[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 25 (Wednesday, March 8, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1275-S1276]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  UNANIMOUS CONSENT AGREEMENT--S. 1712

  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending 
bill, S. 1712, be placed back on the calendar as it existed yesterday 
before the unanimous consent agreement calling up S. 1712.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask that the unanimous consent request 
that has been suggested be amended to read as follows: Consent that the 
pending bill, S. 1712, be placed back on the calendar in its present 
status and that the bill become the pending business again at the 
discretion of the majority leader with the concurrence of the 
Democratic leader.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. THOMPSON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. THOMPSON. May I inquire of my colleague exactly what he just 
suggested, that it be placed on the calendar now and that it be brought 
back up as pending business at the discretion of the majority leader?
  Mr. REID. The two leaders.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair will sort this out. We have a 
unanimous consent request on the floor now put forward by the Senator 
from Texas. We have to deal with that first before we can even go to 
another phase. Is there objection to the unanimous consent request?
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me for a moment withdraw the unanimous 
consent request 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. GRAMM. 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the quorum call be rescinded.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. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending 
bill, S. 1712, be placed back on the calendar in its present status, 
and that the bill become the pending business again at the discretion 
of the majority leader with the concurrence of the Democrat leader and 
the chairman of the Banking Committee.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I, first of 
all, state how appreciative I am of the work done by Senator Johnson 
and Senator Gramm, the chairman of the Banking Committee. I feel badly 
that we are not going to be able to go forward on this legislation.
  We are going to agree to the unanimous consent request, but not 
because this bill shouldn't be considered. We should be legislating on 
it today. It is important legislation. It is being held up on the other 
side of the aisle. This is legislation that the high-tech industry 
feels confident should be passed.
  I simply say that the cold war is over, but the high-tech war is just 
beginning. We need to be the winners of that war.
  The minority is reluctantly agreeing to this unanimous consent 
request. We hope the rest of the day and tomorrow can be used in a 
constructive fashion. We hope the chairman of the Banking Committee can 
use his experience--he certainly has experience; he proved that when he 
was in the House of Representatives, and here--to be able to get the 
warring parties together and move this legislation forward.
  We have no objection.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me give a word of explanation. First of 
all, let me make it clear that it is my intention as a person who has 
concurrence in this decision not to bring the bill back up through this 
procedure, nor will I support it being done unless there is an 
agreement among the parties. Obviously, I would have a right to file 
cloture on the motion to proceed at some point.
  Let me explain what has happened. We have for the last 3 weeks been 
trying to work out concerns about a very tough, very important, and 
very complicated bill. America has two competing interests. On the one 
hand, we want to produce and export items that embody high technology 
because that is the fastest growing industry in the world. We are the 
world leader in the high-tech industry, and it creates the best paying 
jobs in America.
  We have that as one objective. On the other hand, we want to prevent 
technology that has defense and security implications from falling into 
the hands of those who might use that technology against the United 
States of America and our interests. Between these two interests, there 
is competition and friction. These are very complicated and very tough 
issues.
  In the last 3 weeks, roughly half a dozen Members of the Senate have 
been

[[Page S1276]]

working to bring to the floor and pass a bill that passed the Banking 
Committee 20-0 and that would do something we have not done since 1990: 
to set in place a new permanent law to protect America's access to the 
high-tech world market and at the same time protect our national 
security.
  We thought yesterday that we had reached an agreement in principle 
that would allow us to bring the bill to the floor. The problem with 
reaching agreements in principle is that, as one of my famous 
constituents once said, the devil is in the details. We found ourselves 
today thinking we had such an agreement but having great difficulty 
getting the language to comport to what each individual felt the 
principle to be. Under those circumstances, I thought good faith 
required that the bill be pulled down. So we pulled the bill down, and 
it will not come up under this consent agreement unless an agreement is 
worked out among the parties that were engaged in this negotiation.
  I think we all agree that no one acted in bad faith, but what 
happened was, on a very complicated and very important matter, agreeing 
in principle is not agreeing to the details.
  We are hopeful that in the next few days we might still work out 
these details. If we do, then we will go to this unanimous consent 
agreement and bring the bill back up. If we don't work out those 
differences, we will not.
  Before I yield the floor, because I know the distinguished Senator of 
the Foreign Relations Committee wants to take the floor, I will make a 
general point.
  We started dealing in export control in 1917 with the Trading With 
the Enemy Act. We then had the Neutrality Act in 1935, and, with the 
beginning of the cold war, the Export Control Act became law in 1949. 
We were in a life and death struggle with the Soviet Union. There was 
an ``evil empire.'' There was a cold war. We won the cold war, and 
export control on a multilateral basis played a key role in that 
victory.
  In those days, two things existed which no longer exist. One was that 
the United States had a virtual monopoly in high technology. Indeed, we 
were the world's undisputed leader in technology. Virtually, every area 
in the world had been decimated by World War II, and we stood supreme. 
So technology was an American monopoly.
  Second, in 1949, most of the new technology was driven by defense 
research. Our legitimate concern, life and death struggle concern, was 
that this defense research embodied in American industry would end up 
leaking abroad where it could threaten American national security.

  By 1990, our consensus had started to fade on the Export 
Administration Act, and while for two brief periods--from March 1993 
through June 1994, and from July 1994 to August 1994--we had temporary 
solutions, since 1990 we have had no permanent law to protect American 
national security.
  Today, the world is very different. We have won the cold war. Today, 
technology is driven by private industry. Today, it is not defense labs 
that are generating the new technology that drives American business, 
it is American industry.
  We had set out in our export law the number of MTOPS, millions of 
theoretical operations per second, that a restricted computer could 
employ, thinking we were protecting what we then called supercomputers. 
Now, any schoolchild with a computer has the technical capacity, or can 
get it, and exceed that limit. The number of MTOPS is doubling every 6 
months.
  So we were faced with a decisive question: Can we pass a law and 
control this technology? We could pass a law and stop it in the United 
States, but it would occur elsewhere in the world.
  What we ultimately have to decide is: Is our security tied to our 
being the leader in technology, or is it tied to our ability to hold on 
to the technology we have and not share it with anybody?
  I believe in the end that American security is tied to our leadership 
in technology. I believe that we have put together a good bill. There 
is a debate about the details, and there are legitimate differences. As 
Thomas Jefferson once said: Good men with the same facts are prone to 
disagree. I have seen nothing in my political career or personal life 
to convince me that Jefferson was wrong about much of anything, but he 
was certainly not wrong about this.
  We have put together a bill that we believe meets national security 
concerns. But trying to deal with concerns about Presidential powers 
and waivers is extremely complicated. Yesterday we reached an agreement 
in principle. There was the nucleus of the agreement, but getting to 
the details this morning proved more difficult than we anticipated. To 
be absolutely certain that everyone's rights are preserved, and to be 
certain we are dealing in good faith, I concluded--and all of the 
members of the negotiation agreed--that the bill should be pulled down. 
As a result, I pulled it down.
  I am hopeful that perhaps as early as tomorrow these differences can 
be worked out. I don't know whether they can or they can't. I believe 
America would be richer, freer, happier, and more secure if they could. 
If they are not worked out, it won't be because I didn't make the 
effort. I want it to be worked out. I hope it can be. Whether it can be 
or it can't be, I want to be certain that we are dealing in good faith 
and that we are dealing with each other on that basis.
  I think we have preserved that here today. I appreciate my 
colleagues' help. Someone could have done mischief by objecting; my 
preference was to go back to the status quo, but we couldn't do that. 
We have achieved the same result with this agreement, and I thank my 
colleagues for agreeing to it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.

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