Congressional Record, Volume 147 Issue 173 (Thursday, December 13, 2001)

[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 173 (Thursday, December 13, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13138-S13140]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

AGRICULTURE, CONSERVATION, AND RURAL ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2001--Continued

Amendment No. 2598

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, what is the business before the Senate
at this time?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The business before the Senate is the McCain
amendment to the substitute.
Mr. HARKIN. The McCain amendment to the substitute is the pending
business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The McCain amendment to the underlying bill.
Mr. HARKIN. We would like to debate it. I ask if anyone knows where
Senator McCain is; we would like to debate the amendment. He is not
here, so we cannot debate the amendment.
What I would like to do--I wonder if I can work with the ranking
member to see if we can make some progress on this bill tonight. I
would like to ask consent to withdraw the McCain amendment, with the
understanding that tomorrow morning when we come in, the McCain
amendment will be put in order on the substitute after we debate the
Wellstone amendment and lay it aside tomorrow. We will not dispose of
it until we come back next week.
I am saying that we take the McCain amendment off tonight so we can
deal with other things, with the understanding or with the agreement,
with the consent that tomorrow morning the first thing we will turn to
is the Wellstone amendment, as I understand; when the debate is
finished on the Wellstone amendment, Senator McCain be recognized to
offer his amendment on the substitute, and it can debated.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. LUGAR. Reserving the right to object, I just wish to respond to
my colleague.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
Mr. LUGAR. Madam President, I think he is outlining a reasonable
course of activity. As I understand the Senator's proposal, Senator
Wellstone would debate his amendment; others would debate the
amendment. As we know, a rollcall vote will not be in order, given the
unanimous consent agreement, until Tuesday. Therefore, after that
debate, this will be laid aside, and then Senator McCain will be
recognized so we can proceed then, as the Senator from Iowa has
suggested, to amend the--whichever--the underlying amendment at that
point; is that what the Senator said? In any event, whatever appears to
be in order so he is able then to complete the debate on his amendment.
Mr. HARKIN. Maybe I should inquire of the President, what is the
order right now?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The McCain amendment.
Mr. HARKIN. Further inquiry, Madam President. Is there a consent
agreement now in order which lines up some other amendments?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. No, there is not.
Mr. HARKIN. There is not. May I further inquire, where is the Smith
amendment and the Torricelli second-degree amendment thereto in the
order of things right now?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Those are pending to the substitute.
Mr. HARKIN. If they are pending to the substitute, then the Wellstone
amendment will be to the substitute, and so we will have to lay aside
the Smith and Torricelli amendments tomorrow morning in order to go to
Wellstone.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct, as well as laying aside the
McCain amendment.
Mr. HARKIN. Well, then, let's see if we both have the same
understanding of this. What we would do tomorrow morning is lay aside
the pending Smith amendment and the Torricelli second-degree amendment
thereto. We would

[[Page S13139]]

then proceed to debate on the Wellstone amendment. When debate is
finished on the Wellstone amendment, we would then go to the McCain
amendment as an amendment to the substitute, at which time after the
McCain amendment is debated, we would then return to the Smith
amendment with the Torricelli second-degree amendment thereto?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Provided that the McCain amendment has been
withdrawn, the Senator is correct, and assuming that the Wellstone
amendment is offered and subsequently the McCain amendment is offered.
Mr. LUGAR. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Jeffords). The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the
quorum call be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the McCain
amendment No. 2598 be withdrawn, and that when the Senate resumes
consideration of the farm bill on Friday, the pending Smith and
Torricelli amendments be laid aside and Senator Wellstone be recognized
to offer an amendment regarding EQIP grants; that following debate in
relation to the Wellstone amendment the amendment be laid aside, and
Senator McCain or his designee be recognized to offer his amendment
regarding catfish, and that following the reporting of the clerk, the
McCain amendment be laid aside; further, that the pending amendments
may be set aside with the concurrence of both managers for the purpose
of offering additional amendments.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, basically the situation is this. We are
open for business again. We could take amendments right now, but I can
see that there are not many people around right now.
I want to point out again that we are on the farm bill. It is
Thursday, December 13. It looks as if we will have another week and a
day here. Probably next Friday we will adjourn.
We have to get this farm bill done. As chairman of the Agriculture
Committee, I believe I have been more than lenient and willing to let
other bills come up--the Education bill next Monday, tonight the
Defense bill--but now it is the hour when we have to focus on the farm
bill, and we have to get it done. So I intend to object to going to
anything else. We will remain on this farm bill.
Obviously, conference reports are privileged, but for my part there
will not be anything else to come before the Senate until we finish the
farm bill. It will take unanimous consent to get off the farm bill and
I, frankly, am serving notice right now that I am not giving consent
for anything that keeps us from finishing the farm bill. If people want
to vote against it and defeat it, that's their business. But at least
let's get to a vote and let people know whether or not we are going to
pass this farm bill or whether the will of the Senate is we do not want
this farm bill. But we ought to have at least a vote this year.
Farm groups all over America have been writing and calling, asking us
when we are going to get this farm bill done. We have done our job in
committee. I point out again and again, every single title of this farm
bill was passed unanimously out of the committee except one, the
commodity title, and that at least had some bipartisan support.
I was fully aware that we would have an amendment on the floor by
Senators Cochran and Roberts that was going to try to change the focus
of the farm bill on the commodity title and some other titles. We have
been wanting to see the Cochran-Roberts amendment. We have been hearing
about it, but they will not bring it up. Where are they? They are not
here. They were not here today, they were not here yesterday, and I
daresay they will not be here tonight. Will they be here tomorrow?
There is some sort of Cochran-Roberts amendment, but they will not
offer it.
It is an unusual way to make legislation unless--unless it is the
desire and the plan to stop this bill from going through this year.
Maybe that is the plan.
We ought to have a finite list of amendments. We ought to know what
amendments may be offered. I don't know what amendments are out there.
I will ask tonight, and I will ask tomorrow, may we have a finite list
of amendments? Is that possible?
Would we be able to finish and go to third reading by Tuesday night?
Would that be possible? Could we do that? Or by Wednesday? Could we be
finished by Wednesday noon? How about Wednesday night? How many
amendments do we need to consider? We can't seem to get anything agreed
to on this.
With all due respect to my friend and my ranking member, Senator
Lugar, I just hope we can reach some kind of finite list of amendments
and get them listed.
I will be asking unanimous consent for that tomorrow. I will not
tonight. But tomorrow I will ask unanimous consent whether by a certain
time tomorrow we may have a finite list of amendments. If that is not
acceptable, I will ask for such a list by Monday. I will see whether we
can ever get to a point where we can have a finite list of amendments.
If not, then it will be apparent that some do not want this bill to
pass this year, for whatever reason.
Again, I am not saying this is necessarily so. But I am saying that
is what it appears to be. We have to move ahead on the bill. Yet here
we sit. We could have amendments tonight. It is not unusual to be in
session Thursday night.
Senator Lugar and I are on the floor. We are willing to work. We are
willing to stay here and listen to debate and have amendments and vote.
However, no one else is here, except the occupant of the chair, of
course.
We just cannot seem to get the cooperation to get this farm bill
moving. I hope tomorrow morning we will have some debate. I want to put
on notice all offices who are watching on television right now that we
will have amendments tomorrow. There will not be any votes tomorrow.
That has already been agreed to. But we will have amendments tomorrow,
and amendments will be debated. Then they will be set aside. We have
tried to stack votes for them on Tuesday. There won't be any votes on
Monday either.
We will have debate tomorrow. We will stack the votes on Tuesday. But
there will be debate on amendments tomorrow.
I say to anyone who has amendments to offer that they should offer
them tomorrow because, again, members ought to know we are going to
vote on cloture again on Tuesday morning. If cloture happens, and they
have not offered their amendments, they may be out of order.
Again, if we don't get cloture on Tuesday, we will vote again on
cloture on Wednesday. If we don't get cloture on Wednesday, we will
vote again on it on Thursday. We will just see whether or not there are
those in this body who want to absolutely stymie and stall and keep us
from voting on a farm bill this year.
I believe I have acted in good faith. We brought the bill out of
committee. We brought it to the floor. It can be amended. I love
debate. I thought we had some good amendments offered. We have had some
good debates so far. I am just hoping we can bring this debate to a
conclusion at some point early next week and get this bill out of the
Senate.
Again, I look around to see if there is anybody to offer any
amendments. It is pretty quiet in here. Evidently, it looks as if we
are not going to get any amendments here tonight.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I will not add to the frustration and
discomfort of my chairman except to empathize with him, having stood in
a similar situation 5 or 6 years ago when we last proceeded with the
farm bill. I found it was seemingly an endless task. It does finally
come to conclusion. That will be good news for the chairman.
I will work with him to try to identify the amendments so we can have
appropriate debate and votes. Both the chairman and I realize we are
near the end of the session, and conference reports on important bills
are likely to intrude. The chairman recognizes that. He stated
correctly this is the pending business. It ought to be our pending
business, aside from the privileged motions on appropriations bills
that the

[[Page S13140]]

leaders have designated for debate on Monday and early Tuesday.
I believe there probably is a finite set of amendments. I suggested
earlier during the day that we will compile a list of 44 at that time.
I think some of those perhaps disappeared in the course of the day.
Hopefully others do not emerge.
But I think there are some basic issues involving payment limits, for
example, that are still out there. Perhaps some are not parochial
interests but interests of particular Senators in their States, such
as, for example, the distinguished Senator from Oregon, Mr. Smith, with
a legitimate basin problem not requiring much time, although the Senate
may or may not agree with his point of view.
Even if these are simple amendments, perhaps they will not be offered
in the event they are already accepted. Perhaps the chairman and I will
be able, with staff, to work together to see which amendments can be
accepted.
We have been engrossed in very heated debate on sugar and on dairy--
things that claimed our attention at the time so that we have not
really sifted through those things that are perhaps acceptable.
But in the course at least of the next couple of days of debate, I
think the situation will become more clear. The chairman knows I have a
number of problems with the commodities title. I have already expressed
those in the form of one amendment and others.
The chairman is also correct that we did reach remarkable accord on
at least eight titles, perhaps nine. My memory fails as to how many are
in our bill. But those are good titles to this piece of legislation. It
doesn't mean that others may not at least insert lines in them, and
they may do so, but at the same time they are in fairly solid shape.
The commodity situation is one that is bound to be of controversy
because it has money attached to it. Nevertheless, we will have to
reach decisions. I pledge to work with the chairman to do that. I will
offer at least I hope comfort this evening and the belief that the
chairman's day tomorrow will be a better one.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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