Al Franken

Thank you again, Madam Chair, for this hearing.

I think the element of Indian country is so important and I also think why it is so important, again, in VAWA, that we have transitional housing and enough transitional housing when there is domestic violence so that a mother can take her…

I am proud to cosponsor your Child Protection Training Act, and I would like to recognize all the hard work you have put into that bill.

I think that we have to remember how much we do pay down the line for this, and it is penny wise and pound foolish not to be funding these programs.

There's going to be an enormous world market and if we don't do this now we're not going to be part of it.

What we're basically doing is fighting for the future.

Solyndra was actually undercut by the fact that the Chinese spent so much in promoting their own solar industry.

Civilian nuclear reactors wouldn't have happened without the government.

Your report points to government support for development of all kinds of technologies that have led to all kinds of jobs.

We seem to have a debate here in this Senate over the very nature of the role of government in development of new technologies.

The internet, for goodness sakes. DARPA created the internet.

So that when my colleagues on the other side, who aren't here, when they sing the praises of fracturing and then demonize government involvement in picking winners and losers, it seems like they don't know the history of this industry.

GPS technology wouldn't of happened without the government.

I think this violates basic free trade principles.

They will. They can, and they have to.

Last week my colleagues on the other side of the aisle blocked a vote that would have eased the burden of debt for millions of college students in Minnesota and across the country. My Republican friends disagreed with us about the best way…

I think our strength in this country... is our innovation and our spirit of entrepreneurship.

I would like to echo what so many of my colleagues have already explained: that voting on a budget today would serve no purpose. We keep hearing from our friends on the other side of the aisle: ``We haven't passed a budget in a thousand…

Obviously the cheapest unit of energy is the unit of energy we don't use.

We established in an energy efficiency resource standard.

This is the program that Senator Luger and I, actually, put in to the Affordable Care Act.

By the way, investing in community-based prevention shows a $5.60 return on $1 investment according to the Trust for America's Health.

The CEO told me that United Health will save $4 for every $1 they spend on the Diabetes Prevention Program.

It costs $300 for the DPP. It costs over $6,000 to take care of someone with diabetes.

I think that Minnesota is a good example of how care organizations can change the way they deliver care.