Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I will just come out and say it. Citizens United was one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court. It was a disaster, a radical exercise of pro-corporate judicial activism. It was seriously flawed both legally and factually.

Legally, the Court trampled its own precedence--cases such as Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and McConnell v. Federal Elections Commission, which had been on the books for years and stood for the obvious proposition that the people can enact reasonable limits on money and politics.

Factually, the Court rested its conclusions on the faultiest of premises--that unlimited campaign expenditures by outside groups, including corporations, do not give rise to corruption or even the appearance of corruption. That assessment is disconnected from reality and is horribly out of touch with the sentiments of most Americans. For example, the Minnesota

League of Women Voters issued a report in which it concluded that ``the influence of money in politics represents a dangerous threat to the health of our democracy in Minnesota and nationally.'' I think if you asked most people whether unlimited spending on campaigns has a corrupting effect, they would agree and say, yes, of course it does, and I think they would be right. But the decision in Citizens United was based on this unfounded and unbelievable idea that we have no reason to be concerned about the effects of unlimited campaign spending.

So we have this 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that ignores the law, ignores precedent, invents facts, and as a result we ended up with a campaign finance system in tatters--one in which deep-pocketed corporations, superwealthy individuals, and well-funded special interests can flood our elections with money, thereby drowning out the voices of middle-class Americans who don't have the luxury of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the political process.

This is real. Spending by outside groups more than tripled from the 2008 Presidential campaign to the 2012 Presidential campaign when it topped $1 billion. Outside spending went from $330 million in 2008 to over $1 billion in 2012. What happened in the interim? Well, it was Citizens United in 2010 and the floodgates were opened.

The middle class is not just being flooded, it is being blindfolded too, because these wealthy special interest groups can often spend the money anonymously, so voters have no idea who is behind the endless attack ads that fill the airwaves.

Here is how it works: If you have millions of dollars you want to spend, you can funnel it through back channels so that it ends up in the hands of a group--typically one with a generic and benign-sounding name.

I was trying to invent a name, such as ``Americans for More America'' and ``American America.'' I was kind of joking around, and it turns out there is group that has that name. They use this money to buy ads and very often without disclosing the source of their funds. To me, this whole thing looks a lot like money laundering, except now it is perfectly legal.

Again, this is real. A study just came out which showed that in the current election cycle alone there have already been over 150,000 ads run by groups that don't have to disclose the source of their funding, and things are just getting worse. Earlier this year, in a case called McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court was at it again, recklessly doing away with a law that prohibited people from giving more than $123,000 in the aggregate directly to candidates in an election cycle. The limit had been $123,000. Who has that kind of money? Who has that kind of money lying around to spend on elections? Well, I guess the super-rich have that kind of money, but the middle class certainly doesn't. The folks I meet with in Minnesota are trying to make ends meet, pay off their student loans, train for a new job, or save some money to start a family. They sure don't have that kind of money just lying around, and they are the folks who need a voice here in Washington.

In June the Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the subject, and we heard from a witness whose presentation I found particularly persuasive and compelling. I suggest that my colleagues read his testimony. He was a State senator from North Carolina. He said:

Suddenly, no matter what the race was, money came flooding

in. Even elected officials who had been in office for decades

told me they'd never seen anything like it. We were barraged

by television ads that were uglier and less honest than I

would have thought possible. And they all seemed to be coming

from groups with names we had never heard of. But it was

clear that corporations and individuals who could write giant

checks had a new level of power in the state.

He went on to explain that the vast majority of outside money that was spent on State races, including the Governor's race, came from one man--just one man--who reportedly poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into State politics. Before the Governor was even sworn into office, he announced who would write the State's budget. Yes, it was that same donor. Apparently, the donor got his money's worth. The budget he drafted was loaded with goodies for corporate interests and the super-rich, provided at the expense of middle-class and working folks.

I find this whole thing incredibly disturbing, this idea that a handful of superwealthy corporate interests in effect can buy our democracy--or in this case one guy. That is not how it is supposed to work. Everyone is supposed to have an equal say in our democracy regardless of his or her wealth. The guy in the assembly line gets as many votes as the CEO--one. You don't get extra influence just because you have extra money--or you shouldn't. The government should be responsive to everyone and not just the wealthiest among us.

The way I see it is we can go two ways from here. On the one hand, we can continue to let Citizens United be the law of the land. We can perpetuate the fallacy that corporations have the constitutional right to flood our elections with undisclosed money. We can let deep-pocketed special interests buy influence and access and then set the agenda for the rest of the country or we can say enough is enough. We can restore the law to what it was before Citizens United was decided. More to the point, we can restore the voice to millions upon millions of everyday Americans who want nothing more than to see their government represent them. That is the choice we have before us this week. For those of us who believe the measure of democracy's strength is in votes cast, not dollars spent--for us, I think it is an easy choice.

I am going to vote to reverse Citizens United, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 9, 2014, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Wall Street Reform: Assessing and Enhancing the Financial Regulatory System.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate of September 9, 2014, at 10 a.m. in room SD- 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 9, 2014, at 4 p.m., to hold a hearing entitled, ``CLOSED/TS/SCI: Arms Control Compliance Issues.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet, during the session of the Senate, on September 9, 2014, at 10 a.m., in room SD-430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Hearing on the nomination of Sharon Block to serve as a Member of the National Labor Relations Board.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 9, 2014, at 10:30 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of Federal Programs for Equipping State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on September 9, 2014, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Judicial Nominations.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 9, 2014, at 10 a.m. in room SH-216 of the Hart Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``The State of VA Health Care.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 9, 2014, at 2:30 p.m.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I rise today to talk about the transparency provisions in the USA FREEDOM Act. I am a proud cosponsor of Chairman Leahy's bill, and I am particularly proud to have written its key transparency provisions with my friend Senator Dean Heller of Nevada. As I said yesterday, both of us are indebted to Senator Leahy for his leadership on this issue.

For over a year now there has been a steady stream of news stories about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. Yet right now, by law, Americans still cannot get very basic information about these programs.

Americans understand that we need to give due weight to privacy on the one hand and national security on the other. But when they lack an even rough sense of the scope of the government's surveillance programs, they have no way to know if the government is getting that balance right. There needs to be more transparency.

The controversy unleashed by Edward Snowden's disclosures has been going on for over a year. Yet Americans still don't know the actual number of people whose information has been collected under these programs. They don't even know how many of these people are Americans, and they have no way of knowing how many of these Americans had their information actually looked at by government officials as opposed to just being held in a database. This lack of transparency is pretty breathtaking.

I believe the provisions Senator Heller and I wrote will go a long way toward addressing and fixing this. It will give Americans the information they need to judge the government's surveillance programs for themselves.

Three programs are at the center of this debate: the telephone call records program, the collection, through 2011, on Americans' Internet communications records, and the so-called PRISM Program that targets the communications of foreigners abroad.

Our provisions would require detailed annual reports for each program. The government will have to tell the public how many people have had their information collected and how many of those people are likely American. For the call records program and the PRISM Program, the government will also have to say how many times it has run a specific search for an American's data.

By creating these reporting requirements, the government will have an incentive to also disclose the number of Americans who have actually had their information reviewed by government officials, and we give the government authority to do that too.

We don't just require the government to issue more detailed transparency reports. We are also helping American Internet and phone companies tell their customers about the government requests for customer information they are receiving. For years those companies have been under gag orders. As a result, people around the world think the American Internet companies are giving up far more information to the government than they likely are. Those companies are losing billions of dollars because people think they are handing over all of their customers' data to the NSA.

Our provisions expand the options that companies have to issue their own transparency reports, and they let companies issue those reports more quickly. Our provisions give the public two ways to check on the government--government transparency reports and company reports as well.

Like all major bills, this bill is a compromise, and we didn't get everything we wanted, but our provisions will go a long way toward giving the American people the information they need to evaluate the government's surveillance program.

After 9/11, our Nation faced a security crisis. Most Americans had never lived through anything like that. We are now experiencing a crisis of trust where a big part of the American public now thinks our intelligence agencies are out to spy on them, not on foreign countries.

The administration has committed to end the bulk collection of Americans' data, and Congress has written a bill to ban the bulk collection of Americans' data. But unless we pass these transparency provisions, Americans have no way to know if the government is making good on those promises. Our transparency provisions will force the government to prove annually and publicly that bulk collection is over. This is an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability which will allow the American people to decide for themselves whether the government is striking the right balance between privacy and security.

We should take up this bill as soon as possible so that Americans are not in the dark a single day longer. We should take it up so that American companies stop losing business because of misperceptions about their role in domestic surveillance. We should take this bill up so that Americans can get the information they need to hold their government to account.

Tribute to Alvaro Bedoya

Before I yield the floor, I wish to take a moment to recognize and thank Alvaro Bedoya, my chief counsel, who is to my left. This is Alvaro's last week on my staff. Alvaro has been a member of my team since my very first day in office, and I have relied on and trusted his counsel on so many things in the 5 years since.

He has been instrumental in helping me launch and set the agenda for the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law that I chair, and we would not have reached this point in working to make the NSA more transparent and accountable to the American people if it were not for Alvaro.

Alvaro's counsel has also been crucial as we have sought to improve our Nation's broken immigration system, as we fought for marriage equality and LGBT rights, including the right of all children to be free from bullying in schools, and as we work to ban apps that allow domestic abusers to stalk their victims.

Alvaro was even at my side during my very first week in office when the Judiciary Committee held confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court. That was my fifth day in the Senate, and I remember pulling some late nights preparing for that.

Alvaro's departure is bittersweet for me. I am, of course, sad to see Alvaro leave, but I am very excited for him as well. He will soon become the founding executive director of Georgetown Law School's new Center for Privacy and Technology. I have no doubt the folks at Georgetown soon will learn what I already know--that Alvaro is one of the most talented, intelligent, hardest working, decent, good-guy lawyers I know.

Thanks, Alvaro.

And I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, the largest association representing Minnesota's rank-and-file police officers, recently met for its annual conference in Alexandria, MN.

During that conference, MPPOA recognized several outstanding police officers: Sergeant Eric Kilian of the Hutchinson Police Department was named Police Officer of the Year, and Officer Mark Blumberg of the St. Paul Police Department and Officer Brian Hasselman of the Burnsville Police Department received Honorable Mentions. In addition, the Minnesota Association of Women Police, a wonderful organization that trains women police officers and promotes professionalism in law enforcement, recently honored Detective Alesia Metry of the Maplewood Police Department as Officer of the Year at its annual conference in Duluth.

I join MPPOA and MAWP in recognizing these brave public servants, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank both organizations and their members for the work they do every single day to keep our communities safe.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about the transparency provisions in the USA FREEDOM Act. I am a proud cosponsor of Chairman Leahy's bill, and I am particularly proud to have written the key transparency provisions with my friend Senator Dean Heller of Nevada.

Senator Lee is right. This is not a Republican bill or a Democratic bill. This isn't a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. I thank Senator Lee for his leadership. Of course, we are all indebted to Senator Leahy for his leadership on this issue.

Because of time constraints, I am not going to be able to give the speech I wanted to, so I will try to ask for time for tomorrow. I know today's floor is very busy.

I wish to say it is very important that there is enough transparency in our NSA surveillance that Americans can judge for themselves if we are striking the right balance between national security and our civil liberties.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about the transparency provisions in the USA FREEDOM Act. I am a proud cosponsor of Chairman Leahy's bill, and I am particularly proud to have written the key transparency provisions with my friend Senator Dean Heller of Nevada.

Senator Lee is right. This is not a Republican bill or a Democratic bill. This isn't a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. I thank Senator Lee for his leadership. Of course, we are all indebted to Senator Leahy for his leadership on this issue.

Because of time constraints, I am not going to be able to give the speech I wanted to, so I will try to ask for time for tomorrow. I know today's floor is very busy.

I wish to say it is very important that there is enough transparency in our NSA surveillance that Americans can judge for themselves if we are striking the right balance between national security and our civil liberties.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my counsel detailee, Helen Gilbert, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in proud support of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, and to urge my colleagues to support it.

This is an extremely important piece of legislation, and one I was happy to work on in the HELP Committee. It is also long overdue. We haven't reauthorized the Workforce Investment Act since 1998, and it is clear that the law isn't working for the 2014 economy. We know it isn't working because we have a large and growing skills gap.

Now, what is the skills gap? Recent studies have shown that between one-third and one-half of manufacturers in my State have at least one job they can't fill because they can't find a worker with the right skills. That is the skills gap in Minnesota. Of course, it isn't just Minnesota, it is a nationwide phenomenon, and any colleague I talk to on the floor says that is the case in his or her State.

A 2011 survey by Deloitte found that there were 600,000 manufacturing jobs nationwide that were unfilled because of a skills shortage. I just met with Bob Kill, the president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota, a terrific organization that studies manufacturers in my State of Minnesota, and as he likes to say, ``we've been admiring this problem for a long time.''

And it is not just manufacturers. There is a skills gap in information technology, in health care, and in other sectors that have jobs sitting there waiting for skilled workers to fill them. There are more than 3 million jobs in this country that could be filled today if there were workers who had the right skills. With too many Americans unemployed, we have to find a way to fill those jobs.

The thing is, we know how to solve this, and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act will help us do that. I have been to the floor of the Senate a number of times to talk about the strategy. I have talked about it with the Presiding Officer. I am excited about this, as the Presiding Officer very well knows. These are partnerships between businesses and community and technical colleges that are training workers and getting them into

high-skilled, high-demand jobs right away.

A number of these partnerships are up and running in Minnesota and have employers fighting over graduates--and sometimes the fight starts even before the students have graduated. That is good for the student. Bob Kill told me about the top student in one of these programs at Alexandria Technical and Community College--by the way, a community college which has been doing this for a while and doing a great job. This student had 14 job offers before he graduated. All 14 employers said they would pay him to get his engineering degree. I bet if we asked most recent graduates from 4-year or even graduate degree programs, they would be jealous of that kind of eagerness from employers.

So that is a program that is working, and with good reason; employers were involved in the program from day one, so they helped to shape the curriculum to their needs. This is obviously more effective than a training program with no connection to the needs of employers or, as Labor Secretary Tom Perez calls it, ``train and pray.'' Our education system needs more of this focus on skills for jobs that exist.

Careers are different than they were a generation ago. Very few people stay working in one job for one company for their entire life anymore. As technology progresses faster and faster, workers are going to need to constantly update their skills. We need a workforce development system that is agile enough to keep up with these changing demands. That is essential not just so workers will be able to get the different skills they will need over the course of their working lives, it is also going to be one of the keys to the United States remaining globally competitive. If our workers can't adapt to the new industries that are constantly forming, we will lose those jobs to our global competitors. We are seeing manufacturing coming back to our country for all sorts of reasons, and we need to have the skilled workers to take advantage of that and be globally competitive. There is no better way to anticipate and react to these changes than to connect businesses directly with our schools to get workers exactly the skills they need.

This is also about local competitiveness, it is about jobs, it is also about college affordability. I already talked about the student with 14 job offers, all of which included a free engineering degree. We can't get more affordable than free. Many have heard me talk about this issue before, a manufacturer from Minnesota named Erick Ajax.

When Erick hires employees from these business-technical college partnerships, the way he looks at it is they are on a career ladder that would otherwise not be available to them. He told me about one such hire. He hired him right after a credentialing program, like a short CNC credentialed program. The guy did a great job, and so he said: Well, I am going to send you back to community college to get your associate's degree while you are working, and I will pay for it.

So the guy got his associate's degree, came back, and he was magnificent. So then he said: You know what. I am going to send you to the University of Minnesota to get your bachelor's degree, while you are working. I believe he is about to get his bachelor's degree, but he is now the head of quality control for this advanced manufacturing company--and he will have a couple of degrees, with zero debt. I think about that story a lot when I think about college affordability.

I could talk about these partnerships for hours, as the Presiding Officer knows--he has heard me--because they work. I have been enthusiastic about this. That is why I worked with Patty Murray, the great Senator from Washington; Johnny Isakson, the great Senator from Georgia; Tom Harkin, the great Senator from Iowa; and Lamar Alexander, the great Senator from Tennessee, to make sure this bill would encourage the formation of these partnerships. I thank each and every one of them for their leadership on this bill. They worked together on a bipartisan basis and led a cooperative process in the HELP Committee. I think the result is a bill of which everyone can be proud.

I will keep working to pass my Community College to Career Fund Act, because I think these partnerships deserve even more focus as well as a dedicated funding source. But I am proud that I fought to make sure the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act contains provisions similar to my bill, and it does a lot to encourage the formation of more of these partnerships--and bigger partnerships--create more jobs, more workers with jobs, and degrees on a path in the right direction. I think this is a huge step in the right direction, and I thank my colleagues. We are creating a smarter, nimbler workforce that will be able to respond to the unique needs of each local area, coordinating all the programs so they will all be working together toward the same goals and the same outcome metrics. This will reduce administrative costs and make the system focus on what counts--getting people good jobs.

Once again, I thank Senators Murray, Harkin, Isakson, and Alexander for their hard work on this bill. I encourage my colleagues to support it so we can get our workforce system working for today's economy and the economy of tomorrow.

Thank you very much. We can do both the Sanders-McCain bill, the veterans bill, and we can do this, and there is a need for this.

I was proud to join Senator Warren of Massachusetts in presenting the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act. I come from a State where we have the distinction of being fourth in the Nation in terms of level of debt that our students have when they graduate from college, over $30,000. Then we see people who come to graduate school with a lot more.

I do college roundtables all the time. Kids are working 20, 30, 40 hours a week while going to school. I have kids telling me they are giving blood while they are in school. We need to address this. This is only a part of what we need to do when talking about the costs of college, but why is it possible to refinance a home loan in this country, people are able to refinance their car loans, they are able to refinance a business loan, but they cannot refinance their student debt? That makes no sense.

This has become a macroeconomic issue. Economists agree that because of the level of student debt--and if someone is paying 10 percent interest on it, it makes a huge difference--they are

not able to save enough to put a downpayment on a house or they are not able to buy a car, they are not able to move out of their parents' house. This would help 550,000 Minnesotans--550,000 Minnesotans. That is 1 out of every 10 Minnesotans.

What pays for it is saying that people who make over $1 million a year would pay in income taxes what people making $60,000 a year pay. This is about fairness. We all know that in the last number of decades, and especially in the last number of years, virtually all new income has flowed to those at the top. The top 40 hedge fund managers make as much as 300,000 teachers. Why shouldn't they pay 30 percent on their income? Why not benefit the millions of Americans who have student debt and let them refinance their debt as we can with home loans, car loans, business loans?

It just seems that this is a matter of fairness, and it is smart economics because economists agree that the $1.2 trillion in student debt has hurt this economy. It seems to make common sense.

This is not political. It is not political if the other side votes for it. If the other side votes for it, then we can help millions and millions of Americans refinance debt just like other Americans can refinance their credit card debt or home debt. This makes too much sense, and it should not be political. It should be bipartisan.

We should get to this, and then move on to the Sanders-McCain bill, which I cosponsored. I want to get on that. I want to be able to get on a lot of legislation. In this Congress we have sometimes seen--and in the last several Congresses--the minority do what it can to slow down the process and gum up the works here. I would love to get to the veterans bill immediately after passing this.

I thank the Presiding Officer and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, today I am proud to enter into the Record the poems of the winners of the 3rd Annual Minnesota Military Children's Poetry Contest. The theme of this year's competition was ``Celebrating the Veteran in My Life.'' Each of the poems submitted by a Minnesota child paid tribute to the men and women who have honorably served and have had a profound impact on the lives of children and families in Minnesota and across our great Nation. Seventy students from kindergarten, middle and high school submitted entries for this year's contest. There were three age categories for the competition--Kindergarten through 6th grade, 7th through 9th grade, and 10th through 12th grade--and nine poems were chosen as the winning entries.

I want to thank all the students from across Minnesota who helped us honor our veterans for their commitment and service. I also want to recognize and thank the judges of this year's contest: the Adjutant General of the Minnesota National Guard, MG Richard Nash; Minnesota commissioner of veterans affairs Larry Shellito; Minnesota commissioner of education Brenda Cassellius; and Minnesota poet laureate Joyce Sutphen.

I ask that nine winning poems from the 3rd Annual Minnesota Military Children's Poetry Contest be printed in the Record.

``Delvin Menze''

(By Riley Menze)

1st Place Grades K-6

A little boy turned two,

The day Pearl Harbor went boom!

You could call him my grandpa,

You could call him my friend,

You could say his job wasn't that great,

I'd say it was more awesome than cake.

Without him, the crew might've starved,

But they lived through the night,

Have you guessed it yet?

Yep, he was an Army cook.

He might slice potatoes all day,

Or make soup to warm cold souls,

But he is the greatest,

The greatest beyond great.

Today he's a farmer,

A dairy farmer to be exact,

Lives with his wife in the countryside,

Of a little town called Ottertail.

He taught me to milk cows,

Or feed romping heifers,

To drive tractors, four-wheelers,

Plus snowmobiles too.

You could call him my grandpa,

You could call him my friend,

Either way, he's better than a king,

And worth more money than the world.

Mr. President, I yield back all time on the nomination.

I thank Senator Klobuchar for her moving tribute to Jim Oberstar. We both had the honor of speaking today at his funeral. We were both honored by his wife Jean and by his family.

Jim served the Eighth District for 36 years as their Representative. He served it for 11 years before that as a staffer on the Hill, as Senator Klobuchar said. As she said, he died last weekend in his sleep. I think Senator Klobuchar told me that the family said he wasn't 99 percent, he was 100 percent. So this came as a shock to all of us who knew Jim, and it obviously deeply saddened us all.

I announced for the Senate in February of 2007, and a few days later I had my first public event where I took questions from folks. This was at a coffee shop in St. James, MN, in the southwest corner of our State, in the First District.

The first question I got was from a woman asking if I believed there should be term limits. From the way she asked it, I knew she thought there should be term limits, and I thought: Great. My very first question and I don't agree with the person who is asking it.

So I said: No, I don't believe in term limits, and let me tell you why--Jim Oberstar. Jim has been Congressman for the Eighth District for 33 years now, and he is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and he knows more about transportation than anybody else in the country.

Everybody in the coffee shop, including the woman, kind of went, yes--they nodded--yes, that makes sense.

Jim was a walking advertisement against term limits. He was the consummate public servant, and it was all because he was a man who sought knowledge. He had a fierce curiosity about the world and an intense need to understand how it worked. All that enabled him to accomplish so much.

If Jim were here today, if he had one more chance to speak to all of us, first he would say how much he loved his family and his friends and the people who worked for him. Then he would tell us the history of American infrastructure, starting with the Erie Canal and how it opened Midwestern agriculture to Europe because, he would explain, it was 97 percent more efficient to ship those goods over water, down the Hudson and over to Europe, than before. He would tell us how the Erie Canal made New York Harbor, New York City, made it what it is today. Then he would take us through the transcontinental railroad, rural electrification, the Interstate Highway System, and all the way to rural broadband. Then he would go back to the Roman aqueducts, which were built by slave labor, and make an impassioned speech about the history of the labor movement. Jim sometimes had a tendency to go too long, but it was because he believed that everyone was as curious about the world as he was, and he was almost always wrong about that.

I once had the opportunity to speak before Jim at the naming ceremony for the James Oberstar Riverfront Complex, the headquarters for the Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota. Since I was speaking before him, I took the opportunity to predict what Jim would talk about. I said that he would tell us the legislative history of Voyageurs National Park; he would tell us about all the different streams of funding for the park; he would tell us the history of the French voyageurs, the first White men in Minnesota; and that during part of the speech, Jim would speak in startlingly fluent French. Everyone laughed, including Jim, but that didn't stop Jim from telling us the legislative history of the park, all the different funding streams, and all about the voyageurs--and that part in French--and delighting in every word of it.

The first time I ever saw him chair, I went over to the House to see him chair a committee on high-speed rail. He had witnesses from China, Japan, France, and some other European country. When it was time for him to do his questioning, I learned that Jim had piloted every one of those high-speed rail systems. Of course, when he questioned the French witness he did it in French, and it was a tour de force--which I believe is French.

Jim understood the importance of infrastructure to our economy, to economic development, and, as Amy was saying, for recreation. His legacy will be in the ports, locks, dams, highways, bridges, and water systems throughout our country, but it will also be in the bike paths in Minnesota and around the country.

Jim was an avid bike rider. He used to say he wanted to turn our transportation system--the fuel--from hydrocarbons to carbohydrates.

Jim will leave a legacy, and, as I said, it all came from Jim's thirst for knowledge. The pages are here, and I would urge them to thirst for knowledge, not just information. Some people in this town-- and in other places too--just look for enough information to achieve some short-term goal. Jim sought knowledge, an understanding of how things work. Because of that, he was able to get things done and was respected by all of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Amy and I were both there the day that colleagues in the House paid tribute to him, and it was both sides of the aisle equally.

We had a retirement tribute for Jim in Duluth in 2011, and Don Ness, the mayor of Duluth--about whom Amy spoke briefly and who was at the service today--told a story at that tribute that says everything about Jim as a guy.

Don was 23 years old, and he had just been hired to be Jim's campaign manager. Don's first thing to do with him was the Fourth of July parades. The Fourth of July parades on the Iron Range are a big deal, and there are a lot of them. There were six of them in 24 hours. This was his big chance to impress his new boss, and he screwed up every bit of it.

The first thing he did was he was so obsessed with making arrangements that he forgot to make his own hotel reservation on the Range. Don lived in Duluth. So he drove around the Range to get a room until 1:30 in the morning. He found one in Virginia, MN. He overslept and had to drive to Chisholm, and he was late. So he picked up Jim, and to make up the time, he drove fast and, of course, he got pulled over and got a ticket, which made them really late for this parade, and they got put at the end, behind the horses, on a very hot, sweltering day.

All during the day, Donnie made one screw-up after another. He offended a local DFL activist. He lost Jim for about a half hour. Jim knew where he was, but he didn't know where Jim was. He left this black car parked directly in the sun during the parade, and it became--well, you know what that means.

Thankfully, after the fifth parade, there was going to be a 3-hour break and they were going to drive to somebody's house where they would be able to eat and get in the air-conditioning and relax. Donnie decided to put the signs in the trunk, and as he was doing it, as he was closing it, he saw the keys in the car, locked in the car, and it took them 90 minutes to find someone who could open the car, so they lost their break.

Donnie was a 23-year-old kid, and he was certain he was going to be fired. He felt he deserved to be fired. Jim had been calm with him all day, been nice to him all day, but he figured Jim was stuck with him until the end of the day and at the end of the day he would be fired. He drives Jim home to Chisholm. It is 9 at night now. They get out of the car, and he starts to apologize and says: I blew it today. I know this was my chance, and I have blown it, and I will never be in public service.

This guy is now--what term is he in now, Amy? His third? Yes, his third term as mayor of Duluth. What did he get, 87 percent, or something like that?

But Jim stopped him and wouldn't let him finish. He stopped him and he said: I am really proud of you. You had a tough day. We had a tough day. You had a lot of adversity. You had a lot of things to overcome and you never lost your head, which was really not true; Donnie was panicking the entire time, which is probably why Donnie made those mistakes.

But then he gave Don a big hug--that big Jim bear hug that so many people talked about today. Then Don carried a

bag for Jim, and Jim one, too, up to the front porch, and Jim said, before Don went back to the car: I am proud of you. Don't worry about today. I am proud of you.

Don went back to the car, got in, with his head swimming, and he couldn't believe the kindness, the warmth. As he started to back out, he looked back and Jim was still on the porch, and he gave him this big wave and said: Happy Independence Day.

Minnesota lost a giant, the United States lost a giant this week, but we also lost a good guy. He was a great guy--a great man and a good guy.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wish to speak today as in morning business.