Sheldon Whitehouse

That is what bankruptcy courts do. Right? That is where you go to get contracts renegotiated, and it is the American way that it is in everybody's best interests to get that done.

Do you object to them having to show up with full settlement authority? Do you object to them having to show up during the loss mitigation process? Or do you object to them having to negotiate in good faith?

I am delighted to be joined by the Judiciary Committee's Ranking Member, Hon. Chuck Grassley, who I am very much looking forward to working with on these issues as we go forward.

I intend to treat you and our new Republican member, Senator Lee, should he come, as if they were because I think it is a fait accompli, and we might as well yield to common sense.

Are we condemned to a race to the bottom in which corporations end up paying essentially no share of our national revenues?

Think what you could build and design and invent and create with six billion hours of human economic activity.

Health care consumes about 18 percent of America's GDP right now, and the closest country is at about 12 percent.

I think we all recognize that when, in the Eisenhower administration, we took a national move to high-speed road and built a national highway system, it was one of the best things ever done for our economy.

It would be great to have also a high-speed rail moment, and there is no place that is more important than in the Northeast.

You have been to Rhode Island to visit Senator Reed and myself and you are aware of our circumstances, how difficult the State budget is there, how difficult our unemployment situation is there.

Another potential win big seems to me to be turning what is presently nuclear waste into nuclear power.

We were the leader in the world... and now it is clearly over in Asia.

This new clean energy market is a rapidly emerging market and it is also a potentially enormous market.

We have the potential of a very significant wind turbine farm going in offshore.

It is both/and with a bias, and it is the bias that concerns me.

It risks crowding them out because of the priority.

I do not see much in the way of focus here on middle schools.

I do not see good news around the corner.

They are not doing it.

Does it make sense for the hospital orderly to be paying a higher Federal income tax rate all in than they do?

The hospital orderly pushing the trolley down the halls of the hospital at 2 in the morning is paying a higher tax rate right now in this country than the 400 top income earners who are bringing home a third of a billion dollars a year.

I met with maybe 14 of our realtors in Rhode Island a couple of months ago. Every single one of them had the experience of a short-sale agreement with the bank pending, and in the middle of it, another part of the bank whacked them with a…

Every one of us has heard it from our constituents.

If there is something that is sort of basic and American, it is that when you are dealing with somebody else, you ought to be able to get a person on the phone who can make a decision in your case instead of being stuffed into this…

I would urge the distinguished Ranking Member to at least keep a bit of an open mind as to the potential for high-speed rail.