One of the recommendations, I believe, in the Red Team review was that it be a continuous sort of review.

Are you still on track to finish the facility under the $6.5 billion cost cap?

It doesn't make much sense to the guy on the sideline to look at that and say, okay, you want deeper ports and you want to fix locks and you have the money in the bank but you won't spend it.

I mean, eight reauthorizations to the Higher Education Act since 1965, eight groups of well-meaning Senators, eight groups of well-meaning legislators.

If you had $6 billion, would you rather spend it each year on subsidizing a 22-year-old mature technology or $6 billion of energy research?

So you need for us to act to be able to use those funds.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The project is not just important to Chattanooga, but to all of eastern Tennessee because of the number of jobs affected.

If wind was mature in 2011, is it not even more mature today?

Of course, Senator Feinstein's passion and urgency for getting the nuclear waste out of the sites in California where reactors are not operating in the 78 sites, getting it out of spent fuel and dry cask to a single--the easiest way to do…

It could go to Yucca Mountain or to one of the repositories that we're envisioning through the legislation Senator Feinstein and I are working on.

I will give you credit for being a consistent supporter of the small reactor research and support for certification and licensing activities.

the lock could close in a few years unless progress is made.

These are three extremely important steps to give our country the inland waterways that we need.

SHRM greatly appreciates your leadership on this important issue and commends you for convening a hearing.

I have said in statement I would like to double energy research.

I would like to see that. I would like to see some estimate of what the backlog of projects is, what the estimated work plan is over the next several years, and how the funding that is expected to come in from the trust fund and the…

I think you have testified that you are doing everything the courts ordered you to do in terms of proceeding towards completing Yucca Mountain, correct?

The cost of regulation is one. The low cost of natural gas is another.

Moving on the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge, it is a one of a kind tool to discover how materials and biology work.

2022 is the target date for completion of the mercury treatment facility.

I want to thank you for yourself in the Cabinet. That is not always an easy job, but you come to it very well prepared.

I would like to be spending the $6 billion on energy research instead of a subsidy.

So 2017 would be the date, the estimated date, for 90 percent design completion.

I'm encouraged by that. I think the combination of the kind of accountability... has made some good progress.