[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 26 (Thursday, March 1, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Page S1729]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  UNANIMOUS CONSENT AGREEMENT--S. 420

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I am very pleased to see the Presiding 
Officer in the chair this morning. I ask unanimous consent that at 1 
p.m. on Monday, March 5, the Senate begin consideration of an original 
bill reported out of the Judiciary Committee yesterday, S. 420, 
regarding bankruptcy reform. I further ask unanimous consent that 
consideration on Monday be for debate only, to be equally divided in 
the usual form.
  Mr. REID. Reserving the right to object, I am wondering if the leader 
would consider changing the 1 p.m. time to 1:30 or 2.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I see no problem with that. I amend my 
request to indicate that we would begin at 2 p.m. on Monday, March 5 
instead of 1 p.m.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Reserving the right to object, and I shall not, I 
first thank Senator Reid and the majority leader for their good-faith 
discussion. I say to the majority leader, it is my understanding--and 
it is his word, which, to me, is enough--that the agreement we have, 
which is fine with me now, is that we will get started early next week, 
Monday afternoon, and that the majority leader is absolutely committed 
and intends for their to be full debate; Senators can bring substantive 
amendments out, and we will have a debate. That is what this agreement 
is about. We will move forward and we will have plenty of opportunity 
for important debate on this piece of legislation.
  Am I correct that we will have the right to introduce amendments and 
have votes?
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, absolutely. I know the Senator from 
Minnesota has more than one amendment he would want to have debated and 
considered and voted on. I presume there will be other Senators who may 
have amendments they would like to offer. I hope we can set reasonable 
time agreements so that at some point we will get a vote on the 
amendments and that we will move through the amendments and not have 
just one or two amendments tie up a day or days. Certainly, I believe 
both sides will act in good faith and will be reasonable, and we want a 
full debate and votes. We intend to proceed in that way.

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I do not object. I thank the majority 
leader.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that all 
sponsors of S. 220 be considered as cosponsors on S. 420.
  Mr. REID. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, next week we 
are going to get into some heavy lifting. This is a very important 
bill. There are a lot of amendments. For those in the press and others 
who have been wondering why we haven't been doing things, it is 
difficult early in the session to get to substantive matters. This is 
going to be some real substantive legislation. My friend from Minnesota 
has indicated he has a number of amendments to offer and others do. I 
look forward to some long days and a lot of good work next week on this 
bill.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, let me respond in this way: At the beginning 
of a new session, particularly with a new administration, you do have 
to have time to get amendments or bills produced. They have to work 
through committees. The committees have to get organized before they 
can begin reporting bills, plus a lot of time is spent on 
confirmations. I am glad we are ready now, though, to go to serious 
legislation.
  Our colleagues should be on notice that the days probably will be 
long next week, and we will be having votes throughout the day Tuesday, 
Wednesday, Thursday, possibly even Friday. I can't project right now 
what will be required in that area. We may need to even go late in 
order to give Senators time to make their case on amendments and have 
votes. It is time to do that. I appreciate the help we have had in 
getting this bill ready for the floor.
  Mr. REID. Mr. Leader, I am wondering if I could also ask--we have had 
a number of inquiries from Democratic Senators--what is the rest of the 
day going to be like?
  Mr. LOTT. Let me respond to that, Mr. President, in that I know we 
have some requests from Senators who would like to make remarks. We are 
still looking to see if there are additional nominations that might be 
cleared either by voice vote or recorded votes. We should have a fix on 
that within the next couple hours. We will announce that. It is not 
expected that we would have votes into the night or tomorrow. Whatever 
we are going to do, we will do within a reasonable hour today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Under the previous order, the time until 12:30 p.m. shall be under 
the control of the Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I am not using that full 30 minutes, 
so if anyone else wishes the floor, they should come down at this time.

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