mr. heinrich: yes i want to thank my friend from kentucky and ask him if he would to yield for a questionwithout losing his right to the floor. and i want to start out just by prefaces this for a few minutes. from my limited experience just over the past little over two years on the intelligence committee now, i want to start by saying that there's simply no question that our nation's intelligence professionals are incredibly dedicated patriotic men and women who make real sacrifices to keep our country safe and free. and in that, they should be able to do their jobs, secure in the knowledge that their agencies have the confidence of the american people. and congress, those of us here need to preserve the ability of those agencies to collect information that is truly necessary to guard against real threats to our national security. the framers of the constitution as my colleague from kentucky knows declared that government officials had no power, no power to seize the records of individual americans without evidence of wrongdoing and it was so important that they literally enshrined and e

mr. president i ask unanimous consent that the following senators be added as cosponsors to the brown amendment: stabenow, klobuchar blumenthal whitehouse, udall sanders, warren, manchin markey reed of rhode island and heinrich. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: the support to this funding level reached 300-some house members four years ago and 70 senators, including obviously a number in each party four years ago when we decided to support this number. so this funding level of 5of $575 was established four years ago. the amount included in the underlying bill is enough to operate the program we some say and we shouldn't bring the funding level back to the $575 million. fact is, mr. president we don't really know what. what we do know is that t.a.a., the trade adjustment 123457bs, the money that we provide to workers to be retrained after they have lost a job because of the decision that president obama an the congress have made to pass a trade agreement which always produces wirps and losers free trade supporters, free trade opponents all agree -- even cheerleaders as passionate as the "wall street journal," even they acknowledge as strongly supportive as they are of these free trade agre

mr. heinrich: first off, i want to thank my friend from oregon and to recognize the substantial leadership he's shown on this issue over the years, long before i came to the intelligence committee and long before edward snowden began to steal documents. senator wyden along with senator mark udall and others, were doing everything they could without disclosing classified information to shine a light on the fact that the u.s. government was collecting massive volumes of data on millions of law-abiding american citizens. my friend from oregon deserves our thanks for that leadership. now, after the bulk call data program was revealed to the public the government defended it and defended it vigorously. it took a number of months for the intelligence community and the rest of the administration to take a deep breath and really assess whether bulk metadata collection was necessary whether it was effective and to consider whether there were other less intrusive more constitutionally grounded ways to accomplish these same goals. starting with the president's review group on intelligence and communi