Mr. President, I express my support for S. 649, the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act. I am joining as a cosponsor of this legislation because it is important to complete a comprehensive assessment of how we use our radio spectrum before we…

Madam President, the legislation on the floor of the Senate is the FAA reauthorization bill. Senator Rockefeller is here, Senator Hutchison has been here, and we are working now, trying to find a way to move the legislation. It has…

I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for such time as I may consume. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________

I assume we will report the FAA reauthorization bill shortly, and I believe Senator Rockefeller will be on his way. He is chairing the Commerce Committee hearing right now. I will go over and chair the hearing in his stead when he comes to…

I urge policymakers to think long and hard before they allow a merger that gives the parties incentives to harm competition and consumers.

I have no idea whether it is worthy. I have no idea whether it retards competition or is violative of the public interest.

I have long been concerned about concentration, particularly in media ownership.

I'm stumped by the budget oversight. Since the President has been on his--you may remember he was a lead partner with me in authorizing the project, and the future is now in his hands.

According to the National Weather Service, it appears there is nearly a 100 percent chance that we will see major flooding within the coming weeks.

These are the wrong agencies to be cutting during the current economic situation.

I do not think this is a good budget request for the Corps of Engineers and for the Bureau of Reclamation.

This project would involve 48 million man-hours, creating much needed jobs.

I would guess the consensus of this subcommittee will be to re-prioritize the funding in the series of accounts in order to avoid a one-half-billion-dollar cut in water infrastructure funding.

I think the consensus of this subcommittee will not be to support cutting a half a billion dollars out of the Corps of Engineers' funding at this time.

The budgetary criteria used for determining the budget request is not statutory, correct?

I think it's extremely difficult to move forward with only protecting the higher income and the downtown areas, while increasing--actually increasing--the flood risk to those with lower incomes, modest incomes, on the other side of the…

We should be increasing infrastructure spending now to boost the economy.

If we don't get serious about the infrastructure, yes, roads, bridges, water projects, you name it, we won't be the kind of country we used to be.