The very, very wealthiest people are becoming phenomenally wealthier.

We have got to go further than that.

Medicare-for-all would save the American people and our entire health care system $650 billion each and every year.

If Medicare does that, we lower the cost of prescription drugs by 50 percent. Not bad.

In the richest country on Earth senior citizens should not have teeth rotting in their mouths.

The American people are disgusted by the reality that we pay the highest prices in the world, by far, for prescription drugs.

I hope that we very much have the capability of taking on the greed of the fossil fuel industry and saving this planet for future generations.

the scientific community is fairly clear. You know, we get distracted by the terrible war, Putin's war in Ukraine. We get distracted by a lot of things, but climate change is real, and what scientists tell us, if we do not act extremely…

That is really what this whole debate is about. Which side are we on?

it was an epidemic before the pandemic and it has only been exacerbated since.

The question before us is whether we will stand with the working families of this country and protect their interests or whether we stand with the big money interests.

To a significant degree, pathetically, large corporations are using the war in Ukraine and the pandemic as an excuse to raise prices significantly.

Anyone who thinks we do not have an oligarchy right here in America is sorely mistaken.

Today, in America, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have had in 100 years.

The President believes, very strongly, that billionaires and those worth more than $100 million, should pay what firefighters, teachers, and nurses pay as their effective tax rate.

Over the last 45 years in this country there has been a massive--massive--redistribution of wealth.

The time is now for Congress to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

I think I would hope that we could all agree that if we are spending a dollar on VA health care spend it on health care, not a bureaucracy to determine whether or not the veteran, in fact, was exposed or not exposed.

The idea of a presumptive is to sweep in or lower the threshold of evidence in places where the science in the aggregate is strong but the science in the particular is difficult.

So I think that instead of spending a huge amount of money in the Federal bureaucracy to determine whether in fact somebody was exposed to toxins from a burn pit, exposed to Agent Orange, maybe we just say that if you were a veteran who…

We should simplify that and make sure, to quote the Secretary, the more veterans--I think the goal is to get more veterans into the VA.

But we spend money on health care, to be sure, but we also spend a huge amount of money on the bureaucracy to determine whether somebody is eligible or not.

At the end of the day--and I know not everybody in this room agrees with me--health care happens to be a human right for all Americans, in my view, and especially for people who put their lives on the line, such as our veterans.

let me thank the majority leader for his willingness to put my two motions to instruct on the floor next week for a vote. And I want to take a minute to explain to my colleagues and the American people what these amendments are about. As I…

I appreciate the commitment of the majority leader to ensure that I will receive rollcall votes on these two issues. Having received the majority leader's firm commitment, I will not object. I ask unanimous consent to address the body for…