[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 91 (Tuesday, June 6, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7746-S7749]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         THE ANTITERRORISM BILL

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I did not get the opportunity to respond 
to the majority leader prior to the time he made his statement on 
Bosnia.
  Let me say I am disappointed that the majority leader would come to 
the floor and make the statement that Democrats do not care about what 
happened in Oklahoma. I hope he does not mean that. I hope he did not 
really mean to say that, because that is wrong and in my view it is 
uncalled for.
  We care just as deeply as anybody on the other side about what 
happened in Oklahoma. I hope we do not have to hear a statement like 
that again on the Senate floor. We care just as deeply about responding 
to this issue, and we will respond to it. But we also care very deeply 
about our right to offer some fundamental amendments to this bill.
  Let me remind everyone this bill did not go through committee. This 
bill was not the subject of hearings. We went straight to the floor, 
brought this bill up on Friday, offered some amendments and took a 
week's break. If we care so much about this legislation, why in the 
world did we have to take a week off before we came back? Now we are on 
it, and this is the third day.
  Mr. President, I have worked on our side to bring the list of 
amendments down, as I said I would. We have gone from over 60 
amendments to, as I understand it, 15 or 16. We have come to a point 
where we can finish this entire bill--and we can stay in as long as 
necessary to do it--in less than 12 hours. We will get all of the 
amendments up. We will have votes on them and very short time 
agreements. We will finish this bill tomorrow at whatever time we want 
to. We can do it.
  Everybody can respond. We can make our political points on both 
sides, if we have to, but we are going to complete action on this bill.
  But let me tell you, if we do not have a right to offer amendments on 
this bill, of if in some way we are prevented from doing so tomorrow 
and the next day, and this bill is pulled from the floor, I want to put 
everybody on notice that we will offer it to the telecommunications 
bill and every other single piece of legislation that comes on this 
floor until we resolve it. So this is not going to go away. Our rights 
are going to be protected. I want everybody to understand that.
  So, Mr. President, I hope we can work through this and I believe we 
can. I hope that in the course of the next hour or two, we can work 
through this, come up with an agreement, resolve our differences on 
procedure here, and finally come to a point where we can vote on final 
passage. We can do it. We need to work together.
  I know patience is strained on both sides. But I believe we have to 
accommodate Senators' rights here, and a Senator has a right to offer 
an amendment on this bill, as we have attempted to do. We are down to a 
short list, and I believe we ought to work through the amendments on 
it.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, well, we had hearings on wiretap authority, 
and we had general hearings before the FBI Director Freeh. We have had 
numerous hearings on habeas corpus reform. We have had hearings on 
alien terrorist removal and posse comitatus. We have had a lot of 
hearings. But, again, I remind the Democratic leader that the President 
of the United States, who happens to be a Democrat, wants to get this 
bill passed. Does he want 16 amendments or 26 amendments or 36 
amendments? He wants the bill passed.
  You cannot have it both ways. You cannot criticize Members on 
weekends for not passing a bill, saying there are too many amendments, 
and saying he wants to cooperate and have 16 amendments. Members do not 
need 16. They probably do not need six. They probably do not need five 
amendments.
  This happens to be your administration, your President, who is taking 
credit for the antiterrorism bill, and the Democrats will not let it 
pass because they have to have all of their amendments. They have to 
have 16 amendments. Why do they need 16 amendments?
  This is an antiterrorism bill, not a gun bill and not any other kind 
of bill. We ought to pass it. We ought to pass it in the next couple of 
hours. We probably will not. We probably will not pass it at all. We 
will have a cloture vote tomorrow. If the Democrats vote against 
cloture, that is fine. Then they will have spoken. They will have made 
a statement on how they feel about antiterrorism legislation.
  If the President were on their side saying, ``Gentleman, we have to 
have all these amendments,'' I can understand. But he is on our side. 
He is on our side. He said he was last night on Larry King. He wants 
habeas corpus reform. He wants what is in this bill. He wants the 
terrorism bill. ``The majority leader is right saying there are too 
many amendments.'' We have gone back to our people and said they cannot 
offer these amendments. Offer them some other time.
  We will be in session for a long, long time. I was told we should 
have stayed here during the week. Do not give me that stuff. Sixty-
seven amendments offered by the Democrats, and I was told by the 
manager on the other side they would work all these things out over the 
recess. In fact, I asked the question. Let Members not come back on 
Monday and say we just got back from recess, we have not made any 
headway.
  It is very frustrating. I know the Senate is a different place. I 
know one Senator can delay as long as they can, and two or three 
Senators can delay for days and days.
  This is something that the President of the United States wants very 
badly. It is something I assume that the Democrats want badly. If they 
want it [[Page S7747]] badly, they will stop offering amendments. These 
amendments have nothing to do with terrorism. They were not in the 
President's bill.
  Why not get on with it and pass the bill? We have a terrorism bill. 
We can take care of habeas corpus and go to final passage or agree on 
two or three amendments on a side and get it done.
  We have taken the taggants, that amendment that the President was 
concerned about. We worked it out. Worked it out on both sides. We 
accepted that amendment and another amendment that we thought had 
merit, extending the statute of limitations from 3 to 5 years. We have 
done that. We will not continue this game. I do not care whether they 
offer it on telecommunications or not. That is a right they have.
  The time is running out. The time is running out for this bill to be 
on the floor. Make no mistake about it. If they want to do business, we 
will do business. If not, it is fine with this Senator.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, let me just briefly respond to a couple 
of points.
  First of all, the majority leader filed cloture before the first 
amendment was offered. I do not know what kind of good faith effort 
there had been to try to work on both sides to accommodate the 
interests that Senators have with regard to amending this bill. It did 
not appear to be much.
  Second, as I said, there is a very limited timeframe within which all 
of these amendments could be disposed of. Let no one confuse the issue. 
We are not trying to prolong debate on this bill. We are not trying to 
keep it from coming to final passage. We can do that tonight. We can do 
that before 8 o'clock tomorrow morning.
  All we have to do is work through the amendments. We have already 
agreed to a time limit. Indeed, we can have it both ways. We can 
accommodate all of those Senators who specifically said, ``I have a 
very important amendment relevant to this legislation, and I will do it 
in a very short timeframe, and I want to vote for final passage.''
  So, it is very clear. No one should be confused about it. No one is 
trying to delay it. If it is pulled, we will have plenty more 
opportunities to vote on this legislation on whatever other bills come 
up before the Senate in the coming weeks.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thompson). The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I realize the majority leader is very busy, 
and he has a lot of pieces of legislation he has to deal with and a lot 
of other matters relating to national responsibilities and the 
Republican Party.
  However, I want to point out to him, he keeps talking about 60-some 
amendments. It is down to 16 amendments, No. 1. No. 2, of the 16 
amendments, there are only 4 amendments that there is a problem with 
here. The four amendments relate to guns.
  That is what this is about. The President wanted wiretapping 
authority in this. We have an amendment for that. The other side does 
not want to get tough on those terrorists and allow the Government to 
wiretap them. I understand that. It is a civil liberties issue from 
their perspective. I understand it. But the President wanted it.
  The President wanted posse comitatus, but apparently some of the 
posses out West do not want posse comitatus change, so we will have a 
vote on it.
  The President also wants it in this bill. He wanted some authority 
relating to immigration that the other side does not want. It was in 
his bill. They took it out. I understand. That is one of the amendments 
in here.
  There are four amendments, five amendments, with regard to time 
agreements--the longest 90 minutes, the shortest 20--relating to habeas 
corpus. The President says he wants habeas corpus. He did not say he 
wants the Republican habeas corpus; he says he wants habeas corpus. We 
want to give the Senate the one the President wants, not the one the 
Republicans want. We want to debate it.
  So, look, the amendments we are talking about here, all of which have 
time agreements on them, all of which, on our side, have time 
agreements on them, are amendments--but for four of them--that the 
President does want or wants a version of them different than the one 
in the Republican bill.
  So I would like to ask this question: Why do we not have a cloture 
vote on those four gun amendments, because that is what this is about. 
Why not have a cloture vote on those? And why do we not move on with 
the rest of these? And if we get cloture on those four amendments, 
fine. No problem. They are gone. I am sure they will come back. But 
they are gone. I do not want them on this bill. I did not want any of 
these on this bill.
  But we should get something straight here. This is an interesting way 
to proceed. There was a bill that was brought up, not out of 
committee--which I understand and I am not being critical of--and it 
gets brought up on the floor, everybody not having not had a chance to 
read it, because it is a Republican bill that was not finalized on the 
day we started to debate it, and I understand that, too.
  Everybody put all these place holder amendments out there. There were 
60, 70, 80, 100, I do not know what the number was, a humongous number. 
So we stayed here late 1 day, Senator Hatch and I, to get a finite list 
so no one could add more amendments. So we get a finite list and we 
list them. And then the leader comes back before we voted on any of 
them and he files a cloture petition.
  Now, I realize this will be lost on the public, and I understand this 
is inside baseball. I understand this is the Senate. I hope the press 
understands it, though. Then the leader looks down and says, ``OK, you 
now have shown me your list. You have agreed this is a limited list. 
Now I want to go down the list. I don't like that one, that one, that 
one, that one, so I'm filing cloture. Gotcha.''
  Look, whether there is a time agreement, we walked out of here and 
came out of a caucus. I did what I committed to do. And the leader did 
what he committed to do. I came out here and I said, ``OK, here is a 
time agreement with these four. Can we move them right away?''
  I thought the Republican side was for it because they printed up a 
unanimous-consent agreement. All of a sudden, boom. We cannot debate 
them. Or we cannot vote on them. We have a Kerrey amendment. The 
President wanted the ATF involved. Apparently, the ATF is like holding 
up a cross to Dracula to some folks around here. He stood up and gave a 
time agreement of 30 minutes. He made his pitch on ATF, why they should 
be included the way the President wants them included. All of a sudden, 
there is silence on the other side, not a response, no question, just 
so we cannot vote on it.
  What is this, legislation by fiat? Now, look, if this is about 
getting the bill done, which I thought that is what the cloture thing 
was about, getting it done, in the 2 hours we have wasted, we could 
have disposed of at least four of these amendments already. We can get 
this done.
  But that is not what this is about. This is about making sure that 
the Republican bill stays the way they wrote it. And they are using 
legitimate procedural approaches under Senate rules to effectively make 
sure we cannot offer other amendments.
  As a matter of fact, one of the four amendments that are about to be 
offered relative to guns, I am voting against. I do not think we should 
take away the civilian marksmanship money. Why can we not even allow 
the guy to raise it?
  I tell Members, this is not about time, folks. Understand, this is 
not about time. This is not about anything other than making sure that 
the majority can dictate to the minority what they can bring up and 
under what circumstances they can bring it up. I suspect they would be 
very satisfied--I hope they would be satisfied--if they brought up all 
the amendments that would not fall when cloture was invoked, vote on 
them, and then try to make the rest of them fall.
  I cannot think of any major bill--I am sure there is an exception to 
this--off the top of my head, any major bill, that did not have 
nongermane amendments in a technical sense attached to it.
 I cannot think of any. It is possible. I am sure there are some, but I 
cannot think of any. And we are acting like this is some kind of 
unusual procedure.

  Look, we can give a time agreement on all the 16 amendments. It can 
all be [[Page S7748]] done--could have been done by tonight. It still 
can, if we are willing to stay in very late. We could be finished. We 
do not even have to get to cloture to get to final passage on this 
bill. But if there is another reason not to do that, I understand it. I 
respect the right of the Republican majority to deal with this under 
the rules. If they want to do that, fine. But, please, do not make 
anybody make any misunderstanding. There are not 60 amendments, there 
are not 50, there are not 40, there are not 20, there are 16 and 
dwindling. Four--five of which so far we have been told bluntly they 
will not allow us to vote on them.
  The one--let me be precise. Four we are told we are not allowed to 
vote on. And, by the way, the longest one has a 60-minute time 
agreement on it. The others have 20-minute time agreements. And one of 
which I do not know what they are saying, on the Kerrey amendment about 
ATF.
  I ask my friend from Utah, are we ready to vote on the Kerrey 
amendment?
  Mr. HATCH. Let me answer my colleague. I am prepared to try to 
resolve that amendment as I am all of them. When we appeared----
  Mr. BIDEN. We are ready to vote, Senator.
  Mr. HATCH. I understand. When we appeared down at the Cabinet room we 
promised the President, on our side, at least, we would not make this--
we would try to get it passed. I made it very clear at that time that 
habeas corpus reform would be in the bill and we were trying to satisfy 
him on it.
  I have not heard that he is against the provisions in this bill. If 
he is for what the Senator from Delaware wants instead of the 
provisions in this bill, I certainly will be interested in that. 
Because I do not think he wants to limit it just to the Federal courts, 
the appeals.
  Let me just say this. When we were there we said we would not make 
this a gun fight. We will do that, if we have to. We will face those 
issues on the crime bill. And we have succeeded on our side. We have a 
lot of people over here who are very dissatisfied with some of the 
current laws with regard to the right to keep and bear arms that we 
have personally gone to and said, ``Do not bring them up on this bill. 
The President wants an expedited bill. He wants to solve this problem, 
and, by gosh, we intend to solve it.'' And our people have not. We turn 
around and here we have the gun fight started on the other side, that 
is irrelevant to this bill.
  Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield for a question, just a brief 
question, a serious question?
  Mr. HATCH. Of course.
  Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator be prepared to move forward if we drop 
the four gun amendments?
  Mr. HATCH. I certainly believe we could.
  Mr. BIDEN. And enter time agreements on all the remaining amendments?
  Mr. HATCH. It is up to the leader but I certainly believe we could if 
we drop the gun issue.
  Mr. BIDEN. I ask the leader, will he be willing to continue on the 
bill if we drop the four gun amendments and vote on the other 
amendments?
  Mr. DOLE. I do not know if those are gun amendments or not. I have 
not looked at the amendments. I want to stick to terrorism. I want to 
see what the end result is, when we would finish the bill. But I 
underscore what the Senator from Utah said. I attended the White House 
meeting. Everybody was saying ``They are going to make this a big gun 
fight.'' We said ``No, we are not going to do that. We are not going to 
offer any of the so-called gun amendments.'' And then we have them all 
offered on the other side, or many offered on the other side.
  We say no. We accommodate the President. He wants to get the bill 
passed. The President was at the Air Force Academy and blasted Congress 
for not passing a bill. Mr. President, 67 amendments were filed by 
Democrats. We only saw seven of those amendments before Monday. We did 
not know where they were. We did not know what the other 60 were.
  I just suggest we are going to either complete this bill or we are 
going to have a cloture vote in the morning. If we do not get cloture 
it is out of here. It is gone.
  Mr. HATCH. Could I add one other thing in response to my good friend 
from Delaware----
  Mr. BIDEN. Surely.
  Mr. HATCH. My partner in the Judiciary Committee. We do not even know 
what some of the other amendments are because nobody has given us any 
language. But I think there might be a way of resolving this if we got 
rid of the gun fight and reserve that for the crime bill.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield?
  Mr. HATCH. We would like to see what the other amendments are before 
we move ahead.
  Mr. BIDEN. If the Senator will yield, they were all filed by noon 
today.
  Mr. HATCH. We do not know what Senator Kerry's amendment is. I am 
talking about Senator John Kerry from Massachusetts.
  Mr. BIDEN. No, my question was about Senator Kerrey from Nebraska. 
Are we ready to vote on that amendment?
  Mr. HATCH. I am trying to get that cleared on our side. The amendment 
I am concerned about is Senator John Kerry from Massachusetts. We do 
not have any language on that.
  Mr. BIDEN. If it is not filed----
  Mr. HATCH. You said you would get back to us on that.
  Mr. BIDEN. I am told the amendment was filed at noon.
  Mr. HATCH. The Democrats have 20 amendments. Before Monday we had 
language on only seven of those amendments. We certainly do not know 
what the John Kerry amendment is.
  Mr. BIDEN. Let me reiterate. It was filed, I am told. And, No. 2, of 
the 35 or so amendments Republicans filed, we did not have copies of 
any of those amendments either. I mean what are we talking about here?
  Mr. HATCH. I would like to know what they are and let us see if we 
can resolve it. If we can get rid of the gun fight around here and go 
ahead on habeas and some of these other problems that really pertain to 
this bill, sure we are going to want to go ahead. I want to go ahead.
  Mr. BIDEN. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President, if I may. I do not 
know whether I am making unreasonable work for the Parliamentarian here 
with this request. If I am I would be happy to be told so and I will 
withhold.
  Have all the amendments that are able to be attached to this bill 
prior to cloture--have they all been filed by 12:30 today?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All first-degree amendments had to have been 
filed by 12:30 today.
  Mr. BIDEN. I would ask, is there an amendment--or if they need time--
is there a John Kerry of Massachusetts first-degree amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Senator Kerry of Massachusetts filed an 
amendment, No. 1212.
  Mr. BIDEN. I understand that that is an amendment relating to 
firearms. And that would, relating to the list of the 16 amendments, 
make it five of them relating to firearms, including the one Senator 
John Kerry filed. The point being, it was filed almost 4 hours ago at 
the desk in accordance with the rule requiring first degrees to have 
been filed.
  The only point I want to make is there is not any subterfuge here 
that no one knows what is going on. We may not know what is going on 
because we did not go look, but it has been filed. It is there. We 
have, of the total of 16 amendments we are talking about, five of them 
relating to firearms.
  We are ready to vote. We can dispose of all these amendments 
including those five amendments I have just referenced. It can all be 
done and all finished before the cloture vote tomorrow if there is good 
faith to try to move. We are willing to enter into time agreements.
  What I would like to suggest, since we cannot enter into a time 
agreement on those five amendments, maybe while the Republican side is 
responding to Senator John Kerry's amendment--and a further 
parliamentary inquiry--I mean Robert Kerrey's amendment --what is the 
pending business?
  Mr. DOLE. There is not any pending business. We are in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Actually we are in morning business right now.
  Mr. BIDEN. What was the pending business prior to us going into 
morning business? [[Page S7749]] 
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Kerrey of Nebraska amendment, No. 1208.
  Mr. BIDEN. The Kerrey of Nebraska amendment 1208?
  Mr. Kerrey exhausted his argumentation on it and is ready to vote on 
it.
  Mr. DOLE. We are ready to take it.
  Mr. HATCH. We are very close to taking that amendment. I just have to 
clear one or two more people, and we are working on it. Let me suggest 
the absence of a quorum.
  Before I do, let me suggest let us work on this, let us see if we can 
get together. There is good will on both sides here. We want to get 
this resolved. But we just do not want the gun fight on this bill. It 
is a reasonable request. I understand the sincerity of people on the 
other side who do want it. There are people on our side who did, and we 
kept them off. We fought them and said you cannot do it. We told the 
President we would not do it. Now all of a sudden we are in the middle 
of a gun fight and we just do not want to do it on this bill. This bill 
is too important.
  Frankly, I think we can battle out these other things. The questions 
on habeas we will fight it out here on the floor and let the chips fall 
where they may. We have been willing to do that from the beginning.
  I see the majority leader wishes to speak.
  Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I wonder if the two managers might go off 
somewhere and try to see if they cannot put together something. Better 
than do it out here in the open.
  Mr. BIDEN. You do want us to come back, do you not?
  Mr. DOLE. It is like making sausage out here.
  It may be we can work it out. I do not see much problem with the 
Kerrey amendment. We might be able to accept that with some 
modification. But we want to finish the bill. I promised the President 
we would finish it before Memorial Day. I like to keep my word. That 
was not possible. But the President did not know it was not possible 
and he said some things I did not like.
  So I am going to finish this bill. If I do not finish the bill it 
will not be my fault. Because we could not get cloture or we could not 
get cooperation on the other side. That is his side, not my side. We 
are ready. We are ready to do habeas corpus and have final passage 
before 6 o'clock. That would be an antiterrorism bill. All these other 
things are going to be around here a long time, this year and next 
year. We can offer all the amendments we wish. This came to us as an 
emergency. This was an emergency. We were all called to the White 
House. We do not do this on every bill.
  This is very important to the President of the United States. He has 
been to Oklahoma City. He saw the need. He met with the Attorney 
General. He met with leaders of Congress and said, ``Let's do it.'' We 
did not say let us see how many amendments we can offer, who can 
outpoint each other, make some political points on some issue, whatever 
it might be. That is what we are about to get into here, and I do not 
think I want to be any part of that. I want to try to keep my word to 
the President. If we cannot, we cannot. We will do the best we can. I 
think he will understand. If he does not understand, I will write him a 
letter. But that is the way it goes.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, in response to the leader's suggestion that 
Senator Hatch and I go off, I am always happy to go off with Senator 
Hatch. What I would like to suggest is that in the meantime we move on 
an amendment that the President wants in this bill, the wiretap 
amendment, while he and I are off. We can continue to make progress. I 
just think we should debate it in case we do not even get close.
  Mr. DOLE. We are close on that amendment, too. If the Senator and 
Senator Hatch could go off somewhere for 10 minutes they could probably 
get back pretty much with an agreement.
  Mr. HATCH. We have been trying to get an answer to that one for the 
last 36 hours.
  I intend to accept that amendment.
  Mr. BIDEN. Good. I urge the amendment.
  Mr. HATCH. I have to check one or two more people. I am personally 
doing the best I can. It is an amendment that really would allow 
wiretaps following the criminal. In other words, instead of having to 
follow the phone they follow the criminal who might use multiple 
phones. I personally have no objection to that and think it is a wise 
amendment. The President wants it. I support the President.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I think----
  Mr. HATCH. But I have to deal with my side, too.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, my experience is not as extensive as the 
leader's and slightly more extensive than the Senator from Utah's here, 
but it seems to me we waste a whole lot of time working out whether we 
can work things out rather than just bringing them up and voting on 
them. By the time we get to vote on it, we are slowing things up.
  I have another amendment we can move to, then.
  Mr. HATCH. Will the Senator yield before he does? We have a bunch of 
pending amendments that we have asked you to accept. The Smith 
amendment, which would set a floor.
  Mr. BIDEN. We cannot, but let us vote on Smith. We are ready to vote.
  Mr. HATCH. We have McCain-Leahy. We have the Pressler amendment.
  Mr. BIDEN. McCain-Leahy is cleared.
  Mr. HATCH. Then I urge McCain-Leahy--oh, we are still in morning 
business. I am ready to move here. We have Senator Specter's amendment.
  Mr. BIDEN. We are ready to vote on the Specter amendment. We would 
agree to a 10-minute time agreement.
  Mr. DOLE. You cannot take it? You do not want to take it or you 
cannot take it?
  Mr. BIDEN. We cannot take it now so let us just vote on it. Look, in 
10 minutes--the whole thing is over in 25 minutes rather than spending 
45 minutes deciding whether we can take it.
  Mr. DOLE. We would like to take a number of back-to-back votes if we 
are going to do that.
  Mr. HATCH. We have the Brown amendment?
  Mr. DOLE. Why can you not take any of our amendments and we are 
taking your amendments? Because we are Republicans?
  Mr. BIDEN. We can take Hatch. We can take the Hatch amendment, and we 
are happy to do that. We are ready to accept the Hatch amendment. We 
have already taken the McCain amendment. That is two out of six. That 
is about what your average is.
  Mr. DOLE. You are getting better.
  Mr. BIDEN. The Pressler amendment; three out of seven. That is better 
than your average.
  Mr. HATCH. How about Abraham? Can you take Abraham?
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOLE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Snowe). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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