I wanted to ask you a question. Because I had said, and I was, I think, incorrect, when I suggested that the first thing the Republicans wanted to do was repeal the affordable health care bill. It's one of their first major priorities. But…

Let me ask a question. I was just thinking here, it's an honor to be in the House of Representatives and with a Constitution that's so beautiful that it says we are to promote the general welfare. We are among other industrialized nations…

What do the other industrialized nations in the world do for health care? Do they program policies like ours, where 32 million people don't have health insurance reform and they are not mandated to get insurance? What do they do?

And does the United States not have one of the greatest discrepancies of wealth between the richest and the poorest in the industrialized world as well? So are we saying to our wealthy people, ``You can afford health insurance so you can…

Indeed, the issues that Mr. Courtney brought forward in his 1 minute today were alarming to me because my hometown of Memphis depends upon transportation. That's what makes it America's distribution center, the roads, the rivers, the…

Today does end the 111th Congress, which Norm Ornstein, one of the most respected historians and observers of public events, said was the most historic and productive Congress since 1965. I am proud to have been a Member of this 111th…

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. To my friends on the Republican side, we did this 10 years ago with the Bush tax cuts, and it didn't work. It has been mentioned over and over…

I am going to support it because I want to be able to vote to make the estate tax more reasonable, even though the reality is, what we are voting on is whether we are going to give the wealthy with the estate tax a six-course meal with…

We will probably be voting on the President's tax proposal this week--a very difficult vote. I really don't know how I'm going to vote. On the one hand, I see the benefit of getting timely temporary and targeted relief to people, which…

Today the United States received very good news concerning education in America. Nationwide, high school graduation rates rose 2 percent. But even better, in my State of Tennessee, the rates rose 15 percent, the number one increase in the…

The deficit was created by the Congress that was begun in the beginning of this century. The Congress in 1994, when President Clinton was President, a Democratic Congress with all Democratic votes passed a balanced budget bill that…

I think as we look at this lame duck session at the end of the 111th Congress, how we got where we are with the deficit, which was such a big issue--in 1994, Congress and President Clinton passed a bill to balance the budget, all…