i was proud to work alongside with senator mikulski and senator webb and former senator john warner last year to pass the federal safety improvement act signed into law in october of 2008. this law authorizes $1.5 billion over 10 years in federal funds for metro's governing washington metropolitan area transit authority matched dollar for dollar by local jurisdictions. for capital improvement. the technical details of the arrangement are nearly complete and when done, metro will finally have the dedicated funding sources. i compliment the states of virginia, maryland and the district for passing the necessary legislation. earlier this year as a regional delegation along with our new colleague, senator mark warner, we requested the appropriations committee provide the first $150 million. while this is a substantial down payment it's not nearly enough to fulfill all of metro rail's obligations. at the time of the bill's passage metro had a list of ready to go totaling about $530 million and $11 billion in funding needs over the next decade. yesterday, i joined with my colleagues from maryl

warner of virginia. mark, do you have any opening comments you'd like to make? >> senator tester told me since i was late i had to reserve my comments. >> well, john runs the show around here, so we appreciate it. let me start with some questions. i'm going to leave the clock off. i'll invite my colleagues sings there are three or four of us here to have a more informal conversation. if i start a line of questioning and you have a thought along the same line, jump right in here, so we make this in a way more cohesive in that sense. so many places to start. let me start with this. since t.a.r.p.'s inception the program's scope, size and complexity have dramatically increased. i made note of this in my opening comments when i noted the 12 separate initiatives under t.a.r.p. today. some of these interact with the federal reserve, some with the fdic, some obviously with private investors as we discussed as well. i