Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. May I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to continue for up to 20 minutes, if that becomes necessary?

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Chair. (The remarks of Mr. Bennett pertaining to the introduction of S. 1518 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, there is a great adventure coming up. Everyone is looking forward to it and reservations are already being made. We are talking about the great New Year's Eve party on December 31, 1999, the New Year's Eve party of the millennium. Join with me in a moment of fantasy and speculation and consider yourself at that party. You have made your reservations. You are in New York City so you can be part of the celebration in Times Square. This is going to be a wonderful event in your life. You are wearing a name brand digital watch, one of the fancy ones that records not only the time and the day, but the year. So you have your watch on, and you look at it to follow the time until we get to the magic moment. You are looking at your watch, and it says 11:59, December 31, 1999. At the stroke of midnight, your watch clicks over to midnight and goes blank. What has happened? We have already seen that. Someone has taken a watch and set it ahead to that date to see what would happen. At the moment it goes to the year 2000, a circuit freezes open, the watch display disappears, the power from the battery fries the chip and the watch becomes useless. So at the moment of midnight, as you look at your watch, your watch becomes useless. I know the Presiding Officer would not do this, but for the sake of the illustration, let's say you celebrate a little more than maybe you should, and you decide it is appropriate that you take a taxi back to your hotel. You don't have enough money for a taxi. No problem, there's an ATM machine and you have your ATM card with you. You put the ATM card in, push the buttons and wait for the money. Nothing happens, because the ATM machine is not geared to click over into the year 2000, and it won't give you any cash; it is frozen. Somehow, Mr. President, with the help of maybe some of your friends, you get yourself to your hotel. The elevators won't work in the hotel because at midnight of the year 2000, the chip in the elevator said this elevator has not been inspected for 99 years, and it goes immediately to the bottom and stays there until an inspector shows up. So you are forced to stagger up the stairs to find your room. We hope you are using a key and not some other high technology to get into the room so that you can get a good night's sleep. The next morning, you get up, go down and find the lobby filled with angry guests. None of them can check out because the hotel's computers that handle the checkout procedure are all frozen with the year 2000 problem. You stand there getting more and more angry until finally with manual checkout procedures, you get out of the hotel and say, ``Can I get a car to the airport?'' ``Unfortunately, Senator,'' says the manager of the hotel, ``our cars won't start. They have computer chips in them that are geared to the year 2000, and we can only get you to the airport in old taxi cabs that are so old they have no computers, and today they are in great demand.'' You show up at the airport finally, hours and hours late, sure you have missed your flight, only to discover that no flights have gone because the computer program that controls the flights and the reservations is all shut down because of the year 2000 problem that has not been fixed. It is probably just as well that the flights are not flying, because the air traffic control system is managed by computers which have not been fixed for the year 2000 problem, and we would have no safety in the skies anyway. Whether you like it or not, Mr. President, you are stuck in New York for the foreseeable future. When Monday comes, the 3d of January, and the opening of the stock market in the new millennium. The stock market can't open because all of the stock market procedures are run by computers, and inadequate precautions have been taken to get the stock market ready for the year 2000 circumstance and the computers have shut down everywhere. You write a check only to discover that the automatic deposit that goes by computer into your checking account hasn't worked, because the bank in which you have your money is not year 2000 compliant and your check won't clear. The money is not in your account. Every single circumstance that I have just described could easily happen if nothing is done between now and the year 2000. Some of the circumstances that I have just described inevitably will happen no matter how much we work to try to get the problem solved between now and the year 2000. Our challenge, as a society, is to see that as few of those problems that I have described happen. It is impossible to guarantee that none of them will happen. The one that you can be absolutely sure of, Mr. President, is that, if you're wearing the wrong brand, your watch will fry on that date. How big a problem is the year 2000 problem? We have held hearings in my subcommittee and asked this question, and we have come up with two numbers, both of them large. The first is the number that it will cost to fix the problem. The estimate that we have before our committee and in our subcommittee record is roughly $600 billion--$600 billion. That is a little less than 10 percent of our gross domestic product, which is currently running at $7 trillion. So 10 percent of that would be $700 billion. If we are $100 billion off, it is going to cost 10 percent of our gross domestic product to fix the problem--a very large number, a very large percentage. The other number is even bigger. We have asked the question: How big is the potential liability that can come from lawsuits that people file in the year 2000? The answer we have is $1 trillion. So we are looking at a problem in the economy that could cost us as much as 10 percent of GDP to fix, and if it is not fixed properly, it could cost us as much as one-seventh of the economy in lawsuits to deal with the liability. I don't know of a problem we have faced here on the floor that has that kind of certainty connected with it and that kind of urgency connected with it. We, in politics, always try to create a disaster so that the politicians then can pass a law to fix it and then take credit for having averted the disasters. Many times the disasters we were talking about weren't coming anyway. This one you can count on. It is coming; it is there; it is quantifiable; it is very real. A lot of folks have said to me, ``No, no, no, Senator, don't get excited, this is a simple problem and Bill Gates will fix it for us.'' The idea is Bill Gates, or some other smart computer jockey, will sit down, spend a weekend coming up with a solution, mail it out to everybody, and we will put it in our computers like a magic fix, press a few buttons and the whole problem will go away. That is not possible, because it is not that kind of a problem and if you don't believe me look at the Microsoft website, under frequently asked questions, FAQ. There will be no magic bullet. Here is the problem, Mr. President. The computer code was written 20, 30, sometimes as recently as 10, 15 years ago. It was important for cost reasons to hold down the number of areas in a field. I am using the language the computer folks talk about, the bits and the bytes, and so on. They will have a field, and if they have two digits, it is a whole lot cheaper to put the field in the code than if there are four, at least under the old languages in the old code. So, to save time, to save money, they put in a two-digit field instead of a four- digit field, assuming that no one needed to know the 19 of the year, they only needed to know the 61, 62, 71, 72, or whatever would come later. Many of them assumed that these programs would long since be phased out by the year 2000, and if they gave any thought to the year 2000 problem at all, they were sure that their computer codes would not be in use at that time. In fact, Mr. President, many of those codes are in use, and they are in use in the largest computer systems that we have in the country, in the mainframe systems that run most of American business. Is it an easy problem to fix? Oh, yes, it is very simple; very simple. All you have to do is find that portion of the computer code where there is a two-digit field and change it to a four-digit field. That is not rocket science. What is not simple is finding where that field is in the first place. The analogy that I heard that best describes it is this: Fixing a line of code is as simple as changing a rivet on the Golden Gate Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge is held together by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of rivets. You have the responsibility of finding every one and changing every one during rush hour, and if you miss one or two, the bridge will fall down. That is the enormity of the problem that we have here. It is a simple, easy fix once you find it, but gargantuan in its size, because there are so many that must be found and, in many cases, with the older software, no one knows where the code is. Documentation was not an extended science at the time they were writing that code. No one knows where it is. You are on a search mission that can be tremendously frustrating. You can think you have everything, then you gear up the system and run it, only to discover there are still some rivets missing that you have not changed. There are still some fields of code that have not been expanded. Mr. President, we have held four hearings in my subcommittee on this issue. The first one we had the banks and the financial institutions come in and testify as to the size of the problem from their point of view. It was very revealing. They gave us this number which is what is driving my sense of urgency. They told us that if we do not have the year 2000 problem fixed by September of 1998 in the banking system, we are too late. September of 1998, that is less than a year away. Many people say, ``Oh, 2000, this is 1997, we have 3 years to worry about it.'' No, Mr. President, we have less than 1 year to worry about it. I asked the question, why must it be fixed by September of 1998? Back to my analogy about changing the rivets on the Golden Gate Bridge during rush hour. You have to test this system once you have replaced all of the fields with two digits with fields with four digits to make sure you got them all. The banking system can't test its computer programs while it is running all of its checks and deposits and transfer payments. So by September of 1998, when you supposedly have your system done, you have about 50 weekends left to test it. The experts who have looked at it said you have to have at least 50 in which to test it to keep changing the problems as they come along. So I repeat, as far as the banking system is concerned, if people do not have their remedial program pretty well done by September of 1998, they are way behind the curve and, indeed, the witnesses who spoke to us said we are already in a circumstance where we are not talking about a total fix, we are talking about triage, the medical term that says when you bring in an accident victim or a gunshot victim, you do what is necessary to save the victim's life and then you worry about other things to restore him to health later on. Triage is the lifesaving activity; the return to health comes later on. So we are talking about triage activity with respect to the year 2000 being in place by September of 1998. We are not talking about the total fix, because the total fix will have to take place for months and months after we pass the turn of the millennium. Obviously, when we are talking numbers this big if the problem is not property solved, it can have serious implications for the economy. Dr. Ed Yardeni testified in our last hearing. He is an investor analyst who has been looking at this problem, and his first reaction to it when he looked at it was, ``My gosh, if this thing isn't settled, this could, in fact, cause a recession.'' He put the chances of that happening at 30 percent, a recession of worldwide proportions, Mr. President--30 percent. That is enough to get our attention. Why does he say there is a 30-percent chance of a worldwide recession of the problem isn't fixed properly? He makes this very powerful point, going back to our last truly major recession which came as a result of the interruption in oil supplies in the early 1970's. The world runs on oil. If we cannot get a regular and dependable supply of oil, we cannot run our world economies. Today, the world still runs on oil, but it runs on information. And if there is an interruption in the flow of information, it will have implications far beyond your inability to get a taxi in New York on New Year's Day. If the information in the banking system and in the financial markets, information in insurance and loans is all interrupted in ways that cause things to fail, it could in fact trigger this trillion dollars worth of liability that we are talking about and create a recession. Many people said that to Dr.. Yardeni, ``You're an alarmist saying there is a 30 percent chance of recession. Study the problem more so you understand it better.'' He has done it and raised his prediction from 30 percent to 35 percent. At the time we had the hearing, he prepared himself for the hearings to that he would be very much up to date on everything that was going on. When he came before our subcommittee he said the chance of a worldwide recession occurring as a result of the year 2000 problem is now at 40 percent. The chances are going up as time runs out and people fail to react. The more time we have, the lower the chance. The less time we have, with a slow reaction time, the greater the chance. Mr. President, we have learned in the hearings in my committee that this is a pervasive business problem, not just limited to the financial markets. Businesses rely on computer systems for nearly every aspect of their operations from operating medical equipment that administers chemotherapy, to calculating interest on loans, to launching and tracking satellites. Failure in one computer system could not only devastate it, but we are so interconnected that it could have a ripple effect on other computer systems. So this brings us back to the fact that businesses are going to have to expend huge sums of money in order to deal with the risks connected with this. Some of the companies have already stepped forward and disclosed what they are going to do. American Airlines puts the cost at $100 million to solve their year 2000 problem. GTE plans to spend $150 million. And outside of the business arena--my State of Utah has set aside $40 million to deal with their problems. The USAA group said they will spend as much as $75 million. What about the companies in which you own stock, Mr. President? If you say you do not own any, then what about the companies that your pension funds own stocks? How much do they plan to spend in remediation or in contingency planning? If you check their disclosure statements, you probably will not find the answer, because more and more companies are saying, ``We don't want to disclose how big a year 2000 problem we have because we don't want to tip off your competitors, we don't want to hurt the stock price, to in effect say to our investors that we've got this huge cost coming, while our competitors are not disclosing it.'' And some of the regulators have said to us, ``If a stockholder wants to know how big the problem is, he or she should call the company and ask.'' That is totally unacceptable, Mr. President. It is unfair and unrealistic to expect an individual shareholder in any company or a depositor at any financial institution to make the inquiries on his own and have any hope of getting a meaningful answer. What we need is disclosure that is mandated by the regulators that everybody responds to. The burden must be upon the institution to disclose its readiness in this circumstance. That is why, Mr. President, I am rising today to introduce the CRASH Protection Act of 1997. We love acronyms in Government. CRASH stands for ``Computer Remediation And Share Holder'' protection. I hope that it will make our transition into next millennium much smoother than it would currently be. My legislation will require the Securities and Exchange Commission to amend its disclosure requirements in five specific ways. First, it will require disclosure of a moving peg pinpointing any publicly traded corporation's progress with regard to the remediation of the five recognized phases of the year 2000 preparation. Awareness, these five are awareness, assessment, renovation, validation, and implementation. So there will be a disclosure of how a company is doing in those five areas. Second, my bill will require a summary of the costs incurred by the company in connection with any remediation effort. Both sums already expended and those that can reasonably be expected to be expended in the future. That is a cost that every shareholder deserves to know. Third, it will require the disclosure of likely costs associated with the defense of lawsuits against the company or its directors and officers due to any liabilities incurred as a result of year 2000 problems. Fourth, it will require an estimate and a detailed discussion of existing insurance coverage for the defense of lawsuits or the specific occurrence of any year 2000 failure, large or small, and finally it will mandate the disclosure of all contingency plans for computer system failure. Mr. President, the SEC has commented on this issue. And I would like to read their appropriate paragraph. They say: It is not, and will not, be possible for any single entity or collective enterprise to represent that it has achieved complete Year 2000 compliance and thus to guarantee its remediation efforts. Again, Mr. President, it will not be possible for anyone to do that. Back to the statement: The problem is simply too complex for such a claim to have legitimacy. Efforts to solve Year 2000 problems are best described as ``risk mitigation''. Success in the effort will have been achieved if the number and seriousness of any technical failures is minimized, and they are quickly identified and repaired if they do occur. Mr. President, that statement more than any other reflects my concern that we must move forward to make sure that the year 2000 problem is taken seriously by publicly traded companies, their officers and their legal representatives. It will be my goal to move this bill as quickly as possible after the first of the year because again may I stress, Mr. President, it is not midnight, December 31, 1999, tht is our deadline, it is September, 1998, in which the plans must be in place or they will not have the opportunity to be tested and get us out of the circumstance. Finally, Mr. President, let me stress that year 2000 problems are not limited to the private-sector businesses. Studies have shown that our Government is well behind the curve in its remediation efforts. As one of my staffers says that his grandmother, Maria Schwibinger, always told him ``sweep your own stoop first.'' Government ought to focus on its own year 2000 problems as well as require that others do that. The GAO has given many branches of Government unsatisfactory ratings in their management of the year 2000 problems. I have asked the GAO to report on the progress of the financial institution regulatory agencies. And they are doing that. So far I have only one of their reports, and it is not reassuring. They have completed their review of the National Credit Union Administration and expressed a myriad of concerns about its preparedness for the date change. Last Monday, I received NCUA's response to the GAO. And this response troubled me for several reasons. No. 1, it made no effort to refute the GAO assertion that ``For some credit unions, year 2000 problems could even result in their failures.'' We are not talking about expense here, we are talking about survival. And they do not refute that. No. 2, it implicitly agreed with the GAO's assertion that NCUA does not have qualified staff to conduct examinations in complex systems areas. They had better get going in getting that qualified staff as quickly as they possibly can. And, No. 3, its response plan for compliance on the part of the Nation's credit unions is all prospective in nature. They had no report of anything that they had done in the past. Now, lest anybody think I am beating up on the credit unions, let me make it clear that this is the only report I have. It is entirely possible that the GAO's review of bank, insurance, and securities regulators, would be equally as devastating. So others need not take comfort in the fact that I am talking about credit unions and not about them. Their time may very well be coming. So, Mr. President, I submit this bill and ask it be appropriately referred. I close with this final comment. I am doing everything I can. Chairman D'Amato, as chairman of the full committee, is cooperating fully and leading the charge at the full committee level and doing everything he can to see to it that our Nation's financial institutions are prepared and ready for the year 2000 problem. The Banking Committee and my subcommittee have no jurisdiction over the other areas of Government where this problem is real. We have no jurisdiction over the Defense Department, over the IRS, over the air traffic control system or any of the other myriad of agencies that have their own year 2000 challenges. I am currently putting together a letter to the President in which I am calling upon him to appoint, through the use of his Executive power, some coordinating figure within the entire executive branch whose sole responsibility between now and that great New Year's Eve party will be to monitor, hector, prod, push, and otherwise produce results in every area of the executive branch. I hope that if the Government will get involved in this at that kind of level, if the regulators in the financial areas will respond to the kind of prodding that is coming as a result of my bill, as shareholders react to the information that is made available to them if my bill passes, demand remediation efforts on the part of the companies that they own, that we will be able to look back on my opening comment on what the Presiding Officer could expect on New Year's Eve and say, instead of the disaster that Senator Bennett outlined back in November 1997, we had some minor inconveniences. Nothing could make me happier in this area than to see that my prediction will not come true, to have Dr. Yardeni, and other thoughtful people examining this issue, begin to move down their level of concern so that instead of a 40-percent chance of a worldwide recession, they are talking about a 35- or 30- or a 25- or a 20-percent chance or finally saying, well, by virtue of the reaction that was created, the chance of a worldwide recession is now down to practically nothing. I would be very, very happy to be proven wrong by the reaction that is created as a result of the legislation that we will introduce today and the hearings that we have held. But I stress again in closing, Mr. President, this is the disaster that we can see. It is like the oil crisis in its size, but it can be prepared for and it can be mitigated against if we only will muster the will to recognize what we are facing and do the things we have to do. I am hoping that my legislation and the hearings held in my subcommittee will move us in that direction.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to make a brief statement regarding S. 1258, a bill I introduced on October 6, 1997. This legislation will amend the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act of 1970 to prohibit an alien not lawfully present in the United States from receiving assistance under that act. The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has reviewed this bill and approved it for Senate floor action. My purpose in bringing this bill before the Senate is to address a loophole that was inadvertently created when immigration and welfare reform bills were recently enacted. In part, these bills were crafted to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the United States by denying Federal taxpayer paid benefits to illegal aliens. Currently, illegal aliens are still eligible to receive relocation assistance. Often, this assistance turns out to be a significant sum of money. This legislation was originally introduced in the other body following an incident in California in which an illegal immigrant was awarded $12,000 because her legal status in this country made her ineligible to be moved into section 8 housing. In other instances, relocation assistance is being awarded to illegal aliens who then use the money to buy homes in their countries of origin. This legislation simply closes a loophole which was overlooked in previous legislation and fully complies with the intent of Congress when it enacted immigration and welfare reform laws. I note that this legislation will not affect foreign nationals residing in the United States as legal residents or under the legal protection of a valid visa. In addition, the bill provides Federal agencies the ability to waive the provisions of this act in case of an exceptional and extremely unusual hardship. I have one technical amendment to bring the bill into conformance with the legislation already passed by the other body. This amendment does not change the substance of the bill and I ask that it be considered with the bill. I have worked closely with the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in bringing this bill to the floor. I appreciate their support and the help of committee staff in moving this legislation toward enactment.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I thank my colleague for his summary of the circumstance with relation to Hill Air Force Base. I want to take my 5 minutes and refer to the arguments made on the floor. We have heard that the bill as currently constituted contains 32 pages of anticompetitive language. I challenge that, Mr. President. I believe it contains 32 pages of rules by which the competition will occur. Do we refer to rules as anticompetitive when they establish the framework in which a competition will happen? I will take a sports analogy. Is it anticompetitive when there is a referee on the floor that prevents one player from fouling another in a basketball game? If I have a team filled with very rough players, I consider that anticompetitive. But if the purpose of the game is something other than to beat each other up, but to score baskets in the form of the rules of the game, the existence of the referee and, yes, the rule book which runs for more than 32 pages, in fact, enhances competition rather than cuts it down. Mr. President, 32 pages of oversight language. I must report my own experience with this issue. We have only one set of numbers before us as a Congress as to what happens with privatization in place, and those are the numbers that come from the GAO. The GAO says if you proceed with privatization in place, it will cost the taxpayers over half a billion. That is not right, says the Air Force, nowhere near, we will save money with competition. I said, fine, give me the numbers. ``We don't have any numbers. We just know we will save money.'' I had Sheila Widnall, the Secretary of the Air Force, in my office. I asked for numbers. She refused to give me any and just said, ``We will save money. GAO is wrong.'' If GAO was wrong, give me specifics. No, the Air Force said, we won't give you specifics. Just trust us that they are wrong. General Babbitt was put forward as the general who would command this activity. I held up his nomination until he came to my office. I said, ``General, you are undoubtedly qualified for this. I will let you go forward. But there is something I want from you before I will let you go forward.'' He said, ``What is that?'' I said, ``I want you to agree to give us the numbers. If indeed you can improve that privatization- in-place will save taxpayers dollars, you ought to be able to prove that with numbers rather than rhetoric. If you have those numbers I want you to be willing to share them with the Congress.'' He looked at me and said, ``Why, of course, Senator, we will be happy to share those numbers.'' I said, ``General, you are the first person in the Air Force ever to agree to do that.'' That is all we are asking for, a little sunshine here, not quite so much rhetoric and not so much ``trust me,'' a little sunshine, a little oversight, a little understanding. So in these 32 pages that have been attacked, there are requirements that the Air Force tell the Congress how much money they are spending, how much money, presumably, they are saving and how they are following the rules, and then have those numbers reviewed by the GAO. Is this so anticompetitive, if you are saving the taxpayers millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, that you are willing to share the information? I don't think it is anticompetitive at all. I think, again, it is like the rule book in a basketball game that says: These are the rules and there will be a referee to enforce them. The rules are fairly voluminous, but the end result of the rules is that you have a game that works. We have been told again and again, ``no, we believe in competition.'' I believe in competition. But I believe in competition in the open. I believe in competition where the information is available, particularly to the policymakers in the Congress. So, Mr. President, I hope that this bill passes. I hope the President signs it because I think we can pass it by a wide enough margin to send a veto-proof message to the White House, and I hope when it's over, we will then, by virtue of the language that has been added to the bill on the depot issue, as a Congress, be able to see what is done, be able to understand what is done and, if at that time they come back and say we would save the taxpayers this much money, and they get specific with numbers, I am perfectly willing to have them spend that money on privatization in place. But I am not, Mr. President, willing to accept a ``trust me'' attitude, given the history of the Air Force's unwillingness to talk to us on this issue up to this point. I yield the floor. Mr. STEVENS addressed the Chair.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 237, S. 1231.

Mr. BENNETT

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

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2464, which was received from the House.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be placed at the appropriate place in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, as in executive session, I ask unanimous consent that at 9:30 a.m., on Wednesday, November 5, the Senate proceed to executive session and that there then be 10 minutes of debate, equally divided, between the chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. I further ask unanimous consent that following that debate, the Senate proceed to vote on the confirmation of Calendar No. 328, the nomination of James Gwin to be U.S. district judge in Ohio. I finally ask unanimous consent that immediately following that vote, the President be notified of the Senate's action, and that the Senate then return to legislative session.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 230, H.R. 79.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill appear at the appropriate place in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of calendar No. 224, S. 813.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee substitute be agreed to.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill appear at the appropriate place in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of calendar No. 228, S. 940.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee substitute be agreed to.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill appear at the appropriate place in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until the hour of 9:30 a.m., on Wednesday, November 5th. I further ask unanimous consent that on Wednesday, immediately following the prayer, the routine requests through the morning hour be granted and the Senate proceed immediately to 10 minutes of debate in executive session on the nomination of Judge James Gwin, of Ohio, to be U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio, to be followed by a rollcall vote on his confirmation, as under the previous order.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that following the vote on the Gwin nomination, the Senate proceed to legislative session to resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 1269, the fast- track legislation, with Senator Roth or his designee being in control of 3 hours and Senator Dorgan or his designee in control of 4 hours. I further ask unanimous consent that at no later than 5 p.m., the Senate proceed to a rollcall vote on or in relation to the motion to proceed to S. 1269.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of calendar No. 238, S. 1324.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill appear at the appropriate place in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar No. 219, H.R. 708.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be placed at the appropriate place in the Record.