Having an authorization for this program sends a message to the people in control of some of those discretionary-type internal funds.

Would you speak to the danger of not effectively controlling ballast water, and what that could mean for spreading these toxic organizations even further?

I know there was a large one from northern Michigan all the way to the Apostle Islands in Washington.

I think we deserve our own legislation, and not to have it die.

Our bill calls for the Director of OSTP to coordinate the development and implementation of Federal Government activities to improve the Nation's ability to prepare, avoid, mitigate, respond to, and recover from potentially devastating…

It is critical that we expand this understanding so we can improve forecasting and mitigate the effects of space weather events.

I stressed with you the unique challenges that we face in the Upper Peninsula, as we are trying to deal with this situation, primarily the construction season, which is very short there.

It is very frustrating when we have bureaucratic layers that stand in the way of getting the resources necessary to deal with a crisis.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and congratulations, Mr. Bryan and Mr. Gaynor, for your nominations, and, if confirmed, your willingness to serve in these very important positions.

If confirmed, I will look forward to working very closely with you to do this.

on balance, these are programs that are absolutely essential for us to deal with this crisis.

no matter who you are, no matter where you live, you should have access to quality affordable health care in this country.

We have to keep pushing that out to make sure that the States are responding appropriately and have proper guidance from CMS.

we certainly need to have much greater understanding across the country because these pipelines are crossing rivers and other lakes.

We are going to keep working to make sure that we do everything we can and ultimately make sure that we prevent any kind of oil spill from ever occurring in the Straits of Mackinac.

the primary responsibility for cleanup is the company that is operating the pipeline or the spill incident.

the liability for an oil spill in offshore is dramatically greater than inshore.

So those are today's regulations. Of course, the pipe across the straits, that was 60 years ago.

You have a pipe here going along the bottom of the straits that was hit by an anchor, which is the worst-case scenario.

It should not have taken a call from a sitting Senator to have Line 5 shut down temporarily.

I was able to get language recently passed that takes a look at the entire Great Lakes region and now classifies the entire Great Lakes region as a high-consequence area.

I think there's a myth out there that Line 5 is providing an essential energy infrastructure for the state.

I have heard that it's because the focus was on the cables for the Coast Guard, that that may have delayed actually getting visual inspection onto Line 5.

So why would not the company say, 'We are going to show what stewards we are of the environment.'

I certainly don't want to wait until the next disaster to consider what could have we have done to prevent it.