the President of the United States has spent the last few weeks campaigning around our great country at taxpayer expense, telling Americans about what he characterizes as the catastrophic impact of the sequester. He said, for example, that…

I ask unanimous consent for leave to engage in a colloquy with Senator Barrasso for a period of time not to exceed 15 minutes. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Sequestration

I thank the Senator. It is important for us to recognize that all these observations draw back to one central conclusion, which is that the sequester and wasteful spending we see so rampant throughout our Federal Government is the natural…

I am really worried about what is taking place.

But the trend, though, is going the opposite direction. I understand what you are saying, but you have cut actually 15 million say from the Office of Minority Health Services.

the digital divide is still very real in many parts of the country in many of our communities

I am a trained clinical social worker by profession. My background is mental health.

I want to support and make sure all of the President's initiatives are fully funded.

I am so pleased to see in the President's initiative funding to train mental health professionals.

These laws have been on the books since the 1980's and most of them need to be modernized to reflect current scientific advances in AIDS research.

there is an overwhelming need now. It is the resources that, inexcusably, are lacking.

Young African-American and Latino boys, they are being suspended and kicked out of school for a variety of reasons.

It seems to me that the dollar amount that the President is requesting is not enough, quite frankly.

I hope that we are able to discuss what can be done to reach more children with undiagnosed and untreated mental health challenges.

I would like to find out the status of that and can you give us an update?

A lot of the minority physicians are not, and that is the problem because they are not--the exchange health plans don't require the Safety Net providers to be part of these plans now.

I just hate to see and to hear all of the, I say, assaults that you are under and attacks.

I know your work very intimately and I just have to take this moment to thank you so much because all of you are doing life-affirming work.

I am really worried that a lot of these efforts are going to go away.

It is extremely important that we know that we have to have trained mental health counselors.

when we fail to address mental illness, when people cannot access services and there is nowhere for them to go, the outcomes are not positive.

Any program that sees a reduction means it is less that we can do for the communities in America.

the vast majority of people living with mental illness are not violent and also that the vast majority of violence is not caused by people with mental illness.

But what you would see, though, with young men of color, this becomes a pipeline from the cradle to the prison because majority of them never come back to school, and they end up in behavior that sends them into juvenile hall and then into…

There are young people who die every day on the streets of our cities who are disproportionately, in many cases, people of color because of the everyday violence that we experience.