warner: thank you, mr. president. and i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call: mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader.

senator warner? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to go back to comments that both senator schumer and senator shelby made. senator shelby raised the point of, like your analogy, we got this bear, aig, and we don't know what to deal with it. and senator corker and i when secretary geithner was in recently -- >> senator warner, let me apologize. i did not see bob corker walk into the room. my colleague from tennessee. >> i was about to say good thins and you cut me off. >> no, my apologies, and my apologies to my colleague from my colleague from tennessee. senator corker? >> i'll let him ask his first question and come back. >> he thinks so highly of you. very smart of you, senator warner. >> i'm learning, mr. chairman. i'm learning. but we pressed -- we were very concerned and i think a lot of folks were very concerned about the whole aig situation. we were concerned about the fact that 100% payoffs with the counterparties with aig, and no haircut taking and secretary geithner said he didn't have authority and now there's a pr

m> senator warner? >> i know this is a course we are hearing from both sides, i want to add my strong support. i had the opportunity to work in calitics and when she did such a great job in education in south carolina. she was a great partner, a series of education initiatives. you are the right person at the erght time, you introduced your husband. slicken around this room, there are others who are showing support for you. it is tough to get them all in the same room with the same common cause. some of them are pretty expensive, high priced folks. e c me put a marker out. the chairman was initially slking, as we came in, he has played a leadership role, senator martinez and senator nelson, this chinese drywall issue. your agency, your new agency is working on this issue. i can tell you the stories we rad with the folks who had been victimized by this tragedy was pretty remarkable when we had them in recently. the folks from your agency were saying we were starting the testing. i want to make sure virgi

warner. >> i'm learning, mr. chairman. i'm learning. but we pressed --@@@@@@@ ;@ @Å2 institutions that received t.a.r.p. funds, we know they want to pay back these dollars. we know many of them want to pay them back as soon as possible. secretary geithner said as these banks start paying back, at least initially was his attempt to take back not only -- let them repay but also kind of wash out the warrants or buy back or sell back the wants rran warran. that we think through an overall strategy and policy goal for our repayments, and what i'm particularly concerned about is the warrants, the american taxpayers we as shareholders and investors took an awful lot of upside -- or downside risk exposure. i'd like to see some of the upside here. none of us want to be long-term holders of investors in financial institutions, but my hope would be that, one, you'd have an overarching policy in terms of repayments. that, secondly, one thing you would consider, and we raised this with secretary geithner, while we, the federal government, may not wa

i was proud to work alongside with senator mikulski and senator webb and former senator john warner last year to pass the federal safety improvement act signed into law in october of 2008. this law authorizes $1.5 billion over 10 years in federal funds for metro's governing washington metropolitan area transit authority matched dollar for dollar by local jurisdictions. for capital improvement. the technical details of the arrangement are nearly complete and when done, metro will finally have the dedicated funding sources. i compliment the states of virginia, maryland and the district for passing the necessary legislation. earlier this year as a regional delegation along with our new colleague, senator mark warner, we requested the appropriations committee provide the first $150 million. while this is a substantial down payment it's not nearly enough to fulfill all of metro rail's obligations. at the time of the bill's passage metro had a list of ready to go totaling about $530 million and $11 billion in funding needs over the next decade. yesterday, i joined with my colleagues from maryl

we are joined by mark warner, senator warner of virginia. mark, do you have any opening comments you'd like to make? >> senator tester told me since i was late i had to reserve my comments. >> well, john runs the show around here, so we appreciate it. let me start with some questions. i'm going to leave the clock off. i'll invite my colleagues sings there are three or four of us here to have a more informal conversation. if i start a line of questioning and you have a thought along the same line, jump right in here, so we make this in a way more cohesive in that sense. so many places to start. let me start with this. since t.a.r.p.'s inception the program's scope, size and complexity have dramatically increased. i made note of this in my opening comments when i noted the 12 separate initiatives under t.a.r.p. today. some of these interact with the federal reserve, some with the fdic, some obviously with private investors as we discussed as well. i wonder if you could begin, i think some of this you mentioned in your steps, the initial steps,

warner: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from virginia. mr. warner: thank you, mr. president. i'm sure sure we're in a quorum call. the presiding officer: we are not. mr. warner: mr. president, i rise today to discuss bipartisan legislation that i'm cosponsoring with my colleague, senator corker, considering the federal government's recently acquired ownership stake in a number of private companies. i think we all know that taxpayers have been on a roller coaster ride for the past nine months. from their perspective each twist and turn has left us more deeply invested in troubled markets and oftentimes troubled companies. americans are concerned about getting their money back and want to keep politics out of how we manage these investments before he had to make over the last few months. so last week, senator corker and i introduced s. 1280, the tarp recipient occupiershirecipient g politics from the management of our taxpayer investments in private companies. second, it will ensu

senator warner? >> thank you, mr. chairman.i want to go back to comments that both senator schumer and senator shelby made. senator shelby raised the point of, like your analogy, we got this bear, aig, and we don't know what to deal with it. and senator corker and i when secretary geithner was in recently -- >> senator warner, let me apologize. i did not see bob corker walk into the room. my colleague from tennessee. >> i was about to say good thins and you cut me off. >> no, my apologies, and my apologies to my colleague from my colleague from tennessee. senator corker? >> i'll let him ask his first question and come back. >> he thinks so highly of you.

why shouldn't senator corker and senator warner have a chance to offer that? that's what the majority of people in america would like to see done. or senator johanns, the distinguished former governor of nebraska, has his free enterprise act of 2009. he has 29 cosponsors. he'd like to require congressional approval before the federal government can use tarp funds to acquire ownership of an entity through stock. and a few other provisions like that. then senator thune, a member of the republican leadership, has a government ownership exit plan act of 2009. he would require the treasury to sell any ownership of private entity by july 1, 2010 and prohibit additional ownership. well, i think you can get the drift, madam president. we have a number of senators, mostly from this side but cosponsored from the other side, who say the american people are tired of washington take overs. they know that cars aren't going to get better in this country if the government is medaling with them and designing them and building them and making them. i can just imagine what we'll

i applaud senator warner for the bill in thinking through how we put this in. one of the areas i would like you to think about and address in your opening statement is indian country with we have some real problems out there in terms of not only broadband and telephones. i remember when president clinton was trying to demonstrate the digital divide. and i think i told you this in our meeting. he started out in the silicon valley and ended up in ship rock, new mexico. the young lady who introduced him was a star student. she got up and did the introduction and she talked about how she won a computer because of her academic prowess, and then she took it home, but she didn't have a phone line, she didn't have the ability to plug it in. and he used that trip from the silicon valley to ship rock, new mexico, on the navajo reservation to show the huge digital divide. so i hope that your leadership there will move us down the road and this committee will step up to the plate. it's wonderful to see that tie on your son out there. very impressive young man. he seems to

but senator warner is a big proponent of yours. a big supporter of yours. he wanted to be here to introduce you. let me just remind all senators and staff that we are going to try to have all questions -- written questions, follow-up questions end today by 6:00. we'd love for you to try to turn those around. as i understand it, between the two leaders on the senate floor, there is no agreement yet on your nomination. and the other fcc nomination. but i'm sure that chairman rockefeller and others, senator hutchison and others will try to get these packaged up and moved through as quickly as possible. let's see. i think that is it. is there anything else we need? with that, i just want to thank you for your service on the commission so far and what you've added to the commission, to the process. and if you get any questions, we'd appreciate a rapid turnaround and good luck on the c-span c-span c-span [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> coming up, more top nonfiction authors and bo

[laughter] so you've got senator warner, myself and senator lautenberg on the way and that is all that you really need but i don't want your ego to be upset. there's a lot going on today and part of it obviously is what happened with the metro rail system and is actively depressing, senator warner, sad that there is no current way for the ntsb or the department of transportation or anybody else that can make recommendations but they have no enforcement of 40. i did not know that until this happened. and people can have a variety of philosophies about the federal government. but it seems to me that where you have a heavy train being hit by vice versa light stream being hit by a heavy train and something went wrong and yes we know we will speculate and it will all come out in the and and in the meantime the only thing that counts is all those families of the dead and sometimes the families of the injured suffered longer. but there is no authority, they have got to run a safe train. there are recommendations but no authority. the chairman has arrived. >> sorry, the train was a little late

first, is what senator warner said. this is the chinese drywall situation is one of any number of product problems coming out of china. we obviously can't pass laws that regulate production in china, but we have gateways which are our ports and we have a commerce department and we have a cpsc. i think somewhere along the line, if you get a chance, a task force of representatives from the ports homeland security, the commerce department could possibly come up with some ideas of a threshold of entry that could give us some degree of protection, or at least send a signal to the world that we are looking at the quality of the products that are coming in. secondly, cosponsored senator demint legislation dealing with the consumer product safety improvement act which i voted for an chairman pryor spent a lot of time on, but it did have a lot of unintended consequences won by way of example i have eight, soon-to-be nine grandchildren. one of my daughters-in-law the mother of three all under five sheers the largest secondhand cl

senator warner. >> thank you, mr. warner. i know this is kind of a course we are hearing from both sides, but i want to add my strong support of inez. i have had the opportunity to work with her in politics that i've had the opportunity to work with her when she did such a great job in education in south carolina. she was a great partner we found in virginia on a series of education initiatives, and i think you are absolutely the right person at the right time for an agency that has truly been troubled. and while i know you introduced your husband, they are looking around this room. there are a series of other distinguished south carolinians who are here to show support for you. some of them it's tough to get them in the same room in the same common cause. i hope you're not paying all of them. some of them are pretty expensive, high-priced folks in town now. let me just put a marker out. i know when the chairman was initially talking as we came in, he had raised an issue that he's had played a leadership role on and senator m

time-warner did it with time-warner cable in march of 1969. all the owners simply received shares. pepsico did it with its reserve restaurant business. k.f.c., pizza hut -- other entities -- if you owned by pepsico, suddenly you had some of colonel sanders' stock. madam president, would you let me know when i have one minute left, please. the presiding officer: the senator has 30 seconds remaining. mr. alexander: i wonder if i exphiet for an extra one minute? the presiding officer: without objection. mr. alexander: thank you etch vy much. the main company was not consistent with the core business. we should give taxpayers its shares, get it back in the marketplace where it belongs. it is fast, sirnlings creates a market for the shares. this is not like the soviet union where people aren't used to handling shares. half of american families own shares of stock. it would create a fan base for the next chevy, like the fan base for general motors, where the people on

hillary rodham clinton, gen and appalling tunnel, bill richardson, bill ritter, can salazar, mark warner, and dlc leaders all make their mark on the national spotlight. the new dlc chairman harold ford, jr. continues to speak out as one of the nation's up and coming senators. rahm emanuel leads democrats back into the majority on capitol hill after penning with bruce reed a plan in 2006. in continuing with the tradition of helping young leaders emerge and the stars, the dlc founds a new program with an eye towards the future. a quarter-century later, barack obama and joe biden's historic victory in 2008 proves that the party is ready. the new administration and congress have the chance to build a long lasting change and reform, and the opportunity to carry out a new democratic agenda. education reform, national service, health reform, energy, fiscal responsibility, and long- term growth. on the democratic leadership council, the organization that al built from the ground up is taking on a new challenge. under bruce's leadership, house legacy lives on. the power of a good idea can still i

talking about the climate change bills that were before us, whether it was bingaman or it was lieberman-warner, the economy has got to be strong enough to go ahead and implement these changes, so if you have got a weakened economy right now, it might be too much for even the big diamond-arlen specter -- it might be too much for even the bingaman-specter. we are going to be coming to the end of this down economy, but i am not an economist that anyone will be listening to. we need to make sure that what we impose on consumers, what we impose on the industries that are providing all of our resources here is a reasonable cost. >> i covered the markup last week, and i was wondering what support came from the amendment? the expansion of the offshore drilling without revenue sharing? it seems that a lot of republicans were not happy because it did not include the revenue sharing, while the democrats were unhappy because of the expanded access, so what was sort of the good of that amendment? >> well, i think the good of that amendment, might be of it was that through that amendment, we had opened up a

the current change bills that were before is whether it was bingaman or whether it was lieberman warner. the economy has got to be strong enough to go ahead and implement these changes. so if you have a weakened economy right now it might be too much for even the bingaman specter. and i think that's important for us to be looking at. i'd like to think that we're going to be coming to the end of this down the economy, but i'm not an economist that anybody is going to be listening to. we need to make sure that what we impose on consumers, what we impose on industries that are providing us, you know, all of our resources here is a reasonable cost. >> i was wondering, i covered the market last week and i was wondering what new support really came from the expanding offshore drilling without revenue sharing? seems like a lot of republicans were happy they didn't include the revenue sharing. well, the democrats were happy because it expanded access. so what was sort of the good of that amendment? >> i think the good of that amendment, my view on it, was that through that amendment we have ope

foundations like ford and carnegie and corporate contributions from mainstream businesses like time-warner. these are not radical foundations or corporations. in fact, look at some of the people who have been there, other past directors: judge hose cabrinas, court of appeals for the second court; former congressman herman bedillo; former governor of new york, hugh cary. we all know about this part of her life because she very proudly disclosed her board membership and status as an officer in response to the judiciary committee questionnaire that senator sessions and i sent her. we know about it because she reviewed her own records to provide time at the prldf and she went above and beyond what the bipartisan questionnaire called for and asked them to go and conduct and search its own records. she's come up with other materials -- she didn't need to, but she has provided the committee with that. the record before us is public. it is transparent. we already have a more complete record of judge sonia sotomayor's, more and clear -- let me say that again. we have a more and complete picture of

i rise today to speak briefly about a bill that senator warner from virginia and myself will be offering later today. the title will be the tarp recipient ownership trust act of 2009. this bill intends to deal with the issue that our government finds itself in a position of large ownership in companies, something that i think none of us ever imagined would be the case some time ago. this piece of legislation only deals with tarp recipients. but what it does is solve the unease and the problem that many of us have here in the senate and in congress with the fact that we have such large government ownerships in companies. and what this bill would do would be to set up a trust for all company ownership, tarp company ownership to be put into when stakes are larger than 20% of the company. what it would do is give the administration the ability to appoint three trustees to have a fiduciary obligation to the taxpayers of this country. it would be my hope that these trustees would be people like warren buffet or jack welch or people like that that we consider, all of us in our country, with res

of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable mark warner, a senator from the commonwealth of virignia, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: robert c. byrd, presidet pro tempore. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: following leader remarks the senate will be in a period of morning business for up to one hour. then we will resume the consideration of s. 1023, the travel promotion act. the time from 4:30 until 5:30 is equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. at 5:30 the senate will proceed to a roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the dorgan amendment to the travel bill. filing deadline for first-degree amendments is today at 3:30. mr. president, later today democrats will try to move forward on a bill sponsored by democrats and -- the presiding officer: if the leader will suspend? mr. reid: of course. the presiding officer: so the senate may receive a message from the house of representatives. >> mr. president, a message from the house of represen

. >> jim: don warner, we talked about the roving catching instructor and he was watching them in springtraining and they were down and the count went to 3 ---3-1 and he took it automatly because he knew, understands how to play the game. >> bob: seven hits acouple of walks, an error and the orioles put an eight spot on the board in the bottom of the sixth to lead 11-1. watching our children grow. and retiring with confidence. so whatever you're looking forward to, m&t bank is here to help you get there. m&t bank. understanding what's important. >> jim: he doesn't walk a l of guys, and his pitch count may be up. you hang around. that's a good way to be a good starting pitcher, especially when your team scores a lot of runs. hang around long enough until they get you a lot of runs. danys baez comes on to pitch. his e.r.a. inflated. grand slam to hanley ramirez, one of the best hitters in the national league and a couple of years ago, the m.v.p., ryan howard with the three-run home run on saturday night. >> bob: we know all about those two guys. >> jim: who doesn't if you're playing in

among those that did not have a positive return last year -- g.m., united airlines, time warner, ford, cbs and macy's -- all these companies lost billions in what financial analysts tell us was the fortune 500's worst year ever last year. there were two sectors of the economy that did well: the oil industry and the health insurance industry. the top four health insurance companies in america -- united health group, well point, aetna and humana -- made more than $7.5 billion in combined profit last year, while the bottom fell out for sreurt wastefulry other company, short of the oil industry, across the board. the goal of the democratic health insurance bill is to create health care and quality. republicans want to preserve a broken system, one with escalating costs and no guarantee that the policy is going to be there when you need it. rather than health insurance companies, democrats want to put american families first and help those who are struggling with high health care costs. i think this is a moment of truth for us in this congress. this isn't an easy issue. right now the finan

warner, a senator from the commonwealth of virginia, to perform the duties of the chair signed probt c. byrd president pro tempore. mr. reid: mr. president, following leader remarks the senate will be in phorbg with -- will be in morning business. following morning business the senate will resume consideration of the tobacco legislation. and immediately proceed to a cloture vote on the dodd substitute amendment. senators should expect the first vote to occur at 5:30 p.m. today. the filing deadline for first-degree amendments is 3:00 today. filing deadline for second-degree amendments is 4:30 p.m. today. i ask consent that the time from 5:00 until 5:30 be equally divided and controlled between senators dodd and enzi or their designees. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: mr. president, at 5:30 today we're going to have an extremely important vote. it's on whether or not this body will invoke cloture on the tobacco legislation. sunday -- yesterday -- 3,500 children who never smoked before tried their first cigarette. today another 3,500 will do the same and tuesday will

just before tom carper our senator was expected to vote on the lieberman warner build the idea was delaware's precipitation is rising by 37%, the extreme participation in it is more than two inches per day over the entire period. the interesting thing is we had two articles of the paper, at a press release and everybody was up in arms. 37% is a significant rise the only problem when you look at the actual document you will find it is really not statistically significant. they admit it is not. but they have alerted the delaware populous and have got tom carper to vote for it web and even in their own publication it was not statistically significant. these are the extremes that we do with. death of our climate is a chapter six. pat has talked of lot about this year's levels get on bad and chapter seven, a pervasive bias and climate extremes b-12. appeared talking about professional organizations, the ans and the american geophysical union have way dan and i remember back in university of oklahoma and 89 bob carell gave a talk and said this is a red letter day for a climate scientist everywhere

dodd: i'm going to ask consent that a colloquy between senator mark warner of virginia and myself be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. dodd: i see my good friend from ohio, senator brown, who has been a champion of this issue. not only as a member of this body but in his previous incarnation as a member of the other body and before that has cared about this issue very much and spoken on illinois quently already so -- spoken on it eloquently already so let me defer to him. and senator enzi will be here shortly and we will go back and forth. mr. brown: i thank senator dodd. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio is recognized. mr. brown: mr. president, i've watched with great admiration, senator dodd's work on this. i worked with chairman, with henry waxman in the house of representatives. and senator kennedy, senatorred ssenatordodd and congressman wae never given up and i am appear tich particularly to senator dodd. i boil this issue down to almost one sentence: i remember sitting in front of the "help" committee in the house of re

it's actually depressing, senator warner, sad that there is no current way for the ntsb or the department transportation or anybody else that can make recommendations but they have no enforcement authority. i did not know that until this happened. and people can have a variety of philosophies about the federal government. but it seems to me where you have a heavy train being hit by a vice versa being hit by a light train, and something went wrong, and yes, we'll speculate and it will all come out in the end, and in the meantime all that counts is the families of the dead and sometimes the families of the injured suffer longer, but there's no authority to tell them they got to run a safe train. there are recommendations but no authority. the chairman has arrived. >> the train was a little slow. >> thank you, mr. chairman, among the chairmen here, he's the chairman. thank you all for being here. and my apologies for a couple minutes off-target. what we'll try to do in order to if expedite things is to -- we'll limit opening statements to the three of us and we'll ask the other members who m

. >> yeah, senator, i'd love for the fcc to be a resource for you and senator warner in this idea and others. we're thinking about the communications infrastructure for the country, for, you know, for the next several decades. and some of it is a real infrastructure issue. and if we can be -- deliver the best bang for the bucks for taxpayers by laying broadband lines at the same time we're building highways, i don't see why we wouldn't want to explore that. >> another quick area, just the e 911 area. i'm the co-chair of the caucus. i'm a former prosecutor. i did that for eight years and saw firsthand some of these interoperablity issues. the good when we had our bridge collapse in our area, right in the metropolitan area had done a nice job of interopera bility because of our sheriff and others and i've seen difficulties in our rural areas because of that. it seems that's one of the areas of our nation's information infrastructure that may continue to elude us, absent some federal action and federal investment in terms of making our emergency services more interoperable. is it interab

i know don warner, who is the -- really the roving catching instructor. he said this is a young guy. he is only 22 years old. jim hunter said he is 20 game ins the big league ? >> bob: yeah. >> jim: andy macphail, the general manager of the orioles, he said it is not like you're an older, there's a lot of things going on when ryu have to catch. you to call the game; receive it, trail the pitches. you are 6 '5". sandy alomar jr. said, and when the mets were many, he said dennis martinez said give me a shoulder, give me a knee, give me a target. rook. and this was a veteran pitcher. >> bob: a breaking ball that got right in on dunn's trademark. >> rob: and it is difficult, too. today, jim, because so many guys do that little peripheral peek back to see location. they're trying to pick apart, especially a rookie catcher, where he is sitting --setting up. is he setting up too early inside, outside? but always want the glove up there as quickly as possible, just to, you know, get a feel for where i'm going to be visualizing this breaking ball, back door, insid

warner: mr. president, i rise today to discuss the state of our financial system and to provide some thoughts on systematic risk regulation. as we set about crafting an overall reform for our financial regulatory approach. yesterday treasury secretary timothy th geithner and directof the economic council, laurence summers, published an editorial in "the washington post", laying out the broad outlines of their proposals for regulatory reform. i share their views on how we arrived at this moment. and i share the broader goals that they discuss and look forward to working with the administration on comprehensive and timely regulatory reform. however, i want to speak today about one area where i disagree, and that is how to address systematic risk. but let me step back for a moment. mr. president, the magnitude of the events of the past two years strains comprehension. i believe what we've seen over the last couple of years is the equivalent in economic terms of the 100 year flood. millions of famili

. >> senator warner. >> thank you mr. chairman and welcome back.backs, and one echoing my other colleagues concerns about the real human affects these decisions have had upon your dealer networks and their employees and families across the country but also recognizing the economic reality of the last couple years the national auto sales were down to about 10 million and the reality means that to shrink. with i also have to say at some level some of the two spent 20 years in the business sector before i went into public service if i would've ever thought in my business life that i would see a group of senators trying to micromanage the workings of american industry like gm and chrysler i would have said never would happen so if there was any more impetus to try to get back to profitability in get the garment out of your business soon as possible so these kind of sessions don't act going for and with today's session on to be that of the tests but dressing some with consternation and are as shareholders we have that right and responsibility to ask t@o

i'd love for the fcc to be a resource for you and senator warner in this idea and others. we're thinking about the communications infrastructure for the country for, you know, the next several decades. and some of it is a real infrastructure issue. and if we can deliver the best bang for the bucks for taxpayers by laying broadband lines at the same time that we're building highways i don't see why we'd want to explore that. >> another quick area is the e911 area. i'm the cochair of the e-911 caucus. the good -- when we had our bridge collapse in our area right in the metropolitan area had done a very good job of interoperability because of our sheriff and others and i've seen difficulties in the past in some of our rural areas with that and it seems to me that's one of the areas of our nation's information infrastructure that may continue to elude us absent some federal action and federal involvement in terms of making our emergency services more int intraoperable. do you think that's something you would be willing to work on? >> very much so. my wife and i were not very f

. >> thank you come hickham warner from toshi emma. a couple of things, i am struck that it lot of universities have centers are things that are funded by industry yet it is all not apparent when something is published under ivy league center for such and such and it gains a sense of legitimacy that is not revealed by who actually funded the study, sometimes and i don't know what is the best way to address that, and also you brought up something troubling with a lot of the journals he said were published by the industry themselves. is there a way to figure out what industries, does it say created in the association are something or the. cues that goes on in these is rigorous as of the ones because it should be-- you cannot interpret your data that way. >> you raise important points. their journals that specialize in publishing essentially what that u.s. questionable analysis. they are essentially run by individuals involved in trade association or consultants to big companies. they will often published articles 100 pages long. anybody

even confirmed it last year during the debate on the lieberman-warner bill and the same would hold true for this year's bill. put simply any isolated u.s. attempt to avert global warming is a futile effort without meaningful or robust cooperation much the american people need to know what they will be geting with their money all costs and no benefit. and this shows the u.s. action without international action would have no affect on world co2. this is asiewching there is no change in the -- this is assuming there is no change in the manufacturing base, which there would be. this brings us to whether a new, robust international agreement can be achieved. in addition to the -- the u.s. is involved with negotiations for a new international climate change agreement to replace the flawed the keyo treaty, this process is scheduled to culminate in copenhagen. the prospects of such an endeavor look bleak at best. following the conclusion of the climate meeting in bonn, the u.s.'s top climate reofficial, said it would be physically impossible -- now this is the chief advocate of all of this. phy