mr. johnson: thank you senator carper. mr. tester: i appreciate the flexibility.he visa waiver program are -- as the ranking member pointed out, are important programs for our economy but also of concern. in your opening statements if you could address the security of the programs you have, if you need additional tools that you don't have that would require this committee to take action, into the third thing is manpower. do you have the manpower to carry out the job to make sure our country is not a threat with the visa program we have now. if you can do that you can answer all of my questions. thank you. mr. carper: that was under a minute. it is a tradition of our committee to swear and witness. so, if you will all rise and raise your right hand. do you swear the testimony will get before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god? >> i do. >> please be seated. our first witness is mr. david donoghue, principal deputy for the council affairs of youth -- at the u.s. department of state. he has served as the assista

mr. carper: thank you. our final witnesses, john roth. mr. oth served as director of the criminal investigations at the food and drug administration. he had a 25 year career as a federal prosecutor in the department of justice. >> thank you. .anking member carper thank you for inviting me here today to discuss my oversight of dhs visa programs. audit work has involved results. uscis employees 19,000 people to process millions of applications for immigration benefits. they are required to enforce highly complex laws, regulations and internal policies which can be subject to different interpretations. they are excited to process decisions within a reasonable timeframe. accomplish their mission while working in an antiquated system of paper-based files more suited to an office environment then 2016. the system creates inefficiencies and risks to the program free to give you an idea of the scope of the program, they spend $300 million per year shipping, storing, and handling 20 million immigrant files. we published our sixth report on efforts to t

senator carper: mr. rodriguez is an extended invitation for you folks to come back and maybe do a revisit. i would urge to you do that and soon. inspector general roth: we have made specific recommendations. some which they have agreed with. some of which they haven't. we'll continue to monitor and report as appropriate. senator carper: thanks for the update. director saldana, mr. donahue, how do your agencies use social media when you vet and screen these applicants? what challenges have you encountert in doing so? director saldana delon i'll begin -- i'll begin with our portion here with respect to the vetting and screening. we are first and foremost a law enforcement agency and h.s.i., homeland security investigations is an investigative agentcy. all of our investigations and reviews, we use social media to the extent that the evidence leads us there. so in the visa screening process in particular, we -- there is no bar to our use of it. there are occasions where we do, as i mentioned, we go through p

mr. chair. >> senator carper? >> thanks, mr. chairman. i want to go back to visa overstays and we have every state has its own medicaid program. we are told that one of the cost drivers in medicaid is people have an appointment but don't show up. oftentimes moms, dads, young children and so they will do a lot of things to try to make sure people show up. one of the things that we do in delaware and some other states, as well and i think we got this idea from johnson & johnson, the other johnson. >> good name. >> and it's called text for baby. text for baby. and what we do is we send -- i should say text messages are sent to parents who need to make sure that their child has appointment and actually show up. and they do there maybe a week before, they do it like a day before. even the day of, i think. and it seems to me that that's an idea that and it's actually helped. makes more certain that people actually show up for their appointments. save some money for medicaid. make sure people get the health care they need. i'm wondering if a sim

mr. montes started his career in the united states supreme corps, graduated from the department of defense dog handler course. he's a former handler. >> good morning, chairman johnson, ranking member carper thank you for the opportunity to appear today and talk about the u.s. customs and border protection canine training program. i'm director of the cvp canine training program, administrate ef and operational oversight of two canine delivery centers. one located in front royal, virginia, the other in el paso, texas. the cvp canine program is a fusion of two legacy training facilities. the legacy u.s. customs canine enforcement training center, u.s. border national canine facility. the merger of these two training entities afforded the cvp canine training program to build on decades of expertise and law enforcement training and capitalize on best practices. cvp canine training senters are where canine, handlers, instructors receive classroom and practical training and canine discipline yutilized, addressing cross-border elicit activities including gun and currency smuggling, narcotic smuggling, human trafficking and smuggling and illegal immigration. the cvp canine training program delive

mr. chairman. let me associate myself with the remarks of governor. and now senator carper as the attorney general of my state, rhode island, i saw exactly the circumstance that he very well described. not only did the upwind states not make any effort to treat us fairly, we often had to try to sue the upwind states, with epa, or sometimes even sue epa to enforce compliance with the clean air act. on a perfect rhode island summer morning, you could drive to work and hear on the radio that today was a bad air day and that children and the elderly and people with breathing difficulties should stay indoors. stay indoors. like delaware we could have shut down every outlet of emissions in the state of rhode island and not gotten ourselves into compliance because it came from other states. other states that fought compliance. other states that often had not even put scrubbers on their smokestacks yet. other states that specifically built high smokestacks so it would project the emissions out of their state. they were very often states in compliance with the air regulations even t

mr. chairman, ambers of the committee, you have my written statement. this year's budget permission, as as i think senator carper has accurately outlined reflects hard and difficult choices to fit within the budget caps. because we had to make choices there are some things i wish we could've funded at higher levels that we do not in this budget request. let me say that i appreciate very much the true partnership that i think we've had it dhs with the members of this committee. what i believed to be a very effective bipartisan working relationship with members of this committee since i've been secretary, i think together together we have accomplished a lot. going back to even before i was confirmed and i began courtesy calls with members of this committee, i took to heart the message i received from you about the importance of management reform. reforming the way in which our department does business. overall, my goal is secretary for the remanding 319 days i'm in office is to leave the department of homeland security in a better place than i found it. but that means is improving the efficiency and the effectiven

mr. chairman, for pulling this all together. thanks especially to riverso, hudson, nicky, their handlers and each who vocalized and verbalized on behalf of our canine friends. thank you so much. >> thanks, senator carper. let me go back to the metrics because in our briefing here, we did -- certainly one metric is apprehensions of drugs which is probably one of the most successful areas, you know, almost 40,000 apprehensions the last year nationwide. i think it was last year. yeah. fiscal year 2015. are there similar -- first of all, do we have instances in tsa where we detected bombs? have we thwarted any attacks or just been very fortunate that we haven't had those? >> yes. as far as we know, we haven't had a terrorist come through a checkpoint with an explosive to be detected. so to your point, it's hard to measure the deterrence factor of having, you know, a dog at a checkpoint or anywhere else, so that's difficult for us. >> dr. otto, can you talk about the specialized nature of the different smells? i mean, the different odors, and what that means from the standpoint of training. >> so there's a number of different odors, but the concept is all kind of the same on how we're going to train them.

colleagues to consider the ideas that senator carper and i have put forward and to try to work with us to find a solution that works for america. thank you, mr president. i yield back. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. a senator: how much time remains? the presiding officer: 21 minutes. a senator: thank you very much, mr. president. i'm rising to speak to this issue from a simple american citizen point of view. mr. merkley: the american citizen wants the right to know what's in their food. they want to know how many calories. they want to know what the middles are and what the vitamins are and what the ingredients are. it's a simple standard because it's so important to an individual what you're putting in your mouth, what you're putting on the table for your family and your children. now, this is a principle that we have honored time and time again on our packages. we proceed to put on our package whether fish is farm raised or wild caught because citizens wanted to know. it makes a difference to them. it's their choice. it's their judgment. we put on our packages whether juice is from concentrate or

mr. carper: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. carper: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. carper: good to see you on st. patrick's day. i'm pleased to have the chance to rise and to urge my colleagues, some of whom have scattered across the country to go home for a two-week recess, but i'm glad that you're here and hopefully the words that i'm saying here today will find their way to our colleagues wherever they are, wherever they're headed. but i want to urge them to move quickly to confirm two very important nominees. one is a woman named beth cobert who has been nominated to be director of office of personnel management and the other is michael missel, nominated to be inspector general of the department of veterans' affairs. like many of my colleagues, i have grown frustrated over the years, as too often senior positions in the federal government have been left vacant or filled by someone serving in an active capacity for far too long. the lack of critical leadershi