Mr. President, I am pleased today to be introducing the Small Business Contracting Improvements Act of 2010, legislation designed to protect the interests of small businesses and boost their opportunities in the Federal marketplace. As…

Mr. President, I thank the Chair and thank the Senator from Connecticut for yielding the remainder of his time. I understand he has an hour under his control, and I intend to take the full measure of the hour that is left, first speaking…

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak on an issue that is of great importance to my home State of Louisiana: disaster recovery from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005 and Hurricanes Gustav and Ike of 2008. Almost 5 years after…

Madam President, I know that under the previous arrangement, the Senator from Massachusetts will be giving his farewell remarks. I would like to speak for the next 4 minutes prior to him coming to the floor. I spoke on the floor earlier…

I thank my colleague from Illinois for his passionate and coherent and convincing arguments about the issue of how to detain terrorists and knowing that we can do that very well in the United States, and also his explanations about the…

Senator Vitter and I are introducing a package today which we hope Congress will look at very carefully.

We have to have a system where their families are moved to a safe place days before the storm.

I just ask this Committee to be broad in our view as opposed to narrow and see how we can really reach out.

As Senator Kerry said, there are over 200,000 small businesses and counting that have been directly affected.

I thank the Chair for holding this hearing on the devastation that Hurricane Katrina has brought on my home state of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

I raise that, Madam Chair, not out of any criticism but just to say how huge this is and how much faster we have to go.

I believe as a Member of this Committee that the Small Business Administration is very well poised through existing programs that we have as well as new things that our Committee should explore.