[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 159 (Tuesday, September 15, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5593-S5597]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



       Bureau of Land Management Acting Director William Pendley

  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I want to start by thanking my colleague 
Senator Udall for organizing us to talk about the current Acting 
Director of the Bureau of Land Management. I say ``acting'' because 
this is an individual who would not be able to be confirmed by this 
body. But I want to take a step back and walk through a little bit 
about why this is important.
  There was once a strong young man who rose up through New York City 
society. He led American soldiers in battle and went west to learn what 
it meant to truly to work hard on America's western landscapes.
  This man took all of his hard-driving spirit with him to the White 
House and put it to work delivering for the American people. He took on 
big trusts and gigantic corporations that had monopolized the American 
economy and put a stranglehold on American workers. Despite coming from 
a wealthy New York family, this man focused on delivering a ``Square 
Deal'' to working-class Americans. But perhaps his most important and 
lasting legacy was this: After our country's previous century of 
explosive growth across the North American continent, he saw clearly 
that we needed to rein in the pillaging of our forests, the draining of 
our wetlands, the destruction of America's wildlife, and the loss of 
irreplaceable cultural resources. He saw that we had only one chance 
left to protect the splendors of our uniquely American landscapes for 
future generations.
  When Donald Trump looks up every once in a while from his television 
screen or from yet another tweetstorm portrait on his phone to the 
portrait of that great American President, I am sure he sometimes tells 
himself that he could be just like Teddy Roosevelt.
  I am sure he imagines that he is equally deserving of a place on 
Mount Rushmore and that if it weren't for his bone spurs, he could have 
been just as tough as Teddy, charging up San Juan Hill or riding on 
horseback through the Dakota Badlands rather than jumping

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into a golf cart. These delusions of grandeur reached a new height last 
week, when the President told a crowd in Florida that he has been ``the 
number one environmental president since Teddy Roosevelt.''
  I don't really need to tell you that this claim is just about as 
absurd as saying that he has done a great job protecting Americans from 
the coronavirus that has now led to the deaths of nearly 200,000 of our 
countrymen or his claims, frankly, that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize 
for sending love letters to a nuclear-armed despot in North Korea or 
making long-term peace in the Middle East even more out of reach.
  Let's pause and take a look at what President Trump's record has 
actually been on the environment. Yes, I will acknowledge that 
President Trump has signed some great pieces of conservation 
legislation that many of us here in the Senate worked hard to pass with 
veto-proof majorities. But since taking office, President Trump has 
also empowered an Army of former oil, coal, and timber industry 
lobbyists to roll back nearly every protection of wildlife habitat, 
clean air, and clean water that they could get their hands on.
  He has systematically attacked climate science, setting us up for 
worse and worse natural disasters like the fires that we are now 
experiencing across the West.
  Just 1 year into his Presidency, Donald Trump did something no 
President in the last 100 years would have ever thought to do. He 
completely erased national monument designation for treasured red rock 
landscapes in Southern Utah's Bears Ears. By doing so, he also gutted 
key protections for cultural sites that Tribal nations across the 
American Southwest hold to be sacred.
  That egregious and, I believe, illegal action cut against the very 
heart of the Antiquities Act. This is the law that many Presidents over 
the last century used to protect so many of our national monuments and 
national parks. The Antiquities Act was truly Teddy Roosevelt's 
landmark conservation achievement during his Presidency.
  Rather than carry on Roosevelt's legacy, President Trump used the 
Antiquities Act in a novel, new way. He used it to unprotect two 
national monuments--Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. Now over 
2 million acres of the most paleontologically important and culturally 
significant sites in the entire Southwest are open for uranium mining, 
ATV abuse, and fossil fuel extraction.
  Just a few weeks ago, in a similarly destructive act, President Trump 
opened up our Nation's marquee national wildlife refuge in the Arctic 
to industrial oil and gas drilling. It seems there are no landscapes 
that are too sacred to make a quick buck in this White House. Not even 
the calving grounds of the porcupine caribou herd will have been 
spared. He is also now threatening to allow previously unthinkable 
proposals, like uranium mining in the Grand Canyon.
  I don't think anyone in their right mind could call that a great 
record of conservation or environmentalism, not by any measure.

  That takes us to why we are here today--President Trump's decision to 
put William Perry Pendley in charge of the public lands that are the 
birthright of every American.
  We have a saying in New Mexico: ``Dime con quien andas y te dire 
quien eres.'' Loosely translated, it means: ``Tell me who you hang 
around with, and I will tell you who you are.'' I think it says a great 
deal that President Trump has chosen to hang around with William Perry 
Pendley.
  For the last 30 years, Mr. Pendley has been a driving force in a 
campaign fueled by anti-government propaganda--and propped up by 
special interests and extractive industry dollars--to seize and sell 
off the American people's public lands.
  As an industry-paid lawyer and lobbyist, Mr. Pendley has fought 
against hunting and fishing access laws and supported the elimination 
of protections for our national monuments. In fact, he has championed 
the repeal of the very law that Teddy Roosevelt used to protect our 
Grand Canyon.
  He has filed numerous lawsuits in State and Federal courts, seeking 
to deny access to public lands for sportsmen and attacking key 
protections for wildlife, clean air, and clean water.
  Now President Trump has placed him in charge of the Federal agency 
that manages so many of our public lands across the West. This is the 
man who is on record saying that we should ``sell all BLM lands'' east 
of the Mississippi. President Trump handpicked this zealot to lead the 
agency responsible for stewarding those very same public lands. What 
would Teddy Roosevelt think?
  William Perry Pendley's beliefs hearken back to the era right before 
Teddy Roosevelt's Presidency, when railroad barons, hard rock mining 
operators, and timber companies were given free rein over our 
landscapes and our natural resources. By putting Mr. Pendley in charge 
of the Bureau of Land Management, President Trump is saying loud and 
clear that he wants to take us backward to those same failed and 
destructive policies of the past.
  I am proud that the entire Senate Democratic caucus joined a broad 
coalition of hunters, fishermen, wildlife advocates, and outdoor 
recreation enthusiasts, all of whom called on President Trump to 
withdraw Mr. Pendley's nomination. Thanks to that widespread outcry 
from those of us who love our public lands, President Trump was forced 
to withdraw Mr. Pendley's nomination last month. But forcing the Trump 
administration to withdraw the Pendley nomination was only half the 
battle.
  In fact, William Perry Pendley is still sitting in his office today, 
leading the Bureau of Land Management in his previous ``acting'' role.
  President Trump has shown that he is willing to circumvent Congress 
and skip the constitutionally required confirmation process for other 
key Federal leadership posts by illegally placing people into 
unofficial and indefinite ``acting'' roles. Mr. Pendley has now been 
serving in one of these ``color outside the lines'' acting posts for 
well over a year.
  As long as the Republican Senate majority refuses to act on its 
constitutional duty to hold this administration accountable on 
nominations like this, Mr. Pendley and other Trump officials in 
``acting'' roles can and will continue to operate with impunity. That 
is not right, and in this case, we are talking about someone whose 
whole career has been built on opposition to the very idea that public 
lands should remain in public hands.
  Mr. Pendley's role in the Trump administration represents a direct 
attack on Teddy Roosevelt's legacy for our environment. The mission of 
public land management should be focused on serving the American public 
and safeguarding the values that deliver benefits to the American 
people.
  In these times, that means that work by the leaders of our land 
management agency should be rooted in the conservation of our wildlife, 
our water, and our landscapes. Their mission should include expanding 
access to outdoor recreation, preserving biodiversity, restoring 
healthy carbon sequestering forests and productive watersheds. They 
should work alongside Tribal nations and rural communities to protect 
cultural landscapes and promote sustainable economic development--or as 
Teddy Roosevelt put it more simply and much more artfully than I could 
all those years ago:

       Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, 
     cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and 
     romance as a sacred heritage. . . . Do not let selfish men or 
     greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, it is 
     riches or its romance.

  The question before us here in the Senate is whether we will stand by 
as those greedy interests take what is our American birthright or 
whether we will stand up for our sacred heritage.
  I choose to stand up. I hope the Presiding Officer and my colleagues 
will join us.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, as the ranking member on the Committee on 
Energy and Natural Resources, I was especially pleased by President 
Trump's decision to withdraw the nomination of William Perry Pendley to 
lead the Bureau of Land Management, or the BLM, as we know it.
  I said, when the President nominated Mr. Pendley, that he is the 
wrong person in the wrong job in the wrong place and he should not 
continue to lead the Bureau. The job of the Director of the Bureau of 
Land Management is not

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just another Presidential appointment. It is a sacred public trust. The 
Director of the BLM is one of the principal stewards of our public 
lands, as we are hearing from our colleagues today.
  The Bureau of Land Management manages 245 million acres of public 
land, more land than any other Federal agency. The Bureau is required 
by law to manage the lands committed to its care not only for the 
benefit of our own generation but for many generations to come. It must 
carefully balance the use of the land for grazing, timber production, 
mineral development, recreation, fish and wildlife, and the protection 
of scenic, scientific, and historic values of the lands.
  In addition to the 245 million acres of surface land the Bureau 
manages, it also manages another 700 million acres of subsurface 
mineral rights. It manages over 63,000 oil and gas wells and over 300 
coal leases, covering nearly half a million acres of coal lands, which 
together contribute about $4 billion a year to the Federal Treasury.
  It manages another 55 million acres of timberlands and 155 million 
acres of grazing lands. It issues permits for wind, solar, and 
geothermal energy development. In addition, more than 10 years ago, 
Congress designated about 36 million acres of the lands by the Bureau 
as National Conservation Lands because of their outstanding cultural, 
ecological, and scientific value.
  National Conservation Lands include 28 national monuments covering 
nearly 8 million acres, over 260 wilderness areas covering nearly 10 
million acres, nearly 3,000 miles of wild and scenic rivers, and nearly 
6,000 miles of historic and scenic trails.
  Nearly 50 years ago, Congress declared that the public lands managed 
by the Bureau of Land Management should be retained in Federal 
ownership and managed to preserve and to protect them without permanent 
impairment of the productivity of the land and the quality of the 
environment.
  That, in a nutshell, is the job of the Director of the Bureau of Land 
Management: to be a good and faithful steward of the people's lands so 
that we might pass them on to our children and our children's children 
in at least as good condition as we inherited them, if not better.
  Mr. Pendley is not the right person for this job. He spent most of 
his adult life arguing against the principles upon which our Federal 
land management policy is based. He has called for the sale of the 
public lands that the BLM is responsible for retaining and managing. He 
has called for the repeal of the Antiquities Act, upon which our 
national monuments were founded.
  He has denigrated the National Environmental Policy Act, the 
Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Water Act--the bedrock of 
environmental laws that the Bureau must operate under. He cannot be a 
good steward of the public domain if he does not believe the public 
should have a domain and he rejects the laws designed to preserve and 
protect it.
  His extreme views and inflammatory rhetoric do not stop with the 
public lands. He has denied the existence of climate change, comparing 
it to a unicorn, and those who acknowledge it as ``kooks.'' He said 
that the Black Lives Matter movement is based on a lie. He has said 
that undocumented immigrants are ``like a cancer.''
  Mr. Pendley was nominated for office once before. People might not 
realize that. President Reagan nominated him to be the Assistant 
Secretary for Energy and Minerals in 1983. While his nomination was 
pending, he was being investigated by the Department of the Interior's 
inspector general and the Department of Justice for possibly violating 
conflict of interest rules.
  The Senate returned his nomination to the President, and he was not 
confirmed. The General Accounting Office later found that the Interior 
Department sold the coal leases in the Powder River Basin at roughly 
$100 million less than their estimated fair market value. The below-
market sales were made possible by a change in bidding procedures 
approved by Mr. Pendley on the same day that he had dinner with the 
coal industry lawyers.
  The inspector general referred the matter to the Justice Department 
for possible criminal prosecution. The Justice Department ultimately 
declined to prosecute Mr. Pendley, but he left the Department shortly 
afterward.
  For all of these reasons, I think Mr. Pendley is the wrong person to 
lead the Bureau of Land Management. Today, he is still there in the 
position and having the authority to run the BLM. He should not be 
there a minute longer.
  The President was right to withdraw his nomination. Now it would be 
right for the President to remove him from that position. Withdrawing 
his nomination doesn't solve the problem. We know that. It is 
outrageous that he continues to exercise the authority of the Director, 
despite having been nominated and withdrawn for cause.
  Although the legality of his role is a matter of opinion in the 
courts right now, Mr. Pendley is still, in effect, running the Bureau 
of Land Management and continuing to make decisions negatively 
impacting millions of acres of public lands of significant importance 
to millions of Americans, all without the proper vetting and approval 
of the Senate. That is simply wrong, and I believe on both sides of the 
aisle we know wrong when we see it.
  He should resign, Secretary Bernhardt should remove him, or the 
President should step in and remove him. Withdrawing his nomination was 
a step in the right direction, but for all the reasons I have outlined 
today, William Pendley is not qualified to be managing--to be 
managing--our Nation's treasured public lands in any capacity. So I 
would ask President Trump to kindly and respectfully step in and remove 
a person who does not justify the office that he is holding right now 
and the decisions he is making for all of us in our generation and in 
generations to come.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada
  Ms. ROSEN. Mr. President, Nevada's public lands are a source of pride 
and natural beauty, but they are also so much more. They are a source 
of economic strength for our outdoor industries, and they help support 
our communities and our State's economy.
  Each year, tens of thousands of visitors come to Nevada to see and 
experience our majestic public lands and our monuments firsthand. We 
must keep our State's public lands open and accessible for Nevadans, 
for visitors to our State, and for future generations. That is why we 
are passionate about protecting and preserving our State's natural 
wonders.
  Public lands make up a big part of our State. In fact, over 80 
percent of our land is managed by the Federal Government, and well over 
60 percent of Nevada--close to 48 million acres--is managed by the 
Bureau of Land Management.
  I stand here today before you because our Nation's public lands are 
in danger, not just from the threat of climate change or from deadly 
wildfires, which are raging across our Nation's Western States as we 
speak, but also from an unconfirmed and unaccountable acting head of 
the Bureau of Land Management, Mr. William Perry Pendley. It is well 
past time for him to go. Allow me to explain just how dangerous Mr. 
Pendley is for our public lands and for Nevada.
  In the past, Nevada has been able to strike a balance between the 
protection of our public lands and the need for development. That is 
how things should be. But Mr. Pendley does not respect this balance. 
When it comes to our public lands, Mr. Pendley has a longtime and 
documented history of working to destroy our national treasures.
  Some of the highlights of Mr. Pendley's disturbing anti-public-land 
actions and sentiments include this: working on behalf of private 
interests to roll back critical public land protections during his 
tenure at a law firm; advocating for the repeal of the Antiquities Act, 
a landmark law signed by President Teddy Roosevelt that protects our 
public lands and gives the President the power to designate national 
monuments; and fighting to drill on sacred Native American lands while 
mocking these same Native Americans' religious beliefs.
  This is a man put in charge of one-third of our Nation's public lands 
who has referred to the National Environmental Policy Act, our Nation's 
bedrock environmental law, as ``a terrible burden,'' who has written 
that ``the Founding Fathers intended all lands

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owned by the Federal Government to be sold,'' who has aggressively 
pushed oil and gas leasing on our public lands, and who views climate 
change as ``junk science.''
  Mr. Pendley holds shocking and extremist views and has consistently 
worked to dismantle the very lands he is in charge of protecting. The 
administration knows just how bad Mr. Pendley is, which is why it has 
withdrawn his nomination to serve as Director of the BLM.
  His nomination would never pass the Senate. However, it is 
unacceptable that Mr. Pendley continues to run the Bureau of Land 
Management as Acting BLM Director. This bureaucratic loophole allows 
Mr. Pendley to indefinitely serve as the de facto head of the BLM 
without a confirmation hearing before the American people and in direct 
defiance of the Senate's constitutional responsibility to advise and 
consent to executive nominations.
  My office has heard from thousands of Nevadans about the importance 
of our public lands or to raise their concerns about Mr. Pendley--and 
with good reason. As I said before, the Bureau of Land Management 
oversees 67 percent of Nevada, and if Mr. Pendley sells off our State's 
public lands, Nevadans will be the ones paying the price.
  I share the concerns of my constituents. Mr. Pendley was unfit to be 
confirmed as Director, and he is unfit to exercise the authority of the 
Director without being confirmed. For these reasons, this summer I 
joined my Senate colleagues in asking Secretary Bernhardt to remove Mr. 
Pendley from his unconfirmed position immediately.
  I stand here today to reiterate: Mr. Pendley must step down or be 
removed. I call on the President to nominate a qualified Director 
through the standard confirmation process, one who understands the 
balance of conservation and development and who has respect for the job 
that they would hold, because Nevadans can't afford to find out if Mr. 
Pendley will put two-thirds of our State on the chopping block.
  I yield the floor to my colleague from Colorado, Senator Michael 
Bennet.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I appreciate very much my colleague from 
Nevada.
  Let me start by welcoming the Presiding Officer back to the Senate. 
We are glad that you are here and that you are feeling better.
  I thank my colleague from New Mexico, my neighbor, the senior Senator 
from New Mexico, Senator Udall, for organizing this today. This is, I 
know, a matter that is very close to his heart. Thanks in large part to 
Senator Udall's leadership and the leadership of the Senator from 
Arizona and others, we have worked really hard to not have public lands 
be a partisan issue in the Senate, and I think that reflects the way it 
is out West, where our public lands really are the foundation of our 
economy and who we are. They make us who we are. They are a cultural 
touchstone for all of us in the West.
  Instead of comprehending this, President Trump, as he has done in so 
many other areas, has pursued a public lands agenda that is way outside 
the mainstream of conventional American thought. Few decisions better 
capture how extreme that position is and how frenzied his agenda is 
than his decision to hire William Perry Pendley to lead the Bureau of 
Land Management.
  As we have heard today, Mr. Pendley doesn't even believe in the idea 
of public lands. He has argued that the Founding Fathers intended for 
all Federal lands to be sold. Think about what that would have meant if 
we had sold off the public lands of the United States.
  They are the envy of the world. They are the envy of the world, and 
all of the work that Teddy Roosevelt and others had done to make sure 
that our generation would be able to benefit would have been lost if 
Pendley's constitutional interpretation had controlled.
  Asking someone like that to manage our public lands, including 8.3 
million acres in Colorado, is like asking somebody to be Secretary of 
Education who doesn't believe in public education. Given the track 
record of this administration, I guess it is not that surprising that 
he would put somebody in charge of public lands who believed that they 
are actually illegal or unconstitutional.
  Mr. Pendley is by far the most extreme anti-public lands nominee in 
my lifetime. You have heard the Senator from New Mexico talk about his 
attacks on people of color. You have heard about the fact that he 
doesn't believe in climate change. Pendley's ideology on public lands, 
on climate, and on so many other issues doesn't look anything like the 
consensus we have worked so hard to try to establish in Colorado.
  I think fundamental to this is that his extreme ideology does not 
perceive or conceive the economic reality in Colorado or New Mexico or 
Nevada or Arizona or Montana, where public lands sustain local 
businesses and climate change is undermining our farmers and ranchers.
  Since the BLM moved to Colorado, sort of, we have had a front row 
seat to this extremist agenda. This spring, Pendley signed off on a 
resource management plan that opened up the North Fork Valley of the 
Gunnison--one of our most beautiful agricultural valleys in Colorado--
to more oil and gas development.
  Local leaders worried that his plan failed to protect the region's 
watershed and will threaten the area's agricultural and outdoor 
economy. Instead of listening to Colorado, Mr. Pendley signed off on a 
plan, as he so often does, written in Washington by a bunch of special 
interests here who want to plunder our land out there.
  As Senators, we have a constitutional responsibility to ensure that 
the people entrusted with leading our Federal agencies are, at a 
minimum, qualified for the positions they hold and I would hope are 
within the mainstream of conventional American political ideology, but 
we have not been allowed to do that in this case.
  Mr. Pendley was nominated by the President to lead the BLM. The 
response was so negative that I have to imagine there were Senators on 
the other side of the aisle who said: Senator McConnell, please don't 
make us take this vote. Please. I have a tough election coming up.
  Don't make me take this vote, Mr. President. I am scared to take this 
vote.
  As a result, they withdrew his nomination because it couldn't pass 
the Senate. That is how the system is supposed to work. You can always 
put it on the floor and see whether we will support it. In this case, 
the response was so negative, they withdrew the nomination. That 
happens regularly. What is incredibly unusual in this case is they left 
him in his job. Having demonstrated that there was no public support in 
the Senate--the Senate unwilling to take a vote for fear of how 
unpopular it would be in the Western United States--they said: Well, 
you can be the Acting BLM Director.
  That is a disgrace. I don't know how anybody in this Chamber could 
call themselves committed to the U.S. Constitution if a President can 
nominate somebody, see the votes aren't there, withdraw it, and make 
them the Acting Director of the agency. That is the work of a dictator, 
not the President of the United States.
  Every now and then, you would expect the leader of this body to stand 
up for the prerogatives of this body, to stand up for the separation of 
powers and for the rule of law--particularly if you call yourself a 
constitutional conservative.
  We have a choice to make: to do nothing or to do our jobs. The 
American people want us to do our jobs. They are sick of the 
dysfunction here.
  From the perspective of Colorado, the decision on Mr. Pendley is 
simple: Someone who spent his entire career opposed to the very idea of 
public lands is unfit to lead a land management agency, period.
  He should do the right thing if the President won't: Step down 
immediately and allow somebody to take on the responsibility who 
actually understands how important it is to preserve the legacy our 
parents and grandparents created for us so we can preserve it for the 
next generation of Americans and the generation after that.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. UDALL. Mr. President, I very much appreciate the eloquent words 
of Senator Bennet of Colorado. Not only

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does Senator Bennet speak with eloquence, but he matches it with deeds 
and with action. He has a major piece of legislation before the Senate 
to try to protect public lands in his State of Colorado. We very much 
appreciate Senator Bennet and his activism there.
  I would also like to thank Senators Heinrich, Manchin, and Rosen for 
so eloquently talking about why William Pendley is unfit to continue as 
the de facto BLM Director.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, if I could just ask--
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.
  Mr. UDALL. Yes, please.
  Mr. BENNET. The Senator from New Mexico was so kind to refer to the 
CORE Act, the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Economy Act. Just a reminder: 
At the heart of that bill, which is 400,000 acres of public lands in 
Colorado--70,000 of which is wilderness area to protect our critical 
watershed--is the Camp Hale National Historic Landscape, which is the 
first such national historic landscape designation in the history of 
the United States. It memorializes the incredible work of our veterans 
who came to Camp Hale to train, to fight in the mountains of Northern 
Italy, pushed the Nazis out of Northern Italy. And that wasn't even 
enough for them. Then they came back, and they started our entire 
outdoor recreation industry, our ski resort. It was the same generation 
of people. That is an exact, perfect example--I am so glad Senator 
Udall brought it up--a perfect example of why we need to treasure our 
public lands.
  With that, I will yield the floor and turn it back over to Senator 
Udall.
  Mr. UDALL. I thank Senator Bennet once again for the good work he is 
doing there.
  Just a couple of other words in closing, talking about the career 
employee scientists, the people who work at the BLM. The men and women 
who work at the BLM are public servants dedicated to the mission of the 
agency. They deserve a leader who values them and respects them and 
carries out that mission, not an extremist who doesn't even believe 
that public lands should exist.
  Mr. Pendley's hostility toward our public lands resulted in his 
nomination as BLM Director being pulled by the President. If he is not 
fit to be confirmed as BLM Director by the Senate, he is not fit to 
exercise the authority of Director and should be immediately relieved 
of that authority.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ROMNEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.