mr. inhofe: mr. president, i'm prepared to make a unanimous consent request, but i don't have the wording yet. i will momentarily. so i will not take the floor at this time. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. a senator: -- mr. coons: i ask unanimous consent that leah shean, a fellow from my office be allowed floor privileges. the presiding officer: without objection. the senator from delaware is recognized. mr. coons: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with senator whitehouse of rhode island for up to 20 minutes. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. coons: mr. president, i am so pleased today to join my colleague, the senator from rhode island, to discuss one of the most important issues facing future generations and our world. that's climate change, an issue that also affects both of our coastal and low-lying states directly. many know delaware's status as the first state to ratify the constitution but

mr. inhofe: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: i ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment in order to call up amendment number 4204. the presiding officer: without objection, the clerk will report the amendment. the clerk: the senator from oklahoma, mr. inhofe, proposes an amendment numbered 4204. mr. inhofe: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. inhofe: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the following senators be added to the inhofe-murkowski amendment numbered 4204 -- sessions, rubio , shelby, moran, warren, peters and menendez. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. be mr. president. mr. inhofe: mr. president, we have been here before. the same language that is in the base bill right now was in a year ago. last year on the floor, we passed the inhofe-mikulski amendment requiring a report by the secretary of defense on commissary benefi

mr. inhofe: mr. president? the presiding officer: is not sphrr oklahoma. mr. inhofe: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that i being recognized for such time as i shall consume, as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. inhofe: mr. president, let me just say that my friend from ohio is truly passionate and in the years i've been here, i have not heard of anyone who is stronger and has a better understanding of this issue than the senator from ohio. and i find myself listening as he speaks and reflecting back. i hear the same things. it is not just in ohio. it is in my meetings that i have in oklahoma, and it is something that i'm glad he has that passion. irm a glad he does. i -- i'm glad he does. wish yo -- i wish you success. mr. president, i got to get on record after this last week when everyone, the events claiming and submitting the claims of some of my colleagues on the senate floor, that the mainstream media have published about the horrific event in orlando

mr. inhofe: i understand that. but would the senator please advise us as to how much longer he will be taking on the floor. mr. menendez: i will be happy to do so. it will be several hours. mr. inhofe: would the senator mind since i'm going to be talking about projects in new jersey, about the wrrda projects of which the senator has many, a lot of interest in, would you yield to me to talk about that for ten minutes? mr. menendez: my understanding from the parliamentarian is i cannot do that and preserve the right to the floor. otherwise i would be happy to do that. mr. inhofe: would the parliamentarian -- let me ask the chair. isn't it possible for me to go ahead and receive from him a specific period of time at the end of which he retains the floor? the presiding officer: that would require unanimous consent. mr. inhofe: all right. i ask unanimous consent that i be recognized as if in morning business for -- the presiding officer: the senator does not have the right to, for unanimous consent, as the senator does n

mr. inhofe: i thank the senator from illinois. the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: mr. president, first of all i've been told take i'll have the time -- our time that i can use and i appreciate that very much. we heard this morning from the ranking member and from the -- from both sides. i'm going to bring some up here that everyone agrees on. that is with the things that we do in our committee, we passed a highway bill. we passed the tsca bill and now i want to talk about the wrda bill coming up. i want to address the urgency regarding water infrastructure. my nearly five decades in elected office, i watched the impacts of congress prioritizing and failing to prioritize our nation's water system. in 1986, congress enacted the cornerstone wrda legislation that set cost-share standards and created a harbor maintenance trust fund and the waterway, trust fund following this bill. it was intended for congress to reauthorize wrda every two years. wrda means water resources development act. when we talked about what happened in 1986, not many people are aware of th

mr. inhofe: thank you. the chair right now is a member of the armed services committee and can very well remember whether we passed a law. and that law was -- said that the president is not going to be able to release anyone from gitmo until 30 days notice is given to the senate committee, senate armed services committee. now, the president signed that into law. in a matter of hours later released the taliban five. everybody remembers the taliban five. they were the most egregious of all the terrorists that were in gitmo. and we don't know what they're doing right now. supposedly they're over in cutter or some place under some supervision. but it happens that the recidivism rate of those who have been released from gitmo is 30%. in other words, 30% of those that are released are back trying to kill americans again. it's unacceptable and it's very similar to this. whether it's releasing people, terrorists from gitmo to go out and kill americans or releasing people who are criminal aliens from our cities and

inhofe >> mr. president?>> the senator from oklahoma. >> let me go through the list as i made the statement that it's important that people do recognize how long staff works around here. and quite frankly i've often said when they come around for our committee, environment public works committee, the committee that has the largest jurisdiction in the entire united states and we are the committee that gets things done to those who are committed to look at the variety of philosophies that are present, praising his work to be done, we have every most conservative to the very most progressive members. and it's not just this bill. we did the highway bill. the highway reauthorization bill. something that we been waiting, had to wait for about eight years to get done and the largest one since 1998.ls we have the other bills were working on.t we have the wrda to which we anticipate will be a reality that comes out of our committee. what? [inaudible] >> you guys talk about it. the nuclear bill. that's right.ver this b

mr. inhofe: madam president, we're going to be voting on wednesday on something significant. it's had a lot of discussion recently. i want to put a little different perspective on the problems that are in puerto rico right now. puerto rico has $90 billion of detroit now, $90 billion. it says it can't repay it in full. i think a bunch of guys have done a good job at establishes a solution for that. on july it's scheduled, puerto rico is scheduled and it's going to be missing another debt payment which is going to put it up over $90 billion. the senate this week will consider legislation that will impose an oversight board that will set up the bankruptcy restructuring process. it's important that the citizens of puerto rico and the residents of ver vieques realize they hava role in the nation's defense, a role that could bring in economic investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to puerto rico. in april of 1999 following an accident on the range of vieques, vieques is a little island off of puerto rico, the training range that resulted in the death of a navy civilian emplo