Bill Frist

Mr. FRIST

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

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I come to the floor on a matter of great sadness for the Senate family. Today, at 4 p.m. at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, after a long and difficult struggle with colon cancer, Margaret Awamura Inouye, the lovely and gracious wife of Senator Dan Inouye, passed on. On behalf of my colleagues, I offer my deepest condolences to the esteemed senior Senator from Hawaii. Our hearts go out to the Inouye family as they mourn their loss. Dan and Maggie were married for 58 blessed years. They met in Hawaii in 1947 right before Thanksgiving. He had just returned from the war and rehabilitation. She was back from Columbia University with a master's degree in education. For Dan, it was love at first sight. And he didn't hesitate to make his intentions known. He popped the question on their second date, and to his great, good fortune, she said yes. For nearly 6 decades, she stood by him, encouraged him, and believed in his success. Dan credits Maggie for putting him on the path to becoming a U.S. Senator. Without her, he said he couldn't have made it. The Senator tells us that Maggie handled her illness with dignity and grace--that she always had a smile and kept a bright outlook. Mrs. Inouye is survived by her husband, Dan, their son, Dan Jr., and her five sisters, Edith, Grace, Betty, Shirley and Patricia. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Inouye family.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations on today's Executive Calendar: Calendar Nos. 549, 551, 552, 554, 555, 557, 558, 559, 560, 562, 563, 564, 565, and all nominations on the Secretary's desk. I further ask unanimous consent that the nominations be confirmed en bloc, the motions 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. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 399, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, we are going to have a very busy day tomorrow and, indeed, a very busy week. We need to work through amendments on the budget resolution. At 3 p.m. tomorrow, we will have a series of votes on amendments. Senators should plan to be in the Chamber for six back-to-back votes. Senators who are planning to offer amendments should be working with the two managers, Senator Gregg and Senator Conrad. Senators should expect full days and some late nights and should plan their schedules accordingly. There will be additional votes tomorrow after the stacked votes at 3 p.m. Mr. President, as I said earlier today, we will complete action on the budget resolution this week, and we absolutely must address the issues surrounding the debt ceiling as well.

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, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1691 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. FRIST

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

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, the Democratic leader and I have been in consultation over the course of the morning, and I come to the floor now with a unanimous consent request. I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the provisions of rule XXII, the cloture vote occur at 2 o'clock today and that second-degree amendments be filed not later than 2 p.m. on Monday, March 13. I further ask that the mandatory quorum be waived.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, Americans finish what they start, and they expect the Senate to do the same. I open with that because we find ourselves once again in an unfortunate situation in that until yesterday afternoon, we were making steady progress, working together, all four managers on this important bill on lobbying reform, ethics review reform. We had the opportunity to have it finished by today or possibly tomorrow morning. This is an important bill. We have come to a general consensus that it had to be one of the first bills we took to the Senate because it is so important to restore trust in this institution. It is a bill about making our Government more accountable, making it more transparent. It is a bill that strengthens our ethics rules to ensure we uphold the very highest standards of integrity. And it is a bill that will help restore America's confidence in this institution, in our Congress, in our Government. It is also an issue that my friend, the Democratic leader, proposed as his top priority in this Congress. And we agreed. Unfortunately, some of my Democratic colleagues have chosen to hold this bill hostage for a totally unrelated issue. As we have seen even over the last 30 or 40 minutes, things are moving along aggressively toward a resolution. We do not know exactly what the resolution is going to be but toward a resolution. The distinguished Democratic leader said just 48 hours ago to the effect of insisting that Democrats would not try to stall this lobbying reform bill by offering unrelated amendments, saying that: I have told the distinguished majority leader this is no attempt to stall this legislation. I have told the majority leader that unless there are issues outside of what the two committees did that are within their jurisdiction, we have no intention of offering a myriad of issues. We have Members clamoring to offer--issues on the port security deal . . . we are not going to do it on this legislation. That was 48 hours ago, and then in the last 24 hours directly contradicted the assurances he made on Tuesday when he said: I believe that this lobbying reform is important. I believe that we need to do everything we can to help restore integrity to what we do here in Washington. But having said that, Mr. President, I think it would have been absolutely wrong for the Senate not to take action yesterday on the most important issue the American people see today, and that is port security. That is from the statement on March 9. I mention this because if we didn't have this what we call nongermane and totally not relevant amendment to an important issue on which we are making great bipartisan progress, working together--if that amendment had not come up, we would have been able to complete this bill. I have been in discussions with the Democratic leader, and we both understand we have the opportunity to finish this bill in the near future because the amendments are not that tough and there is general consensus around them, but we have to be allowed to finish what we start and not be pulled off with essentially the Senate shutting down last night and over the course of the morning on something that is totally unrelated to the bill itself. Although I don't want to keep overstating it, there seems to be this pattern of obstruction and delay and pushing things off--Judge Alito, the PATRIOT Act, which, by the way, will be signed in an hour or so, and now on lobbying reform. Yes, we have a cloture vote here in a few minutes so that we can continue to make progress on this bill. It is not an attempt in any way to foreclose the opportunity to offer lobbying-related amendments. As the Democratic leader knows and we have talked about, we are perfectly willing to agree on a list of amendments related to lobbying and ethics reform. We can set time agreements, debate the amendments, and vote. But what we are opposed to is considering amendments that are totally outside of the scope of the bill that is at hand. We are opposed to amendments designed to score partisan political points in one way or another. The port security issue, I do not minimize it as an issue. I was one of the very early people who said we need a pause, we need to examine it in detail, and we need to get the information. That process is underway. We have our Commerce Committee looking at overall port security. The PATRIOT Act, signed in 45 minutes, has a whole 13 points on port security. And on what is called the CFIUS review, or the review of the process that created this problem in many ways, I believe, right now our Banking Committee is looking at that aggressively. The Dubai Ports deal needs to be addressed in a thorough way. That is why we have called for--really, initiated by the Senate--this 45-day period, to collect all the information and consider that information as it comes forward. We saw, 45 minutes ago, some real positive news that has been brought forward. It shows the importance of sitting back and getting the information. There is a system underway to address the port issue without injecting it into a lobbying reform bill, a bipartisan bill, that in essence brings it to a halt. The administration is moving toward this 45-day review of the deal. Let's get this review. Let's get information as it is underway. The Senator from New York, I know, has been to the floor several times. In a letter to me this week, he had said--and I quote in the letter--he ``decided not to press for a vote on [his] bill at this time in the hope that this new investigation will be thorough, fair, and independent.'' So, Mr. President, we are about to vote. I do want to encourage my colleagues to vote for cloture because I want to stay focused on the lobbying bill, which we can finish if we get cloture. Mr. President, I see the time has come for the vote.

Mr. FRIST

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

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider the vote.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, again, this looks like another effort to delay and postpone. Therefore, I object.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I switched my vote from an ``aye'' to a ``no'' vote for procedural reasons so that I would have the opportunity as leader to bring the cloture vote back at some time in the future. I did support cloture, but for procedural reasons I switched that vote to a ``no.'' What that means is that over the next several days, after talking to the four managers who are working together in a cooperative, bipartisan way, once we can put together a group of amendments and packages of amendments, I, in all likelihood, will bring that cloture vote back, and we will be on the glidepath to completing this very important bill.

Mr. FRIST. Very quickly, and then I have a statement to make.

Mr. FRIST. I would bring it back right now if I had the votes. We need to have the managers working together and stressing the importance that when we start our business, we need to finish it. This is no fault of the managers. They have done a superb job. We had a totally unrelated amendment injected, I believe, for partisan purposes. I say that and put it aside. We need to get back to the bill as soon as possible. I encourage the managers to get the list of amendments, continue working, and at the first available time when we are allowed to proceed, we will be on that bill and we will finish it. I think we can finish it in less than a day.

Mr. FRIST. What we have seen in the last hour is that there is a press announcement from DP World, and the Senator from Virginia, I believe, read that press announcement that ``DP World decided to transfer fully the U.S. operations of P&O Ports North America to a United States entity.'' I am reading from the press release. This should make the issue go away. On the other hand, that was an hour ago. It brings me back to the point that the DP World issue and port security and the CFIUS reform is underway. The process is moving quickly. We don't have to have votes on the floor of the Senate and disrupt your bill, our bill, which is another very important issue that the Democratic leadership and ours agree should be early. This body wanted to have working groups and, under your leadership, hold hearings and come to the floor, so we are committed to finishing it. We don't need to be dealing with something which is being dealt with, as we see through press releases, through meetings with the company, and a port security bill that we are addressing in the Commerce Committee and the CFIUS process reform being addressed in Banking Committee. That is underway. We don't need to disrupt the bill. I think the distinguished manager and I are on the exact same page. Within several days, I think we will be able to work this out. I encourage the managers to work together so that when we bring it back, we can finish expeditiously. Next week, we have the budget and the debt ceiling and lobbying reform.

Mr. FRIST. With all due respect, there is no reason to give that assurance now. This is on a glidepath, based on what we have heard in the last 2 hours, to take care of itself. Again, it is through no fault of the managers of lobbying reform--on either side of the aisle--that we are where we are today. It is because we have had this extraneous issue injected into the system, which gummed up the works, and it is being resolved as we speak. I just wish that amendment had not come to the floor. We were the first to put lobbying reform on the Congress's agenda. We were first to hold hearings, under the leadership of the distinguished chairmen. We were the first to mark up and the first to act, all as a result of the majority deciding that this is an important issue. The issue of Government reform is a key agenda item to help restore trust and faith in our Government. I have to say that yesterday was a spectacular display, with the Senator from New York taking advantage of the goodwill that had been generated as we were moving forward together, which has led us to the point that we have had the cloture vote today. I have been crystal clear throughout that when it comes to the port deal, Congress needs all of the facts. We don't have all of the facts. We are learning about them through press releases as we speak. But we are getting the facts by having this 45-day intensive review period, focused on the security issue. I think Congress is, at the appropriate time, going to need to make an independent judgment. Obviously, I don't believe it is today because we don't have the facts today. To take people in this body and say let's vote on something, let's kill the deal, or let's grandstand on it is just not appropriate for this body. Let's get the information into the system, and that strategy is underway. Mr. President, we will keep working. We have a lot to do, and I look forward to staying above the issues of gumming up the system and let's move forward as we address these important issues that focus on restoring trust in this Government--lobbying reform, the bill at hand, and the budget of the country, which we will do next week, and facing the debt ceiling limit and taking appropriate action both in discussing and passing a statute that will raise that ceiling. I yield the floor.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, yesterday, I filed the Online Freedom of Speech Act as an amendment to the lobbying reform bill. This morning, the House Administration Committee will mark up identical legislation. We expect the House to act as early as next week to pass this vital protection of free speech. Thomas Jefferson once quipped that, ``Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.'' But despite his low opinion of the press, he also observed that, ``Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.'' From the earliest days of our Republic, freedom of speech and freedom of the press--be they anonymous pamphlets, celebrated essays, or local newspapers--were understood to be fundamental to the practice and defense of liberty. Without the ability to convey ideas, debate, dispute, and persuade, we may never have fought for and achieved our independence. Ordinary citizens--farmers, ministers, local shop owners--published and circulated their views, often anonymously, to challenge the conventional order and call their fellow citizens to action. Indeed, as Boston University journalism professor Chris Daly points out, ``What we think of as reporting--the pursuit, on a full time basis of verifiable facts and verbatim quotations--was not a significant part of journalism in the time of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. . . . In historical terms, today's bloggers are much closer in spirit to the Revolutionary-era pamphleteers.'' And today, it is bloggers whom we now have to protect. There are some who, out of fear or shortsightedness, wish to restrict the ability of our modern-day Thomas Paines to express political views on the World Wide Web. They seek to monitor and regulate political speech under the guise of ``campaign finance reform.'' They argue that unfettered political expression on the Internet is dangerous, especially during the highly charged election season. Needless to say, I stand firmly against these efforts to hamstring the Internet and squarely with the champions of free speech--whether that expression takes place in the actual or virtual town square. Free speech is the core of our first amendment. And the Internet represents the most participatory form of mass speech in human history. It is no accident that this technology was invented here in America. Freedom of speech is encoded in our DNA. It is what allows us to be uniquely curious, daring and innovative. And it is no coincidence that Americans, steeped in the tradition of inquiry and rebellion, would give flight to yet another revolution on behalf of the principle we value most. In an era where technology has made instant, unfiltered communication possible, I believe that the Congress has a fundamental responsibility to allow this new medium to flourish. As an amateur blogger myself, and soon-to-be private citizen, I am committed to ensuring that the extraordinary explosion of political debate in the blogosphere is protected from meddling bureaucrats and regulators in Washington, DC. I commented on this very issue on my own blog last week. Free political expression is not a narrow privilege but a fundamental right. Back in April of 1999, when observers and commentators were only beginning to glimpse the rich potential of the Internet, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger posted the ``Cluetrain Manifesto.'' In it they said that, ``A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed.'' Since then, the conversation has only grown. While authoritarian regimes like Communist China struggle to control the information crossing their borders, millions of private citizens, typing away on their home computers, are engaged in millions of discreet and overlapping conversations, exchanging information, and circulating ideas. As Americans, we should be on the side of this dazzling development. As citizens of the 21st century, we should recognize we have no power to stop it. Brian Anderson of the Manhattan Institute points out that the Supreme Court has extended free speech to include nude dancing, online pornography, and cross burning. It seems only reasonable that free speech should include the humble act of posting a blog.

Mr. FRIST

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

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 366, H.R. 683.

Mr. FRIST

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, as we just heard, we were forced to file cloture on the lobbying reform bill. Under regular order that vote will occur on Friday morning unless and we intend to work out some other agreement.