Earl Blumenauer

I hope today's Budget Committee hearing marks the beginning of a wider, more robust conversation on the budget, specifically transportation infrastructure.

We need more federal resources.

We have not been investing enough. The Highway Trust Fund is not going bankrupt, but it moves into a negative balance.

I hope that we can go to conference on the budget so we can begin to iron out some of those important differences.

I would just put one item on the table that we would like to explore with you further, dealing with infrastructure finance.

Healthcare reform will produce approximately $1 trillion worth of net budget savings over the next 20 years.

The reforms are making a difference. Costs are going down.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. ____________________

I'm prepared to yield back, unless my friend from Memphis wants any concluding comment.

It's very important for us to take a step back and evaluate exactly what the economic employment opportunities are because things that we do to rebuild and renew America in a sustainable way-- Keystone has a few thousand temporary…

Absolutely. Those 11 weather disasters last year cost us over $60 billion. It's also creating uncertainty in agriculture and in the business of insurance where it's more difficult for them to be able to calculate what they're doing. It…

Indeed. Well, the cheapest electron is one that we don't have to use. If we just double American energy efficiency, we can cut carbon emissions 22 percent by 2020--and, by the way, that would save American consumers $327 billion a year…

Thank you, Congressman Tonko. I appreciate your comments. I appreciate your leadership on this issue before and after you joined Congress. And I like the notion about thinking outside the barrel.

And part of what we need to be harvesting. That's why I have a small wind energy tax credit that I think we can install here in the House Chamber. But part of what we've done with the Recovery Act has increased dramatically the amount of…

Thank you, Congressman Garamendi. Thank you for your comments and for your leadership in your native State of California on so many different levels in pressing this point. Your observation is that there's a great deal of economic…

This bill represents the lowest common denominator. I am extremely disappointed that it does not prevent the unnecessary cuts of the sequester and that it fails to fund many programs that are vital to Oregon and the Nation. At this point…

I think this is a very important concept that the committee should consider as we move forward.

I find it interesting that we are having this hearing today when the American Society for Civil Engineers is putting out its update of its scorecard.

I appreciate continuing this process of trying to dive into the Tax Code and the implications, and I appreciate the balanced presentation here.

We are overpaying some of the very low-performing Medicare Advantage programs.

I think MedPAC has over the years served us very well.

I represent a State, Oregon, where we have made a commitment to the Federal Government to reduce our Medicare spending 2 percent a year over the next 5 years.

Rather than having an ongoing debate to minimize to try and get in the way of health care reform, we should be accelerating it.

The costs in the long run are as egregious as anything that we are facing with other entitlements, and we really have not talked about how we are going to cope with that.

I hope that we stop defending east Germany from western Russia.