U.S. State Attorneys General

Do you remember Charlie Brown, whenever he tried to kick the ball, Lucy always picks the ball up. And they picked the ball up on the President, even though they said they were going to hold it down. I yield back.

You know, I have got to admit, it brought a tear to my eye when he talked in his speech about the fact that when your kids look at you, they expect you to be able to take care of them. And if you haven't got health insurance, then you're…

That's John Yoo and David Addington and people who worked for the Vice President?

Now, did the President do a signing statement when it came to the law that this body passed and he signed with regard to torture?

Forgive my reclaiming my time again, gentlelady, but if you could convey to the American people what is a signing statement? What is that?

Some people might think that having a blue ribbon panel such as contemplated in H.R. 104 might be a backward-looking process and sort of be something about settling old scores now that the Dems have the White House and the Congress. But in…

Chairman Grijalva, did we do this after the tragedy of 9/11? Did we engage in a process where we tried to discover what the truth was?

Is fighting for economic justice and security in the U.S. and global economies, is that part of the Progressive message?

In the beginning of our hour as we come together in this Special Order, I think you, as one of the leaders in the Progressive Caucus, have correctly identified economic justice as one of the critical things that the Progressive Caucus…

I hope that this will add to the discussion about having a national program, which I very much support.

We have had some discussion in this committee about the importance of thinking about our transportation in an intermodal way.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We'll get a lot more benefit for this if it's more like matching funds and we encourage private capital to go in and the public capital comes with it. With that, Mr. Chairman, I stand in support of this bill and…

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On one other point, there are people who say that a financial collapse didn't happen, and, in fact, it didn't. You don't get credit for bad things that don't happen. I would argue that the financial collapse was…

But yet many mutual, bank, and insurance holding companies have been unable to even apply for TARP funds because of the Treasury's not coming out with a term sheet that would enable them to apply, even those that can issue nonpublic…

Well, you know, soldiers are people, too. They want a future. They want an education. They want something to pass onto their children. They want to live a quality lifestyle. They want to own their home.

This President, who shakes his finger about supporting the troops, would never, never veto the GI Bill. Certainly you jest.

I've got to ask you a question. If you are training somebody to retrofit a downtown office building in, say, Denver or Minneapolis, and they're going to retrofit that building to be green and efficient, can you offshore that job?

As we're talking about $4 a gallon gas, we also have to take into consideration, Mr. Speaker, that we've seen 30 years of stagnant wages, except for that period in the late 1990s when we had a Democratic President. We have seen 30 years of…

So what we need is a vision for a green economy for now and in the future where we can increase the fuel efficiency of vehicles, where we can invest in transportation and transit, where we can move people and not just cars, where we can…

Well, you know, the gentleman from Colorado makes an excellent point, Mr. Perlmutter. And what you're describing is a slice of a Democratic vision for our country for a fair economy and a cleaner economy. I think it's important when you…

Isn't this proposal of just drilling in the Continental Shelf, drilling in ANWR, isn't this kind of like trying to cure a disease by simply treating the symptoms of the disease? For example, if I were to have cancer, you could try to find…

Well, then, why are they crying about wanting to drill in ANWR and wanting to drill off the Continental Shelf when they have all of these places they can drill now? I mean, I know that there's got to be a million Americans watching this…

That's the problem. He just doesn't know that oil is not $55 a barrel, but actually hit about $126 a barrel. He just doesn't know. Somebody ought to send him a news flash.

Well, let me ask you this, do you think there will come a day when the folks in the White House might just say, they might not need that subsidy after all?