DPC | May 2, 2007

Senate Oversight Highlights Week of April 23, 2007

“It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees. It is meant to be the eyes and the voice, and to embody the wisdom and will of its constituents.…” — Woodrow Wilson

Congress has the Constitutional responsibility to perform oversight of the Executive Branch and matters of public interest. This report summarizes highlights from each week’s Senate oversight hearings.

 

Tuesday, April 24, 2007: Senate Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support

“To Receive Testimony on the Readiness of United States Ground Forces in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2008 and the Future Years Defense Plan”

• Military readiness is under tremendous strain and may be nearing the breaking point. 
   
• The war in Iraq has limited the ability of the Army and Marine Corps to train for other operations. 
   
• The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a decline in readiness of the Army National Guard.
   

Tuesday, April 24, 2007: Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

“The Implications of the Supreme Court’s Decision Regarding EPA’s Authorities with Respect to Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act”

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has both the authority and the scientific evidence necessary to regulate carbon dioxide. 
   
• The Administration’s voluntary approach to reducing greenhouse gas intensity allows emissions to continue growing. 
   
• The EPA has moved slowly in considering applications from California and 11 other states for waivers allowing them to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles. 

 

Tuesday, April 24, 2007: Homeland Security and Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

“Transit Benefits: How Some Federal Employees Are Taking Uncle Sam For A Ride”

• Misuse of federal transit benefits cost taxpayers $17 million in 2006 within several federal agencies investigated by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
   
• Several departments lack controls to prevent fraud and abuse of transit benefits but can take action to implement controls with their existing authority.

 

Tuesday, April 24, 2007: Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery

“Beyond Trailers, Part I: Creating a More Flexible, Efficient, and Cost-Effective Federal Disaster Housing Program”

• The federal Disaster Housing Program is deeply flawed, costing millions while not meeting the needs of disaster victims. 
   
• A witness testified that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s rent assistance program has been the greatest failure of all the human service programs she has seen over the past 30 years. 
   
• Most of the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita still cannot see a clear path out of their circumstances.

 

Tuesday, April 24, 2007: Senate Committee on the Judiciary

“‘The Insurrection ActRider’ and State Control of the National Guard”

• Last year, Bush Republicans surreptitiously expanded the President’s power to unilaterally strip governors of their control over state units of the National Guard. 
   
• The National Guard is a vital part of every state’s emergency response; the President’s expanded power hinders governors’ ability to prepare an adequate and timely response to the needs of their citizens. 
   
• If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it: The National Guard, under the control of governors, has performed well in every major disaster – natural or man-made, often times better than the federal government. 

 

Tuesday, April 24, 2007: Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law

“Casualties of War: Child Soldiers and the Law”

• International laws prohibiting the recruitment and use of child soldiers have been woefully under-enforced, which has allowed the abuse to thrive.
   
• Democratic and Republican Senators have co-sponsored tough legislation to combat the use of child soldiers around the world by placing restrictions on military aid to countries that break international law. The international community must also aggressively prosecute and punish individuals who recruit and use child soldiers.
   
• The same immigration laws that exclude offenders from legally entering this country can unwittingly exclude their victims as well, which only serves to feed the child-soldier-to-rebel-leader pipeline.

 

Tuesday, April 24, 2007: Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

“NCLB Reauthorization: Modernizing Middle and High Schools for the 21st Century”

• There is still much room for needed improvement in supporting and retaining middle and high school students to set them on a path to success. 
   
• The No Child Left Behind Act doesn’t aid high school students because it wasn’t designed to do so. 
   
• Senator Kennedy and witnesses laid out steps we can take to strengthen middle schools and high schools to bring them into the 21st century.

 

Wednesday, April 25, 2007: Senate Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Airland

“Hearing to Receive Testimony on Whether the Army is Properly Sized, Organized, and Equipped to Respond to the Most Likely Missions Over the Next Two Decades While Retaining Adequate Capability to Respond to All Contingencies Along the Spectrum of Combat in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2008 and the Future Years Defense Program”

• The Acting Secretary of the Army and Chief of Staff of the Army testified that increasing the size of the Army is necessary to sustain the “long war.”
   
• The current pace of military operations is harming the readiness of our next-to-deploy forces and limiting our capacity to respond to other crises that may emerge around the world. 

 

Wednesday, April 25, 2007: Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs

“Hearing on Mental Health Issues”

• The Department of Veterans’ Affairs’ (VA) system for addressing mental health issues is too “passive” and is failing to meet the needs of returning service members.
   
• More focus is needed on addressing mental health issues facing veterans’ families.
   
• The VA is not doing enough to ensure that it will be able to meet the mental health needs of the tens of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who are anticipated to access VA services in the coming years.

 

Wednesday, April 25, 2007: Environment and Public Works Committee

“Oversight Hearing on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”

• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is facing staffing shortages as career staff reach retirement age and new work is coming to the Commission.
   
• The NRC needs to do a better job of communicating with the public. 
   

Thursday, April 26, 2007: Senate Armed Services Committee

“Hearing to Receive Testimony on Legal Issues Regarding Individuals Detained by the Department of Defense as Unlawful Enemy Combatants”

• Senator Leahy, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee testified that the Military Commissions Act, as passed by the 109^th Congress, “was a mistake of historic proportions.” 
   
• Witnesses called the Bush Administration’s rollback of fundamental rights and lack of respect for the rule of law unnecessary and counterproductive for addressing post-9/11 threats. 
   
• Straying from fundamental American values and respect for the rule of law is undermining our leadership in countering the terrorist threat and is serving to empower the enemy. 
   
• The Bush Administration has presented a misleading picture of the types of detainees being held and tried under the tribunal system at GuantanamoBay. 

 

Thursday, April 26, 2007: Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety

“Is OSHA Working for Working People?”

• After six years of diminishing resources, weak enforcement, misguided policies, stagnantstandards, and no comprehensive oversight by the Republican-led Congress, the Occupation Safety and Health Act (OSHA) is falling short of its mission to “assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women.” 
   
• Inadequate recordkeeping has masked the problem, making it difficult to ascertain the exact number of work-related injuries and deaths. 
   
• The Bush Administration has not been vigilant in enforcing OSHA. 

Military readiness is under tremendous strain and may be nearing the breaking point.

SEN. AKAKA: Our committee, and indeed, the entire Congress, shares the nation’s concern that our ground forces are under tremendous stress and may be on the threshold of breaking. We have watched with apprehension as the scope and pace of combat operations over the last five years in Iraqand Afghanistanhave degraded the readiness of our Army and Marine Corps. 

All of our military readiness systems are challenged. At the moment, recruiting and retention in general are stable, but not assured. Troops and their families are enduring multiple and longer separations, but not without risk. Equipment is not available to meet all unit requirements, and it is wearing out faster than it can be repaired or replaced. And training is compromised by equipment shortages and compressed timeliness to meet accelerated deployment schedules.

 

The war in Iraq has limited the ability of our military to train for other operations.

COLONEL LEWIS A. CRAPAROTTA, U.S. MARINE CORPS, COMMANDER, 1STMARINE REGIMENT: Our greatest challenge is and will remain available training time, and because that time is limited, our training will continue to focus on the specific mission in Iraq. This has, and will continue to, limit our ability to train for other operations. For example, we do not have time to send units to jungle or mountain warfare training. We have not conducted large-scale amphibious training, and we have not conducted large-scale high- intensity combined arms exercises. 

…

COLONEL MICHAEL F. BEECH, U.S. ARMY, COMMANDER, 4TH BRIGADE COMBAT TEAM, 4TH INFANTRY DIVISION: Although we have optimized our training cycle to suit specifically counterinsurgency operations, I believe our training strategy is sufficiently broad to support a variety of other contingencies. However, if deployed in support of other emerging contingencies, I would be concerned with the atrophy of some specific tactical skills unique to the higher-intensity conflicts.

 

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a decline in readiness of the Army National Guard.

COLONEL TIMOTHY E. ORR, U.S. ARMY NATIONAL GUARD, COMMANDER, 2ND BRIGADE COMBAT TEAM, 34TH INFANTRY DIVISION: The increased operational tempo and the need to cross-level personnel and equipment from nondeployingunits to increase readiness of deploying units over the last five years has resulted in a decline of readiness in the brigade. 

We continue to reset units from deployment, conduct premobilizationtraining, provide equipment sets for post-mobilization training and unit deployment equipment packages, while simultaneously maintaining the capability in the state to react to homeland missions. Our ability as a brigade to perform these missions continues to be degraded by continued equipment shortages, substitutions, and the cross-leveling of equipment between the state and nation to support our deploying units. 

These practices hinder our ability of my units to conduct premobilizationtraining to standard, and add time at the mobilization station before deployment. It can also slow our ability to respond to disasters and terrorist incidents within the state and the region.

 

Equipment availability is a key concern for the Army National Guard.

SEN. AKAKA: This is the, and I’m quoting, “What keeps you awake at night,” unquote, question. Because you are the build pairs, how would you characterize the readiness of your units for your mission-essential tasks and worldwide deployment? What are the greatest challenges in terms of people, equipment, or training? And please paint for us a picture of your unit’s readiness without getting into details that may be classified. 

… 

COL. ORR: I think our challenge is the equipment piece. And our challenge here is that when our soldiers leave the mobilization station and go overseas, they’re very well equipped and they’re very well trained. But we have this continuing challenge since 9/11, as a brigade that was a non-enhanced brigade, that we were currently at about 63 percent of equipment going into the current war. We’ve currently dropped about 53 percent, and a lot of that is due because we’ve transferred equipment within the state to support other units. And we’ve also left about 5.7 million in theater as part of what we call the stay-behind equipment in both Afghanistanand Iraq.

 

Senator Akaka recognized the serious readiness challenges that our military faces and praised the men and women in uniform for their service.

SEN. AKAKA: I want to thank you, Colonel Beech, Colonel Craparotta, and Colonel Orr, for your thoughtful and frank testimony today. As I expected, this has been an interesting and very useful hearing. Although your units face serious readiness challenges, we can see that you are trying to deal with them in a realistic and creative way. You have given us much to think about as we consider how best to support you, your soldiers and the Marines, and your families in this year’s defense authorization bill. And so, all of this information you’ve given us will help us do that. 

 

The Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has existing authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions but has dragged its feet despite overwhelming scientific evidence.

SEN. KLOBUCHAR: Do you consider yourself or the EPA having some kind of independent mission to move on this outside of the Supreme Court decision? Is there something outside of the Supreme Court decision that would give you the authority you need to start moving on this? 

STEPHEN JOHNSON, ADMINISTRATOR, EPA: Under the Clean Air Act, the responsibility for making decisions under the Clean Air Act rests with the Administrator, just as all Administrators and good government working with my other federal colleagues including the White House. 

… 

WILLIAM REILLY, FORMER ADMINISTRATOR, EPA: You will find, I believe, the very savvy, experienced, professional staff at the EPA who have been preparing for this day for the better part of 20 years, that they are much more prepared than we might imagine. Challenge them to respond. 

… 

CAROL BROWNER, FORMER ADMINISTRATOR, EPA: In 1998, in response to a question from Congressman DeLay, we wrote a legal memorandum reviewing the Clean Air Act and determined that the Clean Air Act on the books… does in fact allow EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

… 

I think they can make an endangerment finding…. They have more science than any decision that EPA has ever sought to make. They have an overwhelming amount of science on which they can base an endangerment decision. And I think they can do this in a timely manner, this is not something that should take years, it may take several months but certainly not years. If they move forward in a manner that suggests years, they are simply dragging their feet. 

… 

SEN. BOXER: You helped write and pass the Clean Air Act amendments in 1990. At that time, one of the key problems was acid rain. There were arguments made in those days that more study of acid rain was needed, but Congress took action with you and never looked back. And we know we’re having a good impact here. Can we afford to wait until every last question regarding global warming is settled or do we have more than enough information to act? 

FORMER ADMIN.REILLY: No, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported several times. We have 11 National Academy of Sciences that have supported this as well. We’re ready to move, I think.

 

The Administration’s voluntary approach to reducing greenhouse gas intensity allows emissions to continue growing.

SEN. KLOBUCHAR: In your opening comments, you talked about how you’ve seen the growth of greenhouse gases go up by less than one percent in 2005, and you said it shows the Administration’s program to address global warming is delivering real results. And then I saw this report released by the Department of Energy that says the slow growth of emission from 2004-2005 can be attributed mainly to higher energy prices that suppressed demand, low or negative growth of several energy-intensive industries, and weather-related disruptions such as Katrina. So how do you respond to their take on why we saw slower growth compared to your take? 

ADMIN.JOHNSON: Well I think that there are many reasons why we see a reduction. 

… 

SEN. BOXER: The Bush Administration has set a voluntary intensity reduction goal of 18 percent by 2012. However, under their own intensity approach, actual emissions could rise by 12 percent or more, even if the voluntary goal is met. In your time as the Administrator, do you recall trying to attack a major threat to public health through a voluntary goal that allowed the situation to become worse? 

FORMER ADMIN.BROWNER: I agree that voluntary programs and partnerships can be an important part of how the agency does its job. However, there will always be companies, there will always be sectors of the economy that will not join in those programs. And so that is why we have a regulatory scheme…. When it comes to this issue of climate change, it will not be enough. 

SEN. BOXER: I was wondering if you were Administrator and you were faced with a public health question, if you felt it would be progress to keep emissions rising rather than going down?

FORMER ADMIN.BROWNER: Absolutely not.

 

The EPA has moved slowly in considering applications from Californiaand 11 other states for waivers allowing them to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles. 

SEN. BOXER: California’s request for a waiver to regulate vehicle emissions has been pending for 16 months. Eleven additional states including Maryland, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, all represented on this committee, as well as Washington and Pennsylvania have moved forward to adopt California’s standards. EPA stands in the way of action. 

… 

SEN. BOXER: I’ve asked you to give us the shortest time and the longest time, and we’ve had these 11 states waiting for 16 months. So when the comment period is completed, we will have another hearing and we’ll ask you about that. 

… 

SEN. CARDIN: I understand you need to make a decision on the California waiver. I would just say that I think it’s reasonable that 30 days after the comment period ends for us to have a decision on the Californiawaiver.

Misuse of transit benefits cost the government at least $17 billion in 2006.

GREGORY KUTZ, Government Accountability Office (GAO): Using transit benefits records from seven of the nine agencies GAO reviewed, GAO determined that the amount of potentially fraudulent transit benefits claimed during 2006 in the National Capital Region was at least $17 million and likely more. This fraudulent amount could be millions more if a similar magnitude of fraud exists in the dozens of agencies GAO did not review, or if the other types of fraud GAO identified in this investigation could be quantified. 

Several departments lack controls to prevent fraud and abuse of transit benefits but can take action to implement controls with their existing authority.

 

SEN. LEVIN: The program is marked by weak internal controls over the distribution of the transit benefits. For more than four years, agency audits have been identifying this problem…. Six agency audits in four years have urged the establishment of stronger controls, but they haven’t been implemented. 

SEN. COLEMAN: The obvious question is how did this happen? The answer is disturbing: no one is minding the store. No governmental entity actually oversees this program…. Despite the fact that this program disburses roughly $250 million each year and nearly 300,000 federal employees receive thebenefit, no agency is tasked with managing the program. No agency is tasked with ensuring that the program runs efficiency. No agency is tasked with preventing waste, fraud, or abuse. 

MR. KUTZ: Weaknesses in the design of program controls… can be associated with the fraudulent and abusive activity we identified. For example, GAO identified four employees who continued to receive transit benefits even though they were on extended absences from work, but none of the agencies had written policies requiring adjustment of benefits because of leave or travel. 

CALVIN SCOVEL, INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION: It is important to recognize that the role of the Inspectors General in the Federal Transit Benefit Program is to ensure that strong internal controls are established and adhered to across the Government. It is equally important to recognize the number of actions that agencies could take now to improve internal controls over their programs…. In addition, the integrity of the Transit Benefit Program could be improved Government-wide if each agency adopted best practices found in other Government-wide programs that are also susceptible to employee abuse or fraud. 

 

The federal Disaster Housing Program is deeply flawed, costing millions while not meeting the needs of disaster victims.

SEN. LANDRIEU: The federal Disaster Housing Program, in my view, is inflexible, wasteful, and unimaginative. It’s a program full of inefficient provisions that cause difficulties to disaster victims and cost taxpayers millions of dollars….Today, there are 9,412 people in Louisiana and 557 people in Mississippireceiving direct assistance in rentals. There are 56,000 people in Louisiana in trailers and 27,000 in Mississippi in trailers. There have been significant problems with the management of this program, which range from site locations to multi-trailer parks to the situation in Arkansas, which I’m sure my colleague, Senator Pryor, will address -- trailers deteriorating in an open field at a great waste to taxpayers and frustrating to all those trying to find appropriate housing and shelter for people in such desperate need. It’s obvious to me that this transitional housing program is grossly flawed. It needs to be basically completely rewritten. 

… 

SEN. PRYOR: The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina revealed gaps in disaster response planning at all levels of government. I think this hearing is an important step in analyzing a way forward. Creating a more flexible emergency housing program will increase our ability to respond to catastrophic events in a timely and constructive manner. As you know, concerns have surfaced regarding FEMA’s [Federal Emergency Management Agency] purchase of over 10,000 mobile homes and travel trailers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. These homes were purchased at higher than market prices in a haphazard, competitive bidding process. Since that time, they’ve been used inefficiently. Almost 8,000 of them are still sitting at the airport in Hope, Arkansas, nearly two years after the storm. Miscalculation on this scale must not be repeated. I believe we should closely examine the way that federal government surplus travel trailers and mobile homes are being used today. 

… 

ANDRES DUANY, FOUNDING PRINCIPAL, DUANY PLATER-ZYBERK & COMPANY: The amount of human suffering that is being undergone in these states is truly astounding, and the people that I knew three months into the hurricane are not the people that you find now. There was a resilience, there was an anger to the people of Louisiana and Mississippi, a can-do attitude that is absolutely gone. The people have been destroyed and the source is the absence of housing. There’s nothing as important as the housing and nothing as important as doing it speedily.

 

A witness testified that FEMA’s rent assistance program has been the greatest failure of all the human service programs she has seen over the past 30 years.

SHEILA CROWLEY, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL LOW INCOME HOUSING COALITION (NLIHC): Let me just say that in my 30 years as a social worker, I have seen my share of poorly conceived and poorly executed human service programs. Nothing comes close to the horrors of the FEMA rent assistance program. The very best description of the program is from U.S. District Court judge, Richard Leon, who ordered FEMA to, quote, “free these evacuees from the Kafkaesque application they have had to endure.” 

Witnesses offered suggestions to improve federal disaster housing programs.

MS. CROWLEY: We offer several recommendations on temporary housing. I will close by highlighting three. First, transfer all income-eligible households still receiving FEMA rental assistance into the Section 8 housing voucher program. Congress must appropriate sufficient funds for these vouchers. We know that this will be less expensive than the FEMA rent assistance program. Further, offer all low-income households currently living in trailer camps the option of receiving a Section 8 housing voucher instead of the trailer. This will at least allow them the choice of moving elsewhere. H.R. 1227 takes care of both of these provisions. Second, require GAO to undertake a comprehensive review of all households whose temporary housing from FEMA was terminated. This is also provided for in H.R. 1227. For all households who were wrongly terminated, FEMA should reinstate them if they can demonstrate continued eligibility and financial need. And these households should be moved into the Section 8 housing voucher program. And third, develop and enact legislation that will make HUD responsible for all disaster housing aid needed for 30 days or more in future disasters. 

… 

WILLIAM CROFT, DIRECTOR, RESPONSE AND RECOVERY, THE SHAW GROUP, INC.: It is my opinion that we have an opportunity to create a more flexible, efficient and cost-effective federal Disaster Housing Program by making a paradigm shift in the definition and execution of the mission. We should depart from the current concepts and move to a more definable and logical approach. The future program should be structured to provide emergency shelters which will provide immediate needs during the emergency phase for up to 30 to 60 days. The extended shelters phase should include large, congregate care facilities which can support sustained operations which will include travel trailers, hotel and motel rooms, as well as large shelters. The transitional housing program should include mobile homes, apartments, prefabricated housing, USDA facilities, HUD facilities and other types which would support a much longer term, even permanent housing. And the final and ultimate program is permanent housing. The federal government role in all of this is paramount to the success for providing direct housing to disaster victims.

 

Most of the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita still cannot see a clear path out of their circumstances.

SEN. LANDRIEU: Would you just restate for the record your one or two most frustrating aspects of your job, what you’d like to see changed that you just can’t seem to get either Congress or others to understand for you to accomplish your mission? 

DAVID GARRATT, ACTING DIRECTOR FOR RECOVERY EFFORTS, FEDERALEMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY: In terms of frustrations, I would have to say that it is the continuing situation that we face in the Gulf Coast. And it’s not necessarily one or two areas; it is the comprehensive nature of what is a compelling, social situation that we face and that we recognize that, unlike most of the disasters that we deal with where the disaster victims can see the light at the end of the tunnel 12 months away or 18 months away, most of the victims or many of the victims that we’re still dealing with in this disaster can’t yet see that light at the end of the tunnel. And we’re not able to shine that light in a way that they’re able to see that.

 

Voucher programs for disaster housing fail when they do not address the shortage of public housing.

DIRECTOR GARRATT: However, handing someone a voucher who’s in a travel trailer is only worthwhile if that individual has someplace to take that voucher to. If there is no public housing, if there are no other forms of housing available at or near the fair-market rent, then having a voucher in your hand isn’t worth a lot. What we need is housing, housing for these individuals, public housing and more commercially developed housing to support the population that is still living in those group sites. 

… 

MR. CROFT: I’d like to just restate the fact that vouchers and money really do not provide housing, and we ran into that in New Orleansand throughout Louisiana, as well as Atlanta, New York, Houston, all the places our citizens were evacuated to. Just to say, “I’m going to give you $2000 and later more money, now go find a place to say.” It didn’t happen because there were no places to stay. A voucher doesn’t create a house. And, you know, I think the approach to FEMA being the housing coordinator is good. I think HUD should play a major role. And as I said in my testimony, I think it’s time to bring all of those agencies together and develop a better strategy for future disasters.

 

Funding for a pilot housing program was not allocated among Gulf Coaststates according to need.

MATTHEW JADACKI, INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR HURRICANE KATRINA OVERSIGHT, DEPARTMENTOF HOMELAND SECURITY: Today, I will address… whether the $400 million appropriated by Congress was allocated to the hurricane-effected communities….The communities hardest hit by the 2005 hurricanes did not receive the proportionate shares of the $400 million appropriated for the program. The State of Mississippi’s proposals were awarded $281 million share or 73 percent of the available $388 million, a share greater than is proportioned of the damages from the 2005 hurricanes. Consequently, the other Gulf states, which had to make do with the remaining 27 percent of the funds among them, did not receive funds proportionate to the damages their communities sustained. 

… 

SEN. LANDRIEU: As one of the key architects of the $400 million pilot program that was supposed to be to seek alternatives from the trailer situation that was described, not just by Louisiana officials or Mississippi officials but Florida officials, who said people had been in trailers, not for three years, not for five years, but for 15 years with no way out and no good options. We put this $400 million in to explore alternatives only to find out recently that, of the $400 million, $275 million was awarded to one state for the Park Model Project, which was Mississippi, $74 million to Louisiana, which had three times the housing loss of Mississippi but we got one- third or less of this particular funding pool…. 

So you must have assumed the next hurricane was going to hit Mississippiand not Louisiana or Alabamaor Florida or North or South Carolina, since $275 million went to Mississippi. So how did we know that the next hurricane would hit Mississippibecause we’d be happy to pass that information on. 

GIL JAMIESON, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR GULF COAST RECOVERY, FEDERALEMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY: Senator, we don’t presuppose that the next hurricane is going to hit Mississippi. 

SEN. LANDRIEU: But you sent the majority of the money to Mississippi in case the hurricane did? 

DEP. DIR. JAMIESON: What we attempted to do through the pilot program and through using the Gulf Coast states as a laboratory is explore different alternatives that could be used nationally, any hurricane, any natural disaster. 

SEN. LANDRIEU: So how many GulfCoast states do we have?

DEP. DIR. JAMIESON: We have five that were involved in the pilot program. 

SEN. LANDRIEU: And do you disagree that the end result of a competitive process that was never fully established that 75 percent of the money basically went to one of the GulfCoast states? 

… 

And that is a violation of the intent of the funding. Now, I’m going to submit the memos to the records, and we’re going to have another hearing on this because it’s a pattern I want to say, a pattern of not allocating money fairly between states to not meet the great challenges that we have to find adequate housing in response to disasters.

 

More attention must be paid to planning for disasters before they occur.

JOHN BADMAN III, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICE, RE: FORMED SYSTEMS, INC.: Senator, may I suggest a strong focus be addressed to pre-hurricane planning? I think the greatest failure of all has been the failure to set up emergency response…. We can’t have a knee-jerk reaction. We can’t be trying to figure out solutions after the disaster. We have to be ready for them ahead of time. And I think all the planning that was done after was excellent, but a greater focus has to be on planning ahead of time. 

SEN. LANDRIEU: Thank you, Mr. Badman, but you might be shocked to know that in another committee that I sit on, most of the planning money that goes from the federal government block grant to the states has been cut out substantially – we’ve learned very little lessons from Katrina and Rita– because we needed that money to fund interoperability. So instead of finding additional funding, we cut the planning to give it to interoperability. So we’ve got some interesting work ahead.

   

 

Last year, Bush Republicans surreptitiously expanded the President’s power to unilaterally strip governors of their control over state units of the National Guard.

SEN. LEAHY: The Insurrection Act is one of the major exemptions to our longstanding statutes, but also the distinctive American tradition not to involve the military in domestic law enforcement. And we’re lucky in this country; we have superb domestic law enforcement. We have a superb military and they’re better off [if] they’re allowed to do their own jobs. 

Both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees slipped provisions into the defense authorization bill last year, apparently at the request of the administration, to make it easier for the President to invoke the Insurrection Act in cases well short of insurrection. In addition, the President’s authority to nationalize State units of the National Guard was increased. The state units of the National Guard are controlled by our governors…. [But] [t]his law authorizes the President to essentially strip the control of a state Guard unit from a state’s governor without consent.

…

The Insurrection Act[‘s] riders subvert [longstanding,] sound policies for dealing with emergency situations and keeping [sic] our governors and our locally elected officials in the loop when they have to deal with disasters. [Further,] the changes increased the likelihood the military would be inserted into domestic situations.

 

The National Guard is a vital part of every state’s emergency response; the President’s expanded power hinders governors’ ability to prepare an adequate and timely response to the needs of their citizens.

MICHAEL F. EASLEY, GOVERNOR, NORTH CAROLINA: [I]t’simportant that we have the Guard that was part of the community and knew where to go on the local level…. [T]his particular piece of legislation… seriously undermines our ability to protect the people we serve, that we all serve. But in individual states, each governor has responsibility to respond to any disaster, manmade or natural, in that state. And it’s important to note that we plan year round for all types of disasters and those plans involve the National Guard. They involve emergency management, fire and rescue, local police, a number of agencies, but all depend on those team members of the Guard. And if we can’t be assured that the Guard is going to be there, then we can’t plan and we can’t coordinate[,] and then there is a confusion in the chain of command.

 ...

[T]he governors are commanders in chief of the National Guard during domestic events and the President, when he calls up the Guard for federal service, as he’s done for Iraq and Afghanistan, then he’s commander in chief. The problem is under this bill, we don’t know when the President is going to call up the Guard, because the latitude is so much broader now. 

… 

It’s kind of like if you’re a coach of a basketball team, they give you five players and they say, “Now, this one may come, may not come, but you need to plan to coach the game.” That makes it hard for the team to be cohesive and not knowing whether you’re going to have all of the players there is a problem.

… 

[In the state emergency context, the result] is loss of time responding. Time results in loss of life and property. 

TED G. KAMATCHUS, SHERIFF, MARSHALL COUNTY IOWA; PRESIDENT, NATIONAL SHERIFFS ASSOCIATION: Eighty five percent of my county was without power for almost 10 days. The National Guard was there to assist me and work with me and my disaster people. They went door to door across my county and they went ahead to make sure that the citizens of Marshall Countywere safe, but they did it at our request of the governor, deployed by the governor. Given the significance of the sheriffs in the community, it’s paramount that the sheriff and local first responders are not stripped of their ability and authority to serve a constituency in a time of need. To provide a blanket authority to federal agents and individuals to conduct domestic law enforcement functions, as the new language in the Insurrection Act does allow, it jeopardizes the likelihood of timely response and effective assistance to our citizens in a time of need.

 

The buck stops with the governors, not the President, when disaster strikes on the state level. 

SEN. LEAHY: You know, Governor, when it comes right down to it on the old idea of the buck stops here, who’s ultimately responsible for the security and safety of the people in your state? 

GOV. EASLEY: Obviously, the governors are. The Department of Emergency Management comes under each governor in one form or another. We all have our secretaries of homeland security in one form or another. Ours is crime control and public safety. But when a disaster is imminent or one occurs, some event occurs, we are expected to have planned it out how to respond and to respond appropriately. I think the people see it as our responsibility and I think if you search the statutes, federal and state, you would find that it’s primarily the governors’responsibility. 

… 

Let me just mention one thing about a pandemic. We had Secretary Leavitt come and honestly tell us that in the event of a pandemic, don’t look for Washington to come riding in, that you’re going to have to handle this yourself.

 

The change in the law is unnecessary – the President has always had the power to seize control over state units of the National Guard, if necessary. 

GOV. EASLEY: The President currently has the authority we believe that he needs and that the Constitution gives him under the Insurrection Act. 

… 

H. STEVEN BLUM, LIEUTENANT GENERAL AND CHIEF, NATIONAL GUARD BUREAU: As it existed at the time of Hurricane Katrina disaster, the Insurrection Act permitted the President to call the militia or the National Guard into federal service to suppress insurrections or to enforce the law, including when state authorities were unable or unwilling to secure the constitutional rights of their citizens, as Governor Easley talked about earlier. 

Rarely in the history of our nation has the National Guard been federalized under the provisions of the Insurrection Act. In fact, I can only find 10 times in the historical record of our nation since World War II when the National Guard was federalized under the provisions of the Insurrection Act. 

And as Governor Easley alluded to, that was largely done to enforce and protect the civil liberties or the federal laws that guaranteed civil liberties in the states that were not affording those civil liberties or violating federal law. 

So when this authority is employed, it takes over the control of the state’s National Guard away from the governor and places it in the command and control within the federal government.

 

Nonetheless, the change in the law is problematic, as it expands the President’s authority by enumerating never-before-used occasions when the President may invoke martial law. 

SEN. LEAHY: And, General Lowenberg, some of the people we’ve talked to say, “Well, these changes are simply clarification of the law. They’re not significant.” How would you respond to that?

TIMOTHY LOWENBERG, MAJOR GENERAL,U.S. AIR FORCE AND ADJUTANT GENERAL, STATE OF WASHINGTON: For those who embrace the illusion that there is no change, I would say passage of Senate 513 will have no consequence for them. But as attorneys… we know that changes in statutes do have meaning. This also included a change to the title of the Insurrection Act from Insurrection to Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order. I would suggest to you that in the legal context, that the distinction between responding to a rebellion or insurrection or to something that is a restoration of public order are events of considerably different magnitude...

SEN. BOND: Allowing a president to invoke the act and declare martial law where public order breaks down as a result of natural disaster, epidemic, terrorist attack, is very ambiguous and gives him broad authority.

… 

MAJ. GEN. LOWENBERG: And so from a legal context, the changes do have significance, tremendous significance, and I would suggest that that was not unintended. 

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it: The National Guard, under the control of governors, has performed well in every major disaster –natural or man-made, often times better than the federal government. 

SEN. LEAHY: [T]he National Guard has served spectacularly when the governors have asked them. I think about Katrina. The active military forces came in and they did a superb job there. The same cannot be said of FEMA, but the military performed very, very well. So let us talk about what we need to be doing to help the Army Guard, not ways to put them into things that are not needed and should not be done. 

… 

LT. GEN. BLUM: Disaster response and the management of disaster response has traditionally rested with the discretion of our nation’s governors and has been very, very successful because those first able to respond and lead that response have a comprehensive and complete knowledge of the environment that they’re responding to and the troops that they are employing under them. 

Even for a no-notice catastrophic event, such as the World Trade Center attacks, it was very abundantly clear that an appropriate disaster response was well within the capability of the National Guard and the governor and, in that case, the mayor of the city. 

More recently, the unprecedented scale of Hurricane Katrina showed that local authorities’ ability to respond could be exceeded, but the response capabilities available to the local and state authorities can be expanded and the governors of Mississippi and Louisiana used an option that was available to them called the emergency management assistance compact, EMAC for short, to provide an immediate assistance across a broad spectrum ranging from law enforcement to humanitarian relief, with great effect. 

The EMAC model enabled the governors of every single state and territory of this great nation to deploy over 50,000 National Guard members with law enforcement authority and critical capabilities with efficiency and effectiveness to support the emergency response. It was, in fact, the largest, fastest domestic military response or mobilization of military assets in the history of our nation and it amassed all of the forces necessary. 

… 

And the governors of this nation have never been reluctant to seek and receive federal assistance beyond what their local and state capabilities and their EMAC capabilities were able to provide. So we have seen that before the enactment of this law, we have seen the responses to Katrina, Rita, Wilma, 9/11, the southwest border mission, several national special security events, and literally tens of thousands of military responses to civil authorities. Today, for example, there are 17 state governors that have called out their National Guard today. There are 11,307 citizen soldiers acting on behalf of the citizens of 17 states that are either saving lives or reducing suffering and restoring order or normalcy to events that are driven basically by weather patterns.

… 

SEN. LEAHY:The governors work it out pretty well, do they not? 

GOV. EASLEY: They do and I think it’s important to note that the federal government does not have the resources to do but so much. If you look at 9/11, the response was the New York City Fire Department. Those are the people who have to respond to these type of events. 

And when we have them across the country, in one or two or three or four states, they don’t have the resources on the federal level to come in and handle one state, much less three or four or five [states].

 

A true sign of bad policy: governors were not notified of the change in the law and no one in Congress will admit to having supported it. It seems everyone – Republicans and Democrats, alike – is opposed to the Bush Administration’s plan to further expand the President’s authority over state units of the National Guard.
 

SEN. BOND: [T]he measure that [sic] was concluded in last year’s Congressional Defense Authorization Act[,] I think it was ill conceived, unnecessary and dumb…

SEN. LEAHY: That’s giving it the benefit of the doubt. 

SEN. BOND: Well, even some of the members of the SASC [Senate Armed Services Committee], who should have, did not know about it…. [W]e now know that all 50 of our nation’s governors, adjutants general and local law enforcement are opposed to it. Nobody knows where it came from…. Why on earth would anyone want to do it? 

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MAJ. GEN. LOWENBERG: In giving substantially expanded martial law powers to the President, last year’s conference insertion of Section 1076 in the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act reversed more than a century of well established and carefully balanced state, federal and civil military relationships.

More than a century of policy and practice were changed without a single witness, without a single hearing, and without any public or private acknowledgement of the proponencyor authorship of the change.

I suggest to you very respectfully that when laws are changed for the better, there are many who claim some responsibility or measure of credit for their passage. But this is a provision which has no DNA, no fingerprints, no one claiming authorship, in fact, no one who will even acknowledge having reviewed or coordinated on the changes before or after they were added in conference....

[T]his is not a partisan issue. It is a state-federal issue of the highest order.

International laws prohibiting the recruitment and use of child soldiers have been woefully under-enforced, which has allowed the abuse to thrive.

SEN. DURBIN: There is a clear legal prohibition on recruiting and using child soldiers, and yet around the world hundreds of thousands of boys and girls are used as combatants, porters, human mine detectors and sex slaves. While most serve in rebel or paramilitary groups, some government forces use child soldiers as well….

 

Over 110 countries, including the United States, have ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the recruitment and use of child soldiers. But if the law is not enforced, it is meaningless….Where there is no accountability for violating the law, governments and rebel forces can violate human rights with impunity. 

TheSpecial Courtfor Sierra Leoneis prosecuting nine people for using child soldiers…. These are positive developments, but they pale in comparison to the scale of the child soldiers’crisis. The average perpetrator runs very little risk of being prosecuted. 

Democratic and Republican Senators have co-sponsored tough legislation to combat the use of child soldiers around the world by placing restrictions on military aid to countries that break international law. 

SEN. DURBIN: Governments must also be held accountable for their actions. That’s why Senator Sam Brownback and I have introduced the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2007, legislation that would limit U.S. military assistance to countries that are clearly identified in the State Department’s Human Rights report as recruiting or using child soldiers. Our bill would ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are not used to support this abhorrent practice by government or government sanctioned military and paramilitary organizations. 

… 

Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, HumanRights Watch: A common misperception is that child soldiers are found only in rebel armies. But in fact, the biggest recruiter of child soldiers in the world is Burma’s national army, which for many years has forcibly recruited tens of thousands of boys into its ranks. In a 2002 investigation, Human Rights Watch found that recruiters often preyed upon boys as young as eleven, threatening them with jail if they refused to join the army. They were often beaten during training, brutally punished if they tried to escape, and once deployed, used in combat against ethnic armed groups and to commit war crimes against civilians.

The most recent State Department Human Rights Country Reports found that of the 20 countries around the world where children are currently fighting as soldiers, governments are implicated in 10 of these situations. These include: Afghanistan, Burma,Burundi, Chad, Colombia, DRC, Cote d’lvoire, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda. In some of these cases, governments recruit children directly into their own armed forces, while in others, governments are directly linked to militias or paramilitaries that recruit and use children.

…

 

U.S. military assistance to governments involved in the use of child soldiers currently ranges from small amounts of funding for military training for Burundi, Chad, and Cote d’lvoire to hundreds of millions in weapons, training, and military financing for Colombia (25 percent of which is currently on hold). While the amount of U.S.military assistance is often not large, the loss of U.S. military backing would be politically very embarrassing to these governments, and a strong motivator to end any involvement in child recruitment.

 

The international community must also aggressively prosecute and punish individuals who recruit and use child soldiers. 

SEN. DURBIN: One option, which we will discuss today, is for national courts to play a greater role in prosecuting perpetrators. I am sorry to say that recruiting and using child soldiers is not a crime under U.S.law, so the U.S.government is unable to prosecute perpetrators who are found in our country. 

… 

Mr. Roth:If theUnited States were to amend its criminal code to criminalize the recruitment and use of child soldiers committed here or abroad by either U.S.citizens or non-citizens present in the United States, that would provide an important avenue to hold these perpetrators accountable.

Precedent for this already exists in federal law. For example, Chapter 1 13c of Title 18, the Crimes and Criminal Procedure of the U.S. Code makes it a crime for torture to be committed abroad irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender where the alleged offender is present in the U.S. The provision imposes severe criminal penalties on “whoeveroutside the United Statescommits or attempts to commit torture.” Jurisdiction over this crime applies whether the alleged offender is a national of the United States, or is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender. (Sec. 2340A).

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Consistent with the U.S.’ own policies and practices, U.S. law should criminalize any recruitment or use of child soldiers in violation of international law. This would include any forced recruitment of children under age 18, and any recruitment (whether forced or “voluntary”) into non-state armed groups. This would enable the United Statesto prosecute military commanders who exploit children as soldiers abroad, and then seek refuge in this country. It would also enable the United States to prosecute individuals who may attempt to recruit children from the United States to fight in foreign conflicts.

 

The same immigration laws that exclude offenders from legally entering this country can unwittingly exclude their victims as well, which only serves to feed the child-soldier-to-rebel-leader pipeline.

ANWEN HUGHES, SENIOR COUNSEL, REFUGEE PROTECTION PROGRAM, HUMANRIGHTS FIRST: U.S.immigration laws bar most of those who use child soldiers in violation of international law from entering or remaining in the United States. But those same provisions of the law, as currently interpreted by the agencies charged with their enforcement, can exclude former child soldiers from refugee protection and discourage humanitarian organizations from providing them with the assistance they need. Subjecting all former child soldiers to the same sanctions as those who victimize them is damaging to the children themselves and to international efforts to prohibit and prevent the use of child soldiers. At the same time, one category of those who use child soldiers – those who recruit and use children as soldiers in their own national armies are not necessarily barred from entry into the United States under our current immigration laws.

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The USA PATRIOT Act expanded the INA’s definition of“terrorist activity” to include “material support” to any organization that has engaged in “terrorist activity,” which, in turn, was defined to include almost any unlawful use of a “weapon” for any purpose other than “mere personal monetary gain.” Under a literal reading of these definitions-and the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and State have been reading them literally-groups are considered “terrorist organizations” for immigration purposes even though they do not appear on any of the U.S. government’s lists of “designated” terrorist organizations, simply by virtue of the fact that they have used armed force. In 2005, the REAL ID Act expanded the definition of“non-designated” terrorist organization to cover any group that has a subgroup that uses weapons. Concretely, this means that any refugee who has ever borne arms (unless in service of his own country’s army), or who has ever provided assistance to those who have, or is a member of or has provided support to any group some of whose members have borne arms, is now barred from refugee protection.

… 

[R]elevant federal agencies refuse to recognize any legal exceptions or defenses to these bars. Under the interpretations now prevailing at the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and State, the terrorism-related bars to asylum and refugee protection how no exceptions. No form of assistance is too immaterial or too small to trigger exclusion from international refugee protection – pocket change, a chicken, even emergency medical care, the government has argued that all of these constitute “material support” to terrorism. Worse, the government is applying this interpretation even to refugees whose “support” was provided under coercion, or in other circumstances where the criminal law, for example, would recognize an implicit defense.

… 

For child soldiers, this means that neither their youth, nor the involuntariness of their conscription, nor the fact that they acted under circumstances that any reasonable person would consider to be duress, nor any of the other circumstances that might exculpate them, will protect them against the reflexive and categorical application of these bars to protection. This interpretation places the relevant provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act in direct conflict with international law, which requires that exclusion from refugee protection be based on individual responsibility (requiring personal involvement, with intent and knowledge, and in the absence of defenses) for an excludable act, with the goal of excluding only those who made a knowing moral choice to do what they did.

Child soldiers must be given the asylum, refugee status, and/or rehabilitative aid needed to put down their weapons, reclaim their future, and become productive citizens of the world. Our future depends upon it. 

SEN. DURBIN: We also should support programs that provide psychological services, educational and vocational training, and other assistance to these traumatized young people. 

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ISHMAEL BEAH, FORMER CHILD SOLDIER; AUTHOR: We were told that our responsibilities as boys were to fight in this war or we would be killed. I was thirteen years old. Neither my friends nor I had any choice – it was either join or be killed. We had no family and no other means of survival. We were forcibly recruited and taught how to use the AK-47, M16s, machine guns, G3’s, Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs), etc., for less than a week and then we were sent into battle. Many of my friends were shot dead in front of me as many of us didn’t know how to use the guns very well and were paralyzed by fear.

I will never forget my first day in battle. We were led into the forest by the adult soldiers to ambush the rebels. My squad had boys who were as young as seven, who were dragging guns that were taller than them as we walked to the frontlines. We formed an ambush by a swamp and waited for the rebels. Upon their arrival, the lieutenant ordered us to open fire. I couldn’t shoot my gun at first. But as I lay there watching my friends getting killed, the seven-year-old boys crying for their mothers as life departed their little bodies, and the blood from my friends who had died covering my hands and face, I began shooting. Something inside me shifted and I lost compassion for anyone. After that day, killing became as easy as drinking water. I had lost all sense of remorse.

… 

For over two years, all I did was take drugs, fight, and kill or be killed. At the time it felt as though there was no way to stop…. But I did get out of that madness with the help of Children Associated with War, which was sponsored by UNICEF and other non-governmental organizations. I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for the presence of non-governmental organizations that believed that children like myself, due to our emotional and psychological immaturity, had been brainwashed and forced to be killers, and above all, that we could be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society.

… 

I and many others are living proof that it is possible for children who have undergone and experienced such horrors to regain their lives and become ambassadors of peace.

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One thing that history has taught us is that when we ignore such problems as the use of children in war, they become bigger and more complex problems that later affect us and that we then might be unable to solve. If you do not help these children now, they will grow into adults who will become the leaders of their nations who will have no understanding of ethical and moral standards, and ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, your children now, the future leaders of this country, will have to face them and deal with them. 

There is still much room for needed improvement in supporting and retaining middle and high school students to set them on a path to success.

SEN. KENNEDY: I welcome our witnesses to this hearing on modernizing middle and high schools we prepare to reauthorize the No Child Left BehindAct (NCLB)…. One of our principal priorities in the reauthorization is to ensure that the Act is working for all students at every grade level in elementary school, middle school and high school. 

Recent surveys demonstrate that we still have much to do in secondary schools. Only 30 percent of 8th grade students scored proficient or better in 2005 on math assessment and reading assessment. In 12th grade, less than a quarter of students scored proficient or better on the math assessment, and only 35 percent were proficient or better on the reading assessment. It’s clear that secondary school students need as much attention and help in these essential courses as students in lower grades do. 

We also need to do more to assist students in the transition from middle school to high school and help them graduate. About 1,000 high schools across the country only graduate half their students, and only about 70 percent of high school students graduate on time. Among African Americans and Latinos, only 55 percent graduate on time. It’s clear that high schools need more assistance in supporting and retaining students. 

John Podesta, President and Chief Executive Office, Center for American Progress: It is well established that our students have fallen behind past generations of Americans and young people in other nations in terms of on-time high school completion rates. For decades now, the U.S. on-time graduation rate has failed to top 70 percent. This is below national graduation rates recorded in the middle of the twentieth century and well below current graduation rates in other countries. The U.S. ranked first in the world in terms of secondary school graduation rates forty years ago. Today it ranks 17th. 

For racial and ethnic minorities, the statistics are even grimmer. Graduation rates for African Americans and Hispanic students today range between 50 percent and 55 percent. Every year we lose more and more of these students in schools that are essentially “dropout factories,” a term used by Johns Hopkins University researchers Robert Balfanz and Nettie Letgers to describe the 2,000 worst performing schools in terms of graduation rates. 

In a rapidly shifting global economy, where knowledge and skills are crucial to good paying jobs, too many of our students are falling off the track to economic independence and advancement. In turn, the lack of basic educational attainment unduly consigns millions of our young people to a life of low earnings and poverty. High school dropouts are twice as likely to be unemployed as those with diplomas; working dropouts are far more likely to have low wage jobs and fewer health and retirement benefits than others. 

It is clear that a high school diploma is the bare minimum requirement for decent work and economic security in today’s world. It is thus incumbent upon all of us to do more to ensure that our students stay in school and on the path to greater intellectual achievement and improved job skills. In a nation with the resources and talent of ours, graduation should never be a “fifty-fifty”proposition for anyone.

 

The No Child Left Behind Act doesn’t aid high school students because it wasn’t designed to do so.

Bob Wise, President, Alliance for Excellent Education; Former Governor, West Virginia: Currently, there is little federal investment in our nation’s high schools and we are getting what we pay for. As of now, the federal funding in education targets the bookends of the education system –concentrating on grades pre-K–6 and higher education. The “missing middle” is our nation’s secondary schools, which receive little to no funding from the federal level. Funding for grades pre-K–6 totals nearly $18 billion. Funding for postsecondary education totals nearly $16 billion and that is without taking into account student loans or other tax incentives. However, funding for grades 7–12 is only about $5 billion. 

Unfortunately, the focus of NCLB reflects the current federal funding priorities in education– NCLB was just not set up for secondary schools. I am not here to criticize NCLB. I am here to tell you why it does not work for high schools and how you can fix them in reauthorization. However, I believe it is critical for us to remember all of the core reasons NCLB was written and became law when we discuss the crisis in our nation’s high schools. The law was written to provide all children, including poor and minority children, with access to a high-quality, standards-based education; the same reason federal action must occur at the high school level.

 

Addressing the nation’s dropout crisis would have positive effects throughout our society.

Dr. Robert Balfanz, Center for Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University; Associate Director, Talent Development Middle School Project, Baltimore, MD: We are at a moment when well conceived action by the federal government can play a catalytic role in ending the nation’s dropout crisis and in so doing change the nation fundamentally for the better. Pick the issue you care most deeply about-the nation’s competitiveness, equal opportunity, lowering the crime rate, reducing social welfare costs, urban or rural development, social justice, economic growth, or unleashing the full potential of all the nation’s citizens and the case can be made the creating a system of public secondary schools which graduate all students prepared for success in college, career, and civic life is your issue. This is within our grasp, we know how to do this and we know what needs to be done to make it happen. Central to this is a focused federal effort to create a federal-state-local partnership which provides the accountability framework, capacity building, technical assistance, research, evaluation, and resources necessary to transform the nation’s low performing secondary schools.

 

Senator Kennedy and witnesses laid out steps we can take to strengthen middle schools and high schools to bring them into the 21^st century.

SEN. KENNEDY: Federal investment at the middle and high school level is not sufficient. The main source of federal funds is through the Title I program. Yet, only eight percent of students who benefit from these funds are in high school. 90 percent of high schools with very low graduation rates have many low-income students. But only a quarter of these schools receive Title I funds. We need to dedicate more resources and support for secondary schools to improve academic achievement and ensure that every student has a fair opportunity to graduate…. 

We know that proven strategies and interventions will help students make progress, stay in school and succeed. Research conducted by one of our panelists, Dr. Robert Balfanz shows that we can identify students who are most at-risk for not completing high school as early as sixth grade. Early intervention, quality teachers, small classes, and data-driven instruction will strengthen schools and help keep students engaged. 

We also know that better alignment of standards and curricula between middle school and high school can ease the transition for many students. High school students also have to be prepared to meet the expectations of college and the workplace. We need to promote models that allow students to pursue college level work as soon as possible, such as dual enrollment, early college high schools, International Baccalaureate, and Advanced Placement programs, each of which can make a difference in students’ skill levels and future opportunities. To do all this, we can’t remain bound to the schoolhouse model of past decades. We need to bring our middle and high schools into the 21st century.

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DR. BALFANZ: Our research also points to concrete steps we can take right now to address the graduation crisis head on. At least three types of intervention are required. First, the nation’s dropout factories need to be fixed or replaced. This cause should unite everyone, the urban North, and the rural South, Civil Rights advocates and policymakers concerned about competitiveness. Transforming these schools and systems is the best shot we have at ending the stubborn grip of concentrated and inter-generational poverty that engulfs too many of our citizens and their communities…. 

Second, investments in more research, development, and invention are needed, particularly in curriculum, instruction, and assessment High schoolcoursework needs to develop student’s intellect and reflect tighter and more substantial connections to higher education and the workplace. It should incorporate significant experiential activities that engage our emerging adults in meaningful activities that build their skills and connections to supportive social networks. It must be adaptable enough to address diverse needs, including the increasing number of adolescents who are English language learners. Assessments need to support and encourage meaningful intellectual development and not limit learning to what is easily testable.

Finally, we must acknowledge the impact of poverty and activate “outside the box”approaches for our most vulnerable students. That means investments in improving and integrating social service and community supports in schools that serve high-poverty neighborhoods and regions. It means providing intensive supports to help students from poverty negotiate the treacherous transitions between educational levels. It means embracing a K-16 framework, but also acknowledging that adolescence (especially combined with poverty) brings its own risk factors and that a secondary approach spanning middle and high schools is needed to keep all students on track toward graduation. 

We need to transform the high schools that produce most of the dropouts and the middle grades schools that feed them. With a targeted, inventive, aligned, and integrated approach, we can do this.

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MR. PODESTA: I would like to talk with you today about the Graduation Promise Act (GPA), introduced yesterday by Senators Bingaman, Burr, and Kennedy, and developed with the support of the Center for American Progress, Jobs for the Future, the Alliancefor Excellent Education, and the National Council of La Raza. I believe the GPA is a necessary and vital step towards improving our nation’s graduation rates. It will provide critical federal resources to aid states in their efforts to develop, implement, and expand proven methods for keeping a diverse range of students in school and on the path to economic success… 

The Graduation Promise Act, therefore, proposes a set of federal efforts to assist states in fighting high school attrition in three primary areas: more directly interrupting the dropout crisis in the worst performing schools; developing new strategies for improving graduation rates while maintaining academic standards; and investing more in proven methods for increasing graduation rates and supporting state policies in this area.

 

The Acting Secretary of the Army and Chief of Staff of the Army testified that increasing the size of the Army is necessary to sustain the “long war.”

PETE GEREN, ACTING SECRETARY, U.S. ARMY AND GENERAL GEORGE CASEY, CHIEF OF STAFF, U.S. ARMY: Our nation is locked in a long war – potentially a multi-generational conflict…. It is essential that we grow and transform the force in order to build an Army to sustain protracted campaigns and defeat adversaries in the 21^st century. 
 

The current pace of military operations is harming the readiness of our next-to-deploy forces and limiting our capacity to respond to other crises that may emerge around the world.

SEC. GEREN AND GEN. CASEY: To meet combatant commanders’ immediate wartime needs, we are continuing to pool equipment from across the force to equip soldiers deploying into harm’s way. This practice increases risk for our next-to-deploy units, and limits our ability to respond to emerging strategic contingencies.

 

 

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs’ (VA) system for addressing mental health issues is too“passive” and is failing to meet the needs of returning service members.

PATRICK CAMPBELL, LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN VETERANS OF AMERICA: The system that the Department of Veteran Affairs employs to treat service members with mental health issues suffers from a fundamentally fatal flaw. It is a passive system. It is a system that waits. It waits for service members to acknowledge that they have a problem. It is system that waits for service members to ask for help. We must fix it before we lose this generation of heroes. 

… 

TONY BAILEY, FATHER OF JUSTIN BAILEY, IRAQ WAR VETERAN: I believe with some veterans, there is a lag between their return from war and their acknowledgement and/or diagnosis of PTSD, and we have yet to see our VA hospitals overwhelmed with mental illness from this war. I have a concern that our Iraqi veterans with mental illness will give up on our VA hospitals, because of the complexity and apathy. We can do better than that. We send them to war to fight for our country and it is our responsibility to take care of them when they return. 

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RANDALL OMVIG, FATHER OF SPECIALIST JOSHUA L. OMVIG: The VA delivery system, presentation and implementation of mental and psychological services hasn’t changed much. It is still mainly up to the veteran and their family to identify the problem and go seek help. There still is no comprehensive preventative program during the defusing or decompression time to start dealing with the emotional and psychological effects of their service. VA and DOD [Department of Defense] need to provide group peer counseling, training, coping mechanisms and strategies.
 

More focus is needed on addressing mental health issues facing veterans’ families.

RALPH IBSON, VICE PRESIDENT FOR GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, MENTAL HEALTH AMERICA: While there is widespread recognition of the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other war-related mental health problems among veterans of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, less attention has been given to the toll these military operations have had on the mental health of our veterans’families, and the implications of those problems on the veteran’s readjustment and health. Research on PTSD, for example, has shown that it has had severe, pervasive negative effects on marital adjustment, general family functioning, and the mental health of partners, with high rates of separation and divorce and interpersonal violence. PTSD can also have a substantial impact on veterans’ children.

 

National Guard and Reserve veterans returning from Iraqand Afghanistanencounter obstacles in accessing VA mental health care.

MR. IBSON: The high percentages of Guard and Reservists among the OIF/OEF cohort creates unique challenges that VA has not previously faced. First, these “citizen-soldiers” often live in communities remote from VA medical centers. Yet they are as likely to have readjustment issues or to experience anxiety, depression or PTSD as veterans who have good access to VA health care. Long-distance travel is a very formidable barrier to a veteran’s seeking (and continuing) needed treatment. That barrier is likely to be even higher for veterans with mental health needs, given the lingering stigma surrounding mental health treatment. Second, with activation to and from active duty associated with multiple deployments, health care responsibility for these service members shifts from DOD to VA to DOD, with each shift in responsibility inviting confusion.

 

The VA is not doing enough to ensure that it will be able to meet the mental health needs of the tens of thousands of Iraqand Afghanistanwar veterans who are anticipated to access VA services in the coming years.

MR. CAMPBELL: Once we get these service members in the VA’s door we need to make sure they are in the counseling room and not waiting for hours in the lobby. A recent USA Today article stated that although the number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans using the Vet centers has nearly tripled over the past 3 years, the number of staff has been increased by only 9.3 percent. We cannot wait for the storm to come to start preparing, we must fully staff these facilities and look to expand them to new communities.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has an aging workforce and faces challenges in recruiting and training new staff.

DALE KLEIN, CHAIRMAN, NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION: We expect to have a critical hiring need for at least the next four years. Although we are positioned to meet our hiring challenges over the next couple of years, it will be a continuing challenge to maintain our recruitment momentum. In the 2008-2009 timeframe, we expect hiring competition from utilities and nuclear manufacturers to intensify as they begin to staff up for construction of new nuclear plants. In addition, we face competition from other government agencies, the national laboratories, and academia. 

… 

SEN. VOINOVICH: Do you believe that the private sector and academia is doing enough to recognize that we’ve got this problem and is anybody really zeroing in on trying to make sure you have the people you need and the industry’s going to have the people they need to get the job done?

CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Senator, I do not believe enough is being done on human capital…. We really need to increase the pool of applicants from which we can draw…. I believe it’s going to take a concerted effort by government, by academia and by industry to make this successful. If we all go after the same limited number of people and wave money in front of that same number of individuals, we all lose. We need to increase the applicant pool, and I don’t believe we have done it to the extent that we need to as a nation. 

GREG JACZKO, COMMISSIONER, NRC: We often talk to you about the nuclear engineering programs, but it cuts across the whole spectrum of engineering. We rely on electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, civil engineers, and we have some grant programs to deal on the nuclear engineering side, but those broader categories of engineering skills I think are certainly areas where there is a lack of enrollment of students in those programs.

 

The NRC needs to communicate more effectively with the public.

COMMISSIONER JACZKO: I believe that in order to accomplish its mission of protecting public health and safety, the NRC needs to be transparent in explaining its processes and open with the public with information as much as possible. I think we need to have both sound policy decisions that are based on good scientific, regulatory, and technical information, but we also have to be mindful of public confidence and how the public views the decisions that we make…. I think by communicating better with the public, we will engage the public more and get more public involvement in our decision making processes. I think the result from that will be certainly better policy decisions and the increased likelihood of further increasing public confidence in the decisions that we make.

 

Senator Leahy, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee testified that the Military Commissions Act, as passed by the 109^th Congress, “was a mistake of historic proportions.” 

SEN. LEAHY: Last year’s Military Commissions Act, reported by this commission, and then altered at the request of the White House before Senate passage, I believe was a mistake of historic proportions. It is on the elimination of habeas corpus rights that I’d like to focus. Speaking first as an American, then as a Senator, and then as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I believe it was the worst of the unfortunate changes made by that hastily passed legislation in the weeks before an election…. I hope we can work together in a bipartisan way to correct this historic wrong. And I anticipate the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the issue next month. So with the help of the Chairman and others, I hope we can fix this.

 

Under the Act, legal aliens living in the United States can be denied habeas corpus rights.

SEN. REED: Mr. Smith, I want to try to understand the full scope of the Military Commissions Act. If an individual is here in the United States, legal alien, not a citizen, can he be seized by law enforcement authorities, accused of being an enemy combatant, and shipped to Guantanamo or held someplace and be without access to the courts for purpose of habeas corpus?

JEFFREY H. SMITH, FORMER GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: The plain language of the Military Commissions Act would permit that, yes, in my view.

 

Witnesses called the Bush Administration’s rollback of fundamental rights and lack of respect for the rule of law unnecessary and counterproductive for addressing post-9/11 threats.

SEN. LEAHY: Justice Scalia, a conservative Republican, wrote in the Hamdi case, “The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom of imprisonment – from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the executive.” And the remedy that secures that most basic freedom, of course, is habeas corpus. It provides a check against arbitrary detentions and constitutional violations, guarantees an opportunity to go to court with the aid of a lawyer to prove one’s innocence. And this fundamental protection is rolled back in unprecedented, unnecessary way in the Military Commissions Act.

… 

MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, the President was correct, in my view, when he concluded that many of our laws were inadequate or outmoded when it came to responding to the new threats that we saw after 9/11. The President was wrong, however, when he concluded that he could adhere to those laws with which he agreed and disregard those with which he did not agree. Law matters, especially in time of war. It matters because we are a democracy and because we respect the rule of law. It matters because the law of war governs how we fight, it governs how we treat those whom we capture, and perhaps most importantly, it governs how we expect our fellow citizens to be treated when they’re captured. Fidelity to the law also matters because how we fight the war and how others see us shapes the political landscape after the war is over. And this is especially true of the wars we’re currently fighting. 

… 

JOHN D. HUTSON, REAR ADMIRAL (RET.), U.S. NAVY: I believe that we cannot – we dare not – fundamentally change who we are in the face of this enemy. Because for this enemy, fundamental changes in our DNA as a nation is victory. They can’t beat us on the battlefield. The only thing they can do is try to cause us to change ourselves. And they seem to be succeeding in that regard. We owe it to our forebears, who fought so hard and shed blood to give us this great country, to turn it over to our progeny in the same condition or better than it was when we got it in the first place.

 

Straying from fundamental American values and respect for the rule of law is undermining our leadership in countering the terrorist threat and is serving to empower the enemy.

ADMIRAL HUTSON: We’ve got the greatest court system in the world, and we ought to be using it. We should be trumpeting, heralding our judicial system for all the world to see. We should be using it as an example that we want everybody else to emulate, rather than hiding it behind the concertina wire of GuantanamoBay. We have the opportunity now to demonstrate to the world how strong we are, how just we are. Rather, we are proving to the world that we’re frightened, that we don’t really stand for the things that we have said for all these generations that we stand for. 

… 

MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I’m concerned that in our efforts to get tough with the terrorists, with which we all agree, we have strayed from some of our fundamental principles and undermined 60 years of American leadership in the law of war. In six short years, our disregard for the rule of law has undermined our standing, and with it our ability to achieve our objectives in the broader war. Our actions have affected the level of cooperation we have received from allied and friendly governments.

 

The Bush Administration has presented a misleading picture of the types of detainees being held and tried under the tribunal system at GuantanamoBay.

 

Fifty-five percent of those detained are “enemy civilians,” not accused of committing any hostile act.

MARK P. DENBEAUX, PROFESSOR OF LAW, SETONHALL UNIVERSITY: If you look at our records, you’ll find out that 55 percent – and this is government’s own records from their CSRTs [Combatant Status Review Tribunals] – are not even accused of committing a single hostile act. So these enemy combatants, 55 percent of them, are enemy civilians, as my students point out. But you don’t have to be a combatant to be an enemy combatant, to be the worst of the worst, to be held in Guantanamo.

 

Sixty percent of those detained have not been accused of being terrorist fighters, or part of the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

MR. DENBEAUX: But you also don’t have to be a member of Al Qaeda. You don’t – it turns out that 60 percent of all those detained in Guantanamoare not even accused by the United States government of being fighters for or members of either Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

 

The majority of detainees were not captured in Afghanistan.

MR. DENBEAUX: Another point that’s been made by several of you today – and it’s distressing because it’s not true based on the government’s own records – the number of members of the executive branch who have consistently said the detainees were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan shooting at Americans. Our government’s own records show that 66 percent of the detainees weren’t even captured in Afghanistan. Yet people keep saying they were captured in Afghanistanshooting at U.S.forces.

 

On average, the Department of Defense is interrogating each detainee once a month. 

MR. DENBEAUX: And I want to say another factor the government records show. For those who have been told that we’re holding those people because they’re the repositories of useful information, General Schmidt’s report indicates that over more than 30 months of interrogation, the Defense Department conducted 24,000 interrogations of those detained in Guantanamo. That sounds like a lot. But there are 759 detainees. That averages one interrogation a month. We’re holding people there for their intelligence purposes in order to interrogate them once a month during the first 30 months of their detention. And at least one FBI agent has reported that most interrogations last approximately three hours. It’s deeply troubling, if you’re worried about our security, to believe that we’re holding those people there in order to interrogate them, in order to spend approximately one afternoon a month finding out what they know. Now, one of my really distressing parts of this is, I believe, in all fairness, anybody’s belief that those are the worst of the worst, that they were captured on the battlefield, that they shot at Americans, is simply been misled by information made public before habeas corpus.

 
 

 After six years of diminishing resources, weak enforcement, misguided policies, stagnantstandards, and no comprehensive oversight by the Republican-led Congress, the Occupation Safety and Health Act (OSHA) is falling short of its mission to “assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women.”
 

Peg Seminario, Director, Safety and Health, AFL-CIO:The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 [OSHAct] was landmark legislation enacted by the Congress with the goal of assuring “so far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions.” Since that time, significant progress has been made in protecting workers. Job fatalities and injuries have declined and exposures to many toxic substances have been substantially reduced. But in recent years progress has slowed, and now may be reversing. 

Since 1970, the economy has changed greatly, with new hazards presented and new groups of workers at risk. The number of workers and workplaces covered by the OSHAct today is double what it was in 1970, but there are fewer resources available to OSHA [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] to meet its responsibilities. Health and safety standards are out of date or non-existent for many workplace hazards. Millions of workers still are not covered by the OSHAct, and lack even the most basic safety and health protections. 

Under the Bush Administration, voluntary efforts and partnerships with employers have been favored over mandatory standards and industry-wide enforcement initiatives. With this approach, OSHA has abandoned its leadership role in safety and health, choosing to work with individual employers, rather than taking bold action to bring about broad and meaningful change in working conditions on an industry-wide and national level. As a result, as a nation we are falling further and further behind in protecting workers from serious hazards that cause death, injury and disease. In 2007, the promise of a safe job for every American worker is far from being fulfilled.

…

Konnie Compagna, Registered Nurse from Washington State:Our government’s safety net to protect workers from health and safety hazards is broken. We lack the enforcement and the standards to deal with the number of workplaces and the variety of hazards that face today’s workforce…. [W]hile the majority of workers, as well as on-the-job injuries and illnesses occur in the service sector, that OSHA continues to operate in a industrial mindset, still conducting four out of five of their inspections in manufacturing and construction? Yet in the past decade, hospital workers have eclipsed the injury and illness rates of workers in mining, manufacturing or even construction. The rates for nursing home workers are substantially higher. And healthcare is where one in 10 workers work today.
 

In the rare occasion when OSHA does inspect a hospital or other service sector workplace, the agency is poorly equipped to address the leading hazards that are causing the majority of the injuries and illnesses due to a dearth of relevant health and safety standards. There are no standards, for instance, to stem the tide of neck, back and shoulder injuries caused by the manual lifting and transferring of patients. Yet this problem is so severe that 12 percent of nurses nationwide leave the bedside due to these preventable injuries. There are no standards to prevent healthcare workers from being assaulted on-the- job, even though healthcare workers suffer nearly half of all non-fatal workplace assaults that occur across industry sectors. And there are no standards to protect workers from tuberculosis, SARS, weapons of mass destruction, pandemic flu, or other airborne biological agents, yet we have been told by the government officials that preparation for such events is a national priority.

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Thomas F. Cecich, Safety Professional, GlaxoSmithKline:OSHA must be given all the resources necessary to fulfill its enforcement responsibilities given to it by Congress. Unlike some other stakeholders, we do not view this situation as either/or in nature. An increased commitment to standard-setting and increased enforcement capacity must also be supported by increased funding for OSHA by Congress, even when an Administration does not support such increases.

 

Inadequate recordkeeping has masked the problem, making it difficult to ascertain the exact number of work-related injuries and deaths. 

David Michaels, PhD, MPH, Research Professor and Acting Chairman, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, The George Washington University:As distressing as these statistics are, however, it is likely that the true incidence of workplace injury and illness is far higher than BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] reports, since the Labor Department’s estimates clearly and dramatically underestimate the number of workers injured…OSHA enforcement does not appear to be effective in further reducing injury rates. While BLS reports a decrease in injury rates, sophisticated statistical analyses indicate that most of this decrease can be attributable to changes in OSHA recordkeeping rules. 

Even with the limitations of the BLS data system, it seems reasonable to conclude that OSHA has made an important contribution to reducing work-related fatalities, since these are the workplace events most likely to be reported in BLS system. The occupational fatality rate has dropped from 10 (per 100,000 workers) in 1974 to four in 2005 (although part of this decrease may be attributable to the changes in recording rules…). Despite this improvement, this still means that about 16 U.S. workers die each day on the job from preventable causes like falls from elevated platforms, trench collapses, explosions, violence, and vehicle crashes. 

… 

ms. Seminario:A recent study published in the April 2006 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that examined injury and illness reporting in Michiganfound that the BLS Annual Survey missed more than two-thirds of occupational injuries and illnesses. The study conducted a detailed comparison of injuries and illnesses reported in five different databases – the BLS Annual Survey, the OSHA Annual Survey, the Michigan Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, the Michigan Occupational Disease reports and the OSHA Integrated Management Information System. It found that during the years 1999, 2000 and 2001, the BLS Annual Survey, which is based upon employers’ OSHA logs, captured approximately 33 percent of injuries and 31 percent of illnessesreported in the various data bases in the state of Michigan. It is important to note that this undercount does not reflect those injuries and illnesses that were not reported or included in the databases examined. For example, injuries among self-employed individuals who are not covered by OSHA or workers compensation are not included. Also, injuries not reported by workers are also not accounted for. The results of the Michigan study as well as other research indicate that the true toll of workplace injuries in theUnited Statesis likely to be three to four times that reported annually by the BLS.

 

The Bush Administration has not been vigilant in enforcing OSHA. 

MS. Seminario: When it comes to job safety enforcement it is clear that OSHA lacks sufficient resources and teeth. A combination of too few OSHA inspectors and low penalties makes the threat of an OSHA inspection hollow for most employers. In FY 2006, there were 2,112 federal and state OSHA inspectors responsible for enforcing job safety and health protections. In FY 2006, the 818 federal OSHA inspectors conducted 38,589 inspections and the 1,294 inspectors in state OSHA agencies combined conducted 58,367 inspections. There were a total of 96,956 inspections at the 8.5 million workplaces covered by the OSHA Act. At its current staffing and inspection levels, it would take federal OSHA 133 years to inspect each workplace under its jurisdiction just once.

DPC