ms. klobuchar: mr. president, are we in a quorum call. the presiding officer: we are. ms. klobuchar: mr. president, i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. klobuchar: mr. president, i rise today to talk about the 2018 farm bill and the importance of passing this bill. i the want to chang chairman roberts -- chairman roberts and ranking member stabenow for having a clearly bipartisan bill. senator mcconnell and senator schumer have been dedicated to moving this bill to the floor. under chamber roberts and ranking member stabenow's leadership, they passed a bill out of the committee on a nearly unanimous 20-1 vote and included almost 70 amendments before getting it to the floor this week. the agriculture committee and the farm bill are models of how we can work across the aisle on tough legislation and legislation that affects every americans, whether it's the farmers and ranchers growing the stock, the conservationists that rely on the wetlands or the familie

ms. klobuchar: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from minnesota. ms. klobuchar: i want to thank senator merkley, the senator from oregon, for his leadership, his calling atten to the tragedies that have been going on right on our border, and i rise today to join my colleagues to express my deep concern about the policy that was adopted by this administration to separate families at the border. what we have seen over the past several days and weeks and actually months is simply unacceptable. and while the president has now recognized publicly that we should not be taking children from their parents, this should not be happening in our country. according to the department of homeland security, 2,042 children are separated separater children between may 5 and june 9. 9 pace of these separations was increasing with nearly 70 children being taken from their parents up until today and being kept in facilities that are increasingly overcrowded. the american medical association, american academy of pediatrics having expressed their opposition. they said that th

ms. klobuchar: mr. president, i'm here to talk about net neutrality, but first i wanted to commend the presiding officer for the agreement that we made on the stop act. he is the lead sponsor and i am the lead democrat on the bill, and this bill, of course, is going to make it easier for -- yes? mr. inhofe: i hate to ask you to do this, but i wrote some notes down here when the senator from teesseeas talking and i inadvertently forgotten to mention the main point. is it okay if i do that rht now? ms. klobuchar: of course. the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: that is implying that we're doing something for this president is what i would like to remind the floor there is something that our new president wanted to -- had in mind. he wanted to privatize the air traffic control, i single-handedly stopped that and he wanted to have a brac around this bill on the floor and we stopped that. so many of the provisions he wanted we have taken out of the bill. i ask unanimous consent that m

ms. keddy. >> thank you, chairman lee, senator klobuchar, senator hatch, on behalf of public knowledge, i appreciate the opportunity to testify today. senator klobuchar, your comments about your past reminded me about bill mcgowan, the great leader of mci, and here we have some wonderful ceos who are totally committed to serving consumers and making a lot of promises and certainly have represented an image of a highly committed maverick approach, and that was the essence of mci and bill mcgowan. but that was bought by verizon and that is not the bill mcgowan maverick company that mci was. so i start with that by saying that this issue is not about promises. there are a lot of interesting things that need to be thoroughly investigated by the department of justice in reviewing a merger. this is about law enforcement. this is about what the clayton act requires, as passed by congress, the justice department to enforce the law. in doing that, promises are interesting and certainly thoroughly reviewed, but what is fundamental is what is the market structure that we're looking at and what is the impact a