[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 56 (Wednesday, April 28, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4448-S4449]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           STAYING THE COURSE

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I want to respond to the distinguished 
majority leader.

[[Page S4449]]

  Like him, I have come to the Senate floor on several occasions 
advocating for passage of the FSC bill. Many of us believe it may be 
the only opportunity we have to address, meaningfully, jobs policy and 
the creation of new jobs in this country.
  His characterization of our position is unfortunate and inaccurate. 
We have no desire to filibuster the bill. We simply believe Senators 
ought to have a right to offer amendments. That was really the 
discussion and the debate earlier as the legislation was offered. We 
had an amendment that simply provided for protection for 8 million 
workers who were not accorded overtime, who the administration now 
acknowledges were prepared to take overtime as a part of their 
compensation packages. We fought it. The administration has changed it, 
not to our satisfaction. But had it not been for our fight, I doubt 
very much that overtime could have been protected for the millions of 
workers who otherwise would see it as lost.
  We also want to ensure that we have an opportunity to deal with the 
outsourcing problem. Outsourcing is a very serious issue today. The 
President has created a new program called Higher Hour Workers. The 
acronym is HOW. Well, that is our question. How? How are you going to 
do it? What we have seen so far from this administration falls far 
short of what we need to do if we are serious about meaningfully 
addressing the problem of jobs in this country.
  This administration has lost 3 million jobs. We have not seen an 
administration like this in seven administrations. We want to address 
the terrible and unfortunate record we have seen with regard to the 
economy over the last 36 months.
  So our hope is we can create a real opportunity to debate jobs, to 
debate the way with which we can compete in the international markets. 
That is our desire.
  I went to Senator Frist and offered him an agreement, after this 
cloture vote, and indicated that we would limit our ourselves to 18 
amendments. I presented that to him. I was hoping we could get a 
unanimous consent agreement. That was not done and, as a result, time 
was lost. Now, as we understand it, they have over 50 amendments 
pending to this bill. We have something like 30. So there is no 
filibuster going on. They have some difficulty on their side in trying 
to address this issue, and in an expeditious way.
  We will get through the amendments. It is unfortunate we could not 
have agreed to the 18. We would be done with it by now. But there has 
been a practice on the Senate floor, over the last several months--we 
get on a bill, an amendment is offered, the bill is pulled; we move to 
another bill, we get on that, an amendment is offered, the bill is 
pulled. We have to stay on a bill to finish the bill. I am hopeful we 
can stay on the Internet tax bill until it is finished, that we can 
stay then on the FSC bill until it is finished, and welfare reform 
until it is finished.
  We can accomplish a lot, but we have to have greater attention to the 
work at hand and a willingness to stay with it until it is done. That 
is the nature of the Senate. That is the way we function. That is our 
institutional history. We are prepared to work with our Republican 
colleagues on these and other bills in the months ahead to make that 
happen.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

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