U.S. State Attorneys General

What this hearing has demonstrated for me is that our most expansive Federal powers are given to our most intrusive agency.

The buck has to stop somewhere.

The handling of those tax-exempt applications in that process at the IRS was outrageous and intolerable.

We have 3,500 kids in Minneapolis who go to school every day from a shelter. It is a disgrace, a national one.

In a weird way I think the Air Force is going to be stronger than ever. We have never had to make choices before now.

The idea that you are going to give more money to a Federal agency and everything is going to be just okay, it is just a bunch of nonsense.

It seems to me that asking for more money to support a 1976 accounting system is like a race car driver telling us that if we will just give him more money he can win with his 1975 Pinto.

So by the way, I think a point we should make, Mr. Chairman, is that Social Security has money to pay for its administration.

And so we have got to deal with the fact that we need the capacity to deal with more folks quickly and accurately so we don't pay out benefits to people who don't deserve them and we don't delay benefits for those who have earned them.

And I think, Mr. Bertoni, in your, I think, if I am looking at your testimony, your written testimony, you point out that, in a chart, back in 2002 there were 50.8 million, about 51 million Americans who were receiving benefits from Social…

What is the result? Well, Social Security at some point had to give.

Let's remember, the number of people that have been paying into and are now beginning to collect their benefits because they paid into it is not shrinking, it is growing.

Mr. Chairman, there are consequences in not funding Social Security properly.

Let's remember, even before the budget cuts, Social Security was extremely efficient, spending something around a penny, actually less than a penny on program administration for every dollar it spends paying the benefits American workers…

As I said, it is budget cuts, budget cuts that have left the Social Security Administration without enough resources to serve the public the way Social Security should and the way Americans want the program they have paid for to serve them.

We understand that whatever changes we make are going to have an impact, positive or negative, on a lot of Americans.

The best thing for working families... is a growing economy and remaining competitive internationally.

The Tax Code right now, in my view, is a barrier to that.

I think it allows our priorities to be where they ought to be in terms of enforcement.

I think there are probably some ways that we can allow for these kinds of family members to come in

I would like to continue to work with the Members of the Committee and with all of you to seek improvements on the family provisions.

I am concerned that this bill will no longer provide a meaningful opportunity for U.S. citizens to petition for their siblings.

I believe that the new merit-based visa system will exclude many immigrant family members from reuniting with their U.S. citizen siblings.

I do not think it is fair to characterize those of us who think we should restore the rule of law as saying we are resisting immigration.