Trent Lott

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask the chairman to yield so that I may enter this unanimous consent agreement. I join in that exchange of compliments to each Senator. I commend the chairman of the committee and the ranking member on the Democratic side, Senator Biden. Senator Helms, you have done a great job. I know you have put a lot of time and energy into this particular bill, and we would not be here without your persistence and without the cooperation of Senator Biden. It is an important bill. When you showed up in my office a week or so ago and said we are ready to go, we need to do this, I was determined we would find a place to do it. I think you have now worked through an agreement that will allow us to get it completed and final passage, hopefully, Monday afternoon. I would like to enter into this unanimous consent request and thank both of you for the outstanding work that you are doing. I ask unanimous consent that with respect to the State Department authorization bill, all amendments must be filed by 11:45 today, with the exception of the managers' amendment and any second-degree amendments. I further ask that any votes ordered with respect to amendments be stacked at a time to be determined by the majority leader and the Democratic leader, and the following amendments limited to the following times, to be equally divided in the usual form.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Thank you very much.

Mr. LOTT. Thank you very much.

Mr. LOTT. I encourage Senators who are working on amendments to come to the floor. I know of two or three amendments that are being prepared. Perhaps one of them could go ahead and be offered. There is at least one that would be pretty simple. It would be to strike the emergency provisions. So it doesn't take a lot of preparation. We could go ahead and continue to make progress. We need to finish this bill today. If we do not get our work done during the daylight hours, we will be here tonight. That is OK, if we have to do it, but if it is not necessary, it would be preferable we work during the day. I know the Senate likes to return to its nocturnal habits, but I hope that will not be the case. If there are two or three or four good amendments to be offered, let's bring them out on the floor. Let's have an hour debate, and let's vote. Then let's get to final passage on this issue. I am glad that Senator Sessions is here and Senator Domenici. I know we all need to get a bite to eat. If we could keep this moving along, I think it would save us some time tonight. I thank our colleagues for their cooperation. I will go and make a call to Senators that I know have amendments. I urge them to come on out and have the amendments offered, and then we could make some progress. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT. I thank my colleagues for their work in the handling of this legislation today. They made a lot of progress. We will vote on final passage first thing in the morning. A number of Senators have asked about the plan for tomorrow. We do take up the State Department authorization bill after we have final passage of this piece of legislation. There may be a necessary vote or two on amendments, but they will occur, hopefully, as early in the morning as possible, but none later than 11:45. So any of you who have plans to leave at 11:45 or 12 noon, whatever, you will be able to do that. As usual, we announced we would have a vote or votes on this Friday, but the votes will not occur beyond 12 noon. I hope it will be earlier than that. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation? Senator Domenici is managing the time. Are we ready to hear a statement from Senator Sessions and waiting on an amendment to be offered?

Mr. LOTT

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

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I yield myself time under leader time to conclude the debate. I realize we had notified Members we would be having a vote around 12:30, so I will not use the full 10 minutes. I will just use a portion of it. I want to begin by commending and thanking Senator Abraham and Senator Domenici for their leadership in this area. As always, Senator Domenici pays very close attention to how we proceed on the budget and what happens with the people's money. He is a very good custodian of the people's money, and he has provided real leadership in this area; and Senator Abraham has been persistent. What we are trying to do is very simple. It doesn't need a lot of explanation. We have the good fortune after many years of having not only a balanced budget but having a surplus. But an important factor is that the surplus is caused or provided by the FICA tax. It is Social Security revenue that comes in that gives us this surplus. The question is, What are we going to do with it? There are a lot of really innovative, thoughtful Members in this and the other body who will surely come up with a variety of ways and say, well, this is an emergency, or that is an emergency, or we need to add more money here, or we need a tax cut somewhere else. Social Security taxes should go for Social Security, and only for Social Security--not for any other brilliant idea we may have. We need some way to lock that in. I have talked to young people about this. I talked to my mother. Bless her heart. She is 86 years of age and is living in an assisted care facility, and is very dependent on Social Security. I have talked to people from Montana to Pennsylvania, and Missouri. It is overwhelming. People say: You mean, it doesn't already exist this way? You mean that money has been being used or could be used for somebody else? The answer is, it can be, unless we have some procedure, some way to put it in a lockbox. Senator Domenici and Senator Abraham had a tighter lockbox, one that would really be hard to get out of, and it would include the President in the lockbox. We ought to do it that way. But the Senate has indicated three times it does not want to do that. The House has passed overwhelmingly--I think with 415 votes, bipartisan votes--this procedure, this procedure that would allow or require a super vote of 60 votes in the Senate to use these funds for anything else. That is all we are trying to do--just say that Social Security tax money should go for Social Security; that people support this overwhelmingly, probably at least in the 80 percentile. As far as amendments, I would be glad to try to work to consider other amendments. I have asked for, and I presume we will be receiving, a copy of one amendment, at least, that Senator Daschle has discussed. But the problem is, this is really simple. It is not complicated. We shouldn't be getting off into all kinds of other areas, which are very important. But Medicare should be dealt with as Medicare. We should have broad Medicare reform--not starting to piecemeal it or trying to attach it to Social Security. That is why we want a clear vote. We want a straight vote. It is a simple procedure. Everybody can understand it. And we can move on and deal with other issues. I urge my colleagues to vote for cloture. Let's get this done. Let's move on. We will have other opportunities to deal with other issues. It is something that is long overdue, and it is only the first step. The next step should be a tighter lockbox, and the next step beyond that should be not just more spending for Medicare but genuine, broad Medicare reform. But, for now, let's protect Social Security. Let's vote for cloture, and let's pass this procedure. I yield the floor. Cloture Motion

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, the Senate will begin now 10 minutes of debate on S. 1205, the military appropriations construction bill, followed by 20 minutes of debate on S. 331, the work incentives legislation. Votes on passage of those two bills will begin at approximately 10:45. Following those votes, the Senate will begin debate on the motion to invoke cloture on the House-passed Social Security lockbox legislation for 1 hour, with that vote to begin after all time has expired or been yielded back. It is expected that the Senate will complete the energy and water appropriations bill during today's session of the Senate as well as resume consideration of H.R. 1664 regarding the steel, oil, and gas revolving loan. I presume the vote on the Social Security lockbox legislation will occur around 12:30 or so. So we have two votes then, at approximately 10:45 and another one at 12:30, and then we probably will have at least one more, maybe two, with regard to the energy and water appropriations bill, and then we will go back to the oil and gas revolving fund. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. I thank the Chair.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, the Senator asked a question and yielded to me for a response. First of all, I am standing so we can make an announcement about what the schedule will be for the remainder of the night and to get an agreement about how we will proceed during the day tomorrow. As soon as this 15-minute block of time that was agreed to is exhausted, I will be prepared to go to this. In answer to the Senator's question, I will be delighted to go to this Patients' Bill of Rights very soon. We could even do it next week if we could get an agreement that we will vote on your version of the Patients' Bill of Rights and we will vote on our version of the Patients' Bill of Rights. We have a good bill. We are ready to go. We think there are important things that need to be done in this area, and we are prepared to debate the issue and vote on the two different approaches. So we can do that. Or we can work together and see if there would be a limited number of amendments that could be agreed to that would be offered on both sides. The problem we ran into last year is somebody said we will need 100 amendments. Please. We have lots of other work. If the Senator has a perfect product and we have a perfect product, why do we need 100 amendments? Then it got down to 20 amendments on each side. But I have designated Senator Nickles to work with the designee from the Democratic side of the aisle. I believe Senator Daschle has indicated Senator Kennedy will do that. They are going to try to get some agreement on exactly how to proceed. We will be glad to vote on the two versions any time Senators are ready, because we think this is important. We have a bill that was developed by a task force that had broad involvement. Senator Jeffords was involved, as were Senator Collins, Senator Gramm, Senator Nickles, Senator Santorum--really a good group. So we are ready to go. It is just a question of getting an agreement on how the procedure will be worked out.

Mr. LOTT. As soon as we get agreement on how to proceed, we will take it up. We will be glad to vote on your substitute and our substitute. We could do that this week, but if it is going to be that you have some amendments or you want more debate, then we have to work through when that is going to be. I was ready to do this bill last year, and we could not get a reasonable agreement on how to handle it. If we get that worked out, we will be glad to do it.

Mr. LOTT. I do not have the floor.

Mr. LOTT. I would have to take a look at that. First of all, I think 5 days is probably excessive. There was no need to take up 5 days on the Y2K bill. We could have done that in 2 days very easily, but there were a lot of obstruction tactics and delays--having to vote on cloture. Finally, we came to a conclusion and 62 Senators voted for it. I am not prepared now to say we want to go that long or limit it. I think we need to look at what we need, have a fair debate, and get votes on the substitute. We do not have a list of the amendments. We have asked for a list of the amendments so we are in the process of trying to get an understanding of what is going on here. I want to reemphasize we are aware that there needs to be some things done in terms of patients' rights. We have a good bill. We do not think the solution to the problem is lawsuits. Some people seem to think what we need to solve the problems of managed care is more lawsuits. No. If I have a problem with a HMO in my family, I would prefer to have a process to solve the problem, either internally or an external appeal. I would prefer not to be the beneficiary of inheritance as a result of a lawsuit 3 years later. So that is kind of the crux of it. We have Dr. Bill Frist who has worked on this, I mean a doctor, somebody who understands what it is like to have your heart replaced, someone who understands the need for managed care. We want to do this, so we will be glad to work with all the Senators who are interested. We would like to get a list of amendments. I think it would be fair for the other side, Senator Kennedy, to want to look at our amendments. I hope that process is underway. Senator Nickles has been designated to work on this issue on our behalf, and he might want to respond to your question, if you would yield to him for that.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I want to thank a number of Senators and members of their staffs for the hard work and diligence that has resulted in the passage of the Y2K Liability Limitation legislation. This bill was crafted through the determination of Senator McCain and Senator Wyden of the Commerce Committee, Senator Bennett and Senator Dodd of the Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, and Senator Hatch and Senator Feinstein of the Judiciary Committee. Additional help from Senator Gorton, Senator Lieberman, and Senator Brownback also helped to secure passage of this important legislation. Mr. President, it is also important to recognize the work of a number of the staff members for the Senators who were instrumental in the successful efforts on this bill. We are very fortunate to have such intelligent, dedicated individuals working in the United States Senate, and the passage of meaningful legislation would not be possible without the hard work of these people. Specifically, I would like to thank Marti Allbright, Mark Buse, Carole Grunberg, Shawn Maher, Wilke Green, Larry Block, Manus Cooney, David Hantman, Tania Calhoun, Laurie Rubenstein, Karen Knutson, Brian Henneberry, and Steven Wall . The professional skills and abilities of these staff members were important in achieving this legislative success. These staff members and their colleagues ensure that the United States Senate is a responsive, effective body for the American people. On behalf of myself and my colleagues in the Senate, I again say ``thank you.'' Mr. President, the passage of Y2K liability relief provides a reasonable public policy for America as our nation enters the next millennium. It ensures that America's technology sector focuses on solutions to the Y2K problem, rather than spending limited time and resources on defending lawsuits. American ingenuity will make certain that the Year 2000 problem is solved. Great strides have already been made toward this goal, and this bill is an additional critical step in the process for America.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I would like to express my strong support for the Gregg-Bond amendment that was adopted as part of this Y2K bill. I know that the small business community in Mississippi and nationwide must appreciate our removing the potential for yet another millennium headache. Almost every federal agency requires small businesses to comply with a number of paperwork requirements. That is a fact that is unlikely to change with the new century. It is likely, however, that an unanticipated Y2K failure could prevent a small business from meeting these federal paperwork deadlines on time. The Gregg-Bond amendment will provide relief to small businesses by waiving civil penalties in this type of case. Let me remind my colleagues that this is not an amendment that will reward those who misbehave or who fail to prepare themselves for Y2K. As the Senator from New Hampshire stated earlier, in order to take advantage of this one-time penalty waiver, a small business owner must first prove that he or she took prudent steps to prevent the Y2K failure in the first place. Let me give you an example of how the amendment will work. Let's say a shoe repair shop owner in Inverness, Mississippi, does her best to make her computer system Y2K compliant, only to find that the New Year brings total system failure. Because of this computer crash, the store owner is unable to access her payroll records and cannot submit her payroll taxes on time. The Gregg-Bond amendment gives the business owner a reasonable amount of time to get her system running and pay her taxes--without the IRS slapping huge fines on her. Mr. President, this amendment does not say that small businesses do not have to comply with the law. It does not say that small businesses do not have to meet their paperwork requirements. It simply says that if a small business has a legitimate Y2K failure that causes a hiccup in its paperwork flow, its federal fines can be waived. As we enter the new century, I ask my colleagues: Do we want to start the millennium by fining small businesses for unpredictable and unintentional first-time paperwork violations? Fortunately, the answer is no. I would like to thank Senator Gregg and Senator Bond for offering this amendment, and my colleagues for adopting it. I would also like to thank the National Federation of Independent Business for its hard work on this amendment and this bill. The ``Voice of Small Business'' was heard loud and clear in this Chamber today. Thank you.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, the Senate is presently considering the energy and water appropriations bill. There are now, and have been, negotiations taking place in the Cloakrooms to put the finishing touches on the managers' amendment which will encompass most, if not all, of the remaining amendments. While progress is being made, final passage on that vote is not anticipated this evening. Therefore, I do want to get a unanimous consent agreement about how we will proceed tomorrow. If we get that entered into, then we will not expect further votes tonight. The managers will remain tonight to complete action on the appropriations bill, and final passage will occur tomorrow, hopefully in a stacked sequence, beginning at approximately 10:45. Once again, if we get this unanimous consent agreement, then there will be no more votes tonight, and the first votes will occur in the morning at 10:45.

Mr. LOTT

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

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that immediately following the stacked votes on Wednesday, there be 1 hour for debate, equally divided in the usual form, prior to the vote on a cloture motion involving the House lockbox Social Security legislation.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Therefore, all Senators should be aware, there will be at least two stacked votes occurring at 10:45. In addition, there may be another vote or two on or in relation to amendments on the energy and water appropriations bill and final passage of the appropriations bill. All Senators will be notified when those agreements are reached. I now ask unanimous consent that with respect to S. 1205, when the Senate receives from the House the companion measure to this bill, the Senate immediately proceed to the consideration thereof; that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the text of the Senate-passed bill be inserted in lieu thereof; that the House bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed; that the Senate then insist on its amendment, request a conference with the House on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses and the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate, with the foregoing occurring without any intervening action or debate. I further ask unanimous consent that with respect to S. 1205, the bill not be engrossed and that it remain at the desk pending receipt of the House companion bill; and that upon passage of the House bill, the passage of S. 1205 be vitiated and the bill be indefinitely postponed.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, June 16, the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. 1205, the military construction appropriations bill; that there be 10 minutes for debate, equally divided in the usual form, with an additional 5 minutes for Senator McCain, with no amendments in order to the bill. I further ask unanimous consent that there be 20 minutes, equally divided in the usual form, relative to S. 331; that is the work incentives bill. I finally ask unanimous consent that following the expiration of all debate time, the Senate proceed to vote on final passage of S. 1205, the MILCON appropriations bill, to be immediately followed by a vote on passage of S. 331, the work incentives legislation, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate resume consideration of the energy and water appropriations bill.

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