Floor Statements

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to welcome the 39th Biennial Clergy-Laity Congress of the Greek Orthodox Church of America to Washington, D.C. This is a gathering of the clergy and lay leaders of the 550 parishes across the country with their hierarchs-- bishops and metropolitans.

I am pleased that the metropolitan with jurisdiction over my State, Metropolitan Gerasimos of San Francisco, and the parishes from Ely, Las Vegas, McGill, and Reno are well represented at this meeting. The Greek Orthodox community in America is an integral part of our national mosaic. My State of Nevada has many very successful citizens in both the government and private sectors whose families trace their origins to Greece.

His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, the leader and representative of this national community, serves as Exarch of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew--the spiritual leader of millions of Orthodox Christians around the world. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who on June 29, 2008, celebrated mass with Pope Benedict XVI at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, has also been awarded the highest civilian honor Congress can bestow, the Congressional Gold Medal.

With the blessings of Archbishop Demetrios, and under the leadership of the Order of St. Andrew of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox community has been an invaluable source of information for the United States Senate with regard to the numerous issues facing the nearly 2,000 year-old Ecumenical Patriarchate.

As a result of this warm relationship, on November 29, 2006, 73 U.S. Senators, including myself, signed a letter to President Bush expressing great concern about the religious freedom of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Turkey. According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's May 2008 annual report, legal recognition of religious minorities, such as the Greek Orthodox community, ``has not been implemented in Turkish law and practice.''

On behalf of my fellow Senators, I wish to welcome the priests and lay leaders in the 550 parishes across the country, the bishops, the Metropolitans of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, Denver, Atlanta, Detroit, San Francisco, and New Jersey; the Archbishops, and especially the Greek Orthodox community of Nevada to this year's Clergy-Laity Congress here in Washington, DC. I wish all of you the best for a successful and productive event.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we now proceed to Calendar No. 703, S. 1046.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Voinovich substitute amendment which is at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Veterans' Affairs Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 4289 and the Senate now proceed to its consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, that there be no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to this matter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration of H. Con. Res. 236.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to; the amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to; the preamble, as amended, be agreed to; and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate. I further ask that any statements relating to this measure be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from the consideration of S. Res. 610, and the Senate proceed to its consideration.

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 ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 777, S. Res. 576.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment to the resolution be agreed; that the resolution, as amended, be agreed to; that the amendment to the preamble be agreed to; that the preamble, as amended, be agreed to; and that all motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, en bloc.

Mr. President, S. 3257, introduced today by Senator Specter, is at the desk. I ask for its first reading.

I now ask for its second reading but object to my own request.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 2 p.m., Monday, July 14; 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 proceed to a period of morning business for up to 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each; that following morning business, the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. 2731, global AIDS legislation, as under the previous order.

Mr. President, we are going to be on this global AIDS bill, and I would hope that Senators Biden, Lugar, and anyone else who wants to give a statement regarding this matter do that Monday afternoon. If there are amendments people want to offer, they can do that. We should finish this bill, I hope, relatively soon. We have a finite list of amendments.

Even though this has been a very grueling process, hopefully--with all the concern we have had the last several months with, in effect, not getting along with the Republicans and vice versa--I hope the work that was put in this week in the Senate, where we have been able to accomplish some difficult issues--Medicare, FISA, housing, and moving forward on this legislation--I hope it paves the way for us, during the next 3 weeks, 4 weeks, to complete even more for the American people.

We know that gas prices are on the minds of everyone, and we hope even next week to have some bipartisan legislation on energy that I think would help stop some of the hemorrhaging going on with the problems we have dealing with energy.

We will have no votes on Monday. We will have some votes Tuesday morning.

Mr. 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 Senator McConnell and myself, there will be an hour for debate prior to a cloture vote on the motion to disagree in the House amendments with respect to H.R. 3221, the housing reform legislation. Senators should expect a cloture vote to begin sometime around an hour from now.

Last night we reached an agreement to consider the nomination of General Petreaus and Lieutenant General Odierno at a time to be determined by me and the Republican leader. We will set a time to do those votes. There will be 20 minutes of debate, equally divided and controlled between the chairman and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, prior to votes on their confirmations.

Finally, last night we were unable to get consent to move to global AIDS legislation, and therefore it necessitated my filing cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill. I am hopeful we can reach some kind of agreement on a way to proceed.

I had a conversation on the floor with Senator Kyl, a public conversation on the floor. He is hopeful and confident something can be worked out. I hope that, in fact, is the case. As I have indicated, this is one of President Bush's pieces of legislation that he is pushing. We, on this side, are ready to move forward on it. We would like to be on something that is agreed upon between Senators Lugar and Biden and other people who have some interest in this matter. I hope that can be done; otherwise, we are going to have a cloture vote on that tomorrow.

I hope we can work something out. If not, I hope we would be allowed to proceed to this legislation. As I have indicated to the Republican leader, if cloture is not invoked on the motion to proceed, then that will be the end of that legislation for this work period. If necessary, we will have to come back to it in the next work period. But with time constraints we have this work period, this is our opportunity to complete that legislation.

I have been told that S. 3236 is at the desk and is due for a second reading.

It obviously is not ready yet.

I am sorry about that, Mr. President.

We are going to vote in a short time on cloture, a final cloture vote on this housing bill. It is so important we get this done as quickly as possible. I am disappointed in that Senator Shelby and Senator Dodd, who worked very hard, had a little tight managers' package that would have made it so much better to take to the House, but I have been told Senator DeMint is objecting to that. As we know, in the Senate, one person can hold up things, and it is my understanding he is going to hold up things.

The reason it is important we do this and move forward on this legislation, Mr. President, is that in the news today, the Associated Press reports that the number of homeowners stung by the rout in the U.S. housing market jumped as foreclosure filings grew by more than 50 percent compared to June a year ago.

Nationwide, 252,363 homes received foreclosure notices in June. That is 1 month. Foreclosure filings increased a year ago in all but 11 States; in 39 States they went up.

The highest foreclosure rates: California, Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Nevada. This is a very desperate situation we find. It is more than the people whose homes are being foreclosed upon; it affects neighborhoods where the homes are being foreclosed upon; it affects communities where the homes are being foreclosed upon. It affects, of course, the lenders who do not want to foreclose upon the homes. It is a loss for them when they do that. It is a loss for the community where the home is located because they lose revenues, tax revenues for that home.

So foreclosure is a lose-lose situation. I hope everyone would understand the importance of it. I hope Senator DeMint would reconsider holding up this managers' package which has been worked on for more than 2 months now by Senators Dodd and Shelby and other Senators.

But we are going to send it back to the House today, I hope today. I also hope that Senators would not require the 30 hours to be used. But we will see. They have that right, to use at least part of that 30 hours postcloture.

I am glad we are moving along. I hope we can complete our work today. If not, we will complete it tomorrow for this week.

Mr. President, my distinguished colleague is right, gas prices are a tremendous issue. We in Nevada feel it very deeply. The average price of gasoline is now $4.11 or $4.12 a gallon. In Nevada it is much higher than that.

We have to do something, there is no question, with domestic production. Right now, we have, counting ANWR--and the Republicans thankfully have stopped raising that as an issue; they do not want to drill in ANWR; that is good. But even counting ANWR, and all of the offshore, we have less than 3 percent of the oil in the world. So we cannot produce our way out of the problems we have, because we in America use more than 25 percent of every barrel of oil that is used every day. We use more than 25 percent of it. But we can do better with our domestic production, and we need to do that.

The Republican bill that has been introduced does not have a single line in it that deals with renewables. But I accept the invitation of the Republican leader and I hope he accepts our invitation. Let's work together to try to get something done as it relates to domestic production.

In the other areas, as we know, there are 68 million acres available for drilling right now, 68 million acres. How much is 68 million acres? Look at a map of the United States. Look at the State of Nevada. If you discount Alaska, we are the sixth largest State in the Union. We make up about 68 million acres. From the southern tip of Nevada to the top is more than 700 miles; across the top of the State of Nevada is more than 400 miles; a lot of space. That is how much area is left available to drill right now. We ask and invite the oil companies to start drilling, find out where in the 68 million acres there is oil. We know there is oil. I also invite the oil companies to look at the 8 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico that we legislatively, less than 2 years ago, allowed them to explore and drill.

We know we need to do a better job producing domestically. We are going to do our very best to do that. But we hope there would also be an agreement that any oil that is drilled and produced in the waters off the coast of America be used in America. That is important. And we have had test votes in that regard.

When there was a question about whether there would be drilling in ANWR, we asked that oil--and I believe the amendment was offered by Senator Wyden, an amendment that said: Okay, we can drill oil out of ANWR. You must use that oil in the United States. All but 16 Senators said: That is absolutely right.

One of the 16 Senators who said no was John McCain. I hope John McCain would join us in saying that the oil we get offshore should be used in the United States. In the past, obviously, he has disagreed with that. I do not think it is fair that we drill in the territorial waters of our country and then ship that oil overseas.

We also have to deal with speculation. The Republican leader mentioned that their bill talks about adding staff to the CFTC, the entity that controls some of the trading that takes place with oil. We also agree there should be something done. I am having a meeting today, and we are going to make a decision as to what that legislation should be. So we share that with our Republican friends and hopefully they will join us in that regard.

One thing that is not in the Republican legislation that we think is so vitally important to use at this time, as did this President's father when he was President, is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve we have in America, which is 97 or 98 percent filled. Why did we fill it? For emergencies. I think for emergencies such as this, as was done with his father. Once you start tapping that, the price of gasoline goes down very quickly so we would hope there would be efforts made by this administration to start taking oil out of the reserve. I think there is room for us to work together; that is, Democrats and Republicans to try to meet the expectations of the American people.

Mr. President, under an order entered yesterday with respect to Executive Calendar Nos. 665 and 666, I now ask unanimous consent that upon conclusion of the cloture vote with respect to the House message to accompany H.R. 3221, regardless of the outcome, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the nominations as provided for under the conditions and limitations of the previous order; further, that upon conclusion of the debate or yielding back of time on the nominations, the nominations be set aside until 2 p.m. today, at which time the Senate then proceed to vote on confirmation, as specified in the previous order.

Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, I have been advised by Senators Dodd and Shelby that they likely will be able to finish their work on the housing bill today.

We have also pending a cloture vote tomorrow morning on the PEPFAR bill. I have had a conversation with the Republican assistant leader and we kind of know where we are on this issue. We could, with consent, move that vote up today or do it in the morning. Whatever, we on this side would be satisfied to do it today.

I have had a conversation with Senator Biden, who has helped a great deal on this piece of legislation, and he said he was going to confer with Senator Lugar to see if the last kinks can be worked out. Frankly, that is doubtful. So we can either have that cloture vote in the morning or this afternoon, and we await the word of the minority as to what they wish to do on that issue.

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

Mr. President, we have worked very hard tonight trying to come up with an agreement to move forward. We have been close, but close doesn't count on Senate business. We have a most important bill we are working on, which is the global AIDS bill. It is a bill that the President supports. We have been in touch with his people during the week. There are no requests of Democrats to offer amendments. We have been working with the distinguished Republican assistant leader, Senator Kyl. There has been a proposed 13 amendments, as I recall. We have agreed to seven of those amendments. The others, at this stage, we have been unable to work on. We have tried to work on ways of not having Senators come tomorrow and vote and wind up at the same place on Monday. But there has been a Senator--or two--on the Republican side who, I assume, wants to show that he has a lot of power as a Senator. Any one Senator has a lot of power. So at this stage, it appears that one Senator is going to require all Senators to come to vote tomorrow at 5:21 in the afternoon. That is when time runs out on the housing legislation. And following that, which will complete the housing legislation, we will send it back to the House. Following that, we will automatically have a vote on PEPFAR, the global AIDS bill.

What we wanted to do is avoid those votes and come in Monday, and we would wind up at the same place. But we were not able to get agreement. So we will do directly what we could have done indirectly, but we would have wound up the same way.

First, I appreciate everyone's patience. The Presiding Officer has spent a lot of time here. Senator Dodd, who is chairman of the committee, has been here because it is a housing piece of legislation. We have had a number of conversations with Senator Shelby. The staff has been tremendous. We have had staff working on trying to resolve these amendments. I really appreciate Senator Durbin, my friend and assistant leader, who has been here throughout the night.

I ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S. 2731, the global AIDS bill, occur on Monday, July 14, at 5:30, p.m., with the hour prior to the cloture vote equally divided and controlled between the leaders or their designees; that if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be yielded back, the motion to proceed be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and the Senate proceed to consideration of the bill.

Mr. President, there was an objection, I understand, by my friend.

There has been tremendous work on this bill for months and months. The principal workers on this bill have been the chairman of the committee, Senator Biden, and the ranking member, Senator Lugar. They have worked on this for months. I have, for more than a month, had statements made to me: Give us another day, another day. That has been going on for a long time. We are in a situation here where we ran out of days, and we had to move forward. Senator Lugar and Senator Biden have accepted numerous amendments from Members wanting to make this bill better. I am confident they did make the bill better. But the fact is--I want everyone to understand--the work on this bill did not start tonight. Senators Lugar and Biden thought all the work had been done on it.

So we are where we are. Senators have a right to suggest changes to a bill, even though we have spent a lot of time on it.

I say to my friend, the distinguished Republican whip, we are anxious to finish this bill. I personally think it is good legislation. I think it is something we as a country need to do. But also understand that we have been willing to accept on this piece of legislation any germane amendments that relate to this bill. We have even agreed tonight to work on some things that are not, but we have agreed to do that in an effort to move this forward. I hope over the weekend, perhaps even tomorrow before we leave, maybe something can be done. If not, maybe Monday we can do something. Otherwise, we find ourselves in this position. Monday we are on the bill. We would at that time, of course, have to file cloture on the bill itself.

Now, I think we could constructively use some time. If there are Senators who want to change this legislation and do it in a germane fashion, we should spend that 30 hours--actually the 2 days it would take for cloture to ripen--on trying to improve the bill. We would be happy to do that. We would even be willing to consider, as my friend knows, the junior Senator from Arizona, amendments, as we have talked about tonight, that may not be technically germane. I hope we can do that.

But as we have seen in this Presidential election year, we have two of our Senators running for President, and it makes it extremely difficult to legislate in a way that we perhaps would like to. But that is the process in which we find ourselves. So hopefully something will work out well during the night or, if not, maybe tomorrow or, if not, over the weekend. I hope we could spend our week constructively disposing of this legislation the President wants.

We will finish the legislation very likely, one way or another, next week. I cannot imagine the President's own party would stop this bill from passing. But we have been surprised in the past. So we will do what we can to help the President. This is a bill I believe in. The vast majority of the Democrats--in fact, I do not know of a Democrat who does not like the bill. But we hope there would be some reasonableness on the other side to try to help the President's program also.

Sure.

No. To debate and vote on them.

That is right. I am sorry I did not make that clear.

So Mr. President, I have asked the first consent, which was that we have no votes until Monday. That was objected to.

So, Mr. President, now I ask unanimous consent that on Friday, after all the postcloture time has expired on the motion to disagree--that time occurring at 5:21 p.m.--the Senate proceed to vote on the motion to disagree to the amendment of the House adding a new title and inserting a new section to the amendment of the Senate to H.R. 3221; that upon disposition of that motion, the Senate then proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 2731, the global AIDS bill; that if cloture is invoked, then all postcloture time be deemed expired, and on Monday, July 14, following a period of morning business, the motion to proceed be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that the Senate then proceed to the consideration of S. 2731; that if cloture is not invoked, then a motion to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked be considered to have been entered.