[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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