Mr. President, I rise to speak to the Senate about the nominee that is currently in front of this body and on whom we should vote in the next few hours. We just finished a cloture vote to actually start 30 hours of debate. In the past, we…

Let us keep the dialogue going as we try to work this out.

This has been an issue that plagues us, because of the number of regulations that we have and the number of agencies that are creating them.

I would be very interested in anything else you want to contribute to the record.

So your committee has the ability--they propose the rule, go through the final language, the committee has the conversation.

The court, actually, for the first time, went to the President and said, no, the President does not have the constitutional authority to be able to do this.

The court has the responsibility in law to define what the law says. You are actually saying, no, this is what the law says and you are not following it as a regulation.

I fixed that, and was a part of helping getting that resolved.

Has that happened to you all, where there has been a challenge to be able to step back and say, 'We have to fix the statute because we asked them, the regulators, to do something that will be so expensive or so onerous that we are going to…

There is no State better than North Dakota, is what you are saying.

the political stars have to line up so that the President is of the same party

Several years ago, the House of Representatives was frustrated with the President--and I can fill in the blanks on this--basically not applying the law as they saw that had been written and done.

Because one of the challenges here in the conversation is, it is no grand secret to the world that we have this very adversarial relationship at times with regulatory bodies here.

Many States, like Connecticut, North Dakota, actively review State regulations to ensure they follow legislative intent.

So I have to ask the question, you said the relationships have been pretty consistent. Is that consistently bad or consistently good?

Strong and effective legislative oversight does not mean stopping agencies from issuing rules and it does not mean we must have an adversarial relationship with the regulators.

The onus to improve the rulemaking process is not just on the regulators. As legislators, we must fulfill our responsibility to actually legislate.

Mr. President, I came back just a week ago from visiting our troops stationed all around the world, in all the commands-- AFRICOM, EUCOM, CENTCOM--and talked to them about the threats in all these regions. At a time when I hear colleagues…