this Friday, November 30, at noon, Vermonters will be gathering to see a large crane carefully hoist a 14\1/2\-foot carved statue of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, atop the newly gilded dome of the statehouse in Montpelier. I was born…

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Bowman nomination?

it is with great appreciation and a touch of sadness that I note the upcoming retirement of Sarah Carpenter. Her retirement culminates 20 years of dedicated service as the executive director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, VHFA…

One of the things that the VA has gotten right is they named this long-term solution right. That's appropriate. It's going to take a long time to get the solution, it looks like.

I remember sitting here... when the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the VA... spent a billion dollars.

I know they don't have the capacity to see all those patients in addition.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. We know what is going on in Yemen, so none of us can escape the responsibility we have to either endorse or ignore the suffering that is occurring there. Thousands of victims in Yemen--hundreds of…

We're trying to help make this better, not worse, and we can't do it unless we have accurate information.

I appreciate that, and I appreciate your candor in that.

I would not have learned anything sitting in that office right back there.

We're spending--the number I have is $380,000 a week in overtime.

How much money so far, to date, have we spent on an IT system that doesn't work?

At the end of the day, I want to know how much this overtime and how much this payment, that we're not going to claw back, has cost the taxpayers.

We are not going to hear the same thing again. Am I -- I want that on record, we are correct in hearing that?

And today with all this technology and millions and millions and millions of dollars spent, Amazon has, by June of this year--by August of this year, I know, because a company in my district makes them, they sent out a billion articles to…

I agree with Ms. Devlin, if you miss checking a box, that is not really an issue about the quality exam that you gave.

I think that person's nomination is sitting over in the Senate now.

The question for us is: Will we accept the minimal responsibility that we have in our job to have a debate and say no more, no more will this be done in our name?