Susan Collins

I want to associate myself with the comments that have been made, to express my great concern on what the real-life impact is if Government is unable to function.

What percentage of FHA's insured loans are delinquent at this point?

My final question, because I know that we do need to adjourn, concerns the capital reserve ratio.

It is the height of irresponsibility if Government is allowed to shut down, and would represent a colossal failure that would reflect poorly on everyone involved.

At your previous appearance before this subcommittee, you recommended a reduction in the loan limit from $729,750 to $625,000.

We simply must resolve this issue.

You have to better define what your needs are and establish the requirements up front.

I appreciate that you were forthcoming, but any nominee who was not forthcoming and tried to conceal errors on his tax returns would be in deep trouble with the Administration, I would hope, as well as with this Committee.

Every nominee is expected to be forthcoming if there are errors on their tax returns.

I agree wholeheartedly with the concern of this Committee.

It is extremely troubling to me that the Department would have so little notion of how many contract employees that are working at the Department that it could be off by a factor of 100,000.

It is very troubling, therefore, that more than half of those projects are in serious trouble.

I had concerns at that time about Mr. Borras' lack of experience and his spotty compliance with our tax laws.

I am shocked that there is a 1993 IT project that still has not been completed or abandoned.

But, frankly, if it had been a Resolution authorizing the use of force, I probably would have voted against it.

The administration has said repeatedly that the removal of Qadhafi is not a military objective, it's a political objective.

I think Congress has been completely irresponsible to not make the DOD appropriations bill our highest priority.

I believe that Resolution should have come before any military action.

I am increasingly worried about the impact not only on the Air Force, but on the entire Department, of the Pentagon having to operate under short-term continuing resolutions.

Regardless of my individual view on whether that is a wise operation or not, there is no doubt that as usual our military has operated superbly.

The Administration's proposal to limit Operation Stonegarden to the Southwest Border is ill-advised, and I am glad that it has been repeatedly rejected by Congress.

This successful operation demonstrates once again the importance of sharing intelligence information across the agency silos.

I hope your comments mean that you will endorse the broader bill that the Chairman and I have introduced.

We called upon the Administration to create a strategy to ensure a unity of effort among Federal departments and agencies.

I am wondering why we are not increasing the threat level.