Ben Cardin

I appreciate your testimony. And I just really, first, want to underscore the point that you made about farmers and the importance to our environment that farmers understand.

We have passed legislation--it has not been taken up on the floor yet--that would use the example of Trafficking in Persons report for corruption.

We do need to have government accountability, and that is why conditionality of aid effecting government change is the way I think we need to go.

We cannot solve that problem by going around the governments. You may provide humanitarian assistance to the people that are suffering, but it is not going to deal with the stability of fragile states.

We have a tremendous backlog in maintenance. Before we build a lot of new roads and bridges, are we sure that our current roads or bridges will not collapse?

We need better transit; we need better commuter rail; we need better ideas on rapid rail.

I think seeing it would be extremely important in understanding what has been achieved by keeping our channels open but also the restoration of a major part of the Chesapeake Bay.

I understand in the President's budget submission, he reclassifies the project to compete solely on navigation rather than on the dual purpose and provides $21 million of funding which is an inadequate amount of money.

What you are saying defies logic. What you are saying is that the FBI can save money if it starts taking its employees out of the Hoover Building and putting them into temporary short term leases. Doesn't make sense.

I hope, before you send us a prospectus for our consideration, that we have all of the detailed information available to us.

I just want to underscore the point that Senator Van Hollen made in regards to the congressional appropriations on the original project.

No input at all from the White House?

I understand it is an FBI decision. I asked who was involved in making that decision. Solely FBI?

Of course, we are going through this now with our embassies, and paying a heavy price around the world because we listened to some people who wanted to be in a particular location, and now we have serious security problems that we are…

I would submit to you that you don't have the capacity to expand onsite.

But this building will be at capacity.

Do you have a facility for tomorrow?

You have to harden it the best that you can, which is going to take some space.

Did you figure that into your projections, the realities of politics?

You recognize that you can't proceed without Congress's authorization through our committees, correct?

And what I am suggesting to you, make it two times umpteen years, because that is how this process has unfolded.

I suggest that the information you are giving us right now may be, likewise, a mistake.

I am having a hard time accepting what you are saying here, so I want to be perfectly blunt about that.

The J. Edgar Hoover Building does not meet interagency security committee standards for an intelligence committee graded building.

It is hard to understand how that is going to be met on a 6.6-acre site with 2.6 million square feet.