Department Of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (Senate - July 26, 2007)

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I wish to take a few minutes to walk everyone through where we are right now.

About 15 or 20 minutes ago, the majority leader came over to the Senate to talk to us about moving quickly through the Homeland Security appropriations bill that is now on the floor because, as he described, we have many items of business that need to be accomplished before the Senate goes into recess for the August break. He asked the managers of this legislation, Senators BYRD and COCHRAN, to work with Senators who have pending amendments to move them through in an orderly fashion so we could possibly finish this bill by tonight and go on to the rest of the business that needs to be completed.

In complying with that, Senator Byrd and Senator Cochran and myself worked out an agreement to begin to deal with some of those amendments. That is how we work in the Senate. We would never finish everything if we didn't take some time to have conversations to figure out how we can work through amendments in an orderly fashion.

There are 11 amendments currently pending that we are trying to work our way through. One of those amendments is an amendment offered by the Senator from Louisiana, Mr. Vitter, which he had a right to come and offer. It was not the pending matter. The pending matter was the Landrieu amendment, second degreed by the Dorgan amendment.

In order to get to the amendment offered by Senator Vitter, we had to agree by unanimous consent to set that aside. We talked to the Senator and agreed on a process to dispose of his amendment. Senator Byrd, Senator Cochran, Senator Vitter, and I were here to come to an agreement that Senator Vitter would offer his amendment. He understood that a point of order lay against that regarding whether it was a rule XVI. He understood that Senator Cochran's second-degree amendment also was in the same procedural difficulty.

The agreement was that we would agree to lay the amendment aside, Senator Vitter would set aside the amendment, go to his amendment, and a point of order would lie against it, as well as a point of order against the second degree offered by Senator Cochran. It sounds complex, but the upshot was, it would dispose of the amendment, a point of order would lie against it, and we would move on to the other numerous amendments that now lay before the Senate.

In this body, it is extremely important that we all have the opportunity to work out these agreements so we can work through bills in an orderly fashion. I assumed that would be the case, that we had all agreed upon that and that would be the order this would go to.

Unfortunately, when the Senator rose to ask to set aside the amendment, according to the agreement we agreed to, I did not object. The Senator went to his amendment, and instead of going through the process we had all agreed upon, he sent a modification to the desk that changed his underlying amendment and meant that it no longer had a point of order lying against it.

That is a difficult position it puts us all in because we have 11 amendments, possibly more, to get through. If we can't come to an agreement and trust each other on how the process is going to move forward and go outside that, we are not going to be able to get through these amendments, because this Senate really is based on trust.

So, Madam President, we are now in the parliamentary position where we have gone back to the regular order. Another amendment is pending. If we move through these in proper fashion, the amendment offered by Senator Vitter will now be at the end of 12 amendments that are now in order. At some point we will get to it, but we now are in a difficult position of: How do we move through all these other amendments that are being offered? How do we deal with all the other Senators who are going to come to the floor and ask us to work through these amendments, if we cannot have an agreement that this Senate--when Senators stand on the floor and agree to it--knows that is what will occur? So we find ourselves in a very difficult position.

I see the majority leader is on the Senate floor and will yield to him if he would like to make a statement.

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