Bill Frist

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent that the committee reported amendments be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar 536, S. 2273.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. I understand that there are two bills at the desk and due for a second reading. I ask unanimous consent that the clerk read the titles of the bills for a second time, en bloc.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 5105, which is at the desk.

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 2435 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. This vote will occur Tuesday morning. I will announce on Monday the precise timing of the vote on Tuesday, but I will anticipate an early vote on that morning.

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the filing requirement, it be in order for the managers to propose cleared amendments prior to the cloture vote.

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent that the amendments be set aside.

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent that at 4:15 on Monday, October 4, the Senate proceed to votes in relation to the following amendments; provided further that no second degrees be in order to the mentioned amendments prior to the votes; further, that there be 2 minutes equally divided for debate prior to each of the votes. The amendments are: Byrd No. 3845; Warner No. 3877, as modified; Stevens No. 3829; Stevens No. 3903; Stevens No. 3826; Stevens No. 3827.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator McConnell I now ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside, and I call up amendments Nos. 3930 and No. 3931, en bloc.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendments be dispensed with.

Mr. FRIST. I now ask for the regular order with respect to Collins- Lieberman amendment No. 3705.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I thank the chairman and ranking member for their tremendous work today, really over the course of the last week, especially on the amendments that we have addressed over the course of the whole week. They have worked diligently. It has been a productive week. It has been a long week, but we have had good debate on an issue that is complex, an issue that we have all studied for a long period of time but an issue on which I believe debate and the amendment process contributes even greater to our understanding. It has been very important for Members to come to the floor and debate their different views and their thoughts with respect to our intelligence agencies, their relationships one to another. We have a number of amendments now pending. As the preview order provides, we will begin voting on some of those amendments at 4:15 on Monday. I come to the floor at this time with the concern that the clock is still ticking and is working against us on the bill, in part because of the large number of potential amendments. People have submitted amendments and put them in language and begun talking about them, but we clearly need to pick up the pace in order to finish the bill early next week. Following the completion of this bill, the Senate still must address the internal reform, the internal intelligence oversight reform that goes on in this body. We will begin that on the Senate floor after we complete the Collins-Lieberman bill. Having said that, I will file a cloture motion in a moment. I do this to ensure that we will being the Collins-Lieberman bill to conclusion at a reasonable time next week, still giving us time to address the other aspect of reform, and that is the internal oversight reform in the Senate. This is done in consultation with the managers and with the Democratic leadership. The purpose is not in any way to cut off Senators' rights, but I do remind my colleagues that when colture is invoked there is still an additional 30 hours of consideration if we need that. I hope all of that time will be considered but not be necessarily used. Rule XXII provides for that postcloture time. cloture motion

Mr. FRIST. I now ask consent that the live quorum under rule XXII be waived.

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

Mr. FRIST

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

Mr. FRIST

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

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, on Monday the Senate will resume consideration of the intelligence reform bill. Under the order, there will be a series of stacked votes beginning at 4:15 on Monday. That will be, in all likelihood, the first series of votes on Monday. Monday will be a very, very busy day, and there are likely to be many more votes after these stacked votes over the course of the day into the evening. In all likelihood, we will be voting and debating well into the evening on Monday in order that we can complete this bill early next week. The cloture motion I filed a few minutes ago will ripen on Tuesday morning, and that will determine the remaining action on this bill. Again, I will remind everyone that upon completion of this legislation, the pending legislation, the Collins-Lieberman bill, which focuses on executive reforms, we will also address the Senate intelligence reforms next week. As you can tell, there is a lot of work that needs to be done before the Senate adjourns. We will adjourn next Friday on October 8 after we address both of these issues. Again, I want to stress we have both of these important pieces of legislation we will address before departing. Thus, I anticipate very busy sessions between now and next Friday. As I mentioned earlier, we have had a very busy week, a very productive week. I thank all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their patience and for their hard work. I thank the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Alabama, for his commitment this afternoon, and now into the evening, and for his steady hand at the gavel. I wish all a restful weekend.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements related to this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2884 that was introduced earlier today.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Monday, October 4. I further ask consent that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved, and that there then be a period of morning business for up to 60 minutes, with the first 30 minutes under the control of the minority leader or his designee and the second 30 minutes under the control of the majority leader or his designee; provided further that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of S. 2845, the intelligence reform bill.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent the amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements related to this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, good morning to everyone. Today, we once again will return to the intelligence reform legislation sponsored by Senators Collins and Lieberman. This week, we have made steady progress. As we set out, we will be completing this bill in the near future, but we have a number of amendments. I thank both of the managers for their patience and willingness to work through a maze of amendments. We had all amendments submitted 2 days ago and all the language for the amendments as of yesterday. The managers and staff and Senators have been working hard over the course of the night to look at the amendments, to address them, and to establish an order to which they can be addressed over today and Monday. As announced last night, there will be no rollcall votes today. We will have a full day of debate with a number of people speaking on their individual amendments. We will continue to move forward. A number of Senators have committed to being present today to offer their amendments. I thank them in advance for their participation. I encourage them to talk to the managers as to roughly when we will be discussing each of those amendments. Monday, the plans are to stack the votes. We will have a series of votes, probably beginning around 3 o'clock Monday. There will be a series of rollcall votes beginning midafternoon. The specific time we will announce a little bit later today. The Democratic leader and I have come to the Senate floor regularly over the course of the last week to comment on the progress being made on the bill. We will continue to monitor the progress. The bill itself is being discussed after full hearings in August and months and months of work, so the objective of completing this bill in the near future, both the internal organization, reorganization, and external by the time we depart, is the goal we hope to accomplish. We need to continue with the deliberative process, but we do need to bring the bill to a conclusion; therefore, there is a sense of urgency to have Members come to the Chamber and discuss their amendments. We had, as of 4 o'clock yesterday, 233 filed amendments. The Senate has considered 34 amendments thus far, and 15 have been adopted, 5 tabled, and 14 are still pending. Having said that, cloture may be a necessary tool. Again, the Democrat leader and I have been in consultation. We first mentioned cloture a couple days ago. It is a tool we might use. I point out that amendments that have been filed that are ready to be considered right now and even after cloture will remain, and we have 30 hours and could consider, of course, at that point all germane amendments. I will be in consultation with the Democratic leader over the course of the day. We will have a full day today. I appreciate everyone's consideration. We are also--not on the Senate floor but in a task force--considering the Senate's oversight of intelligence and homeland security. A number of people are asking: What is the appropriate vehicle? We are concentrating through the Collins-Lieberman bill on the external relationships, but what about the internal relationships? The appropriate vehicle and the vehicle that has been set up by the Democratic leader and myself is through Senate resolution where specific changes to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence would be entertained and where we would deal with the changes in the Senate results, especially as it applies to committee jurisdictions. It is my hope we can come to final agreement on this package by next Friday. The Democratic leader and I await the specific recommendations from the task force we appointed about a month ago. We have had a long week, a very productive week. We have accomplished a great deal. The task before the Senate is in reforming the intelligence community's responsibility and oversight. It is a huge but an essential task. We learned on 9/11 how our enemies are working day and night to visit terror on our soil. That is what we have learned since September 11. They dream of ever more catastrophic attacks. They plot and they plan in the false belief that they will elude capture. They are absolutely wrong. The work we do this week and next week in the Senate will strengthen our defenses and it will improve our ability to gather data, to analyze data, and to defeat our enemies. It will help us find them and to stop them and bring them to justice. When we are done, America will be safer and more secure.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I will comment briefly on a topic that we will not be addressing in the Senate, and therefore, before we dive into the bill, I will mention the issue of the Sudan. Just to update my colleagues because on occasion it has been on the front page, but we have not heard as much about it over the last several weeks, yet what is occurring, what we have called genocide in this body and in the House of Representatives, indeed, continues to occur. Two and a half weeks ago, the U.N. Security Council passed a second resolution on the Sudan. This resolution holds out the threat of sanctions on Sudan's leaders and its oil industry if the Government fails to act, fails to curb the ethnic violence in Darfur. The Darfur region is in western Sudan. The Darfur region is about the size of France. Around 50,000 people have died in that region in the last several months, with hundreds of thousands more at risk. I am very pleased by the action of the United Nations, even though, despite the best efforts of the United States, I believe the resolution should have been a lot tougher and it would have had a much greater impact. It is no surprise some countries do not share our outrage and determination to end those atrocities. Even after making modifications, the vote on the Security Council was 11 to 0, with Algeria, China, Pakistan, and Russia abstaining. The measure calls upon Secretary General Kofi Annan to create an international commission to determine if the campaign by marauding Arab militias--that Jinjaweed--against the villagers of Darfur in western Sudan has reached the level of genocide. The resolution also reinforces the role of the 53-member African Union in taking the lead in calming the situation in Darfur and calls on other nations and the Government of Sudan to help it expand its presence there with thousands of additional troops. As the international community knows, the Congress made this determination in late July. It was no secret then, nor is it now, that the Jinjaweed are supported and directed by Khartoum; that is, by the Government of Sudan, which has a sovereign responsibility to not do that but protect its people, not to kill them. The Jinjaweed have killed or participated in the deaths of up to about 50,000 people in Darfur. They have engaged in mass rape of women and girls and destroyed crops and polluted water supplies. They have forced over 1.2 million people to leave their homes, leave their villages, once pillaged. Last month, as I mentioned on the floor of the Senate, I had the opportunity to travel through a refugee camp called Tulum, which is right on the border, about 30 kilometers from the border in Chad, where many people have fled over the border. I had an opportunity to talk to women in little makeshift tents, women who had lost their husbands, killed by the Jinjaweed, who were separated from their children, lost as they had to flee their burning villages. It is wrong. We have spoken on this floor. We need to continue to speak and to act and to encourage the United Nations to act. The United States, under President Bush's leadership, has led the way globally on this issue from the beginning. It does, once again, show the importance of the United States acting even if the world community is slow to react, as we saw in the abstention of the resolution the other day by Algeria, China, Pakistan, and Russia. The United States has supplied well over 70 percent of the humanitarian effort and other supplies going to survivors now in Darfur and in that eastern part of Chad, and we have been providing assistance there for years. So we need to be very proud as a nation. In parts of the Darfur region, we are providing 90 to 95 percent of all the world aid going in to assist the people in those regions. We need to do a lot more. We need to work with and encourage the international community to do its share, especially the countries of the European Union and Arab League. This month, Secretary of State Colin Powell came before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and declared that the State Department's studied judgment is that genocide has indeed occurred. Last night, in the debates, we heard both Senator Kerry, from this floor, and the President of the United States call what is occurring in Darfur genocide. It is now time for the international community to act. Multiple sources are reporting from the region that attacks by both the Jinjaweed and Government forces--again, it is the Government forces who are, through direct and indirect aid, supporting this militia called the Jinjaweed--are still occurring despite the U.N.'s passage of Resolution 1556 last month that, among other things, called for a halt to such actions. I am pleased by the passage of this latest U.N. resolution, but I am not optimistic. I am pleased but not optimistic. Khartoum did not live up to the requirements set forth in the U.N.'s July 30 resolution, so why do we believe they will now? Khartoum will not end its genocide until it has either completed it or until it faces stiff international actions that compel it to stop. We need the international community to stand up. The United States is standing up. We need the international community to stand up. This body has unanimously passed, since that time, a second resolution urging the Secretary of State to take appropriate actions within the U.N. to ``suspend'' Sudan's membership on the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Such an action would be consistent with our obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention and help preserve the integrity of this commission; that is, the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Failure to take this action, I believe, mocks the principles and purpose for which the commission was formed; that is, human rights. Yet in Sudan we have what we have called, and with the ravaging of villages we have seen, genocide. Further, our resolution passed on this floor calls upon the Secretary of State to pursue Sudan's permanent removal from the U.N. Human Rights Commission if the U.N. determines, as it should, that genocide has been committed in the Darfur and that Khartoum is responsible. The U.N. cannot continue to pass resolution after resolution nor can the international community stand idly by while thousands die monthly in these remote regions of Sudan and eastern Chad. Our failure to act is not just another failure of the U.N., it is a failure of our own humanity. Mr. President, I yield the floor.