[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 12 (Friday, January 20, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1254-S1256]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           UNFUNDED MANDATES

  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I admire my new-made friend from Oklahoma. 
I, too, was Governor. I came to Washington about the so-called unfunded 
mandates. It was a little easier to take care of then than it is now 
because we had 12 years of Republicans who ran us from $900 million to 
over $4 trillion in debt in 12 years. It is a little tough for us now 
to carry that load.
  Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. FORD. Not now. I did not disturb the Senator when he was 
speaking.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator declines to yield.
  Mr. FORD. Then we hear something about gridlock. If the Senator had 
been here 2 years ago, you would have been part of gridlock--and I say 
``the Senator'' rather than ``you''; I want to be careful of my 
language for the Record--because the Republican side would not let us 
go with pieces of legislation we thought were important. Now they have 
become part of the Contract With America. The same pieces of 
legislation, basically, that were filibustered in the last session of 
Congress are now in the Contract With America. Surprising, is it not? 
Surprising.
  We stand here in the last few days, last couple of weeks, and act 
like the world has stopped.
  We forgot aging in the bill that came out of committee. It would have 
gone on and we would have excluded aging in the amendment. And the 
manager of the bill from the Republican side, the majority side, was a 
cosponsor of that amendment when he found out about it. So we have made 
some contribution.
  We had an amendment last night that was defeated, but utilities--and 
your State ought to be very interested in utilities--wanted that very 
badly, because the mandates to private enterprise stick and they do not 
stick on public entities under this legislation. So it is the business-
oriented group here, I guess you would say, who have said to business: 
We are going to stick it to you. Because the mayors and commissioners 
out there are raising Cain, we are going to let them off the hook.
  So we have incinerators: Private and public. The public does not have 
to take the mandate but private will, regardless of what it costs.
  Landfills: Public and private. The private will have to get stuck 
with all that.
  Schools--think about schools, the mandate on schools. Private will 
have to be stuck with it; public will not.
  Hospitals; in my hometown we have two fine hospitals. Those fine 
hospitals want to come together--one is public and one is private--and 
come with an HMO, to merge and try to give better service at lower 
rates in my community. We better be careful because the private 
hospital might have to carry out some mandates that the public hospital 
will not have to.
  Why jam this thing through when all those problems are there that 
should be worked out? We wake up: Oh, I did not know it was in the 
bill. I will guarantee not a Senator here, with few exceptions, can 
tell you everything that is in the bill. You get up here and talk 
about, oh, we are just gridlocked. It may be gridlock, but a couple of 
things--real, I think--have happened. One, the utilities woke up and 
business woke up about what is getting ready to happen to them, for 
one. That is one. Then we found we left out the elderly; we exempted 
everybody but the elderly. AARP, I am sure, did not know it. But last 
night it was 99 to zip when you found it, and that was because we said 
let us look at the bill. And Senator Levin, from Michigan, was the 
individual who found it, brought the amendment up, and the Republican 
floor leader became a cosponsor of that amendment. That was helpful.
  You can stand here all you want to and say we have to get it through 
because the American people want it. But when small business and major 
businesses are being hurt, they are not able to be competitive with 
public--we have local incinerators and private; we have landfills, 
public and private; we have hospitals, public and private--and you are 
putting a heavier burden on business and taking it off of their 
competitor, which is government, I think you ought to take a step back 
and see what you are doing on this.
  We on this side have given you an opportunity to do that. If you want 
to continue to make the mistake, continue to make the mistake of 
putting horrendous burdens on business and not on the public entities, 
then go ahead. When this Senator, 8 years ago, introduced unfunded 
mandates legislation--the threshold was $50 million then and it has not 
changed--I got two Senators, two Senators who would be cosponsors.
  How times have changed. You said back, I guess in 1967 or 1968, you 
were here. Where were you when I needed you 8 years ago? Where was all 
this euphoria for unfunded mandates legislation? I introduced it a year 
later--nothing happened. So I dropped it. Maybe I should have carried 
it on. I would have been a part of the Contract With America. But I was 
there 8 years ago. I was there 7 years ago. The threshold is the same. 
Now you want to change some from $50 to $100 million. Things are 
beginning to change. And there are now some changes being made in the 
bill, I think for the better.
  You can fuss at me all you want to. You just give me the devil. Devil 
take the hindmost, you know? But I am doing what I think is right, and 
two changes have made this bill better.
  It does not go into effect until 1996. Why is the urge here to get 
something 
[[Page S1255]] done when mistakes are being made in the bill?
  And one other thing, one other thing. Many of you, the new Members, 
are from the House. Over in the House you could be paid for your travel 
and be a frequent flier and you take those frequent flier miles and use 
them personally. That is all right on the House side. We have never 
done it on the Senate side. I am a chairman of the Rules Committee. I 
said no, and that is agreeable.
  So I had a little amendment here, if you recall, about a week or 10 
days ago that said the House could not use taxpayers' money for 
personal use. They get out here on the floor and every Republican voted 
against me and said let the House take care of it. If they want to have 
it for personal use, let them do it.
  What is wrong is wrong and what is right is right. If you listened to 
Sam Donaldson the other night, and the House let the bill go through 
without making the changes and they are still getting the perk--you are 
going to get that amendment again. Because 50 million people watched, 
as they said the House did not take care of that personal perk. So 
think about it just a little bit.
  In this bill you are changing the rules of the House. You are 
changing the rules of the House in this bill. And I am going to ask you 
to stop it because you would not--Let them have the perk. So why should 
you mandate changes in the rules of the House in this bill? All the 
former House Members, how mad would you get when the Senate did that 
when you were in the House? You got pretty mad, got pretty upset. You 
did not want it done. That was the reasoning.
  But now in this bill it is all right. It is in your bill that you 
want to get through immediately, and you are changing the rules of the 
House. Try a look at page 26, (d), lines 1 through 5. Just take that 
little section of this bill and see what it does to the House. What is 
fair for the goose is fair for the gander. And you are going to have 
that amendment. You are going to say no, we just want to let them have 
perks. But in this bill, this is the difference. We are going to find 
out the attitude, and see how you go are going to vote because we are 
going to get that amendment. And it is coming pretty quickly. Maybe we 
can get it early Tuesday. But some changes ought to be made in the 
bill, and they will be offered. We will have a chance. The Senate will 
have a chance to be for or against this piece of legislation.
  Mr. President, I do not know about my time. I do not know whether I 
can reserve it. But some will not use time, and I will be able to get 
more time later on.
  But let us be reasonable about this. Talk about having comity. We get 
up and say how bad we are. I can go back and give speeches maybe of 
months ago almost identical on this side that the other side made. They 
are almost identical. So as times change, the more they stay the same.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I come here to join my colleague from Oklahoma in his 
comments concerning what is happening in the Senate. I have a 
statement, but I want to yield to him for a few moments to respond to 
the Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I might say that under the rules of the 
Senate, he can get, by asking unanimous consent, all the time he wants. 
The Senator does not have to yield to him.
  Mr. INHOFE. I say to the Senator from Kentucky that we know the 
rules. But I would like to make one short response, if I may.
  First of all, Mr. President, I have a great deal of respect for this 
institution, and I have studied the background and the history of how 
we got into a bicameral system. I think there is a very useful purpose 
for that. I served 8 years in the House of Representatives, and things 
run through there quickly. The train has slowed down here. But there is 
a difference between slowing down the train and stopping the train.
  When a statement is made about why the urgency since it does not take 
effect until 1996, the urgency is that we have many other things in a 
contract, a so-called Contract With America, things that Americans 
believe they were voting for on November 8. We want an opportunity to 
present those. We cannot do that if we get bogged down day after day 
for hours and do not get much done with a bill.
  I will make one other statement that I think is very significant. 
Certainly, I have the utmost respect for the Senator from Kentucky. It 
is true that when the Republicans were the minority here in this body, 
that there was filibustering going on. I think even though it may not 
have technically been a filibuster, what we have been experiencing in 
the last 6 days certainly is very close to that. The difference is 
this: The difference is when they were filibustering last year in this 
body, they were filibustering a bill; for example, the Government 
takeover of the health care system. That was something that 80 percent 
of the people did not want.
  What we are talking about now is unfunded mandates, which is 
something that by survey 80 percent of the American people do want, and 
I draw a major distinction between the two.
  I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for yielding.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, what I want to do is first respond to 
the Senator from Kentucky and a couple of points that he made, and then 
talk in general about the problem I think we are confronting here in 
this debate on unfunded mandates.
  I would agree with the Senator from Kentucky that amendments have 
been offered to improve the bill. I would agree that the amendments he 
referred to have in fact improved the bill, and have in fact gotten 
bipartisan support, and the legislative process in that respect is 
working.
  I also remind the Senator from Kentucky that we are in the first step 
of the process. We are considering the bill here for the first time. 
The House is yet to bring it up. They are going to be considering 
amendments under an open rule which will allow improvement to this 
bill. We will then in all likelihood pass different versions of this 
bill. It will then go to conference where different ideas that have 
been percolated through the legislative process get resolved, and 
hopefully even a better product will come out with the best ideas of 
the House and Senate.
  I do not think anyone would say that any bill that passes the House 
or the Senate is perfect. There are always things that are going to 
come up that could have been improved. We would like to see debate. I 
would like to see debate on germane amendments that deal with the issue 
of unfunded mandates. I would like to see improvements to the bill. I 
would like to hear the concerns of both Republicans and Democrats as to 
what we can do to make this bill a better and more efficient process 
for reducing the amount of unfunded mandates that we pass on to the 
State and local governments.
  But that is not what is going on here. What is going on here are 
amendments that have absolutely nothing to do with unfunded mandates, 
like frequent flier amendments, abortion clinic amendments, and going 
on and on, that have nothing to do with the substance of the bill that 
are in these riders.
  I remember when I was running for office, people would come up to me 
and say, ``When you get to the Senate, you get rid of those riders, all 
of those things that they just throw on these bills that have nothing 
to do with the bill, that really clog up the legislative process and 
get all these things thrown in there that we do not like.''
  What we are seeing here is a classic example of what the American 
public does not like, which is a bill that has broad public support 
that is moving through the process, that is continually being derailed 
on education issues, on abortion issues, and unfortunately we are not 
getting back to the subject at hand, which is unfunded mandates, and 
moving that process through which has overwhelming public support.
  We are happy to deal with germane amendments and improvements to the 
bill. That is what we have been striving to do--limit the debate with 
cloture petitions that the majority leader has 
[[Page S1256]] sent to the desk. Let us have a full and open debate on 
unfunded mandates. Let us deal with the amendments that are germane to 
the bill that could improve the quality of legislation. That is what we 
are attempting to do with the cloture petition. Let us just deal with 
the things that are germane, that are improvements to the bill, and let 
us put all this other stuff--which may be important--let us put it 
aside and we can bring it up another day.
  As many Senators from both sides of the aisle said, we are in early 
January. We have a lot of time in this session to deal with a variety 
of issues.
  But this is a bill that has the support that has been worked on for 
at least 8 years, and has had bipartisan support for a long period of 
time.
  I just got off a conference call 2 days ago with mayors all across my 
State. We did a conference call talking to them. The comments that I 
got were just overwhelming. I have been getting calls from my county 
commissioners from both sides of the aisle saying, ``Please move this 
bill forward. We need this help. We need this assurance that you are 
not going to continue to push more and more costs on local government 
and State government without providing the needed funds to pay for 
these programs.''
  So we have the consensus. I agree the details need to be worked out. 
The Senator from Kentucky is absolutely right. We have improved the 
bill. There will hopefully be other amendments on which we can make 
improvements, at least that we can discuss, to this bill. But let us do 
that. Let us focus in on that.
  I came from the House of Representatives. I have been reminded many, 
many times that the House and the Senate are different bodies, and they 
are. I appreciate the difference. I understand the Senate is a more 
deliberative body. That is a wonderful thing.
  I look back at last year, and look at the bills that were stopped 
here in the Senate that were rammed through the House because of the 
rules of the House, that were rammed through the House, that came here 
to the Senate and were slowed down and in many cases changed, and in 
some cases stopped completely. It was a benefit.
  The Senator from Oklahoma referred to the health care bill. He is 
absolutely right. That process was slowed down dramatically here in the 
Senate, and I think to the benefit of the American public in the long 
run.
  So the Senate does have an important role to play. But when we have 
pieces of legislation that have broad support, in fact have broad 
bipartisan support in this body--we have 60-some cosponsors on this 
bill--we have, hopefully, more that will actually vote for the bill. 
When you have that kind of support, when you have the support here, the 
support in the public, and you have--with this last election--a clear 
mandate to move, then I think it is the obligation of the people who 
support this measure, on both sides of the aisle, to stand up and say 
that it is time to move forward.
  So I hope that Republicans and Democrats can join together and push 
this package forward and limit the debate to amendments that are 
germane to improving the quality of this bill, so we can produce the 
best product here in the Senate, so we can come up with the best piece 
of legislation that the best minds in the country here in the U.S. 
Senate can work on and craft and send to the House. And maybe if they 
recognize the great handiwork that we have done here, they will just 
accept what we have done.
  They did that with the congressional accountability bill--another 
bill that was slowed down for a week with spurious amendments on a 
whole variety of different topics that had nothing to do with 
congressional accountability. We did such fine work on the germane 
amendments, such good handiwork here in the Senate on the underlying 
bill, that we kept it, in a sense, clean from all these other 
amendments. And when it came to the House, the House said: You folks 
did a pretty good job; we will just pass your bill. In fact, it is now 
on the President's desk.
  That is the kind of action the folks in Pennsylvania want. I think 
that is the kind of action folks all over the United States of America 
want from this body. They want us to get down to business. They want us 
to focus in, one by one, on the issues that are important to America. 
The Senator from Kentucky is absolutely right. The frequent flier issue 
is an important issue. It is a perk that the House should not have. 
When I was in the House, I did not accept my frequent flier miles. I 
did not use them for personal use. It was my office policy. The Senator 
from Kentucky is right that that privilege is available and it should 
not be. It should not be. I hope that we can work together and make 
that happen. I hope the House acts quickly to do that. But I would not 
be averse to putting some pressure on the House to do that.
  Let us focus on what we all now agree should be passed, what needs to 
be passed to restore to this institution the faith of the American 
public that we are a body that listens, that we are a body that can 
act, and that we are a body that understands our obligation to serve 
the American public. I hope that is what we can do when we return for 
votes Monday and Tuesday--that we can focus the attention back on the 
bill, that we can improve the quality of the bill, that we can move the 
bill forward quickly, that we can get to the other pieces of 
legislation that are waiting in line behind unfunded mandates, like the 
balanced budget amendment, that are important pieces of legislation 
which, again, the public wants us to take up and move in a timely 
fashion.
  I do not want to stop debate on any amendment that improves the 
quality of this bill, not one. Offer them, debate them. It is needed. 
The Senator from West Virginia is absolutely right that there are 
things in this bill that concern a lot of Members and a lot of people 
in this country, and they should be debated. That is what we want to do 
with this cloture motion. If we get an agreement to limit the number of 
amendments and the time in which they can be offered, that is what we 
want to do.
  That is what this side of the aisle is trying to do. We are trying to 
move the bill forward, trying to be accommodating. We are trying to 
keep our promise with the American public to move this institution, to 
get bills passed, to get it done in a prompt fashion, and to deliver on 
the November election.
  I think we can do that, and I hope that with the support of Members 
on both sides of the aisle, we will be able to accomplish that.
  Mr. FORD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Ford] is 
recognized.
  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, may I inquire of the Chair, what would be 
the procedure now since we are limited to 15 minutes and no other 
Senator is seeking recognition? What would be the parliamentary 
procedure, so that we might understand that for the rest of the day?
  I felt the Senator from Oklahoma could have gotten the floor in his 
own right without----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair finds that as long as we are in 
morning business, any Senator can be recognized for 15 minutes at a 
time.
  Mr. FORD. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 
an additional 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair would find that every time the 
Senator is recognized, he would have 15 minutes; it is not necessary to 
ask unanimous consent.
  Mr. FORD. Now, that is clear.

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