ms. baldwin: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from wisconsin. ms. baldwin: thank you. i rise this afternoon to urge my colleagues to confirm james peterson for the united states district court of the western district of wisconsin. and i want to start where my colleague left off which is to state that i am proud to have worked with senator johnson to put in place a nonpartisan federal commission and to process moving judicial nominations forward because the people of wisconsin deserve to have experienced and highly qualified judges working for them. and they deserve to have judicial vacancies filled on a timely basis. addressing vacate federal judgeships in wisconsin has been a top priority of mine since i was sworn in to the senate last year. i want to thank senator johnson for work to go find common ground with me on this very important issue for wisconsin. together we believe that james peterson will be an outstanding federal district judge, and his experience, qualifications and expertise will serve the western district of wisconsin and our nation

ms. baldwin: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that following my remarks, senator boxer be permitted to speak for up to ten minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. baldwin: mr. president, today the senior senator from south carolina and his republican colleagues have proposed a measure which amounts, in my opinion, to an attack on the freedom of american women to make their own personal health care decisions. instead of focusing on improving access to health care for women, these senators are pursuing divisive policies that jeopardize women's health and put politicians and government between a woman and her doctor. mr. president, i object to this dangerous political game. women's access to quality health care is not a political game for me and some of my colleagues who join me here today, nor is it a game for women and families across the country and in my home state of wisconsin. too many states have enacted record numbers of laws that restrict women's access to reproductive healt

ms. baldwin: thank you. i rise today to speak about a growing crisis in our nation that threatens our economy and the future strength of our country. a college education should be a path to the middle class not a path to indebtedness. but today america carries the burden of $1.2 trillion in student loan debt. in my home state of wisconsin almost 70% of the students graduating from four-year institutions will have student loan debt, and the average debt amount will be $28,000. this is real money. this is real money that isn't going into our growing -- into growing our economy at a time when we desperately need economic growth. this is real money that isn't going towards buying a student's or graduate's first car or first home. the total amount of student debt in the united states has tripled in the last decade, from $363 billion in the year 2005 to over a trillion dollars today. at the same time, federal financial support for students has not kept up with the need. the pell grant once covered $7 out of every

senator baldwin. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, ms.urwell for your time here today and talking about your vision for the department. i appreciate the opportunity we've had to speak in advance of this hearing. i wanted to talk about a couple of different topic. but including the fact that the health care system has been plagued forever with a lack of transparency. and gathering data, dissimulating and sharing data is incredibly key to helping physicians understand where they lie with regard to other physicians' practices, helping understand where hospitals, how they go about pricing things, what their costs are, and helping patients make wise decisions about choosing providers, particularly if they need an operation or a specific treatment. this is an issue where we've seen some variation from state to state. i'm proud to tell you that in the state of wu wii i think we've within a real leader with an organization called the wisconsin health information organization. it intends to be an all payers claim database that does some further an

baldwin, casey and sanders. i'll recognize senator warren. >> thank you, chairman harkin. thank you, ms.l, for being here today. ms. burwell, there seems to be broad bipartisan agreement that we need to reduce federal health care spending. and republicans argue that to accomplish this, we need entitlement reform. but they shouldn't forget that we passed major entitlement reform just four years ago as part of the affordable care act. and that it's already working to reduce medicare spending. so i just had a couple of numbers to look at. in 2009, before obamacare, the medicare trust fund was projected to go bankrupt in 2017. today, the medicare trust fund is solvent at least until 2026. moreover, every congressional budget office estimate of medicare spending since the aca was passed has continued to show bigger savings, that's bigger, not smaller savings, than the report before. in fact, last month cbo projected that medicare spending for 2014 to 2020 will be $500 billion less than they originally projected after the bill was passed. and put that in perspective, that's a cut in federal sp