talk about something that is unpopular with the american people, it is this. about a year ago, the president put out rules limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants, power plants they were being constructed. the epa is applying tight new limits on the omission of existing power plants, plants that were already there producing energy. the administration said it is going to allow states flexibility in how they meet the new limits. that any of the flexibility being offered is just an illusion. states will have a severely limited number of options for what they can do to meet the standards. every one of those options are going to raise the cost of energy for american families. won't evenconsumers

get the allusion of flexibility. they will get higher energy costs. businesses are going to have to find ways to pay for their own higher bills, because it will not just be families when they turn on the light switch that will get a higher electric bill. electricity rate will necessarily skyrocket. businesses will have to find ways to pay for their higher layingcosts, which means people off, passing on the cost to others. chamber of the u.s. commerce says that an aggressive policy targeting coal-fired power plants will be to less disposable income for families and thousands of jobs lost. families have less disposable income, thousands of jobs lost, we just learned last week that the economy shrank by 1% in the last quarter. the united states economy shrank . it is the first time in years that the economy shrank by 1%.

the first time it happened since -- since it happened in 2011. our labor force is the same as when jimmy carter was president. the obama administration wants to put more americans out of work. the action they are taking today is the height of irresponsibility and really, mr. president, it is tone deaf leadership. the obama administration is going to try to defend their extreme regulations by saying once again that these changes will help save lives and keep families healthy. the fact is they are totally ignoring the undeniable fact that when americans lose their jobs, their health and the health of their children suffer. publics an enormous health threat from chronic unemployment. ofincreases the likelihood

hospital visits, illness, and premature death. it hurts children's' health and the well-being of family. it influences mental illness, suicide, alcohol abuse, spousal abuse. it is an important risk factor in stroke and heart disease. major things that impact a family, raise the cost of care. i saw in my days of medical practice. the white house knows it, too. how does the white house know? ane new york times" ran article in november, 2011. november 17, to be exact. the headline of the article was policy and politics collide as obama enters campaign mode. the article says that a meeting occurred in the white house the 20 american lung association and then white house chief of staff william bailey. the meeting was about the epa's propose ozone regulations. in that white house meeting,

white house chief of staff bailey asked a question when confronted with the argument that additional clean air act adulation would improve public health. bailey asks, what are the health impacts of unemployment? i have just gone over them with you. those of the health impacts of unemployment. the white house knows about it. totally aware about it. when the environmental protection agency announced these new rules today, the president himself was reportedly talking off-camera, conference call, on the phone, with the american lung association. someone in that room should be talking about the disastrous public health of vets -- health effects of the unemployment that these rules are causing. it more regulation from washington is not what america needs right now. states already have flexibility in how they approach

environmental stewardship and many of them have come up with creative solutions. last month, the senate and congressional western caucuses issued a report called washington gets it wrong, states get it right. the report showed how regulations imposed by theington oare undermining work done at state levels to manage resources and to protect air and water. stories.uccess where the work being done by states is more reasonable, it is more effective, and it is less heavy-handed them the rules ordered by washington. america does not need washington to pay lip service to flexibility while mandating huge price increases in energy. america wants washington to stop the over-reaching regulations and the mandates and actually allow the states to get it

right. thousands of americans who have already lost their jobs because of washington's expensive and excessive regulation. now the president is putting more jobs on the chopping block. reticent --i wrote legislation that would stop the bill. i offer this as an amendment last fall. democrats in the senate blocked it. i plan to offer it again. and to keep making the point that the president should not have the hour and authority to impose these burdens on the american economy and on american families. my amendment blocks the issuance of new carbon standards for new and existing power plants. it would ask the require the , theval of congress elected representatives of the people, require the approval of congress for regulations that increase america's energy bills like these new roles proposed by the obama administration today.

congress should act on unaffordable energy plan. these kinds of decisions, these kinds of decisions should be for congress to make, not for the president to make on his own. the presidentther is a democrat or republican. we all know we need to make america's energy as clean as we can as fast as we can. that critically important we do this without hurting our economy,a struggling an economy where people continue to sacrifice, and do this in ways that don't cost hundreds of thousands of middle cost -- c lass families their jobs. we should look at states that have come up with ways to balance their energy needs, the health of our economy, and our environment. president obama is taking the wrong approach. these new regulations are going to hurt our economy. it is an economy that is shrinking.

that is astonishing -- our economy is shrinking and it is because of the president's other failed policies. todaylicies introduced will hurt middle-class families who are struggling to find work or to keep the jobs they have now. they will harm the health of many americans. the president needs to change course and if he will not do it on his own, congress must do it for him. today, once again, mr. president, we see the headline, obama lets the epa do his dirty work. charged tont's limited omissions have caused him so much criticism that he is no longer leading the pack. hiding.ident today is if this is something the president was proud of, he should have been at the white house, in the rose garden, in front of the cameras, making an announcement, not asking his epa administrator to make it so he could be on a conference call

because he was ashamed to show his face to the american people because of the impact is regulations are going to have on families all across america. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] discussed the climate change initiative with david honegger and paul bailey. it will mark the 25th anniversary of the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in tianemen square. you can join the conversation with a phone call or via facebook or twitter. a heritage foundation discussion on how a recent supreme court decision striking down limits on campaign contributions is related to first amendment rights.

they also looked at a constitutional amendment aimed at overturning the court rulings. this is one hour. >> good afternoon. welcome to the heritage foundation. and those who have joined us on our website. several will be joining us on c-span today. those watching online are welcome to send comments at speaker@heritage.org. those in-house are asked to take that last courtesy check that cell phones are turned off as we begin. and of course, our online viewers are always invited to send questions or comments. hosting the discussion is elizabeth slatterly. she is our senior legal policy analyst in the center for legal and judicial studies. her research focuses on issues such as the scope of the constitution's commerce clause, federal exemption, and election laws. she also studies and writes about the supreme court,

judicial confirmations, the proper roles of the courts, and judicial interpretation. she is regularly contributing to the rule of law post on a heritage policy blog. please join me in welcoming my colleague elizabeth slatterly. elizabeth? [applause] >> thank you, john. tomorrow morning the senate judiciary committee will hold a hearing on a constitutional amendment that would give congress the power to regulate raising and spending of money in elections. supporters say amending the constitution is necessary to get so-called dark money out of politics and to stop billionaires like the koch brothers from allegedly buying elections. the supreme court has determined

that bans on money are bans on speech. for anyone with experience in running campaigns, money is necessary to engage in effective political speech. today we have a panel of experts to talk about the proposed amendment. in order to get what they have to say, i will keep their introductions brief. first we will hear from bobby burchfield. bobby is an experienced trial and appellate lawyer with expertise in corporate litigation and first amendment litigation. he argued the challenge to the mccain-feingold law. he also argued on behalf of senate minority leader mitch mcconnell in a successful challenge to aggregate contribution limits in mccutcheon that was decided in april. bobby has argued cases, appearing in courts across the country.

he is a graduate of wake forest university and the george washington university law school. where he was editor-in-chief of the law review. he clerked for a judge on the third circuit. next we will hear from donald -- the former chairman of the federal election commission. he led what has been called a revolution in campaign finance, rewriting virtually all of the procedures for audit and advisory opinions. he has worked in private practice, and today he is in a government regulation practice. he also served as general counsel of the national republican congressional committee for nearly 10 years. he has been featured in major papers and has appeared in national publications, including politico, roll call, the hill, and the washington examiner. he has addressed members of congress at house retreats regarding congressional ethics and appeared numerous times on television, including fox news and c-span.

don is a graduate of notre dame. last but not least we will hear from a senior legal fellow at heritage. hans writes on a wide range of issues, including civil rights, the first amendment, and election integrity. he is known within heritage as the unofficial inspector general of the department of justice, having written articles about eric holder and various divisions at doj. his book "obama's enforcer" about the holder justice department comes out later this month. before joining heritage, he served as a member of the federal election commission and was counsel to the u.s. assistant attorney general for civil rights. he writes for politico and regularly appears on fox news as well as other national and regional outlets. he is a graduate of the massachusetts institute of technology.

he received his jd from the vanderbilt university school of law. now i will turn it over to bobby. >> thank you, elizabeth. we are here today to declare victory. at long last the advocates of campaign finance restrictions are conceding that the restrictions on campaign speech they want simply cannot be squared with the first amendment. although there is no chance that the proposed constitutional amendment will be approved and ratified, defenders of free and robust political debate should not let the significance of this moment pass. the self-styled reform community has conceded their restrictions cannot be squared with the first amendment. victory. i wish it were so. this afternoon i would like to make three basic points.

first, the mccutcheon decision is plainly correct. as you know, the campaign-finance regime contains two types of contribution limits. base limits impose a dollar cap on the amount of money a contributor may give to a candidate per election or political committee per year. congress has determined that the non-corrupting amount an individual may give to a federal candidate is $2600 per election. or $5200 for a primary and general election. the aggregate limits impose the cap on the total amount of money a contributor may contribute to all candidates and all political committees in a two-year election cycle. for contributions to candidates, the aggregate limit is $48,600 per cycle. once a contributor gives $5,200 to nine candidates, he is at $46,800.

he make give only $1800 to all other candidates. if it is perfectly legal to give $5,200 to the first nine candidates, why is it a felony to give $1801 to the 10th candidate? this makes no sense. put simply, you cannot corrupt candidate smith the 10th candidate by having already given a legal contribution to candidate jones, one of the first nine. the motivation for the aggregate limit is to equalize political speech. few people can give more than a few thousand dollars, so the aggregate limit keeps more generous donors from giving too much. decades of supreme court precedent has made it clear, defenders of the aggregate limit

recognize that precedent would not allow them to defend the measure as a speech equalization measure. they defended it as a measure to prevent circumvention of the base limits. unscrupulous contributors they said would try to channel contributions to candidates and political committees to the preferred candidates. this led them to rely upon what alito referred to in the oral argument as "speculative hypotheticals." even justice breyer's dissenting opinion allows three hypotheticals to suggest an inch contributor will go to great lengths to obey the base limits if there is no aggregate limit. two quick responses. persons knowledgeable about the campaign-finance laws and regulations, as many of you are, will see that justice breyer's hypotheticals assume activity. moreover, even under the

aggregate limits as they existed until they were struck down, contributors could give the maximum amount of money to nine candidates. if contributors were able to channel excessive contributions through other candidates or political committees to a preferred candidate, there should be evidence, one example in the last four decades, one would think, of this channeling in prior election cycles. yet the government had no such evidence. first amendment rights should not be restricted based upon so much speculation. the aggregate limits made no sense and the court correctly struck them down. my second point is that mccutcheon, like citizens united, did not really break new first amendment ground. rather, those decisions returned to established first amendment principles after a decade of deviation. the mccutcheon decision is grounded on two such principles.

first, speech equalization or leveling the playing field is offensive to the first amendment. this precept is a cornerstone of a case in 1976 in buckley and a landmark precedents case in 1964 and the associated press versus united states in 1945. this desire to equalize speeches to limit the speech of the wealthy so they cannot dominate the debate is i believe a major purpose of campaign-finance restrictions and a key motivation of the effort to change the first amendment. the second fundamental precept underlying mccutcheon is that avoiding corruption or the appearance of corruption are the only governmental interest recognized under the first amendment for restricting political giving and spending. moreover, in this context corruption means quid pro quo corruption, the giving of money for political favors. this precept dates back decades. as the court wrote in 1985 -- we

held in buckley and confirmed in citizens against rent control of preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption are the only legitimate and compelling interests thus far identified for restricting campaign finances. it continued, the hallmark of corruption is the financial quid pro quo dollars for political favors. the court began to deviate from these principles in the late 1990's and the second colorado decision. a court majority began to expand this anticorruption rationale to encompass warchest corruption, which means an individual or corporation had too much money. access corruption, which means by giving money you might be able to shake the senator's hand, and even gratitude corruption, meaning if you gave money to an office holder they

might be grateful for it. this deviation reached its peak in the mcconnell decision in 2003, which upheld the sweeping restrictions on political speech in the bipartisan campaign reform act. citizens united and mccutcheon have reversed this trend and returned first amendment jurisprudence to its basic principles. cries from the reform community about how the roberts court has ignored precedent and rewritten the first amendment are simply mistaken. my third and final point today is that the self-styled reform community is trying to read into the first amendment their own view of what a democratic government should be. by its language and the principles applying to it, the first amendment protects the marketplace of ideas, promoting discussions with the assumption that a free people can assess for themselves the strength of

the arguments and make informed electoral decisions. this means the government does not silence anyone. it is not limiting anyone. it does not referee the debate. in recent years the self-styled reformers have begun to suggest that free and robust debate does not promote democracy, but threatens it. they contend allowing the wealthy to speak more can drown out the voices of the less wealthy and that the very volume of speech in certain quarters threatens to delegitimize, they would say corrupt, the democratic process. justice breyer's dissent appears to adopt this argument. this is a very troubling argument, and those who cherish the first amendment must push back strongly and vigilantly. this notion that the first amendment poses a duty to limit speech to protect democracy turns the free-speech guarantee on its head. other provisions protect the integrity of the process, but the free speech clause of the

first amendment protects unfettered debate so the other provisions can work. this notion that too much speech is undermining democracy is in accurate on several levels. the rich do not advocate a single viewpoint. think of sheldon adelson and george soros. they do not agree on anything. there are strong voices on the left and on the right, not just in privately funded campaign advertisements, but also in the broadcast in the print media. only a small portion of those with significant resources, even bother to participate in debate. among those of limited means , the portion is small. in order to equalize debate among the haves and have-nots, severe restrictions will be necessary. the quantity and the quality of discourse would certainly suffer. let's trust the public to listen carefully to the most robust debate possible and to make decisions based on more information, more debate, not less.

that has always been the premise of the first amendment and of american democracy. thank you very much. [applause] >> good afternoon. i want to thank heritage for having me here and putting on this panel. i want to begin by echoing what bobby said about declaring victory. my reaction when i heard that senate democrats were going to push an amendment to the constitution changing the first amendment was they are finally admitting that what they want to do is unconstitutional. for over two centuries, we have agreed that the idea of robust political discussion is necessary in a representative democracy. when you elect representatives to go to washington or to go to your state capitals you do not micromanage everything they do. you trust their judgment.

the way to ensure their judgment remains somewhat pure and at least consistent with what the people want is that the people can speak out and criticize those folks once they get in office. that is how we do things in america. i'm not sure how they do things outside of america, but i know here when you elect folks you have to be able to criticize them. if you cannot, they may lose touch with the people. what we have seen recently is a real assault against this sort of approach. when the citizens united opinion came down, there was first shock and disbelief on some parts of town, other parts of town were doing dances. but really what came about after that was an amazing sight, from president obama during his state of the union address making what was probably an unprecedented remark, claiming citizens united opinion would usher in foreign national money that was simply

not true. we know who was right and who was wrong in that. second, we saw the irs do what the irs did, asking all sorts of bizarre questions of people from what sort of books they read to what sort of prayer groups they went to and the like. third, and this is one that flashed on the scene and disappeared. the fcc flirted with the idea of monitoring newsrooms just to check the balance. remember that one? that disappeared once people figured out what that was about. that's not forget that because that seems to be the sort of thing that in america we should not be doing, and then now the most recent is you have the majority leader of the senate harry reid seeming to redefine the use of special order speeches and floor statements, attacking various individuals, a couple in particular, for speaking their mind, if nothing else.

it is a bizarre time in which we live, and just when one thinks it cannot get any more peculiar, they are now pushing amendment to the constitution to essentially change the first amendment. they are doing it smiling and they seem to think that somehow the wind is at their back. frankly, i think it is political theater. there's no chance of this becoming the law. senate democrats are in trouble. they know it. any reputable political tracker will tell you this, whether it is charlie cook or stu rothenberg or any the folks who will tell you senate democrats are slowly losing their grip on power. i suppose desperate times call for desperate measures. now they are attempting to amend the constitution as part of their grandstanding to silence the critics. it is a shame. why do we have the first amendment? what gets lost is it is not there because we need a

placeholder in the bill of rights. there's history there as to why we have it and it goes back to when we were under the rule of england, and for about a hundred years england was and to a certain extent has had a different view of free speech then we have here. the licensing orders 1643, for example, essentially banned all sorts of public speech, newspapers, and the like. they had to be licensed and by the crown and later parliament. the kind of speech they did not like the most was the kind of people like the most which was critical of the crown of england. what the government did was, they simply said you had to license it. this is effectively a ban, so you had to register all print materials. there were some draconian provisions that were attached. you could be arrested. that sort of thing. fast forward. then the stamp act, remember this from history class, that was in 1765, had nothing to do

with the stamp to put on mail pieces, but had to do with the fact that the crown required but a stamp be placed on all printed materials. you had to get permission to speak yet again. we fought a revolutionary war over this concept, and as part of the deal adopted the constitution, the bill of rights, and the first of it which contains the freedom of speech and association among others. now here we are in the midst of an election battle where certain politicians are gripping to power as only politicians can and now they want to change the rules of the game and prevent people from criticizing, not unlike england did before the revolution and which led to our revolution. here we are, and what are they trying to do? i have a copy of the proposed amendment front of me, and it says to advance the fundamental political equality for all and

to protect the integrity of the legislative and electoral processes, congress or how the process to regulate the raising and spending of money including the setting of limits to the amount of contributions to candidates for nomination or four elections to federal office and the amount of funds that may be spent by and in support of or pposition to candidates. section two expands power to the tates. which is an even more radical change, because talk about federalizing elections. it empowers regardless of what a state constitution says it would trump that. what does this mean? it invokes the fundamental principle of political equality, whatever that means. for all. yet there is an exception in the later proposed amendment that exempts out the corporate press. it says nothing in this article shall be construed to grant congress the power to abridge the freedom of the press. in other words, that means if

you are the incorporated media, which it is the mainstream media today, it seems you are exempt from this. if you are a blogger or someone who is maybe on the cusp of being media, watch out, this seems to empower congress to regulate you or otherwise potentially ban you from speaking. what some of this means, who knows, and as one who has done nothing but election law for my career, i scratch my head and wonder why they have to do this, because when they want to pass an amendment that says congress shall have the power to regulate the spending of money, congress does have the power to regulate the raising of money. buckley vs. vallejo upholds contribution limits. they have been upheld since. limits that are too low have been held to be an abridgment of speech, but for the most part courts have already upheld the ability to limit contributions. the government has -- with

banning certain kinds of speech. much of it is still banned, the so-called coordination with candidates, which is subject to a murky, multi-factored test. they have the power to do that. so the question is what are they doing? they are going to try to limit independent speech. what is interesting is the courts have upheld some disclosures independent speech which six months ago was supposed to be the answer. that was supposed to cure all the ills in our democracy, but unfortunately, i guess, they have given up on that and move to more radical changes which is the constitutional amendment. when you read this text you think what the courts have already upheld, what are they getting at? they're getting at the tv advertising we are seeing these days criticizing the senate democrats, frankly, for what they are doing. the question is, why can't we do this now under current law? what is amazing is many of the

ads that people are currently complaining of are not covered by current law. unless they contain express words of advocacy, they do not even have to file a disclosure report, which is as it should be. if you are near an election, mccain-feingold imposes additional requirements. these sort of ads we have seen lately are not election ads, they are issue ads, speech designed to influence the acts of politicians. which is precisely the sort of speech that is at the heart of the first amendment. with that i have a few questions for the sponsors of this, see if they can answer these questions. maybe they will answer them tomorrow. probably not. they were supposed to have a hearing several weeks ago which was supposed to be a campaign finance hearing and at the last minute they added retired justice john paul stevens to the witness list and started talking about amending the constitution. i testified about how the party committees have been marginalized.

they did not ask a single question. they're more interested in talking about amending the onstitution. here are some questions. under this amendment regulating electoral processes, integrity of legislative offices, could congress prohibit a labor union from communicating with its members if that communication somehow affected the legislative or campaign process? i would think the answer is yes. what about other membership organizations -- the nra, sierra club? that sort of thing? could congress ban communications between those groups and their members regarding politics? seems to be what this may permit congress to do. can it be speech selective? it does not say anything about -- it does not have the clarity of the current first amendment. it talks about political

equality for all. when you read the dissent in mccutcheon, it seems that political speech equality means you can ban some speech and not other speech. it seems far-fetched that somehow speech equality could lead to some people being banned and not being banned. think back to our recent history. when the fec considered "fahrenheit 9/11," the fec said it was fine because it was a commercial movie. that was not prohibited. but when citizens united came in and asked about "hillary," fec said, nope, sorry, that was banned. i cannot tell the difference between the two movies. except one thing says bad things about george bush, a republican, and the other says bad things about hillary clinton, who was a democrat. you say bad things about the republican, you're fine. if you say bad things about a democrat, you're going to be banned. what about pastors and

churches? can the government now get in there and tell a priest he cannot talk to his congregation because it may somehow have something to do with politics? this amendment would seem to permit congress to do that. what about bloggers? what if your companies try to make documentaries that the mainstream media do not onsider? we have seen it with the citizens united movie. let's not forget the facts of the case. notwithstanding the hyperbolic press coverage, it was about a film and whether it could be seen and bought on pay-per-view cable by adults in the privacy of their own home. the federal election commission and later the solicitors general office said, no, mccain-feingold said you cannot watch that movie in the privacy on your own home on pay-per-view cable. that was the fact. that went to the supreme court. this is not a situation where we

are talking about we are just going to ban campaign stuff. we're talking about banning movies here. what about books and movies generally? what if a book is a 500-page book that talks about public policy, but it does say you should not elect someone to be president? does this amendment empower the government to ban the book? i'm afraid that does. this is why this needs to die so we can continue to criticize our elected officials in an elected democracy. thank you. [applause] >> maybe i will sit down because i think they have said everything they need to say about this. i will add a few words. the slide we put up is basically the constitutional amendment, the important parts of it. you will notice as don said it would not only limit, give

congress the power to limit the contributions that can be given to a candidate directly and also the expenditures at a candidate could incur trying to run for office, but you will notice is also says that it would give them the power to limit the amount of funds spent by in support of or in opposition to a candidate. what that means is it would give congress the power to limit independent spending by individual americans. now, if you think that congress would never do such a thing, i should tell you that in fact in the early 1970's when congress passed the modern version of the campaign finance laws that we have operated under now for 30 years, they actually passed a ban on independent expenditures by organizations and individual

americans limiting them to only $1000. that meant if you as an individual did not like somebody running for congress in your particular state and you wanted to take out an ad in your local newspaper, all on your own, no coordination with any other candidate, to try to convince your neighbors not to vote for that particular candidate, you could not spend more than a thousand dollars doing that. so congress already tried to do this in the early 1970's. now, fortunately, in the buckley decision, which is the seminal case, 1976, in which the supreme court came up with a standard it uses in this area, which is to say that laws that prevent corruption, the appearance of corruption, will be considered acceptable and can be used to somewhat limit first amendment ights.

in that case, fortunately, the supreme court threw out that thousand-dollar limitation on independent expenditures. it shows you the kind of ideas congress previously had about it. if this amendment passed it could pass a law about that immediately and there's nothing anybody could do to stop it. if congress said i think a thousand dollars is too much, for anybody to spend on independently on political speech, they could crank that down to $500, $100, to $5, and there is nothing anyone could do to challenge it, because they would have changed the first amendment to do that. now, the supporters of this amendment, all 41 of them, and i find it absolutely shocking that almost half of the united states senate would for the first time

in american history support something that would roll back art of the bill of rights, something unprecedented, that has never happened in this country, they say when you restrict the amount of money that individuals can spend, raise or spend, that is not the same as restricting free speech. as the supreme court said in the buckley decision 30 years ago, virtually every means of communicating ideas in today's mass society requires the expenditure of money. from the humblest handbill to leaflets, to political ads run during prime time, tv, radio, to putting up billboards, putting up yard signs or in the modern internet age, putting up a website, all of that costs money. and the days when you could stand on a soapbox in the boston

common and speak politically to get people to accept your ideas or to vote for you as a candidate are long gone, and even then if you wanted to be effective it cost money. that she wanted to be effective. it cost money. again, those who say the framers never imagined that the first amendment would protect money spent on political speech, political activity, excuse me, but one of the greatest works in america that helped spur our revolution, thomas paine's "common sense," it cost money to distribute it. "the federalist papers" were printed in broadsheets which were the equivalent of newspapers at that time, all of hich cost money. the idea that if you restrict money you are not restricting free speech is ridiculous. that is the same thing as saying if you restrict the amount of money that a newspaper corporation like "the new york times" can spend, that is a

ridiculous claim. this case as we talked about would not just overturn the citizens united decision and the mccutcheon case, but it would overturn the buckley decision, the case from 30 years ago, because it would also overturn what the supreme court said in that case about expenditure limits. people do not realize back in the 1970's congress did not just pass contribution limits. that is what we have lived under now for 30 years. back then they limited the amount you could give to a candidate to $1000. it stayed that way for 30 years. it was raised to $2000 in 2002 and indexed for inflation. at the same time in early 1970's congress put in and expenditure

imitation. they said that people running for congress and president would be only be able to spend a certain amount of money to run for office. the supreme court threw that out because they said that is a direct limitation on your first amendment rights. when you limit the amount of money that a candidate can spend you are directly limiting their speech. you are limiting the amount of resource they can send out, the amount of ads they can do. you are limiting their ability to rent a hall and go speak live in person to voters. they threw that out. this amendment would get rid of that limitation that the supreme court came up with, and once again, congress could actually pass a law limiting how much you spend. for those of you who think that is a good idea i remind you that once congress but the contribution limits in the 1970's, you can look at a graph of the incumbency rate of members of congress, and that line will be like this.

it just goes steadily up. why is that? because limits on contributions help incumbents. it is very tough for a challenger to take out a sitting member of congress. they do not have the name recognition, contact us, it costs a lot of money to knock ut a challenger. when you put on limits on contributions, you're making it much easier for incumbents to stay in office. if you put in limits on expenditures, which as with has been shown by history, congress has demonstrated it wanted to do, you would be making it an even tougher thing for challengers to come in and knock off members of congress. i will tell you that i do not think it is just a coincidence that in january 2010, when citizens united was decided, what happened in november? in november 2010 we had some of the most challenging congressional races since the

1930's. that is because directly of the citizens united decision and the fact that suddenly it was independent political expenditures come of the ban on that, had come out. i want to talk about something else, and don just mentioned this. this shows what congress could do if this amendment were assed. the citizens united decision, there was something unusual in that, in that were there were two oral arguments for the supreme court, not just one. in the first oral argument i attended, roberts asked a hypothetical question of the government. it concerned the electioneering communications provision. this is a provision that congress had passed in 2002 that

limited and banned the ability to run any kind of radio or tv ad 30 days before primary and 60 days before a general election that named the candidate for federal office. the problem with that ban was you could be running an ad, you could be the sierra club, and you could be running a political ad about a bill that was going to be voted on by congress on october 15, that had to do with the environment. if you named a congressman who was running for office, if you simply told voters, this is an important bill coming out, call your congressman and tell them to vote against this bill, you would be breaking the law if that congress on was up for election in november, even though your ad said absolutely

nothing about the congressman in terms of voting for or against it in the upcoming election. it is one of the provisions the supreme court threw out. that provision only extended to radio and tv ads. the chief justice asked the overnment, if we uphold this provision, could it be used to ban books by the government? a book that discusses the system, and in the end and so vote for x, could the government ban that? the answer given by the assistant solicitor general was yes, we could prohibit the publication of a book. i find it amazing that the solicitor general's office of the united states would give such an answer that they think there is nothing wrong with banning books in the united states of america. some will say there's too much money in politics. the intent of this is to get money out of politics.

i always have to laugh at that. i looked this up before he came down here. in 2013 american company spent over $140 billion advertising their products across the united tates. if you checked several of the websites that total up political spending, you will find in the 2012 election cycle we spent about $6 billion on elections. that is about the same as committees and advertising fast food and candy in united states last year. so, this idea we are spending too much money and restricting it is the right way to go when we have such a great first amendment that believes in increasing debate in this country i think is just wrong. the more political speech we have, the better, and i am shocked at the idea that congress, members of congress, would be in favor of restricting the first amendment. these are complicated issues,

but i want to boil it down to this, because this is what this amendment would allow if it was passed. many of you may know that the federal election commission does impose civil penalties on individuals who violate finance laws. if you knowingly and intentionally violate the law you can be prosecuted criminally by the department of justice and you can go to prison for up to five years. what a lot of people seem to forget was that david bossi, the resident of citizens united, because of the fact that after the fec told citizens united it was not allowed to advertise for this documentary made about hillary clinton, because if they had gone ahead with it after he had advised that he cannot do it, that would have been considered an intentional and knowing violation of the law and

he could have gone to federal prison for five years and be prosecuted by the justice department. why? because he made a movie. i do not know about you, but i do not want to live in a country in which congress has the authority to pass a law that would put someone in jail for making a movie or political documentary, writing a book, setting out a voter guide, pushing a pamphlet, or taking at a political ad, or because a candidate spends $100 more than some artificial expenditure limit that the incumbents in congress put into limit the amount of spending of anybody who wants to try to throw them out of office. i think this violates the most basic tenets of freedom and liberty on which this country was founded and that the bill of rights was intended to protect. it is not the kind of country i want to live in. thanks.

oh, and one more thing. i almost forgot. i did think there was an amendment at heritage that would like to propose, and you will see it is actually funny, it is exactly the current first amendment we have. [laughter] >> we will open it up for questions from the audience in just a minute. first, we have three ground rules. wait for the microphone, please state your name and affiliation, and ask a question, do not make speech. so are there any questions? ok. down here. >> what do you think is the real motivation here for the left promoting this? it may be that this is popular or this will turn out to be a uge popular mistake.

and do you see any way that, given the fact that now 22 or 23 states have called for in article 5 convention for a balanced budget, the left might be hoping that the convention occurs that could turn into a runaway convention that they could use to propose this amendment? > i guess i will go first. i think he it is being driven by two things. first is pure politics. second, i think that which is more scary of the two, some of these guys believe this is what we should do. as i mentioned in my comments, it is an election year. election years cause people to do things that they otherwise would not do. we certainly see a certain drumbeat instigated by democrats

to try to take various messengers and messages, and i think this fits hand in glove with that. i think it is also designed to intimidate people who are criticizing them. this is nothing new to the extent that we have seen governments do this throughout our history. we have not seen our government do it at least in our recent history. notwithstanding efforts to limit have it struck by the supreme court, the idea of such targeted efforts, i think, are unprecedented. but, too, i think some of them elieve it. judge bork called it radical galitarianism. the question is what is quality? when we see this play out, equality seems to have an orwellian notion to it where some are more equal than others.

i think that is part of what is happening here. i think long term it is bad for the people. it is good for the incumbents. ultimately is probably best for those who get to make these decisions. when one looks at the text of the amendment, i am struck by who gets to the police limits on campaign spending. we know from the federal taxpayer funded presidential elections that the fec used to employ sorts of people and employee certain types of audits. one can imagine a mandatory audit of every campaign in america? i was at the fec several years.

there are people who do not play it straight. recently there was someone at the fec. overtly campaigning for obama and then for romney. this was someone in the enforcement division according to the press. the idea that you will have a neutral decision-maker over these things is a fallacy. the same about that carve out the freedom of the press. imagine having to go to the department of motor vehicles and convince them you are the media. do you want faceless bureaucrats doing that? i understand dmv has gone a long way in d.c. and virginia. i don't want to cast any aspersions personally, but you know it is convenient to scapegoat. as far as a convention, that takes a little long-term thinking of the sort we are not seeing. i think what's we are seeing a strategy between now and november, and you see incumbents desperately clinging to power. >> you have something you want to add? >> we are dealing with a well-established, powerful and

well-funded constituency that has for decades advocated restrictions on campaign inances. interestingly, one of their big issues is the so-called dark money issue. where do they get their money? one of these groups disclose their donors. we think we know where the money is coming from, but they do not disclose it. there is a bit of hypocrisy there, but there is also a strong constituency for increasingly severe restrictions on political speech. as for the constitutional convention, i think that is a concern, but i do not detect a great public groundswell for these sorts of restrictions, and i think most people understand that the purpose of the first amendment is to promote free and robust debate. the american public seems to like that.

i would be surprised to see a constitutional convention go down that track. but it is a possibility. >> my name is sarah, and i work or free speech for people. i wanted to ask two questions. i think there is a perception that spending on campaigns, both in direct commission and in independent expenditures, has increased dramatically since buckley and citizens united. i'm wondering if you can attest to the accuracy of that perception? i am also wondering if you are aware of any opinion polls about i'm also wondering whether you're aware of any public opinion polls about citizens united and what your sense is of how the public feels about the finance rules.n

>> taking them in reverse order, i'm not aware any recent polls likesll say no one citizens united. then when i actually read the isl i realize the question skewed. i'd like to think i can read polls. you ask the question, should the megacorporations be u.s. elects and 80% of the people say that's a bad idea, i wonder about the other 20%. but if one were to ask the real question, should the federal government be able to ban a that talks about a politician from pay per view cable so you can't watch it in the privacy of your own home, i come out polls should the opposite of what most of the polls say.

of aalways look for more conformed question and not the superficial question that bucks about the bad guy buying the election kind of thing. certainly spending has on everything in america has increased. buckley a brand new ford mustang cost about $3500. if one were to convert the todays dollars, it would be about $a4500. parties are limited to accepting 10,000 for contributions, adjusted for inflation up to about $48,000. butpending has again up, the way spending has changed i story.s more the candidates have lost their ability -- party committees used to be in

candidate voices, that's no longer the case. money has moved away from parties to groups that are not as transparent, not as accountable. not as long-term. so, yes, the total spending has but when compares it to other spending, very interesting approach. i i think you can cop pair to it what other people spend on advertising, it's still a drop in the bucket. it's ultimately about what money buys, the cost tv advertising has skyrocketed, even over the be you years, used to could get a week of television maybe 250 toce for $# hundred grand, now it's a week.n dollars a postage has gone up, the cost of up.e calms and gone and the cost of compliance has gone up. requires a set of review processes to and after ever

state laws.up of so everything has gotten more expensive. and bottom line is even though spending has gone up, there's money in enough politics to keep up with the information flow that i think voters deserve. ultimately the answer is more information for the voters, not less. it's unfortunate that takes it does.t and advertising costs a lot of it. >> i agree with all of. that i would add, this is the american democracy, the american electoral system that we're speaking of. to me, more debate, more speech, more focus on the issues ads and print ads and public forums, that's a good thing. a bad thingk it's if people are airing a lot more television ads, and they are, because the restrictions have

rolled them back. thing i would say is with regard to the polling, it true that these questions, and i've been on panels that polling,lly to discuss the questions whatever the results that, whatever the results of the polls, the almost always slanted one way or the other. i haven't seen a question that presents the issue. it protects the right of individual person to say things.r and that's the spirit of american democracy, that's the american democracy and i frankly thank that's also

thing.good >> i'm curious about how you see the senate, out in the actual debate in the senate. senator reed brings up this amendment proposal, will it a straight uplly or down vote on this particular proposal? willould you predict it end up being a party line vote, which would be shorter tonight needed to pass it. >> let me take a first shot and comments.ple i'm not sure how the politics of actually.out, i think for democratic senators in close elections, going on is trying to change the first amendment might not be such a popular vote. bolt from thereal majority leader on this issue. now, he may have enough votes to

keep, he may have the power to keep his caulk us in line on this. foregone it's not a conclusion that you're going to have all the numbers of the democratic caucus stand up and line on this. that changing the first thing.nt is a good >> i would say, something that tells you, gives you an this, i think, is the fact that i think the miscalculated recently, why they got the i.r.s. to propose new regulations for 501(c)(4) organizations,s that are the that areorganizations used, you know, the n. r.a., club, they're all 5041c4's. would have restricted the political speech and activity of these organizations. was overwhelmed with public comment in the negative. s50000 comments, that's more comments for that

one proposed regulation than all other regulations, the treasury and i.r.s. proposed in the last seven years. they were overwhelmingly iainst this change that think, they thought would be popular. as a result the i.r.s. has backed off and said oh, we're not going to put out these haveation this is year, we to take into account all these comments on it. but i think that's an indication of how they have miss miscalculd on this issue. >> hi. laws that interfere with any type of political speech or theected to scrutiny government needs to prove that the restriction further a interest. according to this amendment the specific wording is to advance

of fundamental pruns spell political equality. besides that specific wording, udall or any of the democrats showed any type of narrowly taylored compelling interest to justify this amendment? >> no. i any that's the point of the amendment. do is endre trying to strict streutf any, which with all due respect of madeourt was kind up. the amendment says, but actually make no lawss will unless it's narrowly taylored. but you do raise a very interesting question that's a sub set of your question, the idea that a political equality all, this is a new principle being interjected here in the and it is that, language, that would empower itself,.in and of

andwhat is clear is udall others have not presented anything along the lines of analysis on, this seems to be completely developed for the newspapers and the sound bites. and maybe there's some white paper i haven't seen. i doubt it exists. >> i think that notion of political equality goes back to i made when i was speaking about this notion that processe democratic limits on the first amendment and then in some instands the first amendment should be used to suppress speech rather than to promote speech. and's a troubling concept you see some notions of that justiceir way into prior's dissent. time for one more. >> mr. mcgann, you mentioned that as it reads now it could between aunications group and its members. could you say more about that?

that.t sure i see >> under current law and even prior to citizens united when banned from were sponsoring certain political communications, both corporations and labor unions were exempted to varying degrees to those identical communications if they were sent restrictive class. so if i were corporation x or union x and i decided to run an ad that said vote against senator so and so, if i that publicly prir to citizens united that would have been illegal. but if i sent that message to restricted class which in the case of the union is its members. case of the corporation is its administrative and executive person them, families and stockholders. that was exempted. was driven byat not just the speech concern but the associateal concern that's also guaranteed by the first amendment. empowers congress

to, in the name of political and to protectl the integrity of the legislative and electoral processes, this not just electoral, this is also legislative advocacy and expressly empower congress to regulate the spending money and equivalents with respect to federal elections, i don't see how you can read it any way other than to say congress would have the power to limit the ability of a labor union to talk to its members about politics or any other membership organization. one could imagine you'd have a field day writing tv copy on idea that democrat basically empower the government or otherwise pro hib it the union from organizing, that kind of thing, very dangerous vote. but my point is i don't know what this means, but i'm looking compared to current law. it must change current law

itehow. so not only does reach the independent ads, but i really does get at all sorts of other political taken forhat we've granted for years. >> to thank our two outside have heritage tie for both of them. please join me in thanking our panel. [applause] thank all for coming. >> self live events to tell you about this morning. the center for central teejic and studies hosts a discussion on intelligence and

onional security, that's c-span 3 at 9:00 eastern. 10:00, a spa 3 at subcommittee holds a hearing on the impact of climate change on wildlife and agriculture. witness it's include the head of the fish and wildlife service. here on c-span, in response to a recent supreme court on campaign finance, the senate judiciary committee will consider a constitution al amendment that would allow congress and the states the authority to set limits on raising and spending money in campaigns. you can see that at 10:30a.m. eastern. >> we wanted a building that was very accessible to the community. and it needed to be able to a future that we didn't, we cab predict the future. the oldthe problem with

library is that we were tapped out on as many computers and intog that we could fit that structure. so our new building needed to have a lot of flexibility and movement into the future. thething we liked about design is he combined different we havec features much the triangular main part of the building, we have a round auditorium that sits on the side the building. a rectangular structure on the west side that we call the bar. and then the crescent wall that hugs the library on the north east side. and all of these different features are bridged together with skylights. so just light flows through the at all levels and we have a total 360-degree view of our surroundings. think it's vital for a community to have a library that

brings people together, and this particular face was geared in bringing the community together. it's an opportunity for people remember that the things that hold the city together, the officers, the mayor and his various work together to build a city and i like that we have done that with our architecture. >> this weekend learn about the rich history and literary life city, utah, saturday on took tv. >> now part of our coverage of a forum on the treasury departments role in national the work done by the departments office of terrorism and financial intelligence. begins withon treasury secretary jack lew.

it's great to be here today with so many people mo have dedicated themselves to tackling our challenges. i also want to thank the men and made tv f.i. the indispensable institution that it is today. tacker i want to thank david cohen and his predecessor for work.vision and hard i also want to recognize members of t.f.i.'s leadership team, ireland, zubin, shasky and haskell. express my dead case to the civil servants who t.f.i. back bone of

we meet today almost 13 years since the deadliest attack on place, oneil took that killed nearly 3,000 and courseur nation to its of everyone here remembers september 11, the horrific attack that unfolded quickly and time. at the same first, in new york, then washington, finally pennsylvania. was a tragedy unlike any other, catching us by surprise and shattering a sense of as americans we had come to feel. working and living in new york i that day as the twin towers fell, and so many lives were changed forever. this is a turning point for our nation. it transformed ordinary people ross, drew young patriots to the battlefield, and lifted the veil on the real by violentd extremists who are not only well organized but were also well financed. in the wake of the attacks, our its approachifted to national security coordination and use of awful tools. there was that change

a new focus on the importance of disrupting the finances and that fueltworks terrorist organizations. this led to the creation of thei.10 years ago, it was first office of its type in the world. up until then counterterrorism matter for been a the military, diplomatic and law enforcement communities. until then neither finance officials, much less entire finance minute streets, devoted much of their time to teablging this threat. yet the talented team put in designed tosury combat terrorism by tackling the ofancial organizationings terrorist organizations. and without a doubt their accomplishments have made our our world safer. as the.f.i.'s founding efforts expanded beyond counterterrorism, the treasury changednt role dramatically. today because of the professionals experts and t.f.i., treasury provides analysis that is vital to the entire intelligence and making establishment.

we develop and implement policies to combat money laundering and other financial crimes. we work with foreign governments, global, financial thans steutionings and businesses around the world to strengthen the integrity of the international financial system transparency. and we design, implement and enforce sanctions programs to terrorist networks, drug traffickers, organized criminal wmd proliferators. to be clear, this new financial not a new version of a trade blockade or embargo. approachaltogether new targeting the financing, the cash, in order to block the actors and.icit years the of of those proven to be bipartisan. over the last decade the united states has spent more than a trillion dollars on military

combat effort. deficits. swell our but t.f.i. has opened up a new battlefield for the united us to, one that enables go after those who wish to marm us without putting our troops in using lethal force. this administration has been usingve and innovative in in approach both because of the changing international landscape and our determination to use all at our disposal to advance tour strategic interests. these actionsme have consequences. these new financial weapons are targeted in a way that broad economic embargoes never work and we become more pro fish leasing collateral damage. our goal should be to have the ourgned impact while doing best to limit collateral consequences. to take touch action when necessary as it's better to --id

when we deploy these methods, whoe will be those unintentionally pay is a price. as america lives up to its lead, we muse to use the too manies on the our promote pa billity, peace and friend around the world. that includes gathering intelligence, engaging in diplomacy, mobilizing allies and partners, increasing financial creatingrent sit, systemic safeguards to make the financial system more resistant elicit money and imposing sanctions. the mere possibility or sanctions hasf real economic consequences as investors take notice and disrupted.are when we act, governments, businesses, banks and financial around the world often comply even when they may not be legally obligated to. the fact is t.f.i.'s expertise, authority and relationships are meant to combatting national

security threats anded ahaven'ting our foreign policy objectives. world where economies are more connected than ever before, innovating at is a rapid speed, where small band and whereious damage powerful alternatives to military action are a necessity, expanded the options available to all future presidents and made our national security responses more effective. you can see this in a whole host of arenas, and let me just highlight three. first, over the last decade t.f.i. has been actively at work degrading some of the most tonificant terror threats our country, consistently blocking assets of terrorist groups and exposing their activities. it's no exaggeration to say that right now terrorist networks to obtain fund because of t.f.i.'s activities. today it hearter to move illicit

just think, at the time of attack, aler 11 qaeda was relying on both a web of wealthy supporters who thentially operated out in open and a formal financial system to let money for terrorists move around fairly easily. that is no longer possible today. president obama said last week the foreseeable fowch the most direct threat to america at home and abroad remains terrorism. with t.f.i., the treasury continues to confront and combat that threat every day. in fact, last year alone t.f.i. designated 87 individuals and entities under our terrorism sanctions program. this cut them off from the u.s. system and publicly exposed their illicit activities on behalf of terrorist as al qaeda, such in conjunction with their strategy, we have aggressively

targeted foreign drug traffickers, weakening the cartels by depriving their leaders of their ill gotten gain. treasury has imposed sanctions on more 1500 foreign individualskers and and entities under the king pin act. only regulationings not disrupt the financial life of help targeted, they also intelligence. t.f.i. regarding iran, helped put in place the toughest, most come premen'sive sanctionings regime in history. iran found itself under the greatest sanction induced pressure any country has ever experienced. t.f.i. led this evident by taking action to cut iran off from the international financial holding violators accountable. equally important, t.f.i. made a multilateral enterprise. our leaders and officials not congress andith

departments across the federal government, nay helped build a vast international coalition with partners from eump to china. today there's there are sanctions on iran that has 10 statute, 26 executive orders and four united nations security council resolutions. was put in place to persuade iran to abandon its weapon of a neek lure and let's not forget that there was a time when critics said iranian ray on the joel would never work. but because of t.f.i.'s and inno lative actions we have proven the opposite. these sanctions have caused the currencyo shrink, its to drop, its unemployment rate to jump and its inflation rate to skyrocket. currently iran is at the negotiating table for the first time in a decade and progress in nuclear program has been halted while key elements of this program have been rolled

back. in this instance we've seen the powerful impact of coordinating effectively with the international community. the impact of our actions can be greater than the sum of its parts.ual had we decided to act alone or with less cooperation, our have been less effective. the balance between tough unilateral action while maintaining broad support for collective action has brought table. the negotiating we do not know what the ultimate outcome of these negotiations will be, and all optionings remain on the table to keep iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. we have a chance to resolve our differences peacefully and without the use of force. finally i want to talk about donene and what t.f.i. has to help promote stability in central europe. the ukrainian people have shown real current over the last few months as they have fought an independent course for their country and a government that reflects the will of its people. recent election demonstrates

that ukraine continues to make progress, despite the challengings it faces. during this fragile period the has led the effort to build international support for ukraine and treasury has role in thisral undertaking. working with the international monetary fund, the world bank g7 partners we've led an effort to -- bi lateral and support has provided assistance to stablize ukraine. we've worked to support ukraine's economy, the russian economy has become isolated from the international financial system. , our coordinated and carefully calibrated approach enormous pressure on russia, with limited collateral damage to the u.s., european and

global economy. we have targeted key officials associates, we've targeted institutions that support the russian leadership. us the president has given the authority to take even more powerful action. if russia continues to support armed separatists in eastern ukraine. to help weaken russia's economy and help hownstrate again international corporation is a force multiplier. stocks and dropped and anxious investors are reconsidering russian markets. m.f. has forecasted $100 billion in investment will exit russia this year. is alreadys economy started to contract. in the meantime, russian are finding it harder to access international sources of capital and russia's credit rating was downgraded to just above junk status. to impose a cost on russia for its occupation and attempted annexation of crimea to deter russian military

intervention in ukraine. last week's election was a promising sign to the future of ukraine, but there's received to allowia continues the free flow of weapons, funds and fighters across its borders, stepsesident putin's next are still unclear. what is clear is that our a differences made and t.f.i. has made a difference, to the world over by stability and providing us with alternatives to combat. is possible only because the men and women of. committedave themselves to protecting and serving our nation do such a job.stic we're talking about the analysts comb thrug the data and fining a transaction.ancial the policy maker flying to another country to gain support new strategies to safeguard the international financial system. and the department official meeting with bank executives to stop a money lawner dg -- laundering operation. of the dedication of

these public servants we are con fronting our strategic we are making progress and we are a safer and stronger nation. i thank you all very much for here today and i they our team for their outstanding service and commit it. you. # plus. >> the forum on the treasury department's role in national security included a panel that looked at the effectiveness of sanctions against iran and russia. this is a little less than an hour. thank you very much, i'm david sanger from "the new york times." and it's a great honor to be here at the csis event here and our discussion today is going to be about financial intelligence. it flows very nicely from what you just heard from stuart, and also from the first panel, and

we've got a great panel of experts here. to my immediate left, your right, michele flournoy who was undersecretary of policy at the pentagon for how many years? >> three. >> three. and has been out just about long enough now to have plunged back in. jane harman who of course served in congress, and served a number of different intelligence committees along the way. and now runs the wilson center. and general keith alexander, who just left eight years, is it eight years at nsa? the last year was a doozy. some people try to leave the last year of their job quietly. but general alexander decided that would be too boring. so, my hope today is to pick up

from where the panels were, talk a little bit about the role of intelligence in some of these individual cases, and then look forward to where these tools are going, how they've been affected by some of the recent disclosures, but also begin to talk about what kind of utility they could have that we haven't thought of yet, that, you know, where this may be -- where this may be headed. i thought that one place to start might be with the question of what's worked, and what hasn't. something that you heard tom donilon and steve hadley take up, and mr. donilon made the point that, for example, we've been much more successful in the sanctions implementation in iran than we have in north korea. and one of the natural questions that raises is, is that because of the unity on sanctions, or is

that in part because of the intelligence challenge that one faces? obviously iran is a much more interconnected society. let's start with you on that subject. what's your overall sense about how much of this is an intelligence issue versus nonintelligence-related challenge? >> i do think having a very high quality of detailed financial intelligence with regard to iran's money flows, did enable us to build a much stronger sanctions regime than had previously been possible in a couple of ways. one was the one stuart mentioned, in that we could go to private sector entities and raise their level of awareness of the reputational risk of their dealings with some of

these iranian entities and financial institutions. the second is on the diplomatic side. when you walk into a country like china or russia where there may be reluctance going head-long joining a sanctions regime, and you are able to not only urge them with arguments, but actually show them specific relationships and specific financial flows that tie directly to illicit activities that they, themselves have are on record condemning, that's extremely helpful. it puts the diplomatic conversation on a completely different basis. >> you're talking like somebody who has a specific memory in mind. >> no specific memories at all.

i would think those post office discussions happened between my state department colleagues along with stuart and david. >> your point is the chinese can't simply say all this stuff happens, who knows, we asked them to cease and desist. >> it's going to put you politically at risk being a power that says you're ant anti-paliferation yet allowing this to happen under your nose. >> the point was made in the first session that north korea was the first place where we saw a lot of this being used with

the makow bank. then we saw some pulling back at that time. jane, you were in congress at that time. tell us what lessons you think should have emerged from the north korea experience then carried forward into iran and the financial terrorism cases? >> let me make a couple of general comments first. i'm on the house intelligence committee, senior democrat and i love this guy, so good at what he does. i remember telling him, stuart, you can never leave. it's it it's he'd -- it's an edict.

one sunday night i'm at home eating dinner with my family and the phone rings. hi, jane, it's stuart. i'm leaving. it was a hugely disruptive moment in my life and i never really recovered. i think he was also trembling so i am pleased to have that impact on him. it turns out as fabulous as he was, the crowd that has followed is also fabulous. that's kind of my personal story. now about all this stuff. i may be the only recovering politician in the room. is anybody else in my situation? isn't that fabulous? you are all so much more intelligent that i didn't pick that line of work. seriously one of the best things you can say about congress and this program is that congress has not messed it up. it was treated as a bipartisan effort from day one.

i haven't seen no, this is not singular sniping. i haven't seen one shred of it. that is truly amazing. so congratulations to all of you doing this job in such a seamless way. on the sanctions, i may be right or not, of the day, but i think that in this case congress hasn't micromanaged this easier. in terms of sanctions against specific banks, that judgment has been delegated totally to people who actually know what they are doing. so in the makow case and north korea, obviously, north korea went ahead and did what it did. i don't think it paid a penalty in the way that other places have. i just want to say i think the sanctions against russia played

a very big role in russia's change of course on ukraine. i think they worked. people who said just sanctions on individuals don't matter. they matter. i think less effective? i don't think that means this crowd was not effective. i think north korea because of its sort of strange-o economy can be less impacted by sanctions than perhaps other places. >> general alexander, start first with this question of whether or not it was the intelligence on iran that made it so much more effective, whether -- how that compares with dealing with a society like north korea, then i wanted to taking you to some of the terrorism examples that treasury has pursued in recent times. >> i actually -- well first,

juan, thanks for setting this up. thanks for all you did. it was a privilege and honor to work with you. stuart, david, lesley, really has been. you know, i think what they've done for our country, what treasury has done in this area has been absolutely superb. i think we owe them a big round of applause. >> here, here. >> it's the only way i can get an applause. when you look at the impact you have on a country like iran, and i agree with what jane said. the fact is iran's got some economy by withholding it you can have a larger impact. if you don't have anything, telling them you are going to take something away and they look around and say what's left, which is essentially where we are in north korea, i think the differential is much less. i think there are credible cases where both of these apply to it where it can. from my perspective on the intel side, there is great work being done. it's just the impact on iran

will be more. you can have more. and they are more connected. their people in iran see this. they're a factor. because they're a factor and it impacts the people, it makes it more difficult on the regime. that in and of itself is a big differential. in north korea, there is no real credibility network there where the north korean people see that difference. i think when you combine all that, that's really the real case that i think drives the apparent success of sanctions on iran versus north korea. >> how much time at the nsa do you spend devoting resources, signals intelligence for sources and so forth, to following the financial flows, and to what degree is that done elsewhere in the centers that stuart was just describing and so forth? has there been a change of mission over the years you've been there? >> i don't spend any any more, so it's down to zero. they were great partners.

i think they are doing incredible work. and the counterterrorism and on the sanctions, a great partner for the whole intelligence community, not just nsa. we were part of a bigger team that was working this in the interest of our country and our allies. i think that people who understand the financial stuff really brought in some great, great work here. we had some great analysts that we occasionally use, okay, all the time, that helped in this case. >> i wanted to turn to a couple of cases involving terrorism. we asked treasury in the run-up to this if they could give us a list of some cases which have come out into the public now in which there were good examples of the terrorist tracking program being used. one they brought up that we've been discussing here was the

investigation into the nawas brothers. they were arrested in september last year. they were traveling from france. they were arrested in the uk, i believe. they were accused of traveling to a terrorist camp in syria. data from the finance program provided account numbers that helped track them. you might give us a sense how this works in real life? >> i think that is a great example. if i could step back and give information for everybody here. this is really important to set the stage for what's going on in the terrorism arena.

when you look at 2012, 671 attacks, and over 11,000 people were killed. over 21,641 deaths, almost double. that is an incredible set of statistics. state will go and validate all of that. we can argue over so you counted this level of thing. my comment is let's argue over the things but look at double in a year. syria is really a problem. our intelligence analysts across the community have tools to work with. we were talking about that. what tools do they have? this, the meta data programs, where they are trying to guess a wheel of fortune, there is a set of blank numbers up here. you get to say i can use this program, is there a "t?" if a "t" doesn't come up, you

can say is there a financial component to this? if there is they can put that on there and start to look at letters. armed with that, what they are able to do is get out in front. that's what happened to the nowaz brothers when you think about it. because they had information, account numbers and all these things you named there. they were able to see from guys trained in syria, traveling through france to dover, were picked up because there was information from this program and others were able to stop. that's not the key thing for us to remember. the key thing is look, they stopped a terrorist program and there is a bunch more in this whole thing there were 20,000 people killed in 2013. look how secure the united states and europe are. because of the great work of people like this across the community pulling all those tools together, putting them on the table. the great part of this set of

tools, the think i think is good about this set of tools, it's been done with europe involved. europe says, we're there, we agree with the way you're using it. we'll give you access to it. we're all in because we see what you're doing with it. and that may, these tools that they set up, may set a framework for using other tools like meta data. i think that's a huge step forward for us. it's not going to get less. dna talked about what's coming out of syria. you have the nawaz brothers, but there are several thousand out of syria, a great deal coming out of europe and the united states. they're leaving to conduct attacks. it's going to happen. we need these tools and partnerships with countries in europe and around the world if we are going to stop them. >> michelle, you were in office

during the early days of the arabe, you were in office during the early days of the arab revolution. you were getting a constant flow of the data you were using to target individual cells and have to make the decisions along the way about where the limits are on what the u.s. can go do. tell us a little bit about how the kind of financial data plays in that you're getting from these kind of programs, plays in with the other stream of information and decisions you're having to make along the way. >> i think with whether it's the case of syria or other cases like afghanistan, iraq, what this kind of financial intelligence becomes a pretty critical enabler for lots of other agencies, as well. so in some cases, it's going to enable a combination of justice and law enforcement to actually take, to pursue prosecutions or

take law enforcement action. one of the things we saw, we had an afghan threat finance cell on the ground, which had not only traditional intelligence community representatives, but folks from treasury, folks from d.o.d., folks from dea, fbi, and the pooling of the information, pooling of authorities and the fact we had vetted afghan partner units to work with meant that you had much greater effectiveness in actually taking some of this data and disrupting the financial flows that were supporting the insurgency and associated groups. this kind of data also has helped enormously for dod, special operations forces to really just better their understanding of these networks. so if there is an occasion where the military has to actually target, having the understanding of the financial flows is just

that much -- helps you understand the network that much better. i also think this kind of work can be very important part of building partner capacity for taking action. the president in his speech lately recently talked about a shift towards really emphasizing building the capacity partners at the local level to deal with terrorism on their soils. helping them use this kind of information, develop their own sources of this kind of information would be very, very important. the last thing i would note in the case of syria, you have groups like hezbollah very, very active. some of the sources of hezbollah's funding with regard to international drug trafficking and so forth, we talk about reputational risk. having the opportunity to publicize some of that sources of their funding, which are very

much cast a -- raise a lot of questions about their state d - poke a lot of holes in their rhetoric, shall we say, in terms of what they are trying to do in the region. i think this is an enabler for law enforcement, for helping our military understand these networks and partner building and reputation risk. whether it's syria or afghanistan, these elements are common across the various cases. >> you talked about before the utility in dealing with the chinese on weapons proliferation. tell us in the terrorist case if you track something back and it ended up in saudi arabia or some other country where there's obviously been a lot of funding going on of medrases, how did

that same dynamic you described with the chinese, for example, translate when doing this in the terror context? >> sure. i think it has enabled conversations with certain countries about support happening in their society the state may not condone or may not even be aware of. my own knowledge has to do with the case of pakistan where we were able to trace financial flows across the border and among different groups, and even initially when pakistani authorities were in denial about some of what was happen iing an supporting terrorist and insurgent action coming across the border that was directly impacting american forces. we were able to say, no. here is the evidence. this is happening.

look for yourselves. it can make the diplomatic effort much more compelling. >> is there ever a kickback to that, maybe you've seen or you saw in congress or since you've left, where you begin to develop the reaction from the target country that comes back and says this is not an appropriate use of your intel capability? of course, they would rather maintain the ambiguity. did you ever see any objections to the u.s. program in that form? >> well, i saw famed outrage because deniability is built into a lot of the actions of governments, includes our government. that's sort of part of the whole intel landscape. i also saw efforts which are long standing. i don't think they were

developed to defeat these programs, but they work. the hoala network makes it very hard to track what's going on. the other is moving large amounts of cash that don't go through financial institutions which still happens. i remember the frustration in congress trying to figure out who was supporting hamas and some of the terror operations in the region especially in gaza against israel. $25,000 a head went to families of suicide bombers, for example. where did that money come from and how did it get there? one more comment because i think it is such an effective remedy and the state department capably applies it.

let's never underestimate our sea s asymptomatic -- aasemmetric strength. these cools are enormously effective. i don't think we have any other tools this effective. a final comment in terms of congress' bipartisan support is that in each party there are no one missed this in pacifist wings and engagement wings, and financial tools are supported by both of these wings. military tools are not. certain other kinds of engagement tools are not. this is probably the best set of

weapons we have in a very dangerous world. >> you made the observation this may be a building block to get them to help in meta data programs, other intelligence collection programs. if you look across europe these days, if if you hear anything, you hear something in the reverse direction that since the revelations of the past year including the surveillance of european leaders, chancellor merkel and others, but also the revelation of some of these programs, there seems to be pressure on these governments not to cooperate less than they have. you heard one of the earlier sessions that there is a sense steve addly said the europeans don't believe they are under great potential terrorist threat as the united states does and they don't believe the weapons

proliferation threat is as great. in the famous last year you had in office, did you see a reversal of cooperation in any way in some of these cases? >> i think there is a public discussion and then private work. all the countries realize the threats on terrorism. anyone that says they don't, they are wrapping up the terrorists. we give them the leads, they wrap them up. they know this type of data is helping. i think, you asked an important thing. i would take the next step on. that is so the terrorist program actually has a way of treasury can go to europe pol, show they meet a set of standards everybody agreed to. my comment with respect to the meta data program, in reality, europe and many of the european nations have a way of working

with meta data, so do we. we want it for common good. why can't we use that together and come up with a framework that does it and helps us? i think we can. i think there is good in taking these steps on what we can do together, that's a policy decision, not mine. but what i can say is there is tremendous value in the partnership. i think what the policy makers need to do, that's michele and company. >> former policy. >> recovering. >> where is the benefits here? from my perspective it's from the counterterrorism and cyber arena. we have to work together here and set the framework. we have to have a way of saying this is where we all agree. here's where we are going to have to settle and here is where we will never agree. in those you've got some of these. every nation will act in its best interest. it gets down to it.

nations and the elected officials are responsible for protecting that nation are going to act in their best interest. that's us, that's all the other countries. >> michele, he perfectly set you up. >> sorry. >> where this is going a few years out. we heard in the first session, significant disagreements on cyber policy, not only between the u.s. and china where we are defining the problem differently, but i would say the u.s. and europe where the privacy debate is under way in a great way. differences with many of our other partners. if you had to look at where you would like to see this and where you think it will be in five years, the degree of cooperation on things like terrorist finance, on setting some common rules on cyber that would enable the intelligence to go beyond just finance, where do you think we will be? >> those are two different things. where i would like us to be and

where we may be. where i would like us to be is having benefited from a truly elevated, strategic debate about the benefits and, you know, risks to be managed, associated with collecting and using different kinds of meta data, i would like to have that intelligence dispassionate conversation in the united states. that's a big, tall order. based on that have stronger legislation and reform that we need. we need cyber legislation in this country. the danger is we are going to rush to it based on the emotional response to the

snowden leakage based on a truly, informed, strategic debate about benefits and risks and how best to manage the latter. >> what would you hope that legislation had in it? >> i think that i would hope that it would have positive post war authorization of certain types of cyber collection and analysis. it is a critical tool. i would like to see the same kind of discussion in europe. then building some kind of cooperative framework. again, that is rooted in a balancing of the very real security risks and the very real privacy concerns.