Eleanor Holmes Norton

The government is looking for a plan where the actors at the table.

Yes, I think such a plan is in order. I think it is very important so that we know where we are going.

Any project this monumental is necessarily incremental.

DDOT has made a formal request that all of these facilities be put at Union Station.

In our oversight, we ask tough questions, not because we doubt the value of your services but because that is our job.

Lower rent leasing rates for the government.

This notion of partnering with small businesses is really important.

I thought it was a disgrace to contrast what we saw, which is virtually none of what I would take to be the appropriate guidance.

Frankly, in our case it is the taxpayer.

Well, what is it that the brokers did not understand? Was this not written? Was it not written out clearly enough?

Would you submit for the record here your small business plan and who have gotten those contracts?

I suppose I take umbrage that the Federal worker is deprecated.

What is it that you say the brokers are bringing to the table that the in-house people are not?

Everyone knew, particularly after 9/11--but they would know in any case--that New York was a particularly vulnerable jurisdiction to planes of every kind.

Your work and the work of this committee is why they are at the table at all.

We want to see more of taking advantage of its role in the market.

Did GSA ever come to the government to ask for authority to retain that fee themselves?

So, you believe that it is justifiable to essentially close down general aviation and a major commercial and government center of the United States?

It makes us, what is it, 8 or 9 years after 9/11 look like we haven't even learned how to protect our own Nation's capitol.

We really wanted to centralize the delivery of the contracting for brokerage services because we had a whole lot of different contracts going in a whole lot of different directions.

We are the stakeholders, our people who use...who in fact have used general aviation services in the Nation's capitol.

I really see us caught in a real bind here, that we have to monitor the contracts.

I am very sympathetic to the private sector when they complain about overbureaucratization. I hate it.

You are going to have to break it up to do anything with small businesses.

Are you suggesting that that figure in your testimony is strictly due to the broker contract? What about market conditions?