I thank the chairman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, in the legislation today, there is a clause that would cause us to think about what to do in the High Arctic. The Arctic Ocean is melting. There will be a Northwest Passage. We are going to…

I would like to know a specific involvement of the Coast Guard in providing the support.

I can't imagine a situation where it is going to come in less than that, unless you are adjusting the requirements to the constrained budget situation.

As the process goes forward, I would like to know, at the critical stages, how is it going.

I got to--as a whole series of questions I think we need for the record, and we will make those available to you--the Fast Response Cutter engine problem, we need to have some information on that.

So I want us, in our role--and particularly, I think, Mr. Hunter and I, who play a role on both committees--to look at this in a more total-systems way.

Therefore, it would seem to me that, for our purposes, we would need to see the unconstrained Mission Need Statement.

Nothing should be more important to this subcommittee than our responsibility to ensure that our Nation's multimission military maritime law enforcement authority has the tools it needs to meet the many challenges it faces.

The question, therefore, is are you considering the life-cycle cost in the equation on the cheapest, best deal?

So we are really looking at the next Congress before we are going to be able to really drill down and address this fundamental challenge.

We really must do that. Yesterday, I was in the Central Valley--Modesto, California--for a meeting, and I had to drive to San Francisco for a speech over Interstate 580, the Altamont Pass, and it is so broken up. There is the fast lane on…

Hello, America. Do you know what is going to happen in just a few days? In 7 legislative days, the United States highway trust fund runs out of money--kaput, it is over--a fund established by President Eisenhower in the 1950s, out of…