Well, the level of frustration I think that we are all feeling builds every day as more of these facts come out. And I think the most upsetting part is the fact that these are situations that were known within the military health…

This is in the context of being told, the American people were told, that the oil proceeds in Iraq would pay for the cost of the war. You have a couple of issues. One is the oil proceeds. We do not have any accounting of where a lot of…

And I wanted to, then, quote from a New York Times article about that issue. It said: ``The prospect of privatization at Walter Reed led to a large exodus of skilled personnel after the Army reversed results, actually changed the results…

I wanted to start today by talking about the situation at Walter Reed, which I know is a subject that is of great concern to everybody in this Chamber, and it is certainly the issue that I am hearing the most about as I travel around my…

the new Democratic Congress continues to listen to the concerns of middle-class Americans. We know that average American families have actually lost ground over the past several years, even after several years of economic growth and high…

I would think you would be hard pressed to find a district in this country that has seen more damage done by the global marketplace than Pittsburgh over the past 30 or 40 years, and more recently over the past dozen or 15 years since NAFTA…

Well, in a word, it has been devastating, and we have seen the results. I talked about Wheatland Tube. I grew up about 100 miles from that plant, in a river town that was across from a big Allegheny Ludlam plant, which is where all the…

As we take a very important vote for organized labor today, I rise to honor the life of George Becker, who passed away last month. George served as president of the United Steelworkers of America from 1993 to 2001. He started working in a…

I want to tell you about a few things that happened in my district back home. I had several meetings with organizers and folks in the veterans community in my district. I toured a VA hospital that is undergoing a major expansion. As we…

In the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the President offered the American people many reasons why we should enter into this conflict. We were told unequivocally that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed an imminent threat to…

the 2002 budget the President submitted this week is more of the same, the same fiscal irresponsibility and misplaced priorities that we have come to expect from this administration's budgets over the past 6 years. This budget fails to put…

I appreciate Mr. Murphy's comments. When the President gave his State of the Union Address, he talked about energy independence and he always talks about energy independence and our addiction to foreign oil, which he likes to talk about…

Now, I wanted to talk about education funding. The President is going to talk about how he proposes an increase in Pell Grant funding for the first time in many years. But what he doesn't tell you is in this budget, it again cuts or…

I wanted to bring it closer to home for some of my constituents, and this is what they can expect out of this budget in Pennsylvania. We talked about Social Security and the fact that the President inexplicably once again moves toward his…

It is covering children that are uninsured. In Pennsylvania alone, there is 281,000 uninsured children. We are talking about children in this country that lack health insurance, and this program in States all across this country has gone…

That is a tax on everyday Americans. When you increase the national debt to that extent, and we are talking trillions of dollars, not even billions of dollars, that adds to the cost of every American's mortgage, for example. Interest rates…

the Medicare and Medicaid cuts of $300 billion, that is outrageous, that at a time when the number of Medicare beneficiaries is growing every year, the baby boomers are starting to qualify for Medicare in fiscal year 2008, which is where…

I appreciate Mr. Murphy's remarks. And for the folks here listening, I just wanted to let them know how we are going to approach this tonight for the remaining time that we have. I am going to give a broad overview of the cuts that have…

I did want to talk for just a moment about how important it is that veterans were taken care of in this continuing resolution. I do want to commend Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Obey, and the rest of the Democratic leadership who did a great…

This was a politically, cowardly maneuver, calculated to gamble on the outcome of the elections. They left nine spending bills unfinished, hoping that they would then win and come back for a lame duck session where they could ram through…

You are right. Those are the two things that we did the very first couple of days, right after we swore in that new class of freshmen and Democrats took control of Congress. We did away with the gifts and travel and the golf outings and…

This is working in a bipartisan spirit, something that has not been seen in this Congress for more than 12 years. And here we are, the end of our first month in office, we passed another major piece of legislation joined by 57 Members on…

And what this does is provide an incentive for younger and healthier workers to purchase insurance outside of the employer's plan because those benefits will be taxed, leaving only the older and sicker workers in the employer's risk pool…

And it is going to flood the insurance market with people who can't afford health insurance because of health problems. Now if you are young and healthy and wealthy, that is a great plan. That sounds fine. Go out in the insurance market…

We have a situation in this country as was just outlined where we have 47 million Americans with no health insurance at all. We have tens of millions more that live in fear of losing their coverage. Employers often are unable to offer…