Transcripts For CSPAN Politics Public Policy Today 20130315

Country. Department of labors tracking entrepreneurs. As the president was implementing his spending agenda, that agenda that took us from record high deficits of the bush administration, to record deficits three times higher in the Obama Administration. The number of new establishments, entrepreneurial activity, for the yearending march 2010 march, 2010, was lower than any other year since the series began. Since they began keeping record, mr. Speaker. In 2010 under this administrations stimulus policies, entrepreneurial activity was at the lowest level in america since we began keeping records. I dont mean at the lowest level of people succeeding. I mean the lowest level of people trying. The lowest level of people trying, mr. Speaker. What does it mean about us . What does it mean about our future when we have beaten the enthusiasm to try out of our people . Frightened it out of our people. Mr. Speaker, thats not just a department of labor report. We talk a lot about that. What is it that the guys down at the agencies are producing, those technical reports. Ill a tell you what they are producing, ill tell you the impact its had. The federal register, mr. Speaker, i dont he know if you picked up a copy since you have been here. The federal register measures all the new regulations coming out of washington. They have to publish them there. 2012, last year, you and i you werent here yet, mr. Speaker. I have been here for two years. We were not passing a new regulatory agenda. Those department agencies, they were not implementing a new congressional regulatory agenda. They were implementing, pardon me, the old one. They hadnt gotten the old one out yet. 34, ear 33 billion really, 33st9, 33 billion is what those own agencies estimated the cost of complying with their new government regulations would be. Those agencies, those agencies that put out their regulations are required by law to explain to the American People whether its worth it or not. They havele to certify how many hours its going to take the American People to comply with all their new regulations. 81 year, mr. Speaker, million hours. 1 million hours just last year were added to the federal regulatory code book in new work for men and women across this country. Why is that low . The federal government is borrowing money to spend here. There is no prospect for tax relief on the horizon. Taxes keep going up. Brand new Health Care Bill in place that folks dont understand. Going to destroy their health care system, not to mention add to their cost of their business. And the federal government last year in the midst of this terrible recession, the midst of this difficult economy, added 33. 9 billion in additional costs through regulatory activity thats going to take 81 million hours to complete. Lets do some back of the envelope math, mr. Speaker. 81 million hours. The average work year, 40 hours a week, you work 50 weeks a year, thats 2000 hours. 000 hours. Thats 40,000 people. Who will spend every working all of every working day year long just to meet the new federal regulatory burden. Mr. Speaker, i dont wonder why it is that entrepreneurial activity is the lowest its been since we began keeping records. The wonder is that folks are still trying at all. I had someone say that to me, mr. Speaker. I was visiting with a group of honor students. I represent two counties in the north Metro Atlanta area. We were talking about what you want to do when you grow up. We were talking about america as a land of opportunity where you can do anything you want to do. Where its our birthright to be filled with opportunities that our parents never dreamed of having. And a young woman on the front row raised her hand and she said, congressman, youre talking so much about going out and hanging out your own shingle and being a entrepreneur. She said it looks really, really hard. She says why would anybody even try . The best high schools in my district, Award Winning high schools. Honor students in that school. Asking the question in america, why is it even worth trying today you are making it so hard . Aose arent just the words of naive 18yearold. Those are the words of some of the most successful entrepreneurs in america today. Up here in orange, mr. Speaker, its not quite home depot orange. Its one of those Great Companies founded down in my part of the world. Across the country, tremendous success story. We are so proud. They are a great corporate citizen. They give back so much to us in the community. One of the founders, one of the founders of home depot wrote an open letter to the president in the wall street journal. Again one of the captains of industry. One of the most Successful Companies in america. This is what the founder of that company wrote in an open letter to president obama. He said, if we tried to start home depot today, under the kind of onerous regulatory controls hat you have advocated, its a stone cold certainty that our business would never get off the round, much less thrive. These budget exercises are not about numbers. They are about families and opportunities. And when the captains of industry in america, those folks who risked it all with their ideas and every hour of their day for years of their lives to try to get something to grow their idea from a concept into an actual business into an international enterprise, those folks, the most successful among us, say if they were trying to do it today in the america that washington, d. C. , has created oday, they would fail. Folks, this isnt about dollars and cents. In a federal budget, this is about dollars going to regulatory agencies that are crushing dreams and opportunities. This is about the failure of government to weigh benefits and burdens, to do those things that dont encourage opportunity but restrict it. And these are not the words of folks who are here trying to pursue a partisan agenda, its the words of folks who put families to work and put food on the table. Its not just ken langone. We heard it from the founder of subway just this month. Late last month, february. Being interviewed on tv, he said this. You see a subway on every corner in america. 5 foot long happens to be one of my favorites. Its a bargain in this town. I suggest you go and take a look. But the founder of subway said this. Just last month, if i started subway today, subway would not exist. If i started subway today, one of most successful restaurant chains in all the land, subway would not exist. He didnt say that because he thinks americans are unwilling to work today. Americans work harder than any other people anywhere on the planet. He didnt say that because we as a people are unwilling to take risks today. There is no more entrepreneurial culture on the planet than the American People. He said it because washington, government has structured a landscape in which opportunity cannot thrive. Tax burden, health care burdens, regulatory burdens, labor burdens, on and on and on. Folks, theres nothing special about america that exists in our landscape. What is special about america is the idea of who we are that he we could break ties with the mother land such that we could come here and try it our way. So we could take the risk that maybe we succeeded and maybe we failed, but the chance to succeed is such a great motivator, hope is such a great motivator that family after family after family, for over 200 years, has risked it all to come here and risk it all to make sure their kids have more opportunities tomorrow than those parents have today. And our captains of industry, our entrepreneurs, are telling them that government regulation, government overspending, government bore he rowing, rising debt is crushing that dream for the next generation of america. And thats not news. President obama knew it when he was running for election. He he knew it after he got elected. We just need a willing partner to work with us today to solve that problem. Ill go back to home depot again. Its a fantastic Atlanta Company thats grown around the world, Bernie Marcus, tremendous philanthropist in atlanta. Gives of his time and resources to every worthy cause in town to try to make sure his neighbors are taken care of. Believes to whom much is given much is expected. He lives up to that model every day. He says this. Having built a Small Business into a big one, i can tell you that today the impedimentings . The impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with. Bernie marcus. Huge philanthropist, wildly successful entrepreneur. Looks out at the landscape today and says the impediments put forward by government are impossible to deal with. He goes on he says, home depot would never have succeeded if we tried to start it today. Every day, he says, rules and regulations from a group of washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business. And i mean every day. Its become stifling. Lets go back to that chart. This is what Bernie Marcus is talking about. Regulations coming out every day. Federal register published every day. Pick it up in your library. Every day. And for last year and last year alone, last year an last year alone and last year alone, this government, federal government, not the state governments, not the local governments, the federal government and the federal 33. 9 nt alone imposed billion in new requirements on americans. Requirements that by the governments own estimation are going to take 81 million hours to fill out. 40,000 fulltime workers working every hour of every day for a year creating nothing. No productivity. Only complying with federal regulations. Ill finish, mr. Speaker, where i began. And thats why it matters. This is that chart of debt in america. Borrowing from the federal government. And i read the president s words, mr. Speaker, where he said it was irresponsible. Irresponsible. To allow our children to have amassed a 30,000 per child debt under the bush administration. That debt, mr. Speaker, is fast approaching 60,000. For every child. Undered Obama Administration. Under the Obama Administration. If we do nothing, this red line of debt, mr. Speaker, that destroys opportunity, that destroys america as we know it, continues. If we do nothing. F we do nothing. We cant ignore this problem away, mr. Speaker. We must do something. And so year after year, mr. Speaker, make it sound like im an old hand at this. In the three years i have been here, two years, two months, this house has presented a budget every single year. Budgets that make tough choices. Budgets that challenge each and every one of us to set those priorities of things that must happen versus those priority of things we would like to happen versus those priority of things that we could really do without. If it means a better america tomorrow. Three years. Touching things the prognosticators said would never be touched. Folks said medicare was doomed to failure because no congress would ever be bold enough to do those things necessary to save it for another generation. But all three years i have been here, all three budgets i have had the pleasure of helping to produce, made those tough choices. Made those vital changes, to fail to reform medicare is to destroy it. To fail to reform medicare is to end it forever. In 2023 it runs out of money, mr. Speaker. We all know it. Those arent my number, those arent your number, theyre the numbers from the medicare act vares downtown working for pd obama. 2023. Theres no more money. How many of us rely on have family members who rely on that money. We do them no favors by ignoring the problem and careening toward failure. We do the responsible thing, the hard thing, by making the tough choices we have in this budget that will save that program, not just for my mom and dad, not just for your parents and grandparents, but for more generations to come. Our responsibility here, mr. Speaker, is not to scare america. Our responsibility here is not to tell america who to blame. Our responsibility here is to serve america and make the tough decisions that previous congresses have not. The two paths, mr. Speaker, two paths. Im not going to tell you the path weve laid out in the Budget Committee is an easy path, its not. When youve been living beyond your means and i mean a trillion dollars beyond your means each year, 36 cents of every dollar the government spends is boar road. When youve been living that far beyond your means for years, its hard to change. But its the right thing to do. This chard shows the red chart of where america is headed today. I only ran that chart out to 2023. The truth of the matter is you n see it, congressional budget office, the models we have that predict Economic Growth in this country, they stop working. In about 30 years. Because they cannot calculate they cannot see, they cannot imagine in those models how america could still exist as an economy having borrowed as much money as it will have borrowed in 30 years time. The model is great. Theres little asterisks, cbo. Gov, see it yourself, theres asterisks that said we cant predict we could even continue beyond this point. Paul ryan is fond of saying this is the most predictable crisis america has ever faced. Everyone, everyone, every man and woman and every in every seat from the most liberal democrat to the most conservative republican, every congressperson knows the economic destruction that awaits us if we choose to do nothing. Folks have been asking all day, r. Speaker, whats the there there in the paul ryan budget, in the house Budget Committee budget, what i hope before the april 15th deadline will be the law of the land, will be the american budget, the there there is that we shift direction from a pathway that will most certainly mean the end of opportunity for our children to a pathway that will mean more opportunity for our children than even you and i have had, mr. Speaker. We are not in this chamber talking about numbers. We are in this chamber talking about people. And if we fail to act, the devastation, the destruction, is not going to be measured in red lines on a ledger. Its going to be measured in real pain for real families and it doesnt have to be that way. I urge all my colleagues, mr. Speaker, to give prayerful consideration to the house budget. Dig deep into these numbers, dig deep into these choices. That is what america is. It is about making the tough choices. We have the freedom to succeed and we have the freedom to fail , to date, mr. Speaker, congresses have been adopting the freedom to fail. We can change that this year. I urge my colleagues in the senate, i urge the president , join us in that quest. With that, i yield back the balance of my time. The speaker pro tempore the gentleman yields back. Under the speakers announced policy of january 3 20, 13, the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas, mr. Gohmert for 30 minutes. Mr. Gohmert thank you, mr. Speaker. Its always an honor to be recognized here before the United States house. I want to follow up on what my dear friend mr. Woodall was pointing out, with the amount of red ink that weve had, theres no person there is no business, there is no charity, theres no family that could continue to spend like this government is spending. Nd the trouble is, yes, this administration is driving this truck right toward and off the cliff, theyre so fond of talking about cliffs, we have been heading for a big one. The one at the first of the year was just a bump, it was a nothing compared to the overall collapse were headed for. Along the lines that the soviet union faced back in the late 1980s. There are stories about how they were trying to borrow money but they had continued to spend, of course, trying to catch up with our Missile Defense, they knew they had to match that. They were going to remain a superpower. And the great vision of Ronald Reagan had pushed that, he understood that continuing to push a doctrine of mad, mutually assured destruction, really was mad. That was nuts. Why not develop defensive weapons so if there was a mistake there would at least be a chance to stop it. But the soviet union, the soviet system, where youre rewarded not by how well you work, not by how productive you are, but because you exist, is a very noble system, very noble idea, but it doesnt work. It always goes bankrupt, and the s. D. I. , the Missile Defense just helped push them there a whole lot faster. So they got to the point, because they had spent so much, they couldnt borrow any more money. They owed so much, they knew there was no way they could ever print money fast enough as they went back to the preworld war ii days when people using wheelbarrows fig yourtively speak figuratively speaking to carry money to get a loaf of bread. They knew they couldnt do that. When there was no other way, they had to announce, the soviet union is now out of business. Its so ironic, a free market system never collapses. It only fails when people who are not well educated enough, and they can have all kinds of degrees, they could be like the late ms. Miland in my hometown growing up used to say, he may have a ph. D. But hes a phul fool. She had probably a third grade education but she was absolutely brilliant. So we have a lot of people like ms. Miland i talked about, they have a ph. D. But theyre phul fools. They dont understand that socialism doesnt work, cant work, in this world. The soviet union went bankrupt. If people think it cannot happen here, i can assure everyone, mr. Speaker, it will happen here unless we get responsible. A pox on republicansouses houses for not doing everything we possibly could to stop the democrats in the senate and the democratic president from heading faster and faster toward that cliff. Fortunately new york recent days, because we have taken a great stand, weve slowed this truck down. Were still heading there. And to have people, basically throwing a temper tantrum because they didnt get every dime that they wanted, yes, government increased 20 their entire budgets have increased 20 or so, oh, theyre get manager money than theyve ever otten in history, but just try to not cut them but just slow that big rate of growth down, slow it a little bit and we get a temper tantrum, oh, yeah, well if youre not going to give us all the money that so what if its going to bankrupt us . If youre not going to give us all the money, well, were going to let Law Enforcement go so they wont be there to protect you. And you know what, kids that need vaccinations to keep from being diseased, were going to spend the money elsewhere and were going to let them go without vaccinations so they get diseases. You know what . Kids that knead education, were going to prioritize money elsewhere and so they dont have teachers. Now we found out that the Administration Official that stood up and said, yeah, theyre getting pink slips, turns out he didnt know what he was talking about. Unfortunately, theres far too much of that going on these days. Well, we also told, we dont know who in this administration is responsible, this tough just happens, you know, doors magically opened, you know, some of us believe that an act of god opened the jail during new testament times for the apostle paul and silas. But the administration is not giving any indication of an act of god that opened jail cells and theyre not sure who opened them, maybe it was an act of god because they cant account for how all these people who were in jail just all of a sudden got released, but isnt it interesting it just happened to coincide with the administrations threat, give us all the money or else. Disease will take over because were not going to let people have their vaccinations. Were going to let Law Enforcement go so crime will take over unless you give us all money. Not only that, criminals will magically be released, give us all the money or else. When all those things didnt work and the sequestration was moving forward, oh, yeah . Well, we told you the American People were going to hurt so now you dont get to come through the white house anymore. How petty. I did file an amendment to try and try home the point to snap people at the ministration out of whatever stupor they were in to think oh, well just hurt the kids, the veterans, the seniors, those that are coming maybe most of them for the only time theyll ever come to tour the white house, well just let them suffer. We wont let them in. Thatll make them mad and well tell them its all the republicans fault. They dont understand because we havent done a good snuff a good enough job of messaging it, but here in congress for the last two years, not the senate, they werent going to allow their budgets to be cut at all but here in the house where the republicans have been in charge, is something that you know, i have been quite critical of our speaker and continue to be so but it was his order and we cut our own budgets over two years, about 11. 5 . I think it was a good thing to do. But it shouldnt have stopped there. We needed to use that for moral authority to make sure that every Government Agency did the same thing. So in the last two years, you havent heard anybody this body, the 435 people in this body, all of us, every single one of the 435 members of congress, members of the house, had lost about 11. 5 of our budgets we dont have to spend. So in our case you lose somebody, you just dont replace them. And you just get by. And im so grateful i have staff that they dont at least to me they dont seem to fuss about 50 hour, or 60hour weeks, about getting emails all hours of the day and night. I think i stopped emailing them this morning about 4 30 or so. But anyway, i dont expect them to answer my emails in the wee thoifers morning but theyre hard workers. This is a tough, very difficult, stressful environment. And in this environment, where were going bat where were doing battle with the senate to get them to do that that to do their job, to do their budget, to have a responsible budget, to do no more harm to the American Economy and american rights, its often a battle, legislative battle. And yet we have been going into the battle for the last two years as we cut our budgets about 11. 5 . we did it and we still provide every single constituent service that we did before the 11. 5 was cut. And well continue to do that. Thats part of our job. D because of the see quester sequester, we are going to lose another 8 or so, a little over 8 as i understand. So in effect right around 20 over three years we will have ost of our budget. Went out this week, hi so many individuals from my district, i think it was originally going to be about 120. One group of 16, one group of 25, one group of three, one group of two. One group of eight. On and on. All these groups. It added up to over 120, 130 people. And most of them were so brokenhearted, the big school groups, one school group, 81 people was coming up here, and they were not part of that Group Tuesday night, but got another group, 81 coming up, they were so excited about getting to see the white house. So im doing all i can to make sure that the people from my district who come to washington who are brokenhearted over the little temper tantrum whoever had it, that decided no more no, you cant come to our house anymore. Yes, its your house. Yes, you are paying for all of it, but we are not going to let you in the house youre paying for because were mad because we had a 2 cut from the billion or so dollars we have to spend. So i know i understand the disappointment. One of the things that i hope when my time is done in congress , i will have inspired someone during one of our night tours through the capitol to do something far greater than i could have ever done. I was inspired in high school. Didnt inspire me to want to be in congress, but i was just so inspired by history going all over the capitol, back then you didnt need a representative to take you around the capitol. You just needed to come into the capitol. There was no metal detectors. You just came into the capitol. And walked around. Seemed like there was more that you could read about what went on here. Like tuesday night we had a tour and i told the group when we start we can stop at any time, ill stop telling these historical stories about the istory of this place, but they didnt want to stop. Went on and on. About 3 1 2 hour tour. I think we finished around 11 30. Something like that. Ut i push to do that for folks not because our budget hasnt been cut 20 , as its being cut, but because this is the peoples house. Down pennsylvania avenue that way, thats the peoples house. And they deserve to have that opportunity. Now, the reason we know that im not breaking the rule, im not saying the president had a temper tantrum because he said hes not the one who called off the tours. We dont know who had it. Somebody did. He said, that was the secret service decision. Then we find out, it wasnt the secret service decision. They dont have the power to make that kind of call. It has to come from somebody in the white house. So, mr. Speaker, i hope its nice to be around the president. Hes a likable man. Beautiful family. Whoever, mr. Speaker, is making these decisions, having their little temper tantrum, shutting off the tours. Whoever is doing all that, i wish they would step up over the white house and let the president know, mr. President , im the one who had the temper tantrum and shut down the tours. Im the one thats making these decisions over here. I know you didnt do it, mr. President , but i wish whoever it was would step up so we can know who is making the decisions at the white house. Wed like to get to the bottom of benghazi so we can find out who is making the decisions . Secretary clinton said the buck stopped with her. And then after a hearing turns out she couldnt really remember here the buck was. It would be a comedy of error except for there are dead americans and it didnt stop there. It bled over into algeria and more americans are killed. And it continues today. And we still cant get to the bottom of what happened in benghazi. Some like our former secretary of state would say, what difference does it make . Well, it makes a difference to the families of those who were killed in the service of their country. It makes a difference to the families of those who will be killed in the future in the service of the United States because we cant get someone to come forward and explain exactly what happened. Now we get a story here, dated march 15, that would be today. From Katherine Herridge from fox news, who does a terrific job digging out facts, and she reports on information that should have come out months ago. Six months ago. But we cant get straight answers so we dont know how to go about preventing future americans from being killed so that their families dont have to suffer. Katherine points out that there are three Diplomatic Security agents were among the americans injured during the terrorist attack last september on the u. S. Consulate in benghazi. According to a state Department Official speaking exclusively to fox news. According to the official, who confirmed foxs reporting on the condition of anonymity, two were injured including one seriously at the c. I. Facility known as the annex and a third suffered smoke inhalation at the consulate where ambassador Chris Stevens was killed. Now, somebody is reporting on and ondition of anonymity, unfortunately this ought to be reported publicly. We have long since given up on this administration being anything but in last place when it comes to transparency. But the hope that springs eternal in the human breast causes us to hope that surely at some point a light will go on and someone will say, you know we promised for years that we would be the most transparent, just like jimmy carter promised, and really we prosecuted more people for trying to be transparent in government than any other administration. We have shut off more information. This administration has gone further than that. They turned over boxes and boxes of documents that prove and are relevant to american individuals and american groups funding terrorism. But when members of Congress Asked to see those documents, we are told we cant have them. Theres a problem. As i pointed out to the attorney general, you gave them to the terrorists. Dont you think you could give them to members of congress . Where is where does your allegiance lie . Let members of congress see the evidence so we can know who has been supporting terrorism. Obviously this Administration Made the decision not to pursue the 200plus named coconspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial. But the constitution envisioned that there would be oversight by members of congress. That we would come in and have a chance to have hearings and demand information come forward. And when that information didnt come forward, we could just cut off funding to that department. Its called accountability. And there is not being any. Thats why you have to have someone give information to a trust the trusted News Reporter on the condition of anonymity because this administration has fought transparency. Not been a part of making it happen. The stories says four americans, including the u. S. Ambassador, were killed in the attack and the Obama Administration faced intense criticism from republicans of course the story should have said, it faced intense criticism from americans from all parties and from all of the Mainstream Media, but it doesnt because they have to report accurately. It was only republicans. In the aftermath over Security Problems and apparent inconsistencies and officials explanation of what happened. Lately, however, the focus has turned to the attack survivors who still have not been named. Six months later. Separately a Diplomatic Security source told fox news the state departments Diplomatic Security agent who was in the most serious condition suffered a severe head injury during the second wave of the attack at the annex from mortar and rocket propelled grenades. The story goes on, the real story is this administration continues to stone wall as it did and has and continues on the american individuals and organization os that have organizations that have helped support terrorism, that are working against the interest of the United States of america. Ere in america on our soil this administration has even befriended many of those people who were named as coconspirators so im sure they dont want all that information coming out about their contacts and ties with terrorist organizations or potentially funding terrorist activity. Because then it makes the country and world know the administration is actuallytsh has actually been working with people who at least support those who support terrorism. More news, too, this was 7, the chief of the u. S. Africa command is telling congress that thousands of shoulderfired antiaircraft weapons from the arsenal of deposed libyan leader muammar gaddafi, remain unaccounted for in africa and beyond. We got rocket propelled grenades that are unaccounted for and this administration will not help us get to the bottom. I realize, it may be embarrassing. But americans have shown over and over whether it was with eisenhower when he came forward during the Eisenhower Administration when nixon came theard and gave the checker puppy speech and apologized and he goes up in the polls, unfortunately. Fter the bay of pigs, horrible atrocity where people in 1961 had been promised air cover but the Kennedy Administration, and it was pulled within 24 hours of the attack when it was too late to let folks know that the Kennedy Administration was not going to provide air support. So people were slaughtered there in the pay of pigs. Bay of pigs. But president kennedy did a noble thing at that point though he made a huge mistake, he came on National Television and said this was my fault. And the American People loved him for his honesty. And he went up in the poll. It was eisenhower who told the American People, we do not have any u2 planes flying over the soviet union when it turned out we did. When he was caught, when powers was shot down, he said, im sorry, i should have been totally honest with the American People, i wasnt. Eisenhower went up in the poll. Nixon had learned something from his 19509s 1950s episode of apologizing and going up in the American Peoples esteem. He would have gotten to the root of watergate and may have been able to finish his term but instead he tried to cover up. But in this administration, fast and furious continues to be covered. Benghazi continues to be covered. So many things that are going on continue to be covered up. We cant get to the bottom of things. And it does not speak well nor bode well for the future of this country. Army general carterham tells the Senate Carter ham tells the Senate Armed Services committee that explosives and other arms once under gaddafis control have fallen into the hands of extremists in mali. He said others have spread tro syria. The ka gaw fee regime was overthrown in 2011. The general doesnt go on and mention that the gaddafi Administration Fell because this administration without the consent or advice of congress only the request from organization of islamic counsel, some nato countries, not in the u. S. Interest, he goes and starts bombing so that these al qaedasupported rebels could take over from gaddafi, leading to ultimately the death of americans. Anyway, ham said at a hearing on thursday he could not discuss details in public but he did say a u. S. Government effort to buy back portable antiaircraft weapons from libya has had only modest success. Well i hope and pray that somebody who is more effective than those who have been at work for the u. S. In libya will able to get those weapons before more americans die. One other thing, the president is going to israel and something this admferings and those advising our great president do not understand is, when you meet with terrorists, when you meet with those who support crism, you not only give credibility to them, you devastate the morale of those who are opposing terrorists. So when you beg the taliban, please, please sit down with us and talk, no preconditions, well buy you an office in qatar, well let your bloodthirsty thugs loose from our confinement if youll just sit down with us. When you do that, you not only encourage the terrorist it is, you devastate the morale of those trying to stand against them. Its happened in iran, when people who were wanting a different, a more freedomloving administration in iran, iranian people who liked the United States wanted help, they got no encouragement from this administration. Not even verbal encouragement that would have meant so much. No, they were devastated, as we continue to indicate, look, we can work something out, iran. When this administration meets with members of terrorist organizations in the white house, even though our Homeland Security secretary was totally ignorant of what was going on as we found out in answer to my questions in our committee hearing, you devastate those in egypt. People that we can talk to around here and we have who dont want these crazies in control in egypt who hate america and want to annihilate america in israel, you devastate those who want to be on our side and help us and i talked to one just this week, said, what are you doing . When you encourage or even talk to those people who hate you, who made that very clear, you hurt the rest of us who really want a fair and open democratic form of government in egypt. Mr. Speaker, it is my hope and prayer that somebody who is making the decisions at the white house learns from history so we dont keep repeating it. With that, i yield back. The speaker pro tempore the gentleman yields back. For what purpose does the gentleman from texas seek recognition . Mr. Gohmert i move that we do now hereby adjourn. The speaker pro tempore the question is on the motion to adjourn. Those in favor say aye. Those opposed, no. The ayes have it. The motion is adopted. Accordingly, the house stands adjourned until noon on monday today i want to speak with you about another grave threat that our nation faces. This is an issue that truly keeps me up at night and that is the security of our nation. [applause] i have a simple question for all of you. How many of you believe that radical islam is a threat to our way of life . [applause] raise your hands if you believe that. Well i agree and im deeply concerned with what is happening around the world. And if america fails to lead, we will create a vacuum that will empower extremists and make america less safe. [applause] lets start with the ayatollahs in iran. Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism. Iran has supported violent extremmists in iraq and afghanistan who have killed our troops. The regime funds violent errorist arrangizations. Iran provides weapons and training to assad so that we can use those went tons murder his own people. Iran is a regime that calls our country the great satan. Look at their recent activities. They Just Announced they are building thousands of new nter fuges at an underground uranium facility. How many of you believe that they are enriching all of this uranium for Peaceful Nuclear power or for medical ice topes . I dont believe it either. Let me tell you what happens if iran gets a Nuclear Weapon. There will most certainly be an arms race in the middle east because the soonny arab countries wont allow the persians to have a Nuclear Weapon unless they have the very same capability. And a Nuclear Arms Race in the worlds most volatile region would be like lighting a match in a tender box. And here is my biggest fear of all. Its not that iran will put a Nuclear Weapon on the end of a missile. My biggest fear is that they will give this Nuclear Technology to a terrorist organization. That is snorkelly from earlier today. Right now pictures from the conference with bobby general dell. Hes dressing the conference. You can see coverage on cspan2. A quick reminder well have coverage of the Ronald Reagan dinner at about 8 45 eastern. Remarks from David Webster now, the director of the center for gun policy and research which he spoke at the news maimers series earlier today. As law makers try to reduce gun violence after newtown. Whether you are a republican or democratic there is one broad area of consensus and that is keeping guns away from dangerous people. His comment are about an hour. Welcome to the National Press club news makers event today. Im todays event coordinator. The National Press club is the leading organization for journalist. R more information go to www. Press. Org. Last youre the events at sandy hook shocked a nation. When the events were over 20 children and 6 adults were dead. This mass certificate put gun policy at the top of the agenda. As policy makers serged for answers it seemed they had few studies to guide them n. 1996 at the urging of the National Rifle Association Congress passed a law that prohibited septemberers for Disease Control from spending money on research that could prohibit or advocate gun control. However other researchers have been examining this topic. One month after sandy hook took place there was a summit on gun violence. The results were published in the book reducing gun violence in america and for those of you who are interested this is what the book is. Today the books lead editor will discuss Research Findings and propose evidenced based policies for reducing gun violence. He is a doctors in seasons and a masters in Public Health e. He is a professor at Johns Hopkins where he direct it is center fer gun violence and research. There are a few ground rules before we get started. A question and answer period will follow the main speech. Questions will be from credentialed media and club members. Please identify yourself and your organization before asking your questions. No speeches please. I also want to thank National News Makers Committee chair, club staff and engineering staff and our organizing team. Please join me in welcoming our speaker Danielle Webster to the National Press club. [applause] thank you, joe. Thank you for inviting me to talk about what is on a lot of our mind right now. Ow do we reduce gun violence n america . As joe explained, in mid january we queened some of the worlds leading experts on gun violence and its prevention. Literally just a couple of days after the tragedy at newtown ron dal yells called me at home and he put forward an idea that was a brilliant idea which weve tried to carry out which is recognizing this was such an event in a time of reckoning for our country about a way forward, how do we reduce gun violence . How do we have fewer tragedies like newtown but how do we reduce the everyday gun violence we see over 30 gun murders a day in the United States . And as joe explained, the idea was to very quickly assemble some of the best experts, their expertise, the best research and put it in a very clear policy context. In addition to putting forward the best Research Available to answer these critical policy questions, we also assembled experts on a Second Amendment to examine whether any of the potential proposed reforms might violate the Second Amendment. And then finally, also of course incredibly critical to understanding whether we can move forward on a policy is knowing what the American Public supports. There had been a number of polls over the years and sometimes following mass shoot thags tend to ask very general and in my opinion not very useful questions. Do you think gun laws should be stricter, less strict. We will leave this discussion at this point. See it in its entirety at the cspan library. We go to chuck hagel talking about the nations Missile Defense. This is just getting under way. To address the specific questions you have about the topic that were going to talk about Missile Defense. Today im announcing a series of steps the United States will take to stay ahead of the challenge posed by iran and north koreas development of long range missile capabilities. The United States has Defense Systems in place to protect us from attacks. But north korea in particular has recently made advances in its capabilities and is endepaged in a series of irresponsible provocations. North korea announced last month it conducted its Third Nuclear test and last april displayed what appears to be a road mobile ic,m. It also used its missile to t a satellite in or bit thus demonstrating its progress in long range missile technology. In attempts to bolster security. First we will strengthen homeland Missile Defense by deploying 14 additional ground base gbis. That will increase the number of ground based deseptember tors from 30 to 44. These additional gbis will provide a 50 increase in your Missile Defense capability. Second with the support of the japanese government we are deplaying an additional radar in japan. The second radar will ro vide improved Early Warning and tracking of any missile launched in north korea at the United States or japan. Third, as directed by congress, we are conducting environmental pact studies for potential additional gbis in the United States. While they have not made a decision on whether to proceed, studies will shorten the time line for construction should that decision be made. And fourth, we are sm32b turing the program. We planned to deploy that as part of the european phase adapted approach. The purpose was to add to the protection of the u. S. Homeland already provided by our current gbis. The time line for deploying this program had been delayed to at least 222022 due to cuts in congressional funding. Meanwhile the threat matures. By shifting resources from this program to fund the additional gbis that will improve the performance of the gbi and ther versions of the sm3 interceptor we will be able to add protection against missiles from iran sooner as well as provide protection against the north korean threat. The strong commitment of nato to Missile Defense remains ironclad. The faces one through three including sites in poland and romain i cant will provide coverage of all nato territory as planned by 2018. The collective result will be to further improve our ability to counter missile threats from iran and north korea while maximizing scars taxpayer resources. The American People expect to us take every necessary step to protect our security at home and interest abroad. But they expect to us do so in the most effective manner possible. By taking the steps i outlined today we will strengthen our defense, maintain our commitments to our allies and make clear to the world that the United States stand firm against aggression. Thank you. Can you say with confidence that the ground based interceptors in alaska would actually shoot down a missile if it were fired at the u. S. Given the poor test performance of this interceptor . You know there was an issue regarding our guidance system. As you probably know, we are going to further test later this year. We have confidence in our system. And we certainly will not go forward with the additional 14 interceptors until we are sure that we have the complete confidence that we will need. But the American People should be assured that our interceptors are effective. When do you think these 14 interceptors will be field led and do you believe that a deterrent will work against a country like north korea . Were looking at having all fy terceptors in place by 2017. The reason were doing what were doing and the reason were advancing our program here for Homeland Security is to not take any chances, is to tay ahead of the threat and to assure any contingency and thats why weve made the decisions we have. Secretary, in hindsight, was it a mistake to take missile field one offline and now having to spend the money to reactivate it . Im going to ask either the vice cheer or under secretary to answer that question because theyve been here through the process. Ill take one more then get back to that question. When is the estimated time north korea would have a true Ballistic Missile armed with a Nuclear War Head . One of the reasons we are doing based on the intelligence we have is to assure that whatever their time lines are that we are not reacting to those time lines, that we are ahead of any time lines of any potential threat. We feel confident that having the 30 in place now and the additional 14 by the end of 2017 giffs our country the security it needs and the people need to be reassured that security is there. Let me ask the under secretary and the vice chief to take your specific questions. Thank you. Can you be clear on one 14 , the additional interceptors is contingent on the United States proving it is verified and can hit a target . That is right. We will continue to stick with our approach as was noted before the ce2 interceptor kill vehicle had a couple of test failures. We had a successful test flight on january 26. Mda is looking to go forward from that successful test to an interceptor test in a you couple of months. The schedule is not yet set. Well try to do it in this calendar year. Then from that well make changes to those that are currently in place and then the new ground base interceptors would also be ce2s. We have confidence well be able to go forward on a reasonable time frame. If i could take this opportunity to say whether the earlier decision to put a pause missile field one was a mistake. At the time on the intelligence we had it was a good bet. We saved resources at the time that well now have to spend. At the time the threat was uncertain which we didnt know we would see today what we are now. It was the whole concept of eing prepared to go from 30 to 44 interceptors based on the threat was uncertain and owing we may need to go to 44. Thats what were doing today. [inaudible] are there other countries in he area like india [inaudible] let me say that first weve the d to korea and japanese and they understand we are going forward. And the japanese agreed to go forward with radar to improve coverage for United States and japan. We have informed the chinese and at that point i cant characterize their reaction. Did you consult with them or inform them in we informed them. So what about Missile Defense of the United States, im curious about hawaii and the possessions, will those areas, will this cover those areas too in the Defense System provide coverage of the not just the continental United States but all of the United States. A clarification then a question. That cond gp 2 in japan was the one panetta announced. This is another radar . Thats correct. Youre talking about when u look at an adversary there is capability and intent. How much of it is a new assessment of the new leaders intentions based on the language of recent weeks . The policy we have for Missile Defense is art lated in the 2010 Missile Defense review is to stay ahead of the threat with respect to both north korea and iran. That means staying ahead of where we believe the capability would be and is not contingent on any assessment of intentions. There was a question about deterrents and the fact is deterrents exist in two forms. The National Security advisor made it clear we not only intend to put the make nicks in place to deny any potential north korea object toif launch a missile at the United States but also to impose cost upon them if they do. We believe this young lad ought to be deterred by that and if hes not well be ready. How soon will you know whether or not you will be able to conduct it by the end of this calendar year . The intent is we wanted to make sure we had a successful test before we succeeded. That was extremely successful. We put a kill vehicle thereupon and they put it to a test in very vigorous ways and it passed with flying colors. Test next will be with the modifications to it that the Missile Defense agency has made to fix the problem. We will do that and then do another test. They started acquiring the components and asemiling it. That is a very technical piece of equipment that takes a lot to put together. When you talk about the estimated cost for this project and how it fits into sequester. Where is the third gbi site slated to be in the cost of this step will include additional funding for missile field 1 to complete missile field 1 and then additional 14 ground based interceptors. Well take test assets and bring them up to the ce2 standard and then replace them with additional gbi. So there are 14 additional interceptors that will be bought. It will be a little under a billion dollars. The 14 will be bought new. Because they got a contract for 70 right now and theyve delivered 53. There were a number of these in various stages of construction and that work was halted. So when we have a successful test, hopefully this fall that work will resume, so those existing missiles on production line will continue and then we will procure new ones as well. I dont have the exact numbers. So is anything are you going to stop work anywhere toles fund this 1 billion project . Where are you getting the fund and the third gbi site, where is that going to be . The funds will be requested. Its part of the budget bill that weve been working on we submit to congress in a couple of weeks. Congressman dated that the department of defense look at three locations for potential additional site in the United States and mandated two of them be on the east coast. So they are assessing what two alternative lokes on the east coast to look at. And most likely have the third be in alaska where we already have interceptors . You cant be more specific in were still looking at sites. Obviously it is a question of regional interest. Will this Program Announced today have any influence on the plans for a site in poland, interceptor site in poland . It will have no impact on that. We will still go forward on phases one through three. Phase three will involve deploying interceptors in poland. Same time line, same footprint of u. S. Forces to support that. And as the secretary said, same coverage of nato europe. Didnt the secretary say you are restructuring that program, are you dropping the final phase of it and saving some money on that in thats correct. The prior plan had four phases, the third phase involved the deployment of interceptors in poland and we will continue with phases one through three. In the fourth phase we would have added an additional type of interceptors to the mix in poland which we no longer plan to add them to the mix but we will have the same number of deployed interceptors that will provide coverage for all of nato europe. The next shot of that is the europeans will see no difference in their defense. The phase four was about continuing defense of europe but also continuing that defense to the United States. It turns out by doing what we are announcing today. And phase four wasnt going to appear until 2022 or beyond and this threat is going faster. By doing what we are announcing today were going to get better defense of the United States and were going to get it sooner. So it makes complete sense to do this and the europeans wont see a difference. You said the threat is going faster. What are you talking about in particular . In particular the north korean threat but were keeping an eye on the iranian threat as well. What is happening in last april we saw a parade pong young had an account of whether they were fake or real missiles. Weve seen a Third Nuclear test recently. Obviously without getting into intelligence aspects we watch this evolving threat very close lifment as you know at the beginning of this journey we knew we were going to have to e adaptive in sense. Weve built tools if the threat goes faster or slower than we thought. The korean threat went faster than we expected. We pull the tools off the shelf and thats what were announcing today. We also saw the capability to launch in december as well. Do you know that is a real or a fake missile and do you know whether it has the range to reach the United States . We would want to avoid the intelligent aspects of that. It probably does have the capability to reach the United States. The nuclear test, has the u. S. Been able to confirm that that was in fact a nuclear test using so, whether it was a uranium device or pla tone yum device. Uranium eve it was a test. On the second radar to japan, when do you expect it deployed . We continue to deploy additional sm3 interceptors. We are beginning the process of moving from development to deployment of the sm3 and we are codeveloping with japan. The number of reseptember tors will dont grow. That will be true globally. If you look at our force posture. You will see a growing number of sm3 interceptors in the pacific over time. In discussions with the japanese government about precisely when that can be accomplished and at this point i would say its a matter of at least some months before that will occur. Do you expect more . The exact number i dont have at my finger tips but there are around five. Dr. Miller hit the key point on that. This is about how many interceptors we have on there filling the tubse on the ships than the number of ships. The scale back to europe, is that impact japans helping you develop the sm32a. Not at all. Can you tell the public why they should have any confidence in this system since it hasnt had a successful test since 2008. There are two types. Ce 2 s the ce1 and missile. We have confidence in that missile and were going to test it again this summer. We will dont test those missiles to make sure they are healthy. We wanted to improve that missile so we developed the ce2 missile. We discovered there was one component that was vulnerable to something we could only test in space. The Missile Defense agency has done a good job of diagnosising that problem and has retested that missile not fence a target in january and it performed beautifulfully. We have confidence the missile will be successful. We retain our confidence in the ce1 which is in alaska right now. So the American People should have confidence and we can defend ourself against a north korean threat as it exists today. We are going to flight test the ce1 this summer and hopefully flight test the ce2 after we build it this fall. [inaudible] we have very strong bilateral discussion ws japan and south korea. And weve begun to initiate some tri lateral discussions as well. Well see where those go. There is certainly value in pursuing that path. How much of the United States will be covered by these interceptors if they are only in alaska . The entire United States. They are under international strict sanctions. Who is helping in their missile systems, these two countries . Thats a good question. Ill do what the admiral did earlier thats an intelligence question and im not going to answer it today. What was the chinese reaction after this announcement i wont predict that. We need to take precautions to protect ourself. Its our policy to stay ahead of those threats and were taking steps to do so. Thank you. Defense secretary chuck hagel reacting to north koreas missile test announcing the u. S. Will deploy up to 14 additional ground base and missile interceptors in california and Early Warning radar stations in japan. It will take two years for the systems to come online. If you missed this briefing it is available on the cspan library. Go to cspan. Org. A reminder well go to the cpac conference. Live pictures now of the conference. We plan to bring you remarks from House Majority leader eric cantor. Well have live coverage of his remarks. While we wait for eric cantor at cpac drug use among youth from todays washington journal. On this friday america by the numbers we want to turn our attention to Mental Health issues and teen teenagers and young adults in this doesnt tri. Good morning, thanks for being with us. And dr. Richy is with the d. C. Department of Mental Health and a veteran of the army. Host lets talk about the problem. How big of a problem is it . Guest the problem of mental ill nns youth is a large one. Ere is a problem across life spectrum but in young adults you see manifestations of bipolar and schizophrenia and instance abuse. And the combination of instance abuse and Mental Illness is problematic. Host if you are a parent or is her the number to call 3881. 8 3882. Ll others 202588 . We pulled this from the Mental Health study and we found youth 12 to 17 continue to have substantial rates of major deprogressive episodes which we found young adults 18 to 25 have highest reported rates of Mental Illness, of instance use. And that cooccurring dependence, instance use dependence and Mental Illnesses is pretty significant as well as the other thing we found when we pulled the slides for the study is females are more likely to report problems with Mental Illness than males are. Host at what age should the red flags go up for parents, teachers guest its hard to say for Mental Illness because it can present any time in the life cycle. We are recognizing it in children more but in the early teens is when you often see difficulties that are emerging and teens is often when people are starting to use instances. One of the tremendous problems we are seeing is the emergence of these new synthetic marijuanas and amp fete minutes known as bath assaults and these are prip dating what may be underneath already but we see sy coss sis with the use of these substances. Over the span of 7 to 8 years youve look add age of 12 to 17. This is the this the next chart. Can you explain . Guest what we saw was a rate of 13. 3 of females and 5 of males reported having symptoms of a major depressive episode at least once in their lifetime. By 2011 we are seeing that females have dropped to 12. 1 and the mails to 4. 5. A significant drop for females from 2005. For males it is not a significant change. There are still some stability in those numbers. It is still quite high. That is a fair chunk of the 17 yearold population. Host what these numbers tell you . Guest they tell us it is politically important to screen, recognize, and treat Mental Illness in teenagers and young adults. Overlookeden an population. We are doing more and more with school mentalhealth programs. That is a really important component. If you are having difficulties being treated before a childs suicide host we will go back to the issue of suicide. Ofs chart gives you a sense young people in america and the relatively high rate of serious Mental Illness. 18 or older with the rates are among men and women. It begins to stabilize in midlife. Why the drop for older people . Host how you correlate serious Mental Health and violence . Guest serious Mental Health issues, which is usually either schizophrenia or manic depression, can have posttraumatic stress disorder and depression but those are less correlated with violence. What you often have is severe psychotic disorders. Difficulties in thinking, hearing voices, having dilutions. Those can be associated with violence. People not mean these are more likely to go out into a shooting. It is usually disorganized violence that might be walking out into the street and urinating. It might be taking a swing is somebody. We certainly see the slow level of violence in our patients with severe Mental Illness. Here in washington d. C. We have a large homeless population. About 25 have severe Mental Illness. Host earlier this month epilogue was titled a blog was titled, thinking the unthinkable. She said heres a portion of what she told the house committee. He is not a bad kid and neither are the millions of other children that have mental disorders in this country. We continue to manage Mental Illness through the criminal but did it through the criminal Justice System. The only way loving parents can get access to muchneeded services is by having their children charged with a crime. My son michael entered the juvenile Justice System just one month after his 11th birthday. While on probation he received an array of social services, including therapy and psychosocial rehabilitation. Once he completed his probation those services went away. I thought those the only mother in america who is living in this kind of fear. I learned i am far from alone. Parents like me live in all kinds of fear. We live in fear of stigma. My child may be bullied for being different. Will i be blamed for my childs explosive behavior . We live in fear of that unpredictable behavior. Host that is the story of liza long. She touched on the fear family is facing and the reality of political budget cuts. Guest my heart goes out to her and to parents with severe parents of children with severe Mental Illness. There are good organizations out there. It certainly is an issue at times. In terms of budget cuts, state governments all of the country are being hit by budget cuts both by the sequestration and prior budget cuts. Socialten do take out services. In washington d. C. We are relatively lucky. We provide a lot of services. Of taught at the interaction the criminalJustice System. It is true that many with Mental Illness to become part of the criminal Justice System. We are doing a lot with the criminal Justice System in order to try to keep people out of it, such as teaching officers how to work with the mentally ill. There are Mental Health diversion courts and other things to do. Her story was very poignant in that the only way she could get services was having a son in the criminal Justice System. Host she is now the chief medical officer for the d. C. Department of Mental Health and peter delany, associated with the mental and Substance Abuse administration. Dave is joining us from new york. Good morning. Caller good morning. I have two points. What are the effective strategies to reduce teen drug use . I know about the d. A. R. E. Program isnt effective. They use scare tactics. Is there a healthy way to use drugs . It seems that people have only been invested in some type of substance or alcohol or natural drug. Does the experts have a sense on a normal healthy way that this might be used . Host let me turn to dr. Delany. When the track and Substance Abuse guest what we are seeing is this is the overlay between major depressive episodes and substance dependence. What you see is a high factor. It basically says there is a correlation. Thentially youre seeing interaction of two kinds of problems, mentalhealth and drug independence. One can lead to the other and sometimes leads to sometimes they are just the way they happen. Sometimes people become mentally ill and they try to medicate. Or sometimes they start medicating themselves or something but it can lead to a minor and serious problem later. Host do you want to respond . Guest his question is a great one. How can we keep kids from taking drugs . We have been trying to do that for 50 years now. Do of the things we have to is talk about drugs, and especially these newer agents that i mentioned. They are so the goal in the beni places and often people do not realize how serious the consequences can be. I feel like a lot of people who come in with psychosis he points out you cannot just scare kids away. People will not believe you. To the first question i think i would be the drugs are. In terms of the second part of it, is there a healthy way to use medication . In general i would say no. Pcp is notoriously bad. Host we will go to belinda next in arkansas. What kind of nurse are you . Caller i am a practical nurse. Thank you for taking my call. I found working in the Mental Health field that a lot of the treatment that our patients are getting are not effective. They are brought in this is something that needs to be addressed. It seems the doctors and administration of these hospitals are only interested in keeping these patients just for the insurance they can get out of them. They are not interested in treating them and getting them the right medications for the problems. I am devestated at the way i see these patients come in and even get worse with the treatment. There is this whole system of mental treatment in hospitals and all the different areas that needs to be improved. They need to stop worrying about making so much money and get down to taking care of these people again. It just breaks my heart. Host let me ask you, based on your experience what needs to be done to successfully treat these mentally ill patients . Caller what im looking for is for them to really take these patients and get down to the basics of how this started with them. Is there problems in the family itself . Get some of these kids out of these families where there are no parenting skills where the parents do not care and they are on drugs. It has to do with the family itself. For the older people who literally have been sick for many years the system is so broken. They need to go back to the basics. Host let me get your response and then we will talk about the numbers. Guest there are a number of things i could respond to. She is right, our treatments are not perfect. That has improved dramatically over the last 30 years. Newe are new santa 8 into a psychotic agents. All of these medications have side effects. We do need to work on the improvement of treatment. Medications and psychotherapy there are new or complementary alternative treatments out there. We need more Research Dollars to get there. Another thing she said about blaming the parents i think we have to be very careful there. Parents for years felt they were responsible for the child hospital illness. What we are seeing is this combination of genes and environment. It is not the parents fault. By and large i do not want to be planning to parents. Mental illness is pernicious, it is common, and it is treatable. Host we will explain that the red is male, the blue is female. Care, look at outpatient inpatient care, education, and medical, please explain these numbers. Guest by far the largest is outpatient care. That is followed by education. You often see a combination of all of these together. Outpatient is still preferable approach. There is inpatient Mental Health treatment. There are other things that are happening. There are a full list of about 20. The other thing to Pay Attention to in this numbers you are seeing females for education and counseling are getting a little bit more. It is not a significant difference in these charts. I think the important thing that we know is that this is being provided by a number of different places. We have social workers in the community. We also have psychiatrists and psychologists. There is a large number of professionals from the different deals providing these types of services. Host if you are just turning in our listening to cspan radio, today we are looking at the issue of Mental Health and drug use. Our next call is mary from wisconsin good morning. Caller a lot of what is not being addressed is that what percentage is have you found contribute . I think it is a high percentage. Teachers and counselors will need to have better support in dealing with that . I cannot tell you how many counselors i have come across. Host i am going to have dr. Ritchie respond to your calls specifically. One of the charts looks at prescription and outpatient. Guest these are the numbers for adults 18 and older. What we have here is looking at the top three of these kinds of care that are provided for adults. And 11. 5 of adults are receiving medication. P a t a 32 Million People receiving some kind of care for their Mental Illness. Host does that number surprise you . Guest it does not. Mental illness is very common. Most prevalence rates are 20 of the population for depression alone. We all know the stigma around Mental Illness is still quite strong. The more people who are getting to treatment depression especially is a very treatable illness, as is posttraumatic stress disorder. Be more people that can screened and intervene early can be the better. Host what percent of Mental Health issues are related to alcohol or drug use . Guest i will just say a lot. Guest out say the color occurrence of middle of this and substanceabuse is significance. For the youth did a much more likely to have a depressive episode diagnosis if you are also dependent on substances. Sometimes Substance Abuse may come first and it may trigger an underlying disorder and it may lead to depression or some other illness. In other cases people may start having problems early on and self medicate. Host harmonist joining us from california. Good morning korea good morning. Caller i have been following this for 15 years. The number of congressmen the number of contributions from the Mental Health industry is incredibly high. They have created a ponzi scheme to milk the congress of its funds. If you ask the victims of Mental Health if they have been cured the majority of them have not. The Young Children have committed these crimes are shooting other people, have been on psychotropic drugs. The end of this Mental Health industry must be brought about. Guest a lot of points in there, some of which i do not agree with at all. I think that by and large people in Mental Health are trying very hard to try to store and make peoples lives better. In terms of the violence people with severe mental disorders are more likely to commit violence. It tends to be lower level. We have heard of the shootings that do seem to be in committed by a delusional believes. Delusional police can be dangerous. That comes to the necessity of picking them up and treating them before they go out and do these horrendous acts. Host if you break a leg or become sick and youre feeling better after the bone is healed you can see the result. When it comes to Mental Health, how you measure a cure rate . Guest we do not track a cure rate, especially with serious Mental Illness. Dot we do try to track is people do better . Other symptoms reduced . Are they able to function more effectively . Are they able to be with their families so are they mitt taking their medication . There is not as a surly a cure rate but what we see is people getting into treatment and helping them recover their lives. We treat people with diabetes or hypertension. We do not cure that necessarily. We do try to reduce peoples wait. Peoplere often diseases live with for the rest of their lives. We teach them to take their medication, to exercise. And keep their Health Better and keep them functioning for logger. We do not track cure rates. In Substance Use we see the same thing. We cannot attract or rates retract recovery. We do not track cure rates, we track recovery. Host marked from the no. Virginia, good morning. Caller as a parent i think our country is we have two experts there with you this morning. The last gentleman who called from new jersey, this is a gentleman at the grassroot level. He said some things that i know to be true. The person from arkansas touched on some key institutes. This seems to be the key disconnect. The ones to live with it every single day see some plausible issues with it. Dr. Ritchie, you mentioned that it is the environment. As a parent i realized that it is my responsibility to try to garner and control the environment in which my children live. Host had even successful on that part . Caller i get a lot of compliments from the school system. To be quite honest with you there is also a social issue when it comes to ethnicity. Host what is your advice to other parents . Caller here is my advice. All of my children are doing super in school. What hurts my heart is when i see other children who are being short changed only because parents arent as involved as me and my wife. We were at a local basketball tournament where a fan of mine a friend of mine was the principle of a title once school. Out of all of those schools in northern virginia, his school won the number one road number one award for a Reading Program competition. The two top leaders would have been identified as problem children. They were the two top leaders. Host thank you for sharing your story. Guest you are a great parent. I appreciate it. That is the key thing we found in looking at research and families is that when the kid says their parent is involved, when the kid says the apparent to some positive messages, when the kid says the parent says, i cannot approve of drugs, they do much better. I think that parents are a critical component of all of recovery. When things go bad and kids start to have problems, it usually does not come on it is not a button that flips on. They become challenged as well. Sometimes there are parents that have problems of their own. Payingeve need to be attention to screening people early. Ofrybody needs to be part the solution to this problem. It is not just parents or the Mental Health system. It is the school, churches, everybody part of the system trying to provide some sense where the kids and to young adults can Pay Attention and have someplace to go. Host another set of numbers, and the mental and illness any Mental Illness from 18 to older, in a 30 . Guest that is 45. 6 Million People. That is not only serious Mental Illness such as bipolar and six bipolar and schizophrenic it is also a major depressive episodes and anxiety disorders. The thing youre pointing out that is striking is that almost 30 of adults 18 to 25 are having some problems with any kind of Mental Illness. It is a combination of seriousness of l. F. Of serious Mental Illness. Host our next caller is from pennsylvania. Caller good morning. I want to bring up one factor have not discussed yet. Women who are pregnant between ages 16 and 25, i want to ask about the pay from single parent households. Host what have you seen in your experiences . Caller 90 came from single parent households with history of emotional and physical abuse. Their environment. Many mothers get kicked out of their house. They have problems getting on food stamps. He and the thing is i want to know the percentage of those that are sexually active. There was a book about how many people are experiencing depression because of their activity because of their sexual activity. Puttingank you for those issues on the table. Guest there is rich literature showing higher rates of depression in people who are pregnant, postpartum the postpartum can be severely severe. That is a combination of hormones and other stresses going on. We also know that is an area where you can intervene. A little invention goes a long way in terms of the mother and baby. If you treat the depression, both the mother and the baby to a lot better. Tot depression often leads a suicide or suicidal thoughts. Guest what we have found is that 8. 5 of adults 18 and older i am sorry, 8. 5 million. 8. 5 million of 18 or older had serious thoughts of suicide in the last year. Dc adults 18 to 25, those numbers are much larger. This is a population that has a lot of compared of problems. About one. Two million about 1. 2 million actually attempted suicide. I would say there is an occurring problem here. People who are using drugs there is a co occurrence of suicidal thoughts. Host i am going to keep your thoughts. From maryland caller has anyone taken a look between the relationship and how the society has stripped the children from their youth . When i grew up we had some camps, music programs, other things to keep the kids occupied. I watched my wife tried to struggle with summer camp, which is only a week. We have taken the youth away from these children host you put an important issue on the table and we will give you time to respond. Guest 1 of the things we are seeing is a much more reliance form. On digital devices and facebook. Social community support. Is that good or bad . I do not think we know yet. I have kids and they are very connected digitally. I think it has some pros and cons to it. Host our final chart dealing with the present episodes. With depressive episodes. Guest this is major depression in the last year. What youre seeing is that females have a higher level. We are talking about 15. 2 Million People per year report that they have a major depressive episode at least once in the last year. One of the questions i am always looking at is why are we females recording why are females reporting at a higher rate . I do not have a reason why. Underspect males are reporting. Guest one point i would like to make a lot of mental were leaving the last couple minutes of this. Ready toor is about take the podium. Thank you. It is great to be here. Cpac. An honor to speak at i want to share a story of opportunity with you. Last friday i was in new orleans. I went looking for ways to improve education for the children that are born into a life of poverty and dependency. While there, i met a young mom. Her name was essence jackson. Last year her daughter attended kindergarten at a public school. Midway through the year, pulled assetser aside and told her her daughter could not get what she needed at that school, that she was to brought bright, that she needed more opportunity than the school could give her. The teacher told essence to apply for a program which would find athat milani could way out of that school she was then and find a way to attain an opportunity in life by attending a school of her choice. One that could offer her a real avenue to advancement and quality education. Milani this year attends first grade at an elementary school, and she is a participant in the louisiana scholarship program. Although there is much controversy surrounding the scholarship program, essence is a believer. She told me she would do anything to make sure milani would stay at herschel. Essence as putting herself through college right now, and she told me that she would even quit school and try and find three parttime jobs if that is what it took to keep milani enrolled in an elementary school. It makes that much of a difference, caring teachers, motivated administrators, and above all, a safe environment to lerner. Is praising the Louisiana Supreme Court throws out the case challenging the scholarship program. Essence is fighting. She is willing to work even harder for her daughter. We have got to fight, too. We have got to be prepared to work even harder for our children and grandchildren. The jacksons the strength. They need a voice, and all of you in this room give them that strength. You give them that voice. Now more than ever your voice is critical. Now more than ever we have got to turn our words into action. America faces serious challenges. Our debt is exploding. The very Economic Foundation of our nation is at risk. Washington is addicted to spending. This addiction threatens future generations. More taxes, more spending means more government control. Families having to give more and more money to the federal government means less freedom, plain and simple. To Many Americans are on welfare. To Many Americans are dependent on governmentsponsored health care. Up theiramericans give time to hold down two jobs to pay their bills. Country, it in this is not working. Too many moms and dads have had to come home, walked into the kitchen, and deliver the news to their families that they no longer have a job. The bills are stacking up, hopes diminish. Often, they have got to tear their kids from their friends and their schools and neighborhoods in order to move just so they can find some work. We have got to help these families. And the way to do that is not by more government. The way to do that is with ours is rooted in conservative principles of a limited the government and freedom. Lets face it the opposition is organized. They have a very different ideas on how to help these families. Obama and his allies believe the best solution to our ills is cradle to grave government support. Freedom is godr given and it should never ever be taken away. More freedom produces better outcomes. That is why is always best to leave the Decision Making to the moms and dads and the families of america, not the government. All too often washington measures results in dollars spent and government workers hired. When that does not work, the answer is always more government. Nobody knows this better than you. The American Conservative Union has been fighting for freedom for almost 50 years. In the house of representatives today, the fight continues. The Democratic Senate has not passed a budget in four years. Next week the house will pass one that balances. Budget will grow the economy. Theirs is going to raise taxes by 1 trillion. We do not even know what is in the president s budget. It is late, again. Get anything done in washington when Common Ground is held hostage by tax hikes, and that the and if the other side does not show up for work. Despite these odds, i am hopeful. I look around this room and that hope grows. We can pursue an agenda that is founded on the values that we share, an agenda that applies a conservative solution to the challenges faced by so many working families. And, yes, part of that agenda must include School Choice. This is an idea whose day has finally come. Acu 65, the newly founded demanded that Lyndon Johnson include an education tax credit in place of his education subsidy plan appeared conservatives knew that federal subsidies would not mean better education for our kids. We knew then, as we know now, that more parental control over education dollars is the answer. There is no longer a debate about whether federal education policy is working. More money goes in, and the results stay the same. It is not fair to tax payers. It is not fair to parents. And most importantly, it is not fair to the kids. Today, to many of the most horrible children in our country are stuck in schools that do not work. The schools are too dangerous. They do not teach to grade level, and they are not preparing our kids for college or a Better Future. These kids and the unemployed, and a cycle of dependency, or, worse, and life of crime. It costs these children their future. We are losing them, to tragedy, and we have got to fix it. I told you about essence and milani in the new warrants. I want to tell you about joseph and rayshawn in washington. Joseph is a courageous single dad who is raising four kids. Hawn and hiss daughters to have a better than he did. Feeling middle a school. Despite hard work,rayshawn being held back. By fifth grade, he was 3 years behind. Joseph heard of the d. C. Opportunity scholarship program, and he dedicated himself to andng sure that rayshawn the sisters were accepted. All he wanted for them was access to a school that would put them on a path to graduation and then on to college. Within two years at a private andol, rayshawn caught up is now a student at university of the district of columbia. His Three Sisters are now attending a prep school in d. C. And are on a similar path. I have got to ask, who in the world would want to the nine theseaw3n and milani opportunities . President obama sought to end this program, and for four years, republicans, led by boehner, have saved that program from extinction. We have got to save this program. We have also got to follow the lead of a prior speaker today, commit toindal, and go in all in on education reform. Allowing this to move in the direction on the federal level. Could accessnts the best available schools. That their options should include not just public or private schools, but charter schools, a competitive and run it where student compete for schools. No parent or child should ever be forced to wait for a Failing School system to get their act together. One of our priorities will be to move heaven and earth to fix our Education System for the most vulnerable. This gives us the best chance of protecting tomorrow for a generation of smart and capable young people. In the short, School Choice is the answer. It puts our conservative values to work and provides the opportunity for our kids. President obama and the democrats have got to see the light. We can find Common Ground, but as roy reagan said them if they do not see the light, we will make them feel the heat. The fight for the future of our country is here. We fight for our kids. We fight so our kids go to a good school. We fight so our kids have good health care. We fight so our kids are not facing a mountain of debt. We fight so parents can get a job, make an honest and then in living, and provide for their family, and we fight to make sure the government does not tax of with their paychecks or make freedom and opportunity harder to come by. The conservatives fight for freedom, and that is always a fight worth pursuing. We have got to pursue this fight to get a print where we have differences, we share them, where we are bound together with a single purpose we must put all Energy Behind these efforts. We can bring about the change we have been seeking for decades. When conservatives are united, our ideas win the. Conservative ideas win because conservative ideas work. Stand with us, stan with house republicans, with us, lets fight for a Better Future for kids. Let us not take no for an answer. Thank you all very, very much. Take you. Thank you all very much. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] two years ago the president told a lie about the Supreme Court decision called Citizens United. The case struck a huge blow a huge blow. The president of Citizens United is up next. He has proposed document dearies since 2004. Please welcome david bossey. Good afternoon. Im president of Citizens United. It has been a big year, as we celebrate our 25th anniversary. It is great to be back here as we come together for our 40th time. Run for theted is last many years. Were doing it again this year. Where we get a chance to show off some of the groundbreaking conservative films available today. Ofservatives need to think new and innovative ways to develop and deliver our message to a broad our audience. One of those ways is through film. Am on tonservatives, i talk at today about where i see the conservative movement going. Yes, we took some hits last fall, but the conservative movement is as strong as ever. Moore voices are being heard here in this hall and across the nation because we are fighting for our rights and the traditional American Values we all share. We believe in american exceptionalism, not obamas socialist agenda. Thertunately, some in republican establishment are trying to divide us. We as a movement cannot let that happen. Contrary to what some in the establishment want you to believe, conservatives want to win every election. We are not willing to sell out our principles for the sake of a wind. Will use our movement to get elected and then feign shocked when conservatives call them out for bad policy. Ronald reagan cemented our values with his analogy the freervativism stands for enterprise, Strong National defense, and profamily social policies. If you take one leg away from bristol, the school crumbles. We sell out our principles then the conservative movement is simply a rudderless ship. Those in the establishment who claim they know how to win are simply living a lie. Just look at the past two president ial campaigns. How did that work out for the establishment . Only in 2010 when our conservative grassroots were fully mobilized, hand in hand with the twoparty did we prevail. Last month the battle lines were drawn when karl rove and co. , announced to the new york times, of all places, they were forming the conservative victory project. The conservative victory project is nothing more than an attempt by the establishment to control the conservative movement. Calling it the conservative victory product is like nick he was a severe conservative. Karl rove claims he wants to win. Why does he think he has a monopoly on wanting to win . We all want to win. Why does karl rove need to create and new organization with the name conservatives in it . Because american crossroads. Ailed in 2012, that is why did some conservative candidates lose because the made huge mistakes . Absolutely, but they would take me all days to list the candidates who lost said it because they did not run bold conservative campaigns. I like karl. Is a smart guy. I respect him for that. Karl rove is no movement conservative. Called the architect, and i understand why pick he guided president bush in his second term victory, but in reality karl rove and george bush war architects a policy disasters that led to president bush been mired in 13 Approval Ratings for much of his second term. Those ratings hurt republican and conservative brands and brought us president barack obama, and obamacare. It is kind of the opposite of a permanent republican majority, you might say. Uscourse, there is a way for to come together and unite for a common purpose. Conservatives will not be bullied into growing our plea throwing a police out with no pick in the 2010, president obama and his policies showed us that he was a Unifying Force for conservatives. We must make obama that again in 2014. Friends, president obama in his second and are girl address all but declared war on the conservative movement. It took him four years, but finally the real barack obama, the one we all knew, exposed himself as an unabashedly liberal ideologue all to see. The moderate myth that obama portrayed, aided openly by his friends in the Mainstream Media, that he was a transformational leader who would transcend politics is a complete and utter trade. Hissoaring rhetoric from keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention was replaced by a deeply partisan Campaign Speech in the guise of his second inaugural. At whento take a look president obama said during his inaugural address, preserving our individual freedom ultimately requires collective action. Ladies and gentlemen, collective action is a phrase that khrushchev or castro would say in front of their starving citizens. New, ina Campaign Came 2008 they cannot get elected as a fullthroated liberal so they created a myth that obama could work to improve washington and drain the swamp. Folks, over the last four years of the only thing barack obama as trade is our national treasury. During our current fiscal battles, president obama has gone to Great Lengths to deceive and lie about the real consequences of sequestration. From teacher furloughs to longer airport lines to criminal its running free, the Obama Administration has lied to the American People. They have even close to the white house for public tours. Remarkably, the many false claims from the white house had even prompted some in the Mainstream Media to push back. One of the reasons why the white house thought it could get away with it is because the media has always been in their back pocket. Thejust have to look at all obama scandals, with the latest being the tragedy where four brave americans died in benghazi, to see the medias complacency. The Obama Administration has not been forthcoming with information on benghazi, and congress has failed in its oversight responsibilities. Citizens united recently launched a Campaign Calling on members of congress to create a select committee to investigate fully the benghazi tragedy. Since been over 30 years jimmy carters presidency that the United States ambassador has been killed overseas. Now six months after benghazi, there are more questions than answers. It is vitally important for Speaker Boehner to support and the house to pass House Resolution 36, to provide accountability and transparency to the American People and the families of those heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice. Now,2014 is important election for the future of america. It is important we elect someervatives now, moderates will break on important issues like the Second Amendment. Obama and biden are shamelessly using the tragedy of sandy hook to push their gungrabbing agenda. First i say we must have an Honest National conversation on mentalhealth and the culture of violence coming out of hollywood. On immigration, we must secure the southern border with a 21st century fence and encourage all Immigration Law before we debate immigration reform. My friend Jeff Sessions recently corrected a white house assertion and pointed out the remarkable fact that only 36 of 700 miles of doublelayered fence has even been built along the symbol southern border. I was pleased to see paul ryan defund obamacare. Our economy cannot afford it. Nor can the sake of fort declining medical care. It must be every conservatives and moveo defund it away from socialized medicine before it is implicated. 2013 is a challenge prick it ust be a year where we waage attack against and those forces in the republican establishment that hijacked the conservative movement. We must not rest pick as conservatives, we all believe america is an exceptional nation. We do not want our beloved nation to have the financial books of greece or the gun laws of china. Friends, i fear that is the way we are headed. President obama and his left wing liberals and check. The media is in the bag for this administration, and we all know it, which is why the grass roots of our Movement Must not sit on the sidelines. You must redouble your efforts and together we must fight those who want to sell out our principles. Remember reagans three pillars of conservatism free enterprise, Strong National defense, and perfamily social policies. Thesest not cede principles to president obama on one hand, or the republican establishment on the other. The fight is in our hands. Lets unite for the cause of liberty and freedom. Thank you very much. That is set for today. I had a great time. Do not forget to vote in the straw poll right out here or downstairs, and all ser there is this program tomorrow, apparently. I do not know why anybody would show up a less see scott walker and ted cruz. We will see you guys tomorrow. Thanks for being a good audience. That ends the afternoon session of the conference. We will bring you more live coverage tonight. If you want to let us know what you think about cpac. An article from the daily beast about rob portman boss stand on gay marriage. Join the conversation on twitter. Cac. Cpac. You have people who are well meaning, but governors say is the stupid party. I said, what a horrible statement to make, because that is the statement that will come back and haunt you when the democrats start using it. You have to change that and you have to change that thinking. When i have somebody and i want somebody who spends 400 million on campaigns, with perhaps the worst ads i have ever seen they did ads on, that i thought was being paid for by the obama campaign. They were so incredible. Do you remember the super hero add . People want a super hero. I said, what a great ad obama did, and then i said, that was done by the republicans. 400 million and is a failure and you cannot have one victory, you know there is something seriously, seriously wrong. 8, i have made over billion. When i was thinking about running i filed my financial statement. A lot of people were surprised. I have employed tens of thousands of people. And yet i am continually criticized by total lightweights all over the place. It is unbelievable. You see these guys on television, they cannot buy a clean shirt, and theyre saying donald trump, he is nothing. You know thousands of people, some are proud of what i have made oned if mitt mistake, it is that he did not talk and tough about his success, because, honestly, people really want success. They want a leader who is successful. Has done a great job, and i feel the republicans and mitt not speak enough about the great things he did. They were on the defensive instead of taking that offense. Bought 808tly ive years in the middle of miami. It was improperly run for years. It is an amazing place. I want to fix it. Im going to make it incredible. Im on to make that placed incredible. That is what we have to do with this country. Some of Donald Trumps comments earlier today. You can remark you can watch those remarks in their entirety at our website, cspan. Org. Our coverage tonight begins at 8 45 p. M. Eastern on cspan. In 1860,tory started when Congress Finally acted after many decades of difficulty with private contractor the printers in an effort to relieve their woes of waste and abuse. They created an entity to do their printing for then. Theso congress created Government Printing office. The short turnaround of documents in these routine occurrences for the way this place works. This document from april of 1974 is the famous transcript of the white house take of the Nixon Administration that were the investigation of the watergate burglary. Overdocument was brought very late in the day, and the entire transcript had to be prepared for the press, and printed overnight, and the first whiteies went up to the house very early, in the morning, and in the several thousand copies went somewhat later to congress and the day. This is i think the origin of the phrase expletive deleted. This sunday, the history of the Government Printing office, on cspan3. Is aat she has offered us model for governments that stresses civility and empathy. Madisones and dolley is not going to win, but we look to the founding generation because we need their models. Her way up politics was building bridges was a model that we can use for the future. Our conversation with historians on Dolley Madison is available at our website, c span. Org firstladies. Onnext, a conversation reducing gun violence. Daniel webster spoke at the National Press club earlier today. His comments and the question and answer session run about an hour. Welcome to the National Press club event today. Event coordinator, the National Press club is the leading organization for journalism. For more information, go to our website. Theecember 14 of last year, horrific events at Sandy Hook Elementary School shocked the nation. Hen the shootings were over 20 children were dead parrot this event put gun control at the top of the Public Policy agenda. As policy makers search for answers to it seemed they had few studies to guide and pick in 1996, at the urging of the National Rifle association, Congress Passed a law that offended the center for Disease Control to do research that could promote gun control. Other researchers have been examining this topic. One month after the event at sandy hook, a summit took place at Johns Hopkins university of reducing gun violence with the result of the summit were published in were published reducing gun violence in america. , for those who are interested, this is what the book is. Books editor, daniel webster, will discuss Research Findings and proposed evidence based policies for reducing gun violence. He has a doctorate in science and masters in Public Health. He is a professor at Johns Hopkins school Public Health where he directs the center for gun policy and research and direct the ph. D. Program in Public Policy. There are a few ground rules before we get started. Periodstion and answer will follow the main speech. Please identify yourself in your organization before asking your question. No speeches, please. I want to thank the National Press club news Makers Committee staff, andclubs engineering staff and our organizing team. Please join me in welcoming our speaker, daniel webster, to the National Press club. [applause] thank you. Thank you for inviting me to talk about what is on a lot of our minds right now, how do we do gun violence in america. How do we produce gun violence in america. It was explained in mid january we convened a group of some of the worlds leading expert on gun violence and its prevention. Of daysy, a couple fter the tragedy at newtown Johns Hopkins president called me at home and he put forth an idea that was a brilliant idea that we tried to carry at, which is recognizing that this was such a seminal event and a time of reckoning for our country about a way forward, how do we reduce gun violence and how we have fewer tragedys, but more importantly, how do we reduce the more every day gun violence ec over 30 gun murders a d in the United States. And as joe explained, the idea was to very quickly assembled some of the best experts, their expertise, the best research, and put it in a very clear policy context. In addition to putting forward the best Research Available to answer these critical policy questions, we also assembled experts on the Second Amendment to examine whether any of the mighttial proposed reforms violate the Second Amendment. And then finally, also, of course, incredibly critical to understanding whether we can move forward is knowing what the American Public supports. There have been a number of polls over the years and sometimes appalling Mass Shootings that tend to ask a very general and in my opinion not useful questions. Do you think gun law should be stricter, less strict, stay the same . Frankly, most people do not know what the gun laws are. What we did is we fielded a very large and vigorous National Survey. Over sampled gun owners so we could look at that group that could be affected by an additional regulations. And we asked about very specific policy proposals so that we again get more of a cut reaction to guncontrol or whenever it is, what does this actually mean. Upon the research, the expertise, the analysis of the current weaknesses and particularly federal gun policies, we decided to focus the bulk of our energy and focus around federal gun policy. That came of experts together at the summit at Johns Hopkins and who produced the book again, here it is, reduce the gun violence in america, put forward a number of recommendations. Some of these will sound very familiar because they are being discussed right now and being passed out of Senate Committees trade first on our list and the ones we considered most apartment was the establishment of universal background checks for all gun sales. Singly, we need to strengthen our law to reduce trafficking. We needed and this is something that has been discussed less will get back to the specifics momentarily but expanding conditions that prohibit individuals from legal illegal gun possession right now. Banning the future sale and possession of large capacity ammunition magazines, expanding the incentives for states to provide information about disqualifying Mental Health conditions to the National Instant check system, and to incentivize states to adopt law to require that new farms be designed so that they can be fired only by authorized users. There have been some research on federal funding for gun violence research, and actually more important than i think the very specific language in the law was sort of a general intimidation by the gun lobby, at the centers for Disease Control in particular was i think intimidated by budget cuts that they received in response to their prior funding researched that informed the development of gun policy. But please do not get the impression there has not been any research that has taken place over the last 15 or so years trip there is a lot of research. We definitely need more research, and that was one of the recommendations from these experts. But you should also be very clear in knowing we actually do have a lot of research that i will summarize that we think is quite relevant to the policies that we are considering. So just to summarize some of the relativity recent research that is relevant to our gun policy discussions, first of all, we found in a survey of a Large National survey of state prisoners who were convicted of crimes committed with handguns, roughly half of these individuals were not prohibited from illegal gun possession at the time they committed their crimes that landed them in prison. Many of these legal handgun owners were too young to legally drink an alcoholic beverage, a committed serious crimes when they were juveniles, been convicted of misdemeanors involving violence, illicit drugs, or multiple alcohol abuse violations, such as multiple drunk driving arrests, and each of these conditions are associated with significantly higher risk for violent behavior. We also know that law prohibiting violent misdemeanors, those subjected for restrain orders, and those deemed too dangerous due to severe mental ellis reduced Mental Illness reduced violence targeted by those in the prohibitions treat we know from surveys from gun offenders as well as reviews of gun thaticking investigations criminals and gun traffickers exploit our current weaknesses in current gun law, including most importantly again, the failure to regulate all gun sales. I will go into more detail in a moment. We also know we have research that i have let that shows universal background checks for gun purchases, handgun purchases, or licensing, as stronger regulation of gun dealers are associated with your guns being diverted to criminals. With fewer guns been diverted to criminals. Although this is not a part of the federal policy discussions, it is relevant. The contrary to claims of proponents of socalled right to carry law, which makes it easy for gun owners to conceal to carry concealed are loaded firearms in public places, these violent not deter crime. I want to spend time going point by point about some of the opponents arguments for why we should not make reforms and improvements in strengthening our gun laws and hit upon research that refutes some of these arguments. The first one is that our nations high rate of a homicide has nothing to do with far availability. In the United States, our firearm homicide rate is seven times higher than the average of other highincome countries. Why is this . Is it because we generally have more violent crime, that we have more bullying in schools, or Mental Illness . The answer to all of these is no. The United States does not really stand out among other countries in any of these domains. But what we stand out from these and other countries is the we have anx gun laws much wider gun availability than these other countries. And that is why our gun homicide rate is roughly 20 times the average of other highincome countries. The second argument against strengthening our gunnel laws is the one i was but the most time on, because it is most critical, and is one that has been to put forward among some people who loved guns, some people who hate guns come and some people who are agnostic, so it is agnostic. The claim is gun control law does not work because criminals tol disobey employethem find ay get them to the illicit market. There is a logic failure there. If you track that logic to any law we have on the books, you would say, why bother . Lawbreakers break law, so why have laws . As a lot to put forward here. Secondly, it assumes that there is no connection between what we refer to as the legal gun market and the illegal government market, and there is lots and lots of research to indicate that is not true. There is eight a very important linkage between the legal and the illegal market, and most regulations we talked about are designed to prevent that initial diversion from legal to, a legal markets. Who is going to obey those law we are not just focused on the and the user, but we are focusing on people of bullying those laws who own and sell guns. They will be deterred from making an illegal transaction that will allow a gun trafficker to get a gun. Another point, importantly. There is this notion that does not wind up with reality, that is a piece of cake for criminals to get guns. Detailedto a lot of alice on this, but one fact i think stands out that refutes this and is a simple fact, if you look at data from the National Crime victimization survey, which criminologists have been using to study violent crime, you will find that those who report they were a victim of the robbery, when asked whether the robert used a weapon in that said, yes, the rubber used a gun. 29 . Anybody who knows anything about crime and robbery will tell you that people commit robberies, they do not just occasionally do it and went up one day and go rob someone pick these are people who have a pattern of criminal behavior one would think by this logic that it is a piece of cake for criminals to get guns. A gun is a good tool if you are in the business of robbing people. Why is it that only 29 use guns . I think it is because it is not quite as easy for such an individual to get a gun, and that is a good thing and should give us hope we can address this problem, which i think we definitely can. It is also this notion that most criminals are getting their guns to theft. This does not line up with data, the data from this Large Nationally represented sample of state prison inmates. We found less than 10 reported they got their guns directly through a theft. Weretuality, nearly 80 acquiring their guns to some through some private seller that lot now a sense from any type of background check or record keeping. Controlea that why pass law, because they always get them on the illicit market, does not acknowledge the fact that the reason it is too easy to get guns on the illicit market is because we lack the very control we are talking about. Review some ofly the Research Relevant to this. First conducted a study of 53 cities throughout the United States, and there are 28 different states, and looked at their regulations on gun sales, laws, as well as some of the enforcement aspects, particularly relevant to oversight of licensed gun dealers, and we found that regulating private handgun sales was associated with very significantly lower levels of diversions of guns to criminals, particularly within state lines. We also found that states that had systems to licensed handgun purchasers through going directly through Law Enforcement had the strongest relationship between best diversion of guns to criminals, and we also found that having strong regulations and oversight of gun dealers again also deterred these initial versions of guns to criminals. We subsequently did a study where we looked at all 50 states, and we were interested in guns traveling from one state to another to a different state into the hands of criminals. And how that the phenomenon is assisted with state gun law. Found what many of you probably failure, which is that to have the universal background checks, failure to have permitting processes of handgun lawsrs, failure to have a ever part the record gunner owners to report a loss, these are the things that averted the guns to criminals excuse me across state lines. And where were those guns going to put they were going to the states that had the strongest laws, that gun might lead you to believe that the states that enact these law s, why botherf . Some truth to that, because the effectiveness of the laws are the minister by the lack of strong federal law, but there are indicators of reduced gun availability to criminals in those states with the most comprehensive laws. Give you an example, rather than look at studies with lots of coefficients and regressions and things like that them some basic information about the street price of guns. The street price of guns, the most expensive the best inexpensive type of gun in the new york city might be four or five times or more times higher than the same gun in a state with relatively lax, georgia, Something Like that. So this is meaningful. Is the street price that relative scarcity of that product, not unique to guns or almost any product. When you see stark differences and raises in pricing, it ypically has something to so the last example i will give under this general point and to bring this home something that is recent and concrete. That ri enacted a law regulated private handgun sales. Missouri repealed this law at the end of august in 2007. The study we just did, we found that, basically, following the repeal of that law the diversion of guns to criminals doubled, the share of guns that came from thin the state boundaries of missouri went you want quite dramatically. Most importantly, the rate of gun homicides went up 25 . Ou might ask, maybe this was a general phenom none. This was around the time that the economy was tanking and that could cause the gun violence to rapidly increase. Guess what, nationly the rate was going down 10 . If you look at the states around missouri, in the middle part of the country, in that group of the country were having decreases of homicide rates of 5 . Let me go to another claim. We dont need to pass new laws, we need to enforce the ones we have. The flaw in this logic is that the federal gun laws are frankly, they are written by the gun lobby in many cases to make it difficult to hold firearm sellers accountable, whether they are licensed dealers or private sellers. We can go back to the lack of background but there is not a specific statute targeting. Llegal gun trafficking federal prosecutors have been ham strung in trying to hold people accountable who are transferring guns to criminals. Congress is also making it difficult by passages of three different laws that i will allude to briefly. The protection act of 1996, it raised the standard of evidence to hold gun owners accountable and reducing the penalties for those violations. Protect protection of the arms act, which gave protection to the gun owners and it reduces the guns to criminals. Of the the enactment amendments that you might be familiar with, they restrict the use and crime to trace data that might identify the problem gun dealers amok other things. As well as, saying the a. T. F. Could not require gun dealers to do a physical inventory when they do their inspections, among other things. Research i published recently, when we look at the city of lwaukee it is dominated by a ominent gun dealer, one that just lost his license. The enactment of the amendments led to a diversion from the gun dealer into the hands of criminals. Where as if you look at other gun dealers no change occurred in response. It brings home the general argument against them, which is good gun dealers dont need special protection and bad dealers dont deserve them. It is played out in that case in milwaukee. I will wrap up with a few other things. Proposed universal background checks would allow the federal government to create a registry to gun owners. Many of you know it is written into federal law that you cannot create a registry of gun owners. Weve been doing background checks since the braddy act in 1994 and there has been no registry and that sort of is a distraction. Another claim is, the only guy that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. This was put forward by the n. R. A. As a response to what we should do following newtown. But as a general approach that the gun lobbyists had to gun violence. Lets make it easier for the good guys to have loaded firearms in as many places as possible so these type of horrific crimes would be deterred. Theres been quite a lot of research on this topic. Some of it was quite bad and was discredited. The most Rigorous Research has ound that by and large has had no impact on crime. Crime did not go up significantly. There is some evidence it might have had a slight increase in aggravated assaults. Perhaps having more people having access to loaded firearms than previously being the case. I want to end my comments then open it up for questions. Briefly mentioning some findings from the survey we did National Survey of adults to find out that their opinions about a specific south gun policies. Again, set of gun policies. And how gun owners feel about the regulations and how this breaks down across Political Party. Getting again to the most important issue of universal background checks. 84 85 of gun owners are fine with the idea of all gun sales having a background check. If you look at the 14 states where that currently is the law and look at how gun owners feel about it or do they feel it is an incredible inconvenience to them, no. 89 support it in those states. Generally it is not that hard to do. You go to a licensed gun dealer and there is a new report out showing that 90 of the population lives within 10 miles of a license dealers. Typically these checks are done in a matter of minutes. It is not a huge burden that were placing on gun dealers excuse me, gun owners. The pattern of results that i want to underscore here. We typically and frankly the media, focuses mostly on what we disagree on. Theres a lot of disagreement over assault weapons. Theres a lot of disagreement over concealed carrying the right to carry. Theres very, very broad agreement between Political Party between gun owners and nongun owners on a host of important measures that matter the most. That is measures to keep guns from dangerous people. Go you know, im going to through every single poll here. Ut that is the clear picture regardless of your Political Party, regardless if you own a gun, youre fine of restricting a variety of highrisk group either due to criminal baggeds, domestic violence, Mental Illness, there is broad agreement that we need to keep guns from those individuals. Common sense measures, such as universal background checks and even this is not on the federal agenda but a more form alliancing process through a Law Enforcement agency that we found to be particularly important. Some things are moving forward, for example, in maryland on that front. I think were going to stop there so we have enough time for questions and answers, discussions. Please state your name, your affiliation, and as i said before, no speeches, please ask a question. Im from mexico. What do you propose to prevent the massacres that weve seen recently on these shooters. It seems like after the recent shooting in connecticut, there has been a series of shootings all over the country. The essence of the question was what can be done to prevent the Mass Shootings that weve seen all too often that are continuing to occur after the newtown tragedy. I must admit that may be one of the most important challenges of preventing these kinds of acts. A lot of the measures that were discussing, i think sort of going to be most effective in the most rational kind of actor. In many times, individuals involved are not particularly rational actors. I still think that two points. One is those measures are important. Many victims affected, obviously, many families with they proposees and a psychic cost for so many people, even if indirectly affected. I know i was profoundly affected by the news coming from newtown, for example. I know i wasnt alone. Obviously, president obama was as well. But but we have these everyday shootings that we cant lose sight of. Our gun policy discussions have centered around in some ways, very unusual types of uses of guns and violence. Sometimes the most challenging things to address. I think we can move forward with respect to limiting the capacity of ammunition. Research has shown, in essence the greater ammunition capacity available to the shooters in these events the more people injured and killed. I think that is a logical response to it. It is not going to change vernight, ok, for a host of of course for a host of reasons. I think we need to raise our standards. Lets talk about the tucson shooting for example. The shooter was legal to possess handguns in his state of arizona. Most people put aside that gun control is irrelevant. E was a legal gun owner. Had he be a resident of the state of new jersey, im almost certain that he could not get a gun certainly legally and probably not illegally. New jersey has very rigorous background check system. It is not unusual for local authorities to really investigate an application and find out is there something of concern in this individuals background. Of course, as the news came, theres a lot to be concerned about him in terms of his behavior at the community college, in terms of his experience of getting kicked out of the military because of drug abruce. Theres a whole host of things that would have been red flags and prohibited him in a more rigorous background check system. Yes . I had two questions. The ould you have as National Public survey back in 2013 what is the name of the survey and who did it . I dont know if we have the name of the survey but it was conducted at my colleague at john hopkins, the lead author is dr. Colleen berry. Shes an associated professor at john hopkins. We will get you the details of that. It was published in the journal of medicine about one month ago. Maybe more than one month ago. Im losing track. Was an extensive set of policies. One some of them are on the table and others that we think are relative but havent been discussed. We focus on different categories of laws. One is focusing on the aspect of assault weapons, large capacity magazines. We saw strong support for those types of restrictions but as i alluded to before, great differences between gun owners and nongun ownerses. Another set of policies we asked about pertain to who should legally be able to possess firearms. We asked about important categories, such as what is the minimum legal age for possessing a handgun. In 44 of the states right now you can legally possess a hand gun actually as many as you would like if youre 18 years old. But those individuals cant legally consume alcohol. You look at offending rates where they peek for homicide offending as well as other Violent Crimes they peek in the 1824 age group. Thats why we asked that question. We asked about drug users, Mental Health, all of these flagging people at higher risk. The pattern is more for restrictions on those groups. Then we asked a series of with regulating sales, these this has to do with universal background checks, licensing, processing, those type of things. There were some differences but not huge differences between gun wners and not. Again, i think i alluded to this, we oversampled gun ons. We wanted to make sure we could say with some degree of confidence how they feel about these policies. Hen we look at a subset on how n. R. A. Members feel about it. 74 of n. R. A. Members in our survey supported background hecks for all gun sales. [inaudible] what is your hope, what could be the outcome in congress . I read the paper here there are many different predictions but they are saying no way a ban could get approved. Thats a condition, sure. Sorry the question is, what is my own feeling about the likelihood of which gun policies will be able to advance through congress, in particularly the assaults weapon ban that just came out of the Senate Committee yesterday. I would acknowledge im not a political scientist but i Pay Attention to these kinds of things. I think youre probably right that it is going to be a very uphill battle and probably quite unlikely that an assault weapon ban will get through this congress. I have a more optimistic view on two measures that i think are important. One is to strengthen the current laws against illegal straw purchases and gun trafficking. Urrently, the laws are really, really weak and make it theres little incentive for the a. T. F. And u. S. Attorneys to go after that very important problem, simply because it is so difficult to make something stick and when you do the penalties are weak. I thinks there Political Support and consensus and enough bipartisan that it will get through. I think the most important again coming back to universal background checks, background checks for all gun sales, except between family members. I think that is most interesting. I think there is a reasonable chance that it will. I think that if it doesnt, i the it is going to hurt components of it because the support is so widespread, 90 or more in varies polls. It is hard to imagine how you defend this gaping hole in our gun policy. So im somewhat hopeful but also recognize that the committee that needs to go through in the house that the chairman of that committee is not signal of his willingness to put that on the agenda. But, again, perhaps he may feel political heat to change his mind. If i might add, i dont know if people saw yesterday in the Senate Judiciary committee, there was an assault weapons ban that was proposed and it got out of committee but the republicans dont like it in the Senate Someone can filibuster it and it wont come up. Any other questions . My question is about the the data. Alysis and theres a study called man state and war from 1958. He says that you can analyze the causes of war, International Conflict by looking at human nature but the nature of the way the states behave and the international system. Wondering, them you ethodology that when looking at the data at the rate of from all the sides and then you look at the methodology that is used on the gun rights side. This publication looks at case studies of individuals that would be a rape victim or able to protect themselves. The mom that is able to defend their kids in the house. How do you engage with publications and Research Projects that use this kind of case study, personal story methodology, especially when these stories a gun is used to prevent a crime or the ones that are under reported because nothing happened. Thank you for your question. Your question, i think assumes that individual case studies is a better way to study phenomenon than analysis of data. I dont agree with that and suspect most scientists do not. I think if we can do more finelevel research to get more comparative research at that individual level, we would add vance science in this area. E three studies i alluded to in identifying highrisk groups who were previously allowed to possess guns then laws were enacted to make those guns less available to them. When the analysis looks at the individual level and saw reductions in the group that were prohibited firearms. The second thing i want to respond as it relates to the case studies of individual using guns to defend themselves. I would never claim that individuals dont use guns to defend themselves. That does occur. Please dont inif you are anything about what i said that citizens dont use guns to defend themselves, i that i do. Relevantnow if that is right now. It is a frustration of mine that any regulation you put forward going to keep is socalled law abiding gun owners from being able to defend themselves. By and large most of these gun regulations dont do that. That is my response. I would like to ask a question. Sure. In our talks, you mentioned the statistics how many homicides and suicides. I would like to briefly state those statistics and the total number of gun deaths. If you had a magic wand and all the new laws and regulations recommended by the summit were passed, how much do you think that would reduce gun violence in america . All of the recommendations . Oh, boy. First of all, let me get to the first question, because that is he easy one. Out 31,000 homicides and 60 are suicides i think many people assume incorrectly gun availability is irrelevant to suicide risks and theres other da that suggests otherwise. Most of our discussions focus on the severely mentally ill, we seem to focus solely on those individuals to risk to others. Really the greatest risk is to themselves. Restricting gunnle availabilities for individuals because of severe Mental Illness might pose a threat to themselves or others could have a meaningful affect on suicide rates. Only very small most of the rest are homicides, as you might have guessed and only a small proportion is unintentional or what people refer to as accidental deaths. Now the difficult question, if all the recommendation were enacted. I dont think im going to im not going to respond with a percent decline. I dont think it will be overnight and that is one thing that is worth mentioning. There are certain things that could be down in the short term and should be done. There are policing strategies, for example that research has hown that focuses on illegal carrying of guns in hot spots significantly reduces gun violence. We have other strategies that are more offender focused that increase the risk of gun possession and use for those individuals. We see significant declines associated with those strategies. So i think that should be part of the conversation. The restrecting supply so you reduce diversion to criminals i think would have an Immediate Impact but those effects will grow over time so there would be fewer guns available in the llegal market. What is your Research Show or whatever research you know bout the background checks [indecember certainible] [inaudible] the question is what research is there relevant to purchase to licensing systems as opposed in maryland. The laws vare a little bit from state to state. Typically they involve going to a Law Enforcement agency, theres fingerprinting and photographing of the applicants. My research has shown they are e most single, most powerful deterrent from legal to lyle market. What i suspect legal to illegal market. It is a notable deterrent to a purchaser. Currently in maryland, if someone is a felon and they want someone to purchase a gun for them, i dont know if their risks are enormously great. Like most states, there are some dealers that are overrepresented when you look at the pool of guns recovered from criminals. Criminals know that so they can steer their purchaser to a friendly gun store. Go in, pick out their guns, put it and it is not a big deal to recruit somebody to do that. The penalties are weak and not enforced. If you think about the scenario where you are trying to recruit a straw purchaser and say you need to be fingerprinted, you need to go to a lawenforcement agency, they will do a background check, imitating, fewer people say yes to a request to buy a gun illegally. How theted to know public feels about if they have to get a gun, they have to go through that, if they are not a criminal. Licensing through a lawenforcement agency, and i do not have the data, but by regulation is over 70 of gun owners were ok with that. If followup question. When you have strop purchases, it would be nice to track who is doing that. In that regard, with some type of federal database that tracks gun ownership be helpful, or would that be a waste of time and money . Are going to set politics aside because this is probably a thing that worries certain gun owners and certain gun organizations the most. How effective would a registry system work . I think it depends on the commitment of Law Enforcement to use it. In california, they probably have done the most to utilize their registry in a variety of important ways to disarm the people who may be initially, when they purchased the gun, they were illegal gun possessors, but frankly every single day legal gun possessors become illegal gun possession because they get convicted by crimes, they get restraining orders for domestic violence, or Mental Illness breakdowns or a variety of things happen. In california. In maryland, this is done occasionally in times where they had used the registry and linked it up to a database and said we have literally hundreds of thousands in a particular area who presumably have handguns, yet they are prohibited. So they can utilize the registry to disarm these individuals. Again, if you have a commitment to use it, and it is this general idea that i think is widely accepted regardless of Political Party or gun ownership, is we do not want dangerous people to have guns, particularly if all law says they are not supposed to have guns. Generally, the measures put in place to prevent that will lead to greater safety. You mentioned about 60 of people who committed gun crimes, it was legally available to them. The you have any data about the people who are licensed to carry concealed in their state, and the requirement there what is the rate of gun crime who are the certified guys . I myself have not analyzed that data, but there has been some analysts to look at that, and that group who get permits to carry loaded firearms have relatively low rates of committing violent crime. I think it probably has a lot to do with the general democrat demographics of the group to get those permits. They happen to be like me, middle aged guys, mary, who live in the suburbs. Commonlyho is most getting permits. That said, there is clearly quite a number of events of individuals who have permits to carry concealed guns. When you look at their background, and this has done through the courts, the viole nce policy center, investigative reporting, documenting people with scary pasts who were able to carry loaded concealed guns pretty much wherever they wanted to. The general issue of the right to carry it is always couched as a lotabiding gun owners should be able to do what they want with their guns to defend themselves. But it paints a picture that is not accurate. While most gun owners are truly law abiding, there is a subset of illegal gun possessors that if you look at their past, a gun is scary, that is why we think it is important to revisit the prohibitions, and they do not have to be lifetime prohibitions. If you look at criminal careers and the age distribution of offenders. If we have prohibitions in place for 10 years for some of these nonfelony crimes, you could really have a protection due to the most critical period where people might do irresponsible things with guns. Any am not affiliated with project, but am with the George Washington university. My question is about and a i appreciate about your proof your report is it the final gun violence as a Public Health problem. How do you feel it is being defined by the administration now . It is creating political partisanship, and how can we turn around the way the problem is defined . Right. Gun violence cannot legally be categorized as a crime problem, a Public Health problem, a moral problem. Is all the above, frankly. It is most useful to tackle a complex problem for four from multiple angles and perspectives. Focus veryc health ash on prevention, and opposed to lets lock people up after the fact. The administration is embracing that general idea. One type of thing that originated from Public Health and from our center, from the founding director, the idea of personalized guns that we made a lot of progress in reducing injury in a number of ways in other areas. Motor vehicle traffic fatalities is one classical example where again you had a whole list of things that were done to drive down our mortality rates, pretty profoundly. Changed law, we try to change social norms around drinking and driving, seat belts, but also made cars to be more crash where the, so if people did not follow the right rules, they would not die. Applying the same idea to a Lethal Weapon like a firearm, there are many preventable deaths that occur when a gun gets into the hands of the depressed teenager, a young child, or is stolen by a criminal, that if those guns could not actually operate when they were in on authorized hands, we would have fewer deaths and injuries from guns. Wek it is very useful absolutely need to think of this problem as a crime problem, but even people in criminology now across the board whether were talking about guns or other types of crime really are starting to embrace a much more expensive way to approach these problems. Oriented towards prevention. You need the laws in place, but you need other things complimenting them. Complementing them. Please join me in thanking dr. Webster. I found it in forming that somebody who has studied this and has done a Rigorous Research and to get those results, and i hope that those results and this study and Research Becomes part of the policy discussion. Thank you all. This event is over. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] here is a look at our primetime program. At 8 00, chuck hagel briefing reporters earlier today on the north Korean Nuclear threat. On cspan2, or from todays hearing, looking at losses by j. P. Morgan chase, and on cspan 3, a hearing on medicaid medicare payment policies. We will have more cpac coverage tonight, live starting at approximately 8 45 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Among the events recover to become a hearing looking at derivatives losses by Jpmorgan Chase. We will have the first panel from that hearing coming up next. First, a portion of the opening ofatement from the coceo Jpmorgan Corporate and investment bank. Members of the subcommittee, high and coceo of the corporate and Investment Banking at jpmorgan. I lead a task force that conducted a review of the circumstances surrounding the 2012 losses in jpmorgans Investment Office. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss their work, to describe what we found as well as the steps jpmorgan has taken in response. Some of what we found was frankly very disappointing and does not reflect our institution at its best. That said, we have addressed the issues head on and are determined to become a Better Company because of this experience. We have fully cooperated with the subcommittee during the course of its inquiry. It is noted in my written statement we respect the key role the subcommittee has played in highlighting the importance of effective Risk Management and oversight of our nations financial institutions. We appreciate the courtesies extended to us by your staff. As you know, earlier this year our task force issued a report which was the culmination of an extensive review. The work included interviews of many current and former jpmorgan employees and the examination of millions of documents and tens of thousands of audio files. The work was overseen by an independent review committee of our board of directors. We have also been cooperating with the ongoing inquiries by governmental authorities, here and in the united kingdom. Because our findings are already public and are set forth in our written testimony, i will not discuss them in detail now. Instead i would like to summarize our key conclusions and then describes steps we have taken to address the problems we found. In short, the losses were the result of a number of accidental missions, some involving personnel and some involving governments. Those responsible in our view include to varying degrees the traders who designed and implemented the flawed trades, the managers who failed to properly ensure the strategy was sound, the risk managers who failed to serve as europes robust check on trading activity, and the Senior Management of the firm who failed to ensure the cio was subject to the same oversight as other parts of the firm. In light of what we found, the firm has taken wideranging remedial actions. Both within cio to route the firm, to prevent incidents similar to this from occurring in the future. These are described in detail in the Task Force Report, but i would like to highlight for the subcommittee some of the more significant steps we have taken. First, the firm has terminated the employment or accepted the resignations of the responsible cio personnel and pursued compensation. Second, jpmorgan has appointed a new cio Leadership Team which has refocused cio on its mandate. Third, the firm has increased resources for the key risk and finance control functions within cio. Fourth, cio has implemented new or restructured minutes carrying a broad and granular set of parameters. And, fifth, the firm has adopted a variety of governance measures to improve its oversight and control improvecio. Firms remedial efforts have not been limited to cio. Firm has conducted a comprehensive selfassessment of its entire Risk Organization and as a result it is implementing a series of improvements across the entire firm. Where there is room to improve, we can and will do so. With respect to the trading itself, we have learned many hard lessons. In particular, that any future poke pop portfolio hedging will be subject to appropriate monitoring requirements with documentation linking the hedge to the risk is designed to offset. In conclusion, i want to assure you that this experience has caused substantial and healthy introspection at Senior Management levels and our firm and recognition of the need for continued improvement. Thank you, and i look forward to taking your questions. Started in 1860, when Congress Finally acted after many decades of difficulty with private contract printers in an effort to relieve towoes of waste and abuse. They created an entity to do their printing for them. Ing cameongress print the Government Printing office it. Theing of documents is a common occurrence for where this place works print this document from april of 1974 is the famous trent strips of the white house tapes in the Nixon Administration that were the investigation of the watergate burglary. Was brought over very late in the day, and the entire transcript had to be prepared to for the press and pretend overnight, and the first 50 copies went up to the white the following morning. And then the several thousand copies to the Congress Went somewhat later in the day. This i think is the origin of phrase expletive expletive deleted. History thiserican weekend on cspan3. The fact is were all getting older together, and we are not the same our fertility rates have dropped, and were beginning to have an inverted pyramid that makes our challenges as it relates to entitlements and Social Security even greater. Slowgrowing developing countries have had for decades low fertility rates. Japan and europe particulate and russia, and now china is starting to feel the impact of its onechild policy. Were better off than the rest of the world, but our rate has dropped to below break even, the lowest drop in the last three years in recorded history, and unlike most of the world, we have a tried and true way to deal with this demographic time bomb. Demography does not have to be destiny if you change course creek in the path that we could take, it is to allow that we could allow for a strategic reform of our Immigration Law so we can bring young aspirational people that will rebuild the demographic. To make our entitlement system secure and jumpstart our economy in a way that will create an uplifting of our hopes and dreams, but also directly impact, immediately impact Economic Growth. Economic growth and immigration policy. Jeb bush on immigration wars, saturday at endicott 15 eastern, on cspan2. Fromxt the first panel today us hearing looking at derivatives says. Executives took responsibility for banking processes from that two losses. The subcommittee is chaired by carl levin of michigan. This is about an hour and 40 minutes. Let me first began buying extending a special welcome to the new Ranking Member of the subcommittee, a deer and longtime friend, senator mccain. This is not the first time we have worked side by side, and he has been a longtime member and former lee Ranking Member, and was Ranking Member on the Senate Armed Services committee, and has brought a great energy and bipartisan spirit to our work together. And we want to just welcome him as our nubile Ranking Member here. Here. Come senator johnson unlike senator mccain, he has been a member of this committee. Senator johnson has joined us. We welcome him. In april of 2012, americans were confronted with a story of wall street access and the derivative disaster now known as jpmorgan trades. Ale largest u. S. Banks are now deep into derivatives. The derivatives behind the jpmorgan shale trades were part of the so called synthetic credit portfolio, sometimes called the scp, that made outsized bets on whether a particular Financial Instruments or entities were credit or the or would default during specified time periods. The bets were made by traders in the London Office of the u. S. Banking giant Jpmorgan Chase. Their trades, meaning their bets, grew so large that they credit27 trillion dollar derivatives market, single handedly affecting global prices and finally attracted a media storm and at finding out who was behind them. That is when the media and masked jpmorgans for investment cio, before then had been known for making conservative investments. Complainedamie dimon that the reports were a tempest in a teapot, but a month later the bank and that the truth, that their derivative bets had gone south, producing not only losses that eventually exceeded 6 billion, but also exposing a litany of Risk Management problems in what had been considered one of americas safest banks . Jpmorgan chase is the largest Financial Holding company and the United States. It is the largest derivatives dealer in the world and the largest single participant in world credit travis markets. It is consistently portrayed itself as a Risk Management expert with a fortress Balance Sheet. This interest taxpayers have nothing to fear from its extensive dealing and risky derivatives. The portrayal of the bank was shattered when whale trade losses shocked the investing public, but because of the financial risk had been largely unknown to Bank Regulators. The subCommittee Meets today after nine months of digging into facts behind the whale trades. The subcommittee collected nearly 90,000 boxes at the documents, conducted over 50 interviews and has issued a bipartisan report. While the bank and its regulators have cooperated with our investigation, four key former jpmorgan employee is directly involved in the Derivatives Trading declined to cooperate because they reside overseas. They remain beyond the subcommittee subpoena of party. Our findings opened a window into the hidden world of high it states highstakes Derivatives Trading pit it exposes the culture of jpmorgan losses,d, that hid disregarded risk limits and manipulated models, that dodge oversight, and misinform the public. Our investigation brought home one fact u. S. Financial system may have significant vulnerabilities of trouble to major Bank Involvement with high a risk Derivatives Trading. The four largest u. S. Banks control 90 of the u. S. Derivatives markets and their profitability is invested in part in their derivatives holdings. Nowhere more so than at jpmorgan. Howwhale trades derivatives trade can become a runaway train, barreling through every risk limit. The whale trades demonstrate hundred the Valuation Practices are easily manipulated, to hi de losses, congress controls are manipulated to circumvent limits, enabling traders to unload prescript firing a few traders and their bosses will not be enough to stanch wall streets in satiable ask appetite for risky derivatives bets or stop the excesses appeared more controls are needed. Among the most troubling ac instances of that history is jpmorgan traders, who worked required to book their holdings every business day, used internal profitloss reports to hide more than 500 million in losses in just three months. Eventually, those miss reported values forced jpmorgan to restate its earnings for the First Quarter of 2012. To this day, jpmorgan maintains values did not by late bank policies. If derivatives bookings could be the rules need to be revamped. The remaining how much profits are bound up with their derivatives, duras values that cannot be trusted are serious threat to our economic stability. The trades demonstrate how easily a wall street bank can manipulate and avoid risk controls. The financial industry assures us that it can prudently manage highrisk activity because they are measured, monitored, and limited. Rather than ratchet back the rest, jpmorgan personnel challenged and reengineered the risk controls to silence the alarms. It is difficult to imagine how the American People can trust major wall street banks to print lead manage derivatives risk when Bank Personnel can readily game or ignore the risk controls that are meant to prevent financial disaster and taxpayer bailout. The whale trades provide another example of a major wall street banks misstatements and concealment. In fact, in january of 2012, the in accurately occ that the portfolio was decreasing in size when it was not picked most troubling of all, when the media spotlight hit, Senior Bank Executives mischaracterized to investors and the public the nature of the whale trades and the extent of Risk Management and regulatory oversight, gambling apparently that the portfolios bad bet would recover before anyone took a closer look. We took a closer look, and is not prepared a massive derivatives portfolio riddle with risk, a runaway train of trading, blowing through risk limits, hidden losses, Bank Executives downplaying the bad debts, regulators who failed to act. Together these facts are a reminder of what occurred in the recent financial crisis. We cannot rely on a major bank to resist risky bets, honestly report derivatives losses, or disclose bad news without a strong regulator looking over its shoulder, backed by law that require transparency, buffers against losses and consequences for misconduct. That is the big picture. Here are a few of the detailed findings. First among jpmorgans chief Investment Officer rapidly amassed a huge portfolio of synthetic critic derivatives come in part using federally insured depositor funds and a series of risky shortterm trades, disclosing the extent of the portfolio only after intense media exposure. In just a few months during 2011, as shown on chart 1, and i think we can get chart one up over here, the chief Investment Offices scented vick credit portfolio true from a note net National Size from 4 billion to 51 billion and untroubled in the First Quarter 157 billion thrift that exponential mick cora occurred with virtually no regulatory oversight. Second, whats the whale trades were exposed to jpmorgan claimed to regulators and the public that the trades were designed to hedge credit risk, but internal Bank Documents failed to identify the assets being hedged, how they lowered risk, or what the supposed Credit Derivatives hedges were treated differently from other hedges in the chief Investment Officer. If these tradings were hedges gone astray, it remains a mystery why the bank determine the nature, size, or effectiveness of the socalled hedges and how if at all the reduced risk. The chief Investment Officer internally concealed how massive losses in the first months of 2012 by overstating the value of its synthetic Credit Derivatives. It got away with overstating those values in the face of the speech with counterparties and in the face of two internal bank to reduce trade as late as january 2012, the cio had found its Credit Derivatives by using the midpoint in the daily range above what was asked in the marketplace. That is the typical way to die yet during this period. In general, the traders stop this and started using prices at the extreme edges of the daily price range to hide escalating losses. In rec and phone conversation, one trader described these as idiotic. At one point traders used a spreadsheet to track just how large their deception had grown by recording the valuation differences between easing midpoint and more favorable prices pick in just five days in march, according to the trader and spreadsheet, the hidden losses exceeded 400 million. The difference extent eventually exceeded 600 million. Counterparties to the derivatives trades began disputing the c i zero possible values involving hundreds of millions of dollars in march and april. Despite the obvious value manipulation, on may 10, the same day jpmorgan announced the whale trades had lost 2 billion from the banks controller concluded a special review and signed off on the cios derivative pricing practices as consistent with industry practice. Jpmorgan leadership has continued to argue that the values assigned by its traders the synthetic credit portfolio more indefensible under accounting rules. Yet in july 2012, the bank reluctantly restated its First Quarter earnings. It did so only after an internal investigation listened to phone conversations routinely recorded by the bank in which its traders marked its own Valuation Practices. Now, their mismakred values were not wrong because the traders intended to understate losses. They were wrong because they changed the their pricing practices after losses began piling up, stopped using the midpoint practices excuse me stopped using the midpoint price is that they had used up until january, and they began using aggressive prices that consistently made the banks reports look better. Until jpmorgan and others stopped their personnel from playing those kinds of games and the derivative values will remain at an imprecise, malleable, and untruss the set of figures that call into question the derivative profits and losses reported by our largest financial institutions. When the cios synthetic credit portfolio breached five key risk limits, rather than reduce the risky trading activities, jpmorgan either increased the limits, changed the risk model of calculated risk, or turned a blind eye to the breach as great as early as january 2012, the rapid growth of the synthetic credit portfolio preached one common measure of risk, called value at risk of war var, causing a bridge at the cio and the entire bank. That breach was reported to top bank officials, including jamie dimon who approved a temporary limit increase, the bridge was ended. Cio employees pushed through approval of a new var model overnight, throughout the cios reported risk, by 50 . Regulators were told about that remarkable reduction in the cios reported risk, but raised no objection to the new model at the time. The Credit Derivatives portfolio breached other risk limits as well. In one case, it exceeded established limits on one measure known as credit spread through months running. When regulators asked about the breach, managers responded it was a sensible limit and allow the breach to continue. When another risk measure, called comprehensive risk measure, projected the synthetic risk credit portfolio could lose 6. 3 billion in the year, a senior cia risk manager dismissed the results as garbage. It was not garbage rate that projection was 100 percent accurate, and the derivatives traders thought they knew better, pushing to reengineer risk controls to artificially lower risk results, flatly contradict jpmorgans claimed to prudent Risk Management. Fifth, at the same time the portfolio was losing money in breaching risk limits and a jpmorgan dodged the oversight of the occ. Omitted see eye of data from its report to the occ. Failed to disclose the size, risk, and losses of the synthetic credit portfolio. It delayed or tinkered with occ requests for information by giving the regulator inaccurate or unresponsive information in tradeshen the whale first became public, the bank offered such blanket reassurances that suchocc consider the matter closed pit it was only when the losses exploded that the occ took another look. The failure of regulators that act sooner cannot be excused by the banks behavior. The occ also fell down on the job. If failed to investigate multiple sustained risk limit breeches. It tolerated incomplete and missing reports from jpmorgan. It failed to question the bank of us knew about it at risk model, that dramatically lowered the cio risk rating. It accepted jpmorgans protests that the media reports about the portfolio were over but. It was not until may of 2012, after a new comptroller of the currency, took the reins at the occ, that the occ officials instituted their first intensive inquiry into the synthetic credit portfolio. Again, with the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis so painfully fresh, it is deeply worrisome that a major bank should seek to cloak its risky trading activities from regulators and doubly worrisome that it was able to succeed so easily for so long. And finally, when the whale trades went public, jpmorgan misinformed regulators and the public about the synthetic credit portfolio. Jpmorgans first public response to the april news reports about the whale trades was when its spokesperson, using prepared talking points come approved by Senior Executives, told reporters on april 10 that the whale trades were riskreducing hedges that were known to regulators. A more detailed description came on a Conference Call on april 13 to return the call com. The chief Financial Officer made a series of inaccurate statements about the whale trades, shown in chart 2. Said the trades have been put on by bank risk managers and were fully transparent to regulators. He said that trades were made on a longterm basis tree he said the trades were is essentially a hedge prick he said the bank believed the trades were consistent with the full court rule that prohibits hikerisk proprietary trading by banks. Those public statements on april 13 were not true. As late as may 10, jamie dimon scribe the synthetic credit trades as hedges made to offset risk, despite information showing the portfolio was not a hedge. The bank also neglected to tell investors the bad news, that the derivatives portfolio had broken through multiple risk limits, losses at piled up, and the head of the portfolio had put banishment of the portfolio into crisis mode. It was recently reported that the eight biggest u. S. Banks had hit a fiveyear low in the percentage of deposits used to make loans treat their collective average month deposit ratio it has fallen to 84 in 2012, down from 87 a year 1 in 2007. D 10 o apparently, jpmorgan was too busy getting under is to issue the loans needed to speed economic recovery. Based on its investigation of the jpmorgan whale trades, our report makes the following recommendations first, when it comes to high risk derivatives, federal regulators need to know what major banks are up to. We should require those banks to identify internal investment portfolios that include derivatives over a specified one, record reporting performance, and conduct regular reviews to detect Derivatives Trading pit next, when banks claim they are trading derivatives to hedge risk, we need to require them to identify the assets being hedged, and how the derivatives trade reduces the risk associated with those assets and how the bank tested the effectiveness of its hedging strategy in reducing rest premixed, we need to strengthen how derivatives are valued to stop inflated values. A regulator should encourage banks to use independent Pricing Services to stop the games, require disclosure valuations with parties, and require justification when, as occurred at jpmorgan, a derivative values deviate from midpoint prices. Next, when the alarms go off, banks and their regulators should investigate breaches and take action to reduce risky activity. Next, regulators should require disclosure of any new implemented risk model or metric which would implement a material and materially lower reported brisk. Risk. Next, three years ago congress enacted a provision of the dodd frank act and also known as the risk. Er rule, to end financial regulators should finalize a longdelayed regulations. Next, at major banks ham, regulators need to make sure that banks can was banned losses by having charges for tour of the trading pit is way past time to finalize the rules intimating stronger capital banks standards. There ritas trading producing the retail trades damaged a single bank. But the whale trades have exposed problems that reach far desk. One London Trading the American People have already suffered one the devastating and they cannot, afford another. When wall street plays with fire, American Families get burned. The task of federal regulators and of this congress is to take away the matches. The whale trades demonstrated that this task is far from complete. Senator mccain . Thank you, and let me begin by saying what an honor it is to serve on this subcommittee, which has a long history of bipartisanship and a celebrated legacy of uncovering waste, fraud and abuse, and outright corruption appeared before i move forward, i want to express my gratitude to you and the members of your staff for your unyielding and dedicated efforts to this investigation. I would like to recognize the work of my predecessor on the subcommittee, nutter coburn, for his contributions prior to my arrival. This investigation into the so called whale trades at jpmorgan has revealed strides failures and an institution that touts itself as an expert in Risk Management and prides itself on its fortress Balance Sheet. Investigation has shed light on a complex and volatile world of synthetic Credit Derivatives. In a matter of months, jpmorgan was able to increase its exposure to risk while dodging oversight by federal regulators. The trades of lacoste the Bank Billions of dollars and its shareholders value. These losses come to light up the can cause of admirable Risk Management strategies at jpmorgan, or because of the effective oversight by diligent regulators. Instead, these losses came to light because they were so damaging that they shook the market and so damning date caught the attention of the press. Following the revelation that these huge trades were coming from jpmorgans London Office, the banks losses continued to grow. By the end of the year, the total losses stood at a staggering 6. 2 billion. This case represents another shameful demonstration of a bank engaged in while bleak risky behavior. The london whale incident matters to the federal government because the traders at jpmorgan were making risky bets using excess deposits, portions of which were federally insured pit these access excess deposits should have been produced to provide loans to mainstream businesses. Instead, jpmorgan use them to bet on catastrophic restrict through an intensive bipartisan investigation, this subcommittee has uncovered a wealth of new information. Internal emails, memos and and interviews revealed that these trades were not conducted by a group of rogue traders, but that their superiors were aware of their activities. Traders at jpmorgans chief Investment Office, the cio, adopted a risky strategy with money they were supposed to use to hedge or counter risk. However, even the head of the cio could only provide a guessteimate as to what the portfolio was supposed to hedge. Portfolio had the morphed into something that created new and potentially larger risk creek in the words of the primary federal regulator, it would require a makebelieve voodoo magic to make the portfolio actually look like a hedge. Top officials at j. P. Morgan allow these excess of losses to occur by permitting the see of it to continually breached all of the banks own risk limits, when the risk limits the trend to impede their risky behavior. He decided to manipulate the models. Disturbingly, the banks primary regulator failed to take action even after red flags were warned that jpmorgan was breaching its risk limits. These regulators fell asleep at the switch and fail to use the tools at the disposal to curb it jpmorgans appetite for risk. However, jpmorgan actively competed the oversight. The cio refused to release key Investment Data and even claimed the regulator was trying to destroy the banks businesses. After these losses werent covered by the press, jpmorgan chose to conceal its errors and in doing so top officials at the bank misinformed investigators, regulators, and the public. And april to 2012 earnings call, the chief officer falsely told investors and the public that the bank had been fully transparent to regulators. The deception did not end there. During the same earnings call, dimon tried to downplay the losses by infamously characterizing them as a complete tempest in a teapot. The truth of the matter is that 6 billion, some of which is federally insured, is an inexcusable amount of money to be gambled away on risky bets. This investigation potentially reveals systemic problems in our nations financial system. The size of the potential losses and the accompanying deception echo the misguided and dishonest actions that the banks took during the financial crisis four years ago. That me be clear. Jpmorgan completely disregarded risk limits and stonewalled federal regulators. It is unsettling that a group of traders made reckless decisions with federally insured money and that all of this was done with the full awareness of top officials at j. P. Morgan. This bank appears to have annotated and embraced the idea that it was too big to fail. In fact, with regard as to how it managed the derivatives that are the subject of todays hearing. It seems to have developed a Business Model based on that notion, the notion they are too big to fail. It is our duty to the American Public to remind the financial industry that highstakes gambling with federal insurance will not be tolerated. Into a dozen 12 the trades resulting in a 6 billion loss. What if it was 60 billion or 100 billion . Does jpmorgan operate under the assumption that the taxpayer will bail them out again . What place does taxpayers for moralng disregard hazard have the proper operation of a truly free market. I look forward to hearing from martinez today as we examine what went wrong at jpmorgan. Thank you. Senator johnson. A comet or statement what is interesting is what senator mccain pointed out, that jpmorgan appears to have developed its Business Model around the fact they are too big to fail. I have always said that the fact that we have institutions that are too big to fail shows how regulation has already failed us. We have regulation and place that should have prevented that years ago. I am looking forward to hear the testimony to highlight regulators in general are incapable of preventing all these things, and i look forward to the recommendations in terms of how we get regulation up to speed so we can prevent this in the future. Thank you. First will call on our panel of witnesses appeared before we do that, but me make a comment about the procedures here today. We anticipate a long hearing, and so we will first call the first panel come from witnesses with the most firsthand knowledge of the whale trades that are the essential concern of the hearing. After taking their testimony, there will be a short break, and we will return than and braun the panel by adding two Senior Executives of the bank, one responsible for Public Disclosures about the trades, and the other who led the management postmortem review. Then when that panel, that extended panel concludes, there will be a short break, and we will hear from the final panel which representatives from the officer of the comptroller of the currency. Panelwill call our first of witnesses. Ina drew, ashley bacon, and peter weiland. We appreciate all of you being with us today. We look forward to your testimony. Pursuant to will 6 of this its up to become all witnesses to testify are required to be sworn, so i would ask each of you to please stand, raise your right hand. The testimonyhat you are about to give to the subcommittee will be the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth . Be using a timing system today. The rede minute before light comes on, you will see the light changed from green to yellow. It will give you an opportunity to conclude your remarks, and in your written to testify, it will be included in the record. We appreciate you limiting yorks testimony to no more than five minutes. If you have a prepared statement, which will have to go first, followed by mr. Bacon. We will then turned to questions. Please proceed. You can keep your microphones on, if you would. Good morning, chairman levin, Ranking Member mccain, and members of the subcommittee. Ina drew. Thank you for the opportunity to meet and discuss with you my perspective on the losses incurred last year in Jpmorgan Chases synthetic credit portfolio, one of many portfolios managed by the companys chief Investment Office cio when i was the head of that office. About myike to talk career. I spent over 30 years at jpmorgan and its predecessor institutions in the field of asset Liability Management did i joined after receiving a degree from Johns Hopkins university and a masters from columbia university. For the course of my career, i had the privilege of working for a truly great ceos, such as walter shipley, and jamie dimon. Helped build what i believed to be a worldclass asset Liability Management organization. I am very proud of the many successes we had in protecting the banks Balance Sheet. Offsetting risk, and investing prevent the. I had a wonderful mentor who helped me grow at about might leadership skills, and to them i am grateful. This was my life plus work. Lifes work. Many financial crisis, i always try to do my best and what was right for the firm and a thoughtful, diligent manner. I love the work and the institution and gave it my all. Balancing life home life, charitable and educational board work, and many other demands. Night, may 11, two dozen top, i walked into the office of mr. Dimon, whom i had a close relationship. I told him it was my decision to resign from jpmorgan. It was a devastating and very difficult decision for me. Of three the end decades of hard work at an institution i loved. We talked about this decision at how important i believed it was to let the Company Move Forward with new leadership. I accepted responsibility for the events that happened on my watch. My overwhelming sadness and concern was extended to the 400 people who worked for me. Many for more than 20 years. It also went to my colleagues throughout the firm who are now leading the Company Going forward. There were many people from the front office, risk, finance, and quantitative research, who worked on and analyzed the synthetic credit portfolio. Toelied on the experts supervise trading and elevate concerns to me. Of theely, my oversight synthetic credit book was undermined. There were two critical fax that have come to mind recently. First among companys new var was flawed and understated the risks reported to me. Second, some members of the london team failed to cover their positions properly. Dane minimize reported and projected losses and hid from the Important Information regarding the true risks of the book. Throughout these events, i did what i tried to do all times during my career, faced difficult issues with dignity and integrity. I had many months to think about what happened. I do not have all the answers. But what i can tell you is that i always tried to do my best bet, i tried at all times to approach these issues presented to me fairly, thoughtfully, and transparently. Clearly, mistakes were made. The fact that these mistakes happen on my watch has been the most disappointing and painful part of my professional career. I think you for the opportunity to appear today, and i will be happy to answer questions you may have. Thank you very much, ms. Drew. Now we will call on mr. Bacon. Been a good morning. Good morning. My name is ash the bacon, the acting chief risk officer of jpmorgan. I have been there at 20 years. I appreciate the opportunity to come before you today as part of your inquiry into the sea isle synthetic credit portfolio and tell you what i observed after being asked in late april to independently the assets the cio trades hit at me express the entire 4s commitment the importance of active Risk Management. Turning to the cio before real issue, at the request of management, i was brought in from outside of the chief Investment Officer in late april of 2012, along with other individuals from the investment bank, to lead a team of professionals and conducting an assessment of the synthetic credit portfolio. The purpose of that review is to understand that the system losses being experienced and to help chart a course for. The team worked long hours and after initial reports were asked to take over responsibility from the daytoday management of the synthetic credit portfolio. We held that responsibility until a new team took over. The firm also requested that my colleague, michael lead a task force to investigate these trades. Later in the day, i believe he will speak in detail about that effort and the steps identified by the task force in response. I have discussed a few key steps weve takened a a firm as to approve the Risk Management and Risk Management within c. I. O. First, the firm appointed a new c. I. O. Manager. The firm took steps to ensure risks independence and staffing levels. E new c. I. O. Chief officer actual reporting practices, not reporting to his reporting line. E reports to me. Second, the firm overhauled the service committee. The Committee Meets on a weekly basis from within and outside the c. I. O. Has been reinstituted as the Risk Committee to reflect its broader responsibilities. Third, c. I. O. Implemented numerous or new risk parameters. What remained of the portfolio was transfered to the firms transfer bank. Lastly, Jpmorgan Chase conducted a comprehensive selfassessment of the Risk Organization and as are zult were implementing a series of improvements. In addition to working to improve monitoring the firm is reaffirming and were revising our market limits across all lines of business. Weve introduced granularity levels and will cooperate to do so. We provide for more rapid escalation and more effective review. We established a committee to results of the committees. We constantly look for ways to improve. The steps i described portray our beliefs that our port fort yo should be overseen to address risk issues effectively. Thank you for the opportunity to appear for you today. I welcome any question you have. Thank you very much. Mr. Weiland. Thank you chairman. Y name is peter weiland. Im here today to help explain some of the facts surrounding the of events in question to the best of my knowledge and ecollection. Thank you very much. Let me start with you. If you look at exhibit number 81, which is in front of you. What well have 12minute ounds if that is ok. Well probably have more than a round or two after this first panel and well switch after 12 minutes. Me, then senator mccain and senator johnson and any others that will show up. This is a presentation, which you gave to your board of directors on march 20, 2012. It is about the c. I. O. On page one you provide a chart listing nine investment portfolios at the c. I. O. And you indicated if they had longer or shorter investment horizons. Where is the s. E. P. On that chart . It is on the right side on the bottom where it is noted that the portfolio was being reduced, reducing capital and positions. So it is under it is at the shorter end of the event horizon, is that correct . That the time it was correct. It was in the process of being reduced. Im not asking if it was being reduced at that time. Im asking if it is at the shorter event horizon, is that correct . That is correct. So in 2012, the synthetic credit portfolio was being actively traded. Is that correct . Yes. And if the portfolio grew is it to 157 billion, correct by the time of your presentation on march 20, 2012, most of the positions would have been purchased during the First Quarter . That is correct. So these were not investments that were made on a longterm basis . Is that correct . Senator, your horizon is the shorter investment horizon and they were bought and sold regularly and frequently, is that not correct . That is correct. However, the position in the book, which was a shorthigh yield position was a longterm position that had been held for many years and the intention was to be held longer. But when this portfolio grew n the First Quarter from 51 billion to 157 billion most of those positions were purchased in that quarter, is that correct . They had. Is that correct . Thats correct. These trades were out of london but when they were losses at 6. 2 billion in losses that took place over 2012, that affected Jpmorgan Chases Balance Sheet, is that correct . Yes, certainly it did. Did the london traders have to get approval of the c. I. O. Risk managers like you to be put on position . Let me ask mr. Weiland that question. Did the london traders get the approval risk managers like you to be put on these positions . Not for individual trades. The traders in london worked within a set of delegated limits. So they did not get approval from you for the positions they were putting on . Not for individual trades as long as they were working within their limits. Is that what you call positions . What . The individual trades, they had to get your approval . Not one by one, no. 2012, the ry 30, c. I. O. Met with the o. C. C. At their standard quarterly meeting to discuss the upcoming plans. The c. I. O. Chief finance officer represented the bank at the meeting with the o. C. C. Take a look at exhibit number 58. Exhibit 58 is the o. C. C. Summary f that january 30 meeting. In interviews the o. C. C. Examiner who attended the meeting and wrote the summary d the others that attended confirmed that the notes were accurate. Out 2 3 down the page, the o. C. Reports what it was told by Jpmorgan Chase. The. T. M. Book thats mark to market book consists of the synthetic credit portfolio is decreasing in size in 2012. It is expected that the r. W. A. Will decrease from 70 billion to 40 billion. Do you see that, by the way, the note 2 3 down the page on exhibit 58 where it says m. T. M. Book is decreasing in 2012. Do you see that . Ok, mrs. Drew it was increasing in size in the First Quarter of 2012 is that correct . You can see on the chart exhibit one. Yes, that is correct. So again, this meeting took place january 31 and the o. C. C. Was told that the book was decreasing in size, in fact, it was increasing in size. Also in the First Quarter 2012, the c. I. O. Stopped sending standard data to the o. C. C. That might have alerted the agency to the portfolios growth. January tohs from april they did not send to the o. C. C. The executive management report. In february and march, it did not send to the o. C. C. Its evaluation control Group Reports with verified profit loss data for the synthetic credit portfolio. Is that through, those reports were not sent during those months, is that true . I do not know, snort. I have no knowledge of reports not being sent to any regulators. I consider that is the wrong thing to do. So you dont know if they were sent . I do not. Who is in charge of get ending those reports that were missing in january and march. Who is in charge of that . I understand it is risk and finance. Give us names. Who is in charge of that . I dont have a specific person but within the risk and the finances any and all contact would be made with the o. C. C. Mr. Weiland, do you know the answer to those questions . I dont. Do you know why those reports were not sent . No, i do not know. Who is in charge of sending them . I dont know the people responsible to sending the reports to the regulators. My understanding that is part of the finance function. Ok. Maybe we can find out later from ur next witnesses. So we can find out why the reports were not sent during those critical months. . Ke a look at this, would you this is an email dated march 2, 2012, it was sent to you by one of the quantitive an any facts at the bank. It is talking about c. I. O. , c. R. M. Results. The o. C. C. Requires all National Banks to use this risk measure to calculate how much money could be lost in a year in the worst case scenario. It wasnt a requirement in 2012 but it was about to become a requirement in anticipation of that, when this email was written Jpmorgan Chase already began requiring its offices to start calculating its risk measurements. That was in part, because the o. C. C. And now does require banks to use their c. R. M. Results to calculate their Capital Requirements, so how much money has to come from shareholders and to retain earnings. You received this email, again, exhibit 47, notifying you at the bottom of the first page c. R. M. Numbers increased significantly at the c. I. O. As responded these results i understand them that the synthetic credit portfolio could ose 600 billion in one year. You forwarded the email to london and you called the result garbage. You wrote, we got c. R. M. Numbers and they look like garbage as far as i can tell. You and your colleagues complained about the c. R. M. Analysis to the head of Quantitive Research to the whole bank, if you look at exhibit 49, which includes an email dated march 7. On the bottom of the page to all three of you and others, explain that the c. R. I. s portfolio got bigger in january and february, which is why the risk of losing so much money also shot up. Heres what he wrote, which is at the bottom of the that page on exhibit 49. Based on our models, we believe the 3 billion increase in our w. A. , which is references to the c. R. M. Is explained by an increase in short protection, long risk in our portfolio between january and february. Pete weiland in your Office Confirmed this. Mr. Weiland, since the portfolio increased in size by about 33 billion in january and february, the s. C. P. Wasnt decreasing as the c. I. O. Told the o. C. C. On january 30, it was increasing. Do you agree with that, it was increasing . Yes, they were purchasing long positions. The portfolio was also increasing, is that correct . Yes. The banks quantitive experts said the risk administrationment or c. R. M. Number shot up to 6 billion because its portfolio shot up in size. I understand that you had questions about that explanation at the time. Do you believe that the analysts had it write, especially since the portfolio did lose 6. 2 billion in a year . Do you acknowledge they got it right . Yes, i acknowledge it now with all the information we have today that was correct. All right. Do you think it was a coincidence that the c. R. M. Predicted a 6 billion loss in a scenario. E worst case do you thinks that is a coincidence . I dont know the details that generated the numbers at the time but it is agrees with the way things unfolded. Senator mccain . Mr. Chairman, if it is ok, senator johnson has to go so i yield to him. Thanks, mr. Chairman and senator mccain. Mr. Bacon it seems you were brought in to assess what happened here. I would like to ask you a question. Did the management of Jpmorgan Chase, was there an attitude that Jpmorgan Chase was too big to fail and they could drive up the risk portfolio . I dont believe that played a part at all. I think this was a set of mistakes, much regretted and not at all facing on the realliance of too big to fail. Do you think the doddfrank act ended too big to fail or has a chance of ending too big to fail . I think the work that is going on should end up in that place. I think it is to the benefit of Jpmorgan Chase and the system generally if we do end up in that place. Do you think it has ended too big to fail or it has potential of ending it . I think it has potential. I think the work is ongoing but im not the individual looking at that process. Do you have a fair amount of contact with Bank Regulators in your position . A fair amount. Do you believe that Bank Regulators are up to the task of understanding the complexity of these transactions and understanding the limits . I think the answer is generally yes. When Something Like this occurs and we dont understand it ourselves, i think it makes it incredibly difficult for them to understand the details and the context. Ok. My time is short but i would like to sum up by saying, i think the fact of having this hearing is that we have not ended too big to fail. Were still concerned about activities of banks that could pose a risk and danger. I think the goal of congress should be get the american taxpayer off the hook for what happens to the banks. I think the only people that should worry or carry at all if Jpmorgan Chase lost 5 billion or 6 billion is Jpmorgan Chase management and Jpmorgan Chase shareholders and not members of congress. I hope these types of hearings and these investigations can get o the bottom of it so we can too big to fail. Thank you. Senator mccain. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Weiland you said you didnt know who was responsible for the reports that were supposed to be made to the o. C. C. . That is correct. Do you know the office that was responsible for sending these reports . My understanding is that the financial function, part of the c. F. O. Function is responsible primary responsibility to send the reports to the regulators. But you dont know who that individual might have been . Jpmorgan chase is so big you dont know who would have a serious responsible to make required reports to the o. C. C. , is that correct . That is correct. Well, do you know who but you dont know the individual who should have been responsible . You dont know who that is . I dont know. Your former boss jamie dimon criticized the performance of the o. C. C. Saying we made a mistake, we knew we were sloppy, we knew we were stupid. We knew there was bad judgment. Do you share your former boss assessment of this . Now that i understand what transpired during that time, including deception and riskcontrol issues, yes, i do agree. You maintained that the f. C. P. Existed to hedge risk but in a Sub Committee interview you only provided an estimate of asked when the portfolio was designed to hedge. Do you stand by that statement as well . Certainly that was not the best world i could have chosen. I would say that in 2. 5 trillion Balance Sheet macro hedges, which are fluid when the Balance Sheet changes, do change. In response to senator levin i said the positions do go up and down, they have to. That is the dynamic process. Poor choice of words but i would not know the exact amount per se of each individual hedge versus the Balance Sheet. Any hedges were limited to the Balance Sheet and its components. Mr. Weiland, you indicated in a Sub Committee that it was not your job to enforce the risk limits even though you were the senior risk officer. Whose job was it then to enforce the risk limits . I saw the way it was written in the report. It is not my rec collection that i said those words. Certainly it was my job to enforce the risk limits with partnership with the other Senior Management of the business. We didnt i did not make an unilateral decisions about how to respond to the exess es but it is certainly part of my job. Mr. Bacon, as early as march 30, you were notified that the chief officer in london lost confidence in his team. They needed help with their synthetic book and they were in crisis mode. But he said that he was surprised about the losses. Doesnt this email indicate otherwise and suggest they should have acted sooner . I recall the email youre referring to. What i took it to be referring to at the time and i still stand by this. They had lost faith in their ability to manage their r. W. A. Number. The technicals around the texting techniques and the trades to the books was something they were not handling well at all and they were asking for modeling expertise to be inserted in their group and i arranged for that to happen. In january 2012, the c. I. O. s chief Financial Officer assured the o. C. C. That you plan on educing the portfolios risk own to 40 billion, yet it tripled in size instead. Tell us what happened . How does that transpire . You assured the o. C. C. That you portfolio cing the but in actualalty tripled in size. Was the o. C. C. Misled . I dont think so, senator. I wasnt in the meeting when he met with the o. C. C. However, the plan as signed off by all Senior Management, including myself, was to reduce the r. W. A. Over the course of the total 2012. We asked for and received permission to have a slightly higher capital number for the First Quarter before then embarking on a rapid reduction from the Second Quarter forward. Things went terribly wrong as we all know and large purchases that were made at the end of march were not brought to my attention on time. Was it your responsible to fully disclose the true nature of the s. C. P. And its increasing size to the o. C. C. And did you . Be s it my responsible to fully transparent but it was not my responsibility to discuss information directly with the o. C. C. No, sir. Mr. Weiland, you were warned in early 2012 that risk measures predicted massive losses. After the bank lost over 6 billion, you stand by your statement that the risk measures were garbage and not sensible in youre referring to two different risk measures. The results of testing, which i called garbage, is not an appropriate word and not typical my response to these things, which i take seriously. That was part of a process that we were working on to develop a model for the new c. R. M. Regulatory Capital Requirements and that was a very first reaction to a number that you know, it was two to three times that weve seen previously. My first reaction was, it doesnt look right. Clearly as rediscussed earlier, t turned out to be predictive. Ith respect to the c. S. O. 1, which is thing second reference you made. In fact, when that limit was the breached, it is true methodology we were using was not appropriate. The decision was made to make a change. The change was not made, so there was a mistake there not making the change immediately. And there was a missed have nity there to also interpreted that as a sign of something we didnt see at the time. Back to you later in a later email you said were working on a new set of limits for synthetic credit and the will be replaced by something more sensible and granular. Mr. Bacon, there are firmwide risk limits at Jpmorgan Chase. Is that true . Yes. Were those breaches ignored . No, the breaches were not ignored. Specifically the one i think youre referring to is the one in january at the firm wide level. So it was not ignored. T caused action and escalation it was a situation where we relied upon the explanation that turned out to be wrong about the new model. An implementation that was agreed upon at the time by the. View, which all of it failed let me tell you what is hard to explain to my constituents when their tax dollars are ensuring their deposits theyre going to ask, how could we balloon up to a 6 billion and basically it was not only ignoring the facts, but sort of endorsing the behavior. It seemed that the traders seem to have more responsibility and authority than the higher up executives. I have to go to a town hall meeting, ok. You tell me what i am supposed. O tell my constituents this kind of gambling went on and there is also extreme difficulty in getting their home loan mortgages consummated and obtained. Tell me, mr. Bacon, what should i say . , we should bel clear that the whole thing is regrettable and unacceptable. We need to demonstrate how this cannot happen in other places and how we weather the financial crisis well everywhere else and how we can make the. Ntire firm a safer place this failed because of multiple things that were not caught. Trading oversight and management oversight on the ground in london failed completely and second line of defense and finance after that also failed with the limits and the escalation and the Risk Committees, this failed. It would have been easy to catch this in many ways and regrettably it did not happen. I believe we have taken corrective actions on all these counts. Do you believe that jp morgan to fail . G i think there is further work to be done to document that. I think that is something that needs to be demonstrated to everyones satisfaction. Thank you. Mr. Weiland, you indicated that it was your job to have coronation between Senior Management. Is that correct . Yes. May bee risk limits complicated, but the bottom line is that they sound alarms when it looks like an investment or folio is putting a lot of money at risk. A look at exhibit 1 this chart is, also up in front of you. The risk limit breaches. The limit was breached starting in january. It was changed. A new model was put into place. We will have a lot of conversation about that later on. The breach that occurred was the breach. D cs01 that lasted longer. You can see that long red block theire. The cs01 stands for what . Of a moving value credit spreads. Credit spreads of one basis point of cs01. Cocorerect. This exhibit lists the 2011 to from September April 30, 2012. Page after page after page after page after page of breaches. Were changed because of the model. ,f you look at the breaches and the last quarter of 2011 and the First Quarter of 2012, you see a huge jump. In the synthetic. Redit portfolio due of 2011 tost quarter the First Quarter of 2012, the number of breaches jumped six to 170. Breaches. Lone, 160 almost as many in that one month of april as the three previous months combined. Sixbreaches compared to the breaches in the previous quarter. Would you agree that when he had that kind of a huge jump in risk limit breaches that is a worrisome pattern . Do you agree . Are large jump is a worrisome pattern. By april, the action of halting trading had occurred. Riskreaches and the metrics can change even without making trades or trading positions. The markets move. The team was tried to figure out what was the best way forward to escape from the position we were in at that time. You stopped the trading after what day in april . March 28. Llection is it is in the report somewhere. Late march. Yes. When more than one risk limit does thatd at a time, send a stronger signal that the portfolio is overly risky . It may. It depends. If an types of measures certainly does. Sometimes individual positions can trigger several limits because of the way the portfolio is organized. Was a synthetic credit portfolio a low risk portfolio . No. You have these multiple breaches that are going on at huge numbers in the First Quarter. T took you until march did you see this many breaches in a portfolio question mark portfolio . No. There are a couple of different circumstances. We missed an opportunity to understand some changes early. Given that the plan was to change the limits, it continued to preach because we were working on the changes. That we weretood having active discussions on how to deal with it. Continuing to have the breaches as long as everyone understands those are happening, i thought it was a good thing, which would help keep focus on the portfolio. Understanding that breaches would be a good thing . Lets take a look at the limit. It sounds alarm to the value of derivatives. The portfolio drops had that amount. Point. Firsttic credit portfolio to breach its limit on january 6. It kept reaching for more than three months. ,hen on april 19, mr. Weiland the occ sent you an email to take a look at exhibit 65. It askeds about that risk limit that has been in recession for 71 days. The synthetics credit portfolio is breached. Is that correct . Correct. It was over 10 times the limit. In that exhibit that we discussed earlier is the list of the breaches. It indicates on april 19 at the limit was 5 million, but the that 1 basis ps 59 million. Is that correct . Yes. You responded to the occ by saying, we are working on a new set of limits for synthetic credit and the current one be replaced. The 1000 noring breach for 71 days because the limit was not sensible. If the risk limit was outdated or not sensible, why did it take that long to update it . Bank policy requires and occ requires that risk limits the updated every year. Why was this limit not updated . Not been updated since 2009. It has been the same since 2009. The policy is that this needs to be updated every year. It sits three years and you have a rule saying that you update it every year. 71 days goes by with it looking like that. How do you explain that . N we were in the middle of a evaluation. For three years . No. At the time, there were a lot of changes going on. We were very focused on getting the regulatory capital models up to speed and working properly and adjusting the business to deal with those of stop those things took priority. Hours. Nother mistake of it was all in good faith. It was with what we knew at the time to be the case. In that limited not take First Priority at the time. For three years for every year, you should have been looking at the risk limits. Ow this tied hits you breach. 10 times the limit. T is outdated anyway despite the occ regulation, were you aware of that breach . Yes. Why did you not fix it . My understanding was that it was in the process of being reviewed. I was told that it was not a useful limit and that it was going to be replaced with a more useful limit that was being worked on in the risk group inside and outside. If you look at exhibit 54, when that chief risk officer wrote to you about this breach in an email from february 2012, he said, we have a global credit. It was set up at the initiation of the credit book. We have been preaching for most of the year. His is how you responded you said, i have no memory of this limit. I think you just told us that you were aware of the breach of that limit. You told and he did not have memory of it. That is correct. My understanding is that i do not know that there was a global one. He was referring in the email to a global one. I probably misunderstood. That is why i followed and said it needs to be based tasked with all the other limits. It is a review that i was assured was ongoing. That it had been started and was making progress. Did you know the limits are supposed to be reviewed every year . Yes. Were you aware that it had not been reviewed every year . I do not recall. Are you where it was 1000 over the limit . No. Senator mccain. Very quickly and we will take a break and add to the panel. There is a second risk limit on this chart. Value atwn as the risk. It sets a dollar limit on how much money is at risk being lost over the course of a day and ordinary market conditions. Toathematical model is used evaluate how much value and investment per folio is putting at risk. If it exist what is established for the portfolio, it goes onto the risk managers. The portfolio reached the limits for several days, starting on january 16 and breach them again for four days. Ceo jamie dimon personally approved a temporary increase, as a matter of fact come until the cio rushed through approval of a new model, which you referred to. When it was activated on january 27, it resulted in an overnight drop. 50 . The breach and did without them getting rid of a single disc investment. Gettingd without them rid of a single risky investment. That is how much money was at risk at a loss. Even though the portfolio had the same risky Credit Derivatives come its value of. Isk was suddenly cut in half now it to 66 million. How did you know the new model would be more accurate . Was theor, the model change in a review that have been going on for seven months by the independent risk modeling group. My understanding was that it had gone through many changes until arrived in its final form as a correct measure, one i relied on heavily to manage the position. Did you test the model against the data . Do you know whether it was done . I do not. Did they not also say when they approved it that the cio had to automate the data entry . Is that true . If they did, that would have been an order that would have gone to risk. That they not aware said you had to automate the data entry when they approved this model, right . At the time, i was not. Im aware of it now. The Task Force Report of the bank said that that testing you said there was no back estimate that was done. Is that correct . I said i did not know. Take a look at this exhibit. Page 104. Ere is what the this is what the review group said. Group requiredor yoewv only limited cuts to the model. There was no back testing. Analyzed thently and i results that were submitted. Half. S it in suddenly there is no breach. When it wasd approved, it was approved with the requirement that there only be limited back testing and the new model instead of back testing to see if it was working. It insufficiently answered the results that were submitted. And is full of operational errors. There are multiple requests to deal with operational errors. Mr. Bacon, what do you think of this model that drops the cioy 50 overnight . It is something that would require a lot of explanation. Like that testing . Back testing . Yes. What it did provide is insufficient data. Limited back testing was not analyzed. That is not the way to do it. It does not analyze . I do not know. That is what the report says. I am sure that is right. Onthe new model depended analyzing a daily stream of new trading data instead of constructing and audit data database that would feed the data into the model. They were stuck with having to manually enter the trading that every night using spreadsheets which had calculation and formula errors. The new value at risk model for the cio billion dollar portfolio, including the synthetic credit portfolio, was being run manually using spreadsheets with operational flaws. Mr. Weiland, did you know that he was doing nightly data entry and sometimes staying up to get it done . Were you aware of that . I was not aware of the details of manual working. I do not know there were spreadsheets involved. I know he often stayed late at night. Mr. Bacon, the occ told us that the operational problems, the spreadsheets, the lack of an wereated spreadsheets, shocking and absolutely unexceptionable. Do you agree . I do. Ms. Drew, why did the bank model of proof approve this , why did im sorry they approve this knowing there were problems and allow it to operate in a shoddy fashion . It is disappointing. I have no idea. The risk model group is an independent growtup. ,hey are well trained, educated phds. Im disappointed it was not reviewed properly. Did he work for your group . He did. In london. Thesebothers me that limits were breached frequently. No one was told to stop trading because of a risk limit breach. No one investigated. The point of breaches . Would investigate that . Yes, senator. The Bank Reaction has been executives ande add a bunch of new ones. Now it has gone to 230 risk limits for the synthetic credit per folio. It misses the point. It was not that the portfolio had too few risk limits. It was that personal did not enforce the ones that they had. I do not see how piling on another risk limits solve anything. Do you want to comment . Yes. I very much agree with you. One of the changes is an alteration to policies and procedures whereby automatically if there is a breach for three days, it goes to the cfo, myself, everyone. Of the question of whether it is necessary to have more limits although this egregious mistake was caught by a small number of limits, if you followed up on them, there are other mistakes you could make that may not have been caught by a small set of limits, which is why be want to be safer than that. Thank you. Senator mccain, m. D. Have anything to add . Do you have anything to add . No, i do not. We will take a fiveminute minute break if anyone needs to use the restroom. We will be back in five minutes. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] here is a look at the primetime programming across the cspan network. At 8 p. M. , defense secretary chuck hagel. He briefed reporters on the north Korean Nuclear threat. On cspan 2, more from todays hearing and the trading losses by Jpmorgan Chase. On cspan 3, a hearing on medicare payment policies. Well have more cpap Coverage Later tonight. Former governor jeb bush is scheduled to address a gathering. It will start at approximately 8 45 p. M. Friday or on cspan. We have been at the top friends all day. Attendees heard from a New Hampshire republican senator. She touched on Irans Nuclear program. Here is a brief look. Today i want to speak with you about another grave threat that our nation faces. This is an issue that keeps me up at night. That is the security of our nation. [applause] i have a simple question for all of you. How many of you believe that radical islam is a threat to our way of life . [cheers and applause] if you believe that. Well, i agree. Im deeply concerned with what is happening around the world. , wemerica fails to lead will create a vacuum that will empower extremists and make america less safe. [applause] lets start with the ayatollahs in iran. Iran is the largest date sponsor terrorism state sponsor of terrorism. They have supported by linda extremist in iraq and afghanistan violent extremists in iraq and afghanistan who have killed our troops. Provides weapons and so they can use their weapons to murder his own people. Iran is the regime that calls our country the great satan. Look at the recent activity. They have announced they are building thousands of new centrifuges at its under down uranium facility. How many of you believe that they are enriching all of this uranium for Peaceful Nuclear power or medical isotopes . I do not believe it either. Let me tell you what happens if iran gets a Nuclear Weapon. There will most certainly be an arms race in the middle east. The sunni arab countries will persians toe shia have a Nuclear Weapon unless they have the very same capability. A Nuclear Arms Race in the worlds most volatile region would be like lighting a match in a timber box. Here is my biggest fear of all it is not that iran will put a Nuclear Weapon on the end of a missile. My biggest fear is that they will give this Nuclear Technology to a terrorist organization. The public is not paying as much attention as you are i am and those of us part of the Political Community. What i call the Political Community is probably about 10 Million People. It is the people that watch c span and meet the press and fox and cnn. Msnbc they care about all it takes a lot. We had about 130 million voters. They think a lot of what goes on is background noise. People are forming an opinion of romney and obama and so on. Reach many oft those people. Great ratings and has a loyal audience, but look at the other shows. Three Million People per night. That is not the electorate. This is a big country. The conservative media only reaches a tiny chunk of them. More with political commentator fred barnes sunday night at 8 p. M. On cspans q a. Earlier today president obama traveled to the midwest to talk about energy strategy. He urged congress to set aside 2 billion over the next decade to support advanced Vehicle Technology research. He talked about the initiative wearing his state of the union speech. Argonne national laboratory. [applause] hello, everybody. Hello, illinois. Hello. It is good to be home. Let me begin by saying thank you for that great introduction and the leadership she is showing with her team on so many different and amazing breakthroughs. Thank you to dr. Isaac for getting me a great tour of your facilities. It is not every day i get to walk into a thermal test chamber. [laughter] i told my girls that i would go into a thermal test chamber and they are pretty excited. I told him i would come out looking like the hulk. [laughter] they did not believe that. I want to say thank you to my ,riends and your friends senator dick durbin. [applause] an outstanding member of congress who can explain some of the things going on is here. [applause] congressman bobby rush. [applause] glad he is here. We have a number of state and local officials with us, and i could not come to without without someone who has served our country so well for these past four years, dr. Steven chu. [applause] im here today to talk about what should be our top priority as a nation. That is reigniting the engine of american Economic Growth. Classng, thriving middle and an economy built on innovation. In my state of the union address, our most important task was to drive that Economic Growth. I meant it. We should be asking ourselves the questions how to make america a land for good jobs . How do we equip people with skills and training to do those jobs . How do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living . Please upgrade to sit down. Im sorry. Everyone is standing. Maybe it was one of the effects of the sequester. He had to get rid of chairs. [laughter] i chose Argonne National lab because few areas hold more promise for creating good jobs and growing our economy than how we use american energy. After years of talking about it, we are poised to take control of our Energy Future. We produce more oil that we have in 15 years. We import less oil than we had in 20 years. We have doubled the amount of Renewable Energy that we generate from wind and solar. Tens of thousands of good jobs to show for it. We are producing more natural gas than we have before that hundreds of thousands of good jobs to show for it. We have supported the first new Nuclear Power plant in america since the 1970s. We are sending less Carbon Pollution in the environment and we have in nearly 20 years. We are making progress across the board. It is possible in part because of labs like this and outstanding scientists like many of you entrepreneurs, innovators all of you are working together to take your discoveries and turn it into a business. Think about this. A few years ago, the American Auto industry was flatlining. Thanks to discoveries made right here at argonne, some of the most high tech, fuelefficient, pretty spiffy cars in the world are once again designed come engineered, and built here in the United States. That is why we have to keep investing in scientific research. We have to maintain our edge. The work you are doing today will end up in a product we make and sell tomorrow. Youre helping to secure our Energy Future stop if we do it well, that will help us avoid some of the perils of climate change. It will leave a healthier planet for our kids. To do it, we have to make sure were making the right noises in washington. The other day, dr. Isaac and directors of two other National Laboratories wrote about the effects of the socalled sequester, across the board budget cuts. It will have an effect on scientific research. One of the reasons i was opposed to the cuts is because they do not distinguish between vital investment and wasteful programs. They do not trim the fat, but cut into muscle. Done is research being here that gives a great place for researchers to come, but also to create all kinds of stuff that create good jobs. Dr. Isaac said these cuts will force him to stop any new projects down the line. He says, the sudden halt will freeze American Science in place while the rest of the world faceraces forward. It will costs millions of dollars in mr. Future opportunities. Because of the sequester, we are looking at two years where we do not start new research. Every month you have to replace your smartphone because something new has come up, imagine what that means when are pumping upny their research and we are sitting there doing nothing. We cannot afford to miss these opportunities while the rest of the world races forward. We have to seize opportunities. I want the job breakthroughs in energy or nanotechnology or bioengineering to be right here in the United States of america and creating american jobs and maintaining our technological lead. [applause] i want to be clear these cuts will harm in not help our economy. They are not the smart way to cut deficits. That is why im reaching out to democrats and republicans to come together around a balanced approach smart, phasedin approach to deficit reduction. Smart spending cuts and new revenue that will not hurt the middle class or slow Economic Growth. If we do that, we can move beyond governing from crisis to crisis and keep the focus on policies that create jobs and grow the economy. We can move forward to fixing the broken immigration system and educating our kids and keeping them safe from gun violence. Are more important than getting the Energy Future right. And other labs around the country, scientists are working to get us where we need to be. Feel firstmericans when it comes to Energy Prices issues are prices they pay at the pump. We went through another spike in gas prices. People were not happy about it. The problem is that it happens every year. It happened last year and the year before that. It is a serious blow to family budgets. It is coming right out of your pocket. Every time it happens, politicians dust off their plans for two dollar gas, but nothing happens. That may go through the same cycle again. Over the past four years, we have not just talked about it. We have started to do something about it. We work with companies to put in place the toughest fuel economy standards in history. At theat means is that middle of the next decade, cars will go twice as far on a gallon of gas. That we set is what is driving engineers and scientists working in labs. We have set achievable, but ambitious goals. In the middle of next decade, we expect you will feel up fuel up and spend half as much. Average family will save money at the pump. That is worth applauding. That is good news. [applause] show report issued today that america is becoming a Global Leader in advanced vehicles. You walk into any dealership today and youll see twice as many hybrids to choose from as they were five years ago. Seven times as many cars that can go 40 miles a gallon or more of stock or more. General motors sold more hybrid bugles than ever before. Ford is selling some of the most fuel efficient cars. We are helping businesses succeed and we are creating good, middleclass jobs in america. , bute are making progress the only way to break this cycle of spiking gas race prices is to shift our cars entirely off oil. Ont is why i called congress to set up an Energy Security trust to Fund Research and the new technologies that will help us reach that goal. I would like to take credit for this idea because it is a good idea, but i cannot. Basically my proposal builds up a proposal that was put forward by a Nonpartisan Coalition that includes retired generals and admirals and ceos. They came together around a simple idea much of our energy is drawn from lands and waters that we own together. But they proposed is to take some oil and gas revenue from public lands and put it toward research that will benefit the public. We can support American Ingenuity without adding a dime to the deficit. We can support scientists that are designing new engines that are more Energy Efficient and developing cheaper batteries that can go farther on a single charge. Support scientist and engineers that are devising new ways to fuel cars with advanced biofuels and natural gas. Drivers can one day go coast geocodes without using a drop of oil. Cost tast to coast without using a drop of oil. It is not just about saving money. It is also about saving the environment. Our nationalout security. For military officials like general paul kelly, as is about National Security. For business leaders, like the ceo of fedex, it was about economic security. When gas prices go up, it is harder to expand operations and create new jobs. These leaders say we need to fix this. This is not a democratic or republican idea. It is just a smart idea. We should be taking their advice. Lets set up an Energy Security trust that helps us free our families and businesses from painful spikes in gas once and for all. We can do it. [applause] in the meantime, we will keep moving on the all of the above strategy that we have been working on for the last couple of years where we are producing more oil and gas at home, it also producing biofuels. We are producing more solar power and wind power. We are working to make sure that here in america we are building cars and homes and businesses that waste less energy. We can do this. The nature of americas miraculous rise has been our oure, our spirit, willingness to reach for new horizons, our willingness to take risks, our willingness to innovate. We are not satisfied with how things have been. We will try something that we might imagine now, but will achieve. That is the nature of america. That is what Argonne National lab is about. That is what this facility is about. [applause] two decades ago, scientists at where isled by mike he . [applause] started work on a Rechargeable Battery for cars. Some folks at the time puppy idea was not worth it. He said if you have the technology, the car would cost a lot and would not go far enough. But mike and his team knew better. They knew you could do better. And america, our federal government made it a priority. We funded those efforts. Mike went to work. When others gave up, the team kept on at it. When development and eestnet, the team found a solution. When development hit a snag, the team found a solution. They created a lithium battery that costs less and lasts longer. What was an idea two decades ago is now Rolling Office emily lyons in cutting edge fuel efficient cars is now blt lines inassem cutting edge comedy fuel efficient cars. Or 20 years from now, we will be Offering Solutions to our problems that we cannot even copy hand even comprehend. As long as the pipeline for research is maintained, as long as we recognize that we do together as a country and the private sector in its own will not invest in this research because it is too expensive. We cannot afford it. We have got to support it. We will all benefit from it. Kids will benefit from it and our grandkids will benefit from it. That is who we are. That has been the american story. You do not stand still. We look forward. We turn new ideas into new industries. We change the way we can live our lives. That is how we sent a man to the moon. That is how we invented the internet. When someone tells us we can do , we say, we can. Willonfident that we succeed as long as we do not lose that spirit of innovation and recognize we can only do it together. I will work as hard as i can every single day to make sure we do. Congratulations, argonne. He put up. God bless you keep it up. God bless you. God bless america. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] on the next washington journal chairman of the American Conservative Union talks about the future and the challenges of the conservative movement. , bob edgar from common cause. Thejohn carter discusses impact of the federal spending cuts on National Parks across the country. Washington journal is live at 7 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Wethe simple fact is that all getting older together. Fertility rates have dropped. Were having this inverted aramid pyramid. Slowgrowing, developing countries have lower fertility rates. Japan, russia, and china is feeling the impacts of the one child policy. We are better off in the rest of the developed world. , weke most of the world have a tried and true way to deal with this demographic time bomb. It does not have to be destiny if you change course. The path we can take is to allow for a strategic reform of our Immigration Laws so we can bring young, aspirational people that will rebuild the demographic pyramid and make our system secure and jumpstart our economy in a way that will create an uplifting of our hopes and dreams, but also impact economic road. U. S. Economic growth and immigration policy. Former governor jeb bush on immigration wars. Tv on cy on book span 2. Elizabeth monroe refused to conditiotinue the tradition of visiting we will explore her relationship with teens monroe and close relationship with the successor. We will see the Important Role she played