ms. stabenow: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: before my friend from oregon leaves, and to -- just make a couple of comments about our leader on the finance committee because sitting and listening to him about his optimism and hopefulness helps me have optimism that we can actually come together and get things done. i can't think of anybody who first of all is more creative or willing to look at all kinds of inside in order to be able to strengthen health care, medicare medicaid, more quality cost containment. back during health reform, i was proud to join with senator wyden on what i thought was an extremely thoughtful approach around health care. i very much appreciate all that you do. and i have to say that as you -- i know you have reminded me many times coming to the senate and elected office, from the early years of the gray panthers and organizing for seniors. i come to public service and elected office, up for a big fight to save the county nursing home in ingham county, michigan. so we both came into public servi

ms. stabenow: thank you very much mr. president. first let me say that it's important that we fund the highway trust fund and that we have a long-term commitment to our infrastructure of our country for jobs, the economy for neighborhoods. i see the distinguished senator from oklahoma coming in who leads the transportation -- the committee that oversees transportation he and my friend from california have put forward a six-year authorization, on policy that we should commend them for. i'm proud to be part of a group, certainly democrats have been united in saying we need a sense of urgency, we need to get beyond month-to-month highway trust fund renewals and we need to make a commitment to a long-term approach just as every other country has done in a global economy. so that we can continue to compete and win as it relates to our roads and bridges and ports and rails and all the other part of our infrastructure. what concerns me about the bill in front of us, though, is that while we on the one hand wanting to make sure that we have

ms. stabenow: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: thank you mr. president. mr. president, when we have so many issues on our national agenda economy jobs, all of the issues that we need to address, making sure every american has a fair shot to get ahead, access to college has retirement security, all of the other issues that we know americans care about unfortunately we are revisiting a very old debate that just doesn't seem to want to go away, over and over and over again and that is whether or not we'll provide funding for preventative health care for women. specifically for family planning clinics that provide essential primary health care services for women and men things like wellness visits, mammograms breast cancer screenings. in 2013, planned parenthood performed 500,000 breast exams including 15,000 for women in michigan. planned parenthood provided screenings for cancer and heart disease and h.i.v. in 2013, 400,000 pap tests 4.5 million s.t.i. tests and treatments were conducted. women go to planned parenthood for

ms. stabenow: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: first of all let me say it is always a pleasure to work with the senior senator from north dakota. we've partnered on a number of different things, including efforts on the farm bill, and so it's with great pleasure that i'm partnering with him again to solve this problem and to make sure that we eliminate any possibility of retaliation on our businesses and solve a problem in a way that meets our trade obligations and also makes sure that we are standing up for our farmers and our consumers in america. that's really the goal, and i appreciate senator hoeven's leadership and commonsense approach to actually involving problems. so it's always great to be with you. and senator hoeven did say we have put together a thoughtful, bipartisan bill the voluntary cool, trade enforcement act we're very cool here, the country of origin labeling act. i want to thank our cosponsors, we have senators grassley heitkamp klobuchar thune senator brown senator enzi, senator casey senator rounds,