Heidi Heitkamp

Thank you, Chairman Cotton, and thank you for being such a great partner in putting together this hearing on such a critical and important topic.

But that person has to be literate.

There is no reason that it should be partisan to change the incentive systems that we have in Social Security to encourage people to work longer.

I wake up every morning thinking about the men and women in rural America, especially in North Dakota, who play hard, play by the rules, and try to earn an honest living and save for retirement--in fact, their golden years.

I would urge you to impress the importance of this issue on your colleagues as a concrete kind of governance issue that can help rebuild the faith of the American people in our democratic system.

But, there is a critical role that our neighbor to the south plays, in terms of border enforcement.

I think we all understand Mexico is not going to pay for this wall if it gets built.

We would go a lot further if we actually just acknowledged that there are ways to secure the border other than simply building a wall.

Not one person has come in front of this Committee suggesting that we build a wall on the entire length of the border.

Border security protects, not only this country, but has a way of protecting people to the south.

There has been no one to come before this body and suggest that we need to build a concrete wall completely across the border.

Regulatory reform is a big part of what I am trying to do.

We need a little common sense in all of this and we are working to try and make it happen.

This seemingly adversarial relationship that should not exist, because we all have the same goal.

We want clean water and clean air and safety when it comes to building homes, et cetera, but, you know, let us get there with something that makes sense.

This needs to be a collaborative effort.

It is like saying we are going to fix problems with youth challenges simply with the housing program and ignoring education and health care.

I think my point was that siloing just has not worked.

We need to work on getting those food deserts access.

Building public health systems within tribes would definitely help assist tribes with behavioral health issues.

One thing I want to examine is the intersection of diabetes prevention with behavior and mental health.

The most despair economically in this country is in rural America.

The sugar program is critical. I am not sure--I have not been here for the whole hearing.

I hope that you will engage us. We are a very bipartisan, collaborative committee, and we all represent agricultural states.

But my concern is what we are seeing really out of the White House and out of the budget does not seem to be pro rural or pro agriculture.