Brian Schatz

I am proud to again join as co-lead on this measure to protect Native languages.

I don't want to overreact here, but I would like to understand the extent of the problem.

Since then, Congress has continued to build on the foundation of this law, passing legislation such as the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act of 2006.

More than 30 years ago, Congress formally rejected past Federal policies that tried to silence Native American languages.

We have heard about this in a couple of cases. In fact, we wanted to know what we should do about it.

Last month, Mr. Secretary, you said that telehealth can be a godsend. I agree.

The U.S. shares a unique political relationship with the native Hawaiian community.

Do I have your commitment for that?

Do you believe that Medicare beneficiaries should have access to telehealth, no matter whether they live in rural or urban areas?

The idea here is to establish a reserve fund so that you don't have to come back to Congress in order to respond to a public health emergency.

Unless Congress acts, we will go back to the Dark Ages, with very limited access to telehealth.

I am hoping that you will consider expanding the scope of the Tribal Health Research Office to include native Hawaiians.

I have a bill with Senators Feinstein and Grassley, which passed the Senate, did not pass the House, to address some of these barriers.

I passed a couple of laws in this area to enable research.

I want to thank everybody for coming today to discuss this critical topic.

We look forward to receiving your technical assistance on this particular question, because I worry a little bit that Congress is just going to say, there shall be coordination, and then assume that it is going to occur.

I think we also need to create a disaster recovery fund to allow HUD to get assistance out faster.

I especially want to thank Senator Collins and her staff for working with me to authorize the CDBG-DR program.

I am wondering how we can tweak these programs to recognize that it is renters as well as homeowners that we want to provide assistance to.

But just so we are clear. You know, it is not just HUD inventory that we are worried about, it is renters all over the lot who may be in, you know, market rate, un-subsidized.

Historically the amount of funding that a grantee gets is dependent entirely on how much Congress provides

Thank you to all of our panelists. I want to continue the line of questioning from Senator Murkowski regarding mental health access and suicide prevention.

President Biden has put forward a plan as part of the American Jobs Plan to address those issues, to dramatically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and move toward a clean energy future.

The Obama administration put forward a Federal Flood Risk Management Standard. Unfortunately, the last Administration, the Trump administration, eliminated that standard.

We believe that the legislation, however, is a true attempt to hit the sweet spot.