VA has made incredible strides, I believe, over the last few years.

And one of the things President Washington warned the very young Nation about was debt and the calamity that that can create for a nation.

It is just a devastating impact on the population in Indian Country.

We want to make that a priority in our Indian health care considerations.

I don't want the Congress or this Committee to be the arbiter of who should be recognized and who shouldn't be recognized.

I think you are the right person for the job, and I will wrap up by saying, you do have some challenges.

If we don't deal with this, it is hard for me to imagine these other issues that we are concerned about work very well.

I think listening is always a very good thing, and they will be very excited to have you there listening.

It is just an enormously serious health condition, as you know.

I will be very honest, I am not sure why people bother with it. Because it has to be so impossibly cumbersome.

The system isn't working. We really do have, in many cases, 20, 30 or longer years in which tribes file petitions and never quite get an answer.

The inter-relationship between the departments is so hugely important.

I also say thank you for putting this hearing together.

I could see the frown grow on your face as I asked this question, and I understand, but if we do not figure this out you are going to need a gigantic amount of capital to protect these 25 intuitions.

We are describing a level of taxpayer support that also is just really unprecedented.

I think it gave us a bubble. It certainly gave us a burst of economic activity for a little while.

Your testimony today is probably unprecedented... a level of government involvement in the financial institution that we have maybe never seen before.

It brought in a large part to the brink of financial collapse. And today, somehow, someway, we have got to explain to the American taxpayer why it is worthwhile to invest in that to save that system.

I rise to elaborate on a couple points I made a day or so ago on this stimulus package. Many in this body and constituents across Nebraska know I am a former mayor, a former city counsel person, a former county commissioner, and a former…

I wish more of it would go building bridges instead of financial markets.

I think over time it is hard to sustain that. Why? Just simply because one country is going to look at this and, you know, when things stabilize--and hopefully they will stabilize--that country is going to say, you know, we could get more…

But to me, that seems to be an important element as we think about what we want to do with the regulatory system.

If we don't figure this piece out, the mechanism won't make a bit of difference.

There was a point in time where someone was compensated based upon the quality of the loan that they wrote.

It seems to me that there are two really, really important things that really have led in a substantial way to this financial crisis.