I may own my home, but if someone demands joint ownership agreement of my home that is a substantial reduction of my rights and private property.

I appreciate the committee holding a hearing on these bills, very good bills, and I am cosponsor of one of them.

Why should the goverment be able to increase its revenue? How do we solve this spending problem?

If the BLM or the Forest Service have a concern about groundwater then go talk to the State engineer and whatever he or she says is what everybody lives with.

There is nothing more American than the family farm or the family ranch, and it is something that we want to protect.

when you have Federal agents that are acting in direct conflict of the law and they are doing what I consider extorting something as precious as water rights out of private citizens, well, how would we expect those citizens to react?

I believe that the administration's position is unfortunate, because it is clear that we have a debt problem.

We cannot have the debt limit be something that is a threat to the economy unless policy concessions are made.

All I hear from the administration is that negotiations can only proceed if, first, the President is guaranteed yet another tax hike.

It is not clear to me.

Trust funds in Social Security and health entitlement programs face exhaustion.

I believe we can and should use this as an opportunity to address these problems.

What an ultimate act of hypocrisy to condition a Federal permit on violation of a State water law for which you really don't have that.

Mr. Secretary, all I am asking is, how much do you want and for how long? I mean, those are two simple questions.

The root of our spending problem is the government's major health care programs.

the commonly repeated notion that questions surrounding spending and the debt limit are Congress's and Congress's alone to answer is, to put it mildly, a case of false advertising on the part of the Obama administration.

I put out a penny plan that would take care of the deficit in 2 years and result in a balanced budget.

Now, we do not know what that means--what they mean by a 'clean' increase.