Reminder that we still have an issue with the debt and deficits in america. For some reason the conversation has slowed on the issue of debt and deficit. It should not. This should be an ongoing part of our conversation pit starting in 2010 when our deficit was 1. 4 trillion, this epic deficit that called the nations attention because it are grown so incredibly large. Since 2011 that deficit has gone down every single year until 2016. Starting in 2016 that deficit started increasing again and it increased from 2016 to 2017. We have got to Pay Attention to the debt and deficit. It needs to be a part of our ongoing conversation. We release this resource as a set of ideas. If we are going to manage our economy and our spending better there are specific ways to do it. There are essential things we need to be able to spend money on Transportation National defense disaster relief, things that are essential for us to be able to do. For us to be able to afford to do those things we have got to be able to pay better attention to other things so we set the cell. Let me set up the of context free up to their certain things we want to be able to put into perspective for this. This is not just a central set of ideas. They are actually illustrations to a larger set of issues. If we are going to have straightforward solutions it will start with fixing process things beginning with the budget budget. The budget process was created in 1974. Only work four times since 1974 but he was created to give us Greater Transparency and its provided greater complexity and then very difficult if not impossible to be able to run the decided we had to be able to fix the budget and the appropriations process. We had to fix the grants process. If the theres just been a lot of attention paid to contracting and how we are putting checks out for individual contracts. That same attention has not been paid to the grant process of because of that its easiest way to more and more agencies are spending more and grants. Those grants have almost no oversight of the grants need additional oversight of the process. We put out something called the tax periods right to know because every year we talk about duplication and every year we talk again about duplication from the Previous Year and it just keeps going on and on. Six years ago i put up the taxpayers right to know in the house of representatives. It passed unanimously in the house of representatives. Being held up in the senate to be able to move puts a simple straightforward piece. You cant tell her theres duplication in government until you go the gao into her quest for them to study a specific area. 18 months later they can come back to give you information on that particular slide where theres duplication. That should be something you can do and 18 seconds rather than 18 months. We should be able to see from every Single Agency what they do. Right now the new and officials cannot tell you everything the agency does. There is no master list. You cant deal with duplication if you cant see the duplication select an area we have to extract away. The final thing is we need to be able to fix in the rules. We can debate these hard issues we cant solve these hard issues and currently we cant get to debating these issues. Some of these things come up every single year and everyone says why is it not addressed again taxpayers a . There is a structural problem United States senate where we cannot get to the issues and be able to address those. My hope is we can actually get to the point that we can fix the structural problems in the senate and be able to do the real work. From that the book itself as i mentioned before is a set of illustrations. Its not designed to be an exhaustive list. I wish it was 100 ways to drop the ball. We broke them down to large categories wasteful spending is probably the easiest one to see. Lack of oversight is the second one. Where there is spending it just needs additional oversight. The third one a structural changes that are needed and the fourth one is not wasted money but wasted efforts. Let me give you some examples. All these are now on our web site lankfords. Senate. Gov and you can get a chance to be able to download this. Its a free resource there on the site. Wasteful spending some of of the things we listen up the National Science foundation to the small study 40,000 thats incredibly small. They did a 40,000 study on the effects that refugees are experiencing in iceland when they come to iceland. I understand why the u. N. May want to do a study on refugees in iceland and their effects but i dont understand why the federal taxpayers are paying for a study for how refugees are handling iceland. There is about 60 refugees that a move from syria and iraq and application we spent 40,000 stubbing those. We have one that we identified that again i look at it and say its fine if it happens. Doggie hamlet is the name of the production. Uses no lines from hamlet which again is fine if they want to do it but its an outdoor production where they chased dogs and around a pen into a big performance i put it seen some of the eclipse and again its fine if the local Community Wants to do that. Im just confused by the people of oklahoma are paying for the protection of doggie hamlet in new hampshire. There is a billion dollars being spent on the streetcar in san diego. It works out to about 100 million a mile for that streetcar. I look at it from the perspective of coming from oklahoma. Apparently theres a streetcar being installed in Oklahoma City. The people of oklahoma in Oklahoma City are paying for the streetcar in Oklahoma City and all the construction work and all the details around it. The only federal expense was the initial environmental study required by the federal government. The rest of its being paid for by the people of the community. Im confused why there is a billion dollars being spent for local transportation projects in san diego to be able to extend that out. Theres also areas that i talked about with lack of oversight of oversight to make a few small examples like doggie hamlet and some large examples as well. The tax gap has been an issue has listed your figure. Its currently at 458 billion dollars. The irs is the maronda valuation through the National Research program trying to identify where they have had gaps in where they are collecting taxes and a bite and a 54058 billion but they are not acting on it to collect the taxes that are owed. Theres a did not pay into not use system. The system is set up among multiple agencies to say this is either a contractor or an entity that should not be paid. There is a master file from the Social Security administration mean this person is deceased so dont pay them a check related to whatever entitlement may have been due to them in life but not due to them in death. That is not being fully integrated among all the different agencies. That should be a common thing to do. Let me show you where that shows up. S. N. A. P. The retailers that provide s. N. A. P. Benefits, there are 3400 retailers using an individual that is deceased, that is 2. 6 billion dollars just because they are not connecting the dots for someone who is deceased and not connecting with s. N. A. P. Retailers. That is to be addressed. Immigration has been a hot topic. This is an area where we talk about structural changes. Immigration is an area where we say build the wall or do minor changes or enforce existing laws. Let me give you some of the problems we have. About 66 of the individuals that are in the country right now not legally came in under a legal fees and overstate that after the 9 11 commission the federal government was required to do a biometric entry exit visa system so we would know every person they came in, when they left the country and if they did leave the country. That has not been done still to this day and that was a major portion of the 9 11 commission. Also the conversation about hiring 5000 different i. C. E. Border patrol agents. Currently takes over four to 50 days for the Border Patrol to hire one person, foreign and 50 days of hiring. Want to add additional Immigration Judges to take 742 days to hire one immigration judge. These issues sound simplistic to be able to solve that they are structural problems both with hiring and how things operate in these different agencies. These need to be addressed. When i deal with things like not wasted dollars of wasted time and wasted effort. Some of those are things like the nomination process in the senate which i address. There were real place to be able to address the time and length of time it takes to denominations. In 2013 the senate had the exact same problem. They put out a solution. Two hours for two hours for District Court judges eight hours for everyone else except for the circuit court, Supreme Court and cabinet officers. The senate for one year and walked away from it. Like to be able to bring that back and have that be the rule. If the senate is ever going to get back to being a body that is operating in taking up legislation as well as nominations we have to have an expedited process. Claire mccaskill in my working on something called face. As passed in the senate. Dealing with customer service. Right now agencies can do what every business in america does have an on line survey for how did he treat you and customer service. Just send out some basic questions. The reason for that quick the paperwork reduction act. These agencies can do up his act to follow the process of the paperwork reduction act to take so many months to get to the process of doing it they just dont do it at all. We are trying to fix that but if agencies are going to get Better Customer Service and taking care of people they have to be able to get feedback. Its a way that we are fumbling the ball and taking care of people. Theres a lot that needs to happen. We are trying to give some specific examples. Again is not intended to be the big one but if we are going to do the deficit we have to be able to address it. We have to think about it for me to talk about it and find ways to be able to solve it. There are things we need to spend money on but they are also things we dont need to spend money on and there some things we need to stop doing or start doing if this is ever going to turn around. I will open it up for questions. Was going to be critical to getting the work done . What ive said all along and dealing with the tax bill is we cant ignore the debt and deficit issues. As conservatives we have said for a long time before youre going to get ahead of the deficit with the with the controls then again i have a growing and healthy economy. If we use all of the tax reductions to just offset we are never getting on top of the debt and deficits so my first question is how are we dealing with the debt in deficit tax or the estimates real and are the offset trail and im trying to work up through the committee to try to address that. To me the big issue is how are we doing with the debt and deficit and do we ever listed numbers and is there a backstop in the effort just in case we dont . We have had phonecalls throughout the thanksgiving time period. Our staff has had an and will continue to do that. We are so coming together on it. We will continue to work on that that. Related to that very concerned about the provisions are set to expire and maybe could be vetted in the future . Im a is concerned about that but not as much because future congress will have to deal with the exact same rules and that is to look at how spending is done how you were going to offset that. Can you talk a little bit about functions that the tax plan is going to yield . Do you buy that argument . There is an article today in the wall street journal talking about the same group with a lot of economists working through that. The 0. 4 or the. 4 growth estimate is not a bad estimate. Thats a fair estimate. My issue is that everything, what if we dont get 1. 4 growth, is there in a is there any backstop it is an emergency that will come behind us and say what if and how will we protect ourselves and the economy in the days ahead for oklahoma and kansas we have seen some of us in our state legislatures. I think its important we learn some of those lessons and to be able to put into place at the beginning of backstop for that procedure to make sure we are guarding against it. To have a similar red line and also we could be willing. I think we need to get to a solution on the bill. Theres a broad need for tax reform. Im not opposed to doing tax reform. We need to make sure when we do we do it right. When its done with me to build and basic protections, but just in case options and we need to make realistic presentations. Citi a question regarding the requirement. [inaudible] the argument is the administration is no reliance into. Is there any conversation or ideas being kicked around about how to change this dynamic in the report . I would suggest the igs work is important. Citi not only the igs work is important so as the gao. Their 50,000 ig reports and recommendations out there that have not been implemented across federal government. Thats exceptionally important to get those recommendations implemented. This is the same issue we have a the last administration where they took six years to even recommend someone to be Inspector General of one of these agencies. Its very to get those individuals and they should work in a cooperative way with the leadership of all the agencies but they are exceptionally important to be there and to be a part of the conversation. Very supportive of the cities of what they are doing, the Inspector General and the council. They have done with remarkable story. If youve not seen the web site they put together they have one central web site for all the inspectors general of all the reports out from every Single Agency. What its done and what is not done so for the first time two months ago anyone can go on line to be able to see all the reports from all the inspectors general. The oversight as we will pull that one for you to make sure you have the right web site. What else can congress do to boost communication among yourselves . Oversight in every agencies. The senate rules so we can debate these issues and also the length of time it takes to do it. For instance in the budget process i think we should do appropriations every two years rather than every year. That gives us more time to the committees in putting this together for this year. If youre putting it together for this year you are doing oversight for the of years. Right now its a constant struggle to get through the issues that need to be addressed but there are structural things that can be done. Two areas. First of all what do you mean by justification . And then secondly how concerned are you with the tax bill coming down the pike but you also have the own the best. You have a flood of issues this summer frankly. They are quite a few in the next three and half weeks of will have to be then. What if the growth estimates dont get 2. 4 , what happens to ask what should happen to be able to make adjustments . Every economist is guessing. Is their best guess is a welleducated guess but every economist is guessing. Not only should we take the best guess is from the best economists and look at it but we should build in the whatifs. What if it doesnt work . What changes might be needed in the tax code in the days ahead to be able to adjust. If the revenue is not coming in should the rates change plex all of those are in conversation. This yea have you seen any changes made . In the back of the book if you have an opportunity to go through it they are called touchdowns and recoveries and how youll be able to get out of this we highlight a few of those. Our focus is that this is the todo list for this next year and as we work through the todo list our staff says worker may find places to address those . Appropriations language with the uprising committees working with the administration, where can we find this and we hope to identify something we have seen in the past year as well as some the things that are ongoing in current appropriations language this year to address it. If there were no changes made to the Senate Tax Bill with ups to look for it as it currently stands and can you talk more about what the conversation is like that you are having . Good conversations. I wont even go through there no changes because there are ordered changes going through. There is no such thing right now as there are no changes because its already in flux. The conversations are extremely productive. No one is pushing back and no one is saying we dont want to do this. How do we get it done and how does the work through the parliamentary process that was the best way to be able to do that . Obviously they are working with the parliamentarian. That process is going through the next couple of days. The Budget Committee obviously has to get to work this week and you have to get to the parliamentarian. Would you say you are inclined to support a . The mecca would very much like to support it. We have got to get things worked out. Claim you verify other backstop works . We are going to a lot of different options and id rather not get into the details but there are a lot of wasted of backstop and we are trying to work through the best way that is predictable for everyone but also making sure we actually have a backstop in place and not just hope it works out. Is anything on the spending side also . This is just the tax side. Obviously everything has to be financed as this goes through the process. I appreciate the conversation. I really do hope you at thanksgiving. The wonderful things we will do around christmas like appropriations in the tax bill. If you want to have individual conversations we can do that as well. Thank you so much. I. [inaudible conversations] mix of discussion private Sector Development in afghanistan. Panels cover access to capital, transportation issues and Economic Opportunities for women entrepreneurs. The center for should teach and International Studies hosted the event. [inaudible conversations] lets get started. I pulled the chair at csi. We will have a conversation about the private sector in afghanistan. We have been doing a series of events on afghanistan over the last year. We recently hosted Abdullah Abdullah two weeks ago. We could