Michael Bennet

This Congress has put ourselves in this position where credit ratings are actually threatening our credit rating.

How do you assess the risk that if we end up driving this car over the cliff with our eyes wide open, we could see a downturn in our economy?

It is a political risk.

Can you think of anything that would be more destructive to my desire to pay down our deficit than to fail to raise the debt ceiling--raise the interest rate?

I have spent a lot of time on the floor talking about it. I have got kids that I am worried about, and we have got to get a hold of it--we really do--in a bipartisan way.

I am deeply concerned about the fiscal condition of this country, I am deeply concerned about the size of the deficit.

Can you think of a greater self-inflicted wound that we could manage to accomplish through our dysfunctionality than drive our unemployment rate higher when it is at 9 percent?

No mayor in my State of Colorado would ever threaten to jeopardize the credit rating of his city.

I see we are joined by Senator Coons from Delaware, and I am going to stop, but along that line, just to give people who are here in the Chamber or might be watching some optimism, just 2 weeks ago we took a vote on one subsidy, an ethanol…

I do get concerned at times that I think many American businesses have this eye of this wonderful opportunity of the Chinese markets and sometimes sacrifice standards, intellectual property, adhere to restrictions to get into the Chinese…

One of the critical ways of doing that is making sure that these export markets are as robust and as open as they can be for American goods and products.

There is a lot of concern in my State about how we are going to get this economy back on track and what we are going to do about the jobs that have been permanently lost in this recession.

People never thought that they would be displaced in an economic downturn or thought that they would be working for less at the end of the 10-year period than they were at the beginning.

If I had to pick one economic fact out of the mix that worries me the most, it is the decline of median family income in this country.

I was on the floor, imploring people to stop screaming at each other over our debt and our deficit.

I am glad you raised that. My time is up, but I would say on that point that the two groups of people in the town halls that are worried the most and that I worry about the most are people in their 50's that are finding themselves out of…

If you are born into a low-income neighborhood in this country, your chances of graduating with a college degree are around 9 in 100.

I would like to see how we might be able to streamline some of that because there is a recurrent theme that we hear.

The cooperation between the private sector and the Federal Government that made those things possible

Thank you for holding this important hearing.

Credit unions are an important source of credit for individuals and small businesses in this country, and it's important that we ask what they can do to help get our economy grow again.

I strongly supported the creation of that Small Business Lending Fund, but Senator Udall and I and others fought to include his legislation for credit unions in that bill.

Senator Udall's bill will provide a much-needed boost to help small businesses expand and hire.

If Congress did increase the cap on member loans--you just testified that only about 300, I think, credit unions are close to the cap.

We think we have a lot to learn from the States.