Tom Carper

Lock-in, as good as it is in Medicaid, we are just addressing a symptom of the problem.

I think they are on to something at Westminster Village.

Senator Wyden certainly has spent a lot of time promoting.

For us, this one is personal. So I very much appreciate what you just said.

I want to echo Senator Booker's comments on the importance of investments to protect life and property along our coasts.

What I am hearing is that the Army Corps is running low on funds to complete disaster repairs.

It is beaches and dunes that protect us and help us to save money when we get hit by a big one.

Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

I think we are lucky that you are willing to take on this job.

The best way to solve that problem is to cut the corporate tax rate so that we are competitive.

If you do nothing else on health care reform, the one thing you need to do is to make sure that at some point in time, when the cost of health care coverage for a person, for a policy, reached a high level, at some point in time it should…

And it is the right thing to do for our country.

We do not have enough folks at the IRS there to answer questions, be good on the phone, help taxpayers with their concerns.

If we could actually pass that, use that money, at least for a while, for infrastructure, that would be fine by me.

By doing this, if we actually provide some more resources for IRS, it actually helps us reduce our budget deficit in the end.

I would just note for the record that 5, 6 years ago, we had about 40 million people in this country who did not have any health care coverage, and today, that number has been cut in half.

At some point in time, my hope is that we will get to a point where we could actually go in and have a reasonable debate on the Affordable Care Act and make changes to it.

What we have is that I would describe it as sort of a Rube Goldberg set-up here to make sure that legislative employees, employees of the legislative branch, can actually get the employer's share, as other Federal employees do.

I know of no one in the Senate who is a more thoughtful member than Senator Lankford.

I think we should. I do not know of anybody who is asking for a special deal.

Most--before I was elected to this job here, I was Governor of my State.

But, if we do have a second round, I want to come back and ask you about how we are using the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) to find ways to get better health care outcomes for less money, or better health care outcomes…

Surround yourself with the best people you can find.

That is music to our ears. Thank you. Thank you so much for saying that.

We worked very hard with the Intelligence Committee (IC) and, I think, passed a really good information sharing bill.