A resolution expressing gratitude and appreciation to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces who served in World War II, commending the acts of heroism displayed by those servicemembers, and recognizing the "Greatest Generation Homecoming Weekend" to be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Mr. President, I propose the Wyden-Grassley-Inhofe amendment, No. 2944, which is at the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, if you walked down the Main Streets of this country and asked people what a hold was in the U.S. Senate, I think it is fair to say nobody would have any idea what it is you were talking about. In fact, they might hear the world ``hold,'' and they would think it was part of the wrestling championships that are going on across this country right now. But the reason I am on the floor of the Senate today with my distinguished colleague, Senator Grassley, and Senator Inhofe, is that the hold in the Senate, which is the ability to object to a bill or nomination coming before the Senate, is an extraordinary power that a United States Senator has, and a power that can be exercised in secret.

At the end of a congressional session, legislation involving vast sums of money or the very freedoms on which our country relies can die just because of a secret hold in the Senate. At any point in the legislative process, an objection can delay or derail an issue to the point where it can't be effectively considered.

What is particularly unjust about all of this is that it prevents a Senator from being held accountable. I think Members would be incredulous to learn this afternoon that the Intelligence reauthorization bill, a piece of legislation which is vital to our national security, has now been held up for months as a result of a secret hold.

I am going to talk a little bit about the consequences of holding up an Intelligence authorization bill in a moment. But I want to first be clear on what the Wyden-Grassley-Inhofe amendment would do. It would force the Senate to do its business in public, and it would bring the secret holds out of the shadows of the Senate and into the sunshine. Our bipartisan amendment would make a permanent change to the procedures of the Senate to require openness and accountability. We want to emphasize that we are not going to bar Senators from exercising their power to put a hold on a bill or nomination. All we are saying is, a Senator who wants that right should also have a responsibility to the people he or she represents and to the country at large.

Now, to the hold on the Intelligence bill that has been in place for more than 3 months, I think every Member of the Senate would agree that authorizing the intelligence programs of this country is a critical priority for America. Striking the balance between fighting terrorism ferociously and protecting our civil liberties is one of the most important functions of this Senate. The bill that is now being held up as a result of a secret hold, the Intelligence reauthorization bill, has been

reviewed by a number of Senate committees. It was reported by the Intelligence Committee late last September, by the Armed Services Committee last October, and by the Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee last November.

I particularly commend Chairman Roberts who worked with me on a number of amendments, amendments that I felt strongly about, because this legislation does ensure that there will be accountability and oversight in the Intelligence Committee by establishing a strong inspector general, by requiring that the committees get the documents they need to perform effective oversight over the intelligence community, and by making the heads of the key agencies subject to Senate confirmation.

I think the Senate would particularly want to know if this legislation, the Intelligence reauthorization bill that is held up by a secret hold, does not move forward, it will be the first time since the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was established in 1978 that the Senate has failed to act on an Intelligence reauthorization bill.

What we have is a situation where a single, anonymous Senator has invoked a practice that cannot be found anywhere in the Senate rules and has lodged an objection to a piece of legislation that is critically important to the well-being of America. Senators have often asked Senator Grassley and myself and Senator Inhofe: Where are the examples of these secret holds? Exactly why do you believe your legislation is important? We now have a textbook case of a secret hold that is injurious to America.

For all the talk about earmarks--we have been discussing that here on the Senate floor, as well as the scope of conference, line-item vetoes and the like--I would wager that no weapon is more important and more powerful to each Senator than the ability to stop amendments, legislation, and nominations through secret holds. I believe as U.S. Senators we occupy a position of public trust and that the exercise of the power that has been vested in each of us should be accompanied by public accountability.

I have no quarrel with the use of a hold. I have used them myself on several occasions. But what is offensive to the democratic process is the anonymity, the secrecy, the lack of accountability when a Senator tries to exercise this extraordinary power in secret.

Let me just wrap up, because I see the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee is here, with a quick minute on the history of these efforts. Senator Grassley and I have been at this for almost a decade. The Rules Committee held a hearing on our proposal in the summer of 2003. We worked with Chairman Lott and with the ranking minority member, Senator Dodd, extensively. This is a matter that has been considered at length by colleagues.

Senator Lott knows firsthand about this issue because he has personally spent many hours with me as he has wrestled with it, and in fact tried to set in place some voluntary procedures that would curtail the abuses of the secret hold.

These secret holds have been an embarrassment to the Senate in my view, and they have been an embarrassment for a long time. But I cannot recall an instance where we had a hold, a secret hold on the Intelligence authorization bill at a time when our country is at war. This is a practice that needs to end.

I yield now for the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Grassley. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, as usual, the distinguished Chair of the subcommittee has put her finger on an important distinction. I want to take a second to describe how the legislation addresses it. I think we are of like mind on it. Subsequently, a lot of time was spent by the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee and Senator Dodd and Senator Byrd on this matter.

What the distinguished Chair of the Homeland Security Committee is describing is essentially a consult. For example, a Senator wants to be notified about a bill that is headed for the floor. Very often that comes up, say, when a Senator is in his or her home State and frequently needs to be able to come back, and it takes a day, and they need to be able to review it.

Under the Wyden-Grassley-Inhofe amendment we make very clear it is not our intention to bar those consults. We like to use the word ``consult,'' which is a protected tool for a Senator as opposed to the question of a hold.

I think perhaps another way to clarify it is a consult is sort of like a yellow light. You put up a little bit of caution--that we need a bit of time to take a look at it. A hold is a red light when you are not supposed to go forward. We don't want people to be able to exercise those holds in secret. We think it is fine to have the kind of consult that the distinguished Chair of the Homeland Security Committee has described.

In fact, to ensure that we have this kind of procedure that the Senator seeks, we call for 3 days before an individual has to put in the Congressional Record that they have a hold on a matter.

I think we are clearly in agreement--that the consult is protected, but the secret hold and forcing the Senate to do its business in public is what is going to change.

Mr. President, at this point, after the Senator from Oklahoma has spoken, it would be my intention to very briefly wrap up the case for the Wyden-Grassley-Inhofe amendment. We would yield our time at that point, and we are going to ask for a recorded vote.

Mr. President, it is my intent at this point to wrap up.

I particularly thank the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma, who has had a longstanding interest in this subject, for working with Senator Grassley and myself. We do have a bipartisan effort.

The Senator from Oklahoma has highlighted another problem with it, and a lot of Members who served in the other body bumped into this. A lot of these holds over the years have not even been placed by Senators themselves. They have been placed by staff, and Senators go up to each other and try to ask about a matter and it ends up a Senator may not even know about it.

I also see the Senator from Mississippi, the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Rules. He spent a lot of hours with me talking about this over the years. Senator Lott, to show his commitment to the cause of openness, has tried repeatedly to get Senators to do this voluntarily. I recall on a number of instances Senator Lott and Senator Daschle met with Senator Grassley and me. We put together a variety of letters and directives to Senators. It still would not come together.

We think you have to make this a permanent change in the Senate procedures, put the burden on the objector rather than on the leadership, as we have done so often in the past, and the leaders would then have to make phone calls. Senator Lott has a wonderful story that he has told me over the years about sitting in phone booths at airports calling Members, trying to figure out who in the world had a hold on something.

I say to colleagues, we have now reached that moment where the Senate has had it up to here with all of the secrecy and practice of doing business in the shadows.

To wrap this up, we are going to have a vote in a few minutes. The Intelligence Authorization bill, a bill that is vital to America's national security, is subject to a secret hold. I don't think anything could make the case for our bipartisan amendment more clearly than the need to move ahead with this country's vital business in intelligence. I have talked to Chairman Roberts about this. He wants that bill to move. It is a bipartisan bill. We have not had a situation since 1978 when we could not move forward on an intelligence bill.

I hope colleagues will finally bring the Senate into the sunshine. This enormous power that each Senator has is one that will continue, but if we can prevail on this vote, it will be one that will be exercised in the sunlight. Each Senator will be held accountable when they assert this particular power.

I urge my colleagues to vote yes on the Wyden-Grassley-Inhofe amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time and I ask for the yeas and nays.

The Senator is absolutely right.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Mississippi. I particularly thank him for his extraordinarily supportive statement and for

all the help he has given me over this decade. It probably would be my preference to have a recorded vote at this time, particularly since I have had the good fortune to have had such a supportive statement from the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Rules.

Is there a problem with having a recorded vote on the Wyden-Grassley- Inhofe amendment at this time?

Mr. President, just to wrap this up, that is a very fair procedure that the Senator from Mississippi has outlined and we will be happy to accept that.

Mr. President, today I put a hold on the President's nominee for the Export-Import Bank. I don't usually issue a press release when I do that, but I did that because it is in relationship to a problem we are having with the Export-Import Bank on an ethanol issue, and I want the people to know that it is broader than just some of the small reasons you do holds around here.

But I have had a practice, as this amendment would mandate--I have had a practice over the last 7 or 8 years of putting a statement in the Congressional Record when I use a hold. I believe I use a hold a little less often than some of my colleagues do, but I agree. A lot of people maybe use a hold because they do not want to put up with the fuss that goes on when you make public why you are holding up a bill and who you are. But I want to assure you, I have been in the Senate for 25 years, and I have not lost one ounce of blood. I have not had one black and blue mark. I don't believe I have had any fight with any colleague over the practice when they know who I am.

Of course, if they were secret and they never knew I was doing it, I wouldn't have to worry about any of these things. But I believe, as my colleague from Oregon does, that the people's business is the people's business, and the people's business ought to be public. I believe if you have guts enough to put a special hold on legislation, you ought to have guts enough to say who you are and why you are doing it. I think your constituents ought to know that. But more importantly, just to get things done around here, your colleagues ought to know who it is because if you have a gripe, let's get the gripe out in the open and let's talk about it.

What is wrong in America that we do not want to talk about some things? I don't know how often my constituents brag about: ``There are two things I never talk about, religion and politics.'' There are no things that you ought to talk about more than religion and politics because they have more influence on your life than anything else that we do in American society. But somehow you can't think that you can do it in a civil way when you ought to be able to do it in a civil way. In the U.S. Senate you ought to be able to do all this stuff in a civil way.

I hope my experiences of not having any harm done to me in any way for putting a hold on, that people will back this amendment and get the public's business out. There is nothing wrong with the word ``hold,'' but there is something wrong with the word ``secret.'' When you read it in the newspapers you never hear the word ``hold'' unless the word ``secret'' is connected with it.

The people around the countryside of America, at least in my State of Iowa, think what is wrong with American Government is that there is too much secrecy, too much behind-the-scenes dealing, too much money in politics--all those things that give us kind of a black eye with the public. This is not going to solve these problems, just taking the word ``secret'' out of the hold.

But at least the newspapers won't be able to use the word ``secret'' anymore. And maybe when bit by bit we do some of these things around here we will be able to elevate public service to be the honorable profession that it ought to be.

This is a small effort on the part of my colleague and myself and now Senator Inhofe to do that.

How do you eat 10,000 marshmallows? You eat one at a time. How are you going to raise public respect for the Senate? You are going to do it a little bit at a time. This may be too little for some people. But the way caucuses are being held around here on this very subject in the last hour, you know this is a big deal--and it should be a big deal.

This is the public's business. Having expressed those views, I would like to go to a statement I have that maybe will make more sense.

The time has come for the Senate as a body to rid itself of a serious blemish. And, of course, I am talking about the practice I just spoke about of placing anonymous holds on legislation or nominations.

The power of the hold is to stop a bill or a nomination in its tracks, which each Senator possesses. It was never authorized or even intended. It is just a practice. It is not in the books.

I do not object to the use of this powerful tool, so long as it is accompanied with some public accountability. However, the current lack of transparency in the process is an affront to the principle of open government, and I think it is an embarrassment to this body.

The amendment by Senator Wyden and myself and Senator Inhofe which we proposed today would establish a standing order requiring that holds be made public. We believe it is time to have the Senate consider our proposed standing order and then decide as a body whether to end this secret process.

For my colleagues who might be apprehensive about this change in doing business, I ask you to just give it a try. I should point out that this measure is a standing order which, while binding on Senators, does not formally amend the Senate rules and can more easily be changed if it turns out to be unworkable.

I have no doubt that once instituted this reform will be found to be very sound and no reason will be found why it should not be continued for a long period of time. For years, I have made it my practice to publicly disclose in the Congressional Record any hold that I place along with a short explanation. It is quick, it is easy, and it is painless. I want to assure my colleagues of that.

Our proposed standing order would provide that a simple form be filled out, much like we do when we add cosponsors to a bill. Senators would have a full 3 session days from placing the hold to submit the form. The hold would then be published in the Congressional Record and the Senate Calendar. It is just as simple as that.

This amendment is essentially the same as S. Res. 216 in the 108th Congress, which was a collaborative effort between myself, the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Wyden, Senator Lott, and Senator Byrd.

In the last Congress, Chairman Lott held a hearing in the Rules Committee on the issue that is before us. Since that time, I have worked with Senators Wyden, Lott, and Byrd to come up with what I think is a very well thought out proposal to require public disclosure of holds on legislation or nominations in the Senate.

It says a lot that this proposal was written with the help of such outstanding Senators as Senator Lott and Senator Byrd. As chairman of the Rules Committee and as former majority leader, Senator Lott brings valuable perspective and experience. It is also a great honor to be able to work on this issue with Senator Byrd, who is also a former majority leader and an expert on Senate rules and procedures.

I can think of no reason a single Senator should be able to kill a bill or a nomination in complete secrecy. Despite recent attempts by the leadership to curb abuses of holds, the secret hold remains a stain on the fabric of the Senate.

It is time for the whole Senate to consider our proposed standing order and speak as a body on this issue. If any Senator believes I am misguided in this, I welcome their discussion.

I have yet to hear a single good reason we should allow secrecy to creep into what ought to be a very public legislative process. In fact, public discussion on this matter is long overdue. If this practice that is in the shadows of legislation is to continue, let us at least say so publicly.

I can think of no better time to consider this long overdue measure than in the context of a bill titled the ``Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act.''

If we don't end this in a bill with this title, we are missing a chance that we have been waiting for for 10 years. I thank the chairman of the committee for that opportunity. That is why this measure is all about transparency and accountability.

The purpose of the underlying bill is to restore public confidence in Congress by making our actions transparent and accountable. Secret holds run contrary to both principles. They are done in complete secrecy and allow Senators to avoid public accountability for action. The underlying bill requires disclosure of earmarks in advance of conference negotiations and increased disclosure of trips and employment negotiations.

I ask my colleagues to support the Wyden-Grassley-Inhofe amendment so that we can use this one small step to restore confidence and have more public accountability.

Mr. President, first, I was fascinated by the comment from the Senator from Connecticut that after a few years some of this stuff will make sense to us. I have only been here 20 years. I am a patient man; I will wait.

Let me put this in perspective, as far as my interest in this. Back in 1986 I was elected to the House of Representatives. There was a procedure that was used at that time called the discharge procedure whereby a person could discharge a bill out of the committee without having committee action, but it could be blocked by someone and we could not know the name of the person who blocked it.

Consequently, we found ourselves in this situation where there would be legislation that everyone at home is very excited about. We could go home and campaign and say, yes, I am for this. I remember several of the West Texas Democrats wanting to oppose gun control. Yet their caucus wanted them to support gun control. So they would tell the people at home that they were opposing it. Yet they were the very ones who kept it from coming up for a vote.

That is exactly the same thing we are dealing with here. In 1994 we were able to pass that reform. When we came over here in 1994, I was not even aware that you could put a hold on a bill without disclosing who you were or who was putting the hold on. This is a very similar thing. It is transparency, bringing it out in the open.

I agree with my good friend Senator Wyden that if Members want to, they can put a hold on a bill. This does not affect that. Members just have to say who they are.

This morning I had my amendment on the floor and Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley showed me their amendment was essentially the same. I was very happy to fold mine in. I am happy to be part of this.

After a number of years now, this will become a reality. I applaud my fellow cosponsors for the fine work they have done.

Let me review how that means of obfuscation worked--this from the Congressional Record, page H1131, March 10, 1992:

A good example is the method Members from the House of

Representatives used to hide their votes from the people

concerning a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution.

Shortly after it was discovered in a USA Today poll in 1987

that over 80 percent of the people in America want a

balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, House Joint

Resolution 268 was introduced. House Joint Resolution 268

immediately gained 246 coauthors from over the Nation. I can

just envision, at the town hall meetings back home, a liberal

Democrat standing up and holding House Joint Resolution 268

in his hand saying, ``See here, ladies and gentlemen. This is

my name as cosponsor of House Joint Resolution 268.'' What

the Congressman didn't tell these people is that he has no

intentions of allowing House Joint Resolution 268 to come up

for a vote. How does this Congressman, who is trying to make

the people back home believe that he is supporting a budget-

balancing amendment to the Constitution, keep from having to

vote on it?

It is very simple, the Speaker merely puts it in a

committee and then makes a deal with the committee chairman

not to bring it up for consideration. The only way that it

can be brought up for consideration is for a discharge

petition to be signed by 218 Members of Congress. The

discharge petition is in the Speaker's desk and must be

signed during the course of a legislative day. However, the

names of those individuals who sign a discharge petition are

kept secret and if a Member discloses the names of other

Members who sign the discharge petition, he can be

disciplined to the extent of expulsion from membership of the

House of Representatives. So House Joint Resolution 268 had

240 cosponsors, but only 140 Members were willing to sign the

discharge petition.

Pretty cozy, huh? The Congressman can falsely represent his

position to the people at home and never have to vote on the

issue. I might add that there is a happy ending to that House

Joint Resolution 268 story. Several of us contacted a

national publication. While the publication knew we couldn't

divulge the names of those who signed the discharge petition,

they agreed to print the names of the individuals who

coauthored House Joint Resolution 268, but did not sign the

discharge petition. We found a loophole in the corrupt

institutional system that protects Congressmen from their

electorate and as a result of that, we were able to

immediately force it out onto the floor and we missed passing

a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution by only seven

votes.

That situation disturbed me so much that in March of 1993 I filed a one-sentence bill on the House floor challenging the secrecy, ``Once a motion to discharge has been filed the Clerk shall make the signatures a matter of public record.''

I had 87 cosponsors, and it passed by a vote of 384 to 40.

In an article about my initiative, Reader's Digest in November of 1994 wrote, ``The success of this legislation is proof that when Congress is required to do the people's business in the open, the people--rather than special interests--win . . . the passage of this one bill is an important first step in the right direction. And it took a little-known Representative form Oklahoma to point the way.''

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the full text of this article.

The situation is exactly the same here, Mr. President.

In fact, the very stated reason for this whole bill is to require Congress to do the people's business in the open.

A Senator may have a hold on a nomination or a bill or a unanimous consent agreement, and that hold is secret.

It is just as possible for a Senator to keep his constituents and Americans in general in the dark now about their holds as it was for House Members before I successfully led the charge for transparency in discharge petitions.

Indeed the Wall Street Journal was strongly in favor of my House efforts at that time.

Toward that end, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Wall Street Journal's six editorials on the issue of discharge motions.

As the Wall Street Journal mentions, neither the Constitution nor the Senate Rules mention holds. We need this legislation to correct the current situation.

One of the many times I personally have run into this problem of holds was in the case of the nomination of Governor Mike Leavitt of Utah to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

As chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee I was trying to shepherd the nomination of Governor Leavitt through my committee.

At that time in 2003, Governor Leavitt was being run through unprecedented hoops by the Democrats to obstruct his nomination even though we had an affirmative statement from my Ranking Member Senator Jeffords that he considered Governor Leavitt a friend and admission that he was going to receive the vote of Senator Jeffords.

Pursuant to this situation, Roll Call wrote the following piece that I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

You can see from roll-call's reporting that no matter what I achieved in my committee, an anonymous hold could always be placed on the President's nomination, and thus a

halt could be brought to operations of the Senate and in turn the administration.

The American people do not want obstruction; they want progress from us.

Obstruction was certainly practiced by Senator Daschle, and the people showed their lack of appreciation at the ballot box.

I ask that Members join me in this effort and do what our constituents want for the sake of transparency and honesty.

We ought to have the courage to stand up for our convictions, not hide in the shadows of darkness and anonymity.

Mr. President, I believe the Senate did clear the Dodd- Santorum amendment, so the pending issue is the Wyden-Grassley-Inhofe amendment.

Mr. President, I believe, then, we would be ready to go with this amendment.

Mr. President, is the Senator from Louisiana speaking on the same issue? If you would defer, Senator Inhofe has become one of the lead cosponsors of this amendment. I think you would probably like to be heard in sequence. Then the floor would be open for questions.

Let me clear up one point. I am not sure we are ready to go to a recorded vote at this moment. I thought maybe we could set it aside and go to other amendments and have stacked votes later in the afternoon, allowing Senators to continue committee meetings. However, I have been notified that maybe someone would object to a unanimous consent to set it aside so I sent a message back to that Senator: if you want to object, you better come over here. That is a problem around here. We send our surrogates over to object, but they are not here. If he comes, he can object. That is fine. We will try to work with everyone to try to accommodate everyone. There may be a need for further discussion.

Let me take a moment to commend the Senator from Oregon and the Senator from Iowa and now the Senator from Oklahoma for your tenacity. You have been pecking away at this for years.

Typical of the leadership, there was a time when I was saying, do we need to go that far; there is a misunderstanding about holds. In fact, that is a misnomer. There is no such thing. A hold is a request to be notified when an issue or a nominee will be brought up so we can come over and speak. The fact is, it ties the leadership's hands because quite often they say, wait a minute, I can't delay the business of the Senate to have this Senator come over here and talk at length--which is his or her right--on a nominee or a Member.

The point I am trying to make, I have tried to work to deal with this issue of fairness. Senator Daschle and I did work with Senator Biden to further clarify, what is this thing, a hold? How do I have to comply with it? We requested that it be put in writing, which, by the way, was never locked into place. That is one of the reasons I am for this.

We need to make it clearer about how Members do this and what the requirements are. We do not want to stop the practice of a Senator being able to file notice that he would like to be able to come over and discuss an issue.

What I have had a problem with, I do think it has been abused. We have anonymous hold, we have rolling hold, and it is harder and harder and harder to try to do the business of the Senate. But the anonymous part of it is the part that bothers me the most. That is the thrust of the Rules bill and particularly the bill by the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Let's open things, disclose things, have transparency, make sure the people know what we are up to.

This is, in my opinion, very sinister, where Members can hold up a nomination, hold up a bill, and not even acknowledge they are doing it.

I point out that all this amendment does is to say the holds must be in writing and they have to be published in the Record in 3 days.

Is that the thrust of the Senator's amendment?

What is the threat here? I do think there is a good cause for late at night, 6 o'clock, you are wrapping up, and all of a sudden the leadership hits us with, we want to clear 10 bills and a Senator can say, wait a minute, I want to make sure, What is the cost of this bill--as the Senator from New Hampshire has been inclined to do. He has that right. It is appropriate he be able to have time to look at that. But he ought to then have to put in writing that notice to the leader so the leader, if nothing else, will not forget it, and then acknowledge who he is. That is all this does.

I don't know what the vote of the Senate is going to be because some Members may say they are giving up some of their senatorial prerogatives. No, you are not; you just can't hide. That is all.

In the spirit of this legislation of openness and honesty, let me say, this is also an area where some Senators--no one has gotten in trouble with these holds or used the holds for a response or for some benefit personally, but the day will come, if we do not watch it, someone will get in trouble ethically with this procedure.

The leaders may have a different view and I will be very responsive to their views, but for now, it is time we quit talking about making things more open and honest and we do it. This amendment would do that. I plan to support it.

I am advised we do not have an objection to setting aside this amendment, unless others wish to speak on this amendment.

Does the Senator from New York have a comment on this issue or another issue?

Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Oregon for a question.

There would be a problem having the vote at this time, just out of convenience for a number of Senators on both sides who have other commitments. We would like to perhaps stack votes a little later in the afternoon. I want to collaborate with the chairman of Homeland Security and Senator Dodd and Senator Lieberman about exactly what time we would do that. We could get more work done without interfering with Senators' schedules.

So, yes, there would be an objection to it right now. But it has already been locked in and we will have a recorded vote. It will be first in the sequence whenever we set it up.

I ask unanimous consent we set aside the Wyden-Grassley- Inhofe amendment and go to the next pending amendment.

I withhold my unanimous consent request at this time, Mr. President.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: Does he have to have consent? He just calls it up and it would not----

Mr. President, I rise to support this amendment offered by the Senator from Oregon, the Senator from Iowa, and the Senator from Oklahoma. I thank them very much for doing it.

I must say, as I listened to the debate I thought back to the winter of 1988 after I was elected to the Senate.

Incidentally, a distinguished member of that cast was the honorable Senator from Mississippi, and we attended the orientation session together that winter for new Senators. I remember then Senator Wendell Ford from Kentucky came before us to give us instructions about Senate procedure.

He said: Look, I remember when I was just elected to the Senate. You are going to find a lot of things around here that don't make much sense to you, but they will over time.

Then Senator Ford stopped for a moment, and said: Take the seniority rule. The longer I am here, the more sense it makes to me.

I want to say the longer I am here, the less sense the secret hold procedure makes to me. Honestly, it has become increasingly outrageous when you think about it--that this body can be stopped by an action that is secret, and the source of the action is not known on a measure that is on the Senate floor because it came out of a committee. It is really outrageous.

I congratulate Senators Wyden, Grassley, and Inhofe for seizing this moment of reform brought about by the reports from the Rules Committee and our own Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to take this opportunity to get rid of this outdated but really outrageous part of Senate procedure.

If somebody cares enough to hold up a measure and hold up the rest of us from considering it on the floor, the least they can do is have the guts to reveal their identity.

That is all this change would bring about.

I thank my colleagues. I look forward to supporting this amendment.

I thank the Chair.