Mark Kirk

So I want to make sure left hand and right hand are actually talking to each other.

There ought to be some ability to work within this Federal system.

It asks you a set of questions, and based on those answers, generates a tax return.

The Congress appropriated a very large amount of money for health IT over at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

I think there is real potential for an outcome here that is different than anything that has been tried over the previous decades.

Is there a way to have sort of, for lack of a better term, a Shinseki principle here that this IT effort is brought to bed by November of next year so that we make sure that we have full Shinseki management from start to finish exactly as…

I want to make sure that the White House prediction of unemployment is your prediction, because my guess is the White House is going to predict over next year unemployment will fall dramatically.

I think it would be great if he and I had you and Secretary Gates up here in mid-May to discuss how far you got.

What is wrong with just having you use the Department of Defense (DOD) stuff since they are generating veterans, or since you are a little bit larger than them right now, having them just surrender and using the VA standard? I mean…

The Department has since informed us that its budget estimates were based on 2008 actuarial data that did not account for a high unemployment rate.

I think we need to get more aggressive because right now what happens is the promise that we have made to our veterans when it comes to healthcare seems to be only able to be fulfilled if you happen to live in the right part of the country.

The Department's fiscal year 2012 request that proposes a record high $448 million for the VA's General Administration offices in Washington, DC, that is about $51 million higher than in fiscal years 2010 and 2011.

I hope we do not reinvent the wheel. I hope that in fact we reinvent nothing.

I hope we can reject the administration's proposal to zero out children's graduate medical education.

You have about a $580 million request to root out Medicare waste, fraud, and abuse.

I think one of the key problems is for the American people to best understand it the way I think about it is the movie, 'It's A Wonderful Life.'

If we have picked winners and losers in this country, 20 years ago, we picked finance as the winner and manufacturing as the loser.

The only major industrial power in the world that doesn't have a manufacturing strategy.

Would you agree with me that the RTA and all transit authorities are best served by keeping politics out of their management?

I will continue to fight for high-speed rail, but it is now time for the program to produce a compelling and rigorous plan to justify that support--and future funding.

The focus of the Congress and the American people is on our unsustainable spending.

I think the country should begin a debate on moving to all-year school.

Senator Durbin and I are also working on the Durbin-Kirk ALL-STAR legislation to expand charter school opportunities for kids.

I would actually argue it probably will kill a lot of medical innovation.

I think that much of the healthcare bill will be wiped out and IPAB with it.