[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 34 (Wednesday, March 13, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1933-S1965]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  BALANCED BUDGET DOWNPAYMENT ACT, II

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.


                           Amendment No. 3479

  Mr. REID addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Will the Chair explain to the Senate what the order before 
the Senate is now.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] is 
recognized to move to table the Hutchison amendment.
  Mr. REID. I so move to table, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to 
table the Hutchison amendment.
  The yeas and nays have been ordered, and the clerk will call the 
roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 49, nays 51, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 30 Leg.]

                                YEAS--49

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Byrd
     Chafee
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Exon
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Glenn
     Graham
     Gregg
     Harkin
     Heflin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Nunn
     Pell
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Roth
     Sarbanes
     Simon
     Specter
     Thompson
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                                NAYS--51

     Abraham
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Bond
     Breaux
     Brown
     Burns
     Campbell
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     Dole
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Faircloth
     Ford
     Frist
     Gorton
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Helms
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kyl
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Pressler
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thurmond
     Warner
  So the motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 3479) was 
rejected.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. KEMPTHORNE. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the Hutchison 
amendment.
  The amendment (No. 3479) was agreed to.


                           Amendment No. 3478

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the Reid 
amendment, as amended.
  The amendment (No. 3478), as amended, was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Kentucky.


                      Amendment Nos. 3480 and 3481

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, earlier today the majority leader sent 
to the desk two amendments relating to Bosnia on behalf of myself and 
him. I ask unanimous consent that Senator McCain and Senator Burns be 
added as cosponsors to both amendments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the first amendment regarding Bosnia, 
conditions the obligation of funds in this supplemental upon a 
certification that all foreign fighters, including Iranians are out of 
Bosnia, in compliance with the Dayton Accords.
  Let me describe each amendment, turning first to foreign troops.
  Article III of annex 1A is absolutely clear--Let me read it into the 
Record. This is part of the Dayton Accords. It says:

       All forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina as of the date this 
     Annex enters into force which are not of local origin, 
     whether or not they are legally and militarily subordinated 
     to the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Federation of 
     Bosnia and Herzegovina or the Republic of Srpska, shall be 
     withdrawn together with their equipment from the territory of 
     Bosnia and Herzegovina within 30 days.

  Just to make abundantly clear so that there was no misunderstanding 
of just what we meant by this provision, the annex spells out who was 
affected by this requirement. The accord explicitly states:

       In particular, all foreign forces, including individual 
     advisors, freedom fighters, trainers, volunteers, and 
     personnel from neighboring and other states, shall be 
     withdrawn from the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

  In a December hearing before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee 
on Foreign Operations, Assistant Secretary Holbrooke reiterated the 
``high importance'' the administration attached to full compliance with 
this provision.
  Let me cite his testimony:

       It is imperative that the commitment made to have these 
     elements removed be honored. They have said publicly they 
     will do so . . . President Clinton raised this directly with 
     President Izetbegovic in Paris.

  During questioning he noted that Iranian and other freedom fighters 
were concentrated in the sector where United States troops are 
operating, ``so we are going to be watching this extremely carefully.''
  When I asked Secretary Holbrooke what happens if they choose not to 
go, his answer was absolutely unequivocal:

       Choose not go go? This is the Bosnian government's home 
     turf. This is the core of the Federation position. It is not 
     their choice. If the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina says 
     they will go, then either they go or the Bosnian government 
     was not sincere in what it said. They must get them out and 
     we will know if they are out or not . . . President 
     Izetbegovic has publicly committed himself, not only to the 
     public and the press, but to the President.

  The deadline for the withdrawal has now come and gone. January 19 
passed with Iranian's terrorist forces still operating in the American 
patrolled sector.
  Secretary Christopher acknowledged the administration's ongoing 
concern about this issue during an appearance on the McNeil-Lehrer Show 
on January 23. At that time, he said:

       We will not go forward with the equipment and training 
     unless they are in compliance with the agreement. They'll not 
     have a right to the reconstruction fund unless they are in 
     compliance with the agreement.

  At the time, I was reassured that the administration shared the view 
many of us have here in Congress--Iranian troops represented a direct 
threat to American soldiers and to American long-term interests in 
stability.

[[Page S1934]]

  Yet shortly after the Secretary's remarks, NATO soldiers raided a 
house near Sarajevo and detained 11 people with a cache of weapons, 
ammunition and explosives. According to a senior State Department 
official, news accounts indicated five were Iranians believed to have 
already left the country, yet they were clearly involved in plotting 
attacks on NATO installations.
  This past week, the Washington Post reported that members of the 
Iranian Interior Ministry are among the 150 or so men running vie to 
seven training camps. Western officials believe Iranian Revolutionary 
Guards joined by volunteers from across the Islamic world are engaged 
in building a secret security organization called the Agency for 
Investigation and Documentation.
  U.S. Navy Adm. Leighton Smith conceded in a recent interview that the 
forces were of immediate concern to the security of American soldiers 
and cited the loss of 248 marines in Beirut in a suicide bomber attack.

  In addition to our security concerns, Iranian forces and their role 
in the Agency for Investigation and Documentation directly undermine 
prospects for continuation of the Moslem-Croat Federation. In a letter 
to Izetbegovic, Federation President Kresimir Zubak said the Agency was 
``in direct opposition to the constitution of the federation and the 
law.''
  He, like others are deeply worried that the agency will be used to 
harass and investigate Izetbegovic's political opponents and over the 
long run, encourage the movement toward a separate Moslem state, a goal 
Iran has long pursued.
  There are a number of other disturbing signs that President 
Izetbegovic is moving in this direction. However, the immediate concern 
we should all have is the continued presence of Iranian Revolutionary 
Guards.
  In the last several days, administration officials seem to have 
abandoned the linkage drawn by the Secretary on January 23 between full 
compliance and economic and military aid. They are now asserting that 
we will only hold up plans to equip and train the Bosnians.
  This is a decision which is bound to backfire. Withholding military 
support and training will only drive the Bosnian Moslems closer to 
Iran, a nation unfortunately viewed as one of the few reliable partners 
during the years that the embargo imposed an unfair disadvantage on 
their government and people.
  Moreover, if not a part of a broader strategy, withholding only 
military support will call American credibility and commitment to the 
Federation into question. It will be seen as an excuse to reinstate the 
administration's long standing position opposing lifting the embargo. 
After all, only when faced with the imminent prospect of a 
congressional vote to lift the embargo, did the President make the 
commitment to move forward with a meaningful program to assure the 
Bosnian Federation receives the assistance necessary to achieve an 
adequate military balance prior to IFOR's departure.
  If we are serious about the presence of foreign troops in Bosnia, and 
I certainly believe we should be, then we must use all necessary and 
appropriate diplomatic, economic, and security tools we have available 
to press for full compliance.

  I believe the amendment Senator Dole and I have offered sends a clear 
signal that the Congress expects full compliance with the Dayton 
accords if we are to move forward with this $200 million supplemental.
  I think it is worth noting that none of the funds we have designated 
for emergency humanitarian programs would be affected by this 
amendment. In fact, $339 million provided in the fiscal year 1996 
foreign operations appropriations bill for a variety of activities and 
programs would still be available.
  We are simply withholding a portion of our total commitment to assure 
compliance with a provision of the Dayton accord which has an immediate 
impact on the well being of our troops and a long-term affect on the 
viability of the Federation and peace.
  The second amendment Senator Dole sent to the desk earlier today on 
behalf of myself and him, supports the broad goals and plans the 
President outlined in his Oval Office address announcing the commitment 
of U.S. troops. In separating the belligerents and patrolling the cease 
fire zone, he said the United States would ``help create a secure 
environment so that the people of Bosnia can return to their homes, 
vote in free elections, and begin to rebuild their lives.''
  While many of us opposed the deployment of our troops, we now hope 
that they succeed in accomplishing this mission. I think every one of 
us also supports the President's determination to assure the mission is 
limited in nature and fulfilled within the year. Above all else, we are 
committed to protecting the security of our forces.
  The amendment before the Senate advances these goals.
  First, it requires that the funds in this supplemental may only be 
made available for projects and activities in Sarajevo and the sector 
where Americans are assigned. It also establishes that in making 
funding allocations, priority consideration should be given to projects 
identified by the Department of the Army on the so-called Task Force 
Eagle Civil Military Project List.
  This list is a catalog of specific activities designating both the 
location and type of assistance necessary. The task force has 
identified a wide range of activities including the repair of roads, 
bridges, and railroads, and rebuilding municipal electricity, water, 
telecommunications, and sewer systems.
  Although costs have not been assessed for each project--which will 
clearly have an impact on deciding which to pursue--the report makes 
clear that every project has been deemed urgently needed.
  No other agency has been able to produce as comprehensive an 
assessment of Bosnia's urgent priorities. Since the administration 
deemed this supplemental an urgent emergency, designating these 
identified projects as high priorities will expedite the process of 
obligating funds and hopefully have an immediate, visible, and 
effective impact. My expectation is that by improving economic 
conditions in the American sector we will reduce the level of tension 
and stimulate popular support, which, in turn, should lower the 
security risks to our soldiers.
  I should make one point perfectly clear. This amendment affects only 
the $200 million provided in this bill. An additional $339 million 
appropriated in 1995 and 1996 are not subject to these conditions or 
priorities. We have exempted the early appropriations because much of 
those funds are for emergency humanitarian activities which we in no 
way wish to impede or redirect. To date, these short-term, quick impact 
efforts have been very successful and should be continued.

  It is my view that focusing the supplemental resources on the area in 
which United States troops are assigned and targeting projects that the 
Army has already identified as ready for funding enhances stability in 
Bosnia and strengthens the chances of achieving an early exit. While I 
have opposed setting a specific date for departure, I support the 
President's objective to complete the mission within a year. The 
effective administration of our aid contributes to this exit strategy.
  There are a few other provisions in the amendment worthy of note. The 
administration has indicated it intends to deposit $65 million in a 
Croation-owned bank in Bosnia, convert the money to German marks and 
extend loans to small- and medium-sized businesses to generate jobs and 
income. I have made my reluctance to support this idea clear to AID in 
large part because there are no clear accountability mechanisms to 
prevent fraud or abuses. Blank checks to foreign banks invite trouble.
  To solve this problem, the amendment requires the bank which will be 
the beneficiary of this substantial deposit to grant GAO access to 
audit the flow of U.S. funds. I am hopeful this will address 
congressional concerns about accountability while allowing the 
administration to test the merits of this approach.
  Finally, the amendment offers the administration leverage in 
discussions with our friends and allies over their contributions to 
reconstruction. Late last year, the World Bank estimated Bosnian 
reconstruction would cost approximately $6 billion. The administration 
testified that half of the necessary funds would come from multilateral

[[Page S1935]]

lending institutions such as the European Bank and the World Bank. The 
balance would be derived from bilateral donations, of which we have now 
pledged $539 million or roughly 20 percent.

  So far, the pledging by other nations, especially our European allies 
has been anemic. I think it is important that they understand that we 
will not shoulder this burden alone. Thus, the amendment requires the 
President to certify that the total of bilateral contributions pledged 
by other donors must match our level of support. Failing that test, we 
should suspend obligation of supplemental funds. Here again, the 
emergency humanitarian program will not be affected.
  Finally, the amendment makes clear that no funds may be made 
available to support building or refurbishing of housing in areas where 
refugees or displaced people are refused the right to return based on 
ethnicity or political party affiliation. As Senator Dole points out, 
it makes no sense to use our limited resources to endorse or sanction 
what amounts to a variation of the repugnant practice of ethnic 
cleansing.
  Mr. President, let me conclude by stating this amendment accomplishes 
three goals. It improves the operating environment where our troops are 
assigned thereby enhancing their safety, it targets the aid to support 
identified, ready-to-go projects improving prospects for success, and 
the combination of fulfilling those two goals contributes to achieving 
the third and most important--the timely withdrawal of U.S. troops.
  I urge my colleagues to support these amendments.
  I hope both of these amendments will be approved when they are 
actually submitted for a vote to the Senate.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Santorum). The Senator from Delaware.


                Amendment No. 3483 to Amendment No. 3466

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for 
its immediate consideration.
  I send it on behalf of Senators Kerry, Wellstone, Daschle, 
Lautenberg, Levin, and Mikulski.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the pending amendment is 
set aside. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Delaware [Mr. Biden] for himself, Mr. 
     Kerry, Mr. Wellstone, Mr. Daschle, Mr. Lautenberg, Mr. Levin, 
     and Ms. Mikulski, proposes an amendment numbered 3483 to 
     amendment No. 3466.

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       On page 3, line 8, add after ``basis.'':


                  community oriented policing services

       For public safety and community policing grants pursuant to 
     Title I of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act 
     of 1994 (Public Law 103-322) and related administration 
     costs, $1,788,000,000, to remain available until expended, 
     which shall be derived from the Violent Crime Reduction Trust 
     Fund.
       On page 29, line 2, strike all after ``(`the 1990 Act');'' 
     through ``That'' on page 29 line 18 and insert in lieu 
     thereof: ``$1,217,200,000, to remain available until 
     expended, which shall be derived from the Violent Crime 
     Reduction Trust Fund; of which''.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I have spoken with the White House, and the 
President agrees that the only course to be taken on the 100,000 COPS 
Program is an unequivocal and unwavering support for adding 100,000 
cops to our streets.
  The irony of all ironies is, in my view, that after the years that 
Senator Kerry, Senator Wellstone, and others of us have fought for this 
program, we heard repeatedly--I mean, if I heard it once, I heard it a 
hundred times on this floor--``This isn't really going to be 100,000 
cops.''
  I watched Charlton Heston on TV in paid television advertisements. He 
would say, ``This is a phony thing. It is not 100,000 cops. This will 
not produce more than 20,000 additional police officers. It just simply 
is not''--and he went on and on and on and on.
  I heard repeatedly from my Republican colleagues that all this was 
about was adding welfare workers. This was adding welfare social 
workers and no hard police enforcement.
  We have only been doing this about a year, and we now have a total in 
the United States of America--and I will be repeating some of these 
numbers, because they warrant repeating--totally funded so far are 
34,114 additional cops; direct hiring, 20,236; and the so-called COPS 
More Program, 12,678.
  Bottom line, Mr. President, is more than 33,000 police officers are 
on the streets who would not otherwise have been on the streets doing 
community policing and have already been funded.
  What is more, the results of the Community Policing Program, which 
all of my colleagues know now ad nauseam because the Senator from 
Massachusetts and I have been--for how many years now, I ask the 
Senator from Massachusetts, 5, 6 years we have been talking about 
community policing?
  Because of community policing, because of the requirement that in 
order to get a single additional federally paid local police officer 
your whole department has to be involved in community policing, the 
results of these additional 33,000 police officers have been leveraged 
in a way that was not imagined by many. It was by the Senator from 
Minnesota, and that is, if you had a police force of five cops in a 
small town and they are not involved in community policing, in order to 
get one additional cop that you need, you have to put the other five in 
community policing. We have leveraged six cops into community policing, 
where there was none before, by merely one additional police officer.
  Mr. President, there was only a total of about 525,000 local police 
officers before this began. There are those of us on this side, and I 
can speak for the President in this regard--and I seldom ever do that--
bottom line is we want to make sure there are an additional 100,000 
cops on the street when this is over, so we end up with 600,000-plus 
local police officers. As a result of what we have already done so far, 
community policing speaks for itself. More cops means less crime.

  You know, there is not a lot we know about crime. We all think we 
know about it. We think we do not have to know the facts. I heard 
someone say--actually I heard Senator Simpson say it--everyone is 
entitled to their own opinion, but not entitled to their own facts. He 
was talking about something other than this, but the facts are that 
there is not a lot we know for certain about law enforcement and the 
criminal psyche.
  But one thing we do know. If you have a cop standing on this corner 
and no cop on the adjacent corner and there is a crime that is going to 
be committed in that intersection, it will be committed on the corner 
where there is no cop. That is all we know. We think we know a lot of 
other things, but that we do know. So we need more cops.
  To cite just one specific example, look what is happening in New York 
City. More police devoted to community policing has proven to mean less 
crime. In the first 6 months of 1995, compared to the first 6 months of 
1994, let me read the statistics: Murder is down by 30 percent, robbery 
is down by 22 percent, burglary is down by 18 percent, car theft is 
down by 25 percent.
  In the face of that success in fighting America's crime epidemic, it 
seems to me it would be folly to go back on our commitment of adding 
the remaining 67,000 cops called for under this crime law to the list. 
As a former President used to say, in a different context, ``If it 
ain't broke, don't fix it.'' Well, the COPS Program is working. It is 
not broke. It is fixing things.
  Why are we doing what this legislation calls for, backing off of that 
commitment in both dollars and numbers and the requirement that local 
officials use this money to hire cops? That, unfortunately, is exactly 
what this latest continuing resolution proposes to do. Instead of fully 
funding the President's request for the 100,000 COPS Program, this 
latest proposal would slash the 1996 request of the COPS Program to 
$975 million, about one-half of the $1.9 billion called for.
  Let me go back and review the bidding here just a little bit. That is 
that, unlike any other program, we set up a trust fund to fund these 
cops. We are not talking about new taxes here. We are talking about we 
made a commitment, with the help of the Senator from Texas, Senator 
Gramm, over 1\1/2\

[[Page S1936]]

years ago, that we were going to cut the size of the Federal Government 
work force instead of letting it continue to grow as it did under two 
Republican Presidents with the help of Democratic Congresses.
  What happened was we have kept that commitment. We have essentially 
taken a check that we were paying the Federal bureaucrat--I do not use 
that word in a derisive way, but in which we paid a Federal employee--
when that person left Federal employment, we did not hire one; we took 
that check and sent it back home for folks to hire cops. We traded 
bureaucrats for cops.
  Now, here we are, with money in the till under that program, and 
effectively defunding by $1 billion the request for money for cops. Not 
only is the 100,000 COPS Program subject to extreme cuts, but the 
latest continuing resolution also makes nearly $813 million of that 
money that is supposed to go to the 100,000 COPS Program to fund those 
cops into what we call down here--and we think everybody at home 
understands it--we call it a block grant.

  You know what a block grant is? A block grant for this is like the 
old LEAA program, Law Enforcement Assistance Act. When I first got 
here, one of the first things I did--I remember I had gotten in great 
trouble with a senior Democrat named John McClellan from the State of 
Arkansas. I had the temerity to come to the floor and introduce 
legislation doing away with LEAA because I had been a local official, 
and I know how it works. We would sit around the county council 
meetings in my State--which is the largest representative body in my 
State in this particular county I represented--and we would say, ``You 
know something? We can save the county taxpayers' money.'' And a guy 
named Doug Buck, he and the county administrator said, ``Here we have X 
number of firemen,'' or X number of policemen in this case, ``on the 
county payroll. We'll fire half of them, we'll fire them, cut the 
budget. We'll tell the local taxpayers we're cutting the budget. And 
we'll take that Federal money for cops, and we'll rehire them. We'll 
rehire them with Federal money.''
  So what happened was all of us, as local officials, could go home and 
say, ``You know, we didn't raise your taxes. We cut your taxes, and you 
didn't lose any services.'' But what happened was you did not get one 
additional cop. No new cops. The community was not one whit safer, but, 
boy, we local officials, we loved it. We thought it was a great idea. 
That is what a block grant is.
  If you look at the language, I say to my Republican friends, if you 
look at the language closely under the block grant, the local officials 
can take this block grant money and they do not have to hire a cop with 
it, they can go out and use it for anything they think impacts on law 
enforcement. They can hire a public defender with it. They say, Who 
would do that? Well, the folks in Pennsylvania would do that. The folks 
in Delaware would do that. We both know it. You know why they do that? 
Because the local folks do not like telling the local taxpayers they 
are taking their tax money to hire a public defender. They do not want 
to do that. They know that is not a popular thing. But they know they 
have to have public defenders. They do not want to tell them they are 
taking the money to hire judges. They know that is not popular. So what 
do they do? They will take the Federal money and they will hire the 
public defender.
  I say to my friend presiding in the chair, if this prevails, I will 
make him a bet--and anyone else in here--Pittsburgh; Scranton; 
Wilmington, DE; my hometown of Scranton, PA, Democrat, Republican, 
Independent alike will find a way to make sure that locally they look 
like they are getting tough, but there will not be more cops.

  I support the public defender program. I think we need more judges. I 
think we need more protection. I think we need more social workers at 
the prisons. But let me tell you what I know I need: I need more cops. 
I need more cops in Delaware. Scranton, PA, needs more cops. Dagsboro, 
DE, needs more police protection. But that is not what will happen. So, 
$813 million that is supposed to go directly to hire new cops--do not 
pass go--go straight to hiring a cop, now can be used as a block grant. 
The approach just is not right. This so-called law enforcement block 
grant is written so broadly that money can be spent on everything from 
prosecutors to probation officers to traffic lights and parking meters, 
without having to hire a single cop. And that is not an exaggeration.
  I challenge anyone on this floor or back in their offices listening 
or Senator's staff who are listening, go in and tell your boss, ``Come 
to the floor and debate Biden.'' If you can prove to me that you cannot 
locally, with this block grant, go out and buy parking meters or get a 
probation officer, if you can come and tell me that, I will stand 
corrected. But until that, understand, all my tough colleagues, 
Democrat and Republican, who are getting tough on crime, you are 
sending money back home to hire probation officers. The same outfit 
that was worried that the Biden crime bill which became law would be 
soft and hire all these social workers, now apparently are concerned 
because you really are hiring cops. I guess you all want to hire those 
social workers. I guess that is what you all are about. That is what 
you want to be able to do.
  Now, if you do not want to do that, amend this on the floor and say 
the block grant cannot be used--cannot be used--for anything--and I 
will give you a list--from parking meters to probation officers, to 
courts, to judges. Did you ever ask yourself, those who are listening, 
why this block grant is so broad? Well, it is because, I guess, we do 
not like having all these extra cops.
  Second, the block grant has never been authorized by the Senate. My 
friends on the Appropriations Committee like to talk about how they 
follow the process. Well, let me tell you, we know the Judiciary 
Committee--to the best of my knowledge, neither House ever authorized 
this. Let us be clear about what is being done here.
  What this continuing resolution does is take the crime bill that has 
been passed by only one House, the House of Representatives, whose 
funds have been authorized only by the House, whose block grant ideas 
already have been rejected by the Senate. We have come at this a couple 
times in direct legislation. A couple of times I have come to the floor 
and we have debated it, and I have won. Not I have won, my position has 
won. Now we find it back in the appropriations bill. The block grant 
idea has already been rejected by the Senate and incorporated into an 
appropriations bill, so it is passed and funded all in one fell swoop, 
instead of people standing on the floor here saying, ``I don't want to 
fund COPS.''
  Mr. President, we are going to legislate by fiat like this. If we are 
going to do that, then we might as well do away with the committees, 
with hearings, with subcommittee markups, with full committee markups, 
with careful consideration of authorizing legislation and with 
legislating in the sunshine.
  I understand why you put it in the bill this way. You put it in the 
bill this way, in an appropriations bill in a continuing resolution, 
because then you can say, ``I tell you what, I did not vote to cut 
those cops. Not me. I voted for that big continuing resolution, but I 
had no choice. We had to do that. We had to keep the Government 
going.''
  ``It was not me, Charlie.''
  ``Honest to God, Mabel, I know your store got held up three times. 
You did not get the four cops.''
  Let me give you an idea here. I will not take the time to submit the 
chart, but I will just give you a list of the pending requests that 
exist. I will repeat this again: Already more than half a billion 
dollars is pending in requests. Remember Republicans said local 
officials would not want this money, they would not come and ask for it 
because they kick in their own money? I know my friend from 
Massachusetts, a former prosecutor, understands this one. What are the 
reasons we wrote it this way? We knew cops were more popular than 
mayors. So they go, and the chief of police would say, ``Mr. Mayor, got 
good news. We can get 75 grand from the Federal Government. The bad 
news is we have to come up with 50 or 60 or 70, depending on the cost 
and size of the jurisdiction.''
  The mayor always said, ``I don't know. I don't want to do that.''
  ``No problem. We will tell the folks we do not want the Federal 
money.''
  It happened twice in my State already. Guess what? The city council, 
county council, could not take the heat when the public found out they 
could

[[Page S1937]]

get the money and they were not asking for it. Well, guess what? Mr. 
President, 7,766 cops beyond the 33,000 are already requested and 
pending. That means the town councils, the city councils, the county 
councils have already sat down and made the hard decision that they 
will keep a commitment to hire a cop for another 5 years and have to 
pay half the freight in doing that. They did it.

  Take a look. In the State of Delaware, we already have something like 
120 new cops already. We only have an entire police force, if you count 
every cop in the State, about 1,500 in the whole State. We have some 
pending. In the State of Massachusetts there are 276 cops asked for, 
formally requested, ready to be certified. In the State of Minnesota, 
100 cops, 7 million bucks, an additional 100. The State of 
Pennsylvania, 280 cops. Say we turn this to a block grant. That will be 
like water going through your hands. You will not get 280 cops in 
Pennsylvania or 400-some cops in Massachusetts, and so on, because 
there will be other priorities.
  I, for one, happen to believe that is a terrible way to proceed, and 
that is through this block grant approach on COPS. That is reason 
enough for me to oppose the bill all by itself. If the Republicans want 
to change the crime bill, they have a right to try that, but we should 
do it the right way and have a vote on it. Wiping out a major piece of 
this most significant anticrime legislation to ever pass the Congress 
on an appropriations bill makes a mockery of the Senate process. The 
importance of the program we are considering, not to mention the 
perception of our institution, I think, demands better.
  Before turning to specific problems with the so-called law 
enforcement block grants, let me preview the specific success of the 
100,000 COPS Program. I do not know a single responsible police leader, 
academic expert, or public official, who does not agree that putting 
more police officers on our streets is the single best, more effective, 
immediate way to fight crime. Community policing enables police to 
fight crime on two fronts at once: They are better positioned to 
respond and apprehend suspects when the crime occurs; but, more 
importantly, they are in a better position to keep crime from occurring 
in the first place.
  I have seen this work in my home State of Delaware where community 
policing in Wilmington, DE, taking the form of foot patrols aimed at 
breaking up street level drug dealing, is turning the city of 
Wellington and neighborhoods into a combat zone. The efforts 
successfully put a lid on drug activity, without displacing it to other 
parts of the city.
  In practice, community policing takes many forms. Regardless of the 
need of a particular community, the reports from the field are the 
same: It works, it works, it works, it works. I am delighted to debate 
anybody who wants to come and make the case that community policing 
does not work. I will stand here as long as anybody wants and come back 
after I yield to my friend from Massachusetts. I will hang around for 
anybody who wants to make the argument to me that community policing 
does not work. I would love to hear it. I would love to hear it.
  I suspect no one will come and make that argument, and no one will 
come to the floor and say we need fewer cops, and no one will come to 
the floor and tell me, no, they do not want more cops in their home 
State. No one will come to the floor and tell me that they want more of 
this COPS money to hire probation officers. No one, I suspect, will 
tell me that.
  That is what this all does. That is what it does. The 1994 crime law 
targets $8.8 billion for States and localities to train and hire 
100,000 new police officers over 6 years. Now, we will all remember the 
criticism of last year's program, the COPS Program. Republicans in 
Congress got Charlton Heston to go and say there will never be more 
than 20,000 cops, and ``Moses'' Heston could not have been more wrong.
  As indicated, we already have 33,000 new local cops--not Federal 
cops, local cops--only after 1 year. Because of the way we set it up 
with the match requirement in spreading out the cost over a period of a 
year, the money will continue to work and keep working for cops on the 
beat well into the future. This is not just 1 year the cops have been 
at it. The progress will come to a screeching halt if my Republican 
colleagues have their way.
  The continuing resolution includes new enforcement block grants. They 
call it new enforcement block grants, which has loopholes so big that 
it would prevent all the money to be spent without hiring a single 
police officer--not one. Read the proposal. Money is sent not to the 
police, as it is now, but to the mayors. The money may be used not only 
for the cops but also for other types of law enforcement officers or 
anything that ``improves public safety.'' Moreover, the money can be 
used for other vaguely defined purposes such as ``equipment technology 
and other material.''
  Now, look, I am not trying to pick on local officials. They know what 
they need. They do not have to ask for a single cop. They do not have 
to ask for any of this. Let me point out, we are emasculating local 
budgets. As the Federal share of local budgets go, we are throwing many 
of our cities and States into chaos by our unwillingness to come up 
with some rational plan. Now, you are sitting there as a mayor; you 
already lost a significant portion of what used to be Federal funding 
for other programs, and now you have to make some tough choices. You 
have to make these really tough choices because you have less money and 
no growing tax base. Do you think you will put all the money into cops 
like we required to be done? What do you think? I wonder what the 
citizens back home who might listen to this think will happen? I wonder 
whether or not the mayor and the county executive and others, Democrat 
and Republican, would conclude it is better for us to spend this money 
on improvements of public safety because we need new traffic lights, we 
need new parking meters, we need new lights in the local playground, 
all of which are legitimate. They do not put a single cop on the 
street.

  Let me repeat, under the Republican proposal, the dollars can be 
diverted to prosecutors, courts, public safety, and public safety 
officials. In addition, the block grants require any money spent for 
drug courts, crime prevention, law enforcement, educational expenses, 
security measures, or rural crime task forces be taken out of the money 
to hire new cops.
  I see my friend from Utah just walking on the floor. He and I worked 
awful hard to make sure the rural crime task forces were funded and 
rural crime money--as I know my friend from Minnesota knows better than 
most of us here, rural crime is growing faster than urban crime, with 
less resources and training and capability to deal with it. That is why 
it is growing. That is where the drug cartels are moving. That is why 
the drug operations are moving to those areas. What do we do here? 
Right now, in the crime law that exists, there is money separately for 
rural law enforcement, separately for the drug courts, separately for 
all these things. This is the pea in the shell game of all the block 
grant stuff that relates to the money part of it. We are going to give 
you a block grant, give you more flexibility, and that is the good news 
if you are a local official. Even they like the good news. Here comes 
the bad news: Add it all up and it is less money overall. Less money is 
going home. A lot less money is going home. So they may think they can 
hire prosecutors and put in street lights with assets of hiring cops. 
But they have to do everything else they were going to do with less 
money.
  Mr. President, look at the language of the bill. Not one new cop is 
required. All it says is--I am quoting--``Recipients are encouraged to 
use these funds to hire additional law enforcement officers.'' 
Encouraged to use these funds. That is a very strong directive, is it 
not? Encouraged. That is encourage, not require.
  Mr. President, American communities do not need our encouragement. 
They need our help. They need more cops. We should not encourage the 
States to keep the commitment this Congress made to the American 
people. We should keep our word. We should keep our word. Let me also 
point out that this block grant will also force American law 
enforcement to wait for these dollars. It will take the better part of 
a year to draft regulations, preparing application forms to get these 
dollars out the door.

[[Page S1938]]

  When we passed the crime bill last year, I did something that the 
Attorney General thought was a little strange. Two days after, I asked 
for a meeting with her in my office, and I said, ``General, I really 
appreciate all your support on this bill.'' She was supportive and for 
it. I said, ``Now, General, we have to make sure of one thing--that you 
are able to reduce this application to one page.'' They looked at me 
like I was nuts. My two colleagues here who know a lot about this know 
that the cops at home only have to fill out a one-page application. 
They do not have to go to the mayor, or to some grantsman, they do not 
have to go through the Governor, they do not have to go through the 
State legislature, they do not have to fill out forms in triplicate. 
One page. One. The cop sends it in. Guess who gets the answer? The cop. 
The cop.

  When I told the cops back home this was going to happen, they looked 
at me and said, ``Joe, I love you, you are always with us. But come on, 
we did not think you would get this passed, but do not overpromise 
now.'' Go back and ask your local law enforcement people how 
complicated this is. All my Republican friends are real interested in 
making sure we do away with redtape and regulations. Well, this is a 
prescription for redtape and regulation. This is a prescription for it. 
If you want to delay it all, pass this.
  The implementation of the 1994 crime law stands in stark contrast to 
the typical scenario where you will have to go through drafting 
regulations, preparing additional forms, getting the dollars out the 
door, getting them to the mayor's office before they get to the cop's 
office. It is a stark contrast. Instead of requiring the burdensome 
application often filled with entire binders, one-page applications 
were developed. Instead of waiting until the end of the year to 
disburse the funds, the money was awarded in batches beginning only 
weeks after the passage of this law.
  So let us not destroy the momentum. Let us not destroy our effort to 
add 100,000 additional cops to protect our sons and daughters. I make a 
recommendation with some timidity to my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle. Go back home, find out every single cop that came to your State. 
You can get the names of the cops who were hired under the Biden crime 
law. You can get the names. And then just ask at the end of the year 
how many collars each of these cops made. Ask how many times the cop 
that was hired under that bill saved some young girl from being raped, 
arrested somebody who murdered somebody, broke up a drug ring working 
on the street. Look at the specific actions they took and then, after 
you do that, you come back and stand on the floor and you tell the 
people of your State and all of us here that it did not matter, that 
these additional cops did not matter. We down here talk in such broad 
strokes about things that sometimes we miss it. This is real simple 
stuff. If they hire John Doe or Jane Smith as a local cop in your town, 
your city, your county, just track them for a year. You tell me who 
would have arrested that person who burglarized your house or stopped 
it were it not for that cop.
  In a word, Mr. President, the law is working. The crime law is 
already paid by the trust fund, is already being paid that way. Let me 
just add that the $30 billion crime law trust fund that uses the 
savings from cutting 272,000 Federal bureaucrats pays for every cop, 
every prison cell, every shelter for a battered woman and her child. 
That is provided for in the crime law without adding a single penny to 
the deficit or requiring one new penny in taxes.

  The single-most important thing our communities need when it comes to 
fighting crime is more police. The current law guarantees that our 
money will be used for just that purpose. We should not abandon it, 1 
year after enacting it, especially in light of the spectacular results 
that have already occurred. We must save the 100,000 COPS Program to 
ensure that the money for police is used only for police. We should not 
retreat now on this tough but smart crime package that is already hard 
at work preventing violent crime across the country. We should not 
retreat on the 100,000 COPS Program that we insisted on just a few 
months ago in this Chamber.
  In conclusion, Mr. President--and then I will yield to my friend from 
Massachusetts--I want to make it clear. It seems to me an absolute 
travesty that we are out here trying to dismantle a law that nobody 
even attempted to make a case that it is not working. Not one single 
person has come to the floor of the U.S. Senate to make the case that 
this law is not working. I am anxious to hear and debate anyone who has 
that point of view. Yet, we are dismantling, and instead of dismantling 
it, we should be building on it. We should be dealing with an issue my 
friend from Minnesota knows about: violence among youth and the growing 
trend of violent youthful behavior. The growing trend is that crime is 
down in every category. The Senator from Utah and I are involved in a 
project through his leadership to deal with youth violence in this 
country. We should be spending our time on that. I should be spending 
less time having to constantly defend a bill that nobody has made the 
argument that it is not working.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Delaware, 
who, when he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, shepherded the 
single-most comprehensive and important crime bill probably in this 
century, or ever, through the U.S. Senate. It was the first crime bill 
in history to comprehensively try to deal with the problem of crime in 
this country.

  Generally speaking, previously, we came to the floor and we had a 
bill that sought to deal with guns, or we had a bill that sought to 
build prisons, or a bill that sought to deal with drugs, and 
occasionally something like the LEAA that sought to do something with 
the criminal justice system itself. But this was the first time, under 
the leadership of Senator Biden, that we stood back and said, ``How do 
we deal systemically with the problem of crime?'' To the credit of the 
U.S. Senate, we finally --after we got over the issue of guns--shed 
party lines and shed the partisanship, and came up with a comprehensive 
approach to try to deal with crime. We put slightly less than $10 
billion into the building of prisons. We put up almost the same figure 
into prevention, and almost the same figure into police officers.
  What I think is most significant about the approach that we adopted 
is that we recognized something that has been building in this country 
for perhaps 20 years and did something about it even as we recognized 
it. That is, specifically, we took note of the fact that for about 15 
or 20 years we had been disarming our communities in this country. We 
had been losing numbers of police officers, losing the ratio of police 
officer to crime.
  I think for any Member of the Senate who has spent time in the 
criminal justice system--there are a number of us here who have done 
that--or for anybody who spent a lot of time, like Senator Moynihan or 
others, studying the relationship of values and other damaging trend 
lines in the disintegration of the fabric of our communities to law and 
order issues, I think most people have come to the conclusion that 
there is a relationship between people in the community and their 
perception of how the law is applied and how it is enforced to their 
sense of justice, their sense of deterrence, their sense that there is 
a linkage between the law and behavior.
  Most people in America have been able to come to the conclusion that 
when you are properly administering the judicial system, when you have 
adequate police officers, when you have an adequate level of 
deterrence, there really is a relationship to how people choose to 
behave. That is no different from what we try to do in our schools at 
the earliest stage. When the teacher is out of the classroom, kids tend 
to run amuck a little bit and take advantage of it. When the teacher 
comes back in, usually to a greater degree or lesser degree, order is 
restored and people begin to have a sense that there is an authority 
figure there, and they know how to behave. The same is true at home. 
Depending on whether a babysitter is a strong, hard-nosed babysitter, 
or lax, or present or not present, at the refrigerator or the 
television versus taking care of kids, kids will make decisions about 
how to behave. It is no different in the rest of the world in which we 
live. In a community,

[[Page S1939]]

when people perceive that there are not any officers of the law, they 
write the law. They take their behavior and start to do things that 
there is no outside influence to suggest to them they should not do. It 
is so elementary that it almost defies the imagination that we are here 
debating about it.
  The word ``cop'' stands for constable on patrol. It is not rocket 
science. We learned years ago in America when we were this great 
immigrant nation welcoming people from everywhere that one of the great 
ways in which we sort of brought people together was through the 
establishment of a set of laws and a standard of behavior which people 
followed as a whole. One of the critical ingredients of that was the 
cop, the constable on patrol, the person walking down the street with a 
billy stick in a uniform of blue who stood for the standards of that 
community.
  Mr. President, during the 1960's and 1970's, we walked away from 
that. We took police officers off the streets, literally, putting them 
both into headquarters and into an automobile. We eliminated precinct 
after precinct after precinct station in America. This was part of the 
great new policing and cost-saving consciousness of that particular 
time period. What we did was kind of modeled our policing habits after 
the general sort of living habits of Americans. We all went for the 
automobile, and America moved its sense of community from the community 
into this transient status which we are in, fairly well to do, where 
people live in apartment buildings and do not even know each other. We 
have neighbors in these apartment buildings who are utter strangers. We 
have a whole new level of what we call stranger crime in America; 
murders that are committed by people who never met their victims.

  In fact, we have learned in the past few years in America--thanks 
finally to our having required the Justice Department to report the 
truth of who kills whom--we have learned that the great story about 
most people committing murder being people who knew each other is a 
myth. It is not true that most murders in America are committed in this 
passion between lovers or family disputes. We now know that in the last 
10 years in America, out of 200,000 or so murders, 100,000 of our 
fellow citizens were blown away by somebody they never met, an utter 
stranger. And we now know that, of those people who were murdered, two-
fifths of their murderers have never set a foot across the threshold of 
a police station--not for an inquiry, not for an arrest, and certainly 
not for a prosecution.
  That is why there is an increase of fear in America; that is why 
there is an increase of anger in America; because the average citizen 
feels this loss of freedom in this country. There is a dramatic loss of 
freedom in the United States of America--still the freest country on 
the face of the planet, but not the same free country that it used to 
be where we felt that we could go anywhere, travel anywhere, go to a 
restaurant, not have fear of our car being stolen, not having to pay 
extra money for insurance, not having to pay extra money for trauma in 
our hospitals, not having to pay for the price of this incredible wave 
of violence that has consumed our Nation.
  What has happened at the same time as we have had this wave of 
violence? We have diminished the number of police officers. In 
community after community after community we have less police officers 
on the streets of our country today than we did 15 and 20 years ago.
  So here you have these two lines. One line is the increase in crime. 
It is going up. The other line is the presence of police officers, and 
it is going down.
  What is the message? The message is very clear. If you are a criminal 
and you know that the police cannot even respond to the current 911's, 
if you know that if there is a burglary or an armed robbery, that their 
ability to track it down is limited because they are already having 
difficulty filling out their own overtime because they are already 
having difficulty going to court for the number of court appearances 
that they have to meet for the crimes already investigated, and they 
are having difficulty doing their patrols on the level that they ought 
to be doing them because, lo and behold, there are not enough officers 
to cover those patrols. What are you going to wind up sending as a 
message? The message has been crime pays. That is the message we have 
sent America--crime does pay.
  All you have to do is talk to any hardened professional criminal out 
there, and most of them will tell you that you just learn in the 
undercurrent and the subculture of crime in this country that that is 
their perception. It is their perception because we have never had a 
serious war on drugs in America. Why? Because we only treat 20 percent 
of the addicts in this country. So what is the message? The message to 
80 percent of the drug addicts of America is it does not make any 
difference if you are lying in somebody's doorway drugged out; it does 
not make any difference if you have committed your 50th household 
break-in to support your habit because there is nobody there to get you 
off your habit, and nobody to catch you for the crime you are 
committing.
  Go to most cities and dial 911, and see what happens. We have had 
tales that baffle the imagination here in Washington where three blocks 
away from this Capitol people have dialed 911, and it took 20 minutes 
to half an hour for a cop to show up.
  My wife was involved in an attempted robbery in the city of 
Washington a few months ago, stuck up by a man with a handgun, and a 
guy who happened to be driving by in his car called 911, reported it, 
and nobody showed up. And it was only thanks to that lucky citizen's 
presence that he took the license plate of the car that got away, and 
they caught the person who did it.
  In Boston a few months ago, we had a guy who started to run amok out 
in the street at night. The cop came up to him, the guy pulled a gun 
and shot the cop and started running down the street. He went around a 
corner, but there happened to be an off-duty cop working a detail who 
heard it on his radio; he heard the call of what was happening, started 
looking around, saw the guy, ran after him, and the guy went around the 
corner and blew his own brains out before the cop got to him.
  Another example in the 99 Restaurant in Charlestown just a few months 
ago. Guys walked in the restaurant with guns in the middle of the day, 
in the middle of lunchtime and started firing away at five people 
sitting in a booth. I think there were four people killed. It might 
have been five. I cannot remember--four anyway. Two guys come running 
out with their guns. They are taking off in the light of day, having 
committed murder, but two cops happened to be in the place eating, off 
duty again--off duty--and two other guys were out there, again off 
duty, on a detail. The four of them managed to make the arrest red-
handed, right there in the parking lot.
  What happened? Cops off duty, cops not part of the regular duty 
happened to be there. What is the message out of that? What is the 
message out of the cop who happens to be there when somebody runs amok 
in the street? The message is cops in the streets make a difference. 
You do not have to go to school to learn that a police officer walking 
down the street is an invitation not to commit a crime. Most people do 
not go out and rob a bank when the cop is standing on the corner. Most 
people do not run up to an old lady and pull her purse away when there 
is a cop in the lot.
  That happened in Brockton, MA, just last week. A 73-year-old woman 
was murdered at random, in an act of senseless violence, when a young 
guy from a neighboring city, who was just caught a couple of days ago, 
came to that parking lot, grabs her purse and beats her senselessly, 
and she is dead. I tell you, if he had seen a cop in that lot, that 
would not have happened.
  Now, obviously, we cannot cover every corner, we cannot cover every 
parking lot, but you know what we can do? We can guarantee that this 
priority of putting cops on our streets that we committed to only a 
year ago is not now taken away. For what? For what reason? Nobody has 
spoken here and said this is not working. The arguments that were made 
a year ago were that you are not even going to put 5,000 cops out 
there. This is a joke.
  Well, we have put 33,000 cops on the streets of America in the last 
year and a half. We have added 265 cops alone to the city of Boston. 
The Federal Government is now paying for a 25-percent

[[Page S1940]]

add-on of cops to the city of Chelsea, next to Boston, and we are 
taking back communities. I was over there the other day listening to 
the police chief and to the community activists tell me what has 
happened to the drug dealers and the crack houses since we put those 
cops on those streets. They are gone. They are painting the houses 
today. People come out in the community. They care about the community. 
They come back into it, and they suddenly have new life, Mr. President. 
Why would we want to not continue that commitment?
  Now, I know some people will come to the floor and say: ``Well, 
Senator, what we want to do is give the local community the power to 
choose and give these people the opportunity to have a big block grant, 
and they can pick and choose what they want to do.'' But that is 
totally contrary to the decision that we made based on the evidence a 
year ago. There are communities in America that need these cops.
  When you make the cops competitive with a cruiser or floodlights for 
a jail or a drug court or another program, you are diminishing the 
number of cops that will be put on the street. That is the result. 
There is a fixed pot of money, and this block grant takes the fixed pot 
of money and makes cops competitive with everything else that is in the 
block grant. The end result is there will be fewer police officers on 
the streets of America.

  Why would we want to do that when the Conference of Mayors says, do 
not do that; we want the cops. Why do it when the police chiefs across 
the country say, do not do that; we want police officers. Why do it 
when the police officers' unions and patrolmen themselves say, we need 
more cops to help us do our job. The mayors are against it, the police 
chiefs are against it, the district attorneys and attorneys general are 
against it, and we are going to go ahead and do it.
  Now, why would we do it when it flies in the face of truly giving 
people local control? When small communities give it to the Governors, 
that is not local control. That is State control. When you give it to 
the Governors in the format of which it has been given, it is actually 
more expensive administratively. We are currently administering this 
program for less than a 1-percent administrative cost. You put it in a 
block grant with all of this competition at the State level and you 
drive your administrative costs up to at least 3 percent and maybe 
more.
  Moreover, you enter politics into the situation. What is going to 
happen when you have a Republican Governor and a Democratic district 
attorney who may be thinking about running against the Governor and he 
is going to submit a plan to the Governor for this money? Do you think 
he is going to be the first to get it?
  We took the politics out of this program. A cop, as the Senator from 
Delaware said, can directly send a single sheet of paper to the Justice 
Department and he can get an answer within days, and they have been 
doing that.
  I do not know how you get more direct local control than that; a 
local police department goes to where the money is, says we need help 
and gets the money. Instead, we are going to go three tiers. We are 
going to go to the Federal Government, to the State Government, State 
Government through the process down to the local government. It just is 
not part of the revolution of restoring local community control. It 
flies directly in the face of that, and it is contrary to it.
  I do not think this is politics. I think this is really common sense. 
This is how we are going to restore our communities. I think that 
100,000 cops, as I said a year and a half ago, is a downpayment on what 
we need to do in America today. I think we ought to add 100,000 more 
cops to the 100,000 we have, and I absolutely guarantee you that if we 
do that, we will diminish the number of Americans in jail; we will 
restore whole communities; we will reduce the costs to our hospitals 
and all the trauma people suffer as a result of violent crime, and we 
will honestly send a message in this country about law and order.
  I can take you to community after community. Lowell, MA. Let me read 
to you what happened in Lowell in the last year and a half. We were 
lucky in Lowell--not lucky. People made some good judgments. They hired 
a terrific police chief named Ed Davis. He came in 18 months ago, and 
he came in particularly committed to community policing. I went to a 
street in Lowell called Bridge Street with the chief where prostitutes 
and druggies were taking over the street and senior citizens literally 
did not dare to come out of their homes because they feared what was 
happening in the street.
  I walked into the corner pizza store and the guy there who owns it 
told me, ``Senator, you know, people don't come in here anymore. I am 
going to go out of business unless we do something about this.'' So the 
police chief put several police officers in a building right on that 
street, a new precinct, new storefront. And literally the street has 
been revived. The drug dealers left. The pimps and prostitutes are 
gone. Seniors come out of their homes. People take part in the 
community again and the store owner is thriving. That has been 
replicated in other parts of the community.
  Let me just share with you what the Justice Department has reported 
about Lowell. In Lowell, MA, for the first time in 25 years, 365 days 
passed without anyone being murdered.
  In a city plagued by heroin use and street gangs, many say the city 
changed over the last 18 months as a result of an intensive community-
based policing effort now supported by a Federal COPS grant. The city's 
effort has provided 65 new officers, 6 neighborhood substations with 
bicycle patrols, a gang unit, and a mobile precinct for public events. 
Mr. President, that is the story. Over 60 new officers, 6 substations.
  Bill Bratton used to be the police chief in Boston. I began working 
on community policing with him in Boston a number of years ago. As we 
know, he is now the police commissioner in New York City, and he graced 
the cover of Time magazine a couple of weeks ago because the crime rate 
in New York has gone down 20-some percent and it has done it, most 
agree, because of the presence of police officers and the commitment to 
community policing.
  Mr. President, 15 years ago in America we had 3.5 police officers per 
violent crime. Today we have 4.6 violent crimes per police officer.
  So I hope my colleagues will again reach across the partisan divide 
and agree that common sense and the experience we are seeing in our 
streets today dictate that we should not take this pot of money and 
divert it from cops.
  Am I saying that the other priorities that they have included in the 
block grant are not important? The answer is no. They are important. I 
would like to see those funded too. That would truly be part of a 
comprehensive effort to deal with crime. But the first priority, beyond 
any of those other things, is to guarantee that our children can play 
in parks without fear of harm; that our seniors can come out of their 
homes and walk a street to go to the post office or the bank or the 
corner store; and that all of us in our communities can believe that 
the fundamentals of public safety are being attended to by putting 
police officers on the street.
  I will tell you, even with all the computers in the world, all the 
other things people are looking for, until community after community of 
this country is sufficiently staffed by police officers on patrol, we 
will not regain our liberty and we will not restore the order that is 
so cared about by so many of our citizens. I think that is the first 
order of priority and that is why I hope this amendment will be 
adopted.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thompson). The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask the Senator to yield for a 
second?
  Mr. HATCH. I will be happy to.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to follow the 
Senator from Utah.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                         Privilege Of The Floor

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Elizabeth 
Kessler, Michael O'Neill, Steven Schlesinger, John Gibbons, and James 
O'Gara, all detailees from my staff, be granted the privilege of the 
floor for the remainder of this Congress.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page S1941]]

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I have been listening to this debate, and 
it is an interesting one. But I rise in support of the compromise 
language addressing both the local law enforcement block grants and the 
COPS provision contained in this bill.
  This bill strikes a good balance between the Local Law Enforcement 
Block Grants Act of 1995 and the COPS Program. This combination will 
better support the local communities' law enforcement needs, and it 
provides funds, guaranteed funds that will be used to hire new police 
officers. That is the way the bill is written.
  This proposal--that is the bill, not the amendment before our body--
this bill improves the notion of the current COPS Program. To begin, 
this program moves us away from the Washington-knows-best philosophy. 
The proposal returns responsibility and capability to local law 
enforcement officials: The police chief, the sheriffs, the district 
attorneys. Further, this compromise program allows just under 50 
percent, 47 percent of the funds to be distributed directly to the 
communities to meet their individual community policing needs and law 
enforcement needs. This program empowers communities to decide how to 
best spend these resources.

  For example, if a community wants to use block grant funds to hire 
more police to supplement community oriented policing, they may do so. 
They can use whatever funds come to them.
  However, if the resources can be used more efficiently by the 
community, more effectively, by purchasing equipment and doing other 
matters that are critical to their law enforcement needs, they may do 
that. I think any reasonable person would say that makes sense. Why 
thrust upon them a Washington-knows-best philosophy, which is what my 
colleagues on the other side want to do, and not give the local 
communities the right to do this?
  I will tell you why they want to thrust it upon them. Because when we 
passed the crime bill back in 1994, there was a moral commitment by 
this administration to put 100,000 police, or cops, on the street. 
There was $8.8 billion, as I recall, dedicated to that effort in that 
bill. What this administration did not tell the American people is that 
$8.8 billion would not put 100,000 cops on the street. They have been 
claiming credit for that ever since 1994, knowing the funds are not 
there.
  There was a formula, pursuant to which they would pay 75 percent, 
then 50 percent, then 25 percent, then 0 percent--ultimately where the 
communities had to assume all of the costs of those additional police.
  I said that they were dissembling, that they were claiming to put 
100,000 cops on the street when the moneys were not there to do it. Now 
it just shows I was 100 percent right.
  Now they are talking about, ``Oh, we just meant seed money.'' Give me 
a break. I said back then that it is untruthful for anybody to claim 
that bill was going to put 100,000 cops on the street with only $8.8 
billion attributed to that particular approach. And that is true today.
  Yet, in every crime speech since that time the President has gotten 
up and said we are going to put 100,000 cops on the street.
  Now they have about 24,000. I think Senator Kerry indicated they had 
maybe 33,000. That is a far cry from 100,000, assuming that their 
figures are right. And they have hit the brick wall where they do not 
have the moneys to fully fund 100,000 cops. Now they want to call it 
seed money.
  Naturally, some of these communities who want to hire policemen here 
or there are going to have their hands out to grab whatever money they 
can. But New York, by the way, which has been used here as an 
illustration of how crime has come down--I would just like to note that 
New York City did not receive one cop under the President's COPS 
Program, not to my knowledge. If they have, I sure do not know about 
it.
  Nor did Washington, DC. Everybody knows that I have raised a couple 
of points about Washington, DC. It is drug capital USA. It is murder 
capital USA. You cannot walk down the streets and be safe, kids are 
shot in schools, you are shot in drive-by shootings. Of course that is 
true in a number of our communities throughout this country. But 
Washington did not ask for any hiring money. I will tell you why, they 
did not have the money needed to make the match requirement.
  They can come back on the other side and say let us give them the 
money. That is what they said they did back in 1994. The fact was the 
moneys were not there, except for about 20,000 cops. And the 33,000 
that they claim they have are only partially funded under the COPS 
Program. They are not fully funded. So neither New York City nor 
Washington, DC, to my knowledge, have participated in this COPS hiring 
program. They could not afford to put these people on with this seed 
money that it has suddenly become, rather than the full money that was 
being promised to them.
  I said back then it would cost $8 billion a year for each succeeding 
year to have 100,000 cops on the street, under that formula that was in 
that bill. And that is true today. The fact is, it has been dissembling 
to indicate to the American people that they are putting 100,000 cops 
on the street. Now they are here, trying to, I think, ruin a block 
grant approach that really would be effective for our local 
communities, under the guise that they are going to put 100,000 cops on 
the street. Now it is seed money.
  I have nothing against putting more police officers out there. I 
simply believe that the cities should be able to decide for themselves 
whether they want to have cops or whether they want to upgrade 
technology for crimefighting purposes.
  For instance, the District of Columbia, which I have been fighting 
for in trying to make it safe again, does not even have computers that 
work. They have dial phones, rotary dial phones. In some areas, they do 
not have police cars, they do not even have the weapons sometimes, in 
the greatest city in the world. We all ought to be ashamed of that.
  Let me just say, if the community wants to hire these police with the 
block grants, give them the right to do so. We can supplement 
community-oriented policing awards. However, if they find the resources 
can be more effectively used, they have the flexibility to do it, which 
seems to me to be quite important.
  Why do we need flexibility? Take the metropolitan police department 
in Washington, DC. They have more police officers per capita than any 
other city in this country--more than any other city. The last thing 
that the metropolitan police department wants is more police. What they 
need, in this case, happens to be cars, equipment, bullets, if you 
will, and they cannot afford them, because we are not block granting 
the funds to them to be able to do that.
  The metropolitan police department in Washington, DC, is 
cannibalizing police cruisers to keep going, and we are talking about 
playing this phony game of 100,000 cops on the street, which I have 
called a phony game since 1994. I am the first to say, in some areas, 
yes, we need more police on the street, but, by gosh, they can do it if 
they want to. If that is what their needs are, the block grant will 
enable them to do that. If they do not need that, then they can do 
these other things like cars, equipment, bullets, if you will.
  Officers in this town are buying their own bullets. They do not like 
doing that, but to protect themselves they are doing that. Now that is 
pathetic. It is time to bring flexibility to our law enforcement 
assistance programs, and that is what this bill does.
  When we get the flexibility into the bill, what do we face? People 
coming to the floor and making arguments for 100,000 cops, who promised 
us that the moneys were there before, or at least implied that the 
moneys were there, when I said they were not and they have not been and 
they will not be, because it is just too much money.
  I personally resented every speech by some of our national leaders 
who get up and say, ``We are going to put 100,000 cops on the street,'' 
knowing that the moneys have not been there, knowing that that formula 
has not worked and knowing that it is a misrepresentation. I think it 
is time for Washington to help first and then get the heck out of the 
way. That is what is wrong around here. We are dictating where these 
funds should go rather than helping and getting out of the way and 
letting those law enforcement people who really know what is best for 
their communities do what needs to be done.

[[Page S1942]]

  This proposal does that, it gives them that flexibility. This block 
grant proposal helps poorer communities by allowing the hiring of 
police with less of a financial strain on the community. This is 
accomplished by containing a lower matching requirement than the COPS 
Program.
  During the last floor debate on the Commerce, Justice, State and 
Judiciary appropriations, my friend and colleague, Senator Biden, 
stated that nothing in the bill requires that even $1 be used to hire a 
single new police officer. This compromise satisfies his concern, even 
though we set aside a considerable amount of money to hire police 
officers but we block grant the rest in a way that makes sense. This 
compromise satisfies his concern by funding the COPS Program at the 
level the President endorsed in the continuing resolution.
  For those of you who are concerned about the 100,000 additional 
police on the street, this plan--that is, the one in the bill, not the 
one that has been offered by my colleague--this plan places your 
concerns at rest. Although the President's plan does not fully fund 
100,000 cops, assuming that the law enforcement block grant earmark for 
the COPS Program remains at the current 51 percent, more than $3.8 
billion will be available for cops awards over the life of the program, 
assuming money is there under the block grant approach.

  Using the President's math, the fiscal year 1996 average grant award 
amount is $45,856. The available funds will provide seed money for more 
police under the COPS earmark. In other words, according to the 
President's math, it only costs about $45,856 to put a police officer 
on the street. We know it cost more than that.
  To also make it clear, this bill provides especially a paragraph on 
prohibitive uses. It says:

       Notwithstanding any other provision of this act, a unit of 
     local government may not expend any of the funds provided 
     under this title to purchase, lease, rent or otherwise 
     acquire (1) armored tanks (2) fixed-wing aircraft (3) 
     limousines (4) real estate (5) yachts (6) consultants or (7) 
     vehicles not primarily used for law enforcement, unless the 
     Attorney General certifies that extraordinary and exigent 
     circumstances exist that make the use of funds for such 
     purposes essential to the maintenance of public safety and 
     good order in such unit of local government.

  There are protections in this bill. It costs about $75,000--I have 
been corrected--to fund a police officer on the street, about $75,000 
to fully fund one. This so-called seed money will not fully fund 
100,000 police on the street. There is no way that it can. So we have 
gone from fully funding to seed money now under the guise that we are 
going to give the people 100,000 police on the street when, in fact, 
that just simply is not true.
  Add this to what was awarded in the prior years, if you spend that 
$3.8 billion over the remaining program life, and with seed money, I 
suppose you could get to 100,000 cops with a tremendous drain on the 
local community. But they are going to hire these police anyway. 
Naturally, they are going to have their hands out if there is a free 
gift of money from the Federal Government, and that means people they 
hired anyway are going to get help while other communities who need 
money for cars, for equipment, for bullets, if you will, or police 
uniforms cannot get it and cannot do the policing job that they should 
do.
  This is even before the flexible portion of the block grant money is 
expended. We have taken appropriate measures to address concerns about 
guaranteeing police on the street and also in poorer communities to 
best determine how best to fight local crime.
  Why do we always have to go to the Washington knows best mentality? 
Why do we always have these arguments out here about, ``By gosh, we're 
going to earmark and tell them what to do with these funds?'' What is 
wrong with block granting the funds, as long as we have prohibited 
uses, which we have expressly written in this bill? What is wrong with 
block granting the money to them and letting those local communities 
make their determinations of what is best for them, rather than us 
telling them what they need?
  Some communities do need more police. This block grant will help 
them. They will be able to make that flexible determination. Others do 
not, and they will not be forced to because of an inflexible approach 
that I think my colleagues on the other side are asking for.
  One reason the local law enforcement block grant of 1995 is superior 
to a cops-exclusive program is flexibility. We provided for flexibility 
in this bill by allowing local communities to expend funds for all of 
the following law enforcement purposes:
  First, for hiring, training, and employing additional law enforcement 
personnel. So they can do it if they want to. If that is what they need 
to do, they will have some funds out of this block grant to do it with.
  Second, paying overtime to presently employed law enforcement 
officers.
  Third, procuring equipment and technology directly related to basic 
law enforcement functions.
  Fourth, enhancing security measures in and around schools.
  Fifth, law enforcement crime prevention programs.
  Sixth, establishing or supporting drug courts.
  Seventh, enhancing the adjudication process.
  And, eighth, establishing multijurisdictional task forces, 
particularly in rural areas.
  Local law enforcement officials can decide how best to decide to 
spend the money under the program. More police does not always mean 
better policing. Oftentimes, necessary procurement is the best option 
for the community, by far the best law enforcement option in some 
communities.
  This program moves us away from the Washington knows best philosophy. 
We do not let Washington dictate local crimefighting strategies. 
Washington simply does not know best. Washington does not know best how 
to solve local problems, especially a problem like crime. The COPS 
Program dictates to a community how much of their scarce funds they 
must allocate to combat crime.
  The COPS More Program promises to supply overtime and supplies to the 
police departments. However, in practice, only big cities with large 
police forces can be eligible. This is because COPS More grants require 
a showing of moving a cop to the street to receive these funds. Smaller 
communities who are already maximizing their street coverage have 
difficulty showing more officers can move to the street. Small town 
forces do not have the extra manpower to put another officer on the 
street, and rural communities need cars to travel through their 
districts.
  The COPS Program determines the number of officers given to 
communities by the number already on the force. It disregards the crime 
program. Small crime-riddled communities should be able to receive 
help, not be penalized because they are small. The COPS Program does 
not take into account crime when giving out grants. The grants are 
given to any locality that can afford the matching fund whether the 
officer is needed or not.
  The COPS Program does not base the number of officers awarded on 
crime but rather on the number currently on the force. Cities who 
applied for four officers because they had one of the highest crime 
rates in the Nation will be given 1 or 2 officers because the current 
force has 50 officers.
  Look, we are not playing games here. We are trying to solve this 
problem. The block grant gives the local communities the flexibility to 
solve it in their best interests and their best ways without Washington 
telling them what to do. What is going on here is the department is 
paying 75 percent of the salary the first year, 50 percent the second 
year, 25 percent the third year, and then the local agency has to carry 
the full load.
  Based upon a salary of $65,000 to $70,000 a year, for every $75,000 
in Federal COPS grants awarded, the community will need to spend 
$225,000 over the 5-year life of the program to keep a cop on the 
street. That is one single cop.
  I want to submit for the Record a statement by the city manager of 
Sunnyvale, CA, who turned down a COPS grant because they could not 
afford it. I ask unanimous consent that that statement be printed in 
the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

  Statement of Thomas F. Lewcock, City Manager, City of Sunnyvale, CA

       Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

[[Page S1943]]

       I am honored to have been requested to submit a written 
     statement to the Judiciary Committee regarding the City of 
     Sunnyvale, California's decision to not accept Crime Grant 
     funds to add additional police officers to the Sunnyvale 
     Department of Public Safety.


                               background

       My name is Thomas F. Lewcock. I am the City Manager of the 
     City of Sunnyvale, California. I have served in that capacity 
     for fifteen-and-a-half years. I have served in executive 
     capacities in city government for 26 years, having received a 
     bachelor's degree in political science from the University of 
     Minnesota, and a master's degree in public administration 
     from that same institution. The City of Sunnyvale operates 
     under the Council/Manager form of government, with the City 
     manager appointed on professional merits for an indeterminant 
     time by the City Council, serving fully at its pleasure. The 
     City Manager is the Chief Executive Officer.
       The City of Sunnyvale is a residential/industrial community 
     located in the geographic heart of the Silicon Valley. It has 
     a resident population of approximately 125,000, with a 
     private-sector job base of approximately 120,000. It is a 
     demographically diverse community with a minority population 
     of approximately 35%. While the income and educational levels 
     of its citizens are above average, the City has the full 
     spectrum of income and education levels. While law 
     enforcement issues do not have the same complexity as those 
     of an urban core, Sunnyvale remains a relatively densely 
     developed community in the California context with a full 
     range of law enforcement complexities. Approximately 50% of 
     the resident population lives in multi-family dwellings. 
     Given the sophistication of the City's industrial base, 
     highly complex law enforcement issues are presented. This 
     brief overview of the community is provided to members of the 
     Committee in order to provide a framework for the community's 
     law enforcement needs. In many respects, the law enforcement 
     requirements of this community are significantly closer to 
     that of an urban core community than the typical American 
     suburban community.
       The City of Sunnyvale over the last several years has 
     gained a national and international reputation for its unique 
     approach to long-range strategic and financial planning, to 
     results-oriented budgeting, and to its well-recognized 
     approach of operating the City more as a business than a 
     government. In the Osborne and Gabler book, ``Reinventing 
     Government,'' the City of Sunnyvale was noted as the 
     government ``performance leader.''
       The relevance of the City of Sunnyvale's approach to policy 
     setting and the provision of public services is briefly 
     reviewed in order to gain a context as to why a decision was 
     unanimously made by the Sunnyvale City Council to not accept 
     Crime Grant funds.
       For the past fifteen years, the City has structured its 
     approach to policy setting and financial management with two 
     key themes. The first is that of long-range strategic 
     planning coupled with a sophisticated ten-year financial 
     plan. That financial plan estimates all projected operating, 
     capital, debt expenses, as well as future revenues. This 
     highly sophisticated approach to long-range financial 
     planning is used in a number of ways which are beyond the 
     purpose of this statement to describe in detail. Key to this 
     statement, however, is its use in recognizing that the short-
     term financial position of any government and for that matter 
     any business is not predicated on a year-to-year analysis, 
     but can only be fully understood in the context of multi-year 
     projections. Though those projections will of course suffer 
     from the natural uncertainty of government finance and all 
     the related factors that affect government income and 
     expense, it can and does provide a clear understanding of 
     significant expense and revenue trends that should be taken 
     into account in making any decision which has long-term 
     consequences. A series of detailed financial policies have 
     been adopted by the Sunnyvale City Council in respect to 
     utilization of long-range financial planning. One of the most 
     important of those policies is to require that in submittal 
     of annual budgetary plans, that the budget must be balanced 
     not only in the context of one year but also in the context 
     of the position of the City over the entire ten-year time 
     frame. Even though an expenditure may be affordable in a one-
     year context, if it cannot be supportable over the long term 
     then it is not undertaken. This approach recognizes that 
     although on a one, two or three-year basis an expenditure may 
     be affordable, if over the long term it pushes governmental 
     spending in deficit, then it is much better to deal with that 
     issue initially than to compound the financial problem 
     created of effectively spending for many years beyond means 
     and then eventually reaching the point where far more 
     significant budget and service reductions are necessary.
       A second critical component of the approach of the City of 
     Sunnyvale is to clearly specify in measurable terms each and 
     every service which the City is to provide and to allocate 
     funding to those specified service levels. The Patrol 
     Services Division of the Department of Public Safety follows 
     this approach as do all other City departments and services. 
     This approach is not focused on line item detail as to 
     numbers of people, vehicles required, and the like, but 
     rather on the specific level and quality of services to be 
     provided. It is here that the policy focus of the City 
     Council is centered. For example, in the Patrol Services 
     Division, service levels are defined in terms of emergency 
     response times, crime rates, crime clearance rates, citizen 
     satisfaction, and the like. Each year, the Council determines 
     whether or not that defined level of service is adequate and 
     if not, appropriate resource changes are made. Further, if 
     change in demands occur in such a way that additional 
     resources are required in order to meet those service 
     standards, then the Council either appropriates the 
     additional funds for that purpose or if insufficient funds 
     are available makes a determination as to what level of 
     service is affordable.
       It would be incorrect to assume that because the Sunnyvale 
     City Council declined Crime Bill funds that either Public 
     Safety services are not a priority nor that the City is in 
     the financial position to ignore a sizable sum of outside 
     funds. Over the past five years, the real dollar value of tax 
     income to the City of Sunnyvale has declined by 15%. This has 
     occurred as a result of the California economy and severely 
     restricted revenues for all levels of California government. 
     The City has had to make difficult decisions over this time 
     frame to find ways to continue to the maximum extent the 
     level of services it provides. Most certainly, the action 
     taken by the City Council is not a reflection on the lack of 
     priority for Public Safety services. Public Safety services, 
     both police and fire, are clearly the two highest priority 
     services in the City of Sunnyvale. In fact, these services 
     receive 58% of the overall tax-supported budget in this 
     community.


                             the crime bill

       When the Crime Bill was passed, the City began the process 
     of reviewing this new grant program in accordance with the 
     general policy and budget framework outlined above as well as 
     against a specific intergovernmental grant assistance policy 
     which was adopted by the Sunnyvale City Council many years 
     ago. Attachment I excerpts the most relevant aspects of that 
     policy. As can be seen in the attachment, that policy in 
     general discourages the utilization of State or Federal 
     grants to support ongoing City programs. The underlying 
     reason for that strategy is that when City services are 
     increased as a result of a grant that may later be reduced or 
     eliminated by the State or Federal governments, then it is in 
     essence establishing a new or expanded service which the 
     community will become accustomed to. If then later the 
     funding either declines or is eliminated, very difficult 
     decisions have to be made in a constrained resource 
     environment of either eliminating that program or some 
     other. Therefore, this policy attempts to assure a 
     continuity of priority setting around the most important 
     services this City should be providing consistent with its 
     financial constraints. This policy places that strategy 
     into action by either requiring that the program be shown 
     in the City's Ten-Year Financial Plan only for the period 
     of time that the entitlement has been granted or requiring 
     the City's own tax resources to be dedicated in advance of 
     accepting the grant if it is believed that the program 
     should continue.
       For a program such as the Crime Bill which would add police 
     officers, it is clear that if there is a need to increase the 
     law enforcement presence that need will not dissipate simply 
     because Federal funding is no longer available. Therefore, 
     this is not the kind of service expansion for which the City 
     would knowingly accept grant money and then reduce the 
     service by eliminating these added police officers at the 
     time the grant money was no longer present. Rather, this kind 
     of grant would be accepted only if a decision was made that 
     the costs were supportable over the long term and actually 
     scheduled in the City's Ten-Year Financial Plan.
       In order to estimate the City's ability to support the 
     ongoing cost of officers, an analysis was conducted as to 
     what the true cost to the City of Sunnyvale would be. Under 
     terms of the Crime Bill, the City would have been eligible 
     for a maximum of six police officers with a maximum grant 
     amount of $450,000.
       In order to estimate the cost over the City's ten-year 
     financial planning horizon, the wages and benefit costs of a 
     Sunnyvale Public Safety Officer was first determined. As of 
     1995, that annual cost is $95,538. Although officers would 
     not initially be hired at the top of their salary level as is 
     reflected in this cost, the City always utilizes the practice 
     of estimating top-step salaries in compensation since over 
     the long term that will ultimately be the actual cost of new 
     employees. In addition, there are ancillary costs placing a 
     police officer on the street and properly equipping them, 
     which adds an additional $3,227 annually, for a total cost 
     per officer of $98,765 annually.
       Attachment II reflects the present estimated financial plan 
     for tax-supported services in the City. In order to project 
     the full financial effect of six new officers, Attachment III 
     was developed. Under Revenues, a new line item was added 
     reflecting the $450,000 in new income. Under Expenditures, 
     the new cost to the City was projected over ten years. Please 
     note that the projected expense does go up annually 
     consistent with the City's Inflation and cost-of-living 
     projections. While we do not pretend to have a crystal ball 
     as to how inflation will perform, we consider this an 
     important aspect of multi-year financial planning as it 
     recognizes the reality that costs do increase over time even 
     when inflation is low. As can be seen in Attachment III, the 
     total projected

[[Page S1944]]

     expenditure over the City's ten-year financial planning 
     horizon is $6.8 million. Also of note is the interest line 
     under Revenues which was appropriately adjusted to reflect 
     the fact that this new expenditure would reduce City reserves 
     and therefore interest income. As a result, the total net 
     cost to the City is $8.853 million over ten years, which 
     reflects that this grant would support only 5% of the total 
     cost. While it is certainly the case that the cost of law 
     enforcement officers in the State of California is 
     considerably above national averages due to the very high 
     cost of living in California, even with lower expenditure 
     numbers, over a protracted time frame a grant such as this 
     would reflect but a small percent of the overall cost. As 
     also reflected in Attachment III, necessary prescribed 
     reserve levels in accordance with City fiscal policies would 
     not be able to be maintained by the tenth year falling some 
     $2.75 million into deficit.
       The question of whether or not to accept Crime Grant funds, 
     however, was more than the financial analysis alone. As was 
     stated earlier, local government in California has been hard 
     pressed for a number of years with continual reduction in 
     revenue availability while at the same time being faced with 
     expensive new Federal and State mandates. As a result, two 
     additional questions had to be addressed. The first question 
     was whether given all City priorities the addition of six 
     police officers was the most important. The second question 
     was that if it was determined that a greater law enforcement 
     presence was needed and was the top priority in the 
     community, whether the specific restrictions and strings that 
     came along with this grant would restrict the ability to use 
     the funds in such a way as to meet the City's most pressing 
     law enforcement requirements. As outlined earlier, Sunnyvale 
     is a results-oriented organization, specifying in clear and 
     measurable terms what it will accomplish in quality and level 
     of service in everything the City does. The City's 
     recognition as the ``performance leader'' has come as a 
     result of articulating in clear terms what we are 
     to accomplish, but not prescribing the way in which it is 
     to be accomplished. For example, one can assume that one 
     of the most important purposes of the Crime Bill is to 
     reduce the incidence and fear of crime. Due to the 
     prescriptive requirements of the bill, the bill presumes 
     that if police officers are dedicated to this task 
     consistent with the requirements of the bill, then this 
     objective will be best met. We have found in literally all 
     service areas that prescriptive requirements as to how to 
     meet an objective creates substantial limitations in the 
     creative use of resources to assure that service 
     objectives are met in the highest quality and lowest cost 
     fashion. In lay terms, what this basically means in the 
     case of the Crime Bill was that the City would have to 
     accept the fact that the Federal government knew better 
     than we do how to utilize resources in order to accomplish 
     a comparable goal. Rarely have we found that to be the 
     case.
       In the case of the Crime Bill, it was not even necessary to 
     get to the point of judging whether or not this resource 
     increase paid 95% by the City was the highest priority area 
     of expanded City services. Rather, when it became clear that 
     the Federal government would dictate how these officers would 
     be used by providing only 5% of the funds, a unanimous 
     decision was made by the City Council that the incentive did 
     not come close to justifying a change in City priorities. 
     Further, and perhaps even more important, it was believed 
     that if the choice was paying the additional 5% of the cost 
     and thereby allowing these resources to be marshalled in a 
     way judged to result in the best return in investment, then 
     the City would be better off paying 100% of the cost.


                               conclusion

       Most cities do not use the performance-based policy setting 
     and budget approach nor multi-year financial planning 
     approach that has been long utilized in the City of 
     Sunnyvale. The reality is, however, that the issues and 
     consequences are exactly the same for other cities as well. 
     Perhaps the only difference in many other cities is that 
     these consequences are not recognized in advance and will 
     have to be dealt with when funding is depleted. It also 
     underscores the importance that local government and now the 
     Federal government has placed on mandate relief. In a 
     constrained resources environment, each time a new direction 
     is provided by the Federal government by rule, regulation, or 
     law, the Federal government is essentially establishing 
     priorities for local government. Two years ago, a detailed 
     study was undertaken which reflected that fully 23% of the 
     City's operating budget on an annual basis was directed 
     toward the meeting of Federal and State mandates. If all 
     involved in government leadership positions at the local, 
     State, and Federal level concur that law enforcement is by 
     far the highest municipal priority and if in turn that is the 
     major reason for the assistance the Federal government is 
     offering, then it is clear that this high priority has been 
     continually subverted by both the Federal and State 
     government, requiring that scarce resources be directed to 
     other purposes. Not all will agree that City government is 
     capable of establishing the most important priority uses of 
     local government funds. Most local government officials, 
     including this one, would argue, however, that law 
     enforcement is amongst the very highest priorities for local 
     government and to the degree it is not funded to the level it 
     should, the problem will not be solved through carrot and 
     stick techniques that in reality do not significantly enhance 
     the financial ability of a City to continue those services 
     over a protracted time frame.

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, look, all of us want more police on the 
streets. All of us will support that. On the other hand, we have 
provided about half of this money to go for the COPS Program, about 
half the money this administration represented were sufficient to put 
100,000 cops on the street, or at least they have been misrepresenting 
over the last number of years--in the last year and a half, in my 
opinion.
  What we also have is about 50 percent of these funds going in a block 
grant to the communities so they can make their own determination as to 
what is best for their communities, how best to do it. We provided 
prohibitions in here so the community cannot just have exotic police 
approaches, that they have to use funds for the very best law 
enforcement needs, in the best interests of the community. To me, that 
makes sense.
  We help the COPS Program even more than was represented we would do. 
We help the communities to have a flexibility to be able to do what is 
best for their communities. If they do not need police personnel, they 
can then use the money for other law enforcement needs that are very 
important for the community. In the process, everybody wins.
  I think what we have to do one of these days, though, is face the 
music around here in the District of Columbia. I believe we have in 
some respects some very decent people in that police force, but they 
are not funded properly. They are not treated properly. We have crime 
in the streets here in the greatest city in the world. We are not doing 
what we should do about it. Frankly, this type of an approach just 
takes away from getting the job done here as well as elsewhere 
throughout the country.
  I think it is time for us to wake up and realize that block granting 
makes sense, that there have been some pretty sorry claims made with 
regard to the 100,000 cops-on-the-street program.
  No one opposes hiring new cops. The question is whether we here in 
Washington should dictate to the local communities what they should or 
should not do. My colleagues on the other side apparently like that 
system. I do not. I do not think a majority of people in Congress like 
that system. The underlying bill represents a compromise. Funding the 
COPS Program and funding for greater flexibility is that compromise. It 
seems to me that makes sense.
  I know that the majority leader is going to move to table this 
amendment. I hope that a majority of the Members of this body will 
support that motion to table because we want communities to have the 
flexibility to be able to do real law enforcement, not just what 
Washington thinks ought to be the approach for every community in this 
country. They will have the flexibility under this bill to be able to 
do policing, if they want to, or partial policing, or whatever they 
need for law enforcement that is in the best interest of their 
community.
  I apologize to my colleague for taking so long. I yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Let me say to the Senator from Utah, first of all, 
that there is no reason for apology. It is very gracious of him. I do 
not always agree with some of the positions he takes, and I do not 
agree with him on this amendment, but I believe that if you want to use 
the words ``class act,'' he is a class act. I have tremendous respect 
for him.
  Mr. President, I am very proud to introduce this amendment with my 
colleagues, Senator Biden and Senator Kerry from Massachusetts.
  Our constituents, citizens in our country, all of us, we plan our 
lives sometimes around crime--where we eat, how we treat our children, 
where we live, how we travel, where our kids go to school, how we 
answer the door, how we answer the phone. The crime and violence in our 
country and in our communities takes away freedom, the freedom of our 
loved ones, the freedom of our families, the freedom of our neighbors.
  Mr. HATCH. Would the Senator yield for a unanimous-consent request?

[[Page S1945]]

  Mr. WELLSTONE. I would be pleased to.
  Mr. HATCH. We have a couple of amendments.


               Amendment Nos. 3480 and 3481, As Modified

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I send two amendments to the desk. I think 
they are 3480 and 3481. They are modifications. I believe they have 
been cleared on both sides of the aisle.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I wonder whether I could find out as to 
what the amendments are.
  Mr. HATCH. Modifications--have they been cleared? They are not 
cleared? Let me leave them at the desk and see if we can get them 
cleared.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I say to my colleague, there is no 
objection.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
modifications be approved.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the two amendments, as 
modified, are considered and agreed to.
  So, the amendments (Nos. 3480 and 3481), as modified, were agreed to 
as follows:

                           amendment no. 3480

       On page 751, section entitled ``Agency for International 
     Development, Assistance for Eastern Europe and the Baltics'', 
     insert at the appropriate place:
       ``Except for funds made available for demining activities, 
     no funds may be provided under this heading in this Act until 
     the President certifies to the Committees on Appropriations 
     that:
       ``(1) The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is in 
     compliance with Article III, Annex 1A of the Dayton 
     Agreement; and
       ``(2) Intelligence cooperation on training, investigations, 
     or related activities between Iranian officials and Bosnian 
     officials has been terminated.''


                           amendment no. 3481

       On page 751, section entitled ``Agency for International 
     Development, Assistance for Eastern Europe and the Baltics'', 
     insert at the appropriate place, the following: ``Provided 
     further, That funds appropriated by this Act for economic 
     reconstruction may only be made available for projects, 
     activities, or programs within the sector assigned to 
     American forces of the NATO Military Implementation Force 
     (IFOR) and Sarajevo: ``Provided further, That Priority 
     consideration shall be given to projects and activities 
     designed in the IFOR ``Task Force Eagle civil military 
     project list'': ``Provided further, That no funds made 
     available under this Act,or any other Act, may be obligated 
     for the purposes of rebuilding or repairing housing in areas 
     where refugees or displaced persons are refused the right of 
     return by Federation or local authorities due to ethnicity or 
     political party affiliation: ``Provided further, That no 
     funds may be made available under this heading in this Act, 
     or any other Act, to any banking or financial institution in 
     Bosnia and Herzegovina unless such institutions agrees in 
     advance, and in writing, to allow the United States General 
     Accounting Office access for the purposes of audit of the use 
     of U.S. assistance: ``Provided further, That effective ninety 
     days after the date of enactment of this Act, none of the 
     funds appropriated under this heading may be made available 
     for the purposes of economic reconstruction in Bosnia and 
     Herzegovina unless the President determines and certifies in 
     writing to the Committee on Appropriations that the aggregate 
     bilateral contributions pledged by non-U.S. donors for 
     economic reconstruction are at least equivalent to the U.S. 
     bilateral contributions made under this Act and in the fiscal 
     year 1995 and fiscal year 1996 Foreign Operations, Export 
     Financing and Related Programs Appropriations bills.''

  Mr. HATCH. I thank my friend.


                           Amendment No. 3483

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I do not really believe that there is 
any debate in my State of Minnesota about the need to have more law 
enforcement, more police, in our neighborhoods and in our communities. 
We must have more police out in the communities.
  Mr. President, because of the violence, because it is so important 
that we reduce the violence in our homes, reduce the violence in our 
schools, reduce the violence in our neighborhoods and in our 
communities, it is critically important that, as legislators, we, as 
Senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, act powerfully, forcefully 
and immediately. That is what the crime bill of 1994 was all about.
  There is a brave initiative to this piece of legislation. This piece 
of legislation gave us an opportunity, I think, especially through 
community policing, to reclaim our cities and to reclaim our 
neighborhoods, to reclaim our schools, and to really reclaim our 
future.
  The community oriented policing service, COPS, was created by the 
Crime Act in 1994. So far, it has exceeded its hiring goals. Funds have 
already been authorized to add more than 31,000 police officers, over a 
quarter of the final goal. I think my colleague from Delaware, Senator 
Biden, had the figure higher than that--about 34,000, as I remember.
  Mr. President, in my State of Minnesota we have already been able to 
hire 435 new cops that have been put out in the neighborhoods and in 
our communities. Minnesota has received over $24 million under this 
program. This year, if our amendment passes, there would be 100 more 
law enforcement women and men out in our communities, working with the 
citizens in our communities, helping to reduce violence in our 
communities.
  Mr. President, Chief Leslie, the sheriff of Moorhead, tells me that 
the COPS' dollars have allowed him to institute a very effective 
community policing strategy and a citizens police academy for 
residents. He says, ``After 30 years in law enforcement and 17 years as 
police chief of Moorhead, the COPS Program is the best thing I have 
ever seen.'' ``The best thing I have ever seen,'' says the chief of 
police of Moorhead.
  St. Louis County Sheriff Gary Waller is equally enthusiastic about 
the program.
  Mr. President, I have spent time talking with the law enforcement 
community in my State of Minnesota. What they say ought to be heard 
loud and clear by all of us in the U.S. Senate. Minneapolis Police 
Chief Robert Olson, talking about the community policing program, the 
COPS Program. They have 17 community police so far. They see 23 in 
jeopardy. They hope to have 40 altogether. In Police Chief Olson's 
words the COPS Program has been successful and has led to a ``dramatic 
impact this year on the level of crime violence in the metro area.'' A 
city where we have seen entirely too much crime. They have seen fewer 
incidents since instituting the COPS Program of drive-by shootings and 
estimate that they have taken 50 percent more guns off the streets.
  Mr. President, the police chief of Minneapolis, Chief Olson, said to 
me, ``This is not the feel-good program, Senator. This is strict law 
enforcement. We have been able to shut down some of these crack houses. 
We have been able to target those neighborhoods most ravaged by this 
violence and crime and have police out in the communities, out in the 
streets, working with people, to reduce that violence.''
  Mr. President, we need to listen to these law enforcement officers. 
The community police program is a huge success in the State of 
Minnesota. I have talked to sheriffs and police chiefs in the metro 
area, in greater Minnesota, whether it is suburbs, in cities, or 
smaller communities. You get the same response: ``Senator, this program 
is working. Don't kill the COPS Program.'' The League of Minnesota 
Cities said this yesterday, ``Look, we need to make some commitments as 
a Nation. One of those commitments ought to be to community police. Do 
not talk about block grants where the money may or may not go to this. 
You all made a commitment. You have a contract with us. You have made a 
commitment to the community policing program to make sure there are 
100,000 police out in our neighborhoods by the year 2000, to make sure 
in my State we dramatically expand law enforcement in the communities. 
Don't renege on that commitment.''

  I talked to Duluth Police Chief Scott Lyons. He said to me, 
``Senator, this is a new philosophy. What we have been able to do 
through this community police program is establish more rapport than we 
ever had with the communities in our city. Senator, what we have been 
able to do''--and I use the police chief's own words, ``is empower 
citizens to be able themselves to take action --not vigilante action--
working with the police force to reduce violence in their 
communities.'' The police chief went on to say, ``Senator, we are no 
longer reactive. We are proactive. We are taking steps to prevent crime 
in the first place, in the city of Duluth, in some of the neighborhoods 
most ravaged by the crime.'' Why in the world would we want to weaken a 
program that the law enforcement community so strongly supports, as do 
the citizens in our States? It makes no sense.
  I talked to Stearns County Sheriff Jim Kostreba and he said, 
``Senator,

[[Page S1946]]

the COPS Program has enabled us to work with school officials, to work 
with kids. It has helped us to fight against teenage drinking, against 
drugs, against substance abuse, against teenage suicides.'' He went on. 
I thought it was very interesting. He said to me, ``Senator, at the 
beginning, through the community police program, when we had a presence 
in the schools, some of these young people were cynical. Some of these 
young people looked at our police officers as if they were the enemy. 
But not any longer. Through the community police program, we have our 
law enforcement people, men and women, working with these kids.''
  I say to my colleagues, this program is a huge success. This is 
exactly what we ought to be doing by way of priority.
  I talked to Anoka Police Chief Andy Revering and he talked about what 
Anoka has done. He said only 4 years ago Anoka had the fifth-highest 
crime rate in the metro area. The demand exceeded their resource. 
Because of the COPS Program they have seen a dramatic decline, 
according to the chief, in crime. What they have been doing is they 
have been using the COPS Program law enforcement in conferencing. This 
is a program, for my colleagues' information, whereby you bring 
together some of these kids would have committed some of these crimes, 
you bring their families into a meeting, and you conference them, along 
with the victims so that these kids really know what it is they have 
done. By bringing these kids together with their families and also 
bringing them together with the victims, what has happened, says Chief 
Revering, there has been very little repeat of crime by these kids.

  I say to my colleagues, what in the world are we doing by trying to 
have in this continuing resolution essentially a proposal which says, 
yeah, we keep the Government going but we want to cut by half the 
number of resources that go to community policing?
  Mr. President, I have said it many times on the floor of the U.S. 
Senate: When three teenagers, regardless of color of skin, beat up an 
85-year-old woman and leave her for dead, we hold them accountable for 
what they have done. We do not tell them we feel sorry for them. That 
is a strict law and order approach. By the same token, you can talk to 
the kids--and Sheila and I spend time with kids who are at risk--you 
can go to the schools in some of the tougher neighborhoods, you can 
talk to the judge, you can talk to the sheriffs, you can talk to the 
police chiefs, you can talk to the youth workers if anybody wants to 
because they are the ones that are dealing with this violence, and they 
will tell you we have to have opportunities for these kids. We have to 
have alternatives to the gangs and make sure the kids are able to do 
positive things in the communities.
  Mr. President, no matter who you talk to--whether it is people in the 
communities, whether it is the police, whether it is the chiefs, the 
law enforcement people who are in the communities--they all say the 
same thing: This community police program is important. We need more 
law enforcement in our neighborhoods. We need to reclaim our 
neighborhoods. We need to reclaim our cities. We need to reclaim our 
communities. We need to reduce this level of violence.
  I was talking to the police chief in Fergus Falls and he said, 
``Senator, the reason the COPS Program is such a good program is 
because you do not limit the grants just to the large cities.'' He 
said, ``I want to tell you that this is a wonderful community, and it 
certainly is, but do not think for a moment we do not have problems 
with violence and problems with crime.'' This COPS Program has been a 
huge success. Same comment from the sheriff. It does not matter whether 
you talk to sheriffs or police chiefs in the big cities, Minneapolis-
St. Paul, in Minnesota, or Duluth, or you talk to them in midsized 
cities like St. Cloud, or whether you are talking to law enforcement 
people in the small towns of rural communities, they all say the same 
thing. They all say the same thing: ``Senators, cut a program if it 
does not work, but do not cut a program that has been an astounding 
success.'' We need to reduce the level of violence. We need to be bold 
and we need to be dramatic. It is a huge mistake to block grant, to 
move away from what has been the commitment that we have made.

  We said, when we passed this crime bill, that we make a commitment to 
100,000 community police, that we would make a commitment to community 
police all across my State of Minnesota. That is what law enforcement 
people expected. That is what we are doing now, with great success. 
That is what the people in our States expected. We need to live up to 
our commitment. That is why this amendment is so important, and I hope 
it will pass.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I have been listening to the distinguished 
Senator, and I have to say that some of the points he is making are 
good. Take them up with your Governor. We do not have to dictate from 
Washington what law enforcement officials have to do in the individual 
States and communities. If you do not like what the block grant moneys 
are used for in your State, then take it up with your Governor, because 
I will tell you one thing, you get the money. If you need more 
policemen, you can get them with that block grant money. If your 
Governor is not doing it, talk to him. I doubt----
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. HATCH. For a question, sure.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I will wait for a chance to respond.
  Mr. HATCH. If I heard the Senator correctly--and he is a friend and 
colleague--maybe I did not because I was listening and not listening. 
But it seemed to me that I recall him saying that Senator Dole was 
being accused of reneging.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. If the Senator will yield, I did not mention the 
majority leader's name at all. I do not do that.
  Mr. HATCH. I am glad to hear that because I thought there was some 
sort of accusation that Senator Dole had reneged on law enforcement 
needs. I want to make it clear that not only did he not do that, he has 
been one of the strongest pro-law enforcement people in his long time 
in the U.S. Senate, and rightly so, as is his colleague, the Senator 
from Utah. We both have fought very, very hard.
  I agree that my colleague, Senator Biden, on the other side, has been 
a tremendous leader in the war against crime. I have a lot of respect 
for him. I grieve when we disagree on some of these things. Senator 
Dole, in particular, opposed the 1994 crime bill because it was not a 
tough enough law enforcement bill. I was there, too, and I opposed it 
for that reason as well, although there was much we agreed with in that 
bill, and we were glad certain parts of it were passed. I commend 
Senator Biden for his efforts on that bill because there is much in 
that bill that is good, not the least of which is the Biden-Hatch 
violence-against-women provisions. Senator Dole believes in real law 
enforcement, not shallow promises.
  What I am saying here is, look, it makes sense to give about half of 
this money to the communities as seed money to try to help them get 
police personnel. It does not make sense to say that this is the 
President's commitment of 100,000 cops, because he made that commitment 
on the last bill that had $8.8 billion in it, and everybody knew that 
would not provide for 100,000 police on the streets. Now they are 
coming and saying with seed money they can get their 100,000 cops. I 
have said they could not get the 100,000 cops on the basis of what they 
had done up through the 1994 crime bill. That crime bill did not do 
that. It talked about it, but it did not, will not, cannot, do it. The 
President has been going up and down the country talking about his 
100,000 cops on the streets bill. The fact is that just simply is not 
true. I think it is time for the American people to understand that.
  Republicans, recognizing that it is important to have police on the 
street and to have flexibility so you can do what needs to be done in 
the communities, have said, in spite of the fact that the President 
has, in some respects, demagoged this issue all over the country, 
knowing the funds are not there, acting like they are and helping the 
American people to believe they are there when they are not. We have 
decided to put half of the moneys into the cops on the street program 
regardless, because we believe in that, too, to the degree that we 
should do it. That is the degree. But we also put about half

[[Page S1947]]

of the money into a block grant so those communities have the 
flexibility to do whatever is in the best needs of their community. 
That makes sense.
  I do not understand the argument against it--to just dictate from 
Washington that you have cops on the streets whether you want them or 
not, and if you do not want them or cannot use them, you do not get 
anything out of this bill. I would rather have these police people 
throughout the country get good things out of this bill that will help 
them to meet their law enforcement needs in their area than have us 
wonderful people in the U.S. Senate tell them what they have to have. 
Sure, some of these communities will have their hands out for anything, 
and I cannot blame them. Any time you can find money that is just a 
gift, why not take it?
  What we want to do is have these moneys go for the purposes they 
should go for, the best possible, flexible response to crime in this 
country. This bill does that. I think anybody who says otherwise just 
does not understand what is in the bill.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAHAM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida is recognized.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, the debate that we are having today 
focuses on the specific issue of community police. I would like, at a 
later point, to discuss some of my opinions and observations about this 
particular form of use of police personnel from a recent experience in 
a specific community in my State of Florida.
  But as a context of this, I would like to raise the question of what 
is the appropriate Federal, State, local role in law enforcement? What 
should be the nature of the Federal Government's participation in our 
collective efforts to provide security to our homes, our neighborhoods, 
our States, and our Nation? Let me suggest just three items that I 
think are important principles for that relationship and for the 
Federal role.
  First is that the Federal Government must fulfill its own specific 
and singular obligations. Mr. President, that sounds obvious. Of 
course, the Federal Government ought to fulfill its obligations. 
Unfortunately, there have been too many instances in which that has not 
been the case and in which other levels of government, therefore, were 
forced to divert their resources to carry out what otherwise would have 
been a Federal responsibility.
  Example: My State is replete with instances in which the Federal 
Government, through specific agencies, established thresholds of a 
particular criminal activity which must be passed before the Federal 
agencies would assume responsibility. It was a Federal crime at a lower 
level of intensity. But for various reasons, generally having to do 
with the resources or other set of priorities available to Federal 
agencies, those agencies would not investigate or prosecute activities 
unless it reached a particular quantity.
  This has been particularly true as it relates to drug-related 
offenses. Unless you were caught with several pounds of marijuana, or 
significant amounts of cocaine, even though you were subject to Federal 
investigation and arrest and prosecution, you, in fact, were not. So, 
therefore, it became the obligation of the local law enforcement 
agencies to spend their resources in doing what should have been a 
Federal obligation.
  What makes this particularly vexing is that these prosecution 
standards are not evenly applied across the Nation. So that one 
community in America receives a different level of Federal law 
enforcement support than does another. I think those differences are 
intolerable and that one of the first steps in the Federal-State-local 
partnership ought to be that the Federal Government would meet its 
responsibilities and do so on an evenhanded basis across America.
  Second, I think the Federal Government has an important role to play 
in assisting in the coordination of law enforcement agencies. The 
Federal Government has some natural characteristics that lead it to be 
an important partner, if not the first among equals, when there are 
efforts to bring several law enforcement agencies together. The 
examples that have been used in areas of drug enforcement, where the 
Federal Government has, through leadership and through financial 
incentive, encouraged States and local communities to collaborate more 
effectively, has served a very salutary function.
  A third area in which the Federal Government has a role to play is to 
encourage innovation and dissemination of best practices in law 
enforcement. So that if a particular community engages in an activity 
which has demonstrated its effort for efficacy, I think the Federal 
Government has a role in spreading that best practice as rapidly as 
possible to other communities which can benefit by that.
  Mr. President, left out of this list of what I think are appropriate 
Federal roles is for the Federal Government to become involved in a 
general, nondirect form of assistance to State and local law 
enforcement. I do not believe that this is an appropriate role for the 
Federal Government, and that is a ditch into which we have fallen 
before and I fear are about to fall again. Law enforcement is a State 
and local responsibility, and it should be the primary responsibility 
of the citizens at the State and local level to be charged with the 
establishment of priorities and direction, and to provide the financing 
for that level of law enforcement which that community feels to be 
appropriate.
  This is not by any means a novel suggestion. Fifteen years ago, the 
President of the United States of America was Ronald Reagan. Ronald 
Reagan, in his first years in office, advocated a principle called New 
Federalism. That principle was built around the idea that there should 
be an allocation of major responsibilities to levels of government, 
that we should try to avoid what had become a marble cake in which 
virtually every level of government was involved in every decision of 
government.
  President Reagan advocated, among other things, Mr. President, an 
advocacy which has, I am afraid, been forgotten in our current debate, 
that the Federal Government had a particular responsibility for those 
programs that related to the income maintenance of our citizens and 
that those programs that might cause a citizen to move from one State 
to the other seeking higher benefit levels should be nationalized 
because it was not in the interest of the Nation to have people induced 
to make those kind of relocations. He was particularly an advocate that 
Medicaid should be a national responsibility, both because of its 
tendency to induce people movement but also--and I think this was quite 
prophetic of President Reagan--that we were going to need to relook at 
the relationship between Medicaid and Medicare as they served the 
changing needs of our older population and that we would have a better 
opportunity to look at that interrelationship if both Medicare and 
Medicaid were national responsibilities. I believe that suggestion 
which was made 15 years ago is even more true today.

  President Reagan also identified some activities that he felt the 
Federal Government ought to get out of and let the States and local 
governments assume a greater degree of responsibility. One of those was 
transportation. Frankly, I hope that in the next few months as we look 
again at the Federal Government's commitment to transportation that we 
will relook at some of the wisdom of Ronald Reagan in terms of his 
recommendation, if that should be more of a State responsibility, 
particularly in this post-interstate era.
  But another topic in which President Reagan felt should be turned 
back to States with less Federal involvement was law enforcement. He 
felt that law enforcement was a function which was inherently State and 
local in its character and should be looked to be carried out with 
limited Federal involvement. He was well aware of the status of the Law 
Enforcement Assistance Act, the program which had provided block grants 
to States and local communities, a program which lost focus, lost 
accountability, and finally lost public and political support and 
collapsed.
  I am afraid that we are looking more to the failed experience of the 
Law Enforcement Assistance Act program than we are to the appropriate 
role of the Federal Government in law enforcement as we consider this 
proposal to reestablish a Federal Government block grant. I do not 
believe that a

[[Page S1948]]

general purpose block grant has an appropriate role in the Federal 
relationship with State and local governments for the purpose of law 
enforcement.
  Mr. President, I indicated that I thought that one of the areas in 
which there was an appropriate Federal role had to do with the issue of 
innovation and encouraging best practice and dissemination of those 
best practices. In the best tradition of that effort to stimulate best 
practice is what the Federal Government has done as it relates to 
community policing. Community policing is a concept that in many ways 
is as old as law enforcement in this Nation, a concept which, for a 
variety of reasons, waned in recent decades, for which we have paid, I 
think, a heavy price in the loss of the benefits of a closing 
relationship between law enforcement personnel and the communities they 
serve.
  I believe that this is an ideal example of the Federal Government 
using its specific target influence to encourage innovation, in this 
case, the reinvention of a fundamental American idea of the close 
partnership between the police and the neighborhoods that they serve. 
It works to reduce crime. Community policing works to create bonds of 
trust between police officers and their neighborhoods and their 
citizens. Community policing works because it involves the entire 
community in the business of increasing public safety.

  Mr. President, let me share with you an experience that I had on 
February 10 of this year. For over 20 years I have been taking 
different jobs every month, and on February 10, 1996, this program 
brought me to the headquarters of the police department of Port St. 
Lucie, FL. Port St. Lucie, FL is a town in Florida in the middle 
Atlantic coast which has been undergoing an explosion of population. It 
is one of the fastest growing cities in our rapidly growing State. It 
is a community which has developed a very diverse population. It is a 
population which is in many neighborhoods, in a very scattered housing 
pattern; that is, there will be only a few houses with several still 
yet to be built upon lots in a particular block. In many ways, it would 
appear as if Port St. Lucie was not a good candidate for the concept of 
community policing as many people know it--the policemen on the beat 
walking from home to home and store to store.
  Port St. Lucie has received under the crime bill of 1994 $525,000, 
which has allowed it to hire six new officers and a supervisory 
sergeant for purposes of implementing its community policing program.
  The first person I saw upon arriving at the city hall and at the 
police department of Port St. Lucie was the police chief, Chief 
Reynolds. I asked him what had been his experience in the first 2 years 
of implementing community policing in a city with the characteristics 
of Port St. Lucie, FL. He was extremely enthusiastic, and he listed as 
some of the things that had made him a believer in the concept of 
community policing the fact that he had a strong community-neighborhood 
geographic orientation, that under traditional police patterns, 
officers were rotated generally on a 30-day basis from one neighborhood 
to the other. This made it very difficult, if not impossible, for there 
to be a bond developed between an individual police officer and the 
citizens for whom that officer was responsible.
  Community policing was proactive. It had reduced the need for 
emergency responses in his city because, through community policing, 
they were dealing with problems while they were still manageable, not 
before they had become emergencies.
  There was a new access to public officials and to nonlaw enforcement 
activities, as the community police officer in many cases served an 
ombudsman function, intermediary, assisting the citizens not only in 
meeting their traditional law enforcement needs but also in areas like 
directing the citizens to the appropriate public works officials to fix 
up a problem with a street or to a housing code enforcement officer if 
there was an instance of failure to maintain a home in adequate 
condition. The community police served to mitigate community problems 
by dealing with a squabble while it was still a squabble before it had 
festered into a major controversy.
  Those were just some of the preliminary concepts of community 
policing that caused Chief Reynolds to be such a strong advocate. As I 
spent the day working with the officers of the Port St. Lucie Police 
Department I experienced some of those concepts in reality.
  I worked with Officer Joe Diskin through much of my day, and with 
Officer Diskin we met community members in senior centers. We talked to 
them about what was happening in their neighborhood, and if there were 
any problems that we might deal with while they were still at a 
manageable stage. Part of my day was spent at the Darwin Square Plaza 
in downtown Port St. Lucie. For years, citizens in that area had been 
concerned about harassment and about loitering and about allegations 
that the plaza was being used for drug dealing. Recently, the Port St. 
Lucie Police Department, utilizing the personnel resources available 
through the community policing grant, established a substation in the 
Darwin Square Mall. Within a matter of weeks, there had been a decline 
in citizen complaints. There had been a decline in assaults, major and 
minor. There had been an increase in public confidence about using that 
commercial facility.
  I spent a considerable amount of my time going from store to store, 
talking with the owners, with employees, with customers who frequent 
the mall. In every instance, I received acclaim for what the community 
policing program had meant in the quality of their lives.
  Mr. President, community policing is working in Port St. Lucie, FL. 
It is an ideal example of the Federal Government using its targeted 
role in the family of Federal-State-local government law enforcement to 
encourage innovation and the dissemination of best practices. It is not 
an inappropriate Federal Government intrusion into the State and local 
responsibility for law enforcement which I fear a return to the LEAA 
block grant approach would lead us to.
  When we vote today, we are not just deciding the future of the 
community policing program and the opportunity that it offers to 
accelerate this reinvention of a fundamental American idea of the 
police and the community working together. We are also deciding on the 
future of the Federal Government's role in law enforcement. I believe 
in the philosophy of President Reagan that Government will best serve 
its people if there is a clear understanding of what level of 
Government is responsible for what activity, and that law enforcement 
will best serve the needs of the people if it continues to be primarily 
a State and local responsibility, and that the insertion of a Federal 
block grant for indeterminate purposes is an inappropriate concept 
within that philosophy of new federalism and State and local 
responsibility for law enforcement.
  Mr. President, we have an idea which is working to make a positive 
impact on the security of our people. That idea is community policing. 
We should continue with this idea, as we look for other innovations 
that the Federal Government can encourage at the State and local 
government level. But we should become intrusive in terms of the basic 
responsibility at home for the protection of our neighborhoods and our 
people.
  Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment which is 
before us which will keep us on an appropriate path and avoid us 
slipping into the ditch of an ill-considered, ill-formed Federal role.
  I urge you to do this. If he were here today, Mr. President, I 
suggest that President Reagan would encourage us to support this 
amendment.
  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). The Senator from North Dakota is 
recognized.

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment and to 
urge my colleagues to vote for it for a number of important reasons. I 
think the COPS Program does represent a partnership between the Federal 
and State and local governments.
  This proposal by the majority party is another manifestation of the 
solutions they propose in a range of areas: package up some money, tie 
it in a bow, block grant it, ship it someplace else and tell whoever 
you are shipping it to: Go ahead and spend the money. We raised it. You 
spend it. We will not watch. And somehow that will fix our country's 
problems.

[[Page S1949]]

  Senator Biden and others, including me, when we put the crime bill 
together, said there are certain things we would like to encourage, and 
we provided resources with which to encourage them. One of those things 
was putting cops on the street to provide more community policing. The 
program has been very successful. The proposal by the majority party 
now would retreat on our efforts to provide more community policing and 
help provide the resources with which to do that. We are told now by 
the majority party: Let us back away from that, and we will go back to 
the old days. Just block grant it and let somebody back home decide 
exactly what their needs are because they can decide that best.
  I think in some cases that might be correct. They can decide best 
what their needs are, and that is why they can decide whether they want 
to access money for community policing. And if they do not want to 
access it, that is fine. But if they do want to, then this is a 
resource the Federal Government provides in partnership with them.
  We have already been through one iteration of a block grant in law 
enforcement, the LEAA Program which, I would say, was extraordinarily 
wasteful in many ways. Some of my colleagues have already described how 
some of that money was spent: $79,000 spent by one State--this is 
Federal money that was free to them--for a tank and machine guns. 
Another $27,000 LEAA award was to study why inmates would want to 
escape from prison. That, by the way, got Senator Proxmire's Golden 
Fleece Award. I have a lot of friends in North Dakota who could tell us 
why inmates want to escape from prison for a whole lot less than 
$27,000. They could study that for about $5 and come up with a quick 
answer.
  In 1970, LEAA provided money for a twin-engine Beechcraft airplane. 
They spent money for a six-passenger, twin-engine airplane for police 
work in fighting against crime. It was free Federal money, just a block 
grant, so they got $84,000. The problem is the flight logs were 
checked, it was discovered that the plane was used mostly by the 
Governor flying around with his family and staff and other non-law 
enforcement personnel flying around going to meetings, apparently 
fighting crime. But it was Federal money, so they were able to get an 
airplane to fly the Governor around.
  One university got a $293,000 grant to decide whether to make--but 
not to actually create--a loose leaf encyclopedia on law enforcement. 
One city bought a police car with no markings on it with the money, the 
old LEAA money. That car was used primarily by the mayor. Maybe it was 
not so much to fight crime.
  We have had some experience with having one level of government raise 
the money and give it to another level of government and say: by the 
way, we raised the money, you go ahead and spend it, and we will not 
watch you. It is kind of like passing an ice cube around.
  I guess my question is, if that is the notion, why would you want to 
run the money through Washington? Why not simply say: let us cut 
Federal taxes, and say to the local governments and the Governors: if 
you want this money for law enforcement, raise taxes back home and 
spend the money back home. Why should we separate where we raise the 
money from where we spend the money? This is the ultimate manifestation 
here. We are going to block grant everything around here. Why not say 
to the Governors: well, raise taxes and pay for these programs 
yourself. But they say: no, let us run the money through Washington 
first so we can cycle it around here a while, and then send it back and 
say: by the way, you spend it; we will not watch you, and it will not 
matter to us.
  That is what this amendment is about, in many ways. We put together a 
community policing program that is working and it is available to those 
communities who need it, with some matching funds. If they do not need 
it, they do not apply for it. If they do not want it, they do not get 
it. But if they need it and want it, then that money is available.
  The fact is, all of the information demonstrates that this program 
has worked and has worked well. It has provided more police on the 
streets, and everybody understands that one of the ways to prevent 
crime is to put police on the street. Far from deciding that we do not 
care what the local government's decisions are going to be, I would 
like to move in the other direction and say to State and local 
governments, we do care and we want to be involved in some of it.
  I would like to ask my colleagues something on a slightly different 
issue. We have 3,400 people who have been murdered in this country; 
3,400 murders committed by people who were in State prisons but who 
were let out early because it was too crowded. They got good time 
credit, they got whatever you get to get out early, so they got out 
early and murdered 3,400 more people. In those cases, in my judgment, 
the governments were accessories to murder. We knew these people were 
violent because they had committed a violent crime. We locked them up 
and then let them out early because we said, ``Well, you were good in 
prison so we will let you out early.'' Then they go out and murder 
again.
  Let me just talk about two cases briefly because I am going to 
introduce some legislation, which is slightly different than this 
amendment, next week. I will support this amendment. This is the right 
approach. But let me just quickly describe two cases. When somebody 
says, ``what business is it of anybody's, on a national basis, to deal 
with these issues,'' I say that it is a national issue when you have 
3,400 people murdered by people who should not have been in a position 
to murder anybody.
  There is a piece of prose that I thought was really well written, a 
column in last Saturday's Washington Post, written by Colbert King. It 
is entitled ``The `Wrong Place, Wrong Time' Dodge.'' The reason I was 
interested in it was because the columnist was writing about a tragic 
murder that happened here in Washington, DC, that I had also 
researched. It struck me as so strange and so unthinkable that this 
type of tragedy could continue to happen in our country. The columnist 
wrote about the murder of a young woman named Bettina Pruckmayr. 
Bettina was a 26-year-old young attorney, and she lived here in 
Washington, DC. She was just starting her career. On December 16--not 
so awfully long ago--she was abducted in a carjacking, driven to an ATM 
machine in Washington, DC. She was stabbed 38 times.
  Colbert King, in his column in the Washington Post, graphically 
describes what happened to poor Bettina Pruckmayr. She was stabbed in 
the back, three times in the neck, and in dozens of other places. Some 
wounds were so deep that her bones were broken. The person who 
allegedly murdered Bettina Pruckmayr, a young woman who was in a 
parking lot adjacent to her home and was kidnaped and murdered, is a 
man named Leo Gonzales Wright. Wright is now facing murder charges, but 
he should not have been in the position, under any circumstance, to 
have murdered anybody. He is a fellow who had already murdered. He had 
raped. He committed robbery. He committed burglary. And he murdered. He 
was in prison and then let out early because the Government said, ``We 
do not have enough room so you go ahead and go out on the streets.'' 
This person, allegedly, on the streets, murdered Bettina Pruckmayr. He 
should not have been anywhere in a position to murder anyone, but 
somebody let him out of prison.
  In fact, not only did they let him out, but, when he was out, he was 
caught and picked up for selling drugs. The parole board did not put 
him back in prison. As a result, Bettina Pruckmayr is dead.
  It is not just her. Mr. President, 3,400 Americans were murdered in 
those circumstances. Let me describe one additional victim, again 
murdered recently, and again in this area.

  It is the story of a young boy named Jonathan Hall, a 13-year-old boy 
from Fairfax, VA. He was a young boy who had some difficulty in his 
background, but a 13-year-old boy who, I am sure, wanted a good life 
and wanted to grow up, like all young boys do. He was found, instead, 
in an icy pond, stabbed 58 times, with dirt and grass between his 
fingers. Apparently, when he was left there for dead, he, in his last 
moments, tried to pull himself out of this pond but did not make it.
  Who murdered this young boy? Again, it does not take Dick Tracy to

[[Page S1950]]

understand who does these things. A person who had been convicted of 
murder previously, not once but twice--two separate murders--and a 
kidnaping. This fellow was sent to prison, this man named James Buck 
Murray, who allegedly killed this young boy. He was sent to prison for 
20 years for slashing the throat of a cab driver. Then, while in 
prison, escaped while on work release and kidnapped a woman. Then, he 
was convicted of murdering a fellow inmate. But Murray was let out of 
prison long before he completed the terms of his sentence.
  This person should not have been in a position to murder anybody 
under any condition. He should have been in prison. But instead, a 13-
year-old boy is dead. Jonathan Hall is dead, Bettina Pruckmayr is dead, 
and 3,400 other people are dead, because this system does not work.
  People say, ``That is none of your business. That is not of national 
importance. That is for State and local governments.'' Those people who 
let these violent criminals out of jail to kill others ought to be told 
by us this is a matter of national importance.
  Let me finish in a moment. I will be happy to yield for a unanimous 
consent request to Senator Gregg.
  Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from North Dakota for his courtesy.
  Mr. President I ask unanimous consent that at the hour of 5:45 today, 
Senator Dole be recognized to make a motion to table the Biden 
amendment No. 3483, and, further, that the time between now and 5:45 
today be equally divided between Senator Biden and Senator Hatch or his 
designee.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. DORGAN. We have a national interest in this country in addressing 
this crime issue. We had a national interest when we put together 
something under Senator Biden's leadership that talked about putting 
more police on the streets in this country. We did it and it works and 
it makes a lot of sense. We ought not retreat from that.
  I also make the point, as I have just made previously about the 
murders committed in this country by people who should not be out of 
jail, that we have a national interest in addressing that issue as 
well. Why are people who have been previously convicted of violent 
crimes being let out of prison early so they can murder again? We need 
to ask these questions of State governments. We ought to ask them if 
there is not some way we can work together to decide, if prisons are so 
full that you cannot keep the kind of murderous characters in prison 
who now go out and murder again, to build more prisons, because we want 
to keep these people in jail.
  These people would not be let out of Federal prisons, by the way--
these are not Federal prisoners--to murder 3,400 people, because you do 
not get an early parole in the Federal system, thanks to Senator Biden. 
You do not get good time in Federal prisons, thanks to me and some 
others. You are sentenced to jail in the Federal system and you spend 
your time in jail. You are not going to be out murdering again before 
your sentence ends.
  But, guess what? If you are a convicted murderer in this country, if 
you are convicted of committing a murder somewhere, you are going to be 
sentenced to around 10 years in prison, but you will not serve 10 years 
in prison. You will serve 6\1/2\ to 7 years. Why? Because it was 
decided that murderers should get out early.
  (Mr. GREGG assumed the chair.)
  Mr. DORGAN. I am sorry, murderers ought not get out early under any 
condition, and if we cannot protect the Jonathan Halls and Bettina 
Pruckmayrs, and other people who were killed by murderers who should 
not have been in a position to kill anybody, then we should not be in 
the business of law enforcement.
  I support this amendment. It makes eminent good sense, and I support 
many initiatives by Senator Biden and others on our side of the aisle 
who have worked long and hard on this issue. There are good ideas from 
the other side as well, and I appreciate those.
  But it is not a good idea to step back, it is a good idea to step 
forward in addressing crime. Preserving the COPS Program is one step.
  I intend in the coming days to offer a second step, not on this bill 
but as a separate piece of legislation, dealing with the issue of those 
who have been previously convicted of violent crimes, that they ought 
not get good time to go out and murder again, that they ought not be 
put on our streets early. Bettina Pruckmayr and Jonathan Hall should 
not have been killed, and more in the future will not be killed if we 
deal with this appropriately.
  Mr. President, with that, I want to thank the Senator from Delaware, 
for whom I have great respect for his leadership on this issue. I do 
hope the Senate will, when considering this issue, decide that what we 
did to put more police on the streets in this country made sense then 
and it makes sense now. That is an approach and progress from which we 
shall not retreat.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan. The time is 
controlled by the Senator from Michigan and the Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may need, 
but I plan to be relatively brief. I just want to comment and follow up 
on what the Senator from North Dakota, Senator Dorgan, just said.
  One of the significant problems we have--and I agree with him--is the 
problem of people who are getting out of prison at the State and local 
levels before they should. The problem, though, I think, is in large 
measure stemming from Washington and needs to be addressed. I invite 
the Senator from North Dakota to join me in some legislation on which 
we have had hearings before the Judiciary Committee. A number of other 
States have been similarly affected.
  It turns out that Federal rules and regulations under the CRIPA 
legislation, as well as Federal court orders, are actually forcing 
people out of prisons prematurely. In my State, we entered into a 
consent decree with the Department of Justice back in the 1980's with 
respect to conditions in Michigan prisons.
  By 1992, we had an agreement with the Department of Justice that we 
had satisfied the problems that had caused this consent decree to be 
entered into. The Federal judge who had jurisdiction, nonetheless, even 
after the Department of Justice was willing to allow the consent decree 
to be removed, maintained continuing jurisdiction and is forcing people 
out of our State prisons prematurely.
  For the city of Philadelphia, as we heard testimony in the Judiciary 
Committee, this is a problem that literally has meant that people 
arrested for committing violent crimes, because of a cap that has been 
placed on the amount of people who can be allowed in the prison system 
in Philadelphia, are not being incarcerated, are not being held. The 
Senator from Delaware was at the same hearing.

  I hope we can get together on this. I think that is a whole different 
set of issues, and I think it very important they not be merged into 
this debate. I want to make it clear, I think that is a whole separate 
topic, and I would like to work together with the Senator.
  Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield to me for a question for a moment? 
You make a good point. I would be very interested in talking with you 
about your proposal. I may very well consider supporting it.
  If the Federal Government is part of the problem, then let us solve 
that part of the problem that we can in Federal law.
  I will say this. There are some States--and I do not know what 
Michigan does--there are some States that provide over 430 days a year 
of good time credit for every year a violent prisoner serves. I am 
saying to the States, ``Look, if these people committed multiple 
murders, I don't want you giving them a year-off credit for every year 
they spend in jail.'' Put them there and keep them there.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. I do not want to take much time on our side. Part of the 
reason these things are beginning to happen is because in order to meet 
various Federal court consent decrees, as well as the other regulations 
that have been imposed, it is forcing States to make decisions that I 
do not think they would make if they did not find themselves subject to 
it. I would be very anxious to work on it.

[[Page S1951]]

  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, let me begin by thanking the Senator from 
North Dakota for his generous comments about my role in this 
legislation. I must say, I knew of the Senator when he was a 
Congressman, and I, quite frankly, have been impressed at how dogged he 
has been in pursuing tougher approaches to crime.
  The Senator from Michigan spoke about frivolous lawsuits. He is 
correct, this is worthy of a debate at another time. I think his 
intention is positive. I think he may have the perverse effect of 
bringing about the exact opposite result he wants.
  Unfortunately, a lot of what he suggested is in the bill before us. I 
kind of find it fascinating. We had this debate. We had a hearing in 
the Judiciary Committee. We did not do much else. Starting at page 153 
of the continuing resolution and continuing for, I do not know how many 
pages here, entitled section 802, ``Appropriate Remedies for Prison 
Conditions,'' we essentially rewrite the law. The fact of the matter 
is, nobody in this body even knows what is in this bill. Senator 
Hatch's staff knows. Senator Abraham's staff knows, Senator Abraham 
knows, Senator Biden knows. None of you, I will bet you a million 
bucks, has any notion what is in this bill. Zero. I am willing to bet 
you anything.

  But it will not be the first time I have or others have voted on 
things we do not know is contained in omnibus bills like this.
  Let me respond to the comments about my amendment to restore 100,000 
cops. A couple of my colleagues have stood up and said, ``100,000 cops, 
just not true, never going to happen.'' There are 33,000 cops already, 
just from the time we passed the bill, after spending $1.6 billion of 
the $8.8 billion. Then we heard, of course, 100,000 cops are never 
going to, nor should it, fund 100 percent of the local police now or in 
the future. That is true. No one ever said this was going to support 
100 percent.
  Guess what folks? The block grants do not either. The block grants do 
not do it either, nor should they. It is not the Federal Government's 
role to promise in perpetuity to the local communities to fund forever. 
This does fund 100,000 cops, and it does fund them for 5 years or so. 
The cops and the States are going to have to pick up the tab. Guess 
what? It funds 100 percent of what we give them in the block grant, but 
the block grant ends. I challenge any of my Republican colleagues to 
stand up and promise that this bill contains in perpetuity a commitment 
to continue to pay out of the Federal payroll for any cop hired under 
this bill. This is not going to happen. It is not supposed to happen. 
It was not designed to happen. So it is, what we used to call in law 
school, a red herring to suggest this fully funds the cops.
  Funds are in the trust fund. We heard funds are just not there. The 
funds are in the trust fund. Let us recall the Republicans cut $200 
million from the $4.287 billion that is in the trust fund in 1996 in 
their budget resolution. So if they keep up their efforts, maybe they 
will be able to deplete the trust fund so there will not be any money 
in it. The money was there. They cut the trust fund in the Republican 
budget resolution.
  I also heard we have to end the Washington-knows-best philosophy. 
Well, that is what the 100,000 cops is all about. Local communities 
decide if they want to apply, local communities define local policing 
strategy for themselves and the Republicans call for a separate prison 
grant of $100 million that does not let them decide the same way that 
we allow them to decide, because communities have to pick up the costs 
for each cop after 3 years.
  ``One hundred thousand cops is a lie,'' one of my colleagues said. My 
response is, neither 100,000 cops nor a block grant is going to be or 
should be a permanent entitlement program, and we do not want to 
federalize local police. There is no difference. No difference, except 
you get fewer cops and less money under the block grant approach.
  Now we also heard New York City did not receive one new cop.
  New York City got $54 million to redeploy 2,175 cops through the COPS 
More Program. So we gave them that money, the Federal Government. They 
put up the rest, and they were able to redeploy from inside the 
precincts 2,175 cops.
  D.C. It was also said D.C. did not receive more cops. Response. D.C. 
got $6,076,163 to redeploy 626 cops under the COPS More Program.
  Also, it was said, the city should decide between cops and computers. 
My response is, the COPS More Program is exactly that --$217 million in 
1996 that helped relocate and redeploy 13,000 cops by not having to go 
back to the station house.
  Also, I heard block grants give you the right to use the dollars to 
hire new cops. Well, my response is, it must be guaranteed, not an 
option to hire new cops or they will not be hired.
  I also heard it said on the floor by one of my respected colleagues, 
``I have long said 100,000 cops is a phony idea.'' Well, in November 
1993, a lot of people did not think it was such a bad idea, including 
the Senator who thought it was a phony idea. I will not go through it 
because I would hate everybody reading everything I said back to me in 
the Record. But, you know, it may be thought of as a phony idea now, 
but it was not in 1993 when we were doing it.
  The other criticism I heard is the continuing resolution level for 
100,000 cops, $975 million, is sufficient to get us there. Well, $975 
million is not enough for this year, 1996. The CR provided $407 
million, and $276 million has already been spent, and $130 million will 
be spent on police technologies and police efforts to fight family 
violence and community policing efforts.
  The current CR would provide a total of $975 million for COPS. 
Subtract the $407 million, and that leaves $568 million for the rest of 
the year, if the Hatfield amendment becomes law. But $522 million has 
already been requested through March 6. In other words, that leaves $50 
million for all other applications that come in from now through 
September 30.
  There is not enough. There is not enough. Just go back to your home 
States, ask them if they are going to stop applying. No. If the State 
of Oklahoma, if the State of Utah, if the other States, they do not 
want to apply for any more cops, God bless them. Wonderful, do not 
apply. But if they do apply and they qualify on the merits, there is no 
money for them. We already have something like--where is that chart--
7,766 new cops requested so far this year--requested. Oklahoma wants 94 
new ones.
  My colleague says, ``Wow.'' Well, go tell the Oklahoma folks they do 
not need them. I respect that. But the idea there is enough for those 
who qualify and are requesting simply is not true.
  We also heard Washington should not dictate local strategy. Well, my 
response is, we are not dictating local strategy. Nobody has to ask, 
and only big cities get COPS more dollars. That is also not true. You 
have got American Fork in Vermont, Carbon County, Duchesne County, 
Kane, Layton, Logan, Ogden, UT, Salt Lake, South Ogden--you know, the 
list goes on and on. I did not know they were big cities.
  Based on a salary of $65,000 to $70,000, this will not fund 100,000 
cops. The truth is, the average salary is $40,000. I reserve the 20 
seconds I may have left and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). Who yields time?
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the Violent Crime Control and Law 
Enforcement Act of 1994, enacted by the last Congress, contained a $30 
billion trust fund for State and local law enforcement programs. That 
legislation made an important statement of our commitment to stand with 
our police officers in the war against crime by providing dedicated 
funding to put 100,000 new cops on the streets.
  From 1970 to 1990, we increased Federal spending on lawyers by 200 
percent and prison spending by 156 percent, but we increased Federal 
spending on police officers by only 12 percent. The COPS Program would 
reverse that trend, without adding to the deficit, and without any new 
taxes, by cutting thousands of jobs out of the Federal bureaucracy. 
More police officers, fewer bureaucrats. That is the commitment enacted 
into law by the last Congress.
  Mr. President, there is no more important step that we can take to 
fight crime and support our law enforcement community than to increase 
the number of cops on the streets. And that is

[[Page S1952]]

what the COPS Program has been doing. That law has already funded 
25,000 new cops nationwide, including 825 in Michigan.
  Unfortunately, the bill before us today would undermine this 
milestone achievement of the last Congress by cutting in half the 
funding provided to put new police officers on the street. Instead of 
the $1.9 billion requested by the administration, and fully paid for 
out of the violent crime trust fund, this bill would provide only $950 
million to put police officers on the street.
  This cut in funding would not help reduce the deficit, and it would 
not help balance the budget. Congress would still spend the same amount 
of money--we just would not spend it where it is needed, on new police 
officers. Under the bill before us, the bulk of the funds would be 
taken from the COPS Program and put into a block grant, which could 
then be spent on anything from traffic lights to parking meters, 
without hiring a single new cop.
  That is unacceptable. Let me tell you what it would mean for my State 
of Michigan. We currently have applications pending for more than 200 
additional police officer slots around the State. We have applications 
for two new officers from the city of Alma, for three new officers from 
the Ann Arbor Police Department, for one new officer from the Barry 
County Sherriff's Department, for two new police officers from the city 
of Battle Creek--I could go on and on. I ask unanimous consent that a 
partial list of pending applications for additional police officers 
from the State of Michigan be placed in the Record at this point.
  The point is, each of these communities needs the help. And if we 
pass this bill, we are not going to provide it. They need the 
additional police officers to fight a very real war against crime, and 
if this bill passes in its current form, they are not going to get 
them.
  What is true of Michigan is true of other States as well. Every State 
in the country has dozens of pending applications for additional police 
officers under the COPS Program, and if we slash the funding for this 
program, as proposed in this bill, they are not going to get what they 
need. If this bill is passed in its present form, the funding for half 
of those applications will simply disappear.
  Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment to 
restore full funding for the COPS Program.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support this 
amendment to restore funding to the Community Oriented Policing [COPS] 
Program. Law enforcement officials from all across the country have 
told us loud and clear, that the COPS Program is one of the 1994 Crime 
Act's most effective programs. To those who want to slash the COPS 
program by 50 percent in favor of a block grant, I have this to say: 
``If it ain't broke, don't fix it.''
  Consider this: Serious crime is retreating all across the United 
States. Nationally, murder rates fell 12 percent in the first 6 months 
of 1995 and serious crimes of all kinds dropped 1 to 2 percent. Law 
enforcement across the United States credit community policing for 
contributing to these declines. Now is not the time to cut back on our 
efforts to fight crime.
  And more importantly, to my constituents in Iowa, it is rural America 
that will pay the price if this amendment is not adopted. The COPS 
Program made a special commitment to include small towns and rural 
areas. half of all COPS funding goes to agencies serving jurisdictions 
of under 150,000 in population. Block grant funding favors larger 
populations so that even small towns with high crime rates would lose 
out. In 1995, Iowa received over $14 million to hire over 200 officers. 
Over 70 percent of law enforcement officers surveyed in my State, 
supported the COPS Program.
  Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the proposal to slash funding for 
the COPS Program is the loss of local control. Proponents traditionally 
argue that block grants increase local control. The crime prevention 
block grant proposed in the continuing resolution does no such thing. 
This initiative replaces a highly successful program that responds to 
public desire for an increased police presence with a program that 
merely gives money to State governments that may keep up to 15 percent 
before distributing the remainder to local governments. This is a 
significant departure from the COPS Program which funneled the funding 
directly to the local law enforcement agencies.
  The block grant approach to crime prevention invites the abuse of 
funds the COPS Program was created to eliminate, as well as doing away 
with effective crime prevention programs that worked hand in hand with 
community policing initiatives set up under the COPS Program. The block 
grant approach is an ineffective response to our Nation's war against 
crime and a sad departure from the successful efforts started under the 
1994 Violent Crime Control Act.
  Community policing works. It is a flexible program that is responsive 
to law enforcement needs. More cops on the beat have an undeniable 
effect on crime and a community's sense of security. Nationwide, the 
COPS Program serves 87 percent of America with 33,000 officers. We 
should heed the advice of the folks that are on the frontlines in the 
fight against crime. I urge all my colleagues to support this important 
amendment to restore funding to the COPS Program.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I strongly support the Biden amendment 
and am proud to be a cosponsor of this important amendment. The 
amendment would restore $1,788,000 to the COPS Program.
  This funding will allow us to keep our promise to the American people 
to put 100,000 new police officers on our streets. Under the Violent 
Crime Control Act we passed in 1994, the COPS Program was created to 
provide our communities with the police they need to fight crime.
  COPS stands for community oriented policing services. So far the COPS 
Program has made possible over 790 new police officers in my State of 
Maryland, and over 33,000 new officers nationwide.
  Through the use of community policing, the COPS Program puts into 
practice what police chiefs and other experts have been saying for 
years. They know that police officers fight crime and prevent crime 
more effectively when they are integral members of the community they 
serve. They know the fight against crime will be won only when the 
police work with citizens as full-fledged partners in the battle to 
take back our streets.
  Mr. President, the COPS Program is working. Why would we want to 
change a law that is working?
  If we start taking apart the crime control package we passed in 1994 
with bipartisan support, we leave to chance what we know is working 
now. Let us continue to make it a priority to get more police out on 
the streets.
  By restoring the COPS Program, we are responding to a cry for help, a 
cry for more police officers on the street. We cannot ignore this cry 
for help from all of those police departments who need more police.
  My constituents are calling for an increase in the number of police 
officers in their communities. My constituents are calling for more 
crime prevention programs. The legislation to satisfy these calls has 
been passed, the programs are now established; why should we dismantle 
them?
  Mr. President, this bill, as reported by the Appropriations 
Committee, provides no guarantees that even one new police officer will 
be hired. The 1994 crime bill called for 100,000 new police on the 
streets of America participating in community policing.
  I urge my colleagues to consider this: our failure to fulfill the 
promise of 100,000 new police officers means less partnership between 
police and their communities, less work with community residents to 
detect and supress crime, and a missed opportunity to keep our streets 
safe for law-abiding citizens.
  If we are going to take back our streets, we must empower our 
communities with the police they need. The concept of community based 
policing is police officers and citizens forging alliances to combat 
crime. I strongly oppose any efforts to cut community oriented policing 
programs.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the Biden amendment. 
Passage of this amendment will allow our citizens and their partners in 
law enforcement to continue to combat crime together by delivering more 
new police officers to the frontline.
  Thank you Mr. President.

[[Page S1953]]

  Mr. NICKLES addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. NICKLES. How much time do we have remaining on our side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has, on his side, 9 minutes, 8 
seconds.
  Mr. NICKLES. I yield myself--I see the Senator from Utah. Please 
notify me in 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. After 5 minutes?
  Mr. NICKLES. In 5 minutes.
  I rise in opposition to this amendment. I am kind of amused and kind 
of interested in it as well. This is an amendment that says we want to 
take whatever money we have available and we want to mandate that it 
has to be spent in the COPS Program.
  Obviously, it is a popular program, as illustrated by the Senator 
from Delaware, because a lot of people have applied for it. Why would 
they apply for it? Well, it is Uncle Sam saying, ``We will pay for 75 
percent of the cost for new policemen in your community for the first 
year, the second year 50 percent, and the third year, 25 percent, and 
the fourth year you are on your own.''
  But a lot of communities, if they see Uncle Sam waving some dollar 
signs around, they say, ``Yes, we want to grab a hold of it.'' Maybe it 
is the best way to spend resources in fighting crime, maybe it is not.
  I will mention to my colleague there are not just big cities that 
qualify for this program. We had one community in Oklahoma, Moffett, 
OK, that applied for money, was eligible to receive the money. Just a 
couple comments. It is a fairly small town. Unfortunately, they do not 
have a police force, but yet they qualified. I do not remember exactly 
the amount. But it was, I think, about $180,000. But they did not have 
a police force.
  As a matter of fact, this little town had volunteer fire and police, 
but they did not have an organized police force. Yet, they received 
this money. They did not know what to do with it. To make the story 
short, when they realized they would have to do the matching, that was 
a serious problem for this little town, even if they had to match 25 
percent the first year, 50 percent the second.
  The end of the story is they went through a lot of city managers in a 
period of about a year or so and finally decided they did not need this 
grant, they could not afford it. Also kind of humorous, but of 
interest, they said, ``We can do a lot more if we just had a little 
more leeway in what to do with this money. We need some help.'' They 
made that comment. ``And we could use it for''--frankly, I do not think 
they had a police car. I could go on and on.
  But this bill says that the money that we are going to give, we are 
going to mandate that it go to the COPS Program because we decided in 
Washington, DC, that is the best way to combat crime. Maybe some of the 
communities have a particular interest in juvenile crime and might 
think that a better approach would be an effort to educate juveniles, 
or maybe they have a problem with drugs and juveniles, or maybe there 
are problems in other areas. Maybe more police are the answer; maybe 
they are not. But we are coming up with this amendment that says we are 
going to take all the money available that is not earmarked and we are 
going to take the balance of it for the so-called COPS Program. I think 
it is a serious mistake. I do not think it is a Federal Government 
prerogative to hire policemen in my hometown.
  Does my hometown of Ponca City, OK, need more police? Maybe they do. 
But I think that is the responsibility of the people of Ponca City, OK. 
Maybe they have to raise the sales tax to pay for it, or maybe they 
have to find some other method of paying for local police, but I do not 
think it should be coming to Washington, DC, on bended knee and saying, 
``Please give me this money so we can hire another policemen. Oops, in 
3 years, we have a big liability.''
  Uncle Sam starts out pretty generous paying at 75 percent. That is 
pretty nice. But on the fourth year, they are on their own. And a lot 
of cities are saying, boy, that is a nice inducement for the first year 
or two, but after the third or fourth it is a real problem. Maybe we 
will just do this for a year or two and then let people go, or maybe 
have some attrition and not replace them in the third or the fourth 
year. My point being that this is not a Federal responsibility.
  I do not want to federalize police, and 100,000 police officers is 
not a drop in the bucket if you look at the national scheme. I do not 
doubt that my colleagues who support this program can find somebody 
that was hired in this program and they did a good job and they saved 
somebody's life or they stopped crime or something, and I am grateful 
for that. But I just question the right level of Government.
  It is like this issue we had over speed limits. A lot of us decided 
that the States should set speed limits instead of Washington, DC. 
Likewise, I would think community policing is a good idea. If 
communities want to do it, let them do it. Let them do it with their 
own money, not with Federal bribery or enhancements to pull or 
encourage the States to do it, and then find that they have such 
enormous liability.
  Local policing is a local matter. That is something that should be 
under the jurisdiction and control and financing of individual towns 
and cities, counties and States, not the Federal Government.
  Mr. President, that is the reason why I stand in opposition to this 
amendment. The way we had the bill drafted, we had earmarked $975 
million for COPS. That is half of that money. The cities would have 
latitude to spend a significant amount of money for the COPS Programs. 
We are not doing away with the COPS Program. If the city wanted to 
spend more for that, they would have that option. If they wanted to 
spend more for technology, if they wanted to spend more for juvenile 
crime prevention, more for cracking down on drugs or surveillance or 
all kinds of different things, they would have that option, instead of 
the Federal Government dictating, ``We think you should put it all into 
the COPS Program. We know how best to spend this money. We know you 
should put it exactly in this program.'' I think that is a mistake. I 
urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the underlying amendment.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I think it is a great idea to have cops on 
the street. Our bill will do that. I think it is an equally great idea 
to make sure that we block grant some of the funds so the police 
departments can use them for whatever they need to use them for.
  Using the New York illustration, there was not one additional 
policeman put on the streets by the moneys sent to New York. They used 
the moneys to deploy police people who were already there or to replace 
police people who they were already capable of paying for. The fact is, 
there is nothing in this approach of the 100,000 cops on the street 
that means they have to be additional police people in addition to 
those that were on the current police forces and were capable of being 
paid for by the local communities.
  Be that as it may, I agree with the noble goal of having more police 
on the streets. I think every Republican does. The problem is, why can 
our friends on the other side not see the value of allowing some 
flexibility so that the people who really have to solve these problems 
in the local communities have some flexibility to do so? The real 
question is whether we provide funds for cops and cops alone, or 
whether we permit the funds to be used to meet the needs of the local 
communities and the local law enforcement agencies.
  It seems to me that makes sense. It makes every bit of sense that 
anybody, it seems to me, who thinks seriously about it would agree. If 
we are going to provide Federal money to local law enforcement 
agencies, then we should permit those agencies to use the funds as they 
see fit. We have adequate protections in the bill so they cannot use it 
for certain exotic reasons that some have criticized in the past.
  Now, some of those who have criticized LEAA today are the people who 
supported it the strongest. These are the kind of things that bother 
me, just a little bit. Unfortunately, this becomes a political exercise 
rather than what is best for the local communities. It becomes an 
exercise of Washington telling the local communities what they should 
and should not do. We know more, I guess, inside the beltway than the 
people out there who have to face the problems in their respective 
communities. We all know that is bunk.

[[Page S1954]]

  As a matter of fact, I think it is the most surreal and unreal place 
on Earth sometimes right here within the beltway. These folks who face 
those criminal problems day in and day out in the local communities 
know a lot more what they should use their funds for. We should not be 
dictating it. We provide half the moneys for cops on the street; we 
provide about half the money for block grants so they can use them to 
solve their own individual law enforcement needs, which makes sense. 
Why should we dictate that every dime has to go for the COPS Program? I 
agree with the COPS Program to the extent that we have granted it here 
in this bill, but we also have provided flexibility in this bill that 
makes a lot of sense, it seems to me.
  Again, the real question is whether we provide funds for COPS and 
COPS alone or whether we give the local communities some ability to do 
the things they think need to be done. The question is whether we fund 
the COPS Program only and tell the communities like Washington, DC, 
``Sorry, we have no money for you,'' or to permit communities to use 
money for other purposes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware has 14 seconds.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I will do something no one will believe--I 
yield back my time.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The assistant 
legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. I join with the distinguished Senator from Utah, Senator 
Hatch, and the Senator from New Hampshire, Senator Gregg, and move to 
table Biden amendment No. 3483.
  I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to 
table.
  The yeas and nays have been ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gregg). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 48, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 31 Leg.]

                                YEAS--52

     Abraham
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Bond
     Brown
     Burns
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     DeWine
     Dole
     Domenici
     Faircloth
     Frist
     Gorton
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Helms
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kyl
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Pressler
     Roth
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner

                                NAYS--48

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Byrd
     Conrad
     Daschle
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Glenn
     Graham
     Harkin
     Heflin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Nunn
     Pell
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Simon
     Wellstone
     Wyden
  So the motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 3483) was agreed 
to.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Snowe). The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. I would like to thank my colleagues who supported this 
effort and say to my good friend, the majority leader, that I liked it 
better when he was on the campaign trail. We had won until he went back 
down in the well. This is a singular victory for the leadership. I 
compliment him, but I am just so sorry that he has now locked up the 
nomination and will not be out in the field more because it looked like 
I was winning there until three votes changed at the end. But I wish to 
congratulate the opposition and tell the cities they are not going to 
get their cops. I yield the floor.
  Mr. GREGG addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                Amendment No. 3489 to Amendment No. 3466

  Mr. GREGG. I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate 
consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the pending amendment is 
laid aside.
  The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Gregg], for Mr. Gorton, 
     proposes an amendment numbered 3489 to amendment No. 3466.

  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

     Amend page 113, line 11 by striking the period at the end of 
     the sentence and adding ``: Provided further, That the FCC 
     shall pay the travel-related expenses of the Federal-State 
     Joint Board on Universal Service for those activities 
     described in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (47 U.S.C. 
     254(a)(1)).''

  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, this is a Gorton amendment allowing 
expenditures for the FCC. It has no budgetary impact. It has been 
cleared on both sides.
  I urge adoption of this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 3489) was agreed to.
  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I yield to the Senator from Utah for 
purposes of a colloquy.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.


                           Carrier Compliance

  Mr. HATCH. I am prepared to offer an amendment to establish a fund in 
the U.S. Treasury to serve as a funding source for carrier compliance 
under the Communications for Law Enforcement Assistance Act.
  I understand the concern that is shared by some members of the 
Appropriations Committee is that creating this fund implies a 
subsequent obligation to provide funding for carrier compliance. I also 
understand that this concern is highlighted by fears on the part of 
some that carrier compliance may cost more than authorized amounts.
  Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, the Senator cannot be heard.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Senators will please take their conversations 
off the floor.
  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I would note that carrier compliance 
under the Communications for Law Enforcement Assistance Act, which we 
call CLEAA, does not obligate Congress to appropriate any funds in 
excess of the amounts authorized.
  I emphasize that we are losing ground in a important area. We passed 
a bill last Congress that satisfied the various interests and 
constituencies involved in this important issue. Now we need to move 
forward with funding.
  In my view, the creation of this fund will not obligate my colleagues 
on the Appropriations Committee to appropriate funds beyond what the 
Congress has already promised for this worthy purpose. Specifically, I 
am prepared to ask for a commitment between now and the time we take up 
the fiscal year 1997 Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill that 
we will try to work this out. I hope that our staffs will establish a 
series of meetings, the purpose of which would be to reach a resolution 
of this matter by fiscal year 1997.
  It is important; with digital coming into being, we have got to be 
able to handle this aspect of law enforcement. And it is just going to 
have to be something we meet.
  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I wish to acknowledge and congratulate 
the Senator from Utah, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, for 
pointing out this concern and this issue, which is a very legitimate 
concern. I believe that with our staffs working together, we can work 
out the concerns the Appropriations Committee has relative to how we 
manage the funding of

[[Page S1955]]

this issue, and I look forward to having such an agreement worked out 
and will direct our staffs to work together.

  I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. FORD. Madam President, will the Senator from Utah yield for a 
question?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognized the Senator from Texas.
  Mr. FORD. I am sorry. I apologize.
  Mr. GRAMM. I would be willing to yield to my colleague.
  Mr. FORD. What are Senators trying to work out? The money you are 
going to give is grandiose, but I never heard----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. CLEAA is what we call carrier compliance under the 
Communications for Law Enforcement Assistance Act. It is to aid our law 
enforcement agencies to be able to do their work with regard to the new 
digital age, to be able, with court orders, to tap into digital phones 
so that they can follow criminals and organized crime.
  Mr. FORD. This amendment would add more money than we have already 
given in the past?
  Mr. HATCH. It will not add anything now. We are going to try to work 
it out in fiscal year 1997.
  Mr. FORD. There is no additional funding?
  Mr. HATCH. Right.
  Mr. FORD. Why do you need the amendment?
  Mr. HATCH. Because we need to have funding.
  Mr. FORD. I thought there was no funding. This is an authorization?
  Mr. HATCH. No. What we are agreeing to in the colloquy is that in the 
future 1997 budget and appropriations bills we try to find the money to 
be able to do this law enforcement work, and my colleagues have said 
they will work with me.
  Mr. FORD. Madam President, I thank my colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.


                Amendment No. 3490 to Amendment No. 3466

  (Purpose: To ensure that discretionary spending does not exceed the 
           level agreed to in the FY 1996 Budget Resolution)

  Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask 
for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Texas [Mr. Gramm], for himself, Mr. 
     Santorum, Mr. McCain, and Mr. Nickles, proposes an amendment 
     numbered 3490 to amendment No. 3466.

  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       At the end of title II of the committee substitute, add the 
     following:
       Sec.  . (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of this 
     title, none of the amounts provided in this title is 
     designated by Congress as an emergency requirement pursuant 
     to section 251(b)(2)(D)(i) of the Balanced Budget and 
     Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.
       (b) Each amount provided in a nonexempt discretionary 
     spending nondefense account for fiscal year 1996 is reduced 
     by the uniform percentage necessary to offset non-defense 
     discretionary amounts provided in this title. The reductions 
     required by this subsection shall be implemented generally in 
     accordance with section 251 of the Balanced Budget and 
     Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.

  Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, this is a very simple amendment. This 
amendment tries to eliminate the need for an emergency designation in 
this bill. We are adding $1.2 billion to the Federal budget deficit by 
declaring an emergency, but by eliminating the need for an emergency 
designation and cutting other discretionary spending accounts across 
the board by .53 percent, we have an opportunity to fund these so-
called emergencies but do it in a fiscally responsible manner where the 
deficit does not go up.
  Let me try to make my case. Let me make it as succinctly as I can, 
and then give others an opportunity to respond and oppose as well as to 
support.
  First of all, since 1990, we have passed $80 billion of emergency 
supplemental appropriation bills. In some cases, like the Persian Gulf, 
we have been able to come back and offset that with payments from 
foreign nations. But just to give you an idea of the magnitude of this 
loophole that we have created by declaring emergencies, in 1994 we 
declared an emergency for the California earthquake and the Midwest 
floods, and we spent $11 billion which was added directly to the 
deficit.
  In 1993 we declared an emergency for Midwest floods and added $3 
billion to the deficit, with funding also for the drought in the 
Southeast. In 1993 again we added $1 billion to the deficit with an 
emergency for Somalia. In 1993 again we declared an emergency for 
economic stimulus as a supplemental appropriation and added $4 billion 
to the deficit to extend unemployment benefits.
  In 1992 we declared an emergency and spent $9.3 billion for two 
hurricanes, one on the mainland and one in Hawaii; and then for Typhoon 
Omar. In 1992 we declared a dire emergency to fund the costs incurred 
for the Chicago flood and for the riot in Los Angeles. I remember being 
in the conference and I moved to strike a provision where we were 
declaring an emergency to fund lawyers to defend the rioters. 
Fortunately, that provision died because people were shamed out of it. 
In 1992 we had another dire emergency. I could go on and on, but I 
think I made my point. My point is we have a lot of emergencies around 
here.
  I want to remind my colleagues that families have emergencies, but I 
want to go through what happens when a family has an emergency and what 
happens when the Government has the emergency and explain the 
difference. Families have emergencies. Let me just offer an example. 
Johnny falls down the steps and breaks his arm. He is taken to the 
hospital and it costs $700 to set Johnny's arm with the attendant 
medical expenditures. The family has had an emergency.
  If this family were the Federal Government, the Brown family would 
say, ``Well, look, we have already planned that we are going on 
vacation this summer. We have already planned that we are buying a new 
refrigerator. We have already set our monthly budget. This is an 
emergency, we cannot pay for it, so we are just going to add it on to 
our spending.'' That is what we are doing here. But that is not what 
the Brown family does. What the Brown family does is they go back and 
say, ``Well now, look, we have incurred an expense of $700 because 
Johnny broke his arm, so we are not going on vacation this year. We had 
planned it, we had written it in our budget, but now we cannot afford 
it because we had an emergency. Johnny broke his arm.'' In fact, the 
definition of an emergency in this case is something they have to spend 
money on and so they have to take it away from another purpose. They 
may decide they are not going to buy a new refrigerator.
  It seems to me that we can have a procedure that is exactly analogous 
to what families have to do, by saying we have an emergency, we are 
going to provide $1.2 billion for many worthy objectives, but to pay 
for it we are going to take all the other nondefense appropriated 
accounts and reduce them across the board --and let me remind my 
colleagues, we have in the supplemental a defense expenditure. We 
offset every penny of it. We only have emergencies in nondefense. We do 
not have an emergency in defense in this bill, though we have had them 
in the past. We generally do not have them. And we do not have one 
here.
  So, what I want to do is for nondefense accounts, in a simple across-
the-board procedure, what we have done with specific accounts in 
defense. If someone wants to come up with a substitute that cuts 
specific programs as an alternative, I am willing to look at it. That, 
basically, is what my amendment does. Let me explain why it is so 
important.
  The American people got the idea that we were trying to do something 
about the deficit when we passed the Contract With America. The 
President has vetoed the Contract With America. We are now under a 
continuing resolution which is a temporary funding measure. We have a 
bill in front of us that already spends $2.3 billion more than that 
temporary funding measure spends on an annual basis. So, if we pass 
this bill, rather than simply rolling over that bill through the end of 
the year, we are going to spend $2.3 billion more than simply rolling 
over the continuing resolution would do, in any case.

[[Page S1956]]

  But let me remind my colleagues that yesterday all but some 16 
Members of this body voted to increase spending by $2.6 billion. In 
fact, we had an interesting occurrence and that is our Democratic 
colleagues said, ``Let us increase spending by $3.1 billion.'' One of 
our Republican colleagues said, ``No, let us increase spending by $2.6 
billion.'' Congress decided on the $2.6 billion and with great fanfare 
we had offsets.
  The problem is, these offsets have already been counted in the 
budget. We counted $1.3 billion in savings for the sale of the U.S. 
Enrichment Corporation. That is basically a corporation that enriches 
uranium. But the problem is we have already counted that $1.3 billion 
in deficit reduction in the budget that we adopted. But since that 
budget and the bill flowing from it has been vetoed by the President, 
we were able to do that yesterday. To pay for this new spending, $2.6 
billion adopted yesterday, we sold off portions of the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve. The problem is we had already decided to sell it as 
part of the budget. So what we really did yesterday is added roughly 
another $2.6 billion of spending. So we are already talking about 
spending almost $5 billion more in this bill than if we extend the 
current short-term continuing resolution.
  I think it is important that at some point we stand up and decide to 
stop spending money we don't have. It is one thing to write a budget 
setting out good intentions. But it is clear to a blind man that if you 
look at the pattern that we have followed with these emergency 
designations, it has turned into exactly what many of us feared it 
would when it was put into the 1990 budget summit agreement. It has 
turned into an agreement whereby the President and the Congress 
conspire to cheat on the budget; conspire to increase spending above 
the level we set out in the budget. In the process, we have these 
budgets that do not look so bad, but when we count how much money is 
actually spent we end up spending beyond the budget.
  What I am offering our colleagues is a great opportunity to save $1.2 
billion. Somewhere in the sweet by-and-by there may be a budget that is 
adopted. The President may accept it. On the other hand, he may not 
accept it. So we may get through this whole year not having saved a 
penny anywhere.
  I can give you an opportunity tonight to save $1.2 billion. The only 
person I know who knows how much money that is is Ross Perot. We can 
save $1.2 billion by doing what the Brown family would have to do if 
they had an emergency, and that is cut programs we were going to spend 
money on to fund the emergency. And my proposal is a very simple one. 
We remove the need for an emergency designation so that it is not an 
emergency, and we have an across-the-board cut in all other nondefense 
discretionary accounts by 0.53 percent to pay for it. Let me remind my 
colleagues, we have spending in the supplemental for defense. We offset 
every penny of it with cuts. Why should we not do the same in 
nondefense? That is the purpose of the amendment. It is very simple and 
it boils down to one question: Do we want to spend money we don't have? 
Or do we want to move toward a balanced budget? I am giving you an 
opportunity tonight to save $1.2 billion. I hope we do not miss this 
opportunity and I yield the floor.
  Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Madam President.
  Madam President, I rise in very strong support of Senator Gramm's 
amendment. As a cosponsor of that amendment, I think we have a 
fundamental issue to decide on the floor of the Senate tonight, and 
that is whether we are going to go back to the old system, prior to 
last year paying for emergencies, adding it to the interest costs of 
future generations, or whether we are going to face up to the fact that 
we have emergencies in this country, that we do not appropriate for 
them every year as they occur, as we should, and that we need to pay 
for them out of existing appropriated accounts, not to just declare an 
emergency every time we have one and pass the bill on to the next 
generation of Americans.
  If we do not and this bill becomes law, the children of America, the 
people of America are going to be paying interest on this $1.1 billion 
for the rest of their lives. Now, is that fair to have that happen? I 
am speaking as someone from the State of Pennsylvania who probably is 
going to get the lion's share of this benefit.
  In Pennsylvania, in January, we had a very serious snowstorm. We had 
a couple feet of snow in most places, followed by extremely warm 
weather and a rainstorm which, depending on the area, dumped anywhere 
from 4 to 7 inches of rain. So we had the combination of 2 feet of snow 
melting plus 4 to 7 inches of rain in a matter of a 2-day period. It 
caused floods that were above the 100-year-flood level in many places.
  The damage in Pennsylvania is calculated now over $1 billion. There 
is half a billion dollars in eroded infrastructure, and, even more 
important, we lost 100 lives. We lost 2,000 businesses and 50,000 
homes. We had a very serious disaster. It is one that we should, on the 
Federal level, help. It is a disaster that qualifies, in fact, all 67 
counties eligible for individual assistance. Madam President, 52 of the 
counties have been declared eligible for public infrastructure 
assistance.
  So there is no doubt we need to spend this money. The question is, 
are we going to spend it within the existing pot of money that we have 
to spend this year, or are we going to just add it to the deficit?
  Last year, in the rescissions package, we made a decision that we 
were going to fund emergencies. We provided FEMA with money, $5.5 
billion. That is paid for in a rainy day fund. Unfortunately, that 
money is over at FEMA and some of the extraordinary expenses are in the 
Small Business Administration, which is not FEMA. So they cannot take 
that FEMA money, even though it is sitting over there. They cannot use 
it. Or it is in the Department of Agriculture. Again, it is for 
disasters, but the money is sitting over in FEMA.
  I will have an amendment, if this amendment fails, to take the money 
from FEMA and put it into those accounts. It is not something I want to 
do, because I think we should have this fund available to FEMA. I think 
we should pay for it now.
  I have had a history as a House Member of standing up for this. I 
voted, I think, on four or five occasions against unemployment 
extensions which were not paid for, which emergencies were declared and 
we just added on to the deficit. Luckily, in four of the five instances 
where we extended unemployment benefits, the President at that time, 
President Bush, insisted that we find offsets, and we did find offsets, 
and we were able to pass a deficit-neutral unemployment extension.
  The only time we did not do that was under President Clinton in his 
stimulus package. It is the only part of the stimulus package that 
became law, and we deficit spent to provide unemployment benefits. I 
voted against it.
  I tell you, I was a Congressman at that time, and I represented a 
district which has probably been as hard hit, if not harder hit, than 
any district in the country with respect to unemployment. I represented 
the steel valley of Pittsburgh where we lost over 100,000 jobs in a 
matter of 10 years--100,000 steel worker jobs in a matter of 10 years. 
We still have long-term unemployment there.

  But I said that it is important to stand up for principle, that we do 
not spend money today for emergencies, as important as those 
emergencies are and as needed as the funding is, by penalizing future 
generations and not making the tough decisions, not setting priorities. 
That is what this is about. Everybody in this Chamber and everybody in 
the House Chamber is for this disaster assistance. The President has 
asked for it, and the appropriators have wisely appropriated the money 
he has asked for.
  The question is, are we going to pay for it now or are we going to 
make our children pay for it later, forever and ever and ever? I think 
the answer is pretty clear.
  One of the reasons we are here debating this bill--we are into March 
debating appropriations bills--is because we are trying to balance the 
budget. We are trying to cut spending. We are trying not to add on to 
the deficit, and here we are in the middle of this great struggle to 
put America back on sound financial footing, back on the path to

[[Page S1957]]

fiscal responsibility and we are saying, ``Oops, we have an emergency; 
we must add to the deficit.''
  I can tell you, the House of Representatives is not adding to the 
deficit in their bill. They have an appropriations bill similar to 
ours. They do not add to the deficit. They are within their caps, and I 
think that is important to know. I think it is incumbent upon us to act 
as judiciously as the House in this instance.
  Right now there is a special session going on in Pennsylvania, and 
they are coming up with the funds to pay for the tens of millions--
hundreds of millions--of dollars that the State of Pennsylvania is 
going to have to come up with to fund this, and they cannot declare an 
emergency. They cannot put it off budget. They cannot add it to their 
deficit. They have to balance their budget every year, and they are 
making tough decisions up there right now.
  My colleague in the State house and the State senate and the 
Governor, my former colleague in the House, Tom Ridge, are offering up 
some pretty tough medicine right now to the people of Pennsylvania. All 
I am asking is that we take a little bit of the medicine in Washington, 
that we do the responsible thing.
  I do not understand how this body, whether you are a Republican or a 
Democrat, can go back home and go before the people of this country and 
say you really are serious about balancing this budget, that you really 
are serious about cutting spending and setting priorities. We have to 
set priorities. As Senator Gramm says, when the refrigerator breaks, 
you cancel the vacation. Every family does that. Most States do that. 
This Government and this Congress should do that.
  If there is anyone who should be for this bill, whether it spends for 
emergency and adds on to the deficit, it should be me. But I believe it 
is so important--so important--that we continue the precedent that we 
set last year of paying for our disasters, of not bailing out and 
declaring emergencies that I am prepared to vote against this bill. I 
am prepared to vote against disaster assistance for my State if we do 
not offset it over the next few hours.
  If the Gramm amendment fails, I have other amendments. I have other 
amendments to offset other accounts within the purview of this bill and 
outside the purview of this bill. I have amendments to transfer money 
from FEMA. I know that is subject to a point of order, but I am 
prepared to be here tonight, and I am prepared to offer amendments.
  I think this is something that we absolutely must do to be able to 
face the American public with a straight face.
  We bail out too often around here. We are always looking for a way to 
sort of be cute and get around the law, to get around the substance of 
what we really are talking about here.

  Oh, sure, we can legally, under the law, circumvent the Budget Act 
and declare an emergency and add it on. By and large, you know, it is 
only $1 billion. No one is going to notice. Well, I notice. I think we 
have an obligation not just to the process that we are engaged in to 
balance the budget but for the future generations of Americans who, as 
I have said before, will pay for this $1 billion of deficit the rest of 
their lives. Is that fair to do? The answer, I think, is very clear. It 
is not fair to do.
  So I am very hopeful that we can get bipartisan support for a very 
rational act. I will tell you that an across-the-board cut is probably 
not the best way to go about paying for this, but I suggest that the 
principle of saying that we are going to pass a deficit-neutral 
appropriations bill is important. When we do that and we send it to the 
conference and we have a deficit-neutral appropriations bill coming out 
of the House and a deficit-neutral bill coming out of the Senate, then 
we can sure as heck guess that we are going to get a deficit-neutral 
bill coming out of the conference.
  Is it going to have an across-the-board cut? No, probably not. They 
will probably set priorities. They will sit down and they will make 
those decisions within the context of a larger picture, as it should 
be. But I think we have to set the tone here with this amendment.
  So, I am very hopeful that my colleagues who stand up and repeatedly 
talk about how we have to set priorities and balance the budget and 
that we did not need a constitutional amendment to balance the budget 
because we can do it ourselves, we can make these decisions, we can set 
priorities--it is priority setting time. I cast my priority to spend 
this money on disaster relief. I am for disaster relief. I want to fund 
these programs. But I also want to do it within the context of this 
budget.
  I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support that 
effort.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Madam President, I propound a unanimous-consent time 
agreement. I ask unanimous consent that there be 1 hour for debate on 
the pending Gramm amendment--30 minutes under the control of Senator 
Santorum, 5 minutes under the control of Senator Gramm, 25 minutes 
under the control of myself--and following the debate, the amendment be 
laid aside and Senator Mikulski be recognized to offer an amendment 
regarding national service, and that there be 1 hour for debate to be 
equally divided in the usual form, that no amendments be in order to 
either amendment, and following the debate, the Senate proceed to vote 
in relation to the Gramm amendment, to be followed by a vote in 
relation to the Mikulski amendment. I believe this has been cleared on 
both sides.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there any objection? Without objection, it 
is so ordered.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Madam President, I think that those votes, as they are 
being stacked or joined, linked, probably would occur somewhere between 
8 and 8:30, assuming all the time is used. I do not plan to use all the 
time on my side on this matter that is pending.
  Madam President, the Gramm amendment proposes to offset the so-called 
emergency supplemental the President asked for and that was approved by 
our committee to cover the losses and the damages, in part, that have 
occurred during the floods in the Northwest and other parts of the 
country.
  I am not sure that we need to have a replay of the suffering and the 
tragedy that has beset so many people in these types of disasters, 
whether it is an earthquake or a hurricane or a flood or a fire. I 
think that is why the budget agreement of 1990 very precisely empowered 
the Congress of the United States to visit these problems on an ad hoc 
basis and make a judgment in accordance with the needs created by these 
disasters and why there is no formula for that, there is no basic 
criteria. That is within the prerogative and the discretion of the U.S. 
Congress.
  My colleague from Texas tried to compare this to a family disaster of 
Johnny breaking an arm, and what would they do? I will tell you what 
they would do. They would go down and get that arm fixed, and they 
would charge it on their credit card because they did not have the 
money, cash in hand. They would take an attitude that this is worthy of 
an indebtedness because we have an emergency that has to be dealt with.
  Madam President, I believe that is true with the Nation as a whole 
and under the very concepts that set up FEMA, the Federal Emergency Act 
to deal with these emergencies. The Senator from Texas also said why is 
it we do this only for nondefense programs? Aha, we put the gulf war in 
an emergency declaration.
  Over $20 billion we were willing to march down the aisle to say, ``We 
support the President. We support this war for oil,'' even in spite of 
all the propaganda that somehow we were trying to support an emergency 
of a little country like Czechoslovakia being overrun by the big brutal 
neighbor, Hitler.

  So, the gulf war was an oil war, pure and simple. And we declared an 
emergency. Why is it that we can find it easy to declare an emergency 
to make war, but we find it a gnat strangling us in trying to swallow 
in declaring an emergency related to people in need? I suppose it is a 
philosophical debate to some degree. I think it is also a value and a 
priority debate as well.
  I think it is poor procedure, in addition. Bear in mind that this 
amendment says that we reduce appropriations in the nondefense area, 
both in this bill and already enacted, the legislative branch bill, the 
Treasury bill,

[[Page S1958]]

the transportation bill, the agricultural bill, the energy-water bill, 
the foreign operations bill, all having been passed, and now we are 
going to go back and reduce those commitments for those programs in 
spite of the fact that there is a different spendout probably for each 
one of those accounts in most of those bills. That then is going to 
fall disproportionately heavily on those that have had a slower 
spendout in order to recoup that percentage reduction. That kind of 
fiscal management is irresponsible--irresponsible.
  It is an easy way to follow the rules about offsets, but we do not 
have any consideration as to the impact of that disproportionate 
reduction in these accounts across the board. It even undoes the action 
we took yesterday of adding moneys back to the Labor-HHS for 
educational purposes. We have to revisit that. That may not be a high 
priority for some. It is a very high priority for me.
  But it only means again that there are no sound criteria being used 
to recover the offset in order to say, oh, I can vote for the disaster 
relief for those people who drowned, have been drowning, or people 
whose homes have been drowning or their farms have been drowning or the 
levees that have broken through that need repair to prevent another 
storm totally eliminating communities in my State, or the Small 
Business Administration that had expended or obligated its funds to be 
replenished in this bill, to give assistance for the reconstruction and 
the restoration of small enterprise under our great capitalistic 
system.
  We can find lots of help for the big corporations in all sorts of tax 
breaks, but I do not find that there is that easy access to tax breaks 
for small enterprises, the small businessperson, which, after all, is 
the soul of the capitalistic system, not the Fortune 500.
  So, consequently, it seems to me that we are being again very 
inequitable in making these applications. Let me say that on the 
foreign operations, Israel--Israel, in its time of need--will also be 
reduced, the Israeli need that exists today that we have voted 
overwhelmingly to support. I have a strong feeling that we are really 
almost playing games with people in distress. I heard the recitation of 
all the times we have adopted the emergency declaration.
  Again, Madam President, I do not accept the sins-of-the-fathers-
being-visited-upon-the-children concept. I am not saying that every one 
of those declarations had high support or could be validated by 
criteria. I can tell you, having visited farms that will take 2 years 
to restore in my State, at least 2 years for productivity--my 
colleague, Senator Wyden and I, had first-hand direct exposure to 
people who had been absolutely wiped out. Their milk cows stacked in 
piles waiting to be burned or disposed of, losses that cannot be 
replaced even if they had the money to do it because there is not that 
availability. People whose hopes were just washed away, totally washed 
away and; at the same time, to replace those hopes and to be able to 
restore those levies to protect them in the future is being threatened 
by this particular action at this time.
  Let me say, we have stretched this every way possible to find offsets 
for adding through the actions yesterday, and other actions, moneys to 
increase the level of funding. We have done it for a variety and many 
different accounts, fitting almost anybody here on the floor in the 
body, here as a total body, the needs or priorities.
  At the same time, the Appropriations Committee is the only committee 
in the U.S. Congress that has taken specific actions for budget 
reductions and spending reductions--$22 billion we have taken in the 
Appropriations Committee. We could not get the reconciliation through 
the President's veto but I have not seen too many subsequent actions 
taken by authorizing committees to deal with the problem under the 
current circumstance we had.
  There is no committee that can stand on the floor of the Senate and 
say they have done something specific to try to move toward a balanced 
budget by the year 2002, except the Appropriations Committee. We have a 
record. We have a unique position. Always, I will defend our action. 
Sure, we can say we can do more, maybe $24 billion instead of $22 
billion. It is very interesting when we come to the floor we face a 
barrage of amendments to add back, add back, add back; and at the same 
time that we have offset, offset, and offset, there comes a limit to 
how much you can offset and make viably authentic a plan you have for 
funding the U.S. Government.
  Another thing that had made our problem difficult is we protect the 
defense spending. That is sacrosanct. That is jobs. That is this. That 
is the other things. The Russians are not coming any longer, so now 
perhaps Saddam Hussein is coming. I grew up at a time when Communists 
were behind every door, according to some politicians, to scare the 
people into more spending for military; or that the Russians were 
coming.
  As I have said before on this floor, the greatest enemy we face 
today, externally, is the viruses are coming. The viruses are coming. 
We better be more defensive of our people against the viruses through 
medical research than for the so-called hardware buildup.
  I can remember when we used to be able to separate people's 
philosophy because it was easy, oversimplified--a hawk and dove. Doves 
vote to lessen military spending and the hawks want increased military 
spending. I can remember when the Republicans controlled the Senate in 
1980 and we were faced with a Reagan massive buildup of military 
weaponry. Do not let anybody try to sell you the proposition that 
caused the decline of the empire of the Soviets. I will not give them 
that much credit. Their system was flawed to begin with. It was doomed 
to failure. It was just a matter of time.
  Nevertheless, the point is we justified every kind of dollar at that 
time, build up, and up, and up and deficit go up, up, up--one of the 
most conservative Presidents in the United States in modern history 
building the greatest deficit we have had in modern history. So these 
labels of conservative and liberal and moderate and fiscal 
conservatives, all that is a very superficial kind of labeling. All I 
am saying is we have never found a problem to find more money to spend 
for military hardware, but when we come to trying to meet the needs of 
flood victims and people of disasters who have suffered disasters, we 
are, oh, so concerned about our fiscal future and our fiscal present.

  This is a legitimate declaration of emergency. I urge my colleagues--
I do not know in what way we will move at this time. We are checking 
the point of order possibility that exists and we will have to have 
that confirmed. If it is confirmed, I will make a point of order. 
Otherwise, I will move to table the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grams). The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me ask our colleague who has the 
preponderance of time to yield me 5 minutes to respond.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, it seems to me in listening to this 
argument that our dear colleague from Oregon, who has great 
intellectual powers, has been forced to strain them to defend his 
position on this amendment. I am not going to get into a lengthy 
response on each and every point, but there are some I would like to 
make.
  If every penny that we have cut out of defense since 1985 had gone to 
deficit reduction, we would have a balanced budget today. Second, no 
one is proposing that we not provide flood relief. Nobody is making 
that proposal. What we are saying is, we can provide it, but pay for 
it. There is no doubt about the fact that a lot of families, when 
Johnny falls down the steps and breaks his arm, they put it on the 
credit card. The difference is, 30 days later they get the bill. They 
have to either pay it or come up with permanent financing. Their 
ability to get financing, other than rolling it on their credit card at 
astronomical interest rates, depends on a plan to pay it back. We have 
not paid back a net penny of borrowing since Eisenhower was President 
of the United States. That has been a long time. That has been too 
long.
  In terms of the gulf war, we actually collected more money from our 
allies than we spent--probably the only war in history where that was 
the case. Obviously, when we are talking about the loss of American 
life, we are talking about a loss that can never be paid back, but I 
was not talking about the Persian Gulf war here. I am talking

[[Page S1959]]

about the fact that in this very bill we increase defense spending, but 
we offset it by cutting other programs, something we did not do for 
this $1.2 billion.
  In terms of going back and cutting programs across the board, there 
is no doubt about the fact that if the committee had offset this 
increase in spending, they could have done it more efficiently than the 
across-the-board cut. Let me say that without the emergency 
designation, the law would apply an across-the-board cut. Let me also 
say this is a procedure that we have used many times. If a better 
alternative can be found in conference, it can be substituted.
  The point still comes back to not whether we should help flood 
victims, but should we pay for the assistance or should we simply add 
it to the debt? Do we simply spend more and more money every time 
something happens? Or do we say, ``There has been a tragedy in the 
country. We have to do something to help. What we are going to do is 
take money away from programs that we would have spent the money on 
that were a lower priority so that we can fund this emergency 
assistance.''
  The issue here is simply the issue of deficits, and no matter what 
kind of arguments are made, no matter what specter is held up about 
helping needy people, no matter what discussion occurs on defense, the 
bottom line is that we are going to have a vote here on $1.2 billion of 
additional deficit spending.
  Are you for it, or are you against it? I am against it. I want to 
provide the money to try to help people who have suffered from floods, 
people who have suffered from fires, people who have suffered from 
emergency situations that they had no control over. But I want to pay 
for it, and I want to pay for it by cutting other Government programs. 
That is the prudent policy. That is the way, ultimately, in the real 
world, things have to operate. We have been divorced from the real 
world for too long, and that is why we have not paid off a net penny of 
national debt in any year since Eisenhower was President of the United 
States.
  It seems to me that if we continue this process, people are going to 
be here 30 years from now who are going to be making the same 
statement. So I think the choice is clear, and I hope people will make 
the choice to pay for it--to help, but pay for it.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. HATFIELD. I wonder if the Senator will yield for a question?
  Mr. GRAMM. I am very happy to.
  Mr. HATFIELD. As the Senator knows, we operate on an October-through-
October fiscal year. What would the Senator do if an emergency occurred 
or disaster of some kind occurred on September 28?
  Mr. GRAMM. What would I do if it occurred on that date?
  Mr. HATFIELD. Yes.
  Mr. GRAMM. What I would do is extend the funds. And for those 2 days 
I would take the funds out of the funding to be spent on those last 2 
days. Then I would take the additional funding--since we are not going 
to be able to spend it all out in 2 days, I would take the spend-out 
rate, and for those first 2 days I would take the amount to be spent 
and take it from the overall Government operations of those 2 days. And 
then, as it is spent out in the new fiscal year, I would take it from 
that.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I think that is obviously a hypothetical 
question, but it was not a hypothetical response to that problem 
because what we are proposing to do today is to meet the emergency at 
the time.
  I think the Senator makes a good point in the matter of how we have 
handled the emergency declaration. I say to the Senator that I will be 
happy to work with the him to set up a criteria on how we should apply 
that emergency declaration. I do not think we ought to do it on an ad 
hoc basis, on the basis of need today. That is a matter we should deal 
with in terms of an overall long-term--we can do the job quickly, but 
it should not be applied on an ad hoc basis of this current emergency.
  I think, also, that we realize that the disasters that happen early 
in the fiscal year--from all practicality, not hypothetically, the 
disasters that happen early in the fiscal year are going to have more 
opportunity to be offset than those that happen late in the fiscal 
year, as to the spend-out we have had during that fiscal year of those 
accounts that would be taxed or offset.
  So, I think, again, the whole principle of offset is unsound at this 
point in time, unless we add criteria, criteria firmly established that 
we were going to apply. Let me say that the gulf war was so-called 
promised on the part of our allies to be paid back. But let us remember 
we did not have that in hand at the time we made the declaration any 
more than we had any kind of a payback plan for Somalia and the other 
programs that we put declarations of emergencies to in order to meet 
the needs of those people at the moment.
  If we are going to have to measure somehow the suffering, or we are 
going to find some better way to establish the declaration--and the 
Senator himself was a member of that conference and that so-called 
summit that adopted the very language of the declaration of emergency, 
as I was a member of that conference and that summit of that time. So 
that is sort of ex post facto in terms of the pattern in which we have 
followed the declarations of emergency and of the conditions that exist 
today, the call for this declaration of emergency.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania is recognized.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume. I would like to respond to the distinguished chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee by suggesting that the timing of the disaster 
is really less important than the timing of when the money is going to 
be spent. That is very important. We have a billion dollars' worth of 
damage in Pennsylvania, but we are not going to spend a billion dollars 
over the next 6 months in repairing or fixing that problem. We have, 
for example, $5.5 billion sitting in FEMA right now. That money was 
originally appropriated for the California earthquake and for the 
Mississippi floods that happened 3 years ago. It still has not been 
spent out.
  Historically, what we have done when we have declared emergencies is 
we have put it off budget and appropriated money for the entire 
emergency, for what we think is going to be the cumulative cost of that 
emergency, knowing full well they are not going to be able to spend all 
that money in this fiscal year, whether it was September 28 or October 
1. It takes a long time to let contracts and rebuild, as the Senator 
from Oregon said. It is going to be a couple of years before a lot of 
these people get it all back together and can use all the money that is 
available.
  So to suggest we should be worried about the timing of disasters 
really does not reflect how the disasters are paid for. So what we are 
saying is, look, maybe we should look at, as the Senator suggested, how 
we appropriate money for disaster assistance because maybe there is 
money in this request that is not going to be spent this year, that we 
do not need to put in the budget this year, that we can put in next 
year when we anticipate it to be spent. That is a real concern.
  I think the more fundamental issue here is, how are we going to pay 
for emergencies? It is interesting for me that if you look at all of 
these accounts, whether it is the Department of Agriculture, watershed 
and flood control, or whether it is the Small Business Administration, 
or the Corps of Engineers, or the National Park Service--all of these 
agencies that are funded--none of these agencies, to my knowledge, 
receive any additional funds for emergency purposes. They get funded 
for their programs, but they are not given sort of a slush fund or a 
rainy day fund to be able to be used to meet emergencies that they have 
to deal with when they come. We do not appropriate money--with the 
exception of a small amount for FEMA every year, usually $200 million 
or $300 million, which is always exceeded. We appropriate very little 
money annually for emergencies. Then when they come, as surely they 
come every year, we step back and say: We do not have any money. We 
have an emergency we did not anticipate. And whether it is a big one 
like the California earthquake, or a small one, we say, well, let us 
just add it to the deficit.

  What we are saying is that is just not responsible. The responsible 
thing is to let us appropriate the money every year and, my goodness, 
if we do not

[[Page S1960]]

spend it, and if the Lord shines upon us and we do not have a natural 
disaster, well, then we keep it for the next year when, probably, the 
disasters will be worse than what we had planned on. But it is silly 
for us to not appropriate for emergencies, and when they come along, 
say: We have all this destruction and costs and we have to come to 
these people's aid.
  We are coming to these people's aid. We are out there. I have been 
out there, as have Senator Hatfield in Oregon, and Senator Wyden, and 
Senator Specter, and Senator Gorton. We have been out there, and we 
have seen the damage. It is severe, and we need to remedy it, but we 
need to do it within the confines of rational budgeting. That is what 
Senator Gramm said. Every family does it. I hear the credit card 
analogy all the time, and Senator Gramm is right that the analogy is 
not applicable to the Congress, because you have to pay back a credit 
card. If not, they take you to court and garnish your wages. We are 
never going to pay this money back. We are going to add this billion 
dollars to the deficit, and we are going to pay interest on that. 
Children who are not yet born are going to pay interest on that.
  I do not think we have any intention in the near future of doing 
anything to reduce the national debt. We are hoping to reduce the 
annual deficit.
  But there is no plan that I am aware of to start whittling down the 
mountain of debt that we have already accumulated. So to suggest that 
it is equivalent is just not accurate. It is apples and oranges.
  I applaud Senator Hatfield and the Appropriations Committee for, as 
he said, having cut $22 billion this year. He is absolutely correct. 
Unfortunately, because we have not been able to get agreement on 
entitlements and on the budget--the President vetoed the budget that 
actually does something with entitlements--we have had to rely solely 
on appropriations. But we have relied on appropriations within the 
budget caps that we set in the budget resolution. We are not asking 
them to do anything more than we would have had we done all of the 
entitlement savings anyway. I appreciate that they have done it. But it 
is not like we have not worked very hard to get those entitlement 
savings. Everyone over here, at least, put up the votes to get that 
bill to the President for him to balance the budget. Unfortunately, the 
President has vetoed it. But we have done our part. We will continue to 
do our part to make sure that we reduce all levels of government so we 
can balance this budget, not just appropriated accounts.
  The final point I want to make is just to reemphasize. This is not 
about helping people in need. We are helping people in need. FEMA teams 
have been in Pennsylvania for a couple of months. We are doing the job. 
This is how we pay for it, if we pay for it. I think that is a pretty 
easy call for most Americans. You would think it is fairly common 
sense. It is one of the commonsense things that I hear when I go home. 
``Well, of course, if something comes up that you need more money, you 
find the money somewhere else. You just do not put it on the deficit 
forever and over and over for us to pay interest on for generations.''
  I want to see this bill passed. I want to see the people who are in 
need feel good about the fact that the Federal Government came in and 
helped them but also feel good that we did it within the context of a 
budget, that we did it the right way. I am hopeful that we can get 
bipartisan support on this and send a resounding vote that we are going 
to balance this budget and that we are willing to step up to the plate 
in tough situations and make the tough decisions to move this country 
to a more responsible fiscal future.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. HATFIELD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time 
restraints with respect to the Mikulski amendment just agreed to be 
vitiated, that following the debate on the pending Gramm amendment, the 
Senate proceed to vote with respect to that amendment, and following 
the vote Senator Mikulski be recognized.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, before Senator Hatfield leaves, I am 
through debating. I think we made the points. I do not know if the 
Senator from Pennsylvania is finished or not. But if he is, perhaps we 
could go ahead. I would like to have 1 or 2 minutes to sort of sum up, 
and we could go ahead and vote.
  Mr. HATFIELD. I say to my friend that this certainly is a 
possibility. We have to have a few minutes because of the time 
designated, or, at least, a time estimate for a vote. We have to get 
notice to some of our colleagues who perhaps have left the Hill. But I 
would be willing to yield back all of my time and move to a vote as 
rapidly as possible.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, on that basis, let me sum up. Again, there 
are a lot of issues that have been raised here. The provision for the 
emergency designation was in the 1990 budget summit agreement. I 
participated in those negotiations. I opposed this provision. I voted 
against that summit agreement--not that that is of any relevance here.
  Here is the point. There are some emergencies under some 
circumstances that create a situation where there is not a readily 
available option to finance. We could have funded the Civil War by 
offsetting expenditures and by raising taxes. We decided not to do it 
that way. We might have funded World War II that way. We decided not to 
because of the magnitude of the undertaking. But I remind my 
colleagues, we are spending $1.6 trillion a year. We are getting ready 
to add $1.2 billion of new spending declared an emergency. We can avoid 
that by simply cutting across the board by .53 percent, or a penny for 
every $2 we spend on nondefense discretionary programs. I am very proud 
of the fact that in 1995, under the leadership of Senator Hatfield as 
our new chairman, we did not have a need for emergency designations. We 
did not, through supplementals, raise the deficit. In fact, we had 
rescissions bigger than the new spending we had. It is not as if we 
have never sinned before, but we were on such a roll from 1995 under 
the leadership of our great chairman that I was hoping that we might 
stay on the straight and narrow and avoid this movement back to our old 
ways.
  So, I do not see this as a big amendment in terms of its impact; $1.2 
billion for anybody, or any group of people of any reasonable size, 
that would be an unbelievable amount of money. For the Federal 
Government, it is basically one penny out of every $2 we spend on 
nondefense discretionary programs. But why not take a stand here, keep 
the record of this new Congress with the Republican majority, a perfect 
record in that we have written a budget. The President vetoed it. But 
we have lived by it. We have not used an emergency declaration to spend 
money when we had the alternative to pay for it. It is a record I am 
proud of. It is one I want to keep. And, most importantly, despite all 
of the arguments that can be made, it is the right thing to do. This is 
the right thing to do.
  This is a manageable emergency. There is no reason that a country 
that spends $1.6 trillion a year cannot manage an emergency of $1.2 
billion. This is a manageable amount. And what we are doing here is 
setting a precedent that will be followed, if we set it here.
  I would like to stay with our record in 1995, stay with our budget, 
not declare this emergency, and pay for this modest amount of money as 
compared to the Federal budget. We are capable of doing it. It is the 
right thing to do, and I urge my colleagues to do it.
  Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum on my 
time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we set aside 
the pending amendment.
  Mr. GRAMM. Reserving the right to object, I think we are about to 
work out an agreement here, Mr. President,

[[Page S1961]]

that would end our debate, order a rollcall at some time in the future, 
and finish up this matter. I think we can do that very quickly, and 
then the Senator could be recognized to offer an amendment, and this 
would be out of the way.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we set aside 
the pending amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                Amendment No. 3491 to Amendment No. 3466

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for 
its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Gregg], for Mr. Biden, 
     proposes an amendment numbered 3491 to amendment No. 3466.

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       On page 29, line 20, after ``Provided further,'' insert 
     ``That not less than $20,000,000 of this amount shall be for 
     Boys & Girls Clubs of America for the establishment of Boys & 
     Girls Clubs in public housing facilities and other areas in 
     cooperation with state and local law enforcement: Provided 
     further,''

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, the amendment I am proposing today would 
provide the first $20 million of a 5-year effort to add 1,000 new Boys 
& Girls Clubs--including 200 more clubs in housing projects--so that 1 
million more children can participate in this vital program.
  This investment of $100 million in seed money--all to start new 
clubs--translates to only $100 per additional child who will be served 
by a Boys & Girls Club.
  The Federal Government's contribution is only 10 percent of the total 
funds needed to complete this project. This is only seed money. The 
remaining 90 percent of the funding for new clubs will come from 
private donations.
  That is a Federal contribution of only $100 per child to provide 1 
million children with a safe, supervised, and challenging place to go 
after school rather than hanging out on street corners or returning to 
an empty home.
  Fully 40 percent of juvenile crime is committed between 3 and 9 p.m. 
These are the hours when many children are left unsupervised.
  In hundreds of public housing projects across the country, Boys & 
Girls Clubs give kids a safe place to hang out after school--a place 
with positive activities and positive role models.
  A 1992 evaluation conducted by Columbia University found that housing 
projects with Boys & Girls Clubs had 13 percent fewer juvenile crimes; 
22 percent less drug activity; and 25 percent less presence of crack 
than housing projects without Boys & Girls Clubs.
  Those who study this issue agree that breaking the cycle of violence 
and crime requires an investment in the lives of our children with 
support and guidance to help them reject the violence and anarchy of 
the streets in favor of taking positive responsibility for their lives. 
And prevention of crime--particularly juvenile crime--is more important 
now than ever before.
  In 1994 more than 2.7 million children under the age of 18 were 
arrested. Half of these arrests--1.4 million--were children under the 
age of 16.
  There is a fairly simple answer to this problem--provide supervised 
activities for children during the high-crime hours of the late 
afternoon and early evening. The key is to keep children off the 
streets and out of trouble during the times they are most likely to get 
into trouble.
  This is not complicated. We can--indeed we must--recognize this fact 
and take all the actions necessary to fill the crime-likely hours with 
supervised activities. Constructive after-school prevention programs 
like Boys & Girls Clubs are the best way tool we have to stop juvenile 
crime, juvenile drug use, and juvenile victimization by other youth.
  We have a choice. We can work to prevent crime before it happens.
  If we don't, we are merely postponing the inevitable--dealing with 
juveniles after the shots are fired, after the children become addicted 
to drugs, after more lives are ruined.
  When a life about to go wrong is set back on the right track--that is 
a testament to hope.
  We build hope by showing children that they matter and by contrasting 
the dead end of violence with the opportunity for a constructive life.
  This amendment deserves full bipartisan support. This is crime 
prevention--as far as I know, the Boys & Girls Club is a program 
everyone on both sides of the aisle has claimed to support.
  I urge all of my colleagues to fund this proven prevention program 
and join me in helping to stem the tide of children who would otherwise 
be lost to drugs and violence.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, this amendment, which is a Biden amendment, 
would earmark funds for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. It has no 
budgetary impact. It has been cleared on both sides.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this amendment be agreed 
to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment (No. 3491) was agreed to.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Helms). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending 
amendment be laid aside.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                amendment no. 3492 to amendment no. 3466

  (Purpose: To establish a lockbox for deficit reduction and revenues 
                         generated by tax cuts)

  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for 
its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Minnesota [Mr. Grams], for himself, Mr. 
     McCain, Mr. Faircloth, Mr. Coats, Mr. Inhofe, and Mr. Helms, 
     proposes an amendment numbered 3492 to amendment No. 3466.

  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under 
``Amendments Submitted.''
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, on behalf of my colleagues, Senator McCain, 
Senator Faircloth, Senator Coats, Senator Helms, and Senator Inhofe, I 
rise to offer the taxpayer protection lockbox amendment.
  Today, as Congress fights to bring down the deficit and set the 
Nation on the track toward fiscal sanity, President Clinton is 
continuing his demand for an additional $8 billion in taxpayer money 
this year to finance even bigger Government. He says he is offsetting 
the increased spending, but most of his so-called savings are no more 
than budget gimmicks--increased taxes, fees, and one-time asset sales 
financed directly by the taxpayers.
  Congress wants to eliminate the deficit but President Clinton wants 
to spend almost 50 cents of every dollar that working Americans have 
sacrificed toward a balanced budget this year.
  The President said in January that ``the era of big government is 
over,'' but if he has his way big government will only continue to 
grow, at the expense of taxpayers today and our children tomorrow. If 
we do not take immediate action to stop this pattern of abuse, we are 
risking leaving behind a legacy of debts that our kids will be forced 
to inherit.
  While we still have the opportunity, we must do everything possible 
to change the rules of the tax-and-spending game and do what is best 
for taxpayers, for our children and for the Nation as a whole. And for 
that reason we are offering the Taxpayer Protection Lockbox Act as an 
amendment to the continuing resolution.
  Our amendment would make two important changes to the budget and 
appropriations process, a process which has served only to encourage 
abuse of spending and fiscal irresponsibility.

[[Page S1962]]

  First, this amendment would return honesty to the budget process by 
ensuring that a cut in spending is truly a cut.
  Contrary to popular opinion, under current law, dollars cut from 
appropriations bills are not returned to the Treasury for deficit 
reduction purposes as they ought to be. Instead, they are quietly 
stashed away in a slush fund to be spent later on other programs.
  Our amendment would put an end to this practice by locking any 
appropriations savings into a deficit reduction lockbox and dedicating 
those dollars to deficit reduction. In other words, if Congress cuts 
$10 million in an appropriations bill, the taxpayers will save $10 
million. It does not get spent somewhere else.
  Second, our amendment would create a revenue lockbox which would be 
used to direct any future revenues that exceed current economic 
projections toward deficit reduction and/or tax relief.

  It would create a fast-track process for Congress and the President 
to use these funds for tax relief with the remainder going for deficit 
reduction. At the same time, our amendment would prohibit the 
Government from simply using those dollars for additional spending. 
This is only fair, because, after all, these additional funds would 
become available only because of the hard work and productivity of the 
American people. So it makes sense then to return those dollars to the 
taxpayers to encourage even greater productivity on their part rather 
than allowing Congress to waste money that is not even theirs to begin 
with.
  All in all, our amendment is a simple proposal to restore honesty and 
common sense to the budget process, allow taxpayers to keep more of 
what they earn and also place further restrictions on abusive 
Government spending.
  Given the most recent demand on tax dollars from the White House, it 
certainly cannot have come at a better time.
  Mr. President, our legislation has been endorsed by a number of 
citizens and taxpayer groups including the National Taxpayers Union, 
Citizens for a Sound Economy, and the National Federation of 
Independent Businesses. With their support and the support of our 
colleagues, I am confident that we can win a big victory for the 
American taxpayer by passing the taxpayer protection lockbox amendment 
this week.
  Mr. President, that is the conclusion of my statement, and I ask for 
the yeas and nays on my amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. COCHRAN addressed chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, it is my understanding the Senator does 
not want to push for a vote at this time on his amendment. I assume he 
expects to get consent to set the vote on the amendment aside until we 
dispose of the Gramm amendment and maybe other amendments tonight; is 
that correct?
  Mr. GRAMS. That will be fine.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
amendment be set aside.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grams). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                    Amendment No. 3490, As Modified

  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to modify my 
amendment. I send the modification to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the modification of the 
amendment? Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment (No. 3490), as modified, is as follows:

       At the end of title II of the committee substitute, add the 
     following:
       (a) Each amount provided in a nonexempt discretionary 
     spending nondefense account for fiscal year 1996 is reduced 
     by the uniform percentage necessary to offset non-defense 
     discretionary amounts provided in this title. The reductions 
     required by this subsection shall be implemented generally in 
     accordance with section 251 of the Balanced Budget and 
     Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.

  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, reserving 
the right to object----
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, the Chair had already ruled.
  If I might say to my colleague, all I did was take out a paragraph 
that created a point of order. It did not change the nature of the 
amendment in any way.
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I understand the Chair had previously 
ruled. Therefore, I have no objection to the Senator's request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment is so modified. Who yields time 
on the amendment?
  The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, what Senator Gramm did in his 
modification is really identical to what the House has done in their 
bill. The House does actually declare an emergency, but they actually 
do not exceed their caps. What Senator Gramm is going to do, the effect 
of his amendment is to keep the emergency declared and pay for it, so 
we do not exceed the overall budget cap as opposed to the caps on 
specific subcommittees. I think that makes perfectly good sense, to 
make sure that we pay for this within the whole appropriations account 
as opposed to just targeting specific subcommittees because of these 
occasionally arcane budget rules that we have to deal with in this 
body.
  I want to reiterate that I hope on this matter we can get a strong 
vote of support, frankly, from both sides of the aisle, that we are no 
longer going to continue the practice of previous Congresses--not this 
Congress, but of previous Congresses--every time that we have a 
disaster. On an annual basis, we do not appropriate for those. We do 
not appropriate money. With the exception of a couple of hundred 
million dollars annually for FEMA, we do not appropriate money for 
disasters. We wait until they happen, as they surely will, and then we 
ask for emergency authority to borrow the money and not put it on the 
budget.
  We know there are going to be disasters. We should be able to budget 
for those disasters, either beforehand or be able to rearrange 
priorities once they occur. That is what we do here. We arrange 
priorities.
  This is not about whether we are going to provide relief to the 
victims of fire, relief to the victims of floods or storms. What we are 
talking about is providing a reasonable, commonsense way to pay for it. 
That is something that all of us in this body have said we want to do. 
We want to balance this budget. We want to set priorities.

  Many people in this body opposed the balanced budget amendment. When 
they opposed that balanced budget amendment, they said, ``We do not 
need a balanced budget amendment; we can do it ourselves. We have the 
ability to set priorities in this body without the hammer of a balanced 
budget amendment to the Constitution.''
  It is put-up time. If, in fact, you believe that we should have a 
balanced budget, then this is the first step to making that happen--to 
stop this practice of adding tens of billions of dollars. Senator Gramm 
articulated that earlier in the debate, that we have added close to 
$100 billion to the deficit with these emergency declarations.
  This is not just a billion dollars. To many people who might be 
watching this debate who are not Senators, a billion dollars actually 
is a lot of money, it sounds like a lot of money. Here it does not 
sound like a lot of money. But when you add up a billion here and 
there, we have gotten to $100 billion over the last 6 years. That is a 
lot of money even for here.
  So let us not continue this practice. If anyone has an interest in 
seeing that this disaster relief is passed, it is the Senator from 
Pennsylvania. We have had $1 billion in flood damage in our 
commonwealth. We have had over 100 people killed, 50,000 homes damaged 
or destroyed, 2,000 businesses washed away. We need that help, but we 
need to do it responsibly.
  This Senator is not going to be a hypocrite and say, ``Well, I'm for 
reducing the deficit except, of course, when the money comes home and 
then, well, let's just spend it all.'' I will vote against this measure 
if we do not adopt

[[Page S1963]]

this, or something like it. I have several other amendments. I am 
prepared to stay here all night long offering amendment after 
amendment, which I will require votes on, to find some way to pay for 
this disaster that is acceptable to this body.
  So I hope that we are in for a good day of votes, whether it is 
tonight or tomorrow, because if we do not succeed, we are going to have 
votes and you are going to have to stand up to the American public and 
say, ``This is not the way to do business. The way to do business is to 
add it on to the deficit. Fine, but we are going to be here.''
  I am going to be here tonight, tomorrow, the next day, whatever it 
takes, so we do this responsibly. I hope we do it on a bipartisan 
basis. Balancing the budget is a bipartisan affair, and it is something 
I know we all want to do. Let us put into practice tonight what we 
preach.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I think this issue has been fully 
discussed on the floor tonight. I know Senator Hatfield, when he was 
here a moment ago discussing the issue, laid out all the reasons why 
this amendment is not a good idea.
  In 1990, there was a long, drawn-out negotiation over procedures in 
the budget and how appropriations would be made in case of national 
emergencies and whether or not they were under the same requirements 
for offsets as routine operating expenses were.
  It was decided by the Congress in 1990, in concert with 
the administration, a Republican administration, that these would be 
the rules.

  This amendment is an effort to legislate a rules change on an 
appropriations bill. We think it an amendment that ought to be rejected 
by the Senate. Therefore, I am prepared to yield back the remainder of 
the time on this side of the amendment and hope others will yield back 
their time, and I then will move to table the amendment and ask for the 
yeas and nays.
  With that understanding, I yield back all the time on this side on 
the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Pennsylvania yield back 
his time?
  Mr. SANTORUM. I yield back the remainder of my time.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I move to table the amendment, and 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.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to 
lay on the table amendment No. 3490. The yeas and nays have been 
ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 55, nays 45, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 32 Leg.]

                                YEAS--55

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Cochran
     Conrad
     Craig
     D'Amato
     Daschle
     Dodd
     Dole
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Glenn
     Graham
     Harkin
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kempthorne
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Nunn
     Pell
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Simon
     Stevens
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                                NAYS--45

     Abraham
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Bond
     Brown
     Burns
     Coats
     Cohen
     Coverdell
     DeWine
     Domenici
     Faircloth
     Feingold
     Frist
     Gorton
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Helms
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Kassebaum
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Pressler
     Roth
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner
  So the motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 3490) was agreed 
to.
  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move 
to lay it on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, this is a very critical day in the U.S. 
Senate. By adopting this omnibus appropriations bill we will be 
providing critical funding to programs on which many Americans depend. 
If the President signs this bill, then service providers of every sort 
will be able to better plan their budgets for the remainder of the year 
and the upcoming fiscal year.
  It is vitally important that we have put together a bill that the 
President should be able to sign. I wish to thank the distinguished 
chairman, Senator Hatfield for the fine job he has done to try and 
address the administration's concerns in this bill.
  Title I of the Senate-reported omnibus appropriations bill provides 
$331.9 billion in budget authority and $247 billion in new outlays for 
the remainder of fiscal year 1996 for the Departments and Agencies 
funded by the five appropriation bills not yet enacted, including: 
Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education; Commerce, Justice, and 
State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies; Veterans Affairs and 
Housing and Urban Development and Independent Agencies; Interior; and 
District of Columbia.
  Of this amount, $149.4 billion in budget authority and $78.4 billion 
in new outlays is for discretionary spending. When outlays from prior-
year budget authority and other completed actions are taken into 
account, the Senate-reported bill totals $163.8 billion in budget 
authority and $183 billion in outlays for discretionary spending in 
fiscal year 1996.
  The Senate-reported bill is below the 602(b) allocations of all 
subcommittees by a total of $4 million in BA and $38 million in 
outlays.
  The Senate-reported bill is $23.9 billion in budget authority and 
$9.2 billion in outlays below the President's budget request of just 
over a year ago. The Senate bill is $6.4 billion in budget authority 
and $3.9 billion in outlays below the 1995 level. It is $836 million in 
BA above the House-passed bill and $99 million in outlays below the 
House-passed bill.
  While I may not agree with all of the priorities established by this 
bill, I would like to thank the chairman for the $22 million increase 
above the conference level provided for the Legal Services Corporation. 
The bill provides $300 million for this purpose, and another $9 million 
if Congress and the President reach a budget agreement.
  We have worked very closely with the House on restructuring the Legal 
Services Corporation to disengage grantees involvement in controversial 
litigation, and restrict them to providing traditional legal services 
for the poor. While some may not like these restrictions, they are 
necessary to control the controversial activities of some grantees and 
to protect LSC from the negative perceptions of those who wish to see 
its termination.
  I have been very concerned about the proposed $414 million reduction 
in title I, education for the disadvantaged. I am thankful to Senator 
Specter for offering an amendment during the Senate committee markup 
and a further amendment on the floor that restored $814.5 million to 
the title I program, $1.3 billion higher than the conference level and 
$110 million higher than the 1995 level.
  I am empathetic to the use of a contingency appropriations to provide 
additional funding for discretionary priorities. I realize that the 
discretionary spending caps have been very tight on the Appropriations 
Committee this year as we seek a balanced Federal budget.
  With a broader budget agreement remaining elusive, I can appreciate 
the frustration of the Appropriations Subcommittee chairmen in trying 
to live within these tight appropriation caps.
  I remain concerned about attempts to use entitlement reforms 
contained in the Balanced Budget Act to offset discretionary spending 
included in this bill as contingency funding, and with the possible use 
of the emergency designation that one could argue in some cases does 
not fit the traditional definition of such expenditures.

[[Page S1964]]

  Overall, I believe the committee has done a very good job on this 
bill. The committee has tried to address significant priorities in the 
remaining bills.
  It provides funding to meet the President's major domestic concerns 
but continues to pressure both Congress and the President to work 
toward a budget agreement. It provides disaster aid and support for the 
United States military mission in Bosnia. I urge the Senate to adopt 
the bill.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a Budget Committee table 
displaying the budgetary effects of this bill be placed in the Record 
at this point.
  There being no objection, the table was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                                                    CONSOLIDATED OMNIBUS RESCISSIONS AND APPROPRIATIONS BILL                                                                    
                                                                             [Spending totals--Senate-reported bill]                                                                            
                                                                           [Fiscal year 1996, in millions of dollars]                                                                           
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                Commerce-Justice          Labor-HHS             Interior               VA-HUD         District of Columbia          Total       
                                                             -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                Budget                Budget                Budget                Budget                Budget                Budget            
                                                              authority   Outlays   authority   Outlays   authority   Outlays   authority   Outlays   authority   Outlays   authority   Outlays 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Defense discretionary:                                                                                                                                                                          
    Outlays from prior-year BA and other actions completed..          0         92  .........  .........  .........  .........          0         78  .........  .........          0        170
    H.R. 3019, as reported to the Senate....................        151        125  .........  .........  .........  .........        153         92  .........  .........        304        218
    Scorekeeping adjustment.................................          0          0  .........  .........  .........  .........          0          0  .........  .........          0          0
                                                             -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Subtotal defense discretionary........................        151        217  .........  .........  .........  .........        153        170  .........  .........        304        387
                                                             ===================================================================================================================================
Nondefense discretionary:                                                                                                                                                                       
    Outlays from prior-year BA and other actions completed..          0      6,561     15,297     47,368        148      5,002     -1,113     44,345          0          0     14,332    103,545
    H.R. 3019, as reported to the Senate....................     22,658     17,195     46,776     20,836     12,092      8,210     62,914     29,919        727        727    145,168     76,887
    Scorekeeping adjustment.................................          0          0          0          0          0          0          0          0          0          0          0          0
                                                             -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Subtotal nondefense discretionary.....................     22,658     23,756     62,073     68,472     12,239     13,213     61,801     74,265        727        727    159,500    180,431
                                                             ===================================================================================================================================
Violent crime reduction trust fund:                                                                                                                                                             
    Outlays from prior-year BA and other actions completed..          0        826         32         21  .........  .........  .........  .........  .........  .........         32        847
    H.R. 3019, as reported to the Senate....................      3,956      1,286         21          4  .........  .........  .........  .........  .........  .........      3,977      1,290
    Scorekeeping adjustment.................................          0          0          0          0  .........  .........  .........  .........  .........  .........          0          0
                                                             -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Subtotal violent crime reduction trust fund...........      3,956      2,112         53         25  .........  .........  .........  .........  .........  .........      4,009      2,137
                                                             ===================================================================================================================================
Mandatory:                                                                                                                                                                                      
    Outlays from prior-year BA and other actions completed..          2         20     38,687     40,804          0         24          0        133  .........  .........     38,689     40,981
    H.R. 3019, as reported to the Senate....................        503        480    161,850    150,864         59         25     20,043     17,213  .........  .........    182,455    168,583
    Adjustment to conform mandatory programs with Budget                                                                                                                                        
     Resolution assumptions.................................         27         25      4,673     14,012          6          6       -905        341  .........  .........      3,801     14,384
                                                             -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Subtotal mandatory....................................        532        525    205,210    205,680         65         55     19,138     17,688          0          0    224,945    223,948
                                                             ===================================================================================================================================
      Adjusted bill total...................................     27,297     26,610    267,336    274,177     12,304     13,268     81,093     92,123        727        727    388,758    406,904
                                                             ===================================================================================================================================
Senate Subcommittee 602(b) allocation:                                                                                                                                                          
    Defense discretionary...................................        151        218          0          0          0          0        154        170  .........  .........        305        388
    Nondefense discretionary................................     22,659     23,762     62,074     68,478     12,241     13,215     61,802     74,270        727        727    159,503    180,452
    Violent crime reduction trust fund......................      3,956      2,113         53         44          0          0          0          0  .........  .........      4,009      2,157
    Mandatory...............................................        532        525    205,210    205,680         65         55     19,138     17,688  .........  .........    224,945    223,948
                                                             -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Total allocation......................................     27,298     26,618    267,337    274,202     12,306     13,270     81,094     92,128  .........  .........    388,035    406,218
                                                             ===================================================================================================================================
Adjusted bill total compared to Senate Subcommittee 602(b)                                                                                                                                      
 allocation:                                                                                                                                                                                    
    Defense discretionary...................................          0         -1          0          0          0          0         -1         -0  .........  .........         -1         -1
    Nondefense discretionary................................         -1         -6         -1         -6         -2         -2         -1         -5          0          0         -3        -21
    Violent crime reduction trust fund......................         -0         -1          0        -19          0          0          0          0  .........  .........         -0        -20
    Mandatory...............................................          0          0          0          0          0          0          0          0  .........  .........          0          0
                                                             -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Total allocation......................................         -1         -8         -1        -25         -2         -2         -1         -5  .........  .........         -4       -41 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Details may not add to totals due to rounding. Totals adjusted for consistency with current scorekeeping conventions.                                                                     

                         the Specter amendment

  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I want to take a moment of the Senate's 
time to discuss the Specter education amendment to the continuing 
resolution--S. 1594. As you know, the Senate adopted the Specter 
amendment yesterday by a vote of 84 to 16. This amendment provides $2.7 
billion in additional funding for Head Start, job training, title I, 
and other education programs. Given that these additional funds are 
fully offset by spending cuts elsewhere, I supported the amendment.
  Senator Specter offered his amendment in the second degree to the 
Daschle amendment. Like the Specter amendment, Senator Daschle's 
amendment would have provided additional funding for various Federal 
education programs. Unlike the Specter amendment, however, the Daschle 
amendment was not fully offset and violated the Budget Act. In other 
words, while both amendments provided additional funding for education 
programs, the Specter amendment provides those funds in a responsible 
manner that does not bust the budget.
  On the other hand, both the Daschle and Specter amendments also 
provided an additional $60 million for President Clinton's Goals 2000 
Program. I want to make clear that my support for the Specter amendment 
should not be interpreted as support for this program. Instead of 
funding Goals 2000, I would have preferred to use the funding for 
education vouchers or charter schools.


                  transfer of f-16 aircraft to jordan

  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise to speak on a matter which 
could profoundly affect the U.S. defense industrial base. It is my 
understanding that the Committee on Appropriations recommends the 
appropriation of an additional $70 million in fiscal year 1996 funds 
for the Foreign Military Financing Program. These funds would be joined 
with $30 million in previously appropriated funds to provide initial 
grant funding in support of the transfer of F-16 aircraft to Jordan. 
Ultimately, 16 F-16 aircraft are to be upgraded and then leased to 
Jordan in support of its participation in the Middle East peace 
process.
  Mr. President, I have recently received information which suggests 
that the necessary upgrades will be performed on these aircraft in the 
United States prior to making them available to Jordan. If that is the 
case, I will support the committee's recommendation, because I believe 
the required work will enhance the defense industrial base.
  Mr. President, I would ask the junior Senator from Kentucky, who 
serves as the chairman of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, who has 
served on that subcommittee as a champion of U.S. private sector 
exports and who has insisted that American foreign aid programs serve 
our national interests, is this what the committee intends by its 
recommendation? Does the committee intend that engine upgrades and 
structural upgrades will be made by the U.S. private sector prior to 
the lease of these F-16's to Jordan?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I can answer my colleague's question 
very directly and without ambiguity. Yes.
  Yes, the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations recognizes the commitment 
that Jordan has made to peace in the

[[Page S1965]]

Middle East. Jordan has joined with Israel in a treaty of peace. The 
subcommittee believes that the lease of F-16 aircraft to Jordan, a 
transfer of military equipment which is supported by Israel, will 
strengthen Jordan militarily and provide a strong signal of United 
States support for King Hussein and the people of Jordan as partners 
with Israel in the quest for peace in the Middle East.
  It is the subcommittee's intention that the grant funding which we 
recommend to finance the required upgrades will be used to support the 
U.S. private sector and further serve U.S. interests by enhancing the 
defense industrial base. While third countries may participate in 
maintenance programs at a later date, the subcommittee believes that, 
insofar as the upgrades are concerned, the original U.S. manufacturer 
can best insure quality control, cost management, and interoperability 
with U.S. Air Force units.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Kentucky. I 
think that we have clearly established the intent of the Senate. These 
aircraft are to be provided to Jordan, in support of Jordan's 
participation in the Middle East peace process. Furthermore, to support 
U.S. exports and to help preserve the private sector defense industrial 
base, the required engine, structural, and related upgrades are to be 
performed in the United States.

                          ____________________