Should we eliminate the cap completely and hold BP 100 percent responsible so that they pick up all of the economic damages as well as the environmental damages?

I don't believe the risk is worth 3 cents a gallon in the year 2030.

at a time when the Federal Reserve has been provided the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world, to the largest financial institutions in this country--trillion-dollar institutions--without the approval of Congress, without…

let me summarize again what the Sanders amendment does. Let me take my colleagues back to a meeting of the Budget Committee, on which I serve, about a year ago. Chairman Bernanke came before that committee. I asked him: Will you tell the…

this amendment, which calls for transparency at the Fed, is, frankly, one of the more unusual amendments I have ever participated in, not so much for its content but for the kind of coalition that has come together around it. How often do…

as soon as I possibly can, I intend to bring up an amendment which calls for transparency at the Fed. I must tell my colleagues that this amendment is one of the more unusual amendments that has been brought up in the Senate, I suspect for…

Thank you, Senator Alexander.

That isn't going to happen.

Then why did we spend $7 billion looking at Yucca?

I in fact strongly support the bipartisan decision of the Vermont State Senate, which under Vermont law voted 26 to 4, not a close vote, not to extend the operations of Vermont Yankee beyond 2012.

I think there is overwhelming distrust of the plant.

We have spent an enormous amount of money under the premise that we needed a national repository. We don't have one.

Vermont is showing the Nation that we do not need nuclear but that we can in fact rely on energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

In all due respect, a higher level of inspection. People are leaking a possible cancer causing product, and your response was to do a higher level of inspection. I think most Americans would not be satisfied with that.

before I talk about financial reform, I did want to say a word about the disaster on the gulf coast now and the oil spillage there. Obviously, all of our hearts go out to the families of the 11 workers who lost their lives and to the…

Many of the kids who are coming into school are already--especially from low-income families--already pretty far behind.

How do we turn that around to say that, 'If some kid wants to study hard and become an engineer, you know what, that's pretty cool?'

we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth, far higher than most of the European countries; and we end up with more people in jail than any other country.

Do we appreciate, and are we inculcating our young kids with, the understanding that intellectual development is a good idea, in addition to being a great basketball player?

I don't think that any of us fully appreciate the far reaches of poverty on children.

Do you think, as a nation, we really take intellectual development seriously?

The bottom line here is that usury and loan-sharking is immoral, it is wrong, and it has got to be prohibited. I know Senator Whitehouse and Senator Merkley are more than aware, there are even Biblical references in both the Old and New…

If I can pick up from the Senator from Oregon, the reason, for thousands of years, that religious leaders and philosophers have condemned usury, which is what we are talking about today, is that it is basically immoral, according to every…

Last year, in 2009, as I understand it, our friends on Wall Street who are doing everything they can to make sure Congress does nothing to reform the way they do business--that is what they want; let's be clear about it--do you know what…

I wish to congratulate him because our colleagues should know he has been a leader on this issue for many years and has already achieved some significant success. My memory is, we had payday lenders that, if you can believe this, were…