Thank you, Madam President. I have an amendment at the desk which has been slightly modified from its original form, and I ask unanimous consent that it be called up. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?

recently the Obama administration conducted a raid on some of these shadowy operations. I compliment them for doing that. There needs to be a crackdown on these operations, but the ultimate crackdown and ultimate solution is to change the…

I will explain and speak on this amendment even though it is not pending as we speak. I will also file an ongoing objection to anyone setting aside the pending amendment for another or for any votes being scheduled until this matter can be…

I ask for the yeas and nays. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to be a sufficient second. The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the nomination of Daniel Henry Marti, of Virginia, to be…

And I want to continue this same line of discussion because I strongly agree with it.

My biggest concern in this whole space since the crisis, including Dodd-Frank, including Fed action or inaction, is what I think is clearly the continuation of too big to fail.

Now, at the Federal level, I assume part of the problem in terms of delays and complications is you really have two different processes, FERC and DOE, and it's never exactly clear who goes first, how it works, how they intersect.

Charles and I work really well together, particularly on this issue of energy jobs.

I've actually heard of instances where a particular skills training program is artificially lengthened just because of the Federal requirement for students to be able to get that Pell Grant or other financial aid.

Federal programs--for instance, student loans, Pell Grant--those are really mostly designed for four-year colleges.

In my opinion, we really need to even the playing field and right the balance at the high school level.

$100 million. I know it's a big project. I know you're a big entity. But still, a tenth of a billion dollars for pieces of paper before you really started productive activity.

I'm really glad you could be here.

we have four expert witnesses from here in Louisiana talking about energy jobs and everything those mean to our economy.

one of the first things I wanted to do was bring the committee to Louisiana and bring it to the real world, not just in Washington.

I rise in strong opposition to stripping off all of the House language from the Homeland Security funding bill and proceeding with a ``clean bill.'' I do so because I took a constitutional oath, and I take that oath very seriously. The…

I'm hoping one of the ways we change that attitude and even the playing field, at least here in Louisiana, is when in the next few years those folks with the right skills training at 21 step into a job at $55,000, and in five years they're…

we need to give our young people the education, the training, and the skill sets they need to benefit from good jobs.

we need to fix that, and we need to give these folks the training they need.

we will be unable to meet those workforce demands.

our current system of higher education really, in my opinion, stifles innovation in a lot of cases.

I would say a more modest proposal and one that Senator Vitter referenced earlier is greater access to financial aid.

Thank you very much, David.

I think there is great opportunity on a bipartisan basis to move forward with some regulatory relief for smaller institutions.

I would really commend this issue to all of you. It is pretty darn important.