I think the work that you have put us through is going to make the whole system, including for DoD, for Coast Guard, that much more effective.

I believe you change the world through personal relationships, and then also you deescalate things as they occur.

You recognized the growth of the number of women veterans seeking care in the VA, which has more than tripled over the last 20 years.

Can you touch on how the implementation for the SERVICE Act is going, and are there any challenges that you are facing that we can be helpful with you?

The Department of the Interior has a long history of leasing federal land containing coal deposits to mining companies willing to mine those deposits under the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920.

My idea of conservation is you use it and leave it better for future generations.

This was intended to simply add new funding to cleanup efforts, not overhaul a program that has been working well since the 1970s.

We have asked for that information, and nobody has been able to provide it so far.

We need to remember that those U.S. lands in the Pacific, including the-then U.S. territories of Hawaii and the Philippines, were directly attacked and in some cases occupied by an aspiring imperialist dictatorship attempting to conquer…

Thank you, Chairman Hageman, and also thank you to the witnesses for being here today as we convene to take testimony from expert witnesses on the preservation of U.S. critical interests in the Pacific Islands and, more broadly, the…

If you really claim to utilize the best science, why is BLM proposing to fundamentally change the way we manage these forests on flawed science?

The record we create today will support the mission and work of this Committee to ensure that U.S. citizens and our locally self-governing U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands benefit and prosper under…

Conservation should be throughout all of the uses on BLM land.

Their sacrifices highlight why it is a strategic imperative to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific.

the U.S. compacts with the FAS countries are a balance of extraordinary security and defense right and strategic stability secured for the United States, and extraordinary economic gains and stability for the Freely Associated States.

But it is really hard to come in here and talk about increased money for firefighting, when that is just putting a Band-Aid on the wound instead of going to the symptom of what is causing the problem.

I think the Forest Service has to create some credibility, and it has to be long-term commitments like the 20-year stewardship contract if you ever want to get that industry back.

I hope everybody in the House and the Senate on both sides of the aisle can come together this Congress so we can enact real change.