[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 122 (Wednesday, July 26, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10709-S10710]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST--S. 908

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate turn 
to the consideration of S. 908, the State Department reauthorization 
bill, immediately following the disposition of S. 641, the Ryan White 
bill.
  Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I object. Let me just respond.
  I was under the impression that we had an agreement that following 
the disposition of the Ryan White Act, we would go back to the 
legislation relating to gifts. That has been everyone's understanding. 
I am hopeful that we can do that. I think we are very close. I think we 
could work under a time agreement.
  I had the opportunity to talk to a number of those who have been 
actively involved in the negotiations, and I think progress is being 
made. So there is really absolutely no reason at this point to move on 
to other legislation until we resolve that. I hope that all our 
colleagues will understand that and will persist in keeping to the 
schedule that everyone was working under the assumption we would have, 
beginning with the disposition of the Ryan White Act.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I might respond to the distinguished 
minority leader's comments, there is a lot of work underway on the gift 
rule issue. I think progress is being made. There are a couple of 
different packages that are out there, with some potential amendments 
pending. I do not think that we have come to closure on that, although 
we are continuing to work in a bipartisan way, and we have meetings 
later on tonight to see exactly where we are.
  We would like to get some sort of understanding about what the 
procedure would be for it to come up. I think we are getting there, but 
I do not think we are quite ready to go to the gift rule issue yet. It 
may be that tomorrow we will be. I think the leader would like to do 
that, intends to do that before this week is out, and we will continue 
to move in that direction.
  In order for us to make sure that we have legislation ready to go, we 
need to make this effort. But in view of the objection----
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, if I can respond briefly, and I 
appreciate the explanation given by the Senator from Mississippi, I 
suspect what this means is there will be cloture motions filed. 
Frankly, I think the message that that sends is not the one that many 
of us would really like to see.
  No one is holding up State Department authorization. No one is 
holding up foreign aid appropriations. No one is holding up any 
legislation of which I am aware. So to lay down cloture motions under 
these circumstances seems to me, first, premature, and then second, in 
violation of what I thought was an understanding we had on both sides 
that we would go to gifts.
  There was not any axiom to that, any corollary that said it was only 
if we had some agreement about the procedure or about amendments that 
we would return to gifts. The issue was, would we do gifts and lobbying 
together this week? The answer was, yes, we were going to do that. Now 
we do not have that understanding. It is a violation, certainly, of the 
understanding that we have had on both sides.
  So I am very disappointed, frankly, that the majority has seen fit to 
file cloture motions prior to the time we even have any appreciation as 
to whether or not there are objections to the bills themselves or even 
going to the bills. There are none, to my knowledge.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I would like to say as one who has been 
actively involved in trying to move these negotiations along this week 
and feeling we made great progress and actually came to conclusion on a 
unanimous vote on a lobby reform bill--I wonder how many people would 
have thought that was possible 1 week ago. We did it.
  We are now working feverishly to try to come to a reasonable 
agreement on the gift rule issue. There is no intent to not keep 
commitments, and the fact is to keep them. We would like to continue to 
do it in a low-key, reasonable and bipartisan way. We are going to do 
that.
  The leader has every intention of us doing what we said we would do 
on gifts. He has kept his commitment to bring up both of them. We are 
working. I think what he is hoping for is that those of us who are 
involved would get to a point and say, ``Yes, we are ready to go 
back.'' Both sides right now would say we are not quite there.
  Having said that, also with regard to the cloture motion, while you 
might say in the classic sense we have not had any filibusters this 
year, in fact every bill we have had up this year, with maybe one or 
two exceptions, has been very lengthy with hundreds of amendments. I 
really wonder sometimes how the Senate looks when we have 127 
amendments pending on a bill. What happened to the committee process 
around here?
  Mr. DASCHLE. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. LOTT. Without getting into a further argument on that, if we do 
not file a cloture motion now, then we would not be able to get a vote 
on that by Friday. If we are going to be able to complete very vital 
legislation before we leave for the August recess period, we have to 
complete the gift issue, hopefully we could complete regulatory reform, 
we have State Department authorization.
  You would think we would all like to get to conclusion on State 
Department authorization. We have the foreign aid authorization bill 
pending, the DOD authorization bill pending, DOD appropriations and 
welfare reform, all of which we would like to get done. If we are going 
to get them done, we cannot spend a week each on every bill. I will be 
glad to yield.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Just for a clarification. I am interested in knowing if 
the cloture motions are on the bill or the motion to proceed, and if 
they are on the motion to proceed, can the distinguished Senator from 
Mississippi inform us on the number of filibusters on motions to 
proceed to bills so far this year?
  Mr. LOTT. They are both on the motion to proceed and in anticipation 
of likely resistance to proceed. Maybe it will not occur, but that 
possibility does exist and there had been some indications that might 
happen. Maybe it will not be necessary.
  Let me say this, too. We always have the option--if we work out 
agreements, if we are making progress--we can vitiate these. But if we 
wait until Friday and we do have a filibuster on a motion to proceed 
and we are not making progress, it is too late then to file a cloture 
motion, and then we are over to Saturday or next Monday or next 
Tuesday.
  I understand how the minority leader feels about this, and I know 
sometimes that filing cloture motions make it more difficult for us to 
sort of get together. But you must also understand, as the majority 
leader did in the previous Congresses, you have to try to find a way to 
move things along.
  It is not easy. It is very hard. I had no appreciation whatsoever of 
what the majority leader is up against in the Senate, when Senator 
Mitchell was the majority leader. Now I have had a chance, being a 
little closer as the whip, to see what the majority leader goes through 
of either party, and it is a very tough job with the rules we have in 
the Senate.
  This is not intended to slight anybody. It is not intended to make 
anybody mad. It is intended to try to have an opportunity to move the 
process along, and I hope that it will be taken in that spirit. The 
last time a cloture 

[[Page S10710]]
motion was filed, I think it was vitiated. We did not go through with 
it. But we have to have that option, as we move this legislative 
process through.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I will be very brief. Let me just say, I 
appreciate the answers given by the distinguished Senator from 
Mississippi.
  He did not answer my question as to the number of votes cast, or I 
should say the number of cloture votes taken, or the number of 
filibusters actually endured as we consider the motion to proceed. If I 
recall, there is not one.
  Last year and the year before, there were many occasions when the 
majority leader was compelled to file a cloture petition because there 
was a filibuster on the motion to proceed.
  I will simply restate for clarification, we had an agreement. The 
agreement was we go back to gifts when this legislation is finished. We 
are in violation of that agreement, No. 1. No. 2, I think it sends the 
wrong message about the desire of the majority to work with us in 
trying to accommodate an agenda. We were only given this a couple of 
minutes ago.
  I am surprised and disappointed. We will work through it and we will 
certainly do our best to accommodate the schedule. We also would like 
to see a completion of a lot of these items. I think we can do so 
without throwing cloture petitions down prior to the time we even have 
some consultation as to whether it is necessary.
  I thank the Senator. I yield the floor.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, just one further response, and I think we 
can move this issue along. One of the reasons we perhaps have not 
already finished the gift rule issue is that the majority leader wanted 
to accommodate the President on the Bosnian resolution question.
  He deferred action from last week over to this week by agreement on 
both sides, and in an effort to accommodate the President and allow 
more time to pass so that maybe something different would change in 
Bosnia, or with regard to the situation in the United Nations. That is 
why we went back to Bosnia. Everybody understood that. We were not 
quite ready anyway on gift.
  Plus, I might note, I do not believe there was any agreement that we 
would go to Ryan White before we went back to gift. We went to the Ryan 
White bill because there was agreement that we could take it up and 
hopefully complete it, and in the meantime we could continue to work on 
the gift rule.
  We already have not done exactly what maybe was intended, but for 
good reason. We went to the Bosnia resolution because we did not 
complete it by agreement last week. We went to Ryan White because we 
were ready to go, and then we can keep working on the gift bill.
  We will continue to work with the distinguished Democratic leader, 
and hopefully be able to finish all of these bills that we have 
scheduled before the week is out, and at a reasonable hour on Friday, 
also.

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