Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I urge the adoption of the amendment offered by the Senators from Arizona.

Mr. STEVENS. I am sorry, I thought the Senator had already spoken. I withhold my motion.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we are prepared to accept the amendment, and I ask it be adopted.

Mr. STEVENS. And that no amendments be in order to these amendments. I ask there be no amendments in order.

Mr. STEVENS. After which we will accept the amendments.

Mr. STEVENS. Fifteen minutes for Senator Durbin and Senator DeWine, and 20 minutes for Senator McCain and Senator Kyl--10 minutes each for Senator Kyl and Senator McCain. Is that agreeable?

Mr. STEVENS. Ten each.

Mr. STEVENS. Each?

Mr. STEVENS. Five minutes on the Durbin amendment. How much time on the McCain amendment?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Durbin be allowed to call up an amendment which we will accept and then Senator McCain call up an amendment which we will accept. We are working on a unanimous consent request and, if it is accepted, there will be no more votes tonight. We have not quite gotten that straight yet. We cannot announce that yet. As soon as we get this unanimous consent request adopted, we will be able to make that announcement. For the time being, does the Senator have a time limit on his amendment?

Mr. STEVENS. 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. STEVENS. Yes, that is part of the request.

Mr. STEVENS. That is on or in relation to his amendment at 6:20.

Mr. STEVENS. The amendment has been filed. It is the Specter amendment on the airline.

Mr. STEVENS. For the information of Senators, we are now going to take up Senator Specter's amendment. I ask unanimous consent that the vote on the Specter amendment commence at 20 minutes after 6. That will be the last vote tonight. We are going to debate it now. Senator Specter wants 25 minutes, and we will take the remainder of that time and vote at 6:20.

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

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I regret deeply that I am faced with this dilemma. There is $1.850 billion in Public Law 480 in the amendment I have offered. That is $335 million above the 2002 level. That money has not been allocated yet, and it is entirely available to allocate to the cause to which the Senator from Florida seeks to send relief. I understand his position, but we have already increased this amount in the bill. It is a sizable increase. I urge the Senate to realize that and to support my motion to table. Mr. President, I move to table the Senator's amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. STEVENS. The projection is the Specter amendment would be voted on at 7:45. Amendment No. 97 Madam President, I now ask unanimous consent that there be a period of 1 minute on each side so the distinguished Senator from Florida can explain his amendment, and I will take the time on this side.

Mr. STEVENS. It is a two-way street, Madam President. I agree 100 percent. We do intend to follow that procedure. I would be happy to yield to my colleague from the South.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. I congratulate my friend. He has always done very good work in this regard. The Senator from Nevada does a good job. I want to announce that tomorrow morning I hope to be able to call up amendments four or five at a time in a block that we have intended to agree to, but if people want to object, they can at that time. We will have to pull them up and have a vote. But we think we have an agreement on a whole series of amendments. I would say potentially there are 70 amendments that are technical in language and have de minimis amounts of money on small projects in States that we can adopt in a process tomorrow morning on a consent basis, if we can work that out. But tonight I hope to have, if we can do it, at least a couple amendments argued so we can vote on them either tonight, after 7:45, or vote tomorrow morning.

Mr. STEVENS. That is so we can work this out and try to get an idea what we can do. Perhaps we can get the amendments so we can argue them tonight and vote on them tomorrow morning, but we will not know until 7:45.

Mr. STEVENS. But we do expect to get that agreement soon. I would like to get an understanding that the next vote, after the Nelson vote, will not occur before 7:45.

Mr. STEVENS. We do not have an agreement yet. We expect to have an agreement of 1 hour total, 30 minutes each side, but we do not have that agreement yet.

Mr. STEVENS. What amendment?