than 30 days,re to get into the v.a. system toks get their care, or for veterans live more than 40 miles away from a veterans administration health facility, and it's a real burden to have to travel more to get somes just service, they're going to be provider, health care provider locally. close by, without having to go a virginia a. hospital or v.a. center to get their services. through thet them door right away. we're also providing additional to beefs for the v.a. up their services so they can bring more doctors and health care providers. so what we're trying to do is beef up the v.a. as quickly as we can. so that e they earned them. madison signed by the president, so that will be underway. two, we just passed a bill --

that will be signed by the president, so that will be underway. two, we just signed a bill on transportation. in l.a., we have seen major rojects going forward. the purple line is moving west toward the ocean. we were able to secure funding that will help us move forward with that project, that is costing several billion dollars. we secured close to $800 million in federal loan moneys. that's about $2 billion to help extend that subway line to the west. we recently secured about two thirds of a billion dollars for what is being called the regional connector line owntown. if you try to travel mass transit downtown on the trains and subways, you often have to get off one to get on another. with the regional connector, it will be a seamless trip.

it will be a lot more convenient for people who want to use mass transit to get around. we got a grant commitment from the federal government for two thirds of a billion dollars and about another $200 million in loan guarantees as well. that will help cover a large portion of that connector. we are also going to be doing construction on the 6th street bridge. many of you are aware it needs refurbishing. it is not going to be just a patch job. a lot of work needs to be done. the transportation projects are not done in three months. many are not done in three years because they are very big rojects. the difficulty in washington is we have not been able to get consensus, bipartisan consensus on reauthorizing the transportation legislation, the

law that makes possible all of these major infrastructure projects for rail, highway, buses, freeways and roads. and we didn't again. these past couple of weeks, we passed a patch bill. it moves us forward eight onths. that's good because by then the highway trust fund would be so depleted that the federal government would have to inform the states, you know the money you're going to get from the highway trust fund, we have to take a back. if we gave you the full amount you were due, we would run out of trust fund moneys to quickly. of course, the state can not go to some contractor who is about to purchase steel for a bridge renovation where the guy who purchases the asphalt and

cement to do the highway renovation. just do me a favor. by about four months of that stuff. you don't do it that way. time is money. we have to do what we typically do, and that's about a five-seven your bill on transportation. so counties and cities and major contractors and no ok, i an forecast for 5-7 years. hopefully when we come back we will get to work on doing the long-term transportation bill that everyone needs so we can get those tax dollars that when you go to the gas station and pumped gas in your car, that gas money helps pay for those projects. we need to get that money coming back in a smart way. there are any number of things i can tell you about. we can talk about international issues, international hotspots. he can talk about education, immigration, the situation that the border with the kids who have come.

we can talk about all of those things. but let me do this. let me stop and see how much time we have. we have a good 45 minutes. i can stay a little after we finish because i know sometimes a lot of you want to say a quick hello. we can do that. so after we break, we can stick around a little longer. please do me a favor and if you are going to say hello, just make it a quick hello because sometimes people want to unload all of their worries and cares and we have a long line of people who just want to say hello and it is tough. here is the bowl with the names. l.a., we are starting again to see activity. residentially, we have seen housing prices jump again -- i think a little too fast, and i know if you live in eagle rocket is a little scary. it's reminiscent of what we saw before.

it's heating up too much. i just told you about the construction projects. i told you about the guys i met with from the building and construction trade. construction had some of the highest rates of unemployment over the last several years. you had somewhere between 15%-30% unemployment, laborers, operating engineers, all the construction folks were really feeling it because everything got shut down, essentially. now they are starting to churn. they are starting to churn, and they are decent paying jobs. we like that, because we need to start the economy. and there are some decent science. things are still tough -- signs. things are still tough for a lot of families in america, but they have gotten better. last month we had more than

200,000 jobs created by the private sector. that's good. but the actual unemployment rate ticked up, not down. what's going on? a lot of folks during the 2008 crash who could not get to back -- get back to work quickly left the workforce. they are discouraged workers who don't even get counted in the unemployment rates. now they are feeling better in coming back into the system. even though 200 thousand plus jobs were created last month in this country, the unemployment rate went up in knots because more of those discouraged workers are filing again to get noticed to be part of the system to try to get jobs. which is good. i don't think you can see that ery well, can you? you can see it some.

with the lights from the cameras, it is also tough. here is another chart. aybe -- let me hold it up. the red is the beginning of the 2008 wall street crisis, where essentially everything shut down. just a quick note -- and i know i wanted to close, but in september, two thousand eight, democrats were in the majority of the house at the time. nancy pelosi was speaker of the house. on a saturday, i remember, i was in california. she called and she said we need to do a conference call, i just got a call from the president of the united states, george bush. she said he needed immediate action on a bill he wanted to send to us on monday. she asked us all together for a conference call. in the conference call she said this is what the president just

said to me. he is going to send me a bill asking for $800 billion and he needs it by monday. if he doesn't get it by monday, wall street will crash and take the whole economy with it. we started asking the questions about how the money was going to be used. the legislation did not get passed on monday because a lot of folks were saying wait a minute, 800 billion dollars, for whom and for what? it took several times. during that time, if you look back, the market gyrated. it was swinging like 600 points in a day. well, what was going on is the beginning of that red. in the beginning of that red is job losses. the bottom of the red lines,

those were months in america where we were losing about 21,000 american jobs per day. over 800,000 jobs in january of 2009. and during that time, the red, everything below the zero line, those were all job losses. we lost over 8 million jobs in that short time. the economy collapsed. you couldn't borrow anymore. small businesses no longer have a line of credit. banks aren't lending. they had so many toxic loans, they didn't know who they could lend to and who would pay it back. so when they stopped lending, they stopped the wheels of the economy. four 52 consecutive months, since a little after that crash, we have had job growth. but you don't see any blue line

above the zero line that matches anything near the loss of jobs. so, 200,000 jobs, two hundred 80,000 jobs a month before, good. but when you lose 800 and one month, you need four good months to just catch up to one month. that's what's difficult. so the president has worked really hard with the private sector to see what we can do, but that's a lot of making up to do. and that's the difficulty. so many of us believe we still have to try to jumpstart the economy, and there are some simple things we can do to do that. we think we should concentrate on mostly middle-class americans right now because they are the ones who have been hit the hardest. if you are a rich, you're not going to feel it. warren buffett loss of major dollars during the downturn, but he is making some major dollars now. if you are very low income, we have programs to help you from falling through the safety net altogether. in some cases not enough, but

we don't let people die on the streets and suffer that way. but the middle class, try to send your kid to college today if you are making $60,000-$70,000. it's very difficult. try to buy a house in eagle rock. it's not beverly hills. maybe in some peoples opinions it's better than beverly hills. we like our home in eagle rock. there are some basic things we can do. one of the things some of us would do is -- to me this was an easy one. if you are a company in america and you decide to shut down some of your jobs, and you reopen some of that manufacturing in another country, you get to write off the cost of sending jobs to that country and hiring people in that other country even if you let people in america go so you could do it over there because the wages are lower.

but if you open a new job in america in your company, you don't get any kind of tax relief for that. it's a little upside down. we give you tax relief if you ship a job overseas, but not if you open up a new job for an american here. use the money we give away in tax credits to countries that ship jobs overseas to give tax credits to companies that create new jobs. et increase. you want to do a net increase? we will give you a tax redit. weekend pay for it by not giving -- we can pay for it by not giving tax credits to companies that ship jobs verseas.

employee pay a stagnant right now. that's another problem. we are creating jobs but we don't see a big bump in salaries. where do we see a big bump? ceo pay. today if you are a worker in a company, it is not unheard of to watch your president and chief executive officer make about 400 times what you make. when i was a kid, when my parents were working hard, the difference between the president of the company and the line worker was about dirty 5-40 ti -- 35-40 times greater, which is still pretty good money. today it's about 400 times. so let's do this. when you pay salary as a businessperson -- if any of you have a business -- that's an expense. all of your salaries to all of your employees or expenses. let's say i make $10 million in profits and i pay myself a million dollars and pay the rest of my workers another million dollars. that's $2 million in business expenses. net that away from my 10 million 10 million dollars in profits, and of making $8 illion in profits.

what if i have a million and expenses for my employee salaries and the pay myself $9 million. that's a total of $10 million. guess how much i have in profits now? ero. , do i pay on zero profit? ero. why should we subsidize companies that are willing to pay ceos in the tens of millions of dollars by giving them tax breaks that allow them to write off part of the seo salary when it is so high. if you are going to pay your chief executive more than a million dollars and you want to be able to write it off, then you have to be able to show you have also increased pay for your front-line workers as well. otherwise, you can raise the salary for that ceo but you can't get a tax write off for having done it. maybe it will make them think more about sharing more about sharing some of the

games with those who helped make the profit possible. we cannot continue to see middle-class workers have their incomes stay stagnant when the cost of college, housing, health care goes up. i will stop there. let's take questions. think you offer patiently listening. let me pick a few names. k, i have three names. we will go on the order that i selected them. the first ursuline named will get to go first. raise your hand. if you'll step out in the ilm will make it easier. we have microphones. the first person is anna garcia. then we have alexia. then hunter cobb.

those three will go first and then we will just keep knowing down the line. if you could do us a favor, your question or comment as concise as possible and i will try to be as well. >> thank you for holding the town hall. my question is regarding the issue of unaccompanied minors that have gone through severe trauma fleeing imminence poverty. how likely is it that these children are going to receive efugee status? >> the situation at the border, most of the kids are coming from three countries, el salvador, guatemala, and onduras. the law in place today which provides relief for those kids if they can prove they have a fear of persecution or death would allow them to get asylum, not refugee status. it is different.

a refugee in the home country are saying they need to escape and someone on the ground says, yes. like in syria, iraq. you have relief organizations who say absolutely you cannot remain here because you will perish because these terrorists or rubbles will come after you. we know you are a refugee and then you get to come to a particular country. someone seeking asylum said they had to flee their country in secret and now they are here showing up at the doorstep of he border. if i am sent back, i fear persecution or death. please give me asylum. they would qualify if they could meet that standard for asylum. it's a distinction that a lot of people do not make. >> if they are under 18 years f age, unaccompanied minors,

the law says you treated differently than a minor that is with an adult. what are you doing here, etc. those who come with an adult go hrough the process with an adult because it is far faster because you can ask the adult if you are are sick you did. if the adult says yes, then we process them quicker and we end them back. you have seen the news where some of these people were sent back because they could not prove they had a fear of persecution or death. can they prove fear of persecution or death? many will tell you that they have actually witnessed murder and torture of their family members or others. many have told stories about

how it a do not join the gang they will be killed. for some kids, they will be able to make those claims. it will be tough for a 10 or 12-year-old to make the claim which is why they are giving ssistance. the sticking point here is the time it takes to process them. because it's a large number and we are not equipped, there are 240 immigration judges in the united states. to give you perspective, in the county of los angeles, there are twice as many judges just in the county of los angeles as there are the total number of immigration judges for the entire u.s. you have this bottleneck and it's making the process take a while. but i think will happen is a

number of these kids if given the opportunity to present their case will be able to make a claim. they will be given the opportunity. while they are waiting to have their hearing, the law requires they be treated under the lease restrict it setting as possible. you do not want to have a kid block the. if there's a way to have them with a responsible adult who is elated, we will do that. if not come you try to find a temporary setting, possibly foster care. that is what you do. you monitor them and yet a hearing. there's legislation about whether we change the law or not. some people want to change the law so in five or seven days you can process them and send them back. i'm against that. i'm not one of those that for the grace of god could it have been me. i'm the son of immigrants. my country is better than that and we can do this the right

way. at the same time, we don't have an obligation to keep kids who, simply for economic reasons. if you were duped and you get a ermit -- no. i want our country to have a good heart to we have to do this the right way. we have the situation where you prove you really need a place to shelter were you might face persecution or death, absolutely. as much as i feel for you because of economic conditions, you've got to do it the right way. the next question from alexia then hunter. >> i'm over here. thank you for giving me a minute or two, congressman. good to see you again. sometimes, some of us who are very low income, the city of the country keeps taking from us. you know it's very difficult.

there are people out there who need but there are also the ones who don't want to give a penny. i'm not saying don't take some if you really needed, but when some of us are in dire need, teeth, glasses, and it's taken away from us and more, they might as well just dig a hole in the ground and put us there. if there is anything us you can do to help your friends up there, thank you. >> i appreciate the comment. again, we have a responsibility as a sovereign nation to our whether it is through medicare, the pell grant program for students going to college, we try to figure out ways for all of us to succeed. i'm the first in my family to get a college degree. i got a lot of aid from the stanford. i worked all four years. summers i worked construction

with my dad. had it not been for pell grants, financial aid, student loans at low interest rates, i could not have gone to stanford. we have to do what we can. the best way to do well abroad is to do well at home. if we are strong domestically, we can be strong abroad. your point is well taken. we are a country for a reason. hopefully by our example and with our assistance, we can help others do it well also. right now, especially since we're barely coming back from that deep recession, it's time to really make sure that we take care of folks in america who work very hard to build this country. i don't think we will ever shirk our responsibility around the world, i do think we need to be very smart about how we do things. whether it is iraq or people

who come to our border, we have to do this the smart way. we don't want to give the wrong impression of what we are trying to do whether it is an iraq war kids at the border. thank you for your question. before hunter, let me pick out a couple more. it's pretty random, right? ok, so the next three after hunter, liz amsten? i always seem to pick you. jesse borden and then luis perez. presente? ok, in the back. hunter, go right ahead.

>> i listened to your little presentation on the economy with your graph and everything. this thing about the $800 billion bailout, i think people are a little tired of these stories. the economy is not recovering. the bailout was not necessary. it did not work. the country is in a mess. what i would like to ask is if you look at china, china's conomy is booming. they want people to think all that china is doing is building a housing bubble or something that they're building nfrastructure, highways, railroads. they are mining helium.

a lot of americans don't know what that's about but it is fusion energy. obama is shutting down our space program. why don't you demand that obama get the hell out of there? we need a president like the kennedy who says we're going to go to the moon and do things big again. if we had a driver like kennedy to land a man on the mountain, we could change education, ndustry. that's how to get the economy going. alexander hamilton knew how to finance industry. i would urge you to study this. you have opposed glass-steagall. we should have passed that instead of bailing out the banks. >> hunter you've raised some good points. again, try to be concise. i apologize.

these are great questions and i wish i could dive in and talk about it because that's what makes this job interesting. that is a recovery. as robust as it should be? absolutely not. on that bailout for wall street, i voted against it. i do believe we needed to do something. i just don't believe because it gave too much at the banks when they decided to take mortgages all over the country in slice and dice into little pieces and combine them and make them into stock so it takes real estate whereas before the bank used to lend you money and they would hold that mortgage and you would pay on it. for the life of the mortgage, you have the same lender because the bank held at. so long as you were paying,

they were ok because they were getting good interest off of you. someone on wall street got clever. what if we took all of these mortgages and packaged them together and now instead of one mortgage for $500,000 it is 1000 mortgages? you cut it up and you say, wall street, sell this little piece of that package for x amount of money because it is backed by 1000 mortgages. and that's what wall street did. it took all of these mortgages, some good, some horrendous, and it sold them out there in the market. when people started saying they could not pay because interest rates have gone up, they realize their houses were not worth what they thought it they could not make the payments anymore. yes what?

the banks could not pay on that stock anymore because they were not getting the money. that's what led to the crash and that's why you saw all of these homes just plummet so quickly. all of the paper was bad. all of the mortgages were terrible. the stock backed up by the mortgages was even worse. i said to the president, then president bush, and my democratic leadership, if you want me to vote to give $800 billion to the folks who essentially helped maneuver this crash, i want to make sure the money will get down to the people, the decent people who are trying to buy a home. the market was crazy. i was looking to help my grandparents buy a small house in eagle rock. $679,000 for a two bedroom, one ath house. a lot of people bought thinking

that's what the market was today. these are not people saying they were making 30 grand a year and there were a lot of them, too, which is what really led to the downfall. the money was all going to the banks. there are a lot of people who said i have a mortgage valued higher than what my home is valued at that i made commitments on going to continue to pay my mortgage. even if i sold my house i would not get enough money. to me, those people were being very responsible hoping with time the value of the home would catch up to the mortgage. to me, we should help them. you're paying that mortgage at 7% interest rate? guess what, let me let you refinance. you still have to pay on the value of the mortgage but at a lower interest rate so let me save you money on the interest and the banks would not

renegotiate. they would not renegotiate because they could not. why? they no longer on the mortgage because they had sold at off to the stock market in 1000 little pieces. they had to get all of the owners of the mortgage to sign off on the renegotiated rate and they couldn't. why am i going to give the bank for money, this $800 billion? they are not going to do anything to help the homeowner who wants to be responsible. how do i know we are going to get repaid? we ultimately did recoup that money but in 2008, there was no guarantee, no mandate they had to pay back. banks are always going to make money. i wanted to see two provisions, one to help the homeowner and a guarantee that banks would pay back every cent of the $800 billion.

in terms of going to the moon and mining, the president is doing everything he can to get us to renewable energy. i'm with him going toward solar wind and all of the different energy sources that are clean. you can see what happens when you rely on petroleum. when iraq goes haywire, our prices at the pump go haywire. we should not be dependent nor do i think we should have to ait to extract, suck the shale out of canada, and let them use a pipeline going through america to go to the shipping ports in louisiana so they can ship the oil to china and other countries abroad never leaving a bit of oil for the u.s. to use. they want to use american soil for the pipe so if some

terrorist hits it, we suffer the consequence but all of the oil gets sold abroad with not a bit of it for the u.s. i don't think we need to go to the moon to be innovative in what we do. i think the president is trying in that regard so, hunter, i would disagree. the bailout was not the best way to do things, but i will admit even though i voted against it that it did help stop the hemorrhaging. i want to see peaks in job creation as big as the valleys. that would be a true, robust ecovery. they cannot just be modest income jobs. there is more money parked on the sideline by corporate america today, over $1 trillion, in cash that they are

waiting to see where to put it, where to invest. we could jumpstart the middle class if we did this the right way. let's go to the next question. liz, you are on. >> i would like to point out that of those negative job losses, most of the increases re minimum wage. >> you are not seeing the recovery where the guy who lost a job is getting a job back who paid the same as the job he lost. it's tough. >> a lot of problems in 2008 and subsequent were caused by wall street and the banks. where do you stand on putting forward a policy to nationalize banks that take money from the government in the future because they are too big to fail? how about setting up public banks like in north dakota? how about supporting elizabeth warren's suggestion on allowing

the post office to be a bank for basic banking services? this will really help the onsumer. >> as a keep trying to say, the engine of our economy has been, is, and will be for quite some time the middle of america. rich folks could only buy so any yachts, right? it is middle class america that buys the new clothes asher. son, daughter, i will give you the seven or eight-year-old car and i will get myself that little brand-new vehicle. those are things that turn the economy.

while the middle class has some disposable income, it does not have enough that it could just the hogwild. the other two demographics, rich or poor, they could only stimulate the economy so much. middle class, you get them going, we are in good shape. in the 1950's when all of those servicemen and women came back up to world war ii, they needed something to do. we did the g.i. bill and we got them educated. then when eisenhower was president he said we would never face a situation where we were not prepared. we're going to build a highway system connect the nest every part of the country so we could never be caught offguard. guess what? a lot of road construction workers went to work. he was busy with highway 5, 9. he had worked all the time

except for when it rained. he was not making a whole lot as a laborer. yet a sixth-grade education and he got paid about $14 per hour with benefits stable enough for nine months that he could take care of us. as i said, i got to go to college because of that. how many road construction workers do you know could send their kids to stanford university? that's the difficulty. we have to get to the point where we honor the middle class. we look at them for what they are, the jewel. it is the largest segment of america. if we make them feel like they can afford to get that clothes washer, interest rates will go up and that's ok because i can afford to get the car now that i need.

that's what keeps the economy going. in terms of how you handle the banks, i want to be a little realistic. i'm not happy with the big tanks. i told you i voted against the bailout. even though people would say to me, xavier, you are endangering the economy, the banks always get what it needs at the end of the day. the odds are always stacked against you if you go to court against the lender. the creditor has you by the neck. to me, the banks don't have a right to control our lives but they're very important because we see what happens when they would not lend. when they are afraid of the economy, when the banks get a cold, we get the flu. we don't need banks that get so big and so loose with their cash -- not their cash, your cash -- that we cannot control.

we need to make sure they do not go hog wild. they were essentially in vegas on wall street with your money. they should not get to do that. if we could put restraints on them, the banks did not even know how much value they had and some of the stocks they had purchased. they were betting against themselves, these hedge bets. they would put money down and had spent some of their investments were going to lose. if they did lose on the investments, they are ok because they had to do against the loss. it's crazy. i agree we need to do something with is why we have credit unions. it's why we started savings and loans. we have to have a financial system that works for everyone especially small businesses. without the line of credit emma it makes it very tough. let me go on to the next question. jesse, luis, and i'm being told

we are pretty much out of time. 10 or 15 minutes away. i will pick a few more names before i go to you, luis. where are you? >> i'm here with a group but i'm also a constituent of yours. i live in mount washington. i have a short time and followed by a question. our group, we continue to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform but we also understand in light of the fact that it is a civil system that some of the reform can come in changes in policies and procedures. immigration should not be a punitive decision but one that makes it possible for all people to comply with the law. what i want to ask you is we would like to get more detail, if possible, about what may be coming in terms of administrative relief.

>> i've said this before and you're probably read, seen, and heard about this on the whole immigration issue. you know, it's more a political issue more than it is a substantive, mechanical issue how you solve it. the senate four hundred days ago, more than one year ago, back in june of last year, passed a bill that dealt with every aspect of immigration under the law. they went through and looked at his. the proposed tweaks and it was comprehensive. it dealt with the whole issue of border security trying to up date, innovate, new ways of doing things are you would not

just have to put a whole bunch of bodies on the border trying to do it that way. we have technology to help us address some of these issues. it dealt with the issues of the says whether for family unification or work purposes and it tweaked the system to be smarter going forward depending n our needs as a nation. it tweaked the whole system about dealing with people in the work lace. what drives this is at the end of the day, these folks are getting jobs. why are they getting jobs when they don't have the right to work? there are employers who are hiring them. the legislation dealt with the work lace so you would only match people who have the right to work in the country with people who are going to check to make sure when they hire you they are doing it the right way. it dealt with all of those things. that was the bill.

remarkably it got 68 votes out of 100 in the senate. it was a bipartisan bill and it passed. for 400 days, it has languished in the house because house republican leadership will not allow us to have a vote on the bill. many of us proposed and authored a bill that is almost exactly like the senate well although we tweaked it. we cannot get a vote on that though. we need 218 to pass. we have about 200 now. with 18 more members, we could pass that bill. we've been told by the congressional, the cbo, the nonpartisan neutral referee telling us what bills cost or save to have a sense of what we're doing, it would save us close to $1 trillion because it would essentially get rid of some much of the underground

economy that so many of these folks live in in the shadows. it would put them in the overt, the public, economy because they could no longer pay them with cash and therefore not pay taxes that go along with it as well. we cannot get a vote on that hill. the president has taken some steps of administrative leave where he can. the president does not pass laws. the constitution says only ongress can pass laws. the president has the right to use his discretion on how we execute the laws which is why there is now this lawsuit against the president which is a crazy thing but the house has now sued the president for trying to enforce the laws. i have limited resources on immigration.

we have border per troll that is four times what it was when i came to congress in the 1990's and doubling in the last 10 years and size. quite honestly, they've done a pretty good job in the recession help as well to stem the flow of people coming in the country without documents. there are ways to make it work better. i can only have so much money. i'm going to enforce the broken laws, i'm going to try to do it the best i can. easy give me resource money to deport them because they are here without documents, let me go after the criminals, the drug dealers, guys trying to do us harm before i go after the kid in school who might be the valedictorian. the president opposed a program called deferred action for children, daca. ids who were brought into this

country usually through their parents when they were very small and have spent most of their life in this country and most of them do not remember the home country they came from. many have gone on to be valedictorians and many are going to great universities. rather than go after those folks and trying to hunt them down, let me have down the ones trying to sell drugs to our kids. he's using his discretion on how to use the resources to deport people in the country without documents. that is the use of executive discretion. the president has said since house republican leadership has told us last month that they will not pass any immigration legislation for the remainder of the year, the president said ok, i waited in your request to

see if the house would pass a bill so we could reconcile differences and get a bill that finally, i statue, fixes the broken immigration system and you are now telling me you're not going to do that? i'm going to do what i can within the confines of the law to use my executive discretion to try to implement the law as best i can. the president right now is reviewing what he can do using his executive discretion to make immigration laws worked as best as possible. what might he do? he might try to do some things that diverged or redirect resources away from -- again -- going away from the mother trying to buy groceries and go toward the guy trying to recruit someone to be a gang ember. when you're going to find disease going to target as much as he can towards those who are trying to do us harm. it's going to be somewhat

imprecise. how many people will it help? it's very unclear. how far can it go? he cannot change a lot. he can only enforce the law sing his discretion. the program, daca, the deferred action program for these miners who are right now not going to be pursued for deportation is only temporary. they are still subject to deportation. at any moment the program could be canceled. those kids are now out of luck and they are back again in the deportation line. he cannot change the law but changes how to enforce it. they want to go after the guys trying to do us some harm.

hopefully what will happen is we will pass a law to make it very clear who will earn a chance to stay and who will not. rather than going after people where if we had passed the law you would have been able to stay, let's focus on those we need to get out of the country as quickly as possible. i took too long. luis, and before you go we will pick two more names and then we ill close for the evening. estella lopez and, batting leanup, jim duree? you will be our last question her. luis, estella, then jim. >> good afternoon, congressman. we believe in the rule of law. we do not support weakening

laws to protect children in the heat of a short-term crisis. we ask you to keep intact the trafficking law from 2008. >> this is the law that deals with the border kids, wilbur force blah blah law passed in 2008. i want to make this clear. it was passed in 2008 ipartisan. your to bush was president and he signed it. but it essentially says is for children, if we find that they rrive at our border and they are unaccompanied, we are going to try to figure out what's going on so they can come to our border. you may not remember but in 2005, 2006, 2007 and finally in 2008, a lot of kids from china

were coming in these container cars on these big cargo ships. inside, these human traffickers -- a lot of times sex traffickers would oftentimes put little girls in these cargo containers and they would ship them on boats as if they were part of the freight and they would pay off people and get these kids and put them into sex trafficking essentially slave conditions in the u.s. we saw that smuggling going on. everyone came forward and said we cannot do this go on. we have to go after these guys trying to smuggle in human beings. most of the kids were coming from the asian countries overseas and it was just under severe conditions. can you imagine the long trek all the way from china and a cargo container you cannot get ut of?

in the wilberforce law was passed for that reason. because most of these kids did not know english -- they did not know what their circumstance was going to be -- we provided them with legal assistance to see if they make a claim where if they got shipped back they would not be persecuted or killed. that was the reason for the wilberforce law. some are saying we now need to change that to not provide the due process for those children if they come on accompanied. they said we should process them in five to seven days. if you are saying please don't change that law, i'm with you. i don't believe we should be eliminating due process because we want to have the system move faster. the way you have it move faster is to get rid of the ottleneck. don't make it to where it take so long. you can give these kids chance

to make their case without having to strip them of some rights to make their case. i'm hoping what we will do is figure out that we can do this the right way but do it quickly to prove it to the world that if you have a real claim, we've always been willing to take a refugee or someone seeking asylum but it has to be a real claim. after luis, estella then jim. >> i am so glad that you are here. we get a lot of information and you are doing a wonderful job. >> i asked her to say that. >> no, no. that's not true. >> i heard on the radio, i think it was this week, that social security by the year 023, there won't be any.

we think it want happen, but my worry is that a lot of people re on social security and they say where we only have so much money and they cut it in alf. america is not the way it used to be. we know that and we understand it. we have been here many years. i worry because our nation is pushing many states down. they are losing their homes. there's no jobs, no money coming in. on the other hand, china is out orking us.

many people were having a good time and others are dying because there's not enough help for them. i wish i could say more but thank you very much for verything. >> i usually take a little longer than i should on social security because i hate rumors about social security. let me start out by saying this. social security has a challenge facing it in the future. i don't want anyone to think i'm trying to say that verything is hunky-dory. social security is not going bankrupt. it is not broke. it has never once -- not like some of these banks, not like enron or worldcom, failed to

pay in full and on time to every single american who worked in this country and retired or became disabled or the surviving spouse or child of someone who worked in and paid in. never once has it failed to pay those benefits in full and on time. in those 78 years we have gone through 13 recessions. the last one, really bad. in the height of the recession when we were losing 800,000 jobs in one month, every single american on social security got their social security check. let me give you the simple math on social security because it really is simple. you can check and you can ask my office and i will send you the information. i'm not making these numbers up. i may miss it on the hundreds f thousands or millions, but i

will be pretty close to accurate on the billions and trillions. in the 78 years that social security has been around, how much have we contributed to social security? remember. it's not free. we make a fisa tax contribution every paycheck. our employer matches that, 6.1% we get taxed and six point 1% our employer. it's not free. we pay for it. how much have we put in? bout $15 trillion. i may be off a little and i probably have the number in my note book, but about $15 trillion. don't try to figure out how many zeros are in there. t's a lot. every math equation as more than one variable. how much have we expended in

the 78 years? how much is social security paid out to either you as a beneficiary or feared the administrative costs for the 78 years of administration for tens of millions of people? ow much? bout $14 trillion. i know the math is tough but i think you can do the subtraction. $15 trillion brought in minus $14 trillion sent out. what does that leave you? what does that leave you? $1 trillion. $1 trillion of your taxpayer money, your parents, your grandparents, your kids that has never been spent by the social security system. social security ain't dumb. that money they have been collecting in excess of what they send out, they don't just

put it under a big social security mattress. [laughter] it is in t bills, treasury bonds. this is the way it works. the people who say there is a fiction in the trust fund and it's funny money, you pay this. social security gets that money. the treasury says here's the social security money we got for this month. treasury says thank you. here are treasury bonds to replace the cash you just gave me. treasury bonds earn 2%, 3%interest, not much. lower right now because interest rates are so low. but it earns interest. how much has the social security money we've not used over this last several decades earned in interest? close to $2 trillion. how much today is in reserves in

social security that has not been spent that is available? close to $3 trillion. social security is not broke. there's a challenge. i see the challenge in the room. i am the challenge as well. i'm a member of the baby boomers. there's a whole bunch of us. we are retiring now -- not me, not yet -- but we are getting close. we did not have that many kids. so we don't have as many people working paying into the system for social security and now with this big blip of baby boomers retiring, all of a sudden it's a little offkilter. we need more people paying in to make up for all of the people who are retiring. so what is going to happen? in about 20 years, the $3 trillion in surplus will be totally depleted.

what happens the day after we use up the last penny in the surplus? social security continues but it will now be based only on what americans working paying their fica taxes contribute in along with their employer. how much would the day after we use the last penny in the surplus trust fund provide? through what fica taxes collected? about $.75 on the dollar. today if you receive social security, imagine in 2034 someone who would want to get essentially 100% of what you are getting would only get about 75% of what you are getting. which, as ms. lopez tried to make clear, that is tough. you take a 25% cut, that is tough. that is the challenge we face. it levels off. it does not keep going downhill. it will not be worse, worse, worse. what happens is the kids today who are working and now watching

their parents and the baby boom generation retire, remember that they will start to retire. and they are small and they have more kids, so it will be a bigger population now than the relative size of the population working versus the baby boomers so it levels off. no one wants to get $.75 of what people today are getting on $1. so our challenge is to make sure we tweak it. we've got 20 years to do it. so that we want to continue to give a robust retirement benefit to those who worked and paid for it. how do you do it? it's simple math. you either increase the inputs are you decrease the output. inputs -- tax or other types of revenue. outputs -- benefits. you cut benefits. some people say to raise the retirement age. people get money later in life so that means you pay less

benefits over time. that's one way to cut benefits. some people say to change the cola, the cost of living increase, so you reduce payments as they increase to keep with inflation. that's a cut in benefits. some people say to remove the cap on how much people have to pay in, how much of your income gets taxed at 6.1% taxed at at about $117,000 in income. so, guess what -- let's say you make $117,000. every single penny will pay 6.1% in fica. warren buffett makes more than $117,000. he stops paying once he has paid on the first $117,000. everything after that, however tens of millions, it is all untaxed because there is a cap. some people say raise the cap a

bit more. it is very simple, inputs or outputs. we can solve that. you just have to have the will. what i would never support is those who say, the system does not work. it is going bankrupt. we should let you have your own private account. essentially, you get to put it on wall street. and that's -- by the way, you know how much you pay in fees for your social security system to work? less than 1%. i know a lot of you have 401(k)s, financial advisors, have you checked how much they charge on a monthly basis to advise you? i guarantee that means they are not talking to you every month. they still charge a fee. you know how much? at least four or five times more than what social security charges to manage that money for 60 million people.

one last thing, on top of the fact that it's never failed to pay on time in full through the 78 plus years it's been around, it's not just a retirement benefit. it's not just a pension plan. it's better than a pension plan because you cannot outlive social security. you can outlive your pension. that is the commitment that every generation behind you has made. you work for this country, you pay, we guarantee for your life you will always get social security. no matter how long you live, you'll always get social security. no pension in america tells you that. what people don't recognize is there are a lot of americans today who are not retired getting social security. why? they were the children or spouse of an american who worked and paid in so they get survivor benefits.

it is not only that. if you worked in this country and you become disabled, guess what? you get disability benefits as well. social security is a pension plan, life insurance policy, a and a disability policy wrapped in one. go price that out in the private sector marketplace. go to any insurer and find out how much they would charge to provide with disability, life insurance, and a pension annuity. find out how much they charge and then compare it to social security and you'll see why it's the best deal this country has ever made to americans. the population of seniors who are living in poverty is under 10%. if it weren't for social security and medicare, about half of the seniors would be living in poverty today. a women, you should attack anyone who tries to privatize social security. because women outlive men by several years.

and women, a majority of women rely on social security for more than half of their retirement income. by the time to get into their 80's, it is almost 100% of their income because they have outlived whatever meager pension they may have had and they begin to rely almost exclusively on social security. when mrs. lopez says she's concerned about social security getting cut, this is what's going on. first, people trying to be spooked. the people who should defend social security more is not mrs. lopez but everyone in this room under 30. i guarantee you don't have the type of pension plans that my dad had. he had a defined benefit plan which meant you contribute into your pension and it defines how much you will get when you retire. now we have defined contribution, the 401k, the ira. you put in a certain amount and it is not defined. you are not guaranteed a certain amount in your retirement.

it's only guaranteed how much you have to put in and the rest is up to the stock market. if you put your money in enron, you don't get a whole lot back. more and more, you'll find a lot of folks are relying on social security for retirement income. if we're smart we figure out the right mix of input and output -- revenue and cuts -- to keep social security stronger kid to for kids who believe they will see martians before they see their social security check. if we do that it would be good for all america. i told you i would go long on that. i am the ranking democrat on the social security subcommittee ano say, i got this letter in the mail asking me to send $15 per month to help defend my social security and they just get ripped off. it just burns me when i get that kind of stuff because most of these people are on fixed income.

shame on anyone who thinks it's ok to dupe a senior into sending them sonth. you know what? i will send a border patrol agent after them. [laughter] laok, st question. forgive me. we ran a little long. jim, close us out. make it a good one. >> can you hear me? ok, great. the issue that should be on everyone's minds nonstop is that we are currently marching into global thermonuclear world war iii with russia and china. because obama, the bush crowd, cameron in britain, the queen and so on are hysterical that the british empire, wall street, is collapsing and that russia, china, india and others, the bric countries, are building a

new system for the future. what the bric nations are doing are setting up a new monetary financial economic system to finance infrastructure development all over the world. my friend hunter mentioned the chinese moon program. russia has a similar one. obama says that we've been to the moon and we are not going back. he also says we do not need fusion power and other newfangled technology. that is obscene. john kennedy is rolling over in his grave at obama's statement to that effect. but people need to understand -- i'm not kidding about world war iii. it is the assessment of the russian government that obama and company are going to try a thermonuclear showdown like the cuban missile crisis very soon except these clowns around obama think they can win a nuclear

war. they are nuts. they're fascists. what's going on right now in ukraine proves it. i met with staff people here in los angeles and you probably got a briefing on it. she seemed quite conscientious. i spoke to your legislative director back in washington and also a lady who is your foreign-policy adviser up in the caucus office, a turkish american lady. what i laid out then before the nazi coup d'etat, this is what is coming and it has to be stopped. >> i need you to go ahead -- >> i am almost done. john brennan, obama's cia has now admitted to senator feinstein and other senate intelligence committees which

have been investigating criminal activities of the bush cia -- >> jim, i need you to get to the point. >> brennan has now admitted that contrary to his earlier testimony the cia has been spying on senator feinstein, her entire staff, her entire colleagues on the senate intelligence committee. now what do we have? obama says he has confidence in our cia director -- >> give me your question. >> are you going to impeach this nazi sob like a real democrat or not? >> i'm not sure who the reference was to, but i hope your reference is not to people who have been elected to office. i don't think that's an appropriate way to refer to anyone who has been elected to office so i will not grace that comment with a response other

than to say elected office is not easy. i'd tell you that as someone who has now served for more than two decades. i think the president is trying as best he can. i think george bush did the best he can. i disagreed with some of the things they do, but i do not refer to them as you just did. in this country, we are fortunate he can get to say that because we have the leaders who have allowed us to protect the constitution to give you that right. trying to respond to your point -- [applause] let me respond to your point. let me just try to respond to his point. a jim, my sense is this -- how can i say this? it's a dangerous world. there's a lot going on right now in the world that we cannot predict. we, ourselves, by ourselves, cannot control -- whether it

is ukraine, syria, iraq, north korea. the situation in central america that we can see from these kids coming as desperate as well for different reasons. i did not get elected to tell you that i want us to be the her you that i want us to be the cops of the world and not get even paid for it. we are out there and a lot of places around the world. we have our armed forces, a lot of work that's being done, which i think is important, but no one ever pays us for it. we foot the bill for all this stuff. and so, for making the world a little safer, someone should pay us a little more when our troops are out there. how long did we have our troops in the dmz in the korean a peninsula? a i have not seen a check. i believe the u.s. has a major responsibility around the world because we have been successful, and everyone looks to us. and so we have responsibility to lead, but we do not have to be

suckers and the way we lead. to some degree, i agree with the kernel of what was said, in that we have to understand what we are facing. i think i diverge from jim quite a bit on most other points you made, so let me try to summarize by saying this -- and in on syria, i told the president that if he was going to go in and use our military, because the syrian government -- there was proof that the syrian government had used a chemical weapon, that i would support that. i have never been a big fan of using our military unilaterally. i voted against the iraq war for that reason. but to me, it was important to make a point, that if we had proof that someone had used weapons of mass destruction and we said that is a no-no, then we

got to show them it is a no-no. and so while i am not a fan of using military, especially by itself, i was ok with the president to use military force. you try to use chemical weapons on a weapon of mass destruction, you are going to pay the price. if i could just finish. if i could just finish. my point is the same now with regard to ukraine, iraq, i look at things a little differently from syria. iraq to me is not a country. it is a sectarian population. as i have said before, the day i see a sunni arab soldier defend a -- a sunni iraq soldier defend a shia iraqi civilian or a shia iraq soldier defend a sunni iraq

civilian, i will consider it a country. right now shia defends shia, sunni defends sunni, kurd defends kurd. i'm not interested in sending an american soldier in to figure out who they should defend. we just saw what happened in afghanistan where a u.s. general was killed, where the afghani military could not provide the security whether its soldiers were who they said they were. and so until those countries want to be more responsible for their future, i am not interested in investing american lives, as several thousand have done in afghanistan and iraq. tens of thousands coming back wounded. we talked about that in veterans affairs and health care. so we got to be smart.

we're never going to lose our role in the world to try to help bring prosperity to other countries like ours. but at the same time, he have to to be very careful how we use our military and our forces. to respond to jim, what i would say i think the president is trying hard. i think he recognizes when you got soldiers who have served there, four, or five tours of duty, it is time to give them a rest. unless you can prove to me that iraqis can do something special to prove that they deserve to be defended, i will wait until the -- and see what happens in the civil war. in ukraine, the russians are going hog wild. that is in their backyard. if something were happening in our backyard in this western hemisphere, what would we do? would we allow mexico to teeter? would we allow puerto rico -- although it is a territory -- or the dominican republic or haiti get into a crisis?

i suspect not. we invaded grenada, and so the russians fear what is going on. maybe not legitimately. but you got to get inside that brain, because i want to get inside that brain before i send troops to defend somebody i do not understand. i have had to present flags to the spouses of fallen soldiers. it ain't fun. it ain't fun. and i'm going to make sure that if i present a flag to the spouse of a fallen soldier, it is going to be for a good reason, so i can say to that spouse, your husband, your wife died for your country and you should be proud, and i'm proud of what he did. i want to make sure i can say that with my heart fully behind it. and so, jim, i do not agree with most what you said, but if i can agree to which you it is we have to be smart with the way we use our power and we have to be smart how we help the world and

we cannot be duped into thinking just because we're the biggest power in the world that we should get involved in everything right away. with that, you have been great. we went longer. i thank you so much. we will do it again. thank you all for participating. thank you c-span for coverage. we will follow up. you all have a good evening. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] next, debate on the use of wikipedia. talks toident obama reporters about the protests in ferguson, missouri. we'll talk with a reporter about a program that transfers military equipment to agencies. is liveton journal" each morning at 7:00 eastern. live event to tell you about.

a look at the role of philanthropy and defense funding. that is live today on c-span. a conversation on relations with asia, focusing on japan and south korea. blair will take part in the discussion. live coverage at 2:00 eastern on c-span. >> hi. this week we will focus on lyndon johnson's vision for a great society. join the conversation by calling us are sending us an e-mail or a tweet. join the conversation on facebook.com/cspan. >> a discussion about

congressional transparency and the use of wikipedia. palace talked about the challenges posting information about congress. this event was hosted by the cato institute. >> thank you for coming today. one of our speakers likes to point out that in a recent 90 day time frame, almost 400,000 articles on bills pending in congress. the people most knowledgeable have an aversion to this.

the people that work with members, work with counsel, work with crs, are largely not editing the website that a large segment of the american population used to get it -- information about bills pending in congress. we have a huge manner in which government can deliver transparency to the public, and the public likewise can demand better outcomes. so to help navigate the rules around wikipedia, and a little history on the legislation, we have three scholars here today. jim harper is the senior fellow at the cato institute and works on issues such as privacy, telecommunications, and intellectual property, transparency, and security. from 2004-2014, he was the director of policy studies at cato.

in 2014 he became an cato senior fellow and the policy council on the bitcoin foundation. next up is michelle, a legislative researcher and writer in the in the informational studies at the cato institute. she has a masters degree from the university of chicago in international relations. she has been editing wikipedia since august, 2012. she has made nearly 6000 edits on 1392 unique pages. she has created 339 articles, most of which are about legislation from the 113 congress. finally, jim hayes, a graduate of old dominion and george mason university. with that, i will turn it over to jim. >> thanks, john. i'm very pleased to be here and to have you all here as well as the c-span audience. we can do a lot to advance the ball on transparency in

congress. the issues are very interesting. wikipedia editing for congressional staff. there is an aversion to editing on wikipedia and a mistrust within the community for edits coming from congress. we can improve the information that is available to the american people about what happens here. i want to open by doing a brief history, the sort of modern history of the transparency issue him and the work we have been doing at cato, before i turn it over to michelle and then jim. michelle obviously has the numbers to prove that she can make a talented and capable wikipedia and we want to make others as good as michelle at producing information for people together to get insight into what is happening inside congress. what is going on within transparency? i've been working on it longer. since 2000, i run a website called washingtonwatch.com. it has had a lot of traffic.

200,000 comments on a single bill, for example. really impressive stuff. but really, the transparency project has never taken off like a good command that is basically because the data is not available. i was excited when president obama was first elected with the promises of transparency that he made. good-faith promises, and i think a good-faith effort was made within the first couple of years of the obama administration to deliver on transparency. but i think a problem existed, and that is, people did not know how to deliver transparency. people did not really know how to deliver transparency. what is been spared the within the government? i have seen a slowdown in the transparency efforts during the current administration also and i wrote a couple of pieces that are available, and i think they are available on the desk

outside. what do you have to do with the ask on the transparency side? what we want them to be doing to provide transparent data. data has to be available from an authoritative voice, so be below -- people know where to get it. availability, and completeness. that is, you want all of the relevant data in a given area. you want it to be up all the time come and to stay in one place of there can be a consistent datastream and website asked and information services can be built on a datastream that is reliable. of course, the machine for -- discoverability is important. google and other crawlers need to be able to find the data and deliver it to people. and the most important parties readability. -- machine wristed ability -- machine readability. structuring -- the most important part is readability. structuring the data so that it

is usable. a subsequent publication is called "grading the government's availability of public practices," grading the legislative process, the budget and appropriations process. the grades are generally fairly poor. there have been steps taken in the congress and in the administration -- a new law recently passed called the did act that may well improve those grades quite a bit. in a study we are about to commence, again, regrading the availability of data, the numbers will still be fairly poor. actual data about what is going on in congress is not readily available. actual data about the budgeting is not readily available. but over the years, we have set to work at cato trying to make some of that data available.

you can follow our work on these bills on twitter. cato.org/resources/data is where the data is downloadable in bulk, or through the api. what we do is gather versions of the bill from the government printing office, and then using highly software -- highly add xmled software, we add xmle that indicates when there is reference to existing wall. when there are references to an agency or bureau we add the data that makes it automatic to people who want to parse it and find it. when a bill contains spending more budget authority. make that available as data.

and the data starting to see use. for example, the wash in her example. -- that was the example. when this cameo out this was the first time that anyone can systematically find what bills in congress propose taxpayer dollars. kind of surprising and fascinating there was no systematic way of learning when congress was reposing spending. positions the public to do better oversight of the congress. is the user times of this data. they do tracking of legislation and on pages about legislation there is a little section called mention. they use the references we add

two agencies to show what agencies are mentioned in what bills. happening at the department of layer, environmental protection agency, the data we produced allows you to see the bills that affect the agencies. i mentioned references to existing law are another thing that we mark up and the ways congress refers to them. cornell, the legal information institute has begun using the data to let their visitors know when they are visiting a page for u.s. code that it is subject to amendment. it is a link that brings people really important information, relatively sophisticated people going to the cornell law website. many people are familiar with that. when you are on one of those pages and the section of the code you are looking for is up for amendment in congress, they are giving you a link to that.

that i think creates of important democratic link. they may be able to offer educated opinions on what congress is doing an improved democratic processes. we at cato are also using the data on wikipedia. i come now to the subject of today's topic. we take the data that is produced in deep bills and we produce info boxes that we use on legislative pages. you're probably familiar with the info boxes on wikipedia about a movie star, political actor, what their party has been in their career, and so on and so forth. wikipedia info boxes can show any discrete way what is going on with a particular bill. those are produced with deep bill data as well. and to sort of highlight what is going on with wikipedia now, we

have created a twitter bot that is a riff on the congress at its twitter boxed. congress recently came out with a great deal of interest in this. it tracks anonymous edits coming from capitol hill. there has been a little bit of back-and-forth and forth between one or more anonymous editors, and the cutie at large, because the community seems to be trolling the edits that they do. it is interesting stuff. someone edited them i believe, the cato institute page on wikipedia anonymously on the hill about this event happening. it was kind of meta-and we saw our minds a coating when that happened. it tracks all edits, not just those coming from the hill. you can see the bot at wiki bills. you can see what legislation is being edited. you can take a look at what people are doing with bills and find those there. many of the edits are coming from michelle, who does so much work.

we are trying to make government more legible. we are trying to make it more available. editing wikipedia is a way of doing that. getting the notable bills up there, getting them written about, so people when they are doing a search to find out what is going on in congress can go to that resource, which is so valuable for so many things. and at least start their investigation there. as john mentioned, there has been reticence on the congressional side to wikipedia, and that has to do with history early on. there was controversy, because people from the hill, people from congressional offices were going in and editing the pages of the members of congress that they work for. there would be back and forth and there were conflicts of interest in doing that. generally, there is. there is a version to wikipedia editing on the hill. there is suspicion of wikipedia editing from the hill on the part of the wikipedia community. but we think that suspicion can be abated, if not gotten rid of them entirely. but it will be hard. there are customs and rules on

wikipedia against rules against conflict of interest, for cabell, but i think have to be navigated very carefully. michelle is going to -- for example, but i think they have to be navigated very carefully. michelle is going to talk about this culture. she is very highly decorated within wikipedia. i'm very pleased with her work. her experience of the culture is an experience that others have had. there's a lot of controversy that goes into these bills. we will have more discussion around what the rules are and how to navigate the process. we very much like to see congressional offices flipped from a version to embrace wikipedia. after a sort of initial phase of concern and worry and suspicion, i think things will change dramatically and wikipedians will come to expect that the mers of congress are sharing with the public in the best possible way ways to introduce congressional legislation. the question is, which will -- which congressional office will

step up and start editing wikipedia first check on unofficial banana, but she's here to talk about her experience. -- wikipedia first. i don't know if michelle will talk about that, but she's here to talk about her experience. >> in march, 2013, we had a meet up with wikipedians and the transparency activists within d.c. and sat down to talk about how we can use the deep bill data that jim just described in a way to make the wikipedia boxes on wikipedia better. and improve the discussion. one of the things we discussed that day was how we determine if a piece of legislation is notable. obviously, the person who introduces it hopes that it is notable. they put it there for a reason. but with 10,000 pieces of legislation in a congress, we cannot really do with the pd articles on all 10,000. one of the lines that we decided on at this meeting and have held to is that pieces of legislation are notable if they come up for a floor vote in the house and senate.

that is several hundred bills so far in this congress. and we have articles about 350 of them. obviously, there are many more that we do not have articles about. one of the things i've noticed as i do this, is that you can track to hit count an article gets, and you can track exactly who the editors are of an article. i can tell you that when we write an article, posted out there, put it in the article people read it will stop -- people read it. especially bills like immigration bill, farm bill, those get attention. if you search for the bill name, your article is up on the first page of the google hit. people can find it and they use would be as a source of information. they will go there and read the article. the problem is, once you put the article up there, there are some

hard-core wikipedians they come by and do some maintenance on the article. very little additional information gets added. that is what we would like to see people on the hill do. you guys know more about these pieces of legislation than anyone does. you have personal and professional interest in their being correct -- there being wrecked information for the general public in the bill and why the information is good or bad or terrible and how it can be improved. you have incentive to add to these articles. what wikipedia can provide is, one, a knowledge of the rules, and the culture of wikipedia.

how to maintain neutrality in an article. how to ethically address conflicts of interest situations. how to spruce up the article by adding images. and maps that show the vote counts for which states or which district voted for or against a piece of legislation, and how to make cool info boxes. that is something wikipedians can add, but we still need people from the hillside, experts and policy, -- experts on policy for my to add to the comments side. we had a situation where bill was passed. there was no accurate total of, you know, bob voted yes, john voted no. you can make a map of visually who voted yes and no. but there was a guy who just cap putting a map on there. it turns out he was using data from a vote taken on a bill by the same name, but from the 112th congress.

and he did not notice the difference. that is something where we need people who are experts, like yourselves, to do and help us out with. that is also a thing that can come up with multiple versions of the same bill with different titles, but have completely different contents. that is something wikipedians don't necessarily understand, but staffers would. staffers would understand a legislative vehicle they go straight over the head of wikipedians. i think it's a very valuable project. if you think about a piece of legislation, even if you can pull a summary of it from someplace like the congressional research servers, it will not necessarily make sense to a layperson who does not have deep knowledge of that issue. and the great part about wikipedia is that you can make a

link to all of the concepts and agencies and organizations and locations and places that are in the summary. they are studying up on their congressperson to decide if they're going to vote for that guy again. he can go in and look at the legislation and say, i don't know what a hydropower dam is, but i can clicked on this link in wikipedia and read about what that is. i would love to see more people edit wikipedia. i think there are good reasons to. hopefully, jim will be able to tell you some about wikimedia here in d.c., which is a group that knows wikipedia really well and would love to partner with you guys to help staffers and people with knowledge to edit in a strong and knowledgeable way. jim? >> thanks for coming. thanks, cato. we look forward to more collaboration in the future.

by way of background, wikipedia -- i mean, it seems ubiquitous, and that is wherever one page hits go. -- where everyone's page hits go. but keep in mind that the wikimedia foundation is a nonprofit and they run the servers and software and are based out of san francisco, but all the content is written by volunteers. we have a local chapter of volunteers called wikimedia, d.c. we are very active trying to have local funds for distribution, including through the cato institute, and we have worked with the smithsonian and international archives. conflict of interest has a long history on wikipedia. there is an article you can read about it that gives you all the gory details. conflict of interest on editing on wikipedia. in 2006, -- and congress was part of that. there were some good takeaways from that and some good examples. there was an article about congressman joe wilson that was a precursor to some of the conflict of interest rules where staffers put content on the top

page, and then it was incorporated in the article and the article was relatively good quality after that. that is on your handout, some of the concepts about neutral point of view and conflict of interest. things have become more formalized over time. now, there is a nice, long, written policy about conflict of interest. the idea is to give you some best practices of how to do fax correction in articles -- a fact correction in articles, if you find something that is not correct them even if you have a conflict. the idea is not to -- the idea

is to register your account, declare your potential conflicts of interest on the user page, and then make the comments on the top page. and also, if you need help editing, there are some good suggestions on your handout. we would also suggest -- there is a forum on wikipedia called the teahouse. that is a nice place to go for some semi-real-time help. friend the people will help you out if you have concerns. and also, if you want more hands on help, come to our some -- some of our local events. new tonight backstage pass -- you get a nice backstage pass. there are many social media people there and we can help you with your concerns about editing. a lot of this conflict of interest is also tied into some pr controversies that have occurred on wikipedia. there are certain public relations firms and there is kind of a spectrum there and some bad actors who are creating a bad atmosphere on wikipedia. some local firms have gotten

together with some public relations firms and there is a statement from wikipedia on -- from participating firms and that is something we might consider among staffs and have a statement for people to sign on to. it helps to foster a sense of cooperation, and perhaps do some cold throw management there among wikipedians. also, conflict of interest has been found within the terms of use. it is giving you more tools to deal with bad actors, and part of the editing practice would be to differentiate your at it from what bad actors might do. also, one thing that our chapter does in the spring is we do wiki loves capitol hill. we have been having some conversations with the staff of the ip subcommittees. however, if you are interested in talking with us in the spring, we would be happy to talk to about that. we are looking forward to questions and i would be happy to expand if you have general concerns. thanks. >> before john gets up and takes over as master of ceremonies, i'm curious to know among people in the room, who among you feel you are experienced wikipedians and you edit fairly regularly. ok, we have five or six. and the rest of you, you know what wikipedia is, i take it, but not regular editors.

>> actually, of those who raise their hand, who he'll -- who here is a hill staffer? i was curious to know among people in the room, who among do feel you are experienced ns?ipedia an the rest of you, you know what it is but not regular editors. >> who here is a hill staffer?

for those who did not see, only two. that raises a good point. we have plenty of time for questions if anyone has any. i will just say -- i will take moderators privilege and take the first question. i was on a hill not too long ago, and even though i might be open to the idea of editing wikipedia, let's say my boss is ok with it and all of that, wikipedia still has a sort of stigma to it where you would not find it on a college paper. it may not be accurate. it may not be the best place for a source. how do you address that? >> i know for sure there are hill staffers that edit wikipedia. a couple of them commented on a

discussion i was having with them people what we are planning this event, that they were very interested in knowing about the event. the twitter bot that captures edits from -- anonymous edits from the house and ip addresses have proved there are people from the house editing wikipedia. i think anyone who looks down on wikipedia needs to reconsider their mindset. it does wikipedia is one of the six most heavily trafficked websites in the world. and your constituency use it. it's ok if your college professor doesn't want to cite the article. your college professor is not really your audience when you are editing wikipedia. you are editing it to speak to people who will go to your town hall and ask you questions about the legislation you voted for. and they are the people who are going to donate to your campaign, and to help you out

and who you are supposed to be helping in turn. it is ordinary people who read wikipedia, and most of the world is full of ordinary, normal people. we are the people who care about wikipedia. the other thing i would point to is wikipedia's rules regarding citations have improved over time, and people are much more vigilant about properly citing information i goes into wikipedia than they used to. i -- that is something i would encourage any of you as staffers or anyone at all editing wikipedia, cite your sources. cite your sources. cite your sources. if you use proper citations, which there is a little button. you pick the button and tell it whether you want to cite a book, website, or newspaper, and then you fill in the blanks and it

does all of the citation for you. if you do that, people cannot accuse you of taking things up. they have a hard time deleting information that you have added, because you have shown where it came from. i think that adds to the legitimacy as well. sure, you don't cite wikipedia in your college paper, but you do look there first and you find all the citations and use those as information. clicks on that subject, i will share a story from some years back. understanding the value of wiki editing, or wiki style editing, it is quite a while back now -- i added to washingtonwatch.com. it is not wikipedia, but a capability still exists today on the site. i went around on the hill and talked to some friends and said, you know, hey, this is a chance for you to put on public record a really good description of your bill.

your bill can access a lot more people this way. and you will be able to give them the story directly. how does congress to indicate with the public now? you are still very much intermediated by the press. you have someone in the press. you reach out to them to try to get a story written. you try to get a favorable release. it is sometimes high-quality and sometimes low-quality. you have people come to your individual member website, yes, but the flow of information out to the public about legislation is rather poor. on the other side, you have a lot of people who are highly suspicious, because the flow is so poor. the information they have is widely varied and not very reliable sources in many cases. there is a lot of distrust. the instinct on the hill has been not to want to actually engage. i had a friend -- it was in jest, but a friend said, o, the last and we want is for the public to actually know what we are doing up here. it was in jest, but it was based on the fact that often, the loudest of the members of the public are the most distrustful.

there is antagonistic elision between congress and the public at large. but that can be flipped. and i think straightforward, meritorious information about the hills can be communicated to the public. likewise, -- the editors and authors will sometimes joust with one another on how to get to certain issues. out of that jousting, the competition, you'll get very good information. wikipedia handle some of the most controversial debate. people work very hard to choose words carefully, to choose the structure of articles very

carefully, so the debate is accurately represented on wikipedia. you cannot go to wikipedia and use it to win debates. you just accurately represent the debate, and from that challenge comes good information for the public to use. it presents an opportunity for a seachange in transparency about what the hill is doing. a sea change in public attitudes about what the government is doing. as john stated at the beginning, and i believe this as well, this will the -- this will position the public to understand better what they want from congress. they will be able to communicate accurately, communicate about specifics rather than phone banks coming from the home district. people calling saying, hey, i understand that hr 1234 does x, y, and z, and it's up for committee vote next week. how much better does that work?

those phone banks versus the person calling up to say, "i've been told to tell you" etc., etc. >> what is the gap that cato has filled about what congress is doing and its relationship -- nine clicks i'm sorry, could you go but -- and its relationship [indiscernible] >> i'm sorry, could you repeat the question you asked the gap in information between what congress is doing -- like >> oakham of the community should gap between what congress is doing and what the public knows is going on. so, how many pages do you have up on wikipedia from this project echo >> from this comment, not very many.

those that existed were repeat multiple congresses. since i had an article -- the violence against women act had an article. it is not very many. there is one for equal employment rights for gay people. if the employment nondiscrimination act. -- >> the employment nondiscrimination act. >> yes. there are about 10 or so. they preexisted us adding. >> bills that have come up year-over-year, they had articles. and sometimes, they would accurately represent one congress and the next bill in the next congress, and so on and so forth. at but as for systematic reporting from congress, virtually none. a bill would go by without any article at all on wikipedia.

now we are getting them there. and as michelle said, we need to get those articles fleshed out so there is more information available to the public. >> or take the national defense authorization act. there is one of those every year, as i recall. they have articles on many of those, but one particular year, the article will be 5000 words. you know, fairly lengthy. and the previous year it will be three sentences long. i think most of us would consider each year to have equal weight and equal importance to our country. just getting more information and making sure that we write a more robust article every year is something that is important. >> yeah, but i would say the gap a summary style of what is going on on the hill. you are well aware of the specialized media that is around tracking things, but i don't

think it's getting to the web in an easy to digest or find method for the average person. they're obviously googling trying to find out about bills, but how do we mediate between that search to lead them to the more specialized references? that is the gap we are filling in. the problem is, a lot of this ends up being even driven. you have a relatively good editor that writes about this one year and then does not come back the next year to do the same thing. >> one thing that is important is the conflict of interest. how you might handle it. you work in a congressional office. i don't want to talk about editing members pages. it is probably a bad idea to edit members pages.

but you could. how about legislation? you work for a member of congress. your member of congress had legislation introduced. you know a lot about it. and you could provide a lot of information. but on the other hand, there may be a conflict of interest with the page. what is your thinking on whether there is a conflict of interest and what to do about it? >> my way of thinking about the conflict of interest rules is that your mindset matters as much as your actual technical conflict. if you are just editing your site and going to remove all counter arguments, all information from your opponent. you will act like 100% of the world is behind this bill, that would be a conflict of interest. you are not treating the topic ethically or fairly. i would say, your first step if you're going to edit a piece of legislation, or any article, really, is you should join and become a user.

you don't even have to give the website and e-mail address. just a username and a password. this is good because it gives you accountability. if you are logged in, every edit you make is tracked to that account. i mean this not confused with edits made by other people. you can as tablets, yes, i am a good community member, and even though i am -- you can establish, yes, i am a good committee member, and even though i am editing from this same building as this jerk over here, my edits and hit -- his edits are different. that can keep others from saying, you did this good at it here, and here, but you did these terrible ones, so we are blocking you. having your own user account is important. another thing you can do is right on your own user page. it is kind of like your profile, and you can write on that just like any other profile about yourself will serve you can