Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. STEVENS. My parliamentary inquiry is, may I raise rule XVI at this point? HIV/AIDS is not germane to this bill, either.

Mr. STEVENS. I do not object to receiving the request.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. STEVENS. How much time remains?

Mr. STEVENS. How much more time now remains?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I was prepared to yield time to another Senator who is not here. Let me just say this. I am impressed with the debate. There is clearly a division in the Senate. But I do hope Senators will keep in mind that the President of the United States is traveling abroad on a very important mission. We have been appealed to before, on this side, when Presidents have been traveling abroad, to honor the position of the Presidency and not to take positions that would embarrass him when he is abroad. I believe there is no question that the problem we face in Iraq is the populace of Iraq that wants to be part of a new government, wants to have a new government, a new democratic government, really faces a quandary of what can they do? How can they be involved? How can they get their electricity back? How can they get their police service back? How can they get their banks open? How can they get their hospitals open? How can they get potable water? How can they be sure they have the capability to present a firm, new constitution that will be approved by their people? That takes the money the President has requested. I believe if we do not take action to get this money into Iraq and get it moving so they can have the momentum of building a new government, the hearts and minds of those people will be hardened against us. As they are hardened against us, we will have more violence in the street and our soldiers, people in uniform, even the people who are there in civilian capacity now, will be at greater risk. I think that is what the Senator from Arizona has been saying. The risk we face is, if we do not support these loans, our men and women in uniform are going to be in greater harm's way. If you want to support the troops--and I have heard that from every Member of the Senate so far--if you want to support these troops, support the President on this issue and do not approve these loans. As to the concept of loans, I am sure, sometime, there will be some way the people of Iraq are going to under--see the debt they have to the United States when they become a real, strong government. Look what happened to us after World War II. We did not saddle France and Germany with loans. We forgave all the indebtedness, even the indebtedness we had from prior to that war. We helped them through the Marshall Plan to get going. These grants that we have in this part of this bill are absolutely essential to the continued safety, improvement of the safety of our men and women in uniform. I appeal to those who say they support the troops to support the President. He is the Commander in Chief of these troops and he has told us, his military commanders have told us, they need this money. It goes hand in glove with the $66 billion here, to assure they have the right equipment, the right protection while they are there. But let's take the actions necessary to get them out of there. I hope we would have the support of the Senate to do that tonight. Mr. THOMAS addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. STEVENS. I will yield 2 minutes. I believe the leader is on his way to take the remainder of our time.

Mr. STEVENS. The Senators are at liberty to offer their amendments as they wish tonight. We will be glad to stay as long as Senators want to offer amendments and present them to us. We are trying to work out those amendments with people who want to settle amendments first, not those who want to bring up amendments and demand a vote tomorrow. There are a bunch of Senators willing to compromise on amendments and I want to let them proceed and have them go home before the other people who want to offer amendments, argue, and then have a vote tomorrow. I think that is a logical progress.

Mr. STEVENS. That is perfectly all right with me, Mr. President. I am here until Saturday, Sunday, whatever it takes. The bill will be finished sometime before the end of this week. To stand up and say these people are going to come first before those we have been negotiating with, we told them we will accept amendments and can handle those, I think that is wrong. So if Senators want to go home, go home. If they want to stay here and settle this bill, stay. Mr. LEAHY addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the Senator from Texas, Mrs. Hutchison, has an amendment that has been cleared on both sides. She wants to make a few remarks on that amendment. I welcome her offering that amendment at this time and discussing it.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have the amendment for Senator Warner, for himself, Mr. Sarbanes, and Mr. Edwards. It has been cleared on both sides. According to my information, it is amendment No. 1867.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I also have a second-degree amendment to that amendment. I ask that amendment be adopted. This is the hurricane flood damage amendment. We are taking out of the bill those items which were not relevant to the bill. I send that amendment to the desk.

Mr. STEVENS. From the funds that are in the bill. Those amounts are de minimis, really. There will be no budget point of order against that.

Mr. STEVENS. It will happen. It is in another bill also. The question is which bill gets there first.

Mr. STEVENS. The Senator is right. Our current amendment which we have out there somewhere goes through 2004. The Senator's amendment goes back to 2001. We are happy to accept that, but the moneys are there. It is carryover money from past years.

Mr. STEVENS. I congratulate the Senator. It is a good amendment. We have no objection to Senator Daschle's amendment, if it is cleared by Senator Byrd. We have that, by the way, in the managers' package. We worked it out with Senator Byrd's staff and mine. We will be happy to adopt it now, if the Senator would like to do that.

Mr. STEVENS. I have no objection. I would like to confer with the Senator and Members on that side on items we believe are subject to budget points of order and give notice of that.

Mr. STEVENS. Very well. Amendment No. 1807, As Modified

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

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent my notice of reconsideration on amendment No. 1834 be withdrawn.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask for a voice vote of the Reed amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes.