I appreciate those comments and, of course, acknowledge the work that we have done together along with many other members of both the House and the Senate to improve public school choices for residents in the District.

I will tell you from my political experience with the majority of independent, non-parochial public schools, the average of tuitions is about $15,000 to $20,000.

To follow up on the facilities, do we have a comprehensive list of school buildings...

But you don't need to build equity. If you have a charter with 200 children and you have got $400,000 a year guaranteed to come in, what is preventing a bank or an entity from loaning you money to buy or lease or renovate a building?

Well, I would say the question for the community is, having been shown success which you all are showing against the odds, extraordinary success, how do we as a community reward your success.

I listened to the full chairman of the Appropriations Committee and his cautioning all of us that we have no money whatsoever to deal with and even less than we probably think we do.

We need to tackle this as a country because we do need to protect our economy and this is having an incredible impact on our economy.

I hope, I'm certain that what you're doing is benefitting the Navy but the way that you're engaging in a very integrated process with the other parts of the government, as well as with the local community here in the city I think is going…

I just want to communicate how happy the people that live in this neighborhood are with the way that you have conducted yourself.

I just wanted to thank you for that.

I know that the Chair had spoken generally about the reorganization which we obviously generally support or just a realignment and the importance of refocusing our troop strength.

they warrant more than 8 percent or 10 percent or 15 percent or even 20 percent of the budgets that support their facilities.

I just hope that whatever we do we can minimize the cost to the taxpayer as the value of that property is added to.

I think that is a concept that I'm hoping there's some consensus and unanimity if we fight jointly we should train, you know, jointly.

I think 40 percent, or 45 percent of our troop strength today is from our Guard and Reserve.

And to compliment you all on the way that you're doing that with the leadership team here in the city.

Because I really appreciate that and look forward to working with you because it's of course important, you know, to our community and there's just such an opportunity if this would work out for the Navy to be benefitted, the taxpayers to…

There's a move underfoot with a broad base in our community to try to consolidate some of the different components.