Floor Statements

Madam President, following leader remarks, the Senate will resume consideration of the appropriations bill H.R. 1105. The time until 11:45 will be equally divided and controlled between Senators Inouye and McCain. At 11:45, the Senate will vote in relation to the McCain amendment. The Senate will recess from 12:30 until 2:15 for the weekly caucus luncheons. There is almost no question that additional rollcall votes will be expected throughout the day as we work through amendments on this bill. After we do the McCain amendment, I know Senator Wicker was here yesterday on an issue in which he believes strongly. I think that would be a good one to lay down. Senator Coburn has four amendments. They have not been drafted. We have asked him to make sure they are drafted as soon as possible so we can work our way through those.

Senator Thune has an amendment he wants to offer. This is on the fairness doctrine. Senator Vitter has an amendment dealing with abortion or matters related thereto. We should get to that.

I have spoken to one of the Republican Senators yesterday and that Senator is wanting to offer an amendment to cut the spending of this appropriations bill to President Bush's budget levels. We would hope that could be laid down soon. That is an important amendment for the minority and certainly one that deserves debate.

That is a brief overview of some of the amendments I know are there and we should get to as soon as we can.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at 5:45 today, the Senate vote in relation to the Hutchison amendment, with the 4 minutes prior to the vote equally divided and controlled between Senators Hutchison and Inouye or their designees, and that the previous order prohibiting amendments prior to a vote remain in effect. Madam President, the 4 minutes will cause a vote not to be right at 5:45, but it will be close.

Madam President, I alert all Members that we have a number of people who want to speak in relation to the Coburn amendments. We also are told by the Republican staff that there

are a number of Senators who would be willing to offer amendments on the Republican side. I have spoken to the Republican staff, and they say they can lay down two of those and debate them tonight. That is fine with us.

Tomorrow, of course, we are going to come in at 9:30. Then we have to go to the House because Prime Minister Brown is here. That is at 10:30. And then there are other things going on. The Republican leader and I have been invited to a lunch with Prime Minister Brown, and there are other things. We have a steering meeting of the Republicans, I understand, during the lunch hour--I think that is what it is called. We have a chairman lunch. We are not going to be able to have the votes on any of these amendments until after we finish these things tomorrow. That will give us the afternoon to have some votes and find out where we are on this bill tomorrow.

We have had some good debate today. These have been very difficult amendments. I think they go to the heart of the bill, especially those offered by Senator McCain, Senator Ensign, and Senator Hutchison. The rest of them I will have comments on at a later time.

I hope Senators understand where we are and where we are headed on this legislation.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed to S. 520.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to this matter be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Wednesday, March 4; that following the prayer and the 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 resume consideration of H.R. 1150, the Omnibus appropriations bill; further that the Senate recess at 10:40 a.m. until 12 noon for the joint meeting of Congress.

Madam President, at 11 a.m. tomorrow, as I announced, there will be a joint meeting of Congress with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Senators attending the joint meeting should gather in the Chamber at 10:30 a.m. to proceed as a body to the Hall of the House of Representatives.

Due to the joint meeting and other Member meetings, Senators should expect votes early tomorrow afternoon. We are not going to be able to get any votes out of the way in the morning because we come in at 9:30 and leave at 10:30.

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

Mr. President, following the remarks of the two leaders, the Senate will consider the Omnibus appropriations bill. The bill will be open for debate and amendments. There will be no rollcall votes today as we announced previously. Senators should expect the next vote to occur prior to the caucus luncheons tomorrow. There will be a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday at 11 a.m. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will address Members of Congress in the Hall of the House of Representatives. Senators are encouraged to gather in the Senate Chamber at 10:30, those who wish to, to proceed to the House as a body so we can get there in time for the 11 o'clock session.

Mr. President, as a majority, we have done a good job of showing that the Senate can act in a reasonable manner. We have had amendments. We have shown good faith by allowing amendments on basically everything. This bill that is now before us is a big bill. I know there will be speeches given about how big it is. But keep in mind what is in the bill. Last year, we couldn't work anything out with the President, so we funded everything except Defense, Homeland Security, and military construction with a continuing resolution that took us until March 6. March 6 is upon us. The reason I am talking about the bill being the size it is, remember, it includes appropriations for the year dealing with Agriculture--extremely important--Commerce, Energy, Treasury, Interior, Labor, legislative branch--I was chairman of that subcommittee for a long time, and very important items are included in that--State Department. Of course, there are lots of other things that go into those. I have just mentioned the main name on the bill that is in the omnibus.

This process has been as open as anything could be. The full committee was open. Each one of the subcommittees had full input by all ranking members. It is time we move on to get into a regular process where we have not 9 bills but 12 bills that we bring before the Senate. That is what I intend to do.

As we have shown good faith, I think the Republicans have shown good faith. Although there are some amendments I wish they had not offered, that is how things work out here. On this bill, we have to make sure that reciprocity is also the same. We have shown good faith. I have had a lot of people come to me and say: Look, this bill is so important. Let's not have any amendments. Let's go ahead and get 60 votes and get it out of here. I think that is not the right thing to do. As I have announced, there will be amendments. As much as we can, we are not going to have a bunch of amendments pending because we are working on a very short timeframe, and we will work as closely as we can with the minority. We have two terrific managers of this bill, Senators Inouye and Cochran.

I was told Senator McCain was going to be here to offer an amendment. I was told he was going to offer an amendment and that we would have a CR and not the omnibus. That is a reasonable amendment to offer. I think that is appropriate. We will need a little time to talk about that. But I think

that is appropriate. I believe in reciprocity and good faith. I had a conversation the other day with the Republican leader. He didn't mention who was going to offer the amendment, but both of us thought there would be such an amendment offered.

I look forward to completing this legislation. We need to do it by Thursday. I hope we can work our way through this. If it is the CR amendment--and I have no other information other than staff told me walking in that that was going to be the case--I think that is an amendment that will take a little bit of time for us to discuss. There is not much to look at. It is probably one line long. I think I have made myself clear. This is an important piece of legislation for our country. It is an important piece of legislation for the Senate so we can get back to our regular appropriations process. We have done a good job of cutting, significantly, Government-directed spending. I have been on the record some time ago saying we have a constitutional obligation to make sure we are involved in how the country spends its money. We shouldn't leave how it is spent to bureaucrats in big offices here in Washington, made up of people who I don't think know my State as well as I do.

We should have a good, stout debate on a number of issues in the next few days and hopefully move on to other matters next week.

Mr. President, as I have indicated, the omnibus bill has been fully vetted by the various committees, Democrats and Republicans alike. As to the issue the Republican leader raised, that people need more time to review this, this has been on the Web site for well more than a week. People could look at it and have it memorized by now. We also know the issues the Republican leader raised, that President Obama is talking about health care. Does anyone think that we can not do anything dealing with health care? People have said: How much is it going to cost to try to take care of health care?

How much is it going to cost to do nothing about health care? Fifty million people have no health insurance and millions of others are uninsured. If they have a private physician, every time they get sick and hurt, they go right to the emergency room. The highest priced medical care rendered anyplace in the Nation is in these emergency rooms. It drives up taxes, the cost of a doctor, the cost of hospitalization and, of course, insurance premiums. So we have to do something with health care.

Energy? We are importing 70 percent of our oil. We have to do something about energy. Education? We are failing American children by not doing more for education. So these issues we are going to take up in the future should have nothing to do with getting this most important legislation passed.

We are looking forward to moving this matter as quickly as possible. It is something that is important for the country because we have a lot of issues we need to get to after we fund the Government--something we should have done last year but we could not because of the difficulty we had working with President Bush.

I think what Senator Inouye and Senator Cochran have done is in keeping with the traditions of this body in meeting the needs of the American people. There is no wasteful spending in this most important piece of legislation. It is important to all 50 States. I am hopeful and confident we will pass this in the next few days.

Mr. President, before my friend leaves the floor, I have had the opportunity to listen to not all but 80 percent of what he said. I had meetings going on in my office, and I had not been able to watch it all.

As the distinguished Senator from New Jersey knows, I have locked arms with Congressman and now Senator from New Jersey for many years. In fact, my votes in years past have not always been in the majority, but they have always been something I felt comfortable doing and still feel comfortable doing.

I appreciate the statement made by my friend from New Jersey. I am committed to work with him to see what

we can do to resolve the injustice that is taking place 90 miles off the shore of America and, once and for all, give those people who live in Las Vegas--people do not realize the largest number of Cuban Americans live in Florida, next is New Jersey, and, surprisingly, next is Nevada.

I worked with my friends there, Tony Alamo and many others, over the years to try to bring justice to an unjust system. I appreciate very much the statement made by my friend from New Jersey. I look forward to working with him on all other issues.

Yes.

Mr. President, Virginia, Nevada, New Jersey, and the other 47 States are well served by my friend from New Jersey.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate resumes consideration of H.R. 1105 tomorrow, Tuesday, March 3, the time until 11:45 a.m. be for debate with respect to the McCain amendment No. 592, with the time equally divided and controlled between Senators Inouye and McCain or their designees, with no amendment in order to the amendment prior to a vote in relation to the amendment; that at 11:45 a.m., the Senate proceed to a vote in relation to the amendment No. 592.

Mr. President, while I have two of my Republican colleagues on the floor, and others, of course, listening, I have been told by the Republican leadership there is a number of extremely important amendments from the minority's perspective. No. 1 is this amendment that Senator McCain has offered. Another one that comes to my mind is one that a number of people on the other side of the aisle have talked about often, which would lower the amount of spending to the CR level. I do not how much money that is. So we are waiting for someone to offer that.

We heard a presentation made by Senator Wicker this afternoon that he has an abortion-related amendment. We understand Senator Vitter has an abortion-related amendment. I have had several conversations today with Dr. Coburn, and he has been very constructive in working with us in coming up with four amendments, none of which I like. But there are four amendments, and we are going to work our way through these, where people have ample time to talk about them, as soon as we can.

But I thought it was important, before we have our caucus tomorrow, to at least get this one amendment the minority feels very strongly about. We will work our way through this and see what happens tomorrow.

There is no end to amendments that could be offered on this bill. This is a very big bill. It is nine subcommittees. I hope everyone would focus on what would happen if we could pass this bill. It would be good for the institution. We could get back to a process where we do 12 individual appropriations bills. That would be so important because this is not the way to legislate, having these great big bills. We have done it in the last several years, and it is not in keeping with--I am no longer a member of the Appropriations Committee, but I was on the Appropriations Committee for a quarter of a century, or something like that. It is a wonderful committee. But it has not been doing the job it is supposed to do for this institution.

So I hope we, by the end of this week, can pass this omnibus bill. I want to make sure the minority has the opportunity to offer amendments. But as I have indicated, there will come a time sometime when we will have to stop amending and try to get the matter passed. But that will come at a later time.

Mr. President, I am happy to.

The answer, through the Chair to my friend from South Dakota, is, yes, we are going to try to get to as many amendments as we can. With a bill as complex as this, we cannot stack up endless amendments, so we are going to have to work out a process where if we stack amendments, they will have to be few in number. And ``few'' is in the eye of the beholder. But the answer to the Senator's question: There is no reason that I know of--I do not know the subject matter of the Senator's amendment or amendments--but I have no reason to believe that we should not be able to get to his amendment.

The point I am trying to make is, we are not trying to avoid voting on tough amendments. I have outlined to you some pretty difficult amendments. Dr. Coburn did not think up his amendments riding the subway over from his office in one of the office buildings. A lot of thought has gone into his amendments, and they are very difficult amendments. I would like to avoid them, but I do not see any reason how I can do that. So in answer: I repeat, there will be time for amendments. It is just a question of when there will be enough time. Certainly tomorrow. And I hope we can work through these on Wednesday and have a better feel where we need to go.

Mr. President, I have been told we can do what we call wrap-up. It will take a minute or two. If my friend from Tennessee would withhold, we will rip right through this.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Con. Res. 9.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent 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 measure be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S.J. Res. 12.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the joint resolution be read a third time and passed, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid on the table, there be no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to this measure be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 473 and that the bill be referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., March 3; that following the prayer and the 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 resume consideration of H.R. 1105, the Omnibus appropriations bill; further, that the Senate recess from 12:30 to 2:15 p.m. for the weekly party conference lunches.