Tom Carper

I don't think that figure is in any serious dispute.

I am not going to fight to see jobs lost.

Because wise enforcement diminishes the collateral costs that polluters love to push out onto the rest of the public.

The largest cut of any agency, EPA gets a 30 percent cut.

That is not in dispute either.

We do owe those service members, in fact, our commitment to ensure that they have an access to the best quality education.

I am pleased to see that the GAO investigation... has helped to spur the Department of Defense and the Department of Education to begin a better dialogue.

I was 17--actually, 16 years old when I learned that I had applied too late to go to the Air Force Academy.

I would urge you to do that.

Senator Webb was really the driver in the new G.I. Bill, the most generous G.I. Bill we have ever seen in the history of our country.

Good. Do we have to wait until this fall before we can be better informed what is going on at the Department of Defense?

If we want to reward success, how should we be measuring success and this Tuition Assistance Program?

Sometimes, I think maybe, we have our incentives misaligned, and rather than incentivizing not just churning more people through the door, somehow, we have to figure out how to incentivize making sure at the end of the day that the folks…

The Deficit Commission... has provided us with a road map out of this morass, reducing the cumulative deficits of our Federal Government over the next decade by some $4 trillion.

I think it is important to keep those goals in mind.

We care about them and we care about their families and we want them to have the best that we can provide for them.

That seems strange---- especially in a climate where we know that the product that is being delivered, the education that is being delivered to a lot of our students, frankly, is disappointing, even disturbing.

It strikes me as strange, if that is the way it breaks out, $360 million on tuition assistance payments for distance learning courses.

The taxpayers--spent about $517 million in fiscal year 2009 on tuition assistance benefits.

I think it behooves us as, as you said, taking care of the taxpayers' dollar, to find out where that money is going.

The purpose is to try to make sure that the men and women that are serving our country are getting the best deal that they can, a fair deal, and that the taxpayers are getting a fair deal, as well.

I think one of the things that is really important, especially during this period of transition, is for the Department to work closely with the Department of Education.

If I were running a school, it was for-profit, private, public, I would--I am enrolling a lot of students with the taxpayer dollar and I were asked to provide course completion information, graduation completion information, if I were…

It is an important battle, or issue, and it is one that is actually relevant here.

Sometimes, we like--and we had an event this morning, Senator Brown, where some of us were over at a school here in Washington and we were talking about how do we measure success in schools.