us. the other imminent threat is giving up a piece of the grid. and giving law enforcement the tools of intelligence, the single greatest asset we need have and also giving them the electronic tools, i don't think we do nearly the job we should be doing in terms of protecting against cyber attacks. we've seen just last week what happens when supposedly the chinese have now hacked into the personnel records of upwards of 20 million government employees. the one positive out of all of that, it is the only hope we have of maybe recovering lois lerner's emails from the i.r.s., get them from the chinese. but it is a serious issue that we need to put first and foremost as a serious threat to the safety and security of our communities. >> i know that there are some sheriffs representing interesting states, maybe like iowa, might have interests there. some other states like florida. i see one of those sheriffs is about to take the stage and i'd like to ask him to take the next question. governor i see ted comacho former president of n.s.a. and a sheriff from iowa. you have a question for the governor. >> thank you very much. governor, thank you very much for being here. it's very important to all of us. you touched on mental health a minute ago in your speech and i appreciate that very much. one of the things happening across america is you know all the jails predominantly run by the office of sheriff and are funded locally. one of the things we're seeing is those jails are becoming mental health institutes. we're starting to have to house more and more people who have mental illness and problems and that's very costly from a treatment standpoint and from a medical standpoint. when a person comes into a county jail, medicare, medicaid, all those benefits halt even though the person hasn't been adjudicated guilty yet, they're pretrial. what happens is they get back on the street and sadly it's difficult for them to get those support services back. if you become president, would you work to straighten that system out so the sheriffs can get help while they're in our jails and later those people can get the help they need when they get back out? governor huckabee: i assure you i would. as a governor, one of the biggest battles we fought was dealing with the complexities itties of the medicare program. every governor i spoke with said they would take less dollars to be given flexibility of the medicaid program, including not cutting off the medical portion of medicaid for those adjudicated, especially those preadjudicated. that's been a huge problem. one way to make that change is to get congress to make medicaid a block grant program back to the states where the people who live in your state who might know more about what your needs are than some bureaucrat in washington who's never been to iowa, let you guys make that decision and it may not look the same in all 50 states. that's exactly the point. each state should say this is how we want to structure our medicaid program. i was chairman of the national governor's association. we had 49 of the first governors in america sign on to a medicaid reform package to present to congress in which we went to congress and said we will take less money for more flexibility. you would think that would be a slam dunk and congress would jump all over that. 49 out of 50 governors. there was only one governor who didn't sign on, rod blagojevich and you know how he turned out. the rest of them, everybody was on board. i thought this would be easy, this will be a lay-up. you couldn't believe how tough it was and how much we had to fight through the senate finance committee and i'm sitting out there getting a lecture from jay rockefeller, ted kennedy and john kerry on why they didn't think it was a good idea because i didn't understand poverty and i'm thinking guys, i grew up in poverty and i never thought i would get a lecture on what it's like to live in poverty by jay rockefeller and ted kennedy. this one other thing about mental health that has created a problem, in the 1970's, public policy shifted. we wanted to start mainstreaming. the novel idea to not institutionalize people because of mental health issues. but we have a lot of people on the streets who cannot function. there are some people we tried to mainstream we will never be able to mainstream. they are simply dysfunctional. they end up in jail because it is an easier place to warehouse them. we cannot put them in mental health facilities or institutions because so many do-gooders in public policy have decided it is cruel. i do not know why it would be cool to put people in a safe environment of the institution. it would somehow be worth to put them in a county lockup facility. we need a little common sense in the system. [applause] host: there are more people in our jails today with mental health problems than in hospitals. startling. governor, our next question comes from the great state of texas. texas is a unique state for all whole list of reasons. i think there is a couple of other gentlemen running for office from the state. the sheriff from jackson county has an intriguing question for you. >> governor, thank you for attending the conference. i really appreciate that. governor, you said you opposed amnesty to secure the border. how will you handle the millions of illegal immigrants in the country now? mr. huckabee: if we do not secure the border, i think we are kidding ourselves we will have a way to handle the ones who are here. if the pipe in your kitchen bursts and water is spewing on the floor, the first reaction is let's get a new sink. the first priority is to stop the leak. the first priority of the next president should be to secure the border. i believe it can be done in less than a year. i call your attention to the fact that 73 years ago, we built a 1700 mile road between british columbia and alaska. we did it in less than a year with technology that existed 73 years ago. i'm convinced that, if somebody leads and has the will, we can secure only -- the border in less than a year. that is the equivalent of stopping the leak and deciding how we deal with the people who are here. we have not made the battle over how many people should be here. i think the question is not how many people are coming but why. why do you want to come here? if you want to come to this country because you love america and our laws and you embrace our system and our way of doing things, and you want to learn the language and assimilate into america and live the american dream and work hard and killed the country up like settlement -- build the country up like so many people have done, we will give you thorough consideration. but if you are coming here because you have heard we will educate, medicate you, let you vote, even let you press 2 and here it in your own language you can even burn our flag and raise yours. i would meet them at the border and say, this may not be the best trip. if someone breaks the law here, i think we have to be serious about sending them back where they came from. we can barely handle our own criminals, much less those from somewhere else. and deportations have been cut almost in half in the last few years. i am not for mass deportation. i do not blame anyone for coming to this country. i get on my knees every night and thank god i live in a country people try to break into rather than out of. i hope america never gets to the place where we are trying to get out of here. but we have to apply common sense to this. it makes no sense to leave our borders completely unprotected. the country without borders is no country at all. job one, secure the border. then sit down with reasonable people and say, what sink would we like to get to replace it? thank you, sheriff. [applause] host: i recall in the mid-90's, the then president from hope called for additional police on the street. i just came back in the border. it is not just porous. it is an impossible situation. thousands upon thousands of miles. and there is a single problem facing sheriff's -- a shortfall of manpower. my personal opinion is, we need 10,000 deputies. here is the money, get it done. mr. huckabee: it is sad when the people on the border -- and i have talked to border agents who are exasperated. agents who are demoralized because their government for bids them from carrying out their job and their duties. there is nothing worse than to give a person a job and not let him or her do it. that is happening particularly in the enforcement of our borders and dealing with those that violate immigration laws. one of the problems the federal government creates is federal funds for the first couple of years and pretending we have solved the problem. they get to the press conference and congratulate themselves. in year three, when the budget is hemorrhaging, the state is supposed to pick up the cost. i believe border security should not be a cost borne by sheriff's. we are asking police to do something that is one of the few things the federal government has authority to do. i wish our federal government would spend more time doing the things it is supposed to do, like fighting enemies and protecting borders, and less things it is not supposed to do, like redefining what marriage looks like. [applause] host: during your tenure as governor of arkansas -- to go back to mental health -- let's talk about your accomplishments in mental health. particularly to alleviate the burden on sheriffs. they are trying every hour of every day to keep their finger in the dam and it is gushing holes. what do we need to do? not just as president. what are we going to do about this specifically? mr. huckabee: i learned an important lesson from our director larry noris. he said we are locking up people we are mad at rather than the ones we are afraid of. here is one of the things we learned. not violent drug offenders, we found, were better off in community corrections facilities where they would undergo treatment than put them in the general population of the main prison system. the cost of putting someone in general population, at that time , and this was nine years ago that would have been around $47 a day. we can put them in a community correctional program for less than five dollars a day. so the economics are attractive. but more importantly, the recidivism rate for those in a community program who are there for nonviolent drug offenses, it is so much more effective than it is to lock them up and throw away the key. there are some people we lock up that need to be there. they need to be there for a long, long time. if we lock people up that really do not need to be there, not only is a costly but and they come out they went in as a nonviolent offender and come out a hardened criminal. we will recapture them in many cases for the rest of their lives. we have to apply a different approach to incarcerate those that are truly the ones we need to be afraid of and a separate them from the ones we are mad at for screwing up. host: i see steve casey in the audience. he is the executive director of the florida sheriffs association. i want to hand the microphone over to steve casey. >> governor, thank you for being with us today. thank you for being a longtime member of the florida sheriffs association. there has been a lot written about the militarization of police. some have said that police have crossed the line from protect and serve to that of a police state. yet, in the mass shooting in aurora colorado, there are medics would not even go into the theater until the police had been able to clear it. they had to use a bearcat transport to do that. under your administration, what restrictions would you place on the tools law enforcement officers have to do the job? mr. huckabee: those are decisions that need to be made at the command of the scene. i do not think a president should be made -- making decisions in the minutia of handling a crime scene. the issue is, what is appropriate to get some level of control of a situation? in some cases, frankly, when it looks like a war, you need the police to be equipped for what is, in essence, a war. you do not want them underprepared, understaffed, underequipped. i would always say the decision needs to be what is necessary. what is the most significant level of force necessary for the police to get control in a short a time as possible? there will be times where it requires a military presence. if people are burning down stores and throwing molotov cocktails and shooting guns police officers better be as well-equipped as rioters and the people burning down the city. one thing i am currents -- concerned about is when federal agencies develop their own swat teams at every level. even the federal trade commission with a swat team. i call attention to what happened at the gibson guitar company in nashville. i know the ceo and i know what happened. they were accusing the federal trade commission of using an imported wood from india that was not licensed. a pretty serious violent issue the wrong kind of wood in a guitar. in the middle of the workday, a swat team burst into gibson guitar, put the secretaries and technicians working on them, all the people in the factory, put them in the floor. held automatic weapons on them. search the building. it was an outright raid all because they wanted to inspect what kind of wood they were using in their guitars. to me, there is no need to use that kind of force. go in with a search warrant and say, we want to see the kind of wood you are using. there was an accountant in little rock awakened by a battering ram at 2:00 in the morning. there was a tax issue they were accused of. they called the guy and marched the accountant out into the middle of the yard, his wife in their nightgown, in the middle of the night. in front of all the neighbors. because they wanted to seize their computers and look at some records. again, i am not sure that is justifiable. when it comes down to your cities on fire, whatever it takes to get control of the situation. you do not want to have law enforcement underequipped and outmanned and outgunned by thugs on the street. if somebody has superior firepower, it has to be law enforcement. and whatever it takes, they should be equipped to do that. [applause] host: governor, we appreciate you being with us. i have one last question. i think you will appreciate this. as you said in your remarks, the hostility towards law enforcement today is probably at an all-time high. comparable to the 1960's. even then, we did not see the vitriol we have. deputies under attack. how do we change that? i heard your remarks. i know you said it starts in the family. but what are we going to do? how are we going to stand tall for law enforcement? will this happen day one of your presidency? is it going to impact slowly? mr. huckabee: to borrow a phrase , there is a new sheriff in town. but that has historically meant is these days of law enforcement is over. in the same way, the next president should be able to say there is a new president in town. no longer will the blame crime on those trying to enforce the law. he will blame it on those who break it. i do not think i can emphasize enough how important it is for the leader of any organization especially the leader of a country, to set the tone. that is also set by the people he appoints. to have an attorney general who wants to stand with law enforcement rather than castigate them and question their every move. it sets a tone for the country. it is like the tuning fork for an instrument. once it makes a sound, all the instruments to to the tuning fork. the president is like the tuning fork of america. he will set the tone and the mood. i would like to believe that, come january of 2017, we can say to launch was meant, there is a new president in town. he is not in your way but with you. there will be a different approach throughout the system about the appreciation and support of lawn was meant -- law enforcement across the spectrum. [applause] host: it has been almost 50 years. it has been almost 50 years since our criminal justice system has had a complete spectrum overhaul. you may be aware for a long time, sheriffs have been calling for a complete overhaul of the criminal justice system. some things are right, some things are just under. this past friday, we had the honor of hosting an elite group of folks who are responsible for leaving other entities in the criminal justice system. the american prosecutors association, the national association of mental health issues. we had 30 organizations, off the record, no spotlight. and sheriffs feel strongly -- the question is this -- congress has introduced a bill to ask the administration to look at criminal justice were. here is the question. let's assume the president will buy it. is this something you will commit to today, that we should do this and you should keep it as an ongoing endeavor? mr. huckabee: i know it will sound like i am pandering to say i will. that is the right answer. but it is the right solution. there is no way decisions like that can be made from the top down. they need to be made from the bottom up. people closest to the problem are best able to solve it. as governor, i made everyone in my staff work in a state agency every month for half a day. work at the delivery point of government. for example, i would be a medicaid intake officer. another day, i would make drivers licenses. i even mowed the lawn at a state park. it was not for show. i would ask employees, tell me what you could do better. if you working for the day, what would you do to make the system better? i got more ideas at the bottom than i did talking to the geniuses who came up with these ideas. the reason i would do this is not because i am saying this to you. i am doing it because of the practical experience of having learned the best solutions come from the people out there delivering remedies, not just the ones that think they know it but are far removed from it. one of the most important priorities for the next president is to default power to state and local government, which i believe the founders intended. local and limited. the best way we can have criminal justice reform is to let the people who administer it have a hand in what it looked like when we get finished. the answer, based on my own experience, is it is the only way to make a real reform work. thank you for having me here. thank you. [applause] host: governor on behalf of the national sheriffs association, i am pleased to present this flag that was flown over fort mchenry in your name. sir, we wish you godspeed, safety. get home safe. thank you and good luck. mr. huckabee: thank you very much. [applause] >> more now from the national straps association with dr. ben carson. he talked about mental health care and immigration, among other topics. this is 45 minutes. dr. carson: thank you for all the things you do. i have a very soft spot in my heart for law enforcement because without them, our lives would be totally chaotic. somebody would come in your hou se, and say, i like that tb. i'm taking it. -- like that tv. i'm taking it. people frequently do not seem to understand that about the role of people who are actually willing to put their lives on the line for the rest of us. so i have great appreciation for you. and interestingly enough, having grown up in detroit the inner city of detroit and inner-city boston. spent 36 years in baltimore. i have never had a negative encounter with a police officer. i think that's because i was taught as a youngster to have respect for authority. and i tell people all the time if you have respect for authority, you are not going to have a problem. that is so important. i do remember once having a problem in another country. i was in australia. and we were driving one night my wife and i, coming down this health. everybody would pick up speed going down the hill. the police were at the bottom of the hill with their raider. they had a whole parking lot full of people giving everybody tickets. i said, are you kidding me,? this is entrapment. he said, why don't you go to court? so i went to court, and the judge was slamming everybody. they had lawyers. i was there without a lawyer. when i went in front of the judges said, your honor, we were coming down the hill. the police were done at the bottom with the radar. they work on the doppler principle and the signal is degraded -- he said, case dismissed. so, it works out pretty well, i must say. but i also had an opportunity when i was a student at yale to work for the police. i was a student police, as they call them. this was back in the early 1970's. in times of radicals, kill the pigs, all that kind of stuff. i had my little walkie-talkie on. sometimes i would be in a place and it would go off. there's a spy in here, and they would get upset. it was actually a wonderful experience. i learned a lot of things. that is one of the reasons i have such a soft spot. but i should tell you one thing about me if you do not know it already, i'm not pol itically correct. i could say something. i do not spend a lot of time monitoring every word and phrase to determine whether it is politically correct, because i feel very strongly there are a lot of people in our ancestry in this country who gave their l ives so that we could have freedom of speech and freedom of expression. i don't think we do them much honor when we kowtow to the p.c. police. having said that, the other thing that i think is very problematic in our society today is division. we have and norma's division going on in -- enourmous division. there is a war on women. we use every racial incident to create a race war. there's income wars. there's age wars. there's religious wars. and pretty much anything that you can imagine we're warring about it. and it becomes incumbent upon we, the people to reject that and to recognize that we are not each other's enemies. the real enemies are those who are stoking all the flames of division and hatred in our society. and unless we recognize that and unless we resist that our society will simply continue to deteriorate. one one of the real keys i think to unity is for people to actually talk. and that is such an important factor, to spend time having a discussion about the things that you believe. a lot of times what you'll find is that when people are willing to talk, they discover that they are not anywhere near as far apart as they thought they were. and it's just like before people get divorced, they stop talking. next thing you know, their spouse is the devil incarnate. we have to get away from that type of thing if we are going to survive as a nation. then you look at a city like baltimore. where we had all this strife for couple months ago. cities like ferguson. and you ask yourself, what is going on in these cities? i think what is going on is a great deal of frustration. because, over the last few years, there has been a lot of change but not a lot of hope. and people are frustrated. they're hearing all these wonderful things about how great the economy is. and unemployment is down to 5.5%, which is essentially full employment, and yet they cannot find a good job. and it makes it real easy for something to irritate you. sort of like a tinderbox. not making excuses for anybody but just saying there is a high level of frustration because of the sluggish economy and the frustration associated therewith. and it think that is an issue that really needs to be understood and dealt with. you know as all of you know, we have an $18.4 trillion national debt. that is a lot of money. we can say that number, but not very many people actually understand what that number actually means. but if you just took $18 trillion and try to pay that back at a rate of $10 million today, 365 days a year, it would take you more than 5000 years to pay it back. and we are putting that on the back of our young people, of the next generation. thomas jefferson said it is immoral to pass on debt. he probably would've had a seizure if he knew what we were doing today. is that bad. but that is the good news. because it's actually a lot worse than that. if somebody gave us a check today for $18.4 trillion and send your debts are paid, you can start over again, it would not be true because that is a fraction of what we owe. there something known as the fiscal gap. you won't hear any politicians talking about this, bu i am not a politician. the fiscalt gap. look it up when you get home. it's what our government owes in terms of unfunded liabilities. social security, medicare, medicaid. the various cabinet departments programs. all the things that are owed compared to the revenues that are expected from taxation and other sources. those two numbers should match. as they do in your household, if you are not bankrupt. but unfortunately, they don't match. there is a gap and it seems to be getting bigger and bigger each year. right now it stands at $211 trillion. now, mentioned that during my announcement to street -- speech in detroit in the next day some of the newspapers said, what is carson talking about? he has no idea what he's talking about. he's crazy. but then the day after that, forbes came out with an article that's it 17 nobel laureates in economics and 1200 economic professors agree with carson. and of course, that shut them up a bit. because this is a well-entity amongst economists. and it is a big problem. if we don't deal with it you want to talk about a major collapse of an economy. it is very frightening. that is why politicians to not talk about it. but i actually believe that there are solutions for this kind of thing. if you go back a few years ago, italy had a big fiscal gap. and things were looking pretty bad. they were heading in the same direction as greece. they actually had the courage to do something. they raised the retirement age because you can retire at an early age on full benefits, and they cut the benefits by 40%. that was painful. and people do not like it very much, but they've adjusted. they put themselves back on the right course again. and greatly reduce that fiscal gap. the gap is actually looking a little on the positive side now. the longer one waits to fix something like that, the greater the problems. and couple that with the fact that this year, our gdp is actually going to be smaller than our debt. and many economist will tell you that when the gdpt to debt ratio reaches 90%, you get sluggishness great decrease in economic activity. well that's what we have seen for quite a few years now. and it is going to get worse. from 1850 to 2000 our economy grew at an average of 3.3% per year. this year, it is actually negative so far. but from 2001 to 2014 it grew at 1.8%. let me show you the difference between those growth rate. a project out 20 years at 1.8%, and you are looking at a $26 trillion economy. project at three pointer percent and you're looking at a $35 trillion economy. big difference when you have unfunded liabilities to deal with. and these kinds of things are creating a very bad an environment. now, when you think about a nation that possesses the most powerful economic engine in the history of the world with this level of sluggishness, then, of course you're going to have frustration. now, what can we do about it? because i never like to complain about something without having a solution. well first of all sitting overseas right now -- sending overseas right now more than $2 trillion of money from american corporations. they won't bring it back, because we have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. we're always trying to figure out what to do with it. i can remember many such conversations in my years in corporate america, sitting around the board table. but the factor the matter is what i would propose doing is a six month corporate tax holiday to let that money be repatriated to this country. you talk about a huge stimulus. it would not cause the text -- the taxpayers one peny ny. i would only stimulate that 10% of it would have to be used to create jobs for people on welfare and to do job research. that would have an enormous impact on cities like baltimore and detroit. and many other cities across the nation. the under thing is to lower the corporate tax rate to make it -- the other thing is to lower the corporate tax rate to make it commence or with other places to begin to draw business rather than to repel it. and then the number of regulations in our society is just enormous now and just about every area. i was speaking to the american bankers association. they were telling me they have so many regulations now it makes it very difficult for them to carry out their businesses. just about everything is like that. does not mean that we do not need regulations. i'm not one of those people who says that -- get rid of all of them. our ponder said if men were angels, no government or regulations would be needed, -- our founders said. but men are not like that neither women. we need to have regulations but not where it infiltrates every aspect of american society. than the other thing that has to be done is a reasonable and fair taxation system. i have based mine on the bible because i think go'dd's a pretty fair guy. he says, i want a tithe. he did not say if you have a bumper crop, giving a triple tithe. if you have your crops fail, give me nothing. if you make $10 billion a year you pay $1 billion. you make $10 a year, you pay $1.00. everybody has the same rights and we get rid of all of the loopholes and deductions, and that would be revenue neutral between 10% and 10%. everybody is involved. you need to system where everybody is involved. what politicians do is they love to raise taxes. it is easy to do it on 1% or 5%. it is hard to do it on 100%. and that is why we have to have a system where everybody is treated the same. that is such an important concept. liberty and justice for all. when we begin to pick and choose groups that we want to honor, it is a problem. the reason that in my campaign i have not aligned myself with a bunch of special interest groups. i have not run around looking for the big money people. and a lot of the pundit said someone like me could not be a viable candidate but they forgot about one very important fact it -- the people. and we've had over 200,000 donations in the last couple months. from average american people. so, we have what we need to put together an organization and keep it going. and that is the way i see america. i see it as a place that is of for, and by the people. with the government there simply to facilitate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. and that is one of the reasons i have been so vehemently opposed to things like the formal care act. -- the affordable care act. not because i do not want people to have affordable health care -- and i have a much better alternative. but because it turns upside down of the whole concept of a nation formed of, for the people. the government is saying, we do not care what the people thing. it is what we think that is important. if you do not like it, too bad. if we begin to accept that as a nation then we will change the whole concept of this country and what it was meant to be. and i do not think we should do that. when i look at some of the other factors that are impacting us and in terms of our finances, you look at the immigration issues we are having. we do have an illegal immigration problem. there is no crush and about that. -- there is no question about that. we can solve that problem easily by doing two things. sealing all our borders, north, south, east and west, and that does not require building a wall. we have a lot of sophisticated technology, including drones. but the reason for that is not just people coming from south of the border, but there are islam which is hottest -- isljihadists who want to destroy us. if we do not take that series, we will pay the price. they are metastasizing throughout the world while our military is shrugging. our navy is at its smallest size since 1917. the morale is very low in the armed forces. we have had a lot of resignations of top military brass. sequester had led to a situation where lieutenant colonels, captains, majors are getting letters saying, we will not need you anymore. that is not helpful. as our enemies who want to destroy us are growing and our military is shrieking, that is a horrible situation for us. we have to fix that. those people are trying to get in here. we need to seal the borders. we need to turn off the spigot that dispenses the goodies. if there are no goodies and the borders are tough, they will not want to come here. be still have 11 million people here. what are your going to do with them? some people have not been any other place. i would give them an opportunity to become guest workers, so they can come out of the shadows. they have to register, pay back taxes, pay their taxes going forward. if that -- it does not give them citizenship or voting rights. if they want to vote and become citizens, they have to get in the back of the line and go to the process like everybody else, because we have to pay homage to people who have done it the right way. it's a kick in the teeth to them to put somebody else in front of them. bear in mind, that we are a smart and compassionate people. and there are things we can do around the world. right now we spend billions of dollars in aid to other places. guess what? we do not have billions of dollars to give away in aid, but what we do have are a lot of companies and corporations with a lot of skills and abilities like -- in cameron, what we're doing is allowing companies to develop the millions of acres of fertile land -- in cameroon. and the companies are helping to build infrastructures of those countries and providing jobs and helping of people to become self-sufficient. that is the thing we should be doing in honduras, el salvador all over the place and creating situation where those people will not feel the need to come to this country. i think that is how we can export goodwill and create better allies in the process. but all of the things i'm talking about are going to require a lot of courage. because it is going against the status quo. and one of the things i've found, i have learned a lot in the last year, is that the entrenched system does not wish to change. the entrenched system is what is leading us down a path of destruction. unless we have the courage to stand up, like though superseded us, -- those who preceded us we will go the pathway of all of the other nations who became enamored of sports, entertainment, lifestyles of the rich and famous, lost their moral compass, tolerated corruption and rapidly destroyed themselves. the same thing will happen to us, but we do have the ability to change it. we just have to realize we cannot give away all of our values and principles for the sake of political correctness. and we must recognize that freedom is not free. and you have to fight for it every day. thank you so much. [applause] host: thank you. dr. carson: that was terrific. before he began, i want to point out a couple things. as you know, this is coming to us live across the country from c-span. that is a fabulous service, and we appreciate their being here. you know, the other part of that is that we are also stirring this over the web. -- streaming this over the web. thanks to cisco and verizon. dr. carson:, i know you came and you expect some questions and strangely enough, we have some for you. i hope you'll take a few moments. these are questions that came to us as a result of our region out to our membership asking them things they felt were important to ask you. just before i give you this question, let me just preface this, sheriff over 95% of them are elected. they are elected by the same people who are potentially going to elect to president. and it is strange how they get more votes on the ballot than almost 90% of those that are -- on the ballot. sheriffs have an intriguing position. dr. carson: the nation's jails have become the treatment of last resort for the mentally ill. the incidence of serious mental illness in jails including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and major depression is 4 to 6 times greater than the general population. first, what is your assessment of our mental health care system overall? and they wrote, would you change? but i have a feeling we should say, what would you change? dr. carson: well, it is a significant problem. we do not adequately take care o f the people who are mentally ill in our society, which is why so many of them end up incarcerated, which is exactly the wrong place for them to be. because some many of them are extremely vulnerable. psychologically. and you don't want to put them into the place with a bunch of hardened criminals who can take advantage of their psychological state. and you can end up when they come out with people who are mentally ill and now have a criminal tendency as well, which makes them into a much more dangerous person. we need to recognize that as a society. and once again be able to offer the resources that are necessary. again, it goes back to what i was talking about before. one of the reasons that we don't take care of the mentally ill now is because we do not have the money to do it. if we fix our the economy and we start doing things the right way and release that economic engine, and i should mention begin to run our government like a business, which we do not we run like an an efficient behemoth waste incredible amounts of money. for instance, we own 900,000 buildings. 77,000's of which we do not use or the underutilized. yet our government leases 500 million square feet of office space. that is one example. the list goes on and on. if we started to run efficiently, like we do in businesses, you take 3m, apple computers, toyota, they use the system called lean -- sigma the turnaround system that is used for corporations. you can use that same thing in government. we would save and a norma's amount of money. -- we would save an enormous amount of money. once we get that stuff out of here and start running at the right way, we will not need as much money. we will be able to use it appropriate way to take care of the mentally ill. and we will be able to do the kind of research we need to look at so we can identify these people early on, get the help they need early on. just one of the things we do not do, for instance, when we talk about veterans. 22-23 veterans commit suicide every day in this country, which means there is a huge problem going on. we look at it too late. is soon as they enlist we need to have support services all the weight through their military activity. and a year before they are dismissed, we need to have placement going on so it is a smooth transition into the private sector. as far as their health care is concerned, sending -- them to v.a. facilities makes no sense. they should have a health savings account and they should be able to go to any facility in the country and we should be happy to take care of them. host: one of the interesting statistics we talk about frequently is that there an average daily population in our jails, there are 650000 inmates. 2% of them -- 60% of those folks need mental health help. i think you pointed that out. dr. carson: that his craziness. no pun intended. host: with a couple of sheriffs in the audience. the first is from wood county, ohio. i would like to ask mark to please stand and present a question. mark: dr. carson:, last week the chairman of the house intelligence committee warned that our committee is at the highest threat level we have seen, particularly from radicalized americans. as president, what tools would you use to fight terrorism and what tools would you eliminate in our battle of counterterrorism? dr. carson: very good question. first of all, you have to be willing to call terrorism what it is and recognize that it is radical jihadists who want to destroy us and not play games with words about who they are. we should use every resource available to us in terms of offensive and defensive capabilities covert and overt weaponry, economic sanctions utilizing oil including taking the resources they use to fund their activities. we need to understand that our electric grid is very vulnerable. it needs to be hardened and we need to have several layers of alternatives for that. and we need to have both private sector and the government working together in terms of that grid. it is incredibly vulnerable right now. cybe war -- cyber warfare we need to beef that up in terms of our offensive capabilities and the defensive capabilities. when somebody attacks us, we need to be able to identify who they are and retaliate in a way that will make it very clear that they should not be doing things like that. we have got to stop being softies when it comes to our national defense because if we continue along this pathway, it is going to be bad. when it comes to the jihadistst, we have two choices. we either continue to sit back and bomb the desert and act like they are numbered as they grow. and eventually they will destroy us. or we use every resource possible to destroy them now. i prefer the second option. [applause] >> the previous administrations use policy to bring demilitarize vehicles to the police department do you still support a policy? >> we need to do everything we can to protect our police officers. we use whatever equipment they did necessary in order to protect themselves. the bigger issue is what do we need to as a society to remove the level of animosity that exists between police and society was should not be there. there were those, the same people i talked about who are stoking the flames of division between the genders and the races are also doing up between police and the citizenry. it is the last place we should have that. we need to be cut to trading on ways that we can familiarize the community with police officers. here in baltimore if the first encounter of johnny with a police officer is of a friendly face, somebody was playing catch with him, little johnny was very different impression on without officer is then if it is a person who is chasing them down the street. we need to be thinking about ways we can once again bring that familiarity which will lead us away from the kind of situations where we need this kind of militarization. i am for the police being well protected. when they go three streets and people are firing at them they need to be in the vehicle that will protect them. [applause] >> by the time deputies or the police are involved it is too late. that a direction -- that interaction is too late. i would next question comes from paul w. >> dr. carson you mentioned earlier in your speech about the 11-20,000,000 illegals who are here in america right now. you are against amnesty. and you talked about a work permit sponsored by an employer. what happens if they don't get that? what are the consequences? dr. carson: if they don't abide by the rules that we set, they have to be exported. it is visible as that. we set the rules. that is not just the case of illegal immigration, that is with everything. when people know that those rules are solid than they will begin to obey them. it might say well, it could be forced here and not there, then you get we have now. >> there is a -- i had the opportunity to go down to the border and see the challenges and risks. it is an and norm's threats to our deputies. in one cap -- indoor missk;,ksdaksda >> a call made this moment could take up in our veterans to respond. as a result, it is my advice to this country that we need to look back to the middle part of the 90's for success when we put troops officers on the streets again. the federal government invested in that. there were some challenges in that. we need to take a similar step. sheriff's here and across this country will have to be doing that job. dr. carson: we would use whatever we needed to do to secure it. we can do it. we have the ability. we just don't seem to have the will to do it. i was talking to the governor of arizona he was saying there are places he can take me where you could just walk across the border. there was no one there. it is craziness. we also have one of our criminal justice partners with us here today. >> i would like to turn to someone that is become a very good partner of ours. with the legal community in particular. someone asked me are you sure you want to call on a lawyer? i think it is important. i've asked him to present you with a question. >> dr. carson, commentators are saying that now as it relates to the foreign-born individuals in this country it is the highest that of event. this includes those illegal and -- legal and undocumented. if they are not assimilated? dr. carson: it is a problem but i think what i just talked about helps to eliminate that problem. again, we set the rules. if they meet those requirements no problem. if they don't then i think we have an obligation to remove them. i think most people will meet the requirements if they know that they are solid requirements. that includes the employers. employers in this country who employ people outside the regulations have to have severe penalties for doing. in terms of assimilation's english is the official language of this country. i don't mind what people do in the privacy of their own home. they can spaghetti like what they want. but the official -- they can speak any language they want. but the official language of the united states is english. a person in this country who speaks english should never feel uncomfortable in his own country. [applause] >> one last question sheriff susan benton. in interesting state. it has him a lord to you -- allure to you. >> thank you dr. carson for being with us today. what we find is not only are these folks predominately mentally ill they are also poor homeless and conquering disorders with substance abuse. with our philosophies of broken windows and zero-tolerance these are exactly the folks that get tied up in the system of the revolving door. those that are worked for us for many years in terms of crime reduction, but now with this crisis in mental health are you believe that the zero-tolerance is the way to go? dr. carson: no i don't. i think we need to be intelligent. zero-tolerance rules do not give us flexibility that we need. there are some people who for a variety of different reasons get caught up in drug abuse. to take those people and put them again into criminal universities which a lot of the jails are is not helping us as a society. it is not helping that individual. we need to have the ability to be flexible in making decisions. somebody who is selling drugs and is a dealer, i think you can put them under the jail. they're doing very bad things in our society. they need to be adequately punished, but away, and if it looks like we will continue that kind of activity don't ever let them out as far as i'm concerned is that is very detrimental to our society. but the victims we need to look at a different way and we need to try to rehabilitate them. we need to understand in our nation right now that we have about 330 million people, china has over a billion, india has over a billion we need to develop all of our people as much as we can. every young person, or old person, that we give him going down that path is one less person we have to be afraid of, protect our family from, or more taxpaying production. who may discover the cure for cancer. we get the four deserve any of our people away. thank you. [applause] >> we do appreciate your time. your schedule must be challenging. on behalf of the sheriff's association i would like to present you with a token of our appreciation. this flag flight over fort mchenry yesterday. we want to present it to you. [applause] [applause] >> former virginia senator jim webb also spoke. he talked about criminal justice reform and the importance of law enforcement engaging with the community. this event took place to bang days after jim webb declared his candidacy. his or marja 45 minutes. -- his remarks are 45 minutes. [applause] senator webb: thank you for coming to visit with me during these different discussions that are being held about where potential presidential candidates may view issues such as criminal justice reform in law enforcement. i would like to begin first day thanking all of you for the service that you are giving to your community and to your family and ultimately to our country by having chosen this profession of law enforcement. there happen questions over the past year or so about the relationship between our law enforcement communities and the communities which many of them serve. i know from observation and personal experience how dedicated the great majority of our law enforcement community is and what a hard job it often can be on a daily basis. we used to have a saying a long time ago when i was in the marine corps. there were similar confrontations about those who were serving in the military in law enforcement. they were calling law enforcement people pigs. the saying in the marine corps was, if you don't like a police officer, the next time you are robbed, call a hippie. the marine corps experience and my work as an attorney led me to have a strong feeling about how we structure law enforcement in our society. if you look at how the marine corps is structured you see that it combines discipline, meaning a sense of order, fairness meaning that everyone under that system must be treated fairly with a mission. how are we going to work together and overcome all these different boundaries that are so obvious when people come into the military to get our job done and have harmony. at the same time we have discipline and fairness. we will work together in terms of solving the problems that face us. it is essential that we maintain order. it is for the harmony of our society that we have trust and mutual support between the communities and our law enforcement entities. the best case scenario, the goal that we should look for is that our law enforcement officials should be part of the community. solving crime becomes a function of the cooperation rather than having an adversary relationship. enforcement of the laws gives a community the assurance that there will be stability so they can live their regular lives. i have worked on this in many different ways. anyone can read a speech and take a position during a presidential campaign. i spent a month talking to japanese officials and going into the prisons in talking to the wardens and people who worked as turnkey is -- they only had 40,000 people in prison. here in the u.s. we had only 600,000 people in prison. these are different societies. one is ethnically and culturally homogeneous and has been working with each other and ours is a multicultural society where we have a lot of abrasion and differences that we have to resolve and resolve them as leaders. how do we get this sort of disparity, what is it in their system they are doing right and what is it we are doing wrong. the typical response i got from the people in the japanese system was, what happened to you? they said, we copied the american system in the 1890's. i started looking hard at system and we can take these numbers over the years in the 1980's and we had 600,000 people as i said incarcerated. by the time i was running for the senate we had 2.38 million people incarcerated in the united states. and things were not getting any better. i started raising this issue on the campaign trail when i was running for the senate. i was running against an incumbent who had gotten the highest number of votes for president in the conservative political action conference in march of 2006. we were 33 points behind in the polls. i did not have any money. i did not have a campaign staff but i said i am going to go out and talk about the issues that we need to fix in this country and let the dice roll where they may. we won, by the way. nine months later. talking about this issue, the typical advice it was getting from political consultants was you can not talk about over-incarceration in virginia during a senate campaign. it will be political suicide for you to discuss this issue. everybody is afraid. this is not just about over incarceration. it is about the entire criminal justice system. one is the last time we took a hard look at it from point of apprehension to whether you decide to arrest and if so, what type of a court should you go into and what sort of a sentence should come out of a finding of guilty and what happens to someone when they are inside a prison, what does the prison administration look like? in the japanese criminal justice system, you could not become warden at a japanese criminal justice system as you started -- you would go through a national examination, year of training, and work your way up. similarly to what they do in the u.s. military. our system was random. there are some states where it was very advanced and there are other states where -- you are coming and watching for a week. american correctional association said that's all you need to do to start working in a prison. it definitely affects how the system was being run. beyond the prison administration, how do we prepare people who have been incarcerated and are going into supervision, how do we prepare them for reentry into society? a large percentage of these people, all of you will agree want to reenter society. they want to put this experience behind them and move to become a productive member of our society and it is in the self-interest of every american that as many people who have been incarcerated as can be properly reentered into our society should be. it will save us money, communities will be safer, you won't have them back on the street doing other things. that happens when they can't get jobs or they don't have the training, or a profession to work, and people won't be afraid of them. when i got to the senate we decided we would look at all these components. if you look at the u.s. congress in general, what happens is people will get tied up in one specific issue or another, sentencing differentials, crack versus powder cocaine. maybe that one issue can be resolved through the legislative process. we held two years of hearings. we did joint panels with groups like george mason university over here in fairfax, virginia. we got people talking across the lines on issues such as mass incarceration. after two years of thinking we decided the best approach would be to put together a national commission bringing the best minds of america into the table and for the first time since 1965 to get the advice of people who have been out like all of you have been out into this world of law enforcement, of all different aspects of it and to come in and tell us what is the best way that we can remake our criminal justice system in a way that is fair, that can reduce the numbers in incarceration and improve the safety of our communities. we sat down from our office, not from a committee staff, from our office. we sat down with stakeholders from across the political spectrum and philosophical spectrum. we brought in people from the aclu, from the marijuana project, from the national bar association, from your organization, from the international association of chiefs of police, we've brought in 100 different stakeholders, listen to them, got them to talk to each other, and put together a bill which i think was as good as any piece of legislation like this could be. it was for 18 months, $14 million, that's like one helicopter. we could get these minds together and show us for the first time since 1965 how we can streamline and improve this law enforcement process. we finally got on to the senate floor in october of 2011 having worked on this from us five years and we hit the great stone wall of filibusters that preceded the 2012 elections create we got bipartisan support but we had 57 votes, we needed 60 votes to break the filibuster. we had four republicans including orrin hatch, a very strong supporter. we lost the legislation on the floor. the national review online which is a conservative publication, it had been insanity to filibuster this commonsense approach. we brought this issue out of the shadows, into the place of public debate, where republicans and democrats, liberals and conservatives, could come together and talk about it. again, one of the reasons i wanted to come over here today was to express my appreciation to the national sheriffs association for having listened and contributed, and finally in february of 2011, deciding to support this approach, which i believe we still need. there are other areas, where i as someone who prides myself and working in a bipartisan way, we developed a leadership model and in 16 months were able to pass the best g.i. bill in history, and on this issue, there are other areas where we need to be working together and listening, and i would be grateful and honored to be working with your organization in the future to make sure that we can look at these issues in a continuously creative way, in order to enable our law enforcement officials to do their jobs, and at the bottom of this, to work toward the harmony and the respect that we need in our communities. with that, i'm happy, john, if you want to sit down and spend the rest of this time and discussion. thank you very much. [applause] >> i'm sitting here, but you can sit there if you want. senator webb: you're on the right, i'm on the left. [laughter] >> it really is a pleasure to have you here. as you know, c-span has reached out, using a multitude of its viewers. this is a great opportunity as well, and cisco and verizon are pushing this out over the web. as we talked about earlier, we have a number of questions for you. some of them are going to push the envelope, because that's what i think we have to do in this country. we asked the membership, what do you want to ask these folks that may run for president? these are not my questions. i think they are excellent. let me start off with the first one, then we will go out to the audience. in the evolving war against terror, what role do you see for local law enforcement in protecting the homeland? i'm going to add a twist to this. anything they need to do that they are not doing, that you would suggest to them? senator webb: i believe that in terms of the structure of the mission, it's important that we look at local law enforcement as a supplement to what already federal law enforcement, and in some cases military people, are required to do. i think the classic recent example is what happened when the aircraft hit the pentagon on 9/11. i actually was in the pentagon that morning, having breakfast with the commandant of the marine corps. the first word we got when they came into his breakfast room was that a missile had hit the world trade center. that was when cnn first broke the story. commandant jim jones said, do you want to come in my office and catch up on cnn? i got in my car and headed down the road when the plane hit the pentagon. if it were not for the first responders and the local law enforcement, we would have been in a real pickle. i watched that for three days from the balcony of my writing office so i could look directly at the pentagon. those functions have been increased. the training levels have increased, the types of equipment going to local law enforcement has definitely increased. the role is there, it has been defined. the one hesitation that i have the one concern that i would want to pass on is, we do not want to give the impression to local communities that we are militarizing our local law enforcement. there's a difference between being an infantry officer and a police officer. i have been in infantry officer, and i couldn't do the job of a police officer. most police officers are not going to want to do the job of an infantry officer. when you see in some of these communities our local law enforcement heavy up with basic military gear, with the vehicles that are military vehicles on the street, you would only want to be doing that in an extraordinary situation. the best role for our local law enforcement people when it comes to regular community relationships is that role of harmony and protector and guarantor, when you know when something goes wrong, the community is going to be on your side. basically, my view is we want local law enforcement to be the supplementary force, but at the same time we want to make sure these two roles are clearly defined when our communities look at them. thank you. >> i'm going to turn to the audience here. we have a question from chester county, south carolina. i'm going to ask sheriff alex underwood to present you with the next question. >> senator, you voted in the past to continue funds for declared sanctuary cities since march 2008. as president of the united states, would you expand on the scope of these cities, or would you leave the influence of to the states? senator webb: well, we are getting into a think a fairly complicated area of how you define the mandatory role of local law enforcement people when it comes to federal missions. the bill that we voted on, i looked it up when somebody asked me about it, it was one of these rush limbaugh amendments. basically it didn't say you are voting to continue the motion, the motion that was voted on said were going to cut off all federal help to local law enforcement inside any of these sanctuary cities. that's kind of absurd. it wasn't even an illegal immigration type of deal. at the same time, the concern is when you have high density immigrant populations, many of them illegal, which is actually what we have about two blocks from where i live in falls church. when you have that sort of high density population, if you are saying to local law-enforcement, the first thing you want to do is come in and check somebody's papers, you are going to have a tendency among the people who are living there not to call for help. you might have a domestic abuse situation, or a robbery or gangs. there was very heavy gang activity in this como area, for instance. the notion of the sanctuary cities was for local governments to decide they would not require local law enforcement to conduct activities that were basically federal activities, and i respect that. i don't think you should be cutting off funding in other areas if local communities decide to do that. i think in most cases it works toward more effective work i our local law enforcement people. >> thank you. senator, the next question came via the web. as long as our country's immigration problems go unsolved, the sheriffs will continue to bear the heavy cost of handling many of the illegal aliens crossing our borders and overcrowding our jails. until comprehensive immigration and border security reform is accomplished, how would you enforce the current law of the land? senator webb: i think the difficulty that we all have is the knowledge that in many ways, there are a lot of reasons why people come to this country illegally. a lot of them come because they want to work. they want to become part of the system. some might come to conduct criminal activities. this is particularly true in terms of how south of the border has turned -- is in danger of turning into a narco state. there is a lot of drug trade coming across the border. some might be coming for purposes of international terrorism and these sorts of things. it is proper to do our best to enforce the laws as they exist. we want to try to work toward a system that recognizes the realities of where we are under this simpson was only act was passed nearly 30 years ago now and has proven to be blacks and ineffective. -- and has proven to be lax and ineffective. but the reality of the system were working under right now is the president has declined to prosecute certain areas, particularly in those areas i mentioned about people who have come here to make a better life. >> do you agree with that decision? senator webb: i'm happy to comment on that, but congress is basically declining to legislate. it's like they are paralyzed. we saw that in the 2007 attempt for some sort of immigration reform. the reality is that there are millions of people here because of the weakness of the law that are going to stay here. you are not going to send a number probably much higher than 11 million -- you're not going to round up people on buses and send them back. under the current law, i would support the process of identifying people who are illegal, discouraging border crossings for a lot of reasons security being one of them crime being another. i would want to see our foreign policy focus more heavily on solving the problems in mexico and central america. we are spending all this energy and diplomatically and financially and militarily over in places like iraq and afghanistan in that part of the world. the greatest problem -- the greatest challenge we can solve is to work to stabilize the government in mexico and central america so that there is a different environment down there and we won't see the same sorts of immigration patterns. with respect to the president declining to prosecute, and i think what you've seen from some other people if they are saying they will even go further than that. we have to be very careful about timelines. when i was in the senate, when we had the immigration bill in 2007, i introduced an amendment which said that from the date of passage of this legislation, from that date, if you have been here more than five years, if you can demonstrate that you have put down roots in your community, a job, language education -- there were a list of them -- then you should have a path toward citizenship. for those others, we will be able to separate who has come here and settled in under this law and who should not be allowed that pathway. we have to fix, realistically, the problem we have now. then we need legislation that can truly create fair immigration laws, and that's the next step. >> i know this is going through the minds of a number of sheriffs in the audience. i was just down there about a month and a half ago or so. is this a chicken and egg problem, is it something that can go parallel? senator webb: we should always emphasize our security. and the notion of gang activity, serious criminal gang activity not kids hanging out on a street corner, but the serious nature gang activity. we raised that during the hearings when i was trying to get all the different pieces of criminal justice on the table. so we should never be stopping that. but at the same time, with the people who are here, there is a game going on. both parties have been accepting of the people who are here in the third category. the democrats, usually the ones who are accused the most of accepting it. many of them see it quite obviously as a benefit in terms of the percentage of the vote they might get, but the wall street republicans like it just as well. the wall street journal is an advocate of totally open borders. it's not just a democratic issue, it's not a republican issue. what we have to do is have a rational policy and get people to admit it and move forward. >> last comment on that topic and then we will go to the audience. as you formulate your decision you are probably traveling quite a bit. i know from my discussions with some folks that you've been all along the border. in my visit, i had been down there several years ago, and what i saw was stark, dramatic incredibly difficult terrain. i want to encourage you, there are a number of sheriffs along the texas border as well as the arizona border. i would be remiss if i didn't say what i'm about to say. if you go down, see for yourself. don't let the federal government tell you what to see. don't let them bring out the dog and pony show. these guys work their tail ends off down there, the feds. don't get me wrong. see it just one-on-one with these folks, because they are living this nightmare every single day. [applause] i want to turn to sheriff keith cain from davies county, kentucky. >> i want to echo what has already been expressed, and that is our appreciation for you being here. i want to take the opportunity to both personally and publicly thank you for your service to this great country, particularly in a time of our history when that service was not all that popular, so thank you very much. [applause] senator webb, you have noted in the past that there are four times as many mentally ill persons in our prisons as there are in our mental health institutions. i know that to address that disparity, you mentioned in your opening remarks that you sponsor the national criminal justice commission act. though that bill did fail in 2009, 2010, and in 2011, i'm encouraged as are my peers that there is bipartisan support that continues to this very day. i'm also concerned with the fact that -- the statement you made during the course of your opening remarks that the naysayers out there, the political advisers at indicated that this was political suicide. i'm interested in knowing what kind of leadership, with the emphasis on that word leadership, is needed to change this national discussion, the needed dialogue on reforming the criminal justice system. senator webb: thank you. the first thing i would say is if you are looking for the kind of leadership that can change the national dialogue on this discussion, we have shown it. we did it. nine years ago when i started talking about this, people were saying it was political suicide. by staying on this, you indicate that the bill failed in 2009 2010, and 2011. the bill didn't fail, we couldn't get it on the floor. we were listening to organizations as i said across the board, including your organization which you finally agreed to come on board after a lot of questions and dialogue. the kind of leadership you would look for, i hope, is the type that would take on controversial issues that other people don't want to talk about, stand up ask questions, take the hits show a way forward, which we did when we finally created this concept of the commission, and in this case, put it into the national dialogue. it's a success story in terms of the issue as opposed to the bill that we passed. justice kennedy became a supporter on this. the american bar association actually offered to pay for it $14 million. and now you see members of the other party, who wouldn't touch the issue of criminal justice reform, putting it into their platforms. the american conservative action conference here in washington made criminal justice reform one of their top three topics this year when they would not have touched it with a 10 foot pole six or seven years ago. so i believe in a lot of different areas, i've approached a lot of different issues this way in my life. if you talk about problems that maybe other people aren't going to talk about, and you stand up and gather the facts and show a way forward, you can make a difference. i believe we have done that. the issue of the mentally ill in our prison system, its first of all the result of some well-intentioned cases, judicial cases that took place back in the 1970's when there was a lot of concern about putting people into mental institutions against their will, and the standard became much looser and there are a lot of people who truly needed help who are out on the street here in so many of them now in prison systems when they could have been in other institutions receiving different kinds of care. we need to work on that as a country. we need to be providing the right kinds of assistance to people who have issues like that, and not simply the brutality and inattention that so often goes into being incarcerated. also i think we should be putting mental health parity as one of the issues that the congress should pass, in terms of how people receive medical care insurance coverage in those sorts of things. thank you. >> i'm going to turn to one of my colleagues here in the right row, terry is executive director for the michigan state sheriffs association. i know he's got a question. >> i did until he asked it. [laughter] but i want to personally thank you also for your service to our country and your willingness to continue to serve. it sets you above and apart from the other candidates that you are at least here listening to our issues and concerns and answering our questions about those concerns. if i could go back the question, i would like to congratulate you in 2010, the national alliance on mental health awarded you legislator of the year your working criminal justice and helping those persons suffering from mental illness. if i can piggyback on that, you touched on it in your answer slightly. our jails have become the de facto mental health institutions as a result of those deforms you were talking about from the 1980's and 1990's. reform needs to be looked at on a continual basis. what exactly, if you are elected, can we get your commitment that you would continue to work toward reforms in getting our people in the criminal justice system who have had their backs turned on them by the mental health system, can we get your commitment that you will continue to do that, and one of the largest things you could do in that new capacity would be to get the medicaid reform did -- reformed, so that those persons coming into our facilities can continue to get the continuity of care if they are in the mental health system before they come in, they can maintain their system, they can maintain their treatment. our jails were not designed, equipped, staffed, or trained to deal with mental health issues. if we have a silver bullet in our arsenal of dealing with overcrowding, i believe dealing with mental health and the issues dealing with mental health is our solution. what would you do to help us with that, sir? senator webb: well, first of all, as i mentioned, i think in society writ large, we need to focus on mental health parity in terms of medical care. people tend to forget that mental health issues are just as disabling as physical conditions. i have worked on that in the past and will continue to. the second thing is, one of the things i know i would do fairly quickly, i am not a believer in executive orders, the abuse or misuse of executive orders, but i think it is a no-brainer to issue an executive order and get this commission on criminal justice reform going. it's almost no cost and a huge benefit to get these lines -- these minesds together, get the dialogue going and work toward a holistic approach of how all these different things we are talking about interact into a healthy criminal justice system. with respect to the overcrowding, the other area kind of the elephant in the bedroom here that we don't talk about enough is the number of people who are incarcerated for drug offenses. if you do a timeline back to 1980, i think 40,000 people were in prison on drug offenses. today it's probably more like 500,000 on drug offenses. a great percentage of these are for nonviolent crimes. just as in mental health issues, i don't think it makes a lot of sense to put somebody in jail when they have a disease, when they have an illness, physical illness. there have got to be better ways for us to approach the issue of drug use in america. one of the most fascinating changes in our society in my adult lifetime has been the approach toward cigarette smoking. think about this. we didn't make cigarettes illegal, we just got the information out there and educated people about the potential harm. when i was working on the house veterans committee when i was right out of law school, we would be at a meeting -- even probably right now, people would be lighting up a cigarette. today, if somebody lights up a cigarette, in general, you would say, what are they doing? that is actually a success of education regarding your health more than punitive law, per se. they have to be similar approaches when it comes to drug use. >> let me turn to somebody that's equally impressive. he is our national sheriffs association sheriff of the year. he is from shelby county ohio. >> thank you, senator, for being here, and thank you for your service to the country especially as a former veteran thank you for your work on the g.i. bill. we have come through some troubled times the last five or six years in regards to whatever we call it, the great recession. it's put tremendous financial impact on local law enforcement and police departments. as a result of that, we have had lots and lots of unfunded mandates from the state in federal government, especially through homeland security. do you think that we should be offended by all those unfunded mandates coming to us? your thoughts, sir? senator webb: i think you are right to be concerned. certainly there are a number of suggestions that i would have, or reactions i would have, looking at the issue itself. the first one is kind of a sense of irony, from what i was just talking about a little while ago with these sanctuary cities question. i support the notion of local communities, local law enforcement communities, having to make decisions about the best way that they can enforce laws in their communities. the sanctuary cities concept was designed to do that. you cannot have the federal law come in and say you have to check someone's resident status, you have to do this, when that is essentially a federal function. you have the same thing with these mandates, if they are mandating from a federal or state level that something be done, and then they are taking away the discretion of local law enforcement in terms of how they should utilize the assets and the people that they have. i think that is a legitimate question. there's another question from the federal level that kind of hit me when i was thinking about this. that is, if you look at how the congress works, you have two different types of committees in the congress. you have an authorizing committee and an appropriation committee. i was on the armed services committee. we would authorize programs, similar in nature, not specifically to what you are asking. then the appropriations committee had to appropriate the money for that program to take place. if they did not, then even the let program has been authorized, it was not going to be put into place. you would have a similar argument here if there were federal mandates that were not funded. but in general, i would say i think there should be respect for the discretion of local law enforcement in terms of how to use their assets, and we should be very careful in terms of requiring local law enforcement to conduct activities that belong in the federal or state level. i hope that answers your question. >> thank you, sir. senator, we want to thank you. i know your schedule is getting hectic by the day. we have a very special gift we would like to present you this morning. on behalf of the national sheriffs association, i want to present you this flag that actually flew over fort mchenry yesterday in honor of you. it's a representation of our support for you being here. i want to tell you on a personal note, before we finish, a couple of things. we realized in the green room before we came in, we worked in the same administration many years ago. i'm going to say this from the heart, i hope it comes across as such. you have taken a lot of heat you've taken a lot of hits, both physical and political. as you look out over the horizon, i know that you are hearing a lot of people say do what you've got to do and run. by being here today, you have committed, to us at least, that we sheriffs in this audience are worthy of listening to and talking to, and we want to thank you so very, very much. senator webb: thank you. i'm proud of having worked in the reagan administration. one of the great accomplishments of that administration was bringing good people in and allowing them to lead. we are probably going to get a lot busier over the next week or so. if people want to help us out, we appreciate that. >> the seascape -- he's been cities tour about omaha nebraska that was one of america's first groups fighting for racial equality. >> omaha had a reputation as a city that when you came into it if you are black you need to keep your head down and be aware that you would not going to be served in restaurants or stay in hotels. when they began their operation, the idea, the term civil rights was not used. it was not part of the national lexicon at that time. civil rights was so far removed from the idea of the creator of the community of omaha that they were operating in a vacuum. i like to say they were operating without a net. it was not a support group. there were no prior experiences to challenge racial discrimination. >> we look back to the union pacific and now the construction of union station help omaha's economy. >> it was one of the premier railroad companies. it was founded in 1862. it combined several rare look companies to make union pacific than they were charged with building the transcontinental railroad. they started here and were moving west. they started on the west coast also and moved east. they both met up at omaha. that is really what propels us even farther. we become that point, one of the gateways to the west. >> that is the it 2:00 p.m. >> here on c-span this morning washington journal is next. better look at the 2016 presidential race with american conservative union share matt schlapp. later a discussion on the future of the new york times will stop. coming up, noam scheiber talks about the obama administration's plan to expand overtime benefits. also morally 2016 presidential race -- more on the 2016 presidential race. we will also take a look at the puerto rican debt crises and the effect on the global economy. a former senior writer for bloomberg businessweek joins us, and currently the host of full disclosure. ♪ host: "the hill" reports that despite progress, efforts could be a dead end in the senate. some ofsenate democrats want t negotiate over spending levels. russian president vladimir putin called president obama to express confidence in the relationship between the two countries. that call to place yesterday -- took

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