Jim Talent

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet on Wednesday, February 11, 2004, at 9:30 a.m. on Protecting Children From Violent and Indecent Programming.

Mr. TALENT. 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 Wednesday, February 11 at 10:00 a.m. to consider pending calendar business. Agenda Item 2: S. 213--A bill to clear title to certain real property in New Mexico associated with the Middle Rio Grande Project, and for other purposes with an amendment. Agenda Item 3: S. 524--A bill to expand the boundaries of the Fort Donelson National Battlefield to authorize the acquisition and interpretation of lands associated with the campaign that resulted in the capture of the fort in 1862, and for other purposes. Agenda Item 5: S. 943--A bill to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to enter into one or more contracts with the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, for the storage of water in the Kendrick Project, Wyoming with an amendment. Agenda Item 6: S. 960--To amend the Reclamation Wastewater and Groundwater Study and Facilities Act and the Hawaii Water Resources Act of 2000 with an amendment. Agenda Item 9: S. 1107--A bill to enhance the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program for the National Park Service, and for other purposes. Agenda Item 13: S. 1516--Salt Cedar Control Demonstration Act with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. Agenda Item 14: S. 1576--A bill to revise the boundary of Harper's Ferry National Historical Park, and for other purposes. Agenda Item 15: S. 1577--A bill to extend the deadline for commencement of construction of hydroelectric project in the State of Wyoming. Agenda Item 16: S. 1582--A bill to amend the Valles Preservation Act to improve the preservation of the Valles Caldera, and for other purposes with an amendment. Agenda Item 17: S. 1848--A bill to amend the Bend Pine Nursery Land Conveyance Act to direct the Secretary of Agriculture to sell the Bend Pine Nursery Administration Site in the State of Oregon with an amendment. Agenda Item 18: H.R. 408--To provide for expansion of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Agenda Item 19: H.R. 417--To revoke a Public Land Order with respect to certain lands erroneously included in the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, California with report language. Agenda Item 20: H.R. 620--To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to provide supplemental funding and other services that are necessary to assist the State of California or local educational agencies in California in providing educational services for students attending schools located within the Park with an amendment. Agenda Item 21: H.R. 708--To require the conveyance of certain National Forest System lands in Mendocino National Forest, California, to provide for the use of the proceeds from such conveyance for National Forest purposes, and for other purposes. Agenda Item 23: H.R. 856--To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to revise a repayment contract with the Tom Green County Water Control and Improvement District No. 1, San Angelo project, Texas, and for other purposes. Agenda Item 26: H.R. 1598--To amend the Reclamation Wastewater and Groundwater Study and Facilities Act to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to participate in projects within the San Diego Creek Watershed, California, and for other purposes. Agenda Item 27: S. 1167--A bill to resolve the boundary conflicts in Barry and Stone Counties in the State of Missouri. In addition, the Committee may turn to any other measures that are ready for consideration.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 at 10 a.m. to hold a Business Meeting.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a hearing on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 at 2 p.m. on ``Judicial Nominations,'' in the Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 226. Panel I: Senators. Panel II: Diane S. Sykes, to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; James L. Robart, to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington; Juan R. Sanchez, to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on International Trade and Finance of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the Session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 11, 2004, at 1:00 p.m. to conduct a hearing on ``Economic and Financial Reconstruction in Iraq.''

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights be authorized to meet to conduct a hearing on ``Cable Competition--Increasing Price; Increasing Value?'' on Wednesday, February 11, 2004, at 10:30 a.m., in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Mr. Michael Willner, Vice-Chairman, President and CEO, Insight Communications Company, Inc.; Mr. Rodger Johnson, CEO, Knology; Mr. Robert Sachs, President and CEO, National Cable and Telecommunications Association; Ms. Coralie Wilson, President, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors; Mr. Scott Cleland, CEO, Precursor; and Dr. Mark Cooper, Director of Research, Consumer Federation of America.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Will the Senator yield? I hope the Senator's child and in-law have already announced this expected occasion and you have not revealed it to the Senate and the world.

Mr. TALENT. I thank the Senator for his question. He is absolutely correct. I have been to ribbon cuttings and ceremonies in Missouri, and I bet the Senator has been to them in Oregon, where localities have financed local bond issues in order to do transportation infrastructure, because there is not enough money coming from the State and Federal Government. States also do this. The Senator and I are not talking about shifting over to bonding as a way of replacing other highway dollars, or taking over the job of financing transportation, because we do not want that. But bonding should be part of a package that will give us the ability to do the big projects, the one-time projects. We are not suggesting the States should build this into their regular maintenance budgets because this money is going to come in and is going to be invested. It is not a regular stream. It is part of an overall financing package absolutely, and it is done all over this country. Given the deficit transportation situation we are in, the fact that we have this terrible problem with transportation, I think it is foolish of us not to consider it. It is one of the reasons I have appreciated so much working with my friend. I say to my friend, through the Chair, what is the most expensive way of dealing with this? If we were looking for the most expensive and risky way to pay for the transportation problem we have to fix the roads, rail, and transit that we need in this country, what would we do? We would wait. I submit that is what we are proposing to do with this bill, as heroically as the sponsors have worked to get it up to the level where they have gotten it up to. If one were a homeowner and had a hole in their roof, they would consider how to fix it. They might try to do it out of their current income. They might take another job to fix it, which would raise their income. They might decide that the best thing to do would be to take out a home equity loan and pay for it that way. What they would not do is say: ``Well, this is optional. I am going to let this go because it would be irresponsible for me to spend on this. I would be mortgaging my kids' future if I took out a home equity loan to fix the hole in the roof.'' They would know eventually they were going to have to fix this hole, because if they waited, what would happen? Was the problem going to get better? No. Holes in roofs do not get smaller if they are not fixed, they get bigger, and if one waits long enough, the roof collapses, and then they do have to spend some money, don't they? My wife called me the other day about this cold weather we have been having in Missouri, as well as in Washington. We have had ice storms and the driveway has been under ice because I did not get out quickly enough to scrape it off when the snow and the ice started, which she and I had a little discussion about. But she is noticing now that some of it is melting, that part of the driveway is beginning to chip. She is upset about it, and so we are going to fix that and seal that driveway. What would happen if we waited and we did not do that? The cracks in that driveway are not going to get any better. They are going to get worse. This highway bill is a lot bigger than the last highway bill--if we can get the number my friends from Oklahoma and Missouri have worked so hard to get. It is a lot bigger. It is 30 percent higher than the last highway bill we passed. It is a lot bigger because the problems have gotten a lot worse. One thing I will guarantee is, if we do not do something decisively to fix this problem now, we are going to have a highway bill 6 years from now and it will be even bigger. It will be much bigger. The gap between the size of the bill and what we will need to do then to fix the problem is going to be a lot bigger, too. We are trying to bail out a boat and we do not have a big enough bucket. Bonding will fix that. We have a chance to do that in this Congress. We have strong bipartisan support. This is one of the few things we may be able to do on a real bipartisan basis. We have support from the transportation community. We have support from the bonding community. There is precedent for this all over the country. The cost is extremely small relative to the gain and relative to the risk of doing nothing, because if we do not do this now, we are going to pass the bill for our poor transportation system on to the next generation. Let's not kid ourselves that we are doing them any favors by not investing. We are passing it on to them and we are guaranteeing that their bill is going to be a lot bigger than it needs to be. The economic growth they are going to need to be able to pay that bill when we give it to them is going to be undermined if we do not act now. I yield the floor.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I am sure sons and daughters-in-law have been forgiving proud grandparents of a lot worse things than that. I congratulate the Senator from Oklahoma and the Senator from Nevada on the additions to their families. We are really talking about a subject today that is important to all of our families. That is why we are here. That is why those who have worked so hard for transportation, including my friend from Oklahoma, have done what they have done. I am here to rise in support of the bill, and also in support of an amendment I am now offering at this time with my friend from Oregon, Mr. Wyden, and also on behalf of Mr. Corzine and Mr. Coleman. This is an amendment that has broad support within the community of those who are particularly interested in transportation, including the support of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Associated General Contractors of America, Chamber of Commerce, National Heavy and Highway Alliance, which represents the labor unions, operating engineers, carpenters union, iron workers union, cement masons, the teamsters, and bricklayers, and many others. We call it the Build America Bond Act of 2003. We think it is one of the most important things we can do on behalf of the Nation's transportation infrastructure. I am here to explain the amendment and the idea and argue on behalf of it. First, however, I want to say thank you to my friend from Oklahoma, Senator Bond, Senator Reid, and Senator Jeffords for their efforts on behalf of the underlying bill. Those efforts have been heroic. They have done a great job to get the level of spending in the bill up to where they got it. I am going to make the point in a couple minutes that it needs to be a lot higher than that. In making that point, I don't wish to be understood as criticizing them for their work. They have done the best they can do with the traditional methods of funding. I would also like, before I begin discussing the amendment, to thank my friend from Oregon, who may or may not make it to the floor this afternoon to talk about this amendment. I know he wants to. We have had the pleasure of working together for almost a year now on the Build America Bond Act. For me, it has been a personal as well as professional pleasure to renew an acquaintance and working relationship we had together in the House during our years when we were there together. I thank our friends who are handling this bill, especially my senior Senator, Kit Bond, for his great work on behalf of the underlying bill. I am pleased they have gotten the measure to where it is right now. Yet I have to tell the Senate the measure is not big enough. I say that because it bothers me when critics of this bill say it spends too much. The truth is it does not invest enough. It bothers me when critics of the bill say spending on transportation infrastructure is irresponsible, when actually the opposite is the truth. Not spending enough on transportation infrastructure is what is irresponsible, because we have a transportation deficit in this country. It is growing every day we fail to take the necessary steps in the Congress. The Department of Transportation studied the Nation's highways, bridges, and transit systems, and reported back to Congress. They filed a long report and concluded we needed a highway bill that was about $375 billion. This is the report of the expert agencies on behalf of the Federal Government. It says $375 billion, not $311 billion. I am glad we got it to that point, but it will not take $311 billion, not $300 billion, not $280 billion, not $250 billion, but $375 billion--or something close to it--if we are going to begin paying back the transportation deficit we have. I don't believe what I am saying about the status of our Nation's transportation system is seriously contested by anybody. A lot of people don't want to remedy it and pay what we need to pay to do something about it, but they are not contesting that there is a serious problem. Thirty-two percent of the Nation's roads are poor or mediocre; 36 percent of our urban roads are poor; 37 percent of our bridges are obsolete. We lose $67 billion a year in wasted time and wasted fuel costs because of congestion caused by inadequate roads. We lose 4.5 billion man-hours from people around this country who are stuck in traffic. Those are hours they are not at the office or the factory producing things. Those are hours they are not at home with their families. We spend $49 billion a year on extra vehicle repair costs because maintenance costs are higher than they should be because the roads are no good. Those are the overall statistics. And everybody has their own anecdotal stories about the shocks they had to replace because of the potholes, the time they lose getting to work in the morning. There are so many examples of poor infrastructure that my friend Senator Bond and I could give. I called back to Missouri and asked for a picture of the bridge over the Missouri River leading into Hermann, MO. Don Kruse, who is the editor of the Advertiser-Courier in Hermann, did me a favor and went out and took a picture of it. This is a bridge not over some small river or not over the Missouri River where the river begins where it is narrow. This is over the Missouri River in east central Missouri. This is the bridge you take to get into Hermann, MO, which, by the way, is a great town. It is a bustling town, a town with a future if we can get the proper infrastructure. I don't know if most Members of the Senate can see this picture or if the people in the Galleries can see it that well, but the rails are rusted. We can see how narrow the bridge is. That is a Mack truck coming one way, and that is a car trying to go the other way. You don't have to be a transportation expert, you don't have to work for the Department of Transportation to say: I don't think that bridge is adequate. It isn't. You have to either laugh or cry over it. When I drive over it, I say: We ought to tell Hollywood if they ever want a crumbling bridge or a poor bridge to use in a movie, they don't have to build one; come here and use this one outside Hermann. We have blood alleys all over Missouri. I have driven on them--roads that are so dangerous people regularly die because the roads are no good. We also have interchanges in our growing communities, such as Springfield, the I-44 and I-64 interchange that are inadequate. There are many opportunities around Missouri for economic growth of which we cannot avail ourselves because the transportation system isn't what it should be. North Missouri has been in economic trouble for a long time, long before the existing recession. It is not because of the people there. They are productive people with a vision. A big part of the reason is the roads are not good enough. If we could turn Highway 36 in north Missouri into a four-lane road, it would link up Hannibal to St. Joseph, which links up Chicago to Kansas City, and the jobs would follow that corridor. We don't have the money. There are too many first-tier, urgent projects in the State of Missouri and in States all over this country that are not being done, not because they shouldn't have a priority, but because there isn't enough money. So they get pushed further and further behind, and we are all familiar with that situation. We are all familiar with the departments of transportation saying: We are going to do that; we are going to widen that road; we are going to do the system maintenance; it is on the books for 2020. Everybody in the communities knows what that means. It is never going to be done. If that isn't enough--and it should be enough--in Missouri, we lost 1,028 people to highway fatalities in 2002 alone. The statistics show that one out of three accidents are related to the fact that the roads are no good. When you travel around Missouri, one of the things you notice--and I wonder if they have this in other States. I should ask some of my colleagues; I never have. But the highway department allows people, grieving families to put little white crosses on the side of the road where they lost a loved one, and they will write the names of those loved ones on the crosses, sometimes the age. You might see ``Jennifer, age 7'' as you whiz by and see that little white cross. Every one of those people who died on one of those roads has a family who loved them. Tell those families that this highway bill is too big. Tell them we don't need to spend more on transportation infrastructure. Tell them that. What can we do about it? We can do something. We have a mechanism available that is used in States and localities all over this country, a mechanism that will produce dollars immediately to help us remedy this transportation deficit. We can do it responsibly. It has the support of groups involved in transportation from all over the country. It is bonding, and that is why the Senator from Oregon and I in the spring of last year sponsored the Build America Bonds Act. We argue that it is the only way we can address this issue quickly, in combination, of course, with the traditional methods of funding that we also support. This is a way to jump-start this effort. This is a way to make up for this deficit in transportation, for this work that we should have done in the past and did not. Basically, the amendment, if and when we get a chance to offer it, would create a federally chartered nonprofit corporation that would raise $56 billion in tax credit bonds that could be immediately invested in transportation infrastructure. According to our amendment, $40 billion could go to highways, $10 billion to public transit, and $6 billion to rail. It could be invested right away, not even over the life of the bill, the 6 years, but as fast as we can raise it and get it out to the States, and the work could be done in the course of the next year or two. It is a great job creator. Every billion dollars in transportation investment creates about 47,000 jobs. Build America Bonds have the potential to create over 2 million jobs. It is one of the reasons the trade unions are so strongly in support of it, because their members have to drive on these roads and use this transportation system, too. Our amendment also has the potential to generate over $300 million in economic activity. There is a feature to it that my friend from Oregon and I particularly like. The amendment would require that a percentage of the bonds be issued in small denominations, $25, $50, so that moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas could go out and buy a Build America bond and give it to their kids or their grandkids for their birthdays and know that they were investing their moneys in American roads and creating American jobs and protecting the future of their kids as they grow up in this country. The bill has the potential to save us up to $67 billion that we now spend or waste in traffic congestion and the $50 billion spent in extra vehicle repair. This kind of financing is done all over this country. The funny thing is, there is a certain irony to it. This Government will borrow--and everybody here is going to vote for this highway bill or has voted for one at one time or another--hundreds of billions of dollars in long- term debt to pay for operating expenses. Nobody else in the country does that. Yet unless this amendment passes, we will not borrow money for long-term capital expenses, which routinely happens all over the country in public and private life. We will not borrow the money for the items we should finance--investments in capital goods that pay off over time. What is the cost? The way we have set this mechanism up and given the international bond markets and their sophistication, we estimate that under current market conditions, the total cost to the taxpayers would be $2.5 billion a year, for 30-year bonds. It would be $2.5 billion a year. For that we get about 2 million jobs. We actually get this bill up to the level which the Department of Transportation says we need to really begin remedying this transportation deficit. It is, quite simply, the cheapest way of addressing the problem. What is the most expensive way?

Mr. TALENT. I will be happy to yield to my friend.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. I am pleased that the Senate unanimously approved a resolution to recognize the importance of Ralph Bunche as one of the great leaders of the United States. Mr. Bunche was the first African- American Nobel Peace Prize winner, an accomplished scholar, a distinguished diplomat, and a tireless campaigner for civil rights for people throughout the world. He was of that generation of African-American leaders whose life and character broke the back of generations of prejudice, awoke the American conscience, and opened up opportunity for millions of people. This measure is an appropriate and fitting celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak about this landmark piece of legislation that is so necessary and has been so necessary for too long and of which we have deprived America's seniors for too long. If I may say with great respect, I had a chance to listen to the last two speakers, my friend from Oklahoma and my friend from Massachusetts. Listening to those speakers just summed up for me why we have not passed this bill in the years and years it has been necessary and that seniors have been demanding it. The last two speakers represented pretty well and eloquently, with their usual vigor, the opposite ends of the political spectrum on this bill. For the first speaker, the bill represented too much government, too much money. For the second speaker, it represented too little government, too little money. Both speakers are terribly disappointed with President Bush. Both want more time to consider this bill and, if necessary, go back to the drawing board; if necessary, wait years more before we provide a prescription drug benefit that millions of seniors around the country need and have needed for many years. I rise to speak in favor of the bipartisan Medicare conference agreement. I think it is necessary. Medicare is a great program. My dad passed away last October. He was 91 years old. My mom had passed away about 15 years before then in her early seventies. They both used Medicare and stayed alive as long as they did and as healthy and as happy as long as they did in part because of Medicare. It has covered tens and tens of millions of seniors, not only with good medical care but with the security of knowing that they had medical care if they got sick. Medicare was a great program and is a great program in 1965 terms. That is when it was developed. It covers the kinds of things that good health care covered in 1965, and it doesn't cover the kinds of things that were not covered in 1965. It doesn't have very many preventive health care benefits, catastrophic coverage for long-term acute illnesses. And it does not have coverage for outpatient prescription drugs because in 1965 you didn't use prescription drugs very often, unless you had an infection or some kind of pain killer. Now they are a part of almost every ongoing medical care treatment plan. Everybody who has health insurance--and not enough do--just about everybody who does has some kind of prescription drug coverage because it helps keep you healthy. In providing insurance to somebody, you want them to stay healthy because if they get sick, it ends up costing more money for everybody. That is the reason we haven't had this coverage in Medicare, and it has hurt people. There was a parade I used to be in every year when I was in the House. I like parades. You get a lot of exercise, and they are fun. It is in Hazelwood, MO. I would go down the same street. I always walk parades. I remember running up this driveway and these two seniors would be sitting at the top of their driveway watching the parade every year. Every year I would stop there for 60 seconds, and they would ask me when we were going to cover prescription drugs in Medicare. I would say: Well, we haven't done it yet. And they would say: We know that. Then the issue finally moved on the front burner here at the end of late 1990s and the House began passing bills, 3 or 4 years in a row. We never passed one until this year here. The sentiments we have heard today--I respect so much the Senators who uttered them--are the reasons why. I just do not want to wait until we get a bill that satisfies every extreme in politics and the political exigencies for everybody because we will wait forever. We will never get a bill then. I would rather go ahead with this bill, which is a good bill, and take what is good about it and then see what is working and what isn't working and then go back and fix it. That is the reason the AARP supports this. They are tired of waiting, too. I had a hearing on this. I have the honor of sitting on the Special Committee on Aging, a great committee, with a great chairman, Senator Larry Craig. The hearing was in St. Louis. One of the witnesses was Audrey Vallely, a delightful lady, who attended the Route 66 Senior Center in Eureka, MO, regularly. I have been out there for lunch a couple of times. She testified about her experiences over the last 12 years. Audrey suffers from osteoarthritis, a degenerative bone disease, and she also has a sinus disease. She ought to be taking two different types of prescription drugs for these conditions, but it costs $100 a month for 15 pills. So she often cannot take the drugs. She gets some pain relief over-the-counter pills; sometimes it makes her feel better and sometimes it doesn't. She does the best she can. She has to choose between paying for those drugs or paying her rent. Having an air conditioner working in the summer is hard for her. All of these statements about the problems in this bill mean nothing to Audrey, who struggles month after month because of this gap in Medicare. What would the bipartisan agreement mean for Missouri? We have over 888,000 beneficiaries in Missouri. They all have the opportunity to get a discount card--a 15- to 25-percent discount immediately. Better than that, low-income seniors get, in addition to that, $600 a month in annual assistance to help them afford their medicines, along with discount cards. That is a total of over $200 million in assistance for over 170,000 Missouri residents over the next 2 years, if we pass this bill--not otherwise. Beginning in 2006, every Missouri senior in Missouri would be eligible for coverage in this bill for approximately $35 a month. They get at least 50 percent off--or approximately 50 percent off their prescription drug costs. Of the approximately 270,000 beneficiaries in Missouri who have limited savings and low income, they will qualify for even more generous coverage. Additionally, the Government will help the State pick up the cost of the Medicaid-eligible seniors. That will help Missouri, which is in a cash-strapped situation with regard to its budget. This bill meets the conditions that I thought was important for a Medicare prescription drug bill. It has an immediate benefit, reasonable monthly premiums, strong catastrophic coverage, targeted help for low-income seniors, quality benefits for rural areas, protections for local pharmacies, choice and access to all medicine, and participation in it is voluntary. If you like what you have, you don't have to participate. That is the reason I am supporting this. I will be pleased to vote for it on final passage. I hope a majority of the Senate does. I hope we are allowed to vote. You never know these days. This is the most important Medicare bill in a generation and maybe we will be able to vote on it and maybe we will not. I know most of the people want to have an opportunity to vote on this bill. I think most will vote for it if they get that opportunity. I am going to close by saying what I have said on the fairly rare occasions when I have spoken on this issue on the Senate floor. In this body, everything always gets said but not everybody says it. Once in a while, I feel maybe I should deprive the Senate of my comments on something in the service of expedition. But I have said, look, if the bill is reasonable, I am going to move ahead with it. I am tired of waiting. I would like to help these people, such as the folks I saw in that parade, and like Audrey Vallely, and others, get access to prescription drugs. I think most of the people who have worked on this on both sides have done their best. As far as I can tell, they are not motivated by all the lobbyists or the special interests. I have been in a lot of meetings on this, and that hasn't come up once. They are trying to do the best they can for seniors, in a way that will work and be affordable for everybody. That is what this bill does. I am going to vote for it on that basis. I hope it passes. I congratulate the chairman, who is presiding now, for his fine work. How much time remains?

Mr. TALENT. I am pleased to yield that time to my friend from Colorado.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. I wonder if the Senator's position isn't similar to mine, on the point the Senator from New Hampshire raised, that we at least should not refuse to vote on a bill that could mean millions of jobs for everybody in the country in all sections of the country because of one provision in the bill which could perhaps be fixed or compromised in some other legislation. I wonder if that isn't the Senator's position.

Mr. TALENT. Will the Senator yield for a brief question?

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, it is a real pleasure for me to come down and speak on behalf of the Energy Policy Act. I want to begin by congratulating those involved in the conference committee who reached an agreement upon it. I saw my friend, the senior Senator from Iowa. He certainly did yeomen's work on behalf of a provision that is very important to us in Missouri: The renewable fuel standard, as well as the biodiesel tax credit. I am going to begin my brief remarks and end them by commenting on those provisions. They stand to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the short term around the country and in the long term have the potential not just to revolutionize family production by bringing in a whole new wave of value-added enterprise but also help create energy independence for this country. As we have said on this floor on many occasions, when we are able to grow our own fuel, by growing corn, by growing soybeans, and turning them into fuel that we can burn in our cars, it just revolutionizes international relations in the world and also helps the environment and protects the economy as well. This bill is a major step in that direction. For that reason alone, I think it deserves to be voted on and passed. There are provisions in this bill, as the Senator from North Dakota said before in his very eloquent remarks, that all of us would pick out or change if we could. But this is one Energy bill that this Congress has had to write for a very diverse country. I would suggest, when we are trying to come out of a recession, when we are trying to create jobs, when we are trying to achieve energy independence for this country, now is the time for statesmanship, not obstruction. Now is the time for compromise rather than confrontation over discrete points of a very big bill. Now is the time to move forward with all the good parts of this bill that we know are going to create jobs, that we know are going to help create energy independence, that we know are going to be good for the environment, with a view toward getting together afterward and helping to fix or reform the parts of the bill about which we may have some doubts. I hope we can do that. I hope we can get a vote on this bill. I hope in particular that we will not see that weapon, the filibuster, hauled out to stop us from even expressing an opinion on the first national energy policy that this Congress has ever really passed. We have heard much discussion in the last week or two about the importance of jobs. I very much believe in that. We cannot do anything we want to do in this country, we cannot do education, we cannot have health care, we cannot have defense, we cannot have opportunity without prosperity, and we cannot have that without jobs. This bill flat creates jobs. It will protect hundreds of thousands of jobs against being lost. It will create nearly a million. The natural gas and coal provisions, which are not those over which Missouri has a parochial interest but which I strongly support, would create more than 400,000 direct and indirect new jobs just through the construction of the Alaska natural gas pipeline, which will at the same time bring affordable energy to the lower 48 States, 38,000 direct jobs, 80,000 indirect jobs, an estimated 400,000 jobs from the multiplier effect. The investment the bill provides for in clean coal technology creates 62,000 jobs; 40,000 construction jobs created by the construction of approximately 27 large new clean coal plants. When we use this clean coal technology and we make coal environmentally safe, we secure America's energy future because we have hundreds of years of reserves of coal. There is no reason not to move forward so as to create the possibility of reliance upon that even more greatly in the future, if necessary. The renewable fuel standard I will discuss in a few minutes. Nuclear energy, building a first of its kind nuclear reactor to co-generate hydrogen will create 3,000 construction jobs and 500 long-term high- paying, high-tech jobs. I toured the nuclear energy plant in Missouri in Callaway County just a few weeks ago. It is the wave of the future. We can have more nuclear energy plants like that securing energy for our people around this country. This bill is a key to achieving that. Some examples of job losses that the Energy Policy Act will prevent in the future, these are job losses we have had in the past: The Potash Corporation, one of the world's largest producers of fertilizer products located in Northbrook, IL, and Canada, that spends $2 million per day on natural gas, has announced layoffs at its Louisiana and Tennessee plants. Economists predict that Louisiana's chemical industry will lose more than 2,000 jobs in the next 2 years. I have had people come and visit me from the chemical industry saying they are being forced to push jobs offshore because of the high cost of energy. I have had manufacturers in Missouri tell me that the high cost of energy and the unpredictability of the cost of energy is driving jobs offshore. It does not have to be that way. We can have an energy policy that encourages all different kinds of energy--the traditional forms, the alternative forms. This bill does that. No, the bill is not really liked too much, if I may so, by those on the extreme ends of either part of the political spectrum. There are some who do not want the Government involved at all, even in stimulating the production of supply of energy. There are others who for other reasons on the other side of the spectrum do not want the private market to be stimulated for the production of energy. But Americans are out there, Missourians are out there, worrying about the loss of their jobs, worrying about what opportunities are going to be available in the future. Access to affordable, stable supplies of energy of all kinds is a key to this country's prosperity and independence, and that is what it comes down to. Those of us on the Energy Committee, on both sides of the aisle in the Senate, have had that target in view from the minute that we began writing this bill. The Senator from Tennessee is certainly well aware of that because of the major part that he played in it. I close by talking about the special importance of the renewable fuels section of this bill. Everybody back home is so pleased that we have recognized in this Congress, by an overwhelming margin, the importance of ethanol and biodiesel to this Nation's energy supply. The bill will increase ethanol production and the use of ethanol throughout our national economy to 5 billion gallons by the year 2012. It will create 214,000 jobs, $5.3 billion in new investment in renewable fuels production facilities. The biodiesel tax credit of a dollar is groundbreaking for the production of biodiesel in this country. With this tax credit, we can expect biodiesel, in just a few years, to be in the same situation that ethanol is now, and a few years after that the situation that ethanol will be in in the future, one of the mainstays of energy production. These are a key to value-added enterprises as well. I will never forget on a day I was traveling around central Missouri and I talked to some corn farmers and they were talking about commodity prices. They were pretty depressed, and there has been a lot of reason to be depressed about prices of corn in the last 2 years. They did not really see a lot of hope. These were great producers, efficient producers, but they knew even if prices creeped up, one change in the international situation might push them down again. Then I went to the ethanol plant in Macon, the same kind of producers, but these were investors in the ethanol plant. One of them pulled me aside. There was an air of optimism there, an air of energy. One of them pulled me aside and said: Jim, the good thing about this is when the price of corn goes down, I just make more money off the ethanol. That is what value-added enterprises mean to family production in this country. If we lose family farmers, if we lose the family production sector in this country, we lose something that we cannot recover, the values that go with an attachment to and a belief in the land. Value-added enterprises, of which the chief is renewable fuel, is the future for family producers. It is the future for energy independence in the country as well. We are proud in Missouri, as I know the Presiding Officer is proud in Minnesota, of the leadership role we have played in the production of ethanol. We expect to have a leadership role, we do, and expect our leadership role to grow in the production of biodiesel. That is what this bill provides for. I close by saying that although there are many parts of the bill that are going to help Missouri, there is no question about that, and I am enthusiastic about it, I am pleased to have participated in writing a lot of the bill, and pleased to vote for it, there are many parts of it I like. This renewable fuels section is really important to Missouri. Agriculture and tourism are the two biggest parts of Missouri's economy. This bill is a joint effort. I think it is idle for any section of the country or any group of Senators who want a particular kind of energy to believe that they can get what they want for their section of the country, or that they can get what they want for the kind of energy supplies that they favor apart from a bill like this that helps everybody pull together. We cannot unravel this thing and pass a bunch of different bills. It is not going to happen. We are one country. We have to rely on many different sources of energy, but it has to be one policy. We have to have it all in one policy. It is not going to be perfect, but it is going to make a difference for the future. To the extent that it is not perfect, we can work on it. I would so much rather have a view of legislation that says, look, we would rather go ahead knowing that we will take what is good and we can work on the things that we are concerned about than stopping everything because we cannot achieve that perfection given the state of human nature and the realistic possibilities in which we have to operate. I am going to be pleased to support this bill. I urge Senators who have greater doubts than I do, or maybe who have themselves dug in on one issue or another, to try to work out an arrangement with the bipartisan group of Senators who have pushed this bill for so long. I know the Senator from New Mexico is ready to talk. The leadership is ready to talk. I am hopeful we will see the leaders on both sides of the aisle supporting this bill. Now, as I said before, is the time for us to pull together and send a clear signal to this country that we can and will pass a comprehensive national energy policy that will create a stable and affordable supply of energy for years to come and allow our entrepreneurs, our manufacturers, our farmers, our small business people, to move ahead with the predictability that a stable energy supply gives them. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TALENT. I thank the Senator for yielding for a question.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. I will yield, and the Senator is probably doing the Senate a favor by getting me to yield.

Mr. TALENT. Absolutely.

Mr. TALENT. Ten minutes left to inflict myself on the Senate at 4:20 a.m. I think I will talk a little bit about Judge Kuhl. I have gone over her background. It is really extraordinary. I am a lawyer. I actually clerked on the court of appeals for a great judge, a good man, Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit. I know something about Federal judges and how they get there. I don't mean any disrespect. I am trained well enough as a lawyer not to do that. I guess we are protected by the speech and debate clause here. They couldn't come after me if I didn't respect that. I respect Federal judges. I wish they all had the qualifications these people have. There are some of them who got on the court of appeals because they knew somebody; in some cases, because they knew somebody in this body. Judge Kuhl has been nominated to the Ninth Circuit. She has been a judge since 1995; before that, for 9 years she was a partner in a prestigious Los Angeles law firm. She was a litigator. We can forgive her that. From 1981 to 1986, she served in the Department of Justice as Deputy Solicitor Attorney, as Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and as Special Assistant to Attorney General William French Smith. She argued cases before the Supreme Court and supervised work of other attorneys. She clerked for Judge Anthony Kennedy, then a judge in the Ninth Circuit and now a member of the Supreme Court. In 1977, she graduated from Duke Law School. She has extraordinary bipartisan support. Listen to what people say about her. Vilm Martinez, former Director of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said: I'm a lifelong Democrat. . . . Even though we don't share the same political views, necessarily, I consider her mainstream. . . . She's careful and she's thoughtful. She's been an excellent [state court] judge, and I think she will be an excellent 9th Circuit judge, one who will approach that job the way I think that job should be approached: with great care and deference. I wish everybody in this body had the broadmindedness of Vilma Martinez. Congratulations, Ms. Martinez. Twenty-three women judges on the Superior Court of Los Angeles say: Judge Kuhl is seen by us and by members of the Bar who appear before her as a fair, careful and thoughtful judge who applies the law without bias. She can't get a vote. Don't tell me the Senate has operated this way. It hasn't operated this way in the past. They have filibustered, or they are threatening to filibuster, about a quarter of President Bush's nominees to the circuit court of appeals. Not one ever before successfully filibustered on this floor; not one ever before filibustered with the support of the leader of either party. It isn't right.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I wish I could say it is a pleasure to be here with you at 4 o'clock in the morning. It is certainly always enjoyable to see you. This is a subject that is certainly worth discussing and it is extremely important. I have not been all that involved in it before. There are a number of other issues on which I have been working. I am here this evening because, when I look at the qualifications of the four nominees we are considering, Judge Owen, General Pryor, Judge Kuhl, and Justice Brown, those qualifications to me seem so outstanding that it seems that, had these nominees come up in the past, they would not only have been voted on but they would have been approved, and not only approved but approved by an overwhelming majority; as the Senator from Pennsylvania said a little while ago, approved by a voice vote. Now they are being filibustered. For the first time in the Nation's history, court of appeals nominations by the President of the United States are being stopped on the Senate floor by a minority using the filibuster. It never happened before. They filibustered four to this point. I hope that the minority will not filibuster two more on Friday. I understand there are six other nominations the President has made to the court of appeals for whom there is a threat of a filibuster. So it is quite possible that by the end of the year a minority of this body will have filibustered and stopped on the Senate floor, 12 court of appeals nominations, and that has never happened, not even once, in the history of the United States. Then there are some who stand here and say this is nothing new. It is not only new, it is unprecedented. It is not only unprecedented, it is action on a scale that nobody even contemplated before. You cannot look at the total number of nominations; you have to look at the nominations for the courts of appeals. You have to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges if you want these figures to mean anything. The President of the United States has nominated 46 people for the court of appeals so far; 29 of them have been confirmed, 6 of them have been filibustered or very probably will be filibustered by Friday; another 6 are threatened to be filibustered. I certainly invite my friends who have been part of this filibustering minority to stand here and tell us tonight if they don't intend to filibuster any more besides the six we are talking about. I don't think they are going to do that. That will make a total of 12 filibustered or threatened to be filibustered, 12 out of the 46 nominations the President has made to the court of appeals. One-quarter of the nominations the President has made to the court of appeals have been or are threatened to be filibustered. In the past 200 years, not one was successfully filibustered. It is an unprecedented usurpation or attempt to usurp the President's power from the Constitution, and the traditions of this body, to nominate people and get them appointed to the court of appeals. I heard the senior Senator from New York speak. He is my friend and I work with him on a number of issues. I find him to be delightful--well maybe not delightful, but he is my friend. He is a delight. He said the problem is, if they just come to me, I am the ranking member of the courts subcommittee, if the White House will just come to me before they make these nominations and consult with me. What he was saying is that together we could come up with good nominees. I think this is what the minority here is aiming to do. When I say the minority, I mean the group of people who are filibustering. They want a co-Presidency, as far as this is concerned; they hope the President will consult with them before making the nominations. I love my friend, the senior Senator from New York. Nobody from Missouri had a chance to vote for him. We have one President. He makes the nominations. The Senate's job is to vote to confirm. How has that job been conducted in the past, and exercised in the past? It is worth looking at. I say this not as a person who has been a Member of this body before this year, but as a citizen of the United States. I have looked at what happened in the past when we had these vacancies. When the President nominates, what do Presidents traditionally look at? What do you think? They look, first, at personal integrity. They want to nominate people who have integrity and a reputation for integrity. They look for people who they know or people who they know, know. In other words, if you want to be nominated to a judgeship, you try to talk to people in the administration you know or talk to people who know people in the administration. So you contact your Senator or you contact somebody in the Department of Justice, just like applying for any other job. If you know somebody, you contact him. And, of course, Presidents look at qualifications. They look at the achievements of prospective nominees in particular fields and then they look at relevant biographical information that may be specific to that appointment. Perhaps they are looking for a particular ethnic diversity or geographic consideration. Then the President and Department of Justice put all that together and they nominate somebody and send him down here. And then the Senate votes to confirm. How has the Senate done that in the past? The Senate has acted as a kind of check. The Senate looks at these nominees to make certain they have the positive qualifications that the President has said they have. The Senate looks at nominees to make certain they have minimum achievements and experience so that a lawyer, looking at a nominee, would say, yes, that is what a person ought to have to be on the Federal court bench. The nominee may have been a law professor. They may have been a practicing lawyer or a public official. Have they been out of law school long enough, received awards, published in their fields, litigated enough cases? The Senate looks at that for a minimum. We don't want to confirm somebody where the bench and bar around the country would look at that person and say, no, they haven't been out of law school long enough to serve on the Federal bench. Then, of course, the Senate looks at integrity. That is really a negative check: to make certain what they don't have. To make certain that they don't have stains on their record such that they should not serve on the Federal bench. They didn't cheat in law school. They have not been found guilty of ethics violations in the practice of law. There are not any notorious examples of incompetence in their background. That is what the Senate has looked at in the past: where nominees have met those qualifications; had that minimum that the Senate looks for; have not had the negative things the Senate wants to make certain they have not had. In the past, those nominees got a hearing. They were voted out of committee. They not only were put on the floor, but they got a vote on the floor. They not only got a vote on the floor, but they were confirmed, and they were not only confirmed, they were typically confirmed by overwhelming majorities, even by Senators who were of a different party, who disagreed with their jurisprudence. That is what has happened in the past and we have had a tremendous break from that precedent and that tradition in this Senate. Of that action in the past--some here have said that the Senate should not be a rubberstamp. Was the Senate a rubberstamp for 200 years? No, it was not. What the Senate did was show a respect for the constitutional separation of powers, which a minority of this Senate now refuses to show. Let's suppose families have, in their own way, constitutional arrangements just as this country does. Let's suppose that in some family the husband and wife have talked about who is going to handle the finances. They have decided that because the wife is maybe better at those things, or better able to handle those things, that the wife is going to handle the finances. If this is beginning to sound like my family, the analogy is pretty apt. So the wife in this specific family makes decisions regarding investments, and then goes to the husband and says: What do you think, I would like to put some money in this? Or I would like to invest in this thing. The wife gives him the benefit of the doubt. Is that a rubberstamp? That is a recognition, then, of the tradition of that family. The wife in that case has traditionally done this because that is how it is set up. It is not a rubberstamp; it is giving the benefit of the doubt, when appropriate, according to the arrangements that have traditionally prevailed in that family. That is what the Senate did for 200 years and that is what the minority is not doing now. That is why we are losing perspective about it. I will say this to my good friend from New Jersey, who is accusing us of losing perspective: Yes, we are losing perspective because about a quarter of the President's nominees to the court of appeals have been filibustered or threatened to be filibustered; because the Members who are filibustering want to be consulted. They want to be the ones who make the nominations when nobody had a chance to vote for them for President. That is enough to cause us to lose perspective. Why has it changed? What is causing this to happen? My friend from Pennsylvania asked that: Why? Why are we doing this? It's disrupting this body, it's dividing us, and it's an injustice to these people. I am going to get to that at the end if I have time. The worst thing about it is these people, who should be confirmed, or would have been confirmed 10 years ago, deserve to serve. They worked hard and millions of people around the country are going to wonder what is wrong with them because we can't even get a vote. It is not right. Why has it happened? I hear different things. I don't know. I talked to some people. I hear things that maybe Members on the other side at some point went to a retreat and a bunch of law professors met with them and told them if they didn't do something like this there would be an imbalance in the Federal courts. If that is true--I hear this, I don't know--I can immediately see a basic part of the problem, because we have law professors giving advice about something besides the law. I have a rule that when law professors give advice about something besides the law, it is almost always wrong. I say this as a person who used to be a kind of law professor. I never actually made it. I was a fellow, an adjunct professor. And they are brilliant and you get them out of their field and it is risky to take their advice about anything. Let's go back to imbalance. Going back through the Carter Presidency, which is back about 26 years--the last generation in the modern era. In the last 26 years, there has been a Republican President 14 years, a Democratic President 12 years. By the way, I am going to give overall figures for district court and court of appeals numbers but they don't vary. If you break them out and separate them, they don't vary that much. President Carter had confirmed 265 nominees to the bench; President Clinton, 377, for a total of 644, which is about 53 confirmed per year. President Reagan had 384. He was there for 8 years. The first President Bush had 195. Up to this point the current President Bush has had 168, for 747 over 14 years which is, Mr. President, about 53 per year. Where is the imbalance? That a Republican President for 14 years, Democrat President for 12 years, they each got about 53 per year and it is the same basically whether you break it out for court of appeals. They each got basically 10 court of appeals judges per year. There is no imbalance. We have had balance for the last 200 years, and the reason it has worked pretty well, is that the people have elected Presidents from different philosophies and different parties. That is how you get balance. The only way you get imbalance is if you have Presidents of one particular philosophy or one particular party elected year after year, term after term after term, and that has happened and there is a technical term for that. It is called representative government. Yes, if you lose a lot of Presidential elections in a row, there is going to be an imbalance on the Federal bench. That is the way it happens. The only time it has happened in the 20th century, by the way, is when the Democrats had the White House more than 20 years in a row, through President Roosevelt, and then through the only President ever from Missouri, our great Harry Truman. I don't recall hearing Republicans filibustering and claiming imbalance at that time. How much time do I have left?

Mr. TALENT. I am happy to comment on that. Everybody knows what is going on here. They are filibustering the court of appeals judges because, yes, they are appellate judges. They are the more important ones. They are letting the little fish go. They are filibustering, or threatening to filibuster, about a quarter of the court of appeals judges. Another reason is they think some of these people might get nominated to the Supreme Court.

Mr. TALENT

Mr. TALENT. I am going to be brief, Mr. President. I had an opportunity to speak last night and I want to have a chance to hear my friend from Ohio and I want to give him a full opportunity to speak. We are here--I am here again; others have been here more often than I--because we are trying to put a stop to filibusters that are unprecedented in their nature. For the first time in the history of this institution, court of appeals nominees of the President of the United States have been filibustered to death on the floor of this Senate by a determined minority. It is a usurpation of the Constitution. It is hurting the courts, and it is unfair to these nominees who are not only qualified, who not only should be confirmed, but who would, just a few years ago, have flown through this body because of their extraordinary qualifications. I just want to address a couple points. One that has been made very often by some Senators who have been participating in these filibusters is that, in fact, they are really not doing anything that unprecedented or that bad because they have approved, they have allowed all but four of the nominees to go through. Well, that is just not the right way of looking at it. They set out to hunt, if you will, the big game, the court of appeals judges. So it is true, they have not been taking any shots at the rabbits, at the squirrels, at the district court judges. Those they have let through. But they have taken down or they are threatening to take down, through the filibuster, a quarter of President Bush's nominees to the court of appeals. This graph shows it. None of the previous four Presidents, or any of the Presidents, had ever lost a court of appeals nominee by a filibuster of the minority on the floor of the Senate. President Bush has had 29 court of appeals nominees confirmed. Twelve of them have either been filibustered or they are going to be filibustered tomorrow or there are threats to filibuster them. He sent 46 down in total. Twelve have been filibustered or threatened to be filibustered, which is a quarter of his nominees. That is not a passing percentage in anybody's book, and it is unprecedented to have even one filibustered. Second, Senators have said: Well, look, the filibuster has been used in the past, and that is because motions for cloture have been offered and passed sometimes in the past. There have been small groups of Senators who have tried to filibuster nominees in the past, and the rest of the Senate has said: No, we do not do that. We may not like the nominee, but we do not filibuster them. In every case, the leaders of both parties have supported motions for cloture, and cloture has been invoked. They are using instances when the filibuster has been stopped by the Senate in the name of the Constitution, and in the name of the traditions of the Senate to support their efforts where the filibuster has succeeded. They are turning the past on its head to support a present and a future which is completely inconsistent with the Constitution and the traditions of the Senate. It is wrong, and it is wrong to people involved. I wish I had time today. Perhaps I will have time later to go through the qualifications of these nominees. On top of everything else, they just deserve this. Many of these people have overcome tremendous obstacles, personal obstacles in their youth, to achieve tremendous success in the field of law. They would be great judges. We need those judges on the courts. Finally, Mr. President, and before I yield to my friend from Ohio, I just want to say that repeatedly it has been suggested by that group of Senators who have been filibustering that: Well, we ought to go on to other business. In fact, they are upset that the process of the Senate is being obstructed. Well, I would sure like to go on to other business, too. You can filibuster or not filibuster. There is no question under the rules of the Senate, Members have the raw power to do this. What you cannot do is filibuster and then complain about obstruction. You cannot do that. That is called having your cake and eating it, too. The minute that Members of this Senate decide they want to go on to other business, we can go on to other business. Just allow us a time agreement to vote. Allow us to vote on these people. Five minutes after you do that, we are off to other business of the Senate, which all of us want to go on to. In the meantime, please, if you are going to filibuster these nominees, at least do not complain about obstruction of the processes of the Senate. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor to my friend from Ohio.

Mr. TALENT. Madam President, I thank my friend for yielding. It has been a pleasure, in a sense, to be here. I will not take very much time. I have enjoyed hearing the remarks of my friends, the Senator from Hawaii and the senior Senator from Massachusetts. I have the pleasure of serving with them on the Armed Services Committee. They have often been eloquent on the floor of the Senate. My friend from Massachusetts has been eloquent on the subject of judicial nominations before. I am going to quote something he said about 5 years ago. I do it with respect and for a reason. He said on January 28, 1998: Nominees deserve a vote. If our Republican colleagues don't like them, vote against them. But don't just sit on them-- that is obstruction of justice. Free and full debate over judicial nominations is healthy. The Constitution is clear that only individuals acceptable to both the President and the Senate should be confirmed. The President and the Senate do not always agree. But we should resolve these disagreements by voting on these nominees--yes or no. We should resolve these disagreements by voting on these nominees-- yes or no. I have quoted this for a reason. The divisiveness over nominations, holding them up in one way or another, is not new to this Senate. This tactic of abusing the filibuster rule for a minority to stop court of appeals judges from even getting a vote, that is new; that is unprecedented. They have been blocking now or threatening to block a quarter of President Bush's court of appeals nominees. That is unprecedented, and the Senators doing it are responsible for doing it. They have to stand up for that. But the divisiveness and some elements of obstruction are not new. We have an opportunity with this debate, and we are all exhausting ourselves talking, trying to come up with a real bipartisan resolution. I hope we can end the debate by stepping back and coming up with a set of rules that will be fair to whoever is the President and whichever party controls the White House. If we could do that, then we could clear these nominees for a vote. We are coming to the end of President Bush's term. We don't know who is going to be President a year from now. But we know that President deserves a better procedure than we have given this President. Now is the opportunity to do that, and then we can get on to the other business of the Senate. I encourage both sides to do that, and I thank my friend from Georgia for yielding.

Mr. TALENT. How much time do we have remaining on our side?