[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 64 (Monday, May 22, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4225-S4229]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                CLOTURE

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I was sitting in my office watching the 
floor on C-SPAN and I heard my colleague from Wyoming speak out about 
some of his concerns as they relate to conduct of priority business on 
the floor of the Senate. I am pleased he would come this early 
afternoon to discuss what I think is really a very important and 
necessary issue for all of us to understand but, more importantly, for 
the public that pays close attention to what we do to understand.
  During debate last week, after the vote concerning the Byrd-Warner 
amendment on the President's open-ended mission in Kosovo, several 
things were said by the minority leader that I feel need to be 
corrected. If you were to take the minority leader at face value last 
week, I think you would have gotten a distorted view of what we did in 
the Senate and what was an appropriate and necessary approach.
  The day before the vote on the Byrd-Warner amendment, the Senate 
passed a rule that said only germane amendments could be offered to 
appropriations bills. ``Germane'' is a technical term for relevant. The 
following day, the minority leader stated before us:

       No majority leader has ever come to the floor to say that, 
     before we take up a bill, we have to limit the entire Senate 
     to relevant amendments.

  Those are the minority leader's words, straight out of the 
Congressional Record. When I heard that, I was surprised, and I began 
to think about past Senates, past Congresses. I began to do some 
research. I must tell you I was surprised that the minority leader 
would, in fact, make that statement. The minority leader also said that 
he would defy anybody to come to the floor and challenge the statement. 
I am here today, I did my research over the weekend, and I challenge 
the statement of the minority leader. I think it is time the American 
people understand exactly what he meant and why he meant it.

  We have important and critical legislation that needs to be passed in 
a timely manner to deal with all that is important for the millions and 
millions of Americans whose lives are impacted by what we do here.
  In the appropriations bills there is money for education, health 
services, agriculture, for the environment, for national defense, and 
for other essential Government services on which so many people rely. I 
want to take a few minutes to explain what the majority leader said 
last week and, more importantly, I want to spend more time saying why 
what the minority leader said last week was wrong.
  The majority leader was clearly trying to expedite the activities of 
the Senate when he asked those of us on each side of the aisle, 
Democrat and Republican, to agree to unanimous consent requests that 
would cause the Senate to move along in a timely fashion. When the 
minority leader came to the floor and suggested that irrelevant 
amendments should be debated in full and this was an inappropriate 
thing and had never been done before, then what he was saying simply 
was not an accurate statement.
  The rules of the Senate are very easy to understand and fairly 
straightforward. For instance, a cloture vote, as far as its dictionary 
definition, is a petition to limit debate. The petition must be signed 
by 16 Senators. It is then voted on by the entire Senate, and it takes 
60 votes to invoke cloture; in other words, to move on. Cloture is a 
formal way of ending a filibuster, or ending intentional debate that 
prolongs the proceedings of the Senate. A filibuster, of course, is a 
time-delaying tactic, a strategy used to extend debate, as I just 
mentioned, and ultimately to prevent a vote from being taken by 
Senators.
  By the way, the term ``filibuster'' comes from the early 19th century 
Spanish or Portuguese pirates' term ``filibusteros,'' meaning those who 
held ships hostage for ransom. Therefore, in order to stop a 
filibuster, a tactic used to hold the Senate hostage, a cloture motion 
must be filed. It is the formal beginning of the process to end a 
filibuster.
  Let me go back to what the minority leader said last week. He said 
that ``No majority leader has ever come to the floor to say that''--
meaning we ought to limit debate and move to the relevant issues of the 
day. He said that--``before we take up a bill, we will have to limit 
the entire Senate to relevant amendments.'' In other words, shaping the 
debate, moving it along in a timely fashion.
  That statement caused me to take a short walk down memory lane. Let 
me take us all back to the 103d Congress. The Senate was controlled by 
Democrats, not Republicans, under the watchful eye of the majority 
leader, George Mitchell. During the same Congress, almost 300 
legislative measures were enacted into law. Of those 300 measures, 
Senator Mitchell considered 15 of them to be the object of a 
filibuster. In other words, Senator Mitchell feared that there would be 
a filibuster on a particular piece of legislation. Senator Mitchell's 
response to this imaginary threat was to file 43 cloture motions on 
these 15 measures.
  Let me repeat: Senator Mitchell filed 43 cloture motions on 15 
legislative measures he thought might be filibustered. Of these 43 
cloture motions, 21 of them--almost half--were filed on the same day 
the Senate actually began debating a bill. In his attempt to break a 
filibuster, he filed cloture on bills 21 times before debate had even 
begun.
  If there was any intent to intentionally limit debate--and once you 
have a cloture motion in place, and once you have proceeded to the bill 
postcloture, then only relevant amendments should apply--then, of 
course, George Mitchell was doing exactly what he intended to do as 
majority leader, Democrat majority leader of the Senate: Limit debate, 
shape debate to the particular bill involved.

[[Page S4226]]

  Did Senator Mitchell say before a bill was even offered that the 
Senate would be limited to relevant amendments? He did not have to say 
it. His actions said it, and they were very clear, loud actions. He did 
21 filings of cloture the same day the Senate actually debated a bill. 
He took a procedural step that would make the threat a reality. In 
other words, he did not come to the floor to suggest he might have to 
do something to limit debate to relevant amendments; he just did it. 
And that is the prerogative of a majority leader.
  Clearly, Senator Mitchell went much further than the rule we passed 
last week. As the minority leader well knows, Senator Mitchell 
perfected the art of confrontational legislating. Not only would 
Senator Mitchell not allow nonrelevant amendments, he filed cloture on 
bills 43 times in the 103d Congress.
  That is the record. That is setting the record straight. I say to 
Minority Leader Daschle, I took up your challenge. I did my research. I 
believe those are the facts. But Senator Mitchell's tactics of the past 
pale in comparison to the strategy of the minority leader in the Senate 
today. Again last week, the minority leader said on the floor in 
reference to an appropriations bill that:

       Constitutionally, appropriations bills must begin in the 
     House of Representatives. We are, in a sense, circumventing 
     the rules of the Congress by allowing these bills to be 
     debated and considered prior to the time the bill comes 
     before the Senate.

  I did some simple research, such as picking up a copy of the U.S. 
Constitution and turning to article I, section 7, clause 1, and reading 
it, just reading it:

       All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House 
     of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with 
     Amendments as on other Bills.

  Let me also turn to another provision, ``Riddick's Senate Procedure, 
Precedents and Practices.'' This is, of course, one of the procedural 
booklets we follow:

       Bills originate in the House:
       In 1935, the Chair ruled that there is no Constitutional 
     limitation upon the Senate to initiate an appropriation bill.

  Obviously, the intent of what I am suggesting is that we can initiate 
appropriations bills, and we have, and we have held them at the desk. 
As the House sends its appropriations bills across, we attach a House 
number or we move through that process in a way that accommodates.
  Why would the minority leader propose such an idea? I think it is 
really quite clear. It is to obstruct the action and the movement of 
the Senate.
  Maybe there is another reason. Maybe there is a reason that is 
subliminal, that is not so clear. Maybe the reason was talked about 
this morning in the Washington Times: ``CBO now predicts a $40 billion 
surplus''--even a greater surplus of monies than the kind that was 
predicted earlier that the Budget Committee analyzed when it proposed 
its budget resolution.
  Maybe it is why he wants to drag the feet of the Senate through June, 
July, August, and into September, so at the very end, a lame duck 
President, with his veto, can hold a Senate hostage and gain the 
spending of billions more dollars than were proposed in this present 
budget when he proposed total discretionary appropriations of about 
$223 billion where our budget discretionary spending is around $600 
billion. Maybe he really wants to make good on not giving American 
citizens some tax relief by returning some of these surplus dollars to 
them. Maybe he really wants to make good on the idea that expanding 
Government and spending more money is really the mantra, the very 
foundation and the basics of the Democratic Party that he represents.

  I am not sure, but what I am sure of is that what the minority leader 
said on the floor of the Senate last week does not ring true to past 
Senate actions practiced by Democrat and Republican majorities.
  We operate on the rules of the Senate. We operate on past precedent. 
We also operate on a consistency that assures a motion of activity here 
that produces 13 appropriations bills in a timely fashion to fund our 
Government in a way that I think our American citizens and taxpayers 
expect us to perform.
  What the minority leader said last week was we would not perform; he 
was going to draw a line and stop us, and he drew that line in the 
sand. He said, for example: We do not need to deal with the same bill 
twice; let's wait until the House gets its bill here. Yet he was saying 
that in the backdrop of a gun debate that had been dealt with numerous 
times on the floor of the Senate over the last year; in fact, a debate 
in which his side had won and passed legislation that moved to the 
House, and the House rejected it.
  I am not quite sure I understand even that argument because it not 
only is inconsistent with the very actions that were taking place at 
the time, and that was, we were redebating for the fourth or fifth time 
an idea or a piece of legislation in which the Senate itself had been 
involved throughout the 106th Congress.
  The reason I have come to the floor this early afternoon is to set 
the record straight. I think it is important for the Senate and for the 
United States as a whole to understand how we operate and that what we 
were doing and what we were proposing were clearly consistent within 
the rules. No rules had been bent. There was not a rules committee of a 
single individual but the action of a Congress and a Senate operating 
under unanimous consent and doing so in an appropriate and responsible 
way.
  If there was a bad precedent set last week, it was not bad in the 
sense that it was one majority leader simply following the actions of 
another majority leader some sessions ago, recognizing the timely need 
to move legislation along and to be able to do so by limiting certain 
types of amendments that were irrelevant to the fundamental debate and 
the consideration of a given appropriations bill.
  I hope this clears the air. I hope what we experienced last week was 
but a thunderstorm, and now the clouds have cleared and the air is a 
bit fresher. I hope we can move on in a timely fashion, as we must, 
because if that does not happen, I and others will be coming to the 
floor on a very regular basis and I will not mind pointing a finger at 
those who object and those who obstruct.
  We have a responsibility to cause our Senate to operate in an 
appropriate fashion, and certainly debate on one and all issues is 
important and can happen, but I do believe the citizens of this country 
expect us to get our work done; they expect us to balance our budget; 
they expect us to be fiscally responsible; and, most importantly, they 
expect and anticipate a limited Government that does the right things 
for its citizenry. That is what we are intent upon accomplishing. I 
hope we can move forward, and I hope we can do so in a timely fashion.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I, like other Members of the body, read 
this morning's paper and read the comments of the Democratic leader. I 
have heard the comments on the floor of some of our colleagues, 
including the current occupant of the chair, and the Senator from 
Idaho. Since it is somewhat of a slow day, I decided to add my voice to 
the voices that have been raised here, perhaps from a slightly 
different perspective.
  I know, in Senate terms, I am a relative newcomer. I am only in my 
second term. And around here, that counts for little more than being in 
your first term, but it does not put you in the rank of Senate 
historians or the old Senate ``bulls,'' as they used to be called.
  Nonetheless, if I might, I would like to go back and quote a little 
personal history because my first exposure to the Senate, up close and 
personal, came in the early 1950s.
  If I may reminisce with you, I remember sitting in the family 
gallery, night after night, when the Senate would be debating, 
listening to the oratory that went on and the clashes of opinion that 
would occur, and falling in love with the place. I was a teenager.
  My father had been elected in the election of 1950. I was here in the 
summer of 1953. Dwight Eisenhower was the President--the first time a 
Republican President had been in office since 1932. The Democrats were 
apoplectic about the idea that there was a Republican President, and 
carrying on with great frustration.
  I remember the towering debates--and they were debates. They were not

[[Page S4227]]

speeches given to empty Chambers. They were debates between the two 
protagonists on the Finance Committee.
  Paul Douglas, the Senator from Illinois, would come down here and 
thunder against the terrors of the Eisenhower administration. I would 
listen, in the family gallery, as a Republican, and wonder if anybody 
could respond. Then Eugene Millikin would enter the Chamber, bad back 
and all. He sat there in that seat in front of me. It was very 
difficult for him to move because of his back. So when he would turn, 
he would turn his entire body, and it would be slow. I remember, 
clearly, Senator Douglas recognizing what had happened when Senator 
Millikin had come on the floor. Senator Millikin was the chairman of 
the Finance Committee.
  Senator Douglas said: The Republicans have brought up their heavy 
artillery in bringing in Senator Millikin. He said: In fact, I would 
even say they have brought their nuclear cannon.
  I sat in the family gallery and listened to this, and thought: What 
is going to happen now?
  Senator Millikin, with a few well-placed barbs, proceeded to destroy 
Senator Douglas' argument. And Senator Douglas got mad. He started 
complaining about the fact that the Senator from Colorado--because that 
is where Millikin was from--had as much authority in this body as he 
did, the Senator from Illinois. He pointed out how many people there 
were in Illinois and how few people there were in Colorado, and he got 
very indignant about it.
  I remember Millikin's response. He said: Mr. President, the Senator 
from Illinois is no longer opposed to the bill before us, he is now 
opposed to the Constitution. I must say, I am not surprised.
  With that, he turned on his heels and walked out, leaving Senator 
Douglas sputtering a bit.
  So I go back that far with my experiences with the Senate. I served 
in the Nixon administration as a lobbyist for one of the Departments. 
We did not call it that because under the law you are not allowed to 
lobby as a member of the executive branch; you conduct congressional 
liaison.
  Again, because my father was still a Member of the Senate, I had 
access to the family gallery. When my Department had a bill before the 
Senate, I would come and sit in the family gallery and watch the debate 
as the bills would pass--or not pass--and I remember very clearly the 
pattern of debate in those days. This is now in the late 1960s because 
I served in the Nixon administration, and President Nixon took office 
in 1969.
  Votes would be scheduled in advance, with a specific time. The time 
that sticks in my memory is that 11 o'clock was a fairly normal time 
for votes. We would get into the gallery around 10, because the debate 
would be winding up in anticipation of the 11 o'clock vote.
  Senators would start coming into the Chamber by 10:15. I would say, 
there would be 30 Senators in the Chamber listening to the final 
debate.
  By 10:30, the Chamber would be almost full, because at 10:30, Everett 
Dirksen, as the Republican leader, would stand up to give the 
Republican position, the final speaker prior to the vote. Everyone 
wanted to hear Everett Dirksen. He would go on for 15 minutes, until a 
quarter to 11. By this time, the Chamber would be completely filled--
every Senator in his or her seat.
  Then Mike Mansfield would stand up, with the tremendous respect and 
dignity that he had. If I may say so, without diminishing that respect, 
Mike Mansfield, as an orator, was no match for Everett Dirksen. He was 
not as fun to listen to, but he had an earnestness and a determination 
about him that made him a towering giant of this body.
  Then at 11 o'clock, when Mike Mansfield would be through, whoever was 
presiding would bang the gavel, and the Senate would proceed to vote, 
with every Senator sitting at his desk.
  I remember watching my father, who sat on the front row to the right, 
go up to the table and get a copy of the names of all of the Senators, 
and keep track of how they were voting himself. He would mark it off, 
as did all of the other Senators, just the way the clerk marks it off.
  The only time I have seen that happen since I have been in the Senate 
is when, during the impeachment trial, I went down and got one of those 
records, and I sat and made my own record of every Senator's vote in 
impeachment. I thought it was a significant enough event to revive that 
custom.
  Why am I going through this history? For one reason. Because I read 
in this morning's paper the accusation made by the Democratic leader 
that what the Republican majority leader has been doing these last few 
days is leading to the erosion of the history and sanctity of the 
Senate, leading to a destruction of this institution.
  I give you this history as my credentials, as one who wants to 
comment on this institution, who wants to talk about what is going on 
and what has gone on. No, I will not engage in a debate with the 
Democratic leader as to whether there was or was not precedent of what 
he has done. My friend from Idaho has done that, and that is 
appropriate.
  But I am not here to do that. I am here to talk about this 
institution and what has happened to it in the roughly 50 years since I 
sat as a teenager in the family gallery and fell in love with it.
  It is a little startling to me I can talk about that being nearly 50 
years ago, but it was. As I say, I was a teenager. Now I am beginning 
to look forward to the time when I will be 70. I assure my constituents 
it is a long way away, but in fact it is in about 3 years.
  What has happened to the institution in a half a century of my 
observations of it? If I go back to the old institution--that is, the 
institution that I knew in those years--appropriations bills were the 
least controversial of any bills. Appropriations bills passed without 
discussion, debate, or confusion. The institution assumed that the 
Appropriations Committee knew what it was doing. The major debates were 
over authorization bills. Once something was authorized, it was the 
duty of the appropriators to come up with a legitimate amount of money, 
and there was no attempt to saddle appropriations bills with 
controversial riders or amendments. It simply was not done.
  The appropriations process was considered the most routine of any 
process that was carried on around here. Oh, there was partisanship in 
those days. There were bitter speeches, as the kind I have just 
described between Senator Douglas and Senator Millikin, but there was 
no attempt to use the rules of the institution to slow down the 
appropriations process for political benefit. It simply wasn't done. It 
was simply not considered acceptable in this institution. Now we do it. 
Now it happens. I can't put my finger on the turning point at which it 
happened, but I think I can identify one important point along the 
road, and it happened while I was in the Senate.

  In 1995, a gentleman for whom I have utmost respect as a political 
tactician and strategist, Newt Gingrich, made a serious miscalculation. 
I remember discussing it with him sitting over in what is now the 
Lyndon Johnson Room, as he came over from the House to tell us in the 
Senate what they were going to do in the House.
  They were going to deliver the coup de grace to the Clinton 
administration by forcing the President to accept a balanced budget 
agreement, and the reason they would force the President to do that is 
that they would use the appropriations process to put leverage on him.
  I remember a number of us saying to him, ``Well, Newt, what happens 
if the President doesn't cave?'' He said, ``What do you mean, if the 
President doesn't cave? This President not caving in? Are you kidding 
me?'' He went down example after example where President Clinton had 
caved under pressure from the Congress. He said, ``This will be the 
final example that we have taken control in the Congress, we have 
seized it from the executive branch, and we will make him a lame duck 
for the last 2 years of his term. This is the crucial moment at which 
the Congress demonstrates its power.''
  I asked, and a number of others asked, ``Wonderful, Newt, but what if 
it doesn't work?'' He said, ``What do you mean, what if it doesn't 
work? Of course, it will work. What do you mean, what if he doesn't 
cave? Of course, he will cave.''

[[Page S4228]]

  Speaker Gingrich, in a massive miscalculation, set in motion a series 
of actions that ultimately ended up in a partial shutdown of the 
Federal Government. As the shutdown went on, we Republicans did our 
best to try to explain that it was all Bill Clinton's fault. We did our 
best to say it was all the responsibility of the administration. And 
the press did its best to tell everybody it was all our fault.
  Ultimately, the Republican leader on this side, Bob Dole, stood here 
and said, ``Enough is enough, we are going to put the Government back 
to work.'' Senator Dole's instincts were right, and Speaker Gingrich's 
instincts were wrong, and the Republicans paid an enormous electoral 
price for Newt Gingrich's mistake in the 1996 election. We frittered 
away our opportunity to win back the Presidency, and we saw our margins 
in the House of Representatives go down in that election.
  I think that was a watershed event because I think the people in the 
White House discovered that if they could use the appropriations 
process to create a crisis that would be seen as a Government shutdown 
by the Republicans, they could get political advantage. The 
appropriations process has never been the same. The White House 
negotiators have been much tougher since that happened. The demands 
coming out of the White House have been much more significant, and the 
threat is: We will veto, we will veto, we will veto; the Government 
will shut down, and you Republicans will get blamed for it. You have to 
give us what we want.
  We have seen the appropriations power move from the legislative 
branch to the executive branch, under the threat of a veto and the 
threat of a Government shutdown. That is a sea change in constitutional 
structure and a sea change in politics that has happened while I have 
been in the Senate. That is part of what is going on right now. Right 
now, under instructions from the White House, the Democrats are saying: 
Let us do whatever we can to get ourselves in a situation where we can 
rerun the movie of 1995 in the fall of 2000. Look at how it helped us 
in the election of 1996 to keep Bill Clinton in office. Look at how it 
will help us in 2000 to get Al Gore into office.
  So an appropriations bill comes along: Let's do everything we can to 
slow it down. An appropriations bill comes on the floor: Let's do 
everything we can to increase the amount of debate time. We may end up 
voting for the appropriations bill, but that is not the point. It isn't 
a question of, do we vote for it or do we vote against it? It is a 
question of, how much can we slow it down so as to create the 
opportunity to rerun 1995 one more time? That is part of what is going 
on.

  Another thing that is going on that you never would find in the old 
Senate--again, by ``old Senate,'' I mean that time I saw during my 
father's 24 years here. It used to be that when the Senate voted on an 
issue, it passed or it failed, and it was done with. If it came back to 
be voted on again on the part of those who had lost, it came back in a 
new Congress when there had been an election and, presumably, people 
changed their minds. It never was the case that something was voted on 
again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and 
again, and again, and again in the same Congress. They never used to do 
that. Certainly, they never used to do it with rollcall votes.
  I remember when Lyndon Johnson was the majority leader--this story 
has been told many times, but it is worth recounting here--a Senator 
came to him with an amendment, and Johnson said, ``Fine, we will accept 
it.'' The Senator said, ``I want a vote.'' Johnson said, ``No, you 
don't want a vote. We will accept it.'' ``No, let's debate it and have 
a vote.'' So they debated it, and it was defeated, with Johnson voting 
against it and using his power as the majority leader to kill it. The 
Senator came to him and said, ``You said you would accept this.'' 
Johnson said, ``Yes, but you didn't let me. You insisted on wasting the 
time of the Senate to have a debate and a vote, and I am telling you, 
you don't do that anymore. You don't do that ever again.'' The Senator 
learned.
  We have rollcall votes around here on everything. We will have a 
resolution to memorialize Mother's Day, and someone will ask for the 
yeas and nays, and we will spend a half hour voting, 100-0, and it 
slows everything down. Why do we do that? Well, maybe on Mother's Day 
we all want to be on record saying we are for Mother's Day. I will tell 
you why we do it--and, again, it is something that never would have 
been done 30 years ago. We do it to build a record for campaign 
purposes, not for legislative purposes.
  The Senate has become a campaign-focused organization rather than a 
legislative-focused organization. I will give you my own experience 
with this. When I ran in 1998, my opponent stood up before the crowds, 
on television, whatever, and said, ``Senator Bennett is pro-tobacco.'' 
Pardon me? ``Absolutely. Look at his record. He voted with the tobacco 
interests 12 different times.'' I did? I was there. I didn't remember 
voting with the tobacco interests once. ``No, he is lying about his 
record. Here it is.''
  Then we go into the web site where he has all of this listed under 
the fetching title, ``What Senator Bennett Doesn't Want You To Know,'' 
and here is the list of all of my ``pro-tobacco'' votes. What were 
they? They were procedural votes, votes on motions to table, votes in 
support of the leader moving legislation forward.
  On the one tobacco vote that counted, which was a cloture vote on 
Senator McCain's bill, I was in the antitobacco forces; and, indeed, I 
had and used, during the campaign, letters thanking me for my strong 
antitobacco stand from the American College of Pediatric Surgeons, et 
cetera, et cetera. All of the people who were involved in the tobacco 
fight knew I was on their side. They knew the process around here well 
enough to know these 12 votes about which my opponent was talking were 
meaningless as far as the real issue was concerned.
  I will tell you what I said to him. We checked his FEC report, and I 
said to my opponent: You paid $20,000 to a computer firm to research my 
voting record and come up with this list. I recommend you call them and 
get your money back because you wasted it. They gave you wrong 
information.

  He said I was pro-liquor. He had a voting record that said I was in 
favor of alcohol. Pardon me? We got into it. We found out what the vote 
was that I supposedly cast that made me pro-alcohol. It had to do with 
Federal highway funds and the rights of the States to set their own 
levels of alcohol tolerance, and because I am in favor of States 
controlling that and voted against having the Federal Government 
dictate it, suddenly I had cast a pro-alcohol vote. He went on and on 
and on in this same vein.
  I understand what is going on here. Amendments are not being offered 
for legislative purposes. Bills are not being called up for legislative 
purposes. Recorded votes are not being called for because someone wants 
to improve the legislation. Records are being built on issues that can 
be misrepresented as serious challenges to incumbents. They are being 
brought up again and again and again so that people can stand up in a 
campaign and say that the incumbent voted wrong 17 times. Lyndon 
Johnson would not have stood for it. Everett Dirksen would have had a 
quip about it that would make everybody laugh. But it is now the way 
things are done in this institution.
  I said that I am responding to the suggestion of the Democratic 
leader that somehow what is going on here is destructive of the 
institution. I agree that what is going on is destructive of the 
institution. But I do not put it at the feet of the majority leader. I 
think it has historic roots that go back beyond this majority leader 
and that go back before the previous majority leaders. I don't know 
when it started happening, but we have come a long way from the day 
when the Senate would vote with a rollcall vote about 50 times in a 
session--that is how often my father voted on rollcall votes--a day 
when the Chamber would fill up to hear the debate because it was a 
significant vote. We have come a long way from that.
  The institution has become primarily a campaign platform. Let us make 
no mistake about it. What is going on right now in the Chamber is all 
geared to November and not in any sense geared toward legislation. It 
is not geared toward solving problems. It is not geared toward moving 
the Republic forward. It is all geared toward getting those multiple 
votes that a computer

[[Page S4229]]

can find and then put it on a web site that can be used in a campaign 
speech on the part of the challenger.
  I agree with the Democratic leader that this cheapens the 
institution. I agree with the Democratic leader that it threatens the 
institution. But I disagree with him as to the solution.
  I think all Senators need to back away from the idea that the primary 
purpose of being in the Senate is to give campaign speeches, and back 
away from the idea that the primary function of coming to the floor is 
to do things that will give you an advantage in November and so you can 
misrepresent and attack an incumbent. There is a time for partisanship, 
and there is a time to be very firm about the position that you take. 
But there is also a time to recognize that the institution is 
threatened if you let partisanship get out of hand.
  It reminds me of the signature comment that comes to us out of the 
Vietnam War where, I believe, a captain was quoted as saying after a 
particular battle that it was ``necessary to destroy the village in 
order to pacify it.'' If it is necessary to destroy the institution of 
the Senate in order to make it part of my party's control, I want no 
part of that activity. In my own campaign, I have refused to engage in 
negative advertising. I want no part of what I call ``Carville-ism''; 
that is, the politics of personal destruction that has become so 
prevalent in the last 8 years. I want no part of it.
  I remember a man saying to me: If you do not go negative, you will 
not win the nomination.
  I said to him: The nomination is not worth it. I would rather retain 
my self-respect than gain a seat in the Senate. Fortunately, I have 
both.
  I say to all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--because 
Republicans campaign just as vigorously as Democrats--let's stop using 
the Senate as an institution solely for campaign purposes. Let's stop 
using the rules of the Senate that can allow votes and that can call up 
amendments solely for the purpose of creating campaign records. Let's 
recognize that the purpose of the Senate is for legislation, not 
campaigning.
  If we can do that, we will not get back to the days that I have 
described, but we will at least get towards them in the sense that this 
institution will survive, as we like to call it, ``the greatest 
deliberative body in the world'' and not ``the greatest campaign forum 
in the world.''
  I thank the Chair for his patience. I thank my colleagues for their 
indulgence as I have taken this memory trip. But I hope that all of us 
will recognize that we have something to learn from the past and from 
the kind of institution this once was, and we have a responsibility to 
see to it that it does not degenerate into what it could be.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I listened to Senator Craig's remarks 
about Senator Mitchell's use of cloture in the 103d Congress. As to the 
cloture numbers the Senator mentioned, yes Senator Mitchell filed 
cloture 23 times on the first day of an item's consideration but what 
he failed to mention was that only one of those instances was on a 
bill. Let me repeat that--in only one instance in the entire 103d 
Congress did Senator Mitchell file cloture on the first day a bill was 
considered, and in that instance it was with the bill sponsor's 
permission. It was Senator Rockefeller and the bill was product 
liability. In all but four of the other instances the Senate was not in 
an amendable situation, they were on motions to proceed, conference 
reports, or attempts to go to conference.
  There were two instances where Senator Mitchell filed on amendments 
on their first day, the first was on Senator Kennedy's substitute 
amendment to the national community service bill and the other was on 
the Mitchell-Dole Brady gun amendment, in each case a true filibuster 
was going to be waged. In other words members of the minority had 
indicated a willingness to try and kill the legislation by extended 
debate. This has not been the case this Congress', cloture is filed in 
attempt to stifle the ability of individual Senators to offer 
amendments and that is the crucial difference that I pointed out last 
week.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The 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. Bunning). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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