Sam Farr

I read your testimony this morning, and I was very impressed.

Your involvement and engagement with the V.A. and encouraging them to have greater collaboration with the minority medical schools, specifically our AMHPS schools, has really gone a long way in terms of progress in our endeavors for full…

We were asking for five million or billion, what is it, for the NOAA's--five billion for the NOAA budget and then in that, that the oceans get treated equally with the atmosphere.

If the ocean dies, we die. Mankind cannot survive without the ocean, not just from feeding, but just from what the ocean does with carbon and so on.

That speaks a lot for people that control the atmosphere budget.

My Truth in Accounting Act would require the President to consider these long-term shortfalls when he proposes his budget.

Although Congress, I think, asked for it.

But knowing that, from a risk management standpoint, are we providing the same kind of detection and detail to the Canadian border as we are to the Mexican border?

Has that statistic changed now? Does the Mexican border have more?

Mexico and Canada are our number one trading partners and California is the sixth largest economy in the world

Are we building a fence across the northern border?

I can't stand having to give up my bottle of water, my shaving cream, shampoo every time I go to the airport

I think certainly as far as the 100 percent requirement, it needs to be thoughtfully reconsidered.

We have got to make sure that activities which are illegal in their country, having guns--that is illegal in Mexico; you have no fourth amendment right to commit a crime in Mexico by selling weapons to people that are taking them into…

I think we put a lot of emphasis on knowing that Canada is secure, and therefore, we don't have to worry about Canada and we have to worry about Mexico.

I am also a big supporter of Mr. Rogers' MITOC project. It was a smart thing to do.

I think you have got to charge in the room. You are a big guy, a former Army tank guy. You ought to just go in there and say, we are here.

So can we get these agencies to include DHS in the discussion of broadband expansion in America?

But, look, my communities here or out there, they are already calling me and saying, how do we get to the broadband money?

I think we have a little interoperability problem developing at the Federal level.

I plan to offer legislation to give OEC greater prominence.

But you are not doing it. Here is what you did. You have gotten radios out there for the rural fire departments. They can't talk to each other.

But where there is an underserved area and there has been proven emergencies that no one can respond to, whose job is it to pick up the pieces and try to fix it?

This is a Federal fire in a Federal forest.

The big problem in every one of those fires, is communication. And yet, nothing has been done about it.