a gay wedding. you said you have been invited to one and plan to attend, and yet you remain as someone who believes that the government should define what -- should define marriage as a man and a woman. why is it that you think that people -- same-sex couples who you know personally should be allowed to get married, the people who don't should not? governor governor kasich: ohio passed the constitutional amendment to say marriage is between a man and a woman. to my friend, my question is what time is it? there is a time to celebrate people. reporter: do you believe it should be between a man and a woman? governor kasich: yes. reporter: why do you feel it to be different for people you know personally? governor kasich: i am for marriage being defined as between a man and a woman. if the supreme court changes

that those changes have to be respected. i have a number of gay friends. i like them. they know how i feel about this but i am fine. they want me to go i care about them, i will go. i don't usually go to weddings of people i don't know. i don't go to them. if somebody that i like is getting married in a traditional or nontraditional sense, i am not hung up on that. i have nothing more to say about it. my position has been clear for ever. >> huffington post. reporter: an article recently came out about all police officers using body cameras. do you support that? governor kasich: we have a very comprehensive set of recommendations and a

conditional meet on the bones of many recommendations to come and that will probably be considered. we also have our supreme court looking at the grand jury process. i will get to you the details of what we have already done and i am glad we have done it, it is extremely comprehensive. training is an issue, transparency is an issue. having law enforcement in the community and the community endorsing law enforcement -- these things are a vital part. there is no one single thing that can be done to fix this. the issue of body cameras -- we had a guy in ohio whose family bought in a body camera. he was an iraq veteran. he had a very close confrontation with somebody and he did a fantastic job all stop we hold him as a hero for what he was able to do. i would have to think about -- i go back to my people who are

experts and say, will this make a big difference? i am finally that if they say yes. reporter: l.a. times. there has been debate for a while more recently within the party on immigration policy. governor walker said the other day that the country should consider having fewer immigrants and voiced a concern about immigrants lowering wages. governor bush said yesterday he thought that was wrongheaded. zero some thinking was his i would like to draw you into that fight. what do think about it? governor kasich: we have 12 million people here. the border has not been protected. it needs to be redacted. if you cannot control who comes in and out of your homes, you

have chaos. the same is true for our country. border protection is something that absolutely should be done. it should be first but there are things we can unite both parties around i would hope. what i have said is i would like to know who they are, do they have a sponsor, a criminal record. i have said that on the path to citizenship, for legalization, i think they could be one and the same. i take nothing off the table when it comes to a negotiation like this. i would prefer not to have a path to citizenship. legalization is different, i think. the reason why i wouldn't prefer a path to citizenship is i have try to tell my daughters you

don't ditch ♪ the line to get taylor split tickets. if you didn't get there at the right time, you wait. i don't like it when people ditch the line. my view is you will have to sit down and negotiate. i am open to where we would go on this, preferring not to go to citizenship but i wouldn't take anything off the table and we have to deal with this issue. if you are going to worry about who shout the loudest on anything, you don't make any progress. i have 20 a8% after my first year. you have to work to do that poorly. do your job. i have to test the wind or do a focus group to figure out how i feel -- there could be questions asked to me that i have not

thought about enough. that would question like will you go to a gay wedding and all of this kind of stuff. that will come up. i haven't thought about them. they are wage issues. most of the time, i kind of know what i think and i know how i feel about something. you cannot run around trying to please everybody. you have to be a leader. that is kind of the way i have run my life. it has worked out pretty well. >> we have nine or 10 people wanting questions. i have a deal with mr. nichols to do one. let's go to erica warner of the ap. reporter: the trade bill before congress has divided republicans from the ohio delegation. what do you think of it and

could you comment on any liability or senator portman and israel election in backing the fast-track bill? governor kasich: i'm not in congress now. i don't have access to the details of it. i have expressed my concern about what happens as it relates to the workers. u.s. still makes big investment in ohio. i know, they claim they are being dumped on by the koreans. i supported nafta. but i'm also pleased to see that people are raising serious questions about what we do for those who are displaced. i'm extremely concerned about the government being so above everything that when they see a trade violation, they don't do anything about it. i think we have a long way to go on this bill. i think there will be some good and it will probably be good. i fundamentally am for open but i'm not for america doing things

that sell our workers or to store our manufacturing industries. i know this bill involves some of these intellectual property rights. portman had an amendment on currency manipulation. maybe he will offer that again. maybe it will be included. let's see how it comes out that my concern is trade is good open is good, but at the end of the day, it needs to be fair and a level playing field. reporter: there is no yes or no? governor kasich: i will see what it is in the end. i say, why doesn't it get to my desk first and i will let you know how i feel. >> carolyn ryan from the new york times. last question. governor kasich: two more. [laughter] reporter: i am looking for a concise answer. revisions to the tax code.

governor kasich: revisions on the tax code -- i'm in conversations now with steve forbes about his flat tax. i want to take a look at the distribution table. the beauty of his plan is number one, you can have the plan i'm suggesting, which is a flat or you can take the traditional tax. i've asked him about the distribution tables and he said they're pretty good. i have been a little concerned about the issue of dynamic scoring. he said, if we open up the floodgates, we will have significant growth in the early years and later years it returns to mean. we don't have all the details but i am fascinated by it. it is simple flat. if you don't like it, you can keep the current system, which is really appealing to me. i don't think now is the time to

change carried interest. i think we need these investments and are venture-capital folks out there particularly on the west coast with google and paypal and youtube -- these are important things i don't want to do anything that will hinder investment. i understand the concern about it. maybe there is a way to soften it a bit that at this point, i wouldn't change it. i think the corporate tax rate is too high. i called the administration official and asked them to bring the money back for the biggest stimulus plan ever. they said, the money might go to shareholders. i said at the end of the day, when you to give that money hears of a are not investing in europe and they are investing in g here. reporter: can i follow up on the tax question? you have proposed again leading

income taxes in your state raising sales taxes. you spoke eloquently earlier about the ports to be society. how do you get around the argument that this is an aggressive tax on the poor? governor kasich: we have significant tax relief for those at the bottom, sort of like reagan did. we have done things -- created the first income tax credit which was greatly praised by the groups concerned about what i talked about earlier. we are significantly increasing the personal exemption. here is what i'm trying to do. in states, i believe it is a lot better to be reducing the tax on risk-taking and incentives for investment. i think giving people an ability to choose with consumption rather than income will lead us to a faster growing ohio.

the reason why we cannot get it through his special interest groups say don't touch us. there are powerful interest groups fundamentally business interest groups, who want to protect their own taxes. i understand that but at the greater good for ohio, the more we can bring down that tax -- because when we look around the country, with the fastest growing states don't tax income, whether it is texas, florida. you have all of these people moving from one state to another to avoid taxation. look at the growth in nevada from people leaving california. massachusetts into new hampshire. the fact is, i believe that incentivizing investment and risk-taking is preferable but it is hard. with actually made progress on this. when i announced my taxcutting plan, i announced it to community action agencies, which are the ones there in the

trenches with those who are poor. i said, we have to get people jobs. the single biggest cure for poverty is a job. that is what i am going to do in ohio. thank you all very much. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> c-span's road to the white house coverage continues next week as tomorrow republicans announced their intention to run for the gop nomination. dr. ben carson plans to stick with reporters monday in detroit.

we have his comments live at 10:00 a.m. eastern and on tuesday, we had to arkansas for my cut of these announcement. he won the iowa gop caucus in the 2008 race. you can watch that also on c-span. according to a new pentagon report, military sexual assaults have declined over the past two years. ashton carter unveiled the annual reports findings earlier today during a briefing with reporters at the pentagon. this is 45 minutes. secretary carter: sexual assault awareness month may have ended yesterday, but because of its dangers to our men and women in uniform, and it's impact on our mission, our commitment to stopping sexual assault cannot cease. as i said last week to local

students at georgetown university and sexual assault first responders at fort meyer one reason the military is among america's most admired institutions is that we're a learning organization. we strive to understand and correct our flaws. and today d.o.d. is releasing our annual report on sexual assault in the military for fiscal year 2014 and i'd like to say a few words about what we learned from the data contained in this report. about how to understand and correct our flaws and some new actions that we're taking based on those insights. under secretary carson will make doctors and dr. galbreath will give a briefing after this and take your questions. now, while the top line numbers in today's report were included in our report to president obama this past the full analysis

december, gives us much more detail and makes clear where we need to do better and lots tells us how. -- also tells us how. first, we developed a new and better estimate better how many experienced sexual assault last year. yielding an estimated number of 20,300. that's clearly far, far too many. but we judge it is a work accurate measurement of sexual assault because it is more in line with the range of crimes that military law defines as sexual assault. while the new estimates support our existing trend data on unwanted sexual contact, which the former methodology measured, this new measure will be the one we'll use going forward.

second, through the analysis in the report, we're getting a clearer picture of how this crime is perpetrated on men. compared to women, men are less likely to report and more likely to experience multiple incidents by multiple offenders. and they're more likely to view the incident as hazing or an attempt to humiliate. third, the survey suggests that 22% of active duty women and 7% of active duty men may have experienced some form of sexual harassment last year. that's abhorrent and has to stop, not just because it's flat out wrong but also because the data show that those who experience sexual harassment are more likely to be sexual -- sexually assaulted, so we have to better protect

-- attack permissive behaviors like sexual harassment. fourth, we're not making enough progress on countering retaliation. too many service members, the data shows, feel that when they report or try to stop these crimes, they're being ostracized or retaliated against in some way. in short, the report makes it crystal clear that we have to do more and it gives insights on how to improve this ongoing campaign to ensure dignity and respect in our institution. as i said at georgetown last week, no man or woman who serves in the united states military should ever be sexually assaulted, nor should they experience reprisals for reporting such crimes. today i'm issuing four new

directives that move us forward in accordance with this data. these directives are based in part upon what we learned in this latest report and each will continue to eradicate sexual assault from the ranks. for example, based on what we've learned about the link between sexual harassment and sexual assault, i'm directing the services to update their prevention training to incorporate what we've learned and have that integrated in the training. based on what we're learning about gender differences, we're also going to look at how to best meet the needs of men and women who are seeking treatment for sexual assault, and based on what we're learning about retaliation, especially from one's peers, i'm directing that we develop a d.o.d.-wide comprehensive strategy to prevent retaliation on behalf of victims of sexual assault on

other crimes. to re-emphasize what i said last week, even though sexual assault is a disgrace in any form and happens far too often across our country, it's a particular challenge for us here, strengths in dealing with this problem. we believe in an ethos of honor and trust. we've tackled tough problems before, and, again, we're a learning organization so we'll keep getting smarter, we'll keep getting better. we'll keep doing everything we can to beat back sexual assault, and we won't let up. thank you for coming here this afternoon, all of you, and thank you for your interest in this very important subject. >> [inaudible]

brad carson: thank you, mr. secretary. my name is brad carson. i'm the acting undersecretary for defense and personnel and readiness. i'm greatly appreciative of secretary carter's leadership and his commitment as he just discussed to addressing this critical and challenging issue. as he said, sexual misconduct in any form, whether hazing, sexual assault or rape has no place in our nation's military. nothing is more important to force readiness than the health and well-being of our service men and women and their families. in my new role as the acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, i am deeply and very personally committed to identifying and eradicating any environment within our military where sexual misconduct is tolerated, condoned or negligently overlooked by military leaders. and doing so from the highest to the lowest unit levels.

today with the release of the 2014 report, we have an important opportunity to look at what where we stand compared to previous years' statistics and discuss, also, where we need to be. over the past decade the department has dedicated substantial resources and energy to better understanding the issue of sexual assault and implementing crucial reforms such as developing professional and effective training curriculums, skills and personnel to run response and prevention programs across the world. these programs are all available to service members and provide immediate crisis, medical, behavioral and legal health services and legal services to military victims of sexual assault. much work has been done on this issue in the last few years. the military operates today in compliance with 54 sexual assault-related initiatives, promulgated by secretary carter and his predecessors. over 100 sexual assault-related

provisions of law enacted by congress and we grabble with the implementation of over 150 recommendations from federal oversight bodies, including the government accountability office, the response system to sexual assault adult crimes panel, the judicial proceedings panel and the u.s. commission on civil rights. together since 2012, these actions have fundamentally improved the department's response to the crime of sexual assault. we now have many options in place to help victims report sexual assaults, seek assistance and services for their health and safety, understand their legal rights and options and maintain their privacy, if they so choose. many of these program elements did not exist as recently as even three years ago. these efforts have yielded progress in our fight against sexual assault, as dr. gal breath will further describe we'll continue to see an unprecedented increase in the reporting of sexual assault from victims.

which suggests, which suggests growing confidence in the department's response system. and estimates indicate overall occurrences of the crime have decreased since 2012. with that said, there are still far too many instances of sexual assault in the military, and we have a long way to go to eliminate the crime from within the ranks. but we do need to build on our current progress as we continue to work on the problem areas. i share particularly the secretary's concern about retaliation and ostracism so often associated with reporting of sexual assault. this is an area where we need to dig deeper and learn more so we

can better address these experiences. just related to sexual assault but for the protection of all our people courageously reporting wrongdoing. there are already some efforts under way to address retaliation, and as you have heard, secretary carter's directing me and the secretaries of the military departments to take additional actions squarely focused on this one problem. and i am up for the challenge in my new role. as i mentioned upfront, there's been an unprecedented focus on this issue for the past several years and has led to meaningful progress. there is much more work still to be done. looking ahead, we'll remain prevention focused and continue an uncompromising commitment to victim care. personally, i intend to sustain the high level of leadership focus and attention that this issue so demands. as we build on the progress we have seen. our men and women in uniform deserve nothing less. dr. galbreath of the sexual assault prevention office will take you through slides to discuss details of the report released today and he'll stand by to answer your questions as well. thank you.

dr. galbreath. nathan galbreath: good afternoon. my name's nate galbreath and i serve as the senior subject matter advisor in the sexual assault prevention response office. i'm a clinical psychologist who treated both victims and perpetrators of sexual assault and have also served as a criminal investigator and a forensics specialist for the air force office of special investigations. our office director, major general jeff snow, would be here to brief you today except that he's attending to a family emergency and our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family during this very difficult time. the report that we're releasing today fulfills an annual requirement to provide congress with the number of reports of sexual assault that we've received that involves service members, the dispositions or outcomes of those reports and

the progress that we've made in improving sexual assault prevention and response. in conjunction with the release of the report, the secretary of defense has improved our efforts in eradicating this crime from the military and i'll asks those in more detail in just a moment. as secretary carter and mr. carson indicated, this report -- this year's report is a bit different from previous years' annual reports. as you may rekale, this past december we delivered a report to the president documenting our progress in combating sexual assault in the military. that report covered a three-year period. today's report provides greater detail in covering our efforts in f.y. 2014. new today are follow-up analysis from the 2014 survey conducted for us by the rand corporation and top line results of the survey were released along with the report to the president last december and showed that past year prevalence of unwanted sexual contact is down significantly for active duty women since 2012 and trending downwards for men.

as a reminder, unwanted sexual contact is the proxy measure we've been using to estimate the prevalence of sexual assault since 2006. now, while it's important for us to be ability to -- able to link to prior survey findings on this measure, we also asked rand to check our methods to ensure we're surveying military personnel in the most effective way possible. as a result, rand also included in the 2014 survey a new measure of sexual assault developed by experts to better align with language in military law. the new measure found a similar top line prevalence estimate for sexual assault as our prior estimate but also found some meaningful new insights which are detailed in a follow-up report being released by them alongside ours today. also in the report is a status on our efforts to implement legislation, policy initiatives and recommendations from oversight bodies. lastly, the report looks -- provides the final f.y. 2014 reporting data. these numbers will look familiar to you because we reported them last december. however, we've since gone

through and validated our data which has resulted in some minor adjustments. we know our reports contain a lot of information, largely because we're doing a lot to combat this crime, but i want to boil some of the messages down for you here. overall occurrences of sexual assault against military members have decreased significantly since 2012. as you all know, sexual assault is a very underreported crime. as a result, we implemented a number of policies to encourage greater reporting by victims as victims who report the crime are more likely to engage care. in it addition, reporting is the only means by which we have to identify those who commit the crime and then hold those offenders appropriately accountable. these policies appear to be working as we've experienced an unprecedented increase in reports of sexual assault over the past two years. our final statistics for f.y. 2014 indicate that number of reports we received this year are 11% over what we received last year and 70% over what we received in 2012. we now estimate receiving a report of sexual assault from about one in four military victims. up from one in 10 military victims in 2012.

we're also making progress in holding offenders appropriately accountable. with d.o.d. authorities taking disciplinary action against 76% of military subjects this past year. now, that reflects a 3% change than what we reported last december, which was about 73%. but once again, through data validation process we found additional cases and included them in the numbers. on the other hand, our surveys have not shown progress in reducing the number of victims who perceived some form of retaliation associated with reporting this crime. but i want to point out that our goal in asking about retaliation on surveys is to better assess

victim well-being and the stress they encounter. this important feedback is making our program much stronger, and i have a bit more to say about that in just a moment. analysis of the 2014 survey supported previous findings on the association of sexual harassment and gender association with sexual assault. specifically, those who indicated experiencing sexual harassment under gender association are also more likely to experience a sexual assault. that's information that we've had for some time but the rand report and the analysis thereof has refreshed that data and provided us additional information about those relationships. the survey also identified important differences in how sexual assault is perpetrated against men and women. men that have experienced a sexual assault are more than -- more likely than women to describe the event as hazing and nonsexual. these and other findings help improve our treatments efforts with men. once again, these findings underscore important connections between unit climate and sexual assault.

this is why many of our prevention efforts have focused on giving commanders the tools they need to assess their unit climates and promote solutions that respect the contributions of all. i'd like to provide you highlights of the 2014 survey and some new follow-up analysis conducted by the rand corporation. by the way, rand corporation is going to be available to -- by the way, rand corporation is going to be available to answer any questions you may have because i will only sketch the highlights. the survey conducted last summer contained two measures to estimate the past year prevalence of sexual assault. the first measure, unwanted sexual contact, is the survey question the department has used since 2006 to estimate the number of military victims of sexual assault. and using that measure, there were an estimated 4.3% of women and .9% of men on active duty who experienced some form of unwanted sexual contact in 2014. now, based on those rates, we can do population estimates and that number we estimate is about 18,900 active duty members experiencing unwanted sexual contact in the 12 months prior to being surveyed. both the rates and the population estimates are down

significantly over what was measured in 2012 as well as what was measured in 2006. a second measure to estimate the past year prevalence of sexual assault was also included in the survey last summer. this new measure developed by crime survey experts, military attorneys and statisticians was designed to better align with the sexual assault offenses in military law. now this found similar top line estimates of sexual assault with 4.9% of women and 1% of men indicating they experienced a sexual assault in the past year. these rates are not statistically different than the rates of sexual assault estimated with the prior measure of unwanted sexual contact. like the prior measure, this new

measure also shows risk of sexual assault is five times greater for women than men. however, because there are significantly more men in the military than women, the estimated number of active duty men who indicated experienced a sexual assault last year outnumbers the estimated number of active duty women. there's some other important findings with regard to how the experience in the sexual assault in the military differs by gender. men who are assaulted are more likely to experience multiple incidents in the past year, be assaulted by multiple offenders during work or duty hours, describe the event as hazing or intended to abuse or humiliate them as opposed to having some sexual intent. experience physical threats or injuries during a penetrative assault. however, men are less likely

than women to experience a sexual assault that involves alcohol use or tell anybody about the event or file a report. these findings have important implications for our training, for our prevention and our treatment efforts as well. just for a brief review, let's look at those two survey measures side by side. ok. all total there were an estimated 20,300 active duty members who indicated experiencing a sexual assault in 2014 using the rand measure. while the prior measure and the new measure seem to yield slightly different top line population estimates, those estimates are within margins of error of each other and are not different statistically, and you'll note since december the population estimates have been refined slightly. but i also want to illustrate to you that the number of sexual assaults in the report being released today is about 148 more than what we reported back in december, largely due to our data validation. >> what do you mean by data validation? nathan galbreath: so in order to develop those -- to get those

numbers, we basically took a six-month process and scrunched it to 30 days. as we went back and revalidated each of the reports we came in there were additional 148 reports that we were able to include in this year's report. we also asked rand to update our sexual harassment measure to better align with law and department policy. rand estimated that about 22% of active duty women and 7% of active duty men experienced sexual harassment last year. now, while these estimates are report in and of themselves, they take on new importance with regard to their relationship with sexual assault. these findings further validate the existence of a continuum of harm in which sexual harassment and sexual assault coexist and serve to reinforce each other. something we described more fully in our d.o.d. prevention strategy that we leased by the secretary a -- released by the secretary a year ago. please keep in mind that one may not cause the other.

sexual harassment may not cause sexual assault, but these problems are both closely related and highly correlated. i'd now like to briefly outline some of the other work that we've been doing to improve sexual assault prevention and response. since 2012, congress has passed 71 sections of law containing more than 100 unique requirements in national defense authorization acts. and we've been working to implement all of those. in that same time period, the secretary of defense has directed 54 initiatives to improve sexual assault programs, including four new initiatives today. last spring, the response systems to adult sexual assault crimes panel released their final report and in that congressionally directed panel they made recommendations to response and the military justice system. now, while we've made a great deal of progress in these and other efforts, we still have much to do, especially with regard to victim perceptions of retaliation associated with reporting a sexual assault. when the president directed us to provide him a report in the december, 2013, we developed a list of metrics to help demonstrate our progress.

now, we chose to track retaliation because it's something that we never want a victim to face after reporting a sexual assault. we elected to measure retaliation in three days through a trend measure from prior surveys, through our new survivor experience survey and through climate surveys of our military units. these sources allowed us to get a better overall picture of survivor experiences reporting the crime. now, unfortunately our surveys of the population did not demonstrate progress in this area. while our military members generally gave high marks to their unit leadership for establishing climates that would welcome reporting, far too many respondents to the 2014 rand survey indicated perceiving some retaliation associated with their report and this was echoed

on our survivor experience survey where survivors indicated they received support from their commander but that support tended to wane as they dealt with people lower down the chain of command. it's important to note, however that survey responses should not be reviewed as an indicator of actionable offenses under military law. in other words, there are other elements of proof that go into it and evidence that must be gathered in order to establish whether or not an offense has occurred. however, we use our survey data in order to assess victim well-being and to determine methods to better support them. now, since the department delivered the report -- delivered the report to the president, we've been working very hard to get -- to learn more about retaliation. however, the data we gathered from surveys did not allow us a visibility into the problem that we needed.

as a result, we're going to revise our survey measure and we're going to improve the way we ask this question to better align with law and department policy. much like the approach that rand took in designing the new measures for sexual assault and sexual harassment. so what are we doing about this? following the report to the president, secretary hagel directed that we he hans the training we give to soup advisors of our service members in order to identify and better address measures that could be retaliatory. another initiative directed by the secretary following the december report was for the services to engage command to prevent retaliation. now, we're doing this through our case management groups. now you may not know but each month installation commanders in their role as the chair of the case management group are asking about retaliation experienced by victims, first responders and by bystanders that might have tried to intervene. those commanders in their role as the chair of those groups are referring these allegations to the proper authority, whether they be the services inspector

general, military equal opportunity office or the unit commanders. having commanders ask regularly about retaliation demonstrates our resolve to protect victims and others in our response system and let's everyone know this behavior has no place in the military. now, last february, secretary hagel issued a third initiative to address retaliation. this directive brings all stakeholders within the department together that addresses retaliation as well as identify mechanisms for commanders to address this behavior in their units and this initial philadelphia also includes a focus on retaliation carried out through social media as well. however, as you heard from secretary carter, we must do more to prevent retaliation. therefore the secretary is ordering us to develop a strategy to prevent retaliation associating with reporting any crime, not just sexual assault. this last initiative joins three others that are being released today, and i'll tell you more

about those in the text above. first, the secretary is directing that the services capture lessons learned from the 2014 survey and incorporate those findings in their sexual assault prevention response training. second, we'll evaluate our current treatments for men and women seeking care for sexual assault to make sure it reflects gender differences. it will inform providers to address the specific needs of men and women in treatment. third, we'll be employing a common force wide service energy across the department to determine the prevalence of sexual assault and sexual harassment. this strategy will follow a number of recommendations made to us by the rand corporation as well as the law that requires us to conduct our surveys every two years. it's important for us as a department to speak with one voice on this topic. however, in offyears similar to what we do at military service academies, we'll be conducting forcewide focus groups to identify emerging trends and

and follow up on matters captured in our biennial surveys. it was my intention today to give you a snapshot of our efforts to combat sexual assault as well as demonstrate progress that we're making in implementing the over 200 provisions of law, the directives and recommendations to the department. this unprecedented leadership focus has resulted in an improved understanding of the problem and how it impacts the military. i just kind of like to share with you a personal note on -- an observation that i have. when i joined sapro in 2007, we were barely receiving 1500 reports of sexual assault a year. this year we received 6,131, almost 3.5 times as many. more reporting connects victims with needed care and services. it helps them heal from their -- this terrible crime and helps them restore their lives. even with the increase in reporting, though, by service members, sexual assault remains underreported and we encourage any service member who's experienced a sexual assault to

choose a reporting option that's right for them, to make a report , and get the help that they need and as you might know service members can talk to someone about sexual assault by calling the safe help line at 1-877-995-5247, and can find their nearest sacc i go being to www.safehelpline.org. i'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. >> dr. galbreath, i don't understand the disparities there were fewer assaults but more reports. nathan galbreath: what we're talking about is two different sources of data. reduction in the prevalence of crime. in other words, our estimate of how often the crime occurs. and that's the -- that's the numbers that we came out with, the 18,900, or the 20,000. that's how many we think are out there. however, as far as the numbers

of reports that actually come in and -- of people that make a report to us, that number has increased by 70% in the past two years. so people walking through the door making a restricted or unrestricted report has increased by that much and it's an all-time high this year. >> so there were -- it's fair to say from 2012 to 2014 there were more instances in the u.s. military there were more sexual assaults? nathan galbreath: i'm not saying that. the incidents that you're talking about have come down since 2012 while the number of reports of that have come up. we track both numbers because this top number even though it's the top number is like our denominator and how many of that got reported and that's our numerator, those are the reports that come in. >> i'm sorry. what was the actual number that used the 5131? nathan galbreath: 5131 reports. >> that's up from 30-something?

nathan galbreath: that's up from last year. last year the number was 11% less than that. i don't have the number right off the top of my head but we can get that for you. >> i can get that. thanks. nathan galbreath you bet. >> hi. just to follow up on courtney's question. could you walk us through how you estimate the top line number? how do you get maybe for every report you receive there's four you don't have out there. so how do you know there's about 20,000 sexual assaults and yet only about 6,000 reported? nathan galbreath: ok. so how we do that is through the survey that rand conducted for us last summer. and what we did is we asked all that -- there were about 560,000 people invited to take this survey. we had about 170,000 respondents, about a 30% response rate, which is very good. and in -- out of those respondents we asked them if they experienced a sexual assault by using the questions that rand had developed for us

as well as that unwanted sexual contact question. these are measures and they don't ask, did you experience a sexual assault last year? that's not what these things ask. the questions are behaviorally based. they list off behaviors. for example, did anyone force you to place their penis -- did anyone force their penis in your mouth, anus or vagina? they're very clear language to make sure they understand what we're talking about. and based on that and other criteria, rand was able to calculate an estimate rate for how many people said yes, that happened to me in this last year. so using the rand new measure, 4.9% of women indicated that they experienced a sexual assault in 2014. and about 1% of men indicated that, yes, i experienced a sexual assault in 2014. now, that percentage, those are important percentages.

oftentimes we wonder, how many people does that account for? and so when we go and we use those -- the number of people in the military, because these surveys are done representatively. in other words, the results are weighted to represent the entire force. when we calculate the number of people that 4.9% represents, that's about 8,600 or so women and when we calculate the number of men -- as a matter of fact, crystal, can you bring up the slide? one more. one more. one more. keep going. right here. so when we calculate how much this percentage account how many women this percent accounts for, we get this number here, about 9,600. when we estimate how many men does 1% of our active force account for, it's about 10,600. we add those two together to get the 20,300, more or less, due to rounding, it's a little bit different here.

and that's our denominator. and then we measure the number of service member reports that we get. now, this number of service member reports we get are at an all-time high as well but our numbers include that 61-31 includes civilians that reported to us that they experienced a crime. but because i do an apples to apples comparison here, i factor out those reports and i look at how many service victims made a report to me versus how many service members i think are out there. to my number -- that's where i get my estimate of about one in four victims of sexual assault make a report to the department versus what it was in 2012 which is about one in 10. >> based on it, the number of assaults in the military is actually dropping? nathan galbreath: yes.

>> it includes civilians. can you give some sense of how -- what percentage of civilians? nathan galbreath: about a quarter involve civilians who made a report to the department. that is our task from congress is to report to them not only the sexual assaults experienced by victims in the military but also sexual assaults that may have been perpetrated by members of the military as well. and so that -- that might include some civilian victims and that's what we count in our data. >> can you just describe a little bit more, who are these civilians? these are contractors? nathan galbreath: these could be people in the local community. they could be foreign nationals. they could be anyone that comes in contact with a military perpetrator. >> from "usa today.” can we talk a little bit about the retaliation issue? so it's about 2/3 of women who report, is that right? nathan galbreath: of the women on the survey who indicated that they experienced a sexual assault in the past year and made a report to the department,

to a d.o.d. authority, about 2/3 of those women indicated that they experienced some form of retaliation associated with that report. >> ok. so for years we heard there is zero tolerance for sexual assault. this would indicate that message isn't getting through to a lot of people, right? if they're retaliating against someone who has brought forth a report. nathan galbreath: keep in mind this takes time. ultimately what i would tell you is last year we did some focus groups with people to ask them what do you think is anything changed in the -- since you've been in the service? as a matter of fact, we asked this of our most senior enlisted folks and some senior officers in our focus groups. do you see any kind of -- do you notice any change to how things are happening and what they said is, yes, absolutely. it's night and day how we communicate about this and how we address this in our units. there might always be one or two people that disregard that and remember, one jerk in the department -- in a unit can

cause a lot of problems. but ultimately we're giving people the tools to assess the climate, to understand what they can do to solve the problem and also to -- and also to hold people appropriately accountable. >> it sounds if 2/3 of the people who are reporting this are being retaliated against it's more than a jerk or two? nathan galbreath: here's the deal, that number, like i said in my comments, that's not necessarily -- those aren't necessarily incidents of retaliation. those are perceptions of our victims that have taken the survey, that they perceive things -- they might have been retaliated against. i've treated victims of sexual assault. i will tell you after you experience trauma the world is a much darker place and you begin to see things a little bit differently than you did before. in order for things to be -- actual retaliation episode to be established, there's perceptions is just one element. the thing that the complaint that might come in. but there's additional evidence that must be gathered and other elements of proof such as intent of the person and things along

those lines to establish that. that's why i said that our surveys, 62% there should not be taken these are reports of retaliation. this is not the case. these are things we asked for their perceptions so we can better assess their well-being. but there's a lot more needed in order to get after that. >> on retaliation, with 10,600 men, i realize it's a much smaller percentage, still a fairly -- a larger number of men than women experiencing sexual assaults under the methodology. why on a separate slide did you say -- have an asterisk saying the men perceiving retaliation is not reportable? why is that the case? nathan galbreath: that's a statistical issue. with the number of people that fit in that category, when the margins are too wide we can't report out the result. men did experience -- we know that men did experience some retaliation but we just didn't have enough confidence in the

result. in other words, if i tell you that it's a certain point and the margin says it could be 30 points below or 30 points above, i can't report that out. >> why is it different for men than women? nathan galbreath: largely for the men -- keep in mind of the men who experience a sexual assault, very small numbers report. and one very small numbers report, very few may have experienced that retaliation afterwards. and so there's great variability. >> follow up on the question again and please forgive me about the statistics. 6,131 sexual assaults reported in 2014. that's an 11% increase, correct? nathan galbreath: yes. over f.y. 2013. >> ok. how do you get to conclude there have been fewer sexual assaults? nathan galbreath: so a lot of people think that the number of

reports of sexual assault equals how many incidents occur every year and that's a mistake. that's what we mean by it's underreported. it occurs much more often than it's ever reported and that's true both in the military and in the civilian population as well. we adopted a public health approach in 2010 that basically married up surveying for prevalence, surveying how often it occurs and matching that to how often it's ever reported. and the reason why we do that is -- as a matter of fact we used that not only for sexual assault, we use it for influenza, all other sorts of public health problems. we do that because we need to know what do we think how bad could this problem be versus how much of it are we seeing in our reports. people come in and tell us about. and what we're saying is that we have always kind of -- which have' been able to estimate the number of occurrences through

these surveys, and that's that 20,000-some that we think that are out there versus the number of reports that come in and we want to improve, increase the number of people that report this. because what research says is that when you bring more people in, when they come and report, they're more likely to engage care and services and get that restorative help that they need in order to heal. >> so the actual reports have gone up? nathan galbreath: the actual reports have gone up. but the -- >> estimates are that it's going down? nathan galbreath: you got it. that's exactly right. >> the 61-31, that does not include any harassment, right? nathan galbreath: that's right. >> hi.

lee martinez of "abc news.” the 19,000, what's the break down of the 26,000 by gender? nathan galbreath: the 26,000 by gender, it was -- stand by. that's last year's numbers. the -- very similar in breakdown. i believe it was -- you know what, i'm going to have to get back to you on that. i just -- i can't recall that right off the top of my head but it's a very similar breakdown to what i had before. i apologize. >> and the perception of males this is hazing, does that point to institutional pattern here as opposed to behavior, culture where this permeates and continues on? nathan galbreath: you know, i don't have that information. we're asking rand to do us some additional analysis on that but i just don't have that breakdown beyond what they were able to get for us as far as whether they thought it's hazing or intent to abuse or humiliate.

>> i have one last one. the numbers between 2012 and 2013, there was a significant jump. could you just talk a little bit about why the reasons why there was such a jump? nathan galbreath: i wish i could tell you but we do believe that it's a lot to do with our policies that are encouraging people to come forward. like i said, one of the things we put in place in 2005 was restricted reporting which allows people to come in and engage care and services but not initiate a criminal investigation. and what we were finding is that people would rather suffer in silence rather than come forward and sometimes, you know, subject themselves to the legal system. so experts told us we needed that confidential reporting and so we put that together. in addition, what i would also tell you is that it's the senior

leadership focus i think has a great deal to do with it. like i said, before 2012, what i would tell you is we worked very hard in the sexual assault prevention office to put policies in place but one of the things what was amazing, when mr. panetta put this on his calendar it just energized everyone and the senior leaders started talking about it every single day. i'm sure you heard every secretary of the military service and chief on -- in the military talk about sexual assault and that never happened before. people hear that and they say, these people -- i have more confidence in it because people are talking about it and they're inviting me to come and make that report and we think that has everything to do with it. >> thanks, everybody. >> the new congressional direct three is a handy guide to the 114th congress with color photos of every senator and house member and twitter handles.

also district maps, a foldout map of capital will, and it will get congressional committees. order your copy today. order it at c-span.org. >> and look at some of the coverage in baltimore. the six police officers charged in the death of freddie gray while they are in their custody. this was in the baltimore sun after the announcement was made by marilyn mosby a day after the police handed over their findings. charges include involuntary manslaughter and for one officer, second-degree murder. president obama talked about the issues during a meeting at the white house today. president obama: it is absolutely vital that the truth comes out on what happened to mr. freddie gray. and it is my practice not to

comment on the legal processes involved. that would not be appropriate. but i can tell you that justice needs to be served. all the evidence needs to be presented. those individuals who are charged, obviously, are also entitled to due process. and rule of law. and so i want to make sure that our legal system runs the way it should. and the justice department and our new attorney general is in communications with baltimore officials to make sure that any assistance we can provide on the investigation is provided. but what i think the people of baltimore want more than anything else is the truth.

that's what people around the country expect. and to the extent that it's appropriate, this administration will help local officials get to the bottom of exactly what happened. in the meantime, i'm gratified that we've seen the constructive, thoughtful protests that have been taking place, peaceful, but clear calls for accountability that those have been managed over the last couple of days in a way that's ultimately positive for baltimore and positive for the country and i hope that approach to nonviolent protests and community engagement continues. finally, as i've said for the

last year, we are going to continue to work with the task force that we put together post-ferguson. i'm actually going to be talking to mayors who are interested in figuring ways to rebuild trust between community and police and to focus on some of the issues that were raised by the task force right after this meeting. our efforts to make sure that we're providing greater opportunity for young people in these communities, all those things are going to be continuing top priorities for the administration and we'll probably have some more announcements and news about that in the days and weeks to come. >> some reaction on capitol hill from members of congress to the charges brought against baltimore officers. illinois congressman bobby rush spoke earlier today on the house floor. violence in america.

freddie gray's murder, freddie gray's death and the question of circumstances around his death brought into sharp relief all these issues of race and living in an urban center. . brought into sharp relief. since the years or more of determined, callous disinvestment in our urban areas years or more of joblessness bad schools bad

housing bad health care. 50 years of hopelessness. but in the last few minutes, mr. speaker, this brilliant young, courageous african-american woman baltimore city state attorney mosby made a decision and she kded that -- decided that, yes, notwithstanding all the differences of opinion, to change stories, the moving target, notwithstanding all of these things are happening, she

decided that freddie gray was murdered. freddie gray was murdered. and that she would indict the police officers who were responsible. and by indicting the baltimore city police officers who were responsible for mr. gray's murder, she made a giant enormous step for justice, for young people, young african-american men and women young people who live in our urban areas.

by her decision today, just a few moments ago, she has done this nation an invaluable service. especially for young people. especially for the african-american and other minority youth. these young people have for decades now yearned nor justice -- for justice as it relates to police misconduct, police brutality and yes police murder. this new standard for justice is a standard that now transcends baltimore transcends even the entire

state of maryland it transcends and reaches to other points all across this nation. ferguson, new york city, chicago, cleveland, other >> another member of congress tweeted their view. news from baltimore shows that all lives matter and no one is above the law. new york representative jerry madler writes that for too long policeman's misconduct has been ignored or denied. barbara boxer says thanks to the courage of marilyn mosby, the people of baltimore and freddie gray's family will get the truth. from presidential candidates, other thoughts. former governor jeb bush talked

recently about the rise in baltimore, societal issues and police brutality. this is from before the charges were made today in an event at washington, d.c. jeb bush: it's important to reflect that a young man died. this is not just a statistic, a young man died. secondly, a lot of people lost their livelihoods because of this. allowing the riots to happen was disturbing. i do think that public safety is the first priority for any city or any government jurisdiction in this case. a lot of people are going to hopefully order is going to be restored. thirdly, i just say, i think it sends the wrong signal not to have a baseball game with people in it. i think we need to recognize

that life doesn't just get paralyzed when tragedies occur. you can't allow that to happen because it might create more of them. so now, now that i've got that out of the way, i do think the tendency, particularly on the left is to blame, create a set of reasons why this happens. and the president's view on this, i thought he started pretty well by talking about they had one sentence in his response about the decline of families in urban core america and i think that is absolutely true. but there's much broader issues that go along with this. the pathologies that are being built of people that are stuck in poverty, where you're born poor today and are more likely to stay poor. we need to deal with this and i believe conservatives have the better approach. his approach is to say conservatives haven't offered up enough money to get me to be able to create programs to let

people be successful. well, at what point do we go past? $10 trillion? $1 trillion a year? at what point do you have to conclude that the top-down driven poverty programs have failed? i think we need to be engaged in this debate as conservatives and say there's a bottom-up approach, it starts with building capacity so people can achieve earned success. having higher expectations higher accountability and dramatically different kinds of schools, and the kinds of things that will yield a chance for families to be able to survive in a really difficult time. here's the big challenge, i think, for people born in poverty today. if you're born poor today, by the time you reach 18, it's possible you'll never have a job in your entire life. i mean, that's the world we're moving toward. dramatic disruptive technologies, putting the first rung on the ladder higher and higher and higher. if we don't get this right

we're going to have an america that is radically different than what created its greatness. and the ability for people to rise up, i think, will be challenged in ways we can't even imagine. so, you know, having this conversation in the broader sense, i think, is probably not appropriate completely today. i hope conservatives don't feel compelled to pull back. we don't need to be defensive. it's the failed policies, i think, that we need to address. we need to offer compelling alternatives to it. >> let me circle back on the rioting, specifically. you're not running for any municipal office, but mayor giuliani said the approach is the first person who throws the rock gets arrested. jeb bush: the broken window policy has been proven successful. you don't have to take it to the extreme of police brutality but there needs to be a certainty of punishment that creates order and security. who are the people who get hurt

by this? it's the shop owner. it's the person who now may lose their job in a business that can't reopen. it's the nursing home. it's the church. these are people, this is the community that, you know creates the vibrancy to allow for these communities to be successful are always hurt the most in these kinds of events. i think the mayor's record when he was mayor of new york creating this strategy with the police department was the right one. >> more from jeb bush later tonight. we will hear from current new jersey governor chris christie who spoke today in mclean virginia followed by ohio governor john kasich talking to people at the christian monitor breakfast. >> the new congressional directory is a handy guide to the congress with color photos

of every senator and house member, plus contact information and twitter handles. also, district maps, a foldout map of capitol hill and a look at congressional committees, federal agencies and state governments. order your copy today. it is $13.95 plus shipping and handling. you can also buy it at c-span.org. >> new jersey governor chris christie talking about jobs and the economy at a leadership breakfast hosted by business and tech groups in northern virginia. he also addressed entitlement and tax policies and took questions from the audience for about 15 minutes. governor christie: thank you. thank you all very much. thank you. gary announced that i gave him permission to go off script, i

turned to the congresswoman and said, who am i to tell people not to go off script? can't be a hypocrite up here. so, thank you all for inviting me. i'm happy to be back and i want to thank bobby kilberg and all the people here at nvtc for giving me the chance to come back and talk about issues that are facing our country right now and get the time to take some of your questions, which i enjoy doing the most. let's start with the group of folks i'm in front of this morning and this region. this is obviously an extraordinarily important region in our country's future. the technology industry here has provided an extraordinary amount of economic growth and jobs, great innovation for our

citizens, and extraordinary promise for the future if -- if -- we decide to get our country moving in the right direction, do the things we need to do. this region, of course, over time, has become completely interwoven with the government. we understand that. but we also know that there has to be continued, really robust growth of the private sector to make sure that we don't have any region this or any other one become completely dependent upon government for your economic growth, your economic vitality. it needs to be a partnership and a partnership that works, but that partnership is driven best when it's the private sector driving growth, driving innovation and then can offer that innovation and those ideas to government as a way to improve the services that government provides.

to the folks that we serve each and every day. and so i would urge you to continue to push the government to do the things we all know commonsense dictates, but that all too often are left by the side of the road in the political carping and sniping that goes on most particularly in our nation's capital but -- capitol but every once in a while in state capitols as well, like mine. i met one gentleman this morning who has a business in new jersey and told me that he was a beneficiary of some of the tax incentive and tax credit programs that we put into place and he told me that it literally saved his company and that they're now growing and they're hiring and that's the kind of partnership i'm talking about. a partnership that frees up your ideas and your hard work to be able to succeed through the initial challenging times, to be able to grow and expand and that helps every person in new jersey, not only the ones who

wind up working there but also the broader community that benefits from that company's involvement in the community philanthropic activity, and the money that they provide in salary and benefits helps to strengthen the fabric of our state and its people. by making them feel good when they come home at night from a good-paying job that brings meaning to their lives. to be able to provide for their spouse and for their children. and to be able to, for them also to be an active, involved member of the community. all of this is interconnected. and there are times that i grow frustrated about the fact that many leaders in government don't see the obvious things that need to be done in order to take advantage of the extraordinary resources we have in this country, most particularly our human resources.

to be able to make our country grow and be a better, more prosperous place. i saw this in new jersey firsthand through the type of policies that we now have seen in washington over the last six years. between 2000 and 2009 in new jersey, we raised taxes and fees at the state level alone 115 times. 115 times. and what were the results of that policy? also we grew spending by 56% at the state level. over those eight years. what happened as a result? new jersey had a jobless decade. that period of time we grew netzero private sector jobs. and that was during a period of time in that eight years when we did have national growth. coming out of 9/11, prior to the recession of 2008. yet new jersey did not benefit

from any of that. why didn't we benefit? because we put in policies at the state level that raised taxes, that increased spending that extended regulations, to all these new areas and that made new jersey a place that became more expensive to do business, more onerous to do business and as a result people voted and they voted with their feet. businesses left. or just decided they didn't want to take the risk that went along with growing a business in that type of environment. that's why in the five years now since we came into office, we've grown 175,000 new private sector jobs. now some people may say, well that's good but not great. i'd like to do better too. but in light of the fact that we had nearly 10 years of zero private sector job growth, we're fairly happy with the fact that

we, our policies have been able to push that forward. how have we done it? first of all, we've done it by reducing government spending significantly. in our state. think about this. in the budget i just proposed for fiscal year 2016, which will be adopted at the end of next month, discretionary spending, which means spending on everything in state government other than pensions, health care and debt service, is $2.5 billion les he -- less than it was eight years ago. not $2.5 billion less on the projection, not like they do it in washington. and then call it a cut. this is actually less spending $2.5 billion in less spending at the state level. how do you do that? well, we have 8,500 fewer employees today than the day i became governor and we did it without any layoffs. all through attrition and being able to then make government

become more efficient and more effective. you want to reduce spending, the first place you have to start is reducing the payroll, the size of government. we put in $2.3 billion in business tax cuts and tax incentives. that has helped to spur growth in our state and how folks who were already there not only want to stay, but want to grow as well. it's been extraordinarily important to our economy. as we mentioned, did a number of other things in the tax realm but what we need to do on the national level is what we're continuing to do on the state level in terms of entitlements. i spoke a couple of weeks ago at st. anselm's in new hampshire about a vision for entitlement reform. and the fact is, we need to tell some truth to people. i've been talk about this since 2011. 71% of federal government

spending is now on entitlement programs. 1%. to give you some perspective on the growth of that, when john kennedy was elected president in 1960, entitlement spending was 26% of the federal budget. it is now 71%. so you'll have lots of people who come before you i'm sure over the next number of months who want to talk to you, and i will briefly this morning, about national defense and about education, about research and development, national institutes of health, things that we need to invest in to make our country continue to be a cutting edge leader around the world. but if they to not first talk to you about how they're going to reform entitlements, with all due respect you should just eat your breakfast not pay any attention. because the fact is, if you don't get that 71% under control, where are you getting the money to be able to do those other things we need to do? and no one likes to talk about this.

nasty business. talking about raising the social security retirement age two years over the next 25 years. brutal. absolutely brutal. talking about doing the same thing for medicare eligibility. two years over the next 25 years. fact is, though, we need to do these things. and why? not only here to bring you bad news this morning. i'm here to bring you good news. you're all living longer. congratulations. [applause] and not only are you living longer, but you're living better. we're living better, longer into our lives. medical innovation pharmacological innovation has

allowed us to have a longer, better quality of life. this is something to be celebrated. the average age now of a woman in this country, mortality age is 83. average for a man is 79. when these programs were developed, by the way, i heard some of the women chuckling out there, but you should know, you should know that in the last decade, we're catching up. we're down four years now. we were down six years before. we're coming. [laughter] laugh now. but these programs were developed when mortality was in the 60's for both men and women. so we're living 15 to 20 years longer and expecting these systems to continue to support us through that length of time. the other thing i talked about i think is commonsensical as well.

social security. the idea of social security is to make sure that none of our elderly grow old in their lives in poverty. if there's somebody making $200,000 a year in retirement income, retirement income, d they really need their social security check? you know, everybody in this room knows if you're getting $200,000 a year in retirement income, you've got at least $4 million or $5 million socked away to throw off that kind of money and probably more. that social security check is that making the difference? in the quality of your life? the same way it would make a difference in the quality of life of a person who is living from social security check to

social security check to pay their rent, to buy their food? now, i have people say to me, i paid into the system, i deserve to get it back out. i'm entitled. hence the names of the programs. there's lots of things, you know that we pay for that we get nothing back for in return except a sense of security. i pay homeowners insurance. i'm sure you do too. we pay it every year. because in case our house burns down, we want to be able to rebuild our house. if you live there for 20 years 30 years, paying homeowners insurance every month and then you go to sell the house, do you go back to the insurance company and say, hey, by the way looking good, right? no problems. house didn't burn down. i'd like that money back. if you don't mind. this is meant to ensure that people did not grow old in poverty. you know, i was talking to my friend, mark zuckerberg, about this entitlement reform idea and he said, what, chris, do you mean by entitlement reform. i said, mark, if i have my way it means you get nothing. the fact is, i think most people

who have been extraordinarily successful in america will understand this. that we need to make choices in this country. you'll notice i just talked about means testing social security and medicare. i talked about raising retirement age. and i have not been vaporized into the stage. this idea that this is the third rail of american politics and you can't talk about it has, as its underlying premise, that people in my business don't trust the american people enough to tell them the truth. that may be true, that there's lots of people in politics who don't trust the american people enough to tell them the truth. i do. i absolutely believe that not only should we, but we must, because we want this country to be the kind of place we need it

to be for our children and our grandchildren. we better start addressing this. i do not want to be a member of the first generation in this country's history to leave the next generation a weaker poorer, less opportunity-filled country. because we can't let go of the idea that we get everything we want. that's not the way you run your businesses. and it's not the way your government should run this country. \[applause] let me tell you, we have lots of ways that that money could be utilized. to help make this country grander, stronger, better than we are today. we need to reform this tax system both at the individual and the corporate level, it is onerous, it is onerous compared to almost any system around the world, and we need to get to that and get to it right away. second thing we need to do is reinvest in our national defense.

the united states now, because of the conduct in my view of foreign and defense policy by this administration, can no longer be counted on by our allies and is no longer feared by our adversaries. that's 0-2, everybody. you have to be able to do both of those things and we're doing neither. allies around the world are running from us. and pursuing their own course. adversaries are showing new aggression everywhere. iran, not only on their own, but through their sponsorship of hezbollah and hamas and other terrorist organizations. our inaction in syria has led to an exacerbation of the conduct of isis not only in the northeast but in europe and coming to a theater near you soon if we're not careful. mr. putin in russia, at least in my mind is clearly trying to put the old band back together. he's working and moving his way crimea, ukraine, and if you're

living in one of the baltic states today, members of nato, if you really believe that that membership is a full membership or a junior membership? the conduct of our country has them nervous. has democracies like poland nervous. our allies are concerned. and our adversaries are emboldened. the only way for us to turn that around is not only through a more robust and a more direct and more honest foreign policy where we draw lines and mean it. not say never mind when it gets a little difficult. and where we invest in a national defense that once again

prevents conflict. we don't invest in national defense to have conflict. we invest in national defense to prevent conflict. but we should be investing in research and development and in new ways to lengthen our lives and improve the quality of our lives. but none of these things are possible to approve science and technology and engineering and math education for all of our children. but none of those things are possible. if we don't get our house in order. i've seen this in new jersey where the canary -- we're the canary in the coal mine, everybody. the mistakes that have been made over the past decades in new jersey take a lot of effort to try to fix. we don't want to place our country in the same position. and so, i come to you this morning to let you know that the reason i'm telling you this is because if you all don't get it and start to fight for it, we have no hope. the people who are leading this technological revolution in this country, the thinkers, the

doers, have to also be the leaders. it can't just be men and women in my business. it has to be men and women in yours. don't fall victim to the conventional wisdom that says, something is not politically popular we shouldn't talk about it. because i don't want to be in old age and i don't think you do either looking back on the missed opportunities that litter our lives, rather than the fights we took on that were necessary to fight. so the message i bring to you this morning is born of the hard work of trying to dig a state that had been in awful difficulty out of it and from having traveled the country over the last year, 106,000 miles, to 37 different states, that is wracked with anxiety and that anxiety is not just economic

anxiety, it's the anxiety that comes along with watching a government that's not doing its job. we need to start doing our job again. that's what you pay us for. that's what we need to get done. i'm going to stop because i want to take your questions more than i want to hear myself talk anymore. [applause] >> thank you, governor, for your candor and vision and being here with us this morning. we can take a few questions from the audience. if you have a question, please proceed to one of the two microphones in the center of the room. be prepared to identify yourself by your name and company affiliation and consistent with normal practice at the nvtc, this is for people in business it is not open to members of the media.

you can listen, but not ask. so first question. i'm going to ask the first question, unless i see somebody, which i do not. governor. i have a question. you've talked -- there's -- you've talked about cutting entitlement spending because mathematically it's definitely something we must do. i think it's pretty clear you're not going to raise taxes. so you have taxes, spending, the only third area is economic growth. what will you do for economic growth? governor christie: i think the only way we solve our long-term debt problem is through economic growth combined with the type of restriction of spending i talked about. you're not going to be able to fix an $18 trillion problem with just one or the other. and this is a place where i differ significantly from the president. the president believes that he should be the one deciding who the winners and losers are. the government should decide.

and that if you're a winner, he'll make money from you and give toyota people he'd rather have do a little bit better. that's never where -- that's never the way the country succeeded. the way to get economic growth and i'll have more to say about this next week is to fix the tax system. the tax system is now a clear disincentive to growth. we have seen it all over this country. the president has taken victory lap for 2% or 2.5% g.d.p. growth. it's the weakest recovery from a recession in modern times. and the jobs that have been created have not been the type of really good-paying jobs we saw created in the 1980's and 1990's. they are now jobs that are predominantly at the lower end of the wage scale and many of them because of obamacare and other factors aren't even full-time jobs. the way to expand growth is to get a tax system that encourages people to repatriate money back to the united states, lower taxes, the president thinks the way to stop corporate inversions is to pass a law against corporate inversions.

he wants to treat the system rather than the disease. let's change the tax system so that no c.e.o. feels it's their fiduciary duty to their shareholders to engage in corporate inversion to maximize the value of their shares so they'll want to stay here in the united states. those are the first steps. >> thank you. >> governor christie, todd soudermire. innovation has been a real friend to the technology industry. could you talk about your views on immigration reform? governor christie: sure. i think the way to start this conversation in the country is to see if we can agree on two

basic facts. fact number one is that people who are here in an undocumented status are not going to self-deport. so let's start with that. they're not leaving on their own. second, as somebody who was the united states attorney in new jersey for seven years in the bush administration, i can tell you that there are -- that there are not enough law enforcement officers at the local, county, state and federal level to be able to forcibly deport people who are here in an undocumented status. if you start out agreeing with those two facts, we then have at least the beginnings of the outline of how we have to start to try to fix this problem. part of the reason i think it's so intractable in the country, though, is because the executive branch hasn't done what the

executive branch is supposed to do, and that's execute and enforce the laws in this country. so you have people believing and not wanting to engage in any commonsense discussion of reform of the system because they don't believe that whatever changes are made in the law, that they're going to actually be enforced. and quite frankly, employers are a huge part of the problem. you know, i'm not a guy who is in favor of building a fence or wall along the entire length of america's southern border. it's too expensive, it's inefficient and i'll tell you i've never found a wall or fence that people filled with the human will can't find their way under, over, or around. and so there may be spots where a wall or fence may make some sense. and there may be spots where technology to enforce border security can be used. but in the end there's a will the of undocumented folks in new jersey and i have met many of them. i will they will you that not one of them has ever come up to me and said, the reason i came here illegally to the united states is because i wanted to vote. none of them ever said that. every one of home to i've spoken to said they came here because they wanted to work and support their families. so here's the thing. you know, if we know that, if we know that, then let's start talking about the issues that really matter in this and not the ones that are just emotional. so the idea that employers, all employers, shouldn't be subject

to e-verify makes no sense to me. if we set up a system that people are then going to be willing to buy into, they need to know this is going to stop. and we're not going to be back here again 25 years later having the same conversation. and if folks know when they come here they're not going to get a job if they come here illegally, the incentive to come is going to be significantly less. and so we then will have an opportunity to discuss the broader issue of how do you deal with the folks who are here already and how do you deal with the issue of legal immigration and how do we make the qualitative and quantitative decisions on legal immigration that we need to make? but until we have an honest conversation with the american people about the fact that the president of the united states is not going to look the other way on the issue but is going to enforce the laws and not just democrats but republicans too, that the laws are not only going

to be enforced against those who sneak their way in, but against the business community who exploits that. we need to do both. then we can, in a commonsense way, qualitatively and quantitatively look at what to do with the people. but until we have that conversation, we're going to continue to bicker and demonize and demagogue this issue. because there's too much political capital in it to do otherwise. we need to force people to look at it in another way. >> following on the -- >> introduce yourself. >> steve cooker, i'm with monster worldwide. governor, following on the notion of immigration there's a piece of it that really is at the center of the technology in terms of bringing on qualified individuals, people who can really do the work, people that are professional and technical in nature. we see that we sometimes struggle with finding those types of individuals within their -- within our own backyard and at the hard of that are all the stem initiatives that i think that are growing up.

the other side of that is, those professionals that come from elsewhere and attracting them and keeping them here in the united states, can you talk to both sides of that? one is what can we do to keep those people who want to immigrate into the united states here in a professional capacity and the other side, what can we do from an education perspective in preparing our work force for those type of jobs? governor christie: i'll start with the last and then go to the first. you know, this is one of those situations where reform of our education system is so incredibly important. what you're talking about and what most businesses want is an education system that produces results. you know, i don't think the american people have shown any reluctance to invest significant moneys in our educational system.

from k to 12, to community colleges, higher education in the four-year college and university space and graduate school. the problem is that, you're having problem finding enough people within our shores to address the needs of your business, that's the premise of your question. we need to make sure that we have an educational system that is providing the type of results that we have. we have to work on the potential of children not the comfort of adults. and unfortunately, especially in the k-12 system we're much more focused on the comfort of adults than we are on the potential of children. that's the only explanation for not having a longer school day and longer school year in this country. the only explanation. our school calendar is ridiculous. it's based on the agrarian calendar. i can tell you even in the garden state, kids are not leaving school in june to go and till the fields, -- the fields everybody. it's not happening anymore. and the fact is, why don't we

then, like many of the other industrialized countries of the world have a longer school day and longer school year? we don't because the power and the authority of the teachers' unions. that's it. that's the only reason why. you want better stem education those kids are in school from september to july. and they're in school until 5:00 or 6:00 rather than 2:00 or 2:30, and they're getting the type of exposure to all of the things that they need to to be able to improve those skills that will happen. just like in your business when you work better and harder and longer. almost invariably your results are better. so we need to have a national conversation about how we educate our children. we're still educating our children the same way we did in the 1800's. 20, 25 chairs and desks facing

forward to a white board or black board with one person standing in front talking to them for a limited period of time each day, for a limited period of time each year. everything else in american life has been improved, modernized, but education. at its core, yes we use computers now it's one of the great moments when my 11-year-old daughter bridget started taking computers when she was 8. and she said dad when you were 8 who did you have for computers? [laughter] i said, no one. no one. the world has changed in that respect. but not much more in the world of education. is my point to you in terms of if you're ranked in the 20's in the industrial world in math and science, what makes you believe that 10 or 15 years from now we'll still be the number one economy? hope? prayer? we have to change this. and secondly, what i'm implying in my answer is, once you get a

system that people are willing to buy into, then you can start having the discussions about quantitative and qualitative choices in legal immigration. but until you get to the base problem of what we permitted to happen over the last 25 to 30 years, and the feeling amongst so many people in our country that we're not willing to enforce the laws, why are they going to buy into a whole new set of laws that i think the government won't execute on. we have to have that conversation and the idea that if someone brings a particular quality or set of qualities, that that would help our country even more, that that's something that should be considered in the immigration process. is it -- it's an important idea to discuss. but if we don't get to the underlying problem first, we're not going to ever get there. and you're going to continue to be frustrated. so let's get to the underlying

problem, fix it, and then our frustrations will abate if not eliminate on this topic. >> next question. >> hi, governor, i'm carol cornman with police. incorporated, an i.t. services company. i want to get your opinion on the a.c.a. and how it's been set up and the reporting. i'm baffled a little bit that even small certified businesses, and we're all about small businesses growing, yet under the a.c.a., small businesses are classified as large businesses in some cases. i just wanted to get your opinion on that. governor christie: my opinion on the affordable care act is that it goes exactly in line with the philosophy i was talking about earlier in my remark and -- remarks and the difference between myself and the president. you know, let's look at my state of new jersey and let's pick the state of wyoming. what person in this room actually thinks that the health care challenges that i face for my population in new jersey of .9 million people in the most -- 8.9 million people in the most ethnically diverse state in the country, most densely populated state in the country, are the same as the health care challenges faced by governor meade in wyoming? you don't have to know anything,

right, anything about health care to know those two places are significantly different and face significantly different challenges. you understand that, i understand that, the president of the united states refuses to acknowledge it. the idea that you can have one national system that is going to appropriately, efficiently effectively address the health care needs of the population in new jersey and health care for the population in wyoming is ridiculous. and the core weakness of a.c.a., besides the fact that -- the factor you mentioned in terms of the nondisparate treatment of business, the tax increases, the mandates, all those things, the core problem is that this just won't work.

because the challenges i face in new jersey are so significantly different than they face in other parts of the country and other states. we should be going to a system that's state-based. where governors work with the people in their state to say what is the best way to access health care in a state like ours? and you know, the way businesses will be affected by that is when governments closer to you are making the decisions, you have much greater input. i know small business owners in my state. i work with them all the time for our economic development authority, through our local chambers of commerce. they have access to policymakers in a way you'll never have access to federal policymakers in that way. so i'm a repeal and replace guy. i absolutely believe that obamacare is not salvageable and needs to go. but we also can't be the party that says, it needs to go and we'll get back to you in a couple of weeks about what actually we're going to do. the american people will not go for that dodge. so we need to come out and talk as a party about what we want to do. i will tell you that my inclination is going to a state-based system.

because i just believe as a governor that, you know what gary herbert decides in utah versus what i decide in new jersey versus what matt meade decides in wyoming versus what phil bryant decides in mississippi, are all smart specialized things we know about our states. we get input from folks leek you. that's my view on it. the onerous nature of this is going to suffocate businesses, has already suffocated jobs and we know that. the 30-hour work week. all these things that are going on now surrounding a.c.a. has just suffocated economic growth and the president doesn't want to see it or acknowledge it because he believes in an omnipotent, omnipresent federal government and i don't. >> three more questions and that will be it. please keep the questions short, identify yourself first. >> jim toland. as a followup, clearly obamacare hasn't been the most popular legislation or program with the

republican party. and it does seem like people talk about repeal and replace but there's much more focus on repeal. the question really is, what's the replace? status quo wasn't working very well either. 50 million people uninsured, it's got to be more than we'll do it at the state level. what's the program to get a program that actually addresses the pathologies of the old system without baggage of the new? governor christie: we should get there and talk about it but take a deep breath. it's may 1. you know. i don't -- quite frankly, i think all of us have to go about this in a responsible way. there's been more emphasis on repeal. you can't replace until you do repeal. so there's been more of an emphasis on repeal. but the fact is that all of us who are responsible and for those of us who decide to run

for president, it's going to be our job to come forward with a specific plan and ideas. i would -- what i'm trying to give you is a window into my approach. i'm not going to sit here this morning and lay out my entire plan for replacing obamacare with all due respect. we'll do that in a different setting that makes more sense. but what i'm telling you is the directional guidance i'm giving you is that i believe this is a problem that's much more appropriately dealt with at the state level than it is dealt with at the federal level. all you need to do is look at the growth of medicaid over the course of the last number of years. the last 25 years, medicaid has grown over 00%. and the economy has grown 200%. so you know, this system where the state pays for half of the cost but has almost no influence

on the rules, which is where we're headed and where we are with obamacare, i think is a failure. and i think we're in the same spot. will be in the same spot with this kind of exponential growth if we allow obamacare to continue. >> but isn't that the same dodge >> this is not a time for discussion. next question please. >> governor, my name is paul stide, i'm with effective communications, also i'm a native of mendham, new jersey. governor christie: my hometown. >> two questions about superstorm sandy. how in your estimation is the recovery going? and how has -- have the events of superstorm sandy shaped you as a man and shaped you as a leader? governor christie: i'm on the recovery, the recovery is going very well. now our businesses are back up and running. our jersey shore tourism last year set a record year. in the second year after sandy. and most of the new jerseyans who lost their homes are back in their homes. whenever i say that, i'm mindful of the people who are still not back in their homes. and there are some who are still not back in their homes. and so i always say to people, the recovery is going really well unless you're not back in

your home. if you're not back in your home the recovery is going miserably. one of the problems in the aftermath of katrina was that there was significant rampant fraud in louisiana. and as a result, the federal government does what federal and state governments do all the time. they play the last game rather than the next game. they look at what happened and they made the rules on aid so onerous, not on the state necessarily, but on the individuals in terms of proof and paperwork, that it held up a lot of what's going on. i think h.u.d. in particular has seen this over time and have begun to loosen up on those things and allowed get those people who are not in their homes at a much faster pace.

we've spent billions of dollars already. we've increased resiliency in our states so when the next storm comes things will be better. i think overall the recovery has gone well. when you think about this, when i woke up on the morning after sandy, 365,000 homes had been destroyed. in 24 hours. 365,000 homes. we had no power in more than 2/3 of the state. we had 50-plus gas stations open and operational. most of the state highways were closed. all the schools were closed. there was no wastewater treatment plants in the state. it was as big a disaster as any state has ever ever sustained. and we're back on our feet and people are back in our homes and economic activity has resumed so i feel very good about that. in terms of me, i can only tell you that in 2011, there were lots of people who urged me to run for president. and when i made the decision not to, i did something my political advisors said i should never say. i was asked, of course if you would be when you say you're not running for president i was

asked why and i said because i'm not ready. and my advisor was like, no, no, no. that will last forever of you not saying you're ready to be president. you can't say that. i said, well, it's true. sandy went a long way toward making me ready. when you sit around a table and you get the reports of that destruction and that level of pain and loss, and then everybody, your cabinet, your law enforcement, your national guard all sit around the table and after they report all that they then look at you and say, ok, what are we going to do? you get prepared as a leader in those moments like nothing else can prepare you. because you have a blank piece of paper in front of you. and human suffering all around

you. and everybody, not just the people around the table but everybody in the state is looking to you to say, please fix this. please help. and that's why when i was going through sandy, i never spent more than half a day in the emergency operations center. from the day after sandy forward, i would spend half the day in the emergency operation center with all the different people i had to talk to, get briefed by and give instructions to. and i would always spend half the day in one of the -- in one of the towns that have been destroyed to actually remind myself all the time about who i was doing this for and what they really were concerned about. and i can't tell you in the beginning how emotionally impactful that was. to walk into a town like belmar which i did on the first day after the storm, a jersey shore town, and have a woman come up to me and grab me and begin to hug me and say into my ear, i've lost everything. you're the only person who can help me.

those are moments in my life that i'll never forget and have changed me as a person and have molded me as a leader. but in the end what people want is the truth. they want you to be decisive. they want you to be present. in their lives. when they feel as if their lives are at risk. and so sandy has changed me in every way that sandy could change somebody, that something like that could possibly do to both your mind and your heart and i would have never wished that on my state, ever, ever. and hope and pray it never happens to anybody again at that level of devastation. but we learned from it. we're a better state because of it in the end. and once we get everybody back in their homes i'll be able to breathe a sigh of relief and say, you know, mission accomplished. but until that time you can't. you just keep plugging every

every day. [applause] >> one more question. >> governor christie, this is isha chaudra, i'm with a global insurance brokerage. can you talk about the importance of having honest conversations with the american people. i would like to know how to balance the receptivity of receiving that information from the american people coming from politicians. governor christie: everybody approaches this business differently. i'm someone who always tries to err on the side of letting people know what i really think. [laughter]

[applause] this has to do with how i was raised. we're all a product of our parents, right? sometimes we're thrilled about that, sometimes we're not. i know my children will spend a significant time complaining to someone about something i did that i really thought was good when i did it but obviously i was completely wrong, right? we're all products of our parents. i grew up in a house with an irish father and a sicilian mother. [laughter] now, you all know what this means. this means i became at a very young age expert at conflict resolution. all right. i'm the oldest son in that family and it's not that my mom was argumentative. it's just that she never found