[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 91 (Wednesday, June 17, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6669-S6670]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following leader remarks, we will be in a 
period for the transaction of morning business for an hour. Senators 
will be allowed to speak for up to 10 minutes each. Republicans will 
control the first half and the majority will control the second 30 
minutes. Following morning business, the Senate will resume 
consideration of the motion to proceed to the Travel Promotion Act 
postcloture. Following adoption of the motion to proceed to the travel 
bill later this afternoon, we will turn to the emergency supplemental 
appropriations conference report.
  I am disappointed that we are again wasting time on a heavily 
bipartisan bill, the Travel Promotion Act, which has wide support by 
both the Democrats and Republicans. But the Republicans forced us to 
have a vote on cloture to allow us to get on the bill. All the 
Republicans voted for it. They are filibustering things they even agree 
with just to stall for time. This is 30 hours we could use to do a lot 
of good. I don't know what would be the rationale for wasting this 
time. Maybe they don't want President Obama to complete more 
legislation through us. It is beyond my ability to comprehend why we 
would waste this time.
  It has been written and talked about that this is the most 
accomplished Congress since the first year of the Roosevelt 
administration. I don't have before me all the legislation we have 
done, but I am going to try to recall some of the things we have done.
  We passed the lands bill, the most significant environmental 
legislation in more than a quarter of a century, creating more than 2 
million acres of wilderness, 1,000 miles of scenic rivers, hundreds of 
miles of trails, and many other good things in this very important 
legislation.
  We passed the Lilly Ledbetter legislation equalizing pay between men 
and women.
  We passed the Children's Health Insurance Program which had been 
vetoed by President Bush on several occasions. Now more than 14 million 
children can go to the doctor when they are sick or hurt.
  We passed the economic recovery package. Twenty-five percent of that 
money is out. The rest is coming.
  We passed the omnibus spending bill--very important legislation which 
had been held up by the Bush administration. We spent $1.2 trillion of 
the people's money within a period of 3 weeks. Why did we do that? We 
did it because Mark Zandi, among others, Senator McCain's chief 
economic adviser, Republican economists, and Democratic economists told 
us we had to do this to stop a worldwide depression, and we have done 
that. As Chairman Bernanke said, the crops have been planted and the 
shoots are now appearing out of the ground.
  We went on to pass a procurement bill--extremely important--to rein 
in the excessive expenses of what has taken place in years past with 
the Pentagon, overspending money we give them; that is, something is 
supposed to cost this much and winds up costing twice as much.
  We were able to pass national service legislation, allowing 750,000 
people in America to be involved in public service, dealing with the 
environment, health care, the poor. During the 7,000 hours they 
volunteer, they get a small stipend. When they finish, they get an 
amount of money to help with their college education.

[[Page S6670]]

  Credit card legislation--so important--we finally were able to do it. 
After years of talking about doing it, we did it to stop the ripoffs of 
these credit card companies and what they were doing to hurt 
Americans--all Americans.
  We passed tobacco legislation. I can remember, when I was working in 
the Capitol of the United States going to law school, the Surgeon 
General came out with the first report that smoking was bad for you. 
Some people thought that was the case, but the Surgeon General of the 
United States said it will kill you. We have been trying ever since 
then to get control of tobacco. After all these years, we did it.
  We have been able to work on other important pieces of legislation--
financial fraud, reported out of the Judiciary Committee, which stops 
scams taking place on people who are about to begin foreclosure, taking 
advantage of people who are in a time of distress. We passed a lot of 
housing legislation that is important to allow people to stay in their 
homes. Have we stopped it all? Of course not. But we have done a pretty 
good job at that.
  We are now arriving at a point where we are going to pass the 
supplemental appropriations bill, which is very important, to fund our 
troops. This is the last time we will have to do this because President 
Obama is honest with his budgeting. The cost of the war is in his 
budget. It was never in President Bush's budget. For the 8 years he was 
President, he never put it in his budget. We had to come back and do 
supplemental emergency appropriations bills to fund our troops.
  It is interesting to note, all but five Republicans in the House of 
Representatives voted against funding the troops yesterday. It will be 
interesting to see what happens here. Are my Republican colleagues 
going to join with us to fund the troops? I think so. I certainly hope 
so.
  We have accomplished a lot more than what I have just outlined, but 
we have done it by reaching out to the Republicans. We have not gotten 
a lot of help from the Republicans, but we have gotten enough to pass 
bills. For example, on the economic recovery package, we needed 2, and 
neither one of the 2 would be the 60th vote, so we had to get 3, and we 
got 3. I appreciate very much the courage of Senators Specter, Snowe, 
and Collins in doing that. It was good for their States and good for 
our country. We have reached out to the Republicans time and time 
again.

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