Ted Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent it be in order to now ask for the yeas and nays. And then I will ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KENNEDY. How much time remains on the amendments?

Mr. KENNEDY. If there is no one who wants to address the Senate, I suggest the absence of a quorum--I am sorry. Mr. THOMAS addressed the Chair.

Mr. KENNEDY. I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. KENNEDY. As I understand, we have 2 minutes on each side. There will be 2 minutes for the Senator from South Carolina and 2 minutes for the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, the Senator is correct. The Senator has spoken to me about this issue. It is a very important issue because it does involve children and involves a dangerous industry. But there are other factors to be considered. The Senator has given us some recommendations from very noteworthy OSHA experts who believe a way can be found to ensure the safety of these children and also achieve the objective. I think it would be valuable to have that in an open hearing, and we will do so in our Labor Committee and give due notice to the Senator when that hearing will be held, and welcome any of the people from whom he thinks it would be useful for us to hear.

Mr. KENNEDY. We will have a very brief quorum call. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that upon the disposition of the Dodd amendment No. 382, the Senator from Nebraska, Mr. Nelson, be recognized to call up amendment No. 533; that there be 5 minutes for debate on the amendment equally divided in the usual form; that upon the use of the time, the amendment be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table with no second-degree amendment in order thereto. Further, that upon the disposition of amendment No. 533, Senator Kerry be recognized to call up amendments Nos. 423 and 455, that there be 40 minutes total for debate on the two amendments with time divided as follows: 10 minutes each, Senators Kerry, Smith of Oregon, Kennedy, and Gregg, with no second-degree amendments; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the amendments be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table. Provided further that, upon the disposition of the Kerry/Smith amendments, the Senate resume consideration of the Cantwell amendment No. 630, as modified, with a total of 15 minutes for debate divided as follows: 5 minutes each, Senators Cantwell, Kennedy, and Gregg; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to a vote in relation to the Cantwell amendment, with no second-degree amendment in order thereto, with no intervening action.

Mr. KENNEDY. I believe I have time, do I not?

Mr. KENNEDY. I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 2 minutes.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank Senator Landrieu from Louisiana for this amendment. As she has mentioned, this is completely consistent with her previous amendment, which was overwhelmingly accepted, in that it provides greater targeted resources for teachers. For my money, the most important ingredient in the educational process is having a well-trained teacher in the classroom. There are other components, but this is absolutely essential. The greatest challenge we face is the neediest and the poorest schools where we need the best teachers have the most unqualified teachers. The amendment of the Senator from Louisiana sharpens the direction of this legislation to ensure, to the extent we can, we get well-qualified teachers to teach the neediest students. It is a very important amendment, and it is a very useful and helpful amendment. I urge the Senate to accept the amendment.

Mr. KENNEDY. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY. Yes.

Mr. KENNEDY. No, I was not propounding a consent request. I was stating the way the managers would like to proceed. We are trying to proceed in good faith. We have talked to the different Members, and that seemed to be acceptable. We wanted to let the Members know.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, we have the Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, who has an amendment. As I understand it, there will probably be a side-by-side amendment that will be offered on that from the other side. It is the desire that both of those would be considered together probably on the morrow. We have the Senator from South Carolina and Senator Wellstone to speak. We are prepared to take the Nelson amendment now and include that. It has been cleared. Later on in the evening, we will have a voice vote on the amendment of my colleague, Senator Kerry. There is going to be, as I understand it, from the other side, a side-by-side amendment to that of the Senator from South Carolina. That is going to be available tonight, and it is going to be printed tonight. I don't know whether the Senator from Pennsylvania intends to speak about it tonight or not. We are just trying to get the general lay of the land so that the Members will know the way we are going to proceed. That is sort of what we have on track. Then we have a full morning tomorrow with the Senator from Connecticut and his amendment. We will then dispose of these other measures. I see the majority leader here. I know he wants to address the Senate.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

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

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I understand the Senator from California has 4 minutes remaining?

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, this amendment, offered as a perfecting amendment, was never part of the printed list of amendments. As a matter of good faith, I was under the impression that it was the perfection of another amendment. This amendment is effectively the Enzi amendment. The effect of this amendment, if it goes into effect, is not the $10 million of impact aid for Native Americans; it effectively, under the language of the amendment on page 3 says, ``notwithstanding any other provision of law, the secretary shall ensure that assistance under such program is provided to meet the construction and renovation needs of schools receiving impacted aid.'' That takes all of the previously appropriated money and effectively ends that kind of support for the schools that are expecting for this to be distributed in this month. So this is a revote on the Enzi amendment. The Enzi amendment was defeated and this amendment should be defeated. Quite frankly, I really question--I hate to say this--the good will of our colleagues. We have been attempting to working in good-faith efforts here. I didn't object to the modification of the amendment. This is a restatement of the Enzi amendment which effectively takes all of the construction funds previously appropriated and earmarked for States--already now the States would have that--and says that money will go to a handful of impact aid areas. I hope this amendment will be defeated. It is the Enzi amendment. I ask our colleagues to review their votes at that particular time. This effectively vitiates the action that was taken in the last Congress to help school construction across this country. With this amendment, it effectively eliminates that kind of proposal. I think it is grossly both an unfair and unwise policy. I have the list of the allocations now from the Department of Education for each of the 50 States. I say to every one of our Members, you can be assured you will not get this money that is going to go out to your States within the next 4 weeks. It will not go out if this amendment is accepted and becomes law. That is the effect of it. I regret that we didn't have more time to debate it. I regret that the proponent of the amendment is not here. I have been asking whether the floor manager of the bill understood this to be a repeat of the Enzi amendment. I ask him now if he knows that.

Mr. KENNEDY. I can't yield on my time, since I have very little time left. I will say it is the exact language of the Enzi amendment. They are identical. That is really a misrepresentation of what this amendment is all about. I repeat, since I haven't any further time--and we were charged on our side during the quorum call, with all of my time being charged initially--even though earlier today when the Senator wasn't here, we asked for a fair distribution of the time. We can play it whatever way our friends on the other side want, but this is not the way for good legislation or good faith.

Mr. KENNEDY. Could we ask for another 20 minutes?

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield myself 5 minutes. Madam President, this is an entirely unacceptable way to do business in the Senate. The initial Hagel amendment that was printed for all of us to see applied to impact aid and Native American construction. The amount of money that was appropriated previously was $10 million. It was represented to us that this was a technical correction about how that $10 million was going to be expended between impact aid and Native American housing. At the last moment, the Senator from Nebraska asked for a perfecting amendment. We, to our fault, believed that it was a perfecting amendment, but the perfecting amendment is an amendment that does not deal with the $10 million but deals with $1.2 billion and tracks the Enzi amendment which says the allocations of funding that had been reached under the Department of Education under the Harkin amendment of last year will be emasculated and instead there will be an entirely different distribution according to impact aid, so that every one of those States that was going to receive the aid now from the Department of Education are going to receive nothing. Somehow it will be distributed to States that have impact aid and Native Americans. That is a perfecting amendment. That just defies understanding, logic, reason, and truthfulness. Truthfulness. Madam President, I hope that amendment will be defeated. I will print the exact language of the Enzi amendment and the 22 lines the Senator from Arizona says--well, it is true they had 22 lines of the Enzi amendment. That is the operative language. What difference does it make if you have five other pages of it? You have 22 lines of it that say exactly what the Enzi amendment said. That is basically wrong. It is a bad way to deal with this institution. I am surprised, quite frankly. I regret having to make these remarks when the Senator is not here. We are under a time limit on this, and this amendment ought to be withdrawn, and we ought to deal with the existing Hagel amendment. When all time expires, I am going to make that request, that we withdraw the perfecting amendment and go back to the original Enzi amendment that was distributed and that was understood to be the amendment on which we were going to act. I yield the remaining 5 minutes to the Senator from Illinois.