he received his bachelor's . gree >> thank you for the opportunity to be here. i am going to give you a few bigger thoughts on the search for life and in particular intelligence life the kind that could uphold its end of the conversation. let me back up and say when you read in the paper about the disovery of new planet you're looking at one of three horses in a race to be the first to find some extra trestral biology. the first horse is simply to find it nearby and that's where the big money is. rovers on mars, the moons of the outer solar system, there are at least a half dozen other worlds that might have life in our solar system. the chances of finding it i think are good and if it happens it will happen in the

next 20 years depending on the financing. the second horse in that race is to build very large instruments that can sniff if you will planets and maybe find oxygen or methane produced by cows and pigs and things like that but biology in any case so you could find pigs in space i suppose. that's again a project depending on funding that could yield results in the next two decades. search for rse is extra trestral intelligence. it's to evesdrop on signals leaked off somebody else's world. that makes sense because in years en we only 100 after the invention of practical radio have the availability to send bits of

information. i think that situation is going to change within everyone's lifetime in this room. the reason is the universe is very fetnt with habitats for life. congressman smith mentioned the number of stars in our galaxy but we know at least 70% of them have planets. an nt results from an astoundingly successful instrument says there are thousands. in our own galaxy there are tens of billions of planets. and if that isn't adequate for your requirement let me point out there are 150 billion other

gal axies we can see with our telescopes. what that means that the numbers are so astounding that if this is the only planet in which not only life but intelligent life has arisen then we are extraordinarily exceptional. it's like buying trillions of lottery tickets and none of them is a winner. that would be very unusual. and although everybody likes to think that they're special and i'm sure you are, maybe we're ot that special.

the world total for this endeavor when are we going to find them? that may happen rather quickly. let me point out two other things. this is very interesting to the public because they have seen extra terrestrials on television and in the movies all their lives. that also gives it a certain giggle factor. it's very easy to make fun of this. on the other hand it would have been easy to sail around the earth or to map out the south pacific. it's exploration, that's what this is. the consequences are always shall we say sluberuss. find that there's life out there intelligent life would

calibrate our position in the universe. it would as congressman smith says probably boo b the greatest discovery that humankind could ever make and what's important is this is the first generation that has both the knowledge and technology to do that. >> thank you. and our next witness. >> thanks for the opportunity to talk to you about this question are we alone is anybody out there. can you show the slides i want to walk you through some of the experiment that is we and other people are doing. so as seth mentioned this mission from that we've learned that there are a trillion planets in our galaxy, more planets than stars lots of places for life and we've learned that a lot of these planets are what we call goldie lox planets. the right distance, not to hot, not too cold, some have liquid water. so there could be a lot of life out there. so how are we getting in touch? one of the ideas is that earthlings have been setting

off signals out into space for the last 75 years. the early television shows have gone past 10,000 stars the nearby stars have seen the simplesons. so you could turn that around. if we're broadcasting, maybe other civilizations are sending signals in our direction either leaking the way that we unintentionally or maybe delibt signal. they could be sending laser signals and there are a number of projects looking for laser signals. this is a project at harvard university, lict laboratory, hawaii looking for laser signals. people are also looking for radio signals. our group uses the world's largest radio antenna in puerto reigno 1,000 feet in diameter. it holds 10 billion bowls of corn flakets. we haven't tried that.

most astronomers would be lucky to use this a day or two a year. we fig beyond a reasonable doubt out a way to use -- figured out a way at the same time so we can collect data all year round. we're collecting data as we talk to you. now, that is actually a problem. so even though we get the world's largest telescope all year round it creates an enormous amount of data. to analyze that data we ask volunteers for help. you can help us by running a program on your home computer or your laptop or desktop computer. you install a program called seti at home a screen savor program. and the way we take the data and we break it up into little pieceses. everybody gets a little piece and you install this program it pops up when you go out and the computer goes through the data looking through all the different frequencies and signals types. this is what it looks like when it's running on your computer

at home. it takes a few days to analyze the data looking for interesting signals and then when it finds it it sends it back to berkeley and then you get a new work. if you are the lucky one to find it you might get the noble prize. there are millions of people that have down loaded it split out over 200 countries. together the volunteers have formed one of the most powerful super computers on the planet and enain abled the most sensitive search that everybody's ever done. so we're very grateful. now we've made that more general so that you can participate in not just seti with your home computer but you can participate with lots of projects. climate prediction, gravity weight, proteen folding. you can look for drugs, and allocate how you want it to be

used. one of the new projects is called pan chromatic seti. we're asking those to look at frequencies targeting the very nearest stars trying to cover all the different ban ps that come through. we're looking at radio frequencies, infra red frequencies or wave lengths and optical frequencies looking for laser signals and this will be an extremely comprehensive search because we have eight different telescops that we're using and looking at all these different bands but only targeting the nearby stars. another project we're launching this year is called interplanetry eavesdropping and the idea of this is there may be signals going back and forth between two planets in a distant solar system. maybe we've have machines or people on mars and radio communication or laser communication between our two

planets. put the other way distant civilization may have colonized a planet in their own solar system and there may be radio signals going back and forth. now with the space craft we know exactly when two planets in a distant solar system are lined up with earth so we can schedule our observations and target that and see if we can intercept those signals going back and forth. we're using the green bank telescope in west virginia to do that experiment. while we haven't found et's so far but we've made a lot of interesting discoveries. we've made the first maps of the black hole. these instruments are used in all kinds of things. but we haven't found et so far. we're just getting in the game. we've only had radio 100 years. it's like looking for a needle in a hey stack. the reason i'm optimistic in the long run is that the seti

is limited by computing technology which is growing it's limited by telescope technology, china is building a huge telescope. the australians and south africans and europeans are working on a huge telescope combined to make a giant telescope. i think i will stop there. i've got a couple of poems that i could read you but i'm out of time. thank you very much. >> thank you. thank you both for your excellent testimony. and you've anticipated my questions a little bit but i would still like to go forward with them. let me address the first question to both of you all. it is this. kind of a two-part question. what do you think -- and i can anticipate your answer. but what do you think is the possibility of microbial life being found in the universe or intelligent life being found in the universe? so the first question goes to the possibility.

the second question would be what do you think is the likelihood of finding either microbial life or intelligent life in the universe? two different kind of questions. >> well, the probability of life of course it's hard to estimate because what we do know now and something we didn't know very recently even 20 years ago we did not know were there habitats that could support life. what astronomy has proven is that the entire universe is made out of the same stuff. the distant gal axies have the same llts in your ninth grade classroom. if you've taken chemistry you don't have to take it again if you move to another galaxy. there are plenty of planets and stir the kind of conditions in hyattsville so life could arise. we also know that life began on earth very, very quickly. now, it's only a sample of one

so it's not entirely convincing but it does suggest it wasn't very difficult for life to get a foothold on this planet so maybe elsewhere. so life i think is maybe not so hard to get started. that is sort of the general impression. but what they believe is not so important. it's finding that's important. the second part what about intelligent life that's a lot harder. the earth has had life for probably 4 billion years almost since the beginning. this place has been carpetted with life and almost all of that time required a microscope to see it. it was all microbial. only in the last 500 million years did you get multicell ullar life, that opens up the question, well, if i give you a million worlds with life what fraction of them is ever going to cook up something as clever as you all? and we don't know the answer to that. however, there are indirect suggestions that it will happen given enough time simply because we're not the only

species that's gotten clever in the past 50 million years. dogs and cats at home are more clever than the dinosaurs. >> you made a point that i might emphasize and that is what 20 years ago we hadn't detected a single planet outside our solar system. now we're up to 2,000. >> i suspect the universe is teaming with microbial life. it would be bizarre if we are alone. but i don't know that for sure. the intelligence is going to be rarer but because there are a trillion planets i believe it is going to happen often. it has happened several times on this planet and it is likely to arise elsewhere. >> and you would put it at 100% then? 99. 9. ok. the next question let me follow up, by the way, as far as the seti at home screen sare goes that would be something for the

people here to take advantage of as well as members. i tried to adapt that to my laptop several years ago and was not able to. maybe the government needs to change its policy i'm not sure which but let me ask what are the advantages and disadvantages of radio seti versus optical seti? >> there are lots of pros and cons. laysers are good for point to point communication and lots of bits per second, lots of data. i think the best strategy is a multiple strategy. we should be looking for all kinds of different signals and not put all our money in one basket. it's hard to predict what other civilizations are doing. if you had asked me a hundred years ago what to look for i would have said smoke signals. so we try to launch a new one every year. >> anything to add to the advantages or disadvantages? >> i should point out that they are both sort of different colors of the same thing in fact literally different

colors. they are both electro magnetic. we use both here on earth. i suspect the aliens will as well. an about every week i get email from somebody saying that's more old school. they'll use something more sophisticated than that. we don't know. and one shouldn't discount a technology just because it's been around a while. we use the wheel every day. that's an old technology. i suspect we'll continue to use the wheel for a long time. >> thank you both for your answers to my questions. and the ranking member is recognized for her questions. >> thank you very much. i'm trying very hard to ask omething and sound sensible. what is the status now? >> i think we're just getting in the game. we're learning how to do this.

and i think we would be lucky to find, even though i'm optimistic, and it's likely there's a whole demractic internet out there, i think we will be lucky to find them now but i'm optimistic in the long run. >> might point out that contrary to popular impression this experiment isn't the same from day to day. people figure we're sitting around with ear phones listening to cosmic status every day. but it's of course all the listening is done by computers but the really important point is that much of this experiment depends on digital technology, computers, if you will. and there's something called moore's law that whatever you can buy today for a dollar you can buy twice as much for a dollar two years from now. it's a very rapid growth in the capabilities. so in fact the search is speeding up and it's speeding up exponentially a very overused word but in fact it

applies. >> tell me this. i know that the improvement of -- are ies or important and yet some of the old techniques are still in play. how do you predict your advancement based on what you have available to you for research tools? >> i'll just say something i'm sure dan has much to add but in terms of what we can do in the foreseeable future what you really i think need to do if you want to have a decent chance of success -- and mind you this has to remain speculative, this is all like asking chris columbus two weeks out of cadeeves have you found any new continents lately and his answer was there was only water around the ship.

so he can't predict when anything interesting is going to happen nor can we. but when you look at what are called estimates, and they are guesses as to what fraction of stars have somebody that you might be able to pick up it sounds like you have to look at a few million star systems to have a reasonable chance of success. we can't do that today. we have not done that today. we have done less than 1% of that today. but given the predictable advancements of technology to look at a few million star systems is something that can -- one in a few million given the ability to do it. >> seth captured it well. >> when we find life on other planets what do you speculate we find and what is the value, potential value? >> i think it's profound either

way. this is not an expensive thing. it's an order of a million dollars a year funded by nasa, templeton foundation, some private foundations. the reason why i think it is, if we discover that we are alone we had better take really good care of life on this planet, it's very precious. and the other thing that's po found if we find we're part of a community and get on the internet and learn all their poetry, music, literature, science we could learn a lot. >> just add briefly, nobody know what is we will learn. if we can decode the signal this is sort of being confronted with hire gliffics you might be able to figure them out it turns out they were written by humans. and there was also the rose ta stone and whatever. but we might never figure it out. if you could you would be listening to data being sent by societies far and advance of us

because we're hearing them not the other way around. so they are more advanced and teach you very important stuff. who knows. imagine that the incas find a barrel washed up maybe from europe filled with books. if they could ever figure out the books they would learn a lot of interesting stuff. i don't know that we will ever figure out the books. but even if we don't, the important point that's been made is we have calibrated our place not in the physical universe. we've sort of done that but calibrated our place in the biological and even more the intellectual universe. and i think that's maybe good for our souls to know how we fit in. >> thank you very much. my time is up. >> the gentleman from ohio mr. johnson is recognized for his question. >> thank you mr. chairman. gentlemen for both of you how has the recent discovery of over 1700 planets by the keplar space telescope impacted seti

research? >> if you would asked astronomers 20 years ago are there planets growing around other stars we think so but we don't know. that's changed now. if you extrap late on the planets which are a few thousand planets that they discovered, if you extrap late on that there are a trillion planets in the milky way galaxy about three or four times more planets than stars. so that is a lot of places for life. >> i think that it's also affect it had experiments in the sense that in the past we would point the telescopes in the direction of stars certain kinds of stars, certain masses of stars, certain brightnesses. those are the ones we think might have an earth like planet. we now know two things we know that the majority of stars have planets. you can look at a random star and feel confident it has a planet. more than that we're beginning to get some indication what fraction of stards have planets that are sort of like the

earth. and that fraction is not one in a million, not one in a thousand, not one in a hundred. it may be one in five. so you look at 50 star systems and you've examined 10. so in some sense it's made the search much more straightforward. we look at all the nearby stars we can. >> would you please provide some examples of the technical contributions that seti has made to astronomy and other fields? for example, how has seti research benefited other areas of science? >> well, i think that its benefit is less so in terms of the discovery. we haven't found et. if we had we wouldn't be having this hearing. to my surprise it hasn't turned up any astro physical phenomena that wasn't expected as well. normally the precedent is that every time you build an instrument that examines a different parameter in the

space of the universe you find something new. so that's instructive. the kind of technology that has been developed is certainly of interest to other fields in astronomy but i think the real value of seti is not so much in terms of what it does to astronomy but what it does in terms of the other efforts being made in space. nasa has a big effort. the rovers are mars are there to find the history of water on mars but why are you interested? you're interested because you want to know were there ever martians. microbial most likely. or are there still martians. that's what interests people the most. and seti was always, if you will, a punch line to this story that nasa had about finding traces of water on mars or burrowing through the ice on you're opena where there may be vast quantities of liquid water. seti was always that, ok, we may find life but what about intelligent life?

that would be even more interesting. and that's what's missing from the nasa program today. >> you made a comment just a few minutes ago that kind of caught my attention. let me make sure i got it right. you said that if we hear from intelligent life out there somewhere that they must be more advanced than us because we're hearing from them and not the other way around. how can you draw that conclusion? i mean, maybe they've been hearing from us for a long time and just don't like what we have to say. >> i think it's entirely possible that we are on their, in their catalog. they've seen oxygen or atmosphere and know we're out here. i think life in the universe is going to be lots of different stages. some is going to be microbial, some will be trees, more sophisticated. the earth is 5 billion years old, some stars are 10 billion

years old. so there could be advanced civilizations. >> you're not going to hear from any less advanced societies. they're not building radio transmitters. >> equal to or perhaps more advanced but maybe they got their caller id block turned on. >> it could be. i wouldn't speculate on alien socialing and whether they like our television or not. but if they're at least our level they are within 100 or even 10,000 years of our level is simply on statistical grounds highly uncertain. >> one final quick question for both of you. how would you define successful seti research? i mean, i know that's kind of a nebulous question. define ould you success? >> if you find the signal and can't find it again it's not science. if you find a signal moving across the sky the way the stars do because of the

rotation of the earth, it's a narrow band signal not made by nature, that's success. >> ok. >> i think the most likely scenario is finding some sort of art fact of their technology, radar or navigational beacon that won't contain a lot of information but we'll know we're not alone. >> thank you. i yield back. while it was mentioned a ago that the likelihood is if there were other intelligent civilizations they would likely be more advanced than we are. we're relatively junior galaxy. they might be two billion years older than we are and it's just fascinating to think what form of life might exist in a universe or parallel universe or another galaxy where they've had a 2 billion year head start. we might not even recognize the bands we might not be able to

communicate with them. that's one of the reasons we're fascinated by the subject. and none of this will be charged against the 5 minutes for questions. >> thank you for being here. i noticed in your testimony that you said that there are 24 seti scientists on the planet. and i can't think of a time in this can he where we've had had a larger set of experts. i appreciate it. and i really am intrigued by your section in your testimony on the public's interest. and how the idea of life in space is an idea that everyone grass ps and is especially an ideal hook for i want resting young people in science. i think that's evidenced by the full can he room today. one of the statements that resonated with me is it would be a cramped mind indeed who didn't wonder who might be out there. i really appreciate that. you said also in your testimony extra trestrals are the unknown

tribe over the hill potential competitors or any case someone we would like to know more about. and i recollect a similar hearing in this can he i believe it was last year when one of my colleagues -- and i'm fairly certain it was representative chris smith who is no longer on the can he said the interesting question is what do we do when we find the life on another planet? so can you talk both of you about what's the plan? do we announce it to the world? do we do research more to determine if these are friendly or collaborative or -- what do we do when we make the discovery, assuming that it's going to happen? >> that's a question of great interest to the public and of great importance as well. to begin with there's no danger. you tune in your favorite dj here in d.c. on the car radio and there's no danger that that

dj is going to jump into the car next to you and give you a hard time. so if we pick up a signal they don't know that. there is the question of well should we reply? i'll get to that in just a second. but what happens then? suppose we do. it would be announced. the public has the idea that you all have a secret plant plan, that the government has a secret plan. sfars i can tell there is no plan. and we have had false alarms and i've waited for my congressman to call me up and say you are picking up a signal. and nobody in the government shows the slightest bit of interest. what happens is that the media starts calling up, the "new york times" will call. the government is not so interested. so what would happen is that it would immediately be known that we have found a signal even before it had been corroborated. so there will be false alarms. but you get somebody in another observatory.

you would not believe it yourself if you were the only one to find it. >> i think before you make a big announcement you want to make sure it's real. you ask a different telescope with different people, different software, different equipment, to see if they can verify it. then you triangulate make sure it's coming from outside, you make sure it's not a graduate student playing a prank on you. once you have some confidence, you may not know what it is, it could be a new phenomenon. when pull sars were discovered they thought they found little green men. you make all the information public. the coordinates in the sky, the frequency, anything you know about the signal and i think there will be a lot of debate about whether there's new natural phenomenon or evidence of a new civilization. >> could you address of the 24 you say the 24 seti scientists on the planet, to what extent are other nations involved?

how collaborative are we? we have a lot of discussions in this can he about international collaboration especially in space. so can you talk about where we are as a nation compared to the other countries in the world? >> yeah. seti is quite fragile. as you said there are 24 people doing it. there are about two thirds of them in the u.s. the u.s. is leading this effort. there's -- we are working with others in other countries. and we're trying to train new people and get new ideas and other groups because it's only at a small number of institutions. the funding is fragile too. it's fluctuating around. the two biggest telescopes on the planet are currently funded by the national skines foundation, those are in funding jeopardy. it looks like one of those observatories is probably going to have to shut down the other is hanging by a thread.

the chinese are building a bigger telescope. there's a new one going to be built in south africa and australia. so the u.s. may not continue to lead this work but it is -- >> i would find that isappointing if that happened. >> the gentleman from new york is recognized for his questioning. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i think i might ask the question everyone in this room wants to ask. have you watched ancient aliens? and what's your comment about that series? >> i think i have been on it actually. more than once. the public is a fascinated with the idea that we may be being visited now or maybe in the past the so-called ufo phenomenon. i do not share the conviction that we have been visited. i think that is not something that all of the governments of

the world would have on few stated -- obfuscated. keep in mind, in the 4.5 billion year history of the earth, the time of the ancient egyptians was yesterday, ok, so why were they there then? i have no idea, and i do not find very good evidence. i think the pier mids, for example, were probably built by egyptians. i know that is a radical idea for some people, but they were very clever, and they certainly could have done that. i do not think there is any evidence that could convince me that we were visited in his store times. >> how about you? >> ufo's have nothing to do with extraterrestrials. i think some of these are real henomenon. some imbalance and say it has windows, etc., and some of it is people's imagination, and we

know that because it ties to popular culture when jules vern wrote about flying saucers, and everybody started seeing flying saucers, and before that, angels, and when people watch movies, we get a lot of reports about what is in the movies. making money. >> thank you. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. collins. the gentleman from maryland is recognized -- the gentlewoman from maryland. >> thank you. i feel i should have been here earlier, so i apologize. i enjoy the discussion and testimony. my favorite movie is "contact," and every year, it comes out, and i watch it, and i dream, and i think, who knows? what is interesting is this idea -- and it is a little hubris, right, that somehow we are waiting to find them as

opposed to them finding us. and maybe that is just the nature of homo sapiens. maybe that is what we do. but i am a little curious. dr., in your prepared statement, you discussed the study project, looking to search nearby stars and those most likely to host a planet system similar, so the project as you describe it would examine a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, spanning from low frequencies, detecting possible signals from advanced civilizations. how are these identified, and how are you going to coordinate the use of the six telescopes? >> we are not trying to use the telescopes all at the same ime. we work with a lot of groups at

observatories, and we would typically use one telescope and then another, and the stars that we are targeting, instead of targeting stars that we know have planets, and it looks like all stars have planets, and it looks like we will target the nearest stars, so that is our plan, just target the nearby stars. >> and you talked also about camino, this notion that there are 24 folks in, academically, studying this, but is there not a whole network of people out in communities who feed your fuel -- feed or fuel some of he research you are doing? >> it refers to me, because i do not think we know the answer to that question. in order to do this, it would be like saying, sure, there are thousands of people looking for higgs boson, but if you do not

have the instrument, it is very hard to do the experiment, and the number of those is very small. >> just dreaming and pretending. that is all right. you do not have to answer that. i was not serious at all. and then i want to talk about security issues in the time we have left. i understand that there was the oftware to withstand attack, and in the earlier study, they found that there have been two noteworthy attacks and ompromising. thousands of user e-mail addresses. can you give us an idea of the current state of security? >> yes. i think, in general, downloading software and installing it on your computer, you should be careful. it turns out that software is

one of the safest thing to can install on the computer, and the reason is millions of eople are using it and testing it out, and also, it has been running for a really long time, and it is open source software. a lot of volunteers help us write the software, and we are now doing it with cell phones, and that would allow even more people to participate in the search. >> i guess one of the questions, especially whenever you deal with open source, the challenge of the system's vulnerability ash >> i think open source software is safer because so many eyeballs can look at it. >> ok. i am done. i think i will just go back to watching my movies. >> thank you. the german from florida is recognized. >> i thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for abiding these

distinguished witnesses for this fascinating testimony. ery enjoyable. i go to the facebook page every day and get a factoid, learn something. i have not been there to find that i have already known your message of the day. very educational, very inspiring, and obviously very interesting, and the graphics are always good too, and i want to thank you for that. on your disclosure, i was really impressed with the number of agreements and grants. i am really glad that nasa is so engaged with what you are doing there and still allowing you all to have a pretty free hand to do what you do better. better than anybody else at doing it, obviously, so thank you for doing that. obviously, there is some

curiosity about project bluebook. what do you think? >> first off, i want to thank you. all of those grants are for the research being conducted at the sepi institute. there is no federal money being spent. the majority of our scientists are doing astrobiology, life on mars, the outer solar ystem. this is, i think, a very productive line of research, as well. in terms of the ufo phenomenon, as we say, i am personally quite skeptical. some americans believe we are being visited. that is the result of polls taken since the 1960's. that number does not change. and, by the way, if you think this is an especially american opinion, one third of the french, japanese, etc., believe, and i do not. i absolutely do not. i think if we were being

visited, it would not be controversial. it has been 60 years, for example. if you would ask the residents of massachusetts if you think you are being visited by spaniards, that would not be controversial. if they were here, everyone would know that. >> ok. we are good. stephen hawking, i believe, made some comments about contact with extraterrestrials or other life. your thoughts about his comments? >> yes. so it is a controversial topic on whether we should transmit messages. that is called active seti or messages to extra terrestrial intelligence. most people think we are just any merging civilization and that the first experiments we should do is just listening, trying to receive signals and see what is out there. we think these civilizations

are going to be peaceful and watch "star trek," but we do not know that. that may be naïve. just listening right now, and maybe if we do not hear anything in thousands of years, we should think about transmitting signals, but it should not be just up to a few scientists, and so, that is a big decision about who should speak for earth, so i believe that is what hawking would say, as well. >> i am going to disagree with my colleague, dan. i think there is very little transmitting, and if there is, we are already doing it. yes, we are not deliberately targeting stars in general, though we have done that in the past. nasa sent a "beatles" song to the north star years ago, and they used a fairly powerful transmitter, but the most powerful transmitters are coming off of the airports,

right, for the navigation, and these things are already going into space. they have already reached several thousand star systems. any society that has the technical competence to threaten you across dozens, hundreds, thousands of light-years of space, any society at that level, they can pick up the signal, so if you're worried about this, you should shutdown the radar at the local airports. personally, i do not think that would be a very good idea. >> and your thoughts on -- >> i am sorry. i am not familiar with the topic. are you talking about the nuclear reactor? >> yes. >> i am really not an expert, i am sorry. >> you are talking about towering spacecraft. parts of our solar system, they are in the boondocks, or to upiter and so forth.

trapping by a factor of 100, you cannot use solar cells very effectively out there. you have to power the craft is some way. i would not worry too much about radioactivity because space has plenty of radioactivity. that is the nature of the causebut if you're worried about the fact that these launches could go awry, yes, that is a danger, but people are aware of that danger, and they try to mitigate that danger. >> thank you, and thank both witnesses. the gentleman from arizona is recognized. >> and to our witnesses, what have we learned so far? we have learned that the aliens do not like being -- the beatles, which i have trouble accepting, and they do not like our television. somehow, i thought that would be funnier. a couple of mechanical questions i sort of went to get my head around, the current

cientific understanding. an asteroid hits the world, hits earth, and a rock is thrown out into the stellar -- it carries dna, and does that dna survive, dr.? > yes. this idea, the idea that one world can infect another world has been looked at. people have simulated the environment in space and put some of our earthly bacteria in space to see how long they could survive, and with the dna still be viable when it got someplace interesting, and the results as i understand them suggest that, yes, if you're talking about communicable disease within the solar system, could a rock from mars

have seeded the earth, that is ossible. the live with survive. it would remain. but if you are talking about other solar systems of the distances of the stars, the problem is space is a pretty harsh environment, even for a rock, because there is a lot of radiation, and a thing in there would be suffering for a maybe millions of years really before it gets there, and the general consensus that i've heard is that it would not be viable when it does. >> i think that is the current thought right now. >> i know asteroids have hit the earth many times. an interesting question would be if light is found in our solar system, for example, europa. there could be something swimming around down there.

by the way, i talked to elementary schools, and i have asked them, how do we get through the ice, and they all say we should use machine guns and bombs, and some believe we should meld our way through using mirrors. >> there is something in our dna which is different. >> if we do find life in our own solar system, it would be really exciting. is it exactly the same kind of life? does it have the same dna, the same amino acids, the same nucleotides? that would mean that rocks are going back and forth between these moons and planets and our own solar system, and it already happened in one place and was carried back and forth. that is not very interesting. what would be much more interesting is discovering life that is different, with the different chemistry. if we do find something like that on europa or another moon

or mars, that means that the universe is teeming with life, and we can find it with two different kinds of life in our solar system, and that means there is a lot of life in our solar system. >> it leads to wonder. earlier, the chairman, and i mean this with all of the love in the world, was trying to say, give me a percentage. life out there in existence. i remember doing this sort of as a thought process with one of my professors many years ago, and from the beginning to oday, 100 billion species or something of that, and how many can do higher mass, and to give you sort of a -- we would use that as sort of a benchmark to try to do those calculations, and i guess our understanding is that it is unknowable of what is out there, what is not

out there. we see the world as large numbers, large planets, these huge numbers, and -- >> on earth, intelligence has happened several times independently. there are some creatures who are not necessarily as intelligent as us, we do not know mama but my guess is that on some planets, there are going to be selective pressures that select for different types of things. you get selected if you are strong or fast, but you can also be successful in some evolutionary environment by being smart, and i think there will be places in the universe where it is advantageous to be smart. >> and the fun on this one is how would you ever calculate that? how would you build your baseline to build from? and hope is a powerful thing, to being able to put it into a calculator? >> it is very difficult to estimate, because we have this

one example on earth, and so i think the only way we're going to find out is to do the search. >> it is very a can, i think, to sitting around in the bars in europe in the 1700's, thinking if any expedition would find the hypothesized southern continent. what is the probability? can you give that to me to three figures before i find you? you cannot. -- before i fund you? >> it is a reasonable hypothesis that even intelligent life can be out there. in the end, if you do not continue to do the experiment, you will just have the drinks. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> inc. you. dr., thank you both for your testimony, which was clearly appreciated by both members of

congress as well as the audience, and i also want to thank the herndon high school students who have been here today. it has been a fascinating topic, and we hope this encourages you and other scientific subjects, as well, and in case someone wants to follow-up on this, you might go to the committee website, which is science.house.gov, and we will clearly have information on this as well as other things that would be of interest to you, as well, so thank you, and e stand adjourned. national cable satellite corp. 2014] national captioning institute]

>> on the next "washington journal" we'll look at some of the key issues before congress including immigration with grover nor quist, president of americans for tax reform. the president of pro choice america will take your questions about recent supreme court rulings regarding abortion and contraception. and we'll look at global oil production that the u.s. has surpassed saudi arabia and russia as the world's largest oil producer. "washington journal" is live on c-span every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. forum on the supreme

court's ruling that gave the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns. this is a little less than an hour. [applause] >> thank you, nelson. it really was a privilege to serve with you as your executive director for 13 years. i'm here simply today as a moderator. my role is pretty limited. i'd like to have the two debaters come up. this is a little different than the previous sessions. this is going to be a modified debate, if you will. we're going to be debating the topic of campaign finance and the citizens united decision so

that the backdrop for all this is, as you know, in 2010 the supreme court issued the landmark citizens united decision and more recently in april of this year, talk about timeliness when we were planning this conference we had no idea that we were going to get hit with another supreme court decision on issues involving money and politics, mccutchen versus the federal election commission came down. so we're entering a brave new world concerning the financing of political campaigns. i have the distinct privilege of moderating the debate between these two nation's leading authorities on the subject and the effects of the supreme court decisions on the political process. i could speak for a long time about each of them. rather than to bore you with that please raid your program, google them and you will be very impressed with their ualifications.

we really appreciate them. coming for this event. let me explain the format to you. we will have time for questions. but initially each individual is going to be given an opportunity to make a 10-minute presentation. after the ten-minute presentations, their opening statements, each will have a 3-minute rebuttal. then we'll open it up to questions from the audience. if you have questions put them in writing and at the end we will give them each a minute to kind of sum up. so with that i will turn it ver. thank you.

>> thank you to the miami dade commission on ethics and public trust and st. thomas university center for holding this debate on this critical question on our time. american democracy is in crisis. big money interests dominate our elections and our government drowning out the voices of ordinary citizens. five justices of the united states supreme court have hijacked the first amendment for the wealthy few distorting the very essence of the first amendment's guarantee of an open and unfettered exchange of ideas and undermining the fundamental promise of republican self-government and political equality for all. the american people recognize this and in just four years since the citizens united ruling millions of citizens across the country have propelled a growing grassroots movement for a constitutional amendment to overturn the supreme court and to defend our

democracy. 16 states have already gone on record calling for such an amendment including the states of montana and colorado where 75% of the voters in the 2012 election supported ballot initiatives demanding such an amendment. 500 plus cities and towns and more than 160 members of congress are also already on record. the united states senate will soon hold an historic vote on senator tom you'd al's constitutional amendment bill which would end the big money dominance of our politics and restore that basic vision of our republic. government of by and for the people. in these opening remarks i will address four central points as to why the supreme court's wrong and why we must fight to overturn them in the name of the first amendment our democracy. point number one. money does not equal speech.

in its 1976 ruling, the supreme court equated money with speech and struck down campaign spending limits passed in the wake of the watergate scandal. the ruling set us on our current course today of unlimited campaign spending where our elections are sold to the highest bidders. but as former supreme court justice jean-paul stevens has said, money is property. it is not speech. money in fact amplifies speech and for the very wealthy in our society money enables them to be heard at the loudest dess billions at the expense of the rest of us. the campaign spending limits at issue in buckley where reasonable

by equating money with speech, the buckley court sanctioned a system that allows the very wealthy, and now corporations, to distort our political process and the very meaning of the first amendment. point number 2 -- no one has a first amendment right to drown out other people' speech. the supreme court stated this clearly. in the 1949 in kovacs v. cooper. a union in the city of trenton was blaring its message with a sound truck going down every street. in response, the city passed an ordinance saying the sound trucks can only go down every 3rd street. the supreme court upheld the ordinance as a reasonable regulation on the manner of speech. it found that public streets served other public purposes that needed to be protected and as justice jackson wrote in his concurrence, freedom of speech for kovacs does not include freedom to use sound amplifiers to drown out the natural speech of others. the d c circuit court of appeals

in the buckley case recognized this very point in defining campaign spending limits to be constitutional. it would be strange if the appellate court said, by extrapolation outward from the basic rights of individuals, the wealthy few could claim a constitutional guarantee to a stronger little voice than the unwealthy mainly because they are able to spend more money and the amount they gives an spend cannot be limited. campaign spending limits ensure that big-money interest may not drown out the voices of everyone else in our political process. point number 3 -- today's campaign-finance system violates the equal protection rights of non-wealthy candidates and voters. the supreme court has long held that wealth cannot be a determining factor in our elections.

in 1966, and harper v. virginia board of elections, the court struck down the poll taxes unconstitutional on equal protection grounds. in 1972, it struck down high candidate filing fees on that same basis. the supreme court also made clear in the exclusionary white primary cases that eight process that has become a critical part of the machinery for getting elected must be opened to all. today's campaign-finance system operates as an exclusionary wealth primary, in violation of the equal protection clause. voters and candidates, lacking access to wealth, are effectively barred from the wealth primary. the wealth primary has become a critical part of the machinery for getting elected. almost invariably, those candidates who win the wealth primary, who out raise and outspend their opponents, go on

to win the election. a system that pre-selects candidates based on their access to wealth is contrary to equal protection in the political process and offensive to the basic principle of one person, one vote. writing for the court in striking down high tendency filing fees, it was said that we would ignore reality if we were not to recognize that the system falls with unequal weight on voters as well as candidates according to their economic status. we would ignore reality today were we not to find that this campaign-finance system falls on voters and candidates according to their economic status. point number four -- corporations are not people. in citizens united, they slip away a century of president

barring corporate money in election. the corporate's that corporations are not merely associations of people. such an argument would not pass a basic corporate law exam in law school. corporations are artificial creatures of the state, unlike a corporation of people, corporations have advantages we do not have. limited liability, unlimited life, the ability to frame well. the framers understood that they were not to be treated as people under our constitution. james madison said, corporations are a necessary evil, subject to proper limitations and guards. thomas jefferson hoped to "crush in its birth the aristocracy of

our moneyed corporations." as the result of citizens united, five justices of the court have unleashed unlimited corporate and union dollars into our elections, making a dangerously corrupting system exponentially worse and extending further the fabrication of corporate claims of constitutional rights. under our constitution and under our republic, we, the people, shall govern over corporations, not the other way around. in the face of this crisis, we must now use our power under article five of the constitution to enact a constitutional amendment to overturn the supreme court and to defend our democracy and our republic. we have done this before in our nation's history. 27 times before.

seven times to overturn egregious supreme court rulings. we can and we must do it again. and we will. as dangerous as this moment is for our democracy, it also resents a unique and historic opportunity to unite around our common vision of america, a country may be divided on many public policy questions on the day, but we are united behind that basic and powerful idea -- government of, by, and for the people. that common vision fuels the current movement for a constitutional amendment to reclaim our democracy. as james madison wrote in federalist papers number 57, who are to be the electors of the federal representative? not the rich more than the poor. not the sons of the state which name then the sons of the obscure.

the electors are to be the great body of the people of the united states. in the name of james madison, it is time for a 28th amendment to the constitution that lists up that promise to democracy and make sure that we the people, not corporations or big-money interests, rule in america. [applause] >> thank you mr. bonifaz. you have 10 minutes to make an opening statement. >> thank you very much. i must admit, i am one of those agents of the corporate and big-money interests. wisconsin right to life, citizens united, in the most recent mccutcheon case where all my cases.

in those cases, i was representing an advocacy group in wisconsin whose sources of funds were people of average means who only wanted to do was lobby their incumbent members of the united states senate to urge them in 2004 not to filibuster president bush's judicial nominees and of course they ran square into mccain-feingold blackout. which made it a criminal offense for incorporation or a labor union to run any ad that simply mentions the name of a candidate for federal office. what they wanted to do was to urge the public to contact them about an upcoming vote in congress.

you might wonder, why is it that congress would pass such a blackout period? people that come together in groups, people of average means, that is the only way they can participate by coming together as a group. why is that congress thinks it is outrageous and a criminal offense for someone to have the audacity to lobby them about an upcoming vote in congress? well, this is as old as time. incumbent politicians object to being criticized. they hate it when people talk about what they are doing to us and for us and office. the people who founded our country were surely some of the most sophisticated group of politicians and political figures that have ever come together in the history of the world and they knew that the experiment in self-government, where it is the people that are going to govern themselves, would certainly fail if the government could decide if

people could exercise the four indispensable democratic freedoms that allow that system of government to operate. that is speech, press, association, and petitioning the government. so they rolled the first amendment. john did not mention it, but let me, which said congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, press, association, and petitioning. it was not a few years before the federalist party past the alien and sedition act in 1790 to suppress the speech of the emerging public and party. of thomas jefferson. people were prosecuted and went to jail for doing things that

were considered sedition. that is to disparage the government or any public official. criticize them about what they're doing to us and for us in office. well, it did not work. is often these attempts by incumbent politicians to protect themselves against the people and using campaign-finance to suppress their speech often does not work either. thomas jefferson won. the alien and sedition acts were repealed and he pardoned those convicted under it. it is perfectly obvious from that experience that it is going to be very difficult to get incumbent politicians to get off the train and the train is to use government power against those, who they perceive to be their enemies. john -- his speech was talking about who he perceives to be his enemies. corporate and big money interests.

their enemies of the liberal agenda or what he thinks is the authentic will of the people. what he wants to do is suppress those voices. so he can get his agenda adopted. well, the incumbent politicians will do that as well. it is bipartisan. it happens with people on both sides of the issue. that is why our first amendment was adopted. it is to prevent incumbent politicians from using the power of government to suppress who they view to be their enemies. now, is there any doubt that they have had a difficult time understanding what the word no means? my three daughters the when they were teenagers that no man, well it is ok this time, isn't it, dad? so we have had periodic passage of laws, including the most

recent mccain-feingold law and here the irony of john's lambasting of his perceived enemies, the corporations and big-money interests, the irony that mccain-feingold that he championed targets the very groups that people of average means must have in order to participate. mccain-feingold targeted advocacy groups in imposing this lack out. in terms of mentioning names of candidates in a broadcast ads. they attacked political parties, raise money and are regulated state laws about what candidates can say about federal office. they attacked unions with the same blackout period. they did nothing about any rich person.

there is not a sentence that adversely affects the ability of a rich person to spend their own money for politics. what about people of average means? they do not have the money. what they have to do is associate. they come together in a group, pool their resources, now they have the money to participate. the rich get off, the people of average means are shut out. he calls this attacking the big-money's interest. i call it enabling the rich people to be the only ones that can participate in our political system. he praised the expenditure limits that were passed as part of the 1974 post-watergate amendments which limited what a presidential candidate can spend to $20 million in a two-year election cycle.

and he calls this not suppressing speech. i agree with the fact that money has not been speech. they say we say that. we do not say that. it is ridiculous. the problem is is if you limit the money that can be spent on speech, you are limiting speech. does anyone doubt -- barack obama, in 2008, limited to only $20 million when he ran for the president of united states limits his speech? come on. john? of course it does. somebody had to buy the soapbox. somebody had to buy the megaphone. many people can you communicate with that you can spend any money to go see to speak to them personally?

so that is why campaign-finance limits on spending money violate the freedom of speech because they limit the amount of speech that someone can do and the reality is that it costs money to communicate. the final thing i might say about john's presentation is how offensive it is that he thinks that everyone who is involved in politics are crooks. they have a veritable industry that is funded by the largest foundation, the richest private foundation in our country that is continually generating this concept that every public official, and many of you who may not be but work in government, are simply just a bunch of crooks. they are available for purchase at really quite low prices because john has advocated and defended contribution limits as

low as $100 to run for state representatives. i went to law school here in florida but honestly, even in 1970i did not know a single state rep that you could buy for $100 in the state of florida. he thinks they are that cheap. so, it is not surprising that people are cynical about politics and government and think people are crooks when you have the whole industry that spends an enormous amount of time, money, and effort painting all politicians and public officials with this brush. that takes us really to the final affirmative point that i would make, and that is there is a real problem in our public finances them right now. it is low contribution limits. everything -- all of the things that are disturbing people, the

lack of transparency, the total lack of accountability in many instances of actors within our political system all are occurring because of the low contribution limits. said another way, if someone is interested in things that are happening in congress and they want to support a candidate that shares their views and they are prepared to spend $50,000 to do that, let's say a trial lawyer -- >> try to wrap it up. 30 seconds. >> thank you very much. 30 seconds. 1, 2 -- no. they will not be satisfied with spending $2600. they will find some other mechanism to participate so they give to the trial lawyers pac. they get to the c4, some super pac, some 527 that will spend the money less efficiently, that will be less transparent and

certainly unaccountable because they're not on the ballot. these low contribution limits should be radically increased in order to allow for a much more transparent, much more accountable system which will lack many of the distortions which we suffer under currently in our system. thank you. [applause] >> we are going to give each side up to three minutes to rebut. if you do not have to take the full three minutes, but if you want, you can. mr. bonifaz? >> i do want to clarify something at the outset. we at free speech for people are interested in lifting up voices, not suppressing voices. our view of the current campaign finance system is that it suppresses voices because when you allow the very wealthy, and now very well endowed corporations and unions to drown out other people's voices, you

are effectively suppressing those voices. jim agrees that money does not equal speech. i think that is fabulous that we have reached agreement on that. i wanted to make clear, however, that when we limit the amount of money in our elections, we are not limiting speech. we are limiting the volume of speech, the d c circuit court of appeals in the buckley case understood that. scholars of the first amendment all over the country have understood that. justin stephens understands that when he says money is property, it is not speech. we limit the volume of speech. this very debate today as time restrictions for jim and for me. i can't stand up here and filibuster because it would not be an open and honest debate. we have time restrictions. we do this all the time under first amendment jurisprudence.

reasonable time placed in a manner of regulation on speech and campaign spending limits operate as a reasonable regulation on the manner of speech. those who speak very, very loudly without any limit, unlimited, are able to drown out the voices of others who do not have the money to make expenditures at those decibels. another point of clarification -- jim says that i think everybody involved in politics are crooks. i happen to run for office. i don't think i am a crook. i don't think everyone in politics are crooks. that is that we are saying at free speech for people. -- that is not what we are saying at free speech for people to read -- four people. we do believe that a system in which canada's run for office must cater to wealthy interests and big money interests and corporate interests and union order to win that will primary in order to be successful, that that process is corrupting of the fundamental principle of

clinically quality for all. there are a lot of well-meaning and the decent people in politics and many of them are on the side of saying, we need a constitutional amendment to overturn the supreme court rulings and reclaim our democracy. thank you. the last point of clarification is the idea that somehow this is about a liberal agenda. that i somehow want campaign spending to promote a liberal agenda. i have to be very, very clear. i am a small "d" democrat. i am a small "r" republican. this is not an issue solely for the one side of the little spectrum. -- political spectrum. 55% of voters in montana voted for mitt romney in 2012 and 75% o2 for our ballot initiative with common cause calling for a constitutional amendment for overturning the ruling. across the political spectrum and across the country, people

believe that the system undermines the fundamental promise of democracy, regardless of their ideology. this is about a small "d" democracy agenda. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. mr. bopp, the same round rules. -- ground rules. three minutes if you need it. >> no self-respecting lawyer that would say something in a sentence that could be set in a paragraph. [laughter] i'm really glad -- i have debated john a number of times and i am glad he finally heard me say, which i said for decades, that money is not speech. but that spending money on speech, if you limit that, you are limiting speech. he says he says he wants to lift up, but not suppress -- lifting

up would be public funding. giving money to people who do not have money so they can speak. lifting up would be tax credits, which by the way, i am in favor of, for people making modest contributions to candidates, pacs, and parties. that is lifting up. that is enhancing the ability of someone to speak. that is not what he is talking about. what he is talking about is shutting up other people that he thinks -- he thinks he can get the government to think -- spends too much. it is not just anybody who spends too much. he has not had a better set a single word about the unions. they will spend $400 million in this election cycle to support their agenda and his agenda. he is talking about suppressing voices that he does not want to hear.

he thinks that he can get the government to shut up. the court has repeatedly rejected this idea, that you enhance the voice of somebody by suppressing the voice of another. no, you don't. it is not a question that there is not enough ad time where people can go buy additional ads. it is not like they are not available. they are available. we need to enhance the ability of people to participate -- and the labor unions want to praise the provisions that would drive them out of the political system and that is the only way that people of average means get to participate. we are not talking about how high the volume is on an ad. we are talking about how many you can buy. it was to limit or prohibit people from buying ads, particularly that people he does not like.

to cater to the wishes of the wealthy, the corporate, whatever things he has been saying, big-money interests, isn't that an interesting word? cater to -- what does that mean? what is he driving at? does he think it is wrong that a politician has friends? does he think it is wrong that they give $100 in a campaign contribution? he supported such low limits. you know, we have contribution limits in order to prevent the undue influence of a particular contribution. the court upheld that in order to exclude large contributions that would tend to unduly influence. >> excuse me. you have less than a minute. wrap it up, ok? >> they're talking about undue influence. not friendship, gratitude, or appreciation.

they are talking about quid pro quo corruption. the final thing, the fact that he has absolutely no interest in reimposing the limits that both corporations and labor unions shared before citizens united. has no interest in imposing that on unions. it demonstrates conclusively that this is a partisan effort. unions are the biggest spenders as a group in our political system. they are seconded by trial lawyers and they are rich individuals. he does not want to limit them, either. the two biggest groups he has no interest, as far as spenders and limiting, and though it -- and they are the two biggest groups supporting the democrats and unions. this is without a doubt a partisan clinical effort to shut up voices that he personally does not like and this is exactly what our founders wanted

to prevent. [applause] >> thank you. we will give you -- i know it is not much time, but a minute at the end. we run a tight ship so we have to keep on schedule. we have questions from the audience. i have not seen these. i don't know if they're directed. some look like general question. if you don't mind answering from there. i am looking at these for the first time. one question is, did citizens united allow unlimited donations to image will candidates? by corporations? if not, what is the problem? >> i have to make clear that i have not said that we want to support the idea of unlimited

union money in elections. the constitutional amendment we support would equally apply to corporations and unions. we believe the old decision of citizens united, which allows unlimited corporate and union money in her elections, is wrong. jim has got that completely inaccurate in terms of how he views what the amendment would say. as far as unlimited donations, directly to candidates, it is correct that there are still direct limits on what you can give to candidates. the problem here is that we have unlimited expenditures. we have the ability of unions, corporations, wealthy individuals to make unlimited expenditures as a result of the super pac's as well, post-citizen united. it goes back to the earlier case i cited and it is why we must engage in overturning these rulings because unlimited expenditures undermine any purpose of having direct contribution limits. the unlimited expenditures allow

these big-money forces and corporate forces and union forces to dominate our election and our politics. just one other point on this, which is public funding elections -- i fully support public-funding elections. i have been in court defending them. this is not about one reform versus another. today, in a post citizens united era, public funding of elections will be very much vulnerable to this idea that wealthy individuals and big-money interests and corporate union forces can make unlimited expenditures making such a system ineffective. i think we need all of these reforms. >> a couple of points. john and i have known each other for years and we have debated several times. i know what he supports and he knows what i support. his criticism of citizens united, as you heard, was all about corporations. when i challenge him, he wants

to throw in unions too and i was not talking about his amendment. i do agree that his amendment would encompass unions but it would also encompass the press. this is one of the big secrets out there, that the reformers don't want c-span and others to figure out. that is these amendments will mean "the new york times" versus

all of and is overruled. that was a decision "new york times" versus sullivan overruled. that was a decision where people running for office -- it protects citizens and their ability to criticize people running for office by imposing a higher standard for libel actions against citizens politicians. one of the things they had, the courts had to decide because this involved the states, was that the 14th amendment does confer rights on people and the question was, was "the new york times" a person? the court has long decided under the 14th amendment that corporations and many other entities and people encompass within those protections. what he does not say is that it would also overturn "the new york times" versus sullivan. it would treat the media, which is owned by corporate conglomerates, it would allow them to suppress the speech of the press. if you look before 1974, the court cases, what you will find is all the big free-speech court cases involve the press. "miami herald" sued because it was a florida law that if they criticize a candidate, they had to give equal time and space for

a candidate's rebuttal in the newspaper. the supreme court struck that down. the montgomery, alabama paper had to sue because in alabama law said they could not endorse candidates on election day. the press has been a target of reformers who want to control everybody's speech and decide who is worthy of speaking and not speaking and what voices are to be suppressed because he does not like the message and the press has been one of those targets. it is targeted once again in his amendment. >> we are not going to be able to get to all these questions. i have a few others. this is for you mr. bopp. mr. bonifaz, you can weigh in as well. mr. bopp, do you think there is a ceiling on the money a corporation can contribute to a campaign? as a corollary, money that is

contributed has no influence on a legislature once they have been elected? >> right now, corporations and labor unions can be prohibited from contributing to candidates. citizens united involve independent speech, not contributions. they are also subject to a lower standard under the law as far as allowing contribution limits to be had. i do think they are abysmally low. i am involved in the republican party and i say to republican groups, and i will chance it here, you can't even buy a democrat congressman for $2600. the anecdotal evidence is that it takes six figures. congressman william jefferson of new orleans, yet 99,000 in cold, hard cash in his freezer.

he went to jail. to be bipartisan, duke cunningham, e-commerce and from -- republican from san diego, he came in for an earmarked weapon system. he would literally pull out a schedule and the lowest schedule based on the value of your your mark was $140,000 and a yacht. i don't know where he got the yacht thing, but in any event. to buy these people, it takes much more than $2600 and the effect on our system has been a tremendous distortion, driving money away from the most transparent sources. i think it is great that we have super pac's. i won the first case in the court of appeals saying that super pac's were legal. i am not in favor of driving money to them. by having these low contribution

limits, that is what we see. you cannot vote against a super pac. you can only vote against a candidate or the political parties' candidates. they are accountable. super pac's are, and of course, what john proposes and supports would continue to create that distortion. the other question on influence -- yes. i can see, and this is why i go back and forth on whether i really support contribution limits. i can see that there are some politicians that, if you give enough money to them, you will be able to unduly influence them, meaning that you will be able to get them to change their vote from what they would have otherwise voted to something else. frankly, it takes a lot more money than $2600. if it is a seriously large contribution, i can see some

undue influence and i think we have to make a decision on balance, whether we want to be able to know what interests are influencing our politicians because they actually give them the money and we can vote for or against them -- when an interest gives money to a super pac, how does anybody know that has anything to do with candidate x or y? how did they know it has anything to do with what the super pac does? leave it to the voters -- frankly, i go back and forth on that. >> i will jump in. i think the other dimension of the question needs to be at the rhombus of political equality -- promise of political equality for all. $2600 is not something that the vast majority of the american people have available to contribute to political candidates. the kind of money coming in the system is coming in from .00001% of the population.

those are the people who are participating in this campaign financing process. jim talks about ordinary voices wanting to participate, but the vast majority of the money coming in is coming from the very top percent of our society. that is undermining the principle of one-person person, one vote, and the promise of little equality for all. -- political equality for all. the only other they would add on freedom of the press -- i would urge jim to review. there is a section in the amendment -- section three of the amendment says nothing in this amendment would abridge freedom of the press. the questions around freedom of the press are different questions. editors, journalists, producers, they all have freedom of the press rights as individuals and they are protected under this amendment.

>> thank you. moderator's privilege, i will go off the board. this is more of an issue that occurs in local elections, but the notion of the wealthy candidate who finances his own campaign or does not need contributions for anybody, whether it is mayor bloomberg or recently in the city of miami beach, we had a wealthy person elected to office. do either of you have thoughts about the wealthy individual who does not take campaign contributions? >> i think it is destructive as well for the same equality turns. in buckley, the court faced the questions coming out of congress of campaign spending limits that would apply across the board. independent expenditures, candidate expenditures, including whether they raised it from their wealthy friend or whether they raised it from their own bank account. it is not what democracy is

about only allow only those who are very wealthy to play this game, enter into politics, or have access to wealthy friends. i understand that the very local levels of government, it may be different in terms of the kind of money it takes to run for office. the ultimate trajectory that we are on here with this campaign fundraising process is even in the local elections, we are going to see citizens united have a destructive impact. if you dare, at a local level, to go out against a big corporate interest where the union interest, and i did mention union in my opening remarks, perhaps jim needs to read them outside of this event, but if you could -- if you dare to go against those interests, they now have the ability to come in and make unlimited, independent expenditures targeting you and make that race anti-democratic and i think that is troubling as well. >> mr. bopp, any thoughts?

>> sure. i do. it is true that john's approach to this is all about equality and nothing about freedom. of course, he thinks he can shoehorn that in under the first -- used to think. good point. used to think he could shoehorn that under the first amendment and now he realizes he has to change the constitution in order to get that concept in there. he has his own peculiar view of equality. he is not in favor of equality under the law. what he is in favor of his equality of results. not that everybody gets the opportunity to spend, but that everybody can spend what any other person can spend. think about that consequentially. if equality is the driving consideration, that means since there are a significant number

of people that can't contribute anything to candidates, then really, equality means that no one can contribute to any candidate. that would only be the context of true ecology. it frankly points to where i think john wants to go. that is government-run elections, not free elections run by the people and the government would decide how much you get and how much you spend and what you can spend it on and there we would be. he wants to target labor unions and that demonstrates his view that it is not about rich people. it is about people of average means, pooling their resources. that is what labor unions of all organizations, that is what labor unions do. they are members pooling their resources and participating. he thinks a bunch of people that are very modest and means, because they pool, they had the audacity to pool their resources

and purchase rate in our system, -- participate in our system, are an evil force and need to be suppressed. i think it is fine if the rich participate. i just don't want them to be the only ones that get to participate in that is why we need participation of labor unions and associations and corporations and advocacy groups in our system. on the political effectiveness, which he seems to be somewhat interested in, anyway, what i have found is that there is more liberal democrat rich people than there are conservatives. while some liberal interests seem to think that they stand in the way of getting their liberal agenda, they find out differently when they go to hollywood and raise the enormous sums that they do from the richest people in our country.

there are rich people on both sides. this is not about partisan politics or punishing those people you don't like or suppressing those you are fearful of, that speak out in opposition to your favor policy, but the ability of all of us to have outlets of participation in our political system that are now proposed by partisan efforts or government agencies to proceed. >> i don't know if you want a minute to sum up. mr. bopp, that sounded like a summation. >> i can always say something else. >> [laughter] i'm sure you can. as is most lawyers' prerogative, they like to talk. >> essay make a summation, for many unions to support this constitution because they recognize they cannot compete with exxon and mobil and chevron in this process and they need to

have a level playing field. as far as where we are going with this overall movement, dr. martin luther king jr. said the ark of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. we looked at what happened in the poll tax case going before the supreme court. we have to remember -- that was a 1966 case. before that, there was a case brought in 1937, a group of poor voters challenge the poll tax, a fee charged to voters in order to vote. they got to the supreme court and lost. the supreme court said it was necessary to charge these fees in order to ferret out the privileged voters. surely, if you are a serious voter, you could come up with that dollar or $1.50 in order to vote. in 1951, a second group of poor voters challenged the poll tax. they too got to the supreme court and they too lost on the same grounds.

and then on the way to harper v. virginia board of election, the amendment went and barring poll taxes in election. the remainder four states in which the poll tax remained and virginia was one of them. in 1966, the supreme court finally got it right and the court said it qualified as equal protection under the equal protection clause does change and evolve. dr. king is correct. the right side of history is one that says democracy will prevail, not big money interests, big union interest, big corporate interests drowning out our speech and undermining the fundamental promise of political equality for all. >> we were designing the time limits here, i was thinking, how can i give a lawyer one minute

for anything? [laughter] we are trying. mr. bopp, your closing thoughts? >> the example that john gave demonstrates the fallacy in his argument. the government set the poll tax in the government then imposed the burden on people participating. the government does not determine the price of ads. the government did not decide that ads are going to cost something. it is the marketplace. it is a reality, one, and there are people doing that. you're going to get the lumberjack to work for free to cut down a tree in order to make the newsprint so you can do this for free? so, it is not about the government imposing a barrier. it is about the government

providing for freedom and preventing the government from imposing a barrier which is the suppression of speech by criminal penalties that john has supported and continues to support. as to exxon mobil and chevron, to my knowledge, they have not done anything after citizens united. very few private companies, for-profit companies, labor did but not private companies, because of the market forces. they do not want to get in a controversy. they do not want to lose customers. what we have seen is advocacy groups of all stripes participating in having new avenues of participation since citizens united. the final thing is, we have reached the tipping point as far as contribution limits are concerned. we have had 13 states including four to that florida raise limits.

finally the forces of reality are sinking in on incumbent politicians that by limiting contributions to them, they are not preventing a challenger from getting the resources. they're actually hurting themselves vis-à-vis these independent things, and super pac's, advocacy groups. that is a good thing. if we had that, we would have a more transparent and accountable system. >> this is an illuminating debate. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> on the next "washington journal," key issues for congress including immigration with grover norquist.

the president of pro-choice america will take your questions about recent supreme court rulings about abortion and contraception. production. oil our guest is bloomberg reporter mark shank. journal" is live on c-span every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. several live events to tell you about today. how victims of child trafficking may be unidentified for health care providers and social workers. is on c-span 3 it 7:00 a.m. eastern. security,nergy chaired by chris murphy of connecticut.

towas part of a delegation eastern europe that included a stop in bulgaria. this evening, we will be live from the house veterans affairs for a hearing to report inadequate services to veterans. you can see that on c-span 2 at 7:30 p.m. eastern. now, a discussion on the future of nato. this is a little more than an hour. >> so mr. secretary general.

good afternoon. i'm the president and ceo of the atlantic council. it is a huge privilege for us to welcome you back to the atlantic council. less than two months ahead of the nato summit in wales the september, which, in your own words, will be one of the most important in nato's history. at a time when peace and stability are put to the test from eastern europe to north africa and to the middle east. this is also secretary-general rasmussen's major public visit to washington in his capacity as secretary general. before the former prime minister if norway takes over the role as of october. takes over the role as of october.

himatlantic council hosted back in 2009. will your tenure is not finished, we are extremely honored to bookend your extremely successful tenure leading nato today. a u.s. 2009, it was then national security advisor general tim johnson introduced the secretary general. we are delighted the general toes has returned today introduce the secretary-general. general jones, who has, prior to his position, let nato's military operations in his capacity as commander of u.s. european command, the supreme allied commander europe, leeds today much of the strategic thinking at the atlantic council. he has been a dedicated

supporter of our young atlantic summits, which have become the primary public diplomacy nato summits and have been a means to securing a next-generation of support and leadership for the alliance. we are very grateful. nato will partner with the atlantic council this year, as well, to link talks with future at the 2014 future leaders summit in wales. secretary-general rasmussen has mumbled the been supportive, but has been very much an instigator and visionary behind the effort to get more young voices, young strategic thinkers into the conversation. before i turn the floor over to whatal jones, let me say one didn't have to say back in 2009. if you want to tweet, use the

#futurenato. with that, general jones, the floor is yours. [applause] >> thank you. secretary-general, welcome back. ladies and gentlemen, it is really a great pleasure for me to be able to introduce secretary general rasmussen for his final major dress in the united states. depending on world events, the could be others. had the privilege of introducing the secretary-general here for his first public speech to the united states nearly five years ago in september 2009 while i was still national security advisor. i recall that when the secretary

general addressed the council in 2009, he also spoke to a packed crowd in the little headquarters across the street. there were so many people that you could hardly turn around. i'm very happy to notice that the council is able to welcome back this time to the new headquarters and while there may be more elbow room in these more comfortable quarters, i'm not surprised to see that he is still able to command an overflow crowd in washington. when the secretary-general spoke here in 2009, the obama administration was in the midst of a rigorous strategic review concerning the war in afghanistan, the debate about how many additional troops would be necessary for the united states, nato allies, and partners to achieve its mission success. the administration invited the new secretary-general to visit washington for consultations. and to assess possible

contributions of nato allies to the u.s. surge. it was a challenging time for nato and for the alliance and its allies, including the united states. despite these challenges, when the secretary-general came to washington in september 2009 and spoke here at the atlantic council come in the administration had great confidence in his ability to lead the alliance through this difficult phase. he has certainly lived up to that challenge. in 2010,sbon summit the 28 members of nato vowed to stick together through 2014 in afghanistan, at which point the responsibility for security would switch to the afghan forces. under his leadership, nato has stood by its commitment. the alliance is concluding its combat mission come a transitioning responsibility to afghan forces, and preparing to toe on a post 2014 mission

train and advise afghan forces. secretary-general rasmussen will go down in the history books as having led the largest and longest combat mission in nato history in afghanistan. as the secretary general returns to the atlantic council in 2014, the strategic context is quite different than a mere five years ago, when afghanistan was a dominant challenge for the alliance. --confront these involving evolving strategic realities, secretary-general appointed nato's group of experts chaired by madeleine albright to undertake a strategic review that would inform a new alliance strategic concept. the secretary-general led nato's response to the threat of extremism, civil war, and instability, but also to russia's challenge to the liberal, post-cold war order in

europe, all during the greatest financial crisis since nato's founding in the 1949. in libya, the secretary general skillfully positioned the alliance to respond to rapid events and support you when security resolution council 1973. demonstrated the alliance's capability to act quickly in a crisis and integrate regional partners into alliance operations. in the aftermath of russia's after my -- annexation of crimea and destabilization of ukraine, he has provided decisive leadership of nato and the most serious crisis in europe since the end of the cold war. ouroing so, he has reminded public that nato remains a critical insurance policy for all members and remains relevant well into the 21st century. this september, the united natoom heads of state and

it will be the secretary-general class nato summit before former norwegian prime minister takes over in october. while secretary general rasmussen tenure is not yet complete, we can be confident he has left behind a rich legacy of accomplishment for were -- for which nato member nations owe him a debt of gratitude. as many of you know, the about -- atlantic council recognizes his rich accounts but -- accomplishments by awarding him distinguish international leadership award in 2012. i am delighted be allowed -- atlantic cancel is able to welcome him once more to the stage on the visit to washington. please join me in welcoming the choice -- 12