Just as they served and sacrificed for our country, so, too, must we now serve and care for our veterans when they return home.

We share a common goal of assisting our veterans to reenter the workforce.

I want to welcome everyone to today's hearing titled 'Is It Working: Reviewing VA's Compensated Work Therapy Program.'

I would like to congratulate the gentleman from Illinois, Congressman Randy Hultgren, on winning our friendly wager on the MAC football championship game last Friday. The participants in the game, Ohio University and Northern Illinois…

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in strong support of H.R. 10, the REINS Act, because America's job creators are buried in red tape and need certainty from the Federal Government in order to create jobs. This bill would provide…

One thing is certain: Excessive government regulations are hurting America's economy and strangling job creation. Just this year, new regulations cost our economy almost $100 billion, and this is just the cost of new regulations this year…

Your department is supposed to be looking out for veteran-owned businesses. Why is there such reluctance from the department to follow the intent and the spirit of the law as identified by the GAO?

That is not what Title 38 says.

Where do VOSBs and SDVOSBs fall in your current practice of priority within the Veterans Administration for contracting opportunities?

Obviously there is great disagreement with the VA's interpretation of the law. The GAO disagrees.

Where in the priority scheme do VOSBs and SDVOSBs fall?

I am indeed a great supporter of the balanced budget amendment, and I stand in strong support of it today. You know, it's amazing to me we still keep talking about the Bush-era tax cuts. Those same tax cuts are today's current tax law that…

This is a shame on so many levels as this industry holds the key for economic and national security.

this, to me, is, frankly, as I said, shocking and alarming, that the Administration asked you to make false assumptions.

I guess I am like the average American that wonders why in the world America isn't harvesting its own resources to meet its own energy needs.

These proposals to allow new offshore and onshore energy production will generate substantial revenues.

According to the Obama Administration's own independent analysis, the rewrite of the rule could eliminate up to 27,000 direct and indirect jobs associated with the coal industry.

It is well past time to open a small portion, less than 3 percent, of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to responsible energy production.

It astounded us; after all of the hard work that had gone through so much, after all the taxpayers' dollars we expended to get Virginia into the position it is in, to find out it has been wiped out, and so we are back up here saying…

I am hoping to help be a driver of change influencing better technology and also convincing my environmental friends that the time has come to stop catalyzing wars for oil overseas by blocking domestic hydrocarbons.

The Obama Administration has actively sought ways to put an end to the coal industry through onerous regulations and activist rulemaking.

The second largest economic strength of the United States of America, second only to income taxes is the money we receive from revenues, the royalties from oil and natural gas production of American resources.

What I believe the American people are seeing clearly now is that perhaps it is our fellow countrymen and countrywomen serving us in the armed forces that are rare, precious and endangered.

The federal government has no skill in managing the lands containing oil shale let alone determining what the technology should and shouldn't be.

Virginia is one of the only States that has a comprehensive energy plan.