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Mr. REID. Mr. President, if we have an agreement--and I am sure we do because I have great respect for Senator McConnell, Senator Boxer, and, of course, Senator Inhofe. We have this issue, though: We haven't seen the bill. There can be an agreement, but until we put an agreement in writing, things are a lot different.
We have a number of committees that need to look this over in addition to the EPW Committee on which Senator Boxer is the lead Democrat. We have the Commerce Committee that we have to deal with. We have the Finance Committee that we have to deal with. We have the Banking Committee that we have to deal with.
I want a highway bill. I have had the good fortune of being chairman of the EPW Committee twice. I worked on a number of long-term highway bills back in the good old days when we did that, and I hope we can have a long-term bill again. But we can't move forward on a bill until we have read it and seen it and studied it. That doesn't mean study it for several days, but we need to look at this document. I need to have a caucus after we have this document so we can look at it.
So I hope my friend the Republican leader will be patient and wait until we get something we can study, and I will have a caucus with my caucus and we will sit down and decide how we should move forward on this matter.
I repeat, I admire all of the hard work that has been done by everybody up to this point, but we have to make sure we move forward with this in the right direction. I understand all the issues probably more than most about all the time involved in a bill such as this. There are all kinds of potential ways to stall this, but we are not going to do that on our side. We are going to be as expeditious as we can once we have something that we can read and understand and, as I said, study so we can understand it.
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Mr. REID. Madam President, first, we all appreciate the work done by Senator McConnell and Senator Boxer. Senator Boxer has been tireless on this, as she is on everything. But we have an issue that I think we need to address. We received this bill, which is more than 1,000 pages, about an hour ago.
I am going to have a caucus tomorrow, and I hope we will have an opportunity at that time to have reports from committees of jurisdiction. Committees of jurisdiction is more than just the Environment and Public Works Committee; finance is involved, commerce, banking, and other committees, of course, are interested.
So we need the opportunity to look at this bill. This is a big bill with a lot of different sections in it dealing with a lot of different issues. We are not asking for anything unusual; we just want to be able to study the bill and talk about it in a private meeting tomorrow at 12 o'clock.
Now, if we were doing something that was--``What are you talking about? You mean you want to read this?'' Please. I mean, we have pages of quotes from my friends.
Senator Enzi said:
That is what created this enormous outrage across America of: Did you read the bill? How can you read the bill if you have not seen anything in it, if it has not been given to you? I do not think it is intended to be given to us until we have to shuffle this thing through at the end [and not know what is in it].
Lamar Alexander, one of the most thoughtful people I have served with in government, said a couple of years ago:
We want to make sure the American people have a chance to read it and they have a chance to know exactly what it costs and they have a chance to know exactly how it affects them. That is not an unreasonable request, we don't think. That is the way the Senate works. That is our job. When it came to the Defense authorization bill, we spent a couple of weeks doing that. When it came to No Child Left Behind, the Education bill, we spent 7 weeks going through it. ..... The Homeland Security bill took 7 weeks. The Energy bill in 2002 took 8 weeks. A farm bill last year took 4 weeks. So we have a little reading to do, a little work to do.
John McCain said:
But could I also add, if we haven't seen it, don't you think we should have time to at least examine it? I mean, I don't think it would be outrageous to ask for a bill to be read that we haven't seen.
I--as have a number of people in this body--have worked on highway bills in the past. We have worked on these bills, and they have taken weeks to get done. We are being presented with something here that basically says: You take this or leave it. That isn't the way it should work around here.
I am going to do everything I can to move forward on a long-term highway bill. I want to get it done. But we are going to have to look at this and find out what my different committees think, what different Senators think, what people at home think. You know, I have a lot of people at home who are interested in what is in this bill. There is the banking provision. There are the pay-fors. I looked at them last week, but that has been a moving target also.
The ranking member of our Finance Committee at this stage--unless he has learned something in the last half hour--doesn't know what the pay-fors are either.
So, in short, we want to be as cooperative as we can, but we are not going to lurch into this legislation without having had a chance to read in detail this 1,030-page bill and, after having read it, to have a discussion within the caucus on this bill.
We would be in a very difficult position if--as the Republican leader said, we are going to work over the weekend, which is fine. I have no problem with that. I have tried that myself a few times; it didn't work so well. But I am willing to be part of the deal here if we need to work this weekend to get it done.
I don't know what the House plans to do, but we are assuming a lot, that the House is going to take up this bill. If they did, that would be wonderful, but I have to say that based on my conversation with the Democrats in the House, in conversations they have had with the Republican leadership over there, I don't think there is a chance in the world they are going to take up this bill. They have sent us a bill--a bill that is for 5 months, with conversations between the White House--not our WHITEHOUSE but the President's White House--to come up with a long-term highway bill. Part of that is some consideration of the Export-Import Bank. I realize how important that is. I have been on this floor talking about how important that is. We have about 45 different countries that have, as we speak, ex-im banks that are working, that are taking away all of our business, so it is important that we get that done also. But we cannot let one get in the way of the other. It is not our fault--Democrats' fault--that we don't have an Ex-Im Bank bill. We didn't create the problems with Ex-Im having gone out of business.
So I want to get a highway bill done and I want to get Ex-Im Bank done, but the Ex-Im Bank problem should not stand in the way of us getting a good, strong, robust highway bill.
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