Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

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

Mr. DOMENICI. Senator Hutchinson had No. 2918, high-intensity drugs. Now we have a question from the distinguished Senator from Montana.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I do not believe the other side has any objection.

Mr. DOMENICI. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. DOMENICI. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 2951 (Purpose: To express the sense of the Senate concerning an increase in the Federal minimum wage)

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, this is a full substitute. It is a so- called Democrat budget, and essentially the big difference between the two budgets is that over time this Democrat budget will give back to the American people 4 percent of the non-Social Security surplus. We think over time we should give them back 11 percent. The difference is the Democrats spend 22 percent and we spend 17 percent of the surplus. We think this is not the time to grow Government that much but, rather, leave a little bit more than 4 percent for tax relief for the American people. There are many other differences, but this essentially is the difference. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, in the Budget Committee, there was an amendment offered to raise the Pell grants in this budget to the exact level the President of the United States requested, up to $3,500. That is what the President asked for. That is what is in the budget. I do not think the President of the United States, the education President, would be underfunding Pell grants. He has increased them in his budget, and it seems as if it is never enough. What we have done is right and fair and leaves some room for other education programs. We do not use up all the money doing that extra add-on the Senator is asking for, but we do increase it up to the level of the President. I do not believe we should add to it at this point. I hope Senators will reject the amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am opposed but I yield half of my time to Senator Lautenberg.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOMENICI. We have no objection to the amendment, and I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I will state the Senator's name and the general nature of the amendment: Senator Lincoln, a sense-of-the-Senate amendment on flood control; Senator Bayh, human genome; Senator Reid, women's health; Senator Reid, notch babies; Senator Reid, computers; Senator Kennedy, civilian/military research; Senator Dorgan, rural providers; Senator Dorgan, empowerment zones; Senator Dorgan, trade; Senator Bayh, fatherhood; Senator Landrieu; children; Senator Landrieu, military procurement; Senator Landrieu, thrift savings plan--military; Senator Cleland, Centers for Disease Control; Senator Cleland, long- term health; Senator Feinstein, environmental cleanup; Senator Lieberman, asset building; Senator Kohl, Medicare equity; Senator Lautenberg, Amtrak; Senator Bingaman, veterans' benefits; Senator Murray, customs; Senator Bond, medically underserved; Senator Abraham, as modified, Medicare choice; Senator Bunning, mining; Senator Collins, hunger relief; Senator Collins, excess gas revenues; Senator Collins, home health; Senator Coverdell, flood control; Senator DeWine, troops to teachers; Senator Fitzgerald, trust fund commission; Senator Fitzgerald, child safety seats; Senator Grassley, World Trade Organization; Senator Grassley, long-term care; Senator Grassley, child welfare; Senator Gregg, Social Security education; Senator Jeffords, LIHEAP; Senator Kyl, estate taxes; Senator Santorum, farmland; Senator Shelby, as modified, defense; Senator Smith of Oregon, fiber optics; Senator L. Chafee, breast and cervical cancer; Senator Burns, taxes; Senator Kyl, Medicare choice; Senator Grams, Social Security; Senator Inhofe, impact aid; Senator Hutchison, oil; Senator Enzi, as modified, home office; Senator Enzi, as modified, prevention health. We add Senator Hatch, No. 3022, sense-of-the-Senate on Internet drugs, and No. 3023 on methamphetamines. That is it.

Mr. DOMENICI. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I have 1 minute.

Mr. DOMENICI. As good as this idea sounds, we ought not do this. This is taking a major appropriation, a program we fund in appropriations every year, and making it an entitlement. There are a lot of great education programs. What if we start taking every appropriations bill that has exciting ideas for Americans and we say we don't want to appropriate them anymore; we will just turn them up as if they are Social Security, entitled to automatic funding. It is not the right thing to do, no matter what the program is. It is our responsibility to pay for IDEA, and special ed, not an entitlement against the American people without anybody voting on it again. It is not the right thing to do. I yield the floor. Amendment No. 3075 To Amendment 2984 (Purpose: To provide full funding for IDEA)

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, this will use $31 billion of the surplus. It will eat it up with a brand new entitlement, and it will take jurisdiction away from the appropriators in the normal course of allocating what America's Government ought to be doing. I repeat, the sense-of-the-Senate amendment establishes this as the highest priority, but we should not be setting a $31 billion entitlement program in motion today for a piece of education. Because we did not do our job on this, we should not make an entitlement to make up for our deficiency in not funding it properly.

Mr. DOMENICI. I yield back any time we have on the amendment.

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

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I think we are ready to call up the Smith amendment No. 3028, as modified. It has been cleared on both sides.

Mr. DOMENICI. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DOMENICI. 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.

Mr. DOMENICI. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 3077

Mr. DOMENICI. No objection.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all after the resolving clause be stricken, the text of S. Con. Res. 101 be inserted, a vote occur on adoption of the concurrent resolution, all without any action, and that following that vote, the Senate insist on its amendment, request a conference with the House, the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate, and the Senate concurrent resolution then be placed back on the calendar. I also ask consent that the conference ratio be 4 to 3.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. We will carry the Senator's message to the majority leader. Right now, we have 10 votes that we are willing to proceed with, 5 on each side. The first one is the Santorum amendment on military benefits; followed by Conrad on lockbox; Abraham on Social Security lockbox; Johnson on veterans; Ashcroft on Social Security investment; Mikulski on digital divide; Senator Bob Smith on prescription drugs; Graham of Florida on education; Voinovich on reconciliation instruction and taxes; and Kennedy on Pell grants. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, today the Senate will continue to vote on the remaining amendments to S. Con. Res. 101. Needless to say, votes are expected to occur throughout the morning with an expectation of voting this afternoon and perhaps into the evening, if we are not able to resolve some of the pending sense-of-the-Senate amendments and other amendments. There are 2 minutes of explanation on amendments prior to each vote. To make this process as smooth as possible, I ask that Senators remain in the Chamber between votes. I thank my colleagues for their cooperation. We will be talking with various Senators about amendments. So that everybody will know, there are 75 amendments filed by Republicans and 36 by Democrats. We are going to work with our Democratic minority whip and the ranking member of the Budget Committee to see if we can encourage a number of Senators to accept sense-of-the-Senate proposals and let us accept them on both sides. We will be working diligently at that. If we don't have success, then looking at this, I say that probably we would not finish before 6 o'clock tonight, or even later. We will work very hard. If Members will help us, we can do better than that.