[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Page 25859]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following leader remarks, there will be a 
period of morning business for up to 2 hours, with Senators permitted 
to speak for up to 10 minutes each. The majority will control the first 
hour, the Republicans will control the second hour. Following morning 
business, the Senate will proceed to the motion to proceed to H.R. 
3548.
  I would direct a question to the Chair. What time does the 30 hours 
postcloture run out?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The time expires at 12:26 a.m. 
Thursday.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I hope we can work something out with the 
Republicans. We are going to have that vote as soon as we can. I am 
sorry that we might have to do it in the morning. I think we should be 
able to avoid that. The vote was held later than I wanted it because a 
Senator was quite ill. I hope we can work something out. We have 
bipartisan support, and that is just not words.
  We have significant numbers of Republicans and Democrats who want to 
do two things--one, to do something about the first-time home buyers 
tax credit. There has been general agreement by a significant number of 
Senators, Democrats and Republicans, to get this done. The legislation 
is before this body now. We also have the loss carryback, which is 
extremely important for businesses at this time, also widely agreed 
upon. It was originally sponsored by Senator Bunning, and now Senator 
Baucus and others have agreed to this--not two or three Senators but 
significant numbers on both sides. We could get those done. We have 
given the Republicans a request to do it in 2 hours, and Senators said 
they don't even need that much time to get this done.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, would the majority leader yield?
  Mr. REID. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I would just say to my friend, we have a lot of fights 
around here over things we disagree on, but on this particular measure, 
this is an unnecessary impasse that we have. We have come very close to 
a very modest number of amendments. My side would be more than happy to 
accept time agreements on all of the amendments. I want to second what 
the majority leader says, that I hope we can indeed work out an 
agreement for a modest number of amendments with time agreements and 
wrap up this bill because I certainly share his view that most Members 
support the underlying measure and the additions to which the majority 
leader has referred.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, first of all, the other amendments are 
vexatious. They are argumentative. They are not germane. They are not 
relevant to this legislation. But it seems that this year, every time 
we get where we try to get something done, we have had stalling. We had 
a Senator out here yesterday who had done the work to find out how many 
times we have been stopped from doing things. Almost 60 times on 
absolute filibusters we have had to invoke cloture and 30-some-odd 
times on just objecting to legislation going forward.
  The other amendments the Republican leader has suggested are 
amendments that are not related to this legislation, and there is wide 
disagreement from Republicans and Democrats. Why do we need to do that? 
We don't need to. It is only an effort to slow things down. We are not 
going to agree to that. It is not necessary.
  Let's get these things done. We will move to something as quickly as 
we get rid of this, and they can move the nongermane, nonrelevant 
amendments on those, but let's get this done. I don't know when we can 
do this legislation for the first-time home buyers. It has been a 
tremendous boon to real estate all over America today. Has it been a 
perfect program? Of course not. But the good part of the amendments--
two amendments we are talking about--is they are fully paid for. It 
doesn't run up the national debt by 10 cents--by nothing. Let's get 
this done and then move on and start arguing about other things. There 
is nothing to argue about here. We are not going to go to those 
amendments.
  I had a caucus yesterday in which the Presiding Officer and a number 
of other Senators throughout the Chamber were there. We have done this 
time after time, and quite frankly we are tired of it. It is not 
necessary. There is no reason to have these amendments that are just 
rifleshots at trying to embarrass people, and these two amendments 
don't embarrass anyone. They are good for the country. I hope we can 
get them done.

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