Kent Conrad

Mr. CONRAD

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. The chairman, once again, is gracious to provide another 2 minutes. I ask unanimous consent for 2 minutes from his time to our time and I give 4 minutes to the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I will not take all of that time. Let me say this: I voted for the Medicare prescription drug program. I voted for it because I think it will help a substantial number of my seniors. Also, that legislation contained provisions to make Medicare reimbursement for rural hospitals more equivalent to what urban hospitals receive. In my State, under the old law, our hospitals were receiving about one-half as much to treat the same illness as a more urban hospital. That was in part corrected in the Medicare prescription drug legislation. Let us be frank. The handling of the Medicare prescription drug implementation has been a fiasco from beginning to end. I think every one of us has heard loudly and clearly from our States--I certainly have. I have done nine meetings in my State, including hosting Secretary Leavitt, on this question. It has been botched. The implementation of the Medicare prescription drug bill has been botched. On the day, the initial day, I have never seen such chaos. You couldn't get through on the phones. You couldn't get through on the Internet. You couldn't get accurate information. Cards weren't in people's hands. They automatically enrolled those who were eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid in plans that often didn't cover the drugs that they were on. That is a fact. This was very badly handled by the administration, as badly handled as anything that I have seen in 20 years representing my State in the Senate. It was an absolute fiasco. That is a fact. The question is, What do we do to try to improve the circumstance? The Senator from Florida, who has a very large elderly population, has made one constructive suggestion. He has said let's extend the deadline. Let me just say, in my State, 37 or 38 percent of the people who are eligible have signed up so far. We have over 100,000 people eligible and only 37,000 have signed up and about half of those were automatically enrolled. So the true signup, the voluntary signup is very low. It is clear we need more time. One of the problems is there are so many plans that it just confuses people. There are 41 plans in North Dakota. In all of the meetings I have had, people have said to me: Senator, how can you make any sense out of this, especially since, when you go to the phone lines you can't get an answer; when you go to the computer, the Internet sites, you can't get an accurate answer? I think the Senator from Florida is responsible in saying we ought to extend the deadline. According to the department, we now know that some 10 million people will not have signed up in time. That means they will start to have penalties imposed on them. Ten million seniors, many of them frail and elderly, will start to be penalized because they can't make sense out of this profusion of plans and this confusion. Senator Nelson has a very straightforward approach. He extends the deadline. The Senator from Iowa has an alternative. His approach is to give the department that has botched this signup the decision about whether the deadline is extended. That is a very clear choice. Do we really want the decision whether the deadline is extended to be made by the people who made a hash of this program's implementation? Or are we going to take responsibility and extend the deadline so 10 million people aren't penalized through no fault of their own. I think that choice is very clear.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, has all time been yielded back on the other side on this amendment?

Mr. CONRAD. All time has been consumed. I am prepared to yield back the time on my side on this amendment so we can then go to Senator Murray so she can respond on Senator Santorum's amendment.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, let me yield 1 minute to the Senator from Florida, and then we are going to go to the Senator from Pennsylvania for 5 minutes, and then we are going to come back on this amendment. The Senator from Pennsylvania has another obligation, so we want to try to accommodate him on that. But I give an additional minute at this time to the Senator from Florida, and I will tell him we will have more time for him momentarily after the Senator presents his amendment.

Mr. CONRAD. Will the Chair inform me how much time I have on that amendment?

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I am happy to yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Florida.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, Senator Gregg and I have an agreement that neither one of us do unanimous consent requests without the other informed or on the floor. I have been told by his staff that it is OK with Senator Gregg. With that assurance, I have no objection. I thank Senator Nelson very much for being here to expedite the business of the Senate. It is gracious of him to do so.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, was the Senator in the middle of his thought that he wanted to complete? Can he do that?

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, how much time do I have on this amendment?

Mr. CONRAD. Madam President, maybe the Senator from Idaho wishes to take some of the remaining time, and perhaps we would have a chance to hear Senator Lautenberg before we vote.

Mr. CONRAD. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I have slightly different numbers on two of the amendments. Maybe we could get that straightened out. I have Chambliss No. 3018.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I say to the Senator, this would be the appropriate time for him to make his presentation, and we can go forward with the amendments.

Mr. CONRAD. Grassley is 3073?

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, how much time does the Senator require?

Mr. CONRAD. I am happy to yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Michigan, who is such an exceptionally valuable member of the Budget Committee. She has been one of the strongest voices on the question of what are the priorities of the budget. Also she is a very strong voice for fiscal responsibility, recognizing that if we want to spend money, we have to pay for it. The Senator from Michigan has been a great leader on the Senate Budget Committee. I thank her so much for her contribution during the year, and again on the debate on the budget resolution this year. While we are waiting for the chairman of the Finance Committee, who is being called off the floor momentarily, I want to remind colleagues of the circumstance we face tomorrow. If there are staffs listening or Members listening, we are still getting requests as though we had a lot of time left. We simply do not. Tomorrow we are going to start at 9. We are going to be handling amendments that are in the queue until 10:30. At 10:30, we will start voting on amendments and we will vote on the debt matter and amendments to the debt resolution. When those have been dispensed with, we will then go back to the consideration of amendments until 1:30. At 1:30, all time has been deemed to have been used up in the budget resolution debate. We will start a series of votes every 10 minutes. Right now, with the number of amendments pending, we now have 65 votes pending on this side alone. We know we can do 3 amendments an hour. If everybody sticks to their amendments, that is 22 hours of straight voting. That is just the amendments on our side. The other side has another 15 amendments. That is 80, so that is 27 hours of voting. That is the situation we face. It is in the hands of the Members. Are people going to show restraint or are people going to insist on every amendment to be offered and voted on? I hope very much that we can convince colleagues to take very short time agreements tomorrow. I will not agree to any time agreement over 10 minutes tomorrow, period. Let me make that very clear. I hope we can get time agreements as short as 5 minutes before we get into vote-arama. When we get into vote-arama, understand that there will be 1 minute on a side. So, again, I hope colleagues understand the circumstance we face. We have lost a tremendous amount of time to extraneous events--a joint session, meetings at the White House, and the debt limit debate put in the middle of this discussion. So that is the reality we face. Last year, Lula Davis has just informed me, we started voting at 1:17 in the afternoon, and we voted until roughly 10 o'clock at night. Some of those votes were held every 5 minutes, and we handled over 20 amendments during that period. I think one can see if we have to try to do 80 amendments, we are going to be here a very long time. With that, I thank the Chair and yield the floor. Is the Senator from Oklahoma seeking recognition?

Mr. CONRAD. The debt limit request will be to raise the debt by nearly $800 billion--$781 billion.

Mr. CONRAD. The Senator makes a very good point. It is an indication that we keep adding debt on top of debt. Of course, this budget will add $3 trillion to the debt--more than $3 trillion over the next 5 years. I think it is further confirmation that we are off track in terms of the fiscal policy of this country, and not a little off track--way off track.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, it is important for colleagues to know what we are doing. We are going to go to vote-arama starting at 1:30 tomorrow afternoon. Prior to that time, we are going to have some time for additional amendments until the votes at 10:30. As the chairman has indicated, at 10:30 we will have votes on the debt limit. We will then have votes on the avian flu amendments that were put off from this evening. After those votes are concluded, we will go back to amendments until 1:30. Now, what does that mean? That means we have very restricted time tomorrow morning. We have very restricted time after the votes tomorrow, until 1:30 for additional amendments. The only way people are going to get time is if they take very short time agreements. That is the only alternative we have. Again, I explain to my colleagues, I apologize, but the fact is, our time for budget discussion has been dramatically reduced this year because of extraneous events. It is just a fact. The debt limit was put into this, the joint session, these series of meetings that are important bipartisan meetings at the White House. The chairman would agree that we have had probably the most difficult time managing this budget because there is so much less time available this year. I ask for colleagues to understand if they want time they are going to have to take very short time agreements tomorrow; otherwise, they will be in a vote-arama. Again, I thank my colleagues for the great cooperation so many have shown throughout the day. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CONRAD. Senator Grassley's amendment is the next order in the queue.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I hope colleagues understand that for this budget cycle we have lost time to a number of extraneous events which could not be helped. But it means we have less time than we have had in previous years. I hope my colleagues understand that we have put the debt limit discussion in the middle of this. We have had a number of other events, such as the joint session. As a result, we have less time for amendments. I beg the indulgence of colleagues in understanding that now the only way we can finish is if we have very tight time agreements tomorrow, and if we exercise discipline among ourselves in terms of the number of amendments that we offer. That is the only conceivable way we can finish by tomorrow night. I urge colleagues to think very carefully about amendments which they might want to offer.

Mr. CONRAD. I yield time to the Senator from Florida.

Mr. CONRAD. Yes, I would be happy to yield.