ms. mikulski: thank you very much. i want to thank my colleagues who have spoken on this amendment, particularly those who oppose the amendment. mr. president, i come to the floor today with sadness in my heart. i come because yesterday -- or over the weekend one of our maryland national guard was killed in afghanistan. he was one of two men working in a building in which he was attacked by someone he trusted at the interior service, and it appears that he was assassinated. i talked to his widow. we're sad. we're sad that somebody who went to defend freedom was killed in such a terrible way. i'm sad because last night i spoke to a dear friend of mine whose husband is very ill from the ravages of brain cancer. and we remembered so many good times we had together, but those good times now don't seem possible in the future. and i want so much that she be with her husband and not think about the consequences of cost and so on, and today, -- or last night we learned that our very dear friend and colleague, senator olympia s

ms. mikulski: thank you very much, madam president. i claim ten minutes of the democratic majority time, and i come to the floor to speak about women's health, and i come to speak about the issue of prevention, and i come to talk about the fundamental -- i want fundamentally everybody to remember what we debated and what we did in the health care bill. for the first time in a long time, our nation is talking about women's health. boy, am i glad to hear that. it's most of all been going on on the morning talk shows and in our front pages of our newspapers, but unfortunately too much of the conversation isn't really about women's health. it's politics disguised as women's health. now, what should we be talking about when it comes to women? we should be talking about what are the top killers of women. cancer, that dreaded, dreaded, dreaded c word of breast cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer, or the highest killers of -- are the highest killers of women. lung cancer, cervical cancer and breast cancer. then there are the silent killers of