[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 31 (Thursday, February 16, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2804-S2806]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      UNANIMOUS CONSENT AGREEMENT

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time prior 
to a motion to table amendment No. 252, the Byrd amendment, be limited 
to 2 hours to be equally divided, and that no amendments be in order 
prior to the motion to table. As I understood it, the Senator wanted it 
after the cloture vote?
  Mr. BYRD. Yes. Would the Senator provide for the alternative of 
amendment No. 256, either/or?
  Mr. HATCH. Could the Senator give me a copy of amendment No. 256?
  Mr. BYRD. I ask that the clerk state, for the edification of the 
Senate, amendment No. 256.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith). The clerk will report the 
amendment for the information of the Senate.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Amendment 256: On page 2, lines 24 and 25, strike ``adopted 
     by a majority of the whole number of each House.''

  Mr. HATCH. Would the Senator agree to bring up the amendment and have 
the 2 hours, if there are two cloture votes, after the second cloture 
vote, if necessary?
  Mr. BYRD. Yes. I have no desire to interfere with cloture votes.
  Mr. HATCH. Then let us add either No. 252 or No. 256 to the request. 
The Senator will have his choice on amendments.
  Mr. BYRD. Yes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. BYRD. I thank the distinguished Senator.
  May I say briefly that I want to yield to Senator Pell for 10 minutes 
and then I am going to yield the floor.
  The distinguished Senator from Utah--and he is a distinguished 
Senator--has talked about the 14 days that we have spent on this 
constitutional amendment. Well, so what? The constitutional Framers 
spent 116 days--116 days in closed session at the Constitutional 
Convention--116 days. And now we have spent, the Senator said, 14 days. 
So what? What is 14 days as between us Senators, 14 days to amend the 
Constitution in a way which can destroy the separation of powers and 
checks and balances--14 days.
  The other body spent all of 2 days on this constitutional amendment. 
I believe that is right, 2 days. What a joke! Two days in adopting this 
constitutional amendment. Why, any town council in this country would 
spend 2 days in determining whether or not it should issue a permit to 
build a golf course.
  Two days to amend the Constitution.
  I will not say any more than that now.
  I ask unanimous consent that I may yield to the distinguished Senator 
from Rhode Island. He has an ambassador 
[[Page S2805]] waiting on him in his office. I understand he wishes 10 
minutes.
  Mr. PELL. Thank you very much.
  Mr. HATCH. Reserving the right to object, would the distinguished 
Senator allow me just a few seconds to just make a closing comment on 
what the distinguished Senator just said?
  Yes, they did spend over 100 days to arrive at the full Constitution, 
without the Bill of Rights. And we have spent 19 years working on this 
amendment. This amendment is virtually the same as we brought up in 
1982, 1986, and last year. We have had weeks of debate on this 
amendment. It is a bipartisan amendment. It has been developed in 
consultation between Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the 
Senate. It has had a lot of deliberation, consideration, negotiation, 
and debate on the floor.
  Admittedly, I am sure the distinguished Senator from West Virginia 
would agree that the constitutional convention did not debate this on 
the floor of the Senate at the time, nor would it have taken that much 
time had there been a debate on the floor of the Senate. But be that as 
it may, if it had, we are living today with an amendment that is one 
amendment to the whole Constitution that, if adopted, would become the 
28th amendment to the Constitution.
  We have spent 14 days on the floor. I am willing to spend more. I am 
not complaining, and I do want to have a full and fair debate, but I 
also believe that we are reaching a point where there is deliberate 
delay here, not by the distinguished Senator from West Virginia 
necessarily, but I believe reasonable people can conclude that there is 
a desire to delay this amendment for whatever purpose that may be and 
that is the right of Senators if they want to do it.
  The majority leader has filed a cloture motion which we voted on 
today. We had 57 Senators who wanted to end this debate and make all 
matters germane from this point on. Next Wednesday, we will vote on 
cloture again. And if there are 60 Senators who vote for cloture, then 
that will bring a large part of this debate to a closure.
  I think I would be remiss if I did not say, on behalf of the majority 
leader and others on our side who are working hard to move this 
amendment, that we believe that is a reasonable period of time and we 
believe that every person here has had a chance to bring up their 
amendments.
  We tried to get to an amendment up last night. We were willing to 
work later. We could not get one person to put up an amendment.
  So we have reached a point where we can go along with more 
amendments. But once cloture is invoked then only those that are 
germane will be considered and then only for a limited period of time.
  But I just want to make the record straight that this is not a 
rewriting of the whole Constitution, although it is important and it 
will have a dramatic imprint and impact on how we spend and how we tax 
in America from that point on if this amendment is passed through both 
Houses of Congress by the requisite two-thirds vote and ratified by 
three-quarters of the States. It is very important. Those who are for 
it are very concerned about it and those who are opposed are rightly 
very concerned about it.
  We have had a very healthy debate. We intend to continue as long as 
is necessary to bring this matter to closure. But I do not want anybody 
thinking that anybody has been cut off here or that anybody has been 
mistreated or that anybody has not been given their chance to bring up 
amendments, because they have. We have tabled those amendments. We feel 
that that is certainly within our right to do that. We have tried to 
treat every amendment with the dignity and the prestige that it 
deserves.
  Finally, I would like to encourage my colleagues next Wednesday to 
vote for cloture. Because we all know where it stands. We all know the 
arguments on both sides. This is not just 14 days. Since I have been 
here, we are in our 19th year debating this matter, in the Judiciary 
Committee now four times and stopped a number of other times in the 
Judiciary Committee before we could even get it to the floor.
  So this is not an unusual situation. We actually have worked hard. 
Everybody here knows what is involved in this amendment. Everybody here 
knows the arguments against it. And everybody here knows that we voted 
on some very substantial and very important amendments thus far, and 
those who are in a bipartisan way thus far have been successful in 
maintaining the integrity of the House-passed amendment; I might add 
just one more time, a House-passed amendment for the first time in the 
history of this country. And I have to say that is historic.
  Now we have the opportunity of passing it through here and submitting 
it to the States. And those of us who support it hope that 38 States 
will ratify it. We hope all 50 will, but at least 38, three-quarters. 
And if they do, then this will become the 28th amendment to the 
Constitution.
  But I just wanted to make those points. I am sorry I delayed the 
distinguished Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I do not want to leave the record standing 
as the distinguished Senator from Utah has left it. I believe he 
indicated he thought there was a deliberate effort to delay.
  Mr. HATCH. I said not by the distinguished Senator from West 
Virginia. I would not impute that to you and I hope that is not the 
case.
  But I do not think many reasonable people would conclude that we have 
not given an extensive amount of time to this debate. And I think 
people might conclude that now that we have gone through one cloture 
vote that there may be a desire of some here to delay this matter from 
a filibuster standpoint. I hope that is not true. But that is the way 
it looks to me.
  I admit that I am not nearly as experienced here as the distinguished 
Senator from West Virginia, but I have been here 19 years and I have 
observed. I can remember the majority leader, Senator Mitchell, calling 
filibusters filibusters in less than a day. And here we have had 14 
days, so it is 3 solid weeks of Senate debate on this, and extensive 
amendments, although not as many as the 1982, where there were 31 
amendments. But we did that in 11 days. I think people could reasonably 
conclude that there is a filibuster going on.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I disagree with that statement.
  The Senator from Utah was not here during the debate on the Civil 
Rights Act, which lasted 103 days, covered a total of 103 days between 
the date of the motion to proceed on March 9, 1964, and the date on 
which the final vote occurred on the civil rights bill on June 19.
 March 9, June 19th--103 days transpired. The Senate was on the bill 
itself 77 days and debated the bill 57 days in which there were 
included six Saturdays.

  The Senator implies that there may be a deliberate effort here to 
delay this measure. Nobody has engaged, that I know of, in 
obstructionist tactics. Imagine what one could do if he wanted to. 
There have been no dilatory quorum calls. There have been no dilatory 
motions to reconsider, and the asking for the yeas and nays on a motion 
to reconsider, and then put in a quorum call and send for the Sergeant 
at Arms and have the Sergeant at Arms arrest Members, as I had to do. 
Nothing dilatory has been done.
  Nobody has objected to any time limits on amendments. Not one 
objection that I know about. I have had every amendment that has been 
called up here and time request that has been brought to me, brought to 
me because I am a Senator. I have not objected to any such request.
  The majority leader has a right to offer cloture motions. I think he 
has been fairly reasonable in this situation. He has not been pressing 
out here daily for action on this constitutional amendment.
  I am not against Senator Hatch. I am not against Senator Dole. I am 
just against this amendment. Nobody has attempted to deliberately delay 
this. Let me debunk that idea from any Senator's mind.
  I want to see this come to an end. It is going to come to an end. I 
will have no more to say unless the Senator wants to carry on this bit 
of subject matter further.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague offering that 
opportunity. All I have to say is that the rules today are considerably 
different than they were during the civil rights 
[[Page S2806]] debates when they went 103 days. Cloture can be invoked. 
There is no such thing as a postcloture filibuster today.
  Mr. BYRD. There could be.
  Mr. HATCH. But a lot different from the old days.
  Mr. BYRD. Does the Senator know why it is different? Because I, as 
majority leader, laid down certain points of order that were upheld by 
the then Presiding Officer, and we established precedents that make it 
much more difficult to carry on a postcloture filibuster.
  Mr. HATCH. How well aware I am, and I compliment the distinguished 
Senator from West Virginia for his knowledge of the rules.
  Mr. BYRD. I thank the Senator for that compliment. I hope I have a 
little knowledge of a few things other than just the rules of the 
Senate.
  Mr. HATCH. I have to confess that I think the distinguished Senator 
is a fine Senator, a great Senator.
  I know that he knows the rules very well and I think he knows the 
Constitution quite well, although I do think earlier in the day he said 
there were no amendments dealing with the economy.
  Mr. BYRD. No, no. I said no amendments dealing with fiscal policy.
  Mr. HATCH. I believe the contract laws, I believe the 16th amendment 
do deal with fiscal policy.
  Mr. BYRD. It does not attempt to write fiscal policy, fiscal theory, 
about which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said there is no place in the 
Constitution for fiscal theory.
  Mr. HATCH. I agree with that, if you consider that fiscal policy.
  Mr. BYRD. I consider this amendment which, by the way, I think 
contains about 465 words.
  Mr. HATCH. It does.
  Mr. BYRD. The entire first 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights 
contain only about 385 words. This amendment alone contains about 465 
words. The entire 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights contained only 
around 385.
  What I am saying is this nefarious amendment that is proposed here 
has only about 80 fewer words than do the 10 amendments to the Bill of 
Rights. The 10 amendments contain, I think, about 465 words, and this 
monstrosity contains about 385. So there are only about 80 words 
difference.
  My math may be off a little bit this afternoon. I have not had any 
lunch, and my feet are getting a little tired.
  Mr. HATCH. I am happy to yield the floor.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Pell be 
recognized for 10 minutes, and that he be followed by Senator Murray, 
not to exceed 5 minutes.
  I thank Senator Hatch for his gracious manner and his characteristic 
friendliness and conviviality. He is a fine Senator. I enjoy working 
with him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  

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