If those stovepipes reappear or worsen, we will certainly be in more danger.

We must not let the astonishing lack of management and technical controls...send us back to the days before September 11, 2001.

I emerge encouraged that you are certainly dealing with the specific series of vulnerabilities that the WikiLeaks/Manning case revealed.

Our mourning over their deaths has always been compounded by the knowledge that those attacks might have been prevented.

Colonel Qadhafi must go--and I agree with that totally--whether, unless the world community intervenes in some way.

Longer lasting damage could occur if we allow a culture to re-emerge in which each intelligence entity views itself as a separate enterprise.

That is a good first step in helping the Postal Service, but this is a rising crisis, and we really have to get together and figure out how to head it off before it hits us very hard.

I just urge you, with all the things you are doing, to really keep your eye on this one because we need IT, obviously, for the government to function effectively.

I presume you would agree that these three have to be addressed if we are going to get our long-term finances in order.

I can sure predict that some Members of Congress will say they will not vote to extend the debt limit unless there is something forthcoming from the President.

He has said numerous times that we need to come together and do this across parties.

I was very pleased when the President selected the Commission and equally pleased by the recommendations it put out.

the serious fiscal challenges facing the country make this an extraordinarily important and humbling time to be nominated to join the Office of Management and Budget.

On the morning of March 7, the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, will take the stage in front of the Lincoln Memorial to announce a $3 million donation on behalf of the Australian Government to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund…

I think both of those issues, surge capacity and getting information to the vetters very quickly, those are mechanical kinds of things.

So that it worked in that way, but, of course, the numbers--it worked in terms of the key national security positions, nominees in the Obama transition.

Nothing in the legislation that Senators Schumer, Alexander, Collins, and I are working on together will weaken in any way the important constitutional role the Senate has to advise and consent.

I think that they were not shooting for a high target.

This is one of those topics and hearings that attracts not much public attention, but is actually greatly in the public interest.

I commend you for taking it up.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, I rise to express my deepest sorrow about a tragic attack on American law enforcement that happened earlier this week in Mexico. On Tuesday afternoon, two…

We feel close to the Department and to everybody who works for the Department and in the Department.

I appreciate that reassurance. What you found at the defense ministers meeting is exactly what we found in terms of the cautious optimism at the Munich conference.

the President's budget proposes a 22-percent reduction in the Coast Guard's Deepwater program

I think that is a very significant conclusion. It makes a lot of sense to me.