Bill Frist

Mr. FRIST

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

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. Mr. President, very briefly, I want to take a moment to thank the Very Reverend Matthew William Searfoorce, who is with us this morning, for a truly wonderful and inspiring opening prayer. Reverend Searfoorce comes to us from the great State of Connecticut, where he has served for the past 33 years in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church there. He is currently rector at the Holy Virgin Mary Orthodox Church. I had the opportunity to meet him through a very close personal friend of mine, Ed O'Lear, and his wonderful mother, whom I have known for the past, I guess, 34 years. It has been a tremendous friendship between me and the O'Lear family, including Ed's dad, who passed away, and his mom and Ed. Ed has, in effect, become a member of our family and us a member of his family. So it is through that friendship that I have had the opportunity to meet the Very Reverend Searfoorce, whose prayer we very much appreciate today. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and look forward to a good day and will likely be back over the course of the day as we talk about further scheduling.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, this morning, we will return to the consideration of the intelligence reform legislation. Yesterday, in addition to disposing of a number of amendments, we were able to reach an agreement that all first-degree amendments must be filed at the desk by 4 p.m. today. I thank all Senators for allowing us to take this important step toward completion of this bill. I also continue to encourage all Senators who still desire to offer amendments to contact the bill managers this morning in order to set up a queue for their consideration. I also hope Members will be reasonable with their time requests on their respective amendments. Unfortunately, I anticipate that a large number of amendments will be filed, although we are not encouraging Members to do so. As the Democratic leader and I mentioned yesterday, and indicated on the floor, we will be closely monitoring the progress of the bill over the next several days because we will be departing October 8. We have a large number of issues to discuss and to address, as we always do at the end of a session. Thus, we must bring this bill to closure and have a final vote on this bill in the next couple of days. I know there are a lot of colleagues who want to come to the floor and discuss and talk on the bill and discuss their amendments, and we ask them to do so today and tomorrow. Both today and tomorrow must be very full and productive days. As we discussed on the floor yesterday, if it looks as though we are not making adequate progress--again, we come to the floor again and again to make sure people understand we need to move this bill expeditiously--if it looks as though we are not bringing it to appropriate closure, we will consider filing cloture at the appropriate time. Again, that will allow us to continue to work on the bill and offer and debate germane amendments, but it would be just an effort to give further focus on the bill. This is clearly not a threat at all. It is just a plea in many ways for people to come to the floor now, this morning, today, to work with the managers so their amendments can be considered. This is an extremely important bill. It is a bill that we absolutely will finish as well as the internal reorganization and oversight of this body before we leave on October 8. We do want the Senate to work its will on this bill. I know there are caucus meetings and a lot of conferences going on off the floor on the bill and bringing people up to speed with all the ramifications of the bill. We want to continue to encourage that, but the process on the floor we need to continue to move in an efficient way. With respect to votes on Friday and Monday, the Democratic leader and I have not made announcements as to whether we will be voting. We certainly will be voting on Monday. But as to Friday, we will make announcements later today. But we need to make progress. What we would like to do is have a number of amendments tomorrow, we hope as many as 10 amendments considered over the course of the day tomorrow--the managers will work with that as a focus--but as many amendments today and tomorrow as possible. We will have more to say on this later today. After the filing deadline is reached, we will look at the amendments we have before us, and then we will talk further about scheduling.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to consideration of H.R. 5183, which is at the desk.

Mr. FRIST

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

Mr. FRIST

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

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to consideration of H.R. 5149, which is at the desk.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, this resolution concerns a request for testimony, documents, and representation in a criminal action pending in Florida Federal District Court. In this action, the defendant is charged with impersonating an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, conspiracy to impersonate a CIA agent, possession of a firearm after a felony conviction, and mail fraud. The indictment alleges that the defendant unjustly enriched himself by obtaining money from third parties upon the false representation that he was working with the CIA on a secret operation to obtain funds allegedly stolen from Cuban leader Fidel Castro. According to the prosecution, in furtherance of the alleged fraud, the defendant or his co-conspirators provided to third parties a fictitious letter purportedly signed by Senator Graham. The defendant's trial is scheduled to commence on or about November 1, 2004. The prosecution has requested testimony and the production of documents from a member of the Senator's staff who has evidence relevant to the charged offenses. Senator Graham wishes to cooperate with the prosecution's request. Accordingly, the enclosed resolution authorizes that staff member, and any other employees of Senator Graham's office from whom evidence may be required, to testify and produce documents in this action. The enclosed resolution also authorizes representation by the Senate legal counsel of Senator Graham's staff in this action.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, we are making good progress. We will continue to come to the floor to give a perspective given the fact that we have so little time before we depart. Again, we are going to finish both the internal oversight as well as the external oversight before we leave because we need to keep working in an efficient, rapid, but obviously deliberative way. We both thank the managers for their tremendous job and leadership thus far.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, the Democratic leader, the managers of the bill, and the leadership on both sides have been in conversation over the last 30 minutes or so looking at the schedule for the bill that is on the Senate floor. It is a critically important bill. We have made good progress, and if we look at the way the day has been spent, it has been spent on very significant legislation. But if we project that out and look at the reality, we have 300 amendments that have been given to the managers and to leadership on a bill that we absolutely will finish before we depart. We will finish reform of the executive branch, which is on the floor, and reform of the Senate, before we leave on October 8. There is also a lot of other business--the appropriations, the continuing resolutions, and the extensions. With that recognition, we have 300 amendments. In a little bit, the Democratic leader and I will have a unanimous consent for a filing deadline tomorrow during the afternoon so that everybody will, as we said earlier this morning and late last night, get their amendments in, and language so that we can fully assess how many amendments we are going to really have to deal with. Our deadline that we set this morning at 10 did generate 300 potential amendments. It is clear we are going to have to pick up the pace on issues that have been discussed thoroughly in committee. We are going to have to, in a very efficient way, have our managers deal with them on the Senate floor and go through the amendments in an orderly way. At some point it may be necessary for us to file cloture. It is not something we want to do, but if we file cloture we would still be able to have germane amendments introduced. That is not the intent, but unless we can work through the amendments, have the amendments submitted, have people come to the floor today, tonight, tomorrow, Friday, and Monday, it is something that at least we will have to consider. I say that, again, to give some sense of urgency that we need to have these amendments come forward. We need to see them, and we need to have the managers have the opportunity to debate them and vote on them expeditiously.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. I will ask that following the Senator's time we be given a like amount of time to comment on whatever subject it would be. Then I encourage that we would be able to go straight to the underlying bill. We have the managers here, and I know the Senator has a statement he wants to make. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Kyl follow Senator Kennedy, with a similar amount of time to respond on the topic, whatever it may be, and we will go straight to the bill. I want to encourage us to stay on the underlying bill.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, very quickly, I understand the Senator from Massachusetts will be recognized shortly. I ask him, is he going to be speaking on the underlying bill?

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I do. I think our colleagues can tell from the dialog going on that we, as leadership, are trying to give a framework to accelerate the process that is currently underway in discussing a very important bill. Our colleagues have met in various caucuses. I know a lot of our Members on this side of the aisle are meeting right now, and we are putting forth the same message to bring those amendments forward. And the managers will process those in an orderly way. Mr. President, I want to very briefly comment on the bill. We received yesterday the administration's statement of policy that is in support of the Collins-Lieberman bill. I think that was a very important statement for us to receive to show the administration's strong support. In the expression of support, and support for passage of the Collins-Lieberman bill, there were comments made about certain provisions about which they have caution flags. That will be addressed appropriately on the floor of the Senate. So I am glad we received the letter yesterday. It allows us to address many of those concerns through debate and amendment over today and tomorrow and the next several days. The administration specifically backs the creation of a national intelligence director with--and I quote from the letter--``full, effective, and meaningful budget authorities and other authorities to manage the Intelligence Community, including statutory authority for the newly created National Counterterrorism Center.'' I mention that because it shows the huge support for reform. There is nothing really that new about the reform. There have been 13 reports, national commissions over the last 10, 15, 20 years, 13 different ones urging intelligence reform. Now it is on the floor of the Senate. Indeed, we will accomplish that. I do want to stress that we have both the reform of the executive branch, which is mainly the Collins-Lieberman bill, but we also have the internal reform within this body itself for oversight. Both of those, of course, were recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. The Democratic leader and I have a task force working on the internal reform. Both of those elements of reform are going to be dealt with before we depart. That is a lot of business to accomplish, and that is why there is a sense of urgency in moving along. Yesterday, we voted on a number of amendments, including the McCain amendment and the Hutchison amendment. We will see more provisions of the McCain-Lieberman bill come through with amendments to be addressed on the Senate floor as they look at specific 9/11 recommendations. We do want to do this expeditiously. After we pass the bill, we have to go to the conference with the House and work out any differences between the two bills. I also want to mention briefly the news that came out regarding the FBI and the shortage of linguists to translate intelligence materials. That sort of news is alarming. After 9/11, we know we can't be behind the curve. Our enemies are smart. They are clever, resourceful. We have seen it time and again. We need an intelligence system that will block them at every turn. It is my hope that the Collins-Lieberman legislation will help address this problem. The recruitment of linguists is specifically cited as one of the issues the bill seeks to address. Moreover, in the bill the new national intelligence director will have the authority to prioritize and allocate resources appropriately. Clearly, this issue would likely fall under that person's purview. Whether it is strengthening the FBI or buttressing the CIA or integrating our intelligence capabilities, these are among the many reasons we have to move with deliberate speed to finish this legislation. Nothing less than America's national security is at stake. I yield the floor.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, through the Chair, in response, as we discussed yesterday, if we could get the list of amendments, I think we said by about 10 o'clock this morning--and I think those lists have been coming in--and the filing deadline, let's discuss that over the course of the morning. It would be great if we could do it even late today so we could work on those over the course of tonight. But, again, we defer to leadership and the managers, but it would be great to have that language. That would give people from last night over the course of today to finalize that language. So I agree weakheartedly. I would just suggest that maybe we could have that filing deadline sometime today or this evening and have staff work over the course of the day rather than tomorrow. Again, it is just so that we can see what the universe is and we can systematically put a little bit of a sense of urgency on getting people to focus on the bill itself. But I agree wholeheartedly, let's have a list here in the next 20 minutes or so, and then mutually establish a filing deadline by which we can actually see the language.

Mr. FRIST. I am happy to yield.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, this morning the Senate will resume consideration of the intelligence reform bill. As our colleagues know, several amendments are currently pending to the bill, including the Specter intelligence consolidation amendment. We do hope to reach a time agreement on that amendment this morning, allowing us to vote on the Specter amendment. I know Senator Specter is here. I hope we make real progress on that amendment this morning. Hopefully, we can have a vote sometime this morning. The chairman and ranking member, of course, will be here to work through pending amendments as well as those that may be offered today. I was just talking to the Democratic leader. We are going to have votes throughout the day, as we continue to move forward on this bill. In addition, because of a number of amendments we know we have to consider and will consider--I do not know the entire range--it is very likely that we will need to continue to work throughout today, tomorrow, possibly Friday, and we cannot rule out having votes on Friday, and indeed on Monday. Many times we try to schedule votes such that we pay deference to individual Senators' schedules, and we will try to do that as well. On the other hand, as we all know, we are going to depart on October 8, and with that we have a huge amount of business to do, with this very bill, the single greatest reform bill on intelligence in the last 50 years, and we need to continue to work with the extensions, the continuing resolution, address transportation, address welfare, and have the appropriations bills as well. So from a scheduling standpoint, I ask for real consideration by our colleagues in that we need to move expeditiously, get the amendments to the floor, and have them appropriately debated.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, in closing, I thank Chairman Warner for assisting in getting the Under Secretary of the Navy confirmed today-- tonight. The Under Secretary reported out on May 12, 2004. I thank our distinguished colleague for working so hard and assisting in getting this accomplished tonight.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, tomorrow the Senate will resume consideration of the intelligence reform bill. We had very good debate on the bill today, disposing of two very important amendments. We also had good debate on the pending Specter intelligence consolidation amendment today as well. We would like to get a reasonable time agreement for that amendment and vote early tomorrow morning. Tomorrow we will lock in an amendment list to this bill. This is the first step in the process for the Senate to show the commitment to finish this bill. Further, we need to reach an agreement to have amendments filed at the desk so that all Members will be able to see legislative text. We will do this at some point, I am quite sure, late tomorrow afternoon. I have talked about the scheduling changes that confront the Senate this week. In order to complete this important bill, we will need Senators to make themselves available to offer their amendments and to agree to reasonable debate times. I will continue consulting with the Democratic leader as to the voting schedule for the remainder of the week and next week. It is clear that this cannot be business as usual. It is a very important bill before the Senate. We have a number of issues in terms of appropriations, continuing resolutions, extensions on other bills that have to be dealt with over the coming days. I continue to ask all our Members to be prepared to adapt their schedules for this extraordinary piece of legislation that is in the Senate as well as these other pieces of legislation coming before the Senate. I had the opportunity over the course of today to talk to the Democratic leadership as well as members of our caucus and other Members of the Senate, and it is clear that we have a lot of work to do in a short period of time. Thus, even though we will do our very best to work around individual Members' schedules, we will have to change the pace of the last several weeks or several months, meaning the potential for voting on Friday, voting for sure on Monday. Suggestions have even come forward that in order to meet all of our objectives on all these bills before our departure on October 8 we should even consider working through this Saturday and Sunday. I mention all of those, and no decisions have been made except that the fact that so many people are coming forward to say we have a lot to do means we will have to vote through this week every day starting right at 9:30. We will not have morning business tomorrow. We will go straight into the bill and continue through Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and, clearly, have a full working day on Monday as well.

Mr. FRIST

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

Mr. FRIST

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

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 707, S. 2742.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, September 29. I further ask 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 the Senate then resume consideration of S. 2845, the intelligence reform bill.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations on today's calendar: No. 690 and all nominations on the Secretary's desk with NOAA and the Public Health Service. I further ask unanimous consent that the nominations be confirmed en bloc, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then return to legislative session.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent that H.R. 3428, a bill to designate a portion of the U.S. courthouse located at 2100 Jamieson Avenue in Alexandria, VA, as the ``Justin W. Williams United States Attorney's Building'' which is on the calendar, be referred to the committee on Environment and Public Works.