Jaime Herrera Beutler

This is obviously--you know, my feeling is this is a significant Federal liability.

I appreciate that, and I love that it is typically you are seeking partners in the community.

Around 56 percent of the individuals with mental illness do not receive that mental health treatment in my district.

I am co-chairing the Bipartisan Addiction and Mental Health Task Force, which is the whole goal is to find bipartisan solutions to our growing mental health and addiction crisis.

I feel like it really is the most vulnerable who are going to pay this price, while we are protecting every other institution in the system of education.

I hate the term LatinX, as someone of Latin descent.

I am a huge fan of our community colleges. I think they are such a flexible, tough key to making sure that our workforce will continue to evolve in the way that it should.

I think marrying that community college time with industry, you know, just access. Just seeing like, 'Oh, is that something I want to go into?' is really critical.

For all of Washington State, there was a 38 percent increase in drug overdose deaths in the first half of this year.

The rate of drug overdose deaths in Cowlitz County has increased by 43 percent in the first half of 2020.

Obviously, there are more questions there, but I wanted to transition a little bit and say thank you for your investment and leadership on both the maternal mortality issue, which I know my colleague Lucille Roybal-Allard mentioned, but…

You have to look at what he did during the insurrection to confirm where his mind was at.

Absolutely. I think they are more attuned to the consensus, the fit within the community...

It has taken a long time and a lot of conversations and push, but now we have finally flipped it to where it is this local driven project, and the Corps is stepping alongside as a partner.

I think we can take some lessons about the importance of the local entities engaging with their Federal counterparts, like the Corps.

I am a big proponent of perhaps having some of the accountabilities more regional or local to better expedite and execute on these type of initiatives.

I mean the U.S. Capitol and the seat of our democracy.

Are you aware of this report, the GAO report, and is that something that you can assure us...

I think it has been widely observed that the Board really seemed to slow down the process.

The House of Representatives has been challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic and, more recently, with the assault on the Capitol on January 6.

So you feel like you have the confidence of most of your officers? I realize you can never make everybody happy. Do you feel like that is an accurate assessment?

And one of the things I think would be helpful in retaining--and that was another part of the question--retaining employees is for I think a change in the culture between the leadership and the frontline officers.

So, just in talking with different officers in and around the Capitol complex, I know there are some whom I have known for a while--I have been here for about 10 years, and I was a staffer before that.

January 6 should serve as a wakeup call that the Capitol Police must make major changes in the leadership organizations and operations to refocus the mission.

GAO has an incredibly vital role in Congress' oversight of Federal spending.