Congressional Dish

The Internet plays an essential role in our modern society and yet the way the Internet will be governed is still unclear. In anticipation of an impending Federal Communications Commission vote to reverse the so called “net neutrality” regulation implemented during the Obama administration, we look at the law which the FCC is trying to enforce. We also examine our current lawmaker’s plans for Internet governance by listening to highlights of three hearings featuring testimony from lawyers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Please Support Congressional Dish to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Bills Additional Reading Article: by Daniel R. Stoller, Bloomberg, December 1, 2017. Article: by Kimberly Leonard, Washington Examiner, November 27, 2017 Article: by Mike Debonis and Ed O'Keefe, The Washington Post, November 26, 2017 Article: by Colby Itkowitz and Sandhya Somashekhar, The Washington Post, November 23, 2017. Article: by Klint Finley, Wired, November 22, 2017. Article: by Aaron Byrd and Natalia V. Osipova, NY Times, November 21, 2017. Article: by Richard Adler, Recode, February 8, 2017. Article: by Nathan McAlone, Business Insider, October 31, 2016 Article: by Stuart N. Brotman, The Hill, February 8, 2016. Article: by Jason Koebler, Motherboard, October 27, 2016. Article: by Patricia Garcia, Vogue, September 1, 2015. Article: by Brian Fung, Washington Post, July 23, 2015. Report: , CBS News, March 1, 2015. Report: by Roger Yu, USA Today, May 18,2014. Article: by Brian Fung, Washington Post, January 14, 2014. Article: by Jennifer Yeh, Freepress, September 10, 2013. Report: , Reuters, January 29, 2011. References Bill Resources: Bill Roll Call: FCC Resources: Mission Statement: Network Map: Publication: Publication: Report: Report: Support Page: Visual References Sound Clip Sources Senate Select Intelligence Committee: ; November 1, 2017 (Senate Social Media) Witnesses: Colin Stretch - Facebook Vice President & General Counsel Sean Edgett - Twitter Acting General Counsel 1:49:24 Sen. Roy Blunt (MO): Mr. Stretch, how much money did the Russians spend on ads that we now look back as either disruptive or politically intended? It was at $100,000. Is that— Colin Stretch: It was approximately $100,000. Blunt: I meant from your company. Stretch: Yes, approximately $100,000. Blunt: How much of that did they pay before the election? Stretch: The— Blunt: I’ve seen the— Stretch: Yeah. Blunt: —number 44,000. Blunt: Is that right? Stretch: So— Blunt: 56 after, 44 before. Stretch: The ad impressions ran 46% before the election, the remainder after the election. Blunt: 46%. Well, if I had a consultant that was trying to impact an election and spent only 46% of the money before Election Day, I’d be pretty upset about that, I think. So, they spent $46,000. How much did the Clinton and Trump campaigns spend on Facebook? I assume before the election. Stretch: Yeah. Before the elec— Blunt: They were better organized than the other group. Stretch: Approximate—combined approximately $81 million. Blunt: 81 million, and before the election. Stretch: Yes. Blunt: So, 81 million. I’m not a great mathematician, but 46,000, 81 million, would that be, like, five one-thousandths of one percent? It’s something like that. Stretch: It’s a small number by comparison, sir. 2:19:55 Sen. Tom Cotton (AR): Do you see an equivalency between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Russian Intelligence Services? Sean Edgett: We’re not offering our service for surveillance to any government. Cotton: So you will apply the same policy to our Intelligence Community that you apply to an adversary’s intelligence services. Edgett: As a global company, we have to apply our policies consistently. Cotton: This reminds me of the old line from the Cold War, of one who did not see a distinction between the CIA and the KGB on the other hand, because the KGB officer pushed an old lady in front of an oncoming bus, and the CIA officer pushed the old lady out from the path of the oncoming bus, because they both go around pushing old ladies. I hope that Twitter will reconsider its policies when it’s dealing with friendly intelligence services in countries like the United States and the U.K. as opposed to adversarial countries like Russia and China. House Select Intelligence Committee: ; November 1, 2017 (House Social Media) Witnesses: Kent Walker - Google Senior Vice President & General Counsel Colin Stretch - Facebook Vice President & General Counsel Sean Edgett - Twitter Acting General Counsel 39:05 Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ): Social-media platforms have the responsibility of striking a balance between removing false information and preserving freedom of speech. Can you give us some brief detail of how each of your companies plan to target perceived false news while protecting the robust political discourse? Kent Walker: Let me take that because that was the sort of next stage to my answer to Mr. Shift’s question. We are taking a number of different steps beyond advertising to focus on fake news. We are working to improve our algorithms, to provide additional guidance and training to the Raiders who provide quality feedback for us, and to look at a wider variety of signals to improve the ranking of authentic and genuine news on our sites and to demote sites that we feel are deceptive or misleading. We are also making broader use of fact-check labels, working with third parties, for both Google Search and Google News. And when it comes to advertising, we’ve taken steps to disallow advertising on sites that misrepresent their nature or purpose, and to add to our policies around or against hate speech, incitement of violence, and the like. Colin Stretch: I would group our efforts with respect to false news into three buckets. First, we find that most false news is financially motivated, and we’re making efforts to disrupt the financial incentives. That, we think, will make a big dent in it. Second, we’re looking to stop the spread of it. So when we have information that’s been disputed by independent fact-checkers, we limit the distribution and we alert users who are attempting to share it that it has been disputed. And third, we’re engaged in a number of user-education efforts to help, particularly around the world, users approach some of the content they see with a more discerning eye. Sean Edgett: We’re tackling this challenge in a few ways, and I think the way this was characterized is correct: it’s a balance between free speech and what’s real and what’s false. And we often see there’s a lot of activity on the platform to correct false narratives, and one of those things, for example, is the text-to-vote tweets that we turned over to you, which we took off our platform as illegal voter suppression. The number of tweets that were counteracting that as false and telling people not to believe that was, like, between eight and 10 times what we saw on the actual tweets. But we’re working on the behavior. That’s where we’re focused right now. We’ve had great strides in focusing on that for things like terrorism and child sexual exploitation. We’re trying to figure out how we can use those learnings to stop the amplification of false news or misinformation, and think we’re making great strides there, but it’s a definite balance. We also have work we’ve done, just like my peers, around ads transparency that, I think, is going to help educate the consumer about who’s paying for an ad, what else they’re running, what they’re targeting, what they’re after—especially around electioneering ads, who’s paying for it, how much they’re spending. We are also working with third parties. We have a Trust and Safety council of experts, academics, around the world who are helping us think through the things that we’re trying to employ to tackle these issues and how they will impact the debate and free speech on our platform. So we’re working hard on this, but it’s a challenge. 59:39 Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL): I submit to you that your efforts have to be more than just about finding malicious and deceptive activity, that you have a responsibility—all of you have a responsibility—to make sure that we are not adding to the problem by not being as rigorous and as aggressive as we can in terms of vetting the content and in terms of making sure that we are being really dynamic in doing that. And I also want to just say that I think it’s ridiculous that a foreign entity can buy a political ad with rubles but can’t give a political contribution to me—a Russian person can’t give me a political contribution. There seems to be some legislation that needs to be had here, is all I’m saying. 1:16:05 Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL): Let’s look at unpaid content for a second. Sometimes these fake accounts are pulled down, but the fake story takes the false claims of widespread voter fraud, for example, generated by these accounts have spread thousands of thousands of times, often picked up by legitimate news accounts. What do you do to flag that? What do you sense is your responsibility? And before any of you answer, let me just notice this, that if we’re asking is, are we still in this situation? As of just a short time ago—and I’m talking about when this meeting started—on Twitter, if you clicked on the hashtag “NYCTerroristAttack,” which is “trending,” marked with a red button saying “live,” the top tweet links to an Infowars story with the headline, “Imam: I Warned De Blasio About New York City Terror; He was Too Busy Bashing Trump.” This is a real-time example of when we talk about this information being weaponized. How quickly can you act, and what’s your responsibility to set the record straight so that the people who saw this know that it’s fake news and at least at some point in time it can’t keep spreading like some sort of virus through legitimate world? Sean Edgett: That’s something we’re thinking about all the time because it’s a bad user experience, and we don’t want to be known as a platform for that. In your example, in for instance, the system self-corrected. That’s not—that shouldn’t be the first tweet you see anymore. It should be a USA article, the last time I checked. Quigley: But you saw this. Edgett: USA Today. At lunch I did, yeah, and I also saw the system correct it. Quigley: Can you give me a really good guess on how long it was top? Edgett: We can follow up with you and your staff on that, and I don’t have the stat in front of me. Quigley: Yeah. Edgett: So I don’t know. But we are, like we said earlier, trying to balance free speech with making the information you see on the system—especially around trends that we direct you to, so if you’re clicking on a hashtag, we want to make sure you’re seeing verified accounts and accurate information and reporting. Sometimes it doesn’t work as we intended. We learn from those mistakes and tweak and modulate going forward. Quigley: Beyond the correction, do you have a responsibility to flag something as “this was fake news”? Edgett: We see our users do that a lot. We’re an open, public platform with respect to journalists and other organizations who point these things out. You may have seen that on this instance, for example. Quigley: Yeah, if someone’s breaking the law, you’ve got to feel like you have a responsibility to do something about that. It’s not—as you said, this is a—with this extraordinary gift, this platform of free expression, comes the responsibility you all talked about. So, if you know something’s illegal, you know you have the responsibility to do something. At what point does this become something where you can’t just correct it; you’ve got to say to the public, this isn’t true. Edgett: Right. And we take swift action on illegal content, illegal activity, on the platform. A good example of this is the text to vote, voter suppression tweets that we’ve turned over to this committee. We saw swift action of the Twitter community on disputing those claims; and Twitter actively tweeted, once it discovered these things were on the platform, to notify our users that this was fake information, that you could not, in fact, vote by tweet, and pointing people to a tool that would allow them to find their nearest polling place. That tweet— Quigley: Is this [unclear] because that was illegal activity, or is this—if something’s just fake, do you think you have an equal responsibility? Edgett: We took that down because it was illegal voter suppression. We are actively working on, how do we balance what is real and fake, and what do we do in the aftermath of something being tweeted and re-tweeted, like you said, and had people even seen it and how do we make sure that they’re seeing other view points and other facts and other news stories. Quigley: Do you have a policy right now where if you know something’s out there that’s not true, of saying so? Edgett: We do not. We have a policy that fosters the debate on the platform. We have a policy that takes down a lot of that content because it comes from automated malicious accounts or spammers. That stuff we’re removing and acting on as quickly as we can. Quigley: And I understand how you’re trying to distinguish that, but the fact is if something’s fake, it doesn’t matter if it’s from a fake account or some bot or something. If it’s just not true and it’s wildly obvious, before it goes viral and gets picked up legitimate, you must feel like you have some responsibility. Edgett: We are—we are deeply concerned about that and figuring out ways we can do it with the right balance. 1:57:39 Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA): RT, Russia Today, on your platform, has 2.2 million subscribers. Fox News, on your platform, has 740,000 subscribers. CNN has 2.3 million subscribers. The Intelligence Community assessment that was made public in January spoke about RT, and it said, “RT conducts strategic messaging for Russian government. It seeks to influence politics and fuel discontent in the United States.” So my question to you is, why have you not shut down RT on YouTube? Kent Walker: Thank you, Congresswoman. We’ve heard the concerns, and we spoke briefly about this previously. We recognize that there’re many concerned about RT’s slanted perspective. At the same time, this is an issue that goes beyond the Internet to cable, satellite television and beyond. We have carefully reviewed RT’s compliance with our policies. We’ve not found violations of our policies against hate speech and incitement to violence and the like. Speier: It’s a propaganda machine, Mr. Walker. The Intelligence Community—all 17 agencies—says it’s an arm of one of our adversaries. Walker: And we agree that— Speier: I would like for you to take that back to your executives and rethink continuing to have it on your platform. Walker: Yes. We agree that transparency’s important for all of these different sources of information. We are working on additional ways to provide that for all government-funded sources of information, including Al Jazeera and a range of government organizations. 2:05:27 Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC): Is it constitutionally protected to utter an intentionally false statement? Colin Stretch: So, it depends on the context, but there is recent Supreme Court precedent on that. On Facebook— Gowdy: On which side: that it is or is not? Stretch: That it is, in most cases, protected. However, on Facebook, our job is not to decide whether content is true or false. We do recognize that false news is a real challenge. The way in which we’re addressing it is by trying to disrupt the financial incentives of those who are profiting from it, which is where most of it comes from. Most of this, most of the fake-news problem is coming from low-quality websites that are trying to drive traffic on every side of every issue, and by disrupting the financial incentives, we’re able to limit the distribution. We’re also trying to make sure that users do know when a story has been disputed by a neutral third party and alerting users to that fact— I’ll stop. I’ll stop there. Gowdy: Well, I’m smiling only because on the last break a couple of my colleagues and I were wondering who those neutral fact-checkers are, and I really do appreciate your desire to want to have a neutral fact-checker. If you could let me know who those folks are, I’d be really grateful, because people in my line of work might take exception with the neutrality of some of the fact-checkers. So, if I understand you correctly, the authenticity of the speaker is very important; the accuracy of the content, less so. Stretch: That’s how we approach it. That’s exactly right. Gowdy: All right. For the life of me, I do not understand how a republic is served by demonstrably, provably, intentionally false information. And I get it, that you don’t want to be the arbiter of opinion—I don’t want you to be, either—but today’s not Thursday, so if I say it is, I swear I don’t understand how my fellow citizens benefit from me telling them something that is demonstrably false, and I am saying it with the intent to deceive. I just—for the life of me, I don’t get it, but I’m out of time. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism: ; October 31, 2017 (Social Media) Witnesses: Colin Stretch - Facebook Vice President and General Counsel Sean Edgett - Twitter Acting General Counsel Richard Salgado - Google Law Enforcement & Information Security Director Clint Watts - Foreign Policy Research Institute, National Security Program Senior Fellow Michael Smith -New America, International Security Fellow 38:25 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI): And I gather that all of your companies have moved beyond any notion that your job is only to provide a platform and whatever goes across it is not your affair. Colin Stretch: Senator, our commitment to addressing this problem is unwavering. We take this very seriously and are committed to investing as necessary to prevent this from happening again. Absolutely. Whitehouse: Mr. Edgett? Sean Edgett: Absolutely agree with Mr. Stretch, and this type of activity just creates not only a bad user experience but distrust for the platform, so we are committed to working every single day to get better at solving this problem. Whitehouse: Mr. Salgado? Richard Salgado: That’s the same for Google. We take this very seriously. We’ve made changes, and we will continue to get better. Whitehouse: And ultimately, you are American companies, and threats to American election security and threats to American peace and order are things that concern you greatly, correct? Stretch: That is certainly correct. Edgett: Agree. Salgado: That’s right. 52:15 Sen. Dianne Feinstein (CA): Mr. Salgado, why did Google get preferred status to Russia Today, a Russian propaganda arm, on YouTube? Richard Salgado: There was a period of time where Russia Today qualified really because of algorithms to participate in an advertising program that opened up some inventory for them, subjective standards around popularity and some other criteria to be able to participate in that program. Platforms or publishers like RT drop in and out of the program as things change, and that is the case with RT. They dropped out of the program. Feinstein: Well, why didn’t you revert RT’s preferred status after the ICA came out in January 2017? It took you to September of 2017 to do it. Salgado: The removal of RT from the program was actually a result of, as I understand it, is a result of some of the drop in viewership, not as a result of any action otherwise. So, there was nothing about RT or its content that meant that it stayed in or stayed out. 2:03:15 Sen. Mazie Hirono (HI): So, Mr. Stretch, you said that there are 150 people at Facebook just focused on the content of what’s on your platform. How many people do you have, Mr. Edgett, at Twitter to concentrate on the content and ferretting out the kind of content that would be deemed unacceptable, divisive? I realize there are a lot of First Amendment— Sean Edgett: Right. Hirono: —complicated issues, but how many people do you have? Edgett: Well, we harness the power of both technology, algorithms, machine learning to help us, and also a large team of people, that we call our Trust and Safety team and our User Services team, it’s hundreds of people. We’re at a different scale than Facebook and Google, obviously, but we’re dedicating a lot of resource to make sure that we’re looking at user reports about activity on the platform that they think is violent or activity on the platform they think is illegal, and prioritizing that accordingly. Hirono: So, you have fewer people than Facebook. Facebook has 150; you said you have hundreds. Edgett: Yeah, we have hundreds— Hirono: Hundreds. Edgett: —across User Services and Trust and Safety, looking at the issues of content on the platform. Hirono: What about you, Mr. Salgado? Richard Salgado: Google has thousands of people. There’s many different products, and different teams work on them, but internally we’ll have thousands of people working on them. We also get a good deal of leads on content that we need to review for whether it’s appropriate or not that come from outside the company as well. Hirono: You have thousands of people just focused on the content— Salgado: On various types of content. Hirono: —as Mr. Stretch indicated to us that he has at Facebook? You have thousands of people dedicated? Salgado: We have thousands of people dedicated to make sure the content across our—and remember, Google has many different properties within it—but, yes, the answer is we have thousands that look at content that has been reported to us as inappropriate. Hirono: So, in view of that, Mr. Stretch, do you think 150 people is enough people? Stretch: Senator, to be clear, the 150 people I mentioned earlier is people whose full-time job is focused on addressing terrorism content on Facebook. In terms of addressing content on the site generally, we have thousands. And indeed, we have a Community Operations team that we announced earlier this year that we were going to be adding additional thousands to the several thousands that are already working on this problem every day. Hirono: I think it’s pretty clear that this is a whole new sort of use, or misuse, of your platform, and you may have various ways to address terrorist content, but this is a whole other thing. 2:32:10 Clint Watts: Account anonymity in public provides some benefits to society, but social-media companies must work to immediately confirm real humans operate accounts. The negative effects of social bots far outweigh any benefits that come from the anonymous replication of accounts that broadcast high volumes of misinformation. Reasonable limits on the number of posts any account can make during an hour, day, or week should be developed and human-verification systems should be employed by all social-media companies to reduce automated broadcasting. 2:33:07 Clint Watts: Lastly, I admire those social-media companies that have begun working to fact-check news articles in the wake of last year’s elections. These efforts should continue but will be completely inadequate. Stopping false information—the artillery barrage landing on social-media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced. Silence the guns, and the barrage will end. I propose the equivalent of nutrition labels for information outlets, a rating icon for news-producing outlets displayed next to their news links and social-media feeds and search engines. The icon provides users an assessment of the news outlet’s ratio of fact versus fiction and opinion versus reporting. The rating system would be opt-in. It would not infringe on freedom of speech or freedom of the press. Should not be part of the U.S. government, should sit separate from the social-media companies but be utilized by them. Users wanting to consume information from outlets with a poor rating wouldn’t be prohibited. If they are misled about the truth, they have only themselves to blame. 2:44:20 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI): Mr. Watts, you’ve been a U.S. Army infantry officer, you’ve been an FBI special agent on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, you’ve been executive officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and you’ve been a consultant to the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division and National Security Branch, so you clearly take American national security very seriously. It is, and has been, your life’s work. So, when you say, ”The Kremlin disinformation playbook,” which we’re talking about here, “will also be adopted by authoritarians, dark political campaigns, and unregulated global corporations who will use this type of social-media manipulation to influence weaker countries; harm less-educated, vulnerable populations; and mire business challengers,” you’re not just talking about the Russian election-manipulation operation getting worse and having to be contained. You’re talking about it as if it’s a technology that other bad actors can adopt and have it metastasized entirely into new fields of dissimulation, propaganda, and so forth. Clint Watts: Yes. Whitehouse: Correct? Watts: Everybody will duplicate this if they don’t believe in the rule of law, if they want to destroy democracies from the inside out. Anyone with enough resources and time and effort, if they put it against us, they can duplicate this. I could duplicate it if I chose to. Whitehouse: So, if we don’t stop it now, it’s going to get exponentially worse. Watts: Yes. And I think the one thing that we should recognize is even in the U.S. political context, if we don’t put some sort of regulation around it, if bodies like this don’t decide how we want American politics to work, everybody will be incentivized to use this same system against their political opponents, and if you don’t, you will lose. 2:51:35 Sen. John Kennedy (LA): The First Amendment implications of all of this concern me as well. I mean, what’s fake news? What do you think fake news is? Clint Watts: Fake news, over the years since I’ve been involved and talking about this, is any news the other side doesn’t like, doesn’t matter what side it is. Kennedy: That’s right. Michael Smith: Senator, if I may. I’m teaching undergrads a course at Georgia State University this semester titled Media, Culture, and Society; and we’re about to start classes focused on fake news later this week. I would submit that fake news might best be defined as deliberate mis- or disinformation, which is tailored or engineered to achieve a particular outcome in the way of behaviors, to persuade perceptions in a manner that lead to behaviors such as perhaps a vote for or against somebody. Kennedy: Well, that’s a good definition, but I’ll end on this: in whose opinion? Watts: But I think there are parameters that we could come around. I mean, reporting versus opinion is a key point of it. I think also in terms of fact versus fiction, I’ve actually set up rating systems on foreign media outlets before the U.S. Government’s paid me to do that, you know, in the Iraq/Afghanistan campaigns. House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee: ; October 25, 2017 Witnesses: Ajit Pai: FCC Chairman 14:00 Rep. Greg Walden: Ultimately, Congress is the appropriate forum to settle the net neutrality debate. I think you hear a little of that passion here on both sides. And I’ve been continuing my efforts to negotiate a compromise. Although my staff continues to engage in the various affected parties in productive discussions toward that end, my colleagues in the minority have, unfortunately, seemed largely uninterested at this point. Love to see that change, by the way. Door remains open. We’re willing and able to codify net neutrality protections and establish a federal framework in statute for providing certainty to all participants in the Internet ecosystem. I don’t think we need Title II to do that. 1:31:45 Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH): Voice-activated virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are becoming an increasingly popular consumer gateway to the Internet. Some day soon they might even become consumer-preferred interface with the Internet, leaving the age of the desktop Google Search behind. You get Yelp results in Siri, OpenTable in Google, TuneIn radio from Alexa. These interactions are occurring through private partnerships among these companies to have their apps interact. However, it creates a situation where, by definition, the consumers’ access to other Internet content is limited or completely blocked. It’s the question of, who answers Siri’s question when you ask Siri something? Chairman Pai, can the FCC do anything about this? Ajit Pai: Congressman, under our current Internet regulations, we cannot. Those do not apply to edge providers. 1:36:12 Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA): Will you commit to us that you’ll apply or consider applying broadcast-transparency requirements to state-sponsored media outlets like RT? And if not, why not? Ajit Pai: Congresswoman, thank you for the question. As I under— Eshoo: Uh-huh, you’re welcome. Pai: As I understand the law— Eshoo: Uh-huh, mm-hmm. Pai: —there is no jurisdictional hook at this point, no transfer of a license, for example, that allows the FCC to a certain jurisdiction. Eshoo: But what about those that have a license and carry them? Do you have—doesn’t the FCC have any say so in that, or is this, as the Intelligence Community said, that they are a principle international propaganda outlet? So are they just going to operate in the United States no matter what? Pai: Congresswoman, again, under the Communications Act and the Constitution, the First Amendment, we do not have currently a jurisdictional hook for taking and doing an investigation of that kind. If you’re privy to, obviously, classified or unclassified information that suggests that there might be another agency that has, obviously, a direct interest in the issue—and we’re, obviously, happy to work with them—but at the current time, as I’ve been advised, neither under the First Amendment nor under the Communications Act do we have the ability to— Eshoo: Well, First Amendment applies to free speech in our country. It doesn’t mean that the Kremlin can distribute propaganda in our country through our airwaves. I just—I don’t know if you’re looking hard enough. 1:40:05 Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY): In 2013, and I was one of the households affected by this, there was a carriage dispute between CBS and Time Warner Cable. And CBS blocked Time Warner Cable Internet customers from viewing its shows online through a CBS.com website. So I couldn’t get any of CBS or SHOWTIME or any of that on TV. If you went to the website, because Time Warner Cable was our cable provider and Internet service provider, you couldn’t go to CBS.com—it was blocked. Or SHOWTIME to watch any of the shows that was coming out. And that was when some new ones were coming out that August, so we were trying to find that. But some members of Congress said, bring this up, and I think Chairwoman Clyburn was acting chairwoman at the time and said that she didn’t believe the agency had the jurisdiction to intervene in this situation. And Chairman Pai, do you think if it happened now, do you think the FCC would have the opportunity to intervene in a similar case? Ajit Pai: Congressman, I think the legal authorities have not changed to the extent that the FCC gets a complaint that a party is acting in bad faith in the context of retransmission dispute, then we would be able to adjudicate it. But absence to such a complaint or additional authority from Congress, we couldn’t take further action. Guthrie: But currently the Title II, open Internet, is still in effect. Is that—how would that affect it? Pai: Oh, currently, yes. Just to be clear, I should have added was well then, our Internet regulations would not apply to that kind of content to the extent you’re talking about, the blocking of online distribution of [unclear]. Guthrie: Because it only applies to the service provider, not to the content provider? Pai: That is correct, sir. Federal Communications Commission: ; February 26, 2015 (Open Internet Rules) Witnesses: Agit Pai: FCC Commissioner 38:05 Ajit Pai: For 20 years, there has been a bipartisan consensus in favor of a free and open Internet. A Democratic president and Republican Congress enshrined in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 the principle that the Internet should be a vibrant and competitive free market “unfettered by federal and state regulation.” And dating back to the Clinton administration, every FCC chairman—Republican and Democrat—has let the Internet grow free from utility-style regulation. The results speak for themselves. But today the FCC abandons those policies. It reclassifies broadband Internet access service as a Title II telecommunications service. It seizes unilateral authority to regulate Internet conduct to direct where Internet service providers, or ISPs, make their investments and to determine what service plans will be available to the American public. This is not only a radical departure from the bipartisan market-oriented policies that have serviced so well over the past two decades, it is also an about-face from the proposals the FCC itself made just last May. So why is the FCC turning its back on Internet freedom? Is it because we now have evidence that the Internet is broken? No. We are flip-flopping for one reason and one reason only: President Obama told us to do so. Barack Obama: I’m asking the FCC to reclassify Internet service under Title II of a law known as the Telecommunications Act. Pai: On November 10, President Obama asked the FCC to implement his plan for regulating the Internet, one that favors government regulation over marketplace competition. As has been widely reported in the press, the FCC has been scrambling ever since to figure out a way to do just that. The courts will ultimately decide this order’s fate. Litigants are already lawyering up to seek a judicial review of these new rules. And given this order’s many glaring legal flaws, they’ll have plenty of fodder. 40:46 Ajit Pai: This order imposes intrusive government regulations that won’t work, to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, using legal authority the FCC doesn’t have. Accordingly, I dissent. 1:03:15 Ajit Pai: And I’m optimistic that we will look back on today’s vote as an aberration, a temporary deviation from the bipartisan consensus that has served us so well. I don’t know whether this plan will be vacated by a court, reversed by Congress, or overturned by a future commission, but I do believe its days are numbered. : February 8, 1996 (Bill Signing) 4:59 Vice President Al Gore: I firmly believe that the proper role of government in the development of the information superhighway is to promote and achieve at every stage of growth, at every level of operation, at every scale, the public interest values of democracy, education, and economic and social well-being for all of our citizens. If we do not see to it that every project, every network, every system addresses the public interest at the beginning, then when will it be addressed? How can we expect the final organism to express these values if they are not included in its DNA, so to speak, at the beginning? For that reason, in 1993, on behalf of the president, I presented five principles that the Clinton administration would seek in any telecommunication reform legislation: private investment, competition, universal service, open access, and flexible regulations. : December 12, 1995 (Conference) 22:15 Rep. Rick Boucher: In the very near future, most homes are going to have two broadband wires that will offer the combination of telephone service and cable TV service. One of those will have started as a telephone wire; the other will have started as a cable television wire. The programming that is affiliated with the owners of those wires obviously is going to be available to consumers in the homes, but other programmers may very well be denied access. And if access to other programming is denied, consumers will be deprived of video offerings to which they should be entitled. : December 6, 1995 (Conference) 27:14 Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL): No one has a right to give pornography to children. While we have not previously criminalized this area on the federal level, it’s necessary to do so now. This is because of the advent of the Internet, which enables someone in one location to instantly send or make available pornography to children in every city in America. Children don’t have the right to buy pornography in any store in America, yet some would argue there’s a right to give it to them free, delivered to their home by computer. Telecommunications Act Conference: ; October 25, 1995 8:58 Sen. John McCain: I believe the Senate bill in its present form is far too regulatory. Any bill that gives 80 new tasks to the Federal Communications Commission, in my view, does not meet the standard that we have set for ourselves of trying to allow everyone to compete in a deregulated—in an environment that is changing so quickly that none of us predicted five years ago that it would look like it is today. And today we have no idea what the industry will look like in five years. 32:00 Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN): One thing that does please me is when I think about one of the last renaissance of electricity, electricity goes to the big cities and leaves out the rural areas, and then we have to come up with the REMCs. When we move America to the World Wide Web, though, we’re not allowing cherry-picking and to move to the great resources in the big cities, but the rural areas will be included in the World Wide Web. And so I congratulate both of you to making sure that that happens, that some of the strength of this country lies in the heart of America, and I think that’s pretty exciting. House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance: ; May 11, 1995 1:25:36 Rep. Dan Schaefer (R-CO): Unlike the case for telephone service, every American household has access to at least one, and soon many more, competitive video providers today. The case simply has not yet been made that the federal government has a duty to do anything other than provide for access to alternative in the case of a purely entertainment service like the upper tier of cable. We have provided that access. We will expand that access in this bill. It is time we focus on the real issues addressed by 1555, the building of advanced broadband networks and the benefits that it will bring to all Americans. House Energy & Commerce Committee: ; February 2, 1994 Witnesses: Bill Reddersen - Bell South Corporation Senior Vice President Jeffery Chester - Center for Media Education Executive Director Edward Reilly - President of McGraw-HIll Broadcasting 7:27 Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA): As telephone companies are able to offer cable TV service inside their telephone-service areas, they’ll have the financial incentive to deploy the broadband technology that will facilitate the simultaneous transport of voice and cable TV service and data messages, building out the infrastructure, creating the last mile of the information highway, that distance from the telephone company’s central office into the premises of the user homes and businesses throughout the nation. 24:36 Bill Reddersen: It is our goal to have you pass legislation this year that enables us to deploy a second broadband network that will compete effectively with cable and bring consumers new and innovative educational healthcare information and entertainment services. 25:12 Bill Reddersen: However, unless you eliminate the competitive advantages this bill confers upon cable companies, our industry will not be able to compete effectively against companies that already have a dominant, if not monopoly, position in programming markets, nor will the bill encourage telephone companies to make or continue the substantial investments required for widespread development of broadband networks. Cable companies are formidable competitors and do not need protection. Cable is a 21-billion-dollar-a-year-gross business, passing over 90% of U.S. homes. According to a recent survey, only 53 out of over 10,000 cable systems compete against a second cable operator. Cable has vertically integrated and diversified into multi-billion-dollar programming and communications businesses. Cable companies and the emerging cable telco alliances clearly do not need protection from telephone companies that currently have no video programming market share, virtually no broadband facilities to the home, and little or no operational experience in the video marketplace. 37:55 Jeffrey Chester: While we share the goal of this committee that every community be served by at least two wires, there are no guarantees that this will be achieved in the near future, even with the proposed legislation. We are also troubled by the unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions taking place in the media industries. Serious concerns are raised by the emergence of new media giants controlling regional Bell operating companies, cable systems, TV and film studios, newspapers, broadcasting properties, and information service providers. Without federal intervention, control of the nation’s media system will be in the hands of fewer and less-accountable companies, possessing even more concentrated power. 40:45 Bill Reddersen: Just as we have established private librar—public libraries—and public highways, we need to create public arenas in the electronic commons in the media landscape. A vibrant telecommunication civic sector will be an essential counterbalance to the commercial forces that will dominate the information superhighway. 2:24:38 Bill Reddersen: The common carrier requirements of this legislation are essentially, if executed the way they have in the telephone industry, the second model that you articulated, and that is that if additional capacity was required and someone shows up, we build. Okay? That is the fundamental premise underlying common carrier regulation. 2:30:04 Rep. Michael Oxley (R-OH): Does it really matter if BellSouth builds the wire, the limitless wire, or the cable industry builds the limitless wire if indeed it is essentially a limitless technology that is open to everyone who wants to sell his or her product, including Mr. Reilly, on that particular technology? If you have the common carrier status and you have the ability to deliver your programming, is it really relevant whether BellSouth owns the wire or Mr. Angstrom owns the wire, and if it is indeed relevant, why is it relevant, Mr. Reilly? Edward Reilly: Well, it’s relevant in any instance where the company that owns the wire is also engaged in the programming business at all. If someone is prepared to build a wire and agree that they would never want to be in the programming business, and that we were given very strong safeguards— Oxley: Why is that a problem? Reilly: Well, because we end up inevitably competing with our programming— Oxley: Of course you do. Reilly: —against someone who owns both the wire and the programming content that goes on that wire. Reilly: Why is it relevant, though, if BellSouth owns the wire and you’ve got limitless access and limitless capacity, why does it make any difference that the people who supposedly own the wire are competing against you? They’re competing head to head. You are simply paying the same shelf space for your product as the owner of the product that’s providing that kind of service. Oxley: Well, we have—we believe that there is ample opportunity in that type of environment for a number of anti-competitive activities that would certainly damage our ability to try and be an equal player. Where we get positioned on the wire, what comes up when the menu first comes up, how the billing is organized—there’s a whole host of issues that go along with owning the wire and setting up the infrastructure that can create a significant competitive advantage to someone who chooses to use that for their own program service. 2:38:47 Rep. Billy Tauzin (D-LA): I think the key for us here is to guarantee that there are comparable providers of services and how they get it to us, as long as it’s comparable and we have choice and all people have access to it. If we guarantee that kind of policy for America, we don’t much have to worry about the risk. Consumers take over from there as long as we guarantee, if we do have common carriage on a line, that the owner of the line can’t discriminate; can’t play games with the competitors who own that line; that you can’t play bottleneck games, as publishers are complaining about in the other bill we’re going to debate pretty soon on MMJ; that, in fact, there’s fairness on the playing field. Here’s a question for you in regard to that fairness: If the telephone companies or the utility companies can in fact do what you can’t do—produce their own programs and send them over those lines, even if we restrict them in the number of channels they can use, which I really have a problem with, as Mr. Boucher does—are we going to make sure that the same provisions of program access apply to those producers of programs that we’ve applied to the cable producers? You raised the issue in your testimony. You talked about the problems we had in cable where they own both the software and the hardware—in essence, the content and the conduit—and the problems consumers had as a result of that. Are we going to require the cable companies make 75% of their channels available to competitors? Are we going to require that the utility companies, when they build lines, fiber optic lines, are going to be similarly required to make access available to their competitors? If we’re talking about a real competitive world here, are we going to build a world where some have obligations others don’t have? Some must carry and some don’t? Some must give access to their programs to competitors, as cable is now required to do because of the bill we successfully passed over the president’s veto last year, and over cable’s objection? Are we going to make that same requirement now available—enforced upon other competitors who build wires, or who build some other systems, who decide to deliver it under some particle-beam technology we haven’t dreamed of yet, or the satellite delivery systems that are coming into play? Are we going to create some real equality in this competition, that’s going to give consumers comparable choices? That’s the key word to me—comparable choices. Are we going to do that? Or are we going to dictate the technology, confine you to so many channels, not require you to carry what others have to carry, put requirements on one competitor—the cable company can get on the telephone company’s lines, but the telephone company can’t get on the cable system’s line? Come on. It seems to me if we’re going to build policy that gets consumers real, comparable choices out there, we have to answer all those questions. Video: Video: Special Thanks! To Adam Hettler for performing ! See more of Adam ! for The Most Dangerous Time of the Year. Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: by (found on by mevio)

C-SPAN is much more fun with friends! In this special episode, Matt Marr, comedian and host of the Dear Mattie Show, joins Jen at The Comedy Store to discuss three bills that have passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Lots of laughs in this one! Please Support Congressional Dish to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Matt's Podcast and Social Media Follow Matt on Follow Matt on Bills Full Title: "Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017" unless all scientific information used to justify it is published online and can be reproduced. the EPA spending on this new requirement to $1 million per year out of the money they already have Passed the House on March 29, 2017 by a vote of Written by the EPA Administrator and the States from requiring permits to discharge pesticides into waterways if the pesticide is authorized for sale. Passed the House on by a vote of Written by Written by of Texas's 22nd district Passed the House on July 18, 2017 by a vote of Additional Reading Article: by Sarah Kaplan, The Washington Post, November 13, 2017. Article: by Chris Mooney, The Washington Post, November 13, 2017. Blog: by Guus Velders, Scientific American, November 2, 2017. Article: by Craig Welch, National Geographic, September 20, 2017. Article: by Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone, July 27,2017. Article: by Rong-Gong Lin II, LA Times, March 1, 2017. Interview: by Lauren Kelley, Rolling Stone, February 14, 2016. Article: by Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone, February 11, 2016. Article: by Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone, September 24, 2014. Report: , MACC, Winter 2010. References Dear Mattie Show: Demographic Info: Website: Data: Research: Video: Weather Records: Visual References - Summer - Winter - Annual Sound Clip Sources House Session: , May 24, 2017 Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: by (found on by mevio)

The Veterans Health Administration operates a taxpayer-funded health system to provide our nation’s veterans physical and mental health services. The Veterans Choice Program is a fundamental change to that system as it allows veterans to get taxpayer-funded health care in the private sector. In this episode, learn the history of the Veterans Choice Program, discover the changes that Congress and the Trump Administration have made to the program this year, and get some insights into the future of the program. Please Support Congressional Dish to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Bills Allows veterans to get medical care ; they can go to any health facility that serves Medicare patients, health centers, the Defense Department, and the Indian Health Service. Veterans are they'd have to wait for an appointment with the Veteran's Administration or if they live 40 miles or further from a Veteran's Administration clinic. If eligible, the veteran will receive a . Veteran notifies VA, VA puts Veteran on an electronic waiting list or authorizes their request, VA works out a payment agreement with the health care provider, VA reimburses health care provider but no more than they would for Medicare services. If the veteran gets treated for , their health insurance plan will be responsible for payment and the health care provider will be responsible for going after the insurance company for the money. Veterans for care at private facilities than they would have been charged at the Veteran's Administration. . Orders a , establishes a , and creates a to review VA practices. when determining performance bonuses for top officials at the Veteran's administration and performance goals that disincentivize using private health providers for veteran care . for health care at the VA, VA facility , and will be published online. The VA will for five years to address staffing shortages. and they'll receive for working for the VA. Expands coverage for , which will include . This will be . Extends a pilot program for assisted living care for veterans with traumatic brain injuries . that charge veterans more than State residents from being qualified schools for veteran education benefits. Makes it senior executives at the Department of Veteran's Affairs. to implement these changes. Eliminates the , which was supposed to expire when the money ran out of after three years. Changes the payment system from one where the , with doctors getting reimbursed directly from the insurance companies to a new system where the . Establishes legal permission for the government to share of veterans with "private entities" Creates a new office, , in charge of and processing of whistleblower complaints. This office will have the power to . The identities of whistleblowers unless the whistleblower consents to disclosure. The Department of Veterans' Affairs must on the whistleblowing process. Gives the Secretary of Veterans Affairs the power to senior executives the executive receives 15 days advance notice and all evidence against him or her, legal representation, and the ability to argue their case in an official process created by the Secretary that takes no more than 21 days. Gives the Secretary of Veterans Affairs the power to Veterans Administration employees for performance or misconduct. will have their pay decreased. The demotion or removal process must be completed within and the employee has 7 business days to respond. These new procedures . There is an but it must be started within 10 business days after the date of the removal, demotion, or suspension. The appeal must be decided within . The Secretary without approval of a Special Counsel or unless the Assistant Secretary refuses to act on the whistleblower account or unless a final decision has been made regarding the whistleblower's disclosure. Gives the Secretary of Veterans Affairs the power to or paid to VA employees if the Secretary determines that the employee engaged in misconduct or poor performance before the bonus was awarded. There is an via the Office of Personnel Management. Deposits $2.1 billion in the Veterans Choice Fund, which will not expire. and gives the Secretary of Veterans Affairs the ability to directly hire people to those positions. A program to give VA employees 1 year of training in the private sector and to give private sector employees 1 year of training in the VA. Between from the private sector and the same amount from the VA will be selected in August of each year to participate. , the person must agree to work as a full-time employee of the VA for two years and is prohibited from working the corresponding private sector industry for two years after completing the program. Political appointees of the VA will have annual performance plans similar to the ones administered to career employees. Gives the Secretary of Veterans Affairs the ability to easily promote existing employees or people who voluntarily left within 2 years, one employment status at a time. Creates a website that will list vacant positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs. We're paying to replace VA facilities in 28 locations. Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes Additional Reading Article: by Melissa Quinn, Washington Examiner, November 6, 2017. Article: by Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News Radio, October 24, 2017. Article: by Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News Radio, October 17, 2017. Article: by Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News Radio, October 6, 2017. Article: by Richard Sisk, Military.com, August 23, 2017. Article: by Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News Radio, July 28, 2017. Article: by Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News Radio, July 24, 2017. Radio Transcript: , Morning Edition with David Greene, NPR, July 6, 2017. Article: by Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News Radio, June 8, 2017. Article: by Lisa Lambert, Reuters, April 19, 2017. News Report: by Scott bronstein, Nelli Black, Drew Griffin and Curt Devine, CNN Investigations, January 27, 2016. Article: by David Farenthold, The Washington Post, May 30, 2014. Article: by Greg Jaffe and Ed O'Keefe, The Washington Post, May 30, 2014. References Budget Plan: GAO Report: House Amendment Act: Interactive Timeline: Slideshow: Strawman Document: Sound Clip Sources Hearing: ; House Committee on Veterans Affairs; October 24, 2017. 02:42 Rep. Phil Roe (TN): To that end, I believe it’s important to state yet again that this effort is in no way, shape, or form intended to create a pipeline to privatize the V.A. healthcare system. I want to be completely clear about that. Everyone who participated in the roundtable earlier this month and contributed to the development of this legislation should be completely clear on that. Everyone listening today should also be completely clear on that. Supplemental care sourced from within the community has been a part of the V.A. healthcare system since the 1940s and services to expand V.A.’s reach and strengthen and support the care that V.A. provides. Rhetoric aside, strengthening and support V.A. is what this consideration is about—this conversation is about. It should go without saying that V.A. cannot be everywhere providing everything to every veteran. Expecting V.A. to perform like that sets up the V.A. to fail. That’s why my draft bill preserves V.A.’s role as the central coordinator of care for enrolled veteran patients. In addition to consolidating V.A.’s menu of existing community-care programs into one cohesive program, my bill would create a seamless, integrated V.A. system of care that incorporates V.A. providers and V.A. medical facilities where and when they are available to provide care a veteran seeks and a network of V.A. providers in the community who can step up when needed. Under my draft bill, the V.A. generally retains the right of first refusal, meaning that if V.A. medical facilities can reasonably provide a needed service to a veteran, that care will be provided in that facility. But when the V.A. can’t do that, my bill would ensure that veterans aren’t left out to dry. Press Conference: ; C-Span; August 12, 2017. 0:30 David Shulkin: The V.A. Choice and Quality Employment Act has three important components. The first is that this helps us expand our ability to hire medical-center directors and other senior executives to serve in the V.A. This is about leadership, and it’s really important that we get the right leaders helping us to do the job for veterans. The second is that this bill authorizes 28 new facility leases that will be in different parts of the country that provide our veterans with updated facilities, something that, again, we are committed to providing our veterans with world-class care. And third, and most important, this bill allows us to continue to be able to provide care in the community for our veterans to make sure that they’re getting high-quality care and not waiting for care. Already this year, in the first six months of this year, we have authorized over 15 million appointments for veterans in the community. That’s 4 million appointments more than what was experienced at this time last year. So we’re making a lot of progress in expanding Choice. Hearing: ; Senate Veterans Affairs Committee; June 14, 2017. 12:29 David Shulkin: Two years ago—I’m sure you’re going to remember in July of 2015 we had too little money in our community-care accounts within the V.A., which we solved with your help by accessing unused funds in the Choice account. So we transferred money from Choice into community care. We now have too little money in the Choice account, which we’re working to solve, again working with you, with legislative authority, to replenish funds into the Choice account. So this is the situation that we’ve described before where for a single purpose of providing care in the community we have two checking accounts, and I will tell you, I wish it were easier than it is. We have to figure out how to balance these two checking accounts at all times. And obviously it’s not a science, it’s an art; and we’re having difficulty with that once again, and that’s why we need to work with you to solve it. The Veterans CARE program that we outlined for you last week will solve this recurring problem permanently by modernizing and consolidating all of the community-care accounts, including Choice. Hearing: ; Committee on Veterans Affairs; June 7, 2017. Witness: David Shulkin - Veterans Affairs Secretary 12:55 David Shulkin: Just in the first quarter of fiscal year 2017, we saw 35% more authorizations for Choice than we did in the first quarter of 2016. So far in fiscal year 2017, we have approximately 18,000 more Choice-authorized appointments per day than we did in fiscal year 2016. But we still have a lot more work to do. That’s why we’re seeking support for the Veterans Coordinated Access and Rewarding Experiences program, the Veterans CARE program. Let me just go over that again because you need a good acronym in Washington. The Veterans Coordinated Access—that’s the C and the A—Rewarding Experiences program—the CARE program. I’ve testified before and I’ll report again today that our overarching concern remains veterans’ access to high-quality care when and where they need it. That’s regardless of whether the care is in the V.A. or in the community. Our goal is to modernize and consolidate community care. We owe veterans a program that’s easy to understand, simple to administer, and that meets their needs. That’s the CARE program, and now it’s time to get this right for veterans. So we need your help. 14:23 David Shulkin: Here’s how veterans could experience V.A. healthcare, with your help. The veteran talks with their V.A. provider. That’s a conversation over the phone, virtually, or in person. The outcome is a clinical assessment. The clinical assessment may indicate that the V.A. specialist is the best for the veteran, or it may indicate that community care is best to meet the veteran’s needs. If community care is the answer, then the veteran chooses a provider from a high-performing network. That’s the veteran choosing a provider from the high-performing network. Assessment tools help veterans evaluate community providers and make the best choices themselves. We may help veterans schedule appointments in the community, or in some circumstances, veterans can schedule the appointments themselves. We make sure community providers have all the information they need to treat the veteran. We get the veteran’s record back. We pay the veteran’s bill. This is all about individualized, convenient, well-coordinated, modern healthcare and a positive experience for the veteran. If the V.A. doesn’t offer the necessary service, then the veteran goes to the community. If the V.A. can’t provide timely services, the veteran goes to the community. If there are unusual burdens in receiving care, the veteran goes to the community. If a service at a V.A. clinic isn’t meeting quality metrics for specific services, veterans needing that service go to the community while we work to support that clinic to improve its performance. And veterans who need care right away will have access to a network of walk-in clinics. 19:20 David Shulkin: We want to make sure that if the service is low performing, if it’s below what the veteran could get in the community, that they have the opportunity—they don’t have to leave the V.A. They’re given a choice so that they are able to get care in the community or stay at the V.A., because, you know, if a veteran has a good experience and they have trust in their provider, they’re going to want to stay where they are. But that is the purpose. The whole idea here is to improve the V.A., not to get more care in the community. And the very best way that I know how to improve health care is to give the patient, in this case the veteran, choice and to make those choices transparent to let everybody see, because then if you’re not performing as high-quality service, you’re going to want to provide a higher-quality service, because you want to be proud of what you’re working on. And I want the V.A. to be improving over time, and I think this will help us do that. 24:42 Sen. Patty Murray (WA): Secretary Shulkin, in your draft of Veteran CARE plan, you outline a number of pilot projects that sound to me uncomfortably like a proposals that are made by the so-called straw-man document. It’s from the commission on CARE and by the extreme, and to me unacceptable, plan put forward by the Concerned Veterans of America. And those include creating a V.A. insurance plan and separating it from CARE delivery, dividing the governance of a V.A. insurance plan and the health system, and alternative CARE model that sends veterans directly to the private sector. The goal of those types of initiatives, as originally stated in the straw-man document, is “as V.A. facilities become obsolete and are underused, they would be closed when availability and accessibility of care in the community is assured.” Those policies serve not only to dismantle the V.A. and start the health system down to a road to privatization, I just want you to know I will not support them, and I will fight them with everything I have. So, I want to ask you, why are you agreeing to pursue those unacceptable policy options? David Shulkin: Well, first of all, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and as clearly as you have. I share your goal. I am not in support of a program that would lead towards privatization or shutting down the V.A. programs. What I am in support of is using pilots to test various ideas about governance, about the way that the system should be, organized in the way that we should evolve, because I don’t know without testing different ideas whether they’re good ideas or not. 35:28 Sen. Jerry Moran (KS): You said something that caught my attention: this will not be an unfettered Choice program— David Shulkin: Yep. Moran: —and I wanted to give you the opportunity to explain to me and to the committee what that means. Shulkin: Yeah. There are some that have suggested that the very best approach is just give veterans a card, a voucher, and let them go wherever they want to go. And I think that there are some significant concerns about that, and you’re going to see this proposal is not that. This proposal is to develop a system that is designed for veterans, that coordinates their care, and gives them the options when it’s best for in the V.A. and when it’s best in the community. Unfettered Choice is appealing to some, but it would lead to, essentially, I believe, the elimination of the V.A. system all together. It would put veterans with very difficult problems out into the community, with nobody to stand up for them and to coordinate their care. And the expense of that system is estimated to be at the minimum $20 billion more a year than we currently spend on V.A. health care. So for all those reasons, I am not recommending that we have unfettered access. At some point in the future, if you design a system right, giving veterans complete choice, I believe in principle, is the direction we should be headed in, but not in 2017. 39:05 Sen. Jon Tester (MT): I want to go back to the Choice program, community care versus V.A. care, and tell you where we’re probably all on the same page around this rostrum, but as we’re all on the same page and the budget comes out and gives a 33% increase for private-sector care versus a 1.2% increase for care provided directly by the V.A., it doesn’t take very many budgets like that and pretty soon you’re not going to have any vets going to the V.A., because all the money’s going to community care, and they will follow the money. I promise you they will follow the money. I think that—I don’t want to put words in the VSO’s mouth. He’ll have a chance here in a bit—but I think most of the veterans I talk to say, build the V.A.’s capacity. In Montana we don’t have enough docs, we don’t have enough nurses, we don’t have enough of anything. And quite frankly, that takes away from the experience and the quality of care, and so by putting 1.2% increase for care provided directly by the V.A. and 33% for private-sector care, we’re privatizing the V.A. with that budget. David Shulkin: Yeah. I told you I wasn’t going to say that you were right again, but there’s a lot that you said that I think that we both agree with. And the goal is not to privatize the V.A. What we’re asking for in this is something we don’t have. We need additional flexibility between the money that goes into the community and the money that can be spent in the V.A. Right now we’re restricted to a 1% ability to transfer money between. We are seeking that you give us more latitude there for exactly the reason you’re talking about, Senator. We need our medical centers and our VISNs to be able to say that they need to build capacity in the V.A. where it’s not available. The reason why we’re letting people go in the community now is because the V.A. doesn’t have it. We have to get them that care. Tester: I got it, but if we don’t make the investments so they can get that health care, they’ll never get that health care there. Shulkin: I— Tester: Okay. Hearing: ; House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; May 3, 2017. Witness: Dr. David Shulkin - Veterans Affairs Secretary   16:13 David Shulkin: More veterans are opting for Choice than ever before, five times more in fiscal year 2016 than fiscal year 2015, and Choice authorizations are still rising. We’ve issued 35% more authorizations in the first quarter of fiscal year 2017 than in the same quarter of 2016. 18:00 David Shulkin: My five priorities as secretary are to provide greater Choice for veterans, to modernize our systems, to focus resources more efficiently, to improve the timeliness of our services, and suicide prevention among veterans. We are already taking bold steps towards achieving each of these priorities. Two weeks ago the president signed a reauthorization of the Veterans Choice Act, ensuring veterans can continue to get care from community providers. Just last week the president ordered the establishment of a V.A. accountability office, and we’re moving as quickly as we can within the limits of the law to remove bad employees. V.A. has removed medical center directors in San Juan; Shreveport, Louisiana; and recently we’ve relieved the medical center director right here in Washington, D.C. and removed three other senior executive service leaders due to misconduct or poor performance. We simply cannot tolerate employees who act counter to our values or put veterans at risk. Since January of this year, we’ve authorized an estimated 6.1 million community-care appointments, 1.8 million more than last year, a 42% increase. We now have same-day services for primary care and mental health at all of our medical centers across the country. Veterans can now access wait-time data for their local V.A. facilities by using an easy online tool where they can see those wait times. No other healthcare system in the country has this type of transparency. V.A. is setting new trends with public-private partnerships. Last month we announced a public-private partnership of an ambulatory care development center, with a donation of roughly $30 million in Omaha, Nebraska, thanks to Mr. Fortenberry’s help there. Veterans now have, or will have, a facility that’s being built with far fewer taxpayer dollars than in the past. Finally, V.A. is saving lives. My top clinical priority is suicide prevention. On average 20 veterans a day die by suicide. A few months ago the Veterans Crisis Line had a rollover rate to a backup center of more than 30%. Today that rate is less than 1%. In support of our efforts to reduce suicides, we’ve launched new predictive modeling tools that allow V.A. to provide proactive care and support for veterans who are at the highest risk of suicide. And I’ve recently announced the V.A. will be providing emergency mental health care to former service members with other-than-honorable discharges at all of our medical facilities. We know that these veterans are at greater risk for suicide, and we’re now caring for them as well as we can. 23:19 David Shulkin: The VISTA system is something that, frankly, V.A. should be proud of. It invented it, it was the leader in electronic health records, but, frankly, that’s old history, and we have to look at keeping up and to modernize the system. I’ve said two things, Mr. Chairman, in the past. I’ve said, number one is, V.A. has to get out of the business of becoming a software developer. This is not our core competency. I don’t see why it serves veterans. I think we’re doing this in a way that, frankly, we can’t keep up with. So, I’ve said that we’re going to get out of that business. We’re either going to find a commercial company that will take over and support VISTA or we’re going to go to an off-the-shelf product. And that’s really what we’re evaluating now. We have an RFI out for, essentially, the commercialization of VISTA that we wouldn’t longer be doing internally. 27:33 David Shulkin: We also, as we get more veterans out into the community, out into the private-sector hospitals, we have to be very concerned about interoperability with those partners as well. 38:24 Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL): Given that your goal is one program, are you analyzing which program ultimately would be phased out, because we have a tendency to instead of phasing out programs because they have people with a vested interest in them, simply— David Shulkin: Yes. Schultz: —going along to get along rather than rocking the boat, and so if we’re adding $3 1/2 billion to the Choice program and it had 950 million left, there have been challenges with the Choice program and confusion, and there are still challenges with the community care program, in what direction is the V.A. thinking of going when we—and what is the timeline for ultimately— Shulkin: Right. Schultz: — phasing out one program and only having one? Shulkin: Right. Well, with almost certainty I can tell you there will not be three programs, because the current Choice program will run out of money— Schultz: Right. Shulkin: —by the end of this calendar year. So, that program is going to go away and should be through December of this year. What we are hoping to do is to work with you so that we can introduce a community-care funding program—the chairman referred to it as Choice 2.0—which is a program that makes sense for veterans, which is a single program that operates under one set of rules for how veterans get care in the community. And that new legislation, which we believe needs to be introduced by late summer or early fall in order to make the timeline, would end up with a single program. Schultz: So, you eventually envision phasing out community care with the advent— Shulkin: Yes. Schultz: —of Choice 2.0. 1:33:11 Rep. Charles Dent (PA): In the one-page FY ’18 skinny budget we received in March, there’s a V.A. request for $2.9 billion in new mandatory funding, presumably to complete the FY ’18 funding for the Choice program after the mandatory $10 billion of the program is completely exhausted in January, I guess. Does this indicate the administration’s intent to fund the successor Choice program out of mandatory funding? David Shulkin: Yes. 1:45:37 Rep. Tom Rooney (FL): And many of the providers that are technically participating in the Choice program are refusing to accept Choice patients because they know that they’ll have to wait a long time to get paid themselves. So some providers that don’t accept the Choice patients will only do so if the veteran agrees to pay for the services up front. And that leaves the veterans in that same bind they were in before Choice, which was either face the excessive wait times at the V.A. facility with no option to obtain immediate care elsewhere without paying out of pocket first. And obviously that’s not the point, or that’s not what we’re looking to do. So, I mean, you as a doctor can probably appreciate, you know, with these people that want to take the Choice program to help veterans but they know that it’s going to take forever to get reimbursed be like, hey, will you pay me first, and then, you know, we’ll deal with getting reimbursed later. I don’t know if that’s the rationale, but it sounds like that. The OIG has criticized the V.A.’s monitoring oversight for these contracts and reported that these contracts still don’t have performance measures to ensure the contractors pay their providers in a timely manner, and the OIG made this recommendation January 30 of this year. So, as you work to expand the Choice program, how are you implementing the OIG’s recommendation specifically with regard to timely reimbursements? David Shulkin: Well, there is no doubt that this is an area of significant risk for us, that monitoring and making sure that the providers are paid is critical because of the issues that you’re saying: the veterans are being put in the middle. I would not recommend the veterans put out money for this. That is, as you said, is not the point of it. What we have done is we have done multiple contract modifications. We’ve actually advanced money to the third-party administrators. I’ve suspended the requirement that providers have to provide their medical records to us in order to get paid. We are improving our payment cycles through the Choice program, but it’s not perfect by any means. We have to get better at our auditing of these processes, and those were the IG recommendations, and we are working on doing that. So this is a significant area of risk for us. In the reauthorization, or the redesign, of the Choice program, what we’re calling Choice 2.0, we want to eliminate the complexity of this process. The private sector does not have to do the type of adjudication of claims that we do. They do auto adjudification. They do electronic claims payments. We just are not able to, under this legislation, do all the things that, frankly, we know are best practices. That’s what we want to get right in Choice 2.0. 1:56:40 David Shulkin: Our care needs to be focused on those that are eligible for care, particularly when we have access issues. So, I’d be glad to talk to you more about that. I do want to just mention two things. First of all, our policy is for emergency mental health care for other-than-honorable, not dishonorably, discharged; dishonorably discharged who were not— Rep. Scott Taylor (VA): Sorry if I misspoke. David Shulkin: Yeah, yeah, okay. Rep. Scott Taylor (VA): But I do applaud you for those efforts. David Shulkin: I just wanted to clarify that. Rep. Scott Taylor (VA): I know that there are a lot of wounds that are mental, of course, and— David Shulkin: Absolutely. Rep. Scott Taylor (VA): —I get that. I applaud you for those efforts. Hearing: ; House Committee for Veterans Affairs; March 7, 2017. Witness: David Shulkin - Veterans Affairs Secretary Michael Missal - Veterans Affairs Inspector General Randall Williamson - GAO Health Care Team Director 20:35 David Shulkin: However, we do need your help. The Veterans Choice Program is going to expire in less than six months, but our veterans’ community-care needs will not expire. This looming expiration is a cause for concern among veterans, providers, and V.A. staff, and we need help in eliminating the expiration date of the Choice program on August 7, 2017 so that we can fully utilize the remaining Choice funds. Without congressional action, veterans will have to face longer wait times for care. Second, we need your help in modernizing and consolidating community care. Veterans deserve better, and now is the time to get this right. We believe that a modernized and revised community-care program must have seven key elements. First, maintain a high-performing integrated network that includes V.A., federal partners, academic affiliates, and community providers. Second, increase Choice for all veterans, starting with those with cer—(audio glitch). Third, ensure that enrolled veterans get the care they need closer to their homes, when appropriate. Fourth, optimize coordination of V.A. healthcare benefits with the health insurance that an enrolled veteran already has. Fifth, maintain affordability of healthcare options for the lowest-income enrolled veterans. Sixth, assist in coordination of care for veterans served by multiple providers. And last, apply industry standards for performance quality, patient satisfaction, payment models, and healthcare outcomes. 23:24 Michael Missal: In October 2015, V.A. provided Congress with a plan to consolidate all V.A.’s purchased care programs into V.A.’s community-care program. Under consolidation, V.A. continues to have problems determining eligibility for care, authorizing care, making accurate payments, providing timely payments to providers, and ensuring the necessary coordination of care provided to veterans outside the V.A. healthcare system. 30:30 Randall Williamson: Finally, substantial resources will likely be needed to carry out Choice 2.0. Resources needed to fund IT upgrades and new applications for Choice are largely unknown but could be costly. Proposed changes in Choice eligibility requirements, such as eliminating the 30-day, 40-mile requirement for eligibility, could potentially greatly increase the number of veterans seeking care through community providers and drive costs up considerably. Also, if medical-center staff begin scheduling all appointments under Choice 2.0, as V.A. currently envisions, hiring more V.A. staff will likely be costly and tediously slow. Already, since Choice was established, V.A. medical-center staff devoted to helping veterans access non-V.A. care have increased threefold or more at many locations. 1:04:00 David Shulkin: We are looking primarily at technological solutions, and we are looking at the use of telehealth, which we are doing across V.A. on a scale that no other health system in America is even approaching—2.1 million visits; over 700,000 veterans getting access through telehealth services—and so we are looking at this very seriously about dramatically expanding its use to be able to support where we don’t have health professionals. 1:06:20 David Shulkin: Remember, we have four missions. The clinical care is what we always talk about, but we also have an education mission. We train more American healthcare professionals than any other organization in the country, we have research that’s dedicated solely to the improvement of the wellbeing of veterans, and we also serve a national emergency-preparedness role. So, all four of these missions are very important to us. I would just say two things. One thing is we know from the Choice program that only 5,000 of the several—of more now than a million veterans who’ve used the program chose only to use the Choice program. So they’re saying exactly what your constituent told you, which is the V.A. is essential and important to them. But we are not going to allow the V.A. programs to be diluted, and one of the reasons why that’s so important is that we need to modernize the V.A. system. Our lack of capitalizing the V.A. system in terms of the buildings, the equipment, the IT systems, could make it a noncompetitive system. But we’re going to make sure that the facilities that are open are the best for veterans, and veterans are going to want to continue to get their care there. The community-care program is a way to make sure that we supplement the V.A. in an integrated fashion. 1:10:00 Rep. Mike Bost (IL): The department itself has estimated that it can treat and cure most of the remaining 124,000 diagnosed cases of hepatitis C within the next three years. Is it the V.A.’s commitment that that timeline will be held to and that these will be treated regardless of the level of their liver disease or where they might be at? David Shulkin: Yes. Thanks to the support from Congress, we were provided the resources to meet that timeline. I actually think we’re going to beat it, but with one caveat. What we’ve learned is that our initial outreaches, we were getting thousands and thousands of veterans to come in and to get treatment. We have a treatment, of course, as you know, that now cures more than 95% of hepatitis C. So it’s tremendous medical advance. The doctor to my right is one of those doctors. He’s an I.D. doctor who does this in his clinical work at the V.A. Unknown Speaker: Thank you. Shulkin: What we’re finding now is, and if Dr. Yehia wants to comment on this, we’re finding that we’re now seeing less and less veterans coming in to get cured. There is a substantial number of veterans for a number of reasons, either psychological reasons or social reasons, who are not taking advantage of this care. And so this is now becoming a research question for us. How do we have to begin to approach people that are saying, I have a disease that may end up killing me, but I’m not interested in the treatment. And so I think we’re going to beat your three-year timeline, but there's still going to be a subset of veterans that don’t want to come in and get care. 1:12:50 Rep. Mike Bost (IL): What would happen if we didn’t make that extension go past the August 7, and what would be the final cutoff if we don’t get it past? David Shulkin: Well, first of all, if we don’t do this extension, this is going to be a disaster for American veterans. We’re going to see the same situation that we saw in April 2014, that Senator Kaine started out tonight with, that we saw in Phoenix. And so here’s the timeline. We do need to do this now. As I think Chairman Roe referred to, already today veterans are not able to use the Choice program, because the law states that we have to obligate the funds now for when the care is going to be delivered. So a pregnant veteran who comes to us and says, I want to get care using the Choice program, they no longer can, because nine months from now is past August 7. But this is now beginning to happen with care that is multiple months in length, like oncology care and chemotherapy and other types of therapies. We have a chart that shows that when you start getting towards the end of April to May, this is where you’re going to start seeing a large number of veterans not being able to get access to care, because episodes of care that we’re used to, like hip replacements and other things, are generally three to four months. So we think the time is now that we need to act. Bost: Okay, so, but what we’re doing is not any intention to privatize or anything like that. This is just making sure that those people who are on the Choice program, that we are moving forward to make sure that those services are provided. Shulkin: Not only that, but this is not going to cost any additional money. We are just seeking the authority to spend the money that you’ve already given us past August 7 of this year. 1:17:15 David Shulkin: We are going to go and we are going to start providing mental health care for those that are other-than-honorably discharged for urgent mental health. And we want to work with Representative Coffman on his bill on this, and we want to do as much as we can. But I don’t think it can wait, and so we’re going to start doing that now. I believe that’s in the secretary’s authority to be able to do that.   Hearing: ; House Committee for Veterans Affairs; October 7, 2015. Witnesses: Robert McDonald: then Secretary of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin: Under Secretary for Health, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Brett Giroir: Senior Fellow at the Texas medical Center Health Policy Institute 13:37 Robert McDonald: As you know, we have five strategies: first is improving the veteran experience, second is improving the employee experience, third is achieving support-service excellence, fourth is establishing a culture of continuous improvement, and fifth is enhancing strategic partnerships, and we would be happy to drill down on those during the question period. 14:17 Robert McDonald: In the past year, we’ve moved out aggressively in response to the access crisis, meeting increasing demand and expanding capacity on four fronts: more staffing, more space, more productivity, and more V.A. care in the community. During that period of time, we’ve completed 7 million more appointments for veterans of completed care: 4 1/2 million in the community, 2 1/2 million within V.A. We’ve added more space, we’ve added more providers, we’ve added more extra hours, all in effect to get more veterans in. But because of that, and because we’ve done a better job of caring for veterans, we have more veterans desiring care. So even those 97% of appointments are now completed within 30 days of the needed or preferred date, the number not completed in 30 days has grown from 300,000 to nearly 500,000. 16:15 Robert McDonald: We simply can’t make many necessary changes because of statutory limitations. We need to consolidate our various care in the community programs. We need a freer hand to hire, assign, and reward the executives we task to act as change agents. We need a freer hand in disposing of outdated, unused, or little-used facilities. We need a freer hand in the management of existing facilities so facilities’ managers can adjust their use of resources to the changing needs of veterans. 25:47 Brett Giroir: As background, in 2014 9.1 million of 21.6 million U.S. veterans were enrolled in the VHA. Of these, 5.8 million were actual patients, and on average these patients relied on the VHA for much less than 50% of their healthcare services. These demographic data combined with access challenges suggest reconsideration of whether the VHA should aim to be the comprehensive provider for all veterans’ health needs or whether the VHA should evolve into more focus centers providing specialized care while utilizing non-VHA providers for the majority of veterans’ healthcare needs. Either paradigm could be highly beneficial to veterans as long as the demand and resources are prospectively aligned and there is a consolidation of current programs to simplify access to non-VHA providers. 30:05 David Shulkin: The V.A. approach is to find the very best care that serves the veterans, and I think that we’ve shown that in response to our access crisis that we have encouraged the use of community care to address our access issues. I think the difference here between—maybe what I would expand on what Dr. Giroir said is that the care that V.A. provides is very, very different than the care that the private sector provides. The V.A. provides a much more comprehensive approach than just dealing with physical-illness issues. It provides psychological and social aspects of care that actually meet the needs of what veterans require. And that's why I think that we really do need to do what Dr. Giroir said, which is to see what VHA provides best for our veterans and what care can be provided by the private sector, and it’s that hybrid-type system that's going to meet our veteran's needs. 34:39 Former Rep. Corrine Brown (FL): I think the elephant in the room is that there are people out there that would actually want to just completely close the V.A. and privatize the entire V.A. system, which is totally unacceptable and it is absolutely not what the veterans want. And as you begin, I want you to discuss flexibility, but I want you to let people know how many people we actually serve every day throughout this country. Robert McDonald: Thank you, Ranking Member Brown. As I was going through my confirmation process, I often got the question from senators why—you know, from some senators, small group—why don't we get rid of the V.A. and just give out vouchers? So I studied that—as a business person, I wanted to know—and what I discovered was V.A.'s not only essential for veterans, it's essential for American medicine and it's essential for the American people. Three-legged stool: research. We spent $1.8 billion a year on research. We invented the nicotine patch. We were the ones who discovered the aspirin was important for heart disease—take an aspirin every day. First liver transplant. First implantable pacemaker. Last year two V.A. doctors invented the shingles vaccine. I could go on. That research is important for the American people, and I didn't even mention posttraumatic stress or traumatic brain injury or prosthetics, things that we're known for. Second, training. We trained 70% of the doctors in this country. Who's going to train those doctors without the V.A.? We have also the largest employer of nurses and the largest trainer of nurses. Third leg is clinical work. Our veterans get the best clinical care because our doctors are doctors that not only do the clinical care but also do research and teach in the best medical schools of our country. So I think the American people benefit from the V.A., and it would be a big mistake to even think about privatizing it. 1:06:06 Rep. Phil Roe (TN): Let me go right to what I wanted to talk about which is my own veteran’s officer at home—person that does my work at home—and basically what she’s saying is, how do you get an appointment through the Veterans Choice Program? She said she had been trying to put together a summary, and what's happening is there’re two ways you get in there: a veteran can either be eligible by a 30-day wait list or more than 40 miles. And the most of problems she saw were the 30-day list. And this is what happens. Below is the information’s been given to me by the roll out of the program. In my experience, there appears to be a breakdown somewhere in this process but have been unable to get clear answers on how to fix it. The V.A. blames TriWest; TriWest blames the V.A. Eligibility is determined by the V.A. primary-care doctor if the appointment’s passed 30 days. The non-V.A. care staff then uploads this list of eligible veterans to the V.A. central office here in Washington nightly, and the veteran’s told to wait five to seven days and then call TriWest. The central office then sends the information to TriWest, can take three to seven days. If the consults don't get added, medical documentation didn't get uploaded, authorizations gets canceled, then the veteran’s on a merry-go-round. Look, when they came to my office to get an appointment, I said, you need an appointment with Dr. Smith. They went out front and made the appointment. That's what should happen. It ain’t that complicated. And all of this in between—and I could go on and on—TriWest has a different view of it, and I want to submit this to the record because it really gets to the bottom of what’s actually going— Unknown Chairman: Not objection. Roe: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The non-V.A. care staff were given no training on this, and they basically were left just to wing it, how to make these appointments. That was one of the things was brought up in the report. Our local V.A. care—non-V.A. care staff—increased from 5 to 15 but still are struggling to make all these appointments, and there's talk of—now, listen to this right here—there is talk of calling each patient for every appointment to make sure they keep it. If the patient says, I don't want to go, they still are told to call them two times a month until the past the appointment time. That's a complete waste of time. And the outpatient clinics also ought to be able to add patients to the electronic wait list instead of sending them over because appointment may come up; veterans get left out like that. And the TriWest portal is not very friendly. Private doctors did not like jumping through all the hoops of the Choice programmers saying they must give a percent of their fee to TriWest in order for TriWest to file the claim. So, we have a clinic that’s closing in our office, in our V.A., on a chiropractic and pulmonary clinic, because the doctors are just fed up with the way the system is. It’s so bureaucratic. So, anyway, I could go on and on. This is a very extensive—this is on-the-ground stuff that’s going on today at our medical center, and I bet you it's going on around the country. And I think these are things I will submit to you so you can get to work on this, and, again, appreciate the effort that you put into it. Mr. Chairman, there’s some valuable information here for the V.A. to use. And I yield back. Unknown Chairman: Thank you. Ms. Brown, you had a question. Corrine Brown: I do, because I want the secretary to answer that, because I think—I'm meeting with TriWest today—but the important thing is, you can't send a veteran to an agency or anywhere until they get prior approval from the V.A. because the most important thing is that that doctor get that reimbursement. So can you clear this up? I mean, no person in my office can send someone to a doctor; it must go through the system so that you get prior approval. And once that's done, how long—why does it take so long for that physician to get reimbursed, and can he answer that question? Robert McDonald: We have flowcharted that process, and let me let David talk about the improvements that we’ve made to that process. He'll answer questions one and three, and I'll take two on the facilities. David Shulkin: Okay. Dr. Roe, I think your old adage on the three A's is exactly right. And you have to remember we brought this Choice system up in 90 days. This is a national, very complex system, and what we've heard after bringing it up in 90 days is exactly the type of feedback that you've been hearing from your constituents. The secretary and I are both out in the field, we understand that these problems are happening, and so what we've begun to do is to redesign the system and to process-map it out. Both the secretary and I spoke to the CEO of TriWest last evening, and we are beginning now to make outbound calls to the veterans before they had to call in. We are beginning to actually embed TriWest staff in the V.A. so that they're working in teams, and we're beginning to start eliminating some of those steps. It is going to take a while. It is painful to watch this when you hear stories like what you're hearing, but we understand the problems there, we are working very hard, we think TriWest and Health Net are working to help us make the system better, and we're committed to doing this with urgency. 1:58:08 David Shulkin: We do have a crisis in leadership. We have too many open, vacant positions. We have too many people in acting positions and interim positions. You can't expect that you're going to have a transformation in a health system unless you have stable leadership in place. We need your help on this. We need your help to help create the V.A. to be an environment people want to come and serve and to be excited about, and we are asking for your help in Title 38 for the—Hybrid Title 38—to be able to help get the right type of compensation for leadership positions in V.A. That will help us a lot. Hearing: ; House Rules Committee; July 28, 2015. 1:28:40 Bradley Byrne (AL): We don’t need to have a government-run healthcare system for our veterans. We need to transition out of it and give all of our veterans a card, just like an insurance card. Hearing: ; House Veterans Affairs Committee; July 22, 2015. 19:20 Robert McDonald Clinical output has increased 8% while budget has increased 2%, 35% more people (1.5 million beneficiaries) 20:22 Robert McDonald Increased Choice authorizations by 44% (900,000), 4% more appointments, percentages of wait times, wait times for types of care 21:50 Robert McDonald Care crisis of 2014 was caused by an imbalance in supply and demand, VA has been governing to fit a budget, not making budget fit the care, stats on new enrollees, 147% increase. enrolled veterans use VA for 34% of their care 56:00 Robert McDonald Here is a packet explaining the transformation of the VA, we have an advisory board full of CEOs, VA is going through the largest transformation in it’s history 1:09:40 Tim Heulskamp (KS) Concerned that money will be redirect away from Choice and he thinks “many employees” are not supportive of Choice, throws out bullshit numbers James Tuchschmidt corrects him and said they took money out to pay for the Hepatitis C drug 1:11:50 Tim Heulskamp wants to know why only two people have been fired for the wait time scandal. Robert McDonald many have retired, one indictment, 1,300 have been fired, new leadership, 7 million more appointments this year 1:27:30 Rep.Jackie Walorski (IN) Veterans died because of the Veteran’s Administration, I wanted to see people go to prison, list of things she’s pissed about, "Nothing is working” Robert McDonald 300,000 on wait list a year ago, low wait times, 1:35:00 McDonald we need a better system for anticipating what demand will be. 34% of eligible people are using VA system right now 1:35:20 Robert McDonald the crisis in 2014 was due to Vietnam vets, not Iraq & Afghanistan and we need to prepare as they age 1:36:00 Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) Why don’t we “refer out" the care that’s not directly related to military service? Robert McDonald people like to have all their doctors in one place, private sector doctors have to treat veterans differently - different questions to ask 1:41:00 Phil Roe (TN) Getting veterans outside care should be be through 1 program because it "aught to be easy" 1:43:50 Robert McDonald Moral is low because people don't want to be called out for not caring. They work hard every day 1:46:00 Kathleen Rice (D-NY) Why is there a budget shortfall? Robert McDonald 7 million more veterans needed care. "That's the reason" 1:56:00 Mark Takano (D-CA) New way of operating with non-VA providers - "Care in the Community" - not a conspiracy to "disappear the VA" - That's why we changed the name 2:05:00 Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) We should "outsource" collections” of payment from veterans with other insurance James Tuchschmidt We are looking at doing that. Wenstrup we should take bids. 2:18:00 Robert McDonald We are in favor of Choice program & we need to know about any employees who aren't because "that would be wrong" - Don't care where they get care as long as it's great care 2:20:00 Jerry McNerney (D-CA) Do you favor public private partnerships? Robert McDonald Yes, it's part of our transformation strategy. we have an “office of strategic parterships” 2:22:55 James Tuchschmidt We thought more people would use Choice, the goal was to not have vets waiting more than 30 days for care, we're asking to use that money to pay for care we purchased, we want a bill before you leave in August 2:28:00 James Tuchschmidt We’ve treated over 20,000 veterans with hepatitis C and veterans can use the Choice Program to get their treatment Rep.Ralph Abraham (LA) $500 million would be designated for Hepatitis C treatment Robert McDonald yes Hearing: ; House Veterans Affairs Committee; June 18, 2014. 50:40 Rep. Beto O’Rourke (TX): Why have the V.A. at all? Why not privatize that care? The private sector could do it better. What’s missing in the V.A. is competition. Our veterans deserve the very best. Let’s not keep them in this institution that’s not working. From veterans, almost to a person, I hear, if I get in the V.A., I love the care. I’m treated very, very well. The outcomes are great. Don’t touch the V.A. So, what do you do best, and what does the V.A. do best? And five years down the road, after we get out of this current crisis, what will this look like? Unknown Speaker: That’s a great question. And it’s an honor to serve El Paso, where I spent part of my childhood when my dad was in the army as a doc. I will tell you that I hope it does not take five years. And I think everybody else would echo that statement. My belief is that the first phase is to make sure that the program that the V.A. has invested taxpayer money in—VAPC3—is put in place, is mature, that the processes on the V.A. side are mature, that our processes are mature, and that together we’re identifying where those pockets of veterans are that might not otherwise be able to get what they need in a complete capacity through the direct V.A. system because they lack the capacity to deliver on all the needs, and that the V.A. syst— Yes, sir. O’Rourke: Let me—I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I do want to understand what you think beyond taking care of capacity issues when the V.A.’s not able to see someone in a reasonable period of time. Are there specific kinds of care that you all would be better equipped to take care of? For example, I often think the V.A. is or should be better at handling PTSD or the aftereffects of traumatic brain injury because they see so many people like that as opposed to your typical health system or hospital. Maybe that’s a V.A. center of excellence. Is there something on the outside that we should just move all appointments or consults or procedures in a given area over to the private sector or let the private sector compete for? Unknown Speaker: Great question. My personal view is that it’s too early to ask that question—or to answer it, probably a better way to put it. It’s early to ask it, it’s right to ask it, you’re looking over the horizon line, but that we first need to get the pieces plugged together. And then there needs to be a make-by decision, category by category, and facility by facility, to look at what’s best done with taxpayer funds. Is it best to have the direct system provide care for four veterans in a particular category? Is that really necessary? Or should we buy that on the outside because it’s more efficient and more effective? 54:30 O’Rourke: You know, I’ve been on this committee for a year and a half now—it’s my first year in Congress—but I’d never been approached by a lobbyist on my way in to a meeting. Today I was, who represents providers in the private sector in El Paso and said, we have a hard time getting paid. It takes us a year sometimes. We want to see these veterans who are not able to be seen by the V.A., but it’s going to be really hard to do this if we don’t get paid. 1:34:00 Jolly: We need to do even more in providing a veteran choice. This, bottom line. The question, though, is how do we do that in a way that’s fiscally responsible? And so my question for you generally—and again, if you don’t have enough information, that’s certainly fine—in your role of supporting non-V.A. care, can you give either an assessment, if you have the technical information, or if it’s just in a working opinion on the cost effectiveness compared to traditional care, realizing that we have hard infrastructure costs within our V.A. system that aren’t reflective when you go to non-V.A. We can look at all sorts of data. I’m somebody who thinks typically data’s manipulated to get whatever outcome or position we want to finally be able to support. But can you give an opinion or assessment on the cost effectiveness of non-V.A. care versus within the V.A.? Ms. Doody: I can tell you from our experience with Project ARCH—and I wish I could give you specific numbers, sir—the company Altarum, who was contracted to collect this information—my understanding is they’re going to report back to you folks in 2015—are looking at the cost of care per veteran. From my understanding, it is less than if they would have gone to a V.A. facility for certain procedures. So, again, it’s anecdotal. It may be geographic; I can’t comment on the other regions or other states in our nation. But also just limiting the amount of mileage, the travelling that the veteran would have to do travelling to a V.A. hospital to receive care as a savings to the system also. 1:45:00 Titus: You confirm that you can’t talk about the cost effectiveness; there’s just not enough data there, yet you think it’s working pretty well, but we don’t have any hard figures, and we also know that CVO’s been kind of unable to assess the cost going forward, and nobody’s talking about how to pay for it. Yet, we are moving pell mell towards more veterans using this kind of non-V.A. care. And it’s not that I’m opposed to that, but I want us to do it right or else we’ll be having hearings five years from now, talking about all the problems with non-V.A. care. Now, to hear y’all talk about it, you’re not having any problems; things are working great under your networks. But we know that’s not true, either. I mean, there are problems out there, and we need to be serious about how to address them from the beginning. Now, as I understand it, y’all are just kind of like the middleman, like Sallie Mae and Medicare Advantage, where you have a contract to provide a service. That’s fine, but as you push more people out into the private sector, do you see your kind of business growing, or is your network going to cover more areas, or are more new networks and competition going to come on to be part of this new system that we’re going to be creating? Hearing: ; House Veterans Affairs Committee; April 9, 2014. 2:35 Rep. Jeff Miller (FL): On Monday, shortly before this public hearing, V.A. provided evidence that a total of 23 veterans have died due to delays and care at V.A. medical centers. Even with this latest disclosure as to where the deaths occurred, our committee still doesn’t know when they may have happened beyond the statement from V.A. that they most likely occurred between 2010 and 2012. These particular deaths resulted primarily from delays in gastrointestinal care. Information on other preventable deaths due to consult delays remains unavailable. Outside of the V.A.’s consult review, this committee has reviewed at least 18 preventable deaths that occurred because of mismanagement, improper infection-control practices, and a whole host—a whole host—of maladies that plagued the V.A. healthcare system all across this great nation. 8:53 Rep. Jeff Miller (FL): Mr. Coates waited for almost a year and would have waited even longer had he not personally persistently insisted on receiving the colonoscopy that he and his doctors knew that they needed. That same colonoscopy revealed that Mr. Coates had Stage IV colon cancer that had metastasized to his lungs and to his liver. 13:55 Barry Coates: My name is Barry Lynne Coates, and due to the inadequate and lack of followup care I received through the V.A. system, I stand here before you terminally ill today. 16:10 Barry Coates: I’ve talked to numerous veterans since all this occurred, and a lot of them, I hear the same story like my story, you know, why didn’t we receive help, why didn’t I get care earlier, why didn’t it get outsourced? And outsourced is probably a good thing that needs to be put into policy if it’s backed up to a part they can’t control. CNN Report: , January 30, 2014. Music Presented in this Episode Intro & Exit: by (found on by mevio) Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations

If you are an American adult, there is a good chance that criminals now have the ability to match your name and social security number, greatly increasing your risk of becoming a victim of identity fraud. In this episode, hear highlights from Congressional hearings about the Equifax breach that exposed the personal information of 145.5 million Americans as we explore the key role that credit reporting companies play in our society. Please Support Congressional Dish to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Bills Additional Reading Blog Post: by Tim Fernholz, Quartz Media, October 24, 2017. Article: by Aaron Mark, Slate, October 4, 2017. Article: by Michael Ray, Anita Sharpe, & Jordan Robertson, Bloomberg Technology, September 19, 2017. Article: by Seena Gressin, Federal Trade Commission, September 8, 2017. Article: by Matt Egan, CNN Money, August 31, 2017. Article: by Gretchen Morenson, The New York Times, July 27, 2017. Blog Post: by Mike Brown, Lend EDU, April 12, 2017. Article: by Gillian B. White, The Atlantic, January 4, 2017. Report: , CFPB, January 3, 2017. Article: by Andrew Blake, The Washington Times, November 11, 2015. Article: by Sean Trainor, Time, July 22, 2015. Publication: by Kenneth P. Brevoort, Philipp Grimm, & Michelle Kambara, CPFB, May 2015. Blog Post: by Simple.Thrifty.Living, Huffpost, April 14, 2015 Article: by STAFF, Lexington Law, January 26, 2015. Article: by Alex Hawkes and Simon Watkins, The Mail, March 2, 2013. Article: by Stephanie Clifford, The New York Times, August 4, 2008. Article: by Malgorzata Wozniacka & Snigdha Sen, Frontline, November 23, 2004. Publication: by Mark Furletti, Discussion Paper, June 2002. Article: by Roy Reed, New York Times, March 13, 1968. References Bill Actions Tracking: Credit Report Website: Experian: FTC Consumer Response Center: Identity Theft Website: Open Secrets: Open Secrets: Senate Vote Summary: Sound Clip Sources Senate Session: ; Senate; October 24, 2017. 3:57:20 Sen. Sherrod Brown (OH): Studies show that Wall Street and other big companies win 93 percent of the time in arbitration. Ninety-three percent of the time in arbitration the companies win. No wonder they are fighting like hell. No wonder they have lobbied this place like we have never seen. No wonder every Wall Street firm is down here begging their Senators to stand strong with Wall Street and pass this CRA, pass this resolution to undo the rule stopping forced arbitration. 4:05:00 Sen. Mike Crapo (ID): The real issue is whether we will try to force the resolution of disputes in financial resolution into class action lawsuits. This is a question about whether we should force dispute resolution mechanisms into class actions. In fact, let me read the actual language of the rule that we are debating. It doesn’t say anything about forced arbitration clauses. In fact, the rule doesn’t stop arbitration clauses in contracts. It stops protections in arbitration clauses against class action litigation. Let’s read what the actual rule says: The CFPB rule prohibits a company from relying in any way on a predispute arbitration agreement with respect to any aspect of a class action that concerns any consumer financial product or service. In other words, the entire purpose of this rule is to promote class action litigation and to stop arbitration resolution when there is a dispute. Hearing: ; Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law; October 4, 2017. Witness: Richard Smith: Former Chairman & CEO of Equifax 27:20 Sen. Chuck Grassley (IA): Additionally, we must appreciate that fact that not all data breaches are the same. The information and risk of harm can greatly vary from one breach to another. For example, the past breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus, which this committee held a hearing to examine, involved financial information such as credit and debit cards. Of course, this is information that absolutely must be protected and secured. If it falls in the wrong hands, it can create a lot of problems for individuals. But in the Equifax data breach, I think that’s different. It’s important that consumers and policymakers recognize this distinction because the threat landscape has changed. The information hackers obtained or gained access to in the Equifax breach is the most sensitive personal information used by thieves to commit identity theft. So, we should let that sink in very definitely. A credit card number or bank account information can be changed with a phone call, but you can’t change your social security number and your date of birth. Anyone who’s ever applied for a loan, a credit card, a job, or opened a bank account knows you have to provide a social security number, date of birth to verify your identity. Thus, if someone has this information they can do the same and take over your identity. They can become you. And you won’t know it happened until it’s too late. 38:30 Sen. Jeff Flake (AZ): In your testimony before the House yesterday, you stated that Equifax’s “traditional business model is with companies, not with 400 million consumers.” What portion of Equifax’s business is consumer facing? Richard Smith: Mr. Chairman, roughly 10% of our revenues around the world come from what we call B to C—business to consumer. Flake: That’s 10%. Then, what is the main source of Equifax’s revenue stream? Smith: The vast majority, the remaining, is largely doing analytics, insights, and providing solutions to banks, telecommunications companies, credit card issuers, insurance companies, and the like around the world. Flake: So, if only 10% of the revenue is consumer facing, what is the company’s incentive for keeping consumer data secure when it has no meaningful interaction or limited meaningful interaction with the accountability of consumers? Smith: We are clearly viewed as a trusted steward of that information, and losing that information violates the trust and confidence not only of the consumer but also of the companies we do business with as well. 1:01:52 Sen. Patrick Leahy (VT): You spent a lot of money lobbying against as consumer-protection act that might require you to notify consumers immediately in such breaches. Are you still going to fight and still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to stop that kind of a consumer-protection bill from going through? Richard Smith: Senator, I can tell you as a company we do have a government-relations team. In the scheme of things, it’s relatively small. We’re a company with expenses of well over $2 billion. I think our entire lobbying budget, which includes association fees, is a million dollars or less. Leahy: I could care less what your budget is for lobbying. The fact is you opposed legislation that might require notifying consumers, might actually give consumers the ability to respond when they’ve been hurt. Are you going to—is Equifax going to continue to fight consumers’ right to know? Smith: One, I’m unaware of that particular lobbying effort you’re referring to. I can talk to the company, but I’m unaware of that particular lobbying effort. Leahy: It was in your report that you have to file on your lobbying expenses. 1:03:30 Sen. Mazie Hirono (HI): Do consumers have the right to find out what kind of information data brokers like Equifax has on them? Richard Smith: Do they have the right? Hirono: Yeah, yes. Can they call Equifax up and say, what do you have on me? Smith: Every consumer has the right to a free credit report from us, from the industry, and that credit report would detail all the information that the credit file would have on them. Hirono: But that’s just their credit, but you have a lot of other information on everybody besides just their credit information, do you not? Smith: Yes, we do. Hirono: So, if—and my understanding is that you get all this information free. You don’t pay anybody for the information you gather on 145 million people, which is more than one out of three people in our entire country. Smith: It’s largely free. There are exceptions, obviously, but this business, as you know, we’re 118 years old. We’re part of a federally regulated ecosystem that enables consumers to get access to credit. Hirono: Yes. Smith: So that data’s there, and it’s used at their consent, by the way. Regardless of the type of data we have—if it’s your employment data or your income data or your credit data—that data can only be accessed if you as a consumer give the consent for someone to access that. Hirono: How does one give consent— Smith: If you— Hirono: —if you’re selling the information that you have on them? Smith: So, if you as a consumer go to your bank and want to get a credit card, for example, when you sign a contract with the bank for the credit card, you’re allowing the bank the access to approve your credit, in this particular case, to give you the best rate and the best line. 1:17:52 Sen. Richard Blumenthal (CT): Can you guarantee this committee that no consumer will ever be required to go to arbitration? Richard Smith: I cannot, sir. Blumenthal: Why? Smith: Well, one, I’m no longer with the company. I can talk to the management team. Blumenthal: Well, that’s what I mean by the designated fall guy. You know, you’re here, you can’t speak for the company. I’m interested in looking forward. How will consumers be protected? Will arbitration be required of them? Will they be compensated for the sense of security that has been lost? Will there be a compensation fund? Will there be insurance against that kind of loss? And I’m talking about a compensation fund that applies to them because of that loss of privacy. These kinds of questions, which you’re unable to answer because you’re no longer with the company, are as profound and important as any investigative effort looking back, and I recognize you’re here without the authority to make these decisions, but I think someone from the company has to make them. Hearing: ; Senate Banking Committee; October 4, 2017 Witness: Richard Smith: Former Chairman & CEO of Equifax 6:03 Sen. Sherrod Brown (OH): But security doesn’t generate short-term profits. Protecting consumers apparently isn’t important to your business model, so you gather more and more information, you peddled it to more and more buyers. For example, you bought a company called TALX so you could get access to detailed payroll information—the hours people worked, how much they were paid, even where they lived—7,000 businesses. You were hacked there, too, exposing the workers of one proud Ohio company—400,000 workers at Kroger—and an unknown number of people’s information to criminals who used it to commit tax fraud. 26:35 Sen. Ben Sasse (NE): Your organization has committed to providing identity-monitoring services for the next year, but I’m curious about whether or not Equifax and your board have deliberated. Do you think your responsibility ends in one year, in two years, in five years, in 10 years; and if you think it ends at some point, have you tried to think about the goodwill and balance sheet impact of all this? How can you explain to an American whose identity might be stolen later because of this breach why your responsibility would ever end? Does it end? Richard Smith: I understand the question. And it extends well beyond a year, Senator. The first step we took was the five services we mentioned to the chairman a minute ago, which gets the consumer through one year. The ultimate control for security for a consumer is going to the lifetime lock. The ability for a consumer to lock down his or her file, determine who they want to have access for life— Sasse: But isn’t this—just to interrupt—isn’t that about people who might be breached in the future. I’m talking about the 145 million whose data has already been stolen. Does your responsibility end, or what do you think your legal obligations are to them? Smith: I think the combination of the five services we’re offering combined with the lifetime lock is a good combination of services. Sasse: I actually think the innovation of some of the stuff you proposed for the big three going forward is quite interesting, but why does any of that five really do much for the data that’s already been stolen? Smith: Senator, again, the combination of the five offerings today plus the lifetime lock we think is the best offering for the consumer. Sasse: Okay, I don’t think you’ve really answered the question about whether or not you’re exposure legally ends for the 145 million. 29:13 Sen. Ben Sasse (NE): I want to open, at least, the allegations that Equifax executives engaged in insider trading relating to knowledge of this cyber breach. One of the clearest times in definitions of insider trading occurs when a business executive trades their company stock because of confidential knowledge that they have gained from their job. I’m sure you can imagine why Americans are very mad about the possibility that this occurred here. While insider trading is going to be discussed a lot more later in this hearing, I wish you could just very quickly give us a timeline of the first steps. When did Equifax first learn of the May 2017 breach, and when did you inform the FBI of that breach? Richard Smith: Thank you. I’ll answer as quickly as I can. We notified the FBI cybersecurity forensic team and outside global law firm on August 2. At that time, all we saw was suspicious activity. We had no indication, as I said in my oral testimony, of a breach at that time. You might recall that the three individuals sold stock on August 1 and 2. We did not have an indication of a breach until mid- to late August. Sasse: So you’re saying that those three executives—Mr. Chairman, I’ll stop—you’re saying those three executives had no knowledge of a breach on August 1 or 2. Smith: To the best of my knowledge, they had no knowledge and they also followed our protocol to have their stock sales cleared through the proper channels, which is our general counsel. 32:00 Sen. Jon Tester (MT): Let’s fast forward to the 29th of July, and you learned for the first time that your company has been hacked—don’t know how big the hack is, but it’s been hacked—and it was preceded by this notification from US-CERT. Three days after, as Senator Sasse pointed out, you had three high-level execs sell $2 million in stock. That very same day, you notified the FBI of the breach. Can you tell me if your general counsel was held accountable for allowing this stock sale to go forward? Or did he not know about the breach. Richard Smith: Senator, clarification: On the 29th and 30th, a security person saw suspicious activity, shut the portal down on the 30th. There was no indication of a breach at that time. The internal forensics began on the 30th. On the 2nd we brought in outside cyber experts—forensic auditors, law firm, and the FBI. The trades took place on the 1st and the 2nd. At that time, the general counsel, who clears the stock sales, had no indication—or to the company—of a security breach. Tester: Well, I’ve got to tell you something, and this is just a fact, and it may have been done with the best of intentions and no intent for insider trading, but this really stinks. I mean, it really smells really bad. And I guess smelling bad isn’t a crime. But the bottom line here is that you had a hack that you found out about on the 29th. You didn’t know how severe it was. You told the FBI about the breach. On that same day, high-level execs sell $2 million worth of stock, and then you do some investigation, evidently, and you find out at the end of the month that—or, at least, by the first part of September—that this is a huge hack, and you finally notify the public. And as was pointed out already in this committee, these are people that didn’t ask for your service. You’ve gathered it. And now it’s totally breached. And then, as Senator Sasse said, what’s the length of exposure here, and you said, we’ll be doing these five things. That’s proactive, and I think we can all applaud those efforts. But I’ve got to tell you, that doesn’t do a damn thing for the people who have had their identity stolen and their credit rating stolen. So let me ask you this: So their credit rate goes up a little bit, and they go buy a house for 250,000 bucks on a 30-year note, and it costs them 25 grand. Are you liable for that? Smith: Senator, I understand your anger and your frustration. We’ve apologized for the breach, we’ve done everything in our power to make it right for the consumer, and we think these services we’re offering is a right first step. 53:57 Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA): In August, just a couple of weeks before you disclosed this massive hack, you said—and I want to quote you here—“Fraud is a huge opportunity for us. It is a massive, growing business for us.” Now, Mr. Smith, now that information for about 145 million Americans has been stolen, is fraud more likely now than before that hack? Richard Smith: Yes, Senator, it is. Warren: Yeah. So the breach of your system has actually created more business opportunities for you. For example, millions of people have signed up for the credit-monitoring service that you announced after the breach—Equifax is offering one year of free credit monitoring—but consumers who want to continue that protection after the first year will have to pay for it, won’t they, Mr. Smith. Smith: Senator, the best thing a consumer could do is get the lifetime lock. Warren: I’m asking you the question. You’re offering free credit monitoring, which you say is worth something, and you’re offering it for only one year. If consumers want it for more than one year, they have to pay for it. Is that right? Smith: Yes, Senator. But the most, the best thing a consumer can do is the lock product. It’s better than monitoring. Warren: Okay, but, they’re going to have to pay after one year if they want your credit monitoring, and that could be a lot of money. So far, seven and a half million people have signed up for free credit monitoring through Equifax since the breach. If just one million of them buy just one more year of monitoring through Equifax at the standard rate of $17 a month, that’s more than $200 million in revenue for Equifax because of this breach. But there’s more. LifeLock, another company that sells credit monitoring, has now seen a 10-fold increase in enrollment since Equifax announced the breach. According to filings with the SEC, LifeLock purchases credit monitoring services from Equifax; and that means someone buys credit monitoring through LifeLock, LifeLock turns around and passes some of that revenue directly along to Equifax. Is that right, Mr. Smith? Smith: That is correct. Warren: That’s correct. Okay. The second Equifax announced this massive data breach, Equifax has been making money off consumers who purchased their credit monitoring through LifeLock. Now, Equifax also sells products to businesses and government agencies to help them stop fraud by potential identity thieves. Is that right, Mr. Smith? Smith: Yes, Senator. There’s one clarification. You’d mentioned the LifeLock relationship— Warren: Uh-huh. Smith: —which was accurate. At the same time, the majority of that revenue we normally generate is direct to consumer. We’ve shut that down. We’re no longer selling consumer product directly. Warren: I’m sorry. My question is, every time somebody buys through LifeLock—and they’ve seen a 10-fold increase since the breach—you make a little more money. We actually called the LifeLock people to find this out. So, I asked you the question, but I already know the answer. It’s true. You’re making money off this. So, let me go to the third one. Equifax sells products to businesses and government agencies to help them stop fraud by potential identity thieves, right? Smith: To the government, yes. Not to the business. Warren: You don’t sell to businesses? Just small businesses? Smith: We sell business, but it’s not to prevent fraud. That’s not the primary focus or business. Warren: But to stop identity theft, you don’t have any products that you’re touting for identity-theft purposes? Smith: Senator, all I’m saying is the vast majority we do for businesses is not fraud. Warren: Look, you’ve got three different ways that Equifax is making money, millions of dollars, off its own screw up, and meanwhile, the potential costs to Equifax are shockingly low. Consumers can sue, but it turns out that the average recovery for data breaches is less than $2 per consumer, and Equifax has insurance that could cover some big chunk of any potential payment to consumers. So, I want to look at the big picture here. From 2013 until today, Equifax has disclosed at least four separate hacks in which it compromised sensitive personal data. In those four years, has Equifax’s profit gone up? Mr. Smith? Smith: Yes, Senator. Warren: Yes, it has gone up, right? In fact, it’s gone up by more than 80% over that time. You know, here’s how I see this, Mr. Chairman. Equifax did a terrible job of protecting our data because they didn’t have a reason to care to protect our data. The incentives in this industry are completely out of whack. Because of this breach, consumers will spend the rest of their lives worrying about identity theft. Small banks and credit unions will have to pay to issue new credit cards, businesses will lose money to thieves, but Equifax will be just fine. Heck, it could actually come out ahead. Consumers are trapped, there’s no competition, nowhere else for them to go. If we think Equifax does a lousy job protecting our data, we can’t take our data to someone else. Equifax and this whole industry should be completely transformed. Consumers—not you—consumers should decide who gets access to their own data. And when companies like Equifax mess up, senior executives like you should be held personally accountable, and the company should pay mandatory and severe financial penalties for every consumer record that’s stolen. Mr. Chairman, we’ve got to change this industry before more people are injured. 1:22:00 Sen. John Kennedy (LA): It just seems incongruent to me that you have my information—you don’t pay me for it; you don’t have my permission — you make money collecting that information, selling it to businesses — and I think you do a service there; don’t misunderstand me — and you also come to me—you can’t run your business without me; my data is the product that you sell — and you also offer me a premium service to make sure that the data you’re collecting about me is accurate. I mean, I don’t pay extra in a restaurant to prevent the waiter from spitting in my food. You understand my concern? Richard Smith: I understand your point, I believe, but another way to think about that is the monitoring part that you’re referring to, Senator? Kennedy: Uh-huh. Smith: In the future, it’s far less required if you as a consumer have the ability to freeze, or lock as we call it, and unlock your file. And that is free for life. Kennedy: But it’s not just the freeze part. What if you had bad information about me? Have you ever—has an agency ever had bad information about you, and you had to go through the process of correcting it? Smith: Yes, Senator. There’s a process that if— Kennedy: It’s a pain in the elbow, isn’t it. I mean, the burden’s kind of on – you have my data, which you haven’t paid me for. You’re earning a good living, which I don’t deny you. I believe in free enterprise. I think this is a very clever business model you’ve come up with. But you’re earning your money by selling my data, which you get from me and don’t pay me for, to other people, but if the data is wrong that you have about me, I would think you would want to make it as easy as possible to correct it, not as hard as possible. Smith: I understand your point, and it’s an important point for the entire industry to make the process as consumer-friendly as possible if there’s an error on your utility bill, if there’s an error on your bank bill, your credit card statement, to work with consumers to make— Kennedy: Well, can you commit to me today that Equifax is going to set up a system where a consumer who believes that Equifax has bad information about him can pick up the phone and call a live human being with a beating heart and say, here’s this information you have about me that you’re selling to other people—you’re ruining my credit, and it’s not true, and I want to get it corrected. How are you going to correct it, what information do you need from me to prove that it’s incorrect, and when are you going to get back to me, and give me your name and phone number so I can call you. Smith: Senator, I understand your point. There is a process that exists today. More than half— Kennedy: Yeah, and it’s difficult, Mr. Smith. Smith: Be more than happy to get the company to reach out to your staff, explain what we do, and what we’re doing to improve that process. I hear you. Hearing: ; House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection; October 3, 2017 Witness: Richard Smith: Former Chairman & CEO at Equifax 5:13 Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL): The Equifax data breach was massive in scale: 145.5 million American victims as of yesterday. I would call it shocking, but is it really? We have these under-regulated, private, for-profit credit reporting agencies collecting detailed personal and financial information about American consumers. It’s a treasure trove for hackers. Consumers don’t have a choice over what information Equifax or, for example, TransUnion or Experian, have collected, stored, and sold. If you want to participate in today’s modern economy; if you want to get a credit card, rent an apartment, or even get a job often, then a credit reporting agency may hold the key. Because consumers don’t have a choice, we can’t trust credit reporting agencies to self-regulate. It’s not like when you get sick at a restaurant and decide not to go there anymore. Equifax collects your data, whether you want to have it collected or not. If it has incorrect information about you, it’s really an arduous process—I’ve tried it—to get it corrected. When it comes to information security, you are at the mercy of whatever Equifax decides is right; and once your information is compromised, the damage is ongoing. Given vast quantities of information and lack of accountability, a major breach at Equifax, I would say, would be predictable if not inevitable. I should really say breaches. This is the third major breach Equifax has had in the past two years. From media reports and the subcommittee’s meeting with Equifax officials after the breach, it’s clear to me that the company lacked appropriate policies and practices around data security. This particular breach occurred when hackers exploited a known vulnerability that was not yet patched. It was months later before Equifax first discovered the breach, and it was another several weeks before Equifax shared news with consumers, this committee, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Senior officials at the company are saying they weren’t immediately aware that the breach occurred, and yet, by the way, there were executives who sold over a million dollars in stock just days after the breach was discovered but, yet, not reported. And for a lot of Americans, that just doesn’t pass the smell test. 22:45 Richard Smith: We know now that this criminal attack was made possible because of combination of human error and technological error. The human error involved the failure to apply a software patch to our dispute portal in March of 2017. Technological error involved a scanner which failed to detect that vulnerability on that particular portal. Both errors have since been addressed. On July 29 and July 30, suspicious activity was detected, and a team followed our security-incident protocol. The team immediately shut down the portal and began our internal security investigation. On August 2, we hired top cybersecurity, forensic, and legal experts, and at that time, we notified the FBI. At that time, to be clear, we did not know the nature or the scope of the incident. It was not until late August that we concluded that we had experienced a major breach. 47:53 Rep. Frank Pallone (NJ): All right, during your tenure at Equifax, you expanded the company’s business into packaging and selling other people’s data, and in that August 17 speech, you explained that having free data with a gross margin of profit of about 90% is—and I quote—“a pretty unique model.” And I get that this unique model is a good deal for Equifax, but can you explain how it’s a good deal for consumers? Richard Smith: Thank you, Congressman. I think I understand the question. Our industry has been around for a number of years, as you know. In fact, Equifax is a 118-year-old company. We’re part of a federally regulated ecosystem that enables consumers to get access to credit when they want access to credit and, hopefully, at the best rates available to them at that time. So we’re very vital to the flow of economy, not just in the U.S. but around the world. Pallone: All right, I want to turn to what Equifax is offering consumers in the wake of this breach, specifically the free credit-lock service that is supposed to be introduced next year. We’ve been told that this free credit-lock service could require consumers to consent to Equifax sharing or selling the information it collects from the service to third parties with whom the individual already has a business relationship for marketing or other purposes. Is that true? Smith: This product will be a web-enabled, mobile-enabled application that will allow a consumer at a time he or she, if they decide they want access to credit, can simply toggle on, toggle off that application to give the bank, credit card issuer, auto lender, access to their credit file to approve their loan. Pallone: Well, by agreeing to use the Equifax’s lock service, will consumers also be opting in to any additional marketing arrangements, either via Equifax or any of its partners? Smith: Congressman, we’re trying to change the paradigm. What I mean by that is, this will be in an environment viewed as a service, a utility, not a product. But we know cross-selling, upselling, or any products available to the consumer, when they go to get and sign up for the lock product, it’s a service to them, and that’s the only product—this service they’ll be able to get. Pallone: Will Equifax give consumers an easy and free method to choose not to share their data in this way, even if the consumer already has a business relationship with the third party? Smith: Yeah, Congressman, I’d envision as this evolves over time, the consumer will have the ability to invite into their world who they want to have access and who they do not. It’ll be their choice, their power, not ours, to make that decision. Pallone: Now, last week, the interim CEO announced that by January 31 of 2018 Equifax would make locking and unlocking of a person’s Equifax credit report free forever. A credit-report lock is already included in TrustedID Premier and other services like credit monitoring and identity-theft insurance. Will that still end after one year? Smith: Congressman, a couple of differences. Number one, the product we offer today for consumers protects the consumer at the same-level protection they’d get January 31. The difference is, today is a browser-enabled product, or service; the 31 of January it’ll be an application, much simpler and easier for the consumer to use. The protection is largely the same. So they get this free service when they sign up for one year. At the end of the one year, effective January 31 of 2018, it goes into the new lock product. Pallone: I guess the difference, other than not expiring, between the credit-report lock that is part of TrustedID Premier and the credit-locking tool that will be available in January, why not just extend the freeze program? Smith: There’s a difference between the freeze product, which came to pass with FACTA back in 2003, passed into law in 2004, that is now governed by state laws in all states, and it’s a cumbersome process for a consumer. In many cases, some states require you to mail in your request for a freeze and that we must mail you a PIN, so your ability to get access to credit when you want credit is encumbered. A consumer could go to a car dealer or to a bank to get a credit card, forget his or her PIN on a freeze product, have to go back home, look for the PIN, mail the PIN in, so it’s a cumbersome process. The lock product we’re offering today is a big step forward; lock product for the 31 of January is an even further step forward. 53:00 Rep. Joe Barton (TX): Mr. Smith, what’s the market value of Equifax? What’s your company worth, or your former— Richard Smith: Congressman, last time I checked it’s somewhere close to 13 billion. Barton: Thirteen billion. I’m told by my staff that this latest data breach was about 143 million people. Is that right? Smith: We were informed yesterday from the company that is typical in a forensic audit, there was some slight movement and the numbers adjusted. Press release came out from the company last night. It’s 145.5. Barton: A hundred—well, okay, I appreciate your accuracy there. But under current law, you’re basically required to alert each of those that their account has been hacked, but there’s really no penalty unless there is some sort of a lawsuit filed and the Federal Trade Commission or state attorney general files a class-action lawsuit against your company. So you really only notify—you’re just required to notify everybody and say so sorry, so sad. I understand that your company has to stay in business, has to make money, but it would seem to me that you might pay a little bit more attention to security if you had to pay everybody whose account got hacked a couple thousand bucks or something. What would the industry reaction be to that if we passed a law that did that? Smith: Congressman, I understand your question. I think the path that we were on when I was there and the company’s continued is the right path, and that’s a path, a line that the consumers to control the power of who and when accesses a credit file going forward, taking the— Barton: Well, a consumer can’t control the security of your system. Smith: That is true, sir, but they can control— Barton: And your security people knew there was a problem, and according to staff briefings that I’ve been a part of, they didn’t act in a very expeditious fashion until the system had already been hacked. And, I mean, you’re to be commended for being here. I don’t think we subpoenaed you. I think you appeared voluntarily, which shows a commendable amount of integrity on your part, but I’m tired of almost every month there’s another security breach, and it’s okay, we have to alert you. I checked my file to see if I was one of the ones that got breached, and apparently I wasn’t. I don’t know how I escaped, but I didn’t get breached, but my staff person did, and we looked at her reports last night, and the amount of information that’s collected is way beyond what you need to determine if she (audio glitch) for a consumer loan. Basically, her entire adult history, going back 10 years, everywhere she’s lived, her name, her date of birth, her social security number, her phone numbers, her addresses, her credit card, student loans, security-clearance applications for federal employment, car insurance, even employment history of jobs that she worked when she was in high school. That’s not needed to determine whether she’s worthy of getting a five-thousand-dollar credit card loan or something. And now it’s all out in the netherworld of whoever hacked it. I can’t speak for anybody but myself, but I think it’s time at the federal level to put some teeth into this and some sort of a per-account payment—and, again, I don’t want to drive credit bureaus out of business and all of that, but we could have this hearing every year from now on if we don’t do something to change the current system. 58:42 Rep. Ben Lujan (NM): Will Equifax be willing to pay for this freeze at Experian and TransUnion for consumers whose information was stolen? Richard Smith: You’re referring to the freeze or the lock? Lujan: You said they’re the same, so… Smith: Yeah, right now we offer a free lock product, as you know, for one year, and then a free lifetime lock product for life, starting January 31, 2018. Smith: And that also extends to Experian and TransUnion? Smith: No, sir, it does not. Lujan: Would Equif—let me repeat the question. Will Equifax be willing to pay for that freeze, for that lock, at Experian and TransUnion for consumers whose information was stolen by it—through Equifax? Smith: Congressman, the company’s come out with what they feel is a comprehensive five different services today and a lifetime lock. I would encourage, to be clear, I would encourage TransUnion and Experian to do the same. It’s time we change the paradigm, give the power back to the consumer to control who accesses his or her credit data. It’s the right thing to do. Lujan: Okay, I’m down to limited time, Mr. Smith. I apologize. I’ll take that as a no that Equifax will not pay for Experian and TransUnion consumers. 1:26:09 Rep. Debbie Dingell (MI): Why do consumers have to pay you to access their credit report? Why should that data not be free? Richard Smith: Congresswoman, the consumer has the ability to access the credit report for free from each of the three credit reporting agencies once a year, and you combine that with the ability to lock your credit file for life for free. Again, it’s a step forward. 2:00:40 Rep. Larry Bucshon (IN): Is it possible people who never signed up or used Equifax directly could have been impacted by the breach? Richard Smith: Yes, Congressman. Bucshon: Okay, so how does Equifax get the information on people who’ve never directly associated with Equifax at all? I mean, I’m not familiar with that. Smith: Yeah, we get it from banks, telecommunications companies, credit card issuers, so on and so forth. Bucshon: So just like we go to apply for a loan, they send you the information, because they want to get a data—they want to get the information on my credit rating, for example. Smith Correct. As I define it, we are part of the federally regulated ecosystem— Bucshon: Yeah. Smith: —that enables banks to loan money to consumers. Bucshon: Right. So, it’s up to the banks, at that point, to notify the individual which credit agencies they’re utilizing to assess their credit risk? Or is it up to the credit agencies? Smith: Traditionally, the contributors of data—in that case, Congressman, the banks would give their data to all three. That’s the benefit of the system is you get a holistic view of an individual’s credit risk. Bucshon: Yeah. My point is, I guess, because a lot of people I talk to back in Indiana, southern Indiana, have no idea who Equifax is, right? And many of those people have applied for home loans and other things. And a matter of fact, probably at some point you have their information, but they may or may not have been notified who sent the information to them—probably the bank or other agency—and that’s something I think that is also maybe an issue, that people don’t understand or have not been told who is being used to assess their credit risk and, hence, something like this happens, they have no idea whether or not their information has been compromised. Smith: I understand your point. Bucshon: Yeah. 2:09:20 Rep. Gene Green (TX): Mr. Smith, Equifax customers or businesses who purchase data and credit reports on consumers, the American public is essentially Equifax’s product. How many times per year on average does Equifax sell access to a given individual’s credit file to a potential creditor, and how much do they make every time they sell it? Richard Smith: If I understand the question, Congressman, we take the data that is given to us by the credit ecosystem of the U.S., add analytics to it, and then when a consumer wants credit—again, through a credit card, home loan, a car—the bank then comes to us for that data and for that analytics, and we charge them for that. **Green: Okay. Well, the question was, how many times does Equifax receive payment for that individual credit file? Every time—if my local car dealer contacts Equifax, and so they pay a fee to Equifax for that information. Smith: Yes, Congressman. If you as an individual want to go to that car dealership and get a loan for a car, they come to us or to competitors, and when they take your data, access your data, we do get paid for it, correct. 2:47:40 Richard Smith: If there’s one thing I’d love to see this country think about is the concept of a social security number in this environment being private and secure, I think it’s time as a country to think beyond that. What is a better way to identify consumers in our country in a very secure way, and I think that way is something different than an SSN, a date of birth, and a name. 2:56:28 Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL): What if I want to opt out of Equifax? I don’t want you to have my information anymore. I want to be in control of my information. I never opted in, I never said it was okay to have all my information, and now I want out. I want to lock out Equifax. Can I do that? Richard Smith: Congresswoman, that requires a much broader discussion around the rules of credit reporting agencies because that data, as you know today, doesn’t come from the consumer; it comes from the furnishers, and the furnishers provide that data to the entire industry. Schakowsky: No, I understand that. And that’s exactly where we need to go, to a much larger discussion, because most Americans really don’t know how much information, what it is that you have it, and they never said okay. Video: , YouTube, December 3, 2015 Hearing: ; Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee; December 18, 2013 Witnesses: Tony Hadley: Senior VP of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Experian 47:13 Sen. Jay Rockefeller (retired) (WV): So, Mr. Hadley, what does your company—or why does it single out and sell lists of economically vulnerable groups like immigrants, widows, and military personnel? 48:03 Tony Hadley: Thank you, Senator. We would be very concerned if lenders were using that information for scamming purposes, too. And we have processes and procedures in place to ensure that nobody gains access to that score for that purpose. Now— Sen. Jay Rockefeller: And how does that work? Hadley: We have an onboarding system by which we take on a client that gets our information to know who they are, and we also have a mail-piece review process to know what they’re going to offer the consumer. And if it’s anything that looks discriminatory or predatory, we will not provide our list to them. Now— Rockfeller: And this is your self-regulation. Hadley: This is our self-regulation under DMA standards. So if we were to violate that, we’d be in violation of our self-regulatory standards as well as our contractual standards with our clients. Now, what’s important here is that there are somewhere between 45 and 50 million Americans who are outside the mainstream of the credit markets in the United States. These are underbanked, underserved consumers who financial institutions cannot reach through credit scoring and credit report. They don't have financial identities or a big enough or even the presence of a credit file in order to bring them into the mainstream of financial markets. But that doesn't mean that they don't need access to financial services. So banks use this data to try to reach out to consumers who they can help to empower them, not to scam them. We don't want to do business with financial institutions who are trying to scam people, only to empower them. And this is their best way to find those individuals who are outside the mainstream—immigrants; new to credit, like recent college graduates, exactly what we’re talking about here—to give them an offer, an invitation to apply, so that then they can make an eligibility determination regarding that application under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. But this is marketing literature, not eligibility determination. Rockefeller: Who— Hadley: Can I add to that for you? Rockefeller: Not entirely. Can you tell me which are the companies that buy this ChoiceScore product from you? We’ve asked you that. Hadley: Yeah. They would be banks and financial institutions and members of the financial community. Rockefeller: That’s what’s called a general answer. Hadley: Yeah. I can't tell you who our clients are. That’s a proprietary list of ours. It’s like our secret ingredient. The ones who would want that most are our competitors. And our counsel has informed me that they don't believe that our ability to give that to you can be shielded from disclosure through the rules of the Senate. If we thought they could be—for example, under a law enforcement action, where it could be shielded and protected from FOIA or other disclosures, we could do that, but not under the situation—under the rules of the Senate. And we’re very sorry about that, but we just simply can't do that. Our counsel won't let us. 1:25:49 Sen. Claire McCaskill (MO): The case, Mr. Hadley, of Experian and Superget. You purchased the company Court Ventures in 2012, in the spring of 2012. For more than a year after the time you purchased this company that had all this data, you were taking monthly wire transfers from Singapore, and your company did nothing. And as it turns out, those wire transfers were coming from a man in Vietnam who specialized in identity theft and was marketing the information that you owned to criminals to ruin people's lives. So my first question to you is, you were quoted as saying, “We would know who was buying this.” You were getting wire transfers from Singapore on a monthly basis, and no one bothered to check to see who that was? Hadley: Now, I want to be clear that this was not Experian marketing data; this was Experian authentication data. So it’s under a different company, a different use. So that’s just—I want you to know that it’s not marketing data. McCaskill: I don't understand the distinction. I think it’s a distinction— Jay Rockefeller: Nor do I. McCaskill: —without a difference. I believe it was data that you owned, Experian owned. You’d purchased this data from Court Scan, and they had, in fact— Hadley: No. Let me clarify. McCaskill: —sold it to someone else. Hadley: Yeah, let me clarify that for you, because we’ve provided a full response to that question to the Committee, and it’s part of the eight submissions that we’ve given. And I do have to say that it’s an unfortunate situation, and the incident is still under investigation by law enforcement agencies. So I’m really extremely limited in what I can say publicly about it, but I do want to say this. The suspect in the case obtained data controlled by a third party—that was U.S. Info Search. That was not an Experian company—through a company we bought, Court Ventures— McCaskill: Okay. Let— Hadley: —prior to the time that we acquired that company. And to be clear, no Experian data was ever accessed in that deal. McCaskill: Well, I understand what you’re saying. Here’s what happened: You had U.S. Info Search— Hadley: No, we did not own— McCaskill: No, no; I’m— U.S. Info Search existed, and Court Ventures existed. Hadley: And they had a partnership. McCaskill: —they decided, for commercial reasons, to make more money, to combine their information. Hadley: To resell their information. McCaskill: And so they had a sharing agreement, those two companies, correct? Hadley: Right, right. McCaskill: Okay. So these two companies had a sharing agreement. Then you bought one of those companies. Hadley: Court Ventures. McCaskill: Correct. So now you owned it. Now you stood in their place. Are you a lawyer? Hadley: I’m not a lawyer, but I understand we stood in their place, right. McCaskill: Are there any lawyers on the panel? Okay; she’ll back me up. You stand in their place when you buy this. So now you’re there. Now, you said in your earlier testimony, we would know who was buying this. So you now are part of their transactions. Hadley: During— McCaskill: And you were receiving the benefit of these monthly wire. Hadley: So, during the due-diligence process, we didn't have total access to all the information we needed in order to completely vet that. And by the time we learned about the malfeasance, I think nine months had expired. The Secret Service came to us, told us of the incident, and we immediately began cooperating with the Secret Service to bring this person to justice. McCaskill: Okay. Hadley: And we’re continuing to cooperate with law enforcement in that realm. This was—we were a victim and scammed by this person. McCaskill: Well, I would say the people who had all their identity stolen were the victims. Hadley: And we know who they are, and we’re going to make sure that they’re protected. There’s been no allegation that any harm has come, thankfully, in this scam. McCaskill: Okay. Hadley: And we’ve closed that down, and— Rockefeller: Let Senator McCaskill continue. Hadley: —and we’ve modified our processes to ensure that [unclear]— Rockefeller: Let Senator McCaskill continue. McCaskill: Okay. So let's talk about that process. This person got—this man who they lured to Guam to arrest and who is now facing criminal charges in New Hampshire, they posed as an American-based private investigator. What is your vetting process when people want to buy your stuff? Hadley: That would’ve been Court Ventures who would have vetted that prior to our acquisition. McCaskill: Okay, but I’m talking about now, you. What is your vetting process? Hadley: Right now, before we would allow acc—first, let me say that that person would have not gained access to Experian or this data if they had gone through our vetting processes prior to the acquisition. McCaskill: And what would’ve stopped him? Hadley: We would’ve known who that company is. We would’ve had a physical onsite inspection of that company. We would’ve known who that business is and what that business's record is. We would’ve known exactly why they wanted that data and for what purposes. And that would have been enshrined in our contract. And we would’ve known the kinds of systems they have in place to protect the data that they gained. Those are all incumbent upon us under the Gramm-Leach- Bliley Act and the FCRA. McCaskill: Well, listen, I understand that this was not a crime that began under your watch. Hadley: Thank you. McCaskill: But you did buy the company, and you did keep getting the wire transfers from Singapore, and the only reason you ever questioned them is because the Secret Service knocked on your door. I don't know how long those wire transfers from Singapore would’ve gone on until you caught them. I don't have confidence that it would’ve stopped at all. So I guess what my point is here, I maybe do not feel as strongly as others on this panel that behavioral marketing is evil. I believe behavioral marketing is a reality, and, frankly, the only reason we have everything we have on the Internet for free is because of behavioral marketing. So I don't see behavioral marketing as an evil into itself. What I do see is some desperate need for Congress to look at how consumers can get this information, what kind of transparency is there, and whether or not companies that allow monthly wire transfers into their coffers from Singapore from a criminal who is trying to rip off identity theft, whether or not they should be held liable for no due diligence on checking those wire transfers from Singapore until the Secret Service knocked on their door. And that’s what I think we need to be looking at. And I don't think there’s enough—I mean, I know that some of my friends on the other side of the aisle, you say trial lawyers, and they break out in a sweat. But the truth is that if there was some liability in this area, it would be amazing how fast people could clean up their act. And, unfortunately, in too many instances there’s not clear liability because we haven't set the rules of the road. Video: , YouTube, October 3, 2009. Hearing: ; House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations; July 30, 2008. Witnesses: Thomas Quinn: Vice President of Global Scoring at Fair Isaac Business Consulting Stan Oliai: Experian Decision Analytics Consulting Senior Vice President Chet Wiermanski: Transunion Credit Services Analytical Systems Vice President Richard Goerss: Equifax Credit Services Chief Privacy Officer Evan Hendricks: Privacy Times Publisher and Editor 26:42 Thomas Quinn: A FICO score is a three-digit number ranging from 300 to 850, where the higher the score, the lower the risk. Lenders use the score, along with other information, to decision the request for credit, set the credit line and pricing terms. Creating the FICO score model requires two samples of credit reports, two years apart, for the same randomly selected depersonalized set of consumers provided by one of the national credit reporting agencies. Those credit factors found to be most powerful and consistent in predicting credit performance, individually and in combination, form the basis for the complex mathematical algorithm which becomes the score. The traditional FICO score model evaluates five broad types of data elements from the consumer credit report. These include, and listed in order of importance, previous credit payment history, about 35 percent contribution; level of outstanding debts, about 30 percent contribution; length of credit history, 15 percent contribution; pursuit of new credit, 10 percent contribution; and mix of type of credit, about 10 percent contribution. FICO scores were first introduced to the marketplace in 1989 and have been consistently redeveloped and updated throughout the years to ensure their predictive strength. 34:00 Stan Oliai: A credit score is a numerical expression of risk of default, based on a credit report. The score is produced by a mathematical formula created from a statistical analysis of a large representative sample of credit reports. The formula is typically called a “model.” The credit score is calculated by the model, using only information in the credit report. These reports include the following types of information: The credit account history—such as was the account paid, was it paid on time, how long has the account been open, and what’s the outstanding balance; the type of account—is it a mortgage, is it an installment, is it revolving; the public record information—liens, judgments, bankruptcies, for example; inquiries in the credit file that represent applications for new credit and other consumer-initiated transactions. A credit report does not include information such as income or assets. It also does not include demographic information such as race or ethnicity. Demographic factors are not used in the calculation of a credit score. 35:05 Stan Oliai: Regulatory oversight of credit scores is accomplished through routine bank examinations for compliance, with a number of laws that govern fair lending, such as the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. This makes sense because the lender chooses the scoring model to assist in this proprietary underwriting process. The lender is ultimately responsible for demonstrating to regulators that the scoring model it has chosen complies with the lending laws. 46:20 Chet Wiermanski: There is strong evidence to suggest that consumers would benefit from the increased reporting of nontraditional credit information. For example, consumers with thin credit files and, in particular, minorities, immigrants, young and old, all experience a net benefit from full-file reporting by energy companies and telecommunication providers. Consumers with impaired credit histories also obtain a net benefit from full-file reporting by these companies. We are presently engaged in a follow-up study to learn more about the impediments to full-file reporting faced by the utilities and telecommunication industry. It may be very well that Congress may have a role to play in removing roadblocks to encourage voluntary full-file reporting. 2:01:30 Richard Goerss: There are a lot of thing—different activities—that a consumer can do to protect themselves if they feel they are victims or might be victims of identity theft. Certainly, one of the things that they can do is to place a fraud alert on their credit file. They can receive a free disclosure of their credit file to see if there has been any inappropriate activity or inquiry to their credit file. They can provide an identity-theft report and identify the account information that they feel, or that they say, was opened fraudulently. And under the requirements of the FACT Act, the consumer reporting agencies are going to delete that information, and the consumer reporting agency that receives that identity theft with the information-removal request is going to refer it to the other two consumer reporting agencies, who are also going to remove that information. 2:24:30 Evan Hendricks: Right now, you take it for granted that we know about credit scores, but you have to remember it was, like, 12 years ago, in the mid-1990's, when credit scores started being widely used. They were a complete secret; the industry did not even acknowledge their existence. Then, when they found out about it and reporters like Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post started reporting on it, then they would not disclose the score to you. So, California led the way with a state law, and now we have the FACT Act, which means that you can get one—you can buy a credit score for a fair and reasonable price. 2:54:55 Rep. Jackie Speier (CA): We call these credit reporting agencies or credit bureaus, which gives the average consumer the impression that they are dealing with some federal entity, when in fact they are not—we heard this afternoon they’re private or publicly traded companies—and yet this information is so critical, and to Mr. Barrett's comments, who suggested that the consumer needs to be educated, needs to know what goes into their FICO score and what they can do to improve their FICO score, we can't give those kinds of answers, because, for all intents and purposes, it is a proprietary formula. It’s sort of like secret sauce; we don't know what it is. Now, there’s something wrong when the government can't articulate what should be considered in a FICO score. Cover Art Design by Music Presented in this Episode Intro & Exit: by (found on by mevio)

Natural disasters: They just keep coming. In this episode, learn about the disaster relief bill that will soon be law, get an update from Puerto Rico from a member of the Coast Guard, and look into a few new laws that included disaster relief provisions with special guests Jessica Rhodes and Margy Feldhuhn. Also, get the scoop on the existential crisis that Congressional Dish has been experiencing and get a preview of exciting new changes coming soon to your favorite Congress-focused podcast. Please support Congressional Dish to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes Bills Outline funding for Federal Aviation Administration projects and operations through March 31, 2018 Funds public and private that provide graduate medical education programs and a until March 31 a Medicare program providing in-home treatment of immune diseases until the end of 2020 the Medicare Improvement Fund, by $50 million per year. If people affected by the hurricanes want to withdraw up to $100,000 before January 1, 2019 from their retirement accounts, the 10% tax on early withdrawals from retirement plans . The money can be repaid People with employer plans from the retirement funds for up to $100,000 (double the usual amount) until December 31, 2018. They will get an extra year to pay it back. Allows employers whose employees were affected by the hurricanes to get a who couldn't work up to $6,000 per person Current law allows tax deductions for charitable contributions to churches, private organizations, hospitals, & other organizations as long as these don't make up more than 50% of that person's charitable donations for the year. This is for donations made for Harvey, Irma, and Maria relief. This will if the donation is to a private foundation or to a new fund Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico The Secretary of the Treasury will give the US Virgin Islands money from the hurricane. The government of the US Virgin Islands will determine the amount Puerto Rico will be given money based on for what Puerto Rico would have been given if they had the same tax code. Puerto Rico will not be given the money until Puerto Rico submits a plan that is approved by the Secretary of the Treasury for distributing the payments to the residents. for universities & higher education schools that were affected by the hurricanes or have students affected by the hurricanes. Gives money (Project School Emergency Response to Violence, which helps schools recover from traumatic events) on a $18.67 billion to the DHS and FEMA for their disaster relief fund will be for loans to local governments to provide essential services needed as a result of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, or Maria $526.5 million to the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service for fire suppression $16 billion of National Flood Insurance Program debt $1.27 billion for food for Puerto Rico Changes how bankruptcy court judges are appointed and raises some fees. Passed the House of Representatives on October 12, 2017 by a vote of Additional Reading Article: by The Editors, Bloomberg, October 13, 2017. Article: by christopher Flavelle, Insurance Journal, October 13, 2017. Article: by Niv Elis and Cristina Marcos, The Hill, October 12, 2017 Article: by Alexa Liautaud, Vice News, October 12, 2017. Article: by Aaron Rupar, ThinkProgress, October 12, 2017. Article: by David Dayen, The Intercept, October 11, 2017. Article: by Mike Ward and Kevin Diaz, Houston Chronicle, October 11, 2017. Article: by Catherine E. Murray, AccountingWeb, October 11, 2017. Article: by Aurelie Corinthios and Liz McNeil, People, October 6, 2017. Article: , Fox News, October 5, 2017. Commentary: by Peter Morrison, Lexocology, October 3, 2017. Commentary: by Mary Plotkin, The Hill, January 17, 2017. Article: by Jen Wieczner, Fortune, January 11, 2017. Commentary: by David Dayen, New Republic, November 30, 2016. Article: by David Dayen, New Republic, May 9, 2016. Article: by Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker, February 26, 2015. Article: by A.R. Sanders, E.R. Martin, G.W. Beecham, S. Guo, Cambridge University Press, November 17, 2014. References Bethenny Frankel's Disaster Relief Site: Broad Defense: iab Tech Lab: Twitter: Young Turks Appearance: Young Turks Appearance: Young Turks Appearance: Young Turks Appearance: Young Turks Appearance: Sound Clip Sources Interview: , October 12, 2017. Press Briefing: , CNN Politics, October 3, 2017. Podcast: , Libsyn's The Feed, September 30, 2017. Press Briefing: , September 27, 2017. YouTube Live Stream: , The Broad-Cast, September 27, 2017. Song: , For the Love of Money, lyrics by The Ojays. Music Presented in this Episode Intro & Exit: by (found on by mevio) Cover Art Design by

Since 1994, the FBI has maintained a database with samples of DNA taken from convicted criminals in order to match those samples with DNA collected at crime scenes. However, over the course of the last two decades, the DNA database has expanded to include many more people. In this episode, we explore the expansion of DNA collection and storage by law enforcement and examine a new law that will further that trend. Later in the episode, get an update on Congress’s progress in meeting their multiple September 30th deadlines. Please support Congressional Dish: to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes Bills Outline to create standards and procedures for the use of Rapid DNA machines and the DNA analyses they create. the DNA samples allowed to be stored to include those prepared by any criminal justice agency using Rapid DNA machines that are approved by the FBI. Division A: Reinforcing Education Accountability in Development Act is now to partner with developing countries and "donors, multilateral institutions, the private sector, and nongovernmental and civil society organizations, including faith-based organizations" to promote education programs and activities to prepare individuals to be "productive members of society and the workforce" "Assistance provided under this section to support programs and activities under this subsection shall be aligned with and advance United States foreign policy and economic interests." Division B: Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief Requirements Act, 2017 for disaster relief, as long as President Trump officially approves it. the Small Business Administration to lend $450 million for disaster rebuilding but half of that is allowed to be for administrative expenses and additional $7.4 billion for housing and infrastructure in disaster zones Includes a provision that says the recipients of funds "may adopt, without review or public comment, any environmental review, approval, or permit performed by a Federal agency, and such adoption shall satisfy the responsibilities of the recipient with respect to such environmental review, approval or permit." Division C: Temporary Extension of Public Debt Relief the debt ceiling until December 8, 2017. Division D: Continuing Appropriations Act, 2018 and the funding and provisions from the 2017 funding law until . The .6791% cut will Additional Reading Article: by Meridith McGraw and Maryalice Parks, ABC News, September 20, 2017. Article: by Melanie Zanona, The Hill, September 20, 2017. Commentary: by Thomas Huelskoetter, Fortune, September 20, 2017. Article: , Ripon Advance News Service, September 20, 2017. Transcript: , NPR, September 16, 2017. Article: by Greg Tourial, Roll Call, September 15, 2017. Article: by Amber Phillips and Kim Soffen, The Washington Post, September 8, 2017. Article: by Mike DeBonis, Kelsey Snell, Philip Rucker and Elise Viebeck, The Washington Post, September 7, 2017. Article: by Annie Sciacca, Mercury News, August 25, 2017. Press Release: , IntegenX, August 21, 2017. Article: by Jerry Iannelli, Miami New Times, August 16, 2017. Transcript: , Democracy Now, August 2, 2017. Article: by James S. Henry, The American Interest, July 28, 2017. Article: , Business Wire, April 7, 2016. Article: by Ava Kofman, New Republic, February 24, 2016. Article: by Shane Bauer, Mother Jones, November 20, 2014. Article: by Robert Barnes, The Washington Post, June 3, 2013. Press Release: , Cision PR Newswire, April 1, 2013. Article: by Bradley J. Fikes, San Diego Union Tribune, April 1, 2013. Article: by Jennifer Lynch, Eff, January 6, 2013. Audit Report: , Office of the Inspector General, May 2006. References Cornell Law School: Cornell Law School: Electronic Privacy Information Center: GovTrack: GovTrack: FBI: FBI: FBI: EFF: Federal Register: NCSL: OpenSecrets: OpenSecrets: OpenSecrets: OpenSecrets: OpenSecrets: OpenSecrets: Integenx: YouTube: YouTube: YouTube: YouTube: YouTube: Listener Dee Bradley's Blog: Sound Clip Sources Hearing: , Senate Judiciary Committee, December 9, 2015. Witness: James Comey - Director, FBI Timestamps & Transcripts 5:07:58 Sen. Orrin Hatch (UT): Last week I introduced bipartisan legislation with Senators Feinstein, Lee, and Gillibrand to update our nation’s laws to take account of this exciting new technology. Now, Rapid DNA devices—they’re self-contained, they’re fully automated instruments that can be placed in booking stations, and they can both develop a DNA profile from a cheek swab and compare the results against existing profiles in less than two hours. Now, my bill, the Rapid DNA Act of 2015, would allow law enforcement officials using FBI-approved Rapid DNA instruments to upload profiles generated by such devices to the FBI's Combined DNA Index System and perform database comparisons. Director Comey, you've spoken in the past about Rapid DNA and how this technology will help law enforcement. Do you believe that Rapid DNA technology is important, how will it impact law enforcement, and do you believe Congress should pass legislation authorizing its use within standards and guidelines promulgated by your agency? Director James Comey: Yeah, that authority that's in your bill would help us change the world in a very, very exciting way, that allow us, in booking stations around the country, if someone's arrested, to know instantly, or near instantly, whether that person is the rapist who's been on the loose in a particular community before they're released on bail and get away, or to clear somebody, to show that they're not the person. It's very, very exciting. We are very grateful that we're going to have the statutory authorization if that passes to connect those Rapid DNA technologies to the national DNA database. Hatch: Well, thank you. My bill, the Rapid DNA Act, will not affect when or under what circumstances law enforcement collects DNA samples. These decisions would be governed by state or other federal law. What it will do is affect where samples are processed and how quickly they're processed. Now, Mr. Director, what would you say to individuals who may be concerned that Rapid DNA technology will raise privacy concerns, and what would you say to individuals who may be concerned that this technology could affect the integrity of FBI's Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS? And I would note that my bill restricts access to CODIS to FBI-approved Rapid DNA instruments operated in accordance with FBI-issued standards and procedures. Comey: The first—you said it well, Senator: folks need to understand this isn't about collecting DNA from more people. It's about the DNA that's collected when someone is arrested, being able to be analyzed much more quickly, that can show us in some cases this is the wrong person or can show us in some cases this is someone we have to be very worried about. That is good for our justice system as a whole. And you're exactly right. The national database, the CODIS database, is the gold standard. This legislation does not make it any—water down the standards that are applied before a DNA result can be pressed against that database. We're still going to have high standards. We're still going to require that this is the gold standard for identification in the United States. Hearing: , House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, June 18, 2015. Witnesses: Amy Hess - Executive Director of Science & Technology at the FBI Jody Wolf - President of the American Society of Criminal Laboratory Directors Natasha Alexenko - Founder of Natasha’s Justice Project Timestamps & Transcripts 6:05 Amy Hess: All 50 states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Laboratory, and the FBI contribute DNA records to and participate in NDIS, which contains almost 14 million offender or arrestee DNA records and over 630,000 forensic or crime scene DNA records. 11:06 Jody Wolf: Currently, these devices are best suited for use with single-source, high-quantity biological samples such as referenced standards of blood or saliva from known individuals, thus limiting its usefulness for complex crime scene samples of more than one person. These instruments also currently can’t analyze trace amounts of DNA. Consequently, these instruments are not designed for the routine testing of evidence types found in rape kits and will not help with the reduction of rape kit backlogs. 22:03 Rep. Bob Goodlatte (VA): Would this legislation help speed this up a lot? Jody Wolf: Well, comparing 90 samples utilizing Rapid DNA would take almost 27 hours. Using the—processing it using a traditional existing technology would take 7 to 8 hours. So the limitation with the Rapid DNA is that you can only run 5 samples at a time, whereas on current technology, we can run 24 samples at a time. To process 90 samples utilizing Rapid would take 27 hours. Using existing technology would take 7 to 8. Same result. Goodlatte: So do you think that this is a good thing for people to have the option here, or not? Wolf: It depends on your goal. The advantage that Rapid DNA has is that you have that answer while the person is still in the booking station. With traditional databasing, there’s a delay because you have to transport the sample from point of collection to a laboratory for analysis. Supreme Court Argument: Maryland v. King, February 26, 2013. Witnesses Katherine Winfree - Chief Deputy Attorney General of Baltimore, MD Michael Dreeben - Deputy Solicitor General of the Department of Justice Timestamps & Transcripts Part 1 3:24 Katherine Winfree: The cornerstone of our argument is that when an individual is taken into custody, an individual is arrested on a probable cause—a probable-cause arrest—that person, by virtue of being in that class of individuals whose conduct has led the police to arrest him on—based on probable cause, surrenders a substantial amount of liberty and privacy. Justice Elena Kagan: But, Ms. Winfree, that can’t be quite right, can it? I mean, such a person—assume you’ve been arrested for something, the state doesn’t have the right to go search your house for evidence of unrelated crimes. Unknown Speaker: Justice Kagan. Kagan: Isn’t that correct? Winfree: That’s correct, Justice Kagan. Kagan: Doesn’t have the right to go search your car for evidence of unrelated crimes. Winfree: That’s correct. Kagan: Just because you’ve been arrested doesn’t mean that you lose the privacy expectations and things you have that aren’t related to the offense that you’ve been arrested for. Winfree: That’s correct, but what we’re seizing here is not evidence of crime. What it is, is information related to that person’s DNA profile. Those 26 numbers— Kagan: Well—and if there were a real identification purpose for this, then I understand that argument. But if it’s just to solve cold cases, which is the way you started, then it’s just like searching your house to see what’s in your house that could help to solve a cold case. Winfree: Well, I would say there’s a very real distinction between the police generally rummaging in your home to look for evidence that might relate to your personal papers and your thoughts. It’s a very real difference there than swabbing the inside of an arrestee’s cheek to determine what that person’s CODIS DNA profile is. It’s looking only at 26 numbers that tell us nothing more about that individual. Kagan: Well, but, if that’s what you’re basing it on, then you’re not basing it on an arrestee. I mean, then the chief justice is right: it could be any arrestee, no matter how minor the offense. It could be just any old person in the street. Why don’t we do this for everybody who comes in for a driver’s license because it’s very effective? Part 2 0:20 Katherine Winfree: Since 2009, when Maryland began to collect DNA samples from arrestees charged with violent crimes and burglary, there have been 225 matches, 75 prosecutions, and 42 convictions, including that of Respondent King. Justice Antonin Scalia: Well, that’s really good. I’ll bet you, if you conducted a lot of unreasonable searches and seizures, you’d get more convictions, too. That proves absolutely nothing. Press Briefing: , Attorney General Ashcroft, March 4, 2002. Timestamps & Transcripts 0:33 Attorney General John Ashcroft: Douglas and Laura White were married just 11 days when, walking down a bike path in Mesquite, Texas, in November of 1993, a man jumped out from behind the trees and demanded their money. The frightened couple began to pray, which enraged their attacker. He shot Douglas dead on the scene, raped Laura, and disappeared into the Dallas suburb. Eight years later, in January of 2001, under the federal DNA Backlog Reduction Program, police in Dallas matched a DNA sample taken from Alvin Avon Braziel Jr., with DNA evidence collected from the crime scene. Braziel was convicted of capital murder and given the death sentence. The murder conviction of Alvin Brazil is a powerful example of how one technology, forensic DNA analysis, has revolutionized law enforcement. Over the short span of 10 years, DNA technology has proven itself to be the truth machine of law enforcement, ensuring justice by identifying the guilty and exonerating the innocent. With a strong support of Congress, the Department of Justice has served as a leader in the national effort to maximize the benefits of DNA evidence, and the past 5 years have seen a national explosion in forensic DNA collection. All 50 states and the federal government now have laws on the books that require DNA to be collected from convicted offenders for the purpose of criminal DNA databasing. The strong trend is toward broader DNA sample collection, including collection from all felons in many states. And the reason is simple: experience has taught law enforcement that the more offenders that are included in the database, the more crimes will be solved. 9:23 Attorney General John Ashcroft: The law enforcement tool that makes this DNA analysis useful to state and local police and prosecutors throughout the nation is the Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS. It’s administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. CODIS brings the power of DNA technology to bear on thousands of law enforcement investigations by integrating information obtained by state DNA databases and making that information available nationwide. House Debate: , May 16, 2017. Timestamps & Transcripts 8:00 Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner: Like fingerprinting, photographing, and other booking procedures which at the time were novel but now have become routine, Rapid DNA will soon be standard procedure in police stations throughout the country. There is only one problem with Rapid DNA technology: federal law. Our law, written in 1994 when DNA technology was still in its infancy, prohibits the use of Rapid DNA technology in booking stations. This is not because of any limitation in Rapid DNA technology, but simply because at that time Rapid DNA technology was not even contemplated. Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: by (found on by mevio) Cover Art Design by

Process: It matters. During the first seven months of the 115th Congress, the Republicans tried - in multiple ways - to repeal portions of the Affordable Care Act. We already know what they were trying to do; in this episode, hear the full story of how they tried to get their bills passed into law. Later in the episode, we also do a quick summary of what to expect in September as deadlines related to flood insurance, government funding, marijuana, and many other topics loom. Please support Congressional Dish: to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes Additional Reading Article: by Jackie Wattles and Chris Isidore, CNN Money, September 8, 2017. Article: by Mary Williams Walsh, The New York Times, August 28, 2017. Article: by Ed O'Keefe, The Washington Post, July 28, 2017. Article: by Juliet Eilperin, Kelsey Snell, and Sean Sullivan, Bangor Daily News, July 28, 2017. PDF: , The New York Times, July 27, 2017. Article: by Rachel Roubein, The Hill, July 27, 2017. Article: by John Cassidy, The New Yorker, July 27, 2017. Article: by Jessica Estepa, USA Today, July 27, 2017. Article: by Vann R. Newkirk II, The Atlantic, July 27, 2017. Article: by Vann R. Newkirk II, The Atlantic, July 26, 2017. Article: by Russell Berman, The Atlantic, July 25, 2017. Article: by Peter Sullivan, The Hill, July 25, 2017. Article: by Robert Pear and Thomas Kaplan, The New York Times, July 21, 2017. Article: by David A. Fahrenthold, The Washington Post, February 1, 2015. Article: , NaturalGas.org, September 20, 2013. Article: by Lori Widmer, Insurance Journal, July 31, 2012. References Consider This! Podcast: Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017: , July 20, 2017 Healthcare Freedom Act of 2017: BCRA: , July 13, 2017 BCRA: , June 22, 2017 GovTrack: , July 25, 2017 GovTrack: , July 25, 2017 GovTrack: GovTrack: GovTrack: National Weather Service: YouTube: Sound Clip Sources Briefing: , July 27, 2017. Timestamps & Transcripts Senate Session: Senate Leaders Speak Ahead of Health Care Vote, July 25, 2017. Sound Clip Transcripts Senator Chuck Schumer (NY): Many of us on this side of the aisle have waited for years for this opportunity and thought it would probably never come. Some of us were a little surprised by the election last year, but with a surprise election comes great opportunities to do things we thought were never possible. So all we have to do today is to have the courage to begin the debate with an open amendment process and let the voting take us where it will. Senator John McCain (AZ): Our system doesn’t depend on our nobility. It accounts for our imperfections and gives us an order to our individual strivings that has helped make ours the most powerful and prosperous society on Earth. It is our responsibility to preserve that, and even when it requires us to do something less satisfying than winning, even when we must give a little to get a little, even when our efforts managed just 3 yards in a cloud of dust while critics on both sides denounced us for timidity, for our failure to triumph. I hope we can again rely on humility, on our need to cooperate, on our dependence on each other to learn how to trust each other again and, by so doing, better serve the people who elected us. Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood. Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order. We have been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. That’s an approach that’s been employed by both sides: mandating legislation from the top down, without any support from the other side, with all the parliamentary maneuvers that it requires. We are getting nothing done, my friends. We’re getting nothing done. And all we’ve really done this year is confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Our healthcare insurance system is a mess. We all know it—those who support Obamacare and those who oppose it. Something has to be done. We Republicans have looked for a way to end it and replace it with something else without paying a terrible political price. We haven’t found it yet, and I’m not sure we will. All we’ve managed to do is make more popular a policy that wasn’t very popular when we started trying to get rid of it. I voted for the motion to proceed to allow debate to continue and amendments to be offered. I will not vote for this bill as it is today. It’s a shell of a bill right now. We all know that. Senator Dick Durbin (IL): But there was an interesting thing happened at the end of this. At the very last moment, the very last vote that was cast was cast by Senator John McCain. Everybody knows that John is diagnosed with a serious form of cancer. He made it back from Arizona here to cast his vote, and he asked for 15 minutes after the roll call to make a speech. I don’t think many, if any, senators left the Chamber. Democrats and Republicans stuck around to hear his speech after the vote. Can I tell you that’s unusual in the Senate? Most of us race for the doors and go up to our offices and watch on television and may catch a piece of that speech and a piece of the other speech, but we sat and we listened because of our respect for John McCain. Senator Ron Wyden (OR): Mr. President, the pitch to Republican Senators this afternoon before the first vote was that it was nothing but a little bit of throat clearing — just a first step to get the conversation started. Let’s be clear, nobody can pretend the stakes aren’t real now. In a few minutes, the Senate will be voting on yet another version of the Senate TrumpCare bill. I call it the BCRA 3.0. It features a special gut punch to consumer protection offered by Senator Cruz. Senator Ron Wyden (OR): There was no hearing in the finance committee, no hearing in the HELP committee. Senators are flying in the dark, and as far as I can tell, the proposal is going to be before us without having been scored by the CBO. Senator Ted Cruz (TX): And the Consumer Freedom Amendment was designed to bring together and serve as a compromise for those who support the mandates in Title One. The Consumer FreedomAmendment says that insurance companies, if they offer plans that meet those Title One mandates—all the protections for preexisting conditions—they can also sell any other plan that consumers desire. Senate Session: , July 26, 2017. Sound Clip Transcripts Senator Rand Paul (KY): Today we will vote on a bill we voted on many times. The Senate itself voted on this two years ago. It’s the identical bill. We’re going to vote on a bill we voted two years ago, and I hope everybody that voted for it before will vote for it again. It’s what we call a clean repeal. It’s not cluttered with insurance-company bailouts, it’s not cluttered with this and that and new federal regulations; it is just trying to peel back Obamacare. Now while it is a clean repeal, it is only a partial repeal. Why? It’s only a partial repeal because we have these arcane Senate rules that say we can’t repeal the whole thing. Because we’re only repealing part of it, Obamacare will remain. Senator Rand Paul (KY): My government shouldn’t be telling what I can buy and what I cannot buy. My government should not tell me which doctor I can choose and which doctor I have to leave behind. The government should not be involved in my healthcare business. I want to be left alone. The right to privacy, the right to be left alone, is a fundamental right of Americans. That’s what this is about. Senator Rand Paul (KY): So, are we going to have some government involvement? Yes. But because government is so pitiful at anything they do, we should minimize government’s involvement in any industry. Senator John Cornyn (TX): People keep talking about a secret process. Well, this is about as open and transparent as it gets, and everybody will have an opportunity to offer an amendment, to discuss what’s in the amendment, and to vote on it. Senate Session: , July 27, 2017. Sound Clip Transcripts Senator Chuck Schumer (NY): Mr. President, it is likely, at some point today, we will finally see the majority leader’s final health care bill, the bill he intends to either pass or fail. Thus far, we have been going through a pretense, defeating Republican bills that never had enough support even within their own caucus to pass. Repeal and replace has failed. Repeal without replace has failed. Now we are waiting to see what the majority leader intends for the Republican plan on health care. If the reports in the media are true, the majority leader will offer a skinny repeal as his final proposal. Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: by (found on by mevio) Cover Art Design by

On August 2nd, President Trump signed a new law that passed Congress with the overwhelming support of both political parties, which imposes sanctions on three countries: Russia, North Korea, and Iran. In this episode, we examine the new sanctions and the big-picture motivations behind them. In the process, we jump down the rabbit hole of the U.S. involvement in the 2014 regime change in Ukraine. Executive Producers: Joseph Clerici and Anonymous Please support Congressional Dish: to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes Episode Outline to both companies and people who materially contribute to Iran's ballistic missile program. Orders the President to enact sanctions that block property and financial transactions for the . Orders the President to block property and prohibit from the United States any person or company that materially contributes to the transfer to Iran any . Sanctions prohibiting travel to the United States and financial transactions are The President can by notifying Congress. "It is the sense of Congress that the President should continue to uphold and seek unity with European and other key partners on sanctions implemented against the Russian Federation, which have been effective and instrumental in countering Russian aggression in Ukraine" Orders the President to submit reports outlining his reasons to Congress relating to Russia, Ukraine, and Syria The President on Russia, Ukraine, and Syria within 30 days of submitting his report unless a branch of Congress passes a resolution to allow it. Makes subject to sanctions. Limits to Russian industries. Prohibits the transfer of goods & services (except banking) that support new . Russians need to be have a 33% share or more in the company for the sanctions to apply. to enact sanctions in situations when it was previously optional. to enact sanctions on companies and individuals who provide materials to Russia for energy export pipelines valued at $1 million or more. to block property and deny visas to anyone who provides the government of Syria financial, material, or technical support for getting almost any kind of weapon. The to products for Russia that are for space launches. for a "Countering Russian Influence Fund" which will be used for "protecting critical infrastructure and electoral mechanisms" for members of NATO, the European Union, and "countries that are participating in the enlargement process of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the European Union, including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, Moldova, Kosovo, Serbia, and Ukraine." The money can also be used to . There is of nongovernmental & international organizations eligible to receive the money. The Secretary of State will work with the Ukrainian government to . This will "include strategies for market liberalization" including survey work need to "help attract qualified investment into exploration and development of areas with untapped resources in Ukraine." The plan will also support the implementation of a new gas law "including pricing, tariff structure, and legal regulatory implementation." and "privatization of government owned energy companies." from the 2014 Ukraine aid law and . The money will be available until . to include anyone who provides North Korea with any weapons or war service, aviation fuel, or insurance or registration for aircraft or vessels. Also expands sanctions to include anyone who gets minerals, including gold, titanium ore, vanadium ore, copper, silver, nickel, zinc, or rare earth minerals from North Korea. to include anyone who purchases above-the-U.N.-limited amounts of coal, iron, textiles, money, metals, gems, oil, gas, food, or fishing rights from North Korea. Also , conducts transactions for the North Korean transportation, mining, energy, or banking industries, or participates in online commerce, including online gambling, provided by the government of North Korea. North Korean ships from entering US waters. Additional Reading Article: , Reuters, August 15, 2017. Article: by Erik Wemple, The Washington Post, August 15, 2017. Article: by Thomas Erdbrink, The New York Times, August 13, 2017. Article: by Patrick Lawrence, The Nation, August 9, 2017. Article: by Joshua Berlinger, CNN, August 7, 2017. Article: by Rick Gladstone, The New York Times, August 1, 2017. Article: by Thomas Erdbrink, The New York Times, July 27, 2017. Article: by David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt and Ben Hubbard, The New York Times, July 19, 2017. Article: by Peter Baker, The New York Times, July 17, 2017. Article: by Joseph Tanfani, Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2017. Article: by Matthew Cole, Richard Esposito, Sam Biddle and Ryan Grim, The Intercept, June 5, 2017. Article: by Bruce Riedel, Brookings, June 5, 2017. Article: by Gardiner Harris and David E. Sanger, The New York Times, May 17, 2017. Report: , National Intelligence Council, January 6, 2017. Article: by David E. Sanger, The New York Times, December 29, 2016. Article: by Ana Radelat, The CT Mirror, March 13, 2015. Article: by Zachary Davies Boren, Business Insider, April 16, 2014. Article: by Natalia Zinets and Elizabeth Piper, Reuters, March 27, 2014. Article: by Marie-Louise Gumuchian and Victoria Butenko, CNN, March 25, 2014. Article: , Ukrainian News Agency, March 24, 2014. Article: by Adrian Croft, Reuters, March 21, 2014. Article: by Luke Harding and Shaun Walker, The Guardian, March 17, 2014. Article: , The Economist, February 27, 2014. Article: , BBC News, February 22, 2014. Article: by Conal Urquhart, The Guardian, February 22, 2014. Transcript: , BBC, February 7, 2014. Article: by Vladimir Isachenkov and Maria Danilova, USA Today, December 17, 2013. Article: , Reuters, December 15, 2013. Article: , Fox News, December 15, 2013. Article: by Richard Balmforth and Pavel Polityuk, Reuters, November 21, 2013. Article: by Ian Traynor and Oksana Grytsenko, The Guardian, November 21, 2013. Article: by Pavel Polityuk and Richard Balmforth, Reuters, November 5, 2013. Article: by Luke Baker and Justyna Pawlak, Reuters, October 31, 2013. Press Release: , International Monetary Fund, October 31, 2013. Article: by Shaun Walker, The Guardian, September 22, 2013. Article: by John Hudson, ForeignPolicy.com, July 14, 2013. Article: , Reuters, May 4, 2011. References GovTrack: GovTrack: GovTrack: IMF Report: CSPAN Video: , July 18, 2017. CSPAN Video: , December 18, 2013. CSPAN: CSPAN: Executive Orders : Taking Additional Steps to Address the National Emergency With Respect to Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities, December 28, 2016 : Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities, April 1, 2015 : Blocking Property of Certain Persons and Prohibiting Certain Transactions With Respect to the Crimea Region in Ukraine, December 19, 2014 : Blocking Property of Additional Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine, March 20, 2014 : Blocking Property of Additional Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine, March 16, 2014 : Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine, March 6, 2014 Visual References Sound Clip Sources House Debate: , July 25, 2017. Timestamps & Transcripts 1500 Rep. Pete Sessions (TX): The bill that was passed by the Senate risked giving Russian energy firms a competitive advantage across the globe by inadvertently denying American companies access to neutral third-party energy markets where there would simply be a small or diminished Russian presence. The bill before us today prevents Russia from being able to weaponize these sanctions against U.S. energy firms. And I want to thank Chairman Royce for his hard work on this issue. I also want to ensure that we have an understanding of the definition of the word controlling in Section 223(d) of H.R. 3364. For purposes of clarification and legislative intent, the term controlling means the power to direct, determine, or resolve fundamental, operational, and financial decisions of an oil project through the ownership of a majority of the voting interests of the oil project. 1515 Rep. Tim Ryan (OH): What’s happening with these sanctions here in the targeting of Russian gas pipelines—their number one export—I think is entirely appropriate. The Nord Stream 2, which carries gas from Russia through the Baltics to Germany—and I know Germany isn’t happy about it, but this is something that we have to do. And the point I want to make is we have to address this issue in a comprehensive way. We must continue to focus on how we get our gas here in the United States, our natural gas, to Europe, to our allies, so they’re not so dependent on Russia. We’ve got to have the sanctions, but we’ve also got to be shipping liquid natural gas to some of these allies of ours so they’re not so dependent on the Russians, which is part and parcel of this entire approach. Senate Session: , July 27, 2017. Transcript Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY): Mr. President, and last year we know the United States was victim of an attack by a foreign power on the very foundation of this dear democracy: the right of the people to a free and fair election. The consensus view of 17 agencies is that Mr. Putin interfered in the 2016 election. Hearing: , Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and International Cyber Security, July 25, 2017. Witnesses Bruce Klingner: Senior Research Fellow of the Heritage Foundation Leon Sigal: Director of Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council (SSRSC) Susan Thornton: Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Screenshot: No other Senators in the room Timestamps & Transcripts 3:48 Sen. Cory Gardner (CO): Last Congress, I lead the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, which passed the Senate by a vote of 96 to nothing. This legislation was the first stand-alone legislation in Congress regarding North Korea to impose mandatory sanctions on the regime’s proliferation activities, human-rights violations, and malicious cyber behavior. According to recent analysis from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, North Korea’s sanctions have more than doubled since that legislation came into effect on February 18, 2016. Prior to that date, North Korea ranked 8th behind Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Iraq, the Balkans, Syria, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Even with the 130% sanctions increase after the legislation passed this Congress, North Korea is today still only the 5th most sanctioned country by the United States. 21:22 Sen. Cory Gardner: Could you talk a little bit about the timing of the travel ban? Susan Thornton: Yeah. So, we believe that within the coming week we will publish a notice in the Federal Register, outlining the period of consultation and what we’re proposing, which is a general travel restriction, that will be in the Federal Register for a 30-day comment period. And the proposal is to, I think as you know, make U.S. passports not valid for travel into North Korea unless you get—an application is made for a one-time trip, and you get a license or sort of a permission to make that trip. And so that’ll be in the Federal Register for 30 days. Gardner: Is that trip allowable under a humanitarian exemption? Is that the purpose of that allow— Thornton: Right, right. For the subsequent appl— you’d have to make an in-person application for a trip to— Gardner: And are we encouraging other nations to do the same, and have others made the same decision? Thornton: We have encouraged other people to make decisions about restricting travel and other—because tourism is obviously also a resource for the regime that we would like to see diminished. I don’t think so far there are other people that have pursued this but this will be sort of the initial one, and we will keep talking to others about that. 1:12:32 Leon Sigal: A policy of maximum pressure and engagement can only succeed if nuclear diplomacy is soon resumed and the North’s security concerns are addressed. We must not lose sight of the fact that it’s North Korea that we need to persuade, not China, and that means taking account of North Korea’s strategy. During the Cold War, Kim Il Sung played China off against the Soviet Union to maintain his freedom of maneuver. In 1988, anticipating the collapse of the Soviet Union, he reached out to improve relations with the United States, South Korea, and Japan in order to avoid overdependence on China. That has been the Kims’ objective ever since. From Pyongyang’s vantage point, that aim was the basis of the 1994 Agreed Framework and the September 2005 six-party joint statement. For Washington, obviously, suspension of Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs was the point of those agreements, which succeeded for a time in shuttering the North’s production of fissile material and stopping the test launches of medium- and longer-range missiles. Both agreements collapsed, however, when Washington did little to implement its commitment to improve relations, and, of course, Pyongyang reneged on denuclearization. That past is prologue. Now there are indications that a suspension of North Korean missile and nuclear testing and fissile material production may again prove negotiable. In return for a suspension of its production of plutonium and enriched uranium, the Trading with the Enemy Act sanctions imposed before the nuclear issue arose could be relaxed for yet a third time, and energy assistance unilaterally halted by South Korea in 2008 could be resumed. An agreement will require addressing Pyongyang’s security needs, including adjusting our joint exercises with South Korea, for instance by suspending flights of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers into Korean airspace. Those flights were only resumed, I want to remind you, to reassure our allies in the aftermath of the North’s nuclear tests. If those tests are suspended, B-52 flights can be, too, without any sacrifice of deterrence. North Korea’s well aware of the reach of U.S. ICBMs and SLBMs, which, by the way, were recently test launched to remind them. The U.S. can also continue to bolster, rotate, and exercise forces in the region so conventional deterrence will remain robust. The chances of persuading North Korea to go beyond another temporary suspension to dismantle its nuclear missile programs, however, are slim without firm commitments from Washington and Seoul to move toward political and economic normalization; engage in a peace process to end the Korean War; and negotiate security arrangements, among them a nuclear-weapons-free zone that would provide a multilateral legal framework for denuclearization. In that context, President Trump’s willingness to hold out the prospect of a summit with Kim Jong-un would also be a significant inducement. 1:23:06 Sen. Ed Markey (MA): We “convinced” Qaddafi to give up his nuclear-weapon program, we “convinced” Saddam Hussein to give up his nuclear-weapon program, and then subsequently we participated in a process that led to their deaths. Emergency Meeting: , August 5, 2017. Timestamps & Transcripts 3:47 Nikki Haley (US Ambassador): This resolution is the single largest economic sanctions package ever leveled against the North Korean regime. The price the North Korean leadership will pay for its continued nuclear and missile development will be the loss of 1/3 of its exports and hard currency. This is the most stringent set of sanctions on any country in a generation. 6:30 Matthew John Rycroft (British Ambassador to the U.N.): Make no mistake: as North Korea’s missile capabilities advance, so too does their contempt and disregard for this security council. We must meet this belligerence with clear, unequivocal condemnation and with clear, unequivocal consequences. Today, Mr. President, we have banned North Korean exports of coal, iron ore, lead, and seafood. These are the lifeline exports that sustain Kim Jong-un’s deadly aspirations. In simple terms, should the North Korean regime continue its reckless pursuit of an illegal missile program and a deadly nuclear program, they will have vastly less [unclear]. We’ve also capped the number of foreign workers from North Korea. Every year, DPRK sends thousands of ordinary workers overseas. They often endure poor conditions and long hours, and their toil serves to provide critical foreign currency for North Korean government coffers. This is undoubtedly a form of modern slavery, and today we have taken the first step to ending it. The world will now monitor and curtail work authorizations for these desperate ex-patriots. 28:11 Vasily Nebenzya (Russian Ambassador): We share the feeling of neighboring states in the region. The ballistic missiles, which were launched without warning from North Korea, pose a major risk to marine and air transit in the region as well as to the lives of ordinary civilians. We call upon the North Korean government to end the banned programs and to return to the NPT, nonproliferation regime, and the IAEA oversights as well as to join the Chemical Weapons Convention. All must understand that progress towards denuclearization of the Korean peninsula will be difficult so long as the DPRK perceives a direct threat to its own security, for that is how the North Koreans view the military buildup in the region, which takes on the forms of frequent, wide-ranging exercises in maneuvers of the U.S. and allies as they deploy strategic bombers, naval forces, and aircraft carriers to the region. Another destabilizing factor in the region is the scaling up in North Korea of the THAAD, the U.S. antimissile defense elements. We repeatedly noted not only this constitutes an irritant, but this also undermines the overall military balance in the region and calls into question the security of neighboring states. We would like to hope that the U.S. secretary of state’s assurances were sincere, that the U.S. is not seeking to dismantle the existing DPRK situation or to forcibly unite the peninsula or militarily intervene in the country. However, we are concerned that our proposed, our paragraph in the draft resolution was not supported. The possible military misadventures by any side are liable to cause a disaster for regional and global stability. Discussion: , December 19, 2013. Witness Frederick Kempe: President & CEO of the Atlantic Council Transcripts Frederick Kempe: Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Tuesday said he had agreed to loan Ukraine $15 billion and cut the price of critical natural gas supplies. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Azarov called the deal historic. In Brussels a draft EU document, reported this morning by the Wall Street Journal, indicated Ukraine could have gained even more from the West, though with different conditions and perhaps not as plainly put. Had it signed the EU pact, it might have had $26 billion of loans and grants from the EU over the next seven years, and if it had also agreed to the IMF package. While the Ukraine pivots economically eastward, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians continue to pivot westward, standing together in protest for their continued desire to be part of a Europe, whole and free. And it’s in that context that we welcome back a great friend of the Atlantic Council, Senator John McCain, who visited these protestors over the weekend with Senator Chris Murphy, and continues to play a consistent and leading and principled role in supporting democratic change both in Eastern Europe and around the world and thinking through what role the United States should be playing in these challenging times. Sen. John McCain (AZ): If Ukraine’s political crisis persists or deepens, which is a real possibility, we must support creative Ukrainian efforts to resolve it. Senator Murphy and I heard a few such ideas last weekend. From holding early elections, as the opposition is now demanding, to the institution of a technocratic government, with a mandate to make the difficult reforms required for Ukraine’s long-term economic health and sustainable development. Sen. John McCain (AZ): And eventually, a Ukrainian president, either this one or a future one, will be prepared to accept the fundamental choices facing the country, which is this: while there are real short-term costs to the political and economic reforms required for IMF assistance and EU integration, and while President Putin will likely add to these costs by retaliating against Ukraine’s economy, the long-term benefits for Ukraine in taking these tough steps are far greater and almost limitless. This decision cannot be born by one person alone in Ukraine, nor should it be. It must be shared, both the risks and the rewards, by all Ukrainians, especially the opposition and business elite. It must also be shared by the EU, the IMF, and the United States. YouTube: , February 7, 2017. to see the full transcript Transcripts Victoria Nuland: What do you think? Geoffrey Pyatt: I think we’re in play. The Klitschko piece is obviously the complicated electron here, especially the announcement of him as deputy prime minister. And you’ve seen some of my notes on the troubles in the marriage right now, so we’re trying to get a read really fast on where he is on this stuff. But I think your argument to him, which you’ll need to make, I think that’s the next phone call you’ll want to set up, is exactly the one you made to Yats. And I’m glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario, and I’m very glad he said what he said in response. Nuland: Good. So, I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea. Pyatt: Yeah, I mean, I guess. In terms of him not going into the government, just let him sort of stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I’m just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate Democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok and his guys, and I’m sure that’s part of what Yanukovych is calculating on all of this. I kind of— Nuland: I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. What he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know? I just think Klitsch going in—he’s going to be at that level working for Yatsenyuk; it’s just not going to work. Victoria Nuland: Can’t remember if I told you this or if I only told Washington this, that when I talked to Jeff Feltman this morning, he had a new name for the U.N. guy, Robert Serry. Did I write you that this morning? Geoffrey Pyatt: Yeah. Yeah, I saw that. Nuland: Okay. He’s not gotten both Serry and Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. Pyatt: Okay. Nuland: So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and have the U.N. help glue it, and, you know, fuck the EU. Pyatt: No, exactly. And I think we’ve got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude, the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it. Geoffrey Pyatt: I think we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing. And then the other issue is some kind of out reach to Yanukovych, but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place. Victoria Nuland: So, on that piece, Geoff, when I wrote the note, Sullivan’s come back to me VFR, saying, you need Biden, and I said, probably tomorrow for an “atta-boy” and to get the deets to stick. Pyatt: Okay. Nuland: So, Biden’s willing. Pyatt: Okay, great. Thanks. Briefing: , February 6, 2014 Witness Jen Psaki: State Department Spokesperson Timestamps & Transcripts 0:19 Male Reporter: Can you say whether you—if this call is a recording of an authentic conversation between Assistant Secretary Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt? Jen Psaki: Well, I’m not going to confirm or outline details. I understand there are a lot of reports out there, and there’s a recording out there, but I’m not going to confirm a private diplomatic conversation. Reporter: So you are not saying that you believe this is a—you think this is not authentic? You think this is a— Psaki: It’s not an accusation I’m making. I’m just not going to confirm the specifics of it. Reporter: Well, you can’t even say whether there was a—that this call—you believe that this call, you believe that this recording is a recording of a real telephone call? Psaki: I didn’t say it was inauthentic. I think we can leave it at that. Reporter: Okay, so, you’re allowing the fact that it is authentic. Psaki: Yes. Reporter: “Yes,” okay. Psaki: Do you have a question about it? 7:40 Female Reporter: This was two top U.S. officials that are on the ground, discussing a plan that they have to broker a future government and bringing officials from the U.N. to kind of seal the deal. This is more than the U.S. trying to make suggestions; this is the U.S. midwifing the process Hearing: , Senate Foreign Relations Committee, January 15, 2014. Witnesses Zbigniew Brzezinski Carter’s National Security Advisor 77-81 Center for Strategic & International Studies, counselor & Trustee Thomas Melia: Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Rights & Labor at the Department of State Victoria Nuland: Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Timestamps & Transcripts 32:27 Thomas Melia: Our approach to Ukraine complements that of our EU partners and what they sought in their association agreement, a Ukraine that is more responsive to its citizens, that offers its people opportunities that a growing free-market economy would provide based on the rule of law. 34:19 Victoria Nuland: The point that we have made repeatedly to Russia, and that I certainly made on my trip to Russia between two trips to Ukraine in December, was that a Ukraine that is economically stable and prosperous should be no threat to Russia, that this is not a zero-sum game that we are playing here, and that, in fact, the same benefits that the EU was offering to Ukraine—benefits of association and economic integration—are also available to a Russia that wants to take the same market opening and democratic reform steps that Ukraine has already taken, 18 pieces of legislation having already been completed. 58:43 Senator John McCain (AZ): This is a country that wants to be European. They don’t want to be Russian. That’s what this is all about. 59:52 Senator John McCain (AZ): I’m somewhat taken aback by your, “well, it’s sort of up to the Ukrainian people.” We ought to be assisting morally the Ukrainian people for seeking what we want everybody on this earth to have, and so it’s not just up to the Ukrainian people. They cry out for our assistance. Panel: , Aspen Ideas Festival, June 26, 2017. Witnesses Ory Rinat: White House Interim Chief Digital Officer Farhad Majoo: New York Times Correspondent Transcripts Ory Rinat: What drives social engagement? What drives Internet engagement? It’s shares. And that’s not a social-media thing; that’s back to forwarding chain emails. It’s when people share, that’s the source of engagement. And what drives people to share? It’s anger. It’s sadness. It’s inspiration. It’s really rare; it happens, but it’s rare that somebody says, wow, I just read an objective, fascinating piece that represents both sides; let me share it on Facebook. That’s not what people share. And so what happens is we’ve incentivized, as a society, sensationalism in journalism. I was giving an example earlier: during the transition, there was an article in a publication that should not be named that said something along the lines of, Trump transition website lifts passages from nonprofit group. Okay. Doesn’t sound that great. Couple of paragraphs in, they mention that the website actually sourced and cited the nonprofit. Couple of paragraphs later, they quote the CO of the nonprofit saying it was okay. Couple of paragraphs later, they quote a lawyer saying even if it wasn’t okay, even if they didn’t have permission, and even if they didn’t cite it, it was probably still legal. But that headline was so sensationalized, and people want to click on something that makes them angry, and so everybody just needs to take a breath, and it’s not the Internet’s fault. Farhad Manjoo: Well, it’s the Internet ad model’s fault, right? It’s the fact that those sites—Facebook, every news site you can think of—is getting paid based on clicks. So is sort of the fundamental fix here some other business model for online news and everything else? Ory Rinat: Sure, I just can’t think of one. Farhad Manjoo: Right. Panel: , The Aspen Institute, August 4, 2017. Witnesses Nick Burns: Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Bush) Condoleezza Rice: Former National Security Advisor (Bush) Tom Donilon: Former National Security Advisor (Obama) Stephen Hadley: Former National Security Advisor (Bush) Susan Rice: National Security Advisor Timestamps & Transcripts 9:00 Condoleezza Rice: The liberal order was born, it was an idea, designed after World War II, when people looked out at the world that they had inherited after World War I and said, let’s not do that again. And it had two important elements, and it had one important fact. One element was they really believed that the international economy did not have to be a zero-sum game. It could be competitive, but it could be a growing economy and a positive-sum game, so my gains were not your losses, and that’s why they wanted to have free trade, and they wanted to have a comparative advantage among countries. And as you said, they set up institutions to do it, an International Monetary Fund and exchange rates, a World Bank eventually starting as a European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, which would rebuild economies and actually would become a source of capital for countries coming out of colonialism. And in some ways the most remarkable one, the general agreement on tariffs and trade, which was not a set of trade agreements but rules of the road to level the playing field so that the international economy could grow. So it was by its very nature supposed to get us away from conflict in the international system. They hated the fact that there’d been beggar-thy-neighbor trading policies and competition over resources. It was violent. So they weren’t going to do that again. Then, the important fact: they were going to try to create the democratic peace where they could, so they rebuilt Germany as a democracy, Japan as a democracy, and it was all going to be protected by American military power. And so that was the liberal order. 12:00 Condoleezza Rice: It is being challenged by Russia because Russia unfortunately doesn’t really have a foot in the economic side and, therefore, uses its military power for its respect. But it’s also being challenged by the four horsemen of the Apocalypse—populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism—and they tend to run together. And so one of the questions that we ought to be asking is not just the challenge to the liberal order from transnational terrorism or cyber warfare or from big powers like Russia and China but how do we deal with the fact that it does seem that there are those who believe that they were left behind by the global order, and they’re fighting back. They found people who will give them an answer as to why they didn’t succeed. Populists always have an answer: it’s the other—the Chinese; the illegal immigrants; if you’re from the Left, the big banks. And, oh, by the way, the other this time around is not just taking your jobs; the other is dangerous—so refugees and immigrants—and so I think the challenge is this time not just one that we foreign-policy people can understand but one that has to go internally to these societies and see what’s happening. That’s why I’m glad for the Aspen Strategy Group, that we are having this wonderful session that _____(01:30) will help to lead, because this is a really big challenge from the inside and from the out. And, yes, I’m worried that the liberal order might not survive it. 31:00 Condoleezza Rice: Leading differently obviously means finding a role for others—that’s very important—but it also means—and I know we can’t retire from this role, but there is a weariness among the American people, and we can’t ignore it. We can’t as foreign-policy people simply say, look, we’ve had to get back there and lead. We have to say, we’re going to lead because it’s in our interests, it’s with our values, and our allies have to appreciate it, right? And they have to be a part of it. That’s my point. I think we really haven’t gotten from the allies. What we get mostly from the allies is criticism for not leading, because the only thing the world hates more than unilateral American leadership is no American leadership, but we do need our allies to step up, and some of them have. On Minsk, for instance, the Germans stepped up to try and settle the Ukrainian circumstances. But let’s not underestimate outside of foreign-policy leads, the degree to which the American people are asking questions about how much more we can do. Unknown Speaker: Well, this is a good transition point to Russia. Let me just frame it this way: since Putin’s invasion and annexation of Crimea, 20 of the 28 allies have raised their defense spending, and they feel the threat. And I would even say right now, Merkel is leading NATO, not so much the United States; she’s leading NATO on this. So, Condi, you studied the Russians and the Soviets your life; we’ve got a dilemma here. Putin attacked our election and tried to discredit our democracy. We know he did that. Putin annexed Crimea. He still has troops in the Donbass and Eastern Ukraine, dividing that country. He has been a malevolent force in Syria. So, what’s the strategy for President Trump here? How does he respond to this? And we saw this extraordinary situation where the president was essentially repudiated by the Republicans in Congress on this big vote in the Senate and House to sanction Russia. If you were to give advice to him, what would it be? Not to put you on the spot too much. Rice: Well, thanks. Well, the first advice I would give is, be sure you know who Vladimir Putin is, right? And Vladimir Putin is someone who likes to humiliate, someone who likes to dominate, and someone who essentially understands power. And so don’t go into a room with Vladimir Putin unless you are in a pretty powerful position, and that means when you go to talk to Vladimir Putin, first let’s continue the policy that the Obama administration began, maybe even accelerate the policy of putting forces, at least on a rotating basis but possibly on a permanent basis, in places like Poland and the Baltic states so that you say to him, this far and no further. Secondly, I like raising the defense budget as a signal to the Russians. Third, I think you have to say to the Russians, we know you did it on the electoral process; we will, at a time of our choosing, by means of our choosing, we will deal with it, but we have confidence in our electoral system, so don’t think that you’re undermining American confidence by what you’re doing, because he feeds on the sense that he’s succeeding in undermining our confidence. And the final thing I’d say to him is, stop flying your planes so close to our ships and aircraft; somebody’s going to get shot down, because once you’ve established the kind of ground rules with Vladimir Putin, now you can talk about possible areas of cooperation. By the way, there’s one other thing I’d do: I’d arm the Ukrainians. I think that you have got to raise the cost to the Russians of what they’re doing in Ukraine, and it’s not on the front pages anymore, but in Eastern Ukraine, people are dying every day because of those little Russian green men, the Russian separatists, who, with Russian military training and Russian military intelligence and Russian military capability, are making a mess of Eastern Ukraine and making it impossible for Kiev to govern the country. And so I think it’s time to arm them. 33:30 Nick Burns: I think President Obama actually put in place a lot of what Condi’s saying. Is there bipartisan agreement on this tough policy? Susan Rice: I think there’s certainly bipartisan agreement on the steps that Condi described that we characterized as the European Response Initiative, where we got NATO with our leadership to put in those four countries, the three Baltics, plus Poland, a continuous, rotating, augmented presence and _____(00:26) deployed not only personnel but equipment, and we have reversed the trend of the downsizing of our presence in Europe, and that’s vitally important. 36:00 Tom Donilon: It’s important to recognize some of the fundamentals here, right, which is that we are in an actively hostile posture with the Russians right now. And it’s not just in Europe; it’s in Syria, it’s in Afghanistan, it’s in Syria, and it was in our own elections, and it’ll be in the European elections going through the next year as well, and it’ll probably be in our elections 2018 and 2020 unless we act to prevent it. So, we’re in, I think, in an actively hostile posture with the Russians, coming from their side. 40:00 Stephen Hadley: We’re putting battalions—we, NATO—putting battalions in the three Baltic states and in Poland and in Bucharest. Battalions are 1200 people, 1500 people. Russia is going to have an exercise in Belarus that newspaper reports suggest maybe up to 100,000 people and 8,000 tanks—I think I’ve got that number right— Unknown Speaker: This month. Hadley: —more tanks than Germany, France, and U.K. have combined. And we have to be careful that we don’t get in this very confrontational, rhetorical position with Russia and not have the resources to back it up. 58:00 Condoleezza Rice: Democracy promotion—democracy support, I like to call it—is not just the morally right thing to do, but, actually, democracies don’t fight each other. They don’t send their 10-year-olds as child soldiers. They don’t traffic their women into the sex trade. They don’t attack their neighbors. They don’t harbor terrorists. And so democracies are kind of good for the world, and so when you talk about American interests and you say you’re not sure that we ought to promote democracy, I’m not sure you’ve got a clear concept, or a clear grasp, on what constitutes American interests. Speech: , Council of Foreign Relations, November 19, 2015. Transcript Hillary Clinton: So we need to move simultaneously toward a political solution to the civil war that paves the way for a new government with new leadership and to encourage more Syrians to take on ISIS as well. To support them, we should immediately deploy the special operations force President Obama has already authorized and be prepared to deploy more as more Syrians get into the fight, and we should retool and ramp up our efforts to support and equip viable Syrian opposition units. Our increased support should go hand in hand with increased support from our Arab and European partners, including Special Forces who can contribute to the fight on the ground. We should also work with the coalition and the neighbors to impose no-fly zones that will stop Assad from slaughtering civilians and the opposition from the air. Hearing: , House Foreign Affairs Committee, November 4, 2015. Witnesses Anne W. Patterson: Assistant Secretary Department of State, Near Eastern Affairs Transcript Rep. David Cicilline (RI): Who are we talking about when we’re speaking about moderate opposition, and do they, in fact, include elements of al-Qaeda and al-Nusra and other more extremist groups? Anne Patterson: Well, let me take the civilian moderate opposition, too, and that’s the assistance figure that you’re referring to, and that is groups within Syria and groups that live in Turkey and Lebanon and other places; and what that project is designed to do is to keep these people, not only alive physically, but also keep them viable for a future Syria, because we have managed to, even areas under control of ISIL—I won’t mention them—but we have managed to provide money to city councils, to health clinics, to teachers and policemen so these people can still provide public services and form the basis for a new Syria. So that’s—a good portion of that money goes into efforts like that. There’s also the opposition on the ground, and I think they’ve sort of gotten a bum rap in this hearing because I think they are more extensive than it’s generally recognized, particularly in the south, and they, yes, of course, in the north, some of these individuals have affiliated with Nusra because there was nowhere else to go. Anne Patterson: Moscow has cynically tried to claim that its strikes are focused on terrorists, but so far eighty-five to ninety percent of Syrian strikes have hit the moderate Syrian opposition, and they have killed civilians in the process. Despite our urging, Moscow has yet to stop the Assad regime’s horrific practice of barrel bombing the Syrian people, so we know that Russia’s primary intent is to preserve the regime. Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: by (found on by mevio) Cover Art Design by

In 2012, Congress created a new government agency called FirstNet and tasked it with building a high-speed wireless network that would allow all first responders in the United States to communicate with each other daily and in times of emergencies. In July, FirstNet awarded AT&T with a 25 year contract to do the actual work. In this episode, hear highlights from a recent hearing about this new network as we examine the wisdom of contracting such an important part of our public safety infrastructure to the private sector. Please visit to nominate your favorite Congressional Dish episode. Password: Patreon Please support Congressional Dish: to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Additional Reading Article: by Blake Montgomery, Buzzfeed News, August 2, 2017. Article: by Donny Jackson, Urgent Communications, August 1, 2017. Article: by Donny Jackson, Urgent Communications, August 1, 2017. Article: by Adam Stone, GovTech, July 27, 2017. Interview: by Andy Reed, Executive Biz, July 27, 2017. Article: by David McLaughlin, Gerry Smith and Scott Moritz, Bloomberg, July 24, 2017. Article: by Daniel Vitulich, Wireless Week, July 21, 2017. Article: by Amy Kolb Noyes, VPR, July 14, 2017. Article: by Dave Gram, VTDigger, July 9, 2017. Article: by Al Catalano, Keller and Heckman LLP, Lexology, June 29, 2017. Article: by Leidos, PR Newswire, June 26, 2017. Article: by Theo Douglas, GovTech, June 19, 2017. Report: , U.S. Government Accountability Office, June 2017. Article: , AT&T Newsroom, April 4, 2017. Article: by News Staff, GovTech, March 30, 2017. Article: by Lesia Dickson, GovTech, January 26, 2017. Article: , AT&T Newsroom, December 14, 2016. Article: by Paul Davidson, USA Today, November 30, 2016. Article: , AT&T Newsroom, November 10, 2016. Article: by Michael J. de la Merced, The New York Times, October 22, 2016. Article: by Colin Wood, GovTech, May 18, 2016. Website: , The New York Times, February 13, 2016. Article: , AT&T Newsroom, July 24, 2015. Article: by Adam Stone, GovTech, November 17, 2014. Article: by Greg Gordon, McClatchy News Service, GovTech, September 26, 2014. Article: by Greg Gordon, McClatchy DC Bureau, July 14, 2014. Article: by Jose Pagliery, CNN, May 20, 2014. Article: by Tod Newcombie, GovTech, April 17, 2014. Article: by David Raths, GovTech, October 10, 2012. Article: by Sarah Rich, GovTech, August 20, 2012. Article: by Seth Schiesel, The New York Times, June 25, 1998. Article: by Edmund Andrews, The New York Times, February 9, 1996. Article: by Edmund Andrews, The New York Times, September 20, 1994. Article: by Eben Shapiro, The New York Times, May 7, 1991. Article: by Ernest Holsendolph, The New York Times, January 9, 1982. Article: by Gene Smith, The New York Times, November 21, 1974. References Website: Website: GovTrack: Document: Infoplease: YouTube: YouTube: Visual References Sound Clip Sources Hearing: ; Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Communications; July 20, 2017. Witnesses: Curtis Brown: Virginia Deputy Secretary of Public Safety & Homeland Security Dr. Damon Darsey: University of Mississippi Medical Center Professor Mark Goldstein: GAO Physical Infrastructure Issues Director Chris Sambar: AT&T FirstNet, Senior Vice President Michael Poth: FirstNet CEO Timestamps & Transcripts 1:10 Sen. Roger Wicker (MS): In 2012 Congress created the First Responder Network Authority to lead the development of a nationwide interoperable public-safety broadband network in the United States. Following the communication’s failures that plagued recovery efforts during 9/11 and other national emergencies, including Hurricane Katrina, there was and still is a clear need for a reliable communications network to support the essential work of our public-safety officials. Such a network would improve coordination among first responders across multiple jurisdictions and enhance the ability of first responders to provide lifesaving emergency services quickly. 6:37 Sen. Brian Schatz (HI): With FirstNet, firefighters will be able to download the blueprint of a burning building before they enter; a police officer arriving at a scene can run a background check or get pictures of a suspect by accessing a federal law enforcement database; most importantly, emergency personnel will not be competing with commercial users for bandwidth. They will have priority on this network, which will be built and hardened to public-safety specifications. It will have rugged eyes and competitive devices and specify public-safety applications. 9:40 Curtis Brown: Last week the governor was proud to announce that Virginia was the first state in the nation to opt in to FirstNet. Virginia opted in to provide current AT&T public-safety subscribers with the benefit of priority services now at no cost to the Commonwealth, as well as the green light to build out of Virginia’s portion of the national public-safety broadband network. We believe that decision to opt in will promote competition within the public-safety communications marketplace, that will reduce costs and drive innovation across all carriers. Opting out was _____(00:31-verily) considered, but the unknown cost and risk associated with deploying and operating a network was not feasible. 19:45 Mark Goldstein: In March 2017 FirstNet awarded a 25-year contract to AT&T to build, operate, and maintain the network. FirstNet’s oversight of AT&T’s performance is very important, given the scope of the network and the duration of the contract. Among GAO’s findings in the report are the following: first, FirstNet has conducted key efforts to establish the network, namely releasing the requests for proposal for the network and awarding the network contract to AT&T. As the contractor, AT&T will be responsible for the overall design, development, production, operation, and evolution of the network. 24:35 Chris Sambar: The AT&T team that I lead is dedicated exclusively to FirstNet. I expect this group to grow to several-hundred employees by this year’s end as we hire people across the country with a broad range of skill sets to help us ramp up our network build out. Overall, AT&T expects to spend $40 billion over the lifetime of this contract and to build an operating unique, nationwide, interoperable, IP-based, high-speed mobile network, encrypted at its core, that will provide first responders priority, primary users with preemption and all other users during times of emergency and network congestion. The First Responder Network will be connected to and leverage off AT&T’s world-class telecommunications platform, valued at nearly $180 billion, including a wireless network that reaches 99.6% of the U.S. population. In addition, AT&T will support first responders 24 by 7 by 365 with a dedicated security-operation center and help desk. We will provide first responders with a highly secure application ecosystem as well as a highly competitive flexible pricing on equipment and services that they select for their unique needs. One of the most important resources that AT&T brings to bear on the new First Responder Network is our best-in-class national disaster-recovery team. We have spent more than a 130,000 working hours on field exercises and disaster-recovery deployments over the last two decades. This team combines network infrastructure, support trailers, recovery engineering-software applications, and boots on the ground filled by full-time and volunteer AT&T disaster-response team members. In order to support the First Responder Network, AT&T will increase its disaster-recovery fleet by adding 72 new custom-designed vehicles, just for the FirstNet mission. 26:55 Chris Sambar: Possibilities include near real-time information on traffic conditions, which can help determine the best route to an emergency for a first responder; wearable sensors and cameras for police and firefighters to help give them better situational awareness and camera-equipped drones and robots that will be able to deliver real-time imagery. Our FirstNet efforts are expected to create 10,000 U.S. jobs over the next two years as well as significant public-private infrastructure investment. 30:25 Michael Poth: We’ve created and delivered state plans on June 19 to 50 states, two territories, and the District of Columbia three months ahead of schedule, and as mentioned, the five governors from five great states have already opted in. None of this could be possible, though, without the public-private framework that Congress established for the FirstNet network, by leveraging private-sector resources, infrastructure, cost savings, public-private partner synergies to deploy, operate, and maintain the system. FirstNet can be now deployed quickly, efficiently, and cost effectively. 36:10 Sen. Roger Wicker (MS): Dr. Darsey mentioned that the Mississsippi wireless communications commission has expressed concerns about FirstNet’s commitment to hardening the network. You mentioned this in your testimony, the need for FirstNet infrastructure to be hardened. Can you discuss why that’s important, and is it more important in the rural areas, and also, in your experience, how do broadband needs differ between urban and rural communities with respect to providing emergency medical services? Dr. Damon Darsey: Sure. Thanks for the question. I’ll give you an example. Couple years ago we had a tornado, as you well remember, that took out a hospital in the northeast part of our state. And the medical center has got a pretty robust program to respond to that, and we did. The challenge in that was it took out a couple of commercial towers, but it did not, after a fairly close hit, take out one of our hardened public-safety communication towers. What that did for us is we lost all ability to communicate data out of that area, which was vital in moving and evacuating the hospital, nursing home, and recovering the people that were there. That’s the piece that is the concern that I think we share, all of us here, of how do we make that as hardened as possible. In terms of rural and urban, from a medical perspective we can do a lot more, as our team is showing in Mississippi and other states, if we know about the patient well before they get close to a hospital. If we can reach out and touch the stroke patient in the middle of the Mississippi Delta, we can dramatically increase their chances of survival and meaningful use after arrival to the hospital. Currently, we’re doing that over radio, and it’s working really well, but now imagine that in the rural areas. In urban areas, it’s vital in the medical world, but here we’re five minutes from multiple hospitals. Now take that as a 45 or 50 minutes away, and what we can do with broadband data in that time is truly life saving and saving of healthcare dollars. There’s a nexus here that FirstNet can combine both of those. 41:00 Michael Poth: Numerous bids were in, and they were analyzed with a great level of detail, and through that process that the Department of Interior assisted us with as the acquisition experts, AT&T came out as the prevailing solution and prevailing company provider. Sen. Bill Nelson (FL): The question is why. Poth: Well, the value that they’re bringing with their existing infrastructure, their ability and size, their financial sustainability to be able to take on something of this nature, and their lowest-risk approach to implementing this in the shortest time was truly some of the value propositions that made them more competitive than some of the other bids that were analyzed. 42:13 Chris Sambar: The initial RFP that FirstNet released contemplated building out a public-safety broadband network using just band class 14, and we responded accordingly. But through discussions, we decided we would extend it beyond just the band class 14, which is the spectrum that was allocated for first responders in 2012. We said we would open up all of the spectrum bands within AT&T. So, essentially, what that means is the day that a state opts in, they have immediate access to AT&T’s entire network, all spectrum bands, and they will see the benefits of FirstNet on all spectrum bands, all wireless towers, from AT&T that are LTE enabled. So I think that’s a tremendous benefit that FirstNet was not expecting when they contemplated the original RFP. But when we brought that, I think they were very pleased with that, and that helped us. Sen. Bill Nelson (FL): So, you’re going to have a level playing field for all device manufacturers. Sambar: Absolutely, sir. 43:15 Sen. Bill Nelson (FL): There must have been some folks in Virginia that suggested that you opt out of the network and chart your own path. Tell me the benefits to Virginia’s first responders of the governor’s decision to opt in. Curtis Brown: Thank you, Senator. The decision to opt in was really based on looking at the benefits that comes with opt in, the immediate priority and preemption services that would come for those who are subscribers to the network. And a major thing, Senator, is to the fact that it comes at no cost to the Commonwealth. We have been disproportionately impacted by sequestration and other aspects—the governor had to close a 300-million-dollar budget deficit—and so looking at the cost it would take to build a network and sustain it, it just was not feasible. 47:45 Chris Sambar: We initially envisioned, when we launched the State Plan portal on June 19, that we would have roughly 50 user IDs and passwords per state. That would be 50 individuals who would access the portal. We immediately got feedback that states wanted more, and we are offering more. So, we have a state right now, as a matter of fact, 227 login and user IDs have been issued. So, it shouldn’t be an issue for a state if they have additional people. The only requirements we have, Senator, is that, as Mr. Poth said, that it’s an official email address, somebody in the state who works for the state— Unknown Senator: Right. Sambar: —or an authorized consultant. Either of those is fine. We just don’t want, like, a @gmail, @hotmail, someone that we don’t know who they are. Unknown Senator: Right, okay. 53:14 Michael Poth: How do the states hold us accountable? As FirstNet shifts gears from developing a proposal and making an award, for the next 25 years we are going to be in a position to work with the states, continuous and public safety in all of those states, to make sure that all of their expectations, both from the State Plans and in the future, are being met and translated. If appropriate, we back into contractual actionable items. Or if AT&T, for example, is not meeting the requirements or the expectations, FirstNet will, on behalf of public safety and those states, enforce the terms of the contract. 54:55 Michael Poth: Canada is using the same exact spectrum that we’ll be utilizing with AT&T, so there’s a lot of synergies. We’ve spent a great deal of time coordinating and comparing notes with Canada and the public-safety entities in that country as to what we’re doing so that there is the inoperability between the countries will also be realized. 1:08:50 Chris Sambar: So we have had a number of states as well as federal agencies we’ve been in communication with, and some of the states have been very direct that they’re interested us putting our LTE equipment on state-, city-, municipal-owned assets. That would give them the benefit of revenue from AT&T through a lease agreement. It would also give us a benefit of being able to build out the network faster. 1:24:20 Michael Poth: AT&T’s already been doing this, as mentioned, for years with their fleet of 700 deployables. Now with the 72 dedicated, which are much smaller units which is going to give us the ability to maybe get those into areas that are a little tougher to get to, we’re very excited about that. That is an absolute addition to the solution that we’re going to be able to bring to public safety quickly. 1:25:50 Chris Sambar: So, we will be building out band class 14 over the coming five years across a significant portion of our network. In the meantime, before band class 14 is built out, we will be using our commercial network. There are requirements in the contract with FirstNet over how quickly we need to build out band class 14, and we have to hit those milestones in order to receive the payments due to us from FirstNet. If we don’t hit those milestones, we don’t receive the payments, so we will be aggressively building out band class 14 for first responders. Again, in the meantime, they will have access to all of AT&T’s bands. So to say it simply, if you are a first responder, Senator, you will not know whether you’re on band class 14 or any other AT&T band, but you will have the exact same experience regardless of what band you are on on AT&T network. Sen. Roger Wicker (MS): Your position isn’t the service that’s provided, and the consumer and the public-safety user, to them it will be immaterial where it’s coming from. Sambar: The way I like to say— Exactly. The way I say it is this: public safety has been told for many years that the magic of FirstNet happens on band class 14, and we’ve changed that. That’s not correct anymore. The magic happens on the AT&T network period, and it doesn’t matter where you are, you’re going to have the exact same experience. So we’ve extended it far beyond the band class 14 to our entire network. Wicker: Will you build out the class 14 spectrum only where it is economically viable, or will you build it out where there is written requirement in the arrangement between you and FirstNet? Sambar: We are building band class 14 where we need the capacity in our network. So in order to provide priority and preemptive services to first responders and have enough capacity for everyone that’s on the network, including the first responders, there are places where we will need additional capacity; that’s where we’re building— Wicker: And you will determine that need. Sambar: AT&T, based on capacity triggers—obviously, we’ve been doing this for a long time—based on capacity triggers that we see in the network, we build out band class 14 as additional capacity on individual—and this is done on a tower-by-tower basis. 1:28:00 Sen. Roger Wicker (MS): Are you able to say what approximate percentage of the lower 48 landmass will be covered by band class 14 build out? Chris Sambar: Unfortunately, I am not, Senator. That’s proprietary between FirstNet and AT&T. I would say, again, it’s a significant portion, though. Wicker: Can you be more specific than “significant”? Sambar: That would be proprietary, Senator. I apologize. Wicker: And what makes it proprietary? Sambar: The specific details of the contract between FirstNet and AT&T. There’s a number of specific details that are proprietary, Senator. Wicker: That is proprietary and not available to the public— Sambar: That’s correct, Senator. Wicker: —or to the Congress. Sambar: That’s correct, Senator. 1:29:35 Sen. Roger Wicker: Then in terms of this coverage, which you said really shouldn’t matter what band it’s coming over— Chris Sambar: Mm-hmm. Wicker: —are you able to say what percentage of the lower 48 landmass will be covered in one way or the other? Sambar: One way or the other? Wicker: Yes. Apart, of course, from the deployables. Sambar: So, 99.6% of the U.S. population will be covered by AT&T’s network. 1:39:05 Chris Sambar: The vast major—as we understand it, based on our research and FirstNet’s research—the vast majority of firefighters, for example, are not issued devices for their daily use at work, especially volunteer firefighters. Greater than 70% of police officers are in the same situation: they are not provided a device. They’re using their personal devices. We are going to make available the FirstNet network to all of those first responders, regardless of whether you’re a volunteer, whether your agency provides you a device, or whether you bring your own personal device. They will have access to the FirstNet network. Once we can verify their credentials and ensure that we have the right people on the network, they will have access to all of those features and benefits, and it will come at a significantly lower price than they’re paying today for their personal or commercial service. So it’s a tremendous benefit to all first responders. 1:39:55 Sen. Roger Wicker (MS): On user fees, will they cost the same for all network users, or will they vary by regions, public-safety agencies, or states? Chris Sambar: It’s difficult to answer because there are different use cases, so it depends. If you’re a large department and you want unlimited data and you have a number of applications that you want preinstalled on the device and you have mobile-device management software, that would be one use case. There may be a rural department that wants to connect body cameras and dashboard video camera from a police department. It will depend on the use case. Wicker: So it’s use case and not regions and states. Sambar: That’s correct, sir. Wicker: That would be the variable. Sambar: That’s correct. Hearing: ; House Committee Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, September 29, 2005. Witnesses: David Boyd: Homeland Security Dept SAFECOM Program Director Timothy Roemer: Member of the 9/11 Commission, Director of the Center for National Policy Art Botterell: Emergency Information Consultant Timestamps & Transcripts 30:44 David Boyd: Interoperability’s not a new issue. It was a problem in Washington, D.C. when the Air Florida flight crashed into the Potomac in 1982, in New York City when the Twin Towers were first attacked in 1993, in 1995 when the Murrah Building was destroyed in Oklahoma City, and in 1999 at Columbine. Too many public-safety personnel cannot communicate by radio, because their equipment is still incompatible, or the frequencies they are assigned to are different and they haven’t got bridging technologies available. They operate on 10 different frequency bands, and they run communication systems that are often proprietary and too often 30 or more years old. Over 90% of the nation’s public-safety wireless infrastructure is financed, owned, operated, and maintained by the more than 60,000 individual local jurisdictions—police, fire, and emergency services—that serve the public. 1:43:00 Timothy Roemer: Let me give you a couple examples of what the 9/11 Commission found as to some of these problems. We found all kinds of compelling instances of bravery and courage, people going into burning buildings and rescuing people. They might have rescued more. We might have saved more of the fire department chiefs, officers, police officers, emergency personnel, if they would have had public-radio spectrum to better communicate. At 9:59 in the morning on 9/11 four years ago, a general evacuation order was given to firefighters in the North Tower. The South Tower had collapsed. A place that held up to 25,000 people had been diminished to cement, steel, and ash. The people, then, in the North Tower, many of the chiefs in the lobby, didn’t even know that the other tower had collapsed, or else they might have been able to get more people out more quickly. We had comments from people saying such things as, we didn’t know it had collapsed. Somebody actually said, Mr. Chairman, that people watching TV had more information than we did in the lobby on 9/11 in the North Tower. People on TV in Florida or California knew more than our first responders on site in New York City. 1:45:10 Timothy Roemer: Mr. Chairman, then we had a disaster happen in the southern part of our country in New Orleans where we had other communication problems. In New Orleans, there’re three neighboring parishes were using different equipment on different frequencies. They couldn’t communicate. We had National Guard in Mississippi communicating by human courier, not by radio frequencies; and we had helicopters up in the air looking at our own citizens on the roofs of their homes in New Orleans, screaming and yelling for help, but they couldn’t talk in the helicopters with the boats in the water to try to find out who was rescued, who wasn’t, and who needed help. 1:55:45 Art Botterell: Third, we can no longer afford to rely on vendor-driven design of our emergency-communications infrastructure. Businesses are responsible for maximizing shareholder value, not for protecting the public welfare. We need independent sources of information and planning for our future emergency infrastructure lest we continue to get updated versions of the same old thing. Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: by (found on by mevio) Cover Art Design by

We've paid a lot of attention this year to the bill that would “Repeal and Replace” the Affordable Care Act but that is not the only bill related to health care that is moving through Congress. In this episode, learn about the other health care bills that have made it just as far as the Repeal and Replace bill, including one that is already law. Also in this episode, we laugh at the Senate for inventing holidays and doing so in the dumbest way possible. Please support Congressional Dish: to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes Bills Outline Laws : Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule submitted by Secretary of Health and Human Services relating to compliance with title X requirements by project recipients in selecting subrecipients. Overturns finalized by the Obama Administration that would have prevented States from cutting off Federal funds for "family-planning services". Bills In Progress an antitrust exemption that currently applies to health and dental insurance for life insurance, and property or casualty insurance the Executive Branch to use regulations to create a procedure for certifying Association Health Plans (AHPs), which are not regulated like the state small group health insurance markets. Association Health Plans and the insurance companies that provide coverage and their decisions are exempt from State laws. a fund that will pay insurers to continue coverage if the plans disappears. The fund by the Executive Branch to pay for other things "whenever the Secretary determines that the moneys of the fund are in excess of current needs." A would be created to write the regulations. The applications for plans will . If the association plan becomes insolvent, the and can try to fix the plan, cancel the plan entirely, and . Would become effective and enactment regulations would be created by the Secretary of Labor. Enacts a on filing health care lawsuits which would be one year after the injury is discovered but never more than three years after the malpractice occurred The states can make the , "regardless of the number of parties against whom the action is brought or the number of separate claims or actions brought with respect to the same injury." Actual economic losses (such as medical expenses, past and future earnings losses, and loss of employment) in health care lawsuits will . Each guilty party in a health care lawsuit in direct proportion to that party's percentage of responsibility. Doctors who prescribe a medicine that has been approved by the FDA along with manufacturers, distributors, or sellers in product liability lawsuits Any statements or conduct expressing "fault" (along with apology, sympathy, etc.) made by a health care provider in regards to an unexpected medical outcome for any purpose as evidence of an admission of liability. The statute of limitations would be and the limits on damages will be for all lawsuits started after the law is signed. Additional Reading Document: , Congressional Budget Office, July 19, 2017. Article: by Andrew Beaujon, Washingtonian, June 27, 2017. Document: , Congressional Budget Office, June 26, 2017. Document: , Congressional Budget Office, May 24, 2017. Article: by Timothy Jost, Health Affairs Blog, April 14, 2017. Document: , Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, April 13, 2017. Article: by Timothy Jost, Health Affairs Blog, April 11, 2017. Document: by Department of Health and Human Services, Federal Register, Vol. 81, No. 243, December 19, 2016. Article: by Jon Greenberg, Politifact, November 15, 2013. References American Civil Liberties Union: GovTrack: Cornell Law School: Kevin McCarthy Majority Leader website: ConsumersUnion: OpenSecrets: American Medical Association: Google: US Senate Financial Disclosure: American Health Insurance Plans: Dept of Health and Human Services: Medicaid: Washington Post: Videos CSPAN: YouTube: Sound Clip Sources Hearing: , House of Representatives Committee on Rules, February 14, 2017. Timestamps & Transcripts 6:40 Rep. Jim McGovern (MA): I’ll make the point I continue to make about the process. Both of these rules, or protections, went through a long process, and whether you agree with them or not, there was a process. Here we are; the committees with jurisdiction did no hearings on this, have basically—there’ll be no opportunity for review. We know what the outcome is going to be: two more closed rules. So it’s kind of this whole hearing is kind of pointless because, again, the process is going to be the most restrictive that it can be. 9:40 Rep. Tim Walberg (MI): As you know, Title X is the only domestic federal program that provides grants for family-planning services. Grants go directly to states and non-governmental organizations, which then distribute money among healthcare providers. Over half of the grantees are state and local governmental agencies, which serve as intermediaries to distribute funding to subgrantees. Prior to this rule, states were free to direct their Title X funds to healthcare providers that did not participate in abortion. When states had this freedom, they were able to choose to invest in women’s health care instead of abortion. The new rule blocks states from restricting grants to potential recipients for reasons other than the ability to provide Title X services. Under this rule, states are prevented from establishing criteria that would eliminate abortion providers from receiving Title X grant money. Hearing: , House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, February 16, 2017. Timestamps & Transcripts 10:15 Rep. John Conyers (MI): I am pleased that the subcommittee’s first hearing of this new Congress is on H.R. 372, the Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2017, which repeals the antitrust exemption in the McCarran-Ferguson Act for the health insurance business. For many years I’ve advocated for such a repeal, so I’m heartened to see the bipartisan nature of the support for this position. 11:50 Rep. John Conyers (MI): Congress passed McCarran-Ferguson Act in response to a 1944 Supreme Court decision, finding that antitrust laws applied to the business of insurance, like everything else. Both insurance companies and the states expressed concern about that decision. Insurance companies worried that it would jeopardize certain collective practices like joint-rate setting and a pooling of historical data, and the states were concerned about losing their authority to regulate and tax the business of insurance. To address these concerns, McCarran-Ferguson provided the federal antitrust laws apply to the business of insurance only to the extent that it is not regulated by state law, which has resulted in a broad antitrust exemption. Industry and state revenue concerns, rather than the key goals of protecting competition and consumers, were the primary drivers of the Act. In passing McCarran-Ferguson, Congress, however, initially intended to provide only a temporary exemption and, unfortunately, gave little to consideration to ensuring competition. 26:15 Rep. Austin Scott (GA): Be definition, health care and health insurance are not the same thing. But when one insurance company controls such significant portions of the cash flow of all of the providers in a region, no provider can stay in business without a contract with that carrier. Therefore, the insurance company gets to determine who is and who is not able to provide health care: sign a contract with a competing carrier, and we’ll cancel your contract. Accept the lower reimbursement, or we’ll cancel your contract. It’s closer to extortion than negotiation. Hearing: , , March 1, 2017. Witnesses : American Benefits Council, which represents Fortune 500 companies : Associate Director of Affordability at Families USA, a consumer advocate org. : Executive VP of Toko Marine HCC-Stop Loss Group & Chairman of the Self-Insurance Institute of America : President of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts Timestamps & Transcripts 25:50 Rep. Virginia Foxx (NC): Ultimately, they are fighting to maintain government control—government control over the kind of health insurance you can buy, government control over the kind of health insurance employers can and cannot offer workers, government control over the doctors you can see and the doctors you can’t see, and government control over certain healthcare benefits that many individuals may not need. Yet despite the cost and pain inflicted on so many Americans by Obamacare, the answer for some is still more government control. 47:35 Lydia Mitts: The second bill I would like to speak to is the Small Business Health Fairness Act. This bill would exempt association health plans from adhering to critical state and federal requirements for small-group coverage. These requirements have benefited small employers and their workers alike. They include protections that prevent plans from charging small employers exorbitantly higher premiums because their employees have poor health, are older, or are disproportionately women. They also include requirements that plans cover comprehensive benefits that meet the needs of a diverse workforce. By allowing association health plans to ignore these key protections, this bill would increase premiums and threaten stable access to comprehensive coverage for many small employers and their workers. Employers with a young workforce that is in pristine health may be able to get lower premiums. However, the rest of small businesses would see coverage become less affordable, whether they sought it through an association or the existing small-group market. On top of this, employees move to association plans would be at risk of facing skimpier coverage that doesn’t cover the care they need. 1:41:20 Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (OR): Ms. Mitts, the ACA included, as we know, unprecedented new consumer protections for patients, such as eliminating annual and lifetime limits, preventing insurers from dropping people when they get sick, charging women higher premiums. What will happen to these protections in association health plans? Lydia Mitts: Under the bill put forth to you today, those association health plans would no longer have to comply with so many of those rating protections that have been a huge benefit to many small businesses that prior before the Affordable Care Act actually had a really hard time finding affordable coverage for their employees because they employed employees who actually had healthcare needs, who were maybe older, and the market didn’t work for them before. And so we would move back to a situation where we’d have a segmented market, and people who are healthy, in pristine health, could move into an association health plan. I think the thing that’s important to keep in mind is that that doesn’t mean that association health plan would always be there and work for that small employer. If their workforce got older, claims went up, they might find that that association health plan charges them more, and it’s not a viable option for them anymore. Bonamici: Can you address—I know there’ve been some solvency concerns about some of the association health plans. Can you address that concern as well? Mitts: Yeah, there’s historically been concerns about association health plans not having adequate solvency funds. They have leaner, less rigid requirements than typical health insurance coverage. Partially state oversight was added to that to help address some of these problems, bigger problems, where they were just under ERISA. And when an association plan goes insolvent, their employers and their workers are still left with all of those unpaid medical claims and then on the hook for them. And if the plans are not under state jurisdiction, they won’t be able to benefit from state guaranty funds that help pay those claims, so they’ll be left on the hook for them. Hearing: , House Committee on the Judiciary, February 28, 2017. Timestamps & Transcripts 44:20 Rep. Steve King (IA): One of the drivers of higher healthcare spending is defensive medicine. It’s a very real phenomenon confirmed by countless studies in which healthcare workers conduct many additional costly tests and procedures with no medical value that are charged to the federal taxpayers and to other consumers simply to avoid excessive litigation costs. 45:25 Rep. Steve King (IA): They include the following: a bedside sonogram with an “official sonogram” because it’s easier to defend yourself to a jury if you’ve ordered the second sonogram; a CT scan for every child who bumped his head, or her head, to rule out things that can be diagnosed just fine by observation; x-rays that do not guide treatment such as for a simple broken arm; or CT scans for suspected appendicitis that has been perfectly well diagnosed without it. In fact, I have an orthopedic surgeon who has said to me that when he has a knee injury, 97% of the tests that he orders are protection from malpractice. He knows what he’s going to operate on before he actually starts the surgery. 51:55 Steve Cohen: And if we want to make health care cheaper, which we should, and make it more affordable, we ought to have a single-payer system. That would make it more affordable. And if that’s the nexus that makes this law applicable for the federal government to usurp the states, and the Chairman said that the nexus was that it makes things cheaper and anything makes health care cheaper is so important that we need to take it away from the states, well, if you’re concerned about cost, you should be for a single-payer system, and that would make it cheaper and take profits away from insurance companies that right now are paying for ads to get people to buy drugs and making immense profits and having their executives draw salaries in the areas of 40 and 50 million dollars. This bill takes away from people who are hurt by medical malpractice in ways that are artificial and wrong, and we should not be on the side of those people who commit medical malpractice and cause injuries to others. With all of that said, I respectfully suggest that the agenda we’re following is not the agenda of the American people at the present time, and it’s the agenda of the American Medical Association, who’s here today, and this is the bill du jour. Hearing: , Senate Finance Committee, June 8, 2017. Timestamps & Transcripts 44:37 Sen. Tom Carper (DE): And I like those ideas. I studied a little bit of economics at Ohio State as navy ROTC midshipman. I like market forces. I like trying to harness market forces and make them work. You came up with a good idea in 1993, and I just wish to heck that you would work with us to try to make sure that those good ideas have a chance of working. And the reason why the marketplaces are failing in places, like you mentioned Ohio in your statement, Mr. Chairman, the reason why they’re not working, we’ve basically undermined the individual mandate so that people will know if they really have to get coverage. Young people aren’t. We’ve taken off the training wheels, so to stabilize the marketplaces and insurance companies. They lost their shirts in 2014 because of it. They lost less money in 2015. Got better. They raised their premiums, they raised their copays, they raised their deductibles, and they did better in it. And tells that rather than the marketplaces being a death spiral at the end of 2016, they’re actually recovering, until a new administration came in and said, well, we’re not sure if we’re going to enforce the individual mandate, and, by the way, we don’t know for sure whether they’re going to extend the cost-sharing arrangements. That provides unpredictable lack of certainty for the insurance companies. What do they do? They say, we’re going to raise our premiums more. What you’re destabilizing, the very idea that these guys came up with 24 years ago. Sen. Orrin Hatch (UT): Well, if I could just interrupt for a second. Those were ideas that were against—it was part of the anti-Hillary care bill, and it— Carper: They were good ideas. Tom Price: Well— Carper: And I commend you for them. If my life depended on telling what Hillary care did, I couldn’t tell you. But I know what your bill did, and, frankly, there were good ideas, and now we’re undermining undercutting them. Why? Dr. Price, why? Price: Senator, I appreciate the observation. I would add to that that there are significant challenges out there, and there were so before this administration started. In your state alone, premiums were up 108% before this administration started. In your state alone, there were fewer insurance companies offering coverage on the exchange before this administration started. So what we’re trying to do is to address especially that individual and small-group market that is seeing significant increases in premiums, increases in deduct— Carper: What are you doing? What are you doing to doing? How are you stabilizing the marketplaces? Price: Well, we— Carper: Just give us some ideas. The three Rs. What are you doing on those? Reinsurance, risk adjustment, risk corridors. What are you doing there? Price: We passed it—or we put in place a market-stabilization rule earlier this year that identified the special enrollment periods and the grace periods to make certain that they were more workable for both individuals and for insurance companies. We allowed the states greater flexibility in determining what a qualified health plan was, to try to provide greater stability for the market. We put out word to all governors across this nation on both 1115 and 1332 waivers and suggestions regarding what they can do to allow for greater market stabilization in their states, and we look forward to working with you and other senators to try to make certain that all those individuals, not just in the individual and small-group market but every single American has the opportunity to gain access to the kind of coverage that works for them and their families. Sen. Mazie Hirono designated February 3rd as "National Wear Red Day." This is what she wore. Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: by (found on by mevio) Cover Art Design by