the Bush administration starved NASA of the funds.

the real estate market has dropped like a rock, and, therefore, a person's home is worth a lot less than a mortgage being underwater that much.

Mr. Chairman, one more question, if I may.

Basically you said in response to the Chairman that in order to reduce the cost of Medicare over time so that the Federal Government can afford it, we are basically going to have to do significant improvements, No. 1, in the efficiency of…

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Well, what would be the difference between- let's say that we took a certain amount of the exemption...

I would think that that would be a very important message for you to get out to all of these supervisors, that we ought to all be in the harness pulling in the same direction.

What do you do to control the regulators so that they are not working at cross purposes with what we are trying to do to restore the economy?

I have no objection to offshore drilling if it is done responsibly and if it is done where the oil companies already have leases.

It is the previous administration, so you are going to just plead the Fifth, then.

I want you all to be mindful of the balance of issues.

I was surprised at the degree of criticism that you received from a number of the talking heads on TV this morning.

Either guarantees or buying them up and injection of capital into the banks.

Wouldn't that then necessitate having the savings and loan approach that we had, go in and buy up those bad assets and hold them then until the price came back up?

Look backward and tell me with the problem having been to begin with the bad mortgages that were securitized and sold throughout the financial system, if our first response had been let us send this money in there to buy up these toxic…

So the newly confirmed Secretary of the Treasury is basically--it looks like he is going to have to take this course.

Yes, it was when all this stuff started.

Was that accurate? They said there could be unless we signaled that we were going to do something, which we did.