Mr. President, the situation in Gaza today is a disaster. Congress must take action. The administration must take action. The world must take action. Today, 3 weeks after Hamas's barbaric attack against civilians in Israel, which began…

Thank you, Chairman Sanders, for calling this hearing and giving me the chance to provide my testimony.

For working class people, lower income people, the gap in their life expectancy with the rich is about 10 years in America.

What the nurses have told me, and I have had the opportunity on several occasions to sit down and talk with these nurses, is that what this strike has everything to do with is the safety of their patients.

They tell me that they are stressed out. They are burnt out and are leaving the profession they love in droves because they are overworked, undervalued, and are forced each and every day to do more work with less resources.

I want to thank all of the nurses who are in this room, the nurses who are watching this event on livestream, and the many, many nurses all over this country who put their lives on the line during COVID.

Safe staffing is not just some abstract concept. It literally improves patient care, keeps more nurses in the profession, and most importantly, saves lives.

The function of a humane and civilized health care system is to provide quality care to all, not to make huge profits for the insurance companies, the drug companies.

I have been on the Senate Health, Education and Labor Pension Committee for 18 years, and you know what, we have never had a larger meeting than this.

In the United States of America, we spend almost twice as much per capita as any other major country.

Madam President, I wanted to take a few minutes to share my thoughts regarding the horrific situation in Israel and Gaza. On October 7, Hamas terrorists waged a barbarous attack against Israel, killing over 1,400 innocent men, women, and…

The thing is that hundreds of thousands of women and children are living in desperation today. And nobody in the world can guarantee that a bottle of water may not go to somebody connected to Hamas. If you are insistent upon that, what you…