Sheldon Whitehouse

The fossil-fuel industry's campaign to mislead the American people

This is a great hearing.

It is an up-front effort and an up-front investment to put that system in, but once you have done it, it is worth it.

The distinction between the observation and inpatient admission has very significant ramifications for the patient's payment.

As I think Dr. Kelly opened up and said, there are not adequate incentives right now for institutions to promote student success.

The danger, of course, is that the big, powerful groups that throw their weight around here would try to co-opt that process so that it once again became the Wall Street and Big Polluter Free Ride Act of whatever year it was in.

I guess as the only Democrat present today I am standing in for our Ranking Member, and I would like to make a brief opening statement, and let me open with a word of gratitude for regulation.

I think I share your frustration with the process that I think we probably all on this Committee feel.

The budget process has become meaningless, and I am sick of it.

If we are going to address this problem, we need to stop playing favorites.

Again, that damage would fall on the coastal Atlantic States, correct?

Republican concern about the debt and the deficit seems to vary considerably depending on the program at issue.

My concern is that in setting the ground rules for the application of dynamic scoring, you might be inclined to set it up in such a way that it favors things that the majority party likes.

The policy goals that Mercatus Center sought to achieve on behalf of its big funders are things that we need not worry about infiltrating your work as CBO Director?

In making those selections, will you be sure that it can apply fairly to all results, no matter what the desired policy outcome might be by certain interests?

I would suspect that you would find that there are a considerable number of things that both sides could agree on as being unnecessary, burdensome, or obsolete if we did it as a package and tried to put it all together.

The Tax Code is rigged and riddled with this nonsense.

Will you treat us fairly in setting up this rule so that it falls on the just and unjust alike, as some would say?

So coastal States like Rhode Island would take the hit.

I think a lot of us are concerned about where this dynamic scoring issue goes.

The Clean Water Act and clean water regulation has, for always since back when it was a common law doctrine and through the establishment by Congress of the Clean Water Act and through the EPA's administration of that law, had the purpose…

I am from Rhode Island. We are a downstream State. Coastal States are downstream States.

Without this, we have nothing?

It is just legally wrong.

Attacks on this rule from my Republican colleagues have been extreme and seemingly based more on government conspiracy theories than on the actual rule.