Unanimous-Consent Agreement
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, after consultation with the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to the consideration of the following resolutions en bloc: A…
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, after consultation with the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to the consideration of the following resolutions en bloc:
A Wyden-Grassley-McCaskill resolution relative to secret holds, which is at the desk; a Udall of Colorado resolution regarding waiving the reading of an amendment, which is at the desk; S. Res. 8, Senator Harkin; S. Res. 10, Senator Udall of New Mexico with a substitute amendment, which is at the desk; and S. Res. 21, Senator Merkley, with a substitute amendment, which is at the desk; that there be up to 8 hours of debate, equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, for the purpose of debating these resolutions concurrently; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the substitute amendment to S. Res. 10 be agreed to and the substitute amendment to S. Res. 21 be agreed to; the Senate then proceed to vote in relation to the resolutions in the order listed above with no intervening action or debate; that the following resolutions be subject to a 60-vote threshold for adoption: Wyden-Grassley-McCaskill resolution and Udall of Colorado resolution; that the following remaining resolutions be subject to a threshold of two-thirds of those voting for adoption: S. Res. 8; S. Res. 10, as amended; and S. Res. 21, as amended; that there be no amendments, motions or points of order in order to any of these resolutions prior to the vote in relation to the resolution, except for the substitute amendments to S. Res. 10 and S. Res. 21 listed above; further, that if a resolution fails to achieve the listed threshold for adoption, it be returned to its previous status.
Madam President, I have had a number of conversations this evening with my counterpart, the Republican leader. We on this side have a caucus scheduled for tomorrow at 12:30 and so do the Republicans. These votes are all going to occur after we finish our caucuses anyway, so there are going to be no votes in the morning. The debate will start in the morning. We are going to come in at 10 o'clock. There will be no morning business. It has been suggested we come in at 10:30 because of the inclement weather, and that is fine. There will be no morning business in the morning, and then we will vote immediately on these matters set forth in this agreement.
The weather reports are that the Sun is going to be shining. Tomorrow it will be cold, and we know the streets are bad. But as I have indicated, we are not going to have the votes until tomorrow afternoon, so we hope it will all work out. Senator McConnell and I will visit this issue again if anything untoward happens. We know it would be better if we didn't have this bad weather, but we are not all fortunate enough to live in southern Nevada. Sometimes bad weather does come. That being the case, we have been out of session now for several weeks. We have this organizational stuff that we have to get out of the way so we can start having matters referred out of the committees. So as inconvenient as it is for everyone, we need to move forward.