[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 118 (Thursday, July 20, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10416-S10419]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST--H.R. 1944

  Mr. MACK. Mr. President, I have a consent agreement that has been 
approved on both sides of the aisle on a matter other than this bill.
  I ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the 
legislative appropriations bill, the Senate turn to 

[[Page S10417]]
the consideration of H.R. 1944 and it be considered under the following 
agreement:
  One amendment in order to be offered by Senators Wellstone and 
Moseley-Braun regarding Education Funding/Job Training and LIHEAP, on 
which there be a division, and each of the two divisions be limited to 
1 hour, to be equally divided in the usual form with all time being 
used tonight except for 30 minutes under the control of Senator 
Wellstone; and that at 10:20 a.m. the managers be recognized to utilize 
10 minutes for debate to be followed by Senator Wellstone to be 
recognize for his 30 minutes of debate, to be followed by a vote on a 
motion to table the first Wellstone division, and that following that 
vote, the majority leader be recognized to place the bill on the 
Calendar, and if that action is not exercised, the Senate then proceed 
immediately to a vote on a motion to table the second Wellstone 
division and that following that vote the majority leader be recognized 
to exercise the same right with respect to placing the bill on the 
Calendar, and if that action is not utilized the Senate proceed 
immediately to a vote on passage of H.R. 1944.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Reserving the right to object.
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. One minute, 6 seconds.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I want to thank all of my colleagues who have come to 
the floor tonight to speak so eloquently for equal opportunity.
  I yield my remaining time to the Senator from Maine, Senator Cohen.
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, at the heart of the amendment of the 
Senator from Texas is that everything should be decided on merit. That 
makes the assumption that we are all starting off on a level playing 
field. That makes the assumption that we all have equal opportunity and 
we are born with that equal opportunity.
  That completely ignores what is a reality of our lives--that not 
everybody has an equal opportunity, not everyone has equal access to 
education, not everyone has the same opportunity to break through 
various barriers.
  There is the assumption that everything is decided on merit. If that 
is the case, why do we have laws against monopolies? Why do we just not 
say the company that gets the biggest, that provides the most for the 
least should prevail in every case? Why do we need to break up 
monopolies if everything is to be decided on merit?
  We have law to prevent that because we understand that not everyone 
is treated equally in the marketplace.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas has 3 minutes and 20 
seconds.
  Mr. GRAMM. Let me begin with the last point. No one has ever argued, 
nor does anyone believe, that any two people are born equal. No one 
believes that the playing field is level.
  If the mother of the Senator from Maine loved him and my mother did 
not love me, no law can ever make us equal. I do not know how much 
property the father of the Senator from Maine owned when he was born as 
compared to any other Member. Society cannot guarantee equality, except 
in one way, and it is what Abraham Lincoln called a fair chance and an 
open way. There is no legislative remedy to an unlevel playing field 
other than leveling it in the future so that people can compete. 
Because there have been wrongs in the past does not justify making 
those wrongs the law of the land in the future.
  I believe that merit does not hold people down. Merit liberates 
people.
  I think we are down to a moment of decision. I want to use my final 
moments in defining what I have offered, a very limited amendment that 
says on this bill, this year in the Congress in congressional spending, 
that we will provide under this appropriation that contracts cannot be 
let on any basis other than merit.
  Nothing in my amendment limits outreach, limits recruitment, nothing 
in my amendment overturns an existing contract, nothing in my amendment 
overturns a court order or prevents the court from issuing an order in 
the future to remedy a specific problem.
  What my amendment seeks to do is to bring back to America, and in 
this particular bill, legislative branch spending, the concept of 
merit. The alternative which is offered by the Senator from Washington 
simply says that contracts have to go to qualified persons. That is not 
the issue, Mr. President. The issue is not that the person who gets a 
discriminatory contract is unqualified. The issue is that they are not 
the best qualified candidate. The issue is they did not submit the 
lowest bid or the best value.
  There is only one fair way to decide who gets a job, who gets 
promoted, and who gets a contract. That is merit. That is what I am 
trying to bring back to this individual appropriation bill.
  If you oppose set-asides, and a huge percentage of the American 
people do, then I urge Members to vote for my amendment and vote 
against the Murray amendment. The Murray amendment simply precludes 
giving contracts to people who are not qualified. My amendment requires 
giving contracts to people who are the best qualified. That is the test 
of merit. Not that the loser of the competition has no merit; it is who 
has the most merit. That is the issue.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Time has expired.
  Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.


                      Amendment No. 1827 withdrawn

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, amendment No. 1827 
is withdrawn.
  So the amendment (No. 1827) was withdrawn.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The vote is on amendment No. 1825.
  The Democratic leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I want to use just a couple of minutes of 
my leader time to comment on the pending matter prior to the vote. I 
will be very brief.
  Since the days of the New Deal, our Government's goal has been to 
expand opportunity, to give more Americans a fair chance to succeed, to 
open doors, not to close them.
  Affirmative action has been a bipartisan part of that goal for 30 
years, since the days of the civil rights revolution.
  President Johnson issued the Executive order which authorizes 
programs of affirmative action. President Nixon greatly expanded and 
strengthened that Executive order 5 years later. For more than 30 
years, Members of the Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, all 
supported the policy.
  In 1986, when President Reagan's advisors were urging him to repeal 
that Executive order, 69 Members of the Senate, Republicans and 
Democrats alike, joined in a letter to the President urging that he 
resist that advice.
  In 1991, 4 years ago, the Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 
1991, reversing Supreme Court rulings which undermined fundamental 
civil rights--and part of the bill included the Glass Ceiling 
Commission, to study why women, who are 45 percent of the work force 
are less than 5 percent of top management in the private sector.
  Just 1 year ago, the full Senate, Republicans and Democrats alike, 
without a single dissenting voice, voted to establish a Government-wide 
goal of 5 percent of contracts for women-owned businesses.
  If affirmative action was needed 9 years ago; if a study of women's 
workplace role was needed 4 years ago; if a Government-wide goal for 
women-owned businesses was a good idea 1 year ago--then those who now, 
suddenly oppose all affirmative action, all goals, all efforts to study 
the makeup of our work force, have a responsibility to explain to the 
American people what has changed.
  In fact, not much as changed. Our goal is a colorblind society. But 
identifying a goal and reaching it are two different things.
  We have not yet reached that goal, and until we do, the amendment of 
the Senate from Texas should be voted down. It is an effort to divide 
people, not to find common ground. It is a political effort, and it 
deserves to fail.
  I yield the floor.


                       vote on amendment no. 1825

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on amendment No. 1825.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeWine). Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.

[[Page S10418]]

  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Ashcroft] 
and the Senator from North Carolina [Mr. Faircloth] are necessarily 
absent.
  Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye] is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
who desire to vote?
  The result was announced, yeas 36, nays 61, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 317 Leg.]

                                YEAS--36

     Abraham
     Bennett
     Brown
     Burns
     Byrd
     Coats
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     Dole
     Exon
     Frist
     Gorton
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Helms
     Hollings
     Inhofe
     Kempthorne
     Kyl
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Pressler
     Shelby
     Smith
     Thomas
     Thurmond
     Warner

                                NAYS--61

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Conrad
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Glenn
     Graham
     Harkin
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Hutchison
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Nunn
     Packwood
     Pell
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Simon
     Simpson
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thompson
     Wellstone

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Ashcroft
     Faircloth
     Inouye
  So the amendment (No. 1825) was rejected.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. FORD. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, before the next vote, as I understand, there 
will no more amendments on this bill unless I offer the rescissions 
package.
  Mr. MACK. It is my understanding that there are no further votes 
necessary on the legislative appropriations bill, that if we were to--
--
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I do believe we will have a vote on the 
pending question.
  Mr. DOLE. Right. I mean after this next one.
  Is there any demand for a rollcall on final passage?
  Mr. MACK. No. It has been cleared on both sides.
  Mr. DOLE. If we cannot get an agreement on the rescissions package, I 
intend to offer it as an amendment and then have the Wellstone-Moseley-
Braun amendments and do it all tonight. We are not going to add any 
more time in the morning. We have been trying to put this together for 
3 weeks. I have been here a long time. I have never been so frustrated 
in my life. So if they want to stay here tonight and keep everybody 
else here half the night, I am prepared to offer the rescissions 
package as an amendment as soon as we complete the next vote. If they 
are prepared to enter the agreement we thought we had, we are prepared 
to do that. So we can think it over during this vote, and I am prepared 
to offer the amendment right after this vote.
  Mr. STEVENS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. STEVENS. I informed the manager of the bill I did have an 
amendment on OTA.
  I would call the attention of the Senate to the fact that the bill 
which has come to us from the House takes the money for the OTA from 
the Library of Congress, something that I wish to avoid. The House 
voted strongly in the Chamber on that matter.
  I think we have made a mistake, not correcting that situation to 
protect the Library of Congress. But perhaps we can do it in 
conference.
  In view of the problems that the majority leader just announced, I 
will not offer that amendment now, but I want the Senate to know I 
think we are making a big mistake to leave this situation where the 
House has voted overwhelmingly to maintain OTA but to take the money 
out of the Library of Congress. And we have not solved that problem 
here, in my opinion. I disagree with the manager of the bill and his 
solution. It is not a solution. The GAO has informed a lot of Senators 
here that they can perform the role of OTA, which in my opinion is 
ludicrous. But I will not offer the amendment at this time.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
                       vote on amendment no. 1826

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 
1826, as modified. The yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk will 
call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Ashcroft] 
and the Senator from North Carolina [Mr. Faircloth] are necessarily 
absent.
  Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye] is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
who desire to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 84, nays 13, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 318 Leg.]

                                YEAS--84

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Baucus
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Brown
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Campbell
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Frist
     Glenn
     Gorton
     Graham
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Johnston
     Kempthorne
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lugar
     Mack
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nickles
     Nunn
     Packwood
     Pell
     Pressler
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Shelby
     Simon
     Simpson
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thurmond
     Warner
     Wellstone

                                NAYS--13

     Burns
     Byrd
     Chafee
     Dole
     Gramm
     Inhofe
     Jeffords
     Kassebaum
     Kyl
     Lott
     McCain
     Smith
     Thompson

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Ashcroft
     Faircloth
     Inouye
  So the amendment (No. 1826), as modified, was agreed to.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. FORD. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. When it comes to controlling Government spending, 
nothing stands out in my mind more than the $1 billion that the Federal 
agencies toss out the window every year in energy waste.
  The Federal Government is our Nation's largest energy waster. This 
year agencies will spend almost $4 billion to heat, cool, and power 
their 500,000 buildings.
  Both the Office of Technology Assessment and the Alliance to Save 
Energy, a nonprofit group that I chair with Senator Jeffords, have 
estimated that Federal agencies could save $1 billion annually.
  To achieve these savings, agencies just need to buy the same energy 
saving technologies--insulation, building controls, and energy 
efficient lighting, heating, and air-conditioning--that have been 
installed in many private sector offices and homes.
  I know what you may be thinking, ``Here we go again with another 
crazy idea about how we need to give agencies more money so they can 
hopefully save money sometime in the future.''
  Well you are wrong. Why? Because there are now businesses, known as 
energy service companies, that stand ready to upgrade Federal 
facilities at no up-front cost to the Government--that's right, at no 
up-front cost to the Federal Government.

[[Page S10419]]

  These companies offer what are called energy saving performance 
contracts which provide private sector expertise to assess what energy 
saving technologies are most cost effective, provide nongovernmental 
financing to make the improvements, install and maintain the equipment, 
and guarantee that energy savings will be achieved.
  Agencies pay for the service over time using the energy costs they 
have saved--if they do not see the saving they do not pay for the 
service--it's that simple, that's the guarantee.
  This type of contract is used every day in the private sector and 
State and local government facilities. For instance, Honeywell Corp. 
has entered into these energy-saving arrangements with over 1,000 local 
school districts nationwide, allowing schools to reinvest $800 million 
in savings in critical education resources rather than continuing to 
pay for energy waste.
  Unfortunately, even though Congress first authorized Federal agencies 
to take advantage of this innovative business approach in 1986, 
agencies have been dragging their heels.
  To help get things moving, the Department of Energy recently prepared 
streamlined procedures to encourage their use.
  Now is the time for Congress to put the agencies feet to the fire on 
financial reform of Government energy waste. Agencies must enter into 
these partnerships with the private sector.
  That's why, today, I am introducing an amendment calling for the 
agencies to reduce Government energy costs by 5 percent in 1996. I'm 
also asking that agencies report back to us by the end of 1996 to 
ensure that they have actually taken action to reduce their energy 
costs.
  You know, we are often called upon up here to make really hard 
controversial decisions that please some and anger others. This is a 
winner for everyone. If 1,000 local school boards have examined it and 
are reaping the savings, I say it's about time we got our Nation's 
biggest energy waster on track too.
  With this one, simple reform, we will create thousands of job and 
business opportunities in every one of our States, improve the 
environment by reducing air pollution, and save ourselves hundreds of 
millions of dollars every year, at no up-front cost to taxpayers.


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