mr. inhofe: mr. president, i ask you to let me know when i have one infinite remaining. the presiding officer: -- one minute remaining. the presiding officer: the chair will do so. mr. inhofe: mr. president, on the 15th of june, the house passed a bill that we've been talking about here. i have concerned that have not been discussed here in the last few minutes. although the senate voted 90-6 on a bipartisan amendment to prohibit funding for the transfer of gitmo detainees to the united states, the supplemental appropriation conference deleted that language. now, that language came from an amendment that was authored by myself and my good friend fro from -- from hawaii, senator inouye. but they stripped that language out. the senate's bipartisan amendment would have effectively prevented the closing of the terrorist detention at gitmo. since president obama announced that he intended to close gitmo, it's become widely circulated that the -- these detainees could be transferred to american prisoners f

mr. inhofe: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that i be recognized as if in morning business for such time as i shall consume. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. inhofe: i do have a couple of comments to make concerning the remarks by my good friend from vermont, but i will do that at the conclusion of another subject that i feel some passion about, and that has to do with the nomination of harold koh by president obama. he is a nominee for the position of legal advisor to the state department. and i understand that cloture has been filed on harold koh, and i wanted to come to register my strong opposition and assure the american people that their representatives in congress are not going to let this nominee sail through unopposed and to let them know that there are some of us here in the senate who will require full and extensive debate before this nominee receives a vote. and i think that you -- in doing so, you almost have to ask the question as to whatever happened to the understa

mr. inhofe: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent i be recognized as if in morning business for the time as i consume. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. inhofe: let me, first of all, mr. president -- say of my friend, the senior senator from wyoming, he really does articulate this well. and he has spent countless hours working on this. and when you listen to him, not just in his depth of knowledge in trying to work out something that would give improvements and avoid a total socialization of medicine, he knows what he's talking about. i think when we go back -- i go back to my state of oklahoma, it's not all that differe than from when he goes back to his state of wyoming. people ask the question, if government isn't working well now, why do we want to put all the rest of these things in government, whether it's health care, the banking industry, the insurance industry, oil and gas and the other takeovers that we're witnessing right now. i do think that you can summarize what

mr. inhofe: 12 minutes. mr. gregg: mr. president, i will reserve the balance of my time. ms. stabenow: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: mr. president -- mr. president, let me indicate that we're talking about a motion to waive less than 1% of this bill. it's an emergency bill. it's a supplemental. it's less than 1%. in terms of the overall scope of what's before us, it's small. but i can tell you in small towns and in cities all across america, this is a big deal. we have up to three million people that in some way work with our automobile industry. we have small businesses all across this country that are looking at this vote. we have had colleagues come to the floor. we have had hearings held, letters and press releases about helping dealers at this time. this is the moment. this is the moment and the vote as to whether or not we will do that. i am very great full for the chairman of the committee and his graciousness in working with us on this and to our leadership. while we know this has not come through the regular process an

mr. president, i didn't plan to come to the floor to speak about global warming legislation but i heard bits and pieces of my friend, senator inhofe's speech about, essentially, why we'll never approve global warming legislation and why it's a bad idea and the usual horribles about what will happen. you know, my friend, senator inhofe and i work together well on both issues that come before our committee when it comes to building infrastructure, the state resolving fund. we've been a team. the highway trust fund, we've been a team. he has been very helpful on most of our nominees and, if not all. so i'm very grateful to him. but i couldn't allow his words to be the last word here on global warming legislation as we get ready to leave for a week to go home and work. so i disagree very strongly with those who say if we attack the problem of global warming head on we're moving into territory where we're going to regret the fact we did it because it's going to hurt our people, it's going to lose jobs, it's going to increase energy costs when, in fact, we know the opposite is true. it's not just me saying it. i come from a state, califor

with senator inhofe to introduce with him a resolution acknowledging the revolution of the tianamen crackdown. it demands that china release its political and religious prisoners. today, mr. president, we look back on the tianamen protest, we honor those who died in the struggle for freedom. let's remember that brave, unnamed protester who 20 years ago believed that one person can change the world through peace an nonviolence. think what a whole nation can do, mr. president. thank you. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. a senator: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. burr: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to be recognized for up to 30 minutes. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. mr. burr: thank you, mr. president. when i yielded the floor to allow senator brown to speak, i was in the process of describing the substitute amendment to the base bill, h.r. 1256. before i go back to that, let me share for my colleagues the response to a letter from the campaign