this five minute vote on a bill debated yesterday f s twenty five seventy one dealing with laws federal laws on insecticides fungicides and roadside five minute vote on the house floor earlier today they voted on contempt of congress citations against harriet miers and joshua bolten here's how temp stark's of congressional quarterly reported that house republicans left the chamber in mass thursday to protest the refusal of democratic leaders to call up a senate passed bill overhauling the ground rules for electronic surveillance democrats said they will try again to extend a temporary law before it expires this weekend and president bush said he would delay the start of a planned trip to africa this weekend if it would help congress quickly clear long term legislation he could sign without further action the temporary measure and acted last august is set to expire on saturday feb sixteenth as lawmakers commence their one week president's day recess both sides have accused the other of playing politics with the issue or that vote on the contempt citations to thirty two to thirty two to twenty three excuse me to twenty three to thirty two as most republicans left the floor a p the associated press says it's the first time  twenty five years that a full chamber of commerce has a full chamber of congress has voted on a contempt of congress citation first time in twenty five years that's from the associated press congress now in writing about that electronic surveillance also echoes a little bit of what tim stark's wrote for congressional quarterly saying a deal could still happen there headlined house democrats could still pass fights a bill this week over the past few months house democrats have been they have been steadfast that they will insist on a conference with the senate to work out the inconsistency is between the chambers separate foreign intel and intelligence surveillance act bills according to this article in congress now they quote a house leadership aide is saying it's not likely there will be further action but there are still some discussions of options the article says last night several democrats joined rank with house republicans to defeat a twenty one day extension of current law set to expire friday night vote one ninety one to talk to twenty nine afterwards democrats held an emergency rules committee hearing where a measure was adopted that would allow any fights or related measure to be brought to the floor on the same day officially that resolution according to congress now would waive the two thirds majority requirement or allowing same day consideration by rules and by the house as a whole that permits the democrats to work overnight to craft either revise long term legislation or a revised extension that may earn enough democratic votes to pass the house the president spoke about that earlier talked about feisal legislation ahead of his trip to africa which is set to begin tomorrow but during those brief comments on the south lawn he said he would delay his trip if necessary well we'll find out the senate meanwhile is continuing work on indian health care programs extending programs through the year two thousand and seventeen it appears that several amendments have been on heard senate leaders hoping that they can finish the bill today or tomorrow before they leave for the president day recess and one capitol here hill hearing that we're covering this afternoon is mike mcconnell national intelligence director testifying about intelligence issues and his agency's budget that just got underway a short while ago we're covering that on c span three and you can also follow that on c span radio and about halfway through this series of suspension bills bills debated yesterday requiring a two thirds vote five minutes on the house floor an h comrades to eighty nine honoring and praising the end of a lace e p on the occasion of its ninety ninth anniversary a five minute vote and just update you again the house today voted to hold two of president bush's bush's confidence in contempt for failing to cooperate with an inquiry into whether a purge of federal prosecutors was politically motivated to press writing angry republicans boycotted the vote staged a walkout the vote was two twenty three to thirty two today to hold presidential chief of staff josh bolten and former white house counsel harriet miers in contempt the charged miers with failing to testify and accuse her and bolton of refusing congress's demands for documents related to the two thousand and six two thousand and seven firings republican said democrats should instead be working on extending a law set to expire saturday allowing the government to eavesdrop on phone calls and e mails in the united states in cases of suspected terrorist activity the white house said the justice department would not ask the u s attorney to pursue the house contempt charges and they report the associated press reports it's the first time in twenty five years that a full chamber of congress congress has voted on the contempt citation a congress contempt citation that's from the associated press also today on capitol hill part of the the house coverage today was the memorial service for tom lantos who died earlier this week the rip up the representative from california democratic representative at the age of eighty on monday you can see  that moral service on saturday we're going to show it to you again in its entirety saturday morning right after washington journal at ten a m easter members will take their seats remove their conversations from the floor the gentleman from florida is recognized for one hour an article appeared today madam speaker on the website of a publication called of the politic reprinting a statement by a spokesperson for the majority leader of this house describing actions of mine as and i quote in comprehensible and unjustifiable and quote it was not my actions which were in comprehensible or unjustifiable madam speaker but rather the actions of the majority which deprived all members of this house the opportunity to debate or even consider or vote on the contempt resolutions brought to the floor today by the majority in an absolutely totally unprecedented fashion the majority knows that the rule we considered earlier is totally and absolutely unprecedented its sole purpose was to prevent us from even debating or voting on these contempt resolutions and further the majority denied us the opportunity to take up the foreign intelligence surveillance act amendments passed by the senate which we feel very strongly are our in the supreme national interest of the united states the majority knew that the minority was strongly of the belief that the only options available to us where procedural votes the majority knew that we intended to utilize our procedural options to register our displeasure with this uncalled for process we purposefully refrain from all procedural motions during the opening moments of the session today precisely to show respect for our friend and departed colleagues we were assured by the majority that we would not begin consideration of the rule in other words that the house  man and he was my friend it was an honor for me to be present today at his memorial service in statuary hall i was suddenly summoned out of the memorial service for my friend mr lantos to perform my responsibilities as a member of the rules committee to manage the rule for the minority side for the contempt resolutions the majority had decided to resume saw today was an uncalled for effort by the majority to force the minority to give up our rights to protest a process we feel is blatantly unfair the majority's decision reconvene the house interrupted the tribute to my good friend mr lantos it is the majority that decides when to convene the house it is the majority that chose to convene the house even though many speakers remained to speak in the memorial for mr lantos i was told by my good friend  that he does not recall any memorial being interrupted by a house session and he has been here more years and i have i've been here fifteen and obviously i don't recall any other speaker the statement attacking me today by a spokesperson for the majority leader was totally uncalled for and unacceptable floor manager for a rule that was as he said in his very thoughtful state unprecedented and we had a debate on that rule and this house chose to do something it had never done before pass a rule which two took two contempt resolutions and adopted them that was the decision of the house and i think it was an unfortunate one mr diaz balart had a responsibility to stand up for this institution he and i stood together at that service heard from colleagues of ours and heard from many other distinguished people who remember the life of tom lantos we were stunned when all of a sudden the bells rang and the house was going to reconvene in the middle of this memorial service now members of the majority staff madam speaker had been informed had been informed of exactly what it was that we in the minority were going to do if the house reconvened and we proceed with consideration of this special rule we had informed the members of the majority staff that we were going to call for a vote and so mr diaz balart was simply working to under very very very challenging and again from my perspective unprecedented circumstances where i had never before seen the house of representatives convened during a memorial service being held in statuary hall but under those circumstances mr  responsibility to fulfill his duties not to the republican members but to do what he believed to be right and i agree with him obviously in up holding the rights of this institution and so for any member any member or anyone outside to malign mr diaz balart for simply doing his job under very difficult circumstances we'll continue thank you very much madam speaker and let me conclude by simply saying that mr diaz balart is one of those members and we all know is a fighter for freedom and has been throughout his entire life and in many respects lincoln diaz balart is very similar to tom lantos and i will say that as a fighter for i would say of course we come to the floor today with lots of disappointment on what where failing to do today we think we should stay until we get other matters done but on this issue that relates to the activities of the day i first of all i was at the memorial service as many of you were i was privileged to be there and frankly there are very few members of congress in the history the congress that could have on the very short notice that we would have this sad service today would have the foreign minister of israel the secretary of state the head of the united nations the speaker of the house it was an impressive service and i hate it  that we have in this debate around any lack of respect for that service on the other hand the only work we had to do today was one hour of debate on a rule that would then also replace the debate one hour of debate the service was scheduled to last from ten o'clock until eleven thirty it turned out it lasted till eleven fifty but it was scheduled to last from ten o'clock till eleven thirty when it when at ten forty five the majority decides we're going to start the one hour of work we have to do today and eleven the majority should expect the other side to complain if in fact mr diaz balart had not had his objection fifty minutes of that one hour debate would have been gone before i ever walked out of the memorial service the vote lasted fifty minutes are there abouts apparently members couldn't even get in to vote for fifteen minutes let alone get into participate in the debate of course we should have said less not start the debate on the only work we're doing today while we're passing up the work on the foreign intelligence surveillance act we're voting to talk about how you can kill rats in the technical correction to the federal insecticide fund just and roe dent to side at that's the only debate we're having today we were going to have during the fifteen minutes of it of the one hour during the memorial service and of course lincoln diaz balart or somebody should have stepped up to stop that and thank goodness he did and i am i am really saying ed that a service we should have all agreed on would be the priority of the morning we couldn't manage for that to be the priority the morning we had to start the one hour of work we had to do fifty minutes before that service was scheduled turned out and thirty minutes before it was scheduled to end i i'm regretful that my good friend had to rise to this moment of personal privilege but i certainly support him in seeking this privilege and hope that the members of the house will understand what happened here and appreciate the great respect we all have for tom lan thank you well my friend you  i rise to as i have a couple of times in the past to simply say that i think on our side obviously we believe that we need to move forward on the work us however share what has been said about tom lantos for whom we have the greatest respect and we all share a sadness at his loss i regret that the actions that appreciate the position the gentleman found himself in and that mr blunt and his leadership themselves but i thank you and then the speaker you utilize the opportunity of the rules to rise to a question of personal privilege due to the statements attributed in the press that i mentioned before to a spokesperson which i as i cited as i stated and restated i believe a total were totally uncalled for and unacceptable i thank all of you for having listened me with such a courtesy  it is for someone who arrived as a four year old refugee with his family fleeing oppression an extraordinary moment in the midst of the sadness of the day and the office that i felt it's an explorer extraordinary moment to be able to rise and invoke the rules of the house to seek the attention of the representatives of this extraordinary nation so i thank each and every one of you for your patience and your courtesy and at this point after thanking mr dreier thanking mr blunt and thanking the majority leader for their kind words i simply and remembering a friend who we everyone in this room can agree on and reached our lives my son mentioned the other day this week when we were talking about the sad news said that you remember when i was a little kid and you wanted me to get my posture up when you would what you would tell me i'll never forget he told me your posture that's one of the first things that impressed me about tom lantos even before i learned about his zealous extraordinary commitment to the oppressed everywhere where people are still longing to be free and so let us all then and this recollection of what i  believe was a very unfortunate moment remembering someone who we can all agree was extraordinary and reached our lives and was a great member of congress and a great american thank you all very much and voting resumes on suspension bills debated yesterday in the house fifteen minute vote here on h r forty one sixty nine dealing with an american flag brail flag memorial at arlington national cemetery representative using some time on the floor as a point of personal privilege to talk about some of the votes they the motion to adjourn vote that happened during the ceremony a memorial service for tom lantos who died earlier this week and so they spent a few minutes talking about that that motion to adjourn one of several procedural votes earlier in the day on the house floor ahead of the debate on the contempt citations here's how c q reports a congressional quarterly amid heated debate and g o p procedural delays the house today adopted a rule that would hold a kurd and former white house aide in contempt and authorized legal action against them a self executing executing rule adopted two twenty three to thirty two with one member voting president up to a resolution setting up a constitutional clash between president bush and congressional democrats republicans accuse the democrats of engaging in pa audition politics and tried to delay adoption of the rule with a series of procedural a walkout over an unrelated issue this is from congressional quarterly the first resolution science white house chief of staff joshua bolten and former white house counsel harriet miers for contempt of congress for refusal to comply or intervene in judicial proceedings in federal court to enforce its subpoenas that's the reporting of congressional quarterly follow following the vote today the main legislative agenda agenda today the the contempt of court the contempt of congress citations against joshua bolten and harriet miers meanwhile over in the senate they continue work with a series of votes on the american energy and health care bill extending programs through twenty seventeen and you can follow that on c span too we have been covering a hearing with national intelligence director michael mcconnell that's been interrupted briefly for those senate votes should resume in just a bit on c span three also on c span radio and again back to the memorial service for tom lantos we showed you some of that today earlier in our schedule here on c span you have a chance to see it in its entirety this weekend we're going to show that to you saturday morning right after washington journal ten o'clock eastern on c span legislative work is wrapping up on the house floor today with this series of votes the final four votes here in a series of suspension billed as a fifteen minute vote earlier today though according to the associated associated press it was written by the a p the house voted to hold two of president bush's confidence in contempt for failing to cooperate with an inquiry into whether a purge of federal prosecutors was politically motivated angry republicans boycotted the vote and staged a walkout the vote was two twenty three to thirty two today to hold presidential chief of staff josh bolten and former white house counsel harriet miers in contempt the citations charged miers with failing to testify and use her in bolton of refusing congress's demands for documents related to the two thousand and six two thousand and seven firings according to the associated press it's the first time in twenty five years that a full chamber of congress has voted on a contempt of congress citation that's from the associated press on the house floor the bill is h r forty one sixty nine fifteen minute vote this is a bill that allows for the placement of an american braille flag memorial honoring blind veterans at arlington national cemetery a fifteen minute vote the little news today mitt romney is going to endorse john mccain an announcement today in boston and we're hoping to be able to show that to you later in our program schedule we can tell you with certainty that on saturday the sixteenth this saturday we will show you senator hillary clinton and obama both speaking at the wisconsin democratic party dinner in milwaukee just a couple of days ahead of that state's primary next tuesday the one thousand also remarks that day that night saturday night by senator russ feingold and senator herb kohl of wisconsin saturday night eight o'clock row to the white house coverage live here on c span this fifty minute boat is winding down this one on h r forty one sixty nine allowing the placement of an american braille flag memorial honoring blind veterans at arlington national cemetery couple more votes two to follow this senate meanwhile is working on the indian health bill and they expect two senate leaders expect to wrap that up either today or tomorrow r o ahead of the president's day recess yesterday the senate voted to ban waterboarding and other interrogation tactics used by the cia log on to capitol news dot org to participate in the poll of the day should the cia be allowed to waterboard terror suspects according to the associated press and reporting some news or some comments a conference of a committee hearing this afternoon a senior justice department official says laws and other limits in acted since three terrorism suspects were water boarded has eliminated the technique when one is now legally allowed quote the set of interrogation methods authorized for current years is narrower than before and it does not today include waterboarding that's from steven bradbury the acting head of the justice department's office of legal counsel he said in remarks prepared for his appearance a five minute vote this one eight read seven ninety commands the people of the state of washington for showing their support for the needs of the state state of washington veterans and encouraging residents of other states to pursue creative ways to show their own support for veterans a five minute vote on the house floor earlier today they approved a contempt citations amid heated debate writes congressional quarterly and g o p procedural delays the house today adopted a rule that would hold a current and president bush and congressional democrats republicans accuse the democrats of engaging in partisan politics and tried to delay adoption of the rule with a series of procedural measures that culminated in a walkout over an unrelated issue nine u s attorneys federal law requires the u s attorney for the district of columbia to take the matter before a grand jury if the house acts but attorney general michael mukasey told the committee last week that he would not allow that to happen you case he argues that executive branch officials cannot be prosecuted for respecting bush's executive privilege claim house democrats circumvented new casey with a second resolution which empowers the panel to quote initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings in federal court to enforce its subpoenas that's the action in the house today it passes to twenty three to thirty two according to c q just before the vote republicans walked out of the chamber to protest the lack of action on long term legislation overhaul the foreign intel of the foreign intelligence surveillance act or feisal but that issue may not be dead this week congress now in a headline earlier says that house democrats could still pacify said this week a deal could still  happen according to this report and house rules last night approved a measure for allowing emergency consideration of a possible compromise bill will be before the end of the week over in the senate they continue work on indian health indian health programs through the year two thousand and seventeen with the as of amendment votes there senate leaders hope to have the bill finished by the end of the day today or tomorrow before they leave for the presidents day recess earlier today here on c span we covered the memorial service for tom lantos democrat of california who died on monday we'll give you a chance to see that memorial service again on saturday at ten a m easter just a couple more votes left on the house floor this one on a dress nine sixty three supporting the goals and ideals of national salute to hospitalized veterans week and for other purposes five minute vote on the house floor earlier they approve to contempt of congress resolutions voting to hold president bush's confidence josh bolten and harriet miers former white house counsel in contempt of congress the citations charged miers with failing to testify and accuse her and bo refusing congress's demands for documents related to the two thousand and six two thousand and seven firings according to the associated press it's the first time in twenty five years that a full chamber of congress has voted on a contempt of congress citation in a series of votes five minute vote on eight raz nine seventy two supporting the goals and ideals of american heart month it is a five minute vote we are joined on the phone by congress daley's christian borge earlier today mr burridge there was a memorial service in the capitol for representative tom lantos and that was interrupted a bit with the house coming back in and a vote called caused a little confusion and different versions on each side what happened well source was going on for four congressman lantos and they ended up coming into session earlier than the republicans anticipated in in their anger and to save all the potential efforts to push through the contempt charges against surprise them during the middle of this memorial service to it immediately angered house democrats staffers saying that they are being disrespectful about lantos and robbins are countering that they were disrespectful by calling the house of the session during the middle of this staff and then there was a nice little debate on the floor about the representation of members and mr hoyer gave a nice except instead of and the recognition of the their problems with that with the same  were made about him and it's just one of the things that that is almost into it own self and in terms of representing what can happen when people decide to come to the floor and take advantage of the rules of the house but the house democrats were successful they were able to move on to debate and vote on the contempt citations but there's been a number of reports today that still there may be a possibility of getting some work done in the house on electronic surveillance what have you heard well speak  the latest set of attempts to reform the size a law permanently and the senate version of the bill there's a lot of them about the you know as you said there may be some kind of compromise and they may before i really don't see that happening clearly  the this is an issue that the democrats are not going to be giving up on anytime soon and most importantly the idea that the senate bill would grant liability protection for talk mutations firms that participated in the bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program which  since been found to be illegal and because of that is the reason why we are trying to reform the laws in the way they are and as long as that issue is still fair stage unresolved there won't be any movement on the so president bush earlier today saying that he'd stick around town and not go on his trip to africa if he thought something to be worked out should he leave i guess it depends upon his feeling about tigers because i don't really see them having about this bill christine borge of congress daily thank you for joining us talking about the agenda today in the u s house that you brought me and here on the house floor they're wrapping up the last in a series of five minute votes a spent suspension bill debated earlier this one supporting american heart month you're watching live coverage of the u s house on c span mr speaker i ask unanimous consent that today following the legislative business and in a special lot of he had a voice entered into the following members may be permitted to address the house for five minutes to revise and extend the chair will entertain one minute request of the speakers announce policy of january eighteenth two thousand and seven and under a previous order of the house the following members are recognized for five minutes each congressman cummings from maryland  president's day recess we leave at a time where we have our troops commit did in iraq we have our troops committed in afghanistan where in the last forty eight hours there have been reports that radical islamists have perhaps been plotting an attack to assassinate the president of the philippines where al qaeda in iraq has said that they are going to launch new attacks or additional attacks against israel against jerusalem where there have been arrests in denmark of individuals perhaps planning to assassinate murder the cartoonist's director a declaration of war by hezbollah and we're going back home without extending the protect america act it's unilateral disarmament the head of our intelligence community has said that the protect america act that the authorities provided under fire have been the tip of the spear and keeping america safe but it is not only about keeping america safe because the information the intelligence that we have gathered under the protect america act under pfizer over the last six years have kept america safe but as i have also it's also enabled us to identify threats and potential attacks against our allies and what this dow does this unilateral disarmament means that an employer certain tool in keeping america safe and our allies say expires on saturday night you take a look at the you know what's happened here it's the day after september eleventh the president meeting with his national security team they're looking for ways to identify exactly what the other threats are against the united states what the capabilities of al qaeda are they come back with some suggestions and ideas one of which is to use our telecommunications folks perhaps and others to get information and insights into al qaeda and a radical jihadists members of congress are brought in the current speaker of the house was briefed four times i believe within the first eight months in terms of what we were going to do what we expected to collect and how that would keep us safe and today these folks are thrown under the bus this unilateral disarmament makes america last say the president  i'm willing to stay until congress completes its work i'm willing to postpone or delay a trip to africa that's been in the planning stages for a long time so that congress can complete its work i'm willing to work with congress to make that happen the senate did their job senator rockefeller was being briefed at the same time six years ago that the current speaker of the house was briefed he recognizes the responsibility that they have and that the senate has to making sure that america keeps these tools in the hands of our intelligence community they did the right thing overwhelmingly the other body passed a bill that keeps america say bipartisan protecting those who helped our government to stay to put in place the mechanisms that keep us safe over the last six years and now the house walks away from this for the next twelve days and each day that we are gone our ability to monitor radical jihadist in the threats to the united states begins to erode just a little bit each and every day but every time we identify potentially a new threat to the united states we need to go back through a cumbersome process one that ties the hands of our intelligence community as al qaeda and radical jihadists have evolved and they're becoming more coordinated and more effective in and planning attacks against the united states we're moving back and we're degrading and we are unilaterally disarming it isn't disappointment and a disgrace that this house is leaving today without finishing this business speaker the two remaining last names on the speaker's list is mr davis of kentucky and mr murphy of pennsylvania gemma's recognized five minutes speaker we are facing massive problems with regard to the price of energy energy costs money and expensive energy cost jobs and we are seeing that now happen in our economy we are standing at a critical crossroads and if we fail to deal with our energy needs in a responsible way we will face not only the concerns about the environment but we will face and we are facing economic recession threats and major job losses you know earlier today the department of commerce released december's trade deficit numbers which once again strongly underscore the need for american energy independence the good news is that the trade deficit shrank but the bad news is that energy imports continue to make up over half of our deficit of our trade deficit over half of the five percent and november it was the reason why we had major increases we continue to see risk that oil was sold for only fifty dollars a barrel a year ago and gas into two fifty is going to continue to climb as long as we continue down this road of importing foreign oil the united states will be allowing opec nations to call the shots for our economy and becoming more dependent upon hostile countries for oil when opec manipulates production rules or old prices soar and our president is left to go and ask saudi leaders to produce more oil more saudi oil not more american oil we have venezuelan leader chavez threatening to cut off oil to the united states to exxon if they were to do that the price of oil would increase throughout the world chavez himself predicted the cost per barrel would double to two hundred dollars and increasing our prices such a move would show all these oil producing countries that they control or actions by shutting down our access to oil we've already seen natural gas prices manipulated by russia we've seen these energy prices increase but when we buy all from countries with a history of supporting terrorism the worst part about this is we are funding both sides of the war on terror and meanwhile what is congress done in the last year or two well it's put an embargo on our own oil it's blocked exploration for american oil congress has voted to prevent oil production oil drilling on the atlantic coast the gulf coast the pacific coast colorado and alaska these bans on dr in oil are particularly proposed to us in light of the fact that china and cuba are drilling within sixty miles of our florida coast while we are not allowed to drill off our coasts you know the us contains seventy percent of the world's  supply our country with energy for hundreds of years if we are allowed to use it but rather than turning to this resource that can lead us to energy independence and energy security we once again turn our backs to it last year we cut off access to two trillion barrels of shale oil in the western states in the event of a spending bill such policies of forced us to continue this increase of importing oil but what happens is the impact upon the american family in terms of cost see increased cost for food as we also try using corn for ethanol but when twenty percent of corn is being used for ethanol we see the poll costs of food go up we see the cost of transporting food go up we see the cost of w climbing because not only is that a concern with regard to shortages of we coming from other nations but it is also a huge concern the cost of transporting that wheat so what was sixteen dollars four hundred weight last year for wheat for bakers to use their flour now it's forty dollars anticipation to climb much more how will americans react when they know that while congress continues to embargoed american oil resources a loaf of bread is going to climb from a dollar fifty to three dollars a low americans don't understand why we cannot drill for oil in oil yes we need to do so many things to clean up the air yes we need to make sure we are investing in clean coal technology so that the three hundred years worth of coal we have in this nation can be used to clean the produce electricity we have to make sure we're using clean nuclear energy we have to make sure that natural gas is used for what it supposed to be as a chemical product to make fertilizer rather than criticizing energy at abare high cost and thereby allow us to use it for making fertilizing other products that can help also reduce the cost of our food products but instead we continue to say no to american oil and it just doesn't make sense here's what america's going to face by tw fifty our energy demands going to double that means we have four hundred coal fired power plants need to be rebuilt and an additional four hundred built with one hundred nuclear power plants that need to be rebuilt because they're old and we need to build an additional one hundred that means starting  we have to open up a new clean coal power plant every two and a half weeks and a nuclear plant every two and a half months and we haven't even started building them yet it cannot be done instead what we're probably going to face is rolling brownouts because the efforts we're doing are not going to suffice i hope this house will move forward take the embargos off coal and begin to really move towards clean coal technology and stop the embargo on oil or you'll back the claim without objection the gentleman from texas may reclaim his time  michigan for fourteen he m on the fourteenth day of the second month of this year this house is basically empty except for a few of us everyone has gone home we found time today to do important business for the people of the country i have some of the bills that we passed today one of those was that we had the time to vote after debate on regulating and sex roaches fungus and rats in the united states oh such an important piece of legislation that the house of representatives debated and voted on the why we had the time to vote on these important issues of regulating the rats and roaches and fung guy in the united states we didn't take the time to protect the american people from those people throughout the world who want to kill us who want to do harm to us and our families and not to america only but to all freedom countries throughout the world because we didn't have time to to work on the protect america act i'd bill that does exactly what it says mr speaker it protects america it protects america from care and one of those ways is being able to ease drop into conversations when one terrorist overseas talks to another terrorist overseas amending the feis of foreign intelligence surveillance act but oh we didn't have time to do that it troubles me mr speaker because as the house of representatives without firing a shot raise the white flag of surrender to those people who wish to do us harm the head of the national intelligence service has told us that fifty percent of the intelligence that they obtain is true fi and yet we have cut off that resource by failing to vote on that they went to bait on that but yet we had time to talk about roaches rats and fungus mr speaker this ought not to be under fives that we have been able to prevent crimes from being a kurt against the united states one of those was the bombing of the brooklyn bridge another was the the bombing of fort dix in new jersey those were prevented because of vice because we had the intelligence because we had the eavesdropping the legal age dropping capability mr speaker the house of representatives has not done a disservice to the people of the united states by failing to debate this issue and at least have an argument a lively debate and then vote on it to protect the united states the people of the united states deserve better from us our job is to protect america through legislation and mr speaker i think we have not done that today because we are off doing other things so i hope that i am proven wrong by history that this did not hurt the united states down the road for failing to act on this important piece of legislation and it's important the house come back as soon as possible and deal with the issue of protecting america first and making sure that we know what they're saying throughout the world when they want to do us harm because the people we fight the war we fight against are people who will do anything to get their way and their radical beliefs including killing children and women and the n s a and car bombs and anyone else that gets in their way and it probably is joy throughout the terrorist cells in the world consensus of about jackson thank you for speaker actually it's a privilege to follow my friend former judge also from texas ted poe and they nailed it on the head and  following up on that is another travesty going on this week and that's why i just filed a bill in the last fifteen minutes called america the military freedom act we are endowed by our creator with liberty but like any inheritance we only get to keep it if we're well into fight for it that is precisely why so many of our uniformed military members have laid down their lives and the plain fact is that there is no more important us for the federal government than to provide for the common defense in order to do that there's gotta be a military that we have all the rights and freedom of speech even those rights have a limit such as when you can't yell fire in a crowded theater there is however no right to trespass there is no right to obstruct lawful in grass and a grass into a military recruiters office the city of berkeley california chose not to protect the marines lawful right to in grass and the grass they instead chose to aide and a bad law breakers by encouraging them and passing ordinance to make it easier to like the marines rights the restricting of funding that is proposed and put forward in the bill have just filed has been done bravia slee in matters such as the speed limits of states are to encourage states to limit drinking and driving so it's nothing new it has been deemed appropriate to encourage political entities in areas in which the federal government has a vested interest and it has no more vested interests than what we have in providing for the common defense but barkley and any other city has the right to rule over its own city as they wish and they're welcome to do that but the federal government should not reward city that chooses to obstruct and prevent the obtaining of military members who provide the very freedoms and the umbrella of freedom under which that city acts they have a right to use freedom of speech but they have no right to take united states taxpayers dollars to eight in a bad hurting our military readiness we took an oath in this body in this room to defend this nation against all enemies foreign and domestic and those who prevent the united states from attaining military members are not the nation's friends though such a city may desire punishment all we're trying to do with this bill is just not reward them for hurting our national defense other city later such as those in san francisco to ledo while like the mayor there have snubbed or restricted our military they need to be aware that when they began to prevent the military from having enough troops to protect us and being militarily ready they should not expect federal subsidies to assist them it is true that the actions that are dressed in the military freedom act are mainly actions or missions by community leaders and not all of their citizens we understand that the good citizens in each of those towns but the choice of the citizens is either to replace the hurtful leaders or bear the consequences or move the old adage is democracy ensures a people are gov better than they deserve therefore those are those cities either deserve to have better leaders who don't hurt our national defense or that these are not to have funds to reward their harmful conduct cities like barkley should take stock of how many of their very own first responders in the business in their cities of saving lives were trained in the military i would remind you also and i remember vividly  about to go on active duty about the time vietnam was in did our heroes came back to vietnam and were spent on some of the hippies that did the spending cut their hair got into positions in cities and have found new figur really effective ways of spitting on our military but everyone should understand mr speaker this is not taking away money for expressing free speech is simply not rewarding the rich obstruction of providing for the common defense says it will cost additional money to overcome the obstruction to our military readiness the military freedom act takes money from the appropriate place to do that this is the ultimate pay go bill for military readiness and national security any of it i hope and i encourage the leaders the majority later as the democratic majority leaders of this body to bring this bill to a attention now because it's a sad day and they need to take note would suggest that what has happened today on this floor has been an abrogation of duty abrogation of our duty as representatives of the people of the finest nation on the face of the but given what we've done today we may not be there long as speaker there are individuals who have as their stated goal the destruction of the west can call them what you will radical jihadist terrorists their threats are real and they are continuing and this house under this live democrat leadership is ignoring  you don't have to take my word for the fact that these threats are real benazir bhutto was assassinated on december twenty seventh allegedly on orders from al and one might say well that's six weeks ago well just in the past forty eight hours we have seen threats from other radical jihadists in denmark three  us were arrested in a plot to murder a cartoonist for drawing an editorial cartoon years ago that they found objectionable i know that some on the majority side view this as comic relief i guess but the three g hottest who are arrested the plot in a plot to murder a cartoonist in denmark within the past forty eight hours didn't view it as comedy and this democrat majority  leadership says oh that's ok don't worry about it speak out the american people are paying attention in the last forty eight hours in the philippines jihad us with two to terrorist groups associated with al qaida are said to be plotting to assassinate the filipino president and bomb western embassies and this democrat majority leadership says oh that's ok don't worry mr speaker the last forty eight hours in iraq the reputed leader of al qaida in iraq posted on a jihadi web site a call for war with israel and for jihad us to use iraq as a launching pad to seize jerusalem and this democrat majority leadership says oh that's ok don't worry about it and just this morning has been a cheap asanas for allah raise the prospect of war with israel declaring zionists if you want this kind of open war let the whole world listen let this war be open and the democrat majority in leadership in this house said that's ok don't worry about it that this house of representatives will leave town today and go home when saturday of this week the opportunity and the ability of our intelligence community to protect us and other freedom loving people around the world will expire i'm astounded most of what we do on this floor so my constituents think that make a whole lot of difference in their lives mr speaker this makes a whole lot of difference in the lives of my constituents in the lives of your constituents in the lives of every single american and not to have acted today on this bill to allow our intelligence community to keep us safe and protect us i would suggest mr and pass this bill the protect america for a purpose gentleman from arizona wri speaker i stand once again before this body with another sunset memorial it is february fourteenth two thousand and eight valentine's day in the land of the free in the home of the brave and before the sun set today in america almost four thousand more defenseless unborn children were killed by abortion on demand that's just today mr speaker that is more than the number of innocent lives that america lost on september eleventh only it happens every day it is now been exactly twelve thousand eight hundred and six days since the tragic judicial  handed down since then the very foundation of this nation has been staying by the blood of almost fifty million of america's own children some of the mr speaker cried and screamed as they died but because it was vocal chords instead of air we couldn't hear them and all of them had at least four things in common they reached just a little babies who had done nothing wrong to anyone and each one of them died a nameless and lonely death and each of their mothers whether she realizes it or not will never quite be the same and all the gifts that these children might have brought to humanity are now last forever yet even in the full glare of such tragedy this generation clings to blindness and invincible ignorance while history repeats itself and our own silent genocide mercilessly annihilates the most helpless of all victims to date those unborn mr speaker perhaps it's more important for those of us in this chamber to remind ourselves again of why we are really all here thomas jefferson said the care of human life and happiness and not  destruction is the chief and only object of good government mr speaker protecting the lives of our innocent citizens and their constitutional rights is why we are all here it is our sworn oath the phrase in the fourteenth amendment capsulizes our entire constitution it says no person shall be deprived of life liberty or property without due process of law the bedrock foundation of this republic is the declaration not the casual notion but the declaration of the self evident truth that all human beings are created equal and endowed by their creator with the on a dual rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and every conflict our nation has ever faced can be traced to our commitment to this core self evident truth it has made us the beacon of hope for the whole world it is who we are and yet mr speaker another day has passed and we in this body have failed again to honor that commitment we failed our sworn oath and our god given responsibility as we broke faith with nearly four thousand more innocent american babies who died without the protection that we should have given them but perhaps tonight mr speaker maybe just one someone new who has heard this son memorial will finally realize that abortion really does kill a baby that it hurts mothers in ways that we can never express and that twelve thousand eight hundred and six days spent killing nearly fifty million children in america is enough and that this nation is great enough to find a better way than abortion on demand so mr speaker may we each remind ourselves that our own days in this sunshine of life are numbered and that all too soon each of us will walk from these chambers for the very last time and if it should be that this congress is allowed to convene on yet another day to come may that be the day when we hear when we finally hear the cries of the unborn may that be the day when we find the humanity the courage and the will to break embrace together our human and our constitutional duty to protect the least of these our tiny american brothers and sisters from this murderous scourge upon our nation called abortion on demand mr speaker it is february fourteenth two thousand and eight twelve thousand eight hundred six days since roe versus wade first stained the foundation of this nation with the blood of its own children this on valentine's day in the land of the free and the home of the brave thank you mr speaker one of the speakers announce policy of january eighteenth two thousand and seven the gentleman from wisconsin mr kagan is recognized for sixty minutes as it does me of the majority leader i think it's only fitting that on this valentine's day we begin to have a discussion about health care in america it's a heart warming day it's a day of friendship a day of conversation between one's loved ones and when i was sent here by the people of northeast wisconsin i was sent here to listen to their concerns my previous existence i was a physician caring for many thousands of people across northeast wisconsin and i've continued to listen them while i'm here in the halls of congress and i want to share in the first few minutes of this hour some of their conversations with me tom and sue wright from new london when i asked them what was important to them fifty million people without health insurance is a disgrace tom and sue are right but they're not alone bob from green bay writes of taxpayers can't get the same health insurance as congress at least get drug cost down so we can afford  pills were bought from casco russ writes i'm sixty years old and i've got five hundred dollars deductible on my health care five hundred dollars deductible on everybody actually it's five thousand another zero five thousand dollars deductible on my health insurance per family member all of our health expenses out of pocket we need help desperately that's russ in casco in greenville  story this is from al and linda as we near retirement we know we can't afford health insurance premiums or drugs on our own please help we're getting towards retirement we don't have the money from pierrots kathleen it's time for all americans have the same health care benefits as their representatives in washington and finally from trivets al writes without a job that pays a fair wage i won't have money to pay for health care gas war social security or anything else my friends my colleagues it's time for us to have an open and honest discussion about what's important in america and if it's not your health i don't know what it is because if you don't have your health you don't have anything now you have the my colleague from pennsylvania mr opar and i want to commend dr kagan for his leadership on this issue and as all of our colleagues know dr kagan right from the very start has made health care his top priority here in congress using his expertise i have a health care background as well health care policy is my professional background and the gentleman i have spoken numerous times about the importance of health care and i wanted to come down today to talk about the need for health care reform as we are currently discussing but also just to commend the gentleman for his continued leadership on this at a time when clearly the political system is in uncharted waters with the presidential election that is going on around us divided government we have a congress with the house and the senate that are having issues with other things going on but we continue to see the health care system get worse and worse and i think the gentleman and i agree on many things but most importantly on the need to do something about the health care issue right now it would be very easy to say let's kick the can down the road another year we'll come back here in march of two thousand and nine and everything will be different and we'll take up health care then that's great you know what when next year comes along we are going to take up health care and there's a variety of differences of opinion on what the approach should be for health care reform how expansive do you want it to be but there are things that we can do now this year in this political environment that are realistic and that's what the gentleman and i have been discussing we want to do things this year that would be considered if not low hanging fruit at least issues that we can all agree on or most can agree on that we can pass and set the table for a further discussion next year on health care reform we have a country where there's over two trillion dollars that gets spent every single year seventeen percent of our g d p goes to health care and i don't think in my district there's an issue that i hear about more often than health care reform when i go around and visit my constituents and the reason is this is an issue that affects everybody it's not just your wallet obviously a five thousand dollars premium as you as dr kagan was describing something that we can all relate to the exponential increases in health care costs mall businesses every day in this country by the thousands have to make decisions on what to do about their health care costs for their employees do they shift the cost to an unmanageable level do they stop offering health care but they know they can't afford it and it affects everything that we do fifteen hundred dollars of the price of your car if you buy an american made car is due to the health insurance costs of the automaker your state taxes are higher because of exploding medicaid costs its health care is the last remaining item on the table in every labor dispute in the country that's why those issues come up and we have a system that in many ways is better than any other system in the world it's why people from all over the world come here for their transplants and for high end high tech care we have medical information medical innovation and technology advances that far surpass anything happening anywhere in the world that's if you can get in if you can afford our system the problem is when we are compared to other countries as a nation in life  infant mortality or not just in the middle of the pack we're at the boy bottom of the pack when compared to other nations we have tremendous issues we're talking about forty seven to fifty million americans  access to health care they don't have insurance there's tens of millions more that live in fear of losing their coverage their one accident or illness away from losing everything so we have major issues to discuss most important and i know the gentleman is going to deal with this issue at some length tonight is the fact that if you're an individual or you're a small business owner and one of your employees gets sick or injured you get a call from the insurance company and they say guess what we have to drop you because you've had this incident and i think everyone can agree that your individual health status shouldn't be a factor in your health insurance rates and something that the gentleman has taken a leadership role on which i'm going to leave him with because i'm on a limited schedule myself and i appreciate you giving me the time is talking about ways that we can incentivize the forty seven million americans and others who have insurance to join large risk pools community rated risk pools whether it be one hundred eighty million people in the country that are privately insured that would be everybody or metropolitan statistical areas regional groups whatever we can agree on and i realize that there's you know differences of opinion on how big the group should be but we can all agree that your individual health status should not be a factor in setting your individual health rates it should be a larger pools health status which would lower the costs for almost everybody so at this point i am going to thank you gentlemen for allowing me to say a few words and commend dr kagan for his work i yield back and i appreciate you being here tonight mr all my your contributions to congress have already been exemplary and i look forward to working with you in the future on health care issues and it's not just you and i it's not just the members of the class of two thousand and six a group i call america's hope for a real change and a positive change in the direction of our country it's not just the people that call us up not just the people that sent us postcards not just my patients back home but it's most trusted person in washington d c that understands the importance of health care cost today and who is that person that's our come troll or general david walker who on january twenty eighth before the senate budget committee had these words to say and i quote under any plausible scenario the federal budget is on an imprudent and unsustainable path rapidly rising health care costs are not simply a federal budget problem they are our nation's number one fiscal challenge the growth in health related spending is the primary driver of the fiscal challenges facing the state and local governments unsustainable growth in health care spending is a system wide challenge that also threatens to erode the ability of employers to provide coverage for their workers and undercuts our ability to compete in a global marketplace and he went on to say that the key points in his present taishan are quote although recent declines in our annual budget deficit are good news our longer term fiscal outlook is worse and absent meaningful action we will face spiraling levels of debt our long term fiscal challenge is primarily a health care challenge and i close quotes well i think the controller general has it right it's our health care challenge and people every day in wisconsin across the country are challenge when they receive in the mail a solicitation from insurance company one such as this and with happy smiling faces on the front they invite you to call an eight hundred number to see if you qualify but here's the list and it reads important information about preexisting conditions although we make every effort to extend coverage to all applicants not everyone will qualify if you've had treatment for any of the following conditions you may not qualify for coverage and it lists a long list of conditions that many millions of people have and at the very end there's a real teaser and it says quote this list is not all inclusive other conditions may apply my friends and my fellow americans i believe it's time on this valentine's day february fourteenth of two thousand and eight to bring an end to the discriminatory actions that insurance companies now enjoy we have to bring an end to discrimination against any citizen in this country based on their preexisting medical conditions and before i highlight the bill that i'm putting in for submission today it's called the no discrimination health insurance act i'd like to review with you what we have today in our health care system and it's here to my right our health care system is simply unsustainable there are three tiers to health care tear one in red and orange we have medicaid which is sixty one million americans and medicare forty three million these people in general don't pay for the bill they don't feel the economic cost because government is providing for their needs in most cases so in tear one you have a group of people that aren't paying the bill in tear two you will pay a portion of your bill and this has to do with the one hundred forty nine americans million americans that have health insurance but increasingly today the health insurance premium is skyrocketing and the cost for care average is fourteen thousand dollars each year for a household of four this price and this cost is beyond what the normal hardworking family in wisconsin and elsewhere in the country can afford to pay in to or three this is the forty seven million american citizens who have no health care coverage at all and i'm one of them as the only member of congress who has not signed on for health care benefits for i didn't come here for a benefit i came here to guarantee guarantee access to affordable care for everyone forty seven million americans who choose not to purchase insurance either because they're they can't have they don't have the money in their pocket or they can't afford it so our system as it exists today is unsustainable unbalanced and is tipping over rapidly that is why i submitted for passage a bill called the no discrimination in health insurance act this bill seeks to do three things first it guarantees that if you're a citizen you're in because no insurance company and group or individual health should be allowed to sell you a policy that excludes you from the community we have to begin again to insure communities rather than individuals because what's happening amongst the insurance world today is you will be cherry picked away from your mate a husband will qualify but not his wife a mother may be separated from her family and what's worse your neighbor may have a completely different health care coverage only because we're being cherry picked and divided i believe we have to get back to community ratings it's not just my opinion many millions of americans agree with me the f b i you agrees with this idea families usa as well and our constitution in fact guarantees any citizen and every citizen has protections against discrimination this is the result of very long and hard won gains by ordinary people who for decades showed extraordinary courage fighting for positive change and the rule of law to protect each and every citizen now i believe is the time to apply this fundamental principle of anti discrimination to our health care system because my patients quite frankly cannot hold their breath any longer and that's why i've introduced this bill the no discrimination in health insurance act this essential piece of legislation will guarantee access to affordable care for every citizen in america by bringing an end to the discriminatory practices employed by insurance companies today who deny lifesaving coverage to millions of americans only because of a preexisting medical condition look the grim reality is that our constitution protects us from discrimination unless and until we become sick i believe our legislation here that i'm putting forward will put discrimination where it belongs in the past and in all forms of discrimination is essential i believe but it's also time we pull back the veil of secrecy because today the real price of health insurance the real price of a pill the real price of a hospital service is hidden and that's why the second thing that this bill will do is to show us the price openly disclose the price and then allow every citizen to purchase that product that health insurance policy at that same lowest price within the region and in all forms of discrimination is paramount and tantamount to why we're here as a congress if you go to your favorite restaurant you'll find a solution or a health care crisis right in front of you will hand you a menu and when you open the menu and see that your ice cream for dessert might cost five dollars for you what's the price that the person sitting next to you or across the table will pay five dollars shows the price and everyone gets to pay the same price if you go today to a pharmacy anywhere in the country and you're standing in line with five people to buy the same prescription drug you may all pay five different prices for the same product because the price it is not openly disclosed and there isn't a free and open medical marketplace as a physician for the past thirty years and now as a congressman for the past thirteen months i understand how difficult it is for families to pay not just their health care bills but their insurance premiums people today all across the country are choosing between taking their next pill and skipping a meal or vice a versa but you don't have to be a doctor to know our system is broken because ordinary people cannot make cannot afford to pay for their health insurance these skyrocketing costs are excessive they're simply out of reach for small businesses they're out of reach for families across america we need to do more we need to do more now we need to pass legislation that contains the essential elements of openly disclosing the price guaranteeing that you're a citizen you're in and you will not be discriminated against and that everyone in your region every citizen or legal resident can pay the lowest price possible the reality is our nation's insurance industry has been successful it has been successful beyond all measure and spent successful by dividing and conquering dividing you from your neighbor dividing up families and individually insuring people based upon their preexisting condition we have to put the letters unity back into community and restore community based ratings we can begin to heal our nation by doing this by becoming a community once again my no discrimination act requires companies to openly disclose their price to charge every citizen the same fee for the same service within the region and allows all citizens to find  benefit by paying the lowest available price it will end discrimination in health insurance it's the right thing to do and it will reduce the cost for everyone across the country for health care simply put if you're a citizen you're in without any discrimination against you due to a medical condition i ask all of you to join me in this effort because it will be a big battle there are some very strong forces in the insurance industry that don't want to compete for our business this legislation is essential not just for you and your family it is essential for small business to survive the greatest expense everywhere in wisconsin as i went around the district to listen to different employers whether you're in agriculture in your family farmer or a small businessman trying to run a photography shop the greatest expense in their overhead is their health care cost we can we must do better and we can do better by forming an openly disclosed marketplace where people begin to compete once again for each other's business this is important it is essential not because i say so that because the people that i represent say so and as i mentioned earlier the comptroller general agrees everyone in this house every member of congress in the senate in the house has a healthcare story to tell i can share that with you not confidentially because they come up to me on the floor and ask me about their health they asked me about the pills they're taking and i'm here and i'm available i can't believe because well i've taken an oath that only get paid by the people i represent the fact is everybody has a health care story to tell and we have to make certain that we don't discriminate against people based on their political affiliation be they independent democrat or republican but by the condition that they're a citizen and they ought to be involved in the risk pool so mr chairman i'll close my remarks on health care by some suggesting very strongly that every member of congress consider this either you're for discrimination and on the side of the insurance industry or you're against it and you're on the side of the consumer and the patients in the millions and millions of americans who need health insurance at prices they can afford to pay it was said first in the white house over years ago either with us or you're against us but this bill allows everyone in the house to decide whose side are you on whose side are you on are you sitting in the boardroom with the c e o s of an insurance company are you sitting at home at the kitchen table with mothers and fathers who are struggling to pay their bills every month in my state of wisconsin and it's true across the united states the most common reason that people go bankrupt today is they go bankrupt because they cannot afford their health care bills they cannot afford this and sean o county several months ago when i stopped in to the county courthouse i was told that nineteen out of twenty families who had come through an education policy after going bankrupt did so only because they couldn't afford their health care bills we can and we must do better in america and it starts by reforming our health care system when we drive down the cost of health care we're going to cut taxes for everyone now this sounds like it's voodoo economics but if i lower the cost of doing business for every city every county every town every state in the country by lowering health care costs i can reduce your taxes this is not just a health care issue it's a business issue it's a tax issue and mr chairman i'd like to share with you some words i was privileged to listen to in a small town in the northern part of wisconsin a district i have the honor and privilege of representing the city called niagara wisconsin and as niagara goes so goes our nation naggers a small town of eight hundred eighty people and the major employer there is a paper mill which was recently purchased and then closed three hundred twenty jobs in this small town are about to disappear in and i went to niagara to interview some people and listen to their concerns to see what government can do i helped them i spoke with george george is nearly eighty years old and i'd like to share with you his words for our country will be available if not today than tomorrow at my congressional web site kagan dot house dot gov as a video clip i asked george are you still working and george responded nope i'm retired one thousand years but forty one plus years in there but what i want to say is that congress should have been aware of this happening because it's been in all the union papers and is referring to the closing of the mill the one major employer in town quote people been talking about it they put one or two paper machines out of there they pulled the machines out and what do they do they ship the machine to india that machine was one hundred years old and now it's operating in india so why was congress so lax all these jobs have been deteriorating right along and i asked him how long have you lived here he responded all my life you were born right here y i'll be eighty years in april and i have five brothers who worked in the paper mill also forty one forty two forty five they all work there that long and my children during the summer months worked in that mill i asked them what did you do in the mill i worked on the paper machines which one i worked on the mall all machines started off in the old mill number one went to number two and then went to number three and then to number four and do they have an  retirements i asked him at the mill i i have i have very good benefits i'm thankful for that that's what i'm worried about now though i was told that at the end of two thousand and eight things were going to change i'm going to have to get something else i don't know that nobody told me that but that's just the rumor so we have to start looking into something else is referring healthcare benefits in the prescription pills quote what makes me mad is we found out we can get medication in minnesota and canada and what happens they tell me i can't do it no more because we'd get sued the company would get sued they would save the mill about three hundred dollars every three months and we'd save ourselves two hundred fifty dollars every three months and they said no you can't do it snow we gotta buy him at wal mart and i asked him so you think there's a better way of doing things you better believe it i asked him then at the end of my conversation if there's anything else he'd like congress to hear if he were talking then with congress and with president bush what would he have to say what would you ask him to do and george responded quote get on the ball take care of the united states not foreign countries they always said foreign countries are going to take us from within they don't have to fight a war with us well that's what's happening right now they're buying up all the united states close quotes george had it right we have to be able to take care of our own people i represent people in wisconsin not foreign nations and taking care of people in wisconsin means first of all guaranteeing them access to health care that they can afford high quality care that's delivered right close to home and how can we do that how can we afford to continue to pay for those costs when our jobs are being shipped overseas so mr speaker as i close the ceiling i like  begin to begin to think differently in america health care is intimately tied up with our employment opportunities with our jobs we need higher wage jobs that will sustain american provide living wages a living wage that can afford health care health care is intimately involved with our jobs and also with our environment and the education of our children can't unwrap all of these problems they're all stuck together but the single greatest probably face today is  our health care crisis and by submitted this bill for passage today the no discrimination health insurance act i hope to lay the first brick in the new wall the foundation of the house of health care we have to begin to think differently in america and hopefully that starts today the the need for earmark reform should be an issue that we can all agree upon a bipartisan agreement as reported last week congress's approval rating fell to just twenty two percent will the house sit idly by and patting each other on the back as this issue continues to grow to be one that your mirka people care deeply about quite frankly the effort in the house to bring a level of transparency in the earmark process as good as it may have period has yet to satisfy of the american people as a first congressman jack kingston a member the  job of the congressional help people those members who oppose your marks have they have made some legitimate claims and they have to be addressed now there have been positive earmarks to fight gangs to fight the violent m s thirteen gangs the f b i we created a a office of intelligence gang intelligence in the f b i to track they gang movement across the country and there's a growing problem with regard to two gangs to take a look at that in sixty one of the seventy seven recommendations of the iraq study group have been now adopted so that basically was an earmark i also was told that the work that dr francis collins done and i may be wrong on this but dr collins does receive the gold medal he is the one who has mapped the human genome system and there are people alive today because of the work th map those genes that were by we know that some individuals a certain gene may get a certain condition and now they can deal with that to save their their life so there had been some very positive ones but i think it is important to acknowledge that the members who have opposed earmarks have have made some legitimate claims and they deserve that we look at those claims and address those cla the joint select committee on earmark reform which is called for in the bill would be comprised of sixty members mr speaker evenly split between house in the senate because whatever we do the house and the senate have to be together also between republicans and democrats and i think the american people are thirsty and there's or see for some bipartisan activity as out of this this congress so we will come together republicans and democrats work done on the preparations also the tax and tariff measures also what has not been done very well executive branch earmarks would also be speech studied i want to stress that again because i think that congress has ignored some of this and i think the general public doesn't understand that this panel would also mr speaker look at executive branch earmarks reviewing earmarks and all bills considered by congress all all bills is really the key to the house during this period of time to place a moratorium on all earmarks until the joint select committee has finished its work and we're able to put into place a rule system that restores the confidence of americans that legislation is not loaded up with hidden special interest or wasteful spending it would restore honesty integrity and openness to the process that everyone would feel very confident biggest to ground rules would have been agreed to by everyone the among the american public would see how this was done i strongly support the earmark reform including a list of names of sponsors on earmarks or specific line item spending but the rules mr speaker must apply equal standard to all legislation appropriations as well as authoriz the earmarks sponsors it must be across the board in every bill but also my the a process in the industry little integrity and probity that is honest and authentic was the american people have absolute trust that is the key it has to be a process mrs baker where the american people have absolute trust earmark reform must be bipartisan and must be an issue that both political parties can come together so that every member of congress can know what's in it and the american people can know when and i'm hopeful that members on both sides of the aisle will join this effort and support the kingston lump wolf earmark reform bill and then mr speaker we have the opportunity after we do that because i know most americans are concerned about the spending with regard  to the federal debt and the deficit i have a deal with congressman cooper again a bipartisan bill and again it's good to see we have to work across the aisle it's called the cooper wolf bill mr speaker what it does it sets up a national commission of eight republicans and eight democrats and i would tell members there are seventy members plus on the bill are roughly forty democratic members and thirty of thirty democratic members and forty republican members and i say congressman hoyer gave a very powerful speech at the press club several months ago indorsing this concept on the on the bill we have congressman boehner the minority leader we have congressman blunt the minority whip we have people on both sides of the aisle of all political viewpoints in every part of the country and what it does mr speaker it puts everything on the front for the new york times samuelson who writes a column for the washington post also we've had editorials in papers like the tennessean and and the richmond times dispatch and papers like that but what it would basically do it would have this national commission of eight republicans and eight democrats to go around the country having a conversation with the american people mr speaker they would listen to the american people and then they would hold public hearings in every congressional every federal reserve district in the nation so they were required to go every everywhere and interesting enough the brookings foundation and heritage along with david walker of the government can offer the now doing this and what they call wake up tours where they're going out around the nation to tell the american people of the danger of the fiscal danger the financial danger that awaits this nation if we do david walker said and i will insert it in a congressional record i've sent it out to some members of the house david walker said there was a tsunami a financial tsunami off the coast waiting to come in and overcome and overtake this country and as a father of five children if our children were on the beach and someone that there was a tsunami off the coast of the new jersey coast or the north carolina maryland coast we would as parents want to do everything we can to help our kids so for our children and for our grandchildren we have a we have an obligation to deal with this problem also mr speaker i think it's a moral issue also in the ten commandments is that they'll shall not steal and for one generation to be living off the next generation essence dealing with all the support that we have the bipartisan support again a lot of good members on both sides of the aisle i'm hopeful that there can be a way that we can bring this bill up and vote on this session so with the earmark bill that i spoke about earlier which deals with the fundamental problem that the congress has has to deal with and with this bill weekend we can have a renaissance in this nation and create jobs and make a tremendous difference and so i just hope that we can pass both of these bills in this congress and i see my friend from from tennessee and i will yield to the gentleman from tennessee congressman long well i think frank  for a distinguished career of public service there's really no one in the house and we honor the life of tom lantos today here in congress that frank wolf has the same kind of person as tom lant in terms of always caring about what is right what is just human rights anywhere and everywhere in the world that to need our attention in the greatest nation in history world and frank wolf is one of the people here that level headed approach that honors the constitution honors what is right and so here we are again working together jack kingston and frank wolf and  long standing members of the appropriations committee know that this is a problem this abuse of earmarks has created clearly the need for sweeping reforms of this process but i think that we need to do it the right way instead of the wrong way one of the things i like about john mccain is that he doesn't pander to people based on whatever might be popular for the moment the right approach to this particular problem with congressional earmarking in two thousand and eight is to step back and establish a bipartisan back cameral select committee to overhaul the process in its entirety and i say that because any canned of a ban that is temporary or only for an individual is not lasting so if you if you play age to say no earmarks well for how long and who all is affected and who have bought the senate have about the house how about the executive branch about everybody else because unless it is  change it's not a permanent change it's not a real change it is a political posture and therefore we should be careful not to pander on this issue but truly seek change i think that's what this does this select committee what is a select committee well the congress has this provision so that committee can rise above the other commit yes it has subpoena power it has tremendous authority it is unusual but it a committee set up to reform a system like this now a lot of people realize that article one section a nastase constitution clearly says that congress shall appropriate the money now we need to also look at history and realize that over the last forty years there is a continuing separation of powers underway where the executive branch pulls and pulls more and more authority from the legislative branch so one of the things that this select committee would allow us to do is over a six month period of time with five public hearings have a national debate about what is the congress's role what is the executive branch's role both under the constitution and in reality because just two weeks ago february the first the present budget request came over actually it was february the fourth but when it came over it is full of specific requests for specific programs which are a earmarks so one of the first things we need to do with this select committee is define what is an earmark because right now it is not clear as to what is and is not an earmark for instance  earmark for a member of congress to request an increase in a specific account at the national institutes of health if it if it's the national institutes of health and you believe that it should be increased and you're a member of the united states congress and under article one section and you have the authority appropriate money that should not be an earmark but i've got news for you a lot of things that are are right now classified as an earmark should not be an earmark it should be programatic in nature it should be looked at in a different way so this whole system needs an overhaul and that select committee can get to that without people claiming turf protection or feeling like you're stepping on their toes and then they could come back with these recommendations that would have the force of law and truly change this whole process without the legislative branch retreating from its constitutional responsibility or just ceding more and more authority to the executive branch many times to people at the office of management and budget o m b that budget requests who are neither aleck did nor educated enough on these issues to actually make these recommendations that's once important for elected representatives to do this in a very responsible way the select committee is exactly that approach the responsible way to do this it is comprehensive in nature represent of wolf said it doesn't just apply to the appropriations committee it applies to authorization committees tax and trade and tariff bills the executive branch requests the whole gamut of direction of funding of appropriated dollars and the whole thing needs to be reform and i'll give you an example the bridge to nowhere request is one of the most egregious earmarks that  can point to and it did not come through the appropriations committee it was in fact an authorization bill from the transportation committee that is gas tax dollars that every five years the congress directs to this project or that project or this priority or that priority and in fact that bridge to nowhere was an authorization bill so you could wipe out all the earmarks on appropriations and if that's allowed to continue the most egregious abuse we can point to continues so you need a comprehensive and systemic approach to this and that's why we have had consensus developing in our conference on the republican side for basically a time out a moratorium six months no earmarks hold up the trains let's stop and do this right but do it responsibly don't just willy nilly say well we're going to do this for political purposes or that for blue nickel purposes we're going to grandstand or pander no we're going to do this the way that people fifty years from now can look back and study the record and say they put the institution and its congressional prerogatives and responsibilities above the passions of the moment and they recognize that some people had abused it and that needed to be cleaned up and reformed and change but they did not give  people down the street the executive branch more and more authority and violate the separation of powers under the constitution the united states and they this is an important principle as we go forward on how to truly have a systemic approach to clean this mess  but it needs change anybody who thinks that this system stands the smell test in america is wrong it needs to change and we're trying to change it from this place because that's the responsible thing to do people have abused it i would argue that the last election in two thousand and six was lost by our party in large part because of these abuses of earmarks on authorization tax straight energy bills and appropriations and we could use an overhaul statutory framework that the house in the senate would both have to adhere to the public is demanding it and so some self imposed thing is not going to bring about systemic change systemic change is what this institution needs change that will still be here ten years from now not just for the next election this shouldn't be political it should be bipartisan just this week one of the leading democrats here in the house basically called for the same thing said we ought to have a to have a time out and we need to overhaul this process his name is henry waxman i talked to him today i don't want to put words in his mouth but i was encouraged that one of the leading democrats said the same thing basically we need to have a comprehensive reform of this process known as earmarking but i believe step one is to define it what is it what is not an earmark and then go forward things that are existing by law all that have been around for a long period of time should not be an earmark and another thing we need to do is separate the ability of people to have a cottage industry through lobbying for earmarks i mean that frankly makes everybody in washington look bad it erodes the public trust over a period of time and there are there are times where someone advocating for you for a specific cause and his country is necessary and that's called lobbying today lobbying has a bad name if i was a lobbyist i would want these reforms so that my reputation is not tarnished just like we appropriators wolf kingston want her culbertson weldon gud others that have helped us with this calls they don't want our integrity tarnished by the people who abused this prerogative under the constitution they're the ones just like the local law enforcement guy who takes a bribe all police officers are not like that and all members of congress are not going to do what these people did thankfully the people have that have violated our trust are either under investigation or there are already goan or some of them are in jail that the system needs to be cleaned up so that they cannot do that again that's what has happened and frankly there are some people in this institution who are kind of arrogant about this saying that it ought to continue in that there is no reason for reform but that's not true either so we've got to meet in a rational logical way and that's why the select committee approach is the right approach and i'm very very proud to stand with representative wolf and kingston and others in support of this approach and we will have a moratorium on earmarks until we make the needed changes to begin to restore the public trust in uphold the honor and the dignity that should be associated with our fulfilling our responsibilities under the constitution the united states and i thank you gentleman for comment very good i think it really needs to be bipartisan and needs the institutionalize and needs to be done in such a way that the american people have confidence in the yields in the gentleman from illinois congressman kirk a member the preparation committee also i think the gentleman for yielding and join this group of what we might call a pa state appropriators who are leading the reform cause because i think we all agree that the current system was broken under republican leaders and broken under democratic leaders i believe that we should not tax the american people more than necessary the taxpayer monies should be spent wisely and that congress should use  power to cut waste to keep taxes low many congressional earmarks are a waste of the taxpayers money i authored the amendment to kill the bridge to nowhere it was a difficult choice taking on a very powerful member of congress who had the ability and some of these to delete all transportation funding for my own district but i looked at this project it was an earmark not by the appropriations committee but by the transportation committee to build a three hundred and twenty million dollars structure slightly shorter than the golden gate bridge slightly taller than the brooklyn bridge connecting catch a can alaska population eight thousand with  population fifty green island has no paved roads no restaurants and no stores it was clear that this was an extravagant expenditure of money by the united states taxpayer to benefit a very very few number of americans it was also disturbing about how this project was handled as so many other low quality earmarks are done airdropped without consideration by the house or senate floors  potential to amend or kill this project by senators or members of congress added to a conference report that is a final bill at the last minute where everyone is only given one vote yes or no on the complete package and not able to reach in and delete funding for a low quality project are battled after the kirk amendment passed was a long one but finally the governor of alaska relented and thanks to public outrage thanks to congressional scrutiny thanks to concerned americans around this country the bridge to nowhere will not be built but we have seen so many other projects which do not  pass even a laugh test among american taxpayers for example a new earmark i understand for the a berkeley school system that would create french gourmet menus for school lunches clearly something that does not even pass the laugh test here on the house floor among republicans or democrats also we've seen these earmarks for monuments to me i think it's perfectly appropriate when we see a proud public structure funded by the taxpayer to be named after one of our national heroes to be named after a great american or just great humanitarian from history but not for sitting politicians who currently hold public office i'm worried that for example throughout west virginia we have many senator byrd's centers it seems like almost a large part of the state is now named after a sitting member of congress who comes with feet of clay someone who has can have great great attributes and great detriments as someone who really should be judged by history before we name great public works after them our reforms talk about ending funding for these monuments to me it calls for an increased level of i think appropriate humility  fund in the past like many of my colleagues i have requested earmarks because i have been struck by critical needs in my district but increasingly in order to get funding for small projects in your district you are asked to support funding for a large projects in other people's districts for bridges to nowhere for more monuments to me for things that are quite frankly not  the for the public fisc and for the taxpayers expenditure and that we have to recognize that some of these earmarks will simply lead directly to higher taxes for the american people and for programs which do not reflect an appropriate decision by the government to remove funding from an individual taxpayer to provide for these projects that's why i backed this moratorium that we've come forward with and i backed that kingston wolf reforms because i think it's a recognition by members of the appropriations committee that the system is broken that the public's confidence in how this money is spent is not there that republicans and democrats should join together to fix it that the power of the purse is rightly put by the constitution in the congress but it has to be a power that's respected it has to be a power that in which judgment is leveled  d which the burden of proof is against spending the taxpayers funds so that always we have a feeling towards the bottom line of balancing the budget and making sure the tax burden on the american evil is as low as possible that's why i think a gentleman from tennessee a gentleman from virginia for having this special order and and hope that this legislation can pick up bipartisan steam and be adopted by the american people if they get it but some of the elected representatives the american people here still don't get it and their voices need to be heard and with that i yield back to my friend from from virginia well i i thank the gentleman enclosing less than the gentleman have any other comments i say this this needs to be bipartisan it's house congress two six three i believe it will pass the house i think it's inevitable that it will pass the house and he asked the we have to come together i acknowledge have been some efforts in syria it's made i think both those can come bipartisan we have to do it for the american people say well done this really makes sense with that idea back to balance my my time one of the speakers announced policy of january eighteenth two thousand and seven the gentleman from california  california is recognized for sixty minutes it doesn't mean the minority leader thank you very much mr speaker and i shall not take the entire hour and i know that will bring a smile to your lips mr speaker in one nine hundred sixty eight congress officially moved the federal holiday acknowledging our first president's birthday to the third monday in february so now it's commonly known as presidents day i rise today to give more specificity to such unambiguously title designation and to try to a pay appropriate tribute to that first president in our experiment of constitutional self verman george washington was born december twenty second seventeen thirty two almost two hundred and seventy six years ago he died on december fourteenth seventeen ninety nine at the age of sixty seven a mere two years after choosing not to run for a third term thereby a stablish being a president now enshrined in our twenty second amendment he has been described as america's premier military and civilian leader during the revolutionary era and yet as one a story has recently written young people in particular do not know much about washington by our time in the early twenty first century george washington seems so far removed from us as to be virtually uncomprehensible he seems to come from another place another time from another world he did not write a literary political military or philosophical treatise that transformed our understanding of philosophy physics human affairs or government none the less throughout our history he's been compared to cincinnatus that late fifty cents a roman figure who spurned his plow for a defense of rome when so called by the roman senate why is this so the basic facts of washington's life have been retold on a new barrel occasions nevertheless if only because this man is our quarter on the dollar bill and on mount rushmore they bear repeating born in seventeen thirty two in virginia along the potomac river he was a fourth generation american he was not the first born son and his family was not in the top tier of the virginia aristocracy probably standing at six foot two to six foot three and slightly above two hundred pounds he was a physically imposing man threw a stone over the natural bridge in the shenandoah valley which was two hundred fifteen feet high was generally regarded as the finest horseman in virginia the writer lead the pack in most fox hans and was a graceful dancer washington was an adventure and a surveyor in the shenandoah valley as well as an explorer of the ohio county iowa country then comprised of western pennsylvania and parts of present day ohio he became a virginia militant militia officer and was at fort necessity in seventeen fifty four for that ignominious surrender to the french he left the army four years later married the wealthiest widow and virginia martha dandridge custis in seven fifty nine and inherited the magnificent now magnificent mount vernon when his brother lawrence died stayed he was an ambitious farmer planter and businessman at first specializing in tobacco during the course of time that he had mt vernon under his direction he systematically quadrupled its size of eventually overseeing five farms and introducing new crop rotation schemes that are even today admired for their direction while he never seemed to have very much to say he wasn't indifferent to the larger world we're told he subscribed to ten papers at mount vernon and in the seventeenth sixties despite owing owning fifty thousand acres found himself twelve thousand british pounds in debt from this and other things that came to believe the extant system of commercial trading with his british counterparts was designed for his and his neighbors perpetual indebtedness he became a non importation believer and a supporter of colonial efforts at self sufficiency as we know continental congress washington was a member of the virginia delegation after the clashes at lexington and concord he attended the second continental congress wearing his old military uniform and was nominated by john adams on june fifteenth seven hundred seventy five to command the volunteer forces that had amassed in massachusetts because of the british occupation of boston on july third seven hundred seventy five he took command of that army then called the army of the united colonies a couple of years ago i was privileged to spend a semester at harvard i remember walking through the streets just sort of looking at the people playing soccer and baseball and i saw a monument that appeared to be not very spectacular i went over to see what it was all about and it was a monument to george washington taking over that army and inscribed on the walls there on are the words that he spoke that day to those troops and while i do not have them from memory i recall that he indicated to the men then assembled that they were to be united in this effort to fight for freedom and as you sat there as i stood there and looked at those words and tried to drink them in you could almost  since the power of such a magnificent figure as george washington talking to those assembled scattered troops from all over he was in a very simple since a commander who commanded the attention and the loyalty of his men of course the army of the united colonies was the next year change to the continental army sounding quite a bit more professional than it was in reality while never known for groundbreaking military tactics or strategic innovations washington nevertheless displayed admirable courage exemplified by his exploits at seven hundred fifty five it pittsburgh when with british general braddock injured washington had at least two horses shot out from under him and had bullets grazes uniform only to be unhurt and commended for his bravery in leading the troops in organizing their retreat his subsequent leadership during the revolutionary war was indispensable to the colonies eventual success finally achieved eight long years later in the treaty of paris he never accepted a salary as commander in chief of the continental army more importantly he was a visionary commander bindings that's competent and important figures as the thirty three year old rhode island quaker nathaniel green and the twenty five year old boston bookseller henry knox while he fought a mere total of nine battles of which he only won three washington knew we had to keep the colonial forces intact in order to defeat the british and woo the french a dual task be accomplished by not focusing on captured grounds a war posts as they say but on maneuvering and survival while highly critical of the un trained and then disciplined colonial forces as commander in chief he wrote annual letters to the state governments and kept congress knowledgeable of his situation in order to maintain some semblance of trust and harmony his surprise military and moral victories at trenton and princeton as well as his steadfastness at valley forge the following winter have gone down in american lore is true measures of commitment of greatness of in durance and leadership the suffering at valley forge was unimaginable there he wrote to see men without clothes to cover their neck in this without blankets to lay on without shoes but which their marches might be traced by the blood from their feet and almost as often without provisions as with marching through frost and snow and at christmas taking up their war when our quarters within a yorktown in seven hundred eighty one affectively ending the military aspect of the war and after the treaty of paris was finalized he resigned as commander in chief of the american forces and surrendered his sword to congress on december twenty third seventeen eighty three now his decision to leave retire to leave for retirement about vernon and then attend the constitutional convention in philadelphia  eighty seven was not one without risk as james madison said washington would be making a decision to quote forsake the honorable retreat to which he had retired and risked the reputation he had so deservedly acquired but he did attend the convention and was elected president as he later said when so ever i shall be convinced the good of my country requires my reputation to be put at risk regard for my own fame will not come in competition with an object of so much magnitude at the constitutional convention his presence was a calming and vital force probably the most graphic illicit illustration of the singular status that washington enjoyed was the decision of the constitutional convention to deposit the minutes of its secret deliberations with him for safekeeping and  james monroe later told thomas jefferson be assured his influence carried this government his universal admiration help overcome the suspicions of the possibility of monarchy arising out of the new constitution and its king resembling popularly elected executive office a suspicion of which he was very much apprehensive republics are thought to be possible only in small homogeneous enclaves not on sprawling vast continents a fear of monarchy and they can common heavy handed government rule either from the sesa theory or the nature of power hungry man was widespread as our nation's first president he instinctively knew he would be setting precedents for future executives to follow as they walk this tightrope between centralization and dispersion of power between deference and democracy he was twice elected president twice elected president unanimously by the electoral college as one of the premier historians of the founding era has written the whole thing that is the creation of the constitution was merely words on paper until implemented by washington's government washington knew how malleable the situation was he understood that every move he and his administration made would be a precedent that would shape the actuality of the constitution and he proceeded with great care it was washington for example who created the structure of the executive offices we now call the cabinet and it was he who defined the senate's role in foreign policy and something of the operational meaning of the words advise and consent as washington himself said we are a young nation and have a character to establish it behooves us therefore to set out right for first impressions will be lasting as president he believes in the rule of law however unpopular a belief might be such a belief might be at any given time when the risk whiskey rebellion a popular uprising in four counties in western pennsylvania protesting an excise tax on whisk occurred when it threatened to stop the normal functioning of civil government washington firmly stood against the subverting of civil authorities more importantly in relation to constitutional government washington was a firm  to its principles he believed in contrast to others of the age who sympathized with frequent revolutions x knew that decisions of a republican people only be unmade in the same way that they had been made this preference for ballots over bullets and appeal to republican constitutional ballot driven self government would be made again by abraham lincoln  one and the equally as powerful self government in the new republic required adherents to the law that is our constitution and the laws under it which articulate the boundaries and dimensions of our communal lives together as citizens as he said in his farewell address this government the offspring of our own choice uninfluenced an odd adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation completely free in it principles in the distribution of its powers uniting security with energy and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment has a just claim to your confidence and support the very idea of the power and right of the people who stablish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government so this combination of constitutionalism and consent he believed is the bedrock of self government in seven hundred seventy five washington said make the best of mankind as they are since we cannot have them as we wish and as president he ably navigated the waters between anglo and french factions and their sympathizers both overseas and within his own cabinet it was thomas jefferson's opinion that jay's treaty of seven hundred ninety five an important agreement that kept the united states out of the franco british imperial intrigues up this magnificent life most eloquently when he says throughout the first half of the seventeen nineties the closest approximation to a self evident truth in american politics was george washington a legend in his own time americans had been describing washington as the father of the country since seven hundred seventy six which is to say before there ever was a country by the time you assume the presidency in seven hundred eighty nine no other impossible to delineate in fact some of the most incredible stories also happen to be true during general edward braddock's ill fated expedition against the french outside pittsburgh in seventeen fifty five a young washington had joined with daniel soon to rally the survivors despite having two horses shut out from under him multiple bullet holes piercing his coat increasing his pants at yorktown in seventeen eighty one he had insisted on standing atop a parapet for a full fifteen minutes during an artillery attack bullets and shrapnel flying all about him defying age it tried to pull him down before he had properly surveyed the field of action when washington spoke of destiny people listen finally his commanding presence had been the central feature in every major event of the revolutionary era the lynchpin of the continental army throughout eight long years of desperate fighting from seven hundred seventy five to seventy nine three the presiding officer at the constitutional convention in seventeen eighty seven the first and only chief executive of the fledgling federal governments and seven hundred eighty nine he was the palpable reality that closed the revolutionary rhapsodies in flesh and blood america's one and only indispensable character a description speaks for itself in relation to the man that we honor this month still it is not only for these facts alone the george washington has earned our highest esteem frequently commanded in discussions of republican that's where the small are republican political thought in classical virtue one historian has recently written that washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the way he conducted himself during times of temptation it was his moral character that set him off from other men washington's life was immersed in this classical may you of republicanism virtue in titled rules of civility and decent behavior in company and conversation a list of over one hundred short instructions on how to conduct oneself in the company of others in society and in the cultivation of one's manners and morals now washington not have a classical education he did not attend college he was always in secure about these facts and tried to make up for this lack of intensive self cultivation for this lack by intensive self cultivation and liberal in lightened values this self cultivation was successful and it helped him lead others throughout his military and civilian endeavors as one scholar has commented adulation for washington's classical virtues cannot simply be dismissed he writes general greene rhode island who became one of his most trusted deputies told a friend that washington's very presence spread this spirit of conquest throughout the whole army green hope that we shall be taught to copy his example and to prefer the love of liberty in this time of public danger to all the soft pleasures of domestic life and support ourselves with manly fortitude admits to all these dangers and hardships that attend a state of war in part these rapturous assessments simply express the excitability of men putting their lives on the line for what seemed to be a hopeless cause they needed to see greatness and so they sought but the accounts are too specific and to consistent for that to be the only reason soon after washington's appointment as commander in chief that dour critic of man john adams told his wife that the virginian was destined to become quote one of the most important characters in the world again and again washington struck the men of his day as an exemplar of ancient republican ideals almost as though he had stepped from the pedestal of the age another historian has written washington's writings are crowded with ringing affirmations of revolutionary ideals and washington's friends and enemies alike testified that he deeply believed what he wrote like cromwell as captain washington knew what he fought for and loved what he knew he was one of one mind about that today washington speaks to us across the ages about virtue education and religious freedom in his first inaugural address washington stated there is no truth more thoroughly established then that there exist in the economy and course of nature and indissoluble union between virtue and happiness between duty and advantage between the general between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and that about the importance of seeing education and virtue as one philosophical whole washington wrote to his nephew george step to washington these words should you enter upon the course of studies here here marked out you must consider it as the finishing of your education and therefore as the time is limited that every hour misspent is lost forever and that future years cannot compensate for lost days at this period of your life this reflection must show the necessity of an unremitting application to your studies to point out the importance of circumspection in your conduct it may be proper to observe that a good moral character is the first essential in a man that the habits contract at your age are generally indelible your conduct here may stamp your character through life it is therefore highly important you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous in relation to religion he was also convinced that as he declared his farewell address religion was an indispensable foundation for both morality and republican government as president he attended the services of a variety of denominations addressed jews as equal fellow citizens in his famous and articulate letter to the newport hebrew congregation in seventeen ninety in it he said the citizens of the united states of america have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy a policy worthy of imitation all possess the like liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship it is now no  more that toleration is spoken of as if it were by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoy the exercise of their inherent natural rights for happily the government of the united states which gives to bigotry no sanction to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support may the children of the stock of abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants well every one shall sit in safety under his own voice and in fig tree and there shall be none to make him afr this commitment to freedom of conscience had been previously heard in seven hundred seventy five when washington and written while we are contending for our own liberty we should be very cautious of violating the rights of conscience and others considering that god alone is the judge of the hearts of men and to him only in this case they are answerable finally a farewell address with its encouragement to avoid excessive partisanship meant maintain american neutrality achieve diplomatic independence in short to implement unity at home and independence abroad still trike strikes the cords of wisdom and prudence in our ears i salute the man who in whose tribute  monument without words stands in our capital of the day its height stature and distinctiveness speak for themselves he was a unique man who seemed to be immune to both bullets and smallpox it may or may not be true that washington had neither copious mists of ideas or fluency of words nevertheless even a sometimes harsh critic like thomas jefferson had to admit that the moderation and virtue of a single character probably prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been bias a version of that liberty it was intended to establish now washington did say that with our fate will the destiny of unborn millions be involved and as we look to his birth life service and we know that he was right and that should give us pause without washington's character is perseverance and achievements all the important his historic graphical debates over the founding would be merely parlor games of philosophical intrigue and events and decades and centuries past washington believed in literally started and served in the system of government which would be called self government federalism monarchy prime a janitor artificial hereditary distinctions sectarian bloodbath these were not to be the demarcations of this new nation as washington in this cautiously optimistic manner said in his seven hundred eighty three circular to the states the foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy age of ignorance and superstition but  when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined that in a former period these rights were understood and defined on this newly freed and expanding continental land of which washington said is there doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a spear let experience solve it is well worth a fair and full experiment for washington america was a practical experiment in the preservation of liberty and the success of republican government as he said in his first inaugural address on april thirtieth seventeen eighty nine the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered perhaps as deeply as finely staked on the experiment interested in the hands of the american people in contrast to monarchies washington established the republican principle of rotation in office presidents no matter how indispensable were inherently disposable george washington was an extraordinary man who made it possible for ordinary men to rule in the words of the great frederick douglass the former slave an abolitionist i would not even in words he said do violence to the great events and thrilling associations that gloriously cluster around the birth of our national independence no people ever entered upon pathways of nations with higher and grander ideas of justice liberty in humanity than ourselves madam speaker we have george washington to thank for such beneficence he made it happen now let us live up to that challenge to articulate and legislate the contours of liberty and justice for our collective humanity in these united states happy birthday president washington we honor you and appreciate your service to this to our great country madam speaker i would yield back the balance of my the eyes have it the motion is agreed to accordingly the house stands adjourned until ten am tomorrow the house has completed all legislative business for the week today members attended a memorial service honoring representative tom lantos who passed away on tuesday also today members voted to hold white house chief of staff joshua bolten and former white house counsel harriet miers in contempt of congress for refusing to comply with house did it cheri committee subpoenas pertaining to the firing of nine u s attorneys this week the house failed to act on the foreign intelligence surveillance act agreed to by the senate house republicans walked out of the chamber today in protest of the bill not being brought up members are not expected to act on the bill before they return from their we long presidents day recess july house democratic leaders will say that it was simply a matter of finding time in the schedule that they always intended to do it but there was always something else that was even more intense and then they had to take precedence and and now they're saying well we have this time in the schedule do it's we're going to do it today even writing about this in congressional quarterly you said that house action will be far from the end of the matter that the any action in the in the court the court cases would extend far beyond the bush presidency what's the house really after in this case w the house wants to do is do a sort of congressional prerogatives congressional oversight of progressives because the democrats don't want to set a precedent of having no consequence to a subpoena being ignored they fear if that's the case then become worthless it'll take longer than the bush presidency simply because bush has less than a year to go and court cases like this factoring in appeals and the not very many of court cases like this i should add to go on will certainly take a a custodian of the records because what the democrats really wanted was an internal white house records communications back and forth between aides and that sort of thing related to the firings miers was subpoena for documents in her possession and testimony because the democrats investigation revealed she had a hand in far as mean she was and she discussed it with the justice department in the early stages and was aware of and so on and so they want to see what you know assuming these citations are approved in the house today what happens next what's the white house likely to do well that's what gets a little complicated under the law if the citation is approved the u s attorney for the district of columbia is required to take the matter before a federal grand jury for action but attorney general michael mckay's he has already told congress that he has not been let that happen to mr mccain he's you executive branch officials cannot be prosecuted for respecting a claim of executive privilege so what the house democrats are doing is responding to that is also adopting a second resolution that would authorize the judiciary committee to initiate legal proceedings to enforce their subpoenas to initiate the proceedings on their own in a court so they don't need to justify i meant that to carry a metaphor he furriner writes for congressional quarterly covering the debate head to the polls in wisconsin and democrats caucus in hawaii tuesday march fourth primaries in ohio rhode island texas and vermont follow the candidates on the network it takes you to the candidates  c span you can also follow the campaigns on line like c span dot org we recently visited all twelve of the presidential libraries and found rarely seen film video and audio recording including do it defeats truman of course they wish they had visited that's all there was to it language i've been criticized for going over the heads of congress so what's the fuss a lot of things go over their heads you can watch these and other historic archival material anytime at our web site c span dot org slash presidential libraries or if you like your own d v d copy of the complete presidential libraries t v series a twelve disc set is available for the special price of forty nine ninety five plus shipping and handling to view or purchase the presidential libraries material go online to c span video dot org slash products as executive producer of the washington journal i know that  calls are an important part of our on our programming it's part of who we are we're committed to opening up the phone lines so you can talk directly to journalists elected officials and other decision makers he began taking calls on the one thousand nine hundred presidential campaign which made us the first nationwide daytime call in program on television and ever since then we've been inviting viewers to call and speak and be heard we take calls each morning on the washington journal during our coverage of congress on the campaign trail after important speeches and as a part of our key event coverage our aim is to hear from many different points of view from across the political spectrum so if you ever thought about calling in and put it off we invite you to call in and talk about our topic of the day the c span network providing you access to public affairs from television radio and on the web next a look at u s foreign oil dependence john hofmeister president of shell oil talks about his fifty city tour to talk to americans about the issue this portion of washington journal is forty five minutes on your screen right now is the president of shell oil john hofmeister mr hofmeister we've been telling folks about your fifty city toward to talk to the american public how did the idea come about and second question what's learned well it came about because of the enormous hostility that occurred after the katrina rita hurricane season it was clear to me coming back to the united states from living overseas for about a decade that there was a huge disconnect between the american people american elected officials and the oil industry and after the prices shot up when the hurricanes came through and we lost production the us lost twenty five percent of its production capacity following those two hurricanes and it wasn't like for a day or two it was like for months that we had to make up for this twenty five percent ga prices spiked all over the country and i started getting hate mail other show managers started getting awful phone calls from people i got forty eight letters from attorneys general across the nation accusing us of price jing i said to my staff this can't continue we've got to do something different than this we thought about advertising across the nation that's very expensive i don't know how many people actually pay attention to it so we said let's go talk to our customers let's go talk to public officials and that  originally started out as maybe thirty cities but the more we get out there the more we saw the problem is much bigger than we thought it was and so we decided to just keep going and we went right up through the end of last year and what do you think now that i presume is at the end i  continue with this we will continue an outreach i think the lesson we learned to answer your other question the lesson we learned is we have an obligation as a company as a supplier of energy to tell people what's going on what the real story is about supply about demand about prices about sources of new energy about alternative forms of energy if we're not telling them shame on us and i think the industry has to learn that lesson as well our big goal and with us for forty five minutes and he wants to hear from you so our phone lines are going to be open and we'll take your calls across the board on any topics related to energy policy that you are interested in and we're going to get to those calls in just a couple minutes and give you the numbers and far  radio listeners just wrote to seven three seven triple zero one for republicans for democrats to zero to seventy seven triple zero two and for independents two zero two six two eight zero two zero five that's how much despite the fact that there's been a decline in domestic  production you must believe that it's difficult to carry your message along when stories such as the the earnings reports from across the oil industry came out recently here's the headline on the associated press when all the major oil companies reported earnings total fourth quarter profits surge with oil price prices and we're not talking revenues we're talking profits and with regard to your company royal dutch shell p l c europe's largest oil company posted a sixty percent gain in the fourth quarter profit to eight point four seven billion on asset sales and higher oil prices so people at home are thinking gas prices are going up not because just prices are higher for the companies that they're making more money off you know there's an interesting dichotomy here that people may not understand fully but this is why we have to go out and talk with people most of the increase in profitability in our company and really the industry is because of the rising price of crude oil now we don't set the price of crude oil that's set on the global trading marketplace has jumped from nine years ago when it was eight dollars and fifty cents a barrel to ninety four dollars a barrel today i think it is that's a huge increase a ten fold increase in the commodity price of crude oil because our costs of old production fields are still very low from the old days when things were much cheaper that comes through as profit to the bottom line the difficulty however is new investments new projects such as the oil sands of canada or the deepwater gulf of mexico cost a whole lot more than old projects so the good news is those profits help bring more energy into the economy ironically at the pump where people think we're really ripping them off and i heard that over and over again at the pump our wholesale margin is about a penny to a penny and a half a gallon which just barely covers our costs of getting at there and the retailer makes only a couple of cents per gallon on average and so there's not a whole lot of money at the pump the real cost of the oil that people are buying for their car is in the crude price we have to do a better job of explaining that yes the numbers are big i don't want to deny that the numbers aren't big but it's largely inflated by the crude price and it's also inflated by the cost structure going forward of finding new energy i don't really apologize for those numbers because on a manufacturing basis those are average if you look at a percentage of sales about seven percent of our sales is  profit and that's about what u s manufacturers do other industries actually have a different business model where they make a significantly higher percentage of profit than we do one more question about oil economics before we get to our calls this morning in the wall street journal it talks about the global economic slowdown headline on the piece pace of rising oil demand is expected to decree decrease so if in fact the demand slows what can people expect that what will happen to  are a lot will depend what happens to the price of crude if demand slows to the point that the crude demand falls then that would result most likely in a lower commodity price to the whole world but let's be careful about that let's not go jump for joy too quickly because in many parts of the world the demand for oil is continuing to increase such as china india even while the supply of oil is just barely keeping up so if overall global demand continues to rise and the supply does not increase significantly then we could still see high prices for crude oil which will still come through the high prices at the pump now what shell doing about that well i can tell you that in the last four months just as one company we've committed seven billion dollars to new projects just in the united states you may have seen a lease sale last week where we committed over two billion dollars for new leases in the chuck cheese sea we announced in december  we did a groundbreaking actually in december for a big refinery expansion in port arthur texas with our partner saudi refining so this money is not sitting in our pocket the profits are going right back into the business so we can produce more energy for the future and last question i promise because our calls are all lined up here and i know people want to hear more about what shell is doing to invest in alternative fuels there is cause of this over time of course there's just not going to be as much oil no matter where you look for i think the demand for oil will continue to put pressure on supply there's no question about that and i'm not sure that conventional easy oil can keep up with the demand unconventional oil is more expensive more difficult to get and that's why ten years ago shell actually started down the alternative path we announced in one thousand nine hundred seven the formation of the renewables business we now have ten years plus of experience and businesses like solar like wind we're working very closely with our automotive partners on hydrogen as a fuel source down the road so i'd be very happy to talk about alternative fuel well let's get to our viewers questions and the first one is from fort wayne indiana republican land good morning iran for the president of shell oil good morning i would like to say that the big bedell government make taxes on gasoline and which they have absolutely no they invest no money into this business and do not an extent sit there and try to rip the oil companies off and if i taxes on oil too much and in fact they're ripping the business off i think taxes are always a debate and i respect the viewers point of view our taxes last year for the world taxation was eighteen billion dollars that's a lot of money we did however have sufficient profitability to put another twenty four almost twenty four billion back into the business the tax issue is really one of dispute between what the companies pay and what the consumers pay and consumers pay a lot of tax at the pump depending upon what state they live then we as a company we really don't want to get into too much of a debate about taxes that's for government to decide we're citizens of the country that government decides to us according to a certain amount one of the dangers however is too much taxation takes away from our ability to invest in new projects in the future and so to that point we look for favorable tax regimes and that's where we tend to invest at the moment what we see around the world is many governments are taxing much more than they used to because of the high oil price and as a result of that we are actually moving more investments to the united states because this is a more  to be a productive citizen these days you must put fuel in your car turn your lights on and heat your house i believe we should take over the oil companies as people consider a public works nonprofit the taxes  health care and to preventing these world wars over energy i do believe that it is a necessity not a commodity and that's the question i asked you is do you believe that the energy should be to  oil becomes the property is state maybe you can talk to viewers about that from personal experience well this is a very interesting question and what we find is that the productivity of our operations is generally much greater in free economies because of the competition between the independent oil companies there are examples of countries around the world where the state owned oil company which is there for the people of the country actually operate very inefficiently and in a sense it becomes a jobs creation mechanism for what could be considered a socialist economy and while the oil does go to the people ultimately for their use often it heavily subsidized prices which seems to help in the short term over the longer term when people don't pay the full price of energy then appreciate how much it's really worth in terms of a global commodity i think it will remain a commodity even though it is a necessity because both elements are important there but it is traded around the world i don't think oil is forever i think that alternative energies will compete with oil which will make this a commodity trading and global so i really believe in the free economic enterprise system because it leads to greater productivity and greater ingenuity and innovation what we see also is the independent oil companies are leading the world in technological development technological design that's not necessarily the case among some national oil company systems this little item in the usa today also points out to another thing to think about with state and oil companies and that's the politic particularly in central asia her comments to congressional committee come amid threats from venezuela to cut off oil exports to the u s as well several incidents in which russia has or threatened to cut off gas supplies to some of its neighbors most recently brain here's her quote it is a really important part of diplomacy in fact i think i would go so far as to say that some of the pla the politics of energy is warping diplomacy i tend to agree with the secretary and as we look around the world the issue of natural resource nationalism is something that affects our business more and more every year natural resource nationalism i would define as a sovereign state which has energy reserves operating in its own best interest regardless of consequences to others and what we see in the expropriation of assets or what we see in the way some national some nations conduct business with us is an increasing parag get to by the state to set policy that is beneficial to them which is their right we're not we're not quibbling with the right of a sovereign nation to decide what is best for itself but if you add that up around the world the consequences for the global consumer are really quite precarious let's be clear opec operates as a cartel opec operates in its own self interest which may not be aligned with the interest of consumers we face that all over the world this nation the united states of america tries to practice the oil business as though there's a market free market but when you have a cartel determining crude oil price it's not a free market when you have a country namely the united states which prohibits the development of its own resources most people around america did not know until we told them during our fifty city tour that only fifteen percent of the outer continental shelf is available for oil production eighty five percent is off limits that's not a free market so in a sense the united states is creating its own perverse kind of but two questions i had regarding oil one is if i keep the the sources of oil if ever one number two and or three in the world keep seem to be changing its candidate saudi arabia and then venezuela they make a lot of news about cutting off oil to the united states i don't see that it matters after all it's one big pool of oil xaus they sell it to somebody it was a pressure gold wherever the market as long as the oil is in the pool it i'm not sure that it matters unless that is incorrect thinking perhaps you could comment on that you're exactly right all is a fungible commodity that moves around the world by ship and whether venezuela says they won't do business with the united states or not if the oil still goes into the oil trading marketplace it really doesn't have much of an effect it may discomfort some refineries in some places which were expecting crude deliveries but the but the reality is the amount of oil being produced for the world remains about the same and that that when you talk about ships i think it's different pipelines and i wanted to just ask you to explain about how real are how large a concern oil companies such as yours have about the threat of terrorism to the supply chain terrorism is a very serious issue and with the new homeland security laws in this country we are taking active steps to reinforce the security protections of every chemical plant that we have and other companies are as well are continuously in touch with homeland security the inspector facilities right now we're going through a very dramatic really identification of our of all of our employees a very expensive process to certify that all of our employees are citizens or legal residents in the country and they have to carry a certain kind of i d which means only they can get into the passivity even if i visit one of our facilities i have to be escorted because lawyer my legal american citizen i don't have the particular scrutiny that has gone through my records and my background and so forth so i misquoted when i go to my own facilities that call for john hofmeister from westland michigan independent line good morning caller good morning the you too  bucks a barrel and that's about nine now on gas then was about a dollar and it's about three now what has it done to your profitability i mean where were you at then and where you at now because i know that that's a very large fluctuation but i'm kind of wondering you know exxon mobil posted what eleven billion dollars for the last quarter i know every time hugo chavez sneezes gas goes up twenty thirty cents a gallon i'm kind of wondering how much eve guys have to say about what the prices are i actually have a from the owns a b p station which is your competitor and he tells me that he actually gets a number from the corporate office and they tell him that's what he s to sell gas for sun this kind of wondering how much do you guys have to say about that thanks it does very  let's let's start with crude price and crude oil profit if the crude prices around ten dollars and at one point and goes up to ninety dollars people would think our profits might increase by by nine times or ten times it doesn't quite work that way because there's a whole cost structure in between in terms of how we invest in future projects what we invest in if we chose not to invest our profits would go up significantly greater than what they have gone up but there's no question but what the crude price is correlated to our profitability which is why we've seen for shelf for example over the last decade our profits of more than tripled because of the increase in the crude price and the fact that we're heavily loaded towards low cost crude and that really does help our profitability in the short term at the retail level it's a different cost and pricing structure all together there are some retail stations that are owned by the major oil company in which there is a price setting determination made at some central headquarters for shell we only own i'd say about less than a thousand of the fourteen thousand shell stations across the country and we don't control the price at the pump that the dealer sets what we do is sell wholesale product at a certain cost to the retailer the retailer then determines based upon his neighborhood his part of town his state with the state taxes and so forth how much does he have to charge per gallon to both purchase new supplies that would come into his station in the future which might be higher or lower cost depending on crude oil price or how much he has to make his profit to keep his business going and ultimately it's competitive at the pump based upon the neighboring stations and what they're charging based upon what other companies are having as far as their wholesale price is concern i know that sounds very convoluted i'm sorry about that but it is rather complex when you get to the price at the pump the folks at shell are gathering all of the information learned on the store into a so called final report and it is being released at ten a eastern time today we've gotten that that's look at it from the folks at shell it's been called the national dialogue on energy security i'm presuming mr hofmeister that this will be available for people to read on the internet absolutely we have a website people can go to shell dot com they can get to a website that is all about u s energy security i think it's shell slash u s energy security which dot com and they can access it after ten o'clock this morning eastern time now i presume that was you said at the outset a large portion of this this effort was to tell the oil and particularly the shell story to american citizens but did you learn anything that will cause a change in your company operations there's a whole section about what we learned in the report and we when we study the title of it is not only did we learn we transformed this this experience transformed us because it wasn't just me visiting fifty cities i had accompanying me some two hundred fifty shell managers over the course of the year that's unprecedented for a company to take two hundred fifty people over the course of a year and a half to go visit consumers across the country and visit regulators and visit elected officials and so forth so we had it transformed us in the sense that it humbled us when we heard the stories of people about what the impact of these high prices are on their lives of course with these high prices we've seen drive offs go to record levels where people buy the gas or they they put the gas in their car they can afford to pay for it they drive off that's a criminal act unfortunately and so we learn also how much enthusiasm people have for alternative forms of energy we also learned there are some myths out there about how  is we're running out of oil we're really not running out of oil there's more oil than we've had that we know than we've ever produced and but but as we have a view that just as the stone age did not end for the lack of rocks the oil age is not going to end for the lack of oil the reason being what we see happening is that new technologies innovation will replace oil over a sustained period of time coffee cup a sort of cherry hill new jersey   mobile actually record profits for any corporation ever in the world period any kind of company not just oil any way you look at it you could sell you could choose to sell outrageous taxes you have to pay and how it hurts your business with the hundreds of billions of dollars in past that you've seen through this current administration is really almost it's really sad and point number three just know things are changing and they're not changing you're right they're not going to change from because of the lack of oil they're going to change from the technology needed so we do not destroy the global demand for oil and whether or not the supply of oil keeps up and so the dramatic rise in the crude oil prices what has led to the dramatic rise in the profitability of the companies but keep in mind that finding new oil sources ever more expensive and those profits are going right back into the business if we drop the price at the pump in order to cut a break let's say for a period of time that would directly affect the amount of money we have available to invest in the future when it comes to taxes there's two sides to taxes as you bring up there are certain incentives there are very few new incentives during the last number of years the last time we saw big incentives was at the end of the clinton administration when oil actually hit ten dollars a barrel a fifty i think in one thousand nine hundred eight and people just stopped investing in new while there was no return on investment to shareholders and so the clinton administration quite properly in those periods of low all prices gave certain incentives so that oil companies would continue to invest in new all production had those and centers not been put forward more drilling rigs would have been set aside more people would have been laid off so it was a good back in those in that time period shell for example caught a mistake that was made by the minerals management service and agreed to renegotiate all of our contracts to put a price ceiling back into the contracts that had been mistakenly approved back in that between one thousand nine hundred eight and two thousand and two so we would make sure that we were following what had been the spirit of the law at the time and just a simple human error of not putting a price ceiling  we went back and fix that when it comes to the future we do believe that alternatives are important to the future but here's the reality that no american should ever forget today on the fourteenth february two thousand and eight america will use ten thousand gallons of oil every second that's every second not every minute not every at ten thousand gallons of oil every second where does that oil come from that's a swimming pool full of oil every second because our system our whole economy is predicated on using that much oil natural gas is a good alternative but we can't put natural gas in our cars not at this stage except a few models that use compressed natural gas we think ethanol is a good future fuel but it really should come from biomass waste as our view instead of food there's nothing wrong with food based ethanol except that raises the price of food at the same time it raises the price of gasoline but there are many other alternatives that we're working on but what i sense is the the disaffection that you feel for our industry and i understand that we heard that all over the country because of the lousy jobs we've done for decades in communicating with people just like you sir this is a fact question our e mail question from kevin c in new york do you i feel that the futures market has a negative effect on the price of oil and if so do you feel that the futures market should be left out of the pricing of energy supply and let's take a demand regulate oil pricing in the future market futures markets driving the prices up what the futures market does for global oil trading is i think it reflects the supply demand relationship and actually brings more oil forward particularly when we need it oh we'll we'll always be speculative it always has been there are insecurities around the world which affect oil there are  slumps there are economic growth periods there's a commodity traded business or commodity business there's always going to be trading because it does create economic value for people all over the country we were asked many times what is the actual net effect of the oil price through speculative trading nobody can ever figure that out for sure we estimate it roughly at something around five percent five percent sort of through the speculative process but sometimes that's five percent high sometimes that's five percent low because the even the traders don't get a good sense of what's the real supply demand relationship but what speculative trading does is it make sure that the oil is where it needs to be when it's needed because here is what happens with the breakdown of a barrel of oil just imagine we have in front of us a barrel full of crude oil that's about forty two gallons of oil in this barrel we call the  bottom of the barrel the middle of the barrel in the top of the barrel the bottom of the barrel is the heavy difficult to refine part of the crude molecules which goes into heavy uses such as everything from diesel to heating oil to aviation fuel and then the top of the barrel are where we get gasoline and other lightly refined product that may go all to mclean into petrochemicals the middle of the barrel is what's getting squeezed which is why heating oil is so expensive at the same time your heating oil demand is increasing because it's winter it's cold we also have airlines that are demanding ever more aviation fuel which comes from that same part of the barrel and we have diesel fuel for agriculture for truck purposes and around the world many cars are diesel driven diesel engine cars so the middle of the barrel is squeezed for the type of molecules which serve your heating oil furnace and the only way we can increase the supply of middle of the barrel distillates is by getting more crude oil and refining more crude oil that middle distillate but we can't make more middle distillate out of that forty two gallon barrel because only the molecular structure will let us get so much that's why there's i met recently with twenty airlines they're very concerned about the price of aviation fuel and the solution really is to get more barrels into the refining process that's about the only thing we can do and of course getting more barrels is what the whole problem is all about because easy oil is running out and expensive unconventional is harder to get and some of the deepwater oil projects in the gulf of mexico take a very long time so getting more crude oil into the system is the only way to affect the heating oil price today this question from ari griffey and farmers branch texas is about the refineries he talked about them at the outset he writes there is a refining shortage in the us supposedly when i work for a small business administration i notice that the big oil companies bought up small refineries and close them down a set of utilizing the mark spending them why it's a good question and the reality is with changing environmental rules which we believe are appropriate because we all want clean air we all want clean water and good use of land with changing environmental rules the most effective and efficient way to run a refinery is to have size small what we call teakettle refineries require every bit as much investment every bit as much cost in fact more per barrel because you don't have the volumes that can go through a small refinery so there has been a consolidation of refineries across the u s frankly over the last thirty years now there's another reality and that is through the ninety's most of the refineries in america were either losing money or making too little money to invest in new production we had supply exceeding demand so there was further rationalization during the ninety's then we hit the wall and the wall was this us demand increased dramatically with the change of the u s fleet with more pickup trucks with more su these with less fuel efficient vehicles the demand peaked suddenly in the late ninety's and the early two thousand at the very same time global demand increased in places like china india etc so with the increased demand in the us the increased demand overseas what we found is a shortage of refining capacity within a very short period of time even though we incrementally had increased our production so we're changing that now the good news is shell announced in this in the fall the expansion of the port arthur texas refinery more than doubling the size of it which brings in a few years three hundred thousand new barrels of of production per day another company in garyville in louisiana has announced an expansion we saw yesterday i believe in the wall street journal a totality stanch and so companies are now moving forward to expand refining production and i think that's a good thing they tell you a little bit more hofmeister he has a bachelor's and master's degree in political science which is interesting and i'm sure he put it to good use over the past two years with us from case a kansas state university and some of his other work inside shell he is part of the committee and policy committee of the american petroleum institute he is also part of the hydrogen and fuel cell technical advisory committee that's been established by the u s department of energy he was named president of shell oil in march of two thousand and five and in his work for the company has lived in north america europe and asia our telephone calls for him next come from ridgeway missouri good morning caller thank you very much for c span and i just have two qui stated that you spent i think sixteen billion dollars in taxes and i'm just wondering how much subsidies do you get from the american people to help pay the tax thank you i think the question of to what extent is there a war effect on the price of crude i frankly don't know how to quantify that if if if at all throughout our tour of america we've got that question very often it's on the minds of people that actually the cost of the war should be noted as part of the cost of crude oil that's sort of a political view and you know for an oil company like sh our job is just go get more oil and we're a supplier and so whatever happens around the world we are in a sense have to compartmentalize the political world and really concentrate on the geology and the technology and find ways to keep bringing oil to all of our consumers around the world i were recently had that question on a radio talk show in which i said to the host thank you very much but the question is really beyond my pay grade i don't know the answer to that question in terms of war affect the second part in terms of subsidies there are all kinds of tax enablers that help in certain areas that have been part and parcel of the industry for many years in fact many decades this current discussion about a particular part of a manufacturing tax break for all manufacturers in america called paragraph one ninety nine congress is considering a lemonade ing that for the oil companies but you're absolutely right we are a manufacturer to pick out the oil companies to eliminate this amounts to a depreciation allowance you know for just to single out the oil companies when our profits are average with the rest of manufacturing i'm not sure that that is anything other than political of kind of action  by law makers but if that's what they decide then well we'll have to go along with it but in terms of our taxes the eighteen billion dollars that's real that's money that we're paying to governments around the world and it's far far exceeds any incentives that we would ever be eligible for this you are identified as paul us for questions we've talked about two of them so the other two are doesn't shell oil come from the north atlantic and is it an opec member or shell oil is headquartered in the  this primary shares listed on the u k stock exchange were publicly listed company the shell oil company is one hundred percent owned subsidiary of royal dutch shell we've been in the us for about one hundred years and been serving us customers  barrel remember the opec cartel will be illegal in most of the world it is your job as oil executives to fight them for us believe me you will get public support if you take on this fight i believe it may be pec way thank you i'm from lancaster variety of reasons international law does not make opec illegal there are some countries around the world and yes in the us such a cartel would not be legal in the us but the us does not have extra jurisdiction all responsibility for what happens outside the us and something that's a global business i think what we have to do is concentrate on domestic resource development in this country if we were not prohibited from exploring on federal lands if we were not prohibited from the outer continental shelf it's my view that between conservation between efficiency in the use of energy with the diesel as ation of the american fleet like the european fleet has diesel live if we could produce more oil in this country i think we could swing the import export balance by up to six million barrels a day today about fourteen million barrels will be imported twenty one million barrels will be used that means us productions about seven million barrels a day imagine if the government policy of this country changed such that we could increase domestic production by two to three million barrels a day and save two to three million barrels a day we could have a dramatic impact on the global availability of crude which would have an impact favorable impact in my view on american consumers we could do it the government and that's part of our fifty city tour and the outline of an energy strategy for america if we change the balance of the import export relationship americans would be more secure with their energy security have a lower more affordable energy supply we can continue to invest in alternatives and new technologies i frankly am an optimist that we could have it all do you a plan to attempt to think that year of each party's nominee good question and the answer is absolutely i've already visited with almost all of the nominees are that i would say the candidates not the nominees yet but the candidates to have a long and in depth discussion about energy issues as seen through the eyes of an energy company this coming twenty eighth of february is a big day in houston texas there's a president chael summit on energy security sponsored by the greater houston partnership of the city of houston where we're headquartered every presidential candidate has been a bill that has been invited it's not a debate it is a format where each presidential candidate could come forward explain to some three thousand people at the george r brown convention center what their energy strategy is for america i believe n b c is going to be televising this this is a chance for americans to see the presidential candidates tell the american people what their energy strategy for the future is going to be i plan to be there i'd like to hear what they have to say anchorage alaska good morning caller  doing so for many years yet none of your ships have a registered geographic sapphic appendix with the u s coast guard to conform with the applicable law requiring alvin's firefighting capable of rescuing your tankers was sitting around a dutch harbor for a couple months and then sent away where you would otherwise have to have those listed in the applicable geographic specific appendix now i've contacted  if you're going to be willing to comply with law in this matter and i would suggest contacting commander rob smith and commandants office who has been conducting an investigation of the g s a requirements for some time and as a matter of fact the commandant was forced to answer the question almost a year ago on c span where there was some other twenty six or more tankers translating the region's region of the western alaska captain of the ports on without the required spill response plan i'm hoping you'll get together with those other shippers saying and deploy the proper spill response required equipment throughout the aleutian chain could you please respond well you raise very serious concerns and i must say that i'm not familiar with any violations we have an international shipping business which is set up entirely to make sure that we do comply and follow the regulations of wherever we are are are sending our our ships but i will certainly take your your question to heart and i will go back to my organization and ask for the specifics with respect to the preparations this past summer in which we did have a fleet standing by in anticipation of drilling in the beaufort sea we made sure that our spill response capability was world class and we spent extra funds to have extra equipment extra people extra training because spill response in the arctic is absolutely essential to anyone that's going to do business there we're determined to be successful in opening up drilling in alaska but only only if we can meet the environmental regulations and standards that have been set by the u s government the state of alaska because we do not want to get into conflict with the people of alaska in particular the people of the north who have a very determined lifestyle which is pristine in the way in which they live in the environment in which they live we want to co exist and demonstrate by our company said dialogue with the public on energy policy i've gotta know that we gave the wrong website address out saw it and i'm going to give the more specific one but it is that us energy security shell dot com and after ten a m eastern time you'll be able to find it ther hofmeister i'm sure audiences many of them said appreciate you being here to take calls today thank you hi i'm tamil henry part of the political team here at c span my job this year covering the presidential race is really exciting will be crisscrossing the nation to bring you the very latest in political activities campaign amounts mintz candidates speeches and fundraisers look at the an up close look at how the candidates interact with the public as they seek support for their party nomination the kind of unscripted moment you won't find anywhere else and we will just stop at the battleground state we'll follow the race wherever it goes for more information check out our web site a campaign network dot org and click on our video archive section for past programs and political news this c span networks providing you access to public affairs on television radio and on the web next national intelligence director mike mcconnell this is part of his testimony before the senate intelligence committee from earlier today it's just under an hour hearing will all appropriate apologies to the very busy man else and they decided they wanted to ignore your order in full or in part or you do  it would depend on circumstances of course if they if it was i considered it appropriate and reasonable and then i would insist  on getting it corrected that they would do what i'd ask him to do and the there via ways to do that fifteen of those agencies work for another cabinet officer so one option is to work it out with cabinet officer my always have recourse to fall back to the president if necessary and something i would not want to do and would make every effort to work around but that is the option that i that i could exhaust if i had to but you wouldn't have any lack of confidence that what you saw to be what should be done would be done no sir that one of the things that the bill created was something called the jack and i remember how to expand space joint intelligence and we meet three times a year we talk about priorities and so on and in the con since i'm a member of the principals committee in the white house i am at all of those decision by s so i know these people and we work with them on a regular basis  so i think if it was something that was in extremis that had to be done immediately there's a path to get that done if there's something more of a policy nature there's a path to get that worked out so it's not like having a department intelligence i mean for sure and that's clear hire or fire directive authority it's more of a coordinating role but if i felt strongly about it as a professional in the interest of protecting a country for whatever reason i think i could prevail  the end the debate and dialogue and always have the president to go to finesse or i want to come back to you and that mr director i want to ask a question which some will take as political but i take his policy  the house has left i'm meeting with the chairman reyes of thousand tell his committee tomorrow morning at ten o'clock because he's concerned and i think that john to meet i'm not sure but i know i'm going to meet with him to figure out what what what what what what what's down the path revise it there's no question the president had what he wanted in our bill and he made it very clear and on one day and then on the next day he proceed to make it very clear that this is a terrible thing that the house was doing and that that intelligence collection would stop and that they should be in danger to terrorists from  you know sort of from sunday morning so i want to ask this question you and i both want to see the protect america we don't want to see the protect america act but on saturdays you're clear about that we're all clear about that i believe the best way to handle the fact that the senate sent the house a bill only a few days before the expiration of the protect america act and this for the second time does in fact give them reason to be upset with us pushed around by us i look at it differently i think that it would be great if we agreed on a short term extension but that isn't going to happen be that as it may i believe would be responsible for us to help the american people and i'm doing this hoping that people will be listening understand what the government's anti terror terrorism capabilities will be in the days of that other words of the protect america act is expiring on saturday night the natural inclination is to feel that that's the end of collection and so some a when are you coming isn't it true that intelligence the intelligence collection gap which was discussed a great deal at the end of last july  you described that last summer with respect to the coverage of international terrorists has been closed we've significantly improved our posture since last july as sir and because of the act that you all passed last august to protect america i guess right right isn't it true that the targeting and collection of communications of foreign terrorists now underway pursuant to the protect america act will continue even after the sunset of the protect america act the provisions of the bill allow us once we had submitted the files a court the procedures and so on they're proved and we're we are loaded from the the date that's approved we get a year or so some level of connection collection will go forward if it in fact expires on on saturday but now that said it's a very important i highlight for this committee what what else happened what else one we lose the ability to compel the carriers to help us to there is no liability protection for the carriers therefore they're thinking twice about helping us making it much more difficult and three this is a very dynamic situation while we may have something on the on some key targets that we're working  recruitment training different names different personalities will pop up under protect america act that was manageable so if it expires that new dynamic is not it would put us back in a position under the old fights the legislation which we would have to satisfy a probable cause standard if collection were obtained in the country meaning a wired united states so it's there is some level of protection but it's not where we need to be when we don't have the carriers  willingly participating with us in a way to compel them and it's a pretty dynamic situation yes but they're the bulk part of the answer is that intelligence would continue to be collected what is pre loaded with worries legitimate worries on your part about as what are the withdrawal of whatever might be what's preloaded and for where we still have continuing cooperation the private sector right isn't it true that no vital intelligence collection now going on under the authority of the protect america will be shut off on saturday would not be turned off the issue becomes compelling private sector cooperation then the and then things that changes are that's correct the way you stated it is is correct didn't the congress specifically provide the protect america act the p a authorizations continue in effect until their expiration the way that you've framed it is true but the my response is also true i mean there is some provision for carry over but it has i understand it has issues yes sir and is it also not true that if we come to august which is when it technically would expire that there are relatively easy ways for that to be continued if we have not worked out our start would agree with that you would not meet with that and i wouldn't and the reason is i would find would find ourselves in a situation that we found ourselves last july remember when when this was returned to the pfizer court in january of zero seven and the initial response of the pfizer court we had fairly broad capability to do what we needed to do but as subsequent judges looked at the situation and interpreted the words in the law going back to seventy eight over time capability was subtracted from us and so when we went into july of zero seven we had lost about two thirds of our capability right last year last year so my point is going into the way you framed your  question if if we got to july and then the things we are to august in the things we put in since protect america act expire we would be back in that same situation just like colleagues but i got asked this last question if you have any uncertainties about this and you do and i do what did not have made sense for the president and that there were reasons that we jam the house because we were clogged in the senate we're not able to operate on amendments for a number of days the house has been through this this experience with us before they don't like it and they're angry about it and you could see that the results of the of the extension vote last night that an extension of the protect america act in order to allow these things to work out which they surely would have been would have been a good idea sir when i went through this experience last summer one of your members quoted that in the political context i was a little over my  head i admit that was absolutely correct this is a political process i am a professional officer with professional responsibilities so when i'm advising my committee both committees and you want to listen on the hill or in the executive branch is where condition is this is a political process and so all i can do is tell you that if we if we extend the act or expire of the act we're at a disadvantage and so how it's worked out in the political process is that's going to be to those of you were elected to those positions well yes it will be and i thank you very much and send about thank you mr chairman i will offer a political suggestion and not ask you to comment since you are a professional officer the house passed a bill that was very different from our bill it was clear that the president said he would not sign it because you said it would not work there is nothing in  rules of the house or any other body that prevents them from looking at that understanding what's coming they knew what we reported out in october they knew that that was the that was the form that they would be dealing with  house so it is not a question of when we got it there so much as the inability of the house to deal with it and i'll just leave that out there for no comment i do want to ask you one thing on which you can comment and i think the important thing and appreciated the chairman's question one of the key point that you brought out was that without the power to compel without protection or retroactive protect the carriers which may be involved in this program realize that they are suffering serious threats to their business livelihood and perhaps even their even their facilities and personnel if we don't give them retroactive immunity for the work that they've done and thus it is my assumption that general counsels of the carriers are telling would be telling you you you show us a court order we're not going to cooperate on anything which is not covered by a court order is that a fair assumption sir it's fair and i would take it a step further  this has to be a willing relationship partnership and so in where we find ourselves now even with a court order some are saying we'll take it to court to verify and what i want to highlight is for us to do this job it requires this willing cooperation and if you think about this technology area united states industry dominates it it's a it's a strategic advantage for us and so we're putting ourselves in a position that we we can't capitalize on it and i would suggest even perhaps putting it at risk what i mean by that it's very easy for competition in a foreign country to point to a company here and say you're being sued for spying on its citizens or whatever even if those allegations are totally out of order it could damage your brand and so with sarbanes oxley fiduciary responsibility shareholders and so on we put these companies in a position where they feel like they're they are being punished for trying to help so that that's the the mitigation that we've got to get through to get this protection for  director this hearing is what i wanted to have for a long time and i hate to be taking up questions that are of war i it important but i found the debate yesterday on the floor and particularly the news coverage of it somewhat troubling the floor adopted how the end was a sion bill approved in conference with what i consider to be one very bad provision requiring that the cia be limited only to those techniques approved in the army field manual i'd like to ask you to comment on that second but i want to ask you to address specifically some of the charges and allegations that i think were either badly misinformed or irresponsible that we heard on the floor and that were covered in the media i spoke today with a with an international broadcast group asking me questions to be fed back into the middle east they picked up statements that were made on the floor that i believed to be absolutely false so first i would like to ask you the eight treaty obligations i want to know whether there is any intent whether there's any chance the cia would use those or use torture or use waterboarding i believe that the argument is appropriately separate from the discussion we heard on the floor saying this bill outlaws torture outlaws waterboarding i do not believe that we need any more legislation i believe that is outlawed i believe is not used i would like your comment specifically on that and your comments on what would happened to the cia's interrogation of high value boundaries of the law is this this imaginary box outlining with my hands that's that box is the result of the american political process defines our rules it's our law and the army field manual in the context of this box is a small circle in the middle of it it's designed for a specific purpose for a minute uniform generally younger less experienced less trained for a for a specific purpose so the question becomes do you limit the cia and  interrogation program to that to that small circle the president stated what his intentions are but the question is what's inside that box and is it lawful if it's loss of lawful as determined by the american political process than cia would use those lawful techniques in certain prescribe circumstances as you've alluded to there's there aren't enhanced interrogation techniques currently waterboarding is not included in that if it were ever decided that for any reason that waterboard should be included in that there's a process to make that determination to determine if it's legal the law has changed since waterboarding was last used some five years ago so i don't know if i'm answering your question but it's a techniques that are specifically prohibited in the army field manual burning and electric shocks those those clearly are are illegal and are not appropriate for anyone to collude the cia certainly the ones that are specifically things that you just mentioned yes or the final question was what would happen to the cia interrogation program if they were limited that small circle in the big box  permissible it could not be as effective as they have been in certain circumstances no what i would describe is it's it's a point in time when you go to when those techniques were used we knew little about an organization that had just attacked the world trade centers and captured some hardened terrorists and so there was some interrogation techniques that use that resulted in useful information so as that something is exercised every day on anyone is captured no it wouldn't be done today the way it was done back then probably not really one of the main reasons we know so much more and it's very easy to have an interrogation if you if you have lots of answers a chain used to test and probe and establish relationship anyone would prefer a non confrontational approach if possible but still what's in the box so long as it's not torture as defined in the american political process as being a legal cia would be capable of using some of those techniques thank you i would like to say to my colleagues that the hearing is not about the question that i asked or the question of the vice chairman asked although they have their their interest but it's about the condition of the authorities the ability to maneuver and to the lead of the director of national intelligence in a way that is most  comment on this assertion if you could tell me if it's true or false your surveillance of anyone affiliated with al qaeda or any organization affiliated with al kheda or any person affiliated with any organization affiliated with al qaeda will continue unimpeded through any period in which the so called protect america act is not in effect at least until august of this year  i don't think that's correct sir but let me ask for some legal help me tell you my and my understanding we have certain procedures that are that are sort of loaded been approved by the court and so on in a dynamic situation if there was someone outside that i don't  outside al qaeda known to an organization affiliated with al qaeda i'm using unknown to us or outside a specific list of identifiers or that sort of thing i think if if the protect america act expires it would put us back in a situation of probable cause if the collection was done in the united states on a wire and i think that's the answer but let me unless they were affiliated no i think if it's done if expires and stun in this country it would require you to have a warrant i believe but let me get someone who actually knows the answer been  here to to the extent someone is covered under an existing authorization now thirty days for an acquisition signed by the attorney general and director of national intelligence and that has been issued  those continue for up to one year or even beyond the expiration of the of the protect america act directive issued under those authorizations should also may also continue under those also and  authorisations may include organizational authorization so that new individuals who are affiliated with the organization can nevertheless be surveilled correct we would certainly take that position senator what we could not do is that the issues that are raised in the attorney general deionized letter are if we need to modify or issued new directives pursuant to those authorizations to different electronic communication service providers or different  methods than what are covered in existing directives under or to modify those authorizations and directives which we have done over the past six months then there's also a substantial question in the wording of the act although we think we hope we have good arguments but it may be litigated of whether the liability protection continues on because that is in the wording of of what actually continues on so as the a g laid out there's there's uncertainty in all those different areas but not as to your ability to surveil people who are affiliated with as it turned out they were in fact destroyed is there anything out of that circumstance that bears on the authority the d n i versus the director of the cia is there do we need to strengthen the authority of the d n i so that when the d n i makes a statement like that to a cia director it becomes clear that that is in fact a decision that the agency must comply with there's a command gap between the d n i d n i negroponte making that statement and the action that took place in contravention of the statement and where is that command gap it's it's being investigated now and i don't i haven't talked to him basher meghan negroponte and i don't know all the circumstances but if it were an order and if it were violated and two big ifs then i would agree with the way outlined it but what what i what i've heard just and people talking about it it wasn't a direct order it was an opinion but but i don't know but the way you describe it was an order and if you don't i'll eat as part of your d n i authority i do and they need it as an order and violated then you'd have to deal with that one last just quick reaction you said the army field manual was designed for young men generally less less experience less well trained in uniform in uniform i frankly don't think that's true and i would challenge it and urge you to maybe reconsider at because what i understand is that the military has very significant and very experienced intelligence operatives that men who i've courses this is a matter you have you know special ops individuals you have d i a folks through you have some of the very best intelligence and interrogation operators in the country the united states military and they are the ones who are telling us that they work very well within the confines of the army field manual and i think it's fair to have the discussion as to whether or not at that level the army field manual is the right restriction or not what is not fair i don't think is to take the military interrogation and intelligence operation and denigrate it as if it's a bunch of eighteen year olds running around we've got no experience doing this and the army field manual has to protect them from their naive today and their ignorance because it's the same field manual applies to highly trained highly professional highly experienced individuals many of whom have a lot more interrogation experience it appears than folks in your or in the in the c think of the army field manual is primarily lowest common denominator to protect the nation from what happened in the heinous behavior at abu ghraib so it it is a course of action that was taken by this body and the executive branch to agree to how we're going to do that in  future so that that circle closed to be a smaller circle what you say is true they are very experienced people but now they live within that circle the question is do we want to make the same circle apply to all parties and that's the question you all have to wrestle with i would say to my colleagues the following the it may be that and senator whitehouse did ask one question which was directly on point of the purpose of this hearing it may be that my colleagues don't have an enormous interest and the power is in the authorities of the director of national intelligence and they wish to talk about other matters which are much more fun to talk about but they were not the point of this hearing they were not the point of this hearing that's partly my fault and that's partly the vice chairman point because we start out with two such matters but the point is does he have the authority that he needs and if people feel that they are disinclined to engage in that subject then i of course will be very happy to hear about that but this hearing but i want to first say how valuable your questions were and how important it was that you brought us clearly to some clarity on the issue of what really happens if the p a expires would agree which by the way i oppose letting that happen and i also feel that way about senator whitehouse questions about the army field meant this these things are critical but i happen to find the topic of this hearing fun as you say or important and let me let me just say a little over a year ago the committee held another hearing on intelligence reform which oh d n i testified to its ability to lift and shift quote lift and shift collection resource to address current crises such as dar for in somalia the problem however i think you might agree is that lifting and shifting almost inherently means that it doesn't help us anticipate crises before they happen it does not help the intelligence community develop experience or expertise on these threats and it does not represent an ongoing commitment to long term challenges in fact  deputy d n i for collection acknowledged at our hearing that there is a quote need to get the intelligence community back to what i grew up calling global reach quote unquote quote we don't have that today and quote she further testified that with congress h the intelligence community can quote get back to a place where we can do global reach and pay attention to places that are not perhaps high on the list today unquote mr chairman that is what we should be doing pushing the intelligence community to allocate its resources in intelligence community that quote one challenge to improving the coverage of emerging and strategic issues across the into legends community has been the diversion of resources to current crisis support unquote certainly current crisis support  takes a disproportionate share but that may just offer how we try to mitigate that we have a thing we call the national intelligence party's framework and we make that dynamic every six months we go through a process leading up to the signature by the president and the  way we get to closure is the cabinet officers sit and we take them through a dial what are we looking at what do we not looking at and we have we've added some some dynamics to that in the last cycle because cabinet officers tend to focus on the here now and it was to get your question what about those areas that we aren't we don't have as much focus on how do we do that so they've engaged in a very positive way so we're trying to get back to addressing your question well i think with regard to that last year your office testified about its authorities to lift and shift collection resources to address crises what you just said mean that the old d n i has moved beyond lift and shift to ensure that sustained attention is paid to regions that are traditionally under served by our intelligence community or is it not a fair notice that is they are i don't my personal like the term lift and shift more that's that's crisis management in a collection situation but the whole nature of the party's forum  our framework national tells party framework was to was to force focus on the areas that we're not getting as much attention and it's changed quite a bit where we look at what we're looking at how we're doing it in the resources we're dedicating to it but i think about this a lot especially as i trips and work my work in africa with regard to foreign relations committee and last week you testified that quote kenya is likely to enter a period of increased social tension instability which could affect its willingness and ability to cooperate with the united states on regional diplomatic and counterterrorism matters this is exactly the kind of strategic challenge the united states that we need and dissipate rather than just respond to it also demonstrates clearly how issues like political repression and corruption ethnic tensions and do stay linked the stabilizing pressures of poverty and marginalisation directly affect our national our national security so direct mr director what are you doing to direct election resources toward these sorts of issues extreme political crisis in kenya and what impact it has on us as well as on the kenyan people the part of the way we do this as i mentioned in my remarks about mission manager and mission manager took on a political context because if you have one then the nation that it focus on a region focuses on gets there's a reaction so what i'm looking at is how do i get the benefits of mission management in the construct of how we currently operate and as you know we have a national tell this council which consist of national intelligence officers i was our most senior officers in the community for regent what i want to do is empower them to work across the disciplines humint sigint imagery whatever and get real focus and then there's there's a constituency for every region of the world department state sector to our defense or wherever and have active dialogue with them to understand more their needs and so on and we're starting to have some  traction there's been particular focus on on africa because of kenya because of chad because of somalia so we're better not where i'd like to be but we're better and it's it's making us more sensitive in a in a global context thank you mr director t questions that i had planned to ask about the last couple of days and let me start then with respect on the authority question to some matters of fiscal responsibility and what i've long been concerned about is that there's a habit in the intelligence community of beginning these very large acquisition programs and nobody's really quite sure how to pay for it down the road and i think you've been concerned about this as well and you've talked about a variety of strategies you've been interested in including audit double financial statements and a variety of things but what have you been able to accomplish thus far to make sure that the intelligence community doesn't spend these huge sums of money on these major acquisitions that are going to later have to be cancelled on the grounds that they're on affordable and in effect don't give you value for the dollar that you're allocated sir excellent question something i'm very concerned about and focused on let me capture sort of three areas of interest with acquisition where you we get ourselves in trouble the first is requirements creep we're going to design something build something whatever and then as we go through the process everybody wants to add another capability another capability so all of a sudden it becomes an affordable the schedule slips so we have a we have a major problem so we have to do a better job in containing requirements creep second thing is we lost a generation of program managers when when the dot boom occurred in the ninety's many of the people with the skills that built large systems were tracked in the private sector and they left so we we suffered from and an inadequate supply of professional program managers so we recognise that we're trying to rebuild that capability another part of it is having realistic  cost estimating the ideas don't start something you can afford now you know if we can do that we established a new deputy on our staff that before acquisition someone experienced thirty more years in industry to work through these issues and now hard decisions as you're aware we had a program that was multi billion dollars that was putting us in a position of being a one point failure and so we took that on as a community and my ex con i mentioned earlier we took it to all the parties that had to make it as a citizen and finally took it to the president for decision for coordination with the hill now that i think gets us back into focusing in an area looking at the architecture what's affordable how would you manage it and we start a process we call i see a intelligence collection architecture that's to to force us to look at the discipline the cost in the schedule so that we will choose things that are affordable in the best interest of the nation so i i feel like we're making progress but but one of the things that i would ask your support on currently your bill or the bill for this office gave me authorities for a streamline acquisition the problem is you didn't give me the authority to delegate them to anybody that spends money so while the d c i and the director of central intelligence have special authority to do special things can take risks that can go fast and you gave it to me it's only for my staff and not for the rest the community i need that authority for the rest community and i'm sympathetic to that let me ask you about something that came up in an open hearing not long ago that my constituents just were kind of flack when they heard about it and it goes to again the question of your authority with respect to the problem at one of the open hearings we had last fall willy when a senior f b i official acknowledged that a large number of f b i agents analysts don't have access to the internet at their desk and committee staff and found that there were similar access problems existing for the f b i for top secret system particularly for the offices overseas and you and i have talked about technology in the past and i know you have a great interest in this what can you do with your authorities to in effect address something that i think just defies common sense you  case i can offer to help and we've done that we put technical people into the process to help to think it through and to requirements not sort of thing and i have some budget authority now it's it's much more clearly defined understood and in action for the agencies that are in defense department it's it's less clearly defined for agencies outside the defense department so we're that's something we recognize and we're working through it and let me just make one other point so you capture this on the executive committee that we've established to run the community the director of the f b i is now a member that he participates actively and he is now benefiting from some of this deliberative process so i think will make that better owner of the meager territories of west virginia the honorable senior senator west virginia bye bye virginia by pointing out that we're having more votes at four thirty and that's not much time so now we have three more people that wish to speak and they're probably not even going to get the full five minutes so senator feinstein also asked you to take judicial notice that it valentine's night and so loaves have some responsibility  in addition to what senator wyden point was in your response to it are you saying that you believe you have adequate budgetary authority at this time we had a conversation about a year ago it was a personal conversation and you said you hope to work this out internally you told us earlier about some of the ways you would work it out and so i guess my question to you is without specific additional budgetary authority do you think you have what it takes to do what is necessary to correct many of the big problems within the intelligence communities ma'am partially and let me tell you exactly what the issue is the law says that if it's a different if it's a an acquisition by defense agency which is where most of the acquisitions done and it's funded has money also contribute money military intelligence program into the into a major buy and what's what's happened over the last say six or eight years is major systems of moved all into defense all into the national program or it's a hybrid so it's it's mixed there's been a lot of to ing and fro ing between staffs about will use these procedures or those procedures the poor guy was trying to buy things were getting double reviewed and sets of procedures on so i sat down with secretary gates and said this is untenable he's agreed to a process where we are now is in this as interagency coordination for the directive is this is interagency it will go to the principals in within two weeks and what we'll do is make recommendations to present so we hope to have this clearly defined and resolved i would say by italy it's scheduled for signature by the fifteenth of april if it doesn't happen and i have an obligation to come back to tell you it didn't happen and i need some help ok good because i think it's our intent that you have that authority lease it certainly is mind so i want to help with that any way i can one of my concerns has been the growth of contractors within the agency and there's been difficulty in getting any clear understanding of how many contractors are really within the intelligence community if you exclude the construction of satellites which is necessarily done by contractors and how how many contractors are there in the intelligence community i think well two things we've done a report so we can make that available to you and i think it's  detailed questions on why this why that and so on are now your office is now up to one thousand seven hundred fifty people i gather forty percent of that is the counterterrorism center which you inherited but the remaining sixty percent is is not is that a stable size at this point or is it going to continue to expand memoir what i would like to do is kept my office and a level like the joint chiefs of staff just just kept it a reasonable place whatever that is and i'd like to get help from you to do that now that said what is what i need you to also help me do the joint chiefs of staff is kept the services or our defense agencies grow works or contract depending on the mission so i need to have the counter terrorism center the counterproliferation center the counter intelligence executive in all these little things they need to be treated as second to find command so they can do whatever they need to do and i've got us a staff that's kept at a level you can see it we can manage it and we can live within our cap that'll let me manage it because i don't have a profit motive like i would have in industry so i'm looking for a way to force us to deal statement you mentioned that you have focused the d n i as well as the integrated the intelligence community and i'd like to have you clarify that in terms of exactly what are the natures in dimensions of your power because when th act became law four years ago the president was referring to it as a single unified enterprise for the entire intelligence community it was certainly understood that you to be a human you you ha unified command over the intelligence agencies so how do you view your role now as an integrator as opposed to a director you know one who obviously should be taking charge of the responsibilities within those agencies not day to day control but certainly being able to direct and so i know you've chosen a middle ground in all of this and yet how does that pale with the original law as you know if you're director you have a line authority and there's sixteen agencies and of the sixteen fifteen of them work for another cabinet officer so the as a practical matter i'm in a situation where it's someone in a department with a different set of personnel standards and a different set of hiring and firing policies and so on so it's not that i can give direct orders to someone else's organization so there's a there's a cabinet secretary between me and the process so what we've worked out is to operate as a sense of a unified community and we use this executive board that we have to to do that and we have the cooperation so far of the cabinet officers the only way i could see the change that dramatic significantly would create a department of intelligence and then it would be operated like other departments where you have a lot of thought ready so right now it's there is some level of cooperation and integration and coke in and management skills that are involved in keeping this community unified do you think that is consistent with the original act man i was the words from the original act you well know the debate was a department of intelligence or a coordinator although it's labeled director across the community and the words in the act left it the position without authority for line direction capability now in this inner agency process we're going through now it's been recognized we're trying to get an executive order that will help us make this a stronger position but i guess it gets back to the original question the premise of whether or not you are seeking additional statutory authority we have to go through this executive order ban furniture because i think it's absolutely critical back to this point about time is that the essence because it has been for years and i think that the time has come to make a decision so we can you know we can create the culture that still underway which is also disturbing about creating a culture of collaboration you know the need to share that information and that obviously still is not being truly embedded in the culture and that's disturbing and so we need to move to a point i think that you know we should have a timeline and if it can occur if we have to change the law then i think we need to do that in order to make sure it happens otherwise we're going to be in the same situation and who knows if we don't understand the nature of the consequences as a result of our inability to do that and so it's clear that the director does need strong authority and the question is whether or not we should be prepared to undertake that and frankly i think it has to happen in order to ensure i don't think we view the role of directors being just an integrator but also unify our memories you you're dealing with in the limitations of the last years and that's what we have to recognize our response