[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 120 (Friday, September 11, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10233-S10234]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 LET US RESERVE JUDGMENT ON IMPEACHMENT

  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I had not intended to discuss the subject 
of the hour this morning, and I will only do so briefly and, hopefully, 
not in a controversial way. I heard the Senator from Pennsylvania 
pleading with people to reserve judgment. And I simply want to echo 
what he said. These are very traumatic times for this country. And I 
would say, despite the trauma the country is experiencing over the 
apparently possible impeachment of the President, we still have a 
tremendous amount of work to do in the U.S. Congress, and the American 
people have a right to expect us to do that business before we leave 
here.
  While it is more gratifying, I suppose, from a political standpoint, 
as

[[Page S10234]]

well as from a personal standpoint, to immerse ourselves in the Starr 
report, we still have so much very serious, important work to do here, 
and I would be willing to suggest that we should come back after the 
election if necessary to deal with some of these things.
  Having said that, let me say that the President will respond in time 
to the Starr report, I am sure. He is entitled to be heard. The 
American people are entitled to an objective, nonpartisan deliberation 
based on the facts.
  As a former trial lawyer, I have gone before jurors who I had a 
sneaking suspicion had made up their mind before I got to make my 
opening statement. And I can tell you, it is a very queasy feeling. I 
have tried cases when, in my own mind, I was satisfied that the jury 
had made up its mind before the case was tried, before they heard the 
evidence, despite what we lawyers call voir dire examination, where you 
ask the jurors: ``Do you have any preconceived notions about this 
case?'' All of them said no. And I did not come to that conclusion that 
they made up their mind before they heard the evidence just because I 
lost, it was based on other things.
  The American people have an inimitable, innate sense of fairness. The 
vast majority of the people in this country want, expect, and have a 
right to know that this whole situation is going to be considered in a 
very dignified way in accordance with the process.
  This should not be--and I do not think it will be a political witch 
hunt. And I want to compliment the people in the House whom I have 
watched in the Rules Committee and in the Judiciary Committee, and the 
Speaker of the House, in their admonitions to their own Members about 
this being a very solemn, somber time in the history of this country 
and we must treat it with the seriousness it deserves. This is not one 
of those ``let's give them a fair trial and string them up'' kind of 
hearings.
  So as an English philosopher once said, ``There's nothing more 
utterly impossible than undoing that which has already been done.'' 
Whatever the President's sins, they have been done. So far as anybody 
much knows at the present, the American people know what those sins 
were, his indiscretions, what he described as ``indefensible.''
  So the question before the House will be whether or not any or all of 
those things combined reach the threshold that the Founders intended in 
the Constitution; and that is, we know it is not treason and it is not 
bribery, and the next question will be: Does it reach the threshold of 
high crimes and misdemeanors?
  The President has admitted, as far as I know, virtually everything. 
So he has bared his soul to the American people and pleaded for their 
forgiveness, as he did this morning before a prayer breakfast.
  So, Mr. President, while I did not come over here to speak on that, I 
just wanted to add my comments to those of the Senator from 
Pennsylvania, Mr. Specter.
  And I would also like to say that when I talk about the work we have 
yet to do here, I am talking about issues of health care, I am talking 
about issues of the environment, and I am talking about issues of 
education. I am not trying to make a comparison, but what I am saying 
is that morality is often like beauty, it is in the eye of the 
beholder.
  There has been an awful lot said about the President sacrificing his 
moral authority. And I would simply remind people--and this is not 
intended to be defensive--I would simply remind people that allowing 
children to go without health care is immoral, too, in this Senator's 
opinion. And abusing the only planet God gave us to sustain ourselves 
is also immoral.
  Probably next Tuesday, The Senate will debate a provision included in 
the Interior Appropriations bill that would prevent the Secretary of 
Interior from being able to strengthen the environmental rules 
determining how the giant mining companies of this country will mine 
gold, silver and so on from our public lands. Most people don't know 
it, but we mine gold through a process called heap leach mining. And do 
you know what we use? Cyanide. I am not saying it is immoral to use 
cyanide, but I am saying it is immoral to block regulations determining 
how you are going to use cyanide to keep it out of rivers, streams and 
the underground water supply. That is what the amendment on Tuesday 
will be about.
  I put in the category of being immoral to say the Secretary of the 
Interior must wait and let somebody else do a study before he can 
protect the environment. Last year, we had a handshake deal on this 
subject--we agreed not to procrastinate and delay Interior Department 
regulations any longer. Now, this year we have to have the National 
Academy of Sciences study it--postpone it for another 27 months. At the 
end of that, the mining industry will probably want the National 
Organization of Women to study it. After that, they will want NASA to 
study it --anything to keep from facing up to despoiling the only 
planet we have to sustain our children and grandchildren. As I say, 
morality takes a lot of forms.

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