quorum call:

mr. kaufman: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator delaware is recognized. mr. kaufman: i em the suspending of the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. kaufman: i have eight unanimous requests for the committees to meet during today'ssion of the senate. they have been approved by the majority and minority leaders. i ask unanimous consent that these requests be agreed to, these requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. under the previous order, the question is on the nomination of lael brainard. mr. kyl: mr. president, i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

he vote:

the presiding officer: are there any senators in the chamber w wish to vote or to change a vote? if not, on this vote, 78 yeas, 19 nays. and the nomination is confirmed. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from vermont is recognized. mr. sanders: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to speak for ten minutes, to be followed by senator burris for 5 minutes, at which point the senate would recess for party caucuses. the presiding officer: is there objection?

without objection. mr. sanders: the front page story of the "new york times" today points to the fact that of the enormous power of big money in terms of financial reform. and they say -- and i quote -- "with so much money at stake, it is not surprising that more than 1,500 lobbyists, executives, bankers and others have made their way to the senate committee that on wednesday will take up legislation to rein in derivatives." that's end of quote. mr. president, when congress deregulated wall street and allowed them to do pretty much anything they wanted to do, which brought us to where we are today, i.e., a massive recession, they spent over a ten-year period $5 billion. $5 billion in order to work their way on congress. last year, as we begin to address financial reform, they

spent $300 million. so the issue that we are debating now is not whether congress will regulate wall street. it is whether or not congress will continue to be regulated by wall street. their power is extraordinary. their money is unlimited. and if there was ever a time in american history where the senate has got to start standing up to big-money interests and represent the needs of ordinary americans, this is the time. and the american people are looking. mr. president, let me just touch on four issues that i think are key if we are serious -- underline "serious" -- about financial reform. number one, we have got to break up the huge financial institutions which are the cause

of the crisis that we're in and which exert so much power over our economy. mr. president, the four major u.s. banks: bank of america, citigroup, j.p. morgan j.p. morgan, chase and wells fargo, issue two-thirds of the credit cards in this country, write half of the mortgages and collectively hold $7.4 trillion in assets, about 52% of the nation's estimated total output last year. and, mr. president, despite the fact that we bailed these banks out because they were too big to fail, incredibly, three out of four of these institutions are now larger today than they were when we bailed them out. enough is enough. i am joined, as a progressive, by many conservatives who understand that you cannot

continue to have that concentration of ownership. not just in terms of the liability to the american people in terms of too big to fail, but in terms of their monopoly control on the entire economy. so if we are serious about financial reform, now is the time to start breaking up these beathat exert enormous impact on our economy. number two, mr. president, we have got to end the absurdity of a wall street selling trillions of dollars in exotic financial tools, instruments, at same time as small and medium-sized businesses are unable to get the loans that they need in order to create the jobs that our country desperately is in need of. at a time when we are in the

midst of a major recession. at a time when we are losing our competitive advantages in the global economy, it is absolutely absurd that our largest financial institutions continue to trade trillions in esoteric financial institutions which make wall street the largest gambling casino in the world. we need to have them start investing in the real economy, the productive economy, in small and medium-sized businesses, in transforming our energy system, in helping us rebuild our infrastructure and in transportation and in other desperate needs. they can no longer live isolated from the real world and engaged in bets on whether or not oil is going to go up six months from now or that the housing market goes down. mr. president, if we are serious about real financial reform, we need to pass national usury legislation.

i get calls every week from vermonters who are sick and tired of paying 25% or 30% interest rates on their credit cards. every major religion points out that usury is immoral. it is wrong to charge people outrageously high interest rates when they are in desperate need. we need national usury legislation. i will be offering an amendment which will tap at 15% the amount that financial institutions can charge our credit cards which is exactly what exists for credit unions today. lastly, mr. president, if we are serious about real financial reform, we need transparency at the federal reserve. the fed cannot continue to operate in almost total secrecy. during the bailout large financial institutions receive trillions of dollars in zero or near zero interest loans.

who will receive those -- who received these loans and what were the terms? the fed is not telling the american people. did some of those banks turn around and in a mammoth welfare scam invest that fed money, zero interest money in government treasury bonds at 3% or 4%? the fed is not telling us the answer to that question as well. it is time that we have transparency at the fed so that the american people know what our central bank is doing. mr. president, most of all, we need to end the heads bankers win, tails everybody else loses the financial system that currently exists in the united states today. the american people are profoundly disgusted with the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior on wall street. they cannot understand how the very same people who created this recession in which millions

of workers have lost their jobs, people have lost their homes, people have lost their savings that these very same people are now receiving multimillion dollar bonuses. people don't understand that nor do i, in fact. so we need a new wall street. we need real financial reform. and i hope, in fact, that the senate and the house are prepared to stand up to the very, very powerful special interests who do not want us to do that. with that, mr. president, i would yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the president will immediately be notified of the senate's action with respect to the confirmation of the brainard nomination. the senator from illinois is recognized. burris: thank you very much, mr. president. mr. president, when i came to washington over a year ago, this country faced an economic crisis greater than anywhere we've seen

in generations. so my colleagues and i set out to work and under president obama's strong leadership, we passed a landmark stimulus package that stopped the bleeding. we did what was necessary to prevent a complete economic collapse and set america back on the road to recovery. since that time we've come a long way. many key economic indicators have started to turn around, but we're not out of the woods yet, mr. president. the economy has started to -- to grow again, but unemployment is still too high and rampant foreclosures continue to threaten families in my home and across the country. during the first three months of this year, almost 15,000 homeowners went into foreclosure in illinois alone. despite our best effort to modify mortgages to make them

more affordable, that's twice as many foreclosures that we saw during the same period last year. this is unacceptable, mr. president. we're making progress, but it's -- it simply isn't enough. today america no longer stands at the brink of disaster, but we still are vulnerable to the same recklessness that led to this crises in the first place. for years a big corporation like goldman sachs -- from wall street bankers packaged and sold mortgages together and sold them to investors. they knew that these investment vehicles would inevitably fall -- fail so they turned around and bet against them. they bet against the american people, mr. president. they sought to make a profit off the misfortunes of their own customers. they -- they allegedly committed fraud and that's why we're

currently -- they're being sued by the security exchange commission on behalf of the american people. as a former banker, i understand the seriousness of this misconduct. i know that it continues to pose a traumatic threat to the american financial system. that's why we need to pass a strong financial reform to prevent bad behavior on wall street from ordinary folk on main street. i urge my colleagues to join me in the reform legislation presented by mr. dodd. this bill would prevent goldman sachs and other companies from getting this country in the mess in the first place and it can help ensure that we'll never end up in this position again. this legislation creates a consumer protection bill designed to shield ordinary americans from unfair, deceptive and abusive financial practices. it would establish an oversight council, tasked with the --

keeping a close eye on emerging risks so that we're never taken by surprise again. it would end the so-called too big to fail, protect taxpayers from unnecessary risks and eliminate the need for future bailouts. this bill would also increase transparency and accountability for banks, hedge funds, and the derivative market so big companies like goldman sachs will not be able to get away with their allegedly fraud -- alleged fraud anymore. these basic reforms will establish clear rules of the road on the financial service industry so that we can keep the market free and fair without risking another economic collapse. but if we fail to take action, if we do not pass this reform bill, then we will be right back where we started with no safeguards against this kind of

deception and abuse in the future. mr. president, i call upon my colleagues to join me in supporting senator dodd's bill which comes to the floor this week. i ask my friends on both sides of the aisle to stand with me on the side of the american people. let us pass financial reform legislation and let's do it without delay. i yield the floor, mr. president. and suggest the absence -- the presiding officer: under the previous order the senate stands in recess until 2:15 p.m.

>> political campaigns are now using cloud computing. technology that uses the internet and central remote servers to maintain data and application. officials from microsoft, google and the democratic national committee as well as house minority leader john boehner participates in this hour-long discussion. this is part of the politics online conference hosted by george washington university in washington, d.c.. >> the ceo, we have nick, from

the office of the leadership of the house republicans, and he's the director of new media they are and josh was the director of i.t. with dnc. so pretty rowdy group, i think, i hope. the intention here is to talk about computing as a model, what it holds promise for in the public were many, what advantage people are taking, not taking out in that arena. and as well which will sink coming from a vendor our political perspective that i will ask each to give us a minute or two, their perspective on the area, what they think are the trends are key points they want to make about that. that i have a couple of questions to ask them. we will take questions from the audience as well, if you have any. so please come give me a hand, an indication have a question and i'll get around the room to them. we will have a might come around. why don't we start at the end and work our way back.

>> microphones are a little silly here. i've devastate that we're not using roberts rule of order. first of all, thank you so much for organizing this panel. we now know, we can talk about real kinky stuff about politics. i absolutely cherish every one of those opportunities. thank you, stan, very much. i think one of the things that i realize director of technology at the dnc and that technology is radically changing. every day as time moves on, we can't sort of rest in the world of what happened a year ago, or what was done during the campaign or anything like that. even between election day 2008 and today, technology is very, very, very different. we need to recognize that fact. now cloud computing is obvious at the forefront of all of these changes. and just taking a big picture

view of where we are, if you take a look at a given campaign and say, how much traffic on going to get over the course of a campaign, it would probably find, and i'm sure this will change a little bit from campaign to campaign, that 90 or 80, or maybe 70% of the traffic happens within the last two weeks of the campaign. or maybe three weeks. but still, this is a really, really big deal. you're asking campaigns to build capacity for what's really a mounting to a couple weeks of work. and does it make sense for campaigns to pay a ton of money to build all this capacity for really just a big spike at the end of the campaign. this is what cloud computing comes into play. and what i think it's incredibly relevant for campaigns and political organizations. that allows you infrastructure for seconds rather than weeks. and for campaigns, this is just a really, really big deal. number two, is that i think

campaigns are sort of the most transient of organizations, right? one day they don't exist, the next day they exist. and trying to build simple infrastructure, even servers for file sharing or you know, is hard for a campaign that didn't exist a week ago and tried to ramp up the full step over the course of a couple of weeks. this is the secondary where i think cloud computing is exceptionally relevant for political campaigns. and with, i will pass it on. >> to tackle a lot of what josh talked about, technology changing so quickly, this is a problem that we run into, or i run into a much a. i spent most of my days trying to help boehner and house republicans to use media to help better to make it with the american people. in doing that we're trying to stay at the forefront of technology and cloud computing is the direction will go in. in every step of the way, with any large organization or enterprise, we're dragging i.t. bureaucrats kicking and

screaming along with us. we have seen is when the got into, members want to use twitter more or youtube more your you know, the direction they tend to go many times, they want control on. so getting folks to help sees that control is a common issue that i see a lot of parallels with and cloud computing here. but the most important thing and is becoming more increasingly important lately, when you talk about issues with cloud computing is especially in my job at is the cost american taxpayers. americans are making our decision on how they will spend their money. that's something that we will have to respect that these are conversations that americans are having right now and we need to do the same thing. expect the same thing from congress. not being an expert message out and cloud computer, i'm interested a lot more about it and i will use it in congress here hopefully before too long. >> your kind of caught in the middle there. >> why did you guys keep this between you?

good afternoon. i provide an interesting perspective from one step what does would have a billion dollar company to my left and with two major republican and democratic sitting next to each other and i'm stuck between with the guy with the turbine. [laughter] >> that is america that is one of the greatest things about this country. so one of the fastening things about cloud computing, or what i call the campaign cloud that is emerging, when we look at what has happened in the space of online policy, can we break it down from an e. democracy sample, listing the emergence of three strong pillars of that, that development. want that his government, too, the campaign and three the election standpoint. cloud computing is really affect a lot of the government applicatiapplications, or can affect a. on the elections i. we start saying impacting with some kind of voting system. but the campaign realm is sort of unknown or unpack to about

69% of us are already using cloud computing in some capacity. we don't even realize it. this is a new term. so to me it's all about the campaign cloud. how do we convert this to helping us get more money, help us get more votes and how do we generate more awareness for a campaign. one of the fundamentals that campaigns of all sizes struggle with, from school board through presidential come is infrastructure. infrastructure is the fundamental cost, the ability to scale or peak at a lifecycle of a campaign, happens at any stage. we know that any issue or any opposition could affect the growth of a campaign. the second is the scalability, the ability for us to go ahead and see how we can go ahead and add more photos or more data without this is really having to increase our costs. scalability, in sharing that information among multiple users is another advantage of cloud computer that we are starting to see. if you look at the behaviors of the everyday american, the internet users that are using

it, we had about 56.8% voter turnout this last election because if i think increase of 2004 to 2008. then the vertical camping election, how do we make that by going into tonight, 15, 20 million? cloud computing in my opinion is a game change. it's just a true she is what economic getting 2002 our industry in fund-raising. i believe cloud computer will change the way we go ahead and increase political by finding out that debt. google and microsoft have been phenomenal jobs of giving us the tools we need. but who will access that sky? if you have a cloud here and clout application here and they are merging together, using that and how did they form a bigger cloud. they can break apart easily. without any major cost or damage to your information. now the question is how to access those clouds or even know they are available. that's a we hope we can come in. we will share some of that today. >> i'm just going to echo what

everyone has said. i do want to comment i posted interesting that they chose the google and microsoft guys which are the microphone. [laughter] >> so much love. so much love. a lot of trust in our professionalism there. [laughter] >> we at google think that cloud computing is the next revolution in i.t. i think it provides so many benefits for businesses, for educational institution. but particularly for government and political campaigns. there's a lot of opportunity to take advantage of. flexibility, scalability, cost reductions and really contrive new ways of thinking about how you can interact renegade and information and collaboration. i think it's a very, very exciting time to see if people are trying to take advantage of this. we view ourselves as the kind of generic providers, the tools that enable people to do different things. we think the cloud is a model that supports the kind of new ways of thinking about them new ways of interacting and collaborating that people the. i'm very interested to hear what people here have to say.

i think a lot has been said already about where cloud is going and where it is important. >> i'm going to have to control myself and but my time and not answer all the questions. the first question, by the way, if you have questions in the audience, do give me a shorthand up and we'll get this microphone to you. i will interspersed them with my question. if you have questions for these guys, this is a pretty interesting group of folks. please get your hand in the air. the first question i wanted to ask, is the title of this, the session, cloud computing, how it can lower your costs and increase your risk. i did that make up that title. noted anyone on this panel, so i am curious about your use of that, and then had you respond to that title with what you think is accurate about that. what you think is inaccurate about that. do you want to start us off, just to? i would be happy to start saw. i was a i disagree with the title because it assumes there

is a trade off between lowering cost and increasing this. i think that cloud computing is very -- not to be oser, the mic on. is this one off? >> this one is good? they get her back there. to want to come up here? >> technical difficulties. >> this will be an interesting panel if we are all hopping up. i was saying when i saw the title of the panel i kind of looked at it and said i think there is a false premise that there is a trade off between cost and risk. and i think we think the cloud provide lower risk for almost all organizations. i think it's especially true in many ways for political campaigns for many of the reasons people here talk about and that there are short lifecycles, not a lot of capital expenditure, not an ongoing i.t. infrastructure. the ability to mitigate some of the i.t. risk is somewhat reduced. but i think if you look at some of the government agencies that started to look at the clout and

the ability of clout provided at larger scale to reduce risks while lowering costs and increasing activity, i don't think there's a trade off at all. i think the more we start looking at the cloud will realize this is a win-win and not so much trade off. >> to jump around a bit. >> sure, i think the tide is greatly over simplified, the problem obvious the. but it spend a lot of time on your clout and/or organization. but i also think if they are so high, to move into cloud computer and you should all probably cancel your facebook account and eugene accounts and hotmail accounts and everything else. we are all very much a part of some cloud structure right now, i think that this is a direction we're moving and daddy sort of mitigate these concerns and the security concerns. and as i said, one of the most attractive things should be the cost and scalability and the agility the cloud is going to be able to provide. maybe not a fair title.

>> robbie stuart? i think one of the key things -- it ever hear me okay? one of the key things that i think everyone is struggling with in terms of this is education. one of the constant struggles with a campaign in a convertible is that when e-commerce comes out everyone is scared to give their credit cards online and give money. and people were saying, oh, only the big eyes, the presidential's and the governors will take money online. now we have a state reps and mayors and aldermen all raising money online 10 years later. so you know, being an industry for 10 years seeing this evolution happened, i think it's a matter of educating and sharing with people that they are doing that. you know, google, just quickly one of the things about their applications, there number three, number one all of us are already using some kind of cloud computer from e-mail perspective. number two, we are using it from

a photo perspective. the third are from apps which is google docs and believe it or not even a dopey. all those applications we are using. and forth, we're using to make video standpoint of an the fifth, the small but i think one of the growing is data. i think that's what microsoft is also looking at from the perspective. this space by 2013 is projected to be about 150 billion-dollar industry in cloud computer. so it makes a lot of sense that everyone is looking at this, this aspect. but at the same point for a campaign perspective, there is no concern. it is just in my opinion a matter of education. >> josh, anything to add? >> yes, real quick. i don't mean to be a downer, but i think addressing these separately, on the cost issue i think by and large when folks are migrating towards the cloud, you are actually achieving lower cost. but this isn't always the case. and i think that, a healthy dose

of skepticism, just because it's in the cloud means it's going to be cheaper is definitely worthwhile. when i work with campaigns across the country and i advise them, just like everything else, you should have a healthy skepticism and make sure that just because it is in the cloud doesn't necessarily mean it's better. i think there are advantages, which we will talk about today. but i think that's an important point. on risk i think there are cases where it may increase risk, but i think there's a lot of cases where it decreases risk. you know, a great example of that is as we talked about, e-mail. i certainly see in campaigns and my time decide to boost their e-mails themselves. this is about the most awful idea i've ever heard in my life. and just having all of your e-mail in the cloud on google labs on something else, significantly decreases risk. and is a far, far, far better i get the likelihood that google is going to lose your e-mail is

a heck of a lot less it than the likely that a server that is sitting in a campaign office somewhere going to die and not happen. so i think it's a little bit complicated, but by and large it does decrease risk and conflict. >> out that you're going to say it was last laugh expect you didn't and that's accurate. i was the one working on this point and you have the first question and we will get to you next after that. i think, people stayed this way often. i meet with customers all the time but i work across government, be with a lot of cios and ceos for a brighter different places. they asked me this way, i really think applause down to the trade off between lower your costs and losing control to some degree. some sense of control. and that's what the trade off the people need to make. what do you want to let go of and get the benefit of this new model. kind of how i have. so let me ring this microphone

down. [inaudible] >> no? >> there you go. >> i think one of the questions i think it's one thing to talk about using clouds are campaigning and one thing different to talk about you being the cloud once you're in government. i know that in open source software one of the issues with clouds that we are summoned upon from the legal perspective is open source places you to do certain things with other peoples code when you're only doing it locally on your machine. and you don't have to share it. we're running into some questions about whether, if

you're doing proprietary things but doing that in the cloud, does that count as we releasing your software back to the wild which could trigger obligations to share that code back with other people. so it strikes me that there are probably similar requirements for government about where you can put your data, which can do with it, you have to share with and who you have to take it away from. i don't know if we have any lawyers in the room but i'm curious about that risk side of it, if there is some arcane legal requirements that might get triggered by this. >> i will make a comment and then i will hand it to whoever wants it. i think this is a case and i think we'll see quite a few of these were the law is not keeping up with the technology, quite frankly. . .

you know, our office along we sent a letter to pelosi and the chief administrative officer asking why skype has been completely walled off for congress. their staff and they aren't allowed to communicate via skype and there's multithousand dollar solutions are being used but many people are using skype.

so why can't we take advantage of this? there's security concerns. okay. well, what are they? let's address them. let's talk to the folks who do it right and talk to the folks at microsoft about the cloud and let's get this figured out. it's just this sort of, you know, new bad issue we run into a lot with folks that have been really embedded in sort of the bureaucratic world for a long time. >> i agree with the comments that were made. i'm not an intellectual property lawyer so i'm not going to tackle open source in the cloud. but it is a good distinction between campaigns and governments and who can use the cloud and where and how seriously you need to look at the security concerns. but we've worked with many government agencies, city governments. state governments. and when you look at an apples to apples comparison what's the risk. there's often i'm moving to the cloud and i bring on board these risks. there's true there are risks to the cloud but you also have to look at the risks that you have and the way you're operating today.

and when people take an honest look and say what are the risks i face the way i run the day and what are my risks in the cloud most of them come out saying i think the cloud mitigates my overall risk. because of the way it's happening. and that's -- some people want to say zero risk today versus x if i hand it over to microsoft and google and let them run some of these things in the cloud. that's really not an accurate way or realistic way to make an amendment. when people make that amendment and it's different across different agencies. such as the dod. what is the real difference in terms of risk that i have in these different places? >> this comes up regularly in my conversations with various customers. i know for a fact it does for you. and i haven't even talked to you about it. and i'm sure it comes up in conversations inside of the walls of those organizations and to rob as well. the thing i tell people regularly is you have to realize -- take security and

privacy. there's a limited set of world class resources. and i mean the people involved that are able to do those -- that kind of work. and you have to do the tradeoff of am i willing to give up the control and take advantage of the fact that a company like google, company like microsoft are out there recruiting the best in the world to do these things. and we're having conversations with various folks, for example, and they brought up the dod in the military. if you would asked two or three years are they ever going to think and the answer from every one of our experts and from theirs and ours not no for a and not no for a long time. they're looking at it because frankly i know the people who are doing this for me. and i've looked at the people and the processes that you have doing it for you. and it's worth having this conversation now. whether or not it's an answer that can be done, there are restrictions that are real in terms of things that you legally can and cannot do. and we think that actually is important to pay attention to. [inaudible]

>> well, i can't read you chapter and verse. what we find they're very different from everyone we talk about. what you have to tease apart what's legally required and organizationally mandated and that's how it is today and people aren't thinking about it. once you tease those apart you get down you can't move that data. it's intel organization can't do that. but you got to get down to the reality versus the perceived reality that exists today. is what i would say. rob, you have something to add with that? >> working with campaigns, the biggest thing who owns the data. that is always the big question. you know, will you sell my data? will you share that? will you monetize that with online? with privacy issues thank that's going to be more important than the intellectual property issues. and i think privacy will be a big key discussion in cloud computing.

in the campaign computing i don't want my data to be shared with someone else because that's going to help me get elected. and campaigns operate under a different female. -- fundamental. they are not focusing on making money they are focusing on winning the election and that crucial component is data. now voter information and that information about who and how they voted also crosses a lot of different state lines and different election commissions. and what can be shared and what cannot be shared. so we're going to enter all new domain here. and there is a paradigm shift and there are rules and laws that have not been written. this conversation is a little bit groundbreaking because of campaigns not in elections but just in the campaign world they're more focused about making sure their opponent doesn't get that data and no one shares that data with someone else and monetizes that. in fact, 90% -- guardner did a study.

>> i think the key to this just like the key of what's going on in congress -- the key to providers is going to be transparency. if we can see what's going on with our data and we can see even, you know, outages and latency issues and things like that. and they give us a window of what's going on. like i said, just like in congress, once we know more about it than everybody should be better off and i think it will ease a lot of folks into that sort of sphere as well. >> i'd just like -- one of the thing you were saying specifically the gpl requirement. can you base any kind of service off of gpl code modified as much as you want. it's when you redistribute software based on gpl code. i'm a lawyer and i can't -- but i know that one very specifically. my question is, in reference to cloud security, now traditionally in information security we rely on defense and depth.

which means don't count on anyone seeking to save you. don't count on authentication. don't count on network acls or firewall rules. don't count on just your antiviris. the definition of security is the absence of unmittable surprise. now, one of the i've been encountering and embracing the cloud is that i have found it nearly impossible to take on any given cloud solution while also exercising a defense and depth strategy. in the case of google i can't see when documents were accessed. i can't see when people logged in and what ips they came in. also i can't limit access on that site versus on a ip range. in the case of utilizing the services like cc2 or any of those, i have no ability to exercise any control over the network. i can't deploy idf.

i can't get net flow. i can't get any of these things that i normally suck into my security information management stuff to get an idea of what's actually going on. in none of these services can i audit anything. in the case of microsoft stuff, i can't even monitor traffic that goes between dms on the same machine. what type of things do you think need to happen in the cloud computing space so that people coming from a security perspective like me will be able to exercise basically the past 20 years of our craft in the cloud? >> where do you work now? >> the center for american progress. >> okay. again, i'm happy to comment if somebody wants to start. >> i had this exact conversation -- my job prior to this was also in our commercial business. and i had this exact conversation with wells fargo and the conversation came from their security folks how can we

ensure that you're up to the latest revs and how do we audit your logs? and the answer frankly you don't for that. and the question is, do you have defense in-depth from the provider you're getting that from or not? and in some cases you've got some restrictions and some things that aren't possible at this point in time, right. will those improve over time. i can't tell you what plans, you know -- various other countries have for various pieces nor am i privy to every product plan that we have. but in terms of the services that we offer that are our business services and that are our paid services those we stand behind and we stand behind our defense in depth strategies. and those you should investigate whether from us or from anyone else for that matter. >> how can i trust your defense in dep in dep in depth when i know 4 out of 5

of you on stage with -- >> how can you trust that we've dealt with it? is that your question. i guess i don't get your question. >> it has been compromised recently. google has been compromised, the house has been compromised, i don't know about the dmz. >> close. [laughter] >> at various points in time -- no, it's fine. and perhaps your organization has not been compromised at any point in time, right? so i'm not sure what your distinction that you're drawing. are there going to be challenges and are is there going to be threats that come up that you got to figure out and readjust and deal with? absolutely there are. and the question is you want to try and recruit those resources in your organization to handle that or do you want to take advantage of the investment that's being made potentially on your behalf to take a service? it's a choice. i'm not saying it's a mandate. [inaudible] >> that's a great question

nor -- >> since i'm the neutral one. [laughter] >> one of the things that we all have to understand our behaviors are completely changing. i don't think anyone here is saying this is 100% et cetera. but a lot of people don't even know that they're using cloud computing. no one even knows they're actually -- 69% of internet users are doing these activities. it has shifted. now, all we've done is stuck a label on it. and now everyone is going and saying how do we do more of this? and there are security issues that are going to be addressed. and one of the biggest fundamentals it is the users that will define to these companies and from a political engagement to what our standards of acceptability will be. and the reason why i say that is because if you look at content, over a period of time, content now has become more believable over the internet. and there's no content verification aspect. and i draw that analogy with the security aspect. election security or campaign security has never been a big priority in the campaigns.

we've had phisching websites that have been up. data has been compromised even in the obama campaign. data was compromised. but no one talks about those activities because it's a matter of establishing trust. we are just in our elementary baby stages of the internet. and in this last decade we are facing new challenges. i think there's a huge business opportunity here. but at the same time, i think that it is the users that will dictate what security parameters will happen neither microsoft or google with their billions of dollars will be able to solve it 100%. but they're a lot better than me trying to hire some i.t. security person in a campaign that is only spending $30,000 for a state rep race in kansas. they just don't have the resources let alone building their website. >> that's a really good point. and certainly for organizations of, you know, dnc size and scale it's a totally different question.

and we've certainly asked a lot of the hard security questions. and i'm not sure there's perfect answers to all of them. in fact, there aren't. but i think that this is a really important distinction to make that we need to look at the -- we need to look at the users here and who are the different users. and what we're capable and the republicans are -- and what cap is capable of is different than what individual campaigns are capable of. i don't mean to bend our security. >> i'll give you a little bit more detailed answer really quickly. one, i think they will have to have a little more option of transparency to give you access to some of the data you want. two, i agree with stan. you're going to have to give up a feeling of a need for control over some of the access to this. we've done that in a lot of other places where we've outsourced. i don't think about the security of the supply of the electricity to my house. i assume that somewhere along the line somebody has done that. i think that's a control and it's a cultural issue and it will take time to change. we need to get better.

we're going to have to make a cultural shift. but i also think we look at a security i.t. standpoint. the biggest security risk for any organization really is usually end-point devices it's substicks and laptops. the number left at lax at a checkpoint and that's a huge security risk especially when you're saying what i'm really worried about is the data that's sitting on that laptop getting in the wrong people's hands. we've all seen that happen. and the cloud moves us to a place i don't have data? my laptop anymore. i had my senior of vice president at google leave his laptop in la guardia on the way to london. he didn't care. he said there's nothing on it because it's all in the cloud. that's a huge paradigm change. we don't have usb clips anymore. that really changes the profile of what we're talking about and many of the most common threats are distinguished greatly in that cloud world even when we're

trying to figure out how to be transparent and work around the network security and more the technical back end pieces as well. you've got to look at that holistically and there's two sides to that conversation. anyway. >> that's a great point is that someone has done that. that's an important factor as consultant to my customers. shouldn't we just continue to tell them this is facts and you guys as the vendors you deal with the cloud part. you make it more affordable for me to sell to my client because i can never imagine any one of my campaigns oh, i really need to get in amazon's cloud account or something like that. perhaps some of those larger entities but doesn't it make life a lot more simpler thinking about cloud computing. >> it's a good question. >> let me try to tackle it a little bit.

i can't imagine any of the congressional campaigns or senate campaigns booting up some ez2 server tomorrow. i'm sure it does happen every once a while. whether it does is a completely different question. i believe there are some services that are cloudier or whatever you want to call it that google apps and this is a huge deal for campaigns. things for botnet.net is a huge deal. one thing we use a ton and i think is very, very exciting is a little company called twilio that is telephoning in the cloud. and so it's things like that that i think is really exciting. and sure, not all campaigns and small organizations will use things like ez2 or 3. but they will use other services. that exist online. don't involve any local storage and save them a lot of time and money. >> the thing i would add is --

when we talk about cloud computing i think of it as the spectrum. sas, the platform is a service. and just trying to make sure people get a common grounding of that so that when they say, hey, i'm taking a sas offering at least enough intellectual stimulation because what's behind that? because that's fairly important. at the end of the day as a consultant, i think, you want to recommend things that you have a fairly sense are going to be robust and they're going to scale if they need to or whatever else they need to do. probably not critical for a small campaign and the decision-makers in that campaign. but something that is important to understand what is it the thing that's built on? to your question about security and in depth. once you kind of understand are or convinced or not convinced as the case may be that a certain offering has what it takes or doesn't have what it takes, that

you can ripple it through that decision path if you need to. >> i think software as a service has been classified as part of cloud -- you know, cloud computing. software as a service, you know, probably has a strong element in our industry because everyone wants to be like president obama's technology platform. everyone wants the same thing but no one is going to -- [laughter] >> i forgot -- [laughter] >> i'm in big trouble because we're nonpartisan. all my republican clients are going to get mad at me. they all want the same infrastructure but they don't want to spend millions of dollars to create it or reduplicate that. software as a service to allow us to have the capability of not only scale which is fundamental to campaigns. as i mentioned in earlier comments but scale in the right time. in your campaigns you might have an issue during the primary that my pique you and you might have a million more people that will visit that website but you're not having to pay those huge

amount of fees for your infrastructure. and then you're able to scale down while -- after the campaign is over. a lot of people forget when we look at edemocracy from a government standpoint it's very easy because government is always in power and it's just a matter who wins to actually stay in power. when you look at a campaign perspective, it's a matter of competition. and so what happens is after the campaign is over, what happens to all that data? what happens to the next election cycle? and no one talks about what has happened in the last 10 years ago. four years ago people would take down their website and start all over again. six years ago people started keeping their websites up. now eight years later people are saying, wait, every day is a campaign. we have to do this all the time. and whether i have now has a strategy where president obama has maintained his campaign platform, he does different messaging from the white house. when we look at softwares of

service i think it's going to be crucial because we have 1.2 million candidates out there who cannot go ahead and spend, you know, even thousands of dollars let alone hundreds of dollars that just would be willing to go ahead and be able to benefit from microsoft live office suites and take advantage of these applications through one gateway on a monthly basis. >> do you have a question? >> i was interested in how cloud computing is dealing with archiving? we heard earlier from the white house website director talking about their archives and sending, you know, over a hard drive and obviously that doesn't work if you're commissioning and decommissioning machines on an as needed business. how are we dealing with archiving at this point in the cloud? >> it's an interesting question.

i think it varies from cloud provider to cloud provider from service to service how this is handled. some of your more infrastructure service kinds of offerings thing like amazon ec2, google and microsoft, it's going to be dependent upon your applications you are building and running. when you get to more of a software is a service solution or the online services at google apps a lot of these are putting solutions in place where you can do much more of what you need to do right in the cloud and have your archive in the cloud as well as your live data in the cloud. that can be hugely beneficial to organizations that are looking to have reliable archives. this is an emerging space and to be honest as a guy who's been talking to companies i get two kind of information security officers. one guy comes to me and says i need to keep everything any person has ever said or done for all time, period. and then i got guys who come to me i love your services but i want to make sure unless i tell

you, everything anybody says or does is gone in 60 days. i don't want to keep anything of it because it becomes discoverable. as a solution that's a set of requirements on both ends. i think there's a lot of discussion going on about what the right detention policies and archive policies are. the guys at the white house have a fairly constrained of requirements they have to follow. campaigns vary from different places. and you'll see solution providers in the cloud have different solutions to allow you to can you say applies and meet your own archiving over time. >> i'll echo first of all i agree with everything he said. you guys must be disappointed we're not disagreeing more. but the reality contextually and conceptually it's the same problem space that we're in. i think what you bring forward is a very interesting distinction that people need to keep in their minds. that is the difference between consumer services and have a certain fit of features and

capabilities that people are getting very used to but have a very different set of abilities than perhaps a service that's been built for a government or an organizational capability that has those requirements. so if i'm using my gmail account, which i don't have or my hot mail account, which i don't have but my daughter has a gmail account, i don't expect the archival capabilities and i wouldn't use it for purposes where i expect it because i happen to know enough not to perhaps. i don't think everybody is educated to that degree and that's part of what we're going through as a society, frankly. when you start to enter into your space and you have those needs and demands, what we call more robust services, probably paid services, not advertising supported and so forth become interesting and necessary even. the business model is different at that point. what you get is different. i think the interesting distinction in this room or in this space if you will the difference between government administration and campaigning. and the things you can take advantage of in one and not

necessarily take advantage in the other and i'll let other folks comment to that. >> it's not a huge concern for us but the library of congress is going to start archiving tweet which i thought was fascinating. i don't have a solution to it, unfortunately. and i don't envy the job as folks in the library of congress have to do. does anybody know how they're going to -- >> i spoke to the gentleman he said it will take him all 15 minutes and that twitter will deliver to them and they're done. >> twitter had to approach them at one point because twitter -- [inaudible] >> right, right. they'll take care of all your data. no, it's obviously a huge concern for government officials and for your requests and all these other kinds of issues. these are things we have to figure out. >> are there other questions from the audience? you have bun back there? -- one back there? okay. i'm going to pose one if we don't have one from the room. i'm curious.

we've got kind of four very different perspectives, five, if you count me. where do you see kind of lost opportunity today? you talked about smaller companies doing some interesting jobs. at the end, josh you have a different perspective. and folks are starting to take advantage of different things. what do you think they're missing today and the follow-on question where do you put yourself forward one cycle from now. where do you envision kind of going forward? anybody want to take that one first? go ahead, josh. >> i think that there's a couple of answers to this. number one, there's a lot of services that are appearing in the cloud. and, you know, companies that existed today didn't exist a couple months ago. we don't know what services we're going to be using in the cloud and hopefully that's good. hopefully people are coming up with new ideas that we could have never thought of a couple months ago. and i suspect if we look forward a couple of years and what

services will we be using in the cloud if i gave you a guess right now, it would probably be a really, really bad guess. with that said i'm going to do that anyway. and there's a couple of things that i think are not totally being optimized and used in a way there's potential for them to be used. and one of them is data processing in the cloud. and i think we're starting to see some companies appearing that do a lot of -- that do a lot of certain data work in the cloud. amazon has tackled that a little bit. and obviously there's a lot of implications for when you're building your applications in the cloud doing a lot of the data work in the cloud as well. but that's something i think that's interesting. second is mapping services and just general geo location stuff. you're starting to see some companies pop up and do some geographical stuff in the cloud. i know that's a very broad spectrum of things. i've seen some interesting companies in the space. and i suspect that we'll see more.

and i think otherwise we'll -- from a campaign's perspective, i think we'll be seeing more services that sort of offer out of box a lot of the things that a campaign would pay someone for. to have, you know, some vendors and thing like that, more sort of sweeps of tools that a campaign can just come to and get this or that that they paid a company to install software or something. >> i think these are challenges that we face are base and scalibility in congress. we have members' websites or committee websites that aren't seen by ten people a day until a bill drops and gets placed on the drudge and they get 3 million page view as day. we feel that's something that a cloud platform or a cloud could adapt to a lot better. i think it's better when we consider things like twitter and

social media before it from the perspective that i'm in, it's just important that we stay informed. and i try to do this every day and get people to be more opened -- or moving towards services like this. we can send taxpayer money better and i'm looking forward to find out more that we could use. >> in 2007, electionmall.com switched to a fast model for online fundraising. we had a lot of push-back. and that someone indicated we never sold it as a fast model. but as a technology firm in our space we realized that campaigns were not going to spend 3, $5,000 on websites and getting a fundraising page with a certificate, branding it, getting merchant id, visa, mastercard, discover putting this together an email system collecting the donor data was something that a lot of candidates were not thinking of knowing how to do.

so we focused on developing a fundraising agenda. we were trying to solve a problem in the space. political participation is of crucial in terms of being able to understand that data is a key component it off helping campaigns win. whether that be donor data, volunteer data or voter data. and being able to maintain those relationships i think are going to be some of the future aspects of what cloud computing will do. only primarily because we start seeing the rise of social networking sites where now, you know, people are using social networking to store their photos and store their comments and with the microblogging of twitter and tomorrow might be ritter, fitter whatever it is. whatever new technology comes out, these behaviors are dictating what companies will do to go ahead and invest new mexico. -- in them. in 2004, we saw howard dean raise money online. '05 we saw the rise of youtube.

'06 we saw the rise of social networking. now '08 we saw the rise of facebook. now in '10 i think we're seeing the impact on what twitter will have on campaigns. and every single, you know, 2 to 4 years in american democracy, we're starting to see changes in which technology is playing a greater and greater role and cloud computing to me is sort of the base fundamental, you know, cement that is holding this whole building together. >> so i'll give you kind of a thematic answer to this. it plays very well. where i've seen very well in this space from an election point of view. we're using facebook, we're using twitter. we're getting stuff that's public facing down in the cloud and taking advantage of that in terms of reaching our electorate. reaching our audience. where i haven't seen us really adopting the cloud in the same way is more of the internal stuff. how do i run? where's my email? where's my document? where's my nonexternal facing stuff and confidential information.

how do i make the campaign or the agency itself work better, not just reach out more to the public world. i think where i anticipate seeing a big growth in the use of the cloud over the coming years. and that's a big change because it not only says i've got a new technology to leverage but enables me to think how i actually run the campaign differently. how can i speed up the way we do press releases or make strategy or figure out media? how do i actually run differently and make different choices based on the capabilities that the cloud brings inside of the organization. and the long run i think -- asking -- looking farther out. i think there's an amazing opportunity for the cloud because when you move to web-based applications, the need for software and laptops and my own laptops disappears, one of the things i'm very excited about from google -- this isn't a sales pitch. we're looking on something chromes and it's nothing but a web browser. you can literally pick up a

laptop and log in and it becomes your laptop. when you log out there's no data left. as a google guy maybe i get on a plane without a laptop and when i get in i walk in and i grab one and i log in and there's my stuff. when i'm done i log out and i hand it back to the tech guy and i get on a plane and i pick up a new one in the next office. i've got full access to all of my content from a mobile device. when you think about what that can mean for your organization that's enormous. and we're not there yet. we're not entirely in the cloud. but as you adopt that cloud model, the capability of having something like that where i just pick up a laptop wherever i go and i access all my content from one of my mobile devices, that really becomes a very real possibility. and that changes the way we think about even the end user infrastructure and the way we think about the end point technologies over the longer term. >> so i'll add something to that and bring up a different perspective as well.

we do think from microsoft's perspective scenarios where that -- what was just discussed there by jeff totally makes sense as well. we think there's scenarios and we heard some concerns from the audience. there's other areas where customers may make decisions to keep control in a different fashion. but moving away from that, i think one of the key things that we're seeing and we'll continue to see a little bit alluding to what robby talked about. is a continuing -- i want to pick the right term, fragmentation of attention i guess is what i'll call it. the place where my kids pay attention today is very different from what i paid attention to as a kid and very different from what my parents paid attention as a kid. and the number of channels they listened to. i don't mean tv channels. different communication channels is expanding just rapidly. hugely. and for a campaign, i think, the ability to communicate to all those channels gets to be a huge, huge task. and i think what we'll see --

and i know what we're thinking strongly about as well. how do you bring those things together and manage them kind of in a coordinated centralized way so that your attention as a campaign staff isn't as fragmented as the channels that your people are out there perhaps listening to that you might want to reach out and touch. how do you target those communications and you talk about advice and online. how do you take the shift that's happening in the budget that a campaign will spend from tv ads, print ads to online advertising. what about mobility? what about on the phone? what about gaming? what about, you know, all the place where is people are. if you can measure their time where they're spending time today, that has shifted radically away from the tv somewhat. not totally. away from print, somewhat, not totally. towards all these other channels and i think figuring out how to manage that -- because i don't expect campaigns to get more staff and to get lots more money necessarily to do what they're doing unless they get a lot better fundraising which could

happen. but that said i think that explosion is going to continue frankly. that problem gets worse from the management side better from the consumption side over time. that's a big trend that i see coming. that i think is going to drive a lot of change. >> actually you brought up a story that a friend told me the other day that i really liked. which was interesting 'cause it's not only different channels that people are listening to but they're expecting interaction. and this is a story about a 4-year-old. and she was with her dad. and they put a "dora the explorer" dvd. and, you know, 5 minutes in the little girl walks up and she looks behind the tv. and the dad thinks this is cute. what is she thinking dora is behind the tv. what are you doing going behind the tv. she says i'm looking for the mouse. because she can't imagine a one way only medium at the age of 4. that says a lot about the coming generation of fragment of media. it's not just about how you reach people but about actually facilitating a discussion and interaction. and that's going to -- maybe not cloud computing directly but

that's a huge shift in the way this generation thinks and more and more people was that way. that was a shocking story to me. i'm looking for the mouse. i want to click something. i want to control where dora goes. i want to have a two-way conversation here. not a one-way i'm going to listen to what you have to say. that's a massive shift in the way people interact with media that we're going to have to adapt to. and i think those that adapt well to it and find a way to facilitate that interaction are going to reap huge benefits from that. >> you know, not just what people expect in their media but what people expect from their government too. that's what we have to look at leveraging right now. it's not i deal every day well, we're using the best tools every day for congress and we want to deal with the best tools available. and so these are the things that we have to think about and what we need to look at right now to make sure that we are, you know, enabling the best sort of back and forth that we have with americans between government officials anymore. it's not just a microphone that we use to blast emails and tweets just going in one direction our youtube videos and that's great.

we won't -- we won't see the same people anymore there if you're not having that conversation and we're not using tools that hopefully will involve the cloud there. you're right. the level of expectation is a lot higher and rises every year. >> well, we happen to hit on five minutes left so we've got a minute each and now i'm going to robert and hold you to your minute. if you have a few last minutes that you want to share. i don't need who goes first but each will have a minute to sum up any points you feel like making. ravi, you look ready. >> you know, from our standpoint at election mall, we invested a lot of time and resources into looking at how this will help campaigns. i'm a political junkie. i was a candidate myself. and i saw the challenges that candidates faced, you know, back in chicago when i was growing up, you know, having a went in 1997 was a big deal.

having an email address was a big deal. and corresponding with people. now in 2010, those are fundamentals. you can't run for office without having a website and email address. so things are changing and cloud computing is part of that evolution. and it's going to be a great revolution for campaigns because it allows some really cost benefits. but at the same time, it is going to take a lot of education. politics 1.0 was all about providing and sharing information. when i ran. politics 2.0 was all about interactivity. and it's nice to see the government is starting to interact more with the citizens. from that perspective. but politics 3.0 is all about metrics and analytics and the ability for us to scale in a way to share this information that we've never even imagined. and this goes beyond the borders of the united states. this goes to every democracy around the world. and if we can go ahead and do that, that's phenomenal. and that's what gets me up every morning.

is that these things could actually increase political participation in every country. my goal is that if we can provide technology that will go ahead and if cloud computing can go ahead and increase from 56.8% to 60%, 75% of americans participating in the next election cycle in 2010, that's fantastic. and so today's cloud computing tomorrow whatever it is. but if it can provide us the scale for political participation, i'm all for it. was that under a minute? >> no. [laughter] >> to echo a lot what's been said today, like ravi said, demand that. and from your representatives. and we're demanding that and we say well, why aren't they ahead of the times a little bit more? that's where you and everyone else and the electorate comes in. these elected officials aren't going to change and listen more until you demand that of them. house republicans are actually going to be employing a large cloud platform as part of the large national effort we're

going to launch in the next few weeks. it's a little early talk about what will be included but the conversation online we hope to be one of the largest that's ever taken place between congress and the american people. and it's up to you guys to make sure that type of thing working and to tell your friends and neighbors and make sure people are participate. if not, then congress is going to continue and lag behind in technology and that's something none of us want. >> i think a couple of parking lot points. -- parting points. i know folks have a little different perspectives here. as a campaigner, as someone who is organizing, i think one of the things we're trying to do two things. number one, we're trying to remove technology as a behindence of organizing. i think this is a really, really important point. and it's very exceptionally relevant for campaigns across the country as campaigns start up. as campaigns go. i can't tell you the number of stories i've heard of a

campaign's email system dying, their internet dying all these problems that should not be hindrances to campaigns. and i know it's relevant to small businesses and a bunch of other type of organizations as well. and i see a lot of where we're going with cloud computing as getting us part of the way there. as getting to a point where you need to spend less money on technology. you need less people who are super technology savvy and, you know, figuring out how to fix a computer but more and more moving to a place where technology gets out of the way a little bit and helps people do the job that they're there to do. but on the other side of that, technology is also helping us do our jobs. and it's letting us organize in new ways that we've never organized before. and this is a really important point. and i think it's obviously not due to cloud computing but a lot of the platforms that are coming up right now, and a lot of the new tools that we're seeing are made so much easier by the fact that they exist in the cloud. as i mentioned before, we're in an environment where we go -- our scale changes radically over

a relatively short period of time. and cloud computing really allows us to scale and not to say we're all the way there. but cloud computing has already changed things in 2008 and beyond. and it will be really interesting to see where it goes from here. >> i guess my parting thoughts probably what i said earlier. i would look at cloud computing and leverage that in two key areas. one how do i reach out to the people i'm trying to communicate with and using a new kind of conversation using these services. and two, how do i better run my internal organization? how do i remove the technology barrier for what we're doing internally? and i'll part with this. i think one of the really amazing things about cloud computing is because it puts massive infrastructure resources in the hands of literally anyone, it removes the differential between the big and the small. you've got the power of a microsoft or a google on the same tools being used by a large organization available at low cost to a very small organization.

and that's a great leveling factor that i think is something people can take advantage of and really leverage. and it's very powerful for anyone. >> so as the moderator i get the last word. but i'll try and use it within our ground rules. and thank you all of you for staying in our ground rules. i hope you guys appreciated it. what i would say is -- to quote from one of our customers. but it probably could be one of your customers as well just as easily, which is you need to be thoughtful and planful about this. to your point about security and what have you. just because it's a new paradigm doesn't mean suddenly the problems that you had go away. it's a different way perhaps to solve the problems. and what the quote is, was don't go out and do this because it's cloud but don't not go out and not do this because it's cloud as well. take a consideration. look at the problem that you're confronted with and determine whether that model makes sense. determine whether that model is better or worse than another model to solve that problem. the other thing i will say is that kind of one theme you hear through here is we're on the

cusp of something. there are some companies who have taken this the whole way, right? early adopters and gone big. but, you know, we've got a lot of folks who are not sure about this as well. and at the end of the day i think it's an education problem, it's a comfort level problem, it's some control and i don't think people will always decide to let that control go or not. and i think as we all kind of get more comfortable and more familiar with it, we'll see other possibilities that come up through this model. so again thanks to these gentlemen for joining us. i really appreciate it. and i thank all of you coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> the senate today approved the treasury undersecretary for international affairs. >> and now from "washington journal" a look at the latest fundraising by both parties. >> ken vogel of politico is talking about fund-raising and campaign 2010. let's take a look at the numbers here. before we get started. according to open seets.org the most run raised for the 2010 senate campaigns has the massachusetts senate race at $25 million. that was for scott brown's seat. pennsylvania comes in second with $23 million. arlen specter running for that seat. florida, $22 million.

nevada, $21 million. connecticut, $20 million. and then we have on the house side the most run raised for 2010 house campaigns, south carolina second district at $6 million. pennsylvania, twelfth district is totaling $5 million so far. minnesota sixth district $4 million. ohio and florida, 13th and 8th districts respectfully coming in at $4 million. those numbers will change. ken, where are we headed for 2010 as to how much a senate seat and a house seat are going to cost this time around? >> guest: we're talking about an expensive election cycle. it's not getting more expensive to run a race in senate where the they have more expensive media markets but also because we're going to see some experts expect unprecedented spending by outside groups, corporations or

nonprofit groups that are incorporated as well as unions facilitated by this recent supreme court decision back in january. citizens united versus federal election commission. the supreme court struck down decades of laws and rules that prohibited corporations and unions from spending money on ads that explicitly support or oppose candidates. and we're already seeing 527 groups, some of these outside groups -- the u.s. chamber of commerce, which is affected by this ruling gear up for extremely expensive, aggressive campaigns that are sort of outside of the direct fundraising that we're seeing here. so candidates are going to feel the pressure to keep up their fundraising so they can compete and answer in some cases. some of the negative attack ads that they're going to be seeing from some of these outside groups. really a combination of factors, a very competitive election cycle historically.

the first midterm election of a president particularly when that president's party controls both chambers of congress is going to be very competitive and expensive election cycle. in this case you have republicans gearing up for what they think are going to be significant gains in both chambers of commerce. combined with that supreme court decision, combined with the escalation in these races is going to make for a very expensive 2010 >> host: before we get to these outside groups, an overview from open secrets.org about fundraising. democrats have raised about $267 million. they've spent about $152 million. and they have cash on hand about $222 million. and republicans in the house, $243 million raised. they've spent $128 million. and they have about $172 million cash on hand. and then democrats in the senate have raised $141 million. $76 million spent. and they have about $116 million cash on hand so far.

and then the republicans, $141 million. same amount as the democrats. they've spent $61 million. a little bit less. and they have the same amount of cash on hand. about $116 million. so what is happening here in the senate with the same amount of fundraising versus the house? >> guest: well, i mean, in the house democrats have long had a edge on cash on hands. we're seeing republicans cut into that just in the first quarter, republicans raised $10 million more than democrats in house races. that is not a whole lot but it is -- it does demonstrate that there is something close to parity at least in a lot of these cases. and frankly that's a little surprising given that it is such -- the factors seem to be sort of alining for republicans to be more energized and to take more advantage of the opportunities in this election cycle. and yet democrats are the most

to keep up with him including the democrat national committee being on par with the national committee which is very committee. the republican has raised the democratic committee, some prognosticators said the problems the chairman michael steele has had and that the republican national committee has had under his tenure for dissuading large donors who do make up an inordinate share of the political fundraising from giving up what they might be giving. however, there are outside groups that are sort of picking up the slack. including the republican governor's association which doesn't follow the republican election commission which is what we're doing when we're talking about fundraising in the first quarter. they follow with the irs as well as some outside efforts that are gearing up to kind of compete a little bit with rnc for republican fundraising supremacy

to be the kind of campaign arm if you will of republicans including the one that's being pushed by karl rove and some very well-connected republican operatives here in washington, d.c. called american crossroads. so these are all things to watch headed into what's going to be again a very expensive election cycle. the first quarter of the election year does tend to be a very important one. there are some initial preliminary judgments that we can make including democrats have done a fairly good job keeping up with republicans. except we should point out in a few key races on the senate side. you mentioned the senate races which are the most expensive and among some of those races, we see republicans substantially outraising democrats including pennsylvania where pat toomey is gearing up with a challenge with arlen specter and florida marco rubio tea party hero has raised $3.5 million in the first

quarter. very impressive for him. massachusetts, you mentioned scott brown did surprisingly well a relatively unknown candidate against a very well-known candidate martha coakley whom he beat. illinois, mark kurt, same thing. these are senate races are we're seeing republicans putting some distances between themselves and their democratic opponents. >> host: if former governor crist wants to be an independent what happens to the money he raised from republicans? >> guest: we saw something similar with arlen specter. when he switched from the republican party to the democratic party, there were calls that his donors, in fact, made to him as part of a concerted campaign organized by the club for growth, i think, a very prominent washington, d.c. political group that reached out to his donors and said, hey, you should request refunds from

arlen specter 'cause you gave this money to him under one pretense and now he switched parties. the trust that you had between the donor and the recipient campaign is broken. in fact, arlen specter did volunteer -- he kind of set himself up for this situation if anyone is offended by this and wants their money back, the club for growth took him up on that and launched a concerted campaign to get his donors to request refunds. it was substantial. in fact, the amount he ended up refunding charlie crist is certainly under no obligation or otherwise to do that. but he might face calls similar to those that arlen specter returned to return some of that money. charlie crist is -- was renowned as sort of a very aggressive successful fundraiser. it's surprising that marco rubio is drawing on his tea party superstar appeal has managed to raise a lot of money from largely out of state to really

outraise charlie crist. however charlie crist runs as an independent it could open up some new fundraising avenues for him. could give rubio a run for his money certainly from the electoral side would be seen is a siphoning off votes from rubirubio >> host: i know you've written about the tea party. what are you seeing as far as are they raising money, organized effort to raise money? are tea party people giving money to candidates? >> guest: well, they certainly are giving. and, you know, some of the tea party groups that have emerged that do have some semblance of an organizational structure, which is somewhat rare in the tea party. this is a very grassroots movement. and one that has not taken kindly to what they see as efforts to kind of co-op or use them to raise money. capitalize on their energy. however, there have been a few groups that have kind of emerged facing some of these questions about whether they are seeking to co-op or capitalize on the movement.

but they have raised substantial sums of money. and had one that directed money to some of these campaigns. so you see some of these tea party activists and organizations saying we were responsible for a large part scott brown's success from out of state. these were tea party folks getting to him. there's no way to determine that definitively. one tea party group whose organization out of sacramento -- it was a pac previously that weighed in in the 2008 presidential campaign on behalf of senator john mccain, his running mate sarah palin against joe biden. they tacked on the name tea party express. they're the group that runs these bus most recently here in washington, d.c., last week for this big rally on tax day. having stops all over the country, they're raising a lot of money. they raised $1.6 million in the first quarter. that's nothing to sniff at. and they're using it both to fund the pac which, of course,

is not uncommon for these pacs to have high overhead and direct a lot of money back to consultants even as that gets a lot of criticism from the press and from opponents. but also to independent expenditure teams including scott brown where they spent around $400,000. they started a big independent expenditure against bart stupak who was key to passing the health care overhaul. he subsequently retired. and he they took a little bit of credit for his retirement. it's unclear how much it had to do with it. they are throwing around money that we really don't see on the normal among tea party groups >> host: we've thrown a lot of numbers out there in the first, you know, 5, 10 minutes of this interview. so let's take a step back. we saw a new pew survey that came out yesterday that only 1 in 5 americans say they can trust their government. so if that's the case, are

individuals giving to campaigns in 2010? and who -- what type of person is giving money? >> guest: it's really -- always a very small universe of people who sort of have both the income as well as the interest to put their money into campaigns. where we see sort of shifts in the paradigm of some of the disparity that we just went through where even as some of these conditions seem wildly different than any other election -- than any recent election cycle, nonetheless there's near parity in a lot of these cases and key races. and when you add it up across-the-board where we see shifts in that is when there is a real uptick of interest because of anger with an administration or a government. or because of the economy tanking as we see now. it's counterintuitive during times of economic struggle there will be more people giving to campaigns but nonetheless it is easier to activate your base and

it is the base who typically gives money when you have something to kind of light the fire under them over. and in this case again it would seem to bode well for republicans that, you know, the economic struggles even as we see the economy sort of showing signs of coming out of it and showing signs of life as well as democrats have controlled both chambers of commerce and the white house, it would seem to bode well for republicans, nonetheless it still is typically that same sort of small universe of people who are giving, that's one of the reasons why the tea party is looked at so lustily by republican operatives here in washington. they see people being mobilized to give monies to campaigns and they are working with them to get them to do that. we saw that with barack obama's presidential campaign where he motivated a large group of previously sort of nondoners or folks who were maybe not even particularly active in politics to give small sums of money to his campaign.

that added up to quite a bit. he raised $750 million for his campaign. a republican would be lucky if they're able to channel either the tea party energy or the anti-incumbent energy or the anti-wall street energy that we see right now out there in the country into a fundraising surge like that. so far we don't really see it >> host: all right. on individual contributions, there are limits from the campaign finance law. 2400 to any candidate per election. 20,000 to any national party per year, party committee per year. and 5,000 to any pac or state or local party per year. tulsa, oklahoma, tom is joining us on the republican air. you're on the air with ken vogel. go ahead. >> caller: i was concerned about the money -- that went from the stimulus bill that went to the unions. do you think it's going to be funded back into the democratics bane? -- campaign? >> guest: it certainly could. that's a concern about republicans.

as i talked about unions as well as corporations are going to have unprecedented flexibility in this election cycle as to how they can spend money. previously unions were limited in sort of who they could communicate with. and how they could communicate. they had to sort of -- most of their sort of general funds as they call them. most of their money, not their political action committee money -- they were limited in using that. they had to use it to communicate exclusively with their own members. now this supreme court decision allows them to use that money to communicate more wildly. -- widely. that could be airing ads or going door to door in a way they previously had to identify that they were going to a union door. now they could conceivably go to every door in a given precinct in a key district, key precinct in a key district and that could make a difference as to whether unions have substantially more money to throw around because of the stimulus, i'm not really sure.

i haven't seen numbers that would suggest that's the case. their dues, you know, they may have an uptick in dues. if they have more members who are employed dealing with the stimulus. i think that's a little extrapolated out. >> host: open secrets.org have a list o top pacs. you can see the national rifle association. the national association of realtors. i'll go through that list as we go to sebastian, florida. on the democratic line, go ahead. >> caller: thank you, greta. kenneth, i looked at the massachusetts race. and you just said $400,000 for the tea parties. the chamber of commerce -- >> i'm so sorry about that, caller. i pushed the wrong button. please call again. we'll try to get you on air. my apologies. robert on the independent line. go ahead. >> caller: good morning, mr. vogel and greta. >> yes.

>> caller: what i have to say is a comment. i hate distortions. i hate lies. and i hate fraud. we've seen a lot of this from the republican party. their follow-up on fox news and everybody keep carrying this. so tell me, is it against the law for fox news and their contributors to be raising money for the republican party? that's all i have to say. >> guest: it's actually not. this is an interesting sort of line of inquiry that we've seen in recent days. pushed by some on the left including media matters. sort of a left-leaning media watchdog that has raised legitimate -- has raised concerns using legitimate numbers about fundraising political action committees that are maintained by fox news contributors. these being folks like newt gingrich or sarah palin who have contracts with fox news to provide commentary.

but who are nonetheless still active in politics raising money to give to republican candidates. raising money -- the more cynical among us raising money to position themselves for their own prospective races in the case of sarah palin and potentially run for the 2012 republican presidential race. there's no federal communication law that would prohibit anything like this. they are commentators. a. something to consider a lot of people during the campaign season they like to -- they like to assert that one side is getting more -- more airtime than another. but the rules that would prohibit that ostensively, this so-called equal time doctrine only applies to broadcast television. not to cable television. the idea being that the public owns the sort of broadcast airwaves that the networks sort of borrow or use. and that, therefore, they are

prohibited from using the airwaves to back a particular candidate. we saw this a little bit when fred thompson the former tennessee senator was actually running for president, for the republican nomination for president in 2008. folks said well, he's an actor, too, and he was on law and order so nbc should be prohibited from running reruns or live shows. i'm not sure if he was actually continuing to be on the program at the time playing the district attorney in new york city. but nonetheless, there were concerns raised that nbc should not air reruns featuring fred thompson of law and order because that would have violate the equal time doctrine. in fact, it turned out that even though there were some questions about whether this actually applied to them, they decided nonetheless to voluntary not air these reruns. and these other networks, however, cable networks that do have contracts or syndication agreements to run law and order

were not summarily obliged and kind of like laughed off a little bit. some of these concerns. and continued to air the reruns because they said the equal time doctrine did not apply to them. i'm not sure if that answers the caller's question but some interesting sort of back-story there. >> host: next phone call, kansas city, missouri. karen, democratic line. >> caller: hi. yes. thank you for c-span. good morning. >> host: good morning, karen. >> caller: the only thing i have a problem with is that i see the tea partiers it should not be fair to a senator like senator mccain why should we vote him in again when he left his campaign to go vote on the bailout. you know, so i think we should just be fair. we should target everybody. everybody.

the democrats and the republicans on this -- ever since they've been in office for the last eight years that's who we should be getting up out of there. i say get rid of all of them in even when they come up for re-elections, democrat or republicans. get rid of all of them >> host: there's two headlines this morning that i want to share from that caller's comments. here's the front page of "usa today." frustrated voters cut ties with de so eshg dems. more people are saying they are independent in key races across the country.

>> host: pushing antiestablishment gop candidates in florida, california and colorado. any idea of the fundraising efforts going on in the battle for funds between these two? >> guest: well, the senate conservatives fund has been a successful political action committee. there's really no way that it could compete with the national republican senatorial committee overall. in terms of fundraising or ability to influence races, sort of writ large. however, because demint is strategically targeting the pac's giving to races in which republican primaries in which there's a more moderate candidate sometimes those who are backed by the mainstream including senator cornyn and the senator senatorial committee and using his funds to further a

challenge to that more moderate candidate including in florida. so we've seen, in fact, efforts of like him who are ideologically simpatico like him have an impact. in fact, the national republican senatorial committee and john cornyn early on threw their support behind -- or at least helped out sort of covers the idea that they were supporting charlie crist the very moderate governor of florida in the gop primary against marco rubio who senator demint supported. senator demint -- his support is the financial support. perhaps to some extent for the senator conservatives fund. but moreover his rhetorical support urging his own backers to support marco rubio ended up really helping marco rubio to the point now where john cornyn is urging charlie crist to get

out of the race. we do see something of a battle for the soul of the republican party. and to get back to the caller's point, it's a good one. it's one that we hear sort of voiced from tea party activists and others around the country, which is that this is not -- that the anti-incumbent sort of tide and sentiment is not limited to opposing democrats. it's also opposing republicans. john mccain as the caller mentioned is no favorite of the tea party movement. in fact, he's largely despised by the tea party movement. and there are several republican candidates -- there are several candidates who are challenging him for the republican nomination for his re-election bid there in arizona. who are seeking to tap into this anti-incumbent energy and raising money to run against him. however, mccain it should be noted has a substantial fundraising edge against them >> host: next phone call comes from washington state. susan on the independent line. go ahead. >> caller: yes. hi. good morning.

i guess what i'd like to say is --. >> host: we're listening, susan. >> caller: down where i live it's 3 to 5 feet of rainfall which sounds kind of mystic. but right now i'm going through remodification, you know, trying to remodify my home loan and hopefully live in it. but to find out how in these past elections from 2000 our votes were stolen in both those elections, 2000, and 2004. but big pharma, anheuser-busch i guess also pays -- helps to pave the way. but then we have like check it out. this fellow alexander wrote i.p. intellectual properties for the fda. yet suddenly he's writing legislative body. it has to do something with disabled people minorities i.e. women trying to maintain their homes >> host: susan, what's your

point? >> caller: well, i'm just trying to figure out -- you know, people are trying to figure out a timeline that it all broke loose in '95. no it was about '95 this dates back to. as the market -- and then pharma is to blame >> host: let's talk about corporations and giving of the corporations under the supreme court ruling. what's going to happen on this. what's the latest on that? >> guest: it's unclear. first of all we should say democrats particularly democrats, at least one republican are sort of scrambling to pass legislation that would dial back to some extent some of the -- some of what the predicted effects of this supreme court decision. and so it's unclear as to whether they'll be able to pass anything in time to really impact the spending headed into the 2010 elections. perhaps they could get something in place passed and implemented in time for the 2012 election.

of course, when barack obama will be up for re-election. however, as it stands right now, there are a number of particularly trade associations not so much corporations that are devising plans to take advantage of this new flexibility court to them by this supreme court decision and where we'll see it most acutely will be from some of these trade associations like the u.s. chamber of commerce as well as some these advocacy groups with vague and ambiguous names association for better choices. or the -- you know, american enterprise fund for new energy. i just kind of made those two up. but nonetheless groups that have a specific policy interest that are funded either by corporations or by other interest groups or by wealthy donors who seek to weigh in and really target a way perhaps not all that much what we've seen in

past elections but with the ability to be more aggressive in explicitly supporting or opposing candidates who they believe have either, you know, run afoul of them in their sort of policy goals or are supportive of them. and so i think it sort of remains unclear we're going to have to pay attention to these going forward and there's a question how much of this new spending will even be reported? what will be required to be reported to the federal election commission? that's one of the concerns that we see being -- advocates for stricter rules are seeking to address in pushing -- in pushing legislation to serve what they say is to close some of the loopholes opened up by the supreme court decision. i have to point out, of course, that advocates for, you know, on the other side of this issue say that the supreme court decision is a big victory for free speech. and it allows corporations and others who were having their free speech rights impinged by these rules to really express

themselves in the election. so there are two sides of this issue. barack obama, the congressional democrats are clearly on the side that holds that this type of spending could be -- have a bad effect on our democracy. having corporate, you know, vast accumulations of corporate wealth, drown out the voices of average voters. and really influence the election in a way that, you know, could be sort of misleading. and we should -- >> you can watch the rest of this "washington journal" segment anytime at c-span.org. back to live coverage of the senate now as members consider judicial nominations f dc associate judgeships. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. alexander: thank you very much. i ask unanimous consent to include in the record following my remarks an article from "the new york post," an article from "newsweek" magazine by george f. will entitled "why america needs nuclear plants." the presiding officer: without objection. mr. alexander: mr. president,

thursday is earth day. actually, it's the 40th anniversary of earth day. and it's a good day to celebrate by creating a national resolve in our country to build 100 new nuclear power plants in the next 20 years which would be the best way to create the largest amount of pollution-free, carbon-free electricity. nuclear power today produces 20% of mechanic's electricity but 70% of all of our carbon-free, pollution-free electricity. during 2009, america's national energy policy looked more like a national windmill policy. the equivalent of going to war in sailboats. if we were going to war, the united states wouldn't think of putting its nuclear navy in mothballs. yet we did mothball our nuclear

construction program, our best weapon against climate change, pollution, and insecurity. although 107 reactors were completed between 1970 and 1990, producing 20% of our electricity today, which as i said is 69% of our carbon-free electricity, the united states has not started a new nuclear plant in 30 years. instead of using our own nuclear power invention to catch up with the rest of the world, president obama in his inaugural address set out on a different path. america would rely upon -- quote -- "the sun, the winds and the soil" -- unquote -- for energy. there was no mention of nuclear power. windmills would produce 20% of our electricity. to achieve this goal, the federal government would commit another $30 billion in subsidies and tax breaks. to date, almost all the subsidies for renewable energy

have gone to windmill developers, many of whom are large banks, corporations, and wealthy individuals. according to the energy information administration, big wind receives an $18.82 subsidy per megawatt hour. 20 times as much -- 25 times as much per megawatt hour as subsidies for our electricity production combined. last year's stimulus bill alone contained $2 billion in windmill subsidies. unfortunately, most of the jobs are being created in spain and china. according to an american university study, nearly 80% of that $2 billion of american taxpayer money went to overseas manufacturers. and despite the billions in subsidies, not much energy is being produced. wind accounts for just 1.3% of america's electricity available only when the wind blows, of

course, since wind can't be stored except in small amounts. conservation groups have begun to worry about what they call the -- quote -- "renewable energy sprawl" -- unquote -- producing 20% of united states electric from wind would cover an area the size of west virginia with 186,000 turbines and require 19,000 miles of new transmission lines. these are not your grandmother's windmills. these turbines are 50 stories high. they artheir flashing lights can for 20 miles. an unbroken line of giant turbines along the appalachian trail except for coastlines, ridgetops are the only place turbines work well inch of the east. but that unbroken line of giant turbines along the appalachian trail would produce mo more

electricity than -- no more electricity than four nuclear reactors on four square miles. and of course you'd still need the reactors for when the wind doesn't blow. there are other ways a national windmill policy also risks destroying the environment in the name of saving the environment. the american bird conservancy estimates that the 25,000 u.s. turbines today kill 75,000 to 275,000 birds per year. imagine what 186,000 turbines would do. one wind farm near oakland, california, estimates that its turbines kill e8 0 golden eagles a year. to be sure, similar concerns about sprawl exist for other forms of renewable energy. for example, it would take continuously foresting an area 1.5 times the size of the great smoky mountain national mark to produce enough electricity from biomass to equal the electricity produced by one nuclear reactor.

and a new solar thermal plant planned for the mojave desert was to cover an area three miles by three miles squared until environmental objections stopped it. so for at least for the next couple of decades, relying on windmills to provide our nation's clean electricity needs would be like wandering off track from your house in virginia through san francisco on the way to the corner grocery store. this unnecessary journey offends the theory of par sin pee designed as don't overcomplicate if a simpler possibility exists. the simpler possibility exists for lots of lower-cost, reliable energy to build 100 nuclear plants. instead of traveling through san francisco on your way to the

corner grocery store, do again what our country did between 1970 and 1990. build 100 reactors on 100 square miles of space, several of them would be on existing reactor sites, compared with 126,000 new square miles needed to produce that much electricity from biomass or the 26,000 square miles needed for wind. unlike wind turbines, 100 new nuclear reactors would require few new transmission lines through suburban bac backyards d pristine open space t would also require less taxpayer subsidy. at current rates of subsidy, taxpayers would shell out about $170 billion to subsidize the 186,000 wind turbines necessary to equal the power of 1 reactors. -- of 100 reactors. while federal government loan guarantees are probably necessary to jump-start the first few reerktz, once we prove that reactors can be built

without delays or huge cost refer runs, no more loan guarantees will be needed. in fact, the tennessee valley authority just finished rebuilding the $1.8 billion browns ferry reactor on time and on budget proving it can still be done. and even if all $54 billion in loan guarantees defaulted, which isn't going to happen, it would still be less than one third of what we're putting into wind. my concern about the unrealistic direction of our national windmill policy led me to give five addresses on clean energy over the last two years. the first delivered at the oak ridge national laboratory in 2508 called for a new manhattan project like the one we had in world war ii but this time for clean energy independence. then a year ago at oak ridge i proposed building 100 new nuclear plants, a goal that all 40 senate republicans adopted along with three other goals: electrifying half our cars and trucks, expanding offshore

exploration for natural gas and oil, and doubling clean energy research and development. my concern during 2009 deepened as members of the obama administration with the conspicuous exception of energy secretary steven chu seemed to develop a stomach ache whenever nuclear power was mentioned. the president himself seemed unable to mention the subject. alast year at a climate change summit in new york city, president obama chided world leaders for not doing more to address climate change. but he didn't mention the words "nuclear power" during his entire speech. ironic because many of the countries he feels lecturing were making plans to build nuclear plants to produce carbon-free electricity. and we -- we were not. climate change was the inconvenient problem, but nuclear power seemed to be the inconvenient solution.

fortunately, with the arrival of 2010 has come a more welcoming environment for nuclear power. in his state of the union address, president obama has called for -- quote -- "a new generation of safe, clean nuclear reactors" -- unquote. his 2011 budget request recommends tripling loan guarantees for the first reactors and in february his administration announced the awarding of the first two loan guarantees for nuclear power. he has selected distinguished members, both for the nuclear regulatory commission and for a new blue-ribbon commission, to figure out the best way to dispose of nuclear fuel -- the best way to dispose of used nuclear fuel. democratic senators have long been supporters of nuclear energy and have joined with the 40 republicans to create bipartisan support. last december, for example, democratic senator jim webb of

virginia, a former navy secretary, and i introduced legislation to double nuclear power production and to accelerate support for alternative forms of clean energy. there seems to be a growing public understanding that nuclear reerkt reactors are safs safe, as other forms of energy production. a nuclear plant is not a bomb. it can't blow up. our sailorses have lived on top of reactors for nearly 60 years without a nuclear incident. no one in the united states has ever been killed in a nuclear accident. and most scientists agree that it is safe to store used nuclear fuel on site for 60 to 80 years, while those scientists figure out how to recycle used fuel in a way that reduces its mass by 97%. reduces itsz radioactive lifetime by 99%, and does allow the isolation of plutonium which

can be dangerous in the wrong hand. in addition, there's growing real decision by those who work -- realization by those who worry about climate change that if americans want to keep consuming one-fourth of the world's electricity and we want it to be low cost and carbon-free, nuclear power is the only answer for now. it's also helped and been a little embarrassing as well that the rest of the world has been teaching americans the lesson that we first taught them. china is starting a new nuclear reactor every three months. france is 80% nuclear and has electricity rates and carbon emissions among the lowest in europe. japan gets 35% of its electricity from nuclear and plans 10 more reactors by 2018. there are 55 new reactors under construction in 14 countries around the world, not one of them in the united states. i believe we must address human causes of climate change, as

well as air pollution that is caused by sulfur, nitrogen and mercury emissions from coal plants. but i also believe in the commonsense theory of parsiminy, don't overcomplicate things if a simpler possibility exists. my formulaer four the simplest way to wit reach the necessary carbon goals for climate change without running jobs overseas in search of cheap energy is this. number one, build 100 nuclear power plants in 20 years. number two, electrify half our cars and trucks in 20 years. if we plug in vehicles at night, we probably would have enough electricity to do this without building one new power plant. number three, explore for more low-carbon natural gas in the oil we still need. and number four, launch mini manhattan projects to develop a low-power battery for electric

cars and solar panels for rooftops that's cost-competitive with other forms of electricity as well as other ways to recycle nuclear power and to recapture carbon from the coal plants. these four steps should produce the largest amount of energy with the smallest amount of spliewtion at the lowest possible cost. thereby avoiding the pain and suffering that comes when high energy costs push jobs overseas and make it hard for many low-income americans to afford heating and cooling bills. mr. president, one day solar and other renewable energy forms will be cheap and efficient enough to provide an important supplement to our energy needs and can do so in a way that minimizes damages to our treasured landscapes. but today, on earth day, as it comes thursday, is a good day to remember that nuclear power beats windmills for america's

green energy future. mr. president, i thank the president. i yield the floor. mr. sessions: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: mr. president, i would thank senator alexander for his remarks. i share that analysis. i think he's exactly correct. and i think it's very, very important for america that we recognize what he has said. but even more important now, since i think the american people overwhelmingly understand and support that, that we take some action that would actually help us get in the game of nuclear power production. i just remain baffled by some of

the generalized kind statements of the administration on nuclear power but lack of action that could move us forward and get us out of this funk we're in, where we're just not doing anything. we've got to start catching up with the countries that are serious about this and will help make us more productive, help create a lot of high-paying jobs in america. clean power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, no emissions into the atmosphere, no co2, just has so many benefits that i'm convinced we need to move forward. but i was to make remarks on another issue, and that's on the nomination of marisa demeo to the d.c. superior court. that's not a nomination that comes through our committee, judiciary committee, as most

federal judges do, because it is a superior court nominee, and it comes, i think, through homeland security, and she's on the docket. it's not a lifetime appointment. but if you're an advocate or a resident of the city, district of columbia, who might have to one day appear before a judge, you do want to know that congress has made certain that once that judge puts on the robe, that he or she is capable of putting aside personal views and applying the law even handedly. one day -- unfair jurisprudence to one party is detrimental and costly and painful, and we immediate to make sure our nominees exercise judgment, objective, fair judgment and not allow their personal politics or ideologies to influence a

decision, their decision-making. so i'm not comfortable enough to say that ms. demeo is capable of doing that. i'm just not. her background and record raise issues with me, and i want to be fair but i think we need to talk about them. the d.c. superior court does have broad jurisdiction. it includes trial matters, civil, criminal, family court, landlord, tenant and so forth. a judge needs to be impartial in all those matters. but ms. demeo's background provides evidence that she may be more political and strong willed personally than impartial. her prior experience includes serving as regional counsel for the mexican american legal defense fund. in this position, she has made a number of troubling statements. for example, she argued that -- quote -- "governments have a

legal obligation to help those who don't speak english well." well, we have an obligation, all of us to, help people who he don't speak english, and i think that's so. but as a judge, i'm wondering does this mean that constitutionally, she's saying that the government has a legal obligation to do that. that seems to be the tone of her statement. during her ten near at maldf, the organization sued the state of texas because high schools did not offer their exit exams in spanish. you don't have to be a lawful citizen of our country to be able to attend the schools of texas, they accept even those unlawfully in the country, but apparently they decided they should do their exit exams in english to get a high school

diploma. she opposed the nomination of miguel estrada, fabulous hispanic nominee. she stated about miguel estrada the following: he had superior academic credentials, a brilliant writer and testified beautifully, i thought, before the judiciary committee. she said this about him -- quote -- "the most difficult situation for an organization like mine is when a president nominates a latino who does not resonate or associate with the latino community and who comes with a predisposition to view claims of racial discrimination and unfair treatment with suspicion and doubt instead of with an open mind." close quote. i don't think that's an accurate description of miguel estrada, who came here as a young man from central america. i don't think that's an accurate description of him.

i'm disappointed that she would make that statement about him. i'm unaware of any provision in the constitution, let me note, which requires that judges show favoritism to one party or another based on their ethnicity. a judge, no matter what their background, racial, ethnic, religious, political, should give everybody before the court the same fair treatment. it's not necessary for a caucasian to hear a case involving caucasians or vice versa, or any ethnic group to be involved. every judge puts on a robe, and that robe symbolizes their absolute commitment to objectivity. after the democrats successfully filibustered mr. estrada, one of the first nominees to be blocked by repeated sustained

filibusters -- this was not too many years ago; less than ten, about seven or eight, and we still have problems now in the senate as a result of the alteration of senate tradition where nominees are filibustered. i try not to do that, but the gang of 14 settled that, saying that filibusters in extraordinary circumstances become now possible. this was after the estrada nomination. she was proud of blocking mr. estrada, bragged about it and said -- quote -- "this shows that just because we have a republican president and a republican senate, it's still possible to defeat candidates who are so conservative that they take us back in civil rights." close quote. well, i disagree with that. i disagree with her analysis of

miguel estrada's position. i saw him testify. i think he would have been a fabulous member of the united states courts. but, you know, being a liberal never having to say you're sorry, what you say about other people. in opposing linda chavez, a wonderful writer and thinker and passionate advocate for civil rights, she stated this in opposing linda chavez -- quote -- "we generally support the nomination of latinos to important positions, but linda chavez could really turn things backward for the latino community." close quote. now, i don't appreciate that. linda chavez wouldn't have turned things back on the latino community. i don't know what she means by that. she went on to say -- quote -- "a spanish-sounding surname does

not make a person sympathetic to the concerns and needs of the majority of the latino population." close quote. and she, therefore, would appear to only embrace the kind of latino nominee that agrees with her politically. not really a question of ethnicity, is it? it's a question of something more, something different; really political approach to government and law. on may 13 of 2004, she participated in a press conference with the coalition against discrimination in the constitution to -- quote -- "challenge extremism of the federal marriage amendment backers." close quote. well, i guess that means i'm an extremist. quite a number of senators, a

majority, as i recall, voted to say that a marriage should remain as it had always previously been interpreted, to be a union between a man and a woman. but she says this is an extremism amendment. i don't think so. i know there's a legal dispute about gay marriage in the district of columbia now. she has already stated where she is on the matter, declaring it a fundamental right. i don't believe that's a fundamental constitutional right for a same-sex union to be declared marriage under the law of the united states. never was for the first 190 years, 170 years existence of this country.

ms. demeo is no friend of immigration enforcement. when the i.n.a. announced they planned to enter into the f.b.i. information intersection a data base of 314,000 individuals who had been ordered deported but who fled and absconded and did not submit themselves for deportation, in an effort to simply comply with the judicial final order, she decried that move. she responded that most of the violators are guilty only of violating civil immigration laws, don't pose a threat to national security. well, i'm not saying they pose a threat to national security. they've come into the country illegally. they somehow became apprehended. maybe they committed some other crime. they were ordered to be deported, and they should be deported. and if they don't show up and abscond, they should be in the ncic, just like anybody that's got a speeding ticket that didn't pay his fine.

she also criticized the government's operation tarmac which identified and ordered the deportation of 600 workers with access to sensitive areas at airports who had violated immigration laws. so we had 600 workers with access at airports with sensitive areas, and they were found to be illegal here and ordered deported. she's an advocate for amnesty openly. i guess we can disagree on that. good people certainly disagree on that. but, she's a big fan also of affirmative action programs, which are the fine line between affirmative action and quotas and mandatory racial preferences. and i fear that she's crossed

that line. during the clinton administration, when energy secretary federico pena announced his resignation, she insisted he be replaced by a latino, indicating that was necessary for latino concerns to receive consideration. well, i think it's all right to ask that that happen. but to demand that and to insist that only a person of your ethnicity can give fairness to your ethnic group, i think, is wrong and goes against fundamental american concepts of law. in a 2000 opinion and editorial for the san diego tribune, mr. mayo fully embraced the concept of dangerous identity politics idea, i think, in my view. she said this -- quote -- "we must create the pressure to move the nominations of paez, who he had been nominated to the federal bench, and other latino nominees. latinos must be appointed in

greater numbers at all levels especially to the appellate courts where most decisions interpreting the constitution and federal laws are ultimately made. without sufficient representation at every level, equal justice for latinos and even the perception of justice will not exist. i think that's an overstatement. it's one thing to advocate, and i respect advocating for more people from groups that appear to be underrepresented. that's a legitimate factor that would play in a nomination. to use that kind of language, i think is dangerous because it suggests fairness is not otherwise obtainable. perhaps ms. demeo can set these aside and be fair on the bench. i think they are extreme in many instances. i just am not certain that

that's so. it appears to me that she's entrenched in a political approach, lifestyle of emphasizing rights for one group or another, and not so much the idea, the american vision of equal rights for everybody. that's the core american principle, that everybody in a court of law is entitled to equal rights and a judge and juries are charged to that effect. and judges put on a robe to show that they're going to be unbias and they're going to follow the law regardless of what their personal views or friendships or so forth might be. so that is my concern and reason i have decided that i would oppose the nomination. i assume she will go on and have her vote soon and will probably

have a majority and be confirmed, but if she is confirmed, i hope judge demeo will think about some of the issues that i've raised here and make sure in her own heart of hearts that when she takes that bench she's not going to favor one party or another based on their religion, their ethnicity, their politics or her personal social agendas, and i believe it's important. i offered some letters. a letter from numbers u.s.a. that said her nomination -- quote -- "would be a setback for the nation in terms of seeking to restore the rule of law in imgraition. -- immigration." the eagle forum has said, a conservative group that's -- that has studied the nomination and has written that her advocacy for issues such as --

quote -- "in state tuition for illegal aliens, the handling of census for purposes of redistricting, photo i.d. voting laws, english only initiatives, amnesty for illegal aliens, affirmative action in traditional marriages are their basis for opposing the nomination. another wrote her bias is so ingrained in so much the main thrust of her career that it is not rational to believe she will suddenly change once confirmed as a judge, it is reasonable to conclude that she will use her position to implicate her own political ideology. close quote. and they go on to say that da do

that her own bias and lack of constitutional knowledge is revealed by her statement that is the constitution is -- quote -- "a flawed document that embodied the historical biases of its time." it's not a perfect document. we all know that. it has been amended since because it did have some provisions that cannot stand historical scrutiny, such as, the question of slavery and equal rights for all americans. but i do think her statement is -- is troubling to me. as a hold, i don't think -- as a whole, i don't think that is a flawed document. it is a document struck off the

man of hands at any given time someone once wrote. the traditional values coalition notes that she has demonstrated a willingness -- quote -- "to undermine our nation's effort to secure our borders against illegal aliens" and make a number of points. others have written. i would enter that into the record. i would hope that our nominee, who i don't have anything personally against, if confirm, and i suspect she will be, will think about these issues, commit herself totally and completely to fair and equal justice to everybody who appears before her and put aside some of the advocacy positions that have marked her sustained efforts during her professional career. i thank the chair and would yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president? mr. sessions: before i leave the floor, i would offer the letters of the concerned women of america, the eagle forum, the members u.s.a. traditional values coalition for the record. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. do: mr. president -- mr. president, i want to spend a few minutes, if i may, this afternoon to talk about our -- the issue that has been the subject of much debate an discussion over the last number of days and that is the financial reform bill that will

be coming to the floor of this body in a matter of days. an issue that is going to confront, as the circumstances presently are -- exist into members having to make a choice. and my hope is that before that occurs, that we can reach some understanding here that will allow us to have a strong bill that ends too big to fail, that protects consumers. builds the kind of architecture for financial services, that allows us to avoid the pitfalls that caused our economy to reach almost near collapse over the last several years. so the choice is going to come down to sort of like this, mr. president. there are people who can vote to to help debate on financial reform legislation that will hold wall street firms, large financial institutions accountable and prevent future economic crisis, like the one which we are just beginning to emerge or basically defeat this

somehow, walk out of this chamber and leave us basically where we've been. and that is highly vulnerable. individuals, families, businesses, the overall economy of our country once again exposed to the kind of vulnerablities that brought so much hardship to our country. or, of course, they can block, as they are apt to do some, listen to some consideration of this bill and leave us in a place -- a broken place with the status quo, which, again, would create the kind of problems i described. so you have to ask yourself a question: who benefits -- who benefits for this bill to rein wall street or large financial institutions is strangled by a filibuster? we end up we can't even get to debate the bill. who benefits from that? certainly no one can make the case that the american family would benefit.

these families have seen millions of jobs lost, trillions in savings wiped out because of the greedy few on wall street gambled with money that didn't even belong to them, causing the hard ship that we've seen in our nation. certainly not the american small businesses, they don't benefit. these are the ones who have seen the flow of credit and capital literally dry up. how many of us in this chamber back in our respective states have talked to small businesses that cannot get a dime worth of credit over the last several years to hire new people, to survive during an economic crisis? anecdote after anecdote after anecdote of businesses desperately trying to find credit in order to survive. because of the unchecked risk taking of financial firms that caused this financial crisis, credit has virtually gone and the american businesses, small businesses particularly, certain will are not benefiting if we're confronted again with the status

quo and a perpetuation of the senate credit rules. certainly, mr. president, not the american community banks, they don't benefit at all. these are the ones who have found it difficult or even impossible to compete on a playing field tilted so heavily towards the largest firms and, frankly, financial firms that are unregulated. wufn the things that our community -- one of the things that our community banks and others -- and i'm not suggesting that they dot every i and cross every t in the bill, but one of the things they're seeking is some consolidation of recommendations, they want to see their competitors who are not subjected to any regulation be subjected to so they will have to face the same set of rules. the bill that i have written along with my colleagues on the banking committee does just that. we done sol date the regulation so that there's not the overlapping jurisdictions that exist and their major competitors, the nonbank

financial institutions are going to be subjected to the same rules that they are. that creates that level playing field that our smaller banks need in order for them to compete effectively. mr. president, certainly not the american taxpayer, they're not going to benefit with the status quo either. these are the people forced to bail out wall street in 2008 and if this bill is blocked, might be asked to do it again. now i'm not in the prediction business, mr. president. but if some future congress goes back to the american public, as we did in the fall of 2008 and ask them to write a check again for $700 billion because we failed to get this legislation through that would end too big to fail, the implicit guarantee that the federal government will bail you out if you're so large or so interconnected that you can't possibly fail, the american people, in my view, would reject overwhelmingly a

request to write another check for that purpose. and our bill, for the first time, writes into legislation an absolute prohibition that the american taxpayer would ever or should ever be asked to do what they did in the fall of 2008. but, mr. president, here's the benefit if this bill is blocked, the same large financial firms that got us into the mess in the first place, they believe, and i presume they're right, that they can bolster their bottomlines if the status quo prevails. they can continue to take outrageous risks, along with using other people's money, knowing that any profit is theirs to keep and any loss will be made up by the american taxpayer. they're the ones. that's why we're faced with this prediction that 41 of our fellow colleagues here will vote against us going to this bill on what they call the motion to proceed to the bill. the letter from the minority

leader has said we've got 41 votes here to stop you from debating this bill. when you explain that to the american taxpayer t, to the smal business to the american family and others out there paying the price because this mess that the american institutions who today are leading the charge against getting to bail, explain to them why the status quo is in their interest and their benefit. mr. president, those who vote to block this bill will be sending a clear message to american families, businesses, community bankers and taxpayers and that message will be, i'm sorry, but we're not on your side. we're choosing another side of this equation. last month my good friend, the minority leader, and the republican senator responsible for campaign fundraising participated and ended up meeting in new york with wall street executives. and that happens all the time.

certainly have right to sit down and talk with people, represent labor and business. we should do that. but nobody knows what was talked about at that meeting when you come back and, again with our friend and colleague, who chairs the campaign committee, comes back right afterwards and all a sudden we get this rhetoric about too big to fail, we can't possibly go to this bill. i was born at night, mr. president, but not last night. born at night, but not last night. don't tell me that miraculously these things happen and awful a sudden we find -- all of a sudden we find themselves with, once again, 41 colleagues, many of whom i suspect are not overly enthusiastic about this game plan and say, don't ask why, don't tell us what's in the bill, just tell us we're going to line up and say no matter what anyone says or does or tries to do, we're going to object to even going to this bill. i firmly believe that there's more than a small minority of my

republican colleagues who, frankly, find that argument objectionable, and that's not to suggest they like this bill or agree with every position in it. but i know them well enough to know that they're sick and tired of being told how you're going to have to vote on a procedural motion on a matter i think deserves at least the support of our colleagues to begin that important debate. and what we do know, of course, about the opposition to going forward is that the republican leadership returned armed with some very false talking points. talking points written by a political strategist with close ties to large financial institutions. talking points that have been debunked by the independent media analysis and even republicans like fdic chairman sheila baird. let me point out, madam president, the memo that suggested this game plan written by the political strategist was written long before even one

word has was written on the bill. they were told how to fight the bill that didn't even exist out here by akiewtion the bill of -- accusing the bill of leaving open the too big to fail, even though they knew, at least those who read the bill, that those provisions had been written so tight that no one could possibly argue that too big to fail would ever be allowed again. the republican leadership in return promising that every member of their caucus would vote to kill this bill before the debate even began. madam president, i know for a fact that members of this body on both sides of the aisle want to pass a good bill. my colleagues here know me well, and they know my reputation over the years. i have never, ever passed a major piece of legislation in this body over three decades when i have not had the cooperation and backing of a member or members on the other side of the aisle, never once.

on every major piece of legislation i have been involved in. and here we are on the brink of going forward with the largest -- the single largest proposal to reform the financial services sector of our country, and we're divided here like a couple of petulant teenagers. instead of sitting around and coming together as i have offered for months to get behind a bill that will allow us to go forward. it's long over due that we grow up and recognize that this isn't some, you know, athletic contest. this is about whether or not our economy can get back on its feet, whether or not we can grow and prosper and create jobs, have credit flow and credit formed so that businesses and wealth can be created. nothing less than that is at stake in this debate and discussion. all the more reason why we need to go forward, and to go forward like adults, like members of the greatest deliberative body we are told over and over again in the history of mankind, the united states senate to resolve these matters. i have worked for hours with my

colleague from alabama, as he well knows, senator shelby, to the point that he has said -- and i commend him for it and i appreciate it very much, that we are 80% of the way to a bipartisan consensus. in fact, i suspect that if richard shelby were asked today whether that number was 80%, i suspect he would even have a higher number. imagine being between 80% and 90% in agreement and yet we're being told by the minority we can't go forward. do we have to write the whole bill? is that how we go forward? you have 80% or 90%, what you think is a good bill, but oh, no, we're going to stop any further debate. in all my years, i have never heard of such an argument, whether i have been in the minority or the majority, that i agree with 80% or 90% of what you have written, senator, but i'm sorry, we are going to have to stop even considering any further debate on the floor of the united states senate. i have worked for many hours with the senator from tennessee, bob corker, to try to get to

hundred% as he well knows. no matter what was said in the meetings between the republican leadership and wall street executives, the fact is that the bill that i will be bringing to the floor reflects not only a bipartisan input but good common sense as well. and if you look at what the bill actually does, it's clear that there is no ideology here, just one principle. hold wall street and large financial institutions accountable so that american families and businesses can grow and thrive without fear of another economic catastrophe. the bill, madam president, creates an early warning system so that for the very first time in our nation's history, someone will be in charge of monitoring our entire financial system to look out for emerging products and practices and problems not just here at home, madam president, but even globally. again, i don't think you would have to have a ph.d. in economics to know that what we read in the headlines and heard on our news shows a few weeks

ago that there were major economic problems in the small nation of greece, that all of a sudden the financial system of every other nation around the world was at risk. and in that small exchange in shanghai, china, began to decline by 12% a few years ago, every other exchange around the globe within hours was adversely affected. that market, that exchange, madam president, represented less than 5% of the volume of the new york stock exchange, and yet because it declined by 12% one morning, every other exchange around the world reacted. what more do i need to say about whether or not our issues here are global in scope, not just domestic? so, again, even further reason why we need to be able to pull together and create this bill that is essential. so we have a warning system in place that will monitor the financial system. as i said, look out for products, practices, and even problems that can emerge in other parts of the world, if

they could pose the kind of risk that would bring our financial system to near collapse. under the status quo, of course, no regulator can see beyond the narrow silo of their own radar screen, and we changed that. this now involves all of these prudential regulators sitting in a systemic risk council, headed up by the federal reserve and the treasury here so they can actually look over the horizon and act as a financial radar system. what's going on out there? are there problems emerging in products or s&p 500 or nations that could bring our country to near financial disaster? if we had had that in place back a few years ago, i would argue we might not find ourselves where we are today. so this is one of our provisions in the bill. what a pity it would be not to lose the opportunity to create that kind of an early warning system. that's how the subprime leading -- lending sector was able to grow so large despite

the dangers it posed to our economy and why no one was able to stop it before it precipitated a crisis. madam president, i don't believe members of the minority caucus really want regulators to be unaware of emerging threats to our financial system. the bill brings new transparency and accountability as well to financial dealings by ensuring that even the most complicated or obscure transactions are concluded in an open marketplace. the presiding officer, of course, is well versed and talented, coming from the empire state understands these issues. we happen to believe, i believe, that driefts, for instance -- that derivatives, for instance, are a very important component to growth and prosperity. they have become a pejorative, unfortunately. but my view has been let the markets work. now, how do the markets work best? markets work best when there is transparency, when buyers and sellers, investors have an

opportunity to see with clarity what these instruments are, what they are designed to do. right now we have a shadow economy where some of these instruments operate in the darkness, and that's one of the problems that created the financial mess we are in. our bill opens up, sheds light, brings sunshine to these instruments so that taxpayers and more importantly investors and others can honestly understand what they are, what they are intended to do and how they can possibly -- how they work. for the first time here, madam president, we would force risky financial companies like bear stearns and lehman brothers that have operated in the shadow of the banking system to be the subject of proper supervision again so we have the ability to understand what they are doing. of course, under the status quo, these dangerous giants that have been free to take enormous gambles in a single-minded quest for maximum profit and when they

go down like the hindenburg, taxpayers are left to clean up the rubble. madam president, i don't believe that members of the minority caucus really want to leave the next lehman brothers unsupervised until its collapse shakes the very foundations of our economy. this bill that i have -- that we have before us beefs up the s.e.c. oversight, it strengthens protections for investors and gives shareholders a greater voice in how executives are compensated and how big their bonuses can get. under the status quo, of course, the same executives whose mismanagement caused the collapse of financial giants get to collect ridiculous bonuses again. kill the bill. there is nothing in here that would preclude the same kind of abuses, the outrageous gouging, if you will, at taxpayer expense by a handful of these executives who fail to understand or if they understand even more outrageously were willing to

reward themselves for their own failures because the american taxpayer shored up their financial institution. and the allen stanfords, bernie madoffs of the world are able to rip off investors for billions while the understaffed and underfunded s.e.c., the securities and exchange commission, fails to stop it. madam president, i don't believe that members of the minority caucus, the republican caucus, really want to leave these executives free to line their pockets with unearned billions or leave investors vulnerable to wall street predators and con artists. that's what's happened, that's what went on. our bill stops it. we need to be able to go forward with this bill. our bill requires full disclosures in plain english, madam president, so that americans can easily understand the risks and returns of any financial product, whether it's a mortgage or a student loan. and our bill creates an independent consumer protection agency, a watchdog with bark and bite to protect consumers from

the abusive practices that have become almost standard operating procedures. skyrocketing credit card interest rates, the explosion in checking account fees, predatory lending by mortgage firms and so much more. and you don't have to educate the american people. you will hear it over and over again from your own constituents. listen to what they have been through with these increased interest rates, interest fees. every gimmick you can think of to pick the pocket of the american taxpayer who today necessarily needs to depend on credit cards in order to make ends meet in their families. of course, under the status quo, madam president, consumers trying to make smart decisions about their family finances are confronted with a sea of fine print, technical jargon, and they are vulnerable to the predatory lenders and the greedy predators that have taken advantage of them. our bill stops that, our bill

puts an end to that. if we don't get the chance to debate this and go forward, that will be the end of it. what a disgrace it will be to be confronted as we were at the outset of this congress with the problems the american taxpayer have been through. 8.5 million jobs lost, seven million homes in foreclosure, retirement accounts evaporated, small businesses failing, and we did nothing to stop it. despite the fact that 80% or 90% of what i have written in this bill is agreed to by many in the minority, but you won't even allow the bill to go forward to be debated. for the life of me, i don't understand that logic. in short, madam president, this bill protects the american consumer, american businesses, community banks. as i mentioned, taxpayers, from the very exact situation that occurred in 2008. an economic crisis brought about by wall street high jinks, large financial institutions and regulatory failures. and our bill creates a stronger foundation, i might add, on

which we can rebuild the prosperity that we have lost in our nation over the last number of years. madam president, i don't believe that members of the republican minority, our friends and colleagues here, want to kill this bill. i don't want to believe that. unlike other matters we have debated over this congress, this matter ought to be one where we can come together, as i have tried to do, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, to craft a piece of legislation that reflected the myriad views embraced by the members of this senate. and we are on the brink of going forward and i will go forward with this bill. now, we can do it one of several different ways. we can go forward and i will bring this bill up. the leader, i'm told, will offer a motion to proceed. my hope is we won't have to have a vote on that, that there would be enough common sense here to say this is a good product, even for those who don't like various provisions of it. and then do what we're supposed to do in this body -- debate,

offer amendments, try to improve the bill based on your own view of what constitutes an improvement. but let's act like the united states senate on a major bill of this import here. instead of just putting on the brakes, don't show up, don't say anything, just vote no, we're not going to debate this until you do exactly as i want you to do. madam president, that's not the senate, and i think the american people expect to see work. my hope is, of course, that i will be right in that and that my colleagues, many of whom i have worked closely with on many, many issues, do not want to be part of a blindless -- or rather a blind, pointless effort here just to walk away from this process. i believe that the -- that they believe, mr. president, that our friends on the other side are caught between the same commonsense principles that led many of them to spend so many hours helping to create this legislation and the political

deals that have led their leadership to demand they help to kill it. mr. president, i have been in this body as i have said a moment ago some 30 years. i have served with many republican colleagues for a long time. i have got great friends. as my colleagues know on the other side of the aisle, people who i believe care as much about this country as any other member does, and they want to be part of answers, solutions. they didn't come here, they didn't fight hard to get here just to say no. they came here because they wanted to be part of the answers. now we can get our country moving again. again, i am charged as a chairman of a committee to try to pull together a bill that represents the different points of view, that listens to our fellow colleagues here in crafting a piece of legislation that can work. i have tried to do that now over many, many months, and i have come to the point where frankly we need to go forward now in this body. i'm confident again if my colleagues will give us the chance, we can achieve the results that they seek.

i'm hopeful that they will when the motion to proceed occurs and then engage in the kind of thoughtful, intelligent debate that this senate has a reputation of achieving and accomplishing. so, madam president, i thank my colleagues for the work they have contributed to so far. let us not take all of that work and dash it on the rocks of procedural filibustering here. we could do better than that, i'm confident we will, and i urge my colleagues to be supportive of these efforts. with tt, madam president, i yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina. a senator: i ask that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. demint: thank you, madam president. i rise in opposition of the nomination of marisa demeo to be a superior court judge in the district of columbia. i do not believe she has enough judicial experience to sit on the d.c. superior court. she's currently serving as a magistrate judge, a position she's held for the past 2 1/2 years. although being a magistrate judge is good training for a superior court judge, two years is not enough for that training. of the 25 magistrate judges in the district of columbia, she is one of the least experienced. 19 of the current d.c. magistrate judges have served for five years or more compared to her 2 1/2. some have served for decades. in fact, only three of her 24

colleagues have served less than miss demeo. looking at her record, i see she has much more experience working as a lobbyist for a special interest group than a magistrate j. she was chief lobbyist for the mexican-american legal defense and education fund, a national latino civil rights organization. from 1997-2004. in this position, she became more well-known for her divisive comments that she made against hispanic republicans than for her legal expertise. she took on a high-profile role opposing president bush's nomination of miguel he i estra, criticizing him in numerous newspaper stories because he did not appear to support her political agenda. during this time, she made personal attacks against him, suggesting he was a traitor to

other hispanics. let me read from a 2003 article from "national review" entitled "dems to miguelest estrada: you're not hispanic enough." miss demeo said "if the senate confirms mr. estrada, his own personal american dream will come true, but the american dreams of the majority of hispanics living in this country will come to an end through his future legal decisions. in another press statement, she said, "the most difficult for an organization like mine is when a president nominates a hispanic who does not associate with the latino community. instead of debating these issues, ms. demeo tried to convince the media, an entire community should think only one way. her way. and that miguel estrada was wrong for thinking anything

otherwise. to me, this sounds like ethnic bullying. it is dangerous and insulting to believe a particular community should think uniformly, and ms. demeo was wrong to do this. madam president, i was not in the senate at the time. however, i have come to work closely with miguel estrada since that time, especially during my work with the honduras crisis. he is a patriotic american and one who gave his own time and energy to help us understand the legal issues facing honduras. i don't doubt for a minute his qualifications to serve on the federal bench. comments by ms. demeo and others questioning mr. estrada's credentials, encouraging the filibuster of his nomination, and accusing him of not being you a thentsically hispanic -- authentically hispanic made the confirmation process painful nor him and his family.

this wasn't the only time ms. demeo advanced this terrible argument. she used this same linedden attack against lane did a chav chavez. ms. demeo was quoted by "the washington post" in january of 2001 saying, "we generally support the nomination of latinos to important positions, but linda chavez could really turn things backwards forbe the latino community. we just really question what kinds of efforts she is going to put into enforcing affirmative action laws." ms. demeo has also attacked those of us in wrong who oppose the amnesty legislation of a couple of years ago saying we were anti-immigrant and not interested in seeing immigrants become full participants in this country. she strongly opposes english as the official language and says the government must accommodate

non-enlish speakers. she was quoted by the associated press in 2003 saying, "governments have a legal obligation to help those who don't speak english." she demands that the census department use sampling to pump up the number of voters in hispanic districts shooch she told national public radio in 2001 that raw census data should not be used because it does not fully represent those minorities communities that were missed by the census. instead, she advocated that less accurate sampling data be used to redraw political districts. ms. di demeo has shown similar disregard for verified information by organize arguing that photo prirmts for voting vieltses the rights of minority voters. she is also an active opponent of affirmative action suggesting that the public that all latinos are in lock step agreement on this issue.

after the supreme court's decision in rudder, demeo said, "all sessions of the latino community supported the continuance of affirmative action." the nation must now also turn and concentrate on ensuring equality of opportunity in our elementary, middle, and high schools. colleges and universities that use race-conscious admissions have made those universities a better place for everyone to learn." ms. demeo has also attacked the definition of "traditional marriage." she is views have led groups like eagle forum, numbers u.s.a., the federation of american immigration reform, english first, concerned women for america, and the traditional values coalition to oppose judge demeo's nomination. madam president, i assume ms. demeo will be confirmed. should f. she does, i will pish wish her well in this new position but i regrettably will

vote "no" on this nomination. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. mr. leahy: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. leahy: madam president, what is the parliamentary situation? the presiding officer: the senate is considering the nomination of madam -- marissa j. demeo. mr. leahy: thank you. i am going to speak on a different matter. today is justice john paul stevens' birthday, and boff boff i couldn't help but think about that and the wonderful conversations i have had with him of late. and his retirement from the supreme court will begin to draw to a close an extraordinary

judicial career spanning four decades, including 35 years of the nation's highest -- on the nation's highest court. madam president, i ask that my statement appear as in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: madam president, it's interesting. justice stevens and i both came to washington in the wake of the watergate scandal in 1975. his confirmation to the supreme court was the first of a dozen supreme court nominations i have considered and voted on in my years in the senate. as a young freshman senator, it was my privilege to support his

confirmation in 1975. incidentally, he was nominated by a republican president, overwhelmingly democratic sena senate. from the time he was nominated until he was confirmed unanimously, it was two and a half weeks. justice stevens is the only sitting justice with active military service during wartime. he is the last justice from the greatest generation. he's never turned away when the nation sought his service. he worked os a navy intelligence officer during world war ii and that earned him a bronze star. justice stevens' uneck and enduring perspective it is irreplaceable. the federal judiciary, indeed, the entire nation, will mississippi principled jurisprudence. today as he marks another milestone with the 1e bracing of

his 90th birthday. i want to mention just a few of his most notable opinions. during my 35 years in the sena senate, i have submitted briefs to the supreme court in only a few cases. the most recent case was very important. it strofd a vermont musician named -- it involved a vermont musician named diana levine. ms. levine -- remember, she is a musician -- she was forced to endure the amputation of her arm after she was injected with a drug to treat nausea. the drug maker failed to include critical information on its warning label that could have saved ms. levine's arm and she ultimately sued the drug maker for this failure. a vermont injury awarded her

damages for the injuries that forever altered her life and career. justice stevens wrote the court's opinion in that important case. he concluded that the food and drug administration approval of a dprug for sale does not prevent that corporation from being held accountable under state consumer protection laws. justice stevens has written important opinions in cases in which the supreme court has upheld the power of congress to pass legislation to protect americans we represent. he's brought to his opinions a keen understanding of the distinct roles set forth in our constitution. for courts and for the democratically elected congress. he's maintained a fer vefnts respect for both. in gonzalez v. raich and tennessee v. lane, justice stevens authored the supreme court's opinions upholding the actions of congress to protect

americans. and i suspect these precedents will be even more important as the supreme court continues to examine laws passed by congress to protect americans from discriminatory health insurance policies and fraudulent wall street practices. justice stevens has also written important decisions involving enforcement of laws duly passed by congress. he authored a powerful opinion for the court, one of the most important environmental protection decisions in recent memory. in massachusetts v. e.p.a., the court concluded that the environmental protection agency had to live up to its name and mission in implementing the clean air act, despite the bush administration's refusal to do so. some of the most important cases decided by this supreme court in the last decade have involved the limits of presidential power

in time of war. justice stevens has left his mark on many of them. his experience serving his country in wartime no doubt contributed to his understanding. as he said earlier, madam president, he is the only member of the supreme court to has served his country in wartime. d. in the military. at their core, these decisions upheld the notion that the rule of law applies even in a time of war, something the founders of this country believed. a decade ago, the supreme court unnecessarily waded into the political thicket to determine the outcome of the 2000 presidential election n a scathing dissent, justice stevens lamented that the decision would damage the court's reputation as impartial. and of course he was right, and it did damage the court's reputation.

he had noted and i quote, "although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. it is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." he was right to speak so critically of what was a blatant political decision. and while the public's memory of that politically charged decision finally began to recede, the supreme court again opened the floodgates issuing its latest election-related decision in the citizens united case. in citizens united, five justices with the stroke of a pen overturned a century of law to permit corporations to overwhelm and distort the democratic process. in what may be his most powerful

dissent, just cities steve -- justice steevessens noted that the courtst ruling threatens to undermine the integ gret of institutions across the nation. the path that is taken will do damage to this institution. i agree with just cities steve innocence both of these dissents. i join him in his concern for the court's reputation. and while it's important -- while i supported his confirmation -- i said before as a very, very junior, very new senator -- i've not always agreed with just cities stevens -- justice stevens. but mice admiration for his service is not based merely on the results of the cases that came before him nor solely on his judgment or his forthrightness. but rather also the manner in which he approached the law and his vigilant concern for public

confidence in our courts. madam president, if we lose that public confidence in our court, we lose one of the greatest mainstays of our democracy. if a society does not have confidence in the integrity and the independence of their courts, there is no way they could maintain a democracy. there is no way they could maintain a check and balance. and i've always respected the way in which justice stevens has conducted himself as a justice and the way he has explained his conclusions. he and i slayer a view of government transparency that's a vital element of our democracy. no one could question justice stevens's integrity nor his dedication to public service. and today i join a grateful nation in wishing justice john paul stevens a very happy 90th

birthday. we're indebted to him for his service. and i hope the next nomination to the supreme court will honor his extraordinary legacy. the law is not a game to be played or a puzzle to be solved. the law is intended to serve the people, protecting the freedom of individuals from the tyranny of government or the mob, and helping to organize our society for the good of all. no justice should substitute his or her personal preferences and overrule congressional efforts to protect hard-working americans pursuant to our constitutional role. i'm looking forward to meeting with president obama tomorrow to discuss his selection of a nominee to succeed justice stevens. then, in also my private

discussions, i will suggest he picks someone who approaches every case with an open mind and commitment to fairness. someone who will heed the inscription above the supreme court which pledges equal justice under law. someone like justice john paul stevens. i ask consent that my whole statement be made part of the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: i note also, madam president, as in morning business that today is equal eqy day. after 16 months of work, professional women today will finally earn what their male counterparts earn, what they did in 12 months of work last year. a shameful gender discrimination is still in our country. i hope we will redouble our efforts to fully close the wage

gap. it is shameful, and i might say it's also illegal that we still have today 46 years since the equal pay act was enacted, where men are paid more than women for the same kind of work. congress passed title 7 of the civil rights act to protect employees against discrimination with respect to compensation because of an individual's race, color, religion, sex or national identity. unfortunately, now a ruling by the supreme court in 2008 meant those who are subject to pay discrimination have no claim to remedies unless a suit is filed no more than 180 days after the pay discrimination first takes place, even if the employer carefully hid that pay discrimination. this ruling eroded

interpretation of discrimination laws. last year the new congress achieved what could not be done before. we enacted the lily led better fair pay act. i was proud to cosponsor that along with senators mikulski, kennedy and others. i actually became the first -- that actually became the first bill president obama signed into law. my me men tow of that is a -- my memento of that is when the president signed that. today women are still paid 70 cents on average for every $1 man makes. that pay gap could mean $4.2 million in lost wages.

it is time to do nationally what vermont did, pass an equal pay act which requires equal skill, effort and responsibility. now in vermont, employers cannot require wage nondisclosure agreements, workers are protected from retaliation from disclosing their own wage. vermont has one of the narrowest wage gaps between women and men. madam president, this is not a democratic or republican issue, but an issue of inherent fairness. we should pass the paycheck fairness act and the fair pay act. let us work towards solutions to ensure that our daughters and those who have them, our granddaughters are not subject to the same discrimination. i ask consent my full statement

be made part of the record. madam president, i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding roll.

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. kaufman: madam president, i ask consent the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: madam president, i ask consent to speak in morning business for up to six minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: madam president, i rise today to speak once more about our nation's great federal

employees. 49 years ago president kennedy stood before congress and offered a bold profession of his faith in american innovation. convening a special joint session to share with the american people his plans for economic recovery and global leadership, president kennedy challenged us to reach the moon in nine years. he reminded us that leading the way in exploring space was essential to leading a vibrant, innovation kph*eu, that the -- economy. that the newly free around the world cult between east and west would draw inspiration from such a difficult mission undertaken by a free people. he challenged us to reach the moon in nine years. we made it there in eight. kennedy called the timeless adage od ospra per ospra, through the stars through rough

times. we look for inspiration beyond the bonds of our farthest frontier. we can choose despite uncertainty to be forward-looking and set lofty goals. that, more than anything, is the mission of those great federal employees who work in the national aeronautic and space administration, nasa. madam president, i was among those called to study engineering in the late 1950's during the years of sputnik and the space race. we benefited not only from the amount of achievement the government is making. but the purpose the space program inspired in all of us. america's reach into space is linked with america tofs training of scientists and mathematicians who will drive our 21st century innovations. and i know there is no one in the senate any more commited to stem education than you, madam chair. that is why i've chosen this week to honor a great federal

employee from nasa who dedicated her career to promoting stem education. dorothy metcalf lindenberger, dottie took an unusual path to space. as a child she was always interested in space exploration. when she lost a trip to space camp, her parents saved up money for her to go. it turned out to be an excellent investment not only in her daughter's future but in the many students she inspired. she pursued her love of science in college where she majored in college. she began teaching in hudson bay high school in vancouver, washington, in 1999. in her five years there as a science teacher, she won awards

for achievement an avid marathon runner, dottie coached the school's cross country team. in 2003 one of her students asked the question that would change her life. the student curiously asked: how do astronauts use the bathroom in space? when dottie went online to research the answer for her student, she discovered on nasa's web site a recruitment call for teachers to join the space program. she jumped at the chance, though it was a long shot. over 8,000 teachers applied. dotty was one of the three who made. it she joined nasa in 2004 and began the rigorous two-year astronaut candidate training. dottie learned how to fly jets and operate complex space shuttles. she undertook scientific and technical briefings, engaged in

physiological training and practiced water and wilderness survivor skills. she works with nasa's education program, helping develop new ways to bring space and stem subjects into the classroom and inspiring girls and boys alike to follow in her footsteps by studying science. when she's not trained to be a mission specialist on the shuttle, running a marathon or singing lead vocals for an astronaut band, she's also inspiring her own daughter. she and her husband jason who is a history teacher have taught their 3-year-old daughter to sing "twinkle, twinkle little star" on april 5th, dottie and the rest of the crew lifted off for a two-week trip to the international space station. her tasks was to oversee the transition of the space station's computer to a new

ethernet. she record add video to help promote robotics, science, and engineering. dottie sees her role as a teacher for all. she and her husband even built a telescope that they brought on summer vacation and wherever they stopped, they would encourage people to look through it at objects like jupiter and the moon. she said wherever we go in our solar system, from a teaching standpoint, i really hoapt students are engage -- hope the students are engaged in learning math and science. we should always try to be a leader in this. madam president, american astronauts like dottie carry out important work. once again we find ourselves as a nation in difficult times just as we were when president kennedy challenged us to look sky word. last week president obama laid, as a future -- a vision for the future of american space and exploration, no matter what

mission, it will be carried out by nasa employees. the outstanding public servants of nasa give flight to our dreams an remind us that in america, when we're willing, there's no impediment to grand achievement. let us look once more in these rough times to the stars, to the limits of space and those who would take us there. let us recommit ourselves to inspiring students such as astronauts like dottie do each day to study science, math, and technology. i hope my colleagues will join me in thanking dorothy medkauf-lindenberg and her crew mates are from sts-31, we welcome them home. they are all truly great federal employees. i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

mr. kaufman: madam president? the presiding officer: yes. mr. kaufman: i ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: i ask that the time be equally divided between the two sides. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: madam president, i ask for the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from hawaii. a senator: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be rescinded. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. akaka: mr. president, i rise today to speak in support of marisa j. demeo to be an associate judge of the district of columbia superior court.

i chaired her nomination hearing before the committee on homeland security and governmental affairs and believe she is very well qualified candidate. since 2007, she has served as a magistrate judge of the d.c. supreme court. prior to that, she was an assistant u.s. attorney for the district of columbia, prosecuting criminals on behalf of the federal government. judge demeo also worked as an attorney for the mexican american legal defense and educational fund, an organization that provides legal services to individuals of hispanic descent. she received her bachelor's degree from princeton university and her ahmadinejed -- and her g.e.d. from the new york university law school. candidates from the d.c. superior court identified with the nonpartisan judicial

nomination commission which sends three names of qualified candidates to the president for his final selection. this process is consist -- has consistently produced excellent nominees for d.c.'s local courts. like others chosen through this process, i believe judge demeo has much to offer the d.c. superior court. judge demeo has a strong record as magistrate judge and has presided over many cases on the busy criminal calendar. my staff spoke with d.c. superior court chief judge satterfield today, and he emphasized how pleased he has been with her performance. judge satterfield said that he could not understand the concerns being raised by judge demeo's impartiality. she has an open record as a magistrate judge, and no one is criticizing her work on the court. the committee also interviewed many of her colleagues during

the nomination process who describe her as fair, having a good temperament and knowledge of the law. judge demeo herself emphasized the importance of fairness, impartiality, integrity and respect for all parties appearing before her during her nomination hearing. in may, 2009, the committee on homeland security and governmental affairs favorably reported her nomination. the committee of jurisdiction clearly considered her to be well qualified because no objections to her nomination were voiced. i was pleased the senate confirmed stuart nash to be an associate judge of d.c. superior court earlier today. however, there remains a critical need to fill vacancies at the court. d.c. superior court is a trial court that hears over 100,000

cases a year. with many judges nearing retirement, it is important to fill empty seats quickly. this need is so great that judge chief satterfield wrote two letters to majority leader reid, asking us to fill these vacancies. judge satterfield described the situation as dire and stated that unfilled vacancies hinder the court's ability to administer justice for the people of washington, d.c. mr. president, i ask that both of these letters be entered into the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. inouye akaka: the committeen homeland security and governmental affairs works quickly to hold its own nomination hearings because we understand what an important role the court plays in the district's legal system. it saddens me that the district's courts and residents ton suffer while a highly

qualified candidate's nomination is slowed. i'm confident that, once confirm, judge demeo will exercise sound and unbiased judgment when ruling on cases before her. she has the education and experience to make valuable contributions to the d.c. superior court bench. i plan to vote in support of judge demeo's nomination and i urge my colleagues to do the same. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent that any remaining time for debate with respect to the demeo nomination be yielded back and the senate now proceed to vote on confirmation of the nomination. further, that upon confirmation, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid on the table, the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the cloture motion with respect to the nomination be withdrawn. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. there is. the question is on the

nomination of marisa j. demeo to be an associate judge of the superior court of the district of columbia. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: are ere y sena in the chamber wishing to vote or change their vote? if not, the yeas are 66, the nays are 326789 the nomination is confirmed. the presiding officer: under the previous oerthe moon to reconsider is considered made and laid on the table. the president will be immediately notified. the cloture motion on the nomination is withdrawn. mr. dorgan: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator north dakota. mr. dorgan: the senate is not in order. the presiding officer: the senate will be in order, please. please move your conversations out of the well and off the floor. please.

the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota. mr. rganmr. esident, the senate is still not in order. the presiding officer: would people please move year conversations out of the senate. the presiding officer: the nator om nor dakota. mr. dorgan: mr. president, i indicated yesterday when i asked unanimous consent on a nomination that i would be back on the floor today at 4:30, so following this vote, i wanted to come to the floor to once again ask unanimous consent -- i told my colleague from louisiana, senator vitter, that i was going to do this. i told him last week what i asked -- when came to speak about this, i said, i don't under any condition come to the floor of the senate to be critical of another senator. that's not something i enjoy doing. in this case, i explained to senator vitter that i was going to be vit cal of something he has -- critical of something he has done, and i felt it

appropriate, and as a matter of courtesy -- mr. president, the senate not in order. the presiding officer: the senate will please be in order. the senator from north dakota. mr. dorgan: mr. president, i felt as a mast courtesy i should -- as a matter of courtesy i should tell my colleague from lewis laws when i was going to do. let me describe the circumstance. it bothers me a lot, and i'm pretty unhappy about it, and so should all of my colleagues be unhappy. there's a man named general michael warble, a soldier who served this country for 30 years. he has served in wartime. i know him. know him fairly well. related to him. don't have -- not related to him. don't have anything more than a professional relationship because i've seen his work in the u.s. army corps of engineers. he was recommended unanimously by the armed services committee. senator levin and senator mccain and the unanimous vote of the armed services committee to be promoted from a one-star ne