Sheldon Whitehouse

It is hard for me to understand why even if you have adjusted CVS' rate from 35 to 25... you still have Carnival Cruise Lines out there at 0.8.

If we allow for no growth, then in the 10-year budget period we are looking forward to more than $11 trillion goes out the back door of the Tax Code.

More money goes out the back door of the Tax Code than actually gets collected by the United States Government in revenues.

I hope we will consider ways to try to prevent that kind of tax evasion on the corporate side as well as just lowering the top.

Most seniors spend their money on food and drink, health care, gas, and heat.

I appreciate very much that cutting Social Security is sort of catnip for Republicans.

I think to tell the public that it is actually more accurate where seniors are concerned is just factually a mistake.

The growth rate in our health care cost has come down significantly since the passage of the Affordable Care Act

There is an ideology around here that all cuts help grow the economy--all cuts help grow the economy--and that all Federal spending is a burden on the economy, and that here endeth the lesson.

It is just as wrong as it can be to have made that choice.

If it is 3.7, that means that every dollar you cut in spending, you reduce GDP by $3.7.

I intend to do. The $15 billion that comes back to seniors through the benefit against the $230 billion overall cut to me is a fig leaf.

Economics says that the impact of cutting and spending by the Federal Government on the economy varies depending on the condition of the economy.

I would urge OMB to urge the administration to be accountable and set a target.

I think when we look at Medicare benefits as the solution to our health care cost problem, we are fundamentally misdiagnosing the problem.

CBO actually cites ACA as one of the drivers of that progress.

We need to immediately turn off the sequester, which was never intended to be implemented, and replace it with balance deficit reduction that phases in as the economy improves.

Social Security, as you just said, has not contributed to the deficit problem.

I wanted to congratulate you first on the Executive order that the President signed yesterday on cybersecurity.

Other people count on those decisions, and they need to know.

We are obviously going to see a lot more of that as we dump more and more carbon into our atmosphere and we create the setup for continuing worse storms.

I look forward to working with the Chairman and the Ranking Member to do that.

I hope that the changes that we've agreed to in the rules will free up a little bit some of the obstruction on the floor.

I know that Senator Mikulski is keenly interested in it as well.

I am delighted to see the Presiding Officer in that seat. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________