I hope... that you will assure me that OMB will not issue any procurement preferences that create artificial barriers to competition.

The President's new health care law is already causing health insurance premiums to increase for many employers and employees.

The failure to extend existing tax relief would make an already stagnating job market worse.

I want to thank the Chairman for holding this hearing.

I am pleased to join my colleague from Maryland, Senator Mikulski, in introducing the Positive Aging Act, which will help to increase older Americans' access to quality mental health screening and treatment services in community-based care…

your recommendation--looking at the threats, looking at the need to project power and ensure access--is a Navy that would be sized at 346 ships.

we really need is an assessment that is unconstrained by the budget requests.

the practical reality is that it is not going to be, given that the same people who are involved in the budget analysis and the budget request are also performing the QDR.

We expect the utmost honor and dignity to be given to those buried at Arlington.

Gross mismanagement of these sanctified grounds has tarnished the sacred trust and shaken many military families.

How are the families supposed to find the gravesites of their loved ones?

You don't think it is a problem that gravesites are mismarked?

But Mr. Metzler, you have an IG report that identifies 100 graves without the proper burial stone, that----

Mr. Metzler, this is really important, because what you are saying right now is at odds with what the Army IG report says.

And you specifically asked for more money and more staff and were turned down?

If you thought the money was being spent for the wrong things, if you thought you were understaffed, whom did you relay that to?

Doesn't the staff rely on those maps when they direct the family members to the gravesites?

So do you dispute the findings of the IG report that there were 100 unmarked graves, that there were scores of gravesites misidentified on the maps, that there were burial urns that had been unearthed and their contents discarded?

I understand that, but it seems to me that the VA's system, despite its deficiencies, is better than the paper system that you are now using.

Well, given the amount of money that you are spending to develop a new system, I have to believe the contractor would have been willing to license that system to you.

I feel so strongly that the financial burden of providing the data that would lead to the most accurate possible flood maps shouldn't fall on the communities. It should be FEMA's responsibility.

That obviously is $26 million less. That is more than a 10 percent cut.

To help communities tap into that funding source, because for a community to have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to produce data to challenge these maps is really difficult during these tough economic times.

I support FEMA's efforts to modernize the outdated flood maps with new modeling and more detailed data.

I rise to introduce the SAFE Port Reauthorization Act of 2010. This bill extends important programs that protect our nation's critical shipping lanes and seaports from attack and sabotage. The SAFE Port Reauthorization Act of 2010 is…