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Sheldon Whitehouse is a United States Senator from Rhode Island, serving since January 4, 2007. A member of the Democratic Party, Whitehouse has focused on a range of issues including environmental protection, healthcare reform, and campaign finance reform. He has been a vocal advocate for addressing climate change and has worked to promote policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions and protecting natural resources. Whitehouse has also been involved in efforts to reform the political campaign finance system, emphasizing the need for transparency and accountability in political donations.
I think I am making a slightly different point, thinking longer term about the health care problem per se, and that as that $35 trillion tsunami hits us, we cannot cope with that from a fiscal point of view, so we have to reduce the cost.
It strikes me that the problem here is that in order to achieve those large reductions, a considerable amount of executive management, of experimentation, of flexible and dynamic regulatory activity going forward is going to be necessary.
the Bush administration has added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt versus where the budget was planned to go.
I appreciate it. I have gone over my time, which I was doing happily and willingly because I was at the end of the line here.
Do we presently have an authority in government that can oversee the dynamic process of engagement?
George Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has written recently that there is $1 trillion a year of excess cost in our health care system, and he is no fool, is he?
I think we are headed into, I think, a fiscal crisis that is going to make the current economic problem look like a picnic.
We have three major significant problems to deal with. We have one supply of political capital to deal with them.
This discussion matters a great deal not just to CBO economists and Senators on the Budget Committee.
Politicians like Sheldon Whitehouse
