Transcripts For CSPAN3 Politics Public Policy Today 2014121

complaint log their observations. that complaint log is kept, and it is reviewed through our organizational assessment and improvement program, and all of the complaints are followed up on in a timely manner. of course, there are other ways to do it. we've received a variety of letters from individuals expressing concerns about specific issues at cemeteries, and we apply the same level of aggressive resolution to those complaints as well. >> do you respond to individuals? >> oh, yes, sir. we respond to individual letters absolutely. >> how long does it take? is it on a timely basis? give me an example how you respond. >> i think it would depend on the nature of the complaint and how quickly we can resolve it. say we're working on the issue. that usually goes out, if we send one, within a few days, and then the actual resolution can vary depending, again, on the issue recently at riverside national cemetery, for example, where we had contractors that were treating headstones and the grounds in a manner that was inconsistent with what we would regard as this complaint came to us. we acted very aggressively. we corrected the situation, and, in fact, we added language referred to as a dignity clause contractors now have to be especially conscious of what they're doing at our grave sites to make sure they're honoring the dignity of the burials. >> thank you very much. i have one more question, mr. chairman. you testified, mr. walters, on the current nca proposed rule act of 2012. it is my understanding that the national funeral directors association expressed concern with one of the details of the propose ed rule. under previous rules funeral homes were able to apply directly to the va for partial reimbursement. in their view this allowed funeral homes to easily provide the veteran with a timely and dignified burial and that's what i'm concerned about, the convenience for the family and, of course, for the veteran. without any concern about not additionally, in situations without a next of kin under the proposed rule funeral directors would have to apply to become the authorized representative, which would add difficulty and additional cost to a process where funeral directors are trying to honor our nation's fallon herfa fallen heroes. can you explain why nca. is not allowing funeral homes to apply directly to the va? were there comments supporting this change during the public comment period. i don't want to delay the process for the families particularly when there's no next of kin, so if you can elaborate on that, i'd really appreciate it. >> yes. congressman bilirakis, the administration of that particular program falls under the veterans benefits administration, so i would be happy to for the record provide a response. i will say that, you know, the intent of the direct payment to the veteran was to do precisely what i thought you said toward the end of your comment, which is to make sure that the family, you know, receives the money as quickly as possible and then to pay their expenses with it. i also know that under secretary hickey's leadership, the automation of burial claims has been put into place such that nearly half of them at this point are processed that way without human intervention, which then frees up staff time to perform other work. and the processing time for those burial times has been reduced from a peek of 190 days in february 2013 to 64 days in december of 2014. but again, sir, i will take -- >> again, my concern is there are a lot of local funeral homes, and they want to help out our families, and, you know, i just don't want to delay the process and make it inconvenient for the families or, if they don't have a next of kin, they can take care of it directly. so i appreciate very much, mr. chairman. again, thank you for your service. we're going to miss you. >> thank you very much. recognize mr. o'rourke. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i also want to join my colleagues in thanking you for your service in the way you've led this committee. i have enjoyed working with you in my first term in congress and future after you leave this institution. so thank you. to the secretary, to mr. walters, first of all, i want to thank you for the great job that you do and that your team does. you have a new person in he we o paso, texas, the community i represent. amy works well with our team and is attentive to the veterans and their families in el paso. i want to thank her and the team in el paso who do a phenomenal as was your predecessor, you have been very responsive to us, to me personally. we're able to talk on the phone about concerns before they well. cemetery in el paso at ft. bliss is in many ways remarkable. it's very clean, well kept, a great staff, and the response and i think you probably have the data to back it up in terms of the surveys from those customers that you serve has been great, but as you know there's one disconnect between the nca and el paso and our offices and that is the fact that el paso is one of three waterwise i think is the term you use cemeteries out of the 131 in the system, and it is deeply unpopular amongst those people whose opinion i care about the most and that is the veterans and their families, the widows and widowers, the children, the descendants of those who are buried there. you have approached this as an either/or proposition. either we have turf and grass and i think your argument is that when el paso and ft. bliss had that, it was suboptimal, or you have waterways, which doesn't require a lot of management or maintenance, is cost efficient, and in the opinion of some it's aesthetically pleasing. to remind everybody when we talk about zero scaping, we're talking about crushed rock and dirt on ground. we're not talking about a desert landscaping, although there is some landscaping with shrubbery and some trees, but imagine you're in el paso, texas, visiting a family member who is there and it's 110 degrees outside and you're asked to or want to kneel and you can't because you're asked to kneel on i'm looking for an option, some way that we can work together to get past what is unacceptable to my community, and we're also asking to know what the criteria are that you use to make these decisions. my understanding is only three out of 131. i don't know if mr. hallinan would be comfortable converting arlington cemetery into a waterwise facility to save money and time and maintenance costs. i'm going to guess the answer is no, and so our contention in el paso is if a waterwise nca cemetery is not sufficient for the best in our system, then it should not be sufficient for el paso. i want to get your comments and your thoughts on that and perhaps a suggested path on which we can work to resolve this situation for el paso. >> sure. thank you for the question, congressman o'rourke. our decision to turf or zero scape a cemetery is not arbitrary. it is based on a variety of f t factors to include climate condition as well as the in the case of el paso, as you know, the decision to zero scape that cemetery was based on a congressionally mandated study in 1999. the results of that study indicated that if el paso were to be maintained as a national shrine, there was not a sufficient amount of water to do so, and the study recommended zero scaping the entire cemetery. at that point we made the decision to make the investment to zero scape the cemetery. >> if i could interrupt you because i only have 20 seconds, you're giving me the history. i'm asking for the future. how are we going to work together to resolve this situati situation? what we have today is unacceptable. >> okay. well, just to say, i mean, our survey results just to put them on the record, our survey results from those who are using the cemetery suggests a high degree of acceptance, but in answer to your question -- >> i would refer to my colleague's ice cream shop analogy. i don't know that we're asking those whose family members were already interred or buried at that cemetery who did not have a choice in whether it was conv t converted from grass to rocks and who are deeply disappointed in that and are asking me as their federal representative to do something about it. and what i get is the process that you use to arrive at this decision that is depp lie unpopular and unacceptable to me and the people i represent. what i'm asking for now is how can we work together to do something. perhaps we cannot turf the entire cemetery. perhaps there is some waterwise solution that is an improvement the gravesites that we have in el paso at ft. bliss today, but because i'm out of time and because it probably involves a longer conversation i would just like to gain your commitment that we can work together to do that. >> absolutely. congressman, we are always willing to work with you and your staff. we have done so in the past. we will continue to do that with you. i think a good launching point may very well be the study that the ut el paso is currently undertaking when they're examining soil conditions and perhaps coming up with some consider. so absolutely we're more than willing to work with you and your staff. >> great. thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. that i recognize mr. >> mr. chairman, i want to thank you for accepting a unanimous consent to allow me to sit in on this hearing and i really appreciate your leadership. it's been an honor to serve with you in congress. i know that other than going to the university of michigan, you've had a distinguished career. i happen to be a buckeye so that part, you know, i wish you'd come to ohio state -- >> good luck in the playoffs. >> but i really do appreciate the way you've treated our treated this committee with come to common ground. thank you for allowing me to be here. i have a couple questions for mr. walters and then i want to do -- have one question with mr. hallinan. mr. walters, i appreciate your new october 1st draft of regulation that would deal with next of kin. frankly, the old policy caused homeless veterans and folks identified because they had served in a conflict much further back in our history real hassles in getting headstones. so i appreciate the updated version. there's only a few questions that i have about it because there's some folks that are historians and other archivists that are interested in helping, and there are a few pieces of language that they don't quite understand, and i wanted to talk with you about it. the first part involves where you say any individual who provides documentation of such lawful duty basically can provide information on these headston headstones. a lot of the interested parties are having trouble understanding what the language of such lawful duty means. i assume it means of the duty of the va to provide a headstone, but is there anyway you could clarify that here in this hearing or maybe in writing later? stivers, that i get it right, i would preiffer efe efer prefer that and submit it for the record. i appreciate that and i knew that might be the result. the second is your proposed rule creates an actual date on the calendar. it uses april 6, 1917, the date we entered world war i, but as you know, our archival records and our procedures on archives actually say basically anything 62 years back and further. they don't use a date on the calendar. much more sense to have those two things be the same and use the archival records as 62 years back instead of the drop dead sense, and i'd ask you to take a look at whether you could consider that change as well. >> sure. we received 383 comments on this particular proposed rule and we're going through them right now, and i'm sure that's one of them. in general, sir, what i will say is that our primary motivation in establishing the april 1917 date was to really honor family members' wishes to the extent possible. if we establish the 62-year time nara. we're basically establishing a date of 1952 as the launching point, and we felt that family members would be alive for veterans who served prior to 1952. it would just be best to move the date back to just a standard date of our entrance into world war i and then go from there. >> and i certainly appreciate that. i would ask you to look at it because certainly many of our veterans during the draft were more socioeconomically disadvantaged. there were more broken families. i would ask you to take a look. if you have have consistency, i think it makes sense. i don't think april 6, 1917 is the worst thing in the world, but i think consistency -- one of the rules we need to live by up here is if we can create things that are consistent, it just makes it easier for everybody. please take a look at that. and the last thing i would ask is if you could consider community -- the sort of community of historians. every state has a state historic preservation officer, and if you can include some language about th that, that it's a state-governor appointed position. if you could allow those folks to be included in this by name and by spelling them out, i think it would be really helpful state. i believe, one for federally recognized indian tribes separately. they are everywhere and it's a position that could and should be i think recognized in this regulation but i'd ask you to take a look at it. i'm not asking for a response to that but take a look at that as well. >> sure. we'd be happy to do that, sir. >> thank you so much. and, mr. hallinan, i wanted to thank you for the tomb of remembrance that i have worked on for almost four years here in congress. you guys took it and did it by regulation and i appreciate what you're doing to implement that. you mentioned it a little bit earlier in your comments and i want to thank you because it unidentified remains of our service men and women ended up in a landfill, this will make sure that never happens again. i really appreciate the efforts you have put in it, and i just wanted to say thank you. welcome. they exist, the only reason they have a job is to serve our nation's heroes and the people who have worn the uniform. it was a sensitive subject. we were out front. we worked the process. i'm happy to update the committee that we will advertise that project in march of 2015. we anticipate a contract being awarded in april of 2015 with 180 days to start and complete that project. so october or november of 2015 i anticipate having a tomb of remembrance at arlington. >> i appreciate that. even our unidentified soldier, sailors, airmen, and marines and even their fragments of remains deserve a place of honor and i >> thank you. last, i'd like to thank senator cleland for employing john marshall. good to see john here. but i really appreciate you and what you do for our veterans and thank you for serving our buried around the globe. i happened to visit one of your places in france, one of your cemeteries in france this year. it was very well kept up. i really appreciate that you take your mission seriously and honor our heroes regardless of where they happened to have their final resting place. >> thank you very much, mr. congressman. >> thank you. i yield back the balance and i want to again thank the chairman and wish him great luck on his future. things. >> thank you very much. i have one more question. i'll open it up to the other members also if they have another one or if they want another five, feel free. only because the first meeting that i had with secretary mcdonald, he sat down and he said something that really got the wheels turning. to address nca and strategic plan moving forward because specifically after these conflicts we're coming out of, are we prepared for the volume that we're going to have and what studies, plans do we have to be able to deal with this moving forward? >> thank you, mr. chairman. the national cemetery administration has a very robust strategic planning effort. as far as predicting the future rates, we use the vet pop 2011 model that we received from another office within the va. that model provides us with veteran level data at the county level. using that data, which is based on the 2010 census, using that data we then look at historical patterns down to the individual cemetery level and make projections and assumptions 20, 30 years into the future. i will say that we've been historically extremely successful with these predictions. in most years we're -- we have a variance of about 1% from our projected internment rates, which in turn informs the need for additional grave sites and construction projects. so any cohort in the future would be reflected in these models. we would reflect it in our utilization rates, our prior year utilization rates, and that would be translated into our future projections and our construction planning models. as a result of our planning models, we have never had an interruption in burial service at a national cemetery, and we intend to continue that record. >> thank you for that response because i know we all sit with what we deal with with vba and vha and how we're unable to predict a lot of that stuff, so thank you for that response. ranking member? >> i would just ask secretary cleland if the typhoon that recently hit the philippines had an impact on our cemeteries there and what's happening, and, second, what you all are doing with nor man dir and the french government to have that site declared a unesco international heritage site. how that affects our cemeteries. >> thank you very much. the last question i don't know the answer to, and i will call upon mike conley who might know an answer to it. the first question about the typhoo typhoons. typhoons hit the philippines from time to time. sometimes the trees are blown down, gravesites are impacted, however, we have a great crew out there and a great leader, and they are always johnny on the spot in responding and setting things right. >> that's good to know. thank you. i'd just be curious to know about the heritage site. >> the heritage site i'll have to ask mike conley, does he know anything about the heritage site at normandy? >> miss titus, forgive my voice, i have a cold. >> thank you. >> but we are in contact with the unesco folks. our overseas operations office just outside of paris has reviewed paperwork, and we are considering whether we want to endorse that. our concern obviously is that if it is declared a world heritage site, that there's nothing in there that would prevent us from maintaining and improving upon the site as we deem appropriate as the years go ahead. but clearly the nature of the events that happened there clearly fall under the criteria and deserve to be so recognized. >> i agree with that. well, thank you. >> mr. secretary, can you identify him for the record, please? >> that was mike conley, our much. >> a question for mr. hallinan. a constituent of mine and her husband are both eligible for burial at arlington, but my understanding is that the rules do not allow them to reserve a plot next to each other and if they do want to be buried together, they will be buried one on top of the other and they'll share a headstone with one's name on one side, the other is on the other. is that a requirement -- is that limitations? in other words, you're not plot next to your spouse like you might at another national cemetery because i think it's 2015 that we're running out of room? >> congressman, to answer your question, there were prior reservations at arlgton under the u.s. army which ended in 1962 bay law. there are no legal reservations anymore. arlington is unique. it is a space issue. there are different types of burial patterns at our national cemeteries as mr. powers and mr. be a driver to bury people side by side, to give them their own grave would quickly use up the remaining capacity at arlington national cemetery so that was part of the process that developed. you're 100% accurate. both are eligible. the same grave site. whoever predeceases would go in first and the remaining spouse when he or she were to spouse would go in on top. >> is there a plan in place to add additional grounds post-2050? >> i don't want to say no, congressman. i believe that when we approach that era of the decade, there may be some opportunities, but it's very difficult in the area that we're in in washington. we've taken -- under the millennium project we've taken space from ft. meier. when one looks at available space outside of the next not just a matter of maximizing a place like ft. meier is where the caissons support arlington. it has a small footprint already. any future expansion will come by great financial cost. there may be land towards the current iwo jima memorial. we're starting to get out there. any interest we show beyond our current footprint will be a very difficult and sensitive issue, but we are looking. we do project beyond what comes >> lastly for mr. walters, thank you for your commitment to work with me. i really appreciate that, and while i feel very strongly about the position that we hold related to the cemetery i do again want to commend you and your team for the way in which you take care of it. i think again it's very clean, looks really nice for what it is, but i have just heard from too many veterans and their families at this point who desperately want something that is more accommodating for them as they pay tribute to their loved one. so i know there's a way we can work together to get this done, so i appreciate your willingness to work with me on that. >> we look forward to working with you, sir. >> thanks. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. and with that, gentlemen, on behalf of the subcommittee, thank you for your testimony. and you are now excused and we'll wait a few minutes to switch over the witness table. >> thank you, mr. chairman. at this time we welcome our second panel, miss amy outreach and education for the tragedy assistance program and for survivors and miss die ann zuma that, director for amvets. we appreciate yir attendance. your complete written statements will be entered. miss neiberger-miller, you are now recognized for five minutes for your testimony. >> thank you -- [ inaudible ]. t.a.p.s. is a nonprofit organization that provides comfort and care to anyone grieving the death of someone who died while serving in our armed forces regardless of where they died or how they died. we appreciate the subcommittee's continuing interest in ensuring our nation's veterans and service members have final honorable and well maintained. these issues touch my family. my brother was killed in action in iraq and is buried in arlington national cemetery and my father-in-law is also buried at arlington. we hope you will review our submitted testimony which includes opinions on legislative initiatives related to national cemeteries and arlington. the scandal that envelopes the department of veterans affairs also touched the national unfortunately, the previous under secretary for memorial affairs retired after an oig report revealed he had engaged in prohibited practices and preferential treatment, but new leadership is now in place, and we very much appreciate the opportunities we have had to mcdonald and under secretary sloan gibson. we know they have a commitment to assisting survivors, and it is our hope that new va leadership will move forward in we're pleased to report the number of pending burial allowance claims has declined significantly since last year at this hearing with 17,818 on last week's va report. while these benefits do not route through the national cemetery administration, delay in their delivery hurts families by forcing them to delay settling estates and does impact their view of the va. at arlington national cemetery we're in a different place today than we were even a year ago upset about the removal of mementos from gravesites at section 60. section 60 is where hundreds of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in iraq or afghanistan are buried, including my brother. superintendent hallinan met with families and has extended a compromise permitting them to leave handcrafted objects and small laminated photos at gravesites. initially this was a pilot during the nongrowing season last year, and the compromise was extended into the growing season and is still currently in place. the families are very grateful for this compromise. they have worked to educate each other about the rules and the majority follow them. a few still do not follow the policies, but the appearance of the section is much more uniform and improved. one town hall meeting was held earlier this year with families, and we're hopeful lines of communication will remain open between the families and the administration. because some families were turned away on memorial day from arlington due to logistic issues on the bridge with security, we're also working with the cemetery leadership to help better distribute logistics information to survivors in advance of these major events so no one is turned away. we would like to see greater survivor involvement in an advisory capacity. no survivor has served on the adviso advisory committee for arlington sem ter since janet mannion's death in april of 2012. while the members of the committee have exemplary military and veteran credentials and the chair of that committee just testified on the previous panel, we believe their deliberations would benefit from the insight of a survivor's perspective and we thank you for the opportunity to submit our testimony and we welcome any questions. >> thank you, miss neiberger-miller. with that i recognize miss zumatto for her testimony. >> chairman runnion, ranking member titus, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, on behalf of amvets, i thank you for the opportunity to assist you in the important job of overseeing our national cemeteries. previously my testimony before this committee has been somewhat limited to a repetition of facts and statistics. however, today's testimony will be much more heartfelt and person personal. because i love history, am a trained historic preservationist, love my country and grew up visiting and documenting cemeteries in the new england area, today's topic is important to me both everybody in this room knows and to the national cemetery administration to honor the memory of america's military men and women. i'd like to set the stage national cemeteries, not only to our nation's veterans but to all american citizens. historically cemeteries, especially military cemeteries, were much more than established sites of burial with regimented internal layouts conducive to accepted societal funerary rituals. few individuals are aware, i believe, of some of the equally important social and political aspects of cemeteries, plug promoting and preserving the individuality and status of the deceased, the setting aside of landscaped spaces in or near communities delineated by defined boundaries, the organized commemoration of significant events and/or persons, serving as places of beauty and tranquility where friends and family can gather. as expressions of national of military cemeteries, and as sites of pilgrimage and permanence. i'm hopeful that this brief introduction has sparked a greater appreciation of historic national value of the many unique and irreplaceable cemeteries held in trust within the nca system. the monuments, grave stones, architecture, landscape, and related memorial tributes within each nca cemetery are richly steeped in history and represent the very foundations of these united states. how can we do any less than our absolute best to develop and maintain that's truly american shrines? this summer visiting national cemeteries, there were seven i was able to get to, my impression of nc krsmnca cemeted its employees is higher than ever. having had the rare opportunity for in-depth visits where i was able to observe every facet of cemetery operations, i was both professionalism at every level of the organization. none of the cemeteries i visited displayed any blatant shortcomings that would be obvious to the casual observer. commitment to providing the highest quality of service to veterans and their families would not be possible without positive role models and strong leadership throughout the nca system. i certainly acknowledge that perfection does not exist in this world and that i have not yet had the opportunity to visit every cemetery under the stewardship of the nca, but given the recosources, both hum and financially, i must equally acknowledge that nca continually strives to meet its most important obligation, providing dignified resting places for our nation's veterans and their eligible family members. this concludes my testimony and i will be happy to answer your questions. >> thank you very much, and we'll begin a round of questions. miss neiberger-miller, t.a.p.s. has sought to inform surviving families about the enhanced security procedures at arlington resulting in access constraints during major holidays and time when many families choose to visit their fallen loved ones. how successful has t.a.p.s. average been, as your testimony noted several areas where t.a.p.s. has volunteered to assist in spreading word and how do you think outreach could be compassionate? i think for us it's about reaching out to our families and distributing information. we've made improvements in our survivor database so we can better track our families around burial location of their loved one. one of the challenges is that many of the families who bury their loved one at arlington do not live in the washington area, so unlike people who reside here, they're not familiar with the security precautions that occur when the president or the vice president travel to an families, especially when they from out of town, very serious traffic issues and are not familiar with the security lockdown procedures. and so our role has been to compile the information and to families. i would say we still have some improvements that we're trying to make, but we're working hard at that and we've also met with the cemetery administration over the summer to actually make some additional improvements because of some concerns over memorial day. >> and very similar to information, and i wanted to thank t.a.p.s. for participating in the discussion with gold star families and section 60 in particular. that it's an agreement, and it's not a formal. do you have any suggestions on how to move forward and kind of ease that anxiety? >> well, i think for all of us, communication open. ago we had a group of very upset families, and for our families to really talk with the administration, to see them as people, for the administration to meet them as people and to look them in the eye and say, you know, we want to work with you on this, that went a long way. and so i think it became about how to humanize the conversation cemetery has to be at a certain standard as a national shrine, but also recognizing that grieving is different today, and for some people leaving an object or a photograph is extremely important. and so how could we work out something that would work for everyone, and so the families have really done a lot, i think, to help educate each other, and they've kept those lines of communication open, and that's been key. >> thank you. miss zumatto, you're talking about the consistency you have seen across your visits. is there anything that stood out that stood out to you when you visited the sites that was different, that wasn't -- is there any specific things that stood out? >> i'm going to say not really. the seven sites that i visited, and they were not just brief run in and out. i usually spent a minimum of two days or more at each site. i just did not -- i mean, i wasn't going through their records. jefferson barracks i spent one day just at their training center. i spent another day at the scheduling office. so i could see the process, and then i spent a day at the cemetery itself, but every site that i went to i was truly -- i was surprised i think by the care of the chain of custody, if you will. i had no idea what the process was like until i went to started, and the redundancy at every point to ensure that, you know, it was the right veteran and that the site where they were going to be interred was the right site, and, i mean, there is -- they use maps. they draw this stone is here, this stone is here. just the detail so that there are no errors is perhaps one of the things that really struck me. that and as i was riding around with different employees during my visits, i would constantly if they saw somebody walking around who looked like they needed help or if they saw a piece of trash in the road or, you know, in the cemetery itself, they just got out, they took care of it. it was just really very r reassuring to see that level of care at every step of the way. >> thank you. good to hear. with that i'll yield to the ranking member, miss titus. >> thank you. thank you both for all the good work you do with families during this most difficult time. i would ask miss neiberger-miller, if you have the same experience dealing with people and talking to families that we heard reported in the surveys that the nca does. they say their surveyed show 95% of the people are satisfied, it has the best marks of any government agency. hear on the ground from families? >> what we hear from families is that they're often very satisfied with the burial process. unfortunately, we do work with people who are traumatically r bereaved so many of these people are struggling with short-term memory losses or other issues going on. they're often in a great state of shock. these are people who died young who were not expected to die, who often died in very violent ways, and so their family is often in a great degree of shock. the burial is often very quickly after the death. there's not a wait typically for an active duty service that's extremely long, and so the family sometimes even needs the photographs or other things from the service to really recall it very well, and that's unfortunate, but they always will say that they feel their loved one was honored and that they feel that placement at arlington or at a national cemetery honors their loved one's sacrifice. >> do you ever talk to families who feel like they don't live close enough to a national cemetery so they just resort to some other kind of more private funeral? >> well, there are families sometimes who really have to make very difficult decisions. also because this was someone who wasn't expected to die, so there was no family plan in place per se like there might be for say an older veteran like my father-in-law who knew for several decades he wanted to be buried at arlington and told all and so families sometimes don't always recognize the travel distances that they may be assuming or may not realize they want to visit as often as they do after a death, and that can be challenging for them to make a long distance trip to go and visit a location. we don't hear often from families about that, but it certainly is something that is discussed sometimes. >> thank you. and miss zumatto, when you visit those seven cemeteries, did you visit any state cemeteries or just national? >> i have not yet had the opportunity to visit a state cemetery, no, ma'am. >> do you think some of your veterans would like to see more cemeteries in the west where they could be buried in a national cemetery, not just a facility? knowledge, not personal experience, but from researching, if you will, i don't really believe that being buried in a state cemetery, a state veterans cemetery, is any less honorable or -- i just don't see it as a negative. if there is no national cemetery or if that national cemetery has no more available space, then, you know, i don't see why, as long as the state cemetery is being maintained to the shrine the other day about a problem in alaska having to do with access, and apparently there are two national cemeteries in alaska, one of which is only accessible by boat and the other apparently is on an active military installation. the issue that he brought up was the fact that it's difficult, not everybody has access to a boat, but that if there's any sort of security issues going on on the base, then the base is closed and you can't access the cemetery. far as state cemeteries go, i haven't been to one. it's on my list. i'm going to continue visiting cemeteries. >> thank you. i just worry about policy varying from state to state, even with the checklist. for example, the same sex couple might be able to get buried together in a state that recognizes it but not in a state that doesn't if it's a state so i think while state cemeteries i think the one in nevada and boulder city is great, i think there are still differences that we need to address. i appreciate it. >> thank you mr. chairman. ms. neiberger-miller, thank you for your testimony. i really enjoy hearings like these that our chairman and ranking member put together. other than your testimony, i didn't know about a lot of these issues. i appreciate you bringing your perspective directly to us. likewise, ms. zumatto, really appreciate all the work, and time that you took to go to these different cemeteries, including the one at ft. bliss in el paso, texas. i want to note for the record appreciate. the fact that you're listening as well to gain insight. ms. zumatto i really appreciated your remarks in your testimony, in your written testimony, about the national cemetery at ft. bliss. you describe it as serene and beautiful and very well maintained and a little bit of a surprise because you had heard that there was some discontent in el paso about the cemetery. i really can't argue with your conclusions. i think it is a very serene, a very beautiful place. again, so clean and well maintained and for the resources that they have, if you're going to have that crushed rock and some small areas of grass, some small areas of trees and landscaping, it is excellently maintained. i think the disconnect might come when we talk to the families, the survivors, who can also appreciate everything that but then that act of actually kneeling at the grave site or this is, you know, their experience as they relate it to me, because of that environment, and not having that grass, and that expectation, because it was there before, and because it's in the vast majority of other cemeteries in el paso and almost every other single national cemetery. but you also said something that i thought was so important in your testimony or wrote in your testimony which was that when you visited with vsos prior to visiting the cemetery, you found that they were not as upset with the aesthetics as they were with the process and they felt like they had been disconnected from the process used to choose the scaping or water wise. talk a little bit -- i had a great exchange with mr. walters in the previous panel where we agreed that we would try to work together to find a way to make an improvement, maybe it's not turf and maybe it's not staying with the status quo, maybe it's something better for all concerned. talk about a process that you might recommend from your experience that we could use in working with survivors, working with veterans, working with vsos in our community and working since you had that great conversation with the vsos, i thought you might have some thoughts on it. >> well, i have not done a study of zero scaping so i'm not sure what other types of low maintenance, or waterwise options there might be. i would doubt that what is currently at ft. bliss is the only avenue available. i have seen pictures of ft. bliss back when it was turfed and in the picture i can see a lot of brown and bare patches -- >> doesn't look good, does it? >> so i can't imagine that that would be any better. >> right. this in my written testimony or not, but -- and this was my first experience being in a desert, but when you stand in the cemetery and you look at the i did ask -- i went to a local vfw post, actually, when i was veterans and see what they thought about and you mentioned that couple of things. i asked them if it was difficult to walk on. somebody was saying that, you know, an elderly person perhaps or somebody with some disability, you know, do they have difficulty either with a wheelchair on that surface or walking on that surface, so that possibility came up. i didn't try either myself when i was there. it was 120 degrees that day, so i didn't try kneeling. but there were people visiting the cemetery when i was there and i did notice at least two individuals had brought like almost like a small prayer rug, if you will, something to put on the ground to kneel on, which i thought was, you know, a pretty good option. but one other thing that i'll mention is i recently came back from a visit to a military -- a national military cemetery in grass in that cemetery -- >> now, what is on -- i saw your picture from the cemetery in israel. and it looks like there is grass on the actual grave but it looks like it's surrounded by stones and there's some material in between the stones over the grave. is that grass or some other covering? >> the ground is mainly flagstone type material and then each individual grave is sort of built up. there's a wall, a surround, if you will. and on top of that, there is grass -- excuse me, there is soil, but it's not grass. >> gotcha. and there were a variety of different things. personalize their loved one's site, but it wasn't grass. and any place that didn't have flagstones was bare dirt. >> well, i appreciate you bringing that to our attention. i have the pictures here in front of me and it just provides yet another option. in other words, it's not a choice of a false choice between bad turf and grass, which is what ft. bliss had, and the crushed rock, but as you saw in the desert, it's full of life and there are forms of grass and plant life that thrive there and i think there's some middle ground we can reach and looking at what others have done including in israel gives us options. thank you for doing the work and providing us some other perspective. i appreciate it. thank you both for your testimony. >> thank you. that t.a.p.s. and amvet does to honor our veterans and care for their families and loved ones. you are now excused. i want to thank everyone for being here today. the status reports from our cemetery and memorial representatives and the input from the vso community was well presented and this sub committee appreciates the work that went into the preparation for today's hearing. i'm certain that this subcommittee will continue to engage in these issues in the next congress as the final resting place for our veterans and the families left behind deserve the highest standard of care. i would like to once again thank our witnesses for being here today and ask unanimous consent that all members have about five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include any extraneous material. hearing no objection, so ordered. i thank you the members for their attendance today and this hearing is adjourned. american alan gross has been released from a cuban prison after five years in captivity. the associated press is reporting it's part of an agreement that also includes the release of three cubans jailed here in the u.s. senior u.s. officials say mr. gross was on a u.s. government plane bound for the united states this morning after being released on humanitarian grounds by the cuban government at the request of the obama administration. president obama was set to announce mr. gross' release later today according to officials who insisted on anonymity because they're not authorized to discuss the matter ahead of the president. c-span will have live coverage of his statement on the issue. that will be at 1:00 p.m. eastern. also at 1:00 eastern we'll bring you live coverage of a conference on coal as an energy strategy. including its economic competitiveness and viability as an energy resource. u.s. and international energy company representatives will take part in the discussion hosted by the center for strategic and international studies here in washington. again that will be at 1:00 p.m. eastern. here are some of the programs you'll find this weekend on the c-span networks. saturday night at 9:30 on c-span, actor seth rogen discussing politics and humor with daily show could creator liz winstead at the harvard institute of politics. sunday evening at 8:00 a. c-span's q&a author and town tall dotcom editor katie pavlich. on c-span2 saturday night at 10:00, on book tv's after wards, william deresiewicz argues the top universities are missing the mark in education and students should learn lessons in how to think critically, be creative and have a goal in life beyond the material. and sunday morning, just before 11:00, book tv visits lafayette, west lafayette indiana to interview several of the city's authors and tour its literary sites. and on american history tv on c-span3, saturday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on the civil war, historian damion shields talks about the life of irish-american soldier patrick cleburne and his role in the confederate army during the battle of franklin, tennessee. and sunday afternoon at 4:00 on real america a 1974 investigative piece by san francisco's kron-tv on the history of police brutality in neighboring oakland. find our complete television schedule at c-span.org. and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400. e-mail us at comments@c-span.org. or send us a tweet @c-span #comments. join the c-span conversation. like us on facebook. follow us on twitter. a discussion now on foreign policy issues, including the fight against isis, the russia ukraine conflict, iran and its nuclear program, and nsa surveillance. you'll hear first from senator rand paul who is a member of the foreign relations committee followed by robert menendez. they spoke at the "wall street journal's" ceo council annual meeting here in washington, d.c. it's about an hour. >> ladies and gentlemen, if you may ask you to divert your attention from your colleagues and your neighbors and lunch and have your attention, please. thank you very much. want to welcome everybody. my name is paul gigot, the editorial page editor of "the wall street journal" responsible for the fun parts of the paper. the opinion pages. and we have a session today at lunch the changing politics of foreign policy. it's going to be in two parts. it's going to have first i'm going to talk to senator rand paul who is already seated to my left. and then we're going to talk with the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, democrat robert menendez of new jersey. so we're going to try to get you all in to it at each of the back end of each of the conversations. lots to talk about given the turmoil around the world. so please i want to first welcome senator paul. senator from kentucky. elected in 2010. an ophthalmologist before he entered the dark arts of politics. and making a name for himself in the un senate right from the start. so you have been, i think making a name for yourself on foreign policy and national security critical of the iraq war, certainly. part of the way the afghanistan war has been supported. though you were critical of that in the beginning. where do you think the republican party has gone wrong on foreign policy? >> i would say there's a little bit of blame to go around to both parties on this. i think if we put this in terms of kind of where we are right now, the biggest thing that has occurred to me that we've done incorrectly is congress has abdicated its role in declaration of war and war making. our founding fathers saw one of the great responsibilities of congress was to debate, you know, whether we go to war. for four months we've been back at war in the middle east. and they're using as justification for this a war resolution or authorization of force from 2001, which said that we would go after the people who attacked us on 9/11. no one really purports that isis attacked us on 9/11. in fact they are now avowed enemies of al qaeda which distance cousins of al qaeda did attack us on 9/11. so really i think what we have is a very loose definition and really no oversight. our founding fathers thought it was really, really, really important that this power go to the legislature. in fact madison wrote that the executive branch is the branch most prone to war, therefore we have with studied care vested that power in the legislative branch. so if i were going to say what is wrong, really, with both parties, it's an abdication of the role of congress. when they talk about the separation of powers madison wrote that the separation of powers would work because we're going to divide the power but then we will pit the ambition of one group or one branch against another. so the ambition for our power should be enough to check the other branch. we've gotten so far away from that we have a very docile congress that we may not ever have a vote on a use of authorization of force for the new war. so i recently introduced a declaration of war which hasn't happened since 1941 to try to shake them up a bit to say, hey, guys, this is our responsibility. >> one of the presidents you have praised for his conduct of foreign policy is ronald reagan. and if you look at the course of his presidency, he used force several times abroad without getting authorization there congress. there was the bombing of libya with an attempt to kill moammar gadhafi. there was the invasion of grenada. there was the reflagging of ships in the gulf, all of which were controversial in the congress. yet he didn't get an authorization. are you saying that any time a president uses force he must first get an affirmative vote from congress? >> if you look at most of our history, and you look at most of the people who looked at our founding fathers, they would say that the commander in chief has the power to repel attack, imminent attack. the thing is this has now been dumbed down to the extent of being almost farcical. i'll give you an example. i had a conversation with the president about a year ago and i repeated back to him what he said in 2007. he said no president should unilaterally go to war without the authority of congress unless they're under imminent attack. i said what happened in libya? he said well benghazi was under threat of imminent attack. and i said, really? you meant by imminent attack, imminent attack of a foreign city would be justification for a war without the authority of congress? the disappointing thing has been few on my side have been good at asserting congressional authority and nobody on the other side has. i think they've been largely apologetic for their president. >> but are there any instances, other than repelling attack -- >> i think the hard line would say in repelling an attack. i think there would also be instances of minor military skirmishes that would occur. but i would also say when people use reagan as someone they believe was a much more interventionist if you look at the totality of reagan's foreign policy we weren't involved in that many wars. when we did get involved in the middle east he thought twice about it and he came home from the middle east after the disaster in beirut. >> but he deployed those troops without the permission of congress. >> yeah, i know. i'm not saying that ralgen was perfect or anybody was perfect. but i think that for the most part if you make the argument back and forth, what is the correct constitutional and historical nature of how foreign policy should be conducted, if you look at weinberger's doctrine under reagan he does say when troops are involved there should be congressional authority. >> what i hear you saying is if you were commander in chief you would in almost every instance want to go to congress to get an affirmative vote. not just cult them but get an affirmative vote to va, back me up on this action i want to take. >> i don't think anybody can give a blanket answer to every possible instance. but i can give you an answer to the current one. in august when it became clear that isis was a threat to our consulate in erbil, to our embassy in baghdad and was a threat to american citizens there i would have come before a joint session of congress and i would have asked them for permission to declare war on this group. >> at that time? >> absolutely. he would have gotten every vote. i'm one of the -- i'm not going to apologize for this. i'm one of the least reluctant to go to war. if i'm ever commander in chief, i will not want to take the country to war. it will be the last resort and only when the country says we are united and we must fight and we will fight. it won't be eagerness on my part. in this case, i see that there is a threat to american interest. if the president had come forward and done the right thing, i would have voted. as reluctant as i am, i would have voted for force and will still vote to use force against this group because i think they are a threat. to our interests in the region. >> let me change the subject to another one, surveillance. and there was-and putting recommending limits on what the nsa has done in collecting metadata. you voted in fact, you were one of four republicans if i'm not mistaken, who voted for the bill that failed ultimately, mainly because the -- your party, all but four of you, voted against the bill. so it failed. it would have put new restrictions on the fisa court review process and barred the collection by the nsa of metadata. you were with president obama on that one. where were your republican colleagues wrong? >> i think we have to define the issue and understand what we're talking about. many people say and many people in government will say these are just your business records. these are just your boring old business records. what do you care about metadata? do you know what metadata is? it's your visa bill. on your bill i can tell whether you drink, whether you smoke, and how much. i can tell what you read. i can tell what doctors you doctor to see. two stanford students put an app on a phone and asked 500 kids to volunteer to be part of this app. all they got off the app was your phone records. how long you spoke and who you spoke to. they could tell 85% of the time what your religion was. they could tell nearly 100% of the time who your doctor was and what diseases you could have. they could tell even one woman who had a long conversation with her sister, and then called planned parenthood. what do you think you know about this woman from her meta data? the government has no right to look at your records unless they have suspicion or probable cause you committed a crime. call a judge, get a warrant. it is not that hard to get a warrant. we wrote the fourth amendment for a reason. to restrain government. the constitution isn't about restraining the people, it is about restraining the government. when i look at the nsa program and they tell me they wrote a single warrant and a guy's name on it named verizon, they got 100 million phone calls, and they're storing them in utah. that is antithetical to everything i understand about american freedom and i will oppose it to my last breath. >> yet the reform that you voted for would have allowed those -- >> actually didn't vote for it. but -- >> excuse me. it was whether or not to close debate -- >> no i didn't vote for it. i voted with republicans but for a different reason. >> that's right. it didn't go far enough. >> not necessarily that. i voted against it because it reauthorizes the patriot act. one of my main objections to the patriot act, i'll give you a good example. there's a section 213 of the patriotability and they do sneak and peek into your house without announcing they've ever been into your house. people say well terrorism is so bad, and we must do something, we are so frightened, we have to do something. let's give government authority. do you know what they are using 213 for? 99% of the time, for the war on drugs. do you know what happens with unannounced no-knock raids for war on drugs? look at the baby in atlanta. two months ago they threw a concussive grenade into a crib at 1:00 in the morning, there were no drugs in the house, and it was the wrong house. people say oh, we're going to have terrorism. then it's a slippery slope to we're going to use the patriot act on all kinds of ordinary crime and i object to that. >> there are people who would argue, look, the nsa, there's not one documented case we found of real abuse. there were some people who did, individual staffers who were punished for sneaking a look at one account or something, but nothing systematic. nothing serious in terms of abuse of that authority. meanwhile, one of the things that was in the bill was -- would have allowed google, for example, and private collectors of data to keep that metadata. >> they don the data. so they can -- >> i don't -- >> google is not going to put me in jail. the whole internet is based on information. i'm not against information. and i give up privacy all the time. but i give it up voluntarily. google and facebook are not putting me in jail or going to put me in jail. so i guess i object to saying google and the government are somehow the same. they're completely and entirely different. there is an argument to be made. the argument is that these are good people. and i think by and large they are good people. i've met people in the fbi and the cia and the flaiz and they are. but here's what madison said about government. and the reason we restrain government is because if government were always comprised of angels we wouldn't have to worry. i don't take away or feel that i have to limit the nsa's power because of one particular bad person or one particular bad instance but i do object to the accumulation of power for the danger of abuse. i'll give you an example. in 2011, we passed legislation that allows for the indefinite detention of an american citizen without a trial. that goes against everything that is fundamental to our country. an american citizen, i had the debate with another republican senator, i said this means an american citizen could be sent to guantanamo bay without a trial. forever. he's like, yeah, if they're dangerous. i said, sort of begs the question, doesn't it, who gets to decide who is dangerous and who's not? the president signed it, and he objected to it also. this is like so many things the president does, i object to it but i'm never going to use it because i'm a good person. trust me. the thing is even if you love this president, who's going to be the next president? it always is about power, the restriction and the restraint of power. it's not about individuals. to me it is incredibly important and i think the potential for the abuse of collecting of metadata is enormous. i'll give you one other quick example with it. there was a former head of one of the security agencies, and he says, oh, yeah, metadata. we kill people based on metadata. i don't think he was referring american citizens but we kill foreigners based on metadata. they can find out a lot through metadata. i'm concerned whether they abuse it or not. about collecting my information. and i think the idea of bulk collection goes against the individual nature of the fourth amendment. the particularity argument of it. i think our founding fathers would be horrified to know that all of our phone records are stored in utah. >> another subject, and going back to reagan, one of his watch words, phrases, was peace through strength. he presided, as you know, over an enormous buildup in defense spending. the current trajectory of defense spending, particularly if you go to sequester is down to below 3% of gross domestic -- gdp. which is going to be as low as it was back in -- before 1941. would you -- would you support a significant increase from current levels in the defense budget and do away with the defense sequester? >> i absolutely support the concept of peace through strength. i think the most important thing i think the most important thing the federal government does or spends money on is national defense. you can't rely on state governments. you can't rely on corporations. or individuals to defend your country. you have to have a national defense. when i look at priorities, and say what is the federal government authorized to do, national defense is the number one priority. if i'm looking at dollars spent i will always say a priority. specifically with regard to the sequester, the last five-year budget that we produced, and we've produced five-year budgets continuously since i've come here that balance in five years, we have a five-year budget that balances in five years, eliminates the military sequester and spends money above the military sequester but we do eliminate five departments of government. and so you -- you can, if you want a strong defense, fine. but if you want a strong defense and you're going to run up an $18 trillion deficit then i think you make the country weaker. i'm for peace through strength absolutely. i will spend as much money as i can get out of congress, however i won't run up another $10 trillion in deficit. so it has to be done by cutting other parts of government. >> so you're saying if practically speaking you can't politically succeed in cutting five departments of government which has not succeeded during my lifetime, you would not be in favor of an increase -- >> i think that twists my words. i am in favor of a strong national defense. i'm for spending whatever it takes -- >> i'm not trying to twist your words. but guns or butter, i understand that -- >> no, i think it's a mistake to immediately acknowledge that you're willing to admit defeat on cutting and reining in spending. and here's the point. this is the reason you can't. there are people on our side. i think they're absolutely wrong. there are conservatives who are, i'll spend anything and i don't care if it bankrupts the world. we have got to have it. that is wrong. you will be a weaker country. and you will be more vulnerable, and i true believe that the number one threat to our national security is our debt. we have an overwhelming debt. we are borrowing a million dollars a minute. what does separate me from some conservatives is i am not all in, everything no matter what. i'm saying we spend what we can from what comes in. we bring in $3 trillion every year, we spend $3 trillion. that is very simple. everybody in the business world understands that. they spend what comes in or borrow it based on a rational basis. we do nothing rational in washington. it is bankrupting the country. i think it threatens us and makes us weaker. i want to be clear -- about the defense spending. you think that the current levels are adequate, or do we need to increase it at some point? >> i think it is a mistake to look at defense spending and say we're going to spend 4% of gdp or we're weak. i think if you want to protect the country, you have a strategic vision for what we need to defend the country. so for example, if tomahawk missiles are incredibly important we need to know and we need to have a discussion with all of our military folks, all of the foreign policy experts, how many do we need for next year for the vision of what we need? but we don't predecide that we're going to spend -- 2% of the gdp on the tom hawks and another 2% of the gdp on this. we have to have a vision of what we need. from what i have done in the past my five-year balanced budget, the last one we introduced, eliminated the sequester from the military, allowed military spending to grow above the sequester, and did so while balancing the budget in five years. that is my preferred vision. for government. and that's what we ought to do. if we want to be strong again we should both balance the budget and spend an adequate amount of money on military defense. >> okay. let's take a topical issue that you addressed earlier, isis and the president according to the latest news reports is considering a proposal to put a safe haven for the syrian rebels in parts of syria with the help of turkey. and u.s. bombing to enforce it. good idea? >> we're talking about the syrian rebels? >> i believe that's -- >> the moderate, the so-called- >> that's right. i believe that's the proposal. inside syria. >> i read a good description. i don't mean to be flippant but this is the best description i've heard of the moderate rebels. this is a former cia agent and he said the only thing moderate about the rebels is their ability to fight. they are basically -- they have been in the last several years a conduit for giving weapons to isis. i said a year ago, i voted in our committee against arming these people. because i said the ultimate irony here is we will be back here fighting against our own weapons within a year. and i'm -- i was found to be absolutely correct. we are now going back to the middle east, which i support begrudgingly, because i think it's a mess there and it's never going to end but we are going back in and fighting largely against our own weapons. 600 tons of weapons went into syria in 2013 alone. those weapons, many of them found their ways into the hands of isis. i don't think there are any moderates there. there's 2 million christians who are on the other side of the war. it's a messy civil war and we shouldn't be involved in it. the only reason i am for getting back involved over there is not because i think there's any end to the war between sunnis and shiites or any end to the syrian civil war or there would be anything that great by replacing assad with isis. -- >> but the reason -- >> but the reason i get involved is because we have an embassy and a consulate to defend which should be defended. >> how do you defeat isis if you allow them to have a safe haven potentially inside syria? >> isis will never be defeated until the people who live there decide to, in a way, rise up and say that this is a bar babeic form of islam and we're not going to tolerate it. but that would mean the turks rising up. it would mean the iraqis rising up. instead of -- see the thing is is here we have to question if there is one overwhelming truth that i think cannot be disputed by the fact, it's this. every time that we have toppled a secular dictator, been replaced by chaos and the rise of radical islam. look at hillary's war. if you look at hillary's war in libya, what has happened? it's chaotic there. hillary was the biggest promoter of getting involved in the syrian civil war. libya is an absolute disaster. you had gadhafi, a secular dictator, but you had some stability in libya. now that he's gone, our ambassador is assassinated. in the last month or two our embassy has fled overland into tunisia. libya is now chaotic. there are jihadist groups running amok. i think we're more at risk now than we were before. to those republicans who love a republican intervention, iraq is worse off now. do you think we are better or worse off with hussein gone? there was more stability under hussein. i'm not saying i would support him or give him money. but there was more stability under hussein. and iraq was a bulwark against iran. you had check and balance over there. you had somewhat of a geopolitical stalemate. but now, we topple hussein, iraq is a huge mess. and i think will be a huge mess for the time foreseeable. but a year ago, many on the side of intervention wanted to bomb assad. if we had -- and i opposed bombing assad and we didn't do it. but had we bombed assad a year ago, who do you think would be in damascus now? isis. without question isis has become stronger because of our involvement in the syrian civil war. so my argument, which is different, and i will admit to be different than other republicans, and democrats, is, that intervention has unintended consequences. and that we have to be careful, and think about what we're doing before we do it. >> of course we stayed out of the syrian civil war. i want to open this up -- >> actually we didn't. we and our allies gave 600 tons of weapons. qatar and our allies and the united arab emirates and the saudis and us together put 600 tons of weapons into syria. most of it wound up in the wrong hands. and i think we're worse off for it. >> i want to open it up. does anybody -- do i see any other -- any questions out there for senator paul on anything regarding foreign policy or any other subjects? we have one right here. >> the question is regarding iran. i guess we now have the second extension of the talks. your colleague will be on later. has said he has great concern over that second extension. and what it says about iranian intentions. >> so do i. i think that one of the interesting things that's come out in recent weeks though has been netanyahu's response to this. that he actually thinks an extension is a good thing. so i think is interesting and will maybe change some of the debate. i think we need to and should do everything we can to prevent iran from having a nuclear weapon. that includes the threat of force. i do think the sanctions -- and i voted for every sanction that has come forward in the senate -- the sanctions have brought them to the table. i think it would be a mistake to push them away from the table. if you institute sanctions again right now when you're in the midst of negotiation, that there's a very good chance that the international coalition will collapse. i think also that there is a certain bit of irony for the group that believes in virtually unlimited power for the president to conduct war, but they want to circumscribe the president's ability to conduct diplomacy. i think ultimately things that are laws like sanctions do have to come before congress. but i think it's a mistake to pass new sanctions in the middle of negotiations, particularly if the new sanctions start out with something that i think really is a nonstarter position for iran, which is no enrichment. if you start out with the position of no enrichment there will be no negotiations. >> anybody else? yes, sir, right here. >> i'm from germany. in europe the russian-ukraine crisis seems to be more important than here in the u.s. how important do you think this is for the u.s., and what went wrong, and what could be a solution? >> i thought we said no hard questions. i'm not sure there is any easy answer to your questions. i agree with you that because of proximity, that obviously europe sees this in a heightened way over the way it's probably seen here. i don't think it would be correct to say that we don't see it as important. if you are talking about international order and trying to look at an international civilized and stable world, allowing one country to invade the integrity of another is an enormous step backwards in time and a real problem. that being said, it is very difficult to understand even when the most hawkish members of political parties here are not advocating necessarily sending military troops into ukraine. i think there are ways, though, of talking about and introducing either defensive arms, weapons, and/or money into ukraine, that could potentially bring russia to negotiating on this. i think also trade is an important part of this. i think trying to get independence or having other alternative sources of gas would have less dependency. some people fail to understand that dependency goes both ways. russia while it can thrive it requires foreign capital and it requires continuous trade. so while europe could be hurt by cutting off natural gas, so will russia. trade is not a one-way street. so i think there are limitations to it. i'm not sure what the easy answer is to force them to exit crimea. but i think part of it, when you look, and you have a, i guess an analysis of current president, when the current president sets red lines and then doesn't adhere to them, that may encourage other people to step through when he tells them not to step across a certain line. so i think there's been a certain fecklessness in this president's foreign policy that may have encouraged some of these transgressions. >> let me -- i want to ask you a practical political question. there have been some rumors out there that you may be considering a run for the white house. >> nan. >> and i assume that you will probably announce sometime next year if you're going to do that. i asked a lot of republicans around the country about your candidacy. and here's what they tell me, almost to a person. they say, fascinating person saying interesting things about the party needing to reach out. agree with much of his economic message. but, i don't think he'll ever make it out of the primaries because of his foreign policy positions and security positions. and a super pac will come in and take your positions, and just hit them one after another, and you won't survive that political -- it's a practical question. what's your response to that? >> you know i think the thing is that one that fails to understand where the people are in the country. but two, it also fails to understand who i am and what i support. i grew up as a reagan republican. i was at the convention in 1976 when my dad was a delegate. peace through strength is something that i believe viscerally. do i believe that defense is the number one thing we have to do with the federal government? absolutely. anybody who comes in and wants to say otherwise will have to argue with the facts. i have five-year budget plans that get rid of the military sequester and increase defense spending. so people are really going to have to argue with the facts. people come in and want to call names or say you're this, you're that. here's the thing about it. in iowa about a month ago they asked ordinary republicans who live where i live, in middle america, they asked them, and i think it's a great question because they put it in general terms and not real stark terms, they said, do you agree with john mccain and more intervention? or do you agree more with rand paul and less intervention? and i think that's a great way to put it. because i'm not talking about all or none. i'm not talking about no intervention. i think we do have to intervene right now with isis. so i'm not talking about all or none. but i do believe less. i believe we've been everywhere all the time. we're about to bankrupt our country, and that there is great danger to what we've been doing. so i want less. mctain wants more. he wants 15 countries more. or 15 wars more. but the thing is, is that there is a more and a less argument. when you poll that in iowa, 45% agreed with mccain. and 41 agreed with me. so this is not a small movement. nor is it easy to say that people like myself who believe in less intervention can be characterized as people who don't believe in a strong national defense. that's a caricature and i will have to fight that. but, we'll see what happens. >> but do you think the republican party -- the republican grassroots has changed enough politically from a decade ago to -- >> i think we've always been there. i mean the thing is, i'm right there. when we were attacked on 9/11, i would have voted to go to war with those who attacked us and to annihilate and wipe them out and let the rest of the world know that this will -- you do this, this is the result. this is a warning to the rest of the world that we will never tolerate being attacked. and i'm right there with most of america, and with most of the party. but i'm not there when you tell me that we need to have boots on the ground in 15 different countries. i'm not there. i'm also not there when you say, we need 6% of gdp for military spending because 6% is a big number and that's what we need. >> how about four? >> i'm not there for making a number either. >> i know. >> if you said a number i think there's a problem. also if you tell me we're going to run a trillion dollar deficit and spend 4% of gdp, i'm not for that unless you're going to pass a budget and eliminate everything else. and so it does have to be both. it can't be one or the other. it has to be -- there has to be fiscal sanity to what we do. >> all right, senator paul. thank you so much for being here. and appreciate it. thank you. senator robert menendez now joinses now. senator menendez as i mentioned before is the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee. condolences for at least a couple of more weeks and then you'll be ranking member of the foreign relations committee. senator from new jersey, appointed in 2006, i believe, and then served in the senate consistently from that. born in -- in new york city, and of cuban immigrants who arrived here, i think, the year before you were born. so, classic american story. you heard senator paul. i wonder, do you feel sometimes that you've switched political parties when you've listened to the senator? >> no. i have a great deal of respect for senator paul. he sits on the senate foreign relations committee and he has interesting perspectives at different times. look, i think part of your line of questioning with senator paul really came to the question of when is strength appropriate? and after 22 years serving in the congress, between the house and the senate, all sitting on either the house or senate foreign relations committee, i've come to the clear view that weakness, not strength, invites provocation. and that is a global message. it's a global message whether you are dealing with the russian invasion in ukraine, it is a global message when you're dealing with china in the south china sea, in conflicts, territorial disputes with japan and south korea. and it is true in so many other parts of the world. so, my own perspective is that we always seek to use diplomacy. and we always seek to use economic inducements, whether positive or negative, to get a country to act in a certain way. but the ability to have credible strength is important at the end of the day. in order to back up those actions, whether they be economic or diplomacy. and i truly believe that weakness invites provocation, and russia is a great example of that. for me, president putin is kgb. in terms of his orientation. he is an admirer of peter the great. peter was great, why? because he extended the russian empire. the reality is as you look at president putin's speeches over the last two years he has basically evolved in accordance with what his speeches are. so when it comes to ukraine, which is very significant for the ukrainian people, and i would say very significant for europe, but even has a more significant consequence globally, which is that if the international order can be upended, without consequence, then other international actors will look and say, what did the united states and the west do? to russia in terms of invading a sovereign country without provocation, an exing parts of its country, and if the answer is not much, then you will see other global actors thinking that strength will ultimately allow them to do what they wish to do. and that is consequential to the national interest and security of the united states. >> has, since we're on russia, and ukraine, has the response from the west, i mean the united states, and the european union, been adequate to meet the challenge that you put to the global order in ukraine? >> well, i would hope that what we began to do with the europeans, which is important in terms of keeping our multilateralism in this respect, can be enhanced even beyond. because we now, i was in ukraine in august when the first invasion took place and i know some people don't call it an invasion, but when you see thousands of russian troops, tanks, surface-to-surface missiles and a whole host of armored vehicles cross from one country to another, to me, where i come from, that's an invasion. and so, you have an invasion taking place, then you have the minsk accords which were supposed to be a cease-fire and now you have a second invasion taking place. you see the annexation of crimea, and now you see the part of eastern ukraine being pursued by russia. in the donbas region which is critically important. they probably want to create that land bridge to make the totality of their crimea investment a total success. for me what we've gone in sanctions has been important. but i and my committee voted 18-0 on a bipartisan basis which is one of the unique things about the senate foreign relations committee in the midst of a sea of partisanship the senate foreign relations committee over the last two years that i've been the chairman has passed just about every major piece of legislation and almost every nominee in strong bipartisan votes. and i've worked very hard to make that the case. because, as it relates particularly to foreign policy, our bipartisan is incredibly important to send a global message of where the united states stands. i think as the committee voted under my legislation that i authored, that we should give defensive weapons to the ukrainians to fight for themselves. it is part of the calculation that putin will have to make. how many russian soldiers go back to russia to their families, if, in fact, the ukrainians can defend themselves? and sanctions, you know, russia's an extracting country. that's basically its economy. it relies upon its extraction of oil. and with oil so low, the ruble having fallen dramatically, today their announcement that they would probably go into recession, this is a critical moment. because, either russia will continue its second invasion and extension of annexation of ukraine, or we will have an opportunity to have them change their calculus. and if we don't, what stops china from saying, you know what? i'm going to go and take those territories in the south china sea? what stops north korea, which is an enormous challenge to the united states? what stops the iranians in the midst of a negotiation to stop their march towards nuclear weapons from saying at the end of the day the west won't do very much. so there is a global consequence to what we do. >> but the president, president obama's response to your bill, and in the senate, was this is what to give any lethal aid to the ukrainians beyond the minimum we've given them would create -- would make things worse because it would escalate the situation which make putin even more engaged more inclined to act faster, and we could end up with a much broader war on our hands. what's your response to that? >> well, my response is that we haven't done anything, nor has the ukraine, to provoke russia. and russia has already taken the most aggressive actions. russia and putin particularly will calculate what will be my potential losses if i go further. if they believe they can continue on the course that they are on, they will follow that course. and at the end of the day, i think it's a sad commentary that we would not give a sovereign country, who is looking to the west, the ability to defend themselves. this is not about u.s. forces going in. this is about the ability to defend themselves. and you cannot fight tanks with night vision goggles. which is what we've given them. at the end of the day you have to have the ability to have as part of putin's equation. so i respectfully disagree with the president, as does on a bipartisan basis every member of the senate foreign relations committee that voted 18-0 to give the ukrainians the wherewithal to defend themselves. >> is that going to move in the senate do you think? >> i hope that in the closing days as we look at the national defense authorization, legislation that is probably one of the two must-pass bills including the omnibus at the end of this year and i would hope tax extended is the third one that, in fact, we would have the wherewithal to include that or have it offered as an amendment and i think would be robustly supported by the congress. there's the same -- at the same time there's an effort to extend ukrainian loan guarantees, and i think they need that. but they need the wherewithal to defend themselves. so i think there may be an opportunity, and i look forward for that opportunity to happen. >> let's turn to isis, and the syrian campaign. you were -- you were one of those who voted against going to war with iraq in 2003, if i'm correct. and yet now, many in your party were highly critical of president bush and his conduct of the war. and now we have a democratic president taking the country back to war, not in the precisely the same way, but certainly conflict back in iraq. you heard senator paul talk about the need for a congressional authorization. do you agree with that, that that is what we should do, and is it likely to pass? >> well, paul, let me just take your -- the beginning premise of your question, and just characterize it a little bit different. and then get to the heart of your question. first of all, when we were struck on september 11th, in which i lost hundreds of citizens in new jersey, as part of those americans who were lost nationally, i supported president bush. it was the right engagement. it was against bin laden. it was al qaeda. it was the perpetrators of september 11th. and that's where we needed to fight. when we went to iraq, i spent a lot of time doing what any member of congress could have done. spent a lot of time looking at what was necessary to make a determination about whether or not we should authorize the use of military force. because i have a standard. if i believe the cause is right, then i will vote to send my son and daughter to defend the country. but i believe the cause is not right, not only will i not send my son and daughters, i won't send anyone else's. and the time that i spent looking at the iraq situation indicated to me that there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. no clear and present danger to the united states. no imminent threat. and, we were going to take our eye off the prize because lynn badden and al qaeda in the afghan/pakistan border. that's why i voted no. i am neither a hawk nor a dove. i believe in strength when necessary. i believe in diplomacy when it can be achieved. with reference to the aumf i agree with senator paul that the authorization for the use of military force particularly in this case where the administration has stated that there will be a multiple-year campaign probably exceeding the life of this administration. that congress should act to make such an authorization. i think the nation is stronger, the world is more cohesive, when they know that we are acting together. and i think creating limits on how that authorization moves forward is incredibly important, because a 2001 authorization for the use of force that is taking us to multiple parts of the world, when it was never envisioned for that is an overly broad use 6 the authorization of military force. and so how one structured this to give the president the wherewithal to fight the fight against isil which i strongly believe is important, i have a little different view than how senator paul describes it. because, i want to make sure that we succeed against isil before it has the operational capacity to create a september 11th-like attack. i don't believe it has that operational capacity yet. i don't wish to leave it alone to succeed in having that operational capacity. and that's one of the critical elements of our strike against them. >> but you have american generals suggesting that at some point we may need to introduce ground troops. either as not just as trainers, but as targeters, or with local troops on the ground. would you think -- would you want -- would you want the aumf to have a limitation on the use of american ground troops? >> well, i think that what we are doing now is incredibly important. assisting both the iraqis, the kurds, and doing something that the committee unfortunately was far ahead of its time when it voted on a bipartisan basis to arm the vetted syrian rebels at a time in which that vetting and those rebels could have made a very significant difference. that was over a year and a half ago. and so, it was at a critical moment, as well as that the committee gave the authorization for the use of military force on a bipartisan basis, where i brought john mccain and barbara boxer together, you know, that's a pretty big spectrum, to agree on the use of force when assad was killing his people with chemical weapons in violation of international law, and that gave the president the wherewithal at the g-20 summit to get russia to turn assad around, at least on the chemical weapons. now whether you're being killed by chemical weapons or not it doesn't really matter. but for the international norm it did. as it relates to spotters, and maybe even special forces, i think that will be necessary. but at the end of the day, what we do to assist the kurds, who have shown themselves to be resilient, to assist the iraqis, and then to now late but better late than never, help those who are willing to fight in their own country on the ground is incredibly important. but at the end of the day, you have to make a determination. if isil is a national security threat, i believe it is, then ultimately you have to have the whereal to defeat them. and how that evolves is a question to be listened to by the extents. >> would you support the president on this idea of a safe haven in syria? >> that needs to be further vetted out. because, it's easy to say safe haven. which basically means that we are conducting a no-fly zone. which means -- >> that is -- >> are we in it ourselves? is nato in with us? is it us and the turks? because a no-fly zone means you're going to use your aircraft and other elements to ultimately ensure that no turkish -- excuse me, that no syrian air flights can take place in the area you designate. that's very significant. and that requires a lot more than the united states -- we are the superpower of the world. but we are not omnipotent. so we have to make sure, and there are also shared obligations here. and nato needs to be part of those shared obligations and we're going to consider that. >> with the use of force resolution, against isis, pass in the senate, and would a majority of democrats vote for it? >> i think there's -- of course it's how it's structured is going to be incredibly important. but i know that in the senate democratic caucus, where i recently raised this issue, there was a strong appetite to have an authorization for the use of force well structured, that would give the president the wherewithal to fight isil. but not create an open-ended set of circumstances based on the 2001 aumf, which many people think has become overly broad and taken us to places in the world it never meant to do. >> why don't we open it up? does anybody have any questions here for senator menendez about his party or the conduct of foreign policy or for that matter anything else? we've got one way back there. is that dan yergen? >> senator menendez, one of the other responses to the russian invasion of ukraine is your legislation with senator corker on sanctions on russia. in the possibility that either things will change, or there will be a post-putin russia, how do you build flexibility into the bill so that one can respond to a changing situation with russia itself? >> i think -- it's a good question, which is similar to the efforts that we did when i authored all of the when i authored all of the iran sanctions along with my colleague mark kirk, a republican from illinois. and in there we created flexibility for the the president to be able to respond to evolving changes, which have not taken place from my view, in iran's position on its pursuit of nuclear power for nuclear weapons. and i would think we would do the same thing in russia. in russia our cause is to restore the international order and for russia to stop its aggression particularly now in eastern ukraine. i think it can be done and it's not for the sake of punishing russia in a permanent basis. it's the purpose of restoring the international order and sending a global message that you cannot up end the international order without consequence. yes, gentleman in the glasses. behind the pillar. >> thank you. and thank you for your work with my home state, senator kirk. on iran, why do you think given all the support that the committee, was there so much resistance on the part of the administration when they have that much support to pursue that very policy, and further then, where do you see us going with iran? what's the guidance that you would give here for resolving this issue ultimately with iran in the nuclear ambitions that they have? >> well, let me say i followed iran for 20 years. when i found out that u.s. voluntary constitutions to the atomic energy administration were going to what? was going to help operational capacity at the nuclear facility. not at the national interest and security of the united states nor our ally of the state of israel nor of other allies in that region. i led a successful effort to stop the contributions above and beyond our membership dues. so when iran wasn't the the centerpiece of global attention, i was following it. and i have been following it for the course of 20 years. te only reason they're negotiating with us is because of the sanctions and the consequences to the economy. and the only reason the iotola, who is the ultimate decideer here, i read a lot of expectation but the reality is he will decide whether an agreement can be reached or not. for the iotola, the question is regime change. is this an attempt by the united states and the west to ultimately change the the regime? in iran or stopping a path towards nuclear weapons? what do you think he believes? >> i think he will decide the question if he believes that regime change, if he believes regime change comes to giving up the nuclear program then he won't. if he believes regime change comes from within iran because of unsettling economic consequences, then he will. and that is my view, which has been my philosophy, i believe in diplomacy. i believe in the negotiations that the administration has pursued. but i believe in negotiations through strength. you're all business people. when you are conducting a negotiation, you hope to be in the position of strength in conducting that negotiation. and in making a deal, you don't want to portray that you want the deal more than the other side. if you want the deal more than the other side and the other side has a good sense of that, it's only a question of how far they will take you before the deal breaks and you end up in a bad deal. in this context with the iranians, the question is that we need them to understand that 20 years of violating international norms, violating u.n. security council resolution, not just a u.s. perspective, but a global perspective. has a consequence to it of having underground facilities. if you want a peaceful nuclear facility in a country with one of the largest oil fields in the world for supposedly domestic energy, you don't go ahead and develop it underground. you don't need a plutonium reactor, which is basically a pathway towards a nuclear bomb. so the sanctions got them there. the problem is that after a year of negotiation what it seems to me is that the only reason that progress can be claimed is that we t the united states and europe have moved closer and closer to where the iranian position is in pursuit of steel. why do i say that? now we're talking about recalibrating it. we were told that the facilities had to be closed. now we're talking about recalibrating what they do there. we haven't talked about the missile capability that iran has with the missiles. that's breath and scope and length of what it can hit. not only the state of israel, but can hit an ally in europe. and we have real concerns there. the chairman is allowed to receive then we will pursue a path of nuclear armorment as well. under the theory of nuclear self destruction, we cannot afford it. for all of these reasons, it is in the national interest and security of the united states. forget about any other ally, of the united states to make sure that iran doesn't achieve this. i believe that sanctions that go beyond where we are today and say if, and we'll move it up to the new deadline. if if by march, when is when you supposedly have a frame work agreement, then maybe having reimposed that, being lifted or suspend suspended an endless negotiation is not something that is acceptable. because they continue to move their research and development. they're getting billions of dollars in relief, which is fuelling what? the wherewithall to create greater capacity. and we are weakening. we vice president lifted at the end of the day any of the sanctions. but we are weakening. you see a mild growth taking place. you see businesses lined up and chomping at the bit to do business. and so the dynamics have changed. if the west keeps coming towards me in a deal, i keep sitting there pretty and say keeping this going. that's my concern. zblf would you be willing personally to introduce the sanctions in march if you don't see a -- >> i'm looking for an opportunity to do it well before then. including -- depending on how national defense authorization works, whether it's open to an amendment process. >> e senator paul and the president say they would undermine the negotiations. >> you know, i would just simply say every time i have led on the sanctions, i was told the same thing. i was told europe would never follow or join us. all of that was wrong. now is anyone going to do this willingly? no, but we have to lead in this regard. and i would rather be in a negotiation where there's a real consequence to not striking a deal because if we continue down the course, we will weaken ourselves to a point that the iranians will believe there's no credible military threat. they will believe they will never be reimposed and move forward. and this is the fallacy of what's going on these days by those who say sanctions are war. i don't believe that's true. i don't believe that's true. but if we continue down the path of giving them the wherewithal to be able to move forward, not dismantling but freezing in time, at some point in this time when the international sanctions regime is largely diminished to the point that they feel they can move forward, the the only option for this or any future president will be a military option. why should we wait for that only option. i believe the call grated sanctions as a message to the iranians that this cannot continue forever is a good negotiating step. doesn't break. doesn't move you away from the the negotiations. gives them an inducement to try to find common ground and can prevail at the the end of the day, as we can prevail in achieving bringing it to the table. >> i think we have time for one more question if anybody has one. all righty. yes, sir. right here. >> maybe another question concerning russia and ukraine. was it a mistake to have discussions with ukraine concerning -- [inaudible]. >> the question is, was it a mistake to engage ukraine in the possibility of entrance into nato. look, that could be true for estonia and latvia when we did

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