Chris Murphy

Insurance is really important to people. They prefer jobs that have insurance. Do you think that the purpose of healthcare reform should be to insure more people or less people?

I think one of the reasons that the healthcare bill that is about to be pending before the Senate is so stunningly unpopular is that the President, your boss, talked consistently during the campaign and after the campaign about a…

This bill made a clear statement from the Congress about mental health is both important and bipartisan.

It would have very serious, negative consequences on us to be in a flat-funding scenario.

In a flat-funding scenario, we would lose about 200 people by the end of the year.

What happens to you in a flat-funded budget?

I just think that you are being used by the Republican majority for political purposes, and I think it compromises your independence.

Republicans are not going through the committee process. There is no bill being produced by committee.

My fear is that the way in which Congress is interacting with CBO is changing radically.

For those of us who believe in CBO, I think there is a deliberate campaign to try to reduce its relevance.

The House healthcare bill, which was rammed through with almost no public debate, with no time for any legislator to read that piece of legislation, was done so without a CBO score.

I will just express my deep concern about the actions of the majority party in the House and the Senate with respect to the continued relevance and independence of the Congressional Budget Office.

I share the chairman's interest. I will just note that GAO has been an indispensable partner to those of us who think it is our mission to be very careful with the dollars that our taxpayers send to Washington.

There is, right outside this Chamber, a picture of the authors of the Connecticut Compromise, two of the Connecticut delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

I wanted to turn back to this question of the President's Article II authority in the context of a fairly extraordinary set of events that is playing out as we speak inside Syria.

During your confirmation process, we spoke about the importance of the mental health section of the 21st Century Cures Act and you committed to work together to ensure the law's implementation.

They are worried that we are sending a signal with these budget cuts with our lack of support for NATO.

There is a total disconnect between the case you are making and the array of challenges that need increased resources in the budget that has been submitted.

You can only read it as intentional. So here is the governance funding cuts.

Part of the solution here can be the United States providing real support for the continuity of the European experiment.

I completely buy into the idea that a big piece of the story line here is a withdrawal of American leadership.

The United States should step up our engagement in the region

There is great concern in the region about the massive withdrawal of the United States from the Balkans.

Every single leader from the region that comes to talk to us--this is what they want to talk about.

The persistent scourge of corruption that is holding back economic progress and destabilizing governments.