I will execute the budget as executed by Congress.

Even Congress cannot repeal that law.

I consider cyber, probably, one of our greatest national vulnerabilities.

It was a lot of those same issues, is the fact that they were overhauling the entire Medicaid program without a significant number of hearings or a deep look into why they were actually doing it.

We have expanded our efforts to improve emergency preparedness and response across the entire country, and we have emphasized the protection of the most vulnerable.

we had done much better planning. In fact, our hospitals had returned to normal functioning.

As the then Chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, along with Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, I led a bipartisan investigation into the response to Hurricane Katrina at the federal, state, and local levels.

Today, even as we meet, yet another hurricane, Maria, is battering a region still struggling to recover, and it is expected to hit Puerto Rico particularly hard.

Older adults matter.

We should take that motto to heart, and from this hearing today I can see the huge amount of progress that has been made since I conducted that investigation so many years ago into the very inconsistent and in some ways failed response to…

Senators Bill Nelson, Marco Rubio, Bob Casey, and Susan Collins have introduced the Protecting Seniors During Disasters Act.

It was evident to me in rereading it that we have learned many of the lessons of Katrina, but we still have a long ways to go.

We are learning how being prepared today can make the difference between safety and danger, and in many cases literally the difference between life and death.

You shouldn't be exchanging business cards during a disaster.

I want to close my remarks by also warning the residents who have been affected by these storms of the many scams that have already arisen.

It's really unacceptable, in this day and age, with the technology that we have, to have something like this happen.

The second question is, Don't we have sailors on the bridge with binoculars anymore?

But, if we're doing--if we're executing on every ounce of capacity, and it's not adequate, sounds to me like we need more capacity.