so this is a wonderful opportunity for us to look at the gao report. to question do you hear from you and continue to try to look at the systemically holistically and get to the root cause of solving this problem. and mr. chairman, i yield back to you for further yielding. >> chair thank the gentle lady. it concludes the panel's -- or members' opening statement. on the panel today, we have two witnesses dr. marsha crosse. health care us accountability office and dr. doug deputy director for regulatory programs. senator for drug evaluation research. thank you for coming. your written testimony will be made part of the record. you have five minutes to summarize your opening statement. at this time the chair recognizes dr. croses for five minutes for summary. >> mr. chairman, ranking member, members of the subcommittee, i'm pleased to be here today. to discuss our work on drug shortages. as you know, prescription drugs are a critical part of political care. over the last decade there's an increase in the number of drugs that are in shortage. it included d

. >> so, what are the recommendations by the gao of what the fda should be doing?> so what the gao said essentially is that the fda needed to be essentially more nimble in how it was predicting these shortages. it has now tremendous database of numbers that tell it what is in shortage and how long it's been in shortage. a fair amount of data, but basically the gao said the fda wasn't using that data to kind of look at overall patterns in the country, look at kind of how these things tended to shake out and then try to predict when the shortages would occur. that's what the gao told the fda they needed to get better at. >> sabrina tavernisi from "the new york times," thank you so much. >> thanks a lot. >>> finally tonight, the connection. as far as everyone is concerned, tomorrow is president's day. and many of the advertisements would lead you to believe that it's a celebration of two of america's greatest presidents, george washington and abraham lincoln. >> massive deal. ♪ who's your founding father >> in the rear view camera. >> despite of what almost everyone b

we're audited by the gao in almost every aspect of our financial affairs and the programs that we run. we have outside independent accounting firms that audit the fed. we publish our balance sheet weekly. all of this is completely appropriate. what i don't agree with and would strongly oppose is interfering with the independence of monetary policy by bringing political pressures to bear on the committee's judgment about what is the appropriate way to implement monetary policy. we're given objectives by congress that's completely appropriate. we report to congress. you should hold us accountable and ask us to explain how our policies advance the goals that you have assigned to us, but if you pass a bill that wouldn't have the gao come and take documents, second guess every decision that we make or permit them to do that within a short time of our making those decisions and bring political pressures to bear, congress wisely made the fed independent in the implementation of policy because it was understood that we sometimes have to make difficult decisions that would be hard for the cong

anybody from the audience from gao? >> gentleman right behind me, yes. and there's plenty more back in the building. >> on behalf of dr. coburn and myself how much we value the work that you do, and appreciate the opportunity to partner with you. >> thank you, sir. >> i want to first talk a little bit more, talk a little bit more about the flood insurance program. dr. johnson -- well senator johnson and i both -- dr. coburn -- voted against the flood insurance corrections bill that passed the senate not very long ago just earlier this month. late last month. and i go back in time to 1990 i was a house member on the banking committee and believe it or not i think with a guy named tom ridge, who was the raking republican on the subcommittee that i chaired then and one of our focuses of the national flood insurance program because we were concerned that the program was under water and all these years later, well, it still. and the kind of changes we're seeing in weather it's getting to be more under water. and we adopted some changes to the legislation, in

anybody from the audience from gao? >> gentleman right behind me, yes.and there's plenty more back in the building. >> on behalf of dr. coburn and myself how much we value the work that you do, and appreciate the opportunity to partner with you. >> thank you, sir. >> i want to first talk a little bit more, talk a little bit more about the flood insurance program. dr. johnson -- well senator johnson and i both -- dr. coburn -- voted against the flood insurance corrections bill that passed the senate not very long ago just earlier this month. late last month. and i go back in time to 1990 i was a house member on the banking committee and believe it or not i think with a guy named tom ridge, who was the raking republican on the subcommittee that i chaired then and one of our focuses of the national flood insurance program because we were concerned that the program was under water and all these years later, well, it still. and the kind of changes we're seeing in weather it's getting to be more under water. and we adopted some changes to the legislation, in t

. >> gao recommended improves its database for a more predictive analysis. how did the agency respond and how far off are they putting into practice? >> they agree and they are doing it immediately. >> the gao says it lacks the procedures and policies related to british renewed use of the drug shortage database. what does this have of the agency to prevent or mitigate shortages? >> they do need these kinds of standard procedures in place to insure the accuracy and the understanding of how data should be entered a and to analyze. the also agreed they would move forward with those tax. >> do think that could play a teacher with drug shortages? >> they need to have good information because they need to look at this more broadly, with an class's and time to measure whether or not they put the right steps in place to have the impact to improve the situation rather than treating each individual situations that have to uniquely be solved through mecca yield back. >> the gentlelady from north carolina. >> thank you. thank you to the panel. this is a very specific si

we're audited by the gao in almost every aspect of our financial affairs and the programs that we run. we have outside independent accounting firms that audit the fed. we publish our balance sheet weekly. all of this is completely appropriate. what i don't agree with and would strongly oppose is interfering with the independence of monetary policy by bringing political pressures to bear on the committee's judgment about what is the appropriate way to implement monetary policy. we're given objectives by congress that's completely appropriate. we report to congress. you should hold us accountable and ask us to explain how our policies advance the goals that you have assigned to us, but if you pass a bill that wouldn't have the gao come and take documents, second guess every decision that we make or permit them to do that within a short time of our making those decisions and bring political pressures to bear, congress wisely made the fed independent in the implementation of policy because it was understood that we sometimes have to make difficult decisions that would be hard for the cong

the gao is saying they're out there, you just have to pay a little more. >> thank you very much.o to josh lipton with breaking news from the apple shareholder meeting. >> reporter: yeah, here at apple hq in california, tim cook is still on the stage fielding questions from shareholders. the meeting was only supposed to go about one hour but is going a little longer. we will continue to bring you updates. i want to bring you headlines. cook talking to shareholders about this company is committed to introducing new products, new services, and to that end, he talked about research and development spending which is up 32% year over year. cook's point was listen, we want to introduce now products this year and are putting our money where our mouth is. he also talked about acquisitions. with that big cash pile, investors want to know what they are doing with it. cook saying they bought 23 companies in the last 16 months. he went on to say we're not opposed to buying a bigger company but it has to be the right fit. also, cook mentioning where's the growth really coming from now. he talk

. >> having a gao investigation into what's happening in a local state is extraordinarily premature.it wasn't for political campaigns going on, he wouldn't have made that. >> we should know in a couple weeks if the gao is going to investigate cover oregon. as for the fbi, they won't comment, calling the allegation one of white-collar fraud. as for the source of that fraud, i can tell you that he has not yet been contacted by the feds. bret. >> dan springer in a windy portland. thank you. >>> republicans have taken to referring recently to an imperial presidency when criticizing the white house over its use of executive orders instead of congressional legislation. correspondent shannon bream tonight on what some in the gop want to do about it. >> you can't simply proceed willy-nilly and or at whim or through press release and say this is what we're going to do. >> former democratic congressman dennis kucinich sued george w. bush and president obama for going beyond what he believed were their constitutional limits. both times, the federal judge told kucinich and the members who joined

please make sure to silence all phones and electronic gao vices. completed speaker cards and copies of documents to be included as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will appear on the february 11, 2014 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. >> thank you. so, for those of you in the audience, we have about four regular agenda items as ll

. >> thank you, my name is susan irving and i direct the work at gao on debt management so i am a big fan of article one. as the co-author of the first outlook report calling attention to the long-term, i want my comments not to be heard is doubting that. i would like to suggest that the 1974 act did not create vector spending, it arrived before that. i would like to suggest that your goal of wanting congress to have to look at the debt consequences of spending and revenue actions is hurt by an act of the debt limit rather than help. now you can -- people can write to their elected officials and their elected officials can vote for increases in mandatory spending custom revenues emergency supplemental without offset and later vote against paying for them. it becomes afree vote and if you are seeking to look at the long- term and change fiscal policy it seems the time to pay attention to the debt consequences of actions is not when you are deciding whether to raise the debt limit after the fact but whether you are deciding on spending. it would be important to separate out. i'm asking

that it was last like april that it was sent and there is a committee meeting tomorrow, and before the gao. and then, so basically the revision process was kind of well under way and we are hoping that it will come to... or that we are hoping that we can make significant progress in march >> any idea when it will actually be finalized and the board will vote on it? >> i would hope, i would hope at some point in march but i am not sure, yet. >> any other questions? >> comments? >> any public comment on the executive director's report? >> commissioners, ray hartz, director of san francisco open government, there are two items that i would like to discuss, item two where we see that everyone has finally learned the sunshine ordinance to you is a pointless exercise. i will look at these from month to month and i see the number one again and again and i will be honest with you that i can't help but wonder if it is just one complaint that you let sit there and they get hit by a bus and make it go away. the second is item 7 where i would like to ask a question, what do you train the city employee

. >> de yea gao figured it out.had a problem that would notify him the minute a reservation opened up. he declined to talk on camera, so we went to dan garcia of the computer science department at uc berkeley to find out how the program worked. monaco's program grabs a snap shot of the reservation page every minute. 99% of the time is says no reservations currently available. >> if those are ever different, it means the reservation page is updated. rather than saying no reservations, if that changes it says we have five reservations. >> and it immediately sends an e-mail. it did no not take long to figure out they opened up at every day the same time, 4:00 a.m. and often gone in 30 minutes. others figured that out too including an ebay user who gobbled up a bunch and sold them on ebay. >> it might be worth it, but it depends on if it is 5. :30 or money:00? >> the res voition sold for $20 -- the reservation sold for 20 bucks. the general manager canceled all of the reservation so he is no longer selling. foodies, you

. >> de yea gao figured it out.had a problem that would notify him the minute a reservation opened up. he declined to talk on camera, so we went to dan garcia of the computer science department uc uc berkeley to find out how the program worked. monaco's program grabs a snap shot of the reservation page every minute. 99% of the time is says no reservations currently available. >> if those are ever different, it means the reservation page is updated. rather than saying no reservations, if that changes it says we have five reservations. >> and it immediately sends an e-mail. it did no not take long to figure out they opened up at every day the same time, 4:00 a.m. and often gone in 30 minutes. others figured that out too including an ebay user who gobbled up a bunch and sold them on ebay. >> it might be worth it, but it depends on if it is 5. :30 or money:00? >> the res voition sold for $20 -- the reservation sold for 20 bucks. the general manager canceled all of the reservation so he is no longer selling. foodies, you

and the gao report says would-be pilots are noticing. >>> so, after accusations that border patrol agents have a history of using unnecessary deadly force, customs and border protection, it is now under pressure to make its use of force policies public. homeland security secretary jeh johnson said it could happen any day now. a leaked report shows agents shot at rock-throwers and intentionally stepped in front of vehicles as an apparent excuse to shoot fleeing drivers. >>> a bill that would have expanded health care and education for veterans getting rejected in the senate. a lack of support from republicans doomed this bill. they said the $24 billion price tag would bust the budget. veterans groups said the bill simply fell victim to washington's partisan politics. >>> so, a lot of free rides for members of congress, according to "usa today," lawmakers taking more than $1.37 million worth of privately funded, free trips last year, the most in a decade. and on over 40% of those trips, family members came along. now, this travel was mostly funded by non-profit, charitable and educational g

please make sure to silence all phones and electronic gao vices. completed speaker cards and copies of documents to be included as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will appear on the february 11, 2014 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. >> thank you. so, for those of you in the audience, we have about four regular agenda items as well as two hearings taking place. so, madam clerk, if we'll start the first one, if you could call item number 1. >> item number 1 is the hearing to discuss and evaluate san francisco's 10-year plan to abolish chronic homelessness, which is due to sunset at the end of 2014. >> thank you. so, colleagues, our first item today is a hearing i called for a few months ago to discuss our city's ten-year plan to abolish chronic homelessness here in san francisco, a plan which is set to sunset this year in june. leading up to today's hearing my staff and i spent significant amounts of time meeting with city, nonprofit and community leaders as well as outside organizations w

. >> de yea gao figured it out.had a problem that would notify him the minute a reservation opened up. he declined to talk on camera, so we went to dan garcia of the computer science department at uc berkeley to find out how the program worked. monaco's program grabs a snap shot of the reservation page every minute. 99% of the time is says no reservations currently available. >> if those are ever different, it means the reservation page is updated. rather than saying no reservations, if that changes it says we have five reservations. >> and it immediately sends an e-mail. it did no not take long to figure out they opened up at every day the same time, 4:00 a.m. and often gone in 30 minutes. others figured that out too including an ebay user who gobbled up a bunch and sold them on ebay. >> it might be worth it, but it depends on if it is 5. :30 or money:00? >> the res voition sold for $20 -- the reservation sold for 20 bucks. the general manager canceled all of the reservation so he is no longer selling. foodies, you

last year was the chair of this committee for gao and that's a government audit and oversight committee. i called for this hearing because many people including myself have heard from several current and former members of the fire department of their significant concerns related to the department's process for recruitment, testing as well as promotion. specifically i had concerned about the testing and hiring process, lacking transparency and the decisions on how was being promoted seemed to be based on a series of secondary criteria that's not specified or evenly weighed in the hiring process. additionally this audit takes a look at one of the often forgotten components of our fire department and that's the emergency division and their concerns about ability to transfer from ems positions from fire positions. it's my hope to discuss it with the budget and analyst that's here today and the members of the fire department so we can make sure the hiring process is fair for our future and our current fire department employees. this will be a friendly, honest and spirited conversation. i'm l

the gao has listed since the '90s high risk. it's estimated by some that $20 billion is wasted. that's a lot of money. so i've introduced the bill that, based on my experience but also meeting with many, many stakeholdersings, and it's bipartisan which is very important. and i think addresses this in a very clear, workable manner and what the bill calls for. but this is a lot of money, taxpayer money, and we can do much, much better. we can do much, much better. and we have to open the door for more competition in terms of smaller innovative companies that may, indeed, be able to build out a much better system. hay don't apply -- they don't apply now because you need a team of lawyers to pull together a 1900-page application, you know, response to an rfp and then agencies have their own supplement that may be up to a thousand pages. they simply can't compete. so i think that this is an area that is really ripe for reform. taxpayers would benefit from it and the product that comes out of the executive branch, all of the agencies, i.t. is absolutely part and parcel of all of this.

reviewed this audit in detail with the fire department and the department of human resources at the gao hearing on january 23rd. and frankly as i sat in the meeting, there was something very -- there were some very alarming revelations about our city's emergency medical services and i'm seriously concerned. people are calling 911 because of pedestrian [speaker not understood] or a loved one is having a heart attack or something of an emergency capacity is happening and the fire department has no ambulance to send. this is happening every single day. in fact, it's happening on an average of 8 times each day, and these medics that follow situations, medic to follow, is what they're called, they have increased over 500% since 2008. and if this is happening 8 times a day on an average day, then if we're in an emergency situation, whether there is an event, whether there is an earthquake or terrorist attack, we are not in a situation where we have the capacity to address this issue appropriately. and that's not all. under its agreement, under the fire department agreement with the state emer

. >> having a gao investigation, what is happening in the local state is extraordinarily premature. and if it was not for some political campaigns going on he would not have made that. >> reporter: people who really need health insurance in the state can fill out a between-page application and get the health care insurance. but right now, 35,000 people have done that. far fewer than they need to keep this solvent. so there are calls to have cover oregon scrapped altogether. megyn? >> wow, dan springer, thank you. >>> we're also seeing a new report on obamacare tonight saying the congressman who interrupted president obama's 2009 speech on health care reform may have been on to something, these reports suggest. the conservative website suggesting that man's worst nightmare is coming true. joe wilson was the man who shouted out, you lied, during the interview. this headline, obamacare recruiting illegals in california is getting a lot of attention but is it true? michael canon is the director of health policy studies and a former domestic policy analyst. good to see you, michael. the

now, despite all of these issues, the gao says they predict that kids will eventually get used to theew lunches, get back to the lunch lines and will be healthier for it. >> i don't know. garrett, thank you very much. don't say i didn't tell you so. >> the gatekeepers -- >> maybe we should not at the school. >> i totally disagree. the schools have every inningright to get involved. >> no, they don't. no, they don't to infinity. that kind of mature discussion then. one of my favorite nutritionists because she practices what she preaches and still thinks this is money well spent. she is back with us. might be well spent for the good intentions but the kids are not eating it. >> it's true, the kids were not takers. >> why is that. >> the program was a little bit aggressive. >> you think? >> a little bit. but i think it's absolutely a good program and was the right choice at the right time, and we're seeing children that are obese. >> they're getting thinner because they're starving. >> i think the fact the kids boycotted the food, they're claiming they're starving is ridiculous. >> they'

this not like gaos when we talk about plans.ified human beings. >> put us farther along than even europe or asia as far as that goes. well, we have in a remarkably short time become used to. children conceived in lab dishes and brought to term in surrogate wombs. this however is different it is, however, described accurately i think as therapy. that is it is the pursuit of a accepted norm of health, the prevention of disease. at most, you would describe it as negative eugenics. it's one thing to say we are going to prevent a crippling or fatal illness. it's another thing to say well, maybe there is a michael jordan in this d.n.a. somewhere. i think we are a long way from that scientifically. a along away from that ethically. if it is possible to draw a line where you can stop on this slippery slope between therapy and the engineering of designer children, it's worth trying. >> i want to turn to a different study out this past week on child obesity. ages 2 to a down 43% in 2011, 2012. compared to 2003, 2004. george, you weighed i

the gao is looking at this. and these are actually fact specific questions. we probably shouldn't rejudge the results of those investigations as to the ethical or the legal questions. >> all right. well, let me ask you this: isn't it the case that johnson and johnson, it makes healthcare products, health and human services regulates johnson and johnson. i mean, to me, it seems like a little bullying, a little intimidation. i'm your regulator. i can regulate your company, cut your bottom line, and i want you to give me money for somebody else. i mean, to me, that's worse than unethical. it's bullying. it's intimidation. >> well, you are quite right. there are two constitutional reasons to be alarmed by this dynamic. one is, you know, congressman gowdy referenced the power of the purse. this is perhaps the most important way in which congress is able to constrain the executive branch. but if the executive branch can go around the appropriations process and get its money from elsewhere to come up with its own enforcement priorities, that really cuts congress out

there's over $400 billion in duplicative programs according to a gao audit.ese programs are not being dealt with in the house. unfortunately, the republicans have been as guilty and are as guilty of pandering to things that support what keeps them in power. >> i'm going to push back on david a little bit. david, what i don't think the tea party understands is when you get elected, government is about compromise. and the first thing when i think speaker boehner did a smart thing when he said we're going to pass a clean spending bill because he put the money on the back of the spending democrats, democrats who won't cut a dime and the spending president. the problem we have time and time again as a party is i think when we dealt with the government shutdown last fall, what we saw was a lot of tea party folks wanted to get caught up in repealing obamacare when it didn't have a chance to be repealed. instead of focusing on delaying the individual mandate, which is there's a great argument for that now. so i think the only way that republicans are going to be able

just to remind us all, every two years, beginning of everything congress, gao gives us a list. senator johnson heard me to say that before, we use that as our to-do list in this committee to figure out ways to save money and get better results for less money. we're thankful for that to-do list. in response to this historic announcement house oversight and government reform committee chairman darrell issa and this is a quote from darrell, the comptroller general has made it very clear that we've not prepared properly, that the federal government has a financial risk that we have not properly mitigated, said i think it's a wake-up call to us all. i couldn't agree more. gao's report is a call to action for both congress and the administration, warning us that our country must start thinking now about how to better prepare and adapt to a new climate reality. today our witness from kwchlt ao will further detail these financial risks to our communities, to our taxpayers and hopefully offer some commonsense solutions that my colleagues and i can work with the administration to see imp

and that all happened in 2010, 2011, the gao report came out in 2012 about it. but now unexpectedly, it's all come back because the canceling of the tunnel, including the issue of the supposed costover runs that weren't costover runs at all, though issues have been included in this new subpoena which we obtained last night served on the port authority on monday of this week. the port authority is being asked to turn over documentation related to the shutdown of access lanes on to the george washington bridge. that much we knew. the port authority is also unexpectedly being asked for a ton of information on that tunnel. on the tunnel project that chris christie canceled after it was already started. and that is technically within the remit of the legislative committee that sent the subpoenas out, but honestly nobody saw it coming. why is all this coming up now? what does it mean for chris christie and what does it mean for the bridge-gate investigation into him and his administration? stay with us. i know how to answer these questions. sly. hey, let me get it. ah

>> that's a factor, what the gao actually found is that 60% of people who have exhausted unemploymentome sort of private income coming in but that income is very disbursed. it could be help from family and friends, could be odd jobs, could be using the last of their savings. it really is very difficult for these folks trying to get by. they went from living paycheck to paycheck in some cases to living dollar to dollar now. >> steve, this is the situation mr. bernanke mentioned fairly frequently, the longer people were out of work, the harder it was going to be for them to become employed. then without the benefits, it's a very difficult situation. >> right. the incidence of getting reemployed if you're out of work for awhile, it goes down. if you have been out of work for a short period of time, you get back to work. really liked the story. i went to look for the people she's talking about and others are talking about in the data and it's problematic. you don't necessarily see it. i looked at a category called discouraged workers. you can see a pretty hefty bump in december and januar

i want to insert into the record, 1999 study from the gao that examined the impacts of lifting the ban on crude oil exports from alaska. in that report, they state despite higher crude oil prices, no observed increases occurred in the prices of three important petroleum products used by consumers on the west coast. this was not cited in the essay. i would like to submit a report back in 2006 which was also cited. >> without objection. >> we have to make sure we have the full quotes in context. you mentioned the tyranny of geography. i was reading an article yesterday where because of the glut of the oil coming from the north into the gulf refineries, texas is looking to move their crude through the panama canal up to the refineries in california. it speaks to the issue of alignment that we get to a point where we will have a mismatch between what we are producing domestically and our ability to meet the needs, the capacity within our refinery. understanding and appreciating that it is getting to the point now where we have reconfigured as many refineries as we can. maybe there is a lit

a gao report from 1997 to 2001 posed greater health risks for men than women.ex, which some argue defeats the whole purpose. we have come upon studies where they do use both male and female, but they then don't analyze how the two respond differently. if they have the two but no analysis of the difference. >> if you do the two together and you think females are here and males are here or vice versa, then you're going to get results that are height here, so they're not predictive of either, males or fee mails. >> dr. paula johnson is director of the women's center of health and biology. good morning. >> good morning. >> your report fans nate and scared me at the same time because don't we already know the differences between men and women? we know there are differences. i don't know why we're getting short end here. >> we know there are differences but remember it was only 20 years ago in 1993 that there was a law passed that mandated the incluns clooufgs women and minorities in nih trials and it's really been over the past 20 years that we learn that these sex

i would suggest that the high camp languages that after the gao comes up with their report that there be 30 days -- if i read this correctly, that before the postal service could then act. and it just is a little bit -- a little bit of a possibility here that the congress could respond to that decision if this is not at all practical. i would just suggest that it be 60 days. i think the senator would have preferred 90, but as a practical matter would suggest that this be a 60 day to give us some possibility of congressional action. otherwise there is almost no point putting the 30 days in year. >> mr. chairman, i totally agree. i would go for 90, but whenever we can resolve your. >> i am willing to accept 60. they que very much. this is essentially -- let's make this unanimous. is there objection? is there objection? no objection. the amendment. this would be i can't as amended. >> no. i think their chairman. >> oh, sure. >> it is really very appreciated . >> you bet. thanks for your constructive. now we move to final passage on high camp as amended. any more comments? hearing and all