Tom Carper

Almost everybody says we need people to come to work. One of the greatest needs is in terms of cyber.

I was literally present at the creation for the Department of Homeland Security, and we have seen the transformation of 22 agencies into a single department to serve our country.

I think it may have been a decade since we had a Senate-confirmed Chief Financial Officer in the Department of Homeland Security. I think that is awful.

We need to strengthen the financial management functions of the Department, and that remains on GAO's High Risk List.

An agency with a budget the size of this one, it is an almost $100 billion budget, and that is unacceptable.

It is an honor especially to welcome you as one Navy veteran to another.

Jeff is exceptionally well qualified to serve as the Department's next CFO, and I know his long-held institutional knowledge and his extensive experience in budget management will serve our country well.

There is a debate that is unfolding on the floor today.

I think we have a pretty good idea of what is wrong. And we have a lot of good ideas about how to address it.

Everything we do, everything we do we can do better.

Can't you guys just work together? Can't you work together? Can't you get something done?

The situation is not hopeless. Working together, we can prevent the worst impacts of global warming.

We can be proud as Americans that we are leading the pack in terms of addressing climate change.

How about heat waves? Absent climate change, would we be experiencing events such as the Pacific Northwest 2021 heatwave, or this past summer's heatwave in the U.S.?

The human influence on extreme weather and its impacts on people is quite clear.

Making more informed policy decisions will help us protect more Americans from extreme weather and allow us to use taxpayer dollars more effectively.

Would you have said when hell freezes over?

One last question of you, Dr. Wehner, then we will turn it over to Senator Capito.

We are beginning to turn this adversity into opportunity.

We need to do a whole lot of that in the days going forward.

I think the consensus around innovation, American leadership, things like the example I just gave you that would probably save lots of lives in Hawaii or California or elsewhere, I think that is part of the reason why things are moving…

One of the Ranking Members here was a fellow named Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma, who was a climate change denier.

I think we know where we are going if we don't work together, pull together.

As a matter of history, we have heard that this decision reverses over four decades of clean water implementation.

I feel very strongly that we need to value the science.