Elizabeth Warren

I think a large part of what we would like to see in supporting this is to go beyond the 20 percent.

When Medicare Advantage came into effect in 2003, there was, in fact, the movement to privatize Medicare happened.

I fully understand the notion just to say let's put more money into the program. But we're also going to have to find some scale here.

We've got to get more people into school, post-secondary. We've got to get more of them out, that is, all the way through.

If we stay on our current trend line, we're going to be about 5 million young people short of meeting that goal.

We also know our current college completion rates. We've got about 55 percent completing within 6 years.

I think the only way to reach a goal like that is really through the community colleges.

So I'm hearing two things. I'm hearing allocate the grant dollars differently or at least look into whether we want to allocate differently.

By the year 2020, we know that about 65 percent of all jobs are going to require some kind of post-secondary education.

If we can improve that by improving the K-12 education and preschool as well, we'll do better.

I just am hopeful that we get this done quickly.

We all want to see the money spent in the most effective way, and whether that means a little more discretion for the agency may accomplish that is something we certainly should be taking a look at.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I know that you are committed to improving the equipment and making sure we meet the highest safety standards.

Now, the FTA was supposed to issue objective standards by October 1 of 2013 and it has not done so yet.

I particularly appreciate your working on the safety standards on the Red Line.

Transit asset management was a new and welcomed addition to MAP-21.

So you are making the large trader report available to FERC people in any investigation.

We still have not recovered from the failures of the Fed and the other banking agencies to limit systemic risk and protect consumers leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.

It is time for us to pick workers and consumers and taxpayers over the speculators, over the 'too big to fail' banks.

Market manipulators do not respect jurisdictional boundaries between agencies. In fact, they try to exploit those boundaries and take advantage of gaps in oversight and in data sharing.

I have to say that sounds pretty appealing to me.

Dodd-Frank required that the CFTC and FERC agree on principles for sharing data.

I think your focus on this set of issues has already benefited consumers and helped some small businesses.

I understand from you that the only reason this has not been done is that you have concerns about working out the details about confidentiality.