Housing remains a critical component of both the President's plan to promote economic growth and his focus on meeting the common challenges faced by Americans and their communities.

HUD has achieved measurable success since 2001 in carrying out its mission and meeting the many challenges confronting a Cabinet-level Department.

Thank you for the invitation to join you this morning. I am honored to outline the Fiscal Year 2004 Budget proposed by President Bush for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

if what we are trying to do with North Korea to get them to stop the nuclear program and to stop proliferation and all of those things, we need a quid pro quo for that.

Politics often gets in the way, does it not?

If you can shoot down a rocket in its boost phase with a laser from a big airplane, you can shoot down anything.

Okay. So, that is a little island, you have it there or the floating platform.

Although presumably the warhead would not be armed. Unless they do not have the arming techniques.

Secretary Crouch, when does the U.S. plan to upgrade the radars in the U.K. and Greenland for missile defense, and how much funding will be required to protect the upgraded radars and the local inhabitants from potential terrorist strikes…

You want that system in Alaska by the end of 2004.

It is not clear how the national missile defense system to be deployed by 2004 will be manned 24 hours a day.

If we are going to completely throw off the schedule of these folks, I do not want to do that.

All right.

Secretary Crouch, will the President's planned deployment of the national missile defense system in Alaska go ahead by the end of fiscal year 2004 regardless of the actual readiness of the system or could that time line be adjusted to…

General Kadish, should we proceed with deployment of the GMD system if we have not yet completed a successful test that includes aiming the interceptor with in-flight target updates?

General Kadish, when do you plan to increase test complexity to include targets with signatures, countermeasures, and flight dynamics more closely matching the threat?

The Missile Defense Agency is an R&D agency that has no operational control over the system it develops.

Let me ask a policy question to the secretary over there. That would be the first time that we would be weaponizing space.