merkley: thank you, mr. president. i rise to ask unanimous consent of all of my colleagues, before i explain the unanimous consent request, i will give a little bit of background. this is senate bill 1874 that senator snowe and i have worked on for some time because of our mutual interest in making the hub zone process for rural economic development work better. when this process occurs with each census, there is a two-yea nightmare of red tape before communities that should benefit from this economic development opportunity have the ability to do so, and across the country right now, we have rural communities that absolutely need to benefit from this most recent census. they have high unemployment rates. they are hit hard by the drop in exports. they are hit hard by the collapse of the housing community. sawmills have shut down, paper mills have shut down. and so so many folks come to this floor to talk about cutting red tape and talking about helping economy in the heart of rural america. they come to this floor and

i want to talk to senator jeff merkley about his vote against the bill.was nineteen. i spent four years in the military and i served a tour in iraq. all the skills that i learned in the military are very transferable into the corporate and real world. chase hired me to be a personal banker. the 100,000 jobs mission has definitely helped me get my foot in the door. chase is giving opportunities to vets who don't think that there's any opportunity out there. chase and these other companies are getting a great deal when they hire veterans. chase is proud to help 100,000 veterans find jobs at home. ♪ but the fire is so delightful ♪ nothing melts away the cold like a hot, delicious bowl of chicken noodle soup from campbell's. ♪ let it snow, let it snow and it showed me the pressure points on my feet and exactly where i needed more support. then, i got my number. my tired, achy feet affected my whole life. until i found my number. i tried the free dr. scholl's foot mapping center. in two minutes, i got my foot map and custom number. i'm a 440. that matched up t

merkley: mr. president, tonight i voted against final passage of the defense authorization bill. and i rise now to explain why i voted against it and the considerable concerns that i have about the vast expansion of the powers of detention of american citizens that were contained in that bill. now, these provisions related to the detention of american citizens, without the standard rights of the fifth and sixth amendment, have been an object of intense debate on the floor of the senate over the last several days. as a senator wh who's now been e three years, i can say unequivocally that this debate was extremely valuable. folks came from both parties on both sides of this issue and shared their insights, both from their life experiences, from their scholarly knowledge of the law, and certainly from their philosophy. and i commend all who participated in that debate. i listened to a great deal of that debate on both sides. i thought that this is extraordinarily important. issues surrounding our bil

merkley: thank you, mr. president. colleagues, tomorrow, we are going to be voting whether to close debate on the nomination of richard cordray as director of the consumer financial protection bureau. this can be framed in terms of his qualifications, but that would be a mistake because folks on both sides of the aisle have noted he is exceptionally qualified for this position. a graduate of michigan state university, of oxford university, the university of chicago law school where he was editor in chief of the university of chicago law review. in addition, he's held a number of public positions with honor and distinction -- as state representative, as ohio treasurer, as ohio attorney general. indeed, as ohio's attorney general, he was an aggressive advocate for consumers. he recovered more than $2 billion for ohio's retirees, investors and business owners and took major steps to help protect its consumers from fraudulent foreclosures and financial predators. what a terrific resume. an individual who has stood up for r

amendment tom you all michael bennett tom harkin dick durbin chuck schumer sheldon whitehouse and jeff merkley all saw what happened. in last year's elections as the result of citizens united they saw how the amount of secret outside spending skyrocketed from just sixty sixty eight million dollars in the two thousand and six midterms to over three hundred four million in the two thousand and ten midterms that's a four hundred percent increase in corporate cash influencing elections and buying politicians just ten months after the citizens united decision and as you'd expect when corporations get to hand pick their members of congress republicans win big well with occupy wall street at their back now these senators are saying enough is enough and this constitutional amendment will give power back to congress and to the states to set their own election laws so that they can keep corporations and extreme wealth in check in the political process that means they can start by passing laws like this old wisconsin law that was on the books through most of the nineteenth century and it's basically what

strong the story was and also believe the was available for interviews as well so to hear from him but merkley was also very inspiring. so even though she, herself, could not go out and about to promote it, there were four crowns. she did interviews set up and took special care with her needs. there are a lot of ways to promote books especially thanks to the internet where an author does not necessarily have to go out on the national book tour anymore, and unfortunately this is where the bookstores also impact the effect as well. there are fewer places to go. there is less likely the chance to even have a tour. >> host: is there proof and author goes on tour will books get help? >> guest: i don't necessarily think that's the case. it also depends on the book. while their leaders do like to meet some authors i've seen this myself where the of literary fiction writer david mitchell appeared at various bookstores last year and even though he was at four different stores in new york city all of them were standing remotely, some of them even attracted several hundred people, but to extrapolate that

reid: i also ask unanimous consent that roger yang, a member of senator merkley's staff be granted floor privileges today. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: mr. president, yesterday on the senate floor my friend the republican leader said he supports the extension of the payroll tax cut that was enacted last year. there's been an extreme change of heart haoefrplt on the sunday's shows, the assistant leader, my friend, the junior senator from arizona, said sunday not a chance they would work to extend this payroll tax cut. then as late as tuesday my friend, the republican leader, said that it wouldn't do a thing to help the economy. so obviously there's been a change of heart since then by the leaders of the senate republicans. but i noted yesterday that my friend was very careful to say only that he supports existing cuts, not that he supports our plan to cut taxes for 160 million american workers and every business in the country. last night i found out why. i was disappointed to see republicans' proposal was actually a back door route to protect the very rich while sh

. >> senator merkley. >> thank you very much, mr. chair. i want to start with a brief discussion, difference between qualified residential mortgage which was an exception to the risk retention role as mr. walsh pointed out and qualified mortgage which was a term used to di fine a mortgage that meets ability to pay standard. get a read of the wider loans. mr. wolin, under the section for the qualified mortgage, ability to pay standards, series of requirements are laid out and those requirements include the mortgage being fully amortized, not being negative amortizing, being verified in, and so forth. and meeting the ratios and regulation or statute or death to income. it has been underwritten and ability to pay two terms are used in this section one of which refers to a presumption and the other to safe harbor. technically those are two different thing that you produced two different rules based on which direction the rules will go. two different draft rules. do you have a sense which way you are going to go on this? >> i don't. has yet to b

we have senator cardin, senator baucus, gillibrand, merkley, lautenberg. i hope i'm not leaving -- leaving those out. these are the environmental voices. we -- those voices, the commonsense voices for jobs, for clean technology, for a bright, bright future for our nation. so to be the chairman of that committee is an honor beyond my every expectation. it's not to say we don't work with republicans. we do, on public works matters. we work very well with senator inhofe and his team of republicans on public works. but when it comes to the environment, there is nobody home over there. there is nobody home over there. as a matter of fact, they do harm. and today i'm going to talk about the need to create jobs through this sector, but i also want to say while my colleagues are here, an interesting development that has happened on the payroll tax cut bill that the house is about to pass. colleagues, we have a term and kind of an inside-the-beltway term, when extraneous provisions are added to a bill that will bring down the bill, we call that a poison pill amendm

to be recognized along with senator grassley, but i call for the regular order with respect to the merkley amendment number 1174. the presiding officer: the senator has that right and that amendment is now the regular order and is pending. mrs. boxer: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from california. mrs. boxer: is it necessary to lay aside the pending amendment so that i can engage in a colloquy? the presiding officer: there is no need to do that. mrs. boxer: thank you. senator levin and senator mccain, i want to thank you very much. before we engage in a colloquy, i simply want to show one chart. it tells the story as to why senator grassley and i are so pleased that you are willing to accept this by voice vote. senator levin, if i could ask you, senator -- senator, senator levin -- just to take a peek at this because i think this tells the story. this is what the military leadership makes, about $200,000. this is what the president of the united states, who is the commander in chief, makes every year. this is what we have limited, and that was a reform, the top five def

about electric vehicles, alternative fuels, where the system really is going and also senator jeff merkleywho's a democrat from oregon, will be sitting here talking about energy independence, and again, he has some initiatives on electric vehicles. leader in the month, early november, we have dan reichert from stanford and richard from mit talking about what is coming on at the three leading institutions on energy innovation. leader in the month we have dan sugar, ceo, and, of some power were talking about solar energy. dan miller is here in november talking about a boom or bust. he's invested a lot in biofuel. and in december we will have authors talking to that extreme weather events and ipcc chair -- the authors talking about extreme weather events and the chair. the best way to obtain contracts to sign up for our e-mail newsletter or go to climate-one.org. i would like to thank the key supporter of climate one. now i would like to begin the radio program and get going with our conversation. what did america learn from the dp oil disaster in the gulf of mexico? the crude oil spill from

. >> senator merkley. >> thank you very much mr.air and i wanted to start with a bit of it brief discussion, the difference between qualified residential mortgage which was an exception to the risk retention role as mr. walsh pointed out and a qualified mortgage, which was a term used to define a mortgage that needs ability to pay standards, that is getting rid of the liar loans. mr. wolin, under the section for the qualified mortgage, given the ability to pay the standard, series of requirements that are laid out and those requirements include not being a balloon mortgage, and being fully amortized, not being negatively amortizing, being verified income and so forth. and meeting their ratios in regulation or statute for debt-to-income. all of those basically, yes, yes. this is an underwritten ability to pay. two terms are used in this section. one of which refers to a presumption and the other two safe harbor. technically those are two different things in the law they think you have reduced two different roles based on which direct

some of us -- namely, senators leahy, durbin, udall of colorado, kirk, lee, harkin, webb, wyden, merkley, and myself -- realized that there was a fundamental flaw in section 1031 of the bill, and there is a difference of opinion as to whether there is this fundamental flaw or not. we believe that the current bill essentially updates and restates the authorization for use of military force that was passed on september 18, 2001, and despite my support for a general detention authority, the provision in the original bill, in our view, went too far. that the bill before us would allow the government to detain u.s. citizens without charge until the end of hostilities. we have had long discussions on this. the distinguished chairman, the distinguished ranking member, the senator from north carolina believe that was not their intent. and these discussions went on and on. and they resulted in two amendments: our original amendment which covers only u.s. citizens, which says that they cannot be held without charge or trial, and a compromise amendment which i shall read. on page 360 between lines