I thought that the purpose of cap and trade was to have all of the money that was coming in from whatever was being taxed would go toward the solution of that tax.

I am a huge believer that incentives work better than penalties, although recognizing that sometimes penalties need to be in place because there are bad actors.

The budget proposes raising the effective tax rate from 35 percent to 41, 42 percent.

Mr. Chairman, I want to welcome you back to the committee and congratulate you on being the first to hold a hearing on President-elect Obama's nominees.

I particularly want to thank and congratulate Senator Mikulski for her tremendous work on the Higher Education Act.

The argument that it cuts the deficit in half in 4 years is truly spurious.

Except that we are about to make it a Federal issue and a Federal tax, because we are talking about cap and trade, which is a tax, and that tax will be passed on to the consumer.

The American people deserve solutions, not just debate.

I think it's smarter to invest when they're young--through programs like Head Start--rather than spending $50,000 a year to keep a kid who fell off track in jail.

We do appreciate the answers that we have gotten today and look forward to the same cooperative spirit and look forward to a quick confirmation so that we can get Senator Daschle in place doing the job that we need done.

Every independent group that has looked at this... has said that this carbon tax... represents a $300-billion-a-year increase in revenues.

While we don't always agree and won't always agree, we have both put concrete healthcare proposals on the table for discussion.

This is a budget which has fundamental flaws.

Senator Kennedy and I also have a track record of finding solutions for problems Americans face on the domestic policy front.

Our healthcare system is broken and fixing it is one area where I hope this 80 percent rule comes into play.

One of the things that has to happen around here is we have to restore confidence in the American people.

Part of it has been the speed with which we have done things and the size of the things that we have done.

Well, we were also told that with the first TARP that that money would go to buy toxic assets.

We also keep talking about being bipartisan, but we do not act bipartisan.

Nobody in America, I think, believes that we can spend the $700 billion or the $820 billion efficiently.

I personally believe that we should have been offsetting some of the spending in this stimulus bill today.

I know that the members of this committee take the advice and consent clause of the Constitution seriously.

I rise today to discuss the emergency supplemental bill that we are considering in the Senate. This new version of the emergency supplemental bill represents a change from the previous version. It is less expensive--$3 billion less in…

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