Later this evening, President Obama will address our Nation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to the following member of my staff, Maeve Whelan- Wuest, for the duration of today, September 9, 2014. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so…

I appreciate your leadership in those areas where we have worked together and thank you for your years of public service.

I find it hard to believe that we would have seen the kind of action that we needed to see taken had it not been for the agency and for the attention, obviously, the Congress has paid to this issue.

The bill introduced by Senators Rockefeller and Thune will help change that.

I have often said that North Dakota has oil, Wyoming has coal, Montana has some of both, and in South Dakota we have pheasants.

the leadership efforts of Senator John Thune... has helped and will be needed moving forward

We had a big problem in South Dakota this last year during the spring. There was a real concern about getting fertilizer shipments there in time to plant the 2014 crop during that short planting window.

Mr. Dooley, you talked about some of the rail inefficiencies in the chemical industry.

Mr. Hamberger, you talked about Chicago. We hear about Chicago all the time.

Madam President, listening to the good Senator from Texas, I feel as though I am in a parallel universe. I rise to support S.J. Res. 19, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that ensures our democracy is for the people--for the people…

rail is the most efficient and it's really the only way to get to the market. So if we don't have that, we don't have an economy.

I think that my observation has been, and as I acted once in this arbitration process...

I consider it a failure on my part to expose certain things and techniques.

The numbers I used were based on a September delivery for corn to an elevator in central South Dakota, based on 2013 rates and what we think the 2014 rate is going to be.

I think that the world is gradually going to shift against thinking like yours.

It's time for the STB to refocus its mission on providing regulatory balance to support the businesses and the people who use the rail network.

Mr. President, during the past month, two American journalists were murdered by a fanatical Islamic terrorist group, the Islamic State, known as ISIL. The murder of these two journalists is part of a campaign of horrific brutality that has…