good morning, everyone. i'm hope goens the staff director for the homeland security committee thank you for coming to our panel discussion, funding the front line hosted by chairman bennie thompson. today's moderator is miss tiffany cross. tiffany cross is the editor on cofounder of the beat dc, a daily news publication highlighting diversity in the nation's capitol. welcome within ms. cross. >> good morning, everybody. >> good morning. >> i'll try that again. i grew up in a baptist church. good morning, everybody. >> good morning. >> i know these are dire times. but we want to have an energetic conversation this morning. and members have votes at 10:00. so while the chairman has an introduction that could easily go on for 30 minutes i'm going to be brief and thank the kmarm for having this important conversation and i'm delighted to be here. again my name is tiffany d. cross i'm the cofounder and managing editor of the beat d.c. if you don't subscribe i hope will you after today. without further ado i will bring forth the chairman of homeland security, congressman bennie thompson. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. good morning. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> you know, i'm of that same religion. you have to talk back. president trump's shutdown has been going on for over a month now. remember this is his shutdown, because he said on camera directly to the american people, he would take pride in shutting down the government. 800,000 of our federal employees still have no paycheck since last year. they will miss another paycheck tomorrow. almost all of our front line workers at dhs are working with no pay. this includes tens of thousands of tsa, transportation security officers, coast guard officers, border patrol officers, secret service officers and et cetera. democrats in the house are doing the work to fully fund the government. yesterday we voted again to reopen the department of homeland security. quite simply, the shutdown of dhs has undermined the department's ability to secure the homeland, protect the american people and pay its front line officers and agents. for example, millions of travelers each day pass flew airport security checkpoints staffed by tsos who aren't getting paid. many tsos some of the lowest paid worker in government are calling out for work in increasing numbers. many are now understandably working for paid work to make ends meet. come tomorrow, they may not be able to pay the first of the month's bills such as rent or utilities. this has already led to staffing shortages and delays at our nation's airports. the public should know these delays are a direct result of president trump's shutdown. so we decided to put some additional faces on this shutdown and what the impact will have. my first person who will talk is no stranger to this issue. he is the former secretary of homeland security, jeh johnson, who has some comments he would like to offer before our panelists begin. secretary johnson. [ applause ] >> good morning. >> good morning. >> chairman thompson, thank you for the opportunity to be here. i want to acknowledge my former colleagues and friends who are on the panel. and i speak to you this morning not as secretary of homeland security and not as a democrat. i speak to you as a concerned private citizen and the father of a member of the united states coast guard. we are in the midst of a security crisis. and it is one of our own making, frankly. i used to say when i was the leader of homeland security that our most valuable security resource are our own people. the very people we depend upon to protect us are the people we are now inflicting a financial insecurity. the very people we depend on for our security are made to suffer by this shutdown, by inflicting stress, hardship, anxiety and anger into their personal lives and the lives of our family. a breaking point may come tomorrow when they miss a paycheck for the second time this year. as former administrator nefinger can tell you absentee rates at tsa have been as high as 10%. the starting salary of a tso is something in the range of $28,000. they like a number of others in the department of homeland security really do live paycheck to paycheck. our customs personnel who secure our ports and airports from dangerous incoming contraband, drugs, and so forth, special interest aliens, are made to suffer as a result of our failure to pass a budget. as chairman thompson knows, for years while i was in office we fought high attrition rates in the united states secret service and were able to make lots of progress to turn that around. i fear that the shutdown and the missing paychecks are a huge setback. our border patrol agents have not been paid now for two pay periods. they too live pay period to pay period. my own son's ship mates, i fear, are going broke. at basic training in kate may, new jersey, recruits are deciding to go to another military service. an assistant u.s. attorney that i know in florida who is regarded as essential government personnel was handed yesterday a memo with options for food banks and relief at churches. from a security standpoint, we are letting our guard down. if this shutdown ended tomorrow, i fear that the damage already done to our security will be months if not years as a result through high attrition, lack of reenlistment, recruitment efforts have all been set back. a journalist i know and respect told me yesterday that he feared we would have to wait for a catastrophic event to finally resolve this shutdown. i refuse to accept that. my message to both political parties and both political branches of government, it is time for leadership. it is time to get back to the basic role of governing, the most basic thing our political leaders can do for the people that elect them is to keep the government open and pay the workers. and we are failing at that right now. end in shutdown. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, mr. secretary. i went to clarke atlanta university so i'd be remiss if i didn't say you just heard from a morehouse man. thank you. >> i'm going to introduce our panelists now. and i'm going to start with vice admiral peter -- fwofrpg me if i mess up yorp last name peter nefinger. >> you got it. >> i practiced last night in the mirror so good. tim manning, the former fema deputy administrator for protection and national preparedness katlyn i'm trying this katlyn. katlyn derkovich. >> perfect. >> katlyn is the former assistant secretary for fr infrastructure protection' department much homeland security. we have joining us this morning jay david cox senior. he is the national president of afgy, the american frags of government impose. and i am a former labor organizer special welcome to you. tony riordan joining us the national president of the national treasury employees you know. . i want this to be an interactive discussion i want the opportunity for the audience to weigh in with questions. i'm just going to get us startwood the first round of questions then i'd like you all to weigh in with questions as well. peter, i'm starting with you. and the reason why is because i think a lot of us saw the notice yesterday from air traffic controllers and pilots and flight attendants detail the severity of the shutdown and the line that spoke to me that jumped out to me the most is in our risk averse industry we cannot calculate the level of risk currently at play more predict the point at which the entire system will break. it's unprecedented. and they were speaking specifically to the shutdown. you also spent some time in the coast guard as well. and we heard from the coast guard yesterday detailing the stress that its members are feeling. and i was just saying back stage that when people can't feed in re families or themselves things can get dangerous. but another dangerous point is our airlines. we have things like the super bowl coming up. but then we have things like every day travel. if you could, detail us your introduction remarks on what you think is happening now and your assessment of the path forward. >> okay. thank you. and thank you to chairman thompson for the invitation to be here today. and i would echo the comments of former secretary johnson with respect to the concerns. i too appear as a private citizen. and also as a retired member of the united states coast guard. i served for 34 years in the coast guard. following that almost two years as the administrator of tsa. to address directly your first question, the -- i will tell you this and i know this because i know the people and worked close i with coast guard men and women throughout my career and worked closely with members of the transportation security administration. particularly the front line transportation security officers, the uniformed folks you see every day. and if they're on the job they'll do the job. and they'll show up. and they want to do the job. and i've had lots of conversations over the past month with people in those positions. but -- but i would agree that there is a point at which there is a breaking point. i don't know where it is. and i don't know what that is. but when you're not making a lot of money to begin with, and whether a junior enlisted members of the united states coast guard, junior officer or member of the tsa, your starting pay and many of the first years you are in is relatively low. there is a point at which you have to take care of yourself. it's interesting to me -- it's surprising and unfortunate that we have to have a discussion about funding essential government services. i say they're essential because by definition they are essential. ever since the establishment of the agencies currently affected by the shutdown this body, congress, and every single president has affirmed and reaffirmed their right to exist and their need. so i say it's essential by definition because, you know, the elected officials representing the american public have said that these are services that they want. and if i speak specifically to the two agencies i'm most familiar with, the coast guard and transportation security administration. we you look at the transportation system of the united states i think it's fair to say that it is one of the key essentials to economic health of in country. and it's safety and security is what those two agencies are pledged to protect. in addition to with the coast guard protecting the maritime boundaries of the united states and all that entails and implies. so there clearly are impacts. the -- and, again as i said it's interesting that we're discussing impacts. and we have been reading about them for some time now. but the first and most important impact and the highest impact is of course to the people nar -- that were asked by their country to do this job. and stink it's important to remember that -- that every single person who raises their hand and takes an oath of office, the same oath of office that every member of congress takes that every member of the executive brafrm takes, that every president has taken, and it's the one that begins, i pledge to support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic. but there is a very interesting additional follow online it's the one that says i take this obligation freely without any reservation or -- orp purpose of evasion. it's important to remember they take it freely. . these are people who said i really want to serve my country. it's a contract we have now with them. because the other side of that then is the promise to take care of them as they're serving their country. remember these are people who have asked to do to do in the ghost card and tsa some of the hardest and thankless work this country has. but some of the most important work. you know that because any keep getting reauthorized and we know how people -- how people look to them. so they have promised to do their job. and they will continue to do their job because it's important to them and people said that to me as i've gone through. but remember these hard jobs are not just challenging because you're asked to get under way on ships. in an average coast guard career it's not unusual to spend a third of your career away from family and friends. far away from family and friends. the -- everyone knows that the tsa has been presidents at best the butt of the late night comic jokes and deerition at worse. if you are the face of government -- and i would argue that tsa is largely the face of government you see roughly 2 to 2.5 million people a day coming through airport checkpoints. at a large airport, the average tso individual officer will see 1,500 people during a shift. every person needs to be treated with respect and dignity and at the same time cleared for entry because collectively you want to make sure that people feel safe and secure in travels. so to -- to fail to pay people who are done these hard things i think is -- is unconscionable. that in turn replies against the agencies that are then asked to do -- those are members of agency that is do these missions. mission and readiness obviously begin to suffer. again i don't know the breaking point but at some point you can't fuel aircraft and put food onboard the ships and can't repair things that break then suddenly you can't do the jobs, the basic jobs you've been asked to do. important jobs. it's hard to maintain recruitment. secretary johnson mentioned that we have already seen instances of people who have gone to recruit training, boot camp at kate may new jersey for the coast guard. people who have not yet been paid by the coast guard because they started boot camp after the government shutdown who have been asked to go home because there is no more pay to keep them there. they had to fund their own way home. and some of those people will likely choose to go someplace else. long-term workforce, i suspect you'll begin to lose people who have talent and capability because they will need to find other opportunities, not that they want to but need to. and then there is all the little things that don't get done. all the opportunity costs of not having the ability to go to work. so fl -- the overall impact is one of uncertainty on the part of the american public. uncertainty on the part of the individuals asked to do the job. the very real and tragic cases of individual hardship and countless. as numerous as there are people not being paid. and then ultimately my concern as a citizen is undermining some faith and confidence in the ability of the government to provide essential services. so i would leave it at that and i'm happy to follow on with any specifics. >> all right. thank you. and i definitely have some follow up questions. but i'll let the audience weigh in and make sure everyone gets a chance to give introduction remarks. so i'll go to tim manning. as a remind era former fema administration official. tim, set the frame for us on what you think of in government shutdown and its impact on fema. >> great, sure i will. thank you. i also want to thank mr. chairman for having us here to talk about this topic. it's unbelievably critical to the public to the american public not just the men and women of the department of homeland security but the whole nation. and so before i start i as well have -- speaking as a private citizen on behalf of my former colleagues and friends. across the entire emergency management community, like admiral nefinger, i aspen the eight years in the obama administration as deputy administrator of female aifr. a liechl emergency manager, emergency responder and worked with people my entire career. i can tell you from the start that women and men of the federal emergency management agency and the entire federal government are tireless, selfless public servants. they choose to do this for the value to friends and family, to protect their neighbors. they don't do it for reward. they don't do it for riches. they do it to serve each other. and they definitely deserve better. in the context of fema, i think it's important to understand to a -- to begin with that fema as you think of a an agency is -- well one of those organizations that's oft unthought of in the first place until something bad happens. it's not an agency that comes to mind on a sunny, clear afternoon. but it's beyond the just the federal emergency management agent agency. the federal government emergency response capability is the entire executive branch. it's every department and agency across the government. fema is the coordinator of that effort. and i fear that in this shutdown aside from the impacts that we're having on the individuals that work on the agency and the interagency that supports disaster response in the united states, it's having a long-term extremely detrimental affect on the nation's preparedness and ability to respond to disasters and acts of terrorism within the united states. secretary johnson mentioned mentioned his fear that it might require a catastrophic incident to snap us out of this. and my fear is that with the effect the shutdown is having on fema and the nation's ability to react to a crisis, there would be nobody there to deal with it. and an important thing to understand about fema is that unlike a lot of other agencies where you see people who are determined to be exempt or classified as essential that are working selflessly for no pay, where you can exempt entire classes, law enforcement, people working for day to day in enforcing the nation's laws, in fema, the people that to disaster response are all dual headed people. people on day it to day executive assistants or managing contracts or managing a training disaster. disaster response, crisis management is not the day job. they're not able to be exempted. they are not on the job working for free. they are home furloughed without a paycheck. furthermore, actually prohibited by law from checking emails every day. so when there is a crisis, a big disaster, hurricane katrina, hurricane sandy, hurricane maria, hurricane harvey. those are all hands on deck missions. every person in the federal emergency management agency and a lot of people across the department of homeland security and every other federal agency change their day jobs to do disaster response. and they're not there. they're not at work right now. they're home. in 2013, during the shutdown, the tropical storm karen was coming ashore in the gulf of mexico. three or four days into that shutdown appear we had to do a snap recall of a number of people. the folks that are on- considered exempt nar at the agency right now are the ones that are watching what's happening. they're monitored -- doing situation monitoring but there are not enough of those people to do the response. we had to pull those people back. that was extraordinarily difficult three or four days into the shutdown. a month into that one i'm not sure how we'd reach everybody. as i mentioned, the men and women of the agency -- of the emergency management community are selfless, tireless public servants. but the tragic thing, that i hear most from people talking to folks still in the agency, they love that mission. they absolutely love being the last best hope for people when therapy at their most dire. when there is a major catastrophic incident in their home. in their community. fema is the last place that there to help them. and the people- the work at fema love that mission. and without exception the people i talked to are all -- they are looking for new work. they are destitute about it. dpont will dpondent about it. they need work. they need to pays pills their mortgage and find something stable. that's a loss to the nation that will be hard to fill. at the same time, we have stopped -- there is a stop work on all contracts. there is no training. millions of first respond erps a year trained by fema at the center for domestic preparedness in ants steno, the emergency management institute- -- the center for domestic preparedness in alabama, the emergency management stoupt and the fire academy in emit's berg, maryland, are all closed. it will take years to back fill, get that training back started again and to get the people who have lost that opportunity back through the training opportunities. as they use the advanced first responder trainings that we are weaker as a nation without. disaster recovery work is stopped around the country. the rebuilding from disasters in puerto rico has stopped. the contracts have been stopped. the list goes on and on. i fear that this will have long-lasting months as the secretary said, possibly years to recover from. in the meantime i fear that we are rolling the dice. we are -- we will be lucky to get everybody back on the job without a crisis striking that we are not able to respond to. and i feel for all of my former colleagues at the agency and across the department, across the government through this time. and it's time to end the shutdown and get back to work. >> thank you, tim. so before everyone runs out to get a bunker i want to get through this quickly and get to katlyn. just a reminder that tim served in his capacity during the entire term of the barack obama administration. by all means you're certainly a subject matter expert. that's a dire warning. katlyn who as a reminder wsh dhs official during barack obama's second term worked under secretary jeh johnson. please frame the discussion for us. >> thank you very much tiffany. and i want to thank chairman thompson, former secretary jeh johnson, members cht house homeland security committee and all members of congress and staff that are here today. more importantly i want to thank the federal employees on the front lines, whether exempt or non-exempt. the work that you do is vitally important to our national and economic security. i am here today to talk about the impacts of the partial shutdown on the homeland security enterprise and the public/private partnership that protects our nation's critical infrastructure from cyber and kinetic threats i'm here as a private citizen but for eight years i had the honor and friflg of serving the department of homeland security and working in partnership with the owners and operators of the electric grid, communications, financial services, transportation, water, chemical, health and many oerp industries as well as partners at the state and local level in mitigating risks to our nation's critical infrastructure. as each day passes though, the strategic risk to our nation continues to grow. both from the threats that led to the establishment of the department of homeland security but in cyberspace and other emerging domains. we rely on an ant kuwaited definition of imminent threat and one not could go nizant of risk environment we live in driven by adversaries and bad actors directed by nation state and non-state actor that is do not follow norms and more importantly operate upon a strategic doctrine less concerned about immediate consequences but focused on headlines, gaining footholds that serve as a channel to skate, deescalate, ultimately and dividing our country. these active and persistent threats are not considered imminent under current apprehension laws. which means the preparedness efforts we engage with the homeland security enterprise have been significantly reduced if not come to a halt. preparedness and resilience are integral to the homeland security mission. and if we are unable to understand and take steps to mitigate risk early, we will lose critical momentum. we should take solace that the homeland security employees on duty without pay are doing an great job in blocking and tackling the threats every day. on the cyber front the national cyber security communication serk the hub for information sharing, incident response, and coordination fwor both critical infrastructure and the federal government is operational and managing major risks. federal networks are being protected and the important dns security work continues. especially at the large departments and agencies that remain reasonably staffed and have the ability to manage key systems and keep cyber hygiene up. federal civilian network intrusion deeks and prevention capabilities have not been interrupted. most of the federal security operations centers, facilities where security information is housed, monitored and analyzed to protect data from cyber threats are also up and running. but the preparedness work and the conduct of election and -- and census system vulnerability assessments have ceased because they can't be tide to emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property. on the physical side, protective security advisers and others in the field continue to provide federal support to major public gathering. from the recent new year's eve celebration in times square to the security for the super bowl in atlanta on february 3rd and events beyond, to include mardis gras, the daytona five hundred and the nba all-star game. more than 900,000 remain unthe president office of protective service. whether occupied or not nop but our strategic efforts and security awareness campaigns are on old despite the recent icele attacks again americans in syria, the continuing threats to schools and places of worship and active and persistent cyber threats. the diminishment of our intelligence capability and inability to raise awareness about emerging threats does leave us vulnerable. and many of our private sector partners that have developed and deployed innovate every antiterrorism plans policies and technologies through the safety act to manage risk and litigation stand to lose their krert attention and designation as the renewal applications go unprocessed. many other vital -- many other vital strategic initiatives have been impacted. for example, while the chemical facility anti-terrorism inspectors continue to monitor threats to chemical facilities we are unable to do enforcement. partnerships have been impacted. we have asked our private sector partners to help us address emergencies such as fuel resiliency, supply chain risks, position navigation and time, electric magnetic pulse and many others. these projects are now on hold. the rollout of continuous diagnostic and monitoring which helps our departments and agencies approve sieb he were security posture has been delayed. enterprise initiatives at the department such as the migration from data centers to the cloud, something that our employees -- osh the department's employees have been working hard on are also on hold. and many of the equities that this very committee fought hard to give to the new cyber security and infrastructure security agency are being challenged by interagency partners in the absence of dhs at the table. and planning has been impeded for future capability development. finally and equally important i want to speak to the human impact. much like pete and tim have already acknowledged. many -- let me start with contractors. many of the cyber and infrastructure protection missions depend on contractors. some have been given stop work orders. others continue to work without invoices being paid. this is particularly devastates for smaller contractors. the very businesses the dhs worked hard to cultivate over the last several years. many will never recover. laying off or losing employees or simply going out of business. these contractors have built relationships. they have longstanding knowledge and have gone through the ard ewous vetting process and are cleared for work. i can't underscore the enormous impact the potential absence will have on dhs missions particularly cyber. and finally, the federal workforce within the men and women i called my family for eight years. most of the federal homeland security employees work at the department because of the desire to serve their country because of the national security mission and the stability of a paycheck. we have taken away the stability of a paycheck and we have called into question the importance of this homeland security mission. there are reports that recruiters are starting to poach the best talent in the department. and the pipeline is in doubts. i know that many of you in the room understand our hiring challenge and the shutdown only exacerbates the problem. i'm sorry when i say our i still speak as a member of the department of homeland security even though i am a private citizen. there is anecdotal evidence that recruiters are calling. talent is getting offers. we are going to lose continuity and knowledge -- we are going to lose continuity and knowledge. from a a recruiting standpoint we have been significantly impacted. most recently the department was told it couldn't attend the scholarship for service even, a major recruiting opportunity for junior employees. the rest of the intelligence community was there, the fbi was there. the but dhs was not and our pipeline will take a hit. finally with every passing day, the impact grows more significant. as we near the 30-day markets going to be difficult to restart projects to ensure contractor continuity again especially for small businesses. we are the dormant sigh is the creating calculation was piv cards. and when the shutdown ends and we call employees back to work there is start-up time required to get everybody back into their seats. the critical mission of the department of homeland security should certainly be exempt from laps in funding. but the bottom line is we cannot allow a government shutdown to happen again. it is bad for our national security our economic security and catastrophic for the people who have answered the call to service and defend our front lines every day. i do want to thank the senator warner for introducing a bill to make sure that shutdowns never happen again and i hope that the house will take up similar legislation. thank you. >> thank you, katlyn. lots of follow up questions for you. but i'll keep moving and we'll revisit that. mr. cox, with afgep you have a lawsuit against the administration right now. so very curious your thoughts to help frame in discussion. >> thank you very much. and again, thank chairman thompson who has been a true leader for the employees and homeland security and been a true leader of working men and women in this country. you can see my hair a gray. and there is two events that have occurred in my life that i can tell you exactly where i was at and what i was doing. one was the assassination of president kennedy. i was in forest's seventh grade science class when the sixth grade teach he were betty kristy came in and said it's true. the president has been sass natured. i suspect there are others in the room that can give you the exact memory much that occurrence. and i can tell you exactly where i was at on 9/11. i was at a hilton hotel in the georgetown area, close to the potomac. people came in the rm and said the pentagon is on fire the world trade center is on fire. and i couldn't get to work. and i thought surely the end of time was coming very quickly that day. and i saw this country come to a screeching halt with every plane in the sky being grounded. following that, we saw the bankruptcy of many of the airlines. we saw the devastation to our economy. and many things occurred and happened. why? because of the security of the screening of passengers at the airports. the people of this country demanded -- the airline industry demanded that it be federalized, managed and operated by the federal government as we do other law enforcement for the protection and the well being of this country. and tsa was created. yes, more government employees were created under a republican president, a republican congress. however, they were created as second class government employees without title 5 rights or pay. they are some of the lowest paid government employees, starting at about 28,000. and those that have now been there 16, almost 17 years, their top pay is $40,000 a year. these are the most dedicated men and women that i have ever had the opportunity to meet and to work with. and i know the former administrator over here will tell you, you get them in a room, ten hours later they will be discussing how detailed and how involved they are in their work and the passion of their work. they love their work immensely. but at the same token, that's not a lot of money. and is there a person in this country that can say they have not done a superb job accomplishing what their mission was, because we have had no incidents in any way, shape or form. they have handled it. even some at their own risk and some have lost their lives. they wear the uniform, and they proudly wear it. however there is no uniform allowance coming. there is no money to even buy the laundry detergent to wash that uniform. we received information yesterday in honolulu and the entire state of hawaii they are receiving a large number of resignations from transportation security officers. it's one -- the highest cost of living in our country. they can't afford to go to work without pay. tsa being some of the lowest paided federal employees, second class citizens without titles 5 rights or title 5 pay, again the turnover is approximately 20% a year. so since this government lockout, as i prefer to call it, has started, there's been between 17, 1,800 officers that would just normally have left the agency and no one coming back in to fill, and others are leaving at a higher rate. and at the same token look at the work that they do. no one wants to stand in a line at an airport, at a ball game or anything in the world. that's our human nature. we want to move through. they are working very quickly. they do a superb job. but i would ask any of you kind of look at those screens and if you can figure out what they're seeing and how they immediately know to pull in bottle of water out, i think they are superfantastic people that's keeping this country safe. and they do it with such great work and professionalism. but they cannot continue to exist and survive. come the first of the month they're not even going to get transit subsidy even though there seems to be bantering backwards and forwards. let's talk about new york city, let's talk about here in the nation's capitol. most of these employees use public transportation to get there. there is just not readily available parking. it's a very difficult situation. they're having to figure out if they're going to be able to feed their children, pay their rent, how are they going to survive? and let's go back. the very senior ones, the highest payed ones are making about $40,000 a year. subtract that, about a third of that in taxes and you can start figuring out very, very quickly. it's a struggle. how are they going to continue to come to work to do that when they're standing in soup line sns airline employees are bringing in pizzas and feetding the men and women of this country that is keeping us safe and preventing another 9/11 from ever occurring again in this country. that is unconscionable. it's a disgrace. and it is a shame on in country that we are allowing these type things to happen. and when it comes back to hiring, how are we going to get people wanting to apply for those jobs? it takes a long time to recruit and -- and train these folks. and to have mentors to get that work done. we're losing a lot of experience. we are getting very frayed at the edges. i too share the concerns that our air traffic controllers, the airline industry are sharing. and i believe we are moving very swiftly to a breaking point in tsa. and i'd go back to a comment earlier. there is all this data gathering. and you have the experts in this room that's much, much better than me that understand there are people in this world that would love to harm this country. and they know exactly what's going on in this country, because it's all we're talking about this this country right now. so it's time to end in government lockout, pay federal employees for the great job that they are doing. and allow congress to do all the other things that they need to be doing and to work through our checks and balances. and i call upon the president, and i call upon the majority leader in the senate to move forward with some legislation, and the house has sent a full gamut of a buffett that they can pick from. so it's time to move some legislation in the senate and protect this country, and to protect our economy and protect the jobs of working men and women. and i will close also, because in this government lockout we have talked a lot about border security. according to the data and information that we have today, there are 2,000 less border patrol agents employed and on the job today than there was two years ago. i am not sure exactly what may be occurred almost two years ago to the day or two here. i'll let you figure that out. 2000 less border patrol agents. you can't have border security. you can't have transportation security without the human resources of the people doing the job. thank you so much. >> and thank you. thank you for the work that you do. and you framed it up beautifully. there is currently two competing bills voted on this morning. the house voted numerous times to reopen the government. so thank you for framing that. i too remember where i was when kennedy -- president kennedy was sass natured. i was a twinkle in my mother's eye. so we'll move on next to tony riordan, who is -- as a reminder the national president of the national treasury employees unionen and a lot of people are filing taxes. it's tax season. people are waiting to get their irs return checks. so i'm sure a lot of people in the audience are curious. your thoughts on the current situation. >> okay. thank you very much. chairman thompson, thank you for inviting me to discuss what i believe really are the devastating impacts this month-long shutdown is having on the lives of the employees of the department of homeland security's customs and border protection, office of field operations, cbp office of trade and the federal law enforcement training centers. mo are represented by the national treasury employees union. since the start of the shutdown over 25,000 cbp officers and agricultural specialists responsible for border security at 328 air, sea and land ports of entry, ensuring legitimate trade and travel efficiency, processing asylum seekers, who present themselves at our ports of entry, as well as stopping illicit trafficking in people, drugs, illegal weapons and money, they have all been working without pay. many much our non-uniform trade operations specialists responsible for trade compliance and collecting over $47 billion annually in duties, taxes, fees and other revenue have been furloughed. as have some fletc structures who train federal law enforcement officers for every single agency. as i told congress on many occasions prior to the shutdown, cbp employees at the ports are chronically understaffed. according to cbp an additional 2516 cbp officers need to be funded and hired in order to meet the current staffing needs at our nation's ports of entry. since 2015 cbp officers have been required to work excessive over-the-and have been sent on temporary duty assignments to critically understand southwest border ports. now these officers are working excessive overtime and working away from home on tdy assignments without pay. at cbp's office of trade, responsible for the implementation of trade agreements and assessing trade duties, and tariffs, many employees are furloughed. cbp itself states that every dollar invested in cbp trade personnel returns $87 po the u.s. economy. by lowering the cost of trade and protecting innovative intellectual property. today they are prohibited from doing their jobs. jobs that are vitally important to the nation's economic security. half the instructors are working without pay to train new law enforcement officers for agencies that have been funded in 2019 and for unfunded agencies whose trainees are considered essential. the remainder they're furloughed. with hiring at a standstill, class sizes are significantly smarl smaller and the training candidate supply will, of course, eventually end for unfunded agencies. our members are marking one month without a paycheck. many of those are working excessive overtime, including forced double shifts, without pay. not only are they worrying about paying their family's monthly living expenses, but also for paying for gas in their cars to get to work and for child care to take care of their children. also until the shutdown ends credit card and housing expenses on those on tdys and stationed at preclearance ports in abu dhabi, ireland, canada and the caribbean must now be paid from personal accounts, not government accounts. furloughed cbp and members are facing similar financial challenges. you hear their stories in the meade. we all hear their stories in the media each and every day. it is time to reopen the government and to get these government employees paid. i want to be clear, this absolutely does not mean that we don't support border security. in fact, our members and nteu strongly support border security, and that's exactly why we have fought for many, many years for additional funding for cbp, for more staffing at the ports, to fix the hiring process, so employees can be brought on much more quickly and efficiently and for better equipment, pay, and benefits for all cbp employees. all of this contributes to a stronger border. cbp employees i represent are frustrated that the government leaders seemingly do not recognize that securing the nation's ports of entry is just as vital to border security as is securing the border between the ports of entry and that ports are an economic driver of the u.s. economy. it is imperative, in facts it is critically important, for the entire government to be funded and to be reopened today so that all federal workers can do the jobs that they are so committed to doing and to be paid for that vitally important work. thank you very much. i'm happy to answer any questions. >> thank you. thank you all for helping to frame the discussion. i'm going to ask a round of questions while you all gather your thoughts to ask a question. thank you, secretary, for joining us today. while you all gather your thoughts for questions, and peter, i'm going to revisit you first. just because it's something that keeps me up at 3:00 in the morning and i'm curious if it keeps you up at 3:00 in the morning, again you spoke about this a little bit the your introduction, but i mean we all read that memo from air traffic controllers and pilots and flight attendants just in a word given the current state of affairs, is it safe to fly? >> as i said before, if people are on the job then they're doing the job and it's safe to fly. i fly a lot. i've flown through a dozen airports since the shutdown commenced and i've spent a lot of time interacting. there are people in the tsa who still recognize who i am so we talk and i ask them how they're doing and to a person, i mean there's version of the answer, echo what jd said, people who love what they do, good at what they do, it's a challenging job, that's why they love what they do, and they're committed to continuing to do it but in the same breath they say, but we don't know how long we can go without getting paid. i'll echo what i said before, somewhere out there is a breaking point. i don't know where it is. i think it will be as far out as any individual can push themselves because they care about what they do. i know that. like i said, i served with these people. same goes with the members of the coast guard who often don't even have the option to quit their job and find another job because of the commitment you make when you join the military. i'm not worried about flying right now. as long as i see a tsa on the job i know the job is being done. my fear is that there comes a point where you can't get enough tsos to come back because you're not paying them and people have to work. if there's a higher incidence of people not showing up my suspicion is because they need to find work to pay for their job. i think it's safe to fly right now and i continue to fly, i'm flying tomorrow, and i look forward to seeing my former colleagues when i do, but i'm concerned that at some point out there you just kind of run out of options. >> while it might be safe, it might not be convenient. we've seen airports close terminals because of a lack of people showing up. we've got like i said, the super bowl coming up in atlanta, the atlanta mayor was in town and assures everybody that atlanta is prepared to welcome people to the super bowl, but we've seen a lot of reports about people waiting if lines two or three hours. i think a lot of people are assured that you say it's safe, but i want to echo the point you said you don't know when there's a breaking point without these folks getting paid. caitlin, you spoke a lot about cyber security, which i think is something that does not get a lot of discussion in the mainstream media, but certainly something we should all be paying attention to. certain cyber security experts have called this shutdown a welcome mat for hackers. you talked about certain programs that are still ongoing, but certainly there are some gaps given the shutdown and how that's impacted the work that you talked about. you've also spent time in the private sector engaging across the executive branch and leading projects that touch on everything from fema to other executive agencies. what keeps you up at 3:00 in the morning given the shutdown? >> tiffany, great question. let me just start with your initial kind of premise. i do think that over the course of the last several years, thanks in part to the hard work of the men and women of the department of homeland security, we have helped propel the issue of cyber security into the mainstream and that's both part of the work that they do to protect federal civilian networks, but in some ways more important the outreach, the partnerships that happen with the private sector and across all of the various industries and sectors. i think again, as i mentioned in my comments, i take solace in the fact that the end kick, snag was stood up during the obama administration, is really the hub for coordinating all cyber security activity, is operational. there are hundreds of cyber security federal employees who are on duty working without pay making sure we are protecting federal networks and doing the basic blocking and tackling. as i mentioned, i think the concern is more of the strategic and the emergent risk. at the end of the day our adversaries are very capable, they're very smart, they approach opportunity a little bit differently than i think sometimes how we think about defense and they look for soft targets, right. the weak link in the chain. as someone mentioned earlier, i can guarantee you they follow every day with great interest what is happening in this country and are looking for opportunities to exploit where there might be weakness or softness. there is a lot of important work that has happened and this is both on the cyber side but also some of the more systemic aspects of what we do, but, you know, a campaign and an initiative to look at supply chain security and the parts that go into many of the critical networks and systems that, you know, underpin our infrastructure and that work has stopped. you know, i think it was 18 months ago the president declared that we had a national emergency around fuel security and discussed rethinking how the markets work related to nuclear and coal and there was a question around that and a big effort has been around fuel resiliency. that national emergency apparently is no longer an emergency and now on hold. the list goes on. >> sorry to interrupt you but you mentioned our adversaries, are there any you care to name? >> so i think that there's two buckets. there's our nation state friends who continue to -- their capability, their sophistication continues to increase and that's the four horsemen, russia, china, iran and north korea, but as much as i say that in one breath i still remain very concerned about the lone offender. isil has not been defeated and we became acutely aware of that earlier this month. they have very sophisticated social media campaigns to recruit and target soft targets and, you know, i still remain very concerned about the terrorist-inspired event, the lone offender that sits in their basement and decides the right time i'm going to go out and strike, you know, you pick the soft target. >> but the president has said that we defeated isis, so you're saying we have not? >> based on recent events i would say that isil has not been defeated, yes, ma'am. >> and we also recently saw that the dnc has come out and said they were attacked immediately or attempted -- hackers who attempted to attack their systems immediately after midterms in november and this is just, you know, the campaign arm of the political party. do you think our nation's infrastructure is prepared during this government shutdown to address any attempted attacks by some of our adversaries currently? >> i am very optimistic about the capacity that we have built in many of the sectors and that is really at the end of the day the work and the mission of this new cyber security and infrastructure security agency that used to be aptly named the national protection program, we worked for years in helping our partners in the private sector understand emerging threats, understand the importance of protecting their facilities and nare networks and giving them tools and information that both helps protect their businesses, but kind of the broader national, you know, security, so i am confident that we have a strong posture but as more time goes on and as we are unable to do some of these key preparedness campaigns around emerging and strategic threats, we become less prepared. i will tell you, though, that the owners and operators of critical infrastructure, whether from the private sector or the state and local angle, do understand the importance of their role and work hard every day to make sure that they're doing their end. they just rely on us or us, again, i apologize, rely on the department of homeland security, for critical information and mitigation strategies and if we are unable to provide that, that's where we start to fall short. >> thank you. tony, i want to revisit something that you said. you talked about the importance of border security being as important as the work that you do. this week there's been a lot of reporting on furloughed workers who specifically irs employees who under contracts are well within their right to not return to work if i understand it correctly. like i said in my introduction with you, it's tax season and so a lot of people -- i think all of us in this room get fide consume the minutia of this government shutdown every day but when you look out across the country not everybody knows what's going on. all they know is they're not getting a paycheck and some people are concerned they may not get their tax returns. you said a lot about border security. i'm curious your thoughts specifically on what's going to happen, what you can say to the american people who are concerned, one, about getting their tax returns, is that going to be impacted, and two, about the irs employees who under contracts are within their right to not return to work without pay? >> yeah. thank you for the question. let me just first say about -- i believe this about all federal employees, but since you're asking me about irs employees, let me just say that, you know, these are some of the most mission focused people that you can ever imagine and, you know, by the tens of thousands, they have been called back to work and they've reported. i think that's important to recognize. these folks want to do the work of the american people and they work extraordinarily hard to make sure that they are providing a service to the american public, to the taxpayers in the united states of america. what you're asking me about is something that is a legal right that they have that is contained in the agreement between the internal revenue service and nt eshg u, which is a hardship exemption. essentially what it does is it provides the employee, if they have a financial hardship, they -- something significant enough that they cannot literally cannot get into work, they have that right to exercise that exemption in the agreement. what we have instruktds our employees, our members, is that when you get called back to work, you are to get -- are to go back to work. that is your responsibility as an employee and like i said, by the tens of thousands these employees have done exactly that. now in terms of, you know, what should the american public be thinking about whether or not they're going to receive their tax returns on time, clearly i think that is probably best asked of the internal revenue service but here's what i will tell you, that, you know, even prior to the shutdown f you go back to what has happened from 2010 to the present, the irs has lost 23,000 employees. as a result, you know -- and let me also add, has lost $715 million in funding. i believe even going into the shutdown the irs was in a very vulnerable position. ten you had the situation with the new tax reform legislation and i think the irs didn't have enough people, didn't have the funding to really carry out everything that was going to be required for that as effectively as they otherwise would is been. got to have a lot of training to train the irs employees to deal with all of the questions, the millions of questions that are going to come in about the tax reform legislation, new tax laws, biggest tax reform legislation in 30 years i might add, and that training i already -- i heard from our members was antiquated, it wasn't sufficient and then we have the shutdown. so the training stops. the -- whatever folks were trained in advance of the shutdown, they've -- many of them were out of work almost a month. they have to be retrained. so it really creates a difficult situation and i think delays a lot of things and so as a citizen, i would certainly be concerned about whether or not the tax season which is supposed to start on january 28th, is the irs really ready to carry out the tax season. as a result what does that mean for tax refunds. i don't personally know the answer to that, but i think there is certainly reason to wonder if they will go out timely, but like i said that's something the irs itself needs to answer. >> okay. thank you. tony, so can you talk us through -- i'm sorry, not tony, forgive me, david, can you talk us through, you currently have a lawsuit against the administration. can you talk us through, one, where that stands and, two, many of your employees it's been reported only make about $500 a week. i can certainly understand when you make $500 a week when you miss one paycheck it can certainly impact your entire financial situation. one, what are your workers doing to make ends meet? what are you saying to your members who are missing paychecks? i understand paypal has come out and offered interest-free loans for some of the members. yeah, tell us the state of mind. all of us tend to talk about the politics of it all, but we forget about the real life people. sometimes these things are conceivable and when we look at people in data, but you're talking to individuals whose lives are directly impacted. can you tell us what your members are going through and how they're surviving literally. >> it's like $500 take home pay, i want to be clear of that. not making $500, but $500 take home pay, which is not a lot of money. >> after taxes. >> after taxes. other deductions people have, health insurance, things of that nature that come out of their paycheck as we all do. they are struggling. we are working, afg affiliated with afl-cio through our privileged union programs, through a network of many labor banks offering interest-free loans as well as working with a lot of federal credit unions offering interest-free loans. we have been working with members of congress to -- that's worked with major lenders in this country to not foreclose, not to take people's cars, not to do those type things to try to understand that people are -- through no fault of their own are not getting paid. there's been a large outpouring of people doing and giving things. however, there is a downside to that. we are federal employees. there are laws that actually prevent us from accepting, you know, of value of maybe more than $20, someone can give me the exact number, but it's a small amount of accepting things and we are calling upon congress that sure we in this instance, as long as this lockout is going on and people are now talking about preparing into march and april of a continuing guess, we need some type of relief and at least some provision passed by the congress that these folks if somebody gift th someone gives them pizza at the airport or something they don't lose their government job. we don't want government employees to be compromised. >> right. >> those are difficult things. the lawsuit that we have filed it actually goes back to probably depression era days and the establishment of the minimum wage and overtime for hours over 40 hours in a week. the laws says if you don't pay an employee at least minimum wage, then they are entitled to damages for that or if you didn't pay them for their overtime, this lawsuit was filed in the last government shutdown and we prevailed ain the court system and we have filed it again. we believe that it will move forward because while many of these people make more than minimum waj, they did not receive anything so, therefore, they didn't get the minimum wage. however our court systems are shutting down because they're running out of money and probably by the first of february the court systems will not be operating in this country, so we are coming to a halt with our justice system. as we all know in legal lawsuits, these are years sometimes and being resolved, the real answer is the congress and president opening up the government and paying employees to do the job to make all these problems go away very, very quickly if we just did that. >> so let me ask, we're live streaming, it's to the just a bunch of policy experts watching us right now. there are some people in the flyover states watching this right now and a lot of people tweet me or call into different radio shows and ask me, why don't these federal employees just walk off the job? some people say if that happens then perhaps the government shutdown would end. i know there are legal implications to that and that's not an option. if you could explain to the american people -- >> that is not an option. federal employees cannot walk off the job, they cannot strike. afge, i will assure you, ntu, tony will be right here with me, no union that represents federal employees in any way, shape, or form would encourage that. that is against the law. we will abide by the laws of this country. i can promise you we will abide by them very strongly. we don't have that right. private sector employees do have that right. federal employees, congress says we don't have that right. i also say, private sector employers do not have a right to withhold the wages of their employees. there is a -- the government goes after employers that withholds wages, however, our government has exempted itself from its own laws that it holds all other employers accountable for and says it doesn't have to pay employees and it can require employees to come to work, not be paid, and if the employees don't come, the employees can be subject to adverse disciplinary action including up to removal of their jobs. that's -- we are being held hostage, my friends, and i'm -- it's probably a powerful word. government employees are being held hostage at this point in time and it is unfair in every way, shape, or form. >> you look like you want to weigh in. >> i do want to weigh in, actually. i am in large measure in agreement with jay david. look, let me be really, really direct about this. federal employees want to go to work. they true enough, want to be paid for going to work. >> yeah. >> every federal employee understand that they took an oath to the united states of america and to the constitution of the united states of america. they, when they're told to show up to work, they show up to work. jay david is right, you cannot strike, you cannot have work action, job actions, slow downs, work stoppages, anything of the sort and no federal union that i'm aware of and i can certainly speak for nteu would ever condone or promote such an idea. federal employees want to go to work. we've got to get them back to work. we've got to get them paid. for those who are working through the shutdown we have to get them paid. they all need to be paid and now. >> i'm going to start asking some of the questions interest the audience. if you have a question please find one of chairman thompson's very capable and awesome hard working staffers to ask questions and i'm happy to relay them. the first one is for tim, and the question is, how might the shutdown affect state emergency management and are there any effects on state and local emergency management grant funding? >> that's a great question. all of the people that manages the grants that fema gives out to state and local governments are furloughed right now. there is no action on granting. for what that means for people, the state and local emergency management agencies operate -- the disaster response capability of the nation is a big team effort between state, local and federal agencies an non-profit organizations and ngos. state and local emergency management agencies operate in large part on federal grants, a mix of local and state appropriations and federal grants. those grants that have been previously awarded the money is in the hands of state and local governments but new grants are not being awarded. there is nobody at fema to process or deal with any questions, to load any quarterly funding on. any pending grants that were about to be given out have stopped. if the shoutdown goes on much longer it puts additional in peril as well. there are billions of dollars in terrorism funding, terrorism preparedness grants, that activity has stopped. i mean it really -- the engine of homeland security in the nation runs if a collaborative form and it's all paused for the time being. additionally all the state and local, millions of responders i mentioned being trained every year, those are all state and local first responders, police, fire, ems, that's all stopped. it may be years before they get an opportunity to get back in. these are advanced anti-terrorism, counterterrorism classes, things in responding to weapons of mass destruction incidents, advanced command and control training, that's not happening. there are widespread impacts across the country beyond just the employees of the federal government. >> tim, feel free to pass on this question but i'm going to ask it, the president has talked about they've looked at taking billions of dollars away from fema, from important projects around the country from hurricane recovery to wildfires. in your expertise having worked at fema for eight years, do you think it's a good use of federal resources to take those funds away from some of these national preparedness emergencies that the country has experienced, to build what some would call a sue per phyllis wall. >> you know, i -- i'll answer it this way. i won't comment necessarily -- look, i've spent my entire career in emergency management and homeland security, including the -- for a number of years before i came to fema as a state homeland security adviser on the southwest border. i have very strong opinions, i believe strongly in a secure international border, both north and south, that there is a lot of work to be done, a strong border cbp, strong ports. there's much work to be done and there's a lot of dedicated selfless people doing that. they're the wall. the cbp, the tsa, the coast guard, the men and women of homeland security, are the ones protecting the nation's borders an they need to be back at work. in so far as removing, taking money from fema, from disaster accounts from committed, much less committed disasters, where there is active recovery projects going on, should be unconscionable. the way -- i mean we're a country of laws that money has been appropriated and awarred pursuant to a a whole series of statutes and checks and balances to declared disasters declared by the president to be major disasters. recovery has started. there are commitments to american citizens to rebuild their communities and help get them back on their feet and it should be unthinkable that money would be taken away for any kind of political squabble to be put to some other use beyond what it was committed for, be it recovery in puerto rico from a hurricane or recovery in communities devastated by wildfires in california, politics that has no place in disaster response and rebuilding communities after crises. we should let the men and women of fema and the women and men of the emergency management community and towns and mayors and governors across the country get on with the work of rebuilding their communities and preparing themselves for the next disaster or terrorist attack. >> thank you for that. this next question is for caitlin. forgive me, i'm trying to understand the handwriting. i think a doctor wrote this question. dhs recently issued an emergency directive directing agencies to take action, to take certain actions to protect against dns hijacking activity and are to be completed within be ten days. how does the shutdown affect the ability of federal agencies to comply with that directive? i hope i asked that correctly. >> as i mentioned earlier, the important dns work, departments and agencies, for the most part continues to occur, especially the larger departments and agencies that are well staffed. i think where there is some concern are the smaller agencies, smaller independent agencies that may not be as well staffed and their ability to keep up with that. in speaking to officials yesterday, i think we should take some solace that that work is continuing right now. >> again, if you have any more questions, find one of chairman thompson's staffers to collect your questions. while you think about that i'm going to ask each of the panelists a question and i will start with you, tim, put you on the hot seat. something i've been thinking about and i think a lot of people across the country have been thinking about, including the very direct cardi b. who released a video last week detailing how she's scared and like it or not her language may be a bit vulgar, but it was accurately capturing the sentiment across the country. she said she's scared about this government shutdown and scared what will happen. if each of you can talk us through what is your worse case scenario? what is the thing that keeps you up in the middle of the night? i know, you know, there are people who said we don't know what the breaking point is, but as best you can, what is the worse case scenario that this country, given there is no end in sight for this shutdown to end, what is the thing that you think will be the breaking point for this country? >> wow. the small consideration. so in the context of fema, as i mentioned kind of in my opening remarks, my big fear is that something of a, you know, national consequence, a catastrophic level crisis will happen and we won't have the people in the building, we won't have people on the job to deal with it. we have exempted a large swath of law enforcement and, you know, front line responders across the country in the furlough where they're working for free selflessly. that's no different at fema. as i mentioned fema is an agency where people do two jobs and everybody has two jobs. in the passionate reading of the law what's considered exempt or nonexempt is based on your day job. there are a small number of people at the agency who are monitoring situations and can respond to small things, but, you know, i used an example of a tropical storm coming offshore during a previous shutdown and we haven't had to re call a number of people. it's not hurricane season so we're fortunate in that regard. as we say it's always earthquake season and there are a number of large disassers thters that cou strike the nation that would have that level of impact, not the least of which would be another large terrorist attack. the -- having folks on the job, you can't get time back. you can't get enough people on the job three days after an event or two days after an event and make up for that lost time. time is unrecoverable. you need to get out fast, you need to react quickly, and bring the entire coordinated might of the u.s. government to bear on a catastrophic crisis and we can, i don't believe, can do that today. you know, the -- there are -- fema is on the back end of two of the most -- of the busiest years in the history of the agency. we've had the most impactful disasters, hurricane after hurricane after fire in the history of the country. fema, a small agency of less than 10,000 people, many of which are reservists, not even full-time employees, have been facing extended deploimtsz away from their families in an agency unlike the military where that's not expected. you don't take a job as a grant manager in fema expecting to live in a hotel room in puerto rico for a year away from your family, unable to get home, missing games and plays and deaths of family members and birthdays. and now we're asking them to sacrifice groceries so they can make enough money to make their mortgage payment. that shouldn't be how the most powerful nation on earth manages its business. we need to get people back at work, protect the nation, and pay the people that have chosen to commit their life to public service. >> thank you for that. >> something that we probably don't talk a whole lot about in homeland security in the department of justice this close to 150 federal prisons and penitentiaries around this country because most of us don't come face to face with those institutions on a daily basis like we do with tsa and other government agencies. we tend to forget about them. they are the major employer in those areas. they're located in rural areas. you usually just don't put a federal penitentiary downtown new york city. they're the major employer. it's not just husband, wife. it's father, son, brothers, sisters, cousins. 90 plus percentent of the people in those communities work at those prisons. the other 10% are associated with businesses that are vendors of those prisons, and there are some very, very serious criminals in those prisons that have certainly broken the laws of our country and inflicted harm upon the citizens. what worries me, entire communities going under that we see people leave, people lose their homes. once you get under water with paying your bills, it's going to take a long time to get back out. if this shutdown lockout ended today, it would take seven to ten days to get most federal employees their paycheck to get them some money. it would take three to six months to even sort out owed overtimes, other type things. the systems don't come up that fast. hiring has stopped. all these type things. the talent pool is not going to be there. i think there's a lot of devastation and prisons come to mind because it's so unique and a major, major employer in those areas, but still yet, there's 800,000 people that's currently affected and hundreds of thousands of government contractors and tony and i don't talk a lot about government contractors and -- but these are workers that are not being paid and i am talking about them more and more because it is just totally unfair to not pay workers and they do a vital service. there's never a way that every one of these entities is going to be performed by the federal government and it's branching. it's just growing. it's a malignancy that's going to grow and get much larger and i think we will see the effects of this for several years to come. >> a point of reference, senators introduced legislation this week to ensure that contract workers get back pay. it's a republican controlled senate so we don't know how that vote is going to turn out, but they did introduce the legislation. >> we certainly, afg is strongly supporting that legislation and we'll work as aggressively for that legislation as we have worked for legislation to pay government employees because all workers, all workers, ought to be treated fairly. >> thank you. thank you for that. tony? >> yes. thank you for the question. you know, i have to tell you that when i think about just this entire shutdown situation, what first occurs to me is that in the united states of america, think about this, in the united states of america, in 2019, we are requiring federal employees to work to work and not be paid. we also have furloughed hundreds of thousands of others. what keeps me up at night is the fact that there are 800,000 federal employees who are not receiving a paycheck. they can't pay their rent, they can't pay their mortgage, they can't put gas in their car, they can't pay for child care, they can't pay the co-pay so that they can take the insulin to keep themselves alive, and then we have the cascading impact on the communities. you know, i often think about the impact on the federal employees, the impact on our country, on the rest of our country, for the services that they should be getting, that they aren't getting, and then, of course, the impact on our nation's economy which is astounding. clearly you know at the front of my mind is the impact on my members, the financial impact, the emotional impact, and i think it's important to recognize. if we take our customs and border protection employees, our cbps, for example, they are the most mission focused people i have ever been around in my entire life and they are on the job and they are doing an outstanding job. they're doing the best job that they possibly can. i think it is only appropriate to understand that when people are worried about whether or not their children are being fed or they're able to pay the mortgage or the rent to keep the roof over their family's head, they might not be thinking in all situations about the stuff that they would ordinarily think about. i think there is only -- it's only realistic to consider that things could happen that maybe otherwise wouldn't. i mean, they're there on the job and doing the best job they can, but come on, human nature is human nature, right. the other thing that really is of major concern to me as a citizen is the issue of recruitment and retention. i tell people all the time that a story about when i was in high school i was a foreign exchange student in with what was at that time west germany and they put me at the front of the room and let's put this american kid up there and ask him some questions. the very first question i got was, this is how it went, so tony, why is the -- why is the american civil service the marvel of the world? well, i was 15 years old at the time. candidly, i had no idea. what did i know? i was 15, right. gave an answer. i was embarrassed. i had to find out more about this and i did, of course. here's what i found out, that, in fact, our civil service and our federal employees are in the best in the world but if we are going to treat federal employees like this, if they're going to be subjected to shutdowns every single year potentially many times a year, if they're going to be subjected to pay freezes which incidentally federal employees as i suspect you know are facing in 2019, they got that word, the final word on that right in the middle of the holidays in the middle of a shutdown, so if federal employees are going to be facing this sort of treatment, who the heck is going to want to work for the federal government and oh, by the way, how are you going to retain those folks? that ought to scare the bejesus out of every american citizen. >> thank you for that. caitlin, i can't recall a time where our digital infrastructure was in peril in the public eye at this scale. perhaps you know something privately. in the public eye i can't recall a time. i'm curious what's the worse case scenario in your eyes and what keeps you up at night? >> tiffany, it's actually less the threats to our digital infrastructure. i'm going to pick up both on what jay david said and tony, it's hard to follow you because i think you did a good job laying it all out. one is that someone is unnecessarily harmed or killed. to tony's point, because our federal workers are distracted and worried about making payments if their kids are cared for, putting food on the table, whatever it may be and it's not that they're into the there to do their job, but when under duress you think about other things. that's my first concern. i am very concerned especially if this drags on into the march and april time frame about the economic impact, es special throw areas that have large number of federal employees. i think this, if it continues, represents an existential threat to this region in particular. you think about all of the ripple and the cascading effects that this has and the things that when you're not getting a paycheck you don't do. you don't pursue the work on your house. you don't go out to dinner as much. you really watch what you buy at the store. you don't go shopping, right. the impact that has on that particular business. it just cascades across. you know, i don't know -- i think the estimate is, it's a billion dollars a day impact from the shutdown, but it's going to continue to get worse and to be exacerbated and i think long term, i mean this is an incredibly vibrant region, the national capital region. i moved here in 1994 after college and i can't tell you what a different place washington, d.c., is and how remarkable it is to be a citizen here and partake in our museums and our national parks and the culture and the history and, you know, the politics that goes on. you know, who's going to want to come here? whether it's the small business, right, the person who wants to start the small business or maybe that college graduate -- i was a college graduate who wanted to come and serve my country and make the world a better place, but if there's not that kind of hope and promise of a stable job, the ability to contribute to the mission, it's going to have an impact and we have to think about that. i do hope that we try to make lemonade out of all of this and find the silver lining and i say this with the utmost respect to the two gentlemen to the left of me, but i do think that maybe this is an opportunity once we guarantee that a shutdown will never happen again, is to think about how we reform our civil service system and i say that in working very closely with the private sector in knowing that they are working to attract and, you know, poach the talent of the federal government, we have to make it easier for people to come work for the federal government, period. right. we have to, you know, walk the talk and understand that no longer in this day and age do people hold a job cradle to grave. it is common -- i've been a hiring manager for a long time and you used to look at people's resumes they're jumping around jobs two to three years, what's wrong with this person. now it's more concerning if you look at someone and they've been in a job for 15 to 20 years. once we resolve the shutdown and ensure this never happens again, it is time to work with peb mem of congress and rethink the civil service system and to ensure that we can get the best and the brightest here that they're well paid and have benefits and they have the flexibility that we see in the private sector, which is part of what attracts people to the private sector. >> kevin has it, the white house economic adviser, said we could see zero percent economic growth because of the shutdown. i take your point. tony, you wanted to weigh in quickly. >> i just wanted to weigh in on the point about civil service reform. s see, i think -- jay david can peek spe speak for himself, but we all have to remember that it wasn't that long ago, it with you may of 2018 that the administration put forward three executive orders that sought to destroy federal unions and sought to eviscerate employee rights and i would expect that most people would say, you know, we're willing to talk -- if there's a good faith effort, we're willing to talk about things that can be done to improve our world, right. it's difficult for anyone to do that when you a gun pointed at your head. i think that not only do we need to get through the shutdown, but i think we need to get to a place where there is really good faith, there is not a gun held to the heads of federal unions and where employee rights are under constant attack. got to get there before you can have any meaningful discussions. >> thank you. we are being told to wrap. sorry. to get to you last, peter, your closing remarks. a lot of people are concerned about transportation in this era of a shutdown, so very eager to know what keeps you up at night. >> let me speak from kind of an overarching perspective and it comes from the fact that my entire career was spent in front line operating agencies and, you know, that were asked to go do things, law enforcement, emergency response, those agencies were created because, you know, things don't always go right in this world, right. you have bad things that happen and those bad things can be caused by bad people or caused by natural events or caused by some combination of the above. that's the perspective that i take. when i think about -- this in some manner applies to every agency of the federal government that's currently subject to this shutdown, but i was talking about the department of homeland security because i spent the latter half of my career in the department since it was founded and that's where i was when i left the federal service, the entire department is focused on prevention. if you think about it it's about doing everything you possibly can to keep bad things from happening or to understand the kinds of bad things that happen that you have no control over like a hurricane or a tornado or a flooding or so forth, and then to put as many mitigating efforts in place in advance of that as you can. it's a prevention focus, but it has a response imperative, meaning if something does happen you have to be able to respond to it. those two play together. to the extent that there's less effort being put into everyday prevention efforts, and there is when you furloughed a number of people, because having been through shutdowns during my time in federal service and active duet in the coast guard, you immediately start figuring out what are the truly essential things that i have to do that i can still afford to pay for using whatever appropriations i have left, and then it's hard to know what to predict might happen because you just didn't pay attention to some things that you used to pay attention to. i will tell you it does make the response a lot more challenging than it might otherwise have to be. it's hard to predict -- i mean, again, i grew up in agencies that expected bad things to happen periodically, but it's hard to predict what a worse case scenario is. you can look at mission statement of the agencies foundnd and look at authorizing language of why they were formed to address. you erode this ability to anticipate, you slowly erode your readiness to respond and greatly increase the challenges when something bad does happen. on top of that is this very real concern that you may begin to attra attract fewer people to public service which i grew up believing was a real calling an honorable calling and i still believe it is and i believe that most of the people -- anybody who takes the oath of office believing believes it is. you do this willingly and you do it with a great deal of meaning and i know that when i was in the military, you know, you retake that oath on a regular basis. you take it every time you get promoted or advanced. i worked for one commanding officer who made us retake the oath every single year. then we would go through line by line and talk about what it really meant because it was his belief that you need to have eyes open when you do that, but it was also a way to reinforce this very real sense of what it means to be in public service. i just say, i mean i know that's the way people think about it, we did this, i did this, you know, you learn things like that from people and inflict it on others as you get older, so i would do the same thing with my members, we did it at tsa, and my fear is that as you erode that sense of -- that compact that we have with people who perform public service and do the really hard work of this country, sacrifice a lot to do it, spend years away from their families and friends in the course of a career, put their lives on the line and many do, then you make the response to things that happen significantly more challenging. that's how i would leave it. >> well, thank you. thank you all for sharing your expertise. i feel more enlightened. i'm certain the audience does as well. chairman thompson is not going to deliver closing remarks so you're also witnessing history that an elected official has yielded the microphone to somebody. so thank you, chairman thompson, for this very important conversation that you're having. i do want to say out of respect for the chairman that he has invited the department of homeland security secretary nielsen to testify before his committee to answer enur merble questions and we look forward to her response to your invitation. you know, as we talk about these things, it's very important to talk about the policy of all of these things, but i just want to introduce for the people who might not be policy experts, but for the people who are watching the live stream across the country, the 800,000 people we keep hearing the 800,000 furloughed workers, but we're really looking at millions of people when you think about their families and contract workers and people who are not going to get their food stamp benefits and other government benefits. this shutdown has cast a wide shadow across the country. i want those people more than anyone else to know that chairman thompson's heart is with you, my heart is with you, the people on this stage, their heart is with you and we're thinking about with you and we're thinking about you and this conversation is certainly had with you in mind, and i just -- as we get through the minutia of all of that i just don't want that to be lost as we talk through policy. the president may not have mentioned those people in his remarks and certainly we're all thinking of you and i thank you guys for taking time to come to have this very important conversation today. i want to thank the media, because i know in the very busy news cycle, i run a political platform and i understand that you are spread very thin and pulled in different directions and i want to thank you guys for being here and to highlight the important discussion and the panelists are around to answer questions that you didn't get to ask and i apologize if i didn't get to your question. we have a time constraint and we have to be out of here by noon. so again, please, a round of applause for chairman thompson, his staff who, wo worked very h to put this on today and let's hope this all ends very soon. thank you. >> thank you very much. very well done. later today on c-span3, treasury secretary steven mnuchin at the annual conference of mayors' winter meeting. at 4:15 eastern, senators cory booker address the meeting and that's also live on c-span3. new york has five new members in its congressional delegation all of whom are democrats. representative alexandria ocasio-cortez joins the house as the youngest member of congress at age 29. she defeated longtime representative and then chair of the house democratic caucus joe crowley in an election last summer. anthony brindisi to congress. he previously served seven years in the new york state assembly. before that he was an attorney in private practice. representative antonio delgado was also an attorney prior to his election to congress and he had a brief as a rapper. max rose was representing the 11th district which included staten island and brooklyn, he previously served in the u.s. army where he led a platoon and earned a purple heart and bronze star. joseph morelli won a seat in the 116th congress and an election to fill the seat of louise slaughter for the remaining weeks of the 115th congress. congressman morelle had previously served in the new york state assembly since 1991 including five years as majority leader. new congress, new leaders. watch it all on c-span. >> today is day 34 of the partial government shutdown. today at 2:30 eastern the senate will vote on two measures and one is president trump's plan to re-open the government, fund the wall on the u.s.-mexico border and extend daca protection for some people who entered the country illegally when they were children. the second measure will re-open the government without funding for a border wall. you can see the senate live on our companion network, c-span2. up next on c-span3, a conversation on domestic politics and japan and prime minister shinzo abe's legacy. for the japan america society in washington, this is about 90 minutes.

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