Lisa Murkowski

I think this is the first time that we have seen one another since you visited us in Alaska.

You know that you do not have it now.

We need to get back to where we were in Alaska. This bill will do to that or we are not advocating it.

The failings of the Choice program in Alaska.

I personally think it was a tragedy that we could not keep her.

We need to ditch Choice, we need to go back to what we had built where VA have identified community providers.

With a signature of that ROD, we are really very excited for a host of different reasons.

We have low morale. We have fear of retaliation.

We do not want to participate in a national consolidated program. Those are all the buzzwords that just do not work for us.

We can get them back in, because they are great providers, they are great partners of us.

There is no compromise on what our veterans have earned, so know that we are going to keep working at it.

Well, and I am sure you can appreciate the frustration of the many veterans who for years had struggled with a system that did not work.

The current leadership team at the VA took a system that was working well in our State and went about dismantling it.

I need to make sure that we have providers that we can recruit and we can retain.

We are having a difficult time with provider attrition.

It took a long time, but we got there.

I would appreciate that. I think the people of King Cove would appreciate that, so I will look forward to that.

I appreciate that. I am going to utilize a little bit of executive authority and call a recess for the committee until other members get back so that I do not miss this important vote.

I had asked about the Section 107 Small Navigation Program last year.

Obviously exports of LNG (liquefied natural gas) are a big deal for me both because of the Alaska LNG project and because of the energy bill that we are working on that would expedite these approvals.

I have been a long proponent of making sure that we have infrastructure in the Arctic as we see developments taking place up north.

I was in Houston last week at CERAWeek, which is the big oil and gas summit really in the country.

We are all busy, and I apologize. We are all kind of jumping up and down like jack-in-the-boxes here to go vote because this is so important.

We have a way to go on this. I remain concerned that, as we look at our priorities, mapping, both terrestrial mapping and mapping our waters, is something where we are woefully behind.

I disagree with the 2008 listing determination and vehemently disagree with the designation of more than 187,000 square miles of land--an area larger than the State of California--as 'critical habitat' for polar bears.