Mr. President, I seek recognition today to introduce an important piece of legislation entitled the Student Loan Forgiveness and Repayment Assistance Act of 2010. This legislation is in response to the increasingly high cost of…

Mr. President, as I have expressed to Senator Harkin and to Secretary Duncan, I am concerned that the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, SAFRA, may not adequately provide for the replacement of the early college awareness, default…

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished majority leader for his generous and complimentary comments. As today completes 1 year since my return to the Democratic Party, I have a few observations on what we should do as Senators, not as…

That's right. I don't think we do either. The original Senate bill was 2,000 pages. We had a manager's amendment, and a reconciliation bill on top of that. We are talking close to 4,000 pages, and now the bureaucrats have to take that bill…

I thank my good friend from Missouri for leading this discussion. It is such an important discussion as we look at the consequences of this health care bill that has been passed.

One of the premises that I have always led my life by is the best predictor of future performance is past performance. I think there is a significant issue, a great divide being what is being said, what the President said about the health…

Well, not only am I suggesting that, but the President's agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, put that in writing.

Sixty. For specialists today, it's 60 percent. It's expected to go to 80 percent. So they may have coverage, but they really don't have access. If you don't have a physician who is able to accept you or who will see you, then we're not…

And you don't. When you're looking at difficulty recruiting and retaining health care professionals, especially to rural areas and some urban areas, when you look at escalating costs of medical liability insurance--which our colleagues…

I received a letter from a member of the Pennsylvania State House explaining a resolution he has introduced to stop the Federal Government from imposing unfunded mandates on the State. The resolution cites the Urban Institute as estimating…

I want to reach back into the past, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, where similar cuts were made to the Medicare program, because we have been accused of making this things up on this side of the aisle when it comes to rationing of…

The question is for the President, Mr. President, when did you have this report? And why did Congress not have it? As the actuaries put it: ``Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that a significant portion of the increased demand for…

Thank you. In terms of Medicaid, I think it's an important area for us to look at in terms of, again, the credibility of what the President said he was going to deliver, of what the Democrats say they are going to deliver and what the…

Yes, and not just from my constituents. When I get home, I am out all over my district. My district is a great snapshot of Pennsylvania because it is actually 22 percent of the landmass of the commonwealth State, so it is a fairly large…

Well, I thank my good friend from Missouri. The other part of that is, what they are paying, what my good friend, Dr. Roe from Tennessee, talked about how Medicare pays today less in costs. Commercial insurance on the average nationally…

There has been an unfortunate and devastating accident in the Gulf of Mexico that caused the death of 11 workers. Now we must deal with the attendant oil spill estimated at 42,000 gallons a day. To provide a bit of perspective, the gallon…

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the business we have in front of us here in the Senate, financial regulatory reform. But I did want to note that we meet in an hour of real economic trauma for many families across America and…

As a Nation, one of our strongest allies in the Middle East is Israel. For decades we have stood with this free and democratic state as it has been assaulted. We have always respected the right of Israel to defend itself and to build for…