Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 522, S. 1858.

I ask unanimous consent that the amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to, the committee reported substitute, as amended, be agreed to, the bill as amended be read a third time, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that S. 2407 be star printed, with the changes at the desk.

Mr. President, I understand that S. 2461 is at the desk and due for a second reading.

I object to any further proceedings with respect to the bill.

Mr. President, I understand S. 2483, introduced earlier today by Senator Bingaman, is at the desk. I ask for its first reading.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m., Friday, December 14; that on Friday, 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 then resume consideration of H.R. 2419, and that all time during any recess or adjournment count postcloture; further, that upon disposition of H.R. 2419, the Senate then turn to the consideration of Calendar No. 481, S. 2338, as provided for under a previous order.

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

Mr. President, I wish to speak on two bills that should have passed by unanimous consent because they are so widely supported, but there are objections to them by some Republicans.

The first is the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act, and the other is Training for Realtime Writers Act. First, I am disappointed objections have been raised against the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act on the other side. I do not speak for myself, but I speak on behalf of tens of thousands of Americans who suffer from paralysis and their families.

The Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act is a bipartisan bill. It is a fiscally responsible bill. It addresses a critical need to accelerate better treatments and one day a cure for paralysis. Currently, paralysis research is carried out across multiple disciplines with no effective means of coordination and collaboration. Time, effort, and valuable dollars are used inefficiently because of this problem. Families affected by paralysis are often unaware of critical research results, information about clinical trials, and best practices. The bill will improve the long-term health prospects of people with paralysis and other disabilities by improving access to services, providing information and support to caregivers and their families, developing assistive technology, providing employment assistance, and encouraging wellness among those with paralysis.

I am, frankly, surprised there continues to be an objection to moving this bill forward. I negotiated this bill with my Republican colleagues on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee before it was marked up in July. We received specific requests relating to the NIH. We accepted those requests. We moved forward. We removed the NIH reporting provisions in response to concerns that they were duplicative of reporting requirements NIH already had. We responded to all the feedback from the Department of Health and Human Services and the NIH by incorporating both substantive and technical changes. At that point we were assured there were no objections. As a result of these good- faith negotiations, the bill passed out of the HELP Committee with no amendments. Given all of the efforts we made to meet concerns raised by Senators on the other side of the aisle, and given that Senators had an opportunity to file amendments at that time but chose not to, I had every expectation that the bill would quickly pass the full Senate. Instead, it continues to be held due to Republican objections.

One of my Republican colleagues has said he will object to all disease-specific bills because he does not believe that Congress should be able to pass legislation specifically targeting the fights against cancer, ALS, Alzheimer's, and so on. I strenuously disagree with the Senator on this point. I believe Congress can and should be involved in setting national priorities in these fields. But putting that aside, the

fact is, the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act is not a disease- specific bill. Paralysis and mobility impairment are not disease- specific issues; they are symptoms or side effects that result from numerous diseases and situations, including traumatic brain injury, stroke, ALS, injuries from athletic activities, injuries, of course, from combat in the U.S. Armed Forces, and many others. So paralysis is not disease specific.

Now, again, there seems to be another objection to this bill. One of our Republican colleagues has said he will not allow any bills to pass by unanimous consent that include spending without an offset. Well, let me be clear: There is no funding in the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act legislation. It is only an authorization that allows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to improve the quality of life and long-term health status of people with paralysis and other physical disabilities.

Our colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe, made this case very clear in his discussion of the Water Resources Development bill. He explained the significant difference between authorizing and appropriating. Authorization bills are not spending bills; they determine which projects and programs are eligible to compete for future funding and provide for congressional review and oversight. Authorization bills provide the criterion for spending bills, but they do not contain direct spending. So any spending for the paralysis program authorized by this legislation will be subject to the annual appropriations process.

The Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act passed the House in October. It is long overdue for passage in the Senate. When I introduced this bill, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, Director of NIH, spoke in support of the bill, and let me read something he said that day.

So, really, as the Director of an institution that is

committed to making the discoveries that will make a

difference in people's lives, I feel proud and feel pleased.

But at the same time I'm humbled. I'm humbled because in many

ways the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act is the

harbinger of what I see as the combination of the public, the

leadership in Congress, and the administration and government

in our country that is absolutely unique, and humbled because

at the same time, I know it contains a lot of expectations

from us. And I'm at the same time confident that we can

deliver on these expectations of NIH, with our sister

agencies throughout the government. But the key thing I would

like to provide is an expression of commitment. At the end of

the day, if you do not have leaders and champions that look

at a problem in its entirety, today in the 21st century, you

cannot make progress.

So that is what Dr. Elias Zerhouni said on the day we introduced the bill. I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Zerhouni. Progress is vital in science and biomedical research. It is also vital in the legislative process. As Senators, we have a duty to ensure due diligence in considering legislation. But for one Senator, or two Senators or three, to stall this bill, I believe without legitimate cause--if the objections are that it is disease specific, I have pointed out it is not. Secondly, if it is being held up because there is not an offset, I point out it is only an authorization bill, not a spending bill. If it were an appropriations bill, it would then be legitimately subject to a hold or objection to unanimous consent because it did not have an offset, if that were the case. Anyway, I think for a handful of Senators to block action on this bill seems to undermine the trust that people put in us as legislators to move forward on things, to respond to certain national needs.

Let us be clear: By putting this bill on hold, Senators are also putting people with paralysis and their families on hold. It is a shame, I say to these Senators. I am not asking you to vote for the bill. If you don't like it, you don't have to vote for it. I am only asking you to allow the entire Senate to work its will. Don't slam the door on our fellow citizens who are living with paralysis. There are some 2 million Americans right now living with paralysis of the arms or legs, or both. Many others are living with multiple sclerosis. Hundreds of young soldiers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with spinal cord injuries and paralysis, facing a lifetime of disability. They should not be placed on hold. They shouldn't have to wait. They shouldn't have to have further delay. They should have this bill passed.

I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to reconsider their decision to block this bill. As I said, I worked with Republicans before it went to the HELP Committee. We worked with the Department of Health and Human Services downtown, with NIH, and we met all their objections. We redrafted it and there weren't any objections when it went through the HELP Committee. No amendments were offered. That is the kind of legislation you would think would be subject to a unanimous consent procedure here on the Senate floor. It is a fiscally responsible bipartisan bill, as I said, that does not spend any money. It only authorizes.

Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Four minutes.

I also wanted to talk about the Training for Realtime Writers Act. On behalf of more than 30 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing, I express my deep disappointment that again one or two Senators on the other side of the aisle are blocking passage of this important legislation, the Realtime Writers Act of 2007. Again, it is a bipartisan bill. It is fiscally responsible. It addresses an urgent national need to train more real-time captioners at a time when the demand for these professionals has far outstripped the supply, and when, in fact, the law of the land says that all programs have to be real-time captioned.

For those who don't know what real-time captioning is, these are the people, if you are in your offices and you are watching the Senate floor and you put your button on mute, you see the little closed caption go across the bottom of the screen. That is someone sitting down here in the bowels of the Capitol watching what we say and, on a machine, typing this in so that if you are deaf or hard of hearing you can read what is happening. This is true on programs you watch on normal television as well.

Again, we all use that, I know, at different times. You don't have to be deaf or hard of hearing to use closed captioning. But what has happened, and how this came about is very simple. In 1996, in the Telecom Act, it required that all English language television broadcasts be captioned by the year 2006. All television broadcasts must be real-time captioned by 2006. That was last year. So it is now 2007, and many stations across the country are not in compliance with the law. As a result, a lot of deaf and hard of hearing Americans are not able to access the full range of television programming we take for granted. And why aren't they compliant? Well, it is a legal requirement, but the fact is there are not enough captioners. We knew that back when the bill was passed in 1996. That is why we gave it 10 years for implementation. And little by little we have been trying to get more real-time captioners, but we don't have them.

This bill is an effort to bolster that program and to put focus on it. Again, it is an authorization bill. It is an authorization bill. It authorizes the creation of a competitive grant program to train captioners at the funding level of $20 million a year for 5 years. So, again, it is an authorization bill, not an appropriations bill.

There has been a shortage of real-time captioners. And you might say, well, if there is a shortage, why aren't there more people? Well, a lot of people don't know about it. They don't know about the demand. We need the training and expertise. This is a difficult job. I mean, our stenographers here, who take down our words, have a difficult job, but at least they have time to go back and print it out after they put it into the machines. A real-time captioner has to listen and watch what we are saying and put it on immediately. So it takes a lot of expertise and training to do this.

This act authorizes, again, the funding. It creates no new entitlements. It sunsets after 5 years, because once we get the number up and we get schools across the country teaching this, I have no doubt that we will have enough in the pipeline. And let me point out that this bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent three times before, only to languish in the House of Representatives.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 more minutes.

Again, the House indicated they would take it up. It languished here. It passed the Senate, as I said, by unanimous consent three times already. Again, it is time to keep the promise that Congress made to 30 million Americans in 1996. I would hope we would not block the Realtime Writers Act, and let it go through, and with unanimous consent, as it has done three times in the Senate before. I would ask those who have a hold on the bill, are they saying that 100 Senators before, who let this legislation go through, didn't know what they were doing? We all have staffs, and we all pay attention to what legislation goes through here. I think it is indicative of the support we had on both sides of the aisle that the Realtime Writers Act, as I said, passed by unanimous consent three times in the past.

I wanted to talk about these bills because again I think they are both widely supported. We have worked out agreements with people in the past, and I don't think there is any real, legitimate reason to keep a hold on these bills and not let them pass.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate take up and pass Calendar No. 326, S. 1183, the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act, and Calendar No. 291, S. 675, the Training for Realtime Writers Act.

Mr. President, as part of my closing remarks, in case an objection was raised to the Training for Realtime Writers Act, I want to say this is something that can be done already by the administration, but I would point out that they have not done it in 10 years, either Democratic or Republican Presidents. Quite frankly, they are not focusing on it. They have said they can do it as part of their high-growth job training initiative, but they haven't done it. That is the point of the legislation. They have not done this.

And for those interested in earmarks around here, 90 percent of the money in the high-growth job training----

Well, I want to close with 30 seconds, by saying that 90 percent----

Ninety percent of the money is noncompetitive. Over $235 million over 6 years has gone out in noncompetitive grants, and not one penny for real-time writers.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on behalf of the majority leader, I object.

Mr. President, on behalf of the majority leader, I object.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and move to lay that motion on the table

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, what is the business before the Senate?

Mr. President, in consultation with the ranking member, Senator Chambliss, I am going to repeat for the benefit of Senators a unanimous consent that was entered into last night and try to clarify it a little bit. There was one small change, and that was to add Senator Sanders into this debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following disposition of the Gregg amendment, which we just did, that Senator Harkin be recognized to call up an amendment, and once reported by number, the amendment be set aside; that Senators Alexander, Bingaman, Salazar, and Sanders be recognized, 10 minutes for Senator Bingaman, 10 minutes for Senator Salazar, 10 minutes for Senator Sanders, and 30 minutes for Senator Alexander; that the Senate then debate the following amendments for the time

limits specified under a previous order and in the order that is listed.

First, it would be the Alexander amendments 3551 and 3553, 60 minutes equally divided; the Gregg amendment No. 3673, 2 hours equally divided; Dorgan-Grassley amendment No. 3695, 2 hours equally divided; Sessions amendment No. 3596, 40 minutes equally divided; Klobuchar amendment No. 3810, 60 minutes equally divided; Coburn amendments 3807, 3530, and 3632, 90 minutes equally divided.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 3639.

Mr. President, under the previous unanimous consent agreement, I ask that the amendment be laid aside.

Now we can go to the Alexander amendment.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, how much time remains, or how much time does the Senator from Iowa have on this amendment?

How much time does Senator Bingaman have?

Mr. President, I yield that time to the Senator from Idaho.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee and all the Senators speaking on that amendment, for or against it.

Under the unanimous subsequent request, we will turn to the Gregg amendment No. 3673. There will be 2 hours evenly divided. I say to the Senators, if you are opposed or for the Gregg amendment No. 3673, which would cap noneconomic damages in OB/GYN medical malpractice lawsuits, if Senators want to speak on that, we are on it now, with 2 hours evenly divided. Hopefully, we can reduce that time. I ask Senators to please come to the floor if they want to speak.

If the Senator would suspend, I wish to ask how much time is remaining on this amendment.

I assume in a quorum call the time is taken from both?

If the quorum call is put in now, might I ask the Chair to whom does the time run against?

Mr. President, I think it is only fair to ask unanimous consent any time under this quorum call be equally allocated to both sides.

We have a little over half an hour of time left on this side, about 20 minutes on the other side on this amendment. For those Senators, this is the medical malpractice amendment by Senator Gregg from New Hampshire. By consent, we had 2 hours of debate. The clock is running. If any Senators wish to speak on this amendment, they better hurry over here.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

On both sides.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for a couple minutes for informational purposes without taking away time from either side.

Madam President, we are about to begin 2 hours of debate on the Dorgan-Grassley amendment No. 3695. I have been in discussion with my ranking member, Senator Chambliss, about getting a couple or three votes stacked. I hope sometime during this debate my colleagues will yield me a little bit of time to announce we might have a consent agreement for two or three amendments that would occur as soon as the debate has ended on the Dorgan-Grassley amendment or time is yielded back. That is what we are working on right now. Hopefully, in the next several minutes, we will have some information about when those votes might occur.

We are trying to work out this agreement. I am certain either Senator Dorgan or Senator Grassley, one of the debaters, will yield us a minute at some point during the debate to line up two or three amendments.

I ask unanimous consent that at the end of the debate on the Dorgan- Grassley amendment, or time being yielded back, the Senate proceed to vote on or in relation to Alexander amendments Nos. 3551 and 3553.

That is right.

If we use all time, those two votes will occur, obviously, at about 6:20 p.m. If time is yielded back, it could be a little bit earlier than that.

I say to my friend, yes. In speaking with the majority leader, the majority leader said this is going to be a late night. We have a number of amendments on both sides that I think we can debate and we can vote on this evening. I say to my friend, yes, I hope we can vote on the Coburn amendments, the Sessions amendment, the Gregg amendment, and the Alexander

amendments, and there may be a couple on our side we are trying to get cleared for short debates and votes yet this evening.

Go ahead.

Madam President, I hope the Senate will reject these Alexander amendments. The first one on transmission easement payments, again, if we want to encourage the building of renewable energy resources, they are going to take place in rural areas. These easements they have to get have to take place on farms and rural areas.

I was pleased the Finance Committee in their tax package provided this income exclusion for transmission easement payments because it can help support transmission access development and it does it for renewable energy. So this is part of the tax package that came from the Finance Committee supported both by the Finance Committee and the Agriculture Committee.

If you want renewable resources built in rural America, then this amendment should be defeated because it will slow it down and stop it from happening.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: What is the order before the Senate at the present time?

Amendment No. 3596

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we have not seen the modification.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I join my colleague and concur in his remarks on the Sessions amendment. For a lot of subjects before us we get good ideas, interesting ideas that come up via amendments on bills. This isn't the first time it has happened. As Senator Chambliss said, this idea has been talked about, floated around for a while. Senator Sessions has perhaps focused it more than I have seen in the past on the savings account idea.

But I think Senator Chambliss is right. This is a very complicated subject. It involves a lot of different considerations and as well as interactions with other programs in agriculture. I would just say to my friend from Alabama that I would, with Senator Chambliss, be willing to have some hearings on this next year, and I invite the Senator to testify and bring some witnesses in, as Senator Chambliss says, some agricultural economists, some agricultural producers, and see what this proposal would do. If it has legs, if it has some merit, we could move it.

Just because we pass a farm bill doesn't mean that our committee is dormant for 5 years. We will be holding hearings and working on legislation. The occupant of the chair, too, will be actively involved in a lot of those discussions next year as a valuable member of our committee.

So I would just say to the Senator from Alabama, I am going to join Senator Chambliss in opposing the amendment. Not that I am absolutely, irrevocably opposed to it, but it is a little bit too much of a change on a bill now, without the kind of hearings and due diligence that we should apply to it. So I will oppose it. But I will say this to Senator Sessions: I look forward to having some hearings on it next year.

Mr. President, when I hear the Senator describe how the money is going out, of course it sounds bad. No one wants EQIP money going for doctors who buy a little bit of acreage and want to put in a pond and have a fishing hole. We don't want EQIP money going for that, and it should not go for that.

But the way the amendment is drafted, it just says two-thirds of your income has to be from farming before you can qualify for EQIP. The problem with that is there are a lot of young, beginning farmers who are farming, but they are not making enough money from the farm to sustain themselves, and they and their spouse need to work at other jobs. They may have a night job and the spouse may have a job. Most of their income may not be from that farming venture, but the money they are earning is going into the farm and they are building up their farm asset base. I see this happening, and we don't want to discourage that. Those are the people who may need some EQIP money. They may need to build a fence for livestock production. That EQIP money ought to be there for them to do that. Maybe they are improving their land and they need a water-holding facility to provide livestock with water on an around-the-year basis. That happens in our State, and I am sure it happens in Oklahoma too. They may not be getting two-thirds of their income from farming for a while. Later, they may, as they build up their assets and become better farmers and they get more income from farming.

So according to the Economic Research Service data, this amendment would bar EQIP contracts for 71.2 percent of all producers who receive them in 2006. You cannot say that 71 percent of all those people are these rich doctors putting in a fence and putting their horses out there. That may be a small part of these contracts, but it seems to me you are going after a lot of people who deserve EQIP contracts to go after some who don't deserve them.

The farms that would still qualify under the Senator's amendment would tend to be relatively large farms--that is, with gross income on average over $654,000. Again, these are the producers that have a greater ability to pay for conservation. I repeat: the larger farms, where the producers get more than two-thirds of their income from farming, average over $654,000 in gross income. If you compare that to a beginning farmer, they would actually have more ability to pay for conservation on their own, but this amendment would hurt the younger farmers with lower incomes and second jobs to make ends meet.

As I said, I just think this kind of a shotgun approach isn't the way to go. I wish there were some way to refine it to get at the very problem the Senator spoke about.

Yes.

I could not agree with the Senator more. When I hear what he says, the answer is, yes, I wish we could figure out how we do that. We have not done that, and we should do that.

On the 71 percent, that might sound alarming, but that says to me there are a lot of people out there farming who aren't making a lot of money on the farm. They do have some farm income, but think about it this way: people who may be bona fide farmers or ranchers, but they may have another business in town--maybe they are an elevator operator or something, but they are farmers.

I think we have to be very careful about this. I think there are a lot of these people in that 71 percent--I haven't looked at the breakdown--who are these younger farmers and have to have some off-farm income to help make ends meet or maybe they need farm income to put away for college savings or something.

Sure.

That sounds interesting.

I give the Senator my word. I want the same thing he wants. It burns me up, too, to see some of these people who buy acres and they get EQIP money to put up a nice pond or a horse shed. I agree with him. Maybe we can get our staffs and get people to think about how we might fashion this to exclude those people from the EQIP program. I would love to see that happen.

If the Senator will yield further, maybe the Senator is onto something in terms of intent or what they are doing, coupled with, perhaps, the productive capacity and what that land is actually producing on an annualized basis.

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

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, we are making good progress. Senator Chambliss and I have been working very hard today to get amendments up. I think we are down to just a few we will be voting on tomorrow, and we will do perhaps a little bit more work tonight. I would say to any Senator whose amendment is on the list who wants to debate it, we are here. They could debate the amendment tonight and get in order tomorrow. I have a couple of things I want to wrap up.

I ask for regular order with respect to amendment No. 3830.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

It is just a second-degree.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3539. It is an amendment by Senator Durbin, No. 3539. I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

I ask that the second-degree amendment be agreed to.

I ask the amendment, No. 3539, as amended, be agreed to.

I am happy to yield to my friend from Maryland.

That is correct, Senator. Section 2361 provides an additional funding stream totaling $165 million from 2007 through 2012 to address the critical needs of the Chesapeake Bay. This funding is separate from EQIP and is not intended to offset funding allocated under that program.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, December 12, 2007, at 11 a.m. in order to hold a closed briefing on North Korea.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet in Executive session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, December 12, 2007, at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, December 12, 2007, at 10 a.m. in order to consider the nominations of Harvey E. Johnson, Jr., to be Deputy Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Jeffrey William Runge to be Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs and Chief Medical Officer, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, December 12, 2007, at 10 a.m., in order to hear testimony on the funding challenges and facilities maintenance issues facing the Smithsonian Institution.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet tomorrow, Wednesday, December 12, 2007 from 10:30 a.m.--12:30 p.m. in room SD-628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building for the purposes of conducting a hearing.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``S. 1782, The Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007'' on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 9:30 a.m. in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Witness list: Richard M. Alderman, Associate Dean, University of Houston Law Center, Houston, Texas; Mark A. de Bernardo, Executive Director and President, Council for Employment Law Equity, Jackson Lewis LLP, Vienna, Virginia; F. Paul Bland, Jr., Staff Attorney, Public Justice, Washington, DC; Fonza Luke, Birmingham, Alabama; Richard Naimark, Senior Vice President, The American Arbitration Association, Washington, DC; Peter B. Rutledge, Associate Professor of Law, Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC; and Tanya Solov, Director, Securities Department, Illinois Secretary of State, Chicago, Illinois.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 403, which was submitted earlier today.

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 Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 525, S. 1245.

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