[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 119 (Thursday, September 10, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10181-S10183]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
                                  1999

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the pending business.

[[Page S10182]]

  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 2237) making appropriations for the Department 
     of Interior and related agencies for the fiscal year ending 
     September 30, 1999, and for other purposes.

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.


                           Amendment N. 3554

  Mr. McCAIN. I say to my friend from Wisconsin, I am not going to make 
any motion at this time. I just want to assure my friend from Wisconsin 
and others that we will not give up on this fight. We will continue 
this fight. But I also think it is important to point out that we got 
52 votes, which was the same as the last time. I intend to work with 
friends on both sides of the aisle to try to get additional votes so we 
can make progress on this issue. Since that is not the case, it is my 
understanding that the majority leader will move off of this bill 
probably at this time.
  I want to make sure that again we are not giving up this fight. We 
will continue. And sooner or later I am convinced that we will have the 
opportunity to prevail.
  Mr. President, I yield----
  Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I have not yielded the floor.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I express my appreciation to the Senator 
from Arizona for his willingness to continue this important fight. I 
understand that we may well be moving now to another piece of 
legislation, but I want to indicate that we will continue to move this 
amendment, to try to adopt this amendment. As I understand it, it will 
be the pending business on the Interior bill when it comes back, and we 
will certainly proceed accordingly.
  Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. I have not been involved in the debate over the last 2 
days, but I want to say that we have had this debate and we have had 
this vote again because Senator McCain felt it was important that it be 
considered further, especially in view of the House vote. But we have 
had that debate and we have had the vote, and the vote is the same. 
Nothing has changed. There is no consensus.
  I still maintain that before we start changing the laws we ought to 
try to find out who broke the laws, how did they break the laws, why 
did they break the laws. We now have not one, not two, but three 90-day 
preliminary investigations of whether or not to go forward with the 
independent counsel on whether the President, the Vice President, and a 
Deputy Chief of Staff were involved in 1996 campaign violations.
  It seems to me it would be wise to see what is going to happen there, 
find out what happened. I still don't understand why, if people broke 
the law, there are those who say, ``Oh, geez, what we need to do is 
change the law.''
  Do we have some areas where we are going to have to take a look at 
the campaign laws as far as contributions, and where money can be 
raised, or how, what kind of money on Federal property? Yes, we are 
going to have to take a look at that, and I am going to work with 
Senators on both sides of the aisle who really want to have something 
done that is balanced and fair.
  This is not the solution. This is not the time. Here we are 60 days 
before an election, 30 days before the end of the session. We are 
trying to do the Interior appropriations bill. We spent 2 days on 
campaign finance reform, and now we have threats that it is going to 
continue. I have been patient. I have tried to be cooperative. I 
appreciate the cooperation I have received. I do think now the time is 
right for us to move on to Interior, bankruptcy reform, and child 
custody, very important issues that need to be addressed.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that before I make 
a motion to withdraw my amendment, the Senator from Wisconsin be 
recognized for 2 minutes and then I regain the floor.
  Mr. LOTT. For debate only.
  Mr. McCAIN. Debate only.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. FEINGOLD, Mr. President, I do understand that Senator McCain 
intends to withdraw the amendment momentarily which he has been 
courteous enough to indicate to me. I just want to reiterate that we 
are going to continue with this effort, that the amendment will be 
offered again on this bill and, if necessary, other bills until the job 
is done.
  The fact is we have not really had a real process in the last 2 days 
that we would expect on a bill like this. We have had talk 
intermittently, but each time this has come up, in September, October 
of 1997, in February and March of this year, and on this occasion, we 
have never been allowed the right to have the normal amending process 
that allows a consensus to be achieved. That is what was allowed in the 
House, and that is what lead to the passing of the Shays-Meehan bill. 
Until that kind of process, rather than the mere permission to speak, 
is granted, this is not the kind of process that we are entitled on an 
issue of this importance, so this will continue. It must continue. And 
our effort has bipartisan support of the majority of both Houses of the 
Congress.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Let me just make a couple of comments before I withdraw 
my amendment. As I said, we will not give up the fight. We need to have 
progress. We need to pick up a couple of additional votes, and it is 
important we make every effort to do so.
  There would at least have been a vote at noon today on this issue, 
because a tabling motion was in order by the Senator from Wisconsin. 
The Senator from Wisconsin, for very legitimate reasons, chose not to 
have that vote. So we could have had everybody on record at least on 
the tabling motion.
  I insisted the night before last that we have 2 full days of debate. 
I had rather harsh words exchanged between myself and the majority 
leader--which is very uncustomary for me to have, except on 
approximately a daily basis. But the fact is the majority leader agreed 
that we would have 2 full days of debate. Then I came in today to find 
that, for the convenience of a Senator or Senators on that side of the 
aisle, we had to have a vote at 1:45. There were many on both sides who 
wanted to debate this particular amendment, but we had to curtail it. 
Last night there were Members on this side as well as the other side 
who wanted to speak on this issue. Instead, the Senator from 
Massachusetts had to speak for 2 or 3 hours on minimum wage.
  So, if we are really serious about this, I want to tell my colleagues 
on both sides of the aisle, then we ought to go ahead and debate it, 
and debate it fully. We reached the point before the vote at 1:45 that, 
even on this side, the seven Republicans who wanted to debate did not 
have sufficient time to do so, because rather than go late into this 
evening as I had envisioned, for the convenience of Senators on that 
side of the aisle we had to curtail the debate and have a vote at 1:45 
today.
  So I think it is important to point out that I do not believe the 
issue was debated as fully as it should have been, even though it has 
been done several times in the past. I urge, again, my colleagues to 
recognize there is one way we are going to get true, meaningful 
campaign finance reform, and that is on a bipartisan basis. My opening 
statement yesterday articulated three principles as to what brings 
about meaningful campaign finance reform, and one is bipartisanship. So 
I am reluctant--I am reluctant, without progress on this issue, to 
engage in a debate which could divert the Senate from other important 
issues of the day.
  I want to point out one other reality, much to the sadness of almost 
everyone I know. Tomorrow's newspapers will probably not highlight the 
fact that we failed again on campaign finance reform. They will 
highlight the issue which has consumed all the oxygen throughout this 
town, and that is the firestorm concerning the scandal that is 
affecting the Presidency of the United States and the institution of 
the Presidency today.
  So I hope we can move forward. I will never give up on this fight as 
long as I am a Member of this body. And I hope that we can make 
progress together. But let's do it in a meaningful way and

[[Page S10183]]

in a bipartisan way so we can make genuine progress.
  Finally, I thank all the people who worked so hard to get this back 
up before this body. I thank Senator Feingold. I thank all our friends 
on the outside. I thank everybody who has worked so hard in this 
effort. And we will prevail over time. But we will prevail, I believe, 
in a bipartisan fashion and not in one that exacerbates emotions on the 
floor of the Senate rather than working towards a common goal of 
bettering the electoral progress.
  Mr. President, I withdraw my amendment.

                          ____________________