Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20240622

Some faith providers from kenya on the subject of Family Planning. So i think it is true what the first panel really emphasizes, that things are evolving and developing and this is an important moment to be exploring this further. And with this panel were eager to talk about it from the focus of the u. S. Policy perspective. And i think to begin with well turn to sandy thurman. Given your long involvement with hiv policy from the u. S. Government can you describe to us more about how pep far began partners with faithbased organizations and how that has evolved. Sure. Thank you. And thank you all for being here. It is interesting, the Faith Community has been a partner in response to hiv since the beginning of the epidemic both domestically and globally. So i think pet far was an out growth with faithbased organizations on the domestic side for a number of years. When we really began looking at the disproportionate impact of the epidemic in africa back in the late 1990s and early 2000, it was a lot our interest and a lot of the pressure that was brought to bear on the u. S. Government and policymakers was from faithbased organizations who were on the ground in africa seeing the devastation that was occurring on the continent. So theyve been a natural partner for us faithbased organizations and faith backers have been a natural partner with those of us working in the hiv and aids response from the beginning. So when we began to expand the global perspective to focus on hiv and to put this in perspective, working in the white house, with the global aids budget had been 125 million a year for seven years in a row which now is a rounding error in our pep far program, so when the interest started, faithbased organizations were at the forefront of encouraging us to respond in a very robust way. And that of course ultimately led to to the development of pet far. But i would add that the faithbased partnerships were were not based on politics. They were based on pragmatism. People on the ground that had access and trust in the communities, all of the things that we knew we needed and partners in pep far they were a primary and natural for us. It is so interesting how all of this has evolved and well get into more of the spectrum of groups and the challenges and opportunities that that has presented. But that leads in perhaps in for mark to tell us about your office at u. S. Aid. What is the goal and what is your out reach and your strategy. Sure. So i have the great privilege to head this office at u. S. Aid and its origin is back around 2003 under the Bush Administration and trying to do a more systemic and engagement with the Faith Community. That said weve been working with faith groups since the inception of the agency 52 odd years ago so this wasnt new to the agency it was a new way of looking at it and to reach out to a Broader Group of partners and that is a guiding star for the agency. If you think about buckets of work, certainly to be the ombudsman into the agency the sherpa, the groups that want to work with u. S. Aid and dont know how to get into the door of bankruptcy, can come to us. Groups can act like an ombudsman, we can help finding facilitations for faithbased and Community Groups and try to do proactive out groups, so around ebola as a recent example. We organized with the white house and the department of state a Conference Call with faithbased actors across the United States and we had 400 people on that call to talk about ebola and the role the Faithbased Community might play and we did smaller groups in d. C. With 30 or 40 organizations. So there is a con seening role convening role of the organization. And supporting the other parts of u. S. Aid trying to get things done. So we support the missions in their engagement and that is a critical part of aid. For a Big Government agency we are decentralized. Our missions are vital and decisionmaking happens much there and so those are all of the ways this we try to put it in and we try to make it our engagement in the Faith Community as robust as possible especially when there are areas like health in emergencies when the Faithbased Community have unique things to bring to the table. Thank you. One of the things that came up, in fact, on the last panel was how much of the share of the u. S. Government support goes through faithbased organizations and so many of us turn to kaiser for that kind of analysis and i wonder, jen if you could tell us more about how that how much kaiser has approached that and why that is a complicated set of numbers to find . Thanks janet. And i just want to say that i want to commend the lancet and the authors who put this issue together to start where we pick up and formalize an evidenced based framework that is so critical that i dont think has existed at this level at looking at faithbased organizations and health. And so for this question and what we ask at kaiser what happens now and what is the scope of the involvement and mark and i were talking in advance of this and clearly money is just one measure of this. There is many more ways to look at involvement. Money is one that we all care about and Pay Attention to and so in preparation for thinking about that question i will share some data that we just looked at and really good work being done now on this. Researchers and others looked e. R. A. Sently at health and there is an article that came out on this roughly estimated that over the last decade or more 30 of all Health System for health has been through faithbased organizations. There is a lot there but i encourage people to look at that article in plus journal, so that is available online. The other piece of work of done is jeans work looking specifically at the share of revenues that faithbased organizations have that are from u. S. Government sources and she found 13 . So i think it is less than people think in their minds. So in preparation for this panel, i took a look at data we recently released around nongovernmental organizations. Another proud area that faithbased groups dont know about, what is the role of ngos and we put out a couple of reports on this and we put out a summary analysis on this and what do we know about faithbased organizations in that framework and we looked at 2013 data, 2014 is just available now. But 2013 data, disbursements by u. S. Aid and there is caveats there and just looking at that year, we were able to identify that faithbased organizations represents about 15 of ngos that receive disbursement of Global Health. So 15 of ngos were faith boised. And it is good to look at historical analysis and see how that has changed. And faithbased organizations within the Ngos Community were working in africa, not a surprise to those of us here but an important data point. And the area they were most likely working in was hiv and malaria was a big one and malaria and hiv than ngos over all, less so than Family Planning. We like to look more in depth but to give you a sense. In africa, and malaria and probably less funding than people think. I will give you the Funding Amount because i can see people wondering what that amount is. It was about 96 million in 2013, for what to give you a sense. That is less than the global fund amount identified in the imhe analysis. Were going to run through a series of questions and come back and give you a sense to interact with each other. Perhaps linked to this, the question of who are who are these organizations and where are they and what are they working on sandy you have described from your long years of works the spectrum of the kinds of organizations that helps to under score the opportunities and challenges of working with them. Perhaps you could talk more about what you mean when you talk about different approaches needed for different kinds of faithbased organizations . Sure. Thank you. I think this is this is a genesis of some of the challenges weve had around building these partnerships between faithbased organizations and governments because it is hard to to if we say faithbased organizations, that means a lot of things. Faithbased organizations can range from anything from the catholic Health System in the United States of america which is still and im using the u. S. As an example which is still the second Largest Health care system in the country to very small clinics or ngos or or fans or children on the ground. So there is an incredible broad range. Differences in capacity very big differences in ability to deliver services. And so i think our challenge, all of our challenges to both donors and to faithbased organizations is to begin to define with greater specificity and communicate what the differences are for people. And it certainly came up a lot in the meeting held at the bank this week and has before. And i think when we look at revamping our mechanisms, in order to be more effective build more effective partnerships, we have got to be able to name those things so that when we have partnerships and define roles and responsibilities and establish monitoring and evaluation and accountability and mechanisms and so forth, we have to be very clear about what we are doing with and it can be very big or very small. But what you dont want to lose in that is that we know from all of our years in Public Health, that if we want to really look at sustainable change at the end of the day, that and we want to be able to have countries take full responsibility and ownership of the work that is being done in thur countries, that that has to be rooted on the ground in grassroots organizations all over the country. So if we want to sustain the impact that weve had in pet far or look at sustainability development, we have to figure this out. So we need to stay at it until we do. It wont be easy. It is like family dynamic, it is not easy but you dont abandon the family, you stay in there and work at it and that is where we are in this conversation and it is very exciting. It is interesting because one of the pieces of sustainability, which is of course a big theme here in washington and everywhere, is also the link to the private sector. And the longer term financing issues that link to sustainability. And mark, you have talked about the added financial value of working with faithbased organizations and the outreach. Can you describe a little bit more about your outreach to faithbased groups as a link to the private sector . Sure. I think there are two elements of this. One is that faithbased organizations like most nongovernmental organizations have robust fund raising largely from the private sector and they have partnerships via boards and other mechanisms in which theyve been engaging the private sector since theyve existed and had to do that. The other is a more directive to say as were looking at the importance of the private sector in development, health care in particular, one way we can think about the Faith Community, the Business People motivated by faith but will never put a religious icon on what they do. For example, there is a project they are working on at u. S. Aid about to be finalized on health a small Health Experiment to see if business principals can provide sustainability in provision of health care and clean water and others in the eastern democratic republic of congo and a consortium of Business Leaders connected to the National Business foundation in the United States have put up a Million Dollars of that partnership that were working together. And the National Christian foundation the philanthropy that flows through every year is hundreds of millions of dollars. Part of that will go to international activities. We havent formalized partner shirps with that kind of flow to capital as well as the expertise within that community to bring it to bear and i think that is Fertile Ground to build on. Jen, youve done a lot of work over the years on the u. S. Response to the aids epidemic of course, and as we discussed in the first panel and in the lancet piece, we saw the importance of some of the faithbased organizations roll in that response as well as the Ebola Response that was touched on also in the first panel. Do you want to reflect a little bit more on your view of how that has had an impact in u. S. Response . Sure. To pick up on something sandy said about the role of faithbased organizations an the Faith Community and hiv from day one, that is clear in the u. S. Domestic case as well as globally but i also think it is really important to note that from the case study perspective of pet far, how did pet far come to be, when we come back and try to look together what are the elements that went into many of us watching the state of the union speech and hearing 15 billion and wondering how we were able to get there. It is clear without the Faith Community, that wouldnt have happened. So the Faith Community was from a case study the pet far, to making pet far happen. So it is not just on the ground delivering services and being partners but it really is pushing the u. S. Government to go to another level. So i think that is just really important from my perspective looking at it from the longterm. On the Ebola Response, it is pretty clear that without engaging the Faith Community the way governments had to do realizing they had to or we would not have been able to turn around that crisis. And hopefully the lessons from that experience will be evident and ready not just back on a shelf, but the next time a crisis like this occurred, whether it is ebola again or something else, it is at the forefront of this approaching communities with cultural understanding and engaging the leaders in the community that understand them and can speak to them is the only way we can really get ahead of this. It is quite clear there has been huge huge impact and benefit and also very big challenges that have been presented by the engagement particularly from the pet far perspective. Sandy, could you talk about some of the hardest parts of pet fars history in dealing with the Faith Community and what lessons have been learned and how has that impacted the current pet far strategy . Sure. I think that and again it was not new with pet far. Weve had challenged and in hiv and aids with the faithbased communities and incredible opportunities from the beginning. But it was certainly true. And pet far, i think that weve had to a couple of things. I think it has been very hard for a mechanism as big as pet far to find a way to operationalize our partnerships with faithbased organizations on the ground. And so that has been one. And then weve had stumbles around and challenges around issues of Reproductive Health around the Lgbt Community and weve seen that play out in recent days. But i think where we hang on this interestingly, it more in places like washington, d. C. And in our big institutions rather than on the ground. What i have found always so inspiring is the way that people who are actually on the ground doing this work figure out a way to Work Together. And oftentimes we at headquarters and policy making bodies we try to make it better, but sometimes i think we make it worse. Because people are so people are creative, especially people who are working on the ground in very hard to serve populations in the far reaching places in the world. The people figure this out. I think this is the place where we need to learn from colleagues on the ground and bring those Lessons Learned up to the top. There is something that dr. Blevins mentioned that we have to be careful in wanting to be so politically correct and in the way we engage as policymakers that we dont put people at risk. So we want to tell the story about the nuns who are buying Office Supplies for an ngo that is secular so they can trade and get condoms and not get caught by the bishop, in the old days and people figuring it out on their own, i think we need to take lessons from our colleagues on the ground. It continues to be a challenge for us. But the other thing that we talked about is finding Common Ground. And again, when we define with specificity what our roles and responsibilities are when we engage in a partnership, like a pre i dont know why im using marriage metaphors, but a prenup, but we know this is what we are bringing and you cant touch this and im not going to touch all of that, and we have to define with greater specificity how we engage and i think it takes mystery out of this if you have secular institutions and faithbased institutions. If you really dig down up front and define with greater specificity you can find the Common Ground and not put each other at risk any in way. And to be specific, we have some real controversies that have emerging, like in uganda, and would you like to hear from mark about that episode, putting the blabt community at such risk, the funding for the Interreligious Council being drawn because of that and what lessons were learned because of that and what new practices or vetting procedures or new mechanisms arose from that . I think i should summarize first just quickly, legislators within uganda proposed an antihomosexuality that was dack ownan as best in terms of the treatment of lbgt people and the description and of who they were in terms of people was beyond the pale. And the members of the religious council campaigned positively for that legislation and vocally took out ads in the paper, spoke at a huge rally and i was in uganda when this rally went on and you are listening to think and thinking this is just such a horrible situation and i think the u. S. Government lost confidence in the Interreligious Council to carry out the mandate and serve people without bias. It was so beyond the pail of what we normally saw in terms of actively campaigning among all of the Interreligious Council members. All of them were for it. So funding was withdrawn from that institution and mechanisms were put in place to meet the need of people in uganda so they werent left without treatment. In terms of lesson learned, i think that situation has become polarized. I come out of a community polarizing back ground and i dont know that weve done that successfully yet. How do we depolarize. And the other thing i think we need to learn more about what the actual discrimination is on the ground so we have the evidence that said yes this rhetoric links to a set of behaviors happening that are impacting people negatively. We dont know that right now. We make assumptions that are reasonable but in other cases there have been religious leaders at the top saying bad things but providers on the ground continuing to do good work. So we need to figure that out. There was a study that u. S. Aid did about bias, and i think that is a model for what we want to do in other places and replicate that and what people are experiencing and what they perceive to be experiencing and what can we witness they are experiencing. Certainly another area of challenge involving Family Planning and Reproductive Health and jen i wondered if you wanted to talk about what you have seen in terms of how that has played out. And to pick up where mark left off around lbgt rights an the issues that happened. There is a good new study looking at nigeria and the perceptions of gay men on the ground and their ability to get services and what they needed, finding a link between the rhetoric and their own fears about seeking services, but i agree, getting that evidence and summarizing it for policy makers and Program Managers can understand is really very very critical. And something that goes to the Family Planning issue that actually i want to paraphrase that professor burk said that overriding issue for policymakers is really about Public Health. So it is the Public Health approach. What works for Public Health. And as she said much morrello quently and ill paraphrase stigma discrimination in any form is not what Public Health and human right is about and cannot help us in response to hiv. And stepping back i think the polarize is around Family Planning is very clear in washington. And i think what happens is that people dont realize or make assumptions that faithbased communities are not champions of Family Planning when many many are, in fact leading on providing Family Services on the ground. That is the evidence for that is there. So there is a sort of mischaracterization often of the community and it is a Diverse Community so that also doesnt work as a characterization. I think where the challenges arise is that when there are Effective Services such as modern contraception being most effective in terms of women who want Family Planning methods should get according to Public Health evidence and if there are faithbased organizations and others who cant or wont provide that service, it is incumbent upon the u. S. To look and do an assessment and say how do we reach those who need the services the most and what is the best way to do that and that is where the emphasis needs to be from the Public Health perspective and reaching the goals and how do we reach those who need the services most and put that together from a government perspective. I know were going to have a lot of questions from the audience, but i wonder sandy if you could talk for a minute about how does all of this fit into pet far 3. 0. I think it fits squarely into pet far 3. 0. And we know were going to have to Going Forward take a very strong Public Health approach to containing and eliminating the epidemic in ways that not that we didnt do before but now that we have limited resources, more people on treatment, weve got to continue to move forward and were really going to have to focus more and more as time goes on. That is very important. Our best partners some of our best partners and doing that work are the faithbased partners because we have to get into communities and access those relationships of trust to get people into treatment to keep them on treatment, all of the things that we know that we have to do that it often takes time to do in developing relationships and getting into communities and getting people who Needs Services and getting them into treatment and keeping them in treatment, we cant do that on our own. So we have to find the partners already in the community to help us do that. So expanding our partnerships with faithbased organizations is a critical part of that. And it comes down to it is very pragmatic from a Public Health perspective. We have to identify folks and get them in treatment and keep them in treatment and the programs have to be rooted in communities and on the ground. And this has to be sustainability. It is the primary partner and a big piece of our work Going Forward. Mark, youve talked about exactly that issue, the sort of cultural literacy, i think i call you called it, training for u. S. Government agencies to work better with fbos if were allowed to use the term for now, including new training for how to work with religious groups. Can you just say a word about what that entails . Sure. So general frame is that the various agencies of the u. S. Government came together in the past few years and there is an interagency strategy on global religious leader and political engagement. Part of that strategy calls for more training within our agencies, cross gofts government on how to work with faithbased organizations. At u. S. Aid weve received money from the u. S. Capitol team basically our h. R. Department to begin to do that within our missions and things and so that is really going on for us very strongly. So i have a team, a member of my team, who has worked with many of you, pamela staples who is leading the effort, to do more training and sensitivity. I would say also, if the other side of the coin is how do the take based organizations provide the literacy training toward working with government 101 and 201 and 301, which we all know is a challenge of its own. Thank you all. I have a lot of questions but i think you do too. So lets open it up. And again well take three at a time. And please identify yourself and your brief question. And then well do another round after that. So please wait for the mic so that our online viewers can hear you as well. So first question. Hi, thank you. Im john believens from emory university. Jonathanman put forth the perspective that human rights have to ground the moral perspective and the work of a lot of what were talking about here and that has been an important concept and an important kind of grounding for a lot of our work. But in our work at least in kenya, with faithbased organizations that work with member who have sex with men, work in lbgt communities and with men who use drugs and they almost never use the term. And they talk with us and a lot of us know this that around contentious issues the term invoking human rights has an effect of being seen as the west trying to impose Cultural Values on another part of the world. But our faithbased partners invoke their own similar kind of work. One of the things i found powerful at the World Bank Meeting is dr. Kim out of the poor and roman catholicism it feels to me around finding a common moral space on contentious issues that there are interest sections we havent explored very much and i know faithbased leaders are working to do that in various parts of the world and i wonder if you have any thoughts as to how we might understand those kind of common moral grounds that give us new language beyond just the language of human rights now abandoning it but expanding it. And we have a question in the back corner. [ inaudible ] open house systems. How much when a us aid or whoever funds these programs, are they also attaching to it the sufficient funds to do the evidence based analysis of the intervention as well and are they making that it seems to me like in the first part, we were talking about evidence based interventioned and faith based and obviously funding for that kind of analysis is also important and how much is that attached in the packages . One more question for this round. All right lets turn back to the panel. We have two very interesting questions. One, first lets take the human rights question and then going beyond extending excluding human rights but going beyond that term. Sandy, do you want to start off . Sure. Again, there has been some really interesting work done over on this, better language and better words and defining the way that we that we talk to each other about these kinds of issues. But its limited. And i think coming out of the conference, and weve had a lot of dialogue about this coming out of conference yesterday, i think it is clear that we need to spend some time looking at expanded kinds of language that works for everyone and that is not polarizing in and of itself. We all respect and im sure jonathan man who was just an extraordinary visionary in our field, but understanding that we have to our language has to change as time changes. Were not still we have to keep moving on and finding common language as more partners come to the table. I think it is something we need to invest in and we really and a conversation i would love to have with colleagues Going Forward. And for us in pet far and for others. Because again if the partnerships are going to work like we need to work we have to invest in figuring out what the what the foundation of that looks like and then come to some agreement on that. Jen, maybe you want to come in on this issue of universeality of human rights an the impact of language here. Language is critical. If you dont speak the same language as somebody you have to work on understanding. So how are people people speak about a situation or a group is clearly there has been a lot of work done on that. I completely agree that figuring out the right way to frame these discussions with different communities is we have not done a good job of it. I do wonder though about the human rights using that language. Because when the uganda and nigeria situations were at their height i was involved in a lot of conversations with people in drk as well as in africa d. C. As well as in saefr about how to approach it that these were harmful law and one of the discussions that came up were lbgt rights or human rights and some said you have to focus on human rights and that will speak to a sector of societies that will not necessarily be part of an lbgt rights discussion. So i dont think it is clear. It depends on communities and there are religious leader wheres human rights language is the language they use. But to your point we have not cracked this nut at all. Can i say, on this a resource i dont think we have used enough were or a place to attorney is our Foreign Service nationals which are the people from the countries in which we are working who work for u. S. Aid for a long period of time, decades often. And they are rooted in their own communities and they are from the religion we are talking about and they have the set of relationships and when Foreign Service officers rotate after a short number of years and ive come to appreciate in my three years my role and how to work with the Foreign Service nationals to address the question of language, perspectives and relationships. And mark, maybe you want to take the first crack at the question about funding for the evidence. Where you get into that is difference between evidence and valuation. And we are there on evaluation. That is built into the requirements of our funding. We dont tend to fund a lot of evidence. And that is a gap. And i dont know where were going to solve that. We talk to kenya our budgets are largely dictated by capitol hill and so maybe it is a conversation there as well. But were good on the evaluation not so good on evidence. Sandy . I think this is really a place where we as government donors are slightly schizophrenic because we keep asking for evidence and demanding evidence and talking about data and then we box ourselves in to only having monitoring the evaluation that mark talks about. I think that is a conversation we really need to have and it is not an easy one because again we are all funded by the u. S. Congress and we have our own sort of challenges around that. It is also a place where i think that advocacy on the part of our faithbased partners could be very helpful for us to say that there is we have all of this anecdotal data, but were ham strung by the fact that you are asking for evidence that we cant pay to get and see if we cant be a little bit more creative in these conversations with our colleagues down the street to see if we cant find a way to do that or external partners that appreciate the need for evidence foundations and other donors who might not be as restricted as we are. And i neglected to give a positive story. U. S. Aid has funded the Reproductive Health at georgetown millions of dollars to look at the efficacy of fertility beads for Family Planning purposes and there has been evidence now that those do work they are efficacious and we can fund those as a tool to use to reach our goals in Family Planning. Obviously were going to have a whole lot of other tools. But that particular tool is acceptable by many religious groups opposed to the other tools. And so i think that is one positive story that we might look at replicating. Do we have other questions from the audience . Right here in the middle. Hi. My name is jana carp, im hear from the state department. And it has come up a couple of times in terms of the ebola crisis in west africa but i was wondering if you could speak more generally about the role that faithbased groups could play in pandemic preparedness and response and sort of Lessons Learned from ebola in the past year two years. Other questions . Again, my name is rosemary i just go back to the cooperation how do we cooperate and i met president bush before he left office in the faithbased initiative in 2008 and we talked about the same thing. How do we come up with this collaboration of out reach advocacy in the rural areas there in africa and as you say, Lessons Learned on ebola because there was no outreach or education to people. So local people feels do so much work on the ground but nobody gives them credit and nobody funds them so we should look at the cpos and the local faithbased organizations in the rural areas, the small organizations do a lot so u. S. Aid, pet fund and look into that and work up from the ground and we do collaborate. Again, thank you. If there are no other questions well turn to the panel for these two. Again, the question of the role of the faith groups in pandemic preparedness. I think that its well engaging faithbased organizations and Emergency Preparedness and pandemic preparedness is critical. Again, weve done that domestically and as we look at system strengthening, it is difficult for us to do it on a global with global reach as it is than it is to do at home with domestic reach. But certainly faithbased organizations and other private actors have to be partners in any kind of Emergency Preparedness or pandemic preparedness and i think people are very aware of that certainly in the aftermath of the ebola epidemic and the faithbased organizations were on the ground responding to the epidemic before anybody could figure out what to do. One of the things that came up in our conversations about Emergency Preparedness is training our First Responders on how to engage with people who are already doing the work on the ground when they arrive. And so that the transfer of and the partnership and the integration of already on the ground Indigenous Services is done in a way that honors the people who are responding first and engages the people who are our First Responders coming from big organizations and multi laterals and donors and others. So we have a lot to learn but there is no doubt, i think from cdc perspective or others, that faithbased partners have to be a big part of that process. I totally agree. The preparedness side of the equation equation, which has been harder for policymakers to focus on the response is much easier. But that is a whole different event. But Going Forward, looking at to what extent are faithbased leaders and organizations involved now because there is so much attention paid to needing better preparedness because of ebola and there is now money available for that. And looking back, there is a funding line that u. S. Aid has to look at emerging threats and preparedness. Very few ngos get money in that regard and no faithbased organizations got disbursements for that in 2013. This is preebola so it is important to look at that Going Forward, i think. One story on small you think whether you work with small groups or not, former administrator sherrill went to liberia and went to a small orphanage and school and that shut down and needed food to feed other students and this was a small operation and it turned out that the pastor that ran this had a National Radio show that covered the country so what at first glance was small became very big because he was able to send messages out and was respective. And so i think we have to be open to be surprised and careful when we think something is mall and it is not so small and the influence that can go out. And i think we are in terms of the second face of Ebola Response and we want to build back better u. S. Is in conversation with the International Part of the Catholic Health association and seeing if we can partner on Health System strengthening about ebola and preventible deaths. I think that is a key to try to reach the organizations sandy mentions Catholic Health, in terms of Health Strengthening with faith and nonfaithbased organizations to build in the resilienty to take the shocks and not get set back so far. Any thoughts on the collaboration piece. We talked about that up until now. But any thoughts on collaborating with Community Based organizations, that last question . I think again that we have to continue to expand our capacity. And that really has to be done the Big Governments will never have the capacity to directly fund very small organizations, it is just not i mean we dont have the bandwidth to be able to do that. As much as we would like to, because we recognize that is where we often get the best return on our investment, but well continue to rely on robust coordinating mechanisms and organizations that comprise many different faithbased groups so that we can get the money to the ground. I think that is certainly the way that u. S. Aid does their funding and it is the best of what weve got at the moment. I think there is always room for improvement and again part of what were talking about Going Forward is how do we improve these mechanisms and increase our capacity to get closer to the ground. I think just in the last couple of minutes that we have, i would love to give you all a chance for some final comments and ask you to reflect on precisely that, what are the next steps including to address some of the hard issues. The paper in the lancet that talked about the challenges, about child marriage, about gender based violence about gender, about Family Planning and Reproductive Health, there are very big issues that the u. S. Government is focused on in its own strategies and sometimes the Faith Community can help in those strategies and at times they are a barrier to implementing u. S. Goals in that area. So when you are thinking about next steps, please include how do address these big challenges. Jen, do you want to start us off. Sure. I think this echoes a lot of what the auckors the authors and others have said but looking at the next phase of the u. S. Health Global Policy and Global Health more publicly and srgs that we have to reach the poorest of the poor, we cant have the world we want if we dont, faithbased organizations and religious communities have always done that in a way that other groups havent always been able to. So i think we cant reach those goals without their without their involvement. I think that is clear from the evidence and the paper shows that. So that is one. And two, on the challenges, we have to name them an the article does that. I think naming them and talking about to understand where there is Common Ground and difficulties in figuring out where ultimately the goal of Getting Services to people who need them from a Public Health evidence based services of people who need them is the end game that we want. And lastly data. We need it. We just took a cursory look for today, but i would like to do more on that. I think kaiser, and all of us who can should. I think that is really critical. Mark. Where you live, often shapes how you think. So where im located within u. S. Aide, we are flooded with great opportunities with how to engage. We get frustrated we cant take all of them. But to be honest, to see the partnerships going on aterrific and so im very positive on this. I think in terms of addressing the challenges, the faith communities can be the trip wires for the challenge and the solution at the same time to the challenges. So on gender based violence for example, weve had conversations with the chair of the north American Council of somalia emtams ander emams ander working with us and taking the efforts that they hear, in kenya and ethiopia and other places and hes reached out to the head emam to say will you work with me and we are working on how to make that happen and there are private foundations that will Work Together and the imam came out to meet with us and im going out to minneapolis to speak with him directly and so we can take our partnerships and work with facebook groups and use the religious leaders to answer the challenges that may come out of this community. I just want to agree with what the other panelists have said and just add a couple of things. One, is we certainly need to reach the poorest of the poor but i want to not leave the marginalized for other reasons behind. Which makes it a much more difficult conversation for us. But that is a very certainly hiv and aids and other issues as well. The other is to focus on the importance of literacy and cross training the Public Health practitioners and the faithbased practitioners. And weve had some great pie onners like jonathan man and bill taggy, and jimmy carter and others who recognize the importance of this 30 years ago and started work on this. So there is a very robust and small body of work on cross training. Our practitioners and people on the ground need to talk with each other and find the common language that john was talking about so that helps us we have to have the same language to have a conversation about particularly sensitive issues, it is always a challenge. But just to end on something that a trend that i see in academia and elsewhere that i think speaks to the future in a very important way and that is this incredible growth that weve seen on faculty with john at emory and we have seen and on interdisciplineary approaches to Public Health and theology that include all of ourschools, and also a real growth and dual degree programs in Public Health and develop lt and theology and all the cross training that i think makes me very hopeful about what the leadership will look like ten years from now and 15 years from you on these kind of issues that we all hold so dear. I think theres a lot of bright light on horizon when it comes to new leadership. Well, i think this has been such an interesting panel and i think it opens the door for as the first panel said, so many more conversations, so much more happening in the field right now. And great thanks to all of you for the work youre all doing this this area and for sharing your insights with this. I think this has been very enlightening. Join me in thanking our panel. [ applause ] new york congressman steve israel is chair of the communications committee. On this weekends news makers, we he talks about the democratic agenda in congress, divisions over trade policy and Iran Nuclear Negotiations and the 2016 president ial race. Watch the interview sunday at 10 00 a. M. And 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. This week on first ladies, influence and image. We learn about mary arthur mcelroy. An educated woman and a believer in womens rights when her husband was assassinated she returned to ohio and sured his legacy by making their home into an early library. Chus Chester Arthur becomes president and his sister becomes first lady. Lucretia gar lead and mcarture mcadams. Sundays at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3. Next a look at recent action taken by the epa and their potential impact. Al from washington journal, this is 40 minutes. A freshman member at this point, representative bruce wester westerman, a member of the spice science and technology i committee. Before we Start Talking about policy and legislation, i want to talk a little bit about your for background particularly, your biosays youre a forester by trade. Yes. E. I did my undergraduate work in engineering and then i went back to graduate school in forestry ent to and did a lot of work in the signed Forest Products industry and Renewable Energy. Nk we i think we all have a. Perception of what a forester is. What do you define as far as how it works . Reet when i was in forestry school, there was a gentleman there he was a medical doctor. He was actually a doctor in the larg med school and he had a large piece of forestland in his family and he wanted to retire ge the forest a so he came over and took classes to learn how to manage the forest. He made a lot of neat analogies between medicine and forestry. A forester tries to make the forest as healthy as he can. How its kind of like a doctor for the forest. Where do you come in as far ght as Environmental Policies as far as capitol hill . How do you treat the issues of Climate Change . Whats your personal issues . A prac iti consider myself very much an environmentalist but a. Practical environmentalist. I like to use the word stewardship and kons conservationist. We need to conserve itr and make sure we leave it in better shape, to you for the future than what it was when we got it. When it comes to Climate Change, do you think it happens . Climate change happens. Cause the question is what causes it to happen and you have natural events forest fires put millions of tons of carbon in in t the yearhe every year. Volcanic eruptions do it, and when it happens, its minute changes, so you cant deny the fact that Climate Change how mu happens. The question is whatoe causes Climate Change to happen, how Much Negative impact does it ch have, how much can we stop by Climate Change by changing the activities that we do as mankind. If we make changes here is it going to force things overseas where people dont have the same regulations and they are we do manufacturing in a way thats less environmentally friendly than we do it here in the u. S. And overall that we reduce the is a amount of co 2 gases or do we n increase it. Its a complicated subject. You hear it talked about in platitudes but not the science ce. Of it. Specifically then of the ut rec agency that deals iens it, the Environmental Protection agency talk about recent proposals e long theyve made. Theyve made them on power and air. Whats the longterm impact in your mind as far as decisions by the epa to work in these sectors. Ive worked in over Engineering Products for over two decades. G i filled out forms and did the math and came up with emissions and to some extent, i think the epa is out of touch with what nderst goes on in the real world a lot of times and they dont really and understand the impacts that they have on local communities and on businesses and families, and americans, when they make these rules that sound good when nt theyre sitting here in an the office in d. C. , but they have real permanent affects out in approa the heart land of the country. And one of the rules getting a lot of criticism deals with the approach of power, erns especially later on this year. Whats the proposal and what are it is your concerns about it . Its multiple proposes but it has to do with energy ecific efficiency and Greenhouse Gas emissions, specifically in my district i have some coal fire fire plants that are very efficient. One of the most recent coal fire plants is a super hypercritical process that was only possible because they found materials that could withstand the heat. Er pla this is hotter and has an enormous amount of Pollution Control Technology ons th it and even that plant cant meet some possib of the guidelines. There are older plants, if the rules go into effect, the plants could close. That means my constituents will list see their electrical bills go up 20 to 40 because of this. We im for all kinds of energy but we need to be smart about the way we do it. We need to use our traditional fuels in a way thats responsible and put the rej and uest technology into making our i renewables more efficient in the future and more economically viable. Our paguest,ce Bruce Westerman of arkansas. Serves on the science space and technology committee. If you have questions, call. Before we go to calls Gina Mccarthy was before your committee yesterday. She talked about the purposes of why they put these rules in place. I want to have her i want you to hear some of her justification and get your response. Okay. Youre telling the American People what clean air is ho hav supposed to be so the benefit immediately is that individuals who have kids that have asthma i will know that their air wha quality they can take a look at what the air quality is today on their Weather Channel that weut help provide and they can decide whether the kid should go out and play. The biggest value is that individuals can protect e themselves their kids and their oth elderly parents. Make decisions for themselves y year while we give states to think thes about what are the cost product i ways to achieve that over many years. Some of these states wont even face these challenges for a very long time but you dont worry about the implementation if that means that youre not. Giving the public the information they need gues today to protect themselves and their kids. In a broad sense, how would e nati you react to that . To start itwith i was a bill markup, but ive been through similar hearings. I had prep for that hearing but but wasi unable to get over and ask otherly. Questions. That all sounds g good. T our it sounds almost grandmotherly. Were going to protect our children. I want tiroon protect my children. I want to leave our environment cleaner than it was before but the reason that was in science base and technology. Were questioning what is the Science Behind this. Ne lev if you dig deeper into that, shes talking about ozone her levels. And shes basing all of her comments on one paper. But there are other papers that his in scientifically reviewed papers that dispute the things she was ng t saying there. To put this in perspective, that shes wanting to reduce ozone levels levels. Inevel Yellow Stone National park ptable shes saying the air quality in Yellow Stone National park is not acceptable. Theres no way to achieve these goals that theyre setting. D and its totally unreasonable cal and its not based on sies. Its based on a political agenda more than science. In my state a Little Community called deer, arkansas. Look at where its located. E its a very rural remote area. Ma Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has an ozone monitor there. 68 parts per bill yanion in deere arkansas. Theres no industry there. Theres nothing they can do to lower the ozone. Real these are unreasonable. Erican they put hassles and burdens on nd raise living, breathing americans that get up every day and want to go to work and raise their familiesous and build communities and have a productive life, and these things are just outrageous to some extent. We have calls for you. Lvan our first one is fromia virginia. This is junior. Peopl good morning. Go ahead. Caller id like to askhear you why you are not telling the people about the harp system up in alaska. As fos theres the Climate Change. And another thing is theres no i do. Such thing as fossil fuel. Evi you know that as well as i do. E. Show me any dna evidence of any fossil remains. There is none. Oil, natural gas and coal are hydrocarbons. They reproduce themselves. And i wish youd quit calling fossilwe fuel. We would have been out of fuel in 1955 if you add it up. Now all that coal is rotting leaves and twigs thats put great under pressure. Thats p all it is. And junior, you make a great point. You know basic science. We know all our energy comes from the sun, and sometimes it takes a long time to get that energy. I mentioned ive done projects in Renewable Energy so andme some of nd b theio research thats going on in biomaz right now is how to liqu change the hydrocarbons from green biomass to make it into speed renewable liquid fuels and gaseous fuels and there are ways to do that chemically that speed and up the process that takes these trees and leaves and twigs and limbs and put them through a chemical process, heat and pressure and you produce a gas, you condense the gas and you can actually make crude oil out of living trees. D tech there are processes to do that. There needs to be more research make and tha technology put into it so we can make that Cost Effective so we can do it on large scale models. Should Government Fund be used for that . Absolutely. Im for government providing funds for research. Look at what happened with research through our icultu agricultural system. M we have the besting a Production System in the world byth far. A lot of that is due to the research that was put in the Agricultural Program in this country years ago. And today were making new breakthroughs in agriculture. We need research in new cures for diseases and in new technology and history has shown that dollars invested in research have a great pay back wo over time. Rkhost ralph is next. Hes from alabama. Hello. Caller yes, sir. I was wanting to talk about some about the fda but i also want to talk about the work for people ey coming into our country but the fda is just a grab for money and power. People cant even have pools on their farms any water settling in your land, they say k say it is imported water. And people dont even know how to run their farms anymore. Its just a big power grab and ill tell you something else, re the big business is in with all of you all up there. I dont care if youre a republican or democrat. Are b they got all the industries. Theyre borrowing our coal and everything we got, and the other countries and the countries coming along, even china is surpassing our military. They dont have to worry about their coal for about 15su more years and obamas putting such space powerful pressure on our companies appalachia. Thats the poorest place in the op world. When arele theyhe going to get them new jobs. They want to put up money so when people lose their jobs they can give them a little bit of reserve. Well my wife worked for a textile mill and the money they offered them was two weeks n people unemployment and they had to train the people to come from the other countries and now theyre writing work visas our because our fuel is cheap. Were getting a little bit of our work back and now theyre ry signing, obama and his boys is signing a bunch of things to letpeople people come into this country, Walt Disney World and all those places made their people train foreigners to do their work. Got it ralph. You put a lot out there. Can i ask you one question . Hes gone. I was going to ask him if it was roll tide or war eagle since he was from alabama but brought up some interesting points there talking about some of the regulations that are out there and i think he referred a little bit to waters of the u. S. Which ac is another way that i believe the epa and the corps of engineers are overreaching their boundaries and making rules that are not practical. Anyt how so . When you talk about anything where water can run off youre literally talking about the land mass of the United States. Ls. And its expanding jurisdiction wherever water falls, it rubs to off. What is a stream . Thats what the mission was for was to monitor the navigable gricultu streams. Theyre talking about regulations that have negative effects on agriculture and bout i forestry and a variety of for industries and the scariest part about it is it increases ha jurisdiction for the agencies and you never know what kind of hairbrained rule theyre going to come up with next. From arkansas republican line. William is next. Rmann, hello. Your mr. Westerman, please shut your mouth and quit embarrassing me. Where does your money come from . And in the two coal plants in the ecau United States are in arkansas and they dump tons of mercury in our waters. You cant eatll com the fish because theyre full of mercury. Kn tell me where your money comes from and why you william, i would like to know where your data comes from, because i know that every manufacturing facility in the t state has a National Water discharge permit. Mercd itand gets monitored. These levels of mercury are monitored. I dont know if youre talking about the monitor levels in a ref fuj which they found are produced by nature. But i would like to see the data, and it sound like some of the same data that the epa and the administration puts out that they say these things and they dont really have any basis for it in. Lily is from illinois. Lily youre next. Good morning. Caller i was wanting to find out about the flag and everything. Andndin the jobs that they keep sending out of the country. They dont keep them here. They closed i dont know how many coal mines in illinois. Ow. And theyve got it all on you know, where nobody is working for them. Ut yeah, and lily, youve spokenat is about something that is near and deer to me and its jobs and putting people to work have and when we make the regulations on power plants or any other you industry, it has an effect all way up the chain and you lose e in t coal mininghi jobs. You lose transportation jobs. And what we need more in this jobs. Country than anything else right now are jobs. We need people to get back to work and not just have jobs but have careers where they can raise their families and build their communities, and these tions ki overregulation kills careers and families. Im right there withwer you. When it comes to power plantscan cong can congress do anything to roll what back what the epa plans to do . With this administration its hard to tell, because they seem to just keep making these rules that we spend a lot of time trying to why should congress have to pass legislation agencies are making. The latest one u i heard is theyre trying to regulate gas grills. Theyre doing studiesemas g to find an the emissions of gas grils. Een it g theres no end to this. From an engineering standpoint iseen it go from parts per mi million downll to parts per se power billion. You can make it that much more tate difficult. One of the power plants thats been talked about in my state, there are, you get in a catch 22 because there are rules on efficiency, and theres rules on emissions. If you put the emissions equipment on the power plant, these are air emissions, then the technologys not there to get the efficiency. You put the equipment on and it wood p decreases the efficiency. Ill tell you an example of the regulation. When you dry wood, it releases s. Volatile organic compound different kinds of compounds. So you want to control these compounds. The reason the Smoky Mountains are blue is because the trees release volatile or dpanic compounds but in order to control these vocs, you put in a several Million Dollar piece of equipment that burns natural gas to burn the vocs. When you burn natural gas, you increase my trous oxides. H but if youre a fan of ozone, when you react it you get o 2. Its a very complex process, and youils. Cant just talk about it in platitudes. You have to get to the details and see whats happening. Are there really negative affects going on out there. Representative Bruce Westerman is our guest. He nat hes a republican from arkansas. You had legislation debated yesterday taking a look at the ion . National forest service. Whats your legislation . Its the resilient federal forest act of 2016. Im still excited. This morning i got my first bille passed through the house. I think its a great piece of legislation. We had 21 democrats that voted ll. With us. Bout we had democrats that testified sing for the bill. And its really about using ca justn using sciencebased Management Practices so the National Forest can grow and thrive so we can leave them in better shape than theyre in right now. At t no whatdynami you have to understand about forestry is trees are dynamic. We can make any rule we want to here, andral trees dont care. Rowing theyre out growing in the natural space. They grow. They fill up the growing space. Then theres competition. They get weakened. Theyre susceptible to disease and insects. As fuel for forest fires. And lightning strikes and they burn up and theres ways to manage the forest to make it healthy. Healthy forests are good for everything, no matter what you think about Global Warming and carbon trees, trees are the with answer for that. They take in carbon dioxide, release oxygen. Wh they store the carbon in the trees. When we cute a tree down and growr in a tree the carbon is in the ad house. We have more forest cover in this country now than we had in 1900. A lot of people dont realize er. That. When w trees are the answer. And when we see them burning down like in the video right here, there are tons and tons of carbon being released into the atmosphere. Th healthy trees are better for more than just the carbon cycle. They improve air quality. They improve Water Quality. If theyre managed properly you get better wildlife habitat. Where the forestry has been able to put things up on the nationalhich forest in my state, they did it endang toer save the woodpecker which was an endangered species and they r the went back to look at what kind of habitat they needed and they started reading journals of the earliest explorers that went through arkansas and they said you could ride a horse at full would gait through the National Forest. If you tried to do that now, it would dill kiln youkill you and the horse but where they went in and thinned the timber and they used a Fire Management where they go in and burn, the biodiversity went through the roof because with all these overstocked forests he you get the leaf matter on the ground and you get no greenery nd coming up. You cut that out and let the es. Sunlight in and it was amazing th the seed bank that had been in the soil for decades and the flush of vegetation that came up. They saw the number of bob cat increase, wild turkey, white thier. Tailed deer, song birds, would everything benefitted. And the trees were healthier and now on the stands that have been managed like that, it would be n almostam impossible to burn them down. A natural fire just moves through the understory quickly and you get a new flush of vej station and its a win, win situation. Th r im excited about it. These same techniques work in the west where we have the dry conditions. Weve really got a tinderbox on our hands and its weve loved our trees to death. Weve wanted to protect them but weve notcu based it on science. Weve based it on its bad if we cut them down but you need to when w manage them. N people say there was a time when we didnt cut trees down. Thats true but we didnt have forest fires. Over a long enough cycle, it finds a balance with nature like that. But what weve done is quit cutting and quit putting fires out. The fuel loades continues to grow and it becomes almost imageable and then you get a fire so hot that it turns the silica basically into glass and its different to get regeneration. From a foresters objective, its to get regeneration to get n new treesut growing, and the data is horrible on where weve had enerat some catastrophic wild wildfires. Its only 3 regeneration. Ires 7 thats horrible. Reg the billener passed through the house yesterday requires 75 of regeneration within five years of the fire. Im excited about it if you cant tell. Y missouri, youre next. Hello. Caller thank you very much for cspan. What int t needed. I sent this information to my an congresswoman, my two senators and my son in san antonio, its an engineer. T theres a plant thats being built right now in texas about th 70 miles above dallas, the chinese and our epgngineers are t working on it that is 98 percent try of mercury and all carbon. Its a gas coal combination. And thats why i wanted to put it you. He i dont know if you heard about it. My senator hasi the information. So many people want to go nuclear, and i think some of our congressmen are in favor of obamas plan so to the go nuclear but this is a gasfired coal combination China Engineers have been sent over here to workd that with our engineers and thats in texas. F i scrambled for my paperwork but gues i couldnt find it. Anyway, i wanted to put that out for the congressman. I havent heard about that, but there is a lot of Exciting Technology out there today and as research continues, were going to see more innovations in energy. When i went through Engineering School and i found out an internal Combustion Engine only captures about 25 to 30 of ficien energy that goes into it it the f taught me theres a lot of room for improvement. Thats a real key to helping ll for solve our energy needs in the i future. Imith excited about all forms of energy. Ive done projects with biomass, and ive even done some studies befor before, madee presentations that an looked at how much of our traditional fuels could you replace with nontraditional fuels. In my state of arkansas and in my district which is act 86 forested, if we put in electrical generating plants using biomass, we dont have enough trees to supply the needs it in arkansas. D mixt its going to take a combination and a mixture of all these types of fuels and i think we should ng t be putting more effort in making our fuels more efficient and put n effective and more nology environmentally friendly while at the same time researching how to put new technology into renewables and making those more economical in the future. I read an interesting article where they looked at the state of Renewable Energy and solar looks like its really got some promise as we move forward, and theres some great things being done with solar. Even things that sounds a little bit sci fi like making the highway a solar collector but the technology is not there. A lot of the Renewable Fuels were working with right now are based on old technology. Once we started using other fuels, there wasnt a lot of Research Done on how to utilize pre biomass. We went back to the preindustrial Revolution Technology and weve started ion of improving on that, but a l feel combination of using the ching traditional fuels we have, making those more efficient and rene researching and Getting Better Renewable Fuels that are more economical for the future i think is a great way to approach our energy policy. Here is keno from florida. Caller good morning. Good morning congressman. As a republican i want to lobby you and ask you two questions. Do you support the high speed train system to be built across cars a the United States . Agh lot of people cant afford cars anymore. The high cost of insurance and then expensive cars. A highspeed train system could you support that and we get france to help us build the he eastern half and japan helps us. They have good highspeed systems. And then could you support john kasich for president . T and convince them to be an advocate for this plan . Could you support the high speed train concept and could you support john kasich. Two questions. Thanks for calling in. On the high speed train, i would put m go back and put my engineering hat on. I looked at hundreds of projects de when i was doing engineering d work work and i did project planning and R Development the front end work of scoping the project and running an economic analysis. Ot kno if it was economically viable i could support it. Em with i dont know if its economically viable or not. Now, ive got a problem with thehighs way theyre building it. Coast how about building an american high speed train from coast to coast, and im pretty sure we could built it better than the french or theth japanese if we set our mind to doing that. John kasich, ive never met him. Ind weve had several president ial candidates come through d. C. And ive met several of them. I havent made up my mind yet. I think we have a great field of folks to look at. Ve to one of my previous governors, huckabee is in the race. Er. A great guy. Connecticut is next, sheila, hello. Caller i have important things to say here and they all have to be said. Ly sta thank you. Rtf we have to immediately start fighting the effects of pollutionnswe by reducing nitrogen into the water. I think the sea is the answer. I theres a lot that can be found i by studying the sea. Id like everybody to get a copy of books. We cant afford any more rising infra sea levels. We have to start as of yesterday, fixing our infrastructure to withstand the sit storms weve been having. And we cant sit around waiting for congress to make a decision. All they do is banter back and they t forth like little kids and accomplish nothing. They throw around terms that i dont understand until they get to the point. They waste so much time until they get into the matter, and its very ano knowing. President obama has to put out e an executive order to start to try to reverse Climate Change s all and he needs to do it today. Ountri he has to get china involved as. Well as all the countries that are resistant to working on Global Warming. To this is so crucial that we cantthe u. Wait for even a year to get things going in the right direction. The u. S. Has to be the leader and try to persuade the other countries to ban together with us in an effort to save our i ho planet and thank god the pope is coming and auking to the united l. Nations and i hope he can get the point across. We cant put money across of glad y survival. Out survival isup t thhee key, and mr. Hering westerman, im glad you brought me is up about the trees. Ay the t whats been bothering me is all the parking lots theyve taken away the trees for business to our get more carsca in there to go shopping but we have to suffer our cars. Our cars have to get steaming e tree hot and we have to be trees. Uncomfortable. The trees, ipl love them. S i love all the trees. I mean, i pull into plaza scene i look for a shade zi spot. Sorry to interrupt only because were running short on. Time. You asked a lot of questions and well let your guest respond to what we wishes. Gr i lived in connecticut in graduate school. You have beautiful trees there. Some of the most beautiful forests in the country. You talk about parking lot design, and in the south where it gets reallyd hot you see new are standards where people are required to plant trees in the parking lots and theres some innovative designs on how to ronmen maketa parking lots more environmentally friendly. The issue of nitrogen in the that. Water, i havent dr i dont have any information on that. I know in the oceans theres issues with nitrogen in well water will it leeches through and gets into the well water. But we have to continue to do whats smart. You talked about the gridlock in ou congress. And this isere a deliberative nuit process. Our Founding Fathers were smart. Knew w i think they knew what they were doing. Its frustrating as a member of t move congress when you want to see things done and it moves so slowly, and having passed this dt. First bill through the house, it feels like a great accomplishment. Im proud of it, andthey then i think well, now it has to go to the senate and maybe theyll to take it up. Rd for maybe theyll pass it, and then the administration has got to en slo get on board before that can ever come law so things do happen slowly. There are a lot of bipartisan efforts that happen here. You dont necessarily hear about those on the news but when there is gridlock thats what makes the news. Speaking of the process of congress, what did you make yesterday over the back and forth that took place over the confederateyo flag and displaying it . I had a very busy day yesterday, again. I was in a bill markup in Natural Resources and was trying to get over to the science and Technology Hearing and also had a bill that was going to be run lled i on then floor, and then all of a sudden votes were called in the lag. Middle of the day over a controversy on the flag, and that really threw a wrinkle in rough the process yesterday. I really i read a stripture bible in the bible a while back and it was jenwhen jesus was talking to the far sis. T he said string out nets and pull in camels. A lot of times we take up issues that are very important but on some levels theyre nets compared to the camels that we ntry w need to be addressing, the things that the people of this country want us to talk about and weve had a diverse here. The di what do you thinksp about the display of the Confederate Flag in Public Places being from a Southern State such asom t arkansas . In the south people think of this as heritage. Im worried about you start thinking about fundamental First Amendment rights and restrictinge peoples freedom of expression. Thing. That was put in place for political expression as much as anything. What flag offends somebody next . If you look at the california flag, past Speaker Pelosi theernardin bear in the california flag is aarka symbol of something that might offend somebody. And in arkansas, the star above the flag might offend someone. Right. Theres even debate about that. So you know do we get on a slippery slope and where does this talk. Bt. And while were debating all of this, were 18 trillion in debt with Appropriations Bills that need to be passed. We have important legislation econo that needs to bemy debated. Ill weve got an economy thats not where it needs to be. And this will suck oxygen out of the air. So its something that obviously will be debated, and well see how it goes. Lets hear from donald in michigan. Go ahead. Caller okay. Thanks for cspan. Mr. Westerman. Im curious. Here in michigan, detroit, theres a refinery thoughs of people live 5r7bd there, and f peop michigan down river was a High Percentage of people with cancer. Look at no regulation and how bad it is. I wonder if you would take your e your family, move right next to the you refinery and every day out in your backyard, you see and your breathe it per year. And then see what you think that y about lip service for the corrupt industries that you represent. And were dying. Dont you care about our children . Thank you. Ut t dondald, i care about you and your children and my children and my grandchildren. And i care about the opportunities they have. Weve done a tremendous improvement on air quality and prote Water Quality and we need to continue working on that to it as protect air and Water Quality but we have to use reason in it adds well. And were getting to the point to where weve got all the blood out of the turnip or gotten a shing lot of it out and were getting to a point of diminishing returns when we continue to go from parts per million to parts per billion in the air. Were getting to a point of diminishing returns when bus we continue to add regulations that are the destroying industry and business and jobs and at the same time people want to see s. More people working in and a better economy and they complain about jobs going overseas. Were putting regulations on ot hav companies that cant have an st economic model to have a business here. We have to find a balance. Passing your first will and taking a look at environmental re just issues. Whats a success of being a bill in the senate and signed by the president. Where do you see it going . I think with the bipartisan support we have itue t on it and this is a real issue that needs to be addressed. Se our federal forests have been burning more and more. Were right in the middle of forest season. I it will past. Thank you representative westerman. Thank you. On the next washington journal, usa today reporter allen gomez talks about a term used to describe locations in the u. S. That shelter undocumented work us in the u. S. Also the latest on iran Nuclear Issues with clifford may and matthew spence. Plus well take your calls and look for your comments on facebook and twitter. Washington journal is live every day at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Here are some of the featured programs this weekend. With the upcoming release of harper lees new novel. They focus on the novelist starting saturday night at 7 40 eastern, we talk about the impact of lees book to kill a mocking bird and the events that led to the publication of her new novel. Well reair the programs. On sunday night at 10 00, a talk on clinton cloenthillary clintons second run at the white house. And sunday evening at 6 30, carly fiorina. And saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on lectured and history the factors that led to the Great Depression and president roosevelts actions to help the American People and the economy. And sunday evening at 6 30, jeff shara on william tacumpsa sherman. Get our complete weekend schedule at cspan. Org. Epa administrate Gina Mccarthy was on capitol hill this week to testify about the regulation of mercury emissions and power plants saying the agency failed to consider potential costs before issuing the new rule. From the house Science Committee, this is three hours. The committee on science space, and technology will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recesses of the committee at any time and welcome to todays hearing entitled examining todays regulatory overreach. Im going to recognize myself to give an Opening Statement and then the Ranking Member. Over the last year the Environmental Protection agency has released some of the most expensive and expansive regulations in its history. These rules will cost billions of dollars, burden american families, and diminish the competitiveness of american industry around the world. Todays hearing will examine this unprecedented regulatory agenda and the manner in which epa as used secret science, and flawed analysis to promote these rules. A glaring example is the president s power plan. This plan is nothing more than a power grab to give the government more control over americans daily lives. These regulations stifle Economic Growth destroy american jobs and increase energy prices. That means everything will cost more from electricity to gasoline to food which disproportionately hurts low income americans. Even epa data shows this regulation would reduce sea level rice by only one onehundredths of an inch the thickness of three sheets of paper. This is massive cost without significant benefits. In other words, its all pain and no gain. Epa also seeks to impose stricter ozone standards. Once again this comes with few benefits. In fact, epas own figures show that since 1980 ozone levels have decreased by 33 and todays air quality will continue to improve with the expected development of practical new technologies. Last week this T Supreme Court issued a ruling that is an important step. It ruled that the epa must consider the cost of its decisions and weigh the costs against any potential benefits. For two years the committee requested the voluntary production of the data epa uses to justify clean air regulations. The epas refusal to provide the data led the Science Committee to issue the first subpoena in 21 years to retrieve that information. Earlier this year the committee was forced to issue a second subpoena to obtain information related to administrates deletion of almost 6,000 Text Messages sent and received on her official agency mobile devices. The administration claimed that all but one was personal. Most recently the committee requested information and documents related to the epas development of the waters of the u. S. Rule in the agencys inappropriate lobbying of outside organizations to generation grass root support. The committee was again forced to notice the intention to issue a subpoena for the information. Epa has begun to produce a limited number of documents to the committee. However, producing documents in bits and pieces after months or years of delay are not the actions of an open and transparent administration. They are the actions of an agency and administration that has something to hide. Earlier this year the house passed hr 1030, the secret science reformat. It requires the epa to base the regulations on publicly available data. Why would the epa want to hide this information from the American People . The epa has a responsibility to be open and transparent with the people it serves and whose money it spends. I hope the administrator will tell us today and will produce the data requested and help the president keep the pledge to maintain an open and transparent administration. That concludes my Opening Statement. Thank you very much. Welcome, administrator mccarthy. I want to thank you for being here today. And please take back to the employees of epa my gratitude for their hard work and dedication. Epas job is as hard as it is important. For two generations, we relied on epa to be the one federal agency to protect the public and the environment from the pollution that comes with being an industrial society. Standing against you are corporations that have built their hef knews on a business nodle that yous rivers and lakes onner that dumping ground. But we have been shown that we can clean up the environment and grow our economy. If we were to rely just on the majority of assertions, we would think everything epa does is wrong. For example, the chairman has a number of on a number of occasions cast epa as a Secretive Organization setting out an aggressive regulatory agenda that ignores Public Comments and throttles the american economy. In fact, the reality of the situation is far different than the characterture. The reality is that the Obama Administration has done far more than the previous one to make sure that the water we drink and the air we breathe are clean. The administration is pursuing a prohealth oriented environmental agenda that includes reducing Carbon Emissions and slowing the path of Global Warming. These actions are immensely popular with the vast majority of americans. Know what else is popular . The economic results that the Obama Administration has delivered. As of january, the economy had gained almost five times more jobs under president obama than it did during the presidency of george w. Bush. Corporate profits are nearly double and stock prices have grown proportionately. This may come as news to my friends on the other side of the aisle, but we are seeing epa actually enforce the law. Something that the Prior Administration was reluctant to do while also producing jobs and profits. It turns out these are not mutually exclusive outcomes. Now the chairman is trying to paint a picture of epa has being engaged in secret dealings with the environmental community. He has made much of the Text Messages the use of private email and the use of social media to reach out to americans to let them know of regulatory proposals. The truth is that no other agency in our jurisdiction has had to develop a more public and publicly discussed agenda than epa. This committee is not expert in regulatory process. So perhaps the majority is unaware of the multiple public listings sessions the hundreds of formal filings and the hundreds of thousands of comments that epa gets and processes in their regulatory action. It takes years and years of effort for epa to move a regulation from a proposal to a final rule. You have to ignore all of the Public Comment to believe that there is something secretive about epas rulemaking. Finally, the use of social media to communicate with the American Public is nothing more than recognition of how our society communicates these days. I suspect every member of the committee uses twitter and facebook and the internet to communicate with our constituents and the broader public. Engaging the public and providing opportunities to shape regulation appears to me to be a positive step toward a more democratic government. In the past few years, ive heard many members of the majority complain that epa needs to listen more to the public. As they move proposals forward. However, the public consists of more than regulated industry with the highpriced lobbyists so i cannot see how using social media does not fit with the broad belief of members on both sides of the aisle that people should have a voice in policy making. Let me close by encouraging you to not let the investigative theater of this hearing get to you. There are some in think tanks and industry lobby shops and perhaps even on this committee Whose Mission seems to be to attack the mission of the agency as a way to slow down your work. However, it is vitally important that epa keep working to protect Public Health and improve our environment. The agency has been doing a remarkable job on that score, and i hope and trust that you will not lose sight of the importance of your great public task. Thank you, and i yield back. Thank you miss johnson. Our witness today is the honorable Gina Mccarthy administrator of the Environmental Protection agency. Prior to her appointment as administrator, she was the assistant administrator for office of air and radiation. She served as the commissioner of the during her career which spans over 30 years, she has worked at both the state and local levels on Environmental Issues and helped coordinate policies on energy transportation, and the environment. Administrative mccarthy received a bachelor of arts degree from the university of massachusetts and a master in Environmental Health and engineering. Administrate mccarthy, we welcome you and look forward to your comments and if youll begin. Thank you for inviting me here to testify on the Environmental Protections agencys. Our mission is protection of Public Health in the environment and the regulatory efforts are in further rans of those goals. Were guided by science and the law which serve as the backbone of the agencys actions. I will provide a little more detail on three rules which will hopefully provide tremendous benefit not only to share this information but tremendous benefit to the Public Health and the environment. Approximately 117 million americans which is one in three people get their Drinking Water from streams that lacked clear protection and about 33 million americans fish, swim, and boat in waters that were vulnerable to pollution. Recently the agency finalized the clean water rule that will protect the waters that are vital to our health and our economy. The clean water rule protects clean water. And it provides clarity on which waters are covered by the clean water act so they can be effectively protected from pollution and destruction. The rule provides collier direction on what waters are jurisdictional and which are not and it limits the case analysis. It makes clear this rule only implies when someone intends to pollute a water. This rule not only maintains current statutory expansions knit makes it clear the rule does not add any additional permitting requirements on can goture. We held more than 400 meetings across the country reviewed over 1 million Public Comments and we listened carefully to all sides. In addition to the clean water rule, the agency is in the process of completing two significant air pollution rules. The ozone max. Because the air we wreathbreathe is so important, the Clean Air Act requires epa to review the National Air Quality standards every five years. To make sure that they continue to protect Public Health with an adequate margin of safety. Based on the law, a thorough review of the science, the recommendations of the agencies independent science advisers and the assessment of epa scientists and techal experts epa issued a ro posed in november of last year taking comments on strengthening it to within a range of 65 to 70 to we can adequately protect health and welfare. We invited comments including an alternative level as low as 60 parts for billion. And acknowledging interests and offering comment in retaining the existing standard. The agency is reviewing the comments we received and we will issue a final rule by october 1st of this year. This summer epa will be finalizing the Clean Power Plan which will cut Carbon Pollution from the power sector which is the largest stationary source of co2 emissions in the country. Affordable electric power and safeguarding system reliability. Climate change affecting communities all across the United States now and impacts will increase in the future, burdening our children, grandchildren with health and economic challenges. Epas unprecedented Public Outreach and the comments we received have provided a tremendous amount of information and we expect to make changes to the proposal to address many of the issues that have been raised. A key consideration of epa that was reinforced by many stake holders proposal and during the Comment Period is the need to design the rule in a way that respects both the urnltdsy of dealing with Climate Change as well as the time it takes to plan and invest in the Electricity Sector in ways that assure reliability and affordability. Weve paid close attention to both of those core concerns as well as other comments and will finalize a rule that takes them into account. Again, let me thank the committee for inviting me to speak on the agencys efforts to use the best available science to implement our nations environmental laws so that we can adequately and effectively protect Public Health on the environment. I look forward to taking your questions. Thank you administrator and let me say that because of the interest today and the time limitationes and expected votes and how many members are present, im going to need to strictly enforce the fiveminute rule, even on myself. But were not going to start the five minutes until i start asking you my questions. Administrator mccarthy, my first question goes to the secret science reform act that i introduced that passed the house that passed the Relevant Committee and the senate. President obamas own science adviser testified and said absolutely, the data on which regulatory decisiones and other decision res made should be made available to the committee and should be made public. Why dont you agree with the president s science adviser and why dont you believe this data you used to justify the regulation should be made public . If you know the bill doesnt take the position were not making a judgment call were just saying the American People and other scientists deserve to see this data. Im hoping youve changed your mind, and if so would welcome that comment. Well, mr. Chairman, let me first say that we epa totally supports transparency as well as a strong Peer Reviewed independent science process. But the bill im afraid i dont think will get us there. The way in which our science works is for scientist toes develop but why not make this information publicly available . The information youre asking us to reveal is revealing identifiable now you and i both know that information can be redacted and i agree that it should be redacted. So why cant you release the information after its been redacted . I dont actually need the raw data in order to develop science. Thats not how its done. Why dont you give us the data that you have and why cant you get that data . Well, epa has the authority and the need to actually get information that we have provided to you to not have but youre saying you cant give us the information because its personal and then youre saying you dont have the information. Which is it . Well, when we receive the information were not allowed to release it and there is much information that we do not have the authority to the president s is in his adviser is saying you should make it public. Im willing to see well be happy to redact all the personal information. There is no good reason why other scientists cant review it. We are absolutely in line with the science adviser. The science adviser, however, isnt indicating that every study that epa looks at to determine to have a body of im not saying every study. Im just saying the studies and the data that you relied upon that is a body of data that we did not generate that is generated in science and Peer Reviewed. I wish the ipa would follow as the Ranking Member said, you have nothing to hide, yet it looks to me like youre hiding a lot from the American People and were just protecting peoples privacy and theres ways to do that and every other agency does it except for the epa. You can redact the information. If were flot not going to agree, i regret that but on the Clean Power Plan Charles Mcconnell said at best it will reduce the global temperature by 0. 001 celsius. Thats going to hurt the lowest income americans the most. How do you justify such an expensive, burden so many onerous rule thats not going to do much good and isnt this all pain and no gain . No, sir, it i dont agree with you. If you look at the ria we did the regulatory analysis, you would see its enormously beneficial. Do you consider. 01 of a degree to be beneficial . The value of this rule is not measured in that way. It is measured in showing strong domestic action which could trigger Global Action to address what do you disagree with my 0. 01 of a degree figure . Do you disagree with the. 01 im not disagreeing that this action in and of itself will not make all the climate action. But what im saying is if we dont take action domestically, we will never get started. But if youre looking at the results, the results cannot justify the burden youre imposing on the American People. This is were obviously going to disagree on that as well. My next question goes to the product of documents. My question is when can we expect to get all the documents that we have either requested or subpoenaed . Pepa is committed to transparency and can you give me a date when you will produce the numbers weve asked for . There are a number of documents, some of which we are still discussing with your staff and does she. Any date . Im more than happy to ask staff continue to we can have discussions forever. If youre not willing to give me a date by which youre in good faith going to try to give us the documents then i cant believe the epa is acting in good faith. Sir, you have a number of requests in to us and i want to make sure i do not give you a date we cannot achieve. Give me a target base. Anytime this year . Staff begins to discuss with us which they are. To me this continues a pattern of obstruction that we have been seeing for a couple of years now. It would be easy for you to see ill do my best to get it for you in the next 30 days or whatever the fact that youre not willing to do that is disappointing. Largely with these regulations, its all pain and no gain. We will respond as quickly as we possibly can and well make every effort to do that. Im just trying to avoid gives you a date that anticipates what your own staff like i say, i wanted a target date, a good faith date and unfortunately im not hearing that date. Thank you for your testimony today and well no gou to the Ranking Member and recognize her for her questions. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. I might remind you you went one minute over. The Ranking Member is correct. That has been confirmed and she gets an additional minute. But shes the last person to get an additional minute. Mrs. Mccarthy, the house is in the process of passing an appropriations bill that cuts your agencys budget by more than 750 million. It includes an amendment by the chairman to cut your office and funding of the office of legislative affairs based on a continuing pattern of obstruction and delays of committees request. I believe the chairman has signed a cosign 11 document request letters to your agency and the first 26 weeks of this congress. Basically, a letter every other week. And each of these letters have been either a new request or an expansion of the previous request. Now, i have three questions and ill ask them all at one time. What is your account of the letters from this committee and from congress as a whole . How many documents have you provided to committee to date pages or documents however you keep track, and finally can you describe the impact of the cut and the policy riders in the house and Appropriations Bills would have on your agency. Well, since january 1st of this year, we have received ten letters and one subpoena from this committee. Weve generated 13 written responses and sent up over 15,000 pages of documents responsive to the committees requests and were continue to go make production of documents to the committee. We have held approximately 10 Conference Calles and communicated by email for or phone with Committee Staff on over 35 occasions. So we continue to try to be as responsive as we can, recognizing our commitment to transparency and the important work of this committee. In terms of the budget cuts, the budget cuts that are proposed and the appropriations bill and the variety of amendments that have been added would seriously threaten the ability of epa to do its core work. Now, i understand there are disagreements in moving forward with some rules like our Clean Power Plant to address the challenge of Carbon Pollution or a new ozone standard to protect Public Health but this goes well beyond that. To impact our ability to deliver clean water, clean air healthy land, work with states, support their efforts. This would be a devastating proposal in terms of disallowing us to move forward with the real problems were facing today and would be a serious problem in terms of rolling back all of the work that we would be able to accomplish because there could be no more boots on the ground any more. Now, i have seen grocery carts of documents rolled in here from your agency. On research that was not done by the federal government. On that was done over 25 years ago. And related to tobacco and lung san diego. Are you still being badgered for the information that you dont have