I was pleased to see that a Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research Grant was provided to an Alaska constituent who has a pretty innovative way of recycling plastic ocean waste.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We have to do better on this, we must do better on this.

I'd like your commitment to work with our local developers to better understand their data and support the DoD in ensuring that BAH calculations actually reflect the true and, as you know, the very unique market dynamics of living in the…

We want to get them as soon as possible. We also want to make sure that their families are well taken care of and the community knows we have that responsibility.

The concern, of course, is this gap between when the E-7s come on.

The Senator greatly appreciates the Secretary's time and attention to the unique needs of Alaska with respect to broadband deployment.

I want to shift now to broadband.

I think there's going to continue to be a need for both the village-built clinics program and the 105(l) lease account.

Which has been a frustration of mine because again we've got to figure it out here and we're all trying to look into that crystal ball to understand where we're going, what is it going to look like, and we've asked for a more reliable…

So you don't see that there would be any additional scrutiny or anything that would slow or hinder these renegotiations then?

So there's some buzz out there that this may be a situation where Cook Inlet was just one example.

So if you're planning on sending this plan up, I don't see how you're giving us the time as whether we are authorizing or whether we are appropriating to consider this in a way that is viewed as a serious proposal.

So your thoughts on whether you separate them out and can you tell me where you may be on this report for village-built clinics (VBCs)?

But since the 105(l)s have started being paid, we've seen estimates really kind of all over the board, I think wildly unpredictable, and they have certainly injected some budget uncertainty into the process.

Including whether or not overpayments have been made?

So, I mean, this has been the challenge, is the ability to understand and predict what we can anticipate year over year.

So, Mr. Chairman, my time is well over. I may come back to this because I'm trying to determine whether or not there's been any type of a comprehensive analysis of whether or not overpayments are at issue and the extent of that.

So in theory, if there's not a discretionary proposal for the Interior bill this year, there's $6.6 billion that is currently unaccounted for.

I believe that IHS has been chronically underfunded and we need to make improvements.

So oversight again absolutely key to everything that we do around here.

Yes, it's always about our resourcing, but it's also a matter of prioritization.

I have consistently raised this funding as a priority in our hearings.

you just can't surge it up for 6 months and then take those resources away and expect all to be well in the world.

We are watching daily as the kind of bulking up of NATO's East Flank continues with Russia, but we can't take our eyes off the fact that we have a Western Flank.