Welcome one and all. Great to see our witnesses. Great to be here with senator johnson, and well call this hearing to order. I appreciate the effort of all of you to get here today. Im glad were having the hearing today, and not tomorrow. If we were having it tomorrow we might not be having a hearing. Todays hearing, as you know, is focused on the costs of not being prepared for extreme weather events, and exploring the ways that our federal government can increase resiliency in our communities, and just to underbehind this, and save money. Save money in the long haul. We have deficits coming down, theyre still too much. Down from 1. 4 trillion, i think, four years ago, this year expected to be down to about 550 billion. Only 550 billion. Thats still way too much and we have to continue to look in every nook and cranny and figure out how do we save more money. Thats the focus of todays hearing. But, i will try to take about five minutes for my Opening Statement and yield to senator joh
Entrepreneurs there are currently 9 million this is the only statistic i will give. There are 9 million coming over the next decade i and the odor of Senior Living solutions for the first time to abide assisted Living Solutions to Public Housing in miami 1996. In fact, he may not remember revisited 1988 in reverse so happy to see you there. We have worked with public and private entities in 23 states. Later we will open the first public assisted living facility right here in washington d. C. Our projects with medicated in medicare spending generating thousands of jobs and helping the profit margin. For the past two years we have partnered with low income tax credits for Affordable Housing and investors to grow our bottle that has required a major of undertaking on our part. In 1995 i created senior giving solutions as a forprofit going to grow the firm we had to be propelled by profits under the secretary of beijing i developed a very good understanding of aging issues with a good netw
Proactively preparing for potential disasters and readily responding to a situation as it occurs. Across the department, from fema, to mppd to science and technology, we work with a wide array of government, private and nonprofit faithbased organizations to build and foster resilience. Not as a concept, but as an applied reality. Fema is leading implementation of the National Preparedness system. My colleague here today will discuss our Critical Infrastructure, security and resilience programs, and in my office, the office of policy, we coordinate resilience initiatives and policy across the department and are working to create the framework that fosters resilience and gives a coherent baseline. Id like to share one example of some of the important work that weve been doing. Were creating a program called resilience star based on the energy star concept which you probably are familiar with for appliances in your own home. In this case, it will help ensure that homes will be built to vo
We stole him from san jose at the tender age of i think 29 or 30 to come all the way to the National Association of environmental control. If i had half the energy of this guy, i would be president and Vice President. Hes an amazing guy. Very proud of the work that you do. Thank you for joining us today. Our second witness is from a bigger state than ours New Hampshire, and kelly ayotte cant with be us. Dr. Paul is it kirshen . Dr. Kirshen, Research Professor at the university of New Hampshire. What is your mascot there . Wildcats. Wildcats, yes. Weve had some rough football saturdays against the wildcats and the blue hens. Were all the happy to welcome you here. I understand your research focuses on engineering and management as well as Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment adaptation, planning. Its a mouth full but were happy you could join us. Thanks so much for coming. Lindene patton, my mother was a patton, chief climate product officer for Zurich International group. In this ro
The government. So i look forward to this and thank you very much. Were just glad that you could join us, senator johnson and me. Thanks so much for coming for your comments. When along when senator begich was speaking i was reminded of all people senator mick enzi from wyoming, as my colleagues know, i oftentimes cite him, he may be later here today. He has his 80 20 rule that is one of his Guiding Principles in terms of how to get things done and the 80 20 rule is basically, we agree on 80 of the stuff. Here in congress. We disagree maybe on 20 . Lets just focus on the 80 that we agree on. And well set the other 20 aside until another day. And today i think were going to focus on the 80 that we can agree on. And to help try to path for just the congress but for our country. The one of the people whos not here yet will probably be here in a little bit is senator from arkansas mark pryor. They have a saying in arkansas, whenever you see a friend, and mark pryor said this to me about a