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the presiding officer: are there any senators in the chamber wishing to vote or change their vote? there being none, on this vote, the yeas are 76, the nays are 22. three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn have voted in the affirmative. the motion is agreed to. cloture having been invoked, the motion to commit falls as being inconsistent with cloture. mr. reid: mr. president, i raise a germaneness point of order against the pending cantwell-graham amendment. the presiding officer: point of order is well-taken.

the amendment falls. mr. reid: i raise a germaneness point of order against the pending reed of rhode island, landrieu, levin, brown of ohio substitute. the presiding officer: the point of order is well-taken and the amendment falls. mr. reid: i call up amendment number 1884 offered by senators mercury, bennet bennet and othe. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: mr. reid for mr. markly and others proposes amendment numbered 1884. mr. reid: i ask for the yeas and nays on that amendment. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. there is. mr. reid: i now call second-degree amendment -- the presiding officer: the yeas and nays are ordered. mr. reid: thanks, mr. president. i now call up a second-degree amendment number 1931 offered by

senator reed of revment. the clerk: amendment number 1931 to amendment number 1884. mr. reid: mr. president, the bill before this body has had broad bipartisan support, bicameral in nature. the bill we're considering today is the i.p.o. bill, of course. the bill passed by an overwhelming majority. president obama supports it. mr. president, i want everyone to know, the bill is imperfect and that perhaps is an understatement. and what we're trying to do with the amendments offered by merkley and reed is to improve this bill, which has a lot of problems. and these two amendments will go a long ways to correcting that. this is an important piece of legislation, and they're confident that it'll improve innovators' access to capital.

but it isn't perfect, i repeat. and as with any other piece of legislation, there are ways we can improve it. on this bill, there are many ways we can improve t i'm sorry we can't do more. to that end, the senate will consider two germane amendments to this i.p.o. bill that will protect investors and help prevent fraud. the first amendment sponsored by senator merkley and others deals with companies that raise capital online from small investors. this amendment will ensure watchdogs are in lace to protect those small investors and money from fraudulent companies that abuse the institution. people are out there lurking, waiting for ways to cheat. sorry, but it's true. people who are either immoral or amoral look for opportunities to make money and i appreciate very much the work that a number of senators have put into this amendment. research -- it is an important amendment and it is so important to improve this bill.

you'll hear much more this afternoon from the sponsors of this amendment about why it is so important. the second amendment, sponsored by senator reed of rhode island -- all senators have stature, but jack reed with his background, his military background, his experience in the house and the senate samantha we all look for -- in the senate is a man that we all look for for his leadership and guidance. his amendment will stop businesses from gaming the system and avoiding oversight by hiding thousands or maybe tens of thousands of investors. this will stop when this amendment passes. democrats and republicans agree we need to pass the i.p.o. bill to make it easier for companies to grow and hire new workers. but we must do so in way that prevents fraud and abuse. these two amendments will go toward ccomplishing that.

i say to everyone within the sound of my voice, those two amendments are not going to make this bill perfect but it is going make the bill a lot better. while the i.p.o. measure before the senate today is an important piece of legislation, experts agree its impact on job creation is somewhat limited. this legislation is something that's before this body. mr. president, yesterday senate republicans blocked a bill that would create in one year, as it did this year that we're in, 300,000 jobs. it's hard to comprehend, people who sponsored the amendment voted against it. this isn't anything new. i just think that it's such callous disregard for what's fair and what's right. the republican leader has been

talking nonstop about how important it is for congress to continue to create jobs, so i'm disappointed -- and that is an understatement -- that yesterday senate republicans, led by my friend, the republican leader, rejected an opportunity to help american exporters grow and hire. the ex-im bank helps american exporters compete in a global economy and has always enjoyed broad, bipartisan support until this republican minority stepped in to work here. the last time it was offered in 2006 a republican offered it; it got unanimous consent to pass it. this legislation has been going sings the 1930's. -- sings the 1930's. the national association of manufacturers, the chamber of commerce, the business round table, labor unions and all my republican friends explained to the chamber of comerks the national association of

manufacturers, the business round table that not only did they kill this bill but they stopped the deficit from going down by $1 billion. because o the ex-im bank bill reduced deficit by $1 billion. i talked about the republican cosponsors. of course it had republican cosponsors. but in fact my republican colleagues, including many who voted against the amendment yesterday, admit they support the legislation. i had a number of senators come to me and say, we like it. as i said yesterday in my remarks, they're votin voteing t a bill he they say they like. the republican leader said a number of things yesterday but he said he wanted to vote down this worthy proposal because he wants to pass it separately. mr. president, we understand what's going on here. the republican-dominated house of representatives wants to send

over here a hollow shell of the ex-im bank and they will give it to us and say, we have now an ex-im bank bill. but what they have come up with is so foolish -- and that's a good description of it. their offer is hollow. the republicans want to appear to support the ex-im bank, but at the same time they're killing it. but democrats do actually support the ex-im bank, and we've made that very clear to everybody. swreeted accordingly. -- we voted accordingly. we want it to become law. the only way to ensure ex-im bank can continue to help american companies grow and create jobs is for the senate to attach it to this bill and that failed. so yesterday senate republicans had an opportunity to join us to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country over the next many years. that opportunity they passed. so once again they chose to pick

an unnecessary fight. they want to fight over even things they agree with. how do you like that one? they love this bill, but they want to fight about it. our number-one priority is to create jobs and we've shown that. so it's obvious the republicans don't have their priorities straight. but this is something we've had to live with. mr. president, we're going to work with the minority to come up with a time to have a vote. the vote expires around 6:00 tonight. we would hope that we can have -- because there are a number of things going on around here today -- i hope we can have a vote earlier than that. we will do our best to work with the republican leader to try to come up with a vote. we'll have three votes -- merkley, reed, final passage. mr. tester: mr. president, i would ask to speak for up to ten minutes with senator merkley to follow. the presiding officer: without

objection. mr. tester: mr. president, i rise today to speak in strong support of the bill, the camente capital formation bill that we just received cloture on a few minutes ago. in a place where we often get bogged down, this legislation reflects a strong bipartisan commitment to create jobs by ensuring that small businesses have the access to capital that they need. this legislation has tremendous potential to create jobs, to spur economic growth, and innovation. the key component to achieving all of this -- these goals is ensuring that small businesses have access to capital that they need to grow their businesses and create jobs. this legislation is a rare instance in congress where both chambers and both parties come together to focus on this nation's most urgent priority and that is jobs. the president has already expressed his support for it, so let's get this bill done and off for his signature. over the past few years, i've held 12 opportunity business workshops all over the state of

montana. without a doubt, access to capital is always one of the most cri critical issues that i hear. access to capital makes all the difference for a small business. if the money is there, so is the expansion. so is the capacity to do more research and development. so is the next idea. without capital though there is no growth, there is no risk taking and there are no jobs. montana is a state of entrepreneurs. it's a frontier state, has a tradition of self-reliance and is clearly expressed in the entrepreneurs and successful small businesses that have created and grown in this great state. they clearly reflect america's entrepreneurial spirit which helps keep rural america strong and makes our economy the most innovative in the world. our small businesses vary from family farms and ranches and one-man manufacturing shops to innovative biotech companies and cutting-edge information analytic firms. many of these firms have the

opportunity to change the landscape when it comes to diversifying montana's economy. according to the research from the coffman foundation nearly all net jobs created since 1980 have come from firms five years or younger. the role of start u7s in creating jobs has been well documented. but that ability to create jobs is limited if these firms do not have access to financing to scale and to grow their companies. so central to job creation is making sure that investors and capital markets are accessible for startups. because of this potential for growth, need to do all we can to empower these businesses with the tools they need to survive and thrive at every stage of their development. these young companies mabel to access the capital they need to bring innovative ideas and products to the marketplace. back in july i held the first of a series of hearings in the banking committee to examine the challenges tawntsd facing innovative small businesses as

they tried to access capital. a major takeaway from the hearing was the need to ensure that capital markets remain within reach of startups at various stages in their development particularly in the stages before they get ready to go public. a key recommendation offered at the hearing came from boozman, montana. he said we ought to look at updating s.e.c. regulation a to better 2345eub8 small businesses to raise capital through public offerings. the regulation a exemption was created in the securities act of 1933 to provide small companies with an opportunity to raise capital without being subject to full registration with the s.e.c. legasite is developing a norovirus vaccine which will save significant health care costs. to create jobs, those are jobs of the future. working through the f.d.a. approval process is not an easy one. it requires years of hard work,

tens of millions of dollars and can be tough for any company to stick it out for that long for that much money. but for a 1345u8 firm in boozman, moment, it can, especially difficult. access to capital will be the determining factor in their ability to gain f.d.a. approval. in september senator toomey and i introduced the small company capital formation act to update the regulation by increasing the total amount of capital that can be raised to $50 million while protecting new investors. currently, businesses can only raise $5 million under regulation a. a limit that has not been updated in nearly 20 years, and one many view as being too low to be a valuable tool in raising capital. the bill maintains the most attractive elements of regulation a including for issues to test the water before registering with the s.e.c. it also preserves the

nonrestrictive stutt us told through a rega status so they can be resold after a initial offering. new investor protections include a requirement that issuers file an audited statement with the s.e.c. an a requirement included in the legislation i introduced as well as the house bill before us today. the bill directs the s.e.c. to establish additional disclosure requirements and requires issuers to leak trongally file offering statements with the commission. additionally, the bill subjects those offering or selling securities under regulation a to negligence-based liability. and it includes disqualification provisions to prevent bad actors from making offerings in a way inconsistent with dodd-frank. from what some of the folks have said about the house version of regulation a you would assume

none of these protections are included. the bill i introduced with senator toomey is identical to the language included in the house bill, h.r. 3606 that is before us today. the truth is that the substitute amendment that was voted on yesterday made very minor chiengs to the -- changes to the house bill, a adding a study by the s.e.c. five years after implementation of these changes. we should have been able to pass this bill by a voice vote here in the senate since this bill has enjoyed strong bipartisan support in the senate with six bipartisan cosponsors. regardless of that, i am pleased that this balanced bill also enjoyed a 420-1 vote in thousands. imagine that. all but one voting member of the house of representatives agrees on this bill. by note that the s.e.c. recently released information from its forum on small business capital formation increasing the

regulation a exemption to $50 million was one of their top recommendations at this forum. by the way, this is an idea that has been on the s.e.c. small business capital formation recommendations almost every year since 1993, the year after the limit was last raised to $5 million. so the idea that this is some risky new idea is not correct. in fact, at a briefing with the s.e.c. a few weeks ago, s.e.c. lawyers suggested there is absolutely nothing scary about s. 12544 and that they are very comfortable with the existing investor protections included in that bill. the bottom line is i'm thrilled thrilled we will have the opportunity to pass the legislation hopefully very soon and get it to the president's desk. what does this legislation mean for montana? for brett baker, the president and c.e.o. in bozeman, lifting the cap will provide him with broader opportunities to raise capital. instead of worrying about where the next phase of financing will

come from he can focus on discovery and research, using compounds that they discovered to treat treet antibiotic resistant wounds. these changes will will aa compy like microbion to access capital at an earlier stage without diluting their earlier investors. raising capital publicly through regulation a would give folks in bozeman who know about the company an opportunity to share in its success, something that's not possible unless they are accredited investors. more broadly, this legislation is going to provide small businesses in montana's emerging data and biotech industries with new tools, and options to access capital at different stages of development and will provide necessary updates to existing regulations. for example, changes to the s.e.c.'s 500 shareholder rule when companies like investment brokerage in great falls cant

canada continue to provide employees with stock in the company without having to go through a costly and time consuming registration process with the s.e.c. this montana grown company dates back over 75 years and has always believed in rewarding its employees so they can have a stake in the success of the firm which now operates in 16 states. without these changes, a company like d.a. davidson would be faced with the choice of costly public registration or potentially eliminating existing employee shareholders. for a company like rivertop renewablables, this will provide an onramp to go public if that's an option they choose to take one day. rivertop has begun full-scale production on their green biochemical products used in dish washing detergents and de-icer. these changes will ensure rivertop will sister multiple strategies so they can go public at a time that's right for them and take advantage of public

markets and continue commercialization of their products. and for lance at printing dot.com, it will allow him to grow his online ticket printing firm. since 1997 this company has expanding internationally with over 25 employees in bozeman in montana. this bill will ensure that entrepreneurs across the state of montana will have a whole set of new tools at their disposal so they can make smart decisions about their future to develop and expand business. they have more choices, better access to capital markets which should give them more leeway to create and innovate. we've seen ecosystems of support for small businesses like these spring up in montana in virtually every county. obviously the success of these companies has implication on job creation and growth. but there are also tremendous opportunities for innovation. it's not surprising that in montana so many startups have

located near universities at missoula and bozeman. many of them got their start with discoveries in the labs at moment state and the university of montana. with this legislation, the possibilities of endless in montana. for entrepreneurs and innovators across montana and this nation. mr. president, i look forward to voting on this legislation and getting it to the president for his signature. with that i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: i ask unanimous consent at the conclusion of the remarks of senator merkley and senator bennet, i be recognized. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reed: thank you, mr. president.

mr. merkley: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: i rise to speak to amendment 1884. specifically this is the crowd funding amendment, and that might be a term that is new to many. so let me explain. that the internet provides new opportunities for capital to reach small businesses and startup entrepreneurs. and that what this crowd funding amendment does is says when the crowd, that is, all of those who are surfing the internet, go to a funding portal on the internet, a web site, to seek to support a company, to invest in a company, that there is an orderly process that adequately facilitates this type of opportunity while providing fundamental investor protections so that this will be an effective instrument of capital formation. because indeed, if crowd

funding becomes a situation where inaccurate information is put forward, where there is no accountability, where there are pump-and-dump schemes, the reputation of crowd funding will be damaged and the opportunity for capital formation equally affected. this follows on a model already on the internet in some other contexts. for example, you can visit a web site called kickstarter.com and you as an individual can look at a host of concepts that are being put forward for social and artistic activities across this country. and you can say yes, i want to help that artist build that sculpture or so on and so forth. they say how much money they want to raise, and you decide if you want to donate. that is a donation model. or you can go to a web site like prosper.com, or kiva.com and

these are peer-to-peer lending web sites and if you go to prosper.com you'll see a whole list of folks who are saying yes, i want to consolidate my credit cards and i'd like to borrow x amount and interest rate of such and such and here's a little bit of background and you can decide if you want to lend to that individual or not. that's peer-to-peer lending. what crowd funding does is create an equal opportunity for folks to invest in early-stage businesses, startup businesses, small businesses. imagine, for example, that you run into someone in a cafe. they say i have this new idea for a coffee shop, and it's called starbucks. i want to call it starbucks. and wouldn't you like to help me launch this? and you say, well, another coffee shop. i don't know i don't know if the world needs another coffee shop, maybe you don't, and years later you'll say i should have seized that opportunity.

but through a crowd funding portal you get to hear those stories. you get to go and read those stories being presented by folks from across the country about their efforts and you can decide if you want to participate. now, crowd funding is in the larger capital formation bill that comes to us from the house. but that particular formulation is deeply flawed. so i'm going to walk through a series of differences between the house bill and the senate bill, and thus for my colleagues who can understand then why we need to pass amendment 1884. the first factor is that the house bill does not require someone listing themselves or asking for startup money to provide any financial information. that's a huge mistake. if there is no information, there is nothing to guide, if you will, the wisdom of the

crowd. now, what we do in this senate amendment is we create a simplified format. if you're seeking less than $100,000, then your c.e.o. simply certifies what the financials are for the company. if you're seeking $100,000 to $500,000, then you need to have a c.p.a. review the financial statements and if you're seeking more than $500,000, then you need to have audited financial statements. so as the amount of money you're asking for increases, the degree to which you need to do due diligence financially and present the details increases as well. now, there's certainly nothing that would create a particular web site from establishing its own standard above and beyond these particular levels. a second thing is that it is critical that there be

accountability for the accuracy of the information. so the house bill not only doesn't require information, but if you put out information, it -- there's no accountability. basically it's an invitation to spin any story you like. what the senate bill, in order for this capital market to work well, you have to stand behind the accuracy of your informati information. so it has a basic liability accountability; that is, that you as a director or officer of this organization, you are standing behind the accuracy of what you put out. it has a due diligence protection so this is very, very balanced. it has a -- a requirement that the information be relevant or germane to the conduct of the company, so that's another protection for the business itself. so it's balanced between the t two. but this can give investors a basic belief that what is being set up is reasonable amounts of

information proportional to the request and that the services and directors are standing behind this information. that creates the foundation for an effective marketplace. a third distinction between the house bill and our amendment 1884 is the house bill does not require companies to go through an intermediary. in other words, under the house bill, if you want to promote your company, you can simply put out an e-mail and the e-mail can say anything you want because you're not responsible for the accuracy and you can send it to everyone in the world. you can proceed to put up pop-up ads that simply promote your company, again, with no accuracy required. but by creating a internet intermediary and that internet intermediary has to register, would create a streamlined formulation here so that you have a funding portal registration much simpler than a

broker-dealer. but no doing so, you agree that you're not going to take any position on the various investment opportunities you're listing, so you truly are the marketplace. you're not saying that, by the way, that particular offering by that company's a really sweet deal, you can't pump it, you can't favor it. so you're a neutral marketplace, again, enabling the investor to know that they're getting straightforward information, not something that is -- is spun. another distinction is the house bill has no aggregate caps. the result of that is that a person could lose their entire life savings in one fell swoop. the senate bill puts on very reasonable, proportional caps and says if your income is $40,000 or less, your cap is $2,000. between $40,000 and $100,000, your cap is 5% of your annual income.

if you're over $100,000, it's 10%. so it allows for larger amounts of money from those who have much higher incomes but provides basic aggregate cap protection so we don't end up with folks who are on public services because they were swindled out of everything that they had. another key distinction is that under the house bill, you can list your offering and close your offering within a single day, which provides absolutely no feedback loop for any type of detected deception. under the senate bill, we create a three-week period from your listing to your closing so you list your -- your idea. if enough people sign up to -- to reach your funding request level -- say you've requested to raise $600,000. enough people say up and they're donating -- not not donating but investing $100,000 here, $100,000 there, you reach your goal, well, as soon as the 21-day period expires, then you

close. and so that does give time for some sort of feedback loops regarding any sort of fraudulent activity. another distinction is that the house bill allows a company to pay promoters and not disclose it. so this is called pumping. if you've ever seen the movie "boilerroom," you can see a classic pump-and-dump scheme, where a room full of folks on the phone are calling people up, cold calling them, and they're saying, hey, i'm calling you because i'm giving you this incredible investment opportunity and here's the story. and they can say anything they want and, boy, they can talk people into buying that stock. and then the stock is actually being purchased from the folks who own the boilerroom. and then as soon as they sell all the stock they have, they quit making phone calls, the value of the stock drops and everybody who invested loses out. that's a classic boilerroom, that's a classic pump-and-dump. the house bill allows paid promotion with no disclosure.

the senate bill says, if you're going to be, say, getting on the blogs site within a web site portal and saying favorable things about a stock and if you're paid by the company to do it, you have to disclose that. you simply say, hey, i'm employed by such and such but i want to bring to your attention some merits of this. but at least the public knows where you're coming from. another essential issue is the issue of delusion -- dilution. dilution is not a solution in this world. it is a problem. and that is folks who get in on the front end and think, boy, i've got in on this idea early, i'm going to really, really benefit from having made this effort and find out later that a bigger investor comes in and the stock is diluted in a fashion in which you are basically written out of your share of the ownership. and so the senate bill directs the s.e.c. to provide investor protections in this area. so these are key distinctions.

these are the distinctions between a solid foundation for capital formation in this incredibly exciting, new opportunity, new market and simply a path to predatory schemes that the house is providing. that's why i'm encouraging my colleagues today to support the amendment -- the amendment that senator bennet, who will be speaking next, and i have put together, a number of our colleagues have joined us in this, including senator landrieu and senator scott brown. this is a credible foundation for an exciting idea. let me close with this notion. and that is that across america, americans have $17 trillion invested in their retirement accounts. if they were to put 1% of those funds into this type of crowdfunding start-ups, they would be providing $170 billion of investment potential for small companies and start-up companies. that's an incredibly powerful

potential form of capital to put america forward. it's small businesses that create most of the jobs, and this capital formation idea will help in that. let's get it done. and i certainly deeply appreciate the contributions of my colleague from colorado, senator bennet, who will make his points. mr. bennet: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. bennet: mr. president, thank you very much. and i want to recognize the senator from oregon, senator merkley, for his leadership on this issue, for his willingness when times got tough to dig even deeper and make sure we could get to the balanced approach that's reflected in this amendment. it is a bipartisan amendment which around this place i think is worthy of -- of all of us taking a moment to recognize. and it's an amendment that the people that know most about crowdfunding support. and i just wanted to read several paragraphs from -- from some of those folks. from launch is the crowdfunding

platform. they note that the compromise -- quote -- "is important because unlike previous bills, for the first time, we have a senate bill with bipartisan sponsorsh sponsorship, a balance of state oversight and federal uniformity, industry standard investor protections, and workable funding caps." from "the national small business association, "we are that our compromise -- quote -- "would promote entrepreneurship, job creation and economic growth by making it much easier for small companies to raise capital and get new ideas off the grou ground. this legislation represents a reasonable effort to accommodate differing points of view and to move this important idea forward." one prominent investor protection advocate wrote that the crowdfund act addresses this concern by providing a significant regulatory relief to the very small issuers without unreasonably compromising the investor protection provisions on which the federal securities laws are grounded and the long-term success of the u.s. securities markets has been based.

now, the senator from oregon did an excellent job of describing the provisions in this bill so i'm not going to go over that ground again, but i do want to talk for a moment before the senator from -- before i yield to the senator from rhode island about what it is we're trying to solve here. too often i think that we don't ask ourselves here what the nature of the problem is we're trying to solve before we actually set about solving it and then, no surprise, we end up actually making matters worse. in my town halls, the chief concern of the people that come is that median family income has continued to decline in this country. for the first time in this country's history, the middle class is earning less at the end of the decade than they were at the beginning of the decade. that has never happened before in the united states. and so person after person has come and said, you know, michael, i've done what i was supposed to do, i kept working

at my job. nobody said i didn't do a good job, but my wage is actually less in real dollars today than it was at the beginning of the decade. but the cost of health insurance continues to go up, the cost of college. i've had at least half a dozen people say to me that they cannot afford to send their kid to the best college they got into. i can't think of anything that's more of a waste of our productivity than that. and the essential problem that we're facing in this economy is structural. our gross domestic product tod today, believe it or not, mr. president, today, as we stand here, is higher than it was when we went into this recession, the worst recession since the great depression. productivity is also way up. the efficiency with which we're driving that economic growth is way up because we've had to respond to competition from abroad. we can't take anything for granted anymore.

we have employed technology to drive productivity, from the cotton pickers in my wife's hometown to the largest fortune 500 companies that we have. and we've got 23 million or 24 million people that are either unemployed or underemployed in this economy. so the economic output is back but it is decoupled from wages and it has decoupled from job growth. and that was true, mr. president, before we we want into the worst recession. you see, the last period of economic growth in this country's history is the first time that our economy grew and wages fell. that our economy grew and that we lost jobs. it was a decoupling of economic growth from wage growth and from job growth. there's something terribly wrong with that picture and it is creating an enormous downward pressure on the middle class in this country.

and there are two things that it's -- well, there are a bunch of things we need to do but there are two major things i think we need to do. one is we need to educate our people for the 21st century. the worst the unemployment rate ever got for people with a college degree in the worst recession since great depressi depression, the one we just went through, was 4.5%. that's a pretty good stress test, to seems to me, mr. president, of the value of a college education in the 21st century. but as a country today, we hav have -- you know, if you're a child living in poverty, your chances of getting a college degree are 9 in 100. if we don't change the way we educate people in this country, we will continue to see 91 of 100 children living in poverty, constrained to the margin of our economy and the margin of this democracy. that's an important piece of work, mr. president. we have a vital national interest in that and we're not paying enough attention to it here. but the other thing that we have to do is create the conditions

in this country where we are driving innovation and driving job growth here. because the days of just expecting the largest companies in this country to create jobs are over. and the jobs that went away in the 20th century, many of them are not coming back in the 21st century. it's about businesses that are started tomorrow and next week and the week after that and the month after that. and in order to create those sorts of conditions, the amendment that we have presented, this crowdfunding amendment, could unleash billions of dollars, as the senator from oregon said, of local investment, investment on main street, or on someone else's main street through the internet, that could allow people with great, innovative ideas for the first time to raise capital from our middle class and from other people that would like to participate in this kind of new business

venture. this is not all we need to do. there are many things we need to do and i think there are things in this overall bill that we need to fix. but this bipartisan amendment represents a real step forward. and as we look to future, it's the reason why, frankly, we need to do comprehensive tax reform in this congress. it's the reason why we need to fundamentally think differently about our regulations in this congress. and we should be asking ourselves the question: are we more or less likely to be creating jobs here in the united states with rising wages or not? and i think we should put the politics of this aside because there isn't a person in this chamber that doesn't want to do this. we start, though, with a recognition that we have structural issues that we need to resolve. so i hope that everybody that hasn't had a chance to look at the amendment will look at the amendment of i hope people will support this amendment on both sides of the aisle. i'm very pleased that it is

bipartisan with senator merkley and senator brown, and i look forward to voting on this amendment this afternoon. so with that, mr. president, i see the senator from rhode island is here. i thank him for his leadership on this legislation, and i will yield the floor. mr. reed: thank you, mr. president. i want to commend both senator bennet and senator -- the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: thank you, mr. president. i want to commend both senator merkley and senator bennet for their extraordinary work, an indeed in collaboration with senator brown of massachusetts to make significant improvements in the crowdfunding provisions of the house bill. and this, as senator bennet and senator merkley have indicated, represents a potentially a way to raise capital and they have included protections that will ensure that investors are not disadvantaged. it addresses one of the significant issues in the house

bill but frankly not all of the significant issues. there are some extremely glaring, i think, provisions in the house bill that we attempted to address in the reed-landrieu-levin substitute. that substitute did not -- although it received a majority of vote votes, did not receive h to achieve cloture. so we're now considering the house bill. i have an amendment to that house bill that addresses one of several difficulties with the house legislation. it is targeted at the provision that would allow currently reporting companies that are routinely disclosing information to investors to essentially go dark, to stop reporting, to revert to a private status. investors, when they buy stock in public companies, expect routine disclosures. they expect to know on a

quarterly basis and in a very real sense on an annual basis what is the company doing, what are the prospects of the company? all of that goes hand in hand with the widely dispersed ownership of a company. the house version would allow a substantial number of owners, the real owners of the stock, the ones that can vote the stock, that ones that get the dividends, the ones that vote for the -- on the proxies or directly for the leadership of the corporation. it would allow them to go dark. now, this might be appropriate for some companies that have a relatively small base of real oafnls buowners. but the way the house has drafted this legislation, it could open it up to a significant number of large companies and would frustrate the expectation of those investors would assumed they were buying shares in a public company and would be able to follow that company through public reports throughout the course of their ownership.

the securities acts of 1934 and 1933 set up a system that beginning in 1964the s.e.c. required that those companies with record holders of at least 500 -- 500 holders of record -- and at least $10 million in equity securities outstanding would be required to follow the routine reporter requirements under the securities laws. the decision was made that at that point a company does have a size that is adequate and necessary so that they should be disclosing. now, the issue that is motivating the house is this 500-person requirement. it was, as i said, adopted in 1964. there is a sense that that limit

is probably too loavmen low. the house version is 2,000. we make no attempt to change the house limit of 2,000, the new limit. but what we want to make sure is that the individuals that are being counted are not the record holders; they are the real orientation thowners,the benefi. many companies' record holders fall beneath this 500 level. there are many well-known companies that have thousands and thousands of beneficial owners but still they are on their records less than 500 record owners. now, the s.e.c. defines record owners as "each person who is identified as the owner of such securities on the records of the security holders maintained by or on behalf of the issuer."

record ownership is very direct. it is the shareholders who are records as such on the books of the company. but in the case of most public companies, shares for most investors are not usually held of record, but beneficially. this is where the term "beneficial owner" comes from. in such indiana stawnses -- in such instances, the shares are held by someone else. if you buy shares through charles schwab, that discount broker firm would likely serve as the record owner and you'll be the beneficial or in. it is dwriewr your money, you -- it is your mornings you paid for it. it is your vote. it is your right to sell the shares. but as far as the company is concerned, the record owner is the broker. now, i think we've all been familiar and we've all received in the mail a big package of proxy materials from your broker. it is not in many cases directly from the company. it is from the wells fargo

advisors. frit is from schwab advisors. because they are the ones who are the record owners, they distribute the material to beneficial owners. the consequences that for companies that may have very few or relatively few record holders, they have thousands and thousands of beneficial owners. those are the individuals that will lose out if the company decides under the house rule to suddenly go dark, stop public reporting. i think that would trust the expectation of many, many investors. now, as i've caughte i i've ind, most investors do so through intermediaries and as a result they would not necessarily be counted as a record holder. record holders, the brokers, the large entities, are increasingly purely pass-throughs.

they are agents with no economic interest in the company. that is why i believe that beneficial ownership should be the test to whether companies have to report under the exchange act. it should encompass those who have the power to sell and/or the power to vote the shares. they are at the actual shareholders. they're the individuals that management is committed by if i douchfiduciary duties to work f. when we raise this level to 2,000, it is appropriate that we also ensure that it is not simile record holders, it is the beneficial owners, the real owners, for want of another term. now there are also could be for example two identical companies with identical numbers of beneficial owners but they might have different numbers of record holders because of the way the shares are held in a trust or by a broker, et cetera. and one reporting and one not

reporting does not seem to me to be a fair or efficient way to do business. companies have to obtain numbers of owners from banks and brokers in order to be able know how many copies of annual material they have to print. they have to provide the proxy material through the brokerage to the intermediaries. so they know very well, in fact quite precisely their beneficial ownership, their real shareholders. but using this record level as the trigger to go private, to stop public reporting, to me, again, is the wrong approach. now, my amendment would clarify the definition in this new shareholder threshold section of the underlying bill and ensure that companies are not avoiding these public reporting requirements by using a threshold of 2,000 record holders. if they have 2,000 or fewer

beneficial owners. if this is a truly small business that has 1,500 individual share holders, beneficial owners, and they want to go dark, well, that seems to be something that we certainly would continent nance and about -- and with my language, it would be possible. it doesn't frustrate the expectations of the person who buys a share of nationally known stock that's publicly tax rated that gets every quarter -- publicly traded and that gets every quarter the 10-q, the 10-k. and suddenly they don't get anything. they wonder what's going on at the company. i think transparency, information is critical to the success of our capital markets. and i think this legislation will do that. requiring quarterly reporting of firms with large numbers of share holders, real shareholders, beneficial shareholders, protects investors

while at the same time improving market efficiency and transparency. from this information, those individual analysts and brokers who follow companies are able to determine their recommendations, are able to advise clients that you should buy this company; it is a good company. when the company goes dark, that information source dries up, and it's harder -- harder for individuals, brokers, investment advisors to give advice. i think that would not be helpful to the market. in fact, i think it might ironically impede capital formation, not facilitate capital formation. now, there's one important point that has to be stressed. and that my amendment does not affect the employee exemption in the underlying bill. the house bill has a blanket exemption for counting owners of the company for employees. we have reviewed this exemption

in our legislation with eminent experts including professor john coats at harvard law school and he concurs that employees would not be swept up into being counted because they happen to receive compensation through stock in their company. and there are many, many companies -- wawa, weeingmans,m- wegmans who really want to have active participation through stock plans but are private companies, want to remain private and have a relatively small number of beneficial owners. again, my legislation makes no attempt to change the underlying house bill which gives a very broad blanke blanket exception. there ithey do acquire stock onf

of employee. we specifically asked professor coats, one of the experts in securities laws, whether this would inadvertently trigger or inadvertently complicate the beneficial ownership rule. and his opinion is that esops count as one record holder and one beneficial owner because they don't pass through the votes or the right to direct sales. they don't have the characteristics which are typical of the beneficial owner. the right to vote and the right to go ahead and shoot. they maintain those rights. they do not delegate those to the individuals who might be part of the pool. so under professor coats' rue is that esops also would be exempt

from being counted, if you will, as more than one entity. we've also reached out to the securities and exchange commission, and we have received some assurances in talking to meredith cause of the s.e.c. that given their rule making power, they have within the ambit of their power in implementing this legislation the ability to clarify any of these points so that not just employees who receive stock for the employee plan but an esop and other entities that hold stock not on behalf of their investors but have the right, as an entity, such as a venture capital fund or a private equity fund, have the right at that fund level to vote and to direct the sale of the shares and receive the dividends that they, too, would be counted as one entity. professor coats, as said,

believes that this will not affect the venture capital, private equity firm structure which would typically count as one shareholder, whether of record or beneficially. since the d.c. firm or the pee firm does not there is -- or the p.e. firm does not pass through. the same might be said of mutual funds, pension funds, et cetera. the primary that would be counted on behalf of these clients. what we have, i think, is legislation that recognizes the need to increase the number adopted in 1964, but also to recognize that the real owners of companies far exceed in many cases the record owners, and that these real owners depend upon the routine reporting that is required under the securities act so that they can be informed, so that they can

follow their stocks. and indeed, the analysts who look closely at these companies, who make recommendations to buy and sell, also need this type of information. and for this reason, mr. president, we have proposed this amendment. i think it's something that improves the bill. it was included in our substitute which did not receive sufficient votes, 60 votes, to pass cloture, or receive the majority votes in this body. and it's something, i think, again, that will improve this legislation. i would not hesitate to add more improve it as necessary, but certainly this would be an improvement. and with that, mr. president, i would note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming is recognized. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. ii also ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with my republican colleague for up to 30 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. barrasso: earlier today senator durbin called on republican members to give up their federal health care. he makes an interesting argument. but once again democrats in the senate are ignoring history, as the senator did today. ignoring the facts and ignores the democrats' record on this issue. the truth is republicans have already offered in this body to give up their health insurance coverage. in fact, here's the rest of the story. during the debate on the health care law almost two years ago

today, republicans offered to forego their private coverage and instead enroll all members of congress -- all members of congress -- in medicaid, the government's safety net program for low-income individuals. the democrats in this body unanimously rejected this idea. unanimously rejected this idea. every democrat -- every democrat -- voted "no." this was on an amendment by former senator lemieux from florida, an amendment that asked to enroll all members of congress in the medicaid program. yet, at least 50 of the newly covered individuals under the democrats' new law is going to get coverage. these people will get their coverage through medicaid. so the president's solution for health care in this country is to put 50% of the newly covered individuals under medicaid, but yet the democrat members of the united states senate unanimously

sraeted "no -- unanimously voted "no." if democrats believe that medicaid is good enough for the 24 million people they will soon force on to the rolls, my question is why isn't it good enough for the democrat members of congress? so i'm joined today by my colleagues on the floor who continue to raise questions about the health care law and the so many broken praeuplz made by this -- broken promises made by this president. i'm fortunate to be joined by a senior member of the senate finance committee, senator grassley. and i would ask my colleague from iowa, as a senior member of the senate finance committee, you spend a lot of time studying and debating president obama's health care law. my question to you, senator grassley, is do you think that the president's promises match the reality? mr. grassley: the senator from wyoming, definitely not, and

americans are seeing every day that that isn't the case. if i could respond a little bit more in length, i would go back to 1994 and point out a problem that president clinton had, and that in turn president obama tried to avoid about 14 years later. it was in 1994 that the health care reform issue came before the congress, promoted by president clinton at that time, and it failed. and in large part because it fundamentally changed the health care coverage for nearly every american. now we know that the bill that is now law has fundamentally changed. but, president obama in 2009 and throughout his campaign in 2008 decided that he would combat the failure of the clinton administration on health care

reform and not being successful there by repeating over and over tkpwoepb -- again to americans, if you like what you have, you can keep it. it's basically what we heard on at least 47 different times while the bill on health care reform was being debated. we heard that from the president himself. we probably heard it by members of this congress hundreds of times. and while it may have been politically useful to make that promise to the american people, senator barrasso, it remains a promise that he can't keep and he didn't keep. the fact is that millions of americans are seeing changes in their existing health plan due to the health reform law. so basically when the president says if you like what you have, you can keep it, it's not turning out that way, and americans are seeing it every day.

the administration's regulations governing so-called grandfathered health plans will force most firms, and up to 80% of the small business, to give up their current health programs. and that's happening fairly regularly. when those businesses lose grandfather status, they immediately become subject to costly new mandates and increased premiums that follow. so the economics of health care costs and health care insurance dictate that you aren't going to be able to keep what you have, as the president promised. families in 17 states no longer have access to child-only plans as a result of health law. so if you were a voter in 2008 and the president to you, you like what you have, you can keep it. and you wanted only health insurance for your children, you can't do that today in these 17

states. it's not known how many families that lost coverage for their children because of the law have been able to find an affordable replacement. in medicare advantage, that's about 20% of the senior citizens of america, there is a study showing medicare advantage enrollment is going to be cut in half. choices available to seniors are going to be reduced by two-thirds. then there is the open question about americans who receive their health care through large employers. c.b.o. recently released a report that constructed a scenario whereas many as 20 million americans could lose their employer' coverage. and while i acknowledge that the congressional budget office report provided the number i just mentioned as only one plausible scenario, there are many who believe that's a very

plausible. so, senator barrasso, 47 times, just while we were debating it -- i don't know how many times during the campaign -- this president said if you like what you have, you can keep it. it's a promise that was not kept. mr. barrasso: it's interesting, i say to my colleague from iowa, that we take a look at this and so many promises. that reflects one specific promise: if you like what you have, you can keep it. i practiced orthopedic surgery for 25 years, taking care of families in wyoming. many of those families include family members who are on medicare, the program for our seniors. senator grassley has made some reference in his -- in the earlier comments about seniors, people who are on medicare, people who are having a harder time finding a doctor. and this health care law clearly had an impact on seniors as well. i ask my colleague from iowa,

are there specific things that you've been hearing as you travel around the state visiting with folks, at home, in terms of perhaps promises made to seniors and those broken programs with regard to medicare? mr. grassley: that's not only a promise that' been broken, it's a promise that is easy to qualify. the president said on july 29, 2009, during the consideration of this health care reform law, the president said -- quote -- "medicare is a government program. but don't worry, i'm not going to touch it." end of quote. so let's take a look at the health care law and see if that promise was kept. the health care law made significant cuts in medicare programs. and this is what you can quantify in dollars and cents. on april 22, 2010, the chief actuary of medicare analyzed the

law and found it would cut medicare by $575 billion over ten years. the president said about medicare, as i told you, "i'm not going to touch it." but the president has touched it in a big way. $575 billion out of medicare. and that's -- when medicare is on a path to go broke by 2021. $575 billion isn't going to guarantee medicare for everybody in the future. we've got to reforeman and change medicare if that promise is going to be kept. and we all want to do that. but the president has made that more difficult. the congressional budget office wrote that over $500 billion in medicare reductions would -- quote -- "would not enhance the ability of the government to pay future medicare benefits." and you know what the president

has said during the debate on this bill? i'm not going to touch it. but he has touched it in a big way. the chief actuary had this to say about the medicare reductions -- quote -- "providers, meaning hospitals, doctors, providers for whom compare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable, and absent legislative intervention might end their participation in the program." so not only touching it in $500 billion-something, but also touching it in a way of limiting access for senior citizens of america, when the president said "i'm not going to touch it," he misled the american people. the c.m. actuary said in essence these cuts could drive providers from the medicare program. and i have a hard time to understand how these massive cuts to medicare count as

somehow i'm not going to touch medicare. on the other hand, the biggest problem facing medicare in the near term is a if i -- is the physicians payment update problem that could have been addressed in the reform bill and you know what? it wasn't addressed. of course nothing was done about it. perhaps that's whaet wha*t president -- what the president said when he said about medicare, i'm not going to touch it. mr. barrasso: that clearly points out to the people around the country what they know, if they are on medicare, that it is that much more challenging for them to even find a doctor because of the $500 billion of cuts to medicare. and not to save medicare, not to strengthen medicare, but to start a whole new government program for other people. so those are several of the promises that the president made. we just heard from my colleague from iowa that if you like what you have, you can keep it, and we know that promise has been

broken, and now the promises about the president is i will protect medicare, which is clearly not the case, as the american people have seen, which is why this health care law is even more unpopular today than it was when it was passed. but thinking back to the time it was passed, the senator from missouri who is joining us on the floor, senator blunt, was very actively involved in the debate and the discussions in pointing out the concerns that people at home in his home state had with regard to the health care law and the objections that he heard. and my recollection is that there was even an issue on the ballot about the health care law and mandates and issues. so i would ask my friend and colleague from missouri if there are things that he would like to add in to help with this discussion of the broken promises of the obama health care law. mr. blunt: well, doctor, i thank you for your leadership on this

issue during the debate of the health care law itself and right now on the second anniversary of it being signed into law. certainly, missouri voters were the first voters that went to the polling place and registered their view of this, which as i recall it was like 72% said no, we don't want to be part of it. now, the national number on approval appears to be catching up with that. the famous comment that was made on the other side of the building by the speaker, we will know what's in the bill once we pass it, has proven to be very true and not very positive from the point of view of that bill. and it was -- the promises that you and senator grassley have talked about already, the promise not to touch medicare, the promise that if you like what you can have, you can keep it, and surely nobody can say that with a straight face anymore. and the promise that there wouldn't be a mandate during the campaign. you know, four years ago, this was the big division between the two principal candidates for the nomination on that side.

senator obama's view was there would be no mandate, there is no need for a mandate. in fact, at one point he said that having a mandate would be like solving homelessness by mandating that everybody buy a house. now, that's not my quote. that was president obama's quote when he was senator obama. having a mandate on health care would be like solving the housing problem by saying that we're going to require that everybody buy a house. these -- this plan does not work, it doesn't come together. the parts of the plan that were supposed to pay for the plan are one by one being discarded. remember, senators, the class act, the so-called class act, the long-term care act which technically i guess would have produced some money because you collected money the first ten years, the ten years you're counting the money, and you're not allowed to spend any of it for the first ten years. so sure, that would be a net income to the federal government. you're not spending anything,

everything is coming in. but even the secretary of health and human services said what many of us said at the time, this plan won't work, so we're not even going to collect the money because we know that it won't -- that there is no way this particular structure will do what it's supposed to do. so it's just one broken promise after another, one set of things that the more the american people look at it, they realize that this just doesn't add up. and not only does it not add up financially, it doesn't add up to better health care. we're going to see lots of people. the congressional budget office recently estimated that i think 20 million people that get insurance now at work would lose that insurance at work once this goes into effect, and that was not a calculation in the original bill. everybody was calculating at least that anybody who has insurance now would keep -- their employer would continue to pay for it. 20 million of them apparently,

that's not going to be the case. you know, i would go back to you on that topic of just what employers are going to have to decide to do once they are faced with this new mandated policy that covers not what they think they can afford but whatever some government official decides is the perfect policy for all americans. now, imagine that. the perfect policy for all americans. one size fits all almost always means that one size doesn't fit anybody. but this perfect policy and these employers that's now understood in many cases are just going to take the option. we'll pay the penalty that's less than we are paying now for insurance, and we will have to require our employees to go get their insurance in a subsidized exchange, which means taxpayers are helping buy insurance for people that today the employers are buying insurance for at the rate of at least 20 million and i think that number will be a lot higher than that, senator.

mr. barrasso: it does seem that way to me with the fact that two years out, senator coburn and i put together a report on what we're finding, a checkup on the federal health law, and the title is -- "warning, side effects" because there are huge side effects from the health care law. the four that we have written out on the prescription pad as we see it as the prescription pad handed out by president obama, number one is fewer choices. number two, we have higher taxes. number three, more government. and four is less innovation. that's what the american people are seeing of the side effects of this health care law, thanks this they don't want. they don't want fewer choices. they want more choices. people don't want higher taxes. they want lower taxes. they don't want more government. they want less government. they don't want less innovation. they want more innovation. that's what the american people ask for. there was a reason to do health care reform because people

wanted the care that they need from a doctor they want at a cost they can afford. and i know that's what my colleague from iowa sees when he goes home every weekend and talks to people in his home communities. mr. grassley: could i add one thing at this point? we don't really know how bad this bill is yet -- or this law is yet, and i'm going to add something to what senator blunt said when you quoted the speaker of the house saying we don't really know what's in this bill. you're going to have to pass it to find out what's in it. that's what had you to say to get a majority vote even of her own party to get it through the house of representatives. but in a sense, she is right. you can read every -- you can understand every letter of this law, but it has 1,693 delegations of authority for the secretary to write regulations, and until they are written, you aren't really going to know what's in it. and you remember the accountable care organization rules that came out. six pages out of 2,700 in the

bill dealt with accountable care organizations, but the first regulations that were written were 350 pages long. so we really don't know what -- how bad this legislation is maybe for a few years down the road, and hopefully we never get that far down the road. mr. barrasso: and my understanding from the accountable care organization component of this is that the very health programs that the accountable care organizations were referred to, the ones that the president held up as the models across the country -- and one was in utah, one was guizinger in pennsylvania, i believe the mayo clinic may have been a third. once all of those pages of regulations came out, the programs that the president says this is the model that we want to follow, they all said we can't comply with these regulations. they are too stringent, they are too confining, they won't work in our program. so if they are not going to work at the kind of places that the president said are doing it

well, to me that means they are not going to work anywhere in wyoming and very likely not anywhere in iowa or anywhere in missouri as we go and try to make sure patients can get the care that they need from the doctor that they want at a cost that they can afford. i mean, those are the things. and that's why i continue to look at this health care law and go home every weekend and talk to people and continue to hear that this bill is bad for patients, bad for providers, the nurses and the doctors who take care of those patients, and bad for taxpayers. when we take a look at -- and senator blunt made a comment about this with medicare, some of the changes, who is going to make these decisions, it looks to me from reading through this law that it's unelected bureaucrats. 15 unelected bureaucrats with this so-called independent payment advisory board. people who will decide what hospitals would get paid for providing various services, so that in small communities, the hospital may say well, we can no

longer offer that service. and i have heard my colleagues talk about the specific loss of the availability of hospitals to even stay profitable with some of the cuts, taking $500 billion away from medicare. again, not to save and strengthen medicare but to start a whole new government program for others. i mean, those are the things that we're dealing with and why at town hall meeting after town hall meeting, people continue to tell me they want this repealed and they want it replaced with patient-centered, patient-centered health care. not government-centered, not insurance-company centered, patient-centered health care. that's what people are asking for, and they get tired of all these broken promises that the president has made. i remember he said he's going to bring down the price of premiums by $2,500 per family per year. what family wouldn't want that because the whole purpose of the

health care law initially was to get the cost of health care under control. this didn't do that. if i go to a town hall meeting as i did not too long ago in wyoming and say how many of you under the new health care law are finding that you're paying more for health insurance. not the 2,500 less a year that the president promised. how many of you are paying more? every hand goes up. and then you ask the question how many of you believe that the quality and the availability of your own care is going to go down as a result of this health care law? every hand goes up. and i know in the show-me state of missouri, that's not what people want. they don't want to pay more and get less. i don't know if my colleagues have been hearing things similar to that at home. mr. blunt: that's exactly what i think we're all hearing. whether you are for this bill or not, my guess is if you're hearing that, if you're asking that question.

the president's promised, another promise, that the average family -- if his health care plan went into effect, would have $2,500 less as you just said, doctor, per year. in fact, since he became president, insurance premiums have risen by $2,213 a year. not a 2,500-dollar cut, but a 2,213-dollar increase. in 2008, the employer-provided insurance, the average family premium was $12,860. last year it was $15,073. these are incredible increases for families that, along with the bad energy policies and other policies put families into a condition that they would hope not to be in and we would hope for them not to be in. so you have got increased cost to families, increased cost to

the system. that's the other thing the president said. another broken promise was that this health care bill would control costs. and recently, according to the medicare actuary, the person that calculates these costs, the estimate was that national health spending would go up at least $311 billion over ten years under this plan. now, that's not cost control. that's $311 billion, almost a third of a trillion dollars in increases, payment reductions to hospitals. you mentioned this board that will make these decisions. i'm not sure that there will be enough people on that board that understand rural hospitals, to understand why it's critical that rural hospitals that are critical care hospitals continue to have different arrangements with the government than others do for the government-provided health care like medicare and medicaid. and if they understand that,

there may not be enough people on the board that understand the unique needs of urban hospitals that have a heavily uninsured population. how is this 15-member board going to be better than the 500 members that serve people in washington now trying to look at specifics and then be accountable? who is this board accountable to? what decision do they make that somebody can challenge in a meaningful way, in a way that they would be really concerned about? so it doesn't control costs, as the president said it would. it doesn't reduce insurance costs as the president said it would. i think it will wind up with maybe even more people uninsured as long as the penalty that you pay is less than the premiums you're going to pay, particularly for young workers who are outside the system today, and the president's plan, you eliminate the advantage that they have for being young and healthy by saying no, you can't really classify groups.

where if you go get life insurance, you certainly pay more if you're 75 for life insurance than you do if you're 27, if you have -- you're just going to pay less. and it's the same way today for health insurance as well because it's clear that the likelihood of your using that plan at 26 is different than it is at 62. so all of these things just don't add up and people are beginning to figure they don't add up and i thought senator grassley made a very good point about even when we passed the bill, you won't know all of the costs of this bill till it actually goes into effect. and i'm very much in support of his view that we never want to let this get so far down the road we know how much it would really cost or all of the rules and regulations you would really have, because it will -- it will head health care in a direction we might not be able to reverse course and get to a health care system that's really focused on patients and health

care providers rather than government bureaucrats deciding what's the best health care for everybody. i want my doctor to decide. i want to be part of that discussion. i don't want some government bureaucrat deciding what procedure is the only procedure that's acceptable for me. mr. barrasso: it's interesting. you go home as i do, very, very often, to talk to many of the small business owners in the state of missouri as i do in wyoming, as senator grassley does in iowa, and one of the promises that the president made is he said four million small businesses may be eligible for tax credits. four million small businesses may be eligible for tax credits. well, turns out that the key word there by the president is "may." may be eligible. even though the fact that the white house has sent out postcards to all these small businesses, the i.r.s. sent over a million dollars in

taxpayers' money to send out millions of postcards promoting the tax credit. the treasury department's inspector general recently testified that -- quote -- "the volume of credit claims has been lower than expected." as a matter of fact, only 7% of the four million firms the administration claimed. why? well, because of the complexity and the whole way the system was set up, the president was able to talk big and deliver very small. and that's why so many people are very, very unhappy with the claims in the health care law because they know these promises have been broken. with regard to the nancy pelosi's famous quote that first you have to pass it before you get to find out what's in it, that's why i come to the floor every week with a doctor's second opinion because it does seem that just about every week we learn some new unintended consequence, something new

about the health care law, and another reason why americans are unhappy with it. why it remains as unpopular if not more unpopular today as when it was passed. and why so many people believe that -- that this -- that the supreme court should find this bill unconstitutional for the reasons that really do have americans at home really in an uproar. very unhappy that the government can come into their homes and mandate that they buy a government-approved product, and pay for it or pay a fine. nothing like this has happened before, and people are frankly offended. we don't know what the supreme court is going to do, but i know what this body ought to do. this body ought to vote to repeal and replace this broken health care law and really get a health care law in place which is what the american people wanted, which is the care they need from the doctor that they

want at a price they can afford. and we have not seen that yet but that's why we are here on the second anniversary of the president's health care law to continue to point out the flaws of this and quite interestingly, when you take a look at some of the national poll numbers for people who have talked to a health care provider, whether that be a nurse, a doctor, a physician assistant, a nurse practitioners, no matter who they are, even less supportive of it than the gin public. the presiding officer: the senator has used 30 minutes. mr. barrasso: tough tough, mr. president. i -- you, mr. barrasso: thank you very much, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts is recognized. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president.

i enjoyed the presentation before me and the two senators dealing on the issues surrounding health care. i think it's a very relevant discussion that we need to pay attention to. i want to talk on two issues today. i'll start first with the crowning amendment coming up between senator bennet and senator merkley and i, something that we have been working on in a truly bipartisan manner as it should be done here, as i do many of my actions. for those of you who may be listening up in the gallery or on television, crowning is an opportunity for individuals to invest money upwards of a thousand dollars, upwards of a million dollars total, so $1,000 per person, totaling $1 million. not dealing with a lot of the traditional s.e.c. filings that are in place and a lot. other problems in which only very wealthy people in years past have been able to participate in these types of offerings. for example right now if i had a good idea and wanted some of my friends to invest in it and then

we go and start marketing, we coonts do that. that's illegal. one of the president's objectives in his jobs speech was the to talk about new opportunities and crowning is one of them. he supports it, the house has done a similar crowning bill and we're actually taking this crowning opportunity and -- crowdfunding opportunity. i know our bill is different than the house bill in that the house bill doesn't require that you actually are a legal business or even some kind of incorporated legal forum before you try to issue stock and that bothers me somewhat in that you can have somebody in their living room issuing stock with no check and balance. that's important. it doesn't require that you offer securities through an intermediary. you could put up your own twitter site, buy shares, is my great idea, come on and buy shares. all the experts agree that we would need to require an intermediary like an ebay

where the crowd can identify the good and bad players the way that even identifies -- e bay allows bad sellers on their site. it allows investments to take place that can't be done right now and allows the groups to use the seed money to create those new ideas and new jobs. startup businesses are the entities looking to create jobs at this point and or use that money as seed money to go to a traditional lender and say we have a great idea and some money to back it up and ask to you sign on with us. i'm hopeful that the amendment comes up, i understand it is, and i'm looking forward to having that very important vote. excuse me one minute, mr. president. so i would appreciate obviously you and everyone else giving strong consideration of that. thank you. everything's dropping here. mr. president, i'd like to

shift gears for a minute and talk about the women against violence act as we know, or may not know, jessica pipstein of hampton, linda torres of worcester, patricia fray of marshfield have milka rivera of lawrence, casey taylor of winthrop, lauren ashley of wayland, michael trustee of wegertown, beth spartarchino of easton, david walton of taunton, massachusetts, elaine mccaul of wakefield, brian bergeroon of wal don, and troy

burstton of medford, joseph scott of worcester and, mr. president, those are names that i just read, constituents of mine that have been killed by the husbands, wives, partners, girlfriends or boifdz in domestic violence incidents in 2011 and 2012 lien. it's only -- alone. it's only march of this year. it's unacceptable. those lives lost are tragic. in addition to the people that lost their lives, the lives of the victims' children and families and friends have been destroyed. i know because, mr. president, i was a victim of domestic violence and as a child i watched as my mother was beaten by abusive stepfathers. i did what i could to protect my mom and my sister, but as a young boy, there was only so much i could do. i remember vividly being a

6-year-old boy going to protect my mom and getting beaten on until the police came and something that still lives with me and i try to use that experience and knowledge to help in many different ways. when i was growing up, frankly, there weren't the resources available to victims that are available today. at which my -- i wish my mother had known back then she wasn't lien. i wish she could use one of the fantastic, fantastic support providers that now exist in massachusetts today. and since being elected to the senate i've been moved by the organizations in my state that are stepping up to the plate and continue wasly -- continuously step up each and every day to provide support to victims of domestic violence. and frankly as a government we've made tremendous progress in helping victims get their life in -- and lives back in order. not only the victims themselves

but the family members of those victims. the violence against women act was first signed into law in 1994 as you know and made a bold statement that we would redouble our efforts to support law enforcement efforts to crack down on offenders and assist those working in our communities to provide assistance to victims seeking a new way of life, away from the violence that they have been subjected to. in each reauthorization we have improved upon the previous bill and made it stronger and made stronger commitments to those who have been abused. now is not the time, let me repeat, now is not the time to take our foot off the gas and avoid dealing with this problem. mr. president, the landmark violence against women act must be reauthorized this year. i am incredibly proud to have cosponsored this reauthorization when it first came to my attention and i believe it makes critical commitments against this horrific problem and

historically, are vawa has been a bipartisan effort where parties locked arm in support of law enforcement and victims against perpetrators of domestic violence. it was a glimmer of hope for other than ann otherwise contentious and overly partisan atmosphere. i got to tell you this isn't the first time i've said this, but there's no democrat bill that's going to pass. there's no republican bill that's going to pass for those listening. needs to be a bipartisan, bicameral bill that the president will sign and i've been deeply troubled this year that this year's reauthorization has become once again partisan. there's no reason for it. there's no excuse for it. we just did the hire hero veterans, % withholding, the insider trading, the highway bill. no reason we can't do the vawa bill on a completely nonpartisan basis. i'm on the floor today to call on my colleagues to ban together and pass -- band together and pass this reauthorization and send a strong signal that the senate stands united in

recognizing victims from across the country to give them the help that they need and obviously deserve. in massachusetts, vawa is supported by law enforcement and many service providers on the front lines of assisting domestic violence victims. i know previously as an attorney i dealt in family law matters. i know of the yeoman's work these entities do and on friday i will be visiting voices against violence in framingham, massachusetts, to support services to survivors of sexual assault and ensure a trained rape counselor is available after hours. the ymca uses those funds for a proactive program that has service providers working closely with law enforcement to provide information, identify and provide information for domestic violence victims and advocate on their behalf at a time when quite frankly these

folks need advocates. because of vawa, reach beyond abuse in waltham has supported many cutting-edge prevention efforts with teams of placement of advocates in police departments as a symbiotic, a give and take relations in those departments. the jean carger uses funds to establish a homicide prevent project and was recently recognized by the white house for their work. mr. president, i could go on and on about the tremendous involvement and great organizations, not only in my state but throughout this country that are making a difference in the lives of victims. and we need to stand as a body and not get into party rhetoric and declare to women across america they are not alone in this fight. we need to do everything to help the millions of women like my mom who once in this situation and are now survivors and help

them become survivors and not just victims. so i call upon my deletion colleagues to join me in sending a very, very strong bipartisan vote and get this done. so, mr. president, i yield the -- i yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. thank you. the presiding officer: would the senator withhold his request. mr. brown: yes. i didn't recognize. the presiding officer: the senator from california. mrs. feinstein: mr. president, thank you very much. i want to thank the senator from massachusetts for his remarks in support of the violence against women's act. i believe that this bill will be before the senate shortly and, senator brown, we look forward to your vote. so we look forward to that. i rise to pay tribute to a public worker, a social worker and a tenacious advocate for as vulnerable americans. i rise today to honor a trail blazer and a mentor for me and countless others. i rise today to honor an

outstanding united states senator from maine and the dean of the senate women, my friend, barbara mikulski. i'm privileged to have represented california in this body for almost 20 years. when i first ran for the senate back in 1992, i received a call from barbara mikulski personally urging me on and reaching out to provide encouragement. i've relied on her advice, her friendship and the mikulski brand of candor ever since. as a matter of fact, one of my fondest evenings was a three-onion martini right down the street. it's hard to believe, but when senator mikulski took office in 1987, there was only one other woman in this body, senator nancy kassebaum.

later, nancy kassebaum-baker, the great republican senator from kansas. increasing the number of women in the senate has really been painfully slow. in 1991, the ranks of women in this house rose to three, then later to seven after the 1992 election. today we have 17 women in this body and 76 in the house. as senator mikulski reflected to the "washington post" last yea year -- and i quote -- "women were so rare even holding statewide political office back then. i was greeted with a lot of skepticism from my male colleagues. was i going to go the celebrity route of the senate? i had to work very hard." and she has. barbara has worked very, very hard to become an outstanding legislator and a trailblazing public official. let me list just a few of her

firsts. she was the first female democrat to serve in both chambers of congress. that, in itself, is impressive. the first female democrat to be elected to the senate without succeeding her husband or her father. the first woman to chair a senate appropriations subcommittee. the first woman to serve a quarter century in the senate. and the first woman elevated to a senate leadership position. she is the only current member of congress in the national women's hall of fame. and she's not done yet. just last week, barb achieved another historic first. according to the senate historical office, she reached 12,858 days of service, becoming the longest-serving female member of congress in our nation's history. senator mikulski was born and raised in baltimore.

determined to make a difference in her community -- and, mr. president, you know that well -- and guided by her catholic faith and a belief in social justice, she became a social worker, helping at-risk children and educating seniors about medicare. she once said -- and i quote -- "i feel that i am my brother's keeper and my sister's keeper." social work evolved into community activism when barb successfully organized communities against a plan to build a highway through baltimore's fell's point neighborhood. shortly thereafter, in 1971, she was elected to the baltimore city council, where she served five years. that was just about the time i was elected to the board of supervisors in 1970 in san francisco. in 1976, she ran for congress and won, representing maryland's 3rd district for a decade.

she was then elected to the senate and has won reelection in 1992, 1998, 2004, and 2010 by large majorities. as i said, barb is an accomplished legislator. she is also one of the very be best. she cares passionately about quality education and ensuring every student has access to higher education. she's a fighter for stem cell research to cure our most tragic and debilitating diseases. she's a tireless advocate for the national institutes of health. and she is a leader on women's health, writing law requiring federal standards for mammogra mammograms, and a fierce proponent of breast and cervical cancer screenings and treatment for uninsured women. we serve together on the

intelligence committee and she asks some of the most prescient questions. and i've seen her commitment to the f.b.i., to fighting terrorism, and also to cyber security, where she headed a task force for our committee that has resulted in the cyber security legislation, newly pending. finally, she has led the way to strengthen pay equity for women. the lilly le leadbetter fair pay restoration act is the law of the land today because of barbara mikulski's experts. as barb said when we passed the bill -- and i quote -- "i believe that people should be judged solely by their individual skills, competence, unique talents, and nothing else in the workplace. once you get a job because of your skills and talents, you better get equal pay for equal work."

or, in a manner that best captures barb's candor, she said -- and i quote -- "women of america, square your shoulders, put on your lipstick, suit up and let's close that wage gap once and for all." to me, that is classic barbara mikulski. let me close with the story. every so often, at barbara's leadership, the senate women get together for dinner. there's no agenda or staff, just republican women, democratic women and a lot of lively conversation. we talk about our families, we talk about the workplace, we talk about the world, and, of course, we even talk, to some extent, about this place. sometimes we'll enjoy senator mikulski's world-famous crabcakes, the best you'll ever taste and second only to -- ony

to dungeness crab of the west coast, if i might add. mr. president, if you haven't, make sure you try the recipe on her web site. we talk about the families and the way we can work together and it's a snow is back to the civility -- and it's a throwback to the civility of the united states senate. and these dinners are when barb really stands out as the dean of senate women. mr. president, women in this country have always had to fight for the most basic of rights. i think young women forget that it wasn't until 1920 that we were able to vote in this country and it was only because women fought for it. barb will be the first to say her milestones are symbols of how far she has come, but she will also show us how much further women have to go. today we take it for granted that a woman can be secretary of

state. we've had two. or speaker of the house. we've had one. or a candidate for president -- not quite yet -- oh, no, i take that back. we have had one. and one day soon, a woman will sit in the oval office of this great country. and when she does, she will owe a great deal to barbara mikuls mikulski. but on this day, let the "congressional record" of this senate reflect and forever record that senator barbara mikulski is the longest-serving woman in the history of the united states congress. and this country is forever better because of it. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. hatch: mr. president, i came here to speak on another matter but i'd like to take just a few minutes to talk about my friend, barbara mikulski, myself. we've served a long time together. when she came to this body i

think -- i may have been chairman of what was then called the labor and human resources committee, now the health, education, labor and pensions committee. from the day she got on that committee, she made a difference in every way. not just for women but for every single american in this country. i have a tremendous amount of fond respect for senator mikulski and what she's been able to accomplish. let me just mention one thing. back in the early 1992's -- back in the early 1990's, she and i worked together on what was called the fahd fahd revitalization -- the f.d.a. revitalization act that. act was a very, very important thing because we had the f.d.a. spread out all over the greater washington, d.c. area, probably 30, 35 different offices, some of which were in -- were in the converted cook encoops. it was ridiculous to have these top scientists in anything but a

centralized located with top computerization and all the other scientific instruments that they need doing this work for the american people. i have to say that barbara mikulski played a pivotal role in helping to develop that tremendous facility. and i just want you to know that i don't think it would have been developed without her -- her effort and her dogged work to make sure that we now have a centralized -- and it still needs improved -- but centralized f.d.a. revitalization campus that literally's saving the lives of millions of people and making the lives of millions of people better. i could go on and on but i have a lot of respect for my distinguished colleague from maryland and i feel badly if i didn't get up and tell people how much i do respect her. she believes in what she does.

she loves this body. most of the time, i think. and she cares for her fellow senators. well, we care for her, and i just want her to know that. now, mr. president, if i could, i would like to just have -- make some other remarks and make sure these remarks are placed at the appropriate place in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. hatch: mr. president, this friday the nation observes an anniversary that most americans would prefer to see removed from its calendar. i'm talking about the second anniversary of the passage of the president's health care law. rather than celebrate this day, it is one that citizens and taxpayers have come to rue and regret. the process by which obama care became law was an affront to the republican principles of democratic self-government. and the substance of this law is an historic threat to the liberties our constitution was designed to secure. a decent respect for the opinions of the american people

cautioned against passing this law on a purely partisan basis, yet inspite of the clear opposition of -- in spite of the clear opposition of the american people to this massive expansion of government power and to its historic spending and tax increases, the president and his congressional allies were determined to jam this bill through the congress. the architects of this strategy, if not the party loyalists who carried it out against the wishes of their constituents, sleep easy at night having done so because they knew that this was a once-in-a-generation opportunity, the crowning achievement of the liberal bureaucratic state, a takeover of the nation's health care sector and its top-down regulation by washington. had aelude democrats for over 70 years. the economic downturn of 2008 changed that. with the election of president obama and significant majorities in the congress, the left was not going to, in the words of the president's chief of staff, "let a crisis go to waste." what this strategy meant in practice was that democrats would advance a radical liberal

agenda whether the american people supported it or not. that is the anniversary that we are observing this week. and it is a dark spot on our nation's history, in my opinion. the obama-care episode showed a fundamental disrespect for the opinions and constitutional commonsense of the american people. faced with growing unrest and real concerns about the impact of this law on families, the economy, and access to health care, the law's proponents assumed that the american people were just too dowm get it. -- dumb to get it. but once obama-care became law, the american people would become to love it, as well as the benefactors who gave it to them. that's what we thought. as speaker pelosi once explained, we have to pass the bill so we can find out what's in it. the great liberal conceit was on full display in the process that led to this bill becoming law. we know better than you, they said. we can plan one-sixth of the american economy and you will eventually come to like it. well, as we all know, the

american people had something else in mind. they reminded congress and the president that this country and people are sovereign. they stood up as free men and women, rejecting obama-care before it became law and refusing to embrace it afterwa afterward. and as their understanding of the law has deepened, they have remained constant in their commitment to full repeal. according to a rasmussen poll this week, over half of americans support the full repeal of obamacare. next week the supreme court will hear oral argument on the constitutionality of this misguided law. in arriving at their decision later this year, they will consider obamacare through the prism of past precedents and the constitution's originallal historic meaning. but the justices of the supreme court are not the only ones evaluating the constitutionality of this law. the american people, as citizens of this nation, have their own obligation to consider whether this law comports with our

constitution and principles of limited government. on that, the verdict is already in. according to a recent gallup poll, 72% of american adults including 56% of self-professed democrats believe that the law's individual mandate is unconstitutional. the average american who opposes this law on constitutional grounds might not be a law professor or an appellate advocate, but those citizens and taxpayers understand that our constitution was designed to guarantee liberty and that it did so in part by limiting the powers of the federal government and maintaining the sovereign powers of the states. they know that the unconstitutionality of obamacare runs far deeper than the onerous individual mandate. the law is at its core a violation of our most deeply held constitutional principles. it undermines personal liberty and puts more power in the hands of the state; tha that is, the federal government.

in the interest of what the left views as a constitutional mandate to health care, it undermines the right to life, liberty, and property. it undermines sacred rights of conscience and religious liberty. expansion of liberty fundamentally transforms the relationship of the states to the federal government, undercutting the ablght of those sovereign communities to make basic decisions about the welfare of their citizens by crowding out spending for police, infrastructure, and education. the american people might not have submitted complex legal briefs in the supreme court litigation, but their conclusions about obamacare possess a unique and powerful wisdom. the people of utah and of this country understand that the very d.n.a. of obamacare, a commitment to more government control, the empowering of an already unaccountable administrative state, and an assault on free markets is

unconstitutional. this is not what president obama promised the american people. the president couched this government takeover of the nation's health care sector as a modest reform designed to reduce costs. when he spoke before a session of congress in september in 1999, to push for his plan, the president promised that it would -- quote -- "slow the growth of health care costs to our families, our businesses, and our government." unquote. the president swung and missed on all three. according to the president's own actuary at c.m.s., national health expenditure would increase. this comes as no surprise to the american people. the president's health care law promised all sort of free care but we all know, contrary to the repeated assertions of president obama and his administration that nothing in life is free,

the bill will eventually come due for all of this so-called -- quote -- "free mayor" -- unquote -- and it is taxpayers who are going to pay that bill. according to the congressional budget office, quote, "rising costs for health care will push federal spending up considerably as a percentage of g.d.p." this is not what the president and his allies promised. we were promised lower costs. what we got were higher costs, more federal spending on health care, and with it more taxes and more debt. when fully implemented, obamacare authorizes $2.6 trillion of new federal spending over ten years. it will increase premiums by $2,100 for families forced by obamacare to purchase their own insurance. the medicaid expansion will impose $118 billion of new costs on the states. it will increase spending on prescription drugs, physician and clinical services, and hospital spending. and it will increase the deficit by $701 billion over its first

ten years. who does the president propose will pay for this? here's how: he will pay for it by selling more treasuries to china. he will pay for it by increasing taxes and penalties by over $500 billion. and american workers will ultimately pay for it with 800,000 fewer jobs than would have otherwise existed. this is not the story that the president and the democrats in congress responsible for this law want the american people to hear, so they will attempt to spin their way out of it. in a memo obtained by the press last week, the advocates of obamacare laid out their strategy to sell merits of this misguided law prior to oral arguments at the supreme court. this week was designed to lay out all of the great things provided by obamacare. naturally, that memo mentions absolutely none of the costs. it does not mention the cost of these benefits for federal taxpayers. it does not mention the costs for employers and workers.

it does not mention that the law would lead to as many as 20 million americans losing their employer-sponsored health benefits. it disngtsz mentio does not ment the tax increases will have on the economy. and it does not mention the harm it would do to the constitution. i wish i could say that i was surprised, but i am not. i'm not able to say it because i am not surprised. obamacare is merely the capstone to a generation-long liberal project that has attempted to convince citizens that they can have their cake and eat it, too, that nobody or only the very rich will have to pay for it. obamacare exploded this myth. obamacare is the culmination of generations of government expansion and it shows once and for all that we are all going to

be paying for the liberal welfare state. taxing warren buff feet is not going to cut it. all of america's families will pay nor this law one way or the other. after centralizing control of the nation's health care system in washington, d.c., and putting health care decisions into the hands of government bureaucrats, we will all pay for it through higher taxes, less opportunity, and diminished access to care. and our children are going to have to pay for it as a nation conceived in liberty is increasingly burdened by an unsustainable national indebtedness. that is, unless the american people get the final word on this. they certainly should. i believe in the american people. i know what my fellow utahans think of the president's law. no less o thank legislators, thy take the constitution seriously. they know this law is unconstitutional. this know what it does to free

markets and free men and women. they know if this law is constitutional, then there are effectively no limits on what the federal government can do. they know that this law has to go, and i look forward to showing it the door. i thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the deputy majority leader. mr. durbin: mr. president, i rise today to join my colleagues in honoring our friend and your colleague, often regarded as the dean of the women in the senate, senator barbara mikulski. earlier this week, senator mikulski added to her already long list of accomplishments with the distinction of being the longest-serving female member of congress in the history of the united states of america. senator mikulski's life is the story of the american dream. raised in a working-class immigrant family in the east baltimore neighborhood of highlandtown, senator mikulski learned at a young age about the

struggles of working families and ethnic americans and the value of paying it forward. she helped at her father's grocery store which opened early in the morning so that steelworkers could buy lunch before their morning shift. she delivered food to seniors and families when parts of the neighborhood were set on fire after the asenior senator nation of dr. -- after the assassination of dr. martin luther king jr. at one time she even drove on top of a tank to deliver the groceries. her roots helped shape her role today as a men terks fighter and-- --as a mentor, fighter and true public service. she worked as a social worker for catholic charities, counseling seniors on medicare. she got her start in politics as a community organizer and social worker. in 1970, one side of barbara mikulski that her colleagues certainly have seen was her dogged determination to stop a 16-lane highway project that

would have threatened the fells point and canton neighborhoods in baltimore. she got the job done, and many people say that that work helped to save fells point and inner harbor, two of the showcase areas of baltimore. she gave a speech at catholic university to a catholic conference on the ethnic american, which caught the attention not only of people in baltimore but far beyond its reach, as she talked about her family story and the story of millions just like her. a year later she ran for and won a seat on the baltimore city council, the first step in her now 41-year career in public service. over the course of the senate's 223-year history, there have only been 38 female members. the first, rebecca lat i mother felton was appointed to fill a vacancy. she served only a single day in

1922. senator mikulski has so many firsts in her story of public service. she was the first woman elected to the senate in her own right, the first -- not because of a husband or a father or someone who served before her in higher office. she was the first woman democrat to serve in both chambers of congress, the first. and last year she was i inp du e was ink ducted int inducted intf fame become the longest-serving woman senator in the history of our nation. it is no wonder that other members of congress have turned to her for guidance, men and women alike. i can recall so many meetings of our democratic caucus when after a long debate involving many people saying many things, barbara mikulski would stand up and in a few terse words get it

right. at the end of the day, people would say, that's what we ought to do. she has this insight based on their life experience and her ability to try to peel through the layers of the political onion and get to the heart of the issue. following the election of a number of esteemed women into the senate, a lost roarts deemed 199 -- a lot of reporters deemed 1992 as the year of the women. "calling 1992 the yeert o year e woman makes it sound like the year of the caribou or the year of the asparagus. we're not a fad, fancy or a year." that was typical barbara mikulski. senator mikulski rises above and beyond all that. from her first days in the senate in 1987, she is a fought an uphill battle to address the most important issues of national importance.

first and foremost for her -- her family. next -- her great state of maryland. she is a fearless advocate, and i know the presiding officer knows that better than most, as her colleague from that great state. she has supported educational initiatives, veterans' causes, interstate commerce, access to health care, and women's health and fair pay. mr. president, you know the answer to this question, but those who are listening to the debate might not. what was the first bill that newly elected president barack obama signed in the white house with a public ceremony, the very fairs? -- the very first? well, it was a bill that barbara mikulski pushed hard for -- the lilly ledbetter fair pay restoration act so that women going to work all over the united states would get a fair shake when it comes to compensation for the jobs they did. it was president obama's first bill, and when he signed it, the

very first pen he handed over to senator barbara mikulski. i was there, and i saw it. championed by senator mikulski, the long-awaited and much-needed bill clarified time limits for workers to file unemployment discrimination lawsuits making it easier for people to get the pay they deserve regardless of their race, age, or gender. i would like to start here, but i don't know where i would end to talk about the important issues that she has worked for. let me talk about health care for a minute. when we set down to pass this historic affordable health care act, barbara mikulski was assigned the job to make sure that it connected up with the families and workers across america in a very real way. to make sure that at the end of the day we weren't talking to ourselves or engaged in political gibberish, but passing a law that could change a life for the better. she made invaluable contributions to the substance

of that bill. we know that those provisions would be important and that they would work because we know where barbara mikulski came from. we know where her political heart resides. while it is a milestone to celebrate senator mikulski's distinction as the longest-serving woman in the united states congress, there is a much greater cause for celebration. senator mikulski's decades of service to this nation, an admirable feat for man or woman. i extend my congratulations to senator mikulski for this milestone. thank you for what you've dong for the senate and for the state of maryland and for our great nation. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll of the senate.

quorum call:

mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader is recognized. mr. reid: i ask consent the call of the quorum be terminated. the presiding officer: without objection. the majority leader is recognized. mr. reid: the hour of 2:30 having arrived, it is my honor and my pleasure to rise to honor a patriot, a pioneer and now the longest-serving woman in the congress of the united states ever, that's the senior senator from maryland, barbara mikulski. barbara and i served together in the house. we came to the senate in 1986. i remember that day so well when we had our first appearance here in the senate as senators. mr. president, it was really quite a moving event for me, but one of the things i remember about that day is the presentation of senator

mikulski. we all said a word or two. everything that we said will be long forgotten. but barbara mikulski and the way that she says things will not be forgotten. here's this woman who's -- my wife is five-feet tall. i think landra is taller than her. but she said, i slam-dunked linda chavez, her opponent. that said it all and that was the beginning, to me, of working closely with this good woman. she's really been a friend and inspiration to me in so many different ways during the time we've served together. had wwhen we got on the environt and public works together, she was here, i was here. she was always ahead of me because of her service in the house. on the appropriations committee for more than two decades, i was

here, she was here. she was always one ahead of me. barbara was the first democrat woman elected to the united states house -- the united states senate, elected in her own right. last year she surpassed the legendary margaret chase smith of maine as the longest serving woman in the history of the senate. and on saturday, she officially surpassed congresswoman edith norris rogers of massachusetts, who, by the way, served in the house from 1925-1960, as the longest serving woman in the history of the united states congress. senator mikulski's service and the service of many female members of congress have -- has paved the way for girls of today to know that they can become united states senators, they can become professional basketball players, they can be engineers,

doctors, the sky is a place they need to go. that's where they feel they can go because of the work that's been done by barbara mikulski. when i came to the senate with her, she was the only woman who served in the senate as a democrat. there was one other republican at the time. now, since then, mr. president, i've watched very closely on this side of the aisle. now we have 12 democrats. and if the elections turn out the way that i hope they do -- and i'm cautiously optimistic they will -- we'll have 17 women who are democrats in the united states senate. she is truly a trailblazer. we recognize barbara's achievement today and her outstanding record as a tireless advocate for the state of maryland. she grew up in the highland town neighborhood of east baltimore. she learned the value of hard work by working in and watching her dad especially open that

family grocery store and work early in the morning till night. he sold lunch to workers, steelworkers and other people who came by that little grocery store. in high school, she was educated by the nunns o nuns of the instf notre dame. she credits nuns for ilg still in her faith -- instilling in her faith and thirst for justice. she went on to study at mount st. agnes college, which is now part of loyola college in maryland. she earned her master's degree in social work from university of maryland. she was a social worker and has always been proud of the fact that she's been a social worker. she was employed by catholic charities, the city of baltimore's department of social services. i can imagine what a dynamo she was -- and she still is. there's no work harder than being a social worker. the problems you see and have to deal with are extremely

difficult. during her years as a social worker, she was a powerful voice for children and seniors in need of an advocate. barbara boxer -- i'm sorry, barbara mikulski then and now is an advocate. it was there that the spark for service and activism was lit. but it was a plan to build a 16-lane highway that fanned the flames that had been lit by her activism. the highway would have gutted historic fell's point, which was a neighborhood that was something that she felt should be protected. it would have uprooted homeowners in a majority african-american neighborhood. she organized residents of fell's point and baltimore's inner harbor and stopped the construction of that highway. this is a testament to the power of democracy that she believes in with all her soul. looking back on that triumph,

senator mikulski said this -- quote -- "i got into politics fighting a highway. in other countries, they take dissidents and put them in jail. in the united states of america, because of the first amendment, they put the united states senate -- put them in the united states senate. god bless america. "she's always been an advocate for the disenfranchised and disadvantaged. she's also been an advocate for the dissidents in other countries with whom she -- of whom she has spoken so eloquently on so many occasions. her family were pols. she's heard all the polish jokes and she has withstood a little of the barb as that took place when neighborhoods were different than they are now. but she took special pleasure and was so proud of her herita heritage. she took a special interest in the plight of the polish people oppressed under communism. we know in 1980 the people of poland started a fledgling little group called solidarity, a movement to change in

nonviolent resistance against communism and in support of social change. mr. president, senator mikulski and i had the wonderful pleasure of traveling under the guidance of a trip led by john glenn, a world-famous man then and now. it was a wonderful trip for a couple of new senators. we traveled and the iron curtain was down and it was down hard, and we went to poland on this codel. and i can remember, we had the opportunity to meet with members of the solidarity movement. we met in secret with them in a secret location. and senator glenn talked, senator stevens, a senior member of the senate at the time, spoke. and i said, i'd like to hear

from senator mikulski. now, mr. president, i -- i am not articulate enough to explain that presentation that she made, extemporaneously. this powerful woman stood and talked about her heritage and her religion and what that meant to the people of america and what it should mean to the people of poland. it was truly -- and i've told her this personally over the years on several occasions to remind her -- one of the most heartwarming, strong speeches i've ever been present to listen to. she spoke to the people there assembled -- there weren't many of them -- as a fellow activist. she spoke of an american of polish descent and a fellow catholic. she spoke as one of them. and when that presentation was completed, everyone knew that she was one of them.

now, mr. president, i don't kn know -- because it took almost a decade for the solidarity movement to strike victory in poland -- i know that senator mikulski's speech was not "the" reason but i guarantee you it was one of the reasons that they had the audacity and the courage to proceed as they did. remember, poland was an interesting country. it's the only country behind the iron curtain that the communists could not destroy their education system. and it was because of the strength of the catholic church in poland at that time. solidarity's victory in poland inspired a string of peaceful anticommunist revolution as that eventually led to the fall of communism entirely all over eastern europe. polish -- barbara's polish an restry and the -- ancestry and the polish community she grew up

in in baltimore were very important to barbara but i never knew it in that night in warsa warsaw -- knew it until that night in warsaw with those few members of the solidarity movement who assembled to honor us. her grandmother had come from poland over here with a few pennys in her pocket literally. but she had a dream of a better life for her and her family. shs what barbara mikulski -- this is what barbara mikulski said about her great-grandmother. quoted -- "she didn't even have the right to vote in this great country of ours, but in three generations, i joined the united states senate." it was a remarkable feat for her but, more importantly, a confirmation of the american dream. for barbara, what began as commune activism, a fight against a highway, grew into a successful career in public service. and i just want to on a little side note here, mr. president, talk about something very personal to me.

senator pryor, david pryor, got sick -- he was the secretary of the senate -- so that opened a spot in the senate leadership. that was something that i thought would be interesting to me. so it was known who was interested in filling that spot. i knew barbara mikulski was interested and i went to barbara and i said, barbara, you want it, it's yours. two years later, wendell ford decided he was going to retire. he was the whip. i can still remember that morning, i'm walking from the hart building over to the russell building, in that long walkway there, and i see barbara mikulski. i didn't say a word to her. she said, "i want to talk to you." she said, "you supported me when i wanted to be the secretary. you want to be the whip? i'm supporting you."

but for barbara mikulski, i would not have had that leadership position. once the democratic knew -- democratic caucus knew that barbara mikulski supported me, it was all over. i won. and i won because she came to me, as she did that morning. so, mr. president my respect, admiration and love for this woman is difficult for me to describe, but it's there. she ran for congress after the city council of baltimore for five years and won. she represented maryland's third district for ten years before winning the seat in the senate she now holds. i say again i appreciate all that she has done for me. there are so many different things she has done for me. as a senior member of the appropriations committee, somebody who loves this institution. i am in awe of the legislative

record of this amazing woman. she has been a dedicated representative, not only of the state of maryland but, mr. president, the state of nevada. one thing that she did for me -- and there are lots of them -- we were new senators. she was on one of the subcommittees of appropriations that was concerned about veterans' benefits and affairs. she as a favor to me traveled to reno, nevada, to look at an old, old veterans' hospital in reno, nevada. she went through this. she said this is not the way veterans' hospitals should be. and i, barbara mikulski, is going to change it, and she did. through the appropriations process, we renovated and improved that hospital so it was one of the better hospitals at the time. so, mr. president, i am so grateful for this good woman. an advocate for parity for women

in everything from salary to health care access. but for barbara mikulski, the national institutes of health would not have a center for women. she got a little upset when she learned that they did a study of -- on the effect of aspirin on people's hearts, and she came to the realization that they tested 10,000 people, they were all men. i had a situation that arose in nevada about that same time where three women came to me who had a devastating, debilitating painful disease that is like -- described as running slivers of glass up and down your bladder. it was said to be a psychosomatic disease. these women had nowhere to go. i talked to barbara mikulski about this, and now, madam president, we have -- 40% of these women have medicine that takes away their symptoms totally. i could go on here a long time,

as everyone can see, but i do it because i congratulate barbara on this milestone, which is so important to me and the senate, and to tell her how much nevada appreciates her. it's not just her. she has done things for the entire country. i wish her well in the years to come. mr. mcconnell: mr. president. the presiding officer: the republican leader is recognized. mr. mcconnell: it's my honor to be here this afternoon to extend on behalf of the republican conference of the united states senate our respect and admiration for the senior senator from maryland on achieving this important milestone. i'm sure she would be the first to tell you that becoming the longest serving woman in the senate -- in the congress wasn't easy. a life in public service is filled with many highs and lows, but barbara is nothing if not both tough and resilient.

barbara would point to her upbringing as the daughter of a baltimore grocer where she learned firsthand how hard work, honesty and determination can lead to a successful and rewarding life. she later learned while fighting a freeway that would have destroyed several baltimore communities, including her own, that if you fought hard enough for something you believed in, you, too, can make a difference. so if you knew barbara back then, it wouldn't surprise you we are honoring her here today. last year when senator mikulski became the longest serving female senator, she said she never saw herself as a historical figure. to me, barbara said history is powder wigs and jane jane adamsd abigail adams, both pioneers in their own right. however, barbara is a pioneer.

she is only the second woman to be elected to first the house and then the senate. today in congress there are 76 women in the house and 17 in the senate. as dean of the senate women, she served as a role model and a mentor to many of these women. to put this in perspective, when she first arrived in the senate, there weren't any natural mentors to teach her the ways of the senate. at the time, even the senate gym was off-limits. a lot has changed since then, and barbara had a lot to do with it. later, as more women were elected to the senate, barbara worked with them to help them understand the senate and how best to be an effective senator, both here and back home. she wanted to give back. most importantly, regardless of party or issue, barbara would push her female colleagues in the senate to think differently,

encouraging them to think of themselves as a force, a force of good and ofttimes a force for change. and i know many are grateful not only for barbara's leadership and courage, but her willingness to take the time to share her experiences with them. i don't want to just be a first, barbara once said. i want to be the first of many. in 35 years, nearly 13,000 days as a member of congress, barbara has been a champion of the space program, science research, welfare reform and major transportation, homeland security and environmental issues in maryland. so i would like to recognize barbara not only for the tremendous accomplishment as the longest serving female in the history of the united states in congress, but also for all of her many accomplishments in the house and the senate. as she once said herself, it's not how long you serve but it's how well you serve. i'd also like to recognize

barbara for the pioneering model she has been to so many women in her distinguished career. congratulations, senator mikulski. mr. reid: madam president. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i would like to make an announcement. senator mcconnell and i have tentatively worked out something. we'll have our votes tomorrow, not today. so that being the case, there is not a crunch for time here today. i would like to set up an orderly process for -- we have a number of senators here who wish to say something regarding senator mikulski, and i would like to set up an orderly time to do that. so i would ask that senator mikulski be recognized and that following that, we have senator gillibrand -- senator cardin, i'm sorry, senator cardin be recognized for -- for how much time? mr. cardin: ten minutes. mr. reid: ten minutes, senator cardin. senator boxer, ten minutes.

senator kay bailey hutchison has been here before anybody else. following senator cardin, i would ask that she be recognized. after senator boxer? okay. that's fine. senator gillibrand, are you seeking recognition? okay. how much time do you need? three minutes. we have gone through this. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. cardin: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. cardin: madam president, i just want to make sure that -- i know there are a lot of us who want to pay our tribute and respect to the senior senator

from maryland, senator mikulski. i just want to make sure that the order is -- that everybody -- we have a lot of people on the floor. make sure everybody has their opportunity. are we operating under a consent order? the presiding officer: the consent order to this has senator cardin followed by senator boxer and then senator hutchison. senator kerry is asking to be recognized, yes.

mr. kerry: senator reid included my name in that list for ten minutes. the presiding officer: without objection, senator kerry will be added and a complete list will be put together. mr. cardin: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. cardin: i'm glad we could get that straight. let me first thank all of our colleagues that are here to pay our honor to the senior senator from maryland, senator mikulski. this is march madness in basketball. sweet 16 is starting. we're very proud in maryland of our lady terps. they are in the sweet 16. but i just want you to know we're all getting our fantasy teams and i want senator mikulski on my fantasy team in basketball, because she is a true leader, she understands the importance of working together, and she is a winner. we're proud of her roots in maryland. she has -- she is a great granddaughter of polish immigrants who owned a bakery.

she began her public service in high school where she helped deliver groceries to seniors who were locked into their apartments. she helped the homebound seniors get the food that they needed. she went to the university of maryland school of social work because she wanted to be a social worker. she wanted to help other people. she knew that she was good at that and she could make a difference in people's lives. she worked for catholic charities and dealt with children at risk and helping seniors with medicare. but as you have heard from several of my colleagues already, she really gained her representation by -- reputation by taking on a highway that was scheduled to be built that would have gone through canton and fells point, disrupting a neighborhood in baltimore. this was a 16-lane highway. it was considered to be a done deal. it was going to happen. the powers to-be said we are

going to have a highway coming through downtown baltimore. the powers to-be did not know barbara mikulski. that highway never happened. senator mikulski stopped that highway from being built. she they ever went on to serve in the baltimore city council with great distinction, and in 1976, she was elected to the congress from the third congressional district, a seat that was vacated by our esteemed colleague, paul sarbanes, who then came into the united states senate, and barbara mikulski followed in the great tradition of senator paul sarbanes. in 1986, when senator mack mat a.c.c.'s seat became vacant, senator barbara mikulski was elected to the united states senate. she has many firsts. first female democrat to be elected in her own right to the united states senate. at the time she was elected to the senate, she was only one of two female senators.

today we have 17 female senators in the united states senate, in large part because of senator barbara mikulski. i know you will hear the presiding officer was part of that expansion. you hear how senator mikulski was not only a role model and an inspiration but an incredible help to get more women elected to the united states senate. last year, we joined in this body to celebrate senator mikulski becoming the longest serving woman in the history of the united states senate, surpassing margaret chase smith from the state of maine, and then on this past saturday on st. patrick's day, she became the longest serving woman in the history of the united states congress, replacing edith norris rogers from massachusetts, who served, as the majority leader pointed out, from 1925-1960. marylanders understand longevity records. we're very proud of our cal ripken and the record that he

held in baseball. senator mikulski, like cal ripken's legacy, is what she has done in office to make a difference, not the length of her service. she is a fierce and effective advocate for so many causes. we have heard about her accomplishments in education and health care which she has done to advance sensible health care to improve quality for the people of this country. that was her mission in the affordable care act, to make sure that we had the delivery systems in place that would deliver quality health care. senator mikulski's leadership was critical in that regard. she has been a leader on women's health care issues, and i will never forget her -- her reminder to all of us in the caucus don't forget women's health care issues when you bring that bill to the floor, and we didn't. we put that in under senator

mikulski's leadership. we talked about breast cancer and cervical cancer screenings. senator mikulski has been in the leadership on all those issues. we in maryland are proud to be where the national institute of health is headquartered. its growth in large measure has been the result of senator barbara mikulski. we are proud of hope 6 and housing. senator mikulski has been in the forefront of that program, making it possible for many people in our community to have decent, affordable and safe housing. the space program. senator mikulski has been critically important to america's space program. i've been with her many times at goddard seend firsthand the results -- seen firsthand the results of her advocacy. the hubble space telescope is another legacy senator mikulski can be rightly proud of. we in maryland are also produced to house n.s.a. the national

security agency with its new mission, the cyber command located in maryland. as senator feinstein pointed out, senator milks has been a real lead are on national security issues. we can't issue press releases, she works behind closed doors to keep us safe but we all know she is one of the key leaders in this nation on national security issues. we know about pay equity and the lilly ledbetter law, the first bill signed by president obama. it was senator mikulski's leadership that got that bill to the president's desk. recognizing that we are still not where we need to be on gender pay equity in america. in our region, the chesapeake bay is center to our way of life and our economy. senator mikulski's been one of the real champions on water quality and the chesapeake bay. she understands the respect for state and local government that we have to work together as a

team. i know the governor of maryland, governor o'malley, would agree with me, that there is no better friend to the people of maryland working with the state than senator bar a bra mutle -- barbara with mikulski mikulski getting the federal government on the same page as the state and local governments to get things donor the people of maryland. she's been able to do it all across the nation. "the baltimore sun" put it best when it said there is nobody more willing to take on big business, big government or anyone when it's time to look out for the interests of her constituents." and i think all of us would agree on that. on a personal note i want to thank senator mikulski for her friendship. i want to thank her for being my buddy and my advicor. with -- advisor. whether she is with presidents or kings or the patrons at jim eye's restaurant in fells point you get the same common sense,

the same down-to-earth person, you get senator barb. we are so proud of her. thank you, senator barb for what you have done to make this nation a better place to live. thank you for being such a role model for young people, especially young women to get involved to make a difference. thank you on behalf of my two granddaughters. their future is much brighter, their opportunities are much greater because of you, senator barb. congratulations. your colleagues here want to express our love and respect and admiration for your incredible service. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from california. mrs. boxer: mr. president, what an incredible milestone senator mikulski has reached. and the words of her colleagues and the love that they feel for her is coming through. and it is a wonderful thing for me to be part of this tribute. i don't know how many senators would have the governor of their

state here when they're honored, and the former distinguished incredible senator paul sarbanes is here. that in itself, senator mikulski, is testimony to your status among all of us. and so many of us are here in the senate because barbara mikulski knocked down the barriers one by one. the first democratic woman ever elected to the senate in her own right. the first woman to serve in both chambers. the longest serving woman in the senate. and now she has made history once again. this past saturday after 12,858 distinguished days of service, no other woman in history has served in congress longer than senator mikulski. ever. now, some trailblazers make history and they're content to stand proudly alone. i did it. but not senator mikulski.

she always made clear she was honored to be the first democratic woman but she never wanted to be the last. i'll never forget her saying -- quote -- "some women stare out the window waiting for prince charming. i stare out the window waiting for more women senators." well, 17 women, republicans and democrats, now serve in the united states senate, and i know all of us have stories to tell about how senator mikulski helped us along the way. reaching out to mentor us, encourage us, lead us, organizing regular meetings, filled with folders and pens and pencils, and organizing dinners. she and senator hutchison teamed up and we're so fortunate to have them working together, we get together now and then among just in the heat of debate we sit down and break bread together. you know, when i considered running for the senate in 199 , senator mikulski -- 1992,

senator mikulski was the very first person i went to see. after my husband. i was conflicted. i had a good house seat, i was told i could hold it for as long as i wanted and up wasn't sure if i should give it up for the senate. i was considered a longshot. senator mikulski told me the following: if you run and i want you to run, she said, it will be the toughest thing you will ever do and the best thing you will ever do, and she was right. you know, those of us of a certain age have probably seen the play or the movie "a man for all seasons." well, today we celebrate a woman who is truly a senator for all seasons. some members have passion, others have policy skills, some are brilliant negotiators, others great advocates for the least among us. some are very serious students of history, and others are flat-out hilarious. but i don't think our country

has ever seen so many incredible traits combined into one senator. whatever the issue, she'll address it. war the problem, she'll solve it. whatever the wrong, she'll fix it. whatever the need, she'll meet it. whenever and wherever people without a voice need a champion with a keen mind, a sharp wit, and an unparalleled ability to speak from the heart and get things done, barbara mikulski is there. and a lot of us have been there with her and we've watched her and we love it and we marvel at her. she does it with a sense of humor that's unparalleled. anyone who has ever lived to -- listened to a speech are from with senator mikulski has heard her utter these inquestionable quips which i finally -- fondly call mikulskiisms. she's called us women into battle by asking us to go eerg to eerg with our opponents. she has -- earring to earring with our opponents.

she has challenged to us suit up, put our lipstick on and fight. she's said often that women don't want to talk about gender but an agenda that helps america's families. when asked by "glamour" magazine how she felt about being the woman of the year along with singer madonna, senator mikulski reapplied -- quote --"she's got her assets and i've got mine and we both make the best of what god has given us." when asked about the difference perspective women bring, she often says women, we're not so much about macroissues but rather the macaroni and cheese issues. who else could say that better? when discussing the challenges women face in politics with a group of female parliamentarians from around the world, this is what barbara mikulski explained

to them. they asked about what is it like to be a woman and is it tough? she said let's put it this way. in an election, if you're married, you're neglecting him. if you're single, you couldn't get him. if you're divorced, you couldn't keep him. and if you're widowed, you killed him. and then there was one of my favorite mikulski moments. this is a treasured moment. the women of the house still hadn't managed to integrate the house gym. so we were relegated to this tiny room with old fashionedhooded air dryers and hardly any room to move but there were very few of us and we decided to make the most of it by having an aerobics class. of course coming from california, i organized it. well, in came geraldine ferraro ferraro, olympia snowe, and barbara mikulski and me. our instructor asked us to

stretch our arms way up and we do. groans. put your hands on your hips. more groans. now she says bend from the waist. suddenly a voice bellows from the back of the room, if i had a waist, i wouldn't be here. we all turned around to see senator mikulski and we just cracked up. needless to say, that was the end of the aerobics class. look, as funny as she can be, i can't think of anyone more resilient than barbara mikulski. i remember when she was mugged a few years back one evening outside her home in baltimore. a man pushed her to the ground and grabbed her purse. it was terrifying -- for the mugger. he had no idea who he was dealing with. at 4'11" senator mikulski fought back and defended herself just like she defends the people she represents. just like she defends women and

families. just like she defends equal pay and equal rights and civil rights, and the health care of our citizens and the dignity of our seniors. the truth is, mr. president, the senate used to be a very lonely place for women, but senator mikulski changed that. from the day she was first sworn in, she has carried the challenges, the hopes, and the dreams of millions of women with her. barbara mikulski has inspired generations of young women everywhere. she's given them the confidence that they can do it, too. because even as we celebrate this incredible milestone, i know that senator mikulski's greatest hope is that a young girl growing up today will be inspired to follow in her footsteps and one day to break her record. and when that happens, it will be because barbara mikulski, our dean, our cherished leader, our senator for all

seasons, opened the doors of the senate wide enough to let the women of america walk in. thank you so much, mr. president. thank you, barbara mutle. -- mikulski. the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mrs. hutchison: mr. president, i'm pleased to stand and add my experiences with and admiration for senator barbara mikulski. it is fitting that she is now the longest serving woman in the united states congress. when i first got here, i was elected first in 1993, barbara mikulski as the dean of women in the senate had a workshop the previous year for the newly elected democratic women senators. when i arrived in 1993, she expanded it to include all new women senators.

and her sort of opening comment was civility starts with us. and surely, she has carried through as the dean of the women of the senate to assure that all the new women get their bearings in the senate, they get the advice of the ones who have been here before, and it's been a huge help. and really a fun opportunity for us to get to know each other on a personal level as we have our women senators dinners. from this came a book that senator mikulski and i worked on together, and it really was the genesis of the book, which became nine and counting, the nine women senators that were here in the year 2000, it came from a meeting called by senator mikulski to meet with the women

of northern ireland. along with the women of ireland, when there was so much strife in that country. and barbara mikulski called all of the women senators together, our nine, to give encouragement and advice to the women who were trying to bring the people of ireland and northern ireland together so that there could be a peaceful conclusion to the conflicts in northern ireland. and from that as we were sharing our stories to show the women of northern ireland how -- how much they could do from our experiences and our overcoming of obstacles, barbara ul mikulski and i sat down and said, you know, i think we have a book here. if each of the nine women senators could write a chapter about our obstacles and our

beginnings in politics and help encourage other young women and girls to aspire to and be able to succeed in politics, then we ought to do it. so we worked with a publisher and we got together, we decided kind of how we would lay it out, and we then decided as a group that we would give all of the proceeds to the girl scouts of america because almost all of us had been a girl scout at one point. and so from that, we put a book out that is still being sold called "nine and counting." it sold here in the senate bookshop, and it has given a lot of money to the girl scouts of america, to a leadership fund so that they can continue to create girls who will be leaders in our

country. but that started with a meeting that barbara put together for those of us who could maybe give advice and help to these women of northern ireland. when i came in to the united states senate in 1993, the first thing that i really wanted to do was give equal treatment to women who work at home in their ability to save for retirement as those who work outside the home. and i had had the experience as a single working woman of putting aside some for my ira, and then when i married my husband, ray, i found out i could only put aside $250 in an ira. and i said, wait a minute, why would someone working inside the home, a woman who probably is going to need retirement security more than any of us,

not be able to save for her own retirement security if she's a married woman? and so, i authored the homemaker ira, and i wanted, of course, to have a democrat lead because we had a democrat congress. we had a democratic congress and a democratic house and senate. and so i asked senator mikulski, and she said absolutely she would sign on, as she always does when it's something that's going to benefit women. and so, it became the hutchison-mikulski bill. i asked barbara, though, i said, you know, i really want this bill to pass. i don't care if my name is first. i'd love to put your name first if you think that will help us get it through. she said, absolutely not. i wouldn't take your name off that bill for anything, because it was your idea. i said, oh, my gosh, there

aren't very many people in this body who would make that gesture and also put her weight behind the passage of the bill. and of all the things that i've done, that we've done together, barbara, of all the things, that is going to affect the most people in our country, because now we have the homemaker ira that passed in 1996, that allows women, whether they are married and working at home or outside the home and single or married, they will be able to set aside the same amount. and fortunately that amount has grown. so it's now not $2,000, but it can be $2,500 or $3,000 or $5,000, depending upon your age. it was a wonderful thing that we were able to do together.

senator mikulski and i worked on behalf of afghan women. when we started hearing the atrocities that were happening to the women of afghanistan that were brought back by great women's organizations like vital voices, that told the stories of the not only unequal treatment of women in afghanistan, but inhuman treatment of women in afghanistan. senator mikulski and i and senator clinton introduced the afghan women and children relief act, which was signed into law in december of 2001, which authorized funding for women in afghanistan and afghan refugee women, political participation was supported for afghan woman, and we followed up with appropriations. and i have to say that our presidents, our republican

presidents -- president bush -- our democratic president -- president obama -- we have always said that american money will go into afghanistan or iraq or anywhere else to support equally the education of girls and boys, that we would support women where they are not being treated as equals on a human rights basis. so our presidents have stood up and, of course, our bipartisanship in congress has also been the right thing to do. and senator mikulski, again, a leader in that area. i cannot think of a stronger supporter in this united states senate than barbara mikulski on the area of nasa. i want to say senator bill nelson also has been such a strong supporter. senator lamar alexander. senator mikulski and i now are

the, she is the chairman and i am the ranking republican on the committee that is appropriating for nasa. i am also such a -- so fortunate to have a chairman in jay rockefeller on the authorizing committee and the oversight committee for nasa. he too has been such a strong leader in assuring that we continue america's preeminence in space. senator mikulski, when the rubber hits the road in appropriations, has been there to say we're going to have the science and the hubbell telescope, which has given us so much information, and the james webb telescope. and now, of course, we have the human space flight issues. and barbara mikulski has been right there saying of course we're going to utilize the international space station. of course we're going to keep

america's priorities in space because it has done so much for our economy and our jobs and our technology and our health care improvements, but it has also bn a national security issue that barbara mikulski recognizes first and foremost. now i can't match a lot of the stories about barbara mikulski and her personality, but i can tell you that i took barbara mikulski to tour the johnson space center in 2001, and we did a wonderful event at baylor college of medicine to talk about the research that's being done and the biomedical sciences on the space station. i thought, well, you know, i'm going to bring barbara in when we can show her a little bit of texas, because we know texas has a lot of personality, and sometimes we are thought to have a little too much fun.

but, boy, i'll tell you what, barbara is one of us. i brought her into the houston rodeo. during the month of the houston rodeo, everybody is go texan, and everybody dresses texan, which means cowboy. and we have a great time. so i took barbara mikulski into the steer auction where just this past saturday a steer was sold for $460,000. the grand champion steer, i might say. and all of that money goes for scholarships for our young people to go to college. barbara mikulski comes in to the steer auction, and she looks around. there are 2,000 people at the breakfast before all these people are going to go and bid on the steer so that we can have the scholarships. and we're all dressed appropriately, texan, of course. and she reached over to my ear,

and she whispered, now, kay, if we were here on monday morning and we went to a chamber of commerce meeting, would these people look like this? well, i love to tell that story in houston because it gets huge laughs. she won over everybody in houston. they adored her from the beginning. she put on her cowboy hat and she rode in the grand entry on a buck board, and she became an honorary texan in our hearts. so, barbara mikulski knows how to win them over wherever she goes in the world, i assure you. let me just mention one of my early experiences, and that was when i first came in to the united states senate, there was an effort to have health care reform, and a program was put

forward. and this particular program had some things that were good. but one of the things in it was that no insurance coverage would be required for women to have mammographies if they were 40 or below. i'm going to tell you something, the biggest eruption in the united states senate was barbara mikulski saying are you kidding? i will not let this go by me in the united states senate. we are not going to say that a woman who is 40 or under is not going to be eligible for insurance coverage or a mammogram. not going to happen. and barbara mikulski took the lead, and i'm going to tell you the first thing that came out of that plan was that provision.

and it will never be in a plan as long as barbara mikulski is in the united states senate. so i'm just going to tell anybody who is looking at health care reform, take a little advice. don't mess with barbara mikulski, because we're going to have mammograms. and not only that, barbara mikulski came forward in the next month and passed unanimously in this senate a mammogram standards bill, because she learned in this process that there were varying degrees of standards of mammograms, mammography. and she was going to make sure that there were standards that every clinic would have, that every piece of equipment would have. and she led the effort, and it's law today. i will just end with yet another accomplishment, and that is single-sex education in public

schools. i started -- i didn't start. actually senator jack danforth of missouri started saying, look at the issue and saying we need to allow our public schools to offer single-sex education, meaning girl schools and boy schools, because so many of us have seen that you have to adapt education for the needs of each individual child to the best of our ability. and we know that there are so many wonderful private schools for boys, private schools for girls. but you could hardly have a public school that would be single-sex in this country in the 1990's. so jack danforth started. and when he left the senate, i picked this up. and i thought -- and the more i

looked at it, the more i saw that the benefits to boys and to girls, particularly in the middle and high school grades, were palpable. the benefits were palpable. and so, senator clinton and i and barbara mikulski, susan collins, the three of them had gone to girls schools. i hadn't. but they knew the benefits firsthand of single-sex education. barbara was a product of single-sex education going to a parochial school. and we had to fight, the first time i introduced the amendment was 1998. but it was 2001 when the four of us came together, and we actually got that bill passed through an amendment, and that amendment then not only made public single-sex education an option and legal, it also made it eligible for federal funding

grants, just like all of our public schools are. so i just want to say that it has been one of the joys of my time in the united states senate. to work with senator barbara mikulski. and i think that the impact of this 4'11" mighty might is the impact of ten times. she has made an impact on congress and an impact on america, because she is relentless, she is reasonable, she understands an issue, and she understands the importance of listening as well as talking. she is effective. she is totally respected. if there is anyone in the united states senate that doesn't like her, respect her, and work well with her, i haven't met them.

and when you're the longest-serving woman in in the congress, you've been with a lot of people. but she is unanimously so well regarded, i have never met an enemy of hers. i'll just close by saying the people who know her best love her most. and i can't think of a finer thing to say about any person. thank you, mr. president. and i yield the floor. mr. kerry: mr. president? the presiding officer: the snoer from massachusetts. mr. kerry: mr. president, first of all, i want to say what a pleasure it is to welcome senator sarbanes back here. i had the pleasure of cutting beside -- of sitting beside him on the foreign relations committee. we miss his judgment and wisdom here. we could use it these days, and it is great to see him back here. i also want to welcome governor o'malley here. i can't think of a time when

people have stood up to laud a fellow senator that the gone of- that the goafn of their state i- that the governor of their state is sitting here and listening. this is echo the remarkable affection that everybody has for barbara mikulski and particularly the high regard in which she is held. this is a very special celebration. the longest-serving woman in the history of the united states congress, 12,862 days today and counting, and in that time, i recall when i first came here, there was one woman serving -- nancy kassebaum. and it's fair to say that barbara mikulski has been one of the pivotal forces in creating here, assembling what i would call a true band of sisters, the

women with whom she has served in the senate, each of whom makes extraordinary contributions to this institution. we've heard from other colleagues that her clea careers just filled with milestones, and it is. the first democratic woman to serve in both houses of congress, the first democratic woman elected to leadership, the first woman elected to statewide office in maryland. these are just a few. when she came to the senate in 1986, after tenge years i ten ye house of representatives, women were still, in her words, request bit of a novelty in the senate." and indeed then it was only barbara and senator nancy kassebaum. but now barbara says, and i quote, "we're not viewed as novelties. we're not viewed as celebrities. we're viewed as u.s. senators." and one of the reasons for that is that barbara mikulski has

demonstrate add seriousness of porpurpose, an ability to legise and bring people together that has really defined her role as the dean of the women in the senate. some of the women in the senate, some of her colleagues call her "dean," and others call her "coach barb." but no matter what they call her, she has brought them together in this bipartisan sisterhood. she holds workshops, serves as a mentor to all newcomers, organizes monthly dinners. the dinners are what some of them have called a "zone a civility." which is something that the senate could use a little more of these days and again it is barbara mikulski's ability exampl--example that helps point direction. i would say to you that barbara mikulski's career has never been

defined by or -- it's not really about gender. it's about the agenda. i've had the privilege of working with her enough on different issue issues, being we calls one of her gallahads. i've seen this laser focus on what's right, on her conscience, on her gut, on her sense of what the people of maryland want and what she thinks is her duty as a united states senator. that's why i wanted her on the speaker's platform in 2004 in boston at the convention, and she delivered just the right message in her forceful and commanding way. she stood up there and she declared, "when women seek power, we don't seek it for ourselves; we seek it to make a difference in the lives of other people." and there's no arguing, as we've heard from a umin of colleagues -- and we've heard from a number

of colleagues, about what an extraordinary difference barbara has made in the lives of other people, not just marylanders but all americans. she's been an extraordinary advocate for the goddard space center, for the wallop's space facility, for the johns hopkins center, the chesapeake bay cleanup efforts. for decades she proudly worked beside my colleague of 26 years, ted kennedy. she loved ted kennedy and ted kennedy loved her, and together on the health committee they worked to make universal health care a reality. and her role when stho senator kennedy was sick was an extraordinary role of picking up that baton and helping to bring it across the finish line. along the way she became a leader on women's health, fighting for equality and health research and making sure that women get the quality of care that they deserve. she was one of the chief sponsors of the medicaid financing of mammograms and pap

smears. and i will never forget personally how barbara reactorred whe--reacted when tht would not include women in the trials of aaspirin because their hormones present tomb biological vaicialsz. barbara fired back, my hormones rage because of comments like that. her proudest accomplishment she says is the spousal ant antiimprovement act which helps to keep seniors from going bankrupt while paying for a spouse's nursing home care. but throughout her career barbara mikulski has fought to strengthen the safety net for seniors, for children, for anyone who needed somebody to stand up for them or push open the door for them. that fight started in east baltimore, where her polish immigrant grandparents ran a bakery and her father a grocery store, and she says she often

watched her father opening the doors of his grocery store for local steelworkers so they could buy their lunches before the morning shift. she dpo got it in her head at tt time that she' she'd rather be opening doors for others on the inside. she got a job as a social worker helping at-risk children and educating seniors about medicare. she got involved in politics by organizing community groups to stop a highway from going through the highlandtown neighborhood where she grew up. let me tell you, mr. president, nobody had ever seen anything like her. at one rally she jumped up at a table and scried, "the british couldn't take fells point. the termites couldn't take fells point. and, god damn if we'll let the state roads commission take fells point." and as they say on espn, the crowd went nuts and the roads

commission never knew what hit them and i assure everybody that was a nonprofane use of our lord's name. again, no surprise, that led to her election to the city council and i think that explains a lot about just how good a politician she is, how well she knows the street. i think every were unof her colleagues, all of -- i think every one of her colleagues, are in awe of her ability to focus in on the street emotion, on the simple policive an argument -- on the simplicity of an argument, and to be able to sum it up in a razor-like comment. whether it is as camden yards, fells point, the eastern shoarks the washington suburbs or out along the mason-dixon line, barbara understands her constituents concerns, shares their aspirations and sums up their hopes and dreams in a few

short sentences that nobody else can parallel. mr. president, if anyone expected bar br mikulski to accept being just a novelty or celebrity in congress, they had no understanding of her deep roots as an immigrant, urban american and the values she learned about hard work in her family. if anyone be expects her to slow down just because she's now the longest-serving woman in the history of congress, they don't know her. a couple years ago barbara and i talked about how similar maryland and mass are in certain ways, especially the rural and fishing histories which we actually both have. she told me she wasn't much of a fisherman but she liked to hunt. the only problem was, she cited the resoil of the rifle give than she stands 4 pouf 11" ." well, it is clear from the record, clear from the comments of all of her colleagues, clear

from this extraordinary longest-serving record in the congress and all that she has accomplished that she stands as one of of the tallest united states senators and packs a punch way beyond her 4 '11". we're proud to have her as a colleague and are in awe of her ability to galvanize action, which is what this institution should be all about. i yield the floor. ms. mikulski: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. ms. mikulski: mr. president, i know -- first of all, let me say i'm enormously touched and gratitude about the warm words that my colleagues have spoken on both sides of the aisle. and i'm particularly moved by the fact of the men of maryland who are here today, the wonderful word of senator

cardin, my colleague, and also here today governor o'malley and my -- when i came to the senate my senior colleague, paul sarbanes. governor o'malley and senator sarbanes are over here, but they certainly -- they're on the bench, but these men are certainly not back benchers. and i must say about the governor and senator sarbanes, senator s.a.r cardin, they prove adage that men of quality will always support women who seek equality. i've enjoyed their support, their wise counsel, and their collegial ifortses icollegial ef the people of maryland. it is an honor to be here passing this significant benchmark where i have become the longesthe longest-serving we

history of the congress. it is a great honor for me to be able to pass into the history books with an esteemed person like senator margaret chase smith, and we spoke about that in january 2011 when i was sworn in. there were tributes that day and wonderful word words coming from women senator. and today actually over the weekend i surpassed the record of edith morse rogers who was the longest-serving woman in the house. both of those women came from new england. they were both hearty, resilient and fiercely independent. i, a, as i read their histories, so admired them. they were known for devotion to constituent service and unabashed sense of patriotism, and kind of telling it like it

is. i hope that as i join them in the history books that i can only continue with the same spirit of devotion to duty and that fierce independence and patriotism. mr. president, i didn't start out wanting to be an historic figure. you don't say, oh, what do you want to be when you grow up? i want to be an historic figure. when i was growing up, it was about service. for me, its not how long i serve. it's not about history. you know, for me history books were jane adams and abigail adams and powdered wigs and i just welcome a day when i even have time to powder my know, let alone powder my wig. the fact is that when i wanted to grow up i wanted to be of service. i learned that in my home, in my family, in my community, and with the wonderful nuns who taught me. my colleagues have talked about my wonderful mother and father.

i had a terrific mother and father. and i'm so happy today that my two sisters and my fantastic brother in laws are joining me here today. i only wish my mother and father could be here with me because they worked so hard to see that my cities ters sisters and i han education, at significant sacrifice to them. but they were really wonderful people and you saw them in the life of business. every day my father would open his grocery store and say, good morning. can i help you? and when he did, he wanted to make sure that his customers got a fair deal. he opened his grocery store during the new deal because he believed in roosevelt, as my father said, "i knew roosevelt believed in me." then i had the benefit of the wonderful catholic nuns who educated me. i had the benefit of going to a school called the institute of notre dame and then mount saint

ago necessary college, the sister of notre dame and the sisters of mercy. these women who had concentrated her life to the message of christianity and the message of jesus christ wanted to make sure that women in america could learn and be part of our society. they didn't only teach us our three r's. they taught us about leadership and service, but they also taught us about other values. the values of love your neighbor, care for the sick, worry about the poor, be hungry and thirst after justice. when i was at the institute of ne tremendous dame, the school that nancy pelosi went as well, there was something called the christopher logan after saint christopher. it said it was better to light one little candle than to curse the darkness. that's what i wanted to do. i wanted to be a social worker. i even thought about being a doctor. one time i even thought about being a catholic nun, but that vow of obedience kind of slowed

me down a little bit. because, mr. president, in this country wonderful things happen. when my great-grandmother came to this country, she had little money in her pocket, but a big dream in her heart that she could be part of the american dream, that she could own a home in her own name, in her own right, that she could have a job and so could the people in her own family. and that based on merit and hard work, you could be something. well, in three generations, i've become a united states senator. only in america the story of my family could have occurred. modest beginnings, hard work, effort, neighbor helping neighbor. and as much has been said about my fight for the highway, i was really thinking about getting a doctorate, a doctorate in public health at johns hopkins. but they were going to run that highway through the

neighborhood, the older ethnic neighborhood, african-american neighborhoods. we were viewed in some of those neighborhoods as the other side of the tracks. i wanted to fight to keep those neighborhoods on track. so i took on city hall, and i did fight them. and in this country, what happened. in another country they would have taken a protester like me and put me in jail. instead in the united states of america, they sent me to the city council. i worked hard there, and five years later when senator paul sarbanes, who was a congressman, ran for the senate, i ran for his house seat. and i got the job. when i arrived in the house in 1976, only 19 women were serving. 14 democrats and 5 republicans. only five women of color. in 2012 there are 74 women in the house, 50 democrats, 24

republicans, 26 women of color. and here in the senate there are now 17 women serving: 12 democrats, 5 republicans. today we saw here visiting us was senator carol moseley-braun, a woman of color who served well while she was here. those were the numbers and those were the statistics. and though i joined this long number of first, for me it's not how long i served but how well i served. when i came to the congress, i became a member of the fabulous third congressional district. my job was to represent a blue-collar community that was in economic transition. what did we do? we were a community that built things here so we could ship them over there. we built cars. we built ships. we made steel. we knew that if a country didn't make something and build something, it couldn't make something of itself.

i fought for those blue-collar people. i fought to keep those jobs in manufacturing. we fought for the poor of baltimore, its dredging, so we could bring in the big ships so that we could have exports. we worked again for those people in those manufacturing areas while we saw jobs go overseas. and then we worked very hard for cities to make sure that our cities were safe, that we had great schools and that they had a chance of making it. i fought hard for health care. one of my greatest pieces of legislation was the spousal impoverishment act, that if one spouse went into a nursing home, the other spouse wouldn't have to spend down their life's savings so that they would lose their home. aarp tells me my legislation of so many years ago that stands today have kept one million people -- one million people -- from losing their home or their family farm. those were the battles then. those were the battles when i

changed my address when i came to the united states senate. though i changed my address, the battles are still the same: jobs, social justice, opportunity based on hard work, peace in the world, and continue to fight for this. but for me, it's not only about issues. issues are so abtract. issues can be so bloodless when we talk about it. for me, issues are about people, the people i represented in my own hometown, the people i represent in my state, and the people i know who live in the united states of america. my favorite thing is being out there talking to the people, going into diners, going table to table listening to their stories, holding round tables with parents with children with special needs, meeting with scientists who have discoveries that they think will lead to new ideas and new products that will be new jobs. universities that train our

workforce. for me, it's about the people. so as i pass this important benchmark, which i'm so honored to do, i want people to know i still am that young girl that watched her father open that up grocery store every day and say "good morning, can i help you." i'm still that young girl that went to the institute of notre dame at mount saint agnes college that said i'm going to light one little candle. i don't want to curse the darkness. i'm going to continue to fight for a stronger economy, a safer america, the people of maryland. and in conclusion i just want to say thanks. i want to thank the dear lord for giving me the chance to be born in the greatest country in the world, to be able to work hard and serve in one of the greatest institutions in the united states of america. but nobody gets to be a me without a whole lot of thee. i want to thank my family. i want to thank the religious women that educated me.

i want to thank all of my staff that worked so hard to help me do a good job. and i want to thank the countless volunteers who believed in me and worked for my election when nobody else did. and most of all, i want to thank the people of the third congressional district in the state of maryland who are saying barb, we're going to give you your shot. don't ever forget this. don't ever forget us. and i want them to know though i've now served in the senate 12,892 days, i will never forget them, and every morning i'm saying in my heart, good morning, can i help you? mr. president, i yield the floor. [applause]

mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: mr. president, i am so honored to join with so many of my senate colleagues and people from maryland and across this country in recognizing and congratulating the amazing woman that you just heard from, my good friend from maryland, senator barbara mikulski, who as you have just heard has just become the longest-serving female member of congress in the history of the united states. you know, this is really an achievement that takes courage, takes passion, and it takes commitment. those are three things that all of us who know her so well know she has in abundance. mr. president, my good she taugs

about the legislative process, the rules on the floor and the many more subtle rules off the floor. in short, senator mikulski showed us the ropes and she has done it every day that i have been he here for all the women that have come since she's been here. because while she knows it's important and courageous to lead

the charge, she also understands the first ones have to be responsible and successful so others can follow. mr. president, it's because senator mikulski has done her job so well that other women have been able to follow her in her footsteps. so she is here today as the longest-serving woman in congress not by accident or by happenstance. she's here because she has earned it, because the people of her state know she is an indispensable champion of their causes, because she does work across party lines and because she delivers results. mr. president, i know many years from now when women have achieved a larger, more representative role in our nation's capital, senator mikulski will be at the very top of the list of people to thank. the person who not only forged the path but who went back and guided so many of us down it. so, mr. president, i know many

of my colleagues are here on the floor today to thank senator mikulski, but i'm here especially to thank her as one of those women who has followed her in her footsteps for her more than 35 years of service to her state and to her country and those of us who know her well know she is not even close to being finished. so, mr. president, my very best to my very good friend, senator mikulski. and i wish her very well in her next 35 years. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from new york. mr. schumer: you know, i too want to speak of my dear friend, barbara mikulski, who is just precious. she is precious to her family. she is precious to the people of the third congressional district that she represented for ten years.

she is precious to the people of maryland, precious to the people of the united states, and precious to those of us who have the privilege of serving with her in this body. she's been affectionately known as a few things here: the dean of women, the breaker of the ceiling, as patty murray just said, setting the stage, setting the rule book, writing the rule book for women in the senate. there will be, mr. president, 51 women in the senate one day. there will be. and it will come much more quickly because barbara mikulski was really the first. there is no question about that. the senate will be a better place for it in so many different ways. she's also not only known as the dean of women, we love her. she's known as barb. and i love calling her up on the phone late at night and having her say, "this is barb. please call me. make sure you say the words.

leave the phone number twice. and of course when barb says something, we all do it. so i always leave the phone number twice. now, one of the -- i admire so much about her, but one of the things at the top of the list is who she -- she's the real deal. she knows where she came from. she has never forgotten where she came from. and as i have told her personally, she has that internal gyroscope of who she is, what she should do, how she should do it, that guides her almost instinctively. and it's probably the most precious thing a politician can have. and not very many people really have it. but hers is about the best i have ever witnessed. it started from her upbringing and her faith, wh she mentioned -- which she mentioned. we've talked about willie. she mentioned willie. but you never forget how she reminds us, because it's with

her. you can see it in her actions every day how when people would come in to the store that willie had, the grocery store in east baltimore, when they lost their job or someone was very sick, willie would say, take the groceries and pay me later. it reminded me of my grandfather jake. we've talked about this. he was an exterminator. not quite the same as willie and not providing the same services. but he would tell people if you have roaches and rats in your house and you can't pay, i'll still exterminate. pay me when you have money. so i understood that instinctively. i'd love willie to have met my grandpa jack because i'm sure they were kindred souls in a lot of ways. the guidance of willie and barb's mom, you can see it every day in the way she acts. and i just want to say another thing about barb. she got in to public service as a community activist. there was a highway that was

going to tear up an important and historic part of her community, and she got involved. and, you know, being schooled by her and many of my colleagues, many women felt, oh, they would be excluded from politics if they went into politics directly. but when you're a community activist and you take a leave because something is borrowing you about your home or your neighborhood, politics just followed sort of naturally. it's a little bit like patty murray's story as well. these days because of what barb has done, i think my daughters can aspire -- i don't know if they do, but can aspire to go into political life directly. but in those days, it was much harder. but there she was. she led this fight. she went on to the city council, of course the third c.d. in

maryland and now to this august chamber. she has done so much. it has been cataloged by all my colleagues. medical research. there are probably millions of people alive today because of the 35 years that she has pushed to make that happen. they don't know who they are. they're there. they're living happy and healthy because of barb mikulski. how about veterans and health care needs? again, literally tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of our veterans are living much better lives because they were able to get the health care that mikulski spearheaded, particularly in the earlier days when this was not a popular cause. and the list goes on and on and on. she has done so, so much, and in our chamber, she is beloved, beloved. people are sometimes afraid of her when she gets mad.

people want her approval. but most of all, i think what most of us seek is her advice, because after so many years in politics, she has that gift to understand what the average person needs and to talk directly to them. she doesn't talk through her colleagues or doesn't talk through the media or doesn't talk through some community leader or other politician. she is still talking to that family sitting in east baltimore or hagerstown or in annapolis. she almost has them in front of her eyes wherever she goes, and that's why she is so -- her speeches is so effective. she doesn't try to polish them. that's not her. she speaks from the heart directly to the people, and she cares so much about them that it comes through. it's an amazing trait. one of the things i most admire

about people in political life is people who never forget where they came from, mr. speaker. she is one of the most powerful people. not just women. one of the most powerful people in america. persons. maybe i'm saying that wrong. but she wouldn't be mad at that. and yet, she is the real -- she is just too -- i didn't know barb mikulski when she was a community activist in east baltimore, but my guess is she is exactly the same today. all the power and the accomplishments and the praise all deserved have not changed her a whit. that to me says an amazing thing about an individual. so, barb, i know my colleagues are waiting, but we love you, we cherish you, and as patty murray said, i will put it my own way, i am sure with barbara mikulski,

knowing her as well as i do, the best is yet to come. madam president, i yield the floor. mr. whitehouse: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island is recognized. mr. whitehouse: madam president, i'd like to join my colleagues in a tribute to senator mikulski. i see my distinguished friend, senator cochran, on the floor, and i want to know if he would like -- very good then. i'm delighted to join my colleagues in joining in this tribute to our -- perhaps our favorite colleague, barbara mikulski, on her becoming the longest serving woman in congressional history. her work in these halls has made our country stronger, and in a place where partisan rancor too often rules the day, she has established a legacy of service to her constituents and to all of us in this body that stands as an example to every one of

us. her political career began in the late 1960's when she launched a campaign to stop the construction of a highway over historic neighborhoods she wanted to protect in baltimore. she won that battle and went on to run for the baltimore city council in 1971. more than 40 years later and following a successful stint in the u.s. house of representatives, barbara mikulski continues to blaze an impressive trail. during her 27 years in the senate, she became the first woman to sit on the senate appropriations committee, the first woman to chair an appropriations subcommittee and the first democratic woman elected to senate leadership. last year, we celebrated barbara as she became the longest serving female senator, and now she has crossed yet another milestone, passing congresswoman edith norris rogers of massachusetts, having served in the united states congress longer than any woman in history. of course, we don't just

celebrate the quantity of barbara's service but its quality. no one is better at drilling down to the heart of an issue and expressing it in punchy, unforgettable terms. no one cheers us up more than barbara when she tells us to stand tall, square our shoulders, put on our lipstick and rise to the occasion. we don't all put on lipstick, but we all get the message. no one better combines the idealism of public with the owe active abilities of government. she told me once with a twinkle in her eye, i'm a reformer but i'm a bit of a wart healer, too. practically and passion combined is what makes politics successful, and no one does this better than barbara. when she was first elected to the house in 1977, she was one of 21 women in congress, 18 in the house and only three in the senate. today, there are 93 women

serving, including 17 senators. and barbara has earned the distinction of dean of the senate women. but she never, never forgot her roots as a champion for those who need a voice in this building. in her years in the senate, barbara mikulski's dedication to her constituents and women's rights has been clear. from becoming a champion of women's health issues to organizing training seminars for women of both parties elected to the senate to sponsoring and pushing through with a force that we all remember, the lilly ledbetter fair pay act of 2009. during my much shorter tenure as a united states senator, i have had the great privilege and pleasure to work with barbara to pass landmark health care reform legislation out of the health committee. i have also served with her on the intelligence committee and worked closely with her on the senate intelligence committee's cyber task force to evaluate cyber threats and issue recommendations to the full committee. i have taken from those

experiences great affection and respect for senator barbara mikulski. these are issues that are complex and complicated, difficult and object truce and -- and obstruce and she brought to them the verve and vigor to them and those are her hallmarks -- vevre, vigor and vision. i know those of us in this chamber are proud to call senator barb our colleague and friend as she makes history again. her hard work and collegial spirit have enriched this senate, and i wish her all the best in the accomplishments ahead. on behalf of all rhode islanders, senator mikulski, i congratulate you for this milestone in your history, the senate's history and our nation's history. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from georgia is recognized. mr. isakson: i consider it an

honor and privilege to rise for a moment to pay tribute to senator mikulski from the state of maryland. in so doing, i think it's only appropriate that i quote from a speech made on november 22, 1922 by the first woman ever to serve in the united states senate. rebecca latimer felton was the first senator in the senate to be a woman. she was appointed for one day. governor brown had run against walter george of the united states senate. walter george won. because of miss felton's unending help to him in his race, he asked the governor if he would appoint her for a day to his seat before he took it and was sworn in. she came to washington, d.c., to serve for one day and she made one speech. in that speech, she had a paragraph that to me exemplifies barbara mikulski. she said and i quote -- "let me say, mr. president, that when the women of the country come and sit with you, although there may be very few in the next few years, i pledge to you that you will get ability, you will get integrity of purpose, you will get exalted patriotism, and you

will get unstinted usefulness." that was rebecca felton in 1922. today in nor of 2012, we honor a senator who has lived up to every one of those promises miss felton made almost 100 years ago. i have had the privilege to serve on the help committee with the senator, worked very closely on the alzheimer's legislation which she has been such a leader on, worked with her on many other projects, including one i am happy to remember -- remind her about. that was a confirmation of wendy sherman just a few months ago when together on the floor of the senate we worked together to see that she was appointed and named and confirmed under secretary of state for the united states of america serving under hillary clinton. and in that night when we worked on getting that u.c. done, and it wasn't easy, i saw the tenacity, i saw the grace, i saw the patriotism and i saw the integrity of barbara mikulski. it is an honor for me to rise today and commend her on a great individual achievement but not just for herself but for all the women who had gone before her

and all the women who will come later on and for my five granddaughters and my daughter. she has lived a life in the united states senate exemplary of the contribution all women can make to our society. i commend her on her service, her compassion, her integrity and all that she has done for the state of maryland, the united states of america and peace on this earth. so, barbara, congratulations to you on a great achievement. it's an honor for me to be here. if i could ask unanimous consent, i want to make one other recognition if i can and ask that it be separated in the journal. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. isakson: this past weekend, georgia lost a great, great citizen. furman bisher died on saturday afternoon of a tragic heart attack. he was the premier sportswriter in the united states of america. covered every super bowl, every masters, was at every heavyweight fight. from the time he started typing on his manual typewriter until the day he died, he typed on

that same manual typewriter that was over 65 years old. he was a brilliant writer, a compassionate individual, a great friend and someone i looked up to very much. he was a pace setter. he actually got the only interview of shoeless joe jackson ever done by a reporter. he did it because of his countrying ability to be in the right place at the right time. i pay tribute to his life and all his accomplishments in terms of the writing of sports in our state and around the world. to his family and loved ones, i extend my sympathy on behalf of not just myself but all the citizens of georgia. and i yield back. the presiding officer: the senator from delaware is recognized. mr. coons: madam president, i am honored to follow my good friend and colleague from the state of georgia in recognizing the contributions of senator mikulski, now the longest serving woman in the history of the united states congress. today we have been joined by many great marylanders. we have had governor o'malley and senator cardin and former

senator sarbanes, and senator mikulski's own family, her sisters and brother-in-law in the gallery. i am also pleased that we have got two of her favorite constituents, my father and my brother, watching us today as well. they live in annapolis and they have known what i have known since childhood when i lived in the suburbs of baltimore, that senator mikulski is a remarkable, a tireless, a passionate and an effective senator. reference has been made to her start as a community organizer, someone who saved fells point from a 16-lane superhighway, someone who wasn't afraid to get into the gritty issues of a local community and standing up for folks who didn't have anyone to fight for them. we have also heard about her early years as a social worker, helping folks in need understand the programs available to them and then fight for the programs that should have been available to them. and it's no surprise to any of us that the district she first represented in the house of representatives, the third, was known as the steel district

where lots of men and women worked in the baltimore -- excuse me, in the bethlehem steel plant, and it's no surprise that she has earned a reputation here in the senate as a woman of steel who fights for manufacturers, who fights for federal workers, who fights for western maryland, who fights for poultry on the peninsula on the eastern shore of maryland, who fights for her constituents day in and day out. it is indeed just that in this women's history month we would be recognizing senator barbara mikulski who has stood up for maryland each and every day. and although like me she comes up a little short every time she stands, she stands incredibly tall in the company of senators throughout american history. she is someone whose passion for people whose determination to continue in the tradition of her father, that fair deal grocer who asks every day that simple question how can i help and then gets busy answering it. she is a role model for me, for all of us, for my daughter, for

my family, for our community. she is the only senator who i have heard say to me fiercely before going on a vote on the floor to the barricades, and the only person who could say that and mean it. for a lifetime, she has been at the barricades of justice, she has been at the barricades of service, she has been at the barricades of making a difference, and for that, we are all grateful. madam president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: thank you. the senator from alaska is recognized. ms. murkowski: thank you, madam president. i, too, stand today to pay recognition to a friend, a colleague, and truly a woman who brings a smile to my face because for as many years as she has served her state of maryland, for as many years as she as served in the halls of

congress, she has the enthusiasm, the spontaneity, the excitement when she approaches an issue as a brand-new rookie freshman coming into -- into this body. and that's really quite remarkable. because around here, we can get kind of dragged down by the day-to-day, the politics, the partisan nature, the conflicts that are inherent in this process. but senator barbara mikulski is one who i think embraces life and embraces the responsibilities that are put before her and that that she has an opportunity to represent to her constituents, she embraces them with a enthusiasm that should be a reminder to us all of why we are here, to serve. i've got so many different stories and quips and quotes about senator mikulski whose name sounds somewhat familiar to

mine, senator murkowski, and every now and again we have an opportunity to share the same stage, same podium, and the -- the individual who is introducing us will trip on his or her tongue and refer to us wrongly. and there was one occasion where we were being recognized by the national geographic society. and she pointed out to the individual who was making the introduction that, she's the vertical one, and i am the not so vert cal one. -- vertical one. just a recognition again that regardless of the situation, barbara mikulski has a good comeback, a quick quip. she is a quipmeister if there ever was one. and it speaks to her enthusiasm and the passion that she brings to the job that she has in front of her.

with a name like murkowski or mikulski, you clearly have a polish heritage that you look to with pride. she reminds me of mine because she is perhaps a little more connected to those polish roots, but again, a sense of pride with who she is and where she has come from and what her family has -- has done in proceeding her that allows her to go on and do so much for so many. we have had the opportunity to work together on issues that coming from different parts of the country truly different ends of the country, you wouldn't think that we would have as much commonality on some of the issues. as the chairman on the commerce, justice, science appropriations committee, we have worked closely on issues that relate to our fisheries and enformats, to --

enforcements, the coastal issues. she's always reminding me we have to take care of our fishermen out there, make sure that our families that rely on our waters are appropriately cared for. we've worked together on women's health issues. we were just recently at the sister-to-sister event, and i do feel a kinship, a relationship with this polish sister here as we talk about those issues that are so important to -- to women's health. we've shared the same concerns about how we do more for our first responders, for our service members, for our veterans. just this past week as senator mikulski -- i almost did it myself, almost called her murkowski -- as she was chairing a committee, and i brought up the issue as it related to late senator ted

stevens and the department of justice investigation that failed so advise rabbably and -- miserably and we are now pursuing through different avenues to make sure that nobody should have to go through what senator stevens did. senator mikulski stopped, literally stopped the committee hearing to remind the attorney general that, in fact, this was not a partisan issue, that this was an issue where we all should be concerned, that if -- if there is no justice within the department of justice, what -- what does that mean for us as a nation? and she is never hesitant to speak up and stand up and make very, very clear. when these issues are important to the nation, it should know no bounds by party. and -- and barbara mikulski has held true to that. i think in many, many different

ways that make this milestone that we are recognizing today even more important, because i think there is -- there is a kind of a piling-on of events that can happen here in the halls of congress. where the weight of what we do on a daily basis just gets to be a load. to a certain extent, you can get tired. you can get worn. but barbara has not let the weight of the responsibility bring her down. i was joking with her just a little bit ago when all of the accolades were coming her way, i said barbara, with all these kind words that are being said about you, by the time the tributes are done, you're going to be seven feet tall. and that woman is seven feet tall in the minds of so many of

us. she is a giant for the people of maryland. she has proven herself to be a giant in so many ways as she works to -- to do good for so many. i'm proud to stand with so many of my colleagues today in recognizing her tenure, recognizing this historic place that she has carved for herself within congress and to call her my friend. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: thank you. the senator from new jersey is recognized. mr. menendez: madam president, i rise today to honor the service of one of our most distinguished, long-serving colleagues, the tireless, sometimes relentless and often spirited senior senator from maryland, senator barbara mikulski. to say that she is a trailblazer for women in politics is an understatement as we've heard. she has blazed a bold trail not

just for women in politics but for all women in every endeavor. she's a fighter, an advocate, someone who you hopefully are on the same side on, and -- of an issue because she is a formidable opponent when you're on the opposite side. and she's a role model for leadership in getting things done. her impressive list of accomplishments is far too long to recite in a few minutes or even a few hours, and it would not adequately do justice to her incredible service to the state of maryland and the people of this nation. senator mikulski has dedicated her career to serving marylanders and dedicated her life to public service. she began that as a social worker in the neighborhoods of baltimore, working every day on the street helping at-risk children find their way and giving seniors the help they needed. she was not and is not a bleeding heart, but there is no

one who has a fuller heart, a more open heart to the deepest needs of the least powerful among us than senator mikulski. she's someone you want on your side, someone everyone wants on their side, and she came to public service with what i like to call the long view. she can see beyond herself to the needs of society as a whole, and she has fought for those needs and won on far more occasions than she's lost. when she first ran for public office in 1971, i know she had in her heart the deep and abiding memories of those kids and seniors she met in baltimore when she began in her career. and i know she carries those memories with her to this day. to this day, she has never forgotten the people of maryland who need her the most and have had the wisdom to elect her time and time again. her political career has taken her from the baltimore city council to u.s. house of

representatives and this chamber where she has honorably served for the past 26 years. for the seven years that i've had the opportunity to work with her in this chamber, there has been no stronger, more knowledgeable, more committed colleague on this side of the aisle. she's an example for all of her colleagues determined to work across the aisle when possible, and ready to fight for her beliefs when necessary. she was the first woman elected to statewide office in maryland, the first democratic woman elected to the senate in her own right, the first woman to serve in both houses of congress, the longest serving female member of the senate, and as we all know, this past saturday senator mikulski became the longest serving woman in the history of the united states congress, serving more than 35 years in the house of representatives and the senate. and it's only fitting that she achieved this milestone during women's history month, because she has not only paved the way for women in politics but for

women everywhere. i had the opportunity to work with senator mikulski during the long and difficult debate and negotiations on health care reform. and her work was instrumental ensuring that women have access to the comprehensive health care they are now guaranteed under the law. and during that debate, no one's voice was clearer, no one's voice was stronger, no one was more convincing than her in the fight for a woman's right to comprehensive health care coverage. she fought for mandatory insurance coverage of essential sftionz like mammograms and maternity care, services many insurance companies refused to cover. she fought to end gender discrimination by insurance companies. and as a result of the affordable care act and in large measure because of senator mikulski's tireless efforts on behalf of women, being a woman is no longer a preexisting condition as insurance companies

used to say that can be discriminated against. those insurance companies who routinely denied coverage of basic women's health services, essential services, are now riverside to cover those services under the comprehensive provisions of the law. whenever there is a need in chamber for a strong voice for women, whenever there is a need for an advocate to stand up for the powerless against the powerful, whenever there is a child who needs a friend, a senior citizen who needs a hand, barbara mikulski is there. i believe there are many times she comes to this floor remembering as she said, her days back in baltimore, and she's right there. an advocate's advocate, fighting for children and senior citizens she has met long the way. the best of us are better off because she comes with a full heart, ready to do what's right, not simply what's politically expedient. her bill, the lilly ledbetter

act was signed by president obama days after his inauguration and i was proud to work with senator mikulski with that and so many other efforts as well that make a difference in the lives of average americans. finally, senator mikulski has been a tireless advocate for something that is near and dear to my own heart. she's been an advocate for those who suffer from alzheimer's and their families. as the son of a mother who battled alzheimer's for 18 years, and who lost her life to it, i understand firsthand the unique challenges of providing long-term care for a loved one. and senator mikulski has come to this floor on countless occasions advocating for increased research, education, and programs for individuals with alzheimer's. and has found the support from her colleagues on both sides of the aisle. it's estimated that 5.4 million americans are currently living with alzheimer's, and millions

more have been touched in some way by this debilitating disease. i want to thank the senator from the bottom of my heart for her passion for helping those who suffer from this disease. and i look forward to continuing to work with her on this issue until we find a cure for alzheimer's. the bottom line, senator mikulski is a deeply committed public servant. the state of maryland has rightly recognized her invaluable service for many years. because of her efforts, those families know their interests are protected and their voices are heard. it's been an honor to serve with her. all of us in this chamber can hope to serve our states with the same conviction, selflessness and pride that senator mikulski has had throughout her 35 years of service to the state of maryland. i'm reminded of what mother teresa said when she got the congressional gold medal. she said it's not all the awards and roiftions that one

receives -- recognitions in life that one receives that matters, it is how one has lived their life that matters. in that respect, senator mikulski has lived an extraordinary life, and we thank her for what she has done, not just for the people of maryland but for all the people of the united states of america. with that, madam president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: thank you. the senator from new hampshire is recognized. mrs. shaheen: madam president, i'm proud to be able to join my colleagues on the floor this afternoon in honoring senator barbara mikulski for her service to maryland and for the endless contribution she has made to the people of this country. it's really hard to adequately describe a political icon as barbara mikulski is, and for all of us women in politics, she is a model of what we can

aspire to, what we would hope to aspire to. and i just want to tell a simple story about barb that i think reflects her ability to get along with people, her zest for life, as so many of my colleagues have described, and the connection that she makes that makes a difference for people. she and i were on a flight with four other senators to the security forum in halifax, nova scotia a couple of years ago and the weather was bad so our flight was diverted to bangor, maine. it was winter in new england and of course when there's bad weather in new england in the winter, it sticks around for awhile. so we were trapped overnight in banger. -- in bangor. now, most of us just sat there waiting to figure out what was going to be done while we waited for a flight the next day, but

not barbara. because she doesn't sit still. she's never afraid to pick up the phone and to take action, and that's exactly what she did. she dialed up her old friend and colleague, all of our colleague, senator collins, susan collins, and said, guess where i am? and that's how those of us who were on that flight, the six senators, the secretary of homeland security wound up joining senator collins and the legendary troupe greeters of bangor, maine, to welcome troops at the airport as they returned home from overseas. so what seemed like was going to be an inconvenience turned into a real fabulous opportunity to thank our brave men and women in uniform and to have a good time while we were doing it. and you find those kinds of things happening if you spend

time with barbara mikulski. it's a byproduct of her relentless energy, her drive to better her community and our nation as a whole, her deep commitment to fighting for women's health, and her unfailing grace and gumption as a legislator, a colleague, and a friend. and as has been said, she got her start as a social worker trying to make the live of men and women in her native baltimore a little easier to bear. she was working in the service of values that were taught to her by her family, who owned the neighborhood grocery store. and as so many have commented, she tells the story of her father opening the store early so that steelworkers coming in for the early morning shift would have time to buy their lunch. barb has carried that spirit, those values that she learned from her family in that grocery store here to the senate and often it is sorely needed here, those values.

but as dean of the women's caucus, she has built a sense of community within the women's caucus. her bipartisan women's dinners are legendary. and, of course, what happens at those dinners stays at those dinners. those are mikulski's rules. but we really don't need to look any further than that windy night in maine to know how effective she's been in making things happen for people. i look forward to more of her dinners, to more conversations with the senator, to more chances to work with her as she fights on behalf of women and seniors and veterans and all those who don't have a voice in government. and at the table. i thank the senator for her friendship, for her leadership, and for her many years of service. thank you. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia is

recognized. mr. manchin: thank you so much. madam president, i, too, am honored to be able to rise today and speak of our dear friend, barbara mikulski. so many good things have been said, so many accolades have been shared of what barbara has done and what she means to all of us. committee only tell you there's not a better ally, a mentor, a neighbor, most importantly a friend that i have in the senate than barbara mikulski. we do share a border, maryland and west virginia have had a long and illustrious relationship. as governor, i'd always known of barbara and met her a few times when i served the great state of west virginia. but as senator, i've had the privilege of being here colleague and working with her and becoming friends. listen to her and watching her, how she works with her constituents, how she considers the issue, how she fights for the issue. and i don't think anyone's ever had to guess where barbara stands on an issue because we've all known. in the 15 months that we have

worked together, i can say that it's extremely rewarding to serve alongside of her. and whether it's her wisdom she shares on the train as we ride over to our sessions here or whether we talk about basically both being raised in a grocery store. my grandfather had a little grocery store. as you know, barbara was raised with her father in a grocery store. and i think that basically if you've got retail in your blood, you understand the people of america. her sense of humor is something to behold and every day that i have the privilege to serve with her is a good day in this senate. i know that the colleagues have all shared their stories with her. they've had more experience with her in the senate. i'm, as a freshman being here a little over a year and a half, has not had that many personal experiences except that i can tell you this. if there's a fight that breaks out, if there's something going wrong, you want barbara on your side. she's the person that you want in that foxhole when the

shooting starts. and i've been so appreciative to have her as my friend and always counting on her. she has been, as you heard, an advocate for women's health. the space program, her most beloved state of maryland she fights for every day. last year she became the first woman to reach the milestone of serving a quarter of a century in the senate. i have staffers who are younger than her service. but also i have young staffers, especially my female staffers, who said they see a world of possibility because of the trail that senator barbara mikulski has left for them. so with all of that, she's made the trail for all of us. as barbara mikulski is a person that no one's going to be able to fill her shoes. we will all be lucky enough if we can just follow in her footsteps. when she began serving on the hill in 1977, there were 20 other women in all of congress.

she and 17 others served in the house while there were three in the senate. today, 35 years later, there are 17 women serving in the senate. if there is anything that we can learn from senator barbara mikulski, it's that 17 women is far too few. we need more women like you, barbara, and just as importantly, we need more senators like you. i can honestly say that i know the state of maryland is much better off because of barbara mikulski. but i can tell you that the united states of america is a better country because of barbara mikulski. so, thank you, to my dear friend, barbara, for her service to this great country and to all the constituents of maryland, who must be extremely proud of her and have a right to be so. but i'm so proud to call her my friend and my neighbor. madam president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: thank you.

mr. lautenberg: madam president? the presiding officer: yes. the senator from new jersey is recognized. mr. lautenberg lautenberg: than, madam president. we've listened with interest and total accord as the life in the senate has been reviewed by so many people of friendship and goodwill about barbara mikulski. her record is quite well-known. she's determined to get things done. she never let's minutia stand in the way or block an accomplishment. when -- i noticed one thing, when barbara mikulski starts to

talk in a debate that the noise around -- the crowd around the room quiets down. and if you don't, beware. barbara will call your attention to it and say it in a way that demands attention. barbara and i arrived in the senate at fairly close proximity. i came here in 1983 and barbara arrived in 1986, as i recall. and we were both on the appropriations committee. i had some slight seniority

ahead of her. and one of the things that was being dealt with was seniority. and barbara asked my help in the choice of subcommittee, and i tried to step out of the way and help barbara obtain the chairmanship of a subcommittee on appropriations, which she managed so well, so effectively. she once called me her gallahad, and i was proud of the moniker because it was intended to be a compliment and a sign of

friendship. strikingly, barbara mikulski and i had backgrounds that were not -- that were not dissimilar. i came from polish heritage. my father, my grandparents on my paternal side were born in poland, as barbara's family did. and they were immigrants that -- my parents were brought as children from europe and went through the traditional immigrant absorption. my folks found it very hard to make a living as they grew up here, grew up in america. my grandparents were essentially

poor people with a kind of blue-collar background and had to resort to storekeeping to keep food on the table, a roof overhead, clothes on their back. and the one thing that threaded through those years for me -- and i heard it coming from barbara mikulski so many times when she spoke, and that was there was always dignity in the house, that there was always a positive outlook. and as i heard it, her parents, like -- or my parents, like hers, were not able to do much with presents and valuables but they did something else, and you

see it so fundamentally clear in barbara mikulski's demeanor and her behavior. that what she learned at home, the same thing i learned at home, and that was the meaning of values. not valuables, values. and values included a character obligation for hard work and honesty and decency. there -- they were the yardsticks by which our -- we were measured as children and as adults. and so we -- i worked very closely with barbara. i left the senate, as is known, for two years and my seniority slipped as a consequence. barbara's seniority continued to grow and she is chairman of th

the -- of the appropriations subcommittee. and -- but barbara always brought a degree of strength and energy to the things that she said, to the things that she did. though barbara, during a presentation, wanted to make sure that she was heard and heard correctly, she would also pop up with humor. she had a facility with words, had a facility with expression that would have you engrossed in what she was saying and caught offguard when a joke would -- or a humorous statement would pop up.

so when we note that barbara mikulski from this modest background was always on the side of working people and it was never just a mask; it was the truth; it was where she wanted to be. and i must say that she, for me, was always a steadfast beacon that would remiensdz remind us,t carried away with your importance. get carried away with your responsibility as a senator. when barbara mikulski, who came these years ago -- it was noted

that she was the first among the women to come to the senate and ultimately, as we now know, became the longest-serving and carried herself through all of the difficulties that we've had, but always, always you could depend on barbara mikulski. when barbara stood up, people stopped talking about things that were extraneous and they would listen carefully because barbara mikulski always made so much sense, and she didn't let you get by without a challenge, if she believed that you were wrong. and so we've heard about her record, we've heard about her accomplishments, and everybody had wo wonderful things to say

about her. i listened carefully to statements that were being made and thought about our days together and how wonderful it was to be able to hear barbara mikulski make sense out of what often escaped challenge. and she would offer the challenge, and she would offer solutions. so i, like our other colleagues, stand here in awe and respect and note that barbara mikulski, the storekeeper's daughter, is so much like that which i saw in my own life and we've seen in america in the past century. and barbara mikulski, who in all due modesty, without any

impression of a smug satisfaction, always ready to take up the battle for the people whom she served, not only in the state of maryland but across the country. she was an inspiration for women coming to government. and she served so well as a demonstration of what could be. and so, madam president, i'm delighted to be here, to stand here as a friend and an admirer of barbara mikulski and wish her many more years of service and know that barbara is here -- b f barb was around, you could

always count on sense and good judgment to result. with that, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from new york is recognized. mrs. gillibrand: i associate myself with the comments of the senator from new jersey. it is with grade a great admirat i rise today to honor the senator from maryland, barbara mikulski, as the longest-serving woman in the history of the united states congress. it has been such an honor to serve with barbara mikulski in my three years here. hshe has become a dear friend ad mentor, just as she has become for all of the other female senators. it wasn't until 1932 that hattie carraway came to the senate and it wasn't until a century later that barbara mikulski became the first democratic woman ever elected to the the senate. when she arrived in the senate, she was just one of two women

serving in this body. now the longest-serving woman in the congressional history, senator mikulski is showing just what's possible when you ignore conventional wisdom, never stop fighting for what's right, and honor our commitment to families that elect us every single day. one of her hallmark battles has been the fight for equal pay for work for women. this is not only an issue of equality and justice but an economic imperative because as we stand here today with more dual-income households than ever, women only make 78 cents on the dollar compared to men. for women of color, african-american women and latinolatinas. i know senator mikulski won't give up until we correct in outrageous injustice. senator mikulski has also led the fight to strengthen our laws against domestic violence and open up access to health

screenings and treatment that save women's lives. and close to my heart, she was among the first to stand up to insurance companies that said that being a woman was a preexisting condition. you could always count on senator mikulski to lead the charge and draw a line in the sand in the senate when it comes to protecting women's health and women's right to choose. we just saw it yet again when she stood up to the dangerous overreach of the blunt amendment that would have denied women of this country the ability to choose which medications to take and leave that decision to their boss. she embodies the words of eleanor roosevelt, the battle for individual rights of women is one of long-standing andnnounce, should countenance anything that undermines it. it's that spirit, making your voice heard, never backing down in the face of injustice, that has made senator mikulski one of the strongest voices we have for women in this country and women

around the world. every single day she is paving the way for more women leaders in america by showing the young women and girls of this country that women's voices matter and are needed in our public debate. i want to close by expressing my personal debt of gratitude to her for her vision, her leadership, and her pioneering spirit. i simply could not imagine working in this body without her leadership. she's taught me so much in such a short period of time and just as importantly she's fostered an unbreakable, bipartisan spirit among our colleagues that has resulted in important victories for the american public. thank you, senator mikulski and congratulations on your historic achievement. it is an honor to serve with you and i hope to continue to serve with you for many years to come. i yield the floor.

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from new mexico is recognized. mr. udall: both senator sessions and senator snowe are here, and i don't know if they wanted to speak. i know we've had a flow of speakers on this side, and if you one of you wants to speak before i speak, i think it's the fair thing to do. senator sessions, you -- mr. sessions: madam president? the presiding officer: yes, the snthe senator from bam is recognized. mr. sessions: my understanding is that senator durbin was going to make a u.c. request, which i would plan to object to, and there might be some brief discussion of that. but i don't see senator durbin on the floor. mr. udall: i was just --

senator sessions, i'm just going to probably be the concluding remarks on celebrating senator mikulski's -- so i'm going to proceed with that, if that's ... madam president, you know, we've been here now for almost three hours. i was down here when we started this. senator feinstein started about 2:00, and we're approaching 5:00 now, for an incredible celebration of barbara mikulski's career. and i've listened to a lot of it, both in my office and here on the floorks an floor, and ity remarkable to hear the kind of things she's done. i rise today to honor any colleague, senator mikulski. as has been noted, this month, senator mikulski becomes the longest-serving woman in the history of congress. with her perfect sense of timing, barbara reaches this historic milestone during women's history month and it is for the history books.

but as barbara has said, it's not how long you serve but how well i serve. and she has served very well. she's served her beloved state of maryland very well, and she's served this country in a number of capacities on the appropriations committee and on various committees in the congress. and we celebrate this historic occasion. but more deeply we celebrate barbara's record of achievement, a record that transcends gender, a record that is rooted in a life dedicated to public service. since she was first elected to public office in 1971 to the baltimore city council, barbara has been setting milestones. just about that for a minute. 1971. this is 40 years-plus of public service. as the chair knows this is a

pretty -- this is pretty remarkable. she served in public service for a while. i've served for a while. but 41 years of public service. it's -- it's remark baling. -- it's remarkable fnlt the first woman elected to statewide office in maimpletd the first democratic woman elected to the senate in her own rievmen own right. the first woman in the democratic leadership and the first democratic woman to serve in both houses of congress. and yet it is not her being first that is the most impressive. it is her commitment to putting others first. and barbara has shown that that commitment, time and again, in over 35 years in the congress she has never wavered in her service to our nation, in her dedication to the people of maryland. she has fought for quality education, she has fought for america's seniors, she has fought for women's health and for veterans. for women facing unequal pay,

barbara championed the lilly ledbetter fair pay act. for senior citizens facing bankruptcy because of a spouse's nursing home care, barbara wrote the spousal antiimpoverishment act. yes, she is a trailblazer, but she blazes those trails to help others. for young people who dream of going to college, for families facing devastating illness, for opportunity for all americans -- that has been her passion. that has been her true achievement and that will be her greatest legacy. when barbara was first elected to the senate in 1986, there was only one other female senator. now there are 17. barbara is rightly so the dean of the women. she is a mentor to her female colleagues but no less so, she is an inspiration to all of us.

one thing i admire about barbara is her remarkable determination, her tenacity, but also her ability to work with others to get things done. she will fight for what she believes in, but she will sit down to dinner with her colleagues across the aisle, and she has never forgotten where she came from. the daughter of a baltimore grocer, each night she returns home to baltimore. she has never forgotten the values she learned there -- hard work, helping one's neighbor, patriotism. she's di did i minuteiaive in height only. that was evident early on. the story is well-known how as a young community activist brar ba stopped a 16-lane highway from coming through battle morning mh baltimore's fells point harbor.