Transcripts For CSPAN Politics Public Policy Today 20120622

united states, i will not give up the fight to change it. in the face of a congress that refuses to do anything on immigration, i have said that i will take action wherever i can. my administration has been doing what we can without the help in congress for more than three years now. last week, we took another step. on friday, we announced we are listing the shadow of deportation from deserving young people who were brought to this country as children. we should have passed the dream at a long time ago. it was written by members of both parties. when it came up for a vote one year and a half ago, republicans in congress blocked it. [applause] >> the bill had not changed. the need had not changed. the only thing that changed was politics. [applause] >> the need had not changed. the bill had not changed. it was written with republicans. the only things that changed where politics, and i refuse to keep looking young people in the eye and tell them tough luck, the politics is too hard. i have met these young people all across the country. they are studying in our schools. they are playing with our children. pledging allegiance to our flag, hoping to serve our country -- they are americans. in their hearts, in their minds, they are americans through and through, in every single white but on paper, and all they want is to -- every single way but on paper, and all they want to do is go to college and give back to the country that they love. [applause] let's get rid of the shadow of deportation and give them some hope. that was the right thing to do. it was the right thing to do. [applause] >> it is not amnesty. it falls short of where we need to become a path to citizenship. it is not a permanent fix. it is a temporary measure that lets us focus our resources wisely while offering justice to young people, and it is precisely because it is temporary that congress still needs to come up with a long- term immigration solution rather than argue that we did this the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. so, to those who are saying congress should be the one to fix this, absolutely. for those who say we should do this in a bipartisan fashion, absolutely. my door has been open for three and a half years. they know where to find me. [laughter] >> i have said time and again, send me the dream act. i will sign it right away. i am still waiting to work with anyone from either party that is committed to real reform. [applause] >> in the meantime, the question we should consider is this -- was providing these young people a measure of temporary relief the right thing to do? i think it was. it is long past time that we gave them a sense of hope. you're speaker from yesterday has a different view. in the speech he said that when he makes a promise to you he will keep it. he has promised to veto the dream act, and we should take him at his word. [applause] [laughter] >> i am just saying. [applause] >> i believe that would be a tragic mistake. you do, too. on all of these issues, the investments we need to grow the middle class, leave a better future for our kids, and deficit reduction that is fair and balanced, and immigration reform, on consumer financial protection so that people are not exploited, whether it is a paid a long shot or their senator and inspected their family, and all of these issues washington has a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the country. the whole idea behind the dream act was inspired by a music teacher in illinois who decided to call dick durbin, for senator, when she found out that one for students was forced to live in the shadows. even as bad idea fell prey to gridlock in the -- in washington, it gained momentum in the rest of the country. forever it is an -- for every student that marched, for every parent that chose to stand up for them, because these are all of our kids, for every american who stood up, spoke out across the country because they saw a wrong and wanted it to be righted, putting their shoulder to the oil and moving us closer towards justice -- to the wheel and moving us closer towards justice. that is always move us forward. it is not start with washington. it starts with 1 million quiet heroes who love their country and believe they can change it. we all have different backgrounds. we all have different political beliefs. the latino community is not monolithic. the african-american community is not all of one mind. this is a big country. sometimes in tough times in the country this big and busy, especially in a political year, news -- those differences are casting a bright spot. when i ran -- i ran for this office because i am convinced that what binds us together has always proven stronger than what drives us apart. we are one people. we need one another. [applause] >> our patriotism is rooted not in race, ethnicity, creed -- it is based on a shared belief of an enduring and permanent promise of america. that is the promise that draws so many talented, driven people to these shores. that is the promise that drew my own father here. if that is the promise that drew your parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents', generations of people that dreamed of a place where knowledge and opportunity was available to anyone that was willing to work for it, anyone willing to seize it. a place where there was no limit to how far you could go, how high you could climb. they took a chance. america embraced their drive, embraced their courage. said come, you are welcome. this is who we are. every single day i walked into the oval office, every day that i have this extraordinary privilege to be your president, i will always remember that in no other nation on earth could my story even be possible. [applause] >> that is something i celebrate. [applause] >> that is what drives me in every decision i make. to try and widen the circle of opportunity, to fight for the big, generous and optimistic country we inherited, to carry that dream for four generations to come -- when i meet these young people throughout communities, i see myself. who knows what they might achieve? and my niecehter's and my nephews. who knows what they might achieve if we just give them a chance? that is what i am fighting for. that is what i stand for. this fight will not always be easy. it has not always been easy. it will not happen overnight. our history has been one where the march towards justice, freedom, equality, it has taken time. there will always be plenty of stubborn opposition that says no, you can not. no, you should not. try. america was built by someone -- by people that's -- that said something different. that said yes we can. as long as i have the privilege of being your president, i will be alongside you fighting for the country that we, together, dream of. if god bless you. thank you, naleo. god bless the united states of america. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ next president obama making an appearance a the national association of elected latino conference. he will return to the white house later tonight. earlier today, marco rubio spoke to this conference, and addressed the immigration reform, saying the biggest problem is the burdensome process. he was introduced by for the senator now martina's. -- mel martinez. >> thank you. what an honor it is to be with you again. i've had a chance to speak with you at your conferences, and i know this is an ever-growing group. i am delighted to be here today. my job is to introduce someone that should be a great source of pride for all of us. "marco rubio, an american son" that is the title of his new book. if you read it, you would know he is one of us. he chose a better life by coming to america, immigrating here -- he is the second generation of that family, a family that worked hard. they were not bankers. they would probably not be at the bank. this banquet unless they were serving at the banquet. -- it probably would not be at this banquet because -- unless they were serving at the banquet. his -- their son rose to their ranks in a remarkable time and frank. his dream of being an nfl wide receiver never materialized, but he did something more remarkable, becoming a young age the speaker of the florida house of representatives. if i was always proud of him and what he did have such a young age. i remember taking him on a tour of the capitol when i was up there as the united states senator from florida, and what an honor it is for me to introduce to you one of us, reject -- [speaking spanish] who knows what it is like to work hard, to see your dad go off to work, and how to have children succeed through education as he has had the opportunity to succeed. help me to welcome some and i am immensely proud to have follow me in the united states senate. the united states and junior senator from florida, marco rubio. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you, senator martinez. [speaking spanish] thank you, senator martinas, for showing my book that is available on amazon for $16.99. [laughter] >> thank you. [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] [applause] >> i apologize to those that do not seek -- speak spanish. i was just telling them how i saved a bunch of money on my car insurance. [laughter] >> thank you. one of the things that frustrates me is when people speak to hispanics and let's quinellas is it all may want to talk about immigration. -- and latinos, it is -- all they want to talk about is immigration. we do not think about emigration all day. we have the same worries, hopes and fears as everyone else in this country. we worry about making payroll on friday, balancing the budget at the end of the month, the schools our kids go to, about whether tomorrow will be better for them than it has done for us. that is what i wanted to concentrate on today when i came here to speak to you, but i will not let myself to that. both my head and my heart tells me that we are as close as we ever been to a critical turning point in the debate about immigration so i have abandoned my hopes of only talking about the economy and jobs, as important as that might be, for one day, in hopes of speaking frankly to you on the issue of immigration, what i've learned in my year and half in the senate, and what i can hope for moving forward. when i get to the senate, and nobody wanted to talk to me about it. if there were so many stars, too much pain and to many people had been beat up. i tried to raise the issue and people would say i do not want to go there again. if i tried that five years ago. i tried that three years ago. all i got was grief. that is the impression i got when i came into the senate, and i want you to know, it is not just republicans. it is senators that have been burned by the way this issue has been discussed and approached and did not want to talk about it anymore. that is what i first learned to read the second thing i have come to realize is how truly complicated if this issue has become. this is not a simple issue. immigration -- both sides like to talk about this issue like it is an easy, yes or no answer. it is much more complicated. if those of us involved in the debate need to recognize that openly. both sides have raised valid points. the people who are against illegal immigration and make that the core of their argument do it as only a law-and-order issue, but we know it is much more than that. yes, it is a law-and-order issue, but it is also a human issue. these are real people. these are human beings who have children, hopes and dreams. these are people who are doing what virtually any of us would do if our children were hungry, if their country was dangerous, if they had no hope for their future. [applause] >> too often in our conversation about immigration, that perspective is lost. who among us would not do whatever it took to feed our children and provide for them a better future? the other side of the debate is equally guilty of over- simplifying it. illegal immigration is a real problem. it is not in a legitimate problem. it is real. it has consequences. one of the great untold stories in america is no community understands that better than ours. it is lots in taos, hispanics who see the impact of illegal immigration -- locking else, hispanics, who see the impact of the legal -- latinos, hispanics, who see the impact of illegal immigration and with the burden of its costs. we are an extremely generous country. 1 million people a year in a great to the united states legally. no country in the world comes close to that. there are probably 50 million people, including many in latin america, maybe your family members, while waiting to come here legally. every single day in my office people come in and say my mom has been waiting, my sister has been waiting for 15 years. why is our message to them? , legally, it is cheaper and quicker? that is not an answer either. last but not least competent there is this notion that -- least, i feel there is this notion that people are demanding their rights. the truth is there is no right to be legally immigrate to the united states. is not about demanding rights. he is about appealing to the compassion of the most compassionate nation in the history of the world. why is this simplified? i will tell you why, because it is powerful politics. it is a powerful political issue. i have seen people use it to raise money, take legitimate concerns about illegal immigration, turn it into panic, fear, anger, and turned that into votes and money. i've seen people go in the other direction. anyone who disagrees with their ideas as anti-immigrant and anti-hispanic. that is ridiculous everything is about politics. i am seen it about hat -- ridiculous. everything is about politics. i have seen it firsthand. i started to work on accommodating children who are in this country through no fault of their home on documented, and do it in a way that invites us, not divides us, and honors our legacy as a nation of immigrants, but also a nation of laws. i propose ideas and the reaction on the left was an immediate dismissal. i saw people say that i was proposing a new three-sith compromise, harkening back to the days when a slave was only 3/5 of a person. i was accused of supporting apartheid. three months later, a president takes a similar idea and diplomats it through executive action, and is now the greatest idea in the world. i do not care who gets the credit, but it exposes the fact that this issue is all about politics for some people. not just democrats. republicans, too. the truth is after actions less -- last week, all the people want to talk about is what this means for the election. what does this mean politically? was this not a brilliant political tactic? if this is what this issue is about to you, maybe it was, but i was not looking for a talking point. i was not looking to influence the election in november. i was looking to help these kids that i have not care if is a not kids that i read about in the newspaper. -- these are kids that i have met. these are not kids i read about in a newspaper. they came here when they were five. they are valedictorians. they want to be biologists. if we are going to deport them in a country that needs more molecular biologist. that is what we are -- what it was about for me. if that is what it is still about for me. only when it is about that will this ever gets solved. as long as this issue is a political pingpong that each side uses to win elections and influence votes, i'm telling you it will not get solved. there are too many people that have concluded that this issue unresolved is more powerful. they wanted to stay on resolved. it is easier to influence elections, it is easier to use to raise money. the only way to solve it is a balanced approach that recognizes this is complicated. i think the way you have to do it here is you have to approach it, first by understanding we have to win the confidence of the american people back, the confidence that we are serious about discouraging illegal immigration in the future, and that is why enforcement is important as a part of any reform. i also think we have to reform our legal immigration system. the single greatest contributor to the illegal immigration is a burdensome, complicated legal immigration process. there are millions of people in this country that would go back home if they thought they could come back next year to work in their seasonal jobs. i know of no one that would not rather immigrate legally if they could, if they could afford it. there are some people that are on that status through no fault of their own. somebody told them they were an immigration lawyer they gave the guy a $5,000 check, and the guide vanished. now they are undocumented. it is complicated it. if we are able to reform and modernize our immigration system, when the confidence of the american people back, which are left with the issue of millions of people better still undocumented, and the great question is what you do about them. i've talked about what you do about the kids. what about everybody else? here is the truth if we are honest with ourselves. we do not know yet. it is not easy. when not going to round up and support 12 million people. we are not going to grant amnesty to these people. somewhere between those ideas, is a solution that will never be easy, but i promise you it will get easier to find if we have a legal immigration system that works and confidence that we are serious about enforcing our laws. some might say that it's too much to ask, this balanced approach. it is if it continues to be politicized. i was tempted to rip apart the policies of the administration. it is a coincidence, that is an election year. why did he make this a priority? i guess i just did tell you. that is not the direction i want. because if i did, if that is what i came here to talk about, then i would be doing the same thing that i just criticized. the exact same thing that i just criticized. is it possible for us to reach that point? let me close by telling you why i think we should and must. i rely on a story i recently learned of. a story of an elderly man who came to the u.s. legally, and then decided to go back to his country because he was discouraged by the way things were here. he decided to go back to his country. after a few years there, he decided to come back. when he came back to the united states, i think he thought since he had come in legally once before he was able to re-enter, but he was wrong. he did not realize that if you leave for a year york immigrant visa expires and you have to renew its. he was elderly and disabled, but did not speak english, and he gets the united states and he is detained and questioned and told the past to appear in court, where he is ordered deported. you are elderly, disabled, do not speak the language, confronting american jurisprudence. he must have been panicked. somehow along the way because of conditions in his country and other factors, the u.s. said you do not have a legal right to be here, but we will let you stay. because your story touches our heart and our legacy as a nation of immigrants. this story matters to me because years later that man was so grateful to this country that he would spend hours with his grandson talking about how extraordinary america was, what a special country it was. today his grandson is in u.s. senate and stands before you today. [applause] knowing that we have in the past been a nation that has been able to balance our laws and compassion, our decide to live in a nation of laws, but also have a nation of immigrants. how did we get to this point? how can immigration be a controversial nation in a nation of immigrants? how can this nation be so divided over who gets to come here now? maybe the best way to confront it is to remind us of who we are and how tightly bound it is into the essence of our greatness. the statue of liberty was not built as a symbol of immigration, but as an ode to republican is a, not the republican party, although some people claim, but i am kidding. the reason is because immigrants from europe would sail right past it and the first thing they would see about america was that statute. there was a poem that was written on the plaque there that i think reminds us of who we borer, of what makes us different, and that hui must remain. when i -- and of who we must remain. i reminded of the during my parents took, of people who were desperate to provide their children with a life better than theirs, making sure every opportunity they did not have would live in the lives of their children and grandchildren. this sentiment exists among all people all over the world, but only in our country has that dream become reality time and time again. let us remind ourselves of the words of that poem, which cost us an answer is the simple question of what do we love more, do we love our party's war that our country cannot do we care about the next election more about the future? are we still that beacon of hope of the world? are we still the country our parents found when they came here? will our children inherit a different one, one more like the rest of the world? are we still the nation that believes in these words -- "keep ancient lands, your story h pomp. give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, the refuse of your teeming shores. send these, the homeless, send these to me. i lift my lamp beside the golden door." thank you. >> coming up tonight on c-span, from dallas, we will bring you coverage of a debate for u.s. senate in texas. the state holds its election on july 31. this gets underway at 9:00 p.m. live on c-span. this sunday, we take a look at the obama for america campaign. we will speak but david axle about the usetalk of social media. they will give a tour of their chicago headquarters. >> if all of us decide we're trying to tighten our belts and spend less, what happens is we all end up poor because our spending occurs at the same time. this is stuff that we have known --since the 1930's [unintelligible] it is self-defeating. >> who is going to tell them the truth? we have to tell them the truth. if we do not, then our country falls. we must succeed in this. we will reach them to the media, through politics, and to pop culture. pop culture -- we should not be afraid to get out there and the influencers and pop culture. >> coverage with paul krugman and sarah palin, watch them on line on the stand video library. >> this was something that was swept under the rug and kept from the american people and the mexican people. there are hundreds of innocent mexican citizens who have been murdered as a result of this, but the only thing we knew outside the government program was that guns from dealers or going into mexico and causing these problems with the cartel, when the government was sanctioning this and sending guns into mexico. >> she is interviewed by major character this weekend on c- span2. >> how do you approach interviews different than news reporting interviews? >> i think a book interviews as gathering history. i think of interviewing when i am working for the news side as gathering contemporary information. >> how difficult is it to remain impartial in your reporting? >> i am going to try to get people as full an understanding of what is happening in this campaign. it is not that difficult to put or biases to the side. >> how does social media work in terms of getting information? >> twitter is a crime news source for anybody who pays attention to politics. it did not exist four years ago. >> sunday night, dan balz is interviewed on the newspaper business and a rise of social media, sunday at 8:00 p.m. on c- span. >> is week a senate banking subcommittee held their hearing looking at the ipo process. this hearing for wednesday is just over an hour. >> let me call the hearing to order. my ranking member is delayed. we anticipate that other colleagues will be writing shortly. but since the panel has assembled and the time has come, it is a corporate to begin the hearing. let me welcome everybody to the hearing, an important topic. i have had the opportunity to read your testimony, and let me thank you all for a very insightful comments. i appreciate it and look forward to your questioning. the number of individuals participating in capital markets is expanding. once an opportunity limited to institutional investors, now the chance of participating in ipo's is available to ordinary investigation. a central question is, is the system transparent and is it working for individual investors? a dysfunctional market can harm our economy, and while the summer is the peak season for planned ipo's and cancelled and more americans and the investment community are questioning the integrity of the process, and i think we recognize that without confidence by investors the ability to form capital and to generate jobs is impaired. that evidence is fundamental to our system and. regulators continue to investigate the problem around the process of the ipo. it is a broader set of issues that we want to confront this morning. there is concern that the jobs at recently passsexed make somef that most important changes in recent decades. it may have caused other problems such as allowing more companies for reverse mergers to go public in the united states. a recent article quoted special purpose acquisition co. and blank check companies come up empty shells used in mergers, have been quick to identify regulatory filings as emerging growth companies. the new law uses that label to describe which companies should be exempt from financial reporting and corporate governance rules. companies with less than $1 billion and will grow revenues are eligible for the less restrictive rules. the standard would have been met by a majority of companies in the lastp o's few years. it allows them to use new review processes for ipo's and let's their banks communicate more freely with investors. underwriting the growth companies is a big growth on wall street. investors are expected to take a bandage of the requirements. retail investors may be denied critical information. during the expedited process was to pass the jobs act, not discussed. our capital markets are more efficient and transparent and can better facilitate the capital formation. all investors face certain risks when to treating capital due to small and large companies. the panelists the case that risk is inherent in all ipo's. we need to make sure that there is one set of rules. everyone should access to the same set of data and disclosures come at least equivalent data. chairman johnson has instructed staff to conduct its due diligence about facebook's ipo. our focus is on the broader issue of ipo's. today's hearing will serve as a jumping off point examining procedures needed in taking a company public. when the senator arrives, or my colleagues, if they wish to make a statement, i will interrupt them and let you make your statements. our first witness is dr. and german. -- ann sherman. her research on that it has been published in top financial journals. she was a consultant on the google ipo. she has taught at the university of madison. our next witness is lisa buyer. if the founding principle of the class 5 group. she has first hand experience as an investment banker and internal coordinator analyst. she was the director of business optimization for google. our next witness is joel trotter. he is the global coach of a representation practice group in the washington, d.c., area. his focus is on capital markets transactions, securities regulation, and general corporate matters. our last witness is ilan moscovitz, and he is a senior analyst for mott gleeful -- motely fool. this research has been cited numerous times in the national press. all your testimony will be made part of the record in its entirety. we will begin with dr. sherman. >> thank you for letting me testified today. my research has been on ipo methods in various countries. and last three decades there has been a lot of experimentation with different methods. the u.s. method is the most popular method around the planet. it was not always that way. if you go back to the 99 nepos it was used only in the u.s. and canada. , wase end of the 1990's the dominant method. with book building the underwriter can be back from investors before accepting the offer price. it is not easy to get people to tell you they like an offering if you know your ortiz that information to raise the price, and that is why it is important the underwriter controls allocation. by controlling allocations, the underwriter can favor regular investors that do not just try to cherry pick a hot offerings, can favre investors that the feedback that helped set the price --. there are reasons why the underwriter may favorite institutional investors. ordinary investors may not have the resosa -- resources. if you look around the world, most countries open up the process to all ordinary investors. , but they do not control the price setting. ordinary investors did not help set the price. they get a chance to get shares. the most popular at that outside the u.s. is a hybrid where they have a tranche of usesgbook hamabook building. everyone is allowed to order shares in the retail tranche, so is open and transparent, they do not disrupt the price-setting process. that is what works well on around the world. the method that does not work well is to use an option open to everyone so everyone has an equal say in setting the price. i do not want to use too much of my time, but i would be happy to answer questions on that. the auction method has been used in more than two dozen countries, and they have a band did it because of huge problems. when i was doomed literature searches to find more about auctions, i learned that search terms were debacle, catastrophe, calamity. the auction that it is one that has blown up in people's faces a round the world. retail investors should be allowed to participate, but you have to be careful about giving them a major role in the price- setting process. i am neutral on whether the u.s. should require people to get an in eric role to investors. it should be to the hybrid that it with a separate tranche, so everybody has an equal chance of getting shares. last, on the world of small investors, where you have a web site and a bunch of people putting up a few hundred dollars each, i see problems. the first is who is going to do that due diligence. fraud is a major problem. someone needs to screen these offerings before they get funding. if we do not find a way to do that, funding could be a disaster for ordinary investors. the second question is who is going to set the price. i hope i have communicated that letting ordinary investors price disastrous, and if they are not good at pricing sophisticated ipo's, is less reason to think they can price early-stage start-ups. thank you, and i will be happy to answer questions. >> thank you for inviting me today. i am honored to submit my commentary to this important discussion. this is such an important rite of passage for some many companies. having banned an investor responsible for deploying the assets of aggregate individuals, part of the team that diplomats to a unique ipo, and a board member as its transition to the public, and looking at the process from a variety of perspectives, and it is from that that i offer comments to date. inherentlylways an very risky thing, riskier than investing in seasoned companies. if you look in 2012, the best performing ipo was a buffalo, new york, based company which had a difficult time getting public. it traded up 5% on day one, and now it is up 162%. then another was embraced in february, up 40% de one, currently down 31%, and then there is another which was up 190% on day one, and today is up 90%, meaning those that participated in the frenzy of day one may be under water. the point is to say it is very difficult to predict what any stock will do on its ipo. is no right answer. the people who invested in day one our speculator is, not investors. investors are in it for a long period of time. the importance is to make sure up front anyone who chooses to participate in an ipo consider the rewards and risks. i would suggest before confirming an order every individual be asked to read to the knowledge and confirm the agreement with a short simple statement along these lines -- i have knowledge that this stock as an equal chance of trading up or down from that original price. my hope is that a cigarette box type warning of this nature just add a moment of pause to transaction decisions too often based on a motion. with my remaining time, i will add comments. some institutions have the chance to meet with teams to see a presentation and ask questions. it is not possible for individuals to have that same exposure, although with the advent of the retail road show they have the chance to watch the presentation, although most of them do not. i wonder if there is a chance to level the playing field by adding, suggesting to companies going public that at an hour or that offer an hour of questions and answers, on line, for individual investors, where they can respond to questions to an investor who had watched the road show. a third comment echoes what he said. i have concerns about many provisions of the recently pass jobs act, they reduce transparency and roll back important investor protections. i would suggest that may need refinement. the questions for the initial invitation, which dr. sherman addressed, the present allocation, i would suggest that needs to be in the hands of professionals who have a by-year rate obligation -- who have a fiduciary obligation and the bankers that the best information about the market and interest in a particular security. it is not appropriate for retailers to set the prices. the process worked very well for both companies and informed investors. i would recommend that we at a request for a straightforward acknowledgment of risk to the management teams, add a question and answer session, and be revised some provisions of the jobs act. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and my thanks to the ranking member and other members of the subcommittee. i have provided you with detailed information in my testimony and what to highlight areas that their emphasis. first, the national importance of our markets, the second bedrock principle of our securities regulation, which is disclosure, third, another better principle, the concept of materiality in that disclosure, and i want to comment on the nature of risk, reward, and capital formation. the first point i would like to make is that ipo's must compete with other forms of capital formation. merging companies have alternative had is providing liquidity to their investors. they can pursue a sale of a company or an ipo. that is what we have seen in recent years. this matters a lot because ipo's play an important role. as obama said when he signed the jobs act, new businesses that account for almost every new jobs created in america and going public is a major step toward expanding and hiring more workers. the ipo ramp is an important step, and provide it if it -- significant cost savings. the support i would like to address is what else we can do to help ipo's. we can return to better principles of securities regulations. from the beginning congress has mandated a disclosure regime rather than merit regulation. my mentor and former partner used an anecdote the contrast disclosure with merit regulation. john is well-known for distinguished careers and his or -- e as directed of his co-workers refused that an upstart company named today everyone in this room would recognize, they rejected that request to sell shares to residents and their state because of the ceo's compensation been too high. what was the ipo price? answer, $22 per share. john responded to his colleagues, the stock is now trading at $60 per share, so how did the in help investors buy for granting them from buying at 22 put that at that sums up merit regulation and highlight the benefits of the disclosure regime that lets investors choose the winners and losers. the third point i want to make is about disclosure and what information companies must provide to busters in a regime that takes the path of disclosure rather than merit regulation. the answer to that question is that disclosure of all information that is material is required. anyone who has looked at an ipo prospectus has wonder if we have gone far afield from a central principle. a prospectus today is a detailed document running as much as 200 pages. brevity may be the soul of wit, but hardly the earmarked of an ipo prospectus. an avalanche of trivial information obscures' truly important information and does nothing to increase the protection to investors. my last point is about risk. it is a simple fact of economic life that not all ipo's to see. in a commercial enterprise can earn a loss. the company may or may not make money for its investors. the cover page of every prospectus today -- and a prospectus as many details of risk factors highlighting the risk related to the company and the offer. in addition, apple markets must offer the opportunity to take risks. markets have no teacher when they are risk free. even if we couldd -- [no audio] >> national association of latino elected and appointed officials mr. chairman, i want to thank you for the opportunity to offer testimony today. the purpose is to help the world in best better. millions of investors rely on us for guidance on how to manage money and as an advocate for the rights of shareholders. we have work to create a level playing field in the market. it is for this reason we are grateful whether the ipo process is working for investors. ipo's are critical to developing public markets and helping businesses raise capital. [no audio] the deck is stacked against us in major ways. first-come insiders and their -- reports of a recent ipo provide an example. there is an equal access to shares. the initial offering is limited to preferred clients of underwriters. by the time we can buy shares, there has been a significant mark up. the first -- $124 billion the not the to the companies going public, but to france and other clients of the underwriters. the ipo process is likely to get worse for investors as a result of the recently passed jobs act. it will lower the bar that the company must meet the public. the weakening reporting requirements means less information at a lower quality cool. when we lost faith in the quality of ipo's in the late 1990 us, volume crashed 70% by 2001. leveldoubled from that following debt settlement and passage of sarbanes-oxley, reforms that address the worst abuses of the doc-, bubble. the jobs act does this for other companies going public. our objective should be to level the playing field by maximizing transparency and useful disclosure. first, extend the application and enforcement of regulations their discussion to the beginning of a process. this will help to improve the flow of information to all investors and is one of the most preventable asymmetries between underwriters and their favorite clients and investors. second, require companies and underwriters allocate shares of the initial offering any more efficient manner. companies like google successfully played variations on at an auction process that is investors the opportunity to participate in buying the shares at the same price. an added benefit is it lowers the cost about going public where public and press where companies by more than half. fixed the most troubling portion of the jobs act. while the number of improvements could be made, if you're looking for the most straightforward remedies, one would be to decrease the size threshold in order to increase the amount of information available to investors. the current definition be needlessly encompasses all ipo's. second remedies would be to implement a lockup period which would extend from the offering to the least 180 days after at issue wer. this will better align the incentives of insiders and investors and will help insure any capital raised serves its purpose by flown to the company and not the insiders exit think on the thinkon-ramp. as the ipo process stance, or near investors have an equal access to information and the market. we are asking for a level trends parents see -- a level playing field and transparency. i appreciate the opportunity to submit testimony and will be happy to answer questions. >> thank you for your testimony. that we begin the question for the whole panel, that focuses on the issue of how do we best protect the retail investor, given that the prevailing model, with variations now, because of the jobs act, is a book building, where managers of the ipo, with clients, and as the theory in order to advance price discovery cut all these road shows, etc., but as the facebook ipo suggested, there was critical information, particularly at the last minute, was available to favor investors and was not the senate did it to the public. i want your thoughts. if we're going to involve retail investors, how can we do it said they will are confident they can get good information and will continue to invest in ipo's? >> it is important to level the playing field in terms of information, and i was surprised with baseball. analysts were allowed to talk but institutions, but not individuals. i can see why it is there because individuals, if allowed to be given these forecasts -- it was expectations of the future -- individuals might not understand that these are speculative and might not be able to appreciate it. the st. information should be available to everyone. -- the same information should be available to everyone. merit, sclosure and not americ and it is important to get everyone access to the same information. the questions and answers from the roche show should be available. >> under greater thanact, is a loosening of the analyst's role, that they now can be sort of compensated or at least -- it is not the subject wall between the analyst and the promoters -- is that accurate >? >> i do not know. >> let's remember individuals have the ability to participate through mutual funds. the favored clients are those big firms that have aggregated many individuals. the firefighters, teachers all get to participate in the ipo's through the screen at the professional investor. the equal of the summit -- the equal distribution of information is important, but remember everybody had access to information that general motors was pulling their advertising off. that was a huge piece of information that did not seem to quell the enthusiasm. the issue was morgan stanley cost estimate which they offer to the client who paid them. the estimate is a product that morgan stanley sells to its customers, and i do not know that we should be regulating what information customers can share with their clients. it is a little bit of a slippery slope, and if we insist investment banks give estimates to everyone, why would they come up with estimates? they will find other places. the jobs act issue i find with biggest concerns is many banks are helped by that, so analyst of banks who have the most information about that are restricted from talking. the only ones who can publish research are those who are farther away, and i am not sure that serves any purpose. >> as i indicated, i am not any position to talk about any particular ipo or company, but i will say that in the area of analyst research, all of the protections developed in the last decade remain in place. they are unchanged as a result of the jobs acts. there were changes relating to those areas that were meeting to be implemented, to interpretation by the regulators in the area. >> with respect to the global analyst research summit, that is my understanding as well. one concern with the changes made in the jobs act is if you allow analysts to meet with prospective clients, there is a possibility you can have analysts meeting clients -- leading companies that want to come public, and they say here is our analyst, he has a night suit, he will write nice things about your company, and we will be a strong buy recommendation . what the company's work on public and were served in directly and got good recommendations from analysts. facebook, it is not the problem that shares went down, because that can happen with any ipo. i would say that there is a problem with equal access to the information. when reports from analysts who have special access to management, they can get information not available to all investors, and when you see something like facebook, there is a problem where you have multiple analysts from various cut theirers who all goi estimates to the same number. you get reports that people from facebook they have indicated they should go over their estimates, the public gets some about our line subscribers are continuing to grow. the quality of information presented to prospective clients of the underwriters is on the same level that investors would have if they have to try to discern what that means. >> you point out that in other countries, retail investors do not engage in the price discovery and setting. that is restricted to -and a- presumed that model is appropriate. many countries have a specific tranche for retail investors in which they can buy at the same price. can you comment about how effective that is good is that something we should look at in terms of our approach? >> i would like to see it considered especially for larger offerings. with smaller ones, they are already marketed toward retail. for larger offerings -- i try to talk to facebook to do this -- that way everyone has an equal chance to participate. when i lived in hong kong, all i needed was a hong kong i.d. number, and everybody had an equal chance, the problem that occurred with auctions is when you get retail investor demand is uncertain, you can get these lots of investors coming in and pushing the price up to unsustainable levels, and people lose money, and then the retailers go away because they are scared of the process. there needs to be coordination. we can easily open up allocation to give everyone a chance without disrupting the process, which is not good for anyone. >> and one of the other aspects of the american model is a the road show in which analysts are able to quiz management, and might be appropriate to consider making that much more accessible. with facebook there was a version put on the net, and neglected to have the questions that analysts thought were the most important part of the demonstration. is the road show process the best mechanism in your opinion? >> i think it is important and would like to see the question and the answer -- look at why investors go to the rear choke, it is to see the management action, to see how they respond to tough questions, because you're not system testing in the idea of the product. you are investing or betting on the management team met. baseball, their first -- facebook replaced their road show with a 30-minute video, and investors were unhappy about that. i've watched the online road shows, but nbc management -- but you see management scripted and rehearsed. >> we have got the jobs act, and you suggest it is opening up new opportunities. is one opportunity, as has been suggested to, to take a shell company, effectively, that is already registered and simply do some type of reverse merger, so you ordered financial statements so you do not have the rigors of sarbanes-moxley. you do not have to go through the traditional process of the book building, analysis, or offered. is that something that concerns you about how either willingly or unwittingly this new act be used? many of the things you just said are in fact true. they were true before april 5, 2012, and the continued to be true today. the act did not change the dynamic. they have been always subject to review. they go to the same type of rigorous sec review process. in terms of sarbanes oxley, plants, -- , sarbanes oxley compliance, they have been exempted under dodd-frank from the control audit. note of those aspects relating to shell companies has changed as a result of the jobs act. >> this might be the most ironic aspect, there is nothing in the bill that requires in the creation of jobs to qualify for the protections and all of the benefits of the jobs act. is that accurate? >> the premise underlying the ipo on-ramp, going back to the competitive nature of the capital formation process and if you have an early stage company that needs to provide a return to its early investors who bet on the company when it was just an idea, that type of the company can pursue one cantwo paths. it can sell the company and be part of a larger enterprise and have redundant positions eliminated, or it can raise its own capital to be independent. in tracing your own capital to become an independent enterprise, you're going to road business, and you need more employees. you will need to hire people, and you can think of cities around our nation that are almost synonymous with certain major companies today, and yet in aost every case they started out as fledgling enterprises that nobody would have guessed would become a household name companies to take. when you think about the connection between ipo's and job creation, you can pick your favorite city, and you will think of a company that has changed the landscape of that city. >> specifically, all of the provisions of the jobs act the ax -- can be accessed by companies who do not grow one job. they can do this until they get to the size of $1 billion in revenue. it would seem to me that they could have bought it standards that would protect whenever their shareholders -- but the reality is you do not have to have one extra job to be an emerging-growth company. is that correct? >> yes, sir, and several points in response to your very good questions there. the profit and loss system in capital markets and our free enterprise system and tails both profits and losses. this goes back to the distinction between merit regulation versus disclosure, and people now in heinz that talk about certain dot-com companies and how they are examples as bad ideas. nobody knew for sure at the outside whether they were bad ideas. investors had to pick the winners and losers, and some of those companies are long forgotten, but many of them are around today and had even created a new industries and changed the ways we purchase products. that is one point in response. on the issue of sarbanes oxley compliance, the jobs council headed by mr. immelt recommend a permanent exemption from sarbanes oxley for all companies below $1 billion in revenue. the jobs act provision that gives this on-ramp is much more limited than that recommendation from the president's jobs council. any new company has up to two years before it has to comply, so it is changing in terms of sarbanes oxley. >> one could argue, before the jobs act, that the requirement to eliminate that for the initial public offering might have been a little bit more generous than was necessary. do we already recognized in sarbanes oxley that companies coming on-line maybe not be as well prepared put your comments about this? >> well, with regard to the jobs act, you are referring to reporting about companies as well as other articles describing companies describing themselves as blank-check companies. there is a quotation in that article from the nasdaq vice- chairmen who lobbied hard for the jobs act. i would say we should be careful about what the emerging-growth companies and exemptions are used for. we have seen trouble in china with their reverse merger disaster. we had reporting in china and an accounting standards in china are not at the same level as ours are. esol when investors -- we saw when investors realized this. they acted on this in late 2010. shares of 93% of companies fell by an average of 50% of chinese emerging-growth companies. anyone of them that wanted to raise capital after that we became very difficult. the and the reason that happens is if people believe that they cannot trust the numbers coming out of china. you are investing in a small chinese company, the first risk factor you consider is whether or not it is a fraud. i would just say that we should be careful about how we -- we do not want to move in that direction, is all i am saying. >> mr. trotter, brought up merit regulation, which might understanding is there is not merit regulation, is that correct? >> that is correct. it is a matter of degree. when you require -- there are instances when disclosure can veer into merkel prado -- into merit regulation. that would be pure disclosure. requiring specific disclosure about specific topics, or requiring companies to comply with substantive standards that are not simply about disclosing to investors all of their material information, then you are veering into merit regulation. >> my understanding is that the sec cannot refuse registration because they reject a business model. they require you to spell out in excruciating detail, and that is not merit regulation. it is setting up a straw man where they say the fight is against mayor regulation. we did not have merit regulation. do you consider we have merit regulation? >> no, i did not think so, and that is very important. in other countries, they give investors much less information and rely on metrics such as as the company to earn a profit for the last two years, and if not, you cannot go public. it closes out a lot of good companies but is not approved pricing because people did not have enough information. the strength in the u.s. is we have disclosure and not merit. >> because of that, very full disclosure and, as this points out, it leads to more. my feeling, and i will ask you, is that these prospectuses are read closely by institutions and -- in preparation for ipo. the information is not gratuitous or ignored. frankly, if i was presented to hundred pages -- evelyn wood would be proud of me. when you have these road shows, when you have these processes of deliberation, the prospectuses are very useful, i presume. is that accurate? >> i think so. i tell my students in my ipo and venture-capital class that you get more information when a company ipos than any other time. they will go through risk factors, extra detail -- you find that a lot more about how the company does business, how the model works, from all the disclosure. you do not necessarily have to read all of it, but you can look through it, and hopefully it is there. i think that is very important. i would hate to see us listen that. >> your comments. >> and institutional investor would read the prospectus cover to cover prior to meeting with the company so as to use the meantime most effectively. there is a tremendous amount of information available. it is written sometimes in arcane form, but it is tremendously important. it brings of information about the jobs that. investors have less time to study the prospectus, given that they can now file confidentially. >> what is your reaction to the confidential filing? how is that going to practically impact and institutional investors like you who is -- who wants to invest, perhaps, but also theoretically is helping to find the right price because you have all these details. what effect will that have practically on you? >> mostly institutional investors read the prospectus in its final form. for the most part, the confidential filing does not much matter. however, from time to time the initial filing differs quite widely from the final five and d to commentary from the sec. investors learn a lot deal in -- learn a lot in seeing the changes. the company groupon changed vastly because it was revealed that their relationship with accounting rules was somewhat flexible. watching the process was very valuable to institutional and retail investors. >> it strikes me, again, we have a system based on transparency, disclosure, basic economic theory that perfect information drives competitive markets, and here we have basically said that this is all going to be confidential until very late in the process. i do not see how that accomplishes the significantly informing investors, institutional or retail. >> mr. chairman, i would agree with you. i would further comment that, by allowing them to keep those facts hidden until later in the process while concurrently encouraging research provisions that allow research during that period, we are asking investors to make the decision based on opinion as opposed to the fact they could have had. >> i know you have a position on this. >> well, i guess what i would say is that the confidential submission process is based on a s.e.c. historical process accorded to foreign private issuers. unlike in the case of foreign private issuers, in the case of emerging growth companies, they are required to provide the original submission plus all amendments that resulted from the review approximately a month before the ipo is price. all the information in this bair is referring to is publicly available in sequence. investors will have a month for that information. >> let me ask another question. there is a presumption that the jobs that -- proponents would argue it reduces costs. estimates are 30% to 50% of the cost. that is something you were suggesting. what are these costs coming from? investment-banking fees, would be lower because there is not the requirement to do these elaborate road shows? is it because information -- where are the savings coming from? >> principally from two sources. the data is based on surveys of post-ipo ceos who responded to the specific proposals and provided estimates of how much cost savings it would recognize. first, through the deferral of sarbanes-oxley internal audit requirement. for companies of this size, the presence of counsel recommended a permanent exemption. second, from the benefits available from the scale disclosure a system that the sec has adopted for small reporting companies. in the case of -- you asked about merit regulation versus disclosure, if you think about the disclosures required if you are a large enterprise, applying this disclosure requirements to much smaller enterprises -- i think it is worth noting that all of the company's that are captured within the definition of emerging growth represent 3% of total market capitalization. there is a concern expressed by my fellow witnesses here that the definition is too broad, but i think you have to take into account the fact that definition captures roughly 3% of the total market capitalization of the united states. that is not a very large number. >> this is one of those issues which depends on what you are measuring, when you compare to. mr. moskowitz, my sense was that having written the revenues of up to 1 billion barzan revenue captures a lot of -- $1 billion captures a lot of companies in the united states. >> yes. >> and captures every potential ipo company -- >> i am not familiar with the 3% number, but it could be right. in terms of the ipo task force, they said it was 14% of companies. in terms of ipos, is about 90%. >> said the world we are talking about -- most of them. 90% of them. the issue about cost savings. this goes to -- one witness pointed out, the internal controls, also is the disclosure requirements that, one could argue, are more appropriate to large corporations, but still there is this issue of disclosure and governments of the company. that is where the savings are going to be. i do not think we will see any savings from investment banking fees or anything else. for the investing public, the initial investors an ongoing investors, does that make sense? >> the investment banking fees are substantial for ipos. it would be nice if we could find ways to reduce that. in terms of the confines -- compliance costs, if a company is doing $1 billion in sales, its market capital is $700 million, the upper limit here -- for them to comply with sarbanes-oxley. >> i have not purchase a pitted with the chairman in the legislation. they said this was a direct response to abuses and a lack of control, those things that ultimately, -- of those things that cost shareholders dearly when the company's cratered because they were not doing the things that shareholders assumed they were doing routinely -- having audits. i had the rare opportunity to be able to engage with a splendid panel of experts. we have learned a great deal. let me simply ask, i think is appropriate, for any concluding comments about the issue going forward. >> i think, and i tell my students that one of the great strengths of the u.s. economy, really, is the fact that we focused on that giving investors the information that they need and letting them decide for themselves. so many countries take a much more paternalistic approach, and you end up losing a lot of great companies and funding a lot of bad companies that way. i hope the u.s. will focus on giving people as much information as possible, and having deeper sensibility for their decisions. >> i would agree with dr. sherman's comments, all the way. i would say that the promise of a public offering spurs many individuals all over the country and in silicon valley, where i live, to try new ideas that turn into the large companies that never existed and suddenly employ thousands of people. the markets are tremendously important and mostly not broken. mostly, they suffer to swings according to risk in the marketplace. that said, i think there are a few changes that probably could improve the process. again, i strongly recommend many aspects of the jobs at the reconsidered, as much as what -- much of what it has accomplished has been the transfer of risk from private investors to public investors, which, as you point out, does not create jobs. >> the potential for not just the misallocation of resources -- does that concern you? >> yes. there'll always be some fraud on the margins, but we will probably talk in the time about crowd-funding, which is very interesting, but also enables significant transfer of funds between informed investors and uninformed investors without any regulations around it. because we have pushed back the sides -- the size to which a company needs to reveal from 500 shareholders to two dozen shareholders, will see a lot more activity on the secondary markets. there are no requirements for disclosing. >> there is a further complication, which complicates our life in many dimensions. with the internet-based economy, these companies can be virtual and located far beyond the reach of anyone, which further makes it, for particular crowd-funding aspects, a source of get rich quick schemes. i have this terrible feeling that the first thing on the page would be that congress recently authorized a tremendous advantage, please take advantage. i do not want to be to melodramatic, but that concerns me. >> a few years ago there was a concern in the new yorker that showed a hound sitting on the keyboard, with the caption that "on the internet, nobody knows you are a dog." >> yes. mr. trotter. >> the ipo task force came to work with the view that the ipo process is critical to capital formation and the early stages of investing. that involves -- that is all connected to innovation and job creation, ultimately. the part of the private sector that really creates jobs. that is our focus. a couple points on risk. the cannot remove risk from the system because if you do you remove the top -- opportunity to make a profit, so the solution is not to look for ways to eliminate risk, but to make things fair. that is disclosure. when you look a disclosure, what are you requiring disclosure of? is it a type of information that the very largest in the company's -- largest companies in the united states have to provide, or more skilled disclosure that focuses on what is material to an investor in an early-stage company? if you fail to recognize that distinction and apply a very detailed disclosure rules across the board, then i think that we do have a system that veers into merit regulation of smaller companies. >> thank you very much. mr. moskowitz, you have the last word. >> generally speaking, is not a good idea for investors, individual investors, to get involved in companies too early. the long-term after a very brief. time of -- a very brief period of living stocks -- appears tend to underperform. the share returns tend to be negative. the concern is that we do not want ipos to be a process where companies are kind public with the intention of getting shares and clients to the underwriters saw the conflict stocks over to unwitting investors to do not understand -- so they can flip stocks to unwitting investors. the important part is that we have equitable distribution of information. i agree that these prospectuses are very detailed. there is a lot of good information presented there. it is very difficult to go through them and find out what stuff is really important. the facebook example -- he really had to read between the lines to figure it out. i think at a minimum it would make sense for investors to have access to -- the same kind of access that clients of the underwriters have. one final thing with regards to broad -- fraud. a lot of former securities have raised concerns about the jobs that. i would just say that we need to think carefully about that. i have various recommendations with regard to crowd-funding. i can talk about them, but i can also just submit it to you later. >> thank you very much. i thank all of you for your testimony. it has been very helpful. my colleagues may have their own written statements, which they will be allowed to submit for the record. i would ask them to do so before next wednesday, june 27. all of your testimony will be made part of the record. some of my colleagues may have written questions. we may have additional questions. we will get you to them as quickly as possible. i asked you to get them back to us as quickly as possible so that we can conclude the record within a very short period of time and informed the chairman and the other members of the committee of this hearing. with that, let me again thank you for your testimony and adjourned the hearing. [gavel] [conversation] >> thank you very much. [conversation] >> coming up live tonight on c- span, we will bring you coverage of the republican candidate for u.s. senate in texas between former solicitor general ted kreuz and david dewhurst. this sunday on "newsmakers," minnesota congressman john kline joins us to talk about the stalemate in congress over student loan interest rates. if no action is taken by july 1, interest rates will double to 6.8%. see that energy this sunday at 10:00 a.m. and again at 6:00 p.m. eastern. our "road to the white house" coverage will continue with a look at the obama for america campaign and their strategy. our guests are senior strategist david axelrod and then -- ben labolt. they talked about their use of soci media and their efforts to target key voters in battleground states. we will also get a tour of their chicago headquarters. that airs at 6:30 p.m. and again at 9:30 p.m. here on eastern -- eastern at c-span. this weekend, a harvard professor -- a harvard professor speaks on the civil war and the movement to end slavery. >> one of the fascinating aspects of abolitionism is that, when lincoln goes to his inaugural, the self-described abolitionists are still a tiny minority. what transforms abolitionists into respective, prescience critics of the american system is fort sumter. >> saturday night at 8:00 eastern. also, more on key figures to ran for president and lost, but changed political history. a look at eugene debs, five- time socialist candidate for president. american history tv, this weekend on c-span 3. >> how you approach book interviews differently than news reports and interviews? >> i think of the book interviews has been gathering history. i think of the -- interviewer and when i am working for the news side as gathering contemporary information. >> how difficult is it to remain impartial in your reporting and not caught up in the high of one campaign or another? >> i will try to as best as i can give people as full an understanding of what is happening in this campaign. it is not that difficult to put your biases to the side. >> how has social and the change to a line of work in terms of reporting and getting your information? >> twitter, in particular, is now a primary source for anybody who covers politics and his attention to politics. twitter did not exist four years ago for all practical purposes. >> sunday night, perdue university students interviewed a washington post reporter on what is newsworthy and the rise of social media. sunday at 8:00 on c-span. this weekend, and all the details of "fast and furious." >> this was kept from the american people and the mexican people as well. there are hundreds of mexican citizens who have been murdered as a result of this, but the only thing that we knew outside of the government program was that guns from american gun dealers were going into mexico and causing all these problems. the government was sanctioning the sales and sending them into mexico. >> she is interviewed by "national journal" white house correspondent major barrett. part of book tv, this weekend on c-span 2. >> with suicides on the rise, military veterans, the defense and veterans affairs department held a conference that continues to bring awareness to the problem. top military leaders discussed improvements that have been made to the detection and treatment of mental health problems of veterans. later in this two and a half hour conference, we would hear remarks from health and human services secretary kathleen sebelius and defense secretary leon panetta. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome janet camp. -- --janet kemp. [laughter] [applause] [applause] >> good morning, and thank you for coming back. this is my time to give you a few minutes of the va update, much like the service panels did earlier in the conference. as i lay in bed last night and thought about everything that i had heard and seen and thought about over the past few days, i decided that you all probably know by this point all the great, wonderful things the va is doing. and it seemed a little silly to stand up here and talk about them yet again after that extremely powerful survivor panel yesterday afternoon. so i am not going to do that. but for those of you who care about those things, the va is doing great and wonderful things. but what struck me, as great and wonderful as all of the service branches are and how strong their programs are, and the va's program, we have a hell of a long way to go. this is the time to take up that challenge. i made some quick phone call this morning and yesterday during that hour. when all this powerful speakers -- that our period when all those powerful speakers were telling their stories. we know that 28 identified themselves as veterans during that time period. two of them identified them as active-duty service members. there were 10 friends and family members to call. the others chose to remain anonymous, and that is always the option when they called a crisis line. we made 12 referrals to suicide prevention coordinators and chaplains on bases during that timeframe. we made to rescues. -- two rescues. one of the people that called had already taken pills, and they got there in time. if you figure all that out, that left a significant number of people who called the crisis line and did not get a referral, who opted not to do that, who did not get a rescue because they were not in immediate crisis, or that we did not know who they were. i suspect that for every one of those there are several of those out in our community and on our military bases, every moment of every day, that we do not know who they are and we are not reaching an not touching their lives. i also suspect that there are several people yesterday during that time. who may be did tl someone that they were in trouble, who did reset -- who did reach out, who did try to get some sort of help, even in a halfhearted sort of way. there was that level of ambiguity that was there. i think, probably, some of those people were not responded to. the hard part of our jobs is yet to come. i think we have hit the low- hanging fruit. we have done the easy things. we need to continue to do those. do not get me wrong. we are making an incredible difference every day in people's lives. i want to challenge us to take that extra step and reach into those corners where we do not know what is in there when we region. i think it is all about being there and be invisible and contacting people and touching people's lives. not being afraid to say to people, are you ok, can i get you some help? maybe it is scary to talk to a mental health professional. maybe people will not do that because of the stigma or what ever involved, but they ought to be able to talk to us. they ought to be able to talk to their friends and neighbors and the people they work with every day without any fear of reprisal. i am challenging us to be those people. this year, for suicide prevention awareness month, which is coming up in september, we have spoke -- chosen the theme stand by them. it is a call to action for friends and families and co- workers and all of us to be there for each other, to be there for our service members and of veterans, to help them get help, but, more importantly, to stand with them in their joys and their triumphs. call to all of a you to put that on as a -- take that on as a personal challenge. not something someone else has to do, but something i have to do and you have to do and we have to do for each other. so let's stand up now, if you are willing to take the challenge and stand by them for our veterans and our u.s. military service members and give ourselves a round of applause for the great and wonderful things we have done, but, more importantly, the great and wonderful things we will accomplish this next year. [applause] i witnessed all of you standing up to do that. i do suspect that you will -- we will hear more challenges during the rest of the morning. i'm excited about the two secretaries coming to talk with us. i think it plans another level of importance to what we do, so i think we are in for an exciting morning. we also had a great evening last night. for those of you who went to the poster session, it was a wonderful experience to see what everybody is doing. we had approximately 260 participants250 participants. the winners are going to receive a packet of fun stuff including a book, other books, as well as a supplement to the american journal of public health. they also received a certificate, which we will be happy -- which they will be happy to put on their walls. the first-place winner on the practical application track is ann. [applause] there is ann over there. the second place winner is from the clinical track, lynn santiago, applying their recovery model in the prevention of a suicide. , stephanie miller, the differences between suicide ideators and suicide prevention. thank you , all. on that note, we will move right along to our first panel this morning. to introduce that panel i would like to introduce to you walter morales, and he is the chief of the army's suicide prevention program. in addition, he is a good friend. >> good morning. you are in for a big treat this morning. you get to listen to the most senior advisers we have to offer. please pay attention because these folks will be here and set it to share with you did uviews, their policies on services that they had helped form for the particular services. i will call each one of them to the stage, and please welcome them with a big round of applause. i would like to introduce chief master sgt of the air force james roy. did mike make it? mike levitt, master chief petty officer for the coast guard. e senior adviser to the army's surgeon general, donna brock. sergeant major for the marines, john gilstrap. the senior and listed leader for the national guard bureau, chief master sergeant denise jelinski-hall. last but not least, master chief terry prince. master chief terry prince is the command senior enlisted leader for the walter reed national medical center. i will turn it over to the list of advisers, starting with roy here, they will provide a briefing on those things they are working on, the themes, policies that they have helped craft. we will go to the panel and will turn it over to questions and answers after word. >>ood morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. when we got introduced, there are different levels of acceptance. there is a little bit back here, over there, but the one that caught my eye was master chief prince. guest, hispecial c wife. everyone has to have a whing mate. thank you for putting us all, and to the veterans affairs and dod, you have come together to make this seamless. at this level, yes, it is seamless. it is at the tactical level that it has to be invisible. things like this, these types of conferences, help. i would also tell you that the fact you are here today, the chair providers, even says more so about who we are and who we care for. that is our people. thank you, and you owe yourself a round of applause because you do an amazing drop for us, and i would like to hear a round of applause. i like the way janet introduced the group this morning. she may comment that we have a lot more to do, and i will tell you i truly believe that. we have done an awful lot, but as a group, as dod, we still have a long ways to go, and at veterans affairs, we have a long ways to the, but we aren't there, ready for the challenge, and up for that. you may be asking yourself in your capacity and what you do, this should not be a surprise. when i go out, i talk with their men in my case, and what i begin with is why is the support, and it is simple. because life matters. that is why this is a port. i try to explain to the young airmen that their families are absolutely concerned about them. their families and trust the military with their health and welfare, and we are up to that challenge. but we are also concerned about their health and welfare. i have to tell you that life does matter, and it matters every single day. i could go through a litany of things that the united states air force does and the program piece of this. that is not what you want to hear. what you want to hear is what is going on in the field. that is the perspective be offered the most. what is going on in the field? yes, certainly, our suicide program we have come comprehensive air men fitness, the culture of taking care of yourself and others is relevant out there today. what is happening in the field is -- are things like this. things like what i would frame as the art of communication, communicating with people, not so much digitally, because people do that. that is our culture today. or so, this and allow communication. that is a piece, if we focus on how we do that, and how we can indicate that each other, it certainly will resonate with our airmen and resume but the topic of talking about. another area of focus i believe that comes up quite often is this idea of there is a lot of help out there. we know that. our airmen know that, their families know that, but quite frankly, a lot of times they do not take -- they did not -- they take for granted. they did not necessarily go down that path. for some, they are concerned it might affect their career, and that is pretty prevalent out in the field. we try to talk with the young person about that, and it is difficult. you got to explain to them that there are times when we do have to look at what we call prp at the person off the rolls of low but while they are in the recovery. the fact is we still have been in our rolls, and that is difficult to explain to connect -- to some people, that that is the reason we have to do that. bottom line is human life matters. each and every one of the matter. concerned about how the situation is rolled out today at also about their families. i look forward to the questions you have. because it helps us take back what we do in each one of our services. >> faq, chief -- thank you, chief. next, master chief petty officer michael levitt. >> good morning. it is awesome to have everybody talking about complex elements that lead to these types of things that lead to suicide. 2010, the commandant and i assumed the duties in the coast guard, and we had a rising amount of suicides, and we talked about eight personnel who committed suici. ound like a s lot, but 88 is too many. we came out with a message, and it talked about how devastating these types of things are to our family members and to our units. it is no different than an operational mishap. it has devastating consequences. we talked about this. we talked about having engaged an involved leadership. we talked about the progress we have in place, and all services have been in place. some programs are probably better than others, and some things get lost in the translation. those are things we have to take a look at. one of the things we shamelessly stole from the navy and marine corps is our operational stress control. what this is, it is a guide to. we posited a program on the west coast. unit commanders to take a look at the operational stretched they have and color code it and see how their units response. this gives us the opportunity to see how their leadership works, but it focuses down to the members to give them a look at what these stresses are, how they impact them on and off duty. what i like about the program is our coast guard men and women are teaching the program. when they get this, it is train the trainer. our numbers, we had eight in 2010 and we have been slowly declining every year. this year we have two, too many, in 20101 of the things with a track is is how often people are hospitalized for suicide ideations. it is a trend where we atwo folks -- we had two folks with suicide ideations. at the end of the day we can take a look at all our programs, do these different things, throwing a lot of money to a complex set of issues and it is about the people, caring for the people, and caging people in all levels, and we need to care enough for people who they are. i thank you and look forward to any questions you might have. , thank you, chief. next, chief master sergeant jelinski-hall. >> good morning. over the past couple of days i have been deeply moved by the collaboration and synergy in this room. many people and organizations coming together, working together, united in purpose. i have been deeply moved by your good work here. yes, we have challenges with suicide. we continue to employ and the practices at every level from the top out and the bottom up. the national guard is in every state, territory, and the district of columbia, and in every step could across america. the national guard comprises our citizen soldiers and airmen and we are a community-based organization. they fully understand the importance of developing strong community partnerships. yes today a we're admirals' but about bridging trust. i was moved by his presentation, and i gave thought to that. this is something that guard has been doing for 375 years. as health care experts come apart directors of psychological help at the joint force headquarters had built trust within our organization we have bridges of trust between soldiers. this comes from working side by side for years, and in any case, for decades. in addition to exercising all the leadership principles and tools, an area tight and importance is building bridges of trust or partners throughout the country. we have made to that he can strides it reached out to local communities to form partnerships to assist our soldiers, airmen, families, and veterans. for example, maryland -- they have partners in care. arizona's national guard total force team. new jersey's vets to vets hotline. the organ national -- the oregon national guard's program. more recently, the national guard bureau has been engaged with joining community bourses. the primary goal of joining community forces is to promote the existing state practices and build capacity. it focuses on the efforts of local partners that strengthened the veterans, family members, and families through wellness, employment, and education opportunities. this is primarily a collaborative initiative providing a platform for exchanging ideas and guidance. it is a conduit at the national level service providers to volunteer their services to the state community forces at that state level. government cannot non government, and non-profit and corporate partners. i commend you on your good work you have done so far. we have much to do, and that is true. i challenge you to be aggressive in your pursuit of crossing community lines to effectively collaborate and communicate. together we will succeed in our effort to develop a culture of a warrior mine set up a zero- colorants for suicide. i thank you for this opportunity, and i look forward to your questions. thank you. >> thank you, chief. our next speaker, commander sergeant major donna brock. >> how is everybody doing? oh, my goodness. ok, at least i see a few army folks in here so i know you guys can at least get right. thank you very much. first of all, i apologize that i have not been here throughout this whole conference. i was not able to attend this year, but i want to make sure i attend next year. i have been hearing there has been a lot of good information sharing going on, and i do hope that you all received something from this. i am sure that you have. i want to thank you for being here. and perhaps -- on behalf of the sergeant major of the army, i represented him today, but we have the sergeant major graduation today, and we have 500 brand new sergeant major is going out into the army world, and he wanted to make sure he gave then his message. i will speak for him today. after 10 years of war, the army as experienced the second highest year of suicides in 2011, slightly down from a record year we had in 2010. the indicator of high-risk behaviors such as drug use, suicide attempts, an accidental overdose continued to be a challenge. the dramatic increases in suicides at the army between 2006 and 2009 have been slowed. unfortunately, we have seen a spike in the last six months. as the chief said, we definitely have a lot of work today. by the way, it saddens my heart. yesterday i had a note of a young enlisted soldier, female, that committed suicide, i tell you, and it happened to be in a-med department, and there was no reason why she did it. the work you do here is very poor. we have to continue to work very hard at this problem that we have. the army continues to institute a holistic approach to the promotion, risk reduction, and suicide prevention. this accounts for the many challenges our soldiers, families, and armed civilians face. we have the composition of various working groups from the army stepped down to the installations that that reflect this approach, and it includes a monthly suicide senior review group which happens in the pentagon. they take each and every suicide that happens in our ranks, and a peel back the onion and try to figure out what we could have done or what happened we at that headquarters, health promotion and risk reduction council, and others. the key elements of the army's approach are insuring that soldiers have cropped access to the best quality behavioral healthcare, increased screening and documentation of traumatic brain injury, and it improved leader awareness of high-risk behavior. collaboration and cooperation among the leaders cannot the medical community, and the chaplains cannot be overemphasized. it behavioral health the army has increased the capacity by 18% per year for the past four years and during the same time frame the army increased its behavioral health workforce in rmy article -- in the ar medical command by 21%. we also have the program strong bond relationship recruitment retreat, and included almost 98,000 soldiers of family members in 2011, and includes disciplines from active army, reserve, and national guard. in response to the increase in suicide and stress on the force, the army has improved its health promotion program to include availability to behavioral healthcare, implementing a paid management campaign to improve a corporate use of narcotic pain medication and reduce medication adverse effects, expanded family support programs, and implemented and in-theater mild traumatic brain injury screening. it has worked in decreasing risky behavior by initiating prevention and substance abuse training at the italian abrogate courses to improve leader understanding, improve communication between law enforcement and the units during investigations, and we have launched my time, an online alcohol and substance abuse risk assessment tool that provides substance abuse risk assessment and targeted education. the improved suicide prevention efforts that the army has invested in are an aggressive campaign wants to expand ace, which stands for ask, care, and escort. this will supplement the effective training program, which is assist. we released a new training video pick which collaborated with the military crisis line with the v.a. developed the thing and prevent the use of free confidential services. we have ensured soldiers subject to legal action are monitored for indicators of high-risk indicators, and although not specifically a part of the suicide prevention program, in 2008, the army established the copperhead's of soldier fitness program which is geared to bolster the strength of soldiers and families by improving their resilience and certain important areas such action at emotional, social, and fizzle, and it has proved effective. to all these efforts and what we seek to discover why soldiers are more greatly impacted disorders while others are not. and why summit exhibit suicidal thoughts and behaviors and others do not. medical providers and leaders are working together to understand suicide so we can prevent its devastating effects on soldiers' families and units. together we are trying to remain army strong, and we are armoy strong. i can tell the audience -- i can tell you we are dod strong. thank you, and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you, sergeant major. the next speaker, sergeant john gilstrap. >> i was asked to relate thoughts and said that. the continued physical and mental health of our marines is on the top of my list. our young men and women have performed magnificently and around the globe for over a decade without pause. there's nothing more important than continuing to care for urden ofwho carry the bird defending our liberty. we have expended considerable efforts and the capacity to care for our marines and families and we will continue to do more. we will continue to extend every effort to heal our wounded, support them as, and help young marines and sailors increased resilience. they will always know that they understand the issues. when a marine diocese i cannot the loss of life is felt. we're dedicated to preventing this tragic loss of life. this year the marine corps published its first suicide prevention of order. this order directs commanders to the a lot and sustained a unit program and to a point in writing a marine to assist the commander in carrying out suicide prevention policy. euna programs must be comprehensive to be successful. programs must strengthen all marines and set a climate to encourage marines to seek help and referral for at-risk marines. marine total thickness acknowledges the complexity up problems like suicide, brain injury, and sexual assault. our biggest opportunities and areas for improvement is getting a range of knowledge problems and get out early. royer this year -- earlier this year a service became available. while not a hot line, this addresses -- main focus is to solve early. when a marine calls, a veteran moderate or a fleet made the core men will enter the call. the operational stressed program builds teams within units which helps commanders build strength, resilience, and readiness. members range from junior marines to senior leadership and what we call extenders, and those are our medical and religious personnel. it is one of our greatest assets. it helps us whether the stress and creates the bond of shared experience. the commandant has ordered all units remain in tact for 90 days after returning from the planet. prevention efforts are rarely successful 100% of the time. training prepares recognizes -- training prepares marines to recognize is like questions, are you thinking of killing yourself? never believed and marine behind rice never leave a marine behind is the bedrock. we will not do it at home. thank you. >> thank you. the next speaker, terry prince. >> hope this thing is on. ike it the pleasure of going last, so your starbucks is worn off by this point. i have the added pleasure of my wife and has looked out for the well-being of marines and sailors and families, and she is a licensed marriage and family therapist to my left. you can imagine what nights are like at the prince household. there you go. i gave you a plug it. thank you. good morning, everybody. i am proud to represent the united states navy this morning at the suicide prevention conference. no sailor stands alone, and one sailor lost to suicide is one too many. you must note united states dating is focusing its efforts, providing leaders and sailors the tools they need to live life fully while reinforcing that life is worth living. as you know we are very busy, and we have over 47,000 sailors deployed currently. we know the reasons for suicide in the navy are complex, we need to be aware of that, relationship issues, career and stressors, legal concerns, financial and health problems been the leading factors. our efforts all lead to build lives worth living. we were to give navy personnel that support network, health care, and skills to get through trying times and go on to thrive in their careers and their lives. we are building a culture where leaders recognize they're getting support for our sailors and families are keys to ensuring readiness. the navy recognizes suicide prevention as an all hands effort and not only use allies in our program, but your sites and expertise. we have discussed the model, our brothers and sisters of the united states marine corps, united states may be corps men serve right along scion alongside marines. the operational stress control used by the coast guard -- whatever that earlier. our continuing of training, our life is worth living button on every navy website that says click here for your lifeline, support centers, our military one source program, the outstanding chaplain corps and family readiness programs they run, the medical professions, and a command, a young group of sailors called the coalition of sailors against destructive decisions has done the normal things to get the drift of this problem. ears helping pier spirit of national help line and most importantly a ship date. these efforts may never tell us how many lives were saved, but we have had an impact, which meant a tragic life lost avoided. sailors are getting the message. they recognize the commitment demonstrated by leaders to develop and use multiple programs that will help them better navigate life possible obstacles. we remember no sailor stands alone and. thank you. >> thank you, chief. let's get another round of applause to the panel. all right. we have a few minutes for questions, and i see four microfarads. please, make your way to one of the microphones and let's get the show started. these senior adviser some tough questions. go ahead, please. >> hi. i question is for all of you, and it is, how do we have this conversation, how do we talk about mental health, suicide prevention in a way that is authentic, but the mission oriented at the same time? we have talked about policies and programs and research and car were implementation that has improved and will continue to improve with the people in this room. but as we have heard this week, this is a leadership issue and it is a human problem. having this conversation internally in events like this and within families and within units, and externally and the larger community, so the national there is responsible, it is going to be important. i have just a couple of things i wanted at before i give it up to you. we have to recognize that this suck it up and drive on attitude is necessary and a lot of ways. it is what has gotten me to of being an army wife. how do we have that part of our culture and also foster the help desk seeking behavior and the anti-stick back campaigns we have? in order to build those bridges of trust that you guys talked about, that there has been trauma for this generation of military families. the that before we jump into skill building. there has to be a recognition that you guys have had a tough, we recognize that, which will give you skills, and then we are going to jump you how to be more resilient. if we do not articulate that right, it does not come off so hot. it makes us feel like we're just going to make you guys stronger, at that needs to be recognized. the new normal we talk about probably we should call a new reality, because there's nothing normal about 11 years of war, and yet to be careful about what we call things, because if i am normal and i cannot attain that, then that is weak. if we are having this conversation for their shares quest for the first time, we have the opportunity the community and make this better that will help picture for the entire country. that was a question and a lot of comments. sorry about that. >> thank you for both the questions and comments. i agreed with most of what you said. i will that is the rson that we ha conferences likehis to talk about this, taking but what i will call the art of leadership, the art of this piece, and then merging that with the science peace as well. to say that this is a science project or a leadership project, i do not think that is true. it has got to be a combination of both. certainly, if leadership or to drill down into this, it is like any other thing we drill down to. our knowledge base we get from experts. experts are sitting in this room. although i agree but the fact that the sides -- the science and this being a leadership problem, this is all our problems. you mentioned the resiliency and the stigma and some other things. this is the way i would phrase it. i believe that in order for somebody to deal with a situation, they have got to have the tools to do that. what i see, and as i talk with darman, here is what i find. some of them do not have the tools. they have not grown up the same way i did in my generation. not to say i had all the tools. when we think in terms of being able to just communicate with each other, that simple fact come all these things that were listed up to date. when you talk about simple communication and the fact that we -- the fact that we are digital natives today, not everything can be digital. you have to go back to the analog the leadership and communication. he got to ask somebody, are you doing ok? and mean it. you got to get in their face. the point was you have got to get in front of them at. you have got to get in front of them and have a one-on-one on that. i would also say that building resiliency is i believe one of those things that is crucial to attacking this problem. i will call it a problem. if the people do not have the skills to work through these situations, then they will not. one of the things we started that has saved us a lot is this idea of initial resiliency training. we did this not the basic trend, although we give them the label of it, but we do this after they get to their first duty station, sitting them down and walking them through, how do you communicate with each other? if you -- how do you break up with somebody? not all bus have that skill. we have to work with folks like that. -- not all of us have that scale. we have to work with folks. i take your points, and both the art and science have to work together. >> great question. a real long question. there are a couple things to come to my mind. one of my shipmates mentioned about our programs. we have to take a look at all our programs. the hazing, what is going on with regard to that. discrimination, sexual assault. we have to take to look at programs so we can get to folks when they come out of training. we call them individual development programs. i am not sure if the other services do it. it is an opportunity to get down to the lower leadership levels at talk about those finances, talk about some of these elements that could lead to these types of things. because at the end of the date you want people to have successful careers and it will build that trust. i talked about operational stress control. our missions are a little bit different. we have people that have gone to these types of things at all different grade levels. we have master chief teaching this st. is ok, these are things i had too, and i needed help at a certain point, i did not understand what was happening to me. when these young people see that from people who are successful, they start earning that trust. it will take time. trust is are earned. it'll take a lot of time. i will pass it on down. great questions. i will focus my comments on the first question. how do we have these conversations? i believe we are having those conversations and had been having them for some time, and there is certainly much more to be done yet, and they are happening at all levels. as component of the army and air force, we do things differently in the national guard. when of the things i wanted to talk about is in the army national guard we have a record sustain a program. as soon as they entered the guard, we have that in this program before they get a basic training. these are young men and women write off the street, out of high school, and they may not have gotten those skills at home. they're having those conversations, and the same for our air men. as soon as they entered the air national guard we have been in student flight and are teaching the various things. when the then is how to the brazilian pit the army and air, we are having this very serious and harsh conversations because quite frankly probably did not have those at home. we need to do that as their leadership at all levels. they may have an instructor that teaches them, but we have various levels of leadership that rolls through those programs and also have those conversations with that as well. it is important to start right there. for us, it is pre-basic training, and that basic training they get it again and all the way through until you reach a level like this. those conversations are happening. we have tools and resources out there. i think there are probably enough resources. when need to find and keep those very good programs that are working for us. we need to focus on those programs and make sure we have those available for our people. tain years, trauma, you bet. 10 years. almost 11. that is the bell rhythm for every service across. now as we have come out of iraq and afghanistan, that campbell will reduced somewhat. that focus in leadership, striking to the heart and had a conversation one on one, eyeball to eyeball, at the lowest level, to the highest level is important. we're going to commute to have our leaders focusing on those areas and engage all service members and families cannot because they are our first line of defense when we come home from the battlefield. to take a step further, for the national guard soldiers and airmen who are part-time, they are employed in the communities. we need to get the employers because they need to be our wing men in the civilian sector as well, to find the sentence and how to ask as tough questions as well. thank you. >> since icicle 20 up at the microphone, i will keep this short period-add to the conversation, he said we have to suck it up and drive on. there is a limit everything. the sergeant major of the army is talking to us, telling us we need to go back to basics. he is talking about getting back into knowing your troops, knowing your people, caring about them, betting and know they are important. it is very simple, and we have gotten away from that a little bit because of the 10 years of war and the tempo. getting back to basics, knowing our people, got to know their limitations. suck it up and drive on, some people can do that, and others cannot. you have to know your folks. had the conversation, you got to be able to get in their face and have that conversation. just like today, the message i got this today about a soldier committing suicide -- those examples are but we go back to our organization and talk about. it is not the best kept secret. it is not a secret. we have to talk about those things and let folks think about what happened there. that is my comment on that. >> i will answer yours about leadership. we are getting this from the top down, they tell marines is ok to not be ok. breaking that stigma and we are doing that through education and teaching are raised about stress, how to deal with stress, but more importantly have been that concern leadership. it is one thing to ask a person how they are doing, but it is difficult and most of you will agree, looking the other person in the eye and asking them are you thinking of killing were self? communicating that, i will leave it at that. that is where we are with that. >> back to me, so i have to say something. most of it has already been covered. i have a lot of notes. an excellent question and a lot of things i could go in different directions, but the key is for leadership and fellow sellers to understand and know their people. -- and fellow sailors to understand and noted their people. take care of your troops. that means no link them. adding experienced suicide as a leader in the united states may be in every case the post park where the interview people, people did see signs, they knew that people were having financial trouble. they write it on people's evaluations. g-i-s to be a -- in east to the eight terms. our young men and women represent the best this country has to offer. ny them do not come from your typical mom and dad home. their first experience is with their recruiter followed by the record division commanders who served as their moms and dads. it can, and problems are not identified because they are in an environment that is controlled, and is occurring at the schools where the freedom party -- and that is where a program i mentioned, in and others because we know we put a web of programs together. with that interested in leadership, with those leaders getting in there and in their face and saying, let me see your budget, do you tock your mom and dad today, when was the last time you took vacation? all those are key factors in getting to that problem and every case is different. >> thank you, panel. i am going to apologize to those folks who are waiting to ask more questions. that's hold off for a second on the questions come up because i still have another portion that needs to be added to the panel's up here. i am bringing in another and listed adviser to the panel. this is my great privilege and pleasure to bring up here, the senior enlisted adviser to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, united states marine corps sergeant major brian battagli. -- battaglia. >> before we wrap this up is a great place to throw out and much deserved thanks to the v.a., dod, in making this conference in reality. thank you for all your efforts. you can see this is a slight twist to a normal panel format. it fits in with our scheme of maneuvering, and what i hope to do by speaking on the heels of youservices' mets, now that have heard on both monday and this morning the services' programs and their efforts, i will wrap up things with an overarching perspective from an armed forces stand for it and share some thoughts and clarify a few things that i picked up along the way during the course of this conference as well. so, my thoughts and observations are not meant to be critical, and we are big boys and girls and must have some tricks again, but -- thick skin, but i want to make sure that we prevent any strategic fratricide in our efforts to reduce suicide in our military. i am going to start by putting myself in the chest, so, jennifer, if he could be so kind to play that video. ♪ >> over the years and this year, suicides within our right across the force are sadly on the rise straight as an effort and the reduction of suicide, one of my priorities in the persistent implementation of our resiliency programs targeted toward the service member, family, a unit, and organization, working in concert with the advice of the army, marines, navy, air force and coast guard, and national guard. we're confident our programs guide us in efforts to sustain performance. we shoulder an obligation to look and listen for science and stand ready to intervene and assist our buddies and times of need. let's reduce suicides in our armed forces. i'd like to project three key points. i want you to remember the acronym now. no problem is too big. we will find a better way. we can do it together. out of reach for help is a finger to the way. whether pushing a button on the telephone, knocking on the door, or texting team leader, help is available. lastly, we care. we recognize that you have committed to our country and we're committed to you. now is the time. stay fit, stay strong, state resilience. -- stay wasilla. maybe some of you have seen this before, and if you have, my apologies. i should you this because of that message and acronym now. has resonated positively, but if you have come back, -- but a few have come back, and there is a portion of this acronym that is not being used. while out reach has to work, when you hear comments like ike try to get help, but waited for six hours and a bleak room. my first sergeant said stop wasting his time. that means the o is ineffective. it causes the entire process to break down and raise the risk of potential injury and death. we have work to do. it is not only educate our force on where to go and what to do. if they feel bad, but continue to educate our leaders. like in the case of the 1st sergeant, holding those leaders accountable who take their es in suchsponsibili an irresponsible manner. that we say is easy to pick up on heavy load of medical expertise within the course of this conference. i hope you will agree it will take a combination of both art and science to reduce suicides to making bread and knees, resiliency, and wellness. i feel our resiliency programs that our services have which are designed to provide a lot of the art, offer those necessary ingredients to meet daily menu in which our service members units, or families built and assisting toughness and ability to overcome adversity and maintain some degree of optimal performance. there is no magic one size fits all balance. we're all different. some need more than others, and it will take participation of both the science and the art picked in a military life cycle, one does not work without the other. jennifer, could i have that can will, please? i could champion the total force fitness program. the system russert -- this is similar to what other programs have, and this is what we used as a guide and what will become part of our normal karcher to maintain that resiliency and readiness throughout the force. our services manage similar programs using this as the overarching model. they use all or some of those domains that you see this a around this wheel of fitness. we did not have enough time to go into the workings, but i am confident when our service members and units and families and veterans fully immersed into a culture and behavior of the total force fitness lifestyle, we will certainly and definitely see reductions in suicide, divorce, crime, a quicker recovery from injury, more use of alternative methods of llamas, and more. i promote total for fitness and i use it. i am no different than the average garden variety service member, so if it works for somebody like us, it will work for the force. that may break up another topic and talk about a few things i have heard during this conference trip things that may just not pass this nit test, because it is important our efforts are so wide that with the many involved entities that bring the solutions together, we remain as in sync as we possibly can. since we are sitting below the national average, we're not doing that bad in our quest to reduce suicide. that has been a quotation that i have heard, and we cannot afford that kind of thinking. i beg to differ with that analogy, and any leaders we have involved in this process who have used such a metric is off key. i enjoyed the opportunity to talk to anybody who thinks that this way to try to convince the otherwise, because we should not use the national average as any measuring stick that our program is in any way a success. a failed suicide attempt is a success story. yes and no, yes of course because the attempt was in fact unsuccessful. we still have that individual with us alive and breathing and another chance to give him or her help. no, because in reality we worked too late. the act had already been executed, and as a leader i failed. by the grace of god or some other factor, i have been given a second chance, but simply put, i was too late. we should learn from that, at any sort of accolade to say that an attempt was in fact a success. back to the basics. you have heard that this morning, and around the force. i have. i like it because it is a catchy phrase. i have used it myself. i knew what i meant when i said that, but to take a step further, that is not how it was received. short answer, sergeant major, i was not around during your basics. someone my age and beyond can relate to that. clearly defined what basics we mean so we do not complicate the matters. you heard on monday the doctor talking about garrison leadership and leadership in a garrison environment. that will be extremely important. this is the environment where most of the basics we are referring to will be applied. basics can mean something different receipt band projected. -- different receipt -- received than projected. what basics are we stating in terms of suicide reduction. zero tolerance. i think denise mentioned the zero tolerance. here is a term that has been used during the course of this conference through day one. we may understand the context of how it was meant, the specifics of this particular conference. when one says or hears the zero tolerance, others associate it automatically with suicide or some sort of crime or with other zero tolerance things we have in our department such as illegal drug use and sexual assault. those, no question about it, r zero tolerance. -- are zero tolerance. maybe we leave that level -- that label of zero tolerance for those that are heinous dilations. let me touch on the va. i will reconfirm with you firsthand that the relationships at the veterans administration has never been better. not just from a medical benefits standpoint, but from acute, long-term care. the feeling of remaining attached in the sense of continuing to belong. it should not stop at separation or retirement when a service member leaves the military service. actual ownership of the service transfers to the veterans administration. cities and towns play a significant role in this connection. what really opened my eyes was the veterans sitting in the va office is not aware of this thing that the va has been promoting. we have been happy and content with the traditional brick and mortar system of acquiring one's medicine. for many, the waiting time was irrelevant. back to the basics. when something is branched off to a suicide conference, can it have a positive impact on suicide reduction. you bet it does. we are definitely beating down stigma. we are going to stay active. it may not be as fast as we would like, but it has momentum and we are going to continue to chip away at it. you want to make a difference. within the confines of this conference and with our international partners, i am confident that we will develop some additional ideas, actions, and course of action to the reduction of suicide within our formations. thanks to each of you for your longstanding commitment to our men and women. let me turn it back over to you. [applause] >> hello. it is a great pleasure to stand before you today. i am not a psychologist, soldier, military veteran, nor do i come from a military family. many of you might ask, why am i here? i believe sharing my father's story is my duty. i believe speaking with those who help our service men and women is an incredible honor. i am here because suicide is an enormous problem in our country. that is why i am here. for duty, honor, country. [applause] my father was not a patriot. he was a bear. [laughter] in 1985, a group that called themselves the monsters of midway defeated the pages of new england in super bowl xx. my father's teammates and brothers were more than just football fans in the city of chicago. there was group courage and team camaraderie. they epitomized manhood. every man wanted to smoke cigars and died tackles. -- dodge tacklers. they embodied things larger than themselves and projected strength even in times of weakness. i would like to share with you some experiences from my childhood. for those of you who have ever been in a football locker room, my upbringing was filled with nfl-isms with my father sounding like a football coach at times. when i was late for church, he would say, urgency, urgency. when i received a poor grade in school, son, you are only as good as your last play. right now, you are not very good. and of course when i disobey him, son, do you want to be a part of this team jim bank that was my father. a man for whom winning was the only option. his persona of perfection added a heavy burden. the truth of life is that losing is a part of it. we all lose something. our youth, our money. there is no scoreboard. winners and losers come and go. there is always hope. hope is a small word with a larger meaning. for when hope is lost, all is lost. tiberi 17, 2011, was the day -- february 17, 2011, was the day my father lost hope. he wrote of suspicions of a brain disease and listed his symptoms. memory loss, mood swings, and depression. he asked to give his brain to the nfl. i donated his brain to boston university. i thought it did not share with my family his symptoms, nor did he tell us he was depressed. he hit his feelings, thoughts, and worries by projecting a persona of strength. i wish my father knew that in order to be strong, you have to be weak. in order to be found, you must first be lost. [applause] this past year for my family has been difficult. it has been a year of healing and a year of reflection. i have found comfort in the words of others, particularly one man who is no stranger to us. robert f. kennedy. moments after the assassination he martin luther king -- b shared a poem. even in our sleep, pain we cannot forgets, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of god. in times of despair, we search for an instant cure, as if there is a magic wands, formula, or secret. recovery takes time. each of us has our contradictory. it is filled with ups and downs, leading us on a never- ending road. there is no closure, only wisdom. we will never be what we were. we must focus on what we can be. over the course of my recovery a major part of my healing can do the -- from the scientific findings of boston university. they concluded that my father suffered from a brain disease linked to a concussion. the neurologists were able to conclude that he suffered from short-term memory loss and loss of other executive functions. these findings answered many of my family's personal questions. with suicide, the question of what if it is persistent. rather than succumb to what if, i am consumed with answering the question, what now? we face an enormous and complex problem. suicide remains hidden in the shadows of myth and shame. those we wish to help will be our biggest obstacle. suicide is preventable. depression is treatable. if only those who are lost would seek guidance. for those who refuse help because of fear, because of in the battle of fear and shame, the friend, a son, is the best weapon. whenever we reach out to our fellow man in moments of despair, we send for it ripples of hope. in time, ripples of hope will cross other ripples of hope and build into a tidal wave of love. a tidal wave of love can sweep down the mightiest depression. we must never give in to the dark hands of depression. my father's last message to me was negative boss leads to negative consequences. he left me a verse from my own battle with life. they who wait for the lord shall we knew thy -- renew their strength. they shall walk and not faint. isaiah 40:31. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, tregg. i am mike turner, the vice president of mental health america. we are the oldest community- based organization focused on mental health and mental health issues in the united states. we are 103 years old this year. we were founded by a gentleman who was in voluntarily committed and was appalled by what he found in the asylum system and dedicated himself to ending stigma associated with mental health conditions. tregg came to our chicago affiliate and carol called me and said, this guy is great. you need to get us involved nationally. he is our new national spokesperson. he does not know that yet. [applause] [laughter] we are proud and fortunate to have him in defeat. -- him indeed. we advocated on behalf of those who live with a mental health condition. we educate the public about the harm, often mortal harm, stigma does in this country regarding mental-health problems. we serve 37 states. we are proud of that mission. i our symbol is the bell of hope. it's it's in our lobby. in 1953 -- it sits in our lobby. in 1953 when they shut down the asylum system, we were sent the change in shackles that were used to restrain patients to the wall. we had those chains and shackles melted down and forge into this 300 pound bell. we bring it on special occasions because the message of that bell is to end stigma, and it now. statement kills, especially in the u.s. military. we have to address it every day. i want to read you some excerpts from our web site. we have a live web site. you can go on and talk about what is on your mind. there are different categories. i went into the section on suicide and suicidal ideation. these are people who attempted suicide. from a forgotten father in washington. i had had difficult times with relationships. i keep everyone at a distance, even those i know i can trust. i can count the number of people i trust on one hand. even with those people, there are doubts. from a woman who lost her son in a boating accident. the doctors wrote me prescriptions for medication and i refused to take the medication for a couple of years. i could not remember to eat when i was hungry. i lost all interest in doing anything fun. friends stopped coming by and stopped calling. from karen who was saved by an intermission. i would like to ask anyone who reads this to please listen. remember that we are all unique entered -- unique individuals. what is important to you may not be important to them. listen to your spouse, listen to your co-workers, listen. i did not have anyone to listen to me and no one would have ever heard my boys - my voice again. -- my voice again. bent the curve in the nfl on the seriousness of traumatic brain injury. he contributed things to the sport and his family. nha believes there is a unique opportunity in american history and in our culture that is an extraordinarily helpful opportunity. you can go into any community and go and use the term pete tsb and americans know what you are talking about. -- ptsd and people will know what you are talking about. we cannot blow this opportunity. we cannot miss this chance. we can raise the bar for ever in american society. mental health conditions are the number one most debilitating chronic condition in the world today. the united states leads the rest of the world. we can really make a difference. the focus is on wellness, prevention, resilience, and recovery. we have something called to the wellness circle. there are three stages, treatment, recovery, wellness. if you are in the green section of that circle, it is ludicrous for you to point across the circle to someone in the deal -- the blue section with a finger of stigma. it really hopeful aspect of a circle is the fact that no matter where you are in the circle, if you ask the right person can seek out the right help, you can find the path back to wellness. i came on board just under three years ago. a retired air force colonel. i worked with the wounded warrior project before i came to mha. i said, we have to be in this space. there is amazing white noise about mental-health and how to respond in an efficient way. we are not addressing that issue. we have been trying for 10 years to do it we have to try to do this. there are so many players in the space. there is so much white noise in the space. we cannot simply be another program and another effort and more noise that takes up more resources. they said, let's have a conference. we had a one day conference. we brought everybody together that we could think of who have any stake in this game. the author of the 2008 rand study was there. umdnj of new jersey was there. an expert in peer counseling was there. we start off with what we thought was an effective model to bridge the gap between this need and what we thought were enough resources after 10 years of war to meet that need and the gap in between. we said, we do not have a hidden agenda in this conference. by lunchtime, all 35 people had told us this is the dumbest idea we have ever heard. after lunch, i said, what are we going to do? he said, let's start over. we started the afternoon with, what do we agree on after that conference, i hit the road and we visited our talked about or examine or studied what we thought were a 11 successful national programs that are addressing this issue with an eye toward what are the best practices. the results of that year of travel have resulted in what we are calling the bell of hope project. it is going to be our signature project in the the military unity for as far forward as i can see. based on some of the things we have seen at this conference, we believe there is still a gap between population needs and the services that are being delivered. what is interesting is that i think the need is growing in the available services and resources are growing. the resources on either end are getting bigger and bigger. while they are getting bigger and bigger, the center point of those circles are moving farther apart. there is a larger gap between these communities and the military that i have seen in my lifetime. the gap between the circles is roughly the same. this piece in here is where we need the help. let me give you a couple of stories to illustrate that gap. i was in charge of the carrier, france. we were fortunate to have the care giver project that we spearheaded. we brought 18 caregivers of severely disabled that risk severely -- severely disabled veterans and we had representatives that were familiar with all the programs available to caregivers of severely disabled veterans. all of those representatives talked about all the programs in place to help those caregivers and all of the progress they made to help those care givers. at the end of the hour, one of the caregivers raised her hand and said, i think i speak for all of the care givers in this room when i tell you, we do not have a clue about what you are talking about. some of the senior officials in that room canceled meetings. they talked about, how can we bridge the gap. the second story happens in october. one of the places we went was the indiana national guard, -- national guard armory. it is about 5 miles up the highway. we had a slot for david and i to explain the project to 200 national guard members and their families. i leaned over and said, this could be a huge thud. i do not want you to get your hopes up. we did our presentation. they kept us 45 minutes after the scheduled one our talk. let me give you some of the comments. the first person stood up and said, we know we have mental health issues. we are not ashamed to say that. we talk about it all the time. what i really need help with is day care because i cannot find any and i do not know where to turn to get debt -- get day care help. you are defer to organization in 10 years to talk to us about mental health. this illustrates the gap we have to address in order to make practical reality and the wonderful practices and programs i have seen evidence in this conference. we feel strongly that the solution is not a top down solution. i do not know how anybody works in the aid. you are walking around with target all over your front end -- i do not know how anyone works in the va. everybody i have met is professional, world class, top- notch. [applause] i do not the least -- i do not believe va and d.o.d. should be charged with solving this problem. we are losing this generation from the military community because we have not yet solved this problem. we must ban this curve in a significant way and we have to do it now. i went on the va web site last night. as of 2010, there are 22.7 million vets in the united states. 37% are enrolled in the va health care system. of bill -- of those enrolled, 47% of billed themselves of outpatient care. 17 percent -- avail themselves of outpatient care. that means 17% of bad wins -- of veterans use va services. how do we solve that problem? i think it is incumbent on the civilian community to stop putting yellow ribbons on their bumpers and stand up at the community level and start to solve this problem. an interesting side note. 21% of the people enrolled did not know they were enrolled. if everything we have talked about worked perfectly, you have reached 70% of the affected the veteran population. that does not count dependence. another conclusion we have reached over the last year is that integrated care is the answer. early in the process. we think the best way to respond with a suicide prevention protocol is not to respond when suicidal ideation is indicated. it is when someone stands up and says, i need day care. how do i get that? that is when we stand up and address suicide prevention. only america's communities can solve this. i have been asking since 1997. america's communities have been trying desperately to do that. they are competing with ever dwindling resources. i have been in the nonprofit business since 1997. every nonprofit is fighting to and nail for every penny we can get. here is what came out of the conference in february of 2011. purse work. does everyone remembers the compelling -- peers work. does everyone remember the compelling story that was told? it started with a peer connection. peers work. they need to be trained. they need to be certified to a national standard. hopefully, we will now hold funding from a foundation that ask us to design and implement the first peer training organization. peers work. peers navigate. their principal function is to navigate at the community level. it is not about being a peer specialist or mental health. it is about entering every single need. they need to know what is available in every sector of service. when that member says i need day care, the peers says, i got it. i will get you take care and we will follow up until you get it. local community collaboration. the community is trying to collaborate and create a blueprint on how you collaborate on community services. it is an important function. retired, active duty. they need to have access to an online resources director in their community that rates the services available. it tells what insurance plans day except, what is my point of contact. are you excepting new clients. i have had 25 people rates this 3 stars out of five. those functions have to exist at the local community level so there is an easier way to find what community resources are available. we need a really aggressive outreach program. the man took his life in 2007. a congressman from new jersey got a bill passed. i went and talked to the man's wife and said, i want to make sure we do not duplicate efforts and do not solve the problem because we are turning around in circles like a lot of us tend to do. she really appreciated the visit. i went to the vet to vet program in new jersey. it is a 10 minute hard drive from the man's front door. that is only going to be solved by organizations that exist and have name recognition at the community level. based on our conference findings over these 11 years, we believe solutions should be based on four principles. peer navigation have to lie at the heart of it. peers can overcome the stigma. it is defer in front door. delivery of integrated services -- it is the friend at the front door. delivery of integrated services. measurable outcomes. if i cannot measure it, it is not a success. if you hear about a program in a community -- we get this all the time. people are already doing that. i asked three questions. how many clients that you helped? what are the long term outcomes for that client? what does your client feel about the help you have provided? if you cannot answer those three questions, you cannot claim success. anything you do have to have a measurable and outcome. local flexibility perry it is not one size fits all. it is one size fits one. there has to be skeletal structure that enables the butterflies to fly in formation. we want to get everybody moving in the same direction in a way that you can pour a unique community resources into that frame work and have them the most efficient. ideally, we would like to start with the military community. this template will work for all social services. americans are ready to hear this message. if i can have the slide up please. this is what we call the community died of colorado -- guide of colorado. they have worked with us to expand it and make it more generic. it is to create a national network of peer navigators' using this model. it is comprised of six ranges of service. you can consider the inner ring the most important and the outer ring the least important. if you say, have you implemented the communityguidon -- community guidon model, they say, no, not yet. the university of michigan has a terrific peer program. they need to be backed up by military technicians. they have mapped every active duty guard, reserve, an independent in every county in the united states. they have also backed military clinicians. they are continuing to do that -- they have also mapped military clinicians. they need to be managed by a database that allows continuous follow-up. the best model we have found is probably community blueprint. the community blueprint told us it is difficult to get community resources to collaborate with each other. they need to be divided into sectors of service. short-term needs and workforce development. i have behavioral health and physical health. we had to combine that because i realize i was inviting out types of health. let me give you a quick statistic. the pair program is that they have -- the peer program's hallmarks is back they have great statistics. 78% did not come for mental health needs. they came for a career needs. 73% had more than one sector of can they needed help with. only 16% initially cut the system for a mental health need. annual community cost without peer navigator, $6.9 million. at a community cost with peer navigator, $200,000. we need to do it at the community level. we need your help and we need your money. this is a compelling need. it will be solved at the local community level, not from the top down. thank you all for your attention. >> good morning. that was a challenge. i need to do better about my step exercises. it is good to be here. it is good to be with the department of defense and all the parts of the military who are working on issues that we care a lot about. we are interested in the issue of suicide nationwide and preventing that issue. i want to take just a minute to set a larger context. after two or three days at a conference like this you may have heard most of this. these are 2008 data. i am sure you know this by now. suicide is the 10th leading cause of death of all americans. that is too much. the 2009 data areetting worse. we anticipate in terms of what the trajectory looks like, 2010 is not getting any better. the tough reality about suicide for us is that it is not just deaths from suicide. the deaths from suicide in our country exceed the deaths from traffic fatalities and hiv/aids. unfortunately, whether for our kids or for adults -- certainly people in the military and their families -- the people who have serious thoughts of suicide and the people who make a plant and the people actually attempt plan about make a pa suicide and actually attempt suicide, those numbers are astronomical. 90% of the people who died by suicide have a mental disorder, many times on identified. is suicide rate among people with major depression is 8 times that of people without. 20% of individuals who die by suicide are veterans. those numbers are not precise, but that is too many veterans dying from that cause. we know that suicide is connected to its substance abuse. the 2% of those who die by suicide have a blood alcohol level -- 32% of those who die by suicide have a blood alcohol level above the legal limit. these are increasing concerns in dealing with those issues. our young people, this is an age group that has bigger issues and less willingness to do something about it or reach out for help. that is true for the age group of 18-25. between 15-25, suicide is the third leading cause of death. this is a high priority issue for families. the other thing we are looking at is how the health care system deals with people who might be depressed or have anxiety disorders or ptsd or other kinds of issues that may precede suicide. a lot of people go to an inpatient unit and when they leave, they continue to be at higher risk for suicide. the connections are not done. we are trying to think about how we get to people who have attempted suicide one or more times and are leaving our care systems without good connections to post care. we also know there are missed opportunities. there are a lot of people who go to their primary care physicians. 45% of the people hadn't visited their primary-care doctors within the last -- people had this is it their primary care doctors within the last month. seldom was the question of suicide or related issues raised. the national action alliance for suicide prevention was launched a couple of years ago by secretary sebelius and gates. the idea was to champion suicide as a national health priority and makes suicide a non-events. we think it -- make suicide a non-event. we are working on a national strategy for suicide prevention. it was done in 2001 and we are working hard to get the update out by this fall. the public-private partnerships for the suicide action line is senator gordon smith, who is the national association of broadcasters ceo. the national suicide strategy has got four strategic directions. we are looking at a healthy and empowering families and communities to get the word out and get people to look at community and clinical preventive services. we are looking at surveillance, research, and education. we have a number of federal agencies and departments working with us. one of the task force's -- there are many -- -- one of the task forces are military personnel, their family members, and other parts of the military. we are collaborating on lots within the veterans administration. we are doing a lot of work on sharing resources. the veterans administration has adopted steps in recognizing -- in creating a training video. they are updating the suicide prevention gatekeeper training and we are participating in a group to develop d.o.d. and joint clinical practices to prevent suicide. the military has been a part of the world that is involved in cutting a work that we have been able to use over the decade in communities. we are pleased with that. we also have work going on with try care -- tri-care and do some pilots there. there is a lot of work going on between samhsa and the military. i am pleased with the interrelationship we have on these issues. there is much more i can say. but my joy in job is to introduce the secretary. i think i see her down there. secretary, i think we got the memo about the colors today. it is a good thing. i want to introduce my boss. i have worked for lots of governors and mayors and political leaders in mike lee -- my career. none of them are as focused and committed to the right things as secretary sebelius. she is implementing reforms that have ended many of the insurance industry's worst abuses and it will help americans get health coverage. she is working with doctors, lawyers, hospital leaders, employers, and patients to slow the growth of health care costs. she has called on all of us to collaborate at the federal level with states, tribes, communities, with federal partners to make america healthy and be the most efficient and effective government agency we can be. she is a strong supporter of behavioral health as part of this effort and leads the charge on the message that prevention works, treatment is effective, and people recover. please join me in welcoming secretary sebelius. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. i am pleased to have a chance to be part of this important conference. i want to start by recognizing what our great health leaders, pam hyde, who leads this important agency on substance abuse and mental health services. as she said, our strategy is not only to look at the cutting edge research and best practices, but actually to collaborate and leverage assets across the federal government. i have been really pleased at the level of cooperation and collaboration with two of the military partners. secretary sinn secchi -- secretary shinsecki and janet kemp and secretary leon panetta who will follow me because he has a deep and personal interest in this area. i do not think there is any more important work than taking care of those who have stood up to protect our nation. men and women in uniform put their lives on the line for us and we need to be there for them when they return. what we know about being snapshot of soldiers today is that they carry an especially heavy burden and have over the last decade. longer deployments, more frequent redeployments, shorter blake's -- shorter breaks between. the pressure has been not only on the active-duty military, but on their families. tragically, as a consequence, we have seen suicide rates continue to rise. the defense department and the veterans administration has taken this crisis on and made it a top priority. it is possibility of meeting the mental health needs of our service members lies with the entire country. the people who fight and defend our freedom need help. we all have an obligation to make sure they get it. in 2010, i join secretary robert gates and don mccue -- and the then secretary of the army to launch the the national suicide prevention department. in our department, that has meant working to make live sighting -- like saving services more accessible to people in crisis. we operate the national suicide prevention lifeline number. a national network of crisis call centers for those experiencing a suicide crisis or in serious emotional distress. last fall, the lifeline recede its 3 millionth call. knowing we had this large network in place, the va reached out to us and we formed a partnership. veterans and their families who called the life line can press number 1 to be connected to the veterans crisis line. it is available in a number of european countries. in just the first five months of this year, over 85,000 lifeline calls were answered by deep veterans crisis line. our department has also organized a series of academies to bring together a community leaders, and veterans officials to team up and share best practices. one example is a program known as operation emersion, an initiative that brought health- care providers to a national base where they live like soldiers for one day. meet withmre's and soldiers of every rank and their families to hear about military culture, like on the front line, and what it is like to be back home. that has given health care providers an in-depth understanding of what service members are actually going through and help them provide better care. operation emersion started in tennessee. when organizers brought it to what our policy academies, it sparked a lot of interest. we flew representatives from other states to tennessee where they experienced operation emersion themselves. now a number of them have replicated this program in their own communities. one of the things we are trying to do and will continue to do is find best practices and help them come up the scale throughout the country. are all to goal is to work in support of states together with the department of defense and the betterment administration to create a system where there is no -- veterans administration to create a system where there is no wrong door. no matter where they go, they get the care they need. we are teaching doctors how to screen for ptsd. we want to give state officials be state -- the technical support they can use to connect service members and veterans to local services like child care, employment, and peer support networks. we are helping community and federal agencies collect in shared data so that we can get services to communities where they are needed most. the thing that ties all of these efforts to gather is the commitment to care for the whole person. we want to make sure people stop making distinctions between behavioral health and physical health. i know that all of you feel the same way. i am a former governor. i was governor of kansas. my adjutant general was the adjutant general of the kansas army and air national guard. he took seriously the effort to address the mental health needs of returning national guard men and women. he used to talk to me about how when a soldier is going into the field, how he would take his tank and run a check on the vehicle. making sure the guns are operational. making sure they have all of the correct ammo. we would never send that machine into the field unless it checked out. but we actually were not taking the same care of service men and women who were in that tank and guiding that machine. in this administration, we are committing to ensuring that we meet the full needs of our returning servicemen and -- service members and veterans. this is exactly the important, lifesaving works so many of you do every day. we want to help give you the support to keep doing it and doing it well. i want to thank you for sharing your experience and expertise at this conference this week. all were men and women in uniform, veterans and their families, have given so much to defend this nation. by giving them the support they need to stay healthy, we honor their service and fulfil our shared responsibility. at the department of health and human service, we regard this as a priority initiative and looked over to our ongoing partnership. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you very much. thank you. thank you for the kind introduction. and thank you all for your leadership, for your wise counsel, and for your commitment to ensuring that our service members and their families receive the kind of treatment and support that they so richly deserves. i would like to express my appreciation to all of you in this audience. appreciation for coming together, appreciation for the work you have been doing at this three day conference. appreciation for defocus that all of you are making -- the focus that you are making to give attention to one of the most complex problems facing our military power -- military families, the problem of suicide. you are the experts in trying to deal with a difficult issue. i am reminded of the story of a nobel prize winner who was going throughout the state of california. he had won the nobel prize in a complex area of physics. he was going throughout the state of california giving a complex address on the area he had gotten the nobel prize in. he was heading toward fresno and his chauffeur leads back and said, i have heard that same speech so many times, i think i can give it by memory myself. >> the professor said why don't we do that. why don't i put on your uniform and you put on my suit and you give the speech. and hethey did that. the professor -- the show for got up and spoke eloquently for an hour and got a standing ovation. the professor sat in the audience and could not believe what happened. then somebody raised their hand, but i have a question. they went to a three-paragraph question, some formulas, questions, and said, professor, what did you think? there was a long pause. the chauffeur said, you know, that is the stupidest question i have ever gotten. [laughter] just to show you how stupid it is, i am going to have my chauffeur answer it out in the audience. there are a hell of a lot of chauffeurs in this audience when it comes to this complicated, difficult issue, and i appreciate the devotion and dedication that all of you are making to try to deal with this issue. i am particularly pleased that this conference is run jointly by the department of defense and the department of veterans affairs. building a strong per collaboration between our two departments is absolutely essential, it is essential, to meeting the needs of our service members and veterans. i am proud of the strong working relationship that i have built with secretary shinseki, and i agree that our two departments are working closely, more than ever before. it is essential we are going to bill that cut a partnership if we are born to address issues like suicide. this issue, suicide, is perhaps the most frustrating challenge that i have come across since becoming secretary of defense last year. despite the increased efforts, the increased attention, the trends continue to move in a troubling and tragic direction. all of us gathered here share a very deep concern about this issue and about the trends we are seeing. we also share a commitment to take action to do everything possible to prevent these horrible tragedies and to support those who have served our country with honor and with distinction. greatest frustration, greatest frustration is that there are no easy answers here. there are no quick fixes. there are no simple solutions. that does not mean that we cannot do more to prevent it from happening. we can do more. we must do more. and together, we will do more. first, it is important for all of us to recognize the nature of the challenges that we face in our military and veterans' community. for more than 10 years, we have been a nation at war. repeated deployments, sustained exposure, combat, tragedies of war brought stresses and strains on our troops at on their families back home. thanks to advances in protective technologies and battlefield medicine, more of our men and women are surviving, ombat. once home, many are grappling with the wounds of battle, both seen and unseen. traumatic brain injury, post- traumatic stress, the other psychological ailments that can contribute to the risk of suicide. the end of the war in iraq, the beginning of the drop down in afghanistan -- drawdown will hopefully ease some of the strain of our trips, but that will not solve this problem. indeed, more than half of those who have committed suicide in the military had no history of deployment. we are dealing with broader societal issues -- substance abuse, financial distress, , the riskip problems factors for suicide that reflect problems in the broader society, the risk factors that will and/or be on the war -- that will endure it on the war. we have to develop and during suicide-prevention strategy. the department of defense is committed to being a part of the comprehensive approach to suicide prevention. we are committed to doing whatever it takes to protect and support our people. building off of the recommendation contained in the 2010 dod task force report last november, we have established a dod suicide-prevention office. this office will put new resources and a new for this -- a new focus where it implements the task force bus recommendations and enhances the successful test of our suicide- prevention program. but i see our efforts, adding to focus on four key tracks, and let me discuss each of those areas. first of all, this is always critical when it comes to an operation like the defense department and to our military forces. leadership responsibility. leadership responsibility. we are directing military leaders to take this issue head on. like almost every issue in our military, progress on suicide prevention depends on leadership. i have made that clear. this issue is first and foremost a leadership responsibility. all those in command and leadership positions, particularly junior officers, nco's, who have day-to-day responsibility for troops, need to be sensitive, need to be aware, the to be opened to the signs of stress in the ranks, and they need to be aggressive -- aggressive -- and encouraging those who served under them to seek help if needed. they also must set an example by seeking help themselves, if necessary. as part of their leadership responsibilities, junior nco's mustnior foster the kind of cohesion and togetherness that is a fundamental part of our military culture and can do so much to improve mental health. my wife, who is a nurse, worked on metal health care issues, she said to me time and time again, "this is a human issue, a human problem. you got to look in people's eyes, you got to be sensitive to their emotions, you got to be sensitive to the challenges that they are facing. you got to be aware, you got to have your eyes open." and the more we can see those problems cunning, the more we can do to try to help -- see those problems coming, the more we can do to help those in need. we have to make clear that we will not tolerate, we will not tolerate actions that the thate, littlehaze -- belittle, that haze, that ostracize those who seek professional help. leaders throughout the department must make it understood that seeking help is a sign of strength. not a sign of weakness. it is a sign of strength. and courage. [applause] we have got to do all we can to remove the stigma that still too often surrounds mental health care issues. outreach efforts such as the real war year's campaign, which work to increase awareness in the use of resources, such as the military and veterans crisis lines, are also a very important part of these efforts. secondly, we have got to do everything we can to improve the quality and access to health care. this is a second pillar of the suicide-prevention strategy -- improving the quality of behavioral healthcare, and expanding access to that care. we now have more than 9000 psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, mental health nurses, counselors, working in military hospitals and in military clinics. that number has increased more than 35% over the last three years. behavioral health experts are now being indebted into line units -- -- imbedded into line units and the department has worked to provide health care providers in clinics to facilitate access. guardsmen and reservists often do not have ready access to the same support network as the active duty force. we have got to do what we can to increase initiatives like the yellow ribbon every integration program that is working to address this kind of problem. going forward, i want to make sure that all service members and their family members have the quality, metal, behavioral healthcare that they need, the kind of care that must be delivered by the best health care professionals in the world. thanks to the efforts of so many of you in this audience, but we are improving our ability to identify and treat mental health care conditions. we're working to better equip our system to deal with the unique challenges that these conditions can present. for example, i have been very concerned about reports of problems with the screening process for posttraumatic stress in the military disability in violation system. for that reason, i have directed a review of this process across all of the uniformed services. this review will help in shore that we are delivering -- ensure that we are delivering on our commitment to provide the best care for our service members. we have got to do everything we can to make sure that the system itself is working to help soldiers, not the height this issue, not to make the wrong judgments about this issue. but to face facts and to deal with the problems of fraud and make sure that we provide the right diagnosis and that we follow up on that kind of diagnosis. thirdly, we have to elevate the whole issue of mental fitness. a third pillar of suicide prevention is better equipping service members with training and coping skills that they need to avoid or bounceback from stress -- or bounce back from stress. to that end, all of the shirt -- services, under the leadership of general dances -- dempsey and the senior and is it advisers, are working to elevate mental fitness to the same level of importance. we have got to elevate mental fitness to the same level of importance that dod has always placed on physical fitness. [applause] separately, a whole government effort that has been led by the president and mrs. obama to combat veterans unemployment and boost hiring of military spouses is aimed at helping to reduce the financial stress faced by military families and veterans. finally, fourthly, we have got to increase research in suicide prevention. in partnership across the government, and with the private sector, the fourth pillar of our approach is to improve our understanding of suicide. to improve our understanding of related mental health care issues to better and improved side to research. i would like to note the leadership of the department of health and human services in addressing this conference earlier. all of us recognize that there is far too much that we do not know about the causes of suicide, the effectiveness of particular suiciderevention programs, and the linkage between psychological help and traumatic brain injury. trying to find out more about these very difficult complex issues is not easy, but we have got to do everything we can to continue their research effort into learning more about this difficult issue. many of you are working tirelessly to address these gaps. as part of this effort, the department of defense and department of veterans affairs are working to build a data repository that will help us better analyze suicide and suicide attempts and do what we can to spot trends and to get ahead of that. likewise, we are improving program evaluation so that we can better focus our resources on those programs that are proven to be effective. the department is also working to fundamentally transform the nation possibility to understand and treat traumatic brain injury and posttraumatic stress. the signature unseen wounds of the last decade of war. her earlier this month, the department and the intricate fallen heroes fund announced the plan to construct state of the art treatment centers for brain injuries, psychological disorders, at nine of our largest installations in the country. i am delighted that we were able to break ground on the first two of these centers at fort belvoir and camp lejeune. these centers made possible by the generosity of private citizens -- and god bless them for their generosity and what they do. because of their generosity, this will help complement the national intricate center of excellence in bethesda and provide cutting-edge evaluations but treatment planning, research, and education for service members and for their families. my long-term goal for the department of defense is to be a game-changing innovator in this eld. just as we fostered the space age and the internet, i want us to break new ground in understanding the human line and human emotions. in doing so, we will be drawing on a rich history of military needs, spurring innovation in this feel. during world war ii, millions of service men saw firsthand the need for better psychological services and psychological treatment. and its aftermath, with the gi bill and the new veterans administration's clinical psychological training program, the entire field of modern psychology has transformed -- it really has. for the first time, for the first time, psychology was a field that was richly funded in training and in practice, and the result has been better treatment and better care for millions of americans. i believe we could help bring about another transformation, made possible by the hard work of men and women like all of you. i know that you will not rest and will not be satisfied until we have given our service members and their family members and our veterans the support they need. there are, as i have said, no easy answers to the problem and the challenge of suicide. but that is no damn reason for not finding the answers to the problem of suicide. [applause] we have to keep trying to do everything we can to prevent, and all of us, frankly for that matter, all americans have to always support and care for those who have stepped forward to defend our country in uniform. we are a family. we are a family. and by god, we have to take care of our family members. that is not just italian. that is american. [laughter] [applause] we owe it to those who protect us to do all we can to protect them. it may god bless you and may god bless all those who protect this great nation. thank you very much. >> coming up tonight, from dallas, we will bring you coverage of eight republican candidate debate for senate in texas between cruz and dewhurst. the state holds its election on july 31. the debate gets underway tonight at 9:00 eastern on c-span. this sunday, john kline talks about the stalemate in congress over the student loan interest rate. if no action is taken, interest rates will double to 6.8%. see the interview sunday at 10:00 a.m. at 6:00 p.m. on c- span. we will look at the obama for america campaign and their strategy. guests are david axelrod and ben labolt. they talk about the use of social media and operational boat to target key battleground states. we will get a tour of their chicago headquarters. sunday on c-span. this weekend, the civil war and the movement to end slavery. >> one of the fascinating hiscts upon abolitionists' when lincoln does his inaugural, the self-described abolitionists are still a minority, and they are still slight. what transformed abolitionists into respected, prescient critics of the american team is fort sumter. >> "the contenders," a look at eugene debs, sunday at 7:30 p.m., this weekend on c-span3. >> out the new approach book interviews differently than news reporting interviews? >> i think it as a gathering history. interviewing when i am working for the news side, i think as gathering contemporary information. >> how difficult is it to remain impartial? >> i am want to try as best as i can get people as full an understanding of what is happening in this campaign. it is not that difficult to put your biases to the side. >> how has social be a change in your line of work? >> twitter is now a primary news source for anybody who covers politics and anybody who pays attention to politics. twitter did not exist four years ago. >> sunday night, students interview dan balz, 8:00 p.m. on c-span. this weekends, details of fast and furious. >> this was swept under the rug. are hundreds of -- of innocent mexicans that have been murdered, but the only thing that we knew of the program was that american gun dealers were going into mexico and causing these problems with the cartel when the government was sanctioning these sales and sending them into mexico. >> she is interviewed by major garrett, this weekend on c- span2. tuesday, national journal posted a discussion. charlie cook moderate it the discussion. the panel discussed 2012 election trends come and voter demographics, the presidential race, and key congressional races. this is about an hour and a half. >> good morning, everybody. the key for joining us. it is my pleasure to welcome you this morning. we are to have an interesting and stimulate a discussion on what we can expect in 2012 election. thank you those of you who are joining our live video stream and to our viewers on c-span this morning. we are grateful to try to cook for briefing of this morning, on election trends and to martin frost and tom davis. they are willing to take questions, so please think about what you would like to ask them. if you would raise your hand, staff will come it usually helps to state your name and link -- and organization. finally, if you would not mind silencing yourself on so we can have uninterrupted discussions. we are gathered here this morning thanks to the thoughtful leadership of the united technology corp.. it is a diversified company comprised of several well-known brands. it has been a great partner of the national journal. every week that congress is in sight -- in session, they pull people and bring the message back to washington. thank you to greg and his team for partnering with us and for bringing us together with charlie cook several times during the election period. he leads all of the federal and government state of affairs for utc. his portfolio is even more abroad, that includes directing affairs for china and the you. please welcome greg ward. [applause] >> thank you, victoria and all of you. it is our pleasure on behalf of united technologies to be here. we are a pretty substantial company. about 210,000 employees around the world. about $60 billion in revenue. you can see on the podium on number of the companies that are part of our family. we are about to add one more. that is the good rich corporations. we hope to have that in the family within the next six weeks or so. we are waiting for approval of that. it is our approval to be here this morning. it is always fun to work in collaboration and partnership with the national journal and the national journal family of products and people. i do not know how did it does it, but he seemed to recruit the best people to run his program and his division. it has been a great affiliation over a substantial number of years. it is also fun to be here again with charlie and two premier and astute political observers. it is going to be a great panel. i have a friend named don and he and i go back a long way. he has a number of children. his four year-old was coming down for christmas looking at all of the christmas presents underneath the tree. he said, unbeweebable. that is the image that charlie has this election year with all begins he has been given. charlie, thank you for being here. congressman, thank you for participating as well. thank you all for participating this morning. it is good to see you. [applause] >> charlie, do you want to come up and i will continue the introductions. i think you all know charlie cooke. that is why you are here. charlie has been providing his insight and analysis to our subscribers and the members of the national journal. he has put together some of the best political reports in town. he writes regularly for the national journal daily and for the national journal. he remains a political analyst for nbc news. at a time when news and information on local campaigns is so polarized, charlie remains one of the most respected political analysts in the country, providing a fair and him rest aspect -- there and humorous aspect to politics. please welcome charlie cook. [applause] >> i will talk briefly because i want to get martin and tom up here. i am afraid of what i might say. i do not want prejudice -- i am curious about what these guys are going to say about the same subject. i look around this room and see people have been watching this stuff as long or as -- or longer than i have. some campaigns have ups and downs like elevators. sometimes they can power through their problems. sometimes they are chilled or can really take on like vertically like a sikorski. hamilton used to make propellers. they still do. sometimes they just get really tired. thank you all for coming out. i have cherished this relationship with national journal. we are working on a new contract. anyway, nice to see all of you here. this is a fascinating presidential election and it is going through a lot of faces. i think one of the questions i will ask is, are we at a different place 60 or 90 days ago? is this an inflection point or is this getting exaggerated or is be -- it be conventional wisdom catching up with reality? i will go ahead and introduce them and get going. when you see panels in washington and you see former members, have you ever noticed there are a handful of people you see a whole lot. the reason is, out of the thousands and thousands of former members of congress there are, there is a small number you can count on a hand better known as being really, really sharp, able to dissect political situations that are not just rubber-stamp being party positions and that had a brilliant expertise and an analytical ability that helps people -- i get it now. if you were going to put together five of them, martin frost and tom davis would be on the thighs. i can only think of four. they are -- would be on the five. martin was in congress for 12 years. he was the dccc share. both of them have been on the inside, the innermost strategy sessions. they know where all the bodies are buried. sometimes they are tempted, but they never really tell us where exactly those bodies are buried. it is two members i have enormous admiration for. i think we should invite three members up and have one as a control group. say this is somebody else. somebody who is not so good. these two guys are really good and that other one is a clunker. that appeals to my perverse nature. why don't you guys come on up. let's just have a conversation. i would rather do that than here myself pontificate. >> martin is so in charge of leadership -- martin tells me where to sit. >> it is obviously early in the morning because charlie did not remember to say what terms we were in. he said years. i was in 26 and tom was in 16. it's all right. it is early in the morning. >> dog years. [laughter] >> i want to cover congressional and presidential and what is going to happen at the end of this year. i will throw it open for either one of you to jump out. is the presidential race fundamentally different from where it was april 11, the day romney nailed down the nomination? >> let me start, if i may. charlie and i have been doing these kinds of programs for the last few years. we agree that this was going to be a close race. other people were saying, obama is going to win by a big margin. as a democrat, i still think obama has a reasonable chance of winning. i have always thought this was going to be comparable to what happened in 2004 when you had an incumbent president who barely won the election. i have looked at all the material you have done on this and charlie generates more stuff than anybody else. >> there are more people who generate more stuff than anybody else. >> he showed the electoral votes almost exactly even among the states where you had solid d and leaning d and solid republicans and likely republicans. it is interesting. it looks to me, if everything breaks the way it looks right now, that is if wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania state democratic -- and that is yet to be resolved, the election is going to come down to three states. for romney to win, he will have to carry ohio, virginia, and florida. i do not know if he can carry all three of those states. if he does, he can be the next president. that is where you will see an awful lot of action. what obama did on the dream act was important and helped him a lot. he was already ahead of him on hispanics and hispanics are important in florida and important in some states in the west. this is going to be a close race and it will go down to the wire. >> the unemployment numbers have gone up. we have had a narrative where unemployment was dropping in terms of the unemployment rate. last month, a job creation was under estimates and the economy was not proving -- improving as well as everyone thought. the commission a wisdom that obama was headed for a second term turned on its head. those metrics will determine who the next president will be. what martin just described in terms of the states at risk is basically the run of 2004. a few states on the bubble. there were a few states in 2000 or and 2000. obama broke new ground last time with indiana, virginia, and pennsylvania. it is becoming a mobilization election in times of going after independence. i think they have a difficult time replicating their turnout model this time around. instead of running against bush, , and economicrs fallout on the republicans' watch, this time around he has had to govern for four years. no president has been reelected with unemployment higher than 7.5%. that is not a hard and fast rule. the magic's of this race make it much more difficult for the president than anybody -- the metrics of this race make it much more difficult for the president than anybody thought. >> the percentage of the white vote continues to decline in the percentage of the minority voted continues to increase. the republicans are in real trouble because of that. they might scrape by this time, but if the hispanic vote goes to the democratic column and the republicans have done nothing to attract hispanics, the underlying dynamics of the election are not on the republicans' side. they may win because of the economy. tom may be right about that. the turnout model from to cause a cannot be replicated. obama is not going to win by that kind of margin. he is not going to carry indiana. he is probably not going to carry a virginia. they have to win by just enough to be reelected. given where the two parties are -- i write for politico from time to time. if the national journal wants me to write for them, i would write for them, too. about one month ago, i pointed out a real problem i see for the obama campaign. it is seen years, particularly white seniors. the democratic share among white seniors have been -- has been declining. while interest rates have stayed low, that is good for a lot of people. it is not good for seniors. sears would show up at my town hall meetings and i said, isn't it wonderful that interest rates are down. and they would say, you did not understand. low interest rates are not good for everybody. obama has got to figure out how to speak to seniors because they are trending in the wrong direction just as hispanics are trending in the wrong direction. >> there is no question that some elements of the republican party have done everything humanly possible to alienate the latino vote. while there is an anchor toward the republican party and many -- among many latinos, there is a disappointment in democrats. you were on our side, but did you fight for us. did you shed any blood for the dream act. they are angry at one side, disappointed in another. that is one reason why, when you look at numbers, how likely are you to vote, latino voters are low. the gallup poll is actually matching what he did against mccain last time in terms of support if they show up. >> what i said initially goes to the mobilization of the election. they are having a hard time expending their electoral base. they will have a hard time replicating what they did before. when you have had to govern and make tough decisions and you have disappointed people and have not managed expectations -- a different set of expectations. african americans. he will take -- he will come close to what he did before. the african-american community heavily invested in their present -- his presidency. let's get the students. these were sent gains for obama last time. -- cinch gains for obama last time. that is not there for him this time. where are the young people? they are looking for jobs. the enthusiasm gap is down. among young registered in ohio and colorado, republicans are registering democrats in young voters under 21. if you look at their strategy, it is not a strategy geared toward young voters. let's get to hispanics, which you cannot just lumped together. puerto rican do not have the same interest in immigration. they are citizens. cubans behave differently than mexican americans. my district has salvadorans. tough group to get out. i do not think they will be able to replicate that. long-term, that is a huge problem for republicans. not just hispanics, asians voters you buy date and their lifestyles are like republicans but do not necessarily vote that way. the economy is at default and it masks the traditional ethnic and social -- the economy is at the front and it masks the traditional ethnic and social alliances. >> the republicans give the hispanics the back of their hands every time there is an opportunity. >> the good days were the back of the hand. look at the presidential debates. gov perry was for the dream act and was for a reasonable position on immigration. romney moved to his right. more progressive moves on immigration hurt him inside the republican party. now, some republicans are threatening to sue the president about his decision on the dream act. my attitude is, bring it on. let him sue -- let them sue. it will drive the point home that the republicans are on the wrong side of an issue that is popular in the hispanic community. did the president push hard enough early on? you can debate that. it was filibustered by republicans in the senate. all of the body language republicans sent to be hispanic community has been wrong. they have blown the opportunity because hispanic voters are culturally conservative. republicans have not given them anything to hold onto. i think this is going to be a real problem going into the campaign. no one expects the turnout model to be the same as it was in 2008. >> earlier, you explicitly said and tom implied references to beat george w. bush's 2004 election. there is never a perfect analogy. there is an analogous situation in that you had two president that are -- two president that are facing ugly independents and how much effort do you make chasing after swing voters who, at the end of the day, are not going to go your way. in the case of bush, organically growing your base or, in the case of obama, how you get close as you can do that extraordinary turnout knowing you cannot completely replicate it. the wall street journal combined the first five months of this year's polling. it was polls in each month. throughout the undecided voters -- throughout the -- and they threw out the under registered voters. they pulled out for comparison purposes and looked at just the undecided, the 7% of the 3800 who were undecided, which worked out to 260. all registered voters -- among just the undecided, 15% right direction, 71% right -- wrong track. 48% approved and 46 disapproved. on obama job rating on the economy, register voters, 44% approved and 56% disapproved. on the generic ballot test, among all voters, democrats were ahead by two postal -- two points. looking at this group, they are older, they are hard independents. there are more republicans than democrats. looking at that group and saying, you are not getting half of this group. you are probably not getting 1/3. if this is the case, doesn't that force you back to turn now and a george w. bush 2004 model? >> of course it does. bush won the race after an enormous turnout in the state of ohio. that was the ball game. you have to ask yourself where these voters are geographically. of course, these undecided voters in certain parts of the country, particularly in the south are going to break strongly against the democrats. you have to look at what is going on in ohio and what is going on in wisconsin and pennsylvania and michigan. you have the auto bailout and the fact that obama acted forcefully to keep general motors in business, to keep chrysler in business and all of their suppliers and the small businesses who rely on people who have jobs in the automobile industry. you will hear a lot about that in those key states. that will have an impact particularly since romney was opposed of the bottle bill out. what makes the difference to undecided voters in those swing states? that is not an argument that will help in leveraging yet. the turnout model in virginia of maximizing his support from the last time made a difference. florida is hard for me to call, hard to predict. i am not sure any of those factors will be in play on obama's site in florida. in virginia, he has one thing -- on obama's side in florida. >> the undecided voters are going to decide this. they had had three years to look at president obama and they are not there. when i was running, they knew me. i had been to their picnics and their parades. and kissed their babies. if they did not like me, it was going to be a hard sell to get them. the president is in a similar position. romney has to make the sale. but they are looking around and that is a dangerous place for a president to be. the more he caters to his base, the more alienated these groups become. it is hard to have a mobilization election. it is a state-by-state. every state has different coalitions to put together to muster a majority. the mall -- the obama team is savvy. they will not make it easy. >> you take a look at registrations over the last decade. both parties have lost market share. many people are going to become independent or declining to state in droves. two failed wars, stagnant wages. people are looking around and the president has fallen short of the promises and hopes people have had in him. a long way to go. a small group that they will be catering to. i do not think they can mobilize the base like they did last time. they only got 52.9%. they will need some of these independents in the end. >> let me play devil's advocate. whoever wins the popular vote, wins day electoral college. if the popular old to a close one way, my assumption has always been, a democrat might be more likely to win the popular vote and lose the electoral college and the other way around because democrats waste so many votes by winning california and new york by huge margins. you have wasted all those other votes and republican votes are more efficiently allocated around the country. besides the fact that this thing goes in the same direction -- looking at it state-by-state in the new world order means paying a lot of attention to we will not name the specific pollsters. we're talking about 80% of the state. i have sort of decided -- you know what, time's up? the obama campaign has spent millions of dollars. if it is one of the top five or six you know what? it is probably close. if one side is in any other is not, maybe not so. i'm just not going to get worked up over the latest rasmussen told. i'm sorry. the largest newspaper in the state is getting together and commissioning a statewide survey. >> the one thing i would note is the polls will tell you one thing. i would wait a week after the democratic convention. at that point, a lot of undecided voters start focusing. it is anybody's race. i do think the metrics on the economy are going to set the voter mood. they are probably the most important indicator. >> going to your point, we live in the washington d.c. area, we see local television here. i have noticed the obama campaign has a very clean and effective advertisement on right now. they are focusing on virginia. they show obama at the beginning where he says i have of the rest of this advertisement. that is a counter message. -- i have authorized this advertisement. that is a counter message. he focuses on the romney's record in massachusetts as governor. that is a very clean, affective advertisement. it is running because virginia is up for grabs. talkt's segue over and about congress for a couple of minutes. i am not going to say anything. [laughter] >> i have some things to say. >> democrats need 25 seats to get a majority in the house. i am kind of skeptical. martin, if you want to make the case or if someone was going to make the case, what would they say? >> i am trying to give an independent view. [laughter] it is early in the morning. i think it is not impossible for democrats to take back the house. it is a heavy lift. it is not just 25 seats. there are other seats were democrats are retiring. it is not impossible. if there is an anti-incumbency mood out there, i have felt there is more of that mood and we have seen in previous elections, there are more republicans an office in the house and democrats, i think the democrats can make significant gains. the important thing is that there are a lot of new republicans who have not established themselves. they have not been in long enough. they have not done what tom did. to go to of little league games and all the pta meetings. -- to all of the little league meetings. it takes a while to become a figure. there are a lot of new republicans who are vulnerable. some of who were swept in by the tide who are going to lose. when you have a landslide election, just like you did in 1994, we knew who the accident took congressmen were. we knew someone not going to make it more than one term. the redistricting has been a wash. republicans thought they were going to benefit. it has been a wash. democrats will pick up some seats in california and illinois. republicans will pick up some in north carolina. it is not impossible for democrats because of the unrest in the country to take the house back. the most likely outcome is republicans will lose some seats and it will be much closer. it is not inconceivable democrats could take the house back. >> i will bet you $10,000. [laughter] >> i am standing up for martin. >> i would not take his money. >> we both went. >> the republican problem is they over performed. they had the highest turnover since 1938. they have used the redistricting where they controlled more seats than at any time since 1920 to strengthen a lot of the seat. there are a half-dozen seats that are gone because of retirement. historically, when you look at presidential reelect, republicans lost seats, nixon swept 49 seats. reagan in 1984. [talking over eachother] 1992 is not a reelect. >> we gained a seat. >> not enough to take back the house. [laughter] that was because of republican over performance. reelects, people and not that upset. they tend to re-elect congressman. take a look at history. it would be difficult for people to oust obama and have a divided congress. it takes the whole argument away. it is a much more difficult -- not impossible, but a much more difficult-. republicans are likely to lose a handful of seats. i think 25 seats is a way that i think is unlikely to occur. >> to talk about the senate for a minute. for a minute? a statistic that makes the point is that the postwar era, the party in the white house only gaining more than 15 seats that was in 1964 with thelbj landslide. -- with the lbj landslide. in a presidential reelection, 25, that is a heavy lift. >> i do not disagree. i am saying, this is such an extraordinary year, strange things could happen. >> i have some thoughts about the sun. -- senate. some of the people have not figured out what is going on. while democrats have a three vote majority, the hill for the republicans is more than that. they need to pick up more than three seat. they are going to lose, there will be an independent in man. that is four. if obama is reelected, the vice president presides over the senate. that is five. if we win either nevada or massachusetts, two states held by republicans, we could win one of those, that is six. the republicans probably have to pick up at least six seats. i do not think they can do that. i think there are a lot of closely contested senate races. some of those will break democratic. some of those will break republican. there are a couple of wild cards. democrats have a shot of maintaining control of the senate by one vote. >> let me make this observation. elections have become very parliamentary. although the last time the republicans over performed and they won a handful of senators, illinois, pennsylvania, wisconsin, that is the exception to the rule. u.s. in very few blue senators in red states and red senators in ballistics. we have 23 democrats -- in blue states. we have 23 democrats up for reelection. 11 open senate seat. it could go either way. i think sometimes there is an exuberance to think we are going to take it. nothing is automatic. we have some democrats that one in 2006. it was a huge democratic year. they have to protect themselves. they are tough holds for the democrats. you have a number of these other seats that could go either way. i feel good about republican prospects and wisconsin, montana, north dakota, nebraska, missouri. >> that does not get the 6. >> that gets you five. virginia is a possibility. you get into second-tier, ohio, indiana. indiana is not clear. >> that is a republican seat. >> the polling is close. by the time it straightens out, it is likely to stay republican. it is not there yet. the feelings within the coalition. i think the senate is very much up for grabs. my gut is that if romney wins, it will portend a republican senate. if he does not win, it becomes much more difficult. >> it is interesting, i am from texas. i went to school in missouri. i was a journalism major. the missouri senate race is one of the most interesting in the country. clear mccaskill is running for reelection. they have a late primary. they have three candidates. it is possible the republicans will nominate the weakest candidate. it is possible mccaskill could be reelected in a state that normally would go republican. there are a lot of things going on. the race in montana is a very interesting race. it is a republican state. he fits the personality of the state. do not forget, the old and a wild card, no one thinks has a chance -- the ultimate wild card, no one thinks has a chance, bob kerrey. >> right. [laughter] >> he is a very interesting candidate. he is an unusual candidate. it is not going to be easy for him to win. not impossible. >> he has lived in new york the last 10 years. he is a badly flawed republican. the three republicans running, one of them is critical disfigured politically speaking. -- quarter thickly disfigured politically speaking -- horrifically disfigured politically speaking. [laughter] the other is more of a placebo. who is able to win the generic republican vote, i think that is okay. i think it was the worst outcome for carry. -- kerry. the only thing that jumped out is that i am not rush into a judgment on what is going to happen. i think this is a guy who wants to stay independent. it depends on what happens in the other -- i say, we do not have 33 senate races, we have 32 senate races and one silent auction. [laughter] the thing is that historic plea they do not -- historical way they do not let it sit in the center aisle. you have to get yourself committee assignment -- your committee assignment. depending on what happens to the other 32 states, i think this guy with love -- 1 part of his tenure as governor, the state senate was evenly divided. there was a power-sharing agreement. i do not know whether these circumstances would allow this or whether this would make things happen, lord knows it would be over harry reid's and mitch mcconnell's dead bodies. in his heart of hearts, he is closer to being a democrat than a republican. i think he really is an independent. if he can figure out a way to do that. he has said, i will do it as long as i can still be effective for maine. if it means siding with the minority party in the matter much -- no matter what, he is not going to do that. on a bad night, republicans picked up two seats. it would take them from 47 to 49. a good night would get them to 52. odds of them doing better than that ended when olympia snowe retired. i did not want to get too specific. there are a number of places where republicans have not been able to get the optimal people to run. >> that is an understatement. [laughter] >> the best candidate is not likely to win. >> is prevented from running. >> virginia. or, let's say, florida. this is not likely to be an optimal situation for republicans. missouri, martin is dead on. >> if she wins the republican nomination -- >> let me make a comment about and this king -- about angus king. >> they have an ankle on everything perry >> i have a daughter in maine. his aunt was mayor of ... andrea. --of alexandria. there is an angle. i did not dismiss his automatically democrat. i think he wants to be independent. he is going to represent people who are frustrated. >> main elected an independent governor who is very unpopular. i am not sure an independent aligning himself with the republican party makes a lot of sense. >> i learned something interesting. angus king's first political involvement was as a driver. >> the current governor of maryland, you know how he got his start? he was a driver for gary hart. >> being a driver is an interesting thing. [laughter] >> it was one of my first two jobs. that and elevator operator. i do not think otis was a run. >> to you have any idea? there were not that many elevator companies. anyway, that is a job that has its ups and downs. [laughter] >> the messages of race is one of the most intriguing races. when we talk about people vote in parliamentary, scott brown is gearing his campaign for it independents. there are only 13 percent and republicans. elizabeth warren is not given her campaign towards -- during her campaign towards independents. he could pull this thing off. the other interesting race from a republican perspective is why. the democrats have a very contentious primary. she was elected governor twice. carried every legislative district in the state. obama, that is one of his home state. he is going to do very well. you get a bitter democratic primary, things can happen. usually when you see a trend, there are always one or two that pop up. >> the massachusetts race is interesting. obama is going to carry massachusetts by a large margin. the question is does a elizabeth warren gets swept in. this happened once before. people do not talk about it much. this happened in new york. bobby kennedy got swept in. these things can happen. i think that elizabeth warren has a problem. he will see plaut it is such a democratic state. she could win it. >> the problem sometimes is too many chiefs and not enough indians. [laughter] >> oh. where is the seven second replay. >> mass., a landslide for republicans would be 52%. he has no margin for error. i would rather be him at this point. let's switch. we want to get to questions. i want to go to the fiscal cliff and the end of this year. this is a sophisticated audience. you know all of the background. my best friend has written some good stuff on what may happen at the end of the year. let's see. who wants to go first? between now and the election, lame-duck or sudden death, meaning after the first of january. >> i vote for sudden death. nothing is going to happen between now and the election. lame ducks are very unproductive. there are going to be a lot of lame ducks. it is going to be hard to do much. whatever happens happens in january or february. >> will whatever that happens, will it be preceded by a significant stock market sell- off? >> what they need is a market tremor to get them to act. the coalition -- the race is the primary election. it is the way lines are drawn. the senate, too. you have blue and red states. they are worried about the primary. it does not allow them to act. compromise is not rewarded. the other thing i would note, if you get to the lame duck session, it is done in the concept of leadership election. i have one two caucus votes. the a secret ballot. when i call of members and say, will you support me? they say yes. you say, can i make the public? they say, no. the only member you can believe it is the one who says he is voting against the. this is done in the context of caucus votes. sequestering, you have a report showing this could put us over the financial cliff. two years ago, they did reach some accord. l th d billion to the debt. other direction.have to go the it is much harder. it is going to take a market tremor. you'll have the appropriation bills. i think it will be a big mistake to let those hang out there. if you are still doing appropriations, you'll not get anything else done. >> is the dynamic of you have to let -- there is an argument that you have to let the bush tax cuts expire so that republicans can vote for something that is not a tax increase. in other words, the brits have to jack up to the pre-bush tax cut level for them to come up with anything less than that. >> that is interesting. >> i have heard the argument. >> it is a good argument. i think what they like to do is lower rates but take care of a lot of special provisions in between. >> at least on the personal side, on the corporate side, that is its own set of issues, on the personal side, is that not so much easier said than done? we are talking about paying taxes on your health insurance premiums. that goes over big. you a talking about going straight to the marrow. it sums great until you read the fine print. >> this is tough stuff. if this were easy, they would have resolved this a long time ago. none of this is popular. someone has to be willing to lose an election. >> you are asking two different questions. do you have tax reform that everybody says they are for? do you have tax reform that is revenue positive, that actually raises more money than the current system no matter how you change the deductions, actually generate some revenue that can be used to pay down the deficit? the parties are not even there. you may have revenue neutral tax reform at the end of the day, which will be a long time coming. that is very difficult to figure out. there is a shorter-term question, are you going to do something anytime soon about the size of the deficit? separate from the issue of overall tax reform. i do not think the parties are incapable of doing that between now and the first of the year. there may be an external shock that will force them to do something. i do not know, this business of playing games, saying, but the bush tax cuts expire. -- let the bush tax cuts expire. it is not a tax increase because they are going to bring the 39.6% rate them. i do not think it plays very well. one of the bigger issues is the sequestration. that is a 50% cut on defense, on domestic spending that is going to happen automatically on january 1. i do not think congress is capable of acting between l and the first of the year to avoid sequestration. the question is, how quickly can they act after the first saw the mitigate some of the problems? that is going to cause real problems in the defense industry. it is going to cause real problems on some domestic programs. i think congress will do something about that in the january, february, and march time frame. apart from whether there is some external economic problem, they have to deal with these automatic cuts. no one thought they were going to happen. everybody thought it would hang there. congress deadlocked and said, -- >> i think it is going to depend on the makeup of the new congress. if republicans take the presidency, the house, and the senate, they will wait to do something. they will do it their way. if you have continued divided government, they may get together and try to get some of the stuff off the table. they will have to live with each other and of the two years. we will see. >> i am very skeptical. >> we need to open it up to the audience. let me clarify, do we have two or three votes for the single most likely outcome sudden- death million post december 31? >> i am a sudden-death guide. >> we have three votes for going into sudden death, with the emphasis on death. [laughter] let's open it up. but the road in microphones? -- are there roving microphones? yes. wave your hand and someone will come. >> the question i have is on the sequestration. the issue came out that if they do go ahead with sequestration, the requirement is a notify the employees 60 days prior to the impetus. that puts it at early november. how much of an impact will that have? >> it could have some. it requires a 60 day notice when you are going to close a facility or decrease employment. that could have a chilling effect. i do not think congress or the president or anybody is capable of avoiding that. we will see what kind of effect it has perry >> they will be home campaigning. each side will get the talking point. i will tell you this, members who voted for the compromise are on the hook for. those who did not fort dodge vote for or off of hope. >> that is called -- those who did not vote for it are off the hook. >> that is called a turning up the heat. >> i do not know how they are capable of solving the problem. this is what they came up with. it is going to be a good. -- to be ugly. i did not see it anything where they could find the offset. you have to find a cut somewhere. we know where a lot of money is, in entitlements. nobody is going to touch that. i have maps i is that show the counties and countries that get the highest percent getting medicare. they are republican counties. these are rural areas. you start messing with the benefits you watch voting patterns change quickly. >> i think the only way this happens before the election, i have talked about the stock market, it has to be the equivalent of attaching electrodes to sensitive body parts and crank it up the electricity. [laughter] i think that is the only way you are going to change behavior. if that sounds chris lee, -- grizzly, yeah. >> let me make one more point. i am somewhat optimistic that if the president is reelected, it is still an of. if the president is reelected, he will show real leadership in the second term in terms of resolving these problems. without presidential leadership, these things do not get solved. >> when has a president had a successful second term? >> bill clinton had a reasonably successful second term. we have had some president to did ok. -- presidents who did ok. i think bill clinton did pretty darn well. >> 5.5 on a 10 scale. >> impeachment. >> who else have we got? >> since both of you are creatures of the house, let's assume the election gets closer without picking a number, what is your prediction on leadership of the house? >> let me jump in and modified this question. on the republican side, how many seats could republicans lose before john boehner gets in some difficulty? if you would like to take the fifth amendment. >> i was there. that is how i got elected to leadership we took a five or six seat loss. that was enough to get the balance shift. i'd be linda who was campaign chairman. -- i'd beat linda who was campaign chairman. it is managing expectations. it is probably nonsense. it is probably not within the realm of high probability. i think it would take a 15, something in the range of 15 to 20 seat loss. they come to town right after the election. they do this on purpose so no one can organize against them. they elect the leaders. then they elect the committee chairman's in january. that is what it would take. if the democrats were to lose seats, that would be a different issue. >> i want to go back to something that tom talked about. the secret ballot. when i was elected caucus chair, i won by seven votes. when tom-a was elected democratic leader, he won by one vote. it is unpredictable. you never know. what happened in 1998 is gingrich -- it is interesting, linder was on the right side. he did not want to make impeachment an issue. i was chair of the democratic side. linda and i were on tv. he said, we are not going to make a big issue about impeachment. he was overruled by gingrich. the republicans lost five seats. that was the first time the president's party had gained seats in the sixth year of an eight year term. gingrich was in disgrace. he had a lot of other problems. i cannot predict how the republicans will be john boehner. if the democrats picked up a lot of seats, he could be in trouble. >> i think he is going to be fun. >> -- fine. >> are you convinced policy is going to seek reelection? >> i did not know. i do not know. if the democrats close this gap substantially, my guess is she does try to stay around. if democrats did not pick up many seats, there probably would be a lot of interest in such a democrat -- inside the democratic caucus. she has turned out to be the right leader. the republicans made her an issue in the 2010 election. she has been exactly the right person in 2012. she is a great fundraiser, she is enthusiastic. it was the right decision for her to say, the caucus will have to make the decision after the 2012 election. how this thing turns up. -- out. >> i am with at&t. we know each other. i have a question which is the vice presidential sweepstakes. do vp picks matter? the think it will matter in this election? >> let tom start on that. >> i think it matters. the old rule is first do no harm. it can matter in picking up a stake. for romney, it will be the first window into how he makes decisions. putting his imprint on things. i think most people vote for president. you do not want to do any harm. if you can add a state or two, so be it. >> let's ask each person to do something. pick three people that you think would be considered and what percentage chance of each one of getting picked. >> as the outsider, let me start on this. this is a republican issue. i think that romney, a cautious politician, will make a conscious choice. portland, polenty, i do not know who is third. i think he picks portland. it makes the most sense. romney is a cautious politician. i cannot see him making an out of the box choice. who knows? we will see what happens. tom is in that party. he may have a different view. >> i do not know what he will do. i hesitate to take a choice. i have so many friends. [laughter] everybody has some strong attributes. they all have some negative factors. >> for the record, i was thinking portman at 35%, pawlenty at 20 or 25%. i would put mitch daniels really high. i do not get a sense that he is aggressively getting a look at. i would put him there. after that, -- >> you have to put the governor of virginia in the mix. >> of the wife is on his cabinet. [laughter] i think he would be a great pick. i also think rubio would be a good pick. he is hispanic, he helps you in florida. generationaly. he solidifies your tea party base. i think he would be a very attractive choice. >> i was at a small breakfast last week, 20 reporters with rubio. a smart guy, smith. i think he has a terrific future. i would not pick him this time for a couple of reasons. one, the subtext of your candidacy is that we should not have elected a guy last time who had never run anything before. you put on your ticket someone who has never run anything. you undercut yourself. 41. to me, republicans, the argument is, that was a mistake. we should not do something remarkably similar. then there is the latino argument. if republicans need help with cubans, we should shut the alexian down. the idea of going after mexican americans with a cuban, that is like saying, i need to set up to the irish, i will pick and englishmen. [laughter] >> you are all the talk and the move in a couple of points. i think he would help. -- you are only talking about moving a couple of points. i think he would help. >> if he suddenly has a gray streak in his hair, he is a serious candidates. [laughter] >> do we have time to squeeze out a couple more? we will go with whoever has the microphone. >> you all have talked about how the republican brand suffers among hispanic. one thing no one has mentioned is women, particularly, women who are not into republicans. has the damage to the republican brand healed since primary season? if it has not, does it matter in the congressional or presidential election? >> i am going to start on this. i am mystified by this issue. my initial reaction, when you had all of this come up about the health care bill and contraception, that this was a real blow for republicans among women, the polling has not shown that. i do not understand. republicans should be having problems among female voters. they made before the election is over. the current polling does not show that. >> if you looked at tracking polls at the time, you cannot find where that happened. you can make a great reason why it should have. it did not. what i have started doing is when i talk about the obama campaign, independents, 18-29 year olds, latinos, african americans, people started saying, what about the women go? -- vote? when you are talking about 52% of the electorate, you were talking about a big group. they are not all alike. this is the first four months of the president's approval rating. the first four months combined. president obama approval rating among single women was 63% and. 63%. among divorced women, 52%. among married women, 44%. what about women? which ones? [laughter] >> and hell about white women and black women? >> white married women with kids, romney went by 18. non married women without kids, obama w -- white, obama wins by one. you get it. >> we have not talked about this. the interesting thing is the catholic vote. i think obama has taken a hit among catholic voters. i am for obama. i still think he wins the election. i am not catholic. [laughter] i do not think this issue was played very well. i do not know that he could have headed off all of the opposition from the catholic church. i think this is a potentially harmful to them -- him. >> one last question. i would like to remind online view is they can participate via twitter. we have an on-line question for you. there are two big phenomenon in this election, media and the rise of the super pac. which has more of an impact? >> super pacs. >> super pac. tom davis and i both spoke out against mccain-fiengold. what we said is this was going to force money. it is taking money away from political parties. it is going to force money into the fringes. everyone ignored us. everybody. that is exactly what has happened. it is unfortunate. you are going to have to amend the u.s. constitution. it is very hard. the people who drafted our constitution knew what they were doing. they made it hard to ever change the constitution. >> this is a huge variation from four years ago. you did not have super pacs. he did not take the federal match. 3-to-1. this time it is going to be maybe advantage republicans. do not underestimate the effect that can have perry >> back to you original question. we need to recognize the obvious. we have guys who we are not collectively 175 years old, but getting to that general area. [laughter] be asking about social media. >> you are exactly right. asked my granddaughter. >> unless it is for. detainment purposes -- pure entertainment purposes. in 2004, the bush campaign used state of the m articro- targeting. it was before social media. the obama campaign is doing that. but they are going to use it very effectively. my guess is the romney campaign will probably do a competent job. the obama campaign will be better at it. will it make a difference? i am on the edge. i am not wild about the idea of super pacs. if you are going to say spending is a form of free speech, that is the slippery slope that led us to this. when you have democrats getting torqued up about this, i did not notice a lot of them getting upset when two people were writing big checks not that many years ago. you have to be consistent. my theory has been that there is a law of diminishing returns in politics. for obama, he raised and spent $700 million total. half of it went to win the nomination. he outspent mccann better than two-to-one. he was going to spend $750 million to $1 billion. what of the number he is going to spend, it is going to be into the law of diminishing returns. i think romney will spend a similar amount. beyond that point, i am not sure each additional dollar is going to have that much of an impact. my hunch for the super pacs is the congressional level. i do not know that he will be at a point where, the presidential, both sides, it will have more money than they know what to do with. extra money on one side, what is that going to do? that is not always going to be the case at the congressional level. >> certainly in senate races. some of the democratic senate candidates are going to be outspent. the house chris gets harder. candidates are better known. where the money could have an effect are in some of these battleground senate races. >> next question. >> i am susan. i have a question about the supreme court decision on health care, how does that affect the election? >> supreme court, health care. >> window that normally the supreme court handles the hottest days. i assume that is what they are going to do. it cannot predict that. if the supreme court strikes down the individual mandate, it becomes a non-issue for the rest of this campaign. congress will have to figure out what to do. how to put honda dumped it back together again, assuming the law will continue. if the supreme court were to totally invalidate the law, it becomes a real issue. a lot of parts of the lot are very popular. it gives democrats an interesting issue to run on. i do not know what the republicans do if the supreme court upholds the law. >> i think we continue the narrative. it is not a popular bill. that is not me speaking. if they uphold the law, it is the issue we are going to come in and repealed. if they knock it down, i do not see any legislation coming forward. whatever you put out there, somebody is going to attack. >> my hunch is that in october, november, we are not going to be talking about the supreme court decision. what say the decision comes down next week and for three weeks you are going to have over cabinet people -- over- caffeinated people on cable television say this is the biggest thing in the election. these are the same people who said that contraception was going to be the biggest issue. then they said sam sex marriage. it is this same group of people. we will move on to something else. i do not think it is going to have a huge impact. is there any other issue that has been so thoroughly litigated in the court of public opinion and health care reform? i think no matter what side you are on, you are not likely to switch. it is factored into the stock price for and against president obama. it had a huge impact on his numbers. it is one reason he is in the gym he is in. i do not think it is going to change because of what the supreme court does. i am not a lawyer. i had an interesting theory that a friend of mine and listened to the recordings of the first two days of oral argument. he thought, they will probably throw out the individual mandate. he listened to the third day. if you throw out individual mandate, can you take that part out? he cannot at the very end of thinking, you know what, i am not sure they are going to do this after all. one of the things he said was, roberts desperately does not want a 5-4, bush-gore political decision. that is what his tenure will be remembered by. just as the previous chief justice, it was bush-gore. he thinks that justice robert is going to want a 6-3 decision. when you had asked malia -- justice scalia asking, are we supposed to go through all 2700 pages? can you really do this? this guy is guess was that -- justice roberts turned to anthony kennedy and suggest for him to write a majority opinion of 6-3, what would turn up to be 6-3 in terms of upholding the law. i thought that was a very interesting theory. >> i had the wonderful experience of clerking for a federal judge. it was a district court judge. based on that experience, i would never try to predict what a federal judge is going to do. i think just leave this alone. we will see what the decision is. >> the most important metric is where is unemployment going to be? >> i would say personal disposable income. >> the numbers are not good. again, i want to go back. this is going to be fought state-by-state. what is important in some of the midwestern states, that may turn this election. >> on behalf of national journal and united technologies and greg ward, thank you all for coming. thank you guys. you are awesome. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> both of these gentlemen are available for speaking at your corporate of vince. -- events. [laughter] >> coming up live tonight here on c-span, we will bring you coverage of the republican candidates' debate between former texas solicitor general ted cruz and dave dewhurst. the state holds its election on july 31. >> coming up tonight on c-span, president obama speaks about the need for comprehensive immigration reform

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