Thank you very much, Representative Tonko. Our promise to the American seniors and those who want to become seniors is that this tombstone that the Republican Party wants to put out there--that is, the termination of Medicare--will not…

As we come to the conclusion of this, the Make It In America agenda is a powerful agenda to rebuild the American manufacturing base to put middle class America back to work so that they can have the home that they want, so that they can…

Let's take another example. And this comes up on the energy policies of this Nation. I think we all understand that the oil industry has done rather well, and we continue to subsidize the oil industry. Efforts to eliminate those subsidies…

Take away the resource money and see what happens. We lose the race. We know we all get sick, right? Why would you ever put forward a policy to reduce research in medical services and the basic understanding of the human gene, of…

Well, R&D, research and development. In the continuing resolutions pushed forward by the Republican party and successfully enacted and signed into law by their intransigence to deal with any new revenues, the research budgets of the United…

But the point here is that our strategy of ``Make it in America'' includes a half a dozen different specific programs, one of which you talked about, which is the education system. Why in the world, when we need, as you just said, to build…

Representative Tonko, I come from the San Francisco Bay area. We are the first great science research technology. We'll let you be number 3. But we're number 1.

That's money directly out of the pockets, and that's money that has to be set aside. What I would like to take a few moments on, with your permission, is to talk about a program that you and I and our colleagues on the Democratic side have…

Representative Tonko, we do have a deficit problem. We have to address that. We've talked about ways that that can be done in the health care sector without harming Medicare. But one of the most important things in addressing the deficit…

And everything in between, Hands off my Medicare, Hands off my children's Medicare. However, we're saying that. The public is saying that. Democrats say we will not give an inch on Medicare. We will control the cost within the total health…

So if you're looking at the deficit and dealing with the deficit, you don't have to destroy Medicare to save money. In fact, it will cost us more money, not directly in taxes but out of the individual pocket. No doubt about it. The other…

Well, as the insurance commissioner in California for 8 years, let me just pick that issue up. The insurance companies are extraordinarily inefficient compared to Medicare. I know that a lot of people think that government is inefficient…