this past holiday season saw a record number of Americans travel by air. Unfortunately, it also saw increases in some common problems associated with air travel--delayed and cancelled flights, customer confusion, and occurrences of ``air…

as the majority leader indicated, we have done really a good job of approving the nominations of the new President. By tomorrow afternoon, 12 of the 13--I think that is the right number--will have been approved. Anyway, all but one will…

I certainly support the leader's efforts to have us work a full workweek in the Senate Chamber. I do say we can really develop some bad habits. I know our leader has already been requested to see if we can get off on Wednesday nights. We…

last Congress I, along with Senator Inouye, introduced S. 2357, ``The Armed Forces Concurrent Retirement and Disability Payment Act of 2000.'' Our bill addressed a 110 year old injustice that requires some of the bravest men and women in…

So, as I hear what the Senator is saying, what he is afraid of is they are trying to use, now, the surpluses from Medicare to spend for other programs. Is that what the Senator is afraid of?

I applaud and commend our leader for his brilliant statement. I acknowledge that the things that we do on a national level have direct impact on our States. I appreciate very much the Senator from South Dakota talking about the need to…

I hope during this coming year, he will look at what happens here that is positive in nature. I was very happy to hear the majority leader talk about what we did last Saturday, in one fell swoop, approving seven of the Cabinet positions…

I am voting in the negative. I appreciate the fact that we need a Secretary of Energy immediately because of the dire energy crisis in the State of California. My objection to Secretary designee Abraham's nomination is based on the…

I say to my friend, he is right on the mark. Senator McCain is quoted in the paper today, almost verbatim what the Senator from North Dakota said. He said, as quoted in the paper: I don't report things out of my committee on a partisan…

People in the State of Nevada in 1985 had a tie in the Nevada State Assembly, equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. It was one of the most productive sessions in the history of the Nevada Legislature. Evan Bayh, when he was Governor…

I have stated publicly on previous occasions my admiration for the two leaders, the Democratic leader and the Republican leader, and certainly that is accentuated as a result of the work they have done today. The work they have done has…

We have a new Member of the Senate today--she was sworn in yesterday--Maria Cantwell from the State of Washington. She was a freshman Member of the House of Representatives, and she, with courage, walked up and voted for that Clinton…

The biggest tax cut this country could get is reducing the $5 trillion debt we have. Will the Senator agree?

The people who met yesterday with the President-elect in Texas, these rich people--and I have nothing against rich people; I am happy he is meeting with them--I hope some of them realize the biggest tax cut anyone will ever get in their…

I appreciate my friend's courage and leadership on these fiscal issues. He has the ability, because of his experience, to see what is going to happen in the future, to be a little ahead of most everyone around here on these financial…

my friend from Missouri not so subtly indicated that he thinks there is going to be a new world out there after the November 7 election. I think he is going to be very disappointed. He is going to be disappointed because the American…

the Senator from Missouri did not mislead me. He never has. The fact is, he didn't contemplate our leader coming forward and saying a number of things that the Senator felt deserved a response. I enjoyed listening to the Senator from…

The Senator remembers that the Senator from California and I sponsored our own constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Does she remember that? We wanted to exclude the surpluses from Social Security, but they wouldn't vote with us.

on October 17, 1997, 28-year-old Lisa Black, a registered nurse from Reno, Nevada, was nursing a man in the terminal stages of AIDS when a needle containing his blood punctured her skin. Today, Lisa Black is infected with Hepatitis C and…

Today, I got up and read the newspaper and the American Academy of Actuaries--another group similar to the Rand Corporation-- which also is not political, has said that what Governor Bush has been saying about his tax plan, his dream for…

Has the Senator noticed what happened on the floor in the last couple of days? An independent group, the Rand Corporation, that doesn't have a political bone in its body--it is independent; it is bipartisan; it is fair; and it has been…

Does the Senator remember listening to Senator Wayne Allard, then a Representative, saying: "In summary, the plan has a fatal flaw; it does not reduce the deficit."

He recognizes that the business community needs direction to try to do that. There has been nobody in the Senate that has been more for the working men and women of this country than Frank Lautenberg. When he speaks on an economic issue…

The Senator and I were in the Congress in 1993 when not a single Republican in the House or a single Republican in the Senate voted for President Clinton's Budget Deficit Reduction Act. The Senator remembers that.

The Senator knows that a majority of those jobs are high-wage jobs. As far as the deficit they talked about--how this deficit was going to be exploding--$300 billion a year in deficit, and it was masked because there was about $100 billion…