stabenow: thank you. everyone involved in the market, but looking at what needs to be done to create the protections paid does the cftc have the resources necessary to take on an additional responsibility with respect to the digital asset market? chair behnam: the short answer is no. i cannot precisely put a number on it, but i have thought about this quite a bit. the best sort of benchmark to think about is what the cftc went through the past 10 years after the financial crisis. this committee gave the cftc to cap the derivatives markets. we have brought that onto exchanges with a theory of -- series of regulatory changes that have brought transparency to the swap market. in 2011, our budget appropriation was about $2 million and now we are slightly over $300 million. depending on the size of the register on pool if you were to authorize a galatian of digital asset commodities, it would be a minimum of the $100 million mark would be a starting point as a reference. sen. stabenow: thank you very much. sen

my colleague senator stabenow asked questions earlier. i support her certified community behavioral health clinic. these have been great programs. there are five community clinics in my state for low income populations. this grant over the past two years has enhanced care of those experiencing mental illness. we are really building capacity clinics by comprehensive health care, use for innovative purposes, creating a program to offer first-aid training, critical incident stress debriefing's, receive --and helping receive support. do you think the certified community behavioral clinics and their grants have been helpful in reducing the barriers for treatment of youth and families, particularly in our less acceptable areas, in more rural parts of the united states? should congress consider expanding these programs to address the disparity in access and what would you prioritize within that system? ms. lubarsky: thank you for your question and i'm pleased you mentioned mental health for state. i think it is vital to prevent mental health. in

i'm joined today by senators murray, stabenow and blumenthal. so let's talk about judges. in the first year of the biden administration, as you know, we've had tremendous success confirming federal judges. tremendous success. we have confirmed more judges to the federal bench 43 as of this morning, than any president in his first year since reagan. and that's a big accomplishment. these are of course lifetime appointments. in fact, the judges who have been nominated and confirmed not only have remarkable demographic diversity, women, people of color, but for the first time, real professional diversity as well. public defenders, public interest lawyers, community folks as opposed to simply partners and big fancy law firms and prosecutors. with justice breyer's decision to retire at the end of his term, president biden has an opportunity to make the supreme court look more like america by nominating the first black woman in u.s. history to serve as a justice. we've had 115 justices in the history of this country. only five have been women and only to have been african-americ

stabenow. >> aye. >> mr. whitehouse. >> yes. >> mr. chairman. >> aye. >> mr. chairman, yeas are 12, nays are 8. >> next, jennifer sass of maryland to be a member of the chemical safety and hazard investigation board. i move to approve. report the nomination to the senate. is there a second? >> second. >> moves and seconded. clerk will call the roll. >> mr. bowman? >> no. >> ms. caputo? >> no. >> mr. kramer? >> no by proxy. >> ms. duckworth? >> aye. >> mr. graham? >> no by proxy. >> mr. inhofe. >> no. >> mr. kelly. >> aye. >> ms. lummis. >> no. >> mr. markey. >> aye. >> mr. padilla. >> aye. >> mr. sanders. >> aye. >> ms. stabenow. >> aye. >> mr. whitehouse. >> aye. >> mr. wicker? >> no, by proxy. >> mr. chairman. >> aye. >> yeas are 10, nays are 10. >> to expedite this meeting, we have agrees to consider remaining matters before the committee by voice vote. i would like to call up two presidential nominations. first i want to call up presidential nomination number 539, steven owens of arizona, to be a member of the chemical safety and hazard investigation board

chairman. >> thank you, senator stabenow. i was about to mention the good work we know you are already beginning with senator danes. so our guests have an understanding of how we're going to work, we have got a democrat and a republican serving on each of the key areas that we have to tackle, and because senator stabenow's expertise in this area and her advocacy is so important, i think we're especially lucky to have her handling the workforce issue which i think we've heard people mention repeatedly. we thank her for all her leadership. senator grassley is next and we welcome him. >> thank you, mr. chairman, i will lead into questions with dr. benton. the dea issued its first public safety alert since 2015. it warned of a significant nationwide surge in counterfeit pills that are mass produced by criminals in labs, deceptively marketed as prescription drugs. these counterfeit pills are killing unsuspecting americans, particularly young people. an unprecedented rate. many are getting illicit pills knowingly or unknowingly thr

senator stabenow. >> thank you mr. chairman and ranking member. i soen appreciate the focus we e giving in the leadership you're giving on this and i have to say dr. murthy i appreciate your report on young people. we know that one out of five americans will have -- in their lifetime and that number may be going up related to the pandemic. the chairman talked about i think there are many of us in this chamber who have experiences with their families and for me it wasas my dad being bipolar before there was a diagnosis and before there was treatment and medication. i so what happens when he didn't have those things and what he did and the transformation in him and our family so i wish that for everyone which means we have to treat health care above the neck as well as below the neck and get rid of that stigma. we know that children and many adults have been particularly hard hit and anxiety depression and other issues can become way too common and far too many children and young people have gone without treatment and social media only makes it wors

then we will have senator stabenow and senator daynes working on the mental health care workforce. so, part of this and you see it with senator stabenow's great work on behavioral health, you have a great program we need more workforce and all over the country we are hearing about challenges there. senator cortez massed out and corn and are looking at how to make mental health care more seamless because too many people fall between the cracks. senator bennett and senator burr will focus on how mental health care gets finally treated the same way as physical health care. special passion of mine particularly because we launched our investigations after a debacle at the oregon health sciences center where they couldn't get their claims paid early on in the pandemic because the insurance companies were stalling. senators cardin and food will team up on making it easier to get mental health care via telehealth. and finally, i want to just mention what the direction here is, really the lone star for what the committee has talked about in the past. everybody in america must be able to get

senator, you've been patient, but senator stabenow has been patient as well on webex. if you don't mind, i'll let her go first, thank you for your patience. senator stabenow, you're there. >> i am and thank you to senator ernst, i appreciate working with her on these issues and appreciate very much you doing this hearing and i want to take just a step back, way back for a moment and kind of frame this as he think just as it's been framed as big refiners, small refiners and so on. this is really about whether we're going to have continue the dirtiest kind of fuel or have cleaner fuels, if you go back 100 years henry ford and thomas edison first tried to do a vehicle with a battery, but could not get the public support, government support to help them create the innovation and two years later the biggest permanent tax credits for oil and gas were embedded in our federal tax code and again they're 100 years when folks thought at that time picked a winner and they won. and now we're trying to balance that out with giving opportunity to biofuels, flex vehicles, wind, solar

okay, i think senator stabenow is next. >> thank you mister chairman, and ranking members. i just want to first add my voice to the choir in terms of addressing plastics. and plastic residents are in everything, and that is challenge. and it is not a natural fiber, so it's important, and it's important to our comey, and it's important to us in many ways, but we have to get our you know we have to get our our head about this. this recycling regimen. and to put in a plug for company, i wear shoes every day that are made from recyclable plastics,. >> one of the cult? >> ravi, and i feel i should be a sales person because i've converted several women in the senate to wearing them, and they're called rothy. but we just need to be serious and aggressive. especially in terms of what needs to happen. i did want to share, one other thing to. talking earlier about evs, and there is a real important thing done in recycling right now, and a lot of industry, a lot of companies in michigan are doing it. they're doing research and development. and are now actually actually recycling. ther

last month i was pleased to join chairwoman stabenow along with both the chairman and ranking member of the house and agriculture committee and sending a letter to chairman behnam that inquired about the scope and size of digital asset markets and whether the cftc is currently working with other federal financial regulators to support and police this growing financial ecosystem. yes, it's true bicameral bipartisan collaboration can still exist and we are demonstrating that to the agriculture committees despite what else may be going on in washington. this must be the way we address issues relating to these markets going forward because they are complicated and they touched so many of us whether we appreciate it or not. i hope today's hearings provide an opportunity for chairman behnam and our esteemed industry stakeholders that are present with us to weigh in on the questions we posed in the letter and i believe today's hearing is important because it begins addressing the growing calls for congress and regulators to work together to provide market participants certainty over which d

it comes from democratic senators elizabeth warren and debbie stabenow and republicans steve daines andblackburn, four people i would not have put together on my own. it not only bans trading in congress but prevents politicians from owning stocks at all. >> when elected you're here to serve the people, not the elite. and this i think is a step forward, important step forward to restore the faith and trust of the american people in this institution. >> reporter: another idea gaining momentum comes from democratic senator jon ossoff. he wants lawmakers to put their assets in a blind trust or forfeit their calories ossoff is part of a working group in the senate that's trying to come up with a unified approach he said he hopes to have bill text ready soon. >> the bottom line is we have come a long way in a month from this being called a fool's errand to now being at the top of the legislative agenda and we should be able to hammer this out without spending too much time agonizing over it this is not a highly complex area of law. >> reporter: one open question, whether any new rules would

senator stabenow? senator whitehouse? >> i'm actually here, mr. chairman. i'm sorry that the camera was turned off. thank you for the hearing, it is wonderful to see the two nominees. i do need to just say something to correct the record from my colleague who just spoke about the american rescue plan. this was something every democrat voted for and every republican voted against. i understand that folks on the republican side want to make it seem like the worst thing ever. the reality is when president biden took office there were 18 million people that were on unemployment insurance, now it is 2 million. we helped small business create 6 million jobs, the greatest year of job creation in american history. we have seen the most economic growth since 1984. we've seen the biggest single your drop in our unemployment rate in our nations history. we know that because of covid related challenges and supply chain breakdowns, there is still much more to do. but the record is very clear in terms of the robust economy and what is happening right now, we just need to

. >> thank you, senator stabenow and thank you very much for your leadership on this issue. paper and paper-based packaging mills are looking for new fiber, sourcing all they can to make new products. a big problem is government incentives might divert paper recovered for use in things other than manufacturing. we appreciate the work you're doing in leadership in making sure that doesn't happen. so, for example, someone might divert commonly recycled paper for use in combustion to generate energy would not count as recycling. we think it's very important to protect the recovered fiber stream for use in manufacturing. we support the legislation. we submitted a letter of support for that and wholeheartedly thank you for the work you're doing on that. >> thank you. hopefully, we can get this done. secretary biser, thank you for the work you're doing in north carolina and in our bipartisan infrastructure bill that we passed. a bill of mine with senator portman, the recycle act, was included as you know, and when you're talking about -- educating individuals as well as working wi

i'm proud to be joined by our leadership team of senators durbin, murray and stabenow. a lot of enthusiasm today, a lot of new ideas focusing on lowering costs for working families. whether it's childcare or prescription drugs or semiconductor chips or filling up the gas pump, what's on the dining table, the cost of food, we're coming up with solutions to address these issues. that's the big difference. between democrats and republicans when it comes to lowering people's costs. we have real answers. they don't. they just attack. and why don't they have answers? because much of the time it goes after the special interests that support them. so they don't want to deal with the oil companies or the meat packing companies or the shipping monopolies. so we are focused on getting costs down, and you're to going to see a lot of activity in march on us -- from us on that issue. now, let's not forget we're a very strong economy. in president biden's first year the economy added 6.6 million new jobs, the most ever, ever in a president's first year. but we're not stopping there. n