ultimately allow noaa to focus its resources on the research and development necessary to improve our modeling capabilities, our computing capacity and warning lead times outlined in this legislation. mr. speaker, i believe there will come a time when there will be zero deaths from tornadoes. i think this bill will help us implement the necessary steps to get there i once again thank my colleagues on the science committee for all their hard work and look forward to working with our counterparts in the senate to move this legislation to the president's desk. with that, i encourage all my colleagues to support this bill and i yield back. thank you. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from oklahoma yields recognized. mr. smith: h.r. 1561 has received overwhelming support and i would like to mention letters of support from the weather company, science and technology corporation and

carmel research center as well. and the full 25 letters of report the science committee received for this legislation. i have no other requests for time but before i reserve, i want to thank the three original co-sponsors we have on the floor tonight. and i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from texas reserves. >> this is a good bill that will improve services. the results of the changes contained in this legislation, it will be more timely and accurate forecasts that will protect lives and property. ms. bonamici: researchers have found that annual variations can produce billions of dollars in reduced gross domestic products.

with stakes that large we owe it to our nation. h.r. 1561 takes steps to support noaa and how we harness research. i want to thank the many leaders in the research community and the private weather sector who provided advice to the committee as we worked on this bill. i extend my appreciation to the under secretary for oceans and atmosphere for her cooperation and advice. i continue working with my colleagues across the aisle until we have a good final bill. thank you to my co-sponsors and with that, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from oregon yields back. the gentleman from texas is reck knees ferniesed. mr. smith: i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the question is, will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 1561 as amended. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3

being in the affirmative the rules are suspended the bill is passed and without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from texas seek recognition? mr. smith: i move to suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 1158 department of energy laboratory modernization and technology transfer act of 2015 as amended. the clerk: a bill to improve management of the national laboratories and enhance technology commercialization and facilitate public-private

partnerships and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from texas, mr. smith and the gentleman from illinois, mr. lipinski will each control 20 minutes. mr. smith: i ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days to revise and stepped their remarks and include extraneous remarks on the bill under consideration. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. smith: i yield myself such time as i may consume. h.r. 1158, the department of energy act of 2015 enables the department of energy to better form partnerships with non-fd entities and transfer research to the private sector. i thank mr. hultgren for his initiative on this issue and the gentleman from from colorado for co-sponsoring this important piece of legislation. i yield as much time as i may

consume to the gentleman from illinois, mr. hultgren. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from texas is -- time is reserved. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from illinois is recognized. mr. hultgren: we also have several letters of support on this that i would submit for the record. one is from the bipartisan policy center on behalf of the american innovation council and the american nuclear society and i would ask that they be submitted for the record. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. hultgren: i want to thank the distinguished chairman, mr. smith, as well as mr. perlmutter for helping bringing this

legislation to the floor. h.r. 1158, the department of energy laboratory modernization and technology transfer act ensures that the department of energy has the tools it needs to allow small businesses universities and the general public at large to do what they do best. we ask the market signals and innovate. the federal government and the national labs do the basic research needed to maintain america's position as a safe and innovative nation. their ability to build large research tools at our user facilities is the crown jewel in our nation's research capabilities and this is the model like china are copying. discoveries made in our labs get stuck in the labs. this is due to a number of reasons and this bill seeks to bake down some of the barriers that makes this happen. many of these problems are outlined in the chapter 3 of

interim report of the commission to resue the effectiveness of the national energy laboratories and i quote from the report. over 50 prior studies and reports published over the past 40 years detail shortcomings in the relationship between d.o.e. and its laboratories and have a pattern of criticism and recommendations for improvement, end quote. the committee and i reviewed many of these prior reports and this bill acts on these consistent, noncontroversial recommendations, by extending the pilot for agreements within d.o.e., the labs are given the ability to negotiate flexible contracts to take the lab's research and turn it into viable products. section 201 allows researchers using federal funds to enter into these agreements. section 20 of the bill will

chip away at what many call the valley of death, what many startups cannot make it through. this section would allow d.o.e. to use funds for early stage pre-commercial proof of concept demonstrations so they can pick up technologies and develop them with private funds. this would grant to the directors of national labs, the signature authority. these are decisions that the secretary of energy must make under current law meaning decisions can be made over the course of a phone call or else weave through bureaucracies before it lands on the secretary's desk. it improves the relationship with the small businesses and it encourages the secretary to enter into agreements with the programs at n.s.f. d.o.e. has started a similar

program, i'm worried that this program is so narrow and focused that it will not be applicable for most of our labs' advancements. medical treatments would not be able to access the current pilot. section 103 would require d.o.e. to undertake an assessment to authorize, host and oversee reactors at d.o.e. sites. this is a critical issue for the united states' position. the united states has not hosted a new research reactor in decades and not any under review. unfortunately the u.s. has become so risk aversed that we have regulated ourselves out of business for building the reactors that might lead to commercialally deployable technologies. we are driving companies

overseas and i look forward to seeing the results from d.o.e. our national labs have been at the cutting edge and we must ensure that it is in the national interests. this bill helps to ensure that is the case because a discovery lost in the labs is a discovery wasted. i encourage my colleagues to support this bill and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from texas reserves. the gentleman from illinois is recognized. mr. lipinski: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. lipinski: thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, i rise in support of h.r. 118 department of energy laboratory modernization and transfer technology act of 2015. i thank mr. hultgren and mr. perlmutter for working together to produce a strong bipartisan

bill. i thank the chairman and ranking member for getting this bill through the committee and getting it to the floor tonight. d.o.e.'s national labs are responsible for the greatest research being conducted in the world both basic and applied. some of this is research has the potential to be new technologies and increase the likelihood of technology transfer. this could have an impact for our nation, not just in new technologies but making the most of our investments at these labs. that's why improving technology transfer, both at labs and universities, has been one of my top priorities on the science committee. h.r. 1158 ensures our national labs have the resources needed to facilitate the transfer of new technologies to the private sector. it greatly increases the companies that are eligible to

engage in new pilot programs to provide for more flexible partnerships similar to those in the private sector and length thens the program for two years. this was an important issue that came up in a hearing two years ago. this bill empowers labs to utilize transfer funds on projects that demonstrate applications for research and technology and asks the department of energy for report on activities related to the mandated technology and technology fund. i personally ask the secretary about past use of the funds that have been passed by the recent actions of d.o.e. and t.c.f. at this time. this has impacts beyond labs. it would decrease obstacles that

prevent nonprofit organizations from working with the department. the bill includes language that i wrote that would make the national science foundation which pairs up grant recipients with entrepreneurs to help get their ideas into commercial arenas, make it available through d.o.e. through a partnership through the n.s.f. effective reporting and accountability systems are in place to determine the performance of these new tools as well as any further steps that will need to be taken. the innovations have come out of d.o.e.'s national laboratories are second to none. argon national lab which is located in my district is one of the best. all of these institutions' nimbttives have been a component of our nation's economy and this bill will ensure they will improve the incredible track

record. i encourage my colleagues to support this bill and i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from texas is recognized. mr. smith: we have no other requests for time and i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from illinois is recognized. mr. lipinski: i yield three minutes to the gentleman from colorado, mr. perlmutter. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. perlmutter: i would like to thank mr. lipinski for his work on this bill and yielding me this time. i rise today to support 1158, the department of energy laboratory modernization and technology transfer act. i thank my friend from illinois, for sponsoring this bill and working with me and my colleagues on this important piece of legislation. this legislation provides tools to spur and accelerate the transfer of new technologies developed at our national labs. it extends the agreement for commercializing technology or

a.c.t. pilot program for two more years and also significantly broadens the range of companies able to participate in the program allowing for more flexible partnership agreements. the bill will allow labs to use their technology to transfer funds for activities which identify and demonstrate commercial activities for their research and technologies. this legislation also removes burdens which currently prevent many universities and other nonprofit research institutions from working with the department of energy. this will encourage further collaboration defend university researchers across the country and wealth of knowledge at the national labs. mr. speaker i represent golden, colorado and the laboratory. it is the energy lab in the world. for more than 40 years, it has led the charge in research and design of products directly

affecting the way we utilize energy. it will provide labs with important tools so they can best lead our country on a renewable and sustainable forms of energy and transportation and bring these light-changing energy to consumers. i have seen the work and i know this great work is happening at other national labs across the country. last year, d.o.e. signed an agreement for commerlizing technology to utilize d.o.e. labs to further research and energy-efficient building-related technologies and this bill allows that agreement to be extended for at least two more years. d.o.e.'s national laboratories and research programs have been the birth place of some of our best programs. when this research is harnessed by business leaders startups

can grow into companies employing dozens if not hundreds, of peopleful we want to make sure they remain an important foundation of our knowledge-based economy. that's why i'm proud to co-sponsor this bipartisan legislation with the gentleman from illinois, mr. hultgren, giving scientists and researchers in the public and private sector tools they immediate to unlock a new wave of innovation. thank you again, mr. speaker. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields. the gentleman from illinois reserves. the gentleman from texas is recognized. mr. ship: i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: -- mr. smith: i reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. >> i yield two minutes to the gentleman, mr. beyer. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. beyer: this bill helps foster opportunities for entrepreneurs to more easily access technologies coming out of the department of energy and

connect the brilliant minds in d.o.e. to the el qualy brilliant minds in the private sector. federal r&d is responsible for many of the industries and technologies that drive our national wealth. the most earth-shattering example, the internet, developed by government scientists at darpa. federal research spawned the biotech and semiconductor industries, gave us tool like the laser, g.p.s. and m.r.i., and through the worldwide web and internet has changed the way we find a restaurant, talk to our children and drive cars. the role of technology is vital and government must lead the way in innovation, providing the capital necessary to perform research without any known commercial application or concern for profit. i'm reminded of the fascinated idea that mathematicians who develop things in their heads in their offices work no application to anything so often within weeks will find that that

mathematical new idea applies to real-life situations. einstein marveled at the power of pure mathematics and said -- and said quote, how can it be that mathematics being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? in 1959, a physicist described the problem as, quote, the unreasonable effect of mathematics. h.r. 1158 helps bring these pieces together, mathematics chemistry, biology and technology. i urge my colleague to support it. thank you and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields. the gentleman from illinois reserves. the gentleman from texas is recognized. mr. smith: i continue to reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from illinois is recognized. mr. hultgren: i yield myself the balance of the time. the speaker pro tempore: the

gentleman from texas -- the gentleman from illinois is recognized. mr. lipinski: before i wrap up on the bill we are debating right now, i want to thank chairman smith for his work on this along with ranking member johnson, working together, we were able to get these bills done here on the floor tonight. i know that we'll have a little bit more of a contentious debate on a bill coming out of the science committee but i want to again commend the chairman and ranking member johnson for working together on these bills. we know there are important things we can get done and we need to get done and will be very helpful to our nation and glad that we are able to do those things on these bills that we have brought forward here tonight, a good, bipartisan mix of bills, showing bipartisan cooperation. mr. speaker, i want to conclude by asking my colleagues to

support h.r. 1158, the department of energy laboratory modernization act. i want to thank mr. hultgren and mr. perlmutter for their work on this bill and i think there are many things that we can't even see right now that will come out of this. but i'm certain that our national labs and the great value that they are to our nation will continue and this will allow them to continue to not only do their research but do a better job, even better job, of producing new technologies that will be of great benefit to all of us. with that, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from illinois yields. the gentleman from texas is recognized. mr. smith: i yield back the balance of my time as well. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from texas yields the balance of his time. the question is will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 1158 as amended.

those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 being in the affirmative the rules are suspended, the bill is passed and without objection the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. for what purpose does the gentleman from ohio seek recognition? >> mr. speaker i send to the desk two privileged reports from the committee on rules for filing under the rule. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the titles. the clerk: report to accompany house resolution 273, resolution providing for consideration of the bill h.r. 226 to facilitate a pro-growth environment for the developing commercial space industry by encouraging private sector investment and creating

more stable and predictable regulatory conditions and for other purposes, providing for consideration of the bill h.r. 880 to amend the internal revenue code of 1986 to simplify, make permanent the research credit providing for consideration of motions to suspend the rules and providing for proceedings during the period from may 22, 2015, through may 29, 2015. report to accompany house resolution 274. resolution providing for consideration of the bill h.r. 1335, amend the magnusson stevens fishery conservation and fishery act to provide flexbility for fishery managers and stability for fishermen and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: referred to the house calendar and ordered printed. the chair will now entertain requests for one-minute speeches.

for what purpose does the gentlewoman from virginia seek recognition? >> mr. speaker i ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. ms. come stock: i rise tonight to -- ms. comstock: i rise to honor these miracle workers home after their three-week deployment to nepal. virginia task force one in partnership with usaid is always at the ready to answer the call when tragedy or natural disaster strike at home or abroad. nepal was devastated by two major earthquakes resulting in the loss of over 8,500 lives and virginia task force one was there to help. with their incredible skill and

teamwork they were able to rescue a 15-year-old boy trapped in the rubble for five days and when the second earthquake hit they saved a 41-year-old woman trapped in a four-story building. they also medically treated countless others. when they returned home on saturday morning they were enthusiastically greeted by relatives and families. those families also endured countless hours of worry while their family members and loved ones are halfway around the world in unfamiliar and dangerous circumstances. mr. speaker, the members of virginia task force one are truly fabulous, wonderful ambassadors for our commonwealth of virginia and our country. it is an honor and privilege to thank them for their courageous service to the people of nepal and to the work they do every day in our country. mr. speaker, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman yields back. the chair lays before the house

the following personal requests. the clerk: leave of absence requested for mr. chaffetz of utah for today and the balance of the week and mr. donovan of new york for today and the balance of the week. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the requests are granted. under the speaker's announced policy oo-- of january 6, 2015 the gentleman from the gentlelady yields back the balance of her time, mr. schweikert is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader. mr. schweikert: thank you, mr. speaker. i'm going to do a budget presentation a couple of moments but i wanted to actually come up here and with my good friend from south carolina, mr. mulvaney, talk about an article that popped up in "che economist" last week, and there's the issue. this place has fairly short memories but about two years ago, there were a handful of us coming here and talking about

sort of an esoteric issue, something called what is it, wheelchair lifts. for those of us who represent tourist areas, like i am, i had a resort owner call me and in a gruff voice say, david do you know what the justice department is doing to me? i have seven pools and jacuzzis and apparently i have to put permanent, fixed wheelchair lifts at every pool and jacuzzi. he said, i want to be sensitive and caring to my mobility-challenged guests, but he went on to tell me the story that for 10 years he, had had a portable wheelchair lift and it has never been requested. so here we are, two years later he's torn up his landscape he, put in the units, and guess what's now happening? he has called me and told me that now his insurance rates are

starting to really bounce up because of an unattractive nuisance. the very things mick mulvaney predicted, i like to say i predicted, two years ago, are coming true. but i'd like to yield to mick. tell us the other side of the story of what's going on. mr. mulvaney: i appreciate that mr. chairman. mr. schweikert. thank you for the time and the opportunity to talk about this a little bit without the pressures of the two-minute timer or three-minute timer, talk about something in detail for a change in this house. it merits the discussion. my experience with it, mr. schweikert, was exactly the same as yours well, not exactly the same i'm not from the resort part of south carolina i'm from the more rural, inland part of the state. but we've got a lot of freeways and a lot of small businesses operating hotels. a lot of them owned by asian americans. i was approached by a group of

indian-american hotel owners last year, these are folks, mom and pop operations, they might own one hotel, maybe two. they told me about the pool lifts having to go in. a lot of them had portable lifts, so they had the ability to do that. similar to your story, none of them had ever been asked. but the department of justice came in and said, you know what? we are going to require you, under the terms of the americans with disabilities act, to put these fixed pool lifts in every single body of water you have. if you have a regular sized pool a kiddie pool and a hot tub, that's three of these fixed lifts. it was a tremendous burden on these small businesses. who, as you mentioned wanted to help folks who needed help to get in and out of the pools, but wanted to do it with a portable machine instead of a standard one. they said, mr. mulvaney, we've seen this before. this is how they got rid of diving boards. this is why we don't have diving

boards. years ago, people said they were an attractive nuisance, kids were jumping off them, hurting themselves. now an entire generation of americans has grown up without diving boards. what's going to happen now, the next generation will grow up without swimming pools at hotels, for the exact rans tissue reasons you mentioned. we spent 40 years getting rid of things that children could climb on and jump off of into the pool and now the department of justice required the owners to come in and put the same things in. it's no longer a diving board, it's a mechanical chair, but to an 8-year-old it looks like something to climb up and jump off of. they were lamenting the fact that not only their buzz would be hurt but part of the enjoyment of coming to the hotel would be gone and not available to their customers and eventually you'd see them start filling in swimming pools. unfortunately, i think that's the way we are moving. but they also talked about something, and this is to the point of the article you just

mentioned in "the economist" from april 25, which is there was a private right of action in the regulation that came forward and what this means to folks who aren't familiar with that, what it means is anybody can sue and in fact in the united states of america, when anybody can sue typically, anybody does sue. . it goes into great length about one very, very energetic plaintiff, mr. chairman, who filed 529 lawsuits against small business owners, hoe it will -- hotels throughout the southeast. in one particular period of time they hit 50 hotels in a row shortly after the regulation became effective. so that they could file their lawsuit against the hotel owners. the article goes to great length by the way to also -- i'll read one of my favorite passages, something that should be enlightening for all of us. there's evidence that lawyers explicitly target small businesses which are more likely to pay up without a fight.

there we go. that's what we've done. in the name of helping people who folks are already trying to help but in the name of having the government tell small business, and large business, how to help people, what do we end up with? essentially a jobs bill for the plaintiffs bar. you and i were talking about this to the extent, mr. chairman, i can engage in a colloquy with mr. schweikert. he and i were talking before we started today about why we were going take a few minutes to talk about this. as my friend, barney frank, said before he left, everybody always says, i hate to say i told you so, but the truth of the matter is, people love saying i told you so. this is exactly what we said would happen. this is exactly what we said would happen. and why the department of justice saw fit to single out small business hoteliers, who were already trying to help people and say, you know what, we know better than you how to help people, you think these portable units are good, nahings -- nah, we think the

fixed units are better and we're from the government, we're here to help you. what do we end up with? we end up with small business laking -- making less money, and i know a lot of people aren't sympathetic to that. i'm i certainly am. i used to be a small business person. i recognize the fact that a lot of people are not sympathetic to small business. but small businesses make less money. kids are going to have less access to swimming pools as they travel the country. think about that for a second. how absurd is that? that we're going to end up filling in swimming pools in order to prevent lawsuits? and lastly, and worstly, you're going to end up in a situation where all we've done is empower a small group of overzealous trial lawyers and their plaintiffs. it's a sad story but one that we hear again and again in america and i only hope that the next time we come up with an idea like this, mr. schweikert, that the government comes up with an idea on how to fix things they'll look at what's happening now to the small business hotel owners as

an example of government gone wrong. mr. schweikert: will the gentleman yield for one second? mr. mulvaney: it's your time. i'm happy to yield back to you. mr. schweikert: i remember you and i having this conversation on the floor and particularly members from the left coming to the microphone and basically scolding me of how incensetific i was -- insensitive i was. now i realize my father may have been right about something. he said, it's almost always about the money. when you look at the economist article, you start to realize that this was a jobs act. for the democrats' supporter and the trial bar. because they're running up and down our communities suing small businesses and understand, i believe you're absolutely correct our future will be hotels and resorts without pools at all. but once again, the folks on

the opposition questioned our sensitivity, our love for our brothers and sisters, and we were trying to say this is the economic argument and here's the argument and we lost. the administration basically gave in to the trial bar and now we do have the i told you so's. mr. mulvaney: i suggest to you that you were in fact being insensitive. you were being incensetific to the trial bar. mr. schweikert: darn it. i knew i was doing something wrong. mr. mulvaney: i had the same experience as you did. i was in long worth, the office building, a couple years back when we took up -- i had a bill, you and i wrote a bill together to try and either delay prevent the d.o.j. from putting this regulation into effect and we had people literally pro testing outside of our office -- protesting outside of our office. folks from the disabled community that wanted this particular accommodation. i'm completely sympathetic to that. what i think they failed to see

at the time and failed to grasp is, number one, they were already being accommodated. my guess is 99.9% of the people who came to protest had never asked to use one of these portable lifts at hoteliers, so they were not aware of the fact that they were there. at the same time they never gave any thought to the unintended consequences of this particular piece of regulation that the d.o.j. promulgated. i think that is a lesson to be learned. the government that is big enough to give you everything that you want, is big enough to take from you everything that you have. and this in a very small way is what we saw in the promulgation of this particular regulation. mr. schweikert: the closing thought on this colloquy, we're already seeing the insurance world starting to charge higher and higher and higher fees for apartments, hotels resorts that have these lifts, these permanent platforms. it's because they're already modeling the risk that someone,

hopefully not with alcohol involved, but someone's going to crawl up on top of one and jump in. and the same litigation profile that we moved diving boards 20 30 years ago the other side basically has driven us to, and they're going to be our brothers and sisters out there, there's going to be some that are going to be hurt. maybe hurt severely. and ultimately what's our future? the removal of the swimming pools. got to thank the folks on the left that weren't willing to discuss rational economics and the d.o.j. one again for making a bunch of money for their trial bar friends. mr. mulvaney: we will get equality. we'll have equal access to swimming pools under this regulation. because no one will have the access. that will be the ultimate result here. that in an effort to make it

accessible to everybody, we'll end up making it accessible to no one and in the final analysis that is a sad state of equality that i don't think anybody should applaud. mr. schweikert: and this is not a petty little issue. this is just a simple example that we talk about here almost every day, of the runaway arrogance of washington believing they're going to run our businesses, run our lives and sort of the obvious outcomes that turn out to be fairly disastrous. so i appreciate you coming down and giving us some of your time. mr. mulvaney: thank you for the opportunity. mr. speaker, thank you sir. mr. schweikert: mr. speaker, i'm going to set up here in a second. i'm going to actually walk through something we've been work on in our office now for -- working on in our office now for the last month and that is what's really going on in the budget numbers. we did a budget town hall about two weeks ago in scottsdale and always like to start it with a

simple question that says, how many of you are tired of seeing us in congress fight with each other? and the hands always go up and they say, yes, you have to stop fighting with each other. and i always try to make the point, it's about the money. you need to understand how bad the underlying financial data is. and what's really going on in the scale of debt and deficits. and just the sheer scale of spending. but where that spending is going. because we have so many of my brothers and sisters here, we go out and campaign and say things like, we're going to take care of waste and fraud. we're going to take care of this and foreign aid. we're going to do this and that. and they're not providing an honest picture of where the money is and where it actually goes. so we're going to do about 10 of these boards and i know this is going to get technical.

when you run for congress, one of the first things that happens, if you're, you know, a numbers guy, the pollster and the consultants sit you down and say, you can't use big numbers, people won't understand them. in this presentation i'm going to treat everyone like adults. these aren't republican numbers, they're not even democrat numbers. though the majority of these do come from the white house. to understand what's actually underlying in the data and how quickly it's eroding. two points of reference. for decades we used to talk about, we were going to hit this inflexion point, when baby boomers began moving into retirement. and what was going to happen to the debt curve and what was going to happen to the curve of consumption of the entitles -- entitlements. guess what? we are now well into that inflexion point. it has begun and congress has done very very, very little in

regards to mandatory spending and you're going to see in these slides, in these boards, that that's actually what may take us down as a republic. so this is 2010. let's just do this as a reference. remember, 2010 was a year when there was still lots of stimulus money lots of other spending out there. but do you see the blue? the blue is what we refer to as mandatory spending. it's primarily social security, medicare, medicaid, some transfer programs interests, veterans and the new health care law. in 2010, about 63% of our spending was in that blue area, 37% is what we called discretionary. that's what we get to vote on here. because what's in the blue is in formulas. so i've been here a little over four years, i've really had absolutely no influence on that blue area.

it's a formula. you hit a certain age, you get a certain benefit. but i want you to watch what's happening in that entitlement, in that mandatory spending. and, yes this is the very discussion that gets people unelected. because people get very upset. but we have to have an adult conversation of what's really going on here. so we're going to do a couple of these slides just to sort of create a reference. here's where we are this year. you remember on that slide i think the blue area was about 63% of our total spending. this year it's 69% of our total spending and obviously then the discretionary, what we get to vote on as members, is now 31%. you notice the movement. and that's just in the last five years. so what happens, as we try not to knock these all over at once, so where are we going?

right now, to give you a different way to look at this, is this is our 2015 modeling from the white house. this green area is our revenues. that's the total revenues coming in to your federal government. that purple area is our debt. that's what we're going to borrow this year to make up for our shortfalls. though you'll be happy to know that as of about 48 hours ago, the administration changed the debt number from $576 billion for the 2015 fiscal year to -- now it's going to be -- i know that may be almost impossible to read my writing, but now it's going to be $582.5 billion . and this continues to erode. but we're going to talk about that at the end here, what's

actually going on in g.d.p., on economic growth in this country. and if we do not develop a growth-oriented agenda, we can't meet our obligations. we cannot keep those promises we've made. and with that, i sit here or stand here in shock of how often we engage in these debates and it's not a growth-oriented focus. so one thing on this slide i really want you to get, blue over here is mandatory spending, the red, discretionary, with defense, defense is considered discretionary, we have to borrow either every dime of defense or every dime of everything else. other than defense and mandatory, social security, medicare medicaid, interest on the debt veterans' benefits and the new health care law. we have to borrow either every dime of defense or every dime

of discretionary other than defense. and that's in this year's budget. that's how quickly this is moving away from us. so what happens if we look way off into the future like four years from now? 2020 is only four years from now. when i first got elected in 2011 i did a presentation here and the numbers i'm going to show you that happen in four years were not supposed to happen for nine years from now. this is to give you an idea how quickly the numbers are eroding and yet i hear almost no one talking about it. in 2020, we're going to be working on that budget in four years, remember that 2010 slide, 63% of our spending went to medicare, medicaid social security, interest on the debt, veteran's benefit and health

care law? it's going to be 76%. 76%. three quarters of all our spending, we're only going to be voting on 24% of the budget and half that will be defense. i don't know if anyone -- because these numbers are small and it's hard to watch. what we will be spending in 2020 on discretionary so defense, all the litany of programs you think of, is basically going to be almost identical to what we were spending 10 years earlier. now i'll hold that up as one of the successes of the republican house. we have been very disciplined on spending on what we had the ability to influence. which was the discretionary budget. but the form lake portion of our budget entitlements, continues to explode. it's almost like washington, d.c. did not know that there was

a baby boom. did not know people were going to be turning 65. did not know that 76 million of our brothers and sisters were born in about an 18-year period of time and now we're into the third year of baby boomers beginning to retire and that inflection has begun. so just as a reference, because i often get asked for this slide, and we are putting these slides up on our website there's the spending pie chart for this year. you'll see the blue areas all the way to here, social security, medicare medicaid, transfer programs, also including the new health care law. interest on the debt. veteran's benefits. so two weeks ago, when we were doing a budget presentation in my hometown of scottsdale, i had one woman who was absolutely positive if we would cut foreign aid we would be just fine here. it's important to understand, do you see this little red area

here? foreign aid would be ultimately nothing but a small sliver within that. yes, it's something. but in many ways it's theater. if you have a politician standing in front of you and they are not talking about the mandatory spending and the speed of its growth, you're not having an honest budget discussion and it's hard because in many places around the country, when you stand behind a microphone and hold up these boards and start to say, we need to have an honest conversation about the math underlying medicare, medicaid social security, what's going to happen in interest on the debt, the new health care law and its cost projections blowing through the ceiling, and veterans' benefits, often those members who try to have that conversation get unelected.

but if you have someone walk into our door here and say, david, we so desperately need spending on this. we often pull out our charts and say, you're absolutely right. this would be wonderful. do you have a solution to help me refine and deal with the explosion of cost in medicare. and they stare at you like we're not allowed to talk about that. but that's what's going on here. let's do another slide to just sort of see how the numbers really are exploding. fi came to you and said, hey new york four years, that 3.8 -- it's actually $3.75 billion budget we're going to have this year $3.75 trillion, not billion, trillion. so we're going to spend $3.8 trillion this year. in four years, we're going to be spending an additional trillion dollars on top of that. an adegreesal trillion.

and every dime of that is going into mandatory spending. it's not going into health research, not going into new parts, it's not going into build an aircraft carrier. it's not going into the programs we all talk about because it's easy politics. every time of that additional trillion dollars other four years from now will be in medicare medicaid, social security veterans benefits and the new health care law. how many times have you heard that? i mean this is it's right in front of us. this is what's going on. your government is growing at an exponential pace but it's not in the area where we as members of congress get to vote because it's in the formula areas, the mandatory spending. so you starting to see a theme

in this discussion and on this slide? i'm trying to build an understanding out there with both my brothers and sisters here in congress and the public out there that if we're not willing to have honest conversations, particularly with this coming to be a presidential election about entitlement, mandatory spending and ways we can manage them, and it's not cut, but there's much better ways we can deliver these. you put all the programs, all the promises we've made at risk because just pretending everything is going to be fine means you're basically doing them to a really ugly future or the country to an ugly future this gives you an interesting projection. now if we go beyond that, 2020 slide, but nine years out. nine years out. we will be running over trillion dollar deficits. and that's using the current

g.d.p. projections for the future, which we're going to talk about that model in the very end slide. there's something horribly wrong in how we're modeling our future income growth into this country. this is -- the math is real. i know it's uncomfortable. and it's, you know, it's almost sacrilegious to many political people here saying, we're not allowed to talk about that. david, why are you such a down her don't you want to get re-elected? why aren't you doing happy talks? i'm still optimistic for the country but i'm optimistic because things are happening in the economy despite government but you've got to understand, in nine years interest will be a trillion dollars and think about this. it's almost going to be approaching, if all discretionary at this time in

nine years will be about $1,400,000,000,000, and our best interest projection is over $1 trillion. and the chart, we go a couple more years out, we'll be spending more on interest than all of defense, all of discretionary, all of health research, everything else. and that's what we're doing. we're creating this trap where as we build more an more debt and build more and more debt, and build more and more debt that becomes our achilles heel and our fragility in this country. so once again, do you remember that earlier slide where i went over there and marked that now this year's deficit projection is $582.5 billion, that's coming from the white house, as of about two days ago. we had someone in our office earlier today, we were trying to do some modeling if g.d.p. continues to do what we think is happening right now, we could be having a discussion this coming

october that the 2015 shortfall was almost $600 billion. you do realize that's approaching double what the optimistic projections were last year for 2015. there's something horribly wrong out there. it's a combination of lack of economic growth and a come by nation of mandatory spend, the entitlements are growing faster than the models we've built. this is an interesting slide, just to give you the point of talking about inflection, it's a fancy word that a lot of statisticians like to use, and us politicians will use it but there it is. and it's begun. we're well into it. do you see where those blue lines start to explode? but do you notice something interesting? the red lines from about here

over, basically stay essentially flat. that's the discretionary spending. that's what we get to vote on. that is your defense that's everything else other than the mandatory spending. but what's exploding through the ceiling? it's like washington, d.c. fails to understand the demographic issues that we're heading toward -- that were heading toward this country and systematically avoided them because -- i'm sure it had nothing to do with my brothers and sisters caring more about the next election than having to go through the painful process of educating our voters to understand, this is your greatest threat, i believe, to our republic. one more slide to sort of put this in perspective. the blue line is interest. the red line is all, all of defense spending.

do you notice something that in about seven years 6 1/2 years, we're now spend manager money in interest than all of defense. all of defense. six years away. actually in reality, my math is closer to 5 1/2. but we'll use six years. think about that. we within -- we will be spending more money in interest on u.s. sovereign debt than we're spending on all defense of the nation. it's absurd and this is what we're about to hand to our kids? as a matter of fact, this is no longer about our kids. this is about us now. the numbers have eroded so fast, it's here. and the happy talk we were doing just a year ago, particularly coming from the administration, has not turned out to be true.

so one of the things that's going on out there, can you regulate yourself to prosperity? can you tax yourself to prosperity? can you, in an arrogant fashion have a bureaucracy that is so inept, its ability to, even when we do bipartisan pro-growth pieces of legislation, like the jobs act we all got together here, what three years ago, and did the jobs act. you do realize there's still substantial portions of that piece of legislation that are still sitting at the f.c. -- at the s.e.c. that still don't have their rules? because the underlying politics behind them. they're three years beyond their due date but we still don't have them. there's something horribly wrong in this government that if we don't have an honest discussion and actually then do something about our tax code, our regulatory code, access to opportunity, and then the

difficult one, the design within our entitlement state. which is something. the republican the last four year five years, have been putting into our budget and you all remember the television commercial of the paul ryan lookalike throwing grandma over the cliff? great politics. horrible math. because the republicans and paul ryan and the rest of us stood up and said, we're willing to actually propose a model that saves medicare and deals with this curb that consumes everything -- curve that consumes everything in our path. it's realy baddle to picks, it's honest math. and we get the crap kicked out of us for telling the truth system of now we get to look at a slide like this we were projecting 3.1% g.d.p. for this year. as of a few hours ago, the --

"the atlantic" said, which does an interesting model of constantly adjusting their g.d.p. predictions, it now has us not at 3.1% g.d.p., and remember every point on g.d.p. is $80 billion to $100 billion of revenue system of you start to realize a couple points of g.d.p. is a big deal. they said the g.d.p. now calculation on their website is now .7% g.d.p. coming in in this quarter. and the indicators look like we're going to get additional downward revisions on the first quarter. we're in trouble. and, yes, the politics will get up here and blame each other and blame each other.

but it doesn't make the math go away. the other thing is also -- and this is one of my pet peeves here, we systemically do not tell the truth. and this is a republican and democrat problem. some of it is because we use really bad modeling data really bad underlying statistics. we underestimate the swings during boom times and slowdowns . so we systemically have blown our g.t.p. calculations -- g.d.p. calculations. that has a lot to do with how we model our spending and what happens with our debt. if you look at this chart, the red is what real g.d.p. turned out to be, the blue -- excuse -- the blue was our projection and systemically we're dramatically under the projections and it looks like this year we're crashing and burning. i'm desperately hoping the third quarter and the fourth quarter get really healthy. but there's something horribly

wrong out there. is this administration, are my brothers and sisters on the left finally willing to have that conversation about the tax code about our regulatory state, those very things that, let's face it, are stymieing the future growth and our ability to save this country? so one last slide just to sort of pry an opportunity, for -- provide an opportunity for those of who you have an interest in watching these numbers, and there are those out there who are numbers geeks, this is that g.d.p. now, and, yes, it is often a pessimistic calculator except for the small problem is, the last couple of years it has actually been the accurate calculator of actual g.d.p. growth. and this is right off the g.d.p. -- gdpnow website from the atlanta fed, showing it looks like now we're down to a .7% g.d.p. growth in the second quarter.

a little bit else on this, and then i will stop this thing i'm doing which may be bordering on a tirade. if you're particularly geeky, last week you would have seen the journal of economic perspectives did a entire report on social security calculations. and there's a handful of folks here with all sorts of letters behind their names mostly ph.d. talking about social security's actually in worse shape than we tell people. close to $1 trillion additional underfunded in the latest projections. and that some of the modeling are simple things like we're actually using really bad life expectancy tables. now, i have incredible respect for the act wears -- actuaries over at medicare and social security. i think they deal with some amazing data sets. but when some of the nation's

finest economists and ph.d. economists are starting to write public articles saying, we're in real trouble here remember last year when there was a detailed projection on unfunded liabilities and debt for the united states, they came in with a number that scared me half to death. they actually came in with a number of $205 trillion. if you did gap -- you know, standard accounting, not government accounting, standard accounting, for the debt of this nation and unfunded liabilities, go on the internet right now and look up, what's the wealth of the world? some of the best models say the wealth of the world is about $180 trillion. and we have universities out there modeling that u.s. sovereign debt an unfunded liabilities is over $200 trillion.

so our liabilities, our unfunded liabilities are greater than the wealth of the world. we're better than this. this is the greatest issue in front of us and we spend so little time actually having an honest discussion about the math. mr. speaker, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2015, the gentleman from california, mr. mcnerney, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.

mr. mcnerney: thank you, mr. speaker. i'm going to talk a little bit about spending today, like my friend and colleague from arizona. but i'm going to talk about spending of a different kind. i'm going to talk about campaign spending. and campaign spending is quite an issue and i want to spend about an hour or less talking about its effects. i want to talk about some of the solutions we have out there that might make a big difference. first i want to say, i truly believe in the heart of my hearts that the united states of america is the greatest country in the world. probably the greatest country that the world has ever seen and may see in the future. and you can just see that by some of the markers of the notions of freedom that this country has had in the past, have inspired nations, they've inspired individuals around the world. our economic strength is

unrivaled, our cultural influence reaches every corner of the world. and our military power is absolutely unrivaled. however, again i truly believe that we can do better and i'll tell you some of the big challenges that we're facing right now, that if we take on these challenges we will even be a greater nation. first of all, we need massive investments in our nation's infrastructure, our highways, our bridges our ports, our airports. we need it in our broadband. we just need a matsive -- a massive amount of investment in our nation's infrastructure. our nation's education is falling behind. yes, we have some of the greatest schools, some of the greatest universities in the entire world. some of our public schools some of our charter schools and private schools unrivaled. but there's a lot of schools that are struggling and producing students that really

can't compete in today's world. we need to do immigration reform. we have 12 million, 15 million people in this country that are undocumented, that live in the shadows, that may or may not pay taxes, that contribute to our economy, but are always afraid of being deported. we have climate change. climate change is here, it's progressing, it's going to get worse. we need to do something about it as soon as possible. we have a vanishing middle class. there's a huge disparity in incomes between the richest and the poorest in this country and it's increasing. our middle class is vanishing. they're feeling more and more insecure, they're unable to send their kids to college. so we have a huge challenge in that regard. we have a need to establish background checks for purchase of weapons and close the gun show loopholes. we need to create a sustainable

economy. and these are huge challenges that we need to attend from the congress, from this body, from the house of representatives, from the united states senate, from the state legislatures, from local governments. but we're unable to attack these problems in large part because of the way campaigns are financed. now we see a growing perversion of presidential campaigns. we have superpacs, we have donors that are having meetings with presidential candidates which are allowed, by the laws, because the candidates are not official candidates. no one knows what's legal and enforceable right now in presidential candidate financing. and worse than that, foreign money is probably coming into all of these campaigns now. and i just want to say, elections up and down the ballot are being more and more perverted each election. all americans should be

concerned. while i was waiting to speak this evening i just read an article in the "national journal daily" today that stated according to data gathered in 21 states by the national institute of money and state politics, $175 million was spent in 2006. that's city council and school boards. a number that was -- that ballooned to $245 million just four years later. that's $70 million increase in local campaign financing in just four years. that's a fraction of the total expected to be spent in future local races. before i go further, what i'd like to do is take a break and introduce my friend and colleague from north carolina, walter jones and he wants to say a few words. i yield to walter. mr. jones: thank you very much.

i want to thank you for taking lead tonight to be on the floor. i know you will have other members of congress to join you in your hour. but i have been here for 20 years and i must tell you that since i've been here i've never seen as much influence by the special interests as i do now. and that's because of money. actually, both parties, that's why you're a democrat, i'm a republican, but both parties seem to be to succumb to the influence of money to get bills to the floor. i am a strong supporter of john sarbanes, who is from maryland. you have your bill that i joined today by the way, to sign my name to, your resolution. and i'm on john sarbanes' bill which is h.r. 20. the title is, the government by the people act, and i'll touch on four quick points. building a government of and by and for the people, the second

part of the bill says, empower the americans to participate. the third part is, amplify the voice of the people. fight back against big money special interests. in my few minutes, mr. mcnerney, what i'd like to talk about is the influence of money. i am a republican, and proud to be one. you're a democrat and proud to be one, but i would tell that you i've seen so many bills this year get to the floor of the house because, in my opinion, it's because of the influence of special interests. you and i recently had a bill on the floor that basically said that we would change the law that would allow the mobile home companies that sell mobile homes to many people in my district, 45,000 people own mobile homes, and there will be others buying mobile homes but they'll change the contract to say that they'll go from 8% to 12%. well, who did it benefit?

warren buffett. i don't deny warren buffett his success. he's a very successful man. and i'm happy for him. but what this bill did was to say to the average person that maybe in california or north carolina, that needs to buy a mobile home, because that's best they can do, we're going to let you pay more in interest . i was the only republican to vote no on that bill. i said this back in my district, quite frankly i was pleased that the majority of people agree with me, that we should be consider -- consider at of those people who cannot afford to buy better than a mobile home. there again that special interest influence, that's what you just said a moment ago, i'm of the firm belief that if we do not change the system, you have an h.j.resolution that you've introduced, i talk about john sarbanes' h.r. 20 that will create an alternative to the system that we have. you and i both know that

citizens united that said that a cooperation is an individual has created a lot of the problems that we face today. and i will say that the american people need to get behind what you're trying to do, what mr. sarbanes is trying to do, and i in a lesser way, to return the power of the people to the people. because too many times decisions here in washington are made because special interests, whether it be a democrat or a republican leadership, puts it on the floor. and i believe that the people, as you believe have a right to let this be the people's house and not the special interest house. so i'm delighted to be on the floor with you today. i will say just a few minutes, if you want to call back on me in a couple minutes, i'll be here until a little bit after 8:00. i wanted to thank you for getting on the floor tonight to speak about this issue, because if we're going to let the

people own the government then we must give the power back to the people. i yield back to you, sir. mr. mcnerney: thank you, mr. jones. i just want to point out again, that this is bipartisan. mr. jones is a republican. i'm a democrat. we both see the corrosive influence of money here in washington and we want to do something about it. a lot of our colleagues agree with us wholeheartedly, but are actually afraid to say it. they're afraid to get up here because they know that if they do they're going to be targeted by this special interest money by superpac money, by dark money. the sad thing is that you don't knows that coming. you can be running a good solid, healthy campaign, arguing the issues and then all of a sudden see a $2 million television ad against you and they would be going after you for very personal misleading ads which could destroy you and your family for no reason other than you don't want to see so

much money in campaign spending. let me look at some of the specific risks and problems that we see today, because of the way campaigns are financed. first of all, campaign financing makes elected officials less effective in their jobs because of the time you have to spend raising money . here in congress it's not unusual to see a member of congress spend two, four, six hours a day on the phone begging people for money. that lessens your effectiveness, you can't spend that time you should be spending studying legislation, talking to colleagues, finding ways to compromise on issues. . the second item is negative campaign ads turn off voters and suppress votes. in this last election we had turnout of 45% 40% in some districts. a lot of it is the negativity people see on tv. they don't know what to believe.

they think they're both bums and either vote for the one they think is least bad oar don't vote at all. and it makes for wasteful government spending. this is an issue like i think my predecessor here tonight was talking about, the tea party folks should be interested in this issue because the way campaigns are financed causes wasteful government spending. i'll tell you, i sympathize with the tea party objectives, government seems big, it seems wasteful, it seems loaded, it seems ineffective, there's wasteful spending, projects that shouldn't be funded. a lot of that has to do with the way campaigns are financed. the next one is the threat this is a big one it's one i kind of mentioned before, the threat of negative campaign ads causes elected officials to avoid important and controversial issues. now, i don't care if you're a republican or a democrat if you're a republican, you have

risk in your primary elections. for big party coming in and trying to trash you personally. if you're a democrat you have more risk coming in in general elections. so it doesn't matter what party you're in, doesn't matter whether you're conservative or liberal, thee the way campaigns are financed is causing our government to be wasteful. it's causing it to be ineffective. i think that needs to be improved. another problem that i mention -- and i mentioned this earlier foreign money is coming into campaigns now. do you want to see foreigners, do you want to see folks from russia, from china, from any country besides the united states having influence on our elections? and now the money, the amount of money coming into elections continues to grow election by election. we had 6.2 -- we had $6.2 million in -- $6.2 million in 010 versus $3 billion in 2020,ic

i've got a million billion mixed up there. sorry about that. elected officials respond more to wealthy doe fars -- donors than they do to nonwealthy donors. simply a matter of access. someone gives you money, they're more likely to have access. that means you're more likely to be sympathetic to their legislative goals. judicial races are getting more expensive and tainted as well. do you want to have a judge in a case that you may be bringing to court get his seat or her seat because of the way the campaign finance trashed their opponent? i don't think so. and in general, people have become very cynical about government because of the negative advertising. people lose faith in our government. to have the greatest country in the world, to have the things that this country has accomplished, the innovation, the science, the freedoms that

we've established throughout the world and how people, cynical about -- and have people cynical about our government buzz of campaign financing is more than a tragedy. campaign spending is a zero-sum game. let me tell you what i mean by that. consider that you're in a meeting, you've got one hour and you've got 12 people. everyone has five minutes to speak. now, what if somebody takes 10 minutes? well, then somebody else is going to lose out. so campaign spending, campaign speak is like that too. people in this country are only willing to listen to a certain amount of campaign rhetoric. after that point they turn off their minds, they don't want to hear anymore. the folks with the biggest money, they get out there they fill the airwaves they fill your mailboxes, they have people knock at your doors. pretty soon you don't want to hear anymore. so the guy with the less money is losing freedom of speech. so i think it's a freedom of speech issue. so those are some of the issues

i have. with p.a.c.'s and super-pacs and other moneys, campaigns will no longer be controlled by the candidate. p.a.c.'s and superp.a.c.'s could have five times more money than the candidate himself or herself so they're controlling all the levers in the campaign. those are some of the issues i think are caused by the excessive spending in our campaigns and right now i'd like to again yield to walter and take up the case here. mr. jones: thank you, mr. mcnerney. i appreciate listening to you and it reminds me of a conversation i had on the floor of the house last week. as you know, i've been here 20 years. i came in with newt gingrich, bill clinton was president, we did some good things for the american people. i'm kind of an older man, to speak. and i vote my conscience up

here gets me in trouble. i voted twice against the speaker of the house, got me in trouble. i was sitting on the floor, this gentleman, i won't say where his name or where he's fro, i don't have permission to do that, but he came up to me and he said, walter he said, i'm probably -- he's 20 years younger than i am, i'm 72 years younger -- i'm 72 years old now. he said i'll probably be like you and never be a chair of ranking member of anything because i cannot to anything that would dampen or threaten my integrity. and i said, well, what do you mean? he said, in january i was told that i could be a subcommittee chairman but i'd have to raise $300,000. the point that you're trying to make tonight, and you're doing a good job, and i try to say with the john sarbanes bill, h.r. 20 i hope people look that up, as well as your resolution is that

this oftentimes, i'll say both parties, we have people in leadership that say, you have to raise x amount of dollars if you want to be a chairman and what happens to that person in eastern north carolina where i'm from who makes $35,000 or $40,000 a year that can't buy influence in washington? that's what you're trying to do tonight. that's why i wanted to be with you and admire you for taking the floor tonight. where are their spokesmen? we are the people's house and all of a sudden everything is about money, winning re-elections with money, big money, and the average citizen is beginning to be turned off by the fact that they don't have much influence. that's why what you're doing tonight is very special. i was thinking to the gentleman that said to me, i'll be like you, walter jones, i'll probably

never be a chairman or ranking member because you're trying to keep your integrity in place. well if we had a system that you're proposing and john sarbanes are proposing that would have a system for those who don't want to be bought and paid for by special interests, they would have an alternative by raising their money in the state and in the district and they would be rewarded for raising their money in that state. then there would be, their allegiance would be to the state and the district. so therefore, again, i'm going to stay a few more minutes but i want to compliment you on what you're doing tonight. i yield back my time. mr. mcnerney: thank you, walter. i don't know of anyone who has more integrity in that institution than you do, walter, i'm honored that you'd come down here and talk with me tonight about this issue. the american people, as far as i can tell, are clearly in favor of reducing campaign money, campaign spending.

i have some gal up poll numbers here taken by "the huffington post" through november 7, through november 9 2014. that was during the last election or right after the last election. first question would you support or oppose amending the constitution to give congress more power to create restrictions on campaign spending? in favor of that was 53%. opposed is 23%. and not sure is 22%. a very strong majority in favor of a constitutional amendment like i'm going to discuss in a little while. the second question, do you think limiting contributions to political campaigns helps -- helps prevent corruption in politics or does it have no impact on corruption? so the question is will corruption be curtailed by limiting campaign spending? the answer it helps prevent corruption 52%. no impact on corruption, 28%.

not sure, 20%. so again, people feel strongly about this issue. the last question i'll read, which of the following statements do you agree with many? elections are generally won by the candidate who raises the most money. the answer is 59% of americans believe that. and 18% don't believe that and 23% are unsure. i think this is a strong issue that we should be talking about. so how do we move forward? well unfortunately, the supreme court appears to have a strong bias toward more money in politics and has consistently issued rulings to that effect. so the supreme court even sought out, they even asked for the infamous citizens united case to be brought forward to them and then ultimately they ruled that corporations have the same rights of free speech as individual citizens do, as individual people do and the

meaning of that decision is that corporations can use their treasuries, they can use their treasuries to campaign, to finance campaigns. i can't think of anything more corrosive or disruptive to our democracy than that. the system was already bad before the citizens united degrees, but this thing made it much -- united decision, but this thing made it much worse. unfortunately, the citizens united decision is one of a series of decisions that allow more and more money into politics. i truly believe that this is a threat to our cherished democratic and republican institutions. but this trend is not confined to the supreme court. earlier this year, the republican controlled senate, in concurrence with the republican controlled house of representatives, passed legislation that increased the total individuals contributing

to political parties by a factor of 10. going from 35,000 to over delsh going from $35,000 to over $300,000. so what can we do about it? the good news, there's really a number of very good ideas that have been proposed and i think it's important for us to go over some of those ideas. my friend walter jones has mentioned john sarbanes' idea and i'll go into that in a little bit of detail. but there's others and i think it's important that the american people be aware of some of these proposals out there. what they might offer. and let them decide. let the american people decide. do they want to see a legislative approach like john sarbanes'? a great approach, i support it. or a constitutional amendment like mine an others that i'll bring up as we go forward tonight. these proposals all have merit. they're all worth studying and thinking about. and i would be happy to support any of the ones i'm going to talk about this evening and

consider other ones that may not have been brought forward yet. so the proposals, again, fall into two categories. legislative proposals and constitutional amendments. legislative proposals are a little ease wrer to enact. but they're subject to supreme court and lower court overturning. so you can work hard, you can get it passed and then have the supreme court or some other court overturn it. and then in the constitutional amendments there's a very high bar. very difficult to get a constitutional amendment passed, and it should be. you don't want people to just willy nily passing amendments to change the constitution. it requires a 2/3 vote in the house of representatives, a 2/3 vote in the senate and three quarters of the state legislatures throughout the country to pass that amendment for it to become part of the constitution. but once it becomes part of the

constitution, the courts can't touch it. they can interpret it, but they can't overturn it. so the -- legislation i'd like to talk about, some of my colleagues were going to be here tonight couldn't because of a change of schedule but i think one of the important approaches mostly championed by chris van hollen of maryland is the disclosure and transparency approach that people that donate ought to be disclosed quickly and broadly so that people know where money is coming from. that's a very important idea. government by the people. john sarbanes' approach, which i will talk about in ate little while. and there's also legislation that would create public finance , and i think that's a very good approach too. the constitutional amendments there's one by donna edwards that overturns citizens united there's one by ted deutch, a

colleague of mine from florida. by the way, donna edwards is from maryland. ted deutch from florida would basically allow congress to enact laws on campaign funding that could not be overturned by the supreme court. i think that's a good approach. i support that, in theory, it's got a beauty to it. then there's my approach which basically would eliminate p.a.c.'s and do over things. i'd like to talk in some detail about my resolution now and we'll get up the board to talk about it. . this is house joint resolution 31 and proposed constitutional amendment and as you can see, it has four parts. the first part i think is probably the most important and it says that money that comes into political election campaigns to support or oppose a

candidate for office can only come from individual citizens and only go to the campaign controlled by the candidates or from a system of public election financing. what does that mean? when money comes in, it can only go -- come from individual citizens and can't come from corporations or any other sources. it comes from individual citizens and it can only go to the campaign controlled by the candidate. that means it captain go to political action committees, superpacs or dark money. the only money that can influence elections directly or indirectly, it has to come from individual citizens and om to the candidate that the campaign is controlled by the capped. that is a very strong requirement and the very

strongest requirement out there. the second measure is similar to the first, but applying to -- and by the way, the first requirement applies to elections for individual candidates at all levels of government from the president on down, to the congress, senate, state governments, city governments and so on. the second requirement, money to supporters who oppose a state ballot initiative to change a state constitution for other purposes can only come from individuals who are able to vote for the measure or from the system of public election financing. that is important. you have ballot initiatives -- in my home state of california, you see millions of dollars coming in from out of state. why would someone from out of state influence a ballot and

that is wrong. the third requirement and congress, the states and the local jurisdictions must establish limits that an individual can contribute to any one election campaign, including limits on the amount a candidate may contribute to his or her own campaign. now, for that particular requirement, we already have that in the u.s. house and u.s. senate the limit is $2,700 per election. every time your voters can vote individuals can contribute $2,700. the primary election and general election in the house of representatives, electrics are every two years so you can collect an amount of $5,400.

if you collect it before the primary and you lose the primary, you have to give back the money that was generated that was donated for the general election and give $2,700 to the donors that gave that to you. and also it's important that it requires governments to limit the amount that a candidate can spend on their own campaign. some of our candidates are extremely wealthy. they have millions or hundreds of millions or more and buy their seat in congress and this would limit that. that is very, very important. and the last is the more controversial of the four, but it says that the total of contributions that to a candidate's campaign for individuals cannot be greater

from individuals who can vote for the candidate. what that would mean, money coming from outside of your congressional district, can't exceed money that comes from inside your district. if you are a congressional candidate or a senator. wouldn't affect the presidential race as much because everybody is in the president's district but it would affect local districts as well. with that, that wraps up the discussion of my proposed constitutional amendment. i want to talk a little bit about john sarbanes' bill and it's a fine bill and not a constitutional amendment. but what it does is give you a tax credit for money you can contribute to a campaign. if you can contribute $50 to a campaign you get a tax credit,

$50, which means money back in your income tax return. but it matches that contribution by 6-1. so you will end up giving the candidate quite a bit more than you are contributing and it's a good measure, a good proposal. and will even out the effective measure of p.a.c.'s and i find myself supporting that. my friend, representative deutsche has a couple of them, one is called democracy for all and hjress 2 and creates funding limits and what it does is allow congress to limit -- to enact laws that will be enforceable and not overturned by the

supreme court. we have van hollen in the 114th congress, h.r. 430 and what this does is requires disclosure so when campaign contributions are made, we can determine who made those contributions. -- very important and it would make a big difference and we have a number of proposals to create public financing. my colleague john yarmouth, had one in the 113th congress and 114th congress, david price has h.r. 424, which is establishing a system of public financing. these are all good. i think i would be support i have of these kinds of prompse. the american public needs to be protected. i think our cherished democratic

and republican institutions are a threat here whether it is because candidates are bombarded by negative ads whether candidates are influenced by big donors, or whether it's because more and more money are coming into these elections every cycle. there is a lot of reasons why we need to look at campaign financing and select one of these approaches and go with it and change to the system that does respond to the american public. with that, mr. speaker, i'm going to yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. gentleman have a motion? mr. mcnerney: i move that the

house does now adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is now on the motion to adjourn. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is adopted. accordingly the house stands adjourned until 10:00 a.m. tomorrow for morning hour debate. >> the house passed a short-term highway funding bill to keep mass transit projects funded for another two months. the money comes from the gas tax, and 18 separate gallon tax that has not changed since 1993.

the house also debated a number of bills dealing with space weather, and science programs. they were all approved by voice vote. house returns at 10:00 a.m. eastern. >> federal highway funding expires at the end of the month. congress is working on a short-term extension to try and bridge the gap and keep laying. let's start with background -- how was the current program funded and why is congress facing its deadline at the end of the month? >> the traditional source for transportation funding in washington is collected from the gas tax, $.18 per gallon. it hasn't been raised since 1983 and cars are becoming more fuel-efficient and people are driving less.

the gas taxes and bringing in as much revenue as it has historically. there is a $13 million gap right now between how much the gas tax brings and of how much the government spends on transportation. advocates say that what we are spending now is barely enough to maintain the system we have southern has to be some sort of increase. there is disagreement about how that should be paid for and there has been resistance to the idea of raising the gas tax. >> by the deadline now? -- why the deadline now? >> that they are doing now is an extension of an extension. it was passed in 2012 and was supposed to expire last summer. they pass an eight-month extension in july last year, and here we are a year later with another extension. >> the house and senate are considering this summer fix -- what happens if funding is not extended? >> the reason they are focusing

on the summer is because the transportation department says they have enough money to cover spending through the summer. that is how they arrived at that deadline. there have been talks of doing an extension to the end of the year to help construction season, but that would require $10 million and there is no consensus on how to pay for that. they stuck with the deadline. >> what is the status, then, of a long-term funding bill in the house and senate? >> congress has passed a transportation bill longer than two years, since 2005. there have been more than 30 extensions, close to 30, and transportation advocates are pretty unhappy. there was an amendment being discussed for the house version of this extension from democrats that would have said, prevented any extensions past september 30 that were not six years and limit.

they would say that would give states uncertainty as they plan long-term. >> what is the white house's take on it? >> the white house has proposed a six year bill that could be paid for with repatriation. they are focusing on taxing overseas revenues, and using that money to replenish the highway trust fund. there is some movement in that direction and some republicans have supported it that the party disagrees on the way to the taxes, whether participation should be mandatory or voluntary, and also there is discussion that doing it as a tax holiday would lose more than it would bring. it is not a permanent solution. >> you also wrote about comments that the former secretary of transportation made about how crazy it was to not raise the

gas tax. why is it not an option? >> the political reality is that it is very hard to get a tax increase through this congress, even -- didn't come out in that position after he left office because the obama administration says they are posed to a gas tax increase. >> i want to touch briefly on a tweet you sent out about earl blumenauer. his district is portland oregon. he says he doesn't want to see any more short-term patches. what is happening here? >> is offering an amendment to the bill today that would ban any extension after this one. this expires in july and the deadline would be september 30, the end of the fiscal year. he would prevent any extensions that are not a six-year

long-term transportation bill that would end the cycle of extensions. >> does he have supporters behind him? >> he has supporters in the desire for a long-term bill, but i think there is a realism that the only thing they can get through right now is the extension. >> we will continue to fall you and watch your tweets. thanks for joining us. >> the house today past three to 7-35, a short-term highway spending bill to keep past transit projects funded for another two months. the house returns tomorrow to work on a bill to permanently extend the research and development tax credit that expired the end of last year. wash the house live here on c-span when members gavel back in at 10:00 a.m. eastern.

coming up tonight on c-span, a house committee examines ways to improve community policing. then, our road to the white house coverage continues with hillary clinton's remarks in iowa on the iraq and the. -- the economy. the house extends the highway transportation projects. now, the house judiciary committee looks into developing better policing strategies to strengthen relations between law enforcement and communities. members discussed the use of police body cameras in the appointment of independent prosecutors for cases involving allegations of police misconduct. witnesses include the sheriff of milwaukee county and the executive director of washington state's criminal justice training commission. this is free hours. -- this is three hours.

>> good morning. we welcome everyone to this morning's hearing on policing strategy for the 21st century. i will begin by recognizing myself for an opening statement. policing is an inherently dangerous job. our law enforcement officers deserve our gratitude for the work they do on a daily basis to make sure our states, our cities and the most helpless in our communities are protected and those who commit crimes are brought to justice. i am concerned that force is used to frequently.

there is increasing unrest in our communities about policing. protests in ferguson, new york and baltimore with the outgrowth of the use of force stopping a suspect. although no charges were filed in two of those cases it is clear that there is disagreement about the actions of police. what started as peaceful protests have turned into rides and police reaction was brought into question. at the same time i am concerned about our law enforcement personnel. last week we learned to police officers were killed responding to a routine traffic stop in hattiesburg, mississippi, gunned down by a group of five men. this comes on the heels of a more widely known murders in new

york. it was reported that they were specifically targeted by a man looking to kelly police officer. while i refuse to consider the actions of police officers in ferguson and new york as justifying the responses that the fellow cities, it is clear we must find a that are way for police and citizens to interact both in everyday situations and when more difficult circumstances arise. we have a distinguished panel before us today with deep knowledge of police training tactics, and policies. we have long-standing leaders in the police community instructors responsible for police training, and those tasked with monitoring the police department that have not met the standards we require of them. i am hopeful that this will be a constructive and positive hearing that focuses on current rules and regulations in place the training our officers receive, and how we can train them better in order to

apprehend criminals while minimizing harm to innocent citizens. i am especially interested to hear what we can do to raise the level of trust among our police officers and citizens while still protecting both. policing will never be an easy or safe job but i believe we must do everything we can to ensure that our officers have the tools and training they need to protect themselves and our nation's and. i would also like to thank the gentleman from michigan for working with us so closely and i was also inspired by the gentlewoman from texas, this jackson lee, who has been speaking with me for some time about this issue. i want to wish her all of you that the purpose of this hearing and the ongoing efforts of this community is to make sure that

we are doing everything possible to address the problems that have arisen in recent months to make sure our communities are safe, our citizens are protected, and that we will not rest until we make progress in those regards. it is my pleasure to recognize the ranking member, mr. conyers. rep. conyers: thank you, mr. chairman. members of the committee, to our distinguished witnesses and to those who have come to this hearing, law enforcement accountability is an issue that is very topical, given current events. but also one that has long been a concern of mine and many other members. as a member of congress, i stood on the streets of detroit with able mourn, an appeal for calm

while my city burned around me in 1967. thinking back, there was a race riot in detroit in 1943. on too many occasions i have met with the grieving relatives of those who have lost their lives at the hands of police, but i have also met with the families of police officers who lost their lives in the line of duty. some of these officers were killed by violent criminals, while other officers were inadvertently killed by their colleagues, or some of their colleagues who could only see the color of their skin. i have cochaired a town hall meetings with fellow members of

congress and others across this nation in response to policing incidents in chicago miami, new york, and los angeles. at these meetings, we try to help the residents of these cities make sense of how to respond to their collective sense of loss and to understand the role of the federal government in protecting their civil rights. i proposed numerous bills to both help protect the safety of police officers and to provide a system of accountability for law enforcement, for example i worked with attorney general john ashcroft at the invitation of president george bush to

craft federal legislation intended to useend use of racial profiling and police practices which is currently pending in this committee as house resolution 1933. next month, i plan to introduce comprehensive legislation dealing with accreditation, data collection, and policing practices. fortunately, our committee has generally approached the issue of policing with a strong, bipartisan spirit. we have enjoyed success in passing reform legislation -- notably, the passage of the pattern and practice enforcement statute which was codified in title 42

of the united states code in 1994. we twice passed the traffic stops statistics study act under the chairmanship of chairman henry hyde. by scheduling today's hearing chairman goodlatte continues this legacy and his commended for his willingness to face a difficult issue that has divided communities around the united states. any discussion of law enforcement accountability must be premised on the recognition of the dangerous and difficult job that all police officers perform. the vast majority of police officers perform their jobs professionally and without bias,

book like any profession -- but like any profession, there are those who make it difficult for the rest to serve their communities. at the outset, i must agree with professor alonzo patterson when he says that the complex and confounding questions raised by ferguson baltimore, and other cities go well beyond the issues of racism in violent police behavior. what occurred in those cities clearly resulted from a vicious tangle of concentrated poverty and culturally disenfranchised youth, as well as accountabi lity cultures of law enforcement disconnected from their communities that is lacking appropriate standards and

oversight. yesterday, president obama was in camden, new jersey to highlight his administration cost initiative to address the challenges of policing in our inner cities. while i support the president's efforts and look forward to working with him to implement his programs, there is no substitute for concrete performance standards for state and local law enforcement agencies who received billions of dollars each year in federal funding. for reform focused police executives many of the current administrative programs are merely icing on the cake, and probably will not reach many chronically underperforming or

troubled departments. the entire purpose of section 14141 was to add a piece to federal enforcement that was absent in the grantmaking process. although pattern and practice enforcement has been affected in cases of individual departments it is far too resource heavy to reach across the more than 17,000 police departments in our country. there must be another way, and i hope that today we can talk about the combination of federal , state, and local measures that are essential to support necessary changes in policing culture. the national outcry that arose after michael brown's death is nothing new to those who are

students of policing practices. from the sean bell, avner louima and army duty aloe incidents, to the eddie maclin shooting in miami, to the timothy thomas in cincinnati, and the donovan jackson beating in englewood, the response is nearly always the same. national outcry followed by well-intentioned programs that never quite get to the heart of the matter. how to risk -- out of respect for all who have lost their lives over the last nine months, both law enforcement and civilians, i hope that we can dedicate ourselves to engaging the difficult issues to make

lasting change in our community. i think the chairman. rep. goodlatte: thank you, and without objection, all opening statements will be made a part of the record. we welcome our distinguished panel of witnesses, and if you would all please rise, i will begin by swearing human. -- swearing you in. do each of you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god? put the record reflect that the witnesses responded in the affirmative. sheriff david a clarke has served in wisconsin since march two thousand two, when he was appointed by scott mccallum, elected in november 2002, . he was a bachelor's degree in

criminal justice management from concordia university, a masters in security studies from the postgraduate school, and has completed various executive education programs with the fbi and at harvard university's john f. kennedy school of government. matthew barge is the vice president and deputy director of the police assessment resource center. among his areas of expertise are use of force policies, officer training, and counseling law enforcement agencies to achieve efficient, constitutional policing. he graduated summa cum laude from georgetown university and holds a j.d. from new york university. susahn rahr is executive director of the criminal justice training division, a position she has held since 2012.

he served as the first female sheriff in king county washington. she received a bachelor's degree from washington state university and currently serves as a member of president obama's task force on 21st century policing. mr. hartley is the executive director on the accreditation of law-enforcement agencies. he began his career with the greensboro, north carolina police department in 1989 and served in a number of positions within the agency before becoming assistant chief of police. prior to joining, he worked for the virginia department of criminal justice services, where he led the department's public policy planning and research division. he holds a bachelor's in criminal justice from appalachian state university and a masters in public affairs from unc at greensboro. professor deborah ramirez

teaches criminal justice at the northeastern university school of law in boston. much of her work focuses on strengthening partnerships between law enforcement and communities, which is integral to building trust and fair, effective policing. professor ramirez received a bachelor's degree at northwestern university and a j.d. from harvard law school. all of your written testimonies will be entered into the testimony in their entirety and i ask that each of you summarize their test -- summarize your testimony in five minutes or less. there is a timing light on your table. when the light switches from green to yellow, you have one minute to conclude your testimony. it works like a traffic light. when it is ready, it signals that your time has expired. sheriff clark, you may begin. mr. clarke: good morning, mr.

chair, and honorable members of the community of the judiciary. thank you for the opportunity to state my view, which is backed by 37 years of experience from ground level concerning police accountability, public safety, and the right thing for us to work on. since the events that led to riots in ferguson, misery, police use of force has become scrutinized nationally. use of force should be scrutinized, locally that is. it should be examined in terms of factual data and circumstances that led to the police action and not from the emotional foundation of catchy slogans like "hands up, don't shoot." let's leave that conduct for the public to engage in and not the mainstream media or elected officials who can't resist the opportunity to exploit the emotions of an uninformed or misinformed public, simply for political gain. we will no doubt hear a lot of

statistics thrown about today some distorted for a predetermined agenda. others are legitimate. in 2013, the u.s. department of justice under eric holder did a study in conjunction on the national institute of justice on traffic stop data. when you used controlled factors , any racial disparities are a to differences in offending. the studies show that black drivers violated speeding and traffic loss at a much greater rate than whites. that conclusion of the study led doj may be ugly to some but it is what the research found. the same studies show that three out of every four black drivers said that the police had a legitimate reason for stopping. the same is true for african-american males.

participation rates in violent crime explain the disparity of why so many black males are locked up in prison. black males are disproportionately involved in violent crime and it is predominantly perpetrated against other black people. it is not the result of a discriminatory criminal justice system. blacks make up 37 point 5% the prison population at the state and federal level. if we release those convicted on drug charges alone, the percentage of black males in prison would drop to 37%, a mere one half of 1%. so much for the myth of black lives filling our prisons. not to mention that illegal drug use is discouraged in the black community and leads to a great deal of the violence that occurs. the police use of force data tells a different story than the false narrative propagated by cop -- or is in the liberal mainstream media. a recent study showed this

breakdown. 61%, or 915 people who die from this use of force were white males, well 32% 481, were black males. it is a myth that police kill black males andin greater numbers. black on black crime is the elephant in the room. we could talk about police use of force but it doesn't start with transforming the police profession. it starts by asking why we need so much assertive policing in the american ghetto. our police officers perfect? not by any stretch of the imagination stopped our police agencies perfect? not even close. but we are the best our communities have to offer. we should be transforming black underclass subculture behavior, addressing the behavior of people who have no respect for authority who tried to disarm

the police, who flee the police, and to engage another flawed lifestyle choices.bashing the police is the low hanging fruit . it is easier to talk about the rear killing of a black male because it can be exploited for political advantage. the police are easier to throw overboard because they can't fight back politically. this is counterproductive and will lead to police pulling back in high crime areas where law-abiding black people live. black people will be the losers and all of this as violent crime rates skyrocket. this means more black victims. a man i admire said this about policing -- "if people are told they are under arrest and refused to come with the police and cannot be forcibly taken into custody, we do not have the rule of law when the law is downgraded to suggest that no one has the power to enforce." for people who have never tried

to take into custody someone resisting arrest, to sit back in the safety and comfort of their own home and second-guess people who face the dangers inherent in that process for both the officer and the person under arrest, is yet another example of the irresponsible self-indulgence of our time. thank you. rep. goodlatte: thank you sheriff clark. mr. hartley: members of the committee, on behalf of the commission on accreditation for law enforcement agencies, thank you for this invitation today for ideas on policing strategies. as a part of this discussion, i think it is important to recognize that every year, over one million police officers

across 18,000 agencies make 40 million public contacts, where they encounter incredibly insensitive and emotional situation. these interactions result in millions of arrests annually and police use force or the threat of force 1.4% of the time, using mostly low-level application. statistically, this is a stalling indication to the adherence of the democratic principles, however, this can only occur where there are trusting relationships between the community and the police. recently, the country has observed situations where this confidence has eroded. although there is no single solution we provide a strategy that institutionalizes test practices to the application of policing standards. the model promotes community competence across all levels of participating agencies, about 5%

of law enforcement agencies or dissipate, -- agencies participate. given this level of penetration the standard service is a powerful tool to influence police policy and practice. these standards remain relevant to a dynamic process in public safety industry, including practitioners, judicial officials, and other subject matter experts. additionally the process is considering information from special interest groups on topics such as victims right and residual justice. we recently responded to the president's task force, and recent doj investigations. all this with a focus on creating serviceable -- that

balance the need for safety and security with constitutionally protected rights and freedoms. the process of accreditation also focuses on intended outcome. this is accomplished through a sophisticated system of leaking agency policy standards and ensuring practices complement organizational directives. it is reinforced through data collection on-site observation agency reported, and public condition hearings. as examples of the standards, participating organizations must develop effective compliance procedures. this must include investigations of all complaints, including those of an anonymous nature. the procedures must establish timelines for notifications and result in postings of summary data for public consumption. from an operational perspective, integrity in criminal investigation teachers is included in the accreditation process. this involves accountability,

collection, maintenance, and presentation of evidence. policies related to interviews lineups must be developed. we require agencies to develop community involvement practices to establish liaisons with community organizations, the involvement of community members, and publicizing agency objectives. although these are only a few outcomes, it demonstrates how standards address core issues impacting community competence while supporting police as an institution. as an association, we support reasonable association to improve public safety. we support the concept of voluntary participation and accreditation to propose productive relationships. we support incentives and agencies pursuing accreditation and we advocate for stronger

interaction with other governmental and nongovernmental entities or standard development. we value approaches that gradually and systematically transition public safety agencies to programming with reasonable implementation timelines and technical assistance. the more than 1000 public agencies and rolled -- agencies and rolled have demonstrated professional excellence. i would encourage lawmakers to support accreditation as an important tool for a the professional delivery of police services as part of 21st century policing strategies. thank you, mr. chairman. rep. goodlatte: thank you, mr. hartley. ms. rahr? ms. rarh: it is my honor to testify today. i would like you to know a little bit about my testimony. i started policing in 1979 and

for the next 33 years i had the privilege of serving my community and assignment such as patrol, undercover narcotics and gave units. i spent a great deal of time working with police conduct cases and trading. when i retired as the elected sheriff in 2012, i have the good fortune of coming to our state's police academy, where we trade all law enforcement officers in the state of washington. i learned a great deal from those recruits. as we embark on this dialogue today, it is critically important that we consider a wide range of factors that affect the environment in which police operate and that we consider strategies most likely to increase public trust and improve public safety. i would like to highlight to these major factors. to add to the context, we have a tendency to talk about the bad apples. i would like to talk about the barrel and the people who make the barrel. the first factor is the absence of a national coherent policing.

we have 18,000 individual police departments, each with a unique culture and reflecting the policies and practices that are a product of those 18,000 local governments. there is a diverse range of values and expectations. agency size ranges from one officers to more than 34,000. about half of those 18,000 agencies have 10 officers were less. all these departments operate in one of our 50 states, each with a unique system of justice that dictates how criminal cases are initiated, processed, and adjudicated. there are mandates for hiring and training but most states exert limited control over their local law enforcement. outside of distribution and withholding federal funds the influence of the federal government on local policing is also limited. the bottom line is there is no single description of the police culture and practice. the challenges faced by police

departments vary widely and the control and oversight of our police is exclusively local. the second major factor to consider is that police departments do not operate independently. in most cities, police chiefs are hired or fired by the mayor or another elected municipal executive. most sheriffs are elected by the voters that they are sworn to protect and serve. when police exert control over citizens, they do so at the behest of an official elected by the people. crime control strategies don't emerge in isolation nor do decisions about police accountability. those decisions are made by independently elected offices and prosecutors. the scrutiny begins and ends with the police department with little examination of those factors outside the agency that influence priorities and practices. the importance of a broader focus of inquiry was illustrated in the recent examination of the government practices in the city

of ferguson. the findings serve as a powerful example of the influence of governing forces outside of the police department itself. ideas for improving policing in the 21st century need to consider both of these major factors. most changes in policies and procedures must be adopted by local government in order to be implemented. for example, the requirement to use body worn cameras must consider local and state laws related to the gathering management, and disclosure of data, as well as local and state laws protecting individual privacy. these changes will take time require a great deal of cooperation, and in some cases the barriers may be insurmountable. there are, however, meaningful steps that can be taken at various levels of government without changing laws. these steps will improve the culture of policing and expand police training in ways that contribute to increased public trust and improve safety. the recommendations of the

president's task force contain a full range of action that is can be implemented immediately and some that are more long-term strategies. one of the areas of focus contained in the recommendations relate to the police training. i sent to you a copy of an academic report that i co-authored. it was published by the kennedy school at harvard and published by the national institute of justice. this paper expounds on the importance of addressing the leadership culture in police departments and suggests a path toward improving culture through effective training. i hope these ideas will be beneficial as this committee explores ways to improve policing in the 21st century. thank you very much. mr. goodlatte: thank you, ms. rahr. mr. barge: distinguished members of the committee. my name is matthew barge, vice president and deputy director of the police assessment resource center. for 14 years park has provided independent counsel to upward of

30 police agencies and communities, helping them solve problems and incorporate best practices on effective safe and constitutional policing. i want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. some have wondered whether local police agencies are capable of transforming or repairing trust of the communities they serve. i'm here to tell you that police departments can change and are changing. real reform is difficult and messy work, but agencies can put in place the systems, the policy, and culture necessary to self-manage the risk of unconstitutional policing and enhance community confidence. some agencies affirmatively seek reform. the voluntary implementation of recommendations in portland, oregon, for example, led to significant decreases in use of force and complaints about police. without increases in crime or officer injury. however, local law enforcement is not always good as self-identifying problems. i work daily with police

officers who represent public service at its most selfless and laudable. but the departments where they work often resemble what might happen if a stereotypical department of motor vehicles ran the u.s. military. inefficient, inept bureaucracy. this produces a culture often resistant to new approaches, transparency, and real accountability. where issues fester, the u.s. department of justice may exercise the authority granted by this body to conduct an investigation into alleged patterns of misconduct where allegations are substantiated, a federal court overseeing a consent degree may result. the process is akin to emergency open heart surgery for police departments. it addresses serious systemic issues and is used collectively and -- selectively and critical moments. currently d.o.j.s enforce 10 consent degrees. addressing the seattle police department where i serve as the deputy.

regardless of how reform is initiated, the bedrock of policing in the 21st century must be a strong, responsive relationship between the nation's police departments and the communities they serve. to this end, a common playbook specific real world reforms is emerging for promoting public and officer safety, efficiency constitutional rights, and public trust. first, officers need more specific guidelines on using force in the real world. the bearer often beg rarmentse of courts in this area may work for judges in the comforts of their courtrooms, but officers in communities need clear and more pragmatic rules. second, departments need internal mechanisms for critical self-analysis. for instance, a standard d.o.j. consent degree reform is the creation of a dedicated board for critically evaluating all uses of force so a department can continually update policy and procedure and training in light of real world lessons learned. likewise, permanent civilian oversight mechanisms can give communities a real time check

and important say in how policing is conducted. third, too many agencies have no idea what their officers are doing. if data exists on use of force or stop activity, it's often inaccurate, inaccessible, or ignored. policing in the 21st century needs to take full advantage of the information systems that we take for granted, and many other areas of public and private life. fourth, in the cities where we work, we continually hear from individuals that the weights and burdens of law enforcement are not equally shared and there is some empirical evidence to support that proposition. the challenge for police departments is to find ways of addressing an issue that at minimum is deeply affecting the police community relationship. forward thinking departments are providing officers with training on minimizing the effects of implicit bias and person-based decision making. modern american policing faces an era of unparalleled challenges with too many communities viewing the police

as them rather than us. the challenge of law enforcement agencies must embrace is to implement the kinds of commonsense steps that might enhance accountability and enhance public trust. with that i thank you again for the opportunity to be here. mr. goodlatte: thank you, mr. barge. ms. ramirez, welcome. ms. ramirez: thank you, chairman goodlatte, ranking member conyers, and the house committee on the judiciary. the police killing of michael brown and eric garner in july and august of 2014, have triggered protests not only in the cities in which those killings occurred, but also throughout this country. since those shootings there have been others. freddie gray in baltimore and walter scott in south carolina. it's plain to me and i expect to all of you today here, that

these protests are not just about the unwillingness to prosecute all but one of those officers nor these shootings -- for these shootings, but about a long, simmering resentment in the african-american and latino communities that the criminal law applies differently to them than it does to white americans. that the police too often stop and frisk latino and african-american youths with impunity and without reasonable articulable suspicions. that automobiles driven by african-americans, especially in white neighborhoods, are too often stopped by police for driving while black. that the death of a black man at the hands of police is seen as more forgivable than the death of a white man. the prosecutors are less willing to see hispanic and

african-american defendants as candidates for rehabilitation who deserve and need a break and therefore they are more willing to press for mandatory sentences against them. and that more black men, age 18 to 21, are in prison or in jail than in college. we can and should debate how accurate the statistical studies are and how accurate these perceptions are. and whether they are more accurate in some states and municipalities than in others. but i think we can agree that these perceptions are accurate more often and in too many places than we would want them to be. and that the perception itself is a reason for great concern because beyond the statistical studies we cannot be one nation

if a significant percentage of our community members believe they are receiving an inferior quality of justice or no justice at all. the protests have provided an impetus for change, but they can't produce change by themselves. we need to ensure that these protests are different from previous protests. and that they don't merely cry out for justice, but actually lead to more justice. to accomplish that we need a road map for change. and we need to press our leaders in congress and elsewhere to follow that road map and travel to a place where justice is more and fairer. to move past these tragedies, we need to do some concrete things. first, we need to strengthen police community relations by

creating community policing models, focused on the development of partnerships between police organizations and the communities they serve. how? new infrastructure and architecture. infrastructure and architecture that might provide the coherence we need and the coherence we need to bring to this enterprise. we need to create in every state federally funded community policing institutes dedicated to creating the tools, templates, training, and best practices for bringing the police and the community members to the table for discussion on how best to keep their communities safe and strong. and we need to increase police transparency by letting the public know what the police are doing. and that can only occur when

state and local police departments are required to keep data regarding police stops, searches, and shootings, and to record the rate of persons stopped, searched, or shot. why? because you can't possibly manage what you don't measure. transparency also means requiring police to install cruiser cameras, to wear body cameras, and to monitor police discretions to turn those cameras off. my last point is about accountability. which means that allegations of police misconduct or situations in which a police officer shoots a civilian should be handled by an independent inspector general. the investigation and prosecutorial decision should not rest in the hands of a

district attorney dependent on that police department for its criminal investigations, past and future. so we need police community partnerships, a state institute to support them, cameras, data collection, and an independent inspector general to investigate police misconduct. the roadmap doesn't end here today at this table. the next part is the most difficult. how do we implement it? the system is broken. we need democrats and republicans to come together to craft a roadmap to justice and figure out how to fund and implement it. only then can we create a stronger community. >> i will begin the questioning and start with you, sheriff clark.