Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. I know everybody is itching to get out of here and spend some time with their families. I am, too. I noticed some of you colleagues have been reporting from Hawaii over the last week. But I just wanted to say a few words about the progress that we've made on some important issues over these last few weeks.

A lot of folks in this town predicted that after the midterm elections, Washington would be headed for more partisanship and more gridlock. And instead, this has been a season of progress for the American people. That progress is reflecting - is a reflection of the message that voters sent in November - a message that said it's time to find common ground on challenges facing our country. That's a message that I will take to heart in the New Year, and I hope my Democratic and Republican friends will do the same.

First of all, I am glad that Democrats and Republicans came together to approve my top national security priority for this session of Congress - the New START treaty. This is the most significant arms control agreement in nearly two decades, and it will make us safer and reduce our nuclear arsenals along with Russia. With this treaty, our inspectors will also be back on the ground at Russian nuclear bases. So we will be able to trust but verify.

We'll continue to advance our relationship with Russia, which is essential to making progress on a host of challenges - from enforcing strong sanctions on Iran to preventing nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. And this treaty will enhance our leadership to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and seek the peace of a world without them.

The strong, bipartisan vote in the Senate sends a powerful signal to the world that Republicans and Democrats stand together on behalf of our security. And I especially want to thank the outstanding work done by Vice President Joe Biden; the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator John Kerry; and the Ranking Republican, Senator Richard Lugar, for their extraordinary efforts.

In fact, I just got off the phone with Dick Lugar, and reminded him the first trip I ever took as senator - foreign trip - was with Dick Lugar to Russia, to look at nuclear facilities there. And I told him how much I appreciated the work he had done and that there was a direct line between that trip that we took together when I was a first-year senator and the results of the vote today on the floor.

This all speaks to a tradition of bipartisan support for strong American leadership around the world - and that's a tradition that was reinforced by the fact that the New START treaty won the backing of our military and our allies abroad.

In the last few weeks, we also came together across party lines to pass a package of tax cuts and unemployment insurance that will spur jobs, businesses and growth. This package includes a payroll tax cut that means nearly every American family will get an average tax cut next year of about a thousand dollars delivered in their paychecks. It will make a difference for millions of students and parents and workers and people still looking for work. It's led economists across the political spectrum to predict that the economy will grow faster than they originally thought next year.

In our ongoing struggle to perfect our union, we also overturned a 17-year-old law and a longstanding injustice by finally ending