Trent Lott

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I thought we clearly had an understanding on that. That additional Feingold amendment was not included in the UC. I urge the Senators to let us proceed with this UC because we are under severe time constraints now. Could we proceed with the UC as requested?

Mr. LOTT. We will make that change in the request: Amendment No. 51, as modified.

Mr. LOTT. I would like to express our appreciation to Senator Feingold for his willingness to do that in an effort to accommodate Senators on both sides of the aisle.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. I know there is a good deal of discussion that needs to go forward. I hope Senators on the floor will continue on this amendment and other amendments. Then, if votes are ordered, we would stack them. I believe there would be probably three amendments that would be offered tonight, and therefore we would have probably a minimum of three stacked votes tomorrow at 10:30.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, before I ask unanimous consent, it is obvious this has become a very partisan bill. We have people on both sides of the aisle on both sides of this issue. I guess we are making progress. I ask unanimous consent that any votes ordered for the remainder of the evening with respect to amendments to be offered from the list submitted last Thursday by the leadership be postponed on a case-by- case basis until 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday. I further ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes prior to each vote for explanation, that the votes be in stacked sequence with the first vote limited to 15 minutes and all remaining votes in the sequence limited to 10 minutes. I further ask unanimous consent that, following those stacked votes, the Senate proceed to additional amendments and that the cloture vote be postponed to occur at 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Further, that just prior to the vote on cloture, Senator Wellstone be recognized to speak for up to 10 minutes. This has been discussed with the Democratic leader and cleared on both sides of the aisle.

Mr. LOTT. This amendment would be voted on, if a vote is required, at 10:30 tomorrow morning in the stacked sequence.

Mr. LOTT. Therefore, there will be no further votes this evening. I thank my colleagues for their cooperation. I look forward to listening to the debate on this particular issue. It is very interesting. I will listen and decide how to vote as the night progresses. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT

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

Mr. LOTT. Madam President, it is my understanding that three amendments have been offered today by Senator Wellstone. Would the Senator clarify? Has he offered three amendments that are now pending for discussion, or does he intend to do so? What is the status on his amendments?

Mr. LOTT. I understand there are still some 80-plus amendments to be disposed of just from the other side of the aisle. I guess there are probably a dozen or more on this side of the aisle, not counting the relevant amendments that were identified from the list that might be offered. So we still have a lot of work to do. I do know that on Friday, and today, some work was accomplished. Senator Wellstone is certainly carrying through with his commitment to offer amendments dealing with bankruptcy. I know the staffs have been working on both sides to see if we can find a way to complete this without the necessity of a cloture vote this week. However, we have to dispose of this bill this week. As Senator Daschle and I discussed on the floor last Thursday, it is our intent to offer a cloture today or tomorrow, to make sure we have enough time to complete this very important legislation. It is my intent--and I see Senator Daschle here now--to file cloture in order to assure passage of the bill this week. If we can make substantial progress by Wednesday, or if some agreement can be reached that would limit the number of amendments, certainly I would be open to that. I think the record is clear. I have repeatedly tried to move this legislation and I have tried to be respectful of the committee process, which we have followed, and also to be respectful of the Senator from Minnesota, who feels strongly about this legislation, as others do. It is time that we make sure we get it completed this week. I am prepared to send a cloture motion to the desk to the pending legislation. Before I do that, I say to Senator Daschle I will be glad to yield for any comment he might have.

Mr. LOTT. I am not clear, I may have yielded the floor.

Mr. LOTT. Madam President, I appreciate Senator Daschle's efforts. He and I have worked very hard to be fair on this legislation. I have the same problems he has. I do not want the burden to appear just to be on his side of the aisle. We have difficulty getting our Senators to offer amendments on Fridays and Mondays and even Thursday afternoons. Even though there are often very legitimate reasons that we cannot proceed late into the evening on Thursday, we are not able to do so. I say to Senator Wellstone, yes, he was here I think on Friday and again this morning. Back on January 22, Senator Daschle and I started talking about trying to move this legislation. We have been trying to move it ever since. Even though I filed cloture, that does not end it. Amendments can be debated, amendments can be voted on, and we still have some opportunity to work through this, perhaps without cloture. I am not sure that is possible. It may not be. The point Senator Daschle made was we have to go to campaign finance reform, and at some point we have to go to the budget resolution. The law requires we do it before April 15, so we are getting to the point where other things will overtake this bill. Cloture Motion

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

Mr. LOTT. Madam President, if I may make a parliamentary inquiry, in view of the revision, I believe the clerk will need to read the whole cloture motion again. cloture motion

Mr. LOTT. Madam President, as just stated, this cloture vote will occur on Wednesday unless it is changed by consent. The Democratic leader and I will discuss the bill and make a determination as to the timing. I am sure it will be in the afternoon, and we will see how late that will need to be. It would be affected by what has been achieved. I ask that the mandatory quorum under rule XXII be waived.

Mr. LOTT. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT. Keeping with full disclosure on this, I think our staffs have been working on that, and I think we did clear a number of amendments like this last time this bill was up. We were in hopes at some point perhaps that this could be done in such a way that we would not have to go to conference and the bill could be accepted by the House. It does not appear that will be possible. We will try to clear as many of the amendments as possible. I will take it up with the chairman when we complete our action. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT

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

Mr. LOTT. Yes.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes now while we wait on other Senators who may want to comment on what I am about to say. But I want to thank the chairmen and the ranking members of the committees who have worked together over the past 6 weeks to get an agreement on the committee rules and the funding and staffing and space arrangements for the Senate committees this year. Senator Daschle and I worked through a very difficult process to get the organization resolution passed back in January. But in some respects that was the easy part, even though that was not easy. It was easier than what the chairmen and ranking members had to go through. Each committee had to deal with how they were going to proceed with the 50-50 division of Members. They had to work on different rules of different committees, different personalities, and different responsibilities. Most of the committees went through it at a pretty quick pace. Some of them were more difficult and were more complex. When the time came the beginning of March for us to pass the funding resolution, not all had been done. There were, I guess, two or three committees that still had some serious reservations or disagreements. But for those committees we extended the time without a lot of difficulty. And those committees have continued to work together, and they have reached agreement, one by one. Then we were down to just one final committee, and they have reached an agreement--Senator Hatch and Senator Leahy. I know it was not easy for either one of them, but I want to thank all who have been involved for the effort that has been put into this. I think it still bodes well that we can work together through difficult issues in a bipartisan way. Having said that, we are ready to go now, and we are ready to discharge the Rules Committee and adopt this resolution. I understand there has been an objection to it being done through the discharge mechanism, that they want the Judiciary Committee to act, and then they want the Rules Committee to meet. I note that it is 10 minutes until 5 on Thursday. Members were told there would not be any further votes. So, once again, I am saying all this and pointing out that, while I am trying very hard, it is still very difficult to get things done without them being complicated. There is no reason why we should not discharge the committee and get this done after all of the good work that is being done. I am going to say, flat out, I suspect there is staff involved in this. It is uncalled for, and it is being, in my opinion, petty to have to track down Members to try to get them to come running over to try to get some sort of running quorum, and to have a vote. And then, by the way, what if we don't get them? What are we going to do, after all this work? So, Mr. President, I ask Senator Reid, can we move this forward? After all that Senator Daschle and I have done, and all that has been done by all the Members, on both sides--including the chairman and ranking member on Judiciary--can't we move this through now?

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I believe the Senator from Massachusetts wishes to speak for a few moments about an unrelated issue, perhaps. Before he does that, I want to notify all Senators that we are trying to work to get an agreement on how to proceed for the balance of today, Friday, and next week. I had hoped we could get a list of amendments that would be offered, a realistic list, and in return we would agree that there would be no further votes this afternoon, or tomorrow, even though we will continue trying to work and also have work completed on Monday. I say to both sides of the aisle that I am getting disturbed that the leadership continues to bend over backward to try to accommodate everybody's schedule. We are not getting a lot of response in kind. Senators don't particularly want to vote on Tuesday afternoons. Senators don't wish to be here on Friday or on Monday. Senators come up with--we have probably close to a hundred amendments on the bankruptcy bill on the two sides. We must finish this bill next week, by Thursday night. I don't want to file cloture, but when I look at the list with which we have just been presented, and considering the fact there is no desire to work on Friday, it is not practical that we can finish this up by next Thursday, unless we find some way to cut down the amendments considerably, move faster, or file cloture. After that, we have to go to campaign finance reform, on Monday, the 19th. We are going to have to do the budget resolution in a relatively short period of time, in the next month or so. We have to do the education bill. Good work is being done in that committee. Basically, bankruptcy is going to have to be done next week. I don't want to cut anybody off. We have bent over backward in many ways to get this bill done. We are going to try to get an agreement as to how this bill will be completed by next Thursday night. Senator Daschle may want to comment.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, let me say that I appreciate that. I understand Senator Bingaman has an amendment that he can offer now, and we could continue to make progress. His amendment has been cleared. So we will continue to work. It may be necessary to be in session tomorrow. We are working on another issue to get completed tonight or first thing in the morning--in spite of the fact that I had hoped we could get a limited list of amendments--a reasonable one--in return for not having further votes tonight or tomorrow, but we didn't get that. We did not get that, but I did want to say there will be no further votes today. Members are encouraged to continue to offer amendments. We will work tonight, perhaps tomorrow. There will be votes on next Tuesday morning as previously ordered and on Tuesday at 2:45 p.m. Again, it is previously ordered. I want Senators to understand we will have a vote Tuesday morning. So Senators need to be here on Monday in order to be here for the recorded vote Tuesday morning. In that connection, again I urge Senators to continue to work tonight, come to the floor and work with the managers to offer amendments tomorrow and/or Monday. I believe we are ready to propound a unanimous consent request. After consultation with Senator Daschle, I ask unanimous consent that any votes ordered for today be postponed and stacked to occur beginning at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, March 13, with the concurrence of both managers.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I am glad to yield.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 5 minutes equally divided for explanation of each amendment beginning at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, to be debated in the order they were offered. In other words, even if debate occurs later today or Monday--just so Senators understand--before the vote there will be 5 minutes equally divided on each amendment. I further ask unanimous consent that when the votes occur at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, the first vote be limited to 15 minutes in length, with all succeeding votes 10 minutes in length. I further ask unanimous consent that all first-degree amendments in order to the pending S. 420 be limited to the following list which I now send to the desk, and any second-degree amendments must be relevant to the first-degree amendments.