Mr. President, I would like to announce for the information of the Senate and the public that a hearing has been scheduled before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The hearing will be held on Thursday, March 10, 2011…

It is about... helping economies grow. We want to sustain jobs, also we want to protect those agricultural interests.

There are many areas in the country, especially in the West, that we look to to provide some support.

The 2012 budget in a word is simply a freeze budget.

We can obviously see the importance of these projects.

This infrastructure strengthens the backbone of America by making resources available for economies to grow while helping to preserve vital resources like water in a place where it is scarce.

We need to know why natural gas was cutoff to entire regions of New Mexico.

This hearing is an important first step to ask the tough questions that will allow us to identify and fix problems.

No man is an island. No state except Hawaii is either. Texas and New Mexico need to work together to improve regional reliability.

Thank you, Senator Bingaman for holding this hearing in New Mexico and for listening to us.

I think today's hearing provides us an opportunity to both zero in on what happened during New Mexico's recent gas outage crisis but much more importantly to get to some of those answers so that we make sure this never happens again.

Thank you Senator Bingaman for the opportunity to testify before you on the natural gas outage that occurred here in New Mexico earlier this month during a period of some of the coldest weather in our State's recent history.

I hope that Transwestern and El Paso would be receptive to your appeals especially to match you in terms of the dollars.

We all know from the witnesses we've heard here today how important it is to have reliability.

You have asked Transwestern and El Paso to also match, each of them, to match you. Is that correct?

We want the system, as I was talking to these gentlemen here to be reliable in those kinds of circumstances.

I think what scientists are telling us is that, you know, this 50 year event, we may see 50 year events much more frequently.

My understanding is that you've put in a million dollars to try to take care of these personal and individual losses. Is that correct?