Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask that the Senate now stand in recess under the previous order.

Thereupon, the Senate, at 12:38 p.m., recessed until 2:15 p.m. and reassembled when called to order by the Presiding Officer (Mr. Carper).

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 13, 2008, at l0 a.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate to conduct a hearing on Tuesday, May 13, 2008, at 9:45 a.m., in room SD366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 10 a.m. in room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to hold a hearing entitled, ``Hearing on Mercury Legislation.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 13, 2008, at 10 a.m., in 215 Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Cracking the Code--Tax Reform for Individuals''.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 13, 2008, at 10:15 a.m., in room 407 of the Capitol Building, to conduct a closed briefing titled ``U.S. Policy Towards Sudan.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet on Tuesday, May 13, at 2:30 p.m. in Room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Successes and Shortfalls of Title IV of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act: Twenty Years of Self-Governance''.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Bulletproof Vest Partnership Program: Protecting Our Nation's Law Enforcement Officers'' on Tuesday, May 13, 2008, at 9:30 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 13, 2008, at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed hearing.

Mr. President, following leader time, the Senate will proceed to a period of morning business, with the time until 5:30 this evening equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. As has been previously announced, there will be no rollcall votes today. There will be votes, though, tomorrow, as early as 11 a.m.--probably about 11:10 a.m.--and we will begin voting in relation to the following items: McConnell amendment on energy, with a 60-vote threshold; the Reid amendment on energy, with a 60-vote threshold--of course, my name is on the amendment because I offered it as part of my leadership responsibilities, but that is an amendment that has been worked on very hard by Senator Dorgan of North Dakota--and passage of the flood insurance legislation. I say, Mr. President, it will be a good day for America when we pass that. That will affect millions of Americans. The Banking Committee did an outstanding job of getting it here ready for passage. Senators Dodd and Shelby did a wonderful job in completing that legislation. And we will also have, tomorrow, a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to H.R. 980, first responders collective bargaining. With that being the case, we will probably complete our last vote--let's see, we have four votes an hour--maybe about 12:15, something like that, we will start the last vote, give or take a few minutes.

So between now and the Memorial Day recess, we have a tremendous amount of work to do. There is so much unfinished business. But let me mention a few of the things we are going to complete or give it our very best.

The first responders collective bargaining bill: We will be on that tomorrow. The farm bill conference report: We expect the House to consider the conference report as early as Wednesday. We need to complete it before we leave this week, which brings me to the point: We are going to do everything we can to see that we can complete our business by noon on Friday. But that is no guarantee. There will have to be some cooperation among Senators; otherwise, we are going to have to work--I know this is difficult because people have responsibilities other places outside Washington, but we very likely could have some work Friday afternoon, hopefully not very late in the day. But I do not know. Everyone should be prepared and arrange their schedules accordingly.

We have this week and next week. One of the things we need to do is appoint conferees to the budget resolution. The House is expected to appoint conferees this week. There is a statutory 10-hour limitation on debate to go to conference. As Senators know, motions to instruct are in order. I will work with the Republican leader on an agreement to move the process forward in an orderly fashion; otherwise, we will do it in a disorderly fashion, and we will have only 10 hours to be disorderly.

We also have a statutory direction to complete a resolution of disapproval, either yes or no, regarding FCC media ownership rulemaking. The reason we are able to do this, Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma and I worked in the early 1990s to pass--and we did--a piece

of legislation that says if the administration or an agency promulgates a regulation, and we do not like it, we can overturn it. We have done that in the past, and that is what this is all about. It is a nondebatable motion to proceed to the resolution, and there are 10 hours of debate with no amendments in order.

We also have--even though we can say it quickly, it is going to take some time--the emergency supplemental, which will be on the floor next Wednesday. We need to complete this before the recess. We are not going to be panicked into completing this. We know there is enough money to fund the troops for a considerable period after the Memorial Day recess. We want to get it done, and we will do our best to get that done, but we are not going to be pushed into doing something we do not think is appropriate.

On judges, I committed to Senator McConnell that I would use my best efforts to have the Senate consider three court of appeals nominees before the Memorial Day recess. I have been working with Senator Leahy to meet that pledge. The nomination of Steven Agee to be a Fourth Circuit judge should be available for debate late this week or early next week.

We are also trying to move forward on two court of appeals nominees from Michigan. The problem we have had with that is Republicans on the Judiciary Committee complained that Chairman Leahy is moving these too quickly. So, Mr. President, they cannot have it both ways. If I am going to do what I said I would do, we need some cooperation from the Republicans. I cannot push the committee to take up nominees they do not want. It is my understanding these two appeals court nominees from Michigan have been worked out over a period of 6 years. It has taken a long time to get to where we are now. So I would hope the Republicans would back off their slow-walking this. Otherwise, we are not going to be able to complete these nominations before the Memorial Day recess.

Finally, we are going to do our utmost to get a vote on an energy package before we leave for the Memorial Day recess. I repeat, we will likely have to have votes on this Friday. We will do them as quickly as we can. There will be no votes on Monday. We have had a number of requests over many months for people who have things to do in their home States on that day. There will be no votes on Monday. So that is going to make everything very difficult next week because I have outlined the many different things we have to do.

Mr. President, over the past several days, we have seen a terrible tragedy unfold in Burma. The official death toll from that cyclone is unknown. But we know the number is in the tens of thousands. We have tens of thousands missing.

International aid organizations fear we are still in the beginning stages of this catastrophe. It is estimated that more than a million and a half people remain in desperate need of help. They are becoming more desperate every day.

Without international aid and expertise, many of these men, women, and children will likely lose their lives to starvation, dehydration, and disease--cholera, typhoid are two among them.

The relationship between the Burmese regime and the global community is complicated, and that is an understatement. In this hour of staggering desperation, the junta must put politics aside and accept the outstretched hand the world is extending to them.

Burma is a government run by dictators. They are nondemocratic. We have had problems with them for years. Senator McConnell has spoken on this floor over the years focusing attention on the nondemocratic process in Burma and how the international community should join the United States in doing something about this.

Today, finally, one American plane was allowed to land in the country--one. This is a start, but it is far few too many loads of supplies. Not only are the supplies having difficulty getting in, but the military folks in Burma are not allowing the international community to help, and they are the ones who have the expertise.

Each day that goes by is a sad day in that country. We have seen the pictures over the weekend of the children lying dead, having died from typhoid.

The junta must allow more supplies, provide visas to aid workers from around the world, and allow those workers access to regions and communities that are suffering very much.

Senator McConnell and I join together to say to the junta: Let the world in. Let us help.

Mr. President, on Friday, oil hit yet another record high. I do not know what it is today. It dropped 50 cents last night to more than $125 a barrel. But on Friday it was above $126 a barrel. If it drops--which we hope it does--to $110, $105, $100, $90, $95, it should not be a day of celebration. Oil is a difficult problem for our country.

The average price of a gallon of gasoline in America today is now above $3.60 a gallon. That is the average. In Nevada, it is more than $3.80 a gallon. Diesel--the fuel that moves the goods we buy--has hit $4.15, on an average, around the country.

Seven years ago, when President Bush took office, the average price for a gallon of gasoline was about $1.50. Now it is 2\1/2\ times more than that.

At first, the steady rise of gas prices was a nuisance. Then it became a burden. Now it is a full-blown crisis. More than 7 in 10 Americans now say gas prices have created financial hardships in their lives. Nevadans are paying, on average, $3,000 more per year for gasoline than they did 7 years ago.

Millions of working people all across America are now spending the first few hours of their workday earning back what they paid for their commute. It costs more than ever to heat and cool our homes. Everything costs more. We have a problem with these people who are paying--in Nevada, $3,000--more than they did 7 years ago for gasoline. It affects their house payments, car payments, their medicine, whether they can send their kids to college. It is very difficult--what kind of groceries they buy. It wipes out most vacations.

School districts in Nevada and around the country are forced to make cutbacks in the classroom because the cost of school buses has never been higher. I met with the officials of commercial airlines in the United States a short time ago in my office across the hall. They said almost 50 percent of the cost of flying an airplane in America today is fuel. It is not that way in Europe because the dollar is so weak they get it much cheaper than we do.

Small businesses are struggling under the burden of record-high shipping costs. The $60, $80 or more Americans are paying at the pump means less money for other necessities--I have mentioned some of them-- but the gas pump is just the tip of the iceberg. Almost every part of the economy is weighed down by the price of oil and gas.

The American people deserve both short-term and long-term ends to this crisis. Last year, Congress took the first step by passing new energy legislation that raised fuel economy standards for the first time in almost 30 years and required the Bush administration to investigate market price manipulation. But Republicans blocked our efforts to include a mandate for clean, renewable electricity, and we have seen very little action from the White House on market manipulation.

It is clearly time to take the next step by passing the Consumer First Energy Act, which will help lower prices in the short term and continues to curb our addiction and invest in renewable energy to avoid an even greater crisis in the long term.

First, this legislation includes a provision that ends the billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil companies whose executives have been hauling record profits while we pay record prices. Oil executives are making fortunes. The oil companies--these international cartels is what I call them--are making more money than any companies in the history of the world. Seven years ago, Vice President Cheney invited oil executives to the White House to write our national energy policy. Is it any surprise that 7 years later the only ones who have benefited from that policy are the oil companies?

The second piece of our legislation forces the oil companies to do their part by investing some of their profits

in clean and affordable alternative energy. If we aggressively promote innovation in solar, wind, biofuels, and geothermal energies, we can help lower energy costs, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs right here in America, and strengthen our national security by reducing our dependence on oil-producing nations.

The third provision: We protect the American people from price gougers and greedy oil traders who manipulate the market. Part of the reason for the record-high prices of oil is that market traders are bidding prices up for their own amusement and profit. If you go buy a share of General Motors stock, you pay a margin of 50 percent. If you buy 100,000 gallons of fuel or barrels of oil, you pay a 3- to 5- percent margin. They have pushed these prices up remarkably with their speculation. They make out like bandits, but the rest of us have to face the real-life consequences of their recklessness.

Now, we also have a provision to temporarily stop filling the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is already 97 percent full, to increase supply and lower prices. We are told it increases prices by as much as 5 cents a gallon. When oil prices come down significantly from their current levels, we can continue filling the Reserve. For now, 97 percent capacity is sufficient.

Tomorrow for our vote, we are going to take this fourth provision out of our energy package and we are going to vote on that. That will be our second vote. It is important that everyone vote for this. This should be bipartisan. The Republicans wrote a letter to the President-- some Republican Senators--saying: Mr. President, stop pumping that oil into the Reserve. I hope they will join with us tomorrow so we can get past the 60-vote margin that is required here to pass legislation.

Finally, our plan stands up to OPEC and countries that are colluding together to keep oil prices sky high. This is a provision that has been pushed by Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin for a long time, and that is in our legislation. Global commerce requires global leadership. Oil- producing nations are earning billions of dollars from American consumers. For most of these countries, the oil trade is their overwhelming source of income. It is time to use some diplomatic pressure to increase production and lower prices.

Our legislation does exactly what it promises: It ends more than 7 years of Bush-Cheney energy policy that has lined the pockets of modern-day oil barons and left the American people to pay the bill. Is it a silver bullet? Of course not. Is it a bill that will solve all of our energy problems? Of course not. But it is a good piece of legislation.

The United States has less than 3 percent of the oil reserves in the world. That counts ANWR and offshore. So we can't produce our way out of it. Should we produce more out of the 3 percent we have? Of course. We are going to continue to work on that. But we consume 25 to 30 percent of all of the oil in the world, even though our population probably doesn't justify that.

This legislation is an important step, one that will make a difference in the short term and in the long term. It offers new thinking, new investment, and a new direction, not more of the same. So I urge my Republican colleagues to join us in passing this important piece of legislation starting tomorrow by passing a law that will tell the President: No, you can no longer pay $125 a barrel to put oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Save that for later.

Finally, Mr. President, we are going to vote tomorrow on an important piece of legislation. Woven deep within our collective memory of every major American disaster is the image of first responders who risk their lives to save others. September 11 is graphically illustrative of that fact. The firefighter who goes back into a burning building saving an elderly man or woman, the medic who tends to victims as ambulances race to the scene, the police officer who cordons off an area and redirects those in danger to safety--every one of those first responders is a hero. Yet far too often their heroism is overlooked. This week, we are going to have an opportunity to honor their service with legislation that will keep them safe and will save lives and will also allow them to receive the fair pay and benefits they deserve.

Senator Kennedy and Senator Gregg have done an outstanding job writing this bipartisan bill. Their work is a model for what we can accomplish when we abandon partisanship and embrace the common good.

This legislation is a bill all Senators can and should support. This legislation provides first responders the dignity and respect they have greatly earned by guaranteeing them the right to collectively bargain. That is a right most private sector employees and public sector employees in 29 States plus the District of Columbia already have. It will mean better wages, hours, working conditions, and benefits for those we count on in a time of crisis. We may never be able to put a fair price on heroism, but this legislation is certainly a start.

Firefighters--not just those from New York but from surrounding areas--suffered the greatest losses on September 11. The recent tragedies such as the fire last summer in Charleston, SC, that took the lives of nine firefighters or the senseless loss of two firefighters in Roxbury, MA, last September serve as a reminder of the dangers these men and women face every time they go to work.

Last Friday, I was in Philadelphia, and I was going to a place called the Free Library. It was a rainy day. Of course, that cut the crowd down a little bit. But the thing that cut the crowd down more than anything else, that brought traffic to a standstill was the funeral of a police officer. He stopped some people who had robbed a bank, and one of them stepped out of the car with an assault rifle, an automatic weapon--not a semiautomatic weapon but an automatic weapon--and he was shot many times and killed.

Police officers put their lives on the line all the time. They do it for us. There is not much we can do usually to put a fair price on that heroism, but tomorrow we can do that. This legislation is the start of that.

This right to collectively bargain respects States rights. The 29 States already providing the right to collective bargaining for public safety officers would not be affected. The 21 States that don't provide for collective bargaining would have the opportunity to establish their own systems or they may ask the Federal Labor Relations Authority to assist in the process.

This legislation guarantees fairness in public safety by expressly outlawing strikes, lockouts, and all forms of work stoppage. That is why this is a good bipartisan bill. By guaranteeing collective bargaining and providing better wages and working conditions, this will improve public safety.

It is without any question that first responders who are paid fairly and treated with respect will keep their jobs longer and perform more efficiently and save the taxpayers money. Communities across America can rest more easily knowing their local police, firefighters, paramedics, and other first responders have long and sustained ties to the neighborhoods in which they work.

I met with police and firefighters from Nevada and around the country to discuss this legislation. They, along with their brothers and sisters across all of America, are just the same as those in Nevada to whom I have spoken. They want us to do everything we can to urge all Senators to take action. They welcome this opportunity to receive support to do their jobs more effectively and to help them provide for their families and protect our families. I urge my colleagues to stand with America's brave first responders by supporting the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act.

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

Madam President, before my friend leaves the floor, I express my appreciation to my colleague Senator Ensign. This is an issue that needs more work. We have spoken to the two managers of the bill. They are going to try to help us. This is an issue important to Nevada and we think other places. But I wanted to express my appreciation to Senator Ensign, who did most of the work on this issue.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have had a number of conversations with Senator McConnell today. I have had a number of conversations with the two managers of the bill. I think we have a plan for finishing this legislation tomorrow. We have had good cooperation on both sides.

What we are going to try to do is finish this bill. There are a number of Senators who want to offer amendments tonight. We can have the votes tonight or in the morning. The way things are looking, we can have them after morning business in the morning because there are not a lot of amendments.

It is our goal to finish this bill tomorrow. If that is the case, then we wouldn't have to be in Friday. We have a lot of things to do legislatively, hearings, and other such business. What we will do is come in Monday and vote on the amendment that has been filed by the Republican leader dealing with energy. It is the Domenici energy package. We will have a side-by-side. I already explained to the Republican leader and others what that will be. It should be fairly direct and to the point. We will have a 60-vote margin on both of those.

Following that, we will move to legislation that is bipartisan in nature. We will need to invoke cloture on it. It is the Judd Gregg firefighters legislation. That will get us through Monday.

We have 2 weeks left. Hang on to your hats; we have a lot to do. We do not know if we are going to get the supplemental next week. We thought we would early next week, but we have learned today there may be some problems developing in the House. We are doing our very best to do that.

I congratulate Senators Harkin and Chambliss and Senators Baucus and Grassley. We think--we don't think, we know the farm bill has been put to rest. We are going to be able to bring a bipartisan conference report to the Senate floor, hopefully, next week. There is no reason we should not be able to do that next week. Those are just a few of the moving parts we have.

The supplemental is not going to be easy, as it never is. Once we get it from the House, we can do our job over here fairly rapidly.

What we would like to do--we certainly will work with the distinguished Republican leader at a later time. I don't think Senators Shelby and Dodd want energy to be part of this bill. If we can get 60 votes on it, we will be happy to stick it in this bill.

What Senator McConnell and I talked about--I think it is fair, and we do a lot of business with 60 votes around here. We are not trying to stop anybody from doing anything.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Mr. President, I say to Senator Domenici, even though he and I have disagreed on a few issues over the years--few in number--I personally know how strongly the Senator from New Mexico feels about this energy issue. I hope the Senator doesn't get 60 votes, but we will do everything we can to ensure he gets a vote.

Mr. President, able staff, both on the majority and minority side, say I may not have phrased everything right regarding the energy legislation. But I think Senator McConnell and I understand we are going to have two votes on energy Monday night. The exact terminology procedurally, I may not have outlined it properly, but I think we know where we are going.

Amendment No. 4722

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

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

Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the Rockefeller substitute amendment No. 4627.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous that the cloture motion on H.R. 2881 be withdrawn.

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

Mr. President, I have been very patient today. I so wanted to come to the floor, after the FAA bill was destroyed, wiped out by the Republicans not letting us go to that legislation, one of the most important pieces of legislation we could deal with. The reason I had to calm myself down, I listened to a number of Republican Senators say: Well, if we could have offered amendments. I did everything I could to allow people to offer amendments: Agree to a list of amendments; could we see your amendment; we will take down the tree; we will do anything you want; offer amendments.

Finally, I spoke to one of the Republican leaders. I said: It is obvious the only reason you are not supporting this is because of the New York money, the final installment of the $20 billion promised the city of New York, the State of New York, by the President of the United States, George Bush. I said: It is in the President's budget.

One of the Republican leaders said: We still oppose it.

Then, if that were not enough, we now come to an important piece of legislation, flood insurance. This is a result of what happened in Katrina and the other devastating floods we have had in this country in recent years. Insurance companies have gone broke. Individual companies have gone broke. Individual homeowners have suffered significantly. So after months of working on this piece of legislation on a bipartisan basis--Senators Dodd and Shelby are the ones who worked to get the bill here--we bring the bill to the floor. We file cloture on a motion to proceed so we can start offering amendments. It passes 90 to 1. We have been waiting since 3 o'clock today to start legislating. People are waiting to offer amendments. I can't imagine how the Republicans can sleep at night, stopping this country from legislating on most important issues. They act as if it is not important. So in the morning I am going to come here, and we are going to ask consent if we can start legislating on this bill, or do we have to wait until 9 o'clock tomorrow night until the 30 hours runs out before we can start legislating on flood insurance. We are going to finish flood insurance this week. If we have to work Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we are going to finish this bill.

People will have an opportunity to offer amendments. Maybe they can't start offering amendments until 9 o'clock tomorrow night, but if that is the case, then we are going to start working at 9 o'clock tomorrow night so people can offer their amendments, because tomorrow is Wednesday. We wasted all day today not being able to offer amendments. I am told there are only a couple amendments people want to offer-- three or four. It is an issue of whether this legislation should include also wind. That is an issue we can debate and vote on. But we are going to make a decision sometime tomorrow as to when we file cloture, whether we do it Thursday and have a Saturday cloture vote, do it tomorrow and have a Friday cloture vote. We are going to finish this bill this week.

We have so much to do. We have the farm conference coming. We have the consumer product safety conference coming. We have to do the budget. We have the supplemental appropriations bill and a number of other measures we have to do.

I hope we can start moving to allow people to offer amendments. It seems not a very good legislative process dictated by the minority, the Republicans, when you pass something 90 to 1, and they still hold it up.

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.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Maria Honeycutt, a Congressional Science Fellow in the office of Senator Bill Nelson, be granted floor privileges for the duration of the Senate's consideration of S. 2284, the Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5493 and the Senate now proceed to its consideration.

Mr. President, the amendment that I am offering on behalf of myself and Senator McConnell addresses technical issues with respect to the ``cooling-off period'' for senior staff members.

Under title 18 and the Senate rules, staff members whose salary is above a certain threshold are prohibited from lobbying the Senate for a period of 1 year. One of the reforms in S. 1, the ethics reform bill we enacted last year, was to broaden the scope of the ban--senior staff members who were previously prohibited from lobbying individual Senate offices for a year are now prohibited from lobbying the entire Senate.

However, we have been made aware of an unintended consequence of the law: some junior staff members who receive salary bonuses over a period of 2 months are inadvertently covered by the lobbying ban, which is now even more sweeping. The Reid-McConnell amendment addresses this problem by providing that a staff member whose

salary is above the threshold for only 2 months will not be covered by the ban, even if those 2 months--for example, July and August--have an aggregate of more than 60 days.

Our amendment also makes the criminal law and Senate Rule XXXVII consistent. Both the law and the rule will now look back over the same time period, i.e., 1 year before an employee's termination, and the threshold will be the same, i.e., more than 2 months. Post-employment restrictions will thus be clearer to staff and the public, as well as easier to administer.

Under 2 U.S.C. 60c-1, Members, officers, and employees of the Senate are paid on a semimonthly basis: generally, the 20th of every month for the period of the 1st through the 15th and the 5th of the succeeding month for the period of the 16th through the end of the month. Thus, the language ``two months'' is intended and shall mean in the Senate equal to four pay periods. If an employee were to be paid above the threshold amount for more than four pay periods, for example, for four and any part of a fifth pay period, he or she would be covered by the restrictions of both the law and the rule.

Mr. President, the amendment is at the desk, and I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered and agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table; that any statements relating to this matter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 552.

Mr. 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.