Mr. President, I have introduced a bill, S. 1085. I have some cosponsors, including Senator Snowe from Maine. The bill addresses something that has become very controversial. It is certainly not partisan in any way. It is more…

Mr. President, a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit with one of my true heroes, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was here and graced us with his presence this week. Last March, I was in Jerusalem, had some quality time with him, and we…

Mr. President, I wish to spend a few minutes this evening talking about where we are as a nation. I have to say I am discouraged at the work of the Senate. If we look around and take in the whole picture here, there is nobody here…

Well, to my colleague, through the Chair, I would answer, What is our obligation? Is our obligation to win the next election or is our obligation to solve the problems in front of our country? It is not even a matter of having votes. We…

Well, I would answer through the Chair that I think we are perplexed. We know intellectually that there is a big problem, and we have this challenge: Do I go down this path and do the best thing for the country or do I go down this path to…

It does not. But it is interesting to note that the President's deficit commission was set up by the President and had six of his nominees on it. It had six Republicans and six Democrats. Five of the six Presidential nominees he nominated…

I thank the chairman. Mr. Chairman, last month a draft Executive order was circulated that would require companies to disclose all Federal campaign contributions as a condition for submitting a bid on a Federal contract. If implemented…

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk. The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows: At the end of subtitle E of title VIII, add the following new section: SEC. 845. PROHIBITION…

I couldn't disagree more strongly with my friend from Maryland. Quite frankly, the information that this proposed executive order would extract and require from companies is not necessary to evaluate any bid that they've made. It's a…

Mr. Chairman, if the information isn't necessary for the bid or for the evaluation of the bid, then it's not necessary for the executive branch to have it or for us to run the risk that it might be misused, so I urge the adoption of the…

This is a piece of legislation that desperately needs repair, and I am sure we will have very robust conversations on the solutions to repair it.

So that one should come back to the legislative branch.

So just to clarify on it, $100 million nationwide, so $2 million per State, added altogether in aggregate, that suddenly becomes an unfunded mandate.

Ultimately on onerousness Congress has the final say.

The application of it, though, will be interesting to see if it has political consequences with it as well.

At some point it gets absurd. But you can always say, but it will save it a life.

How do we keep a group with so much authority and so little accountability from getting this tunnel vision that you talk about in your book?

There will obviously be significant rules that will come out of those, many of them with millions of dollars of impact on the economy.