good afternoon and welcome secretary locke are hearing today today we'll hear from secretary locke of the apartment of commerce fiscal year two thousand and eleven budget request includes eight point nine billion dollars in discretionary funds for commerce decrease of five point one billion dollars or thirty six percent below the fiscal year two thousand and ten inactive level this could have been decreases attributed to the anticipated completion of the two thousand and ten the sen but there are some significant increases in the proposed budget as well including eight hundred nine million dollars and no for satellites at shares and conservation and climate change related programs and eighty seven million which will provide us with the opportunity to look more closely at programs with and those agencies today's hearing will allow us to touch on issues of department oversight and over arching policy issues affecting these agencies while also delving into issues and funding related to other department agencies including the census bureau the international trade administration the national telecommunications and information in the two thousand and ten the sen census has officially begun with enumeration in remote alaskan villages completed we look forward to a status report and timeline for the rest of the country as well as discussions on current concerns including  sentinel advertising apparently a census has gotten one thing right mr secretary because everyone appears to have seen the super bowl ad whatever one might think of it a significant american recovery and reinvestment act responsibilities and overseeing four point seven billion dollars and broadband granted awards while there are concerns about the delay in first round awards is exciting to contemplate a future i speed internet connections are as common as telephones we also will discuss how i propose national export initiative will help promote u s exports and protect us jobs from m fer import subsidies export subsidies and finally the department has held a number of events and made quite a few announcements and fiscal year two thousand and ten at times and now since i made well in advance of any actual implementation and so details  scarce the focus appears to be more on getting good press coverage for the department's efforts and less on the actual benefits to the public so we intend to get to some of those details today there's much and secretary a lot thank you for coming following the opening statement of ranking member wolf will ask you to provide a brief summary of your written testimony and your written testimony will be made a part of the record and now i'll call him mr walker thank you m summarize well thank you very much a chairman mollohan and ranking member congressman will be pleased to join you to talk about the president's budget for the department of commerce for fiscal year twenty eleven with the twenty  ten census field operations ending this year the president's eight point nine billion dollars request decreases overall spending from fiscal year twenty ten but funds targeted increases for vital economic activities because in these challenging times the central mission of the commerce department is very clear and straightforward helping american businesses more competitive so they put more people back to work i want to highlight four areas where the commerce department's efforts described in the twenty eleven budget are integral to that goal of putting more people back to work first businesses use our unparalleled statistical and technical research to develop new products identify new markets and make long term investments for instance the national institute of standards and technology or nist provides metrics that enable development of everything from a national smart grid advanced manufacturing process to airport screening devices and new cyber security measures nist also provides consulting services to american manufacturers to become more efficient and profitable so that they become more viable and competitive in a global economy increasingly businesses are turning to know it for weather and climate observations and much of know as twenty eleven budget increase will finance its added responsibilities to implement the long called for restructuring of the national polar orbiting operational environmental satellite system commonly known as and post this effort will help us better meet civil and military weather forecasting storm tracking and climate monitoring requirements and at a time when both businesses and the president have called for more accurate and readily available climate information the fiscal year zero levon budget assigns additional responsibilities to know as proposed new climate service office which is the result of a propose budget neutral reorganization to bring together its observational and analytical resources now scattered throughout all under one roof a second key function of the commerce department is overseeing the patent protection that has incentivized american  entrepreneurs for over two hundred years when i came to the department of commerce the patent trademark office had a back log of almost eight hundred thousand patent applications in a waiting period of over three years just to receive a yes or no on a proposed patent we've already taken important steps to fix these problems knowing that every patent application waiting in line could be a new product not going to market and a new job not created and through  short term surcharges and other fee provisions as well as upgrades to our out moated systems the twenty eleven budget will along with management innovations and employee process improvements  provide direct consultation and funding to help communities develop crucial economic infrastructure through the recovery act broadband technology opportunities program be taught by tomorrow we expect to announce or we'll have announced  close to a billion dollars to lay or activate over twenty thousand miles of high speed internet cable lines in under served communities and the fiscal year two thousand and eleven budget provides critical funding to ensure that all of these projects have rigorous oversight rb top program our broadband technology program is a true public private partnership because just as the federal government might fund construction of an interstate across the state and then have local communities and governments build the streets and the roads that branched off of it our infrastructure grant funds super high speed internet lines or highways that local providers the private sector will then connect to or tap into to bring high speed internet service directly to homes and businesses the twenty eleven budget provides seventy five million dollars to our economic development administration for planning and infrastructure grants to help communities of dental fi their unique economic strengths and then to develop regional innovation clusters similar to what we've seen in silicon valley or the route one twenty eight corridor in boston and area number four  foreign countries the commerce department serves as a lead advocate for u s companies looking to break in to break into new markets or grow their shares in existing ones the twenty eleven budget provides a twenty percent increase to the international trade administration which among other things will allow us to hire some three hundred twenty eight new trade specialists mostly stationed in foreign countries to help find buyers and customers for u s made goods and our target is for medium and small sized businesses because when american companies export more they manufacture more and when they manufacture more they hire more people international trade administration will play a key role in implementing the president national export initiative which aims to double american exports over the next five years and support two million new jobs and as we implement all these programs results cost effectiveness performance and accountability are paramount objectives and so we take to heart the department's managerial challenges and operational issues as a den of five by our inspector general todd jones are and his staff his findings are acted upon and used to re evaluate other operations and service benchmarks or metrics of performance improvement and we're pleased to support and pleased at the president as granted our requests in the twenty seven budget to  have increased funding for the inspector general for increased oversight of departmental acquisitions and contracts so i thank you for the opportunity to come before you today and for your port of the department of commerce and its programs and i look forward to your questions  mayors and governors local government officials elected officials as well as members of congress interactive map which will enable people to actually within their communities how people are starting to return those census forms compared to what happened in the year two thousand so that policymakers mayors public officials can do more campaigns public service announcements or even target specific  and by around april twentieth all those forms not processed not returned will then become our targets for what we call the non response which is people going door to door was puzzled by many of the other ads that i saw during the super bowl wondering what their point was but what we do know is that there was a lot of discussion both pro and con about that super bowl ad involving the census and there was unprecedented chatter among  response follow up that's been recently revised and what made it necessary to revise it if you're able to well we're trying to costly revise that we also have a cushion but we took some of the lessons that we learned from the address canvassing which was conducted in the spring one hundred thousand people to make sure we had the right addresses documenting the buildings where there were buildings may have been updating really the list of address from local governments as well as the postal office and we had some cost overruns in that particular operation primarily because we hire people and train them and expect a certain rate of attrition economy we had a much smaller attrition and so we ended up paying people to attend the training sessions then than we thought would be  ended up training more people than we actually needed we didn't need them and so we're taking that into account in terms of the number of people we will actually hire building in revised attrition rate for the non back the census form community by community ethnic group by ethnic group will have a better sense of how things are going and how we can redeploy whether using getting local government officials nonprofit agencies churches  governors elected officials local elected officials who put together what they call count committees because we rely on community organizations organizations respected organizations with the community to basically buttress and reinforce our message a lot of concern among immigrant groups about participating people who are new to this country who don't understand the history and the constitutional basis for the census may not want to participate so it's a challenge to get that message out for the first time ever we're sending out the bilingual census forms in spanish and english we have language in some fifty nine different languages  and he did not want to i want to make that clear our system of export controls is meaningless if the plans for developing door use technology posted by the u s government on the internet we all know that our country's adversaries and rivals are aggressively working to steal as much of our intellectual property as possible it's a national security issue it's a job should be addressed immediately if you need legislation would you please well i'm not aware of that particular situation and i do know that information applications to some extent are posted on the internet to make sure that those who might contest the novelty or the uniqueness of that involves military application we need to be very very careful about that because on the one hand the united states government wants to protect our national security and we're trying to restrict making sure that items that have strictly export control laws are very complicated with commerce energy defense all playing different roles depending on the product however concerned the business over national security interest indicated that there are many other items that may have military applications that are readily available by other countries other companies around the world and that are restrictions oftentimes are u s companies at a disadvantage especially when those products are readily available radio shack or home depot or other companies around the world advertise that they'll ship it to a purchaser within the next twenty four hours and even because of the difficult export control regime that deprives us companies of opportunities to engage in research to advance their products and to get revenue so they can continue to perfect their products which can then also benefit our military and our national security in this export control reform that the president has called for first and foremost must always be national security protecting enhancing our national security and whatever commercial benefits may come from modernization or reform of the export control system the number one objective has to be national security and that has to be i can tell you that for instance france is improperly to a country that's unfriendly to the united states so what we would like to do with within the department of commerce is reform that  human rights of the bureau of industry security is currently working to update crime control and law enforcement items contain on the commerce control of their work in our more complex crime control review to address could hinder or abuse human rights and so we are looking at prohibitions on the export of crime control items to countries such as china and even instruments that can be used for torture so doing we just recently conducted such a test involving the federal bureau of prisons along with manufacturers and we did this at the federal correctional facility here in maryland and what did you find we found that actually  that whatever technology that we use is not hampering cellphone use prison guards or administrators within the prison or even first responders who might have to come into a prison at a time of a riot or disturbance we've got to make sure that whatever we do it's not hurting the necessary communication of law enforcement individuals who are operating with in a prison or who are coming into the prison on emergency basis so we don't have a report yet   that i hear from my constituents in terms of the business climate and the economy is the inability of small business owners to access credit and i have so many business owners that will tell me that they've had a perfect relationship with a bank for twenty five years they have a perfect credit history they want to make an investment in equipment or maybe want to make additional hires and their bank of all businesses so i'd like to get your sense of what you think within the jurisdiction of commerce can be done about this the other area that i want to raise which is very important to my constituents as well many of whom are in the business of producing content that is sold all over the world and i just met with a group of publishers very concerned about the dramatic cliff aeration of intellectual property theft published works but  very important issues of access to credit we're hearing that in talking to small medium sized companies and large companies all around the country and it is a major major problem because while the big banks have been rescued and are profitable nonetheless the regulators appear to be putting enormous pressure on them to be much more conservative with respect to their lending practices companies to companies that have long been very good who've always repaid their loans and are very very profitable can i just ask you about that i'm sorry i wanted to get but i do hear that comment made second hand via the small business owners they say well the bank is tell me the regulators are breathing down their neck and i'm really  curious about that is it really the regulators telling them not to land or to be really really conservative in their lending or is this an excuse being used by some of the banks to hold on to their capital and increase  operations to make these loans available also the small business administration has increased its loan guarantee program up to ninety percent and there's consideration to modifying even that and of course under the national export initiative that the president   placed on the access of those small committee banks to these funds in the sense that if they're going to get the funds they really need to increase their lending portfolio because you know i've heard second hand some of the banks saying we'll take the money but we're not going to use it to lend they're just going to hang onto it and you know i think we saw this with some of the big banks that got tarp funds that they used to improve their bottom line but on a certain way to get the economy and balances or the incentives and the and the requirements with respect to the issue of content and publishers violation of intellectual property rights is a big concern american companies are losing billions and a multi agency task force involving homeland security justice department commerce patent and trademark office and we know that there's a lot of tension even among the new information technology providers in terms of their responsibilities or they simply the basically the postman and should not be liable for what's contained or transmitted over their their lines so the department  yes it does part of that funding for the international trade administration under the national export initiative includes folks dealing with talk about it separately and how much is for challenging unfair imports versus the eleven percent is more for forstmann and compliance of u s trade laws than we have another sector of trying to break down market barriers in other countries to u s products and services well that's what i'm trying to tease out here how much of the increase will be used for challenging unfair trade on imports  approximately eleven point eight million dollars or fifteen percent of the funds requested for the department of commerce do you agree that the production of a billion dollars for example worth of goods in the states that substitutes for a billion dollars worth of unfairly traded imports creates or reserves just as many jobs as a billion dollars worth of exports that was a pretty complicated quite well  let me sample it make it more simple do you agree that if you save a billion dollars worth of jobs the number of jobs that it takes to create a billion dollars worth of exports that that  were as much as a billion dollars and you're preventing a billion dollars and that that'll prevent a billion dollars worth of unfair imports and you're creating a billion dollars worth of jobs which domestic market is working just as many jobs as going out and creating export opportunities where that billion dollars over much of a billion jobs a billion countries come upon other countries to reciprocate and it also means that other countries have to abide by the rules of trade otherwise american companies don't get the advantage of the full measure whatever bargains and treaties and agreements we make with other countries if we're able to create jobs and create new jobs that's terrific but if we already have jobs that are here in america we need to save every single services that we need to go after them because we're talking about the existing jobs and unfair trade practices by other countries that disrupt existing jobs has tremendous impact to the people involved their  families support as well as their entire community thank you for that affirmation mr secretary and we look forward to working with you in and ensuring that the that this administration is really up on full alert with regard to  other positions included in the overall trade compliance enforcement increase well any positions work on reducing foreign subsidy programs  we don't have people focused on the investigations unless they're part of the complaint that's been filed that we've been investigat do you agree that in order to have free trade currencies that is the position of the united states on february the twenty sixth two thousand and ten the wall street journal reported that fifteen senators including six exports the article goes on to state but you made a pledge in december to thoroughly investigate such allegations the article quotes the president as saying that the u s needs quote to make sure our goods are not artificially inflated in price and their goods are not artificially deflated in price that puts us at a huge competitive disadvantage and of course by the president and the article knows that the federal reserve board chairman ben bernanke  petitioners in that particular case of filed an amended complaint alleging that the undervaluation of the currency constitutes an unfair subsidy along with several other i believe that it depends on whether or not the petition is will grant us an extension to add these additional elements into our investigation or whether or not they don't grant us an extension because we have a statutory deadline by which we must respond to the initial set of allegations and with these additional allegations that are very complex in nature we need to be sure that we have sufficient time  in place years ago before the president was sworn in and before you took office two in terms of this year's census right and that should be no reason for anyone in our country no matter what their political stripes to to not encourage people to comply with the census is important data that the government needs to go forward right it's a constitutional responsibility of the government and it's news saying that if they had gotten this form they want to fill it out they could encourage anyone else not to fill out this person as a judge or a former judge purported to be giving you know some overview about this but i think that  we should be encouraging everyone wherever they may be to participate in a sense is important to the work of the long term planning for a whole range of issues transportation education and the like and i just wanted to see if we just  tracks in the direction of this program i was well in place by the former administration which was a republican administration that's correct and in fact the questions were all of submitted to the members of congress i believe two years ago and approved by let me just add the sense of a program is really run by career people nonpolitical people and i know it's a political atmosphere sometimes and in our city doesn't allow common sense  couple questions and i think we're going to come back and i know when mr vote one thing i would like it's not really a question but have you ever considered because your job is a very important job i think the secretary of commerce can make a tremendous difference with regard to  and following up what mr mullen the chairman chairman have you ever thought of having a tire team or an advocate team in the department of commerce to help small businesses who are looking to protect from have you ever thought of putting together an ad to get team that will help people who are going through exactly what the chairman was saying where there is a foreign entity coming over pounding taking the job have you ever given any thought well we do have  various groups of like for instance we recently created an office of innovation and entrepreneurship reporting directly to me focusing on the issues of entrepreneur because of entrepreneurs because for instance in the last have a great opportunity come home bring jobs back home have ever put together a major effort to do that not not in the way that you describe but we've been having but we've been having discussions with major industries about what we can do to help them create more jobs here at home well the best jobs though is a job that is a broad never left a little town in west virginia or a little town that was taken over by it and it's gone and i think to find these are american incentives and if you could also have someone call me to see what living out there about any major action has been done by this administration or other minister again i'm not talking goal this is a worthy initiative this i am sure works well in some places this whole notion of really trying to  companies who are not sophisticated export hers and are small to medium size and to try to pull it is a mind full program it is not easy i wish you all the success in the world my first question has to do with the statement that accompanied our fiscal two thousand and ten on us where we directed to provide a report to the committee on appropriations not later than sixty days get the report and you'll do that so what i'm really more important more interested in is telling you how strongly this committee will actually support this initiative and we'll be looking to extraction and manufacturing how important it is to get this small medium sized business entrepreneurial engine going in hopefully a lot of diversified kind of economies but facilitate those relationships and it's not easy to do so i'll be really interested to see what this national export initiative and up looking like a be very interested to see your report and  work with you on it and to support it in this bill and look to your requests which will you know make judgments obviously about the extent to for we recess here for the vote and we'll be coming back right after these three to finish up and i won't take very long to finish up after we come back  the emergency steel guarantee loan program mr secretary in the fiscal year two thousand and eleven request it proposes to reduce the emergency still guarantee loan program by forty three point one million dollars  congress just extended the authorization for this program and the two thousand and ten on the bus was administration's rationale for reducing the emergency steel guaranty loan program nearly ninety percent we have not had any loan activity on that for several years all the loans of have all been paid back there's been no activity no loans only three loans have been made through the program none since the year two thousand we have proved your request and there were need in this current economic climate you wouldn't have any money to to affect the program well there are no outstanding loans there have not been any request even in the last year and they were looking for spectacular we're looking into two thousand and eleven and that's why we've proposed leaving at least some money in the account but the money you have in a can is less than a placeholder i mean i don't i can't imagine a situation that could exist that would actually be benefited by five point two million dollars that's the administration's position and we've just looked at the course of the history of the program since its inception well let me ask you this and think it's possible that some companies in the next year might have a need to be able to participate in the emergency steel guarantee program do you think that's possible that's possible and that's why we have left some funds in the account what will that if you were if we were to approve your request what would the forty three point one million dollars how would you redirect that is ever going to be used for import trade enforcement programs well that's all part of the funds that go into the department and that includes funding would love to see us put together repatriation program because i think there's been a tendency to just criticize and condemn and then maybe to flip it the other way around and see what incentives could be granted i think most of the companies would really my sense is like to have an opportunity to kind of come come home and i know as a governor you've probably been in competition with different governors to get a someone to come to your state versus this congress was considering most favored nation trading status which i voted against many urges passed in the rule of law and accelerate domestic reforms ten years passed and conditions young buddhist monk i went in with a tracking group not as a congressman they don't know what i did i got a clean passport we went back into the bowels of the monasteries and what they're doing is literally bulldozing large portions  arrest protestant pastors we had a hearing in the town wanted human rights caucus about two and a half months ago one one of the lawyers that we had as a witness was arrested when he got back as family was arrested  and we just have to do a better job of advocating connecting with regard to human rights religious freedom and i'm not going to get into much detail it does trouble me though that the insensitivity of the previous administration and this administration this congress of the republicans in this congress and of the democrats in this congress the issue of human rights and religious freedom means less today than it ever had as the number of people we've congressman lantos henry hyde and the giant speak out now it's almost it's almost like no one even cares and so i'm not asking you a question i would hope that the minister could be a very aggressive and advocating for human rights religious freedom and for people that are  just let me just say that accompany the president on his most recent trip to china and was there when he was meeting with president hu jintao and premier wen jiabao and i do not can say that he did raise those issues of human rights and i have always raised it in all my meetings with top government officials indicating that the strength of america is our diversity of thought of opinion religion and ethnic groups and they should embrace that as well the president did address those issues and raised those issues of human rights  national security in our economic competitiveness when you talk about satellites mr adelson who's chairman of the president of the european aerospace industry association has openly written and opined all the technology that actually hurts our national competitiveness our national security because if our defense industries and those involved in high technology don't have opportunities to build products and provide services they're not able to receive the revenues inspector general g a o audit reports on this program and in fact expert review panels involving experts and leaders from the space industry have looked at this and they basically said it had to be completely restructured or completely abandoned and i read those reports upon becoming secretary of commerce and immediately brought this to mr holdren and others within the white house and we have finally been able to prevail and follow those recommendations of the satellite operationalize or focus on the operations information gathering from all the satellites but instead of a fifty fifty cost year where we were paying half of the development of the defense department satellites and they're paying half of the development and costs of our know us satellites especially the afternoon satellites we will we will now have nasa in charge of the acquisition  and management of the development of the satellites and the instruments and so we're going our separate ways i can understand that but on the other hand when you take defense satellites intelligence satellites and you have agenda must always include the education agenda especially in math and science and engineering again whoever is going to contact my staff the first issue we could we have some programs we've been talking with the gates foundation for the other i mean the business community reinforcements your comments about stem education we're all over that in this committee and we're really going to see some things in some of the science accounts that will try to create some type programs for first and really get down to it we're anxious for agencies to come up here and say they've made some progress can actually thousands of make the improvements that they say have not been made for twenty years pretty small reports here's one i just look at census the inspector general's recommendations regarding implementation i can only imagine the time we get that report ove take this really seriously if commerce isn't and we will reflect our seriousness about them and the two thousand and eleven bill if commerce is respons as i'm sure you want them to be just not being there very long that would be a really good thing and that would might be something you want to pay attention to we are aware of it and  perhaps that should be looked at closely the national telecommunications and information administration's p t s p c its public telecommunications facilities and planning and construction i count  know this administration has zeroed that account out the last administration zeroed that account out and i would hope that the  this is ministration would be sympathetic to the needs that the public telecommunications facilities planning construction account address and i'm really surprised to see it  out now that's one of the places where we requested a report we haven't received it and let me start out that was that report we're in the process of finalizing that report to to would just encourage you to the more sympathetic to the professional comment than to the budgetary commenters on this because our request went to the question  of what is the difference between the two accounts some assertion that she's saying there are overlapping that's not our experience and we're fairly experience with this and it probably will be disappointed come back and have it an issue defining the experience and then once it comes back saying that they're defining the differences the distinctions between the two programs and having him back say there's no distinction between the two programs i mean it's  y something that you might want to look at  do you believe are you from enough of these programs to make judgments about whether they did locate each other and i'm not personally familiar with these programs ok for the record would you submit a comment on that question in addition to the letter in response to my question are they do that one of the projects that i'm aware of dealing with the energy efficient building technologies consortium or partnering of agencies including commerce economic development and it's our intent with then to provide five million dollars toward what would be about one hundred twenty nine million dollars grant to accelerate the development of or to help put together a regional innovation cluster that or silicon valley or route one twenty eight corridor and we're interested in how this five million dollars and energy regional innovation cluster what is that focusing on new technologies and involving energy that might go f manufacturing new materials building materials what is a grant program to a nonprofit an academic institution it depends on the proposal that each region applicant might put together it could be a consortium of region what their assets are what they would use this funding for to to build out and and and complement so it's really just as the whole notion of regional innovation clusters is to determine the strength and look at the gaps of of an area as they pursue whatever their what their economic vision might be whether in biomedical research do they need more training do they need some infrastructure do they need some facilities do they need  required for that well we look forward to this one is focusing on one interview fish and building technologies whether it's insulation new materials components etc ok we'll look forward to additional information forthcoming on the program the national innovation marketplace and last week's nest hearing we discussed the national innovation marketplace and when to stand that's a new initiative in the manufacturing extension partnership program and we've learned it has a role in this an that you know we have a fiscal crisis with regard to p t o and in you know nine and they had to come back to congress you know as a result of economic downturn and and some other issues since director capice will be testifying for the subcommittee at the end of march it's not my intent to dwell too deeply into this subject matter we have a high regard for him we consider him to be really a straight shooter and we look forward to his testimony before our committee however i would like to ask you a bit about the department's role in oversight ing u s p t o you know it there is an agreement out there someplace in operate i don't think that was never intended to preclude their submitting a requirements based budget but they haven't we've required that this year and hopefully they're putting that together and and we got it we look forward to that i think that's the first step in understanding what are their needs and certainly their needs aren't necessarily related in any budgetary sense to what their fe collections are so it seems like a really bad budgeting process since proved to be a very bad budgeting process because they guess what their fees are going to be appropriated and they are in excess of that operation so we're looking forward to a process where we like every other agency get a budget request which reflects what their needs are and then we can hopefully be authorized considering this issue will come up with a way to fund it and central management or even our budgeting process so we are reviewing a new requirements based budgeting process for the patent and trademark office and david koppel has been terrific and  welcoming involvement of the top managers in the in the management of the commerce department because as you recall does in the late summer when the funding crisis arose was people from department of commerce that had to help intervene in that situation and help provide leadership to get them through that and we very much appreciate the support that you and your committee provided in giving  temporary funding flexibility and relief borrowing authority in the end it wasn't necessary but it really demonstrated the shortcomings in terms of report and budgeting within the department or the u s patent and trademark office so we are trying to get a handle on it and dave is doing a terrific job we have a huge backlog we also have some excess fees that are now of being generated because of some of the management and the reworking of the whole labor management co operative processes that have been undertaken as well as just deploying paralegals to take care of things that are sitting out there that could be easily remedied which we can then issue the patent collect more fees and use that to replace people who are retiring because of the dire budget situation with a lot of the retirements of the workforce we don't have really not able to  fill those spaces and so our goal of trying to get approval for determination down to one year by year two thousand and fourteen is in jeopardy unless we have access to all those fees and that we appreciate the willingness of you and your  staff and the committee staff to work on that that's why the president's twenty seven budget assume some additional setting authority another temporary provisions along with updating our system i mean here it is the agency that patents and protects innovation perhaps is underutilizing the very things that they approve that are out there that can help them do a more efficient job so it's a very we have a very comprehensive program that   this month but since the announcement was made jointly added like to ask you a few questions about the process why was the announcement made on the day that the federal government was close well that was already the date that had planned and in fact of the employees were going to be convened in a big meeting at no headquarters to receive that information when the government closed down we weren't sure how many people were coming to work and how many weren't and it was primarily an announcement to the press and various stakeholders so it was conducted by conference calls we felt that people would still be available whether they were at work or at home and to participate in that you know i don't  finalized of version of the reorganization people were formed but i do know that in our meetings with they were indicating that they very much needed to and wanted to to inform key members of congress including the various appropriating committees i do know that there was a lot of outreach to a lot of the staff to inform of what was coming and what was being contemplated and again we do know that it's a work in progress and we want to consult with the members of congress  final design there is no final design for this but really a concept some tentative ideas on which people in which units would be moved from the various scattered offices within within within beginning of the next fiscal year to make it easier so that we're not having to amend existing budgets fleshed out still with consultation even with the employees and the various labor groups so we have a proposal but it has not been finalized ok well we're very interested in this and so we look forward to working with you on it and look forward to it mr chairman because i know you have a great interest in this and want to make sure that there's enough time if you want to follow up on it i want to clarify my earlier statement regarding the international trade administrations and the allegation about  in currency manipulation and and how that ties in the international trade administration is reviewing that allegation and will be making a determination whether or not to initiate an investigation of that particular allegation you don't have investigation ongoing that is not yet ongoing they're still making determinations as to whether to initiate such an investigation i want to make make sure that we're thank you for that clear on  isn't lightning we will go into these issues in depth with your fine assistant secretary for nand as he's scheduled to testify next week for do that howard like to focus on a couple of overarching issues with you today the grantees were very patient of the economic adjustment assistance program and its flexibility but they also agreed to the person that the public works funding should not be read to increase the economic adjustment assistance the funding levels now every year again and the past administration and i encourage you folks to sit down distinguish yourself in some policy way from  changing much the public works project and the interest in that remains very high out there in the stakeholder community also in the congressional community here so what we ask is why do you repeated labor opposed  have greater flexibility and also funds infrastructure projects very similar to what the public works fund with the public works account here we're adding to the current funding within the economic adjustment assistance account and it does not necessarily because the pie is now bigger does not necessarily mean that we will less public works projects within this larger account well then let's just all fund public works account i understand that one too and the flexibility is your issue really then why don't you give that flexibility to the public works accounts your testimony here today we appreciate your appearing and we look forward to working with you mr secretary thank you very much