Haley Stevens: “we will soon have a time for a recorded vote. I will yield the floor at the appropriate time, if the Chair will notify…”

“we will soon have a time for a recorded vote. I will yield the floor at the appropriate time, if the Chair will notify me when it is time to start that vote. Mr. President, there are a series of amendments now that have been filed on this bill to earmark money in the portion of the supplemental dealing with Defense. Our subcommittee and the full Appropriations Committee did not earmark any money in the Defense portion of this bill. It was my position and the position of the Senator from Hawaii, Mr. Inouye, that this is, after all, supplemental money on an emergency basis to deal with the problems of those who are in combat now: Iraq and Afghanistan and the war against terror. We have urgent needs of those people. This money must be approved and must be available to them no later than the first week in May. Under those circumstances, I have come to the floor to tell the Senate now we are going to oppose any amendment that would earmark money in this bill. There are some legitimate desires here on the floor for the Department to spend some of the money it has for specific purposes. I think a sense-of-the-Senate resolution in most of those instances would call that matter to the attention of the Department, and to a great extent I believe the Department would follow the suggestion of the Senate--of the Congress, if you want to make it a sense-of-the- Congress, as an amendment to this bill. We can change the amendments into a sense-of-the-Senate concept.…”