John Shimkus

The medical device tax is a very pernicious tax by itself.

I had Secretary Sebelius right at the table you are at, who in essence agreed that they had double-counted the depletion of Medicare dollars.

So this must help that fund, shouldn't it?

So Medicare pays, in essence, 70 percent of private care costs.

Obamacare makes the program even worse because it creates a new entitlement that is not funded.

It was the Speaker at that time who said the American people, we have to pass the bill before we know what is in it.

The bill that was passed was the Senate bill, without hearings, without movement through the committee.

I was the ranking member of the Health Subcommittee when this law got passed.

I would just like to remind him that we had not one hearing on this healthcare law before it was passed on the floor.

As Chairman Upton has said before to DHS, we are all on the same side. The enemy here is the terrorists who would seek to harm our Nation.

If we want to fix parts of the bill, the medical device tax would be one way that we could fix it to create jobs.

No one else has a tax in this sector in the world on gross.

Good paying jobs, good benefits, tough work. In the coal regions around the world, they are critical to the southern Illinois economy.

Coal miners mine coal, take it to the power plant. Good paying jobs, good benefits, tough work.

Base load generation is the low priced commodity product, which--so people get harmed and the economy gets harmed by high prices.

If we don't have a diversified portfolio based upon the regions, some big wind areas, some areas, they don't have a lot of wind.

The 'all of the above' should be all of the above.

As you have just read, releasing the SER is the very next action for the NRC to take.

Great. Thank you. This committee has previously established that NRC has enough funding to complete and release the SER in our February 28, 2013, so we are not going to allow you to commingle this financial debate based upon other…

Collegiality is great, but just signing a letter because that is the majority way instead of you have opposition and you have a better way to do it, stand your ground.

I am concerned the Commission risks undermining this balance by shifting to an unlimited application of the defense-in-depth philosophy in reaction to the Fukushima accident.

I expect some of my colleagues will likely share some additional concerns with your response.

I don't think the staff should attempt to set policy on a matter on which the Commission has not yet reached a conclusion.

John Shimkus, a Representative in Congress from the State of Illinois, opening statement.

I think the best way to get out of this mess is to just owning up to when there is problems and also bragging about the successful deployment.