I applaud this legislation. I particularly applaud the leadership of our colleague Mr. Van Hollen from Maryland.

If I may interrupt you there, that is contradictory to the evidence presented to this committee.

We must seize this opportunity to explore steps that we can take to protect the Nation from this or future pandemics.

How much did AIG get pumped into the company directly from appropriated dollars from this body?

If it's possible to get us data for the record in terms of that list of people who qualified for bonuses and/or got bonuses, and how many of them left the company or stayed with the company?

Those instruments are more appropriate for large commercial banks and investment banks that have the skill sets.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

I think they need to be put on an exchange. I think they need to be standardized, and there needs to be a lot more transparency.

My time is probably running out. But let me ask a final question.

I do get reluctant at times when everybody says we all want it but we don't want to pay for it.

I'm not new to these issues, and I want to follow up on some of Senator DeMint's comments about the sense that there's agreement around NextGen.

I don't think this is a, as a well-informed citizen, I don't think I fully appreciated, potentially, what jeopardy we are placing all of our flying public in if we don't act aggressively.

The Everyone Graduates bill sponsored by Representative Bobby Scott (D-VA) achieves this and should be passed.

I have introduced the Youth Promise Act, which is very similar, to reduce youth violence, where you bring in law enforcement, education, foster care, the probation department, churches, after-school programs, anybody that has anything to…

you really have to wonder what kind of people would look at a child in the third grade that can't read, knowing that that problem will put them on a trajectory towards prisons, and start building prisons rather than come up with some…

If you got a 50 percent dropout rate, 100 children, 50 percent drop out, that is 100, that is going to cost you about $5 million in prison expenses in, at least, many identifiable States.

the Every Student Counts Act introduced by Representative Bobby Scott (H.R. 1569).

If you don't have a dropout rate factor, then you have a perverse incentive to let people drop out.