John Hoeven

I would point out that since 2008, $12 billion has been taken out of crop insurance support.

We want to make the farm bill as farmer-friendly as possible.

I think there are a lot of programs across the Federal Government that have not contributed as much in terms of help with finding savings as crop insurance.

I have seen that as a traveler. And then when we were down on the border last year, we went to the international airport in Houston, and the technology you had to process international travelers, as well as just the systems and the…

I just have a few questions here, and then that will take care of questions that I have for today.

Just priorities for technology and where you feel you are in terms of having the technology you need to do your job.

Ounce of prevention, pound of cure.

Well, your apprehensions dropped by 30 percent from 2014 to 2015, but we need to understand how that relates to the number of individuals who tried to cross, right, to make that a meaningful number.

Forty percent of the problem is visa overstays, so you are on something very important there, Senator.

I strongly urge you, you know, to continue to do that.

What are you doing to get people in those slots so you can cover the backlog?

Okay. Last question I have is in regard to the honey producers.

The inspector general issued a report in January that was critical of DHS, as well as HHS, in regard to implementation of the Ebola screening process.

We have to make it effectively. So when we are putting this budget together, we can say, yes, that is the right resource allocation.

But the cost for one of those agents is three times the cost for your domestic agents, so do you have the statistics to back that up?

It seems to me that is a real key for your data systems, to be able to get----

What I am after, and any one of the three of you from VA who want to take a stab at addressing it...

We need to improve the Veterans Choice Act.

One of the keys is that this legislation will also give you the ability to provide that service directly.

We have worked to include legislation that enables nursing homes and other providers of long-term care...

We have a big problem with these third-party service providers, like Health Net, that are not providing quality service.

We have a project called the ALEMS cycle that we are working on.

I think that is going to be the key in terms of finding ways to develop this technology and deploy it in terms of making it commercially viable and economically viable, not just technologically viable.

The only plant that I know of that captures CO2 and actually sequesters it for tertiary oil recovery is Dakota Gasification Company in North Dakota which you have been to.

Subtitle D is self-implementing.