There IS a provision on drilling in ANWAR in this thing, according to C-Span.
Today will be more interesting than yesterday, rhetorically, as the DEMs pile on the "deficit spending is NOT our fault" meme using H.J.Res.47, A Bill to Raise the Statutory Debt Ceiling, as the venue.
Outside of the Senate, pay a visit to President Bush's press release relating to National Security, and to the The National Security Strategy (NSS) page. The document itself, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/nss2006.pdf, is a 450 kB PDF file.
Roll Call vote 0044 - S.Amdt.3050
Agreed to 60-38: Santorum Amdt - To increase funding for the Community Development Block Grant Program
DEM votes in the affirmative: Byrd, Clinton, Johnson, Landrieu, Lieberman, Lincoln, both Nelsons, Pryor, Rockefeller, Voinovich (okay, he's GOP, but he voted (and lost) for Murray's version too).
Roll Call vote 0045 - S.Amdt.3056
Rejected 43-55: Stabenow Amdt - To provide $5 billion for our emergency responders so that they can field effective and reliable interoperable communications equipment
DEM vote in the negative: Carper
Roll Call vote 0046 - S.Amdt.3061
Agreed to 90-8: McConnell Amdt - To provide funding for maritime security, including the Container Security Initiative, improved data for targeted cargo searches, and full background checks and security threat assessments of personnel at our nation's seaports.
Votes in the negative (all DEM): Akaka, Baucus, Conrad, Dodd, Johnson, Leahy, Murray, Reid
[So Murry is AGAINST this measure of Port Security? - Let me guess, she says it is funded from "Function 920" or "Section 920" where "there is no money," -or- she says this is too little.]
Roll Call vote 0047 - S.Amdt.3054
Rejected 43-53: Menendez Amdt - To provide an additional $965 million to make our ports more secure by increasing port security grants, increasing inspections, improving existing programs, and increasing research and development, and to fully offset this additional funding by closing tax loopholes.
Pure Party-line vote
Roll Call vote 0048 - S.Amdt.3073
Agreed to 76-22: Grassley Amdt - To establish a reserve fund to allow for deficit-neutral legislation that would provide for an extension of the Medicare part D enrollment period.
GOP votes in the negative: Chaffee, Collins, DeWine, Ensign, McCaine, Snowe
Roll Call vote 0049 - S.Amdt.3009
Rejected 49-49: Nelson Amdt - To establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund to protect medicare beneficiaries who enroll in the prescription drug benefit during 2006.
GOP votes in the affirmative: Chaffee, Collins, DeWine, Snowe, Specter
Roll Call vote 0050 - S.Amdt.3004
Agreed to 54-44: Snowe Amdt - To ensure that any savings associated with legislation that authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to use the collective purchasing power of 40,000,000 Medicare beneficiaries to negotiate the best possible prices for prescription drugs provided through part D of title XVIII of the Social Security Act in fallback plans, by private drug plans (if asked) and in other circumstances, but not permitting a uniform formulary or price setting, is reserved for deficit reduction of to improve the Medicare drug benefit.
GOP votes in the affirmative: Chaffee, Collins, DeWine, Graham, Hutchison, McCain, Shelby, Smith, Snowe, Specter, Stevens
Roll Call vote 0051 - S.Amdt.3086
Rejected 44-53: Byrd Amdt. - To preserve a national intercity passenger rail system by providing adequate funding of $1.45 billion for Amtrak in Fiscal Year 2007 and to fully offset this additional funding by closing corporate tax loopholes.
GOP vote in the affirmative: Chaffee
Roll Call vote 0052 - S.Amdt.3015
Rejected 39-59: Santorum Amdt - To provide an additional $550,000,000 for Amtrak for fiscal year 2007.
Split all over :: YEA - 23 GOP, 13 DEM : NAY - 30 GOP, 29 DEM
Coleman - not voting in any of the above.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, it is unfortunate the Senate just defeated the amendment (S.Amdt.3063) that would actually add real money to CDBG and allow our communities across the Nation to invest in the critical infrastructure to bring hope and opportunity back.Neither the acronym "ANWR" nor the word "Arctic" appear in 33 . TEXT OF AMENDMENTS. Not that Cantwell doesn't plan to bring it up, but the amendment was not presented yesterday.The amendment we are now going to vote on (S.Amdt.3050) is a sham, and I refuse to be part of a continuing sham that says to all of us that we are going to have CDBG money. Our recipients deserve a lot more. This amendment is for show, as I quote from the Wall Street Journal of today: `` ..... for show since no money has been added above the cap''--leaving us, next October, November, in the appropriations bill to either fund CDBG or cut transit and Amtrak, which I know is important to many Senators, and many other critical housing programs.
[Senator Murray had nothing to say before her voting against McConnels S.Amdt.3061 relating to Port Security]
10 . CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I rise today in support of Senators MENENDEZ and LAUTENBERG's amendment (S.Amdt.3054) to increase funding for port security. As the cochairman of the Commerce Committee and a Senator representing an island State, I place a particularly high priority on port security, and I know first hand that it is not receiving the resources that are necessary. Budgets are a reflection of priorities, and our budget must place far greater emphasis on this critical component of our national and economic security.I feel compelled to remind this body that, since 2002, it has been given a litany of opportunities to bolster port security resources, and it has routinely rejected them.
As we consider this year's budget, I would like to recall the discussion we had around this time in 2003. During the budget debate, this body unanimously supported an amendment to provide $2 billion to port security. Yet 3 weeks later, when the Senate considered the supplemental appropriations legislation to address funding for the war in Iraq and homeland security, the Senate rejected the amendment that would have provided immediately the actual money for port security funding. It was a lesson in cynicism that I have not forgotten.
... the administration still fails to make port security a top priority. It has consistently submitted inadequate funding requests and has routinely missed critical security deadlines that were required by law. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, only recently submitted its National Maritime Transportation Security Plan. The report was due in April 2005....
It was Congress that put a halt to the Dubai Ports World takeover, and it will have to be Congress that provides the port security funding that the administration's budget lacks.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I hope our colleagues will not vote for the amendment. The Senate just voted overwhelmingly to put almost $1 billion into port security. That is the right thing to do, but the right way to pay for it is out of the 920 account. To make this a priority, let us do it right. The Menendez amendment would increase taxes to pay for port security. We do not need to do that. What we should do is the right thing--provide more inspectors and make sure our ports are secure, and do it the right way with real money that is already there.
AMENDMENT NO. 3115The Senator from Nevada [Mr. REID], for himself and Mrs. Clinton, proposes an amendment numbered 3115.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To increase funding in FY 2007 by $347 million to restore funding or provide increased funding over FY 2006 for programs and policies that support the delivery of contraceptive services and medically accurate information in order to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, including Title X of the Public Health Service Act, and to restore funding or provide increased funding over FY 2006 for programs that help women have healthy pregnancies and healthy children, including the Child Care Development Block Grant, Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, Healthy Start, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes)
Mr. REID. Mr. President, this amendment was offered on behalf of the Senator from Nevada and the Senator from New York, Senator Clinton.
One of the most heated debates of recent years has been on the issue of abortion. People on both sides of the issue feel very strongly. They have argued, they have demonstrated, and they have protested with emotion and passion.
The approval last week of a South Dakota law banning virtually all abortions has only intensified the already strong feelings on both sides of this issue.
The issue is not going to go away very soon. And I doubt that one side will be able to suddenly convince the other to drop its deeply held beliefs. ...
[This is abundant repudiation of Justice O'Connor's assertion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that a SCOTUS decision on a publicly divisive issue will result in "finality of decision."]"Where, in the performance of its judicial duties, the Court decides a case in such a way as to resolve the sort of intensely divisive controversy reflected in Roe and those rare, comparable cases, its decision has a dimension that the resolution of the normal case does not carry. It is the dimension present whenever the Court's interpretation of the Constitution calls the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.
The Court is not asked to do this very often, having thus addressed the Nation only twice in our lifetime, in the decisions of Brown and Roe. But when the Court does act in this way, its decision requires an equally rare precedential force to counter the inevitable efforts to overturn it and to thwart its implementation. Some of those efforts may be mere unprincipled emotional reactions; others may proceed from principles worthy of profound respect. But whatever the premises of opposition may be, only the most convincing justification under accepted standards of precedent could suffice to demonstrate that a later decision overruling the first was anything but a surrender to political pressure and an unjustified repudiation of the principle on which the Court staked its authority in the first instance. So to overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason to reexamine a watershed decision would subvert the Court's legitimacy beyond any serious question."
Mrs. CLINTON. ... Third, this amendment improves public awareness of emergency contraception. Emergency contraception, also known as Plan B, is one of the most misunderstood drugs around. Some have tried to deliberately mislead its purpose. Emergency contraception prevents pregnancy. It does not interrupt or end a pregnancy. The most recent research estimates that emergency contraception could have prevented 51,000 abortions per year. Further, a study from the Journal of the American Medical Association confirms that easier access to emergency contraception does not increase sexual risk taking or greater transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, yesterday I offered an amendment to the budget resolution with the Senator from Maine and the Senator from New Jersey that would have increased funding for several education and training programs and raised the maximum Pell grant to $4,500. Regrettably, by a vote of 50-to-50, the amendment was not adopted.
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of H.J. Res. 47, the debt limit extension; provided further that the Senate immediately proceed to its consideration with 1 hour of general debate under the control of the chairman or his designee; 2 hours of general debate under the control of the ranking member or his designee; and the only amendment in order be the following: Baucus, study on foreign investment, 20 minutes equally divided.
Mr. COBURN. ... The responsibility lies in the Congress for the spending. It is not the executive branch. As a matter of fact, we have sent multiple bills, and if you look at the votes on the multiple bills that have come through this body, they are not just a majority vote, they are a supermajority and many times unanimous. So to claim and lay that on the executive branch when, in fact, it is our responsibility belies the truth. ...I am highly concerned about the debt limit, and it is doubtful that I will be voting to extend the debt limit, but I certainly am not going to stand here and let people claim that it is the executive branch's responsibility. It is not. It is ours, and we failed. We have failed our grandchildren, we have failed our children, we have failed the people who are paying taxes today in this country. We would rather get reelected by doling out earmarks and pork than solve the real long-term problems of our country, and we can see that very easily when we look at earmarks related to the size of the Federal Government.
Mr. GRASSLEY. ... Under current law, there is a statutory limit on the amount of debt that can be issued by the Federal Government. This limit, which now stands at $8.184 trillion, applies to virtually all the debt issued by the Government. There is only one debt limit, but there are, in fact, two types of debt within that figure: debt held by the public--meaning you and I as private citizens buying Government bonds, owning Treasury bills--and then, of course, on the other hand, the debt held by various Government trust funds. An example would be the surplus that is invested in the Social Security surplus payroll that is not being paid out for benefits, being invested in Government debt with that debt owed to the trust fund with the interest accumulating to the trust fund.The amount of Federal debt held by the public is determined by the Government's annual cash flow. When total spending exceeds total taxes, the Government has a budget deficit. To finance this deficit, the Government borrows from the public by selling debt, such as Treasury bills, Treasury notes, and Treasury bonds. We will hear a lot of criticism that President Bush's tax cuts are responsible for our rising public debt, but the facts show otherwise. ...
For example, the Treasury Department reports that the total amount of Federal debt held by all the trust fund programs is about $3.5 trillion. However, the Social Security and Medicare trustees report that the unfunded obligation of Social Security and Medicare is more than $81 trillion.
[Holy cow!! - repeat for emphasis]
the unfunded obligation of Social Security and Medicare is more than $81 trillion.
Given these facts, it should be obvious to everyone that the Federal debt provides a misleading and inaccurate picture of the Government's future liabilities. Efforts to use the statutory debt limit to control Government debt and deficits cannot succeed because it ignores the long-term budget problems.
Indeed, even former Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan has suggested the debt limit has outlived its usefulness and should be replaced with a more accurate and useful alternative. I would welcome the opportunity to work with my colleagues to develop such an alternative. It may never happen, but it ought to happen. This is not quite a very intellectual way to decide what the Government is doing in a fiscal way because, quite obviously, every day Congress is appropriating money and every day we are spending money and every day if that exceeds the taxes that are coming in and we get to the debt limit, the debt is going to increase or is going to shut down the Government.
As a Republican, that was part of our strategy during the Clinton administration. But let me tell you, it didn't work. It didn't work because it wasn't good policy, and it ended up not being very good politics. I hope we do not have an extended debate and a lot of breast beating about the issue of increasing the national debt because, quite frankly, if we spend and we spend up to that limit, we are not going to shut down the Government, if we learned the lesson, as I hope I learned the lesson, and we move on. It ought to be very pro forma. ...
These all create situations wherein we have annual debt or annual deficits, and you increase the national debt on a cumulative basis when you do that. So there will probably be almost 50 votes, maybe, against this resolution when we vote on it tomorrow. I would ask the people who vote against it, do you want to shut down Government? Or if you don't want to shut down Government, you don't want to increase the national debt, why did you vote for the money we spent that brings us to the point of a necessity of increasing the national debt? We should pass this resolution for the sound operation of our Government.
12 . CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, as we take stock during the second annual Sunshine Week, we confront the disturbing reality that the foundations of our open government are under direct assault from the first White House in modern times that is openly hostile to the public's right to know. ...The Bush administration has kept vital facts secret by silencing scientists and experts. We saw it with the gagging of NASA scientist James Hansen, whose conclusions about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming differed with administration policy. This administration also secretly let lobbyists from polluting industries write rules on mercury emissions, overriding the advice of the EPA's scientists and even drawing a harsh rebuke from EPA's inspector general. This tacit war on science--trumping scientific evidence with ideology--has also victimized women's access to the Plan B pill and cut international family planning funds which help the poorest of the poor, even though the evidence is clear that these funds reduce the numbers of abortions.
This kind of secrecy produces bad policies, as we saw when the Bush administration tried to hide the true cost of its Medicare prescription drug plan from Congress and the American people. While they were twisting congressional arms for votes on the program, political leaders at Medicare told Congress the price tag was $400 billion. Medicare's own accountants projected the cost to be $500 billion to $600 billion, but one of those career staff, Richard Foster, was threatened with being fired if he told Congress the truth.
We saw it again when the political leadership of the Justice Department overruled career lawyers who found that Congressman TOM DELAY's Texas redistricting plan illegally diluted Black and Hispanic voting power. Career attorneys also found that a Georgia voter-identification law would discriminate against Black voters. The Department's political leaders dismissed these findings and quietly approved both plans. We only learned of these politically motivated decisions later when the press obtained documents and made them public.
In a situation that borders on the absurd, the intelligence agencies have been quietly reclassifying documents that were open for years. This program began in 1999 but has exploded under this administration, which has reclassified more than 55,000 pages. Even the Archivist of the United States said he knew ``precious little'' of the program until it was revealed by the press.
18 . SUNSHINE WEEK 2006 -- (Senate - March 15, 2006)
Tomorrow will be a very busy day. Under an agreement reached this afternoon, tomorrow morning at 10:30 we will have a series of votes on the budget resolution and the debt limit bill. At 1:30, all time on the budget resolution will be deemed expired and the vote-arama will begin. Senators are reminded to stay close to the Chamber and plan their schedules accordingly.