Mark Kirk

The difficulty before this country is that the baby boom began when the troops came home in 1945. So, for an American born in that key year, you're going to be collecting a retirement check in 2009 when you hit your 65th birthday. There…

The need here is to remove the fear that somehow a loss of a job or discovery of a preexisting condition will deny Americans and their families health care insurance. What we want to make sure is you already have a right under Federal law…

One solution would be to have the government take over everyone's health care and to make sure we take action that breaks the link between you and your physician and insert a large bureaucracy that currently runs the post office and now…

We have seen consistently that while events in Iran or Iraq, while issues concerning global climate change, and of course the immigration bill in the Senate are all front-burner issues, but for American families, education, health care…

Taxpayers should know that Members of Congress convicted of a felony still collect their pension checks in jail. Congress took no action to kill pensions for congressional felons in February, no action in March, April or May. Now…

Last month, several former members of Congress cashed in their taxpayer-funded retirement checks from jail. After indictment and conviction beyond a shadow of a doubt, they are still paid each month by the taxpayers they betrayed.

I would just like to state to the gentleman that I thank you very much for your senior leadership on this bipartisan legislation. I would hope that we could all agree that pike and walleye fishing should not be reserved for those citizens…

If I am not mistaken, last year was the largest increase in tax receipts coming into our Treasury, even though there was no tax increase by the Federal Government, simply because of economic growth, that since September 11, 2001, we have…

We talk about the Suburban Agenda, what is in it, which is pro-school, pro-health care, pro-environment legislation, and what is not, which is a tax increase on the American people. There is the argument that is made very often here in…

If we look at the suburban agenda about safe schools, extending health care, green and open space, et cetera, one of the things that is not part of the Suburban Agenda is a tax increase, especially a tax increase on working families. One…

What we did is we made sure married couples did not pay a higher tax than two single people living together.

You are telling me that the marriage penalty will be reimposed by the American Tax Code unless this Congress acts?

Why I think this legislation is so important, too, is we have seen in the development of the environmental law and movement a trend away from our roots protecting green and open space and habitat to more regulation, more lawsuits and…

It also seems to me we are not empowering a large bureaucracy. There is no overhead in administration. The vast percentage of resources dedicated for this purpose actually goes to the environmental preservation.

You are an expert on health care in this Congress. When we look at the delivery of health care, in a hospital emergency room, we have the most expensive setting to care for a family. Generally they have waited until a very late moment, and…

If we don't pass this legislation, we will have fewer doctors and fewer examining rooms open in community health centers. Ironically, because we did not provide this liability protection for community health centers, we don't have any…

We also hear from job experts that in America generally it takes one month or $10,000 to find a new job, on average, but many families will hit that 18-month limit before they find new employment.

We have seen that several hundred thousand Americans each year exercise their COBRA rights to continue health care insurance for their families after they are laid off or leave employment. But, each year, over 200,000 Americans will reach…

For suburban families, health care issues are second only to safety and security and improvement of public education in their priority list. One of the key issues is access to care, especially at community health centers, and making sure…

Reclaiming my time, that may be the biggest benefit from this legislation. Not only will we save tens of billions of dollars for college education, and I think everybody in this Chamber knows George Washington University just crossed the…

When we look at this problem, we see that the Congress has taken critical action in the past to change our culture in favor of more savings and investment. The 401(k) program was relatively new to our society and our culture. And yet…

Including all of the felonies you would expect: bribery and -- and various items of public corruption, to make sure that a lawmaker, who is convicted of breaking the law, suffers the penalty and doesn't get a taxpayer-funded pension.

Well, because members of Congress have pensions, and they're worried about what would happen if they were ever charged with a crime.

I think it's essential that we deny a pension to any member of Congress convicted of a felony.

I think it's essential that we deny a pension to any member of Congress convicted of a felony.