We are losing 25 to 35 square miles of wetlands per year--about a football field an hour--which places millions of lives and critical national resources at alarming risk.

It's going to bankrupt us. We have a problem as it is under the one-for-one.

What that means is our economy is weaker every day that a ship has to be light-loaded or stand offshore because the channel isn't deep enough to come in.

We could have saved the size of the State of Rhode Island, which we have already lost.

We need to be very aggressive in gathering the maritime dollars that are being paid for our ports and for our dredging.

I see that in your budget you propose using the $2.4 billion remaining in budget authority related to the 2011 Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) selldown to purchase 27 million barrels of oil to replenish the reserve.

While reading your testimony, I was most interested in what steps you take to increase the percentage of leased onshore lands which are currently producing.

I can honestly say, of all the committees I serve on, there is no budget that is in more crisis than this one.

I'm going to write a letter to the President, and ask you all to sign it, and ask him to adjust his budget.

I say we cannot afford not to make them.

This budget that we have in front of us... simply does not have enough money to maintain or invest or build the structures that we have to to build an economy that lasts.

one of the reasons we are not able to get a full extension is over this issue, and the other thing that is in that bill that I strongly object to is an automatic rate increase of 15 percent per year for people that may be in a flood plain.

What occurs to me is that the National Guard, along with the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, by having basically part-time civilians could play a significant role in this.

These budget constraints are really constraining a part of the budget that at least our States rely on significantly.

Tell us why is it essential for the Senate to act on this?

I have great sympathy for Alaska, and I am going to work with Senator Murkowski to think about some exemptions for Alaska that I am going to try to encourage my colleagues to accept.

We might need to think about that because this budget is running into very significant barriers when it comes to the Coast Guard.

you can't put a price on a human life, and nothing is more important than keeping our communities, our families, and our economy safe.