Mike McCaul

No political party should remain silent about it.

I personally think it should be DHS.

I tend to disagree with that assessment, because as you mentioned, civilian control is important here.

I think it provides clarity and guidance as to who should be in charge.

The technologies that Representative McCaul and Ranking Member Cuellar and I went and saw at Laredo were part of one of those operations.

If we secure the land borders and the maritime borders people will...

This is something that we certainly want to look at as to how we can do that.

How do we pay for this?

What are we going to do with the billions of dollars of assets, which includes technology?

I think a visit to the Joint Task Force North, which seems to be the plug-in between the DoD and the Southwest Border and DHS, would be very productive.

If every 6 months we think they are about to get a bomb and they do not... that is a level of victory, but it is not a policy.

I hope today to gain new insights into these and other challenges in the hopes we can move forward, building a strategy for dealing with Iran that is both effective and responsible.

The Qods should be designated as a foreign terrorist organization. I think that would be helpful.

I do not think anybody wants to go to war with Iran. But I do think we need a tougher response.

I agree with you that we have had a timid response to Iran since 1979.

I believe that Iran is intent in attacking us in our homeland.

The Iranian government is a threat to the international community, building weapons of mass destruction.

I think that it should be done more efficiently and not take 3 years to do that.

I do think that we should have had more in terms of aviation assets pre-positioned.

We did pass, you know, a short-term continuing resolution, which does fund FEMA. It's a clean funding bill, which I supported, particularly given what's happened in the State of Texas.

I think a lot of people were very angry and upset about that when they got that news.

I believe the fire starts Sunday night. Monday, we're out there. Wednesday, they arrive from California.

I don't know how they--how it survived the fire, but it certainly--it demonstrated a lot to me, that we are going to prevail.

Let me echo your sentiments about the local volunteer firefighters. They really were the heroes of this story.

The State of Texas remains to be a tinderbox, and I think it's very foreseeable, as it has been this past year, that we'll have many more fires, unfortunately.