Eleanor Holmes Norton

Indeed, the financial incentive was, in fact, to do this.

The public needs to know, short of spending money, do the experts have a response that can increase our feeling of safety when we get aboard the Red Line that we have no alternative but to board?

Even if we give Mr. Rogoff the kind of perhaps authority he ought to have, I can tell you without fear of contradiction--leave aside the recession we are in, let's suppose we are in the false boom economy we just came out of--that there is…

What was the reason, do you believe, we prohibited ourselves from providing for the safety of the public and rapid transit the way we do in other common carriers?

So should some other Federal agency have been charged as more and more cities and States developed mass transit systems?

Well, would you consider putting up a Web site and assigning each jurisdiction around a duty with respect to that?

The choice should have been to put them in the middle so that either end would have the most crashworthy cars.

Wasn't that counterproductive, to say, 'OK, take away their money,' when they don't have any money?

Why did you not recommend what looks like a common-sense recommendation that doesn't require a bunch of experts: 'Hey, at least don't make the crash occur in the front end or the back end?'

What Federal law prohibits you from acting?

I want to once again thank Chairman Stephen Lynch for his attention to Metro by responding to my request early in his tenure as the new Chair of this subcommittee with a hearing on April 24th, and again today granting my request for this…

This hearing is not about assigning cause. We don't have the slightest idea. Nobody could possibly know.

So you don't have any enforcement authority, is that right? You can't tell them to do anything.

When you develop standards, have you found that transit systems across the United States readily develop these standards, and did WMATA do so?

Just your luck, Mr. Catoe.

How many staff do you have?

You know these people cannot replace these cars. And you have done your duty over and over again and said, 'Replace those cars.'

Your testimony has been really indispensable to this hearing. It's riveting testimony.

We need to see a draft of this guidance as soon as possible.

What I can't understand is why, in fact--indeed, I would have expected you to come to the Subcommittee and ask for some assistance.

If that were the case, we wouldn't be turning down so many people to come to us for courthouses.

I appreciate that you have set aside particularly that contract for small businesses and then had them compete for this small business contract in keeping with Federal regulations, so that is good.

What is the role of somebody who doesn't have any expertise when it comes to security except to do what I do, complain about too much security or I have seen people get in who shouldn't?

Can you give us any assurance that those guidelines will in fact not leave customer agency personnel, expert in agency matters, as decision makers for the security of Federal assets?

Apparently, for storage space, the Secret Service is costing us a thousand dollars per square foot.