mr. noble? >> chairman mc sally, sen. risch and other unseen but appreciated members, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the water supply infrastructure rehabilitation and utilization act as 2044. this is important to our agriculture and whole nation and sen. mc sally if you will permit a deviation in prepared remarks, we express to you our appreciation for the work that you have done. personally we had the opportunity to sit down and discuss this problem. you came to yuma, you observed, he listened, you learned, you acted. you exercise leadership, and we thank you for that. my name is wade noble from unit arizona. you my is at the southern end of the colorado river. yuma county agriculture provides winter vegetables to 85% of the united states and canada. across the west the bureau of reclamation facilities on average are 50 years old with some facilities 100 years old. in general, irrigation districts operate and maintain reclamation owned facilities. these are transferred works. acclamation retains ownership, but tr

risch. he will introduce mr. wesley hipke . >> thank you very much. i have a bill here that is the aquifer recharge act. none of my friends from the east coast don't really understand this. they don't understand how important water is to us and they do not understand what a minimal amount of water we get. in eastern idaho we get about 11 inches totals no and water and not much better upstream where mr. wesley hipke is from. in any event, we do a lots of different things. we use our water to be able to do what we do in idaho and that is to have a states that even though we are owned two thirds by the federal government, we are able to do a lot of things with raising crops and those kinds of things. but water is absolutely critical. one of the things that is relatively recent and i use the rees, use the word relatively, that is recharge. it is incredibly important to us, particularly in eastern idaho where we have the idaho's eastern snake plane aquifer which is about the size of lake erie, is that right mr. wesley hipke? lake erie is a pretty sizable b

mr. risch: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the vote take place after the completion of my remarks. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. risch: mr. president, today the senate is considering four tax protocols, these treaties, and they are treaties, have been approved by bipartisan majorities in multiple successive congresses. two of these four protocols reported out of committee without objection during the four most recent congresses. it is in the interest of u.s. taxpayers that these be approved and it is time for these to be approved. i'm honored that on my watch we have finally brought these to the floor and brought them here at this moment to actually adopt these treaties, which will be adopted when the vote is called. to help resolve tax disputes between the u.s. and our tax treaty partners. without the tools, u.s. investors would have limited ability to solve the problems on their own. it's not just businesses that benefit from tax treaties, they impose reasonable limits