Ron Wyden

Can you take a look specifically at that idea for me?

Are you willing to do that?

Medicare in 2013 is very different than Medicare when it began in 1965.

I think this would produce support across the political spectrum.

The day you publish the Medicare database in this country, you would have, in effect, a new baseline for health care in America.

You cannot know it without access to the data. So I am totally in favor of using data to add transparency.

I am especially appreciative of the fact that you cited those numbers at the beginning of your opening comments because they are certainly encouraging and I think you cannot fudge those numbers.

I think there is a legitimate question that does have to be faced, which is given the increased pressures that will come on the Federal budget.

The flip side of austerity is growth, and you have had a lot of important papers and comments over the years with respect to consumer demand.

No, your point is very well taken, and obviously, in this kind of fiscal climate, you cannot just promise and promise some more and not have a revenue source.

I believe that the best tax reform would be either revenue neutral or, ideally, would provide for some revenue increases.

I very much share your view that part of propelling consumer demand here is going to be making sure that anything we do is fair and equitable in the sense of having its benefits concentrated on the middle class where the propensity to…

I am not sure that we can afford as a country large-scale tax cutting, whether it is oriented to the middle class or whether it is oriented to some other group.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is clearly an area where I think Democrats and Republicans can work together.

I think the kind of thing we saw on the front page of the New York Times is a little bit different than a deduction to loaves and fishes in Portland, Oregon, where we are trying to help seniors who are walking on an economic tightrope.

Tax-exempt financing ought to be about general obligation bonds. It ought to be about the needs of the States to finance infrastructure and the like, and this is a terrible distortion.

Let us just make sure we do not put at risk the vulnerable and the low-income.

Well said. I would ask you more questions if I had more time, but thank you again.

I think Alan Krueger deserves a lot of credit for this because, as you know, there was a lot of pushback early on, and he really prosecuted the case.

We have maybe a year and a half. We might generate $4 or $5 billion worth of investment.

My own view is that we are at a point where there needs to be some spending restraint.

Given the President's comments in the State of the Union--and I thought he was spot on in terms of talking about infrastructure and roads and bridges and rails--I really hope that this is an area that can become a prime focus of your work.

We call it 'TRIP bonds' to, in effect, have Federal tax credit bonding to leverage private dollars for investment in infrastructure.

The lead story in this morning's New York Times highlights what to me is a growing abuse in the Tax Code, and that is the matter of tax-exempt bond finance.