Dan Sullivan

It's a very useful quote when we're thinking about public service and the privilege that we all have in serving our fellow Americans.

I think you're very well qualified. I look forward to supporting your confirmation.

How can we assure that we continue the highest levels of safety with regard to our civilian nuclear energy capacity?

I had a bill that would disarm the EPA. The first 20 years of its existence the EPA had no armed agents.

It is a breath of fresh air that we have a new Administrator who actually wants to follow the law and work with States.

The EPA has to follow the law.

We all agree that we need clean water and clean air. Really important, whether you are from New Jersey or Alaska or Rhode Island.

If you split Alaska in half, Texas would be the third largest state in the country.

The Essential Air Service program, which I think was created October 1978 during deregulation, is an important program.

I need your commitment to work with states like mine and others on the Essential Air Service program to make sure that the promises made during airline deregulation are not now forgotten.

A one-size-fits-all on air policy does not work in my state for some of the reasons I just mentioned.

251 communities in my state are exclusively accessed by air only, no roads.

82 percent of the communities in Alaska are not accessible by road.

I think there are only 17 other countries in the world that are bigger than Alaska.

I think you will see bipartisan support here, but we want to kind of finalize that with the VA to make sure you guys are good to go with that one.

The Choice Program up there was an utter disaster, as it was in a lot of States, and you committed--and I think the VA has done a good job on it.

I have one final question I will submit for the record, but it actually relates to the vacant and underutilized list of buildings.

I think you have the support of this Committee behind you on that.

I have deep reservations about any proposal to transfer the FAA's air traffic facilities to a quasi-private corporation.

I think this committee needs to keep a very close oversight role here because there is just a lot we need to do and the coordination between the Navy and the Coast Guard has not been that good.

We should have no man or woman who puts the uniform of the U.S. military on that should deploy on a ship that is that old and broken.

It is clearly in the national interest for the U.S. to have more than one heavy icebreaker.

I think we need a very detailed answer on why that is not even being considered. It seems to me a huge oversight.

The Arctic is key strategic terrain in part because of the new opportunities there, new challenges.

I wanted to follow on to Senator Kaine's point and what you mentioned, General.