Heidi Heitkamp

Will you, if confirmed, commit to pushing in the next DHS budget for sufficient funds to execute the Northern Border strategy?

I think it is critically important, and I would just ask that you pay particular attention to that problem.

The MHA Nation greatly appreciates Senator Heitkamp's sponsorship of S. 1942, 'Savanna's Act' and strongly supports its passage.

I think, again, in our oversight capacity, we are going to be very concerned about cleaning out the backlog and making sure, and if you do not have the resources, we need to know that because it is only going to get worse if systemic…

We hope your leadership on this issue will lead to tribal tax priorities being included in tax reform.

We need to make sure this consultation process works and that we understand what might be an essential government function for a tribal entity is different perhaps than what would be an essential government function for a State government.

I do want to point out when you look at the budget, which was passed, which foretells what is going to happen in tax reform, there are some pretty serious cuts in that budget that will have a pretty dramatic effect on the ability of people…

That is ridiculous. If you have a government pension plan and you are running a pension plan at a tribal-owned business, you have to maintain a separate pension plan.

I believe that every time the words 'State and local government' appear in the Code, we should also read 'tribal government.'

So, how many of the patients that were treated aboard the Comfort were actually ICU patients?

We hope that Congress can be an effective partner for you.

I think you received an incredible amount of bipartisan support, in part because we understood what role you played in the lookback on Hurricane Katrina.

One of the concerns that I have... is that all of our talk about mitigation... will take a back seat.

I get all that, but I think anybody who looks at this... Why does it seem to be, to me, underutilized?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, thank you to my colleague from New Hampshire for letting me go first.

Nothing like a State disaster the caliber of this to realign all of our thinking.

You cannot look at this and then understand this continues and think that we do not have a huge challenge where we need to look at all hands on deck.

I would tell you that is probably not true in North Dakota. Not true in rural areas.

I continue to be concerned, Secretary Ross, about the lack of public trust and government, and I think that it has a dramatic effect on your ability to do the Census.

It is, of course, critical to get accurate counts there, but we have to make sure that the Census is prepared to meet the needs of rural America.

The lack of even a nominee for the Census Director position is very troubling.

I want to applaud your answer in understanding that the bulk of people, you are going to find pretty easily, and it is the marginalized population that we need to work very hard at getting to cooperate and counted.

I think this is a mistake and risks the success of the 2020 Census in States, especially in the western United States.

Simply put, the 2020 Census is in trouble.

I think it is critically important that you think about these add-ons or these extras that you are doing in terms of data collection because it does negate the relationship that you have with the citizen.