mr. wydenand i am going to yield now to chairman men denies, the chair of the senate foreign relations committee, because he and i worked very closely together on all of these kinds of issues -- foreign reels committee, the finance committee, and we have the good fortune of having senator menendez ceptionly sit next to me in the committee. society we're going to be working together. i am going to make the unanimous consent request in a minute. but i want to yield to chairman menendez, thank him for the fact that we're working together. today we've got a loot to do in the future and we're going to work together. i yield the floor to my colleague. mr. menendez: thank you. mr. president. the presiding officer: the senior senator from new jersey. mr. menendez: mr. president, i love your booming voice. i just want to come to the floor very quickly. i look forward to working with chairman wyden so we can forge an even stronger economic ties between the united states and taiwan. as chairman of the for

mr. wyden: madam president, before she leaves the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. wyden wind before she leaves the floor, let me just say to my seat mate on the senate finance committee, how much i appreciate her passion an leadership on this critical issue and i note that the president of the senate is also one of the outspoken members of the committee on this issue and it has been a tremendous debate. i thank my colleagues. it has been a year since the decision on dobbs v. jackson women's health organization. i remember reading the decision in the press early last may and realizing with dread that the court was going to strike down roe v. wade. and my first reaction was that the court had set in motion a catastrophe for the health, safety, and privacy of american women. to the horror of the 36 million women living in states that have already banned abortion or likely to ban access to abortion, unfortunately my prediction was right. now, the supreme court's decision in dobbs tossed a half century of legal press prece

. >> mr. wyden. >> mr. chief justice and may ease the court. the court has lonheld that because of the importance of free speech in our cntry, categorical exceptions to the content regulations must be well dened narrowly limited. speech cannot be exempted without proof of a long set of tradion without subjecting that speech to regulation. the state has not come close to meeting its burden without burden of punishing witht proof the speaker knew the statement would cause fear. where this court reversed convictions for cross buing. and a series of opinions emphasizing the central importance intenpls in making threats actually subscribe. where the ste predicts harm it has shown no difference in criminal enforcement or the availality of civil protective orders and many jurisdiction at is already requires subjective intent. ere, prosecutors prove mens rea the same way they alys have under criminal statutes through objective evidencef the defendant's words and actions. criminalizing sunderstanding is especially dangerous in an age when smuch communic

tom: mr. wyden --biden preaching to the ones that want to go get them. well. i'll a lot on that recently all sorts of news on these names that are strange to me. binance, coinbase and a few others. chairman of the securities exchange commission has been most active and the world turns on its head. bitcoin to a 31,000 print recently because lo and behold to the rescue, global wall street. katie greifeld in for lisa abramowicz. she hasn't been up that 10:00 a.m. for like 14 years. you going to come back tomorrow? katie: i think that's the plan. you get a lot done by the morning. tom: let's talk crypto here. very seriously were you surprised that lawrence think wants to market crypto? katie: not necessarily surprise they want to get in the game but surprise that they would file for a spot bitcoin etf. that was the shocker there that they would try for that structure because the sec has denied it and denied it. tom: i don't need an etf on bitcoin if i can just buy bitcoin. katie: a lot of people don't want to go through the haggle of setting up the digital w

mr. wyden: madam president, before she leaves the floor.the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. wyden wind before she leaves the floor, let me just say to my seat mate on the senate finance committee, how much i appreciate her passion an leadership on this critical issue and i note that the president of the senate is also one of the outspoken members of the committee on this issue and it has been a tremendous debate. i thank my colleagues. it has been a year since the decision on dobbs v. jackson women's health organization. i remember reading the decision in the press early last may and realizing with dread that the court was going to strike down roe v. wade. and my first reaction was that the court had set in motion a catastrophe for the health, safety, and privacy of american women. to the horror of the 36 million women living in states that have already banned abortion or likely to ban access to abortion, unfortunately my prediction was right. now, the supreme court's decision in dobbs tossed a half century of legal press preced

mr. werfel and will have questions. >> chairman wyden, ranking member crapo and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the filing season and the irs budget. i am pleased to report that the irs provided substantially better service to taxpayers during the 2023 filing season. we delivered a strong tax season for the nation. the best in several years. through april 7th, the irs received more than 101 million individual federal returns and issued more than 69 million refunds. totaling about 199 billion dollars. irs employees were able to make substantial improvements this tax season because of the funding congress provided to the inflation reduction act. this funding made a difference. it allowed us to hire more than 5000 phone a sisters which led to a phone level service averaging 87% during the filing season. the average wait time on the phones was four minutes. this is a major improvement from last year. one service levels were under 15% and wait times average 27 minutes. perhaps most telling was this, irs employees answered 6.5 million calls to help taxpayer

mr. chairman, you've been helping us from the get go and i remember those first days when you invited me to west virginia and we'll continue that cooperation and i yield back. >> thank you, senator wyden. again, thank you to all of the witnesses today for being here. we appreciate it very much. i want to introduce you all to mr. jim rob from the electric reliability corporation. is that close? president and ceo of pjm and research scholar and columbia center and mr. david tutor, ceo and general manager of associate collaborative. >> good morning. it's a pleasure to be here . i appreciate the opportunity to discuss our views on reliability and resilience of the electric grid. ranking member barrasso as well. we believe the electric power system is absolutely at an inflection point right now. the electric transmission grid is highly reliable and resilient, yet the risk profile to customers is steadily increasing and our assessments demonstrate they're ever closer to the edge and more frequent and more serious disruptions are increasingly likely. we also believe the energy transformation can be navigated in a reliable way. that's of course with the proviso that the pace of grid transform

mr. wydenmr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: we are in a quorum call. mr. wyden: i ask unanimous consent to vacate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. wyden: mr. president, our country is facing a medication shortage crisis. americans can no longer count on their medicines being available at the pharmacy counter when they need them. unfortunately, it's actually worse than a simple shortage. it is, in particular, that america doesn't have access to aned adequate supply of generic drugs that can be stocked by our pharmacies. i've heard from parents throughout my state whose kids are sick with a strep throat, and they're out there scrambling from pharmacy to pharmacy, trying to track down a bank antibiotic. these concerns are especially serious in rural parts of my state. i think this is true in a lot of parts of this country, because of the long distances families have to drive if the

mr. wyden: i rise in opposition. madam president, the bipartisan package importantly negotiated between speaker mccarthy and president biden, in fact, makes specific rescissions to unused covid funds while protecting important funding for programs that are still necessary to support our communities. this amendment, colleagues, goes beyond the mccarthy-biden agreement. this amendment would take an ax to nearly all of the funding in the recovery act and several other covid bills even if the communities are still depending or planning on using that money. blue states or red states, pass this amendment, and you risk default. i strongly urge a vote against this amendment. the president pro tempore: the question is on the amendment. the senator has five seconds. a senator: i ask for the yeas and nays. the president pro tempore: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote: the president pro tempore: on this vote, the yeas are 47, the nays are 52, under the previous order requiring 6