Floor Statements

Mr. President, I understand there are six bills at the desk. I ask for their first reading en bloc.

Mr. President, I now ask for their second reading en bloc, but I object to my own request en bloc.

Mr. President, I appreciate everyone's patience. I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m., Thursday, October 18; that on Thursday, following the prayer and 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 that there then be a period for the transaction of morning business for 60 minutes, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each and the time be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first half and the Democrats the second half; that at the close of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 3043, the Labor-HHS appropriations bill.

Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Mr. President, we are going to be in a period of morning business for an hour. The time will be equally divided and controlled. The Republicans have the first half. We have the second half. Following morning business, Senators Mikulski and Shelby, as managers of the bill, will resume consideration of H.R. 3093, the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Act.

Last night, I indicated we would work and complete this bill, either tonight or in the morning--and by ``in the morning,'' I mean after midnight. We are going to work until we complete this bill, if, in fact, it is ever going to be completed. I am not filing cloture on the legislation. We have a finite number of amendments, and we are going to work through these amendments.

As I indicated last night, we have had good cooperation from the minority on our appropriations bills, and I hope that continues. I am confident it will. But if anyone who is mischievous thinks they will stop us from voting tonight, we will have votes. I do not need to be voting on these matters of this bill. If people think they can stop us from voting, we will have votes. Even if we have to instruct the Sergeant at Arms or do whatever is necessary, we are going to have votes tonight, unless this bill moves forward more quickly than some have said.

We need to complete this legislation. We have things that are so very important. The President yesterday said he wants appropriations bills. We cannot do the appropriations bills unless we have cooperation from Democrats and Republicans. Right now, we have 29 amendments that are here that Republicans want to deal with. There are eight Democratic amendments. We want to get this bill done. We need to do Labor-HHS, and, hopefully, by that time we can have something ready to send to the President--any one of the six bills we would have passed. I think it is important we get this process done. The President said he wants to veto a bill. We will send him one he wants to veto if, in fact, that is what he wants to do. Hopefully, that may not be the case. But if it is, that is where we have to start with him. So there are going to be votes. There probably will be votes before our 12:30 mandated recess time.

There are other items we need to work on. For example, one reason we need to finish this bill and the Labor-HHS bill is the manager of the farm bill is Harkin from Iowa, and we have to have him free so he can do the markup of the farm bill next week--a very important piece of legislation. In the Democratic caucus--I do not know of the Republican caucus--more than half of the Democrats are vitally interested in the farm bill because it affects their States. We have to do a farm bill. We have not done one in 5 years. I think it would be negligent on our part to leave here without doing a farm bill.

There are many important issues. There are people who want to change

the standard farm bill we have done in years past. This is what legislating is all about. It is extremely important we work toward completing this legislation. So that is why we have the press we are having now.

I would also say, after we finish this week, we only have 4 weeks left until Thanksgiving, and then we have 2 weeks we will be out for Thanksgiving, and then, if we come back, we are going to have only 3 weeks before Christmas. We have a lot to do. I will not go through the list of what we are obligated to do, but it is a lot of stuff. I hope everyone would understand that and be thoughtful and considerate of others.

We may have to work some late nights. We may have to work some weekends. We have been very fortunate this whole year. We talked about working weekends a lot, and we have not had to do it except on a couple of occasions. The reason we have not had to do it more is because of the press of the weekend coming upon us we get our work done. That may be the case this week. I hope so. But if not, everyone should understand, if they have obligations at home, they better have some alternatives or consider missing some votes.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I want the record to reflect that it is the feeling of the Senate, not just me, of a tremendously good job done by the managers of this bill. Senator Shelby, Senator Mikulski, and I served in the House together. We came to the Senate together. And the two managers of this bill are two of the very best.

Now, I can't say enough positive things about Senator Mikulski. I have told her this. And I don't want to hurt the feelings of anyone else in the Senate, but I have said publicly and privately that the finest orator we have in the Senate is the Senator from Maryland. She is outstanding. But not only is she a fine orator, she is a great legislator, and this bill is an example of that.

I also want to acknowledge the cooperation and assistance that we got from the membership of our Senate. This is a bipartisan bill, as indicated by the vote that was just taken. So I deeply appreciate the work of all Senators but especially that of my friend from Maryland, Senator Mikulski.

Mr. President, before I outline what we are going to do this afternoon, let me say I had a conversation last week with Pete Domenici, who announced he would not run for reelection. I served with Senator Domenici for my entire time in the Senate on the Appropriations Committee. We worked on the Energy and Water Subcommittee over many years. During most of that time, he was either chairman or I was chairman, and the other one was the ranking member. We traveled the country looking at different facilities that related to the jurisdiction we had. It was a great subcommittee because all the money we had was discretionary, and it was a subcommittee that did so many good things for the country. There were water projects that were long overdue. We set up the safety and reliability of our nuclear arsenal. It was not easy, but we worked through that.

Senator Domenici has a tremendously interesting background. Because of my fascination with athletics, and especially baseball, I was stunned to learn this respectable man--who has so much mental acuity and is good with numbers and all this--had started out as a great baseball player. He was a pitcher, a left-handed pitcher, as I understand. He played professional baseball. He was in the Brooklyn Dodgers' farm system. He left there to become a junior high school math teacher.

He went on to earn a law degree before he began a storied career in the State of New Mexico as a city councilman and mayor. Now, of course, he is one of the more senior Members of the Senate.

During the time Senator Domenici and I have known each other, we have gotten to know each other's spouses. He is very kind and thoughtful to Landra, my wife, as I try to be to his very sweet, personable Nancy. They have eight children.

He is a person for whom I have great respect. I will miss him. He has a unique knowledge of the importance of our National Laboratories. One reason, of course, is we have two of them in the State of New Mexico. But we have them in other places--California, Illinois. I have traveled with him to Missouri.

He is a person who has looked out for the Nevada test site--a place where almost 1,000 nuclear devices were exploded, most of them underground, but not all of them underground. He worked with me to make sure that facility--that is a billion-dollar facility--is still used for the security of this Nation. He has worked on, as I have indicated, the safety of our nuclear stockpile.

He made his decision to retire for reasons that are certainly valid, but that does not take away from the fact we will all miss him.

I must say, one of the other issues he has worked so hard on-- originally with Senator Wellstone, but after that much of the time alone--deals with mental health parity. Fortuitously, a week before we adjourned for the Columbus Day recess, we passed that legislation

in the Senate. Now we have to make sure our bill and the House bill are conferenced and we finish those two bills. But it certainly is a step in the right direction.

So I do offer Senator Domenici my congratulations for the wonderful job he has done as a Senator and, as I told him on the phone, I express how much--after the next 15 months--I will miss him.

Mr. President, I think it is also important to tell everyone Senator Kennedy is strong and well and happy. He had some minor surgery that was important surgery. A lot of people do not know Senator Kennedy was nearly killed in an airplane crash. His life was saved by Evan Bayh's father, Birch Bayh.

He never complains, but Senator Kennedy has constant pain from his back. As a result of that, he had some work done to see what was going on with his back. They did a CAT scan of his full spine, which normally is not done because most of the trouble in his back is in the low back, not the high back. As a result of that, they fortuitously--with good fortune because of the high x-ray--checked and a carotid artery was plugged.

It was very fortuitous that was done. His wife Jackie thinks that is a miracle, and it certainly is a blessing in their lives because as a result of taking a look at his spine, they were able to spot that and avoid some serious problems in the future.

I cannot possibly overstate the importance of Senator Kennedy's leadership in this body as we address the critical issues that lie ahead in this work period. For 45 years he has been a person who has been on the cutting edge of doing the right thing for this country and certainly for the State of Massachusetts.

Mr. President, today, we are going to have morning business for an hour after Senator McConnell and I finish our brief remarks to the Senate. The time will be equally divided and controlled. Following the period of morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of the Department of Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Act.

Under an order previously entered, people have until 2:30 p.m. today to file any first-degree amendments to the bill. We are going to finish this bill perhaps not tonight, but I hope we can finish it tomorrow because we are going to move then to the Labor-HHS legislation.

Tonight we are going to have a vote, and we are going to see if we can come up with an amendment to the appropriations bill we are working on. If not, there is still a judge we need to have approved, and we will do that tonight.

I hope everyone understands we need to do the Labor-HHS bill. That would be the sixth bill we will have completed. We are going to start that bill as soon as we finish the bill that is before us, the Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill, and we are going to finish that bill this week. We have to do that.

The farm bill is so important all across this country, and the markup of that bill is scheduled for next week. The reason we have to finish the Labor-HHS appropriations bill this week is the chairman of the committee the farm bill will come out of is Senator Harkin, who is also the chairman of the subcommittee that deals with Labor-HHS. So we have to finish that. I hope it does not spill into the weekend. We have talked about that several times this year and rarely have we had to do it. But we need to get that done.

After this week, we will only have four work weeks before we have our Thanksgiving Day recess. We are all on line to see what we can do to work out our differences with the White House to finish our funding for this year. We need to do that, and finishing this bill will point us in that direction.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, would the Senator withhold?

Mr. President, I made a mistake in my statement a few minutes ago. I have known Vicki Kennedy for many years. My staff tells me I mispronounced her name. That was certainly not intentional. I know Vicki. She was so kind and thoughtful to call me very early Saturday morning to let me know Ted was going into the hospital and I asked her to please call me when the surgery was finished, and Vicki did that. I called her Jackie for reasons unknown to anyone other than whoever puts words in my mouth. I want the Record to be corrected.

I note 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 proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 345.

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.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Commerce Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Con. Res. 36, and the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

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, and that any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, we have on this bill that is now before the Senate--the Commerce-Justice appropriations bill--about eight amendments that Democrats have pending or wish to offer, and we have 26 Republican amendments. Everyone should understand we are going to finish this bill tomorrow. It does not matter what events are going on around town, we are going to work and finish this bill. If it takes until 8 o'clock tomorrow night, fine; there will be no windows. We are going to work right through this. If people try to hold this up, we will have a bunch of votes. We will have the Sergeant at Arms instructed. We are going to move through this.

I am told we want to finish appropriations bills. This is our second week on this bill. We are going to finish this bill tomorrow or sometime early Wednesday morning. We are going to continue working on this until it is completed or until we find there is such intransigence by the Republicans that they do not want us to finish this bill. I hope that is not the case.

We have had on our appropriations bills some decent cooperation from the Republicans, for which I am appreciative, but we have other bills we have to do. If we finish this legislation, we will still have seven appropriations bills to do.

I am aware we have had to file cloture 49 different times this year to defeat Republican filibusters or to turn them around, and if it is necessary to file the 50th, we will do that. I think that would be a shame to have to do that.

We have a finite number of amendments now, and we need to try to work through them. What we could do, of course, here--there are more Democrats than Republicans--we could move to table all the Republican amendments. It would take a lot of time to do that. I hope we do not have to do that. I hope we can work through these amendments and some of them will be accepted and some will be voted upon.

I want to be as reasonable as possible, but I have the Nation's business to be concerned about. We have to

work through this. We have been off work now doing other things in our districts. We all worked hard. Now we are back to legislating. As part of that legislation is this bill that is before the Senate now. We are going to work on it and complete it. I was hopeful that with the 2:30 deadline we would come back with a reasonable number of amendments, but that is not, in fact, the case.

We have on the Republican side a number of Senators who are offering multiple amendments. I know they are important, and I understand that, but I hope that we can, as I have said, work our way through these. We will one way or the other work through these, because I do not want and do not intend to file cloture. I intend to work until we finish this bill.

I don't know how I can be more clear than that. We have to move after this to another appropriations bill, one that is extremely important, the Labor-HHS bill, an extremely important piece of legislation involving so many different and important issues, as the Presiding Officer, for example, is well aware.

It is my understanding the distinguished junior Senator from South Dakota wishes to call up an amendment before I do the closing matters, and I am happy to wait. I ask now to return to legislative business.

What is the matter before the Senate now, Mr. President?

Mr. President, before my friend leaves the floor, one of the areas we need to get to--and I want to do it before we leave on November 16--is Indian health, which is something that is long overdue. If we talk about people who need health care, everybody would stand in line as second in need to the Indians around this country. We have a bill, and the Finance Committee is in the process of getting money to get it done. It is not everything we need, but it is starting something that is long overdue.

I say to my friend, who has the most needy reservation--Pine Ridge-- in the country that we need to have the time to get rid of some of these appropriations bills so we can do something about Indian health. I have made a commitment that we are going to do that some way before we leave this legislative year. We have to do that piece of legislation. I know my friend from South Dakota understands the need in Indian Country for health care. As I said, it is great that we want to take care of the children's health initiative, which is important because we have 50 million people with no health insurance. All those problems are really in the shadows of how badly it is needed in Indian Country.