Jim McDermott

If we lower the tax rate to 25 percent, will you stop laying off people in the United States?

I always think that Willie Sutton kind of had it right, that the reason you rob banks was because that is where the money was.

And they handed it out in dividends rather than investing it in any kind of----

I want to thank you all for coming here. I have a feeling as though I have seen this movie before...

So it doesn't make any difference whether they are commercial or Medicaid or Medicare, I still get the same $1.29 or $1.39.

So you think leaving it in the private insurance industry, as the President's bill does, and including more people into the private insurance industry, is competitive?

You think the whole business community would be willing to accept that?

Unions built this country. They built the highways, the ports, the schools. They created fairness, the 8-hour work day, safe working conditions, health care, pensions.

Let's take away their pensions. Let's destroy the system we have developed in this country.

Let us be clear: The Republicans hate defined benefit pensions, whether it is Social Security at the Federal level or it is a public pension at the State level.

I assume this hearing is on the level, and it is really about making it better for the middle class in the country, rather than for the people in the top one percent or one-tenth of one percent.

It seems to me that those folks who have money have plenty of people figuring it out for them.

If you have got it, send it. Let us move it.

The Korean FTA brings economic benefits to each and every state in this union.

Finally we are discussing a free trade agreement that is ready for congressional consideration right now, an FTA that will generate more than $10 billion in increasing U.S. exports, $11 billion in increased GDP, and as many as 277,000 new…

If I can get one other question here, the inflated figure he uses, this huge number, God, it just blows your socks off.

I think that term 'welfare' is what is very misleading.

I have never heard the elderly and the disabled called welfare cases before.

So you have got to be careful where you are poor is what you are saying.

You mean we allow the States to have different standards for people?

What do they have available to them to keep their family together and keep their kids from being hungry?

There is a gap. There is not an overlap. It is a gap really that you are talking about here.

Only one out of four poor children in this country is covered.

I think you gentlemen understand what you are being made part of today.

I am not real sure why we are having this hearing.