mr. schumer: thank you, madam president. mr. president -- madam president, the last thing we need when we're trying to get back on track is a default crisis that would bury us under even more debt. yet the latest round of republican politicians threatening to default on our debt have made their priorities clear. they'd rather stop paying our md women fighting overseas, force deep cuts to social security and medicare and throw even more americans out of work than tell big oil companies and corporate jet attorneys pay their fair share. clearly our republican colleagues are serious about politics, not deficits. you can't be serious about deficits and at the same time recklessly jeopardize our economic standing in the world in order to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest few. yet, that is what leaders like mitch mcconnell seem to be saying. just yesterday my republican colleague drew a line in the sand on cutting wasteful spending in the tax code, calling elimination of special interest giveaways politically impossible. politicall

schumer: thank you, mr. president. before i get into the substance of my remarks, i'd like to ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous order, the vote in relation to the vitter amendment number 4 9 occur at 12:30 and the vote in relation to the demint amendment no 530 occur at -- no 510 occur at 2:00 p.m. the presiding officer: is there objection? the senator from maine. ms. collins: mr. president, i just want to make sure this has been cleared with the senator from south carolina. mr. schumer: it has. ms. collins: thank you. i have no objection. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. schumer: it is our intention to set u

mr. schumer: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from new york. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that not withstanding the previous order for the votes to begin at 11:00 a.m. there now be ten minutes equally divided between the two leaders or their designees prior to the votes. further that there be two minutes equally divided between the votes. finally, all roll call votes after the first vote be it ten-minute votes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: thank you, madam president. and i will take the five minutes on our side, and i believe senator demint will be taking the five minutes on the other side. madam president, i rise today and join my colleagues in strong support of the nominations reform package before us today. this bipartisan bill and resolution which we'll vote on a bit later will effectively change the way the senate does business and is long past time to do just that. it isn't often this body voluntarily takes steps to curb its own power, but for the good of our democracy, the senate must become more efficient. i

mr. schumer: mr. president? the presiding officer: the snore from new york is recognized. mr. schumer: first, mr. president, i want to thank my colleague from oregon once again. he is forthright, he is courageous, he is on the money, and people should listen to him, because he says a lot of good things about a lost subjects, including this wufnlt and i appreciate what he has said. now, mr. president, after weeks of stops and starts, we're now approaching crunch time in the debt ceiling talks. i believe that a grand, bipartisan bargain is possible, but only if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle take off their partisan blinders. neither side can afford to cling to their ideological positions any longer. to get economy humming on all sinalders again and avoid a default crisis, we need to say goodbye to a few sacred cows. and yet mere weeks after voting to repeal ethanol subsidies, the other side's leader, the senator from ken kernings has drawn a line in the sand against including any and all revenue changes in the debt deal. he has said that repeal of special interest t

mr. schumer: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from new york is recognized. mr. schumer: i would ask unanimous consent that the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. schumer: i also rise now, because of the change in time schedule to speak against the amendment offered by mr. demint. like the vitter amendment, this amendment is -- is opposed to the great spirit of comity behind the underlying bill. i'd like to remind my colleague from south carolina that the bipartisan working group labored over every decision we made. far from lifting our index fingers to the wind, we carefully debated the nuances of the changes that were ultimately proposed. the change that the senator from south carolina takes fault with involves the bureau of justice statistics. now, let me tell but this position. the director of the bureau of justice statistics reports to the senate-confirmed assistant attorney general for the office of justice programs, who then reports to the senate-confirmed associate attorney general, who then reported to the

mr. schumer: thank you, mr. president. first i rise in support of s. 679, a bipartisan effort that will streamline presidential appointments and reduce the number of senate confirmations for certain types of positions and urge my colleagues to support this bill. first i want to praise my colleague and friend, senator alexander, who has been a leading, if not the leading force in this area, and we have worked together well in a bipartisan way to try to come up with a proposal that meets the agreement of the chamber. he's done a great job and it's been a pleasure, i would sty my friend from tennessee, to work with hirnlings as it always is. -- to work with him, as it always s i also want to thank, of course, senator reid, who has encouraged us to get involved in this process and has been right there with us all the way, as well as republican leader mcconnell, who, again, has from the beginning been on our side and agreed that this is a worthwhile thing to do. and so we formed a bipartisan working group at senator reid and se

mr. reid: senator schumer and alexander are that far from an agreement that we can move forward on the next bill. so with everyone's patience, i ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote scheduled to occur immediately -- right now be postponed until wednesday, that's tomorrow, june 22, at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the republican leader, and that if cloture is invoked, time postcloture be counted as if cloture was invoked at 6:00 p.m. today. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. the presiding officer: the l. is not will come to order. the senate will come to order. mr. reid: thank you, mr. president. i ask that we now proceed to a period of morning business until 6:00 p.m. this evening. that's an hour and ten minutes from now. senators will be permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each during this period of time. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i would note the absence of a quorum. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: the presiding offi

the betterment of this body, and i'm grateful that he and senator schumer have done all the good work they have on this legislation. mr. alexander: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. alexander: madam president, i would like to thank the majority leader and the republican leader, senator mcconnell, for the way they've worked on this legislation. not just on this bill but when they were the respective whips of their parties several years ago each of them worked on trying to help improve the senate's ability to do its oversight by doing a better job without advice and consent responsibility. that's one of our better-known responsibilities. it is a constitutional responsibility. it's an article 1,section 2. but as part of that advice and consent responsibility, the senate has the responsibility to define which other positions the president may appoint and that's what this is about. senator collins and senator lieberman have also worked for many years on this, and they will be here in a few minutes to open the debate. senator schumer and i will come to the floor about 2:40 and make our

mr. schumer: the vote was in the resolution, -- mr. coburn: you don't want to move it up? mr. schumer: no. we need it at 6:10. if the senator wants to speak beyond five minutes, that's okay with us. mr. coburn: i will withdraw my unanimous consent, mr. president. this is a very straightforward amendment. the people who vote against this rule change, what they're going to be telling you is they don't want you to know what's going on in the senate, and they don't want us to know what's going on in the senate, because all this rule does is make it a force of habit of the senate that before we look at legislation, we ought to determine whether it duplicates things that are already out there in the government. and we ought to determine if it's overlapping to other programs. had this amendment been in effect, a third of what we passed in the past wouldn't pass, because we would then see, which we're ignore of today, all the other programs that are available and out there that accomplish the same purposes for which we pass another new program. on one of my committees in this year -- i

mr. schumer: will nigh colleague yield senator a moment? mr. graham: yes. mr. humer: before he goes on to afghanistan, if the gentleman would yield, i want to add my accolades about leon panetta. i know him well. we actually roomed together for 11 years here in washington. he is a strong man. he is a smart man. he is an honorable man. he's devout plan, and he will be a great secretary of defense. so i wanted to thank my colleague for praising him and add my accolades. mr. graham: thank you. that shows you -- that's about as bipartisan as it will get. it shows you the depth of the way leon panetta view him up here. one of the first decisions he will have to make is what to tell the president about afghanistan. i know we're war-weary. we've been there ten years. the reason we went there to begin with, we didn't just throw a dart at a map. that's the place where the taliban were controlling and vinted al qaeda to come in to be their honored guest. bin laden had a welcome home in afghanistan. the rest is history. so president bush understood the taliban were a force

mr. president, i want to on congratulate senator schumer and senator alexander, senator collins, and others, for working through this bipartisan legislation. it's nice to actually have a piece of legislation we can actually work on together to -- in this case to help streamline the appointment process for some of these lower-level positions and i congratulate them for their work. i do, however, have an amendment that i think makes an important correction and i've discussed this with both senator alexander and others, and i think they understand and they tend to agree that this amendment is important, but under this bill the presidential appointment efficiency and streamlining act of 2011, three -- three important presidential appointments within the department of defense that are currently senate-confirmed positions would no longer be subject to senate confirmation. these positions within our military departments are aimed at a very important goal, and that is to attain better stewardship of taxpayer dollars by our military. and i am talking about specifically the assistant secretaries of t