Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent that morning business be closed.

I now ask that motion be withdrawn.

I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 1128, H.R. 7005. I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Madam President, I ask the live quorum, mandatory under rule XXII, be waived.

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

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the joint resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the joint resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, there are three bills at the desk due for a second reading; is that correct?

I ask unanimous consent for their second reading.

Mr. President, following the remarks of the two leaders, the Senate will proceed to a period of morning business until noon today, with Senators allowed to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Those three bills that were reported are three tax bills. I have been in touch with the distinguished Republican leader. Those are placeholders for purposes of our having the opportunity to get to the Detroit bailout, recovery plan, whatever we wish to call it.

I talked to my staff; they were up virtually most of the night working with the Banking Committee from the House and the Senate, and there are two remaining issues that have been discussed with the White House. I am confident those matters can be resolved within the next hour or so. They are both important issues, but I think they can be resolved. That having been done, we will confer, Senator McConnell and I, and decide how we are going to proceed. I think it would be to everyone's advantage that we move first, but we will have to wait and see how. The House can do that if they choose to.

We would hope they can complete work on this Detroit situation tonight or tomorrow. Then we have to wait for the White House to determine what, if anything, they are going to do with requesting the other money from the TARP money; that is, the bank bailout. That decision has not been made yet.

Members, I have received calls, as I am sure my distinguished counterpart has, that people have obligations at home, there are a number of important foreign meetings people wish to be involved in that they have set on their calendars for longstanding periods of time. These are not pleasure trips, they are business trips representing the Senate. We hope to be able to complete work here as soon as possible. The problem is we have to wait and see how we move through this. The Senate, being the unique legislative body it is, and it has been, one or two people can slow things down quite a bit. We hope that is not the case. We know what we have to try to do. We need to do it as quickly as possible.

So I hope that, in fact, can be done; that is, the legislation can be put before us and a vote taken.

On the reading of bills, the second reading, I would object to any further

proceedings with respect to these bills. I do it en bloc.

Mr. President, the lifeline we throw to Detroit has to be one that gets them to shore, not part way to shore. That is why I indicated in my opening statement that during the night there has been a lot of give-and-take between the White House and the two banking committees.

As I reported earlier, I think there are only two major issues that are still outstanding, and I am confident and hopeful they can be resolved in the next few hours.

The issue before us is, what can we do to stabilize an industry that has direct impact upon 2.5 million jobs in this country. The mere fact that we were trying to work something out yesterday caused the stock market to go up almost 300 points. The American people want us to try to resolve this issue.

But my friend is right. As strongly connected as I am to organized labor, it cannot be a one-sided proposal that is brought before the Senate. I am confident it will not be. I have talked to the Big Three operators. Some are held in low repute. But that withstanding, I think we are in a situation now where we all have to kind of join hands, recognize that this is going to be a compromise, we are going to try to work something out. That is what legislation is all about, the art of compromise and consensus building. That is where we are now. As I indicated, I think we are very close to having something that I think we can bring before the body sometime today.

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

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

Mr. President, as a little boy in Searchlight, as I was growing up, I used to listen every day to the ``Game of the Day'' baseball on the radio, and because there was no entertainment in Searchlight, I loved those games. I listened to them. Dizzy Dean was one of the announcers, and a guy named Al Helfer was one of the announcers. I thought they were very good, very entertaining. In the seventh inning stretch, Dizzy would always sing ``The Wabash Cannonball.''

Now, in my youthful mind, one thing I wanted to do more than anything else was to be a baseball player. In Searchlight, we tried to play baseball. We had a little field there. We did not have enough boys for the team, so we had one girl who made up the nine players. Her name was Mary Ann Meyers. She still lives in Searchlight. She was really quite good--frankly, better than a lot of the boys. She rode a horse bareback as well as anyone could ride with a saddle.

I spent a lot of my daydreaming playing baseball. I had a little paddle of some kind, and I would throw rocks in the air and hit them with that. That was part of my entertainment. I did that for a long time.

As they had no high school in Searchlight, I went to Basic High School in Henderson, NV, which was 45 miles away. I stayed with people during the week and would come home on a lot of weekends if I could. They did not have a freshman baseball team. They had no baseball team. I guess maybe if there had been a freshman good enough--I do not really think that was the case; I do not think they let freshmen be on the baseball team. My sophomore year, I went out for baseball. I was one of two sophomores to make that team. It was so exciting for me. That team was so good, we were so good, we won the Nevada State Championship. The first year they had a championship, we won. We beat Fallon. We had a pitcher by the name of Rey Martinez who later became my chief of staff and was a left-handed pitcher who was very good. We were so good that we beat all of the Nevada schools and all of the California schools. Even though we were from that little industrial town in southern Nevada, we were the California Interscholastic Federation champions. We beat them all.

Now, I would like to stand before everybody here and say that one reason that was the case is I was instrumental in getting hits at the right time and making stellar plays, stealing bases as I dreamed I would do as a kid. But I sat on the bench most of the time. I caught batting practice. I was a catcher. But I felt that I was part of that team and will never forget my experiences there playing baseball.

My friend Don Wilson, who was the other sophomore, was a State batting champion. He was terrific, a great athlete. He went on the play at Arizona State. But we had tremendous athletes. We had Norman Craft, who was our center fielder, who was a Big 10 football player playing at Indiana.

I went to college on a football-baseball scholarship. I was a lot bigger then than I am now. I weighed almost 190 pounds. But I got hurt early in my college athletic career--meaning football--and I came to the realization that I was not the athlete of my dreams. I was not big enough, fast enough, or good enough. So my athletic career, as a freshman in college, ended. I fought after that, but not as the baseball-football player I dreamed of being.

The reason I mention all of this today is to tell everyone within the sound of my voice how much I love baseball. I love athletics. I think it is so good and it is so wonderful that women can now participate just like men--boys and girls can participate. When I was in high school, the only thing my wife could do--she was far more athletic than I am or I was--is be a cheerleader. That was all she could do. There was not a single program for girls. So now we have programs equally for girls and boys, and that is exiting and wonderful, and I am happy that is the case.

The reason I mention all of this today is that yesterday in Las Vegas was a very big day for people who love baseball. It was an important day, but in some ways it was kind of a sentimental day because the great Greg Maddux announced his retirement.

Gregg Maddux, one of the greatest baseball players of all time, announced

his retirement yesterday after 23 seasons in the big leagues. Greg Maddux announced his retirement. He is such a fine person, unassuming. We see all of the negative things about athletes today, their taking steroids and fighting at bars and carrying guns into bars and shooting themselves in the leg and having dogs fight each other, not setting good examples for kids as to how they treat women. Greg Maddux stood for everything that they didn't--a wonderful family man, beautiful children, who prizes his family.

This is not a speech about some guy who played baseball in Las Vegas. This is a statement about one of the greatest baseball players of all time. You take the thousands of people who have pitched in the big leagues, Greg Maddux, this small man, relatively small man, who never lifted a weight in his life, is eighth on the all-time list of pitchers, Cy Young, go down the list, Warren Spahn, Greg Maddux; he is 10 games away from being in the top four or five--10 wins.

Another reason it is so important is that Greg Maddux is from Las Vegas. He never left. He went away for 23 years, spent half the year playing baseball, sometimes more than that, but he always came home. Las Vegas is home. That is where his kids go to school.

So this is a statement about a wonderful man who is a role model for anyone who participates in athletics but also someone Nevada is very proud of. He went to Valley High School, a high school that is still there. There are wonderful stories about this boy who went to that high school. A columnist from a prominent newspaper--I think that is where it was--a few years ago wrote a story, a column about Greg Maddux. He was a senior in high school. They had this skinny little sophomore who was going to pitch against him and his team. And he looked forward to batting against this skinny little sophomore who was pitching for Valley High School. And he describes in the column he wrote, he struck out every time he got up against this guy and they were, of course, beaten. Stories like that are all over Nevada about what he did in his youth.

Greg will soon be 43 years old. Yesterday he held a press conference. In effect what he said is: Thank you to everybody in baseball. He said: I still think I could play this game but not as well as I would like to, so it is time to say goodbye. And that is what he did.

His accomplishments are legendary; 355 games he won. He won more games than Roger Clemens, and he did it without taking any supplements of any kind. I repeat what he told me. He said: You know, I have never lifted a weight. He said: When I was in high school, a physical therapist said: Don't mess with your body. And Gregg may have pushed a few weights with his legs, but no way did he touch his arm, not because his arm had such great power, because he didn't throw as hard as a lot of pitchers, but his accuracy was nearly perfect.

Of the seven men in front of him on the victory list, only Warren Spahn pitched in the second half of the last century. He is the only 300 game winner to have more than 3,000 strikeouts and less than 1,000 walks. He averaged less than 30 walks per year. That is a remarkable accomplishment; the first player in the history of baseball to win at least 15 games in 17 straight years; the only player in the history of baseball to win 13 games over 20 years.

He won four straight Cy Young awards. He won a World Series with the Atlanta Braves. He won 18 Gold Gloves. What is a Gold Glove? That means you are the best fielder in baseball at that position. He won 18 of them. No one will ever match that. That is for his fielding excellence. That is the most of any player ever, 18 Gold Gloves.

How did he do this, a man who didn't throw that hard, wasn't a monster on the mound being 6 foot 9? He was about my size, a little heavier than I am. He was able to do that because of his consistency, his control, and his mental acuity. He studied those batters. He knew their weaknesses and their strengths, and everyone marveled at how he could throw that baseball.

The stories will go on and on about Greg Maddux, but one story is not legend. It is true. For a sportswriter's entertainment, he said: Have the catcher hold up his glove and then we will make sure the catcher can't see so he can't move his hand. Let's see if you can hit that glove.

Think about that. The catcher is, in effect, blindfolded. He didn't do it once. He did it three times. Think about that. For those of us who have ever thrown a baseball, to hit that target is pretty significant. He is a man of humility. I just am so proud of Greg Maddux. I don't know what team I am going to root for now, because when he was with the Cubs, I was a Cub fan. When he was with the Atlanta Braves, I was a Braves fan. As difficult as it was playing for those losers, the Padres; they wouldn't get him any runs, I followed them because I knew Greg Maddux was on that team. And then he went with the Dodgers, and I became a Dodger fan. I don't know who I am going to cheer for. I really don't know.

His brother is a wonderful man. He was a long-time pitching coach for the Milwaukee Brewers. He has now, I understand, gone with the Texas Rangers. Whenever he came to town, I tried to visit with him. He was also a major league pitcher, 5 or 6 years older than his little brother Greg, but always looked out for him and was always so proud of him.

I want the record to reflect that America lost from baseball a great human being yesterday. But for us in Nevada, the place of his home, we still have Greg Maddux. His ties to Las Vegas make us all so very proud. Local historians will say--and rightfully so--that Greg Maddux is the greatest athlete in the history of our State.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until 2:30 today.

Mr. President, I just finished a meeting with my staff representative who has been working with the two Banking Committees and the White House on the Detroit situation that we are trying to work out. I think there has been a whole lot of progress made. I hope the White House will be meeting with Senator McConnell in the near future and we can start moving forward.

We very much want to complete this as soon as possible. I have had calls from lots of different Senators, all having very important things to do and places to go dealing with their service as a Senator. I think it is going to be very difficult to get a vote today. The legislation is not drafted yet. Most of it is, but there are a couple provisions they are working on. So I think it is very unlikely there will be votes today--not impossible but unlikely. It is more likely there will be something tomorrow.

But everyone should understand, if we have a number of Senators who are objecting, who want to slow this down--they have a right to do that; I understand that--we are going to complete the process. That being the case--everyone knows the rules around here; and I do--it may be necessary, if we get some push back from some of our Senators, where we have to go through the process of moving to proceed and filing cloture and all that kind of stuff--if that is the case, everyone should understand we are going to work until we complete this.

The American people want us to make a decision. I am fairly confident that all the work that has gone into this is going to bear fruit, that we will be able to pass legislation that will be good legislation. It will help the workers. When I say ``the workers,'' not only those people who are directly employed by the automobile manufacturers, but the suppliers, the bondholders, and on and on down the road. A lot of people are dependent on our doing something that is appropriate, and I think that can be done.

We are going to have a vote on this sometime. We can either have it sooner or we can have it later. But everyone should understand there will be no stalling us from doing this. We are going to complete this legislation. That may mean--and people have heard me talk about this before, but

everyone knows I am serious about this--that may mean we have to work this weekend. I hope that is not the case. Today is Tuesday. But the rules are as they are and we may have to work through this. We cannot let a few people stop us from doing the people's business.

I think Senator McConnell and I have the same view; we discussed it this morning, that we want to move forward making sure all parties feel they have been part of the process. There is nothing we could do that would be perfect. So we can only do the best we can; that is, to work through this legislation with the art of compromise. We have had to do that on this piece of legislation.

So we will have to wait until the White House completes their meetings with the leadership on the Republican side. Hopefully, today, we can have a better direction as to when we can complete this.

I think the seriousness of what we are engaged in with Detroit and the financial bailout of the banking institutions and the financial apparatus of this country has been very hard and difficult, and we need to keep moving forward. As everyone knows, thousands of jobs have been lost, and we need to get our country back in a position where we are talking about and feel good about the jobs that are being gained, not the jobs being lost.

So having said that, Mr. President, I will be happy to answer any questions anyone has. They know how to get ahold of me.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators allowed to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, and that the morning hour expire at 4:30 p.m.

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

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