first of all, I thank the Senate for confirming the nominee for Chief Financial Officer of NASA, David Radzanowski. Now the team is fairly complete over there, and we can move to the next phase. As we move to the next phase, as we are…

Think ahead to 2016, the opening of the expanded Panama Canal, the increased cargo that will go to East Coast ports.

I have introduced today a Senate joint resolution. This is a resolution that will express the authorization for the use of the U.S. Armed Forces against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. It is a resolution that has been…

I ask unanimous consent that Amanda Figueroa, a Defense fellow serving on our office staff, and Bale Dalton, also a Defense assistant, be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the 113th Congress. The PRESIDING OFFICER…

this week Medicare is turning 49 years old. Since July 1965, Medicare has provided critical access to health care benefits for older Americans and people with disabilities. Florida alone is home to over 3.5 million Medicare beneficiaries…

I wish to speak about health insurance. We notice that nationally and back in our States, the angst over the Affordable Care Act--often derisively referred to as ObamaCare--has subsided. In part, that has occurred because more people are…

the Senator from New Mexico has put his finger on exactly the root cause of the problem. It is the substantial loads of cocaine that are coming into these three Central American countries; that because of the violence, because of the…

I thank my colleague for his leadership, and I wish to ask my colleague if he is aware of the testimony the commanding general of U.S. Southern Command, General Kelly--a marine four-star general--gave to the Armed Services Committee and to…

What this Senator knows is that before the sequester started hitting the defense budget--even though we were conducting a war in two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq--with all of the multiplicity of threats that are around in the region…

The Senator is correct. Whereas General Kelly--and I am just using him as the symbol since he is a four-star general. It is the Joint Interagency Task Force in Key West that is actually headed by a Coast Guard admiral. They can interdict…

The Senator is correct on how all of these things are interlocked. You can imagine how a sufficient quantity of drugs, which is worth so much, is a corrupting influence on any kind of law and order. As a result, the systems of…

The Senator is correct. As a matter of fact, the staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee, with whom I have consulted, is very familiar with the great operation of the Joint Interagency Task Force to go after these drugs. As the…