Tom Carper

I think we have about five million people that are suffering from Alzheimer's disease, dementia today.

We spend a huge amount, as you know, in the last 6 months of our lives.

I think there is a lot of reason to say, yes, we would, and it is just not my conjecture, but folks a whole lot smarter than me.

Some level of debt is reasonable and running a deficit is sometimes necessary.

People ask me, not all the time, but quite a bit, what keeps me up at night, and I am the senior Democrat on this Committee and we focus a lot on cyber attacks and all kinds of attacks on our country, lone wolves. Those are the kind of…

I would ask that my full statement be made a part of the record.

In the Navy, we had to face a big challenge, it is like all hands on deck, and this is all hands on deck.

Just talk to us about root causes here. Is there any way to address this challenge, this problem with the avian influenza by addressing not just the symptoms of the problem, but by addressing root causes, or is that just not possible?

Part of the trade negotiations going on right now with the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership is the use of vaccinations in livestock or birds and to what extent does that impair our ability to sell to a lot of different countries.

One of the things we try to focus on in this Committee is not dealing with symptoms of problems, but how do we deal with root causes of the problems.

When we have a farm that goes down in Delmarva because of the avian influenza, a lot of times, countries around the world will just say they are not going to take any of our chickens.

One of my favorite sayings, if it is not perfect, make it better.

Is that something we are actually doing now, where we have, like, one designated person, so you do not, like, call a call center and get switched from person to person to person?

It was the birthplace of the modern broiler or meat-type industry in the United States.

It does not mean we will always be.

You can do it, but we can help. We all have a role and a responsibility to play.

I hope we will have a chance to ask a few more.

You indicated there is a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of red tape, and it can be very frustrating, time consuming.

They cleaned those up. They have been cleaned up a lot. That has helped a lot.

I think we adopted it maybe a year or so ago and I do not know if we have had enough time to actually get it up and running.

The President has actually said--here is his idea. He has given us a big idea, and basically it says that $2 trillion is part of the overseas profits of American companies, that they are just not bringing it home.

I think, to me, we have a gas tax, it should just be raised.

Several years ago, when Bowles-Simpson was being stood up, they invited input from all of us, and George Voinovich and I suggested that we raise the gas tax and the diesel tax by a penny a month for 25 months.

Oregon has been doing this for 10 years. They are a good laboratory of democracy, and hopefully we can learn from them.

I think you would be able to have a real opportunity for States to expand these public-private partnerships.