In my view, our objective today should be to celebrate the resilience of our Indian businesses.

this is clearly a program that has great success.

I want to thank you and Vice Chairman Barrasso for convening this hearing to explore the role of the Small Business Administration's 8(a) Program.

Do you think that our policies as we're talking about, you know, how we build this out? How we build out the biofuels? Are we looking at the issue of our water usage and the water nexus in the creation of energy, are we looking at that…

Whether the proponents realize it or not any plan to switch from gasoline to electricity or biofuels is a strategic decision to switch our dependence from foreign oil to domestic water.

We're looking at exciting technologies. We're looking at ways that we can advertise that we are reducing our consumption on oil. But we are not factoring in the very critical assessment that must go on when we look at water and our water…

But roughly 3 years later I think it's probably fair to say that some of the optimism surrounding biofuels has begun to ebb.

Do you see the liability issue as one that if we fail to resolve this you will have your Mom and Pop operators who simply choose not to go there with these other fuel selections?

I think that this hearing marks the first time that our committee has actually focused specifically on biofuels policies since some time mid of 2008.

We've reached a crossroads, I think, for our biofuel policies well before most of us expected to reach one.

Let me ask you a question about the tariffs because we're now seeing Brazil importing.

Some are worse offenders than others. Apparently the biofuels is one of the worst offenders, at least in the presentation that we had last week, so. But it is something that I worry that we are not focused enough on.

I think we need to be fiscally responsible. But I do think we need to allow this industry to continue to grow and evolve.

I'm going to bring up the issue that we're all talking about here which is how do we pay for all the things that we want.

It sure sounds good, though.

Do you think that it is perhaps blowing things out of proportion or sensationalizing things for the media to focus just on the revenue numbers?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

What I am seeing coming out of the 8(a) Program is a challenge that, yes, in fact we can compete and we can compete well.