Interestingly, it also had the side effect of making the nursing staff in the intensive care units empowered enough that nursing turnover experienced a considerable drop-off, because they were so excited about what they were doing.

This is far and away the most important hearing happening today in Washington, DC, because of the importance of this issue and your attention to it.

We are working together, along with a few other Senators, on a piece of legislation to address the problem of hospital acquired infections.

For all the work and all the fuss and all the fighting that has surrounded the Affordable Care Act, there remains a very large fundamental problem in the American healthcare system, which is that it costs about 50 percent more than the…

Obviously, when you're talking about saving people's lives, saving money is a secondary concern.

The acronym is the SAFE Act, which stands for Safeguarding America's Future and the Environment.

To protect them and help them adapt in the face of climate change is to protect our economy and way of life.

Outside these walls, climate change is an issue Republicans can actually discuss. Outside these walls, 2012 Republican Presidential candidate John Huntsman, who won reelection as Utah's Republican Governor in 2008 with almost 80 percent of…

America's natural resources--our rivers and bays, our forests and marshes, our fish and animals--are our birthright and our legacy.

thank you. Before I get into the business I have come to address, let me thank the distinguished Senator from Virginia for his remarks. I was a lawyer at a time when the previous case on this subject came out of the Supreme Court that said…

As the Senator from Maryland and me representing Rhode Island, coastal resiliency is something we have to pay a lot of attention to.

The report was pretty stark and explained the vulnerability of some of these vital natural resources from rising temperatures from worsening drought, wildfire, rising sea levels, shrinking snow coverage and flow.

As we prepared it, we asked the Government Accountability Office for a report on the adaptation efforts by the Federal Government within our natural resource agencies.

S. 1202, the SAFE Act, introduced by Senator Whitehouse, is designed to help Federal and State agencies more effectively prepare for and adjust to the growing impacts of climate change on our Nation's natural resources.

the Service applauds your efforts in introducing the SAFE Act.

Along the coasts, is it correct that there are often wetland verges between the upland and either the ocean coast or a lake or river coast that exist in a kind of dynamic environment?

Assateague Island, one of the great treasures, is at risk today because of the changing climate in this country.

To me, the No. 1 effort is to do what we can to mitigate the circumstances surrounding climate changes.

GAO previously noted that as the manager of vast lands and natural resources, the Federal Government has real fiscal risk from climate change through these properties.

To protect these vital natural resources and help them adapt in the face of climate change, I would hope we can move this bill forward.

When you lose them, you don't just lose them, it creates a knock-on effect.

I know our committee will try, as we have in the past, to work together in a bipartisan way.

Some of the natural resources that we find on this earth that are at risk and are actually suffering some consequences already are ones that in turn provide benefit to the environment.

I think you are doing a good job, but there is a cultural divide sometimes between the criminal prosecutors and the civil attorneys for the Government.

So it happened in South Carolina. It can happen to any company, any business, any organization in America, and our laws are not where they should be.