Bob Kerrey

Well, first of all, I think you would be having a difficult time retraining men and women to serve in the military had this Congress not made all of the changes that it made since we have been fighting this war for the last 14 years.

Strike 'probably.' It was you and the executive.

I came into this commission believing that it's likely we have a real problem with pay and benefits.

It would be unfair to identify military retirement as the big problem, because it isn't. The big problem is Social Security and Medicare.

I think that it would be a wrong thing to do and send a terrible signal.

100 percent of the revenues that this Nation produces today are being consumed by our mandatory spending and the interest on the debt.

We believe, however, that they are crucial to ensuring that we carry out our responsibilities effectively.

The reforms we have embarked on over the last 16 months... are substantive and systematic, not just cosmetic.

by what authority were these leases rescinded?

I sure commend that study to your attention because I think we made some very good recommendations with regard to policy.

It was co-chaired by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey.

I hope that this hearing will produce results.

I don't think you can do this without electronic health medical records.

We are all getting--we are living longer.

It is not just I have lost one activity of daily living. I have to be supervised.

I share Speaker Gingrich's evaluation of this, and I actually would slightly disagree with him and maybe substantially disagree with him.

I happen to believe that it could be prevented, that a project that had that as an objective could, over a relatively short period of time, prevent the onset of the disease itself.

We didn't fund that to go half way. We funded it as a project to go all the way to the Moon.

changing that oversight process is a very important thing to do.

There is a case here to change the way we approach Alzheimer's disease, and it is a fairly simple case that it is a different kind of disease.

If you believe it is project based, I am quite enthusiastic that the recommendations that we are making in this report will produce real results.

Unless it has not just authority, but funding, it is going to be exceptionally difficult to get the job done.

The dependency is connected to the public programs that we have in place, Medicare and Medicaid.

I think he said--I am paraphrasing from a couple years of memory past here--but he said, well, I am not asking, but if you can get one, yes.

He hadn't swatted. Dr. Rice, we didn't -- we only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August, 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?