John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Let me interrupt my friend. I may save him----

Mr. KERRY. I think the Senator knows----

Mr. KERRY. I do not have a problem with a vote, but others do at this moment. I have to represent them as the manager. I am representing that I cannot agree at this point in time to have the vote this evening.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I cannot personally agree to that at this point in time.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the second- degree amendment of the Senator from North Carolina be modified to read $10 million. I send it to the desk.

Mr. KERRY. I think we can amend it by unanimous consent.

Mr. KERRY. I thank my colleague.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, will my colleague yield for a moment just for the purpose of making a unanimous-consent request?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, this simply puts us back in the parliamentary position we were in. We have now agreed we ought to have welfare debated before the end of the session. The issue before us is still whether or not we ought to have the minimum wage debated before the end of the session. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.

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

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I guess I am somewhat amused by the notion that the way to solve the problem of an amendment that is somehow not appropriate on this bill is to amend that amendment with an amendment that is not appropriate to this bill. The logic of that does not quite sit. But, on the other hand, we all want welfare reform. So I think it is perfectly appropriate, now that the precedent is set, for us to follow suit with other amendments. [[Page S 10956]] We will be happy to accept the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma. I do not think there is any further debate on it, so we could proceed. THE PRESIDING OFFICER. If there be no further debate, the question is on agreeing to the amendment.

Mr. KERRY. I thank the Senator from Kansas for her forbearance.

Mr. KERRY. The Senator from Kansas has been waiting. And I just need 60 seconds. I want to thank my colleague from Massachusetts for once again raising for the Senate an important issue. I simply underscore--I think I am correct, and the Senator may be able to confirm this--in the 1960's and 1970's, the minimum wage permitted people in this country to be able to earn just at poverty level; but because of the diminishment of earnings in the United States over the course of the last 13 years particularly, minimum wage now produces only 70 percent of the poverty level in income. So the country traditionally has paid a minimum wage that at least promised to keep people at poverty level. Today, it is at 70 percent of poverty level, at a time when we all know it is an awful lot harder without the sufficient skills to be able to break out. Not only do we have the same kinds of antipoverty or rising tide jobs that lift you, you have a much greater difficulty, but you are much lower in the purchasing power that you have from whatever the minimum wage gives you. I think it underscores the purpose.

Mr. KERRY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 1977

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

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, we could have saved this entire exchange and quorum call if I had been permitted to simply say to my friend 4 minutes ago that the issue is not whether we will have a vote; the only question, as is normal in the Senate, is the timing. But because I was precluded from saying that, in order that the country can get a message about how we can never pass anything here, we get into these tangles. I wanted to only say to my friend the issue is when, not whether. I do not know when every Senator will be back. Some are with the President. Some are with the National Governors Association. As soon as they get back from a day's work elsewhere in the country, they will be available to vote. That is normal procedure in the Senate. My No. 2 response is that this Senator remembers last year very well. I will never forget it as long as I am in the U.S. Senate and privileged to be here. Vote after vote, bill after bill was brought forward in good faith, and it was stopped dead in its tracks by a conscious gridlock policy. So I am never going to stand here and hear any colleague on the other side talk about the delay or the problems of proceeding forward. Every good-faith effort of Senator Mitchell to move the Senate forward was frustrated, and everybody knows that. Piece of legislation after piece of legislation that passed here went over to the House and came back--dead, dead, dead. So I am not going to hear anybody talk about a legitimate delay effort in the first 2 hours to legislate on this bill. If there is, we will sit here in quorum call for several days. Let us agree to that. That is just unfounded, uncalled for, unnecessary, and I think, frankly, out of order in the first hour and a half of this effort. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield further for a question?

Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. KERRY. They can talk about Harry Wu. The conference is going to happen. The Senator keeps talking as if we are not participating.

Mr. KERRY. But my question is why not send them there to talk about Harry Wu?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from North Carolina, I think he is correct to bring this question of debt before the U.S. Senate. I think it is an important issue. The question is whether we should not withhold the amount of money commensurate with what the debt is reported to be rather than more than twice that amount, because we already have arrearages on peacekeeping, a significant amount of financial issues. I respectfully suggest that it may be possible, let us say, with a $10 million figure, to leverage the same response, which I suspect the Secretary of State would be willing to try to elicit as rapidly as possible, rather than withholding twice the amount of money. I wonder if he would consider modifying it to that effect.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I send a perfecting amendment to the desk.

Mr. KERRY. I ask unanimous consent that the Helms amendment be temporarily set aside.

Mr. KERRY. I understand the pending business is the Dole amendment.