Mr. Speaker, I rise today to empathize and to stand with those in my home State of South Dakota who are experiencing flooding along the Missouri River. Up and down the Missouri River, people continue to hope for the best and to prepare for…

Madam President, suspicious activity reports, or SARs, are just what they seem--reports by banks and other financial institutions when they come across obviously suspicious activity by one of their customers. They have been, and continue…

this proposed change has the potential to cause financial hardship on many farmers in that area and in North Dakota and Minnesota who have not abused prevent planting provisions.

These trade agreements are critical to the economy, they are critical to jobs and export markets.

Ensuring that Korea's beef regulations are based on sound science has been a high priority for Chairman Baucus.

Is Trade Promotion Authority important to the administration's stated goal of doubling exports over the next 5 years?

I also am concerned about the perception that a lot of people have that the entire agriculture budget goes into production agriculture.

the effective risk management for agriculture producers needs to be one of the highest priorities that all of us, I think, have on this committee as we look to writing the next farm bill.

Madam President, last week I came to the Senate floor to talk about the crushing burden of debt that will soon be coming our way because of government spending, mainly driven by entitlement programs. I noted that our unfunded liabilities…

I want to work with my colleagues on this committee to ensure that our consumers in this country have access to affordable, safe and timely air service.

But I also wanted to point out, I guess, over the next 10 years we're going to be looking at 11,000 new controllers being hired and trained.

Senator Thune. Right. Let me ask just a general question, too, because you've implemented the nine-hour rest period.

It will be cold comfort, Mr. Thune, for the family of a victim of an aircraft accident if it's determined that it was due to controller error and that the controller was fatigued at the time and had been deprived of opportunities for rest.

Well, it just seems like that with that kind of information that managers might be in a better position to schedule and mitigate potential issues for controllers before they happen, if that kind of information and data is available.

But we want to make sure that when we do it, we do it in a way that does appropriately protect consumers online without stifling that innovation and growth.

Last Friday, the Social Security trustees' report and the Medicare trustees' report were both released. They showed that as large as our debt and deficits are now, without tackling these two entitlements, our future debts and deficits will…

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that speakers on the Republican side be allocated up to 10 minutes each. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank all the panelists.