National Sea Grant College Program Amendments Act Of 2015--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, the Democrats have 150 minutes. I ask unanimous consent that that be divided as 40 minutes for Menendez, 40 minutes for Sanders, 10 minutes for Cantwell, 10 minutes for Heitkamp, and 50 minutes for proponents of the legislation.

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, further reserving my right to object, I would also say that just because you have the time, you don't have to use it. I would hope Senators on both sides would understand that the sooner we get to the votes, the better off we will be.

I would also say this. I appreciate on my side the work done by Senator Manchin of West Virginia. That State, in the last few weeks-- actually, for the last few months--has been hit harder than any State deserves to be hit. It is just awful what has happened there. Senator Manchin has been stalwart in recognizing the work he has to do there.

We understand his advocacy for years now--especially the last few months--on the miners, their pensions, and health care benefits. We recognize that. We think we have ways of helping him, and we have something worked out we think is appropriate, and we have discussed that with him.

I would also recognize Senator Sanders. Everyone knows the fervency of his opinion on a number of different things, and he certainly has one on this matter, and he has 40 minutes to explain that. We appreciate his cooperation.

The person who has been a voice on Puerto Rico for more than the last few months--for years--has been Bob Menendez from New Jersey. He has been very articulate in all the caucuses we have had where we have discussed this and on the floor. I admire his feelings on this.

I wish I could say we have solved all of his problems. We have not been able to do that, but I certainly want everyone to know he has done a terrific job of recognizing, in his opinion, what is wrong with this legislation. There is no one better to articulate that position than Bob Menendez.

Senator Cantwell has worked very hard on this legislation with the chair of the Energy Committee, the senior Senator from Alaska. They have worked very hard. They had a way forward, but they couldn't get it done. They are going to continue to work on putting something together. We need more of that.

We have an Energy bill coming up. We hope we can work something out to get to conference on that and move forward on that. That is a bill that is years overdue. We have been trying to do that for almost 5 years. So I hope we can work something out.

Senator Heitkamp is going to come and give us her opinion on what we should do on Ex-Im Bank. She has been articulate and working with Senator Cantwell on that.

I appreciate the work of the Republican leader, and his assistant, the senior Senator from Texas. This has been kind of a difficult issue for everybody. We all didn't get what we wanted. That includes Democrats and Republicans. I wish we could have done better, but this is what we got from the House, which had been worked on over there with the Republicans, with the Speaker, with Leader Pelosi, and the President's people. This is what we have, and we have had to work through this to do what we could do.

I wish we could have done more, but I am satisfied that this is going to be a broad, broad step forward to help the people of Puerto Rico, who are desperate for help.

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