[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Pages 26870-26871]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--H.R. 1904

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that with 
respect to H.R. 1904, the Healthy Forests bill, the Senate insist upon 
its amendments and request a conference with the House. I further ask 
that the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees at a ratio of 3-2.
  Mr. REID. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, we have had a 
difficult time with conference committees. A perfect example is the 
very important Medicare conference. With that matter, we have had the 
majority say you can have two Democrats attend, but they are the only 
ones. If anybody else comes into the room who should not be on the 
conference, we will terminate that session of the conference.
  Conferences have not been as we believe they should, where you have 
Democrats representing the minority and Republicans representing the 
majority meeting and trying to work out issues. These matters are 
simply resolved behind closed doors with Democrats having no input. 
Regarding the very important supplemental, which was completed and 
voted on and passed today, Senator Stevens specifically said on the 
floor he would have a full participation of all conferees. We did that. 
The conference took 2 days. It was tough and grueling. We won very few 
issues, but at least we had a conference.
  Healthy Forests is a bill I support wholeheartedly. As I indicated 
with the votes taken by the Senate on this issue, most Democrats 
support this issue. But we want a conference. We are not going to get 
one. What we suggest is we take our bill and merge it with the House 
bill and send it back to

[[Page 26871]]

the House. If they don't like something, they can send it back with 
amendments. That is what we recommend and that is how we are going to 
stand on the issue.
  Respectfully, I object to the unanimous consent request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, we have had forest fires raging in the 
West for a number of years, and this year it finally hit in a big 
State--California--and destroyed the home of the chairman of the House 
Armed Services Committee. Finally, it got the attention of large 
numbers of Americans, including Members of this body.
  With all due respect to my friend from Nevada, the way we do 
legislation is we appoint conferees and the House and Senate work out 
their differences. I hope some time before we are out of session this 
year we will be able to follow the normal legislative procedure and 
give the conferees a chance to reconcile the differences between the 
House and the Senate and move forward on this most important issue, 
because it is not going away. It is going to continue to be a problem 
summer after summer.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, if I may be recognized to respond to my 
friend.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the fires in California were disastrous. But 
what happened in California is not going to be changed by virtue of a 
conference. We believe if the majority really wants a bill--and I 
believe they do--they should take our suggestion. It is not anything 
unique. It has been done many times in the past. We have done it this 
year; that is, just take what we have passed in the Senate and send it 
to the House. If there is something they don't like, they can send it 
back to us with an amendment. That would be my suggestion.

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