[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 46 (Monday, March 13, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3831-S3839]
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 
     expenditure 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.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, during the course of our discussion 
last week about the action of the President of the United States in 
issuing the Executive order on the permanent replacement of striking 
workers, there were a number of issues that were raised. One was the 
question of whether the President had the authority and the power to 
issue the Executive order; a second was whether there was a sound 
public policy rationale to do so. I would like to take a few moments of 
the Senate's time this afternoon to address those issues specifically, 
and then to make some additional general comments.
  Madam President, I understand that earlier in the course of the 
Senate session there may have been a statement by the majority leader 
as to how we were going to proceed on the Kassebaum amendment. We 
initially had the cloture vote called for at 5:30 this afternoon but 
now that vote will occur on Wednesday at a time to be worked out by the 
leaders. I believe that I am correct. That is my understanding as how 
we are going to proceed. I was inquiring of staff whether that had 
actually been announced in the Senate for the benefit of the 
membership. Could I make that inquiry?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Consent was obtained to postpone the vote on 
the Kassebaum amendment to Wednesday, March 15 at 10:30 a.m..
  Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Chair.
  Madam President, when we debated the issue of permanent striker 
replacement last year and again on the floor last week, our opponents 
argued that the use of permanent replacements is too infrequent to 
justify a legislative response. But the tens of thousands of workers 
around the country who have lost their jobs for exercising their legal 
right to strike bear witness to the need for action. Study after study 
has shown that the permanent replacement of strikers has exploded, and 
that the use--or threat of use--of permanent replacement is now a 
routine practice in collective bargaining negotiations. I 
[[Page S3832]] took a few moments when we were meeting last Friday with 
charts to demonstrate the rather dramatic increase in the utilization 
of permanent strike replacements in recent years.
  In a survey of employer bargaining objectives conducted by the Bureau 
of National Affairs earlier this year, an incredible 82 percent of the 
employers surveyed said that if their employees went on strike, they 
would attempt to replace them, or would consider doing so. And of those 
employers, more than one in four said the replacements would be 
permanent.
  The historical evidence also leaves no doubt that this has become a 
serious problem, and that it is getting worse. Let me just review for a 
moment the results of a study by Teresa Anderson-Little of the 
economics department at Notre Dame University.
  By searching through electronic data bases, published legal articles, 
and National Labor Relations Board case reports, Ms. Anderson-Little 
was able to identify 632 strikes involving the use of permanent 
replacements which occurred between 1935 and 1991--the largest data 
base of any of the studies that have been conducted to date. Her 
research confirms that the use of permanent replacements was extremely 
rare in the first 40 years following passage of the National Labor 
Relations Act, and that the increase has been dramatic in recent years.
  From 1935 through 1973, there were on average only six strikes per 
year in which employers hired permanent replacements. But beginning in 
1974 and continuing through 1980, the average number of strikes per 
year involving permanent replacements nearly triples. And from 1981--
the year President Reagan permanently replaced the striking PATCO 
workers--through 1991, the average rose to 24 strikes per year--4 times 
the average prior to the mid-1970's.
  Our opponents like to claim that the ability of employers to 
permanently replace workers helps to promote more cooperative labor-
management relations, and prevent disruptions to the economy caused by 
strikes. But Ms. Anderson-Little's study also confirmed that the use of 
permanent replacements significantly prolongs strikes and prevents 
disputes from being settled.
  While the average duration of all strikes in the United States has 
historically ranged from 2\1/2\ to 4 weeks, strikes involving permanent 
replacements have consistently lasted an average of 7 times long as 
strikes where permanent replacements were not hired.
  Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped keeping comprehensive 
data on strike duration in the 1980's, Ms. Anderson-Little's findings 
involved strikes only through the end of the 1970's. However, studies 
involving more limited samplings of strikes during the 1980's and 
1990's affirm the impact of striker replacements on strike duration.
  Using a GAO-compiled data base of strikes that occurred in 1985 and 
1989, Professors Cynthia Gramm and Jonathan Schnell of the University 
of Alabama found that the mean duration of a permanent replacement 
strike was three times as long as the mean duration of strikes where 
permanent replacements were not used.
  A survey of strikes involving members of the Steelworkers Union from 
1990 to the present found that where temporary replacements were used, 
the average duration of an economic strike was 121.9 days, but when the 
employer hired permanent replacements, average strike duration 
lengthened to 284.1 days.
  Why is that strikes involving permanent replacements last so long? 
The answer is that once permanent replacements are hired, the union and 
the employer are immediately placed at opposite extremes on the issue 
of reinstatement of strikers, which becomes the sole topic of 
bargaining. Since it is an irreconcilable issue, the strike continues 
until either the union or the employer concedes.
  The union finds it impossible to give in, since accepting the 
employer's position means by definition that the employees have been 
replaced and can't have their old jobs back. The employer, for its 
part, has little incentive to capitulate once it has hired and made 
commitments to new, permanent workers.
  Studies like the Gramm-Schnell study have consistently found that 
employers now hire permanent replacements in 20 percent of all strikes, 
and threaten to hire replacements in another 15 percent of strikes.
  The notion that we can sit back and let this practice continue 
because workers are permanently replaced in only 1 out of 5 strikes is 
both heartless and absurd. Every single worker who is permanently 
replaced is one too many.
  Lest no one doubt that there are real, flesh-and-blood workers behind 
these statistics. When we debated this issue last year, we were 
presented with a list of individual names of more than 19,000 strikers 
who were permanently replaced in strikes that occurred in the eighties 
and early nineties. Those are names from just a limited sample of 
strikes that occurred during that period. And since last year, the 
numbers have kept growing.
  In my own State of Massachusetts, at least 450 workers have been 
permanently replaced just since 1988, including workers at ADT Security 
Systems, Brockway Smith, Kraft S.S. Pierce, and Olson Manufacturing.
  To these workers and their families, this is not some minor issue 
that is undeserving of congressional attention--this is about their 
jobs, their livelihood, their families' future.
  Lori Pavao, a former nurses' aid at a nursing home in Fall River who 
was permanently replaced when she and other nurses' aides and members 
of the dietary and housekeeping staff went on strike on 1989, recently 
described her feelings about what happened to her:

       I worked there for 8\1/2\ years. A lot of patients were 
     like family to me. I felt lost for awhile. I didn't want to 
     start all over somewhere else.
       You always hear about people going out on strike and people 
     going back. I just never dreamed that it would be over that 
     way. I thought I was going to retire from the place.

  Although opponents of the President's Executive order make much of 
that fact that permanently replaced strikers do have the right to be 
placed on a preferential hire list to be considered for future openings 
if the permanent replacements leave, the fact is that very few workers 
actually do over return to work with their previous employer.
  And many never recover, financially or emotionally, from the 
devastating experience of being thrown out of their jobs for exercising 
what is supposed to be a legally protected right.
  Banning the permanent replacement of striking workers has 
overwhelming support not just from labor, but also form religious 
groups, civil rights groups and women's groups. They understand that 
this issue is not about some abstract power struggle between big 
business and big labor. This is about real people who are being 
deprived of the only leverage they have to counteract the enormous 
power that employers have to dictate terms and conditions on the job.
  This is about workers like the women at Diamond Walnut, who gave 
decades of their lives to that company, who agreed to 30 percent 
paycuts in their meager wages to help their company survive when it was 
in trouble, and who then were thrown out on the street when the company 
was back making record profits because of their sacrifice.
  This is about the workers at Burns Packaging in Kentucky--45 percent 
black and 40 percent female--who were making $4.70 an hour when they 
decided to form a Union. What they asked for was a 5 percent increase, 
to just $4.95 an hour, and a grievance and arbitration procedure for 
resolving complaints about unfair treatment. But when they struck after 
6 months of fruitless negotiations at the bargaining table, they were 
immediately permanently replaced.
  (Mr. GRAMS assumed the chair.)
  Mr. KENNEDY. The President's Executive order will not change the law 
regarding permanent replacements. But by banning the practice of 
permanent replacements on Federal contracts, it will help to prevent 
the terrible injustice to working people that is caused by the current 
system.
  In the end, what is at stake here is the standard of living for 
working men and women. The country has experienced a 20-year decline in 
real wages. 
[[Page S3833]] Hourly compensation has fallen compared to other major 
industrial nations.
  Since the early 1980's, we stand virtually and ominously alone in the 
industrial world as a Nation where the disparity in income between the 
rich and the poor grew wider. That is not a healthy trend for any 
country, and certainly not for ours, which is based on the principle of 
fair opportunity for all.
  The facts are disturbing. The ratio in earnings between the top 10 
percent of wage earners and the bottom 10 percent is wider in the 
United States than in any other industrial country. The bottom third of 
American workers earn less in terms of purchasing power than their 
counterparts in other countries.
  American workers are actually working harder than workers in other 
industrial nations. The U.S. workers now labor 200 hours more a year 
than workers in Europe. While vacation and leisure time have increased 
over the past 20 years for Europeans, they have declined for most 
Americans.
  Yet, according to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1977 and 
1989, the after-tax income of the top 1 percent of families rose by 
more than 100 percent, while that of the bottom 20 percent fell nearly 
10 percent.
  Here we are seeing an extraordinary phenomenon, which is really 
unique in terms of the whole American experience in this centry. For 
decades, all of us moved along together, as we increased productivity 
and output, and as we adopted new technology and new skills, as we saw 
corporate profits increase, the standard of living for working families 
also increased, so that each generation was better off than the past 
generation. That is generally what most Americans experienced, it is no 
longer true for the current generation.
  We are seeing that working families are working longer and harder, 
and with less to show for it in terms of their real incomes. The only 
factor that has really enabled families to maintain a stable income 
over the last 15 years is the enormous infusion of second family 
earners--workers' wives, for the most part--into the labor market. It 
is only by having their spouses come into the work force and augmenting 
and supplementing the family's income that working families have been 
able to offset the effects of declining real wages.
  Now what we are seeing, even with all these women who are wives and 
mothers in the work force, is that families have effectively stagnated 
and real purchasing power, is in decline.
  That is what is happening. And there is no further adjustment that 
working families can really make to deal with that problem. Most 
families already have everyone in the family is able to work out there 
working. So they can't put another family member to work to make up for 
the fact that in real terms, their wages are declining.
  Too many of those other members of the family who are trying to go 
out and find work to help supplement the family's income jobs are 
finding that the only jobs available are minimum wage jobs, and that is 
another issue which we must address. The real purchasing power and the 
minimum wage continue to decline. So the ability of those other members 
of the family to contribute to the income of the family is reduced. 
This whole issue presents to the Senate and the House of 
Representatives the question of whether we are going to truly honor and 
reward work in our society.
  Are we going to say to people that are prepared to work 40 hours a 
week, 52 weeks a year, that you will earn a living wage and have a 
future? Or are we going to say that you can be treated like wornout and 
antiquated machinery and put on the junk heap while we hire other 
younger people that will work for a good deal less in terms of their 
benefits, because younger people are healthier and they do not have the 
health-care costs and needs that older workers do.
  The phenomenon we are seeing, Mr. President, is that while the after-
tax income of the top 1 percent of the families rose more than 100 
percent, that of the bottom 20 percent fell nearly 10 percent. Who are 
those 20 percent who are seeing their real earnings decline? They are 
the workers who are out there every single day, playing by the rules, 
doing their bit and participating. And they are the workers who, if 
they have the nerve to try to gain another 5, 10, 15 cents an hour in 
wages, are being permanently replaced by their employers. They are the 
ones who are taking it on the neck.
  The President of the United States says that if those companies are 
going to go ahead and dismiss those workers and hire permanent 
replacements for them, we are not going to give them an additional leg 
up by entering into contracts with them that allow them to make profits 
with taxpayers dollars; we are just not going to do that.
  And now we have an amendment on the defense appropriations bill which 
seeks to block the President from implementing that policy, an 
amendment which is effectively a legislative initiative on an 
appropriations bill, which is not appropriate, and which is tying up 
the Senate and preventing us from doing our basic work in terms of 
dealing with defense appropriations. Our Republican colleagues have 
insisted on offering and pressing this amendment. So we are here 
responding to their arguments.
  Mr. President, another phenomenon that is happening out there in the 
real world for workers is that health care for the American workers is 
becoming increasingly expensive.
  Union workers who went without pay increases in order to obtain good 
health care have seen their health benefits cut back. They have been 
asked to pay greater percentages of health costs. Since 1980, the share 
of workers under 65 with employer-paid health care has dropped from 63 
to 56 percent. The percent of workers covered by employer-provided 
pension plans is also rapidly decreasing.
  What we are seeing is that the coverage of workers by employers for 
their health care costs is on a downward slide. And those pensions that 
were out there to give workers some degree of additional security so 
they would be able to live their golden years in peace and dignity are 
also being cut back. But by God, if you complain about those cutbacks 
that are taking place every single day across America, off you go--
you're permanently replaced, put on the junk heap. And that is what is 
happening.
   We have a President who is saying, to the extent that he has the 
authority and the power, he is going to say ``no'' to the use of 
permanent strike replacements on Federal contracts. That makes a good 
deal of sense.
  This President's action on permanent replacements offers us a chance 
to take a stand against all of these disturbing trends: ending the 
practice of permanently replacing workers on Federal contracts will not 
solve all of the problems of working Americans, but it can help turn 
the tide, and by affirming this country's commitment to collective 
bargaining, we are reaffirming our commitment to a fair balance between 
labor and management.
  We will be standing up for the original historic intent of the labor 
laws, which have done so much for the country in the past half century. 
The President's Executive order closes the loophole that undermines 
good relations between business and labor, and I urge the Senate to 
support it and reject the amendment.
  Mr. President, many of our Republican colleagues have said that they 
are troubled by the President's action in signing the Executive order. 
They complain that it takes away the rights of Congress.
  But this is not what they are really concerned about. Not one of 
them, not even the Senator from Kansas [Mrs. Kassebaum], the Senator 
from Texas [Mr. Gramm], nor the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Jeffords], 
not a single Republican Senator stood up to complain 3 years ago when 
President Bush signed an Executive order on project labor agreements 
that changed the national labor law and prohibited Federal contractors 
from doing something the National Labor Relations Act allowed them to 
do.
  On October 23, 1992, President Bush signed Executive Order No. 12818, 
which prohibited contractors on federally funded construction projects 
from entering into otherwise lawful prehire labor agreements. The 
Executive order prohibited contractors from requiring their 
subcontractors be bound by their labor agreement, even though section 
8(e) of the National Labor Relations Act explicitly permits such 
agreement. President Bush, unlike President Clinton, overrode an 
explicit congressional 
[[Page S3834]] statement about national labor policy passed by both 
Houses of Congress and signed into law by the President.
  Did any Republican complain? No, not a one. Why not? Could it be they 
have no real concern about the President overriding congressional labor 
policy as long as the President's actions are anti-union and are 
designed to thwart collective bargaining and diminish the power of 
working Americans? Isn't their only real problem with President 
Clinton's Executive order a partisan political problem--that they will 
support an activist Republican President but lash out at a Democrat? 
Certainly, there is no consistency of principle amongst our Republican 
friends who are attacking the President now.
  Every Republican who voted for S. 55 is opposing the Executive order 
now. They are putting partisanship above principle.
  President Clinton's Executive order does not conflict with an 
explicit congressional statement of labor policy. There is nothing in 
the National Labor Relations Act that specifically authorizes the use 
of permanent replacements for strikers. Yet there is a provision in 
section 8 of the National Labor Relations Act that makes project labor 
agreements legal. So why are the Republicans who were not concerned 
when President Bush issued his Executive order on project labor 
agreements now so concerned about President Clinton's order on 
permanent striker replacements?
  The Republicans are deeply troubled by this order. We heard a great 
deal about that. We are deeply troubled by the action of President 
Clinton. We are deeply troubled by the implication of this Executive 
order. We are deeply troubled by what this is going to mean in terms of 
labor relations. We are deeply troubled that somehow we are interfering 
in the balance between workers and management. We are all deeply 
troubled.
  Well, none of them was deeply troubled at the time when a Republican 
President issued an Executive order which was in conflict with the 
National Labor Relations Act. No, none of them were deeply troubled at 
that time. A Senator who truly finds President Clinton's action 
troubling would have been far more troubled by President Bush's much 
more direct challenge to congressional authority.
  No, the problem is not the President's authority. Congress gave the 
President clear authority to control the practices of Federal 
contractors in the Federal Property Administrative Services Act, 40 
U.S.C 471. As the Justice Department's legal analysis points out, that 
authority is broad-ranging.
  As that legal analysis states:

       We have no doubt, for example, that section 486(a) grants 
     the President authority to issue a directive that prohibits 
     executive agencies from entering into a contract with 
     contractors who use a particular machine that the President 
     has deemed less reliable than others that are available. 
     Contractors that use the less reliable machines are less 
     likely to deliver quality goods or produce their goods in a 
     timely manner.
       We see no distinction between this hypothetical order in 
     which the President prohibits procuring from contractors that 
     use machines that he deems unreliable and one that the 
     President actually issued which would bar procurement from 
     contractors that use labor relations techniques that the 
     President deemed to be generally unreliable, especially when 
     the Secretary of Labor or the contracting agency's head each 
     confirm the validity of generalization in each specific case.

  Mr. President, this issue is related as well to the debate that we 
have had in the past, and I am sure will have again in the course of 
this Congress, about the Davis-Bacon law which was initiated by 
Republicans and has been the law of the land for more than 60 years. 
Attempts will be made to repeal it.
  The Republicans say, ``Look, instead of requiring federal contractors 
to pay prevailing wages, we can actually save the Federal Government 
some money by letting those wages slide down, slide down, slide down, 
so that the contracting can be done at less cost to the taxpayer.''
  Well, that argument has a sort of superficial logic to it, but as 
former Secretary of Labor John Dunlop has commented--and Professor 
Dunlop is not a Democrat but a Republican, and one of the foremost 
labor economists in the country--as former Secretary Dunlop has argued, 
it is a very shortsighted way of viewing what is really going to be in 
the public's interest, in the taxpayers' interest, over the long run.
  You cannot assume, Professor Dunlop points out, that overall project 
costs are going to be lower just because the dollars you are paying in 
wages to the workers are lower. What you have to look at is the overall 
issue of productivity and quality and the ability to deliver a good 
product on time. That ought to be obvious to all of us. And John 
Dunlop's basic posture and position is that it is delusional to believe 
that just by finding people that are going to work for a lesser cost 
than the prevailing wage, that somehow you are going to be able to save 
millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, some even estimate it as 
high as billions of dollars, in terms of taxpayers' funds. What is 
going to happen is you are going to get inferior products not delivered 
on time and of poor quality. And someone is going to have to make that 
up, and it is going to be the taxpayer who is going to pay a good deal 
more.
  We are talking about the same concept, Mr. President, here in terms 
of the President's Executive order on the use of permanent replacements 
by Federal contractors. All we are saying is that, with regard to the 
President's Executive order, he does not want to use the contracting 
authority of the Federal Government to enter into contracts with 
contractors that are going to have permanent striker replacements.
  Why? Because those permanent replacements are unlikely to have the 
skills, the background, the experience, the techniques, the knowledge 
and the know-how to deliver good products on time which they would be 
charged to do. And rather than taking that chance, in terms of 
protecting the taxpayers' interest in it, he is not going to 
participate in that.
  I think that is sound common sense and is a sound action in terms of 
protecting the financial interests of the United States. And it is a 
sound social policy in terms of trying to give some respect to those 
individuals who are working hard, playing by the rules, who believe 
that under the National Labor Relations Act it is still the law that 
you cannot fire someone who strikes and that therefore it makes no 
sense to say that a striker can be permanently replaced.
  It makes absolutely no common sense to say that you cannot fire 
strikers but you can permanently replace them. And the workers of this 
country are fortunate to have a President who understands that the use 
of permanent replacments is at odds with what the basic principles of 
the National Labor Relations Act and with the system of collective 
bargaining that has served this country well over many decades.
  So, Mr. President, I hope we will not hear any more manufactured 
outrage about the President's Executive order. The President has 
followed precedents established by President Bush. He is fully within 
the authority granted him by Congress to control the Federal 
procurement process. The real issue for his critics is his support for 
working Americans and labor organizations, and not the process he has 
used to accomplish it.
  Now, Mr. President, over the course of the debate in these past days, 
we have heard various arguments that preventing employers from 
permanently replacing strikers would encourage strikes and upset the 
balance in labor-management relations by somehow ensuring that unions 
would always win a strike situation, the President's Executive order. I 
thought it would be worthwhile just to take a few moments to review 
these arguments and also to respond to them so that the Senate record 
would reflect my view of the answers to these questions.
  One of the first questions is, would a ban on permanent replacements 
inevitably lead to more strikes? No, Mr. President, I do not believe 
that it would. Even without the threat of permanent replacement, a 
strike has always been a serious matter for workers and their families. 
Workers do not lightly choose to forgo their wages, walk the picket 
lines for days, weeks, or months; deplete or exhaust their life savings 
and become dependent upon 
[[Page S3835]] the charity of others. Workers are especially reluctant 
to take on these sacrifices because it is never certain that a strike 
will accomplish their goal.
  Apart from the economic disincentives, a strike imposes a great 
emotional strain on families, friendships, and on the fabric of local 
community life. A strike is a last resort that no one undertakes 
lightly. It is wrong to suggest that workers will walk out on their 
jobs simply because they cannot be permanently replaced.
   Workers do not enter into strikes out of any desire or expectation 
that they will cause permanent hardship to the employer. Workers expect 
to return after the strike. They have every interest in the long-term 
prosperity of their employer.
  If anything, the use of permanent replacements is what produces 
longer, more bitter strikes, by transforming the dispute from a dispute 
about wages and benefits into a battle over the future of every 
striker's job. These are the hardest disputes to settle, and last the 
longest time.
  Many strikes today occur precisely because the employer has the 
possibility of permanently replacing the work force. The employer has 
little incentive to engage in meaningful bargaining with the union when 
the alternative is either that the union surrenders to the employer's 
demands, or there is a strike that enables the employer to replace the 
work force, break the union, and escape the necessity of bargaining 
altogether.
  Maybe strikes would be avoided if the employers did not have the 
temptation of permanently replacing their work force. That, Mr. 
President, really says it. If the employer understands that he has the 
option to replace all the workers, he has very little interest in 
trying to resolve the dispute. But if the employer has an interest in 
trying to resolve the dispute then it is logical to assume that the 
disruption would be held to a minimal amount of time.
  You cannot read or hear the real-life stories of individuals that 
have been permanently replaced without being struck by the fact that 
invariably those workers talk about how they wanted to continue working 
for their employer--how they had every hope and intention of remaining 
with that employer as long as they were able to work. That is a common 
expression, a common view, a common opinion that runs through the 
stories of the vast majority of those workers.
  Next, would prohibiting the permanent replacement of strikers 
guarantee that unions will win every strike? This is a concern raised 
by those who argue that somehow we are changing the rules in such a way 
as to upset the whole balance between the workers and the employers and 
guarantee that one side rather than the other would always win.
  The fact is that employers win many strikes in which no permanent 
replacements are hired or threatened to be hired. A prohibition on 
permanent replacements would certainly not ensure that the union always 
prevailed in an economic strike.
  Employers have many ways to maintain production and revenues during a 
strike. They can hire temporary replacements. They can use nonstriking 
employees, managers, and supervisors to do the work; they can hire 
subcontractors to do the work; and they can rely on stockpiled 
inventory. All of those techniques have been used in the past with 
considerable success by employers. Through these and other means, 
employers avoid the hiring of permanent replacements in the majority of 
strikes today. Prohibition on the use of permanent replacements leaves 
in place many significant limitations of what workers may do during a 
strike. Unions would remain unable to engage in secondary boycotts and 
would continue to be subject to stringent picket line restrictions.
  Will a ban on permanent replacements unfairly deprive employers of a 
legitimate self-help option? No, because the hiring of permanent 
replacements should not be viewed as a legitimate form of employer 
self-help.
   The National Labor Relations Act calls for controlled conflict 
between labor and management. There are principles of fairness that 
limit each side's right to engaging in self-help activity. Thus, unions 
are not permitted to engage in secondary boycotts or picket line 
violence during a strike, even though each of these activities makes it 
easier for unions to win a strike. Similarly, the hiring of permanent 
replacements must be viewed as so fundamentally unjust it undermines 
the basic concept of controlled labor-management conflict.
  The fact of the matter is that it is not the law of the jungle out 
there. There are effective restraints in the law already on the tactics 
which can be used by parties to a labor dispute, and those restraints 
are respected. But the use of permanent replacements alters and changes 
this in a very significant way.
  Cardinal O'Connor, the Archbishop of the Diocese of New York, 
testified eloquently on this moral dimension of the permanent 
replacement issue. He said:

       It is useless to speak glowingly in either legal or moral 
     terms about the right to bargain and to strike as a last 
     resort, or even the right to unionize, if either party--
     management or labor --bargains in bad faith, or in the case 
     of management, with the foreknowledge of being able to 
     permanently replace workers who strike on the primary basis 
     of the strike itself. In my judgment, this can make a charade 
     of collective bargaining and a mockery of the right to 
     strike.

  It could not be said any clearer than Cardinal O'Connor said it in 
that comment. So compelling, so sensible, so simple in its logic and 
rationale.
  What is the practice of our foreign competitors with respect to the 
lawfulness of hiring permanent replacements? Often we hear the argument 
that if we prohibit employers from permanently replacing strikers we 
are going to be disadvantaged in our ability to compete effectively in 
trade around the world.
  It is interesting to me to hear this argument invoked so frequently, 
when the fact is that every other industrial country provides much more 
generous benefits to its workers than we do. Our opponents say we 
cannot have comprehensive health insurance for all Americans because it 
is going to make it difficult for us to compete internationally, but 
all of the other industrial countries of the world have it. They said 
we could not have family and medical leave because we would not be able 
to compete effectively. But workers in other countries have family and 
medical leave. In fact, virtually all of them have paid family and 
medical family leave, except for the United States.
  Our opponents says we cannot have an effective day care program 
because we will not be able to compete, when every other industrial 
country of the world has a comprehensive child care system as a matter 
of national policy. Whatever political parties are in power in the 
democratic industrial nations, none of the political leaders, none of 
the political parties is for emasculating programs that reach out to 
the most vulnerable in society. Contrast that to what is happening now 
in the Contract With America where the Republicans are cutting out 
school lunch programs, cutting back on day care programs, cutting back 
on the WIC Program, cutting back on student aid programs and teacher 
support programs, cutting back on housing programs for the homeless.
  I do not know how many saw that enormously moving story by one of the 
networks over the weekend called ``The Feminization of Homelessness,'' 
about the growing number of women and children in our society affected 
by homelessness and the explosion of in those numbers that is taking 
place all across this country.
  Maybe we do not have the existing programs right, and certainly we do 
not in all circumstances. But we ought to try to find ways of 
improving, strengthening, and making them more effective--making them 
work rather than effectively abandoning them.
  No, we cannot say the benefits we provide to working families are 
disadvantaging us internationally in our ability to compete. The fact 
of the matter is, the United States lags behind the rest of the world, 
including our major competitors, when it comes to the basic democratic 
rights of workers. Our No. 1 trading partner, Canada, does not even 
authorize permanent replacements for strikers, even though Canada 
adopted the NLRA as a model for its labor laws. Canadian law has 
regularly rejected the Mackay rule as inconsistent with free collective 
bargaining. United States firms operating in Canada are as profitable 
without the Mackay rule--which is the rule that 
[[Page S3836]] permits the permanent replacement of strikers--as 
American firms operating under the Mackay rule in the United States.
  Other major economic competitors--Japan, France, Germany--
categorically prohibit the dismissal of striking workers. Employers in 
these nations recognize the importance of investing in human resources 
and have no desire to rid themselves of the skilled and loyal work 
forces that they have assembled. The employers here who use permanent 
replacements are harming themselves and their country.
  Most of the industrial democracies with which we compete--just about 
every one of them--has a very extensive, continuing training program to 
upgrade the skills of all of their workers. That is true in France, 
Germany, and all of the Western European countries.
  Ask them how they do it? Are they not concerned that if they train, 
invest and use some of their profits to train and upgrade their work 
force that those workers may leave and go to another place? They say, 
``Well, the other companies are doing the same thing.'' And that is why 
we have seen in the United States, with the exception of some of the 
top companies, really less than 10 percent of companies who have real 
training programs. And most of that training does not go to the workers 
on the front line, but to the supervisors and the managers. We do not 
have a consistent ongoing upgrading and training system for American 
workers.
  Other major economic competitors, as I mentioned, categorically 
prohibit the dismissal of striking workers. Even in the nations of 
Eastern Europe, which we applaud for their emerging democratic 
unionism, workers who strike do not lose their jobs.
  What happened to the machinists at Eastern Air Lines did not happen 
to the shipyard workers at Gdansk and what happened to the coal miners 
at Massie Coal Co. did not happen to the coal miners in Eastern Europe. 
If we are prepared to extol the virtues of the trade union abroad, we 
should be willing to restore a level playing field for collective 
bargaining at home.
  Mr. President, I see some of our other colleagues on the floor who 
want to speak. At this time, I yield the floor.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, I would like to express my 
appreciation to the Senator from Massachusetts for being understanding 
of the necessary absence of the Senator from Utah. He very much wanted 
to be a part of the debate and the vote and his absence is one of the 
reasons that the cloture vote has been postponed until Wednesday. I 
also appreciate the understanding of the Democratic leader.
  There has been a desire from all of you to move ahead. The defense 
supplemental legislation is an important measure, but it seems to me 
that we are having a good debate.
  Mr. President, I would like to explain what this debate is about. 
This debate is not about the Contract With America. It is not about all 
of the other issues that have been raised, including school lunches and 
child care. Those are important issues to be debated at another time. 
The issue before us at this particular moment is an Executive order 
that President Clinton has issued that says large contractors doing 
business with the Federal Government should be prohibited from hiring 
permanent replacement workers.
  There are people with strong views on both sides of the striker 
replacement issue. I feel that we have debated this issue thoroughly 
during the past Congress and again in this Congress, and we will be 
debating it further, I am sure, in years ahead.
  What troubles me is that the President, through this Executive order, 
is able to change major labor law. The Senator from Massachusetts 
mentioned in his opening comments today that Presidents in the past--
President Bush and President Reagan--issued Executive orders and 
nothing was said. Let me just, once again, go through those three 
Executive orders and why I believe they are very different from the 
Executive order that we are debating today, and the amendment which 
would say that no moneys could be used to implement that Executive 
order.
  President Reagan issued an Executive order that replaced striking air 
traffic controllers with permanent replacement workers because the air 
traffic controllers had been striking illegally. There was never any 
question about hiring permanent replacement workers at that time. 
During the years following that Executive order there were several 
measures debated on the Senate floor about rehiring those striking air 
traffic controllers which did not pass.
  President Bush issued one Executive order which required the posting 
in the workplace of all of the rights of employees. This was, by law, 
something that should have been done and was not in any way changing 
the law of the land.
  The second Executive order issued by President Bush concerned prehire 
contracts, and that I think is a bit unclear. One of the major 
differences between that Executive order and this one is the fact that 
the prehire contract had never been debated in this Chamber. On the 
other hand the use of permanent striker replacement workers has been an 
issue debated in both the House and Senate at great length.
  While one may question whether President Bush by Executive order 
could put into place the rule that prehire contracts could not be 
entered into, it had never been debated by Congress. If we were to have 
changed it, then Congress, logically, should have been the place to 
make a change. But the prehire contracts Executive order was never 
challenged by either the Congress or the Supreme Court.
  So I think the difference is very clear. This Executive order is 
being challenged in Congress and is going to be challenged in the 
courts. It is by its very nature a troubling effort by the executive 
branch to, by executive fiat, change what has been the law of the land, 
and a major part of labor law, for some 60 years. This Executive order 
is troubling because, on the one hand, labor's right to strike has been 
upheld, but on the other hand management's right to hire permanent 
replacement workers, just as much a part of existing labor law, is 
being attacked.
  I would like to quote a paragraph from the lead Washington Post 
editorial this morning. It says:

       The law is contradictory. The National Labor Relations Act 
     says strikers can't be fired; the Supreme Court has 
     nonetheless ruled that they can be permanently replaced. The 
     contradiction may be healthy. By leaving labor and management 
     both at risk, the law gives each an incentive to agree. For 
     most of modern labor history, management in fact has made 
     little use of the replacement power and labor hasn't much 
     protested it.

  Perhaps this is where we are today, trying to ponder this 
contradiction. We can ask ourselves if, in revisiting the National 
Labor Relations Act we need to address it in some different ways to 
meet the changing labor markets. The current balance has worked well. 
On the other hand, I am sympathetic to those who say management should 
not immediately hire permanent replacement workers because, if that is 
the case, the employees have lost some leverage which they would have 
with the right to strike.
  On the other hand, if the employees take advantage of a company such 
as Diamond Walnut, which has been debated here before, and strike right 
at the beginning of the season in which all of the crop must be 
harvested, is it not a calculated strike to force management to its 
knees? Is there not some means to balance these competing interests 
without causing a problem?
  I am absolutely certain, Mr. President, that the President has made a 
serious mistake by issuing the Executive order and changing so 
fundamentally labor law that has on the whole worked well. Initiating 
an Executive order that will countermand legislative language is a 
slippery slope that can then work to any President's advantage. I think 
it calls into question the separation of powers between the executive 
and legislative branches.
  While it is the right of the President to issue an Executive order, 
when it overturns the law of the land, I think we have to approach it 
carefully. The Senator from Massachusetts said that there are those who 
argue it would lead to more strikes. I am not sure that it necessarily 
would. But I think what it would do would certainly lead to far 
[[Page S3837]] greater uncertainty in the marketplace. I think it would 
lead to far greater uncertainty in relations between management and 
labor. I think prohibiting permanent replacements would pose enormous 
difficulties on both sides and certainly increase the potential for 
longer strikes, because what would be the incentive for those on strike 
to go back to work?
  It seems to me that we simply must uphold a balanced approach, and 
neither side should be able to unbalance the relationship. Yes, we have 
to be just as cautious of management in taking that opportunity as we 
would with labor. But the mechanism is already in place for collective 
bargaining to work--which is the heart of the matter--and for both 
sides to be able to bargain in good faith. I believe this is what we in 
the legislative branch owe both labor and management when they go to 
the bargaining table. It is up to them, both labor and management, to 
accomplish that.
  I really believe that regardless of the merits of this issue and 
where people stand on either side, we should think carefully about the 
issue before us and the implication that by Executive order a major 
principle of labor law can be turned on its head. This, it seems to me, 
is what each and every one of my colleagues should consider as we 
approach a cloture vote on Wednesday.
  I think that the merits of permanently replacing striking workers 
could be debated at another time. We debated it last year. We will be 
debating it again. But it is the Executive order that we have to deal 
with at this particular time.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I appreciate the explanation of the 
Senator from Kansas about the issuing of the Executive order and the 
authority for issuing the Executive order of President Bush on the 
prehire issue. But I do take issue with it.
  The Senator states that the difference between that Executive order 
and the Executive order on striker replacements issued by President 
Clinton is that the issue of striker replacements has been debated by 
the Congress but the issue of prehire agreements has not. The fact is 
that Congress did specifically consider and debate the issue of whether 
prehire agreements should be lawful at the time that section 8(f) and 
section 8(e) were added to the National Labor Relations Act in 1959. 
This issue was debated at some length in the Senate as well as in the 
House of Representatives, and Congress affirmatively determined that 
prehire agreements and project labor agreements should be legal in the 
construction industry. President Bush acted contrary to that decision 
by Congress when he issued the Executive order in 1992 prohibiting any 
contracting with employers who entered into prehire agreements and 
project labor agreements.
  So the Members of Congress understood in 1959 what they were 
approving, what the public policy implications were, and they accepted 
the particular provisions permitting prehire agreements and project 
labor agreements--sections 8(e) and 8(f), which I put into the Record 
last year. And then, in spite of that, without any debate and any kind 
of discussion, we have an Executive order by President Bush to 
effectively undermine that. And this was after the Supreme Court had 
unanimously affirmed, in a 9-to-0 decision in the Boston Harbor case, 
that such agreements were perfectly lawful and authorized by Congress 
in the public sector as well as in the private sector.
  That is very different from what we are talking about in terms of 
striker replacement. We have in the National Labor Relations Act 
recognition that you cannot be fired for striking, and yet we have 
dictum--a footnote, effectively--in the Mackay case, which was never 
really made use of, picked up really in the period of the 1980's after 
the PATCO strike and used to inaugurate the widespread replacement of 
striking workers with permanent replacements.
  We are talking about the history of the development of this whole 
program. That is really what has happened. Then we had a debate on 
this. There is no question we had the debate on it. It passed with the 
support of Republicans and Democrats alike over in the House of 
Representatives. It was a majority of the Members of the U.S. Senate 
who voted to eliminate the permanent replacements. But we had a 
filibuster and we were prohibited from acting.
  I understand that is the way the rules go. So the Senator is quite 
correct in saying we had a debate but we did not get final action on 
it. That is true. But the overwhelming majority of the House of 
Representatives, and in a bipartisan way, wanted to repeal permanent 
striker replacements. The majority of Republicans and Democrats wanted 
to repeal striker replacements.
  The Executive order is not banning the use of permanent striker 
replacements. All it is saying is we as the Federal Government are not 
going to do additional business with you to make you more profitable if 
you are going to go ahead and hire permanent striker replacements, as 
far as Federal contracting goes.
  The reasons for that are, as I mentioned earlier, when you circumvent 
the quality, the training, the skills of workers who, for example, 
might be the GE workers up in Lynn, MA, who make the F-15 engines, the 
F-16 engines, the F-18 engines, the attack fighter engines--really 
among the best-skilled workers in the world, and who constantly are 
improving and strengthening their skills--those are men and women who 
have worked there 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 years in that plant. They are 
top of the line. To say, look, if they have a dispute up there and you 
are going to replace one of those workers working on those engines with 
some permanent striker replacement who does not have that kind of 
experience that the Federal Government expects--in terms of our defense 
expenditures and contracting I think the President is well advised to 
assure that every dollar that is going to be expended is going to be 
expended wisely, that the item will be of good quality.
  The President's Executive order does not change or alter the right to 
hire permanent striker replacements. Those companies can still go out 
and still have the authority and the power to have them. All we are 
saying is we are not going to give them an additional benefit, like we 
gave to the Diamond Walnut Co., which was getting increased 
productivity and profitability and refused to bargain with its workers 
who were making barely above the minimum wage. That is what we are 
talking about.
  Who are we talking about making a dollar? We are talking about $6-an-
hour or $7-an-hour Americans, who were prepared to work for $6 or $7 an 
hour. I wish we could get as worked up about the people we are really 
affecting as we are about this Executive order. These are people 
working for $6 or $7 an hour and we are somehow trying to diminish them 
to favor companies who want to pay them $5 an hour or throw them out, 
and give those companies the Federal contracts, like the agricultural 
contract which Diamond Walnut got which helped them to sell the 
products overseas. They made millions, tens of millions of dollars on 
that contract.
  You have both sound public policy reasons for this, in terms of 
making sure we are going to have good quality and a good product for 
our Federal investment, and I think you have a sound social policy with 
regard to preventing exploitation of the workers.
  The people we are talking about are barely above the minimum wage. We 
have been on this now Thursday, Friday, and today. We have not been 
talking about consultants making $25, $30, $35 an hour who are really 
ripping off the system. All the examples we have been using are people 
making $6, $7, $7.50 an hour. They are striking for another nickel, 
another dime, and bango--they are replaced. Those are the people we are 
talking about.
  Why are we spending the time here trying to shortchange this kind of 
worker in our society? Why are we spending all day Thursday, all day 
Friday, today, and the time of the Senate, to do so? I think we have 
better things to do with our time.
  I might take just a few moments of the Senate's time to include a 
more detailed history of the President's authority for issuing this 
Executive order.
  Mr. President, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has 
served both Republican Presidents and 
[[Page S3838]] Democratic Presidents as the chief guardian of the 
constitutional separation of powers. It is recognized by Members on 
both sides of the aisle as the authoritative voice on the scope of a 
President's powers.
  On Friday, the Office of Legal Counsel made public a memorandum 
expressing its opinion that President Clinton was acting well within 
his executive authority when he issued this Executive order. I have 
entered the Office of Legal Counsel's memorandum into the Record. And I 
understand that the Justice Department has provided copies of the 
memorandum to each Senator's office.
  This memorandum is important not simply because it offers the 
thoroughly researched and persuasive opinion of the leading 
institutional expert on the scope of the President's powers that this 
Executive order is an appropriate exercise of Presidential authority. 
It is important because several Members of this body have stated--
without citing a single case or statute, without making a single legal 
argument, and without explaining their views--that they think this 
Executive order is unconstitutional.
  The Constitution deserves more than that. The President deserves more 
than that. And the working families whose lives will be improved by 
this Executive order deserve more than that.
  I have reviewed the Office of Legal Counsel's memorandum supporting 
this Executive order. I find it persuasive. For those who have not yet 
had the opportunity to review this important document, permit me to 
briefly lay out the analysis set forth in the memorandum that must lead 
any reasoned observer to conclude that this Executive order is both 
constitutional and appropriate to the President's authority.
  The leading case on the comparative powers of the executive branch 
and the legislative branch is Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. versus 
Sawyer, also known as the steel seizure case.
  This case is something that everyone in this body who is a lawyer 
remembers studying from law school. It still stands as an enormously 
important, defining case in terms of executive authority.
  In late 1951, the Nation's steel production was threatened by a labor 
dispute. President Truman sought to resolve the dispute by seizing most 
of the Nation's steel mills. He justified his action by claiming that 
steel was an indispensable component of the materials necessary to 
prosecute the Korean war. In his view, any steel strike threatened the 
national defense.
  The Supreme Court's decision in the steel seizure case began with the 
premise that--

       The President's power, if any, to issue an order must stem 
     either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution 
     itself.

  Justice Jackson's concurrence explained further that there are three 
zones of Presidential authority:
  First, the President's authority is strongest when he acts with an 
express or implied authorization from Congress.
  Second, the President's authority is less clear when he acts in the 
absence of a congressional grant or denial of authority.
  Finally, the President's authority is at its lowest ebb when he takes 
measures incompatible with the express or implied will of Congress.
  In the steel seizure case, the Supreme Court concluded that the 
President did not have the inherent authority under the Constitution to 
seize steel mills to resolve labor disputes, even in his role as 
Commander in Chief. Further, Congress, when it enacted the Taft-Hartley 
Act, expressly rejected seizure of corporate facilities as a remedy for 
labor disputes. Accordingly, without constitutional authorization and 
acting directly contrary to Congress' will, President Truman's 
authority was at its lowest ebb. The seizure of the steel mills, the 
Supreme Court concluded, was unconstitutional.
  Unlike President Truman, President Clinton did not have to rely on 
inherent constitutional authority to issue this Executive order which 
prohibits Federal contractors from permanently replacing lawful 
strikers. As the Office of Legal Counsel's memorandum makes clear, 
President Clinton has the authority to issue this Executive order 
because Congress gave him the authority.
  That is point 2 under the steel strike case.
  What was the second paragraph in Justice Jackson's opinion? Did the 
Congress give authority which was utilized by the President to issue an 
Executive order? Clearly, that is so in this case.
  The Federal Property and Administrative Services Act was enacted ``to 
provide for the Government an economical and efficient system for 
procurement and supply.'' This act specifically and expressly grants 
the President the authority to manage the Federal procurement system to 
guarantee efficiency and economy. Permit me to quote directly from 
section 486(a) of the procurement law:

       The President may prescribe such policies and directives, 
     not inconsistent with the provisions of this act, as he shall 
     deem necessary to effectuate the provisions of said act.

  In sum, it is not simply the President's right--it is his 
responsibility--to do whatever is necessary to promote economical and 
efficient procurement.
  Every court to consider the question has concluded that section 
486(a)--the section I have just read--grants the President a broad 
scope of authority. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of 
Columbia, interpreting section 486(a), emphasized that:

       ``Economy'' and ``efficiency'' are not narrow terms: They 
     encompass those factors like price, quality, suitability, and 
     availability of goods or services that are involved in
      all acquisition decisions.

  President Clinton understood these boundaries when he issued this 
Executive order. The preamble to the Executive order makes abundantly 
clear that the state of a Federal contractor's labor-management 
relations directly affects the cost, quality, and timely availability 
of the goods and services paid for by the taxpayers. Specifically, the 
Executive order finds that ``Strikes involving permanent replacement 
workers are longer in duration than other strikes.''
  That is in the Executive order, and last Friday I took a short period 
of time on the Senate floor to review what has been happening with 
regard to strikes since 1935, what happened in the MacKay case, and how 
the annual number of strikes has increased, and increased dramatically 
in terms of both the numbers and also the length of those strikes.
  The Executive order continues:

       In addition, the use of permanent replacements can change a 
     limited dispute into a broader, more contentious struggle, 
     thereby exacerbating the problems that initially led to the 
     strike.
       By permanently replacing its workers, an employer loses the 
     accumulated knowledge, experience, skill, and expertise of 
     its incumbent employees. These circumstances then adversely 
     affect the businesses and entities, such as the Federal 
     Government, which rely on that employer to provide high 
     quality and reliable goods or services.
  That is the end of the quote of the Executive order.
  The Office of Legal Counsel is plainly correct when it stated in its 
memorandum:

       We believe that these findings state the necessary 
     reasonable relation between the procedures instituted by the 
     order and achievement of the goal of economy and efficiency.

  Mr. President, compare the detailed findings in this Executive order 
with Executive Order No. 12800, issued by President Bush to require 
Federal contractors to post a notice that workers are not required to 
join unions. The only finding in that Executive order is a conclusory 
statement that President Bush's order would ``promote harmonious 
relations in the workplace for purposes of ensuring the economical and 
efficient administration and completion of Government contracts.''
  That is all there is, Mr. President. And I cannot recall any 
Republican Senator taking to the floor after the Executive order was 
issued to complain that President Bush had usurped Congress' authority, 
had attempted an end run around Congress.
  Some of the corporate lobbyists and lawyers that have complained 
about President Clinton's Executive order might attempt to argue that 
Congress has spoken on the question of
 permanent replacements. In the words of the steel seizure case, they 
are attempting to show that President Clinton's Executive order is an 
act directly contrary to Congress' express or implied will.
  [[Page S3839]] The fact is that the House of Representatives 
overwhelmingly passed legislation that would have prohibited all 
employers--not just Federal contractors--from using permanent 
replacement workers. This body never got the chance to vote on the 
striker replacement legislation. A majority of Senators were ready to 
enact a bill that prohibited all employers from using permanent 
replacements. But a handful of Senators from the other side of the 
aisle filibustered that legislation. They never permitted it to come to 
a vote. Mr. President, that happened not once, but twice. If Congress 
has expressed any view on this subject, it has expressed overwhelming 
support for the President's ban on the use of permanent replacements.
  Mr. President, this Executive order is a lawful and necessary 
exercise of the authority delegated to the President by Congress to 
effectuate the purposes of our Government's procurement laws. It is 
consistent with past Presidential practice and legal precedent. This 
Executive order is an appropriate exercise of the President's Executive 
authority.
  Mr. President, we have over these last few days spelled out in 
careful detail the legal justification and rationale for the issuing of 
the Executive order. We have analyzed the impact of the Executive order 
and reviewed what has been happening in terms of labor-management 
relations over the period of the last 10 or 15 years. We have drawn 
conclusions based upon those strikes and what is happening in the real 
world in terms of labor-management relations, about how the public's 
interest would be served by this action.
  I believe it is sound and wise public policy. I hope that the Senate 
will uphold it.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kempthorne). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CONRAD. 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. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask to be able to proceed as in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Conrad] is recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. Conrad pertaining to the introduction of S. 542 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will please call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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