Trent Lott

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that if and when the Environment and Public Works Committee reports legislation that amends, modifies, deletes, or in any way affects transit provisions contained in section 135 of title 23, United States Code, it be referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs for a period of not to exceed 20 session days of the Senate, solely for the purpose of considering such provisions, and that if not reported by the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs by that time, it be discharged and placed on the Senate calendar. I further ask that if and when the Banking Committee reports legislation that amends, modifies, deletes, or in any way affects highway transportation provisions contained within section 135 of title 23, United States Code, it be referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works for a period not to exceed 20 session days of the Senate, solely for the purpose of considering such provisions, and that if not reported by the Environment and Public Works Committee by that time, it be discharged and placed on the Senate Calendar.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to consideration of Calendar No. 369, H.R. 3811.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. I will be glad to yield, Mr. President.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I now send an amendment to the desk in the second degree, which is the so-called Coverdell-Craig drug amendment.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, since the last amendment was not tabled, I ask unanimous consent that the yeas and nays be vitiated; that the amendment be agreed to; and that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, all without further action or debate.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, in an effort to move things forward, I move to table the Durbin amendment No. 2438, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. LOTT. I thought we just voted on the Durbin amendment.

Mr. LOTT. Was there objection?

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I could respond. I thought that Senator Daschle and I had talked about it and had an agreement that we would do it on Tuesday morning. I realize we have to get consent to do that. The alternative is, as he said, that we not be in session on Monday, which is, I guess, a possibility, but it is pretty hard to complain about not making progress when we are not in session working on something. The other alternative is to come in at an early hour; and approximately an hour after that time, the vote occurs then, which means that the vote could be at 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, Monday afternoon, which, for Senators coming from California and Utah and Washington State, that presents a real problem because their planes do not get here until about 4:30. So I was hoping we could take that time Monday to make some progress on some other issue or have debate on this issue and have the vote that everybody will be here for at 9:30. But it would be fine with me that we have it earlier in the afternoon. But I just assume that both sides will have problems with that. We will talk about it further, and we will hotline the Members on exactly what time they can expect that cloture vote to occur.

Mr. LOTT. I would be glad to.

Mr. LOTT. We would not bring it up without Members being on notice who have an interest in it. That technical corrections bill does need to be done. I believe it is supported on both sides of the aisle and by the administration. We need to get that done, and we would need to do it by unanimous consent. But if the Senator has reservations, he will be notified about it. But we will get it done, and we would want to do it without a modification.

Mr. LOTT. I say to the Senator, it is important we get these technical corrections done, because some legitimate, honest mistakes were made and several important projects could be affected. And we need to do it as soon as we can. But unless we can get unanimous consent, it will not be done. It has already passed the House. So we will have to find a way--I am working with Senators on our side, too, as I know Senators are working over there, to clear up concerns. There are other ways to address those concerns. And we are trying to get that worked out. We need to get it done. We need to do it by unanimous consent. And I, in fact, have met with one Senator this afternoon and discussed how to address a legitimate concern he has. So we will work with the chairman. Did the chairman want to respond to this at all?

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I now yield the floor so the manager of the bill can speak.

Mr. LOTT. For the information of all Senators, pending now is the drug amendment. I hope Senators will begin to debate this very important amendment. I know that there are very strong feelings on this amendment also. However, no further votes will occur tonight. I expect the debate on the amendment to continue through tomorrow's session. The minority leader filed a cloture motion on the committee amendment earlier today. That cloture vote will occur on Tuesday, at a time to be determined after discussion between the two of us and after consultation with others in terms of schedule. So there will be no votes in Friday's session of the Senate. However, Senator Daschle and I are looking at bills that are relatively noncontroversial or noncontroversial that we may be able to take up tomorrow during the day. And the vote would be scheduled in the group on Tuesday morning when we vote, at a time we will notify the Members later on on Tuesday. Now, again, I hope we can reach agreement tomorrow to provide for a vote on this amendment, hopefully prior to the cloture vote; but all Senators will be notified about the voting schedule. I urge the Senators who have been working on the marriage penalty tax to continue to work to get an agreement on that amendment so that we can have a vote on it. We will try to see if we can reach agreement perhaps to consider another bill on Monday. But we will continue on amendments to the tobacco bill beginning after the cloture vote is defeated on Tuesday morning. Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. I say to the Senator from Arizona, I think that is exactly what is happening. And I do think the well is being poisoned tremendously by what has been going on here in the last few minutes. I yield to the Senator from Texas.

Mr. LOTT. Let me go ahead and yield to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. LOTT. He has been waiting.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, just one brief response to the Senator from North Dakota. If he has been here 12 years, then surely he remembers Senator Byrd and Senator Mitchell doing just that. I remember many occasions in my time here that they dictated and filled up the tree. I learned the way of doing business around here from them. I might also note, to make every taxpayer punished by the marriage penalty even with unmarried people costs $38 billion. If we are serious about really eliminating this penalty, that is the cost. I believe the Senator from Texas has a proposal that unfortunately is below that. It is less than that. He would like to completely eliminate it. In the interest of trying to come to some accommodation so we can get a vote and still leave money for legitimate programs, like the teenage smoking cessation program and the Medicaid programs in the States, he has been prepared to negotiate below that level. I am not sure he should have gone down as far as he has. Does the Senator from Texas wish to get into this debate?

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I must say that I think it is unfortunate that this process has been adopted by the Democratic leader. I had indicated all along that at some point, if it was necessary, I would be prepared to consider cloture but not until we had an opportunity to debate and vote on some amendments that clearly are important to Senators and until we had time to have debate on this bill in general. There are still some very important amendments pending: The Durbin amendment, the Gramm amendment, and we have the drug amendments. We have at least two substitutes that would be cut off from being offered: The Hatch substitute, which I know a number of Senators would support, and it is something much closer to the original settlement agreement that was entered into than anything else that is pending around here now; plus the Domenici-Gramm substitute. I think most Senators would acknowledge very readily that those two Senators are very thoughtful Senators and have given a lot of thought to an alternative approach. Yet there is a choice here. The choice is: Do you want a bill or not? If you want a bill, this is a good step toward having nothing happen, because this further sours the well. Yes; I would like to see things move along on this bill and on to other bills and other issues that I know Senators on both sides want to address, but you have to also allow Senators to be able to work through the problems and come to an agreement. If we stay on this bill, we are going to have a vote on the Gramm marriage penalty tax elimination. We will have it this year in some other form or another. It seems to me like this is one way to help address some of the concerns about the excessive amount of money that is in this bill. It is clearly way beyond what is necessary to fight teenage smoking, or even teenage smoking and drug abuse, address some of the health care problems, and address the needs of the farmers. It goes way beyond all of that. That is the problem. As I have said in other forums, this has become a problem of greed. Everybody who touches this bill adds to it. It grows like Topsy. What is our goal here? To have a whole, big, new Federal program outside the regular budget process, or to address the problem of smoking, and teenage smoking, in this country? I had been working on and had kind of sent word to the Democratic leader informally--and I did try to call him, and we were both going back and forth to our luncheons--I had a unanimous consent agreement here that I was working on, and was prepared to work with him on, that would set up a process for us to have a vote on Durbin, although I think Durbin is a very bad amendment. It is another jump, more cost, another hit on actually getting something done. That is one of the problems here. I am still trying to figure out, do Senators, and do the health care community people, and the attorneys general want a bill? Do you want an issue? Do you want to do something about this problem or do you want to play games? It is not clear to me because everybody keeps adding to it, adding to it, and it is just going to collapse out here in a great, humongous pile of nothingness. But I was going to suggest we have a vote on Durbin at 5:30 today, and that we have a time agreement on the Gramm amendment and a vote on it, and a vote on the drug amendment, and that--I assumed at some point the Democratic leadership might have a tax amendment of their own, and we would start going on down the trail. I don't like it when we basically--people say we have to make progress; we have to get this bill done. Where is the progress? This week, we can't blame each other for yesterday; we had a funeral for a former Senator. We had to go to that. We have problems with Senators being here on Monday. We have problems with Senators--I won't get into all that. But you cannot make progress until you make progress, until you are here and you have Senators prepared to vote. And that is one of the unique features of this creature, the Senate. Things move very slowly, they look like they are not moving at all, and it looks hopeless, and then all of a sudden you get ready to vote. I thought we were close to getting ready to vote. So I think this is not a positive thing to happen, and I will urge every Republican Senator to vote against cloture. If we don't get cloture, then what? Then what? I thought at some point next week after we voted on Durbin and Gramm and the drug amendment and Hatch and the Domenici-Gramm substitute, maybe a couple other Democrat amendments, at that point we could have sort of a bipartisan effort to see if the Senate was ready to go to cloture and get to a vote. This undermines that. I understand why it is being done, but I think it is counterproductive, and I hope the Senate would defeat this overwhelmingly. I view it as another blow to our chances of actually addressing this issue in a responsible way and getting on to other important issues. I must say I thought that Senator Gramm and Senator McCain and others who were interested in how you deal with the marriage penalty tax were very close to an agreement--maybe not exactly the way Democrats would like it or the White House would like it, but something that would have been fair for both of us to have and we could make progress on other things. But c'est la vie, this is it. You filed a cloture motion. And also, by the way, that cloture would ripen on Monday, and I think that is going to be a problem for the leadership and a number of Senators, and we will have to discuss when and how that vote would occur. I hope all concerned would reconsider their thinking on how we bring this to a point where we could get some votes and make progress. I really believe, I said publicly, that if we had a tax cut provision added and we had a drug provision added, then the prospects for the bill would be helped substantially; we might actually get a bill through the Senate. Without that, we are going to be sitting around here. If you want to sit around and shout to your feet for the rest of this month and all summer long and try to make out this is a totally partisan thing, that is OK, too. That is OK. I am relaxed. We can just waffle along here and look pathetic if everybody wants to do that. Or we can decide how we are going to get together and make something responsible happen. I yield the floor, Mr. President. Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I would not agree with that at this point. I am not saying that at some point we might come to some sort of understanding of how this would be handled. The first thing is, I think, the Senator from Texas and Senator McCain have got to come to an agreement on the content. That is one of the reasons why we can't go on procedure--until you get something that is worked out, hopefully that everybody can support, because when we get a vote on the Gramm amendment, on the marriage penalty tax, it is going to pass overwhelmingly. A great majority of the Democrats are not going to be able to vote against that. They are going to vote for it. So it is going to pass. But what I would say is I have a unanimous consent agreement right here that would allow us to set up a process to move forward with consent to get a vote on the Durbin amendment at 5:30, and that following disposition of the Gramm amendment Senator Coverdell be recognized to offer a first-degree amendment relative to drugs, there be 2 hours of debate on that--and that there then would be debate on the Coverdell amendment and a vote on that after 2 hours. We have a unanimous consent request here that we would be willing to offer, and then we could go back to your amendment, we go to a tax amendment, if you want to do that. But here is the other side of it. You have to get unanimous consent. And our people are not going to agree to an arrangement at this time where you get some vote on a subsequent tax proposal that would be the king of the tree. I think when the thing is done, when we get an agreement, you are going to vote for the Gramm amendment and that is what will prevail, and we will move on. But we have to try to come to an agreement on that or we are not going to go anywhere. If that is the way it is going to be, that is the way it is going to be. I have been trying to help make this thing move from a procedural standpoint, but if we want to let it collapse on this line, OK with me.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I want to point out we could have had a vote on the Gramm amendment last week. I was perfectly willing to do that, I believe it was last Thursday. We were ready, I thought, to go to a vote on Durbin and Gramm last week. As I recall, there was objection to that from the Democrats. So if you talk about delay or time being consumed, it was because we could not get an agreement worked out on Thursday how we could go ahead and vote on the two of them. What I am proposing here, or have been prepared to propose, is we have a vote on the Gramm penalty tax amendment, the Durbin look-back provision, the Coverdell drugs provision, and a Daschle or others marriage penalty provision. That is Republican-Democrat, Republican- Democrat; it is a way to deal with this thing. But let's set that aside. You know, there is concern that has been expressed about the cost of the marriage penalty. How about the American people who are paying that tax? A penalty for getting married? They cannot help it, if it is so unfair a tax, that young couples all over America are getting hit with this tax just because they got married? So what we are saying is, ``Oh, well, to eliminate this unbelievable tax that is in the Tax Code it costs too much money, so we want to squeeze down what Senator Gramm is proposing to less and less and less.'' What we ought to do is eliminate the marriage penalty tax altogether. Right away. Flat out. Whatever the cost is.

Mr. LOTT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. LOTT. If I can reclaim my time, I remember that meeting, and I was there for part of it and went to take a phone call. When I was listening to that discussion, it was a discussion about how and when we were going to vote on Durbin and Gramm. Maybe at some subsequent point the discussion turned to, really, some alternative to Gramm. But, you know, this is something that has evolved, as far as I can tell, since we met. We were having that discussion, whenever that was--Tuesday, I guess it was.

Mr. LOTT. I heard through the news media that the Senator was proposing a process to have those votes back to back, and, oh, by the way, they are going to be king of the hill; that the last one who wins, you know, wins. That's it. I did not have that proposal come to me in any form, and I would not agree to that. I am prepared to say we are going to get a vote on Gramm, and in some logical order, I assume, we have a deal here where we are alternating back and forth--we offer an amendment; you offer an amendment. And the Democrats could offer an amendment at some point on taxes in the regular order. We could not prevent you from doing that. But that was not the way it came to me. And it did come to me through the media in a way that certainly would not be acceptable.