[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 93 (Friday, June 19, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Page S6839]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRAVEL PROMOTION ACT OF 2009

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we have worked several days this week trying 
to move forward on the tourism bill. It is an extremely important piece 
of legislation. It is important to every State in the Union. That is 
why it is so heavily bipartisan.
  We have almost 50 cosponsors of this legislation. Lots of Republicans 
cosponsored this legislation--Bond, Brownback, Enzi, Graham, Martinez, 
Thune, Wicker, Alexander, Cochran, Ensign, Vitter--and I am sure there 
are others. It is a bipartisan bill.
  We have already wasted so much time. We had to file cloture on a 
motion to proceed to this heavily bipartisan bill. Once we were on the 
bill, I spoke to the Republican leader. We thought we had a pathway to 
having civility here, so the Republicans would try to help us. But, of 
course, we learned yesterday the GOP is still saying no; Democrats need 
to know when they bring bills up, we are going to extend debate as long 
as we can, even if we cannot win.
  We said: OK. You offer--you, the Republicans--four amendments. And 
they did. They picked all the amendments they wanted to offer--not 
germane to this bill.
  I said: OK. They were all involving TARP or the money that we all 
know about by now. So I said, and I told the Senator from Vermont, Mr. 
Sanders: If the Republicans want to offer nongermane amendments, I will 
be happy to have you offer your amendment.
  His is a fairly simple amendment. We see what is happening in the 
world today as it relates to oil. Again, we are seeing speculation. We 
know it was there before, we are seeing it again. We have a large 
inventory, with no reason for the price to spike. But we have those 
people, these commodity traders, who are rolling the dice as if they 
were coming to Las Vegas to roll the dice on the oil because they think 
the price is going to go up.
  What Sanders wanted to do is basically nothing unique. He wanted to 
make sure the entity that is responsible for making sure there are no 
shenanigans being conducted by these traders, that we pass some 
legislation saying: You have to do better than what you have done, in 
effect. I am paraphrasing the picture of that legislation. It was 
fairly noncontroversial. But the Republicans said no. Whom are they 
trying to protect?
  So we were generous in our offer. What was the other amendment they 
wanted to offer? They still had another amendment. I said: Fine, go 
ahead. The Senate should take hard votes. I am not concerned about my 
folks having to take difficult votes.
  The Presiding officer knows, in the short time he has been here, that 
we have taken some hard votes. That is what we are elected to do. We 
are not elected to run from issues. To be clear, some of the amendments 
which my Republican colleagues wanted to include would have been votes 
that have nothing to do with this bill. I said: Let's do it anyway.
  But the standard for a Democrat offering an amendment that is not 
germane, I guess, is different. You can have four. I said: We do not 
even need the same number of amendments. I guess what is good for us is 
not good for them.
  I am disappointed this has not been worked out. I was going to 
propound an agreement which was agreed upon that would permit the 
process of legislating on this most important tourism bill, but I am 
not able to do so because we do not have a Republican here to object. I 
certainly am not going to take advantage of anyone because no one is 
here to object.
  But I do want the Record to reflect that the majority is ready to 
move forward with amendments now or Monday. I hope that on Monday, when 
our managers are here, Senators Dorgan and Martinez, we may still be 
able to reach an agreement to begin the process of working through this 
legislation. If we cannot, we are going to vote at 5:30 on Monday on 
cloture on this bill.
  A decision is going to have to be made. I have not tried to jam 
anybody. We have not tried to jam anybody. We have been as reasonable 
as anybody can be. But we are going to have to make a decision on this 
legislation.
  The State of Oregon, the home of the Presiding Officer, a couple 
years ago I took my family to Oregon. Every summer we take all 5 
children and all 16 grandchildren and try to go someplace. We went to 
Oregon. We rented a home on the beautiful coast that was stark. For 8 
days the Sun did not shine. But I loved it. Being from the desert, I 
loved that rain a little bit. It was wonderful.
  I would love to go back. There were so many things to do around 
there. We drove 20 miles to see a waterfall. The water fell some 300 or 
400 feet. It was not a lot of falling, but it dropped a long way.
  The only point I am making is there is so much for people to see. 
Years ago, UNLV had a great basketball team. Yours was good, but theirs 
was great--the Tarkanian years. So I flew into Portland with my wife. 
We drove over to the coast, down the coast, and went to--I think it was 
called Salem, the University of Oregon, I think, or Oregon State, 
whatever university it was where they had this tournament.
  I watched UNLV play. The reason I mention it, driving down that coast 
was so beautiful. But every State, every State I have ever been to--I 
have been to most of them. I think I have been to all of them--have 
beautiful things for people to come and see. That is what this 
legislation is all about.
  The No. 1, 2 or 3 most important driver of the economy in every State 
is tourism, every State. It is the same in Oregon, where unemployment 
now is over 12 percent. We can get more people to come to Oregon or 
Nevada. It would be tremendous for those economies. That is what this 
legislation does. It sets up a public-private partnership in the model, 
frankly, of what the Las Vegas Convention Center did, which has been so 
successful. That is what this legislation is all about.
  It is bipartisan legislation. Because we could not work anything on 
amendments, I hope we will get cloture on this bill. But whether we do 
or not, I am happy to work with my Republican colleagues to move 
forward on this.

                          ____________________