Letters to the Editor
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Our Senate At Work, 1/22/2008
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I am glad we have a large number of Senators here today. I want to go over the schedule for this week.
First of all, I am going to ask unanimous consent, and I will do that now, that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. 2541, which is a 30-day extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act we are going to be dealing with; that the bill be read three times, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table [etc.]...
The reason I ask consent on this legislation is that this bill expires on February 1. The House has not acted on this bill yet, so when we pass this bill, the House has to pass their bill, and there has to be a conference. I hope we could have this extension. I need not belabor the point. I asked this consent before we left; I ask it again.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Republican leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will be objecting, let me say, my good friend, the majority leader, and I have discussed this issue. There is a significant amount of time left this month to pass this bill in the Senate. A conference may or may not be necessary. Back in August, when we did an extension of the FISA bill, the House simply took up the Senate-passed bill and passed it, and it went down to the President for signature. So I think the discussion of extension, particularly when, hopefully, we will turn to this bill in the very near future in the Senate, is not timely and, therefore, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, for all Members here, we are on the Indian health bill now. I hope we can complete that bill tomorrow. The Republicans are having a retreat. They are having theirs tomorrow; we are going to have ours in 10 days or so. There will be activities on the Senate floor tomorrow, but there will be no votes. If there are any votes tomorrow, it will be after they finish their retreat, after 6 o'clock tomorrow night.
So we hope some work can be done on this bill tomorrow. We know the Republicans will be absent, so that makes it very difficult.
We have to finish FISA this week. Everyone should be aware of that point. We have to finish it this week. I know there are important trips people want to take. We have the very important economic conference in Davos that Democrats and Republicans alike would like to go to.
I say, unless we finish the bill Thursday--and we will not be able to get to it until tomorrow night--unless we finish the bill on Thursday, then we are going to have to continue working this week until we finish this bill. We have to finish this bill. It is not fair to the House to jam them so that they have 1 day to act on this legislation.
If we finish it this week, I have spoken to the Speaker today and they will work to complete this matter next week. It would be to everyone's advantage if we had more time to do this.
I respect what the Republican leader has said, but everyone here should understand all weekend activities have to be put on hold until we finish this bill. Now, it is possible we could finish it fairly quickly. We are going to work from the Intelligence bill, and if amendments are offered that people don't like, I would suggest they move to table those amendments. Because if people think they are going to talk this to death, we are going to be in here all night. This is not something we are going to have a silent filibuster on. If someone wants to filibuster this bill, they are going to do it in the openness of the Senate.
We are not going to say, well, we can't get 60 votes on this. We are going to work toward completing this bill as quickly as we can. I would rather we didn't have to do this. And maybe if we get to it on Thursday, we can finish it Thursday. If not, hopefully on Friday. But I know of no alternative. This work period is very short. We have, after this week, only 3 weeks.
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on the issue of FISA, let me second the observation of the majority leader. ... I agree with his decision.
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Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, we have a number of Members who are supposed to go to the Davos economic summit tomorrow night, and I would note I have talked with Senator Bennett of Utah, who is the senior Republican on that trip, and the trip that is set to leave tomorrow night will not. We will put it on hold until Thursday, to determine whether we can leave on Thursday.
If I could have the attention of the majority leader for a moment. I appreciate the majority leader has been very clear. I happen to concur with him that this is important and we should finish it. All we want to do is to know how it will go. There is a Judiciary Committee amendment to the bill. I would not anticipate taking a great deal of time on that, but I think the distinguished majority leader is doing the absolute right thing.
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I appreciate the distinguished leader spending a lot of time on the phone over the weekend and again today and I appreciate his consideration.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2008_record&page=S57&position=all
"Despicable" is too kind a description for the Democratic machinations on display here, in this grotesque effort to sabotage the principled Constitutional stands of Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold.
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/22/democrats/permalink/fde42e14554c68fe14172e5aa005e0ab.html