Robert Dole

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the motion was agreed to.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOLE. I move to table the next committee amendment on page 27 line 9 and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DOLE. I object. The question is on the motion to table. vote on amendment no. 31, as amended

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, let me say first of all, the Senator is certainly within his rights. I have no quarrel with that, and never have. Certainly, the Senator from West Virginia or any other Senator on either side has that right. I did want to indicate we have had 15 votes on this bill. We started Thursday, January 12, at 10:30 a.m. Up until about 6 o'clock, we had had approximately 25 hours of debate; the Democrats used 15 hours, the Republicans 10. But in the 15 votes taken on this bill, 5 were unanimous, and 3 were sense-of-the-Senate. I think we have only really voted on two or three amendments to the bill. We were getting a list today of 78 or 80, and not many were even relevant. But few were germane. And then our list was some 30 amendments. We whittled our list down to 11. There are still 40-some on the other side. It seems to me that the Senator from West Virginia has exercised his rights and will continue to exercise his rights. And I have no quarrel with that. We must do what we must do as the majority, to try to move the bill along. It is not going to be easy. So I have asked unanimous consent that we just agree to that, and that has been objected to. So I would propose another unanimous-consent request and see if we might be able to save some time; that it be in order for me to table the Gorton amendment and the four remaining committee amendments en bloc, and one vote count as five rollcall votes.

Mr. DOLE. Or Monday.

Mr. DOLE. By 4 o'clock on Monday. Votes will occur after 4 o'clock.

Mr. DOLE. We hope they would not call up all the amendments.

Mr. DOLE. We would be happy to change that. We put that in just to accommodate, to make it more efficient. But we would be happy to change that.

Mr. DOLE. That is fair enough. Let me do that. This is the agreement I proposed and that we discussed, as I say, on both sides in good faith: I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be the only amendments in order to S. 1; that they be offered as first or second-degree amendments, if Committee amendments are available to offer them to, and that they be subject to relevant second-degree amendments. Then I would either read or submit the list. You had about 40, and we had about 11. I further ask consent that all first-degree amendments must be offered on 3 p.m. on Tuesday, January 24, and that at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the minority manager be recognized to offer any amendment on the list from the minority side of the aisle; that no later than 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday, the majority manager be recognized to offer any amendment on the list from the majority side of the aisle. I further ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the above-listed amendment and any remaining committee amendments, that the bill be advanced to third reading, and the Senate proceed to final passage of S. 1, as amended, all without any intervening action or debate. I further ask unanimous consent that once the Senate has read S. 1 for a third time, and the Senate has received the House companion bill, it then be in order for the majority manager to call up the House companion bill and move to strike all after the enacting clause and insert the text of S. 1 as amended. I further ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to vote on the Senate amendment, to be followed by third reading and final passage of the House companion bill, and that all of the action occur without any intervening debate. I ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote scheduled for tomorrow be vitiated, and that no votes occur throughout Friday's session of the Senate. I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business on Friday, it stand in recess until 9:30 a.m., Monday, January 23, 1995, and that the Senate resume consideration of S. 1 at 10 a.m., on Monday, January 23. Finally, I ask unanimous consent that any votes ordered throughout the day on Friday and Monday be postponed to occur on Monday, January 23, beginning at 4 p.m. That would have been the request. And then I had some explanatory material at the bottom. I would say that the reason for 3 o'clock on Tuesday was to make certain that both policy luncheons would have an opportunity to discuss the bill and both the majority and minority side would have time to come back after the luncheons and say, ``Well, we want to offer the following amendments,'' and they could be offered by the manager or by any Senator who had an amendment. It seemed to me that this would have accommodated our colleagues on the other side of the aisle as far as tomorrow is concerned, and all of our colleagues as far as Monday is concerned until 4 p.m. I might further state that it seems to me--I know the Senator from West Virginia would agree that only the following amendments be in order, but they would not have to be offered at any time. In my view, that would mean if we would debate those amendments, 40 or 50 amendments, we could debate those the next 30 days. So we wanted some cutoff time. After that time, no amendments could be offered. It is an agreement we have entered into many, many times in the past. In fact, we have entered into agreements in the past where we said all amendments must be disposed of by a certain hour. But that is the essence of the agreement. I hope that it might be acceptable to our colleagues on the other side. But if not, then I will proceed, as I have indicated, with the vote on the pending amendment, a motion to table that, plus a motion to table each of the committee amendments. And I believe there are four remaining. So there would be four votes on the motion to table committee amendments. Mr. BYRD addressed the Chair.

Mr. DOLE. I am happy to read it. I tried to summarize it.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, let me say that we have been working in good faith on both sides today and part of yesterday to put an agreement where we would be in session tomorrow but not have any votes, and on Monday, consider amendments but no votes before 4 o'clock. The proposal was that all the amendments that we had agreed to be put in this little basket to be offered by 3 o'clock on Tuesday. We thought that was fair. We whittled our numbers from 30-some down to 11, and I think on the Democratic side, it was 78 down to 42 or 43. Some of those may or may not be offered. We are unable to get that agreement, unfortunately. I will first ask unanimous consent that all remaining committee amendments be considered, en bloc, and agreed to and, failing that, we will have a vote on a motion to table the pending amendment, and there will be 5 additional votes on the committee amendments. So I ask unanimous consent that all remaining committee amendments be considered, en bloc, agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that they be considered original text for the purpose of further amendments.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. The Senator from West Virginia has the floor. I want to make an inquiry. If the yeas and nays are ordered, I wonder if we might have that vote occur at about 8:30. I think a lot of people left with the understanding there might be debate but no vote. I will check with the Democratic leader. I do not have any quarrel with the rollcall. Maybe we can have a couple more amendments by that time, too.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I made this request last night. Again, I will say generally it is just routine around here that we adopt the committee amendments. Any former chairman or present chairman knows that we adopt the committee amendments. Now and then--rarely--you get an objection. We are only on, what, No. 11, 5 days. We had to table some. Just to get action, we tabled some of the committee amendments. So I ask unanimous consent that all remaining committee amendments be purpose of further amendment.

Mr. DOLE. I do not have an opinion on that. I think we have a good product before us, if we could just move on it. S. 993 may have been good. This may be even a little better. I think it is still a bipartisan effort, the last I understood. It was not a partisan effort. We do not want to make it a partisan effort, but we want to finish the bill. I want to propound a unanimous-consent request when the Senator from Ohio----

Mr. DOLE. Maybe you can talk some of your people out of objecting to these routine requests while we are at it.

Mr. DOLE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, let the Record show that we have now completed action on another nongermane amendment. We had a cloture vote at 12:15. So we have consumed half the day on a nongermane amendment. We have not had a germane amendment yet to this bill. We are on the fifth day. If anybody can tell me with a straight face that they are serious about passing this bill on the other side, then I would be happy to entertain such thought. We are not getting anywhere with this bill. We are getting calls in our office from mayors and county commissioners and Governors: ``Why won't you pass this bill?'' I am prepared to pass the bill. We are prepared to listen to real amendments. We have not had any real amendments. Then we get some nongermane amendment and took an hour last night and 2 hours today--3 hours on an amendment that does not even belong on this bill. So I guess the question is, are we going to have any real amendments or are we going to continue this game of nongermane, nonrelevant amendments just so we can eat up the time and suddenly just let this bill go away, I guess. But, again, I urge the President of the United States, who supports this bill, maybe to call some of his colleagues and say, ``Why don't you pass the bill?'' The Governors want it, the President wants it, Democrats, Republicans. Why do we have to have 78 amendments? What is wrong with the U.S. Senate? Why can we not move? My view is the American people, whether they are watching or not, know what is happening--nothing; nothing is happening. If it is not going to happen today, it is going to happen tomorrow, it is going to happen Monday. It is going to be late, late, late tonight, late, late, late tomorrow night, if we have to go through the amendments one at a time and waste 3 hours on a nongermane amendment. If we cannot get time agreements on some of these amendments, that is fine; we understand the game that is being played. The American people do not, but they will before it is over. This is day No. 5, and we have yet to have a germane amendment to this bill. Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Now, I assume that if it is a party-line vote, we will not get cloture. Maybe not today; maybe not tomorrow; maybe not Saturday. I do not know when we will get cloture. If the other side of the aisle, the minority, is sincere about amendments, why not give Members a list? We were negotiating yesterday about 38 amendments. We got a list last night of 78 amendments. We thought we were going to cut them down. We doubled it, and added two for good measure. There are 117 amendments filed at the desk, and there has been cloture invoked. We can do trimming on this side, too; we have too many amendments, 30. That is a total of 108 amendments. The way we are grinding along, we would not finish this bill before the Easter recess, or there would not be any Easter recess. Nobody is in a hurry to pass this bill. They do not want to do it before the President gives a State of the Union message. I say, Mr. President, we have been trying to be helpful on Mexico, and we have heard a lot of silence on the other side of the aisle. But Mexico comes up right after unfunded mandates, after it is completed, if it is a week from now or 2 weeks from now. That is up to the President of the United States and the Democrats in Congress. Maybe it is not important to anybody there. This is important to the President, and we have made a commitment to the President to try to be helpful. However, it is fairly difficult for me to stand here as a Republican leader to try to help the President of the United States and the other party, when the other side in this Chamber has done everything they can to prevent a vote on unfunded mandates. Call it what you will. I have learned a lot about delay. In fact, we taught a course in the last 2 years. We got A's, good grades. We stopped a lot of things. So I am not here to suggest we should not do it, because we have not used the rules, because we have. I have learned--I forget most of it--but everything I learned, I learned from my [[Page S1146]] friend from West Virginia, Senator Byrd. He knows more than all of us put together, which is dangerous, in a way. I asked him for advice before I talked to him. Can I do this or can I do that? I do not want to be embarrassed, and I know he would not do that. In any event, I just suggest as the Republican leader that I know that we want to accommodate our friends on the other side of the aisle. So if there is an effort to give Members a real list of relevant amendments, maybe we can do business. But do not give me a list of five amendments for this person, five for this person, everybody take five. We had 78. Give me a list of relevant amendments, relevant to this bill, and germane amendments. I bet they would not total over 15 or 20. We will do the same on our side of the aisle, and maybe by 2 or 3 p.m., we will have it down to 30 amendments. Then we might do business. But not with 100 or some. We may never get cloture, but we will continue to try. Maybe the Governors and the mayors and the county commissioners and the taxpayers of America will understand, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but sooner or later, we need to pass this bill. There are not that many amendments. We will have every nongermane, nonrelevant amendment anybody has ever thought of. They are cleaning out their wastebaskets trying to find amendments. We are prepared to do business. We urge our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this cloture motion. That will reduce the number of amendments drastically, but they would all be relevant. They would all be germane to this bill. They would be important amendments. We will probably spend an hour and a half or 2 hours on the catalog amendments. We spent an hour last night. It has nothing to do with this bill. So we are a little bit frustrated. The American people are frustrated. We promised the American people we would listen to them, and we have not listened to them. We listened to everybody else. The American people want Members to pass this bill. The Governors, Democrats, Republicans, mayors, commissioners, you name it, want the Senate to pass this bill. We are not going to do it because the minority party says, ``No, we don't want to do it.'' There is no hurry; we do not normally do work in January. This is not a normal year. We are trying to deliver on the message the voters gave us last November, all of us on both sides of the aisle; not just Republicans. However, if we are thwarted from our effort to deliver, they will not blame us. So we will stand here every day, at every opportunity, and tell the American people why we could not pass unfunded mandates. Two days would have been plenty for this bill; 2 days. So I hope we will invoke cloture and move on to pass this bill, and then try to accommodate the President's wishes on Mexico, and following that, the balanced budget amendment.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I appreciate what the distinguished Democratic leader has had to say. It may not be intended to be a filibuster, but this is their fifth day. We spent 5 days on the bill before that that took the House 1 hour and 20 minutes to pass on congressional coverage. That was not intended to be a slowdown either, but we had all these amendments. The next amendment is not germane. It has to do with catalogs; nothing to do with unfunded mandates. It has nothing to do with this bill, but we will spend probably 2 or 3 hours on that. We spent about 4 hours yesterday on violence at abortion clinics. Nobody quarrels with that, but it has nothing to do with this bill. We spent most of the afternoon either in recess or negotiating what to do with that amendment. It was not germane, not even relevant to this bill. I am a very patient person. Of course, you have to be a little patient in the Senate, because there are certain things you cannot do. You cannot just say, ``Well, that's it. It's over. Move on to something else.'' We have a letter signed by a number of Governors supporting the cloture motion today. They know what is happening. The American people know what is happening. We are on the 11th committee amendment. Generally, it is routine to adopt all the committee amendments. We are on No. 11. We have had votes of 99 to zero, 98 to 1, wasting time with votes of this kind on amendments that ought to be accepted. Anything to take up time. Anything to delay this process. A bill that everybody supported on that side of the aisle last year suddenly has become very controversial because we have had a change of management, apparently. But I notice that Governor Dean from Vermont, Governor Thompson, and Governor Nelson of Nebraska all suggest that we ought to move ahead with this bill and support the vote on cloture. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that that letter be made part of the Record. It is signed by at least 20-some Governors in both parties.

Mr. DOLE. Was leaders' time reserved?

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, may we have order, so the distinguished leader can be heard?