Dan Sullivan

We also believe that the Government should be held to the same standards as it requires of the public and the private sector.

Let me talk more broadly. I am assuming you also believe the EPA should be following the law like the private sector and U.S. citizens have to do, correct?

I can tell you my team and the members in this congressional delegation, Senator Murkowski and Congressman Young, will not rest until, working together, we get to a better place.

As a Nation, we wrote the check when we sent them to war, and now it is incumbent on all of us to honor that agreement and their service.

America's veterans have lost faith in the VA.

We are here for a simple reason: to bring together key players responsible for delivering health care and benefits for Alaska's veterans so they can fix a problem, a big problem for our State, the implementation of the Choice Act, which is…

We are trying to bring Washington, DC, to Alaska.

This is completely unacceptable.

What we need are answers.

The Choice Act is not working. TriWest and the VA are not communicating at all.

It is accountability for TriWest. It is accountability from the VA. It is accountability from Congress.

It is because of its one-size-fits-all design that the implementation of the Choice Act in Alaska has been nothing less than an unmitigated failure for our veterans.

I think it is something that we need to start instilling as part of the agency oversight.

How about how important it is to the people of the area?

Actually I think you can make the opposite argument.

Why is this a requirement? Why is the compensatory land that you are seeking----

No equal regulator under the Clean Water Act became the subservient sovereign.

Do you have a statutory provision that you can provide us that allows Federal agencies to require compensatory mitigation of a co-equal sovereign to pay mitigation?

I would respectfully request that the headquarters back at the Department of the Interior come back with detailed, detailed, legal authority.

The authority has to derive from the Congress. You have to be able to point to a statute.

I still think your answers to this with regard to mitigation are not sufficient.

Pretty tough words are used when we hear whether it is from Wainwright or Nuiqsut or Craig or the folks at Great Northwest. But the word is extortion.

I think that what you need to do is look at a lot more flexibility for the state, and I think you have that.

You don't have $1.4 million and you should not be required to give up land to develop lands.

But I do not think they are choosing.