[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 138 (Monday, September 30, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11835-S11836]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             OMNIBUS CONSOLIDATED APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1997

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it appears that this afternoon we are 
going to be asked to vote on something in the form of an omnibus 
consolided appropriations bill which may be attached to the Defense 
appropriations bill.
  This is it, Mr. President. This is the 2,000-plus pages that have 
been put together and assembled since last Friday. I would suggest 
there is not one Member of this body who has read this. But we go 
through that quite often and quite often we vote on things that we have 
not read in their entirety. But the reason that we are going to do this 
is because we on the majority side are somewhat held hostage. At least 
in the minds of many Members we are. We are talking about $6.5 billion 
more that we are going to agree to spend to respond to the President's 
request for programs that he was not able to get funded during the 
normal process--$6.5 billion with a ``b'', Mr. President. So we are 
talking about a major, major amount of expenditures.
  All of this goes back to this horrible fear that we seem to be 
laboring under that--if we do not do this and we pass our 
appropriations bills, as we would normally do through the deliberative 
process, and the President vetoes these and we come to an impasse--the 
Government will stop at the end of the fiscal year which is taking 
place at this historic time right now, and that the Republicans would 
be responsible for it.
  Last night I was watching a debate that took place wherein the 
distinguished minority leader, Senator Daschle, was talking about what 
happened when the Republicans shut down the Government. And I was 
waiting for a response because the Republicans did not shut down the 
Government. The Republicans only did those things that were responsible 
in the normal process that we live under here.

  I remember so well in the other Chamber when the President of the 
United States, Bill Clinton, gave his State of the Union Message. And 
in that he had a very dramatic time during that 1 hour and 6 minutes--
whatever it was--when he said, ``And don't you ever shut down 
Government again,'' looking at us as if we were the ones who shut it 
down.
  Well, anyway, apparently the vast majority of the American people 
believed that.
  So, in fear for that and in responding to that, we are agreeing to 
fund a lot of his programs to the extent of $6.5 billion, programs such 
as the Goals 2000 Program.
  You know, a few years ago I came home. And at that time my son was in 
the fourth or the fifth grade. I can't remember. And he was just 
beaming. I said, ``Jimmy, something good must have happened today.'' He 
said, ``Well, you know, dad. I am in the fourth grade.'' I said, ``Yes. 
I know that.'' He said, ``Dad, you know that in reading I am in the 
fifth grade.'' I said, ``How does that work?'' He said it was a brand 
new Federal program. ``It is a pilot program we are trying. It is a 
system that is set up where if you accelerate in a certain area that 
you can then compete with those who are in perhaps a grade or two above 
you.''
  I remember it so well back many years ago. I was in grade school. I 
was in the first grade. It was a little country school named Hazel 
Dell. And there were eight grades in one room. There were eight 
rows. Back in those days, every time you missed a spelling word, you 
would walk up to the front of the class and they would swat you with a 
paddle. So I was a good speller, and I was in the first row because I 
was in the first grade. My brother was in the second row because he was 
in the second grade. My sister was in the eighth row because she was in 
the eighth grade. But every time they got around to me they had me sit 
over in the third row because I was a good speller.

  Here is a brand new, innovative program that Government came up with 
here centralized in Washington. I would suggest to you that the Goals 
2000 Program is one that has as its goalposts to bring the curriculum 
as close to Washington because our wisdom is so much greater here than 
it is out in the local areas. I do not agree with that. And yet what we 
are doing today, if we do--and I think it is going to happen--is we 
will extend the funding of that by $255 million.
  I see here that another $87 million is going to go to EPA. Now, I am 
on the Environment and Public Works Committee. I can tell you that our 
effort with the Republican majority has been to stop some of this 
foolishness that comes out of Washington and have, for instance, real 
Superfund reform, Superfund reform where we would repeal retroactive 
liability, repeal joint and several liability, bring the remedies from 
the Federal Government back to the State. The average Superfund cleanup 
that is supervised by the Federal Government is something like 8\1/2\ 
years, and yet we have some that are being done, or proposals being 
made that if we can do it under local jurisdiction with everyone 
involved such as in Bossier City, LA, where one of the oil companies 
had actually had a cleanup--they admitted they were the responsible 
party, so they made a proposal to the State of Louisiana, and it was 
agreed to by the State of Louisiana, by the city of Bossier City, by 
all of the local officials, by all the consumer groups, by everyone 
they could get together to clean it up in a year and a half, and yet 
the EPA in Washington said no. Now we have got it reversed. But at 
first they said no, and so it would take another 8 to 9 years to do.
  And so with this thrust that we are trying to get to bring the 
remedies and bring as much back to the local area, we find we are 
increasing EPA by $87 million, and that is in addition to the $170 
million that the Agency received above the fiscal year 1996 levels.
  So, first of all, we have increased them by $170 million. Now we are 
increasing that by $87 million. So all these programs where the people 
are upset Government is coming, the EPA, and saying you are guilty of 
messing up the Superfund site when you sold used crankcase oil 10 years 
ago to a licensed contractor; therefore, we are going to fine you, this 
kind of abuse of the responsible and law-abiding taxpayers is going to 
continue.

[[Page S11836]]

  The same is true with endangered species, wetlands. And I notice on 
this, if this is correct, that of the $6.5 billion, about half of that 
is coming from the BIF-SAIF fund. And if you recall, Mr. President, 
this was an amount of money that was set up to take care of future 
needs, a reserve, if you will, so that we do not have to go back 
through the same thing we went through a couple of years ago when this 
so-called bailout came about. So that the S&L's will be required to put 
in approximately a one-time expenditure of $3.1 billion. This will go 
into a fund so that in the event it is called upon the money will be 
there, and yet in fact through accounting they are going to be using 
this money for some other purposes, to fund these programs, the 
domestic programs the administration wants.

  Now, if called upon, that money would still have to come from 
someplace, so what we are doing through accounting, smoke and mirrors, 
is just delaying this payment to buy something today.
  And then I think the Chair would agree with me, the distinguished 
Senator from Arizona, who is occupying the chair at this time; he and I 
have stood on this floor and expressed our concern over what is 
happening to our defense budget many, many times in the last couple of 
years. We are in fact operating with a defense budget that is far below 
the minimum expectations of the American people. The vast majority of 
the American people when asked, should we be capable of defending the 
United States of America on two regional fronts, say yes.
  And so we had the Bottom-Up Review under this administration. We came 
up with some figures as to what it would cost so we would be able to 
meet the minimum expectation of the people of America. And yet we are 
cutting more and more and more. In fact, it was not too long ago before 
the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Chiefs of the four 
services testified to this committee that we are $20 billion short-- 
that is B, billion dollars short--of meeting those minimum expectations 
in our procurement account.
  So, in fact, Mr. President, we are not meeting those expectations. 
And yet we find out something between $350 million and $1 billion is 
going to come out of defense--more money coming out.
  Right now we have been trying to revive or keep alive a National 
Missile Defense System. We know for a fact there are some 25 to 30 
nations that are either working on a weapon of mass destruction or 
already have it. We know there are two missiles owned by two countries 
right now in existence that can reach the United States. We know there 
are mad people out there like Saddam Hussein who murders his own 
grandchildren who are working on technology, and perhaps, if they are 
able, buy the missile technology to deliver a weapon of mass 
destruction. I understand that they have, at least we suspect they do 
have in their possession a biological weapon of mass destruction.
  When we have a National Missile Defense System that is 90 percent 
paid for, all we have to do is kind of reach up into that high tier 
with maybe some of the 22 Aegis ships that we have and be able to knock 
down a missile coming at the United States while we have time to do it, 
instead of that they have cut funding for the National Missile Defense 
System to the point where it is now delayed. And each year that it is 
delayed is a year that a threat exists to the American people. And so 
it is a very serious thing, and we do not know for sure how much more 
money is coming out of defense. We do not know where it will come from. 
Is it going to come out of the National Missile Defense System? I hope 
not.
  Is it coming out of the personnel account? Two-thirds of our defense 
budget is spent on people, and it would stand to reason some of it 
would have to come out of that. And yet we have soldiers serving right 
now who are actually on food stamps. So we cannot knock any more out of 
this account. In conventional warfare, we are now No. 8 or 9, depending 
on how you measure it, in ground forces. I think Pakistan has passed us 
up. In my opinion, that makes us No. 9. So we have a very serious 
problem in conventional forces and force strength, and we cannot afford 
any more cuts.

  For that reason, Mr. President, I am going to listen attentively to 
the debate today to see if I missed something, but I am anticipating 
opposing it. I think I can justify it for no other reason than to say 
look at that, Mr. President. This is something that did not exist 5 
days ago. There it is. That is what we will be voting on in order to 
keep Government from shutting down if the President should elect to 
shut down Government in the event that he were to veto our 
appropriation bill.
  So I do not like what we are doing. I think we are caving into $6.5 
billion of the President's domestic programs that he has been promoting 
that this Congress, both Houses agree is money should not have to be 
spent. Sooner or later we are going to have to do something about all 
the funding we do around here, the smoke and mirrors. We have troops 
right now in Bosnia. We were promised by this administration that in 
December of this year those troops would be back, and if we did not 
believe it--I did not believe it, and yet when we had a motion, or a 
resolution of disapproval so that we could keep from sending our troops 
over to do humanitarian work in the country where we do not have any 
strategic interests facing our Nation's security and we send them on 
over anyway, we missed that by four votes. And I suggest, Mr. 
President, if we had been honest with the American people, if the 
President had been honest with the American people and admitted that we 
were not going to have the troops back in 12 months, then there would 
be enough pressure on the people of this body, at least four of them to 
vote the other way and we would not have had to send troops over there. 
Now they said it is going to cost $2 billion. Just last week Under 
Secretary of Defense John White admitted it will be closer to $3.5 and 
probably be double that figure. So there is another few billion dollars 
that are not there, not accounted for.
  So, Mr. President, I do not think that I could consciously, unless 
something happens today, unless I learn something that my studies have 
not found so far, vote to spend an additional $6.5 billion on 
additional programs for the President.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I have a message from the leader if it is all right. 
On behalf of the leader, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate remain 
in status quo with respect to debate only on H.R. 4278 until 2:30 
today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will 
not object, I ask that we modify that to give me, if nobody else is 
seeking recognition, 7 or 8 minutes to speak as though in morning 
business.
  Mr. INHOFE. Yes. Let me modify that to say not to start until 10 
minutes from now, and the Senate remain in status quo with respect to 
debate on H.R. 4278 until 2:30 today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? If not, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Vermont is recognized.

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