Rob Portman

I think we have 13 bills before the committee. We appreciate getting the Administration's feedback on them.

It's something that I think deserves our support as well. Very inspirational words that Senator Lieberman and I spoke on the Floor of the Senate last year.

We're also reintroducing a bill to allow a plaque to be placed on the World War II memorial inscribed with the words of Franklin Roosevelt.

I also want to thank Chairman Udall for being willing to take on this task.

This is the same bill basically that we had before the committee last year.

Instead, it is the spending. That must be addressed. I say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's work together to get America back on track, to solve this problem which, if we do not deal with it, will not allow our economy to…

These are hard decisions.

This budget does not make a dent in the huge problem we all know we face: historic levels of debt and unacceptable deficits

I am disappointed, as you can imagine, on that front, because I do not think it is up to the task that we have before us, which I think is an urgent one.

Your measure of success will be sort of an unusual one, which is not how popular you are but how unpopular you are among your Cabinet colleagues.

Can you imagine a balanced budget today?

I do hope, without getting into a long discussion about this, that you will commit to trying to meet these statutory deadlines.

There is one major gap, as you know, and you and I talked about it. It does not apply to independent agencies.

We have legislation... to close that gap, to give the President the authority to do what he says he wants to do.

Many of us across the political spectrum have urged reconsideration of this decision.

It's critical for our energy security, certainly to have enriched uranium for our power plants.

We want to be sure it's going to be done in an environmentally safe way.

I think we need right now to focus on that issue.

I think they are less than 10 percent--in fact, less than 6 percent, I think.

Doha has been disappointing, of course, because it was a great opportunity to give workers and farmers in Ohio access to new markets.

Senator Hatch and Senator Baucus have been big supporters of looking at this issue.

I do not think you are going to get the last best offer on things like TPP to really get the barriers down.

We want to have access to it for things like soybeans and corn, beef and pork.

I wish it had happened 4 years ago, or 3 years ago, or 2 years ago, but I think this is good.

You know this committee pretty well, and that is one reason we like having you down there.