Mr. Hatch mr. President . The presiding officer president pro tempore, the senator from utah. Mr. Hatch the senate is not in a quorum, right . The presiding officer the senate is not in a quorum call, senator. Mr. Hatch mr. President , i represent a generation of lawmakers brought up on the principles of bipartisanship and compromise. And i believe that these very virtues of the key to my success as a legislator. By putting these principles in practice as chairman of the finance committee, i was able to pass more than 40 bills sent to law during the last congress. And by working with my friends across the aisle over many decades of Public Service, ive been able to pass more legislation than anyone alive today. Mr. President , i draw from these personal experiences to illustrate a simple point. In an era of endless gridlock and increasing polarization, there is no alternative to civility and healthy debate. We would do well to remember this in light of the frustrations we have all felt
February 23 has come and gone and the annual report has not been given . Im not sure the question you are asking. To whom is it referred . I them with the gao. Oh. You are are all over saying it, right . You are the accountability office. We have done our first audit which is what im here talking about today sir. What im concerned about what it alarm you all that they might not be able to meet the person that needs as far as personnel . Thats all they have been able to hire. We understand and someone else enter this . I can certainly respond to that. First of all the annual report actually has been issued. There was a bit of the time delay but you should have access to that at this point and it does require significant review youre absolutely correct on on that and maybe theres an opportunity. But i mean this is what upsets people. You are talking to someone from the private sector. No simply doesnt make sense but im not an expert on government process so im not sure. Sioux this is a N
Senator as you know there were originally seven Pilot Projects that we looked at. For them were approved in three of them are not approved including the 70 Million Dollar mississippi grant. We were deeply disappointed as well because he wanted to try to make this work but at the end of the day the state in nta couldnt agree on terms because the states plan didnt provide the necessary level of detail we needed to meet the statutory requirements. As you know under the btop program there were specific statutory requirements that this had to meet and the mississippi plan that came forward was not a viable alternative that medbee statutory requirements. One of the things that ntia is committed to the. To requirements from 2012 . I believe from the original btop program and my understanding is the Mississippi Program didnt provide broadband so that was one of the challenges of this. But look we wanted to try to make this work or at the Firstnet Team worked very hard and long hours with missi
Access network would cost. Im out of time. Thank you. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Thank you to you and the Ranking Member for holding this important hearing. As a former prosecutor and cochair along with senator burr of the 911 caucus in the senate, i know how important it is to support our First Responders. Im also the state that had that bridge collapse and while everyone saw on tv the First Responders show up and repeatedly dive into that water to look for survivors and all the work of the Emergency Responders, what people didnt see were the 77 men and women at the Minneapolis Emergency Communications center who took those calls. While a number of people died, it could have been so much worse because people were able to get to hospitals. There were dozens more cars in there and people survived because of our First Responders. I have worked hard to strengthen our countrys Emergency Response network in part by sponsoring and working on the legislation that led to the creation o
First net is their first priority. Because this is no pra jorty of comment about people that we work with, but first net is a secondary item for them. They have a fulltime day job and we pile on top of that. We probably dont get the urgency that we feel about things. So to the degree we can take accountability and responsibility for those functions well obviously follow all the rules and regulations but we would have an opportunity to move more quickly. Id like to see what we can do about improving that and also taking responsibility from commerce and obviously e we wouldnt do that until such time were prepared. We went through that process with our finance organization. Initially, they provided support for us. Today we do a lot of that work ourselves. So i think we have demonstrated we can bring in the right resources with the right talent and training, put the controls in place to cause people to feel comfortable to fullfill that. Id love for you to submit more of that for the record