Lisa Murkowski

I have to tell you that when we first looked or when I first looked at the community deployment, I thought this is not going to work in my State.

Which is the right number to begin really moving out? Is it somewhere in between or can you speak?

There's a lot of anxiety along the road. But we've got a lot of island communities.

I absolutely concur. I agree with you. We need to do more.

This is an exciting time to be working on vehicle legislation.

But if it is that's a huge breakthrough and we want to encourage that.

Both supply and demand matter and the policies that we can consider here in this committee, I think should reflect that.

I think having incentives of R and D based around the performance goals we want to achieve.

That's whether it's appropriate that we be picking winners and losers.

To add insult to injury, it appeared that some members of the Fort Lewis medical staff were exposed to a briefing that suggested members of the National Guard were gaming the system.

I believe it is important that we get the issue out in the open and do all that we can to reduce our suicide rates to zero.

All of this was deeply troubling to me . . . confirming my worst fears when I visited with Alaska troops at Camp Shelby.

I guess I was just more than a little bit disconcerted to learn that still with a milk jug and some fertilizer and some diesel, they can continue to do the kind of damage and inflict the death and the mutilation that we continue to see.

In 2007, I had the opportunity to visit with Alaska Army National Guard troops who were returning from Iraq and Kuwait at Camp Shelby in Mississippi.

I am a little bit disappointed that the Army does not make broader use of this tremendous resource for training a larger number of troops to fight in our cold climates.

Completing the Refuge is anticipated to cost approximately $87 million in today's dollars, so acting now is especially important for monetary reasons.

I would certainly concur. You know, one of the great disappointments following the Exxon Valdez tragedy was a lot of lessons learned there.

Let us take this conversation up north then to the Arctic. It is my understanding that in Alaska, the use of dispersants has not been preauthorized.

Is it really good policy to require our deepwater operators to prove access to subsea dispersants?

We don't want to be sitting in the--if something horrible happens, we don't want to be sitting in a situation where we are held off from using a tool in the toolbox because we haven't done the background or the research that we need on…

We believe that it is time to revisit that and to shorten the lease terms to further incentivize prompt development of oil and gas resources.

Of course, as we are trying to advance oil and gas exploration offshore and we look to the proposals and the plans that are out there, I think this is one of those areas that we need to know and understand how dispersants work in the…

I commend his decision to increase leasing and to extend the leases that have been delayed.

I think we recognize that we have got a lot to do, but we have got to find a path forward there.

I will also reiterate my comments from a year ago that the Senate should follow the example that you set here.