Do I understand you to say definitively that no one in your agency has heard from anyone in the White House or from Mr. Mulvaney with respect to any particular applications?

The Republican tax law was the wrong medicine at the wrong time. The solution is not to take more of it.

I would urge you to do everything you can because small businesses are so critical to increasing trade in this country.

I was troubled to see a report from the McClatchy news organization that OMB Director Mulvaney has been lobbying on behalf of one of his former constituents for an exemption from the steel tariffs.

Do you expect to get additional funding as part of the new fee structure that is part of that change?

Unfortunately, the administration has also used these agencies to carry out what, I believe, is an ill-advised trade war.

We have to help about 95 percent of small and medium sized businesses who are not getting into those international markets, get into those international markets.

I think the Congress has already spoken on that. So hopefully the administration will implement what the Congress has directed with respect to spending because that is the way the Constitution is supposed to work.

I would suggest... they allow us to vet their workers against our database.

We never stand for the proposition that ours is always the best in every single aspect.

I have looked very closely into the insider threat issue.

I think we can all do better with it.

The request in the budget... signals your support for cutting the only Federal programs that would help to secure the public areas of airports.

I asked you to look into the adequacy of our foreign partners in addressing insider threats.

the notion that we would cut back after other priorities, like big tax cuts have been provided, is really astonishing to me.

I agree, and I would argue that we have a presence in the northern section of Syria. That gives us some negotiating ability that we should continue to support.

Do you agree that, for example, in Manchester, New Hampshire, surgeries had to be stopped because there was--the quote that I read--rust or blood on the surgical instruments?

I mean, I guess what I want to hear from you is some urgency in tackling this.