Sheldon Whitehouse

I appreciate very much your attention, Mr. Chairman, to budget process reforms, including proposals such as portfolio budgeting.

When you are dealing with veterans, I think you are probably actually better off working with veterans' organizations.

A budget point of order against an appropriations bill that blows through the budget that this Committee has gotten passed is a useless effort because it gets overcome by a 60-vote vote.

I believe process matters, and I think we can do a lot better.

I hope that you, Mr. Hall, can help lead us along with the Chairman, and I think there is going to be a lot of support for it on our side, to have a conversation about how we can use this Committee to facilitate a broader and more…

As somebody who has to try to fight to get attention for programs into that process, and it is all--you know, you are calling people on the phone saying, 'Can I get this in? Can I get this in?'

When we are in crisis mode and our budgets are being worked out between the Speaker, the Majority Leader, and the President, then there is zero transparency in that.

I would like to go back to the point that I ended my remarks with about trying to sort of revive the relevance of the Committee and that as a larger issue around it, which is reviving the transparency of our spending.

CBO has a longstanding reputation for independence and provides a critical function to Congress.

It is important that that not be compromised.

Director Hall is entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and he will have it.

60 votes have really been the rule in the Senate.

I only wish for a moment to speak in favor of the Crapo-Whitehouse amendment. I could do that for a minute or for 10 seconds later on. I don't need the time now. We can get to the vote as the chairman wishes.

It just strikes me that if we can correctly define the characteristics of the bad behavior that everybody on this committee sees and acknowledges exists, then going the long way around to trying to figure out how your drug approval process…

If there are no alternatives to which a certain set of customers or patients can readily turn----

If the price hike is beyond a certain amount, let us say 1,000 percent, again, not fully determinative but that maybe should send up a little red flag.

I am not an advocate for government price controls, but it does seem to me that there are circumstances in which very clever people have either observed or created a monopoly for themselves and then used that monopoly power to extort…

Along with a bipartisan group of senators including Senators Portman, Klobuchar, and Ayotte, I introduced a bill earlier this year called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (S. 524).

I’ve got a feeling that some of the protections we've put in place back when this was heavily stigmatized to keep all this information private is actually keeping it from getting into electronic health records.

There's an enormous amount of mental health response that's delivered in the emergency room.

Our victory in the stigma area has now created a problem in the infrastructure area, in my opinion.

I want to commend my former delegation member, Representative Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, on the work that he did on the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.

One of the victories that we have achieved has been to bring mental health out of the shadows and de-stigmatize it.

Today, with my colleagues Senator Cory Booker and Senator Jeff Merkley, I wish to discuss the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, S. 697. Some opponents claim it creates a regulatory void that will prohibit States…

Thank you for making that important point. I would like to further highlight that the legislation authorizes two grant programs. The first would direct funding to coastal States, Indian tribes, and U.S. territories. The other would create…