[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 15 (Wednesday, January 25, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1537-S1538]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLOTURE MOTION

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We the undersigned Senators in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on S. 1, the 
     unfunded mandates bill:
         Bob Dole, Dirk Kempthorne, Bill Roth, J.M. Inhofe, Paul 
           D. Coverdell, Bill Frist, Slade Gorton, Olympia Snowe, 
           Spencer Abraham, Rick Santorum, Bob Smith, Jon Kyl, Dan 
           Coats, Craig Thomas, Conrad Burns, Phil Gramm, Thad 
           Cochran, Mitch McConnell, Richard Shelby, Fred 
           Thompson.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The acting majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, although progress has been made today, there 
are still approximately 30 amendments on the list to be considered. The 
managers say many of those approximately 30, at least some of them, 
will not be offered. But until they are formally stricken from the 
list, there is still the risk they could each be called up. The 
majority leader has made it very clear. He has been very patient in 
trying to work through this bill and the amendments thereto. The bill's 
managers certainly have been working very assiduously to try to reduce 
the amendment list and bring this to closure.
  Also, the leader has made it clear he intends for us to complete this 
bill this week. In order to do that we have to work through this list, 
either have them stricken or acted on. If we do not get them completed 
tomorrow at a reasonable time, then it would go beyond that.
  I understand there are only a few issues that still really need to be 
resolved. However, if they cannot be resolved amicably then it may be 
necessary to close off debate. If cloture is invoked, I am not sure 
exactly how many of these amendments are not germane, but those that 
are not germane would then be dealt with through the cloture motion and 
we could move on to the remaining amendments.
  If going through cloture appears to be necessary tomorrow afternoon, 
it will be agreeable to this side of the aisle to waive the intervening 
day and have the cloture vote tomorrow. But I know there would be 
discussion between the majority leader and the minority leader before 
that would be done. I just wanted to put that out on the Record 
tonight. Perhaps we can get this thing really moving tomorrow, and it 
will not be necessary. But in order to deal with the time requirements, 
it was essential we put the cloture motion down at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, the hour is late. I do not plan to debate 
this. In fact, there is no debate on a cloture motion, obviously. It 
can be filed at any time.
  I am sorry it has to be filed or the majority feels it has to be 
filed in that I think we have had a very productive day here. We have 
worked very hard all day today. I just asked staff to total up what we 
had done today. We had five amendments accepted, one was withdrawn, and 
one was set aside. In that breakdown of five that were accepted, three 
were Democratic ones and two Republican. We had one amendment debated 
that was put over for vote tomorrow, and that vote will occur tomorrow 
morning. And we had three amendments tabled.
  That is 11 effective actions on this bill today. I think that is 
rather good progress. I would say to my friend from Mississippi --we 
will not go into the whole litany of how we got to where we are--but we 
lost the first several days working on this bill basically because of 
what happened in committee, where we had actions taken in committee to 
speed this to the floor that prohibited any amendments. We were 
guaranteed once this reached the floor there would be plenty of time 
for all the amendments, to take them up on the floor. Now we get to the 
floor and the attempt is made to restrict or at least discourage 
amendments from coming up. That violates at least the spirit of what we 
were told in committee.
  In committee also, the action there that caused us to lose quite a 
bit of time was the action wherein there was not a committee report 
sent. For those who are not familiar with how important a committee 
report is, it is what in layman's language explains to all the Senators 
and their staffs what the technical legalese language is in the bill 
itself. So on something like this that really is landmark legislation, 
that report was very important. We objected to the bill being filed 
without the report. We were voted down on that, and that was the issue 
that Senator Byrd took up--and quite successfully. On that issue alone, 
we spent some 2 or 2\1/2\ days.
  Then we are finally told we can get the report, but then when the 
time came for the report to be filed it was not filed and we lost 
another day. Then we found out the Budget Committee, which also has 
jurisdiction over this, had not filed their report and that took 
another day.
  So about the first 5 days, in fact the first week that this 
legislation was up, I submit we lost that time basically because of the 
actions that were taken in committee that I have never seen--in my 20 
years here, I have never seen actions like that, where the minority was 
denied a report.
  I know I chaired the Committee on Governmental Affairs for some 8 
years, and the only time we ever sent a bill to the floor without a 
report was with the complete acceptance of that move by the minority. 
So I think the first 5 days we can mark off as being days, rancorous 
though they were here on the floor, that were caused by the attempt to 
bypass the normal procedures of the Senate.
  I think with all that behind us, we are back on track now. We are 
dealing with this. I want to move as forcefully and as fast as 
possible. We had a good day yesterday. I do not have a summary of what 
happened yesterday, but today we have had 11 effective actions and I 
just hope we can continue moving tomorrow and I hope we do not have to 
exercise a cloture motion. I just wanted to spell that out.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The acting majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I want to say again I know the distinguished 
Senator from Ohio has worked very hard to try to move it forward. I 
know it has not been easy. I know he worked on it last year and great 
progress was made last year. That effort made it possible for us to 
have a bill this early in this session. I acknowledge that, and I want 
to take this opportunity on behalf of all his colleagues to commend 
him, and certainly our distinguished colleague from Idaho, Senator 
Kempthorne, who has really been very diligent in trying to work through 
this, also.
  But I do want to point out a couple of things. This is the 9th day 
that we have been on this bipartisan, I thought relatively 
noncontroversial, bill. There have been some actions that have been 
taken that have added some language to the bill. I believe the Senator 
would say he has made some improvements as he has gone along.
  Mr. GLENN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. LOTT. Sure.
  Mr. GLENN. As I pointed out a moment ago, 9 days is correct that we 
have been on this bill. The first 5 days we lost, as far as effective 
action on the bill goes, because of what happened in the committee and 
the speed of putting in the bill in the Senate one day, having a 
hearing the next day, the markup the third day, no report, and over our 
objections in the minority. We had repeated votes in committee, and it 
was a wrangle over that here on the floor--my distinguished colleague 
from West Virginia was involved. It was that wrangle on the floor about 
the filing of reports that were not filed when they were supposed to 
be, even after agreement they would be filed--it was that issue alone 
that caused us to lose the first 5 days.
  The last 4 days, where we have really been operating on this bill, 
especially the last 2 days, we have made excellent progress. As I 
said--we read off the list 
[[Page S1538]] that we had today--we have had 11 effective actions on 
this bill today.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield on that, when you 
say 11 effective actions, do you mean 11 amendments? Or seven 
amendments? How many amendments were disposed of?
  Mr. GLENN. As I said a while ago, Mr. President, we had accepted five 
amendments; there were three on the Democratic side and two on the 
Republican side that were accepted--effective actions. We had one that 
was withdrawn. We had one that was set aside. We had one that was 
debated with the vote to occur tomorrow, and three were tabled. That is 
11 effective actions, as I total them up.
  So we are moving on this, is my point. I know cloture has been filed. 
This is not the time to debate cloture.
  I just want to balance all of the blame we have been getting and the 
heat around us over here. I think it is not justified. At least the 
first 5 days that this was on the floor were not effective days for 
other reasons. They were noneffective days because of what happened in 
committee, which I think was unwarranted.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I certainly understand what the Senator has 
said. I would like to note that, while I think progress was made today, 
we would all acknowledge that, at that pace, since we dealt with I 
guess 5 amendments today, on that basis it would still take us another 
5 or 6 days with approximately 30 amendments pending. Even though we 
made good progress, if we are able to dispose of five or six a day, 
this thing could keep going on down the line. Certainly in the first 
couple of days a lot of discussion was delivered or exchanged on 
reports.
  I point out that objection was heard, and an effort was made to get 
the reports filed. I have before me the two reports. In fact, the 
report from the Governmental Affairs Committee was available on the 
12th of January. That is a Thursday. It is 45 pages long. I am sure the 
Senators have had more than ample time to review that in these 
succeeding days. Then the report from the Budget Committee was 
available on Friday the 13th. There are 38 pages there. Certainly there 
was time to review that.
  So the objection was made, and the reports then were printed and made 
available in a way that everybody could have a chance to review them. I 
want to make sure that point is made, that the reports have been 
available now for 12 or 13 days.
  Then also just one other point. Talking about the time lost the first 
couple of days, I think it is fair to note that the majority leader 
properly and because of his appreciation for the family and the need 
for various Senators to attend a funeral earlier this week, we in fact 
did not have any votes. There was not a lot of action on Monday even 
though we were scheduled to have votes any time after 4 p.m. In fact, 
they did not occur until late on Tuesday to accommodate a lot of 
Senators. We do not blame anybody for that. Those things happen. A 
compassionate leader would always honor that.
  There are arguments on both sides. But I think the leader wanted to 
make sure that he took action to try to deal with this problem. For 
instance, if maybe we could get some information as to how many of 
these amendments will be stricken from the list, that would help. I 
understand that has not been available. If it is not approximately 30, 
if in fact it is 15, then that would make a lot of difference.
  Mr. GLENN. The Senator is absolutely correct. I agree with that. We 
have already asked that be checked on our side to see how many will 
probably not be called up so we will know what is on the list. There 
are serious amendments left. And I am hoping the same thing can be done 
on the Republican side so we can combine things and maybe start getting 
some time agreements and so on.
  Just one further statement on this. One of the reasons I think there 
were some amendments filed on this is because when people finally had a 
chance to read the reports and understand what was in the legislation, 
they had some concern about it. So they started filing their 
amendments. These have been substantive amendments which we have been 
considering.
  Mr. LOTT. Does the Senator mean today or yesterday?
  Mr. GLENN. Most of them yesterday and today. The ones that Senator 
Levin put in and several others here today. Some not dealing directly 
with this would have been accepted in committee. I grant that. But I 
think because we finally got the report people had a chance to look at 
it and understand what was in the bill. That is one reason we had so 
many amendments. Had we been permitted to do this in committee, I think 
there would not be nearly the number of amendments when we got to the 
floor.
  Mr. LOTT. One response, if I could, I understand. Like the Senator 
from Ohio, I do not want to go on at great length. A lot of these 
amendments in that long list of about 100 certainly were not germane 
and not relevant to this bill. We spend a lot of time on both sides on 
things like history standards, the abortion clinic violence, and maybe 
the pornography--a lot of amendments in which it would be a huge leap 
to say that they really were urgent right now and that they were really 
relevant to this bill. But I think maybe we have been through that 
exercise and now we are down to really trying to deal with the 
amendments that have been offered that really are of concern.
  I hope maybe we can complete that, and maybe in the spirit that the 
distinguished Senator from Ohio was exhibiting here tonight we will 
move right along tomorrow and be able to bring it to a conclusion.
  Mr. GLENN. We will do our best.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I will have a final closing statement, 
unless any other Senator would like to be heard at this time.


                          ____________________