Jeff Merkley

I certainly support that, and the State has put money into it.

If you are going to make the argument, at least know the facts, that they do not disappear when you put a cap on the interest rate.

The consumer is getting a far better deal.

It has increased between 2012 and 2015 by $500 billion.

I think you are training veterans to be farmers.

Mr. Baccam, I will not take the time now but can you follow up with us in terms of brainstorming about that particular obstacle.

I applaud all of you for your work.

I have felt that it is so hard for veterans to come back, they have been engaged with high responsibility and high risk, high adrenalin, they come back home and if they do not have kind of a job structure to fit into, that transition can…

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to apologize now that I will have to leave at 3:30, so this will be the only round of questions I will be able to be a part of.

40 percent of returning veterans are from rural areas, and opportunities for veterans in agriculture, therefore, are very important.

1,300 veterans return to civilian life every day here in America.

I thank so much my colleague from Montana for being such a clear and powerful voice on this issue of freedom, of American consumers' rights, of States' rights, and for his solid opposition to this Monsanto DARK Act--Deny Americans the…

I thank the Chair. So we have these affects that scientific documents are showing. So when people come to this floor and say that it is OK to suppress the consumers' right to know because consumers have no legitimate concerns, that there…

Well, in this Monsanto DARK Act 2.0 that has been put on the floor, there is a third option beyond the voluntary labeling and beyond the 1-800 numbers and QR code, and the third option--door No. 3, if you will--is that the company can put…

There is a second option put into the Monsanto DARK Act, which is the quick response code. You have to have a smartphone that can take a picture of that quick response code, take you to a Web site to get information--information, by the…

Is the Senator saying the whole idea presented in the Monsanto DARK Act 2.0 about putting a phone number on the package so someone can call a company is a sham?

Is it right that the Federal Government takes away this power from States, which are, if you will, our places of experimentation and creativity, and then does nothing at the national level? Is this an overreach of the Federal Government?

Thank you. I appreciate the Senator's presentation. This Monsanto DARK Act 2.0--this new version--says to the States that they no longer have the right to respond to consumers' interest in providing a consumer-friendly label that alerts…

People are also very, very concerned about the environmental footprint, at a time when we now understand that 80 percent of the proven fossil fuels in the world, the reserves, have to stay in the ground if we are going to save this planet.

I wanted to start by noting how important dredging is and the maintenance of jetties to the coast of Oregon.

Now we have gone through a period where the President has said we are going to suspend leases of our citizen-owned coal to study exactly this issue, exactly this issue that Senator Wyden and I were raising.

What is the impact of the dust on the communities? What is the impact of the trains splitting the community in half for long periods each day? What is the impact of burning this coal on our broader objectives to be stewards of the planet…

So, you would use your position to say, let us do what Congress asked, and sometimes that means, if you will, that a rule is not going to go through 10,000 reiterations.

I am going to turn to the issue of whether owners of companies have a right to know how that company is spending their money, the owners' money, on political activity.

Is it, Ms. Fairfax, appropriate that the SEC has failed to address this fundamental conflict of interest and has failed to follow the law written by Congress?