[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 39 (Monday, April 7, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2761-S2762]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, it is a pleasure to be back on this spring 
day and to hear the Chaplain's prayer and to see the distinguished 
Senator from South Carolina here ready for business. I know we are 
going to have a productive season as we go into April and May.
  This afternoon there will be a period for morning business until the 
hour of 1 p.m. Following morning business, the Senate will resume 
consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 104, the Nuclear Policy 
Act.
  As I announced prior to the recess, no rollcall votes will occur 
during today's session of the Senate. Under the order, a cloture vote 
on the motion to proceed to S. 104 will occur on Tuesday.
  I had planned to ask unanimous consent that the vote on the motion to 
invoke cloture occur at 5:15 on Tuesday, with the time between 2:15 and 
5:15 to be equally divided between the proponents and opponents. I 
understand that the Democratic leader may have a little bit of a 
conflict, where we may try to move that toward 5:30, although we have 
other Senators who have conflicts at that time. So we will get a 
definite unanimous consent request here shortly. The vote will be 
sometime between 5 and 5:30, I presume, and I believe we can get that 
worked out just as long as we have a minute more to confer with our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
  All Members should be aware that the next rollcall vote will occur, 
then, on tomorrow at either 5:15 or 5:30, something like that. It is my 
hope the Senate will invoke cloture tomorrow, which will enable us to 
begin consideration of this very important legislation, which is the 
nuclear waste legislation. I think there is no more important 
environmental issue pending in America than to make the decision of 
what we are going to do with nuclear waste that is sitting in sites 
across this country, from South Carolina to Vermont, from the banks of 
the Mississippi to the shores of the Pacific. We cannot ignore this. We 
cannot wait another 15 years for studies to be completed. We have spent 
billions of dollars. We have been working on this for years. It is time 
for action.
  The Senate voted by a wide margin last year to make a decision on 
this issue, to pass this nuclear waste repository legislation. The 
House did not act. I have been assured this year the House will act, 
this matter will go to the President, and we hope that it will go to 
him in such a way that he recognizes that Senators and Congressmen and 
the American people all across this country feel that this decision 
must be made.
  So, I am looking forward to our beginning the debate. If cloture is 
invoked, Senators can anticipate debate and rollcall votes during every 
day of the session this week so we may complete action on S. 104 as 
soon as possible. I remind my colleagues that this

[[Page S2762]]

will be a busy period legislatively prior to the Memorial Day recess.
  I think all Senators should be aware that bills are beginning to be 
reported out of committees. We have had 3 months to have the hearings 
to mark up legislation. We have a number of bills that have now been 
reported, including the TEAM Act and the Comptime and Flextime Act, 
which can be very helpful to families and working mothers who need time 
to be with their children. That legislation is ready. Sometime late 
this month or early next month we will, as I have said, have a vote on 
the partial-birth abortion ban legislation. So we are beginning now to 
enter a period where we will have a lot of legislation.

  Obviously, we need to have a vote on the budget. I had hoped we could 
come to a grand agreement that would be in the best interests of all 
Americans with the President. So far, that has been fruitless. I have 
committed basically 3 months, along with the chairman of the Budget 
Committee, the time and the meetings, to try to see that something 
happened in this budget area, but we have not been successful with 
that. I had asked the President not to oppose the balanced budget 
constitutional amendment. He did. In fact, he and the leadership on the 
other side of the aisle twisted arms, and two Senators switched their 
positions, and we lost that by one vote. But every Republican and 11 
Democrats had the courage of their convictions and voted for it.
  Then I asked the President and his people to send us a real budget, a 
budget that showed courage, showed leadership, that would have some 
restraints in the entitlements area, that would preserve and protect 
Medicare, that would give some tax relief to working Americans, that 
would have some restraint and controls on the rate of increase on 
nondefense discretionary spending and would do what needs to be done in 
the defense area; show some leadership. They did not. They sent a 
political document.
  Since that time, we have tried to encourage some movement with the 
suggestion that we have a commission to decide on the accurate, honest 
number of the Consumer Price Index. The President indicated 
preliminarily he thought maybe we could get a commission on that. To 
his credit, the Democratic leader indicated he thought that was a move 
in the right direction. But then they backed away from it. Other 
suggestions have been made by the Republican leadership, but there has 
been no reciprocation, no action.
  The President needs to lead in this area. If he does not, we are 
moving on. We are moving on. We have to do this budget. We will do a 
budget in the Senate in the next few days. I think we have to get 
action in the Budget Committee here in the next couple of weeks. We 
have to get some decision made so the Appropriations Committee can 
begin to move forward. We hope it will be a bipartisan agreement. We 
would like to have the President's help, but the time is over for 
waiting. We must move forward. I will be talking later today to the 
chairman of the Budget Committee and interested Republicans and 
Democrats to see how we can proceed. We still would like to have the 
President's involvement and help, but he does not seem, so far, to be 
ready to do that.
  Our staffs were meeting during the past 2 weeks. They were supposed 
to be making progress. From what I understand, they had a grand time 
meeting and saying how wonderful it was they were meeting--but that is 
about all. It was my understanding, from what the President said, that 
he would meet with the leadership of Congress when we returned from the 
Easter recess period to discuss, hopefully, the final decisions on the 
budget--this week. But I understand now, that meeting is not going to 
occur this week. It is next week. Yet, as we wait for leadership from 
the White House, we see some people saying, why doesn't the Congress 
act? We have been trying to confirm the President's Cabinet. We have 
been trying to work with the administration and to work off of his 
budget agreement so we could move to a final agreement. It has taken 
time. But that time is gone. We have to go ahead and do our job. And it 
will be our intent to do so.
  So, I thank all Senators in advance for their cooperation as we begin 
what I hope will be a productive couple of months. We have a lot of 
good legislation we can take up, we will take up, and I think when we 
go out for the Memorial Day period we will have several bills that we 
can point to with pride that we have voted on.

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