Trent Lott

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess under the previous order following the remarks of Senator Lautenberg for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to Calendar No. 800, S. 3041, the D.C. appropriations bill, and following the reporting of the bill by the clerk, the bill be advanced to third reading, and the Senate then proceed to Calendar No. 805, H.R. 4942, the House companion bill. I further ask unanimous consent that the Senate text be considered offered and agreed to as original text, also including a series of managers' changes sponsored by the two managers which are at the desk, that the House bill then be advanced to third reading, and passage occur, all without intervening action or debate. I further ask unanimous consent that the Senate insist on its amendment, request a conference with the House, and the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate, which will be the entire Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, including the chairman of the full committee and Senator Inouye. I further ask unanimous consent that the Senate bill then be placed back on the calendar.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, the Senate will begin consideration of the continuing resolution at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow. Under a previous agreement, there will be 7 hours for debate, with the vote scheduled to occur after the use or yielding back of that time. After adoption of the resolution, the Senate will proceed to a cloture vote with regard to the H-1B visa bill, unless it can be agreed to be vitiated, and a vote on the final passage could occur. Therefore, Senators can expect at least two votes during tomorrow's afternoon session, and hopefully more. We hope we can possibly have as many as three or four votes. That will depend on further action by the House on conference reports.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. I would be glad to work with Senator Reid and our colleagues to see if we can find a time to do that tomorrow. I ask our staff to see if we can work through that agreement. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it recess until the hour of 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, September 28. I further ask consent that on Thursday, immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then begin consideration of H.J. Res. 109 under the previous order.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I now call up amendment No. 4183.

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

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I now call up amendment No. 4201.

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

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

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

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, before the Senator takes advantage of that time, I would like to make an inquiry.

Mr. LOTT. That is what I was going to inquire about. I believe we are scheduled to take a break in 5 minutes, at 12:30, for the respective party policy luncheons. I had hoped to be able to make some comments and respond to some of the things that were said. I know that Senator Hatch hoped to do that, too. In order to do that, if he is not going to have time yielded, I guess the only alternative would be for me to yield leader time and ask unanimous consent that we extend the time for 5 minutes beyond 12:30. Is that correct, Mr. President?

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I yield myself a minute of leader time and allot the remainder of the time to Senator Hatch to comment on where we are and some of the things that have been said. I know there is a lot of clarification and correcting that the Record needs. With regard particularly to workers in shipbuilding, I believe we have plenty of people in my State of Mississippi who would be perfectly happy to fill any job that might be available in the shipyards in my State. It is very clear what has happened. For weeks, for months, this bill has been delayed, stalled, by all kinds of demands for unrelated amendments, amendments of all kinds. That resistance still continues. The high-tech industry indicates this is vital to them--big and small--this has to be done, and there is bipartisan support. The time is here. We are going to see very clearly whether we want to extend these immigrants visas or not. All the delays to change the subject, deflect it, to demand votes on other things which could tangle up and cause problems for this bill will not work. We will file cloture. We are going to have successful cloture and we will either get this bill done or not. Everybody needs to understand here and outside this Chamber that it is time we get to the issue at hand, that we have a vote, get this work done, and move on. The Senators are entitled to make their case for other amendments. I thought we recognized last Friday in our exchange that there are other bills, there will be other venues where these amendments could possibly be considered, if that is the will of the House and the Senate and the Congress. The point is, do we want to pass it or not? Time is running out. It is time to make that decision. We will have a clear vote on it before this week is out. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I understand that Senator Reid is here. I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, September 28, the Senate proceed to the continuing resolution, H.J. Res. 109; that the joint resolution be immediately advanced to third reading and no amendments or motions be in order; that there be up to 7 hours for final debate to be divided as follows: 6 hours under the control of Senator Byrd, and 1 hour under the control of Senator Stevens. Finally, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be placed on the calendar when received from the House.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate has voted 94-3 to invoke cloture with respect to H-1B legislation. As Members know, cloture limits debate and restrains amendments to germane amendments only. With that in mind, I want all Senators to know that the Senate is going to conduct a final vote on this legislation. We are committed to that, and we will get to that point even if it takes some more time. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will allow this bill to be voted on in the Senate. We have worked on it for months trying to get agreements to find a way to get conclusion. But it is time that we get to the conclusion and have a vote. I predict that the final vote on this bill will be somewhat like the vote we had on the FAA reauthorization bill some 4 years ago. There was a lot of resistance. It took a week to get to a final conclusion. The final vote was something like 97-3. I suspect that when we get to a final vote here it will be 90-10, if we can ever get a vote on the substance.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk to the pending first-degree amendment.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk to the pending committee substitute.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk to the pending bill.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I would be happy to vitiate the cloture votes on this bill if the Democrats would agree to that. I think we could get a time agreement and have germane amendments that could be offered, and we could complete it in a reasonable period of time. Perhaps we should have gone through a procedural effort different from what we wound up with, but I really thought that once we had the cloture vote this morning, we would be able to get some sort of reasonable time agreement--6 hours or more if necessary--and get to a conclusion so that we could move on to other issues. I am still open to that. I know Senator Reid has put a lot of time on it and had some remarks today. I certainly understand that. The issue or issues that have been raised, I think, could be or would be considered on other bills and other venues. I hope we can work together to find a way to complete this important legislation. Failing that, I had no alternative but to go this route.

Mr. LOTT. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I might respond to Senator Reid, I think he knows an effort was made a few days ago to see if we couldn't clear a limited number of amendments--and either without identifying what those amendments would be or identifying them--and we are not able to clear it. We couldn't clear it on this side. We had Senators on this side that wanted to offer other issues, too, including the H-2A issue, involving how we deal with visas for agricultural workers. There are some Members who think we ought to do that. There are others who didn't think we ought to do it on this bill. While I understand what the Senator is saying, I have not been able to clear that, and therefore I had to move forward to try to get the bill to conclusion. I always enjoy working with the Senator from Nevada. He has been unfailingly fair and has worked with us to move a lot of issues. I appreciate that. I regret we couldn't get this cleared. I did try to, but I couldn't get it done. So now we need to get to a conclusion on the underlying.

Mr. LOTT. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, let me say we are going to try to clear that bill so we can get it into conference with the House. If we run into problems, whatever they may be, it is my intent that legislation will be on a bill that is signed into law before the end of this session. It is our intent to get it done. We will try a variety of ways to achieve that. We will want to put it on a bill that we hope will be signed into law. We are not going to try to put it on something that might not be. We will also be taking cognizance of what the House has done.

Mr. LOTT. We will be working on that. I have had other bills that I thought would zip right through'', no problem. We have one from the Finance Committee, the FSC issue, which is very important to compliance with the WTO decision. I am concerned now we may not be able to get that cleared. We are trying to get appropriations bills considered by the Senate. We are trying to get an agreement to take up the District of Columbia, and we ran into a problem. I think maybe we are fixing that problem, but I am saying to the Senator at this point it is hard to get clearances. We did get one worked on regarding the water resources development bill, and we are doing other issues. This is a bill we will find a way to get done before this session is over. We will see what happens when we get it together and try to work through it.