Kent Conrad

I believe it fundamentally puts at risk the economic security of the country.

I think is a growing threat that is extremely serious to the national security.

You know, if we put that in perspective, this is a staggering, staggering number--a trillion dollars in losses because of cyber attacks.

The American people should know what I've learned here tells me you have had remarkable success.

I have been so struck by criticisms in the press directed at you that you can't respond to.

I'm new to the Intelligence Committee and I just want to say how impressed I am by your leadership...

The cuts that will be imposed on your agencies could be draconian and could come much quicker than anybody anticipates.

The cuts will be much more draconian if there is not a comprehensive long-term deal that involves tax reform and the entitlements.

There are more cuts coming. I mean, you can write it down. It is going to happen.

The Fed's job is to get that down, and that resulted in this monetary policy that is a huge Hail Mary pass.

It would be better if we had had more fiscal space coming out of the last boom.

This is a very bad place to be.

I find the share of the pie that is devoted toward international development assistance to be a little bit too modest.

Entitlement spending needs to be contained.

I agree with the Chairman that our current deficits are not sustainable, and they are huge national security issue that needs to be dealt with on a bipartisan basis by having a credible plan to deal with the deficit.

We are not going to balance the budget on 12 percent of the budget, on 12 cents out of every dollar.

These budgets, all of them in all of the Federal Government, this is not going to work.

I salute the Secretary for saying, Hey, we have to take money out of the baseline plan.

We saw a fundamental threat to the economic and national security interests of the United States if we failed to act.

I want to welcome everyone to the Senate Budget Committee today.

If you have a flat tax that generates the same amount of revenue, it is a mathematical certainty that people at the top pay less and people at the bottom are going to pay more.

I do believe we can move toward more of a consumption base by moving toward what you might call the traditional flat tax.

The race to the bottom is what is going on in the world today, and if it is going to be stopped, it is going to take some leadership from the United States.

We had to do more on the spending cuts side of the ledger, substantially more, but that we also had to do something on the revenue side if we are going to bell this cat in some kind of fair way.

If we just use the historical average for revenues, at no time in the last 40 years would we have balanced the budget, not one time.