Mark Warner

I have been critical of NASA's financial and program management.

We asked for the extension of the International Space Station's life, instead of it being cutoff in 2015 as previously planned.

It is time to have an honest conversation about the Space Shuttle and its importance to our short-term capabilities.

We cannot assume the agency will have unlimited resources for every mission it wants to undertake.

We must leverage our existing capabilities and workforce to reach our goal.

We need its scientific minds to be involved in solving today's and tomorrow's challenges in energy, medical research, robotics.

We asked that he consider a strong vision statement. In fact, we specifically said a vision of going to Mars.

We here in the legislative branch are going to try to continue to work with the Administration to refine his plan and change some parts of it.

The President has pledged $3.7 billion for STEM education in the budget, including $1 billion for K-12 STEM education.

I want to continue a little bit along the line of Senator Bunning. I also had some concerns about the arbitrariness of what the standards are of breaking trades, but you have got to draw a line somewhere.

As we sort through how we try to prevent this, we also have got to sort through to make sure that everybody is operating on a level playing field.

I think there is also a bigger problem about market trust here.

I definitely recall, you know, getting panicked calls from some of the folks who manage my investments to say, you know, we do not know what is happening, and to see this $1 trillion loss.

I think we all saw recently, on May 6th, how challenging the merging of the advance of technology, high-frequency trading, and some of the results of perhaps not having totally in place all of the appropriate circuit breaker, stopgaps, and…

But then to have this action, whether it was technology-driven, whether it was a result of the overall actions of the dramatic increase of high-frequency trading, is something that I hope we will be able to get to in this hearing today.

Clearly, we have to make sure our goal is setting rules and regulations that will stand the test of time. We have to make sure we end the notion of too big to fail. I know the approach of the Presiding Officer is to look at size. I think…

Again, one final comment. I know the Presiding Officer is a new Member as well. This is one of those moments when there has been a year and a half of bipartisan work that has gone on, when there seems to be a commonality of interest in…

I think we both agree we want to keep America the capital of capital formation for the whole world. We don't want this to migrate to London or Shanghai or elsewhere around the world. We also know 18 months after we came to the precipice of…

MARK WARNER, Virginia

I have enormous respect for you, and I could live with the situation as long as we got rid of the secret holds.

The focus has been legislation. I do not think the Nation has been diminished.

If you take away Minority resistance, the role the Majority Leader and his senior leadership plays vastly changes in the whole game.

I think, in short, the chief executive ought to have their team in place.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to try bring a little--while respectful of the Senate's traditions and respectful of Minority rights--a little more rationality to this process.

I cannot in any way explain to folks in Virginia, why in a kind of a secret way someone can put somebody's future on hold indefinitely makes any sense.