Mike Johanns

Our responsibility is not just to those veterans who have left us; it extends particularly to those veterans still with us today.

That is why I am proud to be a cosponsor of S. 475, the Military Spouses Residency Relief Act.

I would urge you to work in a very bipartisan way.

None of you have to be intimidated by this. You are enormously qualified to do this job.

I think only with a very strong administrator working with you will you be successful to do that.

The Indian Health Service is in desperate need of good management.

The issue of detection, treatment and screenings and all of those issues are very important.

I really look forward to working with you on a whole host of issues.

It is hard for me to imagine that we improve Indian health very much if we don't address the issue of diabetes.

I hope to be a partner with you as we work on these issues.

We want to do everything we can to encourage that.

Anything we can do in this area is going to be a big improvement.

It is something that I find just completely unacceptable.

We bring them to military service to protect us, and then as they leave military service, to tag them with that kind of label is just enormously unfair.

I also thought it was just completely inexcusable that the head of a Federal Department would make such statements about veterans.

I will just wrap up, Mr. Chairman, with this thought. I asked that question mostly to use this opportunity to highlight the importance of these issues.

Both areas that you mentioned, transportation via air and roads, are hugely important in the State that I come from.

It always seemed a little high-handed to me that the very junior partner in education, being the Federal Government, ... felt they had the ability to force down the standards

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me just say to the Chairman and Ranking Member, this is another excellent hearing.

I appreciate the candor of the answer. I think you acknowledge there were some things here that just simply were missed.

I am very skeptical, and I think there is reason for that skepticism.

I don't want to overpromise this.

What is this going to cost? Second, timing. And that's been mentioned also, but I'll just underscore it.

I have not liked that idea from the beginning. It would seem to me to be just an enormous conflict of interest.

I think it is a real frustration for us here to be faced with these issues of, well, Mike, this is just way too big to allow it to fail, and, Mike, it is going to take taxpayers' money to unravel the risk that they have gotten themselves…