Kent Conrad

I've had lengthy discussions with European farm leaders. It is clear they have an agricultural strategy to support their producers and gain dominance in world agricultural trade. They're gaining markets the old-fashioned way - they're buying them.

One reason the Founding Fathers thought that states should have two senators was so that smaller states wouldn't get run over and could bring their interests to the attention of the Senate more broadly.

When Republicans used reconciliation in 2001 for the Bush tax cuts, they used it to increase the deficit. The whole purpose of reconciliation is for deficit reduction!

The only possible role that I can see for reconciliation would be to make modest changes in the major package to improve affordability, to deal with what share of Medicaid expansion the federal government pays, those kinds of issues, which is the traditional role for reconciliation in health care.

It is vital that we provide North Dakota's children with nutritionally sound diets. That means ensuring that they are getting plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and are developing good eating habits for their future.

Certainly Social Security needs to be reformed.

The American people say, 'Don't touch Social Security, don't touch Medicare, don't cut defense.' That's 84 percent of the federal budget.

Social Security has not contributed to the deficit problem.

America was founded on majority rule, not supermajority rule. Somehow, over the years, this has morphed into supermajority rule, and that changes things.

Access to computers and the Internet has become a basic need for education in our society.

The President is not squaring with the American people as to the seriousness of our nation's fiscal condition. It is time for people to stand up and tell the truth.

Welfare reform happened with reconciliation; half the Democrats voted for it. The Bush tax cuts happened with reconciliation; twelve Democratic Senators voted for it. You didn't have a real partisan issue on those times that it was used.