madam president, if he's backing out on his support for the peb, we need to know that. and i yield the floor. mr. sanders: if i could. mr. wicker: yes. the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. sanders: my understanding, i say to my colleague from mississippi, is that as we speak the secretary of labor is in a room, or has been today, with managements and labor, in trying to forge an agreement. so what is going on right now is they are trying to reach an agreement which is amenable to both sides. so that is a work in process. mr. w mr. burr: it's clearly to anybody listening to this debate if senator sanders had been on the peb board, the peb board wouldn't be making a recommendation, the president wouldn't be behind it. that's where we are, short of a breakthrough in the goarks currently going on -- in the negotiations currently going on. at this grew up listening to paul harvey, he had a show "the rest of the news" the stuff you didn't hear. let me do paul harvey on senator sanders, the railroad workers today get three weeks paid leave on average, plus 11 p

some of those pieces were not in the peb, so the unions and the company. couple days off here and he read the language sometimes and it looks like -- it reads like it sounds. as a lawyer, the definitions are different. we spent a lot of time over last night until 5:00 this morning going over the language. we were able to get to an agreement. it would have been a strike and catastrophic for the american economy. amna: they ended up with one day of paid sick leave, is that true? >> that is one piece of it and another part of it is that there are three days for medical. some of the crew have set times, set standards. three shifts. there are crews that work when the train goes out. those folks don't have predictability in the schedule and they did not have the ability to set a doctors appointment. in the middle of the week, they would not get a chance to work. they were also able to agree on rules around work, working rules in the contract. and in the health care, the split is 85-15. what they wanted to do is make sure they cap the 15% portion that went as hig

. >> i think there is a framework by the peb.ides accept that or negotiate something else. either way is fine, get it done. but having said that, you think about all the energy products, and by the way, it's not just fossil fuels and oil and gas, it's also things like wind turbine propellers that you have to ship across the country. so, all forms of energy, which are helping us to keep energy prices low or not let energy prices go higher, perhaps i should say it that way. you are going to see additional increases for consumers, manufacturers, use 30% of the nation's energy supply. the more it costs, the more it costs in terms of energy input, the more products are going to cost for the consumer, the final cost of the product. so you are just going to see more and more inflation. it's a bad cycle. we can nip this in the bud and frankly need to see the cooperation -- >> sandra: you are giving a lot of credit -- >> 12 unions, nine have said ok. so, come on. let's get this done. >> sandra: ok, so this would be one crisis averted if t