Joe Lieberman

The resulting audit underscores the need for reforms and improvements to the oversight of these two Social Security disability programs.

Overpayment and fraud within the Federal Government's disability benefits program is an important topic to me.

Social Security disability programs are a critical lifeline for many who are facing huge challenges in their life.

You want a configuration of ships and operational concepts that vindicate that mission.

I fear that the defense budget will become a fashionable target for cuts, thereby creating some real peril for our country.

I think that perhaps the most important contribution of the panel will have been to highlight the need for continued, sustained, strong defense funding if we are to maintain the forces we need to protect our security.

Security is the pre-condition to liberty and prosperity.

I think absent an assessment of the foreign language needs and the foreign language capabilities, it is difficult to say what impact the Foreign Language Award Program has on the Department's overall ability to perform its mission.

As usual, you can speak for me, too. I agree.

The other proposal that I wanted to talk about, which I think makes sense and yet I also think will have some problems in being implemented, is the idea of realigning the various regional configurations within the components of the…

We believe also that we need to look in a very deliberate way at the tools that are available to us to prevent terrorism here domestically.

You made a very important point at the end, which I just want to put an exclamation point next to.

You are not going to be punished in this room for saying that.

I wanted to ask you just to talk a little bit about why the BUR and you conclude that this is necessary and how you think it will help the Department achieve its mission of protecting our homeland security.

One of our hopes when we created the Department was that a lot of the intelligence work that is naturally done by components of DHS... would be fed more routinely into the pool of intelligence from which everybody can draw.

The American people face no greater or more urgent danger than a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon.

Thanks, Senator Collins.

I really urge you to get it to us before the end of the year if you possibly can.

OK, because it is a serious charge, obviously.

No, not if I can help it.

What is holding up that strategic plan? Why hasn't it been done earlier, either by the previous Administration or this one?

Inadequate planning causes schedule delays, cost overruns, and the procurement of the wrong kinds of technology at great cost to the taxpayer.

It is unacceptable that our research and development arm would not talk to our operating arms.

Years ago, when I acquired a burglar alarm system for my house, at the end of the installation the man doing it gave me the stickers for the windows and the doors and said, 'Ninety-five percent of what you are paying for are these…

Yes. And the Department maintains the goal of improving the current monitoring equipment that we have?