Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20140624

And so over the course of the last couple of months we have traveled all over the country from orlando, florida, from san francisco, to seattle, boston, new york, my hometown of chicago, virginia. We have talked to workers and Business Leaders and Union Leaders and academics and deans and stakeholders from around the country all helping us figure out what we do to change that paradigm and reflected in this room and watching us online are all of you who have contributed to the agenda for today and also the announcements that we will be making. So thank you very much. We have ln listened to your stories. Since i have the podium, im going to tell you mine. I remember very vividly, i wont tell you exactly how many years ago. Well, maybe i will. 28 years ago and some change i was sitting around a Conference Room table at 2 a. M. 8 1 2 months pregnant. I kept trying to slip my swollen feet up on to a chair where nobody would notice, and for the women in the audience who have been pregnant, you will know that i couldnt actually sit there for more than about half an hour without getting up and taking a little departure but i was too embarrassed to tell everybody i had to go to the bathroom. I needed to get some papers. I needed to make a phone call. I needed to do this, i needed to do that. I needed to pee. And i felt like i was alone and i was in a room full of men and i didnt think anybody there was going through what i was going through so one of our big messages today is that you are not alone. Thats another thing that today is all about. Fast forward a few years later in a different job and my daughter is a toddler. I had a client who was extremely demanding. I loved my client. She was one of my first mentors but i needed to get home because i would wake up in the morning trying to figure out, how could i get home by bedtime. You know what thats like. I told her, i love to cook. Why dont you come over to my house for dinner and i will make dinner. I dont actually love to cook. She would come over every night and i would make dinner and i would get a chance to say good night to my daughter. Im not so sure she thought i liked to cook but she liked my meals and she was willing to accommodate my schedule so i could be home for bedtime. Terrific mentor and a great client. My final story is one that i have told very, very often. This is about employers who get it. I was sitting in a conference, room working for mayor daily, a little intimidating character for those of you who have ever met him. I had just been promoted and it was one of my first meetings in his office. I was sitting across from susan sure. She was the first ladys chief of staff. We kept looking at each other and finally the mayor realized that we werent paying any attention. He says, where is it that you need to go thats more important than here . So in a moment of complete, i dont know, horror, terror, truth, i said to him, the halloween parade starts in 20 minutes and we are 25 minutes away. And he said, and this is really important, then what are you doing here . And i am telling you, from that moment he had my loyalty, he had my work. I worked twice as hard. I was determined to be worthy of that. [ applause ] so as we have heard from all of you, what we have heard is hard working folks who are trying to make ends meet, we need to raise the minimum wage. Point number one. We have heard Everybody Needs to get to go to the halloween parade, so Workplace Flexibility is important. Paid leave is important. Were one of the only countries that doesnt have paid leave child care is important. For a while now weve talked about the glass ceiling, but you know what, it is that sticky floor that is the problem for so many minimum wage workers who cant get that break to get ahead. These are the issues weve heard from you. If you are that single mom who sends your kid to school with a little bit of a fever because you dont have any child care, ive done that, if you are that dad who would love to stay home with your children and your company has a policy that allows you to stay home but nobody in the culture of your Company Takes advantage of that policy, if you are a parent who never has been able to attend a Parent Teacher Conference Let alone a concert or a play in your school because your employer has rigid hours, if you are a company who wants to do the right things by your employees but simply doesnt know what to do, well let me tell you something, youre in the alone and this day is for all of you. [ applause ] so we are excited to be here. Were going to learn. Were going to have announcements to make. Were going to have a conversation with one another, but the most important thing i want you to remember is that this day is an important moment, but its not just a moment, its a movement. Its a movement and we are Going Forward from this day forward. So with that, i want you to welcome my partner in this with whom without whom this conference would simply not have been possible, who is an advocate for workers around the country each and every single day. Please join me in welcoming secretary tom perez. Thank you. [ applause ] morning all right. Good morning. You know, on cue valerie announced that this was a movement and general rosa delora walks in and takes her seat. Did you notice that, yall . Hello, general. Great to see you. Its an honor to be here, and i want to say thank you to valerie, to tina, to our partners in the white house, to our remarkable partners at the center for American Progress, nira and her wonderful team. I must take a moment to thank our wonderful people in the womens bureau. Latifa doing great work around here. You know, these regional summits have been remarkably productive and instructive, and heres what weve learned. Weve learned two things from these regional summits because weve been asking people the following things. Whats keeping you up at night . What are your biggest sources as a working family, as a single parent, what are your biggest sources of fear and concern . And the first thing we hear is that im working harder and falling further behind. What keeps me up at night is my second job because i cant afford to make ends meet. What keeps me up at night is the sense that i want to put food on the table but i also want to be home to eat at the table with my family because the most important family value is time spent with your family. And i dont enjoy that luxury. I dont enjoy that luxury because the minimum wage has decreased in value 20 from where it was 30 years ago. I dont enjoy that luxury because my wages have been flat even though im working 50, 60 hours a week. I dont want to be on food stamps, im told, were told with regularity, but i cant afford not to be on food stamps. And that is why the president is so he focused on equal wages. Making sure that nobody in this country who works a fulltime job should have to live in poverty. [ applause ] and that is why in addition to fighting for harkin miller, the president is using his pen and his phone to make sure we use every regulatory tool in our arsenal to help working families. For instance, the president helped to make sure that 2 Million Home Health workers have access to minimum wage and overtime protections. As you know, 90 women, 50 people of color, 40 to 45 on some form of public assistance. These people are doing gods work and they deserve a fair wage and overtime benefits. And so well continue to fight for wage fairness because weve heard that throughout our six visits to the various regional summits, but weve also heard something else, which is we need to make sure, as valerie correctly pointed out, that we have the flexibility we need to make sure that i can go take my kid to the doctor. I can take my mother or my father to the doctor. You know, we have such a changing universe here. You see, the nature of the family has changed. The nature of work has changed. Were living in that modern Family Society but were still stuck with leave it to beaver rules. Thats the world were living in, and weve got to change that. And you know [ applause ] you know, too many people, as valerie correctly points out, have to choose between the job that they need and the family that they love. Thats a choice that no one should have to make. Ive heard nira say with great remarkable passion that, you know, you shouldnt have to win the boss lottery to be able to take two hours off to take your kid to the doctor. President clinton did a great thing when he passed the family and medical leave act, but for millions of americans who are either not covered by the family and medical leave act or who are nominally covered but in fact are not covered because they simply cant afford to take that time off, we need the next frontier of workplace fairness. We need the next frontier of flexibility. We need to make sure that we are avenue no longer of the company of three or four nations on the planet who are the only nations on the planet who dont have some form of paid leave. Thats not who we are as a nation. [ applause ] thats why were fighting for this. Thats why weve been working so hard. Thats why the president continues to support grant year after year of state paid leave fund, because states are demonstrating that you can do this. Employers are demonstrating that you can do this and its the right thing to do and its the smart thing to do. Employers who pay a minimum wage, employers who pay above a minimum wage, employers who have flexible leave policies, they are creating a competitive disadvantage a competitive advantage for themselves and for their shareholders, and thats why were fighting to do this. Thats why im so proud to announce today that were investing in critical new research to understand the benefits of paid leave and that d. O. L. Will be investing in new grants to support the creation of state paid leave programs. [ applause ] by the way, speaking of the fmla, we believe that all families deserve its protections, and thats why we have proposed new rule changes just last week to realize the promise of windsor and to give all our lgbt brothers and sisters in legal samesex marriages the same rights that every family has. [ applause ] you know, im a labor lawyer and im a civil rights lawyer. You know what, as valerie said, progress does not roll in on wheels of inevitability. It takes everybody in this room, in this nation, it Takes Coalition building. Civil rights act of 1964 were celebrating the 50 year anniversary. That was first introduced in 1948. This workplace visibility, the fmla, we need to take the next tier. We have a president who is committed to that. We have partners who are committed to that. I am confident that we will, indeed, build this movement because we have generals like rosa delora, valerie jarrett, we have the general in chief, barack obama and joe biden and everybody else and we have my partner right here, the nonprofit leaders, the president for the center for American Progress and my friend nir nira tandin. Nira. That was great. So, i have to say, what great partners. We should be able to make a lot of change with this team, and i want to say on behalf of the center for American Progress, weve been really thrilled to have a fantastic partnership over months and months and months leading up to the conference with valerie at the white house and the entire White House Team and the department of labor, which has had a fantastic team. Valer valeries absolutely right. We all have stories, every one in this room and the people you represent, thousands upon thousands of people have a story. I have my own story, which is that, you know, when i had two young children, i had a son who was a year and a half, daughter was 4 1 2. It took a very high pressured job with a lot of time commitments to the job, and i had but i had a boss at that time who saw that i was struggling a little bit and she rescheduled meetings around me, made sure she changed her schedule so i could have my responsibilities both as a parent and as a worker. She changed around the entire work culture to accommodate parents. And as secretary perez said, i really felt like i won the boss lottery, but thats a real problem in this country. You shouldnt have to win the boss lottery. We should all have work situations where people recognize that when we are good workers and good parents, thats where the bottom line is and thats why [ applause ] and thats so much of what today is about and the white house has a fantastic report out today making the case for how improving our working conditions for families is set for the bottom line. We have fantastic partners from around the country, most importantly we have women, parents here today who are struggling with the challenges of making those terrible choices. When weve heard these voices in our in the events leading up to today, weve heard from parents who had to put Sick Children on a bus because it was that or making their rent. Weve heard parents struggling with the decisions about going to work when they know they should be home. Parents talking about how theyve anxiously waited until 5 00 and then dashed home because they knew their child didnt have child care. And thats whats motivated today. Again, today is not just about changing this conversation, its ultimately about changing the country. And were going to do that with everyone here. [ applause ] everyone here staying committed. We have fantastic academics, advocates, people and Business Leaders who recognize how critical it is to have the workplace rules that will help them compete in the 21st century. I want to say a few things to a few of our partners who have helped support putting this conference together. Connie millstein foundation, the ford foundation, the Lloyd Gardner foundation, bright horizons, nekc, all of these people are leaders. [ applause ] all of these people are leaders who bring together diverse viewpoints and ensure that we can make change. We have to learn from these models. Well have a great day today. Today is just the beginning. Were going to have to roll up our sleeves to make change at the local, state, and ultimately federal level to improve the quality life for all our families and ult mittly for our economy. So its my great honor and privilege to introduce joe biden and Vice President biden and jill biden because these are key people who work every day to improve working families and who we are so thrilled to help start out the conference. [ applause ] good morning, everyone. Good morning. I think i need some of what tom perez is drinking. He really had some energy, didnt he . Its wonderful to welcome you all here to this important discussion and thank you, nira, for that kind introduction. Everyone here knows the challenges facing working families. I, myself, can vividly recall teaching full time, getting a masters degree, and raising three young children. Even though i had a lot of support and resources, it was still a lot at once. And those kinds of challenges have only increased for todays working family. Today in 3 4 of families all parents work, whether its a single parent family or both parents working. Women are nearly half of our work force but too many women still men and often face advancement barriers. And on top of an already complicated child care schedule and community obligations, many working families are also caregivers foraging parents. More and more Companies Know that they need to find ways to address those challenges so that they can attract and retain talent. They also know that People Choose one job over another because it is in the best interest of their families. Last month i was in seattle for a discussion with Business Leaders and employees to hear more about some of the creative ways that they are addressing these challenges and attracting and retaining top talent. What i heard there was pretty simple. Employers need to take more than just the eight hours a day an employee is sitting at his or her job. They should also think about the stresses that employers that employees face outside of work, child care, aging parents, long commutes. If an employer can find creative ways to ease some of those stresses, employees can be more productive with the time that they are at work. What i heard also from employees was very clear. When they felt that their workplaces valued and appreciated them, they were upbeat and enthusiastic about their jobs. They were committed to their employers and they saw that their job was not just the place that they went to work for eight hours a day but a place that they were invested in the companys mission. One of the companies that the discussion was moes. A Software Company that works hard to create a flexible structure. Jamie, a project manager at moes told us that her days were filled with organizing meetings and making sure her team is getting everything done. But because of moes no meetings friday policy, she was able to enroll her twins into four a fourday kindergarten next year and start friday fun days this summer. Not only is jamie getting to spend time with her kids, she also has peace of mind that every monday she wont have to catch up on a days worth of missed meetings. R. E. I. Was another company that participated in the discussion. They allow for flexible commuting so employees can go in earlier and miss rush hour. Im sure thats something everybody here can relate to coming into washington. As an outdoors company, they also want their Workplace Culture to encourage employees to live healthy lives. What they referred to as nature nurture. So they encourage employees to get outside, go for a hike, and engage in activities that they enjoy outdoors. Pretty nice, huh . The participants also discussed other ways to address many of the challenges every working family faces offering on site day care, providing a set amount of paid leave and connecting workers with elder care programs. Underscoring all of these policies was another theme. Employers should trust employees and trust that these Solutions Make workers happier and more productive. Its important that businesses adopt policies that recognize that life is rarely simple and that the American Family has changed. When we think of caregivers, we also think of a mother caring for her child. That image does not reflect todays reality, particularly those in the sandwich generation, individuals who are caring for their children at the same time they are caring for their parents. Like so many americans, both my husband joe and i have had firsthand experience of caring for our parents in the final years of their lives. I can vividly recall helping care for joes parents, both of whom came to live with us in the last months of their lives. But the roles of caregivers in Todays Society is expanding far beyond children caring for parents, a role that reminds me of two brothers i met last fall, kyle and brett letsky. Kyle is an Army Specialist who was injured in his first deployment to afghanistan in late 2012. During his recovery bretts employer encouraged him to make the most of the companys leave policy. They kept his job open so that he could go and care for his brother. Stories like theirs are why this convening is so important. Everyone participating in this important discussion can contribute innovative ideas to help make life a little better for our working families. Whether its resources and flexibility for employees who are acting as caregivers or mentoring for women or offering Flexible Working arrangements, all of us must continue to think creatively about the workplace of the future so that we can ensure that every working american has an equal opportunity to succeed and care for our children. Thats what i know our next speaker wakes up every morning thinking about. [ applause ] it is my great pleasure to introduce my husband, Vice President joe biden. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Before jill left the stage, im sure glad she took me to work today. Tom, i think you have i dont know, i was just out at starbucks headquarters. I think you got the double jolt. I dont know, man. By the way, hes that way at midnight, too. Thats why i love working with him on the work he and i are doing about jobs and the future. Valerie, thank you, kiddo. Youve been a great, great friend to me personally, but youve also you and tina have never let up on this subject. You have from the moment we took off and focused on it. [ applause ] it matters. It matters a great, great, great deal and nira, you do an incredible job at cap, but you do an incredible job of everything you touch. Its a pleasure to work with you. Look, let me begin by stating the obvious in times when its not always so obvious. Every single circumstance is different. Every one of you in this audience have a different circumstance, different opportunity, different problem. How many of you have children out there . Raise your hand. In each one of your cases there are different pressures. Theyre not all the same. Theyre not all the same. And the fact is that the fact that youre here, the vast majority of you, youre youre among the lucky ones. Like jill and i, youre among those who are educated. Youre among those who have options mostly. Youre the ones who generally make enough money that you can get some help in caring for your children or your parents. Even if you dont have the salary to do that, youre the ones that know your way around. You know the existence of programs to help your elderly parents or your children. Youre the ones in your communities who have were not going to speak about it much today as i looked at the agenda, but, for example, there is a whole lot of things that are going on and weve been working on for in my case, for over 35 years to ameliorate the pressure on families. And that is, you know, everything from after school programs. They make a gigantic difference. Thats a government program. When mom and dad [ applause ] i mean, we have millions of turnkey children going home after school, no one there, 3 00, 3 30 in circ kumstances tt are not always i was raised in the grade school by the nuns. They say, you know, temptation. Well, you know, its i dont care how good your child is, but a 12yearold going home and turning on the key to get in the house, even in a safe neighborhood, is still its still a concern. And so theres a whole lot of things where we are not going to be talking in detail about, but the vast majority of single moms, and i might add dads, dont dont have these opportunities. [ applause ] each one of you here, if youre honest, and you all are honest, i mean this sincerely, you know how difficult it is to do your job, advance in your job, and be the parent or caregiver for your parents that you want to be. Youve been raised, 99 of you, with the notion that your first and foremost obligation is to your family, whether its your parents in distress or your children. And its really difficult. A lot has to do with personal choices that we make as to how we allocate our time versus relative to our careers. I dont think anyone participating here makes any moral judgments about any of the choices people make as long as theyre conscious choices with real opportunities, and our job, it seems to me, is to provide as many opportunities so that the choices that are always going to be difficult, the choices that have to be made are at least more rational, at least there are more options. But there are a lot of factors and a lot of players that can have a significant ameliorating impact on the difficult choices, women primarily, but men also have to make in raising their children. If you have do you have an extended family that can help you . Thats a big factor. Can you afford safe and nurturing day care . What organizations outside, including your school, outside your school are available in your community from a ywca, to boys clubs, girls clubs. By the way, we owe you. You do an incredible i spent the bulk of my career chairing the judiciary committee. Theres an absolute direct correlation between children getting in trouble and having access to boys and girls clubs, ywcas, ymcas. It matters. Youve got to give children choices. Children basically want [ applause ] children basically want to do the right thing, but the peer pressure is overwhelming. Sometimes they need an escape, they need an excuse. Mom or dad are not present. But, look, you all know all of these things, but one of the factors were talking about today is also that can be incredibly ameliorating, not just the policies, but how understanding is your employer . How understanding . You know, what if anything can the federal government do to help, lastly. I say lastly, all of these things, if theyre working well, including your employers, is less need. Now theres need for minimum wage, theres need for a whole range of things you discussed, equal pay, things weve withbee working on our whole careers but theres a whole lot we can do to change the atmosphere. The examples jill gave. Youll get to do all of those. A point of personal privilege, i can speak from personal experience. The first thing youll say, biden, man, hes got a mildly expensive suit on, hes Vice President of the United States of america, he makes notwithstanding he still makes a lot of money as Vice President of the United States, and i do, by the way, i do. Dont hold it against me that i dont own a single stock or bond. Dont hold it. I have no savings account, but ive got a great pension and ive got a good salary. And for real. [ applause ] for real. Sometimes we talk about this stuff about struggle. My struggle, my god, compared to where i grew up and the way people are trying to go through things now, but heres the point i want to make. Ive been really, really fortunate. And jill as a Community College professor, shes seen the struggle of working parents trying to secure an education while earning a living, raising a family, and many times being the victim of Domestic Violence in the process. As a military mom through the great work she and the first lady have been doing in joining forces, she knows the stress on military families facing struggling through multiple deployments, caring for returning veterans, coping with financial emotional pressure. These are real. These are real. You know, she knows what you know, that no familys alike. No struggle is the same. No opportunities are identical, but all families, whether theyre headed by two parents, a single mom or a single dad share the same basic dreams and same goals for themselves and for their children. We cant equalize it all but we sure in heck can do a lot better. I want to support look, they want to support their families. They want they want to feel comfortable. They want to feel safe. They want to be in a secure home and a secure neighborhood. They want to send their kids to college. They want to care for their mom and dad if they have to and put aside just a little bit, maybe a little bit for their own retirement. They want to achieve these goals without having to sacrifice all of the moments that really matter. My generation, and obviously im a lot older than you, you can see that, but all kidding aside, my generation as i was getting in college coming out of college in the late 60s, it was, you know, its not quantity time, its quality time. Give me a break. Give me [ applause ] theres not one important thing my sons or daughter have said to me that came about, well, we have quality time. Lets go fishing. Lets discuss it. Every as parents you know that to be the truth. The most incredible things your children say to you, ask of you, reveal to you are in those moments that you dont anticipate, moments that occur when youre reading the story at night, when you get home and you climb in bed with them even though theyre already asleep and you pet them. No. One of the great memories of my daughter, whos a grown woman and a social worker, as id stroke her hair shed say, daddy, you know what i miss most . I used to smell coming home from work lying down in bed with me. You and i you know what im talking about. Theyre the things that matter for gods sake. But not all of us have the kind of flexibility that i have. Not all of us had the opportunity. Not all of us had the outside help. Theres no substitute for being there. No amount of compensation to replace being physically, emotionally, mentally present to be there when your child needs you. We all know theres times when were not going to be there. Its just a fact of life. When i lost my wife and daughter in a car accident shortly after i got elected before i was sworn in to the United States senate, i had a whole heck of a lot of help. Ive got an incredible family. My sisters the origin of a phrase in our family, if you have to ask, its too late. And i mean that sincerely. If you have to ask, its too late. So i got home from the hospital and my sister had already moved into my home, given up her no, with her husband. Gave up his job. No, im serious. Who has that . Who has that kind of help . My mother lives nearby. My brothers. They all helped me raise my children, but i was a single father for five years, and i want to tell you, with all the help i had, and i was making a good salary, i was a u. S. Senator, i was making a salary a lot more i was making 42,000 a year and that was then. No, the average salary was close to 19,000. So i was doing well. And i had all this help. And the overwhelming goodwill of the entire state to wrap their arms around me and my children. I used to think to myself, i give you my words, i used to say to myself. I had a secretary in delaware who had three children and was single. Her child would be held to the exact same standard as mine under the law. How in gods name could she do what i was able to do, and i was finding it hard. Really hard. But i got lucky. I still i still had to find my way. My son hunter was 3, my son bo was 4. Still in a full body cast, both arms, both legs all the way up to his neck. When id leave for washington every day i could almost hear the fear in their voices. Are you going, daddy . They wanted to know if i was coming back. They wanted to know, is everything going to be okay. So so to demonstrate to them but not really, because i needed them, i made a point to start i thought i was only going to stay for six months, start to commute back and forth every day, 8,000 round trips later, not a joke, 8,000. No, no, no, no, no, no [ applause ] really and truly by the way, it was i needed to do that. I needed to do that, just for me. They helped raise me as much as i helped raise them, but heres the point. You know what i found out and employers can help in this, that it really matters that even if its only like id get home at night and after five years no man serves one great love let alone two, and five years later when jill came along and basically saved all of our lives, what happened was what happened, id come home and i used to get home late, not real, real late. Id get home by usually 8 00. Shed keep the boys up. Theyd have their dessert while id have my dinner. And i know thats not michelle would not like giving them dessert but it was healthy dessert. Look, look, you do it. You go up and you and you lie in bed with them. Whatever your tradition is. My case wed say prayers like my grampa finnegan would do with me. Theyre the things that they remember. When they woke up in the morning it was no ozzie and harriet, all in the family kind of stuff where we all sat and had breakfast together. But while i was shaving theyd come in and have whatever was on their mind for that day, wed go downstairs. While im having a cup of coffee, theyre eating their breakfast because young kids can only hold an important idea for about 12 hours. You miss it, its gone. It matters to them and to you. Nothing was more important than being there. I didnt have any one boss. I had a Million People in delaware who were my boss and they were pretty understanding. I sincerely mean it. I missed my first six years i was one of the lowest percentages of people voting. I had an 87 , i think thats what it was, voting. I never missed a vote that was a deciding vote and most were procedural votes. Everybody said i think they came up with all these explanations. The other team was doing the right thick. They were attacking me on tv, which made sense, saying would you hire a man who only showed up 87 of the time, et cetera. And so i over the advice of my and i tell you this to tell you how i think people think, over the advice of the experts, i did one ad. I looked into the camera and i said, look, its true, i missed whatever it was, 13, 15 of the votes. And if you elect me again, i will do it again. No, im serious. And i said, because i will never miss a vote that makes a difference, but if i have a choice between a procedural vote and my childs Parent Teachers meeting, im going to the meeting. [ applause ] no, no, heres the point. Its not about me. Look at the luxury i had. How many of you would like to be able to do that. [ applause ] im no different than any one of you, for real. Im not trying to say, oh, joe biden, he did the good no, i had the ability to do it. You all want to do it, and i could make a choice. And i was confident the people in my state would understand because i was confident. The reason i tell you the story is i think thats how almost every american thinks. They think if they only could, if they only could they would. So, folks, look, the fact of the matter is there are too many people where it comes down to making a choice between doing that Parent Teachers meeting or going to that championship game or showing up at that debate or being there just when your child is sick, having to choose between doing that and their job. Not one time but like many of you, my familys been an incredible consumer of health care costs. My sons were critically injured. My daughter had a sublux of her vertebrae in traction for a long time. We had the option. We could choose who could stay home. I cooperate from my home, assuming there werent a critical vote. But the point is, those kind of choices most times it comes down to not losing your job or not, it comes down to subtle things. Its about if i dont stay and help finish the project and not go to my daughters parents night, theyre going to think i dont really want to work hard. Theyre going to think i really dont care about my job so, dammit, your employers not demanding you do it, look, ive had some really incredible people working for me. I forget one time we counted them. I had Something Like 25 rhodes scholars, more marshal scholars. People i had a law firm of 65 people as chairman of the judiciary committee. Almost every one graduated in the top 5 of their class. Really, smart, smart, smart people. Ambitious people. I remember during the really difficult hearing, a hearing having to do with us conducting on the Supreme Court and a very controversial hearing, judge bourque, and the young man who and im not going to mention his name, one of the young men who had done most of the research in the background on judge bourque, he was having difficulty at home. He was having difficulty because he was spending so little time at home for the previous six months in preparations, having difficulty in his marriage. And the day the hearing started, fortunately i had a guy named ron who was the chief of my staff came to me and said he has a problem. I said, tell him if he comes into work, hes fired. Not a joke. Not a joke. I wasnt being noble. I wasnt being noble, it was the right thing to do, but beyond that, he was important. He could do it from home. He could be on the phone. He could let us know. And he had to be assured though that it would not affect his advancement. Thats all employers have to do sometimes is let you know that these subtle choices, i dont have to have some massive policy, particularly if theyre smaller. Look, no one the other piece about what jill pointed out about trust. You know, folks, we make such a mistake, i think sometimes, because i dont know, im not quite sure why, but guess what . Trust is usually returned. Trust is really usually returned. I have a policy. I just hired on three very high profile people. The first thing i sat with them when i hired them, say, look, heres the deal, if you ever have any problem at home, no matter what it is, you dont have to tell me what it is, sometimes its embarrassing. My child has a drug problem. Im taking him to counseling. Vast majority of parents face that. My im having difficulty. My wife is having and i are having a problem. My father is you dont have to give me an explanation, just say, look, i need the time. I need the time. No explanation. You have no idea. I guess you do have an idea how much not only is it the right thing to do but how much loyalty that engenders, how much response you get. [ applause ] and by the way, those of you who are employers, corporate folks out there, you know when its being abused. You dont need a roadmap. You know if that is really abused. And so its a lot easier to trust. People dont abuse trust. If you really trust them, by and large, you know, these are the things that i think all employers can do. Now its true that many times problems are much bigger. Company wide policies have to be made. Decisions on flexible schedules, expanded leave policies, telecommuting, job training and education, onthejob training and education. These are all points youre going to discuss in some detail today. I wish i could stay, i really do. I wish i could stay and be in this conference. So id point the point i want to make today is that all the Corporate Executives and Business Owners in this room, its about creating policies that allow your worker to balance family and work and its never going to be an absolute balance, but in a way thats better for them if, if, if you give it a shot, i think is overwhelming. When i was chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, i mention this because in the book lean in her name is mentioned. Shes still a great friend of mine. Cynthia hogan. A first rate lawyer. She was my chief counsel. She was with me a long time and one of the reasons why we were able to successfully pass the violence against women act. Before she left in 1996, when her first child was born, and as Cheryl Sandburg described in her book lean in when i asked cynthia to return when i became Vice President as my chief counsel at the white house, she was concerned that she wouldnt be able to continue to have time for her family. Now, teenager is a little bit older. We worked it out. We found a way to give her time of flexibility she needed benefiting from her experience and her talents which were badly needed. As her employer, i benefited just as much as she did. There were certain days she left by a certain time so she could be home. It wasnt a hard thing. There was no loss of productivity in my office. I mean, i would have taken cynthia for five hours a day. But the point is she was able to do it from home. So when the kids walked through the door, which was important to her, important to her, she was there. She was in connection with the office. We made a rule. No matter how important it was, she didnt get a text message during dinner because it was important time. Important time. Heres the deal. You all know it. Study after Study Confirms my experience. Family friendly policies reduce turnover, they boost performance and they boost productivity and speaking of cynthia and some of the other women in my shop with children, they are the reason i was able to write the Domestic Violence law in the first place. I cant leave [ applause ] the good news for you is im about to leave but i cant leave without saying something about the violence against women act. You know, nearly onethird of the victims of Domestic Violence lose their jobs because of the impacts on their employers. There are real impacts on their employers. What happens in the workplace. An abuser coming into the workplace disrupting and breaking out the windows of the car in the parking lot. You know, flattening the tires. Threatening coworkers. It happens. And so you can on one hand understand why employers particularly in big operations say, whoa. We dont need this. We dont need this. Its disruptive. But the total cost to the economy are the costs of the economy according to the center for Disease Control and prevention is about they can list 8 billion in lost productivity and healthcare. Thats not the total cost to the whole economy, which is much higher. Employers can and many are i was going to list them but my staff says dont list the ones because youll leave somebody out and i always listen to my staff. All kidding aside, a number of Major Companies are making a big difference because theyve developed policies to help the victims keep their jobs and stay safe. It takes effort on the part of the company. I would urge you as another time not as part of your discussion today, but i think you cannot talk about opportunity for women unless you talk about dealing with in the Work Environment the violence against them that occurs, Domestic Violence. I hope you employers will take a look at some of your fellow companies who have done and provided permissive environment for victims against Domestic Violence. Youre going to hear a lot more today. I know many of you are already putting these policies in place. I want to close by thanking you all here, thanking for everything you do for working families in your companies and your communities and your country. And like i said, we may need broad policies. I think we do. Youll talk about them. But an awful lot of this can be done just by subtle but nonetheless significant understanding of the circumstance that particularly single moms and some single dads have to deal with. Thank you for caring so much about our kids. Thank you for caring so much about being able to make sure that particularly women have the opportunity to meet their potential and every one of their expectations. God bless you all. May god protect our troops. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. Now you can keep in touch with Current Events from the Nations Capital using any phone any time with cspan radio on audio now. Simply call 2026268888 to hear todays Washington Journal Program and listen to a recap of the days events on washington today. You can listen sundays at noon eastern. Cspan radio on audio now. Call 2026268888. Long distance or phone charges may apply. In a few minutes a Congressional Oversight Committee investigates missing irs emails. White house spokesman josh earnest was asked about the investigation at todays briefing. I would like to jump to the irs. The commissioner John Koskinen has been testifying up on capitol hill and one thing he testified and i wanted to ask you about. He said he didnt know about the lost emails from lois lerner until april but the irs did not inform congress until june. Is that an acceptable level of transparency do you think . Two months that the commissioner of the irs knew about these long emails but congress wasnt told until june. Jim, i cant account for that time line so i would encourage you to direct that question to the irs. The one thing that seems obvious the question is whether thats acceptable to this white house. Two months go by. Theres a question begged by your construction which is what would congress have done had they known about it in april or may or whenever the commissioner first learned about it. The fact of the matter is that there is not anything that is tangibly different about the situation right now. So this administration why was that information not passed along . You should check with the irs about this. Our commitment to cooperating with legitimate congressional oversight and in some cases illegitimate congressional oversight is pretty well documented. Ill go through it again because its entertaining. Are you saying Darrell Issas oversight is illegitimate . I am saying there are questions that can be raised about the partisan motivation of those conducting oversight in this circumstance. There have been 17 congressional hearings into this matter. Two in the last 17 hours and three in the last 24 hours. Theyve had as many congressional investigations into this in the last 24 hours as ive had meals. That seems like a lot. 30 interviews with irs employees. 50 written congressional requests. 750,000 pages of documents. After all of that, after three long congressional hearings in the last 24 hours, zero. Thats the other key number here. Zero. Zero evidence to substantiate any of the partisan republican claims about this matter. Isnt the problem here the problem, josh, is you have a key figure in this controversy. We have different ideas about what the problem is. I think the problem is that despite all of this, we have seen an unwillingness doesnt that sound like the dog ate my homework when you have two years of missing emails. On the face of it doesnt sound credible. If you listen solely to the arguments offered by republicans, you may have reason to question their credibility. I agree with that. The fact of the matter is that despite the failure of the hard drive as has been well chronicled, the fact of the matter is 24,000 emails from that time period have been reconstructed and produced to congress. Again, because of our commitment to cooperating with congressional oversight in this matter. Thats what were focused on. I understand why your eyebrows are raised when you see republicans on capitol hill suggesting that there are two years missing emails. Its not true. A large chunk of those emails have already been provided to republicans in congress. When they say that, it is an indication i think that they are becoming increasingly desperate to try to substantiate the conspiracy theories theyve been propagating for some time now. The key number is zero. Zero evidence to support the claims that are made by republicans in this matter. The president is comfortable with the level of disclosure for all of the reasons i cited. 13 months of congressional hearings. 17 including three in the last 24 hours. I think our record of cooperation on this is probably something youre tired of hearing about right now. Its so long just asking the question. The white house is also comfortable with the people looking into the missing emails . I think that is the Inspector General and theyre independent. I would render a judgment on their activities and i dont think it would be appropriate for me to. Theyre independent. For the second day a hearing was held looking into the missing irs emails. Thats next on cspan3. Then a look at the growing violence in iraq. Later, remarks from former republican congressman alan west. Coming up on the next washington journal, congressman Henry Cuellar of texas on circumstances driving unaccompanied immigrant children across the u. S. Border and a look at options in iraq and our defense priorities. Our guest is representative rob wittman. And late r bob wright will spea on autism. Washington journal is live every morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Next, former irs official Jennifer Oconnor and the David Ferriero talk about missing emails belonging to lois lerner. Lerner is part of an investigation on whether irs targeted political groups seeking tax exempt status. Darrell issa oversees this hearing. Good morning all. If you could please close the doors and be seated. Good morning. The committee will come to order without objection the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the committee at any time. As i said last night late for many of you and i say again this morning, the Oversight Committee exists to secure two fundamental principles. First, americans have a right to know that the money washington takes from them is well spent. And second, americans deserve an efficient, effective government that works for them. Our duty on the oversight and Government Reform Committee is to protect these rights. Our solemn responsibility is to hold government accountable to taxpayers because taxpayers have a right to know what they get from their government. So its our job to work tirelessly in partnership with citizen watch dogs to deliver the facts to American People and bring general reform to the federal bureaucracy. This is our mission. This is our passion. And this is what were here for today. The Committee Meets today to continue our effort to get to the truth about the irs targeting of conservative groups. Last night we heard testimony from the commissioner about how and why the irs came to not save and in fact to destroy the disk drive that contained emails of the now well understood and criminally charged by the house former head of the organization lois lerner. I say that again. Lois lerner has been referred for multiple criminal charges by the ways and Means Committee and held in contempt by the full house. Her disk drive is missing. His testimony included a number of significant admissions and facts. For example, commissioner testified that he has seen no evidence that there was any attempt in 2011 to retrieve six months of lost lois lerner emails from backup tapes or in fact from the main hard drive of the server. He testified that he does not know who at the irs was involved in leaking the knowledge about lois lerners emails to treasury and onto the white house. He further testified that he did not believe leaking to the white house was a problem because the white house itself does not leak information. Well chalk that one up to naive and not perjury. He testified that because he does not know what was in lois lerners email, he has no grounds to believe they contain federal records. While i appreciate his time and effort, our relationship with the irs and the commissioner was not improved by his disappointing performance. In fact, one of the most troubling portions of his testimony was to tell us that someone who he could not name who worked for him had told him sometime in the entire month of april, not the 1st of april or 15th of april when we have to pay taxes, sometime in a 30day period someone he could not remember told him one of the most important pieces of information any of us could imagine. That thousands, tens of thousands or perhaps more emails of lois lerner were gone forever. I hope the witnesses before us today can help us understand further how we can have an agency that expects all americans to maintain critical documents for at least seven years and in fact the agency itself systematically destroys records after six months. Theyre worried about data integrity for a catastrophic event but not for criminal wrongdoing of their own employees. Not for waste, fraud and abuse within the agency. This is an agency the commissioner was sent to fix. This is an agency that had lavish partners and did not even live up to the requirement for tax filing by its own members when it held a party complete with a very expensive video at disneyland. This is an agency that targeted conservatives for their political beliefs. That asked them for who their donors were and whether they said prayers at the beginning of an event. What they did in every way and held out their application for 501c4 like a carrot never informing them that even the president s 501c4 wasnt registered. Today the committee will hear testimony from oconnor. During an interview last year, irs chief counsel William Wilkins testified that ms. Oconnor was one of the two key supervisors overseeing the irs response to congressional oversight. In fact, ms. Oconnor was hired by the irs for the sole purpose of overseeing the agencys response to congressional investigations of the targeting scandal. From may 2013 on, ms. Oconnor led the response to the oversight of irs targeting of conservatives. She was promoted to the White House Counsel Office to work on responding to congressional oversight across the entire administration. The irs supposedly has spent 10 million in its response to congress. Im hoping ms. Oconnor will enlighten us about how the irs spent so much of the taxpayers money but supposedly took them over a year to realize two years of emails from the most critical witness had gone missing. And in fact, that same year since she first took the fifth. The idea that the irs just didnt notice is without believability. Well also want to know from ms. Oconnor how the white house came to have insider knowledge about ms. Lerners missing emails and more broadly what role the white house plays in this investigation. Today we will also hear from the ark visit of the United States, David Ferriero. These laws include the federal records act that were put in place precisely for the purpose of preserving important federal records. In particular i want to ask the archivist about a claim made last night. They said that irs didnt report a loss or destruction of federal records because theres no way to know what was in ms. Lerners missing emails. In fact, we do know some things about where and were in ms. Lerners emails. We know from 2010 email correspondents we found at the department of justice that ms. Lerner sent over 1. 1 million pages of a data base to assist the possible prosecution of those same groups that were targeted and that that information included 6103 personal identifiable information including donors. I am hoping the archivist whose loss and destruction would and should have been reported in 2011. The hearing today continues the committees oversight efforts of the irs targeting to get to basic answers for the American People. The committee will continue to aggressively search for answers about how and why the irs allowed to be destroyed lois lerners emails. This information is critical to the committees investigation of the irs targeting of conservative organizations. I might add in closing, the archivist is a welcoming friend of this committee. The archives fall within our jurisdiction. We take great pride in the work that the National Archives does. Just last night very proudly i showed to the commissioner and put in the record a little piece of history of general jackson demanding that his government in 1803 return some of the tax revenue taken from him for liquor that could never be produced because the still burned. That was not covered by the federal records act but because of the unique work that National Archive does often with volunteers from around america who come and study and research, we know what we did not know then and would have not ever demanded to store. So i would say here today to my Ranking Member and to all of the members of the committee, the federal records act is a minimum of what must be stored but there can be no limit to the maximum of what will benefit generations unborn if we can preserve a greater amount of documents with massive capability that our electronic era gives us. With that i recognize the Ranking Member. Good morning. I welcome the opportunity to hear this morning from the archivist of the United States about outstanding challenges that federal agencies with electronic records retention. During the bush administration, the federal agencies admitted to losing millions, millions of emails relating to ongoing congressional and criminal investigations including the u. S. Attorney firing and outing of covert cia agent Valerie Plame and a host of other matters. Our committee played an integral role in investigating these problems. Representative henry waxman, our former chairman, engaged in a constructive effort to find solutions to these challenges. He hosted monthly meetings with the archivist and the white House Counsels office to monitor progress in implementing recommendations. I believe the archivist would agree with his predecessor that those meetings served a useful purpose. Today the white house system automatically preserves emails from all employee email accounts. Since 2008, theres been additional progress. On november 28th, 2011, president obama issued a directive to agencies managing federal records. The president also directed the archivist and director of the office on management and budget to craft a modernized framework to improve Agency Performance and begin managing email records in electronic formats by 2016. I look forward to hearing a status report on these efforts. I also archivist will give us his view on legislation i introduced last year. The electronic message preservation act which will require federal agencies to reserve email records electronically. The committee voted on a bipartisan basis to approve my legislation but language since then and Republican Leaders have declined to bring it to the floor for a vote. Although todays hearing could have potential to help improve Agency Systems from managing electronic records, i was dismayed last night that chairman issa issued a letter to compel ms. Oconnor to appear today. Todays hearing title is lois lerners lost emails. It is true that ms. Oconnor used to work at irs. She worked there from may to november of last year. The problem is that ms. Oconnor left the irs seven months ago in 2013 well before these recent discoveries about lois lerners emails. As commissioner koskinen testified last night, irs officials learned there was a potential problem in february of 2013 and it was not until may of 2014 that they understood the scope of the problem completed their investigation and determined extent to which emails were available or not. Ms. Oconnor left the irs before any of these discoveries occurred. So why is she here . According to the chairmans own press release, its not because of her old job. Its because of her new one. She currently works at the white House Counsels office. Shes worked there for less than a month. One month. But apparently thats enough to warrant a subpoena from the committee. Last night republicans demanded to know when the white house first became aware that the irs was having difficulty locating ms. Lerners emails. Im sure my colleagues will repeat those questions today over and over and over again. But we already know the answer. The white house sent a letter to congress on june 18th and it said this and i quote. In april of this year, Treasury Office of general counsel informed the white House Counsels office that it appeared ms. Lerners custodial email account contained very few emails prior to april 2011 and that the irs was investigating the issue and if necessary would explore alternate means to locate additional emails. That was in april but ms. Oconnor did not start her job at the white house until at least a month later. I ask to enter this june 18th letter into the record. Without objection so ordered. Todays hearing is not about policy. Todays hearing is not about policy or substance. Its about politics and press. Today ms. Oconnor will join the ranks of dozens of other officials during chairman issas tenure who have been hauled up here without a vote or without a debate as part of a partisan attempt to generate headlines with unsubstantiated allegations against the white house. Regardless of how many times republicans claim the white house was behind the irs actions, theres still no evidence. None. That the white house was involved in any way with screening applicants for tax exempt status. No one of the 41 witnesses we have interviewed has identified any evidence of white house involvement or political motivation. Not one. And the Inspector General has also, by the way who was appointed by president bush, has also identified no evidence to support these baseless claims. Issuing a subpoena to a white house lawyer does not change that fact. I sincerely hope that todays hearing will focus on the serious examination of the long standing and widespread challenges of retaining electronic records and constructive solutions. I look forward to the statements of our witnesses and with that, mr. Chairman, i yield back. I thank the gentleman. Members may have seven days to submit Opening Statements for the record. Its now my pleasure to welcome our panel of witnesses. Ms. Jennifer oconnor is an attorney currently in the office of the white House Counsel and prior to that as mr. Cummings said, worked as the primary deliverer of discovery to this committee while at the irs. The honorable David Ferriero is the acrchivist and hes accompanied by mr. Paul webster and i ask that he be able to answer questions and hell be sworn in and my understanding for all of us is that mr. Wester is the man most knowledgeable of working with cios throughout government to ensure that the federal records act are adhered to and as a result is in fact mr. Ferriero i appreciate you bringing him and knows the most of whats been asked of government and what government should and would deliver and at what budget. With that i would ask that you all please rise pursuant to Committee Rules and take the oath. Please raise your right hands high, please. Thank you. Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony youre about to give will be the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth. Let the record reflect that all witnesses answered in the affirmative. For those who have not testified here before, theres a fiveminute clock in front of you. I do not gavel people at five minutes but as you see it go yellow, you summarize. As you see it go red, bring it to a conclude as quickly as possible. Ms. Oconnor, please give us your Opening Statement. Chairman issa, Ranking Member cummings and Ranking Members of the committee, my name is Jennifer Oconnor. I practiced for many years at a law firm where i managed litigation matters. On may 30th of 2013, i joined the irs as counselor to the acting commissioner. I left that position on november 30th of 2013. I understand the committee is interested in my time at the irs. I look forward to answering all of your questions today. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Ferriero. Chairman issa, Ranking Member cummings and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify to the disposal of records at the irs. Accompanying me is paul wester. Government and a member of my senior management. First, concerning the reported unauthorized disposal, federal agencies are responsible for preventing the unauthorized disposition of federal records including unlawful or accidental destruction, deletion or removal from federal custody. Agencies should carefully monitor the implementation of approved records schedule to prevent unauthorized destruction. When an agency becomes aware of an incident of unauthorized destruction, they must report the incident to us. The report should describe the records, the circumstances in which the unauthorized destruction took place, and the corrective steps being taken to properly manage the records in the future. If we hear about the incident before the agency has reported it, well notify the agency and request similar information. The goal of this process is to ensure that the circumstances that may have led to the loss of federal records are corrected and not repeated. We learned of the unauthorized disposal of the irs records through a letter dated june 13th, 2013, from the irs to senators widen and hatch. In this letter the irs reported the loss of email records of lois lerner, the former head of irs and exempt Organization Division dating from 2009 to 2011 as the result of a failure of hard drive. We asked the irs to investigate the alleged disposal of records and whether it was broader than was reported in the june 13th, 20 2014 letter. We asked for a response within 30 days. On a daily basis, professionals worked to ensure Records Management policies and practices protect the rights of the government and citizens and identify the permanently valuable records that document the national experience. In november of 2011, the president issued a memorandum on managing government records, which result eed in issuing the management government records directive in august 2012. Goals to require electronic Record Keeping to ensure transparency, efficiency and accountability and demonstrate compliance with statutes and regulations. There are a number of activities associated with these goals but the action is by the end of 2016 federal agencies must manage all email records in an electronic format and by the end of 2019, all permanent electronic records in federal agencies will be managed electronically to the fullest extent possible. The effective management of email is a central animating issue for the National Archives as we work to meet the requirements of the directive to help agencies meet the goal of managing their email and electronic form by the end of 2016, we have issued updated guidance known as capstone. The capstone approach was adopted as part of our ongoing efforts to evaluate how agencies have used email records and provide agencies with a workable and cost efficient solution to email Records Management challenges especially as they consider cloud based solutions. It also offers the agencies the option of using a simplified and automated approach to manage email as opposed to either print and file or click and file systems that require staff to file individual email records. The capstone approach allows for capture of records that should be preserved as permanent from the accounts of officials at or near the top of an agency or an organizational subcomponent. An agency may designate email accounts of additional employees as capstone when they are in positions that are likely to create or receive permanent email records. Following this approach, an agency can schedule all of their email and capstone accounts as permanent records. The agency should then schedule the remaining email accounts in the agency or organizational unit which are not captured as permanent. As temporary and preserve all of them for a set period of time based on the agencys needs. Capstone approach is part of our initial effort in providing assistance to agencies to enable them to meet the email records requirement and directive. Well continue to provide Additional Information and guidance as we strive to meet all of the directives mandates. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today. Mr. Wester and i look forward to answering your questions about federal records. Thank you. Mr. Wester, i understand you dont have a formal Opening Statement but to set a tone for the committee if you would tell the committee about what your relationship is with cios and how youre working with them and how youre working to hit the deadlines of capstone on behalf of the achivist and how you receive documents from treasury and irs. If you could set the stage, i think thats a good nonpartisan way to begin. Thank you. I work with 100 Staff Members here in the washington, d. C. Area and around the country to provide Records Management assistance to all federal agencies across the government of which there are about 250 active agencies that we work with. The staff that works on Records Management policy activities at the National Archives work with the cio council and other councils across the government to identify different ways we need to approach this Records Management electronic Records Management challenge. What weve been doing since implementation of the directive back in august of 2013 is working with all of the different agencies across the government to figure out how we can meet the two deadlines so by the end of the decade ensuring all agencies are managing printable records and making sure that email records are managed in automotive ways with temporary and permanent emails by the end of 2016. Theres been a number of different activities which i can answer questions about as we go. But we work very closely with Agency Records officers across the government including at treasury and the Internal Revenue service so that they understand where we are trying to go with electronic Records Management as a government and understand what their obligations are with the federal records act and the directive itself in how we try to bring those two things together to make effective Records Management work across the government. Thank you. Ill now recognize a series of questions. Last night we finished late so i wont able to get to best buy. Two days before i needed to acquire a storage device so i spent about 150 and bought a hard drive for about 149 plus sales tax. The irs commissioner last night told us that it would cost about 10 million if he was going to maintain the kind of data that we were interested in. The 80 or so deposatories as i understand would have been a fraction of 149 if they were simply moving them to a single place and backing that up. I guess, mr. Wester, is it true realistically that a few hundred dollar drive and then duplicate of that drive realistically would be able to hold all of the data that those 80 depositories set aside as important permanent documents. Chairman issa, you identified one challenge we have to deal with is being able to store and preserve email and other electronic records and as you identified the cost of doing this are coming down tremendously and that is not a huge factor within the issue that were talking about. The issue that agencies are confronting is that they need to be able to organize that data and be able to provide access to it which is separate from the storage piece. That is where there are additional costs that agencies need to incur to be able to do that. Having said that, a lot of agencies to be able to be responsive to request and to committees like this one and responsible for other kind of requests and Business Needs they have have to develop Search Capabilities to access those materials that are on those drives. And so that is where some of the complexity and the costs start to add up. As agencies are doing that kind of procurement any way to support their Business Needs, we believe that approaches like capstone email approach allow agencies to be able to do that effectively. Thank you. Mr. Ferriero, theres a document put up on the board dated october 6, 2010, in which lois lerner sent 1. 1 million documents including personal identifiable 6103 information to department of justice in order to aid potential prosecution. Have you viewed that email . Yes, i have. Would you say that is a record under the federal records act . Not having access to the records schedule that was created by which this message was created, it is an email that is record whether its a temporary record or a permanent record, i cant tell. When the commissioner said that in fact he didnt know if the lost emails of which this is one included items covered under the federal records acts, he was mistaken, is that correct . All i can say is if it was a created from what i read it is a record. What i cant tell is whether its a temporary record or a permanent record. Lastly, this committee has jurisdiction. Is it reasonable to destroy after six months data routinely so a request simply goes to data that isnt there any longer. If you want to know what was said or done, if it doesnt happen to be maintained by choice, its gone at the end of six months at the irs. Thats right. So the question to the irs are pretty useless and we now know what ftc its 45 days. Is that in fact in the best interest of freedom of information in your opinion . There again, if it was a permanent record, then it is not best practice. Ms. Oconnor, you declined to come here voluntary so question subpoenaed you. You are not pleased to be here but its important that youre here. You were at the irs and hired when we began our investigation and requested selected documents of lois lerner in may of 2013, is that correct . I started on may 30th. So they hired you when we said we want a bunch of documents, correct . The acting commissioner. Yes or no, please. Youre a hostile witness. Were you hired im not at all a hostile witness. Yes, you are. You were hired in may. In june when we were not getting delivery, we went and subpoenaed and in august you were at the irs, is that correct . I was there in august. In august of 2013, we requested all lois lerner emails and not any selection, not any limited group, are you aware of that . Yes. What did you do to determine the envelope or window of all at that time in august of 2013 . So can i explain the process a little bit . I think it would help my time has technically expired so i would ask you be full and complete. Wait a second. Full and complete in what you did from august until the time you left to secure all the documents, please. A little background is helpful. When i arrived on may 30th, the irs had a team that was already in place collecting materials and beginning to respond to the congressional investigations. I joined to be his counselor and perform a number of Different Things a piece of which was helping to respond to the four different Congressional Committees and the ig and others seeking materials and so i played a role that was a liaison to him, his direction was to be cooperative and try to gather and produce materials as quickly as possible. And also to be a liaison to your staff and the staff of the other committees who were interested in figuring out how they could get their priorities to them as quickly as they could. And by that what i mean is identifying the employees whose materials they wanted to see first and using search terms in order to identify the documents at interest. The reason search terms were necessary as opposed to turning everything wholesale among others as you know is theres a statute called Internal Revenue code 6103, which is a criminal statute passed by congress that requires the irs to protect taxpayer information and the way in which they do that in situations like this is they have to read every single document to see if theres taxpayer information in it and redact it if necessary before producing it. A big piece of the effort was to figure out how we could move information as quickly to the Congressional Committee and move them what they were looking for. So in may what that amounts to is when i arrived ms. Lerners material had already been collected as had some other employees materials. There was more collection that went on after that. The process as they explained it to me and im not a tech expert but the irs material is protected with careful encryption and so it needs to be processed before it can be reviewed so they have to load it and then flatten it and decrypt it and the dekripgs creates errors and they have to do it again and in that piece of the process which is the first piece of the process they would run terms that Congressional Committee staff had identified over the material and once that was done and material was viewable they would move it to a review tool and when i first got there one of the things that i was deoing was talking about ho to move volume quickly we had to remove people because irs never encountered Something Like this and didnt have staff in place to do this document review and production. In addition, the technical infrastructure wasnt there to support it so we had a lot of issues that we had to deal with in terms of adding servers and capacity and having technical experts deal with the systems that it would be stable. When we got to august which is where your question was, you did express an interest in all of the emails. We were at that point already sort of well into a process that had begun in may with ms. Lerner and everyone elses emails loaded at that point had been loaded with all of the terms. And so they were being reviewed. So the staff who were working on this daytoday continued to review all of that material. It was the intention as soon as we got that done, we would circle back and make sure the subpoena was complied with. I left in november. We were still in the process of the rolling production. It wasnt finished yet but it was my understanding and i believe it to be true and i have no reason to think it wasnt true, they intended to continue to produce information but the difference between the selected lois lerner information and all of lois lerners information comes from the fact that initially the process was organized around material that had search terms applied to it versus the material at the end. I hope that sort of lay it s it quickly. In august of 2013, your testimony is that when receiving a subpoena and explicit instructions that this was our highest priority that we wanted all of the emails of the person who took the fifth in front of this committee and who in fact was not cooperating and who indications were was at the center of this targeting of conservatives, the decision was made to get to it after you got done with all of the others so when you left the agency, they had not yet done the extensive search or not yet looked for all of her emails and as a result thats why we go until april of this year until we discover that all emails were to be found. I wasnt there when the discovery of the lost emails were incurred. On the day you left, they had not set out to discover all emails but had not complied with the subpoena in the sense they had not gathered all of her emails and they were waiting until they got done with other things they wanted to do and then they would look for all of the emails. That wasnt what i meant. I would like to know what you meant because obviously they didnt know they were missing in the months that you were there after a subpoena asked for all of them. I appreciate that you told us in great detail i appreciate that. It helps us understand. You told us in great detail about the process that you went through but of course the process you went through was a process that you determined that you wanted to go through. We issued a subpoena and 6103 redaction doesnt take the place of your gathering all of that. They were entitled to receive all of her emails without redaction and so was ways and means if they chose to receive it. Right. I believe that it was gathered before i got there. My understanding from the team i didnt interact with them directly. My understanding from the team who did gather it was they gathered everything that was there and so in the process from the point at which i got there to the point at which i left, the team who was working very hard on being able to get you material was reviewing and processing and redacting as necessary all of the material that had been loaded into which the search terms that your staff and staff of the other committees had identified. The process i wasnt there when the process of going back to look at the ones that had originally been loaded but hadnt hit the search terms were reviewed. When i left, my understanding is that was something that was going to continue because the agency seemed fully intending to continue to comply with your subpoenas and i have no reason to believe that it didnt. Thank you. Mr. Cummings . Thank you very much. Ms. Oconnor, let me ask you this. You were at irs for about six or seven months from may to november of last year, is that right . Six months from may 30th to november 30th, sir. And i was wondering when you came in, what instructions were you given with regard to production of documents . In other words, what were you told was the priorities and what were you instructed to do. Just curious. His strong imperative was that we gather and produce everything that the congressional investigators and the Inspector General wanted. And he wanted it to be done as quickly as possible. He was interested in being completely transparent and the directives he gave to me one of my roles was to be his liaison to the team working full time on the document production. In that capacity, one of the things i tried to do and worked on doing was to help them get stuff out faster and to review faster so that more volumes of the material that the committee was looking for and there were four different committees, four different investigations, but he wanted to be able to get all of it to the investigation staff and Committee Members in part because the irs had been asked by the Inspector General not to conduct its own investigation and not interview witnesses so the investigative activity was happening in the Congressional Committees and at the ig so it was important to get them that material. Thats what he told me to do. Thats what i worked with the team on doing. Is that what you tried to do . Its very much what i tried to do. And so you left in november, is that right . Yes. Of 2013 . So you were not there this past february when the irs first identified potential issues with lois lerners emails, is that right . Thats correct. You said something that was very interesting. You said when you got there, ms. Lerners information had already been collected. Is that what you said . Yes, thats correct. What does that mean . Well, to my understanding i didnt directly interface with the staff who did this, but professional longterm irs staff went to ms. Lerners computer and took the hard drive and imaged it and took emails on it and made copies of all of that. My understanding is that a set of staff and again it happened before i got there so this is my understanding also went through her office to collect any paper copies that were i think they collected everything and went through it to find out what was responsive. They actually went through her office to your knowledge to try to find paper copies . To my knowledge, yes. Again, i want to clarify that i didnt witness it. I wasnt there. Thats what i was told. I see. And so let me ask you this. Did you feel that you were able to carry out the instruction in . He told you to do things quickly. He told you to be transparent and he told you thats what he told you. Did you do that . We did our best. There was hurdles with technology and we had to add resources and add staff and add technological resources so i think, you know, nobody thought it was as quick as they would have liked. We worked very hard to get the material to the committees as quickly as we could. You were not there in april when the commissioner learned that some of ms. Lerners emails may not be recoverable, is that right . I was not there in april, no. You werent working at the irs were you there at any time when he was there . We didnt overlap. You never worked for him. No. And how long have you worked at the white house . About a month. I just got there. You just got the job . Yes. So congress received a letter from the white house last week on june 18th that explains how the white house found out about ms. Lerners emails. It says this and i quote, in april of this year, Treasury Office of general counsel informed White House Counsel Office that it appears ms. Lerners email account contained few emails prior to april 2011 and the irs was investigating the issue and if necessary would explore alternate means to locate additional emails. So the treasury told the white house in april, which would have been a month before you started at the white house, is that right . Thats what that letter says. I wasnt there, so i dont know. I want to thank you for being here today. I know this is difficult. Are you a lawyer . I am. You know what a hostile witness is . I do. Chairman said told you that you were a hostile witness. And you said you were not, is that right . Thats correct. Do you consider yourself a hostile witness . Im definitely not hostile. So you got a subpoena last night. A unilateral subpoena. No committee vote. No debated on. Nothing. You had to turn around and testify here this morning. I want to state for the record that weve seen no evidence that ms. Oconnor did anything inappropriate whatsoever and we want to thank you for your service and for your testimony. Mr. Ferriero, let me turn to you. The challenges at irs are not unique. Many federal agencies have had problems retaining electronic records. I know the president has made some improvement with his memorandum in 2011 and that you and the office of management and budget have set target dates for agencies to improve their electronic data systems. But we can always do better, cant we . We sure can. As you know i introduced a bill a year and a half ago amending the federal records act to require you to establish minimum standards for federal agencies to manage and preserve email records electronically. The bill would complement your efforts to get agencies to modernize their Record Keeping systems. This bill passed our committee with bipartisan support. Im very pleased to say. You have testified several times in support in support of legislation. Do you think the legislation could help improve the quality of the federal email preservation . I certainly do. In fact, the directive relied heavily upon the language of empa as we were crafting the directive. I sat here last night. And i listened to you know, the testimony of you, mr. Webster. Im trying to figure out, how do we it seems as if when it seems like our system and probably other agencies, were so far behind the electronic i mean the i. T. Modern world. How do we get ahold of that and move forward . Sounds like that was part of the problem here. And thats what we addressed in the directive. I agree we have a lot of work to do in the federal government. Working with our cio partners. Is it too big to solve . No, its not too big. Weve created something within the National Archives this cap stone project which is one solution. That takes advantage of existing technologies. The biggest problem over time and this is in the paper environment as well as the electronic environment whenever you have a human being in the middle of it making decisions is, then have you problems. And of our focus has been on getting the human being out of the process and relying on technology to capture the information ha we need to capture. My last question, what can we do . You know, i can be see us sitting here it, i probably wont be here but in five years, ten years from now, sitting here going through the same situation. What can can we do as members of congress during our watch to help address this issue . I mean, you said people. Weve got to have a people. We capital have the, let everybody go. So what do we do . We have the directive, and were moving ahead. We have the support of the administration for this and we have the empa bill. If you could convince your colleagues to get the empa bill and get it through the senate, that would also help us because that would legislate the change in the federal records act that we need. Federal records act today says print and save. This is 2014 and were printing and saving . This is embarrassing. Thank you very much. Thank you. I just want to make sure i make the record clear on something the Ranking Member said. I checked with congressman gowdy who has a lot more knowledge of law and i do. He said a term i should have used was noncooperative witness rather than hostile since you and the white house refused to provide your services here on an ordinary ordinary request and we had to subpoena unilaterally based on the denial that you would appear otherwise. So i want to make sure that i dont use a word that perhaps does make people think something isnt true. This is simply a witness that refused to cooperate without eight subpoena. Mr. Mica. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Just for the record, i heard the Ranking Member start with the comments that we were hauling people up here unnecessarily. That was his phrase. And i would take great difference with that comment. First of all, last night, we brought mr. Koskinen back, the commissioner. And we brought him back, and i went through his testimony when he came to us in march. And he never mentioned any problem with the emails back in march, lois lerners emails. The chairman showed everyone on the committee both sides of the aisle asking for lois lerners emails. He came and said to us that last week, this is his testimony in march, last week we informed this committee and others that we believe we completed production of all of the requests. Under the Inspector Generals report of may 2013. And he, in fact, testified last night in his written testimony that he had been aware of technical problems back in february. So i think we had every right to call him back. The other side would intimate that this it is some kind of republican stirring things up. My goodness, last week, the entire country and the congress was stunned to find out that 27 months of lois lerners emails had supposedly been destroyed or her computer crashed. So i think we have every right. Mr. Archivist, the law says that federal records law requires that the National Archives be noticed when documents are destroyed or lost. Is that the law, sir . That is the law. Okay. And miss conner, you were brought on board after this report. This is not a republican report. This report was prepared by the treasurer Inspector General for Tax Administration to see if groups were targeted and it confirmed that. Youre aware of this report, miss conner . I have read the report. You were brought on what, to compile the records from and all the information pertaining to what was in that report or. I was brought on to give advice to active we requested in may certain documents. When you came on in early june, the irs sent documentation attention notices to employees who were identified as having documents including relevant email potentially relevant information to investigators. You were part of that request and noticed to employees in early june. You were there in early june . I was there in early june but my understanding is that an a subset of employees had already this had been sent out. Youre aware that request had been made to employees to preserve and present documents . Absolutely. Its important notice. That was your job. Its appropriate that youre both here today. When did you first learn that there were emails missing . I learned that ha miss lerners emails were missing as the result of a computer crash the week before last. So you were in charge from may until november of compiling information from congress and you never heard before that that there was any missing documentation as far as emails . I didnt hear that any of miss lerners emails were missing when you were compiling this information for the four committees of congress and working with mr. Werfel, who did you report to . Mr. Werfel. Were you aware he was reporting your activity and what was found . You were in charge of reporting to mr. Werfel, right . Did you did you interact at all with anyone at the white house . Not when i was. Between may and november when you were there, if i get your emails, your schedule, like who was the shulman was before that. He came and testified to us that the only time he went to the white house was for egg rolling. Then we subpoenaed the white house records and find he went there 113 times or Something Like that. But you had no contact with the white house during that period . Actually youre jogging my memory. I want to use that as a footnote to just say im doing this completely by the fly off my memory. Was there some contact . Yes, im going to tell you what it is. Now you wind up in the white house. You had a subsequent job i guess helping with the obamacare situation. Could i answer that question . I feel like its something important 0 finish the sentence. Mr. Werfel went to the white house in i think late june with secretary lew in the order to give the president his report. I went into the white house with him. I wasnt in their meeting was this matter discussed at all . I wasnt in the meeting. I just accompanied him to the building. We would find that record. No other contact in the white house during that period . No. Would you be aware that your activities were being reported to mr. Werfel . And usually they have the counsel or someone it might have been treasury reporting to the white house as to what of going on with say this report. Youre not aware of what took place there . So in terms of the ig report, i have no idea what, if anything, was reported to the white house. The visit that i had with mr. Wuerffel was to give his 30day report to the president. Again, what your activity was reported to wuerffel where you were in the investigation and come pieing for congress, you werent aware of it being transmitted beyond him . No. Okay. Thank you. We now go to the gentle lady from new york. Miss maloney. Thank you. I regret i was not able to join you last night for the hearing. We had a Financial Services committee or rather a bill on the floor that i had been working on and we were in debate on the floor. I just wanted to make a brief statement about the hearing that we had last night on the overall irs and this whole irs mess seems to flow directly from confusion over just how the irs should enforce a law that was passed by this congress that gives tax exempt status to not for profits but only if they are essentially politically nonpartisan. And what the irs was looking at is whether these activities of these nonfor profits really merited being tax exempt because theyre getting 100 deduction and putting a great deal of money into political campaigns. Now, we dont have. Would the gentle lady yield . You probably were not here