. >> senter pond? >> thank you, madame chair. mr. speed we just heard the testimony of sickening and third ships are reducing productivity and compromising the work that is done. without the 1.3 billion of funds were for the shovel 40 projects. were they not schoeppel ready? was amtrak not schoeppel ready? why have you had to take these extraordinary steps which apparently are more costly and less productive? >> i think all of the projects were schoeppel ready and i think that the i.t. did an excellent job looking at the risks along the way. but the projects that he looked at one of them was the ridge there were positive projects and there was a frequency converter replacement project and los angeles maintenance facility where the top five that they are

>> senter casey, thank you. we have ourselves a lot of concerns about this as i said big concerns. i would especially emphasized. number one, syria is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. it is incumbent upon them. their signature on the treaty for them to cooperate fully with the iaea when it wants to do inspections, and so without speculating about what the syrian intentions are i would just say it is incumbent upon the syrians to cooperate. in addition i would also add the syrians perhaps a nuclear energy program. i don't know, but given that there is an ongoing iowa ea investigation into the syrian nuclear program we do not think it would be appropriate for any other country to cooperate now with the syrians on a nuclear energy program while this investigation is ongoing. first the investigation needs to be resolved. >> what may follow one part of that. let me ask this way, i wouldn't want you to speculate either, let me just ask fundamentally is their anything in the public record that you could point to as evidence that they are intention is other than peacefu

senter corker i appreciate the opportunity to be here and to again also speak about on behalf of themmittee to establish the national institute of finance. i would like to give a little history. the committee established a little over a year ago on a workshop that was jointly sponsored by the office of the comptroller of the currency in the national institutes of statistical sciences. as an academic and professional statistician i was interest in the workshop which was exploring the statistical issues and financial risk and bank regulation. i consulted some of the big investment banks specifically telling them with issues related to modeling and leaving many of the complicated credit derivative securities that played a part in the recent crisis. i was hoping the workshop focused on systemic risk. but is primarily focused on basil one and basil two and assessing the safety and soundness of the institutions. and focusing on the seeking sound is of individual institutions is important that in and of itself will not ensure the safety and soundness of the financial system. in some ways it

senter franken. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr.forcing the freedom of access to clinic entrances act which prohibits -- unsury, protect americans' access to reproductive service providers. i know the attorney general holder asked the u.s. marshals service to help safeguard reproductive providers and facilities around the country after dr. george tiller is murder last year. hauer you working with u.s. marshals service to ensure ongoing protection for these providers and are you and attorney general elders still recommending increased protection or do you believe that the need was temporary? >> i don't believe -- will conduct regular threat assessments. we have an active docket. the last thing i worked on before i left the clinton administration was the murder of the doctor and buffalo new york 3 miles from where i grew up. the first thing i was briefed on won by a ride back 11 years later for civil rights is a briefing on the murder in kansas. the more things change the more they stay the same and this threat is an ongoing threat an

i've already discussed with senter sessions. >> thank you, mr. chairman and colleagues on both sides of the aisle and secretary napolitano just a brief question on the wtii to read it went into effect on our northern border we seen a precipitous withdrawal and a good part of it at least the people there believe it is because of a lack of education. the canadians believe they need a passport to travel across the border. obviously wtii was put together to make it easy to travel across the board, but the problem is they believe that and a good number of our americans believe the same western and york buffalo depends on cross border traffic. it's probably the number-one thing in its economy so online asking is would you be willing to work with me and commit to working with you and your canadian colleagues to get an education campaign on both sides of the border informing people with the requirements are of wtii that you don't need a passport and that it's not very hard to travel across the border because it is hurting our economy and they're pretty b

senter durbin was one of the sponsors of it and we continue to work hard to make sure every student in this country is the chance to get a grade education. >> host: right over here. the head with your question. >> caitlin from north carolina. some students, teachers and parents believe that the federal government and even some of the school systems like superintendents' don't have enough experience and, like, being inside of the school and knowing exactly how it runs, so they can't possibly have the best policies for the students and for the school system. what are your views on that and how do you propose to fix to have more personal experiences to get >> guest: i agree and one of the most important things we can do is provide flexibility to local and educators to buy julca before i came to washington i didn't think the good ideas come from washington and no time in washington negative ago ideas don't come from washington. they come from the local level, teachers, school boards working hard together to help students be successful. so part of what we want to do is realize speed is if f

. >> thank you, senter. it's true. we hear all the time as do you that all the paper work, all of the forms, it is a mess. i remember three or four nights during the last health care reform era and just happened to go to a montana hospital one floor was filled with people doing paperwork. i went to canada to poke around, was at the edmondson hospital. there were three people in the whole hospital much larger than the montana hospital doing paperwork, three people that is all there was and we all know about the administrative cost and the american system and in other countries. i urge you -- use of this. once and for all we are not talking about this all the time, and use it states are doing much better, find distinctive in the best job and if clearly we have to pass health care reform to make this happen because one's health care reform is passed it is quite force more simplification because more insurance companies are going to be forced to have quite as many different alternatives and options and co-payments and dedu

other people talk about i see my good friend from william on the floor, senter barrasso talk about health care. i am sure he wants to eliminate fraud in home health care. i'm sure he does. we all want to. so we cut back on areas where there is fraud. where is their fraud? there's fraud in out fliers. to many hospitals built, and especially sick patient it's an out liar. one county in florida built 60% about late payments in america even though the county had 1% of seniors in america. other examples like that. but general accountability office came with less and said we've got to do something about this. there's fraud in the home health care program. i don't single out home health care. i'm a big fan of home health care. they do really good work. but we want to take out the fraud. excessive payments is fraudulent. is that a good thing to do? doesn't that help extend solvency of the trust fund? is in that helping patients, not hurting them? that is what we are doing here. other examples like that. in fact, all folks came to us and said make some of these changes because it is much more effi

senter kaufman. >> mr. beck, what is the state of the income loan? >> the borrower does not document their income on the application. islamic and why was that developed? it seems a little unusual, doesn't it? >> state income loans were developed for customers that didn't get a w-2. >> why did they go beyond that? is clearly went beyond that, right? >> yes it did, senator. i think what happened in the industry is if you look at performance of mortgage loans was the dominant driver of performance with the fico score and income was not at least in the older vintages 205 to two under six immaterial driver performance i think as we got into 2006 we saw some of the changes and that is where the industry started to tighten the standards and require additional documentation. >> can you think of another place you can go to get a loan without disclosing or in complex >> the income was disclosed -- >> i mean where people actually take your word, just it seems such a foreign concept you could go into any one and part of money and they say what is your income can

the senter stake of the largest tent in american politics today is fiscal responsibility of individualf liberty, restrict to big government and defense of liberty and that doesn't mean you ignore other issues but you also handle them in a responsible fashion and the other thing when you have a tent like this and that much diversity and in this tent if you walk among these folks you have christians and libertarians walking hand-in-hand and evangelicals we haven't seen that since reagan. we have republicans and independents and democrats. we have all philosophical strips and some to keep birds. when did they never show up. 1985 my first town hall meeting of their work fruitcakes, who are these people? who are the grocers'? they are democrats. the first thing i would like to remind you they are democrats but you've got to get some folks never going to come to the tent and they are going to have issues that you are not going to be altogether comfortable with them. but in fact if you are going to have a big tent of diversified tolerance, and you just live with that. some people are going to

you can sit by senter gramm. >> good morning.me is carie lemack, and i just want to offer my thanks and gratitude to these fine public servants have gone far beyond where the need to go with this commission, beyond its congressional mandate and to continue to focus on these important issues. i want to offer my thanks to you and your staff for doing this and then hopefully continuing to go and i brought a picture of my mom. this is judy to get a couple of weeks before she was told on september 11th. she was with family in canada when this was taken and she was just about to celebrate her 51st birthday. she would have been 51 and october of 2001. and i understand you are seeing why are we talking about 9/11? i think it is because luckily, thankfully there are not other victims today to speak here today. we are grateful for that especially with what happened a month and a day ago. but the fact we don't of their victims year doesn't mean we shouldn't be listening to the victims would say which is this needs to be a top priority. my n

service hearings will make my comments brief and stiffer questions and head back i want to thank senter carper. a real leader. it was an honor to be on this team and if these are with these are supposed to be like when i'm looking forward to going on another one with you and the team members because we were really able to i feel it right to the heart of the matter and speak directly and plainly to not only the country leaders but obviously the embassy staff and the embassy leaders as well and they gave me a true picture as to what is happening over there, something i can come back and not only relate to my constituents in massachusetts but obviously dealing with a lot of the votes we are going to be taking and working in the appropriate manner. i agree with the poppy issue and i think it's something we need to get a handle on. but the thing i find most fascinating is the one thing they are all talking about over there is jobs. the jobs, jobs, jobs. every country, every person, every leader whether it is from the top leader in each country all the way down to the regular pomegranate form

i want to thank senter collins for her most gracious introduction, but more importantly for her steadfast support of the men and women in uniform. she's been a great advocate for insuring the needs of our troops are considered and met. and knowing her personally i got to meet her family particularly her dad and her mom. her mom was a former chairman of the board of trustees of the university of maine. not while i was there but the prior year to my coming on board and she certainly knew the university very welcome and her dad was a world war ii veteran who fought in the battle of the bulge and to my knowledge he was decorated with the purple heart and bronze star and i got to meet her dad and spent quite a bit of time with him and i very honored to have known him and i am sure he is extremely proud of his daughter today. with me today is my wife, linda, linda westphal. we've been married 41 years. she and i have raised a family, raised four children, james, heather, amy and lindsay and unfortunately they couldn't be here today because of a family commitment and work responsibilities but th

and senter dole never understood why any of our staff ever had children when we were in session. he would always say she let them during a recess. [laughter] but on a more serious note, during the five budget impact during the period of time of the clinton administration, the government had been shut down for a period of time and we have been going back and forth with house in terms of continuing resolutions in an attempt to try to get the government back operating and to pass a sufficient amount of money for a pergola of time that allows the government operate and the house was determined to be essentially force the issue, and mr. gingrich, the speaker at the time, and dick armey and others were opposed to doing anything to allow the government to go forward and wanted to sort of force the issue. there was a point in time we were bouncing something back-and-forth and the house once again indicated that they would be unwilling to pass something in the senator dole can out of the cloakroom and said to me you call dick armey on the phone and tell him the next time we are not going

we have the national response coordination senter record night with nasa operations center, other componentswithin dhs cord need with operations center which gives the secretary visibility on a variety of issues including things such as border matters, coastal issues, other activities that occur within the department under her perfume as other components. >> now, yes dhs has created this office of coordination at dhs. now, as we look at statutory role of fema, we see conflicts with the role and many of the statutory plan mandated functions of fema itself. and the agency appears to be relying on -- and this really does get the commission upset. sorry, the committee upset. because it appears to be relying on these outdated administrative documents. here's some more initials for everybody. hspd-5. now, this is exactly what we had in mind when we passed the katrina act and overruled these administrative documents. can you explain therefore in light of the post-katrina act why hspd-5 is still an outstanding administrative document and the role of the so-called office of operations coordination ca

>> senter i don't think it is an issue of tolerating. i am not sure that there is much value and ostracizing an individual or an organization. what we would rather do and what we are trying to do as i said earlier is raise the performance of the entire industry through the sharing of best practices through the voluntary awareness programs that we've initiated through the new web site that we've created called safetyshare.org to make sure we can disseminate across the industry the best practices, the best of the best so we can bring that level of performance of and i am not sure that ostracizing that individual or an organization moves us in that direction. >> if that organization willfully defiance they are not going to respond to the new waste web video on safety, massey obviously. i think that is silly frankly. mr. addington? i kind of said this is shocking this testimony to me that the mines continue to stay open and i say why can't you shut down the mine or part of a mine and they said well because of the federal mine safety and heal

my name is steve, the director of the imam senter texas tech university and it's my pleasure to be heremy colleagues from our university to become hosting this conference with a were friends, dr. bill weiss and his friends here. i think we are off to a remarkable start and this morning's first panel amazed me. i learned a tremendous amount, and i'm looking forward to the next set of discussions and panels as dr. jackson and his panel will discuss afghanistan. with that, dr. jackson. >> good morning. i feel this is a neat opportunity after the conference to discuss the diman experience yesterday in detail and that we touched on a lot of the problems of iraq. i do think it's interesting in a conference titled lessons learned lessons lost and that type of thing that the question what we mean by a lesson turns out to be a non-trivial issue, and i do think as mike said in his opening remarks there's a danger applying lessons that either are not valid from past historical cases or don't travel well. so i think in almost all of these discussions and certainly the one in afghanistan we have to

i think every senter republican or democrat would believe he was a senator's senator.it is easy and politics to appeal to the self-interest i all of us. ted kennedy appealed to the best of last. he appealed to the sense of justice, since of responsibility to our uniquely american sense of hope and possibility. the senate he labored help to reach progress in health care and education,ivil rights, voting rights, immigration reform and so much more. madam president, the powerful have never lacked the champions. tandy kendy was a champion for ordinary aricans. for those who struggled, for those who did not have a champion. he believed everyone in this greatly and deserves an opportunity tpursue the american dream. i thought last night of the president's speech. talking with -- before the speech with mrs. kennedy, after the speech with senator kennedy's three children. it was impossible to put it in words how much i missim. we miss our friend yearly. but we know that it is a privilege to call him our friend it was a privilege toerve alongside such a public servant. dedicate

they don't work for a guard company -- >> by the way that reminds me senter akaka probably you troubled -- store right, they've got a lot of folks that white professionals have been attached to the embassies for years that our nationals that are providing security. thanks for reminding -- >> that is the bulk of the contractors, the great bulk of the contractors. and they go home at night. it don't go in some guard camp, they go home at night. >> so the fact is it's cheaper. >> it's much cheaper, infinitely cheaper. >> now, the second category are the security guards, the bodyguards, black water, dying for, triple canopy, these people. there has been a question of whether it is cheaper to do it with americans on contract or perhaps military, u.s. military. and i believe the congressional budget office came out with a study last year in which they put up the true cost or as best they could get of the true cost of the civilian contractor bodyguard. and military person that came out. it was very close to the same. obviously if we substitute military that is 1,000 new military iraq at a time

>> senter i think all of us are quite concerned about the situation. certainly i've studied that iom report carefully and talked to the leadership of the cancer institute about this. the cooperative groups that have been conducting the clinical trials on cancer as long as 50 years have certainly produced wonderful data over the course of time but there is no question that the current system is not functioning as well as it should and that is what the report pointed out. i should mention that it was the doctor and the leadership that asked for the iom to look at this so they were fully aware of the need of course on the changes and asking iom to help out with this and are now i think in bracing the report and already moving forward to try to make the such changes. clearly the number of serious issues, one is of long time as you mentioned between the time when a protocol was conceived and when the first patient is enrolled and that has stretched of two and a half years. here we have a field that is moving so quickly that by the time you get to the point

. >> or internet or on [inaudible] programs senter? [laughter] >> first of the current iteration of the technology doesn't even show a face at all. it is designed to ascertain the anomalies that can be further looked at through a secondary inspection. secondly, the reader is sent where the person is so there is no association. further, the image is not stored. that is part of the how can i say, it is part of the contract, the technology, everything else that there is no storage of the image itself. it is merely designed to ping to someone upstairs if there is an anomaly of someone downstairs. i've seen the newspaper of the images. they use a very old first generation version of what actually shows up the technology now has really mitigated the privacy concerns, so hopefully we can work with you but also with the committee because i do think it is a very important investment for the country to make to satisfy people that this is not designed to be anything other than an objectively better way to protect people on aircraft. >> my final q

. >> senter collins, the democrats always hoped there would be a good for health care anyway. >> theyid. that's true. [laughter] let me make two points however in response to your question. i have a different take on scott brown than most of my colleagues. i am ecstatic to have another republican from new england in the republican caucus and one who i believe will be a more moderate voice. i believe that is good for the republican party and for new england. i think is good for our country. the second point i want to make is i believe the election of scott brown gives the president permission to reach out more to republicans because he can tell the left he has to now so i naturally optimistic it may allow us to proceed on bills we otherwise would not have. on health care there is a bipartisan health care bill to be had. there are several provisions in the senate bill that have widespread support. why don't we sit down and enact those provisions? small business tax credits, widespread support and it would help reduce the number of uninsured americans. the purchase of insurance across st

think in certain ways this is this leap into one chartered waters in fact of those states, depue senter ranks states every couple of years on their government and now they are using a set of criteria that doesn't go much to the substantive policy that how well governed the states are but because they are a group that has also funded reform efforts in campaign finance because they are choosing relatively non-partisan criterium, i think it is a good measurement and an indicative won the top six states in the rankings are the six best governed states in america are the six states that allow unlimited independent expenditures even prior to last thursday's decision. additionally we have experienced a lower federal government that is prior to 2002, that is throughout the 1990's and 1980's corporations could make these issue ads that jan baran talked about earlier and was an article of faith argued vigorously in the courts by my colleague here, fred wertheimer and others there is no difference between the issue eds and express. they were the scene and had the same impact on public policies. ok

. >> senter i thought you say to the challenge exactly right. sure, i can say with confidence i don't think we found the best mix of policies to try to give americans confidence they are not going to see the same rate of increase they've seen in the past. we do think it is good public policy to make higher education more affordable to americans. we want to make sure people have the chance to go to college and that we are generating a larger number of college graduates and a share of our population in the future. that is good policy. we think there's a high return on that happy to hear door ideas and listen to you and work with you on ways we can help, sensible ways we can let future rates of growth of tuition. >> congress wouldn't have to pass a bill of the president would give equal time to helping middle class families. as he's doing, java owning banks and wall street etc. and there wouldn't be a disagreement with me on his part for doing that if he would do the same thing with some of our major universities or all of our universities for incr

. >> i know i'm out of time but -- >> senter kaufman, we are in the back seven minutes of the vote. there's a greece period as you know. senator cardin is going to come back so that we can hopefully get the to last senators and here but if you want to truncate a little bit it is your choice. >> i will do that. >> i want to thank you for rustling what i find to agree with the several statements made on the complex problems and difficult problem because it involves the lives of the folks that are just the best among us and i also want to thank queue for the patience to wrestle with us on this issue and the ability to do that and i can't think of three people who would be better than i would be happier to see russell this problem than the three of you. i want to agree with what senator casey and others said. the number one problem here there's a lot of problems. so i don't minimize any but the number one problem is do we have a partner in the afghan government for success? that to me is the key question. i spent time, two trips to afghanistan, met with folks and talked to them. that's