Do you believe that oil volatility is an issue that needs to be addressed?

Clearly you have put on the table some new ideas and points of direction that we should go in.

To me, that's a national priority, to protect those forests.

It seems to me that this is probably not unique necessarily to firefighting in the context of natural disasters.

All of the witnesses mentioned these community preparedness plans. In some cases, I think, we are talking about everything from building codes to boundaries to communications about best practices.

That gives you the latest information.

No community should have to wait for that declaration to get the emergency communication system deployed.

When other capacity is down.

We want to see them protected.

I just want to ask the witnesses. Obviously this is a big priority for the State of Washington.

So you are saying both stop the fire borrowing so that we have more money in advance to actually do fuel reduction preparedness, but then, in addition, be ready for more rapid response with a different kind of network.

I do not know if anybody else or Commissioner Goldmark has a comment on that, but one thing we did hear as we were going around the state is we should have a number, just like on I-90, that you can call.

I think that any legislation really needs to deal with those two pieces.

To me, a more robust communication system that helps both in the communication about the fire, and in the response is something that we need to look at.

Senator Murkowski and I released a bipartisan energy bill. We hope to mark up that bill next week, but critical to that Energy bill is the modernization of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Forty years ago, we created the Strategic…

I definitely view you as two critical assets to the future of our country and the future of economic opportunity for individual workers.

You mentioned something that is very much on my mind and many people's here and that is the notion of energy security and how we switched from being an importer to creating a domestic supply.

I rise today to voice my support for the Every Child Achieves Act. I would like to thank Senator Alexander and Senator Murray for their hard work on this legislation. This bipartisan bill offers an opportunity for real progress in…

it is an embarrassment that we are not spending more time and energy in the United States of America and our territories providing real solutions to the people that live within our boundaries.

energy is the lifeblood of any economy.

we need to look no further than Puerto Rico where electricity costs are over twice the national average.

It was time to move forward and come up with a way that we could solve the problems.

We will incur costs.

S. 1694, the Yakima River Basin Water Enhancement Project Act of 2015 is critical for the State of Washington.

This legislation is an example of how some of the best and brightest are working hard on solutions at a local level.