John McCain's campaign has suggested that the best answer for the growing pressures on Social Security might be to cut cost-of-living adjustments or raise the retirement age. Let me be clear. I will not do either.

Social Security, to my mind, has been an enormously successful program for the past 75 years, taken a whole lot of elderly people out of poverty.

the United States has by far the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world.

the sad reality is that for millions and millions of Americans, their real incomes are going down.

So while the middle class shrinks and poverty increases, the wealthiest people for many years have become much wealthier.

My point was that right now we are having a major debate about the future of Social Security.

if you are talking about international competitiveness, not to talk about wages, not to talk about environmental protection, not to talk about trade policy, they are all lumped together.

The United States today has the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on Earth.

Well, actually, we raised the payroll tax in 1983 so that it is now a viable program.

investing in infrastructure, creating decent-paying jobs frankly is a lot more important than giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.

We now have, by far, the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country.

I am deeply concerned that the proposed budget eliminates the availability of a second Pell grant in the same award year.

Let us see some political courage there rather than throwing senior citizens off the LIHEAP program or low-income people off of life and death programs for them.

Investing in infrastructure is a lot more important than giving tax breaks to billionaires.

When the President ran for office, he was very clear in saying that Social Security has been an absolute success for the last 75 years, it is vital to the well-being of the working people of this country.

our Republican friends are proposing massive cutbacks in Head Start.

The United States has 50 million people without any health insurance. We are the only country in the industrialized world that does not provide health care to all people.

How do you deal with that?

In my view, this is simply unacceptable when we have a $14 trillion national debt.

If you do not invest in infrastructure, does the infrastructure, our roads and bridges, magically get better?

Why didn't you ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying--I know you did some of it--but in a much more significant way their fair share of taxes?

What I found astonishing, is that 82 Fortune 500 companies in America paid 'zero or less in Federal income taxes in at least 1 year from 2001 to 2003.'

investing in infrastructure--our roads, our bridges, public transportation--is perhaps the fastest way we can do that.

But Mr. Chairman, at the end of the day, in your movement toward deficit reduction, three-quarters of your plan talks about cutting spending.

I happen to believe that the stimulus package did pretty much what it was supposed to do. It created 2 or 3 million jobs.