george: it is about $37.5 what is iny close to the senate bill. you write about what is in the bill in terms of the environment. what will we see in terms of the amendments? >> the real fights will be less overspending. more over provisions that republicans added. rolling back some of the environment and energy policies supported by the obama administration. have cutases, they

funding for clean renewable programs. they added writers to bar the administration from spending money on policies they do not support. rule is a controversial canrding how the epa regulate bodies of water. the tweet youat posted. offering amendments that deal with the iran nuclear deal. congressman trying to do? >> we did see it in the senate. it is an attempt by republicans to discredit or weekend the iranian nuclear deal that the administration made with iran a limit theirck, to

nuclear production in exchange for sanctions. -- lifting sanctions. bar thes would do was u.s. from entering into contracts and other agreements with iran as a result of the deal. one of the main issues being the u.s. is about to buy what is called heavywater from iran, a component used in nuclear reactors. republicans want to block that. republicans see it as a way to poke at the deal and question the deal. >> a different aspect, the fornia drought. there will be republican language in the bill trying to redirect water in the state to areas hard-hit. been how to do

that without starting water wars, and while protecting the environment. thedemocratic criticism of republican approach has been it onisdderdo enough to c the endangered species act. republicans argue waters a precious commodity and they need to make this happen fast. think we will see this play out on the bill. kevin mccarthy is from the central valley. involved in some of these efforts. .hat might he offer will he push it in one direction or the other? x what other amendments should be keeping our eyes open for?

ask flint michigan, there is a major water crisis with lead being found in the water. learned that is not going to come up on this bill. firerats might hold their for future spending bill. the real fights are over environmental policies. a democrat is going to offer an amendment that would restore funding republicans tried to cut. also, the army corps of engineers that attracts a lot of local amendments. i think you will see some river restoration projects, ways to get more money , is there a way to get there

faster? amendments like that. come upditionally have on this bill a lot. it is questionable whether those will pass. reluctant to direct money toward specific projects in an era where there's a ban on earmarks. >> you will keep following you. here is your twitter handle. you are reporting. thank you. >> thank you, good to be here. >> now a discussion on tsa wait times. thengressman, a member of committee was a guest on washington journal. this is 40 minutes. table,ack at our congressman john mica to talk

about airport security and long wait lines. breaking overnight, the tsa's head of security in the wake of the long lines. the agency's assistant administrator for security operations has been reassigned to a new position. what is your reaction? we have heard several hearings on the tsa performance. we are in the oversight is not in my subcommittee. it was revealed this particular individual had received $80,000 in a year and a subsequent month of 90,000 in bonuses, plus $180,000 salary. he was at home with the meltdown. know, it has been a disaster out there in particular the big airport here at one of the problems is what was created by a media revelation of a 95%

last fall, failure then you have the new administrator come and ordering to crack down, we will bring in and no moreoroughly exceptions, that brought the lines. we had other tsa folks testify and there was not a plan b. getting huge bonuses -- bonuses. actually make the line smoother. tweeting this out last night, tsa security chief receives 90,000 bonuses removed from this post. >> it is a charge put the hearing and you can see it was getting quite a bit of money.

he is only one of thousands of highly paid eurocrats and that is part of the problem in tsa. we have a cap of 45,000 screeners. these guys receive more bonus moneys in a year than every screener out on the line working. they only received a total of 6000 for the country. while republicans are shorting them or not getting the resources, i brought this little chart. every year, the last three years, the republican congress .as given more money to the tsa there is the evidence. we adjusted the fee. we set up a five dollars service theye and calculated that somewhat we thought it would

cost to run the system. we adjusted that. we have got airlines operating at the time to commit to that, but we did not anticipate some of the newer lines coming up, big ones. the size. as far as we adjusted that so the tsa's getting more fees several years ago. it is not a matter of resources but how you use them. big bonuses and you have thousands of people getting $100,000 salaries. studio, 45 miles, 4000 100employees making over thousand dollars a year.

then we have 13,000 more tsa people on top of that. we want to get into wasting money and that would take away from the rest of the program. in, thenistrator came , theygets the information have a 95% failure rate in detecting things that pose a threat. he saysguy comes in and he will crack down. he institutes the crackdown. b for tsao plan whistleblowers. they have at least 10 or 11% turnover every year.

the positions they have, in 4000 employees but only hired 373. 30% wash outhired, within a year. it is like trying to fill the bathtub. 2500 vacant positions. first, they cannot recruit them and you cannot train them. they cannot retain them. and they have trouble administering them. this is turning into a huge bureaucracy. has -- worked for the counter terrorism office. he says the tsa needs to be address hist how to

long wait lines. one thing tsa could do is dramatically lower the price of paychecks. only about 2 million people have signed up for the program. she says continue -- consider a $15 family summer pass. guest: israel does not charge .nything for their equivalent 99% of the people should be in pre-check. the system is not geared to go after the bad guys. down now we are cracking to a 99% of americans struggling to not pose any risk. and pre-check, they are now finding out more people. they chase national since we had our healing -- our hearing.

lines are longer than the regular lines. what you need is to get them out personnel business, and into the security business. what we face today, it is not a gun and a knife and people going through there. you have secured cap pick -- cockpit doors. today, if people on flight 93 was taking place, the passengers and the crusade today, they have done that with richard reid, they did that with the diaper bomber. the public is very alert. impossible and the things -- they concentrating do not vet and screen people who work in secure areas. there are tens of thousands of

them. we do not know who they are and do not have passport numbers or social security numbers. these are people working in secure areas. plane wase russian probably an inside job. that is where some of the threat is today. if you go after people who pose a risk and you do it in a sensible fashion, that is one of the things we need to concentrate on. collecting intelligence. the most disturbing thing at our hearing was whistleblowers told us the office of division and intelligence analysts -- run, poorlypoorly staffed, and not people with the credentials to be doing that with an important task. it is finding out who poses a risk, tracking them in making certain they do not get to the

gate. host: the associate press tweeting -- guest: yes, well, the only way you can take down an aircraft at that level would be catastrophic failure. more than likely, it is an explosion. there is a possibility it could be a lithium battery. this has been a longer flight. the russian airliner went down killing 200 people. you have got the possibility of a lithium battery, some type of .uel we crossed wires and it caused that explosion that came out of the sky. more than likely, this is the insider job from paris.

after those bombings, there are 80,000 people at work at the airport here that is the airport richard reid came out of and they have had security problems. the 80,000 people went in and they took 70-80 batches of have some they might connection or be radicalized. we do not know if they got them all. the investigations have to go is a kind ofthis issue we need to be dealing with. the other thing, they are not going to take down with a knife or a sharp object. they will use explosives. -based bomb,nitrate but one we cannot detect with the equipment out there. you can get the rest of these on the internet. put together these devices that can cause an explosion.

new serious threats we need to be dealing with. host: let's get to calls. in virginia, independent, good morning. caller: the first thing i want to say to everyone is thank you for c-span. this is a great opportunity. long-time listener and a first-time caller. i will try to set the record straight. if we could go back to the assistant administrator, mr. hogan, i want to set the record straight. i think, congressman, you should encourage your cohort to go back and have another conversation with mr. never chirp. things out.w i understand the bonuses are are and that -- but there circumstances i know on good authority why that bonus was received and it has a lot to do with what the administration had asked him to do and then

reassigned him at his own personal cost. that was a way to make him whole. this was not a flagrant over government spending. that gentlemanct had a number of years, some great institutional knowledge and was more than willing to do whatever the administration had asked to do, but he stood up and said a lot of the things you are asking are in fact going to make lines longer. doing i am sure he was the bidding when they found out the new administrator came in and the media had disclosed in 95% failure rate. he was told to do certain things and he did them. he happened to be in charge and as i said, he was only one of the people who may be part of the problem and maybe he was just doing their bidding. but again, a lot of bonuses for the higher-ups and almost

nothing for the guys on the line. like you haves knowledge of this, do you work for the tsa? caller: i do not. i would just ask you, congressman, if you would, please reconsider having a conversation with him. if there is culpability, it is at his level as well. exactly. he came in and met with me and sat on my sofa and told me he would institute a crackdown and he will screen everything. i said listen, you can do that but we need to be focusing the resources where the risk is. 99% of those people do not pose a risk. concerned about things that do not cause a threat.

all the stuff they confiscated have notle, they identified one terrorist. they have a behavior detection program. they hired 3000 300 people at the cost of about one third of $1 billion. the meantime, 17 known terrorists went through eight terror -- 24 times and were never detected. i have the reports of the failure. i only brought a few. these got one foot of back in my office. tsa has failed to do what it is set up to do. it is not to shake down little ladies and innocent americans to go after people who pose a risk. host: should he lose his job? guest: he just started so i am giving him a chance. i said, and i do not mean to be light about it, basically, he comes in and he is the administrator and he has an army

of people whose job depends on and -- he like it is, gives the order to crack down. there was no plan b. might have been his responsibility or someone's responsibility to make sure you prepare. but they cannot hire. they have vacancies and 30% washout once they get on board the first year. john in louisiana, a republican, good morning to you. force: i am a retired air -- i worked for delta before 9/11 and after. he brought up an interesting thing about the tsa. atent through security dulles international airport and i have in my flight day a cockpit door key fastened to a

key ring that is a bottle opener. can also open a beer can. the individual pulls it out and asks me what it was. i am old school. we used to call those a church key. i said that is a church key and he said, a religious artifact, he handed it back to me, and i went through the line. that is the type of people we were dealing with. the tsa. in that is from a position, i was the captain on the flight. i had my uniform on. that is what i observed going through the line. buts not rocket science thousands standing around is what the airline business called the tsa. congressman, you can respond to both. go ahead, adam? caller: since 9/11, the federal government could have just taken over not the security contract but increased their oversight and accountability.

instead, they created a bloated they cannot kill. they have created a monster and it is now upon to kill. we keep on dumping money into it here at guest: -- into it. and wei helped create it wanted to have the federal government to come in and set the rules and regulations are what failed in 9/11 is the ineral government put regulations for the private streamers. they never did. the federal government put restrictions and on what could be carried aboard like box cutters and the sharp razor. they never did. faa actually had a message in the flight directions for pilots andooperate with hijackers when they got to the swiss embassy, that is the kind of government failure that happened. we wanted to have the government

involved. i would restructure it. we do very well with a private sector. the federal government must set the protocol. they should do the audits. then they should direct the resources toward the risk. they do not inspect tsa employees let alone thousands. airports where they screen the employees, they do it in my hometown of orlando, miami, and atlanta. they found drugs and guns. those were not terrorist threats. they were dealing in drugs and guns. now they go through a metal detector. a person told me he says, it is crazy. once i get to a secure area, i have access to chemicals, access to all kinds of things you , hammers and screwdrivers and knives.

then you have access to the plane and you can do damage with a pair of pliers and sabotage a plane. we need to be vetting those people and spending our resources there. concern.e job is a we have got to find a better way to protect ourselves. that is with intelligence and connecting the dots here it every time we failed to connect the dots. host: victor, silver spring, maryland, republican. caller: good morning. i do not fly anymore. us beforeime i flew 9/11. i do not want to be treated like a potential middle eastern type going through all of this, wondering what in my bag will be considered contraband. will it be my dealer in or my shampoo? i do not know anymore and i do not feel like putting up with the hassle. host: is that a trend? well, most americans now

are treated that way and that is the way it should be. we should have some profiling, not on the basis of race and religion, but there are a lot of categories. people who have flown for years of thehould be about 90% population. who go after the people have been in some of these areas. whereave posed a risk terrorism stems. there are a whole host of people upknow keeping the watchlist is very important and they have not done as good a job. they failed internationally to negotiate -- first, we have very few tsa employees around the world at these airports where the flights are coming in. the ones that have been most at risk.

we failed at getting passenger record information and negotiations. it has gotten a little better and the europeans are giving us more. data about to know people coming in and if we know more about our passengers, which we have gotten, date of birth and other things, we can check better who it is. set one billion dollars for a transportation worker, we do not have a thumb, we do not have iris, that has been a disaster for transportation workers. until you know who the person is with a thumb print and iris, the credentials do not mean a lot. even in my backyard, they now use a thumb print and can tell you a lot about people. use their tickets multiple times and passed them on to other people with a simple mechanism. host: long security lines. what about actual airlines? airlines charge bags a hefty

unit --a hefty fee. guest: people do not know what they are talking about here. they put more bags in the belly of the aircraft. it is probably where they will send the explosives. we only have 123 airports with automatic baggage screening. some of those are totally automated and very good and some are partial p we have 450 airports now. which airport would you go through if you were a terrorist? the more bags you check through, they are being checked and we just do not put them on the plants. there are also being screened. you are just moving the problem down to another level and putting yourself at risk because the failure rate of the 300 airports doing the hand check gauge is absolutely terrible.

it is a serious problem. you do not want people to be putting something to get through to get to the belly of a plane and blow it up. host: usa today notes that the airport collected -- million in baggage fees. guest: airports chart you four dollars in -- a passenger fee to go through the airport. i introduced a bill some time ago to limit baggage fees. i did that to show the airlines are not afraid of the increasing of the baggage fees or the service. that is another one. also, the money is taken off the ticket so no funds are going into the airport improvement trust fund. that runs the system.

five dollars we have had for security fee. are fair fees because those who use it pay it. the general taxpayers should not be paying, necessarily. you try to set up a system that was fair. it has been forwarded by the airlines and others. host: ron, republican. caller: i have a suggestion. how about getting our military guys in there and the national guard and maybe even a veteran? guest: when the air traffic control system, they had a dispute, reagan had the military take it out. i think it would be good to have , those coming out of the military, get in.

in almosts that era every screener and everyone working in those positions at the airport from israel are coming out of the military. it is not a situation where we have an active military but the most important part is not just the screening. it is the intelligence, the intelligence, the intelligence. if they get past you, i can for have orderedd i tests done and i have ordered new tests done and i have been doing it longer than anyone in congress. my responsibility is tuesday one step ahead of them. that is what i want others to the resourcest where we are going after the biggest risk, not hassling everybody. host: karen in new jersey, democrat. you are coming in clear. caller: ok. my question is my son is traveling to paris in june to

in june-july, and how concerned should i be with the security of a flight from -- he is traveling british airways to paris and then is using air .rance to get to more sigh how concerned should i be with security? guest: you probably have a bigger chance of being killed in your kitchen at home, if you look at the death statistics. from the united states, you are relatively safe. of course, the latest incident from paris is troubling. but, again, the odds are very slim that they be involved in any kind of incident. all of this has caused more crackdown around the world. more intensified security, going

after people who pose a risk. they missed them in muscles. , they thought they couldn't penetrate the system, so they went to the counter and killed people in line. they are looking for new venues. have gone to cafes and stadiums. we have had the boston marathon, the times square bomber. square bomber, another great tsa success. he bought his ticket on the way phone, paide cell for it with cash, went through tsa and was brought off the airline by border control. but we can't let that happen. that is a failure of the system to get bad guys. host: jeff, an independent color. good morning. caller: from 2011-2015, i have

attempted to gain employment with the tsa. the application process is ridiculous. i went on for interviews, submitted my paperwork for times -- paperwork four times. host: what do these agents make for the tsa? guest: it is a fair wage. i forget the starting. , in that range? folkst think they reward enough at that level. i just gave $76,000 for all the bonuses of the tsa workers. i think if you pay them more -- and i think, recruiting -- this gentleman is talking about a job and there are hundreds of vacancies.

that really irritates me. when they can't fill the positions. systemwide,ncy is if you go to los angeles or chicago or atlanta -- you go to these big airports and the vacancy rate is double that. they have actually trained more withle than they employ the tsa, that is how big the turnover has been. they need some stability. i don't think they are capable of recruiting, training, retaining or hiring. i think the project sector could do that function and set the standards. changing the protocols. i got an e-mail from a hearing of a tsa employee. he said by the time we get information from the tsa about

the threat, they give us little information and give it to us late and we see more information on tv. that is tsa's job. to set the protocol. host: the hearing that you referenced, the oversight and government reform has heard to hearings since april 27. guest: even before egyptair. thursday,ednesday and there will be hearings on the tsa lines. amy, good morning. caller: my question is about cuba. trying to open 10 airports in cuba. they were talking about the security there. the security on people boarding ,lanes in cuba and coming here

it wasn't just iffy. there is something that is not right. and they are trying to do this really fast. guest: a good point. and it should get a serious review before we let any of the planes come in. that is where most of the threat is coming. your diaper bomb or your liquid explosives. that is coming in from outside and that is where we have few tsa -- we haven't negotiated very well our presence at those facilities. some of them have equipment that is not as good as ours. when they come back into the united states, you have to go through our security again, that you may have been at risk flying. i have advocated even giving them equipment to upgrade. i'm not advocating this for cuba but access to some of the equipment and technology, so

that people getting on the plane are secure. but it isn't necessarily carrying it on. it is also smuggling it on through workers at the airport and things like that. cuba definitely has not been our friendliest ally, so it does pose a risk. host: steve, a democrat. you are on the air with the congressman. caller: you had alluded to something that could have brought the plane down, and you said it was a nonexplosive material. i was in the military and navy, and what we used to destroy classified equipment were canister is. they are the size of a cook can. -- a coca-cola can. it starts off with smoke and heat and if you put it underneath the cockpit and the communications control, that

could take the plane down easily. what do you think? guest: again, there are new threats. i have been aware of this for some time. most of what we have out there is looking for a nitrate-based, the walk-through portals that we have can detect that. dogs are trained basically for nitrate. i have had testing with non-nitrate-based materials, and i can tell you that you could take down an airplane. we have to stay one step ahead of these guys. that is my big concern. the behavior detection program has been a terrible failure. the israelis and other agencies can get it right but tsa has not been able to. again, right now, you see what

we have done since the disclosure of the 95% failure rate is going after all of the americans who pose no risk and they are not capturing things, like this guys bottle opener or whatever it was. i saw this morning on television, boxes and boxes of stuff that they have confiscated. if people wanted to get mad, we know that they bought equipment that you could screen faster and it would determine whether the liquid posed a risk. we have that technology. they couldn't train the people to use it so they dumped down -- machine.ed down the to use it so they dumped down -- they dumbed down the machine. they have actually purchase the equipment and not used it. i don't want to get into all of

the failures but that is right there. host: in illinois, good morning. karen is waiting period caller. caller: good morning. the airline crash that happened at o'hare in 1979, people died and i wanted to put that out there, that people passed in that crashing and no one remembers them. host: ok. guest: one of the things i work for since o'hare was the biggest infrastructure project of my career -- redoing the runways. not very safe, we straighten them out and it cost $15 million and it took years to do. three governors went to jail who i worked with over that time. it is one of our primary

responsibilities. not just a terrorist threat but also making airports safe. we do remember those folks. host: james in daytona beach, florida. caller: good morning. e of yourm on constituents. guest: former, if you are daytona. i lost that a few years ago. caller: oh, wow. i read the sunday paper and every day's paper. they have a voting record of our representatives and senators down here. i've noticed that you and john desantis are against the people every time, for the rich and the powerful. host: we are running out of time, give us one example. eek.er: i see it every w

i read the bill and it is always against the people. host: all right. congressman? guest: again, i think john desantis and i are on the conservative side. the longer i stay in congress, the more conservative i get with people's money. last night we worked on public buildings and i feel i am working for the people. rdey are out there working ha and struggling to pay bills, to educate their kids, pay their mortgage, and for me to come up. and waste money or not go after people who are wasting money, it is a shame. i try to save $1 billion a year for the taxpayer. i would be glad to enumerate them. i don't think we vote against the people. we are actually voting for the people. host: one hearing happening

today on capitol hill is about the d.c. metro. nment: another big gover program. i am going to complement the manager today. he fired 20 people today, it has been incompetence management. big government programs spiral out of control. i never finish the answer with why we ended up with the tsa the way it is but it was because of an airline crash in november of 2001. a plane went down in long island. we were set to restructure the tsa is out as much bureaucracy but we allowed the government to take it over for several years, and then airlines would hop down. then it moved from transportation and it mushroomed 16,000-22,000 up to 45000

and now 63,000. seven government agencies are smaller than tsa. we have to get a handle on it. host: a democrat, we will squeeze you in. caller: i work at dulles international airport. and i worked out of

>> see his testimony before the house homeland security committee, live at 10:00 a.m. on c-span3. washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up, a georgia republican congressman will join us to talk about his work to fight the opioid adamic. he will also discuss his work on the homeland security committee. then, a massachusetts democratic congressman talks about the house agricultural committee hearing.

and the latest debate on the use snap program, also known as food stamps. also, the fight against isis. magazines,tlight on -- the war on terror has cost $4 trillion. be sure to watch "washington journal." >> questions about a chinese donor and terry mcauliffe's finances. thank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me. >> why now?

>> i wouldn't say it was an announcement. reporters said they were looking from acontribution chinese businessman. we were able to confirm quickly some other outlets quickly that indeed, federal prosecutors in the eastern district of virginia were interested broadly in terry mcauliffe. as to why now? i think it is because were porters had been pressing. they had got some word. >> let's talk about the details. who is this chinese is this man and what did he contribute? he contributed $120,000 to the 2013 campaign and inauguration. online.guy who reports

he is closely linked to the chinese government but he is a member of the national people's congress. he is also a contractor who is building embassies for china. he is also a permanent u.s. resident, which is important here because foreign citizens cannot make political contributions. -- can. having permanent resident status makes him eligible. maybe at face, it is not a problem but there could be other problems. the attorney quick to say he is a legal resident and has the ability to contribute. that seems to be an easy issue to resolve. this has been a year-long

investigation. what have you learned on that front? >> that is what we understand. they're looking into dealings they have had. personal deals with which he has been involved. what they are looking for is public corruption. was he ever given straight up the love or money? money orht up gratuity, and then to do something official? that is the classic, what prosecutors would be most interested in. it might the tough to prove. reporters to see anything that is obviously criminal but we will see. if there isa sense

anything there? >> my sense from talking to people is at the end of the day, there probably is not of they are there. suspiciousrobably financial transactions. to substantiate this corruption , proving he did something in exchange for a payment, at least so far, they have not found the evidence to substantiate that. maken to my head i had to a prediction, i would say there is not but the investigation is ongoing. the governor is a wealthy man. >> he is. he released summaries of his campaign returned. he is a millionaire several times over. has been involved in a number of business deals.

of course, there is nothing wrong with that. he is a rich guy. a lot of that is public. >> let's talk about the connection between terry mcauliffe. he is quick to describe his west friends, bill and hillary clinton. democraticf the committee, he was a prolific fundraiser. virginia is a key battleground state for hillary clinton. how does that come together in this investigation? is veryubt about it, he close with the clintons. you mentioned a lot of their connections. it is important to note, too, there is they donor sharing. a lot of the same people who donated to the clinton foundation also donated to terry campaign.s one of my colleagues had a good story about that.

there is overlap. they are close. my understanding is it is looking at records and other things that date that too when board.on the my understanding is also investigators are not looking specifically at the foundation that there was any wrong done there were looking at hillary clinton herself in this instance. the focus is on mcauliffe although that includes the time when he worked at the foundation. obviously, you can't ignore in this sort of heated clinical season his connection to the clintons. headline,u see the federal persecutors investigating. timelinek about the over the next couple of months. when do you think we will have some said resolution whether or

not the justice department and fbi will be proceeding? >> that is hard to say. i think they are reluctant to deadlines because of elections. they don't want to bring charges just to influence elections. they would be the first to tell you, they bring charges if they are going to bring charges when the evidence drives them there. artificially imposed deadlines on themselves. they and those in the leadership will be constant of those elections. can at think you can timeline based on what is happening politically. post reportern the investigation. thank you for being with us. >> you -- thank you. >> this weekend, the libertarian party holds its convention in

florida. we have live coverage saturday and sunday. see it saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern and sunday at 9:45 here on c-span. >> madam secretary. ourrobably give 72 of delegate votes to the next president of the united states.

the nasa administrator on the state of science and technology related to education. his remarks came at an event hosted by the brookings institution. it is one hour 35 minutes. >> we welcome you very warmly to the institution. it has been acknowledged the

base for american prosperity requires an education system young individuals can excel at sign signs and technology. something called stem. as noted by scholars here at brookings, stamina intensive 2.7stries produce about billion trillion and added value to our economy. it is the principle driver and and exports.owth, given the reality of increasing global connectivity, and competitiveness the promotion of , stem related skills and knowledge must be recognized as a national priority. the key point we will make with you this morning. the current state of stem

education in the u.s. clearly underscores the urgency of this issue. according to the department of education the united states is , falling behind internationally, ranking 29th in math and 22 in science industrialized nation. only 19% of american high school seniors are proficient in math and interest in pursuing stem related careers. if we wish to preserve the u.s. as a focal point of technological achievement such trends must be reversed quickly. the necessity for increased collaboration between leaders in the public and private sector's s in developing innovative initiatives for america's future inventors, technologists and explorers has never been more apparent. the aim of today's event is to examine how educators and

policymakers can better promote stem in the nation's future workforce and gain a better understanding of how and where such programs should be implemented. also where currently and what currently is being done to improve k-12 stem education and are there effective initiatives in place to ensure that those with degrees in stem are equipped with the appropriate employment skills necessary to lead successful careers. we are pleased and honored to have with us this morning two distinguished guests to help us understand these issues and provide us important insights. the honorable charles bolden and dean kamen. i will give a brief intro to their bios you will understood immediately why they are key to this future for the united states. they will provide us

introductory remarks and then we will have a guided discussion from the dias up here and then go to q&a from the audience. i will remind everyone that we are on the record this morning and we welcome c-span to record this event. let me go into the bios of our key participants this morning. nasa administrator charles bolden, also major general united states marine corps retired, was nominated by president obama as the 12 administrator of nasa. he began his duties on july 17 of 2009. administrator bolden leads a nationwide nasa team who advance missions and goals of the u.s. space program. nasa's administrator, administrator bolden has overseen a safe transition from

30 years of spatial missions to a new era of exploration focused on full utilization of the international space station and space and aeronautics technology development. he has led the agency in developing a space launch system rocket and the orion spacecraft , which will carry astronauts into deep space destinations. anwill include perhaps, asteroid, but it also supports the mars initiative. he has established a new space technology mission directorate to develop cutting-edge technology for missions of tomorrow. his 34 year career in the marine corps also included 14 years as a member of nasa's astronaut office. after joining that office in 1980, he would travel into orbit four times, commanding two space shuttle missions and piloting two others. his flights included the deployment of the hubble space scope and also, the first joined russian and u.s. shuttle mission, which included a cosmonaut as a member of his crew. dean kamen the founder of first

for inspiration and recognition of science and technology. he is an inventor and entrepreneur and a tireless advocate for science and technology. his roles as an inventor and advocate are intertwined for the development of technology and practical uses. he is driven by his personal determination to spread the world about technology's virtues and change the culture of the united states. as an inventor, he holds more than 440 u.s. and foreign patents, many of them for innovative medical devices that have expanded the frontier of health care worldwide. while still an undergraduate he invented the first wearable infusion pump, which rapidly gained acceptance from such diverse medical specialties as chemotherapy, neonatology, and endocrinology. in 1976 he founded his first medical device company, auto syringe inc., to manufacture and

market the pumps. he later founded a corporation to develop internally generated inventions and provide research and development for major corporate clients. one of his proudest accomplishments is the founding of first, an organization dedicated to motivating the next generation to understand, use and enjoy science and technology. we also would knowledge that we have had a group of young scholars with us throughout the year who are federal executive fellows. many of them are in class this morning, but i believe we have one joining us this morning as well. a federal executive fellow who is bringing his tour to an end. this is a young marine corps recently promoted colonel. we are in the presence is morning of not just two great marines, but two marine fighter pilots and it is an honor for us to be in their presence as well.

i will also mention, and this is for my brookings employers, i never miss the opportunity to do preparations for a session like this. i was on an airplane flying to the balkans at the end of last week on a turkish airlines flight. and i looked up on the television and there was neil degrasse tyson interviewing administrator bolden about the mars commission and the nature of technology that nasa has brought to us every single day and the session concluded with neil asking when nasa will produce a flying car, if i recall. so, i never miss the opportunity to prepare for these sessions. initially, i thought it was amazing you had learned to speak turkish, but then i realized i was on the run channel. i shifted my technological approach to the english channel, and learned it was a great session as well. this morning we will have opening remarks and i will invite neil kamen to make his first presentation and show us a video, i believe.

>> i think it would take me with explainy longer to first, than an efficiently done video, which shows the background. and it is told to you by god. morgan freeman. who, like a lot of people in hollywood and the world of super athletes that i have gotten behind, agree, he would help us. i said, morgan, you could read the phone book and people will pay attention. put together some short introduction that really captures what first is. now, he did this four or five years ago, so the data he has is very weak compared to where we are now because we have phenomenal growth every year. this year for example, we had 46,000 schools from 83 countries. what you need to understand is i'm an inventor. we look at the same problems as everybody else. we see them differently. 25 years ago when it was still urgent, when we were 29th in

math and 22nd in science which puts us at the bottom, let's be clear, we were in washington and there is always a crisis in education. i said, there's not a crisis. even in those years as today, we spent more per capita on education for student than anywhere else in the world. we have great schools and universities. we have stanford and m.i.t. and so on. so, what is the problem? the problem is a very small group of kids care about that. it's not an education problem. it's a culture problem. we celebrate with an obsession of two things, the world of sports and the world of entertainment. there is a system that inspires kids to spend their time and energy becoming experts on something that really matters to them, but probably not wisely

for their career. , butlet's use that model instead of teaching them how to bounce a ball, let's give them the skill set to create careers to great industries to make sure this country stays where it needs to be. if we celebrate science and tech the same way we do other things, particularly for women and minorities, who were not even present back then. so, i called on industry to help and i said, the business of america is business. you can't blame the schools. you can't blame the gym teachers if they caps on going to be good at cricket. spend three hours every day after school playing basketball or football. they will do it nice and weekends and mom and dad will show up. we have great athletes, but not great cricket players. that is not a department of education problem. i need superstars. i need the lebron james of science and tech.

they exist in our big companies. in year one of this competition i had 23 of these companies. this year i had 3700 corporate sponsors. by the way, this is not an ad. where do you find a superstars of tech? you find them at nasa. by year two we went from 23 teams to 40 sixteenths and we had a nasa team. by year three, more nasa teams. and as last year, the largest single source of first teams around the country was nasa and we are very proud of our association with nasa and what they have done for us. to prove that it is impactful on all kids, i am going to show you 54 secondsute and video. listen to god, can we do that? morgan freeman: this is the super bowl. the super bowl of smart. it's a life-changing competition.

it is kids having fun. computing, working together to dream up, design and build robots. >> it's an exhilarating feeling. and look, i using power tools. ammorgan freeman: they are having the hardest fund they will ever have and they are becoming our next generation of engineers and innovators. first, for inspiration and recognition of science and technology. i am teaching with some of the greatest influences of my life, by challenging and trusting me. these mentors got me to understand that i could do anything i put my mind to. first mentors are changing kids lives every day. professional engineers, teachers, parents teaming up with young people, not just to build robots, but to build confidence and self-respect. >> i'm around people i can get along with. i can talk computer lingo with

them. morgan freeman: first was founded by one of our greatest inventors, dean kamen. he saw the kids mostly look up to sports heroes and movie stars. >> i said, we have a culture that is assessed with sports and entertainment. let's inspire these gives to be big thinkers the same way shakeel o'neill can inspire them to spend dozens of hours a week bouncing a ball. : morgan stanley: the president agrees. president obama:: we have to stand side-by-side with athletes is more models. here at the white house we will lead by example and show how cool science can be. morgan freeman: 250,000 kids age six to 18 compete at all different levels. the first tech challenged. at the high school level, the first robotics competition. the only difference between this sport and all of the others is every kid on our team can turn pro.

there is a job out there for everyone of these kids. freeman: students who take part in first are 50% more likely to go to college and twice as likely to major in science or engineering. >> i definitely know i want to get into engineering. >> once they have tasted the power of knowledge, they won't go back. morgan freeman: there is no doubt, first works. >> 10 or 15 or 20 years from today, some kid in those stands will have cured alzheimer's or aids or cancer, or will have built an engine that doesn't pollute. look at these kids. they're the future. >> i feel like i can go and do anything i want to do because of this program. morgan freeman: somebody took the time to guide and inspire me. it changed my life. take some time. org.o usfirst.

[applause] >> well done. let me invite administrator bolden for his remarks as well. and then we will go to some q&a. >> first of all, a big message that want to give you. nasa is on a journey to mars. i don't want you to miss that this morning if you hear nothing else. but how do we get there? a lot of the stuff dean talked about is critically important. we need young men and women from all over the place to help us do that. if you go to the johnson space center today, you will find that about half the engineers in our robotics lab were participants in the first program when they were in high school. there is great benefit from it. we use in our missions to try and inspire the youth of today. nasa has a $19.3 billion budget today. we spend $19.3 billion on stem education because everything we do is related to trying to get

young people interested in -- we actually call it steam. we have extended it to be steam. a is for the arts. hopefully, we have the opportunity to talk about the value of arts and design. there is a new community of people called makers. these are young men and women who have an incredible bit of ability to visualize and make things. i am privileged to have a young man sitting here. he does not know i am going to do this. but tom is shadowing me today. he's an engineer at the glenn research center in cleveland, ohio. he's a graduate of a historically black college called florida amu c university, where he majored in architecture. he said he always wanted to make things. he spent time in the army but never gave up on his desire to build and make things as an architect.

lashonda holmes is sitting right next to him. she is a white house fellow. she is from atlanta, georgia. she was trying to figure how she was going to make it through college. she met a coast guard recruiter. today she flies helicopters in the coast guard. something you do not see very many people who look like her do. science and technology, the arts of design, they are critically important for our kids today. we believe that you advance the nation stem program and you put yourself in a situation where you are able to compete with any country anywhere. that is what the president talks about all the time. ,e have created cooperations collaborations with many other federal agencies. we work with the department of education on something called 21st century communities and learning. we worked with the department of agriculture in their 4-h program and in other programs trying to promote the kind of things they do.

we recently celebrated our y 80 and formermigh secretary of agriculture actually planted some seeds in the department of agriculture garden they came from the international space station. they were seeds that were just like the lettuce -- as they had grown the international space station in preparation for going to mars. youth engagement in stem at every level is critically important. our priority lies with women and minorities because they represent a huge portion of our population. women are greater than 50% of the population. we believe you cannot leave that behind and succeed. you cannot leave that portion of the population behind and be better than other people. let me say one thing about first. i will share with you a letter from a principal at a school where recently he had some nasa engineers come out.

this was a school in west virginia. the southern part of west virginia had never had anything like this. we had some engineers from our facility in west virginia visit his kids. there are a middle school. he said i wanted to let you know how much it meant for you to come to our school. 75% of our students are on free or reduced lunch. our students have less chance than 80% of other students to make it out of high school. the community is riddled with drugs, homelessness, and generational poverty. the children need to see it's possible to make themselves into someone that counts, someone who can change the world. the young students wondered if you would be back for them. this was after the engineers left because it was too good to be true. they want to know if they would ever come back again or if they would ever see him again. i told them that i sure hope so. they went away with big smiles. we would love for you to come

back next year. put us on your calendar for april 17. thank you for your commitment to the children from western virginia. that's through a stem program out of nasa. stem is not monolithic. we need people not only with science and technology backgrounds, but people who are willing to engage their hearts and minds. people who do understand the arts and of the ability to can andceived of things designers who can build things like 3-d printers. we believe stem is critical. we want to talk about it a lot today. if we can fire some of you up to go tell people with whom you come in contact that it is just as important to have a young student who's going to be an all-star on the first court or somewhere else as it is to be an all-star basketball player, we will have achieved our goal. >> terrific. thank you for those remarks. let me ask several questions and

we will have a conversation and then we will go to the floor for additional questions. we have used the term stem. s-t-e-a-m. can we talk about each one of those components. are any of them more important than the others are worthy of more investment given the current situation? i think we have laid a good groundwork with your opening remarks to lay this out, but this is important i think. let's get a baseline and definitional approach to stem or steam this morning. please. >> i think education as we all knew it that the first and the for, the "s" and the "m," better or worse, they do try to teach in school. we all took a science or math course every year. we learn to count and then we learn algebra and trigonometry.

some of us learned it. some of us did not learn it, but it was always there. i think the reason that those work well, because there was not a lot of passion with those kids. they are out of context. there was nothing a kid ever did in life for which trigonometry would help them. you don't go to a store and the 10% discount is the cosine. [laughter] and putting pins and frogs was not all that relevant. but the technology is cool. every kid that has ever hated science loves "star wars." every kid that says they hates engineering is wearing supercomputers. they are immersed in the results of engineering. haso me, what industries got to bring, what the culture

has to bring to the school's is the relevance by which it will be important to kids to do the hard work of learning the science. learning math is not easy. it takes multiple years to learn all of that. there has to be a purpose. kids were not bounce a ball for an hour a day if there was no nba. to me, the average teacher may be very good at doing the science part and the math part s-ede same way that the phy teacher can teach them the rules and skills of football, but they don't inspire them. the word first doesn't have education in it. we took the position that it's up to our culture to create the passion and and willingness to work will follow. because there's an nba kids will learn to bounce a ball. we needed to bring the relevant people that use and apply technology and engineering into a real environment, a hands-on environment -- as hands-on as any other sport -- so that when

kids chill up to school, they will realize, i want to go to learn that math. they will know, that motor control just what a lot of smoke out of that circuit board because i forgot to multiply by five squared. for better or worse, schools have focused on science and math as these abstract things. we are bringing to the school relevance. we are showing kids it is accessible and fun and every bit as rewarding as any other thing they do. except, unlike the nba that has a few dozen jobs every year, right now, there are a few million unfilled career opportunities because kids can do it. >> i would agree. the particular part for us is i started out by saying we are on a journey to mars. we know where we are going to go not capable of getting there right now because we don't have the technology. we don't have all the technologies that are needed. we need kids to be very

competent in science and math. that's what allows them to be the dreamers that create the technologies we are missing. we find a lot of things serendipitously. the crew on the international space station, they have to have water to survive. they have to have food to survive. we are finding necessity is the mother of invention. we used hydrogen and oxygen in a fuel cell. the plentiful byproduct of that was water. so we do not worry about getting water to crews. today on the international space station we use the sun to produce electricity and solar cells. so, we either have to fly water up, which is costly. we take yesterday's coffee and put in a water purification system. the technology using the math and science that kids learn to create a water purification system, so that the astronauts now recycle everything. whether it is urine,

perspiration, it makes no difference. we reuse everything. we are now growing vegetables. we are growing lettuce, we are growing cherry tomatoes. we are not growing potatoes yet, did, thatwatney we are on the way. those are the kind of things we need to do. the serendipitous discovery is the same machine that creates the clean drinking water for the astronauts on the international space station. well, guess what? about 90% of the infants that die in the world today die from waterborne pathogens. if we can take those same machines off of the international space station and put them into rural villages -- not just africa and south america and other places -- but put them into the south in the united states, where kids are dying because they do not have clean drinking, that changes the whole world. that is putting science and math together into the technology field and getting what the nation needs. >> are we satisfied with the way

that stem is being presented to students in the educational institutions around the country? and if we are not, how what me change them? >> programs like first and another program very similar to first, kids need hands-on stuff. it is like dean said, my son is back there and he has three beautiful girls that are my incredible granddaughters. i don't have any trouble with where they're going to be on the weekend. unfortunately they're going to be playing soccer, volleyball, basketball or something else because that's what they emphasize -- we emphasize. i want them also to be participating in music or art. his baby girl is an artist. she spent all day yesterday, mother's day, creating incredible artwork. that's really important. we need to expose them and schools need to make sure there are opportunity for kids to do things like create a robot. create a satellite. today we use something that we

call -- well, you can call the micro sats, you can call them small sats, whatever. they are the size of this glass. a kid today in elementary school can take a cell phone apart. they can take a memory card and the camera and put into a box. we can take it to the international space station and spit it out so they can build a satellite. what kid in elementary or junior high school could say that several years ago? we are beginning to introduce that into the informal curriculum of schools. i will take the informal curriculum as long as the schools will allow us to put it there. >> dean? >> everything he said. i think our schools are there to solve the supply side of the equation. i think what's been missing for at least a generation in this country is the demand side. when i was a kid, the demand was created in the culture because -- i'm older than most of the

people, but i remember when the new sputnik went up. all of a sudden america, at the end of world war ii, we were unrivaled. everything was good. our parents all wanted to come back and make the world a better place so their kids would never have to deal with the stuff they went through. and suddenly, sputnik went up made america realize, maybe we are not just the unrivaled leaders. maybe we have other things to worry about. it took a generation to really understand the importance of science and tech. we were in a race. americans are very competitive. we are fat, dumb, and happy compared to the structures in germany or japan. we are very happy, until we are threatened. i thinks but -- i think sputnik did it and then, we won that one. and then we sort of relaxed back. it's not that we don't have

enough supply. we have the great institutions , but only a few people take advantage of them. they have parents that say, you can play volleyball all weekend , but you better get an a in math. as i said, 20 years ago we were in that mode or i don't think most of american kids ever saw the real value, the excitement, the fun of science and tech because we created role models and superheroes everywhere else. i think the next version of sputnik. is upon us first teams,0 4000 teams. i came afte back from a trip in beijing -- i was there representing the international engineers. when i tell that to people here they said, you are a traitor. what they are missing is the part that is about creativity, how to make use of it. and the chinese government knows that. they say, you were helping them.

i say, well, thinking about it as the next sputnik. if you are worried about competing, maybe the fact that we now have a couple billion kids around this planet that are all going to be competitive, maybe the fact that we highlight that will be another call to action in this country to get real hands-on passion and excitement in science and technology into the schools, which again, is going to require industry to help. and it is working. and by the way, i think first will also turn out to be a tool of international diplomacy. just like the original purpose of the olympics when it was started in 1894 by business people in switzerland. they said, let's create a platform where all young people in the world get together and compete in something in a positive way, running and jumping. the original athletics of the olympics. well, it has been 120 years. i am not sure it has turned into a love fest as they hoped.

but, if we now have a single language, mathematics, that is the same everywhere in the world and we have 86 countries this year competing. we have more countries competing a company consider go in the st. louis championship. we had more countries representing the first team to they did in the winter olympics. i think for the first time ever, getting the world's kids to understand that instead of repeating the self-inflicted wounds of their parents and grandparents, by which they separate each other with political and cultural issues, what if they could all collectively be on the same team , fighting against the same global warming, water, the environment, education, health care, security? the good of a generation of kids worldwide, working together, cooperating as they do at first and maybe, break the cycle of these self-inflicted wonds and face the real challenge the

world is going to face. everyone of those challenges is going to require world-class technology. >> just to follow up on your comments. i was on a panel two days ago where i made the comment that no post-conflict society or developing society could ever achieve its full potential without bringing women fully into the mainstream and fully empowering women within society. how can we get this developed society to bring women more fully into stem and to empower them not just to study but to get them into industry? >> you tell them, we won't survive if you leave half the population behind, for one thing. people sometimes understand that. again, i think the best thing is to have concrete examples for them to see. we selected -- the class of 2013 of astronauts had 6800

astronauts. we selected 8. half of them were women. those four women have already become superstars. they were superstars in their own right before selection, but now four more women who can go into any place in the world and talk about how they became astronauts. they are from all kinds of backgrounds. one spent her last year in the antarctic working with emperor penguins. another one was the captain of the u.s. women's rugby team. a major in the u.s. army. a helicopter pilot. another one, the only marine selected, is part of the f-18 fighter pilot, iraq, afghanistan and was a soccer player at the naval academy. the good thing about them is, because we required it, sports is good. sports is important. sports is a vehicle that helps to build teamwork, which first, again, the big thing about first

is, it builds teams. they winning team for example, when we were in st. louis was actually three teams. you talk about ok, my team won. but my team consisted of three teams and because they did better than everybody else, i picked two teams to go along with me. so they learn to scout. you need more than just science and math. some of them using math are now statisticians. they look at the other teams and say, we don't know how to do clobbered feminist, but they do this incredibly well. they want to win on the field of battle. edit want to have their opponents have their robots breakdown, so they will go and help each other in the pits in between contests. we are incredibly proud to look at the number of schools can say they have been turned around because of something like the first program, where it got kids really interested in being technologists or being makers or being artists.

because it takes everything. i'm looking at my press secretary and my former press secretary over there, who now works for bono, and they are both texting away. we did not know about texting when i first became the nasa administrator. i don't know that we had ever heard about it. when you talk about the arts, social media. absolutely critical today. if we are going to communicate with the world, we have got to know how to use social media. i have got some engineers and technologists, people who are like me. i don't to twitter. i don't do facebook. i don't do any of that stuff. but i have really sharp people who know it and love it and serve to communicate our story to the rest of the world. so, when i talk about the arts being absolutely important, it is. if you want to get your story out, you have to be able to present it in a fashion -- morgan freeman. can you think of any more powerful way to tell the story of first? that's not an engineer. that is not a mathematician.

that is not a scientist. that is an artist. he has chosen to take his ability, his god-given ability, and apply it to help kids understand the critical importance of science and math. that is what we believe that steam is really important. >> steam, noted. add another letter. "d" for design. >> any further thoughts on that? >> i'm happy to tell you more than 30% on our teams are women and minorities. after 26 years of all of our compound growth, that number keeps inching up every year. you could say, it ought to be 50%. you got me there. but i say, look at what we are trying to do here. you know what the number of women that get patents on technology is? the percentage of women? it is in the low single digits. how many women are practicing engineers or doing welding? it's all single digits.

so, our 30% is pretty good. i would love to get it up to 50%. i think our program has a self-selecting extra value to women and minorities because again, since i believe it is a social issue -- that group of people is far more unfortunately distracted from the real world of science and technology than kids that grow up in an environment where mom and dad are doctors and lawyers and engineers. the people who really grow up seeing the culture of this country on espn and mtv or at a huge disadvantage. -- are at a huge disadvantage. even though we try to get everybody into first, there is a process by which women and minorities start to see kids having fun in exactly the same kind of sporting environment.

it is always funny to me that say, you are really hard on sports. i'm not hard on sports. i am using it as a model. they say plagiarism is the highest form of family. -- highest form of flattery. i say to people, i love sports. i have a baseball field in my backyard. i love sports. they are good for lots of reasons. but in the end, and you even said it, sports are really good. they teach kids teamwork. you got me there. but then why is it that when they do teamwork in a classroom you call it cheating? [laughter] so, i just think the power of sports -- you can't underestimate it. so, first is not "like" a sport. first is the ultimate sport. it has everything that every other sport has, except, it is giving you passion to develop the skill sets that will develop your life and career in this country. >> so, are we satisfied then,

where american industry -- are we satisfied that there is sufficient investment in r&d and the systems of education are? >> since i am government, i would say definitely not. >> what advice would we ask them to help us with in terms of how we go about the process of incentivizing industry and government and improving r&d? >> nasa has a program we 17 budgetd in the 20 for the president called new aviation horizon. it is for the first time in decades where we are going to start building x-planes. if we get the budget. if we don't get the budget, we don't build x-plans. what does that mean when you talk about x-planes? nobody knows about the nec. that is the predecessor of nasa. but everybody knows about

breaking the sound barrier and all that. those were experimental airplanes. the predecessor of the space shuttle was the x-15 and other experimental vehicles. young women and men today in colleges and universities around the country, were really excited when they saw the president's budget come out with a significant increase in aeronautics that would enable us to do x-planes again because that is what they want to do. they want to design and build new airplanes. they don't want to go on a plant and work on a production line. dean invents. kids love to go -- and a use the term "kids" because i am an old man. people of to go work for dean arefor spacex because they building and designing and creating things. that is what nasa should be doing. so, no, i am not satisfied that the government is doing its part. historically in this country

over the last few decades, we have abandoned research and development. we have abandoned technology development. things one of the we have increasingly tried to put in the nasa budget. we started a space technology mission. we cannot get to mars based on what we have today. yes, we can go back to the moon and we will, but we want to get ,o mars and in order to that we've got to have young people coming out of our schools and colleges who are wanting to design and build new things, new technologies. >> any thoughts on that? >> well, you asked whether we are investing enough. i am not an economist, but i would say to you it is pretty clear that whatever we are investing, it is probably at least as important to make sure how you invest as much. i know that we spend many hundreds of billions of dollars a year on public education.

as i said, per capita it is well-known that it is more per student than in the rest of the world. here in washington it is something like $18,000 or $19,000 per year per student. and then when you take out the very high percentage but don't go to school or drop out, it is ridiculously high. and then you point out we are number 29 in science and number 22 in math. so, i would say, you can never spend enough money on things that have a good return and you shouldn't waste money on things that don't. to give you a sense of why i am concerned about that, think about this for a second. the entire cost to have a first team, because you cannot monetize the passion. volunteers,000 technology people who volunteer as mentors, because we could not pay them. and they all work for free. i always thought getting industry to donate all of these most valuable things would be

hard, the time and expertise of their astronauts would be the hardest part. it turns out, industry knows it is a great investment to turn these kids on. we got to tens of thousands of schools and we didn't run out of volunteers. here is the staggering thing. with the hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on education, almost all of it over the decades or centuries now, is locked into fixed costs that can't be changed. futures have no discretionary budgets. schools some i'll have enough dollars for the parking floors, basketball, they have enough dollars for the football field and the have enough dollars to pay the stipend for the teacher school toafter become the football coach or basketball coach. and that makes complete sense to me. teachers don't make a lot of money. the teacher who is going to be there for three hours after school should get some financial recognition. in 25 years, we have that almost no luck in getting the school

part of the equation to step up, even though all of this stuff is coming any essentially, for free. in fact, it is astounding to me that for less than the cost of one half of one student, an entire school can have a first-team, but it is a most impossible to get them to recognize the math teacher or the science teacher with the same stipend for coaching our team. historically, it was not there. an i think it is intellectual slap in the face and it limits things. a number of years ago, i went to our senators in our little state where i first got started. one is a republican than one is a democrat. year after year they kept trying to do this education bill. they finally passed it last year and in it -- i always forget which is authorized and which is appropriated. they did the part which required in the new bill -- in the now, schools that meet certain partria can fund just the

-- they will give the teacher the same recognition, the same little stipend, to handle the appropriate public school portion of creating our sport and putting it on the same plane as any other sport. if all of you policy people can figure out, now it has to go to the other, which i guess is appropriation. you guys have to figure out to make sure that every school in this country can support a first team. i don't understand how you can let an institution of learning spend its money on all these other things and not give kids -- every kid in this country deserves the opportunity to try this. the policy people in this country ought to realize that it would be the best leverage of your resources to let that happen. the entire first organization people workingd full-time at this 501(c)(3). and we have well over 100,000 volunteers that you could not pay to put in a classroom.

world-class scientists and engineers. which says for every person working at first, there are 1000 volunteers working for free. that is leverage. just get the schools to bring them in and he will transform your schools. and if you don't do that, this country is going to be there what it gets. >> really important point. just a point of clarification. i would seldom wish to criticize something that administrator bolden would say, but i have to take issue with you calling yourself an old man. from one looking at another. [laughter] a lot of bright faces in that video, young women and men hit were so excited about the learning experience and the competition. how do we get them into the kinds of jobs that will leverage that talent that can secure america's future? >> the jobs are there. that is the problem. that's the easy part. these kids leave the first program and the world is their oyster.

the schools are fighting over them. we had what we called scholarship row. oddad 180 some universities lined up. they are scouting just like the football coaches do. by the way, we handed out $30 million in scholarships from a lot of little tech schools. some are local trade schools like m.i.t., caltech, georgia tech. [laughter] they are all there. yale. they're fighting over these kids and these kids get an education in tech. there is no question of how you get them into the jobs. every company out there is fighting for them. they all want them. >> a happy dilemma. >> encourage them through whatever means possible to invest their time and energy into stem related courses. you cannot do it once they get to college. you have to do it at the elementary level and then it feeds into the secondary level and then college.

it makes no difference. again, i always tell young men and women that i talk to, you cannot have a technical background or degree, does that gives the flexibility to become a poet or to become an author. anything you want to do. if you decide half way through college that you want to be an engineer and you have not taken trigonometry or basic math, you are out of luck. there is no downside to getting them into technical courses as they go through high school and college. it's all up. you know, they can go back. some of the best teachers come from programs like teach for america. and they are young men and women who just don't know what they want to do in life, and so they take two years after they graduate from college. those with technical backgrounds -- dean talked about having a

physics teacher -- you talked about having a physics teacher that did not know physics. young men and women in teach for america, they know physics and they know math and everything else. it gives them an opportunity to take that trade that sooner or later is going to allow them to be an engineer, but to teach young kids in our schools and they do it incredibly well. whatever you do, encouraging -- encourage a young person. and young is a relative term. i use the term too loosely. encourage a person who has never experienced science and engineering. the other thing is, you have to help kids understand. engineers are not only the person in the front of the train. that may sound trivial to some of you. coming from my community, coming from the african-american community here and the united dates, you say engineer and the vast majority of kids think you are talking about the guy in the front of the train. that is not the engineer we are

looking for. we are looking for someone who can look at a system and help to integrate things. so, i had a young member of the society of black engineers. i was talking about inspiring people when i first became the nasa administrator and i said, the president told me he wants to inspire, inspire, inspire. the young man who was the president of the chapter of the society of black engineers said, if you say "inspire" one more time, i am going to puke. [laughter] i said, i beg your pardon? he said, you cannot inspire anyone until you expose them. and so, that is the key. we have to take them by the hand and take them in and let them see that science and engineering and technology not only is fun, but it is available to them. there is an incredible demand for them. much more demand than there is like dean said, somebody who can dribble a basketball.

you are battling against the odds trying to become the next lebron james. to become the next dean kamen, get your degree. go out and invent stuff. nobody can take that from you. nobody can take that from you. you will probably be better than anybody else around because you are passionate about it. >> now you know why we love having nasa as one of our great sponsors. by the way, humility is one of his weaknesses. [laughter] championship our where we filled an 80,000 seat arena, and then around town we needed to fill the rest of st. louis, it looks like olympic village. once a year we recognize an organization or individual for helping to bring first to every andol around the country fu

around the world. it has been given out 24 times. only one organization has ever gotten it twice. once 22 years ago and once they couple of weeks ago. nasa has demonstrated that they have earned it year after year. policy,s a matter of you should go home and ask yourselves, how can any school in this country in the 21st century not be doing everything possible to give kids a passion for science, technology, and engineering? and we found the simplest, easiest, most cost-effective, fun way to do it that is consistent with our culture. we are not going to become rigid and regimented. we will not be beating on kids to spend 10 hours in school. six days a week, over several occasio summer vacation. kids have to go home and they need the summer off. they have to work in the fields or whatever. [laughter] biggest country, its

strength is the passion that freedom gives kids. the trouble is, their passion is being misdirected two things, whether passion will not give them careers. that is so antithetical to the process inside education and technology moves so quickly. i do think we can expect and therefore, we cannot blame the schools for not making these changes, but we have brought 3700 tech giants including saying, we area here to help. we would love to work in cooperation with the schools. we call our competitions ititions. it's all working. but we need to get the schools to do a little bit to make this part of their culture. every school should have a football team and basketball team and first team. whatever you need to do to make that happen, that's your homework assignment. >> that's terrific. let's go to the floor for some questions. we will go for about a half-hour.

i want to call it directly after 11:30. you will be handed a microphone, i believe. and when you get that microsof microphone, i would ask you to please stand so we can see who you are. tell us your name and affiliation and try to keep your question short. >> good morning. my name is rich cooper with catalyst partners. former member of a nasa team for a number of years and proud uncle to a young man who was in st. louis a couple of months ago. he already was on a life path for great things and he is even more inspired, so thank you for that. administrator bolden, i was part of the nasa team on your education for a number of years. and one of the things that nasa was doing was creating the educator astronaut that would better help connect students to the program, as well as teachers to the program. i am curious as to where that is going. i know they are part of the cor e. where they will be in trying to communicate all of these great things.

>> felt the best way is to not single them out. there are no educator astronauts anymore. they are just astronauts. but there are criteria to be enough to not. you used to have to have a technical background. a person who is a teacher and has taught and technical courses, math, science, and the like, is eligible to apply as enough to not. we have people like ricky arnold, they've all flown already. they are now teacher astronauts. they are astronauts who happen to be teachers. ricky arnolds, for my out here in maryland -- from right out here in maryland, i try to get him to come out here, but he still wants to fly more. we are integrating teachers as astronauts now. d.c.am the chairman of the

innovation summit. you have been focusing on people, ages six to 18, but there is a massive number of people who are undertrained or out of jobs and looking for jobs 18 and up. what can we do to retrain and retain these people in the workforce as valuable members of society? >> nasa has -- over the last couple of years in our education program, we have now begun to integrate community colleges int o our area of focus. we did not do that before. we were looking for college graduates. turnedbecause a person away, or a person working in a laboratory does not need a phd or bachelors degree in many cases, but we do need them to be trained as a technician. we focus on young men and women in community colleges today.

we really go after veterans. taking them, understanding what their training was for the military,w hich is directly transferable. let me tell you, a rifleman today is a technician. i don't know when the last time you looked at a weapon was, but it is a computer. you are looking through a scope. you are doing math in your head. some of it is done for you by the weapon, an artilleryman, it is math, math, math, math, math. you take what the veteran has learned because it is directly transferable into the workplace. they are trying to help retrain people into the fields that we need to get us to mars. and i think dean is doing the same thing. >> the good news is, when you look at all of the volunteers, thomas need to be at a first event to feel it. there is a love fest of technology and a lot of the people there are certainly not

six to 18. there are world-class seniors. you talk to somebody and they say, i am the chief google.gy advisor at and then he will pop to other people and they say, i just got out of the military and it is a great place to network here. so, i think there is a process going on that is blending these people together. there was a time when education was the skills that you learned and it worked for a lifetime. it just did. settoday, there is no skill you have today, especially in the technology field, that is going to be worth a damn in three or four or five years. we went from telegraph to telephone. that was a generation or two. but we went from the internet, to e-mail, to texting, to snapchat.

the lifetime of some of these technologies is six months. education is not the destination, it is a process. and a kid coming out of school with a technical degree, i hope these days, understands what they have -- what their education gave them was the ability to keep adapting to future technologies because they don't have the skill set that is not going to be obsolete very soon. >> if the audience members wanted to attend a first event, how would they find that out? >> so, we are at the end of the season. i give everybody my card and say, come to this high school gym. we got too big for that venue. if you use the sports model, the most expensive -- kids can watch the super bowl on television. but in less there is a little league in town, or tee ball, and

less you can make it local, you can't get them. you have to start early. so we started doing regional events. we had one regional every weekend in march for march madness before the championships that happened in atlanta at the georgia dome. well, we keep building up more and more resources to be more successful. airplanes and hotels -- that would've been the most reasonable. this card i give out. each weekend in march, we had 126 cities hold their regional. i mean, little cities like new york, houston, los angeles, san diego. [laughter] i guarantee you, nobody in this room is out of driving distance to one of these events. >> if you look, the convention center was full in one weekend, i think it

is out of driving distance of a march madness event. mr. bolden: that was several regionals. they are everywhere. mr. allen: so, this march madness really is madness. there is a lady all the way in the back. hand her the microphone, please. joanne: think you very much. i got a question about the projects you're talking about. for example, the mars project, this is an age in which students have relatively short attention spans according to your research. perhaps mars fatigue to be setting in. but also some other interesting projects. one dr., as you know has , pioneered a project where these stars are the object and 100 years is the goal. of course there are public forums and a lot of research being done as to how to get there. how can we stimulate people going towards that goal? >> you are absolutely right. going to mars in the 2030's is a long time from now.