  We give a formulation of quantum cosmology with a pressureless dust and
arbitrary additional matter fields. The system has the property that its
Hamiltonian constraint is linear in the dust momentum. This feature provides a
natural time gauge, leading to a physical hamiltonian that is not a square
root. Quantization leads to Schr{\"o}dinger equation for which unitary
evolution is directly linked to geodesic completeness. Our approach simplifies
the analysis of both Wheeler-deWitt and loop quantum cosmology (LQC) models,
and significantly broadens the applicability of the latter. This is
demonstrated for arbitrary scalar field potential and cosmological constant in
LQC.
