Your partnership and leadership on this issue have been invaluable to me, deeply appreciated both in the work we have done on this issue back in Rhode Island, but nationally here in the Congress.

We must also align our laws and policies with the realities of today's Internet, and I appreciate the administration's proposal to move in this direction.

I think that is pretty good business for the United States of America to be involved in.

But clearly, there are two roles you have. You have a role to comply with the law, you also have a role to advocate as to what the law should be.

If EPA gets wounded in its ability to protect the Clean Air Act, I have a real problem on my hands.

We have had a lot of discussion around the Clean Air Act on the costs of compliance with the Clean Air Act.

I think we hear relentlessly in this building from the polluting side.

We had a witness from Rhode Island at that table a week ago describing the asthma problem in Rhode Island.

There is no doubt that the SEC has many more tools given to it by Dodd-Frank to regulate the institutions.

I think one of the aspects of this crisis was the huge cost to taxpayers which may have been mitigated or avoided with better regulation.

I want to commend Mr. D'Agostino for his outstanding service in the United States Navy.

But that would be very disturbing if, in fact, market information was much different than what regulators had.

Yes. But from your perspective----incorporating that data would be helpful, useful, and provide more accurate----

I helped contribute to that along with many of my colleagues here in terms of the 2008 legislation.

But it seems to me that because, as I understand it, they are--using approximate data is a lot cheaper than using a detailed study and there are budget pressures so that we have built in a disincentive to do some of the most specific…

One of the issues we all seem to focus on is the flood mapping, which I would like to probe a bit further.

How does that play out now when--for example, my colleague Senator Schumer was talking about issues in his part of the country.

Has there been any discussion or thought about trying to develop a joint enterprise to do this with the private sector, with State governments, with county government?