Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I am also filing an amendment for myself and Senator McCain.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that another amendment for Senator McCain be printed in the Record. There is one other. These may have been already filed. If so, I ask that they just be withdrawn as a redundancy. But we are not certain they have been filed.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, has time passed for the filing of amendments?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote on the Boxer amendment occur at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow with 2 minutes of debate equally divided prior to the vote.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I share the feelings of the Senator from Virginia concerning the statement of the distinguished Senator from West Virginia. Those are wonderful words to say about our colleague, and every one of them was well deserved. I ask unanimous consent that the Parliamentarian review the amendments filed on this bill prior to 3 o'clock and inform the minority and majority managers of the bill whether any of those amendments are subject to rule XVI.

Mr. STEVENS. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that second- degree amendments be in order to the filed amendments, and that they be relevant to the first-degree amendments.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the managers of the bill may, with the consent of the sponsor, modify amendments so they could be included in the managers' package.

Mr. STEVENS. I support the health care demonstration program directed by section 740 of S. 2549, and I assure my good friend from Michigan that the FY2001 Department of Defense appropriations bill before the Senate includes sufficient funding in the Defense Health Program to carry out this important effort.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I rise to remind Senators that there is an order that requires amendments to this bill be filed by 3 p.m. We have been notified there are about 41 amendments that may be offered. Senator Inouye and I are prepared to deal with these. If Members have amendments and desire to have a vote sometime tomorrow, please take time this afternoon to initiate that debate. There is no time limit on amendments yet, but we do intend to reach a time limit agreement on amendments later this afternoon. If Members have amendments and desire to have a considerable amount of time to present to the Senate, this is a great time to do that. We will be working up a managers' package of amendments that we believe we can take to conference and work out. Senators may want to identify those amendments and present them. We would be pleased to consider them now and determine if we will put them in the managers' package so we can move the bill forward. It is our hope we will finish this bill tomorrow afternoon. That is complicated a little bit by the fact we have a full Appropriations Committee meeting tomorrow afternoon to report out the Transportation appropriations bill. That may not take very long. It is our intention to keep working on the Defense bill, notwithstanding the fact we will be in committee on the Transportation bill. I urge Senators to introduce and possibly present amendments to the Senate so we can determine whether they should be included in our managers' package, which will be accepted by unanimous consent. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I announce that the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Nickles), and the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Voinovich), are necessarily absent. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning) would vote ``yea.''

Mr. STEVENS. With that, I yield back our time.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I and Senator Inouye welcome the cooperation of the Senator from Iowa to keep the current level for next year. We are trying our best to have the ability to take it down to zero in the near future. For now, we do thank the Senator for once again calling the attention of the Department of Defense to the fact that Congress wants good accounting procedures followed. He is right that this is the procedure followed by profit and nonprofit entities in our country. I ask my friend if he desires any time.

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

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, today the Senate will resume consideration of the Department of Defense appropriations bill. Under the order, there will be up to 10 minutes of debate on the pending Grassley amendment regarding accounting, with the vote to occur at approximately 9:40 on that amendment. Following the vote, the Senate will continue debate on this Appropriations bill, with further amendments expected to be offered. Again, Senator Inouye and I invite our friends to bring amendments to the floor now so that we might consider adopting them at this time. It is hoped that the consideration of the Defense appropriations bill can be completed early next week. We hope it will be by Tuesday so that we can take up one of the other bills. We will have several bills ready to take up by midweek next week. We hope to be able to get to them and get them to conference before the Fourth of July recess. We thank our colleagues for their cooperation on this bill.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the previous order with respect to rule XVI regarding the Defense appropriations bill be vitiated.