Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. How much time is remaining?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I have no objection to the request of the Senator from Minnesota that there be no second degrees to his amendment as part of the language which was just agreed to relative to the timeframe on his amendment.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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

Mr. GREGG. Or you just filed one?

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, are you requesting there be no second degrees?

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that that be the case.

Mr. GREGG. If the Senator is agreeable, we agree that his amendment will be debated for 45 minutes, 30 minutes to his side and 15 minutes in opposition.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator from Minnesota be interested in entering into a time agreement on his amendment?

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the Senator be willing to enter into a unanimous consent that we vote on his amendment, if there is a vote, at 5 o'clock? I withdraw my unanimous consent request.

Mr. GREGG. I am perfectly willing to make an adjustment, to give you a timeframe, so we can have a timeframe on the debate. We can have relevant amendments, 1 hour on each amendment. I have gone up to seven amendments now because the Senator from Nevada made a good case that we might not have gotten the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico into the mix. So that is seven amendments on each side and a vote on final passage--that is 14 hours--we vote on final passage, leaving it to the majority leader to call the issue to the floor. I think we could have a deal.

Mr. GREGG. I will not make that decision. The offer is very reasonable. We are willing to debate relevant amendments on education. There are a lot of relevant amendments on education that deal with guns. All you have to do is make it relevant and you can involve a gun issue. There is no question, for example, if you want to offer an amendment that deals with using title I money for the purposes of allowing people to put in some sort of screening system for going into a school relative to guns, that is a very relevant amendment, I would presume. But I am not the one who makes that decision. The Parliamentarian makes the decision.

Mr. GREGG. I do not make that ruling. It would be up to the Parliamentarian to determine what a relevant amendment is.

Mr. GREGG. Then the Senator should have no objection to my offer.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I make a point of order that under subsection 302(f) of the Budget Act, as amended, the effect of adopting the amendment provides budget authority in excess of the subcommittee's 302(b) allocation under the fiscal year 2001 concurrent resolution on the budget and is not in order.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, as the Senator has mentioned, this is $250 million of additional funds that exceeds the subcommittee's 302(b) allocation. I yield back the remainder of our time, if the Senator from New Mexico is ready to yield back.

Mr. GREGG. All I am interested in is seven relevant amendments.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I don't want to prolong this ad nauseam because it is sort of an internal debate. I know the Senator from New Mexico has an amendment he wants to offer. I will make a couple of points in response to the Senator from Nevada, who always eloquently presents the minority's position. The fact is, all the amendments he talked about in the area of education are amendments which we are perfectly willing to get into. We got into them in committee, and we are happy to get into them on the floor. I suspect they would have no problem being found as relevant-- school construction, afterschool programs, safe schools. In fact, we have done a great deal in the area of all of these accounts. On the Safe Schools Program, aftershool programs, we have increased funding dramatically in both those proposals. We have brought forward an ESEA bill in a creative and imaginative way. I think it is being held because there are amendments people want to put on it which they know will cause it to not go any further than this body because the bill has so many imaginative and creative ideas in it which the Federal bureaucracy and the educational bureaucracy do not like because they return power to the States, power to parents, power to children, power to principals. They just don't like the fact that this bill is coming up for a vote with a whole cafeteria of ideas that threaten the present educational lobby here in Washington. Therefore, they have decided to gum it up with a bunch of amendments that have no relevance at all. ``Relevant'' is an important term for the education issue. The education debate should be on education. There are a lot of gun issues which are education related. We are perfectly happy to take those as relevant. But there are some that are not, and they know that. That is why they are throwing it on this bill, because they know it will stop the bill on the floor. They can use that as an excuse for stopping the bill rather than being the actual reason the bill is being stopped. As to gun amendments, we have voted on those enumerable times in this body. We have had amendments relative to abortion clinics, relative to gun-related debt. We have had them relative to gun violence crime protection, safe school new Federal restrictions on firearms, on education and violence protection. There have been votes on these. The list goes on and on. There have been gun amendments all through the process. There are gun amendments that can be made relevant. I would presume if they wanted to include those seven that I suggested, it would be easy enough to do it. I do think that the defense that they don't want relevant amendments, that they want to have the freedom to throw whatever amendment they want on this bill, is a puerile defense. ``Puerile'' is the wrong word. It is a sophomoric defense because basically what they are interested in is not having the ESEA bill come through this House in its present form because it is not a form that they liked when it was reported out of committee.

Mr. GREGG. I want to debate education, not national policy.

Mr. GREGG. As long as they are relevant.

Mr. GREGG. It is my unanimous-consent request to which I am agreeing. You already have that in your request. I was just trying to be accommodating to your time constraints.

Mr. GREGG. In my unanimous-consent request.

Mr. GREGG. I would be willing to agree to time limits also: 1 hour on each relevant amendment.