Tom Harkin

I have said many times, and I will keep saying it, that if we are going to have meaningful health reform in this country, what our kids eat and how they exercise and whether they exercise is a big part of health reform in this country.

One welcome sign of help came in the President's recently released budget in which the President proposed $1 billion per year in additional funding for child nutrition.

I think maybe some financial incentives and bonuses might be a thing that we could do.

A stronger targeted investment in those programs must be a part of a comprehensive Federal response to poor nutrition among our children.

I feel we must reorient our health care system so that it focuses on preventing diet-related illnesses and promoting good nutrition and wellness.

Overweight, obesity, even among our children have reached epidemic levels in America, raising the specter that our children will have shorter life spans than we have for the first time in history.

I think the important part of your story is that you did it and you didn't give up.

I think somehow we are going to have to take a look at that and how we might want to address it.

Well, I just raise the question, if 16 percent is the mean on this, then I raise the question of why other school districts can't meet the mean if they are higher than that.

What sense does it make if you have the authority for school lunches in the lunchroom or in the cafeteria, but you can go right outside the door and there are all the vending machines.

We have to come to grips with this in terms of having the dietary guidelines be standardized for the whole country and for every school.

Patients and physicians deserve to be fully informed about the benefits and risks of medical devices, and the companies making the devices should be held accountable if they fail to achieve this standard.

His response was, 'Well, they don't even know what the value is.' Billions of dollars, and they have no idea what the value is.

But it just seems to me that if you are going to close the loophole, you have got to put them all on a regulated change.

We need to discuss this further because I had a student loan, and I bought a car with a loan long before any of these derivatives ever existed.

I asked the question in our October hearing, I said, what market forces out there demanded these products? Who was demanding this? The answer came, no one.

We must have an unflinching determination on the part of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to restore integrity to these important markets.

Speculative funds ran up the prices of the cotton futures market at a time when there were record surpluses of cotton.

This nomination comes at a very challenging time.

The financial sector has come up with all of these exotic products. No one really understands them except maybe a few people on Wall Street

He appreciates the role of the Congress and the workings of our political system.

He will be a fierce enemy of fraud and manipulation.

Again and again, actions in our futures markets have caused some havoc across our country and economy.

I have absolute confidence in his integrity and in his judgment.

I enthusiastically endorse and introduce Gary Gensler to the Committee to be the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.