Tom Harkin

Your budget includes $765 million to fund the advanced development of the drugs and vaccines that we need to defend against bioterrorism or a public health emergency.

I hope we can also agree that we have to make those investments that will allow our future to prosper.

The plan worked, and worked brilliantly. It created large budget surpluses, 22 million new jobs, and 116 consecutive months of economic expansion.

I think this is something that we just have not paid much attention to and we should.

Reforming healthcare is not only the right thing to do, it will save taxpayers money and reduce the deficit by $210 billion in the first decade and more than $1 trillion in the next.

We wanted to have this hearing, to highlight the problems confronting the Social Security Administration.

Not every case is the same. They're all different, and that's why sometimes people have to appeal these to ALJs and then on to Federal court, I guess.

I think I'm going to call Ms. Shor up to the table. No reason we can't.

I was very concerned about the CLASS Act and how it would work.

The Equal Access to Justice Act is an extremely important statute that defrays the cost of legal expenses for claimants.

About 20,000 a year actually seek to go to Federal--actually go to Federal court.

I'm looking forward to working with the administration on the implementation of this pilot program.

This amendment would prohibit any Federal funds appropriated for the rest of fiscal year 2011 from being distributed under the Equal Access to Justice Act.

The cuts at the level in H.R. 1 will severely punish people who most rely on Social Security and SSI.

We urge its adoption at a minimum of that amount of $11.8 billion.

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?

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

Amendment 195 would stop the payment of Equal Access to Justice Act fees, Government-wide.

If you can get some of that for the record it would be good.

Social Security is the most successful Government program in the world.

AARP recognizes the budget deficit provides many challenges, and our members believe that it's important to work together across party lines to find responsible budget solutions.

Make sure that people who rely upon Social Security--as Senator Reed just reminded us, not just elderly, a lot of kids out there, too, and people with disabilities, survivors--make sure that they can get timely help.

I think it's very important for us to understand that Social Security is a real safety-net program for this country.

The speed and quality of the disability process must continue to improve and should not be allowed to regress.

I will be limiting my questions to the very important topic at hand that will impact millions of Americans this year.