[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 39 (Wednesday, March 7, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2850-S2851]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                PROGRAM

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, tomorrow we will be in a situation where we 
can continue to work on, of course, S. 4. I indicated to the 
distinguished Republican leader yesterday that I am not certain but I 
think I can get consent as to the cloture motion which was filed by the 
Republicans earlier today, that we would be happy to vote on that 
tomorrow sometime. We would also be willing to vote on the two I just 
filed. If that does not happen, of course, we will be in a situation 
where we will have a cloture vote on Friday.
  As I told everyone here early this week, the first cloture motion 
which we will vote on will be the one the Republicans filed. If cloture 
is not invoked, we will immediately move to the cloture motions I 
filed. There will be 30 hours in relation to that cloture motion if 
cloture is invoked and, of course, that time won't run out until 
sometime Saturday.
  So it is really up to the minority as to what they want to do. We are 
willing to move it up 1 day or do it on Friday, whatever is their 
interest. Remember, 30 hours would not run out until sometime Saturday 
night. If we voted at, say, 10 a.m. Friday morning, 30 hours would run 
out sometime Saturday afternoon, 4 p.m. or thereabouts. If that, in 
fact, were the case and cloture were invoked and there are some germane 
amendments postcloture, we could dispose of those on Friday.
  Anyway, we are in a situation where it appears that unless the 
minority decides to allow us to have those votes on Thursday, we would 
be in session Friday for a good part of the day and maybe going into 
Saturday unless we work something out.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, if the majority leader will yield for 
an observation, I think we have made pretty good progress on getting 
amendments disposed of. Hopefully, we can do more of that tomorrow. I 
think both sides have been operating in good faith, and we will 
consider tomorrow what other possibilities there might be.
  I think I can speak for the majority on this side in saying that we 
certainly look forward to wrapping up this bill in the near future. 
There are a few other amendments we would like to have considered, and 
those discussions are ongoing between my staff and the majority 
leader's staff.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I would say this: The Republican leader is 
absolutely right, and we have tried real hard on some nongermane 
amendments to get some votes. It is not all their fault. We have, on 
our side, a Senator or two who simply will not let us agree to votes on 
nongermane amendments because they say and have said for the last 2 
days: You gave a vote on theirs; why don't I get a vote on mine. So we 
have agreed to.
  As I explained to some Senators assembled here in the well earlier 
today, when we moved to this bill, I said it would be open for 
amendment, and it has been, and there is no way we can get out of 
germane amendments. We can invoke cloture, but they are still 
available.

[[Page S2851]]

  On the nongermane amendments, you run into problems like we have run 
into in these last couple of days. There are some really big issues 
people are objecting to and not allowing these other amendments to be 
heard unless they get theirs. We have this habeas corpus issue, and 
there has been all kinds of talk on that. That is okay, from my 
perspective, but we have spent a lot of time on that issue before. We 
have over on this side something dealing with Katrina about which 
Senator Landrieu feels very strongly. We have a Senator over here who 
is interested in the PATRIOT Act and changing that. It goes back and 
forth, with both sides having all kinds of things they want, but it is 
an open process.
  Now, the one thing that maybe we can do in the future to make things 
a little more orderly is have an open amendment process. But when an 
amendment is called, we have to dispose of that. What we have tried to 
do here is have people come and give their statements about amendments 
they want to offer, and we have allowed them to offer them. What 
happens is you get too many amendments stacked up, and it gives 
individual Senators, frankly, too much power because they hold 
everybody else hostage.
  So I think what we are going to do in the future--and I will discuss 
this in more detail with the distinguished Republican leader--is have 
open amendments but not allow these amendments to be stacked up. By 
doing it the way we have done it here, trying to be more open, it takes 
away a lot of the authority of the two managers because the authority 
on these bills floats to individual Senators because they have all 
these amendments and they want to offer them, which I have no problem 
with, but they won't allow other people to have votes on their 
amendments unless they get amendments.
  This legislative process is the art of compromise and trying to work 
things out. Quite frankly, during the last couple of days, we have had 
Senators on both sides who have been very uncompromising, and it has 
made it very difficult for the managers and I would think Senator 
McConnell and myself.
  Having said that, I appreciate all the problems we have here. 
Remember, for 220 years, this has been the U.S. Senate. It is a 
wonderful institution. Sometimes, however, it can be very consternating 
to work things through, but we will get it done.

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