bobby scott at 6:30 eastern. and we'll go to the national press club today for remarks on the government of public affairs offices and transparency, coverage of that begins at 6:30 eastern on c-span2. clocks of all the handsome young officer surrounding my grandfather -- my grandmother, she was 23 at the time. my grandfather could not talk to her because of all the handsome young men around. to go upstairs and do it they had to do and what they were trained to do. she knew her father was up there. my grandfather fell in behind there, going up the steps. someone came running back saying do not let her up there, her father is dead. and she heard that, my grandmother fainted right back

into the arms of the president. tenderly and gently. >> this week, the encore presentation of the firsts -- of the original series, "first ladies." this week, anna harrison to eliza johnson. all this month at 9 p.m. eastern on c-span. join in on the conversation with historian, taylor stoermer. >> this is a huge story. it is the first time that eight true digital native have stepped into the legacy media businesses of newspaper or broadcasting company. if he acts in any way like he did constructing the book publishing business, the delivery of streaming media, and e-commerce, then jeff bezos envision what re-

it is to be a newspaper in the 21st century and how that business remains a business. journalism is changing. it is manifesting itself in different ways. whether it is a blog or twitter, it is the intersection between video and newspapers. -- wehard to see where are at a stage where it is still being figured out. with jeff bezos eying the post, i think that is one stark example of one possible future of newspapers. >> the future of the newspaper industry, tonight on "the communicators. >> on friday the reserve offices association held their three-day national security symposium here in washington. the event included a panel discussion with reserve chiefs of all of the military branches. it addressed such issues as automatic the fence spending cuts -- automatic defense

spending cuts and sexual assault. the reserve office association actsstablished in 1922 and on the white house congress on national security issues. this is 90 minutes. >> ready? hours of this mostam will be one of the beneficial of this national security symposium simply because it is most relevant to the current state and future of our reserve force. we are fortunate enough to have with us the commanders of each and theeserve services

chief of the national guard bureau and representatives from the army guard. panel, we areis not owing to have the typical panel where everybody stands up and does five minutes of wonderfulness of his or her service. is ane are going to have interactive discussion of the top issues facing the reserve forces. , we havehat discussion the perfect -- arnoldmajor general

punaro. he was the commanding general of the fighting fourth marine which he was a glitch to have as assistant commander in me. he was a great boss. i had that job twice. i screwed it up the first time. [laughter] notably, he was the staff director of the senate armed services committee and the chief of staff for senator sam done. people in this city of washington dc who are more familiar, both having lived the reserve life in the military

and on capitol hill. he is a combat veteran of vietnam, with a bronze star and purple heart. he was previously wounded in vietnam. the other intersect was a second lieutenant davis, the training officer of my basic class at quantico, virginia. the general will lead a discussion of the issues facing the reserve forces for roughly an hour. we will then open it up for about half an hour of questions from the floor. write your questions down and pass them up. we will get them to the services. without further ado, general punaro.

>> i can say there is a block in fitness thatps. i will have to mark you down on. secretary of defense chuck hagel said we are at a strategic inflection point. nothing could be truer as you gather here to discuss the future of our national security. as our great leaders on the stage are involved in the course of august and into the middle of september, deliberations on what hum,ll the project object all the key decisions about the size of our military, weapons, all of these things are being decided as we speak right now. they are being decided in a world of increasing threats and decreasing resources. this comes at a time in the coalition that supported the strong national defense, certainly as far back as i know,

that coalition is severely fractured, if not hopelessly broken. optimism that the chairman levin has about the solution, and the cause. if you look at the body of hawks havehe deficit more votes than the defense hawks. if you have the votes, you won, if you did not you didn't. that was the way it worked. right now in congress who do not have the votes. they be we can get them back and we can all work on that. right now, we unfortunately are stuck with a sequester, at least through the obama administration. it is going to force all of us to think smarter, not richer. hasis why secretary hagel something called the strategic choices and management review.

he is the secretary who was trying to gather out on every issue. whether it was for trona operations or sexual harassment, on many issues he said we do not like it, we do not agree with that, we do not support the sequester, even chairman levin has been a true leader against the sequester. everybody in the u, every chairman and ranking, i partisan basis. all the titans of industry are opposed to it. and yet it did not move one vote. we are stuck with it. inc. smarter, not richer. he is basically forcing the departments to figure out how we program our resources at a $500 billion less than we planned for years ago. that is a -10% cut in the defense line. a 10% cut that has previously occurred to the physical 12 year defense plan that brought us down to the , whichcontrolled levels was another $489 billion.

the defense department, in the course of the last couple of years, is looking at taking about $10 trillion out of their plan spending over the next 10 years. they have come up with some tough things like cutting headquarters staff, consolidating commands, and taking a hard look at all of the costs of the volunteer force. the policy board looked at that in detail. it was put out by major general jimmy stewart, sitting out in the audience. come tog we have to grips with, not just in the pentagon but on the domestic side as well. the sequester, as horrible as it is for national security, does not do one thing to rein in the cost of the things that are driving the deficit, which are the entitlement from grams both in the pentagon and in domestic. it does not fix any of the underlying physical problems. there was also the big issue,

looking at the size of the force. secretary withe two options. option one was maintaining a very large force structure on the active side, but one that was probably not as well equipped or well trained. maintaining capacity and not capability. option today presented, let us have a much smaller force act of and some smaller guard and reserve. that is make sure it is well- equipped and well-trained. those were the two options that had been presented. to me, one of them is a total nonstarter of maintaining hollow force. i was disappointed and i know others were. there is the middle option. the they are considering next six weeks to two months that we are to come out. i think they ought to put a middleground option, which is

looking at the size of the guard and reserve. if we are forced to reduce the --e of the active component i am not one who should advocate that we ought to be cutting the size of our active components. even though i grew up in the reserves and spent my entire life -- i am not advocating increasing the size of the guard and reserve at the expense of the active component. these budget realities are going to drive the active force smaller and smaller, whether we like it or not. what we ought not to do in that circumstance is not take it vantage of the tremendous capacity and capability that you could marry up. it is not going to be -- particularly as to draw down. we have these talented youngsters that will becoming at of the active force, both the junior officer level and nco

level. many of them do not want to leave. he have the option of keeping them in the guard and reserve. i would hope that would be an option, that the skimmer and secretary pick a look back and put that back on the table. this middleground option is not new, it is a balanced concept. it has been supported by ,revious analysis commissions independent think tanks, many of the think tanks have been talking about beefing up the guard and reserve. by the way, the continued operational use of the reserve withnce with -- alliance -- my argument would be we should not reduce the size of the reserve components just because the actors are having to reduce their size. this notion suggested by some of proportional cuts or fair share is flawed. why would we do that? what sense would that make?

if we continue to go down the to path of the options, what is the strategic and? that is where we ought to be focused. 847 plus thousand personnel have been -- 847,000 plus personnel have been organized. we need to take advantage of working more closely with the active speed this should not be an us versus them. this should be a hand in glove situation. we are all in this together. it totional guard brings mend his capability to the active component. this capability is not at their expense. we also need to be very careful, and i would say to any of you that have any ideas about having this or that additional benefit, we should not increase our cost

in the guard and reserve. our --lysis shows that if we let our cost flow up we are left with a bargain with the taxpayer. we need to push for an objective and old discussion of these fully burdened costs. fortunate to have key positions in the pentagon right now, people who are very thoughtful and objective on the subject. the acting undersecretary for personnel is the honorable just right, major are more -- major debbie leey -- worked with me on the hill. she was the assistant secretary for affairs and the carter administration. she worked with me in a business capacity. she is a very knowledgeable person on guard and reserve matters. , which are heard from

yesterday, they do a tremendous job. i had some opportunities to talk to the senior leaderships, secretary chuck hagel, general dempsey, the vice-chairman. very supportive of the guard and reserve. thoseuldn't expect any of to be advocating for us just because they used to be in the guard and reserve. it should be the use of objective facts. if we can get the objective facts on the table, our arguments are going to prevail because they make so much sense. a lot of times, the things never get up to that level. havehallenge is not to these things are muscle out in military departments, particularly if they are going the wrong way. playan play a kid -- critical role in ensuring that these go to the highest level of the pentagon and highest level of congress, if need be. -- do ado a trip critic terrific job of that. let me introduce our panel. you have all of their bios so i

will not give long introductions. we are going to introduce in the order i was given. the chief of the national guard bureau, a member of the joint t- staff,- joint chief of general frank grass. >> what i understood is maybe we have a disconnect. you are the division commander. i think we wanted each of the chiefs. i was told to make a few comments and then we will go to q and a. crocs we are going to do it anyway. go ahead. [laughter] >> let me say thanks to everyone in this audience. whether you are currently serving, serving in the past, we

have the best military and best reserve components we have ever had in our history. it took a lot of work to get there. i want to applaud all of the retirees, you have outfitted us in the leadership positions with just a tremendous leadership cast across the services. lookout and get a chance to look at the young men and women that serve in the national guard, both in the army and air , i do i cannot tell you not see that. joinedoung men and women since 9/11. they know what they are getting into. they want predictability as much as possible. they do want an opportunity to deploy. we have to figure out what is that right active component and reserve component mix that the nation needs for security.

how do we maintain a volunteer force, both active and reserve component balance. our warriors do expect to deploy. every time i asked how many people will be deployed. every hand goes up when i asked who was to be deployed in the future. i think there's a balance in the deployment we have to look at. we do need to continue to engage in the operational missions of our services. this was the army and air force. we have to look like the army and air force. he had to have missions that get us into the fight so we continue -- leaders that can be ready at a moments notice. we need to get our training

focus back to where we were in the 80s and 90s when we were doing combat center rotations for our combat units. we have to do overseas deployment for training. we have had a number of those canceled because of the current budget issue. when i think about the 80s when many of us deployed to central america on humanitarian missions -- all of the skill sets paid us benefits in the 90s and 2000. how do we want to have that dynamic training that will keep people in the guard? we are really pushing this hard right now. we have to have the opportunity to fill vacancies. whether it is a critical chart or a chart fall for two or three years. some of you remember the keep up program, where folks can get away from an employer. the family situation is right. they can go close to an active duty bill, especially to the

joint world. to focushat we ought on. it starts with getting the active component, the reserve component, structured right for the future. -- he is heading to the marine forces commander reserve. commanding general of our larger organization. first marine general to command nato forces, general mills. >> as a new one on the panel i will say that i came to work with the reserve component with the greatest respect the cousin twice on the battlefield both in iraq and at -- in iraq and afghanistan. one of the biggest challenges is maintaining that momentum in the years ahead so we do not break has been forged with blood and steel.

i was privileged to have reserve forces both organize units and i 80s under me -- and i 80s under me. i realize the reputation and they have done that through training, through organization and resources. the marine corps begins to trim forces. maintain theo reserve forces at the level they are at, to maintain the support they have been given, and to keep that bond between the active and reserve force. through training together. we will do that through operations together. we will do that through employment of our reserve forces and as augment these. it is going to be a positive time for the reserve over the next few years. >> robin braun is the chief

commander of the navy reserve. she has also commanded at every level throughout her career. robin braun. >> thank you for your service. the navy reserve right now is forging ahead. we are in the process of taking over all of the individual ees serving in afghanistan. we are at 70% reserve component at this point and 30% active component. they're looking to take over all of those missions so the active component can get back to see. reserves are serving across the board. logistics,tel, unmanned vehicles. next year we are anticipating what hundred 35 mobilizations. -- 130 five mobilizations. after 12 years of for we still

have an 80% volunteer rate. commitmentyou the and dedication of the reserve force that we have right now. our challenge is currently we are in the middle of a drawdown of expeditionary forces. the navy made some hard budget decisions then and decided to read news forces in both the active and reserve component in text a dictionary capabilities. of 6000ns a reduction navy reserves, who served in as well asalions maritime security, small boat teams. we're just beginning the drawdown of those 6000. is finding homes for those 6000, who will be displaced. we have done a study of where all of those forces are.

replace -- soto they are not completely displaced. we will have over manned units. right now we are trying to manage that reduction through normal attrition, normal retirements, and then reducing the navy reserve. going forward we have some new missionaries that were very excited about it, especially in cyber and unmanned vehicles. we are looking to grow to about a thousand bullets. there are new and exciting capabilities out there. the challenge will be over the next couple of years, with sequestration and looking at the proper active component and reserve component, we think we have a great opportunity to ship some capabilities from the active component into the reserve component without taking too much risk. that is one of the things we're are working every day in the

pentagon. >> thanks. general john mott has been mobilized. general? >> i will keep my remarks appropriately short. i look for to the opportunity to discuss any national guard issues on behalf of of the dedicated airmen that are out there today. thank you. >> make a note of this man. [laughter] >> he is putting you in a tight spot here. jj jackson, chief of the air reserve, commander at every level. >> thank you for your comments. i want to say i will have to keep it even shorter. thank you very much for being here.

thank you for putting this on. there has been a lot of fiscal pressure to not have these types of conferences. thank you every much to each member you are supporting. i would like to go back and think your commanders for letting you attend the symposium. it is hugely beneficial and of great value to our air force reserve and total air force. thank you very much for being here. a couple of things i would like to pile on. the things we're focused on right now has to do with moving capacity and capability into a more efficient and effective structure. that will be your national guard and the air force reserve. we have an opportunity right now and the chairman had mentioned the skimmer, i was disappointed the skimmer to not have more discussions and serving the reserve components. i believe it will be a place we can have that discussion. given the support of your organization and given the support of the members that the chairman mentioned and the offices of the secretary of defense, i believe we can get

those discussions raised into the cutie are and have some proposals put forward to the secretary. arafat discussion has to do with the structure. to doe are attentive right now is about and 18 months process that was just completed and do a strategic review of all of our missions. what we have done is taken all of our mission steps that support the total active-duty air force, and we have stacked those into different priorities to find out where the mission stats are going to be most value to the nation into the air force reserve. the bottom line is we are trying to find out how we can best equipped and effectively produce .ombat with the air force that is what they are focused on right now, chasing the air force to meet the fight at 2023. we are attempted to do the same thing, make decisions be somewhere we want to be and try not to get caught up in the it comes ton

sequestration cuts. we know we are all going to be smaller. we also know that the air force can benefit from having capacity capability migrated to the air force reserve. we are looking for to make those types of arguments. there are some great work in the report that was put out by jimmy stewart and the chairman. if you have not read that cover the cover i would ask you to do that. we need everyone possible to make the are committed every level. >> thanks. is the deputyn chief of the reserve. -- is also a member of the and chairperson of our subcommittee. jill anderson. lex thank you. >> i want to express my -- i think this the mistreats the dedication not just to your civilian career but for military

education by your attendance here today. i want to thank you for your attendance. on behalf of of the 200,005 members of the army reserve, who complied -- who comprises the majority of the statistics, enablers, engineers, medical and legal support for the army, i want to say again thank you for attending. the army reserve wants to continue to be a part of the national defense strategy. we believe that our ability to participate in the war across all states is a war fight and add immeasurably to the army's capability. like other members of the services to hear today to mow we believe having a strong component is key to our national defense. i look forward to the debate and the discussion here today and to your questions later on. thank you. >> thanks. thee is acting director of military personnel.

someone that has been no more than anyone i know. every time we turn around he has been called active-duty. >> thank you, mr. chairman. it is a pleasure to be here. i just want to tie up all of the comments made by my respective reserve chiefs. 1991, the coast guard shield came out. under preparedness, i look at all of us on the stage and in the audience. there is one common bond we all have. we need to be prepared. desert storm was one of the first to land on the ground in september. since that day the guard and reserve has been called up continuously. we need to be prepared.

second point is professionalism. one of my shipmates and the -- ence we maintain the relationship throughout the year create more portably, for me it is a personal thing. rich's son is a first-class teddy up a certain one of our expeditionary warfare units in san francisco. we are all professionals and we have been around many great professionals. my last point is patriotism. i am sure you have experienced it. i have experienced it when i gone through the airport. the bush shake my hand and thanked me for service. i think that is great that they

are recognizing me but i do not consider myself a patriot. i took the oath, i agree to go in uniform. i do want to remind all of us in the reserve that this is my opinion. patriots.es are the i have been fortunate to deploy as much as i have because i have had good employers who understood what the mission was. i cannot stay any longer than i had to because i had to get back to work. all professionals are you i just want to throw the families of the employers in on the patriot side. >> let us start our roundtable discussion. i would like to deal with these or issues either together separately. one of the issue of the middleground option that i have discussed.

the size of the guard and reserve component, the relationship between the two, the ac rc mix, and then at the same time i think we should talk about the nature of the reserve and guard component, the operational -- we look at this for two and a half years. could we sustain and support what was called the operational reserve? we concluded we could. there are those that are arguing that maybe we ought to move it all the way back to the strategic reserve of the cold war era. i think those are the two issues that we should spend a good bit of time talking among ourselves. i want to say that as we do that, if we could talk about some of the myths that have been put out there, i will mention just one, we want to be careful. i mean it when i say it is not us versus them. there are those that are saying that the guard and reserve cannot get there in a timely fashion.

the are saying they are too hard to get to, they take too long to mobilize. the one anecdote, and anecdotes should not determine the outcome of arguments, objective facts should -- the immediate aftermath of the bombing at the boston marathon, the first picture i saw was in 15 seconds and every tv across the world showed these two individuals in army digital camouflage right there on seen in seconds, helping the wounded, the severely wounded victims. i thought to myself it must be amazing that the 82nd airborne has now caught dr. spock to transfer port them to help those wounded within seconds of it happening. isn't that amazing. the 82ndd, that is not airborne, that is the massachusetts national guard.

[applause] them in the tragedy of new york, members of the national guard, they were the first on the scene. as we talk about these issues and we talk about operational -- i hope we will dispel this fact that somehow the guard and reserve is not available to basically carry out these missions. what i would post to the group , is this middleground option something that seriously should be looked at? the best way to go about doing what is yourhen thinking about are we in danger of moving too far away from the operational reserve? if so, what do we do about that. we will go to my right to our most senior member and get the discussion going. >> thanks. thank you for your salute to the massachusetts guardsmen.

i had a chance to meet them. there were three of them, too that you saw in the news. they had just completed the 26.2 miles. and were there volunteering when the bombs went off they went to the sounds of the guns. i was able to pin some metals on them with governor patrick. you meet these three young soldiers and they would tell you that they did not do anything different than anything -- than anyone else would. i believe that. no matter what rank you are, our folks will step up to the challenge. i think it says something a lot about where we are. why do we need this middleground? why do we have to have this operational force? there are a lot of threats to the homeland. even if you look at the man-made threats of terrorism and look at the increase in scientific study -- increase in the number of

more complex catastrophes we see coming our way and how we are going to respond to that in the homeland if we do not have trained leaders? part of that train the leader of spector for structure. we broke command and grew in our hometown units. we are over 3000 communities. we can respond quickly. we live in boston. when we do go to war, everybody knows someone that brings along the populace. i look at operational from a reserve component for the national guard every day. i look at the numbers. 35 -- 3835ve 3800 guards in the homeland. they're doing missions from .tate duty the baseline is about 4000 per day. the six-year

average, it is 4000 per day. today, 18,009 hundred 73 deployed overseas. 18,000 973 -- 18,973 deployed overseas. jumpknow he would want to in on that. same question to you, ac rc mix and operational nature of the army reserve? >> there is an argument for the fact that we are concerned about whether or not we are going to assume risk by reducing the size of our armed forces raided a counterpoint to that argument is by increasing your capability in the reserve component, you mitigate that risk seven in findlay -- mitigate that risk significantly. there are many cases of

perishable skills. the fighter pilots of the air force and in the army reserve, as i mentioned earlier, our logistics, engineers, medical capabilities -- those individuals not only have that military skill set but they bring with them innovation and other creativity from their civilian careers into those same jobs. a lot of the advances we saw in terms of medicine on the battlefield came from a lot of it --litary and our rate and our reserve doctorate. in order to mitigate the risks we might save by looking at the components, we need to look at the capabilities that currently we -- currently exist in our reserve component. do you see a push away from the use of the army reserve capital we know the army guard was offramp for some of the missions.

to see a push coming in the building, either on the army side or somewhere else, that is pushing the army reserve back to the cold war strategic side? clocks there have been an offramp in many cases. cousin have civil affairs give the ability and specialized capabilities, there is still a demand from some of the commanders. i should probably thank senator levin but he has artie left -- but he has already left, it will to utilizecommanders reserve components, not for long durations, but for some of the short duration missions that they have. that'll fit very nicely. they might need a concentrated small capability to support security cooperation or some capacity.ner building

>> what is your take on these two issues, jj? like three areas, the operational capability we bring every day. the comment there is we need to remain pure one ready. within the air force, it may be different between the services. planned, andm, trained that tier one level. currently it is about 5000 air force reserve members that directly report back commanders. the second part is that surge capacity. this is you have that surge capacity, in addition to that, why pay for something every single day and you can put it in a reserve component and have it only when you need it? we would like to put it in that type of approach. the third one has to do with that strategic capabilities. whether you're are talking about the inactive reserve or about a conflict, that is a key requirement. we have to plan for that strategic requirement but have

the capacity capability every single day. what it comes to the -- when it comes to the acrc mix, i am happy. airmen, reset000 requirement, and see what we can use the reserve component to use. we are going to program with that requirement. i am optimistic we are heading down that pathway. alexa should have mentioned, i think -- >> i should have mentioned, i think we have open- minded new leadership where we hopefully will not repeat the food fights that happened between the air guard and air reserve and active air force, which congress, and i spent 24 years in the congress, all four committees, the two subcommittees, not just rejected

the proposal, but soundly in a way i have not seen before. with general welch, he is a very thought all and objective individual. before we jumped the next area, would any of our leaders want to jump in on the -- on any of those. >> that was pretty unique. we do not have reserve units. we did away with them in 1995. we fully integrated with our active-duty force. both. -- both area commanders are very instrumental in making sure that that reserve force is ready. the commandant and i have talked about this. the, -- today i can show the,. we have forces ready to go out the door. in approximately

8000 of our 100,000 force. 301's are going to be going out the door soon to replace the unit down in gitmo. we will have the gitmo mission so long as we have prisoners down there. the more important thing is for us to be prepared and the ready to answer that call. we are very much integrated with the active-duty command. the plan for it and we are part of their plan over time. collects a question from the audience that i think is very important. could you have a reserve force with half of the units operational and has to teach at? before proposing that the panel, we need to understand, because there's a lot of myths about

readiness, you unfortunately think that readiness -- say that readiness has been deterred under the sequester. if you look at the active-duty force at any one time, and it is different for each service, for the most part a third of that force is operational probably either out in deployment, not in afghanistan -- out in afghanistan, wherever they are. 100% on third is freedom's edge. the second is the units that are getting ready to do something. anday not be a deployment their state of readiness maybe he take below the first third. and then a third at any one time just got back from deployment. if you are an amphibious ready room and you just came back from a nine-month deployment, things are put into maintenance and no one expects that third to be ready to go read the notion that

all of our active-duty forces are 100% ready every single day of the week, 365 days, we cannot afford it and that is just not the way it is. the issue for us on the reserve toe is we do not propose have 100% of our units operationally ready every day. ?hat is the percentage the hidden agenda here is when people talk about the strategic reserve created may be new leaders will think of it differently. deservehink strategic -- strategic reserve, i inc. of the early 80s where we had no equipment, no training, and no money. that is because in the peak of the cold war a lot of reserves longer thano have 180 days to mobilize. it was a serious question to pose. with that background, could you

have a reserve force with half of the units operational and have to teach it? i am going to turn to you first. at any one point, leading up to nine -- to 9/11, the guard had 60,000 guard personnel doing something somewhere. and marine air force corps, all of the marine corporal -- all of the reserve components were on active duty. i throw this out for the whole group. this issue of how much should be operational and how much should be strategic. when we say strategic, are we talking about a new definition of was strategic is? >> looking back in the 70s, 80s, and even into the 90s, the national guard, especially on the army side, we had separate brigades. we had divisional brigades. they were resourced at different levels. even though we trained and

resourced the enhanced for data for our support packages, which were short deployers and enablers, we gave them more resources. whether time he got down to hometown america, that was being bounced a bit. we held those others to a higher standard. the one third that was in the bottom all the time, usually it was our divisional units, you created a mindset that that is all they expect of us, that is , and we are going to stay then we have 180 days to get ready to go. the armye best things did was adopt the rotation of the oxygen model. every done so much for functional area within the guard. not just with on that forces but all the enablers. everyone is in the cycle. i love that model. everybody does need a break. option is we continue in that

cycle. find out what the right amount is for the different functions. >> i think there is absolutely more room for operational forces and then more strategic forces in the navy reserve. see that was seabees involved in rotation, squadrons who are operational, and yet there needs to be room in the reserve for people who can only do 38 days per year. people who can do the 12 months, 12 weekends, and 14 days. is basically all they can give because of their civilian job or family situation. they are trained and ready so that when we need them they can come and serve. i do think there is room for both. there are so many different missions in the navy reserve. ourarcia, as chairwoman of subcommittee, you are actually looking at that model in the continuing service. from your army reserve hat -- , the predictability

is important. i agree with admiral braun. to havegoing to have people who are ready to go at a moments notice. it is a practical matter in the first 60 days of the war fight, you are going to have people who are enablers and army reserve who are going to get there to prepare for the following forces. you are going to have to have some that are operational and more strategic. to your point, you are going to have to see people commit more time. we need to give them the opportunity to do that. i think that is where you're going to have to have -- we have to be smart about how we go about that. we need a mix to support it. >> john? >> i think it is a little narrowly focused to ask that the reserve components are the only ones that can be half-and-half. i think you have to look at it as a total service. i would submit that the active- duty could probably afford, with the downtime and speed ratio, altogether the active duties and reserve and guards come up with

a force that is rated to go at a moments notice and all of the different service core functions that we have. that helps recruiting and tension throughout the entire force. >> we are looking at the reserve in the event a major crisis picks up it being a regular tar -- a regular part of our rotational forces, in order to give us more keys -- more piece. we look at it as an operational force, lane directly into the support of a total force concept, involving peacetime and wartime. all of our structures are getting smaller and the requirements -- you have to have a reserve that is ready, enabled, and trained to go out the door quickly.

timelines will stretch out. it may be delayed or force that comes into a crisis. the timelines are relatively short overall. i think you have to maintain an operational reserve. >> jj? >> just like i mentioned previously, that is why i do not like to use those terms in -- those terms. it too much baggage with them. we do the search capacity because we have to help and then we have strategic depth in the end of that. only 48they participate days per year, we can benefit those ways. i think everyone has said the same thing, that there is a very temporal aspect of this. whether you get to the fight or whether it is raining on a daily basis, errors opportunity for the force, but john said, to go ahead and have all three components. >> steve? >> when i was senior reserve

officer for admiral parker, i proposed a reserve rotational concept. many of the units of the fellow chiefs are underage. -- are under it. we hope we can institute that. if you take those 5000 forces of coast guard that are ready to go and break it up -- if this is your year you have to be -- >> one last question in this session. as i mentioned earlier, unfortunately we are stuck -- we are not going to give up fighting the sequester. that is on a bipartisan basis. is the only way we are going to get out of it. no one is giving up. so far we do not have the votes.

we will keep working it. but us assume we are unfortunately stuck with these lower-level resources. what are we doing and what can we do on the rc side to tighten our belts a little bit? what missions might be candidates for either increased or decreased rc participation? i am going to hit jj and marcia up. air reserve and the army reserve are caught up in some of these issues right now with the headquarters. jj, i will start with you. >> as i mentioned in my opening comments, you can see what is going on for at least the next two years. we are trying to put a stake in 42023, for a technology air force that can -- andly going to and in how do we get there?

we are trying to match that same thing. as we look through all of our missions, we are very diverse. we are in every single one of the air force active-duty service core functions. some of those are enclaves of excellence that did not even have the capability for a member to move up in the senior listed ranks or even senior officer ranks. whate trying to determine is a good strategic type of capacity that we need to retain? do some of those need to be moved into a higher priority echo -- higher priority? clucks can we save money by merging the air force reserve and the air force guard? >> no. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you, mr. chairman. in terms of looking at our structure, i do recognize that we have some structure that needs to be repurposed.

we are looking very closely at some of our street -- some of our training structure and assets. they are being fully utilized. we can find some savings in terms of structure. we also do not want to sacrifice our ability to be responsive to commanders and to any contingency requirements. box great. as i turn it back over to drew for more questions from the audience, obviously you can see we are very blessed to have these very talented, capable, and gauged leaders in a time of critical -- of critical decision-making in the department. our next meeting is september 5. all of these leaders have been tremendous participants in all of our quarterly meetings. we have pumped out a lot of hard-hitting recommendation is to secretary hagel, a number of which have been adopted. we have an open meeting at september 5 in arlington.

it is open to the public. we are going to have many of these same leaders participating. you're going to hear from the secretary of the army, the vice chairman. any of you interested of attending one of the sessions, we need input in the field. we are very fortunate because we are a statutory independent commission that reports directly into the secretary of defense. gathered fromve our conversation this morning, particularly our members, we are not chinking ballots on any subject. we call it as we see it. people support for the of the top of the decision- making chain, there is a thermal layer and the pentagon and a lot of things that are happening at the deck plates never make it up to the top. we want to make sure that secretary hagel and general dempsey get the objective information that they need to make some of these critical decisions. thank you for your continued

support of our reserve component. we look forward to your help. thank you for allowing us to be here. clucks a great discussion, so far. we have a number of questions from our members and attendees in this opposing. -- in this it off symposium. let me kick it off with a question that the general offered up on the merger of the guard and reserve. we heard emphatically from general jackson and general anderson. >> it would have been hell know if i had answered. collects or may have been some efficiencies gained. we talked about that across the department of defense. andelieved the guard reserve both bring capabilities to the table. that is all i am going to say about it. [laughter]

>> i will refer to my boss. next question is for general grant. how do you handle this issue as an honest broker on the joint chiefs of staff go -- on the joint chiefs? as an adjunct >> i came into the job last september. one of the things the staff talked me about is you have to establish a position on combining the guard and reserve. i thought about it. i thought about everything. my first thought was we've got stay tight. i think this decision is not for us here.

i think this decision is a political decision that has to be made. it comes up about every four or five years. in the past we have had seven reserve components for a weekend -- reason. i am going to stay focused on keeping a strong component. we worked together as a team. >> how about the idea of rotating? >> i think if you look to the howre and you think about we do business as a nation, the governors and what we do every day in support of the governors and states, we have made some minor changes that are pretty major when you look at how they impact our response capability with being able to use the reserve under 12 304 alpha.

thaten's it to thinking for the future. had you get the on the title of the to discussion? cap to bring that up if you're going to get there in the future. have seven would not second organization's -- seven separate organizations. for all the people in this room, you each bring a different capability to the fight. a different way to get to you. has to be de- conflicted if we are going to try to bring them into one. if we ever did, you would have to rotate the position. it still would have to have both 10 and 32 authorities. we are looking at this. one of the good news of having

to look at this are the components. secretary anding the chief has said there is goodness in value and what all three components bring to the organization. bring in otherto opportunities for mission set in discussions on statuses and things like that that allow us to work and those efficiencies. when i go over to the hilt, i i tellr -- the hill, them there's good news. when the air force part the air , the guardof them and reserve did not. we have three appropriations that congress set to get us and we keep them qualified on the mobility air force side by using our appropriation to keep those folks ready.

we mitigated some of the effects of this taccone and cut. we do have free appropriations. if you combine that into two or one, you would not have been there. that's my closing comment on that. >> general mills? during the earlier parts of the discussion, we talked about ac potential for accessing rc ase members into the we have a reduction in ac forces. at the same time, we had a question from the audience about how do we manage the outflow from the reserves so that we can get rid of the nonperformers, those who are overweight or not progressing, not showing up for drill? we all have those in our units.

how do we pick the right people coming out of the ac to fill spots we open up from the outflow? enterhink we're going to a a really golden year of being able to handpick talented individuals who are leaving for whatever reason. they choose to go on to pursue other things. i think that we can really have a large talent pool coming in. the challenge will be to attract them and to make sure that they understand the importance of what the reserve component does, the good training they will be able to receive and the good leadership they will be receiving. i think the opportunity is there. we make an attractive alternative to what other aspirations they may have. there has never been a pool of

junior officers but everyone pulling rank that are so talented, so experience. it is going to be a shame. -- we are going to lose some of them off the active roles. we will be foolish. >> i agree. i think this is important to not do across the board equal cuts to the active and reserve component. i think this is a good time to ringhat we can move into them into the reserve component. i think it is an very important to do that. there are people that say it the active cut 10% the rush of the cap the same. why get rid of those

capabilities. let's keep them any part-time status and take advantage of the training they have had over the past five or 10 years? >> if you keep the citizen airmen for life, you retain that half $1 million investment over the first 67 years of that training. wiper that away? it does not make a lot of sense. we cannot bring them and if we do not have the position to do it in. >> if you would also talk about ways we can streamline across us for getting rid of the deadwood? >> it will complicate matters by the fact we have over 30 different duty statuses. there have been a number of statuses that have said we need to reduce the number to as six to provide the ability for people to move back and forth between airmen for life, sailor for life, soldier for life, it will be a bit more

attractive to people. it can be difficult to travel from active to reserve components. the army is looking at it. they have some tools that are in place now. we can add to that discussion and be engaged with them and helping them find ways to shape beatles better. many are designed simply to -- those better. many are designed simply to help the unique skill set. as a reserve component we have an obligation to be engaged in that discussion and help our respective services come with really good tools. >> we have a number of members from the association. we received russians about quality and availability of medical care -- questions about quality and availability of medical care for service them.

if you are or mobilized in the reserve, you are within a couple -- base orr station station were closely tied to the military and medical system. when we are back in reserve stats, we are spread from alaska to puerto rico. remote from either va or quality military medical care. is the added quality of suicide rates that it may contribute to. on improving, sustaining, building the quality of reserve medical care and medical readiness? familyuld comment in

readiness. one of the lessons we learned was to have a good family eachness officer at i location to steer them in the right direction whether it be for medicare or any the nations they had. now with the cutbacks, there is a propensity to say that many will be activated or doing as much. perhaps we can save money by cutting some of these programs. we have to resist that. some of the units are going to have medical problems well into the future, things like that. it is an education process to ensure the community ensures how they will get that medical care. >> how do we break that time and distance? >> one of the things we're dealing with in the air force is standing up a case management san antonio.

for the last 24 months, we have been working this issue to say how do we get care of title 10 and title 30 numbers that have to have continuing service? who will take care of the individual member when they go back to another location? wecame to the inclusion that need to keep this. some kind of reach out and touch. >> we are not there yet. we have it only to about 50%. that is the solution we have come up with. any other comments? >> one of the other things that concerns me, suicides are tremendous problem. it is an epidemic in our society. this weekend.e about 50% of the suicide of the

military has never deployed. it is a problem society has to to deal with. as some providing research money. we are going to look at how can we join forces using some of the assets and the volunteers that the doctors are providing and the health professionals. there is some opportunity. we have to get after that. as a hundred thousand come after this, they are coming back to our hometown. there will be medical professionals that have not dealt with this at the level we had to deal with it. going to have to use our armories to do that. this is the money that is drying up. that same money that we use for our soldier readiness processing has taken us to a level that are medical readiness has ever been.

how are we going to assist in that and all these competing demands? we have to get out there. part of this is the compensation discussion, what worship can we continue to board across all accounts? you talk about this all the time. every program that we sent up to the heeill that you want to , it is hard to sell that on the hill. he have to get after if you're going to maintain the military and strong all volunteer force. at some point our compensation, there is a study that says if we , it defensesthing not change compensation, rate, byn its, more than likely 2000 2180% of the total obligation authority -- by 2081%

population will have the authority. >> we had a couple of questions for thee new missions missions. a couple of examples where ciber in uav. what does each of the services being to prepare for these new battlefields in the future? we are looking at ciber. there is a real interest in having this assigned to the cyber command. will be aniece that interesting one is the art. as an the arctic opportunity where during those forceshen we have our up is to utilize the coast

guardsmen that have the schools -- skill sets. looking into into that point nothing definitive. >> sign me up for that duty. >> i mentioned earlier we looked at out of our -- all of our missions. cyber appears in the top 30 what we think would be a good fit. the discussion we had with the air force is how we are going to fill the requirement for ciber, -- cybercom. it makes sense to look at this. we talked about the past capability. lookingr position where at is this is going to be a specialized skill sets. there has to be on the cutting edge every day. as a civilian you can do that. that onto the deal when you do not have to? ? >> we're pushing to go ahead and build the structure.

we built our first operational ciber group. we're trying to to support that requirements. >> the already have ciber structure in the army reserve. prettyre some perishable skill sets. if you do not exercise those on a daily basis, they can erode. haveis ideally suited to more cyber assets than that. there are things you do on your day-to-day professions i can only enhance the capability. i agree the reserve community has a lot of talent can apply to this challenge. on to bring those folk active service. there is a long training cycle. there is a balance there you have to strike. kid with aut the

ponytail and a garage? >> i wish i had one. this is very attractive. there are a fuse -- few price i concerns. >> >> i had to get that haircut. that in visiting the cyber guard exercise, and cyber command, washington guardsmen were there. they were the educators. they work for microsoft or they work for the software companies. and my take away from that in whatce. interested the competencies are that you need for this. he was our cyber guy. he said it those competencies and then we want to put those

on what is the realistic thing we can do with the six days of training. this is what we are really looking at. task force looking at that. the sergeant who is a great businessman and looking at the future, general mills makes an excellent point. you look at the amount of money and they train them up in all the services. six yearsthey serve active-duty and then they decide they do not want to be on active duty anymore. one of the thoughts i have charged them with is how do we do this? i guarantee you the microsoft and google's of the world are going to be able to pay them a lot more than they're going to

be able to make their year six or you're 12. can we come up with a construct where we do as they said. .hey get their time they do what they are supposed to do. sharks are some of our reserve components where they can come into those units and this is another challenge in that it was mentioned that we have these incredibly talented officers that are going to leave. how do we get them and their? maybe we are going to have to not take as many non-prior service personnel. maybe we will have to spend a little bit more time. kind of talent we are going to be paying for it would be a great disservice to the leave thiso let them

all together and not have an opportunity to continue serve. point out any particular units. i know in the marine corps reserve, if they want to have purple hair during the week, as long as they get a. came on there. >> we actually had short hair wakes. >> maybe in some units. >> with ciber, we programmed about 700 villas over the set up for cyber. because of the growth component, not there.put is we do not have the capacity. we are looking at how to mitigate that right now. there is such a huge demand.

we need to grow that capability. we are also looking at unmanned systems. right now the challenge for us is because of sequestration in the budget challenges. we're not sure when those systems are going to actually come online. it is tough to program when he do not know if you're going to have to push that program another two or three years. it is exciting when you look at the potential. we are working on it. at this point we cannot really say how soon it will come online. >> there is room for everybody on this went to talk. i was at the guard exercise we participate in every year. we have active guard reserve. we had fema participating. /public partnerships were there.

since you cannot determine where the problem resides, you have to have all those partners. what we talked about from the perspective is the governors are very interested. he would like us maintain the authorities we have so that state government can do rings. we have some of our warriors going out and doing folder ability assessments on emergency management not works. we still have to function even that wet may be a.gov are doing. i do think across all, if i think about the active component, every weapon system we will need to have this. these are talking about what is going to come out. there will be capabilities. then you have the national and international piece of that.

.e have 12 units in the guard some of them are arty working cyber network. scattered across the states. most of them reside close to major metropolitan areas that have the skill sets. they are doing very well. to look at how the air force and army are going to for thehe doctrine future, the structure in training. whatever we put in, this has to look like the service. passed the third of -- certified so we can take anything from a state mission all the way to the federal side. >> we have a hard stop in five minutes. i would like to talk to each of a tough question.

that is the sexual misconduct issue. what is each of your services going to address that? >> priorities. every flagreinforce meeting if needed. it is his top priority. that is his top priority. what are you doing on the journaling level? drilling -- drilling level? >> it is through the district commanders right down to the field level. at allu speak, he looks hands as reserved and active- duty. he make sure he is sharing the same expectations. culpability is taken into consideration. we arehis austere time, not doing this anywhere else. we have shown maggie woodward is

running that. the chief ray ortega is to fix this. there are too many reports. , including us, took a stand down date to have that discussion and also pushed out. the commanders could use. >> we had a standout around the marine core. they had to dress the commanders listed. reserve to address the component. there is a reemphasis on eight those training at every level, -- on entry level training at every level. ethos to those with fairness and dignity.

we are taking a hard look at being able to harden the target by getting this back in the sickcks in getting provisions into places like hotels. the level of supervision is there and that the folks that would come to harm our identify quickly. they are doing the exact same thing as the marine corps. where oury much into sailors are on drill weekend and throughout the week. we found that about 50% of the report has to do with our hall. we are pushing a campaign of keep what you own. alcohol use.ve the also duis at all the misconduct

that comes with that. we had done a number of stand downs. round directed, i think everybody really has the opportunity to realize this is my responsibility. every sailor knows it is their responsibility to help turn this around. commander knows it is their responsibility to help fix this. i think we have finally gotten it down to the individual level to say not in my navy, not in my service. i do think that alcohol is such a big factor in this. we really have to continue to responsible drinking

is important if they are going to do that. that is really where the navy is right now. i do think the opportunity to get out into hotels is good. these are events that happened months ago and years ago. i think that shows that people are feeling more comfortable standing up and reporting what has happened. >> the armies doing much the the same thing as the other services. of enhancedot tolls out on their websites devoted to this firm leaders on the level. they can utilize these in their units. it is definitely general oh dear odierno's priority.

we are all members of 18. we have to respect one another. if you see something you need to say something. andle feel comfortable whether they have been a victim of harassment or assault or they know something is going on and they have a responsibility to report it. the few months ago president called all the joint chiefs and with the secretaries to talk about this problem. wanted to understand it. what health could he provide defense to tackle this and put his focus on it? since that time secretary hagel with all thesek services. ctirs thatries of

he looks at. he expects all of us to be working below that level. it is a top priority. what we have done is we have taken two hours out of every and we that we have bring an ex byrds from the field to talk about the problem it in the society, to talk about how it translates to our guard men and women and what is happening in the word system and how we can make an effective case out of some team -- some we may not be able to process. we have a stand down to all of ,he army guard, air guard armories. we have to have those reports that. everyone has been recertified as recruiters. everyone has been grea briefed. deals withrt from us the same issue. this is when they are on state

active duty. we have to turn over local prosecutors. as the chairman said. if there's alcohol involved, a local prosecutor will not touch them. we are pushing the states that do not have a top 32 to put it in place so we can prosecute. we have trained 71 special investigators so that if a prosecutor will not take it, we will send someone not even from that state or community out to do the investigation. and nothing else, we will go after it if we can prove the case. >> each one of you here today

in a representative democracy can make a difference both individually and collectively. colonel don stockton is playing these dragons every day. the chaines through of command. you also have the opportunity to speak to your elected representatives. they have always made a difference. if you do not speak out, if you are not engaged and you also the tremendous talent, military leaders of our reserve, the finest group we have had in my 40 plus years of working these issues, they are carrying be fight every day in the building. they need your support and active engagement. if we do not want these things n, go in the wrong direction or

we should head and neck. do not let us be a stranger. [applause] things thatable are under the threshold. please hold your seats after i hand these out. we have some important notices that we need to post. >> thank you for doing this. >> general anderson. >> why is that bigger? .> it is not a tiffany's box >> you recognize the uniform, right?

>> thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> hillary clinton is in san francisco today of the american bar association meeting. we will have live coverage on our campaign and network c-span2 -- companion network c-span2. a live national press club event and whether public affairs offices help or hinder transparency. officials will take part. that is at 6:30 p.m. eastern on c-span2.

there is a town hall meeting with bobby scott. the focus will be on the orderable care at, also known as obamacare. you can see that life right live right ear on c- span. earlier we had eric holder as he announced the policy changes regarding prison sentencing guidelines. we will have this for you eight -- you at 8:00 p.m. eastern. here are some of his remarks .nd >> we need to ask whether it in beenpproaches have effective and built on the administration's efforts to and witha new approach an unnecessarily large prison population, we need to ensure

that carson ration -- incarceration is used to rehabilitate but not nearly to warehouse and forget. a vicious cycle of poverty and incarceration weekends too many communities. in many aspects of our criminal justice system, they exacerbate the problems rather than alleviate them. it is clear that too many americans go through too many prisons for far too long and for no truly good law enforcement reason. it is clear -- [applause] it is clear at a very asic level. these solutions are not adequate to overcome our 21st century challenge. right now, unwarranted disparities are far too common.

is time to ask tough questions about how we can strengthen our communities, how we can support young people, how we can address the fact that young black and latino men are disproportionately likely to become involved in our criminal justice system. we also must confront the reality that want to they are in that system, people of color also -- often face hearts are punishments than their peers. , black malears offenders have received sentences nearly 20% longer than those imposed on white males convicted of similar crimes. this is not just unacceptable. it is shameful. [applause]

it is worthy of our great country. directed a, i have group of u.s. attorneys to develop recommendations on how we can address them. ,n this area and in many others in ways both large and small, we must resolve to do better. the president and i agreed that it is time to take a pragmatic approach. that is why i am proud to announce the justice department will take a series of significant actions to recalibrate america's federal criminal justice system. fundamentallyby rethinking the notion of mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes. [applause] some have mandatory sentences.

individual conduct is at issue. reduced the discretions available to prosecutors, judges, and to juries. they breed disrespect. when th applied instantly, theyo not serve public safety. let's be honest. some of the priorities have had a destabilizing effect in some particular communities. poor and of color. there ultimately did. that is why i have mandated a modification of the justice department charging policy so certain low level, no violent offenders will no longer be charged with sentences with taccone and minimum sentences. minimumdraconian

sentences. they now will be charged with offenses for which the accompanying sentences are better suited to their individual conduct rather than excessive present terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug team pins. by observing the most severe penalties for violent drug traffickers, we can better from public safety, deterrence, and rehabilitation warmaking power expenditures smarter and more. he have seen this approach has bipartisan approach and congress. senators have introduced what i think is great legislation aimed at giving federal judges more discretion in applying mandatory minimums for other enders. >> some of the remarks given by eric holder earlier today at the american bar association's annual meeting. you can see his complete speech later tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern right here on c-span.

>> all the young officers that were surrounding my grandmother was 23 years old. very beautiful. they all rush to go upstairs to do what they had to do. they left her standing there. my grandfather filled in behind her going up the steps to the deck. she came running back. .o not let her come her father is dead. when she heard that, my grandmother sucked right back into the arms of the president. he caught her tenderly and gently. >> the encore presentation of our series first lady, influence of image, looking at the public and private lives of our nation's first ladies.

during tonight's program, join in the conversation with clone your williamsburg taylor stoermer. >> this is a huge story. that a trueme digital natives has stepped into one of the legacy media businesses are broadcasting company. acts in any way like he did in disrupting the book publishing business, the delivery of streaming media and e-commerce, then he probably re-envision and what it is to be a newspaper and the 21st-century and how that business remains a business. journalism is changing. it is manifesting whether it is a log or twitter -- blog or twitter

it is really hard to say where it is headed. we are at a stage where it is still being figured out. post,us jeff bezos buying the that is one possible future. >> the future of the newspaper industry tonight on "the communicators" on c-span2. a number of boston-based reporters and national counterterrorism correspondence discuss how they cover the boston bombing last april as a part of a panel discussion hosted by the association for education in journalism and mass communication. speakers included the national public radio terrorism :.rrespondent and kevin this is just over 90 minutes. >> okay, so i'm john jenks from

kmin can university in illinois. my co-moderator represents media ethics division from new york's iona university. we organized the panel to discuss one of the worst domestic terrorism cases in years and how journalists covered it. we bring you the journalists who covered one of the hottest stories from the year and who annualized it. we as journalism educators should learn from the pro, the men and women you see in front of you. the story teaches us more specific questions that we can pass on to our students. how to deal sensitively and

powerfully in reporting on intense trauma. how to report the biggest man hunt in decades in a locked down city. how to deal with the flood of unsourced information and rumors circulating on social media. how to report a fluid ongoing terrorism investigation. how to report a story when you're the on scene expert and a journalist. that would be john. each person will take 10 to 12 minutes. then we'll open it up to questions after everyone is done. and the panelists should feel free to question each other at that time as well. if you have a question, look for jack breslan who will moderate that. our first guest to the right is the director of engagement for boston.com and bostonglobe.com and someone who directed the breaking coverage of the bombing and the aftermath. in a second, i'll put up the

live blog so you can see some of the things they did. kevin cullen to her right is a pulitzer-winning columnist in "the boston globe" and tore himself away from the whitey bulger case for a few hours to speak to you all. in the bombing coverage, he was the voice of boston for many people on tv and in his columns. john has the unique perspective of having run the marathon, reported on the bombing for news day, and written the definitive history of the boston athletic association that runs the marathon. dena is with npr and lived with the investigation for weeks as authorities searched for clues on the identities, motives, and possible connections. kelly mcbride is with the pointer institute and deeply annualized the ethical issues that surfaced for journalists covering the bombing. start with tereasa, go to kevin and john. dena will pick up the story. kelly will wrap it up. then go to questions. thank you tereasa? >> i'm happy to be here. thank everyone for inviting me here. my title as john said is

director of engagement and social media for boston.com and "boston globe".com. that doesn't mean i don't take the opportunity to go back to my reporting and editing roots when i can i live blog the marathon every year with a colleague. we do it from the media center a half a block, maybe a block from the finish line in copley square. that day all we're concerned with when we live blog the marathon are the elite runners and the wheelchair racers. as soon as they finish the race and hold their press conferences in the hotel, our day is done. we go back to the globe. that day we finished up and as we came out of the hotel and did our year's many years' routine

of flagging down a taxi to go back to the globe, i had just for an instant, i said to myself, you know, eric and i have never just walked over to the finish line to watch some people finish. maybe i should suggest it to them. i remembered my day was sort of done, his day wasn't. he had a lot of technical work to do back at the paper. didn't mention it. got back to the taxi. back to the globe. and somebody said, did you hear, there's been a bombing a it the finish line. and i packed up all of my stuff and i -- i ran out to the newsroom and i set up shop at a desk at the front of the room. it was a desk that i could stand at so everyone could see me. i proceeded to run our live blog for the next five days until the second brother was arrested in watertown hiding in the boat in somebody's back yard. it was -- my goal for the live blog and we use a tool called scribble live for this.

you're probably familiar with scribble live. it's the premiere live blogging tool that a lot of newsrooms use. my goal for the live blog was that i keep it uncluttered. that i be very, very clear, concise, as accurate as possible but convey as much information as possible. i realized immediately that everybody in the universe was going to be coming to "boston globe".com for information. we were hit so hard with traffic that our site went down. we redirected our site to the live blog. so if you typed in boston.com, you got the live blog, not the home page.

it was the same for bos topglobe.com. that lasted thankfully for 20 or 30 minutes. nobody really noticed. they department want to know anything else. they didn't care about any photos at that point. they just cared about information about the bombings. i realized i had a tremendous responsibility at that point, all of us did in the news gathering operation to give them information as clearly as possible. so not only was iing information i got from my colleagues in the newsroom and from wire stories and writing off of tv as well, i was deleting a lot of material. so if reporters who were all at the same scene were tweeting. we in scribblelive, you can bring in tweets automatically of any sources you want to. we had a list of reporters

covering it in the field, i deleted repetition. because i had to keep -- i had to keep our users in mind. i had to keep the as yens in mind. and i wanted this to be a clean report. i didn't want them seeing four entries in the live blog at once all about the same thing. that wouldn't help them at auchlt the reporters would tweet if we all know how big and ego reporters have. and sometimes they would tweet when they were making live appearances. i'm going to be on cnn in 20 minutes. great. and i'll tell you, that's -- >> i never did that. >> i know you didn't. >> no one asked you to be on tv. >> that's not true, actually. >> he was the man.

he was the man during all of this, i'll tell you. but that's important for the reporters' followers. i don't mean to tooes the reporters that are friends of mine. it is important for the flowers but not for this live blog. those are the sorts of decisions that i made. i would say the other responsibility uh felt was to the extended friends and family of the people who lived in boston and were coming and wanted to know what communities were involved in the man hunt, for example, so if they haven't been able to reach their loved ones or just curious about what was going it provided information that may have been a source of reassurance for them. there are two things i would like to mention. i don't want to call them -- one was a misstep.

the other was a conscious decision that has been questioned by people including the npr colleague down the table there. one is that you i'm sure you all know that many news organizations including us in the live blog reported early on that an arrest had been made of one of the suspects, when, indeed, an arrest had not been made. that decision to put that in the life blog was made by our editor. great, great news man. there was a reporter in the newsroom who had -- who's a just a -- the top federal law enforcement reporter in the city. and around anywhere. she had an impeccable law enforcement source. she told brian who it was. she told the metro editor who it was. and the decision was made to after a lot of other news organizations, including cnn and i believe abc and i'm not sure what other news organizations reported that we would put the

in the live blog, not in the paper, but in the live blog, that a federal law enforcement source said an arrest had been made with the caveat -- amid conflicting reports. that was to signal that we only had one source. it was a great one. we believe him. but we don't have any other confirmation yet. so take it for what it is. the second thing that happened is we allow -- we allowed a couple of globe editors and a couple of globe reporters to tweet directly to our main accounts, our main twitter accounts, at boston.com and at "boston globe." one of them made a mistake. he sent out a tweet to our main account that an arrest had been made and he failed to attribute cnn. as soon as we spotted it, we said, whoa, alarm bells went off. we found out who had done it.

he felt tishl. our policy on handling mistakes made on social media is not to delete them. you could argue you want to delete it because you don't want it to be retweeted. it looks, though, as if you're trying to cover up your mistake. for something this important, we sent out a tweet that was a correction. it's funny the response we got back on twitter was hey, that's okay, we understand it happens, etc. please be more careful. but it didn't -- it didn't explode on us. so the experience that i had in doing that live blog was that it was very difficult at times. i would say most of the calls were easy.

i didn't have to make a lot of the calls, fortunately. you know, the things like photographs that we go out which were horribly graphic. were, you know, when i think back on it now, that it was -- it was and easy call not to post those in the live blog. but information was absolutely critical. during this period of time, during the five days, particularly in the man hunt when we didn't know where they were and they were careening around the city. it was a tips and difficult situation. but i'd like to think that the work we did during those five days helps keep people informed and, you know, maybe a little bit reassured too as well. [ applause ]

>> well, going from the cutting edge of journalism back to the old part era, that's me. i'm very old school. i consider the street my office. i don't spend a lot of time in the newsroom. after the bombings, i spent very little time in the newsroom. i went there to write my columns. after a point, i think i wrote 12 columns in 11 days and eight of them with my ipad at either a bar or coffee shop. jesus christ. trying to keep track of the trial. anyway. when the bombing happened, i was a mile away from the finish line. got as close as i could. but then i realized i wasn't

going to get close and we had people at the scene, actually. we had steve silver who was videoing the scene when it happened. david abell, a reporter. david ran the race, didn't he? he ran the race. and was doing work at the finish line. and then john who's more of a still photographer, one of the best in the business. so we had people as close as you could be. the stuff they produced was remarkable. i knew -- i've covered war. i covered terrorism, particularly in northern ireland.

and covered the aftermaths of 9/11. so i wasn't a stranger to what you do in a situation like this. but over a period of days, i really was as much of the reporting staff as anyone because when something like that happens, you need sources. i've been around the block a long time. i know a lot of people in law enforcement. or in the situation that we have, a lot of what you would call first responders and the first responders at that scene would have been most of the police officers from district four. the police station in the south end. i know a lot of the cops there. i know the captain. and i knew the second day -- the first column i tried to make it was very sensitive. within 24 hours of the

explosions. i called a guye know, eddie kelly. i said if i go down to broadway, that's what they call the station. would it be okay to go to broadway? he said let me get back to you. it took a while. i remember -- because after a thing like that happens, the cable news networks. it's unbelievable. it's like everybody -- i said i just talked to msnbc. why do you want me? oh, we want you. and i was doing this round of things. i was sitting with chris jansing and got a call and eddie kelly said i'm around the corner. you got to come right now. i said this has go it to be forward fast. i got to go. i went to the fire house at 6:00. this is the kind of town boston is. i walked in and there's the -- the front desk when you walk into a fire house is always manned by a firefighter. i looked there and it was my cousin's kid. i said i didn't know you were in this house. >> eddie kelly lives next door to my sister. >> exactly. >> he said ed is upstairs waiting for you.

there's eddie. i know eddie since he was a kid. i'm older than him. hi said none of these guys want the names in the paper. i said it makes it hard for me. i said can i quote you? he said, i don't care. he said they don't want to look like glory hogs. i said i didn't know their names it's not going to be a big deal. i knew tommy and benny -- i knew them all. and i -- particularly shawn o'brien who is a friend of mine. i had known the night before after writing my column, i stopped off at the erie pub in dorchester. i did it for two reasons. i really needed a drink. i was starving. after the bomb, i realized i hasn't eatened. they have a great corn beef sandwich. as i was walking into the pub, a deputy fire chief joe penn a

great fireman grabbed me. he had his i phone. he said this is shawn, shawn o'brien. he said, i can't get him out of the house. i said, what do you mean, talk to him? shawn, kevin, come have a drink with me and joe. he said, no, i don't want to come out. i said, later. i said to joe, was shawn at the scene? he said shawn found the kid. that's when i found out the boy had died. i wasn't to kill him on that spot. later told me shawn was really upset obviously. this was the story i found that night. that every firefighter on engine 7 knew the richard family. kevin me and the chauffeur, that is what they called the driver.

kevin his daughter baby sat martin. the the other two, eddy kelly, his daughter is in the same irish step dance class as janie who lost her leg. the lieutenant's kid is in school with henry. but shawn o'brien, the firefighter who came to martin's body, his daughter, eva, is in the same third grade class as martin. he's looking at this kid and knowing that it's his daughter's friend. so that scene to me encapsulated how small a big city boston is. and how personal this was for all of us. like i said, i've covered war, northern ireland for a long time. northern ireland is a small place. i knew a lot of people who got hurt and people who did bad things. it was my home. a completely different reporting experience.

and somebody -- i don't know -- i think it was howie kerts on one of his last shows on "reliable sources," he asked me, do you think it was a conflict of interest you being so so close and knowing all these people. i said it was because i knew the fire fighters and i knew a lot of the cops and the ems guys that i got information. if you look at the columns i wrote after this happened, there's not a lot hoff thumb sucking. there's a lot of reporting in them. those guys and women, the policewomen of district four knew me and trusted me. that's how i got the information. it was the same thing with -- the desk was constantly asking me to check with my police sources or law enforcement sources. i said i could check with nerve except the fbi. because the fbi wouldn't tell me if my pants were on fire. that's a long story. that is what i did. so, you know, a lot of the -- a lot of the columns that i had in

the first two weeks were really hard news. for example, the after the -- after the m.i.t. cop who was killed, sean callier, his family only wanted to talk to me. i talked to the brothers and sisters and did a column on that. after they pinched i call him joker, the second one that night, i knew where some of the cops had gone. i went to j.j. foleys, a great pub on the south end. i walked in at the same time as the guys from the s.w.a.t. team. jerry foley brought the beers. danny keeler, the great sergeant who saved lives the first -- if you listen to the tapes on the first -- when the bomb went off,

there's a voice in the 9/11 tapes of screaming -- keep the roads open. keep the ring road open. he's screaming. that is danny keeler. i once described him as a former marine. i said i don't think there is such a thing. then there was danny in the black s.w.a.t. outfit. he's there with a bunch of young cops. i watched and toasted and said thank god this is over. then they said to sean, the dead cop then a third toast. they let me in there to that because they knew who i was. if somebody from a tv station showed up, they would have been escorted out of the bar. that kind of stuff -- this was deeply, deeply personal to the town. and at that moment, in a very wounded time for us, it's

awkward because access is what we need. but you get access at a time like that if you're trusted, if you're known. it mattered. i said that we -- we spent so much time in our business talking about our own demitz, it's very depressing. that is another reason i don't hang around newsrooms. everybody is like, oh did you hear who got laid off? there's a buyout coming. i don't go in there that much because i don't want to hear that. but when we came out of this at the other end, i think everybody could look at each other and say, you know, "boston globe" proved the indispensability to the town after this happened. i don't mean to brag, because i thought the other media did incredible. i thought the television stations in boston were incredible. kelly and sean kelly at channel 5. lisa hughes is an anchor in

channel 4. i mentioned her in the first column. at first, i'm watching when it happened. i'm watching and it's a mile away and i'm like, what? there's lisa standing there. and lisa is married to a guy named mike casey and mike's wife was kill in 9/11. and lisa married and adopted his kids and they had a kid together. i'm watching her and saying it doesn't seem fair that she should be doing this. she was just a pro. so tremendous, so poised, so professional. and i thought, you know, everybody in -- everybody in the business, in our town, i thought responded with incredible professionalism because it was personal to everybody. it's rare in this business that you get something that's personal and you have to do your job. but that's enough of that.

[applause] >> well, like everyone else in boston on april 15, things changed very quickly, very dramatically for me when the first bomb went off. before then, i was an author in boston to promote a book on the history of the 125-year-old organization that staged the marathon since 1897. the boston athletic association. here's the book. as part of the as part of the pr, i was running the marathon. >> can i be a radio person and pull your mic closer? that's what we do. >> sure. >> thanks. >> i had been in boston for about almost a week before the race. i had been interviewed about the book by the globe, the herald, by wbz, the big radio stations in town. and by npr. i'd given about four book talks, appeared at the marathon press conference. it was funny to be part of the

press conference and not be the press covering it. signed 100 copies of the book at the hines auditorium and generally had done all of the things that authors were supposed to do. all that plus run 26.2 miles. to cap it off on race morning, the globe ran a nice review of my book and a couple of running books that came out around the marathon in their arts section and several reporters interviewed me at the start. their stories, needless to say, were never broadcast. what all the reporters asked me about was the past. after all, i had written a book about the history of the race. but after 2:59 p.m., nobody cared about the past or the history. all of the questions were what now and what next? i was back in the hotel when the bombs went off. i was finished. i was on the phone with a friend

of mine at the press room in the fairmont hotel. i was telling them a block or so from the finish line. i was telling him about my race and asking who won. if you run the race, you know the kenyans are way ahead of you. he said, whoa, we just heard a loud bang. my response to that ranks up there in stupidity with the naval officer who on december 7, 1941 told the radar operator at pearl harbor, no, no, all of the specks on the screens are birds, not enemy planes. i told him probably a fuse box blew in the circuit box. the hotel is 100 years old. it wasn't. within a few minutes, calls, face book posts, texts, e-mails to see if i was all right and one from the editor at newsday to see if i could help out

providing on-the-scene detail and report. i couldn't. a, the whole area was cordoned off as i could see from the tenth floor room in the hilton closing down huntington avenue one of the main drags to copley square as you guys know. the other reason i couldn't go was i couldn't walk. i mean, i just ran 26.2 miles and i looked like a character out of night of the living dead if i tried to walk. so i gave them what i could see, which was emergency vehicles racing, screaming down huntington avenue. people running and walking from copley square and soon guys with big guns taking up positions in front of miho tell. scary stuff. and a friend of mine in the metro west area west of boston and along the course of the marathon called me. he was going to come in and have dinner with me that night to

celebrate the race and the conclusion of what had seemed like a successful week promoting the book. he said get out of the city. you can't do anything to help, which was true, come stay with us. so i said, you know, that's a good idea. but i had to get myself out of the city, because traffic was barred from coming in. he couldn't drive in and pick me up two miles from where the attack had been and drive me out there. that meant i had to walk to mass avenue which as these guys know is a few blocks from the hotel. so i called my wife back home, said this is what i was going to do. i texted my editor and said i was leaving. packed up a week's worth of stuff, sweaty running clothes, pens, notebooks, and started walking very slowly down huntington avenue. the sun is starting to set. i had a ski cap pulled down, sunglasses on, and a huge bulging backpack on and i was walking away from the scene of the crime.

so now, you really couldn't imagine a more suspicious character. i'm surprised i wasn't pulled over. i got to mass avenue. again, i'm shuffling along like this. several cabs slowed down when i hailed them, looked at me, drove away. one cab driver in boston did not know that his city had been the target of a terrorist attack. he picked me up and i ended with my friends. the next morning, two requests, one was "the new york times" which i also contribute to, that got my attention. one from news day. the times editor needed an outline of what i was going to say. i didn't know what i wanted to say. maybe something about the history of the event because i had written the book. that seemed irrelevant at the moment, maybe, maybe not. i cobbled something together on the trip home. she liked it. the boss wasn't sure. they wanted to round table it understandably.

the newsday editor said just write what you want. i trust you. i told the times which is a very difficult thing for the free lance writer to do, thank you, but no thanks. i'm going to do a story for newsday. the next day back home i banged out 871 words about my race and a little bit about the history. it appeared as a full page two days later. now i know in news day, i know from silting in on many of these panels, its's tedious -- from watching c-span, it's tedious when authors read from their own work. but it's like professors reading from the textbook in class, bad. but i want to read the lead of my story. this is the op-ed piece that appeared in newsday two days later. i laughed out loud while running the boston marathon on monday. this was, of course, hours

before the explosions rocked the 117-year-old event, desi mated several family, and shattered the innocence of a city that is so protective of this race. this was back earlier on that sun-flashed morning when the task at hand for those of us in this year's marathon was simply putting one foot in front of the other for 26.2 miles. now, while our efforts shrink into insignificance given what happened later in that day, it was still an effort. now laughing is not an easy thing to do while running a marathon. laughter requires oxygen and the recruitment of muscle fibers in the throat. when you're run ugh, all your fizz logical systems are focused on one task -- getting blood to the legs to keep them from moving. no time for laughter. and yet, i couldn't help myself. it was in framingham about the six-mile mark where there are 20 long and hilly miles to go. at the railroad station, i saw a

gaggle of young women holding up signs, "you're not almost there" read the first one. brilliant, i thought. the perfect flinty new england response to the inane bro mid often thrown at passing runners by well-meaning but ignorant race spectators. go, you're almost there -- and you have 15 miles to go. the second sign -- this is the worst parade ever. that one got me thinking, again, a slow process when one is near oxygen debt. but as someone who's been steep in the last two years in the history of this event and the organization that stages it, the boston athletic association, i couldn't help but think, that's just not true. while it may lack 76 trombones, what the boston marathon has is a 117-year tradition. it's a grandpa raid.

unstoppable march since 1897. which makes it one of the oldest annual sporting events in america. older than the world series, the super bowl, the final four, the stanley cup. the new york city marathon. by the time it was held in 1970, the boston marathon was already an old dodger. i went on to talk about the first race and concluded by saying basically back in 1897 and then kind of pulled it together and said that in the end, i was proud to have run it. i'm still very proud to be a part of it, despite what happened. i know a lot of other runners feel horror and revulsion but pride of having been there in that terrible day. uh now, the last point b, in the weeks after the marathon and after that piece appeared, i was asked questions by colleagues and local tv crews and friends, questions that i think you all will be hearing a lot in the months to come. now if you're not a runner, the fall is a big marathon season.

boston is in april. most of the other major marathon races in america happen in the fall. you have chicago in mid october which john is running. a huge race. here in d.c., the marine corps marathon in late october and the new york city marathon the first sunday in november. you will hear two questions asked and covered in all of the races. question one, is there enough security? question two, are the runners worried? well, i'll give you the answer. number one, security? who knowles. it's impossible to guarantee. your cop buddies will tell you. common sense, it's impossible to guarantee safety 100% of 26.2 miles of streets. but we have to trust that our law enforcement officials know what they're doing. they usually do.

question number two? are the runners worried? yes, the runners are worried. but not as much about get thing blown up as they are about finishing the race. on that note, i'll finish. [applause] >> should i just go ahead. >> just go. >> i guess i will. >> so i'm npr's counterterrorism correspondent. i feel a little sheepish being on the panel. i covered the boston marathon bombing as a terrorism correspondent as opposed to someone who was up there up close. i think you guys did great job of reporting what you did up close in a very personal way. this panel more than anything else i've heard shows me how personal it was.

so -- and i should say that i'm going be a boston native pretty soon. leaving next week for a niemann fellowship. be joining you at harvard. >> harvard had standards, but then they took me. >> excellent. i want to talk about how npr covered the event. and given that i cover terrorism events with frequency, whether they be domestic or international, i had a couple of hints giving to people trying to teach journalism and things to keep in mind as you try to cover the events. the first one is the first information you get is usually wrong. so the early situations, it's best not to get too far out in front of the story. if i had stepped back a little further, i would have said they might be following that but it the bestmake sense.

description they had of these thatere white college guys looked like frat brothers or something. one guy had his a small cap on backwards. enforcement's original position was that this had to be a domestic attack.

i reported that, saying that was there early inking. and then everything went wild. said that i was guessing it was domestic and when you expect from npr that they would say it was right-wing extremists. i had said, quite specifically and carefully that there was an early indication from federal law enforcement and that there was much more investigation to come. they had talked about april being a big month. it again, ido probably would not have reported that. behought it might interesting to listeners, but it was probably too early to do that. i think i was so focused on this little bit of information about the photographs that i focused on it too much.

i was not allowed to report the existence because it was unclear if they would release them or if that would do any good. there was no way for listeners to know that i was basing my reporting on that knowledge which are not to be wrong in the sense that they might've looked like white college kids, but in fact they were really chechen. the member, there was an early report of a saudi national being started at the hospital? online they said he had unusual burn so the fbi thought he might be involved. my sources in law enforcement says he had scrubbed and fully investigated and had nothing to do with it. and the host-line of morning edition and i are talking. . iasked me about this rumor told him what i knew. it is not true. he tweeted that i scoffed at the

suggestion it was a saudi national. that got lost in the broader story. i did because he had already been cleared by the fbi, but it made it sound guy didn't think it was possible that any saudi national could be responsible. again, online went crazy. aboutaid i was hinting the right-wing being behind it because it was tax day, april was hitler's birth day, all things law enforcement told me, that they were investigating and putting together this picture. do it again, i wouldn't have done it this way. that is my first piece of advice. in the early stages of a breaking story, it is best to speak very precisely and not to get too far out ahead. what's more, everything is 2020 in hindsight. ,f i had stepped back a little i would've realized they usually target a government building or

a federal target. if i had stepped back a little further, i would have said they might be following that but it doesn't make sense. the echo chamber of news reports can kill you. everybody knows that cnn, fox, ap, and "the boston globe" website, sorry about that, were reporting that the arrests were made on the wednesday after the bombing. the best advice i can offer is -- and "boston globe" did this. it may not have worked, is you stick with the people who have helped you get it right in the past and the people cautious in the past. tremendous pressure in the newsroom at npr to match this arrest story. i have a terrific ed sorry.

we worked on the breaking stories before. just sort of the way our makeup is, we're both really, really cautious. we'd be a little later and be right than be right on the news and be wrong. so it took me ten minutes to get the right person on the phone. he was one in a position to know if there had been an arells. we worked on stories like this before. and i knew how to read him, chi i think most reporters understand, you can tell from the tone of voice whether your source is worried about something or if he's sort of knows more than he's saying and isn't that worried, particularly in terrorism. in the zazi -- the zazi case in new york, the guy who wanted to bomb the subways in new york. all my sources, when you called them, they sounded so frightened. their voices were so tight. now, it may be that i hear this better because i'm in radio now.

i used to gauge what was going on. the word choice and how they sound frightened. they sound frightened because it's a big thing. i told bruce there wasn't an arrest according to a good source. we didn't say cnn is reporting or a.p. is reporting. we had a separate newscast desk and we worked enough together. i used to be an old wire service reporter at bloomberg. we worked together long enough that they will sometimes hold the story and say, okay, we're waiting for dena to confirm it. she'll confirm it. don't worry. just wait. they won't put something on the air.

so that's how it worked out in this case and i said i don't think there was an arrest and a short time later, people started walking that back. and i'm really glad this happened early in the story for people who are reporters. if you get credibility on a story early with the editors and the people who are working with you, then they are less amped up home and cell numbers for sources if there was an arrest you canded to confirm. make arrangements with another

source. take --ed it would not asked if i had home and cell numbers if there was an arrest and needed to confirm. i said, look, i wanted to apologize in advance that i'm going to call you. they said they were going to be up working anyway. then the car chase started around 3:00 a.m.of course, the e started at around 3:00 a.m. and someone called to tell me that there was a car chase that they thought was related to this and i started calling other people who had been particularly helpful on this story. because i had warned them that i was one to call in the middle of the night, they'll pick up on the first ring. they saw that it was made. so i think it was sort of the natural courtesy that you

provide to sources when you know you're going to be burdensome, you apologize ahead of time. that's really what the tip is. the last tip i would say is you need to ask specific questions so there can be no misunderstanding. because in the hubbub of it all, you think you're communicating really well. you may not be communicating as well as you think. they have a ton of information. you're trying to get a ton of information. they may skip gaps and you're going to make natural assumptions. that may not be correct. we see this in the story that's sort of kicking around right now. a daily beast story about a so-called conference call between the head of al qaeda, the new deputy, the guy named wohashi and 20 other al qaeda members.

i spoke to sources that said in all of the times they were tracking him, for more than a decade, he's never picked up a phone. so i was clearly spending a lot of time yesterday -- i think it came out yesterday. maybe the day before, i was spending a lot of time trying to either confirm or knock down the story. i pretty much knocked it down. if you look at the papers today, well, actually, it wasn't a conference call. now the reason i bring it up is not to chastise the reporting but to make a point about gaps. if someone said a bunch of people were together on the conversation, you can very easily leap to the conclusion it's a telephone call. as opposed to a chat room or an intercept. the way it worked in the tsarnaev case, the arrest was bizarre, minutes after the police and the fbi came out and said they were calling off of the man hunt in watertown, i was on the air with "all things considered" with host melissa block.

the way our studios are set up, this is in the new building over behind union station. we had these big flat screens that are sort of behind and the engineers behind me, i can't see him. i'm facing the host. the host can see the engineers on the flat screens for her to see the flat screens, i have to sort of crane my neck, right? we're about to go live. on the screens, they're closed captioned. so we don't have sound, but we can see what's going on. the caption reads, gunshots fired and the clock is counting down, five, four, three, two -- i keep looking at the screen, looking at melissa, looking at the screen, looking at melissa. she's going to do the intro. her mic is live. i don't want to come out on her mic but i want to make sure she's looking at the camera, at the screen. i'm pointing. trying to be quiet and calm.

she sees it. she's amazing. she calmly says we're seeing there might be gunshots fired in the neighborhood of water town. even though moments ago police said that he had escaped from this neighborhood. and we went about describing what we were seeing live on the -- on the screen in front of us. and melissa calmly says, gina is going to go and make some phone calls and she'll be back. [laughter] so -- and i tiptoe out of the -- out of the -- okay. so what followed were the longest 15 minutes of my reporting life. i immediately dialed up a bunch of sources i had been calling since the bombs went off. i was leaving all of the voice messages. the new newsroom is very open. it's a cool building. if you can ever take a tour, it's totally worth it. it's the coolest thing. it's got what we call the hub which has all of the editors

around it. they're all watching the screen and looking at computers and all waiting for me to figure out what is going on. so every couple of minute, one or the other of the editors is looking at me. i'm sitting on the table. my cell phone is on the table and i'm watching it and i'm like, please ring, please ring. like high school all over again. please ring. my phone rang. and there had been all of this speculation on tv whether he was in the boat. the youngest brother, had been on the boat, or was wired with explosives or had weapons. then my cell phone rings and the source read a direct line about what was going on on the ground on the other end. i said, oh, my god, is he in the boat? he said, yes. he said is he wearing a suicide vest. he said he couldn't tell. i stopped for a second. i said what do you mean you can't tell? do you have a visual? he said, yes, we have a robot, a camera, an actual visual on him. we're sure it's him. how solid a confirmation can you get, right?

so while he -- i'm talking to him, i'm repeating everything he's saying. so the whole hub can hear it because i can't really take notes and i'm trying to think as fast as i can what possible questions do i need answered. how often do you hang up and your editor goes, did you ask him this and i'm going, i didn't think of it. so i repeat all of this. the hub editors are watching. and taking notes themselves and i hung up and i said, it's him. and then i sort of scramble back into the studio and we reported it and we felt really, really confident about it because of what it was. so a second source eventually confirmed it, gave us more details. bewe felt really, really solid on this. we were sort of watching on tv what this guy was saying. and so we felt really, really strong on immaterial. so i thought i would wrap up

with three things that made the boston marathon attack different than any other attack i covered in the past. the three things, the way they were radicalized. what a huge role technology played in this case, and the bureaucratic snafus that we thought were sort of worked out after 9/11 that clearly are not worked out. i will do this briefly. so start out with the tsarnaev brothers. i wrote a book about the lackawanna six, the first radicalized kids from upstate new york here in the united states. the typical scenario is someone comes and radicalizes somebody. then they go to a camp, get some training, come back, try to attack something here. that is the typical sort of scenario if you are following a terrorist case here. but in this case, it didn't happen. the radicalization happened as best we can tell on the web. the older brother, clearly had quite a hold on his younger

brother. he went to chechnya. but my sources tell me that they couldn't find a nexus between terrorist groups there and the older brother. it will be interesting to hear how the younger brother describes all of this. he's made an extensive written statement, something in the neighborhood of 27 written pages in the statement. see if that comes out in court. this may be a new model of radicalization for law enforcement to study. the fact that the two had no get away plan makes me think this was not such great plot. a guy who tried to set off the car bomb in times square but he didn't use any of the ingredients he was supposed to use, he had a getaway plan, he was going to drive home to connecticut. he left his car keys and his house keys in the car that was supposed to explode. so he wasn't a great planner either.

so he ended uptaking a train back to connecticut. so the second point about technology. it clearly played a huge role in this case. one source told me if they had this much video, iphone footage and pictures they would have captured eric rudolph right away instead of years later. i think it was "the globe" with the israeli software program that helped the fbi to fast forward all of the footage and isolate it so they could zero in on the brothers. the software looks for anomalies in the way people are moving in crowds. there was information in the car they jacked. the driver told them it didn't have a gps. but it did. the black box in the new cars

are like black boxes in airplanes. they provide untold information about speed, how you're driving. there is more but that gives you an idea without touching on tweets that he was sending, how much technology had a role in this. then finally to the bureaucracy. there were communications problems between the boston police and the joint terrorism task force in boston. a lot of tit for tat about who knew what, when about the older brother. clearly the russians didn't fully inform the fbi about their concerns about tamarlan. there was blame and the russians said we're looking at them and the russians say a lot of times we're just looking at somebody. they didn't give anymore information than that. the press had its own problems.

the need to be right. a lot of news organizations did post mortems on what they did wrong and how they the can do better next time. npr was careful. we did not have to walk back anything we reported. i would take back that report i did on the early information from the fbi. it wasn't wrong, it was their thinking at the time. i probably should not have reported it. and we learned from the boston marathon bombing that reporting the new media age is just much trickier and it puts a lot of pressure on those of us who are, you know, old media outlets. we're the outlets people trust so we have to get it right even if we're not first. thanks. [applause] >> so what's amazing about this. i'm kelly mcbride from the pointer institute. what's amazing is that this is mow we do journalism ethics, right?

we look at the best and worst practices in very specific applications. then we extrapolate what should our values be? what should our principles be as we practice journalism. so you guys have to teach what these guys are extrapolating from the on-the-ground experience. the thing is we live in a world now where we are accelerating the rate at which we innovate and create new ways of reporting. and so what i want to do is just bring out some of the lessons. what i do is look at the marketplace of ideas and try to describe how it's working. and tom rosensteel and i recently published the gook called the new ethics of journalism. it does just that, describes a

new framework for making ethical decisions in the world of journalism. you can see the new ethics in all of these -- in all of these descriptions of how this one particular story was covered. so when you listen to tereasa talk about covering the story live, on a blog, although we have had live television 24-hour television for several decades now, that is not the same as the environment that we live in now where everyone has everyone like not just tereasa and "the boston globe" and npr because they can break in and the cable news channels, but everyone has the ability to share, create, and distribute information instantaneously because we all have access to the tools of publishing. so that means that when tereasa is describing how she's sorting through information and she's deleting information that is not necessarily helpful to her audience, there are new standards that we are developing

as we go live. and we're thinking -- tereasa is doing a great job. she's thinking about the audience. it's not just as we try to tell this story, what's new. but what's new and what's important to the audience and how does the audience make sense of this when you're doing what is being described by a lot of people as iterative journalism which means piece-by-piece-by-piece journalism. it raises a lot of questions about when we do make mistakes, how we own up to those makeses. what the best practices should be for standards and corrections. it's interesting that tereasa talked about -- she deleted some information that wasn't necessarily pertinent to her audience or that seemed rep tishls. but she didn't delete the mistakes. she corrected the mistakes and let the audience know that the mistakes had been corrected. she also alluded to -- and i

think this is interesting across this table, the difference between a branded individual and a branded news organization. because both of those serve a different audience. and individual journalists for the most part have to learn how to brand themselves these days. some of them may deny that they do that, but they -- every journalist has an individual brand that he or she is cultivating through his twitter account or through the public appearances she might make on cable television, the books he writes or the level of expertise she conveys in her work. this is all part of the brand. the brand belongs in addition to the news organization, it belongs to the individual. there are ethical challenges. as the individual develops a brand, they develop a loyalty to the brand. tereasa is sailing sometimes

its's great for the individual. but not else inially what the audience coming to "the boston globe" wants. that -- that individual journalist has a different brand so there's a tension between those two audience that has to be worked out. it is worked out in expectations that we're literally creating now as we go. we don't necessarily have the ethics of that works out. kevin talked a lot about his job. and this is when we describe the work of journalists now, it's very hard to -- you can't say who is a journalist anymore. like we can say who a professional journalist is because they get paid to do journalism. but, in facts, it's no longer possible to describe everyone who's a journalist. a lot of people do journalism but they are not professional

journalists. and so in a big breaking news story like this, you have lots and lots of people, both professionals and citizens describing what happened. and creating small chunks of information and that creates an overall narrative arc that the audience now gets as a fire hose coming at them. but one of the most important roles of journalism is to come back and to do what kevin described as making sense of what happened. helping the audience come to terms with what really happened and how that -- how that's -- and that's different from just saying, here are the new facts. so creating context, whether it's historical context or a context of what this means for a community -- first of all, that's done as a branded individual. it's not often that you won't have someone who has a very specific brand doing that work. because that brand is the platform that you then -- that

you then pontificate on what this all means. so brands are really important in creating context. and one of the things that's really interesting about the marketplace of ideas today is that context is really hard to come by. like if you ever are trying to find information, you -- we all go to google search, right? we search something and what we find, what google gives preference to is the most recent information. google gives preference to links recently updated. who knows how the algorithms work because they change them all the time. but it's very hard to create context through search. so that's -- if you think about a democracy, people don't just need to know what happened, they need to know why it happened and

what it means. if they they are going to fulfill their civic duties. one of our jobs as journalism educators now to figure out how do we in addition to doing the "here are the facts." here's the truth of what happened. how do we then teach journalists to create context? that is a really hard thing to teach. we have to figure that out. that's our job as educators. there is an ethical imperative to do that if you are interested in journalism. so not everyone who is doing journalism bears the burden of that ethical imperative. but if you're going to call yourself a professional journalist, then you have an additional burden to figure out not just what happened, but why it happened and what it means. and so that is the broader challenge to us these days. let me go through a couple of other notes. we have -- so we live in this world, kevin was talking about the access that he had. the access is incredibly valuable. and you create access by working in a community. and this doesn't have to be a

geographic community. it can be a law enforcement community. it can be a political community. but you create access by building trust. and you can abuse that access by creating -- by betraying that trust, or by using that access to distort the truth. we see many people who are -- one of the things that tom and i have done in this book is describe this world where we have the traditional professional media we're all so familiar with. but we also have the fifth estate. and the fifth estate are all of the individuals and organizations that are creating

information that functions as journalism. but they don't necessarily embrace the values that journalists embrace. now, and that's not a bad thing. some of them want to embrace those values and they don't necessarily know what the values are. and some of them -- some of them have a deliberate intention to further an agenda. so they're not necessarily interest in the values of dedemocracy as much as they are advocating for a certain philosophical point of view. so part of -- there are people in the estate who have access and people in the fifth who have access. one of the values that is rising up that we need to do a better job of teaching and a better job in our newsrooms of demonstrating is the value of transparency. so when steven -- what's that

tweet he tweeted out? i don't want to call him out. but he tweeted basically that i -- that i -- scoffed at the idea that there was a saudi national who -- >> right. so that wasn't completely transparent, right? because -- because it's a great example of something that is true but not truthful. yes, you scoffed, you scoffed because you had -- you had a history of knowledge about the particular quote. >> he had 140 characters. i will defend him on that one. not like a big long e-mail. but this gets to your point. he actually cleared this we more beforehand. he said, i was going to say this, does this work? and i said, yeah, i guess. we were sort of -- i didn't think of it in the broader context. so i'm as much to blame on that one as he is. it probably should have had a second tweet that followed it up. >> that's the perfect solution. tonight be clear that her sources have -- have indicated this. and let it -- being radically transparent about how we get our information and why in 140

character tweet we might say this, it's not impossible, even within the limitations of twitter, it's not impossible to be transparent. but it requires a consciousness and a habit that we don't necessarily have fully developed in the world of journalism yet. which means i imagine it's very hard to in each the classroom because you don't see it demonstrate in the profession very often. but its's definitely what the marketplace of ideas requires or demands in order for the audience to assign credibility to a certain piece of information. so the other -- the other interesting practices that emerge here is the idea of framing the story. so in a narrative like what happened in boston, you have a

million stories to tell. and -- and when we do it badly, we are just throwing information at people and we're not friming the story. and that is -- or when we do it in the immediate -- in the immediate aftermath of any event, our job as journalists to describe what happened. and to do that as accurately and as truthfully as possible. i loved that tereasa described four goals for her blog that she wanted it to be unclustered, which is really important. concise, accurate, and informative. and those two things are different ---ing accurate and informative. informative implies you want to give people information that furthers their understanding of what happened. not just information that is merely sbrelsing.

and having a -- i see you. thank you. having a -- having a -- having a -- having a contract between an individual or a news organization and their audience requires that the news organization understands their audience. that's something else we're not doing very well in the world of journalism right now but we're getting better. we have all of these mechanisms for an audience to talk to us and to describe to us what their expectations are, what their questions are and we're not having a vigorous conversation with the audience on a daily basis. some individuals are. some people do a good job of this. other people don't want to talk to the audience. as institutions, we don't talk to the audience and describe the institutional aspirations very

well. it's one of the things that will ultimately separate out the -- this will ultimately be how news organizations gain value is how they develop this conversation with their audience. we described three principles in our book. the principle of truth, transparency, and the principle of community. those become the framework, the foundation for making decisions that create journalism that supports democracy rather than -- that's -- the difference is sort of the lower -- the lower bar would with just to create information that can be consumed. and so there is a difference. you can see it happening right here. so it was really great to have four such solid journalists describe that. because this is how we do journalism ethics.

so, thank you. [applause] >> we have some time for questions for our panelists, right here? >> as you were talking about the passion and conviction about the connection between newspaper reporter and the community of firefighters and police, it struck me how that's really a microcosm of the value of a newspaper and a community and the way these are knitted together a lot of us don't get when we think about journalism going away or journalism is dying and it's really much more of a community aspect of it rather than just an industry. >> i think you're right. because in -- in those contexts, in that context, we both hold each other accountable. if i screw something up, i'm going to hear from danny kieler. they know i won't take crap. if i'm right, that's too bad. so i think that's -- like i said, it's funnive in, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, i had some interactions with law enforcement people and a couple of firefighters who don't like me. but our relationship was very -- civil at the time because we all felt like we were in the same boat.

we are part of that community. >> any discussion with any of these organizations about the releasing of the photographs in connection with the death of the police officer? that the scenario is you released the photographs and the guys know they're on the run and they kill the cop. did anyone -- >> i didn't hear anybody blamed for that. they were looking -- dena mentioned, they didn't have a plan. they were morons. he was trying to get the gun. he had the triple lock holster.

i can't open the damn thing and i know what it is. it's hard to open. i can't -- they killed him for nothing. there were debates among law enforcement. the fbi was reluctant to put the photographs out, i believe. danny was saying get it out there. our eyes and ears are out there. we'll have this guy. its's very hard to blame -- i don't see how you can blame the law enforcement people for putting that picture out there. because, yeah, it created the desperation they did it. but if you didn't do it that day, it was going to be another day. they had to know the net was closing in on them. so i think they were going to do that. they only had the one weapon. they needed another weapon. it was going to happen. >> i think also it was something that -- not that they thought this might happen. i think this was part of the discussion between law enforcement officials, both local and federal. if we do this, what's the worst case scenario? will it ignite the two guys and

make them do even more than they've done. >> they were going to. they were the bombs. they were going to go somewhere else. >> that was eventually they decided, look, they're not going to stop at this. and we're just not getting any closer. so we can't -- the facial recognition software they had, everyone talks about it in a sort of a new agy kind of way that this is the solution to everything. in fact, your head has to be tilted the right way and they have to be able to measure between your ear lobes and your eye and it's hard to get a facial recognition photograph i.d. tamarlan had a driver's license and dzohar did too. they couldn't get a bead for facial recognition and that's what tilted them on the edge and that's when they decided they wanted to go ahead and release the photographs. it was -- we heard it was going to be -- i can't remember the day of the week. it must have been a tuesday or something. we heard -- it took a couple of days. >> one of the kids that lost his leg, remember, the picture of

the guy with the cowboy hat holding the kid. that's jeff bauman who lost his legs. he i.d.'d him. he said that's the kid with the bag, i saw him. that was a lot of time. they were going to put it out a day earlier. which implies they clearly thought through this kind of imply kapgs. >> okay, over here. >> not to beat a dead horse here, but surely those of you who come from boston must have some sort of an opinion on the "rolling stone" cover and i would love to hear what that is. >> he's the columnist. i'll let him give his opinion. >> it was a brilliant piece of marketing by rolling stone. if it's one of the things they said around -- they're trying to create a provocative cover to sell magazines. they did a good job. i've -- i am always reluctant to

criticize other journalists' decisions. my attitude is if you don't like it, don't buy it. i had a -- if i wanted to go to criticism, i had a bigger problem in 11,000 words they didn't find the way to write, "martin richard, crystal campbell, and lindsey lou." those are six words. i would have liked to have seen those names in there. >> in the back there? >> picking up on the thread of access, loyalty, and the anecdote that kevin shared with us about the experience in the bar with the s.w.a.t. team just after the arrest -- at what point is -- is -- are the ground rules clear about what is going to happen in that session and what you're going to pick up on are the cops and in this example, talking to a friend, are they talking to a professional journalist, what is your view, what is their view of this?

is there a meeting of the minds? how do you deal with things like that? >> they knew -- they know who i am. but i don't -- they weren't ground rules set. but, you know, and they didn't say anything that was -- i didn't have to make a decision, "i won't put this in the paper. it was an interesting scene because it was ed kelly, the firefighter and ritchie paris, they were the ones basically showering praise on these guys and saying they should be paid as much as us because firefighters in boston make about 30% more than cops. so that was the most controversial thing i picked up. that was from the firefighters. that is a good question. but in the emotion of that moment, i wasn't thinking ground rules. i was thinking of the scene and that's how i ran in the column in the sunday paper. that would have been 1:00 in the morning when i saw those guys. it was the i was out on the other side of the bar. jerry foley said somebody out back wants to see you.

it was keeler. he said i just want you to -- i want you to see all of these kids -- these kids are the best. he said to me, don't put my name in the paper, i'll kill you. i put it in much later on danny. but he just -- i mean there was a bunch of young cops and a big cop named brendan walsh i know because he plays hockey with my cousin and he hasn't been home for five days. i tried to capture that. there were no ground rules. but obviously if they weren't happy with the column, i would have heard from them. >> i have a lot more ground rule problems. as a general matter because of what i do. i don't think my job is to make it harder for the fbi to do their investigation by releasing little tidbits. if they're doing something wrong, it is my job. but if they're doing their job and giving me tidbits for context, i understand what they're doing. it's not my job to put it out

there. the question i ask very often is can i use that? or that's great or i'll take notes and at the end i say, look, can i say any of this? can can i say this? i'll pick my three favorite things. they'll say, yeah, you can use that. say this, say it this way, we're concerned because we want this part of it to remain quiet. because we're still pursuing that as a line of investigation. and there's a little bit of negotiation that goes on because i don't think i should be clamming them up because they're worried that i'm going to talk all the time. it has to do with the trust. i think they know i'm fair and i think they know that if i think something is going to impede an investigation in some way, like i know when an arrest is about to happen or someone tells me something that's going on in a

secret grand jury deliberation and if i were to say that, then it would -- it would impede an arrest, those are the kinds of things that i keep very close to the vest. and they know i do. so they end up sort of telling me these things. and then i can talk to editors who say, well, why are they saying this? i can say that news organization is slightly off because i know this is going on behind the scenes. we just can't report it yet. >> the difference between the two is that -- so they both share a loyalty to their audience. but the difference is the consequences for what could happen, which is why you have to be so much more clear and explicit with your sources and you can be a little more -- it's based more on trust. are the consequences of what could happen. i mean, you're dealing with national security experts. and the consequences of if you have an established relationship with a source who's presuming that everything is on back ground, then you have to go back and negotiate to get everything on. if you make a mistake and you put something out there, the consequences could be significant. whereas you're most likely going to just piss someone off.

>> you don't know danny keeler. >> he may have it worse than i do there. >> over here? >> yeah. i teach high school. and we talk a lot about responsibility. and i wonever in the speed to get information out there, and how quickly the audience requires it or requests it, who's responsibility it is to kind of slow that down so it's correct. is it ours to say, slow down and tell me more, or is it yours to withhold until you know? >> it's your editor's responsibility. that's what they're there -- they're there to tell you the one question you should have asked that you forgot to ask. they're there to say, look, this doesn't feel -- how does this feel to you? this is what i feel is missing. this doesn't feel right to me. and to ask you who it is. when i worked for bloomberg for years and one of the rules there was you tell your editor who it was and why they were in a position to know. and that's sort of the minimum ground rule as an editor is that you should be asking your reporters who is it, were they

in the room, are they hearing this third hand? why would they know what it is that they're telling you. and that ends up slowing stuff up pretty quickly. >> are you asking is it the responsibility of the disseminaor of the reporter or the audience? that's your question. the audience could through feedback could say, you know, we appreciate the fact that, well, for example, in -- for us, it's a -- my desire in doing that live blog was not to be first. it was to serve the audience. i didn't care if -- if somebody had information that, you know, i know it would have been nice if we had it first. but who cares in a situation like that? i just didn't care. but i did care i was informing the audience so they could go about their daily lives. keep that in mind that boston

and the suburbs were shut down. people were asked to stay in their houses. it was just an unbelievable situation. so transmitting, you know, accurate and critical information was essential. if the audience had come back in droves and said, hey, you know, you said this and then later you -- you retracted it and you reported that so and so said this and later they retracted it, we don't like that. that's confusing. they -- they never said that. they don't say that. they get it. they understand. and so in that sense, we keep doing what we're doing. that's the way that an audience can influence. >> the other way that an audience we need to train, especially high school students, what the audience will do is if they go to ""boston globe"" looking for something and they don't find it and they're specifically looking for something, they're going go some

place else, they're going to go to read it. they're going to find it on read it. what we need to train the audience to do in a democracy is at least ask questions of the source of their information. and that's why we need to train the journalists to be transparent about why they're saying this. so that they can sort through the eck co-chamber that people mentioned here and consume -- doesn't mean they're not going to go looking for that gruesome photo or that salacious piece of information. but it means that the audience will look at the source of the information and make some judgments about how reliable it is. you systematically for high school students, basically what we do is go to high schools. we are in chicago, maryland, new york, washington, d.c. -- theywo journalists

go to journalists and we try to teach consumers -- them how to be good consumers of the news. you should not grab the first thing that pops up on google but .ou should look deeper see why should trust it and what you should be looking for. tremendous a response for it. they have an online component they are launching now. as a high school teacher, that might be something you look at. >> you guys can keep going. let me go to the airport. [applause] >> if he could squeeze in one more question. inm from new york city queens. i want a little bit more about the role of twitter and social media. we touched on it, but i want to ask. because it is called the race for news, i think that is a big

part of it. just to dig into that, it was addressed as first info and whether you want to wait or being first. that is the question. can you give us a little bit more on the social media role. obviously there are losses and minuses to promote stories. or we can talk to little bit about the ethics of the situation. the ethics of twitter being poorly used. >> i have to jump to. i have a press conference, but thank you very much. [applause] >> let me start by answering you question by saying cannot look at twitter or any other social media as good or bad. it just is. this is a fact of life. this is how we communicate.

this is like when we got tv was the end of journalism. a platform on which we communicate. if it is up to us to decide how we communicate on their. you have lots of good and bad examples. you have some standards you have put in place over what people should put out. there are good examples of how to work through this new platform. >> we do. i would say that every major newsroom have social media guidelines. the only one i know of that doesn't is the new york times. thatis because they feel ethics policy covers social media guidelines and they like to describe the social media guidelines as boiled down into one sentence, which is don't be stupid.

it is funny when one of the social media editors told me that. i looked back over our social media guidelines which i was revising at the time and thought, she is right. that is what it all boils down to. you know, during the marathon bombings, everyone in the newsroom, whether they were orking online producers whether they were reporters out a the field, everybody felt strong responsibility not to be irresponsible. we did want to get information out as quickly as it could. we wanted to inform the public and give them a critical

information that they needed to know. a little more cautious with social media then on an ordinary day. other than the misstep that i mentioned about a reporter eightting to mention tweet about an arrest to cnn, i cannot say there were any other missteps. >> i don't want to make any .ssumptions >> i was wondering. >> if anyone wants to follow him. >> i am not a breaking news reporter. to call ahey used feature writer and now is called a longform journalists. which he said earlier. i am very conscious as a iurnalist of my own brand.

think i just tweet and facebook everything. most writers i know do that. it is second nature. >> we thank our panelists for coming. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013]

>> hillary clinton is in san francisco today attending the annual american bar association meeting. an award.ected to get we will have live coverage of mrs. clinton on our companion network, c-span 2.

at six: 30 on c-span 2, live coverage of a national press club event. help or hinder transparency efforts. 6:30ll be live starting at eastern on c-span 2. i care on c-span it is a town hall meeting with bobby scott. so be on the affordable care act, also known as obamacare. earlier today we have live coverage of the attorney general eric holder as he announced prison sentencing guidelines. here is a quick look at his remarks. solutions forsh assisting victims and empowering survivors. as the so-called war on drugs enters its it decade, we need to ask whether it and the approaches that comprise that

have been truly effective and build on the administration's efforts led by the drug control policy to usher in a new with an outsized, unnecessarily large prison population, we need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter, and to rehabilitate, but not to merely warehouse and forget. it is a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality, it and incarceration attracts too many americans and weakens too many communities. many aspects of our community -- of our criminal justice system may exacerbate the problem rather than eliminate. to tooy americans go many prisons for far too long and for no truly good law enforcement reason. [applause] it is clear that at a very basic

level, the 20th century criminal justice solutions are not adequate to overcome our 21st century challenges. right now, unwarranted disparities are far to come. as president obama said last month, it is time to ask tough questions about how we can strengthen our communities and support young people. how we can address the fact that young black and latino men are disproportionately more likely to be involved in our criminal victims astim as well as perpetrators. we also must confront the reality that once they are in that system, people of color often face harsher punishments than their peers. one deeply troubling report in february of this year indicates black male offenders have

sentences almost 20% longer than white offenders of the crimes. it is shameful. [applause] it is unworthy of our great country. it is unworthy of our great legal tradition. in response, i have directed a group of u.s. attorneys to examine recommendations on how we can address them. and in many others, in ways both large and small, we as a country must resolve to do better. and i agree it is time to take a pragmatic approach. that is what i am proud to announce that the justice department will take significant actions to recalibrate america's federal criminal justice system. by fundamentally rethinking the notion of

mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes. [applause] some statutes that mandate sentences, and this is regardless of the individual the discretions available to prosecutors, judges, and to juries because they often times generate unfairly long sentences. if they breed disrespect. .hey do not serve public safety they, let's be honest, some of the enforcement priorities we have set have had a destabilizing effect on particular immunities, largely poor and of color. applied in a properly, they are counterproductive. mandated thathave

nonviolent drug offenders with no ties to our tells will no longer be charged with offenses that oppose to coney mandatory minimum sentences. [applause] they now will be charged with offenses that are better suited .o the individual conduct by reserving the most severe penalties for serious or high- level drug traffickers, we can better promote public safety and rehabilitation while making expenditures smarter and more productive. hasave seen this support bipartisan support in congress. dave introduced promising legislation aimed at giving federal judges more discretion

in applying mandatory minimums to certain drug offenders. >> though some of the remarks given by eric holder earlier today at the bar association's annual meeting. you can see his complete speech later tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern here on c-span. >> of all the handsome young officers that were surrounding grandfather,r, my he had been trying to get her to come to her and he couldn't because of all the handsome naval officers. they all rushed to go upstairs to do it they had to do. they left her standing there. she knew my father was up there. came running back . when she heard that, my grandmother ain't it right back into the arms of the president.

he caught her tenderly and gently. >> this week, the encore presentation of first ladies, influence of the image. week, anna harrison to a lie should johnson. weeknights, all this month at 9:00 eastern. during tonight's program, join in the conversation. >> this is a huge story because it is the first time a true digital native has stepped into the newspaper or broadcasting company. if he acts in any way like he did in disrupting the book publishing business, the delivery of streaming media, and certainly e-commerce, then he probably will disrupt and re-

envision what this is to be a newspaper in the 21st century and how that business remains a business. ,> journalism is changing whether it is a blog or twitter for that matter. the intersection between video and newspaper, it is hard to say where it is headed. it is at a stage where it is still being figured out. with jeff bezos on buying the post, it is one example. >> the future of the newspaper industry tonight on the communicators. >> a discussion now on the women's, infant, and children are graham.

host: in our last hour on mondays we take a look ahead of taxpayer dollars are being spent. taking a look today at the nutrition programs for poor women and children, wic as it is known. $7 billion spent on the program. here to help us is the school of public policy professor at the university of maryland. welcome. thank you for talking to us about this. let's talk about the purpose of the supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children, the wic program. what is the purpose? guest: the purpose has shifted over the years. it was established in the 1960's at a time when there was a great amount of malnutrition, especially among low-income african- americans. the original purpose was to give people enough food to give children in the food so they would survive and not be stunted. the purpose has changed over the years. the first purpose was to deal with endemic malnutrition among low-income americans. host: we told our viewers the figures, the annual budget for 2012.

$7 billion. there are 9 million total participants. 4 million women and infants and 5 million children. that $7 billion figure, what is that for? guest: it is for a combination of food. there is a package. it does not come in a box, but there is a designated package. it includes many of the things we try not to eat like milk, cheese, eggs, and so forth. it is a package of food worth about $100 with infant formula and about $40 of food for children. it also includes, and this is potentially the most important part of the program now, nutritional counseling. not only what to eat, but how to cook, especially with so many immigrants in the country and familiar with our food. this is not about being ill educated. it is about the equivalent of

bok choy. it is an educational as well as feeding program. host: 4 million are women and infants, 5 million are children. who are they and how they qualify? guest: that is where there is an argument green. the program started four people at risk of serious nutritional problems, some of the serious problems that come from an adequate eating. last year, 53% of all newborns were on wic because eligibility is set at $41,000 a year, which is not poor. the way they interpret it includes many families with incomes ordinarily much higher than $40,000 a year. it used to be for the poor. now it is for the poor and quasi-middle class people.

host: it is also determined based on nutritional risk. what is that and how is that defined? guest: the available research suggests even though it was important criteria 50 years ago, it has come to the point where everyone is at nutritional risk. host: why is that? guest: none of us eat a perfect meal. the bureaucrats do not want to deny services to anyone. i have been in debates with people where i have said it cannot be that 53% of american newborns are at nutritional risk. i have had people say i am at nutritional risk. maybe i am, but do i need a government program to tell me what i need to eat? yes, indeed. i am being pushy on the subject. the research says nutritional risk was important concept in the 1960's. now almost everyone who is income eligible gets wic and the

nutritional risk category has become a broad. host: do they determine nutritional risk? guest: it is everything from overweight to underweight. the newest addition is second- hand smoke. if you are in a household with second-hand smoke, you are determined to be at nutritional risk. the real action is on income eligibility. host: we're talking with douglas besharov of the university of maryland public policy. he co-authored a book on this program and is here to take your questions as part of our series. we want to hear from wic recipients. we have a line set aside for you. we have a line for republicans, democrats, and independents.

if you are on wic, we want to we'd like to hear how you got on the w.i.c. program. who oversees it. >> the department of agriculture reflecting the fact this program started as a way to deal with malnutrition but also surplus agricultural goods. so it's a program of the department of agricultural. >> if you or on w.i.c. and receive benefits, can you receive snap and what is snap? >> in fact, they make it quite easy for you to do so. snap is what we used to call food snaps and is provided through a credit card called e.b.t. card. i think averages of a family of three is around $4,000 a year for benefits. snap is a credit card that you can use to get almost any kind of food as long as it's not hot

and prepared. so you can get stables, you can't buy liquor notwithstanding, the conservative's argument, i saw someone using a w.i.c. food snap to get gin. but you can't use it to get uncooked lobster. the definition is cooked versus uncooked. you can't use a snap card to get rotisserie chicken which is the cheapest form of hot protein in the store. but you can use it for lobster. i saw on tv last night you can use a snap card for sushi. now i'm making light of it. both of these programs are tremendously important for low-income americans but what they've become is a form of income support for higher income americans as well. many of us argue the idea of the programs are good. they should be continued but should focus on the neediest.

>> you said the income level to receive w.i.c. is to receive it is $21,000. guest: for a family of four. host: how many are on this program versus lower wages than that or a lower income level. guest: i don't have a figure in my head but around a 1/4 of the people we are thinking about on w.i.c. they are not what people would raditionally consider as poor. the figure $21,000 can be monthly income and just to be clear how many legitimate purposes, programs like w.i.c. can serve, w.i.c. is for pregnant women, women with infants. and in a household perhaps earning $65,000 a year, if the woman, the one who usually gets pregnant, gets pregnant, leaves her work for a while, stays out of work for a month or two, their family income probably

went from $65,000 to under $41,000. she becomes eligible for w.i.c. and remains eligible for a year. part of this is -- sometimes i say it lightly but mean it seriously, it's a form of paid leave for lower, middle class families. host: we'll go to winston salem, south carolina. caller: thank you so much. i'm disgusted and make less than $8,000 a year because of my disability. and i go to see my oncologist tomorrow. my son is maxed out on loans to go to school. he's in engineering school at one of the best engineering schools in north carolina. and this is a disgrace. it is. anyone that makes $41,000 a year does not need help.

host: so if you apply for w.i.c. and you are eligible, you get the benefits for one year no matter what. >> no matter what. host: even if you make more money than that or don't need it anymore, you get it for a year no matter what? guest: unless you hit the jackpot and you make a million dollars and the newspaper find out about it. but the formal rule is there is no test for income eligibility, and people are determined to be on for a year. host: john in vermont, a republican. caller: can you hear me ok? host: go ahead. caller: i had the honor of meeting your boss at the calvin cooley home site two weeks ago and told him what a wonderful thing he's done with c-span. the only unbiased place to get your news and such a gentleman

and got to speak to him about five minutes and that totally mpressed me. but when i worked, i'm a retired employee and used to do the procurement of the w.i.c. contracts and in vermont we tried for a while home delivery as the note man went away, so did w.i.c. home delivery and we went over to, you know, more current system, but the thing i noticed, in a state like vermont, there's a million dollars at stake and the competition among the vendors, the thing behind the thing with the w.i.c. program i noticed, not to be jaded or cynical is there is a lot of money here. and just in w.i.c. formulas, whoever wins the w.i.c. formula bid gets shelf space at the

retail grossers. host: let's take that point, john. guest: depending on your political point of view, one of the innovations of the w.i.c. program or one of its worst characteristics which is to say the infant formula makers are forced to bid on these state contracts which means they provide the infant formula for the state w.i.c. program, probably at below cost, in order for them to get shelf space, as the caller mentioned. but the course of this doesn't come out of nowhere. there's a transfer for middle class families paying for the same formula. the formula on the shelf is more expensive for middle class or higher middle class people because people on w.i.c. are getting a subsidy. it's a very interesting type. the w.i.c. package for infants is $$100 and $70 of it come from the formula manufacturers,

about a billion and a half a year transfer now. host: if you apply and become eligible for w.i.c., what happens next? how does this package, as it's called, how do you go about getting that food? >> i made light about nutritional risk. let me emphasize, you do sit down with a counselor and if you're overweight, if euro bees or have high bloop or any other measurable -- high blood pressure or any other measurable problem they try to address that with a referral. then everyone gets roughly the same package. there's a difference depending on again if you have hypertension or are overweight but they'll sit down and make a package and you get w.i.c. checks and look a bit like a check except instead of where it says $30, it will say one quart of whole milk, one gallon is, im milk, whatever it six ounces or 12 ounces of

peanut butter, 12 eggs, a dozen eggs and will actually say that and you go into the grocery store with this check and you can use that check to get the things on that list, nothing else, and if you don't use the entire check, you don't get a refund which of course is another problem i think we'll get to which is how this encourages overeating. but you get a check, you can go to a store and it used to be these were w.i.c. -- they were stores that specialized in selling w.i.c. and they're the ones the caller mentioned were making outrageous profits. now you can go in an ordinary supermarket as long as they're w.i.c. certified. host: what about farmers markets in areas like washington, d.c. can you take a w.i.c. check there? >> there's a new program under w.i.c. to encourage people to eat fresh vegetables. the original w.i.c. was dried beans. this is how far back we go. now you can use canned beans.

but there's an addition since about 2009 where up to $10 a month is available for fresh fruits and vegetables and you can use them in farmers markets. host: here's a snapshot of the w.i.c. food package. this was from 2010. you can just see. you mentioned dried or canned beans, fish, whole wheat. and it goes through the different food packages and the amounts based on whether or not your child is 4 years old or if you're a pregnant woman and you plan to breast-feed or partially breast-feed and goes through all the different types of packages for those that are eligible for the w.i.c. program. that's our topic as part of a "your money" series, taking a look at the wrment i.c. program, 2012 dost of $7 billion. tom from deluth, minnesota. go ahead. >> yes, i'm a first-time caller. caller: when i was young and had two infant children and i was a single dad, w.i.c. is

what kept me afloat and it kept me in touch with the nurse at the w.i.c. it made sure they got their immunizations and i'm really tired of these people attacking the poor people in this country. if it wasn't for w.i.c., i wouldn't have got on my feet, got in the navy and got on with my life. to keep attacking food stamps and w.i.c. problems is really a shame to this country. stop attacking the poor. and women and children. and move on. host: can i ask you about your experience? the checks that you received for food for your children, was it enough to feed your children? too much? not enough? caller: it was barely enough. and him saying that all these people that make $40,000 a year on this program, it's hogwash. when you go there, you're humiliated, you're embarrassed,

you're treated like a second-class citizen when you apply. i've seen women -- now i work -- i'm a volunteer, and i see women that are ashamed to go hurting, the young, poor people in this country, the young children. we've got to stop focusing on what the poor try to get and hat the rich take. guest: i think the caller makes important points about the quality of the program. obviously i disagree with the targeting. many people believe if we targeted the program better we could use that same $7 billion to upgrade the package for the people most in need. for example, we don't have a program now that deals with the diaper needs for infants. people are still paying cash for that. so i guess my point would be,

for low-income and i won't say that number is, it's not $40,000 to $60,000. for low-income families w.i.c. has become tremendously important and is an important part of our social safety net. but we could target the benefits better and give the folks who really need them even more than they get now. host: this is a tweet from barbara who said isn't it true women with infants get milk, formula, juice, cereal on w.i.c. one can of formula is $20 or more? >> i'm not sure about the question but they do get enough formula. it's a very tricky -- the formula is tricky because for years the researchers noticed w.i.c. seemed to discourage breast-feeding and medical opinion, whether rightly or wrongly, encourages breast-feeding. so the program now has a different benefit package depending on whether you're on -- whether you're breast-feeding or not.

that may be what the person is talking about. i never heard someone say that the actual amount of infant formula isn't sufficient. host: jewelrymaker jay tweets in, i don't think we're attacking snap and w.i.c., it's the policies of the program that got out of control. bill in d.c., democratic caller. hi, bill. caller: i'd like to say we're ignoring the elephant in the room which is these automatic cuts that have taken place. host: sequestration? caller: according to the food research and action center. 600,000 w.i.c. recipients will be pushed off the roles with these automatic cuts and nancy pelosi was saying along with that, they're talking about cutting $40 billion out of food stamps with this insane tea party regime of trying to destroy governments in a

traitor ess endeavor to bring the united states back to 1900. host: let's talk about sequestration and what impact has it had on the w.i.c. program? guest: on head start programs it's had a definite income. it makes the same point which is we're collecting middle class entitlements, social security, medicare, and cutting these programs like w.i.c. and snap. it's terrible. host: here's a headline from the new york sometimes recently, august 6, poor children showed decline in obesity rates. the obesity rate among preschool aged children from poor families fell in 19 states and united states territories between 2008-2011. the first time a report showed a consistent pattern of decline for low-income children after decade of rising rates. is it related to w.i.c.? >> first off, who knows if it's true. guest: the numbers are very distinguishy but let's assume

it's true. is it related to w.i.c.? it could be. because w.i.c. and snap were designed to fatten up children. and the original food packages were very heavy on calories, very heavy on dairy. he reforms in the 2001 -- 2009 changes in the package in effect reduced the caloric content of these packages. so it's entirely plausible. in fact, it's a good thing to say about this is we can complain about the targeting. the program responded to the problem of obesity. host: from san antonio, republican caller, go ahead. caller: yes. i wanted to say that i am a w.i.c. -- i do receive w.i.c. and the food stamps. i definitely make less than the $40,000 a year, i make about half that. and even then it was so easy to get into, and i think that they

need to be more strict when looking at, you know, getting pay stubs and getting things like that because i would see women in those offices just were so lazy and i actually try where i do work. right now i'm working but at the time it was very difficult for me. and they did help me but even then it was barely enough. and even when i tried getting medical help with insurance, they told me i made too much. and i barely made half the amount. i made the $20,000 a year. and the fact that they're willing to help other people who are just -- you can tell that they're lazy and don't want to do things. i'm not talking about everybody. i know there are some people who need it and they need to really be more strict on collecting pay stubs, proof of employment. because i know when i went in, it was so easy for me to get, i just had to put i had address, basic information and they didn't verify anything. if they did that, i think they

would be able to save money, cut down, give it to the people who really need it instead of just, like you said, they have too much or not enough. host: we'll take your points, amanda. thanks for the call. guest: it's a tremendous challenge. the people who run w.i.c. on balance are the most dedicated public servants working in public or private agencies i've seen. they're wonderful people. they don't like to deny benefits. they simply don't like to deny them so they're very easy about proving eligibility. i think that has come back to bite them because of the size of the program. but i understand it. they're in effect giving food to people who -- many people who need it badly and it's got an little bit out of control. host: we put the figure out there, $7 billion in 2012 and how does it compare to previous decades? guest: the program started at $100 million a year.

host: what year? guest: 1972. these programs have grown. this is just the story of our evolving social welfare state. it's the reality of where we are. i want to make one point. that we often miss here. the program was established when most of the mothers we're talking about did not work. so they're mainly 9:00 to 5:00. it is extremely difficult as one of the callers mentioned, to get good services. if you have a job, you have to go in the evening. the lines, the waiting can be very long. you often have to take time away from work. we're not talking about a program that is wonderful and just and is giving money to too many people, it's a program that needs continuing reform, continuing to make it customer friendly. host: have there been any efforts on capitol hill as of late or when was the last time the program was looked at? 's guest: are you here in washington?

we're caught in this issue of, you know, right, left, lord forbid you should say a program too big but let's not cut the total spending, let's just give more to the people at the bottom. so many people would like to do that but that would require those on the left to say the program has problems and that would require people on the right to say we need to spend more money on the poor. it's a challenge. host: douglas besharov is a school of public policy professor at the university of maryland. we're talking about the w.i.c. program, the nutritional programs for poor women and children, $7 billion was the price tag in 2012 and as our guest said in 1971 it was $100 million for the w.i.c. program. michael johnson twothes in this, do you know a lot of military that receive w.i.c. and food stamps? are they eligible? >> the answer is yes, they are eligible. they're eligible for food stamps and w.i.c. if their income is low enough. and what's happened is as the income levels in which people

can get food stamps have gone up and w.i.c. have gone up, they've become more eligible. host: jerry houston, mississippi. go ahead, jerry. caller: yes, ma'am, i respect and highly appreciate mr. besharov and his comments. however, education starts at the home, and they've got to focus on poor choices. we all make them. we've all made bad, poor choices. we can't continue this charade of talking around the mountain. you go through the mountain and you only go through with the word alive and the word is focus on the fundamentals. we have to educate children at a young age and raise them properly and then we don't have children having children. we've got to stop this going bananas in schools and this is not teaching a kid at 10 years old to go pick up a morning after pill.

we've got to get real. it's not rocket science, it's life or it's death. i do not worship death and i know the good doctor does not either. ost: douglas besharov. guest: the challenge in all these social programs is help those in need without generating greater need. that affects every program we have. even affects foreign aid. so it's a challenge. and what i wish we could do here in washington, and the state capitals all over the country is understand a balance has to be drawn and work towards it. e don't seem to be doing that. host: the republican dairy farmers want a government regulation forced to sell their product. go figure. i'm wondering about lobbyists and who has a say in these programs because the programs

are heavy on dairy. guest: the programs are heavily lobbied because there's a great deal of money at stake. i don't know if it's republican farmers. i think back in the 1950's and 1960's, we were encouraged to eat our eggs and cheese and drink whole milk because it was good for us. part of this is we've all chickened up a little bit at the gut and it's time to change the menu a little bit. i think they've tried. it is difficult. infants drink a lot of milk or infant formula. that's what they drink. the rest of the food package, some eggs, some cheese, what would you substitute? it's chaleppinging. that's -- it's challenging. by the way, i think we ought to give them cash. host: why? guest: think about the check i told you about, one quart of this, 12 ounces of that. how about this week i don't feel like having peanut butter.

why do i need to be told, especially this is 53% of american infants. this is a level of control that i don't think is necessary. and it's just we've inherited it from the older program and older feelings about the poor. host: douglas besharov told us earlier if you're on the w.i.c. program you receive checks that literally say what you can buy with that check, milk, and how many eggs, etc. that is part of your food package for one month. fred in montgomery, alabama, independent caller. hi, fred. >> hi. we went through the program with my son and it helped us out, especially with the baby formula. and the baby formula is really expensive. and if you go sometime, i don't know in your area, but a gallon of milk can fluctuate quite a bit. and i also work at a food chain

grocery store outlets and our number one theft is baby formula and then the other day, i noticed that overseas, it's like on the black market. so baby formula is the number one, i was surprised, theft in a grocery store. guest: baby formula is very expensive. and unless you believe the economists who say it would be less expensive without the government supporting it, we need to provide the subsidy. host: how does it work, the government's support of baby formula. explain that. guest: the government says we're the major purchaser of infant formula for now 53% of american children. so we dominate the market. this is very much like the medicaid, medicare argument about prescription drugs. we dominate the market. we want you to give us a reduced price for our purchases. well, if you assume at some

point the reduced price goes below the cost of manufacture, which is does, and someone else has to pay the difference, and that is the nonw.i.c. families pay more, so the shelf price goes higher because the manufacturers are subsidizing 50% of the babies in the country. host: how much does it cost to get formula on w.i.c. versus when you go to the store, a can of it can cost $28 and lasts about six days? guest: w.i.c. is free. host: picking up the coast. guest: picking up the total cost. host new york. democratic caller. caller: hello, good morning. i think i need the professor to help me change my attitude about what was once called food stamps. i've always thought of myself as a hubert humphrey democrat but i was upstate new york in the grocery line and i had only

$18 in my pocket so i had to be very careful when i went through the grossly store. as i got to the checkout, the lady in front of me had a huge cart filled with food. huge! junk food, sugary cereal. and she swiped what looked like a white credit card. and i found out from the cashier that it was called a w.i.c. card. i guess now instead of food stamps they give the recipients a credit card. and then she proceeded to pay cash for a bunch of flowers and two bottles of wine. then i went, left the store behind her, i went and took my little bag of groceries into my 18-year-old jeep and she was bundles into her

an infinity s.u.v. now, what i need to do is reconcile my anger about that with my liberal attitude of helping the poor. and i thought perhaps the professor could help me straighten out my mind. host: all right, paul. listen to the answer. guest: that was a very rich question. until you mentioned the s.u.v., i was going to say she probably has difficulty getting to the supermarket more than once a month so she's making all her purchases at once, taking them home and as a result there will be a fair amount of soilage. that is true. the tricky part here is to remember that there are families who are in dire straits and for which food snaps or snap is the major source. host: when he said a w.i.c. card he was actually referring to the snap program. guest: an e.b.t. card, an electronics benefit transfer which is modern talk for welfare.

yes. because food stamps does not have any limitation of how much personal property you own, a house, a car, it could have been perfectly legitimate, because of the way they measure income, she was probably eligible legally. we've generated all sorts of new ways of being eligible for food stamps. one is it you're on medicaid you're eligible for food stamps. when that was first on medicaid was limited to low-income families. with the expansions before obamacare, many more people, to 200% to 300% of people were on medicaid and food stamps and will become even more and we haven't broken that connection. host: mandy is next in georgia. go ahead. caller: i'm a w.i.c. recipient and it's been more than just free food, they have la leche

leagues who teach you more about breast-feeding and express your milk and are very encouraging about breast-feeding and wanting you to breast-feed your baby and they have dieticians to meet with that can help you make meals out of the free food they offer you. to me, w.i.c. has been a blessing. host: can i ask you how often you visit with the officials that are administering the w.i.c. program in your area? >> any time i need to. they tell me any time you need to come in and meet with a dietician or meet with a laleche league, you can come in any time and talk to them. and they're very wonderful. they've given me a free breast pump and they've just been so wonderful and so encouraging and to me w.i.c. has been a godsend. host: how many kid do you have, just the one? caller: i have two older boys who are no longer receiving w.i.c. i haven't had w.i.c. for them for five years and i just recently had a baby who is three months now and that's the only -- the only help we get is through w.i.c.

host: do you plan to stay on the program for the one year you're allowed to be on it? caller: yes, it's helped us out a lot. it's wonderful, it's a godsend. host: can you explain that for skeptics of the program how it's helped you out a lot? caller: when i was on leave, like the professor mentioned, it helped supplement some of our income by giving us milk and cereal. with w.i.c., you have a certain kind of cereal and a certain kind of stuff you can pick. you can't just walk in and pick out sugar frosted cocoa puffs. you have to only get whole grain cereals, whole grain bread. so it's all healthy food and it's all healthy and wonderful and it helps supplement my income until i can get back to work and like you were saying before, infant formula is so expensive, and you go through it, one can, you go through it in no time and they're really helpful of encouraging breast-feeding so they're not all about go on formula, go on formula. they're really helpful and

encouraging. let's see if you can express more milk so you don't have to go on formula. so they're wonderful. it's a godsend. i would hate to see this program go away because they are more than about free food, it's about education, too. host: is it enough that they provide for you? caller: yes, for right now it is. i'm not on formula. i'm still breast-feeding and for right now, it's wonderful. it's a little too much, actually. but my kids get whole grain cereals and whole grain breads and it's wonderful. guest: i'm so glad she called. we tried to say earlier, we worried about the reach of the program and who shouldn't be getting it but many people should be getting it and especially the way she describes what happens in many, not all w.i.c. offices. i've been there and the excitement in the cooking classes is palpable. it truly is. i've mainly seen the classes

for immigrant families but it's many times women need help learning how to cook more healthy food and stretch their food budgets. host: how much of the w.i.c. population is the immigrant population and if you're undocumented, can your children get w.i.c.? guest: yes, if you're undocumented you can. there's no requirement that they prove citizenship or legal presence in the country. and i don't know the exact number but here's the way i would think about it, something like 13% or 14% of american children are african-american, something like 15% or 16% are latino, about 6% or 7% are asian. my guess is around 15% to 20% of the program is immigrant and maybe half of that is undocumented. host: houston, texas. republican caller, debby. hi there. caller: good morning. just from the conversation about this program, one of the

things that struck me is this is the number one way for government to tell the people what they can and cannot have. now, look, i'm 58, there were no w.i.c. programs available for me when i went on maternity leave. there were no food stamps when i was a bartender and feeding two children and not getting my child support. card seen the lone star used in convenience stores. we also have a lot of convenience stores that are crooks and will ring up things like cigarettes and other things that are not on the card under a grocery key. so there's a lot of fraud. now, he just mentioned a very good point. the formula. those of us who are working pay for those who aren't. stop spreading the wealth. now, why am i paying for my grandchildren's formula and

others go get their formula for free and their free formula is jacking up the price for me that i have to buy it. host: douglas besharov? guest: that's the challenge here. there are those who need the program desperately and many people who don't. what we need to do in that building over there is start making distinctions like that or otherwise we will go groke. -- go broke. host: we'll leave it there, douglas besharov, from the school of public policy professor. >> the national labor relations board sbore in four new members today. the first time five members have had a full confirmed board. aptioning made possible by national caption institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corps, 2013]

>> congressman bobby scott of virginia is holding a town hall meeting today to talk to citizens about the federal health care law. there's a movement among some republicans to refuse to fund the law before it's fully in place. we'll have live coverage of that meeting at 6:30 eastern. in the meantime a look at this this morning's washington journal and a look with a worker covering the law's implementation. host: on mondays here on the washington journal" we're looking at the affordable care act, updating you on certain provisions of testify and seemed up with kaiser health news to help us. and joining us is jordan rowe, the senior correspondent for the health news and a topic is a story you've written about which is how the affordable care act is impacting hospitals that sees medicare patients and the headline we have for everybody is medicare defined hospitals, 227 million, under

the medicare readmissions program. what is it? >> the program is one of the lesser known things that was included in the law back in when it was passed that has to do with quality and costs for hospitals. what it basically does is one of the big problems with hospitals and for medicare patients has been a 1/5 of patients tend to get readmitted in a month for a variety of reasons. the way medicare pays hospitals is basically a benefit to them financially. they don't -- there's no punishment for them if a patient ends up having to come back and in fact get a second stay so they get paid so it's like a two for one plan. this plan was a financial incentive, one of several different programs intended to encourage better quality and penalize hospitals who do poorly and about 2/3 of the hospitals, about 2,000 that were eligible for this penalty have had their amounts reduced now for the second of two years. host: this is the second round of fines that $227 million is the second round? guest: last year was $280

million and they're raising the maximum amount every year. this year it's 2% of your total medicare reimbursements. host: how will the fines work? how does the program work, how do the fines work? how do they decide how much? guest: they go back three years and look at your readmissions for three different very common conditions among medicare patients, heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia and look at how sick your patients were and how old they were and there are other factors and determine whether you had more than the national average would be expected or below. if you had more, they do a complicated calculation to recoup that money and punish you a little more and apply it going forward to all your payments for the next year. if you were fined 1%, for instance, every time a fashte goes into a hospital, the medicare patient, medicare is billed and normally pays $10,000 where they only paid 99% of that. host: the lead graph, medicare will levy fees in hospitals in

every state but one for the second round of the government's campaign to reduce the number of patients readmitted within a month. so in every state but one. guest: right. host: why? what's happening here? guest: the only state excluded is maryland because they're exempted from the whole program and have their own special way of paying out medicare. medicare set a tough rate of what they consider acceptable readmissions and in about every state, hospitals are -- in fact, the most major cities, a lot of hospitals aren't meeting that standard and being penalized. host: what's the average fine for each hospital? guest: it's small, about 1/3 of a percent of their reimbursement. it's not a humongous amount. hospitals aren't closing and being turned into iphone stores or malls or whatever. but it's enough to get the attention of the hospitals and also get attention of the financial people on that side that haven't paid as much attention as medicare would like to issues of quality. host: what's the goal for medicare? what are they hoping to do?

how does it impact medicare? guest: this is part of a broad change medicare is trying to implement on hospitals and since they're the biggest payer of all the different insurers they have a lot of leeway. they're trying to get hospitals and other health care providers not to work in their little sile as. one of the problems has been that -- silos. one of the problems is hospital takes care of you when you're in there but when you leave they give you instructions, call your doctor and that's it. a lot of patients can get lost in the shuffle and they may not afford their medications they take afterwards, they may not have a primary care doctor or may not go to the right type of venue if they should be in a nursing home or whatever. this is a way of telling hospitals, you're the biggest adult on this block so now we want you to follow your patients and make sure that they're landing in the right place and things are happening for them that's correct for them healthwise. host: we're talking about medicare and the impact of the affordable care act on patients

-- on hospitals that see medicare patients. that's our topic for all of you. this is part of the affordable care act in our effort on c-span's "washington journal" to update you on the affordable care act along with kaiser health news and jordan rau covers medicare for kaiser health news and we'll take your questions and comments. we divideded the phone lines. if you're a medicare beneficiary, we want to hear from you. hospital professional with, 02-385-5818 and all others 202-585-3882 during this, how are hospitals responding to this readmissions program? 's guest: they've gone through the five stages of dealing with grief. first they protested when it was coming about, that it wasn't fair and they weren't paid extra to take care of patients when they leave afterwards, and so it's unfair to put that burden on them. there have been complaints about the unfairness of the

penalties because hospitals that handle a lot of poor patients tend to be -- are more likely to be penalized. beyond that they accepted it. hospitals are trying different things and are sending nurses directly to patients' homes and will go through your medications to make sure you don't have duplicates because you might not realize what was given to you in a hospital might be the same thing taken here, just under a different name. they'll set up primary care doctors for you. for poor patients, some of them they'll actually pay for your medication so you don't have to orry about that. and pay for transportation in some poor urban areas, anything to get the patients not to fall through the traditional cracks. host: we talked about the fines. this recent round is $227 million on hospitals in every state but one. but how does that compare with profits at hospitals. guest: depends on the hospitals.

some hospitals are extremely profitable and isn't a big deal. other hospitals have negative margins and are struggling along and this is another hit for them if they get penalized. one of the things hospitals are unhappy about this is unlike most of these type of incentive programs, there's no upside. you keep every single readmitted person from being readmitted, you don't get any extra money it. it can be a drain on them but in itself the fines haven't for the most part worked out to the point where they're just knocking a hospital into the red. host: you said the state of maryland has opted how far this program. how are they able to do that and can other hospitals opt out? guest: no, no hospitals can opt out. maryland for a long time has had their own deal with medicare and they've said, you know, we have our own way of paying hospitals and so medicare just gives them a chunk of money basically, this is oversimplification and said go ahead, do your thing and why they were excluded but no other state has that arrangement. if you're a hospital and qualify for this program, you

have to have a certain number of patients in these conditions and there are certain hospitals exempted like the cancer hospital but if you're in the program, you're measured regardless. host: let's go back and remind the viewers it's part of afearedable health care contact. how did that get put in the bill? guest: it's been floating around hospital circles for a long time back to 2008 or so. there's a whole chunk of that bill, it's title 3 that deals with quality and this is one piece of it. there are programs on another incentive program relating to quality. there's one to hospital acquired infections and they're changing the delivery system and encouraging hospitals to ban together and all was worked out. it flew below the radar in the debate of washington. everyone is worked up about the total number. everyone was worked up about the insurance effects for people who didn't have insurance and everyone was worked up about the cuts to medicare so it didn't get as much attention. host: let's do to our first

phone call. tamara has been watching us from fargo, north dakota. go ahead. caller: i was worried what safeguards this would give patients so patients with chronic diseases that, what would stop a hospital from being afraid to see or help patients who need recurring medical care? i've seen this with the whole painkiller thing that's going on. doctors are afraid to see any patients with chronic pain conditions. so what is going to safeguard the patients from the hospitals' fears of being fined or getting in trouble. host: jordan? guest: the hospitals overall that have to take medicare patients they've agreed to are going to take you regardless. i'm not sure they're going to cut you off at the door because they're worried about this in particular. we haven't heard any anecdotal

or evidentiary stories of that. that said, i think if you have a chronic condition, there's a good chance there's an upside because a hospital is going to be more concerned with making sure not only you get the right care in the hospital but what happens afterwards. i know these are chronic conditions like heart failure which is a big dollar one that's a chronic condition and plays into diabetes and other things that all interrelate. hopefully it will be an upside. there's always been the concern with the payment system that there are adverse consequences and something people need to watch. host: american hero tweets in if you fine hospitals for seeing a patient for a second time if things go bad, how is that a good thing? guest: first of all, they still get paid for the second time they see the hospitals. they don't lose that money. it's just that the fine is for the original time. and again, the idea was to encourage hospitals to branch one nd to ensure this is

of the industry industries where there is no warranty. there's no 30-day guarantee. you go and your car breaks down, you can go back a lot of times and get a new car. there's nothing like that here. and so this is an attempt to tually make it so that hospitals bear responsibility in terms of what they deliver in terms of care follows through and works. host: there's a figure out that this effort could save medicare about a billion dollars, is that right? you reduce readmissions. guest: if you reduce readmissions over 10 years, the estimate is it could save about $1 billion. to put in perspective, it's about $550 billion medicare costs every year. this is not going to make or break medicare. this is one piece. here's about 1.2 million beneficiaries readmitted every year out of 48 million.

it's not a cure-all panacea. it's one piece they're trying to use to change the way hospitals work. and that's the goal. host: the $227 million fine for hospitals in every state but one is the second round. is it working to reduce readmissions, the program? guest: it's hard to say. we think it is in terms of the attention it's paid and hospitals who didn't pay attention to what happened afterwards is now putting in programs we talked about. the readmission rate nationally has dropped slightly. it was hovering about 19% for five or six years and at the end of last year dropped to 17.8% and don't know if it's directly related to the fines or directly related to other things but there is the presumption that hospitals are paying more attention to this. host: roger is the medicare beneficiary recipient in new hampshire. go ahead.

problems with my eyes and get help. if we didn't have medicare there was no way someone could afford to go to the hospital and get this done because we have an ophthalmologist in the area and actually, we're socialized wall mongers and again we have socialized medicine because the v.a.'s do a terrific job and we do have an ophthalmologist like i say but i used to have to pay for the drug and for you the food and drug administration approved it and not medicare pays for it. so it's kind of ridiculous, a country as rich as this among the wall mongers of the world and we can't take care of our own people. host: you have any thoughts in listening to what he had to say? guest: i think there is a concern medicare is a good

program and that people really like it but with the growth of folks that are older is going to increase, we need to find cuts somewhere so the idea behind these quality program is to make it more efficient without sacrificing benefits and things like that. host: and the specific quality program we're talking about today that was part of affordable care act is this medicare readmissions reduction 2,225 in year two hospitals will be penalized, 1,154 hospitals will not be fined. that's 1,371 will get lower penalties than they did in year one and 1,074 hospitals will get a higher penalty. .38% is the average penalty in 2014 .42% according to the kaiser health news and what you put together over there. i'm curious about the hospitals

that won't be fined. what are they doing differently? >> that's a good question. guest: they're doing different things. the ones most successful have been ones that target their high risk patients, those with chronic conditions or have other indications they might be readmitted and just throw resources at them and will go and follow them home, set up things for them. foes are the ones most successful. the others are the hospital with the most affluent people tend to have the lowest amount of fines, only 1/3 of them were fined in the latest round so they don't have to do as much because those people have the support at home that are going to watch over and see if you gain weight. there are interesting things hospitals have been experimenting like giving a heart failure patient a scale to weigh themselves and check to see if they go up a couple pounds can be an indication of a serious problem and bringing them back that way. host: springfield, massachusetts, hospital professional.

go ahead. what do you do? caller: i'm an lpn. and this is just a comment for your guest. he can either agree or disagree. my thing is this medical system complex and hard to understand. one of the things that benjamin carson explained a few years ago at the white house that i was very impressed with is he said that to cut all the complex in the system, you know, it should be like, you know, when a human being becomes into this world, you know, when you issue them that social security and birth certificate, you should also issue them a separate health care fund or account. and i think that establishs people and forces people to actually want to be more involved in their health instead of, you know, when they get sick or break an arm or

something, instead of going to the emergency room and racking up a huge bill and leaving it on to the taxpayers, they will learn quick to go to a clinic to where they help you to prevent and aren't as quick to rush you out the door. host: jordan rau? guest: the move to consumer driven health accounts has been strong, particularly in the private insurance and now sometimes people have deductibles of $2,000 or $3,000. unfortunately the literature shows what it tends to do is people are discouraged from getting preventative care and they're more careful and the big ticket items they still get billed with anyway. nonetheless, the idea of financial incentives to get people to go to less costly sites is a major issue. host: angelic is next, an insurance broker in edge water, maryland. caller: good morning. i do deal with a lot of -- >> we leave this program and go live now.

congressman bobby scott of virginia is holding a town hall meeting to talk to constituents about the federal health care law. there's a movement among republicans to refuse to fund the law before it's fully in place. live in richmond here on c-span. captioning performed by national captioning institute] first force [captions copyright national cable satellite corp.2013] >> good to see you. thank you for coming. > how are you?

> we'll start right at 6:30.

>> this is a live mike. >> this is the house of delegates. >> thank you so much.

>> we're going to go ahead and get started. i with an to say good evening to everyone who has come out tonight. and we want to on behalf of our senior pastor and mayor, dwight c. jones, my name is pastor derek jones. i'm the pastor of first baptist church in south richmond. we want to welcome you all to the imani center at the first baptist church, the only conference and catering center here in the south richmond community. we certainly don't want this to be your last time if it's your first time. we want to welcome you here any time to any of our array of community activities, any of our menu of services on sunday. we're very active and socially conscious church so we want you to know you're welcome one and all. we're here tonight and we're glad to have c-span broadcasting live and because of that, we're going to be cognizant of time as this is a live feed so we're going to move into what we came to hear

tonight. we're here tonight to hear some good information about the affordable care act, when that legislation was passed, it was a great victory and it still is, but there are many questions still laying out there, many people want to hear how does it affect my family, how does it affect my future. how does it affect my community . we're here tonight to have questions answered not by a novice or not by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. we're glad to have one who has been through thick and thin with this community who over the years we've been able to count on him, not only to ask the right questions but also to bring us back the right answers. i'm pleased to bring you onight bobby scott, and he makes richmond and he brings the information to the people

and glad he's in south richmond tonight. i want you to help me receive our congressman, the third district's congressman,'s robert c. bobby scott. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. reverend jones introduced himself as the pastor here at first baptist but didn't introduce himself as a member of the school board. so thank you very much for your leadership there, state delegate betsy carr is also with us today. do i see any other elected officials? thank you. good evening. and i'd like to thank everyone for joining us this evening as we discuss the affordable care act, better known by most people as obamacare. and i'm pleased to be joined here by three great speakers. and i understand some actually had to rearrange their schedules to be with us tonight so we thank you for your

willingness to be with us. the first speaker, when i finish, will be joe ann grossee who was appointed by the obama administration who is the regional director for health and human services for region three including five states including virginia and the district of columbia. as regional director she works with federal, state, local and travel officials in a wide range of health and social service issues. prior to her appointment, she served for seven years with the administration of governor edward rendel in pennsylvania, first as deputy secretary of health and later as first ever director of the office of women services. she earned her master's degree at university at johns hopkins and completed additional work at johns hopkins university school of public health and hygiene. our next speaker after that will be dr. bill hazel who received a civil engineering degree from princeton and then attended the university of --

duke university school of medicine where he completed his orthopedic residencey at the mayo clinic. he is a founding member of the commonwealth orthopedics and rehabilitation and also is a former chair of the american medical association's council on legislation, speaker and president of the medical society of virginia, president of the fairfax county medical society and chairman of the inova health systems medical affairs council. among his accomplishments as secretary thus far include the virginia health care -- virginia health reform initiative and the creation of the virginia center for health innovation. gerald hanken is a staff attorney at the virginia poverty law center where he specializes in health issues and graduated from boston college law school and worked at legal services in charleston, south carolina, before coming to virginia and the virginia poverty loss center.

during her brief hiatus from the poverty law center she worked as an administrative law judge for the virginia department of medical assistant services but at the poverty law center she's been one of the key advocates for promoting the development and improvement of public health insurance programs for low-income virginians. first i want to give you a little background on where we are and how we got to where we are before getting to our speakers. nd let me just say briefly that we -- several years ago we recognized we needed to reform because employer based coverage was declining. thousands of americans are losing their coverage by 14,000 a day were losing their coverage. small businesses were struggling to provide insurance coverage but fewer and fewer small businesses were providing coverage from 57% of small sinesses in 2000 to 46% in

2009, about 1% a year declining coverage. the premiums are skyrocketing as a percentage of your income. in 1987, health care premiums were costing about 7% of the family's income. by now it's about 17% and if we don't do something it's going to be about 20% by 2020. and so we recognize if we're going to come up with any kind of plan that works, it has to be comprehensive. one of the groups we have to make sure we cover are groups with pre-existing conditions. we found out if you allow people to wait until they get sick before they buy insurance, people will wait until they get sick before they buy insurance and the only people with insurance would be sick and therefore the average cost of

each premium would be unaffordable. so we have to have a comprehensive approach, and just briefly what we did was proposal similar to other proposals with a guaranteed issue of insurance, responsibility of employers, individual mandate, subsidies to help people that can't afford to buy insurance, to help them buy insurance, and increase market regulations, the same element of the republican plan in 1993, and governor romney's plan in makes -- in massachusetts, along with similar proposals which have the common elements which is what we have in obama. some of the benefits, first of all, if you're a small business, people are talking about the effect of small business. if you've got less than 50 employees, you're exempt. but if you provide health insurance, we give tax credits to those small businesses that provide coverage. young adults can stay on their

parents' policies until they're 26. their caps on out-of-pocket expenditures so when you reach an affordable cap, there are no more co-pays and deductibles, it's all on the insurance company. there also is no lifetime limit. if you have a chronic disease, many times people are bumping up on the maximum the insurance policy would pay. after that, you have no coverage. you also have a pre-existing condition so you can't get any other coverage. now under obama, there are no lifetime limits and no annual limits. and no recision of benefits. a lot of companies figured once they -- you paid premiums all these years and finally get sick, the insurance companies figured they can cancel the policy right then, they can save some money. so we have prohibited canceling people's policies for any -- for any illegal reason. you just can't arbitrarily cancel somebody's policy. if they don't pay, it's one

thing. but if they've been paying their premiums all along, you can't cancel their policy. and that was a real problem. you can't fail to cover somebody because they have a pre-existing condition, whatever your health situation is, you can get coverage at the standard rate. cost sharing protections for families under $94,000. if we expect people to buy insurance, some people can't afford it. so from around $30,000 to $94,000, there will be tax credits to keep the cost of the insurance from zero up to about 10% of your family income. so that it will be affordable. we're closing the doughnut hole on the part d. if you're on part d, i think most of you know what that doughnut hole is after you've gone through a couple thousand worth of benefits, you end up with no benefits, still have to pay your premium and then after

a couple thousand dollars out of pocket it kicks back in but that doughnut hole is a real problem and we're closing the doughnut hole. security, you can get insurance regardless of their situation. a lot of people are in what's called job lock. they've got insurance on their job. they can't leave their job because they can't get insurance anywhere else, because of obamacare, you can switch jobs without worrying about health insurance. preventative care without co-pay or deductible, preventative, when you get cancer screenings or your annual checkup, no co-pay or deductible. people are finding that they have cancer but finding it out early when it is curable rather than late when it's generally fatal. and transparency, we can see what's going on and make sure that insurance companies are doing what they're supposed to be doing. now, for virginia specifically, one of the things that we require under transparency is

that insurance companies when they take your premium dollar, they spend at least 80% to 85% on health care, not corporate jets, c.e.o. salaries, commissions, advertising, and other overhead. 80% to 85% to health care. a lot of them, for virginians, $12 mill dwron was saved -- $12 million was saved thanks to policy rebates and when we caught them not spending that much they had to rebate to the policy holders and virginia got about $12 million. we have 66,000 young adults in virginia now on their parents' policies, over 400,000 virginia children already getting health care without being discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition. some are born with a congenital defect, can't get insurance. ow they can get insurance. two million virginians have already gotten their

preventative care without the co-pays and deductibles. medicare has saved about $157 million already on prescription drugs. medicare recipients. and there is more competition and better prices. right now it is expected when hose without insurance today get insurance, we expect them to be paying 25% less than they're paying now. in new york the bid are coming in at 50% of what they're paying, 50% to 60% of what people are paying now and other states, huge savings. so the fact you actually have to compete and everybody is insured so that when you go to the hospital with insurance and pay, you just pay for yourself, not a little extra because people showed up at the emergency room and couldn't pay. that little extra today is about $1,000 on every family

policy and we're not paying that so people with insurance that don't have to do anything will probably find some savings because they're only paying for themselves now, not for verybody else. the marketplace where those without insurance will go, i say those without insurance, because you already have churns, you'll get the benefits but don't have to do anything, you'll keep the insurance that you have. but those who are buying insurance in the marketplace, it will be run not by the state -- some states are running their own. virginia elected to let the federal government do all the work. and so it's being run at the federal level. medicaid expansion is uncertain. there are huge benefits for expanding medicare. excuse me, medicaid, but they would cover -- if we expand medicaid under obamacare, 400,000 virginians would get health care. virginia has some of the strictest eligibility standards now so a lot of people, working

poor, would be able to get medicaid coverage. we have found that because virginia cover as lot of things like if you go to m.c.v. hospital and can't pay, the state will pick it up. if you go to the health department and get services and can't pay, the state picks it up. the community services board provides mental health services and under the obamacare there is no health parity, you have insurance for mental health. virginia carries it now but if we expand all those people will be coming with medicaid, 90% or 100% paid by the federal government, so that things paid for today on the state dime will be paid for with a medicaid card if we expand. one calculation estimated that the general fund of virginia, if we expand and pay the state atch, the general fund will be

$555 million better off because a lot of things we're paying for with the state dime would be paid for with federal money would be actually better off than it would if we do not expand. billions of dollars, by 30,000 jobs and 400,000 virginians will get benefits. we've paid our taxes. so we are entitled to get those benefits. now, virginia hasn't decided yet, and dr. hazel, i served in the general assembly in the house and the senate and i know we like to do things carefully, so no one should be offended by the fact that virginia hasn't decided yet. they're going through a process to make sure whether it's the right thing or not. so let's not get mad at them because they've decided to do it slowly but surely but hopefully dr. hazel, they'll come up with the conclusion that it's a good thing to do. we'll now have presentations dr. hazel and

mrs. hanken. in that order. >> good evening, everyone. thanks for having me here this evening. i really want to thank the imani center for graciously hosting this event and more importantly to congressman scott who absolutely is a champion for the health and well-being of all the citizens here of the third district. i'm always so grateful to the congressman for inviting me to do events with him and it's a pleasure to be with you here in the city of richmond and the commonwealth of virginia. the congressman set it up perfectly for me by telling you a bit about the affordable care act and some of the provisions and now i'm going to tell you about the marketplace and how you're going to get insurance. again, you might have heard sometimes it's called exchanges but we at h.h.s. refer to it as the marketplace so that's how you'll hear me speak about it going forward. so again, come january 1 of 2014, all states in the country

are required to have a marketplace set up. and again, what's important to know, and the congressman mentioned this, but i want to reiterate it, this is for people who currently don't have health insurance or who buy their own health insurance. so if you were to get your insurance from your employer or from medicare or from medicaid or from chip or from tricare, this does not affect you. you will not be affected by the marketplace. this is for the 48 million uninsured americans and those who buy their own private insurance. so states had decisions to make. again, the congress mank entioned this but is worth repeating, the states had the decision to run it themselves, it would have been a state-based marketplace or partner with us to run it as a federal state partnership like they're doing it in your neighbor state of west virginia or did they decide they wanted the federal government to run it [it's call a federally stated marketplace. but as the congressman

mentioned we'll be running the marketplace for you, we at h.h.s. will run it for you here in the virginia because the governor and administration decided not to run it. it's important to know if states can change their minds even though virginia, for example, is going to be run by us at h.h.s., starting in 2014, states can change their mind down the line and decide they'd stale like to run it for themselves and in fact can apply for funding from us at h.h.s. to set up the marketplace through december of 2014. so now actually i want to give you some details on the marketplace. so the best way to think about this is kind of like expedia for health insurance. again, this is going to be private health insurance that you're going to be purchasing and you're going to be able to make real apples-to-apples comparisons. so again, you're going to look at what works for your life in terms of your health status and finances. again, one of the things i want to tell you about, you can see have ago chewaryal -- actuary values listed here.

there will be a bronze, a kill ver, a gold or platinum -- silver, a gold or platinum. you can pick from. to know the actualarial values, bronze is 60% and means the plan will cover 60% of the benefits you'll be responsible for the other 40. going up to platinum where it means the plan will cover 90% of the benefits, you'll be responsible for the other 10. just for example, medicare is an 80/20 plan, the equivalent of a gold plan. to give you an idea what medicare is, the plan pays 80% of the cost, you're responsible for the other 20%. i hope that gives you an idea what you'll be looking at. again, you'll be able to look in and make real decisions based on what medal level works for you and then within that -- what plan within that medal level works for you. and again, the other thing i wanted to tell you about is it you're a young person, for example, back to those medal

levels. you can imagine this, if you're a young person at 28 years old, you're healthy, might think a bronze plan will work for you because it will have a lower premium but higher co-pays and deductibles but in essence you're taking a risk you won't get sick. but if you're 55 and are a cancer survivor and have diabetes, you might think the platinum plan is better because it will cover a lot of the benefits but the premium will be higher and you'll have little co-pays and deductibles. i hope it gives you an idea how it's buying private health insurance and you're going to get to make a lot of different plans and decisions. but somebody is going to say to me well, what if i'm 55 and have diabetes but i can't afford the premium for a platinum plan because the truth is a platinum plan will have a higher premium. we've thought about that as well and the congressman alluded to it. if you make up the 400% of the federal poverty level which is about $94,000 a year for a family of four, about $46 for an individual, you're actually going to get financial assistance from the federal

government to pay for your premiums. and again, you're going to know this information right up front. we're creating a data hub between i.r.s., social security, department of justice and home planned security and you'll know up front when you're making a decision what premium you want to buy, what plan you want to i would and how many financial assistance you'll get from the federal government. you'll know that up front and that math will help you make the calculation on what plan is the best for you. again, i he hope that makes sense and i'll be happy to answer questions about that later. by the way, the other thing important to know about that, the money does not come to you. the money goes directly, automatically, monthly to the health insurance company to the health plan so that way again, a way to eliminate fraud and abuse but you'll know what financial assistance you're getting but the money doesn't come to you but will go automatically to the health insurance plan you've picked. in addition to this, if you make up to 250% of the federal poverty level which is about

$58,000 a year for the family of four, about $28,000 a year for a individual, you'll get financial financial assistance to pay for your co-pays and deductibles. and again, you'll know all this information up front about if you'll get any financial assistance for the co-pays, any financial assistance for the premiums and again, knowing that math and knowing that data will actually help you make the decision about what plan you want and what medal level and what plan within that medal level you want to buy. and here's a list of the essential health benefits. what does that mean? it means under the affordable re act, my boss, secretary sebelius decided what were the benefits that must be covered in every plan. no matter if you bought a bronze up to platinum, no matter what medal level or the premium, these categories of services must be covered so you can see the categories up there. so again, just so you know, no matter what plan you buy, all these services you see, all these benefits you see listed

up there will be in the plan. so that's why we call them the essential health benefits. that's important for you to know. next you're going to ask how am i going to enroll for this. and it's going to be four different ways you can enroll. you'll be able to enroll online, by a computer, by phone, by regular mail or in person. and i'll get into all those in a minute but again, one of the things that's important to know is once again you'll actually be able to know what qualified health plan, what plan you want and what financial assistance you get before you make the decision and what's important to know especially if you do it online. you'll actually be able to buy your insurance right in real time. that's why i say it's kind of like expedia. you'll be able to look at all the plans, know what financial assistance you get, make that decision, pick the plan you want and you buy your health plan. so really is real time purchasing of health insurance. it's an important thing to know. so help is available for you. we actually already set up a 24-hour a day, seven-day a week

call center and started june 24. you see the number listed up there. that number actually if you call, someone can speak to you in english or spanish but we also have another 150 additional language lines available. so again, you can get help up to 150 languages. you can see that we also have a 24 hour a day, seven day a week web chat available for you. again, live chatting. these are people who can help you as you're trying to fill out the application and make have decisions. but again, we know some people really will need help in person, that somebody will be able to sit down with you at a computer and help you. we know that some people it will be the if first time they're buying insurance or some people might have literacy issues or some people might have language issues. we know that so we've set that up as well and we've created two programs, one called a navigator program and one called an in person assistance program. as the name suggests, i hope navigators will sit with you and help you navigate the system as you try to make have

decisions, same thing with in-person assistance. they'll literally sit with you at a computer and help you negotiate the system and make some choices. what's important to know, navigators or in-person assistants must be neutral and will be illegal for them to direct to you one health plan or another so we thought of that as well but we have assistance for you. navigator grants are actually again, since virginia is a federally facilitated marketplace, we'll be announcing within the week the grants that will be given out to virginia. we're giving out $1.5 million to virginia for navigators and we've already given out $2.4 million to community health centers for in-person assistance, so once again, federal funding coming to you to help you sit down and get the assistance you need. by the way, some people always ask me but there's still a big role for agents and brokers, in fact we started training last week. so we do see there's an important role for them going forward, too.

finally, i know jill and secretary hazel will talk to you as well. i can't sit down without talking to you about medicaid expansion. as you know, there's probably over 900,000 uninsured virginians. in the marketplace we expect 520,000 virginians will get their health insurance now through the marketplace but as the congressman mentioned the other 400,000 would get health insurance if you did medicaid expansion here. that's an important issue and is two parts of the puzzle and was envisioned under the affordable care act we'd do medicaid expansion and the marketplace. if you did medicaid expansion, that's for the people who really are low income, working poor. these are working people making up to 133% of the federal poverty level which is about $30,000 a year for a family of four, $14,000 a year for an individual. again, we're really trying to expand the safety net for the most vulnerable citizens. the administration is considering it and we hope they

will. the congressman mentioned this and is worth repeating, the first three years, it's 100% funded by asking the federal government. 2014-2016 we pick up the cost 100% and ticks down to 2020 where we pay 90% and the state pays the other 10% and remains that going forward. we really are going to pay for the vast majority of the funding for medicaid expansion. you can see in the first six years we estimate virginia would get over $9 billion. you heard the congressman say creating over 30,000 jobs. but jill and the secretary are going to talk more about it so i'll leave it there. a couple of resources for you, i really hope we have handouts for you in the back so you don't have to memorize this but go to health caredot gov and set up something called my account right now so you can put in information about yourself and start getting ready for when the switch starts october 1. that's the other thing i should mention. open rolement is october 1, 49 days away so we're working

fast. it goes through march 21, 2014 but if you enroll october 1 through december 15, your coverage starts january 1, 2014. again, you'll have 10 weeks to make your open a romance starts on october 1 area you can get ready now. -- open enrollment starts on october 1 area you can get ready now. that is for anybody whose primary language is spanish. i hope you will go to that. that is my personal e-mail. oryou have any questions anything i can help you with, i hope you will contact me. to my very much. -- thank you very much. [applause] hazel? >> thank you.

let me recap a little bit. just so we are all clear. if you have insurance today through your employer and it is a large employer greater than 50, they will likely continue to cover you and that is where you will get your insurance. if you are ex military and you have served in the military, you will be eligible for bettering benefits. that does not change. if you are over 65 or disabled and on medicare, that does not change. a lot of people get confused about medicare and medicaid area in virginia, if you are on medicaid currently, that does areahange area -- change -- change. % ofou make more than 138

underverty level, and $94,000, you will be eligible for the tax benefits described in the marketplace. in october,e you go the benefit does not kick in until january the i want to be sure i am clear. they taught me to say it again and again, that is what happens. the typical problem you will have in virginia is a you you are under wondered 30% of the poverty level and are not covered by medicaid those roles have not change. they have not changed. the general assembly set up a commission called the medicaid innovation reform commission and there are five delegates and five senators and they are meeting again for the second meeting. what they basically said in the budget to us is we need some

reforms of medicaid before will expand medicaid. they basically said secretary hazel go perform medicaid. i will tell you about that. we performed medicaid back in 1997. --are one of the few states and through private companies managed care plans. we have already done that. that is not something will bathe to do again because we have done it. there are a lot of people who are not in the managed care fors the we call that fee service. what we are trying to do is bring people into the managed care plan as some said that is a hassle. world, know in today's when you go in for treatment i can tell you about my mom a few years ago. she had pain right here.

can anybody tell me what my mom had? what was her problem? her gallbladder? yes. she had an orthopedic surgeon. mom did not like they either. now that momnow was having pain right here. go toow she does, shasta primary care doctor and the hospital in the cardiologist and finally the general surgeon. and two weeks later, she is on the floor in pain and my dad calls. that is what we have been doing and health care to people. we send them here and there. what we are working with the plans is trying to be better about ensuring everybody has a medical home, a place where a doctor and his team knows you. they are paid to take care of you and keep you well be at 90% of health has nothing to do with health care today. the other 10%

of health is what we are spending most of our money on an healthcare. we think there needs to be some change toward keeping people healthy and that involves a lot of things. genetics, porch was a parents, we cannot do anything about. what we can't talk about is how we eat and exercise and whether you can walk in your community. -- poor choice of parents, we cannot do anything about that. how we put this into the package. do isid this is going to they have asked us to do several things. move more people into managed care and another is to look into changing some of the rules. we find it makes a difference whether people are spending their own money or somebody else's money. choose tor people to have a primary care doctor instead of going to the

emergency room where they do not know you and will not see you again. is the most existence -- expensive place. high commissioner people have the right incentives? we have reached an agreement with ms. grossi's agency to work with people who are dual eligibles. currently, you can't defend for yourself. what we are trying to do is to create better coordinated care so maybe they stay home instead of going to nursing homes in many cases areas try to keep folks in the communities. we are doing behavioral health. with a lot of increase in behavioral health services that are offered and maybe no change in the number of pope -- folks with diagnoses rear we are seeing a lot of changes and whether that is adding any value. organization to

manage the care for those people. we have a number of things that are in the works we are working with cms and will present this to the merck. it and we worried about why would somebody listen to all of this and say we are not ready to expand medicaid? i will give you a couple of points. the united states of america spends 18% of gdp on healthcare. does anybody know what the second-most expensive entry is? -- country is? switzerland and covers everybody. difference, do you know how big that is? the holy u.s. defense budget is only replay five percent of gross domestic product -- the

whole u.s. defense budget is only 3.5% of gross domestic product. switzerland covers everybody. the employers as they are paying their share, if they are pains that much more, what happens to our jobs? we are trying to find the balance here. to ensure what we are getting an healthcare actually works and how can we help people to stay healthy or so they do not consume as much healthcare. it is kind of like the body shop after the accident. what we want to do is prevent the accident. these are real concerns. the folks in virginia are saying we already spend one in five dollars on the medicaid program. 985,000dy cover about virginians through medicaid. the reason we had the transportation package is spending it on

healthcare. there's not a money for education. there's not much for homelessness. there is not money for substance abuse. we are trying to work out the package that will ensure we are getting the good quality in healthcare as we go forward areas -- four. i could go on. the piece is on october 1, if you fall into that category of where you are uninsured are working for a small business, you go to the federal exchange. if you're medicaid patient thomas wanting to come to common portal so we our can get you signed up properly. with that, i will turn it back over to you congressman. [applause] inken?l he >> good evening. it is great to be here. i do have a few slides. toore i get there, i want

say a few words about how hard everybody is working right now to be ready to launch the biggest part of the orderable care act starting october 1. i know that people at the federal level are working night and day to make sure everything is in place so we can flip a switch on october 1 and be ready to accept applications and people were applying for new affordable healthcare options. at the state level, starting with secretary hazel, the agencies are working really hard to make sure this is going to huge newone expects a program like this to be trouble- free. iere are always glitches. think you can understand from what we have been discussing, this a huge undertaking. the idea of finding ways for 50 million uninsured americans

finally to have access to affordable healthcare. it is used. there will be glitches. there will be issues. so the rules are complex. i encourage all of you to spend ,he time looking at information calling and asking for help that you need so you can access the beth -- and the best healthcare possible for your family. i want to talk more about the medicaid expansion. this is going to be somewhat repetitive. that is the way we learn. of the biggest questions is whether or not there is going to be coverage for the lowest income virginians ? the affordable health care act was pieced together very carefully and congress so that everyone would have options. as a result of the supreme court decision last year, the medicaid expansion which is in my mind

one of the essential pieces of the entire affordable care act was made an option by the u.s. supreme court. that is why states all across the country are making decisions about whether or not to expand medicaid. in virginia, we do not have a positive answer yet. said, wessman scott have won of the most restrictive medicaid programs -- which way should i stand? one of the most restrictive in the united states. we are ranked 48th. we do not do anything in virginia for childless adults even if they have zero income. people that poor cannot get medicaid in virginia. what the affordable care act would do as set a new income eligibility % of the poverty

level. for an individual around $15,000 a year. and we believe that up to 400,000 virginians could qualify if virginia adopted the medicaid expansion. who are these people? you know who they are. what about children on medicaid? they turned 19 and they are not eligible. they still have allergies and diabetes and medical issues that they need taken care of. just because they are 19 does not mean that needs stop. lots of low income working families, the parents, adults without children do not get health care through their jobs. they are uninsured. level, of our low income they cannot get medicaid. under the affordable care act,

they could. a lot of people receive state- funded health services react -- services. indigent care in our hospitals. couldare folks who probably qualify for the medicaid expansion. older adults who are waiting for medicare, we are getting older and lots of problems start happening to us as we get older. medicare until you are 65. if they are low income, they could get medicaid expansion if virginia adopted. people who are declared disabled also have to wait for medicare. they have to wait 24 months after being declared disabled by social security administration before they can get medicare. these are the kind of people we believe what qualify -- would qualify. the government pays 100% for the first three years and dr. hazel

and his folks -- one of the things they did was to crunch numbers and try to figure out what is the cost to the state to adopt the medicaid expansion. the numbers appear say it all. we would be bringing in over a d billions of dollars. no less a 90% -- after the first three years. because of the offsets and the folks we pay for right now for state-funded healthcare services , that could be enrolled in the medicaid program, the cost of virginia over the same 10 years is $137 million. billion. it's 20 a big deal to move forward. does not evaporate

into space, it is money that goes into our economy and health services. the experts say about 30,000 jobs would be created. the kind of economics benefits that would occur in virginia if we expanded medicaid. without it, this picture, and i have handouts in the back. without it am we end up with a terrible gap which is not the intent of the affordable care act. actave current medicaid this left-hand side which is about 30% of the poverty line for low income parents. it is really zero percent for other childless adults. the marketplace is only of gullible with the text -- is only of gullible with tax ble with taxvaila credits.

up.000 uninsured people end it is a real problem. about thehazel talked medicaid innovation and reform commission. these are some the reformed they are looking at. 10 legislators on this commission that meet again in a week, here are the legislators who are on them medicaid commission. we are fortunate there are four legislators from this areas, greater richmond area. as secretaryey hazel are on the commission. vote. not thank you for your service there. up, five reasons to adopt the medicaid expansion.

number one the federal of funding available to us. dollars whichx support the medicaid expansion should come back to virginia and help people in virginia as that of helping people in other states. health insurance improves health obviously thomas it also provides security and peace of mind for families so they do not have to worry if they need healthcare and it will get huge bills they cannot afford to be a they do not have to worry about bankruptcy. afford.cannot they do not have to worry about bankruptcy. should -- ans healthcare gap. argumentthat economic should speak to everyone. , $20 billion, it is

great for the virginia economy. with that, i will stop and will have a chance to answer questions. [applause] >> thank you. we were joined briefly by mayor jones who was here but had to leave. i believe members of city council is here. and michelle, a member of city council. [applause] there's a microphone up here for questions if anybody has any questions. , yesere are no questions ma'am? if you come to the microphone, we would appreciate it.

if others have questions, please line up at the microphone and that will be helpful in the -- helpful. >> i am proud of what you are doing. i do work and i do have insurance through my company. but i am wondering how can i get on this? but if i cannot pay a $50 co-pay, there is no way i could pay a $1500 for me and my boys. how long would it be for somebody like me to wait before i can try and get on to this plan? >> when it said employer is providing healthcare, they have to provide a certain amount of coverage. >> if you get health insurance

through your employer and he provides minimal coverage, 60% plan, the brothers plan. -- the bronze plan. to havee, you consider coverage a you cannot go into the marketplace it is your employer has given you credible coverage. >> if you are a small employer, they may opt not to cover and let you go into the exchange and there is no penalty. in his small company under 50, you may still end up with this change being your better option. there is not an affordability option for your employer. made in the law to make it roughly equal if you are covered through your employer or not. >> i should've mentioned that. insurance would cost you more than 9.5% of your income, the employer is offering you a

unaffordable health care and you can go to the marketplace. >> thank you. >> dr. green? >> good evening. i would like to thank you for being here. i am harold greene, a practicing physician for 33 years in the richmond community. i have just a few questions. most of them come from the medical and. you stated that 80% of the cost of the businesses would have to go to medical related costs areas have been defined those medical related costs and will we know what they are? that is one question. the other question is on prescription drugs. is there going to be through the hmos? are they going to cover generics? how are they going to do it?

or like a tier system? i have a lot of patience being hit hard because they have insulin.ut of covered but the pens are not being covered. are they going to cover that? are they going to have anything for the doctors? 70% since a nightmare to my office. i do not know how we would do it. is there going to be on the card as a co-pay? i do not know. how long would they sign up if it going to take and will they have the stem the phone forever like we do to get through to the plan?

>> i have been there not too long ago. [applause] thingis just -- the other -- this state as far as medicaid , we have a gap as you said, through this program called vcc, we do cover this gap. richmond. -- in really in the state of virginia. we do cover that gap. i want to defend medicaid for that. . see a lot of people on vcc that is all of my questions. >> and that's a lot of them. [laughter] >> i will start the -- i will start. thatasking about the rule insurance companies must spend

at least 80% of your premium dollars or your medical services. that is what you are asking. that is the definition. of your premium dollars on your medical services. they cannot be for bonuses for ceos or trips. it has been defined. insurance companies have to start reporting starting this areer of 2012 if they adhering to that formula. or they had to give you a rebate. 12.8 million americans got a rebate totaling over $2.1 billion. that is working. that has been defined. that reporting to us and have been since last summer. , i your call center question heard the data. the average wait time is three seconds to get an answer. working exactly we are hoping it would. we hope you will call that call

center. call the call center number and see.he -- and your beginning an answer and three seconds. on your drug questions, and his private insurance. it is just my private insurance. it is private so people are going to get to make decisions about what plan they want and while pharmaceutical co-pays there are. you will know it just like you know can anybody private insurance. it is private insurance. >> one more. will it include balance and everyone?- felons and >> there are nine exemptions. one of those is incarcerated individuals are not covered. they are not allowed to buy in the marketplace every -- workplace.

>> if they are out of jail? that does not covered of people who are not here, probably dim ago -- properly document immigrants. >> if they leave the premises for the nice -- for the night, they are eligible for medicaid. marketplace. they will be eligible. virginia look like it would get over a 10 year, they would save $90 million. instead of paying for them in jail, medicaid fix that up when they are getting service outside of the facility. that is one. mecannot speak to your d question. i do not know the answer. the drugs would be what a private pharmacy would make.

when we went to the benefit package, it matches up pretty well with what a medicaid packages. 70%,asic package. the 60%, as something that is worked up to the exchange or marketplace with the individual. you would not be involved with that as a physician. it will come with an insurance card. it will their co-pay and deductible. that is always a problem because we have it, too. getsy of admission, vcu credit more. i will tell you that one of the things we are asking for in a medicaid reform is we want a pre-negotiated set up parameters in which we can innovate in the prototype. we'll haveexpected, a lot of adults that will come in who have been princely uninsured and we expect many of them to be high needs.

want to be up to sit down vcc program and say we would like to use use. the current medicaid rolls do not allow restrictions. would have to get to that. the way it works today, would have to take a program to cms and asked for permission. by the time that will be over, we would all be gone. what we are asking is to do innovative programs like that across the state. that is one of our requirements. >> doctors will not -- this was not directly affected doctors. you will be taken insurance. you will be asked a lot of questions. we need to have a session. work with you. the navigator.se most the time, we are the navigator. [laughter] >> yes ma'am?

use the microphone. was i am sorry. my name is marilyn shriver. -- >> i am sorry. my husband retired four years ago and he is on medicare now. i thank the lord about his insurance policy. i carry the cause along which cost me $800 a month. i was hoping i would be able to take advantage of one of these plans. i get the feeling i will not be able to prove what you said because i am already -- even though i am not an employee, i am offered private insurance. is that correct? >> no. based based employer- on your husband's situation and -- you are aployer

dependent. i do not think for you it will be considered affordable employer-based insurance since you are the dependent. you are not the employee. are not all positive about this answer. i think this may be an option for you to go into the exchange. and find something that might be more affordable for you. income as aof qualifier plus his income, not to my income or is it a joint income? >> that income they look at is and, -- and, using the tax code rules about who your family is. >> i would have to going to the exchange? ,> with a question like that you want to go to the marketplace when it opens. we call it the exchange as we

been living this for three years . we have not gotten to the new lingo yet. yours, thenon like i would go to to the marketplace and ask. >> is it better to deal with a broker? >> not necessarily. you probably could get your question answered at the marketplace. that is what it is assigned to do. >> again, that call center is set up for missions like this. -- for questions like this. as a perfect example of what you will be caught link -- calling the call center for. it will depend. i would encourage you to call the call center. >> thank you. >> is the number of material in

the back? >> yes. >> business owner. i want more clarity on the pre- existing conditions. i notice you have example about asthma versus diabetes, etc.. >> to answer that, and does not matter what your condition is, you can get insurance at the standard rate. for answers, not if you have asthma versus diabetes, not another rates? >> the congressman said it. that's one the great things about the affordable care act. if you have a pre-existing condition, you cannot only be chargedyou cannot be more. that becomes true for everybody generally 2014. -- january 2014. you cannot get charge more and

you cannot be denied insurance anymore if you have a pre- existing condition. donerginia has not community rating before. we started this. from the mosttio expensive to lease expensive will be three-one. what will happen is folks who are otherwise healthy may of had a lower premium will probably end up paying a little more. wille who had illnesses get the advantage of a little less hairy it is how insurance works. -- a little less. >> and they cannot charge you an arm and a leg? you know what i mean? >> they cannot charge you more. they can charge people more if they smoke. -- there will be an allowable distinction between

different ages and geographic locations in the state. the existing conditions and do not matter at all for me it -- at all. sex does not matter. that is gone. really, there's a lot less discrimination going on with the new plants. -- plans. year 625 thousand americans were denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions areas a great day when no longer anybody can be denied health insurance because they have a pre-existing condition. >> thank you. >> yes ma'am? >> and i say one thing? this really works if people sign up. because you cannot be denied for pre-existing conditions, you should not wait until you

direct. you should sign up before. -- you should not wait until you wreck. those who do the right thing will have to pay more. that is how it works. you have to sign up. >> hello. marcia. vcc and mytly on question is, will i have the wille if i stay on vcc or i need to actually go out and buy health insurance? >> it is hard to know just on that. my guess is because you are on vcc, you do not qualify for medicaid. you will stay on vcc until virginia the size until they

will handle the medicaid. decides howginia they will handle the medicaid. we will have to see. , iif i want to get off vcc can go out and buy insurance if i want to be in short -- in short -- insured? i do not have to, right? >> it will depend on a lot of things like if you are married and if you have children. a lot of things going to those decisions that we would know. if you think you would be eligible for medicaid, you would theoretically have it if it is expanded. you can also check the change and see if you qualify for that. that means if you are a family of four with an income under 20,000. >> if we do not expand, people who would've gotten the medicaid

card are in a situation where we have not anticipated. expected that everybody would get a medicaid card for a family. medicaid, youget cannot afford the cost of insurance in the exchange. you have to make a certain income to get into the marketplace. under that, you are supposedly a medicaid card. there's an awkwardness if we do not expand. medicaid will probably would get covered if we accept the expansion. expand, we do not really know what is going to happen. that is one of the reasons why we are asking dr. hazel to do the right thing. like i said, virginia --

>> and you are going to get me fired, congressman. thoughtfulrough a process before they sign up. int is why virginia is better financial shape than the national government. when they get to the end of the process, they would notice that many of the problems of not expanding. let's go through the process. >> can i add one thing we have not mentioned? there is another option. for those who fall in the gap right now, we have federal qualified health centers. they welcome folks who fall in the cracks to be there medical home. they will like for those folks to come in to this community health centers. it is not a substitute for an insurance package thomas but it

is a place to go and get care and bh watch to other services -- be a triage to other services. >> they cannot meet the demand. that is our problem. >> it is not a perfect option. it is something in the interim. >> thank you. >> good evening. i am chris. frustrated insurance agent. this a great outreach program. glad to be here. you mentioned earlier about the tax credits for small business owners. is there a limit on the number of years of that tax credit that is allowed for the business owner to take? >> three years. is --ond question i have i am sorry, can you hear me now?

billo you fill about the on august 2 up in washington? of $2000ng the limit deductible for a small employer plan. i have many clients here and have a $3000 deductible and the employer plays -- pay celeste 1000 of the deductible. i am being told that cannot be offered. agoas dropped two fridays to eliminate that caveat. how do you stand on that? >> i am not sure exactly. -- >> inow the problem know the problem but not this particular bill. do you know the sponsors? >> mr. thompson introduced the following bill. to illuminate the limitation of the deductibles from employer

sponsored health plans. they are not required to offer every they are good people. they want to do something. >> if a small employer is not required to do anything, what ever they do, i do not see where the limitation would be. they do not have to do anything. for a large employer, it would be different. the minimum coverage. i do notsue is he believe the higher deductible that have the minimum been put into place. >> if you are a small employer, you are not obligated to do anything to me at >> -- to do anything. not meet the qualifications, the individual goes to the exchange. it is too much out-of-pocket. that is the requirement. >> they lose a contribution and

pay with post-tax dollars. >> and get the tax credit dollars? >> possibly. >> correct. >> i will look at that. that has not been debated at all. thank you. >> you asked about the tax credit. it is up to 50%. the only way you get it is by purchasing the health insurance through the shop. as a market change -- that is the market place. i just want to make sure you know that. if you have anymore questions about the marketplace for small business owners, please contact me at the e-mail. i would be happy to help you out. >> thank you.

informing us of new things coming down the pipeline. .y name is henry i am a combat veteran, retired navy. my group is better at helping veterans -- veterans helping veterans. and womenth veterans within abuse. somewhat on the incarceration. we are going to have a lot of combatants coming back. it'll be high rates of ptsd which will take a lot of dollars to take care of and treat. as you know, we have both male and females in the war.

back in vietnam, it was primarily males. care when we look at tri- and plus, it is going up. how will this new program of veterans and be able to participate in that if they cannot meet all of their requirements through tri-care? >> go ahead. were not mean if they able to qualify for tri-care, what happens to them? they can get their health insurance in the marketplace. to get tax able credits, the financial assistance for the premiums if they meet that federal poverty line. and biden who does not qualify for tri-care can go into

the market ways. -- anybody who does not qualify for tri-care can go into the market place. >> will you be doing a training orientation for our veterans? a lot of them are homeless and incarcerated and dealing with ptsd. and we have a high unemployment rate we must address. what is goodd, about the policy is it will be where it on january 1 will contain significant mental- health coverage. that will be extremely helpful from that perspective. if they are unemployed, depending on if we expandnsion, medicaid, they will be eligible for a medicaid card. file complaints for pension, but if they have a

battery discharge, they cannot -- a bad discharge, they cannot unless itr healthcare is military or combat related. >> they will be eligible -- if they are under $30,000, they would get a medicaid card. fee, up to a sliding $94,000. they will be able to buy insurance at an affordable rate. andart of the outreach enrollment that needs to be done is to reach out to uninsured veterans and there are tens of thousands in virginia. we know that. groups like yours that work directly with veterans have some options. you can become a certified application counselor and get training from the federal government so you can help

provide information and give advice to the people you are working with. also, application a sisters can help people with this process. a lot of different groups are stepping up to the plate to do that kind of outreach. representat veterans a very important group of when needed good counseling and advice as we move into this new world. >> absolutely. i can be reached at -- [laughter] by the way, i was the scott, -- congressman scott -- >> you worked with my brother? >> she is not finished with you,

sir. [laughter] >> i am sorry. to reiterate. if they get health insurance in the marketplace, these remember mental-health services as part of the benefits. every plan must offer mental health services. .e are doing webinars website, to the va their whole documents of pages on the affordable care act and how they can get into the marketplace. i encourage you to go to veterans administration website. >> i encourage you to do the orientation. most of us come back and to take a lot of patient and training -- patience and training to get a proper diagnosis. some are not friendly nor do

they have the patient's -- patience. that is why a lot of veterans and do not seek the opportunities. >> i wanted to add a couple of things. it is good to have the coverage. what we are concerned about is the lack of folks to do the work and take care of people. we do not have the army of military health professionals to handle the volume. that's what we are working on. we'll be asking for grant money. what we have talked about in the affordable care act is the innovation fund. we are looking at trying to do a better job of incorporating mental health into the physical health practice as a way of expanding capacity. it is a couple of things. have you hooked up with the wounded warrior program? kathy wilson?

>> i am familiar with kathy wilson. >> there are a couple of things there. we have a homeless initiative with the working. the good news is we have change policy. we have reduced it by 18%. we are pleased with that. it's proportionate number of veterans are in that group. a disproportionate number of veterans are in that group. if you ask folks if they are respond. they do not if you ask if they have served, they will say yes. then we can identify because they were not answering the s andions. they need peer we are trying to bring more. you do not know unless you have been there. >> one last thing. i am a peer counselor.

ith the incarcerated group, am working with another gentleman. we are going to try to train the incarcerated people and get them certified and hopefully, we can take advantage of some the abandoned houses that we can put veterans and. thank you for the opportunity. >> thank you for your service and helping. question, are a there other questions after these two? ok. other questions? these seem to be the last 4. >> my name is gloria gray. i am a schoolteacher. year, and the city of richmond and i was a across virginia, we went through unique changes as far as our contributions to social security

and our health insurance policy changed. the company we were dealing with -- the cost of insurance went up. a lot of us found that we had to do some very unique things in order to cover our health insurance. myself, rather than carry my son and i, when my insurance policy on it was cheaper for me to stay under my insurance with my job. but to pick up an insurance policy for him, because it was cheaper for me. i found that a lot of us had to do it. some of my colleagues or other people who did work for the city actually -- and they were unable. when you think about social , youity, furlough days have to become very creative and

what you do so you can get to the coverage. my son got aely, full-time job -- a part-time job . what i think is unique is the company he works for did offer him an insurance policy which i was payinghan for him. what i and concerned about is the uninsured, that gap, he may be, one of those areas part-time jobs are even less secure than a full-time job. i am wondering what his options would be if that happened? would i be required to cover him under my insurance because i do not write them -- right now? >> you are not required but you are welcomed to. >> he is 21. a college student. i can cover him to 26.

when all of the changes -- my take-home pay, i had to come up with anything that was more feasible. a lot of us have found ourselves in the situation. >> i understand. you are not required. what is available, anybody under 30 can get a catastrophic plan. there will be a catastrophic plan in the marketplace specifically for young adults. this is very low premium. it's the cover catastrophic circumstances of hospitalizations. they are going to be available. it is something he could look into. >> even if he lives with me? -- yes.rday employed, he can get the financial assistance from

the federal government to help pay for his premiums. he would want to look into the marketplace. for him to get insurance through the marketplace and he could get the subsidies to pay for the premium and co-pay. >> i would like to confirm affordability. i work for a company that has about 4000 employees nationwide. our insurer said this past year doubled on premiums. offer isum plan they 35% of our income. does that qualify me or my wife for affordable care, the marketplace plan? that is minimum. that is the small plan. insuranceployer-based income?u 35% of your

>> correct. plans it an employee only -- do you know what it would cost you? that is the way they will evaluate affordability. >> it just me, and trust to 26%. >> it will be deemed unaffordable. 9.5% areas if it is over of your family income, you could go to the exchange and probably find something that is cheaper that would bring the tax credit. >> what has gotten me confused is when this plan was brought out, it was brought up as a bill or care plan areas when they went before the supreme court, it was argued as a tax. since it was a tax by chief robertson, i will grant to this and i agree with it and it didn't pass -- did pass.

what gives president obama the right to exempt anybody from tax? >> you are talking about delaying the employer-based mandate? >> yes. he exempted that in the middle of the night. technically, the led it and notcal a tax before they called it a tax. they had to answer was is it a tax? is you cannotlaw sue to invalidate a tax until you have paid it. you do not pay it until 2014. ruled it a tax, they would have to throw it out.

later, they said you can do it under your tax authority. they called a tax after that. whether it is a tax or not is a lucid. on the question of if the president has the authority to delay the implementation of a people, the answer is they have been doing it all the time. startinga question of the regulations if you cannot get them done or for usability purposes, you need to delay it. it happens all the time. several times under the bush administration. they did under a number of taxes. you can delay it, but not forever. you can only do it while you are getting things under order. the courts have ruled. the time. all of nobody complains when president

bush and did it. becauseot as big a deal people were not watching. everybody is watching the affordable health care act. delaying the effective date of a tax happens all of the time. and the door the president to do that has only been questioned when president obama did what everybody else did. [applause] >> my question was not about the they. it was about exemption. he granted it to you at your entire staff very you are exempt from this program. and then to all of the union said that he did. 10 different unions. >> what happened in >> what happened in congress was in the bill. members of congress and the staff are the only employees in congress that lose their