[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 55 (Thursday, May 1, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3871-S3872]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  THE SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS BILL

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I want to speak a little bit about the 
supplemental appropriations bill, which I gather will be on the floor 
here probably next week, and this issue which has come to light about 
the effort to put a so-called continuing resolution onto the 
supplemental appropriations bill. I want to just try to make sense out 
of that as best I understand it and describe my recollection of things.
  There has been a lot of talk in the last few days about the shutdown 
of Government that occurred in the last Congress. I was here at that 
time and I remember the occasion. What was happening, as I recall it, 
was that the President indicated very clearly in public statements and 
private statements, in a variety of ways, that he would not sign 
appropriations bills that contained major cuts in education and some of 
the funds for enforcement of the environmental laws in particular. 
Those were areas of great concern to the President. He indicated that 
he wanted Congress to agree with him to maintain funding in those 
areas--not necessarily increase it, but at least maintain funding in 
some of those areas before he would sign those bills.
  In spite of those statements to that effect, the majority here in 
Congress sent those bills to the President and he vetoed them. 
Accordingly, we had a shutdown of the Government. There was no funding 
available through that appropriations process for those areas of the 
Government that were covered by those appropriations bills. So, 
essentially, what was going on was that the majority in Congress was 
trying to force-feed the President to accept some proposals and some 
cuts in funding that he was not willing to accept, and that 
precipitated a crisis. Some felt strongly. Some in the majority party--
the Republican Party--at the time felt strongly enough about it that 
they

[[Page S3872]]

were willing to just keep the Government shut down and not send another 
continuing resolution, not agree to fund Government at the steady State 
level, but to allow the Government to stay shut down as a way of 
gaining leverage in those negotiations. I believe it was on the 18th 
day of, I think, the second shutdown when Senator Dole, the leader in 
the Senate, finally came to the Senate floor and spoke and said that he 
believed enough was enough and he himself was going to urge that a 
continuing resolution be passed in order to go ahead and at least keep 
the Government funded on a steady-state basis while negotiations 
between the President and the Congress continued. I came to the floor 
right after Senator Dole spoke, or I was here at the time he spoke, and 
I commended him for his decision to break with the House leadership and 
to go ahead, after 18 days of shutdown, and finally go ahead and fund 
these departments of the Government. Many of his colleagues here in the 
Senate followed his lead after that and agreed to go ahead and pass a 
continuing resolution to fund those areas of the Government.
  That was the shutdown, as I recall it. That is a general description 
of the shutdown that occurred. What we have now is a bill to provide 
very important funding for a variety of subjects. It is all wrapped 
into this supplemental appropriation. It is a supplemental, of course, 
because it is not one of the regular appropriations bills which we do 
each year. It is a supplemental that comes at an unusual time, and the 
time that we are dealing with this has been driven, perhaps as much as 
anything, by the natural disasters that have occurred in particular 
parts of the country, in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and in 
some other areas as well. There are some other provisions in this 
supplemental which are also very important. My home State of New Mexico 
will be able to receive, under this supplemental, $14 million of 
desperately needed highway funds, which should have been provided to us 
under last year's bill and which I made a major point about in the last 
Congress. We had been fighting to get this money for over 6 months. We 
lost it in the last set of appropriations bills.

  This year, we have been able to persuade the appropriators to include 
it in this supplemental, and I think that is a very important step 
forward. So there are provisions in this bill that are important to my 
State highway funds, title I funds, as well as, of course, the 
provisions that are intended to assist with the disaster relief, which 
is so needed by many families that have been devastated by the weather 
and by the floods that they have experienced in recent weeks in these 
areas of the Midwest. So that is where we are.
  The problem has come up that there is an amendment being included in 
the supplemental appropriation that is another continuing resolution, 
and it says that essentially if we adopt that amendment, it would say 
that if the Republican majority in Congress does not send the President 
an appropriations bill he will sign, an acceptable appropriations bill, 
in any area, there will be allowed to be continued funding in those 
areas at a rate of 2 percent less than this current fiscal year. The 
difficulty with it, of course, is that it again changes the dynamic 
very greatly against a real compromise occurring between the Executive 
and the Congress on these very important funding issues.
  It says to the President, ``Look. Before, you had the ability to veto 
an appropriations bill which you disagreed with, and then everyone had 
to go back to the table.'' Now, if we add this continuing resolution 
provision to the supplemental, that requirement won't be there anymore 
because there will be no pressure on the Republican Congress to go back 
to the table and negotiate further with the President. The President 
will, if we send an appropriations bill that he determines is 
unacceptable for whatever reason and he vetoes it, as called for in the 
Constitution, then there is no pressure on the Republican leaders in 
Congress to renegotiate. They will have in place at that point a 
continuing resolution, which will have been part of the supplemental, 
which says we are going to fund everything, and, by the way, the 
funding level is going to be 2 percent less than it was in the previous 
year, or, in the case of areas such as education, it is going to be 7 
percent less than he requested for this year. That will be the steady 
rate, and that will be the continuing situation from now on. So there 
is no pressure for the compromise that the Constitution contemplates 
between the executive branch and the legislative branch to occur. I 
think it is a very ill-advised provision.
  I think the President is taking the right position by saying that he 
will not agree to this kind of continuing resolution being adopted as 
part of this supplemental. But basically, if the Congress says to the 
President,

       If you want this relief for these flood victims, if you 
     want this money for highways in New Mexico, if you want this 
     money for Head Start, or for title I, or any of the other 
     provisions in this supplemental, then you have to agree to a 
     spending level that is 2 percent below this current year's 
     level in all of these other areas, unless we are able to send 
     you something else that is preferable at a later date.

  This is not an acceptable proposal. I think the President is correct 
in refusing to agree to it.
  We on the Democratic side are correct in refusing to agree to it. 
What we should do, and what I believe the American people would like us 
to do, is to go ahead and approve the supplemental appropriations bill, 
go ahead and appropriate the funds for flood relief, go ahead and 
appropriate the funds for the additional highway funding, go ahead and 
appropriate the additional funds for title I. Then we can have a 
debate, as we go through the rest of this year, on the budget 
resolution and on the appropriations bills. We can have a debate about 
what the right level of spending ought to be in each of these other 
areas.
  We should not at the very beginning, before we have a budget 
resolution, before we have any appropriations bills, have some kind of 
legal provision that says, unless the President agrees to what the 
Republican majority in Congress sends him, that he has to settle for a 
2-percent cut in all areas: education, environmental protection, and 
all of the other areas.
  That is what this continuing resolution provision would do. It needs 
to be dropped from the supplemental appropriations bill if we are going 
to go ahead and pass this supplemental appropriations and have it 
signed into law. It is very important that it be signed into law, and 
sooner rather than later.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The distinguished Senator from Georgia is recognized.

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