[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 151 (Wednesday, October 21, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12810-S12839]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
OMNIBUS APPROPRIATIONS CONFERENCE REPORT
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I had hoped to make this floor statement
in advance of the vote, but I could not be here yesterday. So, I have
asked for time this morning to state my reasons for voting against the
omnibus appropriations bill. And I do so with a conflict of my own
views because I think this bill provides very substantial funding for
very many important projects. However, I decided to vote against the
bill because of the change from regular order and existing procedures
in the appropriations process. The Constitution gives the authority to
100 Members of the Senate and 435 Members of the House, but as the
appropriations process went forward the final decisions were made by
only four Members.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, the Senate is not in order. I would like
to hear the Senator, if we could have order in the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will come to order.
Mr. SPECTER. I thank my colleague, Senator Ashcroft, for asking for
order. I would like to hear myself and am having some difficulty.
As I was saying, Mr. President, notwithstanding the fact that this
bill contains funding for many, many vital programs for America, I
decided on balance to vote against it because it made such drastic
changes in existing procedure where the Constitution gives to the
Congress the authority to appropriate, 435 Members in the House and 100
Members in the Senate, and as the arrangements were finally worked out,
critical decisions were made excluding the chairman of the
Appropriations Committee, excluding the chairmen of the relevant
subcommittees such as myself, with only the Speaker, the leader of the
Democrats in the House, our distinguished majority leader, and the
minority leader in the Senate. I think that is very, very problemsome.
During the time allotted to me this morning I intend to summarize my
views.
Starting first with the accomplishments, it does provide for $83.3
billion
[[Page S12811]]
in discretionary spending for the subcommittee which I chair which has
jurisdiction over three major departments--the Department of Education,
the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of
Labor. There were some very important appropriations items included,
such as a $2 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health. My
distinguished colleague, Senator Harkin, the ranking member, and I
worked very closely on this bill with our staffs, and I learned a long
time ago that if you want to get something done in the Congress and the
Senate, you have to cross party lines to do it.
We added $2 billion to $13.6 billion in the National Institutes of
Health budget, with a vision for the 21st century of conquering cancer,
which takes the lives of 44,000 women a year from breast cancer, and
the lives of many men from prostate cancer, conquering Alzheimer's,
arthritis and Parkinson's. We appropriated $1.1 billion for LIHEAP,
which is home energy assistance going principally to the poor,
significantly to elderly people who only have the option of either
heating or eating. We have $2.5 billion for substance abuse. We have
appropriated $156 million to protect women from violence, an increase
of $21 million over last year.
For education programs, the total budget is $32.9 billion, an
increase of $3.5 billion over last year. For student aid, so vital for
American competitiveness worldwide and to improve quality of life for
individuals, we have $9.3 billion, an increase of $369 million over
last year, and for Head Start a total of $4.6 billion, an increase of
$313 million. We have increased special education program funding to
$5.1 billion, and we have put up some $1.2 billion for classroom size
reduction, an objective I agree with, although we didn't get there the
right way procedurally.
The bill further provides for $1.7 billion for job training, very
important; $1.3 billion for the Job Corps, $1.4 billion for dislocated
workers, $564 million for mine safety, $871 million for summer youth
jobs, a program which the House of Representatives had tried to totally
eliminate.
And why in the face of these important expenditures did I vote
against the bill? Because this bill never came to the Senate floor from
the subcommittee on Labor, Health, Human Services and Education
Appropriations. My staff and I worked on an expedited basis in August
so that on our second day back, September 1, the subcommittee could
vote it out. The full committee voted it out on September 3, but it
never came up on the Senate floor. And similarly, the House of
Representatives took only a small portion of the Labor, Health and
Human Services and Education bill up.
As a result, when we did not follow the regular order and the
customary process, we did not follow the constitutional direction and
the direction which the Senate has adhered to for so many years. This
was, I think, to the detriment of the bill, although so many important
items have been funded, there could have been, I think, a better
allocation had the people really responsible been involved throughout.
When the chairman of the subcommittee is excluded from the final
negotiations and the chairman of the full appropriations committee is
excluded, you lose the impact and the experience of the people who have
worked most closely on the bill.
I would illustrate this point by noting what happened on October 9.
The President had a press conference in the Rose Garden severely
criticizing the Republican Congress on education, and I was asked to
provide part of the response in a subsequent press conference. I did so
by pointing out that the House-Senate conference had provided more
money on education than the President had requested in his February
budget. We had $31.8 billion, contrasted with the President's request
for $31.2 billion, meaning that we put up $600 million more than the
President asked for. Not unexpectedly, with the President's bully
pulpit, his message carried the day and the congressional response was
lost in the shuffle.
Then we had the issue of reducing average classroom size by hiring
teachers, where the President had requested $1.2 billion. What was not
ever understood publicly was that those funds were to be provided by
moneys from the tobacco settlement. However, there never was a tobacco
settlement. The President and his administration never provided any
alternative source of funding. Senator Harkin, my distinguished ranking
member, and I and the rest of our subcommittee understood that, so we
found $300 million for title I, which could have been used for reducing
classroom size for next year. This was substantially more than that
which could have been expended, and that, too, was lost in the shuffle.
What I think is especially disconcerting is the fact that when we
Republicans control both the Senate and the House, we should have been
able to come to terms in September before the fiscal year ended and
submitted bills to the White House, to the President, in regular order
where the President would either have to sign them or veto them. Had we
done this in regular order, I think, with the public debate focusing on
the education issue, for example, the chances were excellent the
President would not veto it when it would be understood the Congress
had provided more than he had requested and that we had complied with
much of his initiative classroom size reduction.
But, when those bills were not presented until October and the only
other option is closing up the Government, then the leverage is all
with the President, and the Congress cannot really perform its
appropriation and legislative function.
The bills were not presented in September because of very strong
disagreements on so many substantive matters which should have been
handled by the authorizing committees. There was endless debate on
whether there would be student testing, endless debate on organ
transplants, endless debate on ergonomics--and we Republicans should
have concluded those matters. We should have excluded the legislation,
by and large, although realistically you can never exclude it all. And
while we should not legislate on appropriations bills, some of that is
necessarily done, but should not be done in a quantity to defeat our
process of presenting these bills.
In the conference we had on October 9, with representatives from the
Office of Management and Budget, I raised the question about a
disagreement in priorities of some $330 million out of the $32 billion
bill--a relatively small part, about one percent. Was the President
going to veto our bill over that amount of money, because of those
differences in priorities? The Office of Management and Budget
representatives said they did not know. I replied if they did not know,
they ought not to be in the process, that we ought to be legislating.
It would have been a very different outcome had we presented these
bills to the President in September and had we focused on precisely
what the Congress had done and where the areas of disagreement were,
and on the fact that at that stage we had provided more money than the
President had requested by $600 million, and that we had taken care of
the issue on reduction of classroom size.
We live in a society with many, many different views. What has been
the strength of the institutions of the American Government has been
the procedures which we have established for more than 200 years. Those
procedures are for the subcommittee to report, the full committee to
report, the matter to come to the floor of the Senate, for 100 Senators
to be able to debate and offer amendments--and that was not done. And
that was not done in the House. We did not have an actual House-Senate
conference on our bill, although we met informally. The product is not
what should have been done. We do not live in an oligarchy under the
constitutional doctrine which governs our society.
But, where you have these decisions made on $500 billion in
expenditures and many, many substantive issues at the very last minute,
it is an oligarchy. Mr. President, 535 of us have surrendered our power
and our authority to a group of 4, and that is not the way the American
Government is supposed to run. That has given disproportionate power,
enormously disproportionate power, to the President because of the
experience we had at the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1996 when the
Government was closed and the Congress got the blame.
What I have seen in the time I have been here is when there is blame,
you
[[Page S12812]]
can usually divide it 50/50, right down the middle, half to the
Congress and half to the administration. If there is partisan blame,
you can divide it right down the middle, half to the Republicans and
half to the Democrats. I think the failure to follow regular order and
our established procedures, the constitutional mandate and what we have
developed as a matter of congressional practice, is very, very, very
serious. I think it warrants a very, very strong protest vote, which I
have cast.
I was interested to hear the comments of the distinguished senior
Senator from West Virginia, Senator Byrd, who yesterday made a speech
and, in more graphic terms than mine, called this a Frankenstein bill--
it did not have a mother and a father--and said he was going to vote
for it. A few minutes ago Senator Byrd approached me on the floor and
said he decided to vote against it. I asked him why. He said he had
persuaded himself. He went home last night, thought about his speech,
decided he was right. He decided he was right on the Frankenstein part;
he was wrong on the part to vote for the bill.
I said I was delighted to hear that because of the high regard I have
for Senator Byrd, also the high regard I have for Senator Santorum, who
is presiding at the moment, my colleague from Pennsylvania, who also
voted against this bill. We discussed it and he did not quite have the
oligarchy in mind, but he agreed with the principle that the 535 of us
ought not to cede our power to 4.
It is not easy to get to the U.S. Senate. It is not easy to stay
here. There is a lot of hard work that goes into what we have done. For
example, Senator Santorum and I represent 12 million people and, in
chairing the subcommittee on this $83 billion bill, I have given very,
very serious consideration to all of these issues and I join him in
thinking they should have been legislated in regular order.
I, again, compliment my distinguished colleague, Senator Harkin, for
his diligence and his work and his outstanding staff, Marsha Simon and
Ellen Murray. My staff is second to none, with Mark Laisch, Jennifer
Stiefel, Jack Chow, Mary Dietrich, Jim Sourwine. Most of all,
``Senator'' Bettilou Taylor--she is technically the clerk--who
commented to me that she did not like my negative vote. Here she comes
back on the floor. She heard her name mentioned. She thought it might
have been interpreted that I was not for education and health care. I
think my record is strong enough that my negative vote as a protest to
the procedure will be understood in light of all the work we did on
these education allocations and health care allocations. And Dan
Renberg, who is my deputy chief of staff and legislative director, who
is extraordinary in working with Bettilou in handling some 1,300
requests which come to our office, and about five times that many phone
calls, and David Urban, my distinguished chief of staff, who also helps
in making these legislative arrangements.
So, it is with mixed emotions that I vote no because procedures and
format are still the most important; that we follow regular order
because we don t know about the quality of the next oligarchy of four
which may seek control of the appropriations process.
I now ask unanimous consent that my full statements on the Omnibus
Appropriations bill be printed in the Record.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
omnibus appropriations bill: problems with the process
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I want to express my strong objections to
the procedures which were followed on the omnibus appropriations bill,
which contains the text of eight individual appropriations and
authorizing provisions totaling nearly $500 billion in spending.
The importance of this legislation stems from our Constitution, which
provides in Article I, section 9 that, ``no money shall be drawn from
the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.''
The regular order is for the 435 House members and the 100 Senators
to consider the appropriations bills in sequence with floor action,
conference reconciliation and then final action by each body before
presentation to the President. This process, too, stems from the
Constitutional directive in Article I, section 7 that a bill which has
passed the House and Senate shall be presented to the President, who
may sign it into law, or veto the bill and return it accordingly to the
Congress for their reconsideration.
This year, the final stages and key negotiations were carried on by
only 4 elected members: the Majority Leader and Minority Leader in the
Senate and the Speaker and Minority Leader of the Democrats in the
House, with the participation of White House representatives.
I chair the Appropriations Subcommittee which has jurisdiction for
the bill funding the Department of Labor, Department of Health and
Human Services and the Department of Education. Our bill did not reach
the Senate floor for consideration by the full Senate. And, except for
a small portion, our bill did not receive consideration by the full
House of Representatives. Thus, the Senate could never formally convene
a full-fledged conference with the House on the Labor, HHS, Education
bill. Recognizing that our bill would be wrapped into an omnibus
spending bill, we held informal conferences involving the House and
Senate Chairmen and ranking minority members, but we were not present
when the final, key decisions were made.
In an early conference session on our bill, representatives of the
Office of Management and Budget raised questions about approximately
$330 million of the $32 billion designated for education programs in
our bill. I asked these Administration officials whether that
differnce, slightly more than 1 percent of the total, would produce a
veto. The OMB representatives responded that they did not know the
answer to my question. I then said if the difference would not produce
a veto, then the matter really ought to be left to the House and Senate
negotiators, who would reach their own conclusions as to the
appropriate figures to be presented in the bill to the President.
With the Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, it is
my strongly held view that we had a responsibility to conclude the
appropriations bills in September before the end of the fiscal year for
presentation to the President. That agreement was not reached because
of many pending military ancillary issues such as school testing, organ
transplants, ergonomics, etc. Had we finished Congressional action on
the appropriations bill on Labor, Health and Human Services and
Education, in September, for example, we could have then presented it
to the President for his signature or veto with the issues
crystallized. It is entirely possible that the President would not have
vetoed the bill.
However, when the bills were not ready for final consideration until
October, the White House emerged with the most leverage because a
failure to agree meant the government would shut down.
On Friday, October 9, the President held an afternoon news conference
in the Rose Garden criticizing the Republican Congress on education
funding. I was asked to give a part of the Republican reply in a
Capitol press conference, which I did, pointing out that the House-
Senate subcommittee conferees had approved $31.8 billion for Fiscal
Year 1999 discretionary education spending, which was $600 million over
the President's budget request of $31.2 billion.
As expected with the force of the bully pulpit, the President carried
the day in the media arena with no Congressional reply receiving any
significant attention.
On the subject of adding teachers to reduce classroom size, earlier
this year the President proposed paying for that $1.2 billion with
proceeds from the tobacco settlement. Of course, there was no tobacco
settlement legislation enacted and the Administration had no fallback
proposal to cover the attendant shortfall in funding.
Notwithstanding the absence of a tobacco settlement, my ranking
member, Senator Harkin, and I had worked through the figures and
allocated $300 million in additional federal funds for title one which
could be used for school districts to hire new teachers and reduce the
average number of children assigned to each classroom teacher. We were
advised the budgetary outlays
[[Page S12813]]
would be $50 million in the first year, which was more than enough for
the first year's funding and could be afforded within the existing
Subcommittee allocation.
Again, all of that was lost in the last minute shuffle with the
President criticizing the Congress without a factual foundation.
Had these issues on education, for example, been handled in a timely
fashion in September with presentment of a Labor, Health and Human
Services, and Education appropriations bill to the President, he would
have had to articulate his views in a public forum to justify a veto.
The result likely would have been entirely different.
It is my hope that we will not repeat this year's process. I firmly
believe that if the people of America are given the opportunity to
understand precisely what is happening, they will demand that we follow
regular order in the appropriations process as set forth in the
Constitution and the long-established practices of congressional
legislative action.
fiscal year 1999 labor, health and human services, and education
appropriations act
Mr. President, this has been an unusual year for the Labor, Health
and Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittee. While
both the House and Senate subcommittees reported bills out of the full
committee, neither House ever had the opportunity to fully debate its
merits. I believe that a bill which constitutes the single largest
investment in improving the health, educational standing and economic
well-being of our nation, and in one way or another, affects the lives
of every man, woman and child in this country should have had the
opportunity to be fully debated by all 100 Senators.
The subcommittee received over 1,300 requests from colleagues seeking
more funding, report language and special earmarks. We weighed each of
those requests very carefully, and wherever possible we accommodated
our colleagues.
I want to extend my sincerest appreciation to Senator Harkin and his
staff, Marsha Simon and Ellen Murray for their role in this effort. I
also want to extend my thanks to each of the members of the
subcommittee for their cooperation.
OVERVIEW
The Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill totals $291.9 billion of
which $83.3 billion is for discretionary spending for FY'99 and an
additional $6.1 billion has been provided for education programs for
FY'2000. The discretionary spending represents an increase of $8.9
billion over the FY'98 approriations level.
HIGHLIGHTS
This bill provides $10.8 billion for the Department of Labor. It
contains $871 million for summer youth, $1.7 billion to provide much-
needed job training and work experience for youth, including $871
million for summer employment and training programs that offer work
experience and academic enrichment to economically disadvantaged youth.
The bill also contains $1.3 billion for Job Corps training; $1.4
billion to assist dislocated workers; and $564 million for the Mine
Safety and Occupational Safety and Health Administrations to help
safeguard the health and safety of workers.
COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS
There is perhaps no better example of the direct effect this bill has
on the needy than the community health centers program. This bill
contains $925 million for this program, an increase of $117 million
over the fiscal 1998 level. Funds are used to provide comprehensive
primary care services to the medically indigent in underserved rural
and urban areas, including the homeless, migrants and those living in
public housing.
CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC)
This bill includes $2.5 billion to maintain critical disease control
and prevention activities carried out by the CDC. While we have made
great strides in eradicating disease and illnesses that once plagued
society, we cannot overlook some of the serious public health threats
that remain, including hepatitis, tuberculosis, HIV infection, and lead
poisoning.
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
I thank all of my colleagues agree that few federal activities affect
the lives of as many Americans as our investment in medical research.
And few investments have such far-reaching effects on this nation's
academic and economic standing throughout the world.
In my view, the National Institutes of Health represents the crown
jewel of the Federal Government. For millions of cancer and heart
disease survivors, it is the tap root of new drugs and surgical
techniques that have added new years to life. It is in the frontline of
new vaccines that save the lives of children who would have been
considered hopeless cases only a few decades ago. And for the millions
of baby boomers who are shouldering their way into old age, it offers
the only source of hope against the devastating effects of Alzheimer's
disease, arthritis, and Parkinson's.
Last year, many of my colleagues voted in favor of doubling research
funding over the next 5 years. Earlier this year, I made a commitment
to do all that I could to achieve that goal. The bill before the Senate
includes $15.6 billion for NIH, an increase of $2 billion over last
year's appropriation. That puts us squarely on the path to doubling
NIH. More importantly, it signals a recognition that the progress we
achieved in the past is not self-sustaining. Science is not an
overnight proposition. What we do today will determine the life-saving
breakthroughs of tomorrow.
This bill supports research across a wide array of diseases and
afflictions, from breast and prostate cancer to diabetes and stroke.
hiv/aids
I want to note the fact that this legislation also includes nearly
$3.8 billion for AIDS research, prevention and services. This includes
$1.4 billion for Ryan White Programs that provide comprehensive care,
early intervention and emergency services to those afflicted with AIDS.
The bill also includes $657 million for AIDS prevention activities
supported by CDC.
women's health
Women's health continues to be a high priority under this bill. In
addition to supporting expanded research on cancers affecting women,
this bill contains another $159 million for breast and cervical cancer
screening, as well as $15.5 million to advance the women's health
initiative, including $3 million for a campaign to educate young adults
about how to prevent osteoporosis.
bioterrorism initiative
The 1995 nerve gas attack on the city of Tokyo killed 12 people and
hospitalized thousands. This incident added a new and frightening
word:--bioterrorism.
Earlier this year, the administration submitted an amended budget
request for activities intended to counter bioterrorism. Should the
President deem this an emergency, the bill would provide $154.7 million
to combat this growing threat.
substance abuse
One of the most serious threats to the fabric of our society is
substance abuse. The problem is no longer confined to inner cities, but
has spread to every community in our country. To combat this threat,
the bill contains $2.5 billion for substance abuse prevention and
treatment, an increase of $213 million over the administration's budget
request.
family planning
For family planning activities, the bill recommends $215 million to
support primary health care services at more than 4,000 clinics
nationwide. This amount represents an increase of $12.1 million over
the 1998 appropriation. Over 85 percent of family planning clients are
women at or below 150 percent of the poverty level and these additional
funds will help to ensure that these low-income women have access to
quality health services.
adolescent family life
The bill recommends $17.7 million, an increase of $13 million more
than the amount recommended by the President for the only federal
program focused directly on the issue of adolescent sexuality,
pregnancy and parenting.
head start
To enable all children to develop and function at their highest
potential, the bill includes $4.6 billion for the Head Start Program,
an increase of $313 million over last year's appropriation.
[[Page S12814]]
This brings us closer to the goal of enrolling one million children in
Head Start by the year 2002.
violence against women
The bill includes $156 million to support the programs authorized by
the Violence Against Women Act. This is an increase of $21 million for
programs to provide assistance to women who have been victims of abuse
and to initiate and expand prevention programs to begin to reduce the
number of women who are forced to confront the horrors of abuse.
Included is: $88.8 million for battered women's shelters; $45 million
for rape prevention; $15 million for runaway youth prevention; $6
million for domestic violence community demonstrations; and $1.2
million for the domestic violence hotline.
liheap
The bill maintains the $1.1 billion appropriated for the upcoming
winter's Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). In
addition, the recommendation provides an advance appropriation of $1.1
billion for the 1999/2000 LIHEAP Winter Program. The bill also provides
additional emergency appropriations of $300 million. LIHEAP is a key
program for low income families in Pennsylvania and other cold weather
States in the northeast. This funding supports grants to States to
deliver critical assistance to low income households to help families
meet higher energy costs.
aging programs
For programs serving the elderly, the bill before the Senate
recommends $2.1 billion, an increase of $105 million over the
fiscal year 1998 appropriation. Included is: $440.2 million for the
Community Service Employment Program which will provide more part-time
employment opportunities for the low-income elderly; $300.3 million
more for supportive services and senior centers; $486.4 million more
for congregate and home-delivered nutrition services; and $173.9
million more for the National Senior Volunteer Corps.
education
To enhance this nation's investment in education, the bill before the
Senate contains $32.9 billion in discretionary education funds for the
1999/2000 school year, an increase of $3.5 billion over last year's
funding level. Specifically, the Goals 2000 Programs is funded at $491
million to promote education reform initiatives and $698.1 million for
the technology programs.
education reform
For programs to educate disadvantaged children, the bill recommends
nearly $8.4 billion, $345 million more than the amount appropriated in
fiscal year 1998. These funds will provide services to approximately 7
million school children. The bill also includes $135 million for the
Even Start Program, an increase of $20 million over the
administration's request to provide educational services to low-income
children and their families.
impact aid
For impact aid programs, the bill includes $864 million, an increase
of $168 million over the budget request. Included in the
recommendations is: $50 million for payments for children with
disabilities; $704 million for basic support payments; and $28 million
for payments for federal property.
bilingual education
The bill provides $380 million to assist in the education of
immigrant and limited-english proficient students. This recommendation
is an increase of $26 million over the 1998 appropriation and will
provide instructional services to approximately 60,000 children. Within
the funds provided, $50 million has been included for professional
development to improve teacher training programs.
special education
One of the largest increases recommended in this bill is the $5.1
billion for the special education programs to help local education
agencies meet the requirement that all children with disabilities have
access to a free, appropriate public education, and all infants and
toddlers with disabilities have access to early intervention services.
The amount recommended will serve an estimated 4.95 million children at
a cost of $662 per child.
class size initiative
The bill contains $1.2 billion to reduce class size in order to
improve academic achievement and reduce discipline problems. These
funds will be distributed among local educational agencies based on a
formula that reflects both their relative number of children in low-
income families and school enrollments. These funds would provide local
school districts with the flexibility to hire more teachers and improve
professional development for existing teachers.
student aid
For student aid programs, the bill provides $9.3 billion, an increase
of $369 million over the 1998 appropriation. Pell Grants, the
cornerstone of student financial aid, have been increased by $125 for a
maximum grant of $3,125. The Supplemental Educational Opportunity
Grants Program has also been increased to $619 million, the Work Study
Program is funded at $870 million and the Perkins Loans Program is
funded at $130 million.
reading excellence
The bill also provides $260 million for a child literacy initiative.
The committee has provided these funds on an advanced funded basis.
This will give the authorizing committees adequate time to work out the
specifics of this new program.
school violence
The bill provides $165 million for a new initiative to address the
violent behavior of students. Included is $40 million to assist schools
in identifying and addressing the mental health needs of children and
preventing aggressive behaviors, $90 million to support activities that
promote safe learning environments, and $35 million for competitive
grants to recruit, train and employ school safety coordinators.
Finally, the bill provides $184 million for the National Labor
Relations Board, $9.8 million over the FY '98 appropriation.
conclusion
Again, I want to thank Senator Harkin and all of the other members of
the subcommittee for their help in crafting this bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri is recognized for 30
minutes.
Mr. GRAMS. Will the Senator from Missouri yield for an unanimous
consent request?
Mr. ASHCROFT. I will be happy to yield to my colleague from
Minnesota.
Mr. GRAMS. I ask unanimous consent that following the remarks of the
Senator from Missouri I be recognized to speak for up to 15 minutes as
in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRAMS. I thank the Senator from Missouri.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, We are very fortunate, Will Rogers once
observed, that we've never gotten all the Government we've paid for.
For most of this century, Mr. Rogers' words have stood the test of
time. Unfortunately, I fear that with this omnibus appropriations bill,
this 3,000-page, 40-pound, 2 foot high, $500 billion monster, we will
be getting all the Government we have paid for and then some.
This omnibus legislation reflects the Federal budget process at its
worst. This package was not the result of democratic votes, open
discussion, and legislators reflecting the will of the people. With
little debate and lots of backroom deals, 8 of the 13 annual
appropriations bills have been tossed into one enormous heap of
spending. This is wrong.
Who has read this pile of programs and pork? Not a single Senator
has.
We didn't get a peek at a summary of this Government colossus until
Monday afternoon, just 2 days ago. We won't see it in the Congressional
Record until after the vote.
The truth of the matter is, no one knows what is in this colossal
creation, and no one claims to be its father. It is said that victory
has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. This forsaken
monstrosity, which no one claims, nor has anyone read, deserved defeat
today. We don't know much, but here is some of what we do know about
this measure.
The Social Security trust fund has been raided for spending more on
the programs and pork in this bill. Billions of dollars will be added
to the national debt that our children will one day have to pay.
This legislation also breaks the much-heralded Balanced Budget
Agreement.
And finally, we know that taxes, which are at record high levels,
will
[[Page S12815]]
not be cut. Washington thinks it needs the people s money more than the
people need it.
When I came to the Senate in 1995, at the same time that the new
Republican majority assumed control of Congress, I hoped that Congress
would downsize the Federal Government and return money and power to the
American people. After 40 years of Democratic control of one or both
Houses, it was finally time for Congress to uphold its responsibility,
to minimize the Federal Government's intrusion into our citizens' lives
and pocketbooks, to lower taxes and to reduce the size of Government.
Unfortunately, President Clinton remains the chief obstacle to lower
taxes and smaller Government, despite his claim in the 1996 State of
the Union Address that ``the era of big Government is over.'' That
famous line from President Clinton is about as accurate as his
pronouncement in January of 1998 that he wanted to save ``every penny
of any surplus'' to preserve the Social Security system. Both are
intentionally misleading and factually wrong.
But Congress also shares the blame. The 105th Congress has been
either unable or unwilling to cut spending, has been, at best,
reluctant to fight for tax cuts, and has now cut a budget deal that
guarantees that Bill Clinton's vision of a costly and intrusive Federal
Government survives for at least one more year.
The cost of the Federal Government is so staggering that numbers
alone do not convey its enormity. We are spending more money today than
our Founding Fathers ever thought possible. As Stephen Moore of the
Cato Institute has indicated:
Adjusted for inflation, the . . . [Federal] spending total
of $7.5 trillion for 1998-2002 is more money than America
spent to fight both world wars, the Civil War and the
Revolutionary War [combined]. In fact, in today's dollars, it
is more money than the U.S. Government spent on everything
from 1787 to 1960.
In the fiscal year 1999 alone, the Federal Government will spend more
than the entire Federal Government spent from our founding until 1920.
Without taking into account the $21 billion in new emergency spending
contained in this omnibus legislation, the Congressional Budget Office
estimates that Federal spending has increased $205 billion over the
last 4 years. By comparison, in the previous 4 years, Federal spending
increased only $192 billion.
Last year, the Congress passed, and the President signed, the
Balanced Budget Act of 1997. There was much rejoicing, celebration and
self-congratulations surrounding the passage of the bill,
congratulations from the Halls of Congress and down Pennsylvania Avenue
to the White House. The backers of the bill proclaimed fiscal
discipline was being imposed on Washington.
Mr. President, I did not join in that celebration, nor share in
Washington's enthusiasm. The 1997 budget deal spent too much, provided
too little tax relief and was unenforceable. The bill contained no
meaningful enforcement provisions, nothing to guarantee that future
Congresses and administrations would limit spending or require the
budget caps to be strictly enforced.
As a matter of fact, I proposed an amendment to impose the spending
controls on the balanced budget agreement, and that amendment to that
agreement was defeated. As a result, we have seen just today that the
balanced budget agreement has been broken. Now promises made one year
are ignored the next. Promises made last year for a balanced budget are
ignored this year. This omnibus bill we have voted on today confirms my
worst fears: It breaks the budget limits set just 1 year ago, spends
the budget surpluses instead of saving it for Social Security, and
keeps more money in Washington without returning it to the rightful
owners--the families that work day and night to earn it.
Mr. President, Americans are working longer than ever before to pay
their taxes. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, the average
American now works until May 10 to pay Federal, State and local taxes.
In a typical workweek, the average American works until late Tuesday
afternoon just to pay taxes. And the tax burden is getting worse, not
better.
For the past 5 consecutive years, the growth in personal tax payments
has outstripped that of wages and salaries. Americans deserve better
than this tax burden and better than a spending bill for which no one
is accountable.
America needs a real tax cut. The Federal Government has collected
more taxes than the year before every year since 1983. We have been on
an ascending, accelerating juggernaut of tax collections, and that
means that the American people have not had a true tax cut in 15 years,
while Washington has increased taxes twice in this decade, in 1990 and
1993. Those two tax hikes will take a combined $600 billion extra from
the American people over the next 5 years.
It reminds me a bit of President Reagan's telling definition of a
taxpayer. Reagan defined the taxpayer as ``someone who works for the
Federal Government but doesn't have to take a Civil Service exam.''
During the debate on the Senate budget resolution last April, a
number of fiscally conservative Senators and I announced that we were
prepared to vote against the resolution because it planned to spend too
much and cut taxes too little--only $30 billion over 5 years, or a
whopping $1.83 per month in tax relief for every person in the country.
We asked instead for a meaningful tax cut and the elimination of the
marriage penalty which unfairly burdens 21 million couples simply
because they are married.
In response to our concerns, the Senate leadership pledged to support
the larger of the tax cuts contained in either the House- or Senate-
passed budget resolution. The leadership also agreed to make repeal of
the marriage penalty the Senate's top tax priority.
After the House adopted its budget resolution last May, the budget
resolution process screeched to a halt. Why? The House budget
resolution recommended cutting taxes $101 billion over 5 years. Given
the agreement we had with the leadership, the Senate was to have pushed
the House proposal. Unfortunately, many Senators would have rather seen
the budget resolution die than have Congress pass even modest tax
relief, equal about 1 percent of the revenue the Federal Government is
projected to collect over the next 5 years.
For the first time since the process was established in 1974,
Congress failed to produce a budget resolution and killed any chance
for meaningful tax or spending cuts this year.
This unwillingness to cut taxes comes during a period in which we
anticipate over $500 billion in surpluses over the next 5 years.
This unwillingness comes from President Clinton's misleading
political promise to ``protect'' the surplus for Social Security. In
his 1998 State of the Union Address, President Clinton proposed
reserving, in his words, ``100 percent of the surplus--that's every
penny of any surplus--for Social Security.''
Well, promises made, promises broken. The mantra here in Washington
lives on: ``You send it, we spend it.''
Despite President Clinton's promise not to use the Social Security
for anything but Social Security, the Administration has raided Social
Security to fund a series of new spending initiatives--paid for by the
same surplus he is purporting to save for Social Security.
While the 1997 balanced budget agreement limits discretionary
spending through fiscal year 2002, this new spending has overridden
these discretionary spending caps, shrinking the budget surplus and
consuming money that could be used to ``save'' Social Security.
It took Congress and the White House only 1 year to breach the budget
caps--1 year to break the promises made to the American people.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, October 20, that
congressional aides have confessed that the omnibus bill not only
contains $20.9 billion in ``emergency'' spending, but also busts the
caps by another $7 billion in nonemergency discretionary spending. That
is $7 billion in broken promises--$7 billion in spending that under the
Balanced Budget Act of 1997 should not be allowed to occur.
It is not surprising that the President found a way around the
spending limits so quickly. As I have said on many occasions, taxes and
spending are the only things in Washington more addictive than
nicotine. In fact, this
[[Page S12816]]
bad habit of resorting to bogus ``emergency'' spending to circumvent
the discretionary caps resembles the behavior of an addict trying to
rationalize his inability to stay sober.
Since 1991, Congress has passed $53.7 billion in emergency spending;
that is excluding Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Unfortunately, the
President's ``emergency'' spending requests do not meet any emergency
other than his inability to get all he wants to spend. There are no
eleventh hour developments that have made Social Security solvency a
secondary concern.
The President is proposing that the equivalent of at least 24 percent
of this year's surplus be spent on a Bosnia deployment that is now 4
years old, Government computer repairs--we have known about these
needs--increased embassy security, and a variety of other initiatives.
Now, many of these requests constitute real and important funding
issues. But emergencies? Mr. President, the well-being of our elderly
is too important for half-truths and doublespeak. Nothing but the
President's unwillingness has prevented the Administration from
offering $21 billion in emergency spending reductions out of the
Federal Government's $1.7 trillion budget.
In other words, the President could have offered to reduce spending
elsewhere to accommodate his emergencies. But apparently the President
would rather see our seniors' Social Security checks shipped overseas
in the form of foreign aid or squandered on more Washington bureaucrats
than find savings amounting to less than 1 percent of the Federal
budget.
Mr. President, as I am sure you know, the Congressional Budget Office
projects the Federal Government will run a $137 billion on-budget
deficit over the next 5 years--fiscal years 1999 to 2003. In other
words, 21 percent of the $657 billion Social Security surplus over that
period will be used to finance non-Social Security spending. Yet, the
administration is strangely silent about this matter.
If the administration sincerely opposes using the surplus for
anything but Social Security, it should call upon Congress--as I have--
to reduce projected spending by $137 billion over the next 5 years in
order to eliminate the on budget deficit. Of course, the President will
not do this. He prefers to block tax cuts by scaremongering vulnerable
older Americans on Social Security, while spending all the money he can
through budget loopholes--like the designation of his needs or desires
as ``emergencies.''
Mr. President, we are here today almost 3 weeks into the 1999 fiscal
year. We voted on the omnibus appropriations package, one which I voted
against, that will fund the Federal Government for the next 11 months.
This omnibus bill contains eight complete appropriations bills; but it
also contains increased funding for the other five appropriations bills
that have either been signed by the President or await his signature.
Every single one of the 13 appropriations bills was affected by the
bill we passed today. It even increases spending in the bills already
signed into law by the President. Several of the appropriations bills
included in this humongous monstrosity were never even considered by
the Senate--not at all, not even for 1 day.
Again, this massive pile of programs and pork, weighing 40 pounds,
standing 2 feet high, over 3,000 pages long, was not available until
mid-day yesterday. Then there was just one copy in the Cloakroom for
all offices to share. This bill is so huge that the Congressional
Record could not even print the bill until this morning, to be
available after the Senate vote.
Although the President and congressional leaders announced they had
reached an agreement last Thursday, a rough summary was not even
available until Monday. We do not know everything that is in this bill.
I do not know half of what is in this bill, and not a single Senator
does, including the leadership and the appropriators.
There is something wrong when Congress passes one bill, one huge
bill, that spends so much--all 13 appropriations bills are affected,
even those already signed by the President--and there is only one copy
to be shared. We should be held responsible for the decisions that we
make--decisions to spend the people's money, to spend the Social
Security surplus, to increase the debt that will be owed by our
children and grandchildren.
Who is responsible here? Who can be accountable when they do not know
for what they are accountable? Today, it feels like I was asked to be
nothing more than a rubber stamp for a deal made by a handful of
individuals who assume they had the power to speak for all of us.
I know what the press reports say, and what the Appropriations
Committee says, and what the President has said, but the bottom line is
this: This legislation has not been scored by CBO, the Congressional
Budget Office. Nor has the Office of Management and Budget determined
that all of the emergency spending requests will be categorized as
budgetary ``emergencies.'' Of course, with no office getting a copy of
the bill before it was voted on, and with some 3,000 pages to review,
weighing about 40 pounds, such an analysis was impossible.
So where does this leave the country? Congress has rejected calls for
tax relief and has just passed a $500 billion omnibus spending bill
that will cut the surplus and boost the size and the intrusiveness of
Government.
The President says he wants to save Social Security, yet his every
action has been designed to save a catchy campaign slogan --``Save
Social Security First''--while he spends the Social Security surplus on
new initiatives. The Government continues to grow, and a tax cut is
nowhere in sight. Yes, I fear we may soon get all the Government we
have paid for--and then some. But then Congress does not even know what
we have just paid for. And we do not know what we have just passed.
We can do better, and we must do better. Our resolve must stiffen.
The people of this country deserve better service from us, and we must
provide it. It is with that in mind that I object to the passage of
this measure today.
Mr. President, I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
Mr. GRAMS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gregg). The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. GRAMS. Thank you very much.
Mr. President, I also rise this morning to discuss my opposition to
the omnibus appropriations legislation that was before us this morning.
While I realize many of my colleagues would have preferred not to
return for this vote, there are a number of us who believed that a vote
was essential on a bill that appropriates a third of our spending
priorities for fiscal year 1999. To shirk our responsibility to the
taxpayers, to hide behind an unrecorded vote, was unconceivable.
I feel strongly that we are elected to represent the American people
and to take care of the Nation's business. The people expect us to be
responsible. They expect us to be accountable. They expect us to be
here and do our job. In other words, when it is time to cast a vote of
this magnitude, they expect us to be here, to stand up and to be
counted.
The omnibus appropriation legislation includes $500 billion in
funding for many essential Government programs and functions. It
represents 8 out of 13 appropriations bills, or two-thirds of this
year's entire appropriations work, one-third of our entire annual
Federal spending. It is by far the most important piece of legislation
we have before us this year.
This monster bill consists of more than 4,000 pages. We can hardly
lift it, much less take time to review it before the vote. I venture to
say that most Members of the Senate still have no idea what is in it.
Even Evelyn Wood herself could not have made it through this volume in
the few short hours we had to digest it. It would take days to get
through it, but we are only allowed to review it in the Chamber, with
no copies available for the individual review that is necessary. I
don't believe they are available yet.
Just to approve it, we were told, and everyone would be free to go
home and campaign. One Democratic House Member was quoted as saying,
``We would be better off not knowing what is in the bill.'' He said,
``Ignorance is bliss.'' Even the House appropriations chairman called
this an ``ominous'' spending bill.
Shame on Congress. If that is truly what my colleagues really
believe, and if they really do think so little of the
[[Page S12817]]
taxpayers whose dollars fund every program, every agency, and every
piece of pork tucked so carefully into this bill, I say to them,
perhaps you have been in Washington too long. This is not how I look
upon my own responsibilities to my Minnesota constituents and my
constitutional duty to the Nation. The people of Minnesota didn't send
me here to rubber stamp anything, and certainly not this bill.
What disgusts me most is the process that produced this omnibus
appropriations legislation. The entire negotiations were secretive,
arbitrary, conducted behind closed doors by only a handful of
congressional leaders and White House staff. The special interests were
well represented at that table, but the taxpayers clearly were not.
Again, the special interests were well represented at the table, but
the taxpayers clearly were not.
Is this the best deal we could get with this President? I guess it
is. President Clinton was intent on spending more money, money from the
surplus, money that he said, in fact, should be saved for Social
Security. But President Clinton's thoughts on spending Social Security
money must have been more important than evidently saving Social
Security.
As soon as the bill emerged from that protective cloak, it was thrown
at us and we were told to agree to it. No process of floor
consideration, no debate, no amendments, no votes. I have to wonder
whether this is truly a democracy. This isn't the way we do business in
this great democracy. It is true Congress has behaved this way before
and the secretive goings-on are nothing new. But this does not make it
right.
As early at 1988, President Reagan stood up and asked Congress to
change this practice. It is wrong because it destroys our democracy. It
undermines our political institution of government through
representation. It is wrong because it allows just a few to make policy
without careful deliberation and to spend hundreds of billions of
taxpayers' hard-earned money without the taxpayers being duly
represented. We must stop this practice now.
Early in March, I reluctantly voted for the fiscal year 1999 budget
resolution in the Budget Committee. I did so to help facilitate the
process and offer a chance to improve the budget plan as it moved to
the Senate floor. I later again voted for the budget resolution based
on a breakthrough agreement reached with the Senate leadership.
Under this agreement, our leadership would pursue the larger tax
relief number of either the Senate or House, and it would make the
repeal of the marriage penalty our top priority. They committed to a
tax bill this year protected by reconciliation legislation.
Unfortunately, these commitments were never honored. What did we end
up with instead? Tax increases, not tax relief. More spending, not
leaner, more efficient Government. And again we faced a President who
threatened to veto a Government shutdown if we even dared to send him
tax relief for the American people. President Clinton called Americans
``selfish'' if they want some of their surplus money back, their extra
tax dollars.
Republicans have joined Democrats and the President to raise the
higher spending levels added in the negotiations. It is beyond belief
that, facing the first budget surplus in a quarter of a century, that
this Congress could have joined with the President to produce this bill
in this election year.
I have argued repeatedly before this Chamber that the surplus is
generated directly by increased individual income tax payments and it
has little--little--to do with Government policy. In other words, the
credit for the surplus does not go to the President, to the Senate, or
to the House, but the surplus goes to the productivity of the American
business and the American worker.
Outside the money earmarked for Social Security, we owe it to the
taxpayers to return at least some of that surplus to them. That would
have been the moral and it would have been the fair thing to do.
I also warned repeatedly that if we don't return at least a portion
of the surplus to the taxpayers, and soon, that Washington will spend
it all, leaving nothing for tax relief or the vitally important task of
preserving Social Security.
The omnibus appropriations legislation proves my point dramatically.
This bill is nothing but a continuation of President Clinton's tax-and-
spend policies. Again, the President's own words, ``Save Social
Security first,'' and I guess what he really meant was, ``Let me spend
the Social Security surplus first,'' and make sure that the taxpayer
does not get their hands on the surplus.
Despite the rhetoric about fiscal discipline, Washington has broken
the spending caps by using the budget surplus. The spending bill
exceeds the caps by at least $20 billion, and the only reason there is
any surplus still on the table is that Washington evidently ran out of
time to spend it.
To mask its budget maneuvering, Washington has covered its tracks
with budget gimmicks, including $4 billion in Social Security ``forward
funding'' into the year 2000. How are we going to adapt this to lower
spending next year? Will we keep on forward funding into the future,
shrinking and shirking our budget responsibilities?
Another dishonest accounting measure was to label this additional
spending as ``emergency spending'' in order to justify the breaking of
the spending caps. Instead of fencing off the budget surplus to save
Social Security first, as it claims it is doing, Washington has spent
an additional $22 billion of the budget surplus--a third of the
surplus--to fund non-Social Security programs--again, nearly one-third
of the 1998 budget surplus. This is Washington hypocrisy of the highest
degree.
In the past few months, I heard so much demagoguery in the Chamber
about saving Social Security, and we have heard the President pledge
repeatedly to the public that he wanted to use every penny of the
surplus for Social Security. But to date, the administration is still
denying they have, in fact, used the budget surplus. It appears this
administration has a very unique way of interpreting the truth or
admitting the obvious.
Few of the ``emergency spending'' items in this bill are truly
emergency related. Many of these dollars could have been added early on
in the appropriations process. But the maneuvering allowed the
President to spend more, and I know President Clinton's biggest
disappointment in this budget is he wasn't able to spend even more. The
Y2K problem is not new. The need for Bosnia troops funds and the
readiness funds is also not new. These should have been funded earlier.
They should have been funded through the normal budget and
appropriations process. But that allowed them to spend more of the
regular budget so they could come back and dig deeper into the surplus
to spend more money.
I only wish this Congress and the President could be as creative in
finding ways to reduce taxes, cut spending and make the Government more
efficient as they are in finding new and creative ways of spending
money, especially the surplus, and making this Government even bigger.
It is ironic that my Republican colleagues are scared to death of
using the budget surplus for tax relief, despite the fact that it is
the taxpayers' money in the first place, but don't mind at all in
helping the Democrats to spend it.
This bill is a Christmas tree that is loaded not with ornaments but
with plenty of pork projects and backdoor spending. Here is one
example: The bill includes $1 billion for global warming, a 26-percent
increase from last year's funding level. The Senate and the House had
previously rejected this level of funding--rejected it--but somehow
somebody managed to just sneak it back into the bill. Yet the President
hasn't even sent us the global warming treaty. So this funding
basically just mocks the Hagel-Byrd resolution that we passed last
year.
There are some good provisions that I support and worked hard to have
included in this bill. There are many good things in here, such as the
desperately needed relief for farmers, IMF funding, and 100 percent
healthcare cost deductions.
Frankly, some of the provisions and funding will help my own state of
Minnesota. But the reckless process and irresponsible spending
overshadows these good provisions. It was against my conscience to vote
for this legislation.
Mr. President, I am deeply disappointed by the inability of our own
Republican leadership to keep its promise to working Americans. I am
[[Page S12818]]
also deeply troubled that the Republican Party seems to have lost its
courage to stand up to our principles. I expect compromises have to be
made, but not compromises so heavily weighted in one direction,
allowing heavy handed arm twisting, black mailing tactics of this White
House to succeed.
When I first ran for Congress six years ago, I was very proud to be a
Republican because we believed in our vision of a government that works
for the people, and we believed government should be limited to only
that amount needed for necessary services. The Democratic Party, on the
other hand, has long believed that people should work for the
government--or, at the very least, that the government has a right to
spend every penny it can take from working Americans. Basically,
Washington doesn't believe Americans are smart enough to take care of
themselves. I don't know many Americans who believe they need
Washington to hold their hand in spending their money or taking care of
their families.
That is exactly why the American taxpayers ushered in an era of
Republican congressional leadership in 1994--a new majority that
pledged to provide fiscal discipline, individual freedom, personal
responsibility, and prosperity for all people.
What changes have this new majority made four years after the 1994
Republican revolution? Well, the distinctions between the two political
parties have all but disappeared; the taxes on working Americans are at
an all-time high; the government is getting bigger, not smaller;
federal spending has increased from $1.5 trillion in 1994 to $1.76
trillion today; and the national debt has grown from $4.9 trillion to
$5.7 trillion, an $810 billion increase.
Mr. President, these are the differences for which this Republican-
led Congress can take its share of the credit, or more honestly the
blame!
Republicans failed not because our efforts have lost the support of
the people, but because our party has lost its backbone. It has lost
the courage to make a stand on principle and not abandon its moral
compass at the first sign of resistance.
Mr. President, each time Congress makes a promise to the taxpayers--
as it did in promising significant tax relief this year--and then
deserts them, Congress comforts itself by saying it will come back next
year and enact an even larger tax cut. I view this as an insult that
flies in the face of Reality! This is self-deceiving at best. If we do
not take a stand today, what is going to happen to make us more
courageous a year from now? Besides, each year we wait, the government
takes an ever-greater bite of the earnings of working Americans and the
government gets bigger and becomes harder to trim in the future.
Mr. President, another big mistake we made that helped create the
mess we find ourselves in today is that we failed to pass the ``good
government'' legislation I proposed in 1997. I have repeatedly asked
our leaders to honor the commitment they made during consideration of
last year's disaster relief legislation to bring up legislation that
provides an automatic CR at last year's funding level for remaining
appropriations pending at end of the session. This would keep pressure
on appropriators to complete their business and keep all of us in the
process--not just a select few. It would also keep us free from
political blackmail: ``If you do not give me this, then I will shut
down the government and blame you for being heartless and
ineffective.'' It happened before, and Republicans were afraid it could
happen again, and the recklessness of this White House for political
purposes is a reality. Had we such a process in effect this year that
would not allow the government to shut down, we would have completed
the business of the nation on September 30, and not been forced back
here to vote on October 20. This path, not the path we are currently
on, would have been the responsible path to take.
Mr. President, I therefore was forced to cast a ``no'' vote on this
legislation because I am deeply disappointed in this business-as-usual
attitude, and deeply disgusted with the process the pork-laden,
backdoor spending, and the budget gimmicks. Americans deserve better.
And let us put Congress and this President on notice, we will use every
Senate rule available not to let this happen again next year.
I yield the floor.
Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, unless less than 48 hours ago, only a few
in this body had actually seen this nearly 4,000-page, 40-pound, non-
amendable, budget-busting legislation that provides over half-a-
trillion dollars to fund 10 Cabinet-level federal departments for the
fiscal year that started 21 days ago. The bill exceeds the budget
ceiling by $20 billion for what is euphemistically called emergency
spending, much of which is really everyday, garden-variety, pork-barrel
appropriations. The bill is loaded with locality-specific, special
interest, pork-barrel spending projects, which are paid for by robbing
billions from the budget surplus.
I cannot in good conscience support a bill that makes a mockery of
the Congress' role in fiscal matters. This bill is a betrayal of our
responsibility to spend the taxpayers' dollars wisely and enact laws
and policies that reflect the best interests of all Americans, rather
than the special interests of a few.
Most offensive and disturbing to me is the misallocation of more than
$9 billion in so-called emergency defense funding in the bill. The
decision to spend only slightly more than $1 billion on military
readiness, when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and each of
the Service Chiefs testified just last month about an impending
readiness crisis, is a fundamental abandonment of the men and women who
serve in our Armed Forces.
I recently released a comprehensive report on the state of military
readiness that includes a lengthy compilation of material provided by
the Chiefs detailing the myriad of problems the Armed Forces are facing
as a result of inadequate resources to support the missions their
civilian leaders have assigned them. In these documents and in their
testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee just last month, the
Chiefs were unambiguous in pressing for additional funding to address
several serious concerns.
Restoring military retirement benefits was the Chiefs' principal
concern, and I and others introduced legislation to do so. The Chiefs
cited the need to increase military pay for the 25,000 military
families on food stamps. They asked for money to provide incentives to
attract and retain qualified people in military service. They talked
about the dire need for more training and maintenance funds.
Mr. President, the Chiefs are the highest ranking military officers
in our nation. Their sole mission is to ensure that our Armed Forces
can fight and win any future conflict. They are the ones whom we should
heed when we are told how to avert a crisis in military readiness.
So what did the Congress decide to do to address the Chiefs'
concerns? We put over $9 billion in so-called emergency defense funding
in this bill. But we allocated only $1.1 billion to the Chiefs'
priorities, and spent the other $8 billion on other programs that,
while important, will not reverse the declining readiness trend in our
military.
We did nothing to address the Chiefs' number-one concern--restoring
military retirement benefits for 20-year veterans to a full 50 percent
of their highest three salary years. General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Congress very clearly that fixing
the military retirement system is his top recommendation for restoring
the readiness of our armed forces:
The most critical element of both current and future
readiness is the men and women we are privileged to have
serving in uniform today. Our people are more important than
hardware.
I concur whole-heartedly with the Chairman's remarks. Army Chief of
Staff General Reimer has written to me that:
. . . the retirement package we have offered our soldiers
entering the Army since 1986 is inadequate. Having lost 25
percent of its lifetime value as a result of the 1980's
reforms, military retirement is no longer our number one
retention tool. Our soldiers and families deserve better. We
need to send them a strong signal that we haven't forgotten
them.
Mr. President, we did nothing to address this clearly stated, number-
one concern.
[[Page S12819]]
Instead, we bought three Gulfstream executive passenger jets, bought
helicopters for the Colombian anti-drug effort, and padded the budget
to pay for burying utilities at Keesler Air Force Base. We gave another
$210 million of defense money to the Coast Guard to pay for its drug
interdiction mission.
We did give the Services $200 million for military health care, but
that's less than a quarter of what's needed to ensure military
personnel and their families receive the care they need. And we took
care of other legitimate emergency costs, like ongoing operations in
Bosnia and embassy security. But on the whole, the Congress ignored the
clear warnings of our highest ranking military leaders and, once again,
let their parochial priorities take precedence.
Obviously, the waste in this bill does not stop with defense
spending.
Here is just a sampling of the egregious pork-barrel spending in this
bill:
$250,000 to an Illinois firm to research caffeinated chewing gum;
$750,000 for grasshopper research in Alaska;
$1 million for peanut quality research in Georgia;
$1.1 million for manure handling and disposal in Starkville,
Mississippi;
$5 million for a new International Law Enforcement Academy in
Roswell, New Mexico;
$1 million for Kings College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, for
commercialization of pulverization technologies;
$250,000 for Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory;
$1.2 million for a C&O Canal visitors center in Cumberland, Maryland;
$250,000 for a lettuce geneticist in Salinas, California;
$500,000 for the U.S. Plant Stress and Water Conservation Lab in
Lubbock, Texas;
$162,000 for research on peach tree short life in South Carolina;
$200,000 for research on turkey carnovirus in Indiana;
$64,000 for urban pest research in Georgia;
$100,000 for vidalia onion research in Georgia;
An additional $2.5 million for the Office of Cosmetics and Color; and
$200,000 for a grant to the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation
Commission.
And there is much more wasteful spending in this 4,000-page document.
I have here 52 pages of items that I have found in this bill that meet
one or more of the criteria that I and others, such as Citizens Against
Government Waste, the National Taxpayers Union, and other well-known
pork-watchers have used for many years. I have no idea yet of the total
amount of pork on this list, but I am sure it is in the billions of
dollars.
Some of these earmarked projects may well prove meritorious and
deserving of the priority given them in this bill. The problem is that
none of these provisions went through the appropriate merit-based
selection process, which is necessary to determine whether they are
more or less a priority than thousands of other projects that are not
funded in this bill. In addition, some of these provisions were never
included in either the House or Senate version of any regular
appropriations bill. They were simply added, behind closed doors, to
this massive, nonamendable omnibus bill.
Mr. President, we are wasting the people's money when we fund these
dubious proposals. We undermine the faith of our constituents--the
taxpayers--when we continue the practice of earmarking and
inappropriately designating funding for projects based on political
interests rather than national priority and necessity. Unfortunately,
that has occurred here. This bill is a shameful example of why the
American public has become cynical and skeptical of government.
We seem to have forgotten that all these programs, whether
meritorious or not, must be paid for. Designating spending as an
``emergency'' doesn't make it free; it still has to be paid for. And
the Congress, blessed with the first budget surplus since 1969, has
been unable to resist the temptation to dip into that $70 billion
surplus and spend it on pork.
The President declares we must save Social Security first. Members of
Congress declare we must save Social Security first. Yet, we spend
billions from the surplus on everything but Social Security. We don't
save Social Security. We don't pay down the debt. We don't return to
taxpayers a little of their hard-earned money. But we can spend a
little more on pork. I guess we can never have too much of that, Mr.
President, surplus or no surplus.
Mr. President, we have lost track of our priorities. I am
disheartened that Congress found the time and money to finance any
number of pet projects, yet we failed to address the needs of over
7,000 children and families whose lives have been devastated by
hemophilia-related AIDS, in part because of the government's failure to
implement the appropriate safety precautions for the nation's blood
supply in the 1980's. This is simply shameful.
Mr. President, we are supposed to follow a process in Congress for
considering important legislation--a process that relies on openness,
fairness, and public input. If we had adhered to that process in
crafting this bill, many of these egregious provisions might have been
eliminated and our priorities might have been compatible with the
public's priorities.
The process by which this bill was created is deplorable.
Negotiations were conducted behind closed doors, out of sight of the
public as well as the vast majority of Members of Congress. Decisions
were made, and then reversed without notice.
A case in point, Mr. President, is a provision to clarify the status
of auctioned spectrum licenses if the purchaser declares bankruptcy. At
5:00 p.m. on Monday, just a few hours before the Omnibus Appropriations
bill was filed in the House, I was told that this provision was
included in the legislation. Yesterday morning, it had been dropped
from the bill.
In addition, only after the bill was filed did I learn that several
provisions which are clearly within the jurisdiction of the Commerce
Committee, which I chair, were included in the bill. I know other
authorizing chairmen share my frustration at never having been
consulted or even advised about these matters.
Let me point to one example of an appropriation exceeding the amount
authorized for a program. The Senate authorized $192 million for the
Advanced Technology Program of the Commerce Department; the House
approved $180 million. Yet this bill appropriates $203.5 million for
the program. What is the purpose of authorizing funding levels, when
the appropriators simply ignore it and alone decide how much money to
appropriate?
Mr. President, I learned yesterday that the bill does not include a
cost cap on the international space station, as I had earlier been
assured--a cost cap that was included in the NASA reauthorization bill
that was reported from the Commerce Committee and passed by the Senate.
And I learned that the bill includes a provision for a $20 million,
taxpayer-funded buyback of three boats to limit domestic competition in
the fishing trade off Alaska--legislation that the Commerce Committee
had not yet sent to the Senate.
Mr. President, speaking about the authorizing legislation in this
bill, one of the greatest failures of the omnibus bill is its rejection
of comprehensive legislation to improve aviation competition, safety,
and security. Critical aviation programs were due to be reauthorized
this year, and the Commerce Committee duly reported the Federal
Aviation Administration Reauthorization bill to the Senate. It passed
the Senate last month, on an overwhelming vote of 92 to 1.
In this bill, we had an opportunity to stimulate much-needed
competition in the aviation industry and enact a host of other critical
improvements in aviation policy. Frankly, because of the influence of
the major airlines and other secondary interests, the legislation was
blocked. But what we did see fit to do is place a hold on activities of
the Department of Transportation to address anti-competitive behavior
in the airline industry. Major airlines won; competition and consumers
lost.
Mr. President, I am very disappointed to report that the major
airlines have succeeded in dealing yet another setback to the nation's
consumers. As many of my colleagues are aware, the major airlines were
able to scuttle the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization
bill that passed the Senate last month by a vote of 92 to one. Some of
the biggest players in
[[Page S12820]]
the industry fought against it because the bill contained numerous
provisions that would have enhanced airline competition, promoted new
entry, and benefitted consumers. That is why the reauthorization bill
was reduced to a mere six-month extension of the airport grant program.
To add insult to injury, the major carriers have now succeeded in
hampering efforts by the Department of Transportation (DOT) to curtail
illegal competitive behavior industry. Regrettably, the omnibus
appropriations bill includes provisions that would needlessly delay the
issuance of pro-consumer airline competition guidelines that have been
proposed by the DOT. Once again, the major airlines have gotten their
way in Congress when it comes to protecting their turf. Not satisfied
with maintaining the status quo, these carriers have forced us to take
a step backwards.
Last April, the DOT took the commendable step of proposing guidelines
to curb unfair and anti-competitive pricing behavior in the airline
industry. It didn't take long, however, for the major airlines to begin
attacking the DOT for having the audacity to address this issue.
The DOT has already been taking its time reviewing public comments on
its proposed guidelines, which I admit may be in need of improvement.
The added delay provided in the omnibus budget bill only serves to
aggravate the existing situation. The airlines readily admit that this
extended delay gives them more time to kill the competition guidelines
outright. That has been the airlines' goal from the start.
Shortly after the DOT proposed its guidelines, the Aviation
Subcommittee held a hearing on airline competition, and the main focus
was these guidelines. The DOT presented very compelling evidence that
there have been instances of predatory behavior. But the major airlines
merely shrug when confronted with very specific examples of a major
carrier's driving a new entrant out of a market by irrationally cutting
prices and increasing capacity.
Even though such conduct makes sense only if predatory behavior is
the standard, the major airlines insist that they only respond in
normal ways to new entrants.
Clearly, the DOT's effort to address this sort of behavior was too
much for the major carriers to accept. They were able to exert enough
influence on the budget negotiation process to put the competition
guidelines on hold. The carriers were successful, despite that fact
that no such provision passed either Chamber of Congress.
With respect to airline competition policy, as well as many other
matters in the omnibus bill, this situation represents the triumph of
special interests over the public interest. The losers here are not
just the new airlines, but the consumers.
Despite this setback, I want to assure everyone that I will continue
my fight for full and fair airline competition. Whether because of
predatory behavior, or artificial barriers to entry such as slots and
perimeter rules, the traveling public has yet to realize fully the
benefits of deregulation. Fortunately, Congress will have an
opportunity to take action again soon when the authorization for the
Airport Improvement Program expires at the end of next March.
Mr. President, we must not let the major airlines dictate the terms
of competition in their own industry. I am determined to see Congress
do better by consumers next time.
Mr. President, I am also deeply disturbed that the House leadership
has killed aviation competition legislation this session of Congress.
Congress' record shows that it has done nothing to ensure a vibrant,
competitive airline industry. Instead, the negotiators eliminated
competition provisions such as new slot exemptions at capacity
controlled airports, as well as efforts to loosen the perimeter rule at
Reagan National Airport. Legislation to manage the environmental
effects of flights over national parks also fell by the wayside because
of this approach. Obviously the agenda of some is only to protect the
big airlines against competition. Let's be clear, the big airlines have
won. Consumers lost. That is a record about which nobody should be
proud.
Most of my Senate colleagues know that the Commerce Committee worked
hard this year to develop a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation
Administration and the programs it oversees. Following a bipartisan,
inclusive, and constructive process, we developed a package that among
other things would authorize important airport construction grants. The
legislation would institute a host of safety and security enhancements.
It would provide the necessary spending to add more air traffic
controllers in a congested system, and to make sure that the critical
air traffic control systems are equipped to deal with the year 2000
problem. And, the bill would have established a widely-endorsed system
for managing the environmental consequences of commercial air tour
flights over national parks.
One of the key elements of the Senate FAA bill was the aviation
competition title. It would have modestly enhanced the capacity at the
four slot-controlled airports in the country--LaGuardia and JFK in New
York, Chicago O'Hare, and Reagan National. The new entrant, low fare
carriers have been effectively shut out of these key markets, which are
critical to sustaining a healthy network and giving consumers new low
cost choices.
Service to underserved markets in the country would have greatly
benefited under the Senate bill. Rural America has suffered the most
from the effects of hub dominance and the lack of airline competition.
My colleagues from the Dakotas can tell you firsthand about the
crippling effects of the recent Northwest Airline strike, for instance.
Northwest dominates their region. When it shut down, they were
literally cut off from the rest of the country. This is unconscionable.
There are other, clear ``pockets of pain,'' according to the
Department of Transportation and the General Accounting Office. These
include communities in the Appalachian Region, such as Knoxville,
Tennessee; communities in the southeast, such as Jackson, Mississippi;
Des Moines, Iowa, in the midwest; Rochester, Syracuse and Albany in
upstate New York. The citizens of these communities will continue to
suffer from having to pay exorbitant air fares without any real kind of
relief that could have been provided with the FAA bill's promotion of
additional airline competition on existing routes, and additional
access for these underserved communities in key business markets such
as Washington and New York.
There are two reasons why the FAA reauthorization bill failed in the
105th Congress, along with its provisions to enhance competition in the
domestic airline industry. The first reason is the utter intransigence
on the part of the major airlines, and the unmitigated gall that they
exhibit in defending the anti-competitive status quo. Their motives are
dictated solely by increasing their profits with no concern for the
free market. It's about blatant anti-competitiveness. At the same time
that they herald industry consolidation and hoard capacity at their
hubs, they continue to thwart efforts to respond to these changing
dynamics in the industry.
Parochial interests on the part of members of Congress constitute the
second reason that this bill failed.
Specifically, House lawmakers from Illinois and Virginia have taken
down the entire FAA bill because of a few noise complaints from their
districts. We have done everything possible to accommodate their
constituents' noise concerns. We have minimized the impact of new
flights by spreading them out so that there are only one or two new
flights per hour. We have increased their noise mitigation funding.
Further, the FAA continues to enforce Congressional aircraft noise
requirements that have brought noise levels down in their neighborhoods
significantly over the last decade.
Notwithstanding, these Members refused even to come to the table to
acknowledge legitimate interests. Let us not forget, the FAA bill was
approved freestanding by the Senate on a vote of 92 to one. However,
the House refused to even conference with the Senate on the bill.
This is not an insignificant issue. As I noted earlier, just ask the
people of North and South Dakota who were effectively paralyzed because
of one airline. Competition is the principle upon which our free market
economy is based. It is a complete, utter and
[[Page S12821]]
wholesale abrogation of our responsibilities, not only to kill pro-
competition and pro-consumer provisions of the FAA bill, but to stop
any addressing of the issue by the proper authorities. The omnibus
appropriations bill blocks pro-consumer airline competition guidelines,
which were recently proposed by the Department of Transportation.
During these six months we will seize the momentum we developed this
year to enact aviation competition legislation. We will also be
examining additional pro-competition issues. It is too important to our
country, to consumers and to the principles of our free market economy
to look the other way.
Mr. President, as we work over the next six months to finish the job
of reauthorizing federal aviation programs, I intend to use all means
at my disposal to rectify this situation.
Mr. President, even today, there is confusion about what is in the
bill and what is not, because the only copy that was available Tuesday
to all Republican Senators was scattered in pieces around the
Republican Cloakroom. There are no copies of this bill available to the
public and only a few copies available in the Capitol. Most of what the
public knows about this bill comes from media reports and the rumor
mill. Members of Congress are only slightly better informed about the
details of this bill, and we have had no opportunity to carefully
review it.
And even if a Senator discovers that there is something in this bill
that is highly objectionable to him, he cannot amend the bill. He can
only vote for or against the entire package. It is all or nothing--take
it or leave it. We are all held hostage to a process that protects
pork-barrel spending at the expense of good policy.
Well, I, for one, will leave it. That is why I voted against the
wanton fiscal irresponsibility this legislation represents.
Mr. President, we cannot continue to do business this way. We have an
established process and we should follow it. I intend to work with
like-minded Senators to develop needed reforms in that process to
ensure that the Congress cannot so easily sidestep the checks and
balances that are so clearly necessary to control wasteful spending and
ensure responsible legislating, and that were intended by the
Constitution.
Mr. President, I do want to take a moment to talk about some of the
programs and provisions in this bill that are meritorious and which, in
other circumstances, would have received my full support and my vote.
For example, the bill blocks the use of taxpayer-funded needle
exchange programs for drug addicts, institutes new reforms to ensure
accountability and market-based response measures within the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), and extends important tax
provisions, such as the work opportunity and research and development
tax credit. Also, the bill contains $18 billion to replenish the
International Monetary Funds depleted resources, which is critical to
restoring confidence and economic stability in the global economy.
This bill funds many important programs directly benefitting American
families and providing critical assistance to our children, including
Child Care Block grants and Head Start. It increases funding for the
Department of Education to almost $33 billion, including $8 billion for
disadvantaged children and over $5 billion for children with special
needs, but not at the expense of local control. The bill sends $1.1
billion directly to local classrooms ensuring schools have the
flexibility to determine how to meet the unique educational needs of
their students instead of Washington bureaucrats, and it prohibits
federally funded national tests, leaving that decision to state and
local authorities.
I am also pleased to see inclusion of the Internet Tax Freedom bill,
introduced as S. 442, in the omnibus appropriations bill. This limited
moratorium reflects the need for careful thought and analysis of the
implications for taxing electronic commerce, and the proper roles for
local, state and federal government in taxing the Internet. Present
federal law neither authorizes, imposes, nor ratifies any excise,
sales, or domain name registration tax on Internet use for electronic
interstate commerce, and only one fee for the Intellectual
Infrastructure Fund. I am confident that this moratorium will allow
Congress to move forward in developing a national strategy for
advancing electronic commerce and appropriate taxation of the Internet.
I am pleased to see that the provisions concerning Amtrak generally
maintain the integrity of the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act and
continue the mandate for Amtrak to operate free of taxpayer subsidies
by 2002. The bill also provides funding, though limited, directly to
the Amtrak Reform Council instead of channeling such funds through the
Secretary of Transportation. These are good decisions, ones which I
support.
Also contained in this omnibus bill is legislation to increase the
number of H-1B visas for skilled foreign professionals who wish to work
temporarily in the United States in jobs unfilled by American workers.
I cosponsored the original Senate legislation to raise the existing cap
on H-1B visas. The provisions in this bill will allow dynamic American
companies and research labs to hire more skilled foreign professionals.
At the same time, we have incorporated safeguards to protect American
workers and provide substantial funding to educate and train Americans
to fill the lucrative high-tech jobs that are available across our
country. American companies, American workers, and the American
consumer will all benefit as a result.
The provisions I have just mentioned, and many others, are good for
the American people. In fact, if these and many of the other policies
and programs contained in the Omnibus Appropriations bill had been
proposed and considered in the established process, I would have voted
for them. Unfortunately, because the Congress has abandoned the normal
process of legislating, my vote against this Omnibus Appropriations
bill may also be construed, albeit wrongly, as a vote against these
meritorious provisions. My vote against this precedent-setting
legislation should be recognized for what it was--a vote against
wasting taxpayer dollars and failing to ensure the readiness of our
Armed Forces.
Responsible spending is the cornerstone of good governance. I look
forward to the day when we can go before the American people with a
budget that is both fiscally responsible and ends the practice of
earmarking funds in the appropriations process.
Mr. President, those of my colleagues who support this legislation
will say of us who oppose it that we are not practical politicians,
that we ask for the impossible--legislation that is free of compromise,
that we would let the perfect be the enemy of the good. That is a false
charge, and it fails utterly as a defense of a legislative process that
everyone agrees is terribly, terribly flawed.
We do not ask that a Republican majority produce legislation that
reflects in every detail our priorities and dismisses completely the
views of the President and the minority. We ask only that, on balance,
any legislation--and surely legislation of this magnitude--reflect the
principles upon which our majority was elected. We ask only that the
Congress complete its work when it is supposed to complete it work, and
in a manner that ensures fairness, openness, and inclusions. We ask
only that we adhere to a little truth in advertising.
When we say we are going to save Social Security first, we ask only
that we make some attempt to do so. When we call something an
emergency, we should be able to say it with a straight face. When we
promise to restore the resources necessary to provide for the common
defense, we must pay just a little attention to the concerns of the
military. When we promise to return to the people some percentage of
the money they have sent to Washington, we ask only that we rank that
pledge somewhat higher on our list of priorities than the usual
cornucopia of parochial spending.
Those who voted against the omnibus appropriations bill would not let
the perfect be the enemy of the good. We simply oppose letting back-
room negotiations, business as usual, and pork-barrel politics be the
enemy of principle.
Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). The clerk will call the roll to
determine the presence of a quorum.
[[Page S12822]]
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I voted today for the omnibus
appropriations bill that was pending before the Senate, in large part
because, very frankly, of my great doubt that delaying what already has
been an utterly abominable legislative process would, at this late
point, improve the nature of the final product.
It should be abundantly clear to us all, to even the most casual
observers, that the first and most fundamental mistake made by this
105th Congress was the unwillingness, or perhaps the inability, of the
Republican leadership to craft a budget resolution acceptable to a
majority of Members of both parties. But, amazingly, the Republican
leadership was then unable or unwilling to put together a budget
resolution that could even muster the majority support of its own
party. As a result, for the very first time since the current Budget
Act was enacted, Congress was forced to proceed on with the 13 separate
appropriations bills without the benefit of the direction of a budget
resolution at all.
In fairness, this body did pass its own version of a budget
resolution, and much of the difficulty in reaching an agreement with
the other body lies with the radical faction in the House, which was
unwilling to support any measure unless it called for huge tax
reductions funded out of a naked raid on the Social Security surplus.
There were a few Members of this body as well who indicated they could
not vote for a final resolution unless a tax cut/Social Security
plunder plan was involved. So, April 15, the deadline for passage of a
budget resolution, came and it went, and in the end no agreement was
reached between the Senate and the other body and no serious effort at
bipartisanship, frankly, was ever attempted. The budget process that
has ensued, and we have witnessed its culmination today, is certainly a
case of the Republican leadership having to reap what it sowed.
Without the discipline of a budget resolution, this Congress then
proceeded to make an utter mockery of the appropriations process.
Rather than deliberate debate and careful consideration of the 13
separate appropriations bills needed to run the Federal Government, we
wound up with an omnibus appropriations bill weighing some 40 pounds
and going on for 3,825 pages as it compressed 8 of the appropriations
bills, a supplemental appropriations bill, and miscellaneous matters
all into one ill-considered mess. The bill we have had before us today
is a consequence of massive, massive legislative mismanagement.
All this is not to say that the legislation that was before this body
today did not have some redeeming strengths. There will be no Federal
Government shutdown, and as the American people rightfully celebrate
the first balanced unified Federal budget in 30 years, the omnibus bill
does stay within the previously agreed upon budget caps. Thanks to
President Clinton and his earlier veto, this legislation does provide
for significant assistance for farmers and ranchers suffering through
an economic crisis throughout much of rural America and, again, thanks
to the President's tenacity, this bill will provide for the hiring of
additional teachers and the expansion of some key educational programs,
such as Head Start.
But even here, the omnibus bill is not as good as it ought to have
been. The agricultural provisions failed to address the underlying
problem of inadequate market prices for livestock and grain by
neglecting to raise the marketing loan rates, and by eliminating price
reporting and country of origin meat labeling, it does next to nothing
for livestock producers.
The educational provisions are inadequate in several areas, but most
noticeably, the Republican leadership refused to permit a Federal-
State-local partnership which would have allowed the cost of school
construction and renovation bonds to have been significantly reduced
for local taxpayers.
To this Senator, it is simply outrageous for some on the far
political right to claim, as they have, that this commonsense provision
would have amounted to some sort of ``federalization'' of education.
Clearly, the decisions as to whether to build or renovate a school
would have remained at the local level, where such decisions belong,
and the bulk of funding for such construction would likewise have
remained appropriately enough with local taxpayers.
Mr. President, it is not federalization for the Federal Government to
help local citizens reduce the cost of their education decisions,
decisions that they make at the local level, by partially writing down
interest rates on the bonds which these school districts would then
have to issue.
There are some who are referring, with some justification, to the
105th Congress as the worst that has ever met in this Capitol Building.
I don't know if that is true, but the mismanagement of this
legislation, coupled with the refusal of the majority leader to even
allow meaningful debate and progress on such issues as managed health
care reform, campaign finance reform, and modernization of financial
services, among others, ought to be a source of shame for this
institution.
Again, Mr. President, while some have voted against the omnibus bill
as a protest gesture, motivated by any number of concerns, I wanted to
do the responsible thing, and I voted to pass this faulty but, frankly,
at this point in time very necessary legislation. It is my hope,
however, that never again will Congress proceed without a budget
resolution and without an opportunity to debate and deliberate on
individual appropriations bills in a timely manner.
Federal Vacancies Reform Act
Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I am pleased that the essentials of S.
2176 have been incorporated into the Omnibus Appropriations bill, H.R.
4328. I appreciate the work of my colleagues, Senator Byrd in
particular, in seeing that this bill becomes law.
Mr. President, I wish to address the changes that have been made to
S. 2176 since it was reported out of the Governmental Affairs
Committee. The legislative history of the bill is largely described in
the Committee report, S. Rep. 105-250. However, this is the opportunity
to discuss the subsequent changes made in the bill.
The term ``first assistant to the office'' is incorporated into 5
U.S.C. Sec. 3345(a)(1), rather than ``first assistant to the officer.''
This change is made to ``depersonalize'' the first assistant. Questions
have arisen concerning who might be the vacant officer's first
assistant if the acting officer dies or if the acting officer resigns
while a permanent nomination is pending. The term ``first assistant to
the officer'' has been part of the Vacancies Act since 1868, however,
and the change in wording is not intended to alter case law on the
meaning of the term ``first assistant.''
A third category of ``acting officer'' is now permitted apart from
first assistants and presidentially designated persons who have already
received Senate-confirmation to hold another office. The President (and
only the President) may also direct an officer or employee of the
executive agency in which the vacancy arises to be the acting officer
if that officer or employee served in that agency for 90 days preceding
the vacancy caused by the departure of the prior Senate-confirmed
officer and, the officer or employee has been paid at a rate at least
equal to a GS-15. Concerns had been raised that, particularly early in
a presidential administration, there will sometimes be vacancies in
first assistant positions, and that there will not be a large number of
Senate-confirmed officers in the government. In addition, concerns were
raised about designating too many Senate-confirmed persons from other
offices to serve as acting officers in additional positions.
The 180 day period in Sec. 3345(b) governing the length of service
prior to the onset of the vacancy that the first assistant must satisfy
to be eligible to serve as the acting officer is reduced to 90 days.
Under Sec. 3345(b)(1), the revised reference to Sec. 3345(a)(1) means
that this subsection applies only when the acting officer is the first
assistant, and not when the acting officer is designated by the
President pursuant to Sec. Sec. 3345(a)(2) or 3345(a)(3). The 90 day
service requirement is inapplicable to a first assistant who has
already received
[[Page S12823]]
Senate confirmation to serve in that position.
New Sec. 3345(c) was added to address the special case of an
executive department (not executive agency) officer who serves not at
the pleasure of the President, but under a fixed term, and without a
holdover provision that governs acting service in that office following
expiration of the fixed term. In that situation, without passing
judgment on the constitutionality of fixed term appointees within
executive departments, if the person whose term expires is renominated
without a break in service, that already Senate-confirmed officer may
continue to serve in the position subject to the time limits contained
in Sec. 3346 until the Senate confirms or rejects that person's
renomination, notwithstanding the adjournment of the Senate sine die.
The subsection does not apply until the incumbent officeholder is
renominated, or when a person other than the previously appointed
officeholder is nominated.
In Sec. 3346(a), an exception is added for ``sickness,'' a narrower
category than ``unable to perform the functions and duties of the
office.'' If the Senate-confirmed officer cannot serve because he is
sick for more than 210 days, the acting officer may continue to serve
during the sickness, and no nominee need be submitted to the Senate to
avoid the vacant office provisions of Sec. 3348. The office is not
vacant if the Senate-confirmed officer is sick, and he may reclaim the
office even after 210 days if he is no longer ill. However, the 210 day
limit will apply if the Senate-confirmed officer is unable to perform
the functions and duties of the office for other reasons. For instance,
the Doolin court stated that the current language of the Vacancies Act
does not apply when the officer is fired, and for similar reasons, it
might not apply when the officer is in jail if he does not resign. To
make the law cover all situations when the officer cannot perform his
duties, the ``unable to perform the functions and duties of the
office'' language was selected. Sickness is the only exception to the
210 day limit, since in other circumstances when the officer is unable
to perform the functions and duties of the office, there is no reason
to allow the officer to reclaim his duties sometime after 210 days.
The 150 day period adopted in the Governmental Affairs Committee was
lengthened to 210 days in each place it appeared in Sec. 3346 as an
accommodation to the Administration in light of the increased time the
vetting process now consumes.
The amendment's striking of ``in the case of a rejection or
withdrawal'' in Sec. 3346(b)(2) is to ensure that an acting officer can
serve for 210 days if a second nomination is made of a person whose
first nomination was returned by the Senate.
The phrase ``applicable to'' is replaced by ``the exclusive means for
temporarily authorizing an acting official to perform the functions and
duties of'' in Sec. 3347(a) to ensure that the Vacancies Act provides
the sole means by which temporary officers may be appointed unless
contrary statutory language as set forth by this legislation creates an
explicit exception.
The phrase ``statutorily vested in that agency head'' is added to
Sec. 3347(b) to clarify that so-called ``vesting and delegation''
statutes that permit the agency head to delegate functions and duties
to subordinates in the department whose positions lack defined
statutory duties apart from assisting the agency head do not permit the
agency head to appoint acting officials. Thus, the organic statutes of
the Cabinet departments do not qualify as a statutory exception to this
legislation's exclusivity in governing the appointment of temporary
officers.
Changes were made to Sec. 3348(b) to provide that the vacant office
provisions of the legislation apply not only when an acting officer has
served more than 210 days without a nomination for the office having
been submitted to the Senate, but also prior to the 210 days after the
vacancy occurs unless an officer of employee performs the functions of
the vacant office in accordance with Sec. Sec. 3345, 3346, and 3347 of
this legislation.
The tolling period provided in Sec. 3348(c) when the 210th day falls
on a day on which the Senate is not in session is extended from the
first day that the Senate is next in session and receiving nominations
to the second such day.
The changes clarify Sec. 3348(d) to provide that actions taken by
persons not acting under Sec. Sec. 3345, 3346, or 3347 or as provided
by Sec. 3348(b) of any function of a vacant office to which Sec. Sec.
3346, 3347, 3348, 3349, 3349a, 3349b, and 3349c apply shall have no
force or effect.
Added to the list of positions in Sec. 3348(e) that are not subject
to the vacant office provisions are any chief financial officer
appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the
Senate, since the head of the agency should not be permitted to execute
the functions of such an official. The amendment also adds to the same
list any other positions with duties that statutory provisions prohibit
the agency head from performing.
The Comptroller General's duties under Sec. 3349(b) are now to be
performed ``immediately'' upon his or her determining that the 210 day
period has been exceeded.
Section 3349b is changed to preserve all statutory holdover
provisions in independent establishments, not merely those independent
establishments headed by a single officer.
The list of excluded officers contained in Sec. 3349c is expanded to
include any judge appointed by the President by and with the advice of
the Senate to an Article I court. This includes the Court of Federal
Claims, but this exclusion does not apply to administrative law judges,
since they are not appointed by the President by and with the advice
and consent of the Senate. The list is also expanded to include members
of the Surface Transportation Board, which, like the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission, is denominated an ``independent establishment''
despite its location in an Executive department.
New Sec. 3349d addresses the situation when the 210 day service
period for an acting officer expires without a nominee having been
submitted to the Senate, and the 211th day occurs during a Senate
recess or adjournment of more than 15 days. Rather than wait until the
Senate reconvenes to avoid the vacant office provisions of Sec. 3348
from taking effect, the President may submit to the Senate a written
notification of intent to nominate a permanent officer for a particular
office after the recess or adjournment. At that point, an acting
officer qualified to serve as such by this law may begin to serve as
the acting officer for that particular position. So long as the
President actually submits the nomination of the person so designated
in the written notification for that particular office within two days
of the Senate's reconvening, the actions of the acting officer are
valid from the date the acting officer begins service and so long as
the nomination is pending. However, if the President does not actually
nominate the person who was the subject of the written notification for
the particular subject designated in the written notification within
two days of the reconvening of the Senate, then the notification
considered a nomination that permitted the acting officer's service
shall be treated after the second day the Senate reconvenes as a
withdrawn nomination is treated under this legislation.
The effective date of this portion of the bill is 30 days after the
date of its enactment. For any vacant office as of the date of
enactment, the time limitations under Sec. 3346 apply as if the office
became vacant as of the effective date of this section.
If the President nominates a person after the effective date of this
section for an office to which that person had been nominated before
the effective date, that second nomination will be treated as a first
nomination under this section.
All other changes are intended to be purely technical.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the United States Constitution contains two
options providing for the appointment of the principal officers of our
federal government. First, the Appointments Clause, found in Article
II, section 2, clause 2, states that the President ``shall nominate,
and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint''
such officers. Alternatively, should the Senate not be in session,
Article II, section 2, clause 3, authorizes the President to
unilaterally ``fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess
of the Senate,'' subject only
[[Page S12824]]
to the proviso that the recess appointment expires at the end of the
next session of Congress.
As the Supreme Court pointedly observed in the 1997 case of Edmond v.
United States, ``the Appointments Clause of Article II is more than a
matter of `etiquette or protocol'; it is among the significant
structural safeguards of the constitutional scheme.''
With enactment of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, an
important step will have been taken toward securing the Senate's
constitutional responsibility to render its advice and consent on
presidential nominations. It is my hope that this legislation, which
makes several substantive changes to the current Vacancies Act, will
protect this vital constitutional ``safeguard'' by bringing to an end a
quarter century of obfuscation, bureaucratic intransigence, and
outright circumvention
Mr. President, because I am an original sponsor of the Federal
Vacancies Reform Act, and because the Act as it is being enacted
differs somewhat from the bill reported to the Senate by the Committee
on Governmental Affairs on July 15, 1998, (S. Rpt. 105-250), I wish to
offer my perspective on the Act's application, time limitations,
exclusivity and exceptions, enforcement, reporting requirements, and
effective date and application to current vacancies.
Application
Section 3345 states that the provisions of the Act will apply to any
officer in any executive agency, other than the General Accounting
Office, if that officer's appointment is made by the President, subject
to the advice and consent of the Senate. Unlike current law, this
change will make clear that the Vacancies Act, as amended by this
legislation, applies to all executive branch officers whose appointment
requires Senate confirmation, except for those officers described in
Section 3349c.
Section 3345 applies when an officer dies, resigns, or is otherwise
unable to perform the functions and duties of the office (the latter
provision covers, inter alia, sickness or absence, which are listed in
current law, or expiration of a term of office). Should one of these
situations arise, the officer's position may then be filled temporarily
by either: (1) the first assistant to the vacant office; (2) an
executive officer who has been confirmed by the Senate for his current
position; or (3) a career civil servant, paid at or above the GS-15
rate, who has served in the agency for at least 90 of the past 365
days. However, a person may not serve as an acting officer if: (1)(a)
he is not the first assistant, or (b) he has been the first assistant
for less than 90 of the past 365 days, and has not been confirmed for
the position; and (2), the President nominates him to fill the vacant
office.
Time Limitation
Section 3346 places a strict time limit of 210 days upon how long an
acting officer may serve. As the language of this section make
abundantly clear, the time limit begins on the day the position becomes
vacant, and not on any other date. The precise language that was used
in the Act will correct the decision of the D.C. Circuit Court of
Appeals in Doolin Security Savings Bank v. Office of Thrift
Supervision, 139 F.3rd 203 (D.C. Cir. 1998). If, however, the President
forwards to the Senate a first or second nomination to fill the vacant
office, the acting official may continue to serve until 210 days after
the nomination is rejected by the Senate, withdrawn, or returned to the
President by the Senate.
With respect to this time limitation, section 3349d further provides
that the vacant office may be temporarily filled beyond the 210-day
time limit if, during a recess or adjournment of greater than 15 days,
the President formally notifies the Senate of his intention to nominate
a specified person for the vacant position, and, in fact, does submit
to the Senate the nomination within two days of the end of the recess
or adjournment. Should the President, for whatever reason, fail to
forward the nomination, then any action taken by the acting official
shall have no legal force or effect, nor shall that action be ratified.
Moreover, such failure would render the position vacant as of the
second day following the Senate's return.
Finally, on the issue of time, the Act, unlike current law,
appropriately recognizes the difficulties faced by a new President
following his initial inauguration. To address that situation, section
3349a provides that, with respect to any advice-and-consent position
which becomes vacant during the first 60 days of the new President's
term, the 210 day time limitation shall not begin until 90 days after
the inauguration date, or 90 days after the date of the vacancy,
whichever is later. Effectively, then, this provision will give a new
President up to 300 days to forward nominations to the Senate.
Exclusivity and Exceptions
Mr. President, turning now to the question of the exclusivity of the
Act, I think it is a fair assessment of this entire issue to say that
the matter of exclusivity is the bedrock point on which the executive
and legislative branches have historically differed. Indeed, it is very
likely that we would not be here today were it not for the differing
interpretations as to the exclusivity of the Vacancies Act. And,
without opening old wounds, suffice it to say that the problems that
have heretofore been brought to the attention of Congress were not the
fault of any one President, any one Attorney General, and certainly not
the fault of any one political party. Accordingly, it is my fervent
hope that the language of the Act will, once and for all, end this
decades-long disagreement.
As the language of Section 3347 makes clear, unless other statutory
provisions exist which explicitly authorize the temporary filling of
vacancies in executive positions requiring Senate confirmation, or
unless such provisions are enacted in the future, Sections 3345-3349d
are to be the exclusive statutory means for filling vacant advice-and-
consent positions in the executive branch.
Moreover, in an effort to squarely address past problems, the Act
specifically prohibits the use of general, ``housekeeping'' statutes as
a basis for circumventing the Vacancies Act. Provisions such as, but
not limited to, 28 U.S.C. 509 and 510, which vest all functions of the
Department of Justice in the Attorney General and allow the Attorney
General to delegate responsibility for carrying out those functions,
shall not be construed as providing an alternative means of filling
vacancies.
Finally, Section 3349b makes clear that the Vacancies Act, as now
amended, does not affect statutory holdover provisions. Nor does the
Act, as explained in Section 3349c, apply to members of independent,
multiple-member boards or commissions, to commissioners of the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission, to members of the Surface Transportation
Board, or to any judge of any court constituted pursuant to Article I
of the Constitution.
Enforcement
Mr. President, with enactment of this legislation, the Vacancies Act
will, for the first time ever, contain an effective enforcement
mechanism. As spelled out in Section 3348, failure to comply with
Sections 3345, 3346, or 3347 shall result in a vacant office remaining
vacant, and no-one, other than the agency head, may perform the
functions or duties that are assigned by statute or regulation to that
office exclusively. An action taken by an acting official who is not in
compliance with Sections 3345, 3346, or 3347 shall have no force or
effect and may not be subsequently ratified.
For those who are concerned with this provision, I would point out
that, while this is an effective, and admittedly tough enforcement
mechanism, it is not so stringent that it will result in governmental
paralysis. On the contrary, not only is the head of the agency
authorized to carry out the most essential functions of an office
forced to remain vacant due to noncompliance, but the language of the
legislation is crafted in such a way as to allow for the filling of a
vacant office once the President submits a nomination to the Senate. In
that respect, then, the enforcement mechanism should not be considered,
nor is it intended to be, a form of punishment, but, rather, a means of
providing incentive for the timely submission of nominations.
Reporting Requirement
Because one of the keys to exacting compliance with the Vacancies Act
is full and complete disclosure of information regarding vacant
positions, Section 3349 establishes a provision for the regular
reporting of information.
[[Page S12825]]
Under this section, the head of each executive branch agency shall, at
the appropriate time, submit to the Comptroller General and to each
House of Congress the following information: Notification of any
vacancy in an office subject to the Vacancies Act; the name of the
person serving in an acting capacity and the date such service began;
the name of any person nominated for the vacant position and the date
such nomination was submitted to the Senate; and the date the
nomination was withdrawn, rejected by the Senate or returned by the
Senate. If the Comptroller General, once he has received the relevant
information, determines that an individual is serving in an acting
capacity beyond the 210-day time limitation in violation of the
Vacancies Act, the Comptroller General is required to notify the
Senate, the House of Representatives, various committees of the two
Houses, the Office of Personnel Management and the President.
Mr. President, although these may seem to be rather routine
procedures, in this case they are vitally important, because one of the
great difficulties in crafting this legislation has been the absence of
reliable information. However, with these reporting requirements, the
Congress and the executive branch will be in a far better position to
objectively evaluate the operation of the Vacancies Act, and, should
this issue require further review, will be prepared to discuss the
matter based on reliable data.
Effective Date and Application to Current Vacancies
Finally, let me address the matter of the Act's effective date and
application. First, as the legislation makes clear, the Act will take
effect 30 days after the date of enactment. Next, the Act, and all of
its provisions, will fully apply to any position which becomes vacant
after the effective date. Third, with respect to those positions that
are vacant on the effective date, or those positions which are being
filled by an acting official on the effective date, only the time
limitations of section 3346 shall apply. None of the other provisions
of the Act (including, but not limited to, the length of service
requirements contained in section 3345), shall apply to those
individuals currently serving in an acting capacity. Lastly, the Act
makes clear that, notwithstanding the fact that an individual may have
previously been nominated, the next nomination of that individual will
be treated as a first nomination for purposes of the Vacancies Act, as
amended.
Mr. President, that concludes my remarks on the meaning and intent of
the various provisions of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998.
However, I would like to take a moment to extend my congratulations and
my sincere gratitude to Senator Thompson, the distinguished chairman of
the Committee on Governmental Affairs, for all the time and effort he
has put into this endeavor. I also wish to thank the Democratic members
of the committee--in particular Senators Glenn, Levin, Lieberman and
Durbin--for their willingness to see this legislation through to
completion. It was not an easy task, and I commend them all for their
hard work. Despite the difficulties, though, I hope they will agree
that securing the rights of the Senate, and thus the integrity of the
U.S. Constitution, is a task that bears doing no matter how demanding
it may be.
Women's Health Cancer Rights Act of 1998
Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President I rise today to applaud this body for
passing perhaps one of the most critical pieces of legislation this
Congress. Today, before the Senate, in the omnibus appropriations bill,
is the Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act of 1998, or more
appropriately, Janet's Law.
Mr. President, I first began the fight to pass this critical
legislation on January 30, 1997 when I introduced this legislation
along with Senator Diane Feinstein, Senator Olympia Snowe, Senators
Hollings, Moynihan, Domenici, Faircloth, Moseley-Braun, Biden, Inouye,
Murkowski, Dodd, Kerrey, Hatch, Gregg, Smith, and Ford.
We faced an uphill fight, but we were persistent. We never gave up.
We couldn't--Mr. President, there was too much at stake. We took on
this fight for the women of America--our mothers and daughters, sisters
and wives, grandmothers and friends. We took on this fight because it
was critical to the health of every woman in America.
Today, there are 2.6 million women living with breast cancer. In 1998
alone, more than 184,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer
and, tragically, 44,000 women will die of this dreaded disease. Breast
cancer is still the most common form of cancer in women; every 3
minutes another woman is diagnosed and every 11 minutes another woman
dies of breast cancer.
I want to tell you, Mr. President, about one of those women, because
the battle against breast cancer is not about statistics--it's about
real women who are in the fight of their lives. Janet Franquet, a young
woman, just 31 years old, from my home state of New York was recently
denied reconstructive surgery following a mastectomy.
Janet Franquet was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of
breast cancer on December 11, 1997. Mrs. Franquet required a mastectomy
and a very intricate, involved reconstruction of the breast following
her mastectomy. The wound site required her surgeon to perform a very
extensive procedure, medically necessary due to the considerable wound
site after the removal of her breast.
Mrs. Franquet's insurance provider, the National Organization of
Industrial Trade Unions (NOITU) Insurance Trust Fund refused to cover
the reconstruction of Mrs. Franquet's breast. Imagine the shock and
horror of being told by your HMO that surgery following the removal of
your breast is cosmetic. That is outrageous.
In fact, when the surgeon performing the reconstruction asked about
coverage, the Medical Director of the insurance company told Mrs.
Franquet's doctor that breast reconstruction was considered cosmetic
surgery, and he would have to deny coverage.
So, Mr. President, I decided that I would give Mrs. Franquet's
insurance company a call. When I spoke with the Medical Director for
the insurance company, he told me that ``replacement of a breast is not
medically necessary and not covered under the plan. This is not a
bodily function and therefore can not and should not be replaced.''
Mrs. Franquet and her family, were left to pay for the procedure out
of their own pocket. The procedure cost approximately $16,500. Luckily,
her doctor, Dr. Todd Wider, agreed to forgo payment for this life
saving surgery. But recently, the insurance fund agreed to pay for the
surgery--only after a lengthy appeal before the Board of Directors with
lawyers and doctors testifying as to the medical necessity of the
surgery.
I ask you, Mr. President, how many other Janet Franquets are out
there? Will they be lucky enough to have a Dr. Wider to take care of
them, or will they be forced to forgo this lifesaving surgery so that
insurance companies can cut costs and save money?
That is why, Mr. President, I began this fight in the Senate and made
it my crusade every day, at every opportunity. The D'Amato legislation
which we will enact into law today makes critically important changes
in how breast cancer patients receive medical care.
This important reform legislation will significantly change the way
insurance companies provide coverage for women diagnosed with breast
cancer. This new law will ensure that breast cancer patients will have
access to reconstructive surgery following mastectomies. Too many women
have been denied reconstructive surgery following mastectomies because
insurers have deemed the procedure cosmetic and not medically
necessary. It is absolutely unacceptable and wrong that many insurers
have decided that this essential surgery is ``cosmetic.''
I know that there are going to be those who say let the marketplace
work, let free competition work. Well, that is simply naive. To say
that by insisting on a minimum standard, insisting on basic commonsense
minimums we are interfering with the free market system is
preposterous. For the government to not live up to its most basic duty
of protecting its citizenry, that is what is wrong.
There exists a very basic relationship between a doctor and a patient
that no Member of Congress and no insurance bean counter can ever
understand.
[[Page S12826]]
That bond is so basic and so sacred that it is only the physician who
is treating their patient who can truly understand it. It is only that
physician who can truly determine the best course of action for their
patient and knows how to save their life. Congress has a duty to
protect that bond and ensure that the physician is able to practice
medicine.
This legislation is crucial not only for the women of New York, where
breast cancer ranks among the top in the Nation, but for the entire
country as well. Our families have been ravaged by this horrible
disease. Our grandmothers, mothers and daughters, sisters and wives,
children and friends have been afflicted at rates that are unexplained
and far too high.
We must continue to work together, on a bipartisan basis, to find a
cure for breast cancer. But until a cure is found, we must ensure that
women receive the treatment they deserve. This legislation protects
women and the families and friends of women who have been diagnosed
with breast cancer.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this bill be recognized
as Janet's Law, after Janet Franquet, the woman who was the inspiration
for this bill and who in fact serves as a heroine to many women who
were denied reconstructive surgery prior to her. Thanks largely to Mrs.
Franquet's efforts and determination in this issue, no woman will ever
be denied reconstructive surgery again. Janet's case has served as an
inspiration for me to keep fighting in the war against breast cancer
and should be an inspiration to every Member of Congress.
I thank all my colleagues for helping me pass this critical
legislation, and I thank the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee,
chairman Stevens and the majority leader, Senator Lott for their hard
work in ensuring the protection of American women who have been
afflicted with breast cancer.
The Need to Track Former TANF Recipients
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, today, I would like to call attention
to a small but very important issue that was not addressed in the
appropriations bill that was considered today. In short, Congress has
not provided the necessary funding to HHS to track what happens to
families who have been dropped from the welfare caseloads.
Back in April when the Senate passed the budget resolution, it
included an amendment that I offered directing HHS to determine whether
former welfare recipients are achieving ``economic self-sufficiency''
once they stop receiving benefits. But a budget resolution was never
adopted by Congress. I ask all my colleagues, why don't we want to know
what is happening to families after they leave welfare? Are we afraid
of what we might find?
So many of my colleagues keep talking about the success of reform,
citing the dramatic drop in the number of caseloads. But I ask you, do
we know where those families are? Are they better off? Have they
achieved economic self-sufficiency? Or are they more deeply enmeshed in
poverty? Why are we not interested in finding answers to these
questions? As policy makers it is our duty and our responsibility to
make sure that the policies we enact for the good of the people
actually are doing good for the people. But if we don't go and find out
how they are actually affecting families, how will we know? We need to
put in place the means to address these very critical questions, and
directing HHS to set up a means of evaluating what happens to families
is the most common sense way to approach this issue.
Evaluation is one of the key ingredients in good policy making and it
does not take a degree in political science to realize what anyone with
good common sense knows: if we want to try something new, we need to
assess how that new program works. Now when Congress enacted welfare
reform, the goals as I understood them were to move people off of
welfare and dependency and into jobs and economic self-sufficiency. The
dropping number of caseloads implies that we have met only part of the
first goal--moving families off of welfare. But eliminating dependency
and achieving economic self-sufficiency through a job that supports a
family are effects that can only be determined over a longer period of
time. As policy makers--regardless of ideological stripe--it is our
role to ensure that the programs that Congress enacts to provide for
American families' well-being are effective and produce the goals we
intended them to. We need to know what is happening with the families
who are affected by the new reform, whether it is in fact effectively
helping low income mothers and their children build a path to economic
self-sufficiency.
What we do know, what everyone knows is that the caseloads have
dropped dramatically--1.3 million families have left welfare since
August of 1996 alone, that is 4.5 million total recipients including
mothers and their children. But what that number tells us is only a
snapshot of the broader picture.
I want to take a moment to talk about this number and what it tells
us. First of all, we have to recognize how naive it is to assume that
all 1.3 million of those families are finding jobs and moving towards a
life of economic self-sufficiency, because that number only tells us
about families that have been dropped from the caseload--and families
drop from the caseloads for many different reasons. A family may lose
their benefits due to sanctions, or they may leave welfare on their
own, for many reasons which we do not know. Even more troubling is that
although the number of families receiving welfare has declined,
indicators of poverty have not shown a similar or equal rate of
decline, which means that many families who are eligible for assistance
are not even applying.
Even among families where the parent has found a job--because without
it they would not be receiving any assistance--we know very little. We
do not know how long those jobs are lasting or whether they are the
kind of jobs that will put families on a path to economic self-
sufficiency. Just because a parent finds a job does not mean that the
family is no longer poor. Getting a job that pays a family wage, that
enables a mother to provide a life for her children that lifts them all
out of poverty does not happen overnight. We need to know what happens
to families 6 months, 12 months, even a couple of years down the road.
And we do not know that.
No one seems to know, even those members of Congress who keep
trumpeting the ``victory'' of welfare reform. Just a few weeks ago, in
the Conference Committee for the Higher Ed. bill, I asked my colleagues
if they knew of any research demonstrating that these 1.3 million
families had indeed achieved economic self-sufficiency and no one had
an answer for me. No one! Let me just say that accepting a very narrow
measure of what has happened to 1.3 million families is no victory in
my book.
Each family is more than a number, more than another tally mark to be
added to that statistic of 1.3 million caseloads. Adding up that tally
does not answer critical questions. Questions like why did that family
stop receiving benefits? Was it due to an increased income from the
mother's job? If yes, then what kind of wages is that mother now
making? Does she have a job that is going to enable her to continue to
provide for her family, or will the next crisis of a sick child, a
broken down car, or some other unforeseen problem push her back to
needing assistance? We have very little information about the
situations of these 1.3 million families. We are in the dark because we
turned off the lights.
Now, let me back up a minute and provide my colleagues with some
background on this issue of asking the necessary questions about the
impact of welfare reform. Requiring states to evaluate the impact of
new welfare policies is not new. Not at all. In fact, prior to enacting
the 1996 reform, all states that applied for a waiver to try an
experiment with their AFDC program--and 43 out of 50 states had been
granted waivers by 1996--were required under the regulations of the
waiver to hire an outside contractor to evaluate the impact of their
new program. For example, in Minnesota, two of the primary criteria for
evaluating the programs were whether the program ``helped families
increased their income and self-sufficiency'' and ``supported families'
movement toward self-support.''
But when Congress enacted TANF, states were no longer required to
continue those evaluations. In fact, 24
[[Page S12827]]
states stopped the evaluation process altogether, and only 19 have
applied for funds to continue those evaluations. That means that over
half of the states ended their project evaluations when Congress
dropped the requirement to assess the impact of reform.
Of course these projects that I have just mentioned are not the only
evaluations of the new reform. When states begin to apply to HHS for
the $1 billion in bonus money for successfully moving families into
self-sufficiency, they will be required to report on the status of both
current and former recipients. Then, HHS will have some information
about what is happening. But that information will not be available
until at least the Fall of 1999.
Last year Congress considered this issue important, since we
specifically earmarked $5 million in the FY98 Labor-HHS appropriations
for HHS to give to states interested in doing their own tracking
studies. And just a few weeks ago, HHS announced it had awarded grants
to 13 state and county projects to track ``leavers''--those who have
been dropped from the caseloads due to increased earnings or sanctions,
and those who have not even applied for assistance even though they are
eligible. This is an example of responsible policy making, and I will
be very interested in the outcomes of these evaluations. But in a
year's time, these 13 projects will be cut off at the knees. These
projects will be unable to complete their planned evaluations because
they will not have the necessary funds. Why? Because Congress has
failed to appropriate similar funds for FY99. I ask you again, what are
we afraid of?
We do have some information, but it is not very helpful. You might
not want to know about it, but I'm going to talk about it anyway,
because I want to illustrate that what information we do have is very,
very limited.
Recently released reports give us some idea of what is happening, but
there are huge holes in what we do know. The good news is that many
states--31 according to the National Conference of State Legislatures--
are conducting various types of tracking studies on their own. The bad
news is that these studies are wildly diverse in terms of who they
track, how long they track recipients, and when their reports will be
available to the public.
Let me just give you a snapshot of what this kind of tracking system
looks like. The studies run the gamut from those examining all closed
cases, to only sanctioned cases, to cases closed due to increased
earnings, to families diverted from ever applying for assistance. And
the time frames of the studies range from 6 months to five years and
everything in between.
But the really frustrating thing about what appears to be a potential
wealth of data is that there is no central clearinghouse for it. As I
mentioned before, HHS received a special $5 million appropriation for
FY98 to fund some tracking studies. But the funds were only to provide
help to states to do their own tracking. It did not provide funds so
that HHS could act as a central location for analyzing the results of
these studies. So, while I was glad that Congress committed necessary
resources to studying what happens to families after they leave
welfare, that is only part of the job. We need an efficient means of
analyzing the information that we do collect, and directing HHS to
serve as a central clearinghouse would have been the best way of doing
that.
There are other problems with this scatter-shot approach to tracking.
One of them is that it does not allow us to trace what happens to
families that get sanctioned. Do they get caught up in a ``churning''
cycle, getting sent to the end of the line, deepening the hardship of
an already poor family? One study in Iowa of families that had been
sanctioned found that only 30% were working 30 hours a week or more and
almost half of them had experienced a dramatic decrease in their income
(over $380 per month).
From several studies, in New Jersey, Iowa, and Tennessee, it seems
that many families who are being dropped from welfare due to sanctions
are turning to other family members for assistance. A study in New
Jersey showed that almost 50% of the families that were sanctioned and
lost their benefits turned to family for aid; in Tennessee, 71% sought
help from other family members. While I understand the intent of
welfare reform was to decrease families' dependency on welfare, I do
not think--and I am confident that my colleagues agree--that it was
Congress's intent to shift the burden of assistance to other low income
families who are just keeping their own heads above water.
Families that get sanctioned are at least within the state's data
base and are easier to track. The groups that we really know very
little about are those families in need who never even make it onto the
official welfare roles. Many families are discouraged from even
applying for aid or get diverted by receiving a lump sum of 2 or 3
months of benefits. In New York City--in Brooklyn and Queens--the
primary goal of city welfare offices, according to its official manual,
is to discourage families from even applying for assistance by
encouraging them to get a job or depend on relatives.
While this may initially save the state money and reduce its
caseloads, shifting the need of mothers and their children to other
family members spreads individual resources more thinly and risks
expanding the number of families in poverty. More disturbing is that
this phenomenon does not appear to be only happening in New York. I
think this is a very troubling trend that seems to be attached to these
groups, one that I want to bring to my colleagues' attention because I
think it will have greater implications for all low-income working
families.
As I have mentioned, very little research looks at the long term
impact of reform, and most of the studies I have mentioned above are
short-term studies. But a program in Oregon is often cited as one to
emulate. I would like to take a moment here to tell my colleagues about
this particular program, because I think this case shows us the
importance of getting more information than just the number of
recipients dropped from the caseloads.
Unlike other welfare to work programs that focused on recipients just
getting a job--any job--the Portland program provided really strong
support services to help families find a ``good'' job, a full-time job
that paid above minimum wage, included medical benefits and the
potential for advancement. The way that the Portland program did this
was to take a ``mixed services'' approach. And what that translates
into is what I would think would be a good job search program for
anyone, whether they were on welfare or not.
First, staff assessed the skills and interests of recipients, and
then they worked closely with individual recipients to help them plan a
strategy for getting what they needed to find a good job. Those folks
that needed educational or vocational training were sent to do that.
Training also included programs that helped parents who needed some
life skills training to improve their employability. And as recipients
were participating in these programs, program staff worked closely with
local companies and employers to match recipients with good jobs where
they would succeed.
For many families, this approach worked to get them jobs that did pay
higher than the minimum wage at the time ($4.15), and many were still
at their jobs at the end of two years. But, there is a finer point that
needs to be made about what appears to be good news in this study. The
jobs that parents got were higher than minimum wage, but they were
still only $6 an hour at the most. Well, that just isn't enough for a
family of three--a mother and two children, which is what the average
family on welfare consists of--to make ends meet. And the bigger
downside is that although many families were able to leave welfare, 40%
of families were still receiving cash assistance at the end of two
years.
Even if we were to be optimistic about the potential for these $6 an
hour jobs to translate into job advancement and greater earnings, what
about the other 40% who still needed cash assistance? We cannot be
celebrating welfare reform as a ``success'' when so many former
recipients have jobs that only move them to just beyond the eligibility
line for cash assistance but do not set them on that path to economic
self-security. And, probably more importantly, we need to know more
about the specific barriers that keep those 40% of families from
getting a ``good job'' too. We just cannot walk away from them.
[[Page S12828]]
As I mentioned, the program in Portland is unusual compared to other
welfare-to-work programs. On the other end of the spectrum are programs
like Wisconsin Works, better known as W-2. With the W-2 program, the
basic premise is that parents will not get cash assistance unless they
are working. This kind of program moves parents into the work force
very quickly, because they need that cash assistance. But what a recent
study of Milwaukee families found was that even though parents are
getting jobs quickly, 6 months later three quarters of them were no
longer employed. And of those parents who did get jobs, only 14% were
getting paid full time wages. That means that less than 2 out of 10
families had a parent who was working full time.
This is very disturbing information. What is happening to these
families who are getting pushed into the work force so quickly that
they are not given the opportunity or the training to find jobs that
are more likely to translate into sustained, full-time employment.
Based on this study, it is very clear to me that we as policy makers
definitely need to know about how other ``work first'' approaches are
affecting families. When less than 2 out of 10 families has a parent
bringing home a full time wage, there are a lot of families who are not
making ends meet, and that is not a success in my book.
Looking at the administrative side, we know that since the caseloads
have dropped dramatically, states have more funds available to provide
support services to families trying to find jobs. However, the 1.3
million drop in caseloads is only a drop in the number of families
receiving cash assistance; many of those families are still receiving
other support services such as subsidized child care, transportation,
housing and medical care. When the labor market hits a downturn--which
is the direction it appears to be heading--and many families are forced
to return for cash assistance, what will happen to the states' ability
to provide these support services necessary to put those mothers back
in the workforce? There is much uncertainty about the future and we are
doing little to reduce it.
Even those of my colleagues who supported the 1996 welfare reform
bill must recognize Congress's important responsibility of finding out
what is happening to those 1.3 million families who have been dropped
from the roles. Reform is not a one-shot deal. Real reform involves
long term oversight to insure that policies benefit all parties: states
and poor mothers and their children.
I have always said, the true test of welfare reform will come in the
austere economic times, when many more families will need it most. Will
we wait until folks are again in dire straits before we begin to gather
information about how to correct the programs that we have just
reformed? Are we really going to allow ourselves to be so short-
sighted? Or will we recognize that our responsibility to enact good
policies that protect our most vulnerable populations such as poor
mothers and their children is intrinsic to our duty as good and
effective policy makers. Not until we are sure that this reform has
accomplished all of its goals-- eliminating dependency and helping
families to establish and maintain economic self-sufficiency--can we
truly claim that this reform is good and sound policy for all.
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I rise today to express my deep concern for
some of the provisions in the omnibus measure that we have passed
today. I voted for this bill because I believe that there are some very
good provisions in it, and, on balance, I think it serves the American
people well. It re-energizes our national drug control effort. It tries
to boost the morale and readiness of our armed forces, rather than
continuing the dangerous trend toward a hollow military. It helps
protect citizens' second amendment rights. It prohibits Federal funding
of needle exchanges. The bill retains language blocking Members of
Congress, judges and members of the Federal executive service from
receiving a cost-of-living increase. There is a one-year moratorium on
Department of Education-sponsored national testing. I voted for this
bill because I have been assured that we have stayed within the budget
caps.
I am concerned, however, about the integrity of the budget and
appropriations process and the classification of emergency spending
that has prevailed in this omnibus measure. Other Senators have spoken
here on the Senate floor about the dereliction of congressional duty in
failing to pass 13 individual spending bills during this year's session
of the Senate. Instead, because of partisan politics, we are here
passing a massive spending bill that rolls eight appropriations bills
into one large catch-all bill, which also includes dozens of extraneous
matters. If that is not bad enough, we have also included ``emergency''
spending to the tune of more than $20 billion.
This spending is considered outside of the budget and therefore not
subject to the budget caps. What this means, however, is that this $20
billion comes directly out of the budget surplus. It is sometimes
necessary to appropriate funds for emergencies like hurricanes, floods
or other natural disasters. I am disappointed, however, that we have
appropriated billions of dollars for things that can hardly be
considered emergencies. Our troops have been in Bosnia for three
years--is this a surprise? The Year 2000 problem? With foresight, we
could have planned for this through the regular appropriations process
rather than designating it as an emergency. So instead of making room
for these spending priorities, the President has declared them
emergencies and instead of imposing fiscal discipline, he--and we--have
used the surplus that the President demanded be saved for Social
Security to pay for them.
As a member of the Senate Budget Committee, I think it should be our
first priority next year to examine how we classify emergency spending.
No longer should the Congress--or the President--be allowed to spend
our budget surplus for matters that should be paid for through the
regular appropriations process. Second, I would like to reiterate my
support for Senator Domenici's biennial budgeting bill. It is at times
like this that the need for biennial budgeting becomes even clearer.
Mr. President, as I said, this bill, though far from perfect, will
work more good than mischief. There are real problems with this bill
and the process that created it; however, we must sometimes accept that
our system of government divides power between Congress and the
President. The President's priorities differ from most of our
priorities. In these circumstances, compromise must rule the day.
Mr. President, as a member of the Senate Budget Committee, I look
forward to meeting our budgeting challenges when we return next year. I
hope that we are able to continue on the course that we set last year
when we enacted tight discretionary spending caps and charted a course
toward a $1.5 trillion surplus. While I am concerned about the process
that got us here today, I remain hopeful that we will take the
necessary steps next year to keep us on our course toward fiscal
responsibility and continued prosperity.
charitable giving incentive act
Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, among the provisions included in
the tax package we voted on today is a provision of great importance to
the charitable giving community: an extension of the enhanced deduction
for contributions of publicly-traded stock to private foundations.
Although extending this deduction benefits many and is a useful tool
for providing funds for charitable purposes, this deduction alone is
not enough.
In this era of ever-tightening fiscal constraints, we have asked our
communities to do more and more for those less fortunate. Charitable
organizations in our communities have become an integral part of the
safety net for the poor and homeless and significant sources of
assistance for education, health care, child development and the arts.
To meet the increasing deficit in unmet social needs, the government
cannot merely expect the private sector to fill the gap, but must
provide the leadership for the use of private sector resources through
changes in the Tax Code. One source of untapped resources for
charitable purposes is the contribution of closely held corporate
stock. Under current law, the tax cost of contributing closely held
stock to a charity or foundation is prohibitive, and it
[[Page S12829]]
discourages families and owners from disposing of their businesses in
this manner.
Earlier this year, I was joined by Senators Feinstein, Wyden, Baucus,
and Gorton in introducing legislation that would provide an incentive
to business owners to use their corporate wealth for charitable causes.
S. 1412, the Charitable Giving Incentive Act of 1998, would permit a
closely-held business to transfer its assets into a 501(c)(3)
charitable organization without paying the 35 percent corporate level
tax. Thus, the recipient charity would receive the full benefit of the
gift. Identical legislation has also been introduced in the House by
Representatives Dunn, Furse, Nethercutt, Hooley, Paul, and Smith of
Oregon.
In addition to this bipartisan congressional support, we have
garnered support from the charitable community. It is my intention to
reintroduce this legislation in the 106th Congress, and I look forward
to working with the Finance Committee Chairman Roth, Ranking Member
Moynihan and my Senate colleagues to legislate changes that will make
it easier for the citizens of this country to give to charitable
causes.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from
organizations supporting the legislation be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
October 9, 1998.
Senator William Roth,
Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, U.S. Senate, Dirksen
Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
The undersigned organizations are all tax exempt 501(c)(3)
charitable entities, or representatives thereof, whose
efforts are dependent upon the charitable giving of concerned
individuals. With the needs of our communities growing, and
in some cases the financial support from government agencies
diminishing, many endeavors are increasingly reliant upon a
core group of concerned, consistent, and active givers. It is
important to encourage and reward the selfless sharing by
this group and to expand its membership.
Accordingly, we support legislation that has been
introduced in this Congress to provide tax incentives for the
donation of significant amounts of closely-held stock. H.R.
3029 and S. 1412, the Charitable Giving Incentive Act, would
permit the tax-free liquidation of a closely-held corporation
into a charity if at least 80 percent of the stock of the
corporation were donated to a 501(c)(3) organization upon the
death of a donor. Thus, the 35 percent corporate tax that
would otherwise be paid is not imposed: all of the value of
the contribution would go to charitable purposes. This is the
same tax result as would occur if the business had been held
in non-corporate form.
The current disincentive for substantial contributions of
closely-held stock should be corrected at the earliest
opportunity. We believe such a change would encourage
additional transfers to charity because the donors will see
more of the benefit going to the charity and not to taxes. We
hope that appropriate tax incentives will encourage more
families to devote significant portions of their businesses,
and their wealth, to charitable purposes.
As a key member of Congress, we urge your active support
for this effort to expand charitable giving by individuals
and businesses. The needs are great. While government cannot
do it all, it can provide leadership for others to do more by
removing current impediments. Your support and assistance are
needed. Thank you for your favorable consideration of this
request.
Sincerely,
Council on Foundations; Council of Jewish Federations; The
Children's Foundation; The National Federation of Nonprofits;
and The National Community Action Foundation.
Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I voted against the
Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for
Fiscal Year 1999. One of the principal reasons why I voted against the
bill is that it does not include two critically important provisions of
the Smith amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill
that passed the Senate on July 21, 1998, by a vote of 69-31. The Smith
amendment provided major protections of the rights of law-abiding gun
owners under the second amendment to the Constitution of the United
States.
As passed by the Senate last July, the Smith amendment included three
major provisions. First, the Smith amendment prohibited the Federal
Bureau of Investigation from charging a user fee or ``gun tax'' for the
so-called Brady handgun National Instant Check System (NICS) that will
go into effect later this year. Second, the Smith amendment required
the ``immediate destruction'' of all records related to gun purchasers
who are determined by the system to be legally entitled to buy a gun.
Third, the Smith amendment created a private cause of action on the
part of any individual gun purchaser who is the victim of a violation
of either or both of the first two provisions of the amendment.
Unfortunately, Mr. President, only the first provision of the Smith
amendment remains intact in the final version of the omnibus
appropriations bill. Although I am pleased that the FBI's gun tax
scheme is now dead, I am deeply disappointed that those who negotiated
this bill with the administration have ignored the legislatively
expressed will of 69 United States Senators by rendering all but
meaningless the second, and eliminating altogether the third,
provisions of the Smith amendment.
The omnibus appropriations bill replaces the Smith amendment's
requirement for the ``immediate destruction'' of records on law-abiding
gun owners with one that only requires ``destruction'' of such records.
Thus, the bill leaves open to question just how long the FBI may
lawfully retain such records.
Although the omnibus appropriations bill does not include the Smith
amendment's language explicitly creating a private cause of action, I
believe that the bill retains an implied cause of action. Assuming that
the courts will interpret the new law in a manner that gives full
effect to legislative intent, judges will recognize such an implied
cause of action on the part of gun owners to sue in Federal court in
order to protect their rights under the Smith amendment.
Mr. President, early in the 106th Congress next year, I will be
introducing legislation encompassing all of the protections of the
Smith amendment for which 69 Senators voted last July.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I voted in favor of the omnibus
appropriations bill this morning, but I did so with some reluctance.
While I am marginally pleased with this bill's contribution to
education and defense, my primary concern is the $20.9 billion in
emergency spending included in this bill that further jeopardizes the
Social Security trust fund.
In July, the Congressional Budget Office predicted the Federal
Government will run a $63 billion surplus in 1998 if the Social
Security trust fund is included in the budget calculations. We still
run a $41 billion deficit, however, if the surplus in the Social
Security trust fund is excluded. The Federal Government will not run a
surplus without the inclusion of the Social Security trust fund until
2002, when CBO expects a $1 billion surplus. By 2008, the surplus will
rise to $64 billion, without counting the Social Security trust fund.
However, the omnibus appropriations package includes $20.9 billion in
emergency spending--spending outside of the caps established in last
year's balanced budget agreement, spending that is not paid for with
offsets in other government programs.
So how are we paying for $20.9 billion in emergency spending? We're
using money from the surplus--a surplus that doesn't exist yet unless
we include the Social Security trust fund in our calculations.
I am dismayed by this outcome, especially when I recall the way we
started this year. The President urged Congress to ``Save Social
Security First'' during his State of the Union Address in January. In
late April, the President again stated, ``I will resist any proposals
that would squander the budget surplus, whether on new spending
programs or new tax cuts until Social Security is strengthened for the
long-term.''
Apparently, the President is ignoring his own advice. During
negotiations over the appropriations package, the President pushed for
$20 billion in so-called emergency spending. He did not propose to
offset this spending with cuts in other Government programs. In fact,
by categorizing his spending requests as ``emergencies,'' he plans to
spend a large part of the surplus he himself designated for saving
Social Security in January.
Frankly, I question the legitimacy of the ``emergencies'' identified
by the President--the year 2000 computer problem, military
responsibilities in Bosnia, and the decennial census.
[[Page S12830]]
These so-called emergencies have been on the radar screen for years.
Unfortunately, the President failed to place a priority on these
challenges when he gave Congress his budget in February.
Now we have several ``emergencies'' for which the President is
willing to dip into the surplus he deemed sacred in January--a surplus
that does not exist unless we tap into the Social Security trust fund.
Unfortunately, Congress capitulated to the President's inconsistent
demands and policies. Today we approved a spending package that dips
into the surplus that should be used to reform Social Security--a
surplus that only exists with the current, but temporary, surplus in
the Social Security trust fund.
Social Security reform is expected to top next year's congressional
agenda. Unfortunately, this spending package starts us off on the wrong
foot.
The President is willing to stick to his commitment to ``Save Social
Security First'' when he wants to deny taxpayers tax relief. However,
the surplus appears to be fair game when we are unwilling to make the
tough choices needed to fund reprogramming government computers for the
Year 2000, our continued military presence in Bosnia, or a
responsibility as old as the Constitution--the decennial census.
Finally, I would like to stress my sincere hope that Congress and the
President will engage in a constructive and honest debate over how to
reform the Social Security system next year. We can't politicize this
issue--our children and grandchildren depend on an honest and
bipartisan reform of a system that will not meet its obligations for
the next generation of retirees.
After declaring Social Security a priority during the State of the
Union Address, the White House fell silent--invoking the famous pledge
only when politically expedient. After President Clinton's speech, a
number of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle have made tough
choices and released Social Security reform packages. The White House
must engage in this process. We do need to save Social Security first.
While I admit that I do not approve of the manner in which the
emergency spending was added to this bill, I am pleased that it
provides a much needed additional $7.5 billion for the Department of
Defense to ensure the readiness of our nation's armed forces, to tackle
the Y2K problem and sets aside funding for a ballistic missile defense.
After 14 straight years of declining defense spending, the readiness of
U.S. Armed Forces is clearly at risk.
By 2003, active duty military personnel strength will decline almost
in half from 2.2 million to 1.36 million, the number of active Army
divisions will drop from 18 to 10, the number of Navy ships will drop
from 569 to 346, and the number of Air Force fighter wings will be
decreased from 25 to 13.
At the same time, we are spending more of our defense resources on
peacekeeping missions and our military personnel are spending more and
more time on overseas deployments and less time training. If this trend
continues it is unlikely the U.S. armed forces will not be the
preeminent military force they were during the gulf war.
Unless we take action now to modernize our weapons systems, aircraft,
and ships, other nations may catch up to the U.S. technologically,
placing our military personnel at greater risk and eroding the tactical
advantages they enjoy on the battlefield today. We must work to ensure
that our fighter planes, tanks, submarines, and missiles are the best
in the world.
This bill provides $1.1 billion to fund urgent readiness shortfalls
in the services, such as flying hours, spare parts, depot maintenance,
personnel recruiting and retention initiatives.
One billion is also set aside for a strategic anti-ballistic missile
defense system. I'm pleased that appropriators recognized this priority
as rogue states aggressively pursue the acquisition of nuclear and
chemical weapons technology. It is disappointing that the efforts of my
colleague Senator Cochran to pass legislation to establish a National
Missile Defense system has failed two times this year by a margin of
only one vote.
Not surprisingly, education was another issue the White House
demagogued in this process for political purposes. This is a debate I
personally welcome. This year's spending negotiations drew a bright
line between the President and Republicans. The amount of money was
never an issue. In fact, our budget agreement matched dollar-for-dollar
the President's request for education spending. The debate was not
about money--but about who gets to spend it.
Some Republican priorities were clearly represented in the omnibus
package. This bill includees a $32.7 billion investment in our
children's education; $91 million more than the President requested for
disadvantaged students and $500 million more than the President thought
we should spend on special education. And this bill includes $1.2
billion for school districts to hire new teachers.
This last program, providing new teachers for our nation's schools
provided a real opportunity to debate the fundamentally different
approach Republicans and Democrats have toward our nation's schools.
Who do you trust with our children's education? Bureaucrats in
Washington DC? Or those who know our children by name--their parents,
teachers, and locally elected school board members.
Through this process it was clear that the President simply wanted to
repeat the pattern of more top down control from Washington DC, new
rules and regulations, more bureaucrats and more paperwork meaning that
less money reaches our nation's classrooms.
According to the House Education at the Crossroads report, we already
have some 760 Federal education programs, requiring over 48.6 million
hours worth of paperwork per year. Both the House and Senate recognize
that we simply cannot continue to add to that burden. Earlier this year
both bodies approved measures which would radically change the way
education funs are spent. The House approved the Dollars to the
Classroom Act on September 18, 1998 and the Senate approved my block
grant approach earlier this year on the Coverdell education savings
account bill. Both proposals support the same philosophical approach,
education decisions should be made by those closest to our children--
their parents, teachers and locally elected school board members--not
Washington, DC bureaucrats.
This new initiative to hire teachers represents a first step toward
trusting local decisions regarding our children's education.
Republicans were responsible for making sure that 100% of this new
money would be spent by our local school districts not by Federal or
State bureaucrats. Schools will be able to hire teachers for any grade,
no matter where the need is and schools may hire special education
teachers; neither would have been possible under the President's
prescriptive proposal.
Importantly, few rules and regulations will accompany this new money.
The President wanted to add this money to a program that already has
171 pages of ``non-regulatory guidance'' from the Federal Government.
With the Federal Government providing only 6 percent of the funding for
our local schools, and 50 percent of the regulation and paperwork--it
was important that we not add to that burden. Republicans insisted that
this new money be funneled through an existing block grant program.
In a 1997 State of Education speech, Secretary Riley said, ``* * * we
should not cloud our children's future with silly arguments about
Federal Government intrusion.''
But that is exactly what this debate was and is about--and it
couldn't be more important. It will again be the focus of debate next
year as Congress works to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act.
I will continue to work in the 106th Congress to save Social Security
and to restore authority over our children's education to those who are
closest to our children--their parents, teachers, principals, and
locally elected school board members.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I expressed yesterday my abhorrence of the
process that produced this behemoth Omnibus Bill. I said, however, that
I would vote for it, because it contained some good things for the
Nation. That is true, but I just could not do it. I cannot support such
a twisting of constitutional intent and of the legislative process.
Therefore, I voted no, so that I can sleep more peacefully tonight.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, earlier today, we passed an Omnibus
Appropriations bill that expressed important
[[Page S12831]]
Congressional intent regarding the education of American children. By
passing legislation to reduce class size in public schools, we are
doing something concrete, common-sense, and effective to improve the
quality of education across America. I am very proud of this Congress
today.
But although there has been plenty of attention this last week
devoted to the issue of class size reduction through helping local
school districts to hire qualified teachers, I feel we are in danger of
overlooking the true significance of the policy and funding we have
passed here today.
By making this investment, which we will be increasing over the next
several years, we are sending an important message to every community
in this nation. The message is ``we have been listening. We have heard
you. You've been saying that class size reduction is important because
it makes a tangible difference in real-world public schools.''
This new law will not solve every problem in every school in America;
that is not the appropriate federal role. Local communities make the
decisions that improve local schools. The federal role is to support
local decisions. I want people to know that Congress is finally
listening; this place is starting to ring with your voice. This class
size effort will help jump-start discussions in every local community
and every state legislature--where the class size decisions that affect
all schools will be made. And, this appropriations bill puts us all on
the road to doing something tangible to helping the students in
America's schools.
Some in Congress have made the argument: ``who do you trust to make
decisions regarding the education of your children, your local
educators and school boards, or some faceless bureaucrat in Washington,
D.C.?''
For 5 years, I was a school board member in the Shoreline School
District. I saw first-hand how every decision gets made in a school
district, including how many teachers get hired, and what the budget
will be for supplies, and what changes will be made to the bus
schedule. And in those years and all the years since, I have heard
local citizens say about the laws that affect their schools that they
want their government to learn how to listen to the people it
represents.
I have not heard people say that the government should walk away from
its responsibilities, to support the children in public schools across
America. I have not heard people advocate that the federal government
should ignore its responsibility to prevent unfair treatment, or that
it should ignore national priorities.
I have heard many times, however, parents and other local citizens
ask very loudly for government to set goals, to get us on the right
path, to do what works, to streamline its efforts, and to invest in
common-sense solutions.
At the top of this list is class size reduction. Class size is
common-sense, and it does work.
The research shows it:
A 1989 study of the Tennessee STAR program, which compared the
performance of students in grades K-3 in small and regular-sized
classes, found that students in small classes (13 to 17 students)
significantly outperformed other students in math and reading, every
year, at all grade levels, across all geographic areas.
A follow-up study of the STAR program in 1995 found that students in
small classes in grades K-3 continued to outperform their peers at
least through grade 8, with achievement advantages especially large for
minority students.
Other state and local studies have since found that students in
smaller classes outperform their peers in reading and math, perform as
well or better than students in magnet or voucher schools, and that
gains are especially significant among African-American males.
A 1997 national study by Educational Testing Service found that
smaller class size raises average achievement for students in fourth-
and eighth-grade math, especially for low-income students in ``high-
cost'' regions.
Particularly of note in the 1997 ETS study was the finding that in
eighth-grade, the achievement effect comes about through the better
discipline and learning environment smaller class size produces. As
policy-makers try to make decisions that will affect students in the
critical years of middle-school, class size makes a difference in terms
of both behavior and academic achievement.
In addition, state organizations representing thousands of local
educators know that hiring more high-qualified teachers to reduce class
size works:
Larry Swift, Executive Director Emeritus of the Washington State
School Directors' Association says it well:
As we pursue our state's goal of improving learning for all
of our students, it becomes increasingly important that all
of our resources be used efficiently and effectively. The
most valuable resource in today's schools is the people who
devote their time and effort to make schools successful--the
teachers. Reducing the ratio of students to adults is
particularly critical for youngsters with a variety of
learning challenges that must be overcome if those students
are to meet the new, higher learning standards.
Kenneth Winkes, with the Washington Association of School Principals
says:
It is increasingly evident that students entering our
schools have diverse and unique needs which can only be
addressed by principals, teachers, and support personnel who
are not overwhelmed by crowded classrooms. Rather, educators
must be able to devote attention to each student in smaller,
more manageable classes.
Lee Ann Prielipp, President of the Washington Education Association
says: ``When educators have too many students in a class, it is hard
for them to give each student the individual attention that students
need. It is this individual attention that is at the heart of the
learning process, and it is crucial in helping our students succeed.''
And, as I've pointed out before, students themselves have thoughts
about the importance of class size reduction:
Brooke Bodnar, age 16, recently moved from a school with larger
classes to Olympia High School, which has smaller classes. She says:
``. . . with smaller classes I'm learning so much more. Class is going
so much faster.''
Jared Stueckle, age 16, a junior at Selah High School, believes that
education should be a higher priority in funding, and that class size
is a good investment. Jared says: ``The classes in which the number (of
students) is lower I generally do better, but in a crowded class, the
teacher does not give us enough individual attention.''
Meghan Sullivan, age 15, a 10th grader at Tumwater High School, says:
``. . . reduction is needed especially at the K-5 grade levels. This is
the beginning of their education and this is where they form study
habits and learning skills, so it's more important to get some one-on-
one contact with teachers.''
Antonella Novi, age 18, a senior at Anacortes High School, says:
``Smaller class sizes enrich the learning experience for the student
and the teaching experience for the teacher.''
Jaime Oberlander, age 16, a junior at Tumwater High School, says:
``I know that I have learned more in smaller classes. I have a
stronger relationship with the teacher. I am less intimidated to
participate in class discussions or ask for help when I need it. I also
receive more feedback from my teacher . . . my teacher can spend more
time critiquing my work and helping me to learn.''
The American people have said over and over how important class size
reduction is to them. When students start school in the fall, parents
usually ask two questions: ``Who is my child's teacher?'' and ``How
many students will be in my child's class?'' This is because, next to
parents and family, the teacher is one of the most important adults in
every child's life. We want that teacher to be the best-trained, most-
qualified person available. And, we want the number of students in
class to be manageable, so each student has access to the teacher, and
the teacher is not reduced to doing ``crowd control.''
Qualified teachers in small classes can provide students with more
individualized attention, spend more time on instruction and less on
discipline and other tasks, cover more material more effectively, and
work more closely with parents. Today Congress has done something
significant and important--taken the first step to helping local
communities increase the number and quality of the teachers in
America's schools.
[[Page S12832]]
I want to thank all those who helped this happen, from the President
and his staff, to Secretary Riley and those who work so diligently, to
Senator Daschle and our Democratic Leadership in both the Senate and
the House. I want to particularly thank Senator Harkin, who worked with
me on a strategy to turn the early defeat of the Administration's
larger class size proposal into a one-year version, funded through an
existing program--a clear victory for every student in America. I also
want to especially thank Senator Ted Kennedy for his stalwart efforts
to negotiate the final elements of this bill in consultation with me.
His work is always excellent, here particularly so.
And I'd like to single out the people who joined me as co-sponsors of
my bill, the Class Size Reduction and Teacher Quality Improvement Act
of 1998: Senators Kennedy, Dodd, Daschle, Moseley-Braun, Boxer, Levin,
Robb, Lieberman, Reed, Lautenberg, Landrieu, Torricelli, Bryan, Kerry,
Akaka, Glenn, Bingaman, and Mikulski. And I would like to thank Senator
Russ Feingold who has given so much time and attention to the issue of
class size reduction, and recognizing local efforts.
Finally, I would like to thank a few key staff people who worked on
this issue all year: Marsha Simon, Ellen Murray, and Bettilou Taylor
from the Appropriations Committee staff and Bev Schroeder with Senator
Harkin, Joan Huffer with Senator Daschle, and Danica Petroshius with
Senator Kennedy and Amy Abraham with the Budget Committee. I would also
like to thank Greg Williamson, Micki Aronson, April Graff, Kennie
Endelman and Minerva Lopez with my staff.
As with all things, the class size legislation would not have passed
without the efforts of many, many people all working with
determination, willing to make compromises on details and get to the
important goals.
On other educational issues, we have also made progress this year.
The funding levels for adult and family literacy programs have seen
modest improvement--something I've worked hard for, and something that
needs more improvement. And children's literacy has seen an important
first step, in passage and funding for the Reading Excellence Act.
Reading efforts around the country and in my state should look on this
national attention to reading as the first step to further support.
On education technology, we have made such important investments. Not
only did we fund $75 million for teacher technology training for pre-
service teachers, but this year we passed the Higher Education Act,
which includes my Teacher Technology Training bill, and we have
provided another $75 million to fund the partnerships that will make
the new law possible in every local community.
On funding for the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, we
have included the $500 million I asked for in my budget amendment
earlier this year, and we did not have to jeopardize other educational
priorities to do it. In addition, by including special education
teachers in the class size proposal, we have taken important steps to
helping local communities deal with the important educational needs of
all students.
There were also mis-steps in this bill--cuts to our schools that did
not need to happen, negative language that will stir up unnecessary
ill-feelings, or funding shifts, such as the one under the Safe and
Drug-Free Schools program, that should have been done in a way more
reflective of local expertise. But all in all this is a good bill for
education, and puts us on the right path.
The Americans I talk to about education funding usually cannot
believe that education is really a priority in Congress. After all,
only 1.8 percent of overall education spending goes to education. This
is the next great challenge. People want Congress to live up to its
responsibilities, to look at its priorities, and to listen to people in
communities across this great nation. This year, we made some important
investments. Next year, we reauthorize the major K-12 education laws.
We must look to all of these processes with respect for local
knowledge, with bipartisanship, and with a steadfast determination to
making education better for all students.
GULF WAR VETERANS ACT OF 1998
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I want to highlight a provision contained
within this massive omnibus appropriations bill, H.R. 4328, that
addresses a longstanding debt owed by this nation to the veterans of
the Persian Gulf War. Title XVI of Division C of this bill contains the
Persian Gulf War Veterans Act of 1998. In five short sections, the
Persian Gulf War Veterans Act of 1998 lays out a sound, scientific
process by which the Secretary of Veterans Affairs may make a
determination, based on the recommendations of the National Academy of
Sciences or other sound scientific or medical evidence, that diseases
suffered by Gulf War veterans are linked to hazardous materials they
were exposed to during that conflict. That is, the Secretary now has a
credible process to determine what diseases should be considered
service-connected for purposes of providing health care and disability
compensation to Gulf War veterans.
This is not some give-away program, but a long overdue recognition
that Gulf War veterans may be suffering from invisible wartime wounds
just as real as any left by bullets--wounds to their immune systems, to
their muscles and joints, or to their internal organs, caused by the
toxic fog of chemicals, oil well fires, and medications in which they
were immersed. This nation has a long history of caring for the men and
women who were wounded in her service, and it is a shame that it took
over seven years to recognize and honor our commitment to these
veterans.
I have seen some news reports that this provision will cost between
$1 and $6 billion over ten years. I do not know what these estimates
are based on. The Congressional Budget Office determined that this
program would cost $40 million over the first five years, and a total
of $490 million over ten years. That is not an extravagant bill to pay
for a war that cost the United States over $60 billion for less than
two months of actual fighting--for a mere 100 hours of actual on-the-
ground combat. Almost 700,000 service personnel were in the Southwest
Asia theater during the initial phase of the conflict, and over one
million service personnel have pulled tours of duty in Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait since 1991. Over 120,000 of these men and women are now on
Department of Defense or Department of Veterans Affairs Gulf War
registries, many suffering from multiple debilitating symptoms since
their service in the Gulf.
The provisions in this omnibus bill were extracted from S. 2358, a
bill I introduced with Senator Rockefeller and Senator Specter, the
Ranking Member and Chairman, respectively, of the Senate Veterans'
Affairs Committee, on July 27. I am proud of this collaboration, which
I believe produced a sound as well as needed piece of legislation.
Although S. 2358 was adopted by the Senate in the closing days of this
Congress, and after the process of putting together the omnibus
appropriations bill had begun, no action was taken on it by the House
of Representatives. Some elements of S. 2358 were included in two
House-passed bills, H.R. 3980 and H.R. 4110, that were sent to the
Senate, again, after the process of putting together the omnibus
appropriations bill had begun. In my opinion, these bills fell far
short of delivering on our commitment to Gulf War veterans.
In both H.R. 3980 and H.R. 4110, the National Academy of Sciences was
directed to conduct a study and to make recommendations to the
Secretary of Veterans Affairs regarding illnesses that might be linked
to service in the Gulf. But, the Secretary was directed only to make
recommendations to Congress. The veterans would not receive any
immediate assistance. It would be up to Congress to make the
determination of service connection, find the funds to pay for it, and
convince both Houses of Congress and the President to agree that action
should be taken. Mr. President, I do not believe that adding this kind
of delay to the process aids our veterans. We can do better, and we did
better in S. 2358. Let the Secretary do his job, and if we do not like
the way he carries out his job, then we can take corrective action.
Mr. President, I have already noted that these compromise bills
arrived in the Senate late in this session, after work on the omnibus
appropriations bill had begun. As the Ranking Member on the Senate
Appropriations Committee, I had already added S. 2358 to the
[[Page S12833]]
list of legislation to be considered for inclusion in the omnibus
package. I did this not because I approve of this way of passing
legislation on an appropriations bill and especially not on a
monstrosity like this omnibus bill, but because I saw an opportunity to
do something useful and needed for these veterans. They do not deserve
any additional delay. And when I saw that the compromise language
contained only a study, and the possibility of further delay for these
veterans, I became determined to include the key elements of S. 2358 in
the omnibus appropriations bill.
Now, I have been noted for my stubbornness--my friends call it
tenacity or perseverance, but my opponents call it stubbornness. On
this matter, I was determined, tenacious, persistent, and, yes, even
stubborn. As a conferee on the omnibus appropriations bill, I was able
to defend my position. This section of the omnibus bill was among the
last issues decided. I sincerely thank my colleagues, Senator Stevens,
Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Representatives
Livingston and Obey, the Chairman and Ranking Member, respectively, of
the House Appropriations Committee, who supported my efforts to include
this provision in the final bill. They did this over the objections of
the Administration. For their leadership and courage in defending the
interests of Gulf War veterans they merit great praise.
The veterans of the Gulf War have struggled for seven years to have
their wartime sacrifices recognized for what they are--the scars of
battle. I hope that Title XVI of Division C of H.R. 4328 will set this
process on a track that is both credible and fair, and that will follow
through on our nation's commitment, in the words of Abraham Lincoln,
``To take care of him who has borne the battle. . . .''
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, today, I voted for H.R. 4328, the
omnibus appropriations bill. I believe that on balance, this
legislation will benefit California.
This bill is 4,000 pages, 38 pounds, and stands a foot tall. It
appropriates $500 billion, funds a third of the federal government for
fiscal year 1999, and includes many pieces of authorizing legislation.
My staff reviewed the entire bill yesterday. It includes properly
written legislative bill language as well as many hand written changes
and amendments. Congressional negotiators, the administration, and many
staff members have worked for weeks to finalize this legislation today,
but that work was often done behind closed doors without the full
review of the Senate.
I do not believe that this is the way the Congress should do its
work. Our choice today was to shut down the government or pass this
bill.
I want, however, to note that the omnibus bill provides many benefits
for Californians.
education
This bill funds several education initiatives. It includes $1.2
billion to hire teachers and reduce elementary class sizes, an effort
already underway in California. This will mean 3,500 new teachers in
California. This bill also includes increased funding for Head Start,
for Education Reform, for bilingual education, for charter schools, for
educational technology and for student financial assistance.
California school enrollment is growing at 3 times the national rate.
We need to build 7 new classrooms a day at 25 students per class just
to keep up with the growth in student population. We have students in
closets, in cafeterias, in portables. We have some of the largest class
sizes in the nation. We have 22,000 teachers on emergency credentials.
California ranks last in the nation in the percentage of young adults
with a high school diploma. Our students rank 37th in the country in
SAT scores.
The California public school system has gone from one of the best, to
one of the worse. Mr. President, quite simply, we welcome this
assistance for the California education system.
I am disappointed that the bill includes a ``hold harmless''
provision for ESEA Title I.
Title I is the largest federal elementary and secondary education
program, providing funds to virtually every school district in the
country to educate disadvantaged children. Title I has often been
called the ``anchor'' of all elementary and secondary education
programs since its enactment in 1965. The bill includes $7.8 billion
for Title I grants to school districts. California received $830
million last year.
Unfortunately, the bill includes a 100 percent ``hold harmless''
provision under which no school district would receive an allocation
that is less than its allocation of the previous year. But the effect
of the hold harmless provision for California, that has had an increase
in the number of poor children, is not to receive all of the increase
in funding to which we are entitled, entitled by law. Thankfully, the
bill does include an ``extra'' $301 million that would provide some
funds for high-growth states like mine. California could receive as
much as $60 million out of the $301 million. I believe the dollars
should go equally to all children in the country based on need.
I call on my colleagues to join me in working to join in an effort to
make sure the dollars follow the children.
This Senator pledges to devote every ounce of energy I can muster to
help our schools deliver on the promise of opportunity and achievement
that America's public schools have always represented and I call on my
colleagues to join me today in this campaign.
california environment
I am pleased that the Omnibus Appropriations bill includes funding
for a number of important land acquisition projects in California,
including $2 million for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation
Area, $1 million for the Santa Rosa Mountains, and $1.5 million for the
continued acquisition of Bair Island for the Don Edwards San Francisco
Bay National Wildlife Refuge. While I am pleased that the bill includes
$1 million for land acquisition in the Lake Tahoe Basin, I would have
preferred to see the $3 million provided by the Senate Appropriations
Committee. Lake Tahoe is an important national resource, and we need to
make it a higher priority if we are to stem the environmental decline
that is already affecting the area. I intend to work with my colleagues
to further address the problems of Lake Tahoe in the 106th Congress.
The Salton Sea bill as approved calls for completion of a plan to
save the Salton Sea by January 1, 2000. It provides a total of $5
million in additional funds for biological studies and to conduct
demonstration projects to clean up the New and Alamo Rivers. These
funds, along with an additional appropriation for the Bureau of
Reclamation in a separate section of the bill, provide all the money
that will be required to prepare a plan and conduct all environmental
documentation. As a result, Congress and the President will be able
early in the year 2000 to authorize and appropriate funding for a
project to save this incredibly valuable resource.
transportation infrastructure
One of the most important sections of the omnibus appropriations bill
provides funding for our nation's roads, airports, and transit systems.
This bill will ensure that California's transit systems are more
efficient and our roads and airports are safer. The bill will improve
the quality of life of California residents by increasing mobility,
reducing congestion, and improving the environment.
The bill provides a total of $73 million for the Los Angeles County
Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). This includes $62 million for the
North Hollywood Red Line extension, $8 million for the Regional Transit
Alternative Analysis study for the Mid city and Eastside, and $3
million for the purchase of new clean fuel buses. This funding level
will allow the MTA to proceed with its restructuring plan as well as
improve bus service and move towards the competition of two important
rail links.
The bill also provides $27 million for the Tasman West Rail Extension
project. The Tasman West Extension will link the heavily congested
residential areas of Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View with the
Silicon Valley. The funding in this bill will allow the project to
continue without interruption and hopefully will permit it to be
completed ahead of schedule and under budget as is now projected.
Other important California rail projects funded in this bill are:
$23.48 million for the Sacramento south corridor extension, $3.5
million for the San
[[Page S12834]]
Diego Mission Valley and midcoast corridor, $3 million for the
Oceanside-Escondido light rail project, $1 million for the San
Bernardino Metrolink project, and $500,000 to upgrade the rail line
connecting the cities of Riverside and Perris.
The bill also provides almost $420 million in formula grants to
California. These grants will fund capital projects and finance
improvements in equipment and facilities associated with mass
transportation. This is an increase of more than $40 million from
Fiscal Year 1998. Included in the formula grants are $171 million for
Los Angeles, $98.8 million for San Francisco and Oakland, $35 million
for San Diego, and $26 million for San Jose. The bill also provides
$6.2 million in grants for the special needs of elderly and disabled
people in California and $8.2 million for non-urbanized areas of the
state.
Another major component of the transportation appropriations bill is
funding for buses and bus facilities. Again, this is very important for
California where bus systems play a vital role in the transportation
infrastructure of our cities. This bill provides more than $30 million
to 30 cities and transportation authorities throughout the state. While
I would have preferred to see a higher level of funding for many of
these projects, the appropriations in this bill will allow local
communities to begin purchasing badly needed fuel efficient buses and
improving deteriorating bus facilities.
I am disappointed that the conference committee reduced funding for
the Bay Area Rapid Transit extension to the San Francisco Airport to
$40 million. This is a dramatic cut from the $100.6 requested by the
Administration and will seriously impair BART's ability to complete the
project on schedule.
Project construction for the BART/SFO extension is already underway.
Contracts for over 90 percent of the construction activity have been
awarded totaling $607 million. The State of California has recently
agreed to provide an additional $57 million for the project. It is
unfortunate that the federal government has failed to demonstrate the
same level of commitment to this project that has been shown at the
state and local level.
I believe that bringing rapid rail transit to the San Francisco
Airport is of critical importance to continued economic viability of
the region. I am hopeful that this setback in federal funding will not
endanger the project and I will work in the 106th Congress to insure
that additional funds are made available.
Securing the Border
The bill provides $97 million next year for 1,000 additional border
patrol agents and 140 support personnel at the border, increasing our
ability to interdict illegal aliens at the heaviest alien traffic areas
such as the Southwest border. It also provides $21.8 million for
interior enforcement, providing the badly needed resources for INS to
work with state and local law enforcement against illegal immigration.
I am very pleased by the inclusion in the omnibus package of a number
of measures that will have a direct impact on our efforts to prevent
illegal narcotics from being transported across the Southwest border.
These provisions are good news for California.
I want to thank Senator DeWine and Senator Bob Graham for their many
months of leadership in this effort, and for their willingness to work
with me to include provisions that will mean fewer drugs on the streets
of California.
The supplemental appropriation portion of this bill will increase
spending on drug interdiction by a total of $690 million for the
current fiscal year. Of that total, $90 million is designated
specifically for enhancements at the Southwest border, which is still,
without question, ground zero for U.S. drug interdiction efforts. This
amount includes $80 million for the U.S. Customs Service to purchase
and deploy non-intrusive inspection technology, such as truck X-rays
and gamma-imaging for drug interdiction at high-threat seaports and
land border ports of entry; and $10 million for INS to purchase and
deploy border barrier and surveillance technology, such as effective
fences and night-vision scopes.
These funds will make a real difference on the ground. DEA
Administrator Tom Constantine recently told me that he estimates that
one ton of cocaine is smuggled across the Southwest border each and
every day. The smugglers are growing more sophisticated every year, and
our agents badly need state-of-the-art technology to counter them,
which this bill provides.
In addition, the omnibus package includes the Western Hemisphere Drug
Elimination Act, of which I was an original cosponsor. This act, which
authorizes $2.6 billion over the next three years for enhanced drug
interdiction programs, and requires annual regular reports by ONDCP and
other drug-fighting agencies on their progress, contains two key
provisions which will directly impact Southwest border, and which were
included at my request: authorization of funding for the U.S. Customs
Service to purchase truck X-rays as part of its 5-year technology plan;
and authorization of $50 million for developing and purchasing computer
software and hardware to facilitate direct communication between all
the agencies that work on drug interdiction at the border.
Technology offers an important way to fight drug smuggling. Improved
communication and coordination among our various border enforcement and
drug interdiction agencies is another. Without effective interagency
communications systems between Customs, INS, the FBI, DEA, and the
Border Patrol, our ability to detect drug smugglers and interdict drugs
at the border is seriously jeopardized. The funds authorized by this
bill will enhance the effectiveness of all these agencies' interdiction
efforts. That translates into fewer drugs on our streets.
Naturalizing Citizens
The Omnibus Appropriation provides $171 million for additional
naturalization services of which $11.6 million will be provided
specifically for reducing the naturalization backlogs for those
localities with backlogs of 15 months or longer. For California, San
Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco along with other counties who
currently have a backlog of 2 years may receive the funds to help
expedite naturalization applications.
Methamphetamine
I am very pleased that the Methamphetamine Trafficking Penalty
Enhancement Act of 1998 was included in this bill. This provision
increases penalties for methamphetamine trafficking, making them
roughly equivalent to those for trafficking in crack cocaine.
Specifically, it lowers the quantity of meth which qualifies for the
highest level of federal drug penalties from 100 grams to 50 grams, the
same as for crack. Dealers at this level get a 10 year mandatory
minimum sentence for a first offense, a 20 year mandatory minimum for a
second offense, and life for a third offense.
Similarly, it also lowers the quantity of meth which qualifies the
next-most serious level of federal drug penalties from 10 grams to 5
grams. Again, this is the same quantity as is provided for crack.
Dealers of this amount receive a 5 year mandatory minimum for a first
offense, and a 10 year mandatory minimum for subsequent offenses.
This provision originally was part of the Comprehensive
Methamphetamine Control Act of 1996, which I wrote with Senators Hatch
and Biden. We were forced to drop this provision to pass the bill by
unanimous consent that year, and this year it was re-introduced by
Senator Ashcroft. I am proud to be the first co-sponsor of Sen.
Ashcroft's bill.
Two aspects of methamphetamine make the rapid growth in California
especially troubling.
First, meth leads to paranoid, violent, and even bizarre behavior by
hardcore users. I will never forget the report of a New Mexico man,
high on meth and alcohol, who beheaded his 14-year-old son and threw
the head out of the window of his van, on a crowded highway.
Second, meth is cooked in this country in dangerous, clandestine
labs, which use highly flammable chemicals, blow up in explosions, and
leave toxic, hazardous waste sites, which require environmental
cleanup.
This is not a silver bullet which will solve the problem, but it is
one more useful step which we can take in this fight.
I am also pleased that this bill contains several appropriations
which I
[[Page S12835]]
worked for to combat the spread of methamphetamine: $18.2 million for
the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement's anti-methamphetamine
strategy; $24.5 million to hire 100 new DEA agents to target meth
trafficking organizations; and $5 million for hazardous waste cleanup
of lab sites.
I am disappointed, however, that the conferees did not support the
Senate's appropriation of $15 million for transfer to the Drug
Diversion Control Fee Account. The clandestine meth labs operate
primarily by converting legitimate pharmaceutical products, such as
pseudoephedrine and ephedrine, into meth. The Drug Diversion Control
Fee Account supports the DEA's efforts to control the diversion of such
legitimate pharmaceuticals to illicit use, and we should provide it
with greater support.
justice appropriations
I am pleased that several programs for which I have worked are fully
funded in this bill:
COPS funding 88,000 police officers throughout the country now has
$1.4 billion provided in this bill to fund another 17,000, reaching the
President's goal of hiring 100,000 police--and exceeding it by 5
percent.
Local Law Enforcement Block Grant continued funding of $523 million
for this program, which is important to California's cities and
counties who utilize this funding to supplement COPS funding for non-
personnel law enforcement expenditures.
$283 million is provided for the Violence Against Women Act,
increasing support for these programs. I have heard from women's
organizations in support of funding for battered woman's shelters and
other support services. California sorely needs these resources.
The President's budget request of $95 million for at-risk children's
prevention programs is fully funded, as I requested. With a growing
adolescent population, California needs continued funding of anti-
truancy, mentoring, and curfew initiatives.
A total of $40 million is provided in various ways for the successful
Weed and Seed program. Criminal gang activity is a severe problem in
many California cities and localities, and many of these California
gangs spread their criminal activity to other states. I am committed to
curbing the growth of gangs, and Weed and Seed prevention funds are
essential to that effort. I have heard from a number of California
mayors, including Mayor Omar Bradley from Compton, who support the
program and expanded funding.
Another $12 million is provided for prevention efforts to combat
youth gangs, under the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.
Terrorism and technology programs
This bill also provides for several programs which were of particular
interest to me as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Technology,
Terrorism and Government Information of the Judiciary Committee;
Extensive funding is provided for a variety of programs to combat
terrorism and to be prepared to meet the threat which this form of evil
poses, including: $145 million for the counterterrorism fund, $135
million for state and local preparedness for the threat of chemical and
biological weapons, including: personnel protective gear,
communications equipment, decontamination equipment, training, needs
assessment, technology development; and bomb technician equipment. It
also includes: $10 million for the National Critical Infrastructure
Protection Center, $282 million to the FBI for counter-terrorism and
foreign counterintelligence investigations.
$23.4 million is authorized from Justice's asset forfeiture fund to
support more efficient use of the communications spectrum by law
enforcement. The need to have adequate spectrum available for law
enforcement is a particular concern of local law enforcement leaders
from California. Enabling more efficient use of the available spectrum
will help to address this concern.
crime prevention
This bill also provides for several California programs to reduce
crime which I have supported, including:
State Criminal Alien Assistance Program: I am particularly pleased
that continued funding of $585 million to reimburse states and
localities for the cost of incarcerating criminal aliens is provided,
restoring the $50 million which had been cut by the Senate. This is
particularly important to California, which bears the lion's share of
the burden of incarcerating criminal aliens. This, however, is still
not sufficient to meet the costs borne by the states and localities,
and I will continue to work in the future for this program.
Delancy Street Foundation/Criminal Justice Council Juvenile Justice
initiative received $750,000 earmarked for this public-private
comprehensive effort designed to interrupt the cycle of chronic crime
and transform a young person's negative cycle to a positive one by
providing major life-altering interventions at continuous points. This
program can serve as a model for the rest of the nation in
simultaneously decreasing juvenile crime and providing new and real
opportunities for youths.
Compton's crime problems merit special consideration and treatment.
According to Mayor Omar Bradley, there are 9,000 suspected gang members
in Compton, amounting to ten percent of the City's population.
Compton's homicide rate is nearly 10 times that of similar sized cities
in the Southeast L.A. area, with more homicides in January alone (14)
than 23 of the other 27 cities had in all of 1996. Seventy-six percent
of suspected homicide offenders were under the age of 27. The report
directs the Justice Department to consider grants to help fight this
uniquely severe crime problem by upgrading Compton's woefully outdated
police computer system and by establishing a Compton Youth Intervention
Center for afterschool programs to serve as a safe haven for 1,000
youth.
My colleagues from California, Senator Boxer, and I jointly requested
this $2 million earmark to support this proven, successful initiative
that has already helped over 12,000 California police officers better
understand how they can promote tolerance and reduce prejudice in their
workplaces and communities. With this additional funding, the Center
can implement its plan to conduct four-day workshops to train tolerance
instructors from police Departments from around the country on how to
control prejudice and hate crimes. These officers will then be able to
go back to their communities and teach other officers how to combat
prejudice and bias.
The overwhelmed 911 emergency response system has prompted cities
around the nation to experiment with a 311 non-emergency number to
relieve the burden and improve access to emergency assistance. The 311
telephone system would allow police departments such as Los Angeles' to
free officers from the burden of responding to non-emergency 911 calls
and gives the community an easy-to-remember link to the police, thus
strengthening community policing. The conference report supports the
use of funds for non-emergency numbers such as 311.
cancer research
The bill also includes $2.9 billion for the National Cancer
Institute, a 15 percent increase. Cancer afflicts 1.2 million Americans
each year. Cancer will kill 1,500 people a day this year. But we
currently invest less than 2 percent of cancer's health care costs in
research to find a cure and treatments. NCI can currently only fund 28
percent of grants, less than one-third approved for funding.
In the September 25 hearing of the Senate Cancer Coalition, Dr. Allen
Lichter, President of the American Society for Clinical Oncology said,
``It often takes several years to get a clinical cancer trial activated
from the idea stage to the point of involving patients because of
insufficient funds. For every clinical trial that gets activated, there
are many worthwhile trials sitting undone.''
I submit that this is not a vigorous war on cancer, when we are
funding less than one-third of grants proposed.
BREAST RECONSTRUCTION
I am also pleased that the bill includes language requiring insurance
plans that cover mastectomies to also cover breast reconstruction and
prostheses. The language in this bill is taken from S. 249, a bill that
I introduced with Senator D'Amato on January 30, 1997. One study found
that 84 percent of patients were denied insurance coverage for
reconstruction of the removed breast, calling it ``cosmetic.'' Plans
have arbitrarily denied this very necessary surgery, to make a woman
whole. Twelve states require coverage
[[Page S12836]]
of breast reconstruction, including my own, but we need a national
standard. This provision can bring hope and help restore self-esteem to
thousands of women who lose their breast to breast cancer every year.
PROTECTING CHILDREN'S ONLINE PRIVACY
The Omnibus Appropriations bill requires the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) to take steps to protect children's privacy on the Internet,
similar to provisions authored by Senator Feinstein in S. 504, the
Children's Privacy Protection and Parental Empowerment bill.
Specifically, the Omnibus bill directs the FTC to require commercial
website operators to follow fair information practices in collecting
and using personal information from children age 12 and under.
Commercial websites must obtain verifiable parental consent for the
collection, use, or disclosure of personal information from children.
States are authorized to enforce the regulations. The bill further
directs the FTC to provide incentives for self-regulation by operators
to protect such information. The FTC is required to report to Congress
on the implementation of the regulations.
EMPOWERMENT ZONES
I am also pleased that the bill includes $60 million in social
services grant funding for a second round of 20 urban and rural
empowerment zones. The empowerment zone concept has shown great promise
in promoting economic development in some of our nation's income
communities. I know of a number of California communities who are
applying for empowerment zone designation in this latest round, and if
selected, this funding will enable them to attract business to their
area and prepare residents for jobs.
NEW COURTHOUSES
The bill includes funding to acquire sites for two new Federal
courthouses, in San Jose and San Diego. These courthouses are badly
needed to relieve the pressure of rising criminal, civil, and
bankruptcy case filings. The bill includes $15.4 million to purchase
land for the new courthouse in San Diego, and $10.8 million to purchase
land for the new courthouse in San Jose.
The Omnibus Appropriations include $36 million for the State of
California, pursuant to the agreement worked out between the state and
the federal government to settle California's claim to lands that were
located in the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve. This funding has been
a bipartisan priority for California's entire delegation, and I am
pleased to see that it was included in the final bill.
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
The international affairs provisions of this omnibus package contain
a number of important steps forward in stabilizing the global economy
and combating the scourge of international drug trafficking.
I am pleased that our colleagues in the House finally saw the wisdom
of providing the $17.9 billion to the International Monetary Fund that
the President requested. These funds are among the best investments we
can ever make. In 1998, we have seen economies across Asia and Latin
America and in Russia go into virtual free fall. And if there is one
principle of the global economy today, it is that economic turmoil
abroad is sure to affect us here at home.
When the currencies of our trading partners fall through the floor,
as we have seen repeatedly this year, they are unable to purchase U.S.
exports. That translates into lost American jobs, as our producers
discover that there is no one overseas to buy their products. The funds
we are providing the IMF in this bill, and the additional funds they
will leverage from other donors, will help to stabilize the economies
of our trading partners, protecting our export markets from further
collapse, and saving U.S. jobs. In a state with an export-driven
economy like California, this is good news. The IMF reforms called for
in this bill that will ensure greater transparency and more market-
based lending practices are helpful, but the most important news is
that the IMF's coffers will be replenished, allowing it to provide
further assistance to vulnerable economies around the world.
The Foreign Operations Appropriations section of this bill also
includes an important earmark, which I want to highlight: $75 million
in economic assistance to Indonesia. I do not think that most Americans
appreciate the strategic and economic significance of Indonesia, the
fourth most populous nation in the world. Indonesia's status as the
political and economic anchor of Southeast Asia make the economic and
political crisis there that much more serious. The assistance that will
be provided by this act--as directed by policy language in the bill
which I authored--will help alleviate the most severe suffering and
food shortages in Indonesia, while helping to ease the transition to a
more democratic form of government and the reform of the Indonesian
economy.
An important component of restoring social and economic stability to
Indonesia is ensuring that all Indonesians, including minority ethnic
groups, are protected and able to participate fully in the society. For
that reason, I am pleased that the bill includes a provision I offered
directing the President to assist the Indonesian government and
appropriate non-governmental organizations in their investigation of
the brutal violence and rapes against Indonesian Chinese in May of this
year. In six months we will receive a report from the Administration on
the findings of these investigations, and the steps taken by the
Indonesian government to punish the perpetrators of the violence and
protect Indonesian Chinese from its repetition.
state department authorization
Let me say a word about the State Department Authorization portion of
this bill, which contains some important progress, but also one major
disappointment. I am pleased that after nearly four years of back-and-
forth haggling, the State Department reorganization plan--now agreed to
by the Administration and the Congress--can proceed. It should help to
streamline our foreign affairs agencies and reduce unnecessary
duplication of effort. In addition, I am pleased that the bill includes
a provision I authored which will allow us to increase pressure on
alien parents who abduct American citizen children from an American
parent with legal custody by allowing us to deny visas to those who
support the abducting parent.
But something very important is missing from this section of the
bill: authorization to pay off our arrears to the United Nations.
Unbelievably, the Republican leadership has acceded to the wishes of a
tiny minority of their caucus, which has insisted on perpetuating an
artificial link between paying U.N. arrears and international family
planning assistance. Despite broad agreement on a three year plan to
pay off our U.N. arrears while the U.N. conducted significant reforms a
group of hardline House members have chosen to hold these arrears
hostage to their agenda on a wholly unrelated, essentially domestic
issue: abortion.
Under the false impression that by weakening our international family
planning programs with Mexico City restrictions, they could prevent
abortions--in fact, they would do the opposite, depriving many women of
contraceptives and thereby leading to more abortions--these Members
have insisted on weakening the United States' international reputation
and the United Nations, causing great harm to our foreign policy
interests.
This tactic is utterly irresponsible, and yet, the Republican
leadership has gone along with it. They will send this bill without
U.N. arrears, and the President will sign it. Then they will send the
free standing bill which contains U.N. arrears, but also contains
Mexico City restrictions, and, as we all know, the President will veto
it. And although the United States will, by the skin of our teeth,
avoid losing our vote in the U.N. General Assembly for non-payment of
arrears--postponing the crisis for one year--we will have to begin this
effort all over again next year. Our foreign policy interests will be
placed at further risk, all for the sake of a political point about
abortion. And though I will vote for this bill, I am deeply distressed
by the failure to include authorization to pay our U.N. arrears. It is
a mistake that I believe we will regret.
Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I voted no on this Omnibus spending bill.
I did so reluctantly, because most of what I know about it--which is
contained in the pages about agriculture, education and other areas--I
like. It is because of the several hundred pages that are a complete
mystery to me that I vote no.
[[Page S12837]]
Mr. President, democracy should not work this way. The people send us
here to deliberate serious matters of public policy and to represent
their interests and the nation's in the debate. In this case there was
no debate, and it was not possible to represent anyone's interests
because it is impossible to know how, if at all, those interests
comport with a bill whose 3,800 pages were not even published until the
dark of last night.
Lest the American people be confused about why it has come to this,
there is a simple answer. The majority party did not schedule Congress'
time to do the work the people pay us to do. One of the Congress' most
basic duties is to decide how the people's money is to be spent. That
process involves the passage of 13 appropriations bills, of which we
managed to pass a whopping total of five in several months. The
majority party found ample time to debate matters of such crashing
importance as the scourge of human cloning and the name of the airport
from which most of us are going to flee this scene later today. Let
there be no mistake about it: The necessity of a $500 billion omnibus
bill did not arise from grand ideological disputes. It came from a
failure, plain, simple and unadulterated, to do our jobs because the
majority party chose to use the Congress' time to do other things.
As a result, the American people suspect that what has happened over
the last few days was a back-room deal involving hundreds of billions
of dollars of their money being spent with no opportunity for their
input, debate or, for that matter, even for their elected
representatives to see the final product. Why is that? I submit the
reason might be that this bill was a back-room deal involving hundreds
of billions of dollars of their money being spent with no opportunity
for their input, debate or, for that matter, even for their elected
representatives to see the final product.
Later today I intend to participate in a panel discussion featuring
the senior Senator from New York, who will discuss his new book on
secrecy and national security. His thesis is that excessive secrecy
produces suspicion, mistakes and unnecessary costs. I completely agree
with him. This budget process--which the Senator from New York has
aptly noted moves us toward something akin to a parliamentary system in
which decisions are made behind closed doors by a select few--proves
that the Senator's thesis on secrecy in national security applies
equally to secrecy in domestic policy. It breeds suspicion, and it
breeds mistakes. There are few things I can say with certainty about
this budget, since very few of its several thousand pages were
available before yesterday, but I can predict one thing with total
confidence: When the smoke clears and the budget is actually read,
there are going to be things in it that would never have survived a
public debate.
The majority will protest that this last-minute flurry was caused by
threats of vetoes from the President. I am not overly sympathetic on
that point, Mr. President. The current occupant of that office has held
it for six years. His views on appropriations bills are not a mystery
sprung on the majority party at the last moment. He submitted a budget
at the beginning of this year outlining what he wanted. He does not
schedule the Senate's time for debate.
We cannot go on like this year after year, Mr. President, taking
money from the pockets of taxpayers and then huddling behind a closed
door to negotiate among a select few--many of them unelected--how to
spend it. This is not government of, by and for the people. It is only
half in jest that I say, sadly, that it is more like government by four
people.
As I said, Mr. President, I cast my nay vote reluctantly because I am
pleased with much of what I know about this bill. I am glad we
succeeded in convincing the majority of the need to extend a helping
hand to America's first industry--agriculture--at a time of grave
crisis. I believe children in school are going to learn more and better
because we are putting teachers in the classroom. I'm delighted the tax
portion of this bill includes a provision much like a bill which I have
introduced which would prevent working families from paying higher
taxes by allowing them to deduct their child care, child and education
credits under the Alternative Minimum Tax. This bill also provides a
much-needed extension of the R&D tax credit and will help the self-
employed, particularly farmers, by accelerating the deductible amount
of their health insurance costs.
At the same time, I am very disappointed the livestock price
reporting provision, which I authored in the Senate, was dropped from
this package. I do not believe the home health care problems we face
will be ``solved'' by this bill and we should not be led to believe
that the agriculture crisis in this country will come to an end as a
result of this bill. In addition, I firmly believe that the thousands
of people in this country waiting for organ transplants, will be hurt,
not helped by further delay in issuing regulations governing organ
transplant allocations.
But what I object to the most is not what we know about this bill,
but what we do not, and can not. You can stir up a lot of mischief in a
bill that runs over 3,800 pages that no one has read.
Maybe we can take some comfort in the hope that the 106th Congress
will do better. We won't be perfect. But perhaps we can get a jump on
our pursuit of perfection by acting like a democracy, then by doing the
work we are paid to do.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I would like to speak a few minutes about
the bill we just passed. I would like to register my personal views
about both the substance of the bill and the process by which it was
passed.
I have very mixed emotions. First, I am very disappointed in a
process that led to this midnight power play. This bill, as has been
pointed out by others speaking before me, is almost 4,000 pages long.
It weighs 40 pounds. It contains about $500 billion in Federal
spending. I might tell you, Mr. President, that $500 billion is enough
to pay for the State budget of Montana for 200 years. It was also
produced within 24 hours' notice of this vote. As a practical matter,
most offices had no more than a few hours to look at this bill. They
had no copies of it. They had to go to a central location and wade
through it with other staff members. There is nobody in this entire
Congress who knows all of the provisions in this bill; it is that
massive, and it was written behind closed doors.
Mr. President, I will admit that it is a with many worthwhile
projects and programs. For example, it provides assistance for farmers,
so important to the State of Montana and other farming states. It has
provisions that help increase our investment in education, again not
only for the Nation but for my State of Montana. It provides important
new tools on the war against drugs. And it provides important new
funding for health care programs. The bill also provides money for the
International Monetary Fund to help fulfill our obligations as a leader
in the global community. By doing so, we are strengthening the
economies on which our export markets depend. Montana has seen wheat
exports decline by 50 percent, almost entirely because of lack of
demand in Asia. In addition, one company, U.S. Semitool in Kalispell,
MT, has had to lay off over 200, again because of a reduction in
demand.
By funding the IMF we also fulfilled our role as leader of the world
community. Like it or not, the United States is the sole remaining
superpower, and our leadership is essential in resolving international
crises. By appropriating $18 billion for an IMF credit line, Congress
is letting the world know that the United States is interested in
living up to its unique role. Incidentally, it should be noted that the
United States has never lost one thin dime in the last 50 years that we
supported funding for the IMF. It is not the big drain that some
people, unfortunately, believe it is.
Mr. President, I obviously have serious reservations about the
process with which this bill reached the Senate floor. That said, I do
want to commend the efforts of those who made a flawed process better.
The President's Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, who is departing, was
outstanding. He will be sorely missed by anyone, who has worked with
him. I know of no finer public servant than Mr. Bowles.
[[Page S12838]]
The President's Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Jack
Lew, has likewise been a pleasure to work with, as has Larry Stein, the
President's congressional liaison. There are many others I could name
in the executive branch with whom I worked--devoted servants tenacious
in their support for good programs for our country.
The same applies to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee,
Senator Stevens, and Senator Byrd. Both are tremendous leaders and both
are tremendous men. The House leadership was also very helpful at
times, as were the chief persons in the House Appropriations Committee.
I very much appreciate their efforts, without which we would have faced
an even more objectionable means of legislating today.
Mr. President, I am convinced that Americans are less concerned about
the process we have used to pass this bill than what is actually in it.
Whether it is highway funding an airport project, I think process is
less important than outcome, as long as results are delivered. I think
Tip O'Neill, the former Speaker of the House, said it best: ``all
politics is local.''
So, why am I so concerned about the process? Let me explain.
Ordinarily, bills that go through the Congress arrive through
committees. They are debated there and, if passed, sent to the floor.
After being placed on the calendar, the majority leader--some years it
is a Republican leader, other years it is a Democratic leader--sets the
agenda and decides which bills to bring up to be debated before the
Senate. It is generally a collegial agreement between the majority
leader and the minority leader as to which bills are brought up and
debated.
Following debate and passage on the floor, bills go to a conference,
because the House has gone through a similar procedure. Many of the
bills that are brought up on the floor under the Senate rules have
added onto them various amendments. Some amendments are relevant and
germane to the bill before the Congress but often, under the Senate
rules, many are not. Regardless, all of those provisions are debated,
in full view of the public and press. Senators cast their votes yes or
no--sometimes with recorded votes, sometimes with voice votes--but then
they go to conference.
What happens in conference? Generally, the principal members of the
committee of jurisdiction meet with the principal members of the
committee of jurisdiction of the House of the bill that passed, because
they are similar but there are different provisions. There are some
adjustments the conferees have to make, so they recommend the same bill
with the same provisions back to both bodies. Both bodies then vote yes
or no, and, if passed, the President gets one bill. The President can
sign it, veto it, or pocket veto the bill.
That is the procedure, and it is basically the procedure our Founding
Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution. They didn't write
all the rules for the House and the Senate, but they decided there
should be a House and Senate and the bodies should make their own
rules. They intended that Congress should operate in the context of
openness in government and representative democracy in government. That
was the whole purpose of our Founding Fathers writing the Constitution,
escaping tyranny from Europe: representative democracy, where the
people are in charge.
Mr. President, I am not going to stand up here as a purist and say we
should follow that lock, stock and barrel. We have to be practical and
do what works, but we must do so with full respect for the people who
elected us, the people we have the privilege of serving.
Unfortunately, something very different than the process I just
described was used to pass this omnibus appropriations bill. What
happened, essentially, is that 3,800 pages of legislation--which, by
and large, contains 8 appropriations bills that did not pass both
bodies and go to conference, was put in one conference report. This
legislation did not go to the floor of the House or the Senate, where
it could be debated and amended. It is legislation, rather, which is in
this conference report and sent back to the House and Senate
unamendable--unamendable. I might also mention that roughly half this
bill is authorizing language that ordinarily goes through the committee
process.
So who made the decisions that resulted in this 4,000 page bill? Were
they the chief people in the committees of jurisdiction? No. Were they
Democrats, Democratic leadership? Not very often. So, who were they?
Essentially, the people in the closed room--unavailable to the press,
to the public, unavailable to other Senators--were top staff in the
administration and the leadership of the House and Senate, usually
Republican and to some degree Democratic, which would mean about five
or six, maybe eight Members of Congress.
Mr. President, we have 535 Members of Congress, roughly. Eight of
whom were in the room with the administration officials, hammering this
bill out. There is so much here, even they do not know what is in it.
What did the rest of us do? We had little choice but to do the very
best for our people at home and get on the phone. We called the select
few in that room, trying to make our views heard, trying to make a
semblance of a democratic process.
I spent a lot of time talking to the chief administration officials
who I know were in the room. To their credit, they listened to me. And
to their credit, they agreed with a good number of the views that I was
espousing.
I did the best I could, given the circumstances we had, and I am
pleased that those people in the room decided to include some Montana
provisions, like Canyon Ferry; various land and water conservation
funds, like money for the purchase of the Royal Teton Ranch right next
to Yellowstone Park; funding to help the massive Gallatin land
exchange; the purchase of Lindbergh Lake, for a number of the same
reasons. There are a lot of provisions in this bill that directly
affect my State, in addition to broad national policies, such as more
teachers, more funding for education, and so forth.
But I believe, Mr. President, that there comes a time when the
process becomes so corrupted that it undermines and corrupts the
legislation that is passed.
Let me give a little personal background here. Several years ago, I
was involved in writing Montana's State Constitution. I think we are
the last State in the Nation to rewrite a constitution. There is a very
important provision in our State's constitution called an open meeting
law. In Montana's constitution, all public meetings are open to the
press. The Governor of our State knows all the meetings he has in his
office will be attended by the press.
Sure, it causes some problems. Some in State government say, ``Oh, my
gosh, this is a terrible provision; it cramps our style; it makes it
difficult for us to do our work.'' Sure, it makes it sometimes
difficult, but we all know deep down it is for the public good and, as
with a lot of things that are good, it takes effort, it takes hard
work. Most of the good things in life take effort and hard work. This
is one of those. We have an open process in Montana, and we have a much
higher view in Montana of our public servants. It is very helpful.
I will relate another personal experience which indicates my resolve
toward a more open representative process. It occurred a little more
than 20 years ago, when I was a freshman Member of the House. I had a
free hour with not much to do, and I said, ``Well, I think I will learn
something. I will go to a tax conference writing a tax bill,'' by
Senate conferees, House conferees, Senate Finance Committee, House Ways
and Means Committee, top folks who are in the conference for a large
tax bill.
I asked around, ``Where is this meeting, where are they?'' I got the
runaround. Nobody could tell me where they really were. I finally went
to Mike Mansfield, then majority leader of the Senate. I thought,
``Gee, Senator Mansfield could find out where it is occurring.'' Sure
enough, his people told me. I went over there. A policeman was standing
right at the doorway. I said I am a Member. I think he thought I was a
member of the conference, so he let me in.
I took a seat in a corner so I could watch and learn a little about
tax policy and how conferences work. I was there, minding my own
business listening to Wilbur Mills, chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee, and Russell Long, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee,
talking.
[[Page S12839]]
They were trying to work out this bill. There were a lot of executive
branch people in the room. Treasury Secretary Bill Simon was in the
room, along with other executive branch people. I was just sitting
there about 5 or 10 minutes, and up walked a senior House Member,
Congressman Burke from Massachusetts. He said, ``Sorry, you can't be
here.''
I asked, ``Why? Why can't I be here?''
He said, ``Well, it's the rules.''
I said, ``What rule is it?''
He said, ``Well, it's the Senate rule.''
I said, ``What Senate rule is it?''
He said, ``I'm sorry, you just can't be here. Nobody can be here. No
other Member of the House and Senate can be here. Not even Congressman
Bill Green can be here.''
Bill Green, who was then a Member of the House Ways and Means
Committee who successfully authored the provision on the floor of the
House to modify the percentage of the oil depletion allowance, even he
couldn't be in the room. All the people allowed in the room were the
conferees. It was closed doors and that is it.
I said to Congressman Burke at the time, ``Look, I'm not going to
cause a fuss here, but this is wrong. It is just not right that this is
not open to the public, certainly to Members of the Congress.''
That afternoon, I stood before the House, along with Congressman Ab
Mikva, who also did not like that process, and we voiced our
disagreement and displeasure. Next year, things opened up because it
was the right thing to do.
Perhaps I have too much of a personal investment in this, but I do
believe the people are much better served the more the process is open
and the more the process is not corrupted as, in my judgment, this
process is.
Again, about half of the U.S. Government bills, which did not pass
the House or the Senate or go through committees in the full light of
day, which did not pass the floor of the House, some of which were not
even brought up on the floor of the House or the Senate, were put in
this huge bill, then sent back to the Senate and the House unamendable.
No amendments are in order, Mr. President, in this process; none.
I suppose there is a reason for that because none of us know what is
in the bill. How can we offer an amendment if we don't know what is in
the bill? I asked the Parliamentarian not long ago: How much of this is
authorization, how much is appropriations? He said, ``Senator, we just
don't know; this huge stack here is too big for us to have gone through
it by now. We just don't know.''
As I said, Mr. President, I am in an anxious position here because a
lot of good is in this bill. But the process, in my view, is wrong.
That's why I voted no on the bill.
The provisions that are in this bill I would have worked for in
separate bills, in separate agriculture bills or Agriculture
appropriations bills or in other authorizing bills that would
ordinarily come before the Congress.
Again, I am not going to be a purist about this, I just want to be
practical. We have done this 2 years in a row, dumping so much in such
a very undemocratic way into a huge bill written behind closed doors,
written by only a few Members of the House and Senate and the
administration. This process dangerously disenfranchises most Senators,
House Members and American voters.
We, as Senators and House Members, don't have an opportunity to go
back to our people and say, ``What do you think of this provision?''
They don't have an opportunity to say to us, ``We don't like what is in
there, vote this way or that. They are disenfranchised, cut out of the
process.
This is not legislation by representative democracy, Mr. President.
It is legislation by a very few, by oligarchy.
At a deeper level, what does that do? It further undermines the
people's confidence or belief in Government. This process does that. It
confirms some of the worst views a lot of Americans have; namely, oh,
those guys back there in Washington are just out for themselves; they
don't care about us.
Mr. President, we must draw the line. Enough is enough. We all know
that the more issues are actually fully debated--and I mean debated--
the more the public has a chance then to see what is going on, and they
themselves get more involved. To the extent we do that, this country
will be stronger. We know that. We also know that the less the people
are involved, the less they know what is going on, and the weaker this
country is going to be.
Mr. President, we are the world's oldest democracy. We have a form of
government where the people elect their representatives to do their
nation's business. We are not a kingdom, we are not a monarchy. And we
will be the leader in the next century if people are more involved in
government. And they will be more involved in government the more we,
as representatives, respect them, respect their views, want their
views, want them to be able to comment on what we are doing or not
doing.
But on the other hand, the more we disrespect people by hiding behind
closed doors, in the dark of night, the more we will cause a further
deterioration of our government and weaken the United States role as
the world leader that we want to be in the next century.
Finally, Mr. President, let me say that this is a sad moment for me.
I cast my vote with reservation, fully aware of the good that this bill
contains. But vote no I must, simply because I think that to vote yes
would be to cast a vote for exclusivity and against the democratic
process. I worked very closely with some individuals who made a few of
this bill's important provisions reality, and I do not want now to be
voting against their reference. They made a good effort and did a very
good job, given the situation they were in, given the circumstances
they faced. They were helpful to those of us who were working for our
States and had nothing else to do--no alternative--but to try to work
with this abominable process.
In closing, Mr. President, I want to say that next year it is
critically important that we prevent this process from happening again.
We have done this two years in a row, and each year more and more and
more is getting dumped into this omnibus conference report process. If
this trend continues, then within a year or two maybe three-quarters of
Government is going to be in there; maybe everything is soon going to
be in there, which means I might as well not report for work until the
final 3 weeks of the Congress, because that is where it is all done,
with those few people behind closed doors.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagel). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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