I believe that the men and women of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard warrant greater support from the Navy in modernizing the shipyard's dated facilities.

I have great confidence in you personally and I hope that you succeed.

If you are confirmed, will you evaluate the imposed workforce levels at the public shipyards, including Portsmouth, to ensure that they're sufficient to handle emergency and other unforeseen work on Navy ships and submarines?

I believe industry consolidation through mergers or acquisitions can limit the number of competitors and thus the opportunity for competition.

I hope that Hurricane Katrina has illustrated to you the risks that a one-shipyard acquisition strategy would have entailed.

I think it is simply wrong for us to send troops into harm's way without fully equipping them.

Are we not asking too much of our National Guard?

Just last week former Secretary of Defense William Perry testified before this committee that the agreement with our citizen-soldiers had been shattered.

I want to follow up on the line of questioning that some of our members have already raised with you.

Aye.

Should we also be looking at improving the benefits for National Guard and reservists?

I was pleased for your assurances that this is a high priority for you and that you have already in fact issued a directive to ensure that the troops do not go if they are not equipped.

He has take charge strong approach. But I think you will see him reaching out more to Congress.

I have investigated a lot of examples of wasteful federal spending and I have never seen waste on this scale. The magnitude is just incredible. And it seems to be a bottomless pit.

For example, FEMA did not verify the identity of all of those seeking assistance. So we had people in jail applying for FEMA aid for rental assistance, believe it or not.

There were several findings that I found particularly troubling. The first is the blatant insubordination of then-FEMA Director Michael Brown. It was clear that he was disengaged from the onset of Katrina. He failed to communicate…

FEMA is discredited, demoralized, and dysfunctional.

That it involves potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities, that language is very troubling to me.