I share your concerns on behalf of the money and the taxpayers who are footing the bill for this cleanup.

Okay. Let's just start right there.

If there is oil and gas in the United States, we should use it.

The timetable in which you're going to do it, that's negotiated, as well?

Okay. Now, let me ask you, on the stimulus bill projects, how did you decide what projects were going to be funded?

All right. Of the material remaining, how do you go about accounting for all of that, of what you're not going to clean up?

Under the stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Department of Energy (DOE) received $5.1 billion to address a substantial backlog of these cleanup projects.

That's how you come to the percentage cleanup that you're going to achieve?

Unless we all stand and deliver by enacting a strong, mandatory, nationwide climate and energy plan, the effort to negotiate a new international agreement will come up short.

Unless we stand and deliver by enacting strong, mandatory, nationwide climate and energy legislation, the effort to negotiate a new international agreement will come up short.

U.S. climate policy would be more of an opportunity for, rather than a hindrance to, the U.S economy.

The United States thus has an interest, as well as a responsibility, in leading on this issue.

Eighty percent of greenhouse gas emissions are produced outside the United States.

What is it that you're cleaning up, and why is it necessary to spend all this money?

You have corrected a number of those deficiencies by what we have seen, the mistakes in the past.

I can testify to that because I have been sitting by his side in the Emergency Operations Center of the State of Florida since 1995 and have seen him perform under very difficult circumstances.

FEMA did not have its act together, and we knew that in Florida the year before when four hurricanes hit Florida in 2004 within a 6-week period.

Senator Bill Nelson. Senator Begich, I'm going to call on you, and Senator Sessions will chair the meeting until I can get back.