mr. president, i ask for yays and nays on my motion to concur. >> is there a sufficient second? there appears to be a sufficient second. the yays and nays are ordered. >> mr. akaka? mr. alexander? miss ayott? >> there you have it. the majority leader, minority leader, they both wrapped up the debate. now the voting has started. we expect it will continue for about 15 minutes, sometimes it drags on a little bit longer, maybe 20 minutes. after it passes, we assume that they have the necessary 60 votes to pass this legislation within a few moments, the president of the united states will walk into the rose garden over at the white house. he will not sign this legislation into law because the paperwork, the bureaucracy that requires some time to do, so he has to sign it before midnight tonight in order to get the process going, but he will make a statement, we expect about a 10 or 15-minute statement from the president as well. kate bolduan is up on the hill watching. i assume a lot of people have been looking closely at the numbers. they have well over 60 votes that will support what mitch mcconnell and harry reid have now proposed. >> reporter: i have been talking to leadership

mr. alexander, you will have three minutes. >> three minutes? madam president, mr. vice president, when we were here last, the question was, if given the opportunity to do so, would we be able to show he complied with the current driving requirement for consecutive years. we did not know it would take this long. when we were here in april, he was prepared to show that he can and has complied. he has continued to be driving, while we were waiting for this hearing. the mta does not dispute that. he has met the requirement. he is a full time driver in every sense of the world. this has now been pending since 2008. his record is spotless. he has had other apparel people help him. he has complied with every purpose and regulation that has ever been in place. the most fundamental purpose of all regulation -- it is clear the public will be well served if he is admitted to the ranks of medallion holders. conversely, no conceivable public purpose will be served if he is further delayed, denied, or made to produce further proof that he is a driver, fully qualified to be a med

mr. alexander: i ask unanimous consent that speakers on the republican side be allocated up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. alexander: madam president, finally washington is taking some responsibility for spending money that we don't have. at a time when the federal government is borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it spends, this is a welcome change in behavior, and i gladly support it. make no mistake, this is a change in behavior from spend, spend, spend to cut, cut, cut. let me give you one example. on christmas eve in 2010, congress raised the debt ceiling and attached to it $1 trillion in new spending over ten years in the new health care law. this time for every dollar we're raising the debt ceiling, we're reducing spending by $1, not adding to it. this reduction in spending over ten years is about $2.4 trillion. here's another example. according to senator portman, who used to be the nation's budget director, the congressional budget office would say that if congress did this kind of dollar-for-dollar reduction for spending every time a president asked to us raise the debt ceiling, we'd balance the