John Glenn

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I accept it on our side, also.

Mr. GLENN. Could we have unanimous consent to have Senator Lieberman have 1 minute?

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 197 at the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. GLENN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, what is the regular order of business?

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, last year in support of the Senator from Michigan, we had a letter from the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Lesislatures, the National Association of Counties, the National League of Cities, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. In their letter to all Senators, they said: Not only will we oppose any amendments not supported by the bill managers, Senators Glenn, William Roth, and Dirk Kempthorne, but we view all amendments as an attempt to defeat our legislation. We urge the defeat of all partisan and extraneous amendments. The reason I support Senator Levin is not to say we are going to put this out there and sunset it and there will not be any unfunded mandates in legislation. My view is that we put it out there as a forcing mechanism to make sure that we have to consider fine-tuning. We know around here we have lethargy, we have inertia; we never get around to some of these things unless we put a forcing mechanism on ourselves. So that is the reason I support this. It is not going to sunset it and do away with unfunded mandates. We force ourselves to do it. We are forced to take a look at it. I yield my time, if I have any remaining.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, we are saying we force ourselves to do that. This is very complicated, what we have gotten into with the proposed amendments here on the floor. It is very, very complex, very, very, intricate. Dr. Weiss, our staff director on Governmental Affairs, drew up overnight a flowchart which I wish we had a print of it but I know this proposal will not be visible on TV, but it shows the intricate pattern of what can happen to an amendment once it is submitted, and it either goes through a ``yes'' track or a ``no'' track. This is a very complicated piece of legislation. I know flowcharts like this always look more complicated than maybe are real and practical in every day life, but this is not a simple bill. It redefines the whole Federal, State, and local relationship. I think Senator Levin is quite right in saying we should force ourselves, put in law that we know at the end of this period we will truly have to reconsider this thing. That is exactly what we will do. At that time we will fine-tune it and see where we will go from there. This is redefining the whole Federal-State relationship. It is landmark legislation. The least we can do is look at it at the end of this funding period and make absolutely concern it is working. If not, we will correct it then. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, under the unanimous-consent agreement that was entered into last night, the order provided that after consideration of the next amendment, which involves S. 993, the bill of last year, which Senator Levin will present, 45 minutes for Senator Levin's use, 15 minutes for Senator Kempthorne's use, Senator Byrd was to be recognized for 20 minutes prior to the vote on S. 993. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Byrd's 20 minutes be moved to the time period following third reading of the bill before the final vote.

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

Mr. GLENN. I will not object.

Mr. GLENN. Reserving the right to object, and I will not object, is there any idea of how much that would move the vote forward?

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

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may require. I could not agree more with the distinguished Senator from Idaho. He has been an absolute delight to work with all through the last 2 years on this legislation. We were very cooperative. We have not tried to backstab each other. We have been upfront on every place we have had differences. In some areas we do have differences. We have a little difference of opinion on this particular item. My proposal, I think, would improve the legislation. The other side does not think that is quite the case, so we have a little difference of opinion. But the basic bill itself will go through. All through the first part of this debate, through the first week of this debate on the Senate floor, I outlined the procedure that was used to get this legislation through committee, which we objected to. But all through that first week on the Senate floor, I refrained from getting into some of these partisan barbs back and forth and so did the Senator from Idaho. He did not take part in those remarks. All the things that were coming up about the political nature of what the Democrats are trying to do, as though this is a political hotfoot we are using to reply to last year's scorch policy of 3 months in the fall, I stayed out of that. There were many of those remarks back and forth. I finally got involved with it because I thought it was so unfair. Lo and behold all that drumbeat, drumbeat, drumbeat of how bad the Democrats were and how we were trying to stall this thing, drumbeat, drumbeat, over and over, apparently had some effect, as one of our major papers back in Ohio made scathing remarks about me, sort of implying that I have sold out. The paper implied that the only reason I am participating in the debate in this manner is because of some kind of party retaliation. That is not like me. Well, I would say to the papers, in reference to the little special they had on their editorial page, no, it is not like me, and that has not been me. If they had been paying attention to what was going on here, they would know that is not what was going on. So when I hear my friend from New Mexico get up this morning and once again make a crack about the Democrats being at fault, and will this be the pattern all through the legislative session, that someone remarked to him about yesterday, obviously my skin is beginning to get a little thin on some of these things--blaming this particular delay just on the Democrats, when I enunciated a little while ago the processes that were used in committee--high handed, cavalier. I cannot put any other words to it than that. I have never seen any minority treated like that in my 20-some plus years here in the Senate. So that is the reason that I wanted to use some of my time on this amendment. My remarks did not apply directly to this amendment. Let me say to my friend from Idaho, I think his remarks are exactly on, and I hope he takes the opportunities in the conference to get some of the other people to stop making these zingers across the aisle that are so unwarranted because we know what happened in committee and we know what happened last year. He and I worked together to try to get this together. He said we could not get it through on the Democratic side, we finally were delayed, could not get it through the floor for regular debate as would normally be the case. We were only able to get it on a unanimous consent. And one Senator objected to unanimous consent at that time and that prevented us from getting it through last year without amendments. Mr. President, if this bill is enacted as currently written, with points of order applied to amendments, it will be almost impossible to escape a point of order on an amendment whose cost estimate--assuming you can get it--exceeds the threshold. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record what every amendment will have to contain, according to section c(1)B of the bill, if it contains a mandate of at least $50 million.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, we disagree, obviously, on this particular amendment. I want to respond first to the comment of my distinguished friend from New Mexico--and he is distinguished and he is head of the Budget Committee. He is very learned in that area and I appreciate that. He commented in the Republican caucus yesterday that one of their persons said, ``If it takes this long for the Democrats to get something through that they want, what does that spell out for the rest of the year,'' or words to that effect. I want to set the record straight on that, because I think there has been a great deal of gobbledygook about, and misrepresentation of, the Democrats on this side with regard to what we have done on legislation this year--deliberate misrepresentation, as the Congressional Record will show. Last year, we passed S. 993. I was part of that, along with Senator Kempthorne. The mayors and Governors said: Do not amend it, do not do anything, put it through. Senator Levin brought that up a little while ago. I read that into the Record. It was looked upon as very good legislation. Why did we not get it through last fall? We had it out of committee in August, and the Republicans that now accuse us of all kinds of delay had a 3-month scorched-earth, do-not-let-anything- through policy that prevented consideration of unfunded mandates or the Congressional Coverage Act last year. We finally got down to trying to get a unanimous consent requirement to let those two bills get through last year and could not do it. That is the reason we did not have unfunded mandates and congressional coverage passed last fall, because there was a policy on the Republican side, apparently, to not let anything get through. One day, after one of the votes on an amendment, I followed one of the more vocal members of the Republican Party and happened to walk out by the elevators, and he was saying, ``We beat another one.'' The press people out there said, ``What was it?'' He said, ``Who cares, we beat it.'' That was the general attitude last fall that prevented unfunded mandates, which I was all for. I worked with Senator Kempthorne, who took the lead in this area, and we had that legislation ready and could not get it through. That was the policy last fall. That is the reason we did not get it through. Some of the press look at it this year as just tit-for- tat. The shoe is on the other foot, so we are doing the same thing back to them. That is not true. When we came in this year, S. 1--which is the successor to S. 993-- had been made a priority and was given the prime designation of S. 1. It was designated as the prime bill that we are going to put through this year. I favored that. That designation is great, as far as I am concerned, because I am for unfunded mandates legislation. But the way they wanted to put it through was to ramrod it through with absolutely no changes, to show we are in some sort of legislative drag race with the House, apparently, and that we can beat them. So what was the procedure that was set up? It was set up this way: We will introduce the bill one day, have a hearing the next day, a markup the third day, and include on that third day sending it back to the Senate. That meant when we got to committee, there was not time to do anything on it. I go to markup usually considering, OK, let us deliberately look at this and make sure we are doing the right job with this piece of legislation. Yet, when we came to markup, they had the hearing the second day, went to markup the third day. We came over with some perfecting amendments. They were not delaying amendments. They were to take care of some of the real problems with this bill. There were some things that had been omitted. Color and race had been left out of the discrimination clauses--substantive matters that had to be taken care of. put amendments in. They were voted down on a party-line basis, straight across the board. We were informed that there would no amendments approved that day, and we are going to vote this thing back to the floor. They told us that on the floor you can put in all the amendments you want-- we will consider all these things on the floor. That is what we were told over and over again. OK. We could not do anything about that. It was also stated we are not going to have a committee report. Normally around here, for those that are not as familiar with Senate procedure as others may be, a committee report is a very important document. These bills that are put in are in legalese, they refer to different parts of the code, and you have to really decode them to know what you are doing. And so the committee report is what most people rely on to look through and see the provisions that are put in layman's language so you can understand it. They would not even put a committee report in. They said we are going to bypass that. The minority asked, ``How are you going to take care of explaining this to people?'' They responded, ``Put something in the Congressional Record?'' ``How about minority views that are normally considered important?'' ``If you want to put minority views in, you should put them in the Congressional Record.'' I have never seen such cavalier treatment of the minority since I have been in the Senate, and that has been over 20 years now. We object. We had a rollcall vote on the committee report and the minority lost. So it was voted out and brought back here to the Senate. To show my commitment to unfunded mandates, I voted even then to send it out of committee and back to the floor. I voted with the Republicans to get it out of committee and back to the floor, even though I objected strenuously to the whole procedure at that time. Now, what happened when S. 1 came to the floor? This is where they say we have been on the floor now 2 weeks with this thing. Actually, what happened is Senator Byrd took up the issue of the absence of a report and objected to it, and for the first 2 to 2\1/2\ days, we had a debate on the committee report. The majority finally agreed that they would do a committee report. ``We will have it for you by tomorrow evening.'' Tomorrow evening came and went and there was no report, so we had to wait another day to get the committee report. Then it turned out that the Budget Committee had not submitted its report, and there was another day's wait. So all these things on procedure could have been taken care of had we been able to consider this legislation in committee, as we should have been able to do. This representation that we have somehow delayed this legislation is beginning to wear a little thin with me. That is how we lost the first week. Then they wanted us to consider immediately taking up the bill because the report was filed. Well, people had not even had a chance to see what was in the report. So it was finally agreed to put it off over the weekend. So the first whole week of consideration, all last week, was because of the way we were cavalierly treated in committee and because Senator Byrd insisted on those reports being available so all Members would have a chance to know what was in this landmark, historic legislation. And I view this bill as being that kind of legislation. Now, once we got into the bill on the Senate floor and got past the committee report problem, then what happened? Then the majority said, ``Let's limit amendments.'' Limit amendments. We had been told repeatedly in committee that we would be able, on the Senate floor, to go through the regular amending process. What happened? Now they want us not to put in amendments. Now they want to move the bill real quick, in a drag race with the House. And we objected to that. In spite of being told that we would be able to bring up anything we wanted on the floor, cloture was filed when we tried to bring things up. Well, cloture then flushes out amendments all over the place. Because if cloture is invoked, you cannot put amendments in after that. So everybody had a pet amendment. And in the Senate, not having germaneness rules, you can put in anything you want. We wound up with 117 amendments, which was unnecessary. We could have taken care of the important ones in committee had we been permitted to do that, instead of having this legislative process where we were rolled on the minority side. Then, meanwhile, negotiations were on as to what amendments were really important. And so we finally wound up with the list being culled down earlier this week, and the ones that are important, we will consider those. That is an abridgement of how we got to where we are right now. So I tell you, I am wearing very thin on this thing. I have been accused back home by one of our major Ohio papers of being one who favored this legislation last year but, for political reasons, opposes it this year. That just is flat not true. It just shows that they were not paying attention to what was going on up here on the Hill during the committee process, what we tried to do, my commitment to this legislation, and working it out. Finally, this week, we were able to work it out. Last night, working until after midnight, we finally got a time agreement on the final amendments that are important. These are substantive amendments. The Senator from Michigan, who has brought these issues up, is a pit bull on this. He goes into these discussions in committee on how the wording is going to affect the council back in Detroit, where he used to be on the council, and the States, Michigan and every other State across this country. These are substantive matters that are being proposed here. These are not delay tactics. If there were any delay tactics, it was because we were trying to get a committee report out that could explain this legislation to every Senator, including the 11 new Senators on the Republican side that have not been familiar with this process at all. There was objection during that first week and that is how we lost the whole first week. And so, when these little barbs keep flying across the aisle about how we are delaying things, I will tell you, we are not being anti anything. I will tell you what the Democrats are being on this bill. We are being constructive, trying to put legislation through that has the fine points worked out in it so it is operable, so we can make these estimates, so we can make sure that States and local governments are taken care of properly. That is the purpose of this legislation. The delay that we have had for the first week was all because of the procedures that were used in trying to ram this thing through. We were responding by saying, ``OK, we want to have the normal procedures here so that every Senator will be informed.'' That is sort of how we got to where we are now. To say that somehow the Democrats are at fault on this is incorrect. I will tell you what the Democrats are doing. They are trying to protect Senate procedure that protects Republicans as well as Democrats. I am just as committed to getting this unfunded mandate legislation through as I was last year. I think we worked it out. The amendment that Senator Byrd proposed took care of a lot of the problems, and I think makes this legislation a better bill. Was that substantive? Are we delaying because of the Byrd amendment that was put through yesterday? No, that was excellent legislating of a very important nature on a bill that is landmark legislation. The majority said it was a delay mechanism when we changed the process of how things operate when bills go over to an agency, and what they can do, we would have given up our legislative authority to those agencies. It was agreed on the other side that this was something that we should correct, and we corrected it. Was that substantive? You bet it was substantive; very important for this legislation. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise to offer this amendment to ensure the point of order requirements in S. 1 lie in only two places. One of those would be just prior to final passage, before we are getting ready to vote on the bill, for its consideration once it has been through the whole process. The other point where a point of order would lie would be when the bill comes back from a conference where it might have been changed somewhat, and so a point of order could lie at that point also. I think we need to think about the purpose of this legislation. The purpose is to know what the total impact of a are not really interested, as we go along, in each little piece of legislative maneuvering that we do here in the Senate Chamber. What they want to know when a bill is passed is does it hit them with a $1 billion bill, no bill, or does it hit them with a new responsibility they did not have before? States and local governments want to know what does this legislation do to them? That is what this unfunded mandates bill was all about. This bill was not supposed to be designed to create a legislative quagmire, some great swamp of procedural difficulties, that would make it so difficult to get things passed that even the finest of legislation would have trouble getting through. A moment ago, I held up a flow chart that my staff director put together overnight that shows some of the procedures under this bill. I wish we had time to get this thing lined up in a better order on a chart so people could really see all the intricate maneuvers that go on here with the introduction of a bill. Basically, each amendment under the bill as it is now--this would be each amendment: Step 1, the Parliamentarian would have a ruling on whether a mandate exists. No. 2, there can be an appeal of that ruling. No. 3 would be a vote on that appeal. The fourth step an amendment would have to go through is the Parliamentarian would make a ruling on whether the cost exceeds the $50 million threshold--determining once again if a mandate exists. No. 5 would be an appeal of that ruling. And No. 6 six would be a vote on the appeal of that ruling. No. 7, the Parliamentarian would rule on whether requirements for funding have been met. No. 8 would be appeal of that ruling. And No. 9 would be a vote on the appeal. That is what is in the bill now, and I do not quarrel with that as a procedure except to say what we are trying to do on each piece of legislation is to find out what the total overall impact on the States and local governments will be. That is what they are interested in as a bottom line. That is the purpose of this legislation. My concern in applying the point of order requirements for CBO cost estimates for State and local funding to floor amendments, as S. 1 currently does, is that the procedure has the serious potential of just unnecessarily bogging down the whole legislative process. Why, when the final total, the final checkout counter total is what we are really interested in, do we want to go through all this self-flagellation of putting ourselves through a tortuous process where an amendment could have a point of order against it when it is proposed and then, if it is still approved, that will have an impact on it being included at as part of the bill because it has been approved. So then another point of order could lie back against the bill itself. We have had appeals from those rulings of the Chair. At each point, then, as I see it, you have a possibility--if someone is interested in setting up another means of filibuster, this would be an excellent means of doing it. All you have to do is put in a whole bunch of amendments that exceed the $50 million threshold and exceed the point of order and you have bogged this Chamber down for days and days on end. I guarantee it. I do not think there are many Members of this Chamber who would vote to put in a new filibuster process, yet that is basically what we are talking about doing. We talk about the election last year. Everybody putting something down hangs it on the election of last year, November 8, as to: We want a leaner, better working Government. We want to cut out all the complexities of Government. We want to make Government flow. We want to make Government efficient. If I ever saw anything that is going to make Government inefficient here in the Senate Chamber, it is a process such as we have before us now that basically sets up a brandnew filibuster process. I know my colleagues on the other side of this issue will say we have to have accountability. The accountability that I think we need to provide in this bill is the final checkout counter accountability of saying we have made our very best effort to assess the costs of legislation. We have considered the costs on the Senate floor. Here is the relationship with the States. And here is the final checkout counter tab, after all the amendments have been considered. I know they will say at each one of these points, if someone is thinking about putting in a $50 million addition to something or $75 million addition, the accountability requirements of having a point of order lie at that time will mean they will think twice before they put that in. I do not think that applies in this case. Because at each point where someone thinks about putting in an amendment like that, they are also going to have to consider that total at the time of reckoning at the end of consideration of all the amendments. We still will have a point of order lying against this whole process. In fact, in the amendment process someone may say, we think your $75 million back there was too much so we modify it to another amount by this amendment. Why should we have gone through a point of order and all the other unnecessary legislative procedures along the way, when what we really want is the final checkout tab? So the accountability requirement here, of making people think twice, I think, is just as strong under this as it would be if we kept this point of order lying at every point along the way, which just sets up another potential filibuster procedure. I want to pass an unfunded Federal mandate reform bill. I have been wed to this idea with both S. 993 last year and S. 1 this year. We have been on the floor now for 2 weeks with this legislation and much of it has been misinterpreted. Some of this legislation has been misinterpreted back home by some of our papers. I have been castigated as though I was delaying this, which I am not. I have fought and fought to get going on this legislation and get it through. But I want to do it right. I want to do it properly. However, I want it to be very clear I want to pass an unfunded Federal mandate reform bill. I do not want, at the same time, to tie this legislative process in such a Gordian knot that it will delay good legislation unnecessarily, and I think that is the important point. Applying points of order to floor amendments will just add bureaucratic overlay nonsense and accomplish very little in this whole process. I believe that kind of nonsensical bureaucratic overlay is not in the interests of the Senate nor is it in the interests of the State and local governments with whom we are trying to deal with in this legislation. To set up new, unnecessary procedures that can be misused by someone who, even with very good legislation, might want to set up a filibuster procedure by putting in new points of order and so on, just does not make any sense to me. I understand points of order can currently be raised under the Budget Act on amendments that affect direct Federal spending but have not been scored by CBO. However, we are not talking about direct spending here; we are talking about estimates. CBO has already told us that estimates in some of these areas will be fuzzy estimates at best. But we are still required to consider the best estimates we can get up front in this legislation. That is the purpose of this whole legislation. Fuzzy estimates for mandates, which are a different animal entirely, involve cost estimates for 87,000 different State and local jurisdictions. Therefore, we should not overload the Senate with these new procedural requirements that are just not necessary on floor amendments. Nor should we at the same time overload CBO. CBO told my staff there is no way they could score all amendments containing possible intergovernmental mandates under the short timeframe that might be required on the floor. They might be able to provide a rough estimate, but it would require them a little longer timeframe to get a better estimate for us that could not be done in the time that legislation completes its consideration here on the floor. I think leaving each amendment subject to a point of order is just a prescription for possible real mischief if somebody's objective is to stop a good piece of legislation by overloading it with amendments that would exceed the $50 million threshold limitation. My amendment would see that the points of order lie in two places. I think this is a very logical. First would be after we know the cost of the bill. We will know the cost of all of the amendments, will have totaled them up and be able to say here is the cost, here is the impact on State and local governments, and now we have to decide. Is that too much? At that point, prior to final passage, the point of order would lie. Then the legislation, if approved, goes to a conference with the House of Representatives and we come back out of that conference. Sometimes the House has different money amounts involved, different requirements. The conference report, as it comes back after having been negotiated with the House in conference, is sometimes different. At that point, it may have changed dramatically. So we need a second point of order that will lie at that point. That was the second point of order. The main one, of course, was just for the legislation. We have completed it, and ran through it. We have a point of order apply when we know what the total tab is. That is where the main point of order will lie. If it goes to conference, comes back with no change or tiny changes, then the point of order would probably not be required against it again. But if there are big changes that come back out of conference, then a point of order would lie at that point also. The amounts themselves that have been offered under my bill would not be subject to individual points of order, as is the case in S. 1 where this whole procedure can get so bogged down. My amendment would reduce the potential burden on CBO. It gives them a little more time to refine their estimates as we are considering bills on the floor, and get them to us. This means we will probably have more accurate information. Most importantly, it will prevent us from having the potential of playing a 100-person game of negotiating a complex legislative labyrinth of some kind anytime we consider legislation with intergovernmental ramifications. Further, my amendment would ensure the conference reports would still be scored, as is the case under S. 1. I have also indicated my willingness to modify the amendment to have the point of order lie against only the mandates at the third reading rather than against the whole bill. The bill would come out--a point of order could possibly lie against it at that point before you even get into amendments--then take all of the amendments in toto and have a vote on the impact of all amendments as a separate point of order. So I would be willing to do that, if someone thought that was more satisfactory. But there has been no agreement at this time by the other side. I repeat that I think what the States and local governments are interested in is not our legislative quagmire here in the Senate and how we may be able to use something like this as another way of filibustering. What they want to know is--when the final deliberations have been made--what is the total impact on the States and local governments? That is what they want, and that is what should be concentrated on. I do not agree that this is some great force mechanism of accountability on each person who will somehow hesitate to offer an amendment for fear that they are going to be the ones that put us over the limit of $50 million. I just do not think many people are going to be persuaded that is a big consideration for them, and, in addition, the points of order will be taken up later. A point of order will lay against the accumulation of all of these amendments anyway. So they are under that same kind of accountability restraint whether the point of order would lie on their individual amendment or the cumulative effect of all of the amendments considered for a point of order at the end of the amending process. If we allow points of order to lie on each floor amendment as it comes up, it seems to me we are sort of going down the road that will lead to a legislative traffic jam of grand proportions. Amendments will bottleneck legislation like cars on the beltway at rush hour here in Washington. In trying to fix the problem with unfunded mandates, let us not go down that road. Let us not create legislative gridlock. I believe that my amendment makes sense. I urge its adoption. I reserve the remainder of my time.

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

Mr. GLENN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Change of Vote

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I either misstated my vote or my vote was mismarked before on the Levin amendment No. 218. I was recorded as having voted ``no'' on that. I intended to vote ``aye.'' Since it does not change the vote, I ask unanimous consent that my vote be changed to ``aye'' on that.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, the hour is late. I do not plan to debate this. In fact, there is no debate on a cloture motion, obviously. It can be filed at any time. I am sorry it has to be filed or the majority feels it has to be filed in that I think we have had a very productive day here. We have worked very hard all day today. I just asked staff to total up what we had done today. We had five amendments accepted, one was withdrawn, and one was set aside. In that breakdown of five that were accepted, three were Democratic ones and two Republican. We had one amendment debated that was put over for vote tomorrow, and that vote will occur tomorrow morning. And we had three amendments tabled. That is 11 effective actions on this bill today. I think that is rather good progress. I would say to my friend from Mississippi --we will not go into the whole litany of how we got to where we are--but we lost the first several days working on this bill basically because of what happened in committee, where we had actions taken in committee to speed this to the floor that prohibited any amendments. We were guaranteed once this reached the floor there would be plenty of time for all the amendments, to take them up on the floor. Now we get to the floor and the attempt is made to restrict or at least discourage amendments from coming up. That violates at least the spirit of what we were told in committee. In committee also, the action there that caused us to lose quite a bit of time was the action wherein there was not a committee report sent. For those who are not familiar with how important a committee report is, it is what in layman's language explains to all the Senators and their staffs what the technical legalese language is in the bill itself. So on something like this that really is landmark legislation, that report was very important. We objected to the bill being filed without the report. We were voted down on that, and that was the issue that Senator Byrd took up--and quite successfully. On that issue alone, we spent some 2 or 2\1/2\ days. Then we are finally told we can get the report, but then when the time came for the report to be filed it was not filed and we lost another day. Then we found out the Budget Committee, which also has jurisdiction over this, had not filed their report and that took another day. So about the first 5 days, in fact the first week that this legislation was up, I submit we lost that time basically because of the actions that were taken in committee that I have never seen--in my 20 years here, I have never seen actions like that, where the minority was denied a report. I know I chaired the Committee on Governmental Affairs for some 8 years, and the only time we ever sent a bill to the floor without a report was with the complete acceptance of that move by the minority. So I think the first 5 days we can mark off as being days, rancorous though they were here on the floor, that were caused by the attempt to bypass the normal procedures of the Senate. I think with all that behind us, we are back on track now. We are dealing with this. I want to move as forcefully and as fast as possible. We had a good day yesterday. I do not have a summary of what happened yesterday, but today we have had 11 effective actions and I just hope we can continue moving tomorrow and I hope we do not have to exercise a cloture motion. I just wanted to spell that out.

Mr. GLENN

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

Mr. GLENN

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

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, once again, I think the Senator from Michigan has shown his dedication to making this a good piece of legislation by going into some of the details and defining before we pass this, and correcting some of the things that might give trouble a little later on or that could be misinterpreted. I want to congratulate him on that, and I am glad it has been accepted on the other side. We are happy to accept it on this side, also.