Mark Begich

I appreciate the missile ground defense system and the work you've been doing in Alaska.

The Coast Guard's really been hollering out there at all of us.

Then by the end of August, you think we'll be down to?

Do you have within the budget that the President has presented the resources to meet that goal?

Then give me the Iraq status again. We had how many troops there about a year ago?

Okay, that's good. That's what we need to know.

Again to echo what I think you said to Senator Udall, we're on track?

So again, thank you for your willingness to, one, come up to Alaska.

I'm a believer that everything we do can always be better.

The President has an opportunity to pick who he would like to be part of his team, but his success and failure is on your shoulders.

I wish you both the best in your new positions.

I appreciate you mentioning that.

Alaska presents some unique challenges.

We as a country have not solved the issues of interoperable communications nor establishing effective command and control at incident sites.

The Federal Trade Commission should have more information from the States about what everyday consumers...the bread-and-butter concerns of everyday consumers

The President has his team, he appoints them. I'm looking forward to seeing you all serve.

If you're not doing anything wrong, you never have to worry.

But we have some issues.

Literally we were in some cases 2 days away from people losing their capacity to have oxygen to live.

Our concern and my concern is that there are vacancies occurring.

They did the first half which was fantastic. I mean, literally made a difference in people's lives overnight.

The majority of the Federal Government are not entrepreneurs.

I think this timing couldn't have been better, in a lot of ways, as we struggle in figuring out how to move our economy forward with an over-10-percent unemployment rate.

We are behind. Energy technology is one area we're falling quickly behind.

We have--need to catch up, in some cases, and be the leaders.