[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Page 627]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           IRAN SANCTIONS ACT

  Mr. REID. Madam President, at the end of last December, I made a 
commitment to bring S. 2799, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions 
Accountability and Divestment Act, to the Senate floor. This critical 
legislation would impose new sanctions on Iran's refined petroleum 
sector and tighten existing U.N. sanctions. The act will create 
pressure on the Iranian regime and help stop Iran from acquiring a 
nuclear weapon. I thank Senator Dodd, Senator Kerry, and many other 
Senators for their hard work.
  I have had conversations with the distinguished Republican leader. We 
are committed to finding a time to do this legislation. This is going 
to be a piece of legislation dealing with just this narrow issue. We 
cannot get into foreign aid and all those other things. I am reaching 
out to my Republican colleagues to help me find a path to get that done 
in the next few weeks. We started this session by working on important 
legislation to prevent the Federal Government from defaulting on its 
obligations, including my amendment to put in place strict statutory 
requirements that will ensure the cost of any new spending or tax cuts 
will not increase our deficit. But everyone should know that I am 
looking forward to moving on the Iran Sanctions Act, as I have 
indicated, but we are going to need some cooperation to get this 
legislation done. I had a conversation with the Republican leader 
yesterday, and it is our goal to finish the legislation on the debt 
limit quickly. Hopefully, we can do that and maybe the Bernanke 
nomination by Thursday or Friday.
  The Republicans have scheduled a retreat. We are going to have one 
next week. When this was scheduled, no one knew when the President was 
going to give his State of the Union Message. But it happens it is on 
tomorrow. So we have the State of the Union tomorrow night. We have the 
retreat tomorrow. We are not going to have any legislative issues here 
unless the Republicans have agreed. We are not going to interfere in 
any way with their retreat. These are extremely important. The two 
caucuses can move alone and not be bothered by other things. It is very 
important. We are going to do the same next week. I think what we have 
done in the last year or so has been important. We used to do these 
retreats on Fridays, but with schedules such as they are, not many 
people showed up, or not as many as we wanted. With the new schedule of 
having votes on Tuesday and Thursday, in fact, it causes people to want 
to be here on Wednesday.
  I look forward to working with the Republican leader and others in 
coming up with a glidepath to finishing these matters as quickly as we 
can. By virtue of some cloture motions I filed, we are scheduled for 
votes in the morning. I want to do everything I can to avoid that and 
will maybe put those over until Thursday or maybe try to get rid of 
those votes today would be the best thing we could do.
  I am happy to yield to my friend the Republican leader.

                          ____________________