mrs. fischer: mr. president, i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. brown: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. brown: thanks, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent to dispense with the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. i represent a state -- i'm privileged, as i know the presiding officer is, to represent connecticut and the previous speaker is to represent nebraska. i'm privileged to represent my state, the state of ohio, and we are home to several large research facilities, medical research facilities, aeronautics research facilities, military research facilities, some that are overwhelmingly represented to do research in pure science. all of them have a major impact in their communities, a major impact in terms of employment directly, majoring in usually good-paying jobs, scientists and engineers and physicians and chemists and all kinds of people in the natural or the medical or the aeronauti

mrs. fischer: thank you, mr. president. today i rise to call attention to a problem that seems to have goss enlost in the shuffle recently. -- gotten lost in the shuffle recently. that issue, mr. president, is our unemployed and underemployed american youth. the "wall street journal" published a must-read story entitled "wanted: jobs for the new lost generation." and i'll read a brief except. "like so many americans, derrick weatherall is stuck. at 23 years old he has a job but not a career and little prospect for advancement. he has tens of thousands of dollars in student debt but no college degree. he says he's more likely to move back in with his parents than to buy a home, and he doesn't know what he will do if his car, which is a 2001 chrysler seabring with well over 100,000 miles, what is he going to do if that breaks down. i'm kind of spinning my wheels, mr. weatherall says. we can wishfully think that eventually it's going to get better but we really don't know. and that doesn't really help us now. derrick weatheral

fischer. >> thank you, chairman boxer. mr. diloreto, you said you were from oregon and you had the dtm.when i said state legislator, i met represented in your legislature, bruce starr, who worked on the vtm. how many vehicles to you have involved in that? do you know quechee said you're looking to expand. >> i do not. spent do you know what the the program was? >> no, but i can give you all the information. i'm not an expert in it but i can get you everything you need and that. >> been a long it would take to set it up? >> if you were to do it full you're looking at probably 10 years or more because you're going to have to either retrofit existing vehicles or not to wait until the fleet goes through the entire, turn over your entire fleet. >> thank you. as a civil engineer, i know that senator inhofe, i was told, ask this in the planning i believe the mr. lewis. when i stepped out, but for you, sir, as a civil engineer on planning and the uncertainty of planning when you don't know what the funding is, can you tell us a little bit about had to deal with that when you're looking at doubl

mr. cornyn: madam president, if i could just respond very briefly. i appreciate the majority leader not objecting to consideration of this legislation. he believes that this issue had been resolved by this contractual arrangement between fischerhouse and the department of defense, but ultimately the department of defense would have to reimburse fischer house under what i understand the reported arrangement to be mait be made. this obviates the need for any kind of work-around, together with any legal questions that might arise as to whether this is actually something the department has the authority to do. i'm not suggesting they don't. i'm just saying this alleviates all those considerations. so i'm glad we were able to come together in a bipartisan way, like we would on the military pay for uniformed military, and pass this narrow piece of legislation. i think maybe now that we've passed the pay for active-duty military and we've passed this provision that provides for survivor benefits for the families of the fallen, maybe that paves the way to open up for some other narrow bills until we can come together on a larger bill, as we've offered, for example, funding for n.i.h., the nationa national institutesf health. the dist