[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4977-4981]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          CONTINUING EXTENSION ACT OF 2010--MOTION TO PROCEED


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 333, 
S. 3153, and I send a cloture motion to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion, having been presented 
under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to S. 3153, Calendar No. 333:
         Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, Mike Johanns, George S. LeMieux, 
           Kay Bailey Hutchison, Lamar Alexander, Saxby Chambliss, 
           Mike Crapo, John Cornyn, Jim Bunning, Michael B. Enzi, 
           John McCain, Judd Gregg, Jeff Sessions, Robert F. 
           Bennett, John Ensign, Mitch McConnell.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a few minutes talking 
about where we are as a nation and what the future is for our children.
  We have at this point in time $12.6 trillion worth of debt. We now 
have equivalent debt for every man, woman, and child in this country of 
$42,000. For our children who are under 25 years of age, in the year 
2030, each one of them will be responsible for $1,113,000 worth of debt 
and unfunded obligations. If we think about what that means, it means 
that for our children who are under 25 years of age, the ability for 
them to experience the opportunity that we as a nation have experienced 
in the past 230-plus years is going to be put at risk.
  We have before us some things that need to get done. They have to get 
done. We have two options: We can add another $9.2 billion to that 
$12.6 trillion we have today and bump up more than that $1,113,000, or 
we can relook into the mirror and say: Should we as Americans start 
making some of the hard choices that are going to be necessary for us 
to get out of the mess we have created for our children?
  When I travel around the country--and I travel in Oklahoma--Americans 
are concerned about our future right now. What are their concerns? What 
does it boil down to in their hearts? In their hearts, they have this 
gripping sensation that what they have experienced as an American may 
not be available for their children. It is a painful realization. Their 
hope for us is that we might change that outcome for their children. We 
have an opportunity to start that right now.
  By way of background, most of us know there is a tremendous amount of 
waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication in the Federal Government. 
Oftentimes, it is hard to weed out because every program, whether it is 
efficient or effective or not, has people who tout it. Our nature as 
politicians is to offend no one. That is our nature. How in the

[[Page 4978]]

world do we accomplish what is going to be necessary in the next 5 to 
10 years and solve this most difficult problem that we, the 
politicians, have created? America didn't create this. The States 
didn't create this. This problem was created in Washington.
  As has often been said, the easiest thing in the world is to spend 
somebody else's money. So the earnestness with which I come to the 
floor is to say we ought not be doing that, especially when we know 
there is waste and there is fraud and there is duplication and there is 
abuse in much of the Federal Government.
  I was reminded of the trouble the State of New Jersey is in. What the 
people of the State of New Jersey have said is: We recognize the 
problem, and we need to change things. So they elected a new Governor 
on the basis that he would make the tough decisions about priorities to 
change the future path--that he might change the path of the future for 
the citizens of New Jersey. He put forth a bold budget. As a matter of 
fact, one of the Senate Democratic leaders is helping him fix the 
problem.
  So we have a Republican Governor with a bold plan who has come 
forward to the people of the State of New Jersey. They elected him by a 
fairly large margin and said: For us to have this great future we all 
want for our kids, we are going to have to do some things that aren't 
necessarily pleasant, but they are necessary. It is kind of like when 
you have a child and they have to take a medicine, or the first time 
you take a child to the pediatrician's office for their first set of 
shots. That is an easy visit. The hard visit is the second visit 
because they have a memory of getting the injections the first time. So 
all of a sudden you have resistance, you have resistance, you have 
resistance to a medicine or a vaccine that actually fixes the problem, 
but there is a small amount of pain with it.
  So the Governor of New Jersey has started out on a bold, fresh course 
not because he is a Republican--it doesn't matter the label. The fact 
is, the people in New Jersey, in a bipartisan manner, recognized they 
had to make changes. So we have unemployment insurance. We have COBRA. 
We have flood insurance. We have the doc fix for 30 days. We have all 
of these things in front of us that we all agree we want to get done.
  Where lies our disagreement? It is very simple. One says we will 
declare it an emergency, not pay for it, and send the bill to our 
grandkids. The other says: Maybe it is time we quit doing that.
  What is the expectation of the American people in terms of how we 
should respond to that? A recent poll said 72 percent of the American 
people, not divided by party, pretty neutral between both parties, say 
the No. 1 issue in front of us as a nation is our debt.
  We had a warning from the rating agencies just 2 weeks ago that the 
United States of America is about to lose its AAA credit rating on its 
bonds. If you watched bond prices yesterday, what you saw was the yield 
shot up. The interest payment we are going to have to pay for when we 
borrow a huge amount of money is going to rise.
  One of the most significant things we could do to help ourselves is 
send a signal to the world that we are not going to wait until our bond 
rating crashes, that we are going to start taking the steps that are 
necessary for us to get back on a road to fiscal health.
  With all good faith, I think the majority leader and the minority 
leader tried to work out an agreement where we could perhaps accomplish 
this. We did not get there. Therefore, we find ourselves where we are 
going to have to have a debate, and we are going to have to discuss in 
front of the American people if we do these good things--and they are 
good--should we get rid of things that are a whole lot less good or 
should we take the immoral choice and not make any choice at all and 
pass it on to our children and grandchildren.
  That is the question of where the American people are today. The 
majority and the President have had a great victory on health care, 
with not partisan differences but policy differences with my side of 
the aisle. That is now the law of the land. Whether you believe CBO and 
how it is scored, the fact is, even if it saves that amount of money, 
that does not come close to solving any of our problems.
  We have had these multiple month-long extensions, of which none have 
been paid for, at about $9 billion to $10 billion a month. We find 
ourselves, because we want to go home or we want to go on a codel or we 
want to campaign or we want to fundraise, we want to make it easy and 
just pass it on down to the next generation.
  I cannot agree to that anymore, ever again; that, in fact, if we are 
going to spend money on things we know we ought to do, then the 
obligation ought to be on us to get rid of funds that are spent on 
things that are very much less important. That is the hardest thing a 
political body does, is that they end up isolating and irritating those 
who are well connected who have an interest in those lower priority 
items. It is hard for us because, as is our nature, we want to offend 
no one. But we are going to have to talk that out. I guess we are going 
to have to talk it out on the floor, and we are going to have to debate 
it. We are going to talk about what our true long-term future is if we 
do not change.
  I would rather us not be at this point, but when I wrestle with my 
own conscience and as I visualize my grandchildren and the 
grandchildren of everybody in this body, I think it would be immoral 
for us not to have this debate.
  I don't know what the outcome of the debate is going to be and the 
ultimate result. But I can tell you it is a legitimate debate we ought 
to be having. We ought to not just be having it on this extender 
package. We ought to be having it on any new spending, in any form, 
that the Congress does.
  One of the large segments of the Recovery Act that some of us 
disagreed with was the amount of money that got transferred to the 
States to help them through this fiscal crisis. When we look at that, 
when we did that, I believe--and this is my personal belief, and I am 
sure many of my colleagues would not agree with it--we transferred the 
worst habit of Washington to the States, saying there are not 
consequences to your spending more money than you have. Although all 
these States have balanced budget amendments--in my own State, even 
though we had to make some tough decisions because of the tremendous 
amount of money that came through the Recovery Act, we did not make the 
decisions we should. So now we are going to make them this year, and we 
are going to make very difficult choices about priorities in the State 
of Oklahoma, with a Democratic Governor and a Republican House and 
Senate. They are going to get the job done. They are going to 
accomplish it because the people of Oklahoma do not allow their 
government to run their government on the backs of their unborn 
children. We do not allow it. We forbid it. We see it as immoral.
  If you think about it, it is because what we are doing is stealing 
future opportunity from our children. People can say that is not right, 
but when you run the numbers--and everybody knows the numbers--it is 
right.
  CBO put out 2 weeks ago that we are going to have a $9.8 trillion 
deficit this decade, not counting last year. They also put out that 
$5.6 trillion of that $9.8 trillion is money that is going to be used 
to pay interest. We are now similar to the person who gets in trouble 
on their credit card. The analogy does not stop there because what 
happens to the person with the credit card debt? The interest rate 
rises because they are not paying, when they only pay the minimum.
  We have now gotten to the point where the vast majority of our debt 
accumulation in the next 9 years is going to be associated with 
interest payments rather than defending the country, rather than 
refilling Social Security, the money we have stolen out of there, 
rather than picking up the deficit that is in Medicare. We are going to 
spend that money to pay for interest. It is a double whammy. It is 
money we are paying that is not helping anybody. It is not helping 
anybody.
  I was nominated to be on the Commission President Obama issued by 
Executive order that has six of our Democratic colleagues in the House 
and Senate and six of us on the Republican side

[[Page 4979]]

and six appointed by the President. I have had multiple conversations 
with many of those people already. Quite frankly, they are worried and 
scared for our country based on the numbers we are seeing.
  How is it we would now start down a road ignoring the reality of what 
is in front of us?
  Let me describe what is in front of us. I wish to talk about it from 
an international standpoint first, and then I wish to talk about it 
from a domestic economy standpoint.
  We had the Chinese Army say 6 weeks ago to the Chinese Government: 
Dump a bunch of American bonds; hurt them. You have the Chinese 
Government that undervalues its currency, stealing our jobs, and we are 
borrowing money from them. They now have an impact on our foreign 
policy. All we have to do is talk about Iran.
  The sanctions we want to place on Iran that are necessary to be 
placed on Iran to contain the threat of them developing nuclear weapons 
are not available to us. The reason they are not available to us is 
because China and Russia have leverage over our debt. We do not have a 
clear, clean, crisp foreign policy because we have this little IOU of 
$900 billion to China and $700 billion to Russia that we are worried 
might influence their handling of that and the consequences of it.
  When we look at history and we look at all the republics that have 
ever been, the one key thing in common that happens to them that causes 
them to fail is what? Is that every one of them got in trouble on a 
fiscal basis before they withered on an international basis or on a 
dominance basis. Every one of them withered. They, in fact, fell 
because they could not support their armies, they could not support the 
networks they put out and developed as a governing body.
  The question is, Will that happen to us? There is a potential for 
that to happen to us. I will tell you, yes, we are in a position now 
where if we do not change gears and start making priorities on both 
programs and benefits, drawn in the light of the priorities of our 
present financial situation, and start making selections about what is 
most important versus what is least important, we are going to be 
similar to the Athenian Empire.
  The real thing that is going on outside Washington and throughtout 
America is the fear of what is happening to us. They sense it. They 
worry about it. We have exaggerated that by at times not paying 
attention to that fear and that worry. But the consequence of not 
starting at a point in time in which we are going to make a difference 
and start doing what we were elected to do, which is to select 
priorities and eliminate nonfunctioning, poorly functioning duplication 
and fraud from the Federal Government--I said I was going to talk about 
the other side.
  What does the domestic side look like for us as we go out, having 
$9.8 trillion worth of more borrowing in the next 9 years, with $5.6 
trillion of that in interest payments? What does that do to our 
domestic economy? What is the impact? The impact is, we will see 
changes in our standard of living because of it. They are not positive 
changes.
  If we were to stop right now and not borrow another penny and try to 
manage the debt we have today, we would still see a marked increase in 
inflation in our country--not immediately, but all you have to do is 
watch the bond market to see what is going to happen and you watch the 
yield curve. When you see 10 years go from last year this time 2.4 
percent to 3.9 percent, which is a greater than 50 percent rise in 
yield as we continue to flood $300 billion this week in borrowing from 
the Fed, what does that mean for the average American?
  What that means for the average American is inflation. What that 
means to that $5.8 trillion in terms of interest payments is that it is 
a larger proportion because as the interest costs rise, the proportion 
of interest payments versus total debt rises. We now spend in the 
United States--last year, per household--$38,980 in Federal programs 
per household. The median family income in America is $50,000, and the 
Federal Government is responsible for 80 percent of that as a ratio in 
terms of money we spend. We only collected--and this is not last year 
but the year before data--$18,000 per household.
  So what do the numbers say? The numbers said that last year, 43 cents 
out of every dollar that the government spent we borrowed. It is going 
to be about 48 cents or 47 cents, we don't know for sure, this year. 
But I would note that we had the highest monthly deficit in our history 
in the month of February, and we need to send a signal to the 
international financial market that we are aware----
  Mr. REID addressed the chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Through the Chair, I would ask if my friend would yield for 
a question?
  Mr. COBURN. I would be glad to yield for a question.
  Mr. REID. Could the Senator give us an idea of how long he is going 
to talk?
  Mr. COBURN. About another 30 or 45 minutes. I will be glad to signal 
that ahead of time so the Senator would not have to wait on me. I will 
make sure the Senator is notified before I finish.
  I kind of lost my train of thought.
  The fact is, about 47 cents out of every dollar that we spend this 
year we are going to borrow. From whom are we borrowing it? Half we are 
borrowing from the American taxpayer, but the other half we are 
floating to the same people who hold our debt today. So we are doing a 
couple of things that are very dangerous for us. We are increasing our 
dependency on financing with those who don't have the best interest in 
mind for us, and we are raising the level of the amount of money we 
borrow that we have to pay back in interest to where it is not going to 
be long that all the money we are borrowing is interest.
  Why is that important to the individual family? If you have a savings 
that has recovered somewhat from the lows of 2009--and I think the 
average savings has recovered about 60 percent of its losses, or 75 
percent of the losses in this country--when we start inflating the 
value of that retirement, the value of that asset is going to decline 
in terms of real dollars. We are perilously close to getting into the 
same situation we got into in the late 1970s and the early 1980s where 
we had double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, and double-
digit interest rates.
  You will hear everybody say: Oh, that isn't going to happen to us 
again. Well, I certainly hope it doesn't, but some of the same 
situations are playing out today that were playing out then. So if in 
fact you are on a fixed income, a retirement income, and we start 
inflating because of our debt, who does it hurt the most? It hurts 
those individuals who are on a fixed income, who don't have the luxury 
of going back to work or don't have the capability of going back to 
work. What happens to them? Their standard of living goes down, along 
with their ability to cope.
  As I talk to families across America, what they are doing, still to 
this day, is they are sitting down at the table and they are visiting 
with one another and they are saying: Here is the money in, and here is 
the money out. How do we increase the money in, and how do we decrease 
the money out? What they are doing is picking what is important. They 
are picking what is a priority and going without the things that are 
not as important.
  I agree that we have 9.7 percent unemployment and we ought to be 
helping those people. I agree we ought to be helping with COBRA. I 
agree we ought to do the doc fix. We had an opportunity last night to 
fix it for 3 years and 9 months and pay for it, but this body rejected 
that. I agree those are good things. What I don't agree with is doing 
those good things on the backs of our grandchildren. When and if we do 
those good things, and we haven't paid for them, what we will have done 
is been dishonest with the American people, not only in our action but 
in our oath.
  You see, it is easy to spend other people's money if in fact you are 
sitting up

[[Page 4980]]

here secure with a pension and a good salary and there are no 
consequences to us. We will all do fine. But the vast majority of 
Americans will not do fine, and the future of America will not shine 
bright. The future will be a little dimmer because we have this 
tremendous yoke of heaviness and drudgery on our backs because we, in 
fact, would not have made the hard choices.
  This isn't the first Congress. The Republicans didn't make hard 
choices when they were in control. It is not partisan. It is a disease 
of elected officials, that they think they can get away without making 
the hard choices because the cost for not making the hard choices comes 
down the road. We have been doing that now for 30 years in this 
country. We have not made hard choices. We have made a lot of mistakes.
  No question, Republicans have made more than their fair share of 
those mistakes. But rather than point fingers, what we ought to say is: 
What is the problem? What are the symptoms of the problem, and how do 
you fix them?
  Many economists say it is impossible for us to grow our way out of 
this situation. We had a nice bump in the fourth quarter, thanks to 
hundreds of billions of dollars that got pumped into the economy, and 
there truly were a lot of jobs saved by the stimulus act. Maybe not as 
efficiently as I would have liked, but there were jobs saved. Nobody 
can dispute that. The question is, are we going to continue the 
policies that got us into trouble?
  As I practice medicine, the one mistake doctors make and that gets 
them into trouble is when they treat symptoms instead of the disease. 
Here is the best example I know. Somebody comes to you with a fever and 
cough, malaise, and not feeling good. Well, I as a doctor, I can give 
them medicine for a cough. I can fix that. And I can give them 
something for the fever and the muscle aches. I can fix that. But if I 
don't diagnose what is causing the fever, the muscle aches, and the 
cough, what I have done is covered up the disease. That is what we are 
doing. The patient may get well because the body is a miraculous part 
of creation, and it has tremendous defenses. The mortality rate for 
pneumonia at the turn of the last century was 60 percent. Today, in 
somebody under 80, it is about 1 percent because we have the drugs to 
treat the real disease not the symptoms.
  What is going to describe our action? Are we going to treat the 
symptoms or are we going to treat the disease? My hope would be that we 
could lock hands and say: Here is a start. Here is $9.2 billion that 
we, in fact, can find a way to come together and pay for and make sure 
these people get these benefits that are needed in this time of 
difficult economic situation. We can do that, and we can set a new 
start--a new start of reaching across the aisle and saying this is an 
appropriate moral goal, just as it is an inappropriate moral goal to 
not pay for it. It is immoral.
  Let me say it again: To steal from your children and your 
grandchildren with a wink and a nod and thinking there are no 
consequences for your borrowing against their future is immoral. It 
wouldn't be immoral if everything we were doing was working great; that 
there wasn't $350 billion worth of duplication, fraud, abuse, and waste 
in the Federal Government every year--$350 billion every year, fully 
documented. It wouldn't be. But that is where we find ourselves.
  So on the one hand over here we have this waste, fraud, abuse, and 
duplication. Yet because we want to get out of town we don't want to do 
the hard work of ferreting something out of that, something that is 
suspected of not being effective, to pay for the $9.2 billion. And I 
told my leadership that I didn't have any desire to keep anybody here 
this weekend through Wednesday. That is not my desire. But, in fact, if 
we are not going to do it, if we are going to take the immoral choice 
and spend money that we don't have and not eliminate programs that are 
not effective--programs that would not deliver to the American people, 
programs that would not accomplish their intended purpose--and just 
charge that to our grandkids, I feel obliged to stand in the way of 
that. And it will not be easy.
  We didn't have much sleep last night. It will require a lot of effort 
on my part. But I think the future of our country is worth that. The 
future of our country is worth taking the consternation of those who 
will be upset with me because I am taking this stand. And I want to say 
at the outset, if somebody had plans, I apologize that those plans 
might be disrupted. I had plans, and they are going to get disrupted. 
But I don't apologize for having a legitimate debate on whether we 
ought to grow a spine and start making the same kind of decisions that 
every family in America is making.
  It doesn't matter if you are a liberal or a conservative, you are 
still making those decisions. It is not about social issues. The 
greatest moral question in front of us today is not this range of 
social issues that so often divide us. The greatest moral issue in 
front of us today is whether we will preserve this wonderful experiment 
and create an opportunity, through hard work and sacrifice, so that the 
generations that are to come will have the same benefit from it that we 
have had. So it may turn into a partisan debate, but that is not my 
goal. It needs to be a legitimate, intellectual debate about the value 
of being efficient, the value of doing the hard work of making choices 
that are of the highest priority, and eliminating those things that, 
although they might be good, are less good in favor of things that are 
absolutely necessary.
  Unfortunately, in my almost 5\1/2\ years in the Senate, my side 
rarely does that, and neither does the other side.
  How do we get out of the problem we have? How do we get out of the 
gridlock? How do we get out of the anger? How do we then focus on what 
the real problem, the real danger to the undermining of America is? The 
real danger to the undermining of America is the fact that we have a 
government that is entirely too big; the only thing it is effective and 
efficient at is wasting money; that we can't afford the Government we 
have today; that we continue to borrow money we don't have to pay for 
things we don't absolutely need. How do we get out of that?
  I recognize the debate. Unfortunately, I had a drafting error in what 
I intended to offer so we are offering pay-fors from what I think is 
not necessarily the best source, but it is better than not paying for 
it. There is $100 billion in unobligated balances sitting at the 
agencies in this country. It has already been used to pay for certain 
things we have already voted on. Nobody would feel the pinch if we did 
it that way.
  I would be inclined to ask for a unanimous consent, but I will not do 
that until I am sure the other side will not object to it, to have a 
change in the paperwork in mine from what I originally intended but, 
because of a drafting error, I cannot use. But nevertheless, the 
legitimate debate is whether we borrow and steal from our kids or we 
get out of town and send the bill to our kids for something we are 
going to consume today.
  There is a disease that is called consumption--it is syphilis. It is 
consumption because it consumes you. We have a disease similar to that. 
Our disease actions in Congress are consuming away the opportunity of 
America, much of it because we lack perspective but most of it because 
we lack the will to make the difficult choices that are in front of us. 
I wonder--actually, I am sometimes astonished--why people do not go 
home from here at night tremendously concerned about our future, enough 
so that it causes us to come together to do the best, right thing for 
America. Is the best, right thing for America to borrow this $9.2 
billion? Is that the best, right thing for America? Or would it be that 
we eliminate programs that are not nearly as effective or lessen 
programs that are not nearly as effective as these are going to be for 
those people who are depending on us today? Not just the best, right 
thing in the short term, because another disease that plagues us is we 
fail to consider the long term oftentimes--not all the time. But we 
become short-term thinkers, thinking about, where is the

[[Page 4981]]

political advantage? How do I look good? How do I accomplish what I 
want to accomplish for me or my State? I think it is important that we 
understand there is no State in this country that can be healthy if our 
country is not healthy--if the country isn't economically healthy, if 
it is not socially healthy. If it is not, then we have not done our 
job.
  My apologies to the leader for putting him in this position. It is 
with a very intended sense of commitment that I want us to try to pay 
for this. I understand there is disagreement in that regard, but I look 
forward to trying to solve this problem, and if we can, I look forward 
to having the debate as it goes forward.
  I yield to the majority leader.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. I say to my friend from Oklahoma, he has not put me in an 
awkward position at all. We would have been happy just to vote on this.
  That being the case, what I will do--and I alert everybody we are not 
going to rush this, so people will have time to get here--I move to 
table the motion to proceed.
  I ask for the yeas and nays.
  Mr. COBURN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Shaheen). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 59, nays 40, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 106 Leg.]

                                YEAS--59

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Begich
     Bennet
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Brown (OH)
     Burris
     Byrd
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Conrad
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Inouye
     Johnson
     Kaufman
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murray
     Nelson (NE)
     Nelson (FL)
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Specter
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--40

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Bennett
     Bond
     Brown (MA)
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Graham
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Johanns
     Kyl
     LeMieux
     Lugar
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Risch
     Roberts
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Snowe
     Thune
     Vitter
     Voinovich
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Isakson
       
  The motion was agreed to.
  Mrs. McCASKILL. I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

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