I believe that's important for our country; our country would not do as well as we are without a strong rail system.

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for as much time as I may consume and ask that the time be counted against the postcloture time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. American Jobs

It is interesting to me that nobody--or very few--would know the statistics and the new jobs that the Senator from Ohio has described, largely because of the old adage that bad news travels halfway around the world before good news gets…

Isn't it interesting, when the Senator talks about a plant that is hiring new people that will produce a new automobile, which is putting people back to work, there is no social work in this country as a good job that pays well. That makes…

the, you talk about a third of the airplanes being ordered are UAVs, I mean, we understand that, you know, 20 years from now, we'll look in the rear-view mirror and see that the use of UAVs, integrated into the National Airspace has become…

Well, a report that's submitted to us under the provision I included in the Authorization Act, will that report give us timelines?

Are we on pace to be able to meet the needs for training and for airspace necessary for that training at that point?

I look forward to working with the FAA, the Air National Guard, and our political leadership to enable RPA operations now and into the future.

Both the Defense Department and the FAA have the capability to make this work. And I hope today's hearing establishes the urgency with which this gets done.

We have Homeland Security, which flies UAVs here.

You mentioned operations at Kandahar and that integrates UAVs directly into a very busy airport in which fighter planes and C-130s and all kinds of aircraft are coming in and out?

And my understanding is the FAA has indicated that's too big, at this point, and the National Guard has said, anything smaller is not acceptable.

I think we will run into a problem. And a problem that should not exist, because we see it ahead of us, let's fix it before we get there.

I am not diminishing the difficulty, because this has to be something we do nationally.

I'm especially interested in finding out that we're not stuck up here, trying to figure out...

not enough progress has been made, and the question is, how will more progress be made in the future

But it is different than what the staff of our Subcommittee was told a month ago.

But, what I have heard the military say is that short of restricted or segregated airspace, the kinds of things you have done to accommodate Homeland Security's flights are not robust enough to allow the kind of training that's necessary…