Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 171.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed to S. Res. 172.

Madam 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, there be no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to this matter be printed in the Record.

Madam President, H.R. 31 is at the desk and has been received from the House; is that correct?

I ask for its first reading.

Madam President, I would first ask for its second reading but object to my own request.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote in relation to the Burr-Hagan amendment No. 1246 occur at 4:30 p.m. tomorrow, Tuesday, June 9, and that no amendment be in order to the amendment prior to a vote in relation thereto.

Madam President, as in executive session, I ask unanimous consent that the nomination of Raymond M. Jefferson to be Assistant Secretary of Labor for Veterans' Employment and Training, received by the Senate on June 2, 2009, be jointly referred to the HELP and Veterans' Affairs Committees.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until tomorrow morning, June 9, at 10 a.m.; that following the prayer and the pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date and the morning hour be deemed to have expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and there be a period of morning business for up to 1 hour, with the time equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first half, the Republicans controlling the second half, and with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; that following morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of Calendar No. 47, H.R. 1256, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Further, I ask that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus luncheons. Finally, I ask that the time during any adjournment, recess, or period of morning business count postcloture to the matter now before the Senate, the tobacco legislation.

Madam President, tomorrow, the Senate will resume consideration of the FDA tobacco legislation. Earlier tonight, cloture was invoked on the substitute amendment. Tomorrow, we will continue to work through amendments. We have indicated from the very beginning that those amendments are germane to the bill, we would be happy to work on those. If there are others we can work something out on, we would be happy to do that. Rollcall votes could occur throughout the day. Tonight, we were able to reach an agreement for a vote at 4:30 on the pending Burr substitute amendment. Senators will be notified when any additional votes are scheduled.

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

Madam President, after leader remarks, we are going to be in a period of morning business for up to an hour. During that period of time, Senators will be allowed to speak for up to 10 minutes each. The Republicans will control the first half, and the majority will control the second half.

Following morning business, we will proceed to the tobacco legislation, H.R. 1256. Two amendments are currently pending to the Dodd substitute amendment; that is, the Burr-Hagan substitute and a Lieberman amendment regarding TSP. Senator Hagan will be here as soon as we complete morning business to offer some amendments. The Republican leader and I thought it would be appropriate that Senators who have amendments relating to the bill that are relevant and germane would offer their amendments first, and those Senators are Hagan and Burr. So we want them to get whatever amendments they want to offer laid down so that we can go to other matters people wish to bring up.

I announce that I have had, frankly, a number of conversations with Senators on both sides, and there are a number of important events today--this evening, I should say--so we are not going to be working late tonight. I think if we go to 6 o'clock, that will probably be about as far as we go. There is a funeral service for one of the employees of the Senate who has worked in the Capitol for many years who was killed in a car accident on Sunday. We have to make sure the people who want to go to that have that opportunity. There are a number of other events, including something at the Vice President's residence this evening. So everyone should be alerted to that.

I had a conversation with the Republican leader yesterday about the schedule for the next work period. We have 3 weeks left in this work period, and we have things we want to do. I have explained to the Republican leader that we would like to do at least two appropriations bills. I have indicated that to Chairman Inouye, and he has conveyed that to Ranking Member Cochran. We want to at least get the legislative branch legislation out of the way and Homeland Security out of the way.

There are other things, of course, we are going to work on during this work period. We have the supplemental appropriations bill that we need to complete within the next couple of days. We have this tobacco legislation which we need to complete. There is a tourism bill which was completed and reported out of the Commerce Committee which is bipartisan and important. It is interesting. In every State in the Union, tourism is important. It is either the No. 1, 2, or 3 most important part of the State's economy. We are going to try to complete that this work period. So we have a lot of things to do.

The next work period, in July, where we have 5 weeks, we will have by then completed, we hope, the legislative branch appropriations, and we will have completed Homeland Security. We have appropriations bills we want to work on. We have health care that will likely be worked on during that period of time.

We have the DOD authorization, which is extremely important. Not only does it have the standard stuff in it that we always did, but we also have to do something about military commissions. This involves the situation we have with enemy combatants and

other people who need to be tried in military courts and who can't be tried, for various reasons, in civil courts. That is going to be a part of the DOD authorization this year, which will make it difficult. We have to do that because what we have passed before was declared unconstitutional by the Federal courts. So we have to do that.

We also have to make a decision as to whether we are going to be able to do the Supreme Court nomination during the next work period or whether that will spill over until the next period, which would be September. I have spoken with the Republican leader about that, and he has indicated he is going to be communicating with me as to what he thinks should be done in more detail than our brief conversation yesterday.

So the reason I am talking about this today is to alert all Senators, as I have, as well as Senator McConnell yesterday, that the next 5 weeks is going to be a unique work period in the Senate. Because of the makeup of the Senate changing over the years and it becoming a place where there is an obligation people have with their families, we aren't able to work the long weeks we have in the past. We have plenty of work to do. No one is complaining that we are not working hard enough, but sometimes you just have to put in the time because of the procedural obligations we have here, procedural rules we have to follow in the Senate.

So the next work period, which is July 5 through August 7, which is 5 weeks, there will only be one no-vote day, and that is July 16. The reason for that is as I have outlined. We are going to conduct business on Mondays and Fridays, and there will be rollcall votes on those days. That is the plan.

I have just been advised that the no-vote day is Friday, July 17, not July 16. So everything I have said other than that is valid. July 16 is a Thursday.

For example, health care--we cannot complete that most important legislation by working just Tuesday through Thursday.

I had a chairmen's meeting yesterday. We meet every other week with all of the chairmen. It was clear from conversations I had with all of our chairmen that we are going to have to have a very long, hard work period in July. If there are questions anyone has or special circumstances, they can contact either the Republican leader or me, and we will be happy to take a look, but everyone is on notice that is where we are. So with respect to your scheduling on Mondays and Fridays, be very careful because we are not going to be able to come in here on Mondays at 5:30. We are going to have to have regular workdays.

July 17.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, there are a number of amendments that have been filed that are at the desk. They haven't been offered as yet. Amendments on both sides in agreement should be considered. We were very close on working out an agreement to do just that. The vast majority of the amendments will be germane postcloture. I have indicated that for those that are arguably germane, I would be willing to work with the person who offered the amendment to have a vote on it. But one Senator has held this up. That is the way things can happen around here. It is unfortunate, but it does happen. We worked for a couple of days trying to arrive at the point we are. The sad part about it is the Senator who has held all this up has an amendment that isn't remotely germane to this bill, but he has lodged an objection to this agreement that is agreeable by all other Senators. I would hope that the Senator would reconsider this objection over the next few days.

In the meantime, I have had conversations with the managers of the bill. I have spent a lot of time with Senator Dodd. It is an important piece of legislation. I watched the Presiding Officer offer her speech today. What a sad thing, the man she spoke about. A picture is worth a thousand words. The picture that she had when she was talking about this bill and how important it is was worth more than a thousand words.

I will have more to say about this on Monday, but everyone in my family smokes. Sadly, my parents are dead. My dad's miner's consumption was terribly exacerbated by his smoking. So when did he start smoking? He was a kid. He started smoking as a little boy. The same with my mother. The same with my brothers. One brother started when he was in the Air Force. He was I guess 20 years old or something like that. He wasn't very old. But the others, all of my other family members, started smoking as kids. One of my brothers chewed tobacco. I can remember I had a friend who learned that my brother chewed tobacco. He was a lobbyist for the tobacco industry and he said, Oh, I will send him a case of--what kind does he chew? I didn't think that was a good idea.

In Los Angeles last week I met the first lawyer who filed litigation, serious litigation against the tobacco industry--a wonderful man. He got terribly upset with the Joe Camel advertisements, when they placed that little comic strip character on lunch boxes for kids. He also was upset because at that time the tobacco industry went through another one of their ideas to get kids to start smoking in stores, like a 7- Eleven store. They would have bins of cigarettes out there. You are supposed to pay for them, but they were there. Kids could steal them so easily. So he filed this lawsuit. He had the confidence to tell me he lost that lawsuit. But when all the lawyers got together to go after the tobacco companies big time, they pooled their money and went after the tobacco companies, and they used all of his pleadings. He said even the misspelled words they used. They didn't change anything. Ultimately, that led to the favorable ruling by the courts that tobacco companies were liable for the damages in the billions of dollars.

It is important that we move forward. I hope that cloture would be invoked on this Monday afternoon. It is one of the most popular pieces of legislation we could do. I am sorry we weren't able to work anything out on the amendments, but we simply were not able to do so. No one can complain this entire Congress that we haven't had the ability to offer amendments. We were concerned for a lot of reasons. One is we have the supplemental appropriations bill floating around here and we didn't want a lot of nongermane amendments on this, but there were no restrictions whatsoever on even nongermane amendments. We just wanted-- every Republican wanted to look at ours; we wanted to look at theirs. We used to do that a lot. We can still do that. But no one can complain and use it as an excuse to not vote for this bill, that we haven't given them a chance to offer amendments.

So I hope Senators will take a look at this to move forward. Let us invoke cloture and complete this legislation. I have already indicated I would be happy to work out something that would be fair to dispose of the amendments that are germane to this bill that have been filed.

Madam President, let me say, while the distinguished Senator from Connecticut is on the floor, the chairman of the Banking Committee and the manager of this bill, Senator Enzi has been a real partner in what we have done here. He asked that we do a committee hearing on this bill. We could have brought it to the floor under rule XIV. This bill has had lots of hearings in the past, but because Senator Enzi is such a gentleman and he thought it would be the right thing to do, we went ahead, in spite of a very difficult schedule that we had and the schedule that especially Senator Dodd had, of all of the things that we were doing under the jurisdiction of that Banking Committee, but with Senator Kennedy's help, he was the one who was obligated to do this legislation. So we have done that. We have jumped through all the hoops. I repeat, I hope no one will use as an excuse to not vote for cloture that we have been unfair in moving forward on this bill, because it would be unfair for them to say that we have been unfair.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to terminate morning business and have the bill reported.

Madam President, I send a cloture motion on the Dodd substitute amendment to the desk.

Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk. This is on the bill itself.

Madam President, I now ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum under rule XXII be waived.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to go into a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

We just went into morning business. We would like to go into morning business.

Madam President, I am happy to respond to my friend. We have been trying for 2 days to move forward on germane amendments. I have had several conversations with Senator Dorgan. I know how important it is to him. I voted with him, and I do every time this matter comes up. As I indicated earlier, I would be happy to work out some kind of agreement.

At this time, until we get some ability to vote on the germane amendments, it doesn't seem like the right thing to do. I am willing, as I have indicated to my friend, Senator Dorgan, to work out an arrangement for him to offer this amendment. This is something that should have been done, I am sorry to say, years ago, not weeks ago. I will work with the Senator from Arizona on this drug reimportation issue, which is important. At this stage, we simply cannot do it; I know of no way to get from here to there.

As I said--and the manager of the bill is here--if we can work something out by Monday, I will be happy to try to work something out. Nobody is trying to stop the Senator from offering that amendment. We have to have an agreement to move forward on the other stuff first because it is germane.

Yes, without losing my right to the floor.

Madam President, that is kind of an insight--I don't know who is on first, but that is pretty interesting.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 132, the nomination of William Sessions to be Chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the nomination of Robert Groves to be Director of the Census.