Jim McDermott

In the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, we responded in historic fashion to meet the needs of unemployed workers.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think that if you put two or three or four reasonable people around the table reading the cases, even these one-paragraph synopses that are given to us, in almost every case, we would say, this person is eligible for disability benefits.

What is the reason for that? The military can put 500,000 people in Iraq inside of 3 months. Why can't GSA move a few people and get some offices open?

Anybody can see the trend of the line for the last 8 years.

You have had a year.

Isn't the trend line about the numbers of days waiting is exactly the same for the last 2 years? It is over 500.

Mr. Astrue, I assume you are on the side of the clients in this issue.

The 1.3 million people who are waiting for a decision to be made on their application deserve better.

It is now time for the agency to take bold steps to expeditiously reduce the length of time that a disability claimant must wait for a hearing.

There must be a better way to serve the American public.

The average waiting time to secure a hearing for a disability claim at SSA is roughly 500 days, 16½ months.

There are nearly six million disabled individuals who wait for SSI to provide them with a helping hand.

Far too many of our most vulnerable elderly and disabled citizens are waiting too long to get the benefits that they deserve and are entitled to under the law.

In recent years, SSA's backlog of claims for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits has reached unprecedented levels, with more than 1.3 million Americans currently awaiting a decision on their case.

Well, before we close, I said at the beginning, half in jest to you, Lord Monckton, that I could mark you down as doubtful.

I don't know how anyone can suggest we could sit on our hands and watch this happen, because such inaction would be the worst kind of generational malfeasance.

The long-term cost of inaction is surely much, much higher, and we fail to respond to it at our own peril.

As a medical doctor, I took an oath that says, 'When it comes to treating patients, do no harm.'

We must address the dire risks of global warming while also ensuring this effort does not impose additional hardships on families already struggling to get by.

Doing it at the beginning makes much better sense, because then he is thinking or she is thinking, 'I am going to spend my time in rural Illinois, not in Chicago.'

If you did that, you would see a dramatic change in what is going on in medical care today.

We need to get medical students committed to primary care before they are overwhelmed with debt.

To do nothing as Dr. Christy suggests or allow ourselves to be bullied or blackmailed by the industrialists of Alabama is not an option.

A real injustice had been done to a whole lot of black guys who were serving their country and somebody had to speak up for them.