Trent Lott

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, we have no objection. We are encouraging Senators to come to the floor with their amendments, and if Senator Wyden would like to be next in line, that is fine. As a part of that, let me ask consent that Senator Inhofe be allowed to offer the next amendment after the Wyden-Grassley amendment so we would have a package of the two lined up. I propose then that we have the Wyden amendment in order after the Santorum-Dodd proposal, to be followed by the Inhofe amendment.

Mr. LOTT. Does the Senator propose to speak on the pending amendment?

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. LOTT. Madam President, I believe we are ready to go to the Dodd- Santorum amendment.

Mr. LOTT. If I may inquire of the Senator from Connecticut, is he proposing that we go ahead and accept this on a voice vote?

Mr. LOTT. Then while the Senator from Connecticut talks to his colleagues and determines how we can work on that issue, I will make a few brief remarks. I want to say, again, to Senator Santorum how much I appreciate the work he has done. He didn't just try to find a way to give this issue a hit and miss; he got into great detail. I had a lot of questions as we went along on different aspects of his proposal. He was always able to give me thoughtful answers. I appreciate that very much. He worked in the Rules Committee, offered some amendments that were accepted. And in this case, he agreed to make it bipartisan, once again, by joining Senator Dodd on the meals question. I emphasize how much I appreciate what he has done. Frankly, I have no problem, personally, with banning lobbyists from paying for meals. Fine. Anybody around here who knows me at all knows that I probably do less of that than just about anybody. I have breakfast with my family: my kids, when they were still living at home before they went off to college, and my wife now. When the Sun goes down, I am ready to go home because I believe there is something called a life, family life. The Senate is not my only life. I think more of my wife than I do the Senate. I go home every night and eat with my wife. I recommend a lot of other people doing it instead of going to all these blame dinners. I am a little offended at the whole concept that you can be bought by a meal. I don't get it. That is where I do get upset. I think there are some things we need to do, should do, can do to make the rules tighter, to have more clarity, disclosure, transparency with regard to lobbying reform. I am going to go along with this because, personally, it will give me a fine excuse just to say ``no.'' But I think we are creating some unintended problems. The Rules Committee bill says that you must disclose the cost of such meals that you go to 15 days after you share the meal. To me, that is better. Are we going to stop eating? It might be a good idea for some of us, but I have been going to meals where you talk about issues since I was in elementary school. Again, I believe in being honest about it, disclose what you are doing, you have had a meal, whom it was with, and then let your constituents decide. They don't expect me to come up here and not go to a luncheon or a meal with school teachers or labor union members or executives from Northrop Grumman or lobbyists, somebody who represents a group, cable television. First of all, they are a source of information. I benefit from it. But I don't just go to lunch to meet with lobbyists from cable television. I also talk to telephone people. You talk to everybody. That is what our republican form of Government is all about. People are here to try to find out the details of issues and then try to cast an intelligent vote. The very idea that if I sit down with them or go to lunch with them or go to a dinner, which I generally don't, that is somehow questionable--no Senators are running up tabs of hundreds of thousands of dollars at the expense of lobbyists. By the way, the rules now say that the maximum value of a meal we can receive from a lobbyist is less than $50. I don't know that that is a great meal, but you could have a pretty good meal. Being a guy who likes hamburgers and pizzas, I am very happy to get a meal of less than 50 bucks. But I do think if we call for a ban on all these meals, that we are going to have some unintended problems for ourselves and our staffs. What happens if you go to a luncheon that is sponsored by a lobbyist organization, maybe it is under $50, maybe you get a box lunch. Are we going to be scurrying around saying, what is my pro rata share of this lunch? Maybe we shouldn't go to these policy luncheons. That is what is going to happen. Or you go and you don't eat. It is totally ludicrous that we are doing this. But my attitude is, fine, if that is what the Senators want to do for themselves, no skin off my back. But I do think we are going to regret this, and we are going to look small. Not this amendment or the Senators involved, who are well intentioned, but I think we demean ourselves by inferring that we could be had for the price of a lunch or a dinner. That is not the case. Having said that, it is clear that in a bipartisan way the Senate wants to do this. So be it. I will be eating with my wife and so will a lot more Senators after we pass this one. Madam President, could I inquire, are we ready to deal with this amendment? Do we want to set it aside and go to another amendment?

Mr. LOTT. Madam President, I thank Senator Inhofe for being cooperative and bearing with us. I am glad we were able to get this amendment on the record. I voted for this before. I think Senator Pat Moynihan one time rose up in indignation and suggested an amendment of this type, and I voted for it. I think it is well intentioned, something that we will need to think about and work on the exact language. I would propose, if Senator Dodd wants to be heard on it, OK; but if we can accept it after that, I recommend that we do that.

Mr. LOTT. Madam President, we have checked on both sides of the aisle and we are, I believe, clear now to accept the Inhofe amendment. I urge that the Inhofe amendment be accepted by a voice vote.

Mr. LOTT. Madam President, I believe there is objection to accepting it at this time. I hope we will be able to get that worked out. If not, the Senator can speak at length. I feel so strongly about it, I ask unanimous consent that my name be included as a cosponsor of this amendment.

Mr. LOTT. Madam President, I will soon ask unanimous consent to set aside the Inhofe amendment and return to the pending amendment, the Santorum/Dodd or the Dodd/Santorum amendment. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that before we move to the amendment at hand, Senator Feingold have his amendment in order following the Santorum-McCain amendment, and we will put it in the queue at that point. If it turns out not to be, we will work with the Senator at a later time.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I could modify my request, since I understand we had not gotten an agreement formally locked in. But after we dispose of the Dodd-Santorum amendment and the Wyden-Grassley amendment, the next amendment to be in order is the Santorum-McCain amendment, to be followed by the Feingold amendment.

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

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, is the Senator from Louisiana speaking on the same issue? If you would defer, Senator Inhofe has become one of the lead cosponsors of this amendment. I think you would probably like to be heard in sequence. Then the floor would be open for questions.

Mr. LOTT. Let me clear up one point. I am not sure we are ready to go to a recorded vote at this moment. I thought maybe we could set it aside and go to other amendments and have stacked votes later in the afternoon, allowing Senators to continue committee meetings. However, I have been notified that maybe someone would object to a unanimous consent to set it aside so I sent a message back to that Senator: if you want to object, you better come over here. That is a problem around here. We send our surrogates over to object, but they are not here. If he comes, he can object. That is fine. We will try to work with everyone to try to accommodate everyone. There may be a need for further discussion. Let me take a moment to commend the Senator from Oregon and the Senator from Iowa and now the Senator from Oklahoma for your tenacity. You have been pecking away at this for years. Typical of the leadership, there was a time when I was saying, do we need to go that far; there is a misunderstanding about holds. In fact, that is a misnomer. There is no such thing. A hold is a request to be notified when an issue or a nominee will be brought up so we can come over and speak. The fact is, it ties the leadership's hands because quite often they say, wait a minute, I can't delay the business of the Senate to have this Senator come over here and talk at length--which is his or her right--on a nominee or a Member. The point I am trying to make, I have tried to work to deal with this issue of fairness. Senator Daschle and I did work with Senator Biden to further clarify, what is this thing, a hold? How do I have to comply with it? We requested that it be put in writing, which, by the way, was never locked into place. That is one of the reasons I am for this. We need to make it clearer about how Members do this and what the requirements are. We do not want to stop the practice of a Senator being able to file notice that he would like to be able to come over and discuss an issue. What I have had a problem with, I do think it has been abused. We have anonymous hold, we have rolling hold, and it is harder and harder and harder to try to do the business of the Senate. But the anonymous part of it is the part that bothers me the most. That is the thrust of the Rules bill and particularly the bill by the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Let's open things, disclose things, have transparency, make sure the people know what we are up to. This is, in my opinion, very sinister, where Members can hold up a nomination, hold up a bill, and not even acknowledge they are doing it. I point out that all this amendment does is to say the holds must be in writing and they have to be published in the Record in 3 days. Is that the thrust of the Senator's amendment?

Mr. LOTT. What is the threat here? I do think there is a good cause for late at night, 6 o'clock, you are wrapping up, and all of a sudden the leadership hits us with, we want to clear 10 bills and a Senator can say, wait a minute, I want to make sure, What is the cost of this bill--as the Senator from New Hampshire has been inclined to do. He has that right. It is appropriate he be able to have time to look at that. But he ought to then have to put in writing that notice to the leader so the leader, if nothing else, will not forget it, and then acknowledge who he is. That is all this does. I don't know what the vote of the Senate is going to be because some Members may say they are giving up some of their senatorial prerogatives. No, you are not; you just can't hide. That is all. In the spirit of this legislation of openness and honesty, let me say, this is also an area where some Senators--no one has gotten in trouble with these holds or used the holds for a response or for some benefit personally, but the day will come, if we do not watch it, someone will get in trouble ethically with this procedure. The leaders may have a different view and I will be very responsive to their views, but for now, it is time we quit talking about making things more open and honest and we do it. This amendment would do that. I plan to support it. I am advised we do not have an objection to setting aside this amendment, unless others wish to speak on this amendment. Does the Senator from New York have a comment on this issue or another issue?

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Oregon for a question.

Mr. LOTT. There would be a problem having the vote at this time, just out of convenience for a number of Senators on both sides who have other commitments. We would like to perhaps stack votes a little later in the afternoon. I want to collaborate with the chairman of Homeland Security and Senator Dodd and Senator Lieberman about exactly what time we would do that. We could get more work done without interfering with Senators' schedules. So, yes, there would be an objection to it right now. But it has already been locked in and we will have a recorded vote. It will be first in the sequence whenever we set it up.

Mr. LOTT. I ask unanimous consent we set aside the Wyden-Grassley- Inhofe amendment and go to the next pending amendment.

Mr. LOTT. I withhold my unanimous consent request at this time, Mr. President.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a markup on Wednesday, March 8, 2006, at 9:30 a.m. in Senate Dirksen Building Room 226. Agenda I. Nominations: Steven G. Bradbury to be an Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel; John F. Clark to be Director of the United States Marshals Service; Donald J. DeGabrielle, Jr. to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas; John Charles Richter to be U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma; Amul R. Thapar to be U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky; Mauricio J. Tamargo to be Chairman of the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States. II. Bills: S. , Comprehensive Immigration Reform [Chairman's Mark]; S. 1768, a bill to permit the televising of Supreme Court proceedings; Specter, Leahy, Cornyn, Grassley, Schumer, Feingold, Durbin; S. 829, Sunshine in the Courtroom Act of 2005; Grassley, Schumer, Cornyn, Leahy, Feingold, Durbin, Graham, DeWine, Specter; S. 489, Federal Consent Decree Fairness Act; Alexander, Kyl, Cornyn, Graham, Hatch; S. 2039, Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act of 2005; Durbin, Specter, DeWine, Leahy, Kennedy, Feinstein, Feingold; S. 2292, A bill to provide relief for the Federal judiciary from excessive rent charges; Specter, Leahy, Cornyn, Feinstein, Biden. III. Matters: S.J. Res. 1, Marriage Protection Amendment; Allard, Sessions, Kyl, Hatch, Cornyn, Coburn, Brownback.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 8, 2006 at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed briefing.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security be authorized to meet on Wednesday, March 8, 2006, at 2:30 p.m. for a hearing regarding ``Crime Victims Fund Rescission: Real Savings or Budget Gimmick?''

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on International Trade and Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 8, 2006, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on ``Reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.''