[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 146 (Wednesday, November 13, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10854-S10856]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                RECESS SUBJECT TO THE CALL OF THE CHAIR

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
recess subject to the call of the Chair.
  There being no objection, the Senate, at 2:19 p.m., recessed subject 
to the call of the Chair and reassembled at 2:29 p.m., when called to 
order by the Presiding Officer (Mr. Edwards).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, is the Senate in morning business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the motion for 
cloture that will be voted on in about 15 minutes. This is a way to 
begin bringing this debate on the creation of a Department of Homeland 
Security to a close and to allow our Government to begin the urgent 
business of creating this new Department.
  For those of us who have supported this idea for over a year now, 
this moment is long overdue.
  I am troubled by the draft of the substitute bill that began 
circulating yesterday which, in my view, has not only a number of very 
good parts in it which are quite similar to those contained in the 
bipartisan bill reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee but 
also has a number of serious shortcomings that I hope to discuss when 
it comes to the floor either later today or tomorrow.
  I am especially concerned that this new substitute bill creating a 
Department of Homeland Security also contains a number of special 
interest provisions that are being sprung on the Senate without prior 
warning or consideration. This is really not the time for that. We all 
ought to be focusing on the terrorist threat, the need to create a 
Department of Homeland Security to meet that threat, and not on using a 
vehicle that is probably moving to passage to put into it a host of pet 
personal projects. This is clearly not the time for that, and I hope 
the President and members of the leadership will discourage Senators 
and Members of the House from using this homeland security debate as a 
vehicle for accomplishing those more special purposes.
  More than 14 months have now passed since September 11, 2001, that 
day when terrorists viciously exploited our vulnerability and took the 
lives of 3,000 of our friends, family, and fellow Americans. Fifteen 
months have now passed since October of 2001, when Senator Specter and 
I initially proposed legislation creating a Department of Homeland 
Security to meet and beat the terrorist threat. This measure was not 
just bipartisan. It was, in fact, intended to be nonpartisan. Our 
proposal had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with 
giving our Government the ability to protect the American people from 
another terrorist attack. I point this out now, not out of pride but to 
make clear how far we have come, in some ways in the wrong direction, 
and how much time we have taken before making this urgent 
transformation.
  In the beginning, the vision of a Homeland Security Department was a 
recommendation and a report issued by a nonpartisan commission chaired 
by our former colleagues, Warren Rudman and Gary Hart. Then it was put 
forward in our committee bill. Then, as often happens to good ideas in 
a democracy, it gained support and steam in Congress.
  At the outset, President Bush and most Republicans in Congress 
resisted our legislation. I never took that resistance to be partisan, 
and I do not believe it was. The President argued that the coordinating 
Office of Homeland Security within the White House led by Governor 
Ridge would be strong enough to do this massive and complex job. So for 
8 months, the administration did oppose the creation of a Homeland 
Security Department.
  In the meantime, the Governmental Affairs Committee held a total of 
18 hearings, exploring every possible aspect of our homeland defense 
vulnerabilities and how they should be fixed. On May 22 of this year, 
the product of that work, a new version of the

[[Page S10855]]

bill, was reported out of our committee, unfortunately, on a party line 
vote with all Democrats voting in favor of a Department of Homeland 
Security and all Republicans opposed.

  That partisan split did not last for long. A month or so later, last 
June, I was very pleased when the President and most of our Republican 
colleagues endorsed a proposal to create a Department of Homeland 
Security.
  Somebody once said it is common in Washington to see people change 
their positions but rare to see them change their minds. I like to 
believe that is exactly what happened in the White House. Based on 
experience, the President and his assistants changed their minds about 
the desirability of a Department of Homeland Security. We then worked 
with the White House and Senate Republicans to build the greatest 
possible support for a bipartisan bill.
  In July of this year, our committee sent such a bipartisan proposal 
to the Senate floor, which we began to debate in early September. We 
had a good debate on this proposal. As was acknowledged by all people 
on both sides, our committee legislation overlapped with the 
President's proposal and the House-passed bill on 90 or 95 percent of 
the issues and decisions involved. Somehow, despite finding ourselves 
on the same page, we could not find a way to turn the page together to 
create a more secure nation.
  The major sticking point was civil service protections and collective 
bargaining rights for homeland security employees. We tried in good 
faith to bridge that divide. We pushed repeatedly for a vote on a very 
reasonable bipartisan proposal.
  I ask unanimous consent that I be given 5 additional minutes to speak 
in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. We pushed repeatedly for a vote on 
a very reasonable bipartisan proposal crafted by Senators Breaux, 
Nelson, and Chafee, to break the unnecessary logjam over the rights of 
Federal workers. But that was not to be had.
  Our colleagues on the other side did not yield. Five times they 
refused to allow a vote on their own bill, even though Democrats had 
time and again given ground and simply wanted a vote on the compromise 
amendment.
  As will be remembered, mostly because of Senator Daschle's totally 
justified expression of anger on this floor, the Bush administration 
even began to question the patriotism of Democratic Senators rather 
than joining us on this good-faith area of disagreement to try to come 
to an agreement.
  In a new low in the tawdry business of political campaign 
advertising, two of our colleagues, Senator Cleland and Senator 
Carnahan, were subjected to ads that took votes they cast out of 
context on homeland security and questioned their patriotism. That was 
outrageous and unacceptable. The fact is that these two Senators, 
Carnahan and Cleland, had been early supporters of a Department of 
Homeland Security. So what started out as a nonpartisan effort to 
protect America's national security, unfortunately, became a very 
partisan effort to decide elections. Now the campaign is over. It is 
time to turn the page once again.

  Benjamin Franklin said, you may delay, but time will not. I say this 
afternoon we may delay, but the terrorists will not. Senators Hart and 
Rudman issued another report within the last week or two and they have 
predicted another terrorist attack:

       The next attack will result in even greater casualties and 
     widespread disruption to American lives and the American 
     economy. The need for immediate action is made more imminent 
     by the prospects of the United States going to war with Iraq 
     and the possibility that Saddam Hussein might threaten the 
     use of weapons of mass destruction in America.

  Our vulnerabilities remain painfully serious, our disorganization in 
terms of our national apparatus to combat terrorism and protect 
national security, homeland security, dangerously disorganized. That is 
why it is so critical to pass a bill creating a Department of Homeland 
Security, led by a strong and accountable Secretary. That will start to 
close our vulnerabilities and improve our homeland defenses. Safety in 
this new age is a civil right. When Americans live in fear, their 
rights are compromised. By invoking cloture and moving toward a 
resolution on a Department of Homeland Security today, we will be 
saying loudly and clearly that we as a Nation do not succumb to fear. 
We will face what threatens us with strength. We will not be shaken by 
the voice that once again has threatened us on audiotape because we 
will secure our own future by working together in Congress to better 
organize our government and thereby to secure more control of our own 
destiny. Fear, uncertainty, and delay will be overcome by strength, 
unity, and American ingenuity. We will protect our friends, our family, 
and our children against the worst designs of our terrorist enemies by 
drawing on the best in each of us and, hopefully, in the days ahead we 
will do it together.
  I urge my colleagues to vote for cloture on this vital legislation. I 
yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I think I have 5 minutes and then we have a 
vote, so I will try to be brief. It is fair to say at the beginning of 
the process, no one conceived there could be partisanship on homeland 
security. Neither party sought the partisanship, but yet in the process 
it came. We ended up as the session ended with a situation no one may 
have chosen, but the reality was every Democrat except one was opposed 
to the President's program, and every Republican except one was for it. 
The definition of partisanship is when you have an issue that produces 
a division right down the middle aisle. That is what we had. We had an 
election. I do think the American people spoke clearly on this issue. 
If there was a dominant theme in the election, it was that the American 
people were unhappy that we had not found our way to a bipartisan 
solution to our homeland security dilemma.
  Today we have an opportunity to fix that. We have the opportunity to 
fix it by the following procedure. We need to vote yes on cloture on 
the Gramm amendment, which I intend to vote yes on. There will then be 
a motion to table the Lieberman amendment which, if it is successful, 
and I hope it will be successful, will knock down the whole 
superstructure that has been piled on top of the underlying Homeland 
Security bill. That will give us an opportunity to offer a bipartisan 
compromise that has been hammered out over the last 4 or 5 days. There 
is, at least in terms of what people have said in the reported media, a 
majority of the membership that is in favor of that compromise. Even as 
we speak, the House is debating a rule under which they will consider 
that compromise. Tonight, about 6 p.m., it is my understanding they 
will vote on that compromise. If they adopt it--and we have every 
reason to believe they will adopt it overwhelmingly--if we do the same, 
we will have been successful in a bipartisan effort to provide for 
Homeland Security.
  I conclude by simply noting when we have the kind of debate we had 
for 6 weeks, it is easy to have hard feelings about it, it is easy to 
say ``I want to prevail'' after all the effort. I hope now we have had 
an election, we have all had an opportunity to go home and tell our 
side of the story, we can now come together.
  I do think we have a good agreement. It does not do everything I want 
to do. It does some things in ways that I would choose not to do. 
Overall, it has two redeeming qualities. One, it gives the President 
the power he needs to get the job done, and the President and all those 
who would be working with him to create and run this new Department say 
with this compromise, they can get the job done.
  Second, at least if everyone stays where they said they are, we have 
a majority of Members willing to vote for it. No matter what you think, 
or no matter what perfection would be, if, after 6 weeks of very 
difficult partisan debate, you have a proposal that will get the job 
done, a proposal that is supported by the person who has the 
constitutional responsibility for doing the job--the President--a 
proposal that those who would implement say they can make work, and a 
proposal the majority of Members have decided they are for, I am hoping 
we can get a very big vote here and put this behind us.
  Finally, in the waning days of a session, obviously any individual 
member has extraordinary power. If someone

[[Page S10856]]

decides they want to try to disrupt the process, they can. This is 
not an extreme proposal. It is a compromise. It has dealt with many of 
the issues that have been raised, from the appropriations issue Senator 
Byrd raised to numerous other issues discussed. I hope we will today 
begin the process that will quickly allow us to pass this bill.

  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________