How many more months and years can we ask these children and teens to wait until they have a safe and loving home?

If the Administration does not come forward next year with this in their budget, it will not happen.

But if I have a 5,000 figure, and what's the figure, 5,000 what?

I had to attend another hearing actually, we call it a Senate markup, we were moving a poison control bill that we passed out of committee just a few minutes ago.

The General Accounting Office has determined that CFSA is not meeting the official requirements of the Adoption and Safe Families Act.

Does the agency agree with that?

I think it should be as warm and as inviting and as unintimidating and as empowering to the families that enter it as possible.

I'm not happy to tell you that.

Maybe I wasn't clear. Could you spread that money out over time, is my question.

$118 million would be one-fourth of the entire District of Columbia Subcommittee, our subcommittee's allocation.

We have kids to worry about, we have projects to deal with, it has to get done, but you have to go sell them.

It needs to come up here with the Administration strongly behind it for it to have any chance of being done.

But why was it laid out that way, is my question. Whose preference is it?

But for you to come in front of this committee, or it is not just this committee, but in front of the public, in a public meeting or anyplace, and not be able to answer that basic question is a real problem.

But, I mean, I really would want to know how long these kids were in care before they got a permanency plan.

I would want to know the range.

Well, that is not--I am sorry. That is not what Ms. Ashby just told me.

It is also, of course, about accountability. And ultimately, and most importantly, it is about putting the safety and the health and well-being of thousands of children first, above all else.