Gerry Connolly

We will not sit idly by until the blue helmet is restored.

Jane Holl Lute, who is now back in the administration, was the U.N. Assistant Secretary General for mission support, she was outraged as were others in the U.N.

I will never forget on a trip to Darfur meeting with a Major Ajumbo who was with the AU, he was also in the Balkans, and he said our rules of engagements here are very similar in terms of protection as they were in the Balkans.

There is much to be done to strengthen U.N. peacekeeping, and that has been, as you know, the theme we have been discussing and its various aspects most of the morning.

For 61 years, they have served our interest, and you have laid it out pretty well in your testimony all the various aspects of that.

I may be a freshman but the light has stayed on red.

So the users are, in fact, certainly paying their fair share.

It is a great privilege for me to sit up here and welcome back to this committee our distinguished former chairman, Tom Davis.

Without Tom's visions, this Congress would never have come up with the idea of a $150 million matching grant.

We also need to have the active commitment of President Barack Obama and his administration to find emergency stimulus dollars for immediate assistance with these infrastructure issues.

I believe that if Congress acts to finalize the $150 million for fiscal year 2010, that D.C., Maryland, and the Commonwealth of Virginia will all find the matching funds to bring together $300 million annually for each of the next 10 years.

This is an issue that has come out of the regional delegation's examination of the tragedy of June 22nd, this anomaly in Federal regulation where we do regulate for hard railcars on railroad systems, but not for transit.

And is it also true, to your knowledge, that there is no Federal standard in terms of crashworthiness and safety of passengers on transit systems; there is for rail systems like Amtrak, but there is not for transit?

This is the Nation's Capital. It's arguably been called the capital of the free world. And the Federal Government has some responsibility, beyond the initial construction costs, to help make sure that system remains healthy and safe.

There's no question, Mr. Connolly, this is a very valuable tool.

So I'm going to be an enthusiastic supporter of H.R. 2517 and encourage my colleagues to do the same.

As Representative Baldwin indicated, look at other ways of trying to address the issue of fairness in the provision of benefits.

I find it odd that somebody would even suggest inferentially that this benefit provision, could itself constitute discrimination against folks in opposite-sex relationships...

I completely concur, and I think that's the correct way to frame the issue for the Federal Government moving forward.

We've got a lot of Federal employees ready to retire in the baby boom generation. How are we going to replace them...

Dr. Rivolo, you use some pretty strong language. You used the word 'reprehensible.' You used the word 'disingenuous' to describe the Marine Corps management of this project and this particular aircraft.

Yes, but in this particular case we have a report from the GAO that says that in this, with respect to the V-22, this is a chronic problem.

I hope that we can use the lessons from the V-22 to identify steps that we can take to avoid repeating these mistakes in the future.

We should not need the GAO to identify problems with continual and unforeseen increases in cost.

Our acquisition challenges are real. With these systemic challenges, it is not surprising that we have not resolved problems exemplified by the V-22 Osprey.