Mazie Hirono

Restoring accountability in the Indian Health Service is not just the name of the legislation, but also the goal of this Committee.

I would also like to submit a longer statement for the record on behalf of the Hawaiian Congressional Delegation signed by Senators Schatz and myself...

This is about much more than just stripping out Native Hawaiian housing programs from a bill.

As both a doctor and a Senator, I find the level of dysfunction completely unacceptable.

It is a powerful message to bring together bipartisan leadership from two Senate committees in support of one goal, better serving Native veterans.

Serving Native Hawaiians is foundational to my service in the Senate.

I am certainly supportive because when you are talking about intermittent energy, storage is a huge part of how we can actually bring all of that online.

I think that is a rather tactful response because in the area of moving toward clean energy and energy self-sufficiency, tax credits and other kinds of support that governments at both the state and federal levels have been very much…

I think that working with their folks at headquarters--their superintendents, their regional directors--they're the people that are going to have to model the behavior in a very transparent and I would say, upfront and almost an aggressive…

Thank you for the work that you have done in exposing some of the challenges facing our National Park Service.

While I think it is great that your employees are now being able to report various kinds of workplace concerns that they have, sexual harassment and mistreatment, that is a very--how should I say?--very sensitive, underreported, kind of…

I think that in this area prevention is really important so there are any number of things that you can do, but a large part of prevention is that people need to know when their rights are being infringed upon and that there are very clear…

I think that the budgets that are proposed for Fiscal '18 will make it much more difficult for the Park Service to take the right kinds of steps to respond to these issues.

I was very astounded to learn that there is a lot of hiring of relatives, et cetera, and I hope that that is another area that you are going to clean up.

Well clearly this is not something that is going to change overnight, so obviously we are going to continue our oversight inquiries as to how you are doing, what further resources you need.

I think it is going to be a major challenge for you all to provide all the kind of necessary resources that you need to really change the culture.

I do commend the National Park Service for undertaking some pretty basic kinds of steps to put in place training, including a very needed ethics training.

The President proposes to cut funding to NPS by almost $400 million and approximately 1,200 people would lose their jobs.

Business is booming at our national parks, which just set a new record for attendance for the third consecutive year.

I am very interested in finding out about.

That is very good. Please keep that up.

I am not sure I understand. There are three submarines right now that should be deployable except that they are needing to be repaired. That is not accurate. Is it?

When you are talking about infrastructure, you are talking about the movement of a number of our troops from Futenma to Guam and recycling through Australia and eventually to Hawaii.

I would like to ask you how are you incorporating the shift to the Asia-Pacific as you consider expanding the fleet to deploy the number of ships you need?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.