Joe Manchin

It makes common sense to me as an American, which I think we all love our military and we are so appreciative of what they do, that given the choice between the soldier and an overpaid contractor performing the same mission, that I would…

The bottom line. It took so long for this contract to be revealed to what was going on and why such a blatant protection of a contractor that was charging $28 billion and held totally harmless--totally harmless--by this Government.

I recently met with the National Guardsmen who say that a contractor knowingly exposed them to sodium dichromate in Iraq.

I appreciate your all being here.

You believe in health care waivers, correct?

If I can just very quickly ask Mr. Holtz-Eakin, in your testimony it's a common misconception that Medicare covers long-term care.

Medicaid was never intended to be the primary provider of long-term care coverage, yet Medicaid is the largest payer of long-term care services.

I had the enormous privilege to spend the last 2 weeks traveling around my great State to hear from the people of West Virginia. It is always so refreshing to get a dose of commonsense from people who are working hard every day to balance…

I rise today first of all to thank the senior Senator, my friend Senator Rockefeller, for nominating such a qualified jurist upon the passing of our dear friend, Judge Blane Michael. Stephanie Dawn Thacker is a native of Hamlin, WV. We are…

We always say you have to drive to survive in West Virginia. So you can only imagine the hardship it's putting on people.

I don't know how anyone who has even the slightest understanding of economics can believe that by increasing the cost, namely the taxes, that you will somehow lower the price to the consumer.

How in the world if we absolutely prohibited speculation in America, put a 25 year sentence, mandatory, on anybody who engaged in speculation in the price. How would you stop that from happening in another country?

We couldn't even get a bill passed here to use alternative fuels for our military which makes no sense at all.

It's not going to have any impact because you won't be able to see production on line for a period of 8, 10 years under a best case scenario.

I'm just saying, just having control over our own destiny. We have no control over global pricing of oil.

We know we can do it. We have the technology, but this agency, EPA, the Administration, will not help us move in that direction.

I too am honored to be able to rise today to speak of our dear friend Barbara Mikulski. So many good things have been said, so many accolades have been shared about what Barbara has done and what she means to all of us. I can only tell you…

Sir, if I may, al Qaeda has presence everywhere else. You said yourself that there's very little presence of al Qaeda.

That's just beyond my comprehension, that we could be doing that there when we should be taking care of America.

President Karzai just endorsed the code of conduct that allows husbands to beat wives, encourages segregation of the sexes, reduces the rights of women in divorce cases.

There have been more U.S. troops killed by our Afghan allies than by al Qaeda or the Taliban last month.

We should really be rebuilding America. We have so many needs in our country, rather than the money that we're spending in Afghanistan.

I have serious reservations about the sustainability of the Afghan security forces.

We know that we face long-term challenges as well.

I did not see an improvement over the 5-year lapse that I had been, 2006 to 2011. I saw deterioration.