mrs. shaheen: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from new hampshire. mrs. shaheen: madam president, is the senate in a quorum call? the presiding officer: it is. mrs. shaheen: i ask that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. shaheen: thank you. madam president, more than 50 years ago, president kennedy signed the equal pay act making equal pay for equal work the law of the land. and yet today, wage discrimination still persists. today women i continue to be pad just over three-quarters of what their male counterparts receive for performing the same work. more women than he have before are graduating from college, but over the course of their careers, they will each make an average of $1.2 million less than a man with the same level of education. unfortunately, that's not unique. across a wide array of industries and within all different occupations, well-qualified women continue to earn an average of 77 cents for each dollar that our male counterparts earn, regardless of performance or educational background. pay discrimin

mrs. shaheen: thank you, madam president. i came to the floor today to join my colleagues, senator harkin, senator udall, senator boxer in supporting an increase in the minimum wage that would give 28 million american workers a very long overdue raise. i know that the years since the economic collapse in 2008 have really been hard for families in new hampshire and across the country, and although we have seen c.e.o. salaries rise, pay for working families has stagnated, and while the cost of food, transportation and child care all continue to climb and families struggle to make ends meet, the minimum wage for american workers has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009. at that rate, a single mother working full time in new hampshire does not earn enough to keep her family out of poverty. so let me just be clear. adults working full time cannot support their families on the minimum wage, and that needs to change. the fair minimum wage act would increase the minimum wage to $10.10 over two years. that would provide a raise to n

shaheen. >> thank you, mr. chairman. secretary mchugh, general odierno, i know you've had a very long morning, so i just have a brief question. but before i ask that, i just wanted to express my condolences to both of you, to everyone in the army over the tragedy at ft. hood. i know that we all share in mourning the victims and offering condolences to their families. i wanted to ask both of you about a hearing that i held yesterday in the readiness committee, where assistant secretary hammock -- we were discussing the whole issue of brack. and she commented -- and i'm going to paraphrase. but we have the quote, if you would like to see it. but to paraphrase what she said is that if the army -- i assume d.o.d. -- can't get the authorization for brack in 2017, that you would go ahead -- you might go ahead and list some basis for closure in your budget request because of the concerns about because of the concerns about the ability to continue to run those bases in the way that they should be run. and while i appreciate the

mr. brown: i understand that s. 2262 introduced earlier today by senator shaheen, portman and others is tefrbg. i ask for its first reading. the presiding officer: the clerk will read the title of the bill for the first time. the clerk: s. 2262. mr. brown: i ask for a second reading and object to my own request. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the bill will be read for a second time on the next legislative day. mr. brown: i ask unanimous consent when the senate completes bits it adjourn until tuesday, april 29, 2014. the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the leaders to be reserved for their use later in the day. that following leader remarks, the senate be in a period of morning business until 11:00 a.m. with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each, with time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees with the majority controlling the first half, the republicans controlling the second half, and at 11:00 a.m. the senate proceed to executive session under the previous order. further, that following the votes

yibled, schatz, heinrich, baldwin, boxer, stabenow, hirono, hagan, landrieu, mccaskill, shaheen, feinstein, klobuchar. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent the mandatory quorum under rule 22 be waived. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. bennet: mr. president, thank you very much. for that recognition. i come to the floor today to talk about jobs and about one sector in particular, -- maybe we should should have a job sector to fix this desk but that's not what i'm here to talk about. one job sector that's created tremendous job growth in colorado and across the united states and that's wind energy and the jobs that it's brought to our state. during last thursday's markup in the finances committee, we worked in a bipartisan fashion to include a two-year extension of the production tax credit known as the p.t.c. any -- and the investment tax credit known as the i.t.c. for wind energy. the wind credit has enjoyed broad bipartisan basis over a number of years ranging from its original champ, cons to be a c