[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 98 (Tuesday, July 25, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7523-S7526]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    ENERGY AND WATER APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I might suggest--and I do this in the 
presence of my good friend from Massachusetts; I wish the distinguished 
Senator from Nevada, Mr. Harry Reid, were here. I have an observation. 
Maybe I am 2 weeks ahead of time, but I believe the plan is that the 
Democrats are not going to let us do anything of significance, 
literally nothing, unless and until they get everything they want.
  The truth is, for this little period in history--I have been here 28 
years, and

[[Page S7524]]

it is a small piece of that--the Republicans have controlled the Senate 
and the House. But the Democrats are bound and determined this year, in 
an election year, that we are not going to pass the regular 
appropriations bills, period. They call us ``do nothing,'' but they are 
obstructionists of the highest order.
  I will just talk about one bill, then I will talk about the 
appropriations bill on education. I am just going to talk on one 
appropriations bill. We have heard from the beginning platitudes about 
working together to get all the appropriations bills done. The 
distinguished occupant of the chair has heard they want to get the 
Interior bill finished; they want to get the Treasury bill finished. 
For the American people, these are the bills you have to pass every 
year in order to keep certain big parts of our Government open. It 
comes down to October 1st, and if they aren't passed, you get the 
President of the United States talking about who is closing down the 
Government.
  I am going to refer to just the energy and water bill. I am going to 
beg the Senator, the minority leader from the other side, in the same 
way he pleads with us to get something done that is right. This energy 
and water bill was not drafted by Senator Pete Domenici; it was drafted 
by Senator Pete Domenici and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who spends a 
great deal of time on the floor of the Senate and, I might say, for one 
who worked with him for years before he got to spend all his time on 
the Senate floor, he has been a very solid performer. I praise him for 
his leadership on the floor. I believe he has been fair, and I believe 
he has been nonpartisan. But I believe what he is seeing he can't even 
speak about because right down deep in that Senator's mind and heart he 
knows it is wrong to hold up appropriations bills for the reasons being 
stated by his colleagues and his leader who compel him to do it.
  This energy and water bill is being held up. We can't even bring it 
up because the minority leader wants a provision that is within it 
taken out. He wants assurance we won't vote on it in the Senate. Who 
has ever heard of that? Take a provision out of a bill that is in a 
bill that has been voted in by a committee. And if you want that bill 
to see the light of day in the Senate, you take out a provision and you 
don't vote on it in the Senate.
  I am not familiar with the contents or substance of the amendment, 
except it has to do with a dispute between the upper Missouri River and 
the lower Missouri River. But it is most interesting, that the 
provision that the minority leader speaks of has been in the 
appropriations bills at least two times. The President has signed it, 
and it has gone out of the Senate. Maybe something dramatically changed 
in the meantime, but it has been in the bill. It has been signed. Some 
who know more than I say it has been in more than two times. I can tell 
the Senate, since I have been writing this bill, it has been in 2 years 
in a row.
  All of a sudden, it isn't enough to have an up-or-down vote in the 
Senate. The only thing that will suffice is that we take it out and 
agree not to vote on it. That means if you don't want to do that, you 
don't get an energy and water bill for this fiscal year.
  We are getting close because we still have to do this bill. It is 
different from the House bill. We need to get some new resources 
assigned to the committee on the House side. We might not be able to 
make it by the October deadline.

  This little innocuous title, ``energy and water,'' is a very 
misperceived title. Energy doesn't mean energy. Energy means all of the 
nuclear weapons programs in the nuclear laboratories in America. By a 
strange coincidence, they are in the energy part of this bill. We have 
been asked by the Department of Energy to put $100 million in new money 
in that bill to take care of production facilities in three cities, 
cities such as Kansas City, Missouri; Amarillo, Texas; Oak Ridge, 
Tennessee; and Aiken, South Carolina; where we have production 
facilities that are desperately in need of repair. We have cleanup in 
the State of the occupant of the chair that is ongoing because of our 
previous nuclear weapons reactor work. We have hundreds of millions of 
dollars in for that kind of cleanup.
  We have all the water projects and dredging projects and flood 
protection programs in this country in this bill. We have all of the 
national laboratories and their special effort and all their employees' 
pay in this bill. I could go well beyond that.
  Now I come to the conclusion: Why can't we take this bill up? 
Frankly, if ever there was an issue where there was something besides 
this bill that somebody has in mind, I have not heard of it. This has 
to be as bad as it is. What is it?
  Is there some political issue we don't understand that has nothing to 
do with the fundamental needs this bill addresses in water, water 
safety, in dams, in diversions, in the dredging of harbors and, over on 
the nuclear side, all the safety programs for our nuclear weapons 
designs, for stockpile stewardship, which is an entire program aimed at 
making sure our nuclear bombs are safe and sound without us doing any 
underground testing? We can't turn that on and off and say, wait an 
extra month, close down the buildings, close down the people for a 
month or so because we have a little problem about the Missouri River 
that somebody doesn't even want to let you vote on. It is not a 
question of whether that provision is right or wrong, it is simply a 
question of whether you will vote on it.
  I wonder, if we would have left it out and we would have brought it 
to the floor and this bill was rocking right along here on the floor 
and somebody offered an amendment to do just what the committee did 
because it had done it 2 years before, what would the response have 
been? Would it have been, you can't do the amendment and you can't move 
on with the bill? I assume that would be the case. I think we would 
have a chance of convincing Senators that is not right.
  I understand there are some other appropriations bills that are being 
held up. I am not aware of the specific reasons why, so I won't make 
the same kind of argument or evidence the same kind of concern as I 
have about the energy and water bill.
  The Senator from Massachusetts talked about getting our education 
programs funded. We are talking about two things. We are talking about 
an elementary and secondary education authorization bill which has 
gotten tied up in all kinds of problems from both sides of the aisle on 
amendments. When can we pass it? Can we get agreement?
  But over there in those new offices beneath the Senate, that are 
called ``SC''--those offices out there that are really nice to work 
in--there is a whole batch of House Members. I was in there. I made up 
a very large group of Senators working on the Labor-Health and Human 
Services appropriations bill. I just have a hunch, from the little bit 
I have participated, that the White House does not intend to sign that 
bill no matter what we do. We have already put in that bill resources 
amounting to $106 billion, the largest appropriations for those 
functions in the history of the Republic.
  In fact, there is now in that bill, to be spent on education and 
other things, $12 billion more than the Budget Committee contemplated. 
While our numbers aren't binding, the Senator who occupies the Chair 
knows we reported out a budget resolution, and we assumed all these 
pieces would fit together. We assumed about $96 billion--$94 billion or 
$96 billion--for Labor, Health and Human Services. We have now gotten 
to the point where we have taken from others and we put $106 billion 
in.
  From what I gather in that committee, there is little we can do to 
convince the Democrats to be for that bill. My guess is if it rocks 
along as it is, it is going to be a partisan bill, and then no matter 
what we try to do, the President is going to say, ``I want more,'' and 
the President is going to say, ``It is not a good enough bill''; and he 
will find some reasons to say it doesn't fund this enough or that 
enough. We are moving toward a real shipwreck. The issue is going to 
be, at some point, why are we where we are when we come to that 
shipwreck point?
  I am going to start today, and I will watch everything I can, and I 
will come to the floor. But I am starting today taking just one bill 
and saying it would appear to me that on the energy and water bill, for 
some political reason, we can't take it up, and as time passes and 
moves on, whether or not we can get a bill and do all the things I have 
alluded

[[Page S7525]]

to or not will be in the hands of the Democrats and the President, and 
then we will see who is to blame.
  I want to suggest that to the extent we are called ``a Senate that 
doesn't do anything,'' I believe we have to put another mantra on 
somebody else and we have to talk about the marvelous obstructionism 
that is going on by the other side of the aisle. It is being done with 
such dignity, such ease, with such platitudes about ``we are all 
working together,'' and ``we are trying to get there,'' and ``we are 
not trying to delay things.'' It really is that, unless they get their 
way on everything, there will be nothing moving in the Senate.
  Now I never saw it run quite like that, and I have never seen anyone 
ever win an argument on a claim that the other group wasn't doing 
anything. We will see how it comes out. In the meantime, we ought to 
try to work together one more time, and I beg the minority leader on 
this bill--it is $23 billion, not one of the biggest. I literally beg 
that he reconsider and let us vote and let us have our 2 days of 
debate. There are about five very serious problems in this bill that 
will be debated. But they will be debated and done with, just as the 
Missouri River issue will be debated and finished if they will let us 
do it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, my mind has been reflecting on the fact that 
now would be the time Senator Coverdell would come in. When we would 
have a real problem, he would wander in and help bring everything 
together. As we know, that will not be the case. We attended Paul's 
funeral on Saturday, and he is not here to help with the problems we 
are having here.
  Let me just say to my friend, Senator Domenici, for whom I have the 
greatest respect, he is someone in this body who has great power. He is 
chairman of the Budget Committee, one of the senior members of the 
Appropriations Committee. He is chairman of the Energy and Water 
Subcommittee, and he is someone with whom I have had the pleasure of 
working for my entire time here in the Senate--on a very close basis in 
recent years on Energy and Water. He has been chairman and I am the 
ranking member. It has been our bill. He is right. The chairman always 
has, as we know, a little more latitude, as he should have. But I have 
had input on the bill, and I feel very comfortable with the bill we 
have.
  I say to my friend from New Mexico, for whom I have the greatest 
respect, we have a problem with this bill that could be resolved just 
like that. The fact of the matter is that no one is compelling me. We 
are all free agents in the Senate, and we have that right. We are 
elected in our home States, and while Senators are very persuasive in 
helping us and trying to get us to go along with what they want, no one 
compels us to do things, and they should not. In spite of the fact that 
this is a good bill, I think it could be made better. I will not go 
into detail, but I will explain the problems we have.
  We have two leaders in the Senate, Senator Lott and Senator Daschle. 
They both do tremendously good work under very difficult circumstances. 
An overused saying is that they both have a job of herding cats, trying 
to put jello in a bowl that doesn't have sides. They have a lot of 
problems, and we understand that. Very rarely in legislative matters do 
we have one of the leaders step forward.
  The measure we have before us, the energy and water bill, is very 
important to this leader. There is a provision in it that is extremely 
bad for the upper Missouri basin States. One of those States, of 
course, is South Dakota. My friend from New Mexico stated--and 
rightfully so--that the provision is causing problems in the upper 
basin States not only to the minority leader, but it has been in the 
bill two times, on two different bills. Of course it has. But the fact 
is that it was meaningless in the bills initially because what this is 
all about is the Fish and Wildlife Service rewriting a manual, 
reissuing and having a new manual. It was first issued before World War 
II ended, in the early 1940s. They did a little revision in the 1970s--
minor revisions. So for almost 60 years they have had the same manual. 
They have decided to rewrite it, and they are ready to publish this new 
manual. What this legislation does is prevent them from doing so.
  Well, the fact of the matter is that is wrong; it is bad. The 
legislature should allow the administrative body to go forward and do 
their thing to control the Missouri River. The administrative agency is 
prevented from doing that. What Senator Daschle and others have said 
is: Take that provision out of the bill, and when that is taken out of 
the bill, we will move forward on the legislation. This is a bill 
involving $23 billion, a very important bill. But this provision is 
something that should not prevent this bill from going forward. It 
should be removed from the bill, and there are all kinds of different 
steps. We are going to have conferences on this bill. We are going to 
revisit it at that time.

  Let me also say that the history of the Senate is such that the 
interest of the minority is always protected. We talk about this great 
country of ours and we brag about our country, and we should do so. It 
is an imperfect country, but the best set of rules ever devised to rule 
the affairs of men and women comes from the U.S. Constitution.
  What is the Constitution all about? The Constitution is not about 
protecting the rights of the majority; it is about protecting the 
rights of the minority. Where are those rights protected in our 
constitutional framework more than any other place? It is in the 
Senate. That is why the small State of Nevada has as much right to do 
things in this Senate--Senators Reid and Bryan--as do Senators Moynihan 
and Schumer from New York, or Boxer and Feinstein from California, even 
though they have millions and millions more people than we have in the 
State of Nevada. That is what the Senate is all about. What Senator 
Daschle and others are trying to do with this bill is nothing that 
hasn't been done in centuries past, decades past.
  So I say to my friend from New Mexico, take that out and we will move 
forward with this legislation and then deal with a few controversial 
issues. We don't have many controversial issues. This is a very good 
bill, and I think we can finish it in a day.
  Let me also say this. We believe there should be certain rights 
protected. Also under this Constitution, we have a situation that was 
developed by our Founding Fathers in which Senators would give the 
executive branch--the President--recommendations for people to serve in 
the judiciary. Once these recommendations were given, the President 
would send the names back to the Senate and we would confirm or approve 
those names.
  One of the problems we are having here is it is very difficult to get 
people approved, confirmed. We have one Senator from the State of 
Michigan, Mr. Levin, who for 1,300 days has been waiting to have a 
hearing for a very qualified, competent woman who wants to be confirmed 
and whose name has been sent to the White House by Senator Levin.
  He wants a simple hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Senator 
Harkin from Iowa is also waiting for a nominee to be reported out of 
the committee. We think that should be done. This has nothing to do 
with the energy and water bill. It does, however, have something to do 
with the other bills. We could have moved forward on the energy and 
water bill on Friday until this glitch came up.
  There is lots and lots of work to do around here. We believe it would 
be extremely and vitally important to move the provision that allows 
the Fish and Wildlife Service to publish its manual, and not have a 
legislative roadblock for the management of the rivers in an 
appropriate fashion. The Fish and Wildlife Service is not for the upper 
basin States or against the lower basin States. They try to be an 
impartial ruler. That is what they are trying to do.
  I say to my friend: Let the Fish and Wildlife Service go ahead and do 
what they need to do and get the energy and water bill brought before 
this body.
  Mr. President, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state his parliamentary 
inquiry.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, tomorrow the cloture motion on the motion to 
proceed to the Treasury-Postal bill will ripen 1 hour after we convene. 
Is that correct?

[[Page S7526]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, during the 1 hour prior to the cloture vote, 
a motion to proceed to the China PNTR legislation is in order tomorrow 
morning. Is that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we look forward to the majority leader 
making that motion, and filing cloture, as he indicated he would. We 
will have to wait and see when that cloture vote occurs--either this 
week or when we get back after the break.
  I apologize for taking so much time. The Senator from Nevada wishes 
to speak, but the Senator from New Mexico would like to be heard.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I want to respond. The Senator from 
Nevada does so well that I was almost going to come over and sit beside 
him and say he is right. The fact is, he is not right.
  At this late stage--when he knows there is hardly a risk of our being 
able to get appropriations bills finished in a timely manner to keep 
the Government open--to tie appropriations bills up because a judge has 
not been appointed is not right. It might be that there is an argument 
about the judicial appointment, but is it right in the waning days of 
Congress, when we have about 25 working days left, for somebody to come 
along and say: Now it is my turn. I will not let any appropriations 
bills be approved by the Senate unless certain people are appointed to 
the judicial and judge positions in this country? I think it is not.
  Second, this is not a partisan issue. I don't know if it is a 
minority versus majority party issue, because I think in the final 
analysis there are some people on that side of the aisle who would like 
to vote on their issue and who may not agree with the distinguished 
minority leader as to their interests for their respective States.
  My last point is that we protect minority rights. But I wonder in 
this case, when it is obvious that Missouri River upper and lower 
groups are going to argue about this, if it is a question of protecting 
minority rights. It stands in the way of getting a vote on the issue. 
If it is important enough to the upper Missouri that they think it is 
very important but it is also similarly important to those on the lower 
Missouri, it would seem that the way to settle it is to let our 
colleagues understand the issue--that is what this Senate is all 
about--and let us vote. I don't quite understand why we can't vote. I 
wonder what is worrying people. The Senate expresses its views on many 
things. It resolves disputes such as this regularly.
  But, in this case until some future date, who knows when we will not 
be permitted to express the collective Senate will by voting on this 
issue--which in 30 minutes could be known by all sides and all parties, 
and a good decision could be made by the Senate.
  I thank the distinguished Senator for yielding.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The distinguished Senator from Nevada is 
recognized.
  Mr. BRYAN. I thank the distinguished occupant of the chair. Mr. 
President, I wish to change the focus of the discussion on the floor 
from the previous colloquy between the senior Senator from Nevada and 
the senior Senator from New Mexico.

                          ____________________