Richard Shelby

Could you say here today that the top priority of your office as the Attorney General of the United States would be to protect the American people from terrorist activity at any cost?

A terrorist or a former terrorist or whatever, or terrorist trained, all of that.

Isn't that a dicey thing to do? Do you know of any community in the United States of America that would welcome terrorists, former terrorists, would-be terrorists, people trained as terrorists that have been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay?

Does the U.S. Government have the authority to admit these terrorists into the United States if you move them from Guantanamo Bay into some of our communities?

In recent years, exports have only accounted--listen to this--for 12 percent of our GDP.

Are you going to provide leadership there? Will you work with us on that?

Safe and sustainable seafood is vital to the U.S. economy, food security, and our livelihood.

Great overruns, gross overruns. But you will get back with us on that.

But you are going to have to get your arms around those costs there because ultimately, as Senator Mikulski has pointed out, you come back up here to the committee and we have trouble finding money if the costs keep going up and up in not…

We are not delegating anything to ACORN.

We will not make any payments to those partnership organizations.

The Census Bureau should not partner with organizations that have shown systemic problems with both accuracy and legitimacy.

The Department of Commerce plays a vital role in our Federal Government and is in dire need of a leader to oversee the programs and agencies that are in distress.

The Nation relies heavily on the Department of Commerce to maintain America's competitiveness within the markets around the world.

I look forward to working with you in a bipartisan fashion.

The talk is over. Now it is time for action.

I think we ought to pay particular attention to that.

I appreciate these hearings that you are putting together, and, gosh, we could be here all week and learn a heck of a lot.

So many of our big banks failed under their supervision, that says a lot to me about the Fed's inadequacies.

I want to thank you, like Senator Dodd did, for your contribution.

I wish we had established that principle more clearly.

I wanted the market to decide that.

I hope we will resist any move--any move--that gives anybody that kind of power and basically renders almost every other entity in Government useless.

I have a deep faith that continues to this very day, that markets do a better job disciplining risk than bureaucrats do.

You cannot stop everybody from failing. You have to have a mechanism where the people who were unsuccessful get taken over and replaced by people who are successful.