Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20160628

I moved into the army job last year is that the army has cut, to protect force structure, cut that procurement budget pretty substantially. And so that where you go for one, youve got that threelegged stool of the people, the equipment and the training that you do. And to you have to one of those other leg ares will need additional force structure for the recommendation. [inaudible] part of what we, i think when people first hear about strategy, their minds always wander to the air force and the navy. And whether or areas for the army, robotics, autonomy, different types of issue people dont necessarily need right away. Lucky for us bob bork gets back, got that right away. But there are tremendous opportunities and ways we can enhance capability for soldiers. If i can just ask one last question, mr. Secretary. You look for fulfilling the responsibilities, for young people, young women and men, their parents, families. They consider military service. What would you tell them why they ought to choose the army . I think, i go to basic training which is down at fort jackson a couple weeks ago and is, i always ask parents, part of the army is, to me the army is the force that is most connected across the country with the United States, with america, with the local communities. It was brought home and departed dramatically a week ago yesterday when i talked about my two uncles went to west point. A lot of people didnt connect the dots for the number of emails i got from all over, the current army today but other people as well who knew, or sort with one of those vocals. Thats what i would tell someone, because thats americas service. I think those industry would agree with you. I think we would also unanimously agree that we are proud to have you as our secretary. We need you now perhaps more than ever. We are glad you have taken on this responsibility, especially thankfully joined us this morning. Thank you. [applause] mr. Secretary, thanks a lot. That was terrific. General lamb, great job. As they would say down in the motor pool, totally gone, sarge. Okay, how about all the four stars present, either on active duty, guard, reserve, whatever and retired. The general is a senior veteran in the room, world war ii, korea, vietnam. When you get up close you will see two little stars. Is the real deal. Wounded in four wars, those three, and the cold war. Hes everybodys hero. How about it, nice and for the general. [applause] okay, thanks a lot, folks. Thats get the pictures taken so the chief undersecretary can go get more guidance. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] you can watch this again later today when he gets closer to our website. Go to cspan. Org. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will meet focusing on fighting places. You hear from special envoy mcgurk. Live coverage at 10 eastern on our companion network cspan. Later live at 2 30 p. M. Eastern cspan3 will have a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on whether federal agencies are deemphasizing radical islam in combating crisis. We have this story from the hills website. The gop led, House Select Committee on benghazi will today release its final report about the handling of the 2012 terrorist attacks in libya. Yesterday democrats on the committee released their rebuttal ahead of republican report. That report aimed to refute allegations expected to be made by trey doughty in what democrats have long claimed as a partisan witchhunt. We are issued our own report today because after spending more than two years and 7 million of taxpayer funds over the longest and most partisan congressional investigations in history, its long past time for the select committee to conclude its work, democrats said. For americans including ambassador Christopher Stevens died in the militia attacks at a diplomatic facility in nearby cia and next in benghazi, libya. That story from the hill today. Now a look at the role immigrants play in the labor force. This is about an hour 15 minut minutes. Welcome everybody. Good morning. How is everybody doing . Thank you for coming out on the monday. We really appreciate. My name is theresa brown. Im the director of immigration policy project year at the Bipartisan Policy Center. I want to welcome you to our event today discussing the release of our report, culprit or scapegoat . Immigrations effect on employment and wages. For those of you who are new to the bpc, our mission is to actively seek to combat the best ideas from both parties to promote health, security, opportunity, and really tackle some of the biggest and thorniest issues that america is facing. Our process is to bring together very strongly interested parties on the issue to hash out the ideas, the constructive clash, if you will, and bring policy solutions to the table to analysis, negotiation and advocacy. Some of the analysis, some of the stuff you hear about the Immigration Project here at bbq started in 2013. Our Immigration Task force is cochaired by former governor ed rendell, former Governor Haley barbour, former secretary and assistant and michael chertoff. Are task force has issued a series of statements and reports on immigration over the last soldiers and is actively working on policy recognition that we believe can take the debate to the next level postelection with the new president and a new congress. I want to thank you very much for joining us today. This event is being live stream online. When we get the audience q a i will ask you very much wait for the microphone to audience members of this live stream came to you. Please take where youre from and ask a question. We prefer you to questions rather than statements, to keep them short and sweet so we can get as many people as question that they would like. We invite you to interact on facebook and twitter during this event. Our hashtag is bpc lives. You can also tweet us at bpc underscore bipartisan on twitter. As and when it knows by now immigration has been a key issue in this election cycle. One of the ongoing debate issues is the role of immigrants in our labor force. Are immigrants taking jobs from americans . Our immigrants lowering wages are helping us fill labor shortages and expand our workforce at a time when it would otherwise be shrinking . A report issued today, and the author will present a summary of the findings, direct some of this issue to ask a to have the perspective. Somewhat big talk about a report but also their own perspectives. We will be taking questions later in the program and again if you are watching on the live stream enjoyed to ask a question, use hashtag bpc live and we will be able to get those questions up to the moderate. Also want to thank cspan for recording this event so it will be broadcast on cspan played on this week i think. Without further ado i will introduce our senior policy analyst to talk about our report. Thank you. Thank you, theresa and thank you all for coming out this morning. Over the past several decades americans are becoming increasingly detached from the labor market. This trend has been particularly pronounced among nativeborn americans. Since 2000 employment has declined by six Percentage Points among nativeborn americans. Among foreignborn individuals it has declined by just two Percentage Points. Opponents of immigration are quick to look at this trend and use this data as evidence that immigrants are displacing native born workers. That restricting immigration will therefore boost nativeborn employment. This argument makes superficial sense, it is also my misguided as it fails to consider several other factors that influence employment trends. This is evidenced by the fact that despite diverging employment rates, unemployment has remained roughly on par between native and foreignborn individuals over the past 15 years. And is basically diverge by what amounts to a rounding error. Why has this occurred to . How can implement such a strong divergence but unemployment remain on par . This is due to the fact that were as important measures the percentage of the Publishing Holding a job, unemployment looks at those who are both out of work and actively seeking employment. So what this tells us is that nativeborn americans have left the labor force for other reasons. Namely, to retire, introduce a billy or go back to school. So as you can see this is the percentage point change in these three activities over the past 15 years, it among nativeborn americans its increased by close to two Percentage Points, or as for foreignborn individuals these activities have increased between zero and one percentage point. So as you can see nativeborn individuals are increasingly leaving the labor force for these reasons. Why has the trend but more pronounced among nativeborn . Our Research Points to the fact that nativeborn workers can do far more flexibility and options at their disposal to pursue these other activities. Take retirement, for example, to our Research Shows that nativeborn americans can do far more punitive wealth and they are more likely to qualify for Social Security benefits upon retirement. So the median nativeborn married couple 86574 has about 10 times more in Financial Assets than the median immigrant couple. And then nativeborn workers didnt have spent longer in the labor force than foreignborn, which generally allows them to qualify for higher monthly Social Security benefit. With regard to School Enrollment, foreignborn individuals face more barriers, language barriers and also barriers with regard to legal steps that can prevent them from enrolling in higher education. With regard to disability, nativeborn individuals are far more likely to qualify for federal disability benefits, namely the supplemental security income, ssi is generally limited to nativeborn individuals. So we crunched the numbers and we found that is nativeborn individuals over the past 15 years exhibited the same rate of change in retirement, disability and School Enrollment as foreignborn individuals, this employment gap narrows. So basically these three factors explain the vast majority of the employment difference between native and foreignborn workers over the past 15 years. Another common refrain among opponents of immigration is that immigration depresses the wages of nativeborn americans. And while its true that foreignborn workers conduct of our prevailing wage that nativeborn workers, the research is ultimately next on the impact immigration has on wages. So our Research Shows that wages have less to do with immigration and more to do with skills, education, and industries that tend to employ foreign and nativeborn workers. So native and foreignborn individuals tend to be employed in different industries, and we identified seven industries that collectively employ around 50 of nativeborn workers and an additional seven industries that employ around 50 of the foreignborn workforce. We found broad differences generalized differences between these industries. For example, the Construction Industry employs around 9 of the foreignborn workforce but just 4. 5 of the nativeborn workforce. On the flipside management occupations employed around 12 of the nativeborn workforce but just 8 of the foreignborn workforce. This is a trend that has persisted for at least the past 15 years. And in general these nativeborn industries, thats a lot better than the foreignborn industries on average at around 50,000 per year compared to around 36 36,000 per year. Opponents basically restrict immigration, then wages in these fourport invisible increase and we will be able to narrow the employment gap and boost employment for nativeborn workers. We dont know if this is necessary the case because and it has to do with skills. So on average 50 of the occupations and the nativeborn industries require at least a bachelors degree compared to just 6 in the foreignborn industries. So this basically tells us that the wage differential there is more a product of skills and Educational Attainment as opposed to the presence of immigrants. Ultimately, out analysis showed in the absence of immigration it is unclear that nativeborn americans would flock to jobs in industries that employ high levels of foreignborn workers. Since nativeborn americans tend of higher levels of education and can more easily exit the labor force, as we saw earlier, that might be less of an incentive to accept a lesser skilled lower wage occupation when you can retire or go back to school. This is shown in the data. Several foreignborn industries are currently reporting severe labor shortages. Even as nativeborn employment has decreased in recent years. So the big examples are construction and agriculture, and commonly foreignborn industries. The Construction Industry reported a shortage of over 675,000 workers in 2015. The agriculture industry saw a 20 decrease in fieldworkers over the past decade which has led to around 3 billion per year in lost revenue. In the absence of immigration this problem would likely be exaggerated which would hinder Economic Growth and double to improve the Labor Market Outcomes for nativeborn americans. At the end of the day immigration is needed to plug these labor shortages. In addition immigration can benefit of nativeborn workers by increasing demand for goods and services which leads to Economic Growth and can lead to additional employment opportunity. Our findings indicate immigration is a vital ingredient for dynamic American Economy. Immigrants do not harm the nativeborn workforce. They complement and enhance the. That sums up my research on the topic so thank you again for joining us and enjoy the rest of our program. [applause] all right. So you heard our take on this, but for some alternative takes we will introduce our panel and asked them to come up and then you were welcome to come up now. I will introduce our moderator for today. Our moderator is tim fernholz, reported with course which is mobile Business Online suntech writes about politics, Economic Policy. Hes a host of actual the podcast. He was a political reporter here in d. C. So he knows the area pretty well before he moved to los angeles as a Business Editor at good magazine. I will let trying to introduce the panels today, and thank you very much. Thank you. Can anyone hear me . Thank you all for joining us today. Thank you, theresa, for organizing this panel. I am here from courts, a global news site where i cover politics at the past couple of years that has been covering a lot of immigration related issues, release a lot of rhetoric about immigration. The question really is one of the rhetoric matched up with what is actually happening in the economy and the people. Thats what were going to talk about here today. We had a really good panel. Immediately to my left is daniel costa. To his left is David Dyssegaard kallick, director the Immigration Program at Fiscal Policy Institute and then finally last but not least we have dowell myers, a professor at the university of southern california. Welcome, guys. To start off, understanding the question of what immigration as a negative or positive impact on u. S. Workers and the u. S. Economy, there is actually, despite a lot of heated arguments about this between politicians, a pretty good consensus in the Economic Policy world. I wonder, david, if you could lay out some of the points of agreement and then we can get into disagreements. Sure, thanks. That was a nice report. Reinforces a lot of the things that we understand about whats going on as well. I would say if you read the newspapers you might have a different sense of how much discriminate there is among economists. If you spend your time reading the economic journals. You would have i was a very broad consensus among people who are very often. Against each other with real differences at the overall growth in income as a result of immigration, and overall benefit to you is one workers, that theres a particular benefit to women workers and their some negative impacts on men with less than a High School Education although at the same time a shrinking number of them. So i would say the obvious questions to me would be how to benefit from those overall good things about immigration and to try to figure out a way to address the question about whats happening to people who may be this vantage. Rather than acting as others they discovered about whether theres a negative impact. In what way . One way to do that against us to talk about the paper, daniel, you interest in the comparison between the different Labor Force Participation rate for native workers, for Foreign Workers but i think you want to complicate the discussion a little bit. I want to commend bpc for doing a great report that was valuable. It was convincing to me in showing the reason for the divergence in Labor Force Participation rates between nativeborn workers and foreignborn workers. He proves all of this point really well with a good data and charts and tables but there was one part where i didnt think it proved well enough. Its so by from the criticism of the paper. This assertion that are labor shortages in those lower skilled foreignborn occupations. What he cites in the paper as evidence for this is two things. Want is to serve as construction employers and an article in the wall street journal which talks about it. But even, i would say consider the source of employers say they cant find workers. What wages are they offering . Even the report itself said that construction workers, employers were not offering enough wages to entice workers out of of industries. The other report cited was a report done by a lobbying group which lobbies for higher number of guest workers. So how you really assess labor shortage are labor market. Wages in all of the low skilled foreignborn occupations, he shows over the past decade or so wages have gone down and every single one of those lower skilled occupations. Some of it on Research Look at the same occupation and the sound of very high occupational Unemployment Rate pretty much across the board over the last decade. Unemployment rates hovering at around double digits. And then theres other evidence that are not these huge labor shortages. More broadly the council of economic advisers just put out a report this month about the longterm decline in prime age male Labor Force Participation, and they basically said the demand for lower Skilled Labor is falling. They say they are not actually sure why its falling. Economist dont know for sure but part of the decline was at least in fact driven by weaker employer demand for people with low skills low and middle skills. A few years ago the Mackenzie Institute predicted this would be large surpluses of less educated workers with a High School Education or less. I think we should take this point about labor shortages with a grain of salt and look more at the date and the evidence. When we finally get coverage of Immigration Reform we should take this information into account. Your research has been on this topic in context of h1b and other temporary visa worker programs. Do you think if we stopped admitting to every workers, would there be more jobs for American Workers . Would those be the kind of jobs people would give . There probably are always going to be some labor shortage in some places, both in low skill jobs and in high skill jobs. What you need to do to make the program fair to both the mic and workers are coming and videos workers who are here is make sure that you heavily recruit and videos workers a fair first opportunity. The way the rules work in the broken some of them pay lip service. Some of them dont at all. Then you require that you pay the workers that you bring in at least no less than the average going rate for the job. Theres plenty of media reports and evidence that has not been happening. So if the system was a little more fair than you would have to worry about it so much because would be proving theres a labor shortage. That would be complimenting the workforce by definition. I think we should shift to a different system where we have made an independent agency that can assess whether labor shortages are across the country in the shortage area and give employers more direct access to workers but thats very different than we have now and the workers who come in should be indentured to the employers like to our and guest worker programs. They can switch jobs. Theres tons of fraud. Theres not much enforcement so that programs are tab 22 manage migration. In general i agree with what david said about how immigration is good for the economy but this is one place or its network is a well and we need major reforms. I would say i do see big reason for having temporary programs. I dont think what would talk about his immigration, people come and see. I think you want people to come, learn english, get experience and we should also read the benefit of the in our society lets move to different jobs. I dont see any real advances accept to some employers who are taking advantage of it i think you can come but you can only come and be restricted to this particular job and get to go back again. Its like guaranteeing they will not do all those things we want them to do. Speaking of the things we want them to do, dowell has done a lot of research on the demographics, we will need more immigrants in the next 20, 30, 50 years. Can you talk about that in the longterm challenge of . I would love to, thank you. A new idea occurred to me. Immigration reform is always about the next 10 years or maybe the next 20 years. Weve reform their regular. Most research is always the last 10 years. Pattycake the old and apply to the future . One thing we know for sure, demographically, ive got my colleagues here, the reason demographers are so much more than economist is that even though economists, economics is the most important thing, i agree, economist cannot predict Interest Rates too much ahead of time. Bitterly thing about three months. The marketers can look ahead 10 years, in 10 years time youll all be 10 years older. What we in the middle of is a Massive Retirement of the baby boomers. They are 60 million baby boomers on deck to retire. Not know of some of them already have gone but over the next 10 and 20 years. We have to rebuild the workforce online, not all at once but replacing workers as they go. The whole dimensions have shifted from the last 10 years which include the Great Recession and high unemployment as the report showed to welcome those curves are wonderful showing the rise in unemployment and the decline during the boom periods and now were hopefully now back to normal and we will hold it for the next 10 years. No more retreats. But Going Forward in time we have a shortage of workers. Than nativeborn actually dont generate enough new workers coming into theres entrances to the workforce and exits. They have to balance. If we live in a kind of growth, gdp, the calculations, i went back and looked from bush, even clinton, a couple of obama once and they all use the same form of basically. Gdp growth is based on labor force. Productivity is what he did wasteful and it hasnt been out the way they hoped. We will be well the labor force, we kind of has gone. 6 a year. Went through the growth used to have a that were budging against the headwind of that. Demographer come what lineup i just know theres not enough people. How do you get more people . Immigration is part of that solution. We dont realize that enough. I would maybe someone should take on this idea because the misconception that immigration d immigration affects economy come some kind of a econ 101 idea that if one person gets one job, theres one through job for me. But thats not how things work. In the real world, can someone take on why that is. I think that is the way things look your thats just chart one of these on onetoone. Needed to charge two and three. A little econ joke your so if you talk about just the labor market, more workers, more supply workers women lower wages. But then more people also means more customers. So more consumers. You are also expected that the people are spinning which means more demand for workers. The third piece is if you look at Business Owners, immigrants are, in fact, disproportionately likely to be Business Owners, i think it is exaggerated. I dont think theyre super ought to endorse but we know about 16 of the labor force and 18 of Business Owners are immigrants. What you see is not the econ 101 idea is look at other misconception because people are thinking just if there are more workers there must be lower wages. If there were more workers and the rest of the economy were static that would be true. What we see as the rest of the economy is going in part as a result of immigrants. Quick to point. I completely agree with it. In terms of the immigration debate some of the giovanni peris research has found that when to bring immigration into United States during slow growth or recession period it takes longer for the economy to actually adjust. For the most part it doesnt impact me people except the lowest wages, least educated workers but the sort of policy solution is to the immigration levels to the health of the economy so you would want when economy is growing in Unemployment Rates are low you want more immigration. Camera talking where the negative impacts sort of windup and why they exist in there . I think, well, i guess thats sort of which the discussion about the lower wages, the foreignborn lower wage jobs. Kenny i think mentioned in the report, he sort of ties it to the back that they are lesser educated and these are lowwage jobs. That make sense to he also says theres globalization pressure and recommendations which are not as well. That sort of makes sense but i think in some of these jobs there arent globalization pressure on landscaping jobs. Made in residential construction. Whats really happened is that wages being low, its not because the immigration. Its because employers and the Public Policy they managed to get governments to implement and that includes top of the number one is de unionization. Number two, failure of the minimumwage to keep a. A lack of labor enforcement, and then you do have 5 of labor force which is mostly lowwage jobs which are unauthorized which cant assert the rights, that there to portable, they fear deportation so they dont complain to the Labor Department can you intended to guess workers were exploited, cant switch jobs, cant complain. But these are all policy solutions which we can sort of raise the bar. A negative impacts that might happen from immigration during high immigration drink or recession or period, you can probably take care of that with a 15 minimum wage. That would more than make up for the gap. These are policy levers in terms of the undocumented as well, legalization, easy solution right there. Guest worker programs, reform those. Its not immigration thats keeping wages low. Its employers and policies. Theres almost an inexhaustible supply of these by want to talk about one of the talking point. Dowell, you cant explain. The claim that all new net gain in jobs growth has gone to immigrants and deny the state since 2000. That is something that you hear politicians say. Is that true . If it is true, why is about . Depends on the date of the people are using. Oftentimes its based on shortterm david. Actually the calculations which is lots of in the data. Over the longerterm, the data smooth out better. Basically you have a lot of baby boomer retirees. Get i say that already . I did i know to a lot of Older Workers are retiring and our new workers coming online. The workers are retiring most of them are nativeborn. Like 90 nativeborn. A lot of the nativeborn losses. And nativeborn of a duty of the new workers, too. But theres not as many nativeborn new workers as there are nativebornativebor n retired workers. So theres a net loss for the nativeborn. The growth occurring as a net growth among the foreignborn so you look at the double net, you can say that the immigrants are getting majority of all the net increase in workers, but really over half the new workers are nativeborn. So figure that one out. One technical question year or problem of the test result is what tv about the children of immigrants cracks do you call of immigrants or do you call the nativeborn . What do you call them . Its not exactly clear how to do that. For some purposes people want to lump them in with her parents because they grew up in an immigrant family at other times want to lump them in with the nativeborn because they are nativeborn citizens. So you get some messed up accounting if you count the children of immigrants as a cost, because the immigrants produced them, and dont count that showed as immigrants as a benefit when they become workers and taxpayers. Thats a real problem in our accounting system. Politically some people play arbitrage game with that and try to make it look bad for the immigrants. Of the people try to make look good for the immigrants. I just say he really should look at it both ways and make decisions on that. The National Academy of science report that is due out within a month does it both ways i think to try to figure out how to account for the costs and benefits of immigrants. You have to figure out how to treat the children. Children are expensive, nativeborn and foreignborn are expensive kids to produce the education system. But then the are major beneficiaries, providers when they become workers and partners and consumers and taxpayers. So its a dilemma how to do that. So when people look at the net change in this immigrants are taking the majority of the net jobs, thats only because theyre not really taking account of all the nativeborn retirees who just went out the door. Thats really whats driving the. Weve been talking so much about retirees, how are immigrants contributing or drawing for new social service programs, whether it medicare, medicaid, Social Security to all of these things with set up . Are the net contributors or net receivers . Do we have Good Research on that . If you wanted about salsas pretty, i think immigrants are contributing more than they are getting. A lot of that has to do with their age structure. Theyre more likely to be in prime working age because people can are as young adults to work for the most part. Undocumented immigrants, about half are paying into social good and almost none of them are getting anything out of it. Social security is anything. Although i would say the biggest piece of that is about the age structure. That salsas good is a payasyougo system for the most part. You want a younger workers paying for Older Workers so thats where immigrants come in. In. Federation aye senior ratio, the number of elderly divided by working age. Into Traditional Democratic measure. Its been constant in the u. S. At about 24 seniors per 100 working age. I call a working age 2564. Its constant until now. Now its skyrocketing going up to about 42. Thats what immigration included in the population. Hypothetically if you take the immigrants out of the calculation, this ratio that is going to increase i3 quarters over the next 20 years with an increase by 100 . Its an extra quarter increased that we would suffer without any immigrant addition to the immigrants tend to come into the working age population. They get older, too. But not all that once. We have this big problem. We have delivered a cliff we are going up in the data to guess at some retirees so quickly and we need to soften a cliff. One way to do it, built into it, with immigrant arrivals but even then its still not enough. How do we manage it is . No one wants to talk about it because we dont have a solution for aging. Any politician could stop aging, they would campaign on it but theres no solution. Theres a ton of programs and we have to pay for them but we dont want to raise taxes. We dont want to run a deficit that we dont want any more immigration. You cant have your cake for different ways. Aging is not the one is going to give. I guess im also not a politician but i think, i mean, i think its not so hard to solve those problems. Maybe we do need to raise taxes. Thats an obvious possibility. So you are right, we cant predict that they will but i think this is a pretty productive economy. We can make it more so with smart investment. I do think to kind of look back to the question about whether there are labor shortages and also talking about, you cant argue with the change in the demographic structure your i dont think that the our big labor shortages. And i dont think that we need immigrants to fill population, subsidy for declining population. Its not inevitably a bad thing for good to be a declined by pushing but i think the fact that we have this kind of age structure means we can absorb immigrants and we can do it very well. Weve done it before in the past the is part of the kind of pitcher we would see. I dont think every level of immigrants will do good but its levels within about the problem. The ways we regulated i think has been a problem and getting a better fix on how do we have an overall immigration system that works better and is enforced that i think is a good idea. Its not so much with shortages or we have needs that we cant otherwise be with those problems. Its more we can see we know how to do this and its gone pretty well and theres no reason to think thats going to be a problem in the future. In fact, kind of to the contrary. One thing that people point to as a symptom of alqaeda broken out immigration system is is a large undocumented population. And, obviously, we have the republican nominee out o on a camping trip saying we need to build a wall. What is the state of undocumented immigrants right now . Are they still a big presence . How are they affecting the u. S. Economy speak what they are 5 of the labor market, and twothirds of them have been here for over 10 years. One fifth avenue over 20 years. Their status has remained unchanged unfortunately things to the Supreme Court. But theyre going to continue working in industries they did and we know that they suffer wage violations and other labor and apply the law violations at much higher rates than u. S. Workers. And so we obviously need some sort of policy solution to i dont know what is going to be. Maybe its status blind labor and for the maybe its what california has done which is to pass a couple of laws that banned employers from making it legal for employers to threaten workers based on their immigrant status. You know, states are probably going to come up with solutions, proworker solutions. I dont know but its a picture of the labor market and when you do something to protect them, because protecting the else the u. S. Workers. That way they dont have to be undercut. Daniel is exactly right that theres 11 million already here and deputy for longtime. They are not going to go somewhere else. Thats an asset thats in place. Its their children again who are really in question. Thats what the daca programmer and at these immigrants. We already pay for their schooling weve already educated and ready degrees taxes and all kinds of good citizen type things. That they have been held back and they are in limbo. They are not going anywhere either. They dont even know the home country of their parents. They just didnt ever go up there. Am i right . Also if you are an unauthorized immigrant whos been here for a while who doesnt have a criminal record, the probability are going to get deported is already low and hopefully the president will make it even lower now that dapa hasnt passed. Can you tell us what the Supreme Court decision last week means for dapa ever programs like thats because the original daca and 2012 is unchanged, but the new program which wouldve impacted around 4 million of the parents of u. S. Citizen born children and legal permanent resident children is essentially in limbo, which means the status of unauthorized immigrants is the same and is critical back to the lower court to be heard on the merits. Doesnt eliminate injunction at issue but the program cant afford and its not going to be implemented while president obama is in office. So it will either have to wait a few more years for intel comprehensive Immigration Reform happens. I think in terms of this discussion today, youre talking about the current welcome people who are here already, the 11 or so. For the most part these are already people in the labor force but its a question of do you shift them from not having legal status to having some level of sort of Bargaining Power in the labor market so they can be more people. I think thats going to only be theyre not talking to immigration, document shifting people from not having status to a provisional status. I think your first question, i mean, i would say 11 we people is a larger number of people but its not really going very much but, in fact, it is shrunken, level off and maybe its going up in the last year or so but we dont see the same kind of train. People think is a constant flow of increases in undocumented immigration and, in fact, at this point it seems like its more of an outflow than inflow. Maybe now reversing a little b bit. We would be negligent not point out the economic benefits that wouldve occurred if dapa would have passed. Families with the least one dapa recipient, or from income wouldve gone up by about 10 anofpoverty rates wouldve gonen by about 6 . Thats from the migration policy and the urban institute estimates. Seems like were living some low hanging fruit on the tree, policy wise. Im curious, a lot of these ideas were talking about, were they present an the 2013 comprehensive immigration bill that passed in the senate and seems like a high point of recent Immigration Reform efforts . Was that a good piece of legislation in all of your view . Rmi asking you to comment on you know, im sure we could sit down to come up with something we would like better but i think it dealt with having issues. I would say there are three big issues that any kind of coverage that the reform has to do with. How to provide some kind of path with associate for them . You have to deal with how do you have an enforcement system that works and i think you can have enforcement system that works and building wall of any level beyond the board is one part of asia and is one thats already been an enormous amount of money. I think it is some kind of workplace enforcement and how to make assistant award for workplace enforcement that will put some level of inspections and come anyway, so theres enforcement. And then there needs to be some change in the future way that immigrants come. I can make it possible for people to come legally . Right now which o of his almosto possibility for anybody who is coming as a low skilled worker to come to the United States. I think the system daniel is talking about where you have some level of responsiveness to some kind of panel of economists and others to think about how do you judge went and make sense to more people come in and wouldnt make sense to have fewer. It has to be some kind of am the 11 million are here, you know, did it with enforcement in a better way and future close that immigrants. I think thats got to be part of it. Never compromises that was a bipartisan deal in 2013. One small point to illustrate both what you david, and daniel said. Daniel said, i was critiquing whether there was construction worker needs because it came from construction firms and political lobbyists it didnt include labor market data or metrics. One of the elements, a minor element in the reform package was a Labor Commission that would actually serv survey authoritatively what are the labor force needs. I happen to work in the housing area and there is a severe shortage of workers ever since the Great Recession decimated the capacity of construction firms to build housing. They havent been able to rebuild their labor force. Theres a real squeeze between the consumer and the producer. A big Construction Company owner get a little bit less of a cut. I think all of the let me revise what i said before. I dont want to suggest theres never a bigger market shortage. What you want i dont did you want to solve every neighbor market shortage by plugging a hole. Thats the way a market economy supposed to work there when theres a shortage you want wages to go out. If theres a not enough nurses, you want the industry to be investing by the government in how we educate more people to be nurses. I dont think you want to say every shortage should be filled by immigrants and especially not people coming temporarily and going back home. You want to say how do you build a growing economy in which theres room for people to get those jobs, just to make up a scenario. You want the labor demand to be lagging a little bit behind labor demand in the Economy Today because you want wages to be going now. This question is kind of at the heart of all of these forums, which is what kind of immigration do we want . One thing a lot of a lot of people sent in 2013 was maybe the most consensus is to run high skilled immigrants. Lets just get a pipeline for my high skilled immigrants coming to the u. S. A lot of people add to get further skill immigrants say we need to link those two things. Would it make sense to say we know we need ask, can they get that to divide immigrants by skill level. I think youre mischaracterizing the emphasis. Dick durbin both in here in the Washington Post started calling a 744 the reform bill, the h. One p. , the most said the particular he thought he was outnumbered by other people in a gang of eight because he needed basic reforms. Immigration and the industry essentially got what they wanted which was many more high skilled workers and they havent recruit u. S. Workers before you hire them. I think we have to make a decision about we are going to need everybody can agree we are going to need at some point immigration. We just have to decide how thats going to be managed in a way that minimizes the cost and opt to myself the benefit of how we do it. I dont know if you want my quick take on the Immigration Reform bill. Others say its a mixed bag. Thats probably why it was worth doing it. It had very huge increases in guestworker programs without needed reforms and there was really absolutely no money for increased label Law Enforcement and that is just too important to leap out. Theres no real biometric tracking system in the future. Its easier without modifying the system in a way that inquiries cant use it m. I. T. Is it against workers. Finally, there was a huge militarization of the border that wouldve occurred which is really terrible enacting progressive groups that want immigration to split off as a result of that as well. Its really a mixed bag. Seems like the employer of Labor Relations are going to be a key issue in whatever comes Going Forward. Seems like it is a major pivot point for all these policies. Step away from the economy for one second that talk about another aspect of immigration. A big thing that we are seeing in the u. S. Immigration reform or people from Central America. We had a moment on that last year. We see refugees coming from syria and africa. Our refugees coming to the United States any different than the typical immigrants are migrant . Do they have different economic damages or costs . We did a big report about refugees. I think that the way people have observed with going on is similar to what you described. There is a big syrian refugee crisis and a big change in europe and in turkey, even more so in lebanon, jordan. The United States has taken 3000 refugees from syria in the last five years. So its really not a significant number of people in terms of labor market. 300 Million People in the country. It hasnt changed very much. We think that you cant than plus or minus 10,000 or so a year and weve been doing that for the last number of years. We dont see in the United States the kind of increase in refugees the way that they have in other parts of the world. That said, refugees seem like they have a different profile than immigrants. Each group comes from a different kind of place. Although you quickly the ones we look at moms, somali, burmese and bosnian refugees and saw that what we are particularly interested in is very little data about that. And saw matt to integrate quite well, do much better and they need some help to get started and after 10 years they are doing quite well. One sort of other related question because were talking about immigrants in ingredients in the u. S. Economy a little bit. Sometimes they are refugees and theres a moral imperative involved. There are some people in washington like Michael Clements at the center for Global Development would argue bringing migraines to the United States is a better form of foreign aid to help people in poor countries. Do you guys think that is something policymakers should think about and do you think thats a good argument to make, a better form of foreign aid and getting what they can access. The remittances that go back from the u. S. Workers to their home countries is foreignmade. In that sense it is a literal subsidy for foreign aid. I worry about brain drain. The other countries in the u. S. And lease them back home. That is a counter development strategy. And the short run the short one cannot remittances administer over time after immigrant have been here for more than 10 years and drop off partly because their parents back home have died by that point and so they have less recipients at home. What about the brain drain . That seems to be a negative for foreign aid. There has been some study between western european communities. So there is a brain drain and also the return migration back to the countries have these potentially depending which country. They have great connections. There is no doubt that what you are saying thats the case. This is by far the biggest source of foreign aid that we have a few unaccounted that way. And also we dont do a lot of foreignmade. Look at the polls that show what percentage of people think is going to foreignmade. 15 must be going to foreignmade. You know, i think it would be smart for us to do more foreignmade and i would also address some of their problems in places if we did that well, which is another question i guess in places like Central America so you dont have people feeling like they need really for the situation spirit that would be a better scenario than benefiting from their coming here. I think a proposal would depend on how you manage the new migration flows. If you did something akin to open borders where there is a very large well all of a sudden, i would worry it would become a tool to lower wages by having all these new workers at one that would have to be gradual and done in a fair way where people were coming in and market wages and not being used to undercut wages. The mac so now we have a few minutes left before we get to q a. I will ask respond and feel free to add any concluding remarks he might have. Im curious. It seems that the discussion we have right now is pretty divorced from political rhetoric has been mentioned. If there is one theres not enough hair pulling as far as im concerned. If there is one fact that you could imprison in the mind of every member of congress, what would it be . Ive got my ready and are good i would start with what is happening with the native warned by the way and in python than that the severity of the baby boomer retirements and how you cant bring replacements all in one year. Youve got to bring them incidentally. Just that one fact. Do i like immigrants, did not like immigrants. What about us . We need immigrants to change the entire attitude towards immigrants. I dont think we are conscious of what we made. I dont think this is a fact that would change a lot of minds. It seems to be so absurd from the kind of conversation we are having. Immigration is much more diverse than people realize. You have disproportionate numbers of lower skilled, but also a lot of people in the higher skilled in the middle as well. I think that there are reasons for focusing on each of those in various ways, but to step back and say we have and also educational backgrounds, cultural backgrounds is very exciting and good for the overall vibrancy of the country and vitality of the economy. I think there is a tendency to zero in very quickly on what about those mexican men working in construction and not talk about the jamaican women working in child care and helping american women go to work with the accountants who are in fact is proportionate on this unaccounted for immigrants as well as Silicon Valley and all of that. It is a much more actually to your point about high skill or low skill before. The large majority of immigration is family unification. They dont have the kind of high skilled, low skill. Its not because of economic present. We do very well with that in the United States. We can improve it. We cannot leave so much on the table in terms of ways we can benefit from immigration and certainly improve our immigration system significantly. Somehow the country has managed to benefit nonetheless that the problems from a lack of reform. I would say i would tell the members of congress that we really are lack keen and need more and better data on immigration to improve the quality of the debate we need better longitudinal data. We need better data on worker programs. We have hardly anything thats really difficult to assess what is going on with immigration, what the impact is on wages. Its really tough. But that does is it divorcees what is actually happening from the debate and from the rhetoric and that just serves to increase the limits of powerful lobby groups pushing to regulate the immigration system so they can disempower migrant workers. We will descend to a night out if youre live stream, you can hash tag and give us your questions. If we go to the room we do have a question online for daniel and it concerns the great construction worker dispute. This is from the reporter at Construction Labor report. She asks Construction Industry players having a hard time finding workers like you said, some of the biggest proponents of guestworker programs besides increasing wages, what else can employers do to attract more nativeborn workers and occupation . Invest more in training and apprenticeship. Training and apprenticeship have really the investment that has decreased over the years. That is really at. There are going to be programs in place for when that isnt enough. But that is something that has been completely neglect it to work with labor unions in order to improve the staffers. We have questions in the room . Right here we have the microphone coming. If you could say your name and affiliation and make sure to ask a question in a brief period of time. By matthew at the naval postgraduate school. My question is where i do jobs. The reason i ask if they met with a young man who works for Silicon Valley. His 100,000. He said two of them in a bar. My concern is how do we get people like you to think about the whole question of employment as a holistic ratio, not just this narrow piece over here because it is so incredibly complicated. Just telling us one small piece of the story doesnt help us understand in terms of what is to be done. The question of how you think more broadly. I want you to communicate in a way that general public can understand it. The Vice President last week, last monday was giving a speech and he said we need people to think like wise man and communicate in the language of the people. So i ask you all if you would be willing to do that, but think about these complex problems and then holistic way and how will you make that happen . I cannot feel that one, but maybe one of you three can. Actually, its interesting they are not particularly focused on immigration and Economic Policy institute certainly think a lot about those questions of overall employment. We have been to be the ones that look at immigration issues. I mean, i think that there are good questions. My answers i guess is the icing first of all, barrys job growth and they are relatively low Unemployment Rates and theres this question raised about what is happening with people at the labor force but not looking for a job. There is some growth yet i think there could be much more. Theres a real concern about the idea there might be Slower Growth Going Forward and how to reduce and in with that . Invest in education, infrastructure. He needs to be countercyclical investment to say how to rates stimulate demand because theres clearly an absence of demand from consumers thats the reason for the lack of growth. So those of the mind. I dont know if that means joe biden criteria. I dont have an answer to how you make that happen, but i think those are the big issues. I was the essential economic challenge of her time is getting wages to go out. Capital share of income compared to workers have reached record highs of the session. As the number of things we can do to invest in infrastructure and increase union and make better laws and rules so that more people can collectively bargain, things like that. But its not easy. The more you pay people, the more they spread. Capitalism is a circular system. You will get Economic Growth and more job growth in pay people more money. Not the richest people, but the poorest people. The poorest people spend everything they get and the richest people will do other things. Do we have another question . Gentleman in the back. And Paul Donnelly at the Public Affairs group. Ill confess im a little bit disappointed because this has been a very sophisticated discussion about economics, but a little bit too simple about immigration policy. It wasnt until the very end that dr. Kallick mentioned both immigration is based on family. The question is if all immigration is the same, permanent to temporary legal and illegal we can talk about that way. Dr. Myers mentioned about a month the National Academy of sciences is going to do a new report on the economic and pack. They did one about 20 years ago, which concluded that immigration is a small benefit to the American Economy as much as 10 billion a year in a 14 trillion economy. In other words, if you get 145. Im a green cards, not guestworker guy. That is my bottom line on all immigration issues. Its a very simple question for you. Why would we ever want more people with fewer rights . A kind of feel like i did say we dont think we want that. We want to have a system of immigration that does respond to the American Economy made and i think as well as other reasons. Certainly daniel and i both say that i dont think youll disagree. People have full right and its better for the American Economy. People will calm with temporary visa and well go back afterwards. There will always be some. Its not like you want people to say they have to come and stay forever. That seems to me like what we benefit from most, what we certainly should be encouraging is discouraging. If theres any role at all, you can go through every single category and talk about numerous countless cases of trafficking and wages not being paid. If theres any role for that, it has to be in a way where someone comes for a very short period of time and is able to sell conditions for a green card to stay permanently. He would be better to assess that labor shortages are and just have them on the direct path to a green card, which eventually can mean citizenship if they wanted to touch it was much to my chagrin when i heard david weber unification. He never mentioned that it wasnt part of Economic Analysis that people do. They dont distinguish really h. One visas not part of the reunification. Its unique in the u. S. And canada and australia are that way. Theres more jobs are refugees through the american tradition has been a longstanding one. Back to my point earlier about Immigration Reform every 20 years and its a different time today than it was 20 years ago. When the last report was done in 1990s, it was responding to a different immigration climate. Immigrants today are much better educated today than they were back then and the cost is shifted accordingly in the current. I dont know the exact calculations are. I cant remember the numbers. It tries to follow a report tries to follow what hes done before with improved methodologies and the smart updated with contextual information. Weve learned a lot over the last 20 years. Can we get you to an exclusive preview . One of the biggest issues plaguing today, what is the conclusion is 12 chapters with lots of stuff. We know the media will take one point and summarize the whole report. We dont have a lot of debate among us. Many faceted. I really like the diversity of immigration made a key point that you take away that there is a key point because people stare at by one in their mind and the figure in their mind wont say what it is. The person is disappearing or has gone negative in the last five years. It is a big enough featuring some peoples minds that they might want to build a wall as the imagination from the past. We do make policies based on what we remember, what are conventional wisdom is from the last 20 years. By shazam at demographer, but i also teach in a policy school and i think about the intersection of these things a lot. To get agreement, you have to go to a common denominator through something old. Unless its a shocking new thing with the major earthquake. Like brexit. No, i didnt say that. I wanted to bring up brexit because there is a sense that he is immigration policy is and far too many people think the implications for the United States. We were talking about this a little bit before the panel. Do you see any lessons from brexit or the u. K. E. U. Immigration system that apply here . The i hope not. One thing i guess you could say in the news today and yesterday is a lot of second thoughts were people who were signing thing saying wait a second, theres not quite the same negative impact. It does look like it has economic consequences that could be a problem for us. Maybe we will not be walled off from the rest of the night having another benefit from the trade we do in europe. I guess i do think its a very broad level that the United States, like england, like the United Kingdom benefit from being engaged with the world and from the backandforth. I think it is also a fairly different concept. I guess the one lesson i saw was i thought it was completely wrong to blame immigration for any real negative impact and written i dont there is evidence of it. The immigration argument for brexit got a lot of momentum from the fact that the government was wrong a couple of times about what they thought was going to happen. First, when the e. U. Expanded based not only new workers or maybe you were going to come in and that ended up being half a million. David cameron spent years saying he was going to get that migration down to the tens of thousands. It never even came close to that. It gave offense to the public that the government is unable to adequately manage migration and so the system lost some credibility and theres a lot of angry people who voted for brexit. Thats a lesson to the United States that we should have a more transparent immigration system with good evidence and data into study was happening with immigration will lead to increased credibility of the system, which in turn i think will be to increase public support. Its also interesting if you look at the map of voting across the United Kingdom, the places where theres been a lot of immigration and David Cameron is promising below are the places where there has been a lot of immigration voted for being in the year. The places left behind by the overall economy where theres not a lot of immigration. At the more rural areas that are not as benefiting as much from the modern economy. The poll data to show that in counties where theres no immigration or very little immigration, those are the ones where respondents are most likely to say immigrants come here for a free ride, not to work. They had no idea what immigrants do worse in the great count as people know how hard they work and a very different attitude. Everybody gets to vote in america. Nothing about whats going on. They voted on information given by political opportunists who terrorize them about some imaginary freeloaders. The well, we are all up here talking about how brexit is a bad thing and we all agree that it is. There was a part of an argument that didnt get much attention which was the Progressive Left this argument. There is a movement that have to do with the fact that the e. U. Has been a tool to implement i stared in for his neoliberal reforms were it didnt turn out so well, i stared he was working terrible in the u. K. Until they started changing politics and got a little bit better. Paul krugman referred to it as punching yourself in the face and if you stop, its a little bit better. There was some sort of an argument on balance they did the wrong thing. After what happened in with the northern countries, that gave a little bit more credibility as well to people voting against it. The we can return to our stores now. We have a question from the internet of the Christian Science monitor was wondering if the families could speak to africanamericans and how they benefit by immigration. When i was summarizing the consensus, i was a part of it is overall there has been a positive spectrum on wages. I think overall for africanamericans, but for African American women in particular and then was less than High School Education or maybe also with High School Education do see some negative impacts. That is where there is in fact a controversy among economists is how big is the impact. How big is it and how so do you characterize the number you get. It seems like its a modest in fact and george boreas, for example, for example has said that the bigger impact. If you list the challenges facing black men with less than a High School Education, immigration would be cannot do list or maybe 20. Theres a lot of challenges. I think you would be wrong to say that its not fair. Fair is on. If you think about what would you do to address that, first of all you should pay the best thing you can do is have people graduate from high school and get a better education. Thats been happening to a pretty underrecognized agree. There are 3 million fewer members than there were 15 years ago. The rates have gone down from 29 to 17 are very dramatically over a 15 year period. We also know what to do to make it better. Investing in local schools, figuring out how you have more access to college and how you deal with the over incarceration of black men in particular, reentry after youve been imprisoned. These are all things that would be very appropriate for us to be doing anyway and certainly even more so if we are going to do it at the same time the sun is good for the overall economy that might continue if we dont address it, some negative impacts on this population with a lot of challenges. I like what you said. Its very complex with many different facets for africanamericans. As a general point which investment in Human Capital pays off. It pays off big time is different multipliers. 10 to one payoff. What is it that you look at. The younger you educate, but earlier you help young children, eight to one, age four, preschool, you get the bigger payoff over time. We are learning that now from scientific studies. The evidence is very clear. The problem is that requires investment up front with the past 20 years down the road. In our democracy we make decisions on the next election cycle at the next budgetary cycle and we are not able to think far enough ahead. We cant cultivate the quality of the workforce we have in place already. We would need as many workers to produce the same amount of goods. Maybe this gdp theme is built out of labor force plus productivity at the ratio could be more favorable for the people that live here. The biggest bang for the buck in my studies comes out of the most neglected segment of the population. They have the biggest upside potential. If you dont bring as many immigrants and can be sure better invest more in the people you have. I can see that as part of comprehensive reform were you cultivate the children here and cultivate our needs for workers. We have another question the room. You have hinted that there is some geographical disparities with the weight immigrants are able to integrate and contribute to benefit the overall economy. Could you speak more to that and maybe some advice for statelevel legislators on how to reap the most benefits for everyone. My name is ryan bob. Im at the office of immigration systems. So will well work on that looking at different natural areas. I guess i would say so in general you see this very close correlation of Economic Growth with growth in immigrant labor force and not the economy. I think you see people often ask because immigrants are attracted to places where there is growth or because when they go there they cause the growth. I think the answer is sort of yes its both of those things that people go where there is growth, but also when they come from and they become consumers, Business Owners and contribute labor and help to expand the local economy. Its pretty interesting to see some of the places where thats not been happening. More in the last five years i would say really across an area with legacy cities are more commonly known as the rust belt. Cities like detroit, cincinnati third, where the just in how you get immigrants because the big problem with the cities that they dont have enough population to cover their services, which means theres a downward spiral of decline at schools and Police Department and how do you pay for all that stuff if you dont have enough People Living there to pay the property taxes and other taxes to support the base. Theres been an interest in how you attract immigrants. , then i tried to say that advertisers to get them to come here. People respond to much more concrete things. What you can do is make it better for immigrants already there. That will attract more people which has the same effects and attracted people looking for opportunities. You can see a role in relationship to what was the main street businesses. In those cities, also declined in a lot of areas as well, please do where there is not much happening in an area. That is a direct impact because you dont have people working there. But it also has the Ripple Effect of the whole area because nobody wants to live place for their storefronts and decline in the neighborhood. Weve seen over and over again for immigrants are the first ones to come into an area like that. They open the restaurant. People start to come to the restaurant and the person who started it, but somebody else, some Hipster Group starts to find out that malaysia could we have a high before and its kind of good. Then you get a store next to that, dry cleaners. I was saying before that i think immigrants are more likely to be Business Owners, but that sometimes gets exaggerated. Immigrants are much more likely or 80 of Business Owners are immigrants or 20 of mainstream business is iran to immigrants. Thats a place where immigrant making a disproportionate difference and turn around the dynamics often in places where the people get attract good. A fabulous point. The counties that received the immigrant are kids, too. Big arguments over taxation in the local area. When the kids grow up, they dont stay in those towns where they move to another town, another county, another state. Santa anna, california to work great immigrants. It is teaching children with health care and graduated them onto another county another state. The federal government is to help the receptor areas to make those in the nations business. The nations workforce being built locally. Thats what the political push clashes over that. They have promised to sever economic revitalization. It still is a visible symbol of that clearly. But really the real Human Capital going on is invisible to people except on tax bills. The federal government to back it and i dont see that happening in the short term, i would make any predictions. States can also do some of that. You can see within a state, the people are growing up in the suburbs and moving to other places. The biggest cost is related to schools states and localities share the cost of schools and play a big role in equalizing not. A big point. My big red countdown clock is telling me we are out of time unfortunately. We will be around afterwards if anyone has any questions. Thank you to the Bipartisan Policy Center for hosting our panel. Donald, david and daniel, we appreciate it. Hope you have a lovely day. I will add my thanks for coming out. You can get a copy of our report online at our website bipartisan policy. Org. You can find all of our other research permission of integration on the website. The video todays event will be available on our website later today in its entirety. If you missed anything you need to put it, you can look at it online later today. Thank you, everybody, for coming and have a great day. Road to the white house coverage will continue later today with live coverage of donald trump talking about the u. S. Economy. Speed my president obama welcomed the minnesota lynx. The president mention his support for equal pay for female athletes. Ladies and gentlemen, the president , the president of the United States, accompanied by head coach, cheryl reid. [cheers and applause] hello, everybody. Hello. Everybody, have received. Everybody, have a seat. Oliver, as ive said, his mom is at. He is not. If you want to bring all to bring all of her, that is fine. Coach, what he said . Come on. There you go. Look, hes got his little suit on and everything. Look at him. Hes got the bow tie. There you go. All right. Now that weve got that settled. Good afternoon, everybody. Give it up for the 2015 wnba champion, minnesota lynx. [cheers and applause] so this is the teams third visit to the white house in the past five years. I should ask, whos hot . We have some lynx fans in the house, including the outstanding senator, amy called the charter. Wnba president lisa boreas is here. Welcome back to coach cheryl reid. Her title with the lynx. Shes feeling greedy though. She wants more. The lynx one at all. Champagne popping. She looks around and says this never gets old. Never gets old. You can see by the way they are playing this year that it has not gotten old for any of the players either. I want to take a moment to recognize somebody i know who has been in the small meant, who was a huge part of minnesota basketball at all levels and a supporter of this team. Obviously he asked. A tragic illness and saw on behalf of all basketball fun. We want to give him a big round of applause. [applause] so i think its fair to say this team is a powerhouse. Lindsay whalen, samora custis, recently named among the top 20 players in wnba history. Seems like you are all in the important three. Youve got that much talent. I got you. You just want this moment in the sun. Now this isnt to say its always easy. Last year these women face down midseason roster shakeups, but these injuries. I know its frustrating. A championship game that started a little bleak. Wednesday is sprayed her ankle. Im iowas trying to find her rhythm. But in the second half, the link started to gain as he. Simone finished with 16 points. Could be a got 20. They pulled away when the championships by 17point. It was their first championship at home in front of their loyal minnesota fans. As meyer put it, it wasnt a perfect year, perfect series are perfect game, but we are the champions and not is what matters. [applause] they did manage to have a pretty close to the tory party, though after the same lynx drove out a private concert, which was pretty cool and reminds us of how much we miss and hit the last time i saw him, he was on this stage no other really good partys. These women are not just basketball players. They are also leaders of the minnesota community. They host in the last Health Awareness game in partnership with a mayo clinic, made holiday cards for children of military members, and teamed up for the twin cities boys and girls club who would otherwise go hungry in the teams find honorary contracts with young boys and girls who are facing big challenges in the dream of playing that well. For a day, does the people were teammates. That is much as any trophy is what makes these women champions. So on the 20th anniversary of the wnba, this is a good moment to celebrate all that these players and many others that came before have accomplished. 20 years ago, amaya, moan and went he were playing horse in their driveway. Suddenly they saw players like lisa leslie, sheryl swoops, sue bird to about two as role models. There is no discounting how important matters. Today these women, the women of the wnba are setting their own out in an exam halls for girls who are growing up today. And they are aware of the responsibilities that come with that. We are not super rich like the guys, but money is not everything when you talk about dynasties and leg is these and inspiring young women and men and opening peoples minds. Although money is useful, too. And i am for people paying for equal work. [applause] i went back, i know lindsay would like to say a few more words. Lets give a big white house congratulations once again to the minute of the links 2015 w. And va champion. [applause] thank you, mr. President. Ive always wanted to say that. To a president , too, you know. Makes it special. So yeah, it is her or her time here in five years. Its been a good run. A good partnership. We were kind of talking earlier today, maybe if theres a chance we can do to get some legislation passed for you four more years than i say couple more times here, kind of keep this thing going. [cheers and applause] that would be good for us. Ive been her good luck charm, but you have to negotiate with michelle. We can do that. We can do that. 2015 as he said was a great year for us. It was a lot of fun. We had like any season theres adversity. We kind of had a rough patch in august, but weve learned from that. I think there must players kind of talking, a big microcosm of the season with a game of long beach and l. A. , where we were down it felt like 40. It was more like 20 at halftime. At that point we all came together. We couldve said we should go back and win at home, but we wanted to give it our best that night. But persevered through that, ended up having a couple chance to tie it. We didnt quit. We didnt give up as a general years. Khaleda yergin regional leaders. That has been our mentality. We didnt win that game. We came back and won three at home. My aquatic or the flexion in phoenix in the finals, which was on the best finals in the nba has three. A great year. The imitation definitely stands for you to come to our house. Whose house . Our house. Invitation stands. I know some people who can get users needs. We have a jersey for you. Okay. I like jerseyans. Lets strike the podium and take a good picture. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] give them a big round of applause. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [applause] president obama yesterday to report this minute and the associated press. The university of tennessee remembering tech summit in Womens Basketball coach that led the ladies to eight national championships. She died this morning in knoxville, tennessee. She was 64. Also, this story from cnns website today mitment and this promise to our miners. With that being said, let me tell you a little bit about whats going on in my state of whats going on in my state of with that being said, let me tell you whats going on in my state of West Virginia appearedg i came back last night. I was driving home thursday night. I got caught in virginia driving on 81 in this delusion of water and rain ive never seen before started while i was on 81. At lexington, virginia over 60 and paddington. Ive never seen in the river started running through the road. We were able to get through that and i was asked what was your First Impression coming in to West Virginia. You come into West Virginia and the greenbrier side and beautiful greenbrier is right there as soon as you come into our state. The exit will go to the w greenbrier in white Sulfur Springs i looked down and it was totally underwater. The curious thing i ever saw in my life is all of these cars were underwater and the lights were on. If the lights around someone was driving. For the latter two, that quick that you could need in your turn your car if you just try to get out the best you could, that gives you an idea of how fast the water rose. No one has ever seen anything like it. Then i see a floating done the middle of the road. I am thinking what happened. And then i tries in and get into charles m. Senator reid said nine inches. We had up to 10 inches of rain in some parts in those areas of southeastern West Virginia that really got hit. All counties got hit pretty good. If you could imagine nine to 10 inches of rain happening within a two to six hour. That would be almost like turning all the hoses you have in your house, turn them on full force and let them run for that period of time and it happens. Hi it is just unbelievable. First of all people didnt have insurance because they didnt think they were in a floodldnt plane. Next of all, people couldnt afford insurance who werent in a flood zone. Next of all, most of ours they come in the beautiful mountains we have, most of the people over the years, ive built in the valleys because that is where the river had meandered and cut out the level places if they say why would they build. This way theyve always been. Either the years theyve done Different Things and build dam floodwalls. B the dams to hold back which has helped tremendously. We need the army corps of engineers. We need to stay with federal government. I want to thank president obama, his chief of staff, dennis mcdonough. I called and i said dennis, if youve ever needed help, we need it now. Senator, i can assure you the president is ready to help us with you to put your debt ration in. Never had we had a declaration time and turned around. I think the entire white house staff with a compassionate heart or my state and all the people in the date as hard as its been hit. Weve got three counties with the declaration. That is nicolas and greenbrier, which was hit hard with the resort is. Those three counties are getting immediate relief. Over 700 National Guard coming in. But i flew over the area. I visited all the areas on friday. I flew over a saturday and ive never seen an entire town, an entire city inundated. That was in a tight spot in the town. So everybody got caught. Someone developed a warning. We did give warning. If youve lived all your life and your grandparents before you can never heard stories about water coming this past in the square, let me give you one the example. I went to white Sulfur Springs yesterday, down in the little town where youve seen the pictures on television of the house that was floating on fire. Before i got to that house, i am walking down, standing there should and there is foundation of few homes im a big no sign of the home anywhere. She had flowers in a crowd and thats where her husband who was the grand father. Her husband, her daughter and two grandchildren were in the house. They got clear to the attic and the house last. As one of the kids was saved, but one little child, mother, daughter and the grandfather were lost in the flood and she is standing there looking at what you say. There is no words to replace that. You see these types of tragedies. Then i walk across the bridge and they got me and said i want you oversee. Iowa trip across the bridge. Not a large stream, comes out of the mountains. That is where the forks basically joined. Ac sometimes the hydrology will back up and it creates a. The water create the dam itself. I walk in there and that thest bomb had gone off in the right rear of her home. He lived in one of them. He said when the thought had in the water he ran as quick as he could had to cave on the hillside did they thought everybody had died. The lady did get out and come back into the home. When the house shifted it broke the gas lines and gas lines broke it so that the homes with natural gas. When the house is shifted, the power lines broke loose. They hit the gas and blew up the homes like explosions going off. The woman was in the house, she got caught, she went back to get something. She went in the attic and got burned over 70 of her body and then she into a tree and hung in a tree for three to four hours until they rescued her and i understand she passed away yesterday. We have lost 23 confirmed dead. O we thought there was 25 because two people that struggle whenav reported missing. We are 23, but we still have five or six or seven accountable for it. The tragedy continues. I want to thank first of all fema. That is on the job. You can watch the last few minutes on our website on a cspan. Org. Senator trent takes and his colleagues began their session helper, conference report conference report to the military can action, veterans and zika virus though. A boat to advance at 11 00 a. M. Eastern time. Tomorrow the senate is likely to return for the restructuring puerto rico is dad. A boat as possible in one day. Live now to the u. S. Senate. The president pro tempore the senate will come to order. The chaplain dr. Barry black will lead the senate in prayer. The chaplain let us pray. Eternal god, the center of our joy, we lift our eyes to you. In a world with change and decay, you are changeless. Ur