the recovery package contain the NCAI-recommended 'Access to Capital' provisions

We have the resources, whether they be geothermal, wind or ocean energy or energy from the river, biomass, we have it all.

But it really is very, very tragic that Alaska Native villages have to depend on Venezuela for their safety net.

Forty-nine percent unemployment nationally on Indian reservations.

I am truly hopeful that we can once again act in a bipartisan manner and work to include funding to address the urgent needs of Indian Country in this proposed stimulus package.

I think when you have good leadership and a sense of pragmatism, we can make good things happen.

To create jobs and make investments in areas where those investments are desperately needed.

Nowhere in this Country is the need for infrastructure greater than on Indian reservations.

I'm asking for your commitment, Senator Salazar, as you move into this position in Interior, to work with us to complete these transfers that were promised to Alaska at the time of Statehood.

We believe, are making a difference. They are still very, very necessary to ensure that Alaska Native children have educational equity with their nonNative peers across the country.

I commend you for agreeing to undertake the challenge.

What Congress had authorized was the Alaska Native Educational Equity Act, and this act provides funding for programs like the remedial and gifted education.

The gaps are wide, and they are unacceptable, and we are working aggressively to deal with it.

I just use this time to make sure you are aware of it and to ask for your commitment to work with us to ensure that we do have continued funding for these programs.

Our education statistics are not anything to be proud of as they relate to our Alaska Natives in terms of achievement, dropout rates, college enrollment.

We can't have a gap in any part of this educational system where it is kind of OK for you to slough.

I appreciate the opportunity to work with you on the childhood nutrition and your comments about just the physical health of our children.

I look for your commitment, if confirmed, which I fully expect will happen here, to work closely with each of us.

I think we recognize that it is not just some decision in senior year of high school that a young man or woman decides, 'I am done with this. I am out of here.'

I have spoken with some of our naval leaders, and they consider themselves to be somewhat disadvantaged by our not having become a party to the Law of the Seas.

I feel very strongly that we have to enhance our domestic oil and gas production.

I strongly support his nomination, as I have said.

I also think that within the Department of Energy, one of the challenges that we face is how we educate the rest of the country on what it is that we need to be doing.

I truly appreciate all that you are poised to do, and what you have done in the past.

We are, by virtue of Alaska, and we have opportunities, when it comes to a leadership role, in collaboration on research, on environmental issues, on issues as they relate to commerce.