The Senate is convened.

• Today --
  • We will have no votes today or Monday.
  • We expect to be voting on Tuesday.
  • Senator Warner and I will remain here to clear amendments for a manager's package.
  • We hope that we could today and Monday debate amendments requiring roll call votes on Tuesday.

• Spoke on his amendment on property rights (Allard Amdt. 5296) to the Defense Authorization (S. 3001).
  • SUMMARY "private property rights is something that's extremely important to the people of colorado, and particularly the rural areas, and this expanded training area is in a very rural area in southern colorado. now, last year -- and so with the assurance that it would protect private property rights, i began to say now you need to talk to the members of the communities and elected officials and see if you can't work out some agreement. and so the army is putting considerable effort at this particular point in time, and i've been asked to begin to propound an amendment that would substantiate or support the army's position on protecting property rights."
• Spoke on his amendment on active duty voting (Allard Amdt. 5298) to the Defense Authorization (S. 3001).
  • SUMMARY "i've been working on is an amendment to bring attention to the fact that our military service members are faced with an ineffective process and u unnecessary hurdles when attem attempting to exercise their right to vote. military absentee voting gained attention in the 2000 presidential election. the government accountability office reported that military ballots during the 2000 election were disqualified five times as often as civilian ballots. despite numerous attempts by congress, our military continue to face voting problems in 2002, 2004, and 2006 elections"

• Spoke in honor of a soldier who passed in Iraq.

• Spoke on his amendment to resrict drilling in the Eastern Gulf.
  • SUMMARY "it says, "not withstanding any other provision of law, the secretary of the interior shall not issue any permit for oil and gas leasing or extraction in an area described," as i have just indicated, "unless and until the president certifies, based on written opinions provided by each, the secretary of defense, the secretary of the navy and the secretary of the air force and the head of each appropriate national security agency of the united states, that the president certifies that in balancing the national security interest of the united states, the advantages of oil or gas extraction in the area outweighed the military and national security missions being conducted in the area.""

• Spoke on the report on the Mineral Management Service.
  • SUMMARY "a lot of americans are wondering, how can it possibly be that in these federal energy development programs that tax money of the american people is being used to prop up sweetheart contracting, flagrant contract of interest violations, drug abuse, apparently all kinds of sexual escapades and lots and lots more. now, i have been trying to clean up these royalty programs for more than five years, mr. president"
  • SUMMARY "it would seem to me given the blockbuster nature of this inspector general report and the tenacious work that has been done by ear devaney that the congress would be more than neglect, would be more than remiss, would be -- the congress would be negligent to not step in next week when we are working on these very programs. and there is discussion about expanding had them dramatically to not step in and make sure that the taxpayers' interests are protected. this is not a question of whether you're for drilling or against drilling here"

• Responded.
  • SUMMARY "where is the accountability? when i served in the military a long time ago, i was taught clearly that the commanding officer was accountable for what happened to that commanding officer's troops or ship. and where is the accountability? what about the head of the minerals management service? the head of the minerals management service is there, and where is the accountability? why shouldn't the head of the minerals management service in something that went on in one-third of the employees of this office for some period of time say, i'm responsible, i'm accountable and face the music and face the consequences? but, no, it's always dodge, weave, deflect"

• Spoke on retiring political reporters.

• Spoke on labor policy.
  • SUMMARY "we can adopt measures right now in honor of labor day that would make a difference in working family and working people's lives. like extending unemployment insurance. if congress doesn't act before early october, 800,000 unemployed americans will stop getting their much-needed checks, including 330,000 from high unemployment states like ohio. we must expand insurance for those vulnerable citizens. we should make sick leave a right of employment, not of privilege. employees should not have to choose between attending to their health and losing their job. we should pass the employee free choice characters would allow more workers to bargain collectively. we know that means higher wages, better benefits, a stronger middle class, a more prosperous america. we should provide tax credit for alternative energy investment, which would help wean us off foreign oil and create new green-collar jobs"!

• Spoke on the Defense Authorization Bill (S. 3001).
  • SUMMARY "who wants to fly 20,000 feet above the battlefield with an unmanned aerial vehicle? the air force and the army. one builds a plane called the predator, one builds a plane called the warrior. they appear to have missions that are duplicate. you have duplicate spending on research and development. duplicate spending on the airplanes themselves. duplicate spending on the missions inside the pentagon. and who pays the cost? the american taxpayer. this is not new. but the competition inside the pentagon shouldn't render the american taxpayer to have to pay for inefficiency and duplication."
  • SUMMARY "there are a lot of questions that have been unanswered going back to the clinton administration and through the bush administration that the american taxpayers ought to have answered with respect to a fundamental review of what is the total cost here including depreciation taken by private contractor and others, what is the total cost of this privatization of housing on our military bases? what is the total cost to the taxpayer? well, i wanted to mention that in the context of the defense authorization bill. because i think these are a couple of things that ought to be considered."
• Spoke on foreign trade.
  • SUMMARY "you can hire people for a lot less in mexico than you had to pay for workers in new jersey. the list goes on and and on. the unbelievable part of this that we as a country and this congress, yes, provides a tax break to a company that says, i'm going to fire my american workers and move the jobs overseas. i've tried, i believe four times on the floor of the senate, to offer amendments and get votes on amendments that would shut down the tax break for shipping jobs overseas. and in each occasion we've lost that vote."
• Spoke on government regulation.
  • SUMMARY "nothing happened in that year with respect to supply and demand that justified it. what i think happened is what is happening in so many areas of our government, regulators brain dead, brought out of sleep, rip van winkle while everything is happening around them, we're not going to watch, so oil speculators drove it straight-up"
  • SUMMARY "saw the advertisements by the mortgage bankers and others that said, you have been bankrupt? do you have bad credit? you can't pay your bills? come to us, we've got a mortgage for you. we've all seen those ads over and over and over again. and guess what, those ads were a reflection of what was going on in an industry right under the nose of regulators who didn't seem to care in which they built this unbelievable system of bad mortgages and pairing them with decent mortgages."

• Spoke on his amendment regarding mandate for force (Webb Amdt. 5499) to the Defense Authorization (S. 3001).
  • SUMMARY "the 2002 congressional authorization to use force in iraq has nothing to do with negotiate with a government that replaced the saddam hussein government as to the future relations-culturally, economically, diplomatically and militarily, between our two countries. on the other hand, we are now faced with the reality that the united nations mandate will expire at the end of this year and that expiration will terminate the authority under international law for the united states to be rating in iraq at a time when we have hundreds of thousands of americans on the ground in that country"

• Spoke on the defense policy.
  • SUMMARY "senator obama sounded the alarmt about al qaeda threat in pakistan and called for a more forceful and comprehensive strategy to fight this threat. george bush and john mccain chose, stunningly, to ignore it. the president kept the bulk of our ground troops and special operations forces and our intelligence assets tied down in iraq, an iraq washington that had nothing to do with osama bin laden and terrorist whose attacked us. republicans led by john mccain attacked obama's approach to go after bin laden and pakistan."
  • SUMMARY "on iraq, where bush has finally begun to slowly inch toward the obama plan for holding the iraqis more accountable by p putting in place a time line for change in the military mission and redeployment of our troops. but, of course, not john mccain. our country deserves more than token shifts and lip service to change. take decisive action to reverse eight years of foreign policy mistakes. that's exactly what senator obama and senate democrats offer. real change."
• Spoke on the Defense Authorization Bill (S. 3001).
  • SUMMARY "there are some who want us to get virtually nothing done on this defense authorization bill. mr. president, there's so many reasons that it's important we get this bill done. it would be the first time in five decades that this body has not passed the defense authorization bill. this bill is loaded with things that are good for the security of our nation"
• Filed cloture on the Defense Authorization Bill (S. 3001)

• Spoke on the Defense Authorization Bill (S. 3001).
  • SUMMARY "we met with a lot of senators relative to their amendments. our goal is the following: that on monday that we enter into a unanimous consent agreement setting out what votes on what amendments would be held on tuesday in both morning and afternoon. that is our goal"

• Spoke on his amendment on excess inventories (Sanders Amdt. 5320) proposed to the Defense Authorization Bill (S. 3001).
  • SUMMARY "i am offering with senator feingold and senator whitehouse is pretty simple and straightforward. today more than half of the spare parts ordered by the air force, over $18 billion a year, are not needed. $18 billion in spare parts are not needed. in fact, if you can believe it, the air force has on order $235 million in inventory already identified as ready for disposal. they are spending $235 million to bring inventory in which is going to go out because they don't need it. that may make sense to somebody, but it certainly does not make sense to me."
• Monday --
  • We will convene at 3:00 PM on Monday.
  • The filing deadline for first degree amendments will be 4:00 PM.
  • We will have no roll call votes.

The Senate stands adjourned until 3:00 PM on Monday, September 15th.