ms. bowen who we'll be voting on in a little bit. within the dodd-frank wall street reforms, individual agencies were directed to establish an office of minority and women inclusion. this action was taken to address the lack of diversity of qualified men and women in federal agencies involved in financial regulation, but also subcontractors, contractors who receive billions of dollars from the government. the cftc itself should lead by example when it comes to diversity as well as expertise, so i'm especially pleased that president obama selected sharon bowen as a nominee for the commission. she will be the first african-american woman to serve on the cftc and will be the only woman serving at this point in time on the five-member commission. and she has the kper tease and the -- the expertise and the experience to be an excellent commissioner. during her testimony before the agriculture committee, ms. bowen told of her upbringing as the youngest of five children in a small town of saint julian

massad and ms. bowen on their confirmations today. i have every expectation that they will work well with all of the stakeholders involved in the vitally important work of the cftc. this will ensure that cftc is fulfilling its mission of protecting the public, which is the bottom line. in congress, we must also do our part to protect these markets and make sure that the cftc has the resources it needs to do its job. that means having both the staff and the technology in place so that the cftc can perform its work. and we have given it so much more work, madam president, with the new legislation. we need to make sure they have the resources to do what we have asked them to do. the agency must be able to keep up with the markets they're overseeing. they can't do that if they don't have the funding that they need. and this will be a priority for me as we seek to update the cftc and its abilities to protect consumers and market participants. we have 21st century markets. we need a 21st century cftc to oversee them. the senate agriculture

ms. nancy weaver, deputy assistant secretary of defense, warrior care policy who is accompanied by mr. dave bowen, director of health information technology, defense health agency. and from the department of veterans affairs, we have mrs. diana reubens, deputy undersecretary for field operations with the benefits administration who is accompanied by mr. thomas murphy, director of compensation services. upon conclusion of the first panel, we will seat two subsequent panels which include for panel two ms. linda holiday, the assistant inspector general for audits and evaluations for the office of the inspector general's u.s. department of veterans affairs accompanied by ms. nora stokes, director of the benefits and inspections division. and mr. roman d around moan figuera, project manager with the inspections division. panel three will consist of mr. eric jenkins who is here in representation of the american ped ration of government -- federation of government employees and afge national va council. ms. deborah gipson is here today and she will be introduced shortly by our congressman o'rourke. mr.

bowen nomination, the senate recess until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. warren: there will be two roll call votes at noon tomorrow. additional roll call votes on nominations are expected. if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it adjourn under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until would ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: mr. president, mr. sessions: mr. president, >> mr. president on the presence in our mel agency today a group that directly reports to him and in which reflects his decisions about environmental matters has issued a new proposed regulation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants by 30% by the year 2030. those are existing plants and they can be they can get pretty and have that kind of reduction unless you have carbon capture and there's no technology feasible with any reasonable technology, it's not feasible economically to capture carbon so it's a dramatic hammering of a major portio