I have been a constitutional and political science student. I mean, this is Political Science 101 or maybe Political Science 1000.

I do not know whether or not we want to have a weak President who is going to kowtow to Congress or a weak Congress who is going to let a President run all over us.

But there is no law that says he has to even appoint a Secretary of State. Am I correct?

I do not want to see a senior citizen, a person who holds a long-term policy, have to pay one dime under this ACI program.

I would just like to continue Senator Kirk's line of questioning to Mr. Green and to Ms. Harrison.

I am not so sure that I want to see the employees pay higher premiums.

I think it is important, the fact that $1 billion was lost in the program.

It is unconscionable. It is unacceptable.

I would like to see your legislation amended that would allow those employees not to have to bear one additional premium payment because of the erroneous information that they were given in this brochure.

This is unconscionable to do this to Federal employees who have given their life in service to the public.

It is unconscionable. It is unacceptable, and I do not see how we can allow this to take place.

I think that is totally unfair, Mr. Chairman.

So you just got one plan. You got a different compounding rate. You do not have two plans.

So what is the difference between the plans?

When we ask the brave men and women of this country to risk their lives in service to this country, the country in turn has an obligation to protect them from exposure and environmental hazards and provide information and treatment.

This is long. It is about 20 pages.

You have to do a better job, wouldn't you, in getting information out to the public that this thing is coming randomly to your home and your address and that--you should really have a better explanation for it.

I am concerned about the undercount in the African American and the Hispanic communities or even the poor communities.

And you are putting that burden on a taxpayer to go through all of this without some type of promotional advertisement information----

I am not one of those that support your canceling the arrangement with ACORN because I think ACORN is getting a very unfair assessment based on some agendas that have nothing to do with service to the community.

I hope that you would look at that again, and I will be following up with you.

Our veterans deserve the best possible care, and no entity is in a better position to understand the unique needs of our veterans than VA providers.

Is there a staffing problem there?

Contracts should be used sparingly, and only in cases where the VA is unable to effectively provide a necessary service.

I believe that we are not seeing the proper transparency and accountability in the VA's contracting procedures.