Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 2 (Thursday, January 4, 1996)

[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 2 (Thursday, January 4, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S41-S43]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

THE SHUTDOWN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Maryland.
I will be brief. I did want to conclude my answer to his question.
I think what we have is a very troublesome development in the way
that the Congress and the President are interacting. It seems that the
Congress is going to take the view that it only has a responsibility to
enact a Defense bill, that other bills can go their own way--and, of
course, its own appropriation, the legislative appropriation bill--and
it is up to the President to try to get the others enacted. If that is
the case, then you have essentially a hostage-taking or a standoff,
which I think is very destructive of the system of Government as it was
intended.

This hostage-taking can be a two-way street. Hostage-taking begets
more hostage-taking. As I indicated before, the President would be ill-
advised, in my opinion, if these are going to be the ground rules for
the interaction with the Congress, to sign a legislative appropriations
bill in this new session of Congress until all appropriations bills for
the executive branch have been signed and put into law.
I am also greatly concerned that we are not going to be able to get
good cooperation between the Legislature and the President on doing a
Defense appropriation bill. If, as Congressman Livingston points out,
once the President signs the Defense appropriations bill, the Congress
is then absolved from the responsibility to work with the President on
getting the other appropriations bills signed, that, to me, is a very
troublesome situation, which I take as a great problem for all of us.
Mr. President, I appreciate the chance to respond, and I hope that a
reasonable resolution of these problems can be found. I thank the
Senator from Maryland for the time.
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I briefly want to add to the comments of
the Senator from New Mexico on this particular matter. To make our
constitutional system work requires, I believe, a certain amount of
restraint and good judgment on the part of all decisionmakers. It must
be an essential premise of our system that one is not willing to
subvert everything, in effect to bring the whole building crashing
down, in order to get your way. I never understood democracy to work
that way. There has to be a certain amount of accommodation. Obviously,
the basic functions of Government should continue. Are we to reach a
state of affairs where every time there is a sharp policy difference--
and people can obviously hold sharply different opinions--that for one
side to gain its way, it brings the Government to a halt and inflicts
all of this harm that is being felt across the country?
I ask unanimous consent that a Washington Post story giving examples
of such harm be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. SARBANES. The headline is: ``Day 19: Federal Siege Takes Public,
Private Hostages.''
It says:

This is no way to do business, obviously. There is no reason to it.
It does not make common sense. There is a tremendous ripple effect
throughout the private sector of people dependent on Federal contracts
and Federal activities. Needlessly and harmfully the shutdown is
resulting in laying off people in the private as well as the public
sector.
The distinguished Senator from Virginia, in his comments earlier,
made reference to one such occurrence about which he had received
notice only this morning. Currently half a million Federal workers are
coming to work and not getting a paycheck. Another quarter of a million
have been furloughed and are not getting paychecks. Workers in the
private sector now are not going to get paychecks. How is it
anticipated that people will be able to handle this situation?

The Federal workers are told that once they go back, they will be
paid. But who can bridge the intervening period? Unfortunately, there
may be a lack of sensitivity in the Congress because, many Members have
significant economic means and, therefore, the loss of a paycheck--
which is not happening for them--does not really place a burden upon
them. They can handle that situation. But most people are not so well
situated. Whether they work for the Federal Government or whether they
are in the private sector, they

[[Page S42]]
need a regular paycheck in order to meet their obligations, such as
mortgage payments, car payments, and school payments.
Nearly half of the Federal employees--46 percent--make less than
$35,000 a year. Three quarters of all Federal employees make less than
$50,000 a year. Less than 1 percent--six-tenths of 1 percent of all
Federal employees--make over $100,000 a year. Members of Congress make
more than that. Close to 100 percent of all Federal employees make less
than Members of Congress. Now, these employees cannot move from period
to period without a paycheck. We need to put them back to work.

The New York Times had an editorial this morning, and I ask unanimous
consent that the editorial be printed in the Record at the conclusion
of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 2.)
Mr. SARBANES. The editorial stated:

The turmoil and uncertainty created by vast numbers of
Federal workers not going to work or not being paid is
poisoning the atmosphere for progress on the budget. Too much
hardship has already been inflicted, not only on the 760,000
unpaid workers, but on millions of Americans who cannot get
visas, loans, or any number of other Federal services.
Congress and the President should reopen the government now.

I absolutely agree with that sentiment. There is a colleague in the
House, in the Republican leadership in the House, who said in mid-
November, ``You have a group in our conference who could not care less
if the Government shuts down. They will be cheering.'' What an
abdication of responsibility.
Do Members of Congress, as my distinguished colleague from New Mexico
states, think they have no responsibility for ensuring that the
Government continues to function and providing the basic services upon
which so many of our people are dependent?
The people in the private sector, some will go bankrupt out of this
escapade. They will go bankrupt. I have had people call my office who
say, ``We are not going to be able to make it. We set up a small
private business and things were working fairly well and now we are
confronting a situation where we may well go under.'' For 19 days now
we have been through this situation after the previous closedown of 6
days, all in order to try to bring a coercive pressure, a scorched
earth bargaining tactic, with respect to the larger issue of the 7-year
budget projection.
Now, that issue involves many difficult and complex questions and a
strong difference over what the priorities should be. But in my
judgment, it is an irresponsible and impermissible tactic to use the
closing of the Government, which has never been done before, to use the
closing of the Government as a coercive pressure in to achieve a
certain result with respect to the larger budget issues.
Are we going to descend, deteriorate into such practices in the
Congress, thereby falling short of meeting the responsibilities I think
we have under the Constitution? Mr. President, Congress and the
President should reopen the Government now as the majority leader
sought to do when he moved the continuing resolution and sent it over
to the House. House adoption of it would bring this crisis to an end.

Exhibit 1

[From the Washington Post, Jan. 4, 1996]

Day 19: Federal Siege Takes Public, Private Hostages

(By Rene Sanchez)

The partial shutdown of the federal government dragged
through its 19th straight day yesterday with one clear
effect. It took even more hostages.
Health officials in Nebraska, facing a widespread flu
outbreak, urged federal officials to reopen the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention to help them assess and
contain the problem. The federal Meals on Wheels Program,
which delivers hot food daily to more than 600,000 needy
senior citizens, is running out of money and may be partially
closed by week's end. The Peace Corps, also desperately short
of cash, began drawing up plans to recall some or all of its
7,200 members worldwide if the shutdown persists much longer.
In Mariposa County, Calif., home to Yosemite National Park,
which has been closed throughout one of its busiest times of
the year, the number of private-sector layoffs climbed past
1,600. Most are hotel, restaurant and gas station workers who
usually can depend on the revenue that they collect during
the holiday season to carry them until the summer.
One-fourth of the adults in the county are now out of work,
and officials there have declared an economic emergency. The
local newspaper has launched a food drive for those in need,
and radio stations in the Yosemite area are urging residents
in neighboring counties to drive over and do business there.
``Who's paying the price for this? Not Congress or the
president, but the average citizen,'' said Michael Coffield,
the Mariposa County administrator. ``All the money our
residents are losing is gone for good. Every day, it is
getting more and more dire.''
Ever since the shutdown began, President Clinton and
congressional Democrats have insisted that it would pose
significant hardships, and Clinton made his most strident
remarks yet on that subject yesterday by ticking off a
lengthy list of problems he said the government's partial
closure is causing Americans.
But some Republican leaders have countered by saying the
shutdown shows how large parts of the government do not
affect many Americans. Other Republicans contend that short-
term problems from the shutdown are far less important than
the long-term crisis an unbalanced budget will create.
Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich said that his department
has received more than 63,000 phone calls regarding working
and wage complaints that it has not been able to answer in
the past three weeks.
Federal courts have remained open throughout the shutdown
by running on filing fees and other miscellaneous funds. But
court officials are now predicting that they will exhaust
those emergency funds by Sunday. David A. Sellers, spokesman
for the federal courts' administrative office, said at that
point it would be up to individual courts around the country
to decide whether to close or to keep some of their business
going.
The Peace Corps also has stayed partially open during the
shutdown by using leftover funds from the last fiscal year.
That pool of money is now drying up. Officials said that if
the shutdown persists another week or so they may be forced
to recall volunteers who work in 95 countries, because the
agency will not be able to pay their living allowances.
``We're having to take a very serious look at that as this
goes on,'' said Andre Oliver, a Peace Corps spokesman.
The furlough also has begun to threaten the complicated
process by which scientists, universities and other research
organizations apply to the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) for money to finance experiments and other scientific
studies.
January is the beginning of a thrice-yearly cycle in which
grant applications are reviewed by committees of outside
experts, and then recommendations on whether to fund them is
passed on to NIH officials. None of the preparation for that
is occurring.
NIH also has about 2,000 grants that have been approved but
whose financing hasn't been provided to the researchers in
the last month. About half are multi-year projects already
underway, and about half are for new research waiting to
begin.
``We're all sort of teetering on the edge now,'' said Wendy
Baldwin, NIH's deputy director for extramural research.
``There's a whole cascade of scheduling in jeopardy.''

Exhibit 2

[From the New York Times, Jan. 4, 1996]

The Budget Scrum

For fans of political games, President Clinton put on a
rip-roaring show yesterday, as he charged right through the
budget rift that has opened up on the Republican side between
Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole. The new year thus dawns with the
surprising spectacle of two archrivals, Mr. Dole and Mr.
Clinton, trying to look like grown-ups while the Republicans
in the House insist childshly that the only way to apply
leverage on the President is to keep the Government closed.
More and more it looks as if the zealous freshmen are calling
the shots in the House.
Say this for the freshmen Republicans. In theory they are
just the kind of people the public says it wants in
politics--men and women of principle who have a lot more on
their minds than re-election. But zeal needs to be harnessed
to a caring practicality. In the current impasse, Mr. Clinton
and Mr. Dole have it right. The turmoil and uncertainty
created by vast numbers of Federal workers not going to work
or not being paid is poisoning the atmosphere for progress on
the budget. Too much hardship has already been inflicted, not
only on the 760,000 unpaid workers, but on millions of
Americans who cannot get visas, loans or any number of other
Federal services. Congress and the President should reopen
the Government now.
But it is also time for the White House to help resolve the
budget impasse by sketching more details of the President's
own thinking on how to achieve a balanced budget in seven
years, as House Republicans demand. Mr. Clinton's skill in
gaining political advantage from the current situation has
been impressive. But his tactics leave even his allies
confused on how much he really does want a compromise
balanced budget, as opposed to an impasse on which he can run
for re-election while defending longstanding Democratic
principles.
By all accounts, the long hours of negotiating over the
holiday weekend involved a lot of Mr. Clinton and Mr.
Gingrich discussing the arcana of Federal social policies
while many other people in the room rolled

[[Page S43]]
their eyes. There is no sign yet of real horse-trading except a leak
here and there. For instance, the White House might be
willing to modify its opposition to a cut in the capital
gains tax. The Republicans seem willing to scale back their
$240 billion tax cut. But the House freshmen and their allies
insist that they simply do not trust Mr. Clinton to bring the
process to a conclusion until they get a clearer signal of
where he would be willing to make concessions, particularly
on Medicare, Medicaid and welfare.
The freshmen militants, Mr. Gingrich and even the
Democratic leadership have the luxury of being dealt into a
game whose outcome means less to them than to Mr. Clinton and
Mr. Dole. With their eyes on the Presidential race, each man
is trying to calculate whether he has more to gain from
accommodation or recalcitrance. Mr. Dole has promised to
bring adult leadership to the White House, but he does not
look very adult if he cannot stand up to his party's kiddie-
corps zealots. Mr. Clinton needs to emerge as a President who
can stay resolute in the face of opposition; but at a certain
point the Chief Executive of a Government that cannot open
for business will begin to look weak.
Mr. Dole is right when he observes that Americans are
growing impatient with the budget impasse. Right now, Mr.
Clinton may have more to gain by holding out on the budget
while insisting he wants to reopen the Government. But there
is clearly a deal within reach, and the public will remember
who walks out of the wreckage with it.

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