Al Franken

How are you going to get anything done if there's no institutional memory.

It's impossible for them to plan for their futures; and I think that our pensioners deserve better than that.

I rise today to speak once again about the New START treaty. Today I will talk about the New START treaty and the maintenance of a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent. That means maintaining and sustaining the nuclear weapons…

We need to keep the focus today on the people that the PBGC serves: our Nation's pensioners, our workers, and our retirees.

This is the year we take our country back.

I have no goal to de-fund from Federal money the good actors.

I just find that irritating, that they throw up that stuff all the time.

I certainly do think it's unfair that private student loans are treated like unpaid criminal fines rather than like very similar forms of consumer debt like credit cards.

As Members of Congress, what can we do to encourage a marketplace where the competition among schools is based on the quality of the education, not the quality of marketing?

In the health care bill, I wrote a provision called the medical loss ratio.

What we're trying to do here--and I would appreciate it if the other members would stay instead of making a comment, quoting a paid lobbyist, and then--with great umbrage, and then leaving.

I think that's why these hearings are important.

When the invisible hand is operating it isn't an invisible hand with a card up its sleeve?

This year I joined Senators Durbin and Whitehouse in introducing the Fairness for Struggling Students Act.

I don't want Pell grants being used in a way that is just going to waste.

You obviously are in no position to do that.

we have big problems in the debt collection industry that are long overdue in being addressed. Before I even begin, I wish to preface my remarks by saying when someone takes out a loan, they ought to pay it back. I have no intention of…

I regret that Democrats have allowed the word ``stimulus'' to become a dirty word, one that we avoid using. The President spoke a few weeks ago about his new plan to invest $50 billion in new infrastructure--projects that will improve…

I think it is important to get this out in the open so that you have an opportunity to address it.

the big policy was why should a bank robber in Texas get a different sentence from a bank robber in California;

I value the diversity that people of different backgrounds, as the Senator said, is what makes our country different.

I think that every American and every person intuitively knows that a judge brings his or her experience to the court.

So would it be too bold to say that if we are interested in long-term deficits in this country, that maybe it would be a smart approach to have drug courts all over the country and make sure that we are not incarcerating people in a way…

I do not think anyone can doubt that. And Oliver Wendell Holmes, I believe, said--it was he who said something to the effect of that the law is experience.

It is an important step in what will be a difficult, but I hope successful, effort to reform IHS so it can be a model of delivering healthcare.