and i thank all of my colleagues for giving us thaeurl -- their suggestions, their requests, their insights. it made for a better bill. as i mentioned, i'm particularly grateful to senator jack reed, the ranking member of the transportation-h.u.d. subcommittee, for his work. i also want to thank the staff for their diligence and commitment throughout this process. as senator reed mentioned, we worked extremely hard, but our staff worked even harder. so i want to thank heidi shomaradi, roger matter, jason woline, gus maples, daphne hague, nathan robinson, christina monroe, jordan stone and mike clark on the subcommittee staff. i also want to give special thanks to the floor staff and the cloakroom staffs who worked so hard. without the help of laura dove and her team and the team on the democratic side, we could not be where we are today. they did a lot of the vetting that needed to be done on various amendments. they helped us in the negotiations and the compromises that ultimately were included in this bill. i would note that our transportation-h.u.d. portion of this bill recognizes fiscal