Sheldon Whitehouse

Thank you, Chairman Collins. Let me first thank you and our Ranking Member, Senator McCaskill, for holding a bipartisan hearing on this very, very important question.

If the market is absolutely failed, then I think there actually is a role for Congress to step in and put some kind of price limits.

Thank you very much, Chairman. Let me associate myself with the remarks of Governor and now Senator Carper.

For too long, though, America's higher education system has lacked a focus on outcomes and value for students and families.

Teachers want to be free to teach, and they want to be able to teach with regards to the time, as opposed to filling out paperwork.

The classroom teachers don't have a lot of faith in the education oversight machinery.

I worked very, very hard on the middle school piece of the ESSA, and on the innovation schools piece.

They need resources, not restrictions.

I do think it is important that there continue to be a supply chain that is available to the fishing community and people who are boaters to make sure that they are not put at risk by the harm that too much ethanol can do in a marine…

I think if the Court's membership doesn't change, that improves the standing of the Clean Power Plan considerably.

I hope that in the future (a) you will be punctual about getting these rules out on time, and (b) that you will take into consideration the period of innovation in those industries where we can potentially earn extraordinary social returns.

I think the Department of Education needs to take a clear message from this bill that they need to align what they're doing much, much better with what's happening locally and become less of a stifling effect and more of an invigorating…

Let's get these rotten old pipes replaced.

I am keen to work with members of this committee to try as best we can to define and refine our response to the earmark rule.

I wanted to make an additional point, and I think I have the sympathy of the Chairman and the Ranking Member in this, which is that when we disarmed ourselves of being able to do what were then called earmarks, i.e., have any specific…

I have two observations in closing. One is in sympathy with Senator Rounds and the elk having to rot where they are shot.

We are a terrestrial species, but we get a lot from the oceans in terms of cooling of the planet, oxygenation of the atmosphere, fish that we eat, and the place I think we might be hitting our ecosystem the hardest is actually in the…

I also think it is important, I do think where there are problems, they may not be nationwide problems, but local problems are real problems.

If something were going badly wrong in Rhode Island, I would hope you would be willing to help me.

That focuses on hurricane damage specifically.

The United States Constitution is a process document. Then came the Bill of Rights, which moved a whole lot of more substantive rights into the equation.

The threshold that has to be met if you depart from the budget is 60 votes.

I would suggest that budgeting by crisis happens when obstruction becomes the rule.

I think we have an enormous amount of work to do, and I think we have to be very prudent about what we set before ourselves.

While many Democrats, including myself, would be open to a budget resolution that spans 2 years, I believe there is far less support for shifting to a 2-year appropriations cycle.