[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 181 (Wednesday, November 15, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S17056-S17059]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE CONTINUING RESOLUTION

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, we should not lose sight of the fact that we 
need a Continuing Resolution because Congress has not completed its 
work on the fiscal year 1996 appropriation bills. The fiscal year began 
on October 1st and, yet, today, 6 weeks later, Congress has sent only 
three of the thirteen appropriation bills to the President that he 
signed. Congress sent a fourth one, the legislative appropriation bill, 
which the President, in mid-July, very unwisely vetoed.
  Be that as it may, in addition, congressional action on the 
transportation and legislative appropriation bills has been completed 
and they are ready to go to the President. Of the eight remaining 
bills, seven are still in various stages of the legislative process: 
Defense, Interior, Foreign Operations, Treasury-Postal Service, 
Commerce, Justice, VA-HUD, and the District of Columbia appropriation 
bills. The Labor-HHS bill has not even been brought up in this 
Chamber--6 weeks after the fiscal year began.
  One of the major causes of this failure to complete congressional 
action on these eight appropriation bills is the fact that virtually 
all of them contain controversial legislative riders, issues such as 
public housing reform, EPA regulatory issues, mining law reform, 
California desert protection, National Endowment for the Arts, prison 
reform, abortion, and rewriting the 1994 crime bill.
  In other words, instead of completing our necessary appropriations 
work, Congress has chosen instead to load up our appropriation bills 
with items from the Republicans' so-called ``Contract With America.''
  Now, Mr. President, this is my ``Contract With America.'' I keep it 
in my shirt pocket in all of my waking hours, Sundays included. It is 
the Constitution of the United States. It is pretty 

[[Page S17057]]
well-worn. It only cost 19 cents when I first gained possession of it--
this Contract With America--the Constitution of the United States. That 
is my contract.
  I have read nowhere in this Constitution of the United States that 
there is any constitutional requirement that we enact the so-called 
``Contract With America.'' I say it is ``so-called'' because it is not 
a legitimate contract. Any lawyer who has studied law, who has taken a 
course in contracts, knows that it is not a bona fide contract.
  There is no constitutional requirement that Congress enact the so-
called ``Contract With America.'' But we are required by the 
Constitution of the United States to enact appropriation bills and only 
the Congress may enact appropriation bills.
  The reason for the President's veto of the continuing resolution and 
the resolution to increase the debt limit was that the Republican 
majority in Congress insisted on including such controversial 
provisions in each of those appropriation measures. That is why we are 
at this impasse.
  It is incumbent upon the Congress to enact a clean continuing 
resolution and a clean debt limit increase without adding controversial 
and unnecessary legislative riders to either. If Congress refuses to do 
so, then the blame properly lies at the doorstep of Congress.
  It has been obvious for months that part of the grand strategy of the 
Republican majority in Congress was to threaten to shut down the 
Government and to force a default on our debt in order to coerce the 
President into accepting their misguided contract items and their 
misguided budget and Medicare cuts. No question but that we have to cut 
the budget. We all know that. And we will have to make some reductions 
in Medicare. But the cuts that are being proposed are, in my judgment, 
misguided.

  A leader of the other body has been extensively and regularly quoted 
in the media on the subject of a Government shutdown, as well as on the 
question of increasing the national debt ceiling. In his statements, 
that leader of the other body has shown a callous disregard for those 
Americans who are affected adversely by this Government shutdown, as 
well as for the consequences of the Government's being unable to meet 
its debt obligations.
  For example, on the question of shutting down the Federal Government, 
he has had the following things to say. The June 3, 1995, issue of the 
Rocky Mountain News quoted Speaker Gingrich as saying: ``We're going to 
go over the liberal Democratic part of the Government and then say to 
them: `We could last 60 days, 90 days, 120 days, 5 years, a century.' 
There's a lot of stuff we don't care if it's ever funded.''
  The June 5, 1995, issue of Time magazine contained this quote by 
Speaker Gingrich. I am quoting Time magazine. ``He,'' meaning the 
President, ``can run the parts of the Government that are left [after 
the Republican budget cuts] or he''--the President--``can run no 
Government * * *. Which of the two of us do you think worries more 
about Government not showing up?''
  The September 22, 1995, issue of the Washington Post attributed this 
quote to Speaker Gingrich, and I am quoting the Washington Post: ``I 
don't care what the price is. I don't care if we have no executive 
offices and no bonds for 30 days--not this time.''
  And on the question of increasing the national debt ceiling so that 
the Federal Government will not default on its financial commitments, 
the Washington Times reported on April 3 that Speaker Gingrich vowed 
``to create a titanic legislative standoff with President Clinton by 
adding vetoed bills to must-pass legislation, increasing the national 
debt ceiling.'' That is a quote from the Washington Times of the date 
of April 3, 1995.
  The same issue, the April 3, 1995 issue of the Washington Times, also 
included this quote by Speaker Gingrich: ``The President will veto a 
number of things and we'll then put them all''--Senators, you can see 
this coming; this is what is developing here; the prophecy is being 
fulfilled--``The President will veto a number of things and we'll then 
put them all on the debt ceiling, and then he'll decide how big a 
crisis he wants.'' So there you have it--the complete blueprint for the 
shutdown.
  And finally, the November 8, 1995, issue of Investor's Business Daily 
contained this quote: ``Gingrich has said he would force the Government 
to miss interest and principle payments for the first time ever to 
force Democrat Clinton's administration to agree to his seven-year 
deficit reduction.''
  So there should be no question in the minds of the American people as 
to why the shutdown of the Federal Government occurred at 12:01 a.m. 
yesterday morning. It is because the Republican majority decided months 
ago and alerted the American people months ago, called the shots months 
ago that there would be a shutdown and that they would create such a 
crisis--even though there is no reason for a Government shutdown. All 
Congress has to do to alleviate and remove this crisis is to simply 
enact an extension of spending authority for the period of time 
sufficient to enable Congress to complete its work on the remaining 
1996 appropriation bills.
  Yet, that is not what the Republican majority proposed in the 
Continuing Resolution which the President chose to veto. Instead, that 
resolution included what amounted to a 25 percent increase in Medicare 
Part B premiums and made even further deep cuts in education and other 
public investments. So, it is clear that the Republican majority 
created this crisis which it said would be created to coerce the 
President either to accept their wrong-headed proposals or to shut the 
Government down.
  The Republicans demanded higher Medicare premiums as the price of 
keeping the Government running. Making seniors pay more for health care 
is the one part of the Republican budget agenda they picked to do 
first. Higher bills for seniors. The vetoed Continuing Resolution would 
have increased monthly Medicare premiums on January 1, 1996. 
Congressional Budget Office estimates indicate that the monthly 
increase would be $11.00 above current law. That would mean an increase 
of $264 a year in Medicare Part B premiums for an elderly couple.
  Mr. President, I cannot for the life of me understand what the 
Republican majority thought they gained from forcing a Government 
shutdown at 12:01 a.m. yesterday morning by insisting on including 
these Medicare premium increases in the Continuing Resolution. The 
American people can see through this deliberately created train wreck. 
The November 13, 1995, issue of The Wall Street Journal contained an 
NBC News Poll asking the question: ``Who Gets Blamed? If President 
Clinton and the Republican Congress don't reach a budget agreement in 
time to avoid a major shutdown of the federal government, who do you 
think will be more to blame--President Clinton or the Congress?'' 
Forty-three percent of those polled would blame the Republican 
Congress; thirty-two percent would blame President Clinton; eighteen 
percent would blame both equally; and seven percent were not sure as to 
whom they would blame.
  And the percentage of Americans who are discontented with Congress 
keeps growing. Yesterday's Washington Post contained the results from a 
Washington Post-ABC News Poll entitled ``Battle of the Budget.'' The 
question was asked: ``There's a possibility the Federal Government 
might have to shut down in the next few days because the Clinton 
administration and the Republicans in Congress can't agree on a plan to 
keep it running while they work on a new budget. Whose fault do you 
think this mainly is--Clinton's or the Republicans in Congress?'' 
Forty-six percent of those polled place the fault of the government 
shutdown on the Republicans in Congress; twenty-seven percent fault 
President Clinton; twenty percent fault both; and two percent fault 
neither the Republicans in Congress nor President Clinton.
  The American people, then, are becoming increasingly disgruntled with 
this Republican-controlled Congress.
  Mr. President, how much time is there remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired prior to 
the vote.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I may proceed for 
not to exceed 7 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the Chair.
  The American people, then, are becoming increasingly disgruntled, as 
I 

[[Page S17058]]
say, with this Republican-controlled Congress. The American people must 
be asking themselves what this game of chicken is going to cost and who 
is going to pay for this fiasco. It is not going to be Members of 
Congress--who will continue to be paid in full even if the Government 
shuts down.
  Furloughed Federal workers by the hundreds of thousands will not be 
paid during this funding hiatus, nor will those who do contract work 
for the Federal Government. But, the President, and Senators, and 
Members of the House of Representatives, and Federal judges will still 
receive their full paychecks, no matter how long the shutdown lasts. Be 
assured, my colleagues, that that situation will not make our 
constituents love us any more than they do already--which is not very 
much.
  Mr. President, according to the General Accounting Office, there were 
nine occasions over the period from October 1981 through October 1990 
when there were funding gaps of 1 to 3 days. In other words, we had 
nine short periods, usually over weekends, when there were lapses of 
appropriations. Not one of these occasions approached the cost or the 
severity, not to mention the gross irresponsibility, of our present 
situation. Furthermore, I am deeply concerned by the strident tones 
surrounding much of the debate on this budget impasse. In the climate 
of violence and intolerance in American society at large at this time, 
the extreme rhetoric and incivility emanating from some of our national 
leaders seems to me to be most unhealthy.
  On the last of these occasions, namely Columbus Day weekend (October 
6-8, 1990), GAO estimated that the shutdown costs of seven affected 
Federal agencies totalled $3.4 million. However, the cost would have 
been much higher if a 3-day shutdown had occurred during a normal 
workweek. GAO states that ``the total cost of such a 3-day workweek 
shutdown would range from about $244.6 million to $607.3 million, 
depending upon whether revenues estimated to be lost by the IRS could 
be recovered.'' That is a lot of money that will be wasted--at least 
$250 million for every 3 workdays that the Government is shut down. 
This is a very expensive way to prove once and for all to the American 
people that the Government cannot perform even its most basic 
responsibilities. No wonder one hears so much talk about throwing the 
whole lot of us out of office. This impasse is like nothing that I have 
ever seen before.
  Mr. President, may we have order in the Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order.
  Mr. BYRD. This impasse is like nothing I have ever seen before in 
Washington. I was searching for an analogy to describe the current 
impasse in Washington today and I found it in an unlikely place. Guess 
where? The November 14, 1995, issue of the New York Times, in its 
Science section, carries a story about the behavior of the great 
spotted cuckoo. It seems that, in order to advance its territory and 
deposit its eggs without the bother of doing the work of building a 
nest of its own, the great spotted cuckoo resorts to creative 
extortion.
  It lays its eggs in magpie nests. If the magpies do not cooperate and 
hatch and raise the cuckoos' eggs, the cuckoos then destroy the whole 
nest, killing all the baby chicks and throwing any unhatched eggs out 
of the nest.
  The cuckoos run a kind of ``avian mafia,'' making an offer to the 
magpies that the magpies can ill afford to refuse.
  It appears to me that some in the Congress may have been carefully 
studying these strange habits in their spare time. These disciples of 
the great spotted cuckoo have likewise not done their work and instead 
have insisted upon planting their very special ``eggs'' in the nests of 
the Continuing Resolution and the debt limit. If those eggs do not 
hatch or receive proper attention, these Congressional cuckoo birds 
fully intend to exact punishment by damaging or destroying our national 
economy. This is certainly not very civilized behavior.
  In the case of the cuckoo, it is described as ``thuggish'' behavior 
even among animals, by the Times. One thing is certain, Mr. President. 
The American people must certainly view our current situation as more 
than a little cuckoo. I daresay they are probably watching us with 
utter disgust.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the New York Times 
article be printed in the Record.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Nov. 14, 1995]

        Thuggish Cuckoos Use Muscle To Run Egg Protection Racket

                         (By Carol Kaesuk Yoon)

       Biologists had ranked them among nature's most laughable 
     dupes, inexplicably gullible bird-brains that dutifully 
     tended eggs dumped into their nests by other bird species. 
     For evolutionary biologists, the many species of birds that 
     so devote themselves to a stranger's young have been 
     something of a mystery, for even when the dumped eggs and 
     young look nothing like their own, the birds often favor the 
     parasites' offspring at the expense of their own.
       Now a study in the journal Evolution offers the first 
     evidence to support what had been considered an unlikely 
     explanation for this behavior. Biologists studying magpies 
     and the great spotted cuckoos that dump eggs into their nests 
     say that the magpie hosts are not dupes at all, but have been 
     forced into cooperation by an avian extortion scheme.
       The researchers say the cuckoos return periodically to 
     check on the nests in which they have left their eggs. If 
     they find their young safely there, all is well. If their 
     eggs are missing, tossed out by uncooperative magpie hosts, 
     the cuckoos destroy the nest, killing the remaining egg or 
     chick inhabitants wholesale. In other words, the magpies are 
     members of an avian mafia.
       ``It's an offer that the birds cannot refuse,'' said Dr. 
     Anders Moller, an evolutionary biologist at Copenhagen 
     University in Denmark and an author of the study. ``It's just 
     the same as in the human mafia. If you resist, it turns out 
     very badly.''
       Dr. Timothy Clutton-Brock, an evolutionary biologist at 
     Cambridge University in England, called the paper ``extremely 
     interesting,'' saying that such punishment behaviors were 
     probably widespread among animals for keeping others in line. 
     He describes this apparently reliable and adaptive strategy 
     for living as: ``You do something nasty to me, I do something 
     even nastier to you.''
       Raising a nest full of eggs and chicks is difficult, time-
     consuming work. There is the incubating of eggs, the chasing 
     off of predators, the finding of food for so many peeping, 
     gaping mouths, not to mention feeding oneself to maintain the 
     energy to do all this intensive baby rearing. So cuckoos 
     might well be expected to have evolved all manner of tricks 
     to get other birds to do such work for them.
       But Dr. Manuel Soler of the University of Granada in Spain 
     said that he and his colleagues  did not believe that birds 
     engaged in such coercive behavior and had set out to 
     disprove the theory known as the mafia hypothesis. Dr. 
     Soler studied the great spotted cuckoos and the magpies 
     they parasitize in high altitude plateaus in southern 
     Spain. He worked with his brother, Dr. Juan Soler, and Dr. 
     Juan Martinez, behavioral ecologists at the university, 
     and Dr. Moller.
       To test the hypothesis, Dr. Soler and his colleagues 
     removed cuckoo eggs from 29 nests while leaving them in 28 
     nests. What they found was that in most of the nests that had 
     had their cuckoo eggs removed either the magpie eggs or 
     chicks that remained were later killed. In contrast, nearly 
     all the nests in which scientists allowed the cuckoo eggs to 
     remain were left intact.
       At the same time, scientists monitored nature. The great 
     majority of nests from which magpies had ejected cuckoo eggs 
     on their own, without the help of scientists, were also 
     attacked and their young inhabitants killed. Very few of 
     those magpie nests that accepted the cuckoo eggs suffered 
     such attacks.
       Such killings, like most rare and rapid events in nature, 
     are hard to witness. But the biologists say they are 
     confident that the attackers were indeed the cuckoos whose 
     eggs had been ejected. When removing eggs from nests to set 
     up their experiment, the researchers were often scolded by 
     cuckoos, which quickly checked the nests after researchers 
     were done. They also followed one female cuckoo outfitted 
     with a radio transmitter who returned to a nest from which 
     her egg had been removed and destroyed the contents.
       But most convincing was the evidence in the nests 
     themselves. For what the biologists found were pecked eggs 
     and wounded nestlings, all left behind by their killers. 
     While other birds and animals attack magpie nests, such 
     hungry predators do not leave their victims behind.
       By the breeding season's end, the magpies that accepted 
     cuckoos in their nests tended to produce more magpie young 
     than those that ejected them, suggesting that the cost of 
     noncompliance is high.
       ``The experiment they did is very convincing,'' said Dr. 
     Peter Arcese, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin in 
     Madison. ``People are going to have to take seriously the 
     idea that these nest parasites are more sophisticated than we 
     think.''
       Researchers say the data are the first to support the so-
     called mafia hypothesis proposed in 1979 by Dr. Amotz Zahavi, 
     a behavioral ecologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Dr. 
     Zahavi proposed that nest parasites, 

[[Page S17059]]
     like the cuckoo, might be bullying their hosts into accepting eggs 
     under threat of violence if they did not. But in the 16 years 
     since Dr. Zahavi's hypothesis was published, no evidence had 
     turned up in support of it.
       ``He's put out a number of ideas that people have initially 
     pooh-poohed,'' said Dr. Arcese, ``and later people have shown 
     that, in fact, they may operate.''
       Dr. Zahavi said, ``Obviously it is satisfying that a model 
     you created is found to be true at least for one cuckoo in 
     one place.''
       But at the same time, researchers note that enforcement may 
     not be the only reason that parasites like the cuckoos are 
     destroying nests.
       Dr. Arcese said that based on studies of cowbirds that 
     parasitize song sparrows on Mandarte Island near Victoria, 
     British Columbia, he and his colleagues had evidence that 
     cowbirds could also cause their hosts' nests to fail. But Dr. 
     Arcese says their studies indicate that the cowbirds may be 
     destroying nests, not to teach the song sparrows a lesson, 
     but for their own convenience.
       Cowbirds, like other nest parasites, must find nests into 
     which eggs are being freshly laid. In nests with older eggs 
     or eggs of unknown age, the host's young may hatch first, 
     ending incubation and leading to the death of the parasite's 
     egg.
       To avoid such problems, Dr. Arcese suggests that parasites, 
     including the cuckoo, may kill young as a way of getting 
     hosts to start another nest, where the parasites can leave 
     their eggs at the perfect time.
       Dr. Stephen Rothstein, an evolutionary biologist at the 
     University of California at Santa Barbara, while praising the 
     team's work as ``superb,'' suggested a simpler explanation 
     for the fact that many magpies keep the cuckoo eggs.
       While the eggs and young of many parasites look strikingly 
     different from that of their hosts, those of the great 
     spotted cuckoo are good mimics of the magpie's.
       ``It could just be evolutionary lag,'' said Dr. Rothstein, 
     describing an idea that has come out of his work with 
     cowbirds. That is, magpies may keep cuckoo eggs simply 
     because they have not yet evolved the ability to make the 
     sometimes difficult distinction between the cuckoo's and 
     their own. It is a lag that leaves the cuckoos winning the 
     evolutionary war, at least for now.
       Dr. Rothstein added that he also had evidence that parents 
     of nests from which any eggs had been removed, whether the 
     bird's own or a parasite's, would often desert the nest. He 
     said this could explain the greater rate of attacks on nests 
     from which eggs had been experimentally ejected as seen in 
     the new study. With eggs missing, the magpie parents might be 
     considerably less interested in tending and protecting the 
     nests, leaving them open to attack by cuckoos or other birds.
       To complicate matters even further, Dr. Rothstein said he 
     and his colleagues have studied the same parasite, the great 
     spotted cuckoo, in Israel where it leaves its eggs in crows' 
     nests. Doing similar experiments, they found no evidence of 
     mafia behavior.
       But Dr. Arcese said that more and more researchers seemed 
     to be finding such geographical differences in the behavior 
     of these birds. One explanation is that since both the 
     parasites and their hosts are long-lived and can learn, these 
     complex behaviors may actually differ from place to place, 
     depending on what they have experienced.
       At the same time, researchers say that both the great 
     spotted cuckoo and the cowbird are extending their ranges, 
     moving into new territory and encountering new birds. 
     Biologists say that with such changes going on, rather than 
     some studies being wrong, all may be right, with researchers 
     witnessing different stages in the ongoing skirmishes of the 
     evolutionary war between these parasites and their hosts.

                          ____________________