[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 62 (Tuesday, May 7, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4793-S4801]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           TEAMWORK FOR EMPLOYEES AND MANAGEMENT ACT OF 1995

  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, let me just comment on two things very 
briefly that, apparently, are going to be joined in the vote tomorrow. 
Let me say that if they are joined, I, if no one else, am going to ask 
for division on the question, so we can vote separately on these 
issues.
  One of the issues is whether to repeal the 4.3-cent gasoline tax. I 
know it was very controversial as we argued about it here. But it was 
very interesting that after it passed, I went back to the State of 
Illinois and, up until a few days ago when it was raised again as an 
issue, of the 12 million people in Illinois, do you know how many 
people talked to me and complained about the gasoline tax increase? Not 
a single one. My guess is--and I see my friend Senator Moynihan on the 
floor--that not a single citizen of New York complained to Senator 
Moynihan about the 4.3-cent tax.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Not a one.
  Mr. SIMON. My guess is that in the State of Tennessee people were not 
complaining. I talked to one of our colleagues from a western State, 
and they were not complaining. One of the advantages, Mr. President, of 
not running for reelection is, a year ago, just about this time, my 
wife and I took off for Spain and Portugal, flew to Madrid--at our 
expense, I hasten to add, not at the taxpayers' expense. And we rented 
a car and drove around Spain and Portugal. The highways were better 
than our interstate highways. But I paid $4.50 a gallon. People talk 
about being overtaxed in the United States. In some areas, our taxes 
are excessive. But we have, next to Saudi Arabia, the lowest gasoline 
tax of any country in the world. If you were to ask, ``What can we do 
to improve the environment?'' one of the things we could do, frankly, 
is not to lower the gasoline tax, but to increase it. We ought to be 
increasing it to spend money to build our highways and use it on mass 
transit and that sort of thing. So I think any move to lower that tax 
is shortsighted.
  And then the distinguished Congressman from Texas has suggested that 
we take the money from education. I cannot imagine anything more 
shortsighted. We need to invest more in education, not less. That just 
absolutely does not make sense.

[[Page S4794]]

  I hope we will reject this thing that emerged in this political 
season, the season that is frequently called the ``silly season'' by 
observers, and rightfully so.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will my friend from Illinois yield for a question?
  Mr. SIMON. I am pleased to yield to my distinguished colleague.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I very much agree with his comments and would add that, 
after the 1993 deficit reduction legislation, the price at the pump--
when that small tax increase took effect--was lower than when it was 
enacted.
  Perhaps the Senator from Illinois also saw in the Wall Street Journal 
an article today under the section called ``The Economy.'' It is 
headlined, ``Economists Say Gasoline Tax Is Too Low.'' The subhead is, 
``GOP's Proposed Rollback Is Seen Aggravating Deficit.'' This is by 
Jackie Calmes and Christopher Georges. It begins:

       Republicans seeking to gain political mileage from a lower 
     gasoline tax can't look to economists to support their case.

  Not that economists are infallible. Who is? But they make that point.
  I do not have to explain the term ``externalities'' to the learned 
Senator from Illinois. Gasoline costs you, air pollution costs you, as 
do the wear and tear on the environment and infrastructure, and so 
forth. You have to pay for that. You better be careful about how much 
you do because the costs that you have not paid for keep mounting.
  I wonder if he has not read this. Would he wish to have it printed in 
the Record at this point?
  Mr. SIMON. I have not seen it. I think it is an excellent suggestion.
  I ask unanimous consent that the Wall Street article be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Wall Street Journal, May 7, 1996]

Economists Say Gasoline Tax Is Too Low--GOP's Proposed Rollback Is Seen 
                          Aggravating Deficit

               (By Jackie Calmes and Christopher Georges)

       Washington.--Republicans seeking to gain political mileage 
     from a lower gasoline tax can't look to economists to support 
     their case.
       Though the joke has it that you could lay all of the 
     economists in the world end-to-end and never reach a 
     conclusion, there is widespread agreement in the field that 
     the federal gasoline tax of 18.3 cents a gallon is too low.
       Nevertheless, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole is aiming for 
     a vote as early as today to repeal the Clinton 
     administration's 4.3-cent-a-gallon increase in the gasoline 
     tax. At the same time, the politics-conscious White House and 
     congressional Democrats aren't about to stop it, despite 
     concern in both parties about worsening the budget deficit.
       With the recent spike in prices at the pump, Republicans 
     and their presumed presidential nominee, Sen. Dole, seized 
     the idea of repealing the 1993 tax increase, partly as a way 
     to divert attention from the Democrats' popular efforts to 
     raise the minimum wage. But they have been stymied by the 
     search for savings to make up for revenue that would be lost; 
     each penny of the gasoline tax adds up to revenue of about $1 
     billion a year.
       ``Repealing the tax isn't going to solve the problem [of 
     recently higher prices], and it's going to hurt the 
     deficit,'' says Nada Eissa, an economist at the University of 
     California at Berkeley. ``I don't think it's a sound 
     approach. I just think we should allow the markets to work . 
     . . and this is a case where the market is working.''
       At the school's Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public 
     Finance, economist Alan Auerbach says he found a near 
     consensus in support of a significant boost when he surveyed 
     about 30 economists at a conference in February. More than 
     half said the federal levy should be $1 a gallon or higher. 
     The sentiment among economists for a higher tax, Mr. Auerbach 
     quips, ``is right up there with free trade,'' an issue on 
     which there is virtual unanimity.
       Economists cite various factors to justify a gasoline tax. 
     Chief among them are the environmental and health costs of 
     air pollution, along with the costs of traffic congestion, 
     and road construction and repair. ``When people consume gas, 
     they impose harms on other people that they aren't paying for 
     otherwise. They crowd the freeways and pollute,'' says David 
     Romer of the University of California at Berkeley.
       Separately, the proponents of an increase point to foreign 
     producers' control over oil supply, and favor a gasoline tax 
     that is high enough to stem U.S. demand. Fighting pollution 
     and dependence on foreign supply ``both are reasons for why 
     this federal tax should be higher than some other tax,'' says 
     Joel Slemrod at the University of Michigan, ``but what the 
     optimal level is, I don't know.''
       To a lesser extent, economists cite the need to cut chronic 
     federal deficits, which was the primary purpose of the 1993 
     increase. In addition, when compared with other industrial 
     nations, the federal gasoline tax is low, they note.
       A number of economists contacted yesterday said they simply 
     haven't done the research needed to determine the optimal 
     level for a gasoline tax or whether they would even support 
     raising it. Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University, who served 
     in the Bush administration's Treasury Department, said he and 
     other economists are reluctant to address the size of the 
     gasoline tax separately from the test of the Tax Code. But 
     given the chance to rewrite the code, he added, ``most 
     economists would say increase the gas tax and reduce some 
     other tax.''
       In recent years, advocates of a higher federal tax have 
     ranged from Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, 
     who has proposed an unspecified increase as a conservation 
     move; to White House Budget Director Alice Rivlin; and 
     billionaire-politician Ross Perot.
       Mr. Auerbach dismissed Congress's effort and Democrats' 
     acquiescence as ``silly,'' and other economists privately 
     condemn it as political pandering. But the tax-repeal drive 
     isn't without supporters in the profession. ``I think we 
     should be looking for opportunities to reduce taxes,'' says 
     John Taylor at Stanford University,though he adds that his 
     preference is for tax cuts that promote savings or investment 
     rather than consumption.
       At Duke University, economist W. Kip Viscusi found in a 
     1994 study for the environmental Protection Agency that 
     federal gasoline taxes just about covered their pollution and 
     traffic costs--before the Clinton increase. ``The bottom line 
     is,'' he says, ``we're roughly at the right level.'' And if 
     the government wants funds to cut the deficit--as the 1993 
     increase was designed to do--he says, ``there are better 
     energy targets to pick on.'' Coal, heating oil and diesel 
     fuel are undertaxed, Mr. Viscusi says, given their pollution 
     and other external costs.
       Even Congress' economists acknowledge their effort is 
     grounded in politics, not economics, Texas GOP Sen. Phil 
     Gramm, a former professor who takes credit for the current 
     repeal vogue, says simply, ``When I get a chance to cut taxes 
     on working people, I take it.''
       Another conservative Texan and former professor, House 
     Majority Leader Rep. Richard Armey, says simply that ``it's 
     an opportunity . . . to repeal the Clinton gasoline tax of 
     1993.'' Mr. Armey caused a stir over the weekend by 
     suggesting that the revenue loss be made up by cutting 
     spending on education.
       The White House and Democrats in Congress have shown little 
     appetite to try to block a repeal, and instead have 
     concentrated on efforts to modify it. In particular, they 
     want to add language ensuring that oil companies reduce their 
     pump price rather than pocket the amount. But with or without 
     such an amendment, the repeal is likely to pass--with 
     bipartisan support.
       ``If we can provide some relief through tax reduction, it 
     would be the overriding consideration regardless of what bona 
     fide arguments one can make on conservation and other 
     issues,'' says Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle.
       At least as important, Democrats don't want to risk the 
     political momentum they have built in recent weeks by 
     hammering at the GOP on job-security issues, and they are 
     leery of falling into the same trap that has ensnared 
     Republicans on the minimum-wage issue: taking a political 
     beating for opposing a questionable, though wildly popular, 
     measure.
       ``It's completely presidential politics,'' says Sen. Kent 
     Conrad (D., N.D.,). But, like the administration, he 
     indicates he will support repeal if Republicans offer a 
     suitable method to replace the lost revenue.

  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, if I can add one other thing to my friend 
from New York, and that is this: I, candidly, do not know how he voted 
on increasing the mileage from 55 to 65 miles an hour. But when we vote 
to increase the mileage from 55 to 65 miles an hour----
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. You vote to increase the demand for gasoline.
  Mr. SIMON. Precisely.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Something called the ``market'' comes along and the 
price rises because of the demand. The supply has not instantly 
responded.
  Mr. SIMON. If I may ask the Senator from New York, would it be 
somewhat inconsistent for people to complain about the high price of 
gasoline and vote for this drop in the 4.3 cents and having voted for 
an increase in the mileage from 55 to 65?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I say to my friend that not only would it be 
inconsistent, but to allude to a point he made earlier, it would be 
``silly.''
  Mr. SIMON. I thank my colleague from New York.
  Let me mention one other thing that is, apparently, part of this 
tripod we are going to be voting on one of these days, and that is the 
TEAM Act. This is the euphemism for what is basically an antilabor bill 
that emerged from the committee on which I serve. I think we need 
balance in this field. We cannot go too far in the direction of labor. 
We cannot go too far in the direction of

[[Page S4795]]

management. But just as we have moved away from self-restraint in this 
body in terms of politics, we have become excessively partisan. So the 
same thing has happened in labor-management relations.
  It used to be that when you had a Democratic President, you had a 
slight shift in the National Labor Relations Board in the direction of 
labor; and when you had Republicans, a slight shift in the direction of 
management, but a pretty good balance. Then during the Reagan years, it 
went way out of balance. I think we did a great disservice to the 
process. I am pleased, incidentally, to see things like employee 
ownership of United Airlines. I think that, plus profit sharing, are a 
wave of the future in terms of avoiding some of the labor-management 
problems that we have had.
  But it is interesting that someone like George Shultz--and we think 
of him as the former Secretary of State, but he also served as 
Secretary of Labor--said that we have an imbalance in this country that 
is not good for labor or management and not good for productivity in 
this country. And so we ought to view any changes in labor-management 
relations with great caution.

  What the TEAM Act does--an acronym that inaccurately describes 
things--is basically permit a company to establish a company union. 
That is not in anyone's best interests. It is going in under the hidden 
cloak that this is a way to have teams, quality teams set up to work on 
safety and other problems in industrial production.
  There is no problem in that field. In fact, between 1972 and 1994, 
there were only two employee committees that were rejected by the 
National Labor Relations Board where there were not other factors of 
unfair labor practices involved. In terms of employee committees, it is 
dealing with a nonproblem. But it is dealing with it in a way that I 
think creates what appears to be good things, but they are really 
company unions moving away from traditional unions. I think that is not 
a good thing.
  Some people have said, ``I can't understand why we have this growing 
disparity between working men and women and those who are more 
fortunate.''
  One of the ways you can judge that is to look at union membership. 
Why is that disparity not so great in Canada, Germany, Great Britain, 
France, Japan, and other countries? Are these not free market 
countries?
  Yes, they are free market countries. But in those countries, you have 
33 percent, 40 percent, sometimes 90 percent union membership among the 
working men and women. In the United States, because of the barriers we 
have put up to organizing, it is 16 percent among our total work force, 
and if you exclude governmental unions it is down to 11.8 percent.
  That is not a healthy thing for this Nation. That is one of the 
reasons, frankly, we have not made progress in some issues like other 
countries have. We are the only Western industrialized nation to have 
people without health insurance--41 million of them. We are the only 
Western industrialized nation to have 24 percent of our children living 
in poverty. That is not an act of God. There is no divine intervention 
that says children in the United States have to live in poverty while 
children in Italy and Denmark and France and Great Britain and other 
countries have a much smaller percentage. It is the result of flawed 
policy. And I think if we pass this legislation, we will compound the 
flawed policy.
  I trust, Mr. President, that we will not pass this particular portion 
of the bill that we may be voting on, and I assume it will be tomorrow. 
If it should be passed, I trust that the President of the United States 
would veto it. I think we have to maintain balance. This bill moves 
away from that balance.
  Mr. President, I note the presence of the distinguished junior 
Senator from Missouri, and I know he is going to get up and agree with 
everything I have just said. It may be that he will differ on a point 
or two. But I do at this point want to yield the floor and again urge 
my colleagues to keep in mind what we need is balance in labor-
management relations. This bill moves away from that balance and does 
not serve the Nation well.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Chair. I thank my friend, the Senator from 
Illinois, in whose State I spent some time this morning. I have to say 
that I highly respect the senior Senator from Illinois. He is right. I 
will differ with him, but I will not disagree in a way that would be 
disagreeable.
  No one really challenges the need for balance in the culture or in 
the society, but I think the balance should be struck by American 
workers. The decision about how many people should be in labor unions 
and how many people should not be in labor unions should not be 
something we manipulate from the U.S. Senate. Rather, the decision 
about who is in a union or who is not in a union should be left to 
American workers. We have a system in the United States, the National 
Labor Relations Board, which is designed to ensure that there is no 
oppression or coercion of workers in unduly restricting their access to 
labor organizations. In the same light, the National Labor Relations 
Board also should make sure that there is no coercion in forcing people 
to be a part of labor organizations.
  More importantly than trying to strike a balance from Washington, DC, 
by trying to impose a certain level of unionism on this country in 
order to match France or Germany, or England, we should provide 
American workers with the ability to strike that balance for 
themselves. Frankly, I do not want to be like France or Germany or 
England. I have not noticed a great stream of immigrants from the 
United States to France, Germany or England. The big stream of 
immigrants is from other countries to the United States.
  It always confounds me a little bit when people in this Chamber hold 
up what happens in other places as a reflection of what the United 
States should become. Sure, there are free economies, but I will 
guarantee you they are not as free as the economy of the United States. 
And the reason people make the tough journey--and they have for 
centuries--to these shores is because there is greater freedom here and 
that is because we do not try to impose decisions on people from 
Washington, DC. We try to let people make the decisions, and that same 
ideal should ring true in the case of the TEAM Act.
  What is the TEAM Act? What has happened that has provoked the Senate 
to consider something that would fundamentally adjust the way in which 
we allow workers to interrelate with their employers or companies?
  Maybe it is best to start at what is our overarching goal? Here we 
stand in 1996, 3\1/2\ years from the turn of the millennium. What do we 
want to do? What should our policy be? What do we want? I think we want 
American society to survive in the next century. And I believe that we 
know we can survive if we are productive and if we are competitive. We 
have had some real challenges to our productivity and to our 
competitiveness in recent years.
  Just a couple decades ago some folks from the Far East--instead of 
Europe--made a real run at the United States. They began to teach us 
some lessons which first were outlined by an American professor but 
first were embraced by the Japanese. These were the lessons about how 
successful we all could be if employers tapped their workers as a 
resource to help both workers and companies do their very best to 
improve the product, to streamline production, to improve safety, to 
improve conditions in the work environment, that if workers could help 
make improvements, you could develop a higher quality and greater 
efficiency. That enhanced productivity--the quality and efficiency 
together equal productivity--would mean a surge in the marketplace, and 
it did. The Japanese with their auto production and electronics 
production nearly displaced the United States. However, we have made a 
comeback.
  How have we made a comeback? We made a comeback when we recognized 
the Japanese principles that were initially discovered and taught in 
some of the business schools of this country--the principle that 
recognized the value of workers. These principles say that no one will 
know the industrial process quite as intimately as the person who is on 
the line and that person has

[[Page S4796]]

something extremely valuable to contribute.
  And so American industries started to say let us have meetings. Let 
us get the workers together and let us discuss how we can improve our 
standing--when we have improved standing and improved productivity, we 
have improved job security. When we do a better job, when we produce a 
better product, we are going to do better and it will lift us all. It 
will lift the employer. It will lift the employees. We will deal 
together as associates, and we will move forward.
  As a matter of fact, there is a wonderful company in the State of 
Missouri. The name of the company is EFCO, E-F-C-O. They make what is 
known as architectural glass. If you are going to build a skyscraper 
and you are going to cover it with glass, you figure out the dimensions 
of each pane and then order the glass to fit your individual project. 
You figure out if it is going to have gas between the panes of glass or 
tinting to make the building more energy efficient. EFCO was that kind 
of company except and it had about 100 employees. They decided they 
wanted to be a leader in the industry. So they began asking their 
employees how to do it. They developed these techniques for asking 
employees how to make a more better product and how to improve the 
efficiency of production. They asked the employees if they had any 
ideas about safety so they could improve the safety, how they could 
increase quality, how they could have on-time deliveries. They were 
only having about 75 percent on-time deliveries when they started these 
committees, and recently, after doing this for quite some time, they 
were up to the high 90's in on-time deliveries. Everything was going 
well. The workers were earning more. The company exploded from 100-plus 
workers to over 1,000 workers, supplying architectural glass to people 
not only in this country but around the world.

  All of a sudden a grievance was filed that these committees are an 
inappropriate act and that somehow, this is some phony union.
  I want to be clear and distinct about my disagreement with the senior 
Senator from Illinois, who said the TEAM Act permits a company 
basically to establish a company union. Not so. The workers would have 
every opportunity, and never lose their opportunity, to petition the 
National Labor Relations Board to certify a union on the premises of 
these plants. There is no part of the TEAM Act which says that if you 
establish these company committees to improve communication, to elevate 
productivity, to lift worker satisfaction, that it in any way prohibits 
a union from being established. It is just wrong. It is inappropriate, 
it is inaccurate, it is a misrepresentation of the bill to say that it 
permits a company union. It does not. But it does authorize companies, 
if they want to, to tap the most vital and essential resource that a 
company has, and that is the people who work there.
  EFCO got to talking to people, and some of the people in these groups 
said you ought to let us do things this way, to have our vacations so 
we could be happier workers and be more productive, and to think about 
this in terms of the way you compensate us.
  A grievance was filed saying that this was somehow a company union, 
because the company dominated the committees by providing something as 
fundamental as a paper and pencil, because there were discussions of 
things that related to employment and because the company did not 
ignore the discussions but actually took them to heart. Therefore it 
was disqualified as if it were a union.
  Let me just say a couple of things about that. No. 1, Missouri 
workers and American workers are not stupid. I spent a lot of time on 
my campaign working in the plants in Missouri and since I have been a 
Senator, I have gone back to work in the plants. These workers know 
whether they are members of a labor union or not. They know whether 
they are in a discussion group or not. I do not have such a low regard 
for the workers in my State to think that they cannot tell the 
difference between a discussion group and a labor union. As a matter of 
fact, it is strange to me to see those individuals who fear these 
committees, because individuals who work in these settings are happier 
and more productive. Maybe they think they do not need a union as much. 
That could be. I would not argue with that. If they are getting along 
without one, they might not want to pay union dues. That could be the 
case and it would remain their choice.
  But these workers know whether they are in a union or not. It is 
strange to me that while employers are highly valuing employees--and do 
not have a low estimation of who these workers are, what they are, and 
what they can achieve--and those who are representing the organized 
labor interests in America are saying that these highly valued 
employees are being confused about whether this is a union or not.
  I want you to know that, from my experience, none of the employees 
who have participated in these activities--that I know of--confuses 
these committees with a labor union. But nonetheless, the National 
Labor Relations Board brought an action against EFCO, the company I 
talked about that went from 100-plus employees to 1,000 employees, to 
stop them from valuing their employees. The NLRB said it was an unfair, 
inappropriate labor practice to have this kind of discussion, this kind 
of interrelationship, and this utilization and tapping of a wonderful 
resource of informed and enthusiastic workers to improve their 
productivity. What a terrible thing.

  This win-win situation is now illegal. An interesting question is 
whether it is illegal to have these kinds of discussion groups if there 
is a union on the premises. The answer is--not at all. As a matter of 
fact, in a union setting, these committees are just fine. There is no 
problem. In my opinion, this is a discrimination against companies and 
workers who decide they work better and choose to work better absent a 
union.
  My colleague, the senior Senator from Illinois, says we need balance. 
It seems to me, if this is a device that is available to union 
facilities, it ought to be a device that is available to groups of 
workers and their employers when those groups of workers have chosen--
not to be unionized. If we are talking about balance here, the balance 
ought to be that workers make the choice, not that we manipulate the 
choices from here in Washington, DC.
  These are win-win situations. There is a very simple question here. 
Are we going to forbid employers and companies in America from 
consulting with workers to improve productivity, to improve safety, to 
improve worker satisfaction, to build job security? Are we going to 
make that illegal?
  Are we going to continue to allow that to be the source of conflict 
with an enforcement agency of the Government that says: Whatever you 
do, you cannot ask your workers what would be a better way to do 
things? You cannot ask them how you could better improve their safety? 
You cannot ask them how you could make the output more efficient so 
they can be more competitive around the world and thereby protect their 
jobs? Are we going to maintain a system that says you cannot do that? 
Or are we going to say: Wait a second, we are going into the next 
millennium and we have to be competitive with people from Singapore, 
people from Taiwan, people from China--1 billion plus people--
energetically pointed toward the United States and the world as a 
marketplace, who want to compete with us. Or are we going to say to 
employers: You cannot talk to your workers to find out what is 
efficient and what is inefficient?
  As I look toward the next century and as I look at my children--you 
know, one is just out in the workplace now. Two are still involved in 
education. I hope one of them is going to graduate next Saturday. But 
in the workplace, what kind of a team do we want to play for? Do we 
want to have a team where we hobble the real stars? The real stars of 
the competitive productivity of the United States are the workers. Are 
we going to say we want to tape their mouths shut, we want to rely only 
on the individuals in the board room? Do we want to rely only on the 
guys who come out with the fancy degrees? Or are we willing to hear the 
voice of the people from the shop floor who are able to say: You know, 
I have looked at this and I have been working on this and I believe if 
we just swap positions in the process, this for that, it would be a lot 
safer; or, we

[[Page S4797]]

can eliminate this step in the production and we can be a lot more 
competitive.
  I frankly believe, as we face this next millennium, we can no longer 
afford a NLRB that goes to the companies and says, ``Unh-unh, shame on 
you for talking to the workers.'' Eighteen cases were pursued by the 
NLRB since 1992 saying you cannot talk to the workers about improved 
conditions, you cannot confer with them about how to have an increase 
in your safety, you cannot ask them to help you figure out how to be 
more competitive.
  We have had about 30,000 employers trying to use these methods in 
response to the competitive surge from across the ocean, from Japan and 
others who are using these techniques. Let me say American workers have 
the right to opt for union membership. They have the right to ask for 
it. They have the right to petition for it. That right would persist. 
Nothing is done to change that by the TEAM Act. They would have the 
ability to ask that unions be organized and they would have the entire 
framework of the NLRB to make sure that any election is a fair 
election.
  But I think, for us to say we do not want to be able to use the 
resource that workers present as a means of improving our productivity 
is a terrible violation of basic sound public policy principles. It 
undervalues the American work force substantially. It ignores the fact 
that, of those who make a contribution, I believe the contribution of 
the worker is high on the list.
  You know, this was a theme of President Clinton's State of the Union 
Message. He kept talking about teamwork. He said what we cannot do 
separately we ought to be able to do together. He talked about 
cooperation. He said, and I agree and I quote: ``When companies and 
workers work as a team, they do better, and so does America.'' Not only 
do I agree with that, I do not think I could have said it better 
myself.
  This just appears to be one of those disparities. I do not think he 
meant to say, ``When union companies and union workers work as a team, 
they do better and so does America.'' I am sure that is true, but to 
limit that to 11 percent of the work force--as the senior Senator from 
Illinois said, 11.8 percent of the work force in the United States, 
outside of government, has decided to be represented by a union--to 
limit the ability to confer and to have those advantages to only 1 out 
of 10 workers seems to be a terrible way to structure and to establish 
the potential for this country to succeed in the next century.
  I believe that it is the fundamental responsibility of Government--
this is at the base of it all; this is why we are here--to establish an 
environment in which people reach the maximum of their potential.
  Government ought to be an institution which promotes growth, not 
growth in Government, but growth for people, for individuals and for 
institutions, for citizens and for corporations. And if we are a 
society of growth, we will succeed. And if we are a society of 
shrinkage, we will not.
  Now, are we going to grow by using the entire array of talents in our 
culture, or are we going to say to 9 out of 10 workers, ``You can't 
collaborate, you can't confer with, you can't discuss, you can't make 
suggestions.''
  When the EFCO case, to which I have referred, was handed down by the 
judge, the judge said, ``This is good for the workers, this is good for 
the company, this is good for the community, but the technical aspects 
of the law require that I stop this procedure.'' And we want to say, 
``You're right, judge, it's good for the workers, it's good for the 
company, it's good for the community, and we want to change the law 
just to allow it to be possible for the 9 out of 10 nonunion workers to 
be able to confer with their employers in the same way that union 
workers do in terms of making suggestions for increased productivity.''
  I believe that the TEAM Act should be enacted. It must be enacted if 
we really care about American workers. Let me just say, we are talking 
about 9 out of 10 workers in the American workplace. A lot has been 
said about the minimum wage. The minimum wage affects fewer than 5 
percent of the workers in this country. We are down at very low levels 
of people who are affected. I think minimum wage affects about 3.1 
percent of the population. Here we are talking about something that 
affects the entire population, the ability of this whole society to 
move forward competitively.
  I see my friend, the Senator from Vermont, on the floor. Mr. 
President, does the Senator desire to speak on this issue?
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I certainly do desire to speak. I, first 
of all, commend my good friend from Missouri for a very articulate and 
well-stated position on the TEAM Act. I would like to provide some 
different perspectives, both historical and with respect to the minimum 
wage, at some point. I will be happy to proceed now or as soon as the 
Senator from Missouri is through.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I am very pleased to yield the floor. I, 
of course, cannot yield but to the Chair, but in respect to my 
understanding and awareness that the Senator from Vermont is here, it 
is my pleasure to yield the floor and to thank the Chair for his 
indulgence for my opportunity to support what I believe is a 
fundamental ingredient of the success and the survival of this society 
in the next century, productivity and competitiveness when we call upon 
workers and allow them to make a contribution which will allow us to 
succeed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I want to pursue TEAM Act. I must say, 
it is difficult for me, from analyzing the circumstances which brought 
about TEAM Act, to understand why anyone would disagree with going back 
to what everybody presumed the law to be.
  First of all, let me make it clear, I am in favor of the minimum 
wage. I am one of those Republicans who is in favor of the minimum 
wage. So the minimum wage and TEAM Act are not linked, other than from 
perhaps some political aspect. But to me, the TEAM Act is essential in 
order to continue the increasing productivity of this Nation. But my 
colleagues better understand the TEAM Act and how it came about and why 
we are in this difficulty.
  Let me take you back 40 years. Forty years ago, I was a senior at 
Yale University, and I was a student studying industrial management, 
industrial administration. At that time, we were studying what ought to 
occur for the future to improve productivity and to build an industrial 
might in this Nation which would allow us to proceed with the greatest 
possible benefit to workers and to management.
  It was an interesting time and there was a great debate going on in 
our Nation as to what we should do as we moved into the future.
  It was also an interesting time, of course, because we had a certain 
man called Joseph McCarthy in this Senate who was very concerned about 
communism and anything that smacked of communism seemed to be sort of 
in ill repute. Thus, when you started talking about workers getting 
together with management and those kind of things, it raised some 
concern with some people.
  It also was a time when the unions were trying to organize and become 
more forceful and protect the rights of workers. But those in the 
academia were discussing the philosophies of the two systems and how we 
could better get together, workers and management, working together in 
American society to bring about higher productivity and to bring about 
better rewards to the workers.
  So we discussed the many things which, at that time, were very 
innovative and novel and hardly discussed before. I wrote my senior 
thesis on how we could try to improve the productivity of workers and 
the workers' plight in our Nation. I remember at that time writing and 
discussing about options of profit sharing, profit sharing with stocks, 
profit sharing period, stock options, and even as far as putting a 
member of the unions or workers on boards of directors.
  A considerable amount of effort by the academia went into outlining 
and defining these. The only problem was, the only ones who were 
listening were the Japanese, the Germans, and others. So when the 
Marshall plan came in, along with all of our wealth that we shared in 
order to bring about the industrial might of those nations in Europe 
and Asia, the only ones who took the ideas that were expressed by those

[[Page S4798]]

who were trying to look to the future to try and provide a better lot 
for workers and higher productivity for industry, were the Japanese, 
the Germans, and the Europeans.
  So what we have seen that has occurred over the past 40 years is that 
in those nations, the concept of the TEAM Act, which we are trying to 
bring in here again, was incorporated fully; in fact, in Germany, even 
more so than anywhere else, where you do have members of the workers or 
the labor unions participating in the boards of directors.
  What has evolved in Japan, for instance, is an incredible social 
organization in their school system to teach teamwork, teamwork among 
all classes, teamwork to bring about the ability to work together. And, 
thus, you have seen a closer relationship in those nations with the 
worker and management than you have in this Nation.
  A decade or so ago when our Nation found itself beginning to be 
outshone in productivity and in the marketplace because of the 
incursion of automobiles in this country from Europe and from Asia, 
which practically wrecked our automobile industry, the kind of skills 
that are necessary in our industries now, which are far different from 
what they were in the fifties wherein you spent your time just stamping 
something or pushing one button or all of the things that were in mass 
production in those days have evolved into a work force that needs to 
have technical skills to understand the workings of the machines, the 
computerization of machines--all of these skills in the mass production 
procedures.
  These resulted in those countries, Japan and Malaysia, all of these 
that had taken this advice of working together and figuring out how to 
improve productivity--they found that the best providers of 
improvements in the productivity were the workers themselves; whereas, 
in this country we just turned around and we kept trying to do quality 
control. We would bring things back and repair them.
  The Japanese and Germans learned the best place to stop is when you 
are in the production line. You find out you are producing too many 
things that are wrong, you find out what is going wrong and have the 
workers work with you to find out what is going wrong. So their 
productivity improved. The number of malfunctions or nonworking pieces 
produced were reduced substantially by working with the workers.
  It took us quite awhile to learn that. But now we have learned that. 
At a time when we now have thousands and thousands of these teams that 
are working together to improve productivity in this country, to make 
sure that we can outdo the Japanese, can outdo the Germans--and we have 
been successful. Yes, we have been successful. There are shining 
examples of that, Motorola and others, who learned the teamwork process 
and have now superseded in the markets in Asia in direct competition. 
We are winning. We are doing it.
  Now what happens? All of a sudden the NLRB comes out with its 
decision: ``You cannot do that. No. You formed a union here, and you 
have got to go through all the election processes or you can't meet.'' 
What is going to happen? If we do not pass the TEAM Act, thousands of 
these teams are going to be destroyed. The productivity gains that we 
have made over the past decade, which have been going on for some 40 
years in Europe and Japan, all that we have learned will be destroyed.
  Why in the world would the unions oppose this? Well, it is simple. 
They are threatened. They are nervous because they have been going 
down. They did not want to do anything that would in any way enhance 
the workers and the management to get together to improve productivity 
unless they are union people. Well, that may be fine, but that is not 
the way to do it. You have to prove, through the reasons that you give 
the workers to join, that they want to form a union; but you should not 
kill the productivity which is now beginning to come up by throwing all 
of these--I think the Senator from Missouri mentioned maybe up to 
30,000 of these teams that are out there. If we do not do something 
here, if we do not do it quickly, then all those productivity 
mechanisms are going to be destroyed.
  So it boggles my mind to think that anyone can oppose a provision in 
the law that says, ``Hey, if you want to work, sit down and you can 
talk about improvements,'' because if there is no improvement, if there 
is no productivity, there is no profit. If there is no profit, there is 
nothing to split. So let us get the profit first, and then we will 
worry about how you bargain or are considered about how to cut the 
profits up.
  That is a separate issue all right. That is for the unions. If you 
get into that kind of discussions, yes, maybe you are getting into 
unionism. But there is certainly no disagreement with the fact that if 
there is not a profit, there is not anything to split. So why kill off 
the mechanisms to provide the profit?
  So I say that I hope that Members of this body will recognize that 
the issue being created here is one that is so dangerous to the 
national productivity right now that, if we did not do something to 
prove and to improve upon the ability of our workers to interact and to 
cooperate and to learn the skills necessary to bring about 
productivity, we will find ourselves in the not-too-distant future of 
having a situation where we have destroyed the great improvements that 
we have been making over the last decade in productivity.
  So I just cannot impress upon my colleagues how important the TEAM 
Act is. If you do not believe so, talk to your businessmen and talk to 
the workers in those plants that are not unionized who believe very 
strongly that the best way to cooperate, to get a profit and to learn 
how to split the profits is through improving productivity. If we do 
not pass the TEAM Act, we are about to see that great movement forward 
in productivity disappear. So I hope our colleagues will support the 
TEAM Act. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

  Mr. ASHCROFT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I certainly want to commend the Senator 
from Vermont for his outstanding remarks regarding the TEAM Act. He 
talks about productivity and about these fundamental communications.
  I have here in my hand a document which lists the illegal subjects of 
discussion as they have been decided in different cases.
  The Union Child Day-Care Center case of 1991 said it was illegal to 
discuss allowing employees to use company vehicles to obtain lunch. 
Therefore, if there was some sort of discussion that said, ``Well, if 
we could just occasionally use one of the company vehicles to go get 
the lunches, we could * * *,'' it would be illegal.
  Here is another example. It says an impermissible topic is, ``In-
plant cafeteria and vending machine food and beverage prices.'' So, if 
a discussion group said, ``You know, we need to lower prices on some of 
these things. This concessionaire you have got running the vending 
machines around here * * *,'' it would be illegal.
  Here is a third example: ``Company provided meals'' is an 
impermissible topic. If the discussion group said, ``You know, we could 
get some more done if you guys could provide some meals or help us with 
our eating * * *,'' it would be illegal.
  ``Abolishing a paid lunch program'' was found to be illegal, 
according to the Van Dorn Machinery Co. case.
  Here is another example that is really troubling, a whole category of 
safety topics that it was illegal for workers to talk to their employer 
about.
  ``Safety labeling of electrical breakers.'' I should think we would 
want workers to be able to talk to their employers about conditions of 
a safer workplace. Workers, individually or collectively, should be 
able to say ``these things are not labeled properly as `illegal'.''
  ``Tornado warning procedures.'' It is illegal for workers to talk 
with their employers about that, according to the Dillon case.
  ``The purchase of new lifting equipment for the stock crew.''
  Rules about fighting--if there is a fight that breaks out among 
employees, American workers must say, ``no, we can't have anybody talk 
to the employer about how to settle it.''
  I think these are obviously the kinds of things that workers should 
be consulted about, and they should be given an opportunity.
  ``Safety goggles for fryer and bailer operators.''

[[Page S4799]]

  ``The sharpness of the edges of safety knives.''
  Here is a case where employees could not talk to their employers 
about a smelly propane operation, propane being an explosive gas, 
burnable gas. I would want to be able to talk about that.
  The case of the E.I. DuPont case, which was a 1993 case. The subject 
was safety. ``No. You can't allow workers to talk.'' Of course American 
public policy should encourage rather than discourage employers from 
discussing safety issues.
  ``Drug use and alcohol testing of employees.'' That could not be the 
subject of discussion. It is no wonder that the Senator from Vermont is 
so compelling in his arguments about this whole situation when he says 
that we need to be able to discuss these things. This is not the old 
days of the 1930's.
  I thank the Senator for bringing out the fact that there were times 
when America marched forward by having adversarial fights between labor 
and management--between employers and employees. I think we will march 
forward much more quickly and competitively if we can have the benefit 
of the wisdom of workers in solving some of these fundamental problems.
  Every once in awhile you hear about these teams, and you think they 
must be talking about advanced circuitry. Sometimes they are. But 
sometimes they are just talking about, ``Hey, we'd better make sure 
that the safety procedures are good enough here in the event we have a 
tornado.'' According to the rules as they now stand, if you want to 
discuss how you evacuate the building in the event of a tornado, you 
violate the law. I thank the Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. I thank the Senator from Missouri for his very 
articulate and well-expressed opinions here. I am hopeful that when our 
colleagues listen and understand what we are talking about here, this 
TEAM Act, we will move through and do what we must do, and that is 
improve our productivity in this Nation.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, one of the things that workers want to 
talk to their employers about, and they want to talk to us about, is 
their ability to resolve the tension that exists between the workplace 
and their families. Most of the men and most of the women in today's 
modern work force feel a tension between serving the needs of their 
families and being on the job.
  If we were really concerned about workers, we would also direct our 
attention to the substance of the Fair Labor Standards Act. This 
archaic rule literally makes it illegal if an hourly worker goes in on 
Friday afternoon and says, as an employee, ``I have to go see Sally get 
an award at the honors program at the high school this afternoon. Can I 
make up the time on Monday?'' Our labor laws make that illegal for the 
employer to let the employee just make up that time on Monday. We have 
a situation where we have so many people now trying to juggle both work 
and family--I do not need to go through the statistics.
  In the 1930's, when we created the Fair Labor Standards Act, we had 
fewer than 16 percent of the women of childbearing age in the work 
force. Now 75 percent of all the women with children 6 and under are in 
the work force. We have just a dramatic difference. We need to make it 
as easy as we possibly can for these people to accommodate the needs of 
their children. This can be accomplished by having flexible work 
schedules, by allowing individuals, if they are asked to work overtime 
sometime, to say, ``I'll take it in comp time, time and one-half, in 
terms of time off.''
  We accorded this privilege to the Federal Government in 1945. That is 
how long they have had the potential of not taking overtime but just 
taking comp time for people who would rather have time than pay. Since 
1978, we have had a flexible work arrangement for Federal employees 
which allowed those who are running the Federal Government and the 
different departments to say to their employees, ``If you need to take 
2 hours off on Friday afternoon you can make those 2 hours up on 
Monday.'' The Federal employees have had it in terms of comp time for 
over half a century; in terms of flexible time, for 18 years.
  However, the rest of the American workplace still finds itself 
rigidly confined and the family disadvantaged substantially by the fact 
that it is illegal for someone to say, ``Make up the 2 hours on Monday 
afternoon. We are glad to have you go and participate with your 
family.''
  I have introduced legislation to address this. It is called the Work 
and Family Integration Act. It is the way to build a better workplace 
for the next century, recognizing and reflecting the needs, concerns, 
and the difficult challenges that families face now. It does not allow 
any employer to demand or extract any overtime in any way without 
paying time and a half for it in accordance with the traditional rules. 
But, if the worker desires, the worker could shift some of his workweek 
from 1 week to the next with the managers or the employers' agreement.
  We held a hearing on this in the committee and people were talking 
about snow days here in Washington. A whole group of employees were 
snowed out on Friday. Their employer was not allowed to let them make 
that 8 hours up 2 hours at a time in 4 days the next week. As a result 
a whole group of workers lost a whole day's pay. I am talking about 300 
people at one plant because our labor laws prohibit the making up of 
time once you cross the end of a week.
  Now, it seems to me if the employees request and the employer is 
willing to accommodate, we should have flexible work arrangements. 
Also, we should allow--if the employer asks someone to work overtime--
the employee to choose to take that overtime not in extra money but in 
time and a half off. As a matter of fact, that comports with, 
obviously, what the Federal Government has suggested is available for 
its own employees for the last 50 years, but it is something where the 
average worker just does not have equality with the Federal employees.
  I believe this is a measure which ought to be supported if we really 
care about workers. Mr. President, 60-some percent of all the men in 
the culture say they want to spend more time with their families. Give 
the employers and the employees an opportunity to work together to 
spend more time with their families.
  I was stunned with a statistic I read the other day that 30-some 
percent of all the men in America said they had passed up promotions in 
order to spend more time with their families, and 60-some percent of 
the women in America said they had passed up promotions. When people 
pass up a promotion that means they are not living or working at their 
highest potential. It means their employers know they could do a 
different kind of job, a better job, more demanding job, and it means 
the person knows they can do it, but they do not want to sacrifice the 
family. So we end up deploying our resources, our great human talent, 
at lower than optimal levels because people are protecting their 
ability to work with their families.
  Why do we not say we will allow you to protect your ability to work 
with your family by giving you flexible working opportunities like we 
have in the Federal Government. Just extend to the private sector what 
we have in the Federal Government. We should do that so we get the 
greater productivity and output from the workers across America. If we 
have higher productivity and output and we have more time with our 
families, we have more worker satisfaction, I can guarantee that will 
be a formula for success and survival into the next century. Whether we 
sink or swim depends on our ability to be competitive. We have rules 
from 60, 70 years ago s which make it impossible for us to survive. It 
is like swimming across the lake with a sack of cement. It is heavy to 
begin with, but when it solidifies it is a weight to carry and we need 
to shed this kind of impediment. We need to free individuals to make 
these requests and agreements.

  Some say, ``Wait a second, some might be abused by their employers.'' 
We have the Department of Labor, an army of wage and hour enforcement 
individuals. There would be no ability to compel anything that is not 
compellable now. All we want to do is free these friends, the employers 
and employees to work cooperatively so they can accommodate the needs 
of their families. I think it is something which ought to be done. As a 
matter of fact,

[[Page S4800]]

it is something with which the administration agrees--at least 
rhetorically.
  I was pleased to note from the Bureau of National Affairs, the Daily 
Labor Report, Vice President Gore, May 3, called on U.S. employers to 
create father-friendly workplaces. Addressing a Federal conference on 
strengthening the role of fathers in families, Gore ``urged American 
companies to give employees flex time opportunities to expand 
options.'' Now, wait a second. We have the Vice President of the United 
States saying we need flextime, legislative proposals before the 
Congress which would provide for flextime, the President of the United 
States having said we need to work together as teams in his State of 
the Union Message, but a promise they will veto employee option 
flextime and comp time.
  Again, we have the dysfunction between the speak and the specifics, 
between the rhetoric and the reality. It is high time we say to 
American families, ``We want to do more than talk about you. We want to 
do more than say we need family-friendly and father-friendly work 
policies.'' We ought to be willing to say, ``Yes, the American worker 
in the private sector deserves the same kind of opportunities to work 
cooperatively, to arrange to meet the needs of her family, his family, 
meet that need just like Federal employees.'' In 1978 we started 
flexible scheduling in the Federal Government as a pilot project. In 
1982, we extended it. Along about 1985 we decided, hey, this is good 
enough to put right into the law. We have a report to congressional 
committees from the United States General Accounting Office, ``The 
Changing Work Force: Comparison of Federal and non-Federal work family 
programs and approaches,'' that documents the fact this is available. 
It is available and it is working in the Federal Government. But we are 
afraid to extend it, afraid to offer this opportunity to people in the 
private sector.
  I cannot believe it. Do you know what Federal workers said about 
this? Overwhelmingly, ``We like it, we want it, we must have it, we 
should continue to have it,'' when they talk to their employer about 
conditions of employment. President Clinton, the President himself, in 
1994, put out an Executive order that this is a good deal, best thing 
since sliced bread. This is something you cannot argue with. He says we 
should extend this, make sure that every person in the executive 
branch, even those in the White House, have this capacity. It is good 
enough for the White House--if it is good enough for Pennsylvania 
Avenue--it is good enough for Main Street, USA.
  If we really care about workers, and I believe we must, if we really 
care about our fellow Americans, we must care less about special 
interests who are afraid if we make workers happy they might not join 
unions. I think what we have to say is: How do we confront the 
challenges of the next century? How do we make sure that America does 
not slip? How do we make sure there is a job base, an industrial 
capacity competitive enough that when our children and grandchildren 
need jobs and when the other countries of this world come fully online 
with a competitive challenge--how do we make sure we are ready to meet 
that challenge?
  Can we do it with a law that was passed in the 1930's and says that, 
``Well, shucks, we cannot allow Americans to accommodate the needs of 
their families. We certainly would not want people in the private 
sector to have the same benefits the Federal employees have for 
accommodating those needs. We have to be very much afraid if these 
workers get too happy, either conferring with their employers or 
cooperating so that they can see the soccer game or watch the awards 
ceremony that the special interests in this country will not make it. 
Well, I think you and I understand, and I think down deep we all know 
that it will not do much good to have healthy special interests if the 
national interests go down the drain.
  As we look to the next century, I think we have to look to those 
national interests: Flexible work arrangements are important in helping 
mothers and fathers be deployed in the workplace to the maximum of 
their capacity and to accommodate the needs of our families. We have to 
look after American families. Yes, let us let workers talk. Let workers 
talk to their fellow employees and employers about things as 
fundamental as tornado drills and whether the propane is leaking out of 
the tank and whether the electrical circuit breakers are properly 
labeled. Let us not assume they cannot do that unless they first call 
in the union. Let us not underestimate the value of the American 
worker. Let us capitalize on the value of the American worker.
  If we really care about America's workers, we will do things for all 
of them, for the vast majority of them, like flex time and the TEAM 
Act, which invites the entirety of the population to flourish. Sure, I 
understand concerns about the tiny, narrow fragment of people on the 
minimum wage. However, well over half of those people are part of 
households that make over $45,000 a year. I think the number is 57 
percent. I started working way below the minimum wage, a third below 
the minimum wage. I am glad somebody did not tell me it was ``because 
you are not worth the minimum wage; you are useless.'' I may have been 
useless at the time, but somebody agreed to pay me 50 cents an hour 
when the minimum wage was 75 cents, and I got my start. I do not think 
I have missed a day of work since. There are those in my home State who 
think I am still worth about 50 cents an hour, but my view is that my 
work and my values should be determined by what I can produce. I should 
not be told if I cannot produce at one level, that I am worthless and 
worth nothing at all.
  Let me just make one other comment about another topic. I do not see 
anyone else seeking the opportunity to speak. There is a lot of talk 
about gasoline taxes. Frankly, I think the most recent gas tax, the one 
passed in 1993, was mislabeled. It was a tax on gasoline all right, but 
it went someplace else. Prior to that time, gas taxes were all spent to 
build highways and roads. But the gas tax in 1993, the most recent one 
that added significantly--about 25 percent--to the gas tax we already 
had, or more, I guess, that gas tax went into the general fund. So when 
the Senators from a variety of jurisdictions get up and say we need gas 
taxes because they build highways, the general fund does not build 
highways. The highway trust fund builds highways. The last gas tax was 
not a demand for more road-building capacity. It was a demand that 
people who drive perhaps would subsidize social programs.
  Now, that bothered me because I think the gas tax that builds 
highways is really a reasonable, uniquely sensible approach. The people 
using the highways are paying for the highways. How wonderful. 
Government ought to work that way. The more you drive, the more you 
pay. The more you drive, the more you use the highways. Makes sense. 
But, no, in 1993 they decided--and I opposed it. I was not here, but I 
was opposed to it. That was not the right way to do things, to take 
what people were trusting to be a gas tax and put it in the old general 
fund so it would support social programs.
  I have to say I am distressed by that because it says that we are 
going to put a tax on drivers, and we are going to use that to support 
social programs, and that means people who live in the outer-State 
areas--a lot of people in the West where they drive long distances when 
they go to work--are going to be asked to subsidize social programs at 
a higher level, to bear an inordinate cost, to bear an unusual share of 
these social programs.
  Well, you all know, and I know, that the social programs have driven 
the deficit in this country, which is about $5 trillion now. A newborn 
child owes $19,000 the day he or she is born. The idea of trying to 
figure out ways to keep displacing the burden of taxation, to load it 
up on the guys out West, or the people who are in the nonurban areas, 
to drive just for the privilege of driving, they are going to have to 
pay an inordinate share of these other programs. That, to me, is a 
bankrupt concept.
  It might be different if we had passed the gas tax to pay for what 
the gas really uses, and that is the highways. But this is not one of 
those situations. I opposed it because it is not one of those 
situations, and I would favor the repeal of it because it is not one of 
those situations. We do not spend the money in the highway trust fund 
we have now. We use it to mask the deficit in part of the flim-flam of 
Washington economics. To add an additional gas

[[Page S4801]]

tax as additional flim-flam to spend on a variety of other Government 
programs that have not really gotten us far, except into debt, I think 
has moved us in the wrong direction. I personally will be glad to 
support a repeal of the gas tax, because I believe that, as it relates 
to taxes, America is running out of gas. We are tired of taxes. We 
realize that we have them at a higher and higher level.
  Last week, the Department of Commerce released the data for this last 
year, and we have had the highest tax rate from the Federal Government 
we have ever had in the history of America. We fought the world wars 
and charged American citizens less than we are charging them now. We 
spent our way out of the Depression and charged America less than we 
are charging now. It is time for us to come to grips with the 
responsibility we have to put Government under control, to change the 
Washington-knows-best way of doing business. It is time for us to be 
sober about our responsibilities as it relates to the hard-earned money 
of our constituents. As it relates to taxes, America is running out of 
gas. It should be running out of a gas tax which was inappropriately 
levied in 1993 and should be appropriately repealed by the U.S. 
Congress in 1996.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Snowe). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOLE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________