Ben Cardin

Mr. Ducker, let me just underscore the point on the taxes. You mentioned the de minimis rule.

If we continue to make these unilateral concessions, then it is not in America's interest and not in the global interest.

I hope we can successfully complete a TTIP agreement that does put us on a level playing field.

I thank my friend from Virginia for yielding. Through the Chair, I thank Senator Warner for his help in making sure we do what is right for our Federal workforce. They suffered through furloughs because of sequestration, furloughs because…

The Senator is absolutely right about the private contractor issue. When you look at 800,000 Federal workers who have been furloughed, that does not include the private contractors, which are clearly going to be an additional hundreds of…

You hear the numbers, you hear the thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of people and millions of people, but until you can put a face on it so people can recognize it is their neighbors, it is their community that has been…

There have been studies done that show that as a result of this manufactured crisis, consumer confidence has been more adversely affected than in any of our natural disasters, that is worse than the attack on our country on 9/11 as far as…

Thank you for pointing out so frequently on the floor of the Senate, in our caucus, and to the American people the harm being caused to our country as a result of the shutdown of government.

We want to make sure government is open. We want to make sure we do not default on our obligations.

You know, we do not have the Federal workers who usually come in here and have lunch. I do not know how much longer we can deal with our current situation with the government shutdown.

We have ten percent of our workforce that works for the Federal Government--ten percent of our workforce. It has had a huge impact on the Maryland economy.

It is Congress's responsibility to do this. Uncertainty is really hurting this country.

When you negotiate with evil liars, everything that you--all of your lines have to be clearly marked out.

We are negotiating with a government, a country run by evil liars.

We would like to see diplomacy work.

This shutdown is really hurting this country in so many ways; so many ways.

China is still buying a significant amount of oil from Iran.

We need to increase the pressure, not reduce the pressure on Iran at this point.

You stop enrichment of uranium. Number two, you allow the existing stockpiles to be transferred and removed from your country.

We are now into 3 years under the Affordable Care Act, and all we get from the Republicans is repeal after repeal after repeal--no effort to deal with legitimate problems of implementation that we would like to work together to do.

And it became law. Senator Boxer is absolutely right: When that bill passed, we came together and said: Let's make it better. We lost the battle on the floor. It became the law. Let's try to make it work. And we did that, Democrats and…

By the way, it was not paid for. It was estimated to cost $400 billion, and there was no offset of cost. So we were worried it would have an impact on the affordability of the Federal Government to pay the bill. So we all voted against it…

It was all private insurance. They did not pool the total purchasing power to reduce the cost of prescription drugs--another matter that we felt very strongly that we were overpaying. And we are overpaying for prescription drugs, as a…

We are going to need 60 votes in the Senate to do anything, and we are going to get many things through a Republican-controlled House.

I think the absolute no revenue pledge that has characterized the Republican position... is a mistake.