He has not put forward a plan to deal with entitlement spending.

entitlement spending is most of the problem we have, is it not, with spending and deficit

$4 trillion over 10 years.

I thank you for the hearing.

we really wouldn't have a problem, would we?

federally mandated Medicaid was soaking up money that I would like to put in higher education.

He is the President of the United States. He is supposed to lead.

entitlement spending is going to soak up all the money that all of you are worrying about over the next 5 years.

We need relief from Washington, flexibility from Washington...

As Senator Lamar Alexander and I wrote in an op-ed very recently, scientific research is a high-yield investment.

States have to fix them year after year after year, and at the point of spend we are at right now...

The sequester is dangerous. Please do not let it happen.

Why would we reduce the part of the Federal budget that generates these returns in science, innovation, and economics just at the time when the rest of the world is investing heavily in precisely those areas?

Maybe we actually have an energy policy in the United States and don't know it.

America's children and families deserve nothing less, and I look forward to continuing to work with this committee toward that goal.

This was our Plan B because of the congressional lack of action.

We ought to pass whatever we can pass. The House can pass whatever it can pass.

I said when he was appointed by the President that he was one of the President's best acts, and I still think that.

My bias is to go the other way, using as evidence most of what's happened in the last few years.

As we look ahead, we need to reauthorize ESEA. Right? I mean, we need to do that.

But as a country, you've just gone through a whole series of exercises where States have together created common standards, common curriculum.

The correct thing for us to do, in my opinion, is for the Secretary to show restraint on insisting on a one-size-fits-all set of conditional waivers.

I just don't think they ought to be defined and run out of Washington, DC.

Unless you're careful, you're going to get your performance standards, your teacher evaluation systems, your achievement gap requirements... all written here by somebody instead of in the State office.

We've always said there is a role for the Federal Government in making sure that kids that are disadvantaged, for whatever reason, are fully included in our educational system.