All of this was done without any prior notice or consultation.

Clearly, the processing of payroll for our federal workers is critical to enable government workers to do their jobs. And we're very impressed with what the National Finance Center workers accomplished. Before the hurricane struck, they worked hard to ensure that the next payroll was ready to go. And then many of them, with just a single suitcase, knowing that their homes had been destroyed, went to work in Philadelphia and Dallas to handle the payroll. We appreciate their commitment. It was truly remarkable.

The integrity of these programs is very important to us. And we will continue to strengthen the safeguards we have to ensure that these farm loans are made only to those eligible to participate in the farm loan programs.

It's going to be a long process to get (the finance center) back up and running again. We are prepared to operate elsewhere for the first couple of months.

They're going to be talking about the U.S.-EU approach and proposals in the World Trade Organization. We're trying to find a lot of common ground so we can move the process forward,

There isn't any nation in the world that requires 100 percent testing.

Are we really serving people when we have some offices that are only open a few hours a day, or that don't have full-time employees? That's a good question to ask, when we have offices where it's costing us $2 for every dollar of benefits that we're delivering.

We're very much part of the team of reducing the deficit in half by 2009.

We certainly recognize that there does need to be an established tolerance for bone fragments that do not pose a food safety concern.

We all sense the urgency of coming to a positive result by the time we get to Hong Kong, and certainly that's what the two will be discussing -- how we can achieve that. We all want this objective here.