One emerging technology is oil shale, an industry which flourishes in countries like Jordan and Estonia.

I hate to be the skunk at the garden party, but every now and then I am.

I think it is better to have a third-party review than to have it sit on a bureaucrat's desk at the FDA and not get reviewed at all, but that is just me.

the proposal that the industry and your department have agreed to doubles the user fees per year for the next, I think, 4 or 5 years.

I am extremely glad that you are holding this hearing but don't ask this member to rubberstamp a doubling of a user fee.

I will look at this with an open mind, but if I had to vote today, I would vote no.

I have never heard of that. It is unprecedented.

We talked about a bill we passed out of here earlier this year, that the Veritis Group said that without that bill because of the intrusion of the governmental, the EPA, it was going to cost 316,000 jobs.

What are we doing then about this uncertainty?

I would like to ask you a couple of questions. Do we know how much of this budget would be implemented by the non-profit organizations in this community and across the country?

I would like to shift gears here a little bit and talk about a part of the budget that we usually do not ever discuss here in a budget committee.

I think we need to talk about this, because you and I both know in our communities how integral they are to the fabric of our communities.

I would very much like to work with you, as you get these answers, because none of us on this committee, to my knowledge, since I have been on the Budget Committee, has asked about the non-profit sector.

The device industry claims that FDA regulation is killing jobs, stifling innovation, and depriving American patients of new medical devices.

FDA's job is to protect the public health.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

When you force a decision, you get a bad decision.

I was concerned about this program when we implemented it in 1997. I was never comfortable with the concept of having external third parties who have the potential for conflict of interests on their own reviewing these important devices.