Energy and Water

The last several years have brought repeated and devastating weather events to many areas of the country, testing the ability of local communities to respond, rebuild and recover.

In many areas of science and technology, American researchers arguably remain the best in the world; however, our margin of leadership is neitheras wide nor as clear cut as it has been in the past.

We cannot continue to under-invest in the short term and pay several times over in the long term recovering from damages that could be mitigated with proper front-end investment.

The threat of nuclear terrorism is one of the gravest national security threats we face today, and we must secure stocks of fissile material.

The National Security missions of the NNSA are vital to the interests of our country and not only to the nuclear weapons program but also to the nuclear navy and nuclear nonproliferation.

Despite my general agreement with the bill we are considering today, I have tremendous concerns with the outlook for this year's Appropriations process.

Despite my appreciation for the innovative and streamlined project model used by ARPA-E, I have repeatedly shared my concerns regarding your program's potential overlap with other areas of DOE. Many of the activities pursued by ARPA-E are in areas where either DOE's applied programs or the Office of Science are also endeavoring to make progress. I believe that there is a place for competition within the Department, but in an era of scarce funding redundancies must be kept to a minimum.