Thank you, Chairman and Ranking Member Murkowski for holding this hearing today.

Earlier this year, I introduced S. 753 with Senator Tom Udall and Senator John Cornyn to reflect a 3-party agreement.

If we move so aggressively forward on storage and we don't address the steps needed to get to a permanent geological repository those communities could end up being de facto permanent storage.

I think that's something that I've heard consistently over and over again from the community of Los Alamos and the surrounding communities, how important that is to their history.

I think this is a healthy discussion.

I can't tell you how many soccer fields and baseball diamonds and other things have been funded across the Nation with that effort.

You've got to wonder if the point is to bridge the valley of death, but there's this incredible resistance to taking on any sort of risk.

this seems like a very political attempt to undermine the implementation of the Affordable Care Act

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

It is the thing, the greatest challenge for those of us in Western States.

We're seeing more and more demand, less and less supply.

Once a New Mexican, always a New Mexican as far as I'm concerned.

I appreciate that, and appreciate your diligence.

I just hate to see us taking money out of hazardous fuel reduction, out of ecosystem restoration, out of... proactive fire management in order to fund the very real need that we need to respond to, an urgent fire situation now.

I want to thank the chairman and ranking member for the timeliness of this.

I want to suggest to the Chairman that we ask the OMB to come and have this kind of a conversation.

Your point is so important we are going to stay at this until we turn OMB around on the question of how important prevention is and carrying out the FLAME Act.

We are going to need navigators and assisters and outreach and education efforts to facilitate enrollment to the highest degree.