If confirmed, you will, at times, be their only voice in housing policy discussions that occur within the Obama Administration.

I am just wondering, specifically with respect to these types of programs, but more generally, how are we going to support our public housing programs with real resources?

I think the President has made a very wise choice. Your experience and your commitment is obvious, and I think you will make a real difference in the Department of Education.

I would hope you would be able to tell us you are going to put your shoulder behind the law and money behind it to make these provisions in title II very effective and real in the process.

I was pleased to co-sponsor with the President-elect, the School Improvement Through Teacher Quality Act.

At the higher education level, we have and I have been particularly active in supporting the LEAP program.

I absolutely agree with you, that that is probably the key, the key point of leverage in any education system.

How do we raise the wages and, therefore, the standard of living, of middle-income Americans?

I think the President has made a very wise choice. Your service and your personal experience reinforces the best ideals of this country.

With your chairmanship and the leader's Cabinet position, we are on the road to healthcare reform, I believe.

How in the world can we allow, in the year 2009, for us to say, that is just the way life is?

George Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has written recently that there is $1 trillion a year of excess cost in our health care system, and he is no fool, is he?

It strikes me that the problem here is that in order to achieve those large reductions, a considerable amount of executive management, of experimentation, of flexible and dynamic regulatory activity going forward is going to be necessary.

This discussion matters a great deal not just to CBO economists and Senators on the Budget Committee.

I applaud the more honest picture that this budget presents.

We have three major significant problems to deal with. We have one supply of political capital to deal with them.

I think we are headed into, I think, a fiscal crisis that is going to make the current economic problem look like a picnic.

Do we presently have an authority in government that can oversee the dynamic process of engagement?