Lisa Murkowski

Oh, there was a fair amount of controversy I guess it was last year, it may have been 2 years ago, when we purchased renewable energy credits.

But it would seem to me that given the responsibilities within the Office of Compliance, to have a good, solid 21 full-time employees is pretty good.

I am still not convinced, but I appreciate the explanation.

I think you really hit the nail on the head that much of it is a security concern.

Now do I understand correctly that with your request, you are seeking another 25 employees?

I have heard concerns from other Members that they feel that on some of the staff-led tours, the staff members have been treated in a discourteous manner.

Save $10 million. And if we have got a tough, cold winter, to have that in reserve.

So I just want to make sure that we all understand that for one last percentage, so that we can say we absolutely, positively are not using coal, we are going to spend $10 million to retrofit this last boiler?

I am then told to get to a clear 100 percent level of using natural gas year-round that we need an additional $10 million in the fiscal year 2010 budget to retrofit another boiler.

I want us to have buildings that are strong and safe and are beautiful and are historic, but I think we also need to use a little bit of common sense in how we address the issue.

I just can't let a good thing drop here.

Let us just patch the roof until we can really address the bigger problem.

Well, I would hope that we would agree that spending $7 million is not the prudent thing to do if we are going to do a whole building renovation in 2 years.

Why in the world would we spend the money to fix this now when 2 years from now, we may have a whole building renovation?

Is that a correct statement, that the issue would be given higher priority, based on a risk assessment?

So there is the ability to work through these?

Do you have flexibility to either work with the Office of the Architect here to not issue that citation?

I am trying to understand exactly how much flexibility there is built into all of this.

I do have to question whether applying a gold standard to the legislative branch is appropriate.

I am in favor of the legislative branch serving as a model for the rest of the Government.

If your agency were to receive only half of the requested increase for fiscal year 2010, what would be the impact and what changes would you make to your budget?

Appreciate your responses.

What would happen if we were to set that standard within the legislative branch?

The President's budget is about an 8 percent increase over last year, if I remember correctly.

I have to ask about way finding.