Mary Landrieu

I think that is a very important point. I mean, as happy as it sounds to designate a special lane for prescreening passengers, it would be very aggravating to be a nonscreened passenger and stand there for 45 minutes watching no one go…

I think this should be an issue for mayors that are trying to promote their cities and for Governors that are all about creating jobs and opportunity.

The Visa Waiver Program must be expanded quickly to include our most important potential trading partners like Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Poland.

We want to see some of these custom approaches and we will be pushing.

Let me ask Administrator Pistole. Airline pilots and flight crews are subject to extensive background checks.

We appreciate Senator Landrieu's interest in this topic, which we have also explored at length.

Let me ask this--probably lots of good people are frequent flyers, but there might be some bad people that are frequent flyers.

I applaud your efforts to move away from a one-size-fits-all screening approach to a more risk-based approach.

Is there anything that this subcommittee can do or this Congress to give you any latitude to expedite?

I really appreciate the hard work that you do.

I just think it's not right to ask our veterans to wait sometimes 3 and 4 years for a resolution of their case.

I want to first thank you for your extraordinary service.

While reading your testimony, I was most interested in what steps you take to increase the percentage of leased onshore lands which are currently producing.

I say we cannot afford not to make them.

We are losing 25 to 35 square miles of wetlands per year--about a football field an hour--which places millions of lives and critical national resources at alarming risk.

I'm going to write a letter to the President, and ask you all to sign it, and ask him to adjust his budget.

There's no way around it. And until we can figure out a way to put more private and public money on the table, we're not going to get there.

This budget that we have in front of us... simply does not have enough money to maintain or invest or build the structures that we have to to build an economy that lasts.

And I agree with the Senator that we have to think big, but we're going to need a bigger budget to do that.

If there was ever an example of what's going to happen, when the levees broke in New Orleans... is there any other case study that needs to be presented?

This budget is wholly insufficient, and it's not your fault, Madam Chair. It's our fault as the general Appropriations Committee.

I can honestly say, of all the committees I serve on, there is no budget that is in more crisis than this one.

We also have to be sensitive to the taxpayers that are picking up this tab.

It's going to bankrupt us. We have a problem as it is under the one-for-one.

If we don't really understand this mitigation, sort of one for one, like if you take an acre of wetlands, you have to replace it, I'm all for that.