Mr. President, the bills from a decade of ineffective tax cuts and unpaid wars and a recession fueled by lax regulation have come due. I did not support the policies that generated these bills, but pretending these bills do not have to be…

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

I thank the Senator from Illinois for his deference. We understand we have to make tough choices. They have to include expenditure cuts. We have already started with the continuing resolution of the last year where we reduced spending…

Is this now the time for additional stress tests of our banks and major European banks to determine the exposure if a larger Euro economy or other economy defaulted?

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and let me commend you, Chairman Bair, for your extraordinary service----

It raises the question, do you believe, not just FDIC but in other supervised entities, big as well as small banks, there will be adequate capital measures?

The foreclosure backlog is really inhibiting not only the banking industry, but overall economic growth.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________

Mr. President, I rise today to join again in the debate occurring in Washington on bringing our Federal budget into balance and facing up to our looming debt limit. Our Nation right now is like an overburdened ship wallowing in the seas…

Madam President, our Nation asks a lot of our troops. In return, we must give them the best possible equipment to fulfill their vital missions and come home safely. We have a powerful obligation to them to ensure the proper performance of…

it is starting to seem a little bit as if a similar two-word prophecy could be applied to the United States Supreme Court's decisions, and that would be 'corporation wins.'

I worry about that because my view is that the founders put the jury in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights in three separate places for a reason.

the idea of coordinating as much as we can imagine, a unified set of rules that apply to the SEC-regulated entities.

Of course, the other concern is if you do not have any of these rules of the road, you get exactly what we had, which was gaming, no money down, great products, et cetera.

In general, more, and in general, if the entities are too big to fail, they should be smaller.

I think, you know, the challenge we gave to regulators was come up with an appropriate balanced mechanism that exempts certain loans from the requirement to hold.

Without BP paying for it at that point since they are not agreed. What sources of funding do you have?

And you have an account that allows you to pay the scientists and the folks who are doing the work in the meantime so that they are not carrying the cost of the government study?