Elizabeth Warren

We are spending, this year, $700 billion on defense, and the only priority I hear from you... is 'more.'

The long-term-debt issue, if you look at the CBO's 20-year projections, is clearly driven by Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

I think all of those things that you cited are things that also contribute enormously to the national security.

We need to stop treating domestic policy and national security as if they're unrelated to each other.

If we continue to prioritize investment in defense at the expense of infrastructure, education, basic research, then we will have a hollow country.

The security and well-being of the United States are at greater risk than anytime in decades.

Mr. Chairman, does that mean people can still submit stories?

If the customers don't come in for the past month and a half because either the business was entirely shuttered or because they couldn't get there because the streets were torn up... they're going to have depleted cash-flow which really…

It's hard enough to run a small business but these folks are now being asked to take on two jobs, run a small business and run a claims prosecution against an insurance company that doesn't want to pay.

Can I ask you a couple more about this, and that is, cash flow for these small businesses? Has money been forthcoming?

So they haven't told you yet then if they're going to--they've not committed to reimburse you for the time that your business was less than it otherwise would have been if this disaster hadn't occurred?

I want to drill down just a little bit on small businesses.

What we're asking for is some accountability in the recovery efforts.

Have you urged National Grid to reach an agreement with its workers so that you could call on mutual aid and get those people to work here in Lawrence and Andover and North Andover?

So why did it take 13 days from the day that you announced the November 19 deadline, you announced that on October 9 to October 22 before you announced the delayed date for restoration?

So how deep were you into this before you realized--I mean, I can do the math here, that 90 percent of these homes you're not going to be able to fix this problem with space heaters.

You're the ones who have the money. You're the ones who have the resources.

You said we can meet this. Now you've already proven you're not very good at this because you've already missed by a month.

So what you're saying is one of the ways small businesses lost out obviously is if they were closed all together, but the second way is small businesses lost out because there were just a lot fewer people who came in to shop, even if your…

We're going to hold you to it.

And so you're saying that you didn't realize that you were going to blow your deadline until October 22? That's when you made the announcement?

Did you make that date?

So there was always this dueling thing of what check is going to hit for them first and then will Columbia Gas pay the subsequent issue after.

What I'm hearing you say is there's no commitment on the part of Columbia Gas.

We talked about a culture of inattention to safety, putting profits ahead of safety that led to the explosion.