[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Page 21692]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ORDER OF BUSINESS

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, in the early hours of the morning, we are 
going to be closing down here in a few minutes. We do have some very 
important business to conduct, first on the Defense authorization 
conference report, and closing up with a few other matters.
  It has been a long day, with a lot of productive work. The Democratic 
leader and I were just commenting it has been a constructive and 
productive last 2 or 3 weeks.
  Mr. President, before I propound a unanimous consent request on the 
Defense authorization conference report, I turn to my colleague, the 
distinguished Senator from Oklahoma, who has been intimately involved 
in this issue over the last several days and the last several hours.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I thank the leader for working with me on 
getting the requirements of what we need to do to get control of our 
spending in this country. I also want to thank the House leadership for 
their commitment in attempting to do that.
  I had threatened to object to the unanimous consent request that we 
pass this bill. That is not a desire or something I want to do. But 
what I do want to do is make sure the money we spend actually goes for 
Defense. And we had, in both the appropriations bill and in the 
authorization bill, by a vote of 96 to 1 in this body, that even though 
we do not report earmarks in the Senate, we do not label them, we do 
not say who put them, we did have an agreement--with amendments in both 
those bills--that we will allow the Pentagon to report to the American 
public on the status of those earmarks and back to us as a Congress 
whether or not they met the mission of the Defense Department because 
about 40 percent of them do not. It is all about transparency, the 
American people seeing where we are spending our money.
  I appreciate the leaders both here and in the House agreeing to bring 
this amendment--which was offered and accepted and passed here; and 
what was thrown out of the conferences--up in the lame-duck session. 
And given that commitment from both the House leadership and the Senate 
leadership, I will not object to this bill.
  I will tell people, other than the earmarks that are in this bill, 
this is a needed bill, and a lot of the earmarks are appropriate and 
needed. But the American people ought to be seeing where we are 
spending the money, and they cannot. This amendment would have allowed 
them to see that.
  The agreement of, hopefully, bringing this back, so the American 
people can actually know where money is spent, I appreciate the 
leader's help in accomplishing that.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, it looks like we will be able to proceed 
with our unanimous consent request and pass a very, very important bill 
to this country. We passed earlier today the appropriations for our 
Department of Defense. And with this, on the same day, we will be able 
to pass the authorization bill.

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