I sincerely appreciate my colleagues' attention on this, appreciate your leadership and support, Mr. Chairman, to help the people of Florida and Texas recover.

By changing these requirements to 120 percent of--changing that requirement after the storm, not only is it--it is unprecedented, it is unfair, it is damaging and destructive to these homeowners.

Not only did you do so after the hurricane took place so people had no prior notice of this, but remember also that there were tens of thousands of people in the eastern area... This is the largest housing disaster in the history of the…

We need to have this change, Mr. Chairman, so it is a 50/50 split. This is an unprecedented, the biggest housing disaster in the history of the country.

I have got tens of thousands of constituents who are living on the second floor of their house with all the sheetrock torn out on the first level. They have nowhere else to go. These are $400,000 and $500,000 houses. These people are not…

the significance of this discovery I do not think can be overstated. And how vital it is for the Congress, for the country, to stand behind NSF and make sure that you have got the support, the financial backing over a sustained period of…

I want to join my good friend Mr. Serrano expressing my strong support to keep the Arecibo radio observatory open.

I hope will join, and my colleagues will join with me and certainly on our side of the aisle to focus the attention of the country on the urgency of bringing down the national deficit.

I hope, Secretary Ross, that you can bring some of your innovative cost-saving ideas from the private sector to the Commerce Department.

I wanted to be sure to add because we have an opportunity through our hearing today, Dr. Cordova, to talk to the scientific community at large.

And existing law is very clear, has been on the books since 1950s, that an individual crossing the southern border is subject to up to 6 months imprisonment to enter the country illegally.