Kelly Ayotte

I think there was somebody who--who kindly mentioned the fact that, you know, you would want to make sure--and I think it was you--that, you know, while the Federal regulators had authority to do whatever they needed to do against…

As this committee draws its conclusions from Chairman Rockefeller's report, what is your industry's view on having one Federal standard, whether it's the banning of third-party or some other solution?

The way to eliminate that, without having to go through, you know, the heroic efforts of most people on this panel, is to simply ban these third-party charges.

I appreciate your willingness to speak with your industry colleagues, and I look forward to your supplement.

Thank you. Mr. McCormick, I wanted to follow up with you.

If you're a bad actor, do they even send the notices?

We would also be interested in looking at, is making sure that the tools--on the law enforcement end, that they have the tools that they need to go after the bad actors.

I want to thank you for holding this important hearing.

So do the math. That's well over a billion dollars in profit.

According to the financial information that the Committee staff has reviewed, telephone companies earn a dollar or two every single time they place a third-party--an unauthorized third-party charge on their customer's bill.

Now, one reason, however, the telephone companies don't really crack down on crammers is, they make money from cramming.

I would liken it to Whack-a-Mole.

We just want to create a positive climate for all of them to do that, particularly in these difficult economic times.

I wanted to thank all of you for being here and for the important work that you do.

I wanted to thank Madam Chairman for having this hearing, appreciate it.

And just to be clear, just so I understand, in terms of issues--for example, a do-not-track issue--you envision that this could be something implemented by industry as opposed to us in Congress coming up.

Has there been discussion of whether the Coast Guard would be part of that analysis? Or would you be separate?

I appreciate that the Coast Guard falls underneath the Department of Homeland Security, as opposed to the Department of Defense.

There has been concern expressed about the withdrawal date at the end of December for our military.

I had a brief follow-up on the mission that you're conducting in Iraq right now, of providing security for the oil platforms that are critical to the Iraq economy.

I thank the Senator from Alabama for that question. As the newest member of the Budget Committee, it is an extreme disappointment. I was looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and undertaking the responsibilities of putting forth a…

I thank the Chair. If I may finish. I thank my colleague, Senator Sessions. We cannot afford to kick this can down the road any further. We must act now. We must address our entitlement programs now. I would call on the majority leader and…

I hope going forward that we rely on your recommendations, as opposed to--it is one of the reasons that when I ran this past fall, I decided to swear off earmarks.

I want to thank the chairman and the ranking member, Senator Wicker, again because I raised the issue.

I interpret these Navy decisions as a reaffirmation and a validation of the importance of the Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF).