Claire McCaskill

Commonsense is taking a vacation.

Let me make sure that I put on the record--I know the answer to this question, but I want it in the record.

It is a sad day when I have to admit that excites me, too.

There is no reason for an ANC to ever graduate. They do not have to.

It seems to me that it is as plain as the nose on your face that this does not work.

I need a better answer than this is just the way we do it, because all this does is, once again, skew the numbers.

I would love to get a room of contracting officers--and maybe you can comment on this, Ms. Connolly or Mr. Vera.

I guess, I understand from your perspective you do not want to penalize the agency or the business that has grown.

Yes, well, they are not.

Taxpayers are going to be paying one way or another. They're either going to be paying through the money we pay to these companies, or they're going to be paying by tolls.

Let me step back from this and look at this from a bird's eye view.

Well, if there's something that we can do as we begin to debate and consider this infrastructure bank, which I'm not saying in any way that I'm not supportive of.

I just wanted to get it out on the table that the reason the private sector is interested in this is not because they want to become part of government but because they see an opportunity to return value to the investors in the form of…

I mean, there's nothing about an infrastructure bank that should bring about a requirement for a highly analytical competitive process and prioritization of projects with public dollars.

Well, I'm a little worried about that answer, because it seems to imply that bringing in other people's capital allows us to have a more rigorous analytical process as to how we decide what projects to build.

Well, what is the prospect for the 1,500 people? I know the rumor was that the Chairman had a lot of trailers in Arkansas, and Joplin is not that far away.

There is a little tiny silver lining in every cloud, and if you were on the ground in Joplin in the days and weeks following that disaster, you saw the silver lining.

What is particularly worrisome to me, and I know it is to you, Mr. O'Brian, is that if Empire goes to the PSC and the PSC says, Yes, you can pass those along to your ratepayers, what does that do for your business recovery?

What do you need, they would just----

OK. I just want to make sure that we take care of the 1,500.

The best solutions are solutions that are done on a coordinated basis at the local level, rather than from Washington.

I do not think a lot of people realize that Joplin is a Mecca for that entire region.

I think it is terrific. I am very proud of the Joplin community because of the way you did this.

So you are saying, What have you got?

It is one of those which comes first, the chicken or the egg...