In Arkansas, EPA rejected our State plan and proposed an extremely expensive Federal takeover.

As you know, under the Regional Haze program, States develop implementation plans.

When they offered up the Federal proposal, why they expanded the scope of the Regional Haze Plan to include sources that were not legally authorized under the rule, EPA answered, because we can.

Bernie Sanders is far from out.

Thank you, Inspector General, for being here. We appreciate it.

I think, as we have discussed, as Senator Ernst raised in her questions, this fits in with the theme of modernization and readiness.

Thank you very much for a productive conversation. Most importantly, thanks for your service to our country.

to build upon Senator Sullivan's comments about 450,000 being an unacceptable risk in terms of end strength, there are some ideas in this Congress to mandate a higher level than that, say 480, 490, what have you.

It sounds to me like it is not working very well.

I still have my doubts about that.

Mandating a higher end-strength without increasing funding would mean a hollow force unless you borrowed more money from modernization to pay for readiness.

It seems like a challenging balance to get back to the pre-positioned activity set.

We cannot send our sons and daughters into combat today without 100 percent confidence in their readiness.

Just 1 week less to learn to be a repairman for one of those aircraft as opposed to being an operator.

The answer to the question right now, will the Air Force use enlisted personnel to fly the MQ-1/MQ-9, is maybe.

Maybe our society should pay them the respect they deserve then and honor their service and not attach any stigma to what they do since they are keeping us safe in our beds at night.

You need 1,100 to do the mission. You need 300 to build up enough dwell time, for a total of 1,400.

I mean, it works fine if you are an O4 NMI and you live it day in and day out.