[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 113 (Saturday, August 13, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 13, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           ORDER OF PROCEDURE

  Mr. MITCHELL. Mr. President, as we all know, the rules of the Senate 
permit unlimited debate; that is, any Senator may speak as long as he 
or she wishes at any time. Under that rule, any one Senator, or group 
of Senators, can prevent the Senate from voting or otherwise taking 
action on measures.
  Last night, I proposed to the distinguished Republican leader that we 
agree to debate the pending amendment, the Dodd amendment on children's 
health insurance, last night and today, and that on Monday we take up a 
second amendment, and that we agree to have votes on those amendments 
at 5 p.m. on Monday. Senator Dole indicated that he was not able to 
agree to that, and we so stated last evening.
  It had been my hope that we could reach that agreement today, but 
Senator Dole has advised me that Republican Senators are unwilling at 
this time to do so. Senator Dole is here and will, of course, speak for 
himself following my remarks.
  Therefore, we are in a situation where debate will continue with no 
assurance, as of today, as to whether or not votes will be permitted on 
the pending amendment or any other amendment on Monday or at any other 
time.
  Accordingly, I have concluded that no alternative is available to me 
other than to insist that there be procedural votes on Monday. While I 
do not have the ability under our rules to compel a vote on the pending 
amendment or on any other measure, I do have the authority to compel a 
vote on a procedural matter, and therefore I have concluded and now 
announce that at 5 p.m. on Monday, if we are unable to reach an 
agreement prior to then with respect to votes on the pending amendment 
or other amendments, there will be at least one and possibly more 
procedural votes.
  My meetings with Senator Dole, as always, have been amicable, and I 
retain the hope, as I believe he does, that we will be able to reach 
some kind of an agreement on Monday to permit votes on one or more 
amendments. So I do not believe that that possibility has been ruled 
out, simply that there is no ability to reach that agreement today. 
Therefore, so that all Senators can have full and fair notice of what 
will occur on Monday, I felt it necessary to make the decision and 
announcement that I just have this afternoon so that Senators will be 
able to plan their schedules for Monday accordingly.
  Finally, Mr. President, let me say that in view of the fact that the 
stated reason for an inability to reach agreement on the votes is that 
several Senators wished to make opening statements, I want to repeat 
what I said last night, that we are prepared to remain in session today 
for as long as any Senator wants to stay and speak. So every Senator 
will have ample opportunity to do so. And on Monday, we will begin our 
session devoted to this bill and amendments at 10 a.m. and continue for 
at least 10 hours on that day and possibly 12 hours, and that it will 
be necessary thereafter to proceed in a similar fashion, subject 
always, of course, to adjustment pending discussions between myself and 
Senator Dole and agreements to the contrary.
  Mr. President, as I said, Senator Dole is present on the floor, and I 
want at this time to invite him to make any comments he may wish on my 
remarks. If I have in any way misstated our discussion, I invite him to 
correct me and make any further remarks he may wish to make.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I do not have any serious, any real 
disagreement with the majority leader. We did have the discussion.
  I think we have a little different view on this side. We think we 
should first, before we get into the amendment stage, lay the 
foundation by a discussion on what is a very important bill and one 
that we are still waiting on our side for CBO numbers. The House is not 
even going to take up the health care bill because they do not have CBO 
numbers.
  The distinguished majority leader has numbers on his bill, at least 
on the first version of his bill. We do not have any numbers on our 
bill. I understand there will be another bill introduced by the 
mainstream group. They will be without CBO numbers. Then there is 
another bill that may come forward by Senators Nunn and Domenici and 
others, pretty much like the Rowland-Bilirakis bill on the House side.
  So for a number of reasons, it seemed to us if we are going to get 
serious about amendments, then we at least ought to know, because we 
have had people discussing our bill, some people suggesting they had 
the CBO numbers. Well, if they have them, we wish they would let us 
have them because we do not have the numbers on our bill.
  But having said that, we will, again, as I told the majority leader, 
have a meeting Monday morning, and I will get back to him after that 
meeting to see whether or not there is some way we can dispose of the 
pending amendment, either with a vote or whatever. And, if not, he did 
indicate to me that there would be at least one, perhaps more than one, 
procedural vote starting sometime--I guess the majority leader has now 
set 5 o'clock.
  So I would just say that I do not know of anybody on our side who 
wants to talk 3 or 4 hours. I have said if that is true, I hope I am 
not here for all that time. In any event, there are a number of people 
who have not spoken at all. We are trying to keep a list so we do not 
have repeaters every day. Some may sneak in, but we are trying to keep 
the list so if you have spoken on the bill, then you have to wait until 
everybody else has spoken.
  Of course, as the majority leader knows, you can speak in morning 
business or you can speak on some amendments, so you may have the same 
people speaking several times during the week. But I have conveyed the 
results of the majority leader's discussion to my colleagues. Senator 
Packwood is necessarily absent this afternoon. I will visit with him on 
Monday morning.
  Mr. MITCHELL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague. I agree on the 
importance of getting the CBO scoring on as many bills as are 
introduced. And the CBO is, of course, heavily burdened with the many 
respective bills.
  I respect the right of any Senator or group of Senators to introduce 
a bill. And while I know all of the efforts described have been serious 
efforts so far, I think it is obvious to the minority leader and to all 
of us that if we adopted a process that we could not proceed so long as 
some Senator was going to introduce another bill that had to be scored, 
why, any Senator who did not want ever to do reform could simply 
indefinitely prolong the process by introducing a succession of bills 
that would require scoring, and there would be a new mechanism for 
delay.
  I do not believe that to have been the case so far, as I think all of 
the bills introduced have been serious efforts and they represent 
Senators' genuine expressions of how they think we should proceed.
  But I look forward to the results of the Republican leader's 
discussion with his colleagues on Monday and hope that we can resume 
our dialog and perhaps reach an agreement on Monday to permit a vote on 
one or more of these amendments.
  Mr. DOLE. Could I just add--I think I did--we did make our request on 
July 25 on Dole-Packwood, and then again we sent a reminder on Tuesday, 
August 9. We are not faulting CBO. They have a great deal of work to 
do. But we do think, if we want to offer ours, say, as a substitute to 
the pending bill, I think other colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle will say, ``What does your bill cost? What do these things 
cost?'' If it is so serious the House cannot bring up theirs with 
numbers, we are somewhat at a loss to what we do if we reach that 
point. But maybe we ought to have the numbers soon--we hope.

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