Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Thursday, May 7; following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and there be a period of morning business until 10:30 a.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the second half; further, I ask that at 10:30 a.m. the Senate resume consideration of S. 454, the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009.

Mr. President, rollcall votes in relation to the procurement bill are expected during tomorrow's session. Senators will be notified when the votes are scheduled.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Thank you, Madam President.

Let me start by commending Chairman Conrad for his leadership of our Budget Committee and especially for the hundreds of hours he and his staff have dedicated to getting this budget done and accommodating both the priorities and concerns of so many of us in this body. Putting together a budget is never an easy process, but I believe our chairman has achieved a very good balance that will set us on a course both to reduce our deficits and invest in the areas we know will make us stronger in the future: energy, health care, and education. A budget is a statement of priorities, and ours are very clearly in this budget. We put the middle class first, and we get our country back on track by investing in our future.

There is no doubt that we have inherited great challenges at this time. We now face the worst economic crisis in generations. Since December 2007, we have lost 5.1 million jobs, including 3.3 million of those in just the past 5 months. So before we consider where we are going, I believe it is important today to talk a little bit about where we have been.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been bemoaning deficits and debt with not a moment of consideration for their own record on this issue. Back in 2001, Republicans controlled the full power of our entire Government. Under the leadership of President Bush and Republicans in Congress, record surpluses that were created under President Clinton became record deficits. Those Republican deficits grew and grew, and now today they add up to trillions of dollars in new debt that is going to be shouldered by future generations of Americans.

So it was with this perspective, which I hope our Republican friends will start to acknowledge and own up to, that we know at this point in time we have two choices: Choice 1 is to continue down the Republican deficit path--no investments in the future, a widening gap between the rich and the middle class, and more massive deficits. Choice 2 is represented by the budget we present today. It improves the economy by investing in energy and education and health care reform so that we are stronger in the future, cutting taxes to the middle class, and addressing deficits so that our children do not continue to bear the burden of bad decisions well into the future.

After 8 years of the Bush administration's very shortsighted budget and misplaced priorities, we are now working with President Obama to invest in our Nation's needs and chart a new course for America. We have chosen a new path with this budget. The American people deserve an economic plan that works for everyone in this country. Our budget makes responsible choices that will help get our economy moving again. I want to talk about a few of them. Let me start with education.

We all know that education and training are the keys to our future strengths. In this new global economy, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity, it is a requirement for success. We will not rebuild our economy and be competitive long term unless we can both create jobs and ensure that our American workers have the education and skills needed to fill those jobs.

This budget before us invests strongly in education and in training. We also place a priority on making sure American students do not fall behind as they make their way into the global marketplace. Our budget helps to retrain American workers for careers in those new high-growth and emergent green industries, such as health care or renewable energy and energy-efficient construction, so that those workers stay in the middle class.

This budget makes strong investments in early childhood education and home visiting programs to make sure that our young students are healthy and that they are ready for school. It also, importantly, invests in making sure college is affordable and accessible for more of our students. We want all of our students to achieve a postsecondary credential, whether it is through a registered apprenticeship, through a community college, or through a university. This budget helps point us in that direction.

As a nation, we have to change the way we think about preparing our young people for careers, starting with making sure education works better.

This current economic crisis has cost us dearly. Every weekend I go home to my home State of Washington, and I hear about another business that has closed or another family who cannot pay the bills. But we know that if we make changes and we make smart investments, we can move our country forward. Investing in education and investing in training is one of those smart investments.

That brings me to our next investment. As we are all aware today, energy issues are some of the most pressing facing our Nation today. Our dependence on foreign oil has left us beholden to other nations, as middle-class families pay the price at the pump. By making renewable energy a priority, we can reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy in the future and help create green jobs here at home and leave a cleaner environment for future generations. This budget does that.

On an issue that everyone knows is near and dear to my heart, I commend both the committee and President Obama for making veterans a priority in this budget process. Our men and women in uniform and their families have served and sacrificed for our Nation. After years of underfunded budgets and being overshadowed by other priorities, this budget finally does right by them. I commend my Budget chairman and our President and all of us for making sure that happens in this budget.

This budget is honest with the American people about the cost of war, not just by paying for our veterans care but by paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on budget for the first time since they started over 6 years ago.

I also note that this budget meets our commitment to nuclear waste cleanup in my State and across the country. Workers at Hanford nuclear reservation and people of that community sacrificed to help our Nation win World War II. Hanford and other sites are now still home to millions of gallons of waste, and our Government needs to live up to our promise to clean them up. This budget does that.

As is the case in many States across America, farming and ranching and agricultural production is my home State's largest industry. Protecting our agricultural sector is critical to the economy, the environment, and to our quality of life. We have to make sure our rural communities are strong. We worked to make sure we have a bright future for our farm families. Production agriculture, such as Washington State's wheat farming, is a very volatile business. A workable safety net such as in the farm bill is vital to the security of our family farms. I have also long supported the Market Access Program which provides funds for our producers to promote their products overseas and expand into those important international markets. Especially in these difficult economic times, when our foreign competitors are trying to limit our market access with tariffs, the last thing we should be doing is cutting programs such as MAP that will help growers in a competitive marketplace.

I want my colleagues to know I will continue to work with everyone to make sure we find ways to support one of the staples of our economy, our agricultural community.

We all know our health care system is broken. It needs real reform. Today we have an historic opportunity to finally tackle this challenge. These investments are not luxuries. They are essential to this country's future strength. That is why we have to prioritize the health professions workforce and access to quality care in rural areas. We have to work to ensure that preventive measures are given priority so American families are not left with giant bills for expensive care down the road.

Some critics of this budget are saying now is not the time to tackle health care reform. I believe that is pretty shortsighted reasoning. There is a direct connection between our Nation's long-term prosperity and developing health care policies that stem the chronic bleeding in business and in State and national budgets. A recent editorial in the Everett Herald newspaper in my home State made this point very well. They said:

Yes, the economy is the most urgent challenge. But our

broken health care system and addiction to oil threaten to

become our long-term undoing.

They're all intertwined: Failing to find solutions to our

long-term problems will likely stunt future economic

expansions, creating longer and deeper downturns.

Health care is an important priority in this budget before us.

There has been a lot of talk over the past few weeks about the inclusion of reconciliation in this budget. Some following this debate are probably very surprised that our Republican colleagues, who were so adamant about using this procedural motion when it came to passing huge tax cuts for a very few while paying for it on the backs of many, would now be arguing against its inclusion in this budget. As I said earlier, there is a direct connection between America's long-term prosperity and improving our health care system. Today nearly 46 million Americans do not have health insurance. One in five working adults does not have good coverage today. There was a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation this month that found 6 in 10 American families put off care because of cost, and 42 percent of those people said they relied on home remedies instead of going to see a doctor.

Of course, just this week the covers of newspapers across the country are filled with photos of people wearing surgical masks. TV screens are filled with commentators talking about the possibility of a new strain of flu crippling the country and our economy. I can't think of a better time to be talking about the need to insure all Americans, to focus on prevention, and to make absolutely certain that when there is the possibility of a public health crisis, no one puts off medical care because they don't have the means to pay for it. But in order to do all that, we have to work together.

Democrats would strongly prefer to address health care in a bipartisan manner and by going through the regular legislative process. It is our full intent to do just that. Democrats believe all Americans deserve high quality health care that reduces our costs, makes care more affordable, and creates jobs in the health care sector. We believe in protecting existing coverage when it is good, improving it when it is not, and guaranteeing health care for the millions of Americans who have none. We know the only way for our economy to fully recover is by making this critical investment in health care today. We are committed to working with Republicans to do that. But they have to demonstrate a sincere interest in legislating, because the stakes are too high and the cost of inaction is too great for us not to move forward. As long as Republicans want to be at the table, they have a seat. We welcome them. This is simply too important an issue not to have their voices. But it is also too important an issue to stall using partisan tactics. We have to address this crisis. We intend to move forward this year.

I urge all colleagues to stop debating the process and, instead, join the conversation about how we move forward on this issue that is so critical to America's families today and to our Nation's future economic strength.

America has paid dearly for the Bush administration's failure to invest in our Nation. We all know that. We don't have to tell the American people. They wake up to it every day: rising health care costs, pink slips, crumbling infrastructure, bills and mortgages they can't afford to pay. We tried it the other way for 8 years. It is time to invest in America again. It is time to give the middle class a break. It is time for honesty, and it is time to make bold decisions. This budget invests in our future and begins to get us back on track.

I thank our chairman who is now in the Chamber and tell him I appreciate the tremendous work he and his staff and so many people did to make sure we now have a budget before us that begins to get America back on track.

I yield the floor.

Every day I pray for the health and welfare of the chairman of our committee.

Mr. President, if I may respond to the chairman of our committee, I appreciate his thanks and praise. But our colleagues should know, no one has spent more time and energy, not just for a few months but for a very long time, to make sure we have a responsible budget we can all be proud of to vote on today. I again thank him and his staff for their tremendous leadership, in calls late at night, when I am out on the west coast, and I know it is even later for him. I appreciate the tremendous amount of work he does, both policywise and making sure we keep the right fiscal balance. There is no one who is stronger in our caucus talking about how important it is to make sure we look at not just what we do today in terms of this budget but how we to do it in the future. Keeping that balance between spending and deficit is at the forefront of his mind. We would not be here today without him. I thank him.

Mr. President, the Senator from New Hampshire has offered an amendment to the conference report that we not double the debt from the time President Obama took office through the end of 2019. Our budget does not go through 2019. It would not double the debt through 2014. The debt when President Obama took office was about $10 trillion. So this amendment is not necessary. I urge a no vote.

Mr. President, the amendment that is before us will freeze spending, nondefense and nonveterans funding, for 2 years and limit the growth of nondefense and nonveterans funding to 1 percent annually for fiscal 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Now, I would remind all of us, we are in an economic crisis in this country. The investments we make in this budget that is before us are important for education, for health care, for energy, and for the other priorities that on which this country has asked us to move forward.

I urge my colleagues to vote no on the motion before us so that we can have the flexibility to deal with these critical issues before us today.

I believe the next motion in order is the Ensign motion.

Mr. President, the Senator from Nevada is correct. This amendment passed on the budget 98 to nothing. The Democrats are happy to support it. It is 8:25 at night. I suggest we take it on a voice vote.

Mr. President, this is on an amendment many of us supported. We are happy to take it on a voice vote. If not, I will be supporting the motion, if the Senator insists on a vote this evening.

Mr. President, I wish to recognize Vickie VanZandt and Steve Hickok for their exemplary record of public service to the Bonneville Power Administration, the people of Washington State, and the Pacific Northwest.

Vickie VanZandt retired on March 28, 2009 after 35 years with the Bonneville Power Administration. She most recently served as Bonneville's transmission business line senior vice president. As the senior executive, Vickie assured the transmission grid operated safely and reliably in order to provide power to over 12 million customers. Her work involved coordinating and setting policy for transmissions system planning, design, construction, operations, and maintenance-- clearly, no small feat.

Vickie graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington's School of Engineering, is a registered engineer, and is a member of Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. She has been a board member of the Western Regional Transmission Association, past president of the Northwest Regional Transmission Association, and has chaired the arbitration committees of both of these organizations. At the request of the Department of Energy, she also chaired the Operations Team investigating the East Coast Blackout of August 13, 2003.

Steve Hickok, Bonneville Power Administration's deputy administrator, retired on April 4, 2009, after 27 years of faithful service. Previous to his time with Bonneville, Steve served on the staff of my former colleague, Senator Mark Hatfield, as well as with the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the Senate Committee on Appropriations. His experience here in the Senate served him well, and at Bonneville, Steve has served as the assistant administrator for conservation and renewable resources development, the chief operating officer, and the group vice president for sales and customer service. He was appointed as the deputy administrator, the organization's second highest-ranking position, in 2001.

Steve graduated with honors from Pomona College in Claremont, CA, and is also a graduate of the Stanford Executive Program. He has received many awards during his time at Bonneville, including the Secretary of Energy's Meritorious Service Award and the prestigious Presidential Rank Award, which he earned in both 1992 and 2000.

Steve has served on the boards of directors of the Electric Power Research Institute, the Western Energy Institute, the American Leadership Forum of Oregon, the Portland Business Alliance, and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

Again, I express my thanks to both Vickie VanZandt and Steve Hickok for their years of invaluable service to the Bonneville Power Administration, and to the entire Pacific Northwest region. The people of Washington State and the region have certainly benefited from their dedicated public service and experience. I wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, this amendment would put in place a regulation that would mean health care providers--not just doctors but anybody in a health care clinic or hospital--could refuse millions of women health care for critical services. It jeopardizes Federal family planning services, Medicaid, and title X, and it undermines State laws that guarantee women access to contraceptive services.

Health and Human Services has proposed to rescind this rule which the Bush administration published when their clock was running out.

This amendment puts ideology ahead of science and ahead of women's health care. Federal law already permits medical professionals to decline to assist in abortions based on their religious beliefs. But stopping this regulation will not change that. This amendment goes way too far and ignores the needs of patients and denies women reproductive health care services.

I encourage my colleagues to vote no.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 772, as Modified

Mr. President, let me start this morning by commending Chairman Kent Conrad for his leadership of our Budget Committee and especially for the hundreds of hours he and his staff have dedicated to getting this budget done and accommodating both the priorities and concerns of so many of us in this body. Putting together a budget is never an easy process, but I believe our chairman has achieved a good balance that will set

us on a course to both reducing our deficit and investing in the areas that we know will make us stronger in the future--energy, health care, and education.

I know that in addition to his work on this budget, this is a particularly difficult time for the State of North Dakota and the families and businesses there. I want to say to Chairman Kent Conrad, who will be on the floor shortly, that all of our hearts go out to him and his State as they struggle with these horrific storms that are going through his area.

A budget is a statement of priorities. Ours is very clear: We put the middle class first, and we get our country back on track by investing in our future.

To be clear, we have inherited some very great challenges. We now face the worst economic crisis in generations. Since December 2007, we have lost 4.4 million jobs, including 2.6 million of those in the past 4 months. So before we consider where we are going, it is important to talk a little bit about where we have been.

For weeks now, my friends on the other side of the aisle have been bemoaning deficits and debt with not a moment of consideration for their own record on those issues. Back in 2001, Republicans controlled the full power of our Government. Under the leadership of President Bush and Republicans in Congress, record surpluses created under President Clinton became record deficits. These Republican deficits grew and grew and now today add up to trillions of dollars in new debt that is going to be shouldered by future generations of Americans.

With this perspective, I hope our Republican friends will start acknowledging and owning up to the fact that we now have two choices. Choice 1 is to continue down the Republican deficit path, no investments in our future, a widening gap between the rich and the middle class, and more massive deficits. Choice 2 is represented in the budget before us today: improve the economy by investing in energy, education, and health reform so that we as a country are stronger in the future; cut taxes for our middle class and address the deficit so that our children do not bear the burden of bad decisions today.

After 8 years of the Bush administration's shortsighted budgets and misplaced priorities, we are now working with President Obama to invest in our needs and to chart a new course for America. We are choosing a new path.

The American people deserve an economic plan that works for everyone in this country. Our budget makes responsible choices that will help get this country's economy rolling again. I came to the floor today to talk about a few of those priorities and choices we have made.

We face pressing transportation needs across our country, and maintaining and creating new infrastructure is key to this country's economic strength.

Just a couple of months ago, the American Society of Civil Engineers issued its annual report card on the condition of America's infrastructure, and the results were very dismal. The leading experts on the state of our Nation's infrastructure have reduced the grade point average of our entire system of roads and bridges and mass transit to a D--that is ``D'' as in dog. Our Nation's roads also got a D-minus since a third of our major roads are considered to be in poor and mediocre condition, and more than a third of our urban highways are congested. American families today spend about 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, and that is costing our economy almost $80 billion in lost productivity each and every year. These roads are in every one of our States. It is time to fix them.

As we are all aware, the available funding balance in the highway trust fund is falling rapidly. Thankfully, in our budget the transportation reserve fund will provide the mechanism that will allow us to reform our transportation financing system and provide the kinds of spending levels in the upcoming Transportation authorization bill that are going to be necessary to maintain our highways and our transit systems. Fixing our transportation is about getting our economy strong, but it is about safety as well. I think all of us remember when that Minnesota bridge went down. We do not want to see that again. It is time to fix our roads and our transportation. This budget takes a major step forward.

Second, education. We all know and we all say that education is the key to our future strength. In this new global economy we exist in, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity; it is a requirement for success. We will not recover and be strong in the long term unless we both create jobs and make sure America's workers have the education and skills to fill those jobs we create. So this budget invests strongly in education and in ensuring that American students do not fall behind as they make their way into this global marketplace.

This budget helps retrain America's workers for careers in high- growth and emerging industries such as health care or renewable energy or energy-efficient construction so that those workers can stay in the middle class. We increase Pell grants and make tax credits for tuition permanent. We want all students to achieve a postsecondary education, whether it is through a registered apprenticeship or through a community college or university, and this budget helps take us in that direction.

As a nation, we have to change the way we think about preparing young people for careers today, starting with making education work better. This current economic crisis has cost us dearly.

Every weekend I go home to Washington State, I hear about another business closing, another family who has lost their job, another senior citizen who does not know how they are going to make it. So we all know that if we make changes and we make smart investments, that is how we are going to move our country forward again and give confidence back to the American people that we are a strong country. Investing in education is one of those smart investments. We do that in this budget.

Our health care system--something we all talk about--is broken. We know it needs real reform. Today, we have a historic opportunity to finally tackle that challenge. These investments we make in health care are not luxuries; they are essential to our future strength. That is why we need to prioritize the health profession's workforce and access to quality health care in our rural areas, and we have to ensure that preventive measures are given priorities so that American families are not left with giant bills for expensive care down the road.

Some critics of this budget argue that now is not the time to tackle health care reform. I believe that is very shortsighted reasoning. There is a direct connection between our Nation's long-term prosperity and developing health care policies that stem the chronic bleeding in business and in our State and national budgets across the country.

Mr. President, there was a recent editorial in the Everett Herald, a hometown newspaper in my State, that made this point, and I want to read it to you. It says:

Yes, the economy is the most urgent challenge. But our

broken health care system and addiction to oil threaten to

become our long-term undoing.

They're all intertwined. Failing to find solutions to our

long-term problems will likely stunt future economic

expansions, creating longer and deeper downturns.

That is not something any one of us wants to see, which brings me to our next investment. As we are all aware, energy issues are some of the most pressing facing our Nation today. Our dependence on foreign oil has left us beholden to other nations as middle-class families have paid the price at the pump. By making renewable energy a priority in this budget, we can reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy in the future and help create green jobs here at home and leave a cleaner environment for future generations. These are smart investments in this budget.

In an issue near and dear to my heart, I commend both the committee and President Obama for finally making our veterans a priority in this budget process. Our men and women in uniform and their families have served and sacrificed for our Nation. After years of being underfunded and overshadowed, this budget finally does right by them. I again commend Senator Conrad, the budget chairman, and President Obama for putting this issue forward.

This budget is finally honest with the American people about the cost of war, not just by paying for veterans care but by paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on budget, for the first time since they started--over 6 years ago.

I also wish to note that this budget meets our commitment to nuclear waste cleanup in my State and across the country. Workers at Hanford Nuclear Reservation and residents of that community sacrificed many years ago to help our Nation win World War II. Hanford and those other sites are now home to millions of gallons of waste. Our Government needs to live up to its promise to clean them up, and this budget rightfully does that.

Let me talk a minute about agriculture because agricultural production is the largest industry for many States across the country, as it is in my State, with farming and ranching. Protecting our agricultural sector is critical to our economy, to our environment, and to our quality of life. We need to work to keep our rural communities strong and to ensure a bright future for all our farm families. Production agriculture--such as Washington State's wheat farming--is a very volatile business and a workable safety net, such as in the farm bill, is vital to the security of our family farms.

I have long supported the Market Access Program, which provides funds for our producers to promote their products overseas and expanding international markets. These are critical for our agricultural communities today as they try to compete in a global economy. Especially in these difficult economic times, when our foreign competitors are trying to limit our market access with high tariffs, the last thing we should be doing is cutting programs such as the Market Access Program, which will help our growers in a competitive global marketplace. As we work to get our country back on track, I am going to continue to find ways to support one of the staples of our economy and that is our agricultural community.

America has paid dearly for the Bush administration's failure over the last 8 years to invest in our country and to invest in our people. We don't have to tell that to the American people today. They are waking up every single day and seeing rising health care costs, pink slips, a crumbling infrastructure and bills and mortgages they can't afford to pay. We tried it the other way for the last 8 years. Now it is time to invest in America again. It is time to give our middle class a break and it is time for honesty and it is time for bold decisions.

This budget that Senator Conrad and the Budget Committee have brought to all of us to consider today isn't perfect, of course--no budget is-- but what it does do is extremely important. It invests in our future-- our future, America's future--and puts this country back on track.

I wish to thank Senator Conrad, again, and his committee for working so hard to bring this budget forward to us, and I look forward to supporting it when we pass it later this week.

I yield the floor.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 705

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I join my colleague from Washington State, Senator Cantwell, this evening to congratulate Gary Locke on his confirmation now as our next Secretary of Commerce. This confirmation comes at an important time in our Nation's history as we all work very hard to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. We need a Commerce Secretary with the dedication and expertise to carry out policies that are going to strengthen our economy far into the future. Gary Locke is uniquely qualified for that task because he does have a lifetime of experience built on hard work, a wealth of knowledge, and a unique appreciation of the American dream.

Governor Locke understands the importance of the American dream because he lived it. His grandfather emigrated from China, and he worked as a servant about a mile from the Governor's mansion in Olympia that one day his grandson would call home. There are a lot of reasons why Governor Locke is an ideal Commerce Secretary, but I wish to tell a personal story this evening that I think illustrates his commitment to public service and to making sure we make the best decision for our taxpayers.

I first met Governor Locke when he was in the Washington State legislature and he was chair of the House Appropriations Committee and I was a new State Senator trying to get a piece of legislation passed that was critical to my constituents. As part of getting that bill passed, I had to go before then-Gov. Gary Locke as chair of that Appropriations Committee, and it was one of the toughest political experiences of my lifetime. He knew the

budget inside and out. He ran me through the paces. He grilled me about what my bill would do and how much it would cost and what kind of impact it would have on the taxpayers. He was very tough. But ultimately, because he asked those hard questions and made me defend my legislation, we improved the focus of that legislation and we got it passed. Governor Locke has brought that level of expertise and dedication to the taxpayers in every single position he has held, and it makes him an ideal person now to lead the Commerce Department.

So let me say a few words about the experience Governor Locke brings to this position. One of the most critical jobs the Commerce Secretary performs is finding markets for American products and technologies. He understands how important this is, and he knows how to do it successfully. As the two-term Governor of the Nation's most trade- dependent State, he spent 8 years breaking down trade barriers and promoting our American products, from airplanes to apples to operating systems. He has led numerous successful delegations to our Asian trading partners to help build those relationships. He also understands that the health of the environment has a direct impact on our quality of life and on our economy.

All of Governor Locke's experience means he is going to hit the ground running as our Commerce Secretary as we confront global climate change and other environmental concerns, including the management of our fisheries. So I was very pleased to help support the confirmation of Gary Locke. He won unanimous approval from our Commerce Committee, and today he won unanimous approval from the Senate. He has served the people of Washington State well, and he will bring that same level of commitment and intelligence to this administration.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Con. Res. 12, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements relating to the measure be printed in the Record.