mr. becerra, vice chair of our house democratic caucus. >> thank you, madam leader, and most importantly to governor o'malley at a witnesses we say thank you very much for attending this important hearing. and i would only mention what i think eight out of every 10 american mentions on a daily basis is the number one priority in this country and this congress should be job creation. we should continue to work on the success that we had over the last two years of creating jobs. more jobs created last year in one year than were created during the entire eight years of the bush administration. still not enough because during the bush recession we lost over 8 million jobs. so america public is right to be focus on job creation. we are looking forward to working with the president on his for postal that he set forth in a state of union address to start to move forward on roads, bridges, schools, we developing blighted areas, cleaning up contaminated sites. all those things. we're looking forward to hearing the testimony, madam leader, and i go back the balance of my time. >> thank you, mr. ch

mr. becerra is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm going to detour from asking you about the president's budget for next year for a moment because the plan house republicans released on friday pertaining to this current year's budget could create an immediate crisis for millions of americans who depend on social security. the republican proposal cuts the social security administration's operating budget for the rest of this current year by $1.7 billion below what the social security administration needs for this current year 2011. that's over $500 million below what the administration spent to serve the public last year with a smaller population of beneficiaries. as the trustee of social security, i'm wondering if you can give me comments as too whether or not you think that's the way we should be stewarding the most important program that the federal government has for americans especially those of retirement age? >> well, again, congressman, as you would suspect i would not support those changes for the reasons you've said. >> m

mr. becerra is recognized. >> thank you mr. chairman pete thank you for being here. i am going to detour from asking about the president's budget for next year for a moment, because the plan the house republicans released on friday pertained to this current year's budget could create an immediate crisis for millions of americans who depend on social security. the republican proposal cuts the social security and ministration's operating budget for the rest of this current year by $1.7 billion below with the social security administration needs for the current year, 2011. that is over $500 million below what the administration spent to serve the public last year with a smaller population to beneficiaries. as the trustee of social security i'm wondering if you can give your comment as to whether you think that is the way that we should be starting the most important program that the federal government has for americans especially those of retirement age. >> again, congressman, as you would suspect i wouldn't support those for the reason you said. >> my understanding is

mr. becerra. that study looked at the same metrics and rank each country on the rate of change in those metrics to call the countries were improving so measure rate of improvement, rate of improvement of innovativeness, competitive ability. on that basis, it ranked the u.s. forget out of 40. -- 40th out of 40. i should do them more than give us pause. it tells us that moving forward slowly in these areas is moving backwards in our global economy. other countries are moving faster, and when it comes to this fundamental infrastructure that is the platform for economic job creation and opportunity for years to come, we have to take that kind of study seriously. that it sees the opportunity of broadband we need a proven across our broadband economy, advances in application, devices and networks that drive innovation and investment across the full broadband ecosystem, back in -- maximizing benefits for all. our plan found we also need to overcome a series of real challenges. one is expected. the invisi