I rise today to return to the issue of the legacy of the invasion and ongoing occupation of Northern Cyprus and related human rights violations in the region. The disruption of a Christmas liturgy at the Orthodox Church of Agios Synesios…

on Monday, January 17, our Nation once again celebrated the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a national holiday. Signed into law in 1983, the bill to make Dr. King's birthday a legal public holiday was the result of a 15-year…

the way that the scoring has been done, and discriminates against certain States over others based upon their regulatory structure.

I would really appreciate you keeping us informed as to how well that is working so that we clearly need to pay attention to this issue.

So for a relatively small investment of Federal funds, we leverage a lot of loans to small companies.

I think we all agree the deficit--we need to have a credible game plan to bring the deficit under control.

I think it is intuitive to the people of this Nation that if we can really get access to care... we can reduce our health care spending.

We need tax reform, and we desperately need it.

All of the major areas need to be on the table, and that was, I think, the credibility of the Debt Commission.

The argument I hear the most against consumption taxes is progressivity, but we can make a consumption tax progressive, and we have ways of doing it.

I represent Maryland. Maryland is prepared to move forward with a nuclear power plant at Calvert Cliffs.

Part of bringing the budget into balance is that we are going to have to make those types of sacrifices.

If the Federal Government does not set the example, it makes it difficult to get the type of compliance.

I do not want to give up on the pricing of carbon.

There is clearly a need out there, and there are clearly banks that are still sitting on the sidelines as it relates to making loans available to small businesses.

We need to do it on our environmental commitments on storm water.

It is about jobs. It is about outbuilding our competitors.

My concern is that if we were to pass the recommendations of the Commission, it is unlikely that that would stand for very long before Congress would once again, for reasons of political expediency, use the Tax Code rather than the revenue…

Let me just very quickly, Mr. Chairman, agree completely, and that bill, of course, was strongly supported by our delegation here, and we want to see you have that authority.

We want the best policy objectives. Future Congresses are going to act regardless of what we do in this Congress on these recommendations.

I think that is a pretty direct, honest answer, and I appreciate that.

You have to set it at a rate where it will not cost the taxpayers any money, and yet it still gets scored as an issue because of the OMB formula.

Secretary Gates shares the importance and the attention that is needed for gender equality.

the Congress needs now to show the leadership, and then to ask the President to join us.

So if, in fact, we bring down the military action and do not have to spend as much on our soldiers overseas, we can bring some back, that in and of itself would give us some savings that are not in your baseline.