John Hoeven

The legislation I have submitted is bipartisan legislation. Co-sponsors include Senator Joe Manchin and Senator Donnelly of Indiana.

So I would say that the unintended consequences to be very cautious in that bill or I should say, be very cautious of that particular rule.

I have introduced two bills and co-sponsored a third with Senator Klobuchar aimed at addressing common sense energy efficiency reforms.

I just want to express my thanks to the good Senator from Minnesota for sponsoring this bill.

If we're going to lift up the caps for defense, I also think we should lift the caps on domestic funding, and homeland security should be one at the top of the list.

It seems to me that if we can combine your effort... that would be of great benefit to the entire homeland security effort.

Where I'm going with this right mix of people and technology is also then going into metrics, managing the effectiveness of our border security, our coastal security.

This is a top priority of mine to make sure that we have a solvent and affordable flood insurance program.

I hope we can accomplish something on a bipartisan basis.

I think we're pretty close to a solution.

I look forward to hearing more about your plans and views today, as well as how we move DHS to be more agile in responding to evolving threats.

We need to find a way to make sure that we're working with the industry to actually help them deploy these new technologies.

The Waters of the U.S. Rule, WOTUS, is creating tremendous problems for our farmers and ranchers, tremendous uncertainty, and I think it should be rescinded.

But that regulation really relies on citizen lawsuits for enforcement.

It's making it very difficult and very expensive for the coal fired electric industry to continue to operate their plants.

We're exporting more coal than ever, and other parts of the world are using coal to produce energy with environmental stewardship that is not as good as the environmental stewardship in this country.

Actually, I have spent a lot of time with EPA working to get something that I think your people feel is workable.

There's just a tremendous amount of regulation that has come out in regards to use of coal for energy production.

I would encourage you to talk to farmers and ranchers, private landowners, as well as industries, the whole gamut of industry sectors on this rule, and I think you'll find that they're very concerned about it and that it is very much a…

How can we measure that and how effective are the preparedness grants in helping improve that preparedness across the country?

Lives saved, obviously, that is a huge priority there.

I have to deal with the immediate issue of what happened in Sandy.

It is very important that, wherever you can, you are measuring that, so we can track it and know what it is.

Administrator, one of the things I mentioned in my opening statement was making sure that as you work with flood mapping, remapping, and flood insurance you are coordinating with efforts by local communities to build permanent flood…

That's it, because, done right, I think it can make a huge cost difference.