I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). Without objection, it is so ordered.

in 3\1/2\ days, the Department of Homeland Security may well shut down. I speak as the senior Democrat on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for the last 2 years and, along with Dr. Tom Coburn, our former colleague…

Because frankly, we continue to lose ground against our major competitive countries, China in particular.

Thank you. My staff, at my request, did some analysis. They found in States that have raised revenues for transportation, 90 percent of legislators who voted for a revenue increase won their primary, won their general election.

Leadership has been defined as the courage to stay out of step when everyone else is marching to the wrong tune.

I have been thinking a lot about it, and I think the President has a proposal. I am not a big fan of repatriation, but the President has an interesting proposal and that could be part of an all of the above approach as well.

We often talk about the jobs that could be created from a full-funded transportation bill. I have heard 600,000 jobs, 700,000 jobs.

I don't think it is an accident that what we regard as the golden age of the American economy in the last century coincided with when we were building the interState system.

I think it was Andrew Jackson who used to say, one man with courage makes a majority.

I think it demonstrates that the general public is willing to support this additional tax.

Our job is not to create jobs. My job as Governor was not to create jobs. Our job is to help create a nurturing environment for job creation.

We need some men and women around here with courage, political courage, to do what I think most of us know needs to be done.

That said, I think manufacturers in general support all the above discussion in terms of how to fund this as it relates to recognizing, back to the chairman's comments earlier, about the criticality of the infrastructure.

As the senior Senator from first State to ratify the Constitution, I applaud your use and reference to the Constitution here this morning.

It took nearly 2 years until these investigations were fully resolved, and during that 2 years, the Archives was deprived of a permanent Inspector General.

Mr. Chairman and colleagues, we may want to do again what we did a year or so ago and keep raising this as an issue, try to establish a sense of urgency, and I would hope that the other colleagues on our Committee would like to join us in…

What can we do to bolster you and strengthen the ability of you and your teams to do your job as watchdogs.

we need an integrity fund, which is what I was saying at the beginning.

we learned how to leverage the effectiveness of a small Subcommittee by working with the full Committee.

We have to make sure that the money that we are spending, the taxpayer money that we are spending, is cost effective.

I look forward to catching up with you and seeing how it is going.

I hope this year we are going to take up again Homeland Security legislation, immigration reform, I hope, border security legislation.

I just want to get to the bottom of this and see if we cannot avoid that brick wall and if we cannot actually get this done this year.

we were able to accomplish a good deal, sometimes just by writing a letter, sometimes just by announcing a hearing.

Nobody wants us to waste their money.