Tom Carper

That said, I think manufacturers in general support all the above discussion in terms of how to fund this as it relates to recognizing, back to the chairman's comments earlier, about the criticality of the infrastructure.

I want to touch again on what you just said about all of the above. Because we have an all of the above energy policy, which I think is good.

What can we do to bolster you and strengthen the ability of you and your teams to do your job as watchdogs.

Engaged oversight, Senator, to read our reports, look at our reports.

Ensure that the FBI complies with the Section 218 provision that the Congress put in place in the Appropriations Act.

It took nearly 2 years until these investigations were fully resolved, and during that 2 years, the Archives was deprived of a permanent Inspector General.

We have to make sure that the money that we are spending, the taxpayer money that we are spending, is cost effective.

I just want to get to the bottom of this and see if we cannot avoid that brick wall and if we cannot actually get this done this year.

It is funding for our overseas contingency operation, Operation Inherent Resolve, for which we have joint oversight responsibilities.

I believe there are at least two off of that list that we wrote to the President about some time ago that are still situations where the IG is there in an acting position.

We were able to accomplish a good deal, sometimes just by writing a letter, sometimes just by announcing a hearing.

I hope this year we are going to take up again Homeland Security legislation, immigration reform, I hope, border security legislation.

Mr. Chairman and colleagues, we may want to do again what we did a year or so ago and keep raising this as an issue, try to establish a sense of urgency, and I would hope that the other colleagues on our Committee would like to join us in…

We learned how to leverage the effectiveness of a small Subcommittee by working with the full Committee.

We need an integrity fund, which is what I was saying at the beginning.

Nobody wants us to waste their money.

I look forward to catching up with you and seeing how it is going.

We know we will never be perfect. But we strive for perfection, because we know everything that we do, we can do better.

In order to form a more perfect Union.

And, the other thing they have been given is a tax code that is not made more simple every year, but generally made more complex.

We are leaving about $400 billion of money on the table of money that is not being collected.

Tom Coburn is gone, but that spirit that he brought to this Committee for all those years is still being nurtured by me.

Addressing these gaps needs to be a priority, given their impact on so many important issues facing our country.

If there is a plan in place that has been followed, that is a good plan that has milestones and metrics that can transcend changes in political leadership in the Departments.

But, we have made progress.