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Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the proponents of the crime victims' constitutional rights amendment, as I understand it, have about 6 minutes remaining. Senator Feinstein has asked that I conclude our portion of this opening debate.

People who are viewing this might wonder what the last 35, 40 minutes have been about. This wasn't supposed to be about abortion. How did that get involved in the crime victims' rights amendment? Perhaps Senator Leahy began this trend when he first spoke this morning about the possibility of gun control, abortion, and the balanced budget amendment.

I think the point is that people who are not motivated to adopt a constitutional set of rights for crime victims are willing to try to use our hard work, our efforts, and our energy to bring this proposed constitutional amendment to the Senate--which is very difficult to do--as a means of trying to tack on their favorite proposal, or to delay the Senate action on the crime victims' rights amendment to the point that we will have to move on to other pressing business. Either of those possibilities, I think, would be very sad.

Let me recount what has happened here. For almost 4 years, Senator Feinstein and I have worked very patiently to bring forward a crime victims' constitutional rights amendment. It is very difficult to get a constitutional amendment to the floor of the Senate. We have had 66 witnesses appear at hearings, with I think something like 15 pages of testimony transcript. We have had hearing after hearing. We have gone through 63 different drafts to make this as perfect as we could. We have gotten it out of the Judiciary Committee on a strong, bipartisan vote. Then we got the majority leader to give us some floor time, which is very precious.

In other words, we put a lot of work into this in support of victims of violent crime in our society. Throughout this building, and in others, there are scores of victims and victims' rights organizations around television sets watching these proceedings, having finally gotten what they hope to be their `day in court'--an argument about the crime victims' rights amendment and a vote on that.

What is beginning to emerge is a very disturbing tactic by those who oppose us, and that is either to try to delay this to the point that the majority leader will have to move on to something else, by offering all kinds of extraneous amendments, or by seeking to achieve what they have never been able to achieve through the normal legislative process, by using our proposal as a vehicle to attach their idea onto--in this case, perhaps, abortion. What better way to kill ours while getting some time to discuss their proposal.

Some of these same proponents are those who argue most vigorously against so-called riders to appropriations bills. They say, well, you should not have an extraneous amendment on an appropriation bill. If you are going to bring something to the floor, you should not debate something else. You should not amend it with something extraneous. We are willing to allow germane amendments to victims' rights in an effort to resolve how to best protect victims' rights. But what I fear I have seen here is a tactic either to defeat what we are trying to do or to use what we are trying to do to advance an entirely different agenda. That would be wrong.

The people watching this debate must be saying: There they

go again. What are these Senators doing? They had a proposal to bring forth a crime victims' rights amendment to the floor, and, by procedural legerdemain, is that going to be prevented, overcome by an abortion amendment or something of that sort? We hope not. The bottom line is that there is a reason all of the people who support this amendment have said it is now time for a Federal constitutional rights amendment.

As we have seen this morning, States have been unable to protect the rights of crime victims with State statutes and their own State constitutional amendments. Attorneys general and prosecutors support this. Law enforcement supports it. The Attorney General of Wisconsin, Jim Doyle--a very respected Democratic attorney general--said this before the Judiciary Committee:

I believe that most prosecutors strongly support victims' rights.

He notes some of the concerns of prosecutors. He said:

I believe these concerns are more than adequately addressed in S.J. Res. 3.

The bottom line is that we have support from victims' rights groups, prosecutors, attorneys general, and Governors, and it is time now to decide whether we want to protect crime victims or not. We have an opportunity by bringing this matter to the floor. At 2:15, we will have a vote on what is called a cloture motion on a motion to proceed. If 60 colleagues agree, we will be able to go forward and debate the motion to proceed, which I assume will be adopted later today. Then we can proceed with debate on the constitutional amendment itself. We look forward to that. If people want to bring forward relevant amendments to that, so be it. That is what the process is about. But I fear what will happen if, instead, we get a series of nongermane amendments or attempts to delay this, to the point that we run out of time and, in effect, a filibuster has killed any hope these crime victims have of protecting their rights in our courts.

We have waited too long. Eighteen years ago President Reagan's Commission on Crime Victims recommended the constitutional amendment to address these rights. Eighteen years is long enough to wait. I hope when we finally have an opportunity on the Senate floor, that opportunity is not snatched away by people who want to pursue other agendas.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the proponents is expired; the opponents have 9 minutes.

Mr. KYL. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair, in his capacity as a Senator from Wyoming, requests the quorum call be lifted, and without objection it is so ordered.

END