mr. bingaman: mr. president, i ask consent to speak as if in morning business for 15 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bingaman: mr. president, yesterday i introduced two bills on the subject on -- on a subject of great importance. two different subjects, really, related to our national energy policy. the two bills were the oil and gas facilitation act of 2011 and the second was the outer continental shelf reform act of 2011. both of these bills are based on bipartisan, largely consensus work, that was done in the committee on energy and natural resources during the last congress. i -- i should note that these important issues are being addressed in separate bills very consciously and for a reason. in the past we have passed comprehensive energy bills that are attempted to address all the energy policy issues in a day in a single piece of legislation. there are obvious advantages to that, but there are well-documented disadvantages as well. and i would like to avoid those disadvant

mr. bingaman: i ask unanimous consent the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. under the previous order, the senate stands in recess until 2:15 p.m. >> the senate has recessed for their weekly party lunches. senators return and 2:15 eastern to consider a judicial nomination. edward chen for u.s. district judge in northern california. he was a lawyer for the aclu and several republican senators say, he will be a quote, activist judge. the vote is expected about 5:15 eastern with more general speeches after that. budget negotiators will go over to the white house this afternoon where vice president biden is hosting a meeting to talk about the federal debt and spending cuts. live senate coverage when they return on c-span2 >> house speaker john boehner says that the debt ceiling will not be raised without significant spending cuts. he spoke last night at the economic club of new york in new york city and said republicans win insist on trillions of dollars in spending cuts before the vote to raise the debt ceiling. his comme

mr. bingaman: mr.resident, i'd ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bingaman: mr. president, i have eight unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and the minority leaders, and i'd ask unanimous consent that these requests be agreed to, that these requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bingaman: mr. president, i suggest the absence of a quorum, and i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. bingaman: mr. president, the country faces two large economic challenges. the first is growing our economy, creating jobs, getting the economy back on track. the second major challenge is cutting the deficit. i'd like to talk about both of those very briefly. i have four charts here. one that relates to jobs and growing the economy and three that deal more specifically with the deficit. unfortunately here in washington, the debate has shifted almost entirely to a discussion of the deficit. too many people in washington are pretending that our efforts to generate growth in the economy have been accomplished, that it's a done deal, that we have recovered from the recession, we can now focus full time on how to cut the deficit. the facts are that this is simply not true. professor alan pwraoeurpbd, an -- blinder, an economist at princeton, former deputy chair of the federal reserve, testified before the senate finance committee a couple of weeks ago, and he made the following statement: he said the economic recovery is mediocre at best, and unemployment remain