i saw senator tom udall and his leadership, and i want to praise that. i've seen how tireless he was working on this, and i'm grateful for senator udall, senator vitter, chairman inhofe, everyone's staff as they worked together to get this bill to where we are today. at the beginning of 2015, my colleagues, senator whitehouse, senator merkley and i began by negotiating with senators udall and vitter to make what we saw as urgently needed improvements to this bill. working together i'm proud that we were able to make those improvements to the preemption provisions that were involved in some of the things that my colleague from kentucky were just talking about, making sure that states still had a role in the process, still had power and authority in this process, and in fact had the ability now to company enforce -- coenforce with the federal government around this bill. i was also very proud of a provision in this bill that will significantly minimize new animal testing and potentially save tens of thousands of animals from unnecessary suffering. i'm prou

i voted for tom udall's bill to a constitutional amendment to repeal it but as a practical matter, someeconsideration by the court makes sense. it isise, we are just -- just getting worse and worse. a tsunami of money, particularly unaccountable money. no one knows where it is coming from. i really -- i don't want to sound alarmist but it worries me about the future of our democracy. al: let me get you to put on that armed services hat. are we turning the corner against isis? yes and no. on the ground in iraq and syria. their territory is contracting. will bethem out of iraq very difficult. the standard rule of thumb is it takes 10 people attacking to dislodge one soldier in a city. it will take a lot of people. and it will take a long time. and these guys have no qualms about using civilians as a shield. having said all of that, their control of territory is diminishing. that partially explained why we are seeing up -- an uptick in these bombings in baghdad, brussels, paris. they are trying to keep their recruiting up, believe it or not, killing people is a recruiting tool for these gu