[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 122 (Wednesday, September 19, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9470-S9477]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        TREASURY AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2002

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Appropriations Committee is discharged from further consideration of 
H.R. 2590, and the Senate will now proceed to its consideration.
  The clerk will report the bill by title.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 2590) making appropriations for the Treasury 
     Department, the United States Postal Service, the Executive 
     Office of the President, and certain Independent Agencies, 
     for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2002, and for other 
     purposes.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I will be joined in the Chamber in a few 
minutes by my colleague, Senator Campbell from Colorado, who is working 
on other parts of this legislation.
  This legislation is the product of the work of the subcommittee on 
appropriations dealing with Treasury, Postal and general government 
accounts.
  In the last 2 days, President Bush has indicated it is time for 
America to go back to work. And we must do that in the Senate.
  This appropriations bill contains funding for counterterrorism, for 
activities to allow us to track down terrorist activity. For example, 
in the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the Treasury Department we 
have the financial crimes enforcement network. We have a 
counterterrorism fund in the Treasury Department. We fund the Secret 
Service. We fund the Customs Service. We have a substantial amount of 
resources in this piece of legislation to deal with the issue of 
counterterrorism in tracking down those who committed the heinous acts 
of terror against our country last week.
  Although we go back to work in the Senate now, the shadow of the acts 
of terrorists committed against our country last week remains. We go to 
work now with a new purpose, a new resolve: to heal, to respond, and 
then to prevent these kinds of acts of mass murder committed by madmen, 
to prevent them from ever happening again in our country or in the 
world.
  Madam President, before I talk about the specific bill, I wish to 
make some comments generally about these days. I made some comments 
last week, and I want to repeat some of them about where we are, what 
all of this means, and what we, as a country, must do.
  There are unique moments in history, too often born of tragedy, when 
Americans stand together with a relentless and fierce determination to 
try to combat the forces of evil and to reaffirm that our freedom is 
secure. This is one of those moments in the life of America.
  A week ago yesterday cowards struck innocent men, women, and children 
in New York City, in Washington, DC, on airplanes, including on one 
airplane that went down in Pennsylvania. Their target was not just 
those airplanes and those buildings. Their target was all of America. 
It was an act of war committed by madmen directed against our country. 
It deserves, and will get, a fierce, strong, and on-target response. We 
should have no illusions about that.
  The campaign to rid the world of terrorism will be long and 
difficult; and our actions must be bold and strong, but not reckless. 
Now, even as we prepare to respond to terrorism, our country mourns the 
death of so many innocent Americans.
  Shakespeare once wrote: ``Grief hath changed me since you saw me 
last.'' The terrorist attacks last week in our country have changed all 
of us. We now carry a heavy burden of grief. We also carry the 
responsibility to ensure that our response is swift, severe, and just.
  But we also have an opportunity today to hold high the torch of 
freedom, and to say to the world: We are heartbroken about our loss, 
but America's spirit will not bend.
  When I left the Capitol Building late in the evening of September 11, 
and drove past the Pentagon, there were

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clouds of black and gray smoke billowing from the fire caused by the 
terrorists. And even today, over a week later, F-16 and F-15 Air Force 
fighter planes fly routine patrols over the skies of our country's 
Capital.

  When I arrived home from the Capitol the night of the terrorist 
attacks, as I walked in the front door, my 14-year-old son, at about 11 
o'clock in the evening, heard the door close, got out of bed, and came 
to me, and said: Dad what happened? And who did this? I told my son: 
This was an act of evil by deranged madmen. The President and Congress 
will tell America that we will search for, find, and punish those 
responsible for these acts of terrorism.
  That is our pledge to us, to our children, and to the world: We will 
not give in to terrorism. We are all Americans; and we will respond 
with an iron resolve, anchored now by a new unity.
  That unity, and the basic goodness of the American people, became 
apparent to all of us in the hours immediately following the attacks, 
when people were reported to have waited in lines for 4 and 5 hours to 
give blood.
  So many heroes stepped forward and risked their lives to help others 
who were the victims of these terrorist attacks. And amidst the carnage 
and the destruction grew a stronger bond among the American people. It 
is an understanding that we live in America but, more importantly, 
America lives in us.
  So now we begin to wage war on terrorism. And we ask all other 
countries in the world to join us. Those countries that believe in 
freedom must join us in our campaign to make the world safe from these 
acts of mass murder.
  Terrorist training camps in foreign lands cannot be allowed to exist. 
Countries that harbor terrorists must, as the President said, pay a 
price for harboring those terrorists. We must dedicate ourselves, as a 
nation, to those tasks.
  Last week it was commercial airliners, full of passengers and jet 
fuel, used as a bomb. In the future it could be a small vial of deadly 
biological agents or chemical agents that could kill a million people, 
or it could be a suitcase-sized nuclear bomb placed in the trunk of a 
rusty car parked at a dock in a major city. If ever we must understand 
our responsibility for world leadership to try to stop the spread of 
nuclear weapons, to reduce the threat of the spread of weapons of mass 
destruction, and to combat terrorism, it must be now. That leadership 
is our responsibility. That mantle is on our shoulders.
  Over a century ago, on the bloodstained ground of Gettysburg, Abraham 
Lincoln said: ``* * * we here highly resolve that these dead shall not 
have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth 
of freedom. * * *''
  Today, in this time, and in this place, we should consecrate those 
words from nearly 140 years ago and let them again inspire our Nation's 
resolve that those who died did not die in vain.
  Our response to the deadly crimes that took them from us will be 
dedicated to destroying the ability of terrorists to wage this kind of 
war, and giving those who live a new birth of freedom from the fear and 
the impact of terrorist acts.
  To those who lost their lives, those who loved them--their relatives 
and friends--we say: Our country grieves with you. Our country reaches 
out to you. And you are not alone.
  Last week, a couple days following the attack on the Pentagon, I 
joined some colleagues to go to the Pentagon. When I came back from the 
Pentagon, I mentioned in this Senate Chamber an act by a young Marine 
that was so inspiring.
  A young Marine, as we were looking at the damage to the Pentagon, was 
hanging by a crane, in a bucket with a steel cable; and I was wondering 
what he was doing because they had hoisted this young Marine up to this 
open gash in the Pentagon where the airplane had exploded. The fire had 
consumed the building; and the building had collapsed.

  The cable and the metal basket, and a young man standing in the 
basket, was dangling from the crane up by the 4th floor. He was trying 
to get in a position to reach in. He reached in this cavernous hole 
that had been caused in the Pentagon, and he pulled out a flag--a 
brilliant red and gold U.S. Marine flag.
  The crane then lowered the basket to the ground, and this young 
Marine got out and proudly carried that flag and walked to where we 
were standing. As he walked past us, he stopped and said: I am going to 
give this flag to the Marine Corps Commandant. I saw it in an office.
  It was untouched, unburned. It was not something I could understand, 
that a flag such as this could have survived that fire. But he said to 
us, as he held this flag: I am going to give this to the Marine Corps 
Commandant. He said: They couldn't destroy this flag; and they can't 
destroy our country.
  And I thought, in many ways he says it for all of us. I have no idea 
how that flag survived. But that flag, and that young Marine, I think, 
said it for all of us: our determination, our resolve, and our 
endurance.
  The road ahead is going to be difficult. The road ahead requires us 
to do a couple of things. And those items are going to be contained, in 
some measure, in this legislation. The road ahead requires us to deal 
with this issue of terrorism in a new way, a new aggressive way. It 
requires us also now to turn to deal with the economy because the 
economy was weak going into these terrorist attacks; and there is great 
fear in this country that the economy could grow much, much weaker. We 
need to take effective action to give this country a chance to restore 
its economy and economic opportunity. Those are the two challenges we 
have, and both are significant challenges.

  This morning I met with the President of one of the major airlines. 
He told me something most Americans and I have known from reading the 
newspapers in the last day or so. The airlines are flying a schedule 
that is much less than the one they had been flying before the acts of 
terrorism. It is also the case that many passengers are canceling 
reservations and deciding not to take trips they were previously going 
to take. The result is a dramatic drop off in the number of people who 
are flying on commercial airplanes.
  This country and its economy cannot survive and grow without a 
commercial air service network. We must take steps to make certain that 
we rehabilitate the commercial air service network, the major airlines, 
and all airlines, the smaller regional carriers and the independent 
airlines as well, that serve our country. You cannot have a great 
economy and an economy that grows unless you have commercial aviation, 
commercial aviation that works and that connects all parts of this 
country.
  It connects to everything. Last week, we saw the airplanes grounded. 
We saw auto workers laid off in Michigan. Why? Because the new way to 
manufacture is just-in-time inventory. If you are doing just-in-time 
inventory, you rely on the parts arriving just in time. If you shut 
down transportation systems, and the parts don't come, those who were 
relying on those parts for their jobs are laid off. It is all 
interconnected. The system we have in this country to transport people 
and freight by air is a critically important element of our economy. We 
must deal with that.
  How does that connect to terrorism? The American people in many 
circumstances are very leery about getting back into an airplane unless 
they feel they are safe. We must move quickly to assure the safety of 
the American people while they are flying. How do we do that?
  No. 1, we will move very quickly to include the use of sky marshals 
in commercial airplanes. Those sky marshals are already being employed. 
I expect that will dramatically increase.
  No. 2, security at American airports must increase in a very 
substantial way. We will have a discussion about having the Federal 
Government take responsibility for the airport security apparatus. We 
must close those gaps that have existed, that we have known for a long 
while have existed in airport security.
  There are a series of other recommendations as well. The Senate 
Commerce Committee will be holding hearings tomorrow on a range of 
these issues. Dealing with the security of American airports and the 
security of commercial aviation is critically important, as well as 
dealing with the economy generally. They are very much related.

[[Page S9472]]

  The economy was soft prior to the acts of terrorism last week, and 
all indications, from the newspapers this morning and all of this week, 
are there will be more and more layoffs. We must act decisively and we 
must act quickly to forestall the further softening of the economy and 
give people confidence that the economy can be restored and can be 
vibrant and can grow once again. There isn't anything much more 
important than the Congress and the President joining together to do 
that, to give the American people the confidence this economy can have 
a strong and vibrant future.
  I studied and taught economics in college. One of the things most 
people forget about economics is, No. 1, there is naturally a business 
cycle. It has a contraction and expansion side. No one has been able to 
repeal the business cycle, nor will they. No. 2, even though we were 
going through a contraction side of the business cycle, there is some 
belief among people in Washington and elsewhere--in some cases a belief 
among economists--that the economy is made up of an engine room of the 
ship of state in which there are massive amounts of dials and gauges 
and levers. If you can just turn them all right and adjust them all 
right--the quantity of money, tax cuts, spending, all of these things, 
interest rates, adjust them just right--the ship of state will move 
forward.
  It is not that at all. It just is not that at all. This economy moves 
forward when people are confident about the future. When people are 
confident about the future, they make decisions that express that 
confidence. They will buy a home. They will buy a car. They will take a 
trip. They will do a whole series of things that express confidence 
that have in their impact the opportunity to create an expanded 
economy.
  Exactly the opposite happens when people are not confident. If people 
are not confident about the future, the economy tends to contract 
because they defer decisions. They don't take the trip. They decide not 
to buy the home. They don't buy the car. They don't make the decisions 
as consumers that they might otherwise make because they are not 
confident about the future.
  This economy has always and will always rest on a mattress of 
confidence. Do the American people have confidence about the future or 
don't they? If they do, this economy will grow and expand. If they 
don't, it will contract. It is that simple.
  This is not like making some sort of economic stew where we have a 
recipe and we put in certain doses of this, that, or the other thing. 
It is about instilling confidence in the American people that this 
economy can and will grow and expand.
  There are a series of things we can do to offer that confidence. The 
President and the Congress can work together on a series of public 
policies that can employ that confidence building in a way that is very 
constructive. It is critical that we begin that immediately.
  Let me turn briefly to this appropriations bill which has elements 
that deal with both the counter terrorism issue and also the issue of 
how to instill confidence with respect to the economy. This is an 
appropriations bill dealing with the Treasury Department. But it is 
much more than that. About one-half of all Federal law enforcement is 
in this bill. It deals with the Office of Management and Budget, the 
White House, the Secret Service, U.S. Customs, GSA, and a whole range 
of Federal agencies.
  I will talk a bit about what this bill does and why it is brought to 
the floor in the manner we have brought it to the floor.
  First, let me again say that central to this bill is the funding of a 
range of issues that are important to the current discussion we are 
having about counter terrorism. The counter terrorism fund within the 
Treasury Department is critical. We have increased that fund in this 
appropriations bill, as well as the funding for the Office of Foreign 
Assets Control, which has the capability and the expertise to track 
terrorists. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Center is the same. It has 
the important capability of tracking the finances and the banking 
transactions these terrorists use.
  The U.S. Customs Service is a very large agency that has the 
responsibility of protecting our borders. That is obviously critical to 
the counter terrorism efforts. If we are not able to have some basic 
control over our borders, we don't have the capability of keeping 
terrorists out.

  We all understand the role of the Secret Service in protecting the 
President and vital public officials in our country, the many other 
duties they perform. So this legislation is important legislation. It 
is timely. We have brought it to the Senate today hoping we could, in 
this new spirit of unity, move this legislation as quickly as possible.
  The subcommittee has worked on this bill. We brought it to the full 
Appropriations Committee. That committee has marked this bill up, and 
this bill now is a recommendation of the full Appropriations Committee 
of the Senate. I am pleased to offer it today.
  This bill contains a total of $32.3 billion in new budget authority. 
Of that amount, $15.6 billion is for mandatory accounts. The committee 
recommendation is within the 302(b) allocations which come from the 
budget we passed. It strikes a balance between our priorities, the 
administration's initiatives, and the agencies requirements.
  My colleague, Senator Campbell, who will be in the Chamber in a bit, 
is now working on a range of these things to try to get them cleared; 
assisted by his staff, Pat Raymond and Lula Edwards, in putting this 
bill in the condition we now have it, as well as my staff, Chip 
Walgren, Nicole Rutberg, and Matthew King, who is detailed to us from 
U.S. Customs. It is a collaborative bipartisan piece of legislation 
which reflects both congressional and administration priorities.
  The bill consists primarily of salaries and expense accounts for a 
good many agencies. The majority of the increases in this legislation 
are for agencies to allow them to maintain current levels. The 
initiatives I will highlight are just a few initiatives that are very 
important.
  (Mr. BAYH assumed the chair.)
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, in this legislation we have doubled the 
amount of funding to $10 million that the Customs Service would have to 
combat the issue of forced child labor practices.
  All of us understand what is happening with respect to child labor 
around the world. It is not fair competition. It is not fair for people 
to use child labor and ship their products to our marketplace in the 
United States and call it fair trade. We have had testimony at hearings 
in the Senate in years past of young children, 8, 10, 12 years old, 
working in carpet factories in some parts of the world, in which those 
who run the carpet factories have actually taken gunpowder and burned 
the fingers of these young children. They burn the fingertips of the 
children in order to create burn scars so that the children who use 
needles to work on these carpets and rugs will not injure themselves. 
It won't hurt because now they are scarred and burned from these 
deliberate burns caused by their employers.
  Is that something we want to allow to happen in this world? I don't 
think so. Do we want to buy from people making products by employing 
10- and 12-year-old kids whose fingers they have burned so they can sew 
rugs and ship them to America to be bought in Pittsburgh, Fargo, 
Minneapolis, and other cities? No. It is not the right thing.
  So we double the amount of money to deal with child labor. We need to 
investigate child labor and prohibit the import of goods from other 
countries into this country when those goods are made by forced child 
labor.
  We add $25 million in this piece of legislation for a new northern 
border initiative to hire additional Customs Special Agents, 
inspectors, and canine enforcement teams to enforce our trade laws and 
to protect our borders. In light of the tragic events a week ago 
yesterday, this is merely a down payment, I am sure, on a much larger 
requirement for the Customs Service with respect to security on all of 
our borders. But I fully expect many of these needs will be addressed 
by the emergency appropriation we enacted last week.
  We are very concerned about the security of America's borders. We 
know there are known terrorists around the world who try to move 
through our

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borders and become part of terrorist cells in our country. We also know 
that, for example, on New Year's Eve in the year 1999, as we entered 
the new millennium, at one of our border points on the northern border 
in the State of Washington a terrorist was apprehended who apparently 
was intending to hijack planes in Los Angeles. Part of the plot was, as 
I understand it, to take down significant structures on the west coast. 
That was foiled by Customs who apprehended this terrorist. That 
terrorist picked the wrong border to come across, or at least the wrong 
border point.
  All terrorists and others who want to bring contraband across our 
border know that in many locations in this country across the northern 
border, the only thing that precludes them from moving across the 
border after 10 o'clock at night, when the border station closes, is an 
orange rubber cone sitting in the middle of the road. At 10 o'clock 
they put out the cone, and the next morning they take it in, and they 
are open for business. The way you get in when there is an orange cone 
is to simply move the cone. That is the problem at many northern border 
ports. The ports of entry don't have adequate security, and we must 
have a northern border initiative to make sure we do something about 
that.
  This bill also funds the Internal Revenue Service. We had a rather 
disturbing report a while ago by the Inspector General for Tax 
Administration at the Internal Revenue Service. What it said was this: 
The Inspector General put together four tax questions and sent people 
out across the country to ask those questions in taxpayer assistance 
areas of the IRS. Here is what they found. These are not massively 
difficult tax questions. The Inspector General sent Federal employees 
out posing as regular folks to ask questions of the IRS. They found 
that 73 percent of the time they either got the wrong answer, an 
incomplete answer, or no answer. In a number of cases, they were 
treated very rudely. In other cases, they were left to wait and were 
not waited on.
  I read that Inspector General report. It was done last spring. I was 
so furious. I read it at night at home. I was furious when I finished. 
If you can't have an agency that gives taxpayer assistance to taxpayers 
asking for help and get the right answer from the agency that is 
administering the program, how can you expect American taxpayers to 
comply? It is wrong. So I put a million dollars in this appropriations 
bill and I called the IRS Commissioner, someone for whom I have great 
respect. I think he has the capability to turn this agency around. He 
has been there now for a bit. He has plans that I think can make a big 
difference in this agency.
  I said I am going to have the Inspector General do this 12 times 
beginning in January next year and issue 12 reports. If they are 
embarrassing--and they are to me, and I hope to you--I want to see an 
improvement. If we have 12 reports of people going to the IRS offices 
asking for help and we don't see improvement over the year, then there 
is something fundamentally wrong with the folks who are running this 
agency and trying to make this happen.
  Again, I have great respect for Commissioner Rossotti. He comes from 
a business background, and I know he will do a good job. He made the 
point to me of why this happened and he has taken action to change 
this. He asked that I defer this monthly investigation to January 
rather than start it in October. I said that is fine. But we are going 
to have 12 reports to the Congress, and I am going to read every one of 
them. If I see reports that say 73 percent of the time people ask for 
help from the Internal Revenue Service they get wrong answers, there is 
going to be hell to pay because we are spending a lot of money to make 
sure the American people get the service they deserve.
  The name of this agency has three words: Internal Revenue Service. If 
we don't put ``service'' back in the Internal Revenue Service, how long 
will we expect the American people to voluntarily comply with this tax 
system? It is a tiny issue, but it is one about which I feel very 
strongly. We need to make this work for people. When each of these 
reports is issued, I will come to the floor and share them with my 
colleagues. I hope they share--as I am sure they do--my concern about 
an agency that gets it wrong 73 percent of the time when they are being 
asked for taxpayer assistance.
  We add $5 million for a new program for grants for drug testing and 
treatment and intervention to State and local authorities and Indian 
tribes for criminal justice populations. One of the things we know 
about these issues of incarceration and recidivism, and so on, is that 
people who go into our prisons and jails with a drug problem and who 
don't get treatment are going to come out with a drug problem, and they 
are likely to commit crimes to buy the drugs to continue taking these 
drugs. The fact is, we have to be smart about this and start making 
sure that people who are drug addicted as they go into jails and 
prisons are required to get drug treatment. It doesn't make any sense 
to throw them in jail and put them back on the street with a drug 
addiction. You are just begging for more crime. And they will comply. 
That hurts this country, and we can do much better.
  We add $100 million above the President's request of $130 million for 
the continued modernization of the Customs Service's new processing 
system called the Automated Commercial Environment. That is an 
important system. The current system is melting down on us. We have so 
much trade back and forth across our borders, the system simply can't 
handle it. We are trying to fund this system called ACE. We are doing 
it in a way that I believe will be very helpful to facilitating trade 
across our borders.
  While I am talking about Customs, let me make another point about 
which I feel strongly. The Customs Service doesn't have a Customs 
Commissioner. Think of that. We have this heinous terrorist act 
committed against our country, mass murders, unspeakable horrors in our 
country. When we deal with these counter terrorism acts and put 
together a program of counter terrorism, one critical element is our 
U.S. Customs Service. They are on the border, and we have to secure our 
borders to try to prevent terrorists from coming into the country. We 
have to have a Customs Service working with all the law enforcement 
agencies to do this.
  The Customs Service previously ran, and is now contributing to the 
Sky Marshal Program. That is up and operating in a skeleton way. The 
Customs Service is an integral part of counter terrorism. We do not 
have a Commissioner at the Customs Service. We have a nominee, but 
there are two holds on the nominee. One has been dropped. In the 
Senate, there is still, as I understand it, a hold on the nominee. We 
have a person whom I think is perfectly qualified to run the Customs 
Service. This is an agency without a head, and we have someone in the 
Senate who is holding the nomination and will not allow us to confirm 
him. The result is an agency without an agency head at a time when we 
clearly need the direction and leadership that agency head can give at 
this point.
  As I understand it, the hold that exists--I will not use the name of 
my colleague, but it has been in the papers. One of our colleagues has 
put a hold on the President's nominee to head Customs because our 
colleague objects to his reluctance to commit to the use of a new 
security detection technology. There is a debate about technology. 
There was another hold that was released, I believe, last week over a 
textile issue.
  Look, this is not the time to be holding up the President's nominees. 
It is not the time to hold up a nominee who is so critical as the head 
of the U.S. Customs Service. Let's get this nomination before the 
Senate and confirm this nominee so this person can be down at the White 
House and with the administration bringing the Customs Service fully 
into this circle of agencies that are going to be critical in combating 
terrorism. We ought to do that today.
  In fact, I say to my colleagues, if those who have been involved--at 
least the one that has been concerned about this and has a hold--I wish 
that hold can be eliminated so that we can bring this nomination before 
the Senate. I want to confirm this person. I would like to do it today. 
It is not my decision to bring it before the Senate, but I hope the 
committee chair and ranking member will talk to the Senator

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who is holding up the Customs Service nominee and let's get that done. 
The President has selected a good person. If we have some disagreements 
with him, go ahead and disagree with him down the road on some specific 
technology issues, but this agency needs a head right now. I hope we 
can do that, if not today perhaps tomorrow.
  Let me mention a couple of other items we have included in this 
appropriations bill. We direct the General Services Administration to 
initiate a pilot project to place automated external defibrillators, 
devices called AEDs, in Federal buildings and provide training for 
their use to more effectively save lives.
  Most of us know what the automated external defibrillators are now. 
They are now no bigger than the size of a laptop computer. They save 
many lives and can be operated by someone with almost no training. If 
we have these in public buildings, and if someone has a heart attack 
and their heart stops, we can save a large number of lives having these 
devices available. That has clearly been demonstrated. We are going to 
have a pilot project with the General Services Administration to do 
that.
  We fully fund the request for the Office of National Drug Control 
Policy Youth Antidrug Media Campaign. We add $20 million to the High 
Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program. That has a total of $226 
million.
  We add $10 million to the Drug-Free Communities Act, which is a total 
of $50.6 million.
  We fund the courthouse projects that were requested by the President, 
and we provide funds for an additional six courthouses to continue 
addressing the significant backlog in courthouse funding in this 
country.
  The projects we have funded fully adhere to the priority list that 
was developed by OMB, GSA, and the Administrative Offices of the Court. 
In other words, we have not pulled projects out because someone wanted 
them. We actually followed the priority list, which we should do.
  We maintain current law requiring the provision of contraceptive 
coverage in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan. We make 
permanent the ongoing project allowing Federal agencies to provide 
child care services for its lower paid employees, and we provide a 4.6-
percent pay raise for Federal civilian employees to maintain pay parity 
between Federal, civilian, and military employees.
  Mr. President, I mentioned that in the Treasury Department bill we 
placed a priority on the Treasury Department's law enforcement needs, 
as well as support for State and local law enforcement needs. We 
provide $33 million for the third and final year of a Secret Service 
staff hiring plan to address the overtime and personnel retention 
problems. They were spending a massive amount of time in overtime 
compensation because they simply did not have the personnel they 
needed. We are in the third and final year of the money to restore 
that.
  We increase the administration's request for the Bureau of Alcohol, 
Tobacco and Firearms to enforce existing gun laws. There are no cuts or 
deviations in this area from the President's budget request. We simply 
have complied with the President's budget request.
  We emphasize in the bill the need for the ATF's Gang Resistance 
Education and Training Program, called GREAT, by including $3 million 
in addition. The GREAT Program, is a wonderful program. I went to a 
school in Anacostia one day with some ATF folks. They showed me, at the 
end of the program, what the kids had been through. They had a 
graduation ceremony for these kids. It is a great program. We have to 
get to these kids with information, and we can make a big difference.
  We increase by $5 million the integrated violence reduction strategy 
to allow ATF to investigate more comprehensively the National Instant 
Check System so we make sure felons do not purchase guns. There are a 
lot of gun debates in this country, but no one in this country wants a 
gun dealer to sell a gun to a convicted felon. So our effort is to keep 
guns out of the hands of people who should not have them.
  Title II of this legislation is the Postal Service title. We provide 
$143.7 million for the U.S. Postal Service, as requested by the 
administration. We, once again, include language saying to them: Don't 
you dare talk about going to 5-day mail delivery service. Through rain, 
snow, sleet, and so on, we deliver the mail 6 days, including Saturday. 
Speaking as someone who comes from a rural State, I want that to 
continue, and we insist it continue. We told the Postal Service in this 
legislation that they must continue 6-day mail delivery.
  The Executive Office of the President is in this legislation in an 
account called Funds Appropriated to the President. It funds, 
obviously, the operation of the White House, salaries, and so on. But 
it also funds the Office of the National Security Council, Office of 
Management and Budget, Office of National Drug Control Policy, as I 
mentioned earlier, and certain other programs. We have simply met the 
request of the President for funding these areas.
  We have independent agencies, such as the Federal Election 
Commission, the General Services Administration, the National Archives, 
Federal Labor Relations Authority, the Merit Systems Protection Board, 
Office of Government Ethics, the Office of Special Counsel, Office of 
Personnel Management--all of these are in this legislation. This 
describes in broad terms what we are trying to do.
  As I close--and my colleague from Colorado, Senator Campbell, is 
here--let me say how much I have enjoyed working with him. I know 
people view Congress sometimes as an area where there is a great deal 
of debate, and that is certainly true. I do not think debate is bad for 
the country. I think it is good. When you get the best of what everyone 
has to offer, the American people are best served. There are more 
instances than not where we come together and work with somebody for 
whom we have great respect, and that is certainly the case with Senator 
Campbell and myself.
  He chaired this subcommittee, and I was happy to work with him and 
felt the experience was a great experience. I am now chairing the 
subcommittee and feel exactly the same way. It is a great experience to 
be working with my colleague from Colorado, Senator Ben Nighthorse 
Campbell.
  I will make two final points. One, to go back to this issue of 
terrorism, this country predictably is very concerned at this moment 
about terrorism. We have been through a frightening ordeal, and we are 
not yet through it. We must, as the President has indicated, work 
together; we must achieve national unity. Part of that national unity 
is to resolve that we will track down and punish those who committed 
these acts of mass murder against so many American citizens.
  We must do that thoughtfully, not recklessly. It is very important 
the way we go about this. Part of it is also to try to make certain we 
prevent future terrorist acts.
  Yesterday, the Attorney General indicated there might be some 
evidence there were other airplanes that were targeted. He indicated 
there might be some terrorists who are still not apprehended, and they 
are searching for them. Even as we, in the middle of this nightmare we 
have gone through, try to make certain the American people understand 
everything humanly possible is being done to prevent another terrorist 
attack, even as we do that, as the President said, we must go back to 
work. So part of that work is to pass an appropriations bill today.
  This bill is also central to the question of counter terrorism and 
combating terrorism because it includes the counter terrorism account 
in Treasury, U.S. Customs, the Secret Service, and the Financial Crimes 
Enforcement Network which is involved with the FBI in tracking all of 
the money back and forth. So we have so many things in this legislation 
that directly relate to this need we have as a nation to move 
aggressively.
  For that reason, my fervent hope is we will not spend a great deal of 
time with a lot of amendments on this bill, and I ask my colleagues to 
join me in trying to reach an agreement to pass this legislation today.
  Let me describe what I was hoping to do. I have great heartburn about 
what has been happening with respect to Cuba. The Treasury Department 
and the Office of Foreign Assets Control--OFAC--have been levying fines 
against people who travel to Cuba because it was against the law. I 
will give an example: A retired lady to whom I talked

[[Page S9475]]

by phone is a bicyclist, and she answered an ad in a cycling magazine 
with a Canadian company, a travel company, doing a cycling tour. So she 
joined something like 10 or 12 cyclists through this Canadian travel 
company, and they went to Cuba, and they bicycled. This is a retired 
American woman. They bicycled in Cuba. Then 18 months later she got a 
letter from OFAC and the Treasury Department levying a $7,650 fine 
against her for riding a bike with a Canadian travel group in Cuba.
  Another fellow I talked to received a $19,020 fine for a weekend 
visit to Cuba. When he was in the Cayman Islands with some friends, the 
friends invited him to go to Cuba for the weekend, and he did.
  OFAC has begun a new enforcement action against Americans who travel 
in Cuba. I fully intended to offer an amendment to this bill to stop 
that. OFAC ought to be about tracking terrorists, not tracking down 
retired ladies who ride bicycles in Cuba.
  However, I am not going to offer that amendment because I do not want 
slow passage of this bill. And the fact is the House has already 
included an amendment on this issue in its version of the bill that we 
will consider in conference. I am going to try my darndest to make 
sure--and I hope my colleague from Colorado will join me--that we 
accept the House provision which would suspend the enforcement of the 
ban on travel to Cuba so that we do not have $7,000 to $19,000 fines 
being levied against American citizens who have traveled there, some of 
whom have told me personally that they had no idea this was against the 
law.
  My point is this: I was fully intending to come to the floor to offer 
that amendment. I know it would be controversial. I know four or five 
of my colleagues who would want to stand up and oppose that amendment. 
I think it is not wise to hold this bill up and offer that amendment in 
the Senate. Therefore, I will not offer the amendment.

  I have two other amendments that have similar circumstances that are 
controversial. I fully intended to offer them, and I have that right, 
obviously, as do all Senators. I have the right of recognition because 
I am managing this bill, but I am not going to offer those amendments 
because at this moment it is not productive for us to divert our 
attention and to wander off into other extraneous debates.
  This bill contains much needed funds for our agencies to prosecute 
the aggressive search for terrorists, to protect the American people. 
It is very important we pass this legislation as quickly as we can do 
so.
  I ask my colleagues if they would do as I have done. If they have an 
amendment to this bill, if they can, if they will, work with us and let 
us see if we can find a way to accept it if it is not too 
controversial. If it is a very controversial amendment, please hold it 
and let us pass this legislation and come back to their issue on 
another bill at some point. There will be other opportunities, but I 
think now is the wrong time for us to spend 3 or 4 or 5 days on 
legislation such as this where we have such critical resources in this 
bill that need to be devoted to the search for terrorists and to the 
aggressive campaign we must wage to combat terrorism.
  I am going to visit with my colleague from Colorado following our 
statements and visit with the leaders and see if we can send a message 
to the country that the President says we should go back to work, all 
America should go back to work. The Senate is going back to work, and 
the best message we can send to the President and the country is to say 
we went back to work today on an appropriations bill and there was a 
new sense of unity, a new purpose, and a new understanding that the 
center of what this appropriations bill is about is investing in the 
ability to provide security for the American people.
  If we can do that, what a wonderful message it will send to the 
American people and give them some confidence about what we are doing 
and what we can do, not just in this bill, but it will also portend 
good news for what we can do on the economy and a whole range of other 
issues.
  The American people need some confidence. What better way to give 
them some confidence than to bring this bill to the floor and say it is 
a new time and we have a new attitude in the Senate? And I take the 
first step by saying the amendments I was going to offer, that are very 
important to me, I will not offer because I do not think we ought to do 
that at this point.
  Let us pass this legislation, if we can, and work together to get 
this completed today.
  As I indicated, my colleague from Colorado has been working on this 
legislation this morning and previously, and let me again say how much 
I appreciate working with him. Following his statement, I ask--
actually, while he is speaking--that those who wish to offer amendments 
or work with us on amendments to which we could perhaps agree, if they 
would understand the urgency.
  We have the Defense authorization bill that will probably come to the 
floor following this. It may even come late this afternoon. That is a 
pretty important bill. The Defense authorization bill is also critical 
to this Nation's security in this difficult time. If our colleagues 
will cooperate with us and allow us to get this bill through the Senate 
today, it will be a terrific signal to the American people that times 
have changed and things have changed in the Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. President, I join my colleague, Chairman Dorgan, in 
placing before the Senate our committee's recommendations for the 
fiscal year 2002 funding for the Treasury Department, the Postal 
Service, the Executive Office of the President, and various independent 
agencies.
  I want to associate my comments with the chairman's comments as they 
deal with terrorism. Certainly we have had huge changes worldwide in 
the last week. We are going to be in for the long haul, a very 
difficult, expensive, and deadly kind of a war that we have never faced 
before. I know we all want to do our very best in Congress, but I 
remind my colleagues, as the chairman already has, of the focus of 
these appropriations bills. As the other Senators are in their offices 
contemplating amendments they might offer to this bill, I remind them 
there is an emergency supplemental moving through now and probably that 
is the better vehicle if they want to do some changes or some 
amendments.
  There are probably better vehicles dealing specifically with the 
terrorist activities than the TPO bill. In our bill, these 
recommendations include funding for Federal agencies that are now 
working on the tactical and security needs of our Nation, and have been 
for years and years. It is clear those needs and others addressed by 
the funding legislation merit swift consideration.
  This bill was crafted by the Subcommittee on Treasury and General 
Government. It contains a total of $32.4 billion of new budget 
authority. Of that, $15.7 billion is for mandatory accounts. The 
committee recommendation is within the 302(b) allocations and strikes a 
delicate balance between congressional priorities, administration 
initiatives, and agency requirements. I congratulate Chairman Dorgan 
and his staff for the professional manner in which they prepared this 
bill in such a short period of time.
  This bill allows these Federal agencies to simply maintain current 
levels. There are very few new initiatives in this bill. Title I 
provides a total of $14.9 billion for the Department of the Treasury. 
Of this, $277 million is more than the administration requested. The 
committee has again placed a priority on Treasury's law enforcement 
needs as well as support for efforts by State and local law enforcement 
agencies.
  Let me repeat a couple of highlights the chairman mentioned. We have 
$230 million to the Customs Service for continued development of the 
badly needed Automated Commercial Environment computer system called 
ACE.
  It has money to continue emphasis on the need for the Gang Resistance 
Education and Training program, called the GREAT Program, which has 
been very successful, by including $3 million more than the 
administration requested for grants to State and local law enforcement.
  It has additional funding for the integrated violence reduction 
strategy to allow ATF to comprehensively investigate denials in order 
to make sure the felons do not possess guns.

[[Page S9476]]

  It has $348 million to the IRS for continuing efforts to modernize 
their computer system.
  Title II provides $76.6 million to the U.S. Postal Service and 
continues to require free mailing for oversees voters and the blind, as 
well as 6-day delivery, to which Chairman Dorgan has spoken, and 
prohibits the closing or consolidation of small and rural post offices.
  Title III recommends a total of $755.5 million for the Executive 
Office of the President, which is $23.7 million more than the 
administration requested. This part of the bill includes the Office of 
Management and Budget, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the 
Federal drug control programs, and funding for the national antidrug 
media campaign.
  A special note: The committee also provided $42 million to the 
Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center, a program that transfers 
technology to State and local law enforcement. I believe since we 
started the program--it is going into its fourth year--it has been 
hugely successful. Over 2,500 local police jurisdictions have received 
grants of equipment they could not afford and for which they do not 
have the money to do the research and development.
  It increases funding to the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas 
program, the HIDTA program, by $20 million, which supports programs at 
their current level. It coordinates Federal, State, and local efforts 
to combat drug use.
  It recommends a total of $185 million to the national antidrug media 
campaign and requires $5 million be spent on the new drug of choice of 
too many young teenagers called Ecstasy.
  Title IV provides funding for the independent agencies, such as the 
Federal Election Commission, the General Services Administration, and 
the National Archives, as well as agencies involved in the Federal 
employment arena, such as the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the 
Merit Systems Protection Board, the Office of Government Ethics, the 
Office of Special Counsel, and the Office of Personnel Management. Also 
included in the title are the mandatory accounts to provide for Federal 
annuities, retiree health benefits, and life insurance. The committee 
recommends a total of $16.6 billion for this title.
  The administration requested funding for 12 courthouse construction 
projects. As Senator Dorgan mentioned, we have been able to increase 
that number of projects to 20. We have provided funding for 12 
additional projects such as border stations.
  In addition, we have continued an aggressive effort to make sure the 
Federal Government real estate is maintained properly, by providing 
$844.8 million for the GSA repairs and alterations account for Federal 
buildings that are in deterioration.
  The funding contained in the bill allows agencies to continue their 
work. It will not be able to accommodate all Members' requests, and I 
remind my colleagues that any funding amendments must be offset. If we 
have those being contemplated that deal with terrorism, there might be 
a better vehicle through the supplemental.

  I thank Chairman Dorgan and his staff, Chip Walgren, Nicole Rutberg, 
Matt King, and Nancy Olkewicz, for their courtesies during the 
preparation of this bill. They have been terrific to work with.
  We are focused on these recent attacks, but clearly we have to move 
forward, as the chairman mentioned, with our work and our various 
budget proposals as we have prepared them. My support for this 
committee's recommendations comes with my understanding that funding 
needs for some agencies may demand an increase. I feel certain most of 
those can be handled through the supplemental appropriation and hope 
they will.
  Additionally, I am particularly pleased that Chairman Dorgan agreed 
to my request to provide additional funding to the U.S. anti-doping 
initiative, called the USADA. This funding will be necessary to ensure 
that our Olympic athletes, our Pan American, and Paraolympic athletes 
are free from drugs and are taught about the ethics of fair 
competition. I thank the chairman for including additional help in the 
Ecstasy program, as I mentioned.
  Speaking of the antidrug media campaign, we have provided over $748 
million for that campaign since 1998. This year, we have $185 million 
for the fiscal year 2002. But preliminary findings released by the 
Office of National Drug Control Policy last year showed that the 
campaign is having a positive effect.
  Unfortunately, more recent information seems to indicate that while 
this report card may be good, it may have been somewhat premature. 
While I agree we must take steps to protect youth from the lure of 
illegal drugs, we have to make sure that money is wisely spent in the 
media campaign and that it is reducing the use of drugs because our 
resources clearly will be strapped in this new war on terrorism.
  I take this opportunity to highlight a new international crime 
initiative in southern Europe and how it relates to law enforcement 
agencies and funding by the pending Treasury appropriations bill. It 
comes as no surprise that international terrorism often relies on 
international crime, particularly through drugs, to finance its 
campaigns of terrorism. The Southern European Cooperative Initiative, 
called SECI, is based in Bucharest, Romania, and represents a 
consortium of 11 countries with a combined population of 135 million 
people. The members of SECI have pooled their expertise and limited 
resources in a collaborative effort to combat transnational crime in 
southeastern Europe. Members include Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 
Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, 
Slovenia, and Turkey. Most Senators have visited one or more of those 
places in the past.
  Most in the Senate have two or more jobs. One of my jobs as the 
chairman of the Helsinki Commission is fighting crime and corruption. 
It has been a top priority of mine and the Commission in these member 
countries, as well as throughout all of Europe. As part of this effort, 
I was pleased when the Foreign Operations Subcommittee included 
language I requested in the fiscal year 2001 committee report urging 
the State Department to continue providing advice and support in 
cooperation with the FBI to SECI. That is in their bill in recognition 
of the direct and indirect impact of transnational crime on Americans 
and American businesses at home and abroad. The subcommittee is 
requesting in the fiscal year 2002 committee report that the State 
Department designate up to $1 million in technical assistance for SECI. 
This investment directly helps a number of U.S. law enforcement 
agencies in their fight against a wide range of transnational crimes.

  At least three Justice Department agencies currently are working with 
SECI: The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Immigration 
and Naturalization Service. In addition, at least two Treasury 
Department law enforcement agencies, the U.S. Customs and the U.S. 
Secret Service, are utilizing resources of SECI to support their 
efforts.
  For example, the Secret Service currently sponsors task forces 
throughout the United States and across the globe recognizing 
cooperation among countries, law enforcement agencies, academia, and 
the private sector, representing the best hope for defeating the 
cybercriminal and preventing counterfeiting, computer-based fraud, and 
other electronic crimes that resulted in hundreds of millions of 
dollars of losses to American consumers and industry.
  Because of their expertise and experience with the task force 
approach, the Secret Service has been asked to be the architects and 
leaders of SECI's highly innovative financial crimes task force in 
southern Europe. This task force, the first of its kind in the region, 
will be based in Bucharest and will be operational by the end of the 
year. The Secret Service expects to open an office in Bucharest and 
have two special agents dedicated to this cooperative effort.
  Tomorrow, on September 20, the General Accounting Office is expected 
to release a report on international crime which I requested last year. 
This report confirms that the threat from international crime is 
growing and more high-level cooperation among Federal enforcement 
agencies is necessary.
  The good work of the Treasury law enforcement agencies in addressing 
new criminal threats from overseas is warranted and welcome. Passage of 
the Treasury appropriations bill will continue to provide essential 
support for

[[Page S9477]]

these agencies in their fight against criminal elements at home and 
abroad.


                           Amendment No. 1570

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send a substitute amendment to the desk 
on behalf of myself and Mr. Campbell, which is the text of the Senate 
committee-reported bill. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be 
agreed to, that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, that 
the amendment be considered as original text for the purpose of further 
amendment, and that no points of order be considered waived by virtue 
of this agreement.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment (No. 1570) was agreed to.
  (The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under 
``Amendments Submitted.'')
  Mr. DORGAN. 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. WYDEN. 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. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________