[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 132 (Tuesday, August 8, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11890-S11891]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                THE STATE DEPARTMENT AUTHORIZATION BILL

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I rise today as Chairman of the 
Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs to express my great 
disappointment that the Senate was unable last week to complete work on 
S. 908, the State Department Authorization bill. Perhaps ``unable'' is 
not quite accurate, Mr. President; ``prevented'' is closer to the 
truth. We were prevented from voting on the bill--in fact, prevented 
even from reaching more than a handful of the ninety or so amendments 
to it--by the obstinacy of the Democrat minority in the Senate.
  I strongly believe that S. 908 is more than just a simple 
authorization bill; it is a litmus test for our willingness to change, 
our willingness to heed the mandate we received last November to save 
money, cut bureaucracy, and make government more responsive to both the 
taxpayer and the times. S. 908 was the first authorization measure this 
Congress to reach the floor within required budget targets. Moreover, 
the bill proposed to reduce dramatically bureaucratic overlap and 
duplication of effort among several agencies by bringing those agencies 
and much of their personnel under one roof in the State Department. 
This reorganization of our foreign policy apparatus, a reorganization 
supported by five former Secretaries of State, would save over $3.66 
billion over four years.
  But despite the savings, despite the streamlining, despite the 
benefits to the exercise of our foreign policy, the forces arrayed 
against the bill joined to form an unholy alliance with one objective: 
stop the legislation. I think this fact was most clearly illustrated by 
this statement from an A.I.D. internal memo brought to light while the 
bill was still in its formulative stage:

       The strategy is ``delay, postpone, obfuscate, derail''--if 
     we derail, we can kill the merger. . . . Official word is we 
     don't care if there is a State authorization this year.

  From the very beginning, despite repeated invitations from the 
Chairman, the administration refused to even meet to discuss the bill 
or participate in the drafting of it. There was no compromise, no 
constructive criticism, no alternatives--nothing. Instead, they 
stonewalled, obstructed, thwarted and delayed. Secretary Christopher, 
who had earlier championed a plan extremely similar to that envisioned 
by S. 908, was muzzled by the White House and suddenly opposed the 
idea. The only active interest they evinced was to engage in a 
distortion campaign. They claimed that folding the agencies into State 
would mean agency programs would be run by State employees with no 
experience in the fields, while failing to mention the fact that the 
bill also provided for the large-scale transfer of agency staff to 
ensure continuity. They labelled supporters of the cost-savings 
provisions in the bill ``isolationists,'' overlooking the fact that 
we've asked every other department and agency to tighten its belt. They 
contacted countless private groups that benefit directly (and 
monetarily) from AID programs and forecasted doom and gloom in an 
effort to generate lobbying against the bill. They said the President 
had an alternative plan far superior to the bill, but never produced 
one--the first time in my memory that the White House had failed to do 
so. It became clear that, like much of what this administration says, 
it is only paying lip service to his pledges to ``reinvent 
government.''
  When it became clear that the bill was destined to leave the 
committee and go to the floor, the focus of the administration's 
efforts shifted to make sure that the Senators in the minority toed the 
administration line. Two attempts to invoke cloture--not to stop debate 
but to limit it to a manageable 30 hours--failed along strictly party 
lines. Only the distinguished ranking minority member, Senator Pell, 
indicated that getting a final vote, either up or down, was more 
important than obstructionism. Dozens of amendments materialized, many 
aimed at nothing less than delay.
  Mr. President, I am amazed at how quickly the Democrats have 
forgotten their own words; how quick they are not to practice what they 
preach. For example, there was this statement in the last Congress from 
Senator Harkin, who voted against cloture on S. 908:

       Well, it was obvious that after chewing up about 7 or 10 
     days of the August break that the Republicans simply were 
     just going to talk it [the bill being debated] to death. They 
     were going to offer amendments, talk on and on, and drag the 
     whole process out and never reach any real, meaningful votes 
     on [the] bill . . . the Republicans say no . . . [w]e will 
     not take the keys that we hold to gridlock and unlock that 
     padlock and open the door. . . .
       Madam President, I have served in the Congress now for 20 
     years. I have seen a lot of fights in the House and in the 
     Senate, some pretty tough ones; I have seen some pretty tough 
     debates and pretty tough issues. . .. But in my 20 years in 
     this Congress I have never seen anything like exists today. 
     This attitude of gridlock, of stopping everything . . . that 
     we have to stop things because perhaps the only way to take 
     over is to tear it down. . . .
       No, I have never seen anything like this in 20 years; the 
     sort of the mean spiritedness, the antagonisms, the inability 
     to give either side their proper due and to let legislation 
     move. There is nothing wrong with people to want to amend and 
     change, everyone should 

[[Page S 11891]]
     have their viewpoint and they should be heard. When it gets to the 
     point where people just adamantly block everything, then 
     surely this Senate and this Congress has become something 
     that our forefathers never envisioned. . . . But this is not 
     what our forefathers envisioned. They envisioned a 
     legislative body that, yes, would debate and discuss and 
     amend, but would do something and get something through. We 
     now have a situation where the minority side will not permit 
     that to happen. 140 Congressional Record S-13262.

  There was this from Senator Lautenburg, who also voted against 
cloture on S. 908:

       In my view, Mr. President, the answer is simple: the 
     Republican leadership simply did not want the Congress, as an 
     institution, to demonstrate that it can do the business of 
     the people. . . . In the past, I have encountered steady 
     opposition by Republican Senators who stalled for months any 
     serious consideration of the bill and asked for extremist 
     changes that would destroy its reforms. . . . And 
     unfortunately, in the Senate where the rules and filibusters 
     give the minority the ability to paralyze, we can see very 
     clearly the handwriting on the wall if we ask for a vote on 
     [the bill]. 140 Congressional Record S-14221.

  From Senator Boxer, another opponent of cloture on S. 908, we heard:

       Madam President, I am very disappointed that a large 
     majority of my Republican colleagues have decided that, 
     outside of routine business, they really do not want to 
     continue the work of this Congress. They want to stall and 
     run the legislative clock down. They would rather talk on and 
     on, even all through the night if that is necessary, to kill 
     legislation that I believe is important to the American 
     people. Madam President, the filibuster has a new best 
     friend: The Republican Party. They embrace the filibuster. 
     They love the filibuster. . . .
       [W]e Democrats underst[and] that you [have] to get things 
     done no matter which party [is] in control. We [do] not stop 
     legislation. . . .
       We did not come here to filibuster, we came here to work. 
     We have a can-do spirit in this country . . . not a no-can-do 
     yak-yak-yak through the night, stop the progress attitude. . 
     . . We are supposed to do the work for the people; the 
     operative word is ``work.'' 140 Congressional Record S-13400.

  Finally, Mr. President, we heard this from Senator Biden, another 
opponent of cloture on S. 908:

       I also find it fascinating to listen and hear about what 
     gridlock is. Let us talk about what gridlock is--my 
     definition of gridlock. My definition of gridlock is when you 
     have a clear majority of the elected representatives of the 
     American people who work in the U.S. Congress--Democrat and 
     Republican, House and Senate--when a clear, undisputed 
     majority want to do something and a minority repeatedly comes 
     along and says we are not going to even let you vote on 
     whether or not we are going to do that--that seems to me to 
     be gridlock, or obstruction. . . . Now, that is gridlock. I 
     am not taking issue with anybody's views on the floor. I am 
     not taking issue with their views, if they believe them as a 
     matter of principle and that is the only reason. There are a 
     lot of crazy ideas that are reflected in the American public 
     and the American psyche and the U.S. Senate. I have been the 
     father of some of those crazy ideas. So, I respect that. . . 
     . But the American people do not understand, nor should they 
     have to understand, the technicalities--such as with the 
     legal system and the complexities of the operation of the 
     fifth amendment and the fourth amendment and the second 
     amendment and the first amendment. They look at it and say, 
     ``Wait a minute now, this is right and this is wrong. Why are 
     we doing this?''
       One of the things the American people, I think, also 
     understand and view the same way is their Government. We all 
     in this body know any Senator is within his rights to engage 
     in a filibuster, to use the parliamentary rules to his or her 
     advantage to keep a majority from prevailing--and there is an 
     underlying, solid rationale for that having been put in the 
     Senate rules. Notwithstanding that, I think the American 
     people have had to wonder a little bit: Why is it that when 
     repeatedly, time after time after time, an overwhelming 
     majority of Members of both Houses of the U.S. Congress say 
     they want to do something, our Republican friends stand up 
     and say no. The party of no.
       Maybe the Senator is correct, that the American people do 
     not like the [bill]. I did not like it. So maybe I am with 
     the American people. But I did not think the alternative was 
     if I did not like that, we were not going to cooperate and 
     not going to deal with the . . . problem in America. I 
     thought that is what we were supposed to do. We disagree, we 
     negotiate, we debate, we compromise and we act, when there is 
     a majority that wishes to do that.
       The truth, Madam President, is that the record is 
     inescapable on what has happened to this Congress and this 
     Senate because of filibusters, obstructionism, and gridlock. 
     And I know that some of my colleagues on the other side of 
     the aisle have raised this issue in caucuses and are nervous 
     about the potential of this strategy because that is what it 
     is--a conscious . . . strategy to benefit their party at the 
     expense of the people. It is a strategy to forsake America 
     just to impact the elections so that one political party can 
     win; not so that America can win. . . . 140 Congressional 
     Record S-14627.

  Apparently my Democrat colleagues have very short and selective 
memories. The Senator from Iowa took us to task for offering countless 
nongermane amendments in an effort to slow bills down. Perhaps he would 
like to enquire of the senior Senator from Massachusetts why he took to 
the floor last week to offer an amendment on the minimum wage to S. 
908--hardly a foreign policy issue. The Senator from California 
castigated us for preferring to talk on and on, into the night if 
necessary, to kill important legislation. Perhaps she would ask her 
colleagues why after two days of floor consideration on S. 908 we were 
unable to produce anything more than several pages of Democrat rhetoric 
in the Congressional Record. The Senator from Delaware noted a 
conscious plan on our part to block all major legislation in order to 
benefit our party. Well. Mr. President, I wonder if that Senator would 
not agree that his party's stalling to death of S. 908, the Defense 
Authorization bill, Regulatory Reform--among others--demonstrates a 
similarly conscious plan? The Senator from Delaware noted that in the 
entire 103rd Congress, there were 72 cloture motions filed and 41 
recorded cloture votes, which he characterized as ``a proud, record-
breaking amount of obstructionism.'' Well, in just the first 7 months 
of this Congress--7 month, Mr. President--we have had 32 cloture 
motions and 16 recorded cloture votes. I wonder what synonym for 
``obstructionism'' the Senator from Delaware would choose to describe 
that tragic record.
  Mr. President, Chairman Helms has promised to bring the bill back to 
the floor in the near future. I hope that our Democrat friends will 
take that opportunity to prove me wrong, call an end to their 
unconstructive blockade, and get down to doing the business the 
American people sent us here to do.


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