You have a very tough job. And in many respects I think the job your predecessors had was easier because we had the vision, we did not have the resources, but we were content to suspend belief.

If this was ready to begin development, why are we not moving forward? Why the delay?

I do hear that comment made secondhand via the small business owners. They say, well, the bank is telling me the regulators are breathing down their neck...

I believe the key to addressing the concerns with the current patent system is to work to increase efficiency at the PTO and improve the quality of patents as well as get rid of the backlog.

if there is a good case to be made for why this advances those goals it really will need to be made very forcefully.

But even though the scenes are familiar and unsettling, we cannot turn away and we must not shirk our obligation to aid our neighbor in her hour of need. I urge the President to continue to press for faster deployment of aid and…

I join my colleague, the distinguished chairman of the Intelligence Committee, in honoring the seven American intelligence professionals who lost their lives at Forward Operating Base Chapman on December 30, and their six colleagues who…

The Nuclear Forensics and Attribution Act will help us fight one of the most important national security threats we face, that of nuclear proliferation. Countries around the world now have access to technology that was once the realm of…

I join my colleague from California (Ms. Lee) in expressing my profound sorrow at the tragedy that has been visited upon the people of Haiti. Even now, a week after the earthquake that shattered Port-au-Prince and much of the surrounding…

his hearing of the House Judiciary Task Force on Judicial Impeachment will now come to order.

But had these markers been listed, had these casinos been listed on his bankruptcy petition, would that mean that at the end of the day, depending on the bankruptcy plan that the trustee and court arrive on, that the casinos would have…

What did he tell you about it?

It is more complicated than that, isn't it? Because the fact that he walked out of the casino having paid off the marker doesn't mean that he walked out without losses.

I take it, Judge, that the filing of a bankruptcy for many people, not solely for Federal judges, is somewhat of an embarrassing event for people. Is that a fair statement?

So if in the course of this period in 2001 and part of 2002 he had 149,000 in markers and left the casino with 11,000 not repaid, we would know at a minimum the losses were 11,000, but they may have been substantially greater?

Some of the markers he would pay in chips, and some he would pay a day or so later, and some he would pay a week or two later.

And do you remember what everyone got, the creditors got in this plan?

Of course, if everyone filed bankruptcy petitions in false names to avoid public disclosure, there would be serious problems with the system, wouldn't there?

Now, was this, in part, as a way of letting creditors out in the community know who was filing for bankruptcy?

You mentioned that the form is filled out incorrectly; $7,500 a month is listed as gross income when in fact it is net income, is that right?

So sometimes they took advantage of the process, the link to his bank account, and actually when he didn't within the time period make the payment, they went and they drew the funds out of his account?

At this point, you have to check. You're not aware of how much of the 149,000 was in that loss that subsequently had to be repaid?

The gentlewoman yields back.

During the meeting with the trustee in which Judge Porteous was present and was under oath, does a trustee generally ask the bankruptcy petitioner whether everything in their bankruptcy petition is correct and accurate to the best of their…

So if you were successful in keeping his name out of the paper by filing originally under a false name, any creditors that relied on the newspaper to learn about bankruptcies would not have found out about his bankruptcy?