ms. stabenow: thank you, mr. president. did want to just, for the record, come down and indicate i know there is a point of order against this bill. but despite the intent, which i appreciate and agree with of protecting taxpayers' dollars. unfortunately the way this is designed, it would actually put taxpayers' dollars at risk by creating an end deadline so that we would have all of the taxpayers interests coming up at the same time. it would lower the value. it would put the companies at risk of a takeover which i don't believe my colleague or anybody in this body would want. so i think it's just incredibly important that we not try to intervene with end dates that are in a way going to backfire in terms of putting taxpayer investment in these companies at risk. thank you. the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. the senator from tennessee has a minute. mr. alexander: i thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i'm very surprised by this. i thought we all wanted to get the stock out of the government and into the

ms. stabenow: thank you, mr. president. first, i would ask to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. ms. stabenow: in doing that, though, i do want to recognize the tremendous hard work that both the chair of the armed services committee and ranking members are doing. we're very proud of the chairman coming from michigan and all of his excellent work in standing up for the troops and this bill's another example of that and i'd like to congratulate him and the senator from arizona for working together on this very important bill. mr. president, i want to speak for a moment on health care. we are hearing a lot as we hear from colleagues -- many colleagues, not everyone, but many colleagues on the other side of the aisle about the need to be against health care reform. to be a no. and we all know that saying no to health care reform means we're going to have the status quo. no equals the stato quo right now. and for too many families, too many businesses all across this country, that is absolutely not acceptable. now, the status quo

ms. stabenow: thank you. thank you, very much. first i want to congratulate, actually on the underlying bill, my friend and colleague and the leader of the armed services committee for all of his hard work on the bill that's in front of us and how important -- it's so important for the troops, and i just want to thank him for his leadership in such a strong way on behalf of men and women who are serving us every single day and all the things that they need to be able to be supported along with their families. so this is a very important bill, madam president, and i'm hopeful we're going to be able to move through this very quickly. i did want to take a moment, mot though tonight to talk about health care, not about the specifics of the bill that we have been working on now for about a year. we've had forums and meetings and drafts and proposals and working sessions for about a year now i believe, and i want to commend senator baucus for the incredible amount of time he has put in as well as his staff, and he and senator grassley w