I would like to go back to a point that, I think, several of you have emphasized, and that is one way to decrease the health disparities between high-income and low-income people is to look at the environments around them.

Not only are the data systems, we just need the dollars to invest in research and understanding what are the most important factors.

We can do this in the United States. We have little pockets of where we have begun to build on the research.

The virtuous circle instead of the vicious cycle.

The lower people's income, the earlier they die and the sicker they live.

If those are not the investments we are willing to make, what kind of a people are we? We have opportunities here. We just have to seize them.

We used to be the most educated population post-World War II. Now our seniors are the most educated seniors in the world, but our young people are falling behind.

This trend of increasing income inequality and decreasing median household income has been going on for some years now. It is getting worse.

We have held back on the investments in these data systems that, I think, would help explain much more what is going on in America.

I rise today to talk about the retirement crisis in this country--a crisis that has received far too little attention and far too little response from Washington. I have spent most of my career studying the economic pressures on…

I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 13, 2013, at 2 p.m. in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled…

I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________