CNN 2010-11-21

I respectfully submit that this committee should recommend to the full House that it take disciplinary action against respondent, and that this committee recommend respondent be censured 1 by the House.

I am grateful that I had this opportunity to serve and recognize that had it not been for God's gift in saving my life, I would not even be here today to talk with you. I thank you for this awkward opportunity to express myself, and I apologize for any embarrassment 2 I've caused you individually or collectively as a member of this greatest institution in the country and the world.

Quite a bit of fan-fare on Wall Street this morning, as General Motors is once again a publicly-traded company. GM shares opened at $35, which is two dollars above the offering price. The automaker, which is a little more than a year out of bankruptcy 3 and a $50 billion federal government bailout raised $20 billion in the IPO, making it the largest public offering in US history. Even with the automaker’s mess of stock sales and billions more than it’s already returned to the government, GM is still on the hump for about $27 billion. Just how much that money taxpayers 4 will get back depends on the price the government gets for its 33% stake in the company when it eventually sells those shares.

It is a national security imperative 5 that the United States ratify 6 the new START treaty this year. There is no higher national security priority for the lame 7 duck session of Congress. The stakes for American national security are clear, and they are high. I’m confident that we should be able to get the votes. Keep in mind that every President since Ronald Reagan has presented a arms treaty with Russia and been able to get ratification 8.

The miners are right behind me here on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport. We just finished a four-and-a-half-hour flight from Atlanta, that’s when they collectively come from Santiago. And the 33 miners, five rescuers are here to attend our “CNN Heroes: An All-star tribute” that is tapping and will be airing on Thanksgiving evening. Right now, you can see all the miners are getting amid aboard buses here on the tarmac. They are being treated like VIPs, because they are VIPs. They are going to be taken to a hotel in Los Angeles. Now we are going to start a fun few days of touring LA at southern California. It’s hard to imagine five weeks ago, these 33 miners were half a mile below for 10 weeks in a dark mine and now they are celebrating here in southern California, the first time for most of them who’d been out of the nation of Chile.