mr. toomey: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, fairly recently, the president of the united states has nominated a candidate to head the civil rights division of the justice department. his name is debo adegbile. i'm here to explain to my colleagues why i believe mr. adegbile is a very bad choice to run the civil rights division of the justice department, but to make my case clear, i need to start with a story of a slain philadelphia police officer. his name was daniel faulkner. this is a picture of daniel faulkner. it's important to tell this story. the story begins 32 years ago. many people have never heard this story. others have perhaps forgotten since it was some time ago, but the fact is danny faulkner can no longer speak for himself, and those who have tried to speak for him have often been drowned out by some powerful and wealthy voices that have had a political agenda, that has perversely defended his killer rather than the memory of daniel faulkner. so the story begins, mr. president, late at night on december

toomey. >> thank you, mr. chairman. madame chairman, thank you very much for being here. welcome on the the first visit in your new role. >> thank you. >> you know, i've been very concerned about this, our monetary policy for some time. i wonder if you could, for the committee, give us a sense of how you would quantify the benefits that the economy has enjoyed, assuming you believe there are benefits, from this unprecedented environment that we've been engaged in. a lot of reputable economists look at traditionally understood mechanism to be asset priced inflation, translating to more spending and the quantification of that gives some very, very modest numbers. i want to know how you get the benefits for the easing that we've had. >> so i don't have a quantitative estimate that i can present to you today. there are a range of estimates in literature. you know, we hit the so-called zero in december of 2008. we lowered the feds overnight interest rate target to zero. standard rules like the taylor rule would have called for more accommodation. rules like that is said we sho

want to thank chairman sanders for including that in the bill and i know senator toomey joins me in that note of gratitude. mr. president, i want to move to a separate subject which, as i asked, would be in a separate part of the record, and this is the -- just a brief discussion about the able act. which is a piece of legislation which has been the subject of enormous and substantial bipartisan support both here in the senate and in the house. we know that a lot of families have -- have relied upon and have really benefited from the so-called 529 plans, a section of the i.r.s. code which allows families to save tax-free for education. what we're trying to do with the able act is to replicate that process or that opportunity as is a better way to say it, so that families that have a loved one with a disability -- it may be one disability or it may be more than one, but every family that has a loved one with a disability should have the opportunity to save just like they might for education in a tax-free manner, in a tax-advantaged way. so we've been working on this legislation for a number of years, senator r