mr. thornberry: thank you, mr. chairman. and let me first commend and express my appreciation to chairman hastings and mr. holt and others who have worked on this legislation. indeed, we have come a long way from the days when helium was essentially a government-run monopoly to this legislation which helps bring in more market forces, more competition, more free enterprise, and i think will help move toward developing more supplies of helium in the future, as was just discussed on the last amendment. it is in exactly that spirit that i offer this amendment which seeks to affirm the authority of the secretary of the interior to allow others who are not currently connected to the helium repository to connect to it and to store their helium there. . whatever costs are incurred with allowing others to connect and to store, those cost vs. to be met by the individuals not by the taxpayer. but by doing that i think we do at least take a step towards encouraging more helium supplies to be developed. the side benefit is as these othe

mr. thornberry pointed out 80% of our sea food is imported conlan and we know now the rate of contamination and import alerts that have occurred. that will make your job harder. we need to know on this committee what is required to ensure public health of this country, domestically, internationally, and how overwhelmed york agency may be if this committee doesn't do something about the resources that it supplies. thank you very much. >> this will wrap up our last annual hearing for the budget, i want to thank staff on both sides of the aisle for their work in this hearing process and thank you for being here and look forward to working with you. thank you. .pulling ..

mr. thornberry? >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. secretary, in your speech at indy you last week, in talking about your strategic choices and management review, you said it is not the goal, is not to assume or tacitly accept that deep cuts such as those imposed by sequester will endure. and then in the next paragraph though you said, this exercise is also about matching the missions with resources. which we've had a long-standing discussion on this committee about what comes first, do you have a dollar amount and then you forget what you can do with it, or do you figure out what it takes to defend the country and then talk about what resources are required to do that mission? and as you know there is a widespread view that you were brought into the pentagon to cut defense. and some of the people who are concerned about that are pointed to the fact that the cost assessment and program evaluation folks are playing a key role in this strategic review. they are more of the green eye shade people. so i guess kind of at a broader level, i