Freedom information act, and they do not try to point any exemptions for National Security or classification reasons, it would be an unprecedented event as far as i know. The state department is incredibly aggressive. All agencies of the federal bureaucracy are incredibly aggressive impacting information that could be classified. The notion that the secretary of state, in the course of her duties, could write 55,000 pages or receive 55,000 pages of email and not one ioda of it is classified, would be very difficult for me or for anyone who is somebody with the freedom of information act to believe. I am confident it will be an interesting thing because the state department, as they process request, will have to decide they will look at an email and say, this is classified but if they try to read acted as such, they are making a liar out of the Hillary Clinton defenders. It will be interesting to see how they perceive when they hit that conundrum, but i would be shocked if there is not classified information in there. There are people who have been criminally prosecuted for storing classified information on unclassified systems. It is a crime. And we will see what happens as the state department goes through those emails and sees how many are classified, if any. Host you can read more he is the investigation reporter for gaewker. Com. Thank you for being with us. That will do it for this mornings washington journal. This weekend on book tv, the tucson festival of books on cspan2 and American History to be on cspan3. Have a great weekend. This friday, president obama will be visiting the phoenix of Veterans Hospital to look at them i the widespread mismanagement group of concealed delays and care. President obama and the new be a secretary Robert Mcdonald are expected to meet with the ba employees, veterans groups, and veterans. The hill says that they are improving the veterans of their department to meet the current and former service members. Ashton carter will talk about Cyber Security challenges facing the u. S. He will be joined either ahead of u. S. Cyber security command Michael Rogers at fort meade maryland. Cspan2 will have live coverage. It that starts at 12 15 eastern today. Senator rand paul visits billy State University bowie State University. This is part of our run to the white house coverage as president ial campaigns get underway. It will continue tonight at 7 45 when we have live coverage as former governor jeb bush visits the home of a former republican chair in dover. He will talk about his aspirations should he decide to run for president. Here are some of our featured programs on the cspan networks. Saturday starting at 1 00 p. M. Eastern, cspan2 book tv is like from it was on a for the tucson festival of books featuring discussions on race, politics, the civil war and collins with callends with authors. We have panels on the Obama Administration on sunday, the future of politics, the issue of concussions in football, and saturday morning at 9 00 eastern on the American History tv on cspan3, we are live in farmville, virginia, for the 16th annual civil war seminar where historians and authors talk about the closing weeks of the civil war in 1865. Sunday morning at 9 00, we cover the seminar with remarks on the surrender of the confederacy and the integration of confederate to brazil. Find a complete Television Schedule at cspan. Org and let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. Ill set 2026263400, email us at cspan. Org or send us a tweet at cspan comments. Join the cspan conversation like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. Former Maryland Governor and Baltimore Mayor spoke at the Brookings Institution about his approach to daytoday decisionmaking. He also answered a few questions about Hillary Clintons use of a private email server for workrelated correspondence. The former democratic governor has said he is considering a president ial run in 2016. This is about one hour. Martin omalley it is my pleasure to welcome governor Martin Omalley to the center of Public Management here in brookings governance study program. One of the critical problems that we analyze in our work is how to make government work better for the middle class average americans, and for everyone. Martin omalley has been a trailblazer in doing that as governor of maryland for two terms from 2007 22015 and before that, serving two terms as mayor of baltimore. Under his leadership of governor , maryland recovered 100 of the jobs lost during the great recession. He was one of just seven states to maintain a aaa bond rating and the College Board organization named maryland one of the top stations top states in the nation on holding down the cost of college tuition. The state also had the best Public Schools in america for unprecedented five years in a row. Governor omalley compiled a similarly distinguished record as the mayor of baltimore, where time named him one of americas top five big city mayors. He is going to talk today about some of the Public Management tools that he helps pioneered as governor and mayor and produce those results. In particular, ways that he and his team used data to make government work better for everyone. He will focus on among other things, the state stat and city stat programs. After his remarks, bill boston will ask him a couple of questions and we will open the floor to your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce governor Martin Omalley. [applause] Martin Omalley thank you. Thank you very, very much. Thank you for your kind introduction and thank you for setting the wheels in motion for this event. This was fun. Thank you all for being here, as well. It is a great honor to be here at brookings today. The people who work in and around this building have done some really outstanding work on analysis and research on government performance. So it is a pleasure to be here with all of you to talk about status driven governing and an issue that is near and your to my heart. Our country and our world face big challenges. Whether it is making our economy work again for all of us, or confronted security threats or Climate Change, but all of those challenges confronting them, will require a government that actually works. You and i see a world where our creativity and imagination have and we can make that so much of that progress possible. And yet creativity and imagination are not exactly the first words that come to mind with most citizens today. When we think about our government, off the bat, what if they were . What if we tackled our biggest problems by using data driven strategies instead of conventional wisdom or the way we have always done it. What if we can make our communities safer by knowing in realtime where crime was actually happening every day and deploying Police Officers to those precise locations at the right times . What if we could put an end to lead poisoning of children instead of ignoring it as if it were a problem that just could not be solved . What if we improve Public Safety by using big data and the experience now that we have of years to actually identify that small percentage of probationers and parolees who are truly the greatest threats to Public Safety . And what if, by sharing medical records and targeting the personal interventions, we could actually cut avoidable Hospital Readmissions by 10 a year, every year . Imagine if the overall performance of any school could be measured over time so that citizens and parents could actually see where we were headed. Imagine if one common platform not only measured the job skills and greatest demand in a given county or metro area, but also allowed employers to find the skilled workers and they need an unskilled workers to obtain the training they need to fill the jobs being created in this new economy. As you might have guessed in baltimore and in maryland, we did all of these things. And more. This, my fellow citizens, it the new way of governing. And it is not about excuses deflecting blame, or ignoring problems. It is about transparency. And open its accountability and openness, accountability management, and it is not about left or right. It is about doing the things that work and move us forward. It is also about setting clear goals, measuring progress, and quite simply, getting things done again. You see, the old ways of governing, bureaucracy hierarchy, these things are fading away. A new way of governing is emerging, and it also calls for a new way of leadership at every level. Leadership that embraces a culture of accountability, embraces entrepreneurial approaches to problem solving and embraces collaborations. Leadership, in other words, that understands the power of technologies like smart maps and gis, and internet, to make the work of Progress Making open and visible for every citizen. This new way of governing has quietly taken root in cities and towns all across our country and it is happening in blue states as well as red states. It is pursued honestly and relentlessly and holds the promise of a more effective way of governing at every level of our public life, local state and yes, federal. Our approach to this was actually born in the subway system of new york city. In the early 1990s, there lived a great man named jack maple lieutenant maple actually, of the new York City Transit police and lieutenant jack maple believe there was a better way to deploy his Police Officers then the way they had always done it. And with nothing more sophisticated than paper maps and colored markers, jack started plotting where and when robberies took place on his section of the subway. He called these maps of the future. Many transit officers were sent to stop criminals where they were most likely to strike, at the times they were most likely to strike, and he put in his own words, the cops on the dots. And jack and his Police Officers drove robberies down to record low levels. The media came calling and then you Police Commissioner came calling. And soon, jack was not just plotting out a strategy for part of the subway, he was made the deputy Police Commissioner of the entire new York City Police department and developed a system that came to be known and used all across the country called compstat. And the nypd, under his command and the leadership of bill bratton, went on to reduce Violent Crime to levels that very, very, very few people ever would have thought possible in new york city, 20 years ago. New yorks ongoing success in reducing crime and saving lives quite literally led to a revolution of performance measured policing in cities and towns all across the United States. And one of the first of those major cities was my city of baltimore. You see, when i was elected mayor in 1999, our city had sadly allowed for allowed ourselves to become the most violent, and abandoned city in america. With more population loss over the prior 30 years than any major city in our country. And at the beginning of our administration we were able to put an additional 20 Police Officers on to the streets of baltimore, which presented us with a really important question. Where to send them. Now, we could have deployed them equally, to each of the six Council Districts. That would be one way to do it. Or if we wanted to be really political about it, we could deploy them to the Council Districts with the highest numbers of primary voters. Or if we wanted to be really, really political about it, we could deploy them to the districts where the greatest numbers of people voted for me. Or or, we could actually deploy them to the concentrated hot spots where the greatest number of our citizens were being shot, mug, or robbed. Mugged or robbed. This is the process we chose. We repeated that compstat process to better save lives and prevent crime. Over the next 10 years, baltimore went on to achieve thanks to courageous Police Officers and neighbors, some of the biggest Crime Reductions, in fact, the biggest Crime Reduction in part one crime of any major city in america in those ensuing 10 years. There is a baseball equivalent of this comstat strategy. Some call it money ball and some call it the shift. You put your fielders were the past performance of the upcoming hitter says they are most likely to hit the ball. You put your police were crime is most likely to happen. The shift, the deployment of resources to maximum dissent affect. That is data driven thinking. It helps in ballgames and it helps make the city safer. We brought this new way of governing and getting ink done it not only to our police the whole enterprise to city government. We became the first major city in america to do so. We started to create a new culture. A new culture of Higher Expectations in city hall. Accountability, transparency meritocracy, senate centered around results. The constant search for better ways to get things done. The leaders started to emerge and we recognized them and their colleagues were able to see who their own leaders were in their organizations by the performance. We set high goals and used data to tell us whether or not the things they were doing were working every day and every week. Our city stat approach like compstat was built on four principles, for tenants. Timely accurate information, robert Rapid Deployment of resources. Relentless followup and strategies. Every two weeks, if you can picture this scene, on a constant and rotating basis, my team and i would hold city stat meetings with the agency or Department Heads and their Leadership Teams up on the sixth floor of city hall, in the big room, with the big boards, and the screen projectors that would project the data that the department had and the agency had submitted prior to the meeting. Everything was mapped out. And everything was indexed to the previous reporting periods of two weeks before. So everybody could see and everybody would know. Ideas were shared and questions were fired back and forth. If we failed to hit a goal, we wanted to know why. If we had a goal, we wanted to know how. So we could do it again, and again. It worked. We reduced the poison of blood in our city by 71 . Early on, when the former inpatient and irascible mayor of but baltimore, William Donald schaefer. We responded with a 48 hour pothole guarantee. Our crews actually hit that guarantee and they hit it 97 of the time. And each of the members of those crews got a thank you note from the mayor when they did it. The Kennedy School at harvard in 2000 and one gave us 2001 gave us our innovations in government award. Our innovation was that we started measuring outputs instead of just inputs. And of course, we did not really do city stat to win awards. We did it to survive. That by the way, is the International City International Mission statement of every mayor. For many years in our city, it seemed like the drug dealers or more effective than our own government. But thank you to city stat, that reality was starting to change. When i was elected governor of maryland in 2007, we took this approach statewide. We called it states that. Statestat. The goals are bigger and more diverse, but it was data driven Decision Making, collaboration followup, and results. And we shared those results, good or bad with an online dashboard so that every citizen could access it and see where we stood as a people and where we were going with that important tool of ours, our government. With this approach, we achieved something in Public Safety like a Public Safety triple crown. We drove incarceration to a 20 year low and reducing recidivism by nearly 20 . There are not many states that did that. With this approach, our teachers, students, parents, and kids with the backing they needed from us made the Public Schools the best in the nation for an unprecedented five years in a row. That had never happened before and we did in the middle of a recession. We cut in half the number of children placed in foster care, driving that down to the lowest levels on record. We set a goal of reducing infant mortality by 10 , and when we hit that goal, we kept going and we reduced infant mortality by more than 70 overall and 25 among africanamerican families. We took on the big challenge of health care costs, with a commitment and the goal of driving down preventable Hospital Readmissions, by creating a platform for Health Care Providers to share patient information. By mapping the incident and the locations of chronic conditions and people who suffer from them, and by aligning the providence profit incentives to wellness rather than to sickness. We drove down affordable Hospital Readmissions by more than 10 in just the first year of trying. It used to be in maryland, that governors of maryland would set a 40 year hope for cleaning up the chesapeake bay. We instead, started to measure actions and results. We created they start to identify and map the sources of pollution and the actions that we can take on land and in the right places to halt the flow of pollutants into the rivers and streams of the chesapeake bay. We set, not a 40 year hope, but a twoyear mild milestone and took measurable actions to reduce stormwater runoff and expand the number of acres planted with river covered crops, a great Clean Technology at all Sewage Treatment plant about the state, we made it possible for citizens to click where they lived to see whether we were making progress and hitting our goals to restore the health of our waters. For all of that effort, we reduced nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment levels by 14 percent, 50 , and 80 , respectively. We restored hundreds and hundreds of acres of stream buffers and natural wetlands, and we doubled the number of native oysters that are now filtering the waters of the chesapeake bay. Did we meet every goal we set . No, we did not meet every goal we set. But with two performance measured government and with openness failure has to be an option albeit, a temporary option. If we met every goal that we set , then we probably were not setting our sights very high or picking very worthy goals. One tragic example was this after six years of steady progress, saving lives increasing drug treatment maryland, like many other states, experienced a really dead the spike in heroin overdoses. So we set a new goal. Instead of merely expanding drug treatment, we set the goal of reducing Drug Overdose deaths by 20 . We made some progress in reducing Prescription Drug abuse by mapping out facilities and doing a better job of monitoring the pill mills and shutting them down when we identify them. We got more people into treatment that we ever had, but it was not enough to prevent or reverse this tragic spike. As with any of these efforts when what you are doing is no longer working, you have to come up with new approaches. So we did. And so we must. What i have learned in 15 years of executive service taking comstat to citystat, to statestat, the larger the citizens population, the larger the source. The larger it gets does not mean we cannot manage it. That is a copout. We came together to form a more Perfect Union. Data driven Decision Making and performance management, making our government work, are essential to that mission of pursuing a more Perfect Union in these modern times. As some of you know, may know, the problem in our federal level is not the lack of goals or lack of data. We had agencies with dozens and dozens of goals and performance metrics and strategic objectives. What are the truly big goals for our nation . And what are the actions that allow us to achieve those big goals together . Too many federal goals are about process and not about outcomes. Having meetings is not a goal. To the public, all of this process, process process means very, very little to their lives. At a federal level, we have to have a clear view of the most important things are government is setting out to accomplish and why. This requires clear goals that reflect what we, the people, actually value. The difference between a goal and a dream is a deadline. Without a doubt, there is no progress without jobs and job creation should be our highest goal. Let me give you just three other examples that speak to our values as people. The infant mortality rate in the United States of america is the highest of all the developed countries in the world. If we value reducing infant would probably as a nation infant mortality as a nation then our goal should be just that at a certain amount at a certain time. If we were to reduce infant mortality rate across the nation at the same rate we did in maryland, we would save more than 4000 american babies a year. That is 4000 families that would be spared at that unfathomable loss. It is so easy to become lost in measuring everything from soup to nuts. We must measure what we value and value what we measure. Second example, if we increase Kindergarten Readiness across the nation at the same rate we did in maryland, we would have 825,000 more American Children ready to learn on their very first day of school. That is 825,000 more children that would not start out behind. 825,000 more children taking their first title steps toward success vital steps toward success in education in life. Final example, if we reduce production preventable hospitalizations across the country at the same rate as we did in maryland, we would keep 600,000 more americans out of the hospital each year. That is 600,000 of us on our feet instead of flat on our backs inexpensive hospital beds. In other words, americans should know what our federal government top five objectives are. Job creation, improving the security of our people improving the education and skills of our people improving the sustainability of our way of life, improving the health and wellness of all americans. And a federal employees should know how their work and the work of their agency can contribute to achievement of those objectives. Leaders staff in the public should all know whether we are making progress together and where work still remains to be done. Finally, coming to the table at the federal level cannot be simply a box checking exercise. We are doing this because somebody said we had to do this. What good are lofty policy goals without followup on the ground in the small places close to home where it really matters . What we need is nothing short of a new method of executive management. A man a method that becomes central every day to the important work of our federal government. Our federal governments objective should be reflection of what we value most and is critically important things that we can only accomplish together. Now, early in my administration in the city of baltimore as mayor, we would hold regularly it seems in retrospect, every week, town halls. Community meetings all across our city. We came together as a community and as a people to talk about our fears very often. To talk about our frustrations. To talk about our hopes. And i invited neighbors to come and ask me, their mayor anything. And at one of these meetings, i will never forget in east baltimore, a little girl about 12 years old came up to the microphone and she said, mr. Mayor, my name is amber. And there are so many drug dealers and addicted people in my neighborhood that people in the newspaper refer to my neighborhood as zombie land. And i want to know if you know they call my neighborhood zombie land. And i want to know if you are doing something about it. The question that she asked of me was really a question that she was asking of all of us. Do we know . And are we doing something about it . Because behind all of our data, there are real people, living their lives, shouldering their struggles, working hard every day to make their children have a better future. And they deserve a government that works. Thank you very much. [applause] can we talk . Microphone to out. Martin omalley sure. I think it is on no. [laughter] you guys are very quiet. Well, let me begin by introducing myself. I am no cost and, senior fellow in government studies here at the Brookings Institution. I want to congratulate the governor on his speech. I cannot imagine a more appropriate speech to be delivered the center for effective Public Management and government studies here at brookings. Let me also add, on a personal note, that if you could find a way of bringing your 48 hour hot hill pothole guaranteed to washington dc, i would follow you to the end of the earth. And so would 500 thousand other people. That caught my attention. Martin omalley it is hard to do in the middle of the snow. Bill it seems to be hard to do in the middle of the summer, but that is besides the point. Im informed that there is a little bit of wiggle room on the back end so we have close to half an hour for the answer. I will ask you one question and then i will turn to the audience taking four or five press questions and moving on to this very large and interesting standing audience that has gathered to hear you talk and hear you answer questions. Is there a time at the and, i will wrap it with the question, and if not, i wont. So, let me begin with my question. As you know, there is a pretty long history of trying to bring effective, goldbased goal based measures to the government and to bring it more in line with the sorts of governance that you talked about in baltimore and in the state of maryland. I think it is fair to say that those efforts have made with incomplete success and the level of current trust in government reflects that. So, what is your analysis of why these prior efforts have not gotten the job done . And how do you think that your approach would have a higher chance of actually being able to bring the goals and effective Performance Measures to the federal government . Martin omalley i think it is important to realize that the ability to actually collect this sort of data and do it in real time is relatively recent phenomenon. I mean, 15 years ago, 90 of the request for service came in on paper in the city of baltimore. So the internet and gis, excel spreadsheets and those sorts of things, they are relatively recent technologies in terms of making our government work. But i think one of the great variables in all of this is leadership commitment. There are many, many mayors who visited our citystat forwards group and solve the boards and saw how effective it was. They loved the picture. They lacked the commitment when they got home to actually do it every day because it does require the leader not to sort of shout from a megaphone at the top of the organizational triangle, it requires you to be in the center of the search for truth and to be there constantly , a presence in the middle, if you will, of a collaborative circle. I think mayors have taken to this a lot easier than governors, weekly. If you look, there is more and more literature coming out and John Bernard Justin a book called government that works where he traces this. Mayors embraced at first and i think it is because the work that mayors do is so very, very visible that they never enjoyed some kind of informational situational advantage of knowing what was going on six months before the public. Everybody knows whether this city is becoming cleaner or safer, so mayors have embraced this first. There is a lot of governors who are heading in this direction. They were slower. There have been some point in the federal government, where it has popped up there. The recovery investment act was a good example, but the great variable here is really executive it commitment. You need the executive, whether it be a mayor, governor president , they need to be very committed to this. Not a one off press conference or nice announcement. He or she has to be committed to this being a new way and a new method of executive management. Bill thank you very much, governor. I will now turn to the press questions. I believe most of the press is in this sector. If you just want to raise your hands and identify yourselves and then we will move on. Lets wait for the microphone sorry. I shouldve said that. Press do we have another microphone. This one does not seem to be working. [laughter] press do you think congress should fasttrack the Transpacific Partnership . Martin omalley i think they should read it first. I think we have to be very careful about lowering our standards for whether it is Environmental Standards or how we treat workers, just in the interest of getting a trade deal done for the sake of a trade deal. I think we should be, when we enter into trade deals, it should be with a view towards yes, bringing down barriers, but bringing up standards. I think we should consider very carefully and not a precipitous way. Press this is an open government question. Would you have any objection to really seeing your email from your tenure as governor of maryland . [laughter] Martin Omalley i dont know that i have many times had emails from covering manys years of state government. We abide by all of our state rules on emails and have many times turned over emails, even though some of them, due to colorful in which, may have caused my mother great embarrassment. [laughter] we will abide by whatever we have to turn over. We had a retention policy and unless there was open letter group liberation, we generally litigation, we would hold onto this for a certain number of weeks and then delete them or purge them from our system. So, we always abided by whatever the state law was on that. I relied on my Legal Counsel to do that. Press Martin Omalley i understand there is also a note archiving requirement on evils. On emails. We did archive a ton of operational memos if all of you want to perus, for eight years. Press i understand there is a press i am Andy Linsky Annie linsky with the boston globe. Do you believe in Good Government that an official should use their of personal a account for official duties . Martin omalley im not an expert on federal requirements or state requirements. Frankly, im a little sick of the email drama. In our state, whether you used a personal email or the public email or a carrier pigeon, it was all a Public Records subject to disclosure. You are not going to ask about emails, are you . [laughter] im sorry. Press the message you got here today is this something you would like to share as a president ial candidate . Martin omalley im seriously considering running in 2016. I believe if we want to continue to heal our economy and heal our democracy, we are going to have to make our government work and we are going to have to do a better job of making our government perform for the dollars that people pay for it. I think those three things all that together, so there is not a doubt in my mind that this is the new way of governing and getting things done. You see it emanating out over these past 15 years of from cities to states. This is how our federal government should operate. Some entrepreneurial departments already are operating this way but it is coming just as sure as the rising tide of expectations of americans under 40. They see their banks being able to operate insecure and personally responsive ways. They see it from retailers, and they want the government to actually work and perform and function. So, yes, i am i intended to talk about this whenever i can. Bill i believe Damon Milbank has a question. Damon this all sounds like terrific stuff you are talking about, but perhaps it may not fire up the democratic primary electorate. How do you propose to do that . Martin omalley i will be giving a number of talks over the course of these next couple of months, including a discussion about how to make our economy work again for all of us , at least the majority of us. Which wage has been declining for 12 years in a row and it is hard for us to say that our job is done. We are creating jobs again, but we need wages going up. There are many, many challenges as i alluded to at the beginning of the remarks. I appreciate bookings having an interest in affected Effective Governance and management performance which is why i came here to give this particular talk, but in order to meet the big challenges we face whether they are security challenges, whether it is change, whether it is fixing what is still not working in our economy, it is going to require a government that works. I think people are actually far more interested in a functioning government an Effective Governance, and people with executive experience than we might give them credit for. Bill the last press question and then move to the audience questions. Press thank you so much. How are you . Just forgive me, and he will question. To put it more directly, were you satisfied with secretary clintons response yesterday which i assume you saw. That she or her attorneys personally went through her cash of some 60,000 emails and determined on their own, which ones were personal and which ones are government. And they turn that portion over to the state department or do you think there is a Public Interest in having an end of an independent person or some other entity figuring out if all the right emails were scooped up. Martin omalley i respect your interest in this issue. [laughter] and i did not watch the press conference yesterday so i dont know. I will leave that to you to figure out. I didnt really watch it. Because i was working. [laughter] bill that seems like a note an excellent notes. It has been my experience that the people in the back that short trip at brookings events so i will reverse the usual procedure and start back there. There was a gentleman on the aisle, that is right. Good morning. I am james moore. Im a president ial management fellow with the urban housing development. You spoke about having realtime statistics on fighting crime did your administration also measure Community Policing, police training, and Building Trust with citizens and communities . Martin omalley thank you. Our whole campaign in 1999, james, was all about Community Policing comstat, zero pollard zerotolerance policing. We had a very robust conversation in 1999 about all of that. Our strategy was that we needed to improve the effectiveness of our police. We needed to do a better job of policing our police, which includes some of those things you mentioned, training, random integrity stings, beefing up internal affairs. We staffed for the first time with independent detectives, a relatively new civilian review board, and we put the money into give them their own detectives so they could investigate cases. We tracked openly and reported regularly, the number of the courtesy complaints and Excessive Force and the sorts of things. The third part of that strategy was to intervene earlier in the lives of young people. But mostly more effective policing, a better job of policing our police, and intervening in the lives of young people. We put the numbers out there all of the time. We put out a big plan and we took the plan all around the city. We did townhall after townhall after townhall and every single district. When bad incidents happened, as they do, and as they will. No profession is above bad incidents or bad actors. We addressed it in a very fluid like way. And we continued to put those numbers out there. I guess some of the strongest proof that we were able to maintain, that is precious consensus and that basic level of trust, was in the fact that in that First Campaign after these discussions, we want we want every Single Council district including the two of my two appointments were the two hardest areas hit by crime. Even with a much increased we separate and the rolling back of openair drug markets and a heightened level of enforcement, i was reelected with 88 of the vote four years later. Look, there is no issue around which there is greater fear and pain in america over our racial divisions probably been around the issue of Public Safety. There is just no substitute for leaders wading into the centers of those peers and leading the conversation and the dialogue and making these institutions of policing and policing the police more open and transparent. Bill thank you. There is a hand right there. Cant tell whos handed this, but i am certainly willing to recognize the bearer of it. Im a member of the d. C. Open Government Coalition and a resident of maryland. My question is, what is your definition of a highvalue data set and specifically, does it include politically Sensitive Data . This is an endemic problem all over the country as governors and mayors open up their data sets. Intended to be an omission when it comes to politically Sensitive Data. Just to motivate that question and provide two examples, three of the questioners from the press asked about the email and you responded to the second one that our state email is a Public Record responsive to the Public Information act. That is not quite true in the way it sounds. Just motivate that, in my district, we have a civilian dollars School District and they rotate the archive every 30 days. The Public Information act as 30 days. Bill sorry i will have to cut you off. But i think the governor has adjust. The point is, you cant actually use the access emails with such a situation, and this type of loophole is widespread in maryland with the holder idea databases. Martin omalley you know, there is also i mean, to answer that. Maryland was named a leader in the open Data Movement. I think we received some award from somebody that watches this and matches these things. I always looked at open data in the operations of our government as the genius that needed to be released from the bottle. Genies that needed to be released from the bottle. It was my hope that once we got out there that it would be very hard for people to start using it, whether it might be with pta, Rivers Organization advocates for whatever, more responsive policing, but it would be very hard to put those genies back in the bottle. We were a leader in that open Data Movement and i hope that my successor has kept echoing. Kept that going. We also got better at arraignment and putting it out there in ways that wasnt so dizzying. People could use it and manipulated to create charts and graphs and things. All of that is still an evolution. That on the email stuff, yeah, we had a retention policy, but if there was files, we held onto those and turned them over. We dont have an archiving requirements and it is an open question of Public Policy all across our country, how long should governments retain question mark 90 days, two days, three weeks, who knows . Open an interesting question in the age of electronic information sharing. I think the most Important Information though is really about the operations. I thought that was what would you are going with your question. I have seen the look in the eyes of a lot of veteran barriers mayors when they saw the citystat room and they thought they would have to own their last five years of service by putting it all online eerie i could almost see the look in people lies in saint in peoples eyes saying, we have got to get out of here and we are not doing this. The newly elected mayors have fresh opportunities. When these men and women come in, they are taking the bar to a constantly higher and higher level. And i think it is also why you are seeing people moving back to cities. Nobody wants to live in a place that is becoming more dirty and more dangerous, more violent. Conversely when cities become more livable and they become safer, you are seeing young people moving back to them and cities are starting to function. People kind of vote with their feet. It is council and not coincidental that people are returning to cities, particularly, younger people because they see that their governments there are being operated more open transparently and in response of ways. Bill yes, the woman in the red dress, right there. Miriam im with the Data Quality Campaign and we have talked a lot about crime and stuff like that. I am focusing on education. What kind of measures did you take to address High School Graduation rates post secondary success, and just seen which high schools had the best outcomes. Did you have any success and raising Graduation Rates in maryland as her time as governor . Martin omalley yes, we did. We had success in raising Graduation Rates in maryland. We also had tremendous success in getting more of our students to take stemrelated ap exams and to pass them. In fact, i think a greater percentage of students in maryland passed more than any other ap exams in any parts of the country. A lot of this rendition can be found on the great online blog. It is called letters to the people of maryland. You can find it on tumbler and there is a whole section in there that has the strategies that we pursued on education and the metrics that we looked at to drive up Graduation Rates, ap success, and on the post secondary piece of things, we increased, i think by 37 , the number of associate degrees that were awarded compared to the benchmark your 2006. All of this is on their, as well. How did we do it question mark we did it by a number of different strategies eerie each of these goals, by the way, we developed a Delivery Plan for achieving those goals. And that Delivery Plan would lay out the leading actions that we needed to take in order in concert to drive toward those goals. In schools, we greatly increase funding for schools. Elementary, but we also went after years in a row without a pennys increased to college tuition. We did a better job than any state over those eight years of holding down the cost of instate tuition. We provided better training for a lot of our High School Teachers particularly in the stem field. We greatly increased the readiness of kids entering kindergarten to actually learn. All of this is laid out in leaders to the people of maryland. Letters to the people of maryland. I read about four blog entries a day for the last 20 days of my service and there are 380 exciting pages, for those of you. [laughter] bill well, governor, as i promised. I would reserve the last question for myself. I would ask that the audience after governor omalley has finished answering my question, to remain seated while he is able to exit the room expeditiously. He has generously given us some extra minutes at the back end for which we are grateful. Governor, let me just preface my question by repeating something i told you when we were chatting for this meeting. Mainly, that i did work for about 2. 5 years of and bill clintons white house. In that connection, a statement that you made a couple of weeks ago touches on your vision of leadership and many other things besides. I would like to give you a chance to comment on your comment. You said triangulation is not a strategy that will move america forward. History celebrates profiles in courage, not profiles and convenience. Interesting choice of words on the circumstances. Let me just ask you, very directly, is it your view that the question did not move forward during bill clintons two terms . Martin omalley no, it is my view that our country can only move forward now on the power of our principles. Our principal of the people. Whether you are talking about Foreign Policy leadership, we should always be meeting with our principles rather than expediency. When it comes to leadership here at home, when it comes to immigration, when it comes to the need for continued reform on wall street instead of offering up e speaker pro tempore the house will be in order. The chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. The clerk the speakers rooms washington, d. C. , march 13, 2015, i appoint the honorable Barbara Comstock to act as speaker pro tempore on this day, signed john a. Boehner. Speaker of the house of representatives. The speaker pro tempore the guest will be offered by the guest chaplain. Let us pray. God maker and ruler of us all, you have given us a good land and made us into a great nation. Today, we ask your blessing and guidance for the members of the house of representatives. Their staffs, and all who in this place support the work of government. Give them wisdom so they may fulfill with honor their responsibilities to those they represent. Defend them from the temptations that come with the authority they bear, so that they may serve you, serve each other and serve the United States of america in humility and love, comfort and care for those here today, who are suffering private hurts, as they do this public work. All this we ask in the name of your son, our savior, jesus christ. Amen. The speaker pro tempore pursuant to section 2a of House Resolution 134, the journal of the last days proceedings is approved. The chair will lead the house in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. The chair lays before the house a communication. The clerk the honorable, the speaker house of representatives, sir, pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2h of the rules of the house of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on march 11, 2015 at 11 20 a. M. Appointments, Advisory Committee on the records of congress, signed sincerely karen l. Haas the honorable, the speaker house of representatives, sir, pursuant to the permission granted in 2h of rule 2 of the u. S. House of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on march 10 2015 at 9 15 a. M. That the Senate Passed without amendment, h. R. 1213 appointment, Advisory Committee on the records of Congress Board of trustees of the harry s. Truman scholarship foundation. The honorable the speaker, house of representatives, sir, pursuant to section 803a. Congressional recognition of excellence im pleased to appoint mr. Romero brown of georgia to the congressional award board, signed sincerely, nancy pelosi democratic leader. Sir pursuant to section 4d of House Resolution 5 114th congress and section 1k2, 110th congress, i transmit to you notification that porter j. Goss david e. Scags, kara l. English, linda and omar. William h. Campbell mary k. Flanagan scott brice, and nate wright signed an agreement not to be a candidate for the office of senator or representative in ordeal debate or resident commissioner to the congress for purpose of the federal Election Campaign act of 19671 until at least three years until he or she is no longer a member fert board. Copies of the signed agreement shall be retained by the office of the clerk as part of the records of the house. Signed sincerely karen l. Haas. The speaker pro tempore the chair lays before the house a communication. The clerk the honorable, the speaker, house of representatives, sir, i will be taking a leave of absence from the House Appropriations committee for the remainder of the 114th congress, as you are aware, i was sleggetted by the Democratic Caucus to serve as the Ranking Member on the House Permanent Select Committee of intelligence this congress. I intend to return in the future. Thank you for your help in this matter. Signed by adam b. Schiff member of congress. The speaker pro tempore without objection. The resignation is accepted. Pursuant to clause 4 of rule 1, the following enrolled bill was signed by speaker pro tempore thornberry on thursday, march 12 2015. The clerk make administrative and technical corrections to the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995. The speaker pro tempore pursuant to section 2b of House Resolution 134, the house stands adjourned until noon on monday, march 16 2015, jeb bush visiting the home of a former republican chairman and will speak to voters about his aspirations should he decide to run for president. Scott walker is in New Hampshire. He is going to speak at the state Republican Party grassroots activist work shop and thats at 11 45 eastern. Thats all part of our road to the white house coverage which included former governor rick perry who spoke yesterday. Welcome back. It is so great to see you. Governor perry it is great to be here and to even remember it. When you came through the last time, my brother spoke to you governor perry all, the last time. It is happening. What is he doing now . Congratulations. He is doing his masters, and he is a graduate doing engineering. Governor perry in what engineering . Kind of the biotech fields. Governor perry each of the coasts has some extraordinary incubators, but there is some fascinating stuff going on in texas. We became this last year, in january 2014, texas became the number one hightech exporting state. I know. Governor perry people have always thought oh, well, texas is just an oil and gas state everything is oil and gascentric, and we have the oil and gas industry, and it plays an Important Role, but it is pretty i am not going to say stagnant, that is not the right word, but it makes up somewhere around 40 of our gross domestic state product. The rest of the state is incredibly diversified and biotech, hightech, the Texas Medical Center has more doctors and nurses than individuals coming in there every day than any other place in the world. You know the director of the Institute Just so you know. I just want to say congratulations on coming through, and we look forward to seeing you more. Governor perry tell your son to keep us in mind as he grows and looks where to go. Caitlin hi. Caitlin. Governor perry are you here as well . Get our picture here margaret. What do you do, caitlin . Caitlin i do communications. Governor perry oh, ok, you have got an Important Role to play. Howdy. Governor perry yeah, well better you than me. I kind of have some allergies going on, too. This is what happens when you fly a lot. Governor perry you have got an excuse. Thank you for doing that. Where have you been, what have you been doing . I run this, the new england council. I represent of new england, washington. I come down there three days a week. Governor perry do you keep a home here and an apartment there . Yeah, we have an office. Governor perry yeah, yeah. Next to kelly ayotte, jack reed, ed markey, bringing people together. Governor perry i may talk about that a little today, but, you know, i find that dysfunction one of our real challenges in our country, and governors do not have that you know, they do not have that luxury. I know that. Governor perry we have to get things done, and we never get to do things big. You know jennifer. Yes. The governor massachusetts, Charlie Baker governor perry yes, good guy. Watched him with a multimillion dollar deficit, sits with the speaker, sits with the president , he says this is my idea, 41. Governor perry not one big issue did we pass in texas without democrat help, and it is what people want. Governor perry well, it is what this country has got to have. We have got to get past this talking past each other. It is one of the things that i am really critical on the president on his he has divided this country, he has divided us by gender, race, economic strata, and we have got to get over that. I mean, you know, i grew up on a very rural cotton farm. We were not poor i know that. Governor perry i grew up in a house a did not have Running Water until i was seven or eight years old. I does not meet a republican until i was 26 years old or anybody who would admit to be 1 it was different in texas. Governor perry i was elected three times. I did not know that. Governor perry reagan was elected a republican in texas. I did not do that. Governor. Perry mr. President it is an honor to be here in this university, and to all of you, good morning. I found that on my numerous visits back to New Hampshire over the course of the years that you all appreciate plain talk about as well as any place in this country. And you want to hear some very plain talk about the challenges that we have in this country. And that is the spirit in which i come today, to share with you this vision of mine, and on three points i want to be very very clear. First, our country has entered and i think a time of testing, a time our Political Leadership is feeling that test. The American People see a president who is in denial about the threats we face, making grave miscalculations that make the world less safe. Isis filled the void of failed policy in iraq and syria. In american tanks, with american weapons, isis began taking cities that just a few years ago had been freed by the blood of american soldiers. In these highly orchestrated videos, we are seeing broadcast to the world, beheadings. We are seeing a young jordanian pilot burned alive. These people have filled mass graves with muslims and christians alike. They have terrorized women. They have declared a caliphate over an area as large as the United Kingdom in that part of the world. And lets be clear about who isis is, what they represent. They are a religious movement that seeks to take the world back to the seventh century. Their aims are apocalyptic, to cleanse the world, not just of christians and jews, but of muslims who do not agree with their extreme ideology. And it is their stated vow to kill as Many Americans as they can. And it is time the American People heard the truth. The president declared in his state of the Union Address that the advance of isis had been stopped. That is simply not true. He says isis is not a religious movement. Again, he is simply wrong. To deny the fundamental religious nature of the threat and downplay the seriousness of it is naive, it is dangerous, and it is misguided. If the leaders of egypt and jordan if they recognize we are at war with radical islam, isnt it time that our president admitted the same . The fact is we did not start this war. We did not choose it. But we need to have the will to finish it. Now, let me state another obvious fact about the middle east. It is not in the interest of peace and security in the free world that iran would be allowed to develop a Nuclear Weapon. Here is another country where our president is naively miscalculating the intentions of a brutal regime. I believe it is fundamentally dangerous to grant Irans Nuclear ambitions diplomatic cover. Our discussions with iran should be governed by two nonnegotiable principles. Number one, iran should not be allowed to become in possession of a Nuclear Weapon, period. And, secondly, israel should be allowed to develop or excuse me they should have the right to exist as a jewish state. Now, put all of that into the context. See, watching all of this unfold in front of us is the president of russia. He has been watching as our president drew a redline in syria that was crossed without consequence. And when he canceled plans to deploy the Missile System in poland and the czech republic, Vladimir Putin was watching. And it was against this backdrop of weakness and empty words that putin then annexed crimea, he invaded ukraine, and it was in those conditions that allowed him to negotiate a onesided ceasefire at minsk with no real consequences. It was, from my perspective, a sorry sight to see western leaders rush to minsk to sign a second ceasefire that russia would invalidate just as quickly as they did the first. Here is the civil truth about this. Our allies doubt us and our enemies, our adversaries are all too willing to test us. And too often today we negotiate treaties and ceasefire agreements from a position of weakness rather than of strength. My point is this as a former captain in the United States air force, as a pilot who has flown into many of those regions in the middle east, including saudi arabia, i am not eager to pursue a military solution, the military action in that part of the world. For 15 years, we have tried a steady diet of military solutions to resolve ancient religious differences in the middle east. And i have seen the impact. I have seen the impact of these policies on our warriors, on their families. For a good seven years of my period of time as governor, from 2003 until 2010, there was hardly a week that went by that i did not write a letter, that i did not visit a family, that i did not go to a hospital expressing my appreciation, my regrets for the loss of a life the sacrifices our heroes had made and their loved ones had to deal with. Wars must always be the last resort after all other options are exhausted. But we need to understand the essential lesson of history here. It is the strength and resolve in the face of threats that we face that guarantees peace for our children and for future generations. It is weakness and vacillation and Wishful Thinking regarding these dictators and totalitarians and adversaries that endanger the peace of the world and that drive global chaos. You see, for the world to be safer, i believe with all my heart america must be strong. And along that same thought process, if you will, along that same line, for america to be stronger, our border must be secure. Drug cartels and transnational gangs are smuggling drugs and weapons and people across a porous border today. They are a clear and present danger to the health and safety of america. Any conversation that we have about comprehensive Immigration Reform must begin with comprehensive border security. And that is exactly why last summer, when i met with president obama, and we discussed this issue of border security, i told him if he would not secure the border with mexico, texas would, and we did. Now, here is the second point that i want to be clear about today. The American People know that the United States economy can be vibrant again. Ronald reagan knew that weakness at home led to weakness abroad. We have to revitalize the American Economy if we are going to reassert americas strength abroad. Now, we are told we are in a recovery. Yet Labor Force Participation is at its lowest level since 1978. One in 10 American Workers are unemployed, underemployed, or have just given up hope of trying to find a job at all. One of five children live in families that are on food stamps. We need to look them in the face and ask them is that the best that america can do . The president may be satisfied with 2 Economic Growth. I am not. For the first time in American History, a generation of leaders are on the verge of breaking the social compact, if you will, with the next generation. That is, that we leave a better country for them than what we found for ourselves. Fewer of us believe in the American Dream now than in the last 20 years for middleclass americans. Opportunity and security have been replaced by worry and anxiety. Outofpocket health costs housing, college tuition, all of them have gone up faster than wages have. Student debt is at an alltime high, and this has to change. It is time to restore hope and opportunity to middleclass america. We can start with our tax code. We have got the highest Corporate Tax rate the western world. That does not just hurt companies it also hurts the American Workers. Economists will tell you that if you cut the Corporate Tax rate by 10 , it will lift wages for the middle class worker by between 5 and 10 . That is what we need to be focused on helping raise those workers wages. We need more than just Corporate Tax reform to help the workers. We also need to simplify the tax code so that you reduce that tax burden on all individuals. We also need to tackle the inequities that are caused by this dodd frank regulation. Dodd frank did not eliminate too big to fail. In fact, it codified it. It limits funds on wall street while restricting access to funds for main street. The cost of Legal Compliance is now overwhelming our community banks. Those of you that come from small communities know those banks may be the only institution in our rural areas to Fund Economic development there. They happen to provide half of all the Small Business loans in this country. This contributes that perception and i would argue the reality that the big institutions of Big Government can take care of their own while main street gets the crumbs. We need to stop the excessive regulation that comes out of washington that kills jobs. They harm Small Businesses, they cost every American Family these regulations almost 15,000 every year. We need to repeal every perverse situation that keeps people from looking to work. One of the many flaws of obamacare is that it causes employers to move people from fulltime work to parttime work just to avoid this massive new insurance cost, and that needs to be repealed. The next president should look at all of the regulations that harm fulltime jobs, harm fulltime work and end them. That needs to be a straight up work of the next president of the United States. Our nation we have an 18 trillion debt. Every department, every agency needs to be required to look at every dime they spent and justify that. Liberals in washington have spent 30 years criticizing reaganomics while i the same time delivering trickledown liberalism. Their view is clear you give more power and money to the government, let the liberal elites take care of their pet causes, and live in a shrinking pie for middleclass americans. Their answer to jobs has been closed to a trillion dollars in stimulus. Wash the money through this huge bureaucracy, and hope that somewhere along the way if youd jobs get creative. Its no wonder that washington is the richest metropolitan area in america. Not because they create wealth but because they redistribute it. Redistribution is not a strategy for wealth creation, only Economic Growth is. And that only happens, i will suggest to you, in the private sector. Let me tell you where the economic revival is occurring. One of the places it is occurring and is in an extraordinary weight is in my state. Instead of expanding the welfare state, we built the freedom state. Our formula was simple, you control taxes and spending it you provide smart regulations and you stop Lawsuit Abuse at the courthouse. Thats it. Those principles. They will work anyway. In my 14 years as governor, we help create nearly one third of all the new private sector jobs created in the United States. In the last seven years from 20072014, we created 1. 4 million jobs in that state. Minus those jobs from the total jobs created in america, that number would be 250,000 jobs in the red. Under my leadership, we had 14 years of balanced budgets, never skipped a debt payment, never raise taxes. In fact, i signed the largest tax cut in texas history. For more than one decade, we have led the nation in International Experts exports. Just last day which way 14, texas became the number one hightech exporting state in the nation, bypassing california. In 2013, we had the second highest High School Graduation rate in america. We had a 118 increase in hispanic participation in our higher education. I might add that on that second highest High School Graduation rate, that is in a state that has this very Large Population of english as a second language. A really Challenging Group of people to teach. But, they are getting the job done. I happen to think that it is time to bring that top of type of economic revival to every state in the nation, with policies that limit government rather than expanding it. Heres the third point. I have never been more certain that i am today, that the best years are ahead of us in this country. Im optimistic about the future because i know that weakness and incompetence of our government should not be confused. Our experiment in the republican form a government is too durable to be sidetracked by one confused the administration. Weve survive worse. We survived a civil war two world wars Great Depression even jimmy carter. [laughter] we will survive the obama years as well. There is nothing wrong nothing wrong with america that cannot be fixed with a change of leadership. I see an america where middleclass workers can find a job, where wages are on the way out, where freedom is on the march. An america where opportunity is the birthright of all, not just dispensed by a few from washington to a select few of their cronies. America stands with its allies again. Where citizens can dream again. And america worthy of our Founding Fathers ideals and our childrens dreams. Inc. You. God bless you. [applause] what he said was that i have agreed to do a couple of questions. Just introduce yourself. [laughter] questions of the governor. Maybe i can ask the first question. Young lady. Thank you for allowing me to ask my question. I am from New Hampshire. I teach at a committee college. My question to you governor, is what would you do to change how campaigns are financed . Please address how money caress and can controlled our political system. Governor perry i come from a state where there are no limits on campaign cut to be shed. We are all about disclosure. Im a big fan of disclosure. I happen to think you disclose where you get your dollars. You do a almost immediately. In the world we live in today with all the technology, you can require wit inquire where that money comes from. I think the American People are smart enough to figure out whether it is too much, or is that would corrupt the process. I happen to think the limiting of dollars is not the issue. The transparency of where the dollars come from is the real issue. We need to be substantially involved with making it be a more transparent process. Thank you so much for being with us, governor. Appreciate it. And presentation. Appreciate your time. I volunteer with aarp New Hampshire and our 226,000 members. My question is domestic. About medicare. We recently took a survey at aarp. It was a survey of those residents of New Hampshire. Not necessarily members, but residents, 50 years of age and older. A big point they made was their concern about health care and the insurance that they hope saves them from big bills but specifically, medicare. Will be there for the next generation . I bet i know where it is going. Governor perry that is my medicare registration. I spend much time on the telephone. I got a nice and capable lady helping me as i work my way through this. Obviously, the challenge that we have as a country is that these entitlement programs in the out years are not sustainable. We all need to be honest about that. Not honest about it for me, or for you, but honest about the next generation that is paying into these programs that expect for them to be there and for them to have that safety net in place as they mature and become senior citizen. We need to be honest about how we are going to deal with that and come up with a solution, whether it is adding some years to when you get that. I think most thoughtful people would say that is an alternative out there. To really think about this 18 trillion debt that we have does not take into account these numbers. I think, for us, for the next president of the United States and next congress to not legitimately touch that and find a solution for that is going to be acceptable. I think we need to get commitments from all the candidates who are wanting to be or should say, all the individuals who want to be candidates. And our members of congress to find a solution to these problems. Dont raise your hands all at once. Governor perry that wasnt a setup up. I just happened have this in my pocket. [laughter] what he gave me was an aarp membership registration. Governor, you talk about entitlement reform regulations and financial services. How realistic would it be if you were elected president for you to work with a congress that is so divided. Governor perry i think americans are so sick of the gridlock in washington dc. People talking past each other. Not getting anything done. Walking on the floor of the u. S. Senate or house and walking away, take your toys, and leaving. Thats not acceptable. One of the reasons that i think our nominee i am obviously biased about this, but i think the executive experience of having to get things done governors do not have the privilege of making a speech and walking away. There was not one big thing that happened in the state of texas not education reform, not those major budget issues that we have to deal with, that was done with just republicans. There were democrats chairs, leaders that we had to work with. I think the next president of the United States, and im critical of the president and the decisiveness that we have seen pitting individually gives individual, gender against gender pitting economic groups against economic groups. We need to be working to bring this country together, to reach across the aisle, find those places. We passed some of the most sweeping prison reform, judicial reform in america in the state of texas. It was the democrats idea democratss idea. Texas is not known as being soft on crime. We were putting kids in jail for long. The time because of nonviolent drugrelated events. They did something bad, but dont ruin their lives forever. Dont put them in prison where they learn to be really first rate criminals. Give them some options. Give the judges some options. That is what we did. In the first part of the 21stcentury, that is what we did. One need to tell you what the result was . The result is that we shut down three prisons in the state of texas beer we save 2 billion. Thats real conservatism in my book. Thats what we need to be looking at in washington dc. To find those serious places. Maybe its medicare reform, are other entitlement reforms, where we sit down and find likeminded democrats that know we have to deal with this. We used to do that. We saw tip oneill working with ron reagan. Im looking for t the next tip oneill and Ronald Reagan to come forward. They are out there, you just have to find the will. We can do it. Im abundantly optimistic. I shared with you that the best days of this country are in front of us. Economically, Foreign Policy wise, and it will require men and women to put aside some of their differences and find the things that they care about that they can Work Together on and deliver that for the American People. Bobbed with federally qualified Health Centers of massachusetts. I appreciate what youre saying in relation to bipartisanship. Yesterday, or over the weekend a letter was sent from republican colleagues that was highly criticized by senator kerry secretary kerry. My question is hypothetically on the point you made on the spear of doing business and ecbs days. If you were a u. S. Senator would you sign on to that letter that Many Republican senators signed on to . If not, what would a better approach kind of in the spirit of tip oneill and Ronald Reagan to get the message across . Governor perry im not a u. S. Senator, by signed the letter because i think they are frankly things are two important to allow compromise on. Allowing iran to get their hands on a Nuclear Weapon is nonnegotiable. I think the president is making air. I think that is a very bad example of a place where we can Work Together. There are places out there, and things so important, that we cannot compromise our principles. Allowing this country that still is the greatest supporter of terrorism in the world when you see iran funding has block to the north, hamas to the south, both sue sunnis and shiites to wipe israel off the face of the earth. Im sorry, but i cannot accept that as a place where i will compromise. Now, i know we are shifting gears here, but the point is thats where we can find places to Work Together. We have expanded those Health Care Delivery systems and other private sector and public sectorprivate sector ways to deliver health care. Giving that type of compromise that type of negotiation, i will say at the table and work with people from now on. Those are places where democrats and republicans, where liberals and conservatives, can indeed agree. I think it makes sense to quit building prisons. I think thats where liberals and conservatives can agree that those are some good things to Work Together on. We can find those. We can find ways to prioritize ours ending in this country. To use whats going on in iran i just happen to think those senators and senator cotton, in particular, he basically could have just clipped out the u. S. Constitution and sent it to iran. Thats basically what he was telling them. Basically, theres a number of ways that we do business and negotiate. We do treaties which require the u. S. Senate, two thirds of them, to find that. We do another level which requires the house and then it, and we do just an agreement. Thats what this is. With the president. An agreement between the president of the united dates and president of the United States and iran. I support that, but more importantly, i support the clear message that the United States, as a body, and certainly, the next president of the United States, is not going to be held accountable by this president , signing an agreement that i do not think is in the United States best interest, and fairly not in israels best interest. Your philosophy on education. K12 education, and how you see it in the future of our nation. Governor perry im Pretty Simple that the k12. As a potential candidate for the United States. That needs to be left to the states. I dont think there is much of a role at all for the federal government. I think your governor, your legislator, working with your school administrators, your teachers and your parents substantially better place for curriculum to be del valle developed then washington dc. If the Department Education needs to be a repository of good practices, that might be a good final thing for it. I dont think that washington needs to be this onesizefitsall, this place where health care, for transportation infrastructure, education reform, needs to come from. Louis brandeis, former member of the United States supreme court, said, the states were laboratories for democracy. States need to experiment and try different ideas out there. From time to time, they will foul up. I would suggest to you that colorado is making an error in legalizing marijuana. Is exactly what Louis Brandeis said. I dont agree with it, by but i respect their right to find out they are making a mistake. The same is true about education policy. People closer to the schools, closer to understanding what the people of New Hampshire are all about, you will come up with the best curriculum. You will find the ways to educate your children substantially better than this onesizefitsall that all too often comes out of washington dc. We just hope you will come back. Governor perry i will be back. [applause] take care of yourself. Have some water there. I will be back. We will look forward to seeing you again. Good message. Your personality plays very well in the state. Governor perry i want to come back and spend some time with the kids one day. Im going to get over here by lindsay. I am a big Lindsey Graham fan. I think he is probably one of the most knowledgeable people that we have on Foreign Policy. We need to listen to him. He is a very very bright United States senator. He has carved out his niche and it is Foreign Policy. We did a poll with bloomberg and he came up to me saying, Lindsey Graham is on every one of these issues. Governor perry i agree. I talked to him night before last, thinking his brain on whats going on in ukraine in particular putin is a dangerous guy. The strategy of kind of strategic patience with them, i dont think is wise. You know, the theory is with oil prices being in the tank, hes got all these economic problems we will just outlast him and he will collapse. You have to remember the 90s and how about a guy in russia. And matter of fact its not nearly as bad now. Hes got billions of dollars of reserves. All of this oil and gas money, he put aside. People think about what was going on in the 90s, and actually its a lot better now. Trying to wait him out is not a good strategy. I think you have to fund the lethal weapons to the ukrainian military. You think the swift banking ability away from him. Theres a law that can go against the oligarchs and squeeze them. And then, we could flood europe with liquefied natural gas. That would really bring him to his knees. Anyway. When i was in wisconsin, we were looking at income contingent student loan payment programs. In said of paying back, they say if you are an investment banker or teacher, you pay back at different time frames with a fix on the amount of interest that you pay. Governor perry i wonder if we can get the government out of student loans. Get it back to the private sector. Let me take off my cspan microphone here. [inaudible chatter] white house coverage continues at 1 00 eastern with senator rand paul at bowie State University. He will be offering his ideas on reforming the criminal Justice System in the u. S. Also, potential president ial candidate jeb bush a story from the associated press. They said that emails that he researched received as governor detail his communications with top donors. They write, it is an insight into jeb bushs work as governor only because his emails are open to review. Not yet available for Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. More from governor bush tonight. We will cover him live in New Hampshire. He will be visiting the home of a former New Hampshire tomorrow, our coverage continues with Governor Scott walker. He will talk to the grassroots republican conference workshop. This sunday on q a how pharmaceutical companies lobby congress. The promotion of a drug actually start 710 years before drug comes on the market. While it is illegal to market a company before it has been approved by the fda, it is not illegal to market a disease. Drug companies has sometimes invented diseases or exaggerated the importance of certain conditions, or exaggerated the importance of a particular mechanism of address, for example. Then blanketed medical journals and meetings, and other venues with these messages that are meant to prepare the minds of clinicians to accept a particular drug. Also, to prepare the minds of consumers to accept a particular condition. Sunday night on cspan q a. An update now from the speech yesterday at the booking brookings institute. This is about one hour. Good morning, everybody. Welcome. I am the Vice President for Foreign Policy at brookings, and i am glad to welcome you today. Before we begin, i would like to acknowledge and thank others from our Energy Security and initiative who organized the event. I would like to acknowledge and thank a commander who is an executive fellow from the coast guard here at brookings who has been a terrific colleague over the last several months. Admiral, i know you are ready to steal him back soon, but i hope we can borrow him back sometime down the road. As all of you know, in april the United States will assume the chairmanship of the Arctic Council for two years. We go back about five years, i would say there are two things that were true. One, and all frankness, not that many people had heard of the Arctic Council. And, two, people writing about the Arctic Council were writing about it in saberrattling terms. This has become an the area of great power tension and clashes between dangerous nations and others. Im canadian, among other things, so i can say that. And of course the most dire predictions about how things would involve in the arctic have not come true. At least an important piece of the story has been the institutionalization and element of the Arctic Council. Things are changing fast in the arctic. This is a region where one of our Board Members described as the worlds next emerging market. Since 1979 we have seen a 40 reduction in the ice coverage. That is having important impacts on indigent as communities wildlife, changing fisheries but more substantially it has meant since 2007 the Northwest Passage is open year round, at least for countries that have the right capabilities. And of particular importance of it seems to me it is opening up new prospects in terms of oil and gas developments and really huge levels of reserves in the arctic, particularly for russia, driving a sense of potential for the region, but also of course a challenge in terms of where that energy lies and claimants to it. It is a region that is growing strategically economically to the United States and to china and india and russia. We are therefore delighted to have admiral john papp with us today to talk about these issues. The admiral was appointed in july 2014 as special representative for the arctic. His the 24th commander of the coast guard. He has had an illustrious 39year career in the coast guard. A graduate of the coast guard academy, two masters degrees, and has served on six ships, commanding four of them, including what i am informed of as the u. S. Governments only tall ship, the eagle. I am informed on that ship he is frequently found up in the sails inspecting the rigging, sailor to sailor, not just as a leader, but held in high regard in the coast guard and the rest of the defense and security community. It is appropriate to have a sailors sailor be our countrys representative to the arctic in this upcoming period. We are delighted to have you here and thank you for being here today. [applause] admiral papp good morning ladies and gentlemen. What a great crowd. This is wonderful. I feel great. I think i met here at brookings when i was the commandant. It is pronounced commandant. Canadians pronounce things a little bit different. I have been introduced as the 24th commandment before. [laughter] i know the first 12 commandments. But i kind of thought at the time, the 24th commandment is a pretty good title. I like that. Thanks for the introduction, and, yes, canada is one of those dangerous places. In fact, i remember going a couple years ago. They brought a bunch of us to the Foreign Relations committee in the senate. Secretary kerry was the chairman at the time, and we did a hearing on the law of the sea. We might want to talk about the law of the sea at some point this morning, but at that particular event, somebody talked to me and said, one of the senator said, we do not need to accede to the law of the sea treaty, we can do everything we want. And i gave an example, between Yukon Territory and alaska there is a segment that is colored gray as the United States and canada have not been able to agree on a border there. The senator said, you cannot tell me that we cannot come to an agreement with canada, and, yes, it is true, we cannot, and it still exists today. We might want to touch on that because theres some interesting elements in terms of the Continental Shelf claims that would to talk about. It is great to be here at brookings. I feel good because all my basic needs have been taken care of. I was served a hot breakfast. I have coffee. They brought in a team over breakfast warming up with a lot of challenging questions, so i feel ready to go. As i look around the room, i am also a little concerned because i see so many faces that i have seen in so many other places and you start after a while losing track of who you have spoken to and what sea stories you have told, but theres one other thing i have to correct. I cannot take jason back. I am no longer the commandant of the coast guard. The current commandant may be concerned about him coming back. You can keep him, as far as i am concerned [laughter] drew pierce, where are you . Thank you for being at the hearing last week. Drew has heard my story many times. I have to ensure i do not do any repeated this morning. Because there are so many people who have heard me talk in other venues, i thought i would take a different course this morning and i will start with an alaska story. Back last fall, i went up to alaska for my second series of listening session. We were in the city of kotzebue. And there was an alaskan native who got up to talk to us. My recollection is his name was he is a subsistence hunter, an interesting individual. He was talking about the challenges of washington coming up and telling alaskans what to do, etc. , etc. , and the example that he used was he said, one of the departments sent the seal expert up to talk to us. He is a seal hunter, a subsistence hunter, and it has been in his culture, in his tribe for thousands of years. As i looked out across the bay there, i could understand why. Everywhere i looked, you could see that heads of seals, and the alaskan natives revere them. It is part of their culture. They use it for food, for furs and other things. It is part of their life. So the seal expert came up from washington, came in to speak to a group of them, and when he was introduced as the seal expert, the man looked at him and said so you are the seal expert. Have many seals have you eaten . [laughter] i like to tell that story because as i have gone and started talking about the arctic, i find that i can usually classify people into seal hunters and seal experts. There is an awful lot of people in between, some who are sincerely interested in the arctic, others that could not care less about the arctic, and hopefully during our chairmanship we will be able to bring more of those people into that category of people who are interested in the arctic. I found that it is very important to listen to the seal hunters, and i use that as a metaphor. There are certain people that have spent a lot of time in the arctic, that are interested in it, that are passionate about it, and in this city i find people who are seal experts. I was in a meeting the other day preparing to go into a meeting over at the state department and a young staffer came up to me and she said, admiral papp im so excited about meeting you. I am passionate about the arctic. Theres so much work to be done up there. I said, when is the last time you visited the arctic . I have never been there, but i am passionate about it. I have watched the nature channel etc. , etc. , and there is so much that needs to be done up there. That can be excused. It is great for youth and young people to be interested and have that passion, because we need more of that in this country particularly as we address the arctic. Where i am concerned is when Senior Leaders are not necessarily they are in that seal expert category. I had a Senate Hearing last week, and there were a couple of senators who had very legitimate, very good questions. There were others on the panel who you can sense it, they almost have to establish their credibility first. One of them, and i know ambassador geir haarde are you still here . From iceland . There he is. One of the senators to establish his creditability, said, my wife traveled to iceland one spring. You have a very nice country there. I looked at the ambassador, and he is there you know at that point they have some sort of very shallow interest or knowledge about the arctic, and here they are making decisions. Another one mentioned to the alaskans who were in attendance that he had visited alaska once. I checked up later on, and i am told, cannot confirm this another one mentioned that he had visited alaska wants. I am told that he took a cruise to alaska wants, that establishes credibility in terms of understanding alaska. I would never put myself in the category of a seal hunter. I respect the seal hunters. I respect our alaska natives. I have one a lot from them. I would say that i am in that category of people that is very interested, that is concerned about the arctic, and i have a limited amount of knowledge. I started out my coast guard career in alaska. I was let us say, academically challenged the academy, and in those days we selected our first assignment based on your class standing. [laughter] there were not many choices left when it came to me. I saw a ship in alaska and said that looks exciting, alaska, i kid from connecticut going to alaska . The ship was home ported in a place called adak, alaska. I did not know where a deck was, but i found it exciting. I went back to my room and i broke out in atlas, a great big atlas, opened it up, and believe me, do this, open up an atlas and alaska will cover two pages in the atlas. At the bottom, there is an insert that has part of the alaskan peninsula, and the first couple of islands of the aleutian chain. There is another insert that covers the rest of the aleutian chain. Adak was in the second insert. Suffice to say, my fiance at the time was not too pleased. However, afterwards, after going out to adak, i think that got us off to a great start in terms of our marriage, and she is with me 39 years later, so it probably was a good experience. Professionally, it was a great expense. I learned a lot about being a sailor in alaska. First of all, you have to deal with the tyranny of time and distance. We are still challenged with that today. Going back to my coast guard position, the nearest air station that can fly helicopters for search and rescue up the north slope is about 850 miles away in kodiak, alaska. That tyranny of time and distance. When youre sailing ships of their, when you have to refill and the nearest port is 800900 miles away that you can get you can get to for feel, it causes you to be cautious and concerned, and then the weather you have to do without there. I have seen the worst sustained whether of my entire career in my first two years in alaska. I have seen whether in the caribbean that lasts 2448 hours, they call them hurricanes down there. The same weather conditions in the bering sea, they call normal weather during the wintertime, and it lasts for weeks on end. The challenges that i faced serving and learning as a sailor up in alaska state with me my entire career. They drove me to be very interested about 36 years later when i became the commandant of the coast guard. Of course, at that time, it was almost forced upon us, because there were a lot of coast guard equities involved in the opening of the arctic, and we begin a process of coming up with the coast guard arctic strategy, and at the end of that and after trying to campaign for resources to better prepare our country for what was happening in the arctic, i was about to retire on may 30 of last year. On the evening of may 29 secretary john kerry called me and asked me if i my come to the state department to help coordinate activities in preparation for the Arctic Council. I did not even have to hesitate. Asked to serve your country by a senior official of the government in an area that i was passionate about, there was no decision involved. I automatically said, yes. Here i am about 78 months later, and im very happy with that decision and very excited about the prospect of us taking on the chairmanship in about another month here. So, as i came into the job, the big task was organizing our u. S. Program for the arctic. What i was very pleased to find was that there was an awful lot of work that had transpired in preparation. In fact, if nothing else, what we had to do was paired it down a little bit, package it, and marketed. We have been about that process. There was something called the Arctic Policy Group, the avg that works across the interagency and consult with alaska. We have a senior arctic official who has been working on that job for about 10 years. She has a lot of good contacts not only with the other countries, but also with groups in alaska. What i found during my career as an officer and as a ship captain is one of the most important things you do in terms of developing policy, programs, or curing at omission is you listen to people. So we set about the business of listening to others and forming our program, and packaging it together could we came up with a rough idea first of all for a theme which is one arctic, shared opportunities challenges, and responsibilities. If nothing else comes across during our chairmanship, that is the theme that i want everybody to remember, because it is one arctic. It is not just year by the eight countries of the Arctic Council, but it is part of our world and things that go on in the arctic impact the rest of the world and we want to develop interests and other countries about the arctic as well. Then we had this collection of projects, literally scores of projects that we could choose from. We started lumping them into categories. One that appealed to me as a former, that of the coast guard was arctic ocean safety, security, and stewardship. It is a theme that we use within the coast guard, but it is really a component of maritime governance. When you look at the arctic, when you look down from the pole which is a view of the earth that not too many people look at, what you see is the predominant feature is the ocean. A lot of it is covered by ice, in fact, there are certain times of the year when its covered by all ice, but it is opening up. There are new maritime routes that are developing. It is interesting. It is exciting. It will change the world and the way we conduct over time, but once again, a maritime environment and the first responsibility of a maritime nation is to provide for the safety and security of mariners and ships that will approach it shores and have to transit, have rescue capability, navigation, other things in order to assure safety of navigation and navigation and maritime trade contribute to the prosperity of the country. It will contribute to the prosperity of alaska and the arctic. It is already happening in other portions of the arctic, and we need to be prepared for it as we go along. So, we are heavy on the emphasis of safety and stewardship. Hopefully, you have red some details of the program. We will have to exercise the search and rescue agreement. We will have to emphasize exercising the Marine Oil Spill preparedness and Response Agreement that was executed by the Arctic Circle countries, and a number of other projects moving forward. The second category is improving the economic and Living Conditions of the people of the north. A series of projects that go from Renewable Energy all the way to a review of telecommunication capabilities within the arctic. Then the third is adapting to Climate Change. Very important. We are not going to cure Climate Change within the Arctic Council, but we need to draw attention to the effects of Climate Change, and also come up with ways to mitigate and adapt to it, to hopefully protect the environment of the arctic, to demonstrate to the rest of the world that what goes on in the rest of the world affects the arctic and what is happening in the arctic affects the rest of the world. People in boston, massachusetts and people in washington, d. C. In fact probably dont need to be reminded that some of those changes that occurring are drastically changing our weather patterns, and im not sure that we can change that in the short term at least, but we need to be about the business of thinking how we can do that and also how we can help people that do live within that environment to adapt to it. So, we lump us things together in that order and then set about that process that i talked about, listening to people. First and foremost, the most important place to go to was alaska. Last august, our team went up to alaska and we met with a full range of people, starting first of all with our alaska natives. We met with them in various venues. We met with environmental groups, other ngos, the oil industry, alaskan legislators, and everything in between. We took their input, went back to washington, refined or program a little bit, and then send it up to secretary kerry for his conceptual approval. Having received his conceptual ahaving received his conceptual approval, we took the program back to alaska. It coincided with an event thats called a week and the arctic, and we went up there and did listening sessions [no audio] there we go. So we went to several cities and did additional listening sessions, brought that back, and further refined our program. Now we have projected that i was not going to speak publicly about the program until we had done those listening sessions. I cant remember the exact date, but there was an event that Heather Conley had scheduled which was passing the torch between canada and the United States, and that was to be my first opportunity to speak publicly about our Arctic Council program. Until i was asked by other leadership just beat at another event, the center for american progress, on the date the four that esci event. I use those as markers. For those of you familiar with the center for american progress, they have an environmental focus. When i spoke to them afterwards, they said, you got it. You recognize the importance of the climate. You recognize the importance of the environment. You are a little strong on that security and safety stuff on the other side, but thats ok. It looks like bounce program. I went the next day and spoke to them and they said that you got the sick purity stuff, arctic ocean, Everything Else, your little strong on the Climate Change in environment, but it is a good Balance Program. I figured that we had this sweet spot. We are doing good here. And that has followed through across the board as we have gone around and spoke and groups. The next step was to take it internationally. And so, it coincided at that time with something called Arctic Circle, the Arctic Circle event was being held in reykjavik, iceland. That was the first time i met ambassador gearhart when i was there in reykjavik. It was my first opportunity just be publicly in front of a large group, talk about interest in the arctic, 1300 people from 39 countries in reykjavik, iceland, in lousy weather, no offense sir, but it was rainy, cold, blowing 40 knots, we were walking into a headwind from the hotel, but it was very invigorating. It helped me to get more excited about this program, and also give me the opportunity to do a lot of bilateral meetings with folks who had come in. We were refining the program. We get another rethink through secretary kerry. Recently, but a month ago, i went on another trip to go to the rest of the nordic countries. We started out in sweden. We went to norway, where we went up to an event for an event called arctic frontiers. Once again, another opportunity to speak to a large group, another group of about 1300 or so people from 39 or 40 countries, senior representatives from around the world. Whats again, an opportunity to talk about our u. S. Program. From norway, we went to copenhagen. I met with not only the danes, but the greenlanders as well. We got their perspective. I went from there to finland and not only did we meet in helsinki with a full range of activities, but we also traveled north to meet with the parliament to meet with one of and not only did we meet in our permanent observers in the Arctic Council. Then, most importantly, we finished up by going to moscow. I will talk a little bit more about that in just a moment, but very productive meeting. It was the first seniorlevel meeting of a United States representative in moscow since the imposition of the sanctions, so it was a significant event, not just for the Arctic Council, but for the United States as well. I will be happy to answer questions on that when we get into it. So, there has been an awful lot of listening going on. What i would say is that it has been broken down into a couple of themes. The first theme being this theme of balance, finding the sweet spot. As i said, i have spoken to an awful lot of groups similar to this, diverse groups, brookings tends to have a very balanced view of things, more centrists. So perhaps this program resonates. We have tried to make it a Balance Program to reflect all the needs that are going on out there. The second comment that i get most constantly when i breathe this two groups, to the press, and in particular, to the other seven countries, is only the Immediate Response of this being rather ambitious. It is. I will lay claim to our United States program probably being the most forward leaning, most Ambitious Program that has ever been proposed during a chairmanship of the Arctic Council. I think that is the way it should be. Part of leadership is setting the bar high, setting goals, and then measuring progress towards those goals. That is what we intend to do during our chairmanship. While everybody else says it is a rather Ambitious Program theres one dissenter. Every time i brief secretary kerry, he says, are you sure we are doing enough . Can we do more . So perhaps we found the sweet spot there is well. The third thing that comes up frequently come in fact, he came up in the session this morning. Why doesnt the United States support the Arctic Economic Council . The Arctic Economic Council or the aec, is one of canadas initiatives. The focus of the Arctic Council has been Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development. We have plenty of representation on the Environmental Protection side. If we want Sustainable Development, it seems to me that we need to cut in industry and let them know what the standards are. We need responsible, Sustainable Development within the arctic. The Arctic Economic Council i believe is set up to facilitate that. Now, where the United States where this misperception occurs about the United States not supporting the Arctic Economic Council, is we have some disagreements on exactly how we ought to employee our participation in it. I would say now that i have had a chance to dissect it, because all all this feedback of us not supporting it, i have had a chance to get into it a little bit. I have found that with a countries, you have a different approaches, just like you have a different forms of government as you look across it. For our form of government in the United States, United States government does not own industries. Some of the industries that are represented within the Arctic Economic Council from other countries are partially or wholly owned by the state. There is a state interest in having those countries in there to be able to develop things within the arctic. We took a different approach. First of all, because of our culture. Once again, our government does not own industries. Secondly, if we start getting too close with industries, you start running into federal Advisory Committee rules that have to be complied with. So, our choice, whether you like it or dont like it, our choice early on was to turn this over to the chamber of commerce and alaska. The chamber of commerce and alaska selected three companies. The Arctic Economic Council has just had its first meeting. So i think there are going to be some disputes on how the Arctic Economic Council should be used. There will be questions on how we employ. There will be questions about how much influence it should have on Arctic Council activities should it have a different status from our observer groups . I dont know. It is a work in progress through the United States fully embraces it. We will continue it greatly think canada for starting it but there is more to come on that. The next thing that came up most frequently is, are we going to talk to russia . I would just leave it at that. Obviously, [laughter] obviously, i was sent to moscow. We talk to russia. It is important what we do. Everything in the Arctic Council is done by consensus. One country can break consensus and we dont take on a project. It is very important to keep russia in the fold, not just for the Arctic Council, but for other things going on in the world. The next to the last thing that is repeated frequently is we are excited by United States leadership. I like that. I have found that. One of the things that is most gratifying to me as an american is when i have traveled overseas, either as the commandant of the coast guard or in this position, it is the respect that the United States gets wherever we go. It is the looking to us for leadership wherever we go. I can be at an event here in washington and i am seated all the way in the back of the room. In fact, in norway or iceland they give me a seat of honor of front. When i step up there, regardless of where we are in the Program People stop and listen. It is because it is the United States. That is particularly gratifying. The last item i will bring up is that along with that, being excited about United States leadership, they question our commitment. They want to know, are you really committed to the arctic . Fortunately, or unfortunately, what they look at its commitment of resources. One of the questions ive really get is, you guys cannot even buy an icebreaker. Our you really committed to the arctic if you cant buy an icebreaker . Yet, the russians have more than two dozen. China is building icebreakers. South korea is building icebreakers. Other countries are building icebreakers. And i dont want to say that were focusing just on icebreakers, there are other infrastructure needs as well but we need to be about the business of committing some resources. I am hopeful that the recent executive order signed by the president , which brings all the agencies together with an Arctic Executive Steering Committee, is going to lead to setting some priorities which will hopefully lead to committing some resources as well to the needs and the arctic. Went back, i think i will finish right there, because im excited about getting into your questions. So, thank you very much. [applause] while you are getting miked up, i would like to ask the first question. I dont mean it to be controversial, but i think its an important question. Despite the grandiose plan that you have outlined that the government has for our chairmanship of the Arctic Council, there are a number of what seem to be crisscrossing signals coming out of this administration. Particularly if you are an alaskan resident. We are all concerned about the Pipeline Capacity dropping rapidly and the need to find Additional Oil reserves to have that Vital National asset continue to operate, and yet we have just seen the administration take large swaps of alaska out of consideration for future oil the relevant, at least on the coastal plain. Do you think that we really do have a coherent and im saying washington do you think we have a coherent on whether we see alaska as a land of opportunity and abundance for the future of the nation, or the other view is maybe close it off and make it all a National Park . I will admit in speaking and listening to alaskans as recently as last week, our senator Lisa Murkowski and Maria Cantwell held a hearing last week on the day that the government was shut down, before the Energy Committee in the senate, i think senator murkowski couldnt there the possibility of shutting down a hearing on the arctic on the day that it was snowing in washington. [laughter] we are getting attention to it. There were alaskans on the panel with me, and they brought up the same concerns. I guess what i would say is that part of our challenge is raising the visibility of the arctic. As we sit here right in the spot, we are 3500 miles from the northern most point of the United States and alaska, right there in the center of the arctic. 3500 miles, and a lot of candidate in between. So, there is not a connection between the American People and the arctic. We only have 50,000 americans who live above the Arctic Circle in northern alaska. Now, i think most alaskans, the rest of the state, also have a connection to the arctic. They understand it. But it is not a Large Population. Someone mentioned earlier this morning in fact, i meant to comment on it it was one of our officers in the earlier meeting who talked about us being a maritime nation. Look, ive had a hard time over the years trying to convince people that we are a maritime nation much less anarchic nation as well. Yet we are good we have responsibilities as a nation. It has only been recently with the opening of the waters that we have developed all this. That is why we are so excited about this. There is a changing climate. It is opening up waters. There are needs there. They are new needs. They are new starts. Anything in washington with a new start is difficult to solve. In terms of resourcing, we all of the pressures that have been on the federal budget over the last decade or so. It is hard to get those new things in there. In terms of policy decisions, i think that part of our program is a very active and strong and robust Public Diplomacy effort which we will hope will raise the awareness of the American People. There will be significant meetings held in alaska. There will be some meetings held here in washington, d. C. We hope to bring Senior Leaders from around the world, including some of our own Senior Leadership from washington, some of the seal experts and bring them to alaska and teach them a little bit about it, so that we can raise awareness. Then and only then will people take into consideration the full range of opinions and issues when they make policy decisions that affect the country broadly like that. Thank you. We will go to the floor. There are some roving microphones. If you would wait to get a microphone. If you would Police Identify yourself and ask a question. We have one in the back of the room. My name is Meredith Sandler with sandler trade. I was a state of alaska representative within the United States delegation from 19952002, and did all the things that you described. My question so, for example i appreciate what you said very much. I am a 10year resident of alaska, worked for the alaskan governor tony mills for seven years, and he would say to me with a little nudge to my back if not for alaska, the United States would not be in the Arctic Council or need an arctic policy, and clearly it has evolved. This room is incredible and so many people are here. My question is that i appreciate the listening, but where are the alaskans, the alaskan governments office, in the policymaking part of this . Not just to be listened to, but to be an integral representative ongoing to the delegation, to the Arctic Council, to what youre talking about, and honest to god, i policy maker who has an equal voice all the feds . Thank you very much. Obviously, as you referred to it as the listening and i referred to it as listening, that is consultation and a more formal term. We will keep that consultation going. I see the alaskan legislators here in washington on a very frequent basis. Our two senators and representatives and beyond, and every time we get alaskans in here, they generally stop by the state department and spend some time with me. I have not had a chance to get back up there to alaska, but i think that you can understand with all the preparations that we have going on with the Arctic Council, which is an international body, as you know, im speaking to the rest of the room, i dont mean to become the sitting towards you, but we are focused on international issues. It is not within our portfolio to beginning with domestic issues. The domestic issues are the responsibility of other departments within our government. As i said, part of our program is this Public Diplomacy effort, which in my heart i hope will raise the awareness of the American People for using the Arctic Council chairmanship as a means to get to the goal that i have advocated for at least the last five years, that we need to start investing in some of the infrastructure in alaska. So the consultation will continue to go on. We have brought an alaskan native to come on to act as the chief of staff to the ambassador. Shes providing great input to us. Weve been a little frustrated, i tried to set up weve been trying to set up a panel of experts to consult with alaskan natives. Were trying to find the right device for doing that, the right contract, whatever it might be. To make a more formal arrangement between us and doing some consulting with alaskan natives. At the end of the day, where do we put alaskans into this organization . Once again, its an International Thing that is a federal function. We appreciate the input. They sit in on the Arctic Policy Group and that will continue. How do we more formally involve them . I know Craig Fleener is coming up through the administerial the new governors representative for the arctic. And we will continue to engage as much as we can. Right here in the middle. Im from the polish embassy. Just to question, referring to the cooperation with russia, could you expand more. You had quite productive talks there. If you could Say Something more. And just along this line, isnt the increased military activity, Russian Military activity, isnt it bothering you at all . Thats the first question. The second, if you could expand on the icebreakers. Whats your opinion . There was a news the other day about possible international cooperation, having u. S. Iceberg breaking capability. Whats the minimum level the u. S. Should, you know, have . Thank you. Russia. One of the things that the United States is deeply appreciative of is that the other arctic countries have stood shoulder to shoulder together in terms of their opposition to the unlawful incursions in the ukraine and russias violation of ukraines sovereignty. They have all adopted the sanctions and have supported the sanctions and we as a country are grateful for that. But one thing that were also in agreement on, as i mentioned, is the seven other arctic countries, the United States and the other six, minus russia, all believe that we should, for the good of the arctic, for the environment and other important issues, we need to keep russia in the fold and Keep Communications open. We are all committed to that. I have relayed the message that the military rhetoric, the actions by the russians in ukraine are not helpful to keeping that line of communication open. Yet we remain committed to doing that. I think and know secretary, this is secretary kerrys belief and the president s belief, and its something that i just understand intuitively, is no situation is made better by cutting off communications. Its very important for us to communicate, not just for those things that we want to do in the arctic, but also to help other situations as well. So we are committed to maintaining that line of communication, at least as it stands right now. Military buildup, i dont know whether you were touching on military buildup in the arctic clearly theres been a lot of rhetoric there as well. I was told by one russian that when i said that that rhetoric was unhelpful, they said, well you know, military people are going to be military people. Theyre going to say what they say. Im trying very hard to make sure, either through our intelligence programs or otherwise, to find where the reality is in terms of capability. One person can look at whats going on in terms of military buildup and rightfully say theyve got an awful long border along the arctic and if youre going to have increased maritime traffic, you should have search and rescue facilities, you should have modern airports and other things. Things that i would like to see built in alaska. As maritime activity increases. So one persons search and rescue response capabilities is another persons military buildup. I saw a couple of news stories when i was appointed into this job that said that the United States was now going to militarize the arctic because they selected an admiral to be their special representative. Im not doing a very good job of it, if thats why i was elected. [laughter] its hard to determine intent. Intent is always sort of a gamble. What you need to look at is capabilities. What are they actually building . And were keeping an eye on that. But some of it is legitimate things that should be built because theres an increase in maritime traffic. They are building icebreakers. I wish we were building icebreakers. Last weeks hearing, senator cantwell asked about the various studies that are out there. Theres one study that calls for three u. S. Heavy icebreakers and three medium. Theres another one that calls for four and six. I cant keep track what have the numbers are and what i told senator cantwell was, we got all wrapped up talking about how many we should have, it would seem to me we could at least come to agreement on, we need at least one. And we should Start Building it. We havent put money toward building that first icebreaker. I would be happy seeing just a first icebreaker, much less all those other things. In the absence of that, there are people coming forward. There are some commercial activities that would say, well build you an icebreaker and lease it back to the government. There are other countries that might volunteer. Part of the Arctic Council, what we might work at, search and rescue, for instance. We want to take that search and rescue agreement and exercise it now. Because no one country can provide all the resources that are necessary to take care of a major maritime disaster, so lets inventory what we have and see how we might Work Together better to be able to share responsibilities and share responses. Maybe all those icebreakers are out there, maybe theres a way for us to cooperate between the countries. I hate to go down this line of logic, but i watch fantasy, the star trek movies and you see on the bridge of the enterprise you see a russian, an asian, an africanamerican, whatever it might be, other countries came together, pooled their resources and worked together. Wouldnt it be beautiful if within the auspices of the Arctic Council, we could pool resources and Work Together cooperatively . I think thats a worthy goal. But the United States at the end of the day has to do its part as well and start investing in some resources there. Im hopeful that the president s new executive order that delineates the responsibilities of the Arctic Executive Steering Committee will start setting those priorities and start pushing some resource proposals. We have a gentleman did you have a question . Lady on the middle. Hello. My name is linda preebie and im a partner doing federal relations and ethics and compliance at a law firm here in washington, d. C. , called colehain meadows. Before that for 14 years i was deputy general counsel and ethics official at the white house drug policy. I was very interested in your comment about the federal Advisory Commission act, which is known as the federal version of the government in the sunshine act. And i presume that your comment expressed a concern, correct me if im wrong, about the u. S. Participation in the Arctic Economic Council potentially converting that to a u. S. Federal Advisory Commission. Is that the concern that you were raising . That would be the concern. Im not an expert on the laws. But it has been expressed as one of those concerns, as we talk to people within the state department. Thats right. I did a lot of that when i was at white house drug policy. That is correct. Thats a legitimate concern. But i note with the president s new executive order on interagency coordination that theres no position or representation there for nonfederal interests. And i understand that as well. As far as the interagency. Although i do have an idea. About a way to address that. But regardless, my question to you is, clearly in light of the very first question that was asked you, there is a desire for people to have input to the federal policymaking process who are not already in the loop, insiders, whether that includes alaska or other areas as well. Do you foresee the creation of an actual federal Advisory Commission for u. S. Arctic policy being created to address that need . I have to admit right up front, i have not even considered it or thought about it. Im not going to use it as an excuse. I think ive been in the job seven months now and while i had a very narrow and parochial interest on the coast guard, ive had to broaden that out into the international portion of this and that has consumed an awful lot of what limited brain space i have, so getting into some of those other finer details, how we refine this as we go forward, i think thats a worthy suggestion for consideration. Well make a note of that. Certainly i could foresee it as a possibility. But i just dont know. Science magazine. admiral, the arctic is one of the most important places in the world in terms of Climate Change, its one of the most volatile regions. You mentioned this. And yet its very poorly instrumented for climate. I note in your remarks you didnt mention this issue. How important is it that the nations of the world improve monitoring in the arctic and what do you think the Arctic Council should do about that . It is a part of our u. S. Program. Were looking at various mapping systems, sensors, were looking at inventorying what other countries are doing and bringing them together so that we can have better observation. Its not only just that, theres a great need for increased satellite coverage, whether its communications, observation, navigation. Most of what weve put up over the decades is optimized for the middle latitudes. Not optimized for the higher latitudes. Thats another thing that clearly the United States cant take on all by itself. Theres benefits to all the countries that are going to be operating in the arctic, so thats another area that were hopeful that we can bring people together and start investing in. But you are absolutely right, we need better coordination of what sensors there are up there and were going to attempt to identify those that are needed as well and start moving towards getting them resourced. Thanks so much for holding this event. My name is claire, im with national journal. you talk a little bit about the need to kind of raise public awareness. It seems like one of the big challenges with arctic is, you know, getting Adequate Funding and resources and sort of convincing congress. But also kind of convincing the american public. Which might lead to more attention in congress. Can you talk a little bit more about how you can get the public to Pay Attention and then i also wanted to ask if youd heard anything back from disney about your offer to them to perhaps use the frozen characters as a way to educate the public . Im afraid my name isnt very good at disney right now. For those of who you dont know and dont know how you couldnt, actually when you go home tonight, google papp disney arctic. And the last time i checked theres at least about 10 pages of articles there. One of the proposals we had was a very bright young lady within my office, who is a big fan of disney, the movie frozen, i think she can recite all the the entire script of the movie and sing all the songs. But she suggested that we need to start teaching the youth about the arctic and perhaps having some Public Service announcements done with the disney characters from the movie frozen, you know, ana and elsa and sven and olaf. I know these because i have granddaughters and i watch the movie all the time. When i arrived in norway, it just so happened that it was in the middle of the film festival. And on that particular evening there was an outdoor theater there were about 300 children all bundled up and theyre watching disneys frozen. so i tell the story to the crowd at the arctic frontiers event the next morning, the 1,300 people, and i mentioned that i had gone out to disney in los angeles to meet with them and i didnt think my marketing through very well and i said you know, youve taught all these kids around the world about a fantasy arctic city in norway. A kingdom that doesnt really exist. And conditions that dont really exist. I said, you need to start teaching them about the plight of the polar bear and alaskan villages that are falling into the ocean because the permafrost is thawing. I went on with a list of other things. I could see this guy was becoming more and more concerned and then he said, admiral, might not understand our culture here at disney is to project positive images and happy endings. [laughter] and hes right but how do you turn that into finding happy endings for our arctic as well . I think it can be done. Were continuing discussions with disney. Im hopeful that were going to get there. Its a very good company and they put out a good product. Id like to have them help us raise awareness. Your basic question, though, is how you raise awareness to the American People. If i had that secret, i wouldnt be sitting here working for the government. Id be out as a lobbyist or Something Like that. Im never going to be a lobbyist. But id be running a business, a Media Business or something. Its hard to get bandwidth. Look at the front page of the post today and see the things that are erupting every day that draw the attention of the American People. And, yes, longterm were becoming were coming becoming concerned about whats happening in the arctic. Because of Climate Change and other things. But its slow. And theres no major cataclysmic event thats happening. And when you have so many cataclysmic events that are drawing the attention every day, its hard to get the bandwidth to spread it out. I mean, its like, you know, we say, why isnt the white house taking this up . Well, the white house has a lot on its plate. Secretary kerrys going to be the chair of the Arctic Council, but do you think he has the time to devote to the Arctic Council on a day to day basis . With dealing with ebola, syria isis and Everything Else in the world . Theres something that goes along with leadership and thats that you got a lot on your plate. The United States is fortunately or unfortunately involved in an awful lot of things around the world. Therefore the arctic isnt a huge problem right now for anybody. So its hard to draw that attention. Thats what ive been trying to do. How can you come up with a national imperative, something that will draw in the American People . Were still struggling with that. But i think were getting closer. Thank you. Richard ranger from the American Petroleum institute. This question prompts a suggestion for you to consider admiral papp. And that is, through some resource associated with the u. S. Chairmanship, a recommended reading list, something that you could develop over time, with the state of alaska, with academia. Theres a lot of great books out there. Arctic dreams, 50 miles from tomorrow, but i think from the standpoint of the long pull, Building Student interest, academic interest, Public Interest, i throw that out as a suggestion that could be developed over your tenure. Thats part of our Public Diplomacy program. Were using the scholarships to gain some interest and start bringing people in. Thats why i thats one of the reasons why i was really keen on trying to get disney in there. Is because you got to start with the youth. One of the challenges we faced back in my previous job was getting the best of american talent, diverse american talent into the coast guard academy. And you cant start at the junior year of high school. You really have to Start Marketing when theyre in grade school. We need to carry over some of these programs and perhaps introduce it in our schools or otherwise. Youre absolutely right. Admiral, in the very near future, theres one cruise line that has plans to send a ship carrying as many as 2,000 people into the arctic waters. Do we as a nation have the ability, if we believe this is foolhardy, to waylay this kind of activity and not allow ships that arent truly sea worthy . Arctic conditions to proceed into our arctic regions . Or should we have such rights . We have the ability, and this is one of those things, i would bring in my lawyers and start looking at this, if a voyage is manifestly unsafe, if you can make that determination, you can terminate a voyage. Yes. If its an American Flag vessel. That can be done. Will it be done in this particular case . Im sure that theyre going to demonstrate they have the capability. Im sure the United States coast guard and other agencies in the government are going to take a good, solid look at this and say, ok, if a problem happens, how do you rescue those people . I personally have been involved with a cruise ship that broke down and the only way you could rescue all those people was to bring another cruise ship alongside and transfer in that case, this was many years ago when i did this, i think it was only about 800 people. You had to transfer 800 people by ferries across to the other cruise ship. Do you require them to have another cruise ship come behind them in their wake . Do you require them to have an ice break escort . Theres a lot of things that canada and the United States will be and are in fact looking at and well place down as requirements on these people. At the end of the day, United States and canada will deploy resources. Resources that might, otherwise, be used for other things. Resources are limited. If youre going to do a new task, you have to pull another task. You might have to send ships up there that are working against trafficking of drugs and migrants and take them of theirre. I would like you to think that role thandk the admiral. [applause] [inaudible chatter] cspan takes you live now to bowie State University in maryland for remark from rand paul. He is expected to deliver remarks on reforming the criminal Justice System here at bowie state, one of the oldest sister black universities in maryland. Also, some questions about whether paul can run for president and retain his sentence senate seat. Just waiting for senator paul from kentucky to speak to students at bowie State University. [inaudible chatter] here at bowie State University, cspan live in maryland for remarks from senator rand paul, again, one of the gop potentials that we could see running next year. He is expected to give his remarks on reforming the criminal Justice System here at bowies day, the oldest black university in maryland. We expect the center to appear in just a few moments. [inaudible chatter] cspan, again, life here at bowie State University in maryland. One of the oldest black universities in maryland. The center, expected to give remarks on reforming the criminal Justice System and people who have committed nonViolent Crimes. Senator rand paul and another senator and have introduced legislation. You can find the online at event. Org. Expecting senator rand paul here at bowie State University with his remarks. Here, lateive at bowie State University waiting on remarks from rand paul. There, the former Lieutenant Governor of maryland. Senator paul, as a potential 2016 president ial candidate questions on whether he can also run for the senate. Kentucky, looking at changing states president ial primary to a caucus. You can read more from the washington times. Expecting senator paul at any moment. We are learning that he is at the university and just waiting to be introduced to the crowd here gathered with students and some political leaders at bowie State University. Good afternoon. Members of the cabinet, esteemed guest, students, and staff, i am the president of the students association. I bring you greetings from bowie State University. As many of you may know, were celebrating our 150 year, so im humbled and honored to be part of this historical moment. Bowie State University welcomes dr. Rand paul, senator from the state of kentucky. Thank you. [applause] good afternoon. Dr. Rand paul is a junior United States senator from kentucky. I elected in 2010, he has proven to be an outspoken champion for constitutional and physical liberties. He sits on the Foreign Relations, health, and pensions committees, and Small Business community. A graduate of Duke University school of medicine, paul was a practicing ophthalmologist for a 17 year. He founded a clinic that provides eye exams for needy individuals. He has also provided free surgeries to families and south america to families it would normally not get care. He continues to do pro bono surgery. As a vocal advocate of term limit, balanced budget, forcing members to read all bills submitted, he has gained prominence for his positions on many issues. He has been married for 24 years and has three sons. Will you all give a warm loose state welcome to senator rand paul. [applause] senator paul thank you. Sometimes people ask, you know, can one person make any difference at all . Sometimes i wonder that even in washington but one of the reasons im here is because of eugene. The person who entered disney. I was scanning online and found the article that he wrote, and i said to my staff, why dont you call him . We are glad to be here this morning. Clark cannot let out of prison a couple of months actually the same month i was born, a long time ago, 1963. The region that he went reason that he went to prison is because he was trying to get enrolled in mississippi southern. At that time, it was very difficult for a black man or woman to enroll. The second time he tried to enroll, they find it linger on planted linger on him liquor on him and gave him a 600 fine. One thing led to another and he declared bankruptcy. He tried to unroll a third time, but was bullied by the police. When he tried the third time he declared bankruptcy and went to ride chicken feed. 25 of chicken feed. You know what happened to him . He was arrested. Seven years in prison for 25 of chicken feed. It was really his. It was on his land that the bank was repossessing. Peoples lives can spiral out of control for 600 fine. Thomas wolfe talks about this in his book. A persons life spirals out of the control when he tries to get his car back. Those of us who have jobs and fairly privileged lives do not know what it is like to have to pay fines, penalties on top of fines, and how someones life can spiral out of control because of this. Even though this was 1963, and a lot of things have improved since then, we have gotten rid of segregation by law, but we still have a problem in this country that is somewhat like segregation, but also somewhat like there are two systems. As Martin Luther king junior said, there are two americas. There is one america that believes in life liberty and pursue of happiness, but there is another america is witness to a daily disgrace, a lack of hope and despair. Like clyde, there are still people in the society were hounded. Several cities and m in missouri, their cities give by on fines. I tell people, its not about what happen this year, its about the building out. I call it an undercurrent of unease. There are still two americas. Many here are those who do believe in life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Those who get an education, no matter the color of your skin, youre part of america and can live the American Dream. Many are not. Its the lack of education, but also the criminal Justice System. As i have learn more about the criminal Justice System, i have come to believe that it is something that will keep these two americas separate. There are so many things, one after the other, they aree unjust. If you look at new york city 500 million of fines. About the third of the budget is funded by fines. Why does the police have to take someone down for selling cigarettes on tax. Couldnt we have given him a ticket . I dont blame the police. I blame the politicians. We can change the rules at any minute. I want to be part of the teijin of rules. With the president , we dont agree on a lot of stuff but on the criminal Justice System, we do. One of the laws that bothers me the most is called civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture is when the government can take your stuff whether they have convicted you of a crime or not. I think this turns justice on the head. Further criminal Justice System, you are innocent until you are proving guilty. Civil forfeiture is the opposite. [applause] if theres one thing that i can change i want to reinforce that in the judicial system you are innocent until Proven Guilty. The problem is civil forfeiture is the opposite. I will give you a couple of examples. A family in philadelphia, their teenage son sold 40 worth of a legal drugs off the back porch. The government took their house. How are we making anything better when we take the house . Maybe it is grandmas house. Why would we take grandmas house . Why would we take the familys house based on not even a conviction an accusation of a child to does not own the house . It is way out of control. Is happening in various venues here if you look at it, the Washington Post has done a great series over the last six or so. It is predominantly africanamerican, and hispanic or one common denominator predominantly people who live in poverty. Its got to stop. I think we can stop it. This is something that the president and i completely agree on. We have legislation that changes the presumption that you will be innocent until Proven Guilty and they cannot take your stuff until you are proving guilty. Giving you some examples of things we have had a problem with. In civil forfeiture they took a motel in new jersey. Why . About 10 people had stayed there over about 14 years that have been caught telling drug. 10 people out of 200,000 people and they took the hotel. When they look at it, theres a program where those who take your stuff get to keep it. They get to keep the proceeds. Its an incentive for the government wanting to take your stuff. For other hotels in the area, they did not take them. They had liens against them. This cell had actually been paid for. The government looks for can they increase your volume . Governor paul i think i lost my volume. We will have someone look into it. Other than civil forfeiture its coming back. Other than civil forfeiture there are a lot of things that we need to fix in our society. One of them is something called mandatory minimums. Management mandatory minimums say that if you committed an infraction, you have to serve a minimum sentence. One person, he sold 300 worth of marijuana, he got a sentence of 50 years. Thats outrageous. 50 years in prison for selling 300 years worth of marijuana. You can kill someone in kentucky and be eligible for parole and 12 years. Something is wrong here. To compound this, there is a racial outcome to this. I dont think there is a racial intention, i tell people, i think they are looking if they dont think that incarceration problem in our country is not skewed towards one race. I dont think its purposeful but it is actual and real and we must do something about it. 55 years in prison for selling marijuana. Timothy tyler was a guy, 23 years ago, he was 23 years old. He was a dead head, doing lsd, things you shouldnt do. The thing is for that crime of sending some lsd through the mail and using lsd, he got life in prison. He is now 46 years old. He has been in jail for 23 years. This is out of control and insane. Jill lockwood is 31 years old. She was writing a false prescription for herself for lortab. It is 95 of tylenol. They put her in jail based on the weight of the entire drug. She is in jail for 15 years. She was an addict. Let her have treatment, punish her, but dont put people in jail for 15 years. This is all done through mandatory minimums. I think judges should get more discretion. Democrats and republicans are saying keyless discussion, give us discretion, another means to incarceration. In 1980, there were 300,000 kids in our america who did not have a father because her father was in prison. There are now 2 million kids with no father because the father was in prison. We need to be fixing the criminal Justice System. If we look at mandatory minimums civil forfeiture, and other problems we have in our society, one of the problems his employment. Republicans, were big on saying we dont want people permanently on welfare. We want people to transition from welfare to a job. They look to as an say, how am i supposed to find a job, i am a convicted felon. There has to be a way to figure out how to get people back to work. [applause] a friend of mines brother grew Marijuana Plants of the worst the mercy of kentucky 30 years ago. He is a convicted felon. He also check the box every time he goes to look for a job. And, he cant vote. If we really want to get people back integrated into society not permanently unable to work and permanently on welfare, we have to figure out how to expunge their records. Booker and i put together a bill, called the redeem act. It takes these minor felonies, mostly drug possession and says, if you have been punished, out of jail, he paid your debts to society, and a certain amount of time, you should be able to get rid of your records. We are talking about nonViolent Crimes. In the bill also, that i have with cory booker, and gets rid of solitary confinement for teenagers. Why were putting teenagers in solitary confinement, i dont know. I can tell you one story that horrified me, in the New York Times, a few weeks ago. A black man, teenager from the bronx, he was picked up for doing a crime. I dont know if you did the crime are not, but it was a crime that he was sent to writers for three years, solitary confinement. Three years in prison and he was never tried. At these people not heard about the six amendment . A speedy trial. He tried to commit suicide three times. I dont know what happened to him and rikers, but it certainly wasnt good fair. It certainly wasnt fair to have a man buzzed up for three years. We ought to change it. [applause] in the bill that i have with cory booker, we take some of the records and let them be expunged. So that they wont show up when you go to work. We also get rid of solitary confinement for juveniles. I also think that part of the problem with gi losing your ability to vote is that we have a lot of felonies that we can make misdemeanors. I have another bill called the reset bill. We take minor felonies nonViolent Crimes, and we make the misdemeanors. Were not saying they are ok, but they are misdemeanor, and you will never lose your right to vote or your right to work. These are things that if we do, we can radically transform our country. We have something on civil forfeiture mandatory minimums, expungement, and resetting your record. All of these things, i think will help with criminal justice. Will help for people who live in the two americas and people who think they arent open to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or that undercurrent of unease. Maybe those people will start to feel part of the American Dream and will be ambitious and tried to succeed like the rest of us. One of the final things is we have had a lot of discussion in our country about Voting Rights. Whether people are excluded or not excluded, and what we need to do to make it better. I think the good thing is, more minorities voted at a higher percentage in mississippi and other stateds last time around. We have come a long way. The one thing precluding people from voting is the felony conviction. I have a bill with harry reid to get your Voting Rights back. I think its hard for people to fieleeel part of america of a cannot vote. We want people to go to work. We want people to be able to vote. How do we protect all these things and make it a better more united, america . I think we need to pay more attention to the bill of rights. The bill of rights is there to protect all of us. It is not necessarily for the prom queen. Its not necessarily for the high school or not, the college quarterback. Those who are popular among you will always do fine. Its for the least popular among you. Its for those with unorthodox ideas. It is precisely for minorities. You can be minorities because of the shade of your skin or a minority because of the shade of your ideology. You can be a minority because you are african or hispanic. But you can also be a minority because you are an evangelical christian. We have instances, and the last year or two, where we have let down our guard. I will give you a couple of examples. We have something now in america called in definite did tension indefinite detention. This means summit can be sent to someone can be sent to one tonto bee Guantanamo Bay forever. I said, this begs the question. Who gets to decide who is dangerous and who is not dangerous . Who should be afraid of this . Anybody think that you may want to be afraid if you are jewish. Has anyone ever seen animus towards jewish people. Everybody ever think theres been animus towards africanamericans in our country . The answer is, even from this president , i dont think this president will round up people based on their race. I dont think he will do that. Thats what he said when he signed the legislation. He said, im a good man, i will not do this. Im not questioning whether or not the president is a good man, but the law on the book. There have been times in our history when we have let down our guard. Madison wrote about this when he said, if government were comprised of angels, we would not need these laws. If government were comprised of angels, it would not matter if there were potential for bias. Remember the times you did not get due process. Remember the times that groups in our country, like japaneseamericans during world war ii who did not get due process and were incarcerated without trial. Thats why we have these rules. Its not because of this president , but the next president , or the president thereafter. We are also doing something that i think goes against justice and the ideas of justice. We are collecting your phone records. Every one of your phone records is being collected and stored. They wont tell us, but in all likelihood, the vast majority of phone records are being collected. If you look at the worn, it does not have your name on it. The Fourth Amendment says it must specify your name, what you did, and they have to go to a judge to ask for probable cause. You look at your phone records, and it says verizon on it. I dont think you can write one single warrior and get 1500 records. It is supposed to be individualized. In fact, we found be five the revolution over this. You had to specify the person. Specify the crime. Probable cause. You should be worried about this. What does the government say . Trust us. We are good people. We will never look at your records. They have already been a couple of intelligence folks looking at their wife the boyfriends records. People are tempted to look at your records. People are not perfect. Can we still get terrorists and we do not collect records . Yes. Get a warrant. If there is a rapist in d. C. And you do not see him running towards the house, the police do not break the door down. It is 3 00 in the morning, they call the judge and they get a permit. We need these constitutional protections. Think about the 1960s. Think about how Martin Luther kings phone was tapped. Think about many people who protested the war. Had their phone tap. You have to have these protections. Not because theres pot one particular bad person in government, but there is potential. Criminal justice, or the lack of criminal justice, it is not a black or white problem. It is not a black or brown problem. What it is is a poverty problem. We have to be careful to make sure the bill of rights applies to every individual. If there is one thing that i want to get across it is that we have to defend the bill of rights. [applause] i think there are two other areas in which there are two america still. And where we need to find out how to unite the two americas. One is education. If youre here at bowie state or youre visiting and you went to school or college and working you succeeded. You are part of the america that will go after the American Dream, life, liberty, pursue of happiness. Like if you did not go to school or you went to a crummy high school, you are living in one of the other americas. The statistics are startling. If you look at the graphs, those who went to school those who waited and had kids and got married after going to school it is night and day. There are two different americas. How do we equalize education . Education is the equalizer. There is still a lack of equality in the school. The best way to put it. I went to Public Schools, they had at kilis physics, biology two, anatomy and physiology, i had a great school. My kids have gone to Public Schools. Tablet schools are not all created equal. There is still a problem. A lot of the problem can be fixed if we allowed for more animation, competition. Allow kids to choose what school they go to. If theres a school in the suburbs, allow them to drive to that school. Schools choice will allow them to be equal. Right now, the concern is that those making decisions are the education establishment, not be parents. Parents are doing anything they can to win the lottery to get their kid to go to a good school. We have to figure out how to make education equal across the board. Finally, what we have to do is get economic equality. Im not talking about some kind of equality of outcome. Im talking about equality of opportunity. I think that we have to do something new. Weve tried passing money out. Look in my state. Appalachia has gotten money for 60 years. We tax everybody in the country, and then it to appalachia. Appalachia is bill as poor as it ever was. The problem is, if you give me the money and asked me to give it someone, people and government dont know who to give it to. We give it to john smith and say, open a business. We dont know if john smith or mary smith are good at making business. The market does though. Every day you are going out and spending money, you are voting on which businesses will succeed. I think we should stimulate detroit. Detroit has 20 unemployment and thousands of abandoned factories. If we want to do thumbing for detroit, why dont we cut the taxes for detroit . [applause] jack kemp was the first person to talk about this. I call these we take tax cuts to areas of high incidence of poverty, and we dramatically cut the taxes. Not a little bit. We almost completely wipe out federal taxes so they can have more money. A detroit, it would be a 1. 3 billion dollars tax cut. For baltimore about 90 million per year. [applause] why does this work better than a government stimulus . We tried a government stimulus. We gave a bunch of money, about 800 billion that we gave out. We did not know who to give it to you. When they divided up, it was about 400 thousand dollars per job. If you give it back to the people think about baltimore there are pockets of poverty, but there are businesses that are succeeding. You dont want to give it to the brandnew person given to the old business. They will hire new people. Give them back more of their money but in a dramatic fashion to stimulate the cities and get the cities growing again. What im saying is think outside of the box. What we have been doing is not working. I think there are ways we can of criminal justice in our country ways of having quality education , and also ways of having Economic Opportunity. If we do things over and over again, that is the definition of insanity is your acted different result. I truly think that the two americas that Martin Luther king talked about can come back together. I think it is imperative for us to do it. I have seen and felt the undercurrent of unease. I have been to ferguson chicago, detroit. Some of this is government. The government has done the wrong ring sometimes. Politicians. Police are trying to do their job for the most part. Politicians have done our bad job of creating criminal justice. But, we ca we cant just think that things will change. Finally, we have to have the debate about who best been money. Are the politicians smart enough to know how to spend it, or should we send it back to baltimore . Should be having if we want baltimore to be richer . Leave more money and baltimore. Can we make more jobs by not sending it to washington in the first place . I am a big believer in freedom, human ingenuity, i say if we give our back to the people, we will see success like we havent in a long time. [applause] i would like to use our moderator for the q and a. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I love the way stay bowie state. We are going to go ahead and do a q a with senator rand paul. I thought was refreshing to hear and talk on so many different topics, obviously thats around and involve our life here and elsewhere. First question, senator paul, could the federal government provide incentives for businesses to hire as offenders . Senator paul the best way to have an incentive is to get rid of the record. Expunging the record is one of the best way to get ex offenders back to work. I think, particularly we are trying out millions of people, as many as 5 Million People who o lost the fight to vote but theyre also people who are having difficulty getting employment. There has to be some exceptions, obviously. If you are a sex offender, child molester, things like that dont go away. Finally crime stay on your record, that is used oak some pot, through some Marijuana Plants and college, you ought to get a second chance. Absolutely. Speaking of smoking some pot second question, please explain your federal ma medical Marijuana Bill and the role of federal government in drug policy. Senator paul this is another bill that we introduce this week. What we do and that is we tried a the federal government will interfere with aids who want to have a medical marijuana. One of the things we have done is there are schedules for drugs. Schedule 1, 2, 3. Three is just about everything. Two is a little more restrictive. Schedule one is most restrictive. Marijuana is schedule one. Most doctors cap prescribe it. A couple examples of people who use marijuana for medical benefit. My political director s father used to use drugs. They were first drive jobs, he had a lot of pain from anms. He tried marijuana, he felt like it helped him. Now he is in virginia and he can use it. There are kids. Some kids have so many seizures its uncontrollable. 100 or 200 seizures per day. Their brain does not develop and they remain stumped. Airtight not cannabis oil without the thc. Thc is the part that makes people get high. They take it out and they give oil to these did. Some of them are showing benefits. A needs to be studied. I think parents ought to have a chance. I think theres a great deal of popularity in the public. I dont know if youre congress is ready to pass it. The public is ready. [applause] senator paul, if you were president , how would you support u. S. Gas and oil instead of importing it from other countries . Senator paul i like the question. One way to be independent and have a growing Energy Industry in our country is we have to compete with everyone around the world. One of the ways we are not competing very well is that our taxes are higher and a Regulatory Burden is higher. For example, the Corporate Income tax in this country is 35 . And ireland, its 12 . In england, its 20 . Most of europe has a lower business tax that we do. Then, you bring in the Regulatory Burden of what we have on our energy. We have greater Regulatory Burden. Our tax burden is higher, our regulatory identifier. Even with that, our Energy Production is doing pretty well. Were at the point where we should say, should we get rid of the laws that say we cannot export. There was a lot of miss everything we were allowed to. Thank you. What are your thoughts on the progress of africanamericans in this country . What would you do as president to continue that progress . Senator paul sometimes we think we have not gone very far, when i think we have come along way. I say we, collectively, obviously it is not me. We got rid of most of the legal problems of separation, in the 60s. Its in the wild to take effect and transmit to the schools. I think really, the problems are not legal separation. We have the fact of. There is dae jure, of the law, and de facto. I do get is a Economic Opportunity and criminal justice. The one thing the government can do is we need to make criminal justice more fair. One thing that i did not mention, which is also a problem many people cannot keep up with her Child Support payments. Instead of working out a schedule, we send them to prison. We have that is prison de btors prison. Could you make the correlation, obviously with criminal justice reform, and Economic Opportunity. You talked about and if you could expand on our little more, the Economic Freedom zones that you have proposed. What will it take to make that a reality, if you will . If you could speak a little clearer on the benefit for individuals, Small Businesses, and municipalities. Senator paul i think if you look at the practical politics of this, and see, what is anyone offering detroit. Zero. You might need some democrats that say, lets just give them a billion dollars. We would have to borrow from china. We borrow 1 million per minute. I have a proposal for detroit, baltimore, louisville, all of our big cities. Wager likely lower the tax rates, you dont affect the infrastructure. Your police, fire, rose, all that you pay for with local taxes. If you live outside detroit in your president of the bank, and i say, i will give you a 5 income tax versus at 39 income tax if you moved to detroit, my guess is that you might consider doing it. We also have hiring incentives in that to get those tax rates you have to hire i think sway 5 of your people have to live in the neighborhood. Excellent. Any other questions, followup questions . [indiscernible] senator paul it is true of everything on the margin. We dont have money for most things. Yesterday, i had people come and wanting more money for diabetes. Her are a lot of good cause is out there, but they want more money. I told them what you tell everyone else, if you have a cause that you believe in, you have to figure out where the money comes from. You have to cut spending. Im willing to do that also. I have said repeatedly, before i touch any penny for a safety matt, i will cut every penny of corporate welfare. That is how you save money. [applause] i think senator paul, when you first came to the senate you talked about looking at eliminating spending, cutting it by 500 billion. Could you speak a little more about that. Senator paul this is a good point. He will say, republicans are for no government. Cutting everything, leaving nothing for the poor. That is not true. We are mostly for not spending money that does not come in. I am for 3 trillion worth of government. Thats how much comes in. There is this huge disparity of what comes in and what goes out. Within the 3 trillion, you have to make some this the winch some distinctions on what you do. I think the department of congress is mostly going to bridge corporations. There are 20 billion dollars worth of rich welfare to corporations. On average, there are about 200 million to 40 or 50 big corporations. You can eliminate that. Theres quite a bit of different departments that could go. Im not sure you would notice the difference. Weve had the department of education for i dont know 30 oh 40 years the vast majority that can go back to the state level and not be done on washington. [applause] i believe the importexport bank would be a part of that as well. Senator paul i would call the corporate welfare as well. Thank you very much, senator paul. Its an honor. [applause] inc. You for coming. Thank you for coming. If you missed any of senator pauls remarks, you can find them online, on cspan. Org. More road to the white house coverage tonight with jeb bush at the home of a former chair of the Republican Party. Tomorrow, wisconsin Governor Scott walker will be in New Hampshire at the grassroots activist workshop. You can watch his comments Live Saturday morning at 11 45 a. M. Another possible contender Carly Fiorina former ceo of hewlettpackard. The New York Times report that she is shaping her message as the foil to Hillary Clinton. What she says is an unimpressive record of getting things done. Politico reporting that despite the controversy over emails, pulls placer ahead of any potential rivals. Gallup asked if they had a favorable or unfavorable perception of candidates. The former secretary of state had a clear lead. You can read more at politico. Com. Here are some of our featured programs on the cspan networks. Starting on saturday, cspan 2s book tv is life from arizona at the tucson festival of books. Sunday at 1 00, we continue our live coverage of the festival with panels on the Obama Administration, the future of politics, and concussions in football. On cspan 3, at 9 00 on saturday, were live in farmville, virginia for the 16th annual civil war seminar. Sunday morning at 9 00, we continue our live coverage of the seminar with remarks on the surrender of the confederacy and the immigration of confederates to brazil. Find our complete schedule on cspan. Org and let us know we think about the programs you are watching. Call us, email us, or send us a tweet. Join the cspan conversation like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. The director of the fbi and the head of the dea, the Marshals Service, and the atf testified on capitol hill yesterday, examining the budget request from the Law Enforcement agencies for 2016. This is about one hour and 45 minutes. The committee will come to order. We welcome on the 2016 budget request for federal Law Enforcement agencies. I would like to welcome first are for witnesses. The fbi director, dea administrator, and atf director. They will later each testify about the agencies budget request. This morning i want to begin by thanking the men and women of the fbi, Marshall Service and atf who work to protect this nation. Were in debt for their service and sacrifice. In particular i want to express my condolence to u. S. Marshall josie wells who was killed in line on duty tuesday while participating in a Fugitive Task force in baton rouge, louisiana. Deputy Marshall Wells was attached to the Southern District office in mississippi and had dutifully volunteered for this task force. Our thoughts and prayers are for his friends and prayers and entire Marshall Service community for their loss here. The constantly changing landscape of criminal activity at home and abroad has challenged the Justices Department ability to deal with emerging threats. We expect our Law Enforcement agencies to be more nimble and sophisticated than the terrorist they pursue. The goal of this joint Law Enforcement hearing is to determine how the 2016 budget would give each Law Enforcement agency the tools and capabilities needed to tackle those changing threats, whether theyre cyber attacks, Drug Trafficking, financial fraud or terrorism. I believe our federal Law Enforcement agencies must Work Together particularly in tough budget environments in a manner that safe guards taxpayer dollars while preserving Public Safety. The fbis mission includes protecting and defending the United States against terrorism and foreign intelligence threats, fighting cyber crime as well as tending to traditional criminal activities, such as Violent Crime, public corruption and white collar crime. In order to carry out these priorities, the fbis 2016 budget request is 8. 5 billion which is an increase of 47 million above the 2015 enacted amount. In the past year, weve seen terrorist threats and increased cyber attacks. I believe its imperative that the fbi appropriately balances the bureaus diverse responsibilities while targeting the highest needs and criminal threats facing our nation. The Marshalls Service has the honor of being americas largest federal Law Enforcement agency. The marshals provide judicial security, apprehend fugitives and protect witnesses and transport prisoners among other important duties. The 2016 budget request of 2. 7 billion for the Marshall Service is 100 million less than the 2015 enacted level of 2. 8 billion. The funding reductions are largely isolated to the federal prisoner detention account. I want to hear how the 15 budget requests will allow the Marshall Service to continue its Critical Missions for the pursuit pursuit and arrest of fugitive tax offenders who are targeting our children. The Drug Enforcement administrations 2016 budget requests totals 2. 5 billion the agency serves a central role in our society, working with domestic and International Partners in enforcement and control of substance laws and regulations of the United States. In addition the deas diverse control program prevents detects and investigates the diversion of controlled pharmaceutical pharmaceuticals and listed chemicals. This mission is critical with Prescription Drug abuse arguably being the countrys Fastest Growing drug problem. The bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms and explosives is tasked with combatting illegal use and trafficking of firearms, illegal use and storage of explosives and acts and bombings among other Crime Fighting roles. Atfs 2016 budget request is 1. 3 billion, which is 60 million above the 2015 level. Im interested how the agency would use this increased funding, particularly in light of recent complaints from hunters and sportsmen who believe that atf overstepped its authority by attempting to ban certain ammunition for recreation use. I look forward to hearing the views and explanations of the witnesses for the details of their 2016 funding totals and working with our Committee Members to prioritize necessary funding for our federal Law Enforcement agencies. At this point, id like to recognize my friend and colleague, senator mikulski, former chairman of the committee. Thank you for this hearing today and really bringing the full complement of federal Law Enforcement before the committee not only to review their budget but so we could first of all truly express our appreciation. We do appreciate every single man and woman who works for the agencies represented here today. They are so much valued and appreciated and they should do that. We need to do that in three ways, number one, give them respect and respect them and the sacrifices they do and their families do every single day while theyre often away protecting us. Number two, lets have the right resources and make sure we dont do another sequester where fbi agents were digging in their pockets and dea agents wondering what they could do to do their job and while were looking at sequester how we go after the sexual predators. And the wonderful forensics, not only what youre enforcing but needless to identify the terrible sniper situation we had few years ago came from a single gun from the forensics that you did. Its that. Some carry a gun and some work with a microscope, all are on their job and i wanted to say that. Tomorrow, i will be at a maryland montgomery Commerce Chamber of commerce event in which they honor those who provide Public Safety. Firefighters and also Police Officers. The baltimore field office, mr. Comey, will receive an award for being the best safety partner. Its not only what you do, how you do it, actually engaged in the community, leveraging the assets of both the federal government and state and local where everybodys best at what theyre best at and best at what theyre most needed for. So we appreciate that. Of course, we want to express our condolences to the death of Deputy Marshall jose wells killed in the line of fire and we wish our Police Officers in ferguson a good recovery. So weve got a big job to do. The way we start with respect i believe with the right resources. While were looking at the Law Enforcement agencies of the fbi, dea and atf, make up most half of the justice departments budget. Close to 15 billion. I think thats a bargain. I think thats a tremendous bargain for what we get in the way you are out there protecting america. Theres only a modest increase here of 98 million, and im concerned whether that enables you to keep on hiring the people that you need to do the job, to be able to sustain the effort with the people that you hire. And also, will we be able to do the cost of living adjustments for the people who work with you, whether agents, intelligence analysts or computer analysts. These needed increases come in the context of the president s request. Yes, we do know its above the caps and we will have a robust discussion. While there are many pounding the table, lets lift the caps on defense debate, theres another way we need to defend america. We need to defend america in the streets and neighborhoods of our communities and we need to defend them from sexual predators. We need to defend them from murderers and killers. We need to defend them against the lone wolf who could be roaming around one of our big cities or small towns. If you want to protect america you not only want to lift the defense caps, you want to lift the domestic caps and have parity with that. I want you to know i feel very strongly about it. When i say i didnt want to run again because i didnt want to raise money but raise hell, this is one of the areas that im going to raise hell about and were going to do it here today. We look forward to hearing what it is you need for those resources. We count on you to be able to do this job. I could go through the data, which i will, when we get to the questions. Two areas i hope we could also focus on, in addition to your specific mission, of course, is the heroin crisis that we hear from every governor, including my own in maryland. We look to work with our governor. Yes, hes a republican and, yes, im a democrat but were 100 marylanders and were 100 involved in dealing with heroin. Of course, the women of the senate joining with very good men are now focusing on the issue of human trafficking. We look forward to hearing it. I need to know what are the right resources for you to be best at what youre best at and best at what youre needed for and we best better get our act together and make sure we support you. I look forward to the dialogue. Thank you. We will start the hearing testimony with fbi director comey and then go right to left. We welcome all of you and your written testimony will be made part of the record. Thank you. Nice to be here. Vice chairman mikulski and senators. Thank you for the opportunity to sit with three, i would say old friends but i dont want to criticize anyone, people ive worked with for many years, more than wed like to admit and appreciate your expression of condolence for the Marshall Service, terrible loss, a reminder of the people we have and risk they take to protect this country. Were very grateful for that. The fbis 2016 budget request is about maintaining the capabilities you have given us. Its about being good stewards of the taxpayers money and make sure we recover from the effects of sequester by filling the ranks so depleted over the past couple of years. There are two enhancements requested in our budget, each for about 10 million, one relates to cyber capabilities, trying to build those and the second to our efforts to integrate better in a technological way with this community. As the rest of you know, the fbi like my colleagues here, its all about the people. 70 of our budget goes to our good folks. We have remarkable men and women working 24 hours a day all around this world to protect this country and its citizens. The members of this committee are very well aware of the threats the fbi is responsible for addressing. Counterterrorism remains at the top of our list for reasons that make good sense. The world of terrorism has shifted just in my 18 months on this job, particularly in the growth and unflourishing spaces of the progeny of al qaeda, most predominantly with isil and use of groups like isil and aqap with Sophisticated Technology and social media to spread their poison, attract recruits to their socalled callieiphate and try to motivate people who dont travel to do harm in the United States. This poses an enormous challenge to us to find the people responding to that siren song and track those traveling and find those who may be motivating to radicalize and stay in place but engage in murderous behavior in the name of some misguided effort to find meaning in their lives. Counterterrorism remains at the top of our list for reasons i know the American People appreciate. As chairman shelby mentioned we have responsibility for counterintelligence. The spy game is not a thing of the 1950s or 1960s, it is alive and well. Increasingly for all the threats, manifesting on the internet, cyber dominates the fbis life and we have to be digitally literate to protect kids, fraud, terrorism, protect Critical Infrastructure and our secrets. Were working very hard to make sure we have the workforce and technology and were deployed in a smart way to be able to deal with the threats that come at us through the internet, which is all the threats were responsible for. We spend a tremendous amount of time working with our partners here at this table to address a variety of criminal threats. Vicechairman mikulski mentioned our efforts to protect children. We work very hard on that and to fight public corruption and a host of other efforts we do around the country. We do them almost entirely in partnerships with federal partners and state and local partners. There is there literally nothing the fbi does alone. We accomplish great good but do it in partnership with lots of other folks. I want to close just mentioning a couple of our capabilities this committee has supported that dont get the attention they deserve. The first is rtdak. It is the Analysis Center for explosive devices around the world. It is a tremendous effort. We are putting together a world class facility so we can do with explosive devices the way we do fingerprints, to connect the dots and save lives. I had a chance to visit recently and see the commitment to keep our allies safer and i appreciate your support. And we have the Hazardous Devices School for today and tomorrow to diffuse devices and protect the American People. Two tremendous resources that dont get much attention. Ill mention one other. In the great state of West Virginia we have thousands of people working in our criminal Justice Information services department, division, literally the frame on which hangs the Law Enforcement of this country. They run the information sharing, the fingerprint database, they run the dna database, they run the sharing of Vital Information that protects Law Enforcement officers. I told them when i visited, your work to a lot of people sounds boring. It is only boring because it works so well. We take it for granted this work will be there so when a cop pulls somebody over and runs their name or fingerprints they know immediately whether thats a rapist or terrorist or fugitive and people are protected by that. They are underappreciated but the frame that hangs Law Enforcement of this country and we are grateful for our West Virginia colleagues. With that, ill stop and thank you again. This committee has been tremendously supportive of the fbi. We recognize it and our great folks are extraordinarily grateful for the support weve gotten from the committee and i look forward to taking your questions. Thank you. Miss hilton. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Good morning, everyone. I want to start by thanking you for your recognition of deputy josie wells, who we lost this past tuesday. He was without a doubt one of our finest. He was a young man committed to our fugitive investigations. He worked to make our country safer. His loss was hard for all of us but you can imagine his family. He came from a long line of Law Enforcement. His father is a retired Law Enforcement officer from mississippi and his two brothers currently serve as Law Enforcement Police Officers. We will stand with them as we bid farewell to josie this weekend as we recognize yet another fallen u. S. Marshall service hero. Our total request includes 1. 2 billion for salaries and expenses and 1. 5 billion for detention and 15 million for construction of courthouses nationwide. The agencys many accomplishments over the years as we celebrate our 225th anniversary this year recently would not have been possible without your support from this committee in particular. In recent years, you have acknowledged and provided resources for us to safely guard the nations federal prison inmate and detention populations. You recognize the importance of those resources. Over the past year we had worked carefully to assess the Agency Spending and where necessary make improvements and reduce costs. The usms has also benefitted from this committees decision to restore our resources in 2014, on salaries and expenses. This allowed us to fill 200 vacant u. S. Marshals and i thank you for that support. I can assure you we take our fiduciary responsibilities financially seriously. And we will work with your staff to submit a moderate budget mindful of our countrys financial situation. We have worked proactively to use existing resources, to ensure officer safety. Aside from retaining a small carryover from the detention balance, the u. S. Marshall service worked to make sure a significant amount are made to the administration and congress for other purposes. It is my ongoing focus to ensure we be as efficient and effective as we can within the dollars given to us and priority to take transformational steps to make the Marshals Service a Data Driven Agency to make strategic and tactical business decisions. Ultimately this is helping us present a performance based budget to show how we are managing our resources appropriated from congress. The 2016 budget you have in front of you provides the necessary resources to protect and enhance you spoke about today. Arresting violent fugitives, protecting children and enforcing Law Enforcement in the communities. Ensuring and safeguarding is still a paramount concern for the Marshall Services as we see more violence in our federal courthouses and federal judiciary. We saw it in wheeling, West Virginia, saw it recently at a judges home in the night, the judge just barely escaping the shooting and his family and the violence in the court in utah. You can see it play across the media, and you can see the violent criminals introduced to our court system pose a great risk to our judiciaries. The 2016 budget increases our enforcement efforts for Law Enforcement as we provide safety to our officers, try to work and ensure we can meet the requirements under the adam walsh Child Protection and safety act. The National Center for missing and exploited children estimates over 769,000 sex offenders live in the United States of which i am proud to say we have apprehended at least probably close to 12,000 annually. Brought them into compliance because over 100,000 of those 769,000 are not in compliance. It is my top priority in this agency as we have lost too many and every effort to make sure personnel are adequately equipped. Along with those at the table and my partners and working collectively together, we the Marshall Service apprehended warrants for more than 105,000 violent fugitives a year. Deputy marshals who risk their lives arresting and apprehending those who flee from justice and we are requesting 1. 5 million for Law Enforcement training so we may keep that effort. The committee has recognized the urgent need to contain proliferation of gangs across our country. It has a severe impact on Law Enforcement because of the highrising level of violence we see. Gangs are no longer isolated to motorcycle gangs and urban street gangs, they are now in suburban and Rural Communities socially economically depressed communities and over more than 1 million members are criminally active in the United States. This is something we all want to address. Our 2016 budget request has an increase of 2. 5 million for a total of 15 million for federal courthouses as i spoke earlier about the situation we faced to make sure to mitigate the risks of the public that attend those courthouses and judiciary. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member mikulski and members of the subcommittee, i request your support to fully fund the 2016 budget request to support the members of the Marshall Service you recognized earlier to carry out the protection efforts of our judicial process. We have proven ourselves a valuable asset to our communities insuring Public Safety and protecting our children. Thank you. Good morning, chairman shelby, Ranking Member mikulski and members of the subcommittee. I want to start by thanking Ranking Member mikulski for her many years of leadership and dedicated service to our country. You have been a trail blazer for women in the senate and i am especially thankful for your support of deas Museum Traveling Exhibit that went to the Maryland Science Center in baltimore last year. Over 350,000 people visited the exhibit during the seventh month seven months run and they learned not just about Law Enforcement but also the Science Behind drugs, addiction and recovery. Dea is in mourning this morning after hearing the news of deputy josie wells and we offer all our assistance to director hilton. The support of this committee has led to the arrest of many violent drug traffickers exemplified by the recent arrest of mr. Martinez, also known as latotu and omar morales. These arrests are another win for mexico in the fight against brutal criminal cartels like the knights tempplar and lasettas. These arrests along with last years capture of guzman signal major steps forward in our shared fight against Drug Trafficking and violence. Since the department of justice began coordinating efforts against the most known wanted drug traffickers in 2003, there have been 183 identified around the world. Cumulatively, over threequarters have been indicted in the United States. Over half have been arrested here or abroad and onethird have been extradited to the United States to face justice. In fiscal year 2014 alone, we saw several successes against them, including seven who were extradited to the United States, one surrendered to the United States authorities and six more who were arrested in custody outside the United States. Historically the image of organized crime in the United States was of hierarchal organizations exerting influence over criminal activities at the local levels, with cells of loosely affiliated groups. That still remains true today. However, these organizations now have direct connections to mexican Drug Trafficking organizations to distribute heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana and other drugs throughout the country. This is the new face of organized crime. The violence perpetrated by these groups harms communities across the United States and dea is set up to manage the to dismantle the distribution cells and traffic organizations with whom they conspire. Of notable concern is the alarming level of heroin use and abuse in this country and increases in heroin related deaths. After years of declining use the availability and abuse of heroin is now increasing especially among younger americans. This is due in part to the increased production of heroin in mexico, even as colombian production has declined. In 2013, 8,257 people died of a heroin overdose. Nearly tripling since 2010. A contributing factor to increasing demand for heroin is prescription opioid abuse. Prescription drug abuse is a nationwide epidemic. Overall, 43,982 people have died of a Drug Overdose in the United States in 2003. That was more than half of which involved Prescription Drugs. These deaths represent not just a statistic but they are family members, our friends, our neighbors and our colleagues. If we look at the operational successes we are having today, coupled with the decline in overall drug use, there is reason for optimism. Since its high point in 1979 the overall rate of elicit drug use in america has dropped by over 30 . By taking harmful drugs off the street, dismantling major drug organizations and seizing profits we are making our nation a safer place to live and to do business. The support of this subcommittee is critical to our success. I look forward to working with you and would be happy to answer any of your questions. Thank you. Good morning, chairman shelby, Ranking Member mikulski and members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today with my colleagues. This is a great team im privileged to work with within the department of justice. I think together we are moving forward to enhance Public Safety around the country on behalf of the citizens that we serve. Im also pleased to be here to discuss the president s fy 2016 budget request for atf. Atfs principle mission is to protect our communities from violent criminals who illegally possess and use firearms, use explosives for elicit purposes and engage in deadly acts of arson. We accomplish our mission through partnerships and through the enforcement of the criminal law regulations of firearms and explosives industry. This makes us somewhat unique among u. S. Law enforcement. We have a long history of maintaining working relationships not only with our federal partners but with our state and local partners. We put a premium on those partnerships. The Public Safety agencies, the Industry Groups and Community Organizations that we work with are vital us to being able to accomplish our mission. When serious Violent Crime happens at communities across the country, atf is there working side by side with our partners. In the past three years alone, atf has been at the front line against crime helping our partners investigate the Boston Marathon bombing, horrific Mass Shootings in aurora, colorado and Washington Navy yard as well as assisting in thousands of other investigations that have simply not made the national news. Atfs work with its partners is producing tangible results in communities across the country. Our discussion today, i hope leads to some help for you all in sustaining the results we have accomplished in various places around the country. For example, we recently completed an enhanced enforcement operation in bridgeport, connecticut and chicago, illinois. In both circumstances we have made an impact working with our state and local colleagues on diminishing and lowering Violent Crime in those communities. We accomplished this not only through manpower and strong partnerships but by also leveraging our technology resources, such as nybin, the National Integrated ballistics informational network. It compares High Resolution cartridge cases, the senator alluded to it earlier, recover ed from mult crime scenes and compare and contrast and follow the gun strategy to identify the worst of the worst offenders in communities. This technology has been integrated with etrace and we are, in certain communities around the country test driving Crime Gun Intelligence Centers , showing very promising results. Atfs contributions to Public Safety extend beyond these operational successes. As director comey mentioned tdak is in huntsville and we have our National Training for explosive research there established through the members of this committee and its performing important work. By the end of fy 2016 it will significantly increase its staffing by 30 and work on increasing fire and arson investigation in addition to explosives research. Because we are getting healthier as an organization over the last several years, we will offer several courses that havent been offered, because training is usually the first thing to go when you have tough budget times , unfortunately. In addition we will be bringing our u. S. Bomb data center from washington d. C. And put it in the cedar facility in an effort to make sure we are not only fully integrating our capacity but collaborating at the highest levels with the fbis explosive device Analytic Center that is down there. Another important acid is our asset is our Fire Research lab in maryland is currently involved in research of several high profile fire incidents. I want to thank this committee for the support that that lab has. Unsurprisingly to me, as ive learned across the country our arson capacity is something thats a great treasure to federal Law Enforcement. Weve worked on several significant arson investigations with state and locals trying to figure out what happened. We are performing tests recently on the west texas fertilizer plant that killed 15 First Responders and injured 160, and were currently looking at the horrific fire that happened several months ago in annapolis that killed a grandmother, grandfather and their grandchildren trying to determine some of the things with christmas trees. This kind of research is taken care of very quietly but would be very helpful to Public Safety across the board. To support this important work and i look forward to discussing it further, atfs 2016 budget request totals 1. 26 billion, including 5100 permanent positions, nearly half of which are special agents. This request includes 52 million increase in base resources that really is focused as director comey mentioned, on our human capital. Atf has a very experienced special agent workforce. Within the next three years we will have nearly 35 of that workforce be either mandatory or eligible for retirement, so we need to do all we can over the next several years, including to this budget cycle, to refresh and get new agents out there before the senior agents leave. I look forward to answering your questions. I do want to maybe set the table here as preemptive. The chairman mentioned about in our regulatory effort, a proposal we posted requested comments on for the last 30 days. That Comment Period will close. It involved an exemption for a particular type of 556 round. Weve gotten nearly 90,000 comments. We will assess those comments. And working with you, with others, see how we can really address what was at the genesis of that posting, which was an effort to address nearly 30 exemption requests in finding a framework for dealing with that. With that said, i see the time is over and i will be happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ill direct my first question to you. On february 13th, the atf released a proposed framework that would have eliminated the m 855 green tip ammunition from the sporting purposes. This week, the atf abandoned this proposal. A lot of us are troubled the with the affs process and intent regarding this proposed ban. Ive heard from numerous constituents who use this ammunition for shooting sport and hunting and theyre strongly opposed to the ban, as you know. Additionally, its concerning to a lot of us the new federal firearms regulation reference guide published in january in inexplicably removed the m 855 ammunition from the exemption list for sporting purposes. Why did the atf propose this m855 ban, when such ammunition has been allowed under sporting purposes exemption for many many years . Senator, thank you for the question. I think its important for everyone to understand again that the genesis of us putting that framework proposal up for Public Comment was our good faith effort to try and construct a framework to deal with nearly 30 exemptions that we have had in the queue for many many years at atf. We do have a responsibility to regulate. We cant stick our head in the sand with respect to the additional exemption requests. The m885 exemption has been in place for nearly 30 years. It was a classification that atf made on that particular round. I want to make sure everybody understands, this was not contrary to some of the blogosphere and effort to completely ban that certain type of cartridge. Its this one particular green tip that is in essence, military surplus, that under leopa does qualify as armor piercing but has had an exemption for 30 years and been in the market and used for sporting purposes for the last 30 years. So our request for input on a framework was our effort to try and get a transparent process we could act on the nearly 30 other exemptions that were there and not sort of not look at the exemption that was out there on m885. So, you know, i think the reality of it is we need to deal with the pending exemptions. There arent going to be any new exemptions granted until we work our way out through this. The exemption for 885 has been there for 30 years and will remain. You abandoned it this week, did you not . Were going to take the input in. We are not going to move forward without analyzing the nearly 90,000 comments from all spectrums with a sense of figuring out how we do this rationally, in a common sense way that, first and foremost for us, protects our Law Enforcement officers in compliance with leopa. Ill direct this question to the fbi director. You talked about earlier the terrorist explosive Device Analytical Center we call tdac and so forth and how important it is. What is tdacs operational and construction status at this point . When will the facility be fully operational, do you know . I think were on track to open it sometime late this spring or in summer. I went down there to check on its progress because im keenly interested in it. The buildings up, looks good to me, but other things to for it to be ready. We have had some delays because our contractor has struggled with some of the unique technical requirements to deal with explosives in that building. My understanding is we are on track for no later than summer opening. How is the atf working cooperatively with you, with the fbi on this . Are they putting their good offices forward to work with you and cooperate with the fbi regarding tdac . Yes, as they always do. Director jones said one of the hallmarks of atf, they are a great partner in a whole host of ways and they are with tdac. Director jones, you referenced the building in cedar a few minutes ago. Where are we exactly on that, as far as staffing the program we call it the National Center for explosives training and research . You know, ive had an opportunity you mentioned this earlier in your testimony. Ive had an opportunity on a number of occasions to go to ncedar, a wonderful facility for our organization and asset. I think when tdac is up and running and what weve done that at ncedar and what we plan to do expands beyond the explosive training and research, focusing primarily on homemade ieds and some of the research there has expanded into the fire and arson realm, we have a great lab in ammondale and doing work down there and that necessitates us moving additional personnel down there. I think the main thing is that were finally going to move the u. S. Bomb data center personnel from washington down to ncedar as originally envisioned and thats going to happen this year. One last question to the fbi director. How is the fbi responding from the armys separation from the Hazardous Device School they sent word, as i understand it where they had a partnership there and the army indicated they would no longer provide personnel to the school but i think thats an important operation there. I agree completely, mr. Chairman. Were working with them to see if there are folks they will no longer have there as part of their complement that can come work for us so we dont lose the expertise and our overall commitment is not lose capability. As you know with the support of this committee were expanding that facility because theres such a hunger for advanced bomb tech training. Thank you. Thank you. I want to compliment you on the fact we will consider the tradition of a classified hearing after this because so much of what we want to do about counterterrorism and organized crimes are questions in that setting and thank you very much for being able to provide us with that opportunity. Ive got essentially two questions. One, i want to raise, is about heroin. I have a significant issue in maryland, raised by our local dea people as well as governor hogan. We heard a place like vermont declared it a state of the state issue. In fiscal 2015, this committee requested that the doj convene a task force to come up with a comprehensive federal solution of Law Enforcement Health Care Treatment and prevention, not only Law Enforcement. Director comey, you told me that it had been handed to the dea, is that right . Are you could you tell me what dea is doing . Are you the task force that i asked for . Because weve gotten very little feedback about it. Sir, id be glad to address that. The task force you called for was not tasked to dea. I do know that the department has been looking at it and actually has convened some meetings that we have attended. To put together is there a department of Justice Task Force . Ill ask the attorney general, that you know of, that has the task force that we asked for . I know that they have had meetings with people outside the department and within the department. Ok. So they have gathered. So they didnt do it. Well come back to that. Could you tell us, though, what youre doing miss leonhart . Sure. Maryland is the perfect example of what its going to take for our country to stem the flow of the rising heroin problem. As you know in maryland, your heroin deaths nearly doubled. In fact, when you look at all Overdose Deaths in maryland last year, the majority of them were actually heroin overdoses. So we very quickly and have for the past year, we put together a local task force. We have one in baltimore and we have a similar task force arrangement here locally were working with our partners. But in baltimore, we became very concerned about why this raise in heroin overdoses. We understand why theres more heroin coming into our country. Thats because more and more of it is coming almost all western hemisphere. But more and more of it is coming from mexico and is being controlled by the same mexican organizations and trafficking groups that we see all across the country who have brought cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana to our communities. So we started looking at it and started remember, i have five minutes. So could we get we started to be concerned because there was an epidemic of fentanol laced heroin a few years back. We started working with medical examiners, coroners and Police Departments and looking at those deaths and finding a number of them are actually phentanol laced heroin overdoses. We have Law Enforcement efforts going, Public Service announcements, warning local Law Enforcement. How many of these great task forces do you have doing this great work in the Baltimore Community . I know the washington hida is working this. No. I am asking, dea oncewants a task force. I am frustrated that the doj does not have a task force. That is not going on. You are doing a great effort. You have 17, 7, how many . We have the main effort in baltimore, but we also have a couple different that are operating in coordinating together in washington dc. We have communities throughout the country where we have replicated what baltimore did. The result of what we have done when we have been able to get im going to ask you. When you going to do on drugs director callomey . We are on the complex trafficking organizations almost all the time in partnership with dea. We are trying to disrupt the traffickers. Does the Marshals Service have a role . Our role is primarily dedicated to the Regional Task forces on the apprehension of the fugitives involved. Our role really is to look for the worst of the worst that are employing firearms in Violent Crime to protect their organization business. The guns are always the driver for us, but that obviously leads us to some collaboration with the dea, and ei, and state and locals across the board. We really need a different kind of coordination here. First, i want to government everyone on what they are doing. It is not a criticism of you. Working with the state and local governments, we have the methodology of task forces, but there needs to be a more organized effort. Obviously we have a second round, i will follow up with more questions. I appreciate what youre doing i gained great insight here. Thank you. I would like to follow up. Does it exist currently that this committee can have a clear layout of the lanes of responsibility with drug issues . In two areas i can see clearly dealing with gangs and drugs all four you have lanes of responsibility those areas. Does it exist that there is a clear layout of who has what lane . I believe that there are very clear lines. For instance, atf and fbi have their Violent Crime task forces, and our role at dea is to identify those trafficking organizations, especially mexican cartels and major mexican organizations that are supplying gangs and fueling Violent Crimes. We worked together in a collaborative way knowing what our lanes are. In the years we have been in washington we have not once ran into a problem that i had to go to the fbi director and say we are overlapping. I have not had to go to the director of atf. We work very well together are we know what our lanes are. I would like to have that document to vehicle to see, so we have clarity of who has what lane in a task force, whatever that may be. I would like to be able to have that so we can get a clear differentiation. Part of the problem is we deal with budget issues. We appreciate very much what you do in the individuals who lay down their life for our country and when we lose that we grieve and our nation grieves. We want member number of people who are actually engaged on the street both protecting each other and our nation as possible. And the least amount and administrative work. One that is related to another, we would want to have one entity have more focus on the street and halve the administrative costs as possible. We are focused on International Terrorism, rightfully so, but we cannot lose the focus on drug and Gang Violence, because we lose more in drug and Gang Violence than we do in International Terrorism every week. I would reinforce that with the funds and the focus we have, and the reader of this is that we have to keep up. A specific question, mr. Jones the attorney general and i had a conversation several years ago it was a conversation about some of the procedures and process and trying to align the fbi processes through during an undercover operation and the Access Points going to d. C. With atf. That was about three years ago. Do you know where that is in status right now, trying to align the atf processes in an fbi like manner . Thank you for the question. We are in a good place from where we were three years ago. I had priorities when i came on board, to make the organization healthy. To fully integrate atf into the department of justice policy. Having served on the hvac, being familiar with all the processes of the department of justice, we are on target with integrating and making sure that we are in sync with all of the doj Law Enforcement components on how we do some of those fundamentals in terms of processes for high risk Law Enforcement operations. The challenge for all of us, and the things that get attention oftentimes is when the policy is not put into practice completely and uniformly across the country. That is sometimes a challenge because putting it into practice involves your people and communication and training where do you think it is in implication of the policy . For us, for atf . We are in sync with doj policy, and we will continue to refine our policies in practice and on paper. One final question. There is a decrease in budget on the prisoner detention line item. One reason was the prisoner population decline. In one hand that is good news but can you tell us why you have seen this incline in prisoner population . The major contributor is the decline in population, it is also the efficiency and practice. Any certain population that is in decline in time and attention in time in detention . The slight decline in immigration, drugs and the length of time it takes to prosecute the case is. It really impacts the dollar. Immigration is a faster processing of those cases compared to drugs. It is really that time factor that reduces this. Thank you. Thank you. Director callomey, i want to thank you for the work you do in counterterrorism. I was there when we created the development of it counterterrorism branch, and ive lost its evolution. I just want to say i have watched its evolution. I just want to say whether it is the well known, or the nonwellknown we have been able to disrupt plots, and that is a significant thing, and i want to thank you for it. I would ask you, one of my disappointments was to learn that the sixyear court on the detention and Interrogation Program sat in the locker and no one looked at it. The report, the 6000 pages and the 38,000 footnotes, which had been compiled, contained numerous examples of a learning experience of cases of interrogation, of where the department could learn, perhaps, some new things from past mistakes. And the fact that it has not been opened, at least that is been reported to me, is a disservice. It is classified, it is for the appropriate departments, of which you wear one. I would like to ask, if you would open that report, and is a certain people to read it designate certain people to read it. Maybe even have a discussion of how things might be improved by suggestions and report. I will do that, senator. I have read the executive summary. You asked me to do it during my confirmation hearing, and i have done it. What we have not done, and i think it is a good question, is head we thought about whether there are Lessons Learned for us , we do not engage in interrogation like that. The answer is yes, i will think about it better, and i will be about where we are in terms of looking at the entire thing. I do not know where its at this time. Thank you. Let me talk about another problem. Human trafficking is now the second largest criminal enterprise in the world. It is behind only the drug trade. In this country, children 12, 13, 14 are being trafficked. They are being transported across state lines, two cities across United States. In some areas like los angeles even street gangs are running these trafficking rings. Traffickers, not to distance themselves have come upon a method of using the internet. There are some 20 internet sites where a purveyor, a trafficker for as little as a dollar can buy inan ad. The internet, effectively, becomes complicit. These are children, these are underage girls, sometimes underage boys. They are held against their will. I have become very concerned about this, and will be doing more on it. My question to you, is what kind what can the fbi do to really make this a major priority, and crackdown on it . It is international, but it is also bigtime national. Your characterization of this is correct, senator. We work with 70 task force is to try to address this. We work with international authorities. It is a big feature in our life. We are trying to send the message that there is a huge cost to dealing with this in the United States. We have a wonderful country with a First Amendment that protects the ability to make websites but we are trying to curb trafficking and losses people up lockl tbosehose people up. For the last 10 years from february 2000 42 december of 2014 2004 two december of 2014, there were individuals who were on the federal terrorist watchlist at the time who attempted to buy a firearm or obtain and explosives permit. In 91 of the cases 2043 separate occasions, those known or what can be done about this . Director comey immediate alert is sent so they can incorporate that information in their investigation. It is challenging because known or suspected has not been adjudicated, that if somebody is a terrorist, we are investigating, so we do not want to blow our investigation. Senator feinstein in 2007, the