The VA had made management efficiency claims which make up over $1 billion in this year's budget, but the [Government Accountability Office (GAO)], at least, says haven't been and can't be proven.

I believe firmly that the Constitution calls for the Senate to advise and consent.

America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. I am, therefore, going to oppose the increase in the debt limit.

There are a couple of things we've got to do. Number one, we have got to have good surveillance mechanisms set up not just in this country but internationally. And I already allocated about $35 million to start cooperating with other…

We know that there's going to be some sort of pandemic in our lifetimes. We don't know whether this will be the big one. And I hope that people realize that if we have a sense of urgency about this, and this particular bird flu doesn't end…

We are not ready for it. If you look at the last pandemic we had on U.S. soil, that was the Spanish flu that took place in 1918, 1919, you had literally millions of deaths. And unfortunately this is one of these situations where if you had…

We know that every several decades you get these kinds of pandemics that sweep through the populations. We don't know that this particular bird flu will show up next year and we won't be ready. But we know that some time in the next decade…

Number two, we've got to have a stockpile of antiviral drugs that cut down the fatalities so that even if you contract the disease, you don't die from it.

I am interested in fixing the system. And I think that's what all Americans, African-Americans, as well as whites, as well as Hispanics, want to see happen is making sure we're prepared for the next time out.

Well, look, we just voted for $60 billion worth of funding to go down to the Gulf Coast. And I think that one of the good things about this past couple of weeks, in the midst of this tragedy, is seeing how generous the American people are…

What we're doing is we're putting a CFO, a comptroller in the White House that is overseeing how this money gets spent.

Well what I can say is is that local, state, federal officials working together did not seem to have a good plan to get those folks out.