i want to commend chairwoman barbara mikulski and chair woman murray. we would not be here without their extraordinary efforts, herculean efforts by two extraordinary individuals. i also want to thank my colleague from the great state of alaska, lisa murkowski, for her work. she is an extraordinary colleague, collaborator, and we worked together to make this subcommittee bill a very good one. chairman ken kalb on the house, ranking member jim moran collaborated on this effort. jim is retiring. i want to thank him for his distinguished service to virginia and to the nation. i am very pleased in particular in this interior subcommittee bill that we could make a strong investment in clean water, in drinking water through the revolving funds, or known, the s.r.f. funds. this is not only about the environment and public health. it is about jobs. in fact, adopting our provisions in contrast to the house lower numbers will keep approximately 97,000 more americans on the job this year. and that, i think, is significant. it's not just about the environment. it's

appropriations committee chairman howard roger roger and senate appropriations chair will manage barbara mikulski the legislation will probably reach the house floor on january fifteenth now at a joint statement the lawmaker said quote not everyone will like everything in this bill but in this divided government a critical bill such as this simply can not reflect the wants of only one party we believe this is a good workable measure. lawmakers agreed to fund defense spending at five hundred seventy three billion dollars for the current fiscal year the bill also cuts funding for buying and developing new defense technologies and weapons systems. and finally jim rickards we apologize ahead of time the bad news for all you gold bugs out there according to goldman sachs head commodities research where there are now gold bullion and beginning of the year rally will not only lose steam but prices could drop sharply by the end of twenty fourteen potentially all the way down to one thousand dollars per ounce that's a sixteen percent drop from current prices of one thousand two hundred fifty one dollars p

appropriations committee chairman howard roger roger and senate appropriations chair will manage barbara mikulski the legislation will probably reach the house floor on january fifteenth now it is joint statement the lawmaker said quote not everyone will like everything in this bill but in this divided government a critical bill such as this simply can not reflect the wants of only one party we believe this is a good workable measure. lawmakers agreed to fund defense spending at five hundred seventy three billion dollars for the current fiscal year the bill also cuts funding for buying and developing new defense technologies and weapons systems. and finally jim rickards we apologize ahead of time the bad news for all you gold bugs out there according to goldman sachs head commodities research where there are now gold bullion and beginning of the year rally will not only lose steam but prices could drop sharply by the end of twenty fourteen potentially all the way down to one thousand dollars per ounce that's a sixteen percent drop from current prices of one thousand two hundred fifty one dollars

appropriations committee chairman howard roger roger and senate appropriations chairwoman of barbara mikulski the legislation will probably reach the house floor on january fifteenth now at a joint statement the lawmaker said quote not everyone will like everything in this bill but in this divided government of critical bill such as this simply can not reflect the wants of only one party we believe this is a good workable measure. lawmakers agreed to fund defense spending at five hundred seventy three billion dollars for the current fiscal year the bill also cuts funding for buying and developing new defense technologies and weapons systems. and finally jim rickards we apologize ahead of time the bad news for all you gold bugs out there according to goldman sachs head commodities research where there are now gold bullion and beginning of the year rally will not only lose steam but prices could drop sharply by the end of twenty fourteen potentially all the way down to one thousand dollars per ounce that's a sixteen percent drop from current prices of one thousand two hundred fifty one dollars

but barbara mikulski never gave up, willing to stay there long hours, days on end to get this job done. so, again, i think a lot of us who served on the appropriations committee for a long time, 30 years for me, probably i guess in all the time i was on appropriations, we had three chairmen had in my time, john stennis from mississippi when i first got here, and then -- i'm sorry, we had four, john stennis, of course senator byrd, ted stevens from alaska, and dan inouye from hawaii. and we think of them as sort of the giants of the senate, well earned accolade or praise, i might say, and probably people wonder what's going to happen now that they're gone and with the sad passing a year ago of dan inouye. well, i can tell you, no longer are they wondering who's going to take over the appropriations committee. senator mikulski has stepped in and has pulled us all together. i think on both sides, both sides of the aisle. and worked this out. so, again, just my highest compliments to senator mikulski for her hard work, her intellectual approach, her rigor in working with others to make sur

you saw barbara mikulski working with her counterpart to get an actual budget done, and now we're seeingng the door on immigration when we already have a very strong bipartisan comprehensive bill in the senate. so in part because of the anger of the american and in part because the president is out there mupushing, i think we are going to see movement to get some things done, so i think this is a combination of the president showing leadership and also congress finally getting that message that the american people want congress to move and move forward. >> the pushback from critics, as you well known, this is badly timed because things do seem to be happening, just the laundry list that you said, yet he keeps talking about the pen and the phone. senator coburn accused the government of devisiveness this morning. let me play that for you. >> what we need is real leadership and my friend has used the politics of division more than any president i know in my lifetime, and what you have today is tremendous anxiety in our country. >> do you understand the concern about the number of executive

murray, democratic senate budget committee chair, sat down and hammered out a budget and then barbara mikulski and congressman rogers put together the spending bill, an amazing break through. and at one point, speaker boehner will to stand up to his tea party republicans and say, i know it's a compromise, we're going forward. if he continues in that spirit, maybe we'll get a farm bill after waiting on the house for two years. >> do you get an increase in the debt ceiling without a fight? >> i'm not going to speak for the party. the president's position is clear. we should not play russian roulette with america's economy. we shouldn't jeopardize this economic growth and kill off jobs because of another political squabble. we went through the eight 16-day government shutdown because senator cruz and a lot of right wing republicans thought that was a good thing to do. it was a disaster. i hope they don't repeat it again when it comes to the debt ceiling. >> senator durbin, thank you so much for your time. >> thank you, david. >>> coming up here if you haven't noticed, there's a lot of talk about

appropriations, he had the statement -- he wants to commend chairwoman the kolsky -- andrwoman barbara mikulskihere will be not another disastrous government shutdown and at that for the state department and foreign operations, the bill provides 49 billion to protect a wide way of -- a wide array of security. 6.5 billion is for overseas contingency operations in afghanistan, pakistan, and other areas and political transition, including the middle east and north africa. if you are interested in foreign aid and the money, many callers are, you can go to patrick leahy's website and get a little more detail about what is in the legislation. news, breaking a couple stories this morning, related to the nsa, the first one by peter baker. he reports that the president, on friday, when he gives his speech about nsa reforms, will restrain some surveillance when it comes to accessing telephone data. he will keep many programs in place and he will ask congress to weigh in on some of these issues. the new york times, next to that, a piece about nsa using computer software to hack into nearly 100,000 compute

were 2 veterans of congress -- hal rogers, house appropriations committee from kentucky, and barbara mikulskits from maryland. the 2 of them worked in a closed-door setting for several weeks to nail this down, and they are confident they have the support of their respective caucuses to move this thing forward. >> peter, stay with us. we are thrilled to bring in fiscal analyst p.j. o'rourke. we really have to go back to "parliament of whores," that lasted. >> no kidding. >> what is new now versus when you wrote this classic? >> i wrote the book 22 years ago and i gave it to a friend of mine, and andy ferguson, the best political writer, and i said, "would you update this book?" he said "all you need to do is move one decimal place on over." >> are the party's fading away within our massive independent registration? >> no! this is what is so weird. basically, americans are politically independent, and yet the parties remain strong. why? because of their fundraising mechanisms. their brilliant fundraising mechanisms. moronic.ally, they are practical politics, they are useless. but boy, can they

she did get a letter from senator barbara mikulski saying, quote: i am just as frustrated as you areealth reform. i am particularly disappointed that the exchange web sites did not operate smoothly. now, this is the same problem, jon, that the federal government had, the so-called back end of the system which tells state officials and insurance companies who has enrolled. >> the back end's not working. there's no way to effectively match policies and people. >> reporter: and that profor vicki, of course, is a nightmare scenario that just keeps repeating itself. maryland, which planned to be a national model, had signed up less than 19,000 people by the end of of december. analysts say the federal government is still having the same sign-up snags and that more problems like vicki's are likely to emerge in the coming months. jon? jon: all right. jim angle keeping an eye on that side of the story for us from washington. thanks, jim. >> reporter: you bet. jenna: another big story, the president is about to lay out his vision for the future of the nsa surveillance program in a highly-anti

what the fair pay bill that barbara mikulski is we incentivize employers to tell what you pay employees, you can't be penalized for asking about a salary, incentivizes people to publish what different industries are paying their workers so that you actually can figure out am i being paid fairly. it's illegal to be -- it's not illegal to be d -- it's already -- it's focused on transparency. >> i want to ask you about the chatchter in the report that notes that even the women in higher ed tend to clust for the majors that lead toward lower paying jobs. the helping professions in many cases. this pipeline starts early. there's a report that of the approximately 30,000 high school students who took the a.p. computer science exam in 2013, only about 20% were women. is this cultural? can you get at this through law? are there other things you have to do to close the pay gaps an the choices people are making in their own careers? >> we have a goal of trying to incentivize more girls and minorities to go into stem subjects, science, engineer -- science, tech nelling, engineering and math this e

that is including barbara mikulski who are de facto leader of the women in the senate to one of my bestmoments was when she gathered the women in the senate, she gathered before a vote and she stood up, she is quite short, on a couch and felt like i'm back in the 1970s. she said, get out there, square your shoulders, suit up, put her lipstick on and get ready for the revolution last night and -- [laughter] so there's a lot of expense of the women in the senate that is passed on and we really do stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. >> we want to close with a question to all of you. a lot of this series has been about women empowerment and being solution oriented. can you maybe give our audience a tangible example of piece of advice about how to become their own peacemakers? some kind of message to take into their own, as they leave this event today. >> one of the things that i've come across is i have both talked to other women who i think you by getting involved in one way or another, whether in an elected office or another position, and often i met with the response, i d

senior senator from maryland, and the chair of the senate appropriations committee, senator barbara mikulski, in strongly supporting passage of the omnibus bill for 2014. this bill is the product of a very collegial negotiation between both parties in both houses of congress. it is in a very large part a compromise of what the house and senate produced in their respective committee processes last summer. we of course have our differences and each of us would have many things in this bill to be dinner. but that's the nature of a goings and ultimately of a compromise. that's where -- but that's the nature of a negotiation and ultimately of a compromise. there are many thingthat's wher. it's certainly far better than the alternative, which would be another confrontation, another government shutdown, and another giant step further away from establishing some sense of regular order. mr. president, it is a matter of record that i did not support the bipartisan budget act of 2013. it is and remains my strong preference that we continue to reduce our discretionary spending levels and, more important

laughter] but i think there is women right now in very important leadership roles, that is inclined barbara mikulski who is our de facto leader of the women in the senate and one of my best moments is when she gathered the women of the senate together before a vote and she stood up and she lifted herself on the couch and i felt like i was back in the 1970s. she said, get out there, square your shoulders, and get ready for the revolution [laughter] there is a lot of experience in the women of the senate that passed on and we really stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. >> we want to close with a question for all of your. -- all of you. a lot of this series has been about being women oriented. can you give our audience tangible or a piece of advice to be peacemakers either in the corporate world worm or in the classroom or to take a message of their own from this event today. >> one of the things i have come across is that i have talked to other women who are thinking about getting involved in one way or another, either in elected office or another positions and i am often met with the r

need to do, if we would just take these bills to the floor as the new appropriation chairman, barbara mikulskifor maryland would want to do and destined or shelby, the leading republican on that committee would want to do, take those bills to the floor like we did for 30 years in a row, and that any member of the senate, any member of the house could bring an them as how they would like to spend money better and the appropriators, to the best of their ability, defend the bill that brought to the floor, but occasionally members come up with something better than you thought of to spend that $10 million or whatever amount of money it is. that's how you set priorities. so one thing about the system working again, we set the bar now so low that we surely can get over it. we surely can because it's not a very high bar. if we just go back to the normal way of doing things. if we would, you know, to legislate, we don't have to have a total rewrite of the tax code to do better than we've been doing. we can look at all the pro-job creating bills the house has passed that have sent to the senate. surely

what the fair pay bill that barbara mikulski is we incentivize employers to tell what you pay employees, you can't be penalized for asking about a salary, incentivizes people to publish what different industries are paying their workers so that you actually can figure out am i being paid fairly. it's illegal to be -- it's not illegal to be d -- it's already it's focused on transparency. >> i want to ask you about the chatchter in the report that notes that even the women in higher ed tend to clust for the majors that lead toward lower paying jobs. the helping professions in many cases. this pipeline starts early. there's a report that of the approximately 30,000 high school students who took the a.p. computer science exam in 2013, only about 20% were women. is this cultural? can you get at this through law? are there other things you have to do to close the pay gaps an the choices people are making in their own careers? >> we have a goal of trying to incentivize more girls and minorities to go into stem subjects, science, engineer -- science, tech nelling, engineering and math this ebes