[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 88 (Monday, June 21, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7310-S7312]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    FOREIGN RELATIONS AUTHORIZATION ACT, FISCAL YEARS 2000 AND 2001

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the State Department 
bill.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:.

       A bill (S. 886) to authorize appropriations for the 
     Department of State for fiscal years 2000 and 2001; to 
     provide for enhanced security at United States diplomatic 
     facilities; to provide for certain arms control, 
     nonproliferation, and other national security measures; to 
     provide for reform of the United Nations; and for other 
     purposes.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
  Pending:

       Sarbanes amendment No. 689, to revise the deadlines with 
     respect to the retention of records of disciplinary actions 
     and the filing of grievances within the Foreign Service.


                      Unanimous Consent Agreement

  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that following the 
modification of the pending Sarbanes amendment, the Senate proceed to a 
vote on the amendment at 5:30 this evening.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, I believe we will be waiting for the 
managers of the State Department authorization bill to come back to the 
floor. We had a time agreement on the State Department authorization, 
and we had hoped to complete that bill last Friday, but for a variety 
of reasons we weren't able to do so. We did get a list of amendments. I 
believe we have some pretty tight time agreements on those amendments.
  We need to move forward with getting to a conclusion early this week 
on final passage of the State Department authorization. That will be 
helpful in dealing with other issues pending before the Foreign 
Relations Committee, including possibly some nominations that have been 
pending there, because of the very serious nature and the need to get 
the State Department reauthorization done. So we will go back to that 
and the managers will be coming to the floor shortly, I am sure, and 
then we will have a vote, as agreed to, at 5:30 this afternoon on the 
pending Sarbanes amendment. With that, I am glad to yield to the 
Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, it is my understanding, therefore, with 
the majority leader's action, we have effectively moved off discussion 
of the Patients' Bill of Rights, which we had before us for a very 
brief period of time this afternoon, and that is the result of the 
majority leader's action.
  Mr. LOTT. That is correct, but it is temporary. We basically now are 
dealing with three different issues--the

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State Department authorization, which began last Friday, the 
agriculture appropriations bill, and the managers of that 
appropriations bill were able to get, I believe, a couple hours of time 
on that, and now the Patients' Bill of Rights issue. We will go back to 
the State Department authorization and, hopefully, we can complete 
that, and then all of the interested Senators who would like to be 
heard in a reasonable period of time on the Patients' Bill of Rights, 
we will work that out for tomorrow. Senators Nickles, Collins, Frist, 
Santorum, and others will probably want to be heard on that, and I know 
a number of Senators on your side. We want to work with Senator Kennedy 
and Senator Daschle to see how we set that up.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Well, I thank the leader. He is giving the assurance 
that there is a possibility, hopefully, or an inevitability, that we 
will consider this legislation. There ought to be negotiations between 
the leaders. But would it be fair to say that it is the intention of 
the leadership at this time that we would have an opportunity to debate 
the Republican proposal and the Democratic proposal on the Patients' 
Bill of Rights?
  Mr. LOTT. I intend to do that, but I have to say, within reason. That 
would be in the eye of the beholder. I know there are Senators on both 
sides of the aisle who want to speak about this issue and want to talk 
about the alternative proposals. We will line up a time to do that. I 
can't say right now, without talking to the managers of the two other 
bills and with Senator Daschle, exactly when that will be or how long 
it will be. We will work that out this afternoon or tomorrow morning.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Senator for at least the assurance that some 
progress will be made. There is at least a very strong sense among many 
of those most concerned about this legislation that this is a priority 
for families in this country, and that we have dealt with other 
legislation, such as the juvenile justice bill. We worked that process 
through without limitations and restrictions, in a responsible way. It 
is certainly the intention of Senator Daschle, and others who are 
cosponsoring this legislation, to do it in a likewise manner. There is 
the determination that we will have an opportunity to do so, and we 
will do that. We want to be able to work that out. I know the leader 
does. I know that is the way it should be worked out. I am hopeful we 
will have an opportunity to address this in the Senate.

  Mr. LOTT. Regarding the juvenile justice bill, you will recall I made 
a commitment we would bring that up and debate and amendments would not 
be shut off. But it was with some assurances that we would finish it by 
Thursday night of the week it came up--I think on Monday. As a matter 
of fact, it was the following week before we were able to finish it. 
That is why I think we need to get some clear understanding of exactly 
what time would be involved and when the votes would occur. I will make 
sure we get that clarified before we go forward.
  Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. LOTT. Yes.
  Mr. DORGAN. I wanted to ask a question about the characterization 
that the Senator made with respect to the action that was taken to send 
the amendment to the desk. It is not an amendment of the agricultural 
interests here. I know the offering of the amendment--I sent the 
amendment at the request of Senator Daschle. I know that was not a 
surprise. Senator Daschle announced last Thursday it was going to 
happen if there was not some sort of understanding reached with the 
majority leader.
  I wanted to say this. The underlying bill is very important, the 
agriculture appropriations bill. It does not, however, contain the 
emergency response to the farm crisis that we must add to it at some 
point here. I hope we will do it in a bipartisan way. But the interest 
that Senator Daschle has in trying to move forward with debate on the 
Patients' Bill of Rights doesn't in any way diminish the interest and 
importance of the agriculture appropriations bill.
  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, if I may respond. Frankly, I was surprised 
that this Patients' Bill of Rights amendment was offered to this bill. 
All that had been indicated was that it would be offered this week if 
some agreement was not worked out.
  First of all, I want to make it clear that I am willing and very 
anxious to make a reasonable agreement. No. 2, this is not the only 
bill that was going to be up this week. There would have been--or there 
will be other opportunities. That is what surprised me, the fact that 
the agriculture appropriations bill was the bill to which the Patients' 
Bill of Rights issue was added. That was a surprise because I thought 
there would be a real strong feeling that we should move forward on the 
agriculture appropriations bill without it being delayed or deferred or 
impacted by other issues. That does not diminish at all the importance 
of patients' rights, but I thought there would have been another bill 
or another way that it could have been offered. So I, frankly, was 
surprised--I am not saying it was sort of a surprise attack; I don't 
mean that at all. I am just surprised the decision was made to offer it 
to the agriculture appropriations bill when we could have offered it or 
it could have been offered by others on other bills this week.
  Mr. DORGAN. One additional question. I will not belabor the point, 
except I was with Senator Daschle, along with my colleagues, last 
Thursday. He made it clear to everybody here in the Capitol what his 
intention was for this week. There would not have been a need to submit 
this amendment today on any bill had there been an agreement last week.
  But let me also say when we get to the agriculture appropriations 
bill, at some point there is going to be lengthy debate about the 
emergency response that we need to do with respect to this farm crisis.
  Let me finally make this point. We will, I assume, at some point have 
a full debate on the Patients' Bill of Rights. It will be a debate with 
amendments offered by both sides--not amendments cleared by anyone, not 
amendments in which someone is being a gatekeeper and which people have 
an opportunity to say here is how we feel about this issue. That is 
going to happen sooner or later.

  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, if I could reclaim my time, I am glad to 
try to enter an agreement as to how this issue would be handled. We are 
ready to go. But the comment about gatekeeper--we have a lot of 
important work to do here. Agriculture, obviously, is a very important 
issue, and State Department authorization is very important, and 
intelligence authorization is very important. We have appropriations 
bills we need to move through. We have a limited amount of time in 
which to do that. We have this week and next week before the Fourth of 
July recess. Therefore, there must be some reasonable understanding, 
some reasonable agreement about how much time or what amendments will 
be offered. We do that all the time. Every Senator knows we enter into 
agreements to limit amendments or limit time. If we can get that worked 
out, then we will go forward. The alternative is that we can have 
debate on this tomorrow, and we can have a couple of votes and sort of 
see where we are and then decide how to proceed after that.
  But I believe we have broad support outside of this Chamber and in 
the Senate for the alternative that we have. Great work has been done 
by Dr. Frist and Senator Collins and Senator Jeffords, a broad group 
within our conference working with Senators from all regions of the 
country who understand this problem. We are ready to do it. As soon as 
you can decide you are ready to have a vote on the merits of the two 
packages pending, with a reasonable number of amendments, we will do 
that.
  We are going to have to get some order as to how that is done, and we 
will do that or we will just vote on the packages as they are and let 
that happen. I think we can keep wrangling back and forth. I invite 
others to join in the opportunity to discuss exactly the substance of 
the two bills and also how we will handle them.
  I see the chairman is here, and Senator Specter from Pennsylvania is 
here, and others. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.

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