On the recordNovember 5, 2015
Mr. President, it is always a pleasure to spend these late afternoons--sometimes Thursday afternoons--when the current Presiding Officer gets stuck presiding, when I come to the floor to talk, yet again, about funding--paying for--these roads and highways, bridges and transit systems that we use. I thank the Chair for being here. As I look around, sometimes we have more than a few folks on the floor, but I think a lot of people are headed for home on Thursday afternoon when we have no more votes. Looking back over the last several days, there are actually a couple of things to feel good about. Last week we passed very important legislation improving the strength of our cyber defenses and our ability to fend off some of the 24/7 attacks that are being visited on financial institutions, on our military, on colleges and universities, on research operations, and on businesses in our country. I am very proud of the bipartisan work we did on cyber security, information sharing, and some of the new technologies that are being deployed to help fend off attacks from the bad guys around the world. I felt very good about that. Not everybody likes the 2-year budget agreement that has been worked out in rough form. But I like to say about a friend, when you ask him how he is doing, he says: Compared to what?…





