associate director chief of staff at the los angeles va hospital. i'm very proud of my position. i can't think of a better job. retaliation is alive and well especially within the va administration. my first encounter was a number of years ago. i was subpoenaed by the inspector general to investigate time card fraud involving two surgeons in my area. i was among close to do 30 individuals who gave testimony. that during that testimony, i said i feared retaliation. i outlined how i felt they would retaliate against me. every aspect i outlined came true. the person who did the deposition was inspector solomon from the inspector general's office. she promised i'd be protected interest the state and federal government. three months after they came out with the final results, one of the individuals paid back a year salary to the federal government and resigned. another individual who they recommended immediate termination was allowed to stay in your supervisory role. there was an end of the year party. at that party this slide was shown. i know. that actually is me. i'm much younger b

laredo to los angeles, two federal officers escorting a 14, 15, 16, 17-year-old to los angeles. we're ending up with two round trip plane tickets, often three round trip plane tickets, and a couple of hotel rooms to deliver and complete the crime. and what's happened is, i read a case that was decided in december of 2013. so december of last year, mr. speaker. and it was a judge, a federal judge, that had to rule on a case about human trafficking, human smuggling, prosecution. and what had happened was there was a mother in virginia, an illegal alien mother, who had unlawfully entered the united states and was living illegally in virginia who had collected some money and sent that off to a coyote in el salvador. might have been guatemala. but i believe it was el salvador. and paid the human smuggler to smuggle her 10-year-old daughter from el salvador to virginia. and so, as the human smuggler, the coyote, smuggled the 10-year-old girl across the border into the united states, they were interdicted by the border patrol. and they brought charges against the coyote, the human smug

in los angeles. what happened is that we deported tens of thousands of gang members who went down to el salvador and continued the criminal behavior that they had in the los angeles area. so i think that in addition to expediting the process, by increasing resources, the other thing we need to do is assess the central american countries to deal with some of the problems they're facing. >> host: senate majority leader harry reid told reporters yesterday the border is secure in california. do you agree? >> guest: you know if you look at how we have spent money or resources that have been increased in the last seven or eight years we have increased money to the border to strengthen the border by 350%. this is not an issue of the border not being secure. remember, you have these children coming to the border looking for the border patrol and turning themselves in. they are not trying to flee so it's not a question of the border not being secured. >> host: yeah and showing our viewers, this is a picture i

. >> i represent ventura california and my veterans use your facility in west los angeles. i am wondering what it is going to be like when you return back to west la? >> i do fear retaliation but i know this was the right thing to do. and i think my veterans support me. >> did you believe by virtue of what you have been through and now being here do you think everything that happened and what we have learned about what is going on in the va across the country do you feel a difference when you go back to west los angeles than you do a few months ago? >> more importantly, i have enlighted congress, i believe and they have an opportunity to look very factual. i think that will be helpful to look at the facts. as far as going back to my job, i could afford not to work, but i want to work and serve the veterans. dr. mitchell and i were chatting and we both want to retire within the va administration. >> i think i am just trying to drill down to see if there has been any shift or change over the course of the last month or two in the culture because you feel it every single day a

richmond: an armed gunman entered the los angeles airport with an attempt to kill transportation security officers. tragically on that officer hernandez for whom the bill is named became the first t.s.a. employee to die in the line of duty. the gunman proceeded past the check point and into the terminal where he shot and wounded two other transportation security officers and one passenger. the two t.s.a. employees who were shot and wounded selflessly remaped at the check point after the shooting began helping passengers escape to safety. despite communication challenges, the men and women of the police department responded to the incident taking the shooter down. through our committee, oversight work, we have identified some commonsense steps that could be taken to mitigate any similar incidents in the future. h.r. 4802 embodies these commonsense steps. it requires airports to have plans in place for responding to active shooter scenarios and t.s.a. to provide information to airports on best practices for responding to a security incident at checkpoints, provide transportation security of

over 64% of the roads in los angeles are in utter disrepair, costing each resident driver nearly $832 a year. my own dad, who was a county supervisor in los angeles for 40 years, used to offer people a dollar for every pothole they could find in his district. if he made that offer today, he would go broke. and to fill this funding gap, i support looking at different ways of funding our roads in addition to the gas tax, such as vehicle miles traveled, which charges drivers by the miles that they travel. for our national economy, we need to focus on freight infrastructure. freight bottle necks cost us approximately $200 billion a year. and yesterday i introduced the national freight network trust fund act for a long-term fix that creates dedicated funding for our freight infrastructure. i urge all of my colleagues to support this short-term fix and join me in looking forward to solving this problem long term. thank you. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from california yields back. the gentleman from pennsylvania is recognized. mr. shuster: thank you, mr. speaker. it

it's been taken over by an elite, very wealthy elite primarily located in manhattan and los angeles. she's got a little smirk on her face right now, i'm looking at it. >> so, caller what do you want us to address? >> caller: that's a good question. >> that conclusively with the advances in sonogram technology up to the year 2000 is definitely a life and she's smiling and you are snuffing it out. >> i'll let our guest respond. >> one of the things that is really interesting that the polling data shows is that seven in ten americans across the board, whether talking about south carolina, kansas, or nationwide support the rights that were enshrined in roe versus wade. one of the things that we know is that when abortion is made illegal the number of abortions don't go up. the number of death itself and injuries to women go up. some people just don't believe that government should be involved in our most personal decision. but that actually spans both parties. it's a really interesting dynamic that we see that every ethnicity. every age group, every party, there is still a majority of su

proud represent los angeles and to say loud and clear that los angeles stands with solidarity with israel's right to defend itself. introduceleasure to the chairman of the house of representatives committee on foreign affairs, this fellow southern californian has helped to ensure that congress has israel's back 20 four/7, 365. please join me in welcoming congressman ed rice. [applause] >> les, thank you very much. what i thought i would share with you or some of my i hadations about trip taken during the second lebanon war, and i had an opportunity to into rockets slammed civilian parts of that city, rockets that were deliberately aimed, deliberately aimed at and what wasets, was goingg, as well, down to the trauma hospital. there were 600 victims there of those rocket attacks, and, of course, if it was not for the iron dome, if it had not been today, youisraelis, would have losses in excess of what i witnessed, because the beings that were then supplied by iran and syria, the rockets i saw coming across, each one had 90,000 ball butings, and it only had one purpose, and that was not to hit

louis, and los angeles v.a. centers. congressman jeff miller chairs the committee. in audible conversations [inaudible conversations] this hearing will come to order. welcome everybody to tonight. titled dea whistleblowers exposing an adequate service provided to veterans and ensuring appropriate accountability. i would also like to ask unanimous consent that the representative tom price from the great state of georgia be allowed to join us and participate in tonight's hearing. without objection, so ordered. i think i heard an objection. tonight we will hear from a representative sample of the hundreds of whistleblowers that have contacted our committee seeking to change the va to improve patient safety and better serve the veterans who have served our great nation. we also hear from the office of the special counsel regarding its work protecting the whistleblowers and the vital information that they provide. the representatives will also be here to answer for the departments reprice holes against whistleblowers and its continuing failure to abide by its legal oblig

>> after what i have learned from what i didn't know because i left out of los angeles and i thought it was taking all my rights with me and didn't know it was flown under liberian flag and they were the ones that the law was under. >> very good. thank you very much. >> thank you senator begich. senator blumenthal. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank you for championing this bill which i'm very proud to be a co-sponsor. thank you for having this hearing which gives us an opportunity to really not only express our support and sympathy but also to make you a part of the crusade for this legislation which will really in a sense make something good, pure her thick experiences. i have a family who is a constituent family in greenwich who suffered very tragically a loss that in some ways is reminiscent of yours a loss that is still with them. george smith the fourth vanished, literally disappeared sometime overnight going into july 4 of 9 years ago. he remains missing since 2005. there was blood on the ship when it went into the harbor. the crime scene was never secured lead alone adequate

angeles, and that u.s. deportations of gang members who had been convicted of crimes in the united states for years, with little or no advanced warning to government officials in the regions, contributed to the diffusion of gang culture and practices. crime and violence including that perpetrate by gangs have worsened as drug trafficking and other forms of organized crime have spread. those points have been dealt with expensively and i will not go into them now. what i would like to address is the kinds of policy responses that this committee could oversee and that the u.s. congress could take. i believe that there's really actually no time since the central american wars of the 1980s there has been so much media and policy attention focused on central america. i welcome that attention. and -- but i also think that our inability our our walking away from the many needs of the peacetime era in the '90s and early 2000s had some contribution to the current situation. the central american security initiative la

conversely the los angeles office would drop from 46 to 56th place. further epa's approach to measuring akers is inefficient due to sampling methods which caused it to radio for 5000 more claims than necessary thereby diverting limited resources from other quality assurance activities such as conduct a more targeted reviews in vero cases. beyond star vba's work includes local quality review teams that conduct reviews before claims are finalized and provide feedback to staff to avoid future errors. however in three of four offices we visited claims processes during overtime hours which can be substantial works looted from such reviews. it may undermine agencies that undermine agencies that pretend to help claims processors make consistent decisions when presenting the evidence ppa uses electronic questionnaires to test for consistency and administer to thousands of staff at once. however we found the agency has never pretested these documents to ensure the query of questions or the validity of expected results. pretesting is a generally accepted practi

first is that we just started a project, cooperatively, with the city of los angeles that's directly focusd on identified solutions to the problem. that includes the water system, the power system. second, u.s.g.s. operates a system called shea cast that allows any user to quickly get an assessment of potential damage. we run that system, for example, for all the nuclear power plamts and the states and around the world. california runs it for every bridge and orr pass. so there are ways of very quickly using 2 data reported through the networks an lieszed and processed within tensover minutes to guilty a damage estimate at, like, fiver fa similarities. >> okay, thank you. and, doctor, while you're on deck here, what would you say act what's been tumped on by other witnesses an earth quake early warning system. how important would it be for the u.s. to have a policy to institute sump a program. >> we, at u.s.g.s., have had this as an oobtive since act 1999 when we put together our plans for the advanced national size mick system. we've invested nearly $10 million so far in the researc

the los angeles time began, the supreme court ruled on monday that private companies had a religious right to be exempted from federal law. this is owned by devote christians and they refuse to pay for contraceptives for employees. it was a victory and the most significant statement in religious liberty in years. reuters, story not by jones but by her colleague, lauren, the supreme court ruled that the owners of private companies can object to grounds that requires employers to provide thursday covering birth control for women. it pleas to a small small number of companies. the health insurance may have to obtain certain forms of birth control elsewhere. kimberly's story from one of her papers i found on the internet said the u.s. supreme court said that the plan holds contraceptives at no cost to employees violates the religious rights of closely held companies. some stories emphasize the lead of the breadth of it. some stories emphasize the narrowness of it. some spoke about, emphasized that it was privately owned or family companies. some said only that it opened the door to perha

angeles times, new york post, "usa today," chicago tribune. he has appeared in such television rams as abc and nbc national evening news broadcasts, fox news, the "newshour" with jim lehrer and today show. now, ann coulter called him one of america's most feared economiests. economists. and she said you can tell the conservatives liberals fear most because they start being automatically referred to as discredited. ask senator ted cruz. but no one is called discredited by liberals more often than the intest is mall economist john lott, author of the ground ground-breaking book, "more guns, less time." the topic for this evening, and let me get this right, is making up facts about guns. now, before i introduce him, though, we have a photo up on the board. our history goes back further than you know be, john. that's me in about, oh, i don't know, 1995 or so. i actually printed out your first copy of your first research, "crime, deterrence: right to carry concealed handgun laws," and i took it to elon college, now elon university, and that is me a

david savage has been covering the court with the los angeles times since 1981. also in the last several years, covering the court for the chicago tribune. he is the author of a book called "turning right." he has recently authored the latest additions of congressional quarterly's guide to the supreme court. david has degrees from unc at chapel hill and northwestern. joan on my far right covers the court for reuters. she has covered it since 1989. before joining reuters, she covered the courts for usa today and the washington post. she is a regular panelist on ebs washington week. she earned her law degree at georgetown law school and specializes in presenting the supreme court through the lens of judicial biography. she has written sandra day , and more recently, american original, the life and constitution of supreme court justice anthony scalia. joan is within weeks of finishing a new book called, "breaking in, the rise of sonia which has a publication date of the first tuesday in october. joined thees washington post in 1987 covering maryland politics. since

i opted to fly back to los angeles as soon as i could get off the ship. once in l.a., i was questioned extensively by the fbi and they photographed the bruisings around my neck. a few days later, the fbi boarded the ship when it returned to port together with the cruise line defense attorneys. the crew member denied even going into my cabin. he did not pass the polygraph but the fbi said it was just a she said/he said case and declined to arrest him. the department of justice declined to prosecute on that same day. the cruise ship then set sail again full of passengers with the rapist on board. two days later, i learned the crew member changed his story and admitted going to my cabin. it was only then that the cruise line confined him to his cabin and then put a security guard outside his door. and then terminated his employment and flew him home to trinidad. with nowhere to turn, i hired a maritime lawyer in miami. why miami? because even though i lived in sacramento, the cruise left from l.a., the crime occurred in international waters and in the ticket

angeles lakers win the world championship. they have a street parade downtown in front of city hall. the whole communicatety was there. on the spanish lang movie theatre, lakers, people from the korean community. speaking languages. >> go ahead. >> people from korean community, south central la, west side, the valley, orange county. they all came together. it was wonderful. and then you look at the opposite when things don't work like that, when we have the rodney king incident and la was tearing itself apart. they are still -- there are still charcoal alleys in different parts of la. so sports can bring us together in terms of the big community, as individuals. you can go out there every day and you working on the baseball field or on the weight room or on ball fields with people who aren't like you. and you see that they are hard-working, they have a sense of humor. they are this, that, or the other, you relate. what do you like? i like jayz or whatever. it enables people who would not necessarily have the opportunity to get

angeles who joined the israeli defense forces and was killed in gaza. another 20,000 came to pay li from to sean carmel texas. israel is not alone. not in war, not in peace. [applause] and because america staunchly supported israel's future as a jewish democratic state, will also continue doing what we can to bring about a just, comprehensive, and secure peace between israelis and palestinians. peopleses for two living side-by-side in peace and security. we are committed to strengthening israel's security and cementing israel's rightful place. which brings me to my next point, we do not just fight for israel's security. we also fight for israel's legitimacy. [applause] as president obama said in a job -- intro group -- in jerusalem and i quote, those who reject israel's right to exist might as well reject the earth beneath them or the sky above because israel is not going anywhere. [applause] no country is immune to criticism. nor should it be. when the criticism takes the form of singling out, one beverly, andrly, relentlessly, over and over and wrong

angeles for the clean air act torrey hope doesn't take anything in maryland or the everglades or dust bowls to become regular in the breadbasket before we act on the critical issue i think the administration the hope congress will take action to make their reality of leadership of climate change that is desperately needed. >> ag for being here and it is nice to see you. with that existing source it is hard to know whether to begin to replace the power plants and that is compliant. . .. the takeover the entire religious the market in the black box. that said, there are a few things that are pretty clear. we know the rule will cause electricity prices to go up. another is from the epa all logic to save the 6% of nuclear generators will that have become economically marginal. how would the epa do this? increasing electricity prices. the only way to keep a marginal nuclear plant in business is for it to be paid more for its power, and the only way to do that is the person the president. the second thing that we know is that this rule will end up with the united states looking like germany

the associate director chief of staff o legal and quality assurance for the greater los angeles va healthcare system. doctor katherine mitchell medical director for the iraq and afghanistan post-deployment center at the phoenix va healthcare system and at this time i would like to introduce the colleague doctor price to briefly introduce his constituents that will be the fourth witness on the panel this evening. >> i want to thank you and the ranking member for allowing me to offer this introduction. this is a remarkably important topic and i commend the committee for the work that you have done. i worked at the va hospital for a number of years during my training and they know how important it is to have honest and real information for our veterans to honor the service which is why we were pleased to welcome mr. scott davis will be on the panel. his father served in the vietnam. mr. davis is a specialist at the national health eligibility center in atlanta and he' he has been in contact with my office outlining his concerns and he has come forward with those that he has been a courageous man

i hope also watching is my son, matthew, who's 3 is who lives and works in los angeles of whom i'm very proud and has been leading up to my apeernsz here before you today. i do have here a group of deer friends and law partners whose support i very much appreciate, also. as you mentioned, mr. chairman, my late father dedicated the entirety of his professional career to representing the united states as a foreign service officer devotedly supported throughout by my late mother, florence snyder adams. they and what came over time to be a family of six kids spent many years all over the world. and i've thus had the opportunity to witness it first hands through the eyes of the service brat that i was. after service in the peace corps in kenya in 1968-1970 and after law school at mr. jefferson's yooumpbt university in charlottesville, i chose to enter the private sector. and i practiced at high levels for now over 40 years. i've always had very close to the heart that i may some day be afforded the opportunity and privilege to serve my country as an ambassador of the united states. and shoul

angeles alone. workers need status to fight back against injustice on that scale. we will all benefit, every worker will benefit when they finally have it. how much will we benefit? the congressional budget office has shown that economic benefits from the bipartisan senate immigration bill are so great that they would increase federal $459 billion between 2014 and 2023. $459 billion -- heck, 459 million dollars would be a lot of money, but this estimate is 1000 times that. how can we improve the lot of workers and the economy as a wholed? well, the easiest and best way the deportation crisis is for the house to call for a vote on the senate bill. that bill would pass overwhelmingly. boehner andy, john kevin mccarthy and the republican party seem to care more about the feelings of the in party than about justice america's workplaces and communities. week, thego last senate did its part. their comprehensive bipartisan bill created a clear and achievable path to citizenship, ensuring that our economy a

angeles oakland and houston va regional offices and today we received an additional allocation and a little rock regional office and we are concerned the number of offices with allegations is growing. vba removed all professional creative claims from its pending inventory. vba's process misrepresented the actual workload of pending claims in its progress towards eliminating the overall claims backlog unquote. quote an office of inspector general teams sent offices to to manipulate an input incorrect dates of claims in the electronic record. incorrect application of data claim provides his data integrity related to timeliness of claims processing unquote. then there's this exchange that took place between congressman bilirakis and the assistant ig and the halliday. mr. bilirakis bilirakis said your mark in your opening statement at vba self reported decrease in the national backlog by more than 50% since march of 2014. do you trust those numbers? ms. halliday, this point i would say no i can trust those numbers. i think we have a lot of work ahead of us to address the allegations we h

afterward, he lived in the los angeles area and proceed care at the v.a. nickel center in l.a. concernantly voice about the care he was receiving, as well as the treatment he received which consisted of medication. he received counseling only as far as a brief discussion regarding whether the medications he's was prescribed was working. if not, he would be given a new medication. he uses a i am a guinea pig for drugs. i would have side effects and they put on something else. 2010, he moved to colorado where he also used the v.a. there, and then finally to houston. the houston v.a. would not refill their prescriptions that clay received from the grand junction v.a., because they said prescriptions were not transferable, and a new assessment would have to be done before his medications could be re-prescribe. appointments in general if ever at 2011 and neither was with a psychiatrist. it was not until march 15 that clay was able to see a psychiatrist at the houston the a medical center. after that appointment, clay called me on his way home and said, mom, i cannot go back there. t

., los angeles veterans collaborative which brings together 250 organizations a month, including the v.a. with the aim of developing coordinated systems. the idea i shared with you, recommendation number two, to create rally points is to get proactive by creating navigation networks that is operated by veterans who can function as surrogate family. we heard them talk about the need for a support system, special relationship between brothers and sisters in the community. we need to leverage that. that's a way to get information from people suffering. it's a way to introduce a process and content expertise into communities with navigators who engage and then advocate. >> one of the things in my local community my wife is involved in, humane society, we find out veterans sometimes won't go to the hospital because they leave their animal, dog at home. they don't have anyone to take care of them because they are alone. humane society are taking care of those animals so veterans can go to something i never thought of. i had no idea that was going on, that people would not get care because

would love to encourage the movie businesses to stay in los angeles and also san bernardino in that area, it would really benefit from manufacturing. so each of these six states the way that they have been drawn does have personality. and so with that i think that you have some questions and i would like to open it up. >> thank you so much. [applause] >> kim, please feel free to sit down. okay, thank you to tim draper. i want to point out that we do have the map of the six californias proposed. they are the six state. and let me start with the question. and so we are trying to raise issues, or do you really want this to happen? >> this is serious and this is an opportunity and i'm looking at it as an important opportunity. and we have really been living in this we have not been active in our creation or re-creation of our government. and california has been benefiting from the pioneers they came here and the way it was set up originally and how he had the best education system and the in the country and now i think it is time for us to get involved and take it back and think of what your

angeles dodgers. the manager for many of that time until i came back here and even after i came back here was tommy lasorda. and he was, like so many managers, a character. he was a showman. and i assume he picked some of the times to pick a fight with the umyo umpire because he was t with the call. but i think his idea was that the team needed a something little extra. tommy was famous for kicking dirt and yelling loudly at the umpire and making sure he didn't use a lot of swear words, and that was the manager's -- he wasn't the only one, but tommy lasorda cams t comes to mind. and on occasion he got thrown out of the game. why did he do this? was he upset with the call? at times it got real ugly, chest-bumping, as indicated kicking dirt. lou pa necessarily la was famous for that. he would kick dirt on the umpire and usually that got him kicked out of the game. and kaitsd as indicated, tried p it clean. but baseball players and managers sometimes have a vocabulary meant for the locker room. certainly

ned ken johnworthy of the "new york times" and john haverhill of the "los angeles times" we created and ran, as it were, the cloture club. >> everybody's dead now except andy and me. [ laughter ] >> and we're headed there. >> including dirksen and mansfield and all those names. we travelled in a pack but journalism does prohibit you to a certain extent sharing stuff. so we tried to keep independent of each other but the press conference the senator would say "oh, god, here they come, the cloture club." but that was -- it was interesting that not every news outlet, not every newspaper, had a full time reporter assigned to cover the filibuster and the civil rights bill. there was -- we didn't have anybody, say, from the "washington post" with us regularly. bob -- robert all bright was assigned to the story but we never saw him and big newspapers, "chicago tribune," "atlanta constitution," st. louis post-ditch pat-- "st. lou post dispatch," they didn't think the story deserved zone coverage which was -- which the cloture club was doing but it was my first introduction to covering something

"the los angeles times," not exactly a right-leaning publication, has noted that deportations of illegals has plummeted from the high in 2008, plummeted every year since then to an absolute low in 2013 of about 1,669. from a high of 8,100 down each and every year to 1,600. now, this first drop probably had a lot to do with the change in the law to which president obama has alluded. we need to fix that. but these other drops have to do with the spirit and the focus and the determination or lack thereof of the present administration. similarly, about 600 minors, this is all illegals, about 600 minors were ordered deported each year from nonborder states a decade ago. a decade ago, 600. last year, only 95. again, the same plummeting trend, the same absolutely plummeting trend. that's what we need to fundamentally reverse. and to reverse that, i am joined with other members, as i suggested, to get the right solution here in the congress, both changes in the law that we need to make and the resources we need to hold these illegal aliens and quickly turn around the flow and send them back to th

angeles area, and the two senators, the governor are 70 years old and up and all from the bay area. they're all white, and if you look at lineup of statewide officials in california right now and then going back 20 years, overwhelmingly they have been from northern california. this is what you call, you know, it's what the folks out this at their fancy conferences call a moment prime for disruption, right? [laughter] this notion that you would have this state that is home to, you know, hollywood and silicon valley and sort of this, you know, allure of youth and innovation that they'd be represented entirely by this cast of characters literally from the '70s and '80s -- 1970 and '80s in addition to being in their 70s and 80s, that just doesn't line up. you're going to start to see this change. jerry brown will probably win this election this year, you're going to have a democratic bum's rush into that job, and in 2016 the question is will barbara boxer run again. you could have two successive psychs where the state attorney general, they all suddenly have to decide after playing this

angeles, i thought i was taking all of my rights with me. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for having this hearing which gives us an opportunity to not only express our support and sympathy, but make you a part of the crusade before this legislation which will really, make something good come out of the horrible tragedy you suffered. george smith iv, vanished. literally, disappeared over night. he remains missing since 2005. his death is with us still in connecticut. that's the reason that these kinds of limitations on lieblts make a mockery of the implicit promtss to the passengers that are made on cruise ships. that they will be kept safe. that's the minimum obligation. in each one of your instances, the cruise ship failed and passengers were left without remedy. and without hope of real recovery. you have my special sympathy in that regard. so we are trying to impose minimal protections on the cruise ship. that's the passenger protection act. it proposes standards of decency. standards of minimal, basic fair dealing. i know in your testimony, you cons

angeles or in a rural environment in the midwest, that's an attack on the united states of america. that's an attack on all of us, no matter what specific geography it happens to be located in. and so that's why we have made the decision as a nation to help back stop those localities that may feel the initial burden of having to reconstruct after a terrorism attack because we believe that it's a national responsibility. and so for the practical reason that there was no longer an ability for the insurance industry to calculate how on earth they would assess a premium based on the enormous potential loss of a terrorist event and because of the fact that as americans we felt like we should come together and insure against this risk, we passed tria initially. over time, we have come together as republicans and democrats to reauthorize it. now, as time has gone on, we have had a conversation about how to best share this between the public sector and the private sector, because we expect that private insurers still should, as is their business, pick up some of this cost, and so this versi

angeles times report in fiscal year 201,320,805 unaccompanied children from el salvador, guatemala, honduras or apprehended by the border patrol. only 16,609 were repatriated. as my friend from texas what kind of messes that sense. >> mr. president, the distinguished senior senator from arizona, the administration has been sending mixed messages. first a call this a humanitarian crisis. then they called it a situation. they are sort of walking his back, but i just want to remind my colleagues from arizona what the president said the few years ago in el paso when people said we need better border secure -- security measures in place, he ridiculed people. you may remember this. he said that -- this is the president talking in el paso. you know, they said we needed to triple the border patrol bill be now they're going to say we need to quadruple the border patrol. a higher fence. maybe they will need a note to. maybe they want alligators in the moat. they will never be satisfied. i and a stand that, he said. that is politics. the truth is, the measures we put in place are getting resul

i don't know about you but tw e wyoming is a tad different than los angeles. what about certain populations and maybe very populace areas but maybe some transportation issues. states have been looking at these issues and are best to address these issues given their needs. we need to balance. there's no sense of going in because we need to balance quality, affordability, access. how do you do that in the model and make sure everyone is protected is our number one concern. we will be looking at teared networks. they are if you go to this group you pay this much, that group, this much. they are teiered up. how are those set up? narrow networks. one issue in particular we'll be looking at in a couple of states, carriers said if you purchase in the state, we will cover you either as in network or out of network. if you go to any provider outside the state, we will not pay nothing. not covered. we're going to have to look at that. we'll also have to look at provider updates. i think that was already addr s addressed here. can't have a free market when people cannot

. >> what is the relationship between ucla and the los angeles va hospital? facility, it is a public institution. a number of the physicians and surgeons have joint appointments counterparts within the university and with the v.a. you are a very egregious case. my colleagues comments with admiring your trilogy -- courage. was with thet board of regents of california and not with the v.a.? >> it's a complicated case. we agreed to part ways. there isve noticed, tremendous overlap and there is a federal component to that. >> here's my question and i am trying to distinguish between the pattern and the law. o wasncident your for t referred to as a ucla party. was it strictly a ucla party or was it also of the a institutionally involved? >> there were a number of members who are employed as physicians at the ba -- v.a. a component of that was directly related to an investigation that occurred at the v.a. led tofacts of the case a settlement with the board of regents of telephone it. to the facts supported claim against the v.a. and the lauper headed you from filin