>> thank you very much, senator crapo. hard tod, it is very talk about these three americans, because it is heartbreaking. i have met with some families, and i know what their lives are every day. nothing i say is going to give them the comfort they need until they are home. i say that as a preface, because i know it to be true. we vigorously pursue every avenue. some of those avenues are best pursued in private, to have a chance of success. the secretary raised these cases directly with the iranian foreign minister during their meeting at the u n general assembly. all threeobama raised americans in his phone call with president rouhani. on the last round in geneva, i had a separate conversation with the deputy foreign minister responsible for this, going over each of these cases and trying to find out whether there might be some avenues for getting their release. as i said, if there are, we will pursue them in every way possible. i also had breakfast with the swiss state secretary, who is our protecting power in tehran, w

other os like king and hoho as well as crapo, coburn, toomey and rand paul.here are people that think you default and it doesn't hurt the economy. >> you'll have plenty of no votes on this. and whether we go off the cliff has to do with how this fight within the republican party eventually unfolds. but right now leadership feels confident. you've listed a lot of the primary dates. and a lot of folks do have primaries. and they can vote no in the upcoming. but the key part about primaries is that there won't be enough time for somebody to get on the ballot if there's a no vote in, say, the middle of march. if your primary is in march or in april and you haven't started a campaign yet, you don't have a threat. there are plenty of of republicans. >> that's when they realize they don't have a primary. >> they want to talk about obamacare. they don't want to talk about this. so if they do bring the government to the brink again four months, five months before the general election, that could really be bad for the republican party. >> i think some leaders are talki

crapo: i rise to discuss the nomination of melvin watt. unfortunately, i cannot support this nomination and i urge my colleagues not to support it either. i do not come to this decision lightly and regret we are placed in a position where we cannot support a well-liked member of congress. however, by making a political appointment the president has ignored the importance that the head of the organization be viewed as nonpolitical. this is not a cabinet position where the nominee is supposed to be an advocate for the president. instead this is an independent agency with a highly complex tax --, task, impacting our entire economy and it is for this reason that many senators noted the need to avoid politics and emphasize the technical expertise needed to fill this position. regrettably, this did not occur and we stand here today with the majority party apparently willing to confirm a political figure to this highly technical position. worse yet, they appear to be ready to do it in a highly political manner that ignores decades of senate rules