[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Page 15867]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  SENATE FIRST QUARTER ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, as we return from the celebrations 
marking our Nation's Independence Day, we should take a moment to mark 
the accomplishments of this Senate as we conclude the first quarter of 
the 109th Session of the U.S. Congress.
  The list of accomplishments is impressive.
  Judges to our circuit courts of appeals, stalled for years, now sit 
on the bench. Key legislative initiatives, once left to languish, are 
now the law of the land or on the brink of completion.
  Class action reform protects plaintiffs from abusive coupon 
settlements while it prevents lawyers from gaming the system.
  It had been delayed for at least a decade despite strong public 
support and legislative majorities. Now it has been signed into law by 
President Bush.
  So too was a bankruptcy reform bill that ushers in a new emphasis on 
personal responsibility. It is another reform of our civil justice 
system that was long delayed, despite broad support.
  We met our responsibilities to defend freedom, and the challenges of 
continuing to wage war on terrorism, with an emergency funding bill for 
Iraq.
  We responded to the heart-breaking human cry for help by funding 
international relief efforts for victims of the Southeast Asia tsunami.
  The budget resolution, which sets the vision of this nation, was 
completed and now permits smooth consideration of appropriations bills, 
tax relief measures, the highway bill, the energy bill and numerous 
other initiatives.
  After failures to enact a budget in two of the last three sessions, 
getting this one in place means we are on course to meeting the 
President's goal of cutting the deficit in half while funding our 
important priorities of health, education, veterans, and homeland 
security.
  When we've found that our budget needed to be adjusted to meet the 
medical needs of veterans, we voted to make the adjustments to ensure 
veterans have the health care they need this year as well as next.
  We now are poised to soon enact a highway bill that will help 
Americans get where they need to go more quickly and safely, and will 
help create jobs within our States as well.
  We are going to conference now on an Energy bill that will help 
reduce our national dependence on foreign sources of oil and prevent 
blackouts like the one that hit the Northeast United States in 2003.
  We made the homeland safer by passing the Real ID provision. These 
provisions tighten our borders, reform our asylum system, and safeguard 
our identity documents so that terrorists cannot use them to avoid 
detection.
  We've broken the unprecedented three-year filibuster of President 
Bush's judicial nominees who finally received up-or-down votes. Now, 
Judges Owen, Pryor, Brown, Griffith, McKeague, and Griffin have each 
taken their oaths and assumed the Federal appellate bench.
  Most recently, the Senate has expanded the benefits of free trade, 
economic opportunity, and political stability to new regions of our own 
hemisphere with Senate passage of the Central American Free Trade 
Agreement.
  We've made a good down payment on the appropriations process by 
passing the Interior, Legislative Branch, and Energy and Water.
  And finally, this week we have paid our respects and expressed our 
condolences to the victims of the London terrorist bombings, and are 
proceeding to work on funding our own homeland security needs.
  Freedom never had a greater ally than the valiant United Kingdom, and 
the United Kingdom will never have a greater friend than America. Our 
prayers are with that great nation today.
  That is an incredible body of achievement in just six months. Where 
once there was inaction, we can now boast of accomplishment. We have 
done what the American people sent us here to do.
  I hope everyone enjoyed the Fourth of July weekend and paused for a 
moment to celebrate the fact behind those fireworks--that government 
of, for, and by the people can work, and that the accomplishments of 
this Senate show that it does work.

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