Thank you for taking the time to listen to our veterans and for committing yourself to helping those who dedicated their service to this country.

I just want to make sure the Fairbanks folks hear exactly what we talked about in Anchorage also.

This hearing, the Field Hearing on Services for Veterans' Affairs in Alaska is called to order.

How can you win the battle if you know that you're losing it and you aren't listening to your commanders out there on the ground who are decisively engaged every day?

Thank you very much.

Would it have made a difference if when you walked in to the university for the first time and you wanted to be a student, that there was a person that said they work with veterans and they worked on everything: financial aid, services…

I want to thank you, Joe, for your testimony.

Thank you for your leadership and advocacy on behalf of Alaska's Veterans.

I hear you. Thank you, Linda. That was very good. That helps me with some additional work.

This is an opportunity for us to hear and to ask some questions.

This process of bringing it back in June will allow us a chance to publicly say here's a success or here are areas that just aren't working out as well as we thought.

I think that would be very interesting.

If the system is so cumbersome--which it is--that I need to have that kind of help, then there's something wrong with the system.

Is there anything we can do? Especially when I was mayor we did audits all the time; we always had a team that would follow up on a regular basis.

I think the Committee would be very interested.

Excellent. That will assist you in your efforts. Fantastic. That's great news.

I want to thank you for having me speak before you.

It's better to find those ideas, see where we can improve, recognize criticism is not a negative, but it's a positive to improve a system.

You've given me some real good food for thought here. I greatly appreciate that.

We have disabled veterans currently enrolled under the Post-9/11 program that need special counseling.

Don't get his head to grow too large.

That's something that we can obviously, from our office, too, follow up to see if Alaska has...

I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and out in the field and here with the issues from veterans.

It makes me nervous, a little bit, to be frank.

This here, like I said, is an outstanding program.