Transcripts For CSPAN Public Affairs 20130311

Not the Prime Minister acting in a manner more usually associated with his Coalition Partners . I do not accept that. It is important that we make progress with rates of adoption in our country. Far too many children are left for far too long in care when we know that they could be adopted into loving homes. Taking some of that money, and really encouraging local authorities to raise their game and improve what they do, can transform the life chances of other people who would be stuck in care. We all know that the state is not a good parent, and we want to see more children adopted more quickly, so more can grow up in a loving home. Will my right honorable friend join me in welcoming the news that new car sales were up 8 in february . I am happy to join my honorable friend in that. The fact is that the economy is rebalancing. We are seeing that in the export figures to some of the Fastest Growing countries in the world. We see it in the fact that 1 million more people are in private sector jobs. We see it in the fact that the rate of new business creation is the fastest now that it has ever been in our history. We see it in the fact that our economy employs more people now than it has ever done in our history. There is still a long and difficult road to travel, but the deficit is down by a quarter and we are taking the steps we need to take to get the economy moving. But as ever, we have nothing constructive from the opposition. I am delighted to hear the Prime Minister say that he agrees that the payday loan industry is irresponsible. Will he now therefore commit to doing the one thing we know would make a difference and cap the charges of legal loan sharksyes or no . As i have said, the most important thing to do today is to welcome what the office of fair trading is doing, which is putting those companies on notice. It is worth making the point that without an effective regulated sector, there are far more dangers from loan sharks, which is the point that the honorable lady makes. This week, the 45 Million People of kenya, one of the fastest emerging markets in which the uk is the biggest trade partner, went to the polls to elect a new government under a new constitution. Yesterday i came back from the funeral in kenya of dr anthony king, the young, british conservationist, worldrenowned in the fight against poaching, who was tragically killed last week. Will the Prime Minister take this opportunity to join me in sending our condolences to dr kings family and our support to the people of kenya in showing the power of democracy, justice and the rule of law . I commend my honorable friend on raising this issue and i join him in paying tribute to anthony king. I know that my honorable friend travelled to kenya to speak at his funeral, and it is right that he did so. We all want to see proper, free and Fair Elections completed, counted and finished in kenya and a proper democratically elected government in that country, and to make sure that there is justice when dreadful events such as this take place. Question time will air a live on wednesday at 8 00 eastern. That is an hour later than usual due to the time change. You can also watch sunday nights at 9 00 eastern and pacific on cspan. Tomorrow on cspan, the Senior Advocacy group aarp will talk about federal benefits and how changes in cost of living might affect Social Security recipients, including veterans, americans with disabilities, and people with low incomes. Live coverage begins at 10 00 eastern on cspan. Also vital later at noon eastern, the czech republics former to go term president talks about the european debt crisis. He is speaking at the cato institute. We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and economy. That is why earlier today, i signed an executive order that will strengthen our cyber defenses by increasing information sharing and developing standards to protect our national security, jobs, and privacy. There are some things that need to be done with an executive order. Some things can only be done with legislation. Part of my reaction is, i wish the president had put as much effort into getting some legislation passed and then come out with the executive order, rather than the other way around. It has been around for a long time, Cyber Security. We finished talking about it, wondering what is when to happen things are happening every single day. This is destroying our intellectual property, taking away from our future. Newspapers are casual about it. Everybody is casual about it. We are not. We cannot afford to be. To look at the president s executive order on a Cyber Security with Jay Rockefeller and Max Thornberry on monday night on the communicators. One of the things that an early American Life was taught to do, she supported her husbands career, usually through entertaining. Dolley was both a socially adept and politically savvy. She could structure entertainment in such a way that she could lobby for her husband under the guise of entertaining. She also thought it was very important to create is setting in the white house, almost like a stage, for the performance of her husband and the conduct of politics and diplomacy. First lady Dolley Madison, a journey from a young quaker with note into the woman that history remembers, the wife of the fourth u. S. President , james madison. We will include your calls and tweets on Dolley Madison on c span. We are going to take a step back now, take a look at the gridiron dinner. Not a look, because there is no camera coverage, no cspan or tv coverage, but reporter from the Baltimore Sun is a washington correspondent who was allowed into the dinner last night. We have him by phone. Good morning. Explain the set up. Remind us what the gridiron dinner is about. Guest it is a group of 65 of washingtons most elite journalists. Historically, it was print reporters, mostly bureau chief street in recent years, it has been expanded. They told the annual dinner. They have been doing it for 128 years. President obama did not, his first two years in office. He was there in 2011 and was there last night. Host as we look at the arrivals, that was the extent of our coverage. There is a governor of louisiana, who spoke last night. Lets speak about the coverage. Mark knoller put out a tweet lamenting the fact that there is no tv coverage. He writes explain how you were allowed in . Guest there is a longstanding issue between the gridiron officials and the television correspondents, to bring cameras in, they were barred from doing so. As the poor porter there, i sort of feel like i was there to represent both sides. Pool reporter there, i sort of feel like i was there to represent both sides. This was the first time a Pool Reporter had been there for the president s remarks only. I came in this is not that unusual reporter comes in as the president is taking the stage. I had 50 minutes or so to get a look around as best as i could, capture a couple of quotes, mostly jokes. Then i report to the press corps. I do not know this for sure, but it is partially in response for requests to more access to the dinner. The other thing the gridiron dinner, the release their transcripts and lyrics to the show before the show even began. The speakers, which included louisiana gov. Bobby jindal, minnesota senator amy klobuchar, they both released text of their addresses as well. Host we have a little bit from what they said. A little bit more john from inside the dinner. Describe the evening in your own words. Guest sure. I was struck by it this is not the White House Correspondents Association dinner, which i think people are familiar with, in part because it is a larger event, and in part because you guys have cameras there. At dinner tends to be a little more celebrity focused. It is a mixing of new york and washington, hollywood and washington. This dinner is much more profiled it did not have the celebrity clientele there. The one person i noted, partially because he is important to my readership, was john harbough. There was not the level of celebrity. The room itself is pretty muted in terms of decorations. We do not have thought the big screens or presentations you sometimes get the Correspondents Association dinner. The jokes tend to be a little bit more, at least this time, tend to be little more inside baseball. The president s remarks were largely directed towards the press. He also picked on members of both parties, people in his cabinet, and so forth. He spent a lot time talking about Bob Woodwards story, at one point saying, name one administration that ever lost out from picking on a bob woodward. What is the worst that can happen . In clear reference to the nixon administration. A lot of his jokes were geared for the press. Perhaps more than what goes on at the Correspondents Association dinner. Host there was a transcript put out of the president s remarks. He says because of the sequey cut my tails. My joke writers have been placed on furlough. I know a lot of you reported that nobody will feel Immediate Impact because of the sequester. Well, you are about to find out how wrong you are. John, you also send your own tweet out about marco rubio and president. What was going on . Guest one of the more poignant, funnier lines of the night when obama took a long set of water, a parody of marco rubios responding to the state of the union, and he ended that by saying, that, marco rubio, is how you take a sip of water. It is a lot of inside jokes, really geared for the folks in the room. It was pretty funny stuff. Host there is a read up about bobby jindal. Bobby jindal spoke for the republicans and senator klobuchar did for the democrats. Mr. Jindal was quoted, what chance does a skinny guy with a dark complexion and a funny name have to be elected president of the United States . What does that do, if anything, for bobby jindal who has been talked about for 2016 . Guest the jindal stuff was not something i was in the room for. I was only in the room for a brief few minutes while the president spoke. The one thing to keep in mind for this is that i was not here to pull the gridiron dinner. I was here to pull the president. There is a fine line. Because of that, i did not get to see in klobuchar or bobby jindal or any of the skits. From what i understand from some of the tweets, it sounded like jindal till that. The president at one point in his speech noted that he thought jindal was very funny. Some of the twitter speculation last night and this morning suggests that jindal may have loosened up low but, compared to his own state of the Union Response that not get very good reviews. It is hard to say given how few people actually get to see this, because of the limited size and because there are no cameras, what it means for bobby jindal, but he got rave reviews from the press corps. Host Howard Fineman sent out this week back to your earlier point about not many people able to see these, how important are these dinners, especially this one . Guest that is a good question. My sense is both the gridiron and the Correspondents Association dinner probably appeal to a very limited audience. I suspect that there are not too many voters outside of the beltway that are paying very close attention to them. I was surprised by how few tweets were flying around last night. The journalists who were not there, not a lot of response from people inside the beltway, virtually none. That is not scientific. My sense is that these dinners are very closely watched inside the beltway, and not very much so outside. Host john fritze, who was in the gridiron dinner for the president s remarks. We appreciate it. Joining us now for a look at the past week and the upcoming week are peter cook, who is chief washington correspondent for Bloomberg Television good morning. We also say good morning to smoken, the Deputy Editor at politico. Were talking about the president s schmoozing. One caller said earlier, this is all for show. There are four separate visits to the hill this week. What might come out of these meetings . Guest it is not clear yet. This is a definite shift in strategy for president obama. He had a meeting with paul ryan, his dinner with republicans last week. The real shift, he had been going around the Country Campaign style, hitting republicans. We saw this during the fiscal cliff fight, the unsuccessful bid to turn back the sequester. It did not work. Now the president is trying something new, of reach to republicans. Obviously, a handful of visits will not change the tone. But if this is something he does in a sustained way, it could make a difference. Host defined this term a grand bargain. Remind us what were talking about. Are the prospects real . Guest when simpsonbowles came out with their plan in december 2010, 4 trillion in deficit reduction. We are getting to that point. The grand bargain dissipated in terms of a few peoples expectations and we had john boehner and the president walk away from the table. It is back in the discussion again because of the sequester, because of this outreach. People are talking about the possibility of a deal that involves both taxes, more revenue, as well as entitlement reform changes. We have not seen it yet. It is still a long shot. People are at least talking about it. They do not see a clear road map to any peace the solution. Host what will it take . Guest this has cropped up again seemingly out of nowhere. It did seem like it was dead, the top of the grand bargain. Suddenly it is back again. It is very hard to know if anything will come of this. The president and his allies seem to realize that the only way they will get the revenue is to do a big deal in washington. Host they have to take off five or six republican senators. Guest if he can do that and pass something in the senate, the white house thinks that maybe they could convince House Republicans to except something to accept something. It is a longshot. Host peter cook and rick rachel smoke andn are our guests. Your numbers are we will also take your tweets. Lots of issues to talk about this week. Peter cook of bloomberg writes about the jobless rate, the Unemployment Rate going down. How significant for this weeks numbers . Guest it was a good number. I was at the lockup at the labor department. And we sat down with reporters who got the information early, which shook our heads and said, this is a good report. 236,000 jobs, the best number since november. We have not seen the Unemployment Rate of 7. 7 since december of 2008. It is one month. The Federal Reserve says it needs to see a sustained improvement. It was certainly good news. Host does this change the republican argument or discussion or narrative about the economy . Guest good news some changes anybodys argument in washington. Only bad news is an impetus for change slightly. Very important to remember that these numbers do not include the sequester, those acrossthe board spending cuts that took effect march 1. Even next month we will just see the beginnings of that taking effect, these furlough notices. Those take 30 days. There are questions about how much we will see from the sequester, how much of a damper that will put on a Stronger Economic growth. Host our first call from eric, a democrat from georgia. Caller ive got a couple comments and questions. My first comment is, the format of cspan you bring in these two people for this fate debate fake debate. It appears the media has outlawed any type of debate. This is outlawed in the court made corporate media. The reason is because republicans can never stay in their positions. If they were to debate a democrat on national tv, there would be our bottle for the republican. If you have or if you have or bottle, and cspan did not do its job. This is my point, you have to go corporate mouthpieces, bloomberg and politico, both of them speaking for their respective organizations, neither of them are respected by the voters, neither of them are paid by the voters, neither of them have a fiduciary duty to serve the voters. They have a duty to serve their Companies Bottom line. This is what cspan2 uses the format. This is their fate debate. Fake debate. Host just to clarify, rachel is with politico. Go ahead. Caller 15 revenue is lower revenue. Hello . That is the revenue. That is a historic low. We just came through a recession more people run the government dole more than ever. We have the lowest tax revenue. What republican side . They say, we are the tea party, were taxed enough already and when we have a record low revenues, and they say, were taxed enough already. What is cspan2 . They want to speculate. Cspan do . I want to speculate. That is your favorite thing. We will not examine what will happen in the past. Host that is a lot out there. Anything you want to respond due from respond to from that caller . Guest my job is to try to serve our viewers an audience by asking as many tough questions i can about republicans and democrats. I believe that as it is. In terms of the revenue and tax question. The caller makes a good point. Tax revenue in historic terms is down as a percentage of gdp. Federal spending is also up as a percentage of gdp. It gives talking points to both democrats and republicans. It is the core of this debate what is the right size of the federal government . It is not something there is a consensus on. Host back to the sequester that you mentioned what is the impact shaping up to be, despite all the rhetoric . He wants blacks and substance, not speculation. Facts and substance, not speculation. Guest is too early to tell, so i will not speculate. It was so hard for president obama to get any traction on this issue the fiscal cliff debate, that had a very specific event happening on the specific date taxes were going up. The sequester is a rowling phenomenon. It is hard it is hard to game it out. President obama got into rhetorical trouble because he was trying to make clear how dramatic the consequences would be. He got into some trouble politically for histrionics. It is a less tangible debate. There will be tangible consequences over time ad spending cuts take effect and government workers get furloughed. Nothing happens right away. It is harder to get handle on. Host paul is calling from chicago, an independent. Caller and wanted to Say Something about the immigration thing. When my parents came here, they had to go through a lot to come here. They were proud to show their papers. They had to learn english to be here. Weve got so much going on with immigration chicago is a safe haven. Anybody that thinks Illegal Immigrants are not getting into trades, that is a joke. Just look around. It is not too far to see around here. I once had eight guys working for me, all kids, and now i have nothing. You cannot compete with somebody who is making half of what youre guys make. Host will immigration be on the agenda this week when the president visits the hill . Guest the president said he wants to walk and chew gum at the same time. He wants to do with budget issues but he also wants to do with immigration and gun control issues. Without a doubt immigration will come up. The conversation has to to some extent. He is looking for republicans who are willing to agree with him on some sort of larger immigration reform. The caller makes a good point about the sentiment out there, represented by a lot of republicans, and some democrats as well, who feel like the issue of illegal immigration hasnt focused completely on the issues those people are focused on. Host what will it take for comprehensive bill . Guest of all the issues on the table, immigration has the best chance at some movement and action. It remains a very tough issue, how do you handle the pathway to citizenship, that remains a difficult issue. There seems to be a moment for republicans, and out of the last election where they feared so poorly coming out of the last election were theyve erred so poorly where they fared so poorly. President obama release signalled that he wanted to turn his attention to this issue. The was a moment when sequestration would take effect, when it looked like there would be this big battle over the continuing resolution. Both sides have stood down on that little bit. It does not look like that is going to be the big battle that some first thought it would be. One of the reasons is that president obama wants to begin to take up other pieces of his domestic agenda. Host we will talk about jeb bush a little bit later in this segment. I do want to get to some other calls. Mike has been patient from boca raton, florida. He is a democrat. What would you like to say . Guest what do your guests consider the tale but in the dog with Speaker Boehner tail biting the dog with Speaker Boehner attacking senator mcconnell and other republicans in the senate and what that means . Guest in regard to the issues the other night caller it was after the dinner. The speaker i saw on abc news had made an attack on the Republican Party in the senate. In particular, Speaker Boehner went after senator mccain, and i believe it was the speaker had held the senate hostage with his eye rate debate about the nomination, seeing that the senate was not getting anything accomplished in any aspects of legislation, and the house was not doing anything at all. Guest weve seen this strategy from Speaker Boehner over and over again. Hes trying to put the on news on the senate to get things done saying weve acted before, now its the senates turn and there has to be some move in the senate. Is senate is controlled by democrats which you guys work it out with the president and well pick it up from there. Guest the Budget Committee is supposed to meet this week. Host and the house as well. Its a major move by democrats to come forward and put something on paper in terms of art lating Going Forward. We have this continuing resolution up for debate as well. Thats the reality of spending. Or this budget plan is more politics. Ate louse democrats to put to paper something that stands in contrast to what the republicans have put forward in the house of representatives. You will see paul ryans budget and the reality of the spending bill and that is where people should be pay ago tension. Do you think the sequester holds then or this resolution for the rest of the year take place of it . Guest the continuing resolution, we dont know how far it will be extended or if there will be a budget to take its place. They could undo pieces of the sequester. There has been talk in making some changes on the Defense Budget tofment what extent that will be extended on the domestic side. We dont know what that will look like but that is a possibility host republican, good morning. Caller i dont know where to start here. Number one, the very first conversation you had both of your guests sounded pretty naive about the president calling these folks to have dinner with him. Its so fake this. Whole thing is so fake. Hes been basically going around the Country Campaigning against the republicans because he wants them out in two years. He wants full reign. Hes dreaming back to when pelosi and reid would have the back room deal for healthcare and he wants that back in two years. And then calling people like john mccain and lindsey gram to the white house. They want more spending for the military and republicans out here in the heart land, were done with that. We want some smart cuts. John mccain and lindsay gram are out of the picture as far as were concerned. First of all, i think as we mentioned before the idea that the president is trying to target a few of the republicans in the senate who might agree with him and might be willing to change improvements replacing the sequester with some tax revenue, i think is a pretty Clear Strategy from the white house. They need a handful of republicans and hes trying to get something done. Is it for show . This say president who you think the white house would like to get a budget deal and allow him to move on to other issue, immigration, gun control, get that done. He needs to get a budget deal if he wants to do that. Thats why hes having this outreach. Whether it will be successful, a lot of republicans didnt hear anything new from the president. He enjoyed eating his meal. But they didnt hear anything new in terms of substance but whether this produces anything is still in question. Guest it is. And the president wants to win during the mid terms and have democrats control the house and senate. That is absolutely true. But there is a limited window of opportunity if he is going to get anything done. That doesnt mean he will get anything done. But if hes going to make the attempt he has to make it now before they slip back into election mode. He has at most a year to do that. Host here is a picture of an elevator on the side of the capitol which and you can see senator paul here and you can see john mack cain. It is a very interesting picture. Senator mccain looking down. The point here is mccain was none too happy with senator paul. But to the filibuster, how significant were those 13 hours on the floor in terms of the debate hear in washington . In terms of long term policy on drones, probably not very significant. But it was real moment. You can debate clwl it was staged thats tricks or something that felt natural. Senator paul said he didnt plan it ahead of time and decided to do it in the car on the way over. If i had known i was going to do it i would have worn more comfortable shoes that day. Touched accord in the nation. It was amazing the response this got on twitter and he was out there solo for many hours. This is not an issue the Republican Party or Democrat Party has pressed on but by the end of the night his colleagues were under tremendous pressure to get out there and show support for him. Host any u. S. Citizen including jeanfonda can be killed at the president s discretion. Here is a look. All i can say is i dont think what happened yesterday is helpful to the american people. We need a discussion as i said about exactly how we are going to address this new form of almost interminable warfare which is different from anything weve faced in the past. But somehow to allege that our government would drop a drone hail fire missile on jeanfonda. That brings the conversation from a serious discussion about u. S. Policy to the realm of the ridiculous. Peter cook, the realm of the ridiculous. Guest we also got wack coe bird. I think first of all it shows how rand paul can grab the National Spotlight when he chooses to do. So and what i think was striking for me one of the people that went to join him was Mitch Mcconnell his fellow republican who hasnt always seen eye to eye. The significant of Mitch Mcconnell going down there and voicing some support, that may be one of the bigger stories to come out of this host let me go to eric in virginia now. Independent caller. Caller how come nobody is talking about how taxes went up january and unemployment went down in february and thats the opposite of what the republicans have been preaching for as long as i can remember. You dont hear about that. I heard it one time on the radio and not on tv and thats the main issue of the economy. It was good when clinton was in. Bush gave all the tax breaks and it was bad. Just simple as that. Its elementary and nobody want to talk about that. Host eric is talking about it. What is your reaction. Well put up the jobs numbers what happened in february the Unemployment Rate dropping to 7. 7 and the tax races from the negotiations. Guest that is an interesting point. Its important with the jobs report, no one particular month tells the story. So we saw a very good month coming out better than expected but we need to look over the next couple of months and particularly after the sequester takes effect to get a good picture of what the economy is doing. One picture of the jobs report was the rebound finally in the housing market, the strong construction report. That was a good sign. Despite the dire warnings about sequester, the dow is in a great mood. The markets had a fabulous couple of weeks. A lot of things arent quite matching what was predicted here. Well have to keep watching host more about the dow. Quite a story the last couple of weeks. Guest the Investment Community is ignoring washington. They are seeing companies with a lot of cash on hand and they are focusing on that. The certainty of the fiscal cliff deal in terms of tax policy Going Forward and whether other tax changes might be coming. There was a sense of relief that got done. The tax holiday went away. They suggest that would have an impact. The average 187,000 jobs a month. That is good. Not great. You need 200,000 or more on average before we start seing that Unemployment Rate drop further host back to the hill. A broader look, broader tax reform bill on the way do you think . Guest its something in the mix and could be part of a grand bargain where they spell out possible rules for tax reform. All of these things are on the agenda but whether they get decun a huge question. Host lets go to South Carolina democrat. Good morning. Caller good morning. Im just calling because im concerned about the country as a whole. Im a democrat. I do believe that all party versus to get together as one. A house divided against itself is not going to stand. It will not stand. Were going to be a falling nation. We need to get together as one because i do believe where there is unity there is strength. Host lets go to josh in colorado. Independent caller. Caller i was just watching. You guys said that it went from 7. 9 to 7. But if you look at the u. S. As a whole, with all the people in the u. S. 7. 7 is still quite a big difference there of unemployed which he said that he brought back 236,000 jobs. There is a magazine factory here in colorado that says he pass this is bill, they are going to close and move out of just colorado and thats over 200,000 jobs right there. So there is only 36,000 jobs added. Some of the numbers there according to josh. Guest thats a good point. The recession hit unevenly across the country and the recovery has been uneven. Some place versus fared better than others. Some places dont struggle. Thats an important point. In our area, the washington, d. C. Area, we fared pretty well during the recession but could have more trouble now that sequester is taking effect because we are so reliant on the defense industry, defense contractors, so that is one part of the country that has been lucky but may see tougher times coming. Host lets talk about gun control for a minute. They are moving in the senate on gun control. They are moving forward and going to meet again this week to talk about the various bills involved. Peter cook, any thoughts on where this is going to be headed soon . Guest the sense i get from the coverage of this issue on when i will its going to be a heavy lift to get some of the proposals the president has put out there with regard to background checks and clips and everything. The only measure moving forward now has to do with trafficking and that wouldnt have had any impact on the newtown situation. Will there be changes that have Significant Impact . Will there be major gun control legislation . Right now it doesnt look like its headed that way because the nra remains powerful on when i will and there are a lot of law makers concerned about moving too far on this area. Host republican from iowa, how significant is that . Guest ultimately not very significant as we were saying the chances do not look good for any significant action on gun legislation. For those who want to see such things and Many Americans certainly dont. The assault weapons ban was already pretty much of a nonstarter on capitol hill. There is not support for that even among democrats. We might get action on background check and that does seem to be fading. Host lets go to another caller. Caller i watch the news every day and watch fox and cspan and i listen to everybody. And the main problem were having is were doing too many cuts which we need to go back in history and look at our forefathers. Our forefathers what they did. They set this country upon getting it out of debt and keeping it safe. And its going to take going to work. Its going to take making something. Its going to take a business perspective as far as making money instead of so much trying to save money. And until and like thomas jefferson, i mean i read up a lot about thomas jefferson. He makes perfectly fwood sense to me. And if you look at our climate and everything, we cant be cutting down trees and making paper. We cant be just wasting stuff. Host lets hear from our guest. Anything you want to respond to what shain said . I would say im not sure entirely the perspective about the cuts. He mentioned cuts as a republican caller to be talking about that right now. The republicans are supportive of cuts, federal spending cuts which they want to see the size of this government reduced and to the extent this discussion gets into entitlement programs, were going to see a grand bargain, were going to see a major deal and its going to include entitlement programs. That is the real question mark for president obama and the democrats. Will they offer anything new there and will the republicans offer anything new on the revenue front . Well have to see if there is anything new on either one of those issues. Guest i would say first the historical argument was an interesting one. We know president obama is an avid student of history and tries to go back into history prior moments and invoke a bigger since of where we are as a nation and what we can do to move forward. But the republicans just want to talk about spending. They feel like theyve given him his revenue and its time to get serious about cuts in washington. And they want to hear about entitlement reform. Be specific. Thats what the Republican Party wants to hear host here is a tweet. Senator paul run for president. Says hes thinking about it but would he run as a Third Party Candidate . Guest we dont know that yet. Hes a republican so no tron think he would run as anything other than a Tea Party Republican with a libertarian streak. He was candid about this in an interview this week saying yes, im thinking about it. Usually they hedge more at this stage of the game. But hes not one for hedging. Host his father had an opportunity to run. Chose to run as a republican. So the Family History there might tell us something as well. Lets get jeb bushs name back in the conversation. Recently about immigration. And he has a new book out. Remind the audience, what jeb bush has said most recently on the topic of immigration. Guest he said a couple of different things. He was known as being a leader in the Republican Party on immigration issues and has long been at the forefront of pushing for change in immigration with his party but this week looked behind the party in terms of what he was advocating for on a pathway to citizenship, not supporting it to and more tope it. Hes seen as a smart politician. Host whats the impact if any so far . Guest first of all the suggestion that jeb bush is in the field of play for 2016 this new book and the comments about immigration is he in the game for 2016. Hes voided running for president. This week raised a lot of questions about whether he would and what impact he would have on mark coe rubio may be thinking about it as well. Host here is a tweet for you peter cook. How do you square your improving economy with the explosion of food stamp recipients by 50 under this economy. Guest we know how much pain there is for so Many Americans. There are 12 million out of work struggling to find a job. We have 40 of those who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer. It is a tough world for a lot of team. Improving economy doesnt mean a great economy by any means. But this is no denying this report was a good report and it suggest the economy getting some traction. Guest businesses have been cautious. With the economy improving, they are still not hiring and thats been hard for a lot of Americans Still struggling to find a job. Host anthony, you are on with peter cook. Caller my question is and the thing that bothers me when someone calls Social Security an entitlement. And none of you in the media or republicans for that matter Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit or debt. Social security is a separate entity. It is not an entitlement. It is an insurance policy and all the republicans want to do is give that money to wall street. All you have to do is thrift cap on Social Security. I would like your response to that. Guest i would go back to what i was saying before which is president obama really hasnt gotten very specific about entitemments except to say he would protect them. He never got pressed on these issues during the campaign because mitt romney and paul ryan were trying to show they were supportive of protecting these core programs as well. If we get to anything resembling a real deal or grand bargain we will have to hear specifics on what president obama will cut or change. Host do you see any changes there . Guest i would sthee as a heavy lift for democrats on the hill. I think its going to be interesting to watch the president with democrats and house democrats. We had nancy pelosi saying changing the inflation gauge for Social Security. This was a nonstarter for he she and her fellow house democrats. So the idea that the cap would go up would be a tough issue for republicans but other changes to Social Security would be a big issue for democrats. Host robert, new york, democrat, go ahead. Caller the republican have not worked with obama since he got in office. Thats one of the issues why we are having problems because they are so divided and it shouldnt be like that. Also id like to ask your two guests when you are a worker at a factory and you are only making minimum wages, less than 300 every week. Its not about the rich people. They should be glad to help out with taxes and stuff because when you got to choose between a poe date toe and a chip when you go in the store and you got to feed your kids which we need help. Thats the reason why so many people are taking food stamps now. The government have to issue more money because there is not enough being made. Host mark, independent then well hear from our two guests. Caller im a veteran from the marine corps, a teacher and a Small Business owner. I have a construction company. And i would like to comment on how immigration, the Unemployment Rate and enlgation are all intertwined for one i feel our economy and our society when you have more people riding in the wagon than are actually pulling it, were creating a problem. And being a smull business owner, i see that the Unemployment Rate is high but i have a Construction Business and there is all kinds of work in construction in the southeastern part of the United States. The problem is all the jobs are being taken by Illegal Immigrants thus for people that dont have those positions are going on unemployment making the Unemployment Rate higher than it should b. Were teaching in the School System to teach to the test and kids to do the least amount for the most reward and we just need to start teaching work eth i can back our education system. Host what have you heard that you want to respond to . Guest i think the point about president obama and the feeling that the republicans have not worked with him. I think weve seen that reflected in in president obamas own stance which he ran on the idea the wealthiest should pay more and everyone should pay their fair share using fairness and quality over and over again. And after his election, this perhaps overconfident not reaching out to the republicans continuing his campaign against them. That didnt work very well in this last round and now hes trying to extend that olive branch as we were talking earlier. Well have to see how real it is and how long it last. Host john boehner says be careful. He needs to let go of certain issues. Here is what the speaker had to say. We went through months of Campaign Style events all over the country. I did have a conversation with the president about it last friday. Its interesting this week weve gone 180. Now after hes been in office for four years, hes actually going to is it down and talk to members. I think its a hopeful sign and im hope thaffle something will come out of it. But if the president continues to insist on tax hikes, i dont think were going to get far. If the president doesnt believe we have a spending problem, i dont know if were fog to get too far. But im optimistic. Optimistic but be wear of anymore taxes. The president that his revenue during the fiscal cliff deal. He also renewed the line in the he also renewed the line in the sand over the debt ceiling, which is going to be the next big deadline. The next big deadline will be the debt ceiling with john boehner repeating he wants to see a dollar in spending cuts for every dollar in increase. People are going to start hearing more about the debt ceiling. It is probably going to kick in in july and august. Host 1 deadline we are watching is march 22. That is the continuing resolution. It is only in a couple weeks. Guest think everyone is tired of fiscal fight here in washington so there seems to be sentiment to move that forward to not try to completely undo the sequester. Part of that may be modifying it, paying in particular for the military. Having said that, sometimes these things have a way of becoming showdowns at the last minute. It does not look like we are heading in that direction. Host every time they go in there and tinker with the sequestered they get more flexibility. The greater the likely this questor stays in place. That is less reason to say these cuts are painful. If the government has the ability to place these cuts with some flexibility, the harder it will be for members of congress to say they are too painful. Host a caller is calling on the democrats online. Goahead. Caller what i want to know is why these loopholes are considered as spending as the Government Programs people pay into. If we had a president did we not have a republican president who left this country in a mass and now they want to get together and say they know better . We have had progress under a democratic president. It has been that way for a while. Why cannot they tell the truth about that . Guest there is a lot in the tax code right now that is an earmark. Is the equivalent of spending. What do you do with the money you bring in . Republicans would use that money to lower rates. Democrats would use that money towards deficit reduction. That is the gist of the debate. The president touched on this on his conversation. What do you do with that money . Guest it is also harder in practice than it is in theory to close those loopholes. When you Start Talking about the specifics, some of them are very popular. The homeowners deduction is something that Many Americans rely on. Host calling from plainview, new york, republican caller good morning. I have a few comments. The first comment is when both houses of congress or with obama, why did he focus on health care and not jobs. If he focused on jobs we would not be talking about sequesters. In terms of entitlements the government seems to exempt themselves from the laws they promulgate. They are not able to join in the pain of the common man. Their pension is an entitlement. I never hear them talking about reducing or eliminating their entitlements. My third point is that wall street mismanagement and Credit Derivatives brought this economy down. Taxing every transaction would go a long way to solving the deficit problem. There isnt enough money taxing the wealthy in the country. There is 780 billion in taxes calculated by going on the internet. Host do you want to respond . Guest i would say in the point about washington exempting itself there is a feeling that washington is not feeling the same pain that the rest of the country is feeling. The white house said two workers would be canceled for the sequestered. They have also talked about how administration employees will be furloughed or could see potential pay cuts. That is one area where we will see some cases. Guest the congressional pay is not affected by the sequestered. Staffs will see potential furloughs and pay cuts. There will be some talk about congress easing the pay during the conversation. The idea of a transaction tax that is an idea that is in discussion. It has been discussed overseas. There is opposition not only from wall street and the Financial Community they do not want to see a transaction tax because it would generate a lot of revenue. There is some opposition from the obama treasury department. Tim geithner was not a fan of the plan itself. Host of all the offense this week at the end of the week is the sea pak gathered in washington. How significant is this year cost gathering . This years gathering . Guest there are a lot of differences in opinion about what the problem was in the last election. Was it a failure to reach out more effectively to minorities . Was it the Technology Gap that republicans have with the Democratic Party . Did they rely on incorrect polls . There are some who argue the differences are fundamental and there needs to be in the ordering of the party. Lots of interesting issues swirling around this year. Host 1 of the issues is that gov. Christie has not been invited. What do you think about that . Guest the insight is as important as the event itself. This is a showcase for anyone who might want to run in 2016. If Chris Christie was not invited he certainly is not lost on people. This is a guy she was dealing with issues in new jersey right now. We can question with his political future will be beyond that. How many people suddenly point to 2016 . Guest he said he was fine not being invited. He played that very well. Host 02 our guests. Thank you to our guests. Rachel smolkin and peter cook. On the next washington journal the Environmental Congress of last year and next year including the keystone pipeline. Then as the Supreme Court prepares to hear same sex marriage cases late thermo, well talk with brian brown followed by the Inspector General for iraq construction. Hell break down the 60 billion spent in the country since 2003 live on washington journal. A look at congress this week. The house returns tuesday at noon eastern. On the agenda a bill that prohibblets waves for states for work requirements for welfare recipients. Also work an a measure at streamlining job training and training programs. Watch the house live on cspan. The Senate Returns monday at 2 00 p. M. Eastern with votes scheduled at 5030 on two judicial nominations. Later a deal to fund the federal government for the rest of the current year. Funding runs out mr 27. The house has already passed the resolution. Follow the senate live on cspan2. And president obama will make several trips to capitol hill this week to meet with both parties. Tuesday democrats, wednesday republicans and then thursday snot republicans and then later house democrats. One of the things that an early american wife was taught to do, she supported her husbands career usually through entertaining which doll by was both socially adepartment and politically savvy so she could structure her intertinyments in such a way she could lobby for her husband under the guys of entertaining. She also thought it was very important to create assetting in the white house almost like a stage for the performance of her husband and the conduct of politics and diplomacy. First laid dolly madison. Well follow her journey, the wife of the fourth u. S. President james madison. Well include your phone calls, Facebook Comments and tweets monday p on cspan, cspan2, cspan 3 and cspan radio. The internet Caucus Committee looked into ways to prevent piracy on the internet. This is an hour and a half. It is a nonpartisan, Bipartisan Organization that cue rates discussions on issues before the United States congress that relate directly to the internet. Im the executive director. Just a bit of housekeeping, next week on march 15 we have another briefing on Cyber Security. Its called Cyber Security after the executive order, will Congress Make the next move. That will deal with some of the issues we are dealing with on a daily basis. Todays event is called combating piracy online. If you want to follow the conversation on twitter. The system of alerts started last week. We thought it would be timely for folks in congress to learn how this program rolls out. So we tried to get the group putting this together along with the board of advocates to explain what the system is, how it relates to the policy in general and the impact on members, constituents in the districts in which they live. We have a lot of folks as you can see. Its like a wedding bang wet table to get through. Im going to quickly introduce everybody and hand it off to the executive dreth or the and then go through the [ation. Well end up with the Advisory Board sproviding comment on how they interface with the comment and then q a. I know there are a lot of questions because this is starteding to roll out so its an opportunity to ask questions. Jill started her career in washington, d. C. Working for aol then time warner including all issues including caller right. To her right is the clint eastwood. That is mayor an grant. Shes going to do a presentation for us on the technical aspects of this project. She works on a lot of i. T. Issues and she interfaces globally on their relationship with isps across the world. Next is thomas daily. Went to the finest law school in boston and tom has been with the company for many years. To his right is executive vice president. Mitch has serve odden the judiciary committee. To his right is brent olsen from at and t. He has a long career at the federal commissions. If i make a point from the last three speakers on the table certainly not least are the Advisory Board and were going to start with the Advisory Board is to consult on this particular project and starting at the beginning is jim burrman. He is my boss. Jerry was a founder of the center for democracy and technology. Jerry before that was the director of the leck on this i can frontier found dage. Before that he was at the lc,u. Including the Electronic Communications privacy act of 1986. To his right is gigi stone. She is been working on property issues and Internet Freedom issues for many years. To her right is the cochair of the privacy foreman. Jewels before that was with aol their chief privacy officer. He has a long history in working on privacy related issues. So with that said, id like to hand it off to jill who is the center for caller right executive director. Thank you. Hello everyone. Thanks for having us. When tim and i talked about doing a briefing like this, we didnt know it was going to be coincident with our empation which we are arriving in front of you in real time just on the heels of culmination of 18 months worth of work in the implementation work of the caller right phase system. Before that several of my colleagues at the table were involved in a multiyear negotiation. As i think many of you know these issues have historically not lent themselves to we will take you through the nets and bolts and we will take questions after wards. Just to give you a little bit of background the center for caller right information was formed in 2011. The parties to that memorandum were representatives of the major content industry and the largest Internet Service providers in the country. It represented the first time these entities came together to deal with ever increasing and large problem of digital piracy. Cci was set up as an organization to work with multiple constituencies, including our Advisory Board and other interested parties. We wanted to implement the copyright information system. We have to achieve goals as an organization and through the alert system itself. One is to educate consumers up about the importance of copyright protection. Consumers about the importance of copyright protection. We are really trying to crack the code in terms of getting to consumers. To those of us who engage in these discussions, who engage in policy discussions for a living, we take for granted that copyright is a concept people can understand. From our research, it really is a confusing and confounding topic to lots of people. Having a successful effort in reaching people and educating them and getting tim them to appreciate the importance of protecting Creative Work is a primary goal of our center. The second and equally important goal is to bring to life and to collect consumers to the multiple ways of enjoying copyrighted content and Digital Content legally. That has always been the case. It has not always been the case that there have been a variety of different options, price points, formats. Some people want to buy. Some people want to rent. Some people want content for free. Marion those choices of consumers with what is available is marrying those choices of consumers is another key of copyright information. The primary goal is getting peoples attention around these issues. It is the copyright information system. I want to put it on the screen so you know who our partners are at the moment. The five largest isps and the movie and Music Industries are represented by the Recording Industry association of america and the Motion Picture association and independent film and television alliance, the association of independent music. Independent and studiorelated producers. The effort began in 2007. At that time, there was a lot of trust. There were a number of different people at the table. Over the course and some of those folks can talk about how difficult the process was at the beginning. There was involvement by key consumer groups and Government Entities trying to unpacked the problem and how you would get to a voluntary solution that would work. The second thing is, there was an understanding that in the realm of digital privacy, the one in which the parties around the table could focus on, was peertopeer piracy. That is not the sum total of the digital piracy problem. It is the area where these parties could start to show an effort and progress in terms of educating people and getting them to change their behavior. The last thing i would say on this slide is that we hope to change attitudes. There has been a lot of attention given to this effort. A lot of claims about the fact that it might shut down someones internet our lead to bad result. Bad results. The goal is education and not punishment. I cannot emphasize that enough. Hopefully, it will become clear as i moved through the presentation. Move through the presentation. How about this . How about if i just continue and if we get he screamed back, we will. Here is how the copyright alert system works. It makes consumers aware of possible illegal activity that occurs over peertopeer networks. There are three types of alerts people could get over the course of several stages. Educational is surely one way. It is purely educational. The second phase is and now an acknowledgment alert. That an acknowledgement is what it sounds like. This requires the consumer to acknowledge the receipt of the alerts. Instead of being delivered by email and just being one way, it will require some level of conversation between the user and the isp. As stays four, five, or six is what we call a mitigation alert. The best way to describe it is somebody saying, i have sent you that 05 of these alerts or you have and you have ignored them or taking any steps to stop piracy over your Internet Connection. We want to make it clear that we mean business. This is a serious issue. There are some consequences attached to those mitigation alerts. One of the things we want to accomplish is to educate consumers on how they can prevent the activity from happening again. It is not always the case that people are engaging intentionally in copyright infringement. There are folks who might have a peertopeer system on their consumer on their computer and data not realize it. Somebody who is not a primary account holder in their household is to gays is engaging in that behavior. There are lots of consumers out there who receive these notices and have not been engaging in these behaviors themselves actively and are willing to understand how they can change that behavior. That may include securing their wireless. It may include making sure they talk to their teenagers. There are a variety of different steps they can take to stop the behavior from occurring over the Internet Connection. Let me just talk about, if so happy to go through in detail the with the copyright system works. As an overview, that is probably enough detail. Let me give you some key facts. These are the things people are most interested in understanding. Residential Broadband Internet accounts. Alerts are sent to the primary account holder. This is primarily going to affect residential account holders. Secondly, and we will go into more detail now that scary and grant is now here. We will go through methodology in now that is here. The content owner are passing those notices on to isps who have a relationship with their customer and then send the alert on to their customers. The information does not go back to the content owner of who at the chicken and subscriber is. A third point is married to the second point. We spend a lot of time building in elements to protect consumer privacy. We feel committed to that and we will continue to watch and monitor to make sure the system encompasses those goals. The copyright alert system does not require an isp to terminate a subscribers accounts. It bears repeating. I was not actually repeat it. This has been a piece of misinformation and concern that has swirled around this Program Since it was announced, since its intention to implement it was announced. There has been some confusion. I cannot say that strongly enough. Termination comes with a punitive system. This system is built around education. Fifth, the website is intended to help people find legal content. I talked about this earlier. I encourage everyone to go to their website. For those of you into the center for copyright information website, it looks different and had a different focus and was intended for a different audience. We spent a lot of time of the last several months talking to consumers and learning the best way we can give them this information. What you will see now at the cci site is a consumeroriented set of materials. I had hoped to show it today, but technologically we cannot do it in this room. There are several animated videos we have created. They are short and intended to help consumers who do not want to read through a lot of materials, understand the system, what their rights are in terms of and in every view and how the process works. I recommend those to you. If the infringing activity stops, the alerts stop. We are hopeful people will get one alert and that will be it. The notion that we are going to send people multiple learns there are no subsequent instances of infringing behavior is not true. It is a Pretty Simple system. If you get an alert and you take the steps necessary, you will not get another one. The next point is that, once a consumer has received a sheet mitigation alerts, they will no longer receive alerts the best received we seem to two mitigation alerts, they will no longer receive alerts. There are consumers that we believe are engaging in this behavior inadvertently, or they do not understand the illegal nature. We are hopeful, which is why we have invested so much time and energy and funds in it, that most people will change their behavior. If we get to the situation where people have gotten six alerts and two mitigation measures and day thinking they continue to engage in piracy, clearly the message has not reached them. We will use the resources we have to try to address alerts to other people. There is not an unlimited of a list that will be sent out. We want this program targeted to people who will respond. Finally, the accounts included in the cup red alert system are not the accounts to be used to provide public wifi. I cannot emphasize enough the point i made about no termination. There has been a concern expressed that if businesses are providing hot spots and they get these alerts, they will shut those hot spots down. Accounts that are parts of this program are not accounts where businesses are providing hot spots. I wanted to make that clear. The next part of the copyright alert system once you have gone to the program and are presented with a menacing mitigation alerts, you are given alert, given a chance to challenge the alerts you have received. We want to have a check and balance. We want to have one that is independent, neutral, and that consumers can easily use. We spent most of the last year building the independent review process. It will be administered by the american arbitration association. They will assign neutral arbitrators. There is a lot more detail about the process on our website. Before a user would be put through a mitigation measures, they will of 14 days to file a challenge. They will pay 35. That money will be refunded if they have a successful challenge. There are several reasons for review that are built into the system. My isp misidentified my accounts. Or, this was not made serious someone was using my wireless. If the user is successful, they will be refunded the 35. If they cannot afford the 35, a beefy the fee will be waived. If a user is successful in challenging if a user is successful in their talent, you will go back to zero as if you never received an alert. The last thing i wanted to talk about this program evaluation. We are in front of you in real time. We are at the beginning stages of implementation and have not got into the face of determining how specifically we will evaluate the program. I can say this. Now that we have implemented, we will be collecting aggregate data to the guy with the efficacy of the program and recommend it necessary recommend necessary enhancements and report that data to the public. It is difficult to know because we are just rolling out exactly what the time frame will be. We want to be transparent. He wants to let people know how the program is working. At the same time, we want to make sure we have enough data to draw a good and reasonable conclusions about the programs efficacy and enhancement that need to be made. We will be looking at both delivery of alerts as well as the appeal process. There will be on lots of information we take in and analyze and make available. Before i turn it over to maryann, i want to say this has been a collaborative process. One of the most important pieces of that has been the creation and continuation of our consumer Advisory Board. As you will hear, they are a group of people that come to this with many years of experience in analyzing internet issues, intellectual property issues, privacy, and it has helped us get to this place in a way that is really fair. I will turn it over to marianne. Is really hard to do this. Unless you have guys in the back of your head. I am mary ann, very glad to be here. My job is to take you to the methodology to verify the cases would generate notices. I hope that in doing so i will take the mystery out of it. I can also assure you that we take a lot of care over this and our intent is to make sure that every notice we sent is valid. We will take a little bit of a context and go to the actual process itself. And as you get towards the end, therell be time to ask questions if you have them. We will review the Motion Picture associations methodology for doing this, but the Music Industry uses a very similar methodology. I will explain a couple of differences between the way we look to the content. The reason is that music is different and how it appears and out to look digitally than the audio visual content that we have for movies and television. Most of our content is detected. I am sure that most people are familiar with different kinds of peer to peer. It is efficient at dividing it into small pieces and sending them quickly. For film and television, it is the best way to get what you want. Music files show up on other kinds of networks as well. We have scanning vendors, Technology Vendors that help us find these cases and to generate the notices for us. I will show you how that works shortly. It will match the addresses that we provide, as i go into the more detailed description of this process, i want to emphasize that we dont want to send a single notice. We want to make sure that every single one of them is supported by evidence and a Robust Communications methodology to make sure that it doesnt go from left field. There are several things that we do to make sure that occurs. The assets, television or movie content, it would be individual tracks, identified properly. A list of things to be monitored. We want to be sure that if we tell them to a find out something that might be what theyre looking for and the kind of information they are providing, things like the name of a movie or the name of the track are not sufficient. There are other things that we need to look at which are unique and will help us to validate the process. Second, we are getting into the process and we need to make sure verification is done properly. And the way to guarantee that is that we are awarded at the vendor and we get evidence at every case. The independent review people can look at that, and to support every notice that we send. We want to make sure that the ip address, the computer that we think is disturbing that file actually dead. It is not just seeing the file being advertised and assuming that it is a somewhat sharing it. We need to make sure they actually did. We want to make sure that when we send those, they are confident that they came from us and not somebody else. It needs to be done by having a standard format as well, it is not confusing to that system when they are receiving information from us. So this diagram is an overview of the process and i will be digging into it with a little bit more detail. One side is the content side, on the left, and the other side is the address side. The message here i want to get you is that it is only if we get the yes on both sides that we send a notice. And there are reasons we may not. We will see far more potential cases than we are going to act on in terms of sending notices. The vendor that i mentioned before, the Technology Vendor back and verify them, they work in the network and they look exactly like anybody else all theyre doing is exactly what you would be doing if youre out there trying to download a film or piece of music. There are two basic differences. The first difference is that they can do more than one at a time. They can be running multiple sessions. They also save the evidence. It is there for anybody doing this process and we require it to be there a way that we look out later. So what i am going to do out of luck with the content side of the equation to explain how we verify the content that we find. I mentioned that we give our vendor a list of things to be monitored. So it would be Television Shows or episodes or film. When the case of music, it is tracks. Anything that is not on that less is going to be passed by. Current releases and popular stuff. You can imagine what might be on less for television and film. We tend to start looking for things a little bit before release, something could escape before it is released and things are going to be in the left for them. In our case, a movie released or television show. They go into the network, they find the file being advertised, they go to investigate that file, and if it has been seen before, they will take attract one. If not, they take track to. I will walk you through that in a little bit more detail. We do something very different the first time we see the file and what we see going on. It is only when we do what we do that we are going to be thinking about sending a notice. So let me address the situation the first time we see a file. The vendor is actually getting the content, they are going to generate something that we call the value. Some of you are thinking im an idiot for mentioning this kind of thing. That value, always take that as being the dna of the digital file. Even a word document or something would have that value. It is generated from the file itself. The value is unique to those files. We do not take on trust for those advertised in the networks and i will show you a picture of what it looks like. You see them advertise. We dont take out, we generate every time. It is downloading, they generate it. If they have not seen that before, they know it is new and theyre going to download the entire film or the entire television show, whatever it is or the entire album or track. They basically watch it. It is a manual process which is supplemented by tools, that they are looking at that content to make sure it is not a Childs Birthday Party in the middle of it. Or it is not a bad shot or they have taken bits and pieces. Those are not the things you would be sending notices on. We might be doing Something Else with that kind of content. It is not something we are interested in. Everything about it gets reported and we move on to the next one. It is a copy of lincoln or the seinfeld series, whatever. It is something we would be sending a notice on. And we would be capturing a lot from that. We want to see the titles, the credits, everything to make sure is a copy of that aspect. We want to record things like the red hat that went across the screen all of those ways to get captured. It actually helps with the forensics. Once we have capture that information about the file, obviously, we are going to send a notice for which we got the download. But it takes time to do this process. Watching the movie, it will take hours. We go through this digitally. A similar process except they use automated tools for validation. They used the occasional kind of manual supplement. We rely on peoples lives. We have a reference copy of lincoln, a version that was recorded and had all the odd things about it, that is the thing in the database that the copy, everything we know about that file. And now we are back in the network, another instance, we started download, and this time we have the match. We dont need to download the entire thing again, but we have downloaded the sufficient way to generate that again. In some court cases, for example, we have gone to court with an entire movie and bits that have been collected in this process and shown how they overlay. And so it absolutely prove that it was the same file and it was being submitted. The values are important to us. And what we do depends on other things to help us to be sure. Sometimes they will give us copies of good or about content. When Michael Jacksons movie is coming out, they were all over peer to peer that works. They were provided with a number of bad copies, confirmations that these were to be stopped. Now i will go down the other side of the equation. I mentioned i would show you a picture. This is one example of a peer to peer network. Those are bits of ip addresses sharing a particular file. Next to its is the type of find that a particular ip address is using. I will come back to that in a second. You see information on the had values. Left to hash values. We have to make sure the isp is the right isp. We have to make sure it is interesting for this program. If it is, we go to the next point. The next point is to try to communicate with that ip. The vendor system is going to say, are you alive using a basic communication came likeoping. Like ping. That is not a sufficient answer for us to send a notice. About 3 or four years ago a lot of publicity was seen about a printer. We go much further. Now we have gotten an answer back from this ip address same, yes i am here. I am alive. You can see in the column next to the first blue thing, some names like those are appear those are peer to appear to peer things that we would see. We will try to speak to the ip in that kinds language. They want to get an answer back in that language, too. We are dropping people as we go. If they get an answer that in that language, the next thing to say is that it looks like you have this file. Palin for a file with these values. Do you have it. The other computer replies, yes, the next thing to do is to establish a complete and shape. It is that the handshake point that we say, give me the file. We generate the cash hash and go into the database. It is only when we receive content that has been verified to be infringing that we will send the notice. Once we have confirmed we are sending the notice, the scanning then there is one to sit the packages out. We will create what we call the evidence package. It has a lot of different information in it. I would not take time now to walk through that in detail with you. In this summer, there is an overview of the transaction, which tests can doubletime stamps. This is when i connected to the eyepiece. Is this what is responded back. That is a screen with several lines 3. We also give details of the action communication between the computers. When we say to that address, are you alive . We capture it and the answer back. It is saved in a way that can be looked at or listened to later. We also say the actual content. Whether it is the whole movie, a piece of the movie, we save that as well. And we also said the verification process to confirm that it was not a valid copy of that film of that television content. All of that ends up being a several megabytes of a file, and it can be presented for the independent reviewer of the want to double check. So then what that does when it receives one of those notices is to take the information that, the date and time. What is important is when it was confirmed to be an infringement. It wasnt the time we connected, its when we knew for sure. And so that is when they will do the mapping to make sure there are going to be sending the notice or the alert to the subscriber that was connected at that time. Obviously, that a subscriber is not qualified to receive alerts, but theyre having rests if you like. They will hold that notice in case it is needed later. That is my story and i would be happy to answer questions. We are running a little bit behind. I want to make sure we have enough time to speak. And get you your questions. I would ask if my colleagues want to say anything, we can ask questions of the Advisory Board. We would like to transition to the Advisory Board that consists of three nonprofit, privacy and Internet Freedom giants. I would offer your perspective on how you have been helping on this, advising, and how you feel about this process Going Forward. It is kind of you set me up for a long speech. But i come to this and take you up a staff. We are in a very contentious space. The goal that i have always had and i know everyone else that the Supervisory Board and all the people want an open internet. A democratic and a vibrant and and that, that when given the way of that. Bad solutions, bad behavior. This has been an area where a lot of Bad Solutions were put forward and a lot of contentious yelling and screaming has gone on. We really have to find a middle ground or way to protect the openness of the internet and also an intellectual property rights, the rights of creators to innovate and to make a living and create. At that as part of the First Amendment and part of creative expression. When they asked me to participate on this Advisory Committee as i have with other efforts, i said sure. What was exciting about it is that while it is not a huge step, it is a very different staff and it is done at and thought about before it got under way. It is not in response, it is that many people are doing different things. And i think, moving at different direction than trying to lock out or do global legislative solutions that are changing too fast. The new business models, different approaches. We need flexibility, innovation, and we need a dialogue between the consumer. This is the basis for that. It is at the beginning. I think the presentation is really important, because what we discovered kicking the tires of this was that they really were not creating the privacy nightmare on the front end. And that they were going through a lot of diagnostic to try to identify real instances of intellectual property, but not snippets, big files. Trying to be clear that they are not skimming along, they are trying to tie that to real infringement, and instead of bringing the hammer of though lot down, and calling it six strikes, three is a misnomer. This is six strikes, these notices that they escalate and it is to convince a consumer, your computer and your address has downloaded a movie or an album. Not a peace but real content. There are other ways to get content. There are new models were youre doing a by june orwe capture the audio alive and itunes or spotify. Most Consumers Want to do the right then, but they need to understand that if they want to have selfrespect and dignity and be responsible to others, they have to know that there are standards, and they have to confront the fact that they might be doing something that they shouldnt. And a lot of consumers will say, i will stop. The hope of this program is to convince a good number of consumers not to do what they are doing. And i think that that is a voluntary fe, not a draconian solution, one that deserves to be studied. It can have glitches and is under way with a lot of data coming in. And i hope that when we get a lot of data about how it is working, the arbitration system, the notice that there are false positives, we will have enough to say this is a good program and can make adjustments. I think it would be helpful if you give a chance, and it will be a disservice to try and surround it with rhetoric and mislead people about the characteristics in order to bring it down because if the argument for openness and freedom is that we can have no solutions in space, that is not acceptable and it is not going to happen. We have to find real ways to solve this problem. You have been kicking the tires on this program and you can kick pretty hard. Were there any hubcaps that were falling off for anything . I want to say, it is good to see so many friendly faces, and i say this is the first time i have ever been called a giant. I cant wait to tell my family of small jewish people that i have been called a giant. I want to echo some of what gerry said. There has been great care taken by the folks formulating the system to try to protect privacy, to try to protect consumers right to use content lawfully. And they deserve credit for that. Is the system going to be perfect . Even though the presentation shows that they are doing everything they can do, i can almost assure that there will be some false positives, i am hoping not many. That is the nature of any system. And i think we have to determine, is the benefit worth the cost. I think it is worth giving the system a chance. It has now launched, the months leading up to it, it was a long way. Having one of the reasons it was a long wait is that the companies were trying to do it right and they were trying to do it in concert. That being said, it will start getting the alerts, and we will see what happens. I am on this board help fine tune it. I think that at the beginning, we decided right away, i think the first one to come loose was the rhetoric around what should be said and the warnings to people. The Advisory Board was very clear of the board that this could not be a wagging finger type situation. That it is not going to work. That if we are talking about education, you have to be doing the wrong thing. It has to be more along the lines of, we believe somebody is using your Internet Connection to a legally download, here are some alternatives. Here is where you go if you dont believe you are doing so. More of the gentle approach as opposed to we see you and we know you are bad. That was the only thing that came loose. I guess thats not entirely true. The other thing i have really been urging is for them to be as transparent as possible. I will continue to urge them to do that. This is a very good start and it is great to have your presentation videotape. I think a lot of the noise that youre hearing and the months coming out to the lodge last week, where people spitting conspiracy theories and suspicions because the transparency was not were was supposed to be. Also very excited about data collection, the presentation of how this thing is actually working. I am sure most of you have not read the 36 or 40 pages of understanding. If you have an hour or to have nothing to do, read it because it requires a collection of how many people get to each alert stage, how many people go through the appeals process, how many people win or lose on what grounds. That data can be valuable in determining if voluntary systems like this work. And there are other voluntary agreements being hatched as we speak about Credit Card Companies and ad networks, this is not the only voluntary system that is being discussed right now between the content industry. I think the data can be valuable, and i think what we are going to find, after the first or second notice, they stop what they are doing. This is not going to get to the hardcore folks or the folks that say, is for the movie studios and the Recording Industry. I am just going to steal, i dont care if beyonce goes bankrupt. That is not what the system is about. They dont think it will stop the hardcore, congratulations. Youre absolutely right. I am presenting myself as a person that people can talk to, complain to, i see myself as a consumer advocate. It is a difficult position for me, but like i said, i am willing to see how it goes. You have had a long history in privacy work in the past. My question, people are worried about the privacy. If you could give your perspective as a privacy leader and an advocate. I have a number of different hats, the chief privacy officer, state legislator, but the role i sort of put on and focus on when we did our reviews was the chief privacy officer. One of the things i learned is good intentions and the policies only goes so far when it comes to privacy to the extent you can design a system so that at an primarily does work in the way it intends to do. What i initially liked about the system and i share some of the input we provided that helped with collaboration of the team, even add some positive elements to it. At the outset we had an adversarial system where peoples names and identities to the course of litigation were disclosed. Here we have a system that is in many ways very different. The information is not disclose, the isps are not monitoring. The piece that i think we were able to help enhance, we wanted to make sure that when somebody did appeal, and they downloaded some content that they might not want to be publicly associated with or be uncomfortable about calling up an appealing and saying, i downloaded this particular content, and now i would like to appeal, and perhaps be deterred because they did not want to be publicly associated even non publicly associated with that, and we said why cant people appeal with an account number or a Registration Number or the like . That does not need to be a part of the appeals process. The appellate review our needs to know this is somebody, here is a file, handed over to me, and they pay a fee we were there early enough that we could provide that sort of input and review into the process and we were delighted that folks worked hard to make that change and enhanced the design. The role i hope will continue to play on this issues is keep an ear open, and when the system is out there, whether it is a product or service, people bang on it and you try to figure out was it intended and you continue to tweak, but we have done a pretty good job, and the team has done a pretty good job by privacy by design, and we have a pretty good situation for the consumer. I would like to get a question and one second, but the good folks from cspan. Org would like to enjoy it if you use the microphone that is standing, that is working. Before i go to questions, one question for me and for brent is this thing is rolling out right now. How many people are getting notices in the first several weeks or months, number one, and, number two, there are two different isps, could you talk about the differences of the program, from verizon, at t, just get a flavor of that. Thanks, and, first, i want to echo the comments that you have heard already from our Advisory Board members, and we on the board very much appreciate their involvement, participation, throughout, and jerrys comments about what we are trying to do is to, and gigis comments are important as well. I want everybody to know that we take their input seriously, and over the course of time, almost five years ago, to this month, that this whole process started, if you can believe it or not. It has been a long time coming, and the isps and the content owners have worked to develop a system that war. All the things that jerry was saying about the focus on education, trying to correct behavior, where it can be corrected. Ultimately, what gigi said was right. If you are doing an infringement, this is not going to stop that. That was one of the reflections with about and came to realize was practical reality here is we are not going to stop this. We can hopefully make a dent in it, and for those people, and most of the people in the audience, if you learned that something is going on on your Internet Connection, you may very well want to stop it, and we hope you will. As was mentioned earlier, it does describe the process in more detail, but what we have is three years, the first notices you will receive from us are going to be through email. We will send them to the address is that we have on record for you. And each notice will basically be spaced out by a week. If we get notice after notice, we only send you one a week. The first 2, email. If we still continue to receive them after the first, the third will be in the form of an acknowledgment, which would be a effectively a page that is on your computer, you have the keys to that page by getting an acknowledgment indicating they you have received it and the notice. We are not asking you to concede they you have in french, but that you have received the notice. There is a video we will ask you to watch that we of produced, doing a little more education. And you are out of the garden. The same thing on the fourth notice, when you get to the fifth, that is what were calling the mitigation measures. I think of it as an advanced form of notice. The reason that we have these notices as we know that the mail alone is not 100 effective. The acknowledgement phase, we will give you the option in, you can either choose to challenge the notice that you receive, if you believe you have been receiving them in error. On the fifth notice, it will be for two days. The bandit will be slow down to 256 k. On the sixth notice, it will be slow down to three days of the same speed. The idea is to give you enough band with said that applications would work. It would get peoples attention. There are kids that can beat mom and dad to the email or acknowledgement page. We want to make sure that somebody responsible will get the notice and realize that something is going on and hopefully make the decision to remove that software and stop the infringing activities. That is the way the process will work. After the sixth notice, that is the end of the program. There are no further mitigation stages. We have told our customers about it, we did a posting on the site, on the policy page. Hopefully we will have success with the program. At t, let me step back for a second. Let me echo that process. Going back to the beginning, as others have been saying, i know there is anticipation about this beginning several months ago. All the delays that happened were the result of people trying to be cautious and to do this the right way, to take into account the consideration of the Advisory Board, to learn from each other, and also to work internally with the folks on our team to get these systems up and running. I would like to a knowledge the folks, a lot involved on the operational side that did a lot of great work here because it ultimately requires that a lot of systems work. They have a template or structure that we are following , it allows us to make implementations of the structure. At the end of the day, you want this to be as automated as possible and as reliable as possible. It takes a lot of work to input from content owners, those systems with reliability, skill and ability, and the like. Having said that, the system as a lot like that in terms of the stages. It is safe to say they are following the stages because that is part of the structure. What is unique about at t is the mitigation stage, and what we will be doing at that stage, we expect and hope that the vast majority of our customers will never reeves reached that stage or have that notice. What would happen is the browser when they are on line would be redirected to an online portal. They will go through a series of pages and content to educate them about copyright on line. Once they have about education or portal, the redirect will cease and their Internet Service will work as normal. There should be no need to call a Customer Care representative or anything like that. But the key here is the educational component. What were really trying to do is educate the customer. It is really to empower them to make a decision. We are giving them information. We are telling them what the copyright is, the differences between lawful and on lawfully available content. And talking to them about things like securing a the router and other things, but at the end of the day, it is up to the customer. This is not a program where we are trying to impose a penalty. It is about changing the mindset and bending the curve on behavior. This is not going to affect the folks that are dedicated to doing this, but there is a lot of evidence that suggests that there is confusion out there. Especially with the younger kids. They dont know the difference between legal sites and illegal sites. And powering them to understand what is going on on the internet. We hope that is where the Program Takes people and we are at the very beginning stages. We should have more to share. I have another question i promised i would ask. If you can direct a question, that will be helpful, too. A graduate student at the university of colorado, my question is to marianne. I have got a lot of research on these systems. What if their systems changed to bypass what they put in place. When could they stop replying . Is there a way to incorporate that . How soon do you advisor system if such navigation tools come into play. That is a good question. Yes, there are ways to avoid this, of course. We rely on our vendor to keep up with those technology changes. Again, this is about reaching the people that are not going to bother to do funny stuff and will appreciate having a straightforward message. Were not but the catch everybody, were not going to find every case, but we do know we are right to find a number, and it is going to make a difference. That is where our focus is on this. Question. I missed the last sentence of your presentation. Does the information in the summary get forwarded to the users, and if so, what kind of information would be helpful to them in figuring out if they are not aware of what is going on . Right, so the notices that we send to the isp include an evidence summary. It is not that big file. It is a summary of what is in that file. It does include dates and times, that it was verified by a manual verification or an automated verification. That is provided to the isp. Most isps are providing a summary of that. If that is not sufficient, then the evidence package said that there and can be accessed by the independent reviewer or by the isp who might want to give more data. Once people understand the basic process, they will know that that file sitting back there, and what is in the notice itself should be sufficient. Does that include the peer topeer site . It does not include the site. It does include the details of the actual sharing and the dates and times, yes. We do not know where that file originally came from, but if somebody originally has that file, they distributed it. Whether they got it the day before, the week before, is not necessarily known. I was just going to comment. I was going to add, in terms of the information that the isps has, there is information about how to check to see if there is software on your computer, and how to secure your connection. There is linked to information, similar links on copyrighted information websites. That is part of the agitation, the more people know how to look for it the more they know about what they can do to address it. I am from the American Library association. After the sixth mitigation notice, then what happens . I mean, do you do any more after that, or do you ignore that person or basically, the program is intended to be educational. After that, after the second mediation alert and the second time someone has been mitigated, the assumption is they are not being educated. Part of the copyright law system is for that person. And can the rights holder make a decision whether to take down our request Something Like that . The issue is a distinction from the takedown issue, but the rights holder can then decide whether or not to pursue other legal options. The copyright alert system is voluntary and does not affect the legal rights and obligations of the content owners. One point of clarification. It has been explained throughout the session, at no point in time the isps give over any personal identifiable information to content owners. To the extent they made a decision to pursue other means, they would need to go to the normal course of seeking a court order to get that information out there. It cannot be emphasized enough that the steps we took and with the advice from the Advisory Board to maintain a strict privacy rules as part of the program and make sure we never disclose that information as part of the program. In terms of validating that somebody stops, is that something that you see to looked to see that the ip address is not being used again and again from the validation authentication site of a broader question, as you look for metrics of it seems that each of the isps is going its own route in terms of pressure to put on the users. Do you envision trying to identify which ones are more successful over the course of time, and perhaps honing the program to a set of best practices on the isp site . Let me answer the first question. I think and that it in your question is this notion that there is some continuing monitoring of a particular account or ip address. Really, the system does not work that way. It works as marianne described, incident by incident. If a user gets a second request and it is because the scanning vendor is looking at now for probably another title, perhaps, that same ip address emerges and the same process was gone through to identify which isp went with that ip address. There is not an ongoing dossier or Information Collection about a particular user, either on the content side or on the isp side, and that is an important point. I am happy to have that is a terrific question, and i for one hope that and expect that we will be involved in some evaluation done the road so you can look at the different approaches that each isp is with current the parameters of the program, but they hold all their variations. You would be able to see whether there is a higher success rate with one kind of messaging versus another, how many appeals are being filed in one area, whether you can do a better education and job of being there, or maybe more requests from the consumer and there are parents that do not understand what is going on, they may want better information on the website. I think that feedback loop would be important. Yes, i think that be able without getting into anyones privacy, the aggregate data is really could be rich and yields important lessons about how to improve the program. The notion of best practices is something that is very much in vogue with regard to the relationship between intermediaries and the content industry. As i mentioned before, there are already best practices with regard to Financial Institutions and rogue websites. Theres now a process that is happening right now with regard to ad networks. I think there is an opportunity once we see the data, individually and in the aggregate, to fine tune the system and see what works best. I also want to emphasize that the best practices should not just go to the intermediaries. The content industry also has to figure out what its best practices are, not only for determining when they are going to enforce their copyrights, but also how they are going to notify people, for example you are notified that you actually own the copyright, things like that. Best practices are the way to go, but the responsibility has to be on all parties and not just one half of the question. When questioned about jill mentioned this is only gets served to residential users. Commercial, Wifi Networks are not targeted. I do not know if american libraries the question i was asked to ask was, wont those folks just go to commercial wifi vendors, and it is a question of advocacy. Will it be efficient going to other wifi providers like mcdonalds or starbucks . I would say this, which goes back to the assumption of the program, which is most people are not working hard to game the system or engaged in large scale copyright infringement. I would imagine somebody who is going to take the time to stop using the home network and the starbucks or mcdonalds to download movies is in that category. We are working under the assumption, as i said, based on research we have done, on all the work that has been done by the content industry over the last decade, as digital piracy has continued to be an enormous problem, is that there is a lot of misinformation out there, and a lot of misunderstanding about what is copyrighted and how to find out what people want in a legal way. I do not think we will see people heading out of their homes and going to starbucks, and hopefully as we evaluate the system and make it better over time, we will be able to address the needs of the people as well. Thank you it is going to be through the collaborative process. I explained to you in idaho, before i became governor, the Bush Administration invited governors to weigh in. I put that on when i was governor. We dilt through the collaborative process, painful at times, but took it luge the 9th circuit this year and affirmed what we din idaho, now we have the only roadless plan that is Court Approved and britten in the states look the collaborative process. We need to do the same thing with other things. We have not had a good experience with interior on some things that we were promised that the collaborative process would prevail and then did not. We are not facing the same thing with sage grouse. Sack cra tary salazar promiseed if they got together sec cra tary salazar got together. The blm would carve those states out of the national i. As you know, there is a National Management plan for sage grouse, but the states want to do this. We want to do this ourselves. I know this may come as a stock this the federal government but we can do it. What we did in idaho, we got together, i say we, the governor led this as appropriate, and have a plan put together. The difficulty and by the way, and i hope i do not endanger this guys job, the fellow who is the head of the fish and Wildlife Service in idaho really likes what we did, likes the collaborative process, likes the plan that we came up with, said in a letter, dated august 1st, last past, a number of things that really spoke well of the plan that we had, and i will not read this in the record. Mr. Chairman, i would like to have this. Without objection, for the record. I would like to be a part of the record. My point is that, the fish and Wildlife Service, which you are going to supervise, is in charge of species. The b. O. Is in charge of soil and plants. The problem we got is that it is attempting to ert the influence over the species when indeed the fish and Wildlife Service knows better than they do. Were hang up now. Were hung up badly. This needs to be resolved. I dont know how to put this gently, but it is going to be resolved. There is going to be substantial process on this prior to you become secretary of interior. Now i was so glad to hear you talk about how important certainty and clarity was to businesses. You and i share that. I love the Free Enterprise system and the free market system. The only wait can operate is with certainty and clarity. We have almost 2,000 grazing permits that are operated by individual operators in idaho. They need certainty and clarity. They dont have it with the problem we have with sage grouse. This is within the hands of the, of the secretary to resolve and i really hope this gets resolved. It needs to be resolved before this process goes forward. I intend to work with them. You suspect after this, i will be hearing from them very quickly as to what we need do. I have some really, really good ideas. Thank you, senator risch. Senator lender . Thank you. Let me begin for thank you for being willing to serve. It is a very important zones the president has nominated you for. I think you bring particularly interesting and exciting set of skills to this job, and i appreciate the meeting that we had for quite a long time in my office. You want to thank the chairman and the Ranking Member so much for their focus on revenue sharing as the possibility of giving states and local communities some Additional Resources that can address some of the man nish shoes expressed on both sides here today. And i wanted to call your attention to the fact that i think is very troubling, but also promising. Since 1950, when offshore production began in this country, the coastal states have sent 211 billion to the federal government. Onshore production, while it is exiting and contributes to the needs of our nation, has brought 61 billion, so offshore has contributed three times the amount of money to the general fund. But 30 billion, the difference is that of those amounts, all thought is three times more for the offshore, 30 million of the 61 has been maintained by the western states, and the interior states, and only a few Million Dollars has come back to the coastal states, now both western and coastal states are impacted, both receive benefits of the jobs, but i want to show you what a picture is worth 1,000 words. This is what the coast of louisiana looks like. These are the piplines connected to wells off the coast of texas, louisiana, mississippi, and alabama. This is the mobile bay. You can see that it is concentrated under the states of texas, louisiana, mississippi and alabama. This is where the 2. 11 billion for the federal treasury has come from with a little bit coming off the coast of california, but not much. We have sat here since 1950 producing the oil and the gas, developing the technology for the world, proud to do it, and cannot get a penny from the federal government to save the land that this production is coming from. I have said, this is one of the great injustices in the law soothed. I want some comments from you about the opportunity to fix this. Right now, we have a bill that gives us 37 but will cap at 500 million. Four states have to share it. And the land and water conservation, so my question is are you aware of this . What can you do to advocate for its correction . Thank you, senator landrieu. I appreciate the conversation we had in your office on this topic as well. I know that we are all in a situation with a tight federal treasury. It would take good collaboration to access what an appropriate change to the revenue sharing agreement may be. I certainly have heard from a number of senators about this issue, and if i am confirmed in the role, i would like forward to better understanding issues by the different states and hopefully bring it to the appropriate resolution. I also want to call your attention to this graft which is this is the oil and the gas wells in louisiana onshore as well as the pipes offshore to show you the amount of contribution that our state is making. Meanwhile we also drain 40 of the continent, nurture 40 of the seafood for the whole entire country, and the activity that guess on here for trade and commerce benefits everyone in the world, not just the people in our state. Secondly, with my time left, louisiana ranks second in natural Gas Production behind texas. We are seeing a meth x corporation, decommissioned, move it to south louisiana, williams Petrochemical Company in tulsa is planning 400 million expansion right here, one of the worlds largest, producers of nitrogen fertilizer is looking to spend 1. 2 billion. That is over 3. 5 billion in one parish in this community that is happening because of the expansion of Natural Gas Drilling in this country and the promise of a manufacturing renaissance which will create millions of jobs. Are you aware of this . Can you comment briefly . My time is about ready to expire on your under standing of the benefit both for the environment and the jobs for natural gas. Senator as our chairman said in his opening question to me as well. We are a country that is blessed with all kinds of resource and natural gas is a very significant component of no res resources, and i think safe and Responsibility Development is an important component to our future. Thank you. Thank you, senator landrieu. Senator. Thank you. Sorry for having to step out tot another markup. I appreciate you coming to my office and i enjoyed the discussion there. Let me follow up on something we tacked about there. The generating station in northern arizona. You understand the significance of that, this coalfired plant, that the largest owner is the reclamation which you will oversee, that uses that share of power to make water deliveries through the Central Arizona project. These deliveries are used to satisfy water settlements to the native american tribe, irrigation districts, residential water users in tucson and phoenix, and lease payments for the plant and associated the lease payments for the plant and the associated mine also provide a huge part of the budgets and given your responsibility for the tribes is extremely important there. Given the complex needs that are satisfied the plant, satisfied by the plant, and all the different interests involved. I am just wondering how you are going to balance all of this, and some of them are competing interests. You have been on the National Parks conversation, i am sorry, conservation associate board, i know in the past. In the past, the ncpa argued that a study that bass was desired by the department of interior would interfere with the regulatory process, and the secretary of interior, david haze, or deputy secretary, wrote a letter in response noting the ncaa misunderstood the purpose of the studies and that the precious misplaced. The study was critical unbias effort to provide epa information regarding the potential impact on water cost and tribal economies. In light of the ncpas past statement about ggs, this is something that would keep you from seeking information from other groups . That is my concern here, that we get all the information about the potential benefits by this massive costs that would be incurred likely causing that plant to shut down, but ncpa seemed to not want some of that information out. Can you just give me, enlighten me on that and where you stand and if were you a part of that, that process or that thinking at ncpa . Thank you, senator. I appreciated our discussion particularly on the generating station. I learned a lot from that as i am learn interesting the department of interior as well ncpa is a Nonprofit Organization founded in 1919 that supports the National Parks. I am one of about 30 board members. I play no role in the litigation, so to the extent that there is any ncpa engagement in anything with interior, my first step would to be confer with the appropriate ethics officials to determine my appropriate engagement on that issue. To the generating station itself, as you point out, very complex, but very, very important to the tribes, as well as the bureau of reclamation, and clearly, a complicated issue that deputy secretary haze has been work on for some time. Right. I will absolutley look forward to diving in and better understanding the issue. Just two days ago, ncpa intervened the lawsuit against the state of arizona seeking the most stringent requirements, visibility requirements, on three power plants, throughout arizona. These coalfired power plants, apachegenerating station is one of those. It is unclear whether this high cost will improve visibility at all, or have any noticeable benefits, but here again, ncpa is filing a lawsuit requiring that strict thing, so i hope that does not influence where you are at interior, because you have a lot of competing interest from there, some of them, in clueing the tribes, and others are only forwarded, i would submit if we keep that plant running, and to meet these obligations, that is how you see it . What is your response . Well, senator, i appreciate the importance of this plan as we discussed and i referenced a minute ago. Again my first thought if ncpa has been involved in some way in this would be to the appropriate ethics official as to determine what role i could play. Let me step back a bit. This has been quite routine now for outside groups like ncpa to sue, and then for the department to enter into negotiations, the socalled sue and settle, many times or most times, the state and other interest are left completely out. What is your feeling on the sue and settle . This may have been addressed earlier on, but it is very concerning, i can till, to the state and local officials and others who have an interest in our stakeholders in Something Like a coalfired plant or other Power Generation and then an outside group will come in and sue and the agencies will negotiate directly with them. Sometimes the state of arizona has to file a suit just to get a place at the table to figure out what is going on. What are your general thoughts in that zr well, senator, without having a background on the specifics, i said, as it relates to ncpa, i played no role in the lawsuits and what they do. I will say this, that in the case of that organization, the layon share of the work the board does is insupport of the National Parks, understanding what the needs are, bringing volunteers, advocating for funding and lawsuits are a small part of what that organization does. Let me move away from ncpa, just in general, whether it is center for biological diversity or other outside groups, the tendency is for them to sue and the agencies to enter into negotiations and settle without involving the local governments or other stakeholders. Can you pledge or is it your feeling we ought to work in to include the stakeholders rather than exclude them . Like i said, sometimes they have to sue to get a place at the table when they are, they are very much affected by the outcomes of the settlements. Senator, as a business person, of one of the things i have done throughout my career is bring parties to the table, and try and reach an agreement on difficult issues so it does not require measures like lawsuits in order to uphold the laws that this body has passed and certainly if confirmed in the position, i will look forward to bringing parties to the table to discuss the different points of view and see if we can find common ground. Well, thank you. I know that state and local governments in after particular would be appreciative in being involved in that process early on and being at that table rather than presented with a settlement that they have to live w and have no role in bargaining for, so thank you so much. Thanks, senator. Thank you, another. Senator i very much share your view about getting the stakeholders together in that kind of upfront preventative way. I was glad to see that you and the nominee share the interest. Senator sanders is next. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here. Thanks for dropping by the office last week. It is my view that history will look back on this period and ask how it could happen that the United States of america, the United States congress did not respond vigorously to what the Scientific Community regards as the greatest planetary crisis of our time, which is obviously Global Warming. I said not only on this committee, but the Environmental Committee as well, recently, we heard from scientists who tell us if we do not get the act together and cut back substantially on Greenhouse Gas emissions, it is likely that the temperature of this planet will rise by 8 degrees fahrenheit by the end of the century causing problems throughout america and throughout the world. Sadly, some of my colleagues believe that Global Warming is a hopes perpetrated by al gore, the United Nations and the hollywood elite. So is Global Warming a hoax . That is a quote from the former Ranking Member of the Environmental Committee. Senator, i think the Scientific Evidence is clear. The president referred to Climate Change in the state of the Union Address and there is no question in my mind that it is real and the Scientific Evidence there is to back that up. If that is true, and i am glad to hear you say that. With the Scientific Community helps that you we need to move in a very rapid session to transform the Energy System away from fossil fuel into Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Energy that the United States can and should be a leader in the world and getting other countries to move in that direction. Do you believe that Global Warming is a issue of urgency which the United States government including the department of interior should act upon . It is urgent. Senator, the department of interior with the lands under the management experiences, many of the impacts that siren tists have attributed to Climate Change, droughts, wildfires, floods, these are matters that certainly require both adaptation as well as thoughtful scientificbased means to address. Not quite clear about what that answer is. Let me just give you an example. When secretary salazar was before us some years ago, i asked him what he thought the potential was in terms of Sustainable Energy on public lands. And there are people who refer to the southwest states like arizona and others as the saudi arabia, he said, salazar said, that are over 100, there are over 10,000 megawatts. Enough for 3. 4 million homes of Renewable Energy projects including 18 utility sol are facilities, et cetera, et cetera. He also stated that we have the potential on public lands to generate enough power through Sustainable Energy primarily solar to meet the demands of 29 of the nations homes. Are you going to be aggressive pushing solar and wind and Sustainable Energy on public fland. Senator, i think that Renewable Energy is a very, very important resource to be tapped on our public lands, as ceo of rei, i am proud we were able to grow the business over the last few years while reducing the energy footprint. We did that by solar installation on some of the stores and we also did that by locking in longterm power supply contracts with Renewable Energy, thereby, creating the kind of season ty that the utilities need to support the projects, and i think that there is tremendous potential to continue do that kind of work. If you were to be confirmed, cane count on you as to be a strong ally entrance forming our Energy System away from fossil fuel into Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Energy . Senator sanders, i support the president s all of the above energy tragedy and that includes continued significant emphasis on renewables. The president has stated that he wants to more than double the production by 2020 of Renewable Energy sources, and i understand that the department of interior has ten megawatts already that have been supported in renewables on public lands and i certainly look forward to continuing that emphasis. Thank you. On another more kind of smaller issue, if would like, but one that i been concerned about. I work with the Smithsonian Institute to kind of transform their purchasing practice away from buying products made in china and selling chinese products in our gift stores to buying america. They have done a gad job in that. What we have found in the National Parks. There are two primary contract contracts, one is doing a good job in buying american products, and one is not. Can you give me assurances that you will do your best to make sure this the products sold at american parks are made in america . Senator, i think that we would all like to see America Manufacturing create jobs in america. I also know through my most recent work in the outdoor retail bus mess that some products are available in america. Others are not. I think creating demand for products made in america is property. I also know that the public wants to, they are made by american fit is of similar quality and similar functionality. I think there is domestic will make effort . I mean the smithsonian has done a good job. There are products that are made in america which are quite affordable and can compete with foreign prod did yous if we have the will to go out and find those vendors. Will you give us that effort . Senator, i will certainly work with john jarvis, who is director of the National Parks service to undertan the role the nps place in the gift shops. I dont know how the relationship works with the contractors to ask them about this issue and see if we might be able to make some progress in that regard. Thank you. Chairman, thank you. I thank my colleague. I thank my colleague of bringing up the issue of Climate Change. Certainly, this is something that this committee can be involved in addressing the matters we were talking about earlier, carbon sequestration, opportunities to promote a lowcarbon economy, clearly is an important item for consideration in the committee. I just want to tell my colleague, as well, that when the president , at the state of the union, talked about bipartisanship in terms of Climate Change, and he mentioned Joe Lieberman and john mccain, i will just tell my colleague. I was sitting next to the senator and both of us were paying a lot of attention to that. So i look forward to continuing the discussion. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Good to see you again. Thank you for coming by the office. And for your willingness to serve and for being here today. Let me start out. You mentioned you support the president s all of the above approach to energy development. So indicating that you will support an all of the above energy approach on public lands. We talked about that, but specifically, will you support fossil fuel development, meaning coal, oil and gas on public lands . Senator, we are blessed with lots of resources. I appreciate that are necessary to drive our economy. I appreciate that he the resources are willing. Technologies are en abeing us to tap them along with renewable. I think that is reflected of all the above. I am certainly supportive of that. Okay. And right now, for example in my state, to permit a new oil well on private land, it takes 10 to 14 days, but on public lands, it takes 290 days. Will you work with us, and with your people, and you have some great people out there, will you work with us to expedite those, the permitting process . Senator, i appreciate, as a businessperson, that business need certainty. They dont mind playing by the rules. They need to know what the rules are. I appreciate from speaking with some officials at the bureau of Land Management that they are also committed to a permitting process that is predictable and reasonable and reliable for the industry. I look forward to working with them on that. A you will work to help us . Yes, sir. Then, this affects the tribal lands, too. Both the permitting, but also hydraulic fracturing. Will you work with us on a statesfirst approach for hydraulic fracturing which is vitally important to our native american friends on tribal lands, as well as public lands . So the states first approach. I know you understands hydraulic fracturing very well and having a background the oil and gas industry, which i think offers opportunities for us to work together. We need a states first approach. Some of the members have talked about that, so we have the flexibility to do things right and well throughout the country because hydraulic fracturing is different in different places so you cannot have a federal onesizefitsall. So specifically, will you work with us on the states first approach . Senator, i know that the job that i will have is to oversee federal lands and that the regulations associated with those federal lands are in support of the american peoples ownership of the federal lands which certainly involves the states and the regions and specific local among f. My knowledge of fracking which is a little bit dated i will grant you. The principles are still the same. It is different by different regionses a as you point out. It is very important that the boms a it works with the industry understandeds those local situations so that they can work to develop the resources in a safe and responsible way. I think working alongside of states, working alongside of scientist and industry is the right approach to come up with a set of rules that are safe for the environment, but also support the opportunities that industry is trying to that is it. I think the chairman will tell you the same thing and the Ranking Member. We are working to do in that good, solid fundamental way with a states first approach is about that empowerment that is so important for states and particularly for private industry and the private investment you need to develop and deploy the technology to not only produce more energy but do it with good steward ship. Your background creates a real opportunity here if you will end gig and work with us on that. We also now shifting to the renewable side. We have to site wind farms. Will you work with us. Will you ask fish and wildlife to work with us so we can develop those alternative Energy Sources as well . Senator, alternative energy is a very important