Duncan Hunter

The situation is ridiculous. It is completely unreasonable to ask vessel operators to comply with 2 Federal standards and as many as 25 different contradictory and unachievable State standards.

I am very concerned that some of these regulations fail to achieve that balance.

What you guys are able to accomplish and do is truly remarkable and amazing.

Do we get a bilateral security agreement [BSA]? And if so, when?

The biggest challenge we face right now is the metastasization of Al Qaeda and their ideology.

It is not just a matter of killing the bad guys.

The ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] that SOCOM is able to provide... is going to be critical.

Our greatest challenge remains the budget uncertainty.

At least from one Congressman, I don't share that optimism. I have been to Israel. They are scared to death of what is happening there and it will be too late.

I thank the gentleman, the ranking member, and the committee as well, for putting in H.R. 2463, the Target Practice and Marksmanship Training Support Act, that Congressman Walz from Minnesota and myself wrote. Basically, what this does is…

I think the last part of what you said is important, where you let San Francisco decide what San Francisco Port wants, you let San Diego decide what they want.

We call that a tax here, but go ahead.

I would like to thank Mr. Garamendi for holding this hearing, for requesting it, and with that I yield to the ranking member.

In 20 or 30 years, they will respond.

I think that we still have to have those baseline aids so that people can look out their porthole, their window, and see the buoy, and know when to turn, what area to stay out of, what area they are allowed to transit in.

They are also constrained by their culture, in that they have done it before, so they are going to keep on doing it.

one of the reasons I am interested in this is DHS has studied the Presidential directive that told them to create a backup system for GPS, and their conclusion was that we needed to study it more.

Thank you. I thank the ranking member. The last panel that we had, they spent about $2.5 billion together...

The hard reality remains, you get what you pay for.

the Coast Guard has reported that since fiscal year 2005 the total number of flight hours for aircraft and underway hours for cutters has declined by more than 14 percent

It is doubtful that the budget proposal that is now being discussed in the halls of the Congress and across this Nation will meet that challenge.

the blue line is unattainable.

there is no way you are going to hit the blue line.

you will just fall short year after year after year after year and never be able to drill down on what you really need to get.

the Coast Guard cannot meets its mission performance targets and whether those targets are truly achievable