[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 127 (Wednesday, October 2, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9820-S9823]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    COMPLETING THE SENATE'S BUSINESS

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, as people can probably tell, we are getting 
down to the end of this session. As such, there is a lot of business 
that still needs to be completed. Many of my colleague have expressed 
their concerns that the Senate has not completed its business for this 
session. We all have similar concerns. Every once in a while, I am 
compelled to come to the floor and explain what is going on. There is 
not a scorecard around here. There is not a program that anyone can 
follow. So sometimes it is a little difficult to know what is really 
happening in the Senate.

[[Page S9821]]

  I know there is a little confusion among the American public about 
our progress because I go back to Wyoming almost every weekend. I go 
out on Friday because we usually do not have votes on Fridays. I travel 
to a different part of Wyoming each weekend and I return to Washington 
on Sunday. One of the things I have learned in my 5\1/2\ years of being 
a Senator from Wyoming is that it is really a big State with numerous 
communities. Each side of Wyoming is approximately 400 miles on a side, 
one of those two big square States in the West. If they had not 
invented the square, we would not be able to exist.
  Wyoming has 267 towns and one-third of those towns do not have any 
population. I go to those towns, too, because there actually are people 
who congregate at those places. There is a post office or a school or 
some other public facility, or a ranch that people go to discuss 
issues.
  For example, two weeks ago, I was invited to a pork barbecue--very 
unusual in Wyoming. We usually have beef barbecues, but this was a pork 
barbecue at three ranches north of Lusk, Wyoming in Niobrara County. 
The population of the entire county--and it is bigger than most eastern 
States--is a little over 3,000 people. Most of the population lives in 
one town, Lusk. The ranch where the barbecue was hosted is just three 
ranches north near Lusk. It turned out that three ranches north is 61 
miles and then you are still not there. After driving 61 miles, you 
turn off the highway and drive back another 25 miles on dirt roads to 
get to the ranch where the barbecue was being held. During the last 25 
miles, I forded a crick to get to the house.
  I do not know how many of my colleagues have recently forded a crick 
to get to some of their constituents. But when I got to the ranch, 
there were approximately 200 people sitting on hay bales, listening to 
a band, eating the barbecue, and talking about what was going to happen 
in their State legislative district.
  Some of our State legislative districts in Wyoming are pretty long 
and wind around so they have enough people within the borders to 
qualify as a legislative district. Previously, the record for people 
traveling to attend one of my meetings was no more 40 or 50 miles. That 
is how close neighbors live next to one another out in that part of the 
country. At this particular meeting, we set a new record. One of the 
families had traveled to over 180 miles to attend my meeting. 
Surprisingly enough, they still live in that same house State 
legislative district, which gives you an idea about the number of miles 
that we have travel out in the West.
  One of the things I have discovered during my weekly trips to Wyoming 
is what the people in my home State are really thinking and worrying 
about. I am here to tell you they have two main worries right now.
  One of my constituents' worries is the drought. Wyomingites are 
experiencing the third year of a tragic drought. People have had to 
sell off their livestock. When all areas affected by this drought start 
to sell off livestock, it drives the prices down. It particularly 
drives the prices down if there is a packer concentration that sets 
those prices.
  Packer concentration is another little problem we have in Wyoming, 
which coincides with our State's current drought. I am sure people in 
America have not noticed their beef prices going down. No, their beef 
prices have been increasing. But the ranchers' prices have been 
decreasing. It is an effect of the drought--with some phony economics 
built in. Nevertheless, Wyomingites are very interested in the drought. 
My constituents also are very interested in what is going to happen in 
Iraq.

  I was able to travel to New York on the floor of the United Nations 
General Assembly when the President delivered his speech to the General 
Assembly. Each session, the President is allowed to appoint two people 
from the Congress to be United Nations delegates. President Bush 
appointed Senator Sarbanes and me to represent the Congress at the 
General Assembly, giving us diplomatic status and rank. It is actually 
very exciting. If the Ambassador is not there, we have the right to sit 
in the U.S. Ambassador's seat and cast votes on United Nations 
resolutions. We also have the opportunity to address the United 
Nations.
  It was interesting attending the session in which President Bush 
delivered his speech to the United Nations General Assembly. When the 
President was first introduced, the people who applauded were primarily 
from the United States. It was a strange situation for the President of 
the United States because they are used to having people stand and 
applaud. For the General Assembly attendees, it was not a big shock 
about the lack of applause because we had just heard the Brazilian head 
of state's speech and he did not receive applause at the beginning or 
end of his speech.
  President Bush gave his speech, giving an outstanding delivery. It 
was fascinating to watch the delegates around the floor as their body 
language demonstrated that they were loosening up. As all of you who 
watched the speech know, when President Bush finished, he received 
applause--pretty unanimous applause. He made a point, and I have to 
tell you that after he finished, the other heads of state, as they gave 
their speeches, used the theme that the President used. They took Iraq 
to task and Iraq heard it. Because the heads of state have talked about 
Iraq--and it is still talk--Iraqi officials have talked about allowing 
inspectors in the country.
  However, we still have a long way to go. There is more important work 
that we have to accomplish to show the resolve of the United States and 
that we are going to disarm Saddam Hussein. If we cannot disarm 
Hussein, we are going to replace him. In the next week, the Congress 
will be debating a resolution concerning Iraq. It was introduced in a 
bipartisan manner in the Senate earlier today, and it is going to be 
one of the really important debates of this body. It will take us at 
least a few days to complete.
  I have to tell you that after the President's speech was over, the 
delegates had a little time to talk among themselves. We wandered 
around and met other delegates, and also overheard their conversations. 
I was very pleased at how well the delegates accepted the President's 
comments about Iraq. Again, if the United Nations does its job, sticks 
together and does what all of the heads of states have been saying, we 
can solve the Iraq problem and we can solve it within the realm of the 
United Nations. I am sure that would be everyone's preference.
  While I am explaining what is going on in the Congress, I have to 
backtrack a little bit because the Congress has had a little different 
situation this year and we have numerous loose ends that remain out 
there. We have heard about why the appropriations bills are stalled 
out. I want to take time to explain why that has happened. Homeland 
security is stalled out, and I want to explain why that has happened. 
We also have an energy conference that is out. We have the military 
construction and defense appropriations, that have already passed this 
body and passed the House and are now being conferenced. We have 
terrorism insurance, which has passed both bodies and is being 
conferenced. We have the Patients' Bill of Rights, and other bills, for 
which conference committees have been selected.

  We work through a committee process in the Congress. The committee 
process allows a select group of people who are intensely interested in 
a particular policy area get together as a committee and they review a 
bill from all of the perspectives of all committee members. It is the 
easiest place to work a bill because groups can drop off where they 
have common interests in a particular section of that bill and work out 
compromises easier than can be done on the floor. So I would say about 
80 percent of the work that we do get done is during the committee 
process.
  One of the reasons that people sometimes think the Senate is a 
divisive body is that this is the room in which we debate the other 20 
percent--the 20 percent that we did not work out in the committee.
  One of the things you will notice is when we complete a bill, we 
agree on about 80 percent, which we had originally agreed upon during 
the committee process. It makes us look a little divisive, but it is 
part of the philosophy that keeps the legislative process moving. The 
committee process gets things done in the Senate.

[[Page S9822]]

  This year, we debated the energy bill for approximately 8 weeks. It 
did not go through committee. You were able to see the entire bill 
crafted and debated on the Senate floor without the flexibility found 
during the committee process. This occurred because the Senate Energy 
Committee was stopped from working on its version of the energy bill. 
There was some bipartisan agreement on the energy bill during the 
committee process, and then the committee was told to stop working on 
it. Consequently, it took us a long time to work through the energy 
bill on the Senate floor, and I do not think it is a bill that, because 
of the complexities of doing it with 100 votes, really reflected what 
could have been accomplished in committee.
  We worked on prescription drugs, which is one of the most critical 
needs for seniors in this country. What happened on prescription drugs? 
It did not come out of committee. Normally the Senate Finance 
Committee, which has an extensive expertise on health care, Medicare, 
and Social Security, handles those issues. But the committee was not 
able to handle it. The Senate voted on three different prescription 
drug bills this year, which took many weeks of debate and time to 
discuss each one. None of them had enough votes to pass the 
parliamentary requirements to move forward in the Senate, even though 
one of them was a tripartisan bill.
  There is another unique thing that has happened this year in the 
Senate. We are not operating with a budget. The last budget agreement 
ended yesterday. It presents some real complications for us to be able 
to get our work done. It presents even bigger complications for 
maintaining any kind of a balanced budget--or as close as possible--
when the economy is down and a war is occurring. We need a budget, but 
we do not currently have a budget.
  Another thing that has happened is when bills come to the Senate 
floor, usually each side gets to introduce some amendments. Each side 
is allowed to introduce and vote on their own amendments. Lately, what 
we have been having is a full tree. You will hear that comment around 
here. I need to better explain this terminology. The full tree means 
that one side puts in all the amendments that can be debated, so the 
other side is blocked from being able to offer any amendments. There 
were some promises in June that was not going to happen. Promises have 
not been kept. Once we finally were given the opportunity to put in an 
amendment, we have not had an opportunity to vote on it.
  I mentioned earlier the extreme drought that is occurring in Wyoming. 
Throughout the West, we are having forest fires. The fiscal year 2003 
Interior appropriations bill has an amendment that would provide for a 
demonstration project to show what a healthy forest could be. It does 
not do much, but it would allow for some demonstrations to show what 
could be done in our forests to have the kind of forests everyone 
envisions. There needs to be a good debate on what we envision as a 
healthy forest. In the meantime, of course, the fires rage on and we 
are not allowed to vote on the healthy forest demonstration project.
  The fire demonstration project is extremely critical to the West. 
About 8 million acres have burned out thus far. For people who do not 
deal a lot with acres, it really does not mean much to them. An acre is 
about the size of a football field. But that is hard to relate to 8 
million acres. It is the equivalent of a four-mile-wide strip from 
Washington, DC, to Los Angeles that has been burned off this year. This 
year's fires have caused in excess of 25 deaths, and untold houses 
being burned to the ground. Those people who did not have their homes 
burned to the ground are now facing blackened stubble.
  Something needs to be done about it. There are some preventive 
actions we can take. Outside Yellowstone Park, there is a pine beetle 
forest, which means pine beetles have gotten into the trees and girdled 
them. The beetles cut off all the nutrition to trees, and the trees 
die. The first year they are dead, they have rusty pine needles. Pine 
needles burn extremely well. After the first year, you have a dead 
standing tree. Dead trees burn pretty well, too. After that, the trees 
fall over, deteriorate, and become part of the undergrowth and create 
further problems.
  There are things we could be doing to prevent these fires. Good 
stewardship of our forests would increase habitat for animals and 
provide more safety. We cannot do much, but we could do the worst first 
by being allowed to vote on an amendment to address wildfire 
suppression. The FY 2003 Interior appropriations bill has languished 
here for approximately five weeks. During the past month, we have 
debated the Interior appropriations bill in the mornings. In the 
afternoon, we have debated the homeland security bill. Again, after 
getting through a loaded amendment tree, we wind up in a situation 
where we cannot get a vote on the President's version of the homeland 
security bill. I think it is very discourteous to the President to not 
be allowed an opportunity to have a vote on his version of the homeland 
security bill. Why not? I suspect it would pass the same as the fire 
amendment.
  It is a definite dilemma. Do we let the President's homeland security 
version of the bill pass, or do we just stifle it? If it gets stifled, 
nothing can happen on this policy issue. We have some work to do. It is 
time we did it. It could be done by allowing some votes on some key 
policy issues.
  There has always been cooperation in the Senate for the 5\1/2\ years 
I have been here in allowing people to have a vote on their amendments. 
Sometimes we did some really unique parliamentary procedures in that we 
let two versions be voted on side by side, even though one was an 
amendment to the other. During the time the Republicans were in the 
majority, the minority was allowed votes on their bills, but we are now 
not getting votes on our bills. There is some point at which you have 
to say: if we cannot vote on it, we will stop the process until we do 
get a vote. The easy way to solve that is to let us have a vote on this 
important healthy forest demonstration project and the President's 
version of the homeland security bill.
  Also, let us have a vote on the President's homeland security. The 
significant difference in the versions is whether we are going to take 
away the right of the President to address ceratin personnel issues and 
make him subject, during emergencies, to stacks of regulations. Should 
the President have to go by huge stacks of regulations to make 
management decisions in a time of crisis while maintaining a secure 
homeland?
  There is going to be a lot of frustration in the next few days 
because there is a great need to get the Senate's work done. We are the 
ones charged with getting the appropriations bills done. We need to 
complete the FY 2003 appropriations process. We should start that 
process with the budget so that we have a road map of what we are 
doing, and then fill in the blanks on the appropriations while staying 
within a balanced budget.
  When I first arrived here in the Senate, we had a huge controversy. 
The very first thing I debated was the balanced budget constitutional 
amendment. People who remember 5\1/2\ years ago will remember that a 
constitutional amendment has a much higher criteria for passing than 
any other bill. It was defeated by one vote. The reason was defeated by 
one vote was because everybody here said we can balance the budget, and 
those who opposed the amendment said we can balance the budget without 
a balanced budget constitutional amendment.
  We did balance the budget for a while. We did it. I am very proud of 
it. While we were balancing the budget, the economy went up. When we 
stopped balancing the budget, the Congress said there were surpluses 
available to spend beyond what was allocated for before, then economy 
started down. Having a balanced budget gives importance to the economy 
of this country. It gives people more reliance on what we are doing, 
and more confidence in what we are doing. At the moment, we are not 
instilling a lot of confidence.
  Granted, there is a war going on, and a war affects the budget. And 
it should.
  Earlier, Senator Hollings had some charts when he was describing the 
amount of the national debt. I knew a fellow named Steve Tarver who 
used to live in Gillette. He used to get a hold of me on a regular 
basis and ask: How much is the national debt? If we are paying down the 
national debt, how come the interest isn't going down? It is because of 
phony accounting.

[[Page S9823]]

  We have gotten on the corporations for their accounting standards. 
Now it is time for us to get on our own selves for our accounting 
methods. For example, the Social Security trust fund, it neither funds 
nor trusts, and we should be taking care of it.
  We could pay the debt down to nothing over a 30-year period. I have 
had charts on the floor to show how that could be done. There are 
emergencies that come up. The 30 years, incidentally, corresponds with 
the time of a house mortgage. We buy houses, and sometimes we pass 
those on to our descendants. Sometimes that has a remaining bill with 
it, and they keep paying them down.
  That is what we are doing with the country. We could take the 
national debt and pay it off over a 30-year period, where if we did not 
spend the difference on the interest payment, when we reduced it, on 
other things, we could pay off more of the principal. So then it would 
be a relatively small payment. It is a huge payment, using the interest 
we are paying now, which we are not able to spend on anything else at a 
future date. As far as the war is concerned, that would be a second 
mortgage on the house with a much shorter term.
  So there is not any excuse for us not to be paying down the national 
debt in good times, and taking out second mortgages in bad times.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I appreciate the indulgence of the Chair in 
letting me expound on this a little bit. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
North Dakota, Mr. Dorgan, is recognized.

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