Kent Conrad

I think with the nomination of Larry Echo Hawk, we have the chance to get this right.

I strongly support the nomination of Jim Miller to be USDA Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services.

This is a little bit too much to swallow, at least for now.

I would just respond to the gentleman that I have seen a bigger budget gimmick, and that is fighting the war in Iraq without putting a nickel in the budget.

With the amount of money our country is already spending on health care, it is very hard for me to understand why the answer is to put more money into the system.

I believe it is a combination of a very loose monetary policy, a very loose fiscal policy, a very loose trade policy, all coupled with deregulation, that created the seed bed for bubbles to form.

I think there was one part of it that was very, very wrong, and I regret deeply my own going along with it.

I think derivatives, while probably the vast majority of it is completely legitimate, the part that was not was the assessment of risk.

All of us who participated in supporting that bear responsibility.

Reconciliation goes directly against that. Directly against that.

Our forefathers intended the Senate to be the cooling saucer.

I think we do have a real challenge if so many new Senators do not know the history here.

I think we had better think very carefully about that as we go into this new Presidency.

One of the great things about the U.S. Senate is nothing is ever settled.

I think I could be persuaded on reconciliation.

There is no single element of Senate rules that goes more against minority rights than reconciliation that I know of.

It was nice to hear Senator Byrd say that this would be a good time to have some civilized discussion about procedures around here.

If I were in the minority at this moment, I would want to think very, very carefully: Do I want an unfettered reconciliation process?

This may be a very critical moment for this body and this Committee and this Budget Act.

I think we need as a body to think very, very carefully about do we want reconciliation to be used in that way.

Sense of the Senate really became absurd... it is purely messaging, and it is a giant waste of time.

Budget resolutions have become messaging instruments, not budgeting instruments.

Senator Byrd, a member of this Committee and somebody who has forgotten more about the rules than most of us know.

I am not going to be at all interested in something that truncates or reduces the rights of the minority.

The minority is not going to be willing to neutralize or significantly adjust its rights here if it would affect the ability to make our points.