[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 4 (Tuesday, January 21, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S122-S126]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        SENATE REPUBLICAN AGENDA

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I think we have the opportunity here today 
to get off to a good start, a fast start. It is one about which we have 
communicated with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. We 
have increased the number of bills that we officially introduce at the 
start of the

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session from what has in the past been only 5 to 10, and therefore the 
Republicans will today introduce our first numbered 10 bills as well as 
Senate Joint Resolution 1, which will be the constitutional amendment 
for a balanced budget. And then the Democratic leader, on behalf of the 
Democrats, will introduce their first 10 bills, and then others can 
come in and offer bills as they see fit. The principal sponsors will 
come to the floor this afternoon in the hour we have designated to 
offer the bills and to make comments. Frankly, I see some overlap 
between our list of 10 bills and the Democrats' list of 10 bills. I 
think that is positive.
  So we want to go ahead and get started with this. We are going to 
move forward aggressively wherever we can to handle the President's 
nominations to his Cabinet. We hope to confirm within the next 2 days 
his first two nominees, to be Secretary of State and Secretary of 
Defense. We hope in the 2 weeks after that to move right along with 
other nominees. So we are trying hard to work with the administration 
and set up an atmosphere that will allow us this year to pass some good 
legislation for the best interests of the American people, but the 
President, we think, deserves his Cabinet in place so that he can have 
people there to work with us.
  One of the glories of the Senate is that it runs as much by tradition 
and custom as it does by written rules, and so one of those customs we 
are carrying out today is introducing these first few bills that will 
lay out our agenda for the rest of the year.
  So it is my honor to present to the Senate and to the Nation 11 major 
pieces of legislation, 10 bills and 1 resolution, that we will offer 
today. Each of them can stand on its own as an important initiative 
dealing with matters that touch the lives of most Americans. Together, 
however, they form a blueprint for the visionary changes our country 
needs. I might even call them the user's manual for a better, safer and 
more prosperous America. These bills represent the consensus of the 55 
Republican Members of the Senate.
  We did have a unique opportunity to sit together for 12 hours the 
week before last to talk through what we want to do in this session of 
Congress and what specific bills we wanted to take up. It does not mean 
that every Republican Senator subscribes to every part of this package. 
To the contrary, it is likely that every Republican Senator, this one 
included, will disagree with some provision or another in one bill or 
another. But as befits the party of the open door, we have had quite a 
lot of give-and-take in putting this package together, and, as always, 
our individual Members make their own decisions about what they will 
endorse. But each of these bills commands overwhelming support on the 
Republican side of the aisle, and I want to commend not just the lead 
sponsors of these bills but all the Senators and staff who worked 
together over the past few weeks to reach the agreement and get these 
bills actually drafted and ready for presentation. I am going to leave 
it to the primary sponsors and others who have worked on the various 
pieces of legislation to give the details. So I am going to summarize 
in this time that I have today what is in this platform.

  Pride of place goes to Senate Joint Resolution 1, as I already 
pointed out, a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution which will 
be introduced today by Senator Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee, and by Senator Craig of Idaho.
  This one, obviously, needs no explaining. There may be still, 
somewhere in the hinterlands of America, a citizen who does not 
understand why a balanced budget amendment is desperately needed, but I 
doubt it. The American people keenly realize the problems caused by 
excessive Federal spending, and everywhere I have gone, every poll that 
I have seen indicates the American people support this initiative 
overwhelmingly.
  I have tried to understand the arguments against a constitutional 
amendment for a balanced budget, but to no avail, quite frankly. We 
have not had a balanced budget in the Federal Government in 28 years, 
and it will probably be at least 4 more years before we get one, if 
then. I have watched good men and women, including Presidents, make 
commitments and actually have plans to get to a balanced budget, but it 
has not worked.
  This year, I think we have an opportunity to work with the President 
to come to a balanced budget agreement. We will see his budget plan 
February 6. I hope he will show leadership and courage and will address 
some of the issues that need to be addressed that, frankly, he was not 
willing to deal with last year. But it was an election year, and, 
hopefully, he will approach it differently this time.
  But even if we come together on a plan to get a balanced budget by 
2002, I still have my doubts about whether it will actually happen if 
we do not have the leverage guarantee of a constitutional amendment. 
Remember, when we pass this constitutional amendment, it then does not 
go to the President for his signature, it goes to the State 
legislatures, to the people for their ratification.
  Recent news accounts seem to indicate the administration will fight 
this amendment and will do it aggressively. I understand they may have 
some questions or objections. I expect them to make those, and we will 
listen to them. But this fight is not about politics, it is about the 
future of our children and grandchildren. It is about the burden of 
debt we are leaving them with, which is a cruel legacy. It is about 
right and wrong, and this time around, I am betting that right is going 
to prevail.
  Because of the importance we attach to education, one of the first 
bills we will introduce today will deal with this area. Just like the 
constitutional amendment for a balanced budget is important to us 
because of what we think it means to our children's future in holding 
down inflation and holding down interest rates and stopping the 
continuous increase in the interest we pay on the national debt that 
will lead to making it more difficult for our children and 
grandchildren to have home mortgages and student loans and car loans, 
we think that education, also, is a very high priority and also an 
investment in the future of our country.
  If we have a strong educational system, if we deal with the 
illiteracy problems, if we deal with the needs of children with special 
needs, it will contribute to a better America, better educated 
children, will lead to more production, better jobs, more jobs, more 
trade, more development in technology.
  So Republicans are placing a high priority this year on education 
with S. 1. The first numbered bill will be the Safe and Affordable 
Schools Act. It will be introduced by Senator Paul Coverdell of 
Georgia, and it is a comprehensive agenda for dramatic change. It will 
help not only parents--and that is where it begins, in the home with 
the parents--but also the States and the local communities to give 
their children a better education.

  It focuses, especially, on children attending unsafe schools, to give 
their families consumer rights and choice in education. In this regard, 
it builds on the good work that was done in the 104th Congress by the 
distinguished Senator from Indiana, Senator Coats, who is now presiding 
in the Chamber. He has done a lot of great work in behalf of 
youngsters, and that work is confirmed in this piece of legislation.
  In higher education, S. 1 establishes what we call the Bob Dole 
Investment Accounts to help parents set aside the resources on their 
own needed for their children's tuition.
  Toward the same goal, it makes the interest on student loans tax 
deductible, and it gives favorable tax treatment to State prepaid 
tuition plans, to education aid provided by an employer to encourage 
more employers to provide that assistance to their workers which would 
benefit their children, and to student work-study awards.
  S. 1 will fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Act, IDEA, as 
it is quite often referred to, by authorizing an additional $10 billion 
over the next 7 years. This is not something easily done, but it is 
something we promised children with these special needs and we promised 
the States we would do, and we have not done it.
  In this legislation, we are making that commitment to fulfill that 
obligation. That will come as good news not only to the families with 
special-needs children, it will also mean a lot to the Governors and 
State legislatures which have been shouldering this Federal mandate 
without the funds to back it up.

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  I want to mention especially the good work that has been done by 
Senator Gregg of New Hampshire and Senator Frist of Tennessee on this 
difficult but very important matter.
  Finally, S. 1 sets up a block grant for States to promote adult 
education and combat illiteracy. This has been long a priority with 
Senator Jeffords, our chairman of the Labor and Human Resources 
Committee, and I am especially pleased it will be included in this 
package.
  As I said earlier today at a press conference, we have been talking 
about trying to deal with adult education and illiteracy problems for 
10 years, but we have done very little about it. This is the place 
where the Federal Government can be helpful in helping to fill a void 
that maybe the States cannot do on their own.
  The next bill we will introduce today is S. 2, which will be 
introduced by Senator Roth. It is the Family Tax Relief Act. It 
contains key provisions from the tax relief legislation of the last 
Congress that was vetoed by President Clinton. Senator Roth has long 
worked in this area. He is the chairman of the Finance Committee. He 
knows his subject backward and forward, and he knows we need a fairer 
Tax Code. He also knows we need to give some incentives for growth in 
the economy, to create more jobs, to have a stronger economy.
  I still maintain that when the economy is only growing at 2 percent 
or 2.3 percent, that is a very weak growth, and we should have it more 
in the range of 3 to 3.5. We think this bill will help do that.

  It will offset the President's 1993 tax increases by reducing taxes 
over the next 5 years. Fully 80 percent of that relief, some $130 
billion of it, or more, will go to working families, and those are the 
ones to whom we think the help really should go, and most of it will go 
to middle-income people.
  In keeping with our Republican commitment to strengthen families, the 
bill does create a $500-per-child tax credit for children under the age 
of 18. The President would like to lower that age, I understand, maybe 
even to 13, but if you are really trying to help families with children 
where they have the greatest needs, I really think it is in that 
bracket--14, 15. So that is how we would start it off. It would apply 
to some 44 million youngsters.
  The bill would raise the contribution limit for the spousal IRA from 
its current $250 to $2,000, and it would allow for tax and penalty-free 
withdrawal from an IRA for the cost of higher education, for small 
business startups and for long-term unemployment.
  What better way to encourage people to look after themselves and 
address the needs of education and startups of businesses and 
unemployment than to encourage them to have an IRA with the tax 
benefits that go with it?
  S. 2 would also lower the antifamily inheritance tax--I call it the 
death tax--which is now at confiscatory levels. When you have an estate 
tax that is 44 percent, or even as high as 55 percent, obviously, that 
is unfair.
  Once again, it is hurting small businesses and farmers, as well as 
individuals, who work all their lives to build up a little nest egg for 
their children, and now many of them are selling those businesses, 
because they know if they don't, when they do pass on, they will have 
over half of what they worked for all their lives taken from their 
children.
  Finally, this bill aims to boost savings, investments and job 
creation by allowing a 50-percent deduction for investment earnings on 
assets held more than 3 years and would let people who sell their homes 
at a loss deduct that as a capital loss.
  The next bill is S. 3, the Omnibus Crime Control Act, again being 
introduced by Senator Hatch. He has done work on this for a long time, 
including this last year. It is a comprehensive package of tough-minded 
steps to fight illegal drugs, terrorism and child pornography.
  It continues the Republican effort to reform our prison system, to 
end abuses therein, both by felons and by Federal judges. In so many 
instances now, felons in prisons are tying up the courts with petty, 
very trivial allegations that take up time and cost a lot of money. We 
want to try to reform that area and to save some of that lost time and 
effort.
  We aim to restore public confidence in our courts by a series of 
reforms that will, at last, tilt the scales of justice in favor of 
innocent victims of crime. This bill reauthorizes major components of 
the Violence Against Women Act.
  The next bill is S. 4, the Family Friendly Workplace Act, to be 
introduced by Senator Ashcroft would extend to all workers the same 
options for flextime and comp time that employees of the Federal 
Government have enjoyed for decades. These opportunities would be 100 
percent voluntary and a matter of choice for the men and women of 
today's work force.
  Most of those workers have to juggle the demands of their jobs and 
the pressures of family life. Virtually all of them, especially those 
with small children, want more time with their families. S. 4 will help 
them arrange it while keeping a full paycheck.
  A landmark of bipartisanship in the last Congress was built to reform 
the Nation's antiquated laws concerning liability. Unfortunately, 
despite the best efforts of Senator Gorton and Senator Rockefeller and 
others in forging a compromise, that product liability reform 
legislation again fell victim to the President's veto pen.
  We owe it to the American people to try again. We need legal reform. 
The American people want it. They expect it. They want broad legal 
reform. But at a very minimum, we should do it in this product 
liability area where so much good work has already been done.
  This bill, S. 5, will also be introduced by Senator Ashcroft, who is 
now chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction. It gives us another 
chance to overhaul an unfair and inefficient liability system for the 
benefit of American consumers and workers.
  We will, in the bill S. 6, again reintroduce the Partial-Birth 
Abortion Ban Act. This, too, was vetoed by President Clinton last year. 
But the times have changed, and as the old song says, ``If times are 
changing, then maybe the results can be different.'' After the election 
of 1996, the Senate has changed, too.
  We are hopeful this time around we will do away with this practice 
that I think has shamed the conscience of the Nation. I commend Senator 
Santorum, the bill's lead sponsor, and Senator Smith for their 
dedication to this cause.
  We will schedule this bill on the floor of the Senate for an early 
vote. I am sure the House will follow suit. We will send it again to 
the President. Hopefully, this time he will sign it.
  S. 7 is the National Missile Defense Act. I am pleased to be 
introducing this legislation. Building on the work that has been done 
by Senator Dole, Senator Kyl, Senator Thurmond, and others in the last 
Congress, it represents our commitment to the American people to secure 
for them, for their homes, their neighborhoods and, in fact, the 
country, the maximum possible protection against missile attack.
  In the aftermath of the high-tech gulf war of 1990, many, perhaps 
most, Americans think that the Nation is already sheltered by 
sophisticated weapons systems like the one that protected Israel 
against the Iraqi scud missiles.
  Don't we wish. But sadly, and potentially tragically, the truth is 
that in an era of international terrorism, the United States remains 
vulnerable to missile blackmail. So S. 7 will put our Nation back on 
the path toward security and toward lasting peace through unquestioned 
strength.

  We have concerns about the environment. One of the bills that we will 
bring up again this year that we worked on--and we got it through the 
Senate after a filibuster, but it wound up getting 63 votes--was a bill 
that would bring to a conclusion the decision about where to have a 
nuclear waste site in America. We will move on that quickly.
  But S. 8 is the Superfund Cleanup Acceleration Act. It offers a more 
efficient, commonsense approach to solving some of the Nation's worst 
environmental problems involving toxic waste. We have sites all over 
the country, hundreds of them. And yet almost--well, I will not say 
almost none, but very few have actually been cleaned up, I think maybe 
as few as 37. Yet, we have spent millions, probably a billion or more 
dollars. We are not getting our money's worth. This legislation is 
directed at doing that.
  Senator Smith and Senator Chafee will introduce this legislation. It 
would

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end the costly litigation that has paralyzed the cleanup effort. That 
is what has happened. There has been nothing but a lot of litigation 
and no real cleaning up where we needed it. And that has diverted 
basically all the resources of the program.
  S. 8 returns to the original vision of the Superfund program--the 
protection of human health and the environment through realistic 
cleanup standards; economic redevelopment of affected sites; and fair 
treatment of individuals, small business and municipalities.
  S. 9 is the Paycheck Protection Act, introduced by the assistant 
majority leader, Senator Nickles, who is here. He will introduce this 
legislation later on. It forbids corporations and labor unions to take 
money from their stockholders and employees or members for political 
purposes without that person's expressed consent. You will note it is 
applicable to the corporations, to management and to the workers, so 
that there is protection against this type of intimidation and, in 
fact, the practice of taking money from dues-paying members and using 
it for purely political purposes.
  I think it is a matter of simple justice. No one should be compelled 
by any organization to pay for someone else's campaigning or lobbying. 
Right here this is where true campaign reform starts.
  Finally, S. 10, the Violent Juvenile Offenders Act is a companion 
bill to Senator Hatch's S. 3 and is the result of not only his efforts 
but those of Senator Domenici, Senator Ashcroft, and Senator Thompson. 
It rests on the principle that violent juveniles must be held 
personally accountable for their actions.
  There has been a rising increase in juvenile crime in America. We all 
know the stories of very young people with automatic weapons going down 
the street, shooting innocent people sitting on their porches. We know 
that many of them wind up not being tried as criminals because of their 
age. It is a delicate balance. But we cannot ignore the problem, and we 
must be, I think, stronger in how we deal with these juvenile 
offenders.
  This bill would assure that violence and repeat juvenile offenders 
are treated as adults. It targets violent youth gangs, toughens 
penalties for violent and drug crimes, and fosters the kind of crime 
prevention and juvenile rehabilitation that have proven records of 
success.
  I heard on the radio this very morning, when I was getting ready to 
come to the Senate, that local officials of the District of Columbia 
are calling out for help in dealing with gangs in this city, because 
just last week a young man, young boy, on his way home from school, 
maybe 16 years old, was accosted by a couple gang members. They wound 
up dragging him into the woods where they shot him, killed him. He was 
not involved in the dispute, but he wound up losing his life. This 
person on the radio was saying, do whatever is necessary. Bring in the 
National Guard if you have to, but we have to break up these gangs in 
our Nation's Capital.
  Mr. President, these 10 bills, along with the balanced budget 
constitutional amendment, form a very ambitious agenda. It will take 
time to accomplish. I do not think we should put a time limit on them 
and say we must do them by the end of February or the end of March in 
each instance. We should do them as soon as we can, but we should make 
sure everybody has a chance to review them, make their case for or 
against them. Let us have full debate, but let us get it done and let 
us do it right. There will be adjustments and accommodations along the 
way, but we are trying to get started in a very positive way and offer 
bills we think are important for the quality of life and the future of 
our country.
  The goal of the Senate Republicans is very clear, I think, and 
unchanging in this effort. It is to free the energy and genius of the 
American people so that they can achieve a better quality of life. The 
legislation we are introducing today we believe will allow them to do 
that--for themselves, their families and their communities--in a 
society that will be more secure, more prosperous and more caring.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor to the Senator from Oklahoma.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, how much time remains of the majority 
leader's time?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Seven minutes 35 seconds is remaining under 
the majority leader's time.
  Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I would be glad to yield the remainder of 
that time to Senator Nickles if he would like to go ahead and begin his 
comments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to congratulate and compliment the 
majority leader of the Senate for his statement today, but also for his 
work with all of the 55 Republican Senators to put together this list.
  This is a list which we have spent some time on. When I say ``we,'' I 
am talking about all 55 Republican Senators, who had some input on this 
list. That is a little unusual. We have not done that before. We came 
up with 10 bills. In the past, our tradition has been to introduce 
five. We came up with 10.
  I might mention later today, or in the next few days or weeks, we had 
several other bills people wanted to have in this list. But this list 
represents a consensus of an overwhelming number of Republicans, that 
these are positive things we can do, should do, and that we should pass 
this year.
  Mr. President, let me just comment and take a second to compliment 
President Clinton on his inaugural address yesterday. President Clinton 
made two or three comments that I would like to refer to.
  He said Government is not the problem, it is not the solution; the 
American people are the solution. I think you will find that we 
Republicans really do believe the American people are the solution. We 
have a lot of ideas for saving Medicare, saving Social Security, a lot 
of different things where we really want to involve the American 
people. I compliment the President on that. He said that Government 
should live within its means.

  The first item that Majority Leader Lott mentioned was a 
constitutional amendment to balance the budget. We have overwhelming 
support among our colleagues for passage of a constitutional amendment 
to balance the budget. We are equally serious about passing legislation 
to implement a balanced budget. We want that to happen. Unfortunately, 
President Clinton vetoed that in the last Congress. We want to work 
with the President. He said in the inaugural address that we should 
live within our means. We are going to try and make that happen. We 
look forward to working with this administration to make that happen.
  The President also said we should put petty politics and extreme 
partisanship aside. He is right. This Congress, this political year, 
maybe in the last year or two, has become too partisan and maybe too 
extreme in working with the administration. It has been too partisan. 
It has been too extreme. We need to put that aside.
  So I welcome the President's comments. I look forward to working with 
President Clinton in this administration to implement many of the 
things he talked about. A lot of things we have in this agenda are 
targeted toward doing exactly that.
  The constitutional amendment to balance the budget has overwhelming 
support among the membership, and rightfully so. We should live within 
our means. Almost all the States have provisions in their constitution 
saying they will not spend more than they take in. We should follow 
that guidance.
  President Clinton, during the campaign, said he was in favor of tax 
relief. S. 2, the second bill we have in our list, does provide for 
family tax relief. Even during the campaign, President Clinton talked 
of a $500-per-child tax credit. That is the foundation of our tax bill. 
Senator Lott mentioned 80 percent of the tax bill we have introduced as 
the leadership package. We passed that last year, but again President 
Clinton vetoed it. He said in the campaign that he was in favor of it. 
We want to pass it this year and we want it to become law. We are not 
interested in passing legislation for legislation's sake or for 
political points' sake. President Clinton is not running again. We want

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these bills to become law because they will have a positive, real 
impact on American lives.
  We define the child tax credit as children up to age 18. President 
Clinton's proposal limited it to kids under 12. We think it should 
include at least kids up to 18. I told some people that my kids range 
up to age 26. We might have an amendment to make it age 26. The bill we 
introduced takes it to age 18.
  We provide estate tax relief. There is a small business advisory 
council that advises the President and those of us in Congress and they 
always have an estate tax relief on their list. Why? Because if you 
have a taxable estate right now above $600,000, Uncle Sam starts taking 
big bites. If your estate goes up to a million above that, Uncle Sam 
wants 35 percent of it. If you have an estate of 3 million, say your 
business is as a farmer or a rancher or a businessman, if it is 3 
million above the $600,000 deduction, Uncle Sam says, ``We want 55 
percent of anything above that amount.'' Instead of protecting 
property, it is confiscating property. We want to reduce that, 
especially for small business and especially for family-owned 
operations. That is in our package, as well.
  We have capital gains relief because we think we tax transactions too 
much. We actually tax transactions more than almost any of our other 
industrial competitors. We need to reduce the taxes on transactions. If 
we do so, we will have more transactions and the Government will make 
more money, not less money. That is in our package. We can do better 
with the economy.
  I think we put together a good package, one that is family friendly. 
We have a provision that Senator Lott alluded to called the Family 
Friendly Workplace Act--Senator Ashcroft has worked hard on it--giving 
families the option that if they work a few extra hours one week, we 
think they can take off for their kids the next week. Why have good 
Government come in saying, ``We mandate you have time off for PTA.'' 
Why not let the families and employees make that decision? So we do 
that. We provide much greater flexibility for families, employers and 
employees in this bill. It is all on a voluntary basis, where they can 
work a few more hours one week and take time off for whatever they 
desire the following week. You do not need Government's blessing to do 
it. They allow for compensatory time. Instead of taking time-and-a-half 
if they have to work an hour or two above 40 hours, if they want they 
can bank some time and take time-and-a-half off. If they worked 44 
hours, under present law they would be entitled to 6 hours of overtime 
pay. If they want to keep it that way, they have the right to do so. If 
they would like to have 6 hours off and maybe have a day off or maybe 
work some other kind of combination or schedule that meets their 
family's needs and desires, maybe for a vacation day, maybe for more 
time off, maybe for time to visit their kids' athletic events, they 
have the right to do so without having the Federal Government enumerate 
that this is what you have to offer by law, and not be paid for that 
time. We give them, through flextime and through the comp time, the 
ability to have the flexibility in their schedules to meet their 
family's needs, all of which are different. All of our families are 
different. All of our families have more time demands that are at 
variance. This gives them that flexibility, and probably would be the 
most family friendly thing we can do.

  We provide for a balanced budget package which will say the 
Government will live within its means. We are not going to spend more 
than we take in. Interest rates will come down. Homes will be more 
affordable. When we talk of family tax credits, if you have three kids 
under the age of 18, that is $1,500 more you get to spend as you 
desire. Maybe it is for education, maybe it is for food on the table, 
maybe it is for a home. You make that decision, because we decided it 
is your money, not Government's money.
  Then the flextime proposal, where we are basically saying that 
families can make the decisions. You have the flexibility in your 
schedules to work out what is mutually beneficial with you and your 
employer.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Mr. NICKLES. I see the minority leader is not here, and I ask 
unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. NICKLES. We also have an additional provision called the Paycheck 
Protection Act. It is fundamentally prodemocracy. It says no person 
should be compelled to contribute to a political organization without 
their consent. That person may be a stockholder. No one should be 
compelled, as a condition of employment, to contribute to a political 
group or organization, whether that be a PAC, whether it be a union 
organization or what. No one should be compelled. That is what this 
bill says. No one will be compelled to contribute to a political 
organization or entity or candidate against their will. They would have 
to sign a written authorization form before they would have 
contributions taken out.
  Mr. President, I compliment Senator Lott and all my colleagues for 
their work in putting this list together. I look forward to working 
with the minority leader and others on the other side of the aisle. I 
know they have their agenda list. I look forward to hearing what that 
is, and I look forward to working with them to see if we can have 
several items beneficial not for Congress but for the American people.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time is reserved 
for the minority leader for up to 30 minutes.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Let me begin by thanking the Senator from Oklahoma for 
the tone of his comments. I did not have the opportunity to hear them 
all, but in keeping with the expressions of the majority leader and 
others who have indicated a desire to find ways with which to create 
greater harmony and greater opportunity for the country through 
increased bipartisanship, I appreciate very much his comments today.

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