George Voinovich

You could say to our Committee that you do not need this money right now.

We have a very difficult budgetary environment right now.

You helped draft the legislation, and they put no money in the budget to pay for establishing a biometric air exit program.

Some of this stuff is not real complicated, and I am familiar with what you have done on the border.

It was not reflected in the budget that you submitted to the U.S. Senate this year.

I have been trying since February, again in March, and as recently as last week, to get an answer from the Department on whether or not the Biometric Air Exit Program should be decoupled from further expansion of the Visa Waiver Program.

I am very upset about it. And I am telling you about it, and you should tell the Secretary that I am about ready to go to the floor to talk about the incompetence of your Department.

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It is the same thing as when I got a hold of the Department of Defense and said you guys are going too fast, when I talked to Secretary Rumsfeld about it. I said you cannot do this.

I am leaving the Senate. As Senator Akaka says, we have spent 10 years trying to improve conditions for Federal workers.

Congress also worked to slow down implementation, to transform the System's rollout into an event-driven process rather than one that followed arbitrary timelines.

We thought that was not competitive, that you are not going to be able to draw people, and so we changed how leave is accrued.

I am interested in the observations about the NSPS system.

Congress established a Meet and Confer requirement to provide for stakeholder input.

You are going too fast. Slow down. Take your time. Make sure the training is there because you cannot do this unless you have the proper training.

I will say this, that after looking into what the alternative is, it is much better than I originally anticipated.

I would say that I would take your time and do it right.

We bumped the program up to a $60,000 cap, and $10,000 a year to try to make the Federal Government as competitive as we can possibly be.

We have passed more Federal workforce legislation than any similar period.

I would like to comment that we are talking about 225,000 people in the process that started in March and get it all done by October 1 of this year, I do not know how you can do it and do it right.