mr. chairman, for yielding. mr. speaker, today i rise in support of h.r. 3080, this legislation is the only fiscally responsible and reform-focused water resource and development bill to ever be considered by this house. this bill, as the chairman pointed out, contains no earmarks, places on a path to limited government and water infrastructure development and lays the groundwork for private sector and state level oversight. h.r. 3080 promotes the public-private partnerships and expands the ability of the private sector to contribute necessary funds to expedite and move projects forward. it also places a strict time limit on the amount of time and money that the federal government is allowed to spend on feasibility studies. it took the federal government 10 years to complete a study on how to fix the jacksonville mile point navigation problem to allow for greater cargo. that project is slated to create some 3,500 jobs. the port everglades channel dredging study took 17 years and cost upwards of $10 million to complet

mr. chairman. mr. chairman, i rise today to offer an amendment that addresses a burdensome executive order that will have vast impacts on both our ocean and inland economies. executive order 13547 was signed in 2010 and requires various bureaucracies to essentially zone the ocean and the sources thereof. this means that a drop of rain that falls on your house could be subject to this overreaching policy because that operation will ultimately wind up in the ocean. the new policy guidelines under this executive order that were finalized in april of this year have the potential to change permitting criteria and regulatory requirements for a large number of economic sectors, including maritime shipping and inland river transportation. the army corps of engineers is participating in at least one ocean and marine spatial planning regional time, -- team, requiring resources and staff time out of their current -- outside of their current statutory obligations and outside of their current budgetary authority

mr. chairman. mr. secretary, thank you for the presentation in your answers and responses to our questions and statements so far. they been helpful. i wanted to add to the comment you made about the va and veterans being dependent on other federal departments and agencies that may or may not be funded in a piecemeal, many continuing resolution approach i want to note that there are nearly 600,000 veterans who work for the federal government, and that constitutes nearly 30% of the entire federal workforce. so these men and women have served our country who are being furloughed or working without a clear idea when they are being paid, are being hurt regardless of what we're able to do when it comes to funding the va and the different agencies and departments within the va. that's especially important to me as a representative for el paso, texas, would have the fifth highest concentration of federal employees of any committee in the country. 43,000 people that have reps and work for the federal government

mr. chairman. >> gentleman yields back. the chair now has a particularly distinct honor and privilege of not only recognizing his neighbor, his original mentor, and the fellow that will always be a chairman to him, the senator from kansas, mr. roberts. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate that very much. chairman lucas and chair stabenow, ranking member cochran, ranking member peterson, all my other colleagues, it is indeed a privilege to be here with you today to begin this farm bill conference committee. we've all worked very hard to get to this point, and that's probably the understatement of my statement, and have already made significant strides, i think, in achieving necessary reforms. for example, both bills do eliminate the direct payments and our commodity and disaster programs. we have heard consistently from producers in all regions, from ann arbor, michigan, to wichita, kansas, that crop insurance is their number one priority. our producers are willing to put their own skin in the game to protect themselves f

mr. chairman. and, mr. chairman, i would like , the i ask my question full service organizations sent a letter to congress not v.a. ting the piecemeal bill on the floor. and so is it possible that i could submit that to the record? >> without objection. >> thank you. now, because, you know, to talk about what a senator introduced, i don't want to talk about the senate. i want to talk about the house. the house of representatives, where i serve, and, mr. secretary, my question to you is come november or the third week in october, will 3.8 million veterans not get their checks in the mail? benefits, that's a nice thing. but collects is what they live on. most veterans that get those checks are on fixed income. explain to me how they're supposed to make it. >> congresswoman, effective 1 november, if we don't resolve this, those veterans will not receive pension compensation, for veterans who are in school, heir education checks, vocational rehab, and those beneficiaries are not just veterans. that's three milli

mr. chairman. >> mr. green. >> thank you, mr. chairman. madam secretary, thank you for taking time to be here today. i represent parts of east and north houston, harris downy, and our district has one of the highest uninsured rates in the country. even worse, we have one of the highest rates of people who have jobs but don't receive their insurance through their employer. it's for this reason that i believe houston would be a good place for you to come and spread the job about the tremendous benefits of the affordable care act. however, we learned your office is unable to attend because of scheduling conflicts. hopefully we can have an agreement that sometime in the future you'll come to the fourth largest city that probably has the highest number of uninsured in a metropolitan area. of course we're in the state of texas that has the number of highest uninsured in the country. it's important to me and our constituents to get it right, and that's why i share your and the president's disappointment the website is not working as planned. nove

mr. chairman. i want to thank you and thank chairman murray for your leadership and everyone at the table who is coming here. i think in a spirit of good faith so we can resolve this for a nation and i represent granite staters. i can tell you they're not happy when you think about where we are. we reached a milestone that none of us are proud of recently with $17 trillion of debt for our nation. i'm blessed to be the mother of two children. a of-year-old and 9-year-old. it's not just words when we think about what is it that we are passing on to the next generation? it's those of us who are in a position around the table to address the fiscal challenges facing our nation. kick the can down the road again and don't get things done to address those challenges. i would like to say that the debt is really a function of both parties because it is. it took democrats and republicans to get us in $17 trillion of debt. we added $4.9 trillion to the debt during president bush's eight years in office. since t

mr. chairman. chairman baucus, ranking member hatch and members of the committee, i appreciate the opportunity to appear here today, and i appreciate the invitation to discuss the potential impact of a failure by congress to increase the debt limit. congress has an important choice to make for the american people, and congress alone has the power to act to make sure that the full faith and credit of the united states is never called into question. no congress in 224 years of american history has allowed our country to default, and it's my sincere hope that this congress will not be the first. among the risks that we control, the biggest threat to sustained in our economy is a recurrence of manufactured crises in washington and self-inflicted wounds. unfortunately, today we face a manufactured political crisis that is beginning to deliver an unnecessary blow to our economy right at a time when the united states' economy, the american people have painstakingly fought back from the worst recession sinc

mr. chairman. that is perfect timing i just want you to know. i want to thank you for holding this hearing on the transaction from internet protocol. it's a topic that we have not discussed but we need to discuss in this congress. i was actually serving on the subcommittee and full committee back in 1996 and participated in many conversations and mark-ups regarding that act. i remember discussing how we could make the marketplace more competitive and at that time at&t did basically have a monopoly we believe in creating the local exchange the aisle x. and the competitive local exchange was a good solution for competition. that marketplace then and the marketplace today mr. chairman as you know are not the same. a new question now whether we need the title ii protections that we put in place back in 1996 and i think this hearing is a good start to answering that question. >> thank you and i now recognize the gentleman from ohio mr. latta. >> thank you very much mr. chairman and i appreciate our witne

mr. chairman. mr. secretary, i know that you said that the va not only deals with the va but other departments also. and so those veterans receiving educational benefits under the g.i. bill and that are attending school now because school has already started at various institutions, what will happen after november 1? if they won't get their money, have you talked to the colleges, the institutions, the universities? >> congresswoman, we are doing everything we can while we have mandatory funds available, at least two accounts, two categories that we will expend money to cover immediately. one is the retroactive aspects of a claim so someone who is due money for previous authorization up until this point, to the best of our ability we pay those and for students currently in school, we pay those as well. but that draws down this mandatory account i'm speaking about. so before the end of this month it will be in a situation where i can no longer pay. and the november 1 payment that is should be going out w

mr. chairman. >> mr. terry. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and i'm pleased to hear that the website will be fully operational by the end of november, and would you be able to -- would you come back to our committee so we could see if that's actually accomplished and how it was accomplished? >> i will make every effort to do that. >> okay. you were governor and state insurance commissioner in kansas, and i reached out to our state insurance commissioner and governor and found out that they have absolutely no data about nebraskaens who have either tried to enroll or enroll. as you know, nebraska's one of the states that opted not to do their own exchange and rely on the federal exchange. so it's interesting to me that neither our insurance commissioner, nor the governor's office, had any data about nebraskans and this -- enrolling in these plans. i also asked our insurance commissioner if any of the navigators, if they knew who the navigators were and whether they had to apply to be certified or licensed, in essence, like an insurance

mr. chairman. mr. chairman, this is a photograph from the 95 shutdown. that is the lincoln memorial, and the closure begins at the base of the steps. people were not allowed to go into the lincoln memorial. i would say that we have a lot more loose tools running around this country doing constructive things now than we did in 95. we ha have somewhat attacked the monument recently. so to say, gee, we should need any step there to protect these memorials is absurd. in this day mage. so i also have a letter here i would like to enter into the record from the national park ranger lodge of the fraternal order of police. and i'll quote just two things from this letter. without any country court findings are changes in the law despite what the gentleman on the other side said, we will carry on with his miserable thankless and perilous task denying public access to parks during the government shutdown. although our actions make sensational news stories and fodder for the pundits, they are supported by the p

mr. chairman. >> the senator yields back. the chair recognizes the gentleman from pennsylvania, mr. this -- mr. thompson. >> thank you, mr. chairman, my thanks to the ranking members, and all the members in the house and senate ag committee for your hard work and dedication in the process of passing a long-term farm bill reauthorization. this conference committee is long overdue. reforms have been put forward by both chambers that update and modernize the agriculture programs to ensure the long-term stability of farms and broader economy. now while we're one step closer to the end goal, most agree we have heavy lifting before this conference. i serve as a chairman of the house agriculture subcommittee on conservation energy and forestry with jurisdiction over titles 2, 8, and 9. at the subcommittee we spent years examining the 2008 farm bill along with the range of other issues under the purview. i'm proud of the product put forward and passedded out of the house. tho this work, we made improvement

mr. chairman. mr. secretary, the chairman outlined in his opening statement recently the house passed the only our promise to americans veterans act that was signed into law would provide immediate funding for critical veterans benefits and services including disability claims, education training, many items you discuss in your testimony. but you also made an important point when you stated that many services, veterans rely on are not directly in va, like the that implement program comes small business administration loans are two of those examples you cite in your test went to could you expand on other types of these programs that would be outside of the bill that we passed that is now sitting in the senate? >> you meet other departments that are impacted? >> impacted, impact our veterans that are outside the va bill? >> sure. our claims processing required, by law, our responsibility to check with the irs for income data, with social security for other benefits. and so that's part of the process that

mr. chairman and mr. shinseki for being here today and for the service to the country and to the nation's veterans. i want to start by getting a shot out to the regional office. i visited with them several times over the last two years to get and they were making remarkable progress on taking care of their disability backlog. the director has done an outstanding job. i'm very concerned about the impact the shutdown could have on their operations and what could potentially happen to the veterans to be as i have a couple of questions in that regard it pitted the first one is why is the g.i. bill hotline closed when other hot lines remain open. >> why is it ) other vba hot lines remained open? >> the one hot line that will remain open as the crisis. the veterans crisis hot line that is funded by the health administration. >> i talk about the call center -- the call center is apparently close to. >> i will try to provide you a better answer to this gimmick that will be fine. you can follow up. the next questi

mr. chairman. mr. secretary, i think this is the 11th time i've been through this discussion about the sky is falling, and the earth will erupt. wyoming families are not buying these arguments. they are saying you can't spend more than you take him. and you definitely can't keep doing it forever and ever and ever. i've got a person that interned for me some years ago are now is the owner of a major company in wyoming and operates in four states. he base his people well, but every once in a while someone comes in and says, i need a pay raise. and he hands them a copy of dave ramsey's basic book and says, you don't have a problem with income. you've got a problem with out go. we have a problem with out go, not income. they are not interested in having their taxes raised so that we can put more people in the wagon. i used an example on the floor the other day about how the private sector, the people working in the private sector getting a little upset because government keeps growing and growing and growin

mr. chairman. i'm pleased secretary sebelius is here today. she's here to discuss the affordable care act, just like with medicare part-d, the launch of the new website has not gone well, but just like medicare part-d, the early glitches in this rollout will soon be forgotten. a lot of the discussion today will focus on that website. this is an important issue and i want to learn what the secretary can tell us about the problems being experienced and how they will be fixed, but we should keep this issue in perspective. the affordable care act is working. it has been improving the health, security of millions of americans for the past three years. because of the affordable care act, more than seven million people on medicare have saved more than $8 billion on their prescription drugs. more than 100 million americans have access to free preventative coverage. and no longer face lifetime limits on their coverage. over 10 million americans have received rebates from insurance companies. and finally, thi

mr. chairman. mr. chairman, this morning i read in the newspaper that at&t recently notified many of its special access customers that it will eliminate certain long-term discount price plans effectively increasing rates by as much as 24%. competitive carriers argue that they have no alternative to gain last mile access to business customers, and the simply accept the higher prices. mr. chairman, i would like to ask unanimous consent to place a copy of that article that appeared in "the wall street journal" this morning, and a copy of the ex parte filing that several companies made with the fcc in regard to those rate hikes. >> without objection >> thank you. let me ask mr. feld and mr. iannuzzi, how can at&t institute up to 24% price increases if these markets are competitive? and do you find fault in claims by some that competition today eliminates the need for a regulatory backstop, particularly in light that hud's actions will effectively raise special access prices? >> sure. only a comment market p

mr. chairman? mr. chairman, i seek to be recognized. >> a point of order. >> the gentleman from california has the time. did you ask the gentleman to yield? >> point of order spent the gently seeks a point of order. >> the suggestion, the falsehood was that suggesting i was lying? if so i would like to have you do with that. >> mr. chairman? >> the chair is going to rule that the timeliness of the has to be immediate and the timeliness of your remarks was not time in this case. and so the chair recognizes the gentleman from california. >> after the dialogue that we had earlier i thought the chairmen would address that if that happen. i remember an earlier conversation here, and i thought that what i heard you say at that time suggested that you would indeed step in if there were any -- >> if the chair is asking, if the john glenn is asking the chairman whether there is consistency with the conversations with another number on the side of the aisle earlier, i think i'm absolutely consistent on that becau

mr. chairman. ms. campbell and mr. slavitt, thrick, would you say if far more states had decided to do their own exchanges, the national exchange would not have experienced as many problems? >> i can speculate. i would say probably. but i don't know for sure. >> i wanted to talk about the kentucky experience, and i want to thank your company for its involvement in our state because the experience in kentucky has been extraordinarily successful. even though there were problems for a few hours on the first day, again because of excessive demand, at least unprojected demand, those were quickly rectified. i have these statistics now for the first 21 days in kentucky. we had 640,000 kentuckyans estimated without insurance. so assuming that most of those were people who contacted the system were mostly from that population, we have had 280,000 unique visitors to connect, kynect. 247,000 have actually conducted prescreenings to determine qualifications for subsidies and so forth. 47,000 applications for health care coverage h

mr. chairman. >> thank you. next. senator wyden from oregon. >> thank you very much, chairman ryan. colleagues, i think senator murray, congressman van hollen are leading democrats superbly. i want to make it clear, the constructive tone from colleagues on the other side is very helpful as well. this budget conference is an opportunity to transition from crisis to consensus. we have to keep our eye on the stark reality. the government shut down has hurt our economy and slowed economic growth. it was mentioned a couple headlines, the one that is particularly painful to me is consumer confidence collapsedded this month, thanks, congress. our first, second, and third priority is to find policies that grow wages, create good job, and help our people. we want to make sure the middle class can stay on the risks of the middle class economic ladder, and we. to help policies that help those that are not there get there and key to this is to provide with our efforts new measures of stability and predictabilit

mr. chairman, i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. mr. long. >> thank you, mr. chairman and mr. secretary for being here today. given your testimony, earlier today you said that i'm responsible for the implementation of the affordable care act. i've heard you referred to and maybe yourself as the point person for the rollout, the architect of implementing affordable care act. so you are kind of the president's point person, are you not, for this rollout? >> yes, sir. >> i earlier you were asked -- there's a lot of things striking about the rollout of this and about affordable care act all together, but the thing most striking to me, is when we had the point person for the rollout here, and you're not going into the exchange. i've heard you say, that -- and you got advice from the foekds behind you, but i'm asking you today, can you tell the american public if your advisers behind you, if they happen to have given you wrong information, if it is possible for you to go into the exchange, like all of these millions of americans going into the exchanges, will you admit to forego you

mr. chairman. >> mr. latta. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. and madam secretary, thanks very much for being with us today. appreciate your testimony so far today. what i'd like to do is i'll get these to you because these are questions that we've received from our constituents back home, specifically about what's going on with the website and for them. and so what i'll do, i would like to get those to you, but there's a lot of questions here and a lot of thought has gone into a lot of these questions. but if i could start with last week's testimony when four of the contractor were here. and in one of the questions that i had posed to ms. campbell from cgi, in her testimony she had stated that they had delivered the medicare.gov and federalreporting.gov and i asked were these sites more or less complicated than this site that we're talking about here today. she said of course this site today was more complicated. in the questioning and from her testimony, you know, we've been hearing about this end-to-end testing that wasn't happening that we h

mr. chairman. i yield back. >> mr. green. >> thank you, mr. chairman. some of us have been on the committee a good while. i don't know if any of you had experience, because we also had problems in 2003 when we created the prescription drug program and this committee did that. with much fewer participants. so what we're seeing now is it sounds like we have a success, we just don't have a computer to deal with it. i support the affordable care act. i know how dependable and affordable insurance coverage is to our families in our district. the stories i've heard from people are excited to sign up for the coverage remind me why this law is important. thousands of people in our district has been denied coverage in the past because of pre-existing conditions, are paid -- or pay for expensive coverage they couldn't rely on. that's why we need the affordable care act's new benefits and protection. that's why it's so frustrating that healthcare.gov has not worked the way we were promised. especially after hearing such optimistic testimony from niece organization

mr. chairman, just say to mr. mcgovern that this is occurring, meaning this britishment of -- establishment of a bicameral working group because some person, unidentified evidently otherwise i would hope that you would call that person's name, said that the president would let the nation default. and so, therefore, this is the position that you're taking? because of some anonymous somebody saying something about the president? is that what you're doing here? >> i appreciate the gentleman asking me a question. in fact, the speaker of the house has been engaged in negotiations, went last week, i believe, to the white house, and the president indicated that thank you for coming down here, he's not interested in negotiating. so we're simply reinforced a continued effort that we believe from the white house, so we're trying to work around that. we're trying to work with members. >> all due respect, mr. chairman, just to put an additional question to you and then i will yield to the ranking member for a question, but th

mr. chairman. i want to thank you for holding this hearing. it is important, it is timely. we want to welcome our witnesses. thank you for king here. as you have heard each of us talk about, competition. looking at how that has changed in the communications marketplace. l today we have that intermodal competition between the ilax, clex and cable, satellite. these are subject to different rules based on out-dated assumptions. i think it is not easy for the federal government here in d.c. to think about the treatment toward communications in today's marketplace. i do feel that it is our responsibility to plook at how we create the appropriate environment, put some regulatory certainty in place, and then encourage that private capital and investment and focus on creating jobs. there are three things that i want to drill down a little bit with you all. number one, is it fair to tell someone who wants to invest in tomorrow's technology that they need to slow down in order to maintain an old network if th

mr. chairman. ant to thank our witnesses for being here. we're looking for to giving your perspective of what went wrong and how it went wrong with this rollout. we were repeatedly told by members of the administration that everything would be working correctly and on time. these false administration assurances seemed to sway some people on the other side of the aisle, and they believe fully that things were going to be done on time. well, yesterday mr. waxman and i were a great on some things in hearing but last month we were disagreeing. he had said that nothing could be found from our committee's investigation of exchange implementation and readiness. but we were quite concerned. that definition of nothing which turned out to be designed -- hide unaffordable premiums, massive glitches, dead ends, error messages, system breakdowns and americans spending countless hours trying to navigate exchange is not ready for prime time. so i hope all of our colleagues are going to work together and joined eff

mr. chairman. i yield back. >> mr. green. >> thank you, mr. chairman. some of us have been on the committee a good while. i don't know if any of you had experience, because we also had problems in 2003 when we created the prescription drug program and this committee did that. with much fewer participants. so what we're seeing now is it sounds like we have a success, we just don't have a computer to deal with it. i support the affordable care act. i know how dependable and affordable insurance coverage is to our families in our district. the stories i've heard from people are excited to sign up for the coverage remind me why this law is important. thousands of people in our district has been denied coverage in the past because of pre-existing conditions, are paid -- or pay for expensive coverage they couldn't rely on. that's why we need the affordable care act's new benefits and protection. that's why it's so frustrating that healthcare.gov has not worked the way we were promised. especially after hearing such optimistic testimony from these organization

mr. chairman. >> mr. mcnerney. >> sorry, mr. chairman, i'm not ready yet. >> ok. mr. guthrie. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for testifying today. a lot of people don't realize at before the government shutdown of september 30, almost every republican, all but one, voted to fund the health care government to sequester level and only asked to get rid of the individual mandate. for a delay for a year. because as businesses and other people have been treated with waivers and special delays, we felt the hardworking taxpayers deserved -- because we didn't think a product was going to be ready for them to purchase. and it turned out on october 1 is it weanlt. so we wouldn't even have had the government shutdown if we had people agree to give hardworking taxpayers the same treatment they gave businesses because the i.r.s. wasn't ready to enforce that. having said that, people say there are other alternatives and so we have good people in the great commonwealth of connecticut working -- kentucky who will take paper applications. so there's argument, well, they can buy

mr. chairman. i think the testimony has been very compelling concerning the negative aspects of this government shutdown. but may say captain colburn this is your livelihood. a family run business. this is the way you put groceries on the table and feed your families. you are calling in your testimony you are asking the secretary of commerce to direct noaa employees to fulfill the task that you have already paid to do. you paid this with management -- you pay these management costs through the cost recovery programs. is that correct? b. that is correct. >> how much do you pay? >> it's a small percentage of our catch but i know over the last seven years i think it's running into millions of dollars. >> it may interest the committee to note that there are three house members -- there are three members of congress to from the house and went from the senate that agree with your position that the secretary has the authority to direct noaa to resume these activities. by holding my hand a letter signed by

mr. chairman. thank you, madam secretary, for being here and thank you for all that you and your staff at h.h.s. has done in implementing the affordable care act to ensure it would provide the many benefits to children, to women, to medicare beneficiaries, and to ensure security to those who already have insurance, as well as lower costs. the biggest complaint has been about the application and the enrollment website, but we have heard over and over from you that those are being addressed. you will recall, and i know my colleagues will recall, that congressman rush and i have always been concerned about those who do not have internet access, those who are uncomfortable using the internet and would not ruse it -- use it. i would want to remind everyone that there are other avenues for enrolling, either by telephone or by paper. either alone or with the help of a certified application assistant. but my question goes to one of the rumors that has been circulating. there are many rumors about how the a

mr. chairman. >> mr. latta. >> well, thank you very much, mr. chairman and madam secretary, thanks very much for being with us today. i appreciate your testimony so far today. what i would like to do, i will get these few, so many questions, that we have received from our constituents back home, specifically about what is going on with the website and for them. and so what i will do i like to get those to you but there's a lot of questions here and a lot of thoughts going into a lot of these questions but if i could start with last week's testimony when our, four of the contractors were here. and in one of the questions that i had posed to ms. campbell from cgi, in her testimony she had stated they delivered the medicare.gov and federalreporting.gov and i asked at that time were these sites more or less complicated than the site we're talking about here today? and she said, of course this site today was more complicated and the questioning, and from her testimony, and we've been hearing about this end to end testing that wasn't happening, that we

mr. chairman. ma'am, thank you for your incredible service to our country for 31 years. i'm pretty disappointed in this hearing today, mr. chairman. we have a shutdown and 800,000 per load federal employees at the irs. 90% of the staff have been furloughed. october 15 is the deadline for all tax returns to finally be submitted. and we are talking about miss ingram. thought about how the irs is going to process this, all of the paper that will be coming in in the next week. instead of having a hearing on the impact of the shutdown of the public, the majority has decided to been actively reenact groundhog day, holding another hearing to point out wrongdoing by the administration. except this version of groundhog day is not funny at all. the committee has decided to bully a civil servant with a long and distinct square with the irs. in fact, members of this committee on the other side have made their intentions clear. accusing the woman of responsibility for the scandal and political bias that they ha

mr. chairman. >> the fact is that the last hearing you requested of my four witnesses, seven and i gave you four. the policy of this committee and has been under republican and democratdemocratic leadership that the minority is generally, dated with a witness germane. you have repeatedly abused that in the process. when you send a direct invitation for a number of individuals including someone that was not there during the planning of the affordable care act and will be gone in a matter of days in the name of the commissioner, he was highly inappropriate to be a witness because he wasn't there before and he will not be there in a couple of weeks. in conversation with the commissioner and i will allow this and afterward -- >> well thank you. >> the fact is i said of course you can have any and all people that would help her and answering questions, and if someone comes up with an esoteric question whether you or anyone else will be for obamacare fine but in fact we have asked for repeatedly and defe

mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator. senator portman. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. chairman. secretary lew, you've said again today the president won't negotiate on the debt limit. and the president, as was noted earlier, has asserted that there haven't been additional items added to debt limits in the past. and, as you and i have talked about, and as you know, when you look back at the last 30 years of the history of debt limits, it's the only thing that has worked. in fact, every significant deficit- reduction package that has passed this congress in the last 30 years has come in the context of a debt limit. i found one that didn't. it was in 2005 for about $40 million, a relatively small deal. that's the way it has worked. and it's gramm- rudman, it's the 1990 balanced budget agreement or the andrews air force base agreement. it's the 1997 balanced budget agreement. it's pay-go rules that many in this committee on the other side of the aisle talk about favorably. of course, it's the 19 -- it's the most recent budget control act, just a couple of years ago. all in

mr. chairman. and thank you madame secretary for being here and thank you for all that you and your staff at hhs has done and implementing the affordable care act to ensure that it will provide many benefits and to ensure security to those who have insurance as well as lower costs. of course the biggest complaint has been about the application and enrollment website. but we have heard over and over from you that those are being addressed. you would recall and i know my colleagues will recall, we've been concerned about those who do not have internet access, those who are uncomfortable using the internet and would not use it. i just wanted to remind everyone that there are other avenues for enrolling, either by telephone or by paper, either alone or with the help of a certified application assistant. but my question goes to one of the rumors that's been circulating. many rumors about how the affordable care act has affected part-time workers. and some of my colleagues on the other side claim that th

mr. chairman. i appreciate your being here today. mr. keating, i read your article in "the washington post," that using the debt ceiling as leverage is unwise and dangerous. you also noted that the respect and admiration of the united states and its institutions inspire around the world are based on the certainty that when our nation makes a promise, we keep it. i take it from what i've heard here today that all of you agree with that same sentiment. i've read yours, mr. benson, that it is on acceptable for congress to either voluntarily default on the debt and a continual short-term extension of the debt limit increase is unnecessary market uncertainty and raises questions about our nation's credit worthiness. i think we're all on the same page here. i agree. think that makes sense. here's my question. if the very prospect of the default costs us money and our good name, i don't understand why we keep voluntarily raising the prospect of default with all of these votes on the debt limit. congress already controls the size of the debt. it

mr. chairman. thank you, secretary sebelius for being here. here's my letter. this is the letter that my family got cancelling our insurance. we chose to have our own private policy back in colorado so we could be in the same boat as every one of my constituents. yet, my insurance policy has been canceled. the white house website says, if you like your health plan you have, you can keep it. did i hear it wrong? >> again, sir, i don't know how long you've had your policy or -- >> why aren't you losing your insurance? >> pardon me? >> why aren't you losing your health insurance? >> because i'm part of the federal employees -- >> why aren't you in the exchange? you're in charge of this law, correct? why aren't you in the exchange? >> because i'm part of the federal employee health benefits plan. >> why won't you go into the exchange? you're part of this law. you're literally in charge of this law. should you be any different than all of the other americans out there who are losing their health insuranc

mr. chairman. i too want to thank the witness for being here. i've a feeling it won't be the last time that you will be testifying somewhere. clearly there is this report. it gets my heart beating a little faster as a former prosecutor because i guarantee you we have had some good investigators on it investigators on at it that work for this committee but you put some good prosecutors on these sets of facts and i think you you're going to find something more than the pressure to move a docket quickly. i don't have a lot of questions for you. i think you have gone over it very well. i would ask you, those of you that works in the ssi offices for the social security administration did any of the lawyers know that the fix was in for conn? didn't the other lawyers representing people with disabilities know this? >> i received numerous phonecalls from other attorneys in the area while i was there. more towards the end of my time in 2007 than any other that had complained that they were losing their clie

mr. chairman. i'll yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for testifying today. first i want to get to a question raised by chairman nunez about the release of numbers as total number of enroll ees to date. you said you're not going to release numbers until mid-november. you said we made a group decision not to do that, not to release them until mid-november. who was part of that group to make that decision? what were the individuals that were part of that group's decision? >> i think it was in response to the question was did the secretary or the white house direct me and the answer to that was no. this was a group decision. we actually sat down with the secretary and talked about what would make sense in terms -- >> who was the group? that's what i'm asking. individually who made up that group. >> these were different components within hhs, different operating divisions and obviously we had conversations with that with white house staff as well. >> who was the white house staff you had conversations with? >> this would be members of domestic policy council -- wh

mr. chairman. >> thank you mr. chairman. and i'm pleased to hear that the website will be fully operational by the end of november. and would you be able -- would you come back to our committee so we could see if that's actually accomplished and how it was accomplished? >> ill make every effort to do that. >> okay. you were governor and state insurance commissioner in kansas. and i reached out to our state insurance commissioner and governor and found out that they have absolutely no data about nebraskians who have tried to enroll or enrolled. as you know, nebraska is one of the states that opted not to do their own exchange and rely on the federal exchange. so it's interesting to me that neither our insurance commissioner nor the governor's office had any data about nebraskians and this -- this -- enrolling in these plans. i also asked our insurance commissioner if any of the navigators, if they knew who the navigators were and whether they had to apply to be certified or licensed, in essence like an insurance agent would b

mr. chairman. you have been at the irs how long? >> i'm sorry. over 31 years. pre-k's i want to go back to where the chairman was. the 6103 confidentiality statute very sears they. it's very sears they. >> let's put up the definition. will discuss any return in connection with her or his service or otherwise or under the provisions of the statue. it is pretty straightforward. you cannot share personal taxpayer information, correct? questioner. -- >> true. this as youighted are talking about the affordable care act. this is from the presentation you gave according to the minutes of that meeting in front of the irs oversight board and i want to show federal tax law imposes piracy protections that bar irs from disclosing federal tax information. this encompasses that encompasses the release of the data in the safeguarding of the data in the hand of the recipient. so you can't pass this back and forth. you have to protect this. this is a hesitation you gave in front of the irs oversight or do. now let'

mr. chairman. >> thank you very much. the mike got pulled a little bit from you. i appreciate you being here this morning and we worked with our leadership to see we don't have votes on the house floor so we won't be interrupted. i appreciate your time for sure and in an effort to allow every member to ask a question, we will be reducing the time for questions to be just four minutes so hopefully we can get through all the members that are here. i'm going to be fast with the gavel. we have plenty of questions so let's try to get through them. i think everyone in america remembers the president's words. if you like your health care plan, you can keep it. period. the affordable care act insurance policies in effect on march 23rd, 2010 when the law was enacted would be grandfathered. a few months later despite the president's words, hhs helped promulgate a new red that in your own review showed it could deny as many as more than 50% and maybe higher. of those holding individual policies the right to r

mr. chairman. >> mr. mcnerney. >> sorry, mr. chairman, i'm not ready yet. >> ok. mr. guthrie. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for testifying today. a lot of people don't realize that before the government shutdown of september 30, almost every republican, all but one, voted to fund the health care government to sequester level and only asked to get rid of the individual mandate. for a delay for a year. because as businesses and other people have been treated with waivers and special delays, we felt the hardworking taxpayers deserved -- because we didn't think a product was going to be ready for them to purchase. and it turned out on october 1 it wasn't. so we wouldn't even have had the government shutdown if we had people agree to give hardworking taxpayers the same treatment they gave businesses because the i.r.s. wasn't ready to enforce that. having said that, people say there are other alternatives and so we have good people in the great commonwealth of connecticut working -- kentucky who will take paper applications. so there's argument, well, they can buy i