Sam Brownback

Tight budgets are going to force us to make the best possible use of government and military facilities.

I think this military has performed very, very well.

I think it's--one of the startling things to me, when I came in as Congressman, was the number of veterans that we were having in our office and coming by that were having a lot of long-term difficulties from the Vietnam war and era.

The budget provides $1.7 billion to family programs and services and I commend the Army for making these programs an important part of its budget.

Because, otherwise, you're going to get a lot of long-term problems, difficulties.

I applaud the Army's new Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, an all-inclusive approach to emotional, social, spiritual, family, and physical fitness, to build resiliency within the Army.

I wrote to you in December to raise the issue of overcrowding in schools on Fort Riley.

And I--boy, I see that thing playing out again, if we don't get on top of it.

I also want to commend the Army for their collaboration with the National Institute of Mental Health on suicide prevention.

I would kind of hold it back, say, 'We're ready to do this, but you've got to change these two things before we're going to put this--we're ready to do it, and we want to do it.'

An aggressive effort in forest restoration and private land conservation

I'm a big person that, if you show people or if you provide an opportunity for people to see something, they really--their imagination catches on and things start to happen.

I don't know of a better way to move up ethanol than do something like that.

These five pillars, we believe, can create higher incomes, better-paying jobs, and attract young people to stay and to come to rural communities.

I look forward to working with you on this year's budget.

We are writing in support of the President's fiscal year 2011 budget request to fund WIC.

We thank the Senate Appropriations Committee for the opportunity to present our views on the fiscal year 2011 appropriations for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

This effort, called the Access, Compassion, Care and Ethics for Seriously-ill Patients Act, or ACCESS Act, offers a new compassionate investigational approval system for treatments showing efficacy during clinical trials.

I really hope--this is my last year in the Senate--I really hope we can make some progress on this.

I can't think of anything you could do that would give more hope to a large group of people that don't have a whole lot of it right now.

It's what we visited about it in my office.

Because I think we owe it to the taxpayer, in these times of, you know, record deficits, to say, 'What is it we can do to get this number down?'

I would hope that we learn our lessons, too, from our past engagement, when we put a fair amount of money in this, is that it does matter whether a country is willing to help itself and structure itself in a way that these dollars can take…

This is very good investment for foreign affairs, in my estimation, for the United States.

We have spent the last 7 or 8 months focusing on developing such a strategy, that includes continued promotion of a science-based and rules-based system.