National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011--Motion to Proceed--Resumed

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, if I could ask the majority leader a question through the Chair.

Unfortunately, I was not able to hear the majority leader's speech, for which I apologize. I was in a meeting, and as soon as I found out he was speaking, I rushed to the floor. I want to make sure, since this is an important bill and an important issue, that I understand precisely what it is the majority leader is proposing. So I ask through the Chair whether the majority leader is proposing a procedure where there would be no amendments and the tree would be filled or whether the majority leader is proposing an agreement that he and I and Senator Lieberman discussed yesterday, which would have allowed for 15 amendments, 10 on the Republican side and 5 on the Democratic side. Again, if the majority leader explained this and I missed it, I apologize. I received conflicting information about how the majority leader intends to proceed on this important bill.

I note that we have been in quorum calls for hours during which we could have proceeded to the tax bill and started working on it, and we could be working this weekend as well.

But I would very much appreciate hearing from the majority leader exactly what his intent is.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I hope my friend heard the nice things I said about her in my statement.

Ms. COLLINS. Unfortunately, I missed those as well.

Mr. REID. They were pretty good. I want to be very candid with my friend. In an effort to do the things the Senator from Maine and I talked about with Senator Lieberman on a number of occasions, including yesterday and the day before, all of those require filling the tree, every one of them. That is just the way it is. The only way we can have some control over amendments is to do it that way.

The answer to my friend's question--would I fill the tree--the answer is yes.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, if I could pose a further question to the majority leader through the Chair, I understand what the majority leader is saying, but as he discussed his plan with me, he would, in fact, allow 15 amendments--10 to be offered on the Republican side that would be amendments of the Republican side's choice as long as they were relevant to the bill--and he would ensure that there would be votes on those amendments. So I am confused when I hear he is going to fill the tree because that implies to me that he would not be allowing those 15 amendments we discussed--10 on our side, of our choice, as long as they were relevant to the bill. So I am truly trying to find out what the agreement is.

Mr. REID. The agreement is that I have made a number of different offers and have made other suggestions. In direct answer to the Senator's question, we have to fill the tree, of course. We have to work through the amendments. I tried to come up with some agreement on amendments and time and what some of the amendments would be. That is how we always do things here.

I will also say this: I have had kind of a hard thing to work through because all I have worked on in the last few weeks has been with the overhanging problem of not--42 Republicans, in a letter, have said: You are not going to do anything legislatively. Mr. President, they have proved that they are not allowing us to do anything legislatively. Certainly, this is a legislative matter.

I think I have been as clear as I can be. I, of course, would be willing to work on the amendment process with my friend. But as far as agreeing to something right now, I cannot do that.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, it seems evident to me that, unfortunately, the majority leader is not pursuing the path we discussed, or at least that is my interpretation of what he is saying. I think that is so unfortunate.

I want to vote to proceed to this bill. I was the first Republican to announce my support for the carefully constructed language in the Armed Services Committee that would repeal don't ask, don't tell. But that is not all that is in this bill. This is an enormously important bill to our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. It authorizes a pay raise that is important to my home State. It is a vitally important bill.

I just do not understand why we can't proceed along a path that will bring us to success and that will allow us to get the 60 votes to proceed, which I am willing to be one of those 60 votes. I thought we were extremely close to getting a reasonable agreement yesterday that would allow us to proceed. I was even willing to consider a proposal by the majority leader that we would start the DOD bill and then go to the tax bill, finish the tax bill, and then return to finish the DOD bill. I think there is such a clear path for us to be able to get this bill done, and I am perplexed and frustrated that this important bill is going to become a victim of politics. We should be able to do better.

Senator Lieberman and I have been bargaining in good faith with the majority leader. He, too, has been creative in his approaches.

So I just want to say that I am perplexed as to what has happened and why we are not going forward in a constructive way that would lead to success.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, as I stated in my remarks earlier, this is not any kind of a legislative wrangle I am having with my friend from Maine. She has been the only person I could talk to about this legislation. I appreciate her time and efforts. But the only way we can do this--and we do it all the time--is I fill the tree and we will try to work through the amendments with some agreement after that is done. This has been taking months to do--months. The time has come, as Senator Levin said, to stop playing around.

Mr. President, I simply make the following request:

I ask upon reconsideration, cloture is invoked--the reason I do this, we can get to where I want to go. It takes three votes. We can do it with three votes or one vote. Upon reconsideration, cloture is invoked on the motion to proceed. Then the Senate can proceed to the bill and would be able to enter into an orderly process for consideration of the bill, allowing different amendments. We have already been through that. There is no need to go through that number. But we have talked about 15--5 from us, the Democrats.

So I make my request. I ask unanimous consent that the motion to proceed to the motion to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the motion to proceed to S. 3454 be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be agreed to, and the Senate now vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 3454, upon reconsideration.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source