Patty Murray

In the long run. Will they be implemented on the same schedule?

The Northeast corridor and the non-Northeast corridor, will their cost-sharing requirements be identical?

Will there be identical cost-sharing requirements by the States?

I would just say that I think there is a real concern that we are not hiring those fast enough to meet that 3-year requirement.

Let me turn to Amtrak. I earlier pointed out that you are seeking a 22 percent cut in the total level of funding for Amtrak.

Those rumors of furloughs persist even if you were given more than 99 percent of what you requested for FAA Operations this year.

Can you be more specific about what other things you are going to do in order to comply with the amount of money that you have if you do not do furloughs?

I want to publicly thank you for all the extra effort during these last few months.

I think the President made an excellent choice in asking that she be appointed as the permanent Administrator of that agency.

But shouldn't we wait until we get a more accurate estimate of what occurred with the 2001 tax act before implementing this kind of regime that could cause a lot of disruption among many taxpayers?

I would just say that if we do pre-certification and confuse people even more, then we are doing a real disservice to people who actually should be getting the EITC for very good reasons that we have set out before.

Can you give us any kind of time line on that?

Do you expect a lot of EITC payments to be delayed this year?

I was not actually asking about your rationale. I was asking, because you are sending 45,000 questionnaires out...

But you are going to take a look at what happens with the 45,000, and if we are seeing tons of delay...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The President's proposal goes the other away.

The President is pushing for tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor our wealthiest citizens.

You will not find one Senator on this committee or anywhere in the U.S. Senate that supports citizens perpetuating fraud on the IRS.

I would be surprised if you can deliver the bacon on that.

I think I heard Mr. Mead say that the foreign repair stations, some of them are not inspected at all; is that correct?

Especially when we are in an era of worrying about terrorist attacks and those kinds of things, are you going to be increasing the number of inspections for our foreign repair stations?

We are not hearing from anybody. And I do think they need to talk to the airports and to the unemployed workers, as well.

I will hold on my other questions and let other members of the committee respond and then come back to Ms. Blakey.

I know you are not going to let me pin you down, but there is a rumor swirling that the Administration has drawn a line in the sand at $900 million.