Mark Warner

I have empathy for Secretary Johnson's notion of calling elections critical infrastructure. I think they are, but I get the notion of the pushback.

The truth is clear that 2016 will not be the last of their attempts.

During the 2016 election, officials at both the Federal and State level were caught flat-footed.

I think it's very important, because I understand you've got to have a cooperative relationship, but I do think our constituents, our voters, need to know if a State or a jurisdiction is not stepping up.

I think it is critical that, even if you don't want to highlight this, someone needs to highlight those states or localities that perhaps choose not to participate or not to move to a paper trail.

I made sure in Virginia that we took out voting machines that didn't have auditable paper trails.

I remain concerned that we're still not fully prepared.

The threat is real and growing.

I think it is time that we have that clearly articulated doctrine.

You will be entrusted to lead thousands of dedicated men and women of the NSA.

Will you commit to ensuring that this committee will be provided with all the information requested pursuant to our ongoing Russia investigations?

I can assure you that this committee will faithfully follow its charter and conduct a vigorous and real-time oversight of the intelligence community.

If I could ask the Senator a question--we may come back for a more formal colloquy at some point. We are working on some additional language to further reinforce this point. I thank the chairman for his good work on this bill. I am…

I hope DOD, which has gotten a very generous bump-up in the last budget--if you're going to take this on, it would be very disappointing, at least to this Senator, if we came back and said, 'Well, we didn't have the dough to do it.'

I think getting more members engaged, because we are losing good people.

I think, just before I get my last question in for Ms. Farrell, we need both reciprocity and portability.

I think we particularly lose on the government side, where people would come in and serve at a much perhaps lower salary than they would on the industry side, but because of the security clearance.

The backlog of 700,000 security clearance cases is our industry's number one priority.

Just last month, at an open hearing the Director of National intelligence, Director Coats, said that our security clearance process is, in his words, 'broken and needs to be reformed.'

In January of this year--and I again appreciate the GAO witness today--placed the security clearance process on its, quote, 'high-risk list' of areas that the government needs broad-based transformation or reforms.

Stabilizing at 700,000 is not acceptable. It's just not acceptable.

If we can use technology; and two, the closer we can get, at least at the SECRET level, on one standard, one form, one adjudication, and one clearance.

I'm disappointed, and I know you are as well, that OMB did not take our invitation to actually participate.

I think it's really important that we all think about this, and I appreciate the GAO putting this on the national security high risk.

I think it is very, very important when people go about talking about doing away with stress tests or eliminating any kind of enhanced prudential regulations, that is not our intent.