Tom Carper

Thanks to all of you for joining us today and for your testimony.

But sometimes, unfortunately, things do go wrong, as we know, and it is our duty to ask whether we could have done better.

I wear two hats today. One is I think of myself as Chairman Boxer's wingman.

I think self-reporting can be effective, but only when there is full cooperation from industry.

I am pleased to welcome both of our witnesses here this morning, and thank you for your stewardship and thank you for your input.

That is why the President has issued his Executive Order, as you know, on chemical facilities.

We like those business models very much. We like those efforts, and we are encouraging more.

I think he said, when good business policy and good cyber policy are one and the same, we know we are on the right track.

I am just going to think out loud.

It should not be like do as I say but do as I do.

In adversity, lies opportunity.

What is the role for the government to contribute and to be responsible legislatively, with our tax code, our regulations, just setting a good example?

We are trying to set a good example. We are trying to partner with the Postal Service.

Senator Boozman who is my wing man, is a co-chair of the Recycling Caucus in the Senate.

All right. Now, if I had a member of my family who worked at one of those agencies, could they participate in the program?

I was just at their recycling center where they recycle all--we have single-stream in Delaware.

There is a good deal that we can agree on and work together on, and that is what the people of America sent us here to do.

Having that kind of analytic rigor behind our decisionmaking is critically important because it then allows us to invest strategically.

We have actually probably done a better job preparing than almost any other State because of the way we are looking at it.

Let us just focus on the 80 percent that we agree on, and we will set the other 20 percent aside until another day.

I believe we cannot afford to ignore the impacts these weather events are having on Federal spending.

The increase in frequency and intensity of those extreme weather events are costing our country a boatload of money--not just the cost that is measured in lives that are impacted but in economic and financial costs as well.

If you do prepare, that ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure.

We see it time and time again. The communities that are not as prepared do not do nearly as well.

It is easy in a political environment to move toward the thing that gets the most attention, but it is not always necessarily the thing that has the best economic imperative.