The rebuilding efforts of the U.S. Virgin Islands will require an extraordinary level of coordination and cooperation between the local government and the Federal Government. We have, in this moment, both the opportunity and the…

Part of the oversight and government reform purpose is to oversee and ensure that operations of the government are working smoothly and efficiently.

My great concern is that this commit does what it needs to do to hold the Federal Government accountable.

You arrived, you said, about a week after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.

I think it is really important for us to do these assessments now as we are coming up to the hurricane season.

In October, bipartisan members of this committee sent a letter to DHS and have been requesting from FEMA response for that letter related to these hurricanes.

Are we prepared for a hurricane in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, or one or two?

I want to extend my thanks to you for the work that you do, not just in this last horrendous wildfire.

Progress has been made, but despite best collective efforts, the territory has not physically been able to finish all of these projects by March 15 deadline.

the insular areas have long had underfunding and under inclusion across a litany of programs.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have been talking quite a bit about infrastructure, and in my opening statement I discussed the President's infrastructure plan with a budget cut of $122 billion from the highway trust fund.

would you support an extension of Stafford Act language so that it is not only bringing resilience to those things that are considered emergency...

It seems that it is not the most efficient use of funding.

Until then, public schooling for the children of the Virgin Islands is operating on 4-hour rotations.

Recovery is far from over and the rebuilding has yet to begin.

We can all agree that environmental protection should go hand-in-hand with economic development.

I believe that FEMA should have a permanent presence in the territory, that they should literally be here year-round.

We need to be able to use military planes so that individuals in the mainland who want to send supplies are able to do so.