[captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] we're just a couple of kids in a college dorm room. who are we to do this? this is purview to have microsoft and the googles. the story of facebook has really been about we started at one college and we spread and kept on growing to the next thing. i think the reason why we're here today is we cared more about this mission than anyone else has. that brings up an interesting point. for a while inside the company, getting to a billion people was this big rallying cry. when we actually started getting

closer to it, it became apparent, it is not like we wake up in the morning saying i want to get 1/7 of the people in the world to do something. a billion is not like magical number. now, as we kind of approached that and passed it, now the focus for us is retooling and you're going to see us retooling the company in a lot of ways to go take on a lot of harder problems that will fulfill this mission. connecting the next 5 billion people is going to be hard. lot of them don't have internet access. people share and put billions of connections into this graph every day. we don't just want to add incrementally to that. we want over the next five to 10 years take on a road map to understand everything in the world smantically and map everything out. we want to play a role in helping people build companies and build jobs.

those are the big themes for us and what we're going to try to do over the next five to 10 years. >> to sum that up, you want all the people? [laughter] i'm kidding. >> we want to help connect everyone. not everyone uses facebook, but most people i think at this point do use social tools for different things. i think a lot of the design patterns and the work that we do can help in that part of the industry and we're proud of the work that we do there. >> all right. you said a lot. i'm going to try to unpack some of what you said. your brain works a little faster than mine. i'm going to try and slow it down a little bit. if you expand to all the people from 1.3 billion today? >> no, we're at 1.15. >> how many a day? half a billion a day?

>> no, our last quarterly report was 690 million daily active users. >> that is pretty cool. >> not bad. >> so what do you -- what do you think about the yahoo logo? [laughter] >> of all the follow-up questions that you could have asked to that? i know marissa is backstage watching so you can look right into the camera and tell her what you think of that awful, awful thing. [laughter] you don't want to answer that question? >> seems fine to me. but you're talking to someone, we have had the same logo for almost 10 years. >> ok. [laughter] ok. how about this? twitter is going to go public. you have gone through the whole thing. you had some pretty rough times

but everything is great now. what is your advice to them as they consider this process? >> it is funny on the surface because i'm kind of like the least -- the person you would want to ask last how to make a smooth poy. - i.p.o. it is actually a valuable process. having gone through what i think most people would characterize as an extremely turbulent first year as a public company, i can tell you i actually don't think it is that bad. i was heartened by the fact that -- i was really worried that people would leave the exeand people would get demoralized when the stock went down, but people were really focused on the mission and believe in the products that they are working on. i believe it has made our company a lot stronger. the processes leading up to going public, you have to know

everything about your company and inside out, have everything strult. i always thought we were a data-driven company. the work they do to get us ready to be public took us to the next level. in retrospect, i think i was too afraid of going public and i think, you know, i've been very outspoken about staying private for as long as possible. i don't think it is necessary to do that. you just have to stay focused on doing right stuff and sometimes it might take the market a while to catch up and see the results of what you were doing. last year when i was here, i was talking about mobile and everyone thought mobile was a disastrous thing for facebook. last year, second quarter, we had basically no revenue on mobile. now it is -- in our last quarter, a year later more than 40% of our revenue is mobile. people think that, you know, there is more competition in mobile. there are more great app smp.

ople spend on desktop on facebook. on mobile there is more. the next biggest stuff instagram. so, you know, we focus on kind of doing what we think are the right things. and we're growing. we're connecting more folks. people are engaging more. sharing more content. all the stuff that we just come in and get excited about every day. this is where all of these private companies that are thinking about when they want to go private. as long as they are focused on what they are doing, i think it is wonderful. it is great. >> to be fair, your mobile products a year ago sucked. >> oh, they did? >> yeah. and then they got really, really good really, really fast. so i think you deserved to have no revenue for them from a year ago . whether you admit it or not or

agree or not, there has been a lot of work in that area. >> absolutely. what we also, we took a bad bet. you know, our legacy at the company was building this big weapon site and focusing on -- -- big website and focusing on building a system for across these different platforms and saw pretty quickly we were not going the get the quality level that we needed. -- because we didn't focus on mobile. i think we did it in the right order. >> well, it is better to go from awful to really good than really good to awful. >> you -- you started talking about platform there for a minute. i wanted to talk about that. you talk about the old facebook

platform. did it have any meaning for you at this point or are you so focused on mobile that the old facebook platform is just dead? >> so, for me, when i think about our mission, in connecting people, it is not, you know, you made this joke that we want to get everyone to use facebook. of course we do. that i don't think is realistic. what is more likely is that people are all going to be using tools that they can use to connect in different ways. when i was getting started with facebook, i felt this void in the way that we developed technology, which is that, you know, as people, our whole brains are wired towards communicating with other people. we have whole parts of our brains focused on seeing microexpressions. the way we built software as an industry didn't reflect that at

all. that seems wrong to me. there were all of these tools that you could use if you wanted to get access to different kind of information. the thing that we care most about, which is what is going on with the people we care about there is nothing. one of the things we realized is that no one company can do everything. instead, we should focus on doing a few of the core things and instead we should try to build a platform that would enable other companies to build a great social app. canvas, people building games and other things inside of facebook. that has evolved into almost a $1 billion business for us. the full vision over time was not that everyone would be building stuff inside of facebook but that we could help apps by enabling log ins and enabling distribution outs.

that's what we're focusing on now. we have three pillars of the platform strategy, which are build, grow and monetize. on the build size, we want to do stuff like log ins, you can make it easier to build an app. if you worry about building your clients, you don't have to worry about the servers. it just works. it is awesome. more han 100,000 apps. that is going really well. people think about facebook platforms as distribution. that is true. that has always been a big start of the story. one of the biggest new things that we're doing is mobile apps install. it is a part of our business growing quickly. a lot of developers are starting to rely on us. monetized as well.

payments for making money for their services. if we can help make it to that industry overall can build better social apps that are more human, then i feel really good. >> ok. i'm going to go with a personal question, if you don't mind. i don't know how many people realize that you have every year i think you a personal challenge where you challenge yourself to do something crazy, interesting, hard. in the past you have had -- you have learned chinese, which you did. >> tried to. >> tried to. one code every day? i made that up. you certainly have had the kill everything you eat year. you killed everything -- and there was the wear a tie every day. i don't know if i missed some. do you have one this year? i don't know what it is if you do have one. >> i do.

i do. the point of these is really, you know, i think you get perspective for buildings things by living in different worlds and going deep on things. something for a year, you have all of these interesting and unintended consequences of making some decision. the other thing for me is willpower. i think a lot of building something is just about seeing things through and i kind of pick things that are going to be hard for me to do. learning mandarin, for example, i was always terrible at lang waverages. i tried to learn french in high school and i just couldn't do it. people would say things to me and it was really hard for me to understand. i went to latin instead. you don't have to speak latin so that worked. hat was actually a lot of fun. it was interesting. one of the inintended sidefects

of it was learning they set up these sessions where mandarin-speaking facebook employees would come to me and talk about parts of the company they were working on. it was great. i learned mandarin and learned a bunch about our company. it was awesome. at the end, i kind of -- i was complaining to my wife one day that i was never that good at listening in mandarin and she goes, mark, you're not good at listening in english either. [laughter] so at that point, i realized the level it was going to take for me to get fluent mandarin was really hard so i tabled that for a while. this year it is meet a new person every day outside of facebook. >> in person? >> yeah. unique. rned out to be

it turned out on average that i actually meet more than one person already. i kind of underestimated that. when i was planning this out, i kind of set up things to get more involved in the community. i started teaching a class at local middle school. i got involved in an organization to meet people who do different things. it has been really interesting. >> the middle school class is dotus? d to forward >> yes. priss priscilla and i have done a lot of education work. her work is kids. when she graduated from harvard, she wanted to become a teacher. conversations are all facebook and kids. so she decide one day that, you know, if we were going to do a bunch of education prockets that i couldn't just be that guy that

gives money to education products. it is a pretty reasonable perspective. one day after class i asked the students how they were thinking about going to college. one of the top students in the class raised his han and said i don't know if i'm going to be able to go to college because i'm undo you meaned. my mind was blown. i hadn't really thought about that. this kid was so talented and i couldn't tell difference. i asked how many of you were born outside the u.s. and a bunch of them put their hands up. one of them said i really hope our government does something about this. and i kind of went home that night and i talked to priscilla and i talked to my friend, joe, who is one of the smartest people i know in both technology and politics and the intersection between them. i was like we have to do something. the great news is that we

decided that we were going to try to build an industry coalition. it was going to be something that a few people were going to take on. i called a boumple my friends who run companies. -- bunch of my friend who is run companies. the great thing is the tech community really cares about changing world. so a lot of people i would expect to have been -- i care about getting high-skilled folks for my company, but we made very clear upfront this is not just about the high skills. if we're going the push on this we're going to push for getting full comprehension imgrage great nation reform done. people in the tech industry really believe in getting that done. it wasn't really hard to get people onboard. i've mfer been prouder than of my peers in the community to come forward on that. >> do you think anything will happen with that this year or next year or forever? it is really tough to mess around with washington, d.c.

>> i'm an optimist. i think you to be to be an entrepreneur. right? these things are not without risk. but there are a lot of people who want to do the right thing. and you know, people talk a lot about how in washington it is polarized and no one can get along. the conversations that i've had a lot of people really want to do the right thing and agree with it and are kind of looking for a path forward. >> so zero chance of anything happening this year? >> i don't know. it is hard for me to say. it is not my job to get it done. it is my job to help provide support for the people who are going to do it. >> the culture of microsoft -- speaking of microsoft, who do you think should be the next c.e.o. of microsoft? thanks for bringing that up, by the way. >> there are probably a lot of people who can run microsoft and

do a reasonable job. when i was growing up, bill gates was my hero. >> oh, come on! >> yes! he is like darth vader. he is not luke skywalker. he is the bad guy. >> no, he is not. bill gates ran one of the most mission-driven companies that i can think of. right now their submission less focused than it used to be. -- mission is a lot less focused than it used to be. put a computer on every desktop and every office or maybe every home. and you know, there are companies that define themselves by a way of doing things. there are companies that define themselves by making a concrete change in the world. and microsoft did that. and i have a huge amount of respect for him doing that. he pushed them and it was an incredibly inspiring company

during the time that he was doing that. i think they still are doing a lot of things but they have lost some of the focus. i don't know. i think he is one of the greatest visionaries that our industry has ever had. >> do you think he will come back? >> i don't know. you would have to ask him. >> do you know? you don't have to answer. >> i don't know. i don't know. >> ok. i don't think you would lie to me. >> not a good liar. >> that's why i'm going to ask you a couple of other things later. the culture of moving fast at facebook, is this a good thing? or did it just get you in trouble? >> yeah. it gets us into tons of trouble. i'm of the belief that values are only useful when they are controversial. so there are companies that write out these value statements that i think are kind of meaningless because they are -- people are like be honest.

of course you're going to be honest. that is not a choice. that is not a value. you have to be honest. it is like go home if you're not honest. but if move fast is good, because it is something that people can disagree with. thr there are companies that don't move fast and have succeeded. in our -- what i really mean by move fast is that i want to empower people at the company to try things out. i don't demand that every it ration of what we release is perfect. what i would optimize for is learning the most and having the best product three, five, seven years from now which you can do by quickly getting feedback and learning and going from there. there are companies that have very different approaches than that. it served apple incredibly well. move fast is a very nice kind of -- you can meaningfully disagree

with it. in terms of what we're doing, i think it is incredibly powerful inside our company. we have this testing framework where, there are thousand s of different version of facebook running. they get this report of how it performs. sharing. time spent. engagement. amount of friends that people have. the amount of money that we make. even for every test that rerun, it will have a survey and ask how happy they are and how much they like that version of facebook. that is really embauer powering. -- empowering. you just try something and when it works, you go here, it works. turn on it for everyone. >> explain this sign at facebook. i don't know for sure it is, but i believe it is. if it is not, you'll tell me. his doesn't say move fast.

>> slow down and fix your -- >> sometimes you to do that. >> it is a camera. have you seen this sign? is it up there? >> people put stuff all over the campus. >> so this doesn't mean anything official? >> i definitely want us to fix our stuff. >> your stuff? >> you know, these things are valuable and they are controversial. it doesn't mean that we always need to do it. it is not like any company wakes up in the morning and goes we want to move super slowly. what i want this to mean for us is that we want to build our culture and infrastructure to move one or two clicks faster than other companies. sometimes we go too fast and mess up a bunch of stuff and we have to fix it. that is cool. >> would you consider home so

far a failure? >> one of the toughest things is derping when something isn't going to work versus hasn't worked yet. i definitely think home is slower in rolling out than i would have hoped. so what we're doing is a bunch overp positive feedback. they love chat -- we rolled that out 100%. we got a bunch of valuable feedback. people want more content. we're taking time to build that. you'll be able to get instagram content and other social content in this and that will just make it more valuable. yeah. it is early in its development. it is a bit slower than i probably would have thought, but, you know, we're patient and still fully believe this is going to be something that a lot of people want over time. getting content delivered to your home screen and being aware of what is going on i think is a

very valuable thing. maybe the current formula, we need to keep working on, but we're going to do that > referred to this as a -- show. you disagree with that. you moved into the -- in that sense it is almost a testing ground. right? >> yeah the parts that work well will roll out quick and the parts don't will kind of slow down. the long-term goal for this is, you know, we released the first version of home as a separate app. we intentionally did that so that people who wants could go out of their way to the play store and get it. once get it to a point where we're happy with the product, we're just going to say turn this on and you won't have to download a separate ap. you'll be able to have your

launch screen as part of the main app. we're having it out there and getting feed back, we'll do that. we're not super far off. we'll just keep working on it until get it right. data.effect, user you have 1.1 billion users. you have more data than any entity in the world. it is all of our data. we care a lot about it. we don't want people getting it and using it to do bad things. we know what facebook has done over the last several mop to try to help -- months to try to help increase transparency. we have seen the lawsuits. we have seen the efforts. i don't need you to repeat that. what i want to know is what mark zuckerberg thinks about these issues in our right to privacy versus the government. >> yeah, so, we take our role

really seriously. i think it is my job and our job to protect everyone who uses facebook and all the information that they share. it is our government's job to protect all of us and also to protect our freedoms and protect the economy. i think they did a bad job of balancing that here. frankly, i think that the government blew it. they blew it on communicating what they were basically the balance of what they were going for. you know, we -- the morning after this started breaking, a bunch of people asked them what they thought. the government's comment wu was basically don't worry. we're not spying on any americans. wonderful. that is really helpful to companies who are trying to serve people around the world and want to inspire confidence

in american internet companies. thanks for going out there and being clear about what you're doing. i think that was really bad. we have been pushing just to get more transparency on this and i actually think we have made a big difference. we haven't -- the big question that you get from all the coverage is, you know, what is the volume of the total number of requests that are going on? is it closer to 1,000 requests that the government is making of us or closer to 100 million? from the coverage and what for what the government has said, you would not know the difference. right? we worked really hard with the government behind the scenes to get to the point where we could release the aggregate number of requests. there were around 9,000 the last half year. does that number tell us everything that we want? no. when we got to the point in the conversation where we saw we were not going the make further progress that we could reveal

whether it was 1,000 or 8,000 of the 9,000 requests, the reality was because of the transparency that we pushed for, now people can know and i think they deserve the know that the number of request nass the government is making is closer to 9,000. definitely not 10 million or 100 million. >> not a -- with regard to grabbing data. >> we're not at the end of this. i wish that the government would be kind of more proactive about communicating. we are psyched that we have have been able to get this and we feel like people should be able to know this and we take it really seriously. >> thanks. last question. what are you excited about product-wise that would surprise s? >> what would surprised you. -- surprise you?

you know, that is one of the things that i'm really excited about because i think a very underestimated problem. we live in a world where everyone around us has high speed internet access. it is unfathomable for us to think only about 1/3 of the people in the world have access to the internet. for something that is so rl early in its development, the internet is growing less than 10% a year, which is kind of startling how few people in the world have access to this. then you think the internet is the backbone of the modern knowledge economy and all the opportunities that we have and the ability to have a free society and tap into jobs and education and all this stuff. it is not happening by itself. it is not growing at a fast rate. it is also easy to think, you know, there are 5 billion phones in the world. the vast majority are -- there are about 1.5 billion smart phones.

smart phones are getting cheaper and cheaper. one day all 5 billion of those feature phones are going to be smart phones. i actually think that is probably true in the next five to 10 yers. the thing that is easy to kind of misinterpret in that is the expensive part of ownership of the phone is not the phone, it is the data. if you have an i phone for two years, it cost about $2,000 to own an i phone for two years. unless data price comes down, we're never going to be at a point where the vast majority of the world will be able to be on the internet. that is what we're trying to focus on and work with other companies to enable by making the infrastructure to provide the internet cheaper. making it so that the biggest and most frequently used apps consume less data so they are cheaper to use and also trying to provide new business models that make it so more people can get on the internet. that is a big focus for us.

that is probably not much of a surprise. >> you intend to make this happen, don't you? >> yeah. this is like why we are here. >> yeah. >> your first question was what has changed and my answer was, you know all the tactics change all the time. mission doesn't change. that's who we are. we are on this earth to connect everyone and help people share more of what they want. we will do this. >> whether they want to or not. i'm just kidding. >> everyone wants to be connected. it is a very fundamental thing. not every person in the world might want to use any specific service but that is why there is a platform and the internet is a broad place. this is like what we're going to focus on. >> all right, mark. thank you so much. [applause] > thank you.

>> on the next "washington journal" on update on negotiations in congress to reopen the government and the topic of default. our guests are republican congressman scott rigell of virginia and tim ryan of ohio and a look at how wall street is reacting to the shutdown. "washington journal" is live on c-span every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> i never ever ask a negative question. i think it is insulting to the person you want to talk to. and it creates a bad impression about what you're doing. you're asking for someone's time because you need information that will lead you to a better understanding of your subject. yeah, sometimes you get negative information when you really don't want it and you haven't even asked for it. i know.

i remember calling a woman to ask her about a senate wife's luncheon in honor to have first lady. she said to me, "i know why you're calling. you want me to repeat those nasty things that nancy reagan was telling us yesterday about barbara bush." [laughter] actually, all i wanted to find out was how much money the senate wives had raised for mrs. reagan's drug abuse fund. this that telephone call, i got more than i asked for and i used every single word. >> presidential history, political intrigue and american culture. biographer kitty kelly will sit down for your call and comments live for three hours beginning at noon eastern on book tv's in depth and in the months ahead look for christina summers on december 1 and radio talk show host mark levine on january 5.

join other viewers reading "walking with the wind." see what others are saying and post your own comments. find out more at booktv.org/bookclub. >> most national parks and monoments have been closed to visitors. recently some of those monoments including the statue of liberty and mount rushmore have reopened with funds from the states. the foundation hosted a discussion about how the shutdown is affecting the national parks service access to national monoments. this is just over an hour. [applause] >> thank all of you for coming today to discuss the closing of the american monument. to start, let us take a step back and contemplate why we have

memorials and national monuments t all. for george washington, the purpose was nourishing and perpetuating the spirit of freedom and patriotism in our country. for james madison, these places were precious to the nation as the memorials of its origin and arly transactions. for president jefferson's surveyor of public buildings, these places represented the tranquility, the prosperity, and the happiness of american overnment. offering sage advice very early on, george washington cautioned us from politicizing these places that represented ideas higher than daily politics. he wrote about the direction -- the direction of the memorial to the american revolution, in 1795.

the event to which it is dedicated, the emblems to which it is composed, and the effect it is meant to produce how all an intimate relationship to the right and happiness of the people. let it be commenced not through the organ of government as a political act, but in a mode which will best testify to sentiments which spontaneously glow in the breasts of republican citizens. how far we have come, if you have observed what has gone on this month. there have been 17 partial government shutdowns since 1977. if history is any guide, there will be more in the future. so that is nothing new. what is new are the arbitrary and unnecessary actions of the national park service. this month, it closed many memorials, national parks, and other public places, it remained open in previous government shutdowns.

far from leaving these monuments open, they have taken actions to barricade them, enforce the barricades, and make life as difficult for american citizens as possible. far from the tranquility and possibility these places are supposed to represent. one park service employee was quoted as saying, we have been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. we are here today to discuss the purposes of americans monuments, the actions of the national park service during the partial government shutdown, and how those actions conform with the law. we are very honored today to have congressman rob bishop, who serves utah's first congressional district, and he will offer some keynote remarks, and we will turn to our previous panel to speak about not only the history and purposes of

america's monument, but the legal ramifications of some of the park service actions. representative bishop served in the house armed services committee and the rules committee, and has continued to serve on the regulation ubcommittee. please join me in welcoming representative rob bishop. [applause] >> thank you. i appreciate your kind introduction, and the charity applause. i appreciate that. i am happy to be here, even though it is not wise to talk when you are upset and mad. i have been in that situation the last three weeks. the other day, i was trying to meet with a couple of air force generals. s usual, i was late.

i found out thats ifif you have to go in the rayburn building, the elevators are slow and crowded. the escalators are far faster to get from the basement to the first floor. except this morning, i realized somebody had messed up, and all the escalators were going down. every one of them. which i thought was a perfect metaphor for congress and this administration. but i am here to talk about what not only the park service is doing, but the forest service and fish and wildlife. the policies clearly are based on vindictiveness, pettiness, and politicizing situations that took place. the only question is, how high up does the instruction to take this approach go? i feel this is going to be another irs investigation, where every time you turn around, you find out there is a level above t. you has seen what has happened in the world war ii memorial. everyone is upset about it. it is also happening on public lands everywhere throughout this country. you have read about people who are not allowed to visit graves in tennessee, the school bus

route closed down, or the in that was serving lunch as the park rangers came in with lights flashing on their cars, and guns drawn. or senior citizens and foreigners that were held basically under armed guard in yellowstone, forced to take a bus drive where they were not allowed to stop for a bathroom break. and when they actually did stop to take some pictures of buffalo, they were threatened, saying that photographing was recreating, and they were not allowed to recreate in yellowstone during the close down. a jogger in valley forge was fined $100 for jogging. a d.c. playground in an area that has never seen a park service employee -- they chained and padlocked the playground so that kids could not go on the swings or the slide. one park in utah, which i always thought was a city park, a family had been having a picnic there for years.

when they went for their 30th anniversary picnic, they were shoved off the grounds before they could put their food down and eat in the park. all these things clearly show that the purpose of public land is being -- which is supposedly for memorializing what has happened in history, and providing recreation opportunities, is being placed in a secondary position, showing there is power and control by certain groups. they claim there are first amendment exceptions. i guess if you are going to protest the world bank or immigration issues, from the same people that allowed the occupy movement to stay on federal land without any fees, but not for cancer research or weddings, or the german-american friendship day which was canceled in the german-american friendship garden. heavens knows what you think would happen if somebody wanted to exercise a second amendment right on public land. in all fairness, for those of you who find this appalling, my

question simply has to be, so what? we are living with this every day. this activity is nothing new. we have been doing this for months. when you have a person in an rea that decides to stop a legal outfielder from going on to grounds because she does not think there should be commercial activity in her wilderness area, or in washington, where they have expanded a city park and then banned an annual church picnic and fundraiser benefit for veterans because the noise would bother the historic and cultural aspects of the rest of the park, or nevada, where a victim of a murder's body was given up the park service in trying to find it. the family tried to find somebody who would search privately. 15 months later, they were able to raise the money to get the special use permit and insurance the park service insisted on. once that private firm was allowed to go into the park,

they found the body within two hours. another air force sergeant who drowned in lake mead, the park service gave up on it. the family had to go to court to get permission to have somebody go in and find the body, which they did in the space of a couple of days. in one park on our border, in which the park service wanted to move electronic devices from point a to point b, on the back of a truck, it took six months to get permission to back up the truck and move from point a to point b. helipads, the border patrol wanted a forest area. the forest service agreed. fission while the disagreed. a year and a half later, those paths were not there to help enforce the border. in the grand teton's in washington, which does not enigrate any fishing opportunities, you have areas that were designated by congress as wild and scenic recreation rivers. they have banned any recreation that involves and motor, a

paddle or an oar. what's left? fish watching? when the park service makes a comment against a keystone pipeline saying it could avoid implementations of the park mission, even though the closest park is 30 miles away from a pipeline, when you have fish and wildlife and finding that there is an endangered species that happens only to grow on oil shale, only there, and allows the county to have a mitigation plan, if they have not come up by march. unfortunately, this plant only blooms in june and july, and you cannot tell what the plant is until it actually blooms. they have to have in march a mitigation plan for what they do not know exists. there are no birds at that altitude, but they said they are supposed to. therefore, that becomes a sage grass habitat.

timber mining has been stopped. when the world war ii monument is open again, all of you who live in the east can be happy, but these kind of activities have been going on in the west and will continue to go on in the west, by a department of the interior that is vindictive and petty. it wants to show control rather than power. i am pleased mr. cole is going o be here, talking about a - the eisenhower memorial. it is a memorial that has broken probably every rule, concept, and traditional activity. it is still over budget. it shows the dysfunction we have n certain areas of our government. when the berlin wall came down, all of a sudden, everyone realized the idea of centralized, overly bureaucratic government fails. it does not work. we realized that everywhere in the world, it was discredited

erywhere in the world except where the idea of centralized your credit government still seems to be the goal. the opposite of that is what our nation was supposedly founded on. and preposition. i apologize. on which our nation was supposedly founded. most people, we talk about federalism, their eyes glaze over. they think of the essay in high school. federalism allows people to have choices and options in their lives. we have examples of that if we try to venerate that will stop in wisconsin, where the state is managing certain lambs on federal property, even though the federal government told the governor to shut them down -- the governor said, they are still operating. in arizona and utah, the -- south dakota, colorado, the governors of the states stepped up and funded the opening of national parks, so they could keep going. we have a situation in the state of utah called sand flats. an area which was owned by blm, which they admitted they did not have the staff, the manpower, the money, or desire to maintain

or regulate. when a near riot broke out, they made a deal with the county, so the county organizes, pays for, and receives royalty from the managing of that recreation area. and it is done brilliantly. we have another in southern utah, called the coral pink sand dunes. the federal government has given over control and management of the land to the state of utah. it was recently listed as one of the hidden treasures. we can still make this work if we come up with the idea of federalism that allows different options and different choices in different areas, and allows the state to take leadership. we can prove that state forests in idaho produce more revenue and are healthier than the federal forests next-door, simply because that process works. yellowstone was the first national park that was established. the second was in michigan. mackinaw island.

it was given back to michigan because they could better manage it. as you have seen in the shut down, they can better management. -- manage it. it is not the fact that we have to have -- the federal government has to control everything. when i was in germany last time, i met somebody working in the german forest service. -- foreign service. she was a preteen when the law came down. -- wall came down. her first trip into west berlin from her home in pottstown, she was amazed. she went into a store. all of the stuff that was there to purchase. she went into one grocery store and realized there were five different kinds of sugar she could buy, five different brands. in east germany, you had sugar or you did not. usually the latter. she had five different choices. her first thought was, wow, there are five choices. her second thought was, why do i need five choices? in the ideal socialist world, if they provide an adequate quantity of cheap sugar, maybe one source is actually enough.

but we all know that does not work in real life. what it simply means is, you need that kind of competition to be able to provide you with what you need. the same thing happens with public land. you need different choices and different options. i recently read a book about members of my religion who tried to live in communist east germany. as i was reading it, every last one of the concepts is that the public land policy in communist east germany is the exact same public land policy we have in the united states today. either we are wrong, or they were right. i really do not think it is the atter situation. it is one of those things a we have to realize that has to be a change and actually allow us to partner with state and local governments to open up these areas, to manage these lands. it would be the best thing we could do to actually do this in a functioning, rational, articular way.

i am pleased the current secretary of the interior is not a simple -- is not a traditional administrative appointee who has risen through the ranks. she comes from the business world of outdoor recreation, and realizes that if you are going to get something for the public land, it has to be there for people to use and enjoy. i certainly hope that mindset becomes inculcated within the federal government, because that is the solution to what we need. the purpose of land is for people to enjoy that. if we are not doing that, we are failing. having everything coordinated through one federal agency does not help that situation. if we were serious about opening up our lands for public enjoyment, we would have a partnership between state and federal government, or turn over more of these areas, or people who know what they are doing can be in charge. we would not have the situation we are finding ourselves today. if nothing else, the government

shutdown has shown why states are important, why federalism is important. the bottom line is this. federalism is the solution to our problems and the salvation of this country. in this area, more than anything else, we need to make sure we use it and use it properly. thank you. thank you for being here. [applause] >> thank you, congressman. he has graciously agreed to take a few questions before we turn it over to our panelists. is there a question or two from the audience? we will send around the microphone. >> i think your idea of change at the top, maybe, will help. it is a good one. but what do you do when you have a whole department full of thousands of employees who are basically state estes or they wouldn't work for the state.

how can you turn the elephant around? >> that is the effort we are going through to try to make sure we get more authority to states. you already have the ability of the federal government to keep controlling the land, but they give the ownership and management back to state and local governments. we can push those entities. e can push to realize that standardization and a communal approach to everything, everything being owned by the department of the interior, does not work. we need to start turning things around some more and more authority goes to local governments to do these jobs. the house has started to do this. things like our efforts with the forest bill, it is an effort to try to turn over the authority of making sure that what happens on the land is controlled from the local level. those efforts have to be done, but they have to come from ongress. >> my name is howard. on the eisenhower memorial -- what is the future of that

bill? >> i do not know. nor does anyone know the future of the eisenhower memorial. with the cfr failing, the authorization for site selection as well as the continuation has expired. it may come back with some limitations. the house has cut the funding for the commission. the commission has not expired, nor have any of their employees been furloughed in this situation and they are still sitting on $20 million that has previously been appropriated and they could be spending even though they do not have any ongoing revenue coming in through the appropriations process. what i think the house has clearly said, in the committee work we have done so far, is we have to rethink this. we should have a memorial to eisenhower, but it should be done the right way. i think mr. cole will be talking about that. there are ways of doing it the right way that can be a whole lot cheaper. do it in a way with other memorials we have done in the past. this has broken all the rules, try to take shortcuts.

it has proven to be an unacceptable solution to this point. >> please join me in thanking representative bishop. [applause] > thank you. >> i would just like to express my appreciation for congressman bishop's leadership on the eisenhower memorial, which was an undemocratic and an transparent selection process, until he took it on. it perhaps would have gone to completion without being addressed. so thank you. we are now going to move to a panel discussion. we are very happy to have bruce cole, a senior fellow at the ethics and public policy center. he is also the former chairman of the national endowment to the humanities. it is the author of 14 books and numerous articles. in 2008, president george w. bush awarded him the medal for his work to strengthen our national memory and make sure our countries national heritage

is passed on to future generations. just this summer, he was appointed by president obama to be a member of the dwight d eisenhower memorial ommission. we are very appreciative that he is now in that post. we're also pleased to have andew who is a legal fellow judiciary studies at the heritage foundation. he is a graduate of new york university school of law. at heritage, he focuses on civil rights, the role of the federal court, and other constitutional issues. each panelist will speak for 10 minutes. head coachfully we will have a conversation with you, the audience. >> the floor is yours. >> thank you very much. and thank you, representative bishop, for being in leadership on this important issue. i think one of the things the shutdown has shown is the

importance of memorials and how americans care about them. they are sacred. i started with the image of dwight eisenhower in normandy in 1963. this is normandy today. the cemeteries are shutdown. the flag does not fly. it is really a desecration of our memory and of those brave oul who is perished in normandy. there are not many presidential memorials. most presidents go home and die. i have simple memorials. but we have a tradition, starting with the great obelisk of the washington memorial, moving on to the lincoln memorial, and then to the efferson memorial. these memorials, jefferson and lincoln are 20th century. they are superb because what

they do is they elevate and show the importance of those presidents they memorialize. if you look at the jefferson memorial -- it harkens back to the classical past. it embodies it, like all the federal architecture of democracy, and rome, and it anchors us to the past. if you walk up those steps, you are elevated. you get the sense of the gravity and importance of the person eing memorialized. there are a couple of others. the james buchanan memorial is well hidden. there is a franklin memorial. actually, franklin roosevelt wanted this. he was talking to his cabinet. e said, if you want to memorialize me, make a plate the

size of my desk in the oval office. they did it. then, you have memorial creep. this is the new memorial, which shows various episodes from his four terms. a group of people look like they are waiting for a men's room. [laughter] you have the kennedy center, which is itself a memorial, a kind of living memorial. i want to talk about the ike memorial. i am all in favor. ike was a great american. he comes from humble origins. here is his house in abilene. he was supreme commander of the allied forces on d-day in that campaign and defeated germany. he was a great president, i believe. served two terms. had a great record on civil

rights. interstate highway. was very smart and savvy a politician. but he was humble. in his tomb in abilene, there are a couple of inscriptions. here is one about humility. humility must always be the portion of any man who receives the blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends. he was a humble and modest person, plain spoken. i think he would be horrified by how he is about to be memorialized. as you can see on october 25rks1999, a law said that an appropriate monument should be created. so far, it has been given $62 million in taxpayer money. they have about $20 million eft. as well as $2 million since 1999 for staff salaries.

the architect is frank gehry. he is very famous. he is one of the starchitects. he has an interesting philosophy. at the end of this paragraph, he says, i will reiterate what i have said many times. i will not face my children and tell them i have no more ideas and need to copy something. he is famous because he upsets all the architectural canons. he does not believe in the past. his work is not rooted in anything. i will give you a few examples. here are his dancing houses in prague, a complete reversion of stability and order. -- perversion of stability and order. here is his lewis center in case

western reserve. you can see how his style is. here was one thing he tried to get done in washington, and addition that looks like it ate the philips, like a giant 747. you can see how out of sync it is with the surrounded architecture. this was actually approved by the fine arts committee and capital spending committee. here is the design for the eisenhower memorial. it is radically different than anything done before. it is postmodern architecture. it is not indebted to the past. it really minimalize his ike. -- minimalizes ike. these columns are eight stories high. in between them runs a scram with trees on it. -- scrim with trees on it. mcmillantes the

plan. it is completely out of sync with anything grounded and anything in washington. it is indicative of the way that frank gehry builds. what it does is it minimalized ike. in the center of this memorial, in the back middle, you see ike cadet. the original plan was to show him as a barefoot boy from kansas. none of his accomplishments are in the statue. by the giant columns. the sense of elevation and importance and dignity, and the sense of humility that should be embodied in this memorial -- it is kind of perverted, turning upside down what eisenhower stands for. frank gehry says, this is what i do. this is what we do. i am talking your language, making it something better. i am taking your junk and making something with it.

he is talking about the lincoln memorial. and the washington, and the jefferson. can we do better? as i said, i am all in favor of the memorial. i think it should be built, but it should be built in an appropriate form. right now, the site is for acres. giant columns. it does not reflect the dignity, humility, and the complement of dwight david eisenhower. here is a very simple memorial. i am not suggesting something like this be built on the grounds of the eisenhower library in abilene, but certainly we can do something that is better. we can build something that is more appropriate. that will be a credit not only to the commissioners, but to the rising generations of america. we will learn something about

the intrinsic good of dwight eisenhower. >> if it is built, i do not guess we will have to worry about anybody trying to break in to that memorial during the shutdown. it will keep people out when it is open. andrew, we will let you take over from here. explicitly talk about how the park service actions on public land and at memorials perhaps violate a few laws and constitutional rights. >> thank you very much. it has been a lot of great information here from both the congressman and mr. cole. i hope folks become more interested in our national monuments. i just spent the weekend in philadelphia. i used to work there at a first amendment group, civil rights group, overlooking independence hall. i walked around and got to see folks with their families,

visiting independence hall, trying to see the liberty bell and things like that. i wanted to hear what folks were saying. the refrain was pretty unanimous, even without any -- i did not prompt. i was just listening. folks were constantly harping on how unnecessary it was to shut down these monuments, and how it seems disproportionate to what was going on in washington. i just want to talk a few minutes and raise some of the legal issues, and point out how folks that are concerned about these issues and have instincts as to what is going on, usually your instincts are pretty right. one of the things a lot of folks are saying is, isn't it odd that the parks service seems to be spending more money trying to shut down the parks then they would be spending just letting the parks lie "fallow"? that is a legal argument you are making when you say that. because you have instincts, that in the absence of a

congressional appropriation the president cannot spend money -- there is a law. the anti-deficiency act. it says that unless congress passes a money bill, it is -- a felony for a federal officer to try to do stuff or spend money. so there is a prohibition on that sort of a thing. the argument folks are making, when they say it is weird spending more money keeping things close -- isn't that probably violating the anti- deficiency act. this is actually an issue that is sort of well within the president's discretion. the law says without congress passing a bill there are only a few things that can continue operating. the phrases "emergency

authorizations involving the safety of human life or the protection of property." this is where we get the opm rule that says essential personnel keep working. the three branches of government each branch gets to define for itself what is necessary to protect the safety of human life and federal property. it seems like what the parks service is saying here is the only way for us to secure this property is putting up these massive barricades. that seems odd. i do not think it would be challenged in court. i think it is a safe bet for the park service to make these calls. -- say these words but it does not pass the smell test for most americans. but in fact, there is another argument against this, which is for many years, the executive branch since the stockton memo in 1981, the omb issued a memo that said what sorts of things are essential?

we get to keep security on the payroll. park security is still getting paid. it seems odd that the park service would be setting -- shutting down a part for security reasons when the security personnel are allowed to be staffing the us monuments. that is just kind of strange. the second issue i would like to talk about is the blocking of private or co-owned property. the congressman mentioned lake mead. there was a news story about a whole bunch of folks with vacation homes in lake mead being told to take a hike, get out. they had year leases. lease, thereeir might be something about having to have a second home since these are vacation homes. folks are asking why are private

places being shut down? when i was in philadelphia, i understand that a tavern opened in 1773 was shut down, it was frequented by some of the founders. it is a private establishment. they serve food and alcohol and is very well regulated. it was shut down, too. i also heard the park service tried to shut down the mount vernon park, and mount vernon is privately owned actually. and privately run. but the park service got a little overzealous and tried to barricade the parking lot of privately owned mount vernon. so, this seems a little bit odd to folks. i would just point out this is one of those areas where what matters very strongly are the lease agreements and the property rights of the property owners. many people own property on federal land.

many people have different businesses they run on federal land. i would encourage those property owners not to necessarily take the park service at their word. take a look at your lease and see if you have rights. if you do, you should stick up for yourself. one of the other things i just heard about was the federal government has started to reopen certain places. the independence tavern was allowed to reopen. provided pennsylvania foot the bill. the statue of liberty was allowed to reopen, provided new york state would foot the bill. this does seem to be a little bit of a problem, or cause the anti-deficiency act states "absent congressional appropriation." because congress has the power of the purse. so, i do not know what the legal justification is for the department of the interior to permit states to foot the bill when there is a law that says the federal government cannot let anyone foot the bill if

there is not an appropriation involved. i would be very curious if members of congress would like to take a look at that. the third issue i would like to talk about is the first amendment. the world war ii vets, they fought for our country and they have a strong, instinctual response to things being shut down. i saw a sign that someone had that said "normandy was closed, too." the first amendment says that folks have free speech and the government has to have a good reason for shutting down public land or regulating public land before they can prevail the freedom of speech. there are actually federal court cases pointing out -- for example, the national wall is a a traditional public

forum. what that means is, when the government seeks to regulate these traditional public forums, the regulations seem to be content neutral. they need to be narrowly tailored to serve significant government interest. so, that is the test. we ask, is the national mall a traditional public forum? are the signs, these barricades, what side of the line do these fall on? what can the average citizen do on the national mall? there are court cases that say thinking or reading or passing out literature, those are all first amendment protected activities. it would be very strange for a park service person -- if i am walking through one of these barricaded areas where the sign says "closed except for first

amendment activities," it would be very strange if a park service person tried to kick me or anyone out. if you say i'm going to go read a book. that is a protected activity. it seems like any person can walk into these areas and there's essentially nothing the park service can do to you. there was another lawyer at the legal center here, i had him go down to find out what authority the park service but they had. they said, no, we are not asking what people are doing. we are enforcing it to the best of our ability. [laughter] if you are a private citizen, remember you have your rights. there is a second problem. they have the signs that say "closed except for first amendment activities." but as i just explained, pretty much anything can qualify as a first amendment activity. so, you are allowed in here unless you are allowed in here. and pretty much anyone is allowed in here. so what is the purpose of the sign?

i would say it is there to scare people. i would encourage people to contact the aclu if they think that is the thing to do. the first amendment is designed for the average joe. it is not do not -- it is not designed simply for lawyers. there is an added problem with all of these policies, they are hopelessly vague. there is a great line from justice potter stewart on the case, the case where he points out that -- a man of average intelligence shouldn't need to guess at what ordinances mean and i think that is exactly what happens. i would like to close with a couple takeaways. first of all, park rangers. what should you do if you are asked to shut down or kick

people out? i would just say if there is ambiguity and what you're being told, err on the side of permissiveness, err on the side of the first amendment. look at the folks and say i am here to protect property, not to enforce political points. on the side of the spectrum, if you are a park ranger there are things you are asked to do on a daily basis -- you know, you sort of have to follow your boss when he says that. on this end of the spectrum, you're being asked to kick out all people of one race, for example and clearly you do not have to do that. use your judgment and narrower on the side of first amendment. my second advice is for citizens. know your rights. we have the heritage guide to

the constitution. i encourage folks to take a look at that. we have sections on the first amendment written by eminent legal scholars. take a look at that and learn your rights. i am not encouraging folks to go to the areas and pick up the barricades and drop them off in front of the white house. that may have additional property or vandalism concerns. but certainly, if you are simply paying no attention to the signs that may not be legally there, that, you know -- [laughter] you may be well within your rights there. so, it seems, despite what the park service is saying, it seems to be business as usual for folks who want to visit, to see our nations capitol, to see philadelphia, to visit places like lake mead or two enjoy our national -- or to enjoy our national parks. the problem is this is not an

academic issue. there are fines being given arrested.e getting lot of these cases would seem to be slam dunks. i would hope people would challenge these cases. it is very difficult to be on the out deceiving -- on the receiving end here. if there is an authoritative park ranger telling you to get off the property, i understand if you do not necessarily stand up for yourself. but i think there are enterprising aclu types who would stand up to this kind of encroachment. >> thank you, andrew. there will be a hearing tomorrow, i believe in the house, on alleged infractions by members of the park service. essentially what we have been talking about is a thing called "washington monument syndrome." this is the term given to the political tactic, making, as you

put it, the average joe feel the affect of a partial government shutdown, and in essence, it is making life difficult for average u.s. citizens for a political impasse here in washington. the first parks director to engage in this activity, to pioneer the idea of washington monument syndrome was george herzog, and soon after that he was dismissed. i think i am correct in saying i have investigated this -- during this partial government shutdown there have been more monuments and memorials closed than any other shutdown in our history. the stories it you see coming out, even on social media, people posting video clips and all of this -- it kind of reveals an intimidating activity by park service personnel. certainly not all are engaging in this.

and i quoted earlier a park service employee who described it as "disgusting" that they were asked to make average american citizens feel so displaced and inconvenienced through no fault of their own. one of the major questions i am interested in here, and i want to know the opinion of each of you, is this the sort of high water mark of this sort of activity? it is obviously violating the spirit of why we have memorials and public laces like this, because the very ideals the are supposed to represent -- we have obviously seen and overstepped overstep by this administration and the park service in particular this month. is this going to get worse with every shutdown? or can we hope that this will be the extent to which american citizens will be treated in this manner?

>> with respect to lake mead again, i have heard some property owners -- there was a piece, i think, in the washington times interviewing the property owners. the property owner pointed out they have had leases on this federal land for 30 years and that includes during the last 1995, and they were not asked by the clinton administration to vacate. there is something new. i do not recall reading about any cases where ordinary folks. so angry that they started -- ordinary folks got so angry that they started violating ordinances. american citizens know their rights, but they also know they are not going to fight fight, so, they are largely compliant even when sometimes the policies are little bad. but i can't think of any case where there was large numbers of world war ii vets or people

storming the barricades. >> i think this backfired. the flashpoint was the world war ii memorial. i do not think anybody expected this overall government shutdown. i don't remember all 17 shutdowns. this, i think, was something new. the officials arrived to see things barricaded, and they were outraged. this was their memorial. i think the reaction really set up a chain reaction where this individual would say no to memorials here, and i do not think that was expected. >> i think that's right. and the social media, for example, a highlighted the story of a man who mowed the grass on the lincoln memorial and got his push mower to mow the grass because it was not being done. that to my mind is a great act of public mindedness by a public

citizen. and of course he was asked to leave. and the 200-year-old senate clock stopped ticking. not because there was not a living breathing human being next to it that could not have a but the official winder had been furloughed. this does represent something very troubling and it reveals a new attitude, especially by the park service toward the american people. striking out against them, not as a people who have a government or our caretakers of public land, but somehow to punish americans for daring to cut funding. it is, i think, quite problematic and i certainly hope we will never see this again in future shutdowns. now we will take your questions. again, we have mics.

if you will just raise your hand yourself., identify >> richard -- a question for bruce cole. can you give us an idea of the lay of the land of the committee you were on, the drum modest the dramatis personae. >> i am just starting to navigate those treacherous waters now. [laughter] the bipartisan committee was foromposed for representatives and senators and citizen members. i've only been on the commission for a couple months or so. i have been making visits to the other commissioners and sort of taking their temperature about

how they feel about the memorial, and getting advice by all sorts ibo. -- all sorts of people. it is too early to predict what is going to happen. >> i'm an intern here at heritage, actually. what i wanted to ask was in relation to something you said before the questions, mr. cole, and that was when the world war ii veterans arrived, a lot of the outrage was this was their memorial, something that belongs to them. that is how it has been seen. in a lot of ways, i think the are waking up and being outraged because they are seeing their memorials go, and that is every memorial, not just the world war ii one. my question to you is, how do you think we can do people do start to understand this is far more than just memorials? that it reaches into every area of what is going on right now and that is the coming war of more theing more and

government decreeing what goes to the people instead of the other way around nowadays? >> a little follow-up on the first question. i think the commissioners wanted to get this done and i think everybody realizes it needs to be done and there remains the question of how it is to be done. it is not only the world war ii memorial, i got an e-mail from a friend of mine whose daughter is visiting normandy. there were a bunch of vets there at the same time. they climbed over the stone fences and got in, until they were shooed out by the employees. i'm surprised. what you see is these monuments, world war ii memorial especially people start asking the question, those are my memorials. why am i not allowed to visit something i actually own? what authority does the park

service have to keep me out of it? i think this is a very healthy exercise and people feel their relation to the government. there was a wonderful piece by mark stein that talked about the magna carta. -- the act that followed the magna carta. he said, you know, it is true the english peasants were benefiting, had more access to the commons than americans in 2013. i think this is a really healthy discussion. i hope there are ramifications of it. >> judge peele. -- george peele, i am an attorney in falls church. my understanding of the antideficiency act is it is in forced by the executive against agents of the executive. can someone comment on the legal actions regarding oversight?

>> right. first of all, i would say congress -- in the office for compliance, there is the inspector general and a variety of different places. congress has the ability and congressman issa's committee, the oversight committee, there are a variety of different places were members of congress can go to request reports or to do their own investigation into expenditure. those sorts of things can get publicity and there can be political ramifications. so, number one is obviously the political process used. interims of private actions to enforce -- i don't think that there is one. but there are a whole host of different statutes the executive is subject to. the executive is the branch that does the enforcement.

so, if there is a non- enforcement issue, i know there have been other non-enforcement issues at doj that folks have raised questions about. congress again has the power of the purse to say we are not going to make appropriations to doj until they get their house in order and start applying the law where it ought to be applied. >> presumably -- people arrested or fined -- >> that is true. yes, if the executive -- for example, the gentleman mowing the lawn in front of the lincoln memorial. presumably there is a groundskeeper whose job that was until he or she was furloughed, and if he or she had given some indication that he or she was excepting those services, that groundskeeper would be subject to the felony provisions of the ada and would be able to

challenge that prosecution or conviction in court. but i don't see -- we are asking with the obama administration enforce the ada in other contexts, and i do not really see that. i do not see a way for an average citizen to sue the federal government for doing stuff without authorization. maybe. there are structural constitutional provisions, and in the first on case, the supreme court says the federalism provisions of the constitution do include private rights of action, so someone could test that case, but until then, i doubt that. >> around the same time that i heard world war ii vets and also the vietnam memorial -- they had to take the barricades away, i heard somewhere in d.c. they were providing the type of security that they do -- it was

some rally, citizenship for illegal aliens, and it has been hush-hush in the press. i wonder if you had heard anything more about that? >> i have not heard anything more about that. there are -- what you might he saying, gosh, it looks like certain content is allowed to be expressed but other content is prohibited. on the national mall. that would be a lawsuit if that were the case. however, the parks service has said they will allow all first amendment activities. presumably if someone wanted to have an anti-immigration rally, they could apply. however another problem with these policies is, again, another lawyer in our department asked "how can he get a permit?" the answer was, we don't know how you can get a permit. hiding the permit russes is a

problem -- the permit process is a problem in itself and another challenge. that could be challenged in court. >> have there been any tea party politicians and tea party leaders making legal challenges against these things? in isolated individual will have -- and isolated individual will have a hard time. but the tea party leaders, what about the vfw? they have lawyers. they have resources. are they doing legal strategy on matter, well, a it will not last that long, so we might as well just wait it out? >> very briefly, we do coordinate activities like this. it would be something worth looking into. i can mention the washington post is reporting, i think,

today a federal judge has ordered the national art service -- national park service to open langley fork park in mclean, virginia, based on a lawsuit from the mclean youth lacrosse association. i gather the organization sued and the judge ruled that the park service has to keep that federal land open. that is the type of thing that could keep happening. i will have to get back to you. >> hi. my name is bill moody. i'm a retired career naval officer. i served for 26 and a half years, mostly on air carriers. can you hear me? my father is a 95-year-old world war ii vets living in new hampshire. he fought in every major campaign in the pacific on the uss yorktown, commonly referred to as "the fighting lady." he is heartsick about the closing of the memorial on the

national mall and he has called it a shameless act of commission. the day after the shutdown, i walked down to the mall and i was stunned to see the barricades put up like strategic hamlets around each of the four war memorials. so, i got a little closer and noticed the barricades had been wired together at the top and the bottom. and i noticed five metro police officers, some on motorcycles, some in squad cars, around the world war ii memorial. i saw five work rangers and for park maintenance officers and the maintenance offers were wiring the -- they had these big bundles of wire that they were wiring the barricade shut. i guess that gives credence to the proverbial old joke about how many park service employees

it takes to wire a barricade shut. i know the answer. it is five. wire nose pliers. i lay the background, because my father's conclusion seeing this on social media -- and by the , way, a member of the park service was inside the barrier giving a tour to the people on the outside, pointing out different parts of the memorial. my father could only come to the conclusion that someone in the administration -- we do not know , patty, andicative small. -- vindictive. andrew, my question to you is -- based on your legal analysis, but also a policy analysis,

serving in the pentagon and the -- i served in the pentagon in the bush administration and also the white house -- i know that money is reprogrammed all the time. people are deemed essential all the time. not to mention that these are open air memorials that do not require much security or maintenance. and each sidewalk on the mall had a barrier that said "closed," and people were walking around, breaking the law, with no repercussions whatsoever until you got to the strategic hamlets. why is it that the president who has the authority, who with the stroke of a pen could open these memorials, why -- this defies common sense and appears to be vindictive, petty, and small. he sun rise and

set? i don't know the -- why does the -- i don't know the answer. it's definitely an raging. your dad understands this. people understand this. i will leave it to you to say more. their justification -- i know what the legal justification is. the justification is, gosh darn it, we need to padlock these things to secure the property. from who? >> lawyers and the pentagon last week deemed 4000 more people essential and had them come back to work. what on earth is causing this inability to break the wires on these barricades and move them aside? >> certainly, i think this administration has taken a very broad reading of what it can and cannot do. this is a very weird case for them to finally say gosh, we do , not have the authority. we will have to shut it down. >> i know what you're talking

about. i have seen that. to see that behavior, against citizens who were just touring open air memorials is mean- spirited. and that sort of mean-spirited behavior of a government towards its people is absolutely unacceptable. when you realize it was a decision that was made. no law tells them they have to close those memorials. in previous shutdowns they were not closed. on top of that, look at the purpose of these memorials in contrast with their behavior. it is deeply, deeply troubling. i leave it to andrew and others to find legal remedies. we should make it clear that this is unacceptable. and in any future government shutdown, the park service or whoever is responsible for taking care of these public places cannot behave in this manner. >> it time for one or two more

questions. >> it seems like a common thread shutting down the monuments. -- the eisenhower memorial in particular and the shutting down in general. and that is an elite that does not care about the rest of us. a political elites who do not think that monuments mean anything or do not care. it shows extraordinary detachment from the people who elected them. and then aesthetically, -- aesthetic elite or artistic that keep trying to push monuments on us that most people do not understand and do not like. they are so toned deaf to the 99% of the rest of us, it really is extraordinary. i'm curious if you share that perception and what do you make of it? >> i think one of the things that has not been taken into account on the folks trying to build the eisenhower memorial is the tremendous groundswell of

outrage. it is all over, conservative and liberal papers. big town publications, small towns. it is just huge. i think what has happened with the eisenhower memorial is there is a determination to move ahead with the plan pretty much unaltered. my view as a commissioner is the situation would be much improved by listening a little bit more, and listening to this criticism and showing a sense of accommodation. after all, it does not look like there will be any private money raised for this. so far, not much has been raised and i do not think there is any requirement in the legislation that talks about raising private money. so, this is not the staff memorial. this is not the commissioners' memorial.

this is the people's's memorial. i think as wide range of opinion should be listened to and accommodated. and we will have a much better memorial. >> and showing respect and deference to the subject. >> yes. >> it is not as though we do not know what the white the eisenhower thought about architecture and style -- he preferred classicism. d eisenhower. one last question. >> on the way over here, i -- honoring -- happened to walk through the park honoring general daniel green and there is a public notice board. on that it is announced this facility is closed due to the government shutdown of the national park service. not only did i commit civil disobedience by walking through the park, but there were 30 toddlers with their mothers openly recreating --

[laughter] on this closed facility. it strikes me we have to laugh at the stupid policy and try to do something. >> right. thank you all for coming. i think bruce -- thank bruce and andrew for being here. appreciate it. [applause] we stand adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> this morning, a house hearing on how the government shutdown is affecting the national park service, being held jointly by the natural resources committee and oversight committee. live coverage at 9:30 a.m. eastern on c-span3 and www.c- span.org. >> every weekend since 1998, c- shown overktv has 40,000 hours of programming with top nonfiction authors. answer.ught that is the

if there were more women in politics, across public life am a more women in power on wall street, that would change. "whyd i would write a book woman should world -- rule the world." arell in the working class subjected to punitive taxes, being ignored by the elite media, not getting any kind of special interest held in washington like the fat cats. we are all in that same boat, no matter what color we are. national the only television network devoted exclusively to nonfiction books. throughout the fall, we are marking 15 years of booktv on c- span2. house democratic leaders met with the president yesterday at the white house to talk about the government shutdown and the debt ceiling. after the meeting, they spoke with reporters for about 15 minutes. it begins with minority leader nancy pelosi. >> good afternoon.

a beautiful afternoon. we have the privilege of having a conversation with the president about the looming deadline. we are still optimistic there's a path to lift the debt ceiling in time. we are pleased with the work done thus far, but we have heard legislation is being prepared in the united states senate. we are disappointed the house republicans decided to sabotage or delay what was happening there, but we are hopeful that everybody knows time is of the essence and if the republicans in the house want to put up a bill, they should do it soon. they have to know, it has has been described, they have to do that with 100% republican votes. we stand ready and members have signed letters, petitions to open government, that we are therefore a clean petition to

a clean petition to open government, clean legislation to open government, clean legislation to lift the debt ceiling that will take us on the path to the budget table where any and all issues can be discussed. so, that is where we are. i'm optimistic. i believe because of the impact of not lifting the debt ceiling -- alone, actually. not lifting the debt ceiling is so catastrophic there will be those in the republican party who will see the light. if they pass it on, they will need 100% republican votes. with that, i would like to yield to thed to mr. hoyer.ed whip, >> thank you. obviously, we want to make sure

that america pays its bills. we spoke with the president. those objectives have the overwhelming if not unanimous support of our caucus. we have a letter that is signed on the debt limit and we are unanimous on opening up government. those are our two major objectives. we have 48 hours to make sure our country remains solvent and paying its debts and to make sure our workers get back to work on behalf of the american people. i agree with the leader that the republican conference wants to offer -- we have not seen text yet -- it has other things in it. one of which we think is very, very damaging to the united states of america, and that is taking away from the president and the secretary of the treasury the ability to manage the payment of our debt so we remain a zero percent risk creditor. with that, let me yield to my friend jim clyburn, the assistant leader. >> thank you.

the last hour has been very, very productive. i hope the next several hours will be as such. i find it kind of interesting that much of the discussion we have been hearing for the last several weeks has been the idea that we can maintain the full faith and credit of the united states of america by prioritizing how we address the debt. now all of a sudden, from what we are hearing, legislation is being brought forward to take away the ability held by the president and the secretary of the treasury to manage our debt and deficits. that is just absolutely be worst possible thing that can be done. we are very interested in a

clean continuing resolution. a clean debt limit. and we can supply the vast majority of the democratic caucus to get that done. we are hopeful the speaker will allow such legislation to come to the floor, and we commit to him and the american people that democrats will be solid in support of that effort. >> on obamacare, the house republicans are talking about consolidating a bigger amendment andtter amendment, including staff in that as well, something i know a lot of democrats and republicans have proposed. your statement about not having any democratic votes -- does that stand if they do that amendment, taking away the

health benefits of members? >> let me just take a crack at that. let me reiterate. we are 48 hours -- the 15th day of a shutdown where government workers have been precluded from serving those who are trying to get veterans benefits, those who want to get on social security, those who want to go into our parks. we are two days from not being able to manage our debt and stay nation.isk the extraneous things the republicans are talking about do not serve our nation. what the leader and i are saying is our members are prepared to cooperate fully in getting those two things done. then we can talk about other things. but we need to move on those and we need to move on them now them and we are hopeful the speaker we are very pleased with what has happened in the senate. the senate has been working

together in a bipartisan way to try to get to an agreement. i'm sorry that that bill has not been sent over to us, but there will be time to chat about other matters once we get the government open and pay our bills. >> how confident are you you can keep your democrats together, that you will not lose any democrat supporting the gop proposal in the house now? >> we're pretty confident. let me say why. this full faith and credit -- if we take any proposals they have had, and they have had an assortment of proposals they would say the full faith and credit of the united states of america is less than our doing a cheap shot on the bill. but here it is. at the whole world is watching. this is the global consequence. we are the united states of america.

the against economy in the world. we want to have our credit rating -- we want to have our credit rating downgraded. we want to pay more for the money we need to borrow to conduct the government. we have engaged these expenses. we have to honor the commitment to pay for them. if you don't appreciate the global and national consequences of that at the boardroom table and the international global table, if it doesn't resonate with you, just think of america's kitchen table. kitchen table. kitchen tables where people have to pay more for their interest on loans, for student loans, mortgages, credit card bills, small business owners have to pay more interest on their business loans. so, your interest will go up and your 401(k) will go down. anybody here have a 401(k)? do you check it from time to time? this is what is at stake here and how it directly affects people over and above the bigger

picture. our members understand we are here to do something big and consequential for our country. already we have had the opportunity cost of time when we should be creating jobs. that is why we are eager to go to the budget table. that is why the senate bill that says to lift the debt ceiling, open government and go to the budget table appeals to us. i would rather have a senate bill or our bill that says we will extend the debt ceiling for a full year. i do not think a few months is enough. obviously that is where their comfort level is. we accept that. we will have strong, strong democratic support. i say again -- if the speaker puts all of these extraneous to question the full faith of the united states of

america, he is going to have to have his own votes to do it. >> the senate has ground to a halt. there is not more work on the senate bill. why are you optimistic? that it will get resolved in the next 48 hours? >> the only thing i would say in response to that is the only bipartisan conversations going on where in the united states senate between republicans and democrats. so you have to ask why did they stall? they stalled because of this deliberate effort in the house, started by the tea party caucus, and once again speaker boehner has allowed that part of his caucus to run the show. so, what we need -- what ever happens with this legislation, which is not bipartisan, they need to get back to the table at the united states senate and work out an agreement. i would just say with respect to some of these extraneous provisions, we have always said

we are prepared to make adjustments to the affordable care act. we are happy to discuss any issues that are in the republican budget and the democratic budget at the negotiating table where we have been trying to go since last march and have been blocked. what we are not prepared to do is accept these unrelated extraneous measures under the threat of continued government shutdown and the threat of not paying our bills on time. and i will lastly say, imagine the president of the united states said to house republicans that he was going to veto the debt ceiling bill. that he was going to refuse to pay the nation's bills on time unless the house republicans adopted his budget or his jobs land. plan.s you all know it would say the president had lost his mind. but that is exactly what house republicans continue to try to do even as the clock ticks down to default. >> [indiscernible]

why are you optimistic? >> i believe -- i think what we are all saying is in the united states senate reason will prevail once they recognize the house republican proposal is not going to go anywhere at the end of the day. >> i do believe there are two possibilities here. one it passes most of the senate -- it passes, goes to the senate and they send something back. not pass. i think it is a little frivolous more than frivolous, reckless to put a bill on the floor like that when markets are watching what is happening here. but nonetheless, maybe the speaker needs to have -- let or sow their oats, whatever the expression happens to be. and once they have had that opportunity, sanity will prevail. then perhaps we can take up the senate bill and send that over or the senate can send it back.

but i think he had to give his folks one last chance to resist. that's unfortunate because time is ticking and it takes a while to gear up the full faith and credit, to continue the full faith and credit, as well as restore confidence that maybe ebbing because the clock is ticking. >> what did the president say to you? >> leader pelosi, have you explained the urgency given the fact that some republicans have suggested it is an artificial deadline? what should americans be bracing for when they wake up october 17? they may not witness changes overnight. >> please, already the rating -- we are talking about something so catastrophic. already the rating agencies are saying what will happen to our credit rating. if you were a businessman -- perhaps you are a small businessman -- with the affordable care act, you can be self-employed, start your own business. and the rest. but in any event, would you

decide to have your lender charge you more interest? that would be stupid. this would be stupid. i don't believe -- and why i have confidence is, i have a little more confidence and my -- in my colleagues that they would understand this is -- you can shut down government, and that is a bad thing. and you can have it shut down for 15 days and that is a bad thing. but you undermine the full faith and credit of the united states of america, that is a very hard thing to get back. it does have major consequences and -- and you saw what happened to the market. when they reneged on the talks. it went down 175 points. just as the republicans were not voting for it. again, it is sanity. i have confidence and i am optimistic because i believed at the end of the day they will do the right thing even if they have to do contortions to get to that place. that is unfortunate because it

does not inspire confidence, but the fact is, they have to get there. >> did the president ask you to do anything specific -- did the medical devices tax,? -- any specific strategy you would buy into, and the issue of postponing the medical devices tax, did it come up? >> i don't like to have a conversation unless you promise not to tell anyone about what transpired in the oval office. those somebody have something they want to say about the -- some of my colleagues may have something to say about it? >> not on that question anyway. >> we are very proud of our leadership. i hope you saw him on tv on saturday with that line about -- of people going in there to sign the petition to open government and the which was historic. to have a clean lifting of the debt ceiling. we have a very unified caucus. thanks to our leadership -- and

you heard from mr. van hollen, the chair, the bice chair, -- crwoleyr becerra, joe behind me, and mr. steve israel. we have a number of new yorkers here. and we are proud of our caucus. we are proud of our president. no negotiations on the full faith and credit of the united states of america. let's go to the budget table two to negotiate the rest. >> it sounds like in the end you are trusting john boehner two, in your mind, do the right thing and put a clean bill on the floor. do you trust john boehner will not let the country default? >> i don't know what the sequencing of it is, but yes. i don't know what order it will be, but yes. >> people saying there will be a vote tonight to reopen the government?

>> of the bill they are talking about right now is a bill to default. make no mistake. the bill republicans are putting on the floor today is a decision to default. once they get over that, we will see what they send to the floor. thank you all. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> on the 16th day of the government shutdown, negotiations over reopening the federal government and raising the debt ceiling continue. the house gavel in at 10:00 a.m. eastern. here on c-span. on c-span2, live coverage of the senate begins at noon. money, thean3 this house natural resources committee has a hearing on the effect of the shutdown on national parks. and in about 45 minutes,

virginia congressman scottrigell, then congressman tim ryan of ohio and a cnbc reporter on how wall street views the government shutdown. host: good morning, everyone. senate leaders are scrambling to find a deal to avert the government shutdown after gop scuttled to plans from leadership yesterday. as the debt ceiling looms for avoiding the government default, which is thursday at midnight, all eyes on this and it -- senate chamber waiting for details to emerge this morning. we will get your thoughts on what happens next. ,epublicans (202) 737-0001