mrs. fischer: mr. president? the presiding officer: the chair recognizes the senator from nebraska. mrs. fischer: thank you, mr. president. in the 116th congress -- are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: the? is the in a quorum call. mrs. fischer: i would ask that it be vitiated, please. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. fischer: thank you, mr. president in the 116th congress, i am once again chairing the senate armed services committee subcommittee on strategic forces, which oversees our nuclear forces. over the coming months, i will be coming to the floor to discuss specific components of our nuclear deterrent and their contributions to the defense of this nation. today i rise to speak about the critical role that strategic bombers play in our nuclear triad. the triad is known for its flexibility and resilience, and bombers contribute to this flexibility in important ways. they are highly visible, and they can be forward-deployed. they can be used to signal resolve to our advers

nilo ok out of nothing and that that was something i remember mr fischer of the dallas federal reserve once said that the federal reserve of the united states would never go down the road of a banana republic and rick hundreds of billions or even a trillion of its own units of currency but we just printed three point seven trillion dollars coming out of the great recession. and we're only dealer to drain maybe about six or seven hundred billion dollars of that there's going to announce very quickly very soon here exactly the final size of its balance sheet but let me make this clear the federal reserve of the united states is now acting like a banana republic has printed wellmost words trillion dollars and will currently monetize over three trillion dollars oh it's assets all right when quantitative easing was first announced a lot of people said mike us that is debt monetization and isn't that what banana republics do and the answer was no because it's temporary and big a while we can start reversing this at any time ben bernanke has said we could reverse and fifteen minutes so here w

fischer. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and our witnesses for your testimony and service over many years. generality scaparrotti, you are well aware if there is ever a major conflict in europe, the first shots are likely to be cyber? they are not going to be kinetic. we have to be prepared for that. i know the russian attack against estonia in 2007, the baltics have been leaning into this in a pretty major way. estonia created the cyber defense league, established nato's cooperative cyber defense center of excellence, and as you know latvia is home to the nato strategic communications center of excellence. i would like you to give us an update and share some of your thoughts on what you see in the baltic countries, lessons learned things we may want to replicate in other places around the world. >> you noted the changes that have taken place. i would add as well that after nato determined cyber was in fact the domain which needed to happen to give authorities -- we now have a cyber center that operates within nato, connected with each of our nations. most of of them are building a cyber c