[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 30 (Thursday, March 9, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1943-S1944]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             ETHICS REFORM

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, Americans finish what they start, and they 
expect the Senate to do the same.
  I open with that because we find ourselves once again in an 
unfortunate situation in that until yesterday afternoon, we were making 
steady progress, working together, all four managers on this important 
bill on lobbying reform, ethics review reform. We had the opportunity 
to have it finished by today or possibly tomorrow morning.
  This is an important bill. We have come to a general consensus that 
it had to be one of the first bills we took to the Senate because it is 
so important to restore trust in this institution. It is a bill about 
making our Government more accountable, making it more transparent. It 
is a bill that strengthens our ethics rules to ensure we uphold the 
very highest standards of integrity. And it is a bill that will help 
restore America's confidence in this institution, in our Congress, in 
our Government.
  It is also an issue that my friend, the Democratic leader, proposed 
as his top priority in this Congress. And we agreed. Unfortunately, 
some of my Democratic colleagues have chosen to hold this bill hostage 
for a totally unrelated issue. As we have seen even over the last 30 or 
40 minutes, things are moving along aggressively toward a resolution. 
We do not know exactly what the resolution is going to be but toward a 
resolution.
  The distinguished Democratic leader said just 48 hours ago to the 
effect of insisting that Democrats would not try to stall this lobbying 
reform bill by offering unrelated amendments, saying that:

       I have told the distinguished majority leader this is no 
     attempt to stall this legislation. I have told the majority 
     leader that unless there are issues outside of what the two 
     committees did that are within their jurisdiction, we have no 
     intention of offering a myriad of issues. We have Members 
     clamoring to offer--issues on the port security deal . . . we 
     are not going to do it on this legislation.

  That was 48 hours ago, and then in the last 24 hours directly 
contradicted the assurances he made on Tuesday when he said:

       I believe that this lobbying reform is important. I believe 
     that we need to do everything we can to help restore 
     integrity to what we do here in Washington. But having said 
     that, Mr. President, I think it would have been absolutely 
     wrong for the Senate not to take action yesterday on the most 
     important issue the American people see today, and that is 
     port security.

  That is from the statement on March 9.
  I mention this because if we didn't have this what we call nongermane 
and totally not relevant amendment to an important issue on which we 
are making great bipartisan progress, working together--if that 
amendment had not come up, we would have been able to complete this 
bill. I have been in discussions with the Democratic leader, and we 
both understand we have the opportunity to finish this bill in the near 
future because the amendments are not that tough and there is general 
consensus around them, but we have to be allowed to finish what we 
start and not be pulled off with essentially the Senate shutting down 
last night and over the course of the morning on something that is 
totally unrelated to the bill itself.
  Although I don't want to keep overstating it, there seems to be this 
pattern of obstruction and delay and pushing things off--Judge Alito, 
the PATRIOT Act, which, by the way, will be signed in an hour or so, 
and now on lobbying reform.
  Yes, we have a cloture vote here in a few minutes so that we can 
continue to make progress on this bill. It is not an attempt in any way 
to foreclose the opportunity to offer lobbying-related amendments. As 
the Democratic leader knows and we have talked about, we are perfectly 
willing to agree on a list of amendments related to lobbying and ethics 
reform. We can set time agreements, debate the amendments, and vote. 
But what we are opposed to is considering amendments that are totally 
outside of the scope of the bill that is at hand. We are opposed to 
amendments designed to score partisan political points in one way or 
another.

  The port security issue, I do not minimize it as an issue. I was one 
of the very early people who said we need a pause, we need to examine 
it in detail, and we need to get the information. That process is 
underway. We have our Commerce Committee looking at overall port 
security. The PATRIOT Act, signed in 45 minutes, has a whole 13 points 
on port security. And on what is called the CFIUS review, or the review 
of the process that created this problem in many ways, I believe, right 
now our Banking Committee is looking at that aggressively.
  The Dubai Ports deal needs to be addressed in a thorough way. That is 
why we have called for--really, initiated by the Senate--this 45-day 
period, to collect all the information and consider that information as 
it comes forward.
  We saw, 45 minutes ago, some real positive news that has been brought 
forward. It shows the importance of sitting back and getting the 
information. There is a system underway to address the port issue 
without injecting it into a lobbying reform bill, a bipartisan bill, 
that in essence brings it to a halt. The administration is moving 
toward this 45-day review of the deal. Let's get this review. Let's get 
information as it is underway.
  The Senator from New York, I know, has been to the floor several 
times. In a letter to me this week, he had said--and I quote in the 
letter--he ``decided not to press for a vote on [his] bill at this time 
in the hope that this new investigation will be thorough, fair, and 
independent.''
  So, Mr. President, we are about to vote. I do want to encourage my 
colleagues to vote for cloture because I

[[Page S1944]]

want to stay focused on the lobbying bill, which we can finish if we 
get cloture.
  Mr. President, I see the time has come for the vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.

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