[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 115 (Thursday, September 12, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8535-S8553]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ORDER OF PROCEDURE
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
Senate go into morning business for up to 10 minutes, allocated to the
Senator from Vermont for the purpose of introducing legislation, and
that when the Senator is done, I be recognized for the purpose of
offering an amendment to the pending matter.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Vermont.
(The remarks of Mr. Jeffords and Mrs. Clinton pertaining to the
introduction of S. 2928 are printed in today's Record under
``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
Senator from North Carolina be recognized to speak for up to 10 minutes
in morning business, and that immediately after his remarks, the
Senator from Connecticut be recognized for the purpose of offering an
amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Nebraska). Without objection, it
is so ordered.
The Senator from North Carolina.
(The remarks of Mr. Edwards are printed in today's Record under
``Morning Business.'')
[[Page S8536]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
The Senator from Connecticut.
Amendment No. 4534 To Amendment No. 4513
(Purpose: To provide for a National Office for Combating Terrorism, a
national strategy, and for other purposes)
Mr. LIEBERMAN. 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 Connecticut [Mr. Lieberman] proposes an
amendment numbered 4534 to amendment No. 4513.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of
Amendments.'')
Mr. LIEBERMAN. I yield now to the Senator from Florida, my cosponsor
on this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Florida.
Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, earlier today and, to a greater extent, at
the end of last week, we had a debate on the issue of the establishment
within the White House of an office to combat terrorism.
The rationale for that office is several-fold. One, not all of the
agencies that will have responsibility for protecting the homeland
against terrorism are in the Department of Homeland Security. There are
a number of important functions--all of the intelligence agencies, the
Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, to mention three,
which clearly have a significant role in protecting the homeland--which
are not within the Department of Homeland Security. So that creates the
need for someone who is in a position of responsibility to coordinate
their activities in order to achieve a cohesive, comprehensive plan to
protect the people of the United States.
That also raises a second necessity, which is that there be a
consistent strategic plan of action around which all of these agencies
will organize their antiterrorism activities. That is title III of the
legislation that has been introduced by our colleague from
Connecticut--the requirement that there be such a comprehensive
strategic vision of how we are going to protect this very open and free
society of America against terrorist attacks.
A third reason why I think this office is important is because we
know the resistance that is going to occur to the changes that we are
now suggesting. We are asking agencies which, in some cases, are a
hundred years or more old to change those old habits, to reprioritize,
to put at the top of their list defending the homeland against
terrorists. There will be, both within the agencies and among the
agencies, some conflicts, inevitably. We need someone who has the
voice, who has the ear, who has the appointment of the President of the
United States to be able to moderate and resolve those conflicts, and
to do so in a clear and expeditious manner so we do not exacerbate
unnecessarily the vulnerability of the American people while agencies
are engaged in bureaucratic catfights.
A final reason why I think this is important is that we need someone
to perform a function that, frankly, has not been adequately performed
in the last decade, vis-a-vis our intelligence agency. That function is
to constantly challenge the agencies that have homeland security
responsibility as to their relevance.
There is a tendency for an agency that has been doing its business in
a particular manner for a long time to be resistant to taking on new
habits--maybe it is the governmental equivalent that it is hard to
teach old dogs new tricks, that it is hard to teach old bureaucracies
new patterns of activity. I use the intelligence community as an
example of that truth. They grew up, beginning with the establishment
in 1947, as agencies which had as their role of being to develop and
analyze information relative to the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact
allies.
It has been largely since the end of the cold war that the
intelligence community has broadened its focus on the rest of the
world, where the United States has important interests that it wishes
to know more about and to have a greater analytical capability to
decide what we ought to do about it. The intelligence community, in my
judgment, was slow to make that transition. Part of the reason is that
they were not produced adequately. They were not asked with sufficient
frequency and aggressiveness: Are you relevant to the kinds of
challenges that you face today?
I believe that is part of the responsibility of Congress, part of our
oversight. It also will be a responsibility of this new office within
the office of the President to be asking these agencies that have
homeland security responsibilities: Are you relevant to the kinds of
challenges that we have facing our Nation today? So those are the
essential rationales.
Now, the concern that was expressed last week was not that we were
going to have such an office. In fact, at one point, the Senator from
Tennessee and I, I thought, had a common agreement that there was the
need for an entity in the White House that could perform those
functions. The question, then, became calibrating just how much
influence and power should that Department have.
I personally was, and continue to be, an advocate for a strong, very
robust office of counterterrorism in the White House because I think
the challenges of inertia and resistance to change are going to be
significant, and there will have to be an effective, even more
assertive force in the other direction to get the kinds of changes the
American people expect our Federal Government to make in order to give
the priority that we expect to protect the homeland against terrorists.
But it is clear from the vote that we have just taken that the
majority of the Members of the Senate feel that goes a little too far.
So what Senator Lieberman and I have been doing over the past several
days is trying to think through what could be essentially jettisoned
from this legislation as it relates to the office within the White
House that would still maintain the essential credibility of the office
to perform its function but would make it acceptable to a majority of
our colleagues.
The two issues that we have identified for such discharge are, first,
the provision that the Presidential appointee to the office of
antiterrorism be subject to Senate confirmation, and, second, the
provision that gave this office the capacity to decertify budgets of
the agencies which had some homeland security responsibility if it were
determined that they were not allocating sufficient funds to that
function within the agency, which was that agency's part of the
comprehensive plan to fight terrorism in the homeland.
I offered this amendment with my colleague, Senator Lieberman, with
some anguish because I think those two levels of accountability and
capability are important to assure us that we can achieve what we must
achieve in defending the homeland. But in order to be able to save the
larger concept of such an office in the White House, which now will be
almost a parallel to the office that is held by Dr. Condoleezza Rice,
as the National Security Adviser--that office is a statutory office,
appointed by the President, created by Congress, but not subject to
confirmation. That will be this office. It will be an office created by
statute by the Congress, so it will have the legitimacy of law. The
head of the office will be appointed by the President and not subject
to Senate confirmation. That is the model we will have if this
amendment is adopted.
What happens if we do not adopt this amendment and then proceed to
adopt the Thompson amendment which will delete both title II and title
III? There will be no congressional directive that it is important to
have an agency to coordinate the multiple Departments of the Federal
Government with homeland security responsibility. In fact, it could be
interpreted as a congressional statement that we affirmatively do not
want there to be a place in the Federal Government that can bring these
Departments together; that, for some reason, the experience we learned
since 1947 as to the importance of a National Security Adviser who can
perform that function for national security is not relevant to the kind
of challenges we are now going to face in terms of domestic security.
[[Page S8537]]
Second, with the elimination of title III, we will have no
congressional directive to establish a strategic plan for homeland
security and to have the strength of Congress in support of that plan.
I think it is worth giving up the confirmation and the budget
certification if we can retain the fundamental principles of the
importance of an agency that can achieve collaboration, can organize
behind a strategic plan, will have the strength that comes from
congressional creation and Presidential appointment, and will be able
to move us as rapidly as possible into the best posture to defend our
homeland and be a constant product to see that these agencies are
cognizant of the changes that will inevitably be occurring in the
environmental threat in which they will be operating and that they are
prepared to constantly be reinventing themselves, adapting themselves
to effectively respond to the challenges that will be different 10
years from now than they are today, and much different 30 years from
now than they are today.
I urge the adoption of this amendment which I consider a compromise
offered in good faith that meets the primary concerns that were
expressed in this Chamber last week and again today but allows us to
move forward with a totality of national policies, including Department
of Homeland Security, the responsibilities that will continue to be
vested in other agencies outside of the Department of Homeland
Security, and an entity within the White House with the ear and the
confidence of the President capable of seeing that the whole of these
work together in a cohesive team for the defense and protection of the
people of America.
I urge the adoption of this amendment and then the defeat of the
underlying amendment.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont is recognized.
Mr. LEAHY. I thank the Chair.
(The remarks of Mr. Leahy pertaining to the introduction of S. 2928
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills
and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished leaders for
allowing me this time. 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. LIEBERMAN. 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. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from
Florida, Mr. Graham, for not only his eloquent statement and his spirit
of accommodation that leads him to offer this second-degree amendment,
but also for the work he has put into this idea.
It is an excellent idea--I have said this before and I will say it
again briefly--the pending amendment, which is to say the underlying
amendment that came out of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee,
is our best effort to respond to the terrible events of September 11
and to protect the American people from anything like that ever
happening again. That is done, first, with the creation of a Department
of Homeland Security, and second, with, in the White House, this
National Office for Combating Terrorism--one focused on homeland
defenses and the other serving as an adviser to the President,
coordinating all our antiterrorism activity which goes well beyond
homeland security to defense, law enforcement, foreign policy, foreign
aid, economic policy, et cetera.
Senator Graham has worked hard on this issue, and I think presented a
very good proposal. It was, as the last vote indicates, not the will of
the Senate to accept it in its current form. Many of our colleagues
indicated to Senator Graham and me that they might be able to support
this office if there were no Senate confirmation. Senator Graham has
agreed by this amendment to remove that requirement.
What would be left then would be quite similar to what the National
Security Adviser has been doing for some period of time since that
statute was created, a statute which coordinates advice to the
President in a particular subject area. In this case, that subject area
is terrorism, which according to most experts outside and inside the
Congress, will likely be the dominant threat to our security in the
next period of our history.
So the best proposal, which we had hoped would be accepted, would be
to provide for Senate confirmation. The Senate has expressed its will
there, and I think Senator Graham has now offered the next best idea. I
am privileged to be a cosponsor of this amendment with him, and I do so
with some sincerity, particularly because of the other section of this
legislation which does create a Secretary of Homeland Security who, of
course, is subject to Senate confirmation and is accountable to the
Senate.
So the concerns I had, the Senator had, and so many others had about
the previous Office of Homeland Security being occupied by an
individual not subject to Senate confirmation, and therefore not
accountable to the Congress, has now been overcome with the creation of
the Department of Homeland Security; that no matter what its shape,
which I think we all agree will be created by the end of this session,
now allows us to take a step forward, not as large as the committee
proposal would have taken but nonetheless a significant step forward in
creating the office and thereby giving this President and future
Presidents one individual within the White House whose direct function
is to coordinate the entire antiterrorism effort of the United States
of America.
I support the amendment before the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I am sorry I have not been in a position to
be following the debate. Without losing my right to the floor, Mr.
President, what is the parliamentary situation?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question is on the Lieberman
second-degree amendment to the Thompson first-degree amendment.
Mr. BYRD. When was this second-degree amendment introduced?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Within the last 15 minutes.
Mr. BYRD. I have not had an opportunity to study this amendment. I
did hear, though, the distinguished manager of the bill say something
to the effect that this amendment would eliminate the requirement for
Senate confirmation of the--is it the Director of Homeland Security?
I ask that I retain the right to the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Responding to the Senator from West Virginia, this
amendment, which is suggested by Senator Graham, who was the originator
and implementer of the idea of a separate White House office on
antiterrorism, would leave the Secretary of Homeland Security
unchanged.
The Secretary would be nominated by the President and confirmed by
and accountable to the Senate, and the new office on antiterrorism that
would be created in the White House in our original proposal was
subject to Senate confirmation, as well. We heard from many colleagues,
particularly on our side of the aisle, who thought that since we were
creating a Department of Homeland Security with a confirmable
Secretary, it was a mistake to require confirmation of an office in the
White House. Senator Graham has responded to that and, as a result,
offered this second-degree amendment to create the Director, who would
be appointed by the President, without confirmation by the Senate.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished manager of the
bill. I strongly disagree with those who believe the Director within
the White House need not be confirmed. I am very opposed to that idea.
I am ready to speak at some length on this. Do I have the floor?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia has the floor.
Mr. BYRD. Very well. While I am speaking, I hope my staff will bring
some of the materials I have prepared to use. I am not going to go
along with an immediate vote on this, I can tell Senators that. I am
sorry I had to get to the floor ahead of Mr. Thompson--I saw him
standing--but I was concerned. I will yield to the Senator if he has an
amendment to beat this amendment, but I am not yielding the floor now.
[[Page S8538]]
Mr. THOMPSON. And I would not try to take it, even if I thought I
could.
I respond to my friend from West Virginia by saying, I was simply
going to address the issue very briefly and ask for the yeas and nays,
frankly, on the second-degree amendment.
I might add, I think the Senator is correct in the way he described
it, but we had three basic concerns. One had to do with the Senate
confirmation. The other one had to do with the fact that it put this
person in a position of being a strategy maker, a statutory strategy
maker, when we already have a national strategy.
I have no objection to reporting to Congress periodically, but being
in on the front end of that, I think that horse has already left the
barn.
Mr. BYRD. When?
Mr. THOMPSON. In July.
Mr. BYRD. How?
Mr. THOMPSON. When the President presented the national strategy.
Thirdly, the new Director is still a pretty big player as far as
budget authority is concerned.
Mr. BYRD. Yes.
Mr. THOMPSON. Those were three things we had concern about, and now
it is down to two. I was going to make those points, move to table, and
ask for the yeas and nays. That was my intention.
Mr. BYRD. I thank the Senator.
Mr. President, I have been saying to my Senate colleagues that we had
better take some time and look at what we are doing. What was about to
happen, in my judgment, would have borne out my concerns and my
warnings. An amendment has been offered by the distinguished manager of
the bill. He certainly has far more expertise with respect to this bill
than I have. He has spent days, nights, and weeks, I would say, on it.
So in taking the floor at this time, as far as I am concerned, it is a
labor of love. I am not on the committee, but this is a good example.
Senators--at least one Senator--did not know what we were doing. An
amendment was called up, I understand, 15 minutes ago. I do not think I
have inaccurately stated what Senator Thompson had indicated with
reference to when this amendment was called up. We will say within the
last half hour. I suppose that is accurate.
The amendment comes from my side of the aisle. Normally, I might not
pay quite that much attention to it, but I have spent a lot of time on
the House bill and on the Lieberman substitute, and I have been very
concerned that Senators really are not paying attention. That is my
observation. I may be very wrong in that. I am sure the Senators on
both sides of the aisle who are members of the Lieberman committee know
what is going on.
But I don't know about the rest of us.
Here we have an amendment before the Senate, as I understand it, that
would eliminate the requisite confirmation by the Senate of the
Homeland Security Director, the individual who is in the White House,
occupying a place which is now occupied by Mr. Ridge. It would seem to
me we ought to require confirmation of that person.
I heard Mr. Lieberman say that it is somewhat similar to the National
Security Director, Condoleeza Rice. She does not require confirmation.
We have a State Department, Secretary of State and the Secretary of
Defense we can call up at any time and find out what we want to know
with respect to defense and international security matters. I made that
same argument with respect to Condoleeza Rice back in the days when
Senator Stevens and I were trying hard to get the President to send Mr.
Ridge before the Senate Appropriations Committee to answer questions
with respect to the appropriations budget. There were those who said
Dr. Rice does not have to come before the Congress and answer
questions, and I said we can get the Secretary of Defense or Secretary
of State. That is quite true.
However, Mr. President, the Homeland Security Department is going to
be in a far different position than Dr. Rice is in. The Director of
Homeland Security will be the person who knows all the answers with
respect to homeland security. That persons's powers will be far broader
in many ways than Dr. Rice and her powers.
The first Secretary of State was appointed in the very early days of
the Republic. The same was true with the Secretary of War and the
Secretary of the Treasury. We have something before the Senate that is
new, a situation that has never prevailed in this country, where it is
attacked from within by terrorists and where the President has used an
Executive order to create a homeland security agency. I don't think
much of this Executive order, as a matter of fact. I am afraid we are
seeing too many of them, too often. The position that Governor Ridge
has now held was created by an Executive order. This is not just a
little clerk down there in the bowels of the White House working. This
is not just an ordinary adviser. This is a new type of war. This is a
new type of agency, a new kind of department.
Yes, we need it. I have been in favor of creating a Department of
Homeland Security. But having read the administration's proposal with
respect to the creation of the Department, and having read the House
bill, H.R. 5005, in regard to the creation of the Department, I have
been more and more constrained to believe that we have a new ``animal''
in this Department of Homeland Security. It is not like the Department
of Energy. It is not like the Department of Interior or the Department
of Transportation. It is not like most of the Departments that have
been with this Government for a long time, several of which have been
created while I have been a Member of Congress.
This is an entirely different breed of Department. This is a
Department that is going to encompass many issues that are of interest
to several of the Departments, the Secretaries of which were not even
aware of when the President announced his intention to create a
homeland security agency, and an agency answerable to him. Many of the
Secretaries who are in the Departments that were to be ultimately
involved were not aware of this until the day the President announced
it, I am told, or at least I read that in the newspaper. So this is a
new animal.
If all Senators would read the House bill, they would get a
reflection of the administration's wishes with respect to the
Department of Homeland Security--not entirely. I believe the House bill
is in some respects better than the administration's proposal, but the
bill by Mr. Lieberman's committee, as reported out of his committee, is
better than the House bill.
However, we have had too much of this lately: An administration that
wants a program run out of the White House. And now the administration
does not want this position confirmed. Let me restate that. The
administration does not want the Director to be confirmable by the
Senate. That alone makes me very suspicious. We have an administration
that operates a great deal in secret, wants to operate even further in
secret, wants to be more secretive.
It was very secretive about the so-called shadow government. I didn't
know anything about shadow government until I read about it in the
newspaper. The administration tried to claim that I had been told what
that was. The administration was wrong 100 percent. I had never been
told. Of course, after this appeared in the newspapers, the
administration was willing to try to come up and explain what this is
about. And we have seen this whole Executive order with respect to a
Department of Homeland Security, the way in which that suddenly emerged
from the dark mists of secrecy, we have seen the same path.
We have an administration that looks upon the Congress of the United
States as a subordinate body. I am sure some of the administration
officials look upon Congress with utter contempt. They don't want
Congress in this position. The Senate, of course, is one-half of the
Congress, being one of two branches. I don't want that. And I am not
going to knuckle under to what they want. This Senator is not--now,
tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow in this respect.
I may be overridden. The Senate, I said myself, is more than the 100
hearts, and the Senate will eventually work its will on this, I
suppose. But it is not going to do so in the next 15 minutes. This is a
position that ought to be confirmed. It doesn't make any difference
what President Bush wants or what he doesn't want. The Congress is an
equal branch.
This Congress is unlike, perhaps, the State Legislature of West
Virginia. The State Legislature of West Virginia may
[[Page S8539]]
feel it has to go along with its Governor. I have been in the State
Legislature of West Virginia. I know a little about how legislatures
work and how Governors operate at the State level. They generally are
very concerned about the State constitution, what it allows with
respect to the budgets and so on, the State budgets. I have seen some
other Governors come to Washington as President and they think that,
well, they did it this way in the government of Georgia or they did it
this way in the State of California or they do it this way in the State
of Texas. Well, things here are not done as they are done at the State
level in West Virginia.
Why should we bend to the administration's opposition to this point?
Why shouldn't this individual be confirmed? It is not enough to say:
Well, the National Security Adviser doesn't require confirmation.
It is not enough to say that. That does not win the jury, I would
hope, in regard to a Homeland Security Director. Just because Dr. Rice
isn't required to be confirmed is no good reason why the Director of
Homeland Security--be it Mr. Ridge, eventually, or John Doe--there is
no good argument as to why that person should not be confirmed.
Are we going to sheath our sword and leave the field on that flimsy
argument: Well, Dr. Rice is not confirmed so I see no harm in not
having the Director of Homeland Security confirmed.
It is an entirely different argument. It is as different as day and
night. That is no argument. Why should I say I take my seat now and let
this vote occur in the next 15 minutes--or the next 30? That is no
argument. Who is here to hear the argument? There may be a good many
Senators in their offices listening to it. That is how I kind of caught
on to it.
I am prepared to speak for several hours, if I can get the materials
I want that I have gone over during the recess. I don't know how other
Senators spent their time. I am sure they were very busy during the
recess, but I spent most of the time during the recess studying the
House bill and the Lieberman substitute. I had objected, as Senators
will recall, to going to the bill before the recess. I had objected to
taking up any substitute before the recess. I felt that it was a matter
worthy of considerable time and debate.
I was here when we created the Department of Energy. I was here when
we created the Department--today they call it Health and Welfare or
something like that. Abe Ribicoff was the Secretary of that Department.
He later came here as a U.S. Senator. I was here when the Department of
Veterans Affairs was created. Thank God I am here now when we are
discussing the creation of this Department. This is a far different
kettle of fish.
Why should this Senate kowtow to any President, whether it be
Democrat or Republican? If former President Clinton were in the White
House today, I would take the very same position. It is not because we
have a Republican in the White House. It is because we have an
administration that is intent on being secretive, has only a sneer, as
it were--at least some of the people down there--for the Congress of
the United States. It looks upon the Congress with contempt.
Some of the people in the administration don't want to live by the
``rules'' that have governed for many years. I use the word ``rules''
because I am remembering, in one case, one of the Cabinet officers
using that word. We are tied down by rules.
The administration people read ``Gulliver's Travels.'' It must have
been required reading because they continue to talk about the
Lilliputians. That is the attitude toward the Congress of the United
States.
I do not want to give any administration too much power. I want any
President to have whatever power he needs to deal with the protection
of this country, homeland security. But I do not want to give any
President power that he does not need but wants, and so I am a little
bit aghast at the willingness of some of our people on my own side to
just bow down and scrape and say: Well, no, that's not too important.
We don't confirm Dr. Rice. We didn't confirm her predecessor. We don't
confirm the security advisers. Therefore I see no reason why we need to
confirm the Director of Homeland Security.
I do. There is a great deal of difference. And, also, I haven't had
an opportunity to read this amendment. I had an opportunity to talk
with Senator Lieberman, perhaps for 2 minutes here, and with Mr.
Thompson for less than that. I haven't read this amendment, but I have
heard enough about it to oppose it--to oppose Mr. Lieberman's
amendment.
Of course I will be against Mr. Thompson's amendment, also. I am
against his amendment, too. But the first vote would come on or in
relation to the Lieberman amendment--I believe that is right. The first
vote would come on or in relation to the Lieberman amendment as against
the Thompson amendment. I assume Mr. Thompson is going to move to table
the Lieberman amendment.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. The Senator from West Virginia is correct. It is a
Lieberman-Graham amendment, and I think it is Senator Thompson's
intention to move to table it.
Mr. BYRD. And the distinguished Senator from Connecticut, Mr.
Lieberman, for whom I have tons and tons and tons of respect, is
opposed and he has offered an amendment now, as I understand it, that
would run up the white flag. I will use my own words. I am sure the
offeror of the amendment wouldn't use those terms, but in my words,
would run up the white flag insofar as confirmation, required
confirmation of the Homeland Security Director by the Senate is
concerned.
I would like to have the Senator's response. He is entitled to
respond. I ask unanimous consent that I may retain the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, responding to the Senator from West
Virginia, I need to say that I wouldn't describe it as running up a
white flag. Senator Graham, who has constructed this section of the
bill which I have supported, felt in the exercise of practicality but
also because he feels so strongly about the importance of at least
putting in law a requirement--again, exercising the power of Congress.
There are some in the Chamber who believe Congress should never tell
the President what to do about anything, and if the President wants to
create an adviser on counterterrorism he should have the right to do
that or not do that.
Mr. BYRD. Yes. There are monarchists--not anarchists--in the
Congress, I will admit.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. That is a word I would embrace. That is quite right.
Our Framers did not create a monarchy. They created a Republic with a
President with substantial powers--accountable to the Congress with
substantial powers--and to the people we are all ultimately
accountable. The Senator from West Virginia is not just a Senator but
``the Senator.'' He has had so much experience over some years here. He
knows, as we have all experienced these days, that sometimes we come to
a moment where we can't quite achieve--Senator Graham is at an
Intelligence Committee meeting, so I am taking the liberty of speaking
for him--the ideal that we aspire to because the votes have been
counted and we don't have the votes. That was the clear message from
the vote.
It was important, nonetheless, to take a significant step forward and
create the office, with a law to guarantee that there would be somebody
in the White House whose sole responsibility is to coordinate our
government-wide antiterrorism program. I must say that I am quite
personal about this issue.
I said to the Senator from Florida when we talked about introducing
the second-degree amendment that we may not have the votes for this,
either. I understand the Senator from West Virginia has a different
point of view on what has been done. But Senator Graham feels so
strongly about the importance of at least creating the office, even if
we can't achieve the ideal of Senate confirmation, that he wanted to
offer this amendment notwithstanding the possibility that the White
House is not negotiating very much at this point. They are just wanting
it their way or no way. But he wanted to give this option to the
various Members of the Senate, particularly on this side of the aisle,
who say, Senator Graham, Senator Lieberman, I like your idea but I
don't like the idea of Senate confirmation.
[[Page S8540]]
That is the purpose of this amendment. I know how strongly the
Senator from West Virginia feels about the prerogative of the Senate. I
agree with him in this case. It is just that we haven't been able to
achieve what we wanted here, although we hoped we might achieve a good
part of it.
I thank the Senator for giving me the opportunity to respond. It is
not my nature to settle for less than the ideal, but, as the Senator
knows, sometimes in our democratic system we have to do it to achieve
some progress.
I thank the Senator.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank my dear friend, the distinguished
junior Senator from Connecticut, and the standard bearer for the
Democratic Party in the last election, and a man whom I greatly respect
for other reasons. He and I have many kindred feelings when it comes to
the discussion of religion. I admire him for many, many things in that
regard. If we wanted to get into the discussion of the cosmological
principles that guide the operation of this universe, and if we wanted
to talk about Charles Darwin, that great English naturalist and his
theory of survival of the fittest, the Senator and I have a lot of
kindred thoughts.
I understand Senator Graham. He is a former Governor. There is
nothing wrong with being a former Governor. But Governors have a way of
looking at things a little differently than those lowly peons like
myself who served in the House of Delegates and the State Senate of
West Virginia. I can understand how a Governor sees things--even at the
Federal level--because sometimes they see things through the lens of
their experiences as Governor dealing with State matters and State
constitutions. I can understand that. I wish I had been a Governor of
the State of West Virginia at some point. I would like to have that
additional experience.
But I cannot yield without more than just a clash of sword against a
shield, even to Senator Graham. I have great respect for him, but he is
wrong in this instance. When he gets to the floor, I will tell him I
said that. I say that out of respect to him. We can all disagree. I
sometimes try to remember that I can be wrong, and often am. But this
is wrong.
I would be happy to debate this with Senator Graham until the cows
come home, if he wishes. He feels strongly, as Senator Lieberman says.
I take that exactly the way Senator Lieberman says it. Senator Graham
feels strongly. Well, so do I.
I am going to see that there is some debate on this matter before we
vote on it. I am not as young as I once was. I once spoke 14 hours--or
something like 14 hours--on this floor. I once sat in that chair for 22
hours. I sat in the chair 22 hours, and I would still have been setting
in it had Richard Nixon, the Vice President, not come to the Senate
Chamber. He naturally had the right to the gavel. I had been a Senator
a while, but I had not been a Senator a long time. But I knew who the
President of the Senate was.
Incidentally, the President of the Senate can't address the Senate
without unanimous consent of the Senate.
I noticed the Vice President the other day in New York. I saw what
was going on on television. I saw that he spoke at that meeting in New
York when the two Houses convened up there. Of course, when they first
convened in New York, John Adams was Vice President, and he talked at
length. He was quite a gregarious person in that respect, somewhat
unlike the current Vice President. He is not gregarious, and neither am
I, for that matter. But the Vice President doesn't speak these days--I
have an audience of one here, but even one individual is of great
importance. So I want my friend from Connecticut to hear what I had to
say here, not that it will be read even as a footnote.
But at this time, the Vice President cannot address the Senate except
by unanimous consent of the Senate. At the time of the beginning of the
Republic, the Vice President was John Adams. And he was one who would
speak at the drop of a hat. He spoke quite at length.
That is a little bit besides the point here, but I just have to say
that I cannot--I suppose the Senator will win over my objection because
not many people here seem to be paying much attention to what is being
said at the moment. I think they take for granted it is a bill like
other bills that come here that have come through the committee, and:
``I am going to vote with my party,'' or ``I am going to vote against
the party,'' or whatever.
But I have been trying to get their attention. And if it had not been
for my objections, this bill would have probably been passed already.
But some attention, at least, is being paid to it now. And I hope that
more attention will be paid to it.
On the business of having the Director of Homeland Security
confirmed, Senator Stevens and I had our experience--and it was not a
very happy experience--with this administration when it came to the
hearings that both Senator Stevens and I thought we ought to have on
appropriations. That was the supplemental appropriations bill, I
believe. That was in the very early part of this year. And at that
point the memories of September 11 of last year were almost as vivid--
in January and February of this year--as they were the day after the
event.
But Senator Stevens and I joined in asking Governor Ridge to come up
before our Appropriations Committee and testify on the budget for
homeland security. Oh, he didn't want to come up. He was just a staff
person at the White House. I believe I saw the President, Mr. Bush, on
television, on one occasion, saying: He doesn't have to go up there. He
doesn't have to go. He's a staff person.
And so I said, at the time, probably in a low voice: Well,
technically speaking, the President has a point. The person, Mr. Ridge,
is on the President's staff.
So far so good. But Mr. Ridge is far different from the ordinary
staff person. And he is far different from the ordinary adviser to the
President. The President has lots of advisers. He has the Secretaries
of all the Cabinets. They are his advisers. And a confirmed Director of
the Office of Homeland Security can still be an adviser to the
President. He still would be, and he certainly would carry more weight
than he carries as an adviser incognito. Those are my words.
But keep in mind that this so-called staff person, this person on the
President's staff, is running all over the country speaking to chambers
of commerce, going down to Mexico and meeting with the authorities
there, going up to Canada, meeting with the authorities there. Ordinary
staff people do not do that. This is more than just an ordinary staff
person. This is more than just an ordinary adviser to the President.
And he was quite willing to come up and ``brief'' Members of
Congress. Well, that doesn't fill the bill as far as I am concerned. I
am chairman of the Appropriations Committee. I don't know how long I
will be chairman, but as long as I am chairman of the Appropriations
Committee, that doesn't fill the bill.
We have briefings, if we want them. But when we want to spread the
Record for the American people to see, and for the American people to
hear what is said by witnesses and by Senators who are asking
questions, it should be done in formal hearings--hearings, not
briefings behind closed doors.
I think there was some offer, even, to have a briefing with the doors
open, but that still does not--still does not--meet the bill. Here is a
committee of the Congress, the Appropriations Committee, created in
1867, doing its work, doing its duty, as we have always done it. When
we have had Republican chairmen of the committee and when we have had
Democratic chairmen of the committee, the committee has always had
hearings. And they have been public hearings.
If we want closed hearings, we can vote to have a closed hearing. And
then we might vote to have the Record cleaned up a little bit and made
public. But ordinarily when we are hearing testimony on the budget, the
Federal budget--the people's money, and the way the taxpayers' money is
to be spent--the taxpayers are entitled to hear that. They are entitled
to hear what the administration person says.
What was it that had to be secret? There was nothing. There was
nothing about the testimony that he would give on these budget matters,
on the appropriations for the next year--nothing--that it needed to be
secret.
If we had had briefings, they would not have been kept secret. Ten
minutes
[[Page S8541]]
later, those who would be in the briefings would go out and tell what
was said because it was not classified. That was a sham. That was a
charade on the part of the administration to try to make it appear that
the administration was trying to be reasonable. Yes, they would let Mr.
Ridge come up and brief Members. Why, my foot. Have him come up and
brief Members of the Congress? Why, that is laughable.
When I first came to this Congress, John Taber of New York was
chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Would John Taber have
agreed to have an administration person in the position that Tom Ridge
is in--I am talking about John Taber, the Republican chairman of the
House Appropriations Committee--would John Taber have agreed to have
the administration witness come up and just give the Appropriations
Committee a briefing? Heavens, no.
And so I feel the same way about it. Why should the Appropriations
Committee of the Senate, after 135 years--after 135 years--through all
administrations, Republican and Democrat--settle for having a briefing,
letting the administration's point man on homeland security just come
up and give a briefing? Why, the American people are entitled to more
than that. The American people are entitled to more than that. That is
trivializing the appropriations process. No, I would not agree to that.
That is what we are about to do here. We are about to say, yes, we
will have a Secretary of the Department. I am for a Department of
Homeland Security. And in my amendment, I certainly subscribe to
Senator Lieberman's committee proposal in having a Department, having a
Secretary of the Department. I go along with that. Yes, let's have a
Secretary. But in my amendment, I am still proceeding under the
understanding that the Director of Homeland Security within the White
House will also be confirmed.
In an appropriations bill which Senator Stevens and I brought to the
floor several months ago, we had language requiring the confirmation of
the Director of Homeland Security. It was in the appropriations bill.
We tried and we tried--Senator Stevens and I tried more than once--to
have the Director of Homeland Security come before the Appropriations
Committee in the Senate and testify.
I assured those from the administration who talked with me about
that, we were not interested in knowing anything about Mr. Ridge's
secret conversations or private conversations with the President; we
were not interested in any of that stuff. We are not interested in that
Dick Tracy stuff. We only want to know the facts concerning the
appropriations. We are not going to ask him questions like that. It is
not going to be classified.
If Mr. Ridge wants the committee to hear him in secret, we will vote
on that in the committee. And if the committee wants to close the door
for an hour to hear what he has to say that is so secretive and so
demands secrecy, we will vote on that. But we are not interested in
embarrassing Mr. Ridge. We are not interested in embarrassing Mr. Bush.
We only want the facts concerning the moneys that are going to be
needed for homeland security.
No, they wouldn't let him come up. The administration had its feet in
concrete and was determined not to let Mr. Ridge come up and testify
before the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The President said he was going to change the tone in Washington.
Well, as far as I was concerned, that was not changing the tone in the
right direction. That was a sour note, and I am sorry the
administration ever took that position. But here we are today and the
administration still doesn't want it. Why?
Why did they have their feet in concrete a few months ago with
respect to Governor Ridge? We could have gotten off on a much better
footing if Mr. Bush had said: Go on up there and answer their
questions. If they are asking questions on dollars and cents, the
taxpayers' money, the appropriations needs, go on up there and answer
those questions.
It would have struck a much sweeter note. But it kind of, in a way,
poisoned the well. So that wasn't changing the tone for the better.
That made it worse. And to this day, the administration doesn't want
that position to be one that requires confirmation by the Senate.
Here we are, the loyal opposition when it comes to this bill, I
guess, saying: We think that position ought to be confirmed. If we are
going to create it, it is going to be confirmed. That is the way the
Senate ought to look at this.
If there were a Democrat in the White House, I would say the same
thing. It should be the Senate's will.
Now, the President can veto the bill. He can do that if he wants. He
can do that. I believe it is the seventh section of article I of the
Constitution which lays out the veto power of the President--the
seventh section, article I.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I am wondering if I could ask a question
without the Senator losing his right to the floor.
Mr. BYRD. Absolutely.
Mr. REID. Would the Senator consent to my suggesting the absence of a
quorum, with the order being that as soon as the quorum is called off,
which would be very quickly--I want to visit with the Senator and the
managers of the bill--the Senator from Virginia would retain the floor?
Mr. BYRD. I don't know about the Senator from Virginia.
Mr. REID. I am sorry, West Virginia.
Mr. BYRD. Yes, that is perfectly OK.
Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that when the quorum call I will
shortly suggest is called off, the Senator from West Virginia have the
floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Carnahan). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. REID. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Carper). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
The Senator from West Virginia is recognized.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, time being of the essence and realizing
Senators want to get out of here and go home and how badly they want to
get rid of the pending amendment, I will try to move on a little
faster. My thanks to the pages for brining me a lectern.
Mr. President, I have heard the concerns of some of my colleagues
about establishing a statutory office within the Executive Office of
the President with a Director confirmed by the Senate. I have heard the
arguments that Congress would be intruding upon the President's right
to receive confidential advice and it would tie his hands with regard
to the internal management of the White House.
These arguments misrepresent the realities of coordinating the
executive branch and the management challenges it will involve, even
after this new Department is up and running.
The point has been made many times during the crafting of this
legislation that the functions involved in homeland security are
scattered throughout the Federal Government. That is an important
point. Let me state it again: The point has been made many times during
the crafting of this bill that the functions involved in homeland
security are scattered throughout the Federal Government. That is not
like the State Department. It is certainly not like the Defense
Department.
We are talking about a Department with functions scattered throughout
the Federal Government, the functions involved in homeland security.
That does not stop just at the water's edge. It goes on to the other
side of the river. Many of those functions will not be transferred into
the Department by this legislation.
The legislation before the Senate today and which the Senate will
vote on--I suppose, eventually, if this legislation is passed--creates
a Department of Homeland Security. I am for creating a Department of
Homeland Security, but the bill creating a Department of Homeland
Security is not the end. That is not the alpha and the omega. That is
not the end-all. We really will not have done our work. We will have
only begun.
Many of those functions, I say again, will not be transferred into
the Department by this legislation. That is why I say we ought to stop,
look, and listen
[[Page S8542]]
to what we are doing. The administration would like Congress to pass
just a mere piece of paper, as it were, handing the Department of
Homeland Security over to the administration, saying here, Mr.
President, here it is. It is yours, lock, stock, and barrel. Take it.
We are out of it. We will stand on the sidelines.
That is what we would do if we were to pass the legislation supported
by the White House. If we were to pass the legislation that has been
sent to us from the House, we would be doing just that. We would be
passing a bill creating a Department of Homeland Security in the
Lieberman bill, legislation that would say: A Department is created.
Here it is, Mr. President. It is yours. Take it. Do what you want with
it. You have the next 13 months in which to implement this legislation.
It is yours.
I am not in favor of doing that. I am in favor of creating a
Department of Homeland Security, but I am not in favor of Congress
doing that and then walking away and saying: It is yours, Mr.
President; for the next 13 months we will go to the sidelines. I am not
in favor of that.
I don't know why some Senators seem not to be exercised about it, but
my blood pressure has gone up a little bit about the very idea of
handing this over to the President and to this administration and
saying: Here it is. It is yours.
That legislation, when we send it to the President, will not be all;
we will have created, under Mr. Lieberman's bill, we will have created
a Department, we will have created six directorates, we will have
created the superstructure of a Deputy Secretary, six Under
Secretaries, five Assistant Secretaries, and so on.
That is OK with me. Let's create that superstructure. That is fine.
But when it comes to transferring the agencies into that Department,
how many agencies are there? Some say 22. Some say 28. Some say 30. How
many agencies are there? What agencies are they? By what criteria were
those agencies selected? Who said that this agency ought to go in but
not that one? And why should this agency go there and not that one? Why
should that one go in? Why not this one?
So all that is going to be left up to the administration. We are
going to leave it up to the administration as to the agencies that will
go in, as to their functions, as to their objectives, as to their
assignments. We are just going to turn it all over--lock, stock, and
barrel--to the administration.
That is the way it would be under the administration plan. That is
the way it would be under the House plan. That is the way it would be
under the Lieberman plan. I am trying to improve the Lieberman bill. I
am saying, OK, let's do the superstructure. Let's have a Secretary.
Let's have a Department of Homeland Security. Let's have a Secretary.
Let's have a Deputy Secretary. Let's have six directorates, as Mr.
Lieberman proposes. Let's have five Assistant Secretaries. I am in
favor of that. That is all in title I.
But I am saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not go too fast now.
Let's create this over a 13-month period. Let's have the work done
under a 13-month period, as the Lieberman bill would do. Let's create
all this. Let's create the superstructure. Let's have it completed in
13 months, as Mr. Lieberman would do.
He would have the Department and the superstructure and the agencies,
their functions, and everything within 13 months, beginning with 30
days after the bill is enacted into law. Then there would be 12 months
in what is called a transition period. Mr. Lieberman would have that. I
would have that, too. But I would say, let's wait a little bit. Let's
slow down a little bit. Let's not just turn this over to the
administration and let them have it and we walk away.
When I say ``we,'' I mean the Congress, the people's representatives.
I am saying Congress should stay front and center in the mix. Let's
have, say, one of the directorates go forward beginning on February 3.
There are six directorates. One is in title XI. I don't touch title XI.
That deals with immigration. I don't touch that, certainly not at this
point.
But for the other directorates, I would say, OK, on February 3 we
will create one directorate and, Mr. Secretary, you send up to the
Congress your proposal as to how we flesh out that directorate, as to
what agencies go into that directorate--what agencies. Of course, that
directorate is going to deal with border and transportation security.
Mr. Lieberman and his committee and Mr. Thompson have created six
directorates. One of them is Border and Transportation Security. My
amendment would say, OK, let's take border and transportation security
in that first directorate, and, Mr. Secretary, you send up your
proposals for transferring agencies into that directorate to make it
work. You have 120 days to do that--that is 4 months. That is February
3 that we start, because that is the day the President sends up his
budget.
Then we say, 120 days later--4 months later--Mr. Secretary of the
Department of Homeland Security, you send up your proposals for the
next two directorates. The next two directorates are the Directorate of
Intelligence and the Directorate of Critical Infrastructure--the
Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Critical
Infrastructure, those two directorates that are created by Mr.
Lieberman's bill. See, I am with Mr. Lieberman on that.
But I am saying: Wait just a little bit. Let's hold our hands on the
bridle here. Let's not let this horse run away with this wagon. Let's
hold up here. You send up your proposal, Mr. Secretary. I assume that
might be Mr. Ridge or somebody else, I don't know who; it is the
Secretary we are talking about. Yes, you send up your proposals 120
days after February 3 while the fleshing out of the Border and
Transportation Directorate is going forward. Then, 120 days later, we
say to the Secretary: Send up your proposals for these next two
directorates, the Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of
Critical Infrastructure.
All right. The Secretary, then, will send up his proposals for those
two directorates. And as far as time is concerned, 120 day later,
then--that would be June 3--120 days later would be something like
October 1. All right. Let's have the Secretary send up his proposals
for the fourth and fifth directorates.
Here they are, the Directorate of Emergency Preparedness and the
Directorate of Science and Technology. I did not create these
directorates; these directorates are to be created under Mr.
Lieberman's bill, under his substitute for the House bill. I am taking
his words for gospel, and I am saying: OK, let's go along, let's have
those directorates. But I am saying, February 3 we will have the
proposal for the first directorate; June 3, let's have the proposals
from the Secretary of Homeland Security for the next two directorates;
then, on October 1, we say to the Secretary, now send up your
recommendations to Congress concerning the last two directorates in
title I: that is, the Directorate of Emergency Preparedness and the
Directorate of Science and Technology.
So, there you are, we do it in a staged fashion. One directorate; 4
months later, two more directorates; 4 months later, two more
directorates. By the end of that next 4 months, the 13 months would be
up, so we will be within the same total timeframe as is envisioned by
Mr. Lieberman's committee. It envisions all this being done within 13
months--13 months following the passage of the Act.
We are saying the same thing, but we are saying don't do it all at
once, and we are not going to give you authority, Mr. President, to do
it all at once. We are saying do it, some here, some there, and some
there, and let Congress be in on all this all the time--all the way.
How does that come about? All right, each set of proposals from the
Secretary of Homeland Security will come to the Congress, and they will
go to the committee, the Lieberman committee, and its counterpart in
the other body. So both the House and Senate will be working on these
sets of directorates in stages. Congress will be front and center.
Congress isn't going to hand this thing over and then abdicate its
responsibility and walk away and stand over here on the sidelines.
Congress is going to stay involved. That is what my amendment is about.
Let's keep Congress involved.
What happens then? All right, let's take the first directorate. That
is Border Transportation. The Secretary
[[Page S8543]]
sends up his proposals to Congress. The proposals, as far as the Senate
is concerned, go right straight to the Lieberman committee. Mr.
Lieberman and Mr. Thompson stay right front and center. They take these
proposals in their committee; they amend them, they adopt them, or
whatever. Whatever that committee wishes to make of the proposals that
are sent to it by the Homeland Security Director, that committee
reports that out as a bill. It comes to the Senate.
Oh, that is going to delay. Oh, my goodness, you say, that committee
is going to report out another bill and the Senate is going to have to
work on it?
Yes, that is true. But we can prepare expedited procedures. So I say
let's prepare expedited procedures. If we do it in that fashion, we can
prepare expedited procedures where the bill is not delayed, where it is
not filibustered--it can't be filibustered under expedited procedures--
and the Senate will take that and, under expedited procedures, will
consider it. It is not going to be a--what is that infernal thing
called?--fast track. That is right, fast track. Under fast track, the
Senate doesn't get a chance to amend, but under these expedited
procedures I am thinking about, the Senate will be able to work its
will and amend the bill that is reported out by Mr. Lieberman and by
his committee's counterpart on the other side, in the House of
Representatives.
That committee would report the bill out to the Senate, the majority
leader would call up the bill, and it would be acted upon under
expedited procedures and disposed of.
Four months later, when the next item came up here, the Directorate
of Intelligence and the Directorate of Critical Infrastructure, the
same thing, same procedure would obtain. The Secretary of Homeland
Security would send his proposals to the Congress.
The reason I don't say the President is that if I did, I would make
my amendment fall, if cloture were to be invoked on my amendment. If
cloture were to be invoked, it would fall because it would not be
germane. I have tried to construct this amendment so it would stand the
test of germaneness in the event cloture were invoked on this
amendment.
So instead of the President sending it up, it would be his man--it
has to be his man, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland
Security. The Secretary would send the proposals to the committee, to
Mr. Lieberman's committee. Mr. Lieberman's committee, under expedited
procedures, would go over the recommendations from the Secretary and
send them, in amended form perhaps, to the Senate floor to be taken up
here and passed.
So the same thing, the same procedure, would obtain in each instance
where a directorate or directorates were being fleshed out by agencies.
Are we talking about 22 agencies here? No. Twenty-six agencies? No.
Twenty-eight agencies? No. Are we talking about 30 agencies? Maybe no,
maybe yes. Who knows?
In any event, the concept is this:
That we avoid the chaos of just passing this bill today--say this is
the bill before the Senate today, and it is passed by the House and the
Senate and sent to the President. We avoid the chaos that will prevail
throughout the affected agencies of Government if this bill is passed
and sent to the President because it is all done at once. We hand it
over to the President lock, stock, and barrel. We walk away. And the
President may take 6 months or he may take 8 months or he may take 13
months before he sends up all of the recommendations dealing with 6
directorates and 22 agencies--or 28. He may take all.
Under my amendment, we say no. Let us just take some at a time. Let
us see how it works. Let us create that first directorate. Let us have
the recommendation of the Secretary of the Department. Let us have his
recommendations. Let the Senate, Mr. Lieberman, and the committee look
at it. His committee looks at it and reports the bill to the floor. Let
us have the Senate look at it, and the same thing in the House but all
under expedited procedures.
We do some here, do some there, and do some later on. We stage it. We
phase it in. We don't just hand it over lock, stock, and barrel, and
say: Here it is. It is yours.
We avoid the chaos of doing it that way. Let us do it in an orderly
way. Let us have an orderly process so we really do not do damage to
the proposal by Mr. Lieberman. As a matter of fact, in my way of
looking at it, we don't vote. My amendment will say we will create the
Department just as Mr. Lieberman creates the Department. We will create
six directorates just as Mr. Lieberman creates six directorates. We
will have a Secretary and a Deputy Secretary, and we will have seven
other Secretaries, and five Assistant Secretaries just as Mr. Lieberman
has the same number.
We are with you, Committee, Mr. Lieberman's committee. We are with
you. But instead of just passing this bill and wiping our hands and
walking away, saying, I shall have no more to do with this, it is all
yours, Mr. President, we are going to say: Here is the concept. Your
Secretary will send up recommendations in intervals. There will be some
of it at a time. We will do the first directorate. While that is going
through the mill and during the 4 months when those agencies are being
moved in, we are going to be taking a look at the next two
directorates. But we will have in mind the flaws and the warts that we
found in the first transactions. We will have had an opportunity to
try. Let us see how it works. If there are flaws, if there are
mistakes, we can correct them as we go along, and the next two
directorates will not make those same mistakes.
When we set up the next phase, the final two directorates we will
have benefited by whatever mistakes or whatever shortcomings may have
surfaced during the creation of the preceding directorates.
It seems to me this is much more logical. It is an orderly process.
It keeps Congress--the elected representatives of the people--in the
process. And it keeps Mr. Lieberman's committee--which is the committee
that has jurisdiction over the subject matter--front and center.
Why not do it that way? Why not do it in an orderly way rather than
just turning the whole thing over all at once and just washing our
hands of it, and saying, that is it, it is up to somebody else?
That is not the way to do it. I think the concept is one that is
unassailable. That is the way it would work under my amendment.
We think we are all in agreement. We are talking about at least two
dozen agencies and 170,000 Federal employees. That is a big shakeup in
our Government. There is virtually little debate going on here. There
was a big rush to get this through in a hurry, pass it by September 11,
or pass it before we go out for the August recess.
Norman Ornstein wrote an article in the Washington Post some several
Sundays ago in which he pointed out the chaos. He referred to the chaos
that will occur in this Government of ours if we go down the road
meekly like lambs to the slaughter and pass this as the administration
conceived it in the darkness of midnight in the subterranean caves of
the White House; just go along like that with all of these agencies in
turmoil, and we transfer 170,000 Federal workers.
Here they are--all moving their desks up Pennsylvania Avenue, and
they are having to move the telephones and get new telephone numbers.
They are having to move their computers, and they are having to do all
this. And the people who work in those agencies are going to be shifted
to another building with a new mailing address. All of that is going on
at the same time. All of these agencies with 170,000 Federal employees
all at once--all is going on in the 13-month period. They are going to
be working in a different culture, in a different kind of atmosphere
with different associations with different assignments than what they
have been accustomed to--all of this at once.
What pandemonium will have taken over Pennsylvania Avenue. In
``Paradise Lost,'' Milton wrote about the fall of some of the angels
from heaven. He wrote about the rebellion against the Creator by these
angels and how they conspired to take over. And they fell. They were
run out of heaven. Satan and his angels of like mind fell with them.
They fell like Lucifer from heaven, and they fell upon the boiling
lake. Lucifer sat and built himself a palace there. That palace was
called Pandemonium.
[[Page S8544]]
Do you remember that--those of you who have read Milton's ``Paradise
Lost''? He created a palace called Pandemonium.
That is exactly what will happen--pandemonium.
Go back and read Norman Ornstein. By the way, go back and read
Milton's ``Paradise Lost.'' But also go back and read Norman Ornstein's
article in the Washington Post of some several weeks go. I will get it.
We are going to be debating this beyond today. We certainly won't pass
this bill today. I think we are sure of that.
So you have an opportunity to go back and read Norman Ornstein's very
thoughtful and thought-provoking article about the pandemonium that
will reign on Pennsylvania Avenue. He didn't put it in those exact
words, but that is what you will be reading about--the pandemonium that
will reign and the chaos that will reign when all of these angels--22,
30 of them--so many that nobody knows exactly how many agencies--but
170,000 employees have to rip up their telephones and their computers
and carry them off and up and down the avenue. What chaos that will be.
Who is going to be minding the store when all of this chaotic exercise
is being carried out?
Who is going to be minding the store? Who will be watching the
terrorists? What will happen to those people right now who are in the
agencies of this Government right today? At 5:30, I suppose most of
them are not still around; but certainly a lot of them are around, and
will be around until midnight and after midnight. They will be out on
the borders, securing the borders. They will be out there at the
airports. They will be at the ports of entry to this country. They will
be all along the border between Canada and the United States and the
southern border between Mexico and the United States. They will be out
there every hour of the 24 hours. They are out there right now, and
they will be there tonight when, Mr. President, you and I are sleeping.
They are out there right now.
But will these people be at their posts of duty when all of this
chaos reigns, when we are going through all this big uprooting of the
Government here in Washington, the uprooting of men and women who are
at their jobs, at their desks, at their telephones today and every day?
They are at their desks securing our country, protecting our country,
protecting you and me, and my grandchildren and yours. What will happen
when all of this chaos reigns? These people will not know--``Let's see,
where am I supposed to go? What room am I in? What is the number and
the place I am supposed to go in this new Government?''
They will be saying: ``Where is my computer? Where is my laptop?
Where is it? And what is my new telephone number? And, by the way, what
is the name of my agency here? Who is in charge here?''
Imagine the chaos. But under my proposal, we will do this in an
orderly fashion. We will do the same thing Mr. Lieberman does. In the
end, we come out with the same Department, come out with the same
directorates, the same number of directorates, named exactly like his
directorates. We come out with the same number of Under Secretaries and
Assistant Secretaries, the same thing. And we will do all that up
front, the superstructure.
But the rest of it, flushing out the directorates, determining what
agencies go in--we want to know, Mr. Secretary, what are your
recommendations with regard to the agencies that go in here.
We will be doing all that in an orderly way, 120 days at a time:
February 3, the first directorate; June 3, the second and third
directorates; October 1, the fourth and fifth directorates. We do not
deal with the sixth one because that is in title II. My amendment only
goes to title I because I did not want to go and get mixed up and have
any problems with germaneness in the event that cloture is invoked on
my amendment or on the bill. So that is it. Why the opposition to my
amendment?
So with Congress dumping the job of dealing with over two dozen
agencies and 170,000 employees into the lap of the Secretary, he will
no doubt be too busy trying to get his own house in order to spend his
time worrying about what the rest of the Federal Government is doing.
The Secretary of Homeland Security will not be in a position to
coordinate agencies outside of his Department, so who will do it? Who
will be responsible for managing and overseeing homeland security
functions and resources across the entire Federal Government?
That is not like Condoleezza Rice. That is not like the Secretary of
State. That is not like the Department of State. Hear me now. That is
not like the Secretary of State. They do not concern themselves with
agencies all across the whole Federal Government. But this one will.
This Homeland Security Department will be concerned with functions and
resources that cut across the whole Federal Government.
Who will be able to dedicate the time necessary to follow up on the
operations of so many agencies in so many different Departments?
This is a brandnew Department. Let me tell you, this is a brandnew,
shiny toy, unlike the State Department, unlike Condoleezza Rice's
Department. I say what I say with great respect to her. But you cannot
equate Condoleezza Rice's position with the position of the Director of
Homeland Security. Why, her Department was created more than 200 years
ago. But not this Department.
This is a brandnew Department. It cuts across virtually all agencies
of Government; something new. Then how could we equate the National
Security Adviser and her position with this new Secretary, this new
Director of Homeland Security, who will be in the White House,
untouchable?
One of my favorite movies, in the old days, when we had black and
white television--I can remember back in 1953, I believe it was, or
1954, when my wife and daughters went to one of the stores around here
and bought a new television set. Yes, television had not been around
long. It just came upon the scene in 1926. I did not have a television
set in my house.
One evening, I went home from my daily work in the office of mine
representing the old Sixth Congressional District in West Virginia,
where the current Presiding Officer was born, the distinguished junior
Senator from Delaware, who sits in the chair today and presides over
this body with such dignity and poise. He was born in that old Sixth
Congressional District. That was the district that I represented. Well,
that was back in the years 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, and 1958.
And one day, when I went home for supper--we called it supper over at
our house. We are just country folks. I went home to supper. I had my
supper. My wife and I and our two daughters walked into the living room
and sat down. And she said: Do you see anything new? I looked around.
She said: Do you see anything new in the living room today? I had not
seen anything new, but as I looked around, there it was, a brand
spanking new black and white television set--black and white.
Well, my favorite movies in those days were clean. And they were
wholesome movies. There are a few of them left but not many in this day
and age. We talk about other people being evil, about Saddam Hussein
being evil; just take a look at the television programming in the
evenings. I saw, on one of the evening shows--I turned the TV on the
other night. I seldom turn it on, but you can't help but see some of
them. And I saw some beautiful young women on there, and they were
saying words that I wouldn't say, and I have said them all in my time.
But I don't like that kind of language in the living rooms of the
country.
How can we say somebody is evil? We need to take a look at our own
self. I cannot look in the mirror and say I am not evil. Nor can any
other man, truthfully. Because we have a little bit of Satan in us. We
have a spark of the Divine in us. That is why there is an afterlife.
And we will have to answer for what we have done in this life.
So there is that black and white television set over there. And I
liked ``Gunsmoke.'' I kind of liked old Matt Dillon in those days. And
I liked ``The Honeymooners,'' Jackie Gleason. And I liked the
``Untouchables'' in those days, Eliott Ness.
But here we have the untouchables at the White House. Don't touch
them. Don't have them come up here. Don't have them come up. They are
the untouchables. Don't have them come up before the committees.
This administration thinks we should not have someone of that
stature, the stature of Tom Ridge, come up before a
[[Page S8545]]
committee of the Senate. Who will be responsible for managing and
overseeing homeland security functions and resources across the entire
Federal Government? Who will be able to dedicate the time necessary to
followup on the operations of so many agencies in so many different
Departments?
Now, I don't want Senators to go home yet. I have been trying to tell
Senators that this is a very important step we are being asked to take,
and we ought to be paying attention to it. I have been saying that to
the administration. Don't push it too fast.
Let's don't be stampeded by this administration. The President is out
there with his backdrops saying: Contact Congress. Tell them to pass my
bill, pass this bill on homeland security.
Well, let's just slow down a little bit. So I say, I wouldn't go home
quite yet if I were Senators because there might be a vote here yet, or
there may not.
Who will have enough authority to twist the arms of bureaucrats when
implementing homeland security policies in the field proves harder than
dreaming them up in the basement of the White House?
Who will do all this? Tom Ridge, will he do it, the man who refused
to testify before Congress when the Nation most needed to hear from
him? No. He had time enough to run around all over the country and
speak to chambers of commerce and this organization and that
organization about his Homeland Security Department and to say awful
nice things about what he was going to do and all of that. He had time
to go to Canada. He had time to go to Mexico and talk to the heads of
state in some of those areas. He had time to do that, but he didn't
have time to come up here and talk with these peons who are sent here
by the people out there on the prairies and on the plains and on the
mountains and in the valleys and in the fields and in the mines and on
the stormy deep. He didn't have time to talk with us.
I think he would have come, but the President wouldn't let him
because of this misguided perception that, well, because Tom Ridge was
an ``adviser'' to the President, he didn't have to go up there; because
he is on the President's ``staff,'' he didn't have to go there.
This is a different kind of staff. This is a different kind of
adviser. Here is a man who goes all over the country speaking about
homeland security, about his plans, about what is going to be
happening, what is going to be done, what are the concerns, what are
the fears, what are the things we have to guard against. But don't go
up there in that briar patch. Don't go up there to Congress. Don't go
up there and talk to those people. They are the elected representatives
of the people. Tom Ridge isn't elected by anybody.
But those people up there, those men and women up there in the Halls
of Congress, they are elected, and they have to go back at times and
answer to the electorate for what they have done or not done. They have
to cast votes. They have to show down, and they have to go back home
and explain the votes to the people. No, don't go up there to them.
And there is that fellow Byrd up there and that fellow Stevens. One
is a Democrat and the other one is a Republican. They want Tom Ridge to
come up there. And those two guys--I will say ``guys'' because that is
all right; that term is used a lot around here these days--those two
Senators. The President could even say: I have a letter on my desk
written to me by Ted Stevens and by Senator Byrd asking me for an
appointment. They want to make their case about having Tom Ridge come
up there.
But the President of the United States didn't show Senator Stevens or
me the courtesy of even writing a letter back to us or calling us on
the telephone saying: I received your letter, Senators, but I am of a
different opinion. This is why I don't want to send him up there.
No, the President didn't show us that courtesy. He had some
underling--and I say that with great respect--a person who wrote the
letter. I think there were one or two of them down there who wrote
letters back to me and to Senator Stevens saying: The President has
received your letter and this is why it can't be done or won't be done.
Now, how do you like that? Here is the President pro tempore of the
Senate, the senior Democrat in the Senate of the United States has
written asking the President for an invitation, asking for an
invitation to come to the White House to discuss having Mr. Ridge come
up before the Senate Appropriations Committee when it holds important
hearings. Is that changing the tone in Washington? Is that changing the
tone in Washington?
Here is the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, former
chairman of the Appropriations Committee from the Republican side of
the aisle, a man, who knows, who could be the next President pro
tempore of the Senate, the man right here at this desk who sits in this
chair on which I hold my hand at this moment. Here are two very senior
Members. Not that all wisdom flows from the limbs and joints and brains
of these two Senators, but they have been here a while. They are the
chairman and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
We wanted an opportunity. We had been turned down in our letters. We
had been rejected. We asked for an invitation. We asked for the
President to give us an appointment. Let us come down and explain our
case for having Tom Ridge come down.
Did the President ever invite us down? No. No. Was that changing the
tone in Washington? That didn't do any good. That didn't help at all.
Here we are with the same thing. Here we have this administration
wanting to turn hands down on the idea of having the Homeland Security
Director come up to the Hill and testify on his confirmation and have
the Senate vote to confirm. Why not? Why not?
This Constitution that I hold in my hand tells me that the Senate may
confirm or will confirm. Certain offices will be appointed by the
President, by and with the consent of the Senate. And up until this
point, I don't remember Presidents dictating to the Senate as to what
offices the Senate may create and which will be confirmed and which
will not. I don't remember that happening. This is a new leaf in my
book of 50 years here in Congress, the very idea.
And now we want to say, OK, Mr. President, we will do it your way. We
will yield on this. You can appoint your man. We won't require him to
be confirmed.
So are we going to hand over this responsibility to Tom Ridge, to
entrust him with these important duties that extend far beyond the
White House gates, after he has already clearly demonstrated an
unwillingness to cooperate with Congress on a matter that directly
affects the hearts and lives of every one of our constituents?
That is how important it is. This is a matter that affects the hearts
and lives of every one of our constituents. Senator Thompson says we
should. He trusts the President to command the secret war on terror
without input from Congress. I guess Senator Thompson--and I have great
respect for him--feels confident that Tom Ridge has enough clout to do
the job. But I am not sure that one man's clout will be enough. On my
side of the aisle there are Senators who are willing to say the same
thing.
Well, they say that vote has been decided earlier today. I don't
believe that has been decided earlier today. The question we voted on
earlier today went beyond that. John Dean, the former counsel to
President Nixon, knows something about putting Executive power in the
hands of White House advisers and beyond the reach of congressional
oversight. This past April, Mr. John Dean wrote a column in which he
expressed concerns about entrusting such responsibilities of
coordinating homeland security to a White House aide with no statutory
authority.
Where is the statutory authority for this White House aide? Oh, I
know the President issued an Executive order, but where is the
statutory authority for it? Somebody has to ask for money once in a
while. Money doesn't grow on trees. They have to come here at some
point. This old Appropriations Committee is a waterhole. Out there in
the great forest are a lot of animals. They roam around out there, and
when the night comes and the shadows and the curtains of night come,
you will hear something rustling in the leaves and you will hear a limb
crack and a twig break. By golly, there are animals out
[[Page S8546]]
in that forest. At some point, they all have to come to the waterholes,
don't they? The birds, the bees, and the animals on four legs--don't
they have to come to the waterhole at some point? Well, the
Appropriations Committee is the waterhole. At some point, these people
down at the other end of the avenue also have to come to the waterhole.
I know the President is Commander in Chief, whether he is a Democrat
or a Republican. It is so stated by this Constitution, which I hold in
my hand. But the Commander in Chief, the President, shall be the
commander in chief of the Army and the Navy and the militia when called
into service to the country. But suppose Congress doesn't provide an
Army and Navy for the President to command? Yes, he is the Commander in
Chief.
Charles I of England, in 1639, I believe, was the first to use that
term, ``commander in chief.'' That goes back a long ways, to 1639.
But in 1649, Charles I lost his head. His head was severed from his
body. That was Charles I of England. Some Senators may have forgotten
it, but the Parliament and the King of England had a war. There was a
war between the King and Parliament. Can you imagine a war in this
country between the President of the United States and Congress? That
is the way it was in England.
You can change history all you want and you can talk about political
correctness all you want, but the people who wrote this Constitution
were British subjects. Some had been born overseas. Alexander Hamilton,
James Wilson, and several of them were first immigrant descendants.
There was Franklin and there were others, and I believe James Morris
may have been born in England. In any event, these were British
subjects. Some were Irishmen, some were Scots, but they were British.
You can say all you want, and political correctness is not going to
change that. This Constitution was written by men--not women. In that
day they did not have women elected as delegates to the convention, but
there were the men, British subjects. They knew about the history of
Englishmen. They knew about the struggles of Englishmen. They knew
about the Magna Carta, which was wrung from a despot in 1215, along the
banks of the Thames River. On June 15, 1215, they knew about that. They
knew that the barons stood there with their swords in their scabbards.
They knew that Englishmen, going back for many years under the Anglo
Saxons, after William of Normandy came to England in 1066 and brought
feudalism to England, they knew the Englishmen had fought and shed
their blood for the concept that the people should be represented by
elected representatives in the Commons. They knew--those men who shed
their blood--the power of the purse would be vested in the Commons, in
Parliament.
Englishmen fought for centuries in order to win that battle over the
power of the purse. They knew that in 1688--let me go back to 1649 for
just a minute. I was earlier talking about the war between King Charles
I, who believed in the divine right of Kings, and his father, James I
of Scotland, was also a devotee of the idea that the King was God's
immediate representative on Earth. So they believed in what is called
``divine right of Kings.'' James I was a very strong devotee of that
idea. His son, Charles I, was as much a devotee of that misguided
idea--maybe more so--than James. But Charles I carried it a little bit
too far. The High Court of Justice was created January 3, 1649; and on
January 30--less than a month later--Charles I lost his head before
perhaps 200,000 people.
What followed that, in quick measure, was the Commons outlawed the
Lords. There would be no more King, no more House of Lords.
So our forefathers knew all about this. They knew how Englishmen had
shed their blood to wrest from tyrannical monarchs the power of the
purse because the power of the purse is the greatest raw power that
there is in government.
Cicero, that great Roman orator said, ``There is no fortress so
strong that money cannot take it.'' So there you have it. The
Englishmen knew that. Our forebears knew that. So the men who wrote the
Constitution knew that. And they knew that this right that elected
representatives of the people have control over the public purse had
been set as an example back in the British Isles from which they--most
of them or their forebears--had lately come.
So there you have it. That is history. There is more to it than that,
but that is just a little of it.
(Mr. DAYTON assumed the Chair.)
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, going back to Mr. Dean's column--as I say,
he wrote it back in April of this year--he expressed concerns about
entrusting responsibilities, such as coordinating homeland security, to
a White House aide with no statutory authority.
John Dean raised a number of important questions which I will now ask
the Senate. I quote John Dean:
Would the departments and agencies fall into line when a
senior White House aide so directed them?
How about it? We are talking about just an aide. He has not been
confirmed by the Senate. How about the Secretaries of the Departments
who have been confirmed, who come before the Congress, who come before
congressional committees and answer questions and give testimony and
are witnesses? Would those senior White House aides fall into line when
this upstart, who has not been confirmed by anybody, except the
President appointed him to this position--he is a White House aide--are
those Department heads going to stand and salute when Tom Ridge tells
them to fall into line? How about that?
What authority does he have? Does he have authority over these
people, these men and women who are in Cabinet positions, who have
stood before the bar of the Senate and been confirmed to their
positions?
Would the Cabinet officers follow orders from anyone other
than the President himself? Could a senior White House aide
resolve long-time department rivalries?
How about that? We know there have always been Department rivalries
going back to the early days of this Republic. Would this senior White
House aide, who does not have to come before Congress and answer
questions about his own budget, would these Department heads, these
Cabinet officers who do come before the Congress and they have been
confirmed by Congress--they come here about their budgets--would they
be brought into line by this upstart, this fellow who is here?
I know he is here by the grace of the President, but could a senior
White House aide resolve long-time Department rivalries such as those
between the CIA and the FBI? We have heard about that, haven't we?
Can this White House aide crack the whip, and these heads of
agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, will they jump to attention, salute,
and say, yes, sir; yes, sir; no, sir; yes, sir? Could the senior White
House aide resolve long-time Department rivalries like those between
the CIA and the FBI, or Treasury and Justice, law enforcement
responsibilities?
Could this White House aide get the Border Patrol, the
Immigration and Naturalization Service, and Customs operating
like they all belong in the same Government?
What authority does he have? He is just the President's man; that is
it. He does not have any statutory authority. He is not confirmed by
the Senate. How would you feel, Mr. President, if you were a Cabinet
officer in this administration, and you had someone who was not a
Cabinet officer, who had not been confirmed by the Senate, a new man
on the job, a new office on the street; it is a brandnew office. It is
a new office, what will be a new Department. But this fellow down here
who really runs things does not have to go up before Congress. Here I
am, a poor old Cabinet officer, and I lie awake at night worrying about
how I will answer these questions when I am called up before that
committee tomorrow and all those klieg lights will be on me, and they
will ask me questions about money, how I have been spending it all.
Here I have to go up there tomorrow. This man does not have to go up.
All he has to do is go up to the ``Commander in Chief.''
By the way, the Commander in Chief--let me read from this book so
people will know this is bona fide. If I had to, I could say it from
memory. Here is the Commander in Chief. He is not the Commander in
Chief of industry.
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and
Navy of the United States,
[[Page S8547]]
and of the Militia of the several States, when called into
the actual Service of the United States. . . .
But he is not the Commander in Chief of industry. He is not the
Commander in Chief of the Congress. But here I am, a Cabinet officer,
and I have to go up there and listen to those people up there. I have
to go up there and sit at a table, way past the lunch hour, and listen
to those Senators, be criticized by them. And here is this man. He is
not confirmed by anybody. He just stands at the Commander in Chief's
desk and salutes and says: Yes, sir; no, sir; not my will but thine be
done.
I do not believe a man or a woman who is thrust into that kind of a
position is going to relish being in that position because he does not
have any statutory authority behind him. It would seem to me a person
in that position would want statutory authority behind him; get the
statute behind him. He would want to be confirmed. Yes, he then has the
authority, the authority of the legislative branch, as well as his own
appointment by the Chief Executive, behind him.
The next question:
Could an aide, such as the homeland security director, get
the Border Patrol, Immigration and Naturalization Service,
and Customs operating like they all belong in the same
Government?
I have been quoting Mr. John Dean.
Mr. President, Mr. Dean concluded that homeland security is too
important an issue for a Nixon-style executive leadership.
Here is a man who was in the Nixon administration, the counsel to
President Nixon, John Dean. Mr. Dean concluded that homeland security
was too important an issue for a Nixon-style executive leadership and
that congressional oversight and the collective wisdom of Congress are
essential in dealing with a threat of such magnitude.
I agree. Why do we have to fuss and fume and fight over whether or
not this person should be confirmed? The President ought to say: Okay,
let's get on with it; let's confirm him. I will name the person, and,
with the advice and consent of the Senate, he will serve.
What is wrong with that? That has been the case for over 200 years.
Some Presidents have suffered defeat when it came to their nominees. I
can think of John Tyler, especially when he was fuming and fussing
around with the Whig leaders in the Congress. What is so bad about
that? After all, I would welcome that. Let him be confirmed by the
Senators. That will give him more authority. It makes him more bona
fide in the eyes of the people. He would stand before the American
people with more authority. What is so bad about that? That is not
anything damaging to the President. Requiring a person to be confirmed
is not demeaning to the President. So why should we Democrats be
willing to roll over and play dead on it?
They say: Oh, they have the votes on the other side.
Well, that is all right. Let's have a vote at some point; let's not
just say roll over and play dead. It is far more important for us to
stand for what we can look back on 10 years from now and say we did the
right thing, we were right, than just for a day to say, well, we will
avoid this fight, they have the votes, and let's go on.
That is not enough. Let us make the case for confirmation, and if we
go down to defeat, the record will be there. And later, when the pages
of history are turned one by one and we can then look back on the
mistakes that may have flowed from that very act of having an
individual in that position, not confirmed by the Senate of the United
States, we will know that we stood for the right; we stood for what was
best for our children and grandchildren.
This job is too important to be left to Tom Ridge alone. I do not say
that with any disrespect to Tom Ridge. I could not speak of him with
disrespect if I wanted to. The man was a Governor; he was a Member of
the House of Representatives in earlier days. He is a respectable man.
So I do not speak of him as a person; I speak of him as an officer who
will be in a key position for the first time in over 200 years, an
untried position, an untried office, in times that are trying but not
yet tried really. This job is too important.
So if you want to beat me, beat me. Go ahead. Roll over me. I will
not get on your wagon. This is a principle, and I think a lot of
people, if they listen to me and hear what is being said and if they
will study this bill, sooner or later they are going to come around to
my viewpoint. I think the American people, if they heard it, would say:
Senator, you are right; this position is too important to be left to
Tom Ridge alone, too important to be left to a President to appoint,
and that ends it.
I know the President is elected, but an electoral college sends him
here, an electoral college sends Vice President Cheney here, but no
electoral college sends me here. The Senator from the great State of
Minnesota, who is now presiding--by the way, one of his ancestors was a
signer of the Declaration of Independence. He signed from the State of
New Jersey. His name was Jonathan Dayton, and Senator Dayton of
Minnesota today sits in the chair. So we were sent here by the people.
We cannot rely on a confidential adviser to the President to
orchestrate Federal homeland security policy unilaterally and in
secret. What is going on here? What is this all about? Why the stiff
jaws down at the other end of the avenue against having this man come
up and testify? He knows the answers. That is why Senator Ted Stevens
and I wanted him up before the Appropriations Committee--because he
knows the answers. He is the President's point man on homeland
security. That is the way it will be.
I do not mean to drag over the old ashes all the time, but that is
the same way it will be if the Congress puts its rubber stamp on this
legislation and goes forward with the administration's desire of being
able to appoint this adviser to the President in this very untried,
really untested up until the last 8 or 10 or 12 months, position. That
man has not been confirmed by the Senate. He has not answered questions
for his confirmation, does not have to go up to the Senate and the
House and answer questions before the Appropriations Committees. He
does not have to answer questions from any other committees. He is the
President's man.
Have you read about all the King's men? Well, this is not quite a
monarchy yet, although I am afraid there are some Members of both
Houses, I am sorry to say, who, by my perceptions at least, would be
monarchists. They will do anything the President says should be done,
and they will do it in the name of his being the Commander in Chief.
Well, the Commander in Chief of what? The Army and the Navy and the
militia when it is called into service. But suppose Congress does not
call the militia into service? That is done by statute. It has been on
the statute books a long time. The Congress calls the Guard into
service. It passes the laws. Who creates the Navy and the Army? Look in
article I, section 8, and you will find out who. Congress shall have
power. Who provides the money to keep these agencies running? Our
English forbears said: We will appropriate money for an army, but just
for a year at a time. In our Constitution, we took a leaflet out of our
English forbears at the time and said 2 years at a time, not more than
2 years. This Constitution still governs. I have not heard much about
it in recent days.
I listened last Sunday to all the talking heads and everybody on
certain programs because I saw in the newspaper that some pretty
important people were going to be on television. I saw that the Vice
President was going to be on, Secretary of State Powell was going to be
on, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was going to be on, and National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was going to be on. I thought I had
better listen to all of these people. So I did. I listened to them. I
listened to every one of them. Not once, and not once in all of the
debate I have been hearing around here and downtown and at the U.N. and
everywhere else, not once have I ever heard the Constitution of the
United States mentioned. Now, it may have been on one of those Sunday
programs. I may have missed it somehow, but not once did I hear the
word ``Constitution'' mentioned.
These smart lawyers down at the White House--and they are smart; I
studied law, never with any intention of being a lawyer. I probably
wouldn't have been a good one anyhow. But in any event, these smart
lawyers down at the White House say the President has legal authority
to unilaterally deliver an unprovoked attack against
[[Page S8548]]
Iraq as a sovereign State. I have as much fear and as much concern and
as much contempt for Saddam Hussein as does any other man or woman. But
it takes more than just legal authority.
These smart lawyers can line up on either side. You can hire a good
lawyer on either side. You can hire a good lawyer to take this side of
the case over here or you can hire that same good lawyer for this side
of the case. A smart lawyer can come in with an almost impenetrable
case.
But that is not the point. The Constitution is there. The
Constitution is there. I hold a copy of that Constitution in my hand.
It is, other than the Bible, my guiding light, this Constitution.
Constitutional scholars in this land agree with me. Just legal
authority is not enough. It is the Constitution. It is there. It is
always there morning, noon, afternoon, night. The Constitution is
always there. But not once, not once was this Constitution mentioned on
any of the networks that I listened to last Sunday in the discussions
about a possible war into which this country was being--at least in
some quarters--stampeded into. We were going to war. We were going to
be in a war. Our collective minds at the head of Mount Olympus had been
made up already. The President had the legal authority.
Legal authority, my foot. It is the Constitution we are talking
about. The Constitution says the Congress shall have power to declare
war. I know that only five wars have been declared, but that
Constitution is still there. And there are at least six other wars to
which statutes have been passed by Congress, dependent upon as
authority. What has happened to us all when we just go forward blindly
without looking to the left or the right, saying we will go to war. We
will change this regime. We will do it, I will do it, or it will be
done.
How about those 535 Members who sit up there on Jenkins Hill? How
about them? They have certificates showing that they were duly elected
by the people--not by an electoral college but they were sent here by
the people. Are we going to disregard them? And these people who sit up
here on Jenkins Hill ought to read this Constitution again. Many of
them have, I am sure. But let us not disregard this Constitution.
The President has legal authority to do this and do that. When it
comes to war, this Constitution says the Congress shall declare war. We
can talk a long time about this subject, too, and probably will. As far
as I am concerned, we will, if the Lord lets me live.
Legal authority: We have an organic law that says Congress shall
declare war. I know the President has inherent authority and that it
comes from this Constitution, too--inherent authority to act to repel a
sudden attack upon this country or upon its military forces. He may not
have time to talk with Congress. He may not have time to get a
declaration of war from Congress. He may not have time to get an
authorizing measure from Congress. He may have to act. In that case,
this Constitution gives him that inherent authority.
We are talking about an unprovoked attack by this country, an
unprovoked attack upon a sovereign state. It does not make any
difference if we do not like the person who is the head of that State
or who is running it or who is a dictator, of course. The fact we do
not like him is not enough. Congress shall have the power to declare
war. We are going to talk about that a while.
I noticed a column in one of the great newspapers this morning which
virtually had our minds made up for us. We are just going to go. We are
going to do this.
Incidentally, I will have more to say on that subject at another
time.
This job we are talking about is too important to be left to Tom
Ridge alone. It is too important to be left to Tom or Dick or Harry
alone. We cannot rely on a confidential adviser to the President to
orchestrate Federal homeland security policy unilaterally and in
secret--in secret. This administration wants to act in secret too much.
The Government's fight against terrorism is bigger than a Department of
Homeland Security. Isn't it? They want to fight over this little
fellow--he is not just a little fellow once he is down there behind
that desk--but they want to wage a big fight against terrorism, and it
is a fight that is bigger than the Department of Homeland Security and
it is too big for Tom Ridge or any other Tom, Dick, or Harry.
He needs the authority of the legislative branch behind him. In
accordance with the Constitution, the President shall appoint thus and
so by and with the consent of the President.
His position ought to be made subject to the confirmation of the
Senate.
My Appropriations Committee brought an appropriations bill to the
floor. This bill was the fiscal year 2002 supplemental that was brought
before the Senate in the early part of the year, sometime around June
or July. In that bill, as reported by the Senate Appropriations
Committee, made up of 29 Senators, 15 Democrats and 14
Republicans, that bill had a provision that provided that the Director
of Homeland Security must be someone confirmed by the Senate of the
United States. That was in the bill.
It was brought here before this body, and it passed the Senate by a
huge margin. I think there were more than 70 votes cast for that
appropriations bill. That provision was in it. Senators knew it was in
it because we brought it up in the Appropriations Committee of the
Senate. It was there. There was never any attempt to strike it. There
was no attempt to amend it. In that provision all Senators knew, they
had their eyes open, they didn't have blinders on, and it wasn't
something done in secret. It was right there in the bill, and we had it
in the Senate here, everybody knew about it, and not one, not a peep
did we hear against that provision here in the Senate. It passed the
Senate and went to conference.
Then the administration saw the handwriting on the wall. They must
have been reading about Belshazzar in the Book of Daniel.
Belshazzar had a great party, a great dinner thrown. And he had his
soothsayers and his lords and his highfalutin officers and all.
Belshazzar, King. He was having all this mirth. He invited a thousand
of his lords. This was a great function there on the banks of the
Euphrates River.
All the mirth was going on. Everybody was laughing, drinking,
toasting, feasting. And all at once, there, over near the candlestick,
appeared a man's hand, and that man's hand wrote something on the wall
near the candlestick. And Belshazzar, the great King, wondered what it
was, and he became obsessed with fear, and his knees buckled, and his
hand trembled, and he brought forth his magicians, his medicine men,
and his soothsayers, and he asked them: What is that saying? What are
those words over there?
And somebody said: Well, we can't answer this. We don't know what
those words are. But there is a man, a young man, who can interpret
these words for you, O King, and his name is Daniel. He is in prison. I
believe he was still in prison. They said: This young man can interpret
these words.
The King said: Bring him to me. And the King said to Daniel--I hope I
am not getting two of my Biblical stories crossed up. It is late in the
day. I hadn't counted on saying this. But I believe the King promised
Daniel that he would have half the kingdom if he could interpret this
dream. He would be clothed in the richest of garb and be made ruler of
half the kingdom.
Anyhow, Daniel said: These are the words, O King:
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
Meaning this:
Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and
Persians.
That is not the entire interpretation, but that is most of it.
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. Thou art weighed in the
balances and are found wanting. Thy kingdom is divided, and
given to the Medes and Persians.
And that night, Belshazzar was slain and his kingdom was divided.
Why have I told this story? I told the story about Belshazzar, the
handwriting on the wall. This administration saw the handwriting on the
wall. Here was this appropriations bill coming right down the road like
a Mack truck, and it had in it the language to the effect that the
Director of Homeland Security would be appointed by the President with
the advice and consent of the Senate.
The administration saw that coming, and it was coming like a Mack
truck. So the administration, as it sometimes
[[Page S8549]]
does--and I don't blame it for doing it--decided it would try to get
ahead of this wave that was coming. The administration, lo and behold,
came up with this grand idea of having this homeland security agency,
and this was all cooked up and hatched down at the White House, down
there in the subterranean caverns.
I don't think it would matter if electricity were cut off. If there
had been a big storm and all the electricity cut off, it wouldn't have
mattered because they probably had lanterns, candles, down in those
subterranean, dark caverns where shadows can be seen flitting around--
shadows in the cave. That brings up another story, but I won't tell it
right now.
In any event, here these people were, and they saw this Mack truck
coming down the road, this bill that had been passed by the Senate, an
appropriations bill saying that we are going to have the homeland
security man answer to those Senators up there.
You see, we had invited him, Ted Stevens and I invited him time and
time again. He wouldn't come. We had written to the President of the
United States, thinking: Well, he will hear us, he will listen to us.
He is a man who said he wanted to change the tone in Washington. He
will hear us: Mr. President, please let us come down and visit with
you, and let us make our case for the Director of Homeland Security
coming before the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Not a word did the President say, by telephone or by pen--not one.
No. The President was going to change the tone. But here he wouldn't
let this man come up. Why not?
So here is this bill coming down here saying: Yes, he will come. He
will have to be confirmed by the Senate or he won't be the man in that
position.
So the administration got busy and said: OK, we will get ahead of
that wave. And here came the President, come out with this and he
unveiled this beautiful new toy. And, by the way, it just swept over
the country, the media grabbed onto it, and here we are now. We have
this bill up before the Senate.
So the administration saw the handwriting on the wall and got ahead
of the truck.
But it is still the same question before the Senate. Are we going to
have this important position be filled by someone who will come up
before the Senate, the committees in the Senate and the committees of
the House and answer questions about the budget? So let us see that he
does that, and we will make sure of that by making him confirmable by
the Senate.
Oh, no. Now, that is going too far, says the administration and some
of my friends on this side of the aisle and on that side of the aisle.
They are perfectly willing out here today to accede to that and not
contest that any longer. After all, Condoleezza Rice doesn't come up
there. She is the National Security Adviser. The Congress doesn't
require her to come up. Why should they require Tom Ridge to come up?
What kind of an argument is that? Where would that get you in law
school? Where would that get you in moot court? What kind of a lawyer
is that? I would hate to have been that kind of a student down at
American University and gone up before Dean Myers in moot court and
said: Well, I will tell you now, Dean. Condoleezza Rice, the National
Security Adviser, doesn't have to. Congress doesn't require her to come
up there before them and be confirmed. So why would we say that the
head of the Homeland Security Department has to come up there?
What an argument. What kind of lawyer would make that argument? Yet
Senators are willing to roll over and play dead with that argument.
They don't require Condoleezza Rice to come up?
Is that a case winner? My word, what kind of high-priced lawyer is
that? Would that have won the case for William Jennings Bryan in
Tennessee? That great lawyer, that great orator, is the man who argued
the case in the John T. Scopes trial, and his opponent. That was a real
case. I don't think they would have won the case just to say: Well,
this fellow over here, say what you want to him about him. But over
here, we don't require this person to go up there and be confirmed. So,
let's get home early for supper. We don't want to argue about that.
They have the votes. Let us just give it to them. They have the votes.
Why not give it to them?
I am talking about William Jennings Bryan in the John T. Scopes
trial. That is not quite enough of a case, I don't believe, to be
persuasive. It might be persuasive among good lawyers, but it is not
quite persuasive among Senators.
The Government's fight against terrorism is bigger than a Department
of Homeland Security, and it is too big, I say to Tom Ridge, or Tom,
Dick, and Harry--nothing derogatory about the person. Oh, no, you are
not going to hang me with that. I don't mean that. But it is too
important to the American people to have just an aide to the President
doing it.
Only an office that can act with the authority of both the White
House and the Congress can realistically guarantee that homeland
security policy will be fully implemented in the farthest corners of
the Federal Government.
That is a sound statement. It is based on specifics, and it is based
on logic. It is based on common sense. I don't have much of it anymore.
I get tired early. I am quite tired now. My voice is getting faint, and
my hands tremble and my hair is white. But I still believe the people
back in West Virginia sent me here to represent them to my best
ability. I swore when I came here, before God and man, standing up
before that desk there, that I would support and defend the
Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I am not saying
there are enemies in this body or in this country. No. I am not saying
that at all. But there are some people who are willing to go the easy
way and take the line of least resistance on that Constitution. Oh,
that Constitution is an old piece of paper. Those men back there in
1787 didn't have any telephones. The telephone didn't come along until
1875. No. Those people back there at the time the Constitution was
written didn't have the incandescent light. No. That just came along in
1878. No. Back in those days, they didn't have automobiles. They had
horses and buggies. They pulled the shades and drew the blinds so they
couldn't hear the wagons out there on the streets. The automobile
didn't come along until 1887 or 1888. They couldn't tell what was going
on outside the place. They did not have the cell phones. They didn't
have radios. They didn't have television sets, and radios didn't come
along until the turn of the century.
There was Marconi, and wireless telegraph didn't come along until
1848. The steam engine was invented back in 1869. That was just a few
years before the convention met. You couldn't expect those people back
then to write a constitution that would endure for the ages. You can't
expect that.
The Constitution? What do you mean, Senator Byrd? The Constitution?
Well, the Constitution was written in 1787. There were not any women
there. The youngest person there, I believe, was Johnathan Dayton. He
may have been the youngest person there. Benjamin Franklin was 81.
They did not have television. Television didn't come along until
1926. We are the bright ones. We are the people who should have written
the Constitution in our age. We have the radio, and all of these
things.
I know that Isaiah, of course, prophesied that certain things would
happen. Isaiah said: Make straight the desert highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be
laid low. The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places low.
The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it
together.
But Isaiah? That was a long time ago. Back in those days, how could
he have foreseen? But he did.
Take these marvelous inventions I have been talking about--the
telephone, the radio, television, the cable under the oceans, the jet-
propelled plane, the automobile--they have exalted the valleys, have
laid low the mountains and the hills, have made the rough places plain,
have made a straight line in the desert.
Isaiah's predictions have come true. And the glory of the Lord has
been preached in all corners of the Earth, on every continent and every
corner of the globe. The glory of the Lord has been revealed.
[[Page S8550]]
Those people weren't old fogies. Isaiah knew what he was talking
about. Here were the Kings with all of these marvelous inventions.
When Nathaniel Gorham and Rufus King and John Langdon and Roger
Sherman and George Read and Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris and
Gouverneur Morris and Elbridge Gerry were up there working, they did
not have all these wonderful inventions; and they met behind closed
doors. They didn't let anybody know what was going on. And they wrote
that little old book they called the Constitution of the United States.
By the way, this book contains both the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence. It certainly isn't very much, is it? These
smart lawyers say that the President has legal authority. And these
smart lawyers had to go through--what?--was it 4 years or 3 years or 2
years, or whatever, to get that law degree? I had to go 10 years to get
mine. And I read far more books than this little book. It took a long
time. I had to burn a lot of midnight oil to get my law degree.
Yes, these smart lawyers can say: Oh, the President has legal
authority. But this is what counts in the final analysis, the
Constitution.
Yes, I listened to all those programs last Sunday. There was the Vice
President of the United States. There was Condoleezza Rice. There was
the Secretary of Defense. There was the Secretary of State. And there
were others there. And not one time did any one of them ever mention
the Constitution of the United States.
They are all saying: The President has authority. Congress has
already authorized them. It authorized them in the 1991 resolution. It
authorized them in the resolution last year. And he also has the robes
of Commander in Chief wrapped around him. Oh, he has all the authority
he needs.
No, he doesn't. This says: Congress shall have the power to declare
war. Now, you may argue all you want, but I took an oath. And I have
taken it many times. I have stood at the desk up there, and I put my
hand on the Holy Bible, the King James version, which was published in
1611. And I have sworn before God and man to support and defend this,
the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and
domestic. Here it is in my hand.
Have we grown so far, have we grown so big, have we come so far, have
we gained so much power, so much wisdom, so much judgment, so much
authority, that we can just nonchalantly push aside this dear old book
that holds the Constitution of the United States? No. I took that oath.
It was a serious oath. Every Senator in this body has taken that oath.
Every Senator in this body has taken that oath. It is not to be taken
lightly.
Someday we will talk about the oath and how the ancient Romans
revered their oath, the oath they took, the oaths. But we just lightly
cast this Constitution aside: This is an old piece of paper. Ha, that
thing was written in 1787, and it was ratified by the few States that
made up this people, as we have it. It only needed to be ratified by
nine States. That was long before our time. We are much smarter than
they were then. We know more now than they knew then. We are
experienced. We are living in the real world. The Constitution was for
yesterday. The Constitution was for yesteryear. The Constitution was
for the 18th century. It was all right, still, in the 19th century. And
for the first half of the 20th century it was probably all right. But
these are different times.
Is that what John Marshall said? Tell that to John Marshall. I will
tell you, folks, the thing is much deeper than this. Senators have not
seen, really, what events will flow--and I have not, either--from our
creation of this Department. And I want to create a Department. But
from an unconfirmed Director, a Director that is unconfirmed by the
Senate, they will look back and say: Robert Byrd, for once, was right.
And maybe just for once. Or some may be a little more lenient and
liberal than that and say: Well, I have known a couple times he was
right; but he was right. And those men who wrote the Constitution were
right. They were writing a constitution that would protect the common
people, the people of this country, against tyranny, against unlimited
power. They were protecting the liberties of the people.
There was no Democratic Party, there was no Republican Party when
those men, those 39 signers of the Constitution of the United States,
sat down on September 17, 1787, and wrote their names on the dotted
line.
Old Benjamin Franklin said: ``We shall all hang separately or we
shall hang together.'' They pledged their fortunes, their lives--think
of that--their sacred honor.
The men who signed this Declaration of Independence were committing
treason--treason--when they signed that Declaration of Independence.
They could have been taken to England, tried, and hanged, or gone to
the guillotine, like Charles I. It may not have been a guillotine, but
it was certainly an accurate axman.
But they wrote this Constitution to create limited government,
divided government, with tensions separating the various Departments.
Yes, they were written on parchment, these barriers to tyranny, to
power. And there had to be jealousy among those three Departments. It
was thought they would defend the prerogatives of that Department
against the encroachments of another Department. That was the way it
was meant to be.
And when I came here to this Senate, there were men and one woman,
Margaret Chase Smith, who sat right over there, where my hand is
pointing to that desk over there in the front row on the Republican
side. Those men and one woman, what would they have said? Would they
have said: ``Let's go home to supper early. Let's just give it to them.
They have the votes''? No, not those Senators; not Styles Bridges; not
Senator Hickenlooper; not Senator Bennett of Utah; not Senator Javits
of New York; not George Aiken of Vermont; not Mike Mansfield of
Montana; not Richard B. Russell of Georgia who sat at this desk; not
Willis Robertson of Virginia; not Harry Byrd, Sr., of Virginia; not
Senator O'Mahoney of Wyoming; not Stuart Symington of Missouri; not
John McClellan of Arkansas; not William Fulbright of Arkansas; not
Everett Dirksen of Illinois, who wanted the marigold the national
flower; not Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who sat on this side of
the aisle, my side; not Olin D. Johnston of South Carolina; not Samuel
Ervin of North Carolina; not Norris Cotton of New Hampshire; no, not
those men and that lady who wrote her declaration of conscience as she
sat at that desk, Margaret Chase Smith.
Those Senators on both sides of the aisle would have had none of
this. They wouldn't have stood still for that kind of halter to be
placed over their heads, for that kind of noose to be placed around
their necks. They would not have stood for that.
We have great Senators today. I have always thought, as I have looked
back and I have thought about the Senators we have today, how
intellectually advanced they are. They are really smart. And a lot of
their hearts are in the right place. But something happened to the
Senate. It is too partisan anymore. It is guided too much by partisan
politics.
But back to the question at hand. There have been a lot of changes in
the White House, too. I don't believe that Dwight D. Eisenhower would
have wanted to see this. Dwight D. Eisenhower was a President who
prayed himself. He prayed in his first inaugural address. The President
of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, spoke the prayer and asked for
divine guidance.
George Washington, the greatest of all, he said, no, I can't do this.
This is something that Congress will have to decide, when it came to
using the military.
Well, those days are gone. I say again that only an office that has
the authority of both the White House and the Congress can act in a way
that will realistically guarantee that homeland security policy will be
fully implemented in the farthest corners of the Federal Government.
That man who sits down there in the White House, who will be the new
Homeland Security Director, needs the authority of the Senate behind
him. He needs the constitutional authority of the confirmation by the
Senate behind him.
Then he can go out and speak to the American people with the
knowledge that he has the authority--not just the
[[Page S8551]]
authority of someone who has been created by an Executive order but
someone whose position has been created by the Congress of the United
States, and he himself, as the person, has been confirmed by the Senate
of the United States.
I should think that he would be viewed by the American people, if
they stop and think, as having more real authority if he is confirmed
by the Senate of the United States. I have a feeling that his
colleagues would look upon him as somebody who is an equal over them.
He had to go before the Senate and answer the questions of Senators and
committees, and he had to be confirmed. He had to be reported favorably
by the committee in the Senate, and he had to stand before the bar of
judgment, as it were, and be confirmed by the votes of the Senators.
Not only was he appointed by the top Executive order of the land, but
he was confirmed by the top legislative authority in the land, the
legislative branch, meaning the Senate in this instance, according to
the Constitution.
By giving the new Director statutory authorities, statutory
responsibilities, we will ensure that he will have independent
authority to act from within the White House, without having to compete
with other advisers to secure the President's support for his
coordination efforts. If he is not required to be confirmed by the
Senate, he will have to compete with other advisers who don't have to
be confirmed by the Senate, other staff people who don't have to be
confirmed by the Senate.
He will have to compete with many others who require confirmation. He
will have to compete with them to secure the President's support for
his coordination efforts because his coordination efforts, as they are
carried out, are going to cut across a lot of lines of authority. They
are going to cut across lines of authority that run between and among
two or more agencies, many agencies of the Government.
He is going to have to cut through that redtape. He is going to have
to cut through it. What authority does he have? He is the President's
staff man. He is the President's adviser. Who is the President's
adviser? Did he ever go before the people's elected representatives in
the Senate and get their confirmation? No.
Well, some of his competition does have to go before those Senators,
his competitors.
Its competitors will be other Department heads--men and women who
have had to come before the Senate Committee to be confirmed by the
whole Senate. He has to compete with them. But his confirmation would
ensure that he would have independent authority to act from within the
White House. He has the authority, the stamp of approval not just of
the President but, more importantly, the stamp of approval of the
people of the United States through their elected Representatives. In
fact, we will not only allow the Director to act independently, we will
require him to do so. How about that?
The Director will have to follow up on the implementation of homeland
security strategy, because he will have to answer to Congress if he
doesn't. Also, by requiring Senate confirmation of this new Director of
the National Office for Combating Terrorism, Congress will ensure that
its concerns over the implementation of homeland security strategy will
not be subordinated to the political agenda of the White House. Even
when the President's advisers want to conceal agency mismanagement or
shift public focus toward a war with Iraq, Congress can make sure that
the Director's job is getting done because Congress can ask him
directly and say: All right, Mr. Director, we want to know about your
stewardship.
We are all going to have to answer for our stewardship--we Senators,
who are viewed with contempt by many of the people in the
administration, who have to be confirmed by Senators. We Senators have
to answer for our stewardship. I have answered for my stewardship many
times over a political career of 56 years now, in all legislative
branches of government, both at the State level in both houses, and in
both Houses at the Federal level. I have had to answer for my
stewardship. I have to go back every now and then and say: Here is my
name. I want to put it up again. Here is my filing fee. I want to stand
for office again. I have to answer for my stewardship, and so would the
Director of Homeland Security have to answer to the people's
Representatives for his stewardship in that office.
Oh, no, no, he is the President's staff man. He is the President's
adviser. Well, he is an important adviser, and he certainly is an
important staff man. He is above the grade level of ordinary staff
people, ordinary advisers. He should be confirmed.
So we will not only allow the Director to act independently, we will
require him to do so. The Director will have to follow up on the
implementation of homeland security strategy because he will have to
answer to Congress if he doesn't.
I have only read three and a half pages thus far. I am a slow reader.
How did I ever get through that? Talk about poor readers, my goodness.
I have only read three and a half pages, and I have been talking--how
long have I been talking, may I ask the clerk through the Chair?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Wellstone). The Senator has been speaking
for 2 hours 15 minutes.
Mr. BYRD. My lands, that is a lot of time. Was it 2 hours and a half?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia has been
speaking for 2 hours 15 minutes.
Mr. BYRD. And I have just read three and a half pages. I am a slow
reader. I had a feeling that Senators just wanted me to keep on. They
don't want to come over and hear this. I am trying to get their
attention. Three and a half pages in 2 hours 15 minutes.
Mr. President, while I am speaking, it reminds me of Cicero, who was
asked the question: ``Which of Demosthenes' speeches do you like
best?'' Cicero answered: ``The longest.'' That is how good Demosthenes
was.
Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. BYRD. Is it a question the Senator thinks I might be able to
answer?
Mr. REID. Easy.
Mr. BYRD. Then, yes, always.
Mr. REID. Is the Senator aware he has spoken 2 hours 15 minutes just
this last round? Prior to that, he spoke for an hour. So this is
actually 3 hours 15 minutes, other than the short quorum call after
which I requested that the Senator have the floor. So, actually, it has
been closer to 3 hours 15 minutes. Is the Senator aware of that?
Mr. BYRD. I wasn't really aware of the passage of time. Along that
line, may I say, let me see if I can quote a little verse by someone
else:
The clock of life is wound but once,
And no man has the power to know just when the hand will
strike, at late or early hour.
Now is all the time we have, so live, love, and work with a
will.
Take no thought of tomorrow, for the clock may then be still.
Mr. REID. May the Senator ask another question?
Mr. BYRD. Yes.
Mr. REID. Is the Senator aware that the majority leader has
authorized me to announce that there will be no more rollcall votes
today?
Mr. BYRD. I am not aware of that. That might change my outlook.
Mr. REID. That is what I was thinking might be the case.
Mr. BYRD. That might send me home to my dear wife of 65 years and 3
months and 14 days.
Mr. REID. May I ask one other question. It would also send me home to
my wife. We were married 43 years ago today, September 12. So it is my
anniversary today. But I don't want the Senator to feel any compulsion
that I should get home early.
Mr. BYRD. I really feel guilty in detaining the distinguished
Senator, the very able Senator, my friend. He is one I have admired all
the time I have known him. I am sorry I have detained him on his
wedding anniversary. I wish the Senator would have let me know that a
little earlier.
Mr. REID. If I may say one more thing. I was looking for an
opportunity. In fact, I suggested it, but they said it would be very
unsenatorial. I was considering waving a white flag because they
surrendered some time ago and indicated that they had left. There was
going to be a motion to table made when the Senator decided to sit
down, but there was a decision made that maybe that might take a long
time. So they decided to go home some time ago. I indicated it would be
very
[[Page S8552]]
unsenatorial to wave a white flag in the Senate, so I thought this
would be a better way of telling you there is going to be no motion to
table made tonight.
Mr. BYRD. I see a more colorful hue as I look for it out here. My
little dog's name is Trouble. My wife named the dog. Obviously, she was
looking at me when she named the little dog Trouble. That little dog
Trouble loves me, but he loves my wife more.
My wife is in the hospital right now. I should go over to visit her.
I am a little too late already.
I am trying to remember what the great Englishman, Edmund Burke, said
about the origin of the term ``whip.'' The ``whipper-in'' was the
person who kept the hound from running away from the field in the fox
chase.
The English had the whip in the 14th century, certainly in the 17th
century, the 1600s. The whip at that time would send what they called a
``circular letter'' to the King's supporters, or if there was a whip in
the opposition, he would send a circular letter to the opponents of the
King and tell them to come in and meet in Parliament at a certain day
and a certain time about a certain piece of business. That was the
whip. That was the English whip. That is where the whip system started.
The House has a whip. The Senate has not had a whip as long as the
other body has had a whip. The Senate has a great whip in the
distinguished senior Senator from Nevada. I have been a whip, and
before that I served under whips. I was a whip for 6 years, and I was a
good whip. I stayed on the Senate floor all the time.
But I say right here and now, as far as I am concerned, Senator Reid
of Nevada is the best whip the Senate has ever had, notwithstanding
even that I was a Senate whip. I served as whip when Mr. Mansfield was
majority leader. I put everything I had into being a whip. I stood by
the gate. If I had been told to guard that gate, I would have been at
that gate alive or dead when Mr. Mansfield came back.
This Senator from Nevada, as far as I am concerned, is the best whip
we have ever had. He is right here on this floor all the time, or
within a voice from this floor. He works here on this floor. He is very
loyal to his majority leader, and he is loyal to his duties, to his
people back home. He tells me every now and then he has a delegation
from Nevada that he has to go and see. But this whip is here at all
times, and he is here to protect me. If I to leave the floor, he will
protect me. I know he will. He is a good whip. He is a great whip.
I will take my hat off any day and say: Gunga Din, you are a better
whip than I am. That is saying a lot. I don't say that often. I was a
good whip, but the Senator is a better whip than I was because he
probably is more loyal to his party than I was and more loyal to his
majority leader than I was.
I stood on this floor offering an amendment during the Vietnam war to
say the President of the United States--who happened to be Richard
Nixon at the time--had a duty to do whatever it took. If it meant
bombing the Vietcong across the lines in Cambodia, the President had a
duty to do that to protect our American servicemen.
I offered that amendment, and my majority leader was opposed to it. I
stood by it; I fought the fight and lost. Mr. Nixon called me on the
telephone that same afternoon from Camp David. He said: You did a great
thing down there. He called me Bob. My wife does not call me Bob. She
is kind enough to call me Robert. He said: Bob, that's a great thing
you did. In his words, he said: You did a statesmanlike job. You stood
for what you believed in, and you offered an amendment on behalf of the
servicemen, the men in the field. You stood by what you thought, and
you even stood against your own party, the leadership.
That was all right, and that was well and good for me because I have
my own views of what is required of me. But the distinguished Senator
from Nevada, he is not disloyal to his leader, not to the people over
here who elected him to his position in the Senate, nor to the people
back in Nevada who sent him here. I salute him.
I will quietly fold my tent and fade away from the Chamber if he is
about to tell me that there will not be any more votes and that
tomorrow, when we come back, I may have the floor again.
Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a brief comment in response to
the Senator?
Mr. BYRD. Yes.
Mr. REID. The plan tomorrow is to come in and we will be on the
Interior appropriations bill until noon. Senator Daschle is planning on
having a vote on a judge around 10 o'clock, and that will be by voice.
Senator Dodd, and whoever is opposing his legislation, will debate for
a half hour, and that vote will occur at 10:15 tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow morning, we will be on the Interior appropriations bill.
I, frankly, do not think we can work anything out on forest fire
suppression. I will try, but I do not think it can be done. So the
leader has to make a decision as to whether he is going to file cloture
on the Craig amendment. We may have to do that tomorrow.
At noon, we will go back to this bill. I have been told that the
Senators who offered this amendment, Senators Graham and Lieberman, are
considering withdrawing the amendment, which would leave the amendment
pending being the Thompson amendment which, of course, will be subject
to another amendment.
That will be the status at noon tomorrow, if the leader decided to
work on this bill Friday afternoon. As the distinguished Senator from
West Virginia knows, Friday afternoons are really tough to get things
done around here. We are going to have votes tomorrow, one on the judge
and one on the Dodd amendment.
Before signing off, I say to my friend, the Senator's comments did
not go unnoticed. I am flattered and a little embarrassed, but I do
appreciate very much what the Senator said. As I have said publicly and
privately, every day that I have been able to serve in the Congress and
the Senate with the distinguished Senator from West Virginia is a day I
consider to be very lucky. To think someone from where I came could be
on the same floor as a Senator speaking with the great Robert Byrd is
difficult for me to imagine.
I understand the importance of the job I have. I appreciate very much
the statements of the Senator. But that is our plan for tomorrow.
Mr. BYRD. I thank the distinguished Democratic whip. I am very
willing to take my tent and fold it silently and slip away.
I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate next takes up homeland
security----
Mr. REID. Which will be tomorrow at noon or thereabouts.
Mr. BYRD.--I be recognized at that time.
Mr. REID. I am the only one in the Chamber and I certainly would not
object to that. I do not think anyone from the minority is present, and
they do not have any basis for objecting anyway. The Senator has the
floor now.
We would attempt tomorrow morning--of course, the Senator is the
manager of the other bill. We would attempt during that period of time
to see what we can work out on this homeland security bill so we can
attempt to move forward in some way, because certainly what we do not
want, at least tomorrow, is to be in a position where we have to file
cloture. I do not think that is necessary.
We will be happy to meet with the Senator tomorrow.
I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate next goes to S. 5005,
the first recognition be given to the Senator from West Virginia.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the speech I
have made not be counted as a speech under the two-speech rule.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BYRD. May I say to the distinguished Senator, I am quite happy to
go home. These old legs of mine have been carrying me around now for a
long time. I always had heard that when one gets to be up in years a
little bit, the feet and the legs first start to trouble one. So I can
bear witness to that.
In case there are any Senators who think the distinguished majority
whip did wrongly in saying we could go home if the Senator would take a
seat, let me say I have only spoken 2 hours and 15 minutes--is that
accurate?
[[Page S8553]]
Mr. REID. Three hours and 15 minutes. Now it is about 3 \1/2\ hours.
Mr. BYRD. And I am only on page 3 of page 4. Well, that is just a
start. As John Paul Jones said, ``We have just begun to fight.''
I have in my pocket the Constitution of the United States and the
Declaration of Independence. Once I finished page 4 tonight, I intended
to start reading the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
of the United States to follow.
Mr. REID. I say to my friend, I do not think he would have to read
it, would he?
Mr. BYRD. I think reading it makes it better.
Mr. REID. Does not the Senator have that memorized anyway?
Mr. BYRD. I know something about the Constitution, but I will save
that for another day. I have a number of poems which I would be glad to
quote even though these old legs are getting tired. Shall I quote one?
Mr. REID. I personally would like to hear a poem.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I never was a show-off so I am not going to
quote any poetry tonight. That would be showing off. I just wanted the
Senator to know I could quote some poems. I can read the Constitution
and comment on it as I go along. I can read the Declaration of
Independence. I can read the Bible. I can read Milton's ``Paradise
Lost.'' I could read Carlyle's ``History of the French Revolution.'' I
could even read Daniel Defoe's ``Robinson Caruso.'' Just because my
legs are hurting and I am growing quite frail and my voice is a little
weak, I am not quite ready to say, well, they have the votes and let us
quit.
I thank the distinguished Democratic whip. The Senator knows I am
getting tired, which is the reason I am not saying things just right.
Let me see if there is anything else for which I need consent. I
believe not, but it is my understanding that I will be recognized when
the Senate next returns to the homeland security legislation. I thank
the Chair and I thank the whip.
I yield the floor.
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. BYRD. 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. BYRD. Mr. President, I do not think a good steward would want to
leave his job unfinished quite so abruptly. I do have a half page of my
prepared remarks to read. I do not like to put items in the Record, so,
if I may, I ask unanimous consent that again this not be counted as a
second speech.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BYRD. By requiring Senate confirmation of this new Director of
the National Office for Combating Terrorism, Congress will ensure that
its concerns over the implementation of homeland security strategy will
not be subordinated to the political agenda of the White House.
Remember, we are not just talking about a Director of Homeland
Security under the Bush administration. We are not just talking about a
Director of Homeland Security under a Republican administration. There
can very well come a time there will be a Director of Homeland Security
under a Democratic administration, and I hope the Senators will see the
wisdom in looking forward to a time when the worm will turn, the wheel
will turn, and there will be a Democrat in the White House.
I am thinking of Senate confirmation as something that will be
important under a Democratic administration as well as under a
Republican administration, as important to the people of this country
under a Democratic President as under a Republican President, under Mr.
Bush. For the moment, it is a Republican President. A thousand years is
but a day in God's reach. And there will probably be a Department of
Homeland Security after my life on this globe has run its span.
The war against terrorism may not end soon. It may go on and on. Who
knows? The President himself has said it will not be quick, it will not
be easy, and it will not be short. Therefore, it is not difficult to
imagine that there will come a day when there will be a Democratic
President in the White House, and I say that my Republicans friends,
when that time comes, will be glad if we in our day have required the
Director of Homeland Security to be confirmed by the Senate.
So we are not legislating for a day, a week, or the remaining 2 years
of this Republican administration. We are debating and acting for a
long time.
Once this is on the statute books, it is not easy to change it
because a President can veto a change. If Congress sees the unwisdom of
its ways today and seeks to change the statute books, maybe a President
in the White House would veto that bill if it came to his desk. So its
easier, in a way, to make a law than it is to change a law, in some
instances. We had better do it right the first time, rather than just
do it fast. Do it right. That is what I am seeking to do.
Even when the President's advisers want to conceal the agency
mismanagement or shift public focus toward a war with Iraq, Congress
can make sure that the Director's job is getting done because Congress
can ask him directly. So I tell my colleagues that I understand their
desire to style the statutory office by yielding to the urge that I
know some Members do.
Let's do it right. There may be a different administration, maybe a
different party at the White House, Mr. Bush may not be at the White
House at that time, I may not be at my desk. Let's do it right. Let's
do it the way we ought to do it. If the war on terror is to be with us
a long time, a Director of Homeland Security will be with us a long
time, and Tom Ridge, if he is to be the Director in the future, even he
may be gone and another Director may stand in his stead. Think about
that. It is more than just a thought in passing.
I thank my friend from Nevada. I thank all Senators. I thank the
wonderful people who have to man the desks up there. I thank the
Presiding Officer, I thank the pages, the security personnel, the
Doorkeepers and all. They have had to wait and listen. They are doing
their job. I thank them and I apologize to them, in a way. I apologize
for having delayed them to their places of abode.
I yield the floor and 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. BYRD. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call
be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, my statement has to undergo some
interruption because of the colloquy between Mr. Reid and myself. But
the little remainder that I just read just now, I hope it will be
understood from those who read the Record, that was the closing part of
a previously prepared speech, and I hope they will keep that in mind
when they read all parts of it in the Record. I would not ask it be
joined directly with the first part, because of that colloquy.
I yield the floor and 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. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________