Mr. President, the distinguished Senator has just asked me if I would yield to her; that she has a very short set of remarks, and I am happy to do so. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.

In fact, the savings clause here is drafted to be nearly identical to the savings clause in a case called Verizon Communication v. Trinko. This is a Supreme Court case in which the Court took a commonsense view of the same clause as we…

Madam President, I call on Senator Merkley for as much time as he wishes. Before Maria Cantwell leaves the floor, who is suffering mightily from laryngitis, I have another editorial hot off the press from the Los Angeles Times: ``A water…

Madam President, I retain the remainder of my time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? The Senator from Oklahoma.

Madam President, I want to thank the Senator from Oregon very much. He gets it. We are united on this. We hope our colleagues hear our plea that if we can get rid of this rider, we will have a magnificent bill that was worked on by so…

Reserving the right to object, I am not going to object, but you said 80 minutes. Who has the other--the reason I am asking is, I didn't know if I needed to yield time to the other side, which I prefer not to since you have your own time…

Madam President, I am going to speak for a little while and then reserve the remainder. I say to Senator Wyden, thank you for your words. I also wish to explain why it was important to take the time at this late hour. We are all exhausted…

Madam President, I did not say this was a bad bill. I said this is a beautiful bill with a bad rider dropped on us. That was what I was talking about, the bill that was placed on top of WRDA. It is awful. The White House said: We do not…

That was a good test. We can see where this is coming from, I say to my friend from Washington. All we are asking for is to go back to a bill that we worked on for almost 2 years, and now we are looking at a situation where we will be…

Yes. I wish to yield my time to my friend. But here is what I am going to say right now. The Senator from Washington is absolutely right that this issue has been around California for a very long time. So I will yield my time to the…

My friend is very knowledgeable and very smart. People tend to look at a provision, I say to my friend, in a very narrow way. They say: Oh, what is the difference? It doesn't matter. But my friend is right on the bigger picture. If all the…

I say to my friend, she is so smart on this. Of course that is where we are headed. And I encourage this. If this happens and the Senator and I are not successful and this winds up to be the law of the land--a provision added in the dead…

Without a doubt. My friend is right. It is not like we are dealing with a subject matter that has no solutions, and science has shown us the various ways to do it. Certainly underground storage is fantastic, recharging. There are all these…

I thank my friend so much. Madam President, how much time remains for us? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 20 minutes remaining.

Well, we have no choice, because, as the Senator from Washington knows, my State gets a lot of water out of the Colorado River. It is under a lot of stress. We have a lot of problems. My heart goes out to every single stakeholder in my…

Absolutely. What is such a joke is that my Republican friends, who were just objecting to our having an amendment to take this earmark off, always give big speeches about how Congress is putting all of these earmarks in. Well, this is a…

A unanimous consent request is not in order? The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is not in order to strip out House language by unanimous consent.

Then I would ask through the Chair, what would the appropriate language be to get unanimous consent? Is it to allow an amendment to do that? Would that be the right way to go? The PRESIDING OFFICER. A motion to concur with an amendment.