Consideration Of S. 4

CONSIDERATION OF S. 4 -- (Senate - March 05, 2007)

Mr. REID. Mr. President, the Senate is in the second week of consideration of the 9/11 bill. S. 4 was reported out during the recess and was available to all Members on Monday, February 26.

We had to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed last Tuesday. Once cloture was invoked, there was a further delay in proceeding to the bill, and we were not allowed to begin consideration of the bill until Wednesday, February 28.

On Thursday of last week, Senator DeMint offered his amendment to strike the TSA provision of the bill. We have been trying to get an agreement to vote on his amendment basically since that evening and on other amendments on the same subject matter as his amendment by Senators MCCASKILL and LIEBERMAN.

Today, Senator Collins offered her TSA amendment. We are willing to add her amendment to the agreement. That was objected to.

As I indicated and the distinguished Republican leader indicated, tomorrow I will move to table the DeMint amendment.

I mention this because this is a good, very important piece of legislation. It has all the markings of being able to do something on a bipartisan basis, once we get over these few little humps. There are now 31 amendments pending to the bill. Most of the amendments do not deal with 9/11 recommendations. They are important funding issues that must be resolved and other 9/11 issues I would like to resolve before there is a cloture vote on this bill. We have all day tomorrow and we have Wednesday to finish this bill.

Accordingly, I am going to wait as long as I can to file cloture. We need to resolve this bill this week. Immigration amendments are going to have to wait until we deal with that bill later this year. It is not going to be too late because we are going to have to do immigration. I know the immigration people feel strongly about this issue. A number of the people who have been heavily involved in this immigration debate previously have offered immigration amendments on this bill. I think it is better we do the immigration legislation all at once and not piecemeal. I know how strongly the people feel who have offered these amendments, but this is not the vehicle to offer those amendments. If cloture is invoked, most of these amendments will fall. In fact, I think all of them will.

I have indicated to the distinguished Republican leader that we are willing to make sure we can dispose of the amendments that appear to be germane prior to the cloture vote. We want to move this legislation as quickly as possible and as fairly as possible. So I hope the people who have amendments to offer will do it on this legislation. I hope they keep in mind that this is the 9/11 Commission recommendations and not an immigration bill.

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