Every child needs at least one good mentor, one good role model, and the more, the merrier.

Our chaplain here in the Senate is an old Navy guy. He is a retired Navy Admiral. His name is Barry Black, and he is black.

He always likes to tell us Senators--talking about faith--he says the golden rule, treat other people the way we want to be treated, is the Cliffs Notes of the New Testament.

I especially want to applaud whoever figured out the idea of assigning to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) the responsibility for doing the outreach to key stakeholders.

I think a lot of them are user fee based, but we want to look very closely at those and work with our colleagues.

In our roles as Governors, I do not know if that ever happened to you under your watch, but from time to time people were released, not often but infrequently, from prison in our State that should not have been released.

I want to go back to a point raised by Senator McCain.

Maybe as we do our top-to-bottom review of the Department we can actually figure out how to have a few less Committees and Subcommittees for you to report to.

I believe they are significantly more secure.

Can we make the borders more secure? Yes, we can.

The next EPA Administrator will also play an important role in our battle against climate change.

I look forward to supporting Gina McCarthy's nomination to be the next Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Let's get this done, and I don't think you will regret it.

One of my top priorities is reforming America's broken toxic chemical laws.

I'm proud to have authored the 'Toxic Community Right-to-Know Act,' which created the Toxic Release Inventory.

I think Gina McCarthy understands that. And I think she will be a very good partner with us.

There is a national security interest to make sure that we deal responsibly with global climate change.

I do not think we will ever get out of debt with over 11 million people out of work, so we need to focus on jobs.

Mr. President, you have to lead. You have to show a willingness to lead on this.

I am very concerned about the cuts in conservation in this budget, as well as in crop insurance, so that is something that this Senate is taking a different approach on.

I share the concerns about chained CPI and believe that, while we need to--and can--address long-term what needs to be done to strengthen Social Security with incremental change, it should not start by cutting benefits.

I, for one, think it would be a better decision to decide what you are going to do, make what you do permanent.

What Senator Portman and I are working on is a proposal that simplifies it, that makes it permanent.

Improper payments in 2010, $121 billion--billion! In 2011, down to $115 billion. That is still a lot of money.

I would invite my colleagues to join us in the idea that there can be better health care results for the same amount of money or less money by going after some of the fraud that we all know exists, some of the waste and inefficiencies that…