Al Franken

Do you agree this is a serious problem for health care in our country and in Minnesota?

This is a very large and a very complex merger, and I have been hearing a tremendous amount about the potential impacts of this merger, both positive and negative.

I will probably follow up with a written question.

I appreciate all your testimony and all your answers, and I will get back to you with more.

Over the past couple years 12 communities in Minnesota have lost their only outpatient pharmacy.

I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Patients, not profits, must come first.

There is a huge concern with that because we just do not know what that next game is going to be.

I think they are just different roles. But I, too, have received tons of calls and letters from community pharmacists in Minnesota who are concerned about this.

By streamlining administration for Indian Country, more agencies should follow that lead.

In Minnesota, we have a lot of biomass resources.

I have seen first-hand how economic development has tremendously benefitted that community.

I would love to have my office work with you on this.

The biofuels or biomass energy industry has lots of promise. But in many ways, it is not there yet.

Economic development is really the key to every community's success. If there is economic development, there are jobs.

I am not sure that is sufficient.

So building on success is certainly part of that story.

I really would love to work with you and have my office work with you on helping our Tribes and our bands develop their biomass.

I want to thank you for bringing up Bois Forte in your written testimony.

Less than 10 percent of residents in Tribal lands have access to broadband.

I have filed two amendments that I will offer at some time, and I will talk about them now. I am strongly opposed to the detention provisions in the Defense bill before us. I am disappointed that Senator Udall's amendment did not pass…

The judiciary will have no influence over the sword or the purse.

The power of the purse is the first power granted to Congress under our Constitution.

Nobody should have to choose between safety and shelter. Yet 48 percent of homeless women in Minnesota previously had stayed in abusive situations because they did not have safe housing options available to them. Twenty-nine percent of…

It is. Because the Senator from Maryland spoke to his amendment, I thought that process was over. I apologize. Mr. McCAIN. Not at all. It is no big deal at all. Maybe the Senator from Maine could make her amendments pending.