Transcripts For CSPAN2 Homeland Security Department Reauthorization 20180207

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good morning to this roundtable of the secretary of affairs will come to order. I want to welcome our participations we will call them, witnesses, where we have the honorable elaine duke, claire brady, george scott and john kelly from dhs, as well as the office of Inspector General. This roundtable is to discuss the attempt to reauthorize dhs, the house is past their bill and they had a memorandum of understanding to consolidate that entire process under the department or committee of Homeland Security in the house and its been a little more messier here in the senate which is not unusual in the Commerce Committee was taken up in past authorization of tsa and coast guard and we have a number of components and my staff keeps telling me the summer of 40 or percent and that is what we are here to talk about today. I think its accurate to say that with the house authorization does is and this is what we do in these authorizations is take what dhs currently does and could buy it and record take recommendations and by reading your testimony its pretty pleasing to see how many of the recommendations the department has made over a number of administrations to improve their operation. Lets also admit this is not been an easy department to establish and operate. Twentytwo agencies, missions and develop that unity of mission and we helped in the congress in working on some of the authorizations of that efforts and but were trying to codify these things and there are a key changes and or new departments that want to codify the countering weapons of mass distraction office and i think we want to figure out some way to focus the mission and do renaming and we talked about do we do that on a must pass piece of legislation or authorization and theres a great deal of desire to do it but its a matter of how to be get this effort signed into law and couple items need to be worked out. Authorization for fema grants and what we do with federal protective service and we continue to have those discussions and maybe that is something we can determine and come to conclusion with voting in a market. My last point is i do want to talk about the one glaring mission out of the house authorization and maybe its controversial but something i think the department really needs is a very serious look at the jurisdiction that you are responsible to and in my breathing weve got this little chart of all the committees and a number got because no one can me knows i think how many committees and subcommittees do have that responsibility to report to and have jurisdiction over you but some of your information is pretty interesting in the number of hearings that dhs personnel have participated in empire conferences as 289, 219 and 113 and 211 of the hundred 14 congress and witnesses in the 400 levels briefings in the thousands and 4000 the hundred 11th congress over 4000 and we have Agency Responsibility in reporting to us and transparency in all those types of things but it needs to be more streamlined. One thing we are suggesting is drilling im not quite sure of any way of doing this and im open to other ideas but establishing some kind of commission to work with house committees and Senate Committees to reduce the burden because from my standpoint i would picture the department is focusing on its primary mission which is keeping america safe and secure. With that, i do ask unanimous consent to my Opening Statement be entered in the record and then i opened it to senator mccaskill. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Im a little confused as to why this is roundtable instead of a hearing. I hope someone can speak to that. This is a demonstration that prides itself on getting rid of senseless regulation and im being told reason we did this is because he didnt have time to get this when approved by omb. Is that right . Is that why it is not a hearing . Its a conversation between staff and dhs will be the best format to have this discussion to prepare for a markup. To pass this authorization into me its not a big difference one way or the other. Well, you know, i think its important the reauthorization of dhs. It rises to the level of a hearing but you and i may just have a disagreement about that. I was under the impression it was something that the department didnt have ample opportunity to prepare for a hearing because of the approval of omb that it was just a choice of the chairman then you and i have a difference of opinion on whether or not this rises to the level of the hearing. Ive got a number of things id like to take time to talk about and i wont have time to talk about all of them and obviously i continue to be concerned about acquisition and how well the department handles acquisition. We see press about the most egregious examples and obviously the recent one we have a contractor who clearly has a very troubled history with federal government yet we entered into a contract with him to deliver meals and clearly they did not deliver on the contract and did not perform under that contract. I think weve got to drill down about debarment and suspension and why that is such a hard thing to do in the federal government. I can assure you my colleague the chairman that if it was his company and if it was a private business and you had someone that was a supplier and they screwed up time after time and you know what that business would do . They stopped doing business with them. But the federal government never seems to do business with anyone who screws up and i dont get it. I would like us to get to the bottom of that. I also obviously have questions that i will spend some time on and im very concerned that the privilege dispute in the it reports. This is groundbreaking and unprecedented and it is very, very bad. I want to get to the bottom of it and i also will put my written statement in the record to have great attendance this morning and i think everyone has questions for the two questions and i will ask my written statement to be put into the record. Again, it is my understanding you each have an Opening Statement. That start with the honorable elaine duke purchased deputy second secretary of Homeland Security. Thank you. We have just one opening okay. Okay. I will give one Opening Statement for the department. Thank you for having both of us here today. Claire grady, as undersecretary for management as our chief management officer, and i is the deputy secretary and acting as chief operating officer and theres a strong linkage to that and hopefully for the two of us we can cover all the areas today. You have been great partners and we are looking forward to having some open and honest dialogue. For dhs the purpose is clear. Its even clearer now with the threat against our country and we welcome an authorization act that would give us updated authority or updated support and updated accountability even for the country which we support. We recognize that we have to ensure that we carry out the mission on behalf of the country and that we are serving even our employers are 240,000 employees right. Missing passage of the authorization act would be helpful in executing executing our authorities and responsible is. Over the past year at dhs have been working on a unity of effort at dhs and this is critical and hopefully we have time to talk about it today. Its looking at how we as the headquarters operate to enable and support the headquarters and i see three roles for the headquarters elements. Leading a community of practice, seeing subject matter servicing the headquarters. I think your proposal, mr. Chairman, consolidating some of committees would be a great parallel to what we were trying to do in headquarters and streamline it better. Weve made great progress and we have to do more in this area. What we are looking for an authorization bill overall is something that does what you say and codify some of the efforts we are making already. It doesnt go so far as to dictate and legislate areas that really would be difficult to change or take away essential possibilities of the secretary and leadership of the department. We do feel like areas in an authorization bill that would help us with personnel things such as hiring retention and separation and flexibility and management of our employers would be helpful and we can discuss those and level of detail either now or in subsequent discussion with you in the Ranking Member later. Also, the Department Cyber structure security we do have the senior official performing the duties of the undersecretary, chris, is with us today. Hes here to talk about [inaudible] area and weapons of mass instruction. We look forward to coming up with agreements that or providing you information that will help you form your authorization bill. Thank you. Mr. George scott is managing director for the us accountability, and assisting. Thank you, chairman johnson and ricky member mccaskill and members of the committee. Im pleased to be here today to discuss opportunities to strengthen the dhs. Over the past 15 years we have committed arrange appointments the operations while making significant progress in addressing transfer the department and strengthening its management functions. In fact we now consider d just be a model for how other agencies should work to address the highrisk issues. That said there are key areas where the Department Needs to continue to improve. Reauthorization provides the opportunity to collect on the progress the government has made and how to best align the dhs missions roles and responsibilities to better counter new and emerging threats to the woman. I like to briefly discuss specific examples where we think legislation to reauthorize the department would help. In terms of Departmental Organization codifying the roles and response abilities of the National Protection and programs directorate would help strengthen the adjust focus and responsibilities on Cyber Security. Also, renaming the office to better reflect those responsible these would be a positive step. In the area of protecting critical and Structure Congress required dhs to evaluate the assistance and information it provides to stakeholders regarding Cyber Security protections particularly those sectors that work for the department on a voluntary basis. It is important for dhs in the congress to better understand what extent those efforts are yielding positive results. While the department has made progress addressing Management Issues including receiving an opinion on five consecutive years significant challenges remain and in particular, the department continues to struggle with its Financial System modernization efforts in additional oversight is warranted. Dhs also needs to continue to develop financial workforce with the skills necessary to hold strong internal control environment in the congress could require the department to develop a competent strategy for doing so. Finally, no discussion on the department would be complete without Acquisition Management. The department has taken a number of important steps in response to improve oversight acquisitions. For example, in reestablishing the joint council codifying the role of the jrc as recently proposed by senator mccaskill in ensuring that the department continues to fall sound acquisition practices will help increase accountability for the billions of dollars that the department spends each year. This concludes my statement i look for to answering any questions you have. Thank you. Thank you. Our final participant witness is john kelly, acting [inaudible] good morning, chairman johnson and Ranking Member mccaskill and and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to discuss this reauthorization act and to address new emerging threats. Since its establishment dhs has progress in addressing challenges to a competent mission. However to fill its final mission a success protecting and securing our nation dhs must continue to from challenges that hinders its efforts. Over the last few years weve issued numerous reports that address the challenges that face dhs. Many of us challenges congress addressed in hr 2825, the reauthorization act. Implementation of our recommendations and your legislation dhs can continue to improve its operations and reduce fraud, waste and abuse. However if the department ignores these challenges will be difficult for dhs to effectively and efficiently address new emerging threats to the lands. In our last two annual reports in the Major Management and performance challenges we highlighted two of the most significant longstanding challenges. First, dhs leadership must commit itself to ensuring dhs operates more as a single entity rather than a confederation of components. The Department Leadership must also establish and enforce a strong control environment and internal is relatively weak and affects all aspects of the departments mission. It includes border protection, immigration enforcement, protection against terrorist attacks, natural disasters and Cyber Security. Fortunately, the dhs authorization act reinforces the need for the Department Unity by streamlining oversight, accountability and eliminating redundancy. Another important area is Acquisition Management in the fiscal year 2017 and dhs spent more than 33 billion on contractual services, supplies and assets. Thus dhs Acquisition Management system is critical in filling its mission. However implementing a system is inherently complex. Dhs annually spend tens of billions of dollars on a broad range of assets and Services Including ships, aircraft, surveillance towers, Nuclear Detection Agreement Financial and Human Resources and systems in Information Technology systems. To its credit dhs has improved some of the acquisition process is however challenges remain. Provisions of the dhs authorization act which strengthen the role of the undersecretary of management implement efficiencies across components and a sure oversight accountability just safeguarding billions of taxpayer dollars. Dhs must also strengthen aviation security. Nowhere is the asymmetric threat of terrorism more evident than the area of aviation security. Tj tsa cannot afford to miss a single genuine threat without potentially catastrophic consequences and the terrorist need only to get through once. Detection on luggage and people requires technology and welltrained transportation security officers. Work is identified vulnerabilities in screenings operations and be conducted nine covert Penetration Testing audits on passenger baggage and screening operations. I cannot provide the results in an unclassified setting but can characterize them as troubling and disappointing. Tsas failures were caused by commendation of technology and human error. Mps that he is a leadership understands the gravity of our findings and moves to address them. We recently audited the federal air Marshals Service contributions, tsas security and although the detailed results are classified they can say that some of the funding could be discontinued and reallocated to higher priority areas. Finally primary focus of dhs is the integrity of abruptly 240,000 department in place. The vast majority of dhs employers and contractors are honest and hardworking public servants. Much of our investigated caseload shows corruption on dhs law impeachment personnel and government contractors. The dhs authorization act implicitly grants the oit refusal we suggest the act explicitly grant that write to us. Inspector generals play a Critical Role in ensuring honest and effective government. The American Public must of fundamental trust to Government Employees be held accountable for crimes and serious misconduct by an independent factfinder. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my comments. Welcome to answer questions. One of the reasons i like this roundtable approach is it allows the flow of questioning and we can stay on one topic. I want to approach us as we do have a timer set for five minutes. I think the light goes off when theres one minute left and then the red light goes off when your time is up. I do want to accept or not necessarily encouraged but if you have a followon question that is pertinent to what another member is asking so we can cover the topic right then and there as opposed to 15 minutes half hour later bring up the topic and rehash it. Raise your hand but again i want to discipline, one shot, a member on a topic and has to be pertinent. Again, that will add to the discussion. Other for my questioning and turn it over to senator mccaskill and see if this works. Im a little confused about the process here but we will forge ahead. Itll be good. If this will be a roundtable i sure hope are not cutting people off from been able to ask as many questions as they want. No. Okay. Lets start with the thing that concerns me because of my work with the ig community is a former auditor. The Inspector General conducted an extensive review of the implementation of the present probably in. The cooperation roadblock when the Inspector General released its findings but only did it take months for the department to respond to the Inspector General regarding privileged so the report would be released but the department decided to assert the privilege that has never been used before. Invoking a deliberate process privilege and now the irony is that your invoking a deliberate process purpose in the travel ban if there was ever anything that wasnt deliberate it was that. It occurred without adequate notice to the Department Without adequate preparation to the apartment and anyone with common sense to look at that and see that and youre using that deliberative process privilege to block information from the public and are we like to see this information ms. Duke . The concern over the deliberative process was has to be productive. We have to be able to have discussion with the president and the administration and additionally is under litigation and that is the issue here. It is important that we protect this. Yes, we will provide a report and as it is to the congress i think that the important thing to note is that even with the redaction it does state what the process was and we believe that even with the deliberative process it gives adequate information about what happened at the travel ban. Will, i think this is outrageous. I dont understand it. Government sued all the time. We cant use litigation as an excuse to stop information from the Inspector Generals. We cant do that because every department will then say we are under litigation and is this an executive privilege or a deliberate process privilege and this is a white house exerting this privilege or is it your department . Different pieces of the report came under different privileges. Some were executive in summer deliberative process. The ig got all the information it was an issue of whether it could be made public through a public report so the ig does have the information. But the ig cannot share that with me. Correct. Or the chairman of the committee. We be happy to have a discussion about that with you if you like to go over the findings and i will commit to you that we will come in and talk to you about the i need more expedition about this. This could be a trend. All of a sudden we could have igs all over government encountering apartment saying this was a deliberate process and we can talk about this and then all of a sudden our oversight is done. We find it highly unusual for an id report to be solely focused on discussions within the executive branch between a lot of the report was focused on email notification and those types of things were normally an id report would be focused on how did dhs implement the travel restriction. As someone who has read many it reports as anyone in this room and as many gao reports in this room emails are always a part of those reports. Emails regard. It would be appropriate but the deliberative process refers to the early stages of how we converse the pre decisional if you well within the executive branch over how decisions i will ask for oneonone briefing in this. If you have to do in a classified setting, whatever, i want to know whats been hidden from the public and then we can go from there. On acquisitions. The recruiting contract. We have now entered into weve asked for information on the recording contract and weve asked january 3rd and we still havent done anything for it was a competitively bid. Yes, maam, it was. s the best deal we could get was being 40000 for every job that pays 40000. We looked at it from the perspective of competitive selection and not representing what met our needs at a fair price. We looked at it in its entirety and as you know we have struggled to hire the necessary staff or Border Patrol agents or officers air and marine and despite the efforts of using a range of options including retention incentives and Different Things we had done from a recording perspective we had an average of that lost about 400 positions for Border Patrol agents every year. This year First Quarter were down another hundred. We needed to do something above and beyond what we are able to do particularly with the intent to hire an additional 5000 Border Patrol agents. We looked at it carefully and said this is a search need. Still need to continue to push on all the flexibilities from an hr perspective we have to meet our staffing needs and to meet that search and we did assistance over and above what we had and we worked with ordered a contract with the company was a proven track record for ability to accomplish just that. 40000 for every employee is outrageously high. We are paying 40000 to hire someone were to pay 40000 and where i live people think the government has also his mind that would be exhibit a. I understand the concern in one of the things important to us about that contract was structuring it so that we pay for actual on boarding when we get formal job offers. Not paying for effort, were paying for delivering results. 40000 for every approximately that includes initial startup costs part of me, initial start across that are granted towards the recruiting efforts, safeguarding information assisted with pii in all the branding and efforts of front so if you do a net division to come up with your close to that but focused on getting the results and it is a scalable contract in an id queue contract. Of anxious to get the contract. Will come soon postmark. Were going to share that information with you and will happy to be sauce the specifics. We ordered a general third, will it come soon postmark. I will look into the exact date. To get in two weeks . We will have issues associate with protected information within that competitive source selection information but committed to providing the information to you and for being transparent. I havent got an answer yes, maam two weeks . Two weeks. Theres a boatload of money coming your way and you cant trust that your spending and right and if we cant trust that the decisions are being made based on evidence related factors and by professionals this will not go well. These issues, these issues that we are confronting today are critical and i think senator mccaskill has done a great job outlining just two areas where we have concern because if cant see an id report and all the attachments were not doing oversight. Right postmark and if you got a problem hiring people you got a problem retaining people. Who are you talking to . What are the strategies being deployed to maintain staff . We spent a lot of time and i spent a lot of time, as you know on the northern border, and i talked to Border Patrol to talk to the challenges and with a few tweaks you could get them to stay instead of paying 40000 you could walk into a high school and recruit high school students. You arent being creative and and its hard work and will require different thinking but 40000 to hire a job that pays 40000 there is no one thanks that is a good idea. Senator, you raise a good point about retention and other activities. You may have heard about our leadership year and that is done exactly having a concerted effort on why are we losing people and looking at that from the leadership management and supervisor perspective. The fact that we went up in the fed survey and the largest increase in government shows that is working. We are hearing from our employees what they want from a cultural perspective and we are addressing that. We can talk more about that and additionally the Border Patrol where we have high attrition and difficult to recruit a lot of that has to do with certain duties and we are looking at legislative proposals on the end that might help and some things including if someone goes to a location where it is not desirable and can they have first transferred were looking at what we can do internally and what we might have similar. You need to get this house in order because like i said we are being asked to authorize an appropriate a lot of money and if that money is going to be and we look back on that time and saying in our rush to get this done we didnt do the right oversight then shame on us. I want to talk about german johnsons chart and the 911 commission. I dont know that you mentioned it but this one of the recognition. Improving this government oversight somehow by bringing in more of a Defense Authorization structure to the department of Homeland Security. I think thats the direction we need to head and that was the recommendation that the 911 commission made that was never followed through. Partly because we had jurisdictional turf battles that go with this. Right. But we going to do the right oversight we can have this kind of disparate jurisdictional challenges and this is probably more to the chairman and Ranking Member. Weve got to start asserting our jurisdiction and Start Talking about how were going to do a broader oversight. If it makes sense for you to be consolidated into the agency you are consolidated into and make sense for the committee on Homeland Security to have broad inconsistent oversight the mission of the agency. When we dont have that we dont have a plan and we dont have oversight when we havent figured this out and maybe there are ways to get on these barriers to committee chairs. I know the house is kind of different select committee or method or can any of you comment on the kind of authorization process that the house is going through and whether you think that is working to give you a more narrow focus point of contact on oversight. I cant specifically comment on the house process but we agree on the consolidation of authority and we are hoping an authorization bill would be a step in that direction. Will we see from this committee is a holistic look. When you look a talk about acquisition you talk about a program we also talk about the system and the reason you talk about the system is because your committee and in others, they have such a narrow slice there were not looking at the full system and so i agree with everything you are saying and i know the house is trying to do a similar effort to consolidate some of the authority and we think we would get more comprehensive oversight with the consolidation of jurisdiction. Right. But you cant force that. Weve got to assert jurisdiction here but lets not pretend that we will get a broad reauthorization oversight capacity here with this kind of mixed jurisdiction. I really encourage this committee to start asserting its jurisdiction and Start Talking about this as a problem. We will solve that problem overnight but it will require but how old is the agency . Fifteen years. Its not overnight. Oh no, oh no. Lets quit pretending, lets quit pretending that 15 years of dispersed jurisdiction here is acceptable and we have to wait longer. Weve got to get this problem fixed especially when you get 25 million. Its why we are i think recommending some commission with highly individuals pointing out that we are putting our Nation Security at risk by having dhs so scattered in terms of aim. The same question with different committees. I understand. Right. And congress didnt follow it. Again, we are on the same teacher but we agree but how do you fix it. I think i will follow on the theme of credibility which has been a big part of the last two questioners and that deals with the grant making that occurs with in your agency. Tens of billions of dollars of money have been put out in various grants since 911 and some of the taxpayers right to know whether that money has made us safer or not it hasnt then we need to make changes accordingly. I understand mr. Kelly, theme is reviewing the threat has her nitrification and Risk Assessment and this is the process that agency and states use to undertake each year. Is it true that these are not being currently used drive grant allocations . Ill have to get you back to that specific. I dont have that answer to you right now. That would be important because i think we need to look at our understanding and yet they are making these assessments and at some point they should get to the point where they actually have data as is mentioned actual metrics to look at before grants are provided. Conceptually, i agree with you on that but i cant give you the actual answer to that question right now. Related to that does the language in the draft legislation require assessments in information and has a say prepared a report . Do they have the potential and i know you want to the issue and you believe im not exactly clear that. Ill chris. Yes, in general the hospital [inaudible] sir, the house bill turn on your mac. Its been what we been recommending for over a decade which is encourage fema to better assess from yeartoyear the effects of preparedness grant and you mentioned this process and fema does use that but thats mostly developed by the state and fema relies on the state assessment so we dont know year in and year out is how these grants are making our capabilities. In short, we dont know what our investment over 50 billion over the last 15 years is finest year in and year out. Thats troubling. We dont know what 50 billions dollars and asked about us so what would your recommendation. What weve been saying for over a decade now is fema needs come up with his own quantitative measure yeartoyear how these preparedness grants are building our capabilities and that is what is not being done now and thats what we would like to see. I think another important point is with all this investment on preparedness and predisaster grant is not clear what the impact is on the post disaster side because that is exploding and were spending more and more every year on that too. Right now it may not be buying down the cost on the back and either post disaster. Thank you. I picked it up. The question also back to mr. Kellyanne mr. Scott theres been a proposal to consolidate some of this grant process which is right now fairly fragmented. Is the gao done in assessment or aig done weather will increase the efficiencies of these programs and better ally them to national priorities. We have not initiated a review in that era. We have been looking at some of the preparedness grants we do a lot of work on the Disaster Assistance grants and weve identified a number of challenges that exist and chairman johnson and senator mccaskill a letter in june making suggestions on how fema can improve their structure and oversight of the Disaster Assistance grants and there are a number of legislative proposals and a mention of changes. Okay. Mr. Scott. To the extent that across various programs there are opportunities to harmonize instream lies requirements and theres always opportunity to bring out additional efficiencies both in the grantmaking process but also in the grant and ministration process. So in practice, actions can be taken to streamline grantmaking i think thats generally a positive thing. As long as that goes with the necessary oversight of the grants its important not just for the money at the door but get the necessary oversight mechanisms to ensure the grant money is properly spent. Great. Thank you. Honorable elaine do, question for you related to Cyber Security. When we deal with the challenges making sure that we are hardening the weakest link because the bad guys are always looking for the weakest link and my concern is that although the federal government has a lot to do to strengthen our Cyber Security efforts im concerned about state and local governments that dont have the same resources that we have here at the federal level. That is certainly a weak link in the overall system. Im working in a bipartisan way with senator purdue to look at ways in which you can get the department of Homeland Security to work with state and local governments that are voluntarily asking for assistance in expertise within your department. If you talk about what you believe we can do from the department to help state and local governments and if theres any specific actions we should be taking here in the committee to assist you in your effort. Thank you, senator. We agree that state and locals can be assisted by the federal government on a voluntary basis. We also think critical and for structure that the federal government can play a role in the integration not in an voluntary way. Cyber Security Agency act will help with that and what we are looking at is we have the tools and thats number one thing we can do. We can let state and locals and Critical Infrastructure use some of the tools that we have deployed and that could be done more and were looking at evaluations and the election subsector is an example of when asked were doing Risk Assessment of structures for the State Government and for the local governments and we think the collaboration and training is another area. Were doing training and we have positions first protective security agents psas throughout the jurisdiction to do onsite assist in remediation and those are federal employees that are out there. We think more needs to be done in this area and we agree and one of the things with the npb d act we think it would to critical and for structure and realizing that cyber is a crosscut across everything and not a standalone function. Thank you. Senator peters, we do know that [inaudible] governments love them. We dont know if ashley working but its doubly a concern. Senator foreman. And they go back to the cyber issue because i wanted to ask about workforce and as you know back in 2014 we wrote legislation Bipartisan Legislation committee supported it to upgrade your abilities in the cyberspace very concerned about the lack of retention and also been able to attract top talent. That was three years ago and we asked [inaudible] to a report three years out in a place to save mr. Scott that it was great and your report basically says that dhs has missed all kinds of deadlines and i understand the need to help state and local and too hard in our own but we dont have the personnel to do it it makes it challenging. Quickly, mr. Scott, tell us what your specific regulations are right now as to how we get dhs back on track and begin to attract this workforce we need. As you mentioned, just yesterday we issued a report highlighting the urgent need for the department to take additional steps to identify Cyber Security positions and critical skill requirements. In summary the department has made progress categorizing and signing certain codes to it Cyber Security positions and theres some concern the accuracy that they provided and i think they estimated 95 of the positions were identified we came in and did analysis and found it around 79 because they basically excluded vacant positions and they didnt have those in the math. He made sick accommodations including her dhs to enhance the procedures around identifying the positions and improving the Workforce Data and developing specific plans to identify and report on the critical needs. [inaudible] our expectations within the next two years or so that they should be further along in addressing critical Cyber Workforce needs. Former secretary, acting secretary now secretary duke, what are your recommendations was to have a credibility and someone responsible for every component and i think that is something you should focus on given your management responsibly. I was involved in to listen to in the legislation that created the department as some of you know and i wondered since then whether we created a behemoth something too difficult to manage but having said that the risk we face requires us to have one agency to focus on keeping a safe and at the time we did try to align the Committee Structure and unsuccessfully. Again, the 911 report this talked about but i agree with what the chairman and other colleagues said about that is its difficult for you and the chairman talked about the number of testimonies you had to give up last year and an ability for you all to focus on your core function because youre dealing with so many different subcommittees. I do think its a good idea mr. Chairman and the first step is to have authorization from this committee because of the bulk of this jurisdiction and if we arent taking that restriction seriously and ensuring that we do have authorizations we are going to continue to have even more erosion of that responsibility. This is good we tried this back in 2011 and Susan Collins tried it and we were able to get it on the committee were never able to get it across the floor and so im glad youre doing this. This authorization will be more narrow to try to avoid issues and i hope we can do this in a bipartisan basis as a first step too much broader issue here which is how you manage this department and so many different silos as mr. Kelly said early and make it work better as a single entity. This will help on oversight. Ive got to raise as chairman of the psi committee you have all not been responsive in a few of our requests and we push and write letters and let me give you three quickly but one is way back in april from 2017 we asked questions about the management and not to get into details because we dont make these investments in public until we report that we need that information. Weve been giving a minimal amount of documents most of which were not responsive to the crest so back in december we asked about your privately run detention facilities again not to get into the details we need that information and you have not been responsive and havent produced any documents and we made phone calls and send emails and status updates and we need that information and not back to december 6. Finally, in generally of this year couple weeks ago we asked you for information on the procedures to protect unaccompanied and alien children. This hearing and report on this topic and deep concern about the lack of accountability. This is with senator mccaskill and myself. We are simply looking for what we were told at the time you are doing which was another agreement you have between dhs and we were told it would be done a year ago and you still havent done it. We still havent put out a way to figure out how to get the information to us and why we are in it, sat and what we can do to push dhs to get that understanding to protect these kids. On all those issues can i get a commitment for you and i will ask for weeks but we need to have a response. My apology. I was not personally aware of that and i do commit that to you. I will give you update on all three. Finally, my last point with regard to the hearing report from last week on the fact that dangerous chemicals so that it opioids are coming into our country for our own us mail system and theyre not able to stop it because they dont have the information we need to pass this stop act and the most part where cosponsors of apple we asked for other things in the report which is work better with the Chinese Government to shut down these labs and stop the shippers and deal with it in china. I know along with Jeff Sessions you had a session on the broader issue of Security Issues with which china last year and can you tell us what has happened with regard to china and their willingness to help us stop this poison from coming into our community and stopping it at the source. We have made progress with china. The percentage and the biggest thing is that the percentage of packages that we can track which is key to shutting it down has over doubled. We are making more progress. We need to track all of them for the Chinese Government has been very cooperative in the. They do not distract. Have not prescribed. They have been cooperative in tracking packages. How they been cooperative . They are helping us institute a tracking system with the mail service. We dont have a mail Service Tracking system in the United States and their is an international once we have very good tracking of dhs under dhl, district. [inaudible] only have packages coming in of that increase volume china has that advanced electronic data on it. They are not there yet just you know. My goal is not just to have that tracking information which is very important but how to get china to do what they say they want to do because after hearing this Committee Room and the Chinese Government official spokesperson says they want to cooperate more United States and that was an extension of some kind of olive branch to you all to get with them and begin to crackdown and not just have the codes and information but to stop these labs and there are thousands of them in the crate is poison and to prosecute some of these people who are involved. We have two indictments that they have yet to arrest these individuals and weve invited over here for chinese nationals and my question is what more can we do on that front and what have you done . We have been working with them regularly in terms of principally through the department in terms of china but it isnt just a china problem. We have an opioid conference going on in miami the early for tonight to look at how we can enforcement and we have its hard to discuss everything but the transit to some countries that we are looking at and stopping not only china but the transit and the president counsel on trying to do the deterrence so we support this stop act. Were hitting it from many angles and its a challenging problem. We could go on and on but your own people tell us that primarily our own mail system and primarily to china right now and understandably shipment is going on and maybe we need new roots but we know weve got a huge issue in this number one killer in my home state of ohio and this last year were from personal and thank you for pushing the chinese more on helping to stop this at the source. Thank you very much, mr. Chair. Thank you for being here today. I will add to what senator portman said. Enforcement deterrence on sentinel coming into the country is important so is treatment today hundred so we can reduce the demand in this country. We cant arrest our way out of this we have to do everything to get out of this and we love the administrations help. Secretary duke, i want to start and i have three areas to explore this morning. You talked about election securities, critical input structure and i want to ask you to please share with us in more detail the scope of activities that dhs has undertaken to help secure our nations infrastructure and what specific actions has the department taken in 2017 and 2018 to advance the mission. I will have chris come up to the table to get more specific possibly were doing assessments of the systems as requested by the state and local government. We are also made available are safe system for checking rosters that on the critical, excuse me, Cyber Security side its principally focused on substance. As you all know chris. Senior official performing the official duties for the undersecretary. Information sharing, Technical Support Incident Response planning and on the first line of information sharing we are working closely with the multistate information sharing and Analysis Center which has direct relationships with state and locals to provide best practices, information on strategic and targeted risks to election input structure trade also providing security clearances to state and local officials. That was can be my next question. Are working to ensure that the Election Officials have the district. And we have ticked off that my november. We have 50 senior Election Officials we are about 37 into getting into the interim. And adding to that on clearances while making progress on the longer clearances were giving oneday clearances to as an interim gap. Are you working to provide Election Officials with as a part of the relationship with the fbi we will not give them as gifts but we can coordinate ways that they can come in to skip weather here in dc or a local office. And are you working to ensure that state Election Officials are coordinating with both the state woman security advisor and the state chief information officer. Yes, maam. As a part of every state in the learning experience we have come to understand that theres essentially a triumvirate state and you just highlighted it they advisor and each state has a bit of a different arrangement particularly on the scene of side but we are developing separate individual information sharing protocols estate. Okay. I may follow up on this a little bit with mr. Scott and ms. Kelly but is a time want to move on to a couple other issues and we may be able to talk some more about that. Two secretaries duke and grady, id like to touch upon an initiative being spearheaded by the dhs and the chief information officer. As i understand it the dhs data Framework Initiative is the departments effort to unify the data sets under one technological architecture in order to enhance the ability to identify terrorist threats in our travel system. As i understand it our existing framework is still in its initial phase of development but it promises to bring important capabilities to dhs analyst into their effort to try to keep out foreign fighters and those who wish to do is on. Can you describe for us the value of the dhs data Framework Project and the priority places on this initiative. Its value is, i cant tell you how strong and it is a top priority. The data framework is essential for moving forward against terrorism, drugs, what it does it does several things. One is a systems issue at the pipes area and the we looking at ettore mckinney between Law Enforcement and intelligence information. Also coordinating intelligence. Under the secretary [inaudible] that will be helpful but not just having intelligence but having intelligence communicate with Law Enforcement at the Law Enforcement since the level and the timeliness and accuracy, things are moving at lightning speed and especially with Something Like radicalization we dont have the years of tracking a criminal anymore. We are all focused on this and it requires management from the pipe standpoint me from a leadership in undersecretary but there are those of us want to support you in the effort and i look forward to working with you on that. I had one other issue and maybe i assume will get other questions and mr. Chair, even talking about the [inaudible] change and wanting Cyber Security into the title. Im concerned that Cyber Security is more important than that and i am wondering what authorities with independent operational Cyber Security component need to retain from an ppg to be successful and with their non cyber functions suffer if the Cyber Security was turned into an independent dhs component and im over time that if you want to give a very brief answer and then work it into the rest of the discussion, that would be great. I think that the cyber isnt just a name change. It does come with authorities and i do think that cyber and critical temperature together work well and we can talk more about that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all of you. I know we have lots of questions we are peppering you with but it was interesting that we bring all these issues and some of this is 15 years of pentup energy and questions but for gao to begin a report which is gao typically brings us all the venues first in gao led with good news here and theres a lot of things that are changing and making those adaptations. We had hearings two years ago talking about the hr system and about how difficult this is been for dhs and now i am hearing the numbers are changing as far as the time for hiring. Used to be for customs and border part 350 days plus and he got up to closer to 100 days for a while to hire one agent and where are we now in the process . Those numbers are definitely coming down and the other thing we look at is the number of applicants we need to hire a Single Person in that number was wellin the triple digits. Its now the double digits and that is way too high but using a combination of streamlining processes meaning combining multiple steps in a single site at recording event and other actions that weve taken weve been able to try that down and it is still too long. One of the things were looking at is weve been taking keeping the numbers as a complete average on a metric and in some cases an individual can be an extreme outlier with 800 days was literally the worst i have seen. We are looking at what is the average, the 80 , so we dont have outliers driving the metric. It continues to be a focus and i meet with the head of Human Capital and the chief Financial Officer for each of the components that have hiring challenges on medical critical. That is certainly a lot and we are committed to work on. If there are specific legislator request to have that we need to know and we can help her through the process. There are 120 different hiring authorities sitting out there and its a complete mess. We have them go through the process and if there are things you see we are doing our own work but if you see things from a were glad to do those as well. There have been improvements there and its more streamlined. We are not rejected so many. We changed first of all we went to the fbi to get best practices and time in the types of polygraph seen. It do we change the type of polygraph . Its been effective, but has pushed up the number. Additionally, we were looking for waiting on certain classes of low risk people and that would include local Law Enforcement. We have the dod with current clearances and those types of things that would be helpful. That tends to be longer. I think the allinone hiring is helpful, but expanded ability to waive would be good. I wanted to make the committee aware we have ongoing work currently looking at the challenges that apartment is facing in terms of Border Patrol agents hiring and we anticipate reporting on that later this year. One thing i would caution is that its important to understand the root causes both in terms of whats presenting preventing you from hiring the right people in the need to balance the goal of hiring additional agents and making sure we are not in some way compromising the quality of the agents we are getting and i know that is something that you are well aware of, but i think its important to the size having a goal to hire more is one thing, but a process to hire the right people is a totally different thing i want to make sure that balance is not lost in the rush to hire additional agents. I dont think there is anyone at the table that would disagree. If i could add additional area of challenge is once they hire them is to properly train them to have the facilities available to provide training to those individuals. If there is a specific need juicy already with the location facilities . We are doing work thats identifying limitations in their ability to train individuals they are hiring. Weatherby recommendations . Will will there be recommendations and when will we get that . I cant give you a hard date. Try. July. In secret service there are training restraints and we are looking to expand the facility for secret service. How much facility sharing can we use . Are there any that we can share facilities . Yes, but the undersecretary can talk more, but we are also looking at shooting ranges and those types of facilities for consolidation to record things like mobile firing ranges to allow people to attain obtain certain proficiencies and we are looking available facilities across federal and local to make short we take full advantage of whats available rather than duplicate. There is no reason to rebuild something that exists. Living next and quick comments. One, for the comments on Cyber Security specifically related to election, senator harrison i have done work on this and we were pleased to hear your answers of cooperations. One frustration was how long it took after the last election for individual states to even be notified and the common answer was we dont have anyone with clearance or a method, so to hear you proactively pursuing that is helpful to know and thats something we are trying to put into legislative language to make it consistent from ear and out so there is the ongoing cooperation so for you all, thank you for doing that and we will continue to work with you because we think its important. Im also pleased and if i can make this one, here for senator mccaskill, this whole table so far has talked about metrics and im pleased to hear that. This committee passed out unanimously a bill that senator mccaskill and i have called the taxpayers right to know that identifies metrics and programs and whats out there. Its command of this committee unanimously. Its across to the floor and if there is any way to get it done that will help us all, its a nonpartisan bill on basic transparency and were looking forward to get that done. Think mr. Chairman. Senator harris. Thank you and i could not agree more with senator langford and i thank you for your leadership on those points. Secretary do, i was a bit troubled by the exchange ahead with senator portman when he asked if you are familiar with the request that hes a member of the United States senate has made to your department and you are not aware. I would imagine before you come to testify before the United States senate that you wouldve done in inventory to see if there were requests that had come in and if there is the status and if they been answered. On Cyber Security, as you know the midterm elections are around the corner and in texas, i believe, the code of the polls on march 6. While dhs has provided a risk and Vulnerability Assessment to some states other states remain on a long waiting list, im told the waiting list being as long as nine months. I would like to know what is your timeline for getting these non . Chris will talk about the specific timeline, but we have made measures in terms of both prioritizing and making the list shorter. Can you give me a date by which will be done . So, first off starting with the ninemonth wait lists, thats actually probably about six months old and we have reprioritize and thats the benefit of the Critical Infrastructure designation as i can take election of the structure and put it at the top of the list. When will they get done . So, we have conducted five and we have another 10 or 11 in the hopper ready to schedule through probably about the beginning of april. The dependency here is whether we get requested for risk and pull her. There are states, south carolina, for example that have this capacity to conduct their own assessment, so while some states have their own abilities, we are focusing on doing awareness on those states that need additional help. How many states have requested that it be done . At this point as i mentioned, up two five have been done and another 11 are in the queue my question is how me states have requested . 16. And when will all 16 be completed . My understanding of the scheduling is probably about mid april. Do you have a date certain . I dont have april 15 or anything like that, but april is the timeline for completing the requested and my hope is that we have more come in and over the course of the next several weeks , but we will where is texas on that list this as their primaries are march 6 . I would have to get back to you on that. I would want to know you are aware of the 16 states at least and what their dates are for the primary and that would be your goal to have their assessment complete before their primary actually occurring before the voters go to the poll. Im concerned you dont know the timeline given that we have unanimous consensus among our Intelligence Community that russia interfered in the election of the president of the United States. It would seem to me that this would be a high priority for the department of Homeland Security and you would be clear about the timelines. I have other questions. Part of my understanding is that the delay in processing these requests are that you do not have skilled workers to complete the scan. Is that correct or not the problem . Im trying to understand the problem with the delay. Maam, the delay is the risk inVulnerability Assessment capabilities is also servicing other Critical Infrastructure sectors and in fact also federal highvalue assets, so what weve done is put at the top of the pile the state and local election official right now. We have de prioritized others and put those at the top. With more i can do more, so we are looking at ways to increase training, to bring additional personnel on and also there is equipment acquired requirement for additional equipment. If we can be more precise, do you have the necessary personnel in funding and other forms of resources to provide the states with their requests and get this completed in a timely manner . For those that have requested right now, we have the capabilities to conduct as i mentioned on the existing timeline. How many state Election Officials have applied for security clearances . At this point we have approximately i believe its 37 have submitted their paperwork. We have one final secret issued. We have about 17, i believe, interim secrets and the stooges on a daily basis, but we have again the opportunity to do daily one day read ends on any issue that might come up and we will do a number of briefings over the course of the next couple weeks or state Election Officials. So, those daily one day readings mean that if you wanted to have some consistent information about what is happening you would have to two every day to get a oneday reading . It depends on the back of the information the intelligence we want to share, but if you require to meet to be in person with those folks or have local intelligent officials read them and that they. That seems extremely bureaucratic, so the goldman is to get them permanently receiving not just in your Election Officials in the state, but also additional staff, so we are at the point right now once in your election official per state and two additional staff with security clearance. What percentage of those then should receive secure a clearances to completion, completing that process have received those clearances . I dont have percentages in front of me. About what number . Probably about today at about a 30 rates for the 50 senior Election Officials that is including an interim secret level work interim secret gets you the same effectively the same access and permanent secret, but we have prioritized again this process of that team in issuing clearances and will continue to do so in advance of the 2010 elections. Lets keep going with texas as the example with march 6, as the primary care they received their clearance . I would have to come back on the specifics of texas. Please respond to this committee with a precise timeline on when they will be completed and we would like to see on the timeline when each of these states are actually conducting a primary to see if you will actually get this done by the time people start voting. Yesman. I have nothing else. Let me follow up. I remember in 2161 of the problems was to identify who to contact in the state and the question i have is how we identified in every state the individual or individuals that do need to be identified that can effectively handle whatever information you provide them . Thats what i mentioned earlier is that we have an individual state by state protocol for notifying whether its a state commissioner elections or secretary of state, so we are working through the process is now turkey to state will again, my question is do we have those individuals identified for every state . Yes, sir. Yes, we have them identified. Okay. I went to make sure we clear that hurdle. Senator jones . I want to talk a bit about ive been really focused on budgeting lately your microphone. Is it on . Obviously, its an unusual situation with someone sworn in as a us senator and we immediately start shutting down the government and that has been a concern of budgeting i heard during the campaign. We have heard secretary mattis pretty vocal about the defensive, and the negative effects these continuing crs have on defense. Do you see that with Homeland Security . Is a problem and if you could outline the affects that some people call crisis budgeting, some people call it hostage budgeting, whatever it is, we are just kicking the can down the road. Can you address that a bit. Shutdowns are disruptive and i will start with our employees. We have 240,000 employees that go through a period where they are not sure if they will get paid or those that must come to work have to come to work and others dont and probably still will get paid after the fact, so there is a true employee issue. The mission, we have to focus on the mission and because under acr or shut down your at last years level and it constricts us in adapting to priorities and we cannot do new new starts, so when a emerging need comes up with can address it because we cant start something new and so dynamic is Homeland Security, that is restricting. It also, like the jurisdictional issue the chairman talked about is disruptive. Our new under secretary has spent quite a bit of time with planning and reacting to shutdowns. Its a administratively a huge burden that distracts. Also a huge burden operationally because you are operating under a continuing resolution and you dont know with certainty what your budgets will be for the next year and that theres a problem with any new start you cannot begin. We are in the middle of the Second Quarter of the fiscal year without a full budget telling us what we have here, so in terms of operational planning, in terms of moving out on hiring efforts, acquisitions, we are hamstrung until that gets resolved and that has a Ripple Effect throughout especially when you try to compress spending a very important resources for very important capabilities and then its now in a period of time potentially it has a huge operational impact. It has Administrative Burden and its just difficult to operate especially on a number of shortterm crs. Does it add administrative cost another cost . Absolutely because you enter into shortterm decisions or shortterm bridges or you make shortterm decisions to accommodate what you have from a financial perspective that you wouldnt make it you have the full budget available at the beginning of the fiscal year. Ranking member mentioned acquisition, which is always a high interest for all of us. The federal government traditionally spends too much in the Fourth Quarter anyway and the shortterm cr pushy and further into awarding quickly in the Fourth Quarter. And spending maybe not in the most judicious way. Not to bring him probably a sore subject, but this past week a cnn reporter found some pretty sensitive documents in the back of the airplane, which could have jeopardized and thought of things. What happened and what all was found in what can be done to stop that . That was a pretty serious breach in my opinion. s actual leading of the documents will be handling under a personnel matter. Similar to anything else, that is a breach of our responsibilities of our employees, so we will handle it that way. In terms of the material and documents, that is something we are working on. It is old information. Its what we tended to call a hot wash of what we see and what we are looking forward to, but it will be handled at our personnel system. Anything that can be done in this to try to stop that . Are you look at ways to figure out how to keep i know it may be an isolated incident, but it could still be a pretty serious isolated incident. I mean, protecting both classified information and in use only and just reiterating i think that this is a reminder to all employees when they hear about it of how careful we have to be. Important responsibility of being a civil serpents is respect protecting the. Bigger response to that question with an Insider Threat. We have expanded our Insider Threat program to go beyond class about information to look at the sensitive and unclassified information that are essential to our mission to ensure we monitor for usage and take appropriate action if we identify a potential vulnerability, so be on the traditional Insider Threat which would limit to classified to look across the information we can control a make sure that we are safeguarding against exfiltration and inappropriate use of that information. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I would like to pick up on what senator jones talked about, shutdowns. What percent of the personnel from dhs were considered essential and required to come to work approximate . About 70 . Most of the individuals were determined to be nonessential that were individuals that work on longerterm actions and we did nothing to jeopardize national security, but individuals moving things forward in terms of critical policy initiative, planning for future budgets, in terms of just the longerterm strategic effort tended to be the individuals and source of functions you will release sent about pretty your workforce home. Unfortunately, ive been around here when we had a shutdown and everyone gets paid eventually. [inaudible] talk about authorization, have you thought about during the shutdown anything you can do in the authorization to make this more clear cut and protect your department and potentially talk about doing a government wide i support in Government Shutdown act which if we dont get our act together we just keep the funding government at the current level and prison discipline and thereafter 90 or 120 days i mean set aside a governmentwide and Government Shutdown act. Is there something in the authorization we can take advantage of with the just in the recent Rearview Mirror . We actually hadnt consider that, but its not just the day of the shutdown, if the weeks leading up to it where there is thanks. Some of the biggest portions of our workforce say transportation secure the officers are in the low end of the scale and so even having to wait for the money could be critical for them, so whether give that some thought and i hope to mark this bill up if we cant do it by next week we will hold a markup and maybe be the following week if we delay it with more complex issues, but give that some thought. Again, because reality situation is every time theres been a Government Shutdown everyone gets the back pay. Incredibly unfortunate theres this level of dysfunction, but lets take a look at maybe addressing that here and could be potentially example for the parts of government. If we may while we are tagamet personnel, disaster workforce flexibly is something that could help us in responding to future disasters. We have a major core workforce in fema that are not career employees with no ability to transition the best of those into the federal workforce. About is one of personal provision we would look at under an authorization bill. In addition, having some ability to do noncompetitive temporary appointments. We are looking at some of the things with recruiting from high schools and the Pathways Program , but some of those workforce structure flexibilities that we could have similar to dod within cbp i mentioned within Border Patrol specifically we are looking at incentives for families and so on the isolated areas. Can we do similar to dod give a preference for spouses for federal employment, those types of things that would help make those not as non desirable locations. I know we have held the Something Like 25 informational meetings with staff between dhs and majority and minority staff, so if those things are outside of comments made during those meetings, get a list of those compiled, get proposals. I assume these things are not in help authorization bill . No. Listless all these things and if we can come to agreement on a bipartisan bases i think those are good initiatives and we should included here. We have a list of what we would call our ask things that would be helpful with what is not only what you and the committee you have this today imac as. Good. So we can make sure we can formalize of the record and we will work with you. Senator mccaskill. Lets talk about this contract. Was this contract, was it did for the tribute meals and fema . Yes maam. This was in a Small Business situation. No. Thats my understanding. So, and you all had no heads up, no ability to find the previous problems with their failure in the default . We are digging into this one now and look what happened. It was terminated quickly. I dont have information i have seen relative to the Due Diligence on the front and. Obviously, that is something we are looking at an understanding what happened associated with that. We have a robust suspension and Debarment Program for we suspended and debarred about 190 people last year, thirdlargest in the federal government and we are in the process of updating our suspension and debarment instructions to make sure we reflect best practices and we will be moving to a case Management System to ensure we have more complete documentation and a tracking. So, how so, tribute will show up again maybe not i dod, but how are we going to dean them so we quit hiring them . Anytime you terminate theres a notification provided. In addition you provide the past performance information to inform and proceed with suspension debarment activities. Why didnt that happen maybe you guys can speak clearly had defaulted on a number of government contracts so they were much smaller, but there had been a number of federal government contracts they defaulted on, but from what i read about it you all didnt have any flag in the system that would have shown up. Again, this is based on my professional judgment, not based on fact anyone make that clear is because the dollar value is because they were below the simple site Acquisition Threshold so there may have been a loophole in terms of reporting, but again thats my speculation on information i verified. We would dig into it as i know you all will so lets Work Together get to the bottom of it i would really like to know what we need to do to strengthen the ability of the federal government for suspension and debarment because i know in terms of the process and what has happened is rather than go through the process of suspension debarment you just default the contract and move on and then that bad actor remains a viable contractor in the federal system. I agree about suspension and debarment because of due process has probably been taken to an extreme and the length of time it takes to get someone on the debarred list is an ornament in terms of protecting the federal government. How long do you think it takes . Probably over two years because you typically allow things to go through the process and as is the case of the contract work we are discussing the company has disputed the termination and so we are going through that process under the contract dispute act in working through that while that is being resolved you cannot put them in the debarred list. We certainly reflect that the performance as we thought of the committee has the opportunity to present the information as they thought relative to the performance. Is available to inform and we require our Contracting Officers to look at the past performance of companies in addition to suspension debarment because our goal is to do with cubbies that perform well. You are only looking within your department. Across the federal government my suspicion is because of the limited dollar value that they didnt get reported, but that is something we are looking into. I was going to say on the responsibility to terminate which is separate theres a government wide repository. Under your Government Affairs rule, information is not regularly entered in that, so if you met the number of the government contracts against a number of contracts that are reported in the performance system, its woefully underreported. Woefully underreported. Welcome i would like to get to the bottom of that and see if we cant put something in this reauthorization this authorization of the department to be helpful. Of the other thing i would say about femas its not like you guys dont know you have to buy meals; right . Cant you have some kind of standing qualification for emergency meal providing in fema that then you can draw on when these occurrences happen . I mean, that i get idea that we go with an unknown company to deliver 30 million meals seems bizarre to me. Plan and have strategic vehicles available you can watch all of this hearing online at cspan. Org. We will break way here. The u. S. Senate is gambling in momentarily. First, we want to take you to the floor of the u. S. House. Normally its the seneca places filibusters, in this case its the house. The democratic leader nancy was he has been on the floor of the house for about an hour and half talking about immigration, but specifically about the negotiations over expanding budget limits, the longterm budget agreement for generally, the democratic leader agreeing, but saying the package doesnt do anything to advance a bipartisan immigration legislation and she said the statement earlier, without a commitment from speaker ryan comparable with the commitment from leader Mitch Mcconnell the package doesnt have my supporte lets listen in to nancy pelosi for a moment or two. When i first heard the speech i saw the light at the end of the title. Daca grant immunity to live a normal life. It was temporary, but felt real. I graduated high school in the top of my class and i was blessed to start college. Follow our house coverage over at cspan as the speech continues. Of the house is expected to go into recess, waiting on action the senate on the continuing resolution in government funding past tomorrow it and not pick the senate likely to take it up at some point. We mentioned it negotiations still underway on the floor. Follow it all on cspan2 in the senate. In the house on cspan and all of our coverage at cspan. Org. We will go live now to the senate floor as they continue work on the house pass defense spending bill. The president pro tempore the senate will come to order. The chaplain, dr. Barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. The chaplain let us pray. Eternal god, how can we serve you today . What do you want us