Floor Statements

I ask the Chair to lay before the Senate a message from the House with respect to H.R. 2847.

Mr. President, I move to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill, with an amendment which is at the desk.

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

I ask for the yeas and nays on that amendment.

Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk and ask that it be stated.

I send a cloture motion to the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote occur at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, February 22, and the mandatory quorum be waived.

Mr. President, I have a motion to refer with instructions at the desk, and I ask that it be stated.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I have an amendment to my instructions at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on that amendment.

Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.

Mr. President, we have a number of nominations that have been cleared. I appreciate the cooperation of the Republicans in this regard. I have said enough on this subject. I am glad we are able to get this many done.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar Nos. 531, 580, 602, 615, 622, 623, 627, 631, 642, 645, 646, 650, 651, 658, 659, 660, 662, 666, 686, 687, 689, 690, 691, 692, 693, 694, and 695; that the nominations be confirmed en bloc and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc; that no further motions be in order; that any statements relating to the nominations be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 415.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I would briefly say I appreciate this being accepted. I spoke to Senator McCain earlier today. He and Senator Lieberman gave speeches on the Senate floor today regarding human rights in Iran. They are very timely and I appreciate their statements.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to H. Con. Res. 235, the adjournment resolution.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the upcoming recess or adjournment of the Senate, the President of the Senate, the President pro tempore and the majority and minority leaders be authorized to make appointments to commissions, committees, boards, conferences or interparliamentary conferences authorized by law, by concurrent action of the two Houses or by order of the Senate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn under the provisions of H. Con. Res. 235 until 2 p.m., Monday, February 22; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two

leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that Senator Burris then be recognized to deliver Washington's Farewell Address; further, that upon the conclusion of the reading, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to concur with an amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 2847, the CJS Appropriations Act, the vehicle being used for the Jobs for Main Street Act, as provided for under the previous order.

Mr. President, for the information of Senators, at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, February 22, the Senate will proceed to a cloture vote on the jobs bill. That will be the first vote of the day.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. President, the issue before the Senate today is what we do with Mother Nature. Mother Nature has been very difficult to deal with. The Presiding Officer, being from the State of Alaska, is used to this kind of weather, but most of us are not. We have one snowstorm and that is usually it for the year, but we have had a series of them this year. Maybe it is a result of the Senator from Alaska bringing the weather with him.

What we are trying to do--we don't have it worked out yet--we may be able to get consent to start the judge vote pretty soon and have that run for a reasonable period of time and then have the second vote be open for some considerable period of time so that people, if they are here, could vote on both and then go home if they are Washington residents or some people who are having trouble getting here could be here on time to vote on that. We are close to being able to work that out.

I would also say we are contemplating, if we can work out the procedural difficulties, not being in session tomorrow. We have some things we have to work out prior to that time because, as most everyone knows, we have been working on a bill to end this work period. It is really a nice piece of legislation. It started with a bipartisan jobs tax credit with Hatch and Schumer; we have a section 171 small business tax issue that small businesses are really looking for; we have a highway bill extension; and we also have Build America Bonds.

We also, prior to the end of this month, have to do some things that are extremely important to the country. We have to extend the PATRIOT Act. We have a number of other things we have to extend. We have only been able to get agreement to extend those for short periods of time, but they need to be done--some tax extenders. We have to do a number of those things. We hope we can merge the two. We will make that determination, how we are going to do that, in the next few hours. We have a message that we can use from the House, so we do not need permission to move to that.

The issue before the Senate and the decision I have to make after speaking to the Republican leader is what we do when we come back here on Thursday. We will have an intervening day. I would rather not be in session tomorrow if, in fact, we have to file cloture on that package I just talked about. I have told everyone what I think would be the appropriate way to do it is to get on that bill and to have some amendments on both sides. I hope we can do that. We really need to finish the bill this week. I hope we can do that in a reasonable time.

It appears from what I have been able to determine that the storm will end sometime early tomorrow evening. The problem is, the streets in the DC area are pretty difficult, so we would have to make sure everyone has time Thursday to get here. There are some people who live in the suburbs when they are in Washington, so we have to make sure they have time to get here.

Anyway, we are working on these issues. We have the Presidents Day recess. I hope we do not have to work

into the weekend to complete that. It is really difficult to put all this stuff over. People's lives are really on the line with our being able to create some jobs. The four things I have been talking about we have been told by the Congressional Budget Office would create jobs immediately--not next year but now.

So I hope we can work through this. I have had one discussion already with the Republican leader today, and I will have some more before the day is out. That is about the best information I can give Senators for the time being.

I hope to be able to get something to the Republican leader very soon. I was told an hour ago that the document is completed. I hope that is the case.

I do say to everyone in the Senate at this time that we want to work through this in an orderly way. I want to make sure both the Republican conference and the Democratic conference have a chance to see the bill. That is fair and that is what we need to do. But I do say to everyone, in addition to that, if, in fact, there is a procedural deadlock we find ourselves in Thursday because of filing cloture on this package--I have explained to everyone that I have no intention of trying to jam anybody on this. It is a jobs bill. We have to let the American people know we are really trying hard to get something done that will create jobs immediately. So I will do my very best to make sure everybody has an opportunity to see everything on this proposed legislation.

If we wind up Thursday on this legislation, I will continue being as cooperative as I can be to make sure people who want to change this in some way legislatively will be able to do that. I may, as I have already indicated to everybody, have to stop amendments in order to get to where we are on Thursday. But I will be happy to open up the vehicle and have people offer amendments. I have no concern at this stage about, frankly, whether the amendments are germane or relevant, just if people want to offer amendments on some subject and to have the ability on both sides to do that, we should be able to do that.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous, consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 561, the nomination of Clifford L. Stanley to be Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness and Calendar No. 614, the nomination of Philip Goldberg to be an Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the nominations be confirmed en bloc; that the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that any statements relating to the nominations be printed in the Record; and that the Senate resume legislative session.

Mr. President, it is hard to comprehend we have been working for weeks to get a couple people confirmed--actually four. One is the No. 3 person in the Pentagon. We just got that done, Clifford Stanley. The Secretary of Defense has been waiting for this person, as I have indicated, for weeks and weeks. This man is responsible for making sure the right troops go to Afghanistan and come back from Iraq. We finally got that done.

The nomination of Philip Goldberg I talked about before. He is Secretary Clinton's person to deal with intelligence matters coming before the Department of State. We finally got that done.

The sad part is we have two others on which we have been working. They were held up, we were told, by one Senator, but that is not the way it is. We have, for example, a woman, Caryn Wagner to be Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis with the Department of Homeland Security. That is being held up by the Republicans. No. Again, Secretary Napolitano will have to wait to have, in this vast Department of Homeland Security, someone in charge of intelligence.

What is that about? It is about people trying to destroy our country--homeland security. The most evil people in the world are trying to do harm to Americans in our homeland, but yet we cannot get a person confirmed who has come out of the committee overwhelmingly. They are holding him up because of something no one knows. But we know every day that goes by, the security of this Nation is in jeopardy because of this.

I might note, this person being held up in the Department of Homeland Security, the Senator holding this up, it is my understanding, the junior Senator from Oklahoma, voted for this nomination out of committee. But he is holding it up now because of other matters. He was nice enough to call me and tell me--I did not talk with him, but he called my office to indicate he was going to hold this nomination.

Laura Kennedy, a career member of the senior Foreign Service--her job is going to be to deal with disarmament. It is too bad the United States of America, a nuclear power in the world, does not have a representative of ambassadorial rank to represent the United States at disarmament conferences. How is that one? Why it is being held up has nothing to do with her qualifications or background. It is some other reason.

I have told the President enough is enough. He has the right, as President of the United States, to do recess appointments. It should be done. What is being done to this President is unfair. It has never been done before. We have had to file cloture on many Presidential nominations that President Bush never had to do.

It is very unfortunate that because of the storms that have hit our Nation's Capital, it has been very difficult to get things done. We are not going to be able to bring this up now until next week. Well, we can't do it next week because it is a recess, the Presidents Day recess, and we are out for the week. So we can come back in 10 days or a week and try again. In the meantime, we don't have anyone dealing with disarmament for our country; we don't have someone helping one of the most important offices in the country, which is homeland security, dealing with the intelligence office.

What is that about? Telephone conversations that are picked up about someone trying to come and blow up the Capitol or one of the buildings in New York or Los Angeles or Salt Lake City or Portland or Denver. We have agents who have infiltrated some of these gangs--I will use that term very loosely--these clandestine operations that are trying to do evil to the people in this country, and we don't have anyone heading that department. It is disgraceful.

The Republicans are holding up these people for reasons that have nothing to do with the background, morality, and competence of these people. They are just holding them up because they want to hold them up. We have had them held up for a number of weeks because they do not like a decision that has been made as to where a building is to be built. The Republicans have backed up the person who has been doing this because he wanted the building built in his State.

I would hope the American people understand what is going on here with this party of no. I have been a person who has gotten along very well in my career, Mr. President, being a very moderate person, trying to be someone who gets along with Democrats and Republicans, but I am obligated to speak out as to what is going on here, and I have only picked two of the numerous people being held up. There are scores of them being held up for reasons that have nothing to do with anything dealing with these people or how they will function once in office.

Frankly, I think the President should recess all of them--all of them. He has been given very little recognition for the importance of the job that he has been doing in trying to find the best people in America to fill these positions. No one can say Democrats did this when we were in the minority. We didn't do this. There were people held up, but this is something that is beyond the pale.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 2917 and that the Senate then proceed to its consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to this matter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 413.

Mr. President, I had the good fortune of serving with John Murtha in the House, as the Presiding Officer did. He was a brave man. He was the first to break away and was noteworthy in complaining about the Iraq war. As a result of that, it brought a lot of attention to that issue.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to this matter be printed in the Record with no intervening action.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 11; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, the Senate will not be in session tomorrow due to the winter storm that has battered our area again, the Washington, DC area. Despite the storm, we are going to make progress on the JOBS bill. I had a good conversation earlier today with the Republican leader, Senator Grassley, Senator Baucus, and others. We will continue to work with everyone on an agreement to move forward with this matter and Senators will reschedule any votes. I doubt seriously there will be any votes this week. It appears, from what I have been able to hear, people now cannot get planes to get here and they are having trouble getting planes to get out of here, so it has made for a very difficult situation. We will keep them informed as to what our schedule will be Monday next.

For the information of Democratic Senators, we are going to have a caucus on Thursday at 12:30, a very important caucus. We must do that. I want every member of the caucus to understand the JOBS bill, why we are moving forward. My friends, Senator Durbin and Schumer--I was engaged with the Speaker and was not able to be on the floor during that vote. A number of Members have raised questions with my leadership, including Senator Murray. I want to make sure everyone understands clearly what is going on.

We have had a difficult time, as everyone knows, with the storms being such as they are. We were unable to have our caucus today, which would normally have given everyone the idea of what was going on, so I tell all Senators, I hope you can be here on Thursday. You certainly can't leave if you want to, the storms being such as they are. We are going to have that caucus at 12:30 on Thursday. The DPC luncheon will be put over until we get back, which is also extremely important. That is based on the retreat we had.