mr. toomey: mr. president, i'd like to make some comments about this amendment, but i will do it at a later time when time is more available. i just want to thank my colleague from maine, my colleague from ohio for their helpful cooperation in this process. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. brown: i'd like to discuss for a moment detail about -- we'll do more detail about the amendments later. i want to say a few words about each of them. they are consistent first with the spirit of the underlying bill, a version which i cosponsored. i am particularly appreciative of senator gillibrand for her good work on this overall issue. the underlying stock act clarifies that insider trading laws apply the same way to members of congress as they do to the rest of the country, pure and simple. it makes sense. my amendments would also extend generally applicable laws to members of congress. one amendment would apply financial trade disclosure rules to members in the same way that they apply to oth

mr. toomey: will the senator yield? ms. mccaskill: absolutely. mr. toomey: thank you very much. that is common refrain from knows who like to go back to earmarking that we can't turn this over to the bureaucrats. who is it that controls the bureaucrats? it is cofnlgt if we think the bureaucrats are allocating resources in a way that we don't approve of, we can change the rules. we write the law that determines the criteria, the metrics, the process by which they compete and evaluate competing projects. that's entirely up to us. so it is not fair for us to suggest that the bureaucrats won't spend it wisely. well then we should set the rules so that they must. and frankly, they don't have the kind of incentives that some people who are holding elective office think they have to try to show up back home with a big oversized check. the bureaucrat doesn't have that incentive. so i would argue that i can't imagine any bureaucrat that would award several hundred million dollars to build a bridge to nowhere or to build a cowgirl hall of fame or an indoor tropical rainforest. these are t