[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 72 (Wednesday, June 5, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5025-S5027]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I appreciate the statement of the Senator 
from North Dakota, the chairman of the Budget Committee, and certainly 
the statement just made by my friend, the distinguished Senator from 
Michigan, Ms. Stabenow.
  I spend a lot of time in the Chamber, and I really enjoy it. That is 
my job. I appreciate my ability to do that, that other Senators give me 
that responsibility. But there are days such as today and yesterday and 
Monday that I am concerned we are not doing enough in this body. I 
don't know why this is being slow-walked, as has been described in 
today's press. I am not making this up. It is right here in the 
Congressional Quarterly:

       Senate Republicans say they will not hesitate to slow walk 
     legislation important to Democrats.

  But as the Senator from Michigan stated, if we passed a prescription 
drug benefit for seniors--it would be great if we could do it for 
everyone, but let's say we do it for seniors on Medicare--they wouldn't 
know to whom to give credit, whether it be Democrats or Republicans, 
but they would be happy they got something. Conversely, our doing 
nothing, the blame goes to both parties. There is no advantage that 
anyone gets by not moving forward on legislation.
  Pick up the newspaper anytime you want--today. I don't have a clip 
from today's paper, but it is easy to find one. Here is one, May 23. It 
was in my desk. I was cleaning out my desk as the Senator was speaking:

       The Department of Transportation has issued a warning about 
     attacks on rail and transit systems across the country, law 
     enforcement officials said on Thursday. The Department's 
     warning, sent out Wednesday, was consulted by the Department 
     of Transportation.

  The reason that is important is this bill that we are now working on 
has a provision in it for security. We have almost $1 billion for port 
security. We have $200 million for security at nuclear weapons 
facilities. We have $154 million for cyber-security, and border 
security.
  I am a member of the Appropriations Committee. I voted for the bill 
that came out of committee. But as with all Senators, you don't have an 
opportunity to read everything in a bill. The bill that came out is not 
a very big bill. It is 117 pages. I could read the bill easily in a 
half hour and really understand everything in it. If there is something 
that people do not like in the bill, they should try to get rid of it.
  I think we are doing a disservice to the people of my State of Nevada 
and the country by not moving forward on this. There is no political 
advantage. I don't know if we can get cloture tomorrow. If we don't get 
cloture tomorrow, we will go again and try it some other time.
  I don't know what benefit there is of the big stall that is taking 
place. I think it is a disservice to the country. I have tried on 
various occasions during the last several days, I have offered 
unanimous consent requests that we limit the number of amendments. I 
have offered unanimous consent requests that we have a finite list of 
amendments. It doesn't matter how many, but let us know how many so the 
managers can work to cut this down.

[[Page S5026]]

  I am very disillusioned with what is happening. I say to the American 
people that they should send a message to their Senators to move 
forward on this legislation. This legislation is for further recovery 
in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States.
  I will bet the State of Georgia is hurting for money as a result of 
some of the spending on antiterrorism, and the State of Nevada. There 
were a lot of things we were spending money on prior to September 11. 
We did it to make it a safer place. But for our ports, highways, 
schools, and other things, we are doing more. Nevada and Georgia and 
other States are eating those costs themselves.
  There is money in this bill to help States, as there should be. We 
are spending lots of money in Nevada training first responders. There 
is $1 billion in this bill, including funds for firefighting grants, 
State and local law enforcement grants, grants to help State and local 
police to better coordinate their operations, fire and medical 
personnel, emergency planning grants, and search and rescue training. 
There is much that will help my State.
  Frankly, time is of the essence. We would be much better off if this 
bill had passed last week. We would be better off if it had passed 
before we took our break for the Memorial Day recess. With each day 
that goes by, the hard-earned money of the taxpayers of Nevada is being 
spent. They need help on programs. What is another day? Another day 
means one more firefighter who is not trained. It means one more police 
officer who needs additional training. This is not done in a vacuum.
  On September 11, the actions of evil people killed about 3,000 men, 
women, and children--women who were pregnant.
  What has happened here is a clear illustration of: Do we really care 
about those people who are dead? I can't in my mind's eye understand 
the terror that went through the minds of those innocent people on this 
airplane who died in an awful way.
  That is what this legislation is all about. Can we stop some of that? 
Of course we can.

  There is $125 million for border security. There is $100 million so 
the Environmental Protection Agency can check the vulnerability and 
assessment of water systems. We have water in Nevada, as we have 
everyplace. You just pull it out of the lake. We have reservoirs. We 
can pull the water out of the reservoir. If these evil people would fly 
an airplane into a building killing not only the people on the airplane 
but the people in the building, certainly they wouldn't hesitate in a 
second to poison water and sicken and kill people.
  We need to move forward. I am terribly disappointed that we are not 
moving forward.
  I don't know why the President isn't involved. They came down here 
yesterday with a Statement of Administration Policy. The Statement of 
Administration Policy indicates that there are five or six provisions 
they don't like in the bill. I have no problem with that. The President 
of the United States has a right to tell us what he doesn't like. But 
what I don't like is people coming in saying the President is going to 
veto this bill. There is nothing to veto. If we pass this bill at 6 
o'clock tonight, there will be nothing to veto. There is no bill. There 
is no legislation. We want to get to the House of Representatives so 
that we can meet and come up with a bill that he can then veto, if he 
wants to. But as Senator Stevens said yesterday, it doesn't happen.
  We are going to work something out to make the President happy. That 
is the way it works. We are not going to send him an appropriations 
bill--especially an emergency supplemental bill--that he doesn't like. 
He can't use this as an excuse.
  My friend from Minnesota is in the Chamber. I am grateful that he 
came here tonight. I hope tomorrow cloture will be invoked and that we 
can move forward on this bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Nevada.
  First of all, I assume tomorrow there will be time to talk about the 
supplemental bill. I will not use a lot of time, but we want to finish 
this work. I am anxious to make a statement on Colombia. Tonight, I 
would like to talk about this delay. Am I correct there will probably 
be time to talk about this bill tomorrow?
  Mr. REID. If cloture is invoked, there will be 30 hours, of which you 
will have an hour of your own.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I hope we will not have to do that.
  The only thing I would like to say about this supplemental and where 
we are is I will refer to an article that the Presiding Officer, 
Senator Miller, wrote in the New York Times. There is a lot of work to 
do here. I think people are becoming increasingly impatient because we 
are supposed to be here to advocate people, and help and work for 
people. I think the supplemental bill is a really good bill.
  I was here the other day talking about one of the most important 
features that Senator Reid was talking about--homeland defense and 
bumping up veteran health care to the tune of about $240-plus million. 
There are gaping holes in this VA health care. It is serious. It is 
very serious. We have very long waiting lines right now for primary 
care and for specialty care. We have a moratorium on any additional 
community clinics. Everybody says they are for the veterans.
  Frankly, if you get beyond the Fourth of July and Memorial Day and 
Veterans Day, the way to speak for veterans is to live up to our 
commitment to make sure they get good health care coverage which they 
and their families deserve and expect. That is just one feature in this 
bill. It is important.
  What bothers me the most is this strategy of delay. It is 10 to 6. We 
are not going to have any more votes. Our colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle have pretty much blocked everything for now. We should be 
having debate and votes, and we should be moving forward. We should 
pass this bill. People can vote up or down. We have a lot of other 
priorities.
  Again, the Presiding Officer has talked about prescription drugs. In 
Minnesota, about as important an issue as I can think of is affordable 
prescription drugs.

  Frankly, I also like the proposal, and I am part of this work of 
reimportation from Canada because there, by strict FDA safety 
guidelines, you are helping seniors and other working families who 
cannot afford the price.
  But let's get on with the work. Let's have the debate relevant to 
people's lives, vote up or down, be held accountable--representative 
democracy at its very best, not at its worst.
  Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are just delaying and 
delaying, slowing the Senate. The Senate machinery is geared to grind 
slowly, but what is going on is just an effort to make the Senate a 
nondecisionmaking body. I do not think we do well for people when we 
are not a decisionmaking body.
  There are those--I am a big advocate--who want to raise the minimum 
wage. I understand we are going to be dealing with hate crimes 
legislation, which I think we should.
  For my own part, I would put right up there with affordable 
prescription drugs wanting to get back to funding education because my 
State of Minnesota believes they have been cheated out of $2 billion 
they should have had for the next 10 years. We did it in the Senate; it 
got blocked in conference committee. The House Republican leaders and 
the White House opposed it. That would have been a glidepath, full 
funding for the special education program over the next 5 years, then 
maintaining that for the next 5 years past that. It would have been $2 
billion more for Minnesota.
  Since a lot of our school districts have had to take money from other 
programs to fund special education because they have not gotten Federal 
money, 50 percent of it would have been fungible for special education, 
afterschool, more teaching assistants to help kids who are not doing as 
well in reading or math, being better able to recruit teachers, being 
better able to keep teachers, there is important work to do here.
  We are not the main player in K-12, but this is a place where we 
could really make a commitment, and should.
  I am anxious to get on with the appropriations process. I am anxious 
to get funding for education. I am anxious to talk about education and 
kids.

[[Page S5027]]

Frankly, I am anxious to talk about education, prekindergarten all the 
way through age 65, because I think that is the way we should define 
education. A lot of our students in Minnesota are 55 and going back to 
school. They have lost their jobs. They worked for the taconite 
industry on the range. LTV shut down, and they are going back to school 
so they can get different sets of skills for different employment 
opportunities to support their families.
  So I would put it to you this way: As I see it, the early years, 
starting with the little ones, who are all under 4 feet tall and 
beautiful--we should be nice to them. That is prekindergarten and the 
early elementary school years. We want to make sure every kid in our 
country has an equal opportunity. Education is so important.
  Then, when people get older, out of school, it is the jobs, decent 
wages, health care coverage. Then, when people get older than that, it 
is Medicare, it is Social Security, it is not losing your pension. 
There is the whole issue of pension reform so we do not see more people 
cheated and some of them financially destroyed with more Enron kinds of 
situations.
  All of this is before us: pension reform legislation, getting it 
right for health care, reimbursement, Medicare. A lot of our hospitals 
in rural Minnesota are being killed right now from inadequate Medicare 
reimbursement. Hospital people have been here talking about what is 
going to happen to our ability to deliver care. Children's Hospital 
here--what is going to happen with cuts in medical education?

  Other people are talking about more funding, expanding health care 
coverage, prescription drugs, education, raising the minimum wage, 
going after hate crimes, ending the discrimination.
  I will finish this way. Tomorrow, we are going to have close to 2,000 
people here from around the country; families who have struggled with 
mental illness. By the way, I do not know that there is a person in the 
Senate who does not know someone in their own family or a friend who 
has to struggle with this illness, saying: Treat it like any other 
illness. End the discrimination in this coverage. Don't tell us that if 
our daughter is struggling with depression, and we are scared to death 
she might take her life, that the health insurance plan will cover a 
couple of days in the hospital and that is it; a couple visits to the 
doctor and that is it. Treat this illness as any other illness. End the 
discrimination.
  We want to bring this bill to the floor of the Senate. It is 
bipartisan. Senator Domenici has been the leader. I have been fortunate 
enough to join him. We have 66 Senators. We have the majority of the 
House on board.
  There is a lot of important legislation we can pass that will lead to 
the improvement of the lives of people we represent.
  I come to the floor tonight just to express some indignation at this 
delay, delay, delay strategy, slowing the Senate up, making it a 
nondecisionmaking body, because I think we are not at our best when we 
operate that way.
  I just as soon have at it, have the debate, have the amendments, 
bring the legislation up for votes; vote yes, vote no. If you want to 
filibuster, filibuster; have the votes or don't have the votes. But 
what colleagues are doing now, at 6 o'clock at night--all gone, and 
will not let us vote on anything else--is making the Senate a 
nondecisionmaking body.
  Frankly, there is a whole lot we could do to help people. The reason 
we are here is to help people. We might have different definitions of 
what it means to help people, so then let's have a debate about that. 
But, for God's sake, let's deal with the relevant legislation that 
affects people's lives. And let's do it now. Let's not just continue to 
grind away and slow everything down and block everything and make it 
impossible for us to move forward.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield.
  Mr. REID. The Senator would agree, would he not, that doing nothing 
does not meet the needs of the people of Minnesota, the people of 
Nevada, or anyplace in this country?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague from Nevada, only if you believe 
that we are here to do nothing is doing nothing defensible in any way, 
shape, or form. And that is what we are doing right now. Because if you 
want to gum up the works here in the Senate and block everything and 
basically make it impossible for us to move forward--which is what our 
Republican colleagues have done--you can do that. But I will tell you, 
the people we represent will not be pleased with us if we operate this 
way.
  Mr. REID. Does the Senator know that in this morning's Daily Monitor 
there is a quote from a Republican--in fact, that is not true. It says: 
``Senate Republicans say they will not hesitate to slow-walk 
legislation important to Democrats.''
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I am sorry. They will not----
  Mr. REID. `` . . . they will not hesitate to slow-walk legislation 
important to Democrats.'' Is the Senator aware of that statement that 
was made?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Well, see, I would say to my colleague--and he might 
disagree about this--there are two different issues here. Listen, if 
you think a piece of legislation is egregious, and you know the rules, 
have at it, slow it up. Fine. I have done that. I do not want to be 
inconsistent.
  But when you have a statement like this, which says: We will not be 
reluctant to slow up legislation that is important to Democrats, then 
you are playing a different kind of game. Then it is straight 
partisanship. It has nothing to do with whether you feel strongly about 
it. It has more to do with a strategy of basically being able to say: 
Aha, a majority in a Democrat-run Senate can't get the job done because 
we will make sure they can't get the job done.
  That is not acceptable. Do you know what that is? That is inside 
party strategy, total reelection stuff, which then means we do not pass 
affordable prescription drug legislation, we do not get it right for 
education, we do not get it right on a whole bunch of other issues that 
are important to people.
  Mr. REID. Finally, would the Senator agree that this legislation now 
before the Senate that is being slow-walked, as the distinguished 
Senator from Texas said yesterday, and he reminded me he said it today, 
he felt it was important to ``slow the train down''--would the Senator 
agree that it is not good for the country to slow-walk or ``slow the 
train down,'' the Supplemental Appropriations Act for further recovery 
from and response to terrorist attacks on the United States?
  This is an emergency supplemental bill. Does the Senator believe this 
is something we should be moving expeditiously?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I will just say this to my colleague from Nevada. 
There are two sets of issues people have, and both of them deal with 
security. There is an uneasiness about economic security, about the 
future, about jobs, pensions, good education for kids, health care. It 
is all there.
  The other thing is that people--and with considerable justification--
are really worried about physical security. Look what we have been 
through. People want to make sure that we are going to be able to do 
everything possible to best defend ourselves, everything possible to 
head off any kind of attack, everything possible to protect them, to 
protect their children.
  So all of the money for Minnesota and all the other States in the 
country, for homeland defense, I do not think the people view as a 
waste. I do not know what the problem is in moving this matter forward. 
I think people in Minnesota and the people in the country--if they 
know; and we will make sure they know--disapprove, and for good reason.
  I came to the floor to call on my colleagues to get going. Let's do 
the work. Let's get involved in the work of democracy. Let's not just 
do delay, delay, delay, all for the sake of some party strategy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Dayton). The Senator from Washington.

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