At this time of economic uncertainty, creating a comprehensive and strong budget is extraordinarily important.

They need not only the health care they are entitled to, but we need to provide them with access to higher education, job training, and offer the resources to help them successfully reintegrate with their families and their communities.

We must make a commitment to restore science and innovation as the keys to a new American economy.

It is important for rural veterans to have access to care.

I look forward to working with others in the Administration, this Committee, and the Congress to meet the President's goal of legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.

I don't think that anyone can disagree with the idea that oil production from the OCS is critical to our energy security.

This legislation will put Americans back to work while laying the groundwork for a clean energy economy.

I hope we can benefit from learning from what others, including Japan are doing in this regard.

If we, our children, and our grandchildren are to prosper in the 21st century, we must decrease our dependence on oil, use energy in the most efficient ways possible, and decrease our carbon emissions.

So between 2002 and 2009, the beginning of the year, there have been no performance measures put together to be able to measure the success or failure of this program?

I completely agree with Ms. Jackson Lee that the answer and the solution to many of these problems is comprehensive immigration reform.

One of the criticisms of him was that he was too young to be President. He said well, I'm doing something about that every day.

The standards absolutely need to be applied nationwide to ensure interoperability and they should ultimately be harmonized with international standards.

I come from the State of New Mexico and have a bit of a history in water management.

This morning's hearing is on a topic that most of us had not even heard of a few years ago, but today is widely discussed here in Washington and around the country, and that is the smart grid.

One of them is just for a young person to be able to have somebody to talk to about their problems.

In the last two energy bills we enacted significant energy efficiency requirements for Federal buildings.

It's important to focus on the buildings sector because it represents such a large share of primary energy use and of greenhouse gases.