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   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now turn to the estate tax repeal bill.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

   Mr. REID. Reserving the right to object. In fact, I should object. I object.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.

   Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate considers the estate tax bill, it be considered under the following limitation: That the bill be limited to relevant amendments, with the following exemptions of the minority: estate taxes

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   I also say, just taking another brief minute, that at least one of our Members believes it would be appropriate that we should not be able to bring this estate tax legislation forward until we dispose of the China PNTR legislation.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, Senator DASCHLE and I have been discussing this matter in the hope that we could work out an agreement as to how we could proceed. We had discussed the possibility of certainly a substitute being in order on the estate tax legislation. I

    believe the Senator from New York, Mr. MOYNIHAN, had a substitute, or others, perhaps, joining with him would have a substitute, and other related or germane amendments to that issue. We even offered the possibility of having two nongermane amendments on each side.

   Our problem gets to be when you go to five or six--I don't know how many were included in that list.

   Mr. REID. Six.

   Mr. LOTT. Plus, if you have a substitute and then you have, let's just say, one or two related germane amendments, then you have five amendments on each side--that is 10 amendments--and even if we got a time agreement, you are talking about 12, or more, or 14 hours, which would be a minimum of 2 days.

   The problem we have in July is that we now have completed six appropriations bills, meaning there are still seven we have to get done.

   I hope that, at a minimum, we get five or six more done in July because they are very important bills that need to get completed so they can get in conference with the House, so they can be sent to the President, so hopefully he can sign them.

   We are talking about Agriculture; Interior; Housing and Urban Development; Treasury-Postal Service; Commerce-State-Justice--these are big, important appropriations bills. We have all those we have to do in July--a 3-week period--plus we have to do the marriage penalty tax elimination.

   I think there is an overwhelming desire to get that done, on both sides of the aisle, although we still disagree on how to get it done. But the Finance Committee has reported that out in a reconciliation bill. And there is a desire to do the China PNTR.

   I know we don't have the time to set aside 2 whole days in the midst of all that for the death tax. If we could just agree to a substitute and germane amendments--this is a bill that passed the House overwhelmingly. Sixty-five Democrats voted for it. Members in the House, regardless of region or race or sex, voted for it. Why does the Senate need to get into all these other nonrelated matters?

   But I understand there are Senators on the Democratic side who wish to have a debate and votes on these other matters. I believe they will probably have an opportunity to come up on other bills before the session is out. But that is why I object at this time.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.

   Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield?

   Mr. LOTT. Under my reservation, I yield to Senator REID.

   Mr. REID. I say to my friend, I think what we have done these last 4 days shows we can move through things very quickly. There were over 150 amendments after we worked on the bill a couple days. So we probably resolved over 200 amendments in the Labor-HHS bill.

   But I also say, in the short time I have been in the Senate, we have had some tax bills with hundreds of amendments and we have been able to work our way through those in some way.

   As with the leader, we on this side of the aisle think there should be some change in the estate taxes. We want to do that. We are getting the same calls you are.

   But I say to my friend, we would be willing to take time agreements on these amendments. I am certain we could finish

    the amendments in one good, long day. We would take time agreements on these amendments.

   On tax bills that have traditionally been brought up in the Senate, we have not had any restrictions on them. We will agree to have some restrictions, but we think this would be appropriate.

   We will be happy to have our staffs work on this during the break, and as soon as we get back, the two leaders can again talk about this. We do want to bring up the estate taxes.

   Mr. BAUCUS addressed the Chair.

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I may respond to that, just briefly.

   After the good work that has been done, in a bipartisan way, this past week, and after having participated in the effort that was just made to complete action on the military construction appropriations conference report, it has restored my faith that anything is possible in the Senate. I hope we can continue to work to find a way to resolve this and get it considered other than through the cloture process. I am going to hold out hope until the very last minute that we can get that done.

   So we will continue to work. Our staffs have been exchanging proposals, and we will continue to do that right up until the time we need to begin voting, which would be, I guess, Tuesday or Wednesday of the week we return.

   Under my reservation, I yield to the Senator from Montana.

   Mr. BAUCUS. I thank the majority leader very much. I assure him, as a member of the Finance Committee, we definitely plan to take up some form of estate tax reform. I don't know what version it would be, but clearly that has to pass this year.

   In addition, however, I do believe there is one other matter that is even more important than estate tax reform, and that is PNTR for China. It far transcends appropriations bills, marriage penalty relief, bankruptcy reform. Getting PNTR passed in July, I think, is of such urgency and is so important that I am constrained to object to any unanimous consent request that sets the schedule for July unless it also includes a time when we are going to take up PNTR. I know the leader knows that is my view. I just hope that in working with the leader, we can work out some accommodation to reach that objective.

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