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< Go back to Immigration Daily
[Congressional Record: September 26, 2000 (Senate)]
[Page S9247-S9251]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr26se00-154]
AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ACT OF 2000--
Continued
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate has voted 94-3
to invoke cloture with respect to H-1B legislation.
As Members know, cloture limits debate and restrains amendments to
germane amendments only.
[[Page S9248]]
With that in mind, I want all Senators to know that the Senate is
going to conduct a final vote on this legislation. We are committed to
that, and we will get to that point even if it takes some more time. I
hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will allow this bill to
be voted on in the Senate. We have worked on it for months trying to
get agreements to find a way to get conclusion. But it is time that we
get to the conclusion and have a vote. I predict that the final vote on
this bill will be somewhat like the vote we had on the FAA
reauthorization bill some 4 years ago. There was a lot of resistance.
It took a week to get to a final conclusion. The final vote was
something like 97-3. I suspect that when we get to a final vote here it
will be 90-10, if we can ever get a vote on the substance.
CLOTURE MOTION
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk to the
pending first-degree amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to report the motion.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the pending
first-degree amendment (No. 4177) to Calendar No. 490, S.
2045, a bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act
with respect to H-1B non-immigrant aliens:
Trent Lott, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Judd Gregg, Wayne
Allard, Conrad Burns, Craig Thomas, Rick Santorum, Thad
Cochran, Bob Smith of New Hampshire, Spencer Abraham,
Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Connie Mack, George
Voinovich, Larry Craig, James Inhofe, and Jeff
Sessions.
CLOTURE MOTION
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk to the
pending committee substitute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to report the motion.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the committee
substitute amendment to Calendar No. 490, S. 2045, a bill to
amend the Immigration and Nationality Act with respect to H-
1B non-immigrant aliens:
Trent Lott, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Judd Gregg, Wayne
Allard, Conrad Burns, Craig Thomas, Rick Santorum, Thad
Cochran, Bob Smith of New Hampshire, Kay Bailey
Hutchison, Connie Mack, George Voinovich, Larry Craig,
James Inhofe, Jeff Sessions, and Don Nickles.
CLOTURE MOTION
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk to the
pending bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the chair directs the
clerk to report the motion.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Calendar No.
490, S. 2045, a bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality
Act with respect to H-1B non-immigrant aliens:
Trent Lott, Gordon Smith, Judd Gregg, Wayne Allard,
Conrad Burns, Craig Thomas, Rick Santorum, Thad
Cochran, Bob Smith, Spencer Abraham, Kay Bailey
Hutchison, Connie Mack, George Voinovich, Larry Craig,
James Inhofe, and Jeff Sessions.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I would be happy to vitiate the cloture
votes on this bill if the Democrats would agree to that. I think we
could get a time agreement and have germane amendments that could be
offered, and we could complete it in a reasonable period of time.
Perhaps we should have gone through a procedural effort different from
what we wound up with, but I really thought that once we had the
cloture vote this morning, we would be able to get some sort of
reasonable time agreement--6 hours or more if necessary--and get to a
conclusion so that we could move on to other issues. I am still open to
that. I know Senator Reid has put a lot of time on it and had some
remarks today. I certainly understand that. The issue or issues that
have been raised, I think, could be or would be considered on other
bills and other venues. I hope we can work together to find a way to
complete this important legislation.
Failing that, I had no alternative but to go this route.
Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. LOTT. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I don't really understand because I haven't
been there, but I have some idea of the burden that the Senator bears.
I really do. It hurts me--I care a great deal about the Senator as a
person--to delay what I know the Senator believes is extremely
important.
However, I believe we should resolve this quickly. We could have a
vote in the morning on H-1B. We, the minority, don't oppose H-1B. As I
have said today, we want a vote on the amendment filed which we have
been talking about all day. We will take 5 or 10 minutes a side and
vote. We could be done with this legislation tomorrow at 2 o'clock in
the afternoon or 10 o'clock in the morning, whatever the leader
decided.
The debate we have had today has been constructive but, in a sense,
unnecessary. I hope the majority leader, the man who has the burden of
controlling what goes on here, especially in his waning days of this
Congress, will meet with the caucus or make the decision unilaterally,
or whatever it takes, and move on. Take care of the high tech people.
Also, take care of the restaurant workers and other people who also
need to be taken care of.
Again, we will take as little as 5 minutes on this amendment and have
a vote and go about our business.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I might respond to Senator Reid, I think
he knows an effort was made a few days ago to see if we couldn't clear
a limited number of amendments--and either without identifying what
those amendments would be or identifying them--and we are not able to
clear it. We couldn't clear it on this side.
We had Senators on this side that wanted to offer other issues, too,
including the H-2A issue, involving how we deal with visas for
agricultural workers. There are some Members who think we ought to do
that. There are others who didn't think we ought to do it on this bill.
While I understand what the Senator is saying, I have not been able to
clear that, and therefore I had to move forward to try to get the bill
to conclusion.
I always enjoy working with the Senator from Nevada. He has been
unfailingly fair and has worked with us to move a lot of issues. I
appreciate that. I regret we couldn't get this cleared. I did try to,
but I couldn't get it done. So now we need to get to a conclusion on
the underlying.
Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. LOTT. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
Mr. BIDEN. I realize the leader, as Senator Reid said, has a lot of
burdens. But today the House passed, by a vote of 415-3, the Violence
Against Women Act--24 Republicans and all Democrats. Seventy-one
cosponsored the Violence Against Women Act.
I wonder if the leader would be willing to agree to a 10-minute time
agreement and we could vote on the Violence Against Women Act tomorrow
or some day?
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, let me say we are going to try to clear that
bill so we can get it into conference with the House. If we run into
problems, whatever they may be, it is my intent that legislation will
be on a bill that is signed into law before the end of this session. It
is our intent to get it done. We will try a variety of ways to achieve
that. We will want to put it on a bill that we hope will be signed into
law. We are not going to try to put it on something that might not be.
We will also be taking cognizance of what the House has done.
Mr. BIDEN. If the Senator will allow me a moment, it may be helpful
for consideration to know I spoke with Republican leadership in the
House on this issue, as well as here, and I am confident we can arrive
at a bill that wouldn't require a conference.
So if the leader concludes at some point--and I take the leader at
his word and he always keeps it--the intention is to bring this up, I
think it may be possible we could literally pass a bill that would not
require a conference. I raise that possibility.
[[Page S9249]]
Mr. LOTT. We will be working on that. I have had other bills that I
thought would zip right through'', no problem. We have one from the
Finance Committee, the FSC issue, which is very important to compliance
with the WTO decision. I am concerned now we may not be able to get
that cleared.
We are trying to get appropriations bills considered by the Senate.
We are trying to get an agreement to take up the District of Columbia,
and we ran into a problem. I think maybe we are fixing that problem,
but I am saying to the Senator at this point it is hard to get
clearances. We did get one worked on regarding the water resources
development bill, and we are doing other issues.
This is a bill we will find a way to get done before this session is
over. We will see what happens when we get it together and try to work
through it.
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader. As I indicated
to the majority leader, this may be a unique bill not unlike the one my
friend, the Presiding Officer, has on sex trafficking on which he has
worked so hard. This doesn't even have those problems. This has 415
Members of the House voting for it; 3 voting against it; 71 cosponsors
in the Senate. I am willing to predict, if we can agree to bring it up
without amendment, we will get 85 to 95 votes. This is in the category
of a no brainer. Henry Hyde is a sponsor of it. It is the Biden-Hatch
bill.
The only point I make, and I will be brief, time is running out. The
Violence Against Women Act expires this Sunday, September 30. It took
me 8 years to get this thing done. It took 3 years after it was written
just to get it considered. It took that long to get it passed. It has
been in place for 5 years. There are no additional taxes required to
pay for this bill because there is a trust fund that uses the salaries
that were being paid to Federal officials who no longer work for the
Federal Government; it goes into that fund.
As I said, if there was ever a no brainer, this one is it. Democrats
like it; Republicans like it. As Senator Herman Talmadge from Georgia,
said to me one night regarding another issue when I walked into the
Senate dining room: What's the problem, Joe? I guess I looked down. He
was chairman of the Agriculture Committee. I said: I'm having problems
with such and such an issue. He said: What is the problem, son? I
repeated; I thought he didn't hear me. He said: No, you don't
understand. Republicans like it; Democrats like it. So just go and do
it.
Well, that is where we are tonight. Democrats like the bill;
Republicans like the bill; the House likes the bill; the Senate likes
the bill; women like the bill; men like the bill, business likes the
bill; labor likes the bill. So why don't we have the bill? And I have
been hollering about this for 2 years now.
Hopefully, in light of what the majority leader said, maybe we will
get to it. I was beginning to get a little despondent. I was even
thinking of attaching the bill to the Presiding Officer's bill to make
sure we get it done.
Today the Washington Post, in an editorial entitled ``Inexplicable
Neglect,'' noted: ``There seems to be no good reason, practical or
substantive, to oppose the reauthorization of the Violence Against
Women Act.''
I ask unanimous consent the totality of that editorial be printed in
the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Inexplicable Neglect
There seem to be no good reason, practical or substantive,
to oppose reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
Originally passed in 1994, the act provides money to state
and local institutions to help combat domestic violence. It
is set to expire at the end of the month. Its reauthorization
has overwhelming bipartisan support. But House and Senate
leaders have yet to schedule a vote.
Versions of the bill have been favorably reported by the
judiciary committees of both chambers. Both would expand
programs that during the past five years have helped create
an infrastructure capable of prosecuting domestic violence
cases and providing services to battered women. Since the
original act was passed, Congress has devoted $1.5 billion to
programs created by it. The House and Senate bills differ,
but both would authorize more than $3 billion in further
support during the next five years. There is room to debate
the proper funding level relative to other priorities, a
matter which will be determined later by appropriators; and
the programs won't end immediately if the act lapses, because
funds have been approved for the coming year. But failing to
reauthorize would send the wrong message on an important
issue and, more important, could threaten future
appropriations.
With time in the 106th Congress running out, the Violence
Against Women Act may become a casualty for neglect rather
than of active opposition. But that's no comfort. Congress
ought to find the time to pass it before leaving town.
Mr. BIDEN. The act of 1994 signaled the beginning of a national--and,
I argue, historic--commitment to women and children in this country
victimized by family violence and sexual assault.
The act is making a real difference in the lives of millions of
women. The legislation changed our laws, strengthened criminal
penalties, and facilitated enforcement of protection orders.
I see my friend from California is here. When she was in the House of
Representatives, she was one of the few people, man or woman, on either
side that fought for 2 years to get this passed. I say to the Senator,
the majority leader indicated he plans on making sure that this gets
voted on this year. ``This year'' means the next couple of days or
weeks. He says he wants to attach it to another bill.
I have been making the case, I say to my friend from California, that
based on the vote in the House, 415-3 and 71 Senators cosponsoring the
Biden-Hatch bill here in the Senate, we should bring this up free-
standing. I was presumptuous enough to speak for you and others and say
we would agree to a 5-minute time agreement on the bill.
Mrs. BOXER. Will my friend yield for just a couple of quick
questions, and then I will allow him to, of course, finish his
statement.
First, I really came over to the floor when I saw the Senator took
time to speak on the floor about the Violence Against Women Act. It was
my great honor when I was in the House that he asked me to carry that
bill those many years ago. I remember what a struggle it was. We
couldn't get that House at that time to recognize this problem.
I have heard my friend say many times, even the words ``domestic
violence'' indicate something that is different about this particular
kind of violence; there is something that is domesticated about it. It
is violence; it is anger; it is rape; it is hard to even describe what
women, particularly women--although it does happen to men--go through.
So I took to the floor just to ask a couple of questions. In light of
the House passage with the kind of vote you rarely see over there--my
goodness, we hardly ever see a vote like that--and the fact it was
freestanding, wasn't attached to any other bill, doesn't my friend
believe we should bring this up--I agree with him--with a short time
agreement, 2 minutes a side? It doesn't matter to me. We have talked
enough about this over the years.
Doesn't my friend agree it would be much better to just bring it up
freestanding instead of attaching it to another bill that some people
may have problems with? Why would we want to take this idea, this
incredibly important idea that the Senator pushed through this
Congress, and attach it to another bill that may be controversial?
Mr. BIDEN. In response to the question of the Senator, I fully agree
with her. I indicated that to the majority leader. To give the majority
leader the benefit of the doubt, which I am prepared to do, I am not
sure he understands how much support this has. When I indicated it
should be freestanding, he cited other bills he thought were going to
go through and they didn't go through and that was what he was worried
about.
He had to leave here necessarily and so didn't hear my response,
which is, this is not like any other bill. I have not heard of any
problem. If any staff is listening--staffs of all one hundred Senators
listen to proceedings. They are assigned to listen to them. I ask
anybody in the Senate who has any problem with the Biden-Hatch bill to
please come and let us know, to debate it. I do not know anybody who is
even willing to debate it, to say they are not for it.
I would be dumbfounded, when in fact we bring this up, if we bring it
up freestanding, if it didn't get everyone in the Senate voting for it.
I would be astounded if it got fewer than 85 or 90
[[Page S9250]]
votes. I would not at all be surprised if it got 100 votes. But I am
not sure the majority leader understands that.
Frankly, what the Senator from California and I could do with
Senators Hatch and Specter and others who are supportive of this bill--
maybe we can go see the majority leader tomorrow and lay out for him
why we are so certain he will not get himself in a traffic jam if he
brings this bill up and why he doesn't need to attach it to anything
else.
Mrs. BOXER. Right. I say to my friend, since we are strategizing here
in front of the world----
Mr. BIDEN. The whole world.
Mrs. BOXER. We might want to see if we could get some signatures on a
letter asking him to bring it up freestanding because it seems to me to
be the best thing to do.
Almost everything else we do, as my friend has pointed out, is
controversial. But when you have a bill that has worked to increase the
funding for shelters and train judges and doctors and the rest, and as
a result we have seen a 21-percent decline in this kind of violence, it
ought to breeze through here.
But I really came to the floor to thank my friend for his leadership
here and his continued focus on this issue. A lot of us, as we get
older, start thinking: What have I done that I am really proud of? I
know my friend can truly say--and I can say it because I was fortunate
he involved me in this early on--this is one of the good things, one of
the great things.
I thank my friend and hope we can prevail on the majority leader to
bring this up freestanding. I thank my colleague for yielding.
Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Senator. I will follow onto that.
History will judge--and even that is a presumptuous thing, to think
history will even take the time to judge, but some folks will judge
whether or not my career in the Senate accomplished anything. I know
for me, the single most important thing I have ever been involved in,
and have ever done, and I care more about than anything I have ever
been involved in, is this legislation. The thing I am most proud of is
that it has become a national consensus. It is not a Democratic issue;
it is not a Republican issue; it is not a women's issue, not a men's
issue. We have taken that dirty little secret of domestic violence out
of the closet.
Mrs. BOXER. That is right.
Mr. BIDEN. We have freed up, as a consequence of that, not only the
bodies but the souls of millions of people and thousands and thousands
of women.
As the Senator well knows, the hotline that she and Senator Kennedy,
Senator Specter, and others have worked so hard to put in place, that
hotline has received literally hundreds of thousands of calls--300,000
all told--tens of thousands of calls over the years since we passed
this, saying: Help me, help me. I am trapped.
I say to men who say: Gee, whiz, why don't women just walk away; Why
don't they just walk away from this abuse they get; There are a lot of
reasons they don't, from being physically intimidated, to being
psychologically intimidated, to having no place to go and no financial
resources.
Mrs. BOXER. Will my friend yield on this point?
Mr. BIDEN. Yes.
Mrs. BOXER. I think also--and I know he is so aware of this--another
reason they do not walk away is their kids.
Mr. BIDEN. Absolutely.
Mrs. BOXER. They fear for their kids. With all of the attention we
have paid to the entertainment industry--and the Chair has taken a lead
on this--to call to everyone's attention the excess of violence and the
marketing of too many R-rated films to kids, we know for sure, I say to
Senator Biden, there is only one proven predictor that violence will be
passed on to the next generation, and that is when the child sees a
parent beat the other parent. We know that 60 percent or more of those
kids are going to grow up in the same fashion.
I was going to leave now, but every time the Senator starts to bring
up another point, it is so interesting, I am kind of spellbound. But
the bottom line is, with this bill we are helping women and children
and families. We are standing for the values that I thought we all mean
when we say ``family values.'' Again, my thanks.
Mr. BIDEN. I thank my colleague.
Mr. President, I will not go through the whole of my statement. Let
me just make a few other points.
I must say I compliment the Chair for his work and his, not only
intellectual dedication but, it seems to me, passionate commitment to
do something about the international sex trafficking occurs. This is a
women's issue internationally.
I suspect he feels the same way I feel about this legislation. I
suspect he believes there is probably not much more that he has done
that is as tangible and might affect the lives of people, that you
could look to, you could count, you could touch, you could see. When I
said there are a lot of calls, literally over half a million women,
over 500,000 women have picked up the phone and called, probably
huddled in the dark in the corner of their closet or their room, hoping
their husband or significant other is not around, and said in a
whisper, ``Help me, help me''--given their name and address and said,
``Help me.''
Think of that. Think of that. A half a million women have picked up
the phone. How many more have not picked up the phone?
The thing we should be aware of--and I know the Chair knows this--it
is counterintuitive to think a child who watches his mother being
beaten to a pulp would then beat his wife or girlfriend later. That is
counterintuitive. Wouldn't you think that would be the last thing a
child would do? But the psychologists tell us it is the first thing.
They learn violence is a readily available and acceptable means of
resolving power disputes.
You know, as the Chair I am sure knows--I am not being solicitous
because of his work in this generic field--about 60 percent of the
people in prison today have been abused or were in families where they
witnessed abuse. This is not rocket science. I hope we get on with it.
There are a few things I want to mention. This bill does not merely
reauthorize what we have done. I made a commitment, when I wrote this
bill and we finally got it passed as part of the Biden crime bill, that
I would go back and look at it--and others have, too, but personally
since I was so involved in it--and the parts that were working I would
try to beef up; the parts that were weak and did not make sense, I
would jettison. In the reauthorization, I would get rid of them.
I hope my colleagues will see we have kept that commitment. We take
the parts we found were lacking in our first bill and we, in fact,
beefed them up. We kept the police training, the court training, and
all those issues. We kept the violent crime reduction trust fund which,
by the way, gets about $6.1 billion a year from paychecks that are not
going to Federal employees anymore and go into this trust fund. It
trains attorneys general and the rest.
What it does beyond all it has already been doing is it provides for
transitional housing for women. We have over 300,000, in large part
thanks to Senator Specter from Pennsylvania, who has been so dedicated
in his appropriations subcommittee to this. We have built all these new
shelters. We do not send women to shantytowns. This is decent housing
with anonymity, giving them an opportunity to get out from under the
male fist abusing them, and they can bring their children with them.
Seventy percent of children on the street are homeless because their
mothers are on the street, a victim of domestic violence. We realized
there is a gap here because there are so many women knocking down the
door to get into these shelters to get out of abusive circumstances. We
can only keep them there for 30 days, 60 days, sometimes longer. They
cannot go back home because their husband has either trashed the home
or tried to sell the home or they have to move back in with the
husband. We tried to find some transitional housing that takes them
down the road for the next couple of years and gives them some hope.
We also beef up cross-State protection orders. For example: God
forbid there is a woman staffer in ear shot and she lives in Virginia
or Maryland or a nearby State and she went to the court and said: Look,
my husband or my boyfriend or this man has harassed me or beaten me,
and I want him to
[[Page S9251]]
stay away from me. The court issues what they call stay-away orders,
victim protection orders.
That woman may work in the District of Columbia. Now she crosses the
line from Virginia or Maryland into D.C., and she gets harassed. The
man violates the order, and she goes to a D.C. cop or D.C. court. They
do not have any record of it. There is no record or they do not honor
it. I am not talking about D.C. particularly. One State does not honor
another State.
What we have done is beefed up the requirement that States honor
these stay-away orders when women cross the line, literally cross a
State line, cross a jurisdictional line.
There is a very well-known reporter at the Washington Post--although
he has written about this, I am not going to take the liberty of using
his name without his permission. His daughter was in a similar
situation in Massachusetts. She was abused by someone. A stay-away
order was issued. She was in Massachusetts. She was in a different
county. The man, in fact, violated the order. They went into a local
court. The local court, because there were not computerized records,
did not know there was a State stay-away order.
By the way, the stay-away order says if you violate the order, you go
to jail. If a man follows a woman into a different jurisdiction and the
jurisdiction knows that order exists and he violates the order, they
can arrest him and send him to jail on the spot because it is part of
the probation, in effect, to stay away. It is part of the sentence, if
you will; not literally a sentence. They can put him in jail.
George's daughter said: This guy has an order. He is not supposed to
be near me.
The judge said: We have no record of that order because they are not
computerized for interchange of these records.
They walked outside the courtroom, and this man shot her dead. He
shot dead on the spot the daughter of this famous Washington reporter
because there was not the honoring, even within the State, of these
orders. We beefed that up.
By the way, in my State of Delaware, which has a relatively low
murder rate, 60 percent of all the people murdered in the last 2 years
were women murdered by their husband or their boyfriend. Did my
colleagues hear what I just said? Murdered by their husband or
boyfriend. The vast majority of women who are murdered in America are
murdered by a significant other or their husband. This is not a game.
We are now in a position where there is, in fact, no authorization
for the continuation of this law for which we worked so hard. Come
October 1, which is what, how many days? Today is the 26th. The point
is, in less than a week, this law is out of business.
I have much more to say about this, but I will not take the time of
the Senate now. I am encouraged, I am heartened by what the House did.
I am encouraged by what Senator Lott said to me today on the floor, and
I look forward to the opportunity to convince the leader to bring this
up in whatever form that will allow us to pass it because, again, this
is not a Republican or Democratic issue. This literally affects the
lives of thousands and thousands of women.
____________________
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