[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 82 (Monday, June 20, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6785-S6786]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     RECOGNITION OF MINORITY LEADER

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senate minority leader is 
recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I agree with the distinguished majority 
leader. It would be good if we did not have to file cloture. Having 
said that, I do not know what it takes to get people to come over and 
offer amendments. Thursday afternoon, we were here. The two managers 
were willing to stay as long as necessary to meet whatever amendments 
were offered by Senators. I realize last week was somewhat disjointed 
because of the various events, but there was no reason on days and 
evenings when we were actually here and able to take amendments that 
people could not offer amendments.
  Today, we have 3 hours to offer amendments on this bill. It will be 
interesting to see how many show up to offer amendments. I guess the 
alternative would be to see if we could get a finite list of amendments 
and have those the only amendments that would be in order prior to this 
bill's termination.
  The other problem we have this week is that all over the country, 
there are base-closing hearings being held by the BRAC hearing 
commission. For Senators who are involved in these issues, they involve 
thousands of members of the military and thousands of civilians

[[Page S6786]]

who are tied to these bases, and they are going to leave and go to 
these hearings. Everyone should know that to wait around here and want 
to make sure that all of the Senators are here for a given vote--it 
will not work because I think there will be Senators gone virtually 
every day this week. I have received word from a couple of Senators who 
will not be here tomorrow. I know some of the hearings are going to be 
held in New Mexico, and I understand the two Senators from New Mexico 
are going to leave late in the afternoon on Thursday. They are the 
managers of the bill. So I hope that we can work into the night on this 
bill this week because if we have any hope of doing those appropriation 
bills next week, we have to finish this bill this week; otherwise, we 
will spend all next week on this bill, spending a lot of time in quorum 
calls waiting for people to come and offer amendments.
  I am a little frustrated because I know there are people on both 
sides of the aisle who say they have amendments but they are not quite 
ready or they want to do it at a more convenient time. The convenient 
times are over. We will not have 100 Senators here on any day this 
week. That is the way it is going to be. So some of these very tough, 
tight amendments are going to have to be decided on the votes of less 
than 100 Senators.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I am happy to yield to the Senator from New 
Mexico.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I say to the majority leader and minority leader, I 
apologize; I was not here for the entire dialog between the two of 
them. I know there is this business of who is going to be absent which 
days, but I say to both Senators, I do not think that should keep us 
from continuing to insist that Senators who have amendments bring them 
forward. We have to see them.
  Mr. REID. That is what we said.
  Mr. DOMENICI. We need to know about them. There are two that we know 
of, one to strike the inventory of offshore assets. That will take a 
little while. Somebody should offer that before the day is out. That is 
an hour or two, and there will be a vote. We think Senator Feinstein 
has one. We would hope that would come forth. I think over the evening 
and midmorning tomorrow something will filter out with reference to 
global warming. Whether it is one, two, or whatever, there will be a 
conclusion, and somebody will offer an amendment. That will be the 
longest one.
  I do not know what the Senate leadership wants to do about the fact 
that it is probably real that there will not be 100 Senators each of 
the days, but I do not know that that ought to keep us from moving 
forward and getting some accord as to finishing this bill. I do not 
know which day, but we are not in the kind of problem we have been in 
the past. As both Senators know, we can get to the amendments pretty 
quickly.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, to clarify the comments that were going 
back and forth between the Senate Democratic leader and myself, we will 
finish the bill this week. We pay our respects to the Senator from New 
Mexico by saying he has been more than willing to be here to receive 
amendments. The fact that there were not a lot of people either on 
Thursday or today rushing to the floor to offer the amendments actually 
leads me to be very hopeful that we will complete this bill Thursday, 
although I know in all likelihood it is going to be Friday. We are down 
to just very few amendments.
  We recognize that some people will not be here over the course of 
even today, voting tonight, tomorrow, and the next day. That is not 
going to slow us down at all in our obligation to address the Nation's 
business. When there are amendments, we will take them to the Senate 
floor to debate them. I think we are discouraged a little by the fact 
that people are not rushing down to offer amendments. On the other 
hand, it kind of gives me a little bit of encouragement. It means we 
are going to finish this bill. We are going to file cloture Tuesday in 
order to finish it, in all likelihood, unless we come to some agreement 
by both the managers.

  I congratulate them for where we are today. We intend on finishing 
the bill with certainty this week.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The minority leader.
  Mr. REID. I would be totally opposed to cloture being invoked if I 
felt the majority was somehow stopping us from offering amendments, but 
that has not been the case. There has been ample opportunity for people 
to offer amendments. So I think we either have to have a list of finite 
amendments the two managers can agree on or it appears cloture would 
have to be invoked.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senators for their comments.

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