I would hope you would be able to tell us you are going to put your shoulder behind the law and money behind it to make these provisions in title II very effective and real in the process.

I absolutely agree with you, that that is probably the key, the key point of leverage in any education system.

At the higher education level, we have and I have been particularly active in supporting the LEAP program.

I think the President has made a very wise choice. Your service and your personal experience reinforces the best ideals of this country.

How do we raise the wages and, therefore, the standard of living, of middle-income Americans?

We have three major significant problems to deal with. We have one supply of political capital to deal with them.

With your chairmanship and the leader's Cabinet position, we are on the road to healthcare reform, I believe.

How in the world can we allow, in the year 2009, for us to say, that is just the way life is?

It strikes me that the problem here is that in order to achieve those large reductions, a considerable amount of executive management, of experimentation, of flexible and dynamic regulatory activity going forward is going to be necessary.

I appreciate it. I have gone over my time, which I was doing happily and willingly because I was at the end of the line here.

Not likely to happen now.

Every 2 years it can.

the Bush administration has added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt versus where the budget was planned to go.

This discussion matters a great deal not just to CBO economists and Senators on the Budget Committee.

Do we presently have an authority in government that can oversee the dynamic process of engagement?

I think we are headed into, I think, a fiscal crisis that is going to make the current economic problem look like a picnic.

George Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has written recently that there is $1 trillion a year of excess cost in our health care system, and he is no fool, is he?

I applaud the more honest picture that this budget presents.