Frank Lautenberg

So, we need the people to get the job done.

We cannot afford it. There's no credible case for doing it.

But nothing is more important than putting people back to work and making sure that our economy is never again threatened by the risky bets of Wall Street gamblers.

I'm skeptical about it, but some have suggested that a tax holiday may make sense in the larger context of corporate tax reform.

Mr. Secretary, yesterday you lifted the sanctions against former Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, a man who's been linked to numerous terrorist attacks, including Pan Am 103, which killed 270 people, 189 of whom were Americans.

What would the estimate be of the revenues needed to help us stabilize things and continue looking to improvements in our economy?

Yes. I note the effort that would be put forth to make sure that transparency really is there in all kinds of situations.

But which might--forgive me, but which, all of which can be considerably improved if we put through the budget as the President requested.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have proposed to cut the new CFPB's budget this year to $80 million.

Well said, Mr. Secretary. Thank you.

This, to me it looks like we might wind up back in the 2008 situation if we had to restrict ourselves to the things that you're now planning to do and improve the supervision and the reliability of the marketplace.

House Republicans claim that cutting programs like Head Start and medical research is going to solve the deficit problem.

In New Jersey we have a nationally known philosopher whose name is Yogi Berra.

Right now, we've got to help Americans get back to work. That's got to be our top priority.

The cornerstone of this effort is last year's Wall Street reform law, which includes critical safeguards to protect the economy from another meltdown.

Letting Wall Street regulate itself helped trigger this crisis, sending millions of Americans to the unemployment line and causing their retirement accounts to shrink.

Again, I welcome each of you here to change the game that has been played in the past, and ultimately responsible for the financial disaster, in my view, that we've seen.

Under President Obama's leadership, we're rebuilding the economy from the ground up--laying a foundation that will make our country stronger and better prepared for the future.

The administration has recommended an infrastructure bank to fund transportation projects of national significance.

If the House Republicans get their way, how is that going to affect the CFPB's ability to start up and fulfill its mission of protecting consumers?

We learned, last week, that the Nation's jobless rate hit a 2-year low in March, another sign that the economy is continuing its slow but steady recovery.

We cannot do that adequately through the traditional mechanisms the Congress has used to fund, for example, transportation budgets.

It's critically important. I'll give you an example of how to--if the Congress extends those tax cuts that go to 2 percent of the most fortunate Americans in the country, we have to go borrow $1 trillion over 10 years.

I urge President Obama to keep the commitment in his budget to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire at the end of 2012.

Unfortunately, House Republicans have been persuaded by their friends on Wall Street that the financial industry can regulate itself.