[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 73 (Thursday, June 6, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5113-S5129]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2002

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of H.R. 4775, which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 4775) making supplemental appropriations for 
     further recovery from and response to terrorist attacks on 
     the United States for fiscal year ending September 30, 2002, 
     and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Daschle amendment No. 3764, to extend budget enforcement.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will be 30 
minutes of debate to be divided by the chairman and ranking member of 
the Appropriations Committee.
  The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. BYRD. Madam President, the bill before the Senate is an emergency 
supplemental bill. It responds to emergency needs for our military. It 
provides emergency funds for enormous gaps in our homeland security 
network. It makes investments today to protect the people of this 
country against attacks tomorrow. We cannot afford continued delay and 
dragging of feet.
  The Nation is unprepared for a biological or chemical attack. Our 
current public health system is ill funded, fragmented, and unprepared 
to respond to the threats posed by bioterrorism. We must expand State 
and local capacity to recognize and to treat deadly pathogens so that 
we are prepared to deal with weaponized disease.
  The anthrax-laced letters that were sent through the mail afforded us 
just a glimpse of the terror that could result from a more serious 
biological attack involving smallpox or Ebola. We know Bin Laden 
loyalists have conducted research on chemical and biological weapons at 
40 sites in Afghanistan. We know that more than a dozen nations, 
including China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia, and Syria, can 
produce biological and chemical weapons. So what are we doing about it? 
Are we taking action? No. Senators are dragging their feet. The 
Government's seemingly uncoordinated and chaotic response to the 
anthrax scare and the public's ensuing panic to anything both powdery 
and white had overwhelmed our public health systems.
  Many of our local health departments were found impotent and ill 
prepared, lacking such basic forms of communication equipment as 
computers and fax machines. Astonishingly, according to the former 
Director of the Centers for Disease Control, only half of the Nation's 
public health departments have direct, secure Internet access.
  State and local health officials will be first on the scene in a 
biological attack. It is essential that they be capable of quickly 
identifying a deadly organism and disseminating that information widely 
and rapidly so that new cases can be caught early and the spread of 
disease can be stopped. Many local health departments, however, do not 
possess modern communications systems because of funding constraints.
  Simply put, in the event of a chemical or biological attack, our 
local health care providers are probably better able to get more 
accurate information and more quickly from CNN than they are from other 
health care officials. So what are we doing about it?

[[Page S5114]]

Are we taking action? No. Some Senators are dragging their feet.
  Our Nation's seaports are the soft underbelly of our homeland 
defense. U.S. ports are home to oil refineries and chemical plants that 
process noxious, volatile chemicals. There are 68 nuclear powerplants 
located along U.S. waterways. A hijacked vessel that crashes into a 
port can be used to ignite volatile fuels or gases and produce a fuel 
air explosion equal to hundreds of tons of dynamite.
  Within a mile of the Inner Harbor of Baltimore is a major east coast 
import and export hub for a broad range of dry and liquid chemicals. If 
ignited, many are capable of producing ferocious fires, explosions, and 
clouds of noxious fumes immediately adjacent to such densely populated 
rowhouse neighborhoods as Locust Point, Highlandtown, and Canton.
  So what is being done about it? What are we doing about it? Is the 
Senate taking action? No. Senators are dragging their feet--some 
Senators.
  U.S. ports receive 16,000 cargo containers every day--16,000 cargo 
containers every day--and 6 million containers per year, but only 2 
percent of those containers are inspected. That means that a terrorist 
has a 98-percent chance of sneaking weapons of mass destruction into 
the United States.
  Cargo containers are piled up by the thousands at ports, depots, and 
huge outdoor warehouses. Many big cities, such as Charleston, SC, and 
New Orleans, LA, were literally built around their ports, and they 
present an attractive target. The only thing separating that container 
yard from where people live and work is a barbed-wire fence.
  Cargo containers that are not inspected are quickly loaded and 
shipped to practically every town in America on top of ships, trains, 
and trucks. It would not be difficult for a terrorist to track a 
container with a global positioning system and detonate a weapon hidden 
inside.
  So what are we doing about it? What is the Senate doing about it? The 
Senate is stalling. The Senate is not moving. Are we taking action? No, 
we are not taking action. Senators are dragging their feet--some 
Senators.
  International authorities have linked 20 merchant vessels to Osama 
bin Laden. Some of the vessels are thought to be owned outright by Bin 
Laden business interests while others are on long-term charter. The 
Times of London reported in October 2001 that Bin Laden used his ships 
to import the explosives used to destroy the U.S. Embassies in Kenya 
and Tanzania in 1998.
  So what is the Senate doing about it? Is the Senate taking action? 
No, no, the Senate is spinning its wheels. Senators are dragging their 
feet--certain Senators.
  Nuclear material is easily available if one knows where to look. In 
January 2001, a panel headed by former Senator Howard Baker and former 
White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler found that the threat of terrorists 
getting their hands on Russian nuclear weapons is the most urgent, 
unmet national security threat to the United States today.
  I served with Howard Baker. He is a man of great integrity, 
knowledge, and wisdom. He is a patriot.
  Stealing or buying a warhead from Russia would be the quickest way 
for the terrorists or a rogue state to get a nuclear weapon, but it is 
much easier to construct a radiological bomb from poor-quality nuclear 
materials. A radiological bomb, or a dirty bomb as it is sometimes 
called, does not have a massive explosion, but instead it spreads 
radioactive contamination by using a conventional explosive.
  So what are we doing about it? What is the Senate doing about it? The 
Senate is spinning its wheels. Are we taking action? Is the Senate 
moving on this bill? No. Senators are dragging their feet--certain 
Senators.
  The list of gaps in our homeland defense structure is overwhelming. 
Senators should be ashamed of holding up action on this legislation. We 
ought to be doing everything within our power to ensure the safety of 
the American people to protect their lives and their property, but 
instead of moving quickly on this supplemental bill, instead of 
fulfilling their responsibility to protect the American people, some 
Senators would rather play politics. In other words, they would rather 
blow up the train.
  What I fear is that with continued delay, we are making it far too 
easy for terrorists to blow up anything they want. We ought to move 
forward with this legislation. We ought to pass this bill. We ought to 
take steps now to protect the American people from terrorist acts. The 
administration ought to halt its opposition to this bill.
  Senator Stevens and I have tried our best to provide money for this 
country and for the needs of the Nation and for the Nation's defense, 
both at home and abroad. We held 5 days of hearings. We have brought a 
bill to this floor that we believe protects the interests of our 
citizens at home and continues our efforts to fight terrorism abroad. 
We had good witnesses. We did not omit important Department heads, 
important officials from the executive branch.
  I, frankly, have difficulty in understanding the complacency about 
these matters.
  We have alerts and prognostications, warnings, dire warnings, from 
the President, the Vice President, who has indicated quite clearly that 
another attack by terrorists of such dimensions as September 11 is 
virtually certain, almost certain.
  Many other officials in this Government have indicated another 
terrorist attack on this Nation is a virtual certainty, and yet some 
people in this body appear to be asleep when it comes to the urgency of 
providing the funds that may prevent another attack.
  Some Senators have problems with some of the items in the bill. They 
know what to do. They can offer amendments. Let us have a vote. They 
ought to offer amendments and ask for a vote. Come on, bring your 
amendments. Ask for a vote. Get a vote on your amendment.
  Yet we have spent 3 full days already on this legislation, much of 
that time begging Members to come to the Chamber and offer amendments. 
Those amendments have been very slow in coming. It is obvious there are 
some in this body who wish further delay. Perhaps they are being 
prodded and urged by the administration to delay this bill.
  What does it take to awaken Senators to the emergency nature of our 
situation? What does it take to jar some of the Members of this body 
out of the usual political posturing that so bores and distresses the 
American public? Does it take another horrific attack, with thousands 
of more lives lost, to focus the attention of the Senate on the urgency 
of this matter?
  Cloture must be invoked. We must move this urgent legislation. We 
must shake off the complacency. We must stop playing politics with this 
Nation's security and get this bill to conference and on the 
President's desk. So I urge all Senators today to vote for cloture.
  Madam President, how much time do I have remaining.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 4 minutes 20 seconds.
  Mr. BYRD. I reserve that time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent, on behalf of the chairman of the 
Budget Committee, Senator Conrad, to modify amendment No. 3764 earlier 
submitted by the chairman of the Budget Committee, to comply with the 
agreement with Senator Domenici on the budget enforcement procedures, 
and ask that that modified amendment be in order postcloture.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, reserving the right to object, every 
other amendment which is nongermane would be barred postcloture. I do 
not see any reason why this amendment should be treated differently 
than any other, and I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Who yields time?
  The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I yield myself such time as I might 
consume.
  I do not know if anybody is confused about what is happening. I guess 
with everything that has been said today and yesterday maybe they are, 
so let me try to straighten it out. The President sent a request to the 
Congress for an emergency appropriation for $29.7 billion. In his 
request, the President outlined what he thought we needed to provide 
homeland security and to deal with the crisis that it poses. He urged 
Congress not to load up this bill with

[[Page S5115]]

extraneous appropriations and not to use this as a vehicle to spend a 
whole bunch of money that we do not have, now that we are looking at 
the potential of running a $100 billion or $150 billion deficit. That 
is the request that the President made.
  Let me outline the bill before us. I hear my dear friend, the Senator 
from West Virginia, talking about people dragging their feet; we need 
this bill. The President has already said he will veto this bill. The 
President has already issued a detailed outline running four pages, 
single-spaced, saying what is wrong with the bill and saying in the 
clearest possible terms that he is going to veto it.
  So is this a political exercise or is this making law? Well, I guess 
that depends on one's perspective.
  Why is the President so upset about this bill that he is saying it 
will be the first bill he has vetoed since he has been President? That 
is pretty extraordinary. A bill he requested, a bill that is aimed at 
providing homeland security, the man who requested it, who has the 
responsibility to all the people of the country for providing homeland 
security, the man who under the Constitution is Commander in Chief, is 
now saying he is going to veto this bill. Why is that?
  Here is why: First, this bill spends $4 billion more than the 
President requested. That is $4 billion, in the words of our dear 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle, that will come right out of 
the Social Security trust fund. That is $4 billion that will not be 
there for trust fund accounts or for any other purpose.
  The problem does not stop there. My guess is, if $4 billion of add-on 
spending had been piled on to this emergency bill the President 
probably would have swallowed hard, noted this is the way Congress 
works, and signed the bill. But that is not the biggest problem. Four 
billion dollars of overspending is not the biggest problem, and I will 
read from the committee's own document, from their committee report, 
where they outline what they are doing.
  The President requested in emergency appropriations, to deal with 
exactly the needs we are talking about, $24.447 billion. When the 
President requested $24.447 billion for emergency appropriations, what 
does the committee provide; what does the bill before us provide? It 
provides not $24.447 billion. It provides $14.041 billion. In other 
words, this bill not only spends $4 billion more than the President 
asked for but in the committee report summary, it notes that it 
underfunds the President's request by over $10 billion. In other words, 
$10 billion in emergency appropriations the President asked for were 
not provided in this bill.

  Now, one might say, they spend $4 billion more than the President but 
they do not fund $10 billion of emergency funding he asked for? How is 
that possible? I will explain how it is possible. In contingency 
emergency appropriations, these are things that are not true 
emergencies, the President had $2.7 billion of offset expenditures, but 
we do not provide $2.7 billion for nonemergency items. We provide $17 
billion of nonemergency items and we do not pay for them. As a result, 
this bill funds $14 billion of nonemergency items that the President 
did not request.
  So is anybody startled that even a President who goes the extra mile 
to be bipartisan, even a President who has done everything he could do 
to try to make this effort a bipartisan effort, has finally balked and 
said, look, the Congress is spending $4 billion more than I asked for? 
They are giving me $10 billion less in emergency spending than I asked 
for, and they are giving me $14 billion of nonemergency spending I did 
not ask for. As a result, the President is pretty upset. He kind of 
feels his effort to prosecute this war is being used to fund programs 
that he believes--and I am not saying he is the only person with an 
opinion--do not represent the right priorities.
  Now given this is the situation we are in, given that our President 
has said he would veto this bill, is anybody shocked that Republicans 
are concerned about it and that we are objecting to it?
  Mr. BYRD. Madam President, will the Senator yield?
  Mr. GRAMM. I am very happy to yield.
  Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator identify the emergency items that the 
President requested that the committee did not fund?
  Mr. GRAMM. I do not have before me a detailed listing. I can get that 
and I would provide it. I simply point out to the Senator, in his 
committee report, which is dated May 29 of this year, in the 
classification of total amounts, the net appropriation is $3.8 billion 
above what the President requested; emergency appropriations are $10.4 
billion; contingency appropriations are $14 billion more. They are your 
numbers.

  I am not saying everything the President says is an ``emergency'' is 
the right designation and everything you want to fund which is not an 
emergency is the wrong thing. I am simply saying that the man who was 
elected by the American people to prosecute this war and to protect 
security asked for $29 billion. We are spending almost $34 billion. He 
asked for $24 billion of emergency spending, and we are giving him $14 
billion. He asked for $2.7 billion in contingency emergencies--much of 
what he spends--and we are spending $17 billion for that purpose. So we 
are spending $14 billion more for nonemergency appropriations than the 
President asked for. Those are the facts in this.
  I don't want to get into an argument with my dear friend, but I am 
reading from his report.
  Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. GRAMM. I am happy to yield.
  I am on page 148.
  Mr. BYRD. As I understand it--and I am confident I am right--there is 
only $65 million in the President's request for emergency that we did 
not approve.
  The Senator is not on the committee. Let me tell you what we did 
approve. Fourteen billion dollars, as requested by the President, for 
the Department of Defense, for the war on terrorism; $1.95 billion for 
foreign assistance, virtually all of which was either requested or 
supported by the President.
  Mr. GRAMM. If the Senator would yield, I would be happy to listen, 
but I only have a little bit of time left.
  Mr. BYRD. The Senator is making some statements that are simply not 
true, and I would like to clarify them.
  Mr. GRAMM. Let me give the Senator 1 more minute, and I will have to 
have my time back.
  Mr. BYRD. There is $8.3 billion for homeland reform that the 
Appropriations Committee determines is necessary based on extensive 
hearings. The Senator was in not in those hearings. The ranking member 
was in the hearings. They were well attended by Republican Members. 
There is $5.5 billion requested by the President in response to the 
September attack on New York City.
  The Senator has come to the Senate floor ``loaded for bear,'' but he 
is saying some things that simply are not true about this bill. I think 
he had a bad dream. I think he had a nightmare. He is not feeling well. 
He is not feeling well this morning.
  Mr. GRAMM. Let me read the words from the Statement of Administration 
Policy:
       The administration strongly opposes this bill and also 
     would strongly oppose any amendment to further increase 
     spending above the President's request.

  Mr. BYRD. Madam President?
  Mr. GRAMM. Continuing:

       The Senate includes scores of unneeded items that total 
     billions of dollars all classified as emergency.

  Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. GRAMM. I cannot yield now because I have a very limited time. If 
we had unlimited debate, I would yield.
  Mr. BYRD. I would love to go to that point.
  Mr. GRAMM. Maybe when we get into the postcloture we can.
  Finally, to sum up--and this is a President who has not vetoed a 
single bill, who came to this city determined to work on a bipartisan 
basis--he says:

       If the supplemental appropriations bill were presented to 
     the President in its current form his senior advisors would 
     recommend that he veto the bill.

  The point I am responding to is that when people say they do not 
understand why there is opposition to this bill given that we are in an 
emergency situation, that simply leaves out that the President has 
already said he would veto this bill.
  What we should be doing, it seems to me, is sitting down, perhaps the 
committee should go back and rewrite the bill, work with the President, 
and craft

[[Page S5116]]

something the President would sign. The idea that somehow there is foot 
dragging going on when the President has already said he would veto the 
bill, I don't view as productive work in which we are engaged. It seems 
to me what we should be trying to do is to make this bill acceptable to 
the President.
  I also note that if you look at every agency of the executive branch 
of Government, you see that this bill funds every single agency of the 
executive branch of Government at a higher level than the President 
requested, except one. There is only one agency of Government that does 
not get more funding than the President requested under this bill. 
Guess what it is. Only one agency does not get more funding than 
requested by the President. What is the agency? The Defense Department. 
And this is a bill that is about homeland security.
  So there are two sides to the story. We are at an impasse. Those who 
want to see a bill signed into law and want to support a President who 
believes his effort is being subverted have some responsibility to do 
that. It is not that we are trying to be mean or hateful, it is that 
the President, who asked for the bill, said he will veto it. The 
numbers provided by the committee show it grossly overspends what the 
President requested; and not only that, it overfunds in areas that the 
President has said do not represent emergencies.
  Finally, in what I think is a twisting of the process, when we had a 
budget, we said there could be an emergency under two circumstances: 
With an agreement of two parties, the President and the Congress. If 
the President says something is an emergency and Congress says it is an 
emergency, it does not count on the budget. But under this bill, this 
$14 billion of nonemergency spending that is added, the President 
cannot take any of the money that is provided for an emergency, even 
though it is $10 billion less than he asked for; he cannot spend any of 
it, unless he designates this $14 billion add-on as a nonemergency.
  That is a perversion of the whole emergency designation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. BYRD. The Senator from Texas, I am sorry to say, is apparently 
having some hallucinations. The President requested--if the Senator 
will look at the report, the Senator questioned $27,143,519,000.
  The White House said the very same thing about homeland defense. They 
did not need the money. They did not want the money. Tom Ridge wrote me 
a letter--I believe he sent a copy of it to Senator Stevens, or he may 
have written the same letter to Senator Stevens, I am not sure, but he 
sent me a letter saying they did not need the money, they did not want 
the money, they would determine what they needed in due time and tell 
us what they needed.
  This Senate added $4 billion for homeland defense last year over the 
President's request. It is being used; it is making a difference. And 
after all of the hearings of this committee, before Republicans and 
Democrats, after all the hearings in which the executive branch 
participated, this is the outcome. This bill that we have brought to 
the floor is the result of those hearings. Go back and tell your 
firefighters, may I say to the Senator from Texas--go back and tell 
your firefighters, tell your law enforcement people, tell your 
policemen, tell your health officials, tell those people, tell the 
people back home they do not need this protection. Tell them; don't 
tell us.

  The Senator was not on the committee. I greatly honor the Senator 
from Texas but he is absolutely wrong. He is dead wrong. He is having 
dreams. He is having nightmares. He is really wrong. The figures he 
quoted this morning, if we had the time, I would show, are absolutely 
false.
  This committee, 29 members, backed this bill. Fourteen of those 
members were Republicans. They voted to report this bill, and they are 
right.
  So I say to the Senator--if I may have his attention?
  Mr. GRAMM. You certainly may.
  Mr. BYRD. Would he please offer amendments. If he doesn't like this 
bill, offer amendments to take out the money, and then you can tell the 
people back home, you can tell the policemen, you can tell the 
firefighters, you can tell the health personnel, you can tell the 
people at the local level, that their safety doesn't matter. Their 
safety doesn't matter.
  What the administration says is apparently what matters. But the 
administration was wrong last year. The Senate was right last year. The 
administration is wrong this year, and the Senate is right this year.
  So I urge Senators to vote for cloture and then let's vote on the 
amendments.


                          wage index fairness

  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I rise today, along with my 
distinguished colleagues, Senator Shelby and Senator Hutchinson, to 
offer an amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill. I 
have come to the Senate floor many times in the last 5\1/2\ years to 
talk about this issue--the wage index--and I will continue to do so, 
and I will continue to offer my bill S. 1001, the Wage Index Fairness 
Act, as an amendment until we do something about it. I wanted to offer 
this amendment to the emergency supplemental bill because it is, in 
fact, an emergency. The wage index is causing hospitals in rural areas 
all over America to close their doors and to turn away patients. We 
cannot allow this to continue.
  The wage index is an injustice to rural communities that I believe 
has reached emergency levels. This terrible inequity within the 
Medicare wage index formula must be addressed in order to ensure access 
to care for Americans in need. This amendment, which is cosponsored by 
my colleague from Alabama, Senator Shelby, as well as my colleague from 
Arkansas, Senator Hutchinson, will establish a floor on area wage index 
adjustment factors used under the Medicare Prospective Payment System 
for inpatient and outpatient hospital services
  Over the past years, I have visited numerous hospitals, and at every 
one, hospital administrators and hospital staff have urged me to do 
something about the wage index. They have illustrated for me the amount 
of money they lose each year as a result of this unfair formula, as 
well as the struggles that result including fighting to keep their 
hospitals staffed and their doors open. Time after time fixing the wage 
index has been cited as the number one issue for Alabama's hospitals, 
and I have worked closely with the Alabama Hospital Association and its 
members to develop a plan to address the wage index problem.
  A complicated and mostly arbitrary formula, the wage index is part of 
the hospital Perspective Payment System, PPS, which was created in the 
early 1990s in an effort to cut Medicare spending. It established a 
base rate for Medicare reimbursement based on two components: labor and 
nonlabor related costs. While nonlabor related costs are similar 
nationwide, labor-related costs must be adjusted to account for the 
regional differences in wage costs. This adjustment is made according 
to a wage index.
  Rural areas such as Alabama and Arkansas have low wage costs; 
therefore, their Medicare reimbursement is much lower than in other 
parts of the country. Alabama actually has the lowest average wage 
index in the country, and Montgomery, Alabama's capital, has the lowest 
wage index in the State. In fact, the wage index for all Alabama's 
hospitals is between 0.74 and 0.89--well below the national average.
  The amendment I have introduced would establish a wage index 
``floor'' for Medicare reimbursement to hospitals. By raising the 
minimum wage index to 0.925, we can help those hospitals that have been 
hit hardest by the unfairness of the wage index formula. Other 
legislative proposals may fix the wage index, but they also include 
additional funding for other portions of Medicare reimbursement policy. 
My bill addresses just the wage index and will help nearly half of the 
hospitals in the country. According to the American Hospital 
Association, this proposal will benefit 2153 hospitals across America.

  Illustrating what an important issue this is, my friend and 
colleague, Senator Hutchinson, has also filed an amendment on the wage 
index and base payment amount, is that not correct Senator?
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. I have also filed an amendment to the supplemental 
appropriations bill on this critically important issue. While my 
amendment,

[[Page S5117]]

cosponsored by Senator Cleland, will not be considered relevant if the 
Senate invokes cloture on the supplemental appropriations bill this 
morning, I want to stress to my colleagues how important it is to the 
livelihood of hospitals across America who are struggling every day to 
survive and to meet growing health care demands.
  Cuts in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, coupled with health 
care inflation and a dramatically growing health care worker shortage, 
are forcing many hospitals to shut down units, cut services, or close 
down entirely. This truly is an emergency situation, and Congress needs 
to take action.
  The amendment I am offering is based on bipartisan legislation I 
introduced called the Area Wage and Base Payment Improvement Act, which 
now has 26 cosponsors. It is designed to help rural hospitals keep pace 
with today's salary requirements for their workers by setting a minimum 
payment on the area wage index. Such an area wage index floor--set at 
.0925 percent--would bring Medicare payments for at least 2,100 
hospitals nationwide closer to the national average of 1 percent.
  The amendment also eliminates the disparity in the Medicare inpatient 
base payment amount by moving rural and smaller metropolitan hospitals 
to the same payment level received by large urban facilities. This 
change in the base payment amount is also supported by the Medicare 
Payment Advisory Commission. In total, my amendment would provide an 
additional $328 million in needed payments to rural hospitals in 
Arkansas.
  These rural hospitals are truly the lifeblood of their community. Not 
only are they often the primary source of health care in a given 
community, they are also a major provider of jobs in a given area. The 
financial failure of a hospital puts its whole community at risk 
because, without these institutions, medical services, social services, 
and jobs disappear.
  Small and rural hospitals have been especially hard hit by staffing 
shortages, particularly in the field of nursing, since lower Medicare 
reimbursements and the very nature of rural areas make it difficult to 
recruit and retain qualified staff. In Arkansas and Alabama, rural 
hospitals are losing staff to bigger salaries offered by large, urban 
hospitals out-of-state. Meanwhile, in many urban area hospitals, fierce 
competition for qualified workers is creating serious retention issues 
as workers are hopping from job to job.
  I ask my colleague how is this competition for workers affecting 
hospitals in Alabama?
  Mr. SESSIONS. Alabama is having to compete with surrounding urban 
areas such as Atlanta, GA, for health care professionals. In order to 
recruit these highly qualified health care personnel, Alabama's 
hospitals must offer urban wages. This has become nothing short of a 
bidding war due to the national shortage of health care professionals, 
and nurses and health care technicians who are being offered high pay, 
living expenses and, in some cases, traveling expenses to leave Alabama 
and work in larger urban hospitals. Alabama hospitals must offer higher 
wages, but they are not fairly reimbursed by Medicare based on these 
higher costs. Their reimbursement continues to be adjusted by this 
capricious area wage index, which, as I have just illustrated, does not 
always reflect the actual labor costs.
  The annual impact of the wage index formula results in a reduction of 
Alabama hospital payments by between 5.5 and 6.5 percent each year or 
close to $46 million/year. Until we fix this problem, Alabama hospitals 
and hospitals all over the country will continue to lose millions every 
year. Already forced to make the most of limited resources and to 
continue to provide care for the State's uninsured, these hospitals 
will face tough decisions regarding health care services. They will 
continue to postpone important projects and the purchasing of much-
needed equipment.
  In my home State, it is easy to see how arbitrary and unfair this 
formula is. In Mobile, AL, the prevailing wage index is 0.81. Just 
across the border on the Mississippi side in Pascagoula, less than an 
hour's drive away, the wage index is 0.88. On the other side of 
Alabama, in Pensacola, FL, also about an hour's drive from Mobile, the 
wage index is 0.89. There is no reason for the difference. The wages 
are not that different. But what it means, is that the hospitals in 
Mobile get less Medicare reimbursement than those in the other two 
areas. This formula is arbitrary and unfair.
  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS, and the Medicare 
Payment Advisory Commission, MedPAC, have recognized the problem, and 
they have even made recommendations to change the wage index.
  In addition to these recommendations, several pieces of legislation 
have been introduced in this Congress to address the wage index. 
Senator Grassley, ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee has 
been a champion of changing the wage index, in fact, he introduced 
legislation last year that I and several of my Senate colleagues 
cosponsored. I also appreciate the support we have received from 
Senators Specter and Harkin during last year's Labor, Health and Human 
Services Appropriations debate. I thank them for their support and 
welcome their offer to help fix the wage index. Although many have 
recognized the problem with the wage index, nothing has been done to 
fix it.
  While I understand the upcoming cloture vote will make my amendment 
nongermane as well, I still feel compelled to offer this amendment to 
the bill to illustrate to my colleagues the true urgent need to fix the 
wage index. I hope that my colleagues will realize the urgency of this 
matter and will work with me to fix this inequity. I urge the Senate 
Finance Committee and my colleagues to join Senators Shelby and 
Hutchinson and myself in our efforts to fix the wage index formula and 
to help our hospitals continue to provide the high quality of care and 
the access to care Americans deserve.
  Does the Senator agree that there is broad bipartisan support for 
these changes?
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Yes, the area wage index floor and base payment 
change proposals both enjoy broad bipartisan support. As I mentioned 
earlier, 26 Senators have cosponsored the Area Wage and Base Payment 
Improvement Act. Elements of this legislation have also been included 
in legislative proposals introduced by both Senators, Grassley and 
Baucus, and I thank them for their leadership in this regard. The fact 
is that rural hospitals desperately need Congress to fix this inequity. 
These hospitals are a vital like in our Nation's health care safety 
net, and we must ensure that they are able to continue to offer quality 
health care services to rural Americans.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Nebraska). The Senator from 
Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, is there any time remaining to the Senator 
from West Virginia?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There remain 45 seconds.
  Mr. REID. I ask that time plus 1 minute be given to the Senator from 
North Dakota, and equal time be given to the Senator from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, when the Senator from Texas objected to 
the unanimous consent request that was made by the Senator from Nevada, 
what he was objecting to was a bipartisan agreement on a budget 
framework and the extension of the budget disciplines that expired at 
the end of September. All we were asking was for the body to have an 
opportunity to vote after the cloture vote this morning. That is 
because under the rules of the Senate, postcloture, that amendment to 
have a budget, to have the budget disciplines extended, will not be 
permitted.
  There has been criticism that we have not had a budget for this year. 
I think all of us understand the jeopardy of not having a budget 
framework and the lack of the budget disciplines, which expire in 
September extended. This was an opportunity to address those critical 
concerns. I regret that the Senator from Texas objected. He doesn't 
want to give the body an opportunity to vote, to discuss, to debate, 
and to decide.
  We had a chance to put in place a budget framework and to extend the 
budget disciplines to keep the appropriations process from spiraling 
out of control. We will have to revisit that issue, but I hope people 
will think carefully about whether we really do not

[[Page S5118]]

want to have any budget disciplines as we go through the appropriations 
process.
  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, forgive me, but for the chairman of the 
Budget Committee, who has not brought a budget to the floor--for the 
first time in my entire period of service in Congress--to be saying 
that he wants to write a budget by changing the rules of the Senate to 
allow it to be germane in a appropriations bill, when it doesn't even 
set totals as to how much we are going to spend, and criticizes me for 
objecting--I am sorry, but I think that just simply goes too far.
  Quite frankly, we should have brought a budget to the floor. We 
should have debated it. We should have voted on it. We did vote on the 
Senator's budget yesterday and not one Member of the Senate voted for 
it. I guess every Republican thought it spent too much and every 
Democrat thought it spent too little. But the net result was, unless I 
am wrong, and I will stand corrected if the Senator would correct me, 
it got zero votes. So I do not understand being criticized because the 
Senator did not bring a budget to the floor.
  Mr. CONRAD. Will the Senator yield?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
  Mr. CONRAD. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 30 seconds.
  Mr. GRAMM. And if I could have the same.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CONRAD. I say to my colleague from Texas, when he says there were 
no number limits in what I was offering, he is wrong. He objected to 
putting in the very limits that he requests. This was our opportunity. 
We had a chance to have a budget framework and to extend the budget 
disciplines and the Senator from Texas said no. We will not even allow 
the body to consider it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. We voted on a discipline yesterday. The Senator voted 
against it, raised a point of order against it, and it was his number 
and he voted against it.
  I would like to say, Senator Byrd asked me where are we not funding 
something the President requested? I just opened up the bill and just 
looked at the first two pages. For staff and expenses of the U.S. 
Marshals Service, this appropriation is down $2.1 million; for the Drug 
Enforcement Administration, it cuts $13 million. I don't know--I could 
go further but I see I am out of time.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired. Under the previous 
order, under rule XXII, the clerk will report the motion to invoke 
cloture.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close the debate on the 
     supplemental appropriations bill, H.R. 4775:
         Harry Reid, Patty Murray, Barbara Boxer, Dianne 
           Feinstein, Jack Reed, Dick Durbin, Tim Johnson, Jeff 
           Bingaman, Robert Torricelli, Tom Harkin, Daniel Akaka, 
           Byron Dorgan, Joe Lieberman, Tom Carper, Bill Nelson, 
           Maria Cantwell, Barbara Mikulski.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on H.R. 
4775, an act making supplemental appropriations for further recovery 
from and response to terrorist attacks on the United States for the 
fiscal year ending September 30, 2002, and for other purposes, shall be 
brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are required under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Bingaman) 
and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Daschle) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. 
Helms) is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 87, nays 10, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 135 Leg.]

                                YEAS--87

     Akaka
     Allard
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bond
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Cantwell
     Carnahan
     Carper
     Chafee
     Cleland
     Clinton
     Cochran
     Collins
     Conrad
     Corzine
     Craig
     Crapo
     Dayton
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Feinstein
     Frist
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hollings
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lott
     Lugar
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Miller
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Nickles
     Reed
     Reid
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Shelby
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Stabenow
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Torricelli
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                                NAYS--10

     Allen
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Feingold
     Fitzgerald
     Kyl
     McCain
     Sessions
     Smith (NH)
     Specter

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Bingaman
     Daschle
     Helms
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 87, the nays are 
10. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are now on postcloture regarding this 
very important legislation. I have spoken to the majority leader. If we 
can finish tonight, of course, there would be no rollcall votes 
tomorrow. If we cannot, everyone should understand, we will work until 
we finish this bill.
  The President wants a bill. He may not like what we have now, but I 
am sure he will like what comes out of conference.
  I suggest that we, in the next little bit, work with those who want 
to change this bill. We will try to work out a list of amendments 
people can offer that are germane. We will be as cooperative as we can. 
Everyone should understand, we will finish this bill. It will be 
finished this week. That is the way it is. If we get no cooperation 
from everybody, then we will have a vote at approximately 5:30 tomorrow 
tonight on this legislation. We are going to finish the bill this week.
  The President has been calling for action for more than 2 months. We 
have been working on this measure, wasting a lot of time this week. The 
wasteful time is over. As I told the Republican leader earlier today, I 
appreciate his coming to the floor advocating that Republicans vote for 
cloture, which they did.
  I hope we can move forward expeditiously. I say again, we will finish 
this bill tonight if possible, with no votes tomorrow. Otherwise, we 
will work through tomorrow until we finish.
  I yield to my friend from Oklahoma.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I tell my friend and colleague from 
Nevada, I am happy to work with him to try to expedite consideration of 
the bill. I might note, the President sent the urgent supplemental 
request on March 21. It was just recently marked up--I believe, last 
week. So we have had it on the floor for a couple days. We have had a 
chance to review it.
  We did cooperate with the assistant majority leader to invoke 
cloture, which is unusual. I can't remember invoking cloture on an 
appropriations bill. Maybe the chairman of the committee remembers. It 
has probably happened, but it is not often. We did it in an effort to 
try to streamline it.
  There are a lot of people trying to pass a budget on this bill. I 
happen to be on the Budget Committee. I would like for us to consider a 
budget, but we haven't had a budget on the floor of the Senate yet. 
Some people were trying to rewrite the budget through the 
Appropriations Committee, and I questioned the wisdom of that. I was a 
little concerned about that. Invoking cloture eliminates the budget 
debate. We are not going to have four or five more proposals dealing 
with budgets and caps and budget rules, and so on. We will deal with 
appropriations bills.
  Now we have a list of amendments, a list of amendments germane 
postcloture. I will work with the Senator from Nevada to review that 
list. I

[[Page S5119]]

don't know if we can possibly pass this bill tonight. I will try. I 
will work with him to try to do it. We will try to pass a good bill. 
Some of us are concerned about the expense of the bill. The bill is $4 
billion over the President's request, and we didn't fund everything the 
President requested. There is a provision in here that says we are 
going to change how we do emergencies. I have an amendment to deal with 
that. I will call it up pretty quickly.
  I urge all my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, if they have 
germane amendments, to bring them forward. Let's consider those and see 
how much progress we can make on the bill. I don't know if we can 
finish this bill tonight. I will work with my colleague to do so.
  If not, we will work to see if we can't come up with a timetable, a 
framework to where it is mutually agreeable to finish this bill as soon 
as possible.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say to my friend, the distinguished 
Senator from Oklahoma, Senator Byrd and Senator Stevens marked this 
bill up 2 days before the House reported it. This was following long, 
very productive hearings that Senator Byrd and Senator Stevens 
conducted. In my 20 years in Congress, I don't know of more in-depth, 
important hearings that have ever been held. Everyone from the 
administration was called to make their opinion known as to what should 
happen with homeland defense and the security of the Nation. These were 
long hearings. I didn't spend the time in committee that the chairman 
and ranking member did, but these were great hearings.
  For someone to suggest--I am not confident that the Senator from 
Oklahoma did--that the Appropriations Committee was dilatory in any 
fashion is a mistake. This is one of the most in-depth, prepared bills 
I have ever come in contact with, even though most emergency bills 
don't have the background and depth this bill has.
  We have marked this up; the Appropriations Committee did it 2 days 
before the House reported it. As everyone knows, we were even willing 
to bring it up, as the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, 
Senator Byrd, tried to do, before the Memorial Day recess. There was 
objection heard from my friends on the other side of the aisle.

  We are now to a point where we will finish the bill. There is no way 
to slow it down. There are a number of problems we have in 
postclosture, but one of them is not, as we usually have in the Senate, 
an indefinite time period. We have a definite time period. We have 
already notified the cloakroom to have Presiding Officers here all 
night tonight. We will finish this bill by tomorrow. We want this bill 
to go to conference next week. We want the bill to go to the President 
as soon as we can.
  I am confident the chairman of the committee would say this: There 
are many inadequacies in our homeland defense. This bill will plug some 
of those holes. The sooner we do that, the safer my State of Nevada 
will be and every other State in the Union. We are moving forward. We 
are ready for the first amendment whenever anyone is ready to offer it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I have a number of amendments. I will be 
ready to propose them. There is no sense in reviewing how quickly we 
got to this point. In my memory there has not been a cloture motion 
filed on the first day a bill is considered.
  All that aside, we are where we are. I respect and appreciate the 
motivation of the Senator from Nevada for getting this done as quickly 
as possible, perhaps tonight or tomorrow. Therefore, I believe I ought 
to tell the Senator from Nevada that in order to expedite that, there 
should be no managers' amendment package because I will, because of the 
egregious aspects of managers' amendments in the past, packages which 
none of us have seen and all too often have been agreed to because it 
is late at night, unless we agree--first of all, there should not be a 
managers' package of amendments. We should debate and vote on all 
amendments. But if I am not in agreement with them and others are not 
in agreement, we will have recorded votes on those amendments, I tell 
the Senator from Nevada.
  We will not have one of these deals that we have seen in the past so 
many times where at the very end--maybe at 10 or 11 o'clock at night--
there is a unanimous consent agreement that a managers' package be 
accepted. We are not going to do that.
  So if the Senator from Nevada wants to get it done tonight, I 
recommend that he play some role in making sure we don't either have a 
managers' package or the contents of it are well known to all Members 
of the Senate and not discovered by reading the newspaper in the 
following days. I tell the Senator from Nevada, I will be ready with 
the first amendment that we have very shortly.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say to my friend from Arizona, a State 
next door to Nevada, that we did not file cloture on the first day, but 
we filed it on the second day. On the first day, we came for business 
and there was nobody from the minority here. We did not stay in session 
very long because there was no business to be transacted. That is one 
of the problems we have in the Senate. People think that if we have a 
bill up on a Monday or a Friday, it is kind of a day that doesn't 
really matter. We should be conducting business on those days. So 
cloture was filed on the second day.
  I agree with the Senator that it would have been better if we had 
held off a little bit, but we simply were getting nothing done. The 
Senator will remember that on that day we accomplished nothing. Out of 
frustration and the fact that my dear friend, the senior Senator from 
Texas, stated that there was an effort by him and others to ``slow down 
the train''--and we read the next day in the Daily Press that there was 
an effort by the Republicans to slow-walk this legislation and other 
legislation--I think the majority leader had no alternative. I think he 
did the right thing. As the Senator from Arizona said, it doesn't 
matter, it is water that has already gone under the bridge. We are here 
now. Let's work together to try to get this bill, which the President 
says he wants badly and we believe he needs badly, to sign for our 
country.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am not trying to take the place of 
anyone who wants to offer an amendment. I thought there was a little 
loose time here. Is the Senator ready? I wanted to speak a couple of 
minutes.
  Mr. McCAIN. I am glad to wait.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. President, let me make a couple of observations. It seems to me 
that there is no question that we are going to pass this supplemental. 
The President of the United States will have his rights, when this bill 
goes to conference, to argue with the Senate and the House conferees 
and have his input. It is very difficult to perceive a situation where, 
when you are talking of more than a few billion dollars and more than 
100 or 200 projects or programs or activities that are funded--it is 
pretty hard to come up with the same number for the President and the 
Congress. As a matter of fact, it has taken me a long time. I fess up 
to understand that the Budget Committee ordered that the Congress pass 
a congressional budget, and it is most interesting that they didn't say 
a Presidential and congressional budget; they said a congressional 
budget. Then, of course, nobody took away the President's prerogatives 
as that budget was implemented. The President retains his prerogatives 
to be for or against the bills that come from that budget.
  In fact, there have been some in both Houses who have attempted to 
change the Budget Act so the President could be part of it. They have 
never gone anywhere--those proposals--because we are supposed to do our 
job, and the President, with the OMB and others, does his job; and 
eventually we come to a rational conclusion somewhere down the line.
  I believe the far bigger mistake we are making as we move toward 
appropriations this year than trying to square this bill up in actual 
dollars exactly the same as the President's, or that we not get any cap 
language that exceeds the President's, I think the most important thing 
is to try to save some of the enforcement provisions of the Budget Act 
so they will be living throughout this process next year and give 
everybody an opportunity to see

[[Page S5120]]

whether they want to get rid of the entire process or whether they want 
to maintain the seven, eight, or nine important provisions that help us 
around here.
  I am not suggesting I know how to do that now in a postcloture 
position. I will continue to work with the leader on the other side and 
the leader on this side and the respective whips and Senator Byrd, 
Senator Stevens, and anybody else to see if we cannot have a bipartisan 
agreement. Let's retain the amendment. Let's retain what? Let's retain 
some significant portion of the enforcement provisions in the Budget 
Act, adopt them as a statute for 1 year in this appropriations bill. I 
believe that is the most helpful thing we can do even if the numbers 
are not identical with the President's.
  For instance, in the entire budget, it looks as if we are coming down 
with an agreement that probably would be supported by more than half of 
the Senate, which says we cannot meet the President's appropriations 
number, but we can put together pieces and be maybe $8 billion to $10 
billion higher on this gigantic budget. That does nothing to change the 
President's budget, does nothing to put him in a position where he is 
getting the short end of what is expected to be a congressional budget 
provided for in our own language, and then we have one called a budget 
of the U.S. Congress.
  I hope, for those who are interested, we will continue to work on 
that. In the meantime, clearly, with the last vote, we are on a path to 
hurry up. I think that is relatively good considering where we have 
been in the past.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.


                           Amendment No. 3764

  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: What is the 
pending business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending business is amendment No. 3764 by 
the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Daschle.
  Mr. NICKLES. Is that amendment germane postcloture?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. In the opinion of the Chair, the amendment is 
not germane.
  Mr. NICKLES. Does the amendment fall?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On a point of order.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I make that point of order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The point of order is sustained. The amendment 
falls.


                           Amendment No. 3703

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Arizona [Mr. McCain], for himself and Mr. 
     Feingold, proposes an amendment numbered 3703.

  The amendment is as follows:

    (Purpose: To strike the amount provided for design of a storage 
               facility for the Smithsonian Institution)

       On page 73, strike lines 1 through 11.

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, this is not a very big or important 
amendment, but I think it has some symbolism associated with it. The 
amendment concerns striking $2 million for the Smithsonian to begin 
design of an alcohol storage facility for animal specimens away from 
The Mall.
  In the Statement of Administration Policy that was sent up on June 4, 
the President states his strong objections to the increases in spending 
over what the President had requested, and it also states if the 
supplemental appropriations bill were presented to the President in its 
current form, he would veto the bill.
  This is just $2 million of a several-billion-dollar increase over 
what the President requested. But in the Statement of Administration 
Policy, the Office of Management and Budget goes on to specify certain 
expenditures that are, in their view, either unnecessary--it says the 
Senate bill includes scores--quoting from the message--``includes 
scores of unneeded items that total in the billions of dollars, all 
classified as an emergency.''
  The bill adds unrequested funds for numerous programs and projects 
throughout nearly all of the Federal agencies. Some of these items 
relate to homeland security--many do not--including $11 million to the 
National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration for economic assistance to 
New England fishermen and fishing communities; $26.8 million for the 
U.S. Geological Survey for urban mapping activities; $2 million for the 
Smithsonian to begin design of an alcohol storage facility for 
specimens away from The Mall. They go on to add that the President's 
fiscal year 2003 budget already includes funding for this project in 
fiscal year 2003.
  So, basically, what we are talking about is a project that already is 
included in the President's budget for next year. Apparently, the 
people at the Smithsonian are seeking to accelerate that, which I can 
certainly understand because then they will have some millions of 
dollars--$2 million extra--to spend on other projects at the 
Smithsonian, a wonderful and venerable institution. But to no objective 
observer could this be viewed as a response to, as the title of the 
legislation is: Making supplemental appropriations for further recovery 
from a response to terrorist attacks on the United States. This is 
clearly not it.

  To make a long story short--I do not intend to spend too much time on 
it--the President believes it is unnecessary, I believe it is 
unnecessary, and I believe it needs to be taken out and the money spent 
at the normal time in fiscal year 2003, which is in the President's 
budget. I am sure they will receive those.
  Someone who supports this will say this is a serious situation, that 
the temperature control is an important aspect, alcohol is flammable, 
and we should be as careful as possible, et cetera. I agree with all of 
those arguments, but I also would argue that other measures can be 
taken and this project can be moved forward at the appropriate time.
  Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the supplemental appropriations bill does 
include $2 million for the Smithsonian Institution to begin planning 
and design work for construction of a storage facility that would hold 
specimen collections preserved in alcohol.
  The House included this amount in its version of the supplemental 
appropriations bill. The amount is requested by the administration in 
the Smithsonian's fiscal year 2003 budget estimate. So the 
administration supports this item.
  The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History on The National 
Mall holds one of the largest natural science specimen collections in 
the world. Most of this collection is preserved in alcohol, an 
estimated 730,000 gallons of highly flammable liquid occupying 50,000 
square feet of space at the museum.
  The storage space at the museum does not comply with the fire and 
safety codes, exposing the public--we are talking about exposing the 
public here--to significant risks. For example, large areas of the main 
building have no sprinkler system, and there are no firewalls between 
the newer wings and the older central exhibition spaces of the museum.
  With the equivalent of several jet planes loaded with fuel--now get 
this--with the equivalent of several jet planes loaded with fuel now 
housed on The Mall, the committee has acted responsibly in providing 
funds to begin the work that will eliminate this hazard. We should not 
wait until next year. To wait is to take great risks with human lives.
  Funds can be obligated immediately, thereby accelerating construction 
of an appropriate storage facility for 6 months to a year. This is a 
significant fire hazard on The National Mall, and we ought to attend to 
it now, not wait until next year.

  The administration supports this item. They asked for it in the 2003 
bill. What is wrong with going ahead with it now? The museum informed 
the committee that construction could begin early.
  I know it sounds good that we are appropriating money for 
construction of a storage facility that would hold specimen collections 
preserved in alcohol.

[[Page S5121]]

Yes, it has a political sound on which it is easy to beat the drums. 
But this is something that involves human lives, not just worms, not 
just insects. It involves human lives. Let someone start a fire down 
there with all of this inflammable alcohol, and we will be spending 
more than $2 million, and there will be human lives involved.
  I urge that the Senate not support the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, will the Senator from West Virginia allow me 
to ask a question?
  Mr. BYRD. Yes.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, it is my understanding that these products--
and I certainly am not going to divulge the location publicly--are in a 
very sensitive location.
  Mr. BYRD. No question.
  Mr. REID. Very close to the Capitol where millions of tourists come 
every year.
  Mr. BYRD. Absolutely; no question about that.
  Mr. REID. Any kind of a suicide bomber, a car bomb would cause a 
conflagration that would be untoward if these products were ever 
involved.
  Mr. BYRD. There is no question about that.
  Mr. REID. The Senator knows, as has been developed--and I assume that 
is why the House put it in this bill----
  Mr. BYRD. The House put it in the bill.
  Mr. REID. The reason they did is they were concerned about the safety 
of not only hundreds of thousands of people who work in the Capitol 
complex area but the millions of tourists who come every year.
  Mr. BYRD. No question about it. The Senator is absolutely correct. 
And I certainly would not want to be a Senator who voted for this 
motion to strike this item if something happened. And who knows what 
might happen today, tonight, tomorrow.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I can say for this Senator, I appreciate the 
House putting it in the bill. I appreciate Senator Byrd and Senator 
Stevens having it in the bill before us because I think to remove this 
legislation is such a wrong way to go.
  If we are talking about homeland security, the place to start is with 
this amendment.
  Mr. BYRD. I thank the Senator for his expression of support.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me outline for my colleagues what I 
think we are going to do. I do not speak for everybody on my side, much 
less everybody in the Senate. What we are going to do is pick out maybe 
a half a dozen instances of provisions that are in this bill that the 
President did not ask for, that do not represent an emergency as we 
conventionally define it. We are going to give Members of the Senate an 
opportunity to vote to keep them in or take them out. Let me talk about 
the Smithsonian issue.
  The President proposed in his budget for 2003 that we build a new 
state-of-the-art facility that will maintain the temperature at 65 
degrees so that we can take specimens that are stored in alcohol at the 
Smithsonian Institution and move them to this building; that lowering 
the temperature would reduce the amount of evaporation and, in the 
process, preserve the specimens better than where they are currently 
stored.
  No one argues--not one person I have heard argue or anything I have 
read on it, and I have read everything I could get my hands on about 
this issue--no one argues that we can build this facility right now. 
There is not even a blueprint for it. The funds, if we provide them, 
would be available on October 1 through normal appropriations.
  Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. GRAMM. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. BYRD. This is the design money. The construction will follow. Why 
not get on with the design money? We could save some time, possibly 
save some lives.
  I thank the Senator for yielding.
  Mr. GRAMM. The President has asked for this funding as part of his 
ongoing appropriation process. The funds would be available on October 
1. The odds that we are going to spend the money before October 1, in 
my opinion, given the experience we have in these kinds of matters, is 
relatively low. What this amendment does in reality is it takes an 
ongoing appropriation to provide funding for the storing of specimens 
in test tubes and jars in a new facility, makes it an emergency so that 
money that would have been provided in the regular appropriation 
process can be spent on something else.
  I will read from the Washington Times statements about this issue.

       Smithsonian officials acknowledged that the need for 
     specimen storage did not result from the terrorist attacks on 
     September 11. ``It predates September 11,'' said Jerome 
     Conlon, assistant director for facility operations. ``It 
     certainly has been on our wish list, yes.''

  The point is there are a lot of things on wish lists. Almost anything 
could be deemed to be an emergency. The point is the President sent us 
a targeted list of things that cost $29 billion. This is an item that 
has to do with the storage of specimens in the Smithsonian. It is true 
that one can argue that someone could blow up the Smithsonian and get 
an afterburn from specimens in alcohol. One could argue that almost 
anything we would do would be an emergency, but the point is the 
Smithsonian does not say this is an emergency. The President did not 
ask for it as an emergency.
  It seems to me that an explosive at a chemical plant in Beaumont, TX, 
would be a lot more dangerous than one in the Smithsonian with alcohol 
tubes.
  I want to protect against both, but the point is where is the line 
drawn on what is an emergency? If we took the standard that anything 
that could potentially be considered as a terrorist target is fair game 
for this emergency appropriation, we could literally spend $100 
billion, $200 billion.
  The point is the President did not consider this to be an emergency. 
The Smithsonian did not consider this to be an emergency, but it was 
added to this bill along with other items on which we will vote, some 
of which are even clearer, but I think this is a pretty clear example 
of something that was in the appropriation process that the President 
requested through the normal channels but it has found its way into 
emergency funding. I do not think we ought to do this. I think this is 
one of a dozen or so clear examples of where we have overreached in 
designating emergency. You can make an argument for anything that it 
has an emergency overtone to it, but basically this is an ongoing 
activity of the Smithsonian. It was in the President's request for 
2003. I think logic would dictate that it be funded through the normal 
process.
  Let me make this concluding point. The question before us, it seems 
to me, is not are we going to build this new building for the 
Smithsonian; the question is, does it represent such a dire emergency 
that it should be exempted from the budget process and we should fund 
it by running a deficit and funding that out of the Social Security 
trust fund?
  I argue that where we are talking about clear examples, where the 
President and the Congress agree, which is our definition of an 
emergency, in law, that there is an imminent threat, the answer is yes, 
we should run a deficit to do it. But in a case where the President 
says this is not an emergency, where it is going to occur anyway 
through the normal appropriations process, where the Smithsonian admits 
that it is not an emergency, it has been on their wish list for quite 
awhile, something they want to do and that is worthy, it seems to me 
that under these circumstances this should not be funded as an 
emergency.
  I think the case is clear cut. Obviously, people can vote however 
they want to vote, but what we are doing in this emergency designation 
is we are waiving the Budget Act, we are raising the deficit, we are 
spending the Social Security trust fund because this is an imminent 
emergency. The point is the Smithsonian says it is not. The President 
says it is not.
  The question is, should we designate it as that or should we allow it 
to be funded through the normal appropriations process where the funds 
will be available on October 1? It seems to me that the clear answer 
is, this should not be in this list of dire emergencies.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Clinton). The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, for my friend to suggest that this is 
stuff stored in test tubes and jars, he certainly does not understand 
the issue.

[[Page S5122]]

There are 730,000 gallons at a site so close to where millions of 
people come every year, and it seems to me there are a lot of things 
that are emergencies but I think the Appropriations Committee in the 
House and the Appropriations Committee in the Senate did the right 
thing in getting the program on its way so they could find another 
place for 730,000 gallons of alcohol and formaldehyde. This is an 
emergency. It should remain in this bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. STEVENS. When the time is ready to expire, I intend to make a 
motion to table the Senator's amendment. I believe others may want to 
speak on it, so I do not want to do that in advance, but I will say 
this: This is money to start this project, one that we all believe is 
extremely necessary due to the location of the Smithsonian. It is a 
very small amount of money. Maybe that is why the argument was started. 
It may be about a very small amount of money, but it is one that 
collectively, on a bipartisan basis, we thought ought to be initiated 
now. We will address the full amount in the 2003 bill, and I think that 
is proper.
  This is not the kind of money that has to go through all kinds of 
rigmarole at OMB to get released. It is money that will be immediately 
available to start this design, and by the time the money is released 
for 2003, it ought to be possible to move this really a year ahead if 
we start now.
  So I urge the Senate to support our recommendation. I do not know how 
the House will feel about it, but it is a nice test case to see whether 
or not the Senate wants to support the judgment of the Appropriations 
Committee on the staging of monies for the Smithsonian. This is an 
emergency to get that collection and everything else out of that 
building and get it where it should be, away from the concentrated area 
of the District of Columbia and the millions of visitors who come to 
Washington, DC.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I will be very brief. I look forward to 
a vote. The Senator from Texas and I will have several votes, not an 
unending stream of votes because we will know after three or four votes 
whether there is going to be any imposition of fiscal discipline or is 
this just a spigot that is going to be turned on. It is not the amount 
of money that is symbolic about this vote. It is whether, as the 
Senator from Alaska said, we will rely on the judgment of the 
Appropriations Committee, as he just stated, or we will rely on the 
judgment of the Commander in Chief, the President of the United States, 
who specifically in his veto threat objected to this provision in the 
appropriations bill. It is really that simple.
  So it is not $2 million. It is, whose judgment are we going to trust? 
Are we going to--as with other amendments, as I say, we will establish 
a precedent for it--be able to trust the judgment of the President of 
the United States or the judgment of the Appropriations Committee?
  So I look forward to a quick vote. I say to the Senator from Alaska 
we have no further debate on this issue.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. FRIST. Madam President, I will be very brief. I have had the 
opportunity to sit on the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian 
Institution.
  I have been in numerous meetings, especially since September and 
October, addressing this very specific issue.
  Having listened to the presentation of the people who have studied 
this issue most carefully inside the Smithsonian Institution, I am very 
hesitant to back away from the recognition that we have over 730,000 
gallons of highly flammable alcohol within about 150 yards of where we 
are sitting right now. I don't want to overstate or understate, and I 
read what has been written about this in the last several days.
  Let me make several points. We are talking about the National Museum 
of Natural History located on the National Mall, right outside the 
door. It currently holds tens of thousands of specimens. These 
specimens are placed in highly flammable alcohol jars. The collections 
today occupy about 50,000 square feet of space in various areas of the 
museum. They do not today comply with the fire code that has been 
written locally in this area, in this region, in this district, in this 
part of the country. They do not comply with the fire code. They are 
stacked under a stairwell where we have thousands of people walking 
over the course of a month.
  The National Museum of Natural History has 1,200 staff and 25,000 
visitors on a weekday who are walking either over, because it is stored 
under a stairwell there, or around the flammable jars.
  This issue has been a concern of the Smithsonian. I have been a 
regent for about 6 years, for some time. For my colleagues who have not 
been in the room, recent national security reviews highlighting the 
vulnerability of highly visited public buildings indicate this problem 
should be resolved as soon as possible.
  The Smithsonian, as mentioned before, has planned to build a 
specially designed storage facility at the research and storage complex 
in Maryland, removing the collections from The Mall area where we have 
so many people coming from all over the United States of America to 
visit.
  We need to remove this as soon as we possibly can. If the Smithsonian 
can plan it, it is in the underlying plan. If they do that--it will not 
be done in 2002--those 730,000 gallons will be over there in 2002 and 
in 2003 and in 2004 and they will be removed in the year 2005.
  Failure to address this issue now would be a huge mistake on behalf 
of this body.
  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I want to express my strong opposition to 
the McCain Amendment that would strike the $2 million for the National 
Museum of Natural History that is provided in the Emergency 
Supplemental Appropriations bill.
  The events of September 11 prompted multiple reviews of the security 
at all federal facilities. These reviews have highlighted a number of 
measures that need to be taken to improve the safety for employees and 
visitors at federal facilities.
  One important item that has been brought to our attention is the 
potential volatility of a storage facility located in the heart of 
Washington, near the national Mall. The National Museum of Natural 
History is recognized internationally as a premier museum and research 
facility. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of specimens are currently 
stored in 730,000 gallons of highly flammable alcohol.
  I commend Chairman Byrd and Senator Stevens for including $2 million 
to begin design for a new facility that would safely store the 
specimens and do so in a location that is away from such a high traffic 
area. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. STEVENS. I move to table the amendment.
  Mr. REID. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to 
table the amendment of the Senator from Arizona. The clerk will call 
the roll.
  Mr. BYRD. I believe the motion of the Senator from Alaska was to 
table the amendment to strike.
  Mr. STEVENS. That is correct.
  Mr. BYRD. I hope Senators will support the Senator from Alaska and 
vote to table the amendment to strike.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Bingaman), 
the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Daschle), and the Senator from 
Minnesota (Mr. Dayton) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. 
Helms) is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 67, nays 29, as follows:

                      (Rollcall Vote No. 136 Leg.)

                                YEAS--67

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bond
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Burns
     Byrd

[[Page S5123]]


     Campbell
     Carnahan
     Carper
     Cleland
     Clinton
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corzine
     Crapo
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Feinstein
     Frist
     Graham
     Gregg
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lugar
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Reed
     Reid
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Shelby
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stabenow
     Stevens
     Thurmond
     Torricelli
     Voinovich
     Wellstone

                                NAYS--29

     Allard
     Allen
     Bayh
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Cantwell
     Chafee
     Conrad
     Craig
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Fitzgerald
     Gramm
     Grassley
     Hagel
     Hutchinson
     Kyl
     Lott
     McCain
     Miller
     Nickles
     Santorum
     Sessions
     Smith (NH)
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Warner
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--4

     Bingaman
     Daschle
     Dayton
     Helms
  The motion was agreed to.


                             change of vote

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, on vote No. 136, I believe I voted 
``yea'' to table. It was recorded as a ``nay.'' I don't challenge the 
accuracy of the distinguished clerks, but I simply ask unanimous 
consent that I be recorded voting ``yea'' to table. The change will not 
affect the outcome of the vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The foregoing tally has been changed to reflect the above order.)
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 3635

(Purpose: To strike the amount provided for the National Defense Center 
             of Excellence for Research in Ocean Sciences)

  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I have an amendment at the desk, and I 
ask for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Arizona [Mr. McCAIN] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 3635.
       On page 25, strike lines 1 through 11.

  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, this has to do with the $2.5 million 
that is earmarked for the mapping of the coral reefs in Hawaii. The 
bill directs $.5 million under the Commerce-Justice-State 
appropriations bill for 2002 to be dedicated to conducting coral 
mapping in the waters of the Hawaiian Islands and the surrounding 
Exclusive Economic Zone.
  I remind my colleagues at the outset, again, the title of the 
legislation we are considering is: Making supplemental appropriations 
for further recovery from and response to terrorist attacks on the 
United States for the fiscal year 2002.
  I knew of many devastating effects of the attacks on our homeland. I 
did not know of any disruption of the coral reefs in Hawaii associated 
with the terrorist attacks on the United States of America.
  The administration did not request this redirection of previously 
appropriated funding for coral reef mapping for the benefit of Hawaii. 
This is no surprise, since there is not an emergency need for coral 
reef mapping in Hawaii. It is even more of a reach to suggest that a 
coral reef mapping provision has a role on the war on terrorism. This 
is an attempt to preclude a competitive contracting process to benefit 
one State.
  A recent report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration stated that the coral reefs in the northwestern Hawaiian 
Islands are some of the most pristine in the world and that the coral 
reefs in the Atlantic, which includes Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, and 
the Caribbean, are some of the most in distress. Why should a 
relatively healthy reef system receive extra attention and funding at 
the expense of those in most need?
  I might add, the Federal Government has already been very generous 
with respect to Hawaiian coral reefs for fiscal year 2002. In fact, 
during this fiscal year, NOAA is scheduled to spend $8.215 million of 
its $28.25 million Coral Reef Conservation Program budget on programs 
specifically targeted toward the northwest Hawaiian Islands; that is 
more than a quarter of the program budget.
  These funds include $762,000 for mapping, $893,000 for monitoring, 
$1.25 million for the Hawaii Coral Reef Initiative, $3.25 million on 
northwest Hawaiian Island Reserve operations and sanctuary development, 
$210,000 for fisheries management, and $3.1 million for marine debris 
removal.
  So the State of Hawaii has already gotten $8.215 million. Now they 
are asking for $2.5 million more. Moreover, this does not include 
funding for NOAA'S overall program that is being spent across all of 
our Nation's coral reef, of which Hawaii also benefits.
  Now the managers of the bill want to carve out another $2.5 million 
for Hawaiian coral reefs. As I said before, what this bill does is 
earmark $2.5 million of that funding for a specific project in the 
waters of the Hawaiian Islands and to a specific organization.
  Are there other organizations that do mapping? I do not know. But why 
is it earmarked for a specific corporation to do this work? I believe 
that it is part governmental and part private, as I understand it. This 
specific earmark would purposefully preclude the issuance of a 
competitive contract for this work. Congress should not be taking such 
action and should allow a competitive contracting process to go forward 
for any Federal funding involved.
  I do not believe we should be providing special treatment to one part 
of the country when other parts also have a great need. If the Hawaiian 
reefs deserve this already appropriated funding, they should be able to 
secure it based on merit review through a competitive process at NOAA.

  Therefore, this amendment would strike the directive provided in the 
bill and allow the competitive process to go forward.
  Madam President, under no stretch of the imagination can this 
provision providing this money for a specific project in the State of 
Hawaii be deemed as a response to the attacks on the United States of 
America that took place on September 11. The administration opposes 
this legislation. And it has no relation to the war on terrorism or 
homeland security in the view of the President of the United States.
  So I have gotten, from the last vote, a pretty good idea how these 
votes are going to turn out. But there is going to come a time, Madam 
President--there is going to come a time--when our deficits have 
ballooned well into $150 billion, $200 billion, from the surplus that 
we had and people will say: What happened to all that money? What 
happened to our money for Social Security? What happened to our money 
for Medicare? What happened to the surpluses that we were so confident 
of, that were going to be $4- or $5- or $6 trillion over the next 10 
years? We are going to look back, and we are going to point at votes 
such as these, where, in the name of fighting the war on terror, we 
will earmark millions of dollars for a project to map coral reefs. I 
think the American people will not be satisfied with that result or 
that decision made by the Congress of the United States.
  As the distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations Committee 
from Alaska just said: We just made a judgement.
  Do you want to trust the judgment of the Appropriations Committee or 
the President of the United States? We will probably again vote to 
trust the judgment of the Appropriations Committee, in the name of 
fighting the war on terror, of mapping coral reefs in Hawaii.
  I would assume there will be a tabling motion made, and at that time 
I will ask for the yeas and nays.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. BYRD. Madam President, the provision in the bill does not add new 
spending; rather, it clarifies the allocation of funding provided for 
coral reef mapping in the fiscal year 2002 Commerce-Justice-State and 
the Judiciary appropriations bill.

[[Page S5124]]

  This amendment directs $2.5 million of the coral reef funds 
appropriated in fiscal year 2002 for mapping coral reefs in the 
Hawaiian Island chain and adjacent areas to complement the general 
mapping currently planned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration.
  These funds will be used to begin identifying the location, type, and 
condition of coral reefs throughout the Hawaiian Island chain. This 
data will be used by resource managers and will provide valuable 
information for the northwestern Hawaiian Islands sanctuary designation 
process. This data will also provide a baseline for future monitoring 
of Pacific coral reefs.
  The funds will be administered by the National Defense Center of 
Excellence for Research in Ocean Sciences through a cooperative 
agreement with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration. Established in 1993 with funds from the Department of 
Defense, CEROS is product oriented and seeks to advance innovative 
concepts and new approaches to technology while fully leveraging 
existing facilities and infrastructure in Hawaii.

  I urge the Senate to vote down the amendment by the Senator from 
Arizona.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. INOUYE. Madam President, as the distinguished chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee has stated, this coral reef initiative does 
not appropriate any money, not even a penny. The sums involved have 
been appropriated and were appropriated in the last fiscal year.
  It may interest the Senate to know that the administration does not 
oppose this initiative. In fact, they authored the initiative. The 
initiative as drafted in the supplemental was drafted by the staff of 
NOAA.
  Eighty-four percent of the coral reefs of the United States are found 
around the Hawaiian Islands. Of that 84 percent, 15 percent are found 
around the occupied islands, the inhabited islands, the islands I live 
on; 69 percent are in the northwest. The Commerce Department is in the 
process now of establishing a sanctuary in the northwestern islands. In 
order to establish a proper sanctuary to identify the ecosystem, to 
identify the fishes, the plant life that all of us want to preserve for 
generations to come, we must have a mapping. We must know where they 
are.
  This is a technical thing. Therefore, my staff was not adequately 
prepared to draft such legislation. It had to be done by the staff of 
Commerce.
  This is not a pork item. One may get the impression that we were 
using this vehicle to get $2.5 million for the people of Hawaii. Such 
is not the case. The moneys will be handled by the Commerce Department 
together with the National Defense Center of Excellence for Research in 
Ocean Sciences, CEROS. This was established by the Defense Department. 
Under the rules of CEROS, this will be under a competition. No 
organization has been selected for the purpose of this mapping. We have 
no idea who that organization will be.
  If we are to carry out the initiative started by the Government of 
the United States to protect our environment, to protect our coral 
reefs, this is absolutely essential. What we have done was to carry out 
the wishes of the people of the United States and the wishes of the 
administration.
  I hope we can defeat the amendment.
  I move to table the McCain amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  Mr. REID. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The clerk will continue the call of the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk continued with the call of the roll.
  (Mr. MILLER assumed the chair.)
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion to table amendment No. 
3635.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I rise in support of the McCain amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion to table has been made and is not 
debatable.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I might speak 
despite the fact that a motion to table has been made.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, if the Senator from Texas will allow, I have 
a unanimous consent request I would like to propound at this time. I 
think it will solve the problem.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the McCain amendment No. 3635 
be laid aside to recur at 2 p.m. today; that at 2 p.m. there be 5 
minutes equally divided prior to a vote on a motion to table the 
amendment, with no amendments in order to the language proposed to be 
stricken; with the time equally divided and controlled between Senators 
McCain and Inouye or their designees.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, Senator McCain has graciously consented, as 
has Senator Gramm, that if someone wants to offer an amendment prior to 
2 p.m., they will have no objection to doing that. We could perhaps 
have two votes around that time. It is up to the body as to whether or 
not someone wants to offer another amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, as I noted earlier, we basically find 
ourselves in a position where the President has asked for emergency 
funding.
  We have a bill before us the President has said he will veto. We have 
a problem in that the proposal spends more money than the President 
asked for. It doesn't fund some of the emergencies he asked for, funds 
many things he did not ask for. The question is, how do we get this 
right so we get the money that the White House wants in a form that 
they will sign and that we can get on about the Nation's business?
  It is fair to say the people on my side of the aisle decided that in 
the end the best thing to do is to go ahead and cloture this bill so it 
will have a vote hopefully sometime this afternoon or tonight, send the 
bill to conference, and then it will be up to the conferees to bring it 
into compliance with what the President has said he will sign, or have 
it vetoed. In either case, we decided that was a better approach than 
simply continuing to debate this issue on the floor of the Senate in 
the face of the President's first veto threat.

  Senator Byrd and I had a discussion earlier today about that veto 
threat. I don't want to get back into that discussion. I want to talk 
about this amendment.
  Senator McCain and I are concerned that there are a lot of provisions 
in this bill that really are not emergencies. That doesn't mean they 
are not meritorious. The example we had before about building the 
storage facility for the Smithsonian so that specimens stored in 
alcohol could be in a building with the temperatures controlled, so you 
don't have to keep adding alcohol and will have better protection 
against fire, is something we need to do. The President has that in his 
2003 budget. It is being funded here as an emergency. The President 
mentioned it in his veto message.
  Senator McCain and I decided that the way to deal with this problem 
is to pick out about four or five of these issues that the President 
has singled out as not being emergencies and give the Senate the 
opportunity to vote on them, and then we have two points of order on 
the bill.
  One point of order is the emergency designation, where the body would 
decide whether or not it is an emergency by whether or not 60 Members 
would vote to deem it such. The other point of order has to do with a 
quirky provision of the bill where the President cannot designate what 
he called an emergency to spend the money unless he takes $14 billion 
of spending that he has not designated as an emergency and spends that 
money.
  We believe that circumvents the whole emergency designation process. 
We believe there is a point of order

[[Page S5125]]

based on that, and my guess is that at some point we will have a vote 
on those two points of order, assuming they lie.
  In going down the amendments, one that Senator McCain has identified 
is the mapping of the coral reef. Let me say this. I don't have any 
doubt in the world that mapping the coral reef is a good thing. Other 
than the State that I represent, my home and the State I was born in, I 
don't love any place more than I love Hawaii. Let me also say that no 
Member of the Senate has been sweeter to me and my family than the 
Senator from Hawaii. So if I had been picking amendments, I would not 
have picked this amendment. But I don't believe that mapping the coral 
reef around Hawaii is an emergency that warrants waiving the Budget Act 
and, in the process, spending money that will generate a deficit and 
that will take the money, ultimately, out of the Social Security trust 
fund.
  Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. GRAMM. I am happy to.
  Mr. BYRD. This is not designated as an emergency, so it does not 
violate the Budget Act. I thank the Senator for yielding.
  Mr. GRAMM. Let me make my point. I hear the Senator. While the bill 
is $4 billion above the level the President requested, the nonemergency 
parts of the bill are $14 billion above the level the President 
requested.
  What we have sought to do is come up with a series of amendments on 
things that we do not believe represent emergencies, to really give 
people an opportunity to say yes or no as to whether they believe they 
should be included in this emergency bill, which is--I think everybody 
agrees--$4 billion above what the President requested.

  We understand where the votes are here. We just find ourselves in a 
position where our President has said he is going to veto the bill. I 
intend to vote against the bill and make these points of order and vote 
for them. I wish we could start the process over and eliminate the veto 
threat and get this job done, but I don't have the power to control 
that. Maybe no single Senator at this point has that power.
  In any case, Senator McCain has offered this amendment. Despite all 
of the merits of what it is doing, it seems to me that this provision 
does not belong in an emergency appropriations bill. We will offer 
several more amendments that we believe fall into this category. 
Obviously, it is up to the Senate to decide whether or not they believe 
these provisions belong in the bill. In any case, Senator McCain felt, 
and I felt, that it was important that at least some of these items be 
voted on, and so there will be two or three more of them that we will 
offer. I don't know what other people are going to do. Then I think we 
would have a budget point of order against the bill.
  At that point, from my point of view, we have made the decision, 
despite the President's veto message, despite the fact that the 
President has said this does not fund the emergency items he wanted and 
designates items as emergencies that he doesn't believe are 
emergencies--if at that time it is the Senate's will to move ahead, 
then I don't know that we serve any purpose to hold it back.
  So the question we are trying to pose is--this is clearly an 
emergency bill. It is over budget from what the President requested by 
$4 billion. I do not believe this provision is an emergency, though I 
don't doubt that it is meritorious. So I intend to support the 
Senator's amendment. I hope other people will as well.
  There will be at least two more amendments. At that point, I think we 
would probably be through. I think we are establishing a pattern here 
that people are ready to pass this bill, spend this money, and worry 
about the problem later.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii is recognized.
  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, if I may repeat myself, not a penny is 
appropriated by the coral reef initiative--not one penny. Moneys were 
appropriated in the fiscal year 2002 bill. This is to set aside, of 
that amount, $2.5 million for the mapping of the coral reef around the 
northwestern islands of the Hawaiian chain.
  Mr. President, 84 percent of the coral reefs of the United States are 
found in the Hawaiian chain. Of that 84 percent, 6 to 9 percent would 
be found in the northwestern islands and 15 percent around the occupied 
islands. This is not important for the Hawaiian people. This is an 
emergency as far as the Commerce Department is concerned because they 
are in the process of establishing a sanctuary in the northwest 
islands. In order to set the sanctuary, you must begin mapping that 
area to determine what sort of fishes are there, what sort of plant 
life.
  If we are to carry out the national mission of protecting our 
environment and protecting the species of this land and this planet, 
then this is an important part of it.
  Furthermore, the funds that will be designated for this initiative 
will be administered by the National Defense Center of Excellence for 
Research and Ocean Sciences through a cooperative agreement with NOAA. 
One specific item they must live up to is that this will be done by 
competition, using a competitive process of selecting whoever does the 
mapping.
  This initiative does not designate any person, institution, or 
organization to do this job. Yes, it is not part of homeland security, 
but as far as NOAA is concerned, this is an emergency. We are not 
appropriating any money; we are just saying let's use the money we have 
already appropriated for this purpose.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me make one point and then I will be 
through. Part of what makes it hard to determine what is happening is 
that the bill does make appropriations for the National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration operations, research, and facilities of 
$29.2 million. That is new money that is provided in this bill on an 
emergency basis.
  What the Senator from Hawaii is saying is that his amendment does not 
require new money because he is taking it from money that was 
appropriated in Public Law 107-77. Our problem is that while you are 
taking $2.5 million for this purpose from money that was appropriated 
for this general account, the bill puts in $29.2 million into the 
account. So it is hard for us to tell--at least it is not obvious--that 
while you are spending old money, that the bill is not replacing that 
old money with new money which is, in fact, designated as an emergency. 
Perhaps this is a technicality, but it is the source of the issue we 
are trying to raise.
  I do not know what the $2.5 million--which is being transferred for 
this purpose--was going to be used for in the first place, and I would 
not be shocked if it were a lower priority than what the Senator wanted 
to use it for. But there is $29.2 million of new money for the same 
account that the committee--let me read the language:

       The committee recommendation includes $29.2 million for 
     NOAA to address critical homeland security requirements.

  The problem is, is any of this $29.2 million going to replace the 
$2.5 million that is being transferred for this purpose? That is what 
we cannot tell. Hence, that is why this issue has been raised by the 
President and by others as an example of a nonemergency that is being 
funded.
  It is clear that the money is being transferred from an existing 
account, but the question is, Is any of this $29.2 million going to pay 
for what is being taken away? That is the question.
  Mr. McCAIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. GRAMM. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. McCAIN. Is the Senator aware that the money is going to the 
National Defense Center of Excellence for Research in Ocean Studies, 
which is a Hawaiian State government agency, but that Hawaiian State 
government agency is solely federally funded? We are proving that money 
is fungible. They give it to an outfit called the National Defense 
Center of Excellence for Research in Ocean Studies which happens to be 
a State government organization, but that State government organization 
is fully federally funded.
  This is a remarkable movement of money and, frankly, the $29 million 
which is added for new money for NOAA is something that was not 
requested by the administration either. Is the Senator aware of that?
  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

[[Page S5126]]

  Mr. GRAMM. Let me yield the floor and let the Senator have the floor.
  I was looking to find my place in the bill. I do not know this bill 
as well as the people who are on the committee, but I believe this was 
an addition to the President's request, as far as I can tell.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, CEROS, the National Center of Excellence 
for Research in Ocean Studies, is not a State government institution. 
It is a Federal institution. It was established by the Department of 
Defense. That is why it is called a national defense center.
  Secondly, the $2.5 million does not come out of this bill. The sums 
have already been appropriated for mapping of coral reefs. This just 
expedites it because NOAA wants it expedited. The amendment itself was 
drafted by the staff of NOAA. It is not to benefit any Hawaiian 
organization, I can assure you, Mr. President. This is to benefit the 
people of the United States who have been crying about the environment, 
about protecting the species of this planet. This is how we are going 
to do it.
  If we do not do it, then it is going to be wide open to fishermen, 
and if the lobsters disappear, if the exotic fishes disappear from that 
area, do not blame me. We are carrying out the wishes of the 
administration.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCAIN. I suggest the absence of a quorum, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. 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. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will not be able to fully detail some 
very good work that staff has done for me on this supplemental 
appropriations bill, but I want to speak about one part of this 
legislation that is of great concern to me.
  Overall, I absolutely support the supplemental, but I want to talk 
about some of the language and some of the additional funding for 
support for Colombia. First, I want to make it clear, having visited 
the country of Colombia twice now, I believe we have a very important 
role to play.
  I rise today to raise concerns about the administration's proposal 
for lifting the restrictions on aid to Colombia and providing an 
additional $35 million to help it fight terrorism. President Bush is 
seeking authority to permit U.S.-funded combat helicopters to be used 
directly against FARC and the ELN, the two biggest leftist insurgency 
groups. The administration claims that the best way to fight drugs in 
Colombia is to help the country end the threat from guerrillas.
  Violence, has wracked the Colombian countryside for more than 75 
years, a product of poverty, inequality and the state's chronic 
weakness. The FARC's four-decade old insurgency, which grew out of an 
earlier civil war, has intensified dramatically since peace talks broke 
down in February, after several high-profile kidnappings. Narco-
traffickers, working with left wing guerrillas and right wing 
paramilitaries, continue to make large portions of the country 
ungovernable.
  In short, Colombia's democracy is in crisis. Colombian civil society 
is under siege. Union members and activists, clergy, human rights 
defenders, journalists, and politicians continue to bear the brunt of 
human rights violations including murders, disappearances and threats 
in the escalating conflict in Colombia. Most Colombians living in rural 
areas unprotected by state forces are under constant threat by the left 
and right.
  While I believe we must help Colombia, I also believe that we must do 
so wisely. The Administration has requested $35 million for Colombia--
$25 million of which will be used to train and equip anti-kidnapping 
police units, $4 million to support police posts in areas out of 
government control, and $6 million to start training troops to protect 
an oil pipeline. This is on top of the nearly $2 billion we have 
already dedicated to Colombia in recent years.

  I have serious concerns about this proposal. Expanding our role in 
Colombia is a major change in U.S. policy. In my view, such a change 
deserves to be considered and debated on its own terms, not within the 
context of an emergency supplemental appropriations bill. I am 
concerned further that this shortsighted approach will only compound 
the already tragic toll on civilian life in Colombia.
  There are several serious problems with this approach, not least of 
which is the fact that the majority of U.S. assistance to Colombia goes 
to the Colombian armed forces, which continue to maintain ties to 
paramilitary groups that are listed on the State Department terrorist 
list. I cannot emphasize this point strongly enough. The administration 
is proposing to send hundreds of millions of dollars to a military 
force that has long, well-established ties to one of the very terrorist 
groups we purport to be fighting.
  Another immediate effect of the changes in policy would be to permit 
the United States to expand how it shares intelligence information with 
Colombian security forces. Again, I think we should be careful about 
providing intel to a Colombian military that is sullied by ties to 
right wing paramilitary terrorist organizations which are deeply 
involved in drug trafficking.
  I also am concerned that the Colombian military does not have the 
will to adequately protect its citizenry. For example, a May 2002 
report prepared by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human 
Rights in Colombia has placed equal blame on the FARC, the AUC, the 
government, and the military on fighting that left 119 civilians dead 
in the small town of Bojaya, in the remote jungles of northwest 
Colombia.
  The UN report says that the government, the police and the army not 
only ignored warnings of an impending tragedy but also may have 
collaborated with the outlawed paramilitary forces to allow them to 
enter the region. The report lays out evidence that a 250-person 
paramilitary unit sailed up the River Atrato in seven large boats and 
passed through two police and one army checkpoint without the slightest 
problem. Anders Kompass, director of the UN's Colombia office, said in 
his report that paramilitary commanders flew into the town aboard light 
aircraft at a time when the town was under full military control and 
only army aircraft were authorized to land on the small airstrip.
  Although this is just one of the most recent examples of Colombian 
military cooperation with the outlawed paramilitaries, it is emblematic 
of a broader pattern in Colombia. Military-paramilitary linkages in 
Colombia are real. It's high time we addressed this problem.
  Like Human Rights Watch, the Washington Office on Latin America 
(WOLA), and Amnesty International, I have serious concerns about the 
State Department's decision to certify the Colombian government's 
compliance with human rights. In my view, the Colombian government and 
military have shirked their responsibility to suspend high-ranking 
military officers implicated in serious human rights abuses. In 
addition, the Colombian government has failed to arrest known human 
rights violators, and when they have done so, have failed to vigorously 
prosecute these individuals.
  In particular, I am concerned about the characterization of army 
actions in Barrancabermeja as an example of progress in breaking army-
paramilitary ties. Despite the high concentration of security forces in 
Barrancabermeja, the city remains under virtual paramilitary control. 
Paramilitaries move freely through the city, and the civilian 
population lives in an atmosphere of unmitigated terror. Surely this 
cannot be seen as progress.

  Over time, I think it's safe to say that we can expect requests by 
the Colombian government for additional substantial aid increases in 
the near future, perhaps as soon as next year. Now is the time to raise 
important questions about our end game. We must ask now, rather than a 
year or two from now: how far are we willing to go? We should not 
broaden our assistance until we get a satisfactory answer.
  As you know, the administration's Foreign Operations Appropriations 
request includes $98 million for FY2003 to

[[Page S5127]]

train an additional brigade of Colombian troops to serve as a rapid-
reaction force protecting the Cano-Limon pipeline used by the U.S. oil 
company, Occidental Petroleum, against guerrilla attack.
  U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson told Colombia's El Tiempo newspaper 
that ``there are more than 300 infrastructure sites that are strategic 
for the United States in Colombia.'' Are we going to pay to protect all 
of these sites as well? Where do we draw the line? Why protect this 
pipeline and not another? Why not a dam, a coal mine, a power grid? We 
need to openly debate these questions before targeting assistance to 
one entity.
  I also am concerned that the Administration may appear to want to 
circumvent congressional authority. They have requested $6 million in 
this emergency supplemental for a program that Congress has not yet 
authorized. However, I am pleased to see that Senator Leahy has reduced 
the amount of funding for pipeline security to $3.5 million. He also 
has inserted language requiring Occidental and the other oil companies 
that would benefit from such protection to repay these funds. I applaud 
these efforts to check this glaring example of corporate welfare.
  This is not to say that the United States should not help strengthen 
Colombia's democracy. The United States can and should help Colombia. 
Here's what I believe we should be doing instead: Support the civilian 
part of Colombia's state--judges and prosecutors, oversight agencies, 
honest legislators, and reformist police officers; protect human rights 
and anti-corruption reformers inside and outside of government; provide 
and more effectively implement alternative development and rural 
development programs to create the conditions for a functioning legal 
economy and alleviate the desperation of Colombia's countryside, which 
fuels the conflict; step up our provision of humanitarian aid to 
internally displaced persons and refugees; use the full weight of our 
diplomacy to support efforts to restart peace talks, perhaps with UN 
involvement; press the Colombian military to break ties with the 
paramilitaries, without sending mixed signals--like waivers and 
disingenuous certification processes; and, spend more money at home on 
efforts to reduce demand through treatment and prevention.
  In Colombia, we should do all we can to strengthen the rule of law 
and democratic institutions. Economic and social development should be 
our highest priorities, and humanitarian delivery is essential. In 
addition, we need to invest in demand side interventions here in the 
U.S. Our militarized drug strategy overwhelmingly emphasizes drug 
eradication, interdiction and law enforcement when studies show that 
these are the least effective means of reducing illicit drug use.
  A landmark study of cocaine markets by the conservative RAND 
Corporation found that, dollar for dollar, providing treatment to 
addicts is 10 times more effective at reducing cocaine use than drug 
interdiction schemes and 23 times more cost effective than eradicating 
coca at its source.

  Our counter-narcotics policy in Colombia has not worked. Although 
some drug laboratories have been destroyed, coca production in Colombia 
has risen. In fact, despite massive fumigation across Colombia, the 
area of Colombia planted with coca grew by 24.7 percent in 2001 to 
419,000 acres, 169,800 hectares. CIA figures for 2000 showed final 
cocaine output at 580 tons.
  What's more, just last month, General Gustavo Socha, the head of 
Colombia's anti-narcotics police force was removed from his post on 
Friday amid an inquiry into how some $2 million provided by the U.S. 
disappeared from an administrative police account. His removal--and 
subsequent resignation--are positive steps, but ultimately the 
perpetrators must be arrested and prosecuted prior to any new infusion 
of assistance money.
  Also, we do not know what the policies of any new Colombian 
administration will be. With the recent landslide victory of Alvaro 
Uribe in the Colombian Presidential elections, I think we have cause to 
be concerned. I hope Mr. Uribe will keep his campaign pledge to combat 
illegal right-wing paramilitary forces with as much vigor as he does 
the rebels, but I have cause for skepticism. I have serious concerns 
that Mr. Uribe's plans could lead to increased abuses that would mostly 
befall poor villagers who live in the areas where the fighting often 
takes place.
  Uribe, a 49-year-old former state governor, has promised to wage a 
war without quarter against both the FARC and the AUC. In my view, an 
escalated military approach is doomed to fail. He says he will double 
the size of the army's combat force to 100,000 soldiers and the 
National Police to 200,000, create commando teams to root the 
terrorists and drug traffickers out of Colombia's vast jungles, and 
recruit hundreds of thousands of civilians for security squads. As 
governor, paramilitary forces flourished in his department, and his 
chief election opponent has alleged paramilitary and narco-trafficker 
links.
  Uribe, whose campaign slogan is ``Firm Hand, Big Heart,'' has raised 
concerns among human rights groups, who fear his anti-guerrilla 
rhetoric might encourage right-wing paramilitaries. I share this 
concern.
  Most analysts agree that the military offensive proposed by 
President-elect Uribe will make things worse before they get better. It 
will most likely result in an increase of Colombian refugees and a rise 
in kidnappings, violence and drug production by FARC rebels in 
neighboring countries. The spillover effect of the war on neighboring 
countries could be compounded by the fact that the armed forces of 
Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru are consumed by internal troubles, Brazil 
is focused on its October presidential elections, and Panama does not 
even have an army. Again, I must ask: what are we trying to accomplish 
here?
  Between 1995 and 1998, when he was governor of the prosperous and 
tortured state of Antioquia, whose capital is Medellin, Mr. Uribe 
oversaw the creation of a network of civilian patrol groups. At least 
two of these groups evolved into notorious death squads, but Uribe 
insists that the others were merely efficient neighborhood 
peacekeepers. I believe that we should be wary of these civilian 
militias. Some see this as a new ``Self-Defense,'' or paramilitary, 
initiative.
  That said, with the exception of the civilian patrol groups that 
turned into death squads, and a military campaign against the 
guerrillas in the Uraba region of Antioquia, which is often described 
as brutal, Uribe's record as governor of Antioquia is outstanding, 
particularly in this chaotic nation. Public health, education, and 
highway systems, which are among Colombia's worst problems, improved 
greatly in Antioquia during his tenure. As a result, I hold out hope 
that he will advance a platform of economic, social, and cultural 
development all of which have been in short supply in Colombia.

  Ultimately, there is no military solution to this conflict. Most 
observers agree that a political solution is the only way out. Mr. 
Uribe has issued a call for the United Nations to attempt to restart 
peace talks with the rebels. In my view, our government should be more 
active in the quest for peace by encouraging negotiations like the 
sputtering ``Havana process'' of talks between the government and the 
ELN. This model could pave the way for eventual negotiations with the 
FARC. Moreover, we should encourage the Colombian government to accept 
a United Nations ``good offices'' mission, under Chapter 6 of the UN 
Charter, without preconditions.
  However, Mr. Uribe's ideas are unlikely to succeed despite his recent 
attempts to reach out to the UN. Before there can be any talks, he has 
demanded that both FARC and the AUC agree to an end to violence--an 
unlikely proposition. Yet I encourage his peace overtures and hope that 
he will agree that a military solution is not the most effective means 
for improving Colombia's plight.
  In conclusion, Mr. President, I am an internationalist. I am a first-
generation American. I am interested in the world and I very much want 
to see us promoting sustainable economic development, promoting the 
environment, promoting human rights. I want to see good economic 
development assistance to Colombia. The truth is, I have some concerns 
about Mr. Uribe, who recently was elected President of Colombia. 
President Pastrana, I think, is a very honorable man, and I think had 
tremendous support in the Senate among Democrats and Republicans 
dealing

[[Page S5128]]

with a tremendous amount of violence. The city I visited twice, 
Barrancabermeja, has been like the Sarajevo of Colombia, a very 
dangerous place, especially for the people who have to live there.
  In Colombia, there are a lot of innocent people who have been 
murdered by savage violence. There is the FARC, which is the 
guerrilla--if a label has to be used--left. There is the ELN, also the 
guerrilla left. Then there is the AUC, or the paramilitary, on the 
right.
  Certainly, the Government deserves and needs our assistance. My 
concern is about the direction we are taking in this supplemental bill. 
This is a supplemental appropriations bill, and I do not think we 
should be changing policy, but we are. The change in policy, as I 
understand it, is twofold.
  First, our military equipment, such as the Blackhawk helicopter, has 
been used in the war against drugs. That is what the original Plan 
Colombia was all about. Now this military assistance can be directly 
used in the counter insurgency war against the FARC and the ELN, no 
longer just for counter-narcotics. What worries me is the one-sidedness 
of the approach that the Government is taking, and I believe this new 
administration in Colombia will take.
  That is to say, if we are concerned about narco-trafficking, there 
are a couple of things we can and should do. The first thing we ought 
to do is to reduce the demand for the drugs in our country. That is 
actually the most effective way to deal with this. I am not sure 
anybody has proven that we can--through aerial eradication, the 
spraying and the military effort--actually successfully fight this 
scourge.
  The truth is, the drug trafficking business in Colombia continues to 
boom. Frankly, there is not anything we have done that has made much of 
a difference to date. The best thing we could do would be to reduce 
demand in our own country and have effective treatment programs in our 
own country. Above and beyond that, what has always worried me in what 
has been, up to now, counter-narcotics, is that all of the focus has 
been on the FARC and on the ELN, two organizations about which no one 
should have any illusions. These are not Robin Hood, justice 
organizations trying to redistribute the wealth and the income to the 
poor. These are organizations that are up to their eyeballs in narco-
trafficking, having made a tremendous amount of money off of it.
  These are organizations that have been engaged in a clear policy of 
terrorism, that is, of kidnapping and murder of innocent people. The 
truth is that if this Plan Colombia was all about going after narco-
trafficking, we would have spent as much time focusing on the 
paramilitaries on the right because they are also implicated in the 
narco-trafficking up to their eyeballs.
  My concern is that we are now becoming more involved in basically a 
military effort. We are becoming more involved in what is now counter-
insurgency, not counter-narcotics. I was never sure what the divide 
line was, but we have now changed this. We have said our military 
weaponry--and I also worry about our U.S. advisers being directly 
involved in the actual military effort--can now be used to fight an 
internal counter-insurgency effort. That is a different policy. We have 
now moved from counter-narcotics to counter-insurgency, and we are 
becoming directly involved.
  Part of the problem is that we are relying on this Government and 
this military and we basically are turning our backs on blatant 
violations of human rights conditions. My concern is that the military 
in Colombia--and every human rights organization that does any 
independent research comes up with the same report--is too closely tied 
to the AUC or the paramilitary. And, therefore, I say to my colleagues, 
it is amazing to me, for example, that this administration has 
certified that the military is doing much better with respect to human 
rights, and they use Barrancabermeja, where I visited twice, as an 
example. In Barrancabermeja, it is not the case at all.
  Senator Leahy has shown important leadership on this question, but I 
see an administration that is turning its gaze away from all of this 
because in Barrancabermeja people's phones have been taken from them. 
They do not have any phones. The paramilitary moves into their homes. 
There is total terror and, frankly, many people have been murdered. The 
truth is that two-thirds of the extrajudicial killings every year in 
Colombia are done by the paramilitary, the AUC, the right. But we are 
now going to move forward and we are going to become directly involved 
in direct aid to the military, too much of which is closely tied to the 
paramilitary, which has been involved in too many slaughters of 
innocent people. It is counterinsurgency, and we are playing a 
different role than we played before. We are becoming more directly 
involved. This is all going to be done with our money. It is going to 
be done in our name. It is a change of policy.
  I wish to say, so at least it is part of the record, that I think it 
is wrong to do so in the supplemental bill, and I want to issue a 
warning to people in our country that I think this is a profound 
mistake. I think this is a profoundly mistaken policy.
  I have had a chance to visit and I especially have become familiar 
with the work of a priest, Francisco de Roux, who has done some of the 
finest economic development work, and his approach is manual 
eradication of the coca plant, not the aerial spraying where the 
chemicals are used, where many people say they have been sick, where 
legal crops also end up being destroyed. Frankly, on the ground, we 
were supposed to be providing money for alternative social 
development. We haven't done that.

  We have had the war on drugs. That has been quite unsuccessful. We 
have done this aerial spraying. Many say: This has affected our health; 
what are you doing? We have destroyed some of their legal crops. We 
said we would have alternative crops and economic development money. 
That has not happened on the ground. We have priests such as Francisco 
de Roux trying to do it a different way. I hope others will join me in 
supporting a more productive approach.
  Now we have moved into a different kind of policy. We are now going 
to be involved in a joint effort to protect the pipeline. I think the 
oil companies, Occidental, et al, have a fair amount of money to 
protect their own pipeline. I don't know why we must use the taxpayers' 
money. Last time I looked, the oil industry was doing pretty well. I 
think they made $40 billion in profits last year.
  It is a long pipeline. I cannot remember how many miles. How many 
projects are we going to be directly involved in protecting? How much 
money goes to the military? What is the end game? What is a victory? 
What are we trying to accomplish? Why the change in policy?
  We are told: By the way, this is part of the frontline fight against 
the terrorists. This is not al-Qaeda. A lot of this has gotten mixed 
up. This is now being justified as part of the war against terrorism. 
FARC and ELN are terrorist organizations. They have been involved in 
the indiscriminate murder of locals, and so has the AUC--which we 
indirectly support because they have ties to the some in the Colombian 
military.
  When we directly let our equipment be used in military efforts in 
counter-insurgency against the terrorists and then try to wrap that up 
with the fight against al-Qaeda and what happened in the United States 
and what has happened in Afghanistan and what is going on in south Asia 
and the Middle East, it is sleight of hand. They are not one and the 
same. No one has presented one shred of evidence that al-Qaeda is 
operating in Colombia. No one has presented one shred of evidence this 
is part of this fight against this terrorist organization.
  This is a slippery slope. We have made some policy changes. We better 
understand what we are doing. We are becoming more implicated in 
counter-insurgency. We are becoming more implicated in direct work with 
the military, which has been tied too closely to paramilitaries, and 
rightly have been harshly condemned.
  I don't, with a broad stroke, condemn everyone, but there are too 
many elements of the military in Colombia that have been condemned, 
with irrefutable evidence presented by people who have done the 
reports--the State Department, human rights organizations and others--
concerning massacres of innocent people.

[[Page S5129]]

  We are basically turning our gaze from that and are quite uncritical. 
The good work that has been done has been done by Senator Leahy. There 
are other Senators who care as well, and I appreciate some of the work 
on human rights conditions, and I appreciate some of the work he has 
done to slow this down.
  Senators, I want it on the record--I will have a better formal 
statement in writing with much more clear evidence, many more facts and 
figures--that I believe we are making a profound mistake.
  I say to the Ambassador, Anne Patterson, whom I met, I know we don't 
agree on all things. She is doing a heroic job under very difficult 
circumstances, but I do not believe this war against drugs has been 
anything close to a success. We are now making a change in policy that 
is of great concern to me. I don't want someone to say that nobody 
talked about this, or that there were no Senators who raised the 
questions about this change in policy. It is a small part of the 
overall bill, so I will vote for the bill, but I am absolutely opposed 
to this change in policy in relation to Colombia.

  The administration is going in the wrong direction. I ask the 
administration to take human rights conditions more seriously.
  With all due respect, do not certify that there has been compliance 
with human rights standards when that is patently not the case. I 
challenge anyone to go to Colombia and on the basis of 1 day come back 
here and say the military is doing a good job of protecting people. The 
people you met there, I am not talking about ELN or FARC, the civil 
society people, the people everyone here would respect who do the human 
rights work and economic development work, have nothing to do with the 
left guerrilla organizations. They are not opposed to the military and 
police but want their protection. They want to know how it can be that 
so many of them--innocent people who have had the courage to do this 
work--are murdered with impunity.
  This administration seems to put all of those concerns in 
parenthesis, and this Senate, in this supplemental appropriations bill, 
to tell you the truth, is not giving a change in policy the kind of 
scrutiny and the kind of analysis or thoughtful deliberation we ought 
to give it. We are making a mistake.

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