it is not a giveaway to the largest institutions. our bipartisan bill makes targeted, commonsense fixes so it will provide tangible relief to community banks and credit unions so that they can lend to borrowers in rural america and support rural communities. it leaves in place rules and regulations that hold wall street accountable. in fact, the big banks aren't necessarily happy with this bill because it doesn't benefit them much, and when we ask the current regulators, such as federal reserve chairman jerome powell, he basically has said that he believes that the bill gives the regulators the tools they need to continue to protect and prevent against financial collapse. let me say how the bill doesn't help the largest institutions. it does not make any significant changes to the regulations facing the largest wall street banks so that they continue to be reined in from causing havoc to the financial system like they did during the financial crisis. it does not make any structural changes to the consumer financial protection bureau.

morgan or citibank or goldman sachs or the largest institutions. $10billion or less. and it does not change the way the federal reserve regulates foreign banks. second, the bill will not be to another mortgage lending crisis.ck let's just go back and he examined 2008. we have a significant over of buyers of subprime lending in the real problem came securitized. that is where the trouble began. putting those institutions in jeopardy to pass along that risk to theis public derivatives. when did all collapses in the risky mortgage loan. and before it was securitized. nothing in this bill changes qualified mortgage standards. nothing in the bill removes the protection that dodd frank has provided to the secondaryng market. the only thing this bill does is those small institutions inh, community bank campaign mortgages without worried about c the standard but the one thing that they can do is sell those mortgages into the secondary market we have to keep those on the books when you have a requirement they keep them on the books you honestly h believe that these institution

due process to every institution. regardless, regardless of its ize, regardless of its jyography -- geography, this is about due process. as justice holmes wrote, whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase due process of law, there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair chilly ith opportunity to be heard. -- conception of a fair opportunity to be heard. a bank examiner or a credit union examiner is not tantamount to judge, jury, prosecutor, cop on the beat and executioner all rolled into one. is your no due process only practical appeal is the one who rendered the judgment in the first place. and so, number one, it is important that all americans, all institutions receive due process which is perhaps why even half -- over half of the democrats on the financial services committee chose to support h.r. 4545. so the ranking member's amendment would set a threshold here but her threshold, as she talks about the so-called megabanks, at $10 billion, that's one half of one

or class of institutions. let me be clear. like many of the bill's supporters, i strongly believe should not take a one-size-fits-all approach to financial regulation. financial regulation must be appropriately adjusted according to the size and complexity of an institution or class of institutions. that is why democrats worked so hard to create this flexibility in dodd-frank and regulators are already required to adjust their rules accordingly. for example, the cfpb has exempted community banks from many of the requirements under the qualified mortgage rule and the federal reserve has developed different capital standards for banks based on size. moreover, we already have laws like the economic growth and regulate paperwork reduction act that instructs financial regulators to go through extensive lookback reviews to update and improve their regulations. so while i agree that this is necessary to review and update our regulate framework from time to time, particularly for our smaller institutions, i oppose h.r

maybe new startup institutions and embracing it.it is towards the future here is not surprising at all eras as anyone's guess in the same way that i would argue. it's trying to break from that and do something new or innovative. and the teacher training schools was so completely different from what came before and you can see this in the archival records. the mechanics and sciences and teacher training if that comes through you will destroy higher education. that is in the archival record and we hear those conversations occurring today around these kind of movements. history may be doesn't repeat itself but my hunch is that it's not going to be that apocalypt apocalyptic. other questions? >> there's been a significant change in the last 50 years and a percentage of the code words that go on to college and the nontraditional publication that turned to different ages. the high school social studies teacher. for my own caree career at the secondary level and now working in higher ed and constantly being interested in the nature of the

these are the largest financial institutions. we eliminate barriers to jobs by allowing mortgage loan originators to work temporarily in a new state or for a new financial institution while their applications for new licenses are pending. our bill requires the treasury to study and report on the risks of cyber threats to our financial institutions and capital markets. finally, our bill provides regulatory relief from enhanced supplemental ratio from certain banks in a serve as organizations like mutualunds d state and localensi doesn't st we would make our banks less competitive than foreign banks for provide the same service. let's keep that opportunity, that market within our own borders as well. let's allow them to be competitive which saves on costs for mutual fund purchasers. now, this benefits countless cal governments across the country that do business with these banks. in my home state alone, this includes the state of south dakota, the south dakota retirement system, the rapid city regional hospital, the city of vermill

it will expand to include all regulated financial institutions instead of only insured depository institutions. it will codify the administration into the legislation. the bill will also add the controversial consumer finance protection bureau to the review process this provision is especially important because before dodd-frank consumer financial laws were implemented by the three banking agencies but when dodd-frank was ep acted, cfpb was given responsible for enforcing consumer financial laws. since they are exempt from egrpa, these are no longer being comp rehence ily review. dodd-frank requires them to review every phi years after they are enact bud this rules out rules which are considered nonsignificant. it also excludes rules that were adopted before the cfpb was created. also the cfpb's regulatory reviews are under a single five-year lookback period. we must ensure that each regulatory agency is comprehensively reviewing its rules on a regular basis. this rule is not duplicative because it requires them to use find frgs regulatory reviews and reports so the cfpb does -- doesn't waste

running the institution. and so when you yo say is there hope yes there's hope and not saying only hope from in in dems but most of a lot that was done was done with republican support historically in terms of good positive legislation. but -- it very much efnghts the question of who, who you're sending to washington and i think one of the major differences for example, between the class of '74 and subsequent wave elections is 1994, 2010, te guys as i mention in any talk they did not come to washington to destroy washington. they came to make government work to it see it as a fundamental smiewtion but i think that's a majority difference with people who you've seen arrive in those subsequent wave classes where they viewed washington as the problem, and they don't have a huge investment in maintaining either integrity it or operaibility of the congress so i think it really comes down to question of who is -- who is in charge and what their objectives are if people are in charge don't care if congress gets a ba

we're enshrined in law by having systemic institutions. these are officially designated too big to fail. no institution should be too big to fail. it happens automatically when a bank it's $50 billion. that's a low threshold. this legislation takes that up to $250 billion. should be automatic. the size of the institution but driven by the conduct of it. at least we are raising the threshold from 50 to make $250 billion. this is problematic for banks that are larger than 250 billion. they have an onerous complex, expensive regime they have to comply with when competitors might be smaller relieved of this burden. there's no fairness in this. i intend to work with regulators to basically have this designation reflect the activity of the institution rather than just the size. another provision section 402 slr is a minimum capital ratio they say well regardless of what those consistent will have a minimum capital requirement that's in addition to the specific that whole regulatory regime remains in place. so we have both simultaneously. this le

specifically today we are whichoning the institute -- hacking activities on their behalf. -- institute one ducted conducted massive coordinated cyber intrusions into the computer systems of 300 unit -- universities worldwide. including 144 institutions right here in the u.s. this was done at the behest of revolutionary guard corps, irgc, which outsourced this data to the institute and their hackers for hire. the irgc plays a central role and iran's malign activities across the world including enacting terrorism. in october of last year we had terrorism authorities providing key support to irgc. syrian president's relentless campaign of brutal ,iolence against his own people as well as the legal activities of hezbollah, hamas, and other terrorist groups. the irgc has been designated for times over here in the united states and they have been designated in the european union and by the u.n.. scheme allowed the irgc to obtain valuable from universities and united states and 21 other countries including the united canada, germany, australia, israel, japan, south korea, china, and other cou

as i've already discussed some, community banks and credit unions are simple institutions focused on relationship lending and have special relationships with the people in their communities. the bankers go to church or play ball or their kids go to school with each other, with their customers. they know their customers, and they're willing to work with them to help them be successful. they provide credit to traditionally underserved and rural communities, where it may be harder to being a ses banking products -- to access banking products and services or get a loan. dodd-frank instituted new mortgage loans and complex capital requirements on community banks and credit unions that hindered public access to mortgage credit and lending more broadly. i guess i'll just insert here, this phenomenon that we often see in washington of one size fits all or cookie-cutter solutions from washington to a problem is directly the kind of problem that we're seeing here. our smaller financial institutions are treated as though they were large megabanks, as though their business models and their portf

what we're doing is giving relief to these institutions. it's about time. we've had enough time to see what needs to happen. this was done in a bipartisan way, which i'm thankful of. and senator crapo, the president, i would like to thank you for your leadership in working with people on both sides of the aisle to create a responsible bill that's not an overreach, some of the provisions of dodd-frank, we all know, are good. some of them are good and we're leaving in place many of those, but at the same time, what we're doing is taking a very constructive step to make sure that these smaller institutions, which represent a very small amount of the assets in our nation, but have such outside impact on the communities that they are in, or have the ability to flourish and do the things that are necessary for our economies back home. so i thank you, i'm proud to be a part of this and a co-sponsor. i thank you for letting us be a part of it and i hope collectively we will ensure this is a very successful effort. thank you, i yield the floor. >> thank you, senator

community financial institutions provide, mr. president, more than 60% of small business loans in this country. too often it is easy to forget that the personalized touch of community banks has been what started the process for success of some of the most accomplished businesses in the united states of america. i believe, mr. president, we must pass this bill if we want that to continue. if we want to keep and create jobs in this country and opportunities for our people. in response to my friends from the other side of the aisle who oppose our efforts here, i have one simple message. the economic growth, regulatory relief, and consumer protection act -- the bill we have before the senate now -- is a thoughtful, bipartisan effort to correct and right-size regulations that were hastily prepared. this product is designinged to help, mr. president, main street, not wall street. this is a good bill. i hope that my colleagues will join me and others in support of it. i yield the floor, suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding off

institution. u.s. institution. i think these are brilliant ideas, because from what we've seen, there's insufficient support of the private sector. there's insufficient equity finance rather than just loan finance, and there's insufficient focus on fragile states. all of those things can be helped by well-designed institutions. another point we are looking at is resilience. many of the countries make some limited economic progress but can be knocked back quickly. or they tend to suffer from climactic or other events. could we do more to prevent rather than respond. could we do more to help with insurance and other mechanisms to help the countries be more resilient. final point i'd make is all of this only makes sense if it's an agenda of things we want to do together rather than just do two fragile states. there's a strong case for saying that in many cases fragile states, particularly mineral rich ones, have their own stolen by corruption politicians and often hidden in western countries includin

higher learning institutions approximately $3.4 billion. the subscriptions of the databases are funded in part by taxpayer, your dollars in student tuition. this means people in our country were paying for surface what nationstate actors were consuming for free. they're not a meyer in our work. they're stealing it and taking credit for and selling it to others. they also targeted and compromised e-mail accounts of roughly 36 us-based private companies and 11 private companies overseas using a massive password spray attack and a brute force attack that flies under the radar of many security protocols used by companies. they compromised e-mail accounts for governmental and nongovernmental organizations including the department of labor, the federal agency migratory commission, the states of hawaii and indiana. even the united nations. when we learned of these attacks we notified the victim so they could take action to notify the impact. some may ask, why would you pursue people you'll never get your hands on. apprehending these individuals ha

these are all public higher education institutions. these two are most improbable figures joined together to make the case to their colleagues in the house and senate that higher education needed support from the federal government. -- the whole country they would bethis significantly persons of limited financial or political resources. john mahoney what happened next. [applause] john: the conventional energy when your second speaker is to comment about your predecessor that she was a rough act to follow. i will break from that script. patricia is a great act to follow. context of thed significant issues so this allows me to focus on some of the deliberations of what i call history in our own time. i want to talk specifically about the higher education act, how it was signed, sealed, and delivered or rather how its proponents thought about what they were trying to deliver and what we have in subsequent decades seen those acts. on november 8, 1965 in san marcus, texas on the campus of southwest texas date teachers college, president lyn

institute of peace. when what you mean by that, particularly indictable as discussing with ilan that a lot of americans have said it's nice that we've been known as a world policeman, but what about us? and also in light of the fact that nature abhors a a vacuum dyson if we don't step up someone else will, but a lot of americans are just tired. we been playing world police for generations and there's some americans are living pretty third world as it is. can you just deemed this out for me, what hunkering down would mean practically speaking? >> sure. a couple of issues are blended together there. we don't live in the kind of world where we can just get in bed and pull the sheets that that will solve the issues. way too interconnected, too many threats that come up from places that we are not watching, think ebola come from west africa. clearly isis as it emerged. so from a security interest we can't afford to hunker down. it's also not who we are as a people. i think the american people are very engaged

whether it's multilateral institutions or in a bilateral way from government. according to a 2016 report, this comes from the indiana university family school of philanthropy, 84% of all donors total economic development is through private financial flows. of course, we know that official government assistance plays a catalyzing role and its essential private investment. one of the quick questions you ask in your testimony is how do we help to activate the private sector in the most fragile countries, creating jobs, growth and prosperity for everyone to share in. i believe that is the right question and like to know your answer. >> first of all, your point, you are absolutely right. remittances work overseas figures and they should be encouraged. the money flowing back into very broken countries like happy a is hugely important in the economy of that country. we should ask ourselves what we do to help that happen and there is a danger that some of these remittances get caught up in very appropriate and well-meaning legislation about money laundering and what ha

he is the chairman of the board of the institute of religion in public life. the publisher of an outstanding publication a lot of the street called "first things." among his many books are these three intellectual books. "the first thousand years: a global history of christianity" the spirit of christian thought," and then "remembering the christian past," and one he has taught at notre dame and in a, gregorian university in rome, and at providence college. it is a pleasure to have him speaking on the christian origin of religious freedom. [applause] dr. wilken: thank you very much. it is customary to say how pleased one is to be here. people sent to me how far did , you come? i said, it happens i live just down the street. at 1317 fourth street. my wife drove me over here this afternoon. she is going to come drive me home. she said it is .8 miles. i am very pleased to have the beginning of a relationship to this fine new museum. those of you who have been through the museum know that there is an exhibit on the great awakening. the great awakening was a powerf

at the national institute on drug abuse, we are looking to institute a policy on drugs in the workplacend how drugs and their after affects change the performance. this is cocaine performance at our addiction performance center. >> we are going to take this gentleman who's a nondrug user and have him do tasks as a control on people who are coming in who are coming off of cocaine and we are going to look at what we think are some performance deficits when people crash. we are also interested of course in the affects of cocaine itself on a task. this has fascinated me to see people in withdrawal do poorly on cognitive measures. since the people coming in will be withdrawaling from cocaine, we need control data to see how the normal person would respond, the nondrug user would respond. >> the air traffic controller task. just puss the button when any square changes direction. >> but just identifying the problem is not enough. our philosophy is going to get the substance abuse employee into treatment, provide them treatment and get them back on the job. we developed technical assistance to

speaker, every single day we hear from our community financial institutions. i heard from one in new mexico that said, you knowing we're a $300 million community tpwhank an area with high unemployment. 37% of our employees are active in community organizations, little league, charities. many serve in leadership positions in these organizations. and we also make tens of thousands of dollars in charitable contributions every year. but if our bank can't survive, you take away the local leadership, take away the economic ebb gin of our community. this -- the economic engine of our community this banker was talking about the regulatory burden. heard from one in iowa, i'm a mortgage consumer lender and also the compliance officer of a small community bank in rural iowa. i've been in banking for over 30 years and always enjoyed my job until the last fife five -- until the last five years. the new rule that will be implemented are ridiculous and at that time we may continue -- may discontinue to offer in-house mortgage loans. unfortunately, mr. speaker, my mailbox run

but it is really those institutions that i would call the large and complex institutions. and the focus there is on sustaining that. on the four pillars that i mentioned. maybe looking at making that more efficient. they shouldn't be more burdensome than they need to be. >> i hope in your conversations with the chair of supervision's, you will insist that this is about banks under 250. and insist on that as it isn't about the banks over 250 as some on this podium house adjusted. i remind our colleagues that we need to stick to the five-minute rules. >> chairman powell, you have referred to price stability is .ne of the mandates let's talk a little bit about income being in mentioned,ces, as with inflation i assume under control, whatever that is. you have your eyes and hands on it. so to speak. but a lot of people believe that he will continue to raise at incremental levels in the future. is that because of your concern about inflation? wages?e on where is that coming from? or is it all of it? >> where we are now is that we have unemployment at 4.1% which is at or near or

by streamlining regulations that will bring relief to the small financial institutions who have been hurt by dodd-frank's one-size-fits-all approach. in a certain respect this bill is a perfect complement to tax reform. further expanding opportunities for american families, communities, and small businesses. it is the product of years of work and a robust committee process. it is also a truly bipartisan bill cosponsored by the equal number of republicans and democrats or independents. senators had and still have a wide diversity of views on dodd-frank. but there's a widening agreement that we should not continue allowing this unintended consequence to wreak havoc on community banks and small u cret unions. i hope soon we can turn that consensus into law. >> try to i rise today to discuss as 2155, the economic growth regulatory relief and consumer protection act and to urge my colleagues to support its passage. in just age few miserable vote n the first vote to vote on cloture to bring this bill to the floor, cloture on the motion to proceed. a very critical vote and again i encourage

we see it as an important tool for these institutions. hope folks: i listening to this, we are not touching anything on the largest institutions in terms of the annual stress test on folks who have 250, and as the chairman of the fed has indicated, even among those banks between 100 and 250 were circling to have frequent, periodic stress tests that are still going to be strong. in legislation lays out detail the requirements would have in those stress tests. my last question is this -- in terms of overall enhanced prudential standards. to 100 50 billion the grouput we viewed of institutions between 100 and 250 billion and 18 must. onth period to tailor those standards more appropriately. as you indicated we have an institution below $250 billion that qualifies -- i would like for the record for folks watching who want to debate next week that you will take this responsibility of 18 month thoroughg and do a examination of the banks will fall in that category and those claiming that all enhanced eventual regulations of banks fall into that

because those institutions were too big to fail. people remember that. they were just too big to fail. they went down, the whole economy goes with them. yet today, today, the four largest financial institutions in this country, j.p. morgan chase, citigroup, bank of america, and wells fargo, are on average 80% larger than they were before we bailed them out. today they are 80% larger than they were before we bailed them out because they were too big to fail. it does not make sense to anybody. but left alone, that is not even an issue that will be talked about here on the floor of the senate. incredibly, since the financial crisis, j.p. morgan chase has increased its assets by more than $1 trillion. bank of america has seen its assets grow by more than $800 billion. citigroup by over $547 billion. wells fargo after acquiring wachovia nearly tripled its size. madam president, no single financial institution should be so large that its failure would cause catastrophic risk to millions of americans or to our nation's economic well-being.

we're not touching anything on the largest institutions in ermz it terms of the largest institutions on folks up to $250 billion and as chairman of the fed indicated, even among the banks between 100 and $250 billion, we're still going to have frequent periodic stress tests that are still going to be strong and the legislation lays out in some detail some of the requirements that we would have in those stress tests. my last question is this in terms of overall enhanced standards, we do move in this legislation, it's been $50 billion to $100 billion. but we give you then in the group of institutions between 100 and $250 billion an 18-month period to staltailor the standas more appropriately we already have an institution below $250 billion, it's still qualifies as sifi. i just like again for the record, for folks watching and who watch the debate next week that you will take this responsibility of this 18-month rulemaking and do a thorough examination of the banks that fall on that category and those claiming the regulations of bank that's follow under that category or are going to su

institutions. what this bill does is force federal regulators, those in charge of protecting consumers and our system from risk, would have to conduct a time-consuming reanalysis, limiting what they look at, to the burdens on financial institutions. the very protections that were put in place in dodd-frank and instead change those to financial institutions not to ensure consumer protection, to reduce costs rather than ensure protection. it's almost like you're giving such authority to the tailor they cut up your whole suit and that's not what we want. if there's adjustments that need to be made we should make them through statute, not give broad authority to government regulators to shred consumer protections. h.r. 4545, the financial institutions examination fairness and reform act would establish a new office of independent examination review. yet more bureaucracy and paper work. have financial institutions appeal and postpone supervisory -- creating more republican red tape, more government comm

financial institutions to the exposure of south sudanese senior political officials. we also seek to bolster the impact of our actions through coordination with our international partners. for example, the eu imposes sanctions on many of the same individuals we have targeted in south sudan, the drc, and elsewhere. we are now working with the eu and other like-minded partners to encourage them to develop similar authorities of their own. additionally, we conduct extensive outreach to our international partners following the publication of treasury action. as an example, after the september 2017 actions against south sudanese senior global figures, we immediately engage with neighboring governments asking them to investigate the illicit financial flows from these senior political figures too their countries, and similarly conduct outreach in the private sector to counter corruption by south sudanese officials. terrorist financing. every day we are using our authorities to counter isis, al and others who engage in and support terrorism. we have made great progress agains

, than the diplomacy and foreign assistance institutions. (suspenseful music) - [narrator] after the postwar demobilization, american defense spending climbed, as it refocused to counter the communist threat. (suspenseful music) - after world war ii, given this sense of a growing peril from the soviet union, this confrontation of global systems, we set up a series of bases around the world. (suspenseful music) - we needed a military that was sufficiently large to prevent intimidation by the soviet army, the soviet military, so that the political forces that we generated would have impact, like the marshall plan, the united nations charter. we created an international system that was favorable to our interests. that became the foundation for much of the defense department's planning for 35 years. - [narrator] by 1991, the soviet union, america's primary post-world war ii foe, collapsed. - world war three didn't happen, because the united states and europe were too strong. we effectively deterred any kind of soviet attack. (exciting music) (pe

or the billions of dollars in fines that financial institution after financial institution have paid out for their illegal deceptive activities. just ten years ago, ten years ago as a result of the greed and the recklessness and illegal behavior on wall street, this country was plunged into the worst economic crisis since the great depression. the official unemployment rate shot up to 10% and the real unemployment rate jumped to over 10%. at the height of the financial crisis, more than 27 million americans were unemployed, underemployed, or stopped working altogether because they could not find employment. 15 million families as a result of that financial crisis lost their homes to foreclosure as more and more people could not afford to pay their mortgages. thousands of americans set up cd's in sacramento, tampa bay, and reno because they had no place to live. as a result of the illegal behavior of wall street, american households lost over $13 trillion in savings which shattered retirement dreams, wiped out life saving, and made it impossible for kids to send their kids to college.

nancy, the institute of peace. goldenberg, this is america panel on foreign policy and foreign states. i am joshua johnson from npr. nancy, let me come back to you. let's play one more clip. this is from two people in damascus. something onessing the minds of a lot of syrians right now which is the violence that has been going on for years. hundreds of thousands of lives lost, most recently in a place just east of damascus. >> hungry -- that children have done. [inaudible] asking people to take care of victims. the roads are blocked and nobody can get in or out of the area. >> they were speaking from a translator, both of them from damascus, istanbul. is the moral obligation of the u.s. to help a fragile state? the united nations is basically throwing of hands up and saying apparently, you don't care about them, because nothing we have said has made a cease-fire stick. the world seems to be content with letting these people die and preventing anything from being done just on a humanitarian level. the u.s. certainly

i am talking about unprecedented heart of strike at the the institution, the damage the institution. the way you avoid them is you avoid them. you do not take those kind of acts. the other is it is not all on the leaders. i fall to other senators for not pushing back more. they are not pitiful helpless victims trapped in the institution. they have power. they can assert what they believe. they can assert the importance of their committees work. host: in national review columnist talks about the importance of the senate when it comes to judge all -- judicial nominations. he says senator mcconnell needs if democrats will not agree to be obstructive. talk about that. every time the senate starts to make progress, if you look back to 2013 or 2015, whenever the senate starts moving ahead because senators know what they're supposed to do, they bogged down on nominations. executive and judicial. my view is they should have set down long ago and said this is how we are going to handle these nominations. this is going to be our process two or four years from now because we do not know who wil

investors and if you can get the more of a the institutional investors to participate in this market that it will actually grow so the many people think regulation is a stop to invention in fact it can foster it in the right way in collaboration with the regulators and you know but some appropriately is safe going to get institutional money and people shouldn't be scared of institutional money because one of the problems we see in the crypto space is this enormous volatility in trading and that volatility will be less and that prices will be leveled out if there's more liquidity there's more players in the game right correct correct i mean i think you see it we saw it in traditional commodity markets and in the stock markets when you have more players when you have more money there than it is it doesn't completely but most of the time it eases the big the big highs and the big lows so that you have less volatility because volatility is only one part of making money and that's for the volatility traders do you think there is i guess the big question whether or not the ship had sailed

i am talking about unprecedented heart of strike at the the institution, damage the institution. them is youavoid avoid them. you do not take this kind of acts, number one. the other thing is it is not all on the leaders. i fault the other senators for not pushing back more. they are not pitiful, helpless victims. they have power. they can assert what they believe. they can assert the importance of their committee's work. aboutthis call him talks -- he says mitch mcconnell, the republican senate leader, needs to keep the senate in session longer so more nominees can be confirmed. he should also consider modifying the culture rules. talk about that in light of what you are seeing with other judicial nominees in the work of the senate. guest: every time the senate starts to make progress -- if you go back to 2013 or 2015 -- whenever the senate starts to move ahead because the senators know what they're supposed to on then they bog down nominations, executive and judicial. my view is they should have sat this isg ago and said how we are going to handle these nominations. this is goi

the house is a majoritarian institution. leaders sevene obligation to come together and make it work. read a, team failed that test and senator mcconnell's effect on the senate has been profound is not regard. host: i want to invite people to call in. you can tweet us at c-span wj. senator mcconnell if you define power in terms of the ability to accomplish the object objectives, nobody has been more powerful than senator mcconnell. he has been very effective. that's different than being a senate leader where you are trying to bring people together and accomplish something for the nation. if you go back to 2009 when barack obama was coming into office and we were on the verge of teetering into the second depression, i was a moment when leaders would usually come to get at say, we have to deal with this national economic emergency. that was not what happened. let themcconnell republicans in opposing the economic stimulus that was vitally necessary to start us back toward some kind of recovering and prevent the depression. when

she is also a nonresident fellow at the institute of religion for baylor. recent projects have focused on launching the black commission on life and marriage and an international symposium on the host in the vatican. she has a phd from harvard university. graduate research fellow of the national science foundation. she has presented at many universities across the country. her latest publication appears in the volume "not just good, but beautiful". she comes to share the black church, and acting the biblical mandate for religious freedom. dr. jackie rivers. [applause] dr. rivers: good evening. i'm truly honored to be here with you and i am absolutely wowed by the museum. my congratulation goes to the people who put it together and it is wonderful to have something like this right here in the heart of washington, d.c., the nation's capital. and fred wilkinson talks about having walked up the street eight miles. i flew from jamaica. [laughter] so i am very glad to be here with you tonight. i do want to take a little bit of a different tack in talking about re

that is to say domestic institution of the states. i don't know if anyone wants to comment -- there's my statement, what do you think of it? >> well, i agree with the statement in terms of what the president constitutionally could do, or what congress can constitutionally do. but there were -- the garrisonian abolitionists, the radicals, that dissolved the union. and to dissolve the union, means the u.s. army won't be able to backup the masters. if there's a slavery revolt, that will end slavery. john brown had a sort of similar idea. garrett smith, known as a radical political abolitionist, went by interpretation of the constitution. and said the constitution does give congress and the president power to abolish slavery. >> federal douglas agreed with that. >> all right, stage left, please. >> with respect to the so-called kilpatrick/dahlgren read where dahlgren found ordered to burn richmond, to capture or kill the cabinet. i'm curious what degree stanton and/or lincoln were aware of these orders if they were at all? >> hot potato.

look, i think institutions have to adapt to survive whether they become rigid orbital and we are seeing a very barnacle encrusted ship of state in washington and other long stable democracies like britain where it's increasingly difficult to change things because only people are invested in the status quo. i think we have to reacquire the habit, particularly here in america, of looking outside of america for other examples and best practice to follow. i think i will give one because i know time is short, civic education. we have forgotten civic education. we teach to the test for math and basic english. we do not teach on literacy. we don't give it the importance it deserves. germany does, particularly west germany where you see the lowest support for populism of anywhere in the western world. we have to look to other examples and learn from them. i think when you get an actively informed citizenry, then you get the capacity to mobilize institutional reform and change. it's a generational goal. it's a great question. >> 's book is called the retreat of western liberalism, and we appreci

but dodd-frank is making it harder for these institutions to survive. millions of americans from rural areas to inner cities now find themselves in what researchers call banking deserts. fortunately, help is on the way. thanks to the leadership of senator crapo, democrats and republicans have joined together to cosponsor a modest but important bill that would streamline the obstacles tripping up these smaller institutions. it's a commonsense compromise measure and senators do not need to resolve all of our differences on dodd-frank in order to unite behind it. i look forward to voting to pass these reforms very soon. now, on a final matter, as i've discussed, a number of america's largest employers are already reinvesting their tax reform savings in bonus, pay raises, and new benefits for their employees. higher take-home pay, lower tax rates are helping families cover today's expenses and save for the future. in nebraska the lincoln journal star reports that hometown companies, nailnet and pinnacle bank have awarded tax reform bonuses to thousands of w

is the only institution of all the institutions and other international institutions where we have to, and this is in the articles that were signed by many men, actually, 44 men at the time, i'm not sure -- well, there was a march 8 day in those days, but they clearly ignored it for the purpose of consolidating that group. when it was signed under the those men, they included in the articles, according to the effect that every five years we have to revisit, and every five years we have to adjust on the basis of numbers, and we have to adjust the formula in order to better represent. so, it's never an easy task. i've gone through one cycle. i'm now beginning another cycle. it's highly disputed. some people are very keen to keep their prerogatives. the u.s., which was clearly in a very strong position in 1944, has negotiated to have a veto right in the institution. so any decision that requires an 85% majority will only pass if the u.s. is in agreement with it. and of course when you have enjoyed that kind of position and prerogative, it's not easy to concede and to -- catherine: to giv

this one is that the claremont institute is going to continue to have. we think the current trajectory and future trajectory of the trump administration, the conservative movement, the republican party is a very important question, it's a question that gets to fundamental questions of the structure of our regime. and it's one, really, that goes back to a rolling crisis in american government that's at least 40 years old, i think, perhaps inaugurated by reagan's breakup of the old liberal consensus which before that was a progressive consensus which wanted to reorient government away from the view of founding limited government, separation of powers, and most importantly for our topic today i think and political control of the branches of government and to replace it with administrative rule, expert rule, neutral -- the neutral science of government in its independent and rather than a politically dependent branch of rulers. i think that's the central question or many of us at claremont think that's the central question that was at stake in this last sloc