Trent Lott

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, let me say again that I think we have made good progress. We have had good debate on both sides of the underlying China PNTR bill, and also on the amendments. But we are reaching the point where we really need to pick that speed up. We need to get an agreement on what amendments will be offered, time agreements for them to be debated, and votes. And we ought to do it tomorrow. Without that, certainly we will have to file cloture; and I may have to anyway. But I think the fair thing to do is give everybody who is serious a chance to offer amendments, have a time for debate on both sides, and then have votes. I am going to try to get that started with this request. And we may have other requests. We are working on both sides of the aisle to identify amendments that really must be moved. I just want to say to one and all that in the end we are going to get the bill to a conclusion. It is going to pass. We have been fair to everybody. But it is time now we begin to get to the closing. With a little help, we can finish this bill Thursday, or Friday, or, if not, early next week. I just have to begin to take action to make that happen so we can consider other issues. I ask unanimous consent that a vote occur on or in relation to the pending Thompson amendment at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, and the time between 9:30 and 10:30 be equally divided in the usual form, and that no second-degree amendments be in order prior to the vote in relation to the amendment. I further ask unanimous consent that a vote occur on the pending Byrd amendment immediately following the 11 a.m. vote and there be time between 10:30 and 11 a.m. for closing remarks on that amendment to be equally divided in the usual form. Before the Chair rules, I want to say that if any objection is heard to this agreement, we will attempt to set two votes tomorrow on these or other issues beginning at 11 a.m. Therefore, there will be no further votes this evening, and votes will occur at 11 a.m.--hopefully including the Thompson amendment in those 11 o'clock votes. But if there is a problem with that, then we will ask consent to put in place two of the other amendments. With that, I ask the Chair to put the request to the Senate.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I believe there will be another consent request propounded later so that we can have two--the Byrd amendment and another--considered and voted on at 11 o'clock. I note that the Senator from Tennessee will want to respond to the objection just heard. Let me say on that issue that I have been supportive of the Export Administration Act and tried several different ways earlier to get that to the floor. There were problems raised by a number of our committee chairmen. We were not able to get that done. I think the Thompson amendment is a very serious and legitimate amendment that has been considered, and it should be voted on. I think we should go ahead and vote on it tomorrow. I think people know where we are. We ought to go ahead and have that vote and move on. I also must say I am trying to get these votes done so that the largest number of Senators can be accommodated and be here for the vote. I also want to say I don't know exactly what the Senator from Tennessee is going to do. But I predict right now that if we don't get this agreement to vote on the Thompson amendment tomorrow, we are going to vote on it at some point--I believe probably on or in relation to this bill. I don't think it serves anybody's purpose to try to put this off or to object to it. In fact, it may make the situation worse, not better. I think we are ready to go. I think everybody knows how they are going to vote. I think while it may be a close vote, everybody pretty much is reconciled to getting it done tomorrow. I regret that there was objection. I hope we can still find a way to get a vote on it in the next sequence that we will try to put together. By the way, on the Export Administration Act, I believe we are prepared to try to find a way to consider that because I think we need to act on it, making sure that we consider national security interests. That, obviously, is an underlying factor on the Export Administration Act. I have no doubt that the Senator from Wyoming wouldn't be for it if he had any doubts in that area himself because he has worked so extensively on it. The same thing applies on this amendment. Senator Thompson is trying to raise a general concern about national security interests. The Chinese are not complying with the nuclear proliferation regimes to which they have committed. What worries me is we are going to have this vote, we are going to pass this bill, and in a month or 6 months we may have a lot of explaining to do. I spent 2 months trying to get a way to have this issue considered separately. That is the way it should have been considered. But it will be considered, I predict, before we get out of here. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, it is a long-standing tradition in the Senate to recognize and honor those Senators that serve as presiding officers of the Senate for 100 hours in a single session of Congress. Today, I have the pleasure to announce that Senator Slade Gorton is the latest recipient of the Senate's coveted Golden Gavel Award. This Golden Gavel Award is not the first or even the second for Senator Gorton but is the sixth. Senator Gorton is the first Senator in the history of the Golden Gavel Award to attain the six gavel mark. This is a great achievement. On behalf of the Senate, I extend our sincere appreciation to Senator Gorton and his staff for their efforts and commitment to presiding duties during the 106th Congress.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, today, I have the pleasure to announce that Senator Wayne Allard has achieved the 100 hour mark as presiding, officer. In doing so, Senator Allard has earned his second Golden Gavel Award. Since the 1960's, the Senate has recognized those dedicated Members who preside over the Senate for 100 hours with the Golden Gavel. This award continues to represent our appreciation for the time these dedicated Senators contribute to presiding over the U.S. Senate--a privileged and important duty. On behalf of the Senate, I extend our sincere appreciation to Senator Allard and his staff for their efforts and commitment to presiding duties during the 106th Congress.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask Senator Frist if he would yield to me before he yields the floor.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I thank Senator Frist for the good work that he does on behalf of his constituents but also the entire Senate. He is the only doctor we have in the Senate, a very outstanding heart surgeon. He did quite an outstanding number of things before he ran for the Senate, the first time he had ever run for office, and he has become a very valuable Member of this body. When he talks about health care, health care delivery, he has seen it as a doctor; he has seen it from the standpoint of the patients with whom he has had to deal. He has seen it from the standpoint of what hospitals do or can't do. He has seen unbelievably magnificent technological medical advances that have allowed our people to live longer and have a better quality of life. He knows about heart, lung, and liver transplants. It is a miracle. We want to continue to improve health care in America. I think we have to recognize that it is changing so fast, we have so many people living so much longer with different kinds of needs, we have to be flexible and we have to make changes. He also understands that we could kill the goose that laid the golden egg. We still are blessed in this country to have the best health care, the most sophisticated, technologically advanced health care the minds of men have ever conceived in the history of the world. And we want to make sure that we protect that, preserve it, and make it better. A good way to begin to kill it is to turn it over to the Federal Government. The Government can kill the goose that laid the golden egg; it can take it down. That is why the American people and the Congress didn't go along with the Government takeover of health care that was advocated in 1993. Senator Frist, as a doctor, has come in and has gotten involved. He is working on these issues. He has been involved in our debate on health issues. That is why I asked him to serve also on our Medicare Bipartisan Commission. We had five or six Senators on that Commission: Senator Gramm of Texas, Senator Frist, Senator Rockefeller, Senator Kerrey, and Senator Breaux of Louisiana was the chairman, the Democrat chairman of this Bipartisan Commission. I also was very pleased to have a lady in her seventies from my State of Mississippi as one of the commissioners. She was the only one with gray hair on the whole Commission. She was the only one not only eligible for Medicare, she was the one person who dealt every day with Medicare, where the rubber hits the road, dealing with Medicare cases in my State office in Jackson, MI--Eileen Gordon. Dr. Frist will tell you she was an outstanding member of the Commission, but she used to say during the meeting: Let me tell you how this really works. Among all these experts, all those theoreticians, there was one person dealing with it on an individual basis who did a magnificent job. That Commission did a good job. They came up with Medicare reforms which would preserve and improve the system, and it included a prescription drug component, with choice, with the private sector involved but prescription drug benefits for those with incomes up to 135 percent of poverty. It was a good plan and a bipartisan plan. I thought we should have moved it forward. I called and talked to President Clinton on Monday, I believe it was, of the week that they were supposed to report, pleaded with him to take another look at it; not shoot it down, in effect. He said he had a problem with this or that. I said: Mr. President, that has been changed. Please talk to John Breaux, the chairman of the Commission. Get the latest proposal. Let's keep the process going. Let's let it come on up to the Finance Committee. The Finance Committee can have hearings and look at it. Let's get this thing going. We can get some reforms; we can get prescription drug benefits. As a matter of fact, he did call Chairman Breaux and he did take a look at it. But he did walk out into the Rose Garden a day or two after that and said: This is no good. We are not going to do it. That was a magic moment missed. That was in the spring of 1999. But they got it started in the right direction. Really, that is still where we should go. We should have prescription drug benefits available to those, the low-income elderly, who really need help who can't afford it, can't get it now, but not subsidize it for everybody. We don't need prescription drug benefit assistance for Donald Trump or Bill Gates or Bill Frist. We need it for low-income elderly people such as my mother, who has to live on $859 a month and pay her bills in an assisted care facility, and pay her drug bills. She needs help. A lot of people like her need help. But they don't need it 15 months from now or 8 years from now. They need it now. That is why I am pleased that Chairman Roth has come up with a package that will do that. It doesn't have the Medicare reforms we ought to have. Senator Frist is right; if we just put more passengers on this ship that is sinking, it is going to sink even faster. So we need to preserve Medicare. We need some improvements and reforms. We need to make sure none of this money is used for anything but Medicare. Then we need to have a very sensible prescription drug component aimed at the elderly poor who really need it. I appreciate the time he spent in the Medicare commission. I think we ought to reconstitute the Medicare commission. I hope the next President will reconstitute that group and say: You have 120 days. I want to hear from you then. We are going to act on what you recommend; up or down, but we are going to act on it. I hope Senator Frist will be willing to serve. But have I given an accurate assessment of what happened with the Medicare commission? Is that a correct description of the prescription drug component of that bill?

Mr. LOTT. I thank the Senator for his work. He is right. What we need is reform that provides results now, prescription drugs now for those who really need it. We don't need more roadblocks. We are going to work together to see if we can make that happen. I thank him for yielding. Now, I believe, Mr. President, I ask for the floor on my own time.

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 adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, Pete O'Brien, who has served the Senate community for 32 years, plans to retire. This loss will be felt by all offices of the Senate and the Sergeant at Arms as he completes his final day as Manager of Parking, I.D., and Fleet Operations on September 11, 2000. Pete started his career with the U.S. Capitol Police in 1968 and worked his way up to Sergeant in the Patrol Division. During his training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center he was nicknamed ``100%'' after earning the first perfect score in the class on an examination. In 1980 he moved to the Senate Sergeant at Arms office as Supervisor of Administrative Operations. In 1985 he became Manager of Senate Parking. The challenge of managing limited parking with ever increasing needs has been skillfully maintained during the years under his watch. His institutional knowledge of the Senate's history and operations will be surely missed in this great institution. Both Pete and his wife Jeanie are native Washingtonians. Pete attended P.G. Community College and the University of Maryland where he studied Political Science. Pete and Jeanie recently moved to Springfield, Virginia, after 20 years in Clinton, Maryland. He plans to spend his retirement enjoying his hobbies of photography, downhill skiing and electronics. His elder daughter Kelly and her husband Colman Andrews have brought something new to Pete's life, grandson Connor Shawn Andrews, born in April. Pete is also looking forward to the upcoming marriage of his younger daughter Erin. So on behalf of the Senate, I want to thank Pete for his dedicated, selfless service and wish him many years of happiness with the new joy of his life, Connor, and with all of his family.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask consent that there now be a period for the transaction of routine morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Banking Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1776 and the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration. I ask unanimous consent that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the text of S. 1452, which is a bill to modernize the requirements for the National Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standards Act of 1994, as passed, be inserted in lieu thereof. I further ask unanimous consent the bill be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, the Senate insist upon its amendment, request a conference with the House, and the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, let me urge Senator Reid and the leadership to work with us, if he would talk with that Senator and identify what the problem might be. I know this bill has broad, I think almost unanimous, support. I read what the bill does in its title. It would modernize the requirements for manufactured housing construction. This is in the interest of consumers. It will help the industry because it will clarify what the standards should be. It is about safety; it is about manufactured housing construction. I have a feeling the problem is not with this bill, that it is an unrelated issue. But I hope we can work through the objection and we will come back on Monday or Tuesday of next week, I might say to Senator Reid, and see if we cannot get that worked out.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. It is possible that we would have votes on Monday. But if we are making good progress--like this week, we didn't force votes on I guess it was Tuesday or Wednesday because we had debate, and we were able to get on the bill. We were able to get amendments done. But I would say this: If there are votes Monday, it will depend on--we were not able to get work done on amendments to the point where they could get a vote today. Votes will not occur before 5:30 or 6 o'clock. We will consult on the time. But it could be that the next votes will not occur until Tuesday morning. It just depends on whether we can get one racked up and in order.

Mr. LOTT. I have spent a lot of time trying to find a way to do that.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until the hour of 12 noon on Monday, September 11. I further ask unanimous consent that immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then resume debate on H.R. 4444, the China PNTR bill, with the Byrd amendment regarding subsidies pending to be debated under a previous order.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I can respond, we will be working with the chairman and the ranking member on that. Thank goodness, we were able to get the energy and water appropriations bill completed. I believe the DC appropriations bill will not be ready until the week after next. We still have the Commerce-State-Justice and the HUD-VA appropriations bills on which we have to make a decision as to which one will go first. There is a problem with the level of funding, the cap on funding. We are going to have to work that out. We are looking next week at, once again, possibly dual tracking with the China PNTR during the day and an appropriations bill at night. The principal focus next week, I believe, has to be on completing work on the China PNTR bill. We are about halfway there, but we still have, I believe, about 11 or 12 amendments that have been identified that may very well require votes. It appears I will still have to file cloture on Tuesday. I want to do whatever is necessary to try to complete that bill by Friday of next week. It may not be possible, but if it means staying on that bill during the day and night, we will look at that option, and I will consult with the leadership on the other side for the need to do that if it appears it is necessary.

Mr. LOTT. Yes.

Mr. LOTT. Right.

Mr. LOTT. As the Senator knows, we are hoping that early next week the House will take up the legislative appropriations bill coupled with the Treasury-Postal Department appropriations bill. It would be done in such a way that both sides find it acceptable. It is my understanding that the administration would sign it. So that would move two bills to the President. We hope to have that acted on in the Senate next week, hopefully by Thursday. So if that is done, that would put us then at 10 appropriations bills having been acted on by the Senate, leaving only three. I will be working, again, as I said, with the chairman about which we would do next week, the HUD bill or CJS. And I don't know whether the HUD bill has come out of committee yet. So we are still working on that. We are still committed to getting through these appropriations bills, hopefully getting them all done through the Congress, going into conference, and hopefully down to the President before the end of the fiscal year.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I just spent the last few minutes with Senator Levin. I understand his interest. The problem they are both interested in is in the Judiciary Committee. We will be working to see if anything could be done. It will be very hard at this point. I understand their interest. I know there is no desire to block the action of the Senate at this time. It is going to be difficult, but I certainly am going to listen to them and see what might be done. If we could keep working on it, maybe something can be worked out.

Mr. LOTT. I further ask unanimous consent that at 1 p.m. on Monday, Senator Thompson be recognized to offer an amendment to H.R. 4444, and that Senator Helms be recognized at 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday to offer an amendment to the same.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 525, H.R. 3615, the Rural Local Broadcast Signal Act and the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask consent that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the text of S. 2097 as passed be inserted in lieu thereof. I further ask consent that the bill then be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, 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 on this legislation. Just so everybody in the Senate will understand, this is the rural local satellite bill. Most of us refer to it as the satellite bill. It is the bill that was developed as a result of an agreement last year to make sure that there was some way for these loans to be available so satellites could be put up in space, where those of us in rural States, smaller communities, would have access to these satellites with dishes, just like the cities have. This is an effort to keep that commitment. I know Senator Burns has worked very hard on this matter. I think Senator Baucus had a part in it. A number of Senators have worked on it. I thought this morning at 11:30 we had it cleared. I understand there was some concern that maybe we would use this bill as a vehicle for some other specific bill or bills. This is too urgent. It is too important to my State and other States such as mine to not get it done. So there will not be any extraneous matter added to this bill. This bill will come out of conference clean. If any Senator has any reservations about that, if that is why there is an objection, if there is one, I assure the Senators and the leadership that that is not going to be the way it works. I ask unanimous consent that we be able to take that legislation up under the request I made.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations on the Executive Calendar: No. 426 through 432, 550, 598, 599, 600 through 610, 619, 620, 621, 622, 623, 625, 626 through 630, 632, 633, 657, 658, 684, and 685. I further ask unanimous consent that the nominations be confirmed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, any statements relating to the nominations be printed in the Record, the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then return to legislative session.

Mr. LOTT. I did skip over those: Nos. 640, 644, 645, and 653 should also be included in that list.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I appreciate that we were able to get these cleared. Most of these are career service people at the State Department and finally the approval of the IRS oversight board. We are really about 9 months late on that. It is important. We have this board in place. It is bipartisan, and I am glad we have gotten it cleared. There are other positions included here where we have Republicans and Democrats, both being cleared. I hope we will use this effort to look at the Executive Calendar and see if there are not other nominations that can be cleared, are noncontroversial or can be matched in terms of partisan divide and maybe even other nominations. I hope we do not just refuse to move any nomination at this point. There are people who need to be considered, and we will try to work on that. This was a good-faith effort on my part and Senator Daschle's part. It is the right thing to do with these nominations.