John Hoeven

Don't those increased costs get passed on to your consumers?

We need to defund it or, better, to deauthorize it, which myself and others here are working to do.

We have to have clean water to do our farming practices the right way.

Director, on the Joint Operations Center (JOC), have you taken steps and are you confident that for any incident that might occur at the White House, that they have the communications capability to get everybody doing what they need to be…

I think with your cyber mission, that lends itself well to also having that defense.

It looks like there will be quite a few.

Is that addressed in this appropriation?

Just one other follow-up question on having adequate personnel, not only retaining adequate personnel, but also the training.

I am going to switch to the September 19 fence-jumper incident and just ask you to give me your report.

And you are confident now for an incident that occurs in one part of, for example, the White House complex, an officer or agent reports up, that your Joint Operations Center can fully take charge of the communications and have everybody…

Yes, it seems to me that you need to report back to us what that policy should be, how long you should retain it.

If the same event happened today, that on-duty supervisor, on-scene supervisor, should relay that information up to the deputy chief of the White House...

Director, talk about manpower. I know you are, I know, perennially short of manpower.

So there needs to be some thought given and analysis as to what that retention policy needs to be, correct?

So you have a clear policy and procedure in place that requires that? That is in place now?

What I am trying to understand is your follow-up now to ensure that an incident is properly reported up the chain.

So that was not complied with in this instance on March 4?

How many of these are new people or additional people versus backfilling, because you have an attrition challenge, too?

Do you have some way to test and verify that you are ahead of the curve when it comes to unmanned aircraft or to cyber?

Is this funding adequate for you to do it?

We're in a global battle for market share as to who produces oil and gas in this country, and we're duking it out with OPEC.

We're at risk for growing our oil and gas industry, our energy industry, in this country versus having it shrink if we don't address this oil export problem and soon.

It's the Keystone XL pipeline that has sort of become a metaphor for what we don't have in this country.

So economic impact right now, $90 billion from hunting and fishing. And you think with this expanded access that this legislation provides, we could increase that further, correct?

I have introduced, or I will be introducing legislation that addresses the sodium piece.