The VA can't achieve its mission of providing the highest quality care to our veterans if we have a culture of fear.

I would say yes. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up my amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk will report. The senior assistant legislative…

Mr. President, we just voice-voted an amendment to let students use summer Pell grants, but the fact is this budget cuts Pell grants. In Minnesota alone, more than 160,000 students were able to go to college thanks in part to Pell grants…

I urge my colleagues to vote yes. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator wish to call up his amendment?

Mr. President, the budget the Republicans in the Senate have presented us with imagines a future where we give even more tax breaks to millionaires and special interests, while pulling the rug out from under working families. Instead of…

Can the Presiding Officer tell me when 7 minutes have elapsed. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will be so notified.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in opposition to the Republican budget resolution. I would ask--there are time restraints here. I will go as far in my speech as I can and then ask the remainder be included in the Record.

Please let me know--is that done without objection? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I will end by saying that this is not even smoke and mirrors; this is riddled with gimmicks and is fundamentally unfair to working Americans. It is the same trickle-down economics that we have seen fail time and time again…

I do think I associate with the gentleman, we are very proud of the crop insurance program and it seems to be working the way we kind of intended.

I am very proud of the work we did on the farm bill.

I want to express my sincere appreciation to you and your team, and to those folks out in those FSA offices in the country.

And that leads me to having you here. I think this is an incredibly important panel.

This could very well have profound impacts, which I think it will; but it also has the potential to show how democracy should work correctly.

And there better be some soul searching on both sides of the aisle on this, as to let the science and the research drive us to come up with conclusions that work.

Yes, it is the 800 pound gorilla in the room, but the science and the preponderance of the evidence on this seems to warrant where we are headed.

the Safe Harbor bill that I'm leading that passed through this Committee unanimously a few weeks ago

I have a bill with Senator Sessions to have the department study high-risk rural road best practices.