John Thune

Thank you for your service and appreciate you being before the Committee today.

Mr. Hanna, I appreciate the ongoing debate about auctioning versus allocating the D Block to first responders.

I represent a very rural State. South Dakota is a state that is made up of rural areas.

Under any circumstance, could you envision a public/private partnership that could manage such a network in a manner that meets the needs of first responders?

The U.S. could face a bond market crisis if politicians do not act soon to start cutting the Nation's debt.

You did a terrific service with your work, and although I did not agree with every piece of it, the body of work I think was exceptional.

The proposed increases are great, but at some point, the Administration is going to have to lead in figuring out how we pay for this stuff.

I do not want to beat a dead horse, because I know it has been talked about already at some length.

I am not a big fan of the Infrastructure Bank, as you might expect.

I hope that you consult with Administrator Jackson about that approach and having Congress come to some solution.

In rural areas of the country, we are not anticipating we are going to see any high-speed rail anytime soon.

I, frankly, do not think that if you get west of Boston or east of San Francisco that you are going to see much transit investment.

Much of Indian country is faced with unacceptable levels of suicide and, unfortunately, tribal youth are especially affected

In the past few years, there has been an increased number of impact aid school districts that have contacted me for assistance.

I think in a fantasy world where we were not fighting a war on terror, we might not have had to spend money fighting a war on terror.

The CLASS Act, which was scored in the near term as a revenue raiser, is, I think, going to be a huge deficit increaser in the out-years.

I do not believe that this Congress is really going to cut $1 trillion out of Medicare.

I just do not subscribe to that.

I mean, saying we need to have a conversation somewhere down the road about this, that is not leadership.

I think the immediate target should be reducing the deficit by 2.5 percent of GDP.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the testimony of our expert witnesses today, and like many of my colleagues am very concerned about steps we can take to get the economy back on track and to deal with these problems of spending and…

There will be some big issues debated here, and I look forward to engaging in that debate.

The importance of maintaining that leg of the triad is, in this Senator's judgment, critical. It sounds like, from what the Senator is saying, he understands that as well.

If you make an assumption that you are going to take the additional 20 delivery vehicles out of the bomber fleet, you would take it from 60 down to 40 at a time when we have about almost 120 bombers in our inventory. That is a significant…

It's like a new little card or something on our computers, right?