[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 27, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1339-S1340]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1996--CONFERENCE REPORT

  The Senate continued with consideration of the bill.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion to invoke 
cloture.
  The assistant 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 the conference 
     report to accompany H.R. 2546, the D.C. appropriations bill.
     Bob Dole, James M. Jeffords, Richard G. Lugar, Conrad Burns, 
     Strom Thurmond, Slade Gorton, Chuck Grassley, R.F. Bennett, 
     Kit Bond, Nancy Kassebaum, Mark Hatfield, Arlen Specter, 
     Mitch McConnell, Ted Stevens, Connie Mack, and Pete V. 
     Domenici.


                                  Vote

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate 
that debate be brought to a close? The yeas and nays are ordered under 
rule XXII.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Indiana [Mr. Lugar] is 
necessarily absent.
  Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey [Mr. Bradley] 
is necessarily absent.
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 54, nays 44, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 20 Leg.]

                                YEAS--54

     Abraham
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Bond
     Breaux
     Brown
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     DeWine
     Dole
     Domenici
     Faircloth
     Frist
     Gorton
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Helms
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kyl
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Pressler
     Roth
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner

                                NAYS--44

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Chafee
     Conrad
     Daschle
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Glenn
     Graham
     Harkin
     Heflin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Nunn
     Pell
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Simon
     Specter
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--2

       Bradley
     Lugar
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 54, the nays are 
44. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted 
in the affirmative, the motion to invoke cloture is not agreed to.
  The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. LOTT. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, may we have order, please.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I understand the will of the Senate. The 
Senate has spoken. They did not desire to pass the bill in its present 
form. I want to make all of my colleagues aware of the serious 
situation that we are facing with respect to our Capital City, a city 
for which we have taken responsibility.
  As I mentioned earlier to my colleagues, we have been for some 90 
days or more trying to reach a resolution of this problem. We have two 
areas of different concerns. One is the fiscal health of the city. That 
is in a precarious position right now. I want to make sure all of my 
colleagues are aware of that. If we do not pass an appropriations bill 
for the city of Washington in the next few days, they will be 
essentially bankrupt. That bankruptcy will be on our heads because we 
have not passed the appropriations bill, which was scheduled to be 
passed by October 1 of last year. I want to assure my colleagues that I 
am going to take every legislative opportunity to make sure that the 
city receives the remaining $254 million in Federal funds that were 
contained in the conference agreement as soon as it is possible.
  At the same time, I also believe that it is imperative that we 
maintain as much of the school reform that is contained in this 
conference report as we can. I will be immediately reaching out to the 
House Members to see what we can agree to and also be talking, probably 
more importantly, to the other side of the aisle here who have seen 
that it was important to them to prevent the passage of this bill at 
this time in the form that it is in. I want to make sure that we do 
what we can to help the kids here in Washington.
  By encouraging individual assessments in the other matters in this 
bill, which I will go through again briefly, we provide a way of 
helping both students and teachers make sure that no child falls 
through the cracks. We have a responsibility to see that that happens. 
We have thousands of young people in this city, because of the problems 
we have with the school system, that are in danger of either dropping 
out or graduating--if they do graduate--in a situation where they will 
not be ready to enter the work force. We must do all we can to make 
sure that we take care of these kids.
  We should also insist upon the independent charter schools as a way 
of providing competition, which certainly a majority of this body 
believes is necessary, for the public schools and to give them an 
incentive to change. This approach provides the chance to improve the 
education of all D.C. students.
  The requirement of a long-term plan and the Consensus Commission to 
ensure its implementation would, for the first time, bring rational 
criteria to the District's educational policy and goals. The criteria 
will give the community a measure for the success of these and other 
initiatives.
  Greater coordination and cooperation between business and educators 
is essential as provided for in our conference agreement. We will bring 
forth more technology with resources to the public school classrooms. 
This is imperative if we are to prepare our students for competition in 
the workplace for the next century.
  Mr. President, I will discuss with the distinguished chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee our next move, but I want to, again, ensure 
you I will do everything I can to make sure we pass it in a timely 
manner and we do provide what is necessary to make sure that the young 
people of this city have every opportunity--and we have accepted that 
responsibility--to be able to enter life with an education that they 
deserve and they need. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. DOLE. I say to the distinguished Senator from Vermont that we 
might file cloture again today and have another cloture vote on 
Thursday to indicate we are serious and we would like to get the bill 
passed. So we will discuss that.
  Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I just wanted to respond very briefly to 
the comments of the Senator from Vermont. I think all of us who 
followed the conference closely understood that it was the sense really 
of not only Democrats but also Republicans in that conference that it 
would be extremely unwise to add these three conditions onto the 
appropriations conference report. It was ultimately, after a number of 
weeks of discussion and meetings, the insistence of the House that they 
move ahead and add those various provisions which have been effectively 
rejected here this afternoon. 

[[Page S1340]]

  I think it has been very clearly stated that if this legislation was 
free from those three additional kinds of riders that really are not 
directly germane to the appropriations bill, that the legislation and 
the funding would go ahead on a voice vote.
  So I am hopeful that we will be able to address a clean bill. After 
what I think is a very decisive vote in the Senate, it ought to be a 
very clear message about what the impediments are toward reaching a 
final, positive conclusion. If it is the desire of the leadership in 
the House and the Senate to really respond to the very critical needs 
of the District, which have been outlined in great detail by the 
Senator from Vermont, we would take the opportunity to remove those 
various provisions and see this appropriations bill move ahead.
  Clearly, if that is not the case, we will have a responsibility--and 
I will join with the Senator from Vermont; I know I speak with Senator 
Coats, Senator Murray, and others who spoke and voted against the 
cloture motion--to make sure that we move this appropriation along with 
the other unfinished business and the other appropriations as well.
  That is our commitment, and it has always been our commitment, in 
expressing our reservations about the policy decisions. It remains our 
commitment.
  We look forward to working with the chairman of the committee, the 
Senator from Vermont, in ways that can be helpful to him and, most 
important, be helpful to the citizens of the District of Columbia.

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