Patty Murray

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, on August 2, 2007, by a vote of 83 to 14, the Senate approved S. 1, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, clearing that measure for the President. When that is signed by the President, this ethics reform legislation will significantly improve the transparency and accountability of the legislative process. While the President hasn't yet signed that legislation, I wish to assure Senators that we intend to abide by the requirements of that legislation during the consideration of this bill. The legislation requires that the chairman of the committee of jurisdiction certify that certain information related to congressionally directed spending be identified and that the required information be available on a publicly accessible congressional Web site in a searchable format at least 48 hours before a vote on the pending bill. The information required includes identification of the congressionally directed spending and the name of the Senator who requested such spending. This information is contained in the committee report numbered 110-131, dated July 16, 2007, and has been available on the Internet now for 8 weeks. In addition, pursuant to standards established by Chairman Byrd and Senator Cochran for consideration of the fiscal year 2008 bills, letters from each Member with the congressionally directed spending item in this bill or accompanying report are available on the Internet certifying that neither the Senator nor his or her spouse has a pecuniary interest in such spending item. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have a certification by the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations printed in the Record at this point.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I have listened to the Senator from Oklahoma on the amendment he has offered, and I want to make a few comments. I remind all of our colleagues that at noon we are going to go to a moment of silence. Today is the 9/11 anniversary, and it is a time we all want to pause for a minute to reflect on what has happened over the last 6 years. Hopefully, I will be able to make a few remarks, and we will see if the Senator from Oklahoma has any remaining time, and then I can talk to my colleague and we can set a time for this vote and then get to many of the other issues that are pending now on this bill. I want to remind all my colleagues that we are trying to work to finish this bill. Hopefully, we will get a path cleared for late tonight or to finish tomorrow morning. I remind everyone that we are going to be finishing this bill because of the Jewish holidays this weekend. We are trying to work through this in a very tight timeframe. We have a number of pending amendments we want to work through. But let me respond to the Senator from Oklahoma. He brings before the Senate today his argument on funding bridges within our Transportation bill, and yesterday the Senate spoke out very strongly and acted very strongly to address the needs of our deficient bridges across the Nation. I spoke out on the floor yesterday about the number of bridges that were deficient across our country, the imperative that we have in moving forward to make sure that they are taken care of, and on a very strong bipartisan vote we approved yesterday a $1 billion increase in Federal funding for bridges. That was, I remind everyone, a historic 25-percent increase in Federal bridge funding. That amendment won't allow us, obviously, to fix every deficient bridge, but it is a historic increase, and it does set the priority of this bill in moving forward to address this very critical need that I share the concern of the Senator from Oklahoma about. We cannot, however, let all our other transportation and all of our other housing priorities be ignored to address the bridge problem. Yes, we are all very focused on what happened because of Minnesota. But having worked on this bill for a number of years, and worked with my colleague from Missouri, we have had hearings on safety and infrastructure in this country that need to be addressed. The FAA needs to be addressed, we need to deal with our Nation's highways, and there are a number of critical housing projects. We have to balance all of those priorities, and I think we have done a very good job in this bill of doing that, and then adding $1 billion yesterday to address the bridge problem. The long-term solution to our need to address our underinvestment in infrastructure is going to have to come about within the Transportation authorization bill that will be debated sometime in the future. My colleague, Senator Bond, has been a leader on that committee, and we need to do a thorough look at the revenues available in the trust funds. We have talked about that on this floor through our bill. We know that needs to be addressed. We have talked to the Finance Committee. It does need to be addressed and will be addressed with this Congress, and in the coming years. But I want to remind my colleagues that the vast majority of our transportation earmarks that are in this bill require a match, and not just a small match but an overmatch by local communities that have set the priorities for these projects and brought them to the attention of Members who have then brought them to us and to our committee. As we move to a vote on the amendment that has been offered by the Senator from Oklahoma, I remind everyone that if it passes, it would have the impact of bringing many of our multibillion-dollar projects to a complete halt. His amendment would not just terminate highway projects, it would also stop major transit projects that many Senators have come to our committee and talked about. They are currently under construction, and we are funding them in the Federal Transit Administration. These are projects that are working their way through the pipeline. If we were to wipe them out with this amendment, construction contracts across the country for these transit projects would be halted and cause a tremendous amount of difficulties and probably challenges within those contracts as well. Those contracts include the Jacksonville Rapid Transit System in Florida, the Regional Rail Project in Pennsylvania, the South County Commuter Rail, Wickford Junction Station in Rhode Island, transit projects in Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Virginia, another one in Virginia, Washington, Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois. Madam President, I refer all of my colleagues to the Transportation bill, all of these projects that are now under construction that have full funding grant agreements would be brought to a halt if this amendment were to pass. So besides all the other arguments, I encourage Members to understand what the impacts of this amendment are should it pass on the Senate floor today. Now, let me, before we go to a moment of silence in just a minute, Madam President, remind my colleagues that the IG report that the Senator from Oklahoma referred to today does refer to past practices of this Congress. We came into session in January of this year understanding the need to take a look at our processes within the appropriations. We understood the impact from past practices that were under scrutiny, and we addressed them very clearly. This Congress has now sent a very comprehensive ethics reform law to the President, and we are awaiting his signature. That law includes some new procedures that require a great deal of clarity and transparency that have not been required ever before in Congress. But even before we sent that law to the White House, the Appropriations Committee, under the direction of our chairman, Senator Byrd, and Ranking Member Cochran, said we are not going to wait for a law to be enacted. We imposed new rules that require new procedures under the ethics reform bill. And this bill, this Transportation bill, in working through our process, has directly followed those new rules and the new rules of the ethics bill that have been sent to the President. Every Senator who asked for an earmark was required to certify that there was no pecuniary interest in their earmark request, and each and every one of those certifications is now available for any Senator to look at on the Web for review. Every earmark is identified with the Senator who requested it in the Congressional Record. You can look on the Web site to see who is there. So we are complying with what this Senate has said we need to do. I would also remind all of us that in addition to those reforms, Senator Bond and I worked to develop a new procedure within the Transportation Housing Subcommittee, and under the procedures we have established, each and every earmark has to be fully consistent with the mission of the Department of Transportation or the Department of Housing and Urban Development. So we recognized that past practices have brought us to a point today where we have to fully look at each and every one of these earmarks. We make sure they are consistent with the funding requirements of that bill, and they are seeing the light of day, as we will see today as we face a number of amendments about them. I want to make one final point before we move to this important moment of silence that is going to occur, and that is, the Senator from Oklahoma is essentially arguing that bureaucrats in Washington, DC, make every decision about funding across the Nation. Madam President, I know I go home every weekend and I talk to community leaders, I talk to mayors, I talk to members of numerous community projects, and I listen to what their needs are. There is no bureaucrat in any department of this United States Government in Washington, DC, who takes the time that most of us do to go home and really understand what the needs of our communities are and to come back here and fight for them. That is what we do. That is our job, and we are responsible for that. I take a back seat to no one in working hard to represent the interests of my State. Finally, Madam President, one other point. The Senator from Oklahoma said he only wants to see authorized funding being done. I would remind all my colleagues, if we move to that, the State Department hasn't been authorized for years, the FAA authorization will run out this year, the Older Americans Act, the No Child Left Behind Act--all extremely important business we need to accomplish. But if we move to a point that says no money except authorized, a number of critical programs in this country will be subject to cutback. I don't think that is what any of us intend to do. Madam President, we are moving rapidly to a very important moment in the Senate, and I notice many of my colleagues are coming to the floor right now. I ask that all of us listen to our majority leader at this point, and I yield the floor.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, there are a number of Senators who want to speak to the pending amendment by the Senator from Texas. The Senator from Minnesota has been waiting for some time. I ask unanimous consent to temporarily set aside the amendment of the Senator from Texas in order for the Senator from Minnesota to send her amendment to the desk and to speak for a couple of minutes and then to return to the amendment of the Senator from Texas.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I am going to shortly ask for unanimous consent in order to set up the next vote at 4 o'clock. I am waiting for the ranking member to return. He should be here shortly. I see a Senator on the floor. If I could ask the Senator from Kentucky, does he wish to request time to speak?

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, as Members know, we are currently debating the Transportation and Housing appropriations bill that funds incredibly important infrastructure, from airports to highways to bridges to housing programs. The majority leader has instructed us to finish this bill by tonight. We have a number of amendments before us that we need to work through. Therefore, I will object, and I remind all Senators that next week, in just a few short days, we will be moving to the Defense authorization bill and a debate on Iraq with numerous opportunities for Senators to bring forward issues relating to that. So I will object at this time.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, the Senator from Louisiana has raised a critically important issue with regard to the need of the disabled and homeless citizens in Katrina-impacted areas she knows so well. We are going to be developing a supplemental appropriations bill in a very short time which we anticipate will include provisions as it relates to Katrina. The Senator does have my commitment that I will work with her to see what we can do to address that critical need within the supplemental. Amendment No. 2795, Withdrawn

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, with that agreement, Senators should understand that tomorrow morning we will come in, there will be 20 minutes of debate between Senators DeMint and Kennedy on the DeMint amendment. We will go immediately to the four votes on amendments, with final passage to be completed in the morning. With that, there will be no more votes tonight.

Mrs. MURRAY. No.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that the following be the only amendments, other than a managers' amendment that has been cleared by the managers and the leaders, remaining to H.R. 3074; that no second-degree amendment be in order prior to a vote in relation to the amendment: Coburn amendments 2812 and 2814 en bloc; DeMint amendment relating to Davis-Bacon; Menendez amendment No. 2826; Menendez amendment No. 2834; that there be 2 minutes for debate prior to each vote, with the time equally divided and controlled in the usual form; that after the first vote in the sequence, the remaining votes be limited to 10 minutes; that upon disposition of the listed amendments, the bill be read the third time, and the Senate proceed to vote on passage of the bill; that the Coburn and Menendez amendments be debated during today's session; that when the Senate resumes consideration of the bill on Wednesday, September 12, there be 20 minutes of debate with respect to the DeMint amendment, with the time equally divided and controlled between Senators DeMint and Kennedy, or their designees; and that no points of order be considered waived by this agreement.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I yield back.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, we are now going to move to a Coburn amendment. We will have 2 minutes equally divided and a vote. We are very close to finishing this bill. There are some amendments in a managers' package on which we are moving rapidly forward. We have a couple of Senators who may require a vote on an amendment and final passage. In the next vote, we are going to try to work out a final agreement on whether to have those votes tonight or the first thing in the morning. But if we can get a final list of amendments, we will let all Senators know, by the end of the next vote, what the path forward is, following this vote. I believe the Senator from Oklahoma wants to speak on this amendment.

Mrs. MURRAY. 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.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, let me let the Senator know that between votes we will have time for the Senators to discuss the amendments. Amendment No. 2797

Mrs. MURRAY. That is correct.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time just used be equally divided from both sides between now and the hour of 7 o'clock. I remind all of our colleagues that at 7 o'clock we will be having three votes on the amendments that are pending.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 317 which was submitted earlier today.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9 a.m., Wednesday, September 12, 2007; that on Wednesday, following the prayer and the pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired and the time for the two leaders reserved for their use later in the day; that the Senate then resume consideration of H.R. 3074, the Transportation Appropriations Act as provided for under a previous order; and that the first vote in sequence be with respect to the DeMint amendment.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, if there is no further business today, I ask unanimous consent the Senate now stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating thereto be printed in the Record.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 954 and that the Senate proceed to its consideration.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating thereto be printed in the Record.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 316, submitted earlier today.