Mr. President, I would like to enter into a colloquy with my colleague from Louisiana. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of Colorado). Without objection, it is so ordered. Energy Planning

If I can make a comment that the Senator just christened one of our new ships coming up. It has Icebreaker capacity to work for Shell to do what? Go right here.

The Senator and I have the same situation he has described: Yes, we are getting those calls and they are not just-- people say this is a union thing. No, it is union, nonunion, chamber, environmentalists, neighborhoods, community councils…

Absolutely, I say to the Senator from Delaware. In Alaska, I chaired the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the MPO, which had this money that would come from this legislation. It would come to us, and if they delayed it here or they had…

The goal for completing the IDES is 295 days for Active component soldiers and 305 days for Reserve component soldiers.

I've long been an advocate for eliminating assignment restrictions for women in the military.

This year DOD's proposal for TRICARE Prime enrollment fees is for a first-year increase of 30 percent to 78 percent.

I appreciate that answer. But I would have expected that from our personnel department in the city would have done that.

Dr. Woodson, I understand you made a decision recently on the TRICARE contract in the West Region, which serves my home State of Alaska.

So you accept because they go through this kind of chain, to a certain extent, I am not saying all the time.

I may better understand it, as it will have a tremendous impact on all men and women in uniform, but especially on constituents in Alaska, as we don't want to go backwards with progress that has been made in the State.

I will not belabor it more than that, to say the response was not as thoughtful as I thought it would be.

To be very frank with you, we are not changing any of the prioritization.

I come from being a former mayor where if I have a CFO, they know all, and at the end of the day, they have to sign off on money things.

I thank my friend from Louisiana, and I will conclude by saying again that her point about being smart and strategic is what we are saying. No one is saying either/or, that it has to be this or that. It is a combination of things. Some…

Absolutely. I will tell the Senator we have been exporting for 40 years. We have been doing that because of our ability to do so and being able to get to the Pacific Asian market. Overall, the State here--through all its natural resources…

What can we do to fix this?

As these soldiers progress through the 400-day process, they are obviously nondeployable and count toward the Army's overall end strength.