[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.
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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
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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.
____________________