Heidi Alexander: “at noon the Senate will be voting on two of President Obama's nominees to the Federal Reserve Board. These are important…”

“at noon the Senate will be voting on two of President Obama's nominees to the Federal Reserve Board. These are important positions. They have long terms. They come at a time when our economy is in trouble and doing its best to recover. In these votes, the Senate will be acting in the way it should, and let me say why I am saying that. On Tuesday of this week, someone most of us know--Marty Paone, who was the Democratic secretary in the Senate for 13 years, until 2008-- wrote an article in the Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper. The headline is ``Senate rule changes come with risk,'' but all I want to refer to today is a description of the Senate that is on our Senate Web site. Marty describes our own Web site in the article and says: . . . [t]he legislative process on the Senate Floor [as] a balance between the rights guaranteed to Senators under the standing rules and the need for Senators to forgo some of these rights in order to expedite business. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article I just referred to following my remarks. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. (See exhibit 1.)”