we could build more life boats to care of all the people who will be displaced because of this disaster system we had in place. in other words, the answer to the persistently mental ill is not only to treat them but to prevent people from becoming severe and persistently mental ill. to liken it to diabetes. we are all about discussing how to conduct more amputations. as opposed to getting people the kind of primary care that will catch their being early candidates for diabetes and trading them aggressively early on so that they never have to develop the symptoms that necessitates such draconian responses.

i appreciate the fact that so many people after the lack of follow through on president kennedy's correct vision, he talked about more research and come up with better therapies. he talked about community-based care. at the end of the day, people want to live with their families and in their community, not in institutions. to get there, the money never went from the institutions to provide the needed care in the community. if you look at the most successful aot connection, one makes it so successful is there are the funding mechanisms to sit or keep will in their community. there is no kind of quick fix.

we need a comprehensive approach. we need to tell the american people what we are talking about. we're not talking about mental health. we are talking about treating every american the way we would treat them if they had cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma, any other illness. if we truly change our mindset and think about this in the same way we would any other health care, a lot of these problems go away. why? we will start paying for them. i am on lipitor. i have been on lipitor for 15 years. why are they worried about me having a stroke in my 60's. i was in my 30's when i was first put on lipitor. why are we taking that same mentality in terms of mental health? you look at my face you know i'm

going to have skin cancer because iparty had it. they say when have you been to the dermatologist recently. you've got me. you got me. jeff was talking about screening. i call it a checkup from the neck up. why don't we have every physician's visit contain a check up from the neck up? mental health is not something you have to go down the hall to drink from the colored water fountain. no one wants that separate but not so equal system of care. that is what mental health is today. it is the separate and unequal system. we want mental health as part of overall health care. the last thing i will say is i think the way for us to achieve this in trying to do together this bill is to monitor the federal government's implementation of the mental health parity act so that

centers of medicare and medicaid will have more say than others ever will on where the dollars a mental health will go. i would like to see them follow the federal law. imagine the federal government having to follow their own law. if the department of labor is going to oversee the plan because over half the health care is being delivered in the private sector or, why not have a better monitoring clarity and ensuring that they treat the "invisible wounds of war" the same way we would treat their visible wounds. both are killing them. why frankly, the invisible wounds are costing more soldiers lives than the visible ones. my view is this is all about framing the issue. i appreciate the work that

everyone is doing in this still to try to do that. this is a very important time in the history of this movement to get it right. there is a lock on the line, not the least of which is our returning heroes who will not only use the public system but they will be employees and our fortune 100, 500, and small business companies all across this country. we better get it right. not only for those of us who have a mental illness like myself or an addiction like myself, but for our returning heroes. i am glad to be here and look forward to the discussion. >> thank you very much. thank you to aei for sponsoring this it is an honor to be here and to support representative murphy on his bill.

i've been following this for over 40 years. the problems have gotten progressively worse. it is an equal opportunity disaster. we have had the passage of the cmhc bill. we have had the five democrat presidents. no president has understood the problem. these are brain diseases we are talking about. nothing has been done. we had two presidential commissions. we have had 15-25 members of congress that had severely mentally ill people in their family. we have had things like the insurance parity. parity did a lot for a lot of people but it did very little for people with severe mental illness. provisions and murphy is the first member of congress to take on serious mental illness and

try to propose serious solutions to this. i think we're all obligated for that. is that a difficult problem? you bet it will be. there are 3.59 million people with untreated illness today. that is the same of the population of san francisco and oakland put together. these are not just numbers. there is an acute shortage of psychiatric that. no one is saying we need to go back to where we were in 1958. we have effectively closed one million public psychiatric bed state hospitals. ev project on the same number of people for population. there is one million will who a

year ago would have been in psychiatric hospitals. where are they now? tuesday we will be releasing a new read more from the center of the number of mentally ill will on state prisons and jails. the numbers about 350,000. what we have left in the state hospitals as we have 35,000. we have 10 times more people in our jails and we have in the mental hospitals. we have at least 200,000 homeless. that is a conservative number. you have 350 thousand people who are in jails and prisons. they -- were prisons and murphy had hearings on wednesday asking where have all these people gone. there are 600,000 of them are in here. that is where they have gone. these are not just numbers. these are people. these are people who have

mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. i get a print out every day of the reports from around the united states and what is going on. last week seth boyer was on. homeless. he refused to take his medicine. he is probably unaware of his illness. he told his parents that he sometimes slept in trash bins. he was found dead, compacted in the trash bin where he had been picked up. these are tragedies that happen every day. we have about 10% of our 13,000 homicides a year that are committed by people with severe, untreated mental illness. about 50% of the mass killings are committed by people with severe mental wellness who are untreated. our emergency rooms are now overrun in terms of where it the 400,000 people are.

it is a huge problem in the emergency rooms. it is getting worse. last year and south carolina a man with severe mental illness was stuck in the emergency room for 36 days waiting for a bed. until recently we thought 36 hours was a long time to wait. we are now at 236 days. every going to go to 36 months? at what part we start to turn this around? police and sheriffs are overwhelmed with the number of severely mental ill, increase in justifiable homicides. this is just the data, about half of the people who are killed by sheriffs and police are severely mental ill. some are suicide by cop. this is getting worse.

individuals have taken over many of the public spaces, parks, playgrounds, bus stations, etc.. we did a survey of librarians. a staff member have been assaulted by a mentally ill patron. many of the public libraries have become day programs. the other thing that has amazed me over the years, because i follow the politics of this town, and this is a hugely expensive problem that i do not always expect the democrats to pay too much attention to. almost nobody has picked it up. the federal medicaid and medicare are among the most rapidly growing segment of the federal budget. medicaid, people with mental illness are 11% of the beneficiaries that rep resents 30% of the cost ssd i tripled between 1980 and 2010.

28 percent had a diagnosis. they are the largest and fastest-growing group of beneficiaries. the problem is huge. this is costly in terms of dollar. what he has proposed is a very good start. he has many different areas on it. you can live in the community for as long as you take your medicine. you do not know that you are sick. we know you have been dangerous. let me stress only a small number people need to be here. those who do need to be on it really need to be on it. it is a marvelous functioning.

five states have shown that studies in new york and north carolina have shown that it decreases the incarceration. increases episodes of violence. it decreases costs. that is coming out this month show that when you keep people on medication you decrease the cost. this is demonstration projects. i think it is going to become very clear how important this has been on it. sam sat is probably the least there. i've been around for 40 years. i'm constantly amazed at how dysfunctional some of the agencies are. i think samsa is in a class all

by itself. this bill attempts to bring them into the 21st century. what it will work or not i am not sure. it is worth a try. it increases the role. it is one of the few people in washington who really understands this problem is that the best leadership we have had today. anything we can do to get him more involved in this problem. let me just thank representative murphy for taking this on. we are obligated to him. what he is doing is very important and deserves our support. thank you. [applause] >> we have a good amount of time for q&a. we have two folks going around microphones. one thing i will mention. mr. murphy just went through a tour de force of his bill.

one of the many important elements i've seen is the provision that would work with the criminal justice system, to educate law enforcement and sheriffs about mental illness on how to manage these folks into the treatment system and not into the criminal justice system. too often these are front-line professionals. in the case of the washington navy yard shooting, in retrospect everything is 2020. and may have made the fatal difference in his case. they visited him in the hotel room and may not have management that diminishes as much as they might have. it is a very important aspect. i'm sorry. there were hands? gentleman in the red tie. >> i share your illness. i too am a democrat.

>> i am with mental wellness policy. i am a hard-core democrat. i have found on the issues of the serious mentally ill that the republican party is a lot better, mr. murphy in particular. my own party is willing to throw money at mental health unwilling to admit the politically incorrect things that need to be done to help the most seriously ill. you talked about prevention. there's no way to prevent schizophrenia or bipolar. we do not know how to do it. you talked about early intervention. we do not know how to identify someone with schizophrenia before they come up with the systems. we do not know how. you talked about arisa> i can talk about the number people with schizophrenia who have non-subsidized what is it that my own party

will not address? >> not to get polarizing here, the one thing we cannot work to do in our field is to not work together we have more in common than we have separates us here? i think we absolutely need to do more. that has what i've been talking to tim on this legislation. i think identifying the role how -- the real health in the room, there is a problem of reinstitutionalization in our emergency room's and prisons. i think for us to retreat from the program that the program, which i salute tim for highlighting, the notion

the notion that we can't do early intervention, if you intervene on the first instance of psychosis, you can dramatically reduce the pathology of that illness if you intervene early. everybody knows that. to say that we are not going to put in place a system of care that responds to you with mental illness the same way we would with diabetes, we treatment for illness until you have to get the amputation. we don't pay. we would not say to someone with cancer come back when you have stage four cancer. that is how we reimburse month will illness today. we are in a historic time. we re-incentivize payment. paying for these

primary and secondary levels of care, my contention is you're not going to have as many tertiary levels of care. would to say about this politically is i don't think we are irreconcilable here. we have to deal with the mentally ill. we have to reorient the system so that we don't create so many of them. age, we are at a moment in time to change the system so that while we are treating those people who are so sick we are also preventing others from ending in that situation. i agree with you. is there a vacuum of leadership? you bet. that is what we are here to discuss. >> let me comment on that. thank you so much for your

support. reagan said this is not an issue of the left or right. that is what it comes down to. i have not seen a division among my colleagues on dealing with these issues. we were drawn together in friendship because of our common desire to do something. 1960's, reagan was the governor of california. there was a movement to caught -- close hospitals. another friend was saying we have people there against their will and they don't have their rights. storm. this imperfect

are some group to talk about the rights of patients. people have a right to get well. -- thiswhere the kits gets misinterpreted. that sometimes people are there with late stage cancer and they say it is time. is not even well and they can't make a decision, they don't know what planet they're on or who they are, how can you say they can make a decision. we have them die with their rights on. impassioned comments from somebody who runs a homeless center in washington dc. of them have no idea that they have a mental illness. we have to talk about giving people the right to get better and treatment.

i want them to get better. let them have this option to be healthy. the stigma that comes with mental illness is the idea that it cannot be treated. we show the main plots and give them drugs and then sit on a couch and talk about their relationship with their mother. that does not happen. we make them better. then we can have people talk about the right to go back to work and the right to live independently. ae right to say hello to policeman. what patrick says is so on target. of we can do this early. just the point. you treat somebody early, you don't have to use as much medication. of the side effects unnerves people.

if you treat this early, you won't have the need of the same level. you won't wait for the illness to pathology eyes. there might be greater compliance. you don't tell them to court order, they will be able to live ablenderstand that this is to integrate this into their lives. you will have much better results in the long term that if we try to have the government micromanage people with mental illness. this tillman. -- this gentleman. >> thank you and all the panel. officer, withical that are forces standing down after 13 years of continuous redeployments in these wars, would you address

the necessity for more varied and out-of-the-box treatments but also a cultural imperative to eliminate stigma that can be .ttached to ptsd we have units coming back home and they will need to decompress and reintegrate into civilian society. we need to treated early and treated effectively so that they don't wind up going a full blown into the system. it helps the society and our economy. >> now i am putting on my navy hat. i'm not authorized to make statements based on the department of defense. let me tell you what i see. been along a stigma among the armed service members against seeking treatment. they saw it as something that would lead to a loss of right or

opportunity in the military. sometimes it lead to discharges. they were afraid to talk. not goought they would into battle or get bad writeups. post dramatic stress is identifiable. you can treated. we have to remove the internal stigma. many generals and admirals have done work on this. thet of this needs to go to level of the noncommissioned officers. the best thing i have heard from a patient i saw at walter reed , i was askingrine he saidt his symptoms, a fascinating thing. he said his gunnery sergeant would tell them if you have a

twisted ankle and you're going outside and you don't tell us, you will get somebody killed. if you have a twisted brain that day, you will get somebody killed and speak up. we will get both of them fixed. that is a kind of attitude that we need. there is not enough providers within the department of defense. we don't have enough providers who have more experience. they are often young people out of medical school and their residency. they are dedicated people. they are led by some brave officers. they don't have enough years of experience. when it comes down to is having more of those. there needs to be a transition between when they leave the service and when they get into the v.a. system. when they are with their units

and after duty, to go back to their fort. they have those groups the can work with them. when they go to the reserve base, their unit is dispersed. they don't have that. it is going to be a lot more work. we can do more with training civilians on handling ptsd. people have a choice of this. a person who has experienced severe combat, i can't imagine. i have not been it. they have a choice to be a betim because it will always underneath and hold them back. sad to think of them living in their mothers a basement and playing video games. the second choices they can be a survivor. despite what happened to them, they can move forward. i am going to have these

thoughts sometimes. the third choice is they can become a forever. they can turn this into a source of strength. they have been through what they have been through and they are stronger and faster and smarter. they can teach other people how to handle it. they can say this is a source to make me a better person. there been people traumatized by combat and shellshocked. it is only in the last decade or so that we begin to address that. this is part of what i see our assistant secretary doing. the v.a. can get up to snuff of where it needs to be. we don't have to have everybody doing it on their own. service doesof the not treat dia but -- diabetes differently.

you don't deliver babies different. what we do the same thing with mental health? i want to make to follow-up comments. the military has taken civil war , world wars one and two, vietnam, it is taken them a few wars to realize that there are consulates all -- psychological consequences to war. we need to also be honest and candid. our understanding of ptsd and how stress affects the brain, it is relatively normal and then and a span of an ied explosion

or repeated tours of duty, it it is irrevocably changed. pathology or the genetic vulnerability. effective.nts are they are better than nothing, but they are far from optimal. a lot more has to go into understanding this. i want to see a diagnosis. i want to see a way of diagnosing this. peoples a suspicion that malingerer. i think that is a very unkind thing to say. that is a reality. there needs to be a better understanding of the condition as well as addressing the manifest need.

forms.ion comes in many we know that somebody is at risk for heart disease. the mentally ill, we us to put people in sanitary it. we are not going to have these needs for these programs were people progressed that far in the illness if we do things the way we can. the other side of the coin is when people are getting their i married care, we need this integrated care model. mental-health needs to rejoin the medicine. friday, we are holding a

at the national press club on integrated care. a comprehensive report on the model of care and the economic consequences and the effects and outcomes would occur. as i was saying before, there are different populations did need mental health care. they are seen in different places and different clinical venues. we need to be thinking about approaches to deal with them in all of these respects. the military is another one that is a specialized venue and population with the same body of knowledge that requires an adapted set of services. >> other questions? there is a gentleman in the corner.

i have a question for the congressman. law, people who are in the justice system, when a judge orders competence checkups and when they're are put to that test in our prisons when they're under arrest, that can turn them crazy as well. as a doctor, you may know the procedure. it seems our justice system is turning a lot of people crazy. is there anyway you can address that? >> i think by the time a person is involved in a major crime tom such as a felony assault or murder, it is too late to do something.

ist happens in some states the justice system changes what they do. -- the second largest psychiatric facility is a jail. cases,ppens in some someone is picked up for shoplifting at a local big box store. stoley soul -- somebody $29 with sheets. he was prosecuted. he sat in jail and ran up a cost case6,000. a judge said dismissed and he was back on the streets. nobody had provided treatment for him. in the case of the navy yard shooter, he came before the police.

he shot somebody's tires. he thought a woman on an airplane was reading his mind. he thought his microwave was talking to him. i would guess those policeman did not know what to do. they thought this was just a guy who is talking to his mic way. he had been twice to the va hospital because he said he did not sleep. we don't know if he ever saw a psychiatrist there. that probably was not the case. there is a long list of failures of the system. i was disappointed when the only thing that the dod concluded was that it would have been prevented if they had done a better job of a security background check. they should have identified when he was in the navy that he needed treatment. don't give him an honorable discharge.

some areas will have a mental health court. they will work with the system. the judge knows what to do. heard from a chief of police and we don't want the people to go to jail. -- he did not know where he was. he wandered into a home and thought it was his. he needs to be in treatment. he needs to be medicated. he needs to see a therapist. he'll be much better off than where he is going to be put into jail. jails, some of these victims are assaulted. they can be more aggressive. they are given more sedation and put in isolation. they have not committed a crime that is worthy of being in solitary confinement. it gets worse.

onwant to ramp up awareness how to handle that. i want to say this for the audience. pitts has announced that they are going to have a hearing on this bill. that will be this thursday. it is very important. i am going to be there. i hope america is watching. i hope people write their congressmen and tell them to be a cosponsor. i am saying that because that is a major issue. that is moving forward. we have time for one last question. one last question. sir. i am curious how the panel

feels about the increase in medicaid coverage for individuals with a positive impact. how will it affect the in lille? -- how will it affect the mentally ill? it is not enough to say we are going to cover more people with medicaid. will there be parity in the youes? you can't just say have insurance company if there is no psychiatrist or social worker to see them. what if a hospital does not have beds? we've heard of children that have been tied to beds for several days. medicaid is not just the answer. there has to be treatment.

there has to be support service of the will. i am amazed at the number of volunteers that work with people. effectives have found using peer support and people who ever covered from their mental illness and are doing well. that can be great support for someone. those are the fundamental changes that we need to make. just medicaid won't be enough. we have to tear down the other barriers as well. >> i would echo that comment that it is a step. it is far from being adequate. medicaid reimbursement is at the lower level of the reimbursement spectrum in terms of third-party payment. medicaid is really managed to stay. each state determines how it is do it.o

intoaid is being converted managed care process. waysstate is going through as they try to deal with how they will control their own medicaid costs and how they will administer programs. the third thing is even if you have a payment system that is , itle for the states depends on the services being in place and going to accept these people. the number of beds and a number of providers has been eroded systematically over the last two to three decades. the infrastructure is not really adequate. process, a financing although that is the lever of change. it needs to be a re-configuration of the health care to livery system.

>> i want to thank the people out there who are providing help rid they are often underpaid and undervalued in what they do. people are phenomenal and what they give as providers. to provide more of this. many people are suffering as patients and family members who are looking for a way out of this and looking for a way to hope. it will take a united courage from all this. >> i am for the expansion of the imd exclusion. here is the thing. it is a violation of parity. i want to find the nexus

point for us to take this issue to the next level. i think the parity thing you becomes like, law. we need a process that can start to share best practices. people will pay for something they can be demonstrated to be effective. this is a deliverable. sure that they become standardized forms of care and that it is not a million conferences before you nail down the lead spot in terms of therapy. i think we can accelerate this through cms. the private sector has put off

on everybody. if we can figure out a way to show them that this is a value for them to provide these services early, you get more cost sharing and saving sharing. i think that will resonate here at aei. >> we thank all of you for coming. this was an excellent panel. i am optimistic with all of this passion and the growing interest on the hill that things may get better for the mentally ill. [applause] take you so much.

>> there've been allegations and insinuations that i knew about the planning of the watergate break-in and that i was involved the plot to cover it up. judiciary committee is investigating these charges. 6, i will give all of my materials turned over to the committee. these are take recordings of 19 documentsons and 700 from private files. the judiciary committee

subpoenaed 42 additional tapes of conversations. i agreed to respond to that subpoena. nixonyears ago, president responded to a subpoena for extra watergate tapes. , sunday night on american history tv on c-span3. a discussion on challenges faced by national security whistleblowers. speakers include daniel ellsberg. here is part of what he said. snowden look at these , he realized he had to

be out of the country if he was going to put out this amount of information and be able to tell what he had done and why. 40 years ago, i was able to speak. i was out unveil. -- i was out on bail. snowden would not of been allowed to do that. he would have been in isolation like chelsea manning for the rest of his life. no journalist has spoken to chelsea manning. -- journalist has spoken to chelsea manning. no interviews, no nothing. they won't, either. they won't be able to. snowden had to be out of the country.

he learned that you need to put out a lot of documents and need to be current. reason that makes a whistleblower, it's hard to do. people knew the secrets in you the truth. new that these involve life or death matters on which lives -- lies were being told. the truth could make a great difference but they did not speak out. we have to change the culture of secrecy. would you change the benefit of the doubt that is given to politicians and the president. the idea thatomas

the president should be the last represents a kind of culpable endurance at this point unless you are 16 years old. if you have lived through any of these things, these people do not deserve the benefit of the doubt at this point. behind the veil of secrecy, extremely bad and disastrous policymaking goes on. this is without accountability. we learned this from the pentagon papers and snowden. if we got the iraq papers, which we still don't have, there would have been a number of leaks. the decision-making is very bad. stupid,t only criminal, it is not subjected to a larger debate, even within the government or congress.

the freeze in the constitution is not obsolete, it was a good idea and it is still a good idea, it has to be defended people started with two presidents and their minions and people of the press. after 9/11, we have a new kind of threat. we really need a different form of government. we have no choice but to leave it up to the present to tell us. >> you can see this discussion on whistleblowers tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. during this month, c-span is presenting winning entries into

the student document or a competition. this is an annual competition that encourages students to think critically about issues. the question we give students is what is the most important issue congress should consider in 2014? phifer believes congress's biggest issue should begun control. i turned to the reception walking a woman was down the hallway. her eyes were as big as saucers. she whispered to me, there is a man here with a gun and he started shooting. he shot carol. he turned and he was right by me.

he shot me. theought he punched me with gun. that is what it felt like. i thought he is occupied and i can get out. i started running out. i tried to run on tip toes so he could not hear me. -- coworker pam at was dead. it looked like she had a big bloody hole in the middle of her chest. her eyes are open. .here was a swat team some of them crouched. they were all pointing big long guns and they were shouting a run, run. they got me into a paramedic van. that was the last thing a river. we urgently need congress to

address the epidemic of gun violence in this nation. >> the availability of guns is so high. available they are, the more they will be used. my fear is it will only get worse and not better. >> if you have a licensed firearm, you have to go through a background check. that takes a certain amount of time. makehows allow people to sales between individuals with no checking whatsoever. an estimated 6.6 million gun transactions occurred without a background check. >> congress needs to pass a national standard, uniform, universal background checks.

everyone will be safer and we have safety across state lines. >> criminals break laws. >> background checks work. they stopped 2 million per head of purchasers. we have a back rent check system in place. extending it to all firearms purchased and easily be of limited. it should be. show loophole gun , iore a gun is transferred can't think of something that would make our country safer than doing just that. >> congress should have a universal background check trying to buy a gun. the gays are 54 the nays are

46. the amendment is not agreed to. >> i will speak plainly and honestly about what is happened here. the american people are trying to figure out how something that has 90% support and not happen. the gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about it. checks areckground aimed at one thing. it is aimed at registering your gun. that registry will be used to confiscate your gun. >> they claimed it would create a gun registry. the bill did the opposite. this legislation outlawed any registry. to supporta used expanded background checks. the currently hear the nra used to support background checks. >> it is reasonable to have in-state background checks for every sale at every gun show.

no loopholes anywhere for anyone. support akraml checks at gun shows? >> if you are a dealer that is the law. >> i'm not trying to play games. if you could say some of the congressman gun control, what would you say? >> i would ask them to step into my shoes. responsibly, raising money for the community and i get up one day from my desk and i had a gun pointed at my face. >> didn't have all the theoretical discussions you want, you can live in a fantasy world if you want to would suggest that the more people who have guns the safer we are, i live in the real world. guns are dangerous. we need to be more serious about them. they represent all of us.

the changeing that does not start with one law. the public wants to make this a priority. we need to hold people accountable. >> when people are affected by something, they demand change. that is what a started to happen now. people get to that tipping point where they have had enough, that is when the culture changes. >> the laws become a change in culture. we need to say this is unacceptable. >> we have a sleeping giant that has been awakened the. whoe are people out there are passionate about this and demanding action. they are not going to back down anymore. old will not take the answers.

if are getting organized. >> we can still bring about meaningful changes so long as the american people don't give up on it. >> i have more hope now that i ever have. the people the congress loudernts are demanding voices and more organization. is not going to be an issue. watch all the winning videos and learn more about the competition, go to c-span.org. tell us what you think about the issues this student wants congress to consider. computersembedding into our environment. smartphone to be

a trademark example of becoming human sensors. we are carrying around an extremely powerful computer. of radiothe form frequency identification readers. easy pass. we have sensors that are all around us. surveillance cameras collect data and send that somewhere else. this is all part of the internet of things. this is the embedding of computers into our real world. tucker on a world that anticipate your every need. our book club selection is big west, the wrong war. -- bing west, the wrong war.

poetmer gang member turned will be on book tv this weekend. live on c-span, "washington journal" is next. >> at 7:15 p.m. eastern, new jersey governor chris christie is a speaker at the annual chamber of congress -- chamber of commerce congressional dinner. coming up in 45 minutes, a look at how deficits affect the budget. 8:30 eastern, nina olson

discusses the need for more oversight of tax preparers. 9:15, robert baker on the political process and the 2014 elections. is next.on journal" you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. host: good morning, everyone. president obama travels to washington state to view the devastation from the recent mudslides and be with families and first responders. following his visit, he would take off for japan, his first stop on a tour of asian countries. for coverage of the president in washington state today on c-span.org. on the domestic side, we will begin with the u.s.