John Mica

The actions taken by EPA in really ignoring you and allowing whistleblowers and others to be intimidated, this has undermined your position as Inspector General to conduct your legitimate investigative oversight responsibilities.

I have never seen an instance in my 21-plus years of 47 Inspector Generals coming together and saying that their oversight was being obstructed.

I think it would behoove you to contact them, and we'll also.

We do have some serious issues here.

We're trying to also stay ahead of the curve.

We need some Federal standards and we need also new tests that have acceptable standards to evaluate people who are on the job in transportation and make certain the public is safe.

But at least they're involved in setting standards; is that correct?

I'm getting back reports on California that a news reporter told me he went out and he said it's a whole different world in the uses.

Do you plan or will there be a plan to check some of these states?

I would like to find out when we'll have that data.

I think Mr. Michael testified they started collecting some data as recently as 2007.

I said nearly a quarter of a million people had been killed in the last dozen years on our highway. It's nearly a half a million people.

My goal is to get the size of the bureaucracy down, consolidate the space and save taxpayers money.

Yes, they looked at them, but they looked and got different treatment depending on whether they were progressive or Tea Party.

If you were targeting progressives, if this was all about progressives or liberals, the ceiling would be coming down.

I have sat with DOD and Post Office, and my mind just spins from the amount of property that they have that we could better utilize and dispose.

Five thousand jobs could be created by making that a port container full operation.

Heaven forbid we should have agencies utilizing space.

The legislative remedies do take time. Mr. Denham and I have introduced measures, others have introduced measures.

And save the taxpayers a lot of money.

We think the list is not totally up to date; it is not complete and it may be inaccurate in some ways.

This is some of the most valuable real estate in the United States of America.

I have a property now that I don't think VA should occupy with VA employees.

We need to get those on the market, get them utilized, look at whatever we can do with those assets.

I am hammering them to get rid of the properties. I am hammering them to find creative ways.