Eleanor Holmes Norton

I regret not having been here to hear the questions, given how this committee has proceeded, proceeding in good faith to try to get a bill out.

The changes that we enacted in MAP-21 are proving what I think we all recognized, and that is many years to put in place to bring about the reforms, rather considerable reforms and vision there.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I thank you for this and the continuing series of very important hearings that the committee and the subcommittee have been holding on MAP-21, and I look forward to hearing from the witnesses on the…

Increasingly, I am coming away with the notion that there is no free money and no easy money anywhere in the public or private sector.

I must tell you that when it comes to building, with the Federal Government itself building, and we have to deal with the CBO, much of what I have heard today wouldn't fly past the CBO because of where the risk is.

We have to know the basis for the 10 years and we have to assure that there is continuous monitoring of anybody who has a security or a top security clearance.

I can't understand the original set of the 10-year notion.

Just to make it clear about the so-called 2 million jobs being lost, the Affordable Health Care Act has apparently freed 2 million who wanted to retire, wanted to leave the workforce, or perhaps get part-time work or to start their own…

Thank you very much, Chairman Begich, first of all, for your attention to the District, for your assistance to the District, and certainly for this hearing.

It had everything to do with the fact that the city then was paying not only for $5 billion in pension liability...

The bundle of issues... encapsulated by having to bring the budget you raise to a body that has no information about it.

The very act of bringing the budget here cost the District on Wall Street.

The District dare not spend its funds until it gets permission from the Federal Government.

I decided this year, in introducing it as my first bill of the year, to call it the 'D.C. Paperwork Reduction Act.'

What I think we are most in need of are ideas about how to fund a 21st-century surface transportation system with transit, roads, with everything that we need in it.

I think we ought to drill down and stop simply talking about cliffs and disaster and let's say what we really mean.

I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for not allowing us to go home in January without casting the opening net for the new surface transportation bill for 2014.

Of course, our major concern is the great dilemma of surface transportation and of this committee.

I certainly had not intended to make an opening statement because Mr. Rahall is shortly here... I want to say, Mr. Chairman, how encouraged I am by your opening statement.

The theme of this hearing. It is a fundamentally anti-American message. Fortunately, it is false.

The Affordable Healthcare Act is not a Government program. Not even single payer.

The Affordable Healthcare Act is going to help that because we have been spending this money on sending these people, up until now, to the emergency room;

Well, I urge you to try to think through some of the ideas you just laid on the table so that you can quiet some of the concerns in the city, and so that we are not faced with the embarrassment of some people not trusting themselves to…

I'd like to ask you, if the District or the Federal Government stuck to the way it looks at legislation...

I just wanted to clarify where the final authority would lie.