In an age of terrorism, and we are not out of the age of terrorism, intelligence is the first line of defense.

If you're ever in doubt, the actions of Dan Coats last week are a demonstration of how these jobs should be done.

The grave danger in intelligence is shading the data to meet the perceived policy needs of whoever is in charge.

Our intelligence activities must support our foreign policy and national security objectives.

We have formed in the great State of Maine a veteran's advisory panel to help me to make sure I get all of the on-ground information I need to bring back to our Committee with the Chairman.

I think we can all agree that a disruption in the Strait of Hormuz would be a catastrophe of the level that we are talking about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve being important.

Oil prices in the future will always be the opposite of what you think today.

We love our veterans in the State of Maine.

The backlog on the appeals that they have filed is something that really drives them batty.

I think the creation of the Cyber Office is a positive one.

I really take issue with your statement about ARPA-E and energy research.

I believe research, basic research, is a fundamental purpose of the Department of Energy.

At what point do you think the debt service payments, the interest on that debt becomes a problem for our economy?

The national debt--I am pivoting a little bit, Mr. Powell--is about $21 trillion. It is horrible.

It was very unfortunate that the Ranking Member... chose to block those bills.

It seems to me there are perverse conflicts of interest in the way this whole system works, in addition to a lack of transparency.

So if we are talking about legislative solutions to this problem, we should really narrow the focus to those minerals, not all import dependent materials, minerals, but those minerals that come from a source that is at risk for some reason.

I think that what some folks are concerned about is that this will be, kind of, a Trojan horse for opening up regulation of mining, generally, of any mineral, not necessarily a critical mineral.