U.S. State Attorneys General

I congratulate both of our nominees for what I hope will be your confirmation to these important positions.

I am here to support and to voice a strong support for Judge Loretta Biggs.

This is the issue. It certainly is not stale, and I think leadership demands that we lead on what could be.

Let's trust people, not some government bureaucrat or some utopian searching person who is, yes, well-meaning.

What we are talking about in the comprehensive sense is empowering the individual, trusting the individual.

We are suffering under [the Affordable Care Act], as the majority of the testimony here clearly indicates.

Stop the hypocrisy. If you truly care about these kids, stop encouraging them to come to the United States illegally. They are crossing the border. Most of them are being harmed, many of them are being abused, and a few of them are dying…

I think the gentleman is exactly right, if the American people show the Senate that the American people care as we know they do. This is still the home of the free. This is still an open republic, and it is still we, the people, who are in…

I would love at this point--I think we all would--to hear them say: We have a better idea, we are going to take it up, and we will show you. I would take that as progress, sir. This is what we have heard: silence.

It was great to hear my colleagues say that they would never use Medicare or Social Security to scare people.

I would not call it a crisis. I would call it a crisis what happened to all of Enron's employees who put money into their pensions.

Democrats do not think that we should be hunky dory, going around town just thinking that we should do nothing on Social Security.

You want to talk about a crisis, talk about someone who depends almost exclusively on Social Security, about cutting their benefits.

For most Americans, Social Security is the heart of retirement security.

In Indiana it actually increased voter turnout when we went to that, because people saw that the administrators valued the process enough.

You can roll out of bed and vote, and yet voter turnout doesn't go up, and that is because we have a cultural issue.

I have been saying for years that the problems associated with Florida's election really had nothing to do with secretaries of state or local election officials, but really it was sheriffs of the State that were the problem.

I think you are probably the first person to give all of us your cell phone number, so I hope this is not a situation where, be careful what you ask for.

I think when you are dealing with a huge system like the VA system, you are going to get a lot of push-back from people who are used to being left alone in their regions or whatever the grouping is.

I expect that this Committee will work with you in a very open and transparent way, in a frank way, so that we can work together to move the ball and get the veterans the kind of attention that they very much earned.

I want to publicly thank Secretary Shinseki for doing that which he believed would be in the best interest of the Veterans Administration.

I am not going to sit here and say that you do not need more money to hire more caregivers and other necessary personnel to take care of our veterans.

I was told by the veterans that I have been talking with--many of them live on neighbor islands, so these are rural issues--I was told that even if they got vouchers to go out to get private care, the doctors on the Big Island and Maui…

So, if you were to have the appropriations to hire 10,000 people, how long do you think it would take for 10,000 people to be hired?