Pat Toomey

As the Iranian people struggle under Ahmadinejad's repressive regime, America cannot stay silent.

I think it is important not to overreach. Uncertainty is an issue in the mortgage market.

This is going to be hard. There is no magic bullet here.

The most obvious policy step to facilitate more mortgage financing is rolling back the GSE's loan level pricing adjustments.

I think that would be an error at this point. I would at least extend the conforming loan limits, current conforming loan limits for another year.

What Senator Boxer is proposing along with me and my help to her on this is good for waiting off strategic foreclosures.

I commend Senator Boxer on her leadership. She originated this thought.

I think there may be a sensible solution to this problem.

Other critical safety needs may go unmet if funding is diverted to pay for PTC.

Let me be very clear. We want the safest possible passenger rail systems.

It is our health-care costs that is driving the deficit and debt crisis that we have.

My own view from the beginning has been that the most constructive thing we can do to maximize economic growth is major reform of both the corporate and the individual tax codes.

Meaningful structural reform means getting away from fee-for-service.

I don't think anybody ought to get first-dollar coverage, because I think we ought to make sure that people have skin in the game.

If you don't think that hospitals and doctors practice defensive medicine, you are absolutely crazy.

My point is over this 10-year period, we have seen huge growth in nondefense discretionary spending.

And at the end of the day, you know, nobody likes this, but without talking about death panels and that kind of crazy stuff, you are going to have to do something about the end-of-life scenario.

I would just urge us to consider that there is another theory here, which is that Government can't really create demand on balance.

I would like to make another point about this which has to do with inflation.

For whatever other reasons, from a purely economic consideration, if you choose to use a less efficient source of energy, you have less prosperity, therefore, less growth and fewer jobs.

Medicare is the real driver of the entire health-care picture.

For every dollar that was dedicated to lowering rates, there was a dollar dedicated to deficit.

I think if you want everybody to have prescription drugs, then I don't know why in the world you wouldn't have Medicare negotiate with the drug companies for prescription drugs if the taxpayers are going to pay for them.

Isn't it generally likely that if we use the Tax Code to distort economic activity on balance we are going to have less economic growth than we would have if we allowed the marketplace to allocate capital instead of political people?

But I think it is worth noting, and I think you will all agree, that the growth in Federal revenue is related to the growth of the economy.