it feels a bit like deja vu standing here today discussing the ongoing saga of the 1099 repeal. Two weeks ago, I offered amendment No. 161 to the small business bill. If we read all the press releases and the public statements, it appears…

I rise today to recognize an industry that has helped shape our country since the days of our Founding Fathers. This industry is part of the very fabric of my home State of Nebraska and of many States. It drives our economy, fosters…

I have always maintained that the average citizen feels inflation most in two areas, at the gasoline station and at the grocery store

I rise today to also speak about the health care bill. The first anniversary of a new law should be a time to celebrate good policy, one would think. The mood surrounding the new health care law is much different. One year later, Americans…

I heard the testimony about how unions have a difference of opinion and I think that is a very fair statement.

What I am looking for is a rigorous analysis that will lead to a right policy choice.

I rise in support of the pending Johanns- Manchin amendment 161, which I believe would send a positive, strong message to job creators that Congress is listening, that we have heard them. The bill we are debating today to help small…

I rise today to talk about the administration's ill-advised cap-and-trade agenda and to support a bipartisan bill that I cosponsored. The Energy Tax Prevention Act would stop EPA from going around Congress and using regulations to…

I rise today to speak for a few minutes about our current fiscal situation. Over the next few weeks, we are undoubtedly going to have a very robust debate on our country's future and the tremendous issues we face. We are going to have a…

But I think we are overregulating in a massive sort of way, and I just want to try to come to grips with what we are headed toward here.

It is a pleasure for me to be back on what I consider to be one of the Senate's most important Committees.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Now, nobody here is saying, let's not have clean water or clean air. But there has to be some common sense and sensibility about how we are going about this.

I will just tell you that sometimes when I was invited to a House member's office, or if I didn't know the House member and I didn't check to see which party they were, if they had a problem, I wanted to try to help them work through the…

I just think that all of us in the Federal Government need to be mindful that our credit card is getting maxed-out.

Common sense goes a long way.

We have asked the Veterans' Administration to strap on yet another agenda item and another agenda item.

There is nothing in anything I said that says, don't enforce the law.

These regulations, I read through them before I came over here today, affect real people trying to make a living in my State and in other States in the country.

It is like everybody got instructions, push your authorities to the limit and beyond, and see if they can stop us.

I hope the panelists can discuss how this year's budget will fix that.

Never in the history of this country has there been a greater need for people, foreign countries, whoever, to buy our debt than now.

It is kind of breathtaking in its magnitude.

There just is not an appetite to buy more paper, because those who are in that marketplace look at the U.S. Government and say, you know, you have so detached the joy of spending from the pain of taxation that you do not have a fiscal plan.

You would not suggest that it would be good economic policy that we pass a law that the price of a porterhouse steak or the price of a gallon of milk could only go high, would you?