[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 63 (Wednesday, May 8, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4846-S4848]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 WHITE HOUSE TRAVEL OFFICE LEGISLATION

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, as I understand, the Democrats have had a 
caucus, and they might now be willing to agree to the unanimous-consent 
request that I made earlier this morning that there be three votes; 
division I being the gas tax issue; division II being the TEAM Act 
issue; and division III being the Democratic proposal for the minimum 
wage; that each division be limited to 2 hours each, to be equally 
divided in the usual form, and following the conclusion or yielding 
back of time, the Senate proceed to division I, division II, and 
division III. Then I assume there would be a vote on final passage.
  If I am correct in that, I would be happy to try to obtain that 
consent agreement now.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I will 
offer a unanimous-consent agreement to do what I understand the 
majority leader proposed earlier--later than that particular offer; 
later on in the morning--that we have three separate bills, and have 
votes and amendments to those three separate bills. I offer that as a 
unanimous-consent agreement at this time with amendments.
  Mr. DOLE. With amendments?
  Mr. DASCHLE. We would offer three separate bills with amendments. We 
could agree to a time limit, but three separate bills with amendments. 
That is correct.
  Mr. DOLE. I never agreed to anything like that. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. DOLE. Let me say that I did indicate--I do not negotiate with the 
press. As far as I know, they are not Members of the Senate. Some have 
more power than we have, but they are not voting.
  I was asked that question, and I repeated the question. I might 
subscribe to that. But I went on to say, I made almost the identical 
offer today, but I never made any offer that would indicate we would 
have amendments to these separate bills. That is an entirely different 
process.
  Plus, I am no rocket scientist, but it did occur to me that obviously 
the President could veto the TEAM Act and sign the other two. He said 
he would do that today. I would not buy into such an agreement.
  I do think this is a very reasonable agreement that I have suggested. 
Since I have been asked to object to the Democratic leader's proposal, 
perhaps he would be kind enough to object----
  Mr. DASCHLE. I object.
  Mr. DOLE. I find it strange that our colleagues on the other side are 
filibustering minimum wage. We are prepared to have that vote right 
now. We will not even need 30 minutes of debate. We are prepared to 
have the vote on TEAM Act, prepared to have the vote on gas tax.
  Again, the TEAM Act is just a very little piece of the pie or the 
puzzle. I hope we could find some way to reach an agreement. If there 
are amendments, I know the Senator from North Dakota--I have written 
him a letter, Senator Dorgan, if he has any way to tighten up the 
effort to make certain that the 4.3 cents will go to the consumer. I 
had a letter from Texaco, and we will have a response from ARCO. 
Somebody raised a question about ARCO in the press conference. I did 
not have the answer, but we are getting the answer from ARCO. I think 
we will have the assurances that some would need before they act on the 
gas tax repeal.
  As I said at the press conference earlier, we do pay for it. This is 
really an effort--the President's spending is why we have to have it. 
He wanted to spend more money, so we had to raise the gas tax. We will 
not let the deficit grow any larger. We will make certain we offset any 
loss.
  I hope that this is a reasonable agreement, and I would like to 
proceed with it. If not, I do not see any reason to stay in later this 
evening.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DOLE. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Go ahead.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I wonder if the majority leader would 
yield for a brief question regarding matters that we discussed just a 
few moments ago.
  Mr. DOLE. Certainly.
  Mr. KENNEDY. As I understand from the press conference, a question 
was asked, just to follow up on what Senator Daschle has pointed out: 
``Why not have three up-or-down votes on three different bills, whether 
they are amendable or unamendable? Why not do it that way?''
  Senator Dole said, ``Three separate bills, I might even subscribe to 
that. But they won't let it happen. They will filibuster the TEAM Act. 
If we can get an agreement to vote on three separate bills, that is one 
thing. I have already given that agreement, to have the three separate 
bills.''
  As I understood the----
  Mr. DOLE. Three separate votes.
  Mr. KENNEDY. The question included the words: ``amendable or 
unamendable? Why not do it that way?''
  ``Three separate bills, I might even subscribe to that. But they 
won't let it happen.''
  As I understood it, that is what Senator Daschle had offered. I was 
wondering, since it appeared, at least from the transcript, that that 
was the position of the majority leader, why that would not be 
acceptable to do that here as the minority leader has suggested.
  Mr. DOLE. As I have indicated, I said in that response, I might and I 
might not. And I will not. That will take care of that.
  Again, nobody is trying to negotiate. Democrats like to negotiate, 
but I do not negotiate with press people unless there is one up there 
who works for the Democrats, but I do not think so, not directly.

  We would be very happy to proceed on the basis we have outlined this 
morning. We think it is very reasonable. I think the President ought to 
accept it in the spirit he invoked in his 1:30 press conference. He did 
indicate he would sign--he mentioned something about workers' rights. 
That is what we are talking about, workers' rights.
  I do not understand how we expect the majority to permit the minority 
to have their way and we not be entitled to have any say at all. We are 
prepared to repeal the gas tax, have that vote, have the TEAM Act vote, 
and have the minimum wage vote and then have a final vote. I think my 
colleagues on the other side might appreciate the fact we would 
probably have a fairly healthy vote on final passage, which I think 
would bode well for what might eventually happen to this legislation.
  There is a lot of merit to keeping the three together. There may not 
be any merit on that side of the aisle, but there is merit on this side 
of the aisle.
  Again, I tried to work with--certainly, always tried to work with--
the Democratic leader. I am happy to meet with him at any time and see 
if there is some agreement we can reach.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I will not belabor this. Let me just say 
that I think both sides have made their position very clear. The 
majority leader wants to combine the TEAM Act, the minimum wage, and 
the Travel Office bill all in one package, in addition, of course, to 
the gas tax reduction. In one package we would combine all of these 
things.
  I must say I do not know that we will ever be able to resolve this 
until we

[[Page S4847]]

can find a way to allow separate bills to be considered. The problem we 
have is, we cannot offer amendments. That is the essence of it. We 
cannot offer amendments to these. We may ultimately have a TEAM Act of 
our own. We may have a substitute of our own to the gas tax reduction 
proposal. We may have a lot of amendments that are very relevant to 
this bill that we are precluded from offering under this arrangement.
  I have had a very productive and very good relationship with the 
leader over many months now. I am hopeful that we can find a way 
through this and see if we cannot resolve it. I do not see a way to 
resolve it until we can finalize some understanding about the 
opportunity that we must have to offer amendments to bills that we care 
deeply about.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, again, I think we all try to work things out 
around here. At least that has been my experience. I see my 
distinguished colleague from West Virginia, Senator Byrd, may not agree 
on what will be the final outcome, but we try to agree. If there is an 
effort or wish to offer substitutes, we might have a substitute to the 
minimum wage.
  We are willing to divorce these three matters from the Travel Office 
bill and bring them up separately, or if there is another H.R. bill 
around here somewhere--there is another H.R. bill. We can accommodate 
that request. We can go ahead and separate, if that would help, and let 
the Billy Dale matter be passed.
  I think the point is that the Senator from Massachusetts made it very 
clear he was going to amend every bill with the minimum wage, which, in 
effect, served notice on us that anything that we brought up would be 
blocked. We want to resolve this issue, get it behind us, so we can 
move on a number of legislative areas that we think are important, 
important to the people of America.
  I am perfectly willing to try to work it out with the Democratic 
leader. We have never had a problem before. Sometimes these things are 
not easy. Sometimes they can be resolved. I make no offer to the 
Democratic leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, if I could just say one other thing that 
I meant to add, the distinguished majority leader this morning said 
that he took good notes from his predecessor, the majority leader in 
the 103d Congress, George Mitchell. I know he is a great note taker, 
and I do not deny that he probably, like all of us, learned from past 
experience.
  However, we went back in the 103d Congress just to try to find an 
example or an instance when the majority filled the parliamentary tree, 
filled the tree in every way, to preclude the minority from having an 
opportunity to offer an amendment. We could not find 10, we could not 
find 5, we could not find 1 instance where the majority so dominated 
the political tree--it is a political tree in this case--the 
parliamentary tree so as not to allow the minority the opportunity to 
offer any amendments. It is not something the majority did in the past.
  Even in the most troubling circumstances, the minority had an 
opportunity to offer an amendment. We had to offer second degrees, and 
we did. We had to come up with counter strategies, and we did. We never 
filled the tree and filed cloture and precluded the minority from even 
having the opportunity to offer an amendment. Having looked at the 
record from at least that perspective, I do not find an example that 
could be called a precedent for what is happening right now.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I meant--and I talked about Senator Mitchell 
as my friend and the friend of everybody on this side and the other 
side, and he is doing quite well in the private area--that he would 
file cloture rather quickly.
  But the point is, I can recall the stimulus package being held up. I 
think Senator Mitchell did a good job of preventing us from voting on 
capital gains for many years. I cannot remember, it has been so long. 
So I think he was quite effective. Maybe I have not been quite as 
effective and I had to fill the trees because I did not know the other 
ins-and-outs of the place. He did a good job, and I certainly have high 
respect for Senator Mitchell. I very much appreciate the fact that he 
was willing to pass on some of the ideas he had that I have been able 
to pick up.
  But I would be very happy to visit with my friend, the Democratic 
leader. If it is a question of working out an agreement with 
amendments, I think we can do that. But when the Senator from 
Massachusetts makes it impossible to bring up any bill--and he says he 
is not going to do it on Megan's law, but he has everything else, with 
the exception of the bill he wanted passed, the health bill--then it 
makes it rather difficult to do the business of the Senate. So I do not 
believe that we are doing anything that cannot be resolved, regarding 
the efforts initiated on that side. I am perfectly willing to work it 
out, if we can, with the Senator from South Dakota, the Senator from 
Massachusetts, and everybody else. I know the Senator from Mississippi 
is willing to try and has tried. I think we have all been in good 
faith.
  So if we can work it out, that is fine. We would be happy to meet 
this evening and see if we can resolve this and have not only these 
three issues behind us, but a number of others that should be dealt 
with, if we are to have a Memorial Day recess.
  I will be happy to yield the floor.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I wanted to inquire of the leader. Of 
course, on the minimum wage, a majority of the Members have actually 
voted for an increase in the minimum wage. So, in this instance, the 
minority is really the majority, and they have been denied the 
opportunity these many weeks and months from having an opportunity to 
be able to have a clean bill on the minimum wage. I think that the 
actions that were taken are taken out of frustration, on an issue that 
the American people are so overwhelmingly in support of, and that is, 
people that work hard ought to be able to have a livable wage, and we 
ought to be addressing that on the floor of the Senate.
  So I just suggest to the leader that, actually, we are not a minority 
on that issue, we are a majority, and with good Republican support. I 
am just puzzled about why we are constantly characterized as a minority 
when we have been able to demonstrate from votes here on the Senate 
floor that a majority wants to have an increase in the minimum wage. I 
do not see how that is so unreasonable.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, it would be my view that when that vote 
comes, there will be a substantial majority. The vote the Senator 
refers to is a cloture vote, and sometimes they are a bit deceptive, as 
I have learned.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Is the Senator now stating to the American people that 
he will only schedule a vote up or down on the increase in the minimum 
wage if we get cloture? Is that the position of the majority leader on 
this issue?
  Mr. DOLE. I did not even raise cloture. I thought that was the 
position of the Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. No, no. I do not believe that the majority leader does 
not understand what my position is on this.
  Mr. DOLE. I think I do understand your position. I sometimes admire 
it--sometimes. But I think the point is that we need to resolve this, 
if we can. I would be happy to try to work with the Senator from 
Massachusetts, or the Democratic leader, or both, and see if we cannot 
work out some arrangement where they can offer amendments. But I do 
believe it is pretty difficult to explain to the majority--and I do not 
often refer to the minority. I think we are all Senators. It is pretty 
hard to explain to the majority on this side why we should permit the 
Senator from Massachusetts to do everything he wants, but we cannot do 
what we want. If the Senator can help me with that, maybe we can work 
it out.
  Mr. KENNEDY. If the Senator will yield on that point. It is not what 
the Senator from Massachusetts wants, it is what 13 million Americans 
deserve.
  Mr. DOLE. Oh. I will say the same about a lot of things President 
Clinton has vetoed, such as the child tax credit, welfare reform, 
balanced budget, all those things were vetoed. The Senator from 
Massachusetts did not vote for them. The child tax credit will help 50-
some million children in 28 million homes.
  So if we want to get into the numbers game here, we can extend the 
debate for some time. I think, since I

[[Page S4848]]

have an appointment at 5, I will be happy to either recess until 
tomorrow morning, or if we want to continue debate, we can. I know the 
Senator from Georgia is here, and the Senator from Idaho wishes to be 
recognized.

                          ____________________