I appreciate everyone's desire, and I share it, to get going on this substantive work. I think we have at least one substantive meeting next week, which, as far as I'm concerned, ain't bad, and if we take one of those meetings in order to have a serious discussion about how we structure the study.... I do think there are some real questions about how we get that structured and whether we want to do it thematically and, if so, what that looks like and therefore how many witnesses we might be presenting per topic, if we're going to divvy it up by topic, which is something that I'd like to see us do.
It may not be what we ultimately decide to do as a committee, but it's certainly something that I'd like to propose. I was prepared to propose that this evening when we had some additional time, but I think we've spent more time this evening talking about meetings to plan the work than we did actually planning the work. For me, I came ready to talk about how we might structure this work and get some of that work done tonight. I think a lot of the time for that has already passed, so I'm resigned to the idea that we take one of the slots we have for next week as a planning meeting.
I just want to offer that up and to let you know, Mr. Chair, that if you're interested in putting your proposal to a vote, namely, that we have a meeting with officials next week, but also that we take a meeting in order to structure the study and get a better sense of how we're going to do this going forward, that would have my full support.