[inaudible conversations] let me try to call this full house to order, if i may. Welcome to brookings. My name is bill galston, senior fellow here in governance stud ies. Thanks so much for coming and welcome also to the people who are watching this event live on cspan. Todays topic is the past and the publication of ira shapiros second book on the senate, this one entitled broken, can the senate save itself and the country. Those of you who read his first book on the senate will know how passionately he reveres the senate as an an answers institution and will not know howdy how distress as decline this topic could not be more timely. We are just days from the expiration of yet another shortterm continuing budget re solution and perhaps even more pertinently from a promised open Senate Debate on u. S. Immigration policy. Will the promise be kept and if it is will todays senate be up to the job of an open deliberation on the most burning domestic question which is more than come itself