[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 173 (Thursday, October 31, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6323-S6326]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, EDUCATION, DEFENSE, STATE, FOREIGN
OPERATIONS, AND ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2020--
Motion to Proceed
Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
resume consideration on the motion to proceed on H.R. 2740.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Clerk will report the bill by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (H.R. 2740) making appropriations for the
Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and
Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending
September 30, 2020, and for other purposes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act
Mr. LEE. Madam President, I would like to speak briefly about an
issue important to me, about an issue important to many Americans, and
I would like to speak briefly about Senator Durbin's recent request for
a hearing concerning the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act.
The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act is a bill that many
Senators have worked for, for nearly a decade, and it has long been a
top priority of mine. I have introduced this bill in every single
Congress, ever since I was first elected to the Senate back in 2010.
During that time, it has been a subject of widespread debate and
discussion. There has been a period of time in which a lot of people
have learned a lot about this area. The debate and the discussion has
occurred both on the Hill and off the Hill throughout the United
States.
Other Members, including Senator Schumer, have sought to pass the
bill, as I am doing. Whether that passage occurs by unanimous consent
or through some other form matters less to me than that we get it
passed, but we do need to get it passed. This year, we have come closer
to making this important and bipartisan reform a reality, closer than
we have ever come before at any point over the nearly decade that this
has gotten a lot of attention.
In early July, the House of Representatives passed the bill on the
Suspension Calendar by a wide bipartisan supermajority vote of 365 to
65. Around that time, I negotiated an agreement with Senator Grassley
to help advance the bill by adding provisions drawn from the Durbin-
Grassley H-1B reform bill.
Senator Grassley has for many years, openly and publicly, made it
known that he had concerns with the bill. I was therefore very pleased
that we were able to sit down and work out an agreement to address
those concerns, while keeping the bill narrow and focused on the
immediate problem that it is trying to solve. That is eliminating the
country of origin discrimination in our employment green card system. I
thank Senator Grassley for working with me on that.
The process by which I have tried to advance this bill through
Congress has been open, transparent, and straightforward. I have sought
and continue to seek unanimous consent to pass the bill on the floor.
If any Member has raised concern about the bill, I have been willing to
work with them quickly and in good faith to address their concerns.
That is why, after reaching an agreement with Senator Grassley, I
also worked with other Members to resolve their concerns. For much of
the past few months, I simply didn't know who, if anyone else on the
Democratic side of the aisle, might have had concerns with the bill. We
were told that there might be holds on the Democratic hotline, but we
were not told who exactly might be holding the bill, and no one
approached me with objections.
I certainly had no reason to think that Senator Durbin would have
concerns with the bill. As I have explained before, he was a leading
cosponsor of the bill in a previous Congress. What is more, the only
substantial difference between the bill he supported and the bill I put
forward in this Congress is the addition of the amendment that I
negotiated with Senator Grassley, which is drawn almost entirely from
provisions of the Durbin-Grassley H1-B reform bill.
In September, I learned that Senator Durbin did in fact have concerns
about the bill in this Congress. As I have with other Members and as I
have expressed the willingness to do with other Members, I am ready and
willing to work with Senator Durbin in good faith to quickly and
reasonably resolve any objection he may have, while preserving the
bipartisan support that this bill has long enjoyed and that it deserves
to enjoy.
As I have said before, I don't believe that any further factual
development concerning this bill is necessary. Indeed at this point, I
believe a hearing can serve no purpose other than to delay speedy
action on this important reform and jeopardize our ability to act
before the end of the year.
For that reason, I do not support Senator Durbin's calls for a public
hearing. Every day that we delay action on this bill is another day
that suffering experienced by immigrants stuck in the green-card
backlog continues and indeed intensifies. That is precisely why I will
continue to work to pass this bill at the earliest possible date.
The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act arguably has wider and
more bipartisan support than any other immigration bill that has been
considered in this body in recent years. The reason for that is that it
is focused on a single, serious, solvable problem that I think we can
all agree needs to be solved.
Whatever other reforms you think might need to be made to our
immigration system, with good reason, we can all agree that America
should not treat immigrants differently based on their country of
origin. There is no reason for this bill to become yet another casualty
to the polarized, partisan divisions that plague immigration policy.
I look forward to working with Senator Durbin to resolve the concerns
he may have about this bill. I reiterate that, once again, this is a
narrowly focused bill, one that focuses on a simple but long-standing
problem, a problem that subjects some immigrants to needlessly lengthy
delays for no reason other than their country of origin. This is from a
bygone era that we shouldn't be perpetuating in this country.
We need to fix the problem. The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants
Act would do that, and I encourage all of my colleagues to join me. We
are almost there, but we need to get it over the finish line.
Thank you, Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Young). The Senator from Georgia.
H.R. 2740
Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the vote we are going
to have in just a few minutes to appropriate our first appropriations
bill for this fiscal year, which, by the way, we are already in the
first month of our new fiscal year.
We are under a continuing resolution, which we have talked about ad
nauseam in this body and how damaging that is to our military and how
expensive it is over the long run. I had breakfast with one of our
Secretaries in the DOD today, and he told me that just in the Navy
alone, a continuing resolution this year would cost the Navy almost $5
billion. That is $50 billion just in one service over the next decade.
We can do better than this.
I want to praise Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy, the ranking member
and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. They have done their
job. The subcommittee chairman and ranking members have done their
jobs. We are ready to vote on these bills, and it comes down to just an
obstructionist issue about funding the wall versus funding our
military.
Just last weekend, President Trump announced that Abu Bakr al-
Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, had been taken off the battlefield by his
own hand, I might say. This is a win not just for our country but for
the world in this fight against terrorism.
As we now know, the world has gotten to be very dangerous--maybe the
most dangerous in my lifetime--with five threats across five domains.
We are worried now about places like China, Russia, North Korea, and
Iran,
[[Page S6324]]
as well as the asymmetric threat of terrorism around the world in over
five domains--air, land and sea, and now we have to worry about cyber
and space as well.
Let's just take a moment and realize that without a strong military,
this Special Operations op over the weekend would not have been
possible. Our intelligence community, our special operators, our
military personnel, all the supply people, all the people involved in
supporting these people at the tip of the sphere came to bear and
brought us a victory this week over the No. 1 terrorist in the world.
Everybody in America should be celebrating this incredible
achievement by our military. Rather than celebrating, however, our
friends across the aisle are trying to change the subject in many ways.
One way is in the U.S. House with the hypocritical approach we are
seeing right now of denying due process to our President and having a
vote this week that is a real mockery of the process in itself. There
is no guarantee of due process to the President in this resolution.
I believe the Democrats just don't understand how President Trump got
elected, and they hate it so much, they will not even let him have this
win relative to taking a major terrorist off the battlefield.
We must never forget how depraved this gentleman was and their
ideology really is. These ISIS thugs have been a scourge on that part
of the world, and they are not going away, by the way. Since 2014, ISIS
has beheaded two American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
Let us never forget that these things occurred. They forced women into
sex slavery, including 26-year-old Kayla Mueller, a humanitarian worker
who went there to try to do good who was later killed.
These are the people, under al-Baghdadi's leadership, who set fire to
a Jordanian pilot--a captured pilot--violating the rules of war. They
put him in a cage, poured gasoline on him, and lit him on fire alive.
These are the people who lined up 21 Coptic Christians on a beach in
Libya and beheaded them in front of a video. They crucified Christians
across the Middle East for years.
Al-Baghdadi inspired all of these atrocities. His death brings
justice to these countless victims. The fight is not over yet. We have
taken out the leadership. We denied them the territorial caliphate. We
are now moving to protect the oil so these people will be denied
resources so they cannot reconstitute again. These people will not go
away. The ideology has not died. We have just taken their caliphate
away. We have to continue to do that.
The current strategy has not changed in Syria. The President has said
this publicly. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said it
publicly. We are there to defeat ISIS. We are there to protect Iraq,
deter Iran, and support our friends in Israel, but we need bipartisan
support and consistent funding to achieve this bigger mission. That is
just one of them in one domain. We have others across the world. With
an ever-growing military capacity in China alone, we have to get
serious about how we fund, consistently, our U.S. military effort.
Yet, as I stand here today, we are under a continuing resolution,
which we know handcuffs our own military and adds hundreds of billions
of dollars over the next decade to the cost of funding our military. We
have a CR right now that has us actually spending $4 billion that the
Department of Defense has already identified that they don't want to
spend. Yet because of continuing resolution rules, they have to keep
spending against these obsolete programs and wasting that $4 billion.
In addition, we are sitting here at the end of October, the first
month of the fiscal year, and we have not even finalized the
authorization for our defense because of not being able to work this
out with the House.
We have to do that and get to funding right away to fund our
military. Our men and women in uniform are the best that we have in
America, and we owe it to them to not drop the ball in this eleventh
hour to show them that we have their backs. They can do the job, but
only if we fund them.
This is a travesty, and right now it is broken down into partisan
politics, not over defending our country. It puts our national security
at risk.
I will give us just one little piece of data here to close this out.
Over the last 50 years, we disinvested in our military by at least 25
percent three different times under three Democratic Presidents. That
is just historical fact; that is not a partisan observation. We did it
in 1976 to 1980; we did it in the 1990s; we did it in the last
administration over 8 years. We disinvested in the military by at least
25 percent.
We saw the travesty that the military had in terms of readiness in
January 1, 2017. We saw how bad our readiness was when two-thirds of
our elite Strike Fighters, FA-18s, in the Navy could not fly. Only 3 of
our 58 Army brigades could go to war that night. It was a terrible
position to be in. Under new leadership, we have gotten that readiness
back, but now we have to rebuild the military that has been burned up
over the last 20 years fighting terrorism.
The challenge we have before us right now is to do our No. 1 job, and
that is to fund and appropriate the Federal Government. Of that,
discretionary spending is what this is all about. It is only $1.3
trillion of the $4.6 trillion the Federal Government will totally spend
this year, but of that, the military, the VA, and all domestic
discretionary programs make up $1.3 trillion.
I am advocating today that we take our responsibility seriously to
fund our military because of the growing threats around the world and
the damage we see that it does to the efforts of freedom by our friends
abroad. There is no bigger responsibility we can have than to support
our men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line every day.
The best testament of that is this example we just saw of a success in
Syria, very close to the Turkish border, pulled off through places
where Russians and Syrian Government and Syrian rebels and Turkish
soldiers were all in the general vicinity. We pulled off a miraculous
victory for freedom in the world. Now it is our job to fund defense and
get on with that. I highly suggest that we take that very seriously.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today, the Senate is going to vote on
whether to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to a package of
appropriations bills that will include the Senate Defense
appropriations bill, and the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services,
and Education (Labor-HHS) appropriations bill.
There are many things in these bills that I support, but I am going
to strongly urge all Senators to vote no. I am disappointed that the
majority leadership has taken this step. They bowed to demands by
President Trump, and that is continuing to delay funding for our
troops.
They insist on including in this bill authority for President Trump
to raid American tax dollars from our military and their families.
President Trump wants to raid that money to pay for his wall, after he
had given his solemn word that Mexico would pay for it, and that is not
acceptable. Because he cannot keep his word, he has already raided $6.2
billion from the Department of Defense this year alone for his border
wall.
He did all of that without congressional approval of either
Republicans or Democrats. He diverted $2.6 billion from the fiscal year
2019 Defense Appropriations Act. Then he took another $3.6 billion from
military construction projects for his southern border wall.
That money came from projects that would have improved the lives of
our troops and their families: military schools, childcare centers, and
improved training facilities, many of which have been damaged by
hurricanes and other natural disasters.
On this side, we oppose this bill because we are fighting to protect
funds that are meant for the women and men of our military and their
families. We oppose this bill because we stand with those patriotic
Americans, and we refuse to place the President's failed campaign
promises on their backs.
That alone should convince every Member of this Chamber to oppose
this package. Yet the Labor-HHS appropriations bill that is tied to
this Defense bill also shortchanges the domestic priorities of the
American people by stealing even more money to pay for President
Trump's vanity wall.
[[Page S6325]]
If all things were equal, the Labor-HHS appropriations bill--our
largest domestic funding bill--would receive a 3-percent increase in
fiscal year 2020, but the Republican bill provides less than a 1-
percent increase for Labor-HHS, while the Department of Homeland
Security's appropriations bill receives a 7-percent increase to cover
the cost of the President's demand for his wall. It doesn't add up to
me, and it doesn't add up to most Americans, who broadly oppose
President Trump's wall.
If, in the House and Senate, we were to have an up-or-down vote on
the wall, I suspect it would fail. So now, they are trying to do it
through a backdoor way--a shortsighted cash grab directed by President
Trump. This is a bill that fails to cover even the annual costs of
inflation in public health, Head Start, childcare, special education,
veterans' training grants, and dozens of other programs that are relied
upon by the American people. He will cut the veterans programs and he
will cut the childcare programs to pay for this wall.
I am also disappointed by the willful spread of misinformation by
President Trump and the Republican leadership regarding our opposition
to this bill. They have baselessly accused the Democrats of blocking a
3.1-percent pay raise for our troops by our opposing this package. That
is ridiculous.
Regardless of the action we take in this Chamber, the men and women
of our military will see a raise in January. No matter what we do, they
are going to get that raise. This well-deserved raise is based on a
statutory formula that does not need to be authorized by the
legislation before us. In fact, neither the House nor the Senate
Defense appropriations bills contain any provision that is related to a
pay raise. Reaching a bipartisan-bicameral consensus on a $693 billion
Defense appropriations bill is hard enough without there being the
willful and irresponsible spreading of misinformation.
This campaign of misinformation does not stop there. The Republican
leadership has even accused the Senate Democrats of holding up aid to
Ukraine. That would be laughable if it were not for the real-world
consequences we are seeing play out in Ukraine today. It is the
Republicans who are holding both military funding and Ukraine aid
hostage to President Trump's vanity wall. It is the Republicans who
refuse to bring a bill to the floor unless Congress enables President
Trump to continue stealing funds from our troops and our military
families to pay for the wall that he gave his solemn word that Mexico
would pay for.
The Senate Democrats have long advocated for aid to Ukraine. We
insisted it be included in the fiscal year 2020 appropriations bills,
and we will continue to do so because it is the right thing to do.
Since 2015, I have personally supported more than $3.3 billion in aid
for Ukraine. That is a level that far exceeds the President's request.
These baseless accusations are merely attempts to distract from why
the Senate Democrats are actually opposing this package. We will not
stand idly by as President Trump continues to rob our military
families--using them as his personal piggy bank--for a failed campaign
promise that he cannot keep. We will not stand idly by as the domestic
priorities of the American people are shortchanged to pay for some
unnecessary monument to the President's ego along our southern border.
We have been down this road before. Just last month, the Republican
leadership failed to get the votes that were necessary to move these
bills, but I think it is prudent to remind everyone that this entire
strategy has been tried before. It failed before, and it will fail
again--that strategy being the wall over everything, that strategy
being the wall at all costs no matter how much damage it does to our
veterans, no matter how much damage it does to our military families,
and no matter how much damage it does to American children. It is a
strategy of a wall and a campaign promise over the American people.
That same strategy drove the country into the longest government
shutdown in American history earlier this year that cost the taxpayers
billions of dollars, and they got absolutely nothing in return.
Incidentally, that was when the Republicans controlled both Chambers of
Congress, and they still allowed this shutdown. So, if you think this
failed Republican strategy will work on the second go-around, I have a
fence for you to paint back at my home in Vermont.
Everyone here knows there is only one real path forward to our
reaching agreement on bipartisan bills, and I believe it is time we
reached that agreement. I have tremendous respect for my good friend
Chairman Shelby. Look at the bills we just passed overwhelmingly. That
is because Senator Shelby and I were able to sit down and work on these
bills, put them together, and do them in a bipartisan way. I have told
the Secretary of Defense and others that we still have time to do that
on the Defense appropriations bill. We can do it.
When we come back next week, we should try again. Let the grownups in
both parties in this body work on it. We will get it done, but the
clock is ticking. It is really time to stop the political maneuverings
and to stop the sloganeering. Let's do real work.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I rise in the U.S. Senate to fight for
America's military.
This past week, our Special Forces eliminated the leader of ISIS and
his likely successor. Their accomplishments should remind all of us
that our brave troops always carry out their duties no matter what the
circumstances. They shouldn't expect anything different from the U.S.
Congress. Yet they do. They have come to expect that their elected
leaders will fail to execute the most fundamental of their duties--
funding the government. They don't deserve failure, and they certainly
shouldn't expect it. They deserve our gratitude, and they deserve our
unwavering commitment.
The best way to demonstrate that gratitude and commitment, I believe,
is by passing an appropriations bill that gives our military what it
needs. Our men and women in uniform should never find themselves on the
battlefield, wondering if they will be able to support their families
back home. They should never wonder if their training needs, support
requirements, or mission objectives will be held hostage by partisan
bickering in the Congress. They should never wonder why America's
adversaries are doubling down on their military investments while
America is sitting idle.
I believe the United States must maintain its edge over our
adversaries. China is escalating its defense spending, which we all
know. Yet America's military is operating under a continuing
resolution. That means that our military is having to face tomorrow's
threats with yesterday's funding levels. That means that our military's
planning and operations are weighed down with uncertainty.
That should be unacceptable to all of us, on both sides of the aisle,
in the U.S. Senate. We have an opportunity to change that today by
voting to proceed to the fiscal year 2020 Defense appropriations bill.
What are we talking about here? We are talking about $695 billion in
total defense funding. That is national security for the United States
of America. That is an increase of about $20 billion over last year's
level. This increased funding, among other things, would provide a 3.1-
percent pay increase for our men and women in uniform--the largest in
10 years. Believe me, they need it. It would continue the development
of the world's most advanced weapons systems, and we will need them. It
would increase our investments in hypersonics, 5G technology,
artificial intelligence, missile defense, and cyber security, and we
need that. I believe all of this is absolutely essential to maintaining
America's strategic advantage over our main adversaries and
competitors--China and Russia. We had better not lose sight of that
here in the Senate.
Unfortunately, at the moment, my Democratic colleagues seem more
focused on scoring political points than ensuring that our military has
the certainty and the funding it needs to counter our adversaries. They
have said they will not allow us to fund our military here in the
Senate until the funding levels for all 12 appropriations bills are
agreed to with the House. If that defies most Americans' senses of how
our government works and what is most important, it should.
My Democratic colleagues want to press the pause button here in the
Senate. I don't agree with that. I believe
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that we must complete our work, and I believe that most of the
Democrats want to get this done.
Foremost, we should certainly complete our work on the Defense bill.
Funding America's military should be our priority. It should come first
here in the Senate. Our men and women in uniform don't get to hit the
pause button, as we do. They don't get to shirk their duties, and
neither does Congress. We cannot afford additional delay. Our service
men and women--those troops whom we have entrusted to keep us safe and
protect our democracy, our country, and our allies--cannot afford
additional delay. We must not kick the can down the road when it comes
to America's security and America's military.
Let's come together. We have done this. Senator Leahy and I worked
together last year, and for the first time in years, we met the
deadline. We can do this again. We need the green light here. We need
to provide the resources that are necessary to maintain the greatest
fighting force the world has ever known. We should never be second to
anybody else. Let's show our troops that we can actually get our work
done here, that we actually care about them.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I yield back all time.
I ask unanimous consent that the vote start now.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Cloture Motion
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
proceed to Calendar No. 140, H.R. 2740, a bill making
appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human
Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal
year ending September 30, 2020, and for other purposes.
Richard C. Shelby, Mike Crapo, John Cornyn, Roy Blunt,
Thom Tillis, Shelley Moore Capito, Roger F. Wicker,
Lisa Murkowski, Mike Rounds, Pat Roberts, John Boozman,
Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, John Barrasso, Kevin Cramer,
Richard Burr, Mitch McConnell.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the
motion to proceed to H.R. 2740, an act making appropriations for the
Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and
related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2020, and for
other purposes, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Georgia (Mr. Isakson) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).
Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran)
would have voted ``yea.''
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet),
the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from California
(Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator
from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms.
Warren) are necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 51, nays 41, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 342 Leg.]
YEAS--51
Alexander
Barrasso
Blackburn
Blunt
Boozman
Braun
Burr
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Enzi
Ernst
Fischer
Gardner
Graham
Grassley
Hawley
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Inhofe
Johnson
Jones
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
McSally
Murkowski
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Risch
Roberts
Romney
Rounds
Rubio
Sasse
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Shelby
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Toomey
Wicker
Young
NAYS--41
Baldwin
Blumenthal
Brown
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Feinstein
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hirono
Kaine
King
Leahy
Manchin
Markey
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Paul
Reed
Rosen
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Whitehouse
Wyden
NOT VOTING--8
Bennet
Booker
Harris
Isakson
Klobuchar
Moran
Sanders
Warren
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 51, the nays are
41. Three-fifths of the Senators having not voted in the affirmative,
the motion is not agreed to.
The majority leader.
Motion to Reconsider
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider the
vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is entered.
____________________