Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, if the Senator will yield.

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, the pending business is the Ensign amendment?

Mr. STEVENS. I now believe that has been cleared and I urge adoption of that amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I have notified members of the minority that we are prepared to accept the Bingaman amendment and also the amendment of Senator Graham. While we await their response, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside temporarily so the Senator from Arkansas can offer an amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, if the Senator wants a vote on this amendment, he is entitled to a vote. I shall not object to that. But I want the Senate to know we have a Boxer amendment to require a report on replacing troops with Iraqi forces or other non-U.S. forces to secure areas in Iraq. We have an amendment by Mr. Feingold to provide transparency and accountability with respect to the Coalition Provisional Authority. He wishes to have an office of inspector general in the Coalition Provisional Authority. As I understand it, he will offer that amendment. We have an amendment offered by Senator McCain and Senator Biden. They wish to have a GAO review on the effectiveness of the Coalition Provisional Authority relief and reconstruction activities, and a report quarterly to the congressional committees on a similar matter to that suggested by Senator Byrd's amendment. So if the Senator wishes a vote on his amendment, I am prepared to agree to that; that will be the case. It would be my intention to accept all of these amendments and take them to conference and see what we can do to come out with a concept of a process of having adequate information and transparency in the Coalition without burdening the Coalition with a series of different types of reports and different types of officers who will be looking over their shoulders and demanding access to their offices and interviews of their personnel when we are trying to get the business done over there. I do not think a provisional authority, within an area with the kind of suicide bombers we are seeing there on a daily basis, is something we have to burden with a series of duplicating types of reports and inspectors general and the comptroller general and his people there at the same time. So again I state to my friend I will not oppose the amendment. I will vote for it. I assume it will get 100 votes. But in conference I intend to see it to these reports are consolidated, and we have a concise-- concise--concept of the type of reports Congress needs to oversee the activities of the Provisional Authority. Does the Senator wish to renew his request for the yeas and nays?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I state again, I have serious question of whether the Comptroller General of the United States is a replacement for the Inspector General. That, in effect, is what the Senator's amendment does. It creates the comptroller general as a constant inspector general of everything that is going on under the Coalition Provisional Authority. I am going to reserve my opportunity to consolidate all of these reports in conference. But I do agree we have the yeas and nays.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, in view of the vote on the Byrd amendment, I announce that we have a Durbin amendment, a Corzine amendment, a Boxer amendment, and a Feingold amendment that pertain to reporting. If those Senators are willing to offer them now, I am prepared to accept them, and we will put them all together when we get to conference. They have not been filed. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the two lists of amendments I now send to the desk be the only remaining first- degree amendments in order to the bill other than those pending at the present time.

Mr. STEVENS. And provided that second-degree amendments be in order and they be relevant to the amendment to which they are offered.

Mr. STEVENS. I now call up amendments Nos. 1844, 1847, and 1851: Senator Feingold's amendment, the Boxer amendment, and Senator Corzine's amendment. They are all reporting amendments, requiring reporting. I ask unanimous consent that they be considered en bloc and agreed to en bloc.

Mr. STEVENS. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask for adoption of the amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask that Senator Reid's amendment No. 1836 be laid before the Senate.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask for the adoption of that amendment. It is a sense-of-the-Senate amendment.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I confess I was in another meeting when I got the word that the vote was not as I expected it. As manager of the bill, I am obligated to take the time to try to achieve the goal that has been set by the administration and by the majority. So I do apologize. But that was an extra amount of time needed to determine what tactic I should use to try to achieve the goal I think the Senator from Nevada would use if he were in my shoes. So we respect one another. He is right; we went over and we said, just minutes ago, we would not. But a contingency developed that I do not think I need to apologize for. I just need to explain. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I have examined the amendment offered by the Senator from Nevada and it has two basic requirements. One is a certification of the amount Iraq will pay or that will be paid on behalf of Iraq, during fiscal year 2004 to a foreign country to service a debt incurred by Iraq, including any amount used for the payment of principal, interest, et cetera. This deals with the amounts that were debts of the former regime of Iraq. It states: On May 1, 2004, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall administratively reserve, out of the unobligated balance of the funds in this title under the subheading Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund . . . the amount that is equal to the sum of the amount certified under paragraph (1). . . . Namely, it is the amount that has been used from any source to service the debt that Iraq owed under the Saddam Hussein regime. Madam President, we take the position there will be no such payment. In any event, we don't see any harm in finding out if there is such a payment and dealing with that subject accordingly. Therefore, I am prepared to state to the Senator from Nevada we have no objection to the amendment of the Senator under the circumstances right now, and I will rely upon the statement of the distinguished Senator from West Virginia to determine whether there is objection from his side of the aisle. It is not an amendment I really seek to have enacted. In all probability, it may be substantially changed in conference if it does survive. But it is not something that offends the process we are involved in now. We don't know of any payments that would be made by any country on behalf of the former regime of Saddam Hussein to deal with the debt that existed under that regime. Therefore, I will not oppose the amendment. I seek the advice of the Senator from West Virginia as to what they intend to do concerning this amendment. Does the Senator wish some additional time to consider this matter? Would he like to take the recess now and come back and deal with this after our weekly luncheon?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes. Madam President, I thank the Senator. I think the Senator will remember, as we wound up the session just prior to the recess, there were a series of amendments that were under consideration. Senator Ensign's was one of those. I think Members of our side checked with staff on the Senator's side, but we are probably not dealing with the right people. We had to pull the Ensign amendment at the last minute because we didn't have the clearance we thought we had. I suggest we just stand in recess now and address this matter when we come back after the scheduled recess.

Mr. STEVENS

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