been used over the years to advance the majority party's political purposes and their agenda i think we've gone too far here i think in violating house rules in violating basic concepts of to undermine organized labor and collective bargaining rights to unfortunately cross that line over again and over again whether it's in wisconsin with the collective bargaining law that was ruled unconstitutional by the courts or here today and i myself and dozens of other members of congress sent a letter to you requesting information on the executive order that we're talking about today in particular we were interested in some direction that you had sent to agencies to report back on how the executive order had been complied with how many agencies had used plas and to do so on a quarterly basis  we sent this letter over in october and have not gotten a response since but i would be interested to know from you as to the feedback and response you've gotten from agencies in now the year or so since the executive order and then the guidance requiring the quarterly reports back was issued mister gordon congressman murphy thank you for the question i apologize that you haven't yet gotten a response my understanding is the response is close to being on its way to you i will tell you that for the most part we have seen few instances of plas being used in construction projects that is consistent with our guidance what we've said to agencies is you need to do this carefully you need to be sure that the use  pla in a particular project and those specific facts will serve economy and efficiency it is not unusual in the procurement system as i'm sure you know that when we have a new tool availableh and this is essentially a new tool for our contracting officerh it takes a while for us to figure out where it makes the most sense how to use it i think that a cautious balanced approach makes sense the fact is that there are lots of academic studies out there some indicate that plas save you money some indicate that you don't part of the beauty of what gsa has done is you have real examples not academic studies of what's actually happened and i think that's helpful mister murphy have you received  of you i think one of the points that will be made likely by the second panel is that nonunion contractors are discriminated against when a pla is required though they can go out and sign collective bargaining agreement after they are assigned the award that that puts them at a disadvantage versus contractors who are initially union contractors can you talk about that critique again we won't have the opportunity to ask this of any  minority witness on the second panel and i imagine it will be one of the primary criticisms on the second panel so i would pose it to both of you as to whether or not you have seen a discriminatory nature against nonunion increase competition i'm confident that we can do this in a way that will not discriminate the fact is that even when project labor agreements are used very often the subcontractors for example are open shops that are not unionized in the workforces as we noted in the preamble to the federal register notice in the rule but in any event if a company if a company feels that an agency is conducting a competition in a way that excludes them and makes it impossible for them to compete they have an avenue available they can file a bid protest and they will get an independent review whether by the court of federal claims or gao to consider whether in fact they are being excluded or unfairly discriminated against in that competition but we haven't decided how that's going to look but it will be some sort of summary data and evaluation of the worth of plas mister lankford when that gets into a draft form that is available to be able to be sent to our committee i would very much like to request a copy of that and that would be sent over to us so that that draft report could be added to that i was not in the administration at the time you probably know i was in the office of general counsel at the government accountability office gao and joined the administration only in november of nine so i'm not in a position to know what happened lankford i've been trying to process through because obviously we want to use plas and i want to reiterate this conversation is not about excluding plas it's just trying to determine why there is an encouragement to use them other than just that's best competition to try to provide that neutral playing field to sayh my question is has there been a tendency in the agencies that they didn't want to use plas and so there needs to be an aggressive approach to say no we encourage you to use them mister gordon now i understand the question and i can speak was say agencies should be allowed to look project by project and say here is a project where it would not serve efficiency to have a pla but here is a project where it would serve it that's what we're trying to do we want that to be increasing the point scale on them as we talked about before it gives them an immediate advantage to be able to engage and say we may be a little higher in price but we're greater in value because there can't be a strike during this time we're going to offset our collective bargaining agreement with this that we won't fulfill that to be able to get this project so it does skewer somewhat and it concerns me when this draft summary one of the statements in it says that there is a risk that plas will exclude but having pla in it that excludes small and minority businesses  of the points on the technical side your past performance your technical approach your use of small businesses all right the amount that you commit to subcontract to small businesses is frequently a factor and it can frequently have more than hpercent of the points so that in the mix of things what you are capturingh and there are different ways to do this gsa has taken one approach and we're evaluating how well that works but it seems to me you can appreciate understand that and again there may be great location for a pla to be the perfect tool to be able to use that in that toolbox on it but the last thing we would want to do is to be able to try to put out the word and say this group gets a higher score based on the fact that they are unionized and discourage other people from engaging in a competitive environment we want to be able to have a level playing field and a competitive environment so we are getting best value and as many contractors as possible are bidding for our projects to get the best possible price if we are pushing in such a way as to say there is a possibility someone will be excluded that's what i am beginning to question and to say if this report is questioning that from gsa then i'm also saying okay what was the evidence to make the shift when a year after the shift was made or hyears after the shift was made there pla bids but that is not required by this executive order nor is it required by any other direction from the administration mister gordon you are absolutely correct what we are doing at this point is letting agencies take different approaches we may down the road as we listen to what the agencies are doing we may come up with best practices that's what we frequently do whether we're dealing with the ways of handling organizational conflicts of interest best value past performance we let agencies try different approaches with some guidance and then as we learn more we twenty three thousand merit shop contractors employing an estimated two million workers i have previously testified before on the subject of governmentmandated plas before another subcommittee of this committee and i have resubmitted that testimony for the record of this proceeding so that i can focus today on the very important bill introduced by congressman sullivan h r h this bill is vitally needed to prevent the ongoing waste of taxpayer dollars and corruption of the federal employers who choose not to belong to or have contracts with labor unions this order was issued as one of the president's first acts in february two thousand and nine with no meaningful outreach to the construction community no transparency in it formulationh we heard today that the representatives of the administration still don't know how it came to be and no factual justification at all for its findings most importantly there were no significant labor problems on any federal construction projects during the  years governed by president bush's executive order thirteen thousand two hundred and two which prevented federal agencies from requiring or prohibiting plas on federal construction projects or on federally assisted projects  the absence of any problems and from the manner in which the obama order was put into effect it is clear that the only reason for the pla executive order now in place was and is politics having heard or read the testimony of representatives from the office of management and budget and the gsa at now two congressional hearings we have yet to hear them identify any factual basis in the form of market research or identified labor problems previously existing on federal construction projects that justifies the federal government's new restriction on competition through pla mandates we heard today that it's a process and that it's open to competition but as the members rightly pointed out there is a preference the thumb is on the scale it is now being tilted if not mandated in favor of these plas and it is impacting competition they are doing a pilot program a pilot program that is ongoing in nature apparently it's continuing to this day on every gsa project that's a peculiar definition of pilot while they are supposedly gathering market research data which is contrary to the way that all other procurements have been done in the past gsa has adopted apparently a build first and ask questions later policy which is contrary to settled procurement principles at the same time many academic studies and we're going to hear more about that later and research by the government's own consultants as has already been pointed out have established that governmentmandated plas increase the cost to taxpayers reduce the number of potential bidders and particularly the number of subcontractors to those bidders who are merit shop they do nothing to improve the quality safety timel overall efficiency of government construction projects only congress can effectively stop the political favoritism in contract awards that is wasting taxpayer dollars and corrupting the federal procurement process and that is what h reference to plas the bill will prohibit federal agencies once and for all from awarding construction projects based on the improper consideration of whether the contractors are willing to enter into labor agreements until this executive order that had not been the rule of law in this country under federal procurement principles as the bill states agencies shall neither require nor prohibit contractors from adopting plas as a condition of being awarded the work nor discriminate on that basis the bill is neutral i can't emphasize that enough it's neutral on the subject of plas it simply keeps the government out of the process it closely tracks the bush executive orders that were upheld by the court of appeals from voluntarily entering into a pla on their own if they're so great let the market show it and let them come forward and prove it without it being tilted or mandated by the federal government we applaud your efforts to promote h own and do not represent the opinions of suffolk university nor do they represent my support for any organization or private interest that might stand to benefit from the passage of h r h which i heartily endorse i would like to enter into the record studies of project labor agreements that the beacon hill institute has performed under my direction over the last hyears of course we've already heard about those among these are studies in which bhi estimated the effects of plas on construction costs for school building projects in massachusetts connecticut and new york we found that plas added twelve to hpercent to final construction costs in massachusetts and connecticut and hpercent to final bids for school construction project about his work which is multicullinearity these are the kinds of buzz words that economists typically use when they are criticizing each other's work in an academic study i'm sorry that he has decided to conduct this conversation in a way that reflects more his outlandish and bizarre characterizations of our work than what we actually did but we can get back to that later in another study we examine the federal government's experience with the bushera ban on governmentmandated  study was aimed at determining how the record of construction projects conducted over this period reflects on president obama's executive order encouraging plas on construction projects costing twenty five dollars million or more president obama claimed  order was needed because quote largescale construction projects posed special challenges to efficient and timely procurement by the federal government our study proceeded on the premise that if president obama is correct about the need to mandate pla in order to overcome these quote special challenges unquote then president bush's ban on mandatory plas should have produced many instances of the delays strikes cost overruns ethcetera against which pla advocates frequently warn we asked the associated builders and contractors to assist us in getting the needed data from the federal government using the freedom of information act abc wrote to federal agencies with procurement responsibilities including omb and gsa for information relating to any problems caused by the absence of governmentmandated plas over the period of the bush executive order the result no respondent to the abc letters including the omb and the gsa could substantiate the occurrence of any delays or cost overruns on bushera projects costing twenty five dollars million or more that were attributable to the absence of a pla this finding should come as no surprise the real purpose of a pla is not to deal with special challenges but to discourage bids from nonunion contractors and to give the pla unions control over the hiring process plas accomplish this purpose by requiring contractors to follow onerous work rules to turn away from their own labor force in favor of labor provided by union hiring hall and to pay fringe benefits a second time that they already provide their workers consider in this light the fatuous nature of the argument for plas the argument presupposes that the work will be performed by the very unions that create the conditions under which the predicted delays jurisdictional disputes and work stoppages could occur if a pla is not adopted the unions that create these conditions are predestined to get work however only if the  adopted and then has the intended effect of discouraging nonunion contractors from bidding i have read a number of studies most commissioned by state and local government agencies which purport to show that a pla would save on costs typically however these studies adopt the same tortuous logic that the unions employ in support of a pla the studies show cost saving by assuming away the possibility that a decision not to adopt a pla might produce lower bids from qualified contractors th a decision to adopt one would produce however the best way to avoid cost overruns and delays is to encourage not to discourage bids from contractors who are not burdened by the collective bargaining agreements that hobbled the competitiveness  what we have is a state of affairs in which hpercent of construction workers are attempting to protect their jobs against the other hpercent and then the added cost to taxpayers these facts show that the real agenda behind governmentmandated plas is to shore up the market share amounts to a discriminatory and costly handout to a group of special pleaders i conclude by pointing out that h r h is not antilabor and in fact it's not even antiunion i am currently involved in a case where a contract is suing because its union was excluded from a new york city pla plas are only about the unions that manage to have the political clout to induce government agencies to require them to form  legislation stripped government of a useful tool for achieving economy in state government if the tool is a useful one then contractors are free on their own behalf to adopt the pla nothing is standing in the way of that therefore i believe that  testify before you today in support of the government neutrality and contracting act h r h i hope my testimony sheds some light on how governmentmandated project labor agreements harm qualified contractors and employees nothing more than to compete on a level playing field to build ontime and onbudget construction projects at the best possible price pla mandates and preferences by federal agencies result in increased costs for contractors and unnecessary hpercent this is why the industry supports legislative remedies like h r h which restores fairness in federal contracting and will eliminate waste so the government can build more projects and create more construction jobs and associates is a smallbusiness success story we have grown into an industryleading awardwinning general contractor specializing in designbuild projects lead sustainable design and historic preservation for federal state local and private clients our firm's success depends on the principles of free enterprise and attracting the most qualified talented personnel and companies for a job regardless of their labor affiliation over the years we have successfully performed millions of dollars worth of federal state local and private construction projects without the need to enter into a pla the contracting policies of the federal government influence the growth and success of small businesses like wu and associates as well as the economic wellbeing of our employees and their families pla mandates place merit shop competitors at a disadvantage and promotes discrimination based on labor affiliation plas have the practical effect of creating jobs exclusively for unionized construction trades people by forcing union representation or compulsory union membership inefficient and archaic union work rules payment of union dues forced contributions to union pension and benefit plans and a host of other problems on employees of merit shop contractors like my firm's employees that have freely decided not to join a union injecting pla mandates into the federal procurement process discourages competition from qualified contractors like my own hpercent of the u s construction workforce it doesn't take an economic degree to know that less competition from a pool of qualified bidders leads to increased costs for the government and taxpayers if members of this subcommittee thin pla mandates somehow advance the economy and efficiency in government contracting please take a look at my written testimony which describes in great detail my unfortunate experience with a federal pla mandate that resulted in procurement delays red tape and needless litigation costs in short in two thousand and ten u s army corps of engineers mandated pla on a project in camden new jersey in the middle of the bidding process by doing so the corps sent a message to qualified businesses like mine we were not welcome to build this project unless we agreed to use union labor and follow the terms and conditions of a pla this is ironic because we were previously selected as the prequalified contractor to bid this project after weeks of uncertainty and attempts to get the corps to reverse the pla we were left with no choice but to file a bid protest with the government accountability office against the corps illegal and discriminatory mandate eventually in the face of a bid protest the corp r offer as part of the bestvalue procurement process we decided not to pursue this contract further because we felt it was not worth investing the additional company resources to prepare a bid and compete against contractor offers in this distorted playing field this exercise resulted in lost time and money for our small business that we could have invested back into our workforce and company it also resulted in needless procurement delays exceeding two months as the it is outrageous that the government is wasting tax dollars and denying opportunity to quality businesses and their skilled workforces that cater to just hpercent of the u s construction workforce i ask that the members of the subcommittee support mr hsullivan's government neutrality in contracting act contractors and not federal procurement officials pressured by special interests should be the ones deciding whether a pla is an appropriate tool wu and associates applauds the oversight and government reform committee for its continued interest in the issue of governmentmandated plas thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of small businesses and the merit shop contracting community we deserve a fair opportunity to provide the best leading trade association in the construction industry it has more than thirty three thousand members in nearly one hundred chapters throughout the united states among these members are building highway industrial and utility contractors while some of them are quite large most are small and closely held many are federal contractors agc was founded in one thousand nine hundred and eighteen and historically a majority of its members have been union contractors today such contractors are in a minority but they remain a large and very important segment of the association's membership to this hearing on project labor agreements and h agc therefore brings a broad perspective before turning to the central subjects of today's hearing i should explain that the labor unions in the construction industry are unique unlike their industrial counterparts these unions have organized themselves along craft lines one union represents carpenters another represents operating engineers another represents electricians and so on down the line industrial unions represent everyone in the appropriate bargaining unit without regard to any differences in their job classifications but construction unions are different no one of them represents all of the craft workers on a typical construction project the individual agreements negotiated with each of these unions are similarly limited each agreement covers a separate and single craft but on the other hand the typical agreement applies to all of the work that the craft performs in a particular area plas differ from these areawide agreements in two ways plas are typically negotiated with several unions and therefore cover several crafts and as the name suggests plas are limited to individual projects and are not areawide the historical purpose of plas dating back to a time when unions represented nearly hpercent of all construction workers was to eliminate inconsistencies in these areawide agreements that would otherwise apply to particular projects such as differences in work rules and expiration dates then and now  as typically supersede such areawide agreements over the last sixty years as the percentage of construction workers that unions represent has fallen below hpercent project labor agreements have become less and less relevant a large majority of today's work is not subject to any agreement with any labor union and the need to address differences between and among labor agreements has greatly diminished open shop contractors are free to coordinate their employment practices entirely on their own initiative and without changing or superseding any prior agreements with labor unions in this new environment union contractors are more likely to seek plas for the purpose of meeting their open shop competition without seeking to open or reopen their areawide agreements such contractors can seek the more favorable terms or conditions they may need to compete for individual projects agc neither supports nor opposes plas per se the association takes the position that such agreements are just another of the many tools that contractorsh not owners but contractors should have at their disposal as they seek to meet their clients needs at the same time agc strongly opposes government mandates for plas or areawide agreements or any other labor agreements for publicly funded construction projects the national labor relations act commits such matters to the discretion of construction employers and their employees and for a host of reasons agc believes that government contracting agencies should follow suit as we have already heard government mandates for plas discourage competition they typically require open shop contractors to make fundamental changes in the way they would approach an upcoming project and to incur costs that such contractors would not otherwise incur such mandates may also trouble union contractors they also may require contractors to make significant changes in the way they would approach a project indeed their typical purpose and effect is to deprive union contractors of the opportunity to work under the area wide agreements that these contractors have already negotiated government mandates can also disrupt the bargaining over areawide agreements they invite the construction unions to bypass the contractors for whom their members work and seek to negotiate with what may be inexperienced public officials they also give unions the leverage to make demands that the unions could not otherwise make beyond that it remains clear that construction contractors are in the best position to determine whether and if so when a pla will help them meet the government's legitimate interest in having its projects constructed on time within budget and to all specifications federal construction contractors have to post performance bonds and to provide a host of contractual guarantees that they will meet their obligations it follows that these contractors already have ample incentive to consider any pla or other labor agreement that would make it from its substantive provisions under special circumstances as currently written this provision actually tilts the scale against union contractors but agc believes that the problem is inadvertent and can be quite easily corrected thank you little bit of time in pittsburgh in the room besides myself i saw your time at carnegie mellon and professor tuerk i think your background kind of speaks for itself i don't know that anybody could question what you've done mister tuerk thank you congressman i wonder if i could make a correction though i inadvertently it's not about who gets the bid or doesn't get the bid it's about fairness and certainly if the president's executive order is based on something that he thought was unfairh anybody in the panel is there any instance anywhere that would have caused the president to issue this executive order i can't find anything in any of the testimony on any of the witnesses that would suggest that there was a problems that existed in the bidding process and having done many rfps myself and looking at it i tend to feel the procured under the bush order there was no problem i think it's been referred to as a solution in search of a problem the only justification for it has to be political because of the way it was implemented with no outreach and with no identified realworld circumstances in which problems had arisen without plas being mandated by the government it's just totally unnecessary and contrary to decades of law as well as the competition in contracting act that requires full and open competition on federal projects mister kelly professor mister tuerk we did all we could to find out if there were any contracts under the bush administration that suffered for a lack of a campaign speech that president obama made in which he promised project labor agreements so again i think that's probably the best explanation for the executive order mister wu well wu and associates frankly we would not bid a project that would have a project labor agreement on it the previous testimony where the gsa procurement officer stated that there was a point system built into their rfp process would certainly raise our eyebrows in our office  as we look for fair bidding opportunities in the federal public and state sectors that would be something that would jump out right away and it would probably be a project that we would not pursue because i would agree with you mr hkelly that on the privatesector side every dollar matters to put together a bid in the millions of dollars takes a tremendous amount of time and resources for our company and if there is the slightest disadvantage going in it would order that executive order made it abundantly clear that construction contractors were free to pursue project labor agreements where contractors knowing the work they had to do knowing the commitments that they had to  you can be excluded from yourh your bid can be thrown out if you don't dot all the i's and cross all the t's and what has always bothered me since getting here five months ago is we have a continual parade of people who have actually never done what it is that they're regulating and people who have never actually had to have their own skin in the game determining how these bids are going to be structured and how they're going to be award and i find that completely troublesome just so the general public knows because not all of us have the opportunity to do this when you do submit a bi ten points critical not critical mister wu it's absolutely critical when we are investing thousands and thousands of dollars of our own overhead project managers estimators support staff to put a bid together a multimilliondollar bid could take hor hweeks for our office to put together working along with our subcontractors as well we can't afford to invest that time and money into an rfp process where we feel like there's any chance that we would be at a disadvantage because there are other opportunities out there with a disadvantage not present i could go bid another project mister kelly so the addition of this language does not encourage a wider universe of bidders it actually does limit those who the bat so i thank you it he says this toyota has used and required project labor agreements on many of their biggest and most important projects he says that toyota has consistently employed project labor agreements for our major construction projects and we could not have been more pleased with the results approximately forty five million man hours have been invested in the construction of nine automobile truck and component plants in the united states in each and every instance these projects were completed on time and on budget and with an exemplary safety record toyota as well as  major american and international companies like boeing and walmart have made the decision to require project labor agreements because they think it's the best business practice for them so let me ask this question to each of the panel members and i just need a yes or no answer i have only got hminutes here resources and has the flexibility to use delivery systems that are not available in the public sector i see no reason why the government should step in and interfere with that mister murphy thank you mr hkennedy so i hear a lot of talk from my republican friends and from my conservative friends about how the government should run more like a business but what you are proposing to do here even in an act that has some nice words about neutrality is to take away from the federal government a tool that a lot of private companies use which is a decision that they make that a requirement that plas be used in construction projects is good for their particular project what we're asking here today is for that to be taken away from the federal government and as we've heard over and over and over again there's nothing mandating that this be used project by project all the federal government does is just encourage a look at whether a pla would be worthwhile as many private companies have so i'm searching here for why we have a double standard and we're all searching for why we have a panel with only witnesses that are critical of plas so i look to the underlying political motives here mr htuerk you said in your testimony that you are not here out of an antiunion bias that this isn't about union this is about the best use of taxpayer dollars but mr htuerk just about two months ago you wrote a piece entitled let's put an end to all collective bargaining and in it you wrote referring to what was going on in wisconsin the wisconsin episode is therefore just a leading edge of a political movement that could if conducted skillfully make it possible to unravel public support for the unions in so dramatic a fashion as to change the face of american politics this would indeed be a wonderful thing to behold so let me ask you this do you stand by this blog post this article that you wrote in which you called for an end to all collective bargaining  do but i want to make a distinction here i am here limiting my remarks to this particular piece of legislation and the committee is of course free to evaluate my remarks here on the basis of things that i have said elsewhere like this for example but what i'm presenting here are opinions based on research not just my broader opinions about how collective bargaining fits into st century america so yes i think that we're finding out in state after state the harm that collective bargaining  done when it's allowed between government workers and their governments even massachusetts has faced up to the reality and has done something about the excesses of union power within the among government workers and yes i think so i'm trying to figure out why not only we have a panel that seems to be rigged in favor of the legislation that we're debating but also why we seem to have studies put before us that aren't based in good empirical and statistical requirements and i look at your public record i look aththe agenda you clearly have to end collective bargaining at large in this country and i put it together with what seems to be a systemic approach on behalf of the republican majority and on behalf of proponents of organized labor across this country whether it be in this committee or in state legislatures across the country to take away from individuals the ability to collectively bargain and to take away from government the very tool that private companies use on a regular basis which is if they believe that it is in the best interest of that particular bid to require a project labor agreement that's all the executive order does and because this seems to be a hearing that is much to do about nothing i bring to the table a political agenda which seems hidden but incredibly relevant with that i will yield back the balance of my time  the quality of our statistical work that has nothing to do with anybody's opinions about collective bargaining or political issues i am not responsible for the invitations that went out for this meeting had i had anything to say about it i would have wanted doctor phillips here so i could have rebutted his university so the idea that these numbers that we are coming up with are just made up out of thin air is itself completely wrong we have a lot at stake we are a ph d granting department of economics that survives and prospers only by virtue of the integrity our work our work has been out there for years and if anybody wants to find problems with it they are free to doctor phillips has tried his attacks i think are wrong again those are the kinds of things that we could argue in another forum  respond to the congressman's question that was unanswered about why all the members on the panel said that we don't need legislation to prohibit private sector plas and that is because the national labor relations act already has protections about them to say that they must be voluntarily entered into not coerced and only by employers in the construction industry and what we have going on here under the obama order is a mandate it is coercion of contractors to private employers on federal agencies projects in which the executive order encourages those agencies to in fact mandate or discriminate in favor of them and that is what the current laws prohibit so that is why we don't need a change in those rhetoric here when we're talking about an executive order that simply asks individual agencies to consider plas when appropriate i think by any reading of that it's a hard to suggest that there's anything that is coercive about that executive order and certainly in your testimony in which you suggested that it corrupted the process i think those are strong words with legal ramifications that you should be very careful about using before the united states congress  baskin they are merited because we have been seeing the federal procurement process divorced from the rule of law for decades it was established that labor backing labor affiliation was irrelevant to responsibility of contractors and by attaching that to this process it is rank favoritism it is not permissible under the law and until it stops we have to say what based on your testimony before it is not an issue if you're bidding against someone as a pla or a nonpla union shop nonunion shop that is irrelevant to you as long as it's a level playing field when you go in to actually do the bidding mister baskin yes abc has members who have signed union contracts so does have nothing to do with it may the best most responsible contractor win do the best work for the best price that's all we're looking for and that's all the federal taxpayers should be looking for mister lankford thank you mister wu you had mentioned before that you've actually backed out of a contract during the bidding process when you saw the direction it was going yes i encounter contractors all the time on a general contracting level and a subcontracting level that simply will not bid projects if a projects labor agreement is part of the rfp process mister lankford so it is your belief that it is reducing the amount of cummings i just think that we need to be careful with those words last year the ninth circuit rejected claims that a pla entered into by la and orange counties violated the due process right tuerk i found it very interesting that you helped me make my point you said that you did not like the way dr hphillips addressed the issues that's why we you heard the discussion earlier about how we were concerned on this side that we were not able to call him and he was anxious to see you he was anxious to look you in the face and say what he had to say but we were denied that right i also understand that the majority entered into the record instances in which the administration testified without other witnesses and that is not surprising in this subcommittee the most recent hearing administrator sunstein testified by himself and the minority did not protest because he was not deemed the minority witness by dictate of the majority what is unprecedented is th minority accept the administration's witness as their own when the majority has invited them and invited other private sector witnesses i would like to make that very very clear and there are instances where this happened in this way the way this happened today that is the denial of a witness under these circumstances i would like toh i hope the chairman i know you said you're going to be looking into it and process that's all you all have been talking abouth fair process somebody i think it was you mister baskin talked about level playing field well guess what we want a level playing field too hope that one day since we have now had two hearings on this issue and at the rate we're going i'm sure we'll have more so perhaps the next time we will have a chance to bring you back mister tuerk i think mister baskin you've done two you're on a chairman if i may respond to the comment that was directed at me about the use of the word corruption because i do want to clarify i'm not accusing the president of committing a crime what i referred to in my statement i just went back and checked it is corruption of the system in the matter of data corrupting a computer system it refers to a messing up of the system i certainly stand behind that and it does involve the element of coercion which i referred to earlier when an agency i hate for people to come in here and say things and then it's like left on a wall not to be erased ever the press picks that up the next thing you know your wife is reading a story that you didn't even mean saying that my husband