Mary Landrieu

I just want to commend you for being open, but I guess caution that we proceed very slowly because of some of the things that I outlined.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton will shortly introduce the 'Federal Fair Compensation Act' which would go a long way to addressing the situation.

Congress ought to move this legislation or an alternative quickly.

One major benefit for the District, with no budgetary impact, endorsed by President Bush, is to release the local budget from annual Congressional approval.

I urge my colleagues to examine the benefits of this proposal as legislation makes its way through Congress.

I look forward to hearing from the city on the status of the District's economy, current Federal funding priorities, and a summary of the fiscal year 2004 local funds budget.

The last 2 years have been unprecedented in the amount of discretionary Federal dollars that have gone to the city, as well as an increase in congressional confidence in local leadership.

However, long-term outstanding economic pressures on the city and continued service challenges in such areas as public education and child welfare will require a new partnership with the District.

Considering current spending pressures of approximately $50 million, I would be interested to learn how the city is planning to spend these new funds.

I am pleased to see that the District has been careful to look ahead and address looming budget pressures while maintaining priority services.

So why do we continue to leave the District's foster children stranded in this equally critical time?

Before this meeting is over, someone has to take responsibility to provide at least to me and to my staff an accurate accounting.

I'm going to have to have these numbers to do any of this work.

One of the issues, Mr. Chairman, is that they only have files for kids that have had a change in their placement.

Would you have liked that?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think this is a very important component to obtain this initial placement assessment by getting the general information from family and neighbors.

I think you mentioned, Senator, we should try to place children with relatives.

I may be misunderstanding, maybe I heard the testimony wrong, but I'm trying to determine when the car accident occurs, are the children in the car accident brought to you?

It's a very limited evaluation of the child.

But in that stop, do you do a comprehensive evaluation of the child's general situation so that you could provide foster parents with some meaningful information about a general initial evaluation of their physical health, maybe some of…

What I am not prepared to do is to wait another 5 years for some of these changes to take place.

That is what we are determined to end.

I do not think we can get much other reform done unless you get that caseload down.

We want to step up the advocacy as an independent voice, you know, helping us all to really stay focused on the reforms.