 As you know, Jeff Bingerman has been a senator for 30 years, representing New Mexico. And he was chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. What for me is a personal note, is that Jeff got his law degree from Stanford, but I had nothing to do with that. So that's not the personal note yet. The personal note is that for, I don't know, 10 or 15 years now that I remember, Jeff would become visiting Stanford multiple one or two times a year. And we'd have these conversations that he'd spend basically a day where he would talk with faculty members. He may have brought Bob Simon with him as chief of staff. And we would have deeply substantive conversations. It was sort of my image of what I used to believe all the senators were like. I used to believe that. And so he's been just a pleasure to have as part of the Stanford community. So with that bit of introduction, just have one or two questions for you, Jeff. So how did you get into energy anyway? You're a lawyer. I mean, what does a lawyer have to do with energy? Well, I practice law first in Santa Fe and a private firm. And some of our better paying clients were energy companies. I was practicing with a former governor, Jack Campbell, former governor of New Mexico. And we represented some folks in various parts of the energy industry at that time. Energy's a big part of New Mexico's economy, always has been. So when I went to the Senate, I asked to go on the energy committee and was able to serve there for 30 years. So even at the beginning, I mean, you could have specialized in a lot of other things as a lawyer. Something brought you to the energy area. And it probably wasn't an accident that you're, the clients that you're dealing with a lawyer. Do you have a prior interest in it, you know? Well, I think I just grew up recognizing that energy was a very big part of the economy in our state. And a very important determinant of whether or not people had jobs. And so I think that's what sort of focused me on it. But I do think that my early law practice probably had a big part in it. I was attorney general of New Mexico. And again, that puts you into direct contact with a lot of energy related issues. So going to the Senate, I went there with the idea that energy was very important. We also, of course, have two national laboratories in our state that have substantial research going on related to energy, both Los Alamos and Sandia. And that was another factor. So you now are living in Santa Fe, but sort of commuting to Stanford. Tell me about that high-coven footprint world that you're in right now. Yeah, well, yeah, I'm working with Dan Riker and others at the, and Alicia, I see Alicia over here at the Steyr-Taylor Center there at the Law School. And we are doing a joint project with George Schultz and his task force at the Hoover Institution to try to look at state laws that have been enacted over the last 25 or 30 years to try to promote renewable energy, promote more efficiency, and see if we can identify some of those that have worked particularly well, that we can urge states to look at seriously, and perhaps some that haven't worked, that ought to be flagged as well. I'm delighted to hear that you and George Schultz are working together. That means that Puttson, this divide of Washington DC, does not exist here. You're a Democrat, he's a Republican. We have Democrats and Republicans around him. We all seem to work together. Well, it's OK, right? It's easier. The further you get away from Washington, the easier it is to do that. Now, I understand that your wife and son are both entrepreneurs. Something happened to you that you didn't follow that. No, I'm the black sheep of the family. I did not pursue a business career, but both my wife and son did. My wife's now largely retired, but she had some very successful businesses. And our son is now doing very well in business as well. And she used to head the Antitrust Division in the Department of Justice. Right. Pretty powerful position. Very powerful family. Well, her side of it definitely was. I'd like to talk a little bit about what the president said, which, as I said, we told the White House, can you just get it the day before this event? So was news, but they didn't listen to us exactly. But I want to understand the implications of it. For a long time, many people were saying, there's one of two directions we can go in the energy of climate policy. We can have legislation. And we had Waxman Markey and a whole range of legislative attempts. Or we can have EPA. And for a while, we had neither. And now it looks like it's going to be a heavy EPA rule. What does that say about, is Congress and off the hook? Will they forget all about it? What's going to be the interaction between the president doing something in the EPA and the Congress thinking about these issues? Well, I do think the circumstances changed significantly from when Lisa Jackson used to testify to us there in the Congress. She would always start by saying her preference was that Congress would go ahead and legislate limits on greenhouse gases and put in place a regime to control them. And of course, the president in his State of the Union speech earlier this year, and in previous State of the Union speeches, also urged the Congress to, I think he referred to it as, adopt market-based solutions to these climate problems. Now he's concluded that that's not going to happen, at least in this Congress. And so he's directed EPA to go ahead. The further EPA goes down the road toward finalizing, developing, and finalizing a rule, I think the less likely it is that Congress will legislate in the area with the possible exception of attacks. I mean, we do have a lot of discussion and articles in the morning paper about comprehensive tax reform. I personally don't think we're going to do comprehensive tax reform in this Congress. But one of these Congresses, we will do it. And as part of that, I think some kind of carbon tax could be seriously considered. But as far as a cap and trade proposal, I don't see Congress doing anything of that type. And I think, as I say, the direction to EPA, which the president gave this week, I think makes it less likely that Congress will try to enact anything of that type in the foreseeable future. So it's interesting. You mentioned the carbon tax, because many of us at Stanford, including George Schelzer, who you've been talking about, has been doing some analysis looking at a revenue-neutral carbon tax, which, in many of our views, can't make it alone, but a tax system is so messed up that there should be some reform, whether it's comprehensive or not, that it could be rolled in. How probable would you, if you were to assess probabilities of, first, that within the next four years or so, that they take on serious tax reform and then seriously will think about, at least think about a carbon tax, you think it's somewhat likely, very likely, Snowball's chance in hell or what? It's hard to predict over four years that the planning horizon in Washington is two years. It's gotten longer. But I think it's very unlikely, or I'd say at least unlikely, that any comprehensive tax reform will be accomplished in this Congress. After the next election, it is possible that the president will determine it's a priority of his before he leaves office and that members of both Democrat and Republican members of the Congress would determine its priority as well. I think some of the impetus for tax reform was the alarm about the growing deficit. And now that the deficit is no longer growing and is, in fact, shrinking, not the debt, but the deficit itself, some of the motivation for going on with major tax reform is less than it was. Interesting. Well, I can only hope that we can get something, but there was a doubt. There is, let me just mention, on the tax subject, regardless of whether we do anything on comprehensive reform or not, there are important tax provisions that are scheduled to expire at the end of this year. I'm sure a lot of folks here are very focused on those, the production tax credit in particular, for wind energy. It expires the end of this year, the tax credit for biodiesel, for cellulosic. Those have been helpful in encouraging deployment of renewable energy around the country. And unless Congress steps up and renews those once again, they'll go out of existence. I think I would think the chances of them being renewed are somewhat less than 50-50. But they may well be renewed again. It's hard to predict at this point. And if you were to break that down between the House and Senate, do you think a Senate, which you, of course, were part of and closest to, does one have a greater chance of moving something forward, and then the other one have to be blocking, and so which is going to move it? Which is going to be blocked? Well, I think the model that we've just seen this week in the last couple of weeks with regard immigration legislation, I think, is one model that has a chance to succeed in this area as well in any area. And that is, if you can get a bipartisan agreement on legislation in the Senate and pass it through the Senate with a good margin, a bipartisan vote, then it goes to the House. And hopefully the House will follow the Senate's lead or come up with an alternative that then can be conferenced and you can get to final legislation to send to the president. I mean, that's what's going to, or that's what people hope will happen with immigration. I think that's the kind of thing that could happen with tax reform as well if you had a bipartisan group of senators committed to a particular course of action. I think part of the problem is that with regard to tax reform, we don't have very good consensus about what we want to accomplish with tax reform other than cleaning up the tax code. On the Republican side, I think it's fair to say they don't want to raise any additional revenue. On the Democratic side, they think we need to have additional revenue and in order to deal with the long-term deficit. And so that's a major stumbling block as well. And then when we deal with the various tax credits like biodiesel, cellulosic, renewables, it is a fairly likely scenario that is we get to the ending of the time. Nobody's really made any decision. We go a couple months later, the pressure builds up and we won't know until a couple months after they expire. No, that may be the case. That's what's happened in some previous years. This last year, of course, we had the fiscal cliff was the big precipitating event that caused the Congress to go ahead and pass extensions of those particular tax provisions, but it provided a vehicle that those tax provisions could be attached to. There's no similar precipitating event looming on the 31st of December of this year, that I'm aware of. So that perhaps adds to the pessimism that I would have about us getting these extended again. So for those people in the room whose companies are very involved in those things, they have to be ready for some more risk bearing, right? I assume that's right, unfortunately. Yeah, but I wanna turn back to the President's announcement a little bit more. And what I couldn't understand from it is is this all gonna be all Washington action or to what extent are the states gonna be involved or pulled into this process? Coming from a state that showed leadership here, is this going to be, do you think sort of the plan is going to involve heavily involved the states or is it gonna be Washington top down or can you tell? I don't know and I think there's been a lot of speculation. I've seen some articles just in the last few days about how saying that the President was picking up on suggestions that the NRDC made in a report that they developed that basically urged that the states be called upon to develop implementation plans and essentially urging that the states be heavily involved in whatever EPA winds up going forward with. Now, whether EPA chooses that route or not, I don't know, I don't think the President specified that that would be the case. At least I didn't hear that part of his speech. But I think there's a lot to be said for trying to get the states heavily involved in achieving the greenhouse gas and carbon emission reductions that he's talking about. But whether EPA will choose to do that, I don't know. Yeah, everything, when I read things coming from the White House as well as the speech, it wasn't clear that the word states was part of the vocabulary there, was all what EPA and the federal government would do in the federal buildings and the efficiency standards and so forth. So I would hope that the states actually are pulled in by the EPA, because after all, that's where a lot of the impetus came from in the first place. Can you comment on, do you have any thoughts about the PACE program, the Property Assess Clean Energy? That was one of those programs where it wasn't the states, it was cities that were implementing financing of energy efficiency and clean energy. And then at the federal government level, it was killed, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said, no, we create risks by doing that, by having instruments that will be superior to the mortgages. Any thoughts about whether there's either legislatively wanting to do something or something that would legislatively or through the administration, doing something that will more facilitate those sort of programs to come back? Well, I think there's interest in doing a legislative fix to that problem, but in fact, I think there's a bill that's been introduced in the Senate and probably in the House as well. Whether it proceeds or not, I can't tell you the, there is a chance, at least I'm hearing that there's a real chance that the Senate will consider energy efficiency legislation before the August recess, and that would probably be start with the bill that Gene Shaheen from New Hampshire and Rob Portman from Ohio have put together, and it's a bill essentially that we reported out of the Energy Committee in the last Congress, it's been reported out again, and I think there's a real effort to try to get it to the Senate floor. If that happens, then something like a legislative solution to the PACE problem might be offered as an amendment to that. Again, there's a lot of ifs in that equation, but it is possible that you could find a genuine effort to fix it legislatively. And whether the administration could get it fixed without legislation, I just don't know. I don't know if the President has the authority or if this independent agency, the federal housing finance agency that you mentioned has enough autonomy to avoid that. How about the new leadership in the Senate Energy Committee? Your successor, tell us about your successor in that committee. Well, Ron Wyden, of course, Ron also was a student here at Stanford and. I wanted you to say that, yes. But he, Ron is the chair of the committee from Oregon. Of course, he is also in line since Max Baucus is leaving the Senate at the end of this Congress. Max will be vacating the chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee, and most people expect that at that point, Ron, as the next ranking Democrat, would move over to the Finance Committee. So his tenure as chairman of the Energy Committee may be two years in length. But I think he's trying very heroically to get legislation to the Senate floor. We've never had great difficulty getting consensus to report legislation out of our Energy Committee in the Senate, but we've had substantial difficulty getting it to the Senate floor and then getting it through the Senate and then getting the House to agree to it. It's part of the reason, since your committee, bipartisan, gets things out, as works it through, but it's a troubled gun in the floor, is part of the issue that there's lack of understanding about energy issues on the rest of the Senate, or is it something different and more profound? No, I think it's different and more profound, and that is the general dysfunction that has beset the Congress in recent years. I think it's just, the majority leader has difficulty moving legislation through the Senate unless he can get some bipartisan support for it. And there's not been a good cooperation between the two parties to get legislation up and considered, as I think many people know, we've had a whole, we've set new records for the number of filibusters in the Senate in recent years and that unfortunately continues. Now, the success that the Senate had with passing the immigration bill this year, it may be just an exception to that because of the political imperative that Republican members feel to get this issue resolved before another election, or it may be the sign that we can get more cooperation in the future. As I say, the model that was used there, I think, is a good one, and I hope it can be used on energy legislation, on a variety of other subjects in the coming months. I think that's an interesting way of viewing it that is improving it. From my cynical point of view, it's sort of like, I think it's sort of like saying, right now we've passed the summer solstice, so the days are getting shorter. Well, they're still as long as they've ever been, it's sort of like the dysfunction is as great as probably has ever been. I mean, me as an outsider, I don't remember the dysfunction ever being this great. And do I have to a short-term memory, or did it used to be worse, or is it bad? Well, I have a fairly short- You've only been there 30 years. Yeah, over the 30 years, I watched it closely. I think the dysfunction is severe now, as I've seen it. And it's particularly true when you get into budgeting and appropriating of money. I mean, that's where the dysfunction is most obvious. We have great disagreement between the two parties and the two houses of Congress on what levels of funding should be provided to different activities in the government. It's almost certain that we will not get an appropriation bill, or a set of appropriation bills, again this year, we will have something in the nature of a continuing resolution to basically keep funding where it has been. And then there's also just great disagreement about how large the government should be and how much revenue the government should be permitted to raise. In California, we have passed an initiative that said, if the budget is not passed on deadline, at deadline, until such time is passed, the members of the legislature cannot get paid. Would that help in Washington too if we would get such a rule? I don't know, I think you'd have trouble getting that through the Congress. And we did hear, but we have the initiative process. We don't have a national initiative process. Maybe we should. Maybe, maybe. There's one thing that I'm always curious about and you as an insider maybe can answer. It seems to be that among the Republicans in Congress, it's become a litmus test to not believe in climate science. It's not simply you don't want to do any bill, but it's to say, I don't believe in the science. It's a litmus test. What's the reality, do all of these reject the science, or is it something different than that? Well, I believe strongly, and I've been saying now for some time, that I think most everybody in the Congress is like most informed people around the country in the world and believes the science. But I do think that the politics for, particularly for Republican members is such, that they do not want to be in a circumstance where they're labeled as moderates. So, in order to avoid that, they do not want to embrace any kind of a governmental response to climate change, because that's sort of one of the things that would tip people off to the idea that they're moderates. And the reason they don't want to be labeled moderates is because the next time they're running a primary, they of course would have an opponent who would say, I'm the true conservative in this race, and my opponent is a moderate. So, particularly in the House, in a lot of the gerrymandered districts that currently exist for members of Congress, that can be a very successful attack to be able to claim that you're the true conservative and your opponent is in fact moderates. So, I thought it was interesting this week when the President gave his speech on climate change. I didn't hear a whole lot of people pushing back on the basis that there was no scientific grounds for the President making the claims and setting out the agenda that he was setting out. I think that the general critique I heard was this is gonna cost jobs, this is gonna hurt the coal industry, this is gonna hurt particular parts of the economy, and therefore we should oppose it. But that's very different than saying you don't agree with the science. It sure is nice to be in a university where now that I know I'm a moderate because I believe in climate change is a problem, we can talk publicly about it. It's not just hidden. Okay, well, it's at least good to know that every time they say that they doubt the science, they actually are not quite telling the truth. At least they're not doubtful. I'm not saying that's the case with everyone. No, I can think of an example. Jim Inhofe is a good friend. Jim Inhofe probably does not believe the science the way he's written a book to that effect, I believe. But I just don't think many people subscribe to his perspective on it. So let's go back to this general dysfunction in Congress. If you were thinking about ways that you can start improving that situation, that dysfunction, are there a couple of things that you would see that would be helpful in reducing that dysfunction which you see there? Well, I think there are a lot of things that could be done. Of course, you can reform Senate's rules to make it much more difficult to filibuster and we've been trying to do that. That still has to get done. I think that the idea of having a non-partisan or non-elected group set out the boundaries for congressional districts to get away from gerrymandering is a good policy initiative and I know that's what's happened here in California. I think it would be a good thing to the extent it can to have that happening elsewhere in the country. So those are good. I think also the idea of allowing, at least allowing, independence to vote in party primaries. The party primary of their choice would be a good thing. In my state, we still have the same system we've always had which is if you're a Democrat, you get to vote in the Democratic primary. If you're a Republican, you get to vote in the Republican primary. But every year, every time we have an election, there are a larger number of people who are neither Democrats nor Republicans who are independent and they are essentially disenfranchised in the choice of the party nominees for the office. So I think allowing independence to vote in one, in whichever of the primaries they choose would help to ensure that candidates, whether Democrat or Republican, try to stay somewhat in sync with the mainstream so that they can pick up some of those independent votes. So there is hope. Well, I think there's some ways forward. You know, it's not easy and I'm not saying anything's gonna correct itself immediately, but I think there are ways to make progress. And I was frankly very encouraged by the way the Senate dealt with the immigration bill. It's not a great bill. I mean, there are lots of problems with it, but it's substantially better than what we have today. And it is a major step forward that they could pass it in a bipartisan way. And as I say, maybe this could be a template for the way we proceed the rest of this Congress on some other things, I would hope so. There's a lot of people in the audience here that are in parts of their career that they could contemplate running for the Senate. What would you tell them? I'd say have at it, it's a great, it's a great, well, I give them the same advice that my former law partner, who had been governor of New Mexico, gave me when I was a very young beginning lawyer, he said politics is a great thing to be involved in if you don't have to be. And I think that's a good piece of advice. So I would recommend anybody who wants to jump into it and doesn't have to, in order to make a living, should be encouraged to. Yeah, and you've had a very successful, probably very gratifying career in the Senate. And presumably other people can do the same here. Some of them may be in the room right now. Well, good, I hope people will make a run at it. And there is a lot you can accomplish in the Congress. I think you can accomplish less these days than was the case a decade ago, perhaps. But that's not, I mean, that's because of the general gridlock that has beset Washington. Well, let me turn back to just a general statement about energy policy. I often have people come up to me and say, we don't have any energy policy in the United States. But you've been chair of the committee that sets energy policy. Do we have an energy policy? What would you say to those people who come up and say, we don't have any energy policy? Well, we have a lot of policies related to energy and we have good consensus on most of the policies related to energy. The one area where we have great disagreement is on how much the government should do to accelerate the transition to a less carbon intensive economy. At least that's my perspective on things. I mean, that's where the confrontation occurs in the Congress these days. When you start suggesting legislative actions that would accelerate that transition to a low carbon economy, you have great resistance. So you have great advocacy, but you also have great resistance. So that's where the country, I think, lacks an energy policy. But on other things, I mean, I think everyone agrees we ought to have abundant sources of energy, that we ought to have inexpensive energy to the extent we can, that we ought to, consistent with meeting our environmental goals, that we ought to lead the world in science and engineering to develop new energy sources and to improve the use of energy. And I mean, there's a lot of subjects like that, there are goals that you can say we have consensus on. And I think not just in the Congress, but in the country. And by the way, thank you for talking to my class. I had the pleasure of having Senator Bingham in talk with my class on energy environmental policy and chat with them about whether the things I was telling them actually had any reality. I won't tell you what they learned from that. How about your future? What's next? Well, we're working on this project that I described to you for the next several months. We're hoping to get a report out early this next year or this next spring. And that's the extent of my planning horizon at this point. My wife and I are back in New Mexico. We're living in Santa Fe and enjoy that very much. And so we have no real plans beyond that. Okay, let me just give the audience, everybody out here a vast warning in about a minute or two, I'm going to call for questions. So those with the microphone should be ready and we'll pull out, we'll have a few minutes that they'll have a chance for you to ask questions. Do you think now that you've left the Senate and you're gonna be doing some writing with the Huber Institution as well as independently, that in some sense you have as good a platform to influence energy policy as you did in the Senate or maybe even better, just different? Well, I think it's different. What we're doing here with our project is trying to focus on what the states can do and have done. And that I think is a little bit separate from what Washington can do and has done. I think in Washington, realistically, the Congress is not going to make major policy with regard to climate change and energy here for the next year and a half I would suppose. But as you pointed out, the president is now on a path to getting significant action from the administrative branch. And I guess the question is, how are the states gonna respond to that? How are the states going to be involved in that? And I think we can be of help in coming up with suggestions. Well, as my bias as I started on my earlier comments is much of these policies started to state anyway and just, I like to think they start in California and Roll East, good things as well as some bad things Roll East. We've had electricity crisis, which also shut down the regulation. But a lot of the things study, so I'm very pleased to see work that'll be going on with looking at what the states have been doing. At this point, I'd like to turn to questions out here. And there's a question over there of whoever has the microphone. I saw a firsthand up there. Just wait till you get the microphone and he'll be there quickly right there. Thank you, Senator. And start with name and organization, but at least name. Hi, Carol DeBenedetto, Lean Energy. Thank you for your insights. I wonder, I'm really curious about your thoughts about campaign finance reform and improving dysfunction in our government and specifically relating to energy policy. So campaign finance reform may be even reversing the effects of citizens united on energy policy. Well, I think the citizens united case makes it very tough to do meaningful campaign finance reform. The exception, which I think most people think is still within the authority of the Congress even after citizens united is to pass legislation requiring much more disclosure of who's doing the financing. I mean, we can't limit the funding because the Supreme Court said that's unconstitutional, but we can certainly do more to make the source of the funding transparent. And I think there are some on the Republican side in the Senate who have indicated a willingness to support that kind of a measure. I think Lisa Murkowski who used to be who is still the ranking member on the Energy Committee but and was while I was the chair in the last few years, I believe she co-sponsored some legislation here just in the last few months that would require this kind of transparency. So that's the one area where progress could be made. I'm not that optimistic we'll get it done in this Congress, but at least there is some bipartisan support for doing that. There's a hand up there, there's the next green shirt there. The microphone move, oh, okay, you've got the microphone. Well, you've got it next. I'm Bill Betchert, I'm unaffiliated, but I'm participating in Citizens Climate Lobby on the topic of a carbon tax. I'd like you to comment on whether there's an advantage to divorcing the carbon tax from the general comprehensive tax reform. Specifically, would you comment on the idea of a carbon fee with all the proceeds distributed to the general population as a dividend? This would be revenue-neutral and might avoid the broader issue of size of government and increasing revenue. Well, I think obviously there's a lot politically attractive about some type of proposal that rebates whatever revenues generated to the rebates that's the public. As a procedural matter, I think it's very difficult in the Congress to pass a carbon tax unless it's part of a larger tax package. Taxes are, whenever a tax bill comes to the Senate floor, there's a great desire to add provisions related to other parts of the tax code. And I think that the way the Finance Committee and the Senate and the Ways and Means Committee in the House operate, they're not going to be supportive of trying to just do a one-off, kind of let's do a carbon tax and then we'll also do more comprehensive reform somewhere else. They'll want to have it all rolled together, I believe. Yeah. And this will be the penultimate question. Hi, Senator Brett Coppeth on Environmental Defense Fund. So I'm really interested in the project you said that you started working on. We are always looking for good state policies to work on at EDF and I'd love to hear from you if you've identified one or two of the most interesting state policies to support clean energy today. Well, we have not come to tentative conclusions yet. We're looking at the renewable portfolio standard laws that some 30 states have already adopted. We're looking at the energy efficiency resource standard laws that some 24 states have already adopted. We're looking at the laws that quite a few states have now adopted that are focused on promoting more distributed generation and particularly solar power distributed generation but we haven't reached conclusions that I could give you today. Okay, and the last question is wait for the microphone and then we will bring this session to an end. Yes, hi, Senator, I'm John Misrachem with the Council on Competitive. It's good to see you. Good to see you. I had the privilege of working with you for a couple of years and one of the many things that impressed me was the time you took to go into the detail of all the things that you were working on. Question I have is a broad question, maybe you can't answer it quickly, but so much has dramatically changed in the US in terms of energy supply with oil and gas. With that change that is, I think, disruptive, how do we still keep the focus on deploying renewable energy and energy efficiency? No, I think that's a great question and I think we're gonna have that debate over the next few years. I agree with you that the new found supplies of shale gas in particular, shale oil, but more particularly shale gas with regard to power generation I think do change that equation very substantially. And again, I think a significant amount of the answer may be in the way that EPA chooses to formulate their regulation. We had a proposal that I introduced and I think we had 13 co-sponsors for a clean energy standard where we basically tried to encourage reduced carbon from whatever source and so there was, you could get a half credit for going from coal down to natural gas for power generation. You could get a full credit if you went to renewable power or nuclear power and I don't know if the EPA will look at that kind of a formulation as one way that they might try to implement a rule, I don't know, but to me it made a lot of sense. It was the kind of a proposal the president had embraced in his State of the Union speeches for a couple of years in a row. But I think the answer to your question is gonna have to be decided over the next couple of years as the country settles on whether we're going to continue to aggressively pursue development of renewable energy or whether we're gonna basically take a powder and say, look, we've got all this cheap natural gas now and we don't need to concern ourselves to that great an extent for a long while. So I don't know the answer. So all good things must come to an end, including this session. So thank you so much for your insight and for the marvelous work you've done for the 30 years in the Senate and the marvelous work you're gonna continue to do as you stay linked to Stanford. Thank you. All right, thanks. Thank you, Jim.