Arlen Specter

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we have concluded the Vitter amendment a little earlier than expected. It would be appropriate now to proceed with the debate on the Inhofe amendment, with the prospect of later having a side-by-side. I urge my colleagues who wish to be heard on that subject to come to the floor so we can proceed. Mr. President, while we are awaiting speakers to arrive on the Inhofe amendment and since we have concluded the Vitter amendment early, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that the time be charged equally.

Mr. SPECTER. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we are now ready to proceed with an amendment by Senator Clinton and a side-by-side by Senator Cornyn, with a half hour equally divided. At the conclusion of those 2 votes, we will discuss the business for the remainder of the evening.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I think we are now prepared to go to Senator Clinton and then Senator Cornyn, with 30 minutes equally divided.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, for the information of our colleagues, we are now trying to work through another amendment following the votes, the Chambliss amendment. We are checking to see how much time would be needed. But it appears that we have a good likelihood of proceeding with that amendment and a later vote tonight, after enough time for debate.

Mr. SPECTER. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we are now prepared to take the amendment of the Senator from Nevada, Mr. Ensign, and have a brief debate, 10 minutes. It will be accepted.

Mr. SPECTER. That is what I am in the process of doing. I commented about the Ensign amendment. I was about to say we are going to have the amendment of the Senator from Florida, Mr. Nelson, which I anticipate will be accepted as well. Then we are going to take the Kyl amendment under an arrangement where there will be a tabling motion. And it is now anticipated that we will have an hour-and-a-half time limit there. I would like to do it in an hour time limit, if that would be acceptable to that side. Senator Kyl is prepared to take a half an hour.

Mr. SPECTER. I do.

Mr. SPECTER. I ask unanimous consent that we have a time agreement of an hour and a half. We have just been informed that Senator Kyl wants an hour. I hope we can get some of that yielded back.

Mr. SPECTER. And a motion to table with no second-degree amendments being in order.

Mr. SPECTER. I was about to come to that. Let me include in the unanimous consent request that we lay down the Ensign amendment and give him 10 minutes, and then we will move to the Nelson amendment. There would be 5 minutes for Senator Nelson. I anticipate it will be accepted.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we will take a look at the amendments. I will give the Senator from Louisiana an answer as soon as we can take a look at the amendments.

Mr. SPECTER. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, let's take the Nelson amendment. There is always manana.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we have made good progress on the bill but, candidly, not enough progress. We have about two-thirds of the Republican list included, and I think that much or perhaps even more of the Democrats' list. We are not sure there because we just got the list. We have been trying hard to schedule two votes for tomorrow to try to get the Senate back on a schedule where we work on Fridays. It would take about a half hour to go through the chronology of about eight different amendments that we have tried to structure but all of which have collapsed. Managing a bill has a lot of pitfalls, where we have absences for dinners on both sides, where we have adjournments for signing ceremonies, where we have recesses for social events at the White House and other places. In one situation, we had an arrangement for a half hour, equally divided, and to have a vote tomorrow and that was changed to we cannot do it tomorrow to we can do it tomorrow, but we want 2 hours, to we cannot do it ever. I think there would be a 100-to-nothing vote on the point that we don't have enough discipline here to move ahead with our work. We have tried to get this bill complete. So after telling the majority leader what the situation was, it was decided that it would be fruitless to have two 99-to-0 votes which are meaningless when they could be accepted. It would be ludicrous, notwithstanding the fact that we all deserve to be voting tomorrow on ludicrous matters. But the majority leader decided we will not bring in people to have meaningless votes. It is our hope that this will spur us to some meaningful votes early on. The Chambliss amendment will be laid down tonight, and there will be 30 minutes of debate on it before the vote at 5:30 on Monday. We will have a vote on Senator Feinstein's amendment, where she will have substantial time on Monday afternoon. We will see if we can construct a vote for Senator Ensign on what he is trying to work out, which has quite a number of concerns. Senator Bond has an amendment that we may be able to take. The remaining business tonight is to take the amendment of the Senator from Florida by a voice vote, which will, I believe, conclude business on this bill for the evening and the week.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we will now go to the Nelson amendment.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, it is an excellent amendment which is accepted.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Schumer be recognized for 4 minutes to speak on the Lugar-Specter-Dodd bill.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Schumer be recognized for 4 minutes to speak on the Lugar-Specter-Dodd bill.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I think we made good progress yesterday. We just had a brief discussion in the well of the Senate. I believe we are prepared to proceed. I ask unanimous consent that we next take up the Kyl-Cornyn amendment, with no second-degree amendments in order, with 30 minutes equally divided.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the amendments beyond Kyl-Cornyn be as follows--Senator Sessions, Senator Vitter, Senator Obama, and Senator Inhofe. I ask unanimous consent that sequence be agreed to.

Mr. SPECTER. Yes.

Mr. SPECTER. At 10:01.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, may we proceed with the final argument on Kyl-Cornyn? Amendment No. 4027