Save that question, Judge Drain. We will be back to it, but I do not want to interrupt Senator Franken.

Thank you very much, Mr. Britt. Your story provides an important backdrop against which the testimony of our next witness I think it is important to be seen.

Let me ask you specifically: Of the three elements of this proposal, one is that somebody has to show up in the court with full settlement authority for the bank.

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?

And that may explain why the Association of Mortgage Investors is working with me on this and seems excited about it.

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.

The Rhode Island program is modest, but I believe that it has the potential to help many thousands of homeowners, and help is definitely needed.

I wish to extend a word of appreciation to both of them for the work they put into trying to solve the problem of the filibuster--more particularly, the problem of the abuse of the filibuster rule in this body. We have come to a resolution…

What the President did last night was to point a finger toward the future, and some people were just capable of seeing the finger. But for most people, they saw where he was pointing, and he has pointed us toward an important future for…

from the Recovery Act to the Small Business Jobs Act, in the previous Congress we passed a number of substantial pieces of legislation to preserve, protect, and create American jobs. The Recovery Act alone has supported between 2.7 and 3.7…

as we embark on a new year and a new Congress, I stand here today to congratulate my colleague, Barbara Mikulski, on becoming the longest serving female Senator in our Nation's history. Her work in these Halls has made our country…

I noticed the other day that the IRS had reported that the 400 top income earners in the country... had paid total Federal taxes of 16.6 percent.

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

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

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

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…

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.

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.

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

So how do we fix it?

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.

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

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.

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.

They are not doing it.