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Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I will propound a unanimous consent request. I have notified the Democratic leader that I intended to do that. I see there are Senators on the floor who will probably have some comments to make. But before I propound that request, let me outline what I would like to do and what has transpired.
Senators will recall that last year there was a major effort made to pass through the Senate bankruptcy reform legislation. That has been a bipartisan effort. The Judiciary Committee has done excellent work. Chairman HATCH has been cooperative. Senator GRASSLEY has been magnificent in working with both sides of the aisle. Democratic Senators had input.
After some starts and stops, we made real progress, but it did get held up at the end of the session. We did not get it completed.
When we came back in at the beginning of the year, we decided the best thing to do was to move forward and have some votes on amendments that were controversial on both sides, but we faced those votes. We got our work done, and we passed bankruptcy reform--basically, a good bill. The House also has acted in this area.
We need to go forward and get bankruptcy reform legislation into conference and completed so we can improve this area in the law, so the law will be clearer for all those interested, and so we can send it to the President for his signature.
In the process of the debate, and the amendments on this legislation, amendments were offered with regard to the minimum wage. In fact, a minimum wage increase was passed and attached to the bankruptcy reform legislation. Senator KENNEDY offered the first amendment. That was defeated. Then an alternative amendment was offered by Senator DOMENICI and others, and it did include small business tax relief to offset the impact of a minimum wage increase. That was adopted. It became a part of the bill.
The problem in going forward is, because of the minimum wage and tax provisions that were attached to the bill, it could be subject to, and would be subject to, the so-called blue slip rules in the House. It could be objected to, in effect, because it has the minimum wage and the revenue measures as a part of it.
So we had not gone forward to try to send this to the House because of the potential blue slip problem and also to wait to see if the House was going to go forward and act on minimum wage and the tax relief package. In fact, a couple weeks ago, I believe it was, they did do that. Now it is time we go to conference.
What I propose to do, even though I will do it in the Senate rules parlance--what it really says is split the two; send the Senate-passed bankruptcy bill to conference with the House-passed bill, have a conference,
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I think that is the way to do all three of the issues. It is a fair way to proceed. It is a simple way to proceed. It gets rid of the blue slip problem, and then we can count on the conference to act on both bankruptcy and the minimum wage increase and the small business tax provisions.
I just wanted to explain what was involved before I ask for unanimous consent. But I am prepared to do that.
I ask Senator DASCHLE, do you want to comment before I propound that request or would the Senator like to do it after I do the request?
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I appreciate the majority leader's effort to try to move this legislation along. This bill, the bankruptcy bill, passed the Senate with more than 80 votes. Whether or not we get unanimous consent is not relevant. What is relevant is that we get these two pieces of legislation successfully completed in a timely manner. If we are not able to get unanimous consent, I intend to support finding a way to assure that we do go to conference both on the bankruptcy bill and the minimum wage.
I am hopeful we can instruct the conferees with regard to minimum wage. It would be my hope, at least, that the Senate could express itself in regard to the issue on minimum wage prior to the time we go to conference. But if we could accommodate that request, that we have at least an opportunity to express ourselves on the conference itself, then I would certainly be supportive of moving on a motion to proceed to two conferences--one on bankruptcy and one on minimum wage.
The distinguished Senator from Vermont, and others, Senator TORRICELLI, Senator DURBIN, and others, have done an extraordinary job in getting us to this point.
We have a much better bill, a stronger bill, in the Senate on bankruptcy than we do in the House. I hope we can take what we have been able to accomplish in the Senate and bring our House colleagues to the realization that that is the kind of legislation that will be signed into law.
On the minimum wage, the House version, at least in terms of the 2-year approach, is the one the President said he will support. It enjoys strong support in the Senate as well. We are concerned about the size and magnitude of the tax provisions. If we could target those, we would be in good shape on that as well.
I understand the majority leader's interest in moving this. We want to be supportive in that regard; most of us do. I am hopeful we can accomplish it through a unanimous consent request.
Mr. LEAHY. Will the distinguished Senator yield?
Mr. LOTT. I am glad to yield to Senator LEAHY.
Mr. LEAHY. I agree with what the distinguished Democratic leader said. I would like to see us move forward. The bill we put together passed 83-14. The distinguished leader is right; it was in excess of 80 votes. There was a tremendous amount of work on both sides of the aisle. Senator HATCH, Senator GRASSLEY, Senator TORRICELLI, and I were the four floor leaders on this, working with others--Senator REID, Senator DASCHLE--to get people to take away hundreds of amendments. We got rid of those, and we got down to several on which we voted and passed in a good package. I would advise the two leaders, I have been working with Senator TORRICELLI, Senator HATCH, Senator GRASSLEY, and Senator SESSIONS to try to whittle it down even further, but to have a packet, one that could be acceptable on both sides of the aisle and also could get signed down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Mr. LOTT. If the Senator will yield on that point.
Mr. LEAHY. Yes.
Mr. LOTT. I have been keeping in touch with the informal discussions that have been going forward.
Mr. LEAHY. I know the majority leader has.
Mr. LOTT. I have the impression that the Senate potential conferees, Democrat and Republican, have come up with a good proposal and are ready to go forward with serious negotiations that I hope could be completed relatively quickly.
Mr. LEAHY. I hope we will find a way to go through this. I realize we have issues of the minimum wage and others. We ought to vote them up, vote them down, whatever is necessary. I advise both leaders, I think we have put together a good, bipartisan, compromise package that could be the basis of final conference action and, if it were, would be signed by the White House.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I may just comment one second more before I propound the UC request, with regard to Senator DASCHLE's comments, we do have a good, strong, bipartisan bankruptcy bill that we have passed. We also did have a debate and discussion on the minimum wage issue and the tax provisions. I didn't choose the debate and the amendments to occur on this bill, but I knew it was going to come up and it should come up at some point. So it was offered to the bankruptcy bill. We had a good debate. We had a vote.
The interesting thing about the minimum wage, I think the parameters are pretty clear. We have the Senate-passed version, the $1 increase over 3 years, and the House version, that increase over a shorter period of time, only maybe a year or so. Then in the Senate provision, we have some small business tax offsets, a relatively small package. The House has a bigger package on the tax offsets. I think the parameters of the discussion on minimum wage are all represented in the two bills that have been passed. We can get conferees from the appropriate committees, and they can look at the minimum wage increase, and over what period of time, and the small business tax offsets or other tax provisions, and have a good conference and be able to get a result. I hope we can do that without delay.
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