I appreciate the question that Senator Wyden asked about the effect the budget is going to have on the 750,000 small businesses.

What has essentially happened since 1974 is that, inflation adjusted, the wages of working Americans have stayed flat for 35 years.

do we have a major challenge as a Nation in which we are spending too much money on foreign wars and foreign bases rather than on domestic infrastructure and domestic education?

the idea is that now you have a working family of modest means that is buying a very modest house, and we are helping them become homeowners.

I just want to express a lot of concern about the cuts that are there.

we are calling upon the Federal Government to honor its contract with the counties.

What has been missing, in my thinking, is for the Department of Energy to lay out a plan for how we are going to end our dependence on foreign oil.

We have had administrations in the past that have talked about attacking our dependence on foreign oil and our addiction to oil in general.

I think the United States as a whole seems to have a parallel problem.

We have proposed, the Senators who have put this forward have proposed having a Department of Energy Security...

This remains both a huge factor affecting the quality of life for families and their ability to look positively on the future.

We reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we create American jobs, and we have environmental benefits.

the vast bulk of the subsidy goes to the families who need it the least in terms of actually becoming homeowners.

I think that it is a good idea.

Is there a rational argument for this? Or is this just plain out a crazy thing to do, to subsidize the construction of factories that compete with American factories?

I would ask everybody else to weigh in except my time has expired, so thank you very much.

Isn't that kind of a sign of something massively wrong in our national education system?

Four Senators have put out a plan as a bill that lays out a pathway to reducing our consumption of oil by over 8 million barrels per day.

I want to compliment my colleague from Oregon, Senator Wyden, for consistently and effectively raising the issue of tax simplification.

Are we as a Nation spending too much on foreign wars and foreign bases rather than on education and infrastructure?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciated the reference, Mr. Chairman, to the Small Business Lending Fund, which was a proposal that I developed in response to a problem we saw in community banks in Oregon.

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