[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 45 (Friday, March 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3774-S3776]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS AND RESCISSIONS ACT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of H.R. 889, which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

        A bill (H.R. 889) making emergency supplemental 
     appropriations and rescissions to preserve and enhance the 
     military readiness for the Department of Defense for the 
     fiscal year ending September 30, 1995, and for other 
     purposes.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
       Pending:
       Bumpers amendment No. 330, to restrict the obligation or 
     expenditate of funds on the NASA/Russian Cooperative MIR 
     program.
       Kassebaum amendment No. 331 (to committee amendment 
     beginning on page 1, line 3), to limit funding of an 
     Executive order that would prohibit Federal contractors from 
     hiring permanent replacements for striking workers.

  Mr. SIMON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois is recognized.


                           Amendment No. 331

  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the pending 
amendment, which is the Kassebaum amendment.
  I would like to make one brief point. Later I will probably speak on 
some other points. But in 1935 when Congress passed the National Labor 
Relations Act, section 13 stated:

       Nothing in this act, except as specifically provided for 
     herein, shall be construed so as either to interfere with or 
     impede, or in any way diminish, the right to strike, or to 
     affect the limitations or qualifications on that right.

  Then in 1938 in the Mackay radio case, the Supreme Court interpreted 
that as permitting permanent striker replacement. But that really did 
not happen in our country to any great extent and has not happened up 
until very recently. By tradition, we have worked things out, and we 
have avoided what most Western industrialized countries have outlawed. 
But the point I want to make is that in the discussion on the floor of 
the Senate, it has been assumed that the President's Executive order is 
as sweeping as our proposal last year on prohibiting permanent striker 
replacement. It is nowhere near as sweeping. It gives no additional 
powers to the National Labor Relations Board.
  Let me just read two pertinent sections. This is the President's 
Executive order.

       It is the policy of the Executive Branch in procuring goods 
     and services that, to ensure the economical and efficient 
     administration and completion of Federal Government 
     contracts, contracting agencies shall not contract with 
     employers that permanently replace lawfully striking 
     employees. All discretion under this Executive order shall be 
     exercised consistent with this policy.

  Then section 4(a):
  ``When the Secretary determines that a contractor has permanently 
replaced lawfully striking employees, the Secretary may''--no mandate--
``may debar the contractor thereby making the contractor ineligible to 
receive government contracts.''
  It is much more restrictive than the legislation that we had before 
us last year that a majority of the Senate voted for but because of our 
filibuster rules we were unable to pass.
  I will hold off saying anything further at this point, Mr. President. 
I will have some further comments before long.
  I see my colleague, the new Senator from Oklahoma, here. I believe he 
wishes to speak.
  So I yield the floor, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question is amendment No. 331 
offered by the Senator from Kansas to the committee amendment on page 
1, line 3 of the bill.
  [[Page S3775]] The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have been very disturbed during the 
debate on the defense supplemental appropriations. I just wanted to 
make a couple of comments not directly addressing the Kassebaum 
amendment but the appropriations itself.
  I really believe this is one of the few times that I can stand here 
and say I do not know for sure how I am going to vote on this. I am a 
member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. When I was in the House 
of Representatives, I was a member of the House Armed Services 
Committee.
  I find that we are in a way endorsing what I refer to as a flawed 
foreign policy when we come up in our forces to have supplemental 
appropriations to pay for various maneuvers and various missions that 
our military has pursued while we clearly disagree with those. As an 
example, I would suggest that, if the President had come to Congress, 
or to the Senate, and said is it going to cost $17 million to send 
troops to Rwanda, we probably would say ``no'' and we would not have to 
incur these costs.
  The same thing would be true in Somalia--recognizing that in Somalia 
we originally sent them in December, under a previous administration, 
however. I think they were sent over for a humanitarian mission not to 
exceed--I believe it was--90 days initially. Then after that, each 
quarter we would have resolutions in order to try to bring the troops 
back home. That ended up costing $17 million.
  If the President had come to Congress and asked Congress to 
appropriate $312 million to send troops to Bosnia without a well-
defined mission there, certainly not having anything to do with our 
Nation's events, without having anything to do with our Nation's 
security, I suggest we would have said ``no.''
 The same thing is true; $367 million to Cuba, and then there is Haiti. 
This appropriation is going to have $595 million to support what nobody 
really knows we are doing in Haiti. I can assure you, Mr. President, 
that if the President had come to Congress and said we are going to ask 
you for $595 million so we can send troops into Haiti to help them with 
problems they are having, it would have been rejected. So here we come 
along later and are forced to do it.

  I hesitated in voting against it, Mr. President, because it is not 
the military's fault. It is not their policy. They did not decide to go 
into Haiti. It was not their idea to go to Somalia, Bosnia, or Rwanda. 
If we do not do this, they are going to be forced into taking it out of 
their personnel accounts, their operation accounts, R&D accounts. And 
there are no spare dollars right now in any of those accounts. In fact, 
we are operating under a budget in this fiscal year that is comparable 
to the budget we had in 1980 when we could not afford spare parts.
  So I have sat in these meetings and talked to the Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the Chief of Staff in the various 
services. I listened to them about the problems they have right now 
with their budget, in trying to keep America strong. I cannot 
conscientiously say take it out of our R&D budget just because I 
disagreed with the missions for which this money is being spent.
  So, Mr. President, I wanted to get on record that I am very disturbed 
with the system. I hope we can establish some type of a system where 
those of us who are going to be asked to appropriate the money to pay 
for these missions will have some voice in making the decisions as to 
what we are doing with our armed services.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, if I may get back to mundane things that we 
talk about here, amendments--and it is good, not simply as a tribute to 
the Chaplain but it is good for us to pull ourselves back and remind 
each other there are things more important than these amendments we 
vote on, and we too easily forget.
  Mr. President, let me comment again on the amendment that is before 
the Senate. It is very easy to forget we are talking about people, real 
people who are struggling for a living when we talk about people who go 
on strike.
  I just have been going through some testimony given a couple of years 
ago by people who were struggling. I just this morning was with Senator 
Kennedy, who held an informal session with a number of people who spoke 
on the need for a minimum wage. Two people I remember particularly. One 
is--and I believe I have his name correctly--David Dow, who has two 
children, a daughter 2, a son 1. He and his wife went 1 year to 
college. Then their first child was coming along so they had to quit.
  They are struggling on the minimum wage. They cannot afford health 
insurance. They are paying $75 a month for their student loan, making 
that payment on the minimum wage. And he just told about the struggle 
he is going through.
  These are real people we deal with when we are talking about a 
minimum wage. It is not some theoretical thing.
  There was a small employer there who said he would like to pay the 
minimum wage if everybody else had to raise their minimum wage so we 
would all be on the same level.
  We are talking about--and here they are judgment calls; I recognize 
that, but we are talking about trying to maintain some sense of balance 
in our society. I think that is what is needed in this area of 
permanent striker replacement. All the other Western industrialized 
nations, with the exception of Great Britain, Singapore, and Hong Kong, 
outlaw permanent striker replacement. Italy, Greece, France, Germany, 
Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland--I am sure I am 
forgetting a few--Japan, all of them outlaw permanent striker 
replacement, and they do it for a very solid reason, that there is an 
imbalance. I say this as a former employer who was in business myself. 
There is an imbalance. Obviously, it is a struggle for a small business 
person. It was not easy for me in business. But as an employer I am at 
an advantage over somebody who is just struggling to pay a mortgage and 
to get by.
  And so we had built into our structure certain things that give some 
power to the employees. While we have not outlawed it as a result of 
the Mackay Radio decision in the Supreme Court of 1938, with only three 
exceptions in large businesses we have exercised self-restraint and 
avoided having permanent striker replacements.
  I think it is important that continue. I have been working with both 
sides in the Caterpillar strike in Illinois. Let me add I have great 
respect for Don Feits, the chief executive officer of Caterpillar, and 
Owen Biever, the president of the United Automobile Workers.
  My feelings are, if we just turned this whole thing over to the two 
of them, we would get it worked out. But if at Caterpillar you were to 
have permanent striker replacements, in a community like Peoria, it 
would just tear that town apart. It just would not be good. I think 
virtually everyone recognizes that. While that is a more volatile 
situation because of the concentration of employees of one company, I 
think we have to recognize we have to have balance, and that means, 
among other things, labor and management working together more than we 
have traditionally done. Germany has something they call mitbestimmung 
where an officer of the union is on the board of the corporation, but 
when that corporation talks about what they might offer to the unions 
in terms of concessions when they go to a contract, that union 
representative absents himself. But that way the unions get a chance to 
understand the problems of management and management gets to understand 
the problems of the unions.
  It is also important they work together and get together for a cup of 
coffee, a beer, whatever, and just talk things over informally. Do not 
wait until you get to contract time. But occasionally we have 
situations that get to the extreme, and I do not think we should let 
that extreme go to the point of having permanent striker replacements. 
I think that puts things out of kilter. I do not think we should be in 
a situation where we want to encourage it.
  The President's Executive order does one thing and one thing only. It 
says if we are going to buy supplies, we will not buy them from people 
who have permanent striker replacements, or at least we have that 
option. That is up to the Secretary of Labor.
  My hope is that we will not adopt the Kassebaum amendment. My hope 
is, 
[[Page S3776]] frankly, that the President, if that should be part of 
this bill, even though he needs this emergency supplemental 
appropriation, would veto it and say give me a clean bill on what we 
need in the Defense Department. I know that postpones things for the 
Defense Department, and I know they would not be happy about it, but 
the better answer is for us not to accept the Kassebaum amendment and 
to move ahead and maintain this important balance between labor and 
management that we need in this Nation.
  Mr. President, if no one else seeks the floor, I question the 
presence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may speak as 
in morning business for no longer than 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the Senator is recognized.

                          ____________________