Tom Harkin

Is there a risk of undermining the entire process of developing drugs and countermeasures for the stockpile if significantly more Project BioShield balances are used for other purposes?

Are you confident enough that under the legislation you have the authority to make any changes in the program to make it financially solvent in the long term?

Thank you for your stewardship of this vast and complex Department.

I was very cautiously supportive of the CLASS Act.

I concur wholeheartedly with Senator Kirk. I think this is something that we just have not paid much attention to and we should.

I do not agree myself with Congress appropriating $120 million for an insolvent program.

I happen to think the community health center has been one of the great underpinnings of our health system in America.

I appreciate the support of Congress, particularly Chairman Harkin, on efforts to fight Medicare fraud.

The American people will not allow the hard-earned protections and benefits in this law to be taken away.

I commend your Department and your leadership in that area.

I believe efforts to repeal it are ill-advised, and trying to fight last year's or last couple years' battles.

We have made America a more compassionate and more just society.

The abuses are structural, not just a result of lax enforcement.

Oh, Senator Harkin, there are just a few bad actors out there. Just one or two, you get rid of them, and you are fine.

Yes, I commit to working with the Senator. I commit to the Senators that we will specifically allocate in the CR that will pass the Senate the amount of funds that are necessary to ensure a smooth transition in July.

Yes, the $70.7 million provided to the program in the fiscal year 2010 omnibus remains available to NIOSH to use until expended. It is our understanding that $13 million remains of that $70.7 million and that it will be used to continue…

I thank the Senators. The Senator is absolutely correct, the 2011 continuing resolution that was proposed by Senator Inouye will not reduce any services or treatment available to responders in the World Trade Center Health Program. In…

I have advocated, for a long time, exactly what she is taking the lead on; that is, every 2 years do the appropriations and then we can do oversight. It is time we move and move as rapidly as possible to biennial budgeting so we can…

We just have a responsibility to make sure that the Social Security Administration gets enough money to fulfill its obligations.

I just wanted to have this hearing, again, to highlight what might happen if, in fact, the H.R. 1 was enacted.

So, why do so many cases, 20,000 a year, go through this whole system and stuff if--I mean, is it just an interpretive question, or is it a question of judgment, how disabled a person is?

I was not aware of that in the--in H.R. 1--not aware that that provision was in there.

I just wanted to point that out, that that's another little whack out there that might happen.

We are fearful that that could make legal representation unavailable to claimants who need to pursue their claims in Federal court.

I'm saying, for the present generation out there, I mean, some of them have never used computers before, have never gone online.