Eleanor Holmes Norton

There is some cost to the government that it simply has to assume in maintaining a core function.

I would like you to submit that for the record. I would like all of you to do it.

This is what we are going to expect from the agency. It ought not be what do we do today, what do we do tomorrow?

In fact, it is about the same cost, according to the IG, nobody has been able to find any value added in terms of money, have they?

I have asked whether--and we should have asked GSA whether or not they are using the same measures this year that they were using 2 years ago, for God's sake.

At least we know that after going through all of this hullabaloo, we haven't saved the government a dime.

I congratulate you on doing it.

The government--and the President put in his budget--bought a building, the first time, I think, since I have been on this Subcommittee that the government plopped down some money, taking an advantage on an option to buy.

We are trying to increase small business use within the Federal Government and certainly within the GSA.

I have to take personal responsibility.

Do you mean the brokerage didn't understand that once you contract with the Federal Government, you are in a different ball game?

I want to thank each and every one of you. This panel would have had a huge hole in it...

Would that not be a reasonable thing for the Congress to do?

I tell you one thing, it's easy to go to sleep on any kind of moving vehicle, especially a train.

Frankly, I think that the victims and the public is entitled to hear any interim step we can take, however minor.

It's important to hear your testimony about automatic versus manual.

I needed your testimony on the record, however, because if we want to really do something besides put up the money in the future...

So you don't think you are the people who ought to be regulating?

Therefore, faced with choices that you can pull 30 percent of your fleet that goes back almost 40 years or put them in the middle, the choice should have been to put them in the middle so that either end would have the most crashworthy…

Therefore, in this hearing, we are really looking for answers. It is real easy to say, 'Spend a billion dollars, and you will be safe,' but I have to ask you whether you are prepared, at least in the future, to look at interim…

You were generous in saying WMATA didn't have a lot of money to do what really needed to be done.

Mr. Millar, your testimony is replete with standards. I mean, they're the kind of standards that I think the public thought were required.

I will have to ask whether it was worth the investment.

So typically, there must be dozens of subway systems across the Nation that are by the seat of their own pants.

Well, I mean, you would maintain it. Do you have any staff?