mr. pryor: mr. president, i want to speak today just very briefly about medicare. before 1965, as the presiding officer and many others know in the chamber, nearly half of america's seniors had no health insurance at all, and medicare made certain that seniors had access to affordable health ca care, and it has lifted millions out of poverty in this country. seniors earn their medicare benefits -- they're not given to them. seniors earn their medicare benefits through a lifetime of hard work because, as we know, all of our working lives a portion of every single paycheck is deposited and is guaranteed for benefits for when we turn 65. this is a bedrock commitment. we pay into it, and it should be there for all of us when we reach the age of 65. today we celebrate the 49th anniversary of medicare, but i would encourage my colleagues to hold the bole loon balloons ande because, over the past few years what we've seen down the hall in the house of representatives is a group of house members who try to continually chip away at the promise of medicare. they want to turn

mr. tester: i'd also ask that senators klobuchar and pryor be added as exprors. the presiding exprors. -- cosponsors. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. tester: i want to thank chairman johnson and ranking member crapo for their hard work on the tria bill and for helping me on this amendment as well as senators schumer and -- [inaudible] for their hard work. i also want to give a special thank you to senator johanns who is a cosponsor of this amendment, somebody i've worked very closely with to get this amendment to the point it is today. the tester-johanns amendment is a national association of registered agents and brokers act otherwise known as narab, introduced last year. it was reported out of the banking committee on a voice vote. our amendment creates a nonprofit association to provide one-stop licensing for insurance agents and brokers operating outside their home state. this arrangement would fully preserve the authority of state insurance regulators to supervise these markets. currently an insurance agent or broker seeking to operate in multip

mr. obama is up to the challenges of the next two years. okay, more data. the latest tally of vulnerable senate incumbent, note the party affilulations. mark begch, democrat. mark pryor, democrat. mark udall, democrat. mary landrieu, democrat . cay hagen, democrat. mitch mcconnell, republican. all vulnerable. there are also five states where there are open senate seats and two long shot races with vulnerable democrats. that makes 14 potentially competitive races with democrats on the defensive in most of them. compounding democrats' problem is this, says diagnostician barack obama, quote, democrats have a congenital defect when it comes to our politics, and that is we like voting during presidential years. and during midterms, we don't vote. and so you already have lower voting totals during the midterm and it's our folks that stay at home. question, is a gop senate takeover inevitable? >> i don't think it's inevitable. i think it looks like it's a very real possibility at this point, john. but what we have to remember is that as bad as things look for the democrats, as easy as it has become to criticize the democratic leadership in the executive, the republicans nat

mr. pryor: mr. president, i rise in support of the bring jobs home act. there has been some discussion on the floor about this act already, but i want to lend my voice to that. this is a commonsense bill to bring good-paying middle-class jobs back here to america. one of the things we have seen statistically when you look at this terrible recession this nation went through a few years ago, we see that our recovery has been slow. that's one -- and one of the reasons it has been sluggish is because these good middle-class jobs in many cases just aren't here anymore. they've gone overseas. they have gone to china, mexico, vietnam, other -- other countries around the globe, and they are just not here, and we need to grow this economy from the middle. we see the statistics where we see that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. that should concern everyone in this chamber. i know it concerns economists and it concerns people all over the country. these are kitchen table issues for people, but we need to grow our economy from the middle, and