David Vitter

Mr. VITTER

Mr. VITTER. I will be happy to provide a copy of what that new amendment would be. I would be happy to do that right now.

Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, will the majority leader yield?

Mr. VITTER. I thank the majority leader. First of all, I appreciate those words very much, and I certainly want to reiterate that I never thought I was waiving what I considered my ability as a Senator to modify my own amendment and try to get a vote on my own amendment in the form I would like. So I appreciate the comments of the leader in that regard. I also want to point out that I was actually modifying the amendment in order to get rid of this point of order and the fact that it, in a previous form, would have legislated on an appropriations bill, which we are trying to avoid. So I was trying to avoid that with regard to my amendment. But I appreciate the comments, and I look forward to moving forward.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. VITTER. I renew my unanimous consent request to go back to amendment No. 2488.

Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, taking the distinguished majority leader's words to heart, I would like to ask the Senate to return to the Vitter amendment to try to dispose of that.

Mr. VITTER. The request is to return to the Vitter amendment to dispose of that and proceed with the business of the majority leader.

Mr. VITTER. Madam President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. VITTER. I would like to object. There is objection.

Mr. VITTER. Amendment No. 2488, which is pending.

Mr. VITTER. Thank you for the courtesy. First of all, let me say to the distinguished Senator from West Virginia, I have the utmost respect for him. I just want to clarify that it certainly is not my intent to delay anything. I am happy to proceed with votes on this bill--all votes that are lined up, and other votes. I would also like to make this offer, if it would clarify or help heal the past situation. I apologize if anything was miscommunicated regarding the last hour or so. But if it would help heal that, I would be happy to withdraw my pending amendment as long as I was given the opportunity and assured of an opportunity to file a new amendment, which is germane, and that could be made pending. And, of course, in that context, I would have no objection to anyone, including Senator Cochran, being able to offer a second-degree amendment on that amendment. So I would be happy to withdraw my pending amendment as long as I could be given the opportunity to submit an amendment that could be made pending rather than have the clock run out or have proceedings and votes on the bill happen before that amendment would be made pending. But, again, my main point is, it is certainly not my intent to delay this bill, or any votes on amendments or the bill, and I am eager to proceed with all of those. I thank the Senator for the courtesy of yielding. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. VITTER

Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, that is disappointing because we have been in communication with all the floor leaders of this bill to actually call up the amendment, but I will certainly proceed to speak on it. It is amendment No. 2400, which is at the desk, which would amend the Homeland Security Appropriations Act to allow the reasonable reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada only. I am joined in this very important amendment by Senator Nelson of Florida and Senator Stabenow of Michigan, and I thank my colleagues, and many other colleagues, who are supportive of this idea. This will be a continuation of a very important, very productive policy we began last year. Last year, I again joined with Senator Nelson of Florida, Senator Stabenow, and many others in coming forward with this specific amendment on last year's Homeland Security appropriations bill. We had a full and healthy debate on the topic. After that full and healthy debate, it passed the Senate floor 68 to 32. After it was retained in the conference committee and passed through the House and the Senate in the final version of the appropriations bill, this amendment and the policy was signed into law. Because of that, we effectively ended the practice by Customs and Border Patrol of seizing from Americans what are otherwise lawful, safe, prescription drugs that happen to be purchased from Canada--drugs which are identical to those that can be purchased in the United States. Again, Mr. President, I want to make clear to all my colleagues that this amendment merely continues the important work we began last year, which received a very resoundingly positive vote of the full Senate--68 to 32. Why do we need to continue that? Well, everybody knows-- everybody who buys prescription drugs, everyone who has an elderly parent, grandparent, or aunt whom they are helping in terms of those very real needs and costs--we are burdened with sky-high prescription drug costs in this country, while virtually the rest of the world pays far greater reduced prices for exactly the same prescription drugs. That is the system we are trying to break up and break through. That is what we are trying to end in order to allow Americans to have access to safe and cheaper prescription drugs from Canada, and elsewhere. It is very important that we take this step forward to continue the policy we started last year, to continue it for this fiscal year, in order to allow Americans this opportunity. Again, I want to underscore several things, at the risk of repeating myself. No. 1, this is a continuation of what we did last year by a vote of 68 to 32. No. 2, this applies to individuals only, and individual amounts of prescription drugs for individual use. We are not talking about wholesalers, we are not talking about businesses getting into the business of buying from Canada. And, No. 3, this does apply to Canada only. We are not talking about any other country. Now, let me say straight off that I support much broader and stronger reimportation legislation. I have supported that position consistently since I came to the Senate and before that while I was in the House, and I am very hopeful that I will be successful, working with others on this issue, in passing that broader reimportation language this year. But in the meantime, this is a very important step forward that we must preserve into the next fiscal year. Mr. President, I yield the floor and invite Senator Nelson to share his remarks.

Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I call up the Vitter amendment No. 2400, which is at the desk.

Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for up to 10 minutes and then immediately thereafter for my colleague on this issue, Senator Nelson, to be recognized for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. VITTER

Mr. VITTER. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. VITTER. Madam President, this is an important amendment for the State of Louisiana. It would be not the whole solution but a significant part of the solution to a real problem--even a crisis--we have with our recovery from Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. This Congress and, in fact, the American people have been enormously generous in terms of responding to the devastation of those storms. One of the best examples of that unprecedented generosity is the billions of dollars the American taxpayer, through Congress, sent to the devastated areas to help people who were wiped out and had enormous uninsured losses. At the time there was a big debate: Shouldn't these folks have had more insurance? Shouldn't they have done this or that? Congress and the American people got it right, recognizing that the event was unprecedented and recognizing, in the case of Louisiana, that most of the losses were caused by the actual failures of Federal levees. The levees broke. They broke from underneath. They were inadequately engineered. That caused devastating losses to folks throughout the greater New Orleans area in particular. The American people and Congress responded generously. In the case of Louisiana, most of that money went into what was called the Road Home Program to help compensate folks for enormous uninsured losses, up to $150,000 per household. That is the good news. It was unprecedented generosity. Again, we say thank you for that. The bad news is that months later, it was determined that appropriated money would not be enough and, in fact, the Road Home Program was running short because even more claims were coming in than had been anticipated and calculated. So there is a shortfall in the program which is at the very heart of our ongoing struggle to recover. My amendment will not fix all of that shortfall, but it would fix a big part of it. It would be a big piece of the puzzle, a big part of the solution, without costing the Federal taxpayer any more money. There is something called the Hazard Mitigation Program that is always involved when there are natural disasters. Because of the scope and size of the devastation of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, following those storms, that Hazard Mitigation Program would send $1.2 billion to Louisiana. We wish to use that money in the context of the Road Home Program to help meet that shortfall, to help bridge the gap, to help fund that program. However, there are some technical requirements under normal hazard mitigation rules that prevent us from doing that. My amendment would waive those few technical requirements so the hazard mitigation money, $1.2 billion in this case, could be used in the context of the Road Home Program to help bridge the gap, to help make people whole. It is important and accurate that I underscore that these requirements are technical. They are things that are normal requirements of hazard mitigation, but nothing I am waiving with this amendment would go to the heart of the hazard mitigation purpose. Congress, in setting up the program, wanted to make sure funds would be used to mitigate hazards, to make sure the same sort of losses don't happen again, to build higher, better, stronger, smarter. Nothing in my amendment gets away from that fundamental intent. That is important because I don't want to get away from the mandate and neither do most people in the House or the Senate. Again, I underscore, this amendment would help fund our Road Home shortfall, would not cost the Federal taxpayer any more money, would preserve and honor the intent of the Hazard Mitigation Program by making sure the funds went to true hazard mitigation, rebuilding higher and better and stronger and smarter, not simply allowing people to rebuild any way they could build before. What it would do is waive certain technical requirements to make all of this work. That is appropriate given the unprecedented scope, size, and nature of the disasters about which we are talking. I urge all of my colleagues to look hard at the amendment and then support it, because this funding shortfall within the Road Home Program is a real impediment to our ongoing challenge and struggle to recover. This amendment would be a major piece of the puzzle to solve the problem without costing the Federal taxpayer any more money and without throwing out the window the very significant and smart focus of the Hazard Mitigation Program. It would make us build smarter and stronger and higher but still help get people back, make them whole, rebuild through the Road Home Program. I yield the floor. Moment of Silence

Mr. VITTER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment so I may call up amendment 2384.

Mr. VITTER

Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, if the Chair could inform me when I have used 2 minutes. Mr. President, we all stand here on the floor of the Senate and regularly acknowledge and even praise the common sense and the wisdom of the American people. Well, this vote this morning for each of us is about whether you really believe that or whether it is just a cheap political line to use. The American people get it, and they do have common sense and wisdom on this issue. They know repeating the fundamental mistakes of the 1986 bill, joining a big amnesty with inadequate enforcement, will cause the problem to grow and not diminish. They know promising enforcement after 30 years of broken promises isn't good enough. They know the so-called trigger is a joke because if the trigger is never pulled, the Z visas, the amnesty happens forever. They know groups like the Congressional Budget Office have estimated that this bill, so big on enforcement, will only decrease illegal immigration 13 percent and will have another 8.7 million illegal aliens coming into the country. They know that. They do have wisdom and common sense. The question is: Do we or do we decide that Washington knows best? This isn't just a vote about immigration. This is a vote about whether this body is out of touch, whether this body is arrogant, or whether it will respect the true wisdom and common sense of the American people. I yield the floor.

Mr. VITTER

Mr. VITTER. I object.

Mr. VITTER. I object.

Mr. VITTER. Reserving my right to object, if I could simply make a clarification about a statement that has been made.

Mr. VITTER. Will the Senator yield for a clarification?

Mr. VITTER

Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Alabama. I want to briefly take the floor to lay out how enormously unfair this process is. I am new to the Senate. Coming here, I had always heard, particularly coming from the House, about the fundamental aspect of the Senate being unlimited debate. I walked through the wrong door, because that is not the case, certainly not the case for me in terms of this bill. It has been exactly the opposite from start to finish. Why do I say that? First, we are handed an 800-page bill, given very little time to digest it. Then a few days later, in terms of this latest revisiting of immigration reform, we are handed a 373-page mega-amendment and given no time to digest it. Then some of us demanded the time to digest it by not agreeing to waive the reading of that 373-page amendment. Only because we did that, we were finally given the right to look at the amendment overnight last night. Great. So we come back at 10 a.m. this morning, after working with our staffs to wade through 373 pages of the amendment, only to find out that mega-amendment is out the window. We have a new modified version of the mega-amendment, which we have never seen before, which we were only given a copy of in the last hour. Now we are trying to digest a new mega-amendment. Meanwhile, the procedure is rolling along. Of course, the majority leader, through this unprecedented use of the so-called clay pigeon, has hand chosen the only amendments that apparently will come up during this debate on the Senate floor. It is not an accident that there are no Vitter amendments. I had plenty filed. None of them are on the list. The majority leader could have chosen any list of amendments. He could have tried to make an effort to have a balanced list to include some amendments of folks such as me who have fundamental reservations with the bill. He did not. There are no Vitter amendments. It is not a coincidence there are no Sessions amendments. There are no DeMint amendments. There are no Cornyn amendments, the person who began this process working with the working group, developing the bill. It is not a coincidence there are no Elizabeth Dole amendments. All of us have been completely shut out in terms of the handpicked list of amendments. Then we try to participate in the process again on the Senate floor. I try to be recognized several times to exercise my rights as a Senator. I am shut down again because the majority leader will only recognize me for purposes that he decides, not me, for purposes that he approved of, not me. Basically, I am allowed to debate and nothing more. I am not allowed to offer a motion. I am not allowed to do any of that. It is coming to the point where I am wondering, even if he allows me to say anything, is he going to hand me a script and I will have to read from that? This is not an open, fair process. This is not the Senate I heard about, with unlimited debate and amendment. Yes, there are unlimited amendments as long as they are approved, apparently, by the majority leader. None of them are my amendments. Yes, there is unlimited debate as long as you agree not to exercise any of your rights as a Senator. You can talk only. You can't make a motion. You can't try to bring up your amendments. You can't do any of that. That process is fundamentally unfair. I hope many Senators who are still considering how they will vote on cloture will focus on this process. The American people have said loudly and clearly this is an important issue to them. They have also said loudly and clearly, by any poll out there, that they absolutely disapprove of this bill by enormous numbers. For us to move ahead anyway is one thing. For us to move ahead using this process, railroading me, railroading any strong opponent of the bill, is something else. It is patently disgraceful. I yield the floor.

Mr. VITTER

Mr. VITTER. Then I object.

Mr. VITTER. That is not really responding to my request. Again, reserving the right to object, I ask the distinguished majority leader whether my rights as a Senator can also be protected in that unanimous consent request regarding Senator Webb's time by allowing me 1 minute on the floor for any purpose.