Ron Wyden

This is a great thrill to be here to nominate two exceptional individuals, Judge Marco Hernandez and Michael Simon.

It seems to me we've got a long way to go to get that in place.

You know time is money. Stop working costs money.

You can have a debate about whether there ought to be loan guarantees and whether you ought to have the program.

I'm particularly concerned about some of the permitting issues that have arisen.

I have felt for some time that it's important to make appropriately redacted versions of these reports available to the public.

We have to focus like a laser on trying to put people to work and resurrect the economy.

Those who were here first should not have second-class health care or second-class housing or second-class educations.

Now, just weeks ago we also passed the Tribal Law and Order Act. That is a big, big deal.

I think it is the case to say that we have perhaps accomplished more legislative success for American Indians in the last 12 months than existed in the past three decades.

We finally at last, at long, long last have passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. And we not only passed it, we made it permanent.

What Senator Gregg and I did is, in effect, go to American business and say, how much would you have to reduce these American rates in order to junk a lot of the stuff that you have overseas?

Senator Gregg and I are saying, no. Why not go with a model we know worked when Democrats and Republicans get together.

By comparison, from 2001 to 2008, when there was just partisanship in the tax area, three million jobs were created.

The tax debate misses the point because both of those approaches, George W. Bush and now what has been offered by President Obama, in my view, involve tinkering with a badly flawed, discredited tax system.

Why would one think that the tax policies that produced anemic job growth and declining real income for the middle class... would create substantially more jobs and substantially more income in the pockets of middle class folks?

When Ronald Reagan and Democrats worked together, 16 million new jobs were created. There was a 17.6 percent expansion in payrolls.

The classification process, which is supposed to protect national security, really ends up being designed to protect political security.

I intend to work very closely with Chairman Bingaman and Senator Udall.

I do believe that we need to put into place a revolving door ban, and my own view, it ought to be a 2-year revolving door ban.

I think there ought to be some ground rules on this stuff, some ground rules that have real teeth.

I am particularly concerned about the overly cozy relationship between the industry and the Government.

I want to see the revolving door restrictions written into the law.

Unless there is a tough, enforceable ban on this revolving door, there is no way I am going to support this proposal next week when we vote.

I want to see strict limits on MMS employees going to work for companies that he or she regulated.