Barbara Boxer

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. I ask unanimous consent to yield back all time.

Mrs. BOXER. I move to reconsider the vote and move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, what is the order at this time? Amendment No. 868

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, the way my colleague and friend has drafted his amendment is very dangerous to the process because he wants to say if, in the rulemaking where we will define the waters of the United States, if they even so much as refer to the guidance that has been put forward, the draft guidance, there will be no rule. The problem of not having a rule is we leave in place chaos. States cannot go ahead and handle this themselves. Local governments cannot. Under the law, according to all the rules of the Court and everybody else, we have to have a definition. No one I know wants to classify a ditch or a puddle as a water of the United States. That is always brought up, but that is just a red herring. We need to make sure we have a Clean Water Act that protects the people, protects their drinking water, and makes sure they are safe when they swim in a lake. If we do not move forward with a rule, at the end of the day this amendment will not allow that to happen, and we are in chaos. It does not protect our people from arsenic, from lead, from whatever objects there may be in a body of water. So I hope we will reject this. I thank my friend for offering it, but I think it is misguided. I yield the floor.

Mrs. BOXER. I move to reconsider the vote and to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mrs. BOXER. I want to tell my colleagues what the plan is for tonight and tomorrow on the WRDA bill and thank everyone so much on both sides of the aisle for their cooperation. Senator Vitter and I are so happy we are able to have this open process, and we will finish this bill tomorrow. This will be the last vote this evening. We will continue late morning and complete our work. Right now we are going to have the Sanders amendment, with 2 minutes equally divided, and both Senators from Vermont would like to be heard. Amendment No. 889

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 14 2013, at 10 a.m. in room SR-328A of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 14, 2013, at 2:30 p.m.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 14, 2013, at 10 a.m., in room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 14, 2013, at 10 a.m. in room SD-215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Advancing Reform: Medicare Physicians Payments.''

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 14, 2013, at 2:15 p.m.

Mrs. BOXER. 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, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The ADA and Entertainment Technologies: Improving Accessibility from the Movie Screen to Your Mobile Device'' on May 14, 2013, at 2:30 p.m., in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on May 14, 2013, at 10 a.m., in SD-G50 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, continue its executive business meeting from May 9, 2013.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 14, 2013, at 2:30 p.m.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to hold a meeting during the session of the Senate on May 14, 2013, at 10:30 a.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. The Committee will hold a hearing entitled, ``State of Video.''

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Seapower of the Senate Armed Services Committee be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 14, 2013, at 9:30 a.m.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 14, 2013, at 3:15 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Returning Private Capital To Mortgage Markets: A Fundamental for Housing Finance Reform.''

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. I move to reconsider and lay those motions on the table. The motions to lay on the table were agreed to.

Mrs. BOXER. I wish to thank everybody. We have made great progress on this bill. We will still be working very hard tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. We urge you, if you have amendments, we are just saying let them be relevant and not controversial. We can't solve every problem in America on this water bill, but we are trying our best to get a really good bill through the Senate. I understand from the House that they intend to look at our bill, work off our bill, and make their changes. Then we will go to conference and hopefully have a very good result. It is 3 o'clock on a Thursday, and we have disposed of numerous amendments. We are still looking at more. We are trying to resolve all of those. One way or the other, it is our plan to finish this bill next week. It is very rare to have a bill that is so bipartisan, that will, in fact, support over 500,000 jobs, and that has the support of business, labor, and all kinds of community groups. With that, I thank my colleagues for working with us. I have talked to the majority leader. There will be no further votes today. Next week we will finish this bill. I thank you very much. I thank my friend from Missouri. It has been a pleasure working with him and staff on his excellent amendment with Senator Nelson. We are very pleased we were able to clear this. I also thank Senator Landrieu and Senator Durbin. They had some issues, but they stepped back and let us move forward with these amendments. People are working together, and they are working very hard, and I am very pleased about where we are. I thank my colleague from Missouri. I yield the floor.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, for the interest of all Senators, I wanted to thank everyone for cooperating with us. We have handled a number of amendments, one quite controversial and nongermane, but we dealt with it. It is not on this bill, I am happy to say. We are trying to keep this bill a water infrastructure bill. There may be a few exceptions, but, for the most part, that is what we want because it will increase the chances of passage all the way through to get it to the President's desk. The bill we are dealing with, the Water Resources Development Act, was last authorized in 2007. It is high time we did a follow-on bill. What we are talking about here is flood protection, projects we need all over the country to protect our people from the ravages of floods. We need to make sure our ports are operational. I know my friend in the chair certainly deals with all these matters in his great and beautiful State of Hawaii. We need to make sure our ports are deep enough, they have enough funding to stay modernized, and can move that cargo in and out with ease. We have environmental restoration. We have to take care of all of our water infrastructure. I know Senator Merkley is here to say something about the bill, which I am very pleased about, so I am going to be very brief. I will talk for about 2 more minutes and say we have a great committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, when it comes to infrastructure. We see eye to eye. We work together. Yes, we have our differences, but we can breach those differences. This bill is a product of working together. It is a product of collaboration--not only in the committee where we work together, but even here when it got to the Senate. We have worked, Senator Vitter and I, with individual Members to meet all of their needs. There are no earmarks in this bill. Whatever we do is setting policy. It is an exciting bill. It includes reforms I think are important. Most of all, I think the people at home are going to like it because it puts them in the driver's seat and protects them from delays and other problems as they move forward with projects their people need. We have some terrific supporters of this legislation--I will close these early remarks--with organizations such as AFL-CIO, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Society of Civil Engineers, we have the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. We have many. I will show you the next chart and name a couple: The Transportation Construction Coalition, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, storm management agency, surveyors, engineers. I think what you see here is mainstream America is behind this bill. The bad news is our infrastructure has been rated at a D-plus. You can't be the greatest Nation in the world and have an infrastructure that is rated D-plus. While we have major problems on other fronts in our committee--and I have to admit today was not a good day for me, the committee, or the American people, when the Republicans boycotted the markup of Gina McCarthy to be the head of the Environmental Protection Agency after she answered more than 1,000 questions. She is the most qualified ever to be nominated, having served, how about this, four Republican Governors. What more do they want? The fact is 70 percent of the American people want clean air, want clean water, want safety reform. Gina McCarthy deserves a vote, not a boycott. They say they don't like her answers. Well, I am not surprised. She is not Mitt Romney's nominee for the EPA, she is not Rick Perry's nominee for the EPA, she is Barack Obama's nominee for the EPA. It is her position, as it is the President's, that we should enforce the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and so on. When your Republican Presidents put up nominees for the EPA I didn't agree with, I didn't filibuster them. I said, okay, I will vote no; let them go. It is a sad day for me on the environment side of our committee. On the public works side of my committee, it is a good day, because we are making progress. We have now about a half dozen amendments that have been cleared on both sides. We are trying to make them pending. We cleared them. We are asking all Senators, please get your amendments in because this can't go on forever. We need to pass this bill, as 550,000 jobs are supported by this legislation. Hundreds and hundreds of businesses are looking forward to our doing this. That is why we have this amazing array of support. With that, I would say to Senator Merkley, the floor is his. I yield the floor at this time.

Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Senator.

Mrs. BOXER. Reserving the right to object for just a moment, and I, of course, will not object, I just want to make it clear that at noon the two leaders are coming to do a back-and-forth. So up until the time they arrive--I just wanted to let my friend know. Then after the leaders, Senator Vitter should be recognized to speak about the issue Senator Landrieu just raised, to be followed by me, if that is OK, if I can do that in the UC? It would be Senator Cardin, the two leaders, Senator Vitter, and myself.

Mrs. BOXER. I wonder if the Senator from Washington would enter into a colloquy with me at this time, through the Chair. I wish to join with Senator Reid in thanking Senator Murray for her amazing leadership. I was on the Budget Committee for several years, and I know that as a result of the Senator from Washington becoming chairman and, of course, being the most senior member next to Kent Conrad for so long, she knows this budget inside and out. It is filled with complexities--the mandatories, the discretionaries, the defense and nondefense--all the things she knows in her head. She knows how to get us to balance not only in terms of the numbers she will move toward balance in her budget but also in terms of our priorities. I wish to make sure my people at home understand this. What the Senator from Washington is telling us is that for several years now--2 or 3--the Republicans have been chastising the Democrats for not passing a budget in the Senate; am I right on that?

Mrs. BOXER. The reason we didn't do it is we had another law that actually set our caps; am I right on that? So we didn't go through the budget.

Mrs. BOXER. All right. So the Senator from Washington decided, with Senator Reid and the leadership team, to bring a budget to the floor. Then--I will never forget it--we stayed here until 5 o'clock in the morning handling over 100 amendments; is that right?