Floor Statements

Madam President, it is my understanding that the Senator from Virginia, Mr. Webb, wishes to speak as in morning business for a period of time of up to--how long? It does not matter. I would like to know.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the statement by the Senator from Virginia is completed--I ask the Senator from Virginia, would you rather complete your statement now? You are here ready to go; is that right?

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senator completes his statement--whenever that might be in the next 10 or so minutes, but that be today--the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.J. Res. 44, which was received from the House. I further ask consent that there be 30 minutes of debate equally divided between the two leaders or their designees and that following the use or yielding back of time, the joint resolution be read a third time and the Senate proceed to a vote on passage, without any intervening action or debate.

Madam President, what I would suggest is--and I am sure my friend from Virginia would have no objection--the Senator from Kentucky, the Republican leader, would make his statement, and it would be made as if during the half hour's time. Would that be OK?

So you would make that now. I know you have things going on in your office.

Is that OK with the Senator from Virginia?

So I modify my request to let the Senator from Kentucky speak for however long he desires for up to 30 minutes on the Burma resolution; following that, we go to Senator Webb. I ask unanimous consent that my consent request be approved.

Madam President, I ask the clerk to report the resolution.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I have spoken to the two managers, Senators Byrd and Cochran. We have done some work this afternoon. We are getting a feel of the legislation. Senator Cantwell has an amendment she will offer at the appropriate time. Maybe it can be worked out with the managers. If it cannot, we certainly are not going to be able to debate it all tonight. We are working on the warrior legislation. If we decide to finish that tonight, that will be done by unanimous consent and won't require a rollcall vote. At least it won't require one tonight. So I think that with a number of balls being up in the air--and we are waiting for other Senators to come and offer amendments--we will have no more rollcall votes tonight.

I suggest, though, that Senators should understand that tomorrow is Wednesday and we really need to finish this bill. I hope Senators who have amendments to offer will do that. I checked with the managers, and I have spoken with Senator Cochran. Tomorrow, if we are in a period where there are no amendments being offered, we will move to third reading. If people want to improve this bill in any way that they feel appropriate, the way to do it is to come and offer an amendment.

I have said today--and I say it again--I don't want to file cloture on the bill. I think it would set a pattern for how we need to work on appropriations bills. Let's get this done in the regular order. In fact, I said earlier today--and I will say it again--I have spoken to the President's Chief of Staff about appropriations bills generally. My feeling is that we will be happy to sit down and talk to the President's people about an overall program to get these bills passed. In the meantime, let's do them one at a time. The power of the White House, whether it is a Democratic or a Republican President, comes when we have the conference, anyway.

Again, I hope we can work within the regular order to get this passed. I notify all Senate offices that there will be no more rollcall votes tonight.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, we have not been able to clear the Wounded Warrior legislation. It is my understanding the minority is looking at that again tonight. Hopefully, we can get it done tomorrow.

When I come in in the morning, when the Senate convenes, I am going to ask consent again to pass that. This is one of the opportunities we have to really do something for the troops. The Defense authorization bill, the other stuff in it, doesn't become effective until the beginning of the fiscal year, October 1, but this, Wounded Warrior, becomes effective upon passage and approval, so it would really be good if we could do that sooner rather than later. As soon as we complete it here, we will be that much closer to being able to get that to the President. The House can do it very quickly.

I was meeting with the Speaker this afternoon. It is amazing what they can do in just a short period of time. I went over my list of things I wanted to complete for the Senate this next couple of weeks: This appropriations bill we are working on now, SCHIP, the conference report on ethics, and then the one on 9/11.

She had two pages of things they were going to do in the next couple of weeks. We can't do that here but she can. That is when you realize the difference between the House and the Senate.

I ask unanimous consent the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 2429 and the Senate then proceed to its consideration.

I ask unanimous consent the bill be read a third time, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table with no intervening action or debate.

I ask unanimous consent it be in order for the Senate to proceed en bloc to consideration of the following calendar items: Calendar No. 277, S. Res. 248; Calendar No. 278, S. Res. 261.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, en bloc, the preambles be agreed to, en bloc, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, en bloc, and the consideration of these items appear separately in the Record, and any statements be printed in the Record, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to consideration of S. Con. Res. 42.

I ask unanimous consent the concurrent resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to S. Res. 280.

I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating thereto be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m., Wednesday, July 25; that on Wednesday, following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that there then be a period of morning business for 60 minutes, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the second half; that at the close of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 2638.

Mr. President, I turn to my distinguished colleague, the Republican leader, and ask if he has any statements.

I say that the Republican leader wasn't on the floor, but I will repeat for his benefit what I said a little while ago. I spoke to Josh Bolton earlier today about the appropriations bills. Of course, it would be great if we could have an overall scheme as to how we can complete them. In the meantime, if we can get them done, we should proceed through these bills one at a time and recognize that the power of the White House, whether it is a Democratic President, a Republican President in the appropriations process, comes during the conferences, anyway. The House can move things very quickly. So all these are ready to go to conference. I hope we can move through these individual appropriations bills and hopefully have some recognition of what we are going to try to accomplish in conference before we go to conference and work some of these out.

The first test will be this bill we are working on now. There has been some moving on it today. Senator Cochran is the one who suggested to me if there is no progress tomorrow, that we should move to third reading. When I say ``no progress,'' people just waiting around, not offering any amendments. So that is where we are. I hope we can finish this soon, do what we need to do on SCHIP, and do the 9/11 conference report, which I understand is almost

finished. When I say almost, 100 percent of it needs to be done, and 99 percent of that has been done.

We have taken out the language the Republicans did not want, especially the President, dealing with the union situation. Even though it was hard for us to swallow, we took that out to make it more palatable to my friends on the other side. We will come back in September rested and invigorated and ready to do some other things for the country.

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

Mr. President, we are getting used to Senators Enzi and Kennedy. They seem to have been on the floor for several days now, and we have at least 1 more day, maybe part of another day, but I hope not--not because I don't want them here but because we have other things to do.

The Senate is going to immediately proceed to S. 1642, the higher education reauthorization legislation. There will be no morning business. Under a previous agreement, there will be 8 hours for debate on the bill and amendments. First-degree amendments are limited to 12 amendments per side, with 6 for each manager and an additional managers' amendment, with first-degree amendments limited to 30 minutes for debate equally divided and any second-degree amendments limited to 15 minutes for debate equally divided. So at approximately 5:15 today, we will begin voting on the pending amendments. We are hopeful we will be able to dispose of all of them this evening.

Following the disposition of this bill, we are going to proceed to H.R. 2638, the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. I hope we can finish that bill quickly. I hope we don't have to file cloture on it. If we do, that is what we will do. Hopefully, we can finish the bill. It is extremely important. It deals with homeland security. I will tell all Senators, the bill we have calls for more money than the President's suggestion, but remember, we go to conference on all of these bills. The House will have passed by the end of this week--certainly by the middle of next week--all the appropriations bills. So we need to get some done over here so that we can go to conference. So I repeat, if somebody has a concern about ours being for more money than the President's, don't worry about it. We have conference to go to, and as we know, in years past, the White House always has the ability to work with us in conference.

When we finish Homeland Security, we are going to go to the children's health bill, which is extremely important. It is important because the bill that has been brought before the Senate is one that is a compromise, a bipartisan piece of legislation, a bill that was reported out of the committee by a 17-to-4 vote. That certainly suggests bipartisanship, and it provides health care for millions of American children. So I hope we can get consent to proceed to this legislation following Homeland Security. If not, we will file cloture, and we will go to it after that.

But as everyone has heard me say, this work period, we are going to complete Homeland Security, SCHIP, we are going to complete the conference report on the 9/11 Commission recommendations, we are going to complete work on the ethics and lobbying reform, and we are going to move to another appropriations bill, which will be Military Construction and VA. All

Senators and staff should be alerted that we may have to work weekends. I say plural because it is according to where we are on the procedural matters.

This weekend, I know there is a big trip planned to go to Greenland, and we certainly hope Senators can go there. It is something everyone needs to see and Senators need to see, with global warming being as it is. We will do our best to complete work so that people can have the weekend off to go to Greenland and to do whatever they need to do. But there are no guarantees in this business, especially at this time of the year. We worked all night one night last week, we worked until early in the morning one night, and that may be necessary this week and next week. I hope we can break in time for our recess, but, again, as I have said now for weeks, we have to finish this work first.

I hope people who have amendments on this bill today will come and start offering them. We are going to make sure that all quorum time is charged against the bill itself so we can finish that time. The time, we are going to finish today; the amendments, we hope to finish today.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the remarks I will make be charged against the bill rather than the Warner amendment.

Mr. President, Benjamin Franklin said:

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

What he was saying is that silver still in the rock, in the ore, is worthless until it is mined, taken out of the rock. It is the same with education. Genius without education is akin to silver in a mine.

We have, I am sure, a lot of geniuses who have not been educated, and that is too bad. That is what this legislation is all about. It is unquestioned that a college education is the single greatest weight on the scales of success. Yet today, more and more working-class Americans are shut out from the promise and opportunity of a college education because the price is out of their reach.

Last week, we took a significant step to restoring that promise to hundreds of thousands of American students by passing the bipartisan Higher Education Access Act. It should not go unnoticed that the $17 billion in new student aid and benefits represents the largest increase in college assistance since Congress passed the GI Bill of Rights more than 50 years ago.

The bill we passed last week did this in a comprehensive way by increasing grant aid, expanding the number of students eligible for Federal aid, making loan debt more manageable, and expanding loan forgiveness options for those professions that we all recognize are important to society--teaching, social work, law enforcement, and health care.

Today, in considering the higher education amendments, we authorize remaining programs and funding in the Higher Education Act. This bill is not weeks overdue or months overdue, it is years overdue.

First, this legislation addresses the recent student loan scandals. With provisions in the bill--increased disclosure requirements, prohibiting payments and gifts from lenders to colleges and financial aid administrators, and new restrictions on preferred lender lists--we are finally putting an end to these unacceptable practices and making sure the student loan system works in the interests of our students.

As importantly, we tackle the rising costs of college. Despite the billions in new student aid and benefits in the bill we passed last week, if college costs continue to rise at the rate they have been-- tripling over the past 20 years--higher education will continue to remain further and further out of reach for too many Americans.

I am pleased to support this legislation. I am also pleased students in Nevada have the good fortune of a State university system with some of the lowest costs in the Nation. But the same is not true everywhere, and this bill will hold colleges accountable if their costs increase too dramatically. It also ensures students and parents have information they need to make objective decisions based on the cost of college.

Finally, the bill phases out the unnecessarily complicated Federal financial aid form which is currently 7 pages long--and probably more complicated than filing out a tax return--with a much simpler 2-page form.

Again, thanks to Senators Kennedy and Enzi for the work they have done and the rest of the HELP Committee for their work in the formulation of this bill which, when combined with their efforts last week, reaffirms our commitment to making higher education affordable and accessible to America's students.

Mr. President, if I may say to my friend, the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, and my friend from Wyoming, we did not have time to do this legislation, but we had to take time to do this legislation. This is an example of how committees working together can get work done. Committees do a lot of work, but much of what comes out of the committees is done on a partisan basis. Democrats vote for it, Republicans vote against it. Frankly, we cannot get those bills to the floor. We cannot get them done.

I repeat, we did not have time to do this legislation. We have so much to do. We have appropriations bills we need to do. As soon as we finish this bill, we are going to move to Homeland Security appropriations, which is essential. SCHIP legislation, we have to do that. We have to do the conference report on the 9/11 Commission recommendations. We have to complete the work we have done and gone so far down the road on ethics and lobbying reform.

This is an example, and I say this to all committees, to work together such as these two men have worked together and we can get things done. That is how we were able to get the Energy bill passed earlier. We took those provisions from the Energy Committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, and the Commerce Committee, on which there was unanimity, everyone agreed. I took those provisions and put them in a package, and that was the bill we passed in the Senate.

I appreciate Senator Kennedy mentioning my name, but the work was done by this committee last week and arriving at the point where we can have this legislation completed today. This is important legislation.

I heard Senator Warner on the floor today talking about when he went in the military. They had those who couldn't read or write during World War II raise their hand. Twenty-five percent of the people on the ship could not read or write. We don't have that situation today. But we do have a situation where there are many people, such as the example I gave, who have the intellect to have a college education and simply cannot do it. It is as

Benjamin Franklin said, when the silver is still in the mine, it doesn't help anybody. When we have the people who have the ability to be educated who cannot be educated, it doesn't speak well of our country.

We have to continue down that road of educating our students, and this legislation, tied in with what we did last week, is a giant step forward.

I again express my appreciation to Senators Kennedy and Enzi and the members of the committee for allowing us to get to the point where we have time to do a bill that we don't have time to do.

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

Mr. President, I ask the pending amendment be set aside and, as one of the Democratic amendments, I call up amendment No. 2328.

I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

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, I have an amendment pending, No. 2328, and I send a modification to the desk and ask unanimous consent I be allowed to modify this amendment.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that it be charged how it was being charged before.

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

Mr. President, I ask that the Reid amendment be withdrawn.

Mr. President, it is my intention--this has been cleared with the two managers--to have two votes tonight and finish whatever votes remain in the morning. It is my understanding that in the morning the first vote will be on the Dodd amendment. He is involved with other matters tonight. We will give him 5 minutes, and if there is opposition, they can have 5 minutes, or should we split 5 minutes, I say to my friend from Wyoming? I am not asking consent now--we will do that later--but I am giving an idea.

We will talk with the managers in more detail about that situation. Likely, what we will have is on the Dodd amendment, 5 minutes equally divided, and on other amendments, there will be 1 minute of explanation, for or against, and after that, 10-minute votes. We understand there could be three to five votes in the morning or there could be more. Whatever, we will finish in the morning. We will come in at 10 o'clock because of the leadership meetings that take place in the Capitol. There will be no morning business. We will go right to the bill and dispose of these amendments before we have our regular work sessions on Tuesday.

Does that seem reasonable to my friend from Wyoming?

Yes, that is what I said, we will do two votes tonight.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate resumes consideration of S. 1642 in the morning, July 24, no amendments other than those in this agreement be in order; that there be 20 minutes of debate time remaining, divided as follows: 10 minutes each for Senators Kennedy and Enzi; upon the use of that time, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Kennedy second-degree amendment, No. 2387; that upon disposition of the Kennedy amendment, if the Kennedy amendment is agreed to, then it be in order for Senator Coburn to offer a further second-degree amendment on the same subject; that there be 2 minutes of debate prior to a vote in relation to the Coburn second- degree amendment, if offered, with the time equally divided and controlled in the usual form; that upon disposition of the Coburn second-degree amendment, there be 2 minutes for debate, equally divided, prior to a vote in relation to the Coburn amendment No. 2369, as amended; that upon disposition of the Coburn amendment No. 2369, as amended, if amended, the committee substitute amendment, as amended, be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; the bill be read a third time, and the Senate proceed to vote on passage of the bill without further intervening action or debate.

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