mr. manchin: will the senator from kentucky yield? mr. paul: without yielding the floor. mr. anchin: i know my friend from kentucky agrees the defense of our country and protection of our civil liberties should be bipartisan and above politics. and i know he agrees we can and must protect our citizens without violating their civil liberties and again my good friend i don't always agree with you on every issue but when it comes to this nation's intelligence gathering and security we agree more than we don't. and like him i was deeply troubled by the revelation our country was engaged in bulk collection. i think we all were surprised. and millions of private citizens' data was gathered unknowingly. and unjustifiably. in 2013 edward snowden revealed to the american public that the n.s.a. was engaging in the bulk data collection and sweeping up virtually every cell phone record of an enormous number of americans, again for no reason and no cause. the u.s. spying program did this by systemically and indiscriminately collecting millions i mean millions, of americans' phone records b

mr. justice. senator manchin: bill clinton was the last presidential candidate to win is a democrat in west virginia. states have gone progressively republican since then. even though we still have 62% of all citizens registered democrats. you would think with that many registered democrats -- what you know, i tell them we are a little bit different democrat in west virginia. i tried to describe myself -- i tell people i'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate, but i think that's most people, if you are democrat or republican. that gathers a lot of people in that arena. with that being said, our social agenda basically, is much more conservative than the national democrat agenda. with that, we have to be able to articulate that a little bit clearer. jim justice -- he was a republican, just turned him a crack to run for governor, but jin is one of those guys that crosses over. he's a great person. he has created a lot of jobs, and he will be a job creator. he's inks -- thinks outside the box, so that will be good. democratic voters need to be looking more at the candidate. president obama b

manchin. senator tillis. >> thank you, mr. chair. thank you all for being here. just a couple of things, and one is based on a comment here earlier about in the senate thinking we should completely privatize the va i honestly have not a single serious discussion with any member that saw that. if they did, if anyone here did, all they need to do is spend some time in the v.a.s to understand the unique nature of what the va has to offer. there's no other more welcoming place for a veteran than the va not that there aren't opportunities for private care. there clearly are already. the nonv.a. care is a very significant part of what you all do every day before choice was ever implemented. choice is just another safety. so i realize in the committee meetings, sometimes the words carry more weight than perhaps they should. i don't think anybody should leave the committee meeting thinking smib has a serious goal or or objective to privatize the entire va i want to go back to a point that smart blumenthal mentioned. you have to figure out a way to get it billed out. can

manchin and tester. senator rounds? >> thank you, mr. senator. i appreciate your work and the ranking member's work on the hospital in aurora. i agree it shouldn't come out of the choice program as the alternative. mr. gibson, i was looking back at the notes i've taken here and you gave some very encouraging notes with regard to some of the stats about some of the areas of the country with regard to additional care being provided. and that's encouraging. i'm just curious, do you believe the stats are consistent across the country? are you finding evidence of that across -- >> actually, that's -- i always worry when people quote averages to me and what you find is wide disparity across the country in terms of the length of wait times and, therefore, in terms of the specific areas where we're making the most intensive investments. so what i would tell you is, where we have been making investments, you see improvement in access measured by appointments and relative value units. but what we are not seeing pretty consistently is a material improvement

. >> we have senator rounds followed by manchin, tillis and tester. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and i appreciate your work and also the ranking member's work with regard to the issues on the hospital in aurora. i agree that it should not come out of the choice program. but as the alternative, mr. gibson, i was looking back at the notes i've taken here. and you gave some very encouraging notes with regard to some of the stats about some of the areas of the country with regard to some additional care being provided. and that's encouraging. i'm just curious do you believe that those stats are consistent across the country? are you finding evidence of that across the rest? >> actually, that's -- i always worry when people quote arranges to me averages to me. you find wide disparity in terms of the length of wait times. and therefore in terms of the specific areas where we're making the most intensive investments. and so what i would tell you is where we have been making consequential investments, you pretty consistently see a material improvement in access measured by completed appo

cosponsor and thank senators burr graham, collins baldwin brown, casey manchin schumer shaheen and warren for being cosponsors as well. mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and i would call up amendment number 1299. the presiding officer: without objection, the the clerk will report the amendment. the clerk: senator stabenow proposes amendment number 1299 to amendment 1221. in section 102-b -- ms. stabenow: mr. president, i would ask that we assume the amendment has been read. the presiding officer: without objection. the senator from ohio. mr. brown: mr. president i call up amendment 1251. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the amendment. the clerk: the senator from ohio mr. brown proposes an amendment numbered 1251. at the end of section 107add the followingfollowing -- mr. brown: i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: i will explain the amendment. there are 12 countries in the trans-pacific partnership. if at some point the president of the united states woul

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 suppor

mr. president, i've joined with senator heitkamp, senator manchin and a number of other senators to propose a simple change to the fast-track bill, a change that would prevent congress from using this expedited process on any trade deal that includes so-called investor state dispute settlement provisions, and i come to the floor today to urge my colleagues to support this amendment. isds is an obscure process that allows big companies to go to corporate-friendly arbitration panels that sit outside any port system in order to challenge laws they don't like. these panels can force taxpayers to write huge checks to those big corporations with no need to file a suit in court no appeals and no judicial review. now, most americans don't think that the minimum wage or antismoking regulations are trade barriers, but a foreign corporation used isds to sue egypt after egypt raised its minimum wage. tobacco giant philip morris went after australia and uruguay to stop their rules to cut smoking rates. under t.p.p. corporations can use these channels to challenge rules right here in america. it wasn't a

mr. manchin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mr. manchin: my good friend, the senator from utah yield for a question? mr. hatch:ite -- i'll be glad to yield for a question. mr. hatch: i have the utmost respect for you and the job you do here every day. i have the utmost respect for you and the job you do here every day for all of us and i appreciate that. we have a difference here. i have to look at the people in west virginia, less than two million people, but they depend on the opportunity to make a living for themselves. they have hard, strong feelings of what we have done over the years in trade agreements and they haven't seen an uptick in opportunity for themselves or their families. with that being said, what we've asked for here, myself and the senator from massachusetts, is not something that's never been done before. i can't explain why president george w. bush would have done this maybe on his own volition, saying that i'm going to put out this agreement that's been scrubbed basically everything's been agreed on, and let y