All Quotes

Eisenhower retook Europe in 11 months.

First, I want to thank the Chairman and the Ranking Member and the Committee staff for facilitating an authorized field hearing that we had in Maine last Friday on--it was fabulous--on long-term care.

Well, my experience has been that the Vet Centers in Maine are a high return, low cost service very cost-effective way of serving the needs, meeting the needs of veterans.

Let's get on with it.

We had really good witnesses. We had veterans, we had officials from the VA, and it was very illuminating and educational.

I would urge you to take a serious look at that. And we have had testimony at this Committee that this is one of the suicide factors.

The workforce problems, as you can imagine, were front and center.

The VA raised its per diem rates in 2023 but, frankly, that increase has not kept pace with rising medical costs.

Maine is the oldest state in the nation by median age.

Maine has one of the highest percentages based on population in the country of veterans.

Modernizing the Dry Dock No. 1 is absolutely essential to maintaining fleet readiness.

I want to thank Congressman Mann for bringing this bill forward.

Prevention, prevention, prevention.

We want to keep that permanent.

By the way, that's a problem across the board. We had an Armed Services Committee hearing this week about the inability of many small businesses to interact with the Pentagon.

The good is we have a historically low unemployment rate, but that creates the question of the migratory workforce.

I mean that can't work for very long.

I like the idea. In other words, additional federal funds not generally but targeted toward workforce retention?