We need to have an accountability structure to see how they are doing, and I appreciate that also being in this legislation.

It is an amazing day that all of you are here, and Congress is gathered to talk about such a critically important subject.

It is imperative that in the process of revamping our mental health care system, that we be guided by scientific evidence and not ideology or opinion.

We will not be silenced. We will make some changes here.

The root cause of the radiological incident was established in a DOE report this past April.

Since the incident, WIPP has been shut down, and the Department has embarked on remediation, training, and rebuilding that will cost taxpayers an estimated $240 million just to restart limited operations next year.

This was no small oversight failure.

This is the hearing on the Oversight Failures Behind the Radiological Incident at DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

Yet the failure to catch this error reflected a much larger systemic failure.

The specific culprit was off-the-shelf organic kitty litter.

This leak, along with a separate truck fire the week before, exposed management and oversight shortcomings both at WIPP and at one of the Nation's premier national laboratories, the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

As part of my 3-year investigation into the Nation's mental health system, I have been meeting with families and caregivers of those with mental illness. Their number one concern is the HIPAA privacy rule. Since its inception in 2002, the…

On some of the issues my friend from Chicago just stated, I couldn't disagree more. Let me explain why, why we have problems with our prisons in America and homelessness. Nearly 10 million Americans have severe mental illness like…

None of us want to have the epidemic of obesity and the problems it brings along with this.

If what you do is sit in front of your TV and eat our food and that is all you do, you will get fat.

I thank the Chairman, and I also thank Representative Grisham for this thoughtful amendment we are working on together, which will put $2 million towards crisis intervention training for State and local law enforcement and also work…

I guess one way I could put this is, for centuries people have tried to deal with the issue is there life after death, and apparently there is in Medicaid, and we will get to the bottom of that today.

What we usually have as our tools in Congress is a carrot or a stick to enhance that.

We are here today to discuss a continuing and increasingly expensive problem: Waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicaid program.

The problem gets worse, the problem doesn't get better, and when it does get worse, you just change the metrics.

Those who won't play by the rules, they need to face the consequences.

None of us are going to tolerate any kind of acceptance of this.

Unfortunately, the Medicaid program is far too accustomed to fraud.

One of those is 42 CFR Part 2, which governs confidentiality protections for all substance use treatment records.

This is critically important. Too many people have died, even during the course of this hearing today.