The Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans will come to order.

I am surprised to be saying this, but former President Barack Obama summed up the need for this bill as well as any of us here could.

Our job, on my opinion here, first and foremost, like has already been said, is to make sure we take care of our moral obligation to our veterans.

are the arguments in favor of species mitigation entirely reasonable on your part, or is there a possibility that some people have an ulterior motive in wanting to make dams unprofitable?

I would like to thank all the witnesses for their valuable testimony. You have come a long way to be here, and I and all of us appreciate that.

it is for an ulterior, unrevealed, and hidden motive.

the VA is not capable of appropriately maintaining this location while meeting the congressional intent of the 1991 legislation.

The Water, Power and Oceans Subcommittee meets today to hear testimony on two bills: H.R. 3144, sponsored by Mrs. McMorris Rodgers of Washington State.

Let's have a little bit of vision here and let's be good stewards of real estate assets that are owned by taxpayers.

The VA needs to focus its time and resources on its core mission: taking care of our nation's veterans.

The lesson? Once you let go of control of our government resources, they are no longer under our control.

The American taxpayers and Pacific Northwest ratepayers deserve better.

It makes no sense that VA keeps a luxury hotel in Paris on its books.

the VA's sole mission is to provide services to our Nation's veterans. The maintenance of a 5-star, 24-room boutique hotel, restaurant, and club in downtown Paris, France is clearly not included in that description.

I wholly support the getting out of the Parisian hotel, boutique hotel business, because we have limited resources.

I introduced H.R. 2773, the Sell Excess Luxury Lodgings (SELL) Act, to authorize the sale of this hotel - 'Pershing Hall.'

Let me tell you about El Toro Military Base in Orange County. It broke my heart when we closed it down.

The economic development that has occurred since those closures is greater than what we had received when those bases were operational.