The time has come for us to harness the innovation and ingenuity of the American people.

I am very much encouraged by the President's commitment in his budget outline to making gains on all these fronts.

Thank you for the opportunity to come and express our support of the budget and some suggestions that we think will improve on.

I take great pride in that the President has stood behind this.

This is now three budgets in a row that have met the independent budgets of our veterans' service organizations in the care of our veterans.

The time has come for us to harness innovation and ingenuity of the American people to develop long-term solutions to our energy crisis.

While I think we need to remedy the problems caused by the bad actors, we also need to acknowledge the fragile condition of our current credit markets and make sure we do no harm with future legislation.

We need to make sure interoperability between the Department of Defense and the VA is one where we use our innovation and use our technology.

VA care is the best in the world. It is the best care anywhere.

I hope that we can work with him to accomplish these goals.

As a member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee and a 24-year veteran myself, I spend a lot of time focused on veterans issues.

I come from Minnesota, a State that cares about our patent system.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And again, thanks to all the witnesses for really terrific testimony on a very, very tough subject.

I am hopeful we can continue to work together to reach consensus on measures to provide more affordable and efficient ways of providing healthcare benefits.

Though imperfect, the employer-based health care system has been successful in many ways.

I want to caution against proposals that would undermine ERISA by pulling one string at a time.

The current employer-based system delivers high quality coverage for approximately 160 million Americans.

American businesses are true innovators when it comes to improving the health care system.