David Minge: “I really appreciate the insights of the gentleman on this. I think it is helpful to those of us in Congress. It…”

“I really appreciate the insights of the gentleman on this. I think it is helpful to those of us in Congress. It certainly, I hope, is helpful to the staff and everyone else that we work with. It is interesting, there are several groups, my colleague has alluded to one, the New Democratic Coalition, the New Democratic Network. We have the Blue Dog Coalition. So within the Democratic Caucus here, the 205 or 207 Democrats in the House of Representatives, we have subgroups that have a deep commitment to reducing the Nation's debt. The people that are speaking here this evening are drawn from these two subgroups of the Democratic Caucus. One thing that is also of interest to me is that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) and I are from the upper Midwest, so we started at the northern end of the country, Minnesota, went down to Texas, went over to Mississippi, now we are up to Wisconsin. And we have got a couple of colleagues here from the east coast and the west coast; and as much as we sometimes think could we not just let those coastal areas go out to sea, we better also get the benefit of their wisdom here.”