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NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 1997

(Senate - June 28, 1996)

The majority leader has said over and over and over again he intends to finish this bill. I believe it, and I think that is the appropriate course. If we come back here with this bill hanging out there for the next 10 days, based on my experience, we will have an average of 40 new amendments a day that staff will be dreaming up, unless we send all the staff on vacation, which might be a good idea, because 40 amendments a day times 7 or 8 days, we will have somewhere around 300 more amendments to this bill. It will just grow and grow and grow. It is easy.

We can easily spend the rest of this session on this bill. It would not be difficult at all. We can just say we will have all the amendments come on the armed services bill. We will take them all to conference. The Speaker will appoint the whole House of Representatives to the conference. We cannot get 435 people in the room, but here we go, because so many amendments do not have anything to do with this bill.

When we get to conference, our conferees on the House side and Senate side cannot make decisions that relate to the Judiciary Committee or others. When people continue to put amendments that are not relevant on this bill, that is what happens, and we simply will not be able to get it done.

If we do not get this bill passed, we will have a hard time passing the appropriations bill on Defense, and everybody knows we must pass these two bills.

It is my hope, No. 1, that we can clear this immediate problem we have with the Senator from New Jersey and that we can move forward to get all these cleared amendments done by 9:30;

otherwise, we are going to eat into time on the other side of the cloture vote.

I have to tell everyone that, if we do not clear these amendments by 9:30, any of them that are not only not relevant, but not germane--and that is a very technical term; a lot of them are not germane to this bill--they will be ruled out if cloture is invoked. So if cloture is invoked, we will have a lot of people who thought they had amendments worked out or who are getting them worked out, who will not be able to get them passed. That is another consideration.

It is my hope, No. 1, that the Senator from New Jersey and the Senator from Texas will have a conversation and we can get that matter ironed out and moved forward and clear these amendments in the next 20 minutes; No. 2, that we can get these two unanimous-consent agreements entered into as soon as the leadership is prepared to propose them; and, No. 3, that we can get this list of amendments and get a time agreement on every one of them. The time agreements are going to have to be anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes; otherwise, I hope no one will walk in at around 11 o'clock and say, `Can I catch my 11:30 plane?" because it will be beyond the ability of the managers of this bill to make that happen.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Jersey for permitting me to make those remarks.

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Mr. LAUTENBERG. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I am not calling an amendment up here, for the information of my friend from New Jersey. I just want to make it clear, Mr. President, we are voting on a cloture motion at 9:30. There is nothing I would rather do than invoke cloture, but I do not think we can do it at this stage, in fairness to our colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I will vote against cloture for that reason.

No. 1, we do not have unanimous-consent agreements, that are very important, that relate to things beyond this bill, that relate to the whole ballistic missile debate, which we hope to have. We hope to lay down three different proposals on ballistic missile defense, including the Dole-Gingrich proposal, the Clinton administration proposal, and the proposal I will have. We think we are on the verge of working that out.

We have also a couple provisions in this bill that, unless they are changed, this bill is very likely to be a veto candidate. All of us who want to see this enacted into law would like to see those changes so we do not go into the House conference with two provisions that are identical to the House provisions, which means that they would not have the flexibility of changing them, which means the administration is likely to veto any bill coming out. So changing those two amendments relating to missile defense and the ABM Treaty is also important. So without those unanimous consents we cannot do that. If we vote cloture, we are not likely to get the unanimous consents.

In addition, we have 27 amendments that have been cleared on both sides. We had hoped to have all these done this morning, but they are not done because we have not been able to

get them done.

So everyone should know and be warned that if cloture were to be invoked, these amendments, I am informed, would not be germane, would not be in order, and could not be agreed to.

We have an amendment by Senator McCain on Bosnia that we do not believe is germane; we have an amendment by Senator Exon on the Lincoln Airport we do not believe is germane; Senator Robb has an amendment on budget request displays we do not think is germane; Senator Sarbanes has an amendment that is on the Forest Glen Annex we do not believe is germane; Senator Bingaman has an amendment on the White Sands land exchange which is not germane.

All of them are relevant to the defense bill, relate to defense, but they do not meet the technical definition of germaneness, which is very narrow, as Bob Dove, the Parliamentarian, knows, and the occupant of the chair from Georgia knows.

We have an amendment by Mr. Smith which is not germane; we have an amendment by Mr. Johnston which is not germane; worked out, we can accept it, but it cannot be done if cloture is invoked. We have one by Mr. Domenici which is not germane, another one by Mr. Domenici not germane. Mr. Heflin has an amendment that is not germane; Mr. Lott, Mr. Exon, Mr. Glenn, Mr. Thurmond, Mr. Cohen, Mr. Levin, Mr. Stevens, Mr. Domenici another one, Mr. Chafee, Mr. Smith, Mr. Robb, Mr. Levin, Mr. Smith, Mr. Glenn, Mr. Chafee, and Mr. Thurmond. We do not believe these are germane. There may be one or two of them we have on this list that are. But 95 percent of them are not.

I want to inform our colleagues on both sides, if the cloture vote is passed, none of these amendments will be able to go on this bill. I do not have a problem myself, but I do think a lot of our colleagues will have a problem.

I hope that cloture is not invoked. It is also my hope, though, that we are going to be able to get this list down and people are going to drop amendments and that we are going to break this impasse between the Senator from New Jersey and the Senator from Texas. I hope that can be done and that we can move this bill forward.

It is also my view that a lot of these amendments, even those that look like they are going to take rollcall votes, are likely to disappear as the planes start flying out this afternoon. But if we do not get these unanimous consent requests, we are going to be here a long time, according to the majority leader, and we are going to be here tonight. So everyone should be on notice of that.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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