Michael Bennet

The TARP does need oversight. These Coloradans can tell you firsthand what is broken now.

What ailed us most was the amount of leverage in our system.

I just want to stress how important small business and community banks are to this recovery effort.

Having three Cabinet Secretaries be the board of the institution seems to me to be imagining a world that we don't really exist in.

This person is a hero for bringing this forward, and we need more, not less, of this.

So my hope is, with SBA Administrator Mills in place now, that we can get the details out.

I think that it is really important that the administration continues to drive policies that are really going to have an effect for small businesses in places like Colorado for our community banks.

The problem comes when their perspective is that we are only worried about the risk of these institutions on Wall Street, not about the institutions on Main Street.

The reserve requirements are making it harder for us to lend, not easier to lend.

We need a strong leader in the administration to talk about manufacturing, and we need every Senator to talk about manufacturing.

Manufacturing is perceived, you know, like Charles Dickens portrayed it in his novels.

So you are saying that the legal importation has been stopped, but the illegal--I do not know if it is importation or exportation--is still going on?

Are there any strategies in place to limit not just the ability of cartels to smuggle in massive quantities, but also to produce the illicit drugs in the first place?

The epidemic has cost the State close to $1.4 billion, and in spite of the best efforts by local law enforcement, we continue to have one of the highest abuse rates in the Nation.

I want to thank you, DHS, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for your prompt response to the H1N1 virus.

I strongly support the increase in funds for addressing violence along the border.

Are there other steps the Mexican government is taking to disrupt illegal smuggling?

We need to improve incentives where we can. We also need to improve capital where we can.

I think it is not just a question of incentives. I think 'too big to fail' is a big, challenging problem.

I hope the Committee and the Obama Administration assigns sufficient gravity to this very serious problem impacting smaller cities, towns, and rural areas.

The problem of meth is really a public health problem as much as it is a law enforcement problem.

Colorado depends on coordination between Federal, State, and local authorities to keep families safe and go after bad actors.

Tom Strickland is one of the finest public servants that has ever been produced by the State of Colorado.

He is somebody who cares passionately about making sure that our generation leaves more opportunity, not less, to the generation that is coming after us.

I just want to thank you for holding the hearing and recognize that it is going to be the first in a series, because there is probably nothing more important that we will do in this Committee this year than deal with this problem.