Chris Dodd

Senator Bob Bennett of Utah is deeply entrenched with transit issues in Salt Lake.

I think that could help structure more of these and make this not so--I think the ingredients are there.

I think we've arrived at a time when we need to recognize, as well, how important the role of transit can play.

This is not an anti-highway hearing, by the way. It's obviously critically important as well.

The costs are prohibitive in many ways, and we are already lowering deficits in the Highway Trust Fund

I'm pleased we are in New Haven this morning to talk with so many of Connecticut's transportation leaders.

That's high-speed. Is that high-speed?

The infrastructure bank idea of leveraging private dollars with public monies, which has been done in Vancouver, Canada, and other places, is one of the more creative ideas

I want to recognize who is in the audience.

Richard Shelby, my colleague on the Committee, cares about these issues in his communities as well.

We are operating both high-speed critical Amtrak service, critical commuter service, and we are running on a system that is now a hundred years old.

He must have known we were having the hearing here this morning.

It is with great pleasure that I introduce Gina McCarthy, who has been nominated to the important post of Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation at the Environmental Protection Agency.

I want to congratulate President Obama for nominating such a remarkable, qualified, energetic and passionate individual

Well, it is huge. You go from something that was $100 and it moves to $5 or $10 more, that is value.

The danger of doing that seems to me to only complicate the problem to some degree.

Well, again, it is certainly worthy of quick examination because this is the kind of thing that, again, in a week or two from now we will pick up our newspapers and discover that this has gone on and no one has paid attention to it.

I for one feel very strongly, at least at this point, that the SEC and the function of the SEC ought not to be so incorporated in something that it ends up diminishing the role of the Securities and Exchange Commission in investor…

One of the things we learned, going back in Richard Breeden's day, is that you cannot have the regulator in a sense also be responsible for the resolution of these matters.

There is a lot of interest in Chairman Schapiro's testimony today.

I fear very much that if you are not extremely helpful, we will have more 'too big to fail,' more moral hazard, and more bailouts, and that is not a healthy path for us to move forward.

That is not going to happen.

I think one of the important things that Congress can look at, and I hope you will look at in the future, is to enact a shareholder voting rights and proxy access act.

Throughout much of the country, the strength of the Afghan central government is tenuous at best, and the Taliban and al Qaeda continue to operate with impunity in large expanses of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

It has been nearly 8 years since the U.S. began military operations in Afghanistan. It should come as no surprise to anyone that, while coalition and Afghan forces have made gains against Taliban and al Qaeda operations, these gains have…