there is no reason that the banking community in the District of Columbia... can't establish a new and different way to lend money for the establishment of schools.

Today, I am pleased, Mr. Chairman, that you have agreed to hold this hearing today on charter schools.

We are vigorously pursuing this incubator concept and we want to work with the mayor's office, which has given tremendous leadership.

I give support to Thurgood Marshall and SEED, and so does the chairman, and attention and support to Mr. Domenici's school because what you are doing is pretty terrific and it is working and it is showing us the way.

We need to tackle this as a country because we do need to protect our economy and this is having an incredible impact on our economy.

I listened to the full chairman of the Appropriations Committee and his cautioning all of us that we have no money whatsoever to deal with and even less than we probably think we do.

There's a move underfoot with a broad base in our community to try to consolidate some of the different components.

Because I really appreciate that and look forward to working with you because it's of course important, you know, to our community and there's just such an opportunity if this would work out for the Navy to be benefitted, the taxpayers to…

I hope, I'm certain that what you're doing is benefitting the Navy but the way that you're engaging in a very integrated process with the other parts of the government, as well as with the local community here in the city I think is going…

And to compliment you all on the way that you're doing that with the leadership team here in the city.

I just want to communicate how happy the people that live in this neighborhood are with the way that you have conducted yourself.

I just wanted to thank you for that.