And basically all they need to do is to show you that they can do the job. They are not competing with other transit systems, are they, for this money?

And, of course, it would be compounded if, in fact, there was free access to military-style weapons which would make it much, much easier to mow down people in such a crowd if you happen to be either a crazy person or a person intent upon…

With the Secretary, the first Secretary of HHS under President George W. Bush, I came to the Washington Hospital Center, sat with your personnel, and had a very impressive briefing of what ER One would look like and how it would operate.

I think that the testimony here of very competent officers is all that needs to be said about this appropriation period and interoperability.

I want you to know this is one Member--I think I have my whole region with me--going to try to get those additional resources for what was a Herculean job Metro did.

I do want to thank you for that testimony, because it is another one of the absurdities of how easy it is for the bureaucrats to simply answer, when you ask for funding, 'Sorry, we only fund for-profit.'

I would ask FEMA, through your disability coordinator established by statute after Hurricane Katrina, to consider real-time exercises throughout the United States, of course, but particularly in this region, where we are more vulnerable…

Including, for example, if somebody, you know, these incidents that we had here; and the one which is most indelibly in our minds, of course, is the incident that occurred here in the Capitol.

It looks like between now and a fully interoperable system we are into jerry-built systems, at some considerable risk, I take it, to homeland security.

Is there a disability coordinator in this region and, to your knowledge, in other regions?

I regard it as an unplanned event. Sure, there was planning, and, sure, most of the planning worked.

How does the Metro handle three jurisdictions, all with vast amounts of the Federal presence, who have their own quite different gun laws?