Trent Lott

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, ordinarily when we file cloture, at the end of that proceeding we ask for the mandatory quorum under rule XXII to be waived and the bill be pending for debate only so that we make use of the time to begin debating the substance of the bill or the alternatives. That has been objected to. As an alternative, so we can make use of the time we have this afternoon--surely we can spend another hour and a half or so allowing Senators to discuss their positions on the marriage penalty or any other issue--I proposed that we go into a period for the transaction of morning business. I am told there may be objection to that, which kind of surprises me--that we will not even allow morning business to go forward so Senators can speak. You talk about the Senate. The way the Senate works is Senators get to speak when they need to and want to on any subject certainly in morning business. But it was suggested, since that apparently was going to be objected to, that maybe we were ready to go forward with debate on the bill and debate on the Moynihan substitute, or one of the Democratic substitutes, and that maybe you are ready to go with that. In an effort to be fair and get the debate to go forward, and to address one of the issues that certainly is a legitimate one--Senator Moynihan, and probably Senator Baucus, offered this in the Finance Committee, and we talked about it, had votes on it--so we can go ahead and engage the discussion about what is the best way to deal with the marriage penalty tax, this is a different way of doing it, and I think it merits being addressed by the Senators. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be open for one amendment, the so-called Democratic alternative by Senator Moynihan, Senator Baucus, or their designee, with no other amendments or motions to commit or recommit being in order.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, since objection is heard, I want to make sure people understand this didn't in any way foreclose any other agreement that might be involved with making other amendments in order and having amendments considered. I presume there will be other amendments that are relevant on the marriage tax penalty provision--I assume on the Democratic side and perhaps on this side, also. This doesn't foreclose any agreement. All I am trying to do is to facilitate the debate and discussion on this very important piece of legislation. There was an indication from the Democratic side that you were interested in going forward with your amendment or amendments, and the one that was clearly identifiable is the one that had been offered in the Finance Committee as an alternative on how to proceed. I certainly don't feel as if that is foreclosing any Senators the opportunity to be heard and to offer amendments. But objection has been heard.

Mr. LOTT. I thank the Senator for her comments. Let me add, perhaps it is just that Senator Daschle and the Democrats need more time to work on amendments and to get to our side some description of the amendments. Maybe we can go ahead and go out tonight. That way, we have the rest of the evening and the night to work on amendments and pick up again tomorrow. I am trying to find a way to keep the discussion going. We could use another hour or so to debate this or other issues. If we can think of a way to do that, I am open to considering other options. I indicated to Senator Dorgan I would yield to him.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet on April 10, 2000, from 1 p.m.-4 p.m. in Dirksen 106 for the purpose of conducting a hearing.

Mr. LOTT

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

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, are we in a period of morning business?

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I will talk a few minutes about the schedule for the week and then comment specifically on some of the issues we will be addressing during the schedule for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We have several important issues before the Senate to take up and hopefully complete action on. One of them is the question of our national energy policy. That will be brought to the Senate during the day on Tuesday with a vote on the gas tax issue. Following that, we will be discussing the marriage penalty tax. This past Saturday, I had occasion to be in a store and one of the other customers asked me: Are we finally going to get rid of the unfair marriage penalty tax? I said we would try to and hoped to do it this week. I went on about my business and the customer went on about his. The customer came back later and said: Do you think you actually will begin to eliminate the very unfair tax? I said: That is what we are trying to do. Then he came back a third time and said: You are going to have a vote next week? I said: Yes, we are. He asked if he could get the names of those voting against getting rid of the unfair tax. I said: Yes, it will be in the Record. Call my office; we will be glad to get it to you. That is what we hear in the real world, off of Capitol Hill. People say this is a real problem. We have been talking about eliminating the marriage penalty tax for years. It is time we get it done. We will have that debate on Wednesday and, I presume, a vote Wednesday or Thursday to see exactly where the Senate is: Do we want to eliminate the marriage penalty tax or not? I think we should. I certainly will vote that way. Before the week is out, we hope to take up a number of Executive Calendar nominations. We have a number of nominations that we should be able to clear. We will work with interested Senators and committees involved on both sides of the aisle to see if we can clear a number of these nominations. Last and certainly not least is the fact we will also want to complete action on the conference on the budget. We completed action on the budget resolution of the Senate on Friday. I understand the conferees will be working together during the next 2 days, hopefully, to file the necessary report by Tuesday night. Then we will have the necessary debate, whatever time that might be. It could be up to as much as 10 hours. Then we will have a vote on that conference report Thursday evening or Friday morning. That leads me to another point I want to be sure to make early in the week. As I have notified Senators in the past, during these weeks right before a recess--in this case the Easter recess--we will go home and be with our constituents and families. Senators should anticipate the possibility or even the likelihood of votes on Friday. If we can complete the work I have outlined by Thursday night then we will not be in session on Friday. But if for some reason we have not been able to complete at least the vote on the conference report on the budget, then we will be in session on Friday. We certainly hope to finish it by noon on Friday, but that will depend on how much time is needed and when the Senate wishes to get to a final vote. I wanted to go over the schedule for the week so Senators know what to anticipate on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and the possibility even of Friday votes on the budget resolution conference report. Now let me go back and talk about some of these issues, to try to make clear what I am trying to do by moving these bills, and explain what the situation is with regard to the gas tax, for instance. There have been those who said the Senate voted last week during the debate on the budget resolution on a sense of the Senate that basically the Senate would not temporarily suspend or in any way remove the gas tax. The Federal gasoline tax is 4.3 cents a gallon. That was added back in 1993. But the total amount of the Federal tax is 18.4 cents a gallon. I remind my colleagues, that does not count the State taxes and in many cases local taxes on gasoline. Where I am from, we even have, in addition to the State and Federal taxes, what is known as the seawall tax. That is quite curious because quite often we do not see anything happening on the seawall, but the tax is being collected and spent on general improvement of roads. Most people do not gripe because we have a developing area and we want to have good roads. I think that is a very important thing. But, as a matter of fact, the total tax on gasoline in most States is as much as a quarter or a third or more of the total cost of a gallon of gasoline. So the taxes on gasoline are significant. With regard to this vote last week, the so-called Byrd sense-of-the- Senate resolution said it is the sense of the Senate that the functional totals in this budget resolution do not assume the reduction of any Federal gasoline taxes on either a temporary or permanent basis. What we will be considering today and tomorrow morning in our gas tax bill is specifically designed to make certain that highway spending, and thus the functional totals, are not changed by our gas tax suspension. Therefore, the spending assumptions in the budget resolution do not assume the reduction of any Federal gas taxes on either a temporary or permanent basis. The revenue levels in the budget resolution, however, do assume a temporary suspension of the 4.3-cent-a-gallon so-called Gore tax increase. If the Byrd amendment had been drafted to read, ``it is the sense of the Senate that the functional totals and the revenue levels in this budget resolution do not assume . . .'' then it would have had a very different impact. So I am trying to clarify the difference in what some people thought the resolution did last week and what we are actually doing. Under the budget resolution, there is no question we could have this debate and have this vote on gas tax because this is what it would do. It says we would temporarily suspend, just for the remainder of this year, 4.3 cents a gallon--I will come back to that in a moment--and, if gasoline prices go to $2 a gallon national average, then the entire 18.4 cents a gallon would be suspended in a gas tax holiday just to the end of the year. So when people say, How much would this cost? The first answer is it would depend on whether or not gasoline reached the national average of $2 a gallon and when that would occur, when that would take effect. The amendment language is drafted so this will not affect the highway trust fund. I want to emphasize that: It will not reduce the funds in the highway trust fund. It would hold harmless the highway trust fund. If there is this gas tax holiday, it would come out of the surplus. I remind my colleagues, we do at this point have a $23 billion on- budget surplus now; that is, surplus in addition to what we have as a result of the FICA, Social Security tax. So there is a surplus there. While we would like to protect that surplus as much as possible and not use it, or see it used to pay down the national debt, this is what I think to be a reasonable way to use some of it, if gasoline prices should actually go up to $2 a gallon. What I am saying is, there is no difference between what we are trying to do and what the Byrd sense-of-the-Senate resolution said. He was trying, I believe, to make sure it did not come out of the highway trust fund. As a matter of fact, this amendment is drafted in such a way it does not. Let me remind my colleagues how we got to this additional 4.3-cent-a- gallon gas tax. It was added in 1993. In the Senate, it passed on a tie vote with the Vice President, Vice President Gore, breaking that tie. There was a big debate about whether or not we should be increasing the price of gasoline by raising this tax in the first place. But there was an even more important, very telling point, and that was, in this case the gas tax would not go into the highway trust fund but it was going to go into the General Treasury to be used for any number of purposes by the Federal Government, not to build highways and bridges and to improve urban mass transportation and rail service or anything of that nature, just to go into the big, deep, dark hole of the Federal Treasury. By the way, I think about $21 billion of gas tax revenue went into the General Treasury. But then in 1997 Congress changed that and said no, this is a gasoline tax and it should go, like other gasoline taxes, into the highway trust fund. So it started going into the highway trust fund. With regard to what we are trying to do here, the elite Washington position is: Oh, what difference does 4.3 cents a gallon make? We can afford that. Yes, maybe, if you live and work on Capitol Hill or for the Federal Government. But if you are out there in the real world, and you are a working family, and you are driving 100 miles a day round trip to get to an industrial job, or to get to where your employment is, while it still will not add up to a lot of money, when you are a blue-collar worker, when you are a union worker, working at a shipyard or International Paper mill, a few dollars more a week in the price of gasoline does make a difference. It comes right out of that family budget. So it is typically what you get here in Washington, the elite attitude: Well, it will not make that much difference. But it is not only the individual who is paying those higher gas taxes, it also affects smaller business men and women. It affects barge operators on our rivers and inland lakes across America. It affects the truck driver who, by the way, if he is an independent driver--he owns his own rig, he drives not a few hundred miles a week, he drives many hundreds of miles a week up and down this country and back and forth across this country--it is hitting him or her very hard because he is paying this extra cost to run those trucks. Or, if you are in a business that involves a lot of trucks, a lot of heavy equipment, such as road construction or sand and gravel work, you have seen the cost of doing business go up considerably. It is not a few dollars, it is not hundreds of dollars, it is thousands of dollars in cases such as that. By the way, that comes right out of the bottom line because quite often you are carrying out a contract for which you have already submitted a bid, you have a price agreement, and now you see you are having to take this extra cost right out of getting this job done. So it is having a real impact. The next argument against reducing the gasoline tax, or having a gas tax holiday, is that: Look, this is temporary. It was just a spike up in the price of gasoline. We did not see it coming. We were caught napping--according to the Secretary of Energy, Secretary Richardson-- and the OPEC countries will open the spigot up a little bit and everything will be fine, prices will go back down. Maybe they will. They have ticked down some in some areas, although I bought gasoline on Saturday and it cost $1.63 a gallon, and that was not the premium; premium was more than that. In some places it is more than that, in some places it is probably less than that. So maybe it will come down and maybe it will stay down, but I think maybe it might, as a matter of fact, tick back up because world demand is going to exceed supply. We are going to be drawing down reserves around the world. So I am concerned it could go back up, in addition to the fact it is still very high. So this is an issue we should think about. We should be careful how we proceed. But we should have this debate. It is bigger than just gasoline price and the Federal gas tax, although, I repeat, to a lot of working people it has had an impact and it will continue to do so. There is a broader question involved, and that is: What is our national energy plan? What are we going to do about the price of fuel, alternative fuels, conservation, environmental impact? All these questions are looming. I do not think we have a true national energy plan for the future. Our dependence on foreign oil has gone from 45 percent of our needs 10 years ago to around 55 or 56 percent now. I think it is going to go over 60. What are we going to do? Are we comfortable with that? Are the American people comfortable with that? I do not think so. In the early seventies, we had the higher prices. We had the gas lines. Nobody liked it. People really got mad. We put forth a lot of effort in Congress to develop a national energy plan and to make ourselves less dependent on oil. It has not worked. It has gone the other way. We need to ask ourselves what we are going to do about this. What if the OPEC countries and other countries from whom we get our oil decide to cut the spigot down or cut it off? Economically, we would be in a real mess quickly. We have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is something we did in the aftermath of the last price increase and the long lines. We have SPR filled up so if we have a national emergency, we can use it for about a month. Is that enough? Should we do more? What are we going to do in the broader sense? I view this current upward spike as another knock on the door, another tap on the shoulder: Hey, America, you have a problem. You are dependent on Libya and Qadhafi; you are dependent on Iraq for about 700,000 barrels of oil a day. Are you comfortable with that? When I go home, I have people come up to me and say: Aren't these the same people we went to war for a few years ago? And now they are turning the spigot on and off, and the prices go way low or high. Is this what we want? I do not think so. It is very dangerous. Then one may ask: What is going to be done? What can be done? We do need to look for more oil reserves of our own. We need to give incentives for our men and women, our independents, our wildcats, the small operators, and the big ones, to find more reserves, to make use of these oil wells that are capped right now. There are a few in my own State and certainly other places around the country. We ought to see if there are other places we can open up. The Senate voted last week against an amendment that would have prevented using the reserves in ANWR in Alaska. I believe we can get at those oil reserves without causing environmental damage, and we should do that. It is not just about more oil. The President said we should look at alternatives. I agree. What are the alternatives about which we are talking? One is natural gas. When I sit on my front porch in my hometown of Pascagoula, MS, looking off to the south and the east, I see a natural gas well. I believe natural gas is a good alternative. It is clean, and we can make a lot more use of it if we provide some incentives for making greater use of natural gas. We have tremendous reserves of natural gas. So much of it is in the ground; so much has been capped because it has not been worthwhile to get it out. That is an alternative that is environmentally safe, and we have lots of it. That is one option. Also, in my part of the country we use coal to provide electricity to our people. It is cheap, and it also is clean-burning coal. Our companies have taken actions to deal with the emissions problems. Yet EPA today is putting genuine hard pressure on five companies in America, including Southern Company in our part of the United States, that will drive up the cost and will cause real problems using coal as their fuel supply in the future. That is one alternative we ought to keep. We ought to find more oil; we ought to make use of natural gas; we ought to continue to find ways to burn coal with clean technology, with modern technology, but also that it is clean coal being burned. The next thing is nuclear power. Nuclear power is clean. There is nuclear power already in Europe, China, and Japan. Yet we have been trying for years and have spent billions of dollars finding a repository for nuclear waste. The Senate passed a bill, I believe, two or three times, and the President is threatening to veto a very carefully thought out procedure of a repository for nuclear waste. Sooner or later, if we cannot deal with that problem, our nuclear plants will be faced with the threat of shutting down. If we do not explore for more oil, if we do not make greater use of natural gas, if we put limits and make it difficult to use coal, if, as a matter of fact, we cannot use nuclear power because we cannot come up with a proper way with which to deal with nuclear waste disposal--talk about an environmental problem. Deciding how to deal with nuclear waste is the biggest environmental problem in America today. We have been batting that ball back and forth for 10 years or more, and we still have not resolved it. If not oil, not natural gas, not coal, and not nuclear, what? Solar and wind? That will help some, but the statistics I have seen show that will provide a very small percentage of our needs. Ethanol--I have supported ethanol. I just do not believe wind and solar, ethanol, and alternative sources beyond the ones I have been talking about will solve this problem. I hope, as a result of the debate today and tomorrow, we will admit that we do not have a national energy policy, that we are dependent on foreign oil and are going to be for the foreseeable future unless we sit down, think this through, and come up with some ideas on how to proceed. I have urged the committees of jurisdiction--the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, and other committees--to have joint hearings or have hearings and ask questions about these long-term problems of how we are going to deal with these issues. I hope after we have this debate and votes tomorrow, we will have a broader, general energy package that will begin to address these long-term problems. I am concerned about it. I hope the Senate will step up to this issue and make a difference beyond what we have done in the past. The second issue on which the Senate will be working this week is the marriage penalty tax. I believe most Americans have some idea by now of what it is. There have been different proposals on how to deal with it. Some of the arguments are: Yes, but if you are married, you get certain bonuses. I do not think that applies to what we are trying to deal with here. The fact of the matter is, if you are a young couple or, as we realized last week, an older couple--couples married 25 years get hit with a marriage penalty tax, but for young couples it is particularly startling. I found that to be the case with my own family. Our daughter got married last May. She has been hearing talk about the marriage penalty tax, so she decided to find out what that would mean for her. She and her husband both work. Together, they have a pretty good income, although they are certainly not wealthy, but they are in that middle bracket. She figured it would cost them about $500 more this year in taxes because they got married. By the way, it is going to escalate over the next few years to about $1,400 a year. This is just basically wrong. We should encourage people to get married. We should not in any way discourage them by saying: Oh, by the way, if you do get married, you will pay more in taxes. Some people will complain the package that came out of the Finance Committee is too big; that, as a matter of fact, not only did we deal with the low-income people by increasing what was in the House bill for the so-called earned-income tax credit, EITC, we also said we will double the 15-percent bracket and the 28-percent bracket because we do think if a marriage penalty tax is wrong, it should be wrong for everybody. It should not be wrong just for the entry-level, lower income people; it ought to be also unfair for the upper lower income bracket and the middle-income bracket; as a matter of fact, right across the board. But we at least broadened its application to the middle bracket to make sure, if you have a young couple who are both working--whether they are in blue-color jobs or whether they are in entry-level professional jobs--they should have this penalty eliminated. Senator Moynihan of New York, and others, have an alternative proposal. I think it is worth considering. In fact, if we could afford it, I would like to have what we are doing and what Senator Moynihan is proposing in terms of--I guess it is the income splitting option. But I think we ought to have that offered and debated. I think we can come up with a way that we can have a full debate where there could be amendments with regard to the marriage penalty legislation. I hope we can reach an agreement on how that would come up. Then on Wednesday and Thursday, we would debate the alternatives and we would have a vote. But it is long overdue. I hope we can do as we did on the Social Security earnings limitation. We passed it unanimously in the Senate. A lot of people said: Oh, gee, that was so easy. Why didn't you do it before? We have been talking about it for 20 years. We couldn't get it done. They said it cost too much or that senior citizens didn't really need it or it was a part of a package. But for some reason or another--for years and years--it did not happen. Finally, we isolated it, passed it clean, and passed it overwhelmingly. The President had a big signing ceremony last week saying: Finally, we have eliminated the Social Security earnings test. Good. The main thing is our seniors who are between 65 and 69, who want to continue working without being penalized in their Social Security benefits, are going to have that opportunity. But I think the same is true here. It is clear now we have isolated it. The marriage penalty tax is not connected to incentives for people to adopt children. It is not connected to the death tax or the estate tax. It is not connected to anything else. We are just going to have a debate about the marriage penalty tax. Senator Hutchison of Texas and Senator Ashcroft of Missouri, and a number of other Senators on both sides, are going to say: We ought to do this. This is the way to do it. But in the end, this is the point: We are going to see this week if the Senate is for eliminating the marriage penalty tax or not. The guy in the store where I was shopping is going to have a list of the names of those who vote against it. I hope the Senate will step up to this and that we will begin the process of totally eliminating the marriage penalty tax. Then, finally, on the budget resolution, I hope we can get a final agreement on the conference report and that we will pass it before the end of the week so we can go forward with our appropriations bills. That is a very important part of what we need to do this year; that is, pass the 13 appropriations bills for Agriculture, for defense, for the Interior, and for all the various Agencies and Departments of the Government, and more importantly for the American people. We ought to do it earlier than usual. There is no reason why we should wait until June or July to do the appropriations bills. Let's get started in May. Let's move them earlier. That is where we can include things that we think should be done. For instance, on the foreign relations bill, I think we should provide aid for Colombia to fight the narcoguerrillas and try to get control of that drug war there. I think we ought to do it, and do it on the foreign relations bill. With regard to Kosovo and defense, the first bill that comes along, whether it is MilCon--military construction--or the defense bill, I hope we will add that additional funding. This budget resolution conference report will get all of that started. Then I think important, once again, is, we should give credit to the Budget Committee and to what we are doing in the Congress as a result of this budget resolution. No. 1, for the third year in a row, we have the ability to have a balanced budget--3 years running now. Before that, we had not had one since 1969. Yet this year we have the ability to do that for a third time, and to protect every cent of the Social Security trust fund income. Every cent that comes in from FICA taxes will be preserved and set aside and will not be spent on other Federal Government spending programs. I do not know exactly what that amount would be for the coming year, but it would be significant. I think maybe the figure is approximately $160 billion, or something close to that. But over a 10-year period, it will be $1 trillion. By not spending it, that is good for the program, it is good for technology, and we can pay down the national debt. Over a 3-year period now, I understand we may have reduced the national debt by somewhere more than $300 billion. A lot of people never thought they would see the day come when we would actually begin to pay down the national debt. If we stay on the path we are on, if we stay on the trajectory we now see with technology--and a lot has to happen; we have to have good fiscal responsibility, monetary policy, stable energy prices, right across the board--but if those things will stay within the ranges we are looking for, we could reduce completely the national debt by the year 2013 or 2015. That has not been done since Andrew Jackson was President of the United States. That is really an amazing thing. If we can continue to keep in place policies by congressional actions, and by monetary policy, and by the administration, and see economic growth year after year of around 4.5 percent--and in recent years it has been more than that; but just 4.5 percent--it would have a tremendous impact on the economy and the explosion of revenue coming into the Social Security trust fund. When we come to the point, over the next 2 or 3 years, where we are going to have fundamental reform of Social Security, to make sure it is preserved, protected, and, as a matter of fact, it is there for our children and our grandchildren in a way that will be meaningful to them, just that growth in the economy of 4.5 percent will give us the options we need to have a very strong program that will go not just into the year 2040 but go throughout this century. I think these are very important issues. This is going to be an interesting week to have debate. When we complete that budget resolution, it will be a very positive action and will set the course for not only this year but well into the rest of this decade. Mr. President, I have been looking forward to this opportunity to have this debate and have these votes this week. I look forward to that process as we go forward. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, Northwest Airlines, one of the defendants in a civil antitrust action brought by the Department of Justice on behalf of the United States in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, has subpoenaed the General Accounting Office to produce documents that GAO collected or generated in the course of its preparation of testimony or reports for several Senate committees, including the Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation and the Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Business Rights, and Competition. GAO advised Northwest's counsel that the documents sought were unavailable because they are protected by both the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution, which is Congress's legislative privilege, and GAO's own deliberative process privilege. Northwest Airlines has chosen to contest GAO's assertion of privilege by moving in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to compel GAO to produce the documents. The records that Northwest Airlines is seeking were records that GAO, which is an investigative agency of Congress, collected or created while preparing testimony or reports in response to requests from committees and subcommittees of the Senate. Northwest has not given GAO, the Senate, or the Court any explanation for why it may defeat the privileges inhering in GAO internal work product and deliberative documents, including drafts of proposed testimony, to defend itself in this antitrust action. None of these internal records at issue in this matter has been provided to Northwest's adversary, the Justice Department. Nor are the final reports issued by GAO or GAO's congressional testimony at issue in this matter, as all parties to the litigation, including Northwest Airlines, have been given full access to these materials. GAO is opposing Northwest's motion to compel, invoking its deliberative process privilege. But the legislative privilege that is grounded on the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause belongs to the Congress. In order to ensure congressional independence from the other branches of the government, the Constitution affords Congress with an absolute privilege from compelled questioning through the courts about the performance of its legislative responsibilities, such as the gathering of information and preparation of hearings, the conduct of administrative oversight, and the consideration of legislation. The Senate has a strong interest in the ability of its committees to receive testimony and analysis from GAO, which serves as its investigative arm, without fear that entities whose activities are the subject of that testimony and analysis will be allowed to root around in GAO's internal work papers, drafts, and deliberative documents seeking something of possible help to them in unrelated litigation. That kind of intrusion into the legislation process is precisely what the Speech or Debate Clause was intended to foreclose. Because the Speech or Debate Clause privilege belongs to the Congress and because it is the committee of Congress that are the direct beneficiaries of GAO's contributions to their legislative work, it is appropriate that the court hear directly from those Senate committees for which GAO was providing analysis how Northwest's attempt to compel production of GAO's internal work product threatens their autonomous performance of legislative duties entrusted to them under the Constitution. Accordingly, this resolution authorizes the Senate Legal Counsel to intervene in this matter in the name of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Appropriations to assert the Speech or Debate Clause as protection against compelled questioning of GAO, through compelled production of GAO's internal work product when responding to requests from Congress.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, this resolution concerns a request for testimony in a criminal action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. In a federal indictment, the defendant has been charged with threatening a public official in violation of federal law. The charge arises out of a threat telephoned to Senator Phil Gramm's office in Houston. At the request of the U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting this case, this resolution authorizes employees in Senator Gramm's office who heard the threat to testify about the threat and produce documents at trial, with representation by the Senate Legal Counsel.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Will the Senator yield? Do you ask consent we go to 7\1/2\ minutes?

Mr. LOTT. That was agreed to?

Mr. LOTT. I ask unanimous consent we limit the next votes to 7\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. LOTT. I guess I have a question of the manager and maybe a parliamentary inquiry. The question is, Are all of these sense-of-the-Senate amendments; every one of them?

Mr. LOTT. I have to agree with what Senator Byrd has said about the way we vote on the budget resolution at the end with the vote-arama. Although I must say, to everybody's credit, we only had 14 seriatim this time. The sense-of-the-Senate resolutions are not binding at all. They may make a statement that makes you feel good, but many Senators are being asked to agree to these en bloc without knowing what the details are. So the parliamentary inquiry is, since there has been objection, is the status that these, then, are not agreed to, and we are ready to go to adoption of the concurrent resolution?

Mr. LOTT. So what is the status, Mr. President? Are they all still pending?

Mr. LOTT. I believe we are ready to go to the adoption of the concurrent resolution, Mr. President.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I move regular order.

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

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, the Senate will resume consideration of S. Con. Res. 101, the budget resolution. By a previous order, there will be two back-to-back votes beginning at 10:30 a.m. The vote on the Byrd amendment will be the first, to be followed by a vote on the Roth amendment. Following the votes, the Durbin amendment regarding tax cuts will be the pending amendment. For the information of all Senators, the so-called vote-arama--and I hope it will not rise to that level; maybe it will just be a few votes we will have to take one after the other--is expected to begin at some point this evening. I do want to emphasize, though, unless we are successful, on both sides of the aisle--let me say, Senator Reid has been working very hard on the Democratic side of the aisle. They have a reasonably low number of amendments still pending. We hope to reduce the number on this side of the aisle, too. We should be able to determine by late this afternoon whether we can finish tonight or we will go over to tomorrow. I think we need to go ahead and tell our colleagues they should plan on being in and having votes in the morning because at this point, with some 60 amendments pending, I do not see how we can finish it tonight by any kind of reasonable hour. I will stay in touch with Senator Domenici and Senator Lautenberg, the floor managers, and Senator Reid and Senator Nickles on our side, to assess the additional time that might be needed. Senators should adjust their schedules accordingly. I know there is an event tonight, a dinner. But we can finish tonight or we can finish tomorrow, or whatever it takes. We have to complete our work. There are only about 8\1/2\ hours remaining of time, so we should be able to finish that all right today. The remainder of the time will be determined by how many amendments we have remaining. I will be glad to yield to Senator Domenici.

Mr. LOTT. I have been urging Senators, and I know Senator Daschle has also, to prepare to be in session on this Friday, knowing the budget resolution was headed for this date for at least a couple of weeks. So we should proceed with that in mind. If we get a lot of cooperation and something could be worked out, that would be different, but I do not see how we can predict anything at this point but having votes on Friday morning. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, that was a 35-minute vote. I apologize for letting it go on that long. You can see how hard it is going to be to get through a vote-arama if we do that. Our plan now is to have two more votes tonight. If Senators would stay in the Chamber or close to the Chamber, we could do those votes in no more than 15 or 20 minutes. Maybe we could cut the second one down to 10. That would certainly help. We are now ready to go into the period for the votes on the number of amendments that are pending, the so-called vote-arama. Having said that, any Senator who has timely filed their amendment at the desk can call it up for Senate consideration. However, there is no allotted time for debate. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that, as we did last year, in a way that I think is the fairest to try to explain what the amendments are, in that brief period of time, there be 2 minutes equally divided prior to each vote for explanation, and all votes in the vote-arama be limited to 10 minutes each after the first vote.

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

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

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask that we proceed to the vote.