I certainly appreciate the sentiment of my colleague. The underlying bill is important to get done. These perimeter rule revisions are important too. Our fear is, unless there is some action, it will not be resolved, as it hasn't been in…

I will conclude by saying, absolutely yes. This is one of the good ideas Republicans had. Rather than creating a new entitlement, taking money from Medicare to fund that new entitlement, the savings we believe we can achieve in Medicare…

Arizona is suffering, as are other States, from the economic downturn. We have an unemployment rate now that has more than doubled. In fact, it has gone from 3.6 percent in June of 2007 to 9.2 percent this month. Our State faces a $1.4…

I wish to address some of the problems with it since the procedure under which we have considered this bill does not allow any amendments. As a result, we have no opportunity to fix problems that are inherent with the bill and will force…

I wish to address now the health care legislation we passed in the Senate and that is pending over in the House of Representatives. There is a news report that Democrats are going to use the strangest of all procedural tactics to try to…

the economic downturn has continued for a year-and-a-half now and has affected most Americans in some way. Congress has approved a number of measures, which I supported, aimed at helping those Americans. It recently extended unemployment…

The Mayo Clinic in Arizona, unfortunately, has had to announce that in several of its key facilities there, it will no longer accept new Medicare patients. Why is that so? Because the government program of Medicare, which our seniors rely…

I appreciate my colleague asking. There are 330,000 seniors in the State of Arizona who rely on Medicare Advantage. It is exactly as Dr. Barrasso said: Medicare Advantage is a program that helps people with preventive care, with…

I remember sitting back in the cloakroom and listening to Dr. Coburn when he was talking about how he treats patients who come into his office. A child, he said, comes in who has had a fall on the playground and the parents…

I opened the newspaper, the New York Times, on Sunday morning and was surprised--shocked--at a full-page advertisement I saw. It had a big headline that said: ``What will it be, Mr. President? Change or more of the same?'' Then it had four…

I recommend to my colleagues a February 11 Wall Street Journal column by Stanford economist Michael Boskin, entitled, ``When Deficits Become Dangerous.'' Boskin's premise is that the new taxes and ``enormous deficits and endless…

The bill has been denominated by my colleagues on the Democratic side as a jobs bill, but it will not create any new jobs and when considered in conjunction with the health care legislation the President has proposed will actually cost…

I respond to my colleague, the point I was making is that it is hard to describe this as a jobs bill because it does not create jobs. Each year, we extend these tax provisions. That is why we in Washington call it the tax extenders bill…

If anything, it could be argued it is a disincentive for work because people are being paid even though they are not working. I certainly did not say, and would never imply, that the reason people don't have jobs is because they are not…

last week, Clifford May, the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, wrote in the National Review that the U.S. should renew its focus on the Iranian regime's influence in Iraq. He warned that the success of the surge…

I think we would be looking for a declaratory judgment that would address the specifics of the way the judgment was rendered, the facts of it, and would say that the judgment was rendered in a way that is inconsistent with the First…

I think that it would not be any more than any First Amendment decision such as New York Times v. Sullivan sets the floor, it does not set the ceiling.

I appreciate the desirability of having uniformity.

I think we are all seeking the same thing here.

Well, at least the cases I am aware of, personally aware of, do get into the issue of intimidation against those who blow the whistle on terrorist support.

It just seems to me that if somebody--the best place to do business in the world is still the United States of America.

I would like to see something that has a deterrent effect in it as well.

Just thank you, and we want to hear from the witnesses. This is a really growing, important topic for American citizens, and to have the Committee engaged in it I think is very important.

This is a subject which I think it would be very important for Congress to begin to act on before this problem gets much worse.

Or bilateral--not necessarily a treaty, but there are various other kinds of bilateral agreements and arrangements between different countries.