[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 33 (Wednesday, March 22, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1553-S1554]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           BANKRUPTCY REFORM

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I will propound a unanimous consent request. 
I have notified the Democratic leader that I intended to do that. I see 
there are Senators on the floor who will probably have some comments to 
make. But before I propound that request, let me outline what I would 
like to do and what has transpired.
  Senators will recall that last year there was a major effort made to 
pass through the Senate bankruptcy reform legislation. That has been a 
bipartisan effort. The Judiciary Committee has done excellent work. 
Chairman Hatch has been cooperative. Senator Grassley has been 
magnificent in working with both sides of the aisle. Democratic 
Senators had input.
  After some starts and stops, we made real progress, but it did get 
held up at the end of the session. We did not get it completed.
  When we came back in at the beginning of the year, we decided the 
best thing to do was to move forward and have some votes on amendments 
that were controversial on both sides, but we faced those votes. We got 
our work done, and we passed bankruptcy reform--basically, a good bill. 
The House also has acted in this area.
  We need to go forward and get bankruptcy reform legislation into 
conference and completed so we can improve this area in the law, so the 
law will be clearer for all those interested, and so we can send it to 
the President for his signature.
  In the process of the debate, and the amendments on this legislation, 
amendments were offered with regard to the minimum wage. In fact, a 
minimum wage increase was passed and attached to the bankruptcy reform 
legislation. Senator Kennedy offered the first amendment. That was 
defeated. Then an alternative amendment was offered by Senator Domenici 
and others, and it did include small business tax relief to offset the 
impact of a minimum wage increase. That was adopted. It became a part 
of the bill.
  The problem in going forward is, because of the minimum wage and tax 
provisions that were attached to the bill, it could be subject to, and 
would be subject to, the so-called blue slip rules in the House. It 
could be objected to, in effect, because it has the minimum wage and 
the revenue measures as a part of it.
  So we had not gone forward to try to send this to the House because 
of the potential blue slip problem and also to wait to see if the House 
was going to go forward and act on minimum wage and the tax relief 
package. In fact, a couple weeks ago, I believe it was, they did do 
that. Now it is time we go to conference.
  What I propose to do, even though I will do it in the Senate rules 
parlance--what it really says is split the two; send the Senate-passed 
bankruptcy bill to conference with the House-passed bill, have a 
conference,

[[Page S1554]]

and they act on it, and then to separate out the minimum wage and the 
tax provisions and send them to conference with the House on minimum 
wage and the tax provisions.
  I think that is the way to do all three of the issues. It is a fair 
way to proceed. It is a simple way to proceed. It gets rid of the blue 
slip problem, and then we can count on the conference to act on both 
bankruptcy and the minimum wage increase and the small business tax 
provisions.
  I just wanted to explain what was involved before I ask for unanimous 
consent. But I am prepared to do that.
  I ask Senator Daschle, do you want to comment before I propound that 
request or would the Senator like to do it after I do the request?
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I appreciate the majority leader's effort 
to try to move this legislation along. This bill, the bankruptcy bill, 
passed the Senate with more than 80 votes. Whether or not we get 
unanimous consent is not relevant. What is relevant is that we get 
these two pieces of legislation successfully completed in a timely 
manner. If we are not able to get unanimous consent, I intend to 
support finding a way to assure that we do go to conference both on the 
bankruptcy bill and the minimum wage.
  I am hopeful we can instruct the conferees with regard to minimum 
wage. It would be my hope, at least, that the Senate could express 
itself in regard to the issue on minimum wage prior to the time we go 
to conference. But if we could accommodate that request, that we have 
at least an opportunity to express ourselves on the conference itself, 
then I would certainly be supportive of moving on a motion to proceed 
to two conferences--one on bankruptcy and one on minimum wage.
  The distinguished Senator from Vermont, and others, Senator 
Torricelli, Senator Durbin, and others, have done an extraordinary job 
in getting us to this point.
  We have a much better bill, a stronger bill, in the Senate on 
bankruptcy than we do in the House. I hope we can take what we have 
been able to accomplish in the Senate and bring our House colleagues to 
the realization that that is the kind of legislation that will be 
signed into law.
  On the minimum wage, the House version, at least in terms of the 2-
year approach, is the one the President said he will support. It enjoys 
strong support in the Senate as well. We are concerned about the size 
and magnitude of the tax provisions. If we could target those, we would 
be in good shape on that as well.
  I understand the majority leader's interest in moving this. We want 
to be supportive in that regard; most of us do. I am hopeful we can 
accomplish it through a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. LEAHY. Will the distinguished Senator yield?
  Mr. LOTT. I am glad to yield to Senator Leahy.
  Mr. LEAHY. I agree with what the distinguished Democratic leader 
said. I would like to see us move forward. The bill we put together 
passed 83-14. The distinguished leader is right; it was in excess of 80 
votes. There was a tremendous amount of work on both sides of the 
aisle. Senator Hatch, Senator Grassley, Senator Torricelli, and I were 
the four floor leaders on this, working with others--Senator Reid, 
Senator Daschle--to get people to take away hundreds of amendments. We 
got rid of those, and we got down to several on which we voted and 
passed in a good package. I would advise the two leaders, I have been 
working with Senator Torricelli, Senator Hatch, Senator Grassley, and 
Senator Sessions to try to whittle it down even further, but to have a 
packet, one that could be acceptable on both sides of the aisle and 
also could get signed down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
  Mr. LOTT. If the Senator will yield on that point.
  Mr. LEAHY. Yes.
  Mr. LOTT. I have been keeping in touch with the informal discussions 
that have been going forward.
  Mr. LEAHY. I know the majority leader has.
  Mr. LOTT. I have the impression that the Senate potential conferees, 
Democrat and Republican, have come up with a good proposal and are 
ready to go forward with serious negotiations that I hope could be 
completed relatively quickly.
  Mr. LEAHY. I hope we will find a way to go through this. I realize we 
have issues of the minimum wage and others. We ought to vote them up, 
vote them down, whatever is necessary. I advise both leaders, I think 
we have put together a good, bipartisan, compromise package that could 
be the basis of final conference action and, if it were, would be 
signed by the White House.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I may just comment one second more before 
I propound the UC request, with regard to Senator Daschle's comments, 
we do have a good, strong, bipartisan bankruptcy bill that we have 
passed. We also did have a debate and discussion on the minimum wage 
issue and the tax provisions. I didn't choose the debate and the 
amendments to occur on this bill, but I knew it was going to come up 
and it should come up at some point. So it was offered to the 
bankruptcy bill. We had a good debate. We had a vote.
  The interesting thing about the minimum wage, I think the parameters 
are pretty clear. We have the Senate-passed version, the $1 increase 
over 3 years, and the House version, that increase over a shorter 
period of time, only maybe a year or so. Then in the Senate provision, 
we have some small business tax offsets, a relatively small package. 
The House has a bigger package on the tax offsets. I think the 
parameters of the discussion on minimum wage are all represented in the 
two bills that have been passed. We can get conferees from the 
appropriate committees, and they can look at the minimum wage increase, 
and over what period of time, and the small business tax offsets or 
other tax provisions, and have a good conference and be able to get a 
result. I hope we can do that without delay.

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