"There are items included in a health care reform plan that would change that. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Wash) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) have introduced legislation that would create 54 pilot programs to deliver coordinated home care and provide incentives for making home care more widespread. This could be one way hospitals trim their promised 150 billion dollars (over ten years) in health care costs."

"On July 23, with Senate Judiciary hearings behind us, I had the opportunity to meet privately with Judge Sotomayor. Without question, she has impressive academic credentials, a lengthy judicial record, and a personal story that is inspiring to many Americans. These qualities are certainly admirable; however, I am concerned with Judge Sotomayor's ability to adhere to long-standing case precedent and apply the law according to a strict interpretation of the Constitution. I am troubled by her decisions in cases where she appears to have relied on something other than well-settled law to come to a decision. My fear is that she has been unable to separate her personal belief system from that of the letter of the law.

"In 2005, when then-Senator Obama voted against current Chief Justice John Roberts, he conceded that Roberts had a 'passion for the law' and that he was a legal advocate with an 'excellent record.' I would say the same thing about Judge Sotomayor. However, it was the uncertainty that then-Senator Obama had about Roberts' impartiality that resulted in his vote against him. Any concern about uncertainty with our current Chief Justice would pale in comparison to the uncertainty I believe Judge Sotomayor currently presents to the highest court in the land. While she stated in her testimony that she would adhere to legal precedent, her judicial record suggests otherwise. In several cases she has clearly ignored precedent or cited precedent that did not apply to the facts at hand, and I believe let her personal beliefs cloud her judgment.

"The decisions made by the Supreme Court affect the lives of every American. After taking into consideration Judge Sotomayor's answers to my questions and reviewing her decisions that appear to have departed from the normal principles of jurisprudence, I find little predictability in her decisions and the implications they may have. I am concerned by the several examples where I believe Judge Sotomayor strayed from the rules of strict statutory construction and legal precedence and went with her own deeply held beliefs while providing little explanation. Therefore, I am unable to support her nomination to the Supreme Court."

"Military spouses would get the same options service members now enjoy for choosing — and keeping — a state of residency under legislation approved Thursday by the Senate as part of the 2010 defense authorization bill.

The spouse residency provision, sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., applies to voting rights, driver’s licenses and vehicle registration, property ownership and income and property taxes. It also could help in divorce cases because it makes it easier for military spouses to have property in their own name.

Burr's proposal, which he calls the Military Spouse Residency Relief Act, was approved by voice vote as an amendment to S 1390, and the defense bill later passed the Senate by a 87-7 vote."

"This week Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Ranking Member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, introduced the Caring for Camp Lejeune Veterans Act of 2009.

'Thousands of Navy and Marine veterans and their families who lived on Camp Lejeune have fallen ill with a variety of cancers and diseases believed to be attributable to their service at the base before it was designated a Superfund site in 1988,' Senator Burr said.

'We owe those who are sick the benefit of the doubt and the health care they need.'"

Today, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, agreed that this legislation would weaken the economy. He stated that the health care reform measures drafted by the Democrats would "worsen an already bleak budget outlook, increasing deficit projections and driving the nation more deeply into debt." When Mr. Elmendorf was pressed further during the Senate Budget Committee hearing by Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) about whether or not the Democrats health care bill would be able to reduce health care costs, he responded "No, Mr. Chairman."

Dear Friend,

I thought you might like to see my statement to the media yesterday on why I voted against President Obama's healthcare plan in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee meeting.

"The president stated very clearly at the start of this process that healthcare was unsustainable on its current path. Today it's 17% of our gross domestic product. We agree with the president, it is unsustainable today, and the goal was to produce a healthcare system that reduced the cost of healthcare over a period of time and made the future sustainable and predictable.

Well, we have anything but that today. Tom Coburn and I did offer a complete substitute to the bill, one that checked all the boxes that Senator Gregg just talked about. It assured that every American was covered. It assured that the right investment was made in prevention, wellness, and disease management, which are the only three things that bring the cost down in the future. And yes, it passed the test of being financially sustainable well into the future.

Not only does the bill that was passed out of the HELP committee today fall 34 million Americans short of full coverage, it is unsustainable financially. And it actually will penalize Americans that have insurance today that they are happy with the doctors they want to go to, that will affect them in the future on the cost of their healthcare and possibly on who their provider of choice might be.

We are headed in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, they're only two numbers you need to remember from the entire markup process, and that's 13 and 10. When it was a Republican amendment it was defeated 13-10. When it was a Democrat amendment it was passed 13-10".

To see the healthcare plan that Dr. Coburn and I offered please go to http://www.burrforsenate.com/health.php.

Kind regards,

Richard Burr
United States Senator

On June 26th, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R.2454), also known as the Waxman-Markey bill, by a vote of 219-212. This bill would create a new “cap and trade” system to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), this legislation would increase federal revenues by $846 billion over the next ten years by, in effect, imposing massive new taxes on energy.

I oppose creating a massive government bureaucracy and imposing new energy taxes on the American people. According to energy policy experts, this cap and trade proposal could cost the average American household anywhere from $1500 to $4500 a year in higher energy bills. It would also impose higher costs on businesses and cause significant damage to American manufacturing, which would threaten jobs and economic growth. This would be devastating to families, especially now when our economy is already experiencing a severe recession.

Europe has shown by example that mandatory cap-and-trade systems, especially before the necessary technology is available, do not work. The implementation of such a system in Europe has cut economic growth and resulted in job loss as businesses have moved to other, less restrictive countries, while doing little to actually reduce emissions. A unilateral approach – which does not include countries like China and India -- would not only jeopardize American competitiveness and drive jobs overseas, but it would also relocate greenhouse gas emissions to other countries, rather than reducing them.

WASHINGTON - North Carolina's two senators have become heavily involved in the effort to reform health care in the United States.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican, has put out one of a half-dozen alternative visions for what a new national health-care system might look like.