Will it be a major vehicle that nasas going to use to establish priority . And then what kind of challenges did the agency face that caused a oneyear delay to the issue shans of the road map . Thes a stro biology road map that again will come out shortly, the reason that its taken longer is because this science is evolving so rapidly. And how the Scientific Community looks at it, bringing in all these multiple disciplines that want to have a voice in astrobiology because you might have thought ten years ago if youre a helio physicist nothing you do has anything to do with astrobiology and now you say, wait, i can contribute. We have been trying to get the best science from the Scientific Community, get it properly reviewed and get it out as soon as we can and so were happy that its done and its about ready to go. How we use those road maps is definitely comes in several different ways. Basically, when anybody then proposes to nasa whether its to do research, to do a mission, they then
Interest with our pension advance than we would have paid if we simply paid off the interest over time on our existing debt. Moreover, we learned after the fact that there were alternatives we could have used to reduce our debt load while avoiding the high fees charged by structured investments. We have fully paid off structured investments. Looking back on our experience, it is clear we made a mistake. We should have been more aware of what we were buying. We also want to make clear that we accept that we signed the contract and accept responsibility for that. We should have known better. As we said, ours is a cautionary tale. We want to make two points to those who may find themselves in a situation similar to ours. First, you have other options. You should explore those options and resist the urge to reach for easy, immediate cash. Second, had we known what we now know, wed never have taken out the pension bands with their unreasonable fees. We wish we could do everything over again
But was unable to send a ct, representative. Epa instead they submitted testimony and we have their testimony before us. Instead i ask it be entered into the record. And i also want to welcome to o. The committee senator bennett nd who will be here momentarily ano will be joining us not as a who member of the committee but as t member of the senate who will also be able to participate in this Committee Hearing. He will be here shortly. Mittee h in the interest of time, i wille withhold my Opening Statement the congressmans district tip includes silverton and north tet where the spill occurred. Mr. Tipton was elected to represent this area in november 2010. Orado wh congressman, your perspective i. Invaluable. We appreciate your service and look forward to your statement. Welcome, congressman tipton. He thank you, senator gardner. Extend my thanks to chairman vitter for convening todays my issues. When it comes to the impacts sse were going to be feeling in Southwestern Colorado but in
Understanding of their hometown economies and hear firsthand from their customers about why they visit the area. So planning governments judgment with their ontheground knowledge stands to hurt the economic harm already done to this area. We should see solutions to address these problems in the hands of the folks on the ground who have been working to solve these problems for years. The Good Samaritan approach i have been broaching, please be able to see both our senators from the state of colorado here who join with us in that concept of being able to address the problem and make sure were achieving a positive result, and i appreciate that support as one of the possible solutions as opposed to superfund designation. The animas river is a significant source of revenue in Southwestern Colorado and beyond, especially in the tourism season. This avoidable spill will have a significant impact, a longterm impact, and were working with state, local and federal officials to gather information
The reason why this is important is because the number one complaint that we received was the failure of vfg and its agents to redisclose the redirect risk. Because its illegal to sign away your pension, they could direct the escrow company, the Pension Company to redirect the funds back to a different account and no longer to that es ko account or if the pensioner got into financial trouble, the pension would get caught up and no longer go to the escrow account. They were no longer getting that monthly return. They were never warned that this was possible. A lot of the investors were Senior Citizens and thats how this was packaged to them. They were safe. You get a return each month. Some were told it was government insured, which was patently false. Another miscommunication and lie from vfg was the failure to disclose the fees involved in these type of products and youve heard some about that. They failed to disclose a fee break down on both sides. A pensioner never knee what their p