[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 146 (Saturday, October 8, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
           THE REPUBLICAN LEADER'S END-OF-THE-SESSION REVIEW

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I would like at this time to touch on what I 
have called the end-of-the-session review.
  As I recall, on January 21, 1993, I stood at this desk and announced 
what I thought the Republican priorities for the 103d Congress would 
be. Now that the session has come to an end, I want to report to my 
colleagues and to the American people on the progress we made in 
upholding those priorities.
  I believe Republicans should be proud of what we stood for and fought 
for in the 103d Congress. As I said the day after President Clinton 
took office, the duty of Republicans is to support his proposals when 
we believe they move America in the right direction, and to change or 
oppose his proposals which we believe move America in the wrong 
direction.
  It is as simple as that. When he is right, we support him. When we 
think he is wrong, we tried to modify or oppose.
  From NAFTA, to health care, to taxes, that is precisely what we have 
done. In keeping with our constructive role as the loyal opposition, 
Republicans proposed responsible public policy initiatives on all major 
issues, including deficit reduction, health care, crime, violence 
against women, welfare reform, campaign finance reform, our 
relationship with the United Nations and NATO, and to include new 
democracies, to name just a few. Let me touch on a few of these issues 
in greater detail.
  First of all, trying to change the economy for the better. The first 
priority I listed in 1993 was to change America's economy for the 
better. President Clinton inherited an economy that was already in 
recovery, and Republicans believe the recovery could be strengthened by 
promoting trade, cutting spending first, by tough and meaningful 
actions to reduce the deficit, and by reducing the redtape and 
regulations that prevent business from expanding and hiring more 
workers.
  Unfortunately, the President has said, as recently as yesterday, that 
he is very proud of his economic package. Unfortunately, the President 
and the Democratic majority concluded that what the American economy 
needed was the largest tax increase in our country's history--$265 
billion. It was supposed to be a $500 billion package with an equal 
number of tax cuts and spending reductions. We have now been told by 
the Congressional Budget Office that about $70 billion of the spending 
cuts have disappeared.
  So we have a big, big tax increase and a very, very small reduction 
in spending. This giant tax increase passed by one vote in the House, 
and not a single Republican voted for it. It passed by one vote in the 
Senate. Actually, it was a tie, and the Vice President of the United 
States, Albert Gore, voted to break the tie, and not a single 
Republican voted for it on this side. We are proud of that vote because 
we did not believe that raising taxes on Social Security, raising 
gasoline taxes on the middle class, and then raising taxes--the 
President would say on the ``rich''--on a lot of the subchapter S 
corporations and others trying to create jobs and opportunities, to the 
tune of $265 billion, was not going to be any magic that would start 
any economic recovery or to keep the growth we already had sustained.
  So because of that legislation, as I said, there is a 4.3-cent gas 
tax--not much, but it makes a difference to every senior citizen that 
earns more than $34,000 as an individual or $44,000 as a couple that 
was hit with a tax increase on social benefits. Over 1 million small 
businesses who file a subchapter S corporation were also hit with a 
retroactive tax that limits their ability to create jobs, and that tax 
increase on subchapter S corporations--the very corporations out there 
creating jobs--amounted to about a 3-percent tax increase.
  We offered a commonsense cut-spending-first approach of deficit 
reduction. Had our plan passed, I am convinced we would have built on 
the recovery with more growth, more jobs, more investments, a stronger 
dollar, lower interest rates, and a stronger economy than we have 
today.
  In other words, had we done nothing, I think we would have had a 
stronger economy today. But had we adopted a Republican plan, it would 
be even stronger. I must say most economists say it takes about 2 years 
for a big, big tax increase to have an impact on the economy. We can 
see that impact happening about now.
  So I guess, though we may have disagreed on the tax increase, we were 
proud to support the President on the North American Free-Trade 
Agreement, and that was not easy to do. There was a lot of opposition 
to the North American Free-Trade Agreement, but in this case we 
believed, as Republicans, the President was right, and we supplied more 
votes in this body, even though we are outnumbered 56 to 44. We 
supplied more votes for the North American Free-Trade Agreement than 
did the Democrats. Republicans in the House provided more votes for the 
North American Free-Trade Agreement than did the Democrats because we 
believed the President was right and he deserved our support, and this 
was important to the American economy, and Republican support made the 
difference.
  In this case, the Democrats who opposed it included the House 
majority leader, and the House majority whip opposed the President's 
position.
  So it seems to me that there was another remarkable case where the 
parties came together or there was an absence of partnership on this 
side.
  On another effort to cooperate with the administration and with the 
leadership in the House and the Senate, Republicans cooperated on all 
the appropriations bills, the 13 appropriations bills, billions and 
billions and billions of dollars, and it is necessary to pass these 
bills to get out Social Security checks, all kinds of checks to keep 
the Government going and many, many millions of individuals rely on us 
to move promptly on the appropriations bills.
  All this was done in record time. It was only the third time it has 
been done on time since 1948. This would not have happened without 
Republican cooperation.
  We have also worked in a bipartisan manner in cooperation with the 
Government, State legislators, city council members, and mayors across 
the country to try to stem the flow of unfunded mandates from 
Washington.
  I particularly thank my colleague from Idaho, Senator Kempthorne. 
Here is a young Member in the Senate, in his second year in the Senate. 
He is from the State of Idaho. He was a mayor of the city of Boise. He 
understands the impact of unfunded Federal mandates, and he made it his 
cause when he came to the Senate.
  Because of his leadership, at least we had it up on the floor a 
couple days ago for a few hours. Then it became obvious it was going to 
be used by my colleagues on the other side as sort of a Christmas tree 
to hang all the amendments on so we would not be able to pass it and we 
did not have an opportunity, because, in my view, if you had an up-or-
down vote on unfunded mandates--unfunded mandates is simply if the 
Federal Government passes a bill and tells the county, city, or someone 
else out there because you have to spend money because we do not have 
it but we require you by law to spend it, we are not going to implement 
that mandate until we also provide the money to the city or the county 
or the township or some other subdivision because it is not fair for 
Congress with the President's signature to pass laws to make counties 
or State governments in Hawaii or Kansas or anywhere else pay 
additional money when they do not have the money.
  So you have to give them a choice: Either you ignore the mandate or 
we send the money to implement the mandate.
  We hoped that would pass this year. It did not pass. We regret that. 
But I want to say again our colleague from Idaho, Senator Kempthorne, 
did his best. We will be back next year and we will certainly make that 
a top priority.
  As we look ahead at the 104th Congress, which we do around this 
place, this is over about, we are coming back a couple days in 
November, and vote on the first day of December on the so-called GATT 
agreement. Then we will be back again in January. Some hope we may be 
under new management. We do not know yet. We are hopeful. We are 
working hard at it, and I know others are working just as hard to make 
certain it does not happen.
  I think on this side of the aisle, whatever happens, we are going to 
continue to seek a stronger economy, more opportunity, and a broader 
future for our children with lower taxes, a smaller, less intrusive 
Government, lower deficit, lower barriers for trade, and more 
incentives to work, to save and to invest.
  Another item that took a lot of time in the past year and a half is 
health care. Again, I promised--I stood here in January 1993--that we 
wanted to be a positive force when it came to health care legislation.
  I remember the first time I met President Clinton, I guess 
semiprivately, was with my colleague from the House, Congressman Bob 
Michel, the Republican leader of the House, and the President told us 
one morning shortly after he had been sworn in as President of the 
United States that he wanted to work closely with us on health care and 
if we could not be there every day personally to work with his people, 
he wanted our top staff people there.
  We never heard about that again. We were prepared to work closely 
with the President. We only had a couple other contacts in the past. We 
had a dinner with a few Members, with the President and Mrs. Clinton, 
and we had a couple visits by Mrs. Clinton to our office to talk to 
Republicans. That is about the end of the photo-ops or bipartisanship, 
or whatever you want to call it.
  But we believe, first of all, that until we had a responsible 
proposal, the President was right in saying, where is the Republican's 
plan? So we developed a responsible proposal. We had 40 Republicans out 
of 44 cosponsors of that proposal. We had more votes than any other 
group in the Senate for our health care plan. We also had other plans 
introduced by others. Senator Chafee had a plan. Senator Lott had a 
plan. Senator Nickles had a plan.
  We believe we had a number of plans that had many good parts in each 
of these plans, and I must say on the Democratic side there were a 
number of plans, and some of those in some areas were good, just as we 
thought some of ours were good.
  What we wanted to do, the bottom line, was to build on the strongest 
health care delivery system in America, not weaken it but strengthen 
it, because we do have the best system in the world. People come here 
to study. People come here for research. People come here for 
operations. When they are serious, they come to America.
  We understood from the start if you have a preexisting condition and 
you cannot get insurance, we ought to take care of that.
  I listened one night on C-SPAN while I was doing my treadmill. I do 
not do it too fast. I get to watch a lot of C-SPAN. I heard Ira 
Magaziner say there are 84 million Americans with preexisting 
conditions. Maybe some of the preexisting conditions are not serious 
enough to deny you coverage. But whatever it is, they ought to be taken 
care of. We ought to take care of it.
  Nobody disagrees with that. Not a single Member of this body on 
either side of the aisle disagrees. We ought to take care to cover 
that.
  Affordability. You should not be locked into your job because you 
think if you move you are going to lose your insurance. We ought to 
take care of that. Nobody will deny that. Nobody opposes that on either 
side that I know of.
  So there are a number of areas that we had agreements on.
  Malpractice reform. Your doctor ought to spend more time with you 
than he spends in court or more time with you than he spends practicing 
defensive medicine. Everybody on this side agreed with that. I am not 
certain because of the American trial lawyers' involvement with the 
other party how many agreed to that on the other side of the aisle.
  But there are probably about 20 areas where there were basic 
agreements.
  So, it just seems to me when you start, as the President did, with 
leadership in the Congress, the Democrat leadership trying to meet in 
secret with about 500 people to draft a plan and locking out 
Republicans, locking out the public, you get about what you ended up 
with--nothing. Nobody ever understood it. Nobody ever trusted it, 
because it was too big, too complex, too bureaucratic, too costly, too 
many regulations.
  So it seems to me that the President's plan and the plan of most 
Democrats--they share a lot in common. As I said, they have too much 
government. They had too many bureaucrats. It cost too much and, in 
effect, it started to undermine the best system of health care in the 
world in the United States.
  So, as I said before, we were blamed. We get blamed for everything, 
except that plane that crashed into the White House, and I assume 
somebody will blame Republicans for that. In fact, I saw in the Dallas 
Morning News a cartoon. It had this plane leaning up against the White 
House and had the President standing out there with someone else, and 
the fellow said: ``I did not know Bob Dole was a pilot.''
  Apparently, we are blamed for that, too, in some areas.
  But our view was we did not devise any parliamentary maneuvers behind 
closed doors late at night that put the brakes on health care. It was 
the American people. They were Democrats, they were Republicans, they 
were independents who called our offices, who wrote letters, who called 
everybody's office. They said: Wait a minute. I do not want to give up 
my health care system. I am a union member. I am something else. I am a 
worker. I am a small businessman. I am a housewife.
  That does not mean there are not serious problems that ought to be 
addressed.
  There have been a lot of hand wringing around this town since health 
care went down the tubes. What went wrong? Nothing. It went right. 
Democracy worked. That is the way it works. You give the information to 
the American people--and there are probably two or three categories--if 
you do not understand, you are not going to buy it. If you do 
understand it, you may be for it or you may be against it. Some people 
maybe just never tuned in. So that is the third category.
  Here is a plan which started off with 60-some percent support of the 
President's plan and ended up with support of somewhere around the low 
thirties or maybe even lower than that.
  But my pledge at this time is to work next year on health care, 
addressing some of the serious problems that we have been prepared to 
do all along.
  What we do not want is a mountain of bureaucrats between you and your 
doctor. The American people want choice--choice of hospitals, choice of 
doctors. We know we have to have cost containment. It would be 
irresponsible to talk about all these things we are going to do without 
somehow saying how you are going to pay for it. Somebody has to pay for 
it. And if we cannot pay for it, we better not do it.
  The President's plan promised everything to everybody--free drugs, 
free long-term care, take care of early retirees for the big three 
motor companies who made a lot of sweetheart union deals costing them a 
lot of money. He was going to take care of everybody and it was going 
to save money. You cannot do that. You cannot do that in the real 
world.
  So we are prepared to go to work again in January on health care.
  I think another very important concern we had was changing our 
criminal justice system for the better. You ask Americans anywhere in 
America--San Diego; Russell, KS; Charlotte, NC; wherever, Washington, 
DC--particularly Washington, DC--what is the most important problem? 
Crime. Crime will be No. 1 in every survey, I would almost bet, 
anyplace in America, whether it is rural areas or urban areas, because 
Americans by the millions live in fear of violent crime in some places.
  In New York City, senior citizens live up in their apartments with 
bars on the windows and locks on the doors. They are virtually 
prisoners in their own apartments. They are afraid to go out.
  So we passed the crime bill, if you can call it a crime bill.
  We passed a good crime bill in the Senate a little while back, 94 to 
4; bipartisan, nonpartisan. But a strange thing happened. It went over 
to the House.
  And I carry this little card around in my pocket. I have had it for 
about 60 days. The House started putting little things in the 
conference that nobody had ever heard of. And they were not little 
things--$2 billion for the Local Partnership Act; $1.1 billion for the 
Ounce of Prevention Program. It added up to $10 billion, almost. All 
this went into the crime bill without 1 minute of hearings.
  Now I would say to anybody in this Chamber, if you wanted to get a 
project for your State and it was going to cost $2 billion, you would 
have to bring the whole State back here for hearings. You would have to 
have hearings here, hearings in the House. It would take years to do 
it.
  This all happened in 20 minutes. Not a single hearing.
  The crime bill we passed finally--not the Senate bill, but the one 
that came back after conference--is going to add $13 billion to the 
deficit--$13 billion. It is stuffed with pork. And, as we say, we do 
not mind a little pork, but this is the whole hog. This was big, big.
  And Republicans were excluded from the House conference committee. We 
were locked out again. They stripped not only most of the tough 
provisions--my colleague from Wyoming is one of the conferees; he will 
be speaking and he can tell you what happened. We took out many of the 
tough provisions, and then we just put in this grab bag--anything you 
want, you can have it, if you are of the right party and you are a 
liberal and you want to spend somebody else's money and you want to add 
$13 billion to the deficit.
  Well, we tried to stop it over here. Came close, but a few 
Republicans slipped away. We wanted to take another $5 billion out of 
it and put back some of the tougher provisions. We did not think we 
were being unreasonable to say this: if somebody sells drugs to a 
minor--your child--that person ought to get a tougher minimum sentence. 
If somebody engages a minor to sell drugs to other minors, that person 
ought to get a tougher minimum sentence. That is what we were talking 
about. And if you use a gun in the commission of a crime, you ought to 
get a tougher mandatory sentence.
  One of those provisions was on dealing with illegal aliens with 
criminal records. And, again, I will defer to my colleague from 
Wyoming, who included that in the bill, which I think will become law.
  So we want to change our criminal justice system for the better. And 
we are prepared, as we were prepared this year, to do that. We want to 
take out some of that spending we authorized last year, so that 
somebody does not get stuck in 10 or 15 years having to pay for it, 
somebody's children or grandchildren. It has no relationship to crime; 
nothing to do with fighting crime in almost every case.
  Where it was related to fighting crime, we said, ``OK, leave the 
money in there. Leave it in.'' Drug treatment in Federal prisons, leave 
it in there. Drug treatment in State prisons, leave it in there.
  Another thing we ought to have done last year was to restore some 
sanity to our product liability and tort system, a system which 
increases costs and frustration for average Americans, while increasing 
lucrative fees for trial lawyers. In fact, product liability and 
personal injury cases costs the U.S. economy a staggering $130 
billion--that is with a ``B''--annually in litigation costs and higher 
insurance premiums. That amounts to $1,000 per household.
  We have tried to reform this for years. We have led the fight on this 
side of the aisle. We keep running into blocks constructed by Democrats 
and the American trial lawyers.
  There was a Democratic filibuster, which I did not read about in the 
liberal press. They run this place, the liberal press. They try to tell 
you what to think and when to think. They did not really think about 
the filibuster that happened when they are trying to block something. 
But if the Republicans are blocking, we would be accused of gridlock, 
obstructionism, all those other things. And sometimes I think a little 
gridlock is fine.
  So the point is that we have been fighting for tort reform, we are 
going to continue to fight for it, and we hope we can make improvements 
next year.
  We would like to reform our campaign finance system, too. The 
Republican legislation banned political action committees. Period. 
Political action committees could give you zero dollars; not $5,000, 
not $10,000, zero dollars.
  We also provided what we call seed money for challengers and to help 
clean up the so-called soft money donations that are never reported. 
And we did not do as our colleagues did, require taxpayers to fund 
campaigns.
  Not many taxpayers in my State rush up to me and say, ``Boy, I wish 
the taxpayers could pay for your campaign for the U.S. Senate.'' It 
does not happen a lot in Kansas. We do not think it ought to happen. 
Period.
  I have been a Presidential candidate. I have accepted public funding. 
I can tell you it took 5 years for the Federal Elections Commission to 
audit my records. They still have not audited the books on when 
President Bush ran against Michael Dukakis. If we start financing every 
congressional race and Senate race, the FEC, the Federal Elections 
Commission, is going to be bigger than the Pentagon. They are going to 
have more lawyers, more bureaucrats, more accountants spending more of 
your tax dollars. So I do not think it is a very good idea. So we hope 
we can do that too.
  My view is, if we are going to have congressional campaign reform, 
let us be honest about it. If Republicans are in charge, we are going 
to try to fix it so it helps us. I do not see anything wrong with that. 
That is the way it works. If the Democrats are in charge, as they are 
right now, they try to fix it to help them. I do not see anything wrong 
with that. That is the way it works.
  We are going to have to appoint a nonpartisan commission of people 
outside the Congress, outside the beltway, who have no interest in this 
place, but they understand how campaigns are financed. Let them make 
recommendations and then we vote those recommendations up or down. It 
will not be a Democratic group. It will not be a Republican group. It 
will be a nonpartisan group of experts who will take a look at campaign 
financing and tell us how to do it. So we believe that we should do 
that.
  We also think we ought to reform what we do around here. We ought to 
simplify the budget process. We ought to limit Member's committee 
assignments. We ought to reduce the congressional staff.
  We ought to end proxy voting in committees. If you are not there, you 
cannot vote.
  And we ought to have a line-item veto for the President.
  Senator Domenici of New Mexico tried that. We brought a bill to the 
floor. In fact, it was up here just a few days ago. Again, I did not 
read about it in the paper, but it was the Democrats who obstructed 
that bill. Only eight Republicans voted against it. The rest of the 
votes against it came from the other side of the aisle. I did not read 
about it in the liberal press. I guess they were off that day.

  Finally, I think we would say this. What we want is an unchanging 
commitment to leadership. If there is one thing that did not need 
changing in January 1993, it was the worldwide respect for American 
leadership. But that has changed too, unfortunately --and I think it is 
very important. I think it is fair to say when President Clinton took 
office, America's credibility and America's reputation for leadership 
was at an all-time high. During the Reagan and Bush administrations, 
the Soviet Union fell apart, Germany was peacefully reunited, Saddam 
Hussein's landgrab in the Persian Gulf was reversed. In short, American 
leadership and resolve were second to none.
  It is also well to point out that during that period, 500 million 
people--500 million people--in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern 
Europe got a little taste of freedom they had not had in 70 years. A 
little taste of freedom: The right to travel, the right to vote, the 
right to telephone, the right to go to church--basic rights that we 
take for granted. That is because of leadership. That goes back to 
President Carter and President Ford.
  Do not misunderstand me. It has been a line of leadership, including 
Republican and Democratic Presidents, that made all this possible. But 
now I sense there is no resolve, when we try to characterize American 
foreign policy. Take a look at Somalia. It started off as a good 
mission--humanitarian. We saved probably hundreds of thousands of 
lives. Then the United Nations said, ``Oh, we have to get you into 
nation-building,'' which means we have to spend a lot of U.S. money 
again to rebuild a nation.
  The warlords in Somalia had a different view. And the end result one 
day was that 18 Americans were killed. And we left.
  Then you look at what is happening in Haiti. When Ronald Reagan was 
President we were trying to get democracy in El Salvador. We were told 
by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--in fact it was in the 
law--you could never have more than 55 Americans, 55. There are 100 of 
us. You could have about half of this body and that is all. They could 
be observers in El Salvador. We were trying to help democracy. Today El 
Salvador is a democratic country, thank you.
  In Haiti--we have 20,000 Americans in Haiti in uniform. We are 
occupying Haiti. There is no national interest there. There were no 
American lives threatened there until our soldiers got there, and they 
are in danger. And we say, bring them home. My view is the day Aristide 
steps foot into Haiti we ought to step out. Restore Aristide, get him 
back there, and then let them worry about it. How long do we have to 
occupy Haiti? Is it going to cost $1 billion, as I read in one of the 
papers? $1 billion?
  Then you look at Bosnia, where candidate Clinton said, ``I want air 
strikes and I want to lift the arms embargo.'' That was candidate 
Clinton.
  We have had a bipartisan group here for the last year and a half, 
trying to get the President to take the lead on lifting the arms 
embargo. Bosnia is an independent nation. They are a member of the 
United Nations. They have a right to self-defense under article 57. 
What have we done? We have done nothing, and 200,000 innocent women and 
children have been killed in this Moslem country of Bosnia. I am not 
suggesting we send any Americans there. I am not even saying we do the 
air strikes. But I am saying lift the arms embargo, let them defend 
themselves--which I thought was sort of a basic right in America, the 
right of self-defense.
  I just mentioned about North Korea. All these countries have become 
synonyms for American foreign policies: Flip-flops, indecision, and 
confusion.
  I do not think the United Nations ought to call the shots. We did not 
elect anybody to the United Nations to call the shots where Americans 
are going to risk their lives, Americans in uniform. That is a decision 
we ought to make, the Congress ought to make, and the President should 
have come to Congress before he went to Haiti. But he said no.
  President Bush came to Congress before the gulf, or during the gulf. 
He rolled the dice. And not a single member of the Democratic 
leadership supported President Bush in the House or the Senate. But 
fortunately, again, there were 11 Democrats out of 56 who stood up and 
said, wait a minute, America is a lot more important than politics. So 
President Bush won by a narrow margin.
  I think we ought to end the immoral and illegal arms embargo on 
Bosnia. And while we sought U.N. approval going to Haiti, what happened 
to seeking the approval of the American people and the American 
Congress? Why did we not do that?
  So I think in order to put the brakes on the administration's drive 
toward U.N. domination of U.S. foreign policy, Congress stepped in 
earlier this year and passed what we call the Peace Powers Act, because 
we think before we start committing young men around the globe from any 
State in this Nation--young men and women, your sons, your daughters, 
whatever--Congress ought to have some voice, not the United Nations, 
not the United Nations alone.
  At the same time, there are many areas in foreign policy where we 
have worked very closely with President Clinton. One thing we did was 
repeal a lot of outdated legislation that affected the former Soviet 
Union. We worked together in the Middle East and South Africa. We 
worked together on providing assistance to support development in each 
of these areas. We had broad bipartisan support.
  As the 103d Congress comes to a close, the military occupation of 
Haiti dominates the concern about American direction of foreign policy. 
And one of the first orders of business for the 104th Congress will be 
paying for the occupation of Haiti. This is a time when we are 
canceling military exercises and military readiness is declining and 
units are being retired. And we embarked on this very costly mission. 
Many people who are experts--I am not an expert--say we are going to 
return to a hollow force. That was even before this ill-considered 
venture in Haiti.
  A top priority in the next Congress must be to stop the raid on our 
defense budget. Over the unanimous objections of Republicans in the 
Congress, President Clinton pushed through a massive defense cut of 
$127 billion as part of the budget package. That is where most of the 
savings came from. Oh, we ought to cut defense. We should cut defense. 
But as Gen. Colin Powell said, it ought to be done in some orderly way 
so we do not compromise our security or compromise what may happen.
  What would happen now if we had to move in the gulf? If Saddam 
Hussein is serious and goes into Kuwait, what is going to happen? Who 
is going to be asked to respond? We know we are. And can we do it? Do 
we have the potential? Do we have the capability? Or have we gone too 
far with defense cuts?
  Let us just assume that when that is happening, something happens in 
North Korea. Then what happens? I think we would be stretched too far. 
So we better be ready to look down the road before we continue 
dismantling our force structure.
  We have taken a lot of money out of defense and put it into social 
programs--billions of dollars. Maybe that is great if you have surplus 
money. The last time I checked the most important thing in the world 
was freedom, liberty. And we have to be prepared. There is nobody else 
out there but us. So it is very important. And once we lose the 
industrial base--we have lost thousands, 5,000, 100,000, 200,000 jobs 
in California, for example. We are losing them all across the country.
  Defense was never meant to be a jobs program; do not misunderstand 
me. But freedom and liberty was part of that equation.
  So we are going to support the President. We only have one Commander 
in Chief and we will support the Commander in Chief just as we support 
the troops in Haiti. We are for them 100 percent. We do not think they 
ought to be there, but we are for them 100 percent. So we are going to 
do what we can in the next Congress to increase our readiness and our 
credibility.
  I want to close--because I like all the people in the liberal press--
most--well, I guess all of them. I do not think they fool many people 
in America. But I just looked at a survey of how the network news 
report on various Members of Congress.
  The report was whether the media is tougher on Presidents or tougher 
on Congress. They concluded they are tougher on Congress. The media is 
tougher on Congress.
  But what did not surprise me, because I know most of the people in 
the media--they are all fine people--if I go up in the press gallery, 
if I see a conservative up there, I do not know how they got in. Just 
came in accidentally, I guess. So they are about 50 to 1.
  So I read through this survey. I said, ``Well, let's see. Senator 
Mitchell, when he is on the nightly news, 90 percent of the time,'' and 
he is a very effective leader and a friend of mine, ``it is very 
positive, it is a positive presentation of whatever he says.''
  I am the Republican leader. Sixty-eight percent of the time I am on 
the news, it is negative. I do not know that I am that negative a 
person, but I am a Republican, and I am a conservative, and I do not 
agree with all the things President Clinton agrees with, so I think I 
am portrayed--well, ``it has to be negative, he is a Republican.'' We 
will handle that all right.
  But I want to address these charges of obstruction and gridlock 
because, again, the liberal media has overused terms in modern American 
political lexicon, and the one most overused is the term is 
``gridlock,'' followed closely by ``obstruction'' and by 
``filibuster.'' Simply throwing these charges around, in my view, does 
not mean anything. Let us take a look at the record.
  First of all, we believe our opposition has been motivated not by 
politics but by honest differences in philosophy, just as any two 
people in this Chamber can have differences on something. We make no 
apologies for parking in the political intersection, if we have to park 
in the political intersection to protect the American taxpayers from 
bad legislation. The President, just yesterday, was talking about 
obstructionism and gridlock in his press conference, and blaming the 
Republicans, again, for everything bad, and taking credit for 
everything good.
  The fact is, even though our colleagues say we try to hide behind 
this gridlock smokescreen, crime obstruction, trying to cloud important 
policy as the reasons for our opposition, the fact is, the other party 
can hardly wait to turn on the filibuster smoke machine.
  The record shows the distinguished majority leader filed at least 29 
cloture motions on or before the first day of debate on a bill or 
nomination. How can you have a filibuster before the bill is up, or on 
the first day the bill is up? These are called preemptive cloture 
motions.
  The other party then claims that Republicans are engaged in a 
filibuster and, of course, the New York Times, the Washington Post --
they agree with everything that comes from the other side--so they buy 
right into it, and you read it in the morning's paper, even though 
there has been no debate, no votes, no filibuster.
  If you believe some of the rhetoric in this town, you would think a 
couple hundred bills were filibustered every year. Let me just tell you 
how many there have been. You can count them on one hand.
  Everyone remembers the demise of the so-called economic stimulus 
package. But the fact is only four bills have died in this Congress by 
the failure to invoke cloture. That means we could not shut off debate. 
It takes 60 votes to shut off debate. If you cannot shut off debate, 
you cannot pass the bill. If you read the New York Times every day, or 
the Washington Post every day, or the L.A. Times every day, or the 
Miami Herald every day, or all the big liberal newspapers, you would 
think every day somebody was on this floor with a filibuster.
  I will tell you what has happened on the filibuster. A filibuster 
worked on what we called the striker replacement bill. Republicans were 
joined by six Democrats. We could not have done it by ourselves. The 
so-called campaign finance reform bill, which I talked about earlier, 
again, six Democrats joined with Republicans. The lobbying bill which 
said, in effect, if you are grassroots people out there, not high- 
powered lobbyists, you cannot come together and assemble and raise 
money to petition Congress if you hire a lobbyist without all kinds of 
reporting and bureaucracy. We said, ``Wait a minute, we don't want 
that.'' The Farm Bureau did not want that. The Christian Coalition did 
not want that. The ACLU did not want that. Liberals and conservatives 
all across America said, ``Wait a minute, you're trying to stifle our 
access to Congress, our right to petition Congress, which is in the 
Constitution.'' So we said no, and we were joined by 10 Democrats.
  Now on the product liability, when the trial lawyers come in and 
write big checks and they gave $3 million at least to the Clinton 
campaign in 1992, we thought we ought to try to reduce this $1,000 per 
household cost and increased premiums and excessive awards, so we 
wanted to change product liability. But that was a Democratic 
filibuster, which I do not think I read much about. Thirty-eight 
Republicans voted to end that debate. We fell victim to a Democratic 
filibuster. Let me repeat, a Democratic filibuster.
  And on the crime bill, Republicans were also accused of resorting to 
what some called ``an extraordinary tactic, a technicality, the budget 
point of order.''
  We raised a budget point of order because we wanted to improve the 
bill. Again, the liberal press said, ``Oh, this is terrible, these 
Republicans are terrible. Why, they should not do this.''
  Let me tell you, this little technical point of order has been raised 
eight times by the Republicans this session, and you would think by all 
the reports, never by the Democrats. Eight times by us, and 27 times by 
the Democrats. But I did not read that in the New York Times or the 
Washington Post or the L.A. Times or the Miami Herald. No, no. They 
only go after Republicans. I do not remember them being called 
obstructionists.
  Finally, I will say this: I do not think you measure Congress based 
on the number of bills we pass. We passed over 800 bills this year in 
Congress. We could not do that if we did not have cooperation.
  For a number of reasons, a lot of bills do not pass. When I was the 
majority leader, there were 177 bills that did not pass. Again, I do 
not remember reading in the New York Times or the Washington Post or 
the L.A. Times or the Miami Herald how terrible that was.
  Gridlock is a two-way street. Again, when you have the majority, you 
do not need to talk because you just do not bring up the bills. If you 
control the place, you decide what comes up. You control all the 
committees, you decide what gets reported out of committees. You do not 
need to filibuster anything. You just do not let it happen. Maybe we 
will find out how that works next year. We are counting on it.
  If you do not call up Republican proposals, that is sort of a stealth 
filibuster. Nobody ever sees it, but you never bring it up. I do not 
think anybody ought to hope for the day we vote 100 to 0 on everything 
around here. If we voted 100 to 0 on everything, we would be in sad 
shape. We have to have diversity. We have to have different views. 
Sometimes it will be based on geography. Democrats and Republicans from 
the Midwest are from both parties. If it is of interest to us, we stand 
together, we block it because we are trying to protect our States. That 
is what we got elected for. We are not rubber stamps.
  As I have said many times before, the distinguished majority leader, 
my friend, had one of the best quotes I ever read. When President Bush 
was trying to get some of his program passed, my friend, Senator 
Mitchell, said, and I quote, it is in the Record:

       Do we live in a monarchy? Is the President a president or 
     is he a king? Are we required by some law to accept whatever 
     the President proposes without any opportunity for 
     discussion, debate or suggestion of constructive 
     alternatives? And if we so disagree with some aspects of the 
     President's plan, if we believe it truly and sincerely 
     harmful to the long-range interest of the country, are we 
     somehow obligated to stand silent and adopt the President's 
     plan lest we be accused of partisanship?

  That says it all. I could not say it any better myself. He said it 
all, right there. We are not rubber stamps. The Congress is not a 
rubber stamp for any President, Republican or Democrat.
  So the ultimate judges of this record of Congress will be the 
American people. They will decide whether or not we have changed 
America for the better. They will decide whether we have America moving 
in the right direction.
  When President Clinton took office, 47 percent of the American people 
believed our country was headed in the right direction, and only 27 
percent said we were going in the wrong direction. Now 70 percent say 
we are going in the wrong direction and only 20 percent say we are 
going in the right direction.
  So I think that is where we are as we conclude this Congress.
  The American people are the ultimate judges. They are pretty 
sophisticated. They make good decisions. And they are going to decide 
the fate of a lot of people November 8, 1994--Republicans, Democrats, 
independents, Perot supporters, whatever it is. But I would just say 
that we are committed, whether we are in the majority or the minority 
the next session, the 104th session of Congress, we are committed to 
these general basic principles: Less Government, less taxes, more 
freedom, and more opportunity, and also committed to tackling the 
status quo and trying to change America for the better.
  Changing America for the better is not always trying to spend more 
money than somebody else or raise taxes more than somebody else. We 
have got to go back to individual responsibilities and values and all 
the things we have talked about, everybody has talked about on both 
sides of the aisle. It is not easy, and it is not going to be done in 1 
year, 2 years or maybe 10 years, but we have to start in that 
direction.

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