I would just respond to the gentleman that I have seen a bigger budget gimmick, and that is fighting the war in Iraq without putting a nickel in the budget.

the issue of cyber-security is really important.

What if smart grid, as a terminology and as a point of discussion with respect to government policy, just takes a complete backseat.

I think there's absolutely no question that, when you combine digital information technology into a system that's controlling and moving electricity, that the security implications are enormous.

In many ways, smart grid is kind of at odds with the traditional concept of a utility company.

In the last decade, Indian Reservations have seen youth suicide rates reach epidemic levels.

Following that, and following discussions at the Standing Rock Reservation where I went and met just myself with a good number of high school students to talk to them about their lives, we put together some legislation to try to make…

The unfortunate result is that the rate of suicide among American Indian and Alaska Natives is 70 percent higher than the general U.S. population.

I have told the story on the floor of the United States Senate, with the consent of the relatives, of a young woman named Avis Little Wind.

I think there was one part of it that was very, very wrong, and I regret deeply my own going along with it.

I believe it is a combination of a very loose monetary policy, a very loose fiscal policy, a very loose trade policy, all coupled with deregulation, that created the seed bed for bubbles to form.

I think derivatives, while probably the vast majority of it is completely legitimate, the part that was not was the assessment of risk.

All of us who participated in supporting that bear responsibility.

Can we improve the process? Can we make it better?

the minority is not going to be willing to neutralize or significantly adjust its rights here if it would affect the ability to make our points.

I am not going to be at all interested in something that truncates or reduces the rights of the minority.

Senator Byrd, a member of this Committee and somebody who has forgotten more about the rules than most of us know.

Sense of the Senate really became absurd... it is purely messaging, and it is a giant waste of time.