largest facility in iraq for one year. i am kind of taken what we call guantanamo an eyesore because i have been there and i think the prisoners are treatedguantanamo. we spent millions of dollars completing a court room down there. we have not completed any trials. as far as hunger strikes, we're dealing with that in a humane fashion as well. it is a safe place. i do not think there are many people in cuba that are trying to free the people that are held at guantanamo, where as when we were in iraq, that may be the case. additionally, it was mentioned that we lock up some of our most hardened criminals. trying to free those people either to release them back to our society. but that threat would exist here as we have seen with the violence that has taken place from our data within our country still, or those affiliated with it.

i think it is the most humane option that we have. i think we are conducting it very well. and transferring people here to greater risk. i yield back. >> the gentleman yields back. any further discussion on this amendment? mr. chairman,, the gentlelady from california is recognized for two minutes. >> mr. chairman, i have probably been one of the few democrats who has continued to believe that there is a reason to have guantanamo bay continue to be open. but i'm reading what is in the mark, and then mr. smith wants to strike what is in the mark. on this particular issue, i will

be supporting mr. smith, i believe, i would like to ask a question to make sure. because in your text, mr. chairman, it says that no funds are to be used to transfer relief or assist any transfer. i always thought that it was important to have both the military commission and our regular federal system, which is said to be enabled able to use those systems, to try to hurt us and our country. and where would make sense, we might decide we want to try people under the federal system that we have versus the military commission system. i know a lot of people have not wanted to have that happen. i just think that there should be fox ability to be able to try these people in wherever we deem is necessary.

smith i would ask mr. because i know traditionally the ranking member has wanted to honestly, i think, shut down gitmo. so my question is to you -- >> your time is rapidly drawing to a close. >> my question would be -- if you're intent and limiting this wack your time is eliminated. the latest time is expired. mr. barber, do you want to yield her sometime. >> i would like to yield. >> the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i share many of the concerns that have been raised here about closing gitmo. i think inevitably this country has to get this job done. of my time to mr. smith to illuminate the steps that we

need to take that make sense that we can move this agenda forward. i yield the balance of my time to mr. smith. >> this is one step. mr. thornberry is right. we only do this every year. we just do it every year. every year as long as it is in the bill, then you can't transfer them out of guantanamo back to the u.s., and i don't think any of us want to just let them go. what we want to lock them up, a fair number of them, at any rate. there are some that have been deemed safe enough to transfer, but there have been prohibitions and blocks on transferring them back to their home countries there as well. it is not require that the guantanamo bay and inmates be transferred to the u.s., it merely allows it. what we have been doing congressionally, and mr. forbes is absolutely right, he got the votes, that is where the majority opinion is. certainly in the house. but make no mistake -- it is

the united states house of representatives that has been making sure that one guantanamo stays open. if this amendment were to pass, there would at least be an option to bring them to the u.s. because there is no other place that we're going to be able to set up a prison to hold the people we need to hold. as long as this ban is in the legislation, we kept saying this president needs to have a plan, the president has laid out repeatedly eveready of different plans to deal with it, -- repeatedly laid out different plans to deal with it. to first step to getting that happy place is lifting a opportunity. it is pretty straightforward. it does not close guantanamo. it creates the possibility of doing it. they we would have to see what the plan was. cannot transfer them out of there, the discussion is over at that point.

>> the gentlelady from guam is recognized for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to make a point of clarification here to be very clear when we are talking about guantanamo and transferring to the united states, please let us add u.s. territories. either. [laughter] >> are you ok? >> i did not hear what she said. >> to answer your question, it is in the mark. it's territories or possessions. that does not hurt to have it answered.

mr. garamendi is recognized for two minutes. >> a question of you, mr. chairman, as to your mark. is there a chance to inhibit the release of prisoners to places other than the united states? the release or transfer it to places other than the united states. and it's territories and so forth. >> there is a separate provision, and we have covered that. we have given the president the ability to -- he can transfer if he meets certain criteria. >> i understand some of these prisoners, particularly those on hunger strike, were scheduled to release somewhere in the world, but they have not yet beenlooking at dealing with it have here, i think it may

prohibit a release to anywhere. page 24? >> john, will you yield? i think i can clarify this. there are two separate sections. the only section this amendment focused is on here is the ban to transfer to the u.s. there is a separate section on the banned transferring to other countries. you basically have to guarantee that the country you are sending them to will make sure that the person never reoffend. secretary gates said look, that is a guarantee that i cannot give and don't feel comfortable making. effectively, and yemen is one of the countries where i forget the number, but there is a fairly large number, and obviously yemen is not the most stable place in the world, and there is concern about transferring them back there, whether or not they might reenter the battlefield.

that is in one of the restrictions. but there are other countries restricted as well. the thank the chair in ranking member. thank you. >> anyone else? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i have the honor of having a super maximize district. i some interesting constituents who can't vote. thewe do not want guantanamo terrorists or detainees to be in colorado. thee people have flouted geneva convention. they do not have u.s. constitution rights. the president has admitted that they're too dangerous to be released, and we don't have -- would want to compromise our intelligence sources and methods why revealing that in open court. so some have to be detained

indefinitely. the question is where we do that. the president has no solution. many of us say the solution is what we're doing right now. they are on territory controlled outside of the u.s. in guantanamo, cuba. let us keep it that way and turned down this amendment. mr. chairman, i yield back. >> if there is no further discussion on the amendment the question is on adoption of the amendment by mr. smith, no. 244. those in favor will say aye. those opposed say "no." 's" have it. a recorded vote is requested. amendment is offered by mr. andrews, no. 022-r1.

will the clerk please pass out that amendment? without objection, reading of the amendment will be dispensed with. the chair now recognizes the gentleman for the explanation and presentation of his amendment. >> thank you mr. chairman. another set of issues surrounding guantanamo have to do with the cost of the american taxpayer of the continuing situation. is purpose of my amendment to not compound the mistake that has already been made. guantanamo has been deliberately created as a nether land in the law that was not the subject of the geneva connection the geneva convention of the u.s. constitution, so we could make

up the rules as we went along. a lot of people know a lot more about this than us. we concluded that is not a very good idea. general patroness -- general hadaeus said guantanamo become a recording device for extremist runs the world. we had a stimulating debate about what to do next with people that are detained there and that is something we have to decide. here's something else we have to decide. we ought to decide whether to continue to bury cost that sum has estimated as much as 50 times the cost of incarcerating people in a maximum-security prison. thecost of incarceration in federal maximum security prison is in the neighborhood of $34,000 per year. the cost of guantanamo is $1.6 million per year. $1.6 million per year. for $186dent asked

million for capital accounts and the mark at to under $47 million. the $61ment starts at the sixth $1 million. let us not compound this and say -- let us think about this in terms of the american taxpayer. this is a decision i think we have to make. i would urge that my amendment be supported. >> anyone not wish to speak on the amendment? -- r. chairman >> the gentleman from virginia is recognized for two minutes. >> i have an amendment at the best i would like to present. >> we will pass that out. that is no.273. will the court pleases to beat that?

-- please distribute that. the amendment will be dispensed with without objection. forgentleman is recognized two minutes. you, mr. chairman. my amendment restores the dollars back into make sure that we can do the construction progress -- to the construction projects that are necessary, especially things -- i have been there before, absolutely terrible state. we want to make sure we have a permanent facility there and make that kind of investment for our marines. we want to make sure those barracks are indeed permanent. i agree with mr. anders, i think we need to get additional information on the cost and a briefing on that. this amendment allows the briefing requirement to stay there. reversement also would the proposed prohibition on construction and tweet get that information.

we ought to be getting the information while we are continuing to pursue construction. i want to make sure that that happens. wheels of information from the president. theught to understand from president with his plan is going forward with those detainees. i want to make sure we understand that time and time again the president points to congress and says he cannot do what he wants to do because congress hasn't allowed him to do that. he never reached out to committee and cannot was with a plan. we want to understand what that plan is in my men would require the president to submit a plan, including the locations where he seeks to transfer the detainees that have been identified as too dangerous to release. we want to get his proposal regarding detainees and conditions attached to the transfers. foralso his proposal disposition of high detainee's

currently held in afghanistan. those detainees currently have to go somewhere too. keep those construction brodericks contract. require the president to provide congress the information about what he plans to do it detainee's in the issues surrounding guantanamo. i yield back. >> the gentleman yield back. is there any discussion on the amendment? what i would like to be heard. >> mr. anders for two minutes. >> i would agree with my friend from virginia that the obviously want our personnel to have conditions sufficient that they have good places to store -- conditions. it gets rid of the extra 60 that would create a permanent presence there. i do not think we want a permanent presence of a place. the other point i would make to you here is that this idea that

we build and information later does not make sense to me. . agree ithink the rest of this, does not make sense to me. that is how we got into this situation and got to a point where we are spending, by some estimates, $1.6 million per inmate per year. cost $34,000 per inmate per year in a maximum prison setting here in the united states. it does not make sense to me. i agree with what is in the perfecting amendments. i disagree with the fact it gets the rest of it. i would prefer to see the perfect amendment saw an accord with my own. >> thank you. >> the gentleman from colorado

is recognized for two minutes. >> i would like to briefly speak in favor of the perfecting amendments. there are permanent missions that are there. there is the need to watch the entire property just to make sure there is never any kind of invasion of the property. we have other sea based emissions that can be done there as well. i would say that as a reason to consider and support the perfect amendment and to the remainder of my time i would like to yield to the tenement of virginia. clocks public to thank the gentleman from colorado. there are indeed of emissions there. not just with detainee's the also see operations where ships come in and out of there in that particular area, obviously defending the border along the country of cuba. if we are going to make that investment we need to look at the long-term viability. if we are going to be doing this

and there is an answering machine, which there is, we want to make sure that we are keeping in mind the marines there -- if we are going to spend the money let us make sure we spend it in a wise way. make thee sure we investment and keep in mind -- and take the marines out of there. i want to make sure we are in the keeping first in mind the needs of our marines and by having two dollars in their -- there are some other areas there but the main element of this, the main cost of this is the upgrade of the barracks. that is one thing we need to keep in mind here and that is why we need to make sure we have the full $47,000,000.80 marks. with that i yield back. yield back.eman the lady from hampshire is

recognized. >> massachusetts. -- it are recognized for is all up in the north east, right? >> you can learn the difference. >> it is a long way from california. the gentle lady is recognized for two minutes. >> thank you. i rise and speak in opposition to the perfecting amendments. i believe we should not be building a permanent facilities to support attention operations at guantanamo. the chairman's marker provide $61 million more than the department of defense had planned to spend. it replaces existing temporary infrastructure to instead construct permanent facilities at guantanamo. at a time when our country is facing the negative effects of sequestration we should be working to close this expensive and unnecessary facility, rather than speaking it rather than seeking additional funds to make

it permanent. at a minimum prior to proceeding ish construction membership the members should have full accounting to keep guantanamo bay will let it keep guantanamo bay open. thank you and i yield back. >> the gentleman from texas is recognized for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. two brief points. we are going to have a military presence there and we need to have the barracks, the medical facilities, etc. regardless of whether they are detainee's. we'd have a a proper facilities for our folks. since the i did not think one can say this is how much it costs for a person in federal prison versus this is how much it costs in guantanamo. for example, i have before me is of the elected mayor of new york sent to the zero and b. his estimate for the security

and so forth for new york would be to run its $60 million the first year and to a $6 million annually in subsequent years. maybe other cities would not be as expensive as new york but the point is whether it is detainee movement that the u.s. marshals service would have had to perform, fbi pay into the federal system, if your point to compare their is it for comparison needs to be made. i think that is what mr. of -- what mr. whitman's amended is try to get at. principal and trotman possible amendment. i yield back. from arizona is funding are continuing a program --

it will be making decisions based on the facts. we do not have the facts about the cost down to the details. it seems to me we are working at cross purposes. on one hand we say we want the president. it would develop a plan -- however they appoint to be released or prosecuted or imprisoned, whatever the course of action is. we want to type continue guantanamo and buildup when we are asking the president to come up with a plan. if we cannot have it both ways. i want to make sure the president presents to this congress a detailed plan on the issues of today. i do not want to see us build up gitmo. i will vote against the perfecting amendments and in favor of the amendment submitted by mr. andros.

-- mr. andrews. >> mr. chairman, i want to echo what congressman whitman and congressman for a very sad about it we are quite have a permanent facility there. thornberry essmen said about it. we are going to have a permanent facility there. had five of the worst terrorists to ever hit this country on 9/11. we had the best prosecutorial team. we went down and talked to the prosecutor and he told us he would have had to guilty verdicts on all those five individuals within six months. this administration can then shut it all down, destroying work they had done for two years, all of the motions, everything they had to get ready for trial.

it was only when we came and told them you are going to try these cases here that they then decided they would restart these cases and finally start to prosecute them. knowadministration did not what they wanted to do. goodead the way to have as down there and encourage members to go down there and see it. what we found out is the rich doing a good job housing these people. the remaining the rights. --have built the facility to the prosecutors told us you cannot as facilities in the united states. to do we will continue this. we have dragged our feet long enough. it is time for this administration to continue to prosecute these cases, and keep these individuals outside of the united states. that is what mr. whitman's perfecting amendment will help.

with that appeal back. -- with that i yield back. it mr. connally is recognized for two minutes. -- mr. connally is recognized for two minutes. >> whether the president comes up with is not likely in my mind that he cannot guarantee or mr. smith can guarantee that there is not a federal judge in the united states that will not let them go. until somebody can show me that there is absolutely no possible way we would have to let them go. point, 166 of them. the worst of the worst.

it's gonna be worse with this group than anybody else. they're very dangerous. i find it interesting that we are arguing the cost of these things when earlier this evening the cost of biofuels and others that are wasted did not seem to bother my all -- did not seem to bother my colleagues on the other side. i yield back. >> don't very much. -- thank you very much. i would encourage any of the numbers to have not been there yet to go down there and see it. i think most of us have been there probably at least once. but if you have not been please be -- please avail yourself the opportunity to go down there. it can be down and back in one day. you see firsthand exactly what is happening down there. it gives you a lot better picture of what is really going on. if there is no for the question now the question is on the adoption of the perfecting amendments.

those in favor say :aye: those opposed say "no" the "aye's" have it. \ >> so many as are in favor will say "aye." opposed? the "aye's have it." is thet thing we have amendment from mr. smith, no. 246. will the court please pass out that amendment. without objection the reading of the amendment will be dispensed with.

the chair now recognizes the gentleman for the explanation and offering of his amendment. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i intend to offer and withdraw this. i believe is a sequential issue. this is a man mitt -- this is an amendment would bid on the floor repeatedly last year. this has to do the power of the executive branch to indefinitely detained a person if they are determined to be a covered person, an enemy combat. that withintention the united states any person of restitution not be subjected to a definite intention. article 3 courts, which has worked repeatedly at to get the numbers but i think it is somewhere in the neighborhood of 400. we have locked up. i believe now it is somewhere over 300 of them through that process. it is an extraordinary amount of

, the to give it president ability to cause side and to three years of another process. fortunately this is a power that has not been exercised. in a couple of temporary situations quite some years ago both president bush and president obama had been successfully able to protect us and prosecute those that would threaten us through the article 3 courts and in the department of justice system. they did not need to resort to this. i always try to appeal to conservatives. you do not want government having too much power. you do not want and having power over your health care and you certainly should not want them to have power over whether or not -- over your basic freedom. that is the power to the -- thent has to bid

president has. i do not believe we need to know its rise despite. overseas i support the drones. provenmestically we have that the article 3 courts are sufficient. i will be withdrawing this amendment and we will renew the degree start this debate next week. >> the gentleman asks unanimous consent to withdraw his amendment. no objections ordered. >> strike the last word. from new yorkan is recognized for two minutes. >> i just want to say that for me this is a matter of conscience i gretzky when december, having fought for the bill of rights. the i see this as an and

firming language. -- as an affirming language. i hope that now is a good time to do that. i plan on supporting this effort if it is brought to the fore. i look for to working with all my colleagues going forward. i yield back. >> the gentleman yield back. it is now june 6. the happy part about that is it is jon's birthday. [applause] >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> i am not done. army ranger, veteran on our

committee, does a fantastic job, and we really appreciate him. i'm going to teach the democrats a birthday song that is our speaker's birthday song, john boehner's. the republicans know it and the democrats can learn it. it is not too difficult. >> this is your birthday song, it doesn't last too long -- happy birthday. [applause] moving right along the next amendment is that of mr. schuster, no. 256. if the court will pass that amendment. without objection the reading of the amendment will be dispensed with.

>> the chair now recognizes the gentleman for the purpose of offering and explaining his amendment. >> thank you mr. chairman. i find it a profit which happy birthday to my mother whose birthday is just occurred. i am sure she is not watching us here but i will be sure to call her first thing in the morning. thank you for reminding me that. we have stopped the steep escalation of the benchmark compensation for contractors. -- thatattended pier is tend to make sure the u.s. taxpayer is not getting the bill. i support the mark and thank the

ranking chairman and members for trying to understand the many nuances of the situation. situationating a where the defense industry has to play by different rules. my colleague from washington, mr. larsen, led panel with the dot. the bureaucracy is very difficult to deal with. it is much worse when there are different rules for contacting with dot than other conversations -- than other groups of the government. bipartisanhere is support in this committee. the committee on oversight and reform have waived their right to sue four referrals. i believe there is not only strong support in this committee but across the entire house. i would urge all my colleagues to support this amendment. i yield back.

discussion ony the gentleman's amendment? >> the question is on the amendment adopted. all those in favor say aye. those opposed say no. the ayes have it, the amendment is agreed to. amendment is next no. 225-r2. the clerk will please pass out the amendment. without objection the reading of the amendment will be dispensed with. the chair now recognizes the gentleman for the purposes of offering and explaining his amendment. >> thank you, mr. chairman. those of us that have been watching the situation in -- probablyicularly

know that by the extremist organization in that area, some of which are associated with al qaeda, often finance their operations through the killing and extracting or harvesting of wildlife, of various specifically elements and rhinoceros. an ability byo these organizations to create environmental havoc but also to finance themselves and cause social and economic damage in these countries. this amendment's purpose is to determine exactly what authority the department of defense may have in assisting the governments in those areas in dealing with the problems that

they have. it does not provide any new authority that may not yet exist but rather calls on the department of defense to determine if there is authority where that authority might arise. if not what authorities they may those countries that have problems with these violent extremist organizations. it does not provide any new authority that may not yet exist. this is a step in attempting to deal with a very serious problem. even more so a military problem. soould ask for and i vote they can proceed. the gentleman of texas. recognized for two minutes. makewould just suggest -- two points of concern. number one is i think this is the sort of thing that can be handled best with a phone call

and a briefing about the authorities that may exist, rather than requiring another report. the specific funds that are 06 and thehe 12 global security contingency fund, are already stretched and assisting on terrorism operations. i recognize the gentleman is trying to make a connection back to terrorism when he talks about possible funding. there are a variety of ways that some of these terrorist groups used to fund their activities and the concern i would have is if the department thinks we are pushing them toward greater involvement and wildlife and game enforcement than that is going to stretch these funds further than they can be stretched and threaten their existing enforcement.

i understand the point the gentleman is making. in thoselimited funds two accounts can only go so far. where they are used right now is sort of counter- terrorism missions. i certainly would not want the department to think that we want them to expand in these other areas and reduce their effectiveness. i think there are a number of other agencies that can help these countries with game and wildlife enforcement and perhaps it would be best to look at them to do that. i yield back. >> does anyone else wish to speak on the amendment? if not the question is on the adoption of the amendment. offered by mr. garamendi. at those in favor will say i. those opposed, no. >> the notes have it and the

amendment is not agreed to. the next amendment is mr. garamendi's #261. will the court please pass out that amendment? the amendmention will be dispensed with. the chair now recognizes the gentleman for the purpose of offering and explaining his or her amendment. mr., chairman -- mr. chairman, given my success i think i'll ask my co-sponsors to present this. but strike the last word, mr. chairman. >> i yield my remaining time to mr. gibson. >> the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. mr. chairman, does have to do with section 1251 underlying language in the bill. -- thegard to syria

chairman can correct me if i am wrong. i think the intent of this language was to show support for friends and allies in the region with regard to securing weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical and biological weapons in the event that we need to move in that direction. the you take a look at language here i think we have done more than that. i have concerns with the language. i want to thank the chairman. i want to address the mokes concerning part of this. the clarification that nothing in this bill authorizes the use of military force. i want to express my appreciation to the chairman for doing that. 0.8 in 1251 it says -- the president should sit -- the president should

provide a supplemental budget to congress. i would be supportive of the supplemental budget if there were actions. my issue is it implies that it is his decision to make. that is our decision to make. again, thank you for having that clarifying language. there are other aspects that also concern me. so paragraph on says president obama should fully consider all course of action to remove the president from power. that just a vicious and of ofds -- that just position ford's seems that we are moving toward the regime. sub paragraph three talks about operational preparation. given my background that concerns me, that lack of definition. so paragraph five says he should continue to support syrian opposition with nonlethal aid this is something i am not comfortable with. we haven't expressed that in the first place. i think we should slow down on this, i think we should strike

this language and moved back to the regional intent. with that i will yield back. seconds. 70 if mr. kaufman would like to take that in his own time. also rise in support of the amendment. i think there is going to be interveningre to speak for the for the nt 8 is adopted. is adopted. i yield back my time. >> the gentleman yields back. i want to speak in opposition of the amendment.

this is not any permission to go to war with syria. the president has stated over and over that the use of the fact thatns chemical weapons have been used in syria is the rabbi. we do not know what that means and our allies to not know what that means. knowolks in syria to not what that means, i did. i find the argument unpersuasive. -- these strike this things ought to be done and the president ought to provide us that planning tool that would be used to look at the options. where the president of the united states blocks it does not to us any good. -- when he does not back those things up that he

said that harms our reputation in the world for a variety of reasons. i just think there is no harm in leaving the section in. i would speak out against striking the section. i yield back. >> the gentleman yield back. the the gentleman from washington is recognized for two minutes. >> i would like to speak in opposition of the amendment as well. i do not think the language is quite as strong as he defines. this is a significant problem in syria. the president should look good all possible options. it is not something we should ignore. there is nothing here that obligates us or pushes us in the direction of further military action. i thank the staff for having worked to make sure we have that language, down so it does not do that.

language, the council does not do that. so ie language calmed down that. not do calling for averaging change without understanding the specifics, this does not do that. we worked very hard to make sure that the language mitt acknowledges the problem -- the language merely acknowledges the problem and if the u.s. can help it should look for options. i think this is sufficiently neutral and that we can leave it in there without doing any damage. i oppose the amendment to strike it. but the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from georgia, mr. scott, is recognized for two minutes. >> i would like to remind everybody that the president did choose to use military assets.

i would suggest, mr. chairman, as we go forward that maybe we paragraph 8 that should the president decide to employ any military asset the president provide a separate budget to congress prior to taking any such action if we go for it. country cannot get suckered into conflict in that country. i oppose the amendment as we go for it. >> the gentle man yells back. the gentle lady from illinois. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to speak in opposition to this amendment. it calls for the president to have a policy that supports israel, our strongest ally in the region. syrian allies poses a threat.

syria has crossed the red line and i think we should support them in congress. the mall, mr. chairman i yield back. >> the gentle lady -- the gentle lady yells back. any further discussion on the amendment? like to speak briefly in favor, not so much that i disagree with everything in the section but i do not think this is the proper venue. a veryt want to see important authorization bill become the place where we discuss or debate the merits of anything in syria. with that i compliment both the chairman and ranking member for developing language that is fairly innocuous. nonetheless i think it would be better to be in a different vehicle. i yield back.

>> any further discussion of the amendment? miss davis is recognized for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. we all know how extremely difficult this issue is. i wished to yield to mr. garamendi for additional conference -- for additional comments. i appreciate the bipartisan effort on this as well. >> thank you. took this step was to cause us to take -- causes to think seriously about what may come about as a result not only of this language but as the result of the very serious problem happening in syria. we really need to exercise our authority under the constitution about going to war. libya have wars like profound implications.

my colleagues join with me in an effort to thoroughly discussed these tweeted to thoroughly discussed these type of issues. i think it is totally insufficient to discuss this at this late hour. least it is the beginning of a discussion by this very important committee that would have the first jurisdictional issue on what could be and should be a declaration of war if we decide to. that, mr. chairman i move to withdraw the amendment. >> the gentleman asks unanimous consent to withdraw his amendment. no objections, so ordered.

>> i ask unanimous consent to call up and unblock package number two, consisting amendments that are approved by the minority side. without objection so ordered with the clerk please pass at the amendment? this amendment is comprised of the following, amendment 0017 by mr. andrews. amendment no. 036 by mr. larsen to designate a dod senior official for management of transfer of individuals detained at u.s. naval station, guantanamo bay, cuba. amendment 051 by mr. sanchez to

require the dod to share information on planning guidance and contingency plans. amendment 080 to express the sense of congress of u.s. military comprehensively evaluate and and take over the bearnaise -- amendment no. 117 to require the dod to provide congress detailing the scope of the participation in 2014 and how this is consistent with the restrictions on engagement from the fiscal year 2000. no. 128 to require that the chief defense counsel and chief prosecutor serving at gitmo be of the same rank. amendment no. 139-or one to require a report on the capability of government to

obtain and rehabilitate individuals detained at guantanamo who are transferred to yemen. requires no. 146-r 1 the secretary of defense to assistance to afghanistan. the extent at which such taxes are not reimbursed by afghanistan would grant the secretary of wafer. to requestno. 167-r1 a report attachment on any constitutional right related to an individual detained at guantanamo subject transfer to the u.s.. number one 79 by mr. conway to require the secretary of defense have by congress -- who since been released and become leaders in a foreign terrorist group.

to expressno. 262-r1 the sense of congress maintaining the united states base is critical to meeting our national security requirements, among other things. without objection beyond what amendment is before the members. -- without objection to the is before thedment members. question is on passage of the amendment offered. so many as are in favor will say i. those opposed, and know. the ayes have it and the amendment is agreed to. next we have an amendment by mr. smith, number one 36 if the clerk will please pass that out. without objection reading of the amendment will be dispensed with.

the chair now recognizes the gentleman the purpose of offering and explaining his amendment. >> thank you mr. chairman. as i begin my argument i realize i started out far too many of my arguments on amendments with the phrase "i know i am going to lose, but the " that is probably not the best debating approach. i ought to know better. this has to do with the two amphibious vehicles that for two years the department of defense has tried to mothball. we have insisted that we keep them operational. it is the department of defense's argument that the money can be better spent elsewhere. destroyers and perhaps even having the funds to send those aircraft carrier battle groups out had -- that they had not been able to send. in an ideal world we would love to keep these nine ships

functioning but we are not in an ideal world. we are in a sequestration world. i will spare you the argument i made before and i will put aside the argument about whose fault it may be. we are where we are. sequestration is going to happen. the department of defense is being forced to make some very difficult choices. it undermines congress possibility to make strategic choices. prohibited thewe mothballing of the seven cruisers and two and 80th vehicles -- and two amphibious vehicles, it is not being done anything with them. they do not have the money to modify them so we are paying simply to have them sit in port. will instead of using the money more wisely to perhaps build , two of british

destroyers, or to send out an aircraft carrier where it would be useful. i understand fluid rather not see these ships decondition the bees -- but the budget is where it is at. the department as it the right choice. the department of defense made the right choice. >> the gentleman yield back. the gentleman from virginia is recognized for two minutes. -- this are many things is one that is not. the ranking member mentioned that these are going to be mothballed. they are going to be dismantled and destroyed. secondly he talked about the way we had put money in for a modest rise asian. it is not accurate. the money had not spent that money. every independent study sense -- we need about four hundred

ships in our navy. the navy always said we need 313. this new shipbuilding plan is 306. if you take the new plan it will not be completed until 2037, the president of the united states will be 76 years old and according to his plan he has a $4 billion deficit for every year for the next 30 years and have no idea how they are going to make it up. let me talk about the capacity we are busy with the ships. in 2007 we met 90% of the navy's commanders need speed when you look at this capacity the navy has never said they need the capacity. here is why. these ships increases represent twice the surface missile capability of the entire british navy. we are not mothballing them, we are tearing them apart. they have a 10 to 15 year useful life on them. it is far cheaper for us to modernize these capabilities and

keep these ships in our fleet because we need this capability. with that, mr. chairman i hope we will reject this amendment and we will support the mark that we have that keeps these cruisers. i yield back. >> the garage from virginia is recognized for two minutes. >> the ships will continue to be deployed. if you look at where the needs are for this nation, by any measure it is well over 300. if we allow these 90 ships to be retired our fleet goes to 270 ships in f.y. 15. twoff otherwise though are am f.b.i. yuss ships. with these two retiring our fleet goes down to 26, they cannot meet their requirement of

corps two marine brigades. we're not going to have the chicagos necessary to deliver them and support them. i will say this, i understand the fiscal challenges that our budget on the defense side is facing but i can tell you this, if we don't stand and make sure we have a commitment to keep as many ships as we can, these cruisers have 10 years of life left in them. if we're going to retire ships that early and believe what little bit we might save from that in the short term and i argue it is short term savings. in the long term we lose money because we don't get the full service out of those ships that we paid full price for. think about it, we don't have the capability. secondly, when it comes time to build new ships and the next ship class comes out, these

ships are supposed to have 40 years but they are only going to have 30 years because we're setting a pattern of retiring ships early. this amendment takes away from what our needs are and take us us to a navy of 270 ships and by any measure that is unaccept. with that i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. the chair recognizes the gentleman from connecticut up in the northeast for two minutes. >> thank you. unlike the debate we had yesterday, i'm going to support the ranking member in this amendment. i don't do it happily. has he pointed out, i think all of our press rens is to keep these ships and extend their life. on march 1, we had sequester go into effect weaven the u.s.s. harry truman sitting in virginia

instead of the middle east. the account is subject to this chainsaw that is going through the navy's budget. the notion that, you know, we can just find somewhere the money to extend these cruisers and also meet the real mission requirements that are out there right now, it's just not there. $2.4 billion was put into last year's budget to keep these ships operational but the problem is the navy needs more than that. they told us that repeatedly. they need $2.8 billion more to meet the operational requirements to get the ships modernized and moving and we don't have the capacity right now. it is just not there. we should be focused to make sure that the middle east is covered right now, which it is

not because the truman deployment has been canceled because of sequestration. 0,000 losing days because of furloughs and that is affecting military readiness in this country. it is time to face reality, which if navy has told us, they need this to rebalance that i recall budget and we have 15 cruisers, will will still be in the fleet that can accompany our strike force and do the important job they do so i support the amendment. >> the gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from florida is recognized. >>i think we should continue this discussion and i yield my time. >> thank you, mr. chairman, to correct the record. we did put in the budget last year, all the money to do the

modernization and operate these vessels for two years. the question comes down to simply this, what size navy do you want to meet these needs? the statistic that should stare at you in the eyes, in 2007, we met 90% of the commanders' requirement. this year we're going to meet 50%. if you want this navy to continue on the curve line that we're going, then vote for this amendment and we'll take these ships out. if we need them down the road, someone is going to come back to this night and say why did we make such a foolish mistake as to tear apart and dismantle ships that have 10-15 years of life left in them? yield back. >> gentleman yields back. one other point. when the paykom commander was

here testifying before the committee, in discussing the switch in strategy where the president said he wanted to switch to a pacific strategy, the admiral pointed fought you take the geography of the pacific ocean, you can fit all of the land masses on the earth inside that and have room left over for africa and australia. it's a pretty big area and we're talking about shifting to thaped that kind of a strategy with a smaller navy. i think that is something -- when we talk a facing reality it is something we ought to be paying attention to. any more discussion on the gentleman's amendment? if not, the question is on the adoption on the amendment offered by mr. smith. so many in favor say aye. those opposed no.

the no's have it and the mendment is not agreed to. next we have an amendment from massachusetts. number 164-r1. if the clerk will pass the amendment out. without objection the reading of the amendment will be dispensed with and the chair recognizes the lady to offer and explain her amendment. >> i intend to withdraw the amendment but i want to take a moment to discuss it because i believe it addresses an important issue. afered this amendment because of a serious loop hole that is costing american manufacturing jobs while limiting the ability

of u.s. military personnel to train in american-made athletic foot ware. the purpose was to close this loophole and to make sure that the men and women are provided american-made athletic shoes upon their arrival at basic training. congress passed an amendment in 1941 to make sure american soldiers trained and operated to the greatest extend possible with american made uniforms. our men and women are provided dress uniforms, combat uniforms and physical training uniforms. these are standardized determined by the d.o.d. and for decades the apparel and footwear was american made as required by law. however, since fiscal year 2002, d.o.d. has circumvented this policy to allow cash allowances

for training shoes. past concerns were raised about the unavailability of domestic sourcing. there is 1 hub% compliant shoe n the market at the price of $68, $6 less than the requirement without a waiver. there is a company that can provide an athletic shoe. there is concerns about domestic sources. in addressing these concerns is challenging particularly given the late hour. i greatly appreciate the willingness of your staff to work with me on this, mr. chairman, i hope i can count on your sport as we consider this for support next week. i ask for a unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment. >> she asks for unanimous

consent to withdraw the amendment. no objection, so ordered. then we have the 099-r1. the clerk will pass the amendment out. without rejection reading of the amendment will be dispensed with. the chair recognizes the gentleman from ohio for offering nd explaining his amendment. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. chairman, as you know this is a non-controversial amendment that was originally to be included on the unblock amendments because both sides agreed it was non-controversial. however, mr. kaufman has objected to be included in the

nonblock. this is an amendment that states what we all know is the importance of our forward basing of troops in europe. we all know of their functions in support of our operations in africa, afghanistan, the middle east. the nature of what those force are doing there. this amendment does not specify a fore structure, it merely acknowledges the operations that are going there. there are many who are fond of running to the house floor and saying there is no use for troops in the europe because the soviet union does not exist. they are waiting for two decades to wait for troops to come that does not exist anywhere. everyone knows that is not the case. that is an insult to the troops in europe. we know they are activity engaged in our current operations and are essential for our overall national security. this amendment merely states those -- the essential nature of those operations and certainly

should have the full support of the entire committee as it had mb included by the ranking and chairman with the unblock. >> you're recognized for two minutes. my concern is certainly not about our participation in the north atlantic treaty organization and not about requirements to have some type of presence in europe. it's the nature of the type of presence we have. my father was a career soldier. i was there as a soldier myself. i was there later on as a marine officer. the notion of not using to ional forces of having

-- establishing these permanent-type of presence where we have a much larger footprint is necessary, where we're supporting the dependent housing, we're supporting the school for dependents, which are not necessary. i think the marine corps has a better model than the united sorry colonel. without -- you know, deploy and come back home on a rotational basis, when we're talking about having exist capacity for bases here in the united states, it just seems ridiculous to maintain the type of presence we have. so i would like to yield the balance of my time to clorn gibson. > thank you.

i'm not sure i see the need for the amendment. i happen to disagree with it as well. i'm not sure i see the point of it. i can envision other ways we can go about advancing the scurelt -- the ather than ecurity. propose to strike the last word. >> the gentleman from virginia is recognized for two minutes. >> i would like to speak in favor of the amendment. as we all know, the need for our forces in europe is dictated not just by the relationship we have with nato but also by the demands by other commands. the african command, the central command. having traveled there to see

what that need is and listening to commanders we understand it is more than just that support of nato. it is not a presence that is there in the old sense, the cold war sense where we need to bo there in case of threats by the russians. we see, too that the foreinstruct has changed there. e number of bases a have shrank. we've of gone from 300,000 oops down to 73,000 with abevaluation of what is the need in europe? to say the need is not there is not looking at the issue that we have before us. remember, too, there are needs in that region. when we have a call to help defend the folks that are part of this nation's presence,

wherever it may be, where do we call? the call goes there to the yerusalem theater. somewhere goes to else, it is not hours response it is days response. to say this amendment is not necessary to restate the importance of it, i think misses the mark and with that i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. we recognize the gentleman from new york for two minutes. >> i think it's a fact that when you go back to the origins of nato and the pledges that were made in terms of commitment, g.d.p., toward national security that the european countries have not lived up to what they said

they would commit to their national security. we picked that up recognizing it is in our interest to do so. look, i'm just saying that i think there's other ways to think about how we advance our national security. i respect that i don't share the same view as mr. turner. i don't see the need for the amendment. i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. the chair recognizes the gentleman from utah for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. have been department -- having dealt with other countries, we under estimate the threat this country fields. with that, i would like to yield the remainder of my time to mr. turner.

>> if you look at the amendment it is clear it does noing specify any fore structure. it expresses the importance of what we have there in our current operations. every one of us has been to yerusalem and with our troops -- our een to europe and with troops. the capability that we expect the department of defense to deliver around the world and we know from that the importance of the facilities and assets we have in europe. >> will the gentleman yield? >> who is asking? i'm sorry. yes, sure. >> can you tell me what the ignificance is of having a combat team in europe, which is

not an expy dishary you nirt. >> reclaiming my time. i can tell you that i don't think anybody on this committee, regardless what their service is to have the background and expertise to speculate what our service in europe should be. we shouldn't be do think that on debates on the house floor. we should acknowledge what our troops are doing and how essential they are and that is what that amendment will allow us to do. i yield back. >> the gentleman yields back. we've had the chiefs testify before us and they can give a pretty concise answer. i think it has been mentioned that we know we're at war. we have troops going outside the wire every day in afghanistan. when they are wounded seriously,

their first thought is the hospital. they are there until they are able to be brought home. that's pretty important hospital. we have an air base, we have pretty important bases over there and people that are there for much quicker response and were able to meet -- we had a ot of talk of benghazi and why we weren't able to respond quicker. we weren't within response time where we are now. we would be further away if we brought everyone home to southern california. i think it would be a great place to bring them all but it does not make sense. any further discussion on the amendment? gentleman from virginia is recognized for two minutes.

>> i would like to speak in support of the amendment and he made a good point. there are things that divided us tonight and this brings us together. if you're talking about republicans democrats, if problem with this argument that we should pull out of our bases oust europe, if you buy into the 11-second sound byte and it is about protecting europe then it takes a while to explain it. the heritage foundation explains it will boldin our adversaries if we do that. hird, the cost savings are deceptive. the other thing we need to remember is what bob said this is a strategic trampoline for us in europe. it gets us faster to where we are. look at libya, the first

responses came out europe. that's why, mr. chairman, i think it's very important, i appreciate the fact that mr. turner would bring this up because we have to have this discussion. i think we need to realize, one, its is important to our interest, not europe's interest that we have the troops there and the facilities there. i hope with support this amendment. i yield back. >> the question is on adoption offered by mr. turner? say aye in favor. those opposed say no. the ayes have it. the amendment is agreed to. almost 1:00. 229. mendment is that will the clerk please distribute

the amendment. without objection reading of the amendment will be dispensed with. the air now roke nices gentleman from california for two minutes to explain his amendment. >> in february, the department of defense issued a contract for about half a billion dollars for the purchase of some 20 aircraft for the afghanistan military. those aircrafts are brazilian manufactured plane with some work done in the united states. those of us who are interested in enhancing the american manufacturing sector should be a contractif this is

of record then the likelihood there is going to be many other aircraft manufactured overseas, perhaps finished here in the united states. the amendment is a simple one and it says that this contract with that was awarded under the building partnership capacity program does not establish a record of program. it's that simple. that would require the military to go back if they wanted to purchase more of these for american troops or the american military to go back through the process and hopefully buy american-made planes. i know there is controversy about this. i think it is a question of where we're going to manufacture these light combat aircraft. are we going to manufacture them here in the united states or overseas and in this case, in

brazil. this amendment would say this contract does not establish a program of record. with that i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. anyone wishes to addresses the amendment? gentleman from nevada is recognized for two minutes. >> there's important myths that need to be dispelled about this. he aircraft is a brazilian design, however, it was to award a nevada corporation and the aircraft will be built in florida. it creates zero new jobs outside the country. the program does not result offshoring, in fact, it creates new businesses in united states bringing new high-tech jobs home and a global market space, which

is needed. the aircraft was built in jacksonville, florida. the bottom line is unlike the aircraft manufactures who sierra, nevada has jobs at home i yield back. >> anyone else where i shall to speak to the amendment? the question is on adoption on the amendment. in favor say aye. those opposed say no. the no's have it and the mendment is not agreed to. the next amendment is 226. will the clerk please distribute

hat amendment. without objection reading of the amendment will be dispensed with. the chair now recognizes the to eman from california explain his amendment. >> mr. chairman, for many years now the united states has been trying to figure out what to do 36 metric tons of plutonium that we have stored. in rogram was developed south carolina to do -- to handle this issue. unfortunately, it has not proven to be cost effective or even completed. recently, the administration has decided to down size the

appropriation for this plant. given some time to sort out what to do next, the plant is way, way over budget and continuing to escalate in cost. what this amendment does is to request that the national provide ecurity agency complete study on how to proceed. the bill -- the chairman's mark has language in it and this adds a couple of additional things to be studied. does not change what is already happening but provides greater opportunity for solutions to a very serious problem. that is the appropriate disposal plutonium.pons grade i ask that this amendment be adopted so we have a more

complete understanding of the options that are available to us, including to the path to iran. i know those who represent the area, mr. willson might find this objectionable but i think it is not to this amendment or the to the base language but to the notion of not providing as much money as we have provided but i will let mr. wilson take that up. >> the gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from south carolina, mr. willson is recognized for two minutes. >> recently we have greed on nuclear issues a then time we disagree. the facilities is 60% completed. studies have been carried out and another one would drive up the cost by delaying

construction further. the project fulfills international obligations that we have with the russian federation for nuclear cleanup. -- environmental clean up. i asked officials on several occasions on what method they would pursue to dispose of the plutonium and they have not responded. the reason they haven't is because there has not been an alternative study since the last alternative study back by the original national academy report 1990's. he the disposal happens there or through another facility. there is no new technologies to dispose of the plutonium. i think it remains the best means to dispose of the weapon's

grade plutonium. we need to commit to find efficients and savings within the program and finish the facility. i urge my colleagues to vote no on the amendment and i yield the balance of my time. >> any further discussion on the amendment? if not, the question is on the adoption of the amendment. so many in favor say aye. those opposed say no. the noes have it and the amendment is not agreed to. the next amendment is from mr. johnson, 217. distributeerk please the amendment. without objection, reading of the amendment will be dispensed with. the chair now recognizes the gentleman for the purposes of offering and explaining his amendment. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

i intend to withdraw my amendment today. i hope the colleagues will consider its merits and the possibility of further commandings. it is to promote the military readiness in the gulf region and the long-term of the viability of the navy's fifth fleet. it directs the defense department to develop and report n contingency options. instability comes enough in bar rain to jeopardize u.s. personnel there. because of the is up jet in the ab uprising in 2011, repression and ongoing human rights violations continue with

protests, which hold the potential to escalate and severely undermine stability on the island. given the absence of meaningful eform, civil unrest is real, including u.s. military who are stationed there. in the interest of our military preparedness the bottom line is clear. per rain warrants are contingency plan for the fifth fleet. with that i ask if you are unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment. >> gentleman yields back his team an asks unanimous consent to withdraw his amendment. without objection, so ordered. the next amount is 223. the clerk will please pass out

that amendment. without objection reading of the amendment will be dispensed with and the chair recognizes the gentleman from california for offering and explaining his amendment. >> mr. chairman, this amendment is similar to that offered by the ranking member mr. smith. i'm going to make this a short. i will withdraw the amendment given to what happened to mr. smith's amendment. someone suggested when i took this office three years ago i carry around one of these things called the united states constitution. it has been a handy thing to carry around and this is my third or fourth one. -- amendmentndment

six, all criminal prosecutes will enjoy the right to a speedy trial where the crime shall have been committed. unfortunately, in the current law and in this national defense authorize act, there are clauses that allow for the indefinite of detention of people, a person, arrested in the united states and held indefinitely without trial. so for those of how -- i think we started out this session -- or was it last session? last session reading the constitution and we started this session reading the constitution but we didn't get to the bill of rights. if we got to the bill of rights someone would have read the fifth and sixth amendment. in the bill we're going to pass tonight is the direct contradiction of the fifth and sixth amendment to the united

states constitution. so i guess i will withdraw my amendment or ask for a unanimous consent to do so. so i will. >> gentleman yields back his time and asks for unanimous consent toy w draw his amendment. without objection so ordered. next amendment is 220. will the clerk please pass that amendment out. without objection reading of the amendment will be dispensed with and the chair recognizes the gentleman of california for the purpose of offering and explaining his amendment. >> there's probably no other committee that has the authority to spend as much money as this

committee. in this bill, we're proposing to spend a whole lot of money on the afghanistan security force, their army. in fact, $2.6 billion is supposed to be spent on equipment to be delivered from some where to some place in afghanistan. i don't know how much corruption we need before we begin to blow the whistle and say time out. so this amendment would with hold $2.6 billion of the $7.7 billion, which is a 51% increase year-to-year to fund the afghan security forces. oney to be spent on stuff, airplanes, equipment, purchase for unknown place, perhaps places like russia or pakistan,

i don't know. we don't know where the money is coming from. we certainly don't know how thing afghanistan army is going to maintain the airplanes, where they are going to maintain them or the men and women to fly them or even to service them. so this says to with hold the $2.6 billion until we're given , where, and who is going to make these airplanes available, make this equipment available and how it is going to be maintained and be a little curious about the potential corruption associated with another $2.6 billion being spent on the equipment for the afghanistan army. or maybe it is for the political leaders in that country. so that's the amendment. if the gentleman and ladies of this committee would like to

blow about $2.6 billion then oppose this amendment. i ask for an aye vote and i ield back my time. >> any other discussion of the amendment? the gentleman of new york is recognized for two minutes. >> i want to speak in favor of the amendment. we've been investing so much, including infrastructure and schools, roads, and now other kinds of things. i don't know -- there's no sense of when it will end. we need all of those things here, unfortunately. so i would like to note that we can use that money for some of

the things that maybe we've been talking about that we haven't been able to afford for the united states. so i strongly support the amendment that the gentleman from california. i would also note that it doesn't say we won't do any of those things, it simply requires a report to well document how these things are going to be used. i would hope it explains why it is essential to our national defense that we continue this. i think it is a modest amendment but it does bring up the more important points and i yield back the balance of my time. >> the gentleman yields back. the intint on your amendment is lottable, however, our committee has a long standing tradition requiring other committees to wave referal. this is done so we can proceed after to the house floor. however, that has not been done

on this amendment. so i must rule your well-intention amendment out of order. >> may i ask the chairman a question? >> yes. >> since you ruled this out of order, then we're going to -- will we pass a bill that allows for the expenditure of $2.6 billion for airplanes related equipment to be spent this year, this coming year in afghanistan? is that the meaning of your uling? >> we're complying with the president's request for the afghan security forces. the reason i ruled your amendment out of order is because you haven't gotten the waiver from the the foreign affairs committee, which has jurisdiction over this.

it has sequential referal on this. >> thank you, mr. chairman. is that of amendment mr. johnson, 236. will the clerk please pass out the amendment. without the objection reading of the amendment will be dispensed with and the chair recognizes the gentleman from georgia for the purpose of offering and explaining his amendment. >> thank you, mr. chairman. my amendment shrimp adds a provision to the bill that should have been included in the first place. we should be slewly clear that the u.s. -- absolutely clear that the u.s. policy in iraq and

afghanistan does not include permanent base. no funding under this bill can be used to establish any permanent base or facility in afghanistan. i would like to recognize the long-standing leadership that my congresswoman has provided in this issue. this amendment is exrill in fighting the perception in afghanistan that we are an occupying army. that perception fuels the insure jens and the taliban and makes our troops more vulnerable. we need to make it clear there will be no permanent u.s. presence in afghanistan. my amendment will place this bill clearly in line with no permanent bases provisions historically incorporated in defense operations and defense appropriation measures. this has been signed into law on

numerous occasions by both president bush and barack obama. these same provisions were recently included in hr1473, which was passed by the house and signed into law by president obama on april 13, 2011. i intend to withdraw my amendment due to a referal issue, i look forward to a vote before the full house. thank you and i ask for a unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment. >> the gentleman yields back and asks for a unanimous consent to withdraw his amendment. no objection, so ordered. the next amendment of 235. will the clerk pass out that amendment? without objection the reading of the amendment will be dispensed with and the chair recognizes

the gentleman from georgia for the purpose of offering and explaining his amendment for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i intend to withdraw this amendment as well. i hope my colleagues will consider its merits and the ossibility of further exam examination on this issue. it states that nothing can be construeds on military force against iran. this amendment is necessary because of the talk a iran in this chamber and in this town that is growing louder and louder. a decision to use military force must be made with the overt consent of the congress and the american people. by clarifying that this bill does not authorize the use of military force against iran, we can make clear that the congress

prefer engagement with diplomacy over force and only congress can make the final demmings to use force. i -- determination to use force. i urge my colleagues to consider this and i thank ask an unanimous consent to withdraw this motion. >> gentleman ask a unanimous consent to withdraw his amendment. without objection, sorded. the next amendment 184 of mr. kaufman. will the clerk pass out that amendment. without objection reading of the amendment will be dispinsed with. the chair recognizes the gentleman from colorado for the purpose of offering and explaining his amendment. two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the amendment gives debarment authority to the -- in afghanistan to this special

inspector general for afghanistan reconstruct. right now, they do no have authority when they recognize a corrupt contractor or a contractor that has relations with the taliban. it takes right now an average of 333 days to go through the process when they refer an action to the department of defense. the problem with this legislation is that it has -- it also has to go to the committee on -- government on oversight and government reform so i ask a unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment and i'll offer it has a stand alone bill. >> the gentleman asks a unanimous consent to withdraw his amendment. with no objection, so ordered. the next amendment is that of

. cooper from tennessee, 275-r1. will the clerk pass that bill out. without on jeckedses, reading of the amendment -- objection reading of the amendment and the chair recognizes the gentleman to offer and explain his amendment. >> if sequestration had been imposed on us by a foreign power we would view it as an act of war. now, our first choice should be to lift the cuts. we have the ability to do that in congress if we had the guts. failing that, we should at least give the d.o.d. and the pentagon flexibility. every witness we have heard from this year has told us we are facing a hollow force. the general shelton of space command said he was already facing chaos and he was not

exaggerating. secretary of defense panetta, all secretaries have warned us of this and what have we done? 14 hours into this markup we're facing the real issue before this committee. it's not just up to me for us to come up with a response but there has to be positive action taken by this committee to at least give our troops, our men and women in uniform, some flexibility. what will i'm proposing in this amendment and it could not be a simpler amendment. ly one sentence. it gives discretion to move $20 billion -- the effect of sequestration in one year is $40 billion and this would allow him to alleviate half of that stupidity, as many of you know, each navy ship is a project. how do you cut each ship 8%-12%?

this is insanity and so far this committee has not done anything about it. i'm not saying this a perfect solution but it is a start. it could not be more completely bipartisan. if this committee does not stand up for the armed services, who is going to do it? if others can suggest a better means, please let me know. in the meantime, this is all you can be allowed to vote on in these 16 hours to save our troops. as you know, due to referal rules, amendments have to be crafted in a way so you can get, you know, it accepted procedurally in this committee. we have will have to work with others in congress in both houses to get this job done. but let's begin that job tonight. let's not swallow sequestration

whole. let's not accept a hollow force. america deserves better than that. i've been complaining about this since february. this is our chance, this is our only chance. if not us, who? if not now, when? i'm sorry it is 1:30 in the morning before we face the elephant in the room. the serious question that this committee faces. how are you going to answer that reporter's question, sequestration, unless we stop it, is a nine-year deal. how are you going to ask that question? what did you do to protect our military from sequestration? this is your answer. please vote for this amendment. >> i have a question of the gentleman on the amendment. is this basic, you're just

repromising $20 billion to give them flexibility in the pentagon? >> yes, in order to avoid the referal there are more artful ways to draw up the amendment but to mention the budget control act you have to get waivers. this would at least, in the national interest give them power to move money around. otherwise, we're going to be faced with thousands of arbitrary and sometimes crippling stupidities that sequestration will put on our military. this committee will have done nothing to stop it. >> thank you very much. mr. rogers, the gentleman from alabama is recognized for two minutes. >> i want to say i wholly support this amendment and i ope my colleagues do the same. >> mr. chairman?

>> mr. scott, gentleman from georgia is recognized for two minutes. >> if i may, i certainly support the intent of the amendment. i guess my question would be, would it make sense to give them the authority to bring before us a program -- a plan before they actually spend that money and possibly allow us to approve what they bring before us? that plan? >> that is the sensible thing but when the general has testified us that he is already in chaos. we don't have the luxury of time. i'm worried unless we lay down a marker here tonight, we may be nominated by our own appropriaters or others who are not paying attention. this is serious stuff. if this was put on us by a foreign power this would be viewed as an act of war.

we need to give them flexibility. >> i support the intent of the amendment. as a member of congress, i want to see what they intend to do with that money. with that i yield my remainder of my time. >> the gentleman yields back. let me just encapsulate a little bit of that. this gentleman presenting this amendment is a very serious member of congress. i have the yut most respect for him and he's really trying to do something here to help this problem that we're confronting. but it doesn't really -- i wish it did solve the problem and would do so in a var simple and straight forward manner. we're dealing with $487 billion in cuts. that's $50 billion and the military said they could deal with that.

on top of that will we have $500 r $50 billion or billion of sequestration cuts, --ch totally cuts every item line item, boom, boom, boom. that was $50 billion this year. so what you're asking is to give full discretion for $20 billion. that really doesn't solve the problem. what we need to do is get rid of the sequestration. >> if the chairman would meet me and raise me. >> let me finish my thought. it is hard for me to think. when we pass the spending bill for this -- was it 13 -- was it 14 we're working on now? so 13 when we did pass that and

the appropriaters passed the bill -- the defense appropriation bill, we did give , department latitude discreationary leeway in funding for the rest of this year, plus, we told them if you come back to us with a request for reprogramming we'll be glad to work with you on that. i think, adam, weren't we down at the white house -- it has been a couple of months now. the comptroller in that meeting said he was going to be bringing the programming up to us within a week or two and they needed it quickly because they were going to be short of on cash. they weren't able to get that to us until about a week and a half

ago. it is about $9 billion. i guess what i'm trying to say is this is a very complicated ing and they couldn't decide amongst themselves and o.m.b. in what to ask for in that $8.5-$9 billion and there's a lot of controversial i fums in there. they have to -- items in there. i have to sign off and the appropriaters have to sign off. this just, you know, you can deal with the $20 billion -- >> would the chairman yield for just a brief moment? ma s limited to $3.5 accuse tive for a year. aaccumulate lative.

>> we're already grab grappling that he $8.5-$9 billion they sent us, we're still struggling with that. mr. turner, the gentleman from ohio is recognized for two minutes. >> i want to go back to what mr. scott has said and i agree with him. there's a significant amount of danger in a provision like this. many of us oppose sequestration nd are flow seeing the effects -- are now seeing the affects that comes with these cuts. the sequestration has to be set aside and not that the department of defense be given broad discretion. the money needs to be put back. the if you give the department of defense this authority, this broad number, many of the vadas that we put in this --

initiatives that we put in this bill. they could step aside and say, i now have a $20 billion authority to undue. the other aspect is, let's say sequestration is remedied. this provision would remain in law and it could continue past sequestration being back filled and continue with the department of defense having this broad brushed pin that without any commission or oversight from congress. itself agree with the chairman's comments there are mechanisms that are involved but i don't think we should give them the broad authority. i yield back. >> the gentleman from washington is recognized for two minutes. >> to clarify a couple of points. in the f.y. 2013 money, the bill that was passed by congress did not deal with sequestration.

it gave d.o.d. an appropriation bill for f.y. 2013 then sequestration cut on top of that. it did not give them any flexibility. they are going through f.y. 2013 trying to figure out how to deal with sequestration without flexibility. you can correct me if i'm wrong, but what you're doing the reprogramming authority still has to be proved by the committee and congress, by house and senate. we are not completely throwing it open to them. to the idea ofc greater flexibility. i think you overstate that this is the only important think we have done in the last 16 hours both in terms of how important it is in the fact that we have done a couple of reasonably important things. it is helpful.

i do not think it helps us much as you stated. it helps a little bit. ox.y other agency is in the we would be giving special treatment to defense. i know we talked about. we do what we can do. am undecided about the amendment. i want everyone to understand what you are doing here. it is not as big of a panacea as might have been described. we have to approve. relatively a small amount of money in terms of the total sequestration effort? >> the gentleman yield back.

he is recognized for two minutes. >> just a couple of, about sequestration. been doing very important work, specifically spending well over $600 billion, probably a hundred billion more of that if we were to count all of the expenditures in afghanistan and things that would happen not in our budget but with the cia and state department and the rest. we have refused to make decisions, tough decisions about what money was actually available to us. about 2.6 billion dollars for the afghanistan air force was really does not exist. nuclear weapons here and there. antimissile systems that do not work in places that are not needed.

then we come and say we have sequestration. yes, we do. we have managed to build quite empire is spending beyond what the administration wanted. we do not spend one moment talking about the war in afghanistan and the $80 billion scheduled to be spent there. you want $20 billion? 30 thousand troops this coming year we will spend as much as we spent this year. what is that all about? not one discussion about that. i have lost a lot of votes in a will put -- not putting another motion on the floor. we will go with that. the gentleman from arizona is recognized for two minutes. this. cooper is bringing to our attention. it is late in the morning.

let me tell you about what i see back home. i represent the men and women in the army and the air force at the air force base. they are demoralized by the way this congress has handled the military. if we can do anything to relieve that pressure and to raise the morale, we should do it. we have done a lot of important work tonight. i think we really must send a message that we generally disagree with the idea of sequestration. go on and on and describing it any number of ways. the way to decrease our spending and to deal with the deficit.

as much as itage is a partial solution to the problem. i appreciate the gentleman bring to ourringing it attention tonight. >> the gentleman has mentioned he would have voted against sequestration had he the opportunity. those of us who have that is not aty, most boat .imple yes, no, black and white it was multifaceted. the first thing it did was raise the debt ceiling limit. if we had not voted for that we down have base basically shut the government. ae second thing was to pass supercommittee that was responsible to come up with savings of another $1.2 trillion out of mandatory spending over

and above the one dollar trillion that we took out of domestic spending. it was a pretty broad thing. all of us that did vote for it had very strong concerns about sequestration. we were assured that it would be so bad that the supercommittee would be forced to do its work. we find they were not able to do that. we still have this hanging over us. weeverything were simple probably would not be paid so much. to be a different kind of job. we have to deal with life as it is. we have to do this as it is presented to us. iwish i could say every vote cast in this house i feel really good about.

some of them you take the bad with the good. unfortunately, there were good and bad in that bill. the gentleman from new york is recognized for two minutes. >> thank you. the way you say about it not being able to be perfect is one of the reasons why we have to support this amendment. mr. barber was not here to vote against the sequester, which i do not believe will end up saving money because of the inefficient way these cuts are being implemented. at the very least, we need to stem the bleeding. i have men and women going to work every day in uniform at an army base. whether you approve or do not approve of the mission, they are currently deporting our troops in combat missions as we speak th.

because they are members of the national guard they are subject to sequester even the next day. they can be flying in afghanistan and the next day they can be furloughed. this is absurd. i want to make sure we have our oversight capabilities. it certainly would be a lot better. mr. cooper offers us a way at the very least to stem the beeping -- bleeding. i have a lot of members on my own side of the aisle who say we cannot settle. i would get rid of the whole thing and chip it away one piece at a time. we have got to give our people enough flexibility to at least deal with the worst parts of this. i appreciate very much what you said. i do not think this is simple at all. certainly, this relatively modest measure we have to take that step. i thank you. thank you for the indulgence at this late hour. gentleman from utah is

recognized for two minutes. >> i will handle my committee in the morning with the same close i have on right now. sequestration was passed with a bipartisan vote. sequestration opposition was bipartisan as well. voted no ont i sequestration is nothing more me a greatves happiness and that fact. a solution to what is happening. sequestration is a problem. it was a problem compounded by prior cuts that had also taken place. everything worked together. what he is presenting here is a wonderful and enthusiastic approach that is what you do at the beginning of our planning process. if we had taken this on as art as our goal,is on

we would be ok. you do not do that at the end of the process. thetill have to deal with end result of what sequestration has put upon us. that deals with what we do for our budgeting and appropriations as they go forward. the house budget took a good step toward restoring and solving that problem. we need to build from that. as much as i love what the this is and fervor is, not a motion we can past. all it does is raise more problems and concerns than it solves. i appreciate what he's doing. . i have to raise my voice as well in saying that this is not forright time and process solving these problems. there is a time and process and this committee must dedicate ourselves to following through

and achieving that process. i yield back. any further discussion on the amendment? davis from california recognize for two minutes. >> i appreciate the comments of my colleagues just now. we needthe reality is to look forward to the next budget. we cannot do that if we do not and acknowledged to the point of a conference. this is something that i think really needs to be done. to hear some enthusiastic voices suggesting that is the next step. if we care as much about the services as i believe we all do, we also knew there are multiple programs that the men and women

that take part in our communities every single day. i see them out there. i see them doing everything in the world. they cannot go out there and the grass iswhen not taking care of. when the cities are not able to do any of that. that is all part of the community. if that is what we do, have that association and our communities and celebrate the people who are part of it. what he is talking about is important. it is not get the job done. this is what we should be about.

>> a there's a further discussion on the amendment, the question is on the adoption of the amendment offered by mr. cooper. if you are in favor say aye. "no" opposed the ayes have it. a rollcall call vote has been requested. ok. , we have onedment more amendment. i ask unanimous consent to call up this package consisting of amendments that have been approved by the minorities. without objection, so ordered.

will the clerk please pass out the amendment and package number three is comprised of the following, amendment number 044 to express the sense of congress regarding the people's liberation army modernization, 1251 ofmend section the underlying bill by adding additional paragraphs to the sense of congress on syria, 1 todment number 222 r- request the secretary of submit to congress a report on estimated u.s. force levels in afghanistan each year from 2015- 2020. the estimated cost of u.s. operations and support for a nsnsf. 1 todment number 233 r- make certain classified reports

be posted online. 250 to provide the navy authority for a short term lease extension for not more than four locking vessels. the secretary air force to report to congress on upgrades to the range communication building at cape canaveral air force building. 1082 bnt 270, to amend to clarify the conditions to guarantee the exceptions of the waiver provided to the president. amendment 271 to require the secretary of the navy to show a building plan for a weapon system.

we direct the secretary of defense to ensure a military department have minimum saved that thing standards outlined in the fire and emergency responders. without objection, the unblock amendment, is there any discussion on the package? there is no further discussion the questionent, is on adoption of the amendment offered by mr. mccann. n those opposedo. -- those opposed, no. the amendment is agreed to. ok. to proceed tong

vote on the amendment where a roll call vote was ordered. the committee postponed further proceedings on the amendment 244red by mr. smith, number regarding the transfer of detainees to the u.s. the question now occurs on the amendment offered by mr. smith. the clerk will call the roll. >> chairman mccann. >> no. >> mr. smith. >> aye. >> mr. thornbury. . > no. , mr. mcintyre -- no, -- forbes -- no, mr. brady mr. mr. miller -- no,

--rews -- aye, mr. wilson aye, mr.davis -- lobiondo votes no. aye.launch event votes i mr. bishop-- no. mr. larson -- aye. mr. turner -- no. mr. cooper -- aye/ . mr. klein -- no. -- no.ers mr. courtney -- aye. mr. frank -- no. aye.ove sac -- mr. schuster -- no.

no conaway -- aye.uerra monday - mr. johnson -- aye. mr. whitman -- no. -- no.ter mrs. spear -- aye. -- notes.g o. mr. kaufman -- present. aye.arson -- ms. shea porter -- no. mr. gibson -- no.

pass.veigh -- mrs. hartzler -- no. dr. hecht -- no. mr. castro -- aye. mr. runyon -- no. mrs. duckworth -- aye. mr. scott -- no. mr. peters -- aye. no.botto -- yeurt -- aye. mrs. robie -- no. mr. brooks -- no.

aye.c -- mr. nugent -- no. mr. cook -- no. mr. brightens time -- no. dr. winthrop -- no. mularski -- no. mr. mcveigh -- no. r. jones -- mr. kaufman -- no. how was mr. lamborn recorded? >> as a no. desires to change

their vote? we have three hours. the amendment is not agreed to. the question now occurs from the amendment offered by mr. cooper or which increases transfer of $20 billion. the clerk will call the roll.

>> german mckeown -- no. no. smith -- no.thornberry -- mrs. sanchez -- no. mr. jones -- mr. mcintyre -- aye. mr. forbes-- no. mr. brady -- no. mr. miller -- no. mr. andrews -- no. mr. wilson -- no. mrs. davis -- no. mr. lobiondo -- no. longiven -- no. mr. bishop -- no. mr. larson -- no. mr. turner -- no. mr. cooper -- aye.

mr. klein -- no. -- no.re dioddio mr. roger -- aye. mr. courtney -- aye. mr. frank -- no. mr. schuster -- no. no.fungus -- mr. conaway -- no. aramonday -- no. mr. whitman -- no. mr. hunter -- no. ms. spear -- aye. dr. fleming -- no. mr. barber -- aye. mr. kaufman -- aye.

mr. carson -- no. ms. shea porter -- aye. mr. gibson -- no. mr. mcveigh -- aye. mrs. hartzler -- no. kilmore -- aye.ed more mr. castro -- aye, mr. scott -- no. mr. peters -- aye. mrs. robie -- no. mr. brooks -- no.

mr. vc -- no. mr. bija nugent -- no. mr. cook -- no. winthrop -- no. mr. jones.

>> ayes, 16, no 45. >> little louder. 45. 16, no quite the amendment is not agreed to beard if the chair recognizes the gentleman from for the purpose of offering a motion. >> i moved to adopt the mark as amended. >> the question is on the motion from the gentleman from texas. .hose opposed no the motion is agreed to.

>> i knew the canadian reports the bill as amendment favorably to the house with the recommendations that it houses. quite so many in favor will hold this. those opposed no. >> i am sorry to interrupt. of our staffber birthday as well today. [laughter] >> we do not have a song. sing.will you sent an outstanding job for us. likes of you want to quickly

sing the republican song. your birthday song, it doesn't last too l ong. verse is like the first. >> i went giving you a chance to learn this. take some of us years. happy birthday. thank memberso for working in such a harmonious, bipartisan manner. i would also like to note that it is now june 6. 69th anniversary of d-day. i want to take a moment to remember the sacrifice of the brave service members, the greatest generation that fought for freedom.

we share a great legacy having the opportunity of serving on this committee. sony have surfaced so much. -- so many have sacrificed so much. we need to remember them in every inc. we do. those opposed no. this calls for the recorded vote. the clerk will call the roll. mr. thornberry -- aye. mrs. sanchez -- aye. >> this is me just a second. i would like to ask members not to leave because we have a little more business with me finish this. --mr. jones

>> mr. mcintyre -- aye. mr. forbes -- ay e. mr. brady -- aye mr. miller -- aye. mr. andrews -- aye. mr. wilson -- aye. mr. lobiondo -- aye. ngevin -- aye.nt mr. turner -- eye. aye.ooper -- mr. klein -- aye. bordallo -- aye.

mr. frank -- aye. mr. schuster -- aye. mr. conaway -- aye. garamendi -- no. mr. johnson -- aye. mr. whitman -- aye. mr. hunter -- aye. ms. spear -- no. dr. fleming -- aye. mr. barber -- aye. mr. kaufman -- aye. mr. carson -- aye. ms. shea porter -- aye. mrs. hartzler -- aye. mr. kilmer -- aye.

-- aye.ro duckworth -- aye. mr. palazzo -- aye. mrs. robie -- aye. -- aye.ks veasey -- aye. mr. nugent -- aye. mr. cook -- aye. mr. wenstrup -- aye.

mr. jones, mr. jones. >> the bill passed, right? >> that is correct, sir. >> the motion is agreed to. it is laid upon the table. for what purposes the gentleman

from washington seek recognition. >> i would like to assert the right of any member to file an alert for inclusion into the house on the bill just ordered reported. >> pursuant to clause 2l, all members are committed to not less than two calendar days. fork unanimous consent clerical changes be removed from the bill on provisions that would cause the beer bill -- bill or end in an earmark. i ask unanimous consent that the chairman the authorized to make such notions as are to go to conference with us. without objection, so ordered. finally, i would like to thank

the council team who worked so tirelessly on drafting this mark. who areof our staff standing here with amazement on their faces wondering how we beat 3:00. [laughter] thank you all very very much. .> no further business the committee stands adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] senatoronna thomas feinstein, and mccain visit the guantánamo facility on friday. they said we continue to believe that it is in our national interest to end the tension with a safe and orderly transition. we intend to work with a plan by congress and the administration together to take

the steps necessary to make that happen. >> cory booker announces candidacy for new york city. there will be a democratic primary as rush holt announced on thursday that he would run as well. president and xi jinping continued with a second day of talks in california and palm springs. asked how things have been going, he said "terrific." , he leftther session the estate about 90 minutes ago .hich ended the two-day summit theohn kerry talks about middle east in u.s./israel

relations. this is his first speech to a jewish organization since he became secretary of state. it is just over half an hour. i want to thank the leadership and the membership of the institute. thiss helped to shape distinguished organization like no one else. of course, it your new president stan. youank every single one of for all that you do for israel but also more for human rights, civil rights around the world, women's rights and fighting racism, religious intolerance and torture. thank you for all that you do to fight anti-semitism around the world. i just appointed ira

forman from the state department. you have a very strong department. i thank you for what you do for the american jewish community. ofbrother is a proud member the community. 34 yearsted to judaism ago after marrying his wife. he started as acting secretary i am told will become the first ever two brothers to live agencies at the same time. when he wrote the hymn, he spoke how good and pleasing it is for brothers to stick together in unity.

i am pretty sure he was not picturing us in the cabinet room of the white house. either way, it'll be an honor to serve alongside my brother even if it is just for a short while. thisore than a century, has been a partner and a pioneer in defining the relationship between american ins and a leader strengthening that relationship. you have built bridges during difficult times and hopeful ones alike. we have seen them all and this journey. look at the landscape today. you're not inclined to act. it is too risky, too much turmoil. a lot of people are quick to call this moment too difficult of a time, too dangerous. too daunting.

i understand that temptation. i understand the challenges and predicament in which israel finds itself. i firmly believe this is the hopeful time, 52 submit it so. this is actually be a time of the and a time of promise. it can be a time of peace. there is no issue so close to your heart as the future of israel security. they're zooming rainfall out of that is hardly a process at all. all of this matters tremendously to each and every one of you. future is what i want to talk to you about.

ofad the great honor becoming secretary of state in february. i visited israel in march, april, and may. i will be back soon. [applause] each time that i go, the deep connection i feel is only strengthened. these bonds reach back to my own family tree. relatives who perished in the holocaust. relatives who i thought about the new and personal ways when i wreath.brie reef on to sit at that ceremony the other.

a man who i believe can lead this into a new error -- era that i long to see. throughve quiet walk the spaces of jerusalem. through the bustle of downtown tel aviv. these are bonds that i felt on my first trip to israel almost 30 years ago. a group of 15 jewish friends. i stood on top of the summit. 1000 martyrs made the ultimate sacrifice. in the name of defending the ancestral homeland. across the crest of that precipice at the top of the mountain, across the dead

,ea, the vast desert below standing in the spot where every new soldier begins his service by defending the future of their state. instructed us after a long discussion about what had happened or not happened and how andhistory had played out whether it was accurate, we had a big debate. we all voted at what had happened had happened the way it was described. he instructed us to stand at that precipice and call out " wes the chasm and yello, did it, together." we shouted and we listened. we actually heard our voices bouncing off the cavern on the

other side of the mountains. he came back to us and it was really as if it was the voices of those who had come back to us. these bonsai share with israel. all all of the modern-day challenges and they were strengthened each time that i got to see the state. once i got to see the state from the air. someone actually let me fly and israeli air force jet. it was on that unforgettable he said i hope you have not eaten too much. we go flying. we left. the jet is yours. take it. of the airbase base. i got to see with my own eyes

how narrow the borders of israel are and how vulnerable israel's security is. there's no margin for error. in a matter of minutes as i flew the jet, at one point my pilot turns. he says you are about to go over egypt. turn. i came close to violating the airspace. i turned the plane upside down. and thesky above me earth below. it was really below. finally i am seeing the middle east clearly, upside down. are american air force pilots do not let me take control the aircraft.

touch down and i walk down the steps of the plane, i carry with me the commitment of president obama's administration i am proud to say has done more than any before to ensure that israel's future is strong and prosperous. never has it been as great. make no mistake. we share your unshakable commitment to israel's security. i think ofwe land, the words of one of the most prominent successors. that which only want is given naturally to all all,

to be masters of our own, not of others. central is the belief the jewish people must control their own destiny. israel made the built oneom and has of the strongest militaries on the planet. as we look ahead, i believe and that theou will agree best way to ensure israel's therity is by ending conflict with the palestinians by summoning the courage to that results in

two states for two peoples, each able to fulfill their legitimate national aspirations in a homeland of their own. we are all committed to that. i come here to affirm we are security.mitted to what does the security look like? certainly it is more than the absence of war. for israel, a nation with history is like any other. in itss being secure future as a jewish state. also a democratic state. also in economically thriving

state. security means freedom from pernicious attacks on the legitimacy from its neighbors are on the world stage. it grows with the empowerment in the west bank and gaza and throughout the region. extremists are isolated. lasting security requires regional stability and markets that will let israelis concentrate more building up their businesses. that the both know place where all of this happens best is in a strong and secure israel that was peacefully alongside a viable palestinian state. every possibility of

this conflict and i will tell a one state solution simply does not exist for either side. i have been traveling to israel a secretary of state for the last three months. i have been involved intimately for the last three decades. i come to this not as a stranger of 30 a proven friends years or more. i've gotten to know every israeli prime minister. many of the kings and presidents have rolled over the last 30 years. i have heard all of the arguments for why it is too difficult to end this conflict. i know some of you are

skeptical. i understand where that's comes from. some people are beyond. i know it is hard. there is a reason why this problem has not been solved jet. i understand the disappointment that we felt from a druid to oslo. many leaders have worked tirelessly without realizing the ultimate goal. withember having lunch a major point of conflict. he looked at me as i talk and said that is my great regret. i should have said yes. live forthink we can regrets. i do not think we have that opportunity. i believe peace is achievable. i know that it is worth fighting

for. we all know. cynicism hasnow never solved anything. it has never given birth to a state. challenges are not met by giving in. israel has only gotten this far because rate people were willing to defy the odds and nor the conventional wisdom and actually overcome obstacles. how else can you make fertile land out of the desert do what israel has done? why should any is really start getting into that cynicism? if we care about the future of weael, and if we understand, should recognize that this time is a significant opportunity. it is more than that. is it a responsibility.

some say in the aftermath of the arab spring it is to if he -- too iffy. the dawn of an error in the region is likely the sign to read change the narrative for the new generation that has started to make the voice heard. ofe are wary because israel's experience following the withdrawal of lebanon. these withdrawals were unilateral. they were not part of a negotiated peace treaty that included strong guarantees for israel security. if they were not part of a peace agreement that agrees to be a demilitarized state or entity. jordan was bilateral. it yielded a much at her result for israel.

-- a much better result for israel. we know that any peace agreement for the palestinians ,ill need to include extensive mutually agreed security arrangements in order to ensure a palestinian state does not become the launching site for future attacks against israel. fundamental security concerns have to be answered affirmatively. including a dangerous puppet of iran that has attacked israel and iran itself. let me repeat. the united states will prevent nuclearm acquiring a weapon. it is that prevention.

it is no caps tame and provision. [applause] at the same time, as i stand here as a friend of israel, as i voting record, i can stand her and tell you that we must recognize the palestinians fundamental aspirations. to live in peace in their own state with the own clear borders. that has to be our mission as well. [applause] i is sure you a stable palestinian state with the

borders and a flourishing economy will only strengthen israel's security and israel's future. i haveestinian children seen, i went into gaza a number of years ago. the kids i saw playing in the rubble, they should be able to grow up with playgrounds that are not made in the degree of -- debris of bombed out buildings. they deserve to live their lives the way everyone else in the world do. should noties lives be determined by terrorists in their midst. though i emphasize that it is not a substitute for peace, believe me, palestinians deserve to see their daily lives grow and the benefits of economic growth. kend is why last week i e palestinian territories led by

tony blair that will be and process scope than anything that has preceded it. we know that this conflict is not because of problems in the middle east. indeed, it is a convenient excuse for autographs for those who do not want their own populations to recognize and wrestle with the inadequacies of their own governance. make no mistake. forlving this conflict both sides can have far-reaching benefits that will he in everybody's interests. the reverse is also true. not resolving this will result in serious consequences. i understand that many of you what makes this different from every other time? that whatences

happens in the coming days will actually dictate what happens in s.e coming decade we are running out of time and possibilities. if we do not succeed now, we may not get another chacne. nce. hold the let the past future prisoner. we cannot let the absence of he's become a self of filling prophecy. the absence of peace is perfect perpetual conflict. whenever you think about this challenge and how hard it is, think about what will happen if it does not work. in thel find yourself negative spiral of responses and couldr responses that literally slam the door on a two state solution.

the insidious campaign will only gain speed. choosewill be left to between being a jewish or democratic state. it will not be able to fulfill the founders visions of being both at once. and the consequences of failure do not live only in the distant future. this is not some far-off concern, my friends. there are also some very real short-term consequences to consider because the status quo is simply not sustainable. [applause] a stalemate today will not remain one tomorrow. what is static today will not be static tomorrow because it has been so for so long and it cannot remain so given the options. in this conflict, the simple fact is tomorrow is not guaranteed to look like today.

and the people who think somehow because there is a fence and because there's been greater security and fewer people hurt are lulling themselves into a delusion that that somehow can be sustained. it cannot be. and think about what could happen next door. the palestinian authority has committed itself to a policy of nonviolence. they are the only entity out there in that region that has committed themselves to nonviolence. think of the cost of that. and think of what they have done to try to build institutions, a security arrangement, a democracy, a prime ministership, growth in the palestinian economy. the fact that last year, up until recently, not one israeli died from anything that happened from the west bank until there was a settler killed about a month ago. salam fayyad did an extraordinary job of building both the palestinian security forces and the institutions of a viable state. but that's not just the work of

one man. we look forward to continuing these efforts with new prime minister dr. rami hamdallah. but if that experiment is allowed to fail, ask yourselves what will replace it? what will happen if the palestinian economy implodes, if the palestinian security forces dissolve, if the palestinian authority fails? surely something much worse for israel's interests and for america's and for the region. in fact, the failure of the moderate palestinian leadership could very well invite the rise of the very thing that we want to avoid -- the same extremism in the west bank that we have seen in gaza or from southern lebanon. so before anyone gives up on this hope, we have to ask whether we are prepared to live with permanent conflict, with the possibility of widespread civil disobedience, with the

possibility of a civil rights movement that grows in the west bank, with the possibility of another intifada always looming around the corner. if the parties don't agree to come back to the table, the palestinians have already said that they will go to the un and seek to join more un organizations, where, despite the best efforts of the united states, they will probably get more votes in their favor than they got last time. and last time, we only got nine votes against. and the palestinians have also threatened to take their case to the international criminal court. yes, the united states of america will always have israel's back. we will always stand up for israel's security. but wouldn't we both be stronger if we had some more company? with the right choices and enough courage and determination, there is a very different future possible for israel. so i ask you today, don't just look at what may happen that's negative; look at the possibilities. i ask you to recognize that this

time can be different, but this time it actually has to be. people have spent so much time lamenting what hasn't worked in the past that i believe we've actually forgotten to focus on what the future could look like if we do keep faith. think of the security benefits an israel where schoolchildren actually run around a playground without having to run into bunkers and shelters to escape the incoming rocket fire. i've been to sderot. i've seen those hundreds of casings that are displayed there that have been fired out of gaza. i went to kiryat shmona up in the north and went into a bunker where kids had to hide from the katyusha rockets coming in from lebanon. i know that fear. we can see a difference where you have a world where extremists and their state sponsors can no longer use this festering conflict as an excuse or a rallying cry for any number of hidden agendas. and we could see an iran that is increasingly isolated.

and think of the economic benefits for the average israeli citizen. the governor of the bank of israel said a peace agreement with the palestinians could boost israel's gdp by as much as 6 percent. an agreement with the palestinians that resulted in the normalization of relations with the arab world, promised by the arab peace initiative, would end the arab league boycott of israeli goods, open huge new markets for israel, bring new foreign investment and business opportunities to israel. and imagine the possibilities, if you had peace, of the extraordinary array of religious sites that suddenly become available from jordan through the west bank and into israel. the end of political and logistical barriers could turn tel aviv into a global hub for international finance and technology. and the possibilities for tourism, as i mentioned, are simply extraordinary, an area

where israel actually currently underperforms its potential and other countries in the region. they're limitless with a rich collection of historical, archaeological, religious sites, as well as the modern attractions. my friends, quite simply, peace pays. and israel's vibrant society and economy and its scientific and technological achievements, all of them would suddenly receive a recognition that they deserve on the world stage with the barriers broken down and the ability to move within the region, with embassies, with recognition, with governments, with peace. that is what the future actually could produce. as the bible says, "there is a future for the man of peace." and as men and women of peace, that is the future that we need to pursue. now, i've asked you to think today about what happens if this fails. and i've asked you to think about what happens if this succeeds.

the third thing i want to ask you to think about today is probably the most important. i want you to do more than just consider the consequences. i ask you to recognize that you have a part to play in choosing which future will become our own. you should also know that you're not going to be alone. the arab league came here to washington, and they've just shown that they are ready to take steps forward, because they reaffirmed the arab peace initiative, but they did so differently than ever before. they added that it will have land swaps for the first time. in fact, everywhere i go -- literally, china, japan -- foreign ministers, presidents raise this issue. young people ask me about this conflict and what they can do to help end it. in the last couple of weeks i had visits here from the foreign minister of brazil and the

foreign minister of new zealand, and the first thing out of their mouth was, "how can we help on the middle east peace process? " now, i asked them, "where's that coming from? you're over in new zealand and this is the first thing on your mind? " they said yes because it affects all of the recruitment and all of the arguments and radicalism that we face, and they see the prospects and possibilities. everyone is invested in a resolution and everyone has a role to play. my many conversations have led me to believe that both prime minister netanyahu and president abbas can be partners in peace. and i know minister tzipi livni, who is here, believes in peace, and she is working hard to help move this process forward. and she is a friend and a valued colleague in this effort to move forward, and i know you will hear from her later. and i thank her for her genuine efforts to try to think differently and act differently at this moment. she shares the vision of an israel that is made stronger through a peace agreement that ensures its security. and she is committed to working

to make that a reality. all of these leaders are committed. we're all committed. so no one has a stronger voice in this than the american jewish community. you can play a critical part in ensuring israel's long-term security. and as president obama said in jerusalem, leaders will take bold steps only if their people push them to. you can help shape the future of this process. and in the end, you can help israel direct its destiny and be masters of its own fate, just as prime minister meir dreamed that it would be. so i ask you today, send the message that you are behind this hopeful vision of what can be. let your leaders and your neighbors alike know that you understand this will be a tough process with tough decisions, but that you're ready to back the leaders who make them.

for your children, do this; for your grandchildren, do this; for israeli children and palestinian children and for israel, let them know that you stand behind negotiations that will lead to two states for two peoples living side-by-side in peace and security, and that you are part of the great constituency for peace. let the world know that when the next generation of soldiers stand on masada's mountaintop, when they yell that ancient oath across that chasm, the vast expanses of their homeland -- "am yisrael chai" -- when they say that, that they too will hear the echoes of past generations just as i heard them, and that they will know that as the echoes ring in their ears, the oath rings truer than ever. with the commitment of the ajc that you have shown for more than a century, you can help ensure that the state of israel will indeed live long in peace and security, not in spite of its place alongside a

palestinian state but because of it. you can help make sure the people of israel and the state of israel will continue to thrive, continue to lead, continue to keep faith with its ancestors as it keeps faith with its future. that's what lies in front of us, and i hope together we will seize this moment and make the most of it. thank you, and god bless. [applause] >> the chair of the agriculture committee is our guest this weekend on "newsmakers." the senate is scheduled to go on a bill that includes a $400

million cut in the program. the house bill should go to the floor for a vote later this month. you can watch "newsmakers" 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. on sunday. >> a look at the future of the u.s. economy, and the housing market, with scott anderson. economic advisory share with the american bankers association. this is 20 minutes. >> all right. hello, everybody. welcome. i would like to -- i'm jeff sigmund, public relations for a.b.a. a.b.a. is an economic advisory committee that meets twice a year to provide its consensus forecast. and meet with washington officials including the federal reserve board. the members of the e.a.c. in attendance today are scott brown, raymond james and

associates, peter hooper, deutsche bank, ethan harris, bank of america, merrill lynch, christopher lowe, f.t.n. financial, nathanial carp, bbva compass, gregory miller, suntrust bank, george mokshon, huntington bank, richard moody, regents bank. karl tannenbaum, northern trust. and scott andersen, e.a.c. chair and chief economist for bank of the west. also in attendance is bob davis, a.b.a.'s executive vice president of mortgage market policy, and once a bank economist himself at harris bank. after our chairman delivers today's forecast, there will be a question and answer session. if you ask a question, we ask that you please state your name, the name of your publication. so without further ado i'll hand it over to scott andersen to get things started.

>> thank you. good morning, everybody. thank you all for coming this morning. well, after meeting yesterday and today, to discuss the u.s. economic outlook, it's the view of our committee that after slower growth in the second and third quarter of this year, u.s. economic growth will accelerate to 2.8% growth in the first half of 2014. the combination of a recovering housing market, resilient consumer spending, less fiscal drag, and a pickup in the global economy will be the catalysts for a faster u.s. economic growth rate. the housing market will be important part of the story. the e.a.c. committee believes the housing market has entered a sustainable recovery with strong gains forecast for home construction, current forecast is 15% growth in residential construction this year and next year. and new home sales, we're expecting about 25% growth in new home sales in 2013. and in home prices.

different home price metrics but our fhfa home price measure that we use, we're expecting it to grow at least 5% or 6% over the next year or two each year. so the housing market we believe has finally caught up with the broader economic recovery. and the wealth effect created from rising home values will be a much more important boost to consumer confidence and spending going forward. turning to the consumer, the consumer will also be in a more important position to support the economic recovery. we do think it will be a better support than it has been over the last couple of years. and will be a stronger support over the next two years. indeed, we think real consumer spending growth which fourth quarter in 2012 was up only 1.8%, we think will rise to about a 2.5% growth rate in 2013 and 2014. this is a combination of several factors, why we see a stronger consumer.

high stock prices are certainly helping. rising home values another piece of the wealth story. we're also seeing declining gas and energy prices which is helping out lower income households also boost the real incomes. so this is certainly helping out disposable income and is always also allowing consumers to kind of shrug off to some extent the rising taxes and the reduced federal spending. looking at the sequester effects, the committee does believe that the fiscal drag from spending cuts and tax hikes is peaking in this quarter and will be a bigger factor in the third quarter of this year. but then we think that drag will diminish over time. there's some debate about what the multiplier effects of the sequester, a drag is. but i can talk a little bit more about that in the q&a.

but we do think the drag from fiscal tightening will diminish over time. we're not expecting any new tightening measures over the forecast horizon. at the same time, the committee sees progress in reducing the country's budget deficit. the federal deficit is expected to fall to $600 billion. in fiscal year 2013. or $650 billion, excuse me, in 2013, falling to $600 billion in fiscal year 2014. that's down from a $1.1 trillion federal deficit in 2012. turning to the jobs, and the job market, the committee does expect a pickup in job growth. especially in the fourth quarter of 2013 and into the 2014. the committee's consensus view of that job growth will accelerate into the 200,000 a month range next year. i think the rebound we saw in the may payroll jobs this morning, 175,000 jobs created, is an encouraging sign in our

labor market, particularly in restaurant, sales and retail, suggest that the consumer and consumer spending is hanging in there despite the spending cuts and tax hikes. that's an encouraging sign. the impact on the unemployment rate which of course is tied to fed policy, we do see continued gradual improvement in the unemployment rate even though the unemployment rate ticked up a little bit -- actually rose up to 7.6%. we do see that unemployment rate dropping to 7.2% by the fourth quarter of this year. moreover, when you look at the unemployment rate longer term, we do expect the fed's threshold of 6.5% unemployment to be reached a little bit sooner than what we thought in previous meetings at about the first quarter of 2015. turning to fed policy, i know there's a lot of interest in what this all means, the improving economy, the improving

labor market for the fed and their actions. we do believe that the stronger economy and job creation by the end of the year will allow the federal reserve to reduce the pace of its asset purchases before the end of the year. i know the markets are focused on september time frame, the fomc meetings, there were some a few committee members that thought of dialing down or taper of the asset purchases could happen before or at the september meeting. but the majority thought it would be before the end of the year. and there are a few committee members that also thought it wouldn't be taper or any dialing down of asset purchases until early 2014. so given that forecast for the fed, we certainly don't see any rise in fed funds rate over the forecast horizon. so the committee does forecast only a slight rise in long-term interest rates as the economy improves.

as the fed begins to scale back on its asset purchases, we do see the 10-year treasury yield moving up to 2.2% by the end of the year and moving to 2.5% by mid 2014. if you look at mortgage rates, we've already moved up botch 4% on the fixed rate mortgage and think that will end the year around 4.3% on the 30-year. and we think that could be up to 4.6% by the middle of 2014. the other concern, people have had is on the inflation area environment whether we're going to see inflation or deflation or disinflation. inflation concerns we think will remain on the back burner for the federal reserve. we do see lower inflation this year than last year. we are going to trend down on c.p.i., inflation, to 1.4% this year from 1.9% last year. even on the core rate, we're going to be well in the mid range of the fed's target zone at 1.5% on core p.c.e.

so this will be a factor holding and constraining the increases we're going to see in long-term rates. as the economy improves the real rates will start to rise. but inflation declining will help keep a lid on those increases despite fed taper or dialing down. on the bank credit side, we also have more good news to report. consumer credit growth we think will accelerate this year to around 6.5% pace. business lend will go remain strong. we're expecting 9% growth this year. and we've continued to see improvement in credit quality. both for consumers and businesses. delinquency rates on both business loans and consumer loans continue to decline and as the economy improves. and we think that improvement will continue this year. i don't want to paint in all rosy. obviously there's risks that remain to the forecast. we do think those risks have diminished from where they were

in january. we got over the fiscal cliff issues, for example. so what are we focused on for downside risk to the forecast? we still believe that we -- a weak global economy is a threat. continued recession in europe, not completely out of the woods on europe yet and disappointing economic data coming out of the emerging market economies including china and brazil. that's -- and also another concern. and it will certainly impact our production side of our economy. we saw that this morning. and the job numbers, going to impact our exports and our production. and the other thing we're worried about a little bit is there could be a bigger multiplier effect from the fiscal drag than what we've seen so far. there was some debate among the committee about when -- whether the sequester was really having an impact or not. and we all believe it's going to have a significant impact on growth. we think that impact has been delayed a little bit because -- partly because of employers moved to income growth in the

fourth quarter expecting tax increases. and that helps smooth out consumer spending in the first quarter. but we do think those impacts are going to hit more broadly in the second and third quarters of this year. and the multiplier effects might be a little bit steeper than what we have in our baseline. the other, third real concern we had as we debated the risks of upside and downside was a premature exit from monetary accommodation from the federal reserve. now, when we say exit, we're not really talking about a scaling back of -- or tapering or dialing down of asset purchases. we think that's likely to happen. and is not really a downside risk to the forecast. but more aggressive approach perhaps when the fed starts to raise rates, that's something that we think is still not in the cards in the forecast and shouldn't be undertaken because there is so many risks still out there. in the forecast. we think it could hurt the housing market.

and consumer spending. so in short, this is -- i think one of the more positive economic forecasts that our group has come out with since the economic expansion started in 2009. we do see real improvement in the private sector economy. certainly clearly visible in the economic data. and i think this will lead to a more stable and sustainable expansion path for the u.s. economy by 2014. so thank you for coming. and thank you for your attention and i'll open it up for any questions that might be -- >> take that mic away from your face -- >> this one? >> yeah. thank you. question. yeah. >> what do you make of the recent rise we've seen in mortgage rates? do you think it's just tied to the taper affairs or more a reflection of what -- how the market's doing? and do you think the fed will have to respond and do more to

push it back down to where it was or let the market ride it out on its own? >> i think the market rising mortgage rates are reflecting the market response to the new taper discussion and the dialing down of asset purchases. we've seen -- it's really following the trend and the treasury market as we saw, 10- year treasury yields rising. i think there's also some concern of where the fed dials down on their asset purchases. right now, the fed is buying mortgage-backed securities and treasuries as part of their asset purchases. and there are some discussion in the last fed minutes that some members at least of the fomc thought they should focus on scaling back agency debt purchases rather than treasury debt purchases. they don't feel comfortable with the interventions in the housing market. that's gotten some mortgage- backed securities investors a little nervous about that and we've seen some spreads widening out a little bit in the mortgage space.

but for the most part it's a response to the change in fed tone and the expectation that we're getting closer to the date of a fed exit. >> you said that -- the expectation is they will dial down purchases before the end of the year. was there any talk or any expectation of how much they would dial down and take away, i guess? >> there were differing views on the committee. but everyone thought they would take a scaled approach. maybe $20 billion or $25 billion decline on a monthly purchase from where they are right now. as much as a quarter lower than what -- what they're doing now is a possibility. but there's a range of views. i think that will be -- a lot of that will be driven by the data and how the data evolves over time. yeah. >> greg robb from market watch. i want to follow up and you said it will be driven by the data. so there's -- a little bit of chatter this morning that 200,000 jobs per month is not a

magic number. do you have a sense of what we have to see in the next couple of months? >> yeah. i think our committee's view is that there is no real magic number on jobs. i've heard a lot of the debate about maybe 200,000 jobs a month. i think there's differing views on that. so the fed will probably look at a broad range of labor market indicators and not just the monthly payroll numbers as they i think the 175,000 jobs we got this morning i think you can read into it what you want. i don't think it really changes my view at all. i think from my point of view, i think we need stronger growth. i would like to see the taper pushed back. because i think there's enough uncertainties globally, fiscally, that we don't need to pile on tighter financial conditions. yeah.

>> just to come back to this issue of housing and the mortgage rates. do you have any concerns that the run-up in rates could undermine the housing recovery? >> would you repeat the question? >> the question is on the housing recovery and whether the rise in mortgage rates could undermine the housing recovery. no. i think the committee's view was that the housing recovery would be sustainable. despite a slight rise or modest rise in mortgage rates. with that said, we have seen some reaction recently in some of the mortgage purchase application data from rising -- the rising rates we saw in may. mortgage rates jumped to about 70 basis points over the last month. and that has led to about a 6% decline month over month in purchase applications for mortgages. so there has been some need of impact, that the spike remains to be seen whether that's going to be sustainable. i think it could slow things

down a little bit. certainly the home appreciation we've seen some of these bubblish markets, as really been running ahead of income growth. and i think as rates rise, of housing affordability, will be more of an issue in some of those markets. >> is there any sort of fallout from the very sharp pullback in the refinancing? mortgage refinancing? activity? has it been helping people improve balance sheets and free up cash flow? >> that's where the real impact is going to be from rising rates and we've already seen refi applications are down like 40% from a month ago already. the pace of them. so you are seeing impacts going to affect the banking industry obviously. on the mortgage side. there is going to be some income effects. because i think there has been some -- but probably less than what we've seen. i don't think people are refinancing really to take out income on their homes. i think they've been refinancing to make their housing a little more affordable. that's freeing up a little bit of income in other areas.

but i don't necessarily think it's going to have as big of an impact as we saw in the bubble years. yeah. >> why do you feel the need to include the warning about the premature efforts? what motivated that? >> well, i think -- we've seen the reaction to the taper news in some of the stock and bond market reactions to it. there's a chance that it becomes more severe, especially if the fed takes aggressive action. while we're seeing positive signs in the consumer, private sector, given the risks on a risk-management basis you don't need to add to that in terms of tighten financial situation at this point. we think the fed should remain

fairly cautious here as they continue to improve the numbers. you come off a strong quarter in the first quarter and we've had summer slowdowns before and we're predicting one this time. there's certainly mixed signals out there in the market and that's enough, i think to keep the fed down in a cautious stance. >> two questions. you said that the sequester impact will be noted primarily in the second and third quarter that it is a little bit delayed. why do you think it has been delayed? the follow-up question, the recovery taking hold in 2014, i guess that is primarily because of the sequester, fiscal related issues in 2013? >> so, yeah, i do think --

there's a couple of things going on with the delay and the impact. on the sequester, i think, it changed the budget authority but not the spending of the federal government and there's been a lot of action taken in the agencies to limit the impacts in the front end, certainly in terms of layoffs and furloughs, which would have had a bigger impact on the economy. we also think -- a big piece of the fiscal drag, we don't like to talk about the sequester alone because the drag of that is only about 1.6% of the g.d.p. there's a bigger drag from the tax hikes at the beginning of the year, at least from a percentage point. the reason that is not more notable in consumer spending because the way employers pushed income forward in the fourth quarter. we had a big spike in income growth, bonuses were paid ahead of time and that helps to

sustain consumer spending in the first half of the year. we're not going to have that in the second and third quarters and that will have more of an impact on the consumer. >> how does that tie into the recovery in 2014? >> we do think the total drag from what has happened in terms of tax hikes and the sequester, at least 1.6% points of g.d.p. we think the big impacts, the timing of the impacts will be in the first and second quarter and that will be about 1% drag in 2014. so there will be a little bit more growth in the economy, at least a .5% of the g.d.p. >> was there conversation about the debt ceiling and there seems to be no progress on that? the last time around the markets seized up the closer we got.

>> the question is on the debt ceiling. yes, there was some discussion on that, obviously, the deadline for hitting the debt ceiling has been pushed back. what we've heard from meetings in washington, it might be october or november that we might hit the debt ceiling thresholds. there wasn't a lot of concern, people thought it was more likely to be some action but we don't think that will happen before the dead line. until we change that date i don't think we'll have a better read on what that is headed. we've been through that a few times so it might not have as big of a market shock as it has in the past because people get comfortable with these discussions going on here in washington. >> any more questions?

we'll conclude today's event. we thank you for coming and we hope you will stay around to meet the economists. >> we talked about the latest jobs report, and unemployment across the country. >> an economics reporter joins us by phone. welcome to the program. >> how are you? >> i am doing fine. in the business section of the new york times, their headline says hiring rises, but pace remains sluggish. what seems to be the concern about the pace of the hiring going on? neither here nor

there report. it wasn't a breakout number. we don't have suddenly a more rapid pace for job creation. it certainly looks like it was a deteriorating. we are essentially creating just enough jobs to gradually bring down the unemployment rate. if you want to do a quickly, you have to see job growth. we have 175,000 new jobs created last month. you probably have something needed above 200,000. >> one of the things that is being discussed is how the jobs ,umbers, usually about a month are readjusted. what does that mean? should we take -- should we

focus on the 170 five they came a yesterday, away into the numbers are readjusted? >> both. the markets tend to react to the immediate news. this ismostly because the meticulous hard work that the labor department is doing. ,s the information gets out the overall term is what matters. the overall trend has been respectable. nothing to write home about. not the job growth that we need to put a dent in the problem that we developed during the .007-2000 nine financial crisis >> we're talking to pedro decosta. what should we take away from the fact that government employment went down 45,000

over the last three months? is that something to be concerned about? >> it is as expected. we know the sequester was going to in. we know belt-tightening is becoming a drag on the u.s. economy. one of the surprises is that it is not actually having a deeper impact. there are worries that once they cut spending, all the private sector services related to government contracts will deteriorate. so far we have not seen as much evidence of that spillover. of thes still more sequester process to be implemented and to kick in. we might see further deterioration over the next few months. >> this morning on the front page of "the financial times," robust u.s. job growth numbers fuel speculation overfed tapering. what kind of tapering of we talking about? is this new buzzword

for reducing the pace of stimulus that they are doing to the economy now. monetary policy officials will lower interest rates. what they have been doing is buying bonds to bring long-term rates down and support the recovery that way. there are different assessments as to how it will work. the housing market is picking up. economy is performing well. made that case to be monetary policy is helping at the margins. there seems to be concerned about how much they can keep doing this without causing financial market bubbles. they seem keen to start winding down the program towards the end of the year. i would expect that to happen

around november, december. thenother item in "financial times" article says that the u.s. economy is on course, despite cuts to public spending. in the next couple of months, in terms of taxes going into effect. i think one of the important things to highlight is that this government drag on growth is unnecessary. it -- we could be doing better than we are. i have seen estimates that we are going to have growth of two percent this year. each is a trend. make upt -- you really a lot of ground quickly. he haven't done. we have stagnated on the two percent area.

ife people estimate that you want for the fiscal cliff and the sequester, and these we could have growth at 3.5% this year. that would mean putting a much -- making much deeper progress in the labor market:. talking about the may jobs numbers they came out yesterday. thank you for being on the program. >> thank you. >> host: rory o'sullivan is with a group called the young invincibles. welcome to the program. who are the young invincibles? guest: we are a youth organization and we want to expand economic opportunity across the country. work with young adults. host: where did the name come from?

guest: it started with healthcare. there is a myth that young people don't want healthcare. is a pushback on that term. we carry that banner to get the message out to members of congress. host: in today's business section of the new york times, they have the headline, hiring rises but pays remains sluggish. your thoughts on the jobs numbers that came out yesterday. do you agree or disagree with the pace of hiring? guest: the news is different for young americans. even though we added jobs, youth unemployment grows. in this case, we focus on the youngest young adults, ages 16- 24. that is where we see a lot of challenges. as you can see, that is about twice the national average. one of the challenges is that number of unemployment

underestimates the true nature of the problem. unemployment has been so high for so long for young people that many of them have been discouraged and are outside labor force entirely. we see a situation where less than half of young people actually have any kind of job at all. that has long-term consequences for the country. host: how do you define the true nature of the problem? guest: to qualify as unemployed, you have to have looked for work very recently him in the last week or two. there are a lot of young people who are discouraged workers and they are not counted in the survey. one way to evaluate the problem is to look at a proportion of young people with jobs compared to the whole population of young people. that proportion is less than half. we saw it hit lowest levels ever

recorded and it has not recovered that much since then. host: the unemployment went by age. in particular, 16-19-year-olds, their unemployment rate was 24.5%. aren't they in high school? how did the unemployment number actually break down? guest: it is true that most are in high school, but getting there early work experience early on in a young person's career can have long-lasting impacts. some of it is self confidence, knowing how to help carry yourself in the workplace for our generation, we have missed out on the opportunity. if you came of age in the 1990s, when the economy was roaring, there were jobs, thick about those first couple of jobs you had in your career and how much that helped you get a foothold

in the labor market. for our generation, those opportunities have been wiped out. that can have long-term consequence is for our employment down the road. host: we are talking with rory o'sullivan, a policy director with the young invincibles. an overview of the unemployment in america, specifically for people ages 18-29. we will also talk about the numbers that were released yesterday. if you want to get involved in the conversation, the numbers are -- host: we also have a special line for people ages 16-29. it was a call -- give us a call. you're special line is (202) 585-3883.

an article from the huffington post -- host: expense was why youth unemployment could be so costly. guest: there is research that looks at prior recessions and the generations who have graduated into a recession. the evidence is that those young people, because they missed out on those work experiences, they will have lower wages for over a decade or thereafter. that has a huge costs on the economy as a whole. host: we are talking with rory o'sullivan, research and policy director with the young invincibles. he graduated with a ba in philosophy, politics and economics and completed a joint

jdmpp at georgetown university. what does that alphabet soup mean? guest: i spent a lot of time in school. master in public policy. host: our first call comes in from seattle, washington. our line for independents. caller: i wanted to ask the guest, if having people retire early, at 55, if that would open up more jobs for young people. i will take the answer off the air. guest: great question and thanks for asking. high unemployment rates have affected people of all ages. we are seeing senior americans

retire earlier. the truth is, we are all in tough shape right now, including young people. host: next, betty in north carolina. she is on our line for democrats. go ahead. caller: good morning. i am happy to see young people get involved when it comes to unemployment. i think that they have a chance of making a difference in this united states of america or wherever. it is not matter. if you look at the unemployed as far as blacks and caucasians are concerned, if we could get into the records, you would not be surprised to see that some of the blacks have just as much education or just as much experience as those that are hired.

they're not just hired. that makes a big difference in the unemployment. if you look at television, if you look at hollywood, if you look at the white house, if you look at wall street, where ever you see these people, there are more caucasians than there are blacks. they have just as much education. i am glad that you are -- you all can make a change. i am an older person. i would love to see that happen. those things are not being equally distributed, these jobs. host: betty in north carolina. she alluded to some numbers up there got from the bureau of labour statistics regarding unemployment rates for people ages 16-19 by race. in may, there was a 22% unemployment rate for white young people, but for black young people, the rate jumps up

to 42.6%. rory o'sullivan, how will this get turned around? guest: there are a lot of different solutions and we have to focus on getting education and training to young people. across the country. those solutions can be different based on different populations. we are saying that there are 6.7 million young people ages 16-24 that are out of work. betty hits on a point that this impact different operations differently. this proportionally, these are young people of color. to get this publisher reconnected and getting back to work our job training programs. this is a program that puts it on people to work serving their community, building affordable housing.

it is them real skills and education. at the same time, they are working towards their ged so they can pursue education and earn a higher wage. unfortunately, we have cut a lot of money from these programs. one of the things that we are supportive of is making sure that we maintain investments in his programs and are reconnecting the most this advantage to youth to work and school. >> our next call comes from randy in missouri on our line for democrats. go ahead. caller: hi host up i would like to make a comment. everybody keeps saying we'd to create jobs in this country. the problem is not creating jobs. the problem is every time a job gets created, it gets outsourced. i understand these companies want to make money, but it is just -- it is all about making profits and the bottom line.

something needs to happen to get these companies to quit outsourcing. guest: a thing you hit on was the importance of creating jobs. our generation brings a powerful entrepreneurial spirit. it is clear young people are excited about starting businesses than any other generation out there right now. that is something that we think we can work with and make it easier for young people to start businesses so they create jobs here in the united states and helping to put everyone back to work. host: huntsville, alabama, our line for republicans. go ahead. caller: what i want to bring up is the issue of people that have been unemployed for a while they go back to school to get retrained and getting saddled

with student loan debt. how do you feel about the student loan forgiveness program and how it could possibly help the economy or hurt the economy? guest: that is an excellent point and i'm glad you brought that up. the one main problem with the student loan forgiveness program is that no one knows about it. right now, if you take out federal loans to get a college education, you can be assured of being able to pay back your loan based on what you can afford which is a great opportunity, particularly in tough economic times like we are seeing now. young people, it may take them longer to get started in the workforce. unfortunately, we don't have enough people that have taken advantage of this program. we need to do more outreach where people can pay back based on their income and they can get

forgiveness after a certain amount of time. host: more than 40% of college students in the last two years are working in jobs that don't require a degree. how would the young invincibles go about talking to young people who are thinking about going to school and what they're doing to choose their occupations and may end up getting into these high loan situations to begin with? guest: a great question. there are two parts to that. one is to right now that there are a lot of young people out there that are working in jobs that are not related to their degrees. it is reduced opportunity for young people. in the long run, one of our challenges is that the data we collect underestimates the connection between the degrees people have and the work they do. even if our typical definition

of a particular job does not require a degree, a typical person with a four-year degree makes 80% more than someone with a high school degree. it is still viable to go to college and for many people it still pays off. it is about making the right personal choice and the future to into the right program that works for you. host: what kind of job where you looking to get when you came out of a college with a ba in philosophy? guest: what i do right now, which is interested in issues of social justice and public policy, and particular, focus on youth. host: as we mentioned, he is the research and policy director where he oversees the organization policy and advocacy work. our next call comes from new jersey, independent line. are you there? caller: i have two things. i have a couple of things you

might be interested in looking at. i see a correlation between the skyrocketing cost of college tuition and the government loan guarantees giving colleges heart launch --carte blanche. the other one is young employment -- i find through my thought that's raising the minimum wage to higher and higher levels only brings the point -- it was never meant to support a family but by raising the minimum wage, i personally think you will see less and less unemployment and you will see older people filling these jobs. to be honest, would you hire an

inexperienced kid in a high price or would you rather have experienced older person who is at a lifetime of learning and experience to do the same job? that is my thought. host: thanks for your thoughts. guest: you bring up a great point. how do we reconnect young people to the workforce in a way that will reduce youth unemployment rates? looking at other countries abroad that have lower unemployment rates than we do, one thing we see is the prevalence of apprenticeship. this is on the child -- on-the- job training. many associate this with construction trades but you can do this in any field. we like to expand the number of apprenticeships for young people so that they are right out of school, high school, learning on the job, real skills that can pay off in the long run.

employers love these things. nine everton recommend them to other people -- nine out of 10 recommend them. these pay off well. that is one thing we think we can help reduce youth unemployment rates and focusing on education and training. host: a tweet -- host: our next call comes from savanna, georgia. caller: thanks for taking my call. one thing that has happened during the recession was the beating on financial institutions, the occupy wall street group and things like that.

the brokerage firms hired college graduates. since they have been depressed with earnings, -- we used to higher 10-15 college graduates a year and we are a medium-sized bank. we would then probably only have about 20 or 30% stay with us. this was a huge warehouse of people who now are not being hired. the other points i have, the woman from north carolina -- the fact is, the graduation rate in high school is about 30% versus 85% in suburban areas. that is causing unemployment among blacks probably as much as anything. guest: to go to the first point in particular, i think you're

right that the great recession affected different populations of young people in different ways. there are industries that there are industries that tragically were hit really hard. financial services is one of them. another thing to keep in mind from the perspective of young americans is that not everyone has a college degree. the way this problem affects our generation depends on their level of skill. only one third of young adults right now ages 25-30 forced into the labor force with a four-year degree in. they are in tougher shape and have a much harder time getting a job is because the demand for skills and education is more in our economy than it was just a few decades ago.

host: next, jim in savannah, georgia. caller: i agree with that but the other thing -- the bank i was with, we had internships for high school kids. they came into our program and all different training was given to them. i am sure those programs have gone away. it is not only the college graduates that have been hit, but also the high school graduates. guest: absolutely. the lack of internships is exactly right, jim. lack of quality for young people just because there are so many young people out there looking for any kind of foothold in the labor market. there are tons of unpaid internships. it is harder for us to jump off into a successful career. that is why one of the big ideas we have had is a program we called career internships. it would be a public-private

partnership across the population. high school students could work for people, studying for a two or four-year degree and make sure they're getting a quality experience with internships internships and making sure that employers are getting what they need of young people. we think it would be a win-win situation because young people would get the experience that we need to be successful. it is -- businesses who take part hire interns that they want. this could lead to a more skilled workforce. host: we are talking with rory o'sullivan. youth unemployment in america. the budget cuts are affecting job-training programs. is this having an impact on youth unemployment as well? guest: yes. we did an analysis over the last

decade. employment rates were falling for young people and never recovered from the dot com bust. we wanted to take a look at what have you been doing in response to this growing problem? we have been going in the wrong direction, we cut one dollars from jobs training programs from a targeted at school and youth of the last decade. from our perspective, that is not make sense. -- does not make sense. we need to put in new ideas like internships that could jumpstart our generation and get them back on track. host: this job it -- that you have with young invincibles, is of a paid job? guest: yes. the money comes from foundations that have an interest in expanding research.

we started out all volunteer from our school cafeteria for a year before we were able to put this organization together full- time. a lot of hard work went into it as well. host: if you are looking for more information, their website is younginvincibles.org. steve in arizona. caller: i have a question for mr. sullivan. i am wondering -- it seems to me that the 1950s generation, that was the union generation. union jobs have been -- gone away. that generation is working for less money. i think the real problem is that the 1990s generation is working

more competitive for less money. that is what these young people really face. the push down wages. i think that is their real struggle. i was wondering what rory o'sullivan thinks about that. guest: that is a key point. the rules of the game had to change for our generation. several years ago, you could get high school diploma, and get a union job and on-the-job training and have a career long term that could support a family. that is not the case anymore. a young man coming of age today who graduates with a high school diploma makes $.75 on the dollar that his dad made 30 years ago, graduating in 1980.

it is a huge drop-off in income and wages for less skilled workers. our system has not adapted to get young people up to the skill they need coming right out of school. that first rung is higher than it used to being on the latter ladder. host: the unemployment rate for may 2013 was 7.6% and with 54 straight months of unemployment, you look at where it was a year ago, 8.2%, it is down a little bit more than half a percent. does this show promise for young people? guest: it is getting a little bit better. when you look at young people under the age of 30, we have seen a job off and unemployment from a little over 12% last year down to 11.6% now. it is rocky progress. i said this last month was on youth unemployment go up under the age of 30. the youngest demographic is that 16.3%.

a little bit of growth here and there but we still have a very long way to go. host: tom, our line for independents. thanks for waiting. caller: good morning. i have listened to this and i have looked at outsourcing of jobs. on c-span, it is 99-1, it everybody approves of this outsourcing of jobs. we had to compete with people that make $37 a month, which to me -- corporations are employing slaves. we can't compete with that kind of stuff. i don't care if corporations come back. i would assume bankrupt myself. it is disgusting what is happened to this country.

not everybody has the intelligence or the means to go get a college education. maybe it is capitalism, but thanks for taking my call. guest: thanks for calling. i think you hit on a couple of points. we have been talking throughout this discussion of how the economy has changed. part is globalization and the demand for more competitive workforce here at home. the other thing you are instantly write about is you don't need a four-year degree will stop there are a lot of great opportunities that can make a decent wage, support a family that you don't have to get a four-year degree four. that is a big reason we are supportive of a partnership programs -- apprenticeship programs. many will get you the equivalent of a two-year community college diploma and sometimes you don't need that. because you are learning on-the-

job, it it could be something like shipbuilding that requires real skill. we have seen innovative programs. some people have unique talents that no one has and they end up doing well financially because of that. it works well for employers because employees can be productive. we have to be aware of all pathways in a successful career. host: what is the get the facts tour? guest: we are highlighting some of these programs that help reconnect young people to training and education. we are going around the country and hosting events to raise awareness for programs that are working and to get the word out. we have cut $1 billion from some of these successful initiatives over the last year. at a minimum, we need to protect

investments and the kinds of things that are reconnecting our generation to the workforce. host: alex from louisiana, our line for democrats. caller: good morning. young people want to work -- the republican party has a problem. a big problem, big problem. i wish you guys would look for thank you. guest: we are committed to getting the word out about this problem and making sure that all of our representatives in washington, no matter what the parties, understand the crisis situation that we are in. we have not seen a major youth unemployment piece of legislation or big idea or

policy that would help gents -- jumpstart this generation. we need everyone working together. host: diane in spring, texas. caller: good morning. glad to be able to speak with you. i think you are doing a terrific job. it sounds like it. i just wanted to mention -- back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which as far back as i can remember, jobs or not all that easy to get and they were one dollar an hour. they were talking about getting rid of social security back then. saying it was going broke because congress had dipped into it like it was a piggy bank and they never did pay it back. that is what we are in the mess

we're in now with it. this discussion has gone on for years and years. the problem is, they are getting the old people against the young people and vice versa. as far as one of the big problems i think with the goings-on in congress is the fact that they have too many lobbyists. they should be against the law. host: we will leave it there. guest: i think you make a great point, in that we definitely don't want to make this an battle by any means. young americans, older americans, all of our interests are tied up together. we have worked with a lot of organizations and partnered with organizations, with aarp, we understand we need this generation to be successful. when we are working and have some muscle careers, we can pay

taxes and be able to things little security -- social security that we need to for our seniors. we are in this together, and it is important to remember that. host: in the bureau of labour statistics, numbers released yesterday, the unemployment rate for ages 20-24 by gender breaks down this way. men were unemployed at 15% and women at 11.8%. why the difference? guest: that is a great question. the great recession had different impacts, as were talking about before on different industries. it turns out that ones that were hit hard were often male- dominated industries. things like construction work it's pretty hard. there were fewer jobs.

the other thing to keep in mind, there is the background growth in the economy, things like education or health services that are often -- have more women in the field than men. we are seeing growth in fields where there are more women and we saw recently a big drop in the fields where there are more men. that is why we think we see higher unemployment rates for men than young women. host: lancaster, california. caller: good morning. i am extremely pleased to see someone targeting this area. i have two comments. if you are trying to educate or get a ged for people who are in the workforce who have not gotten their diploma amah i would say it is a little too late for them. you need to target junior high school kids where peer pressure is not to do well in high school or junior high.

if you can change the attitude towards learning, that is the key. the other thing is that if you're going to really want to wait -- raise the minimum wage, advocate for a tax-free minimum wage. if you do that, there will be more money to spend -- to spend for the people. guest: you make a great point. we don't want to wait until we have a problem later on. we need to get them in middle school and high school so they don't drop out of school. that is exactly right. we also had 6.7 million nine people who are not -- young people who don't have a high school diploma. we also want to be able to reconnect those young people because it is going to benefit them personally who don't have access to opportunities. it is not good for our economy

in the long run to have such a large portion of our committee of work for so long. host: a frequent tweeter sends this question -- guest: there are people who are young at heart. host: our next call comes from florida, independent line. go ahead. caller: good morning. i am in approval for the apprenticeship program. the young man is on the right track because it young people need this. even if you go to college and apply for a job, no experience. this will give them experience.

some kind of thing to take care of their issues. it will help a great deal. young people will get experience and some people can continue in that same sector. guest: a fantastic point and i appreciate the support. you are right. getting that first diploma can get you experience and is going to help you down the road and will look good on a resume for a future employer. often, it will benefit employers who are getting out internships. we see 40% of interns -- excuse me, interns that in turn in college for an employer are eventually hired on.

employers get to know employees and get to see who is a good fit and everybody wins. we are big supporters of expanding opportunities for apprenticeships and internships across the country. host: next is new york, our line for independents. caller: i was wondering how you would think the healthcare reform is going going to affect ages 18-24? a lot of those jobs are lower wage. you see an increasing amount of retirees for taking these jobs to the -- to make ends meet. how do you think the health reform -- host: we will leave it there because we are running out of time. guest: some provisions that will come into effect will be helpful for our generation.

many of our young people making under $15,000 a year to be able to get health care for free through medicaid or get tax credits if you make less than $45,000 a year. most young people fall within that age bracket. we will get assistance to be able to afford health care benefits. that will be huge for our generation. 20 million of us don't have health insurance and a lot of these changes we talked about in the economy over the last several decades about lower wages and lower benefits have hit our generation hard. we think over the next year it is going to be a huge benefit for our generation to be able to take it vantage of the new healthcare option. host: we have been talking with rory o'sullivan. if you want to get more information regarding the organization, you can find on their website, younginvincibles.org.

we want to tell you about what is coming up on tomorrow's edition of "washington journal" and we begin with james bamford. he will talk with us about the history of public surveillance programs and relations acknowledging the existence of ongoing foreign intelligence surveillance programs. later, we will be joined by maria kumar and mona charen. they will talk about their research reports on breadwinner moms. we will wrap up the program with >> when you put on a europe formal for a maintenance job where you are a sanitation worker, you are consumed by the role where it is almost like you are a part of the background. on most like a machine. you are a human being wearing

that uniform. the general world gets to overlook you. really not get to see you. you a cloaking device. or harry potter's cloak of invisibility. when i am wearing the sanitation your form -- uniform, i can observe people in ways they did not know. nagle onofessor robin q and a. >> in his weekly address, president obama calls on the senate for immigration reform. andgop proposals to advert interest rate increase on july 1.

>> hi, everybody. in the next few days, america will take a important step to fix our broken immigration system. the entire senate will begin debating a commonsense that has bipartisan support. we defined ourselves as a nation of immigrants. the promise we find in those who come from every corner of the globe has always been one of our greatest strengths. it is kept our workforce vibrant and dynamic. this kept our business on the cutting edge and it helped to build the greater economic each and -- that the world has ever known. our out of a system has hurt our economy and threaten our security. over the past four years, we have taken steps to patch up some of the worst cracks in the system. will strengthen -- we have strengthened the southern borders and using technology more effective. are near theirgs

lowest in decades. we have focused on criminals that are here illegally who endanger our communities. we support more criminals than ever before. we took off because of dreamers. the young people who were brought to this country as children. if they are able to meet certain criteria, we consider offering them a chance to come out of the shadows so they can continue to work here and stayed here and contribute to our communities legally. if we are going to truly fix a broken system thomas we need congress to act in a comprehensive way. that is why what is happening next week as so important. the bill is not perfect. it is a compromise. nobody will get everything they want, not democrats or republicans or me. it is a bill that is consistent with the principles i have repeatedly laid out for common sense and migration reform. this bill would continue to security at our borders and

increase penalties against smugglers and hold employers more accountable if they knowingly hire undocumented workers. it would represent the most ambitious enforcement act in recent memory. it verified a pathway to earned immigration for the 11 million individuals hard in this country illegally. at pathway that includes passing a background check thomas learning english and going to the back of the line behind everyone who is claimed by the rules and trying to come here legally. this would modernize the legal immigration system so that alongside training american workers, we are tracking workers and entrepreneurs who grow our economy. so that our people do not have to wait years for their loved ones are able to join them in this country that we love. it is wet immigration reform looks like. smart enforcement, a pathway to citizenship, improvement to the

system. they are all, since steps. the have broad support from republicans and democrats, ceos, labor leaders, and clergy. air is no reason that congress cannot work together to send a bill to my desk by the end of the summer. we know the opponents of reform are going to do everything to prevent that. they will try to create division. they will try to play politics that the vast amid -- majority of americans want. we will lose this chance to finally ask a system that is badly broken. if you agree that now is the time for, since reform, which out to your representative. tell them we have to get this done so that everyone is playing by the same rules. tell them that we have the power to do that that lives up to our traditions. in the end, that is what this is all about -- men and women who

want nothing more than to earn their way into the american story just like so many of our ancestors did. throughout our history, that is only made us stronger. it is how we will ensure that america's best days always lie ahead. thank you and have a great weekend. >> fellow americans, i am luke messer. it is my honor to speak to you today on behalf of my republican colleagues. this summer, more than 9 million undergraduates will take out a federal student loan. that is 9 million americans at the start of their journey toward the american dream. as a young man growing up in a small town in indiana, i was taught if you want a great life get a great education. so i did. it was not easy. when it came time to go to college, i received scholarships and a pell grants. i took out loans and worked my

way through school with jobs ranging from collecting garbage and waiting tables to umpiring baseball games. what makes his country great is that my story is not exceptional at all. every year, millions of americans students see their career began with the help of federal student financial aid. unfortunately, in just three weeks on july 1 am a interest rates on many federal loans are to 6.8%.uble from 3.4% no one wants to see this happen. job market over millions of recent college graduates are having a hard time finding full-time work. the house of representatives acted not only to stop the immediate rate hike but to protect students over the long term. our proposal will reduce the rate immediately for most borrowers and give washington politicians out of the business

of setting interest rates. you see, in recent years there have been times where interest rates on student loans have been higher than other loans in the marketplace. you can get a used car loan cheaper than a student loan. that is just not right. taking the politics out of student loans is a commonsense fix. obama'slan that mirrors budget. one nonpartisan education experts said "the two proposals are really on the same page." rather this season this common ground and move the ball forward, the president resorted to campaign style tactics and denounced the plan. the president actually attacked the proposal similar to the one he himself offered weeks ago. his maneuvers are yet another

example of the arrogance of power that has taken root in this administration. it prevents us from addressing the people's priorities making matters worse, democratic leaders in the united states senate tried to take the easy way out and maintain the status quo which will only hurt students in the long run. andr the usual noise bluster, they failed to pass the legislation that would help student borrowers. our young people deserve better. the unemployment rate among young people in this country today is 16%. that is way too high. too many young people have had to come home and tell their parents that they cannot find a job. student loan relief is one example of the solution that republicans have put forward to get our economy on track. our plan for economic growth and

jobs will make life work for families and expand opportunities for every american. we need to get our economy back ourhe right track and give next generation their opportunity to live the american dream. working together, we can. i hope the president and the senate will join us to fix this problem and make life a little easier for millions of students and their families. thank you for listening. >> the senate returns to work on monday to continue to debate and immigration measure that he gives an additional path of citizenship to 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the united states. it aims to crack down on the hiring of illegal immigrants and put a cap on visas for high skilled workers. the committee