[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 176 (Tuesday, December 9, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S16083-S16085]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         OMNIBUS SPENDING BILL

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, unless the majority leader has additional 
comments, I wish to take a few moments to address my concerns about the 
current draft of the appropriations bill.
  I believe the appropriations process has fallen apart. This is a 
Frankenstein monster of a bill born of a badly broken process. It is 
time to send it back to the laboratory.
  At the beginning of the year, we were told the White House and the 
Senate Republican leadership would make sure the appropriations process 
ran more smoothly than ever before. In fact, the process broke down to 
an extent never seen before, opening the door to the worst kind of 
legislative abuses and special interest giveaways.
  This bill, this monstrosity, combines 7 appropriations bills, 
including 11 of 15 Cabinet-level Departments, comprising $820 billion 
in Government spending. To agree to a unanimous consent request this 
morning I believe would represent a shocking abrogation of our 
responsibilities to the people of this country. We have not finished 
until 2\1/2\ months into the fiscal year. This was supposed to have 
been done on October 1. It is now early December.
  These delays are becoming regrettably common. But what makes this 
omnibus unique is its utter disregard for the expressed will of each 
House of Congress. The process was an abomination, closed largely to 
Democrats, hidden from the light of day, written to satisfy nothing 
more than special interest wish lists.
  It didn't have to be this way. The Senate passed 12 of the 13 
appropriations bills by wide bipartisan margins. The House passed 13 
appropriations bills with wide margins. None of the bills posed 
difficulties. The only reason the process was handled this way was to 
ram through divisive provisions and pork spending that could never win 
the support of the Congress on their own.
  I thank Chairman Stevens and especially my ranking member, Senator 
Byrd, for the work they did to avoid this calamity. They understand the 
proper process and worked to employ it in this case. However, they were 
overruled by the White House and Republican leadership. That's why we 
find ourselves in this regrettable situation today.
  This brand of legislating opens the door to the most ludicrous 
examples of pork spending, which has contributed to citizens' loss of 
faith in the process itself.

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  Even the conservative Taxpayers for Common Sense said:

       This bill includes thousands of frivolous, bizarre, and 
     special interest earmarks for every congressional district in 
     the nation.

  For example, in this bill, somewhere in these pages, you will find $2 
million to encourage young people to play golf; half a million dollars 
for halibut data collection; money for a replica mule barn in LaSalle, 
IL; and most ironic, a half a million dollars for the ``Exercise in 
Hard Choices'' Program at the University of Akron which attempts to 
replicate House and Senate meetings in which congressional members 
review a budget and vote to include or exclude various options.
  Alongside this kind of wasteful spending, this bill includes several 
mean-spirited damaging offsetting cuts. These cuts will result in 
24,000 fewer children who will be served by title I educational 
programs; 5,500 fewer kids will be able to attend Head Start; 26,500 
fewer veterans will receive medical care; and $170 million will be cut 
from needed highway construction projects. I could go on all day.
  What is most troubling about this bill is the fact that some of the 
most egregious provisions that were sneaked into this bill at the last 
minute had already been rejected by one or both Houses of Congress. The 
fact that the White House directed conferees to include them shows a 
contempt both for the procedures of Congress and the citizens they were 
designed to protect.
  This bill once more allows the White House to end overtime protection 
for American workers. The Senate voted to stop the White House's plan 
by a vote of 54 to 45. The House agreed by a vote of 221 to 203. The 
reason is clear. Ending overtime is bad for working families, and it is 
bad for the economy. At this precarious moment for our economy, the 
White House's plan would deliver a pay cut to 8 million workers, 
including emergency medical personnel, criminal investigators, nurses, 
physician assistants, teachers, agriculture inspectors, and more.
  Overtime accounts for nearly a quarter of these workers' take-home 
pay. For many Americans, their overtime offers them the chance to save 
for college or a down-payment for a house, or simply to meet their 
medical bills. It has been vital protection for workers for the past 70 
years, and now Congress's defense of working families, overwhelmingly 
approved by both the Senate and in the House, mysteriously was stripped 
from this bill.
  Media ownership is another example. Real damage to our democracy 
occurs when a few companies control the airwaves. We had broad 
bipartisan support for maintaining the limits--wide majorities, again, 
in both the House and the Senate.
  After first agreeing to retain the language passed by the House and 
Senate to limit the number of stations a network can own, conferees 
bowed to White House pressure to permanently raise the limit to make it 
easier on media conglomerates, again, directly overturning rollcall 
votes taken in the House and Senate on media ownership. Mysteriously, 
once more, the legislation confronted reality and the sentiment of the 
Members of both bodies.
  Consider country-of-origin labeling: The omnibus legislation I have 
in front of me includes language actually delaying the implementation 
of country-of-origin labeling for 2 years. The Senate passed country-
of-origin labeling on two occasions--in May of 2002 as part of the farm 
bill, as well as just last month with a vote of 56 to 32.
  Consumers deserve the right to make informed choices. The economic 
benefit to farmers and ranchers in struggling rural communities could 
not be more apparent. It was supported by 167 farm organizations 
representing 50 million Americans but opposed by the four meatpackers 
that control 80 percent of the U.S. beef market. They worked behind the 
scenes to kill this rule and that, too, is in this legislation.
  This bill also undermines our ability to stop gun crimes: This bill 
requires the destruction of background check records within 24 hours. 
Current law requires records to be maintained for 90 days. It is vital 
to the war on terror, as well as to domestic violence cases, that 
retention of these records be maintained. The retention of records has 
been critical to audit NICS and correct mistaken approvals. We will no 
longer have that ability as a result of the provisions included in this 
bill.

  The General Accounting Office reports that the 90-day retention 
allowed the FBI to retrieve 235 guns that were bought by people with 
criminal records.
  We also had a big debate--a very aggressive debate--about DC 
vouchers. We stripped out the provision that was reinserted to 
circumvent Democratic objections. There was no accountability here. In 
addition, we are undermining the Washington, DC, schools to advance a 
theory that absolutely has no evidence to back it up. Vouchers threaten 
to create two-tiered education system in which more children each year 
are left behind. But as with the other controversial provisions, 
vouchers, for the first time at the Federal level, are in this bill.
  This bill also undermines our protection of federal workers. Language 
was dropped that blocked the OMB plan to contract out 400,000 Federal 
workers. The conferees had reached a bipartisan compromise, but that 
was rejected by the White House. What remains provides so many 
loopholes for OMB that the Federal workers have very little protection.
  This bill is to good legislating what a dank basement corner is to 
good housekeeping. Both could stand a good dose of sunlight, and that 
is just what we intend to do.
  We will not allow this bill to be sneaked through a procedural back 
door when no one is looking. It may mean further delay, but 1 more 
month of delay is nothing compared to the enduring damage this bill 
will cause to the Senate, our Government, and our Nation.


         Extension of the Federal Unemployment Benefits Program

  Mr. President, with regard to the unanimous consent request I had 
made, this holiday season is bringing the same bad news that millions 
of jobless workers heard last year. Nearly 3 million Americans have 
lost their jobs; 2.6 million in manufacturing alone. The number of 
people looking for work for more than 6 months has now tripled since 
the beginning of the Bush administration.
  In fact, the economy would have to create over 347,000 jobs per month 
just to keep the Bush administration from having the worst rate of job 
creation of any administration since the Great Depression.
  Today, there are three job seekers for every job opening. Yet the 
Republican leadership in the Congress is again refusing to address this 
urgent problem.
  During this holiday season, the temporary Federal Unemployment 
Benefits Program will expire. This means each week after December 21, 
more than 80,000 Americans will run out of their State unemployment 
benefits. These workers will not be eligible for any additional 
assistance.
  Last fall, before Congress adjourned, the Senate worked on a 
bipartisan basis to ensure that unemployment workers would not be left 
out in the cold. Unfortunately, the House Republican leadership decided 
to turn its back on these families, and the administration has failed 
to act as well. As a result, thousands of workers were stranded until 
Congress reconvened, and we were able to pass an extension. Over the 
last several weeks, Senate Democrats have repeatedly propounded 
unanimous consent requests to pass an extension to the Federal 
Unemployment Insurance Program. We faced Republican objections every 
time. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay went so far as to say he sees no 
reason to extend the Federal unemployment compensation program.
  Clearly, inaction is an unacceptable position. It was last year, and 
it remains so this year. Since it appears Congress may not return until 
the end of January, it is now even more urgent that the administration 
influence congressional Republicans to work with us to pass a 6-month 
extension before Congress adjourns.
  As we approach the holiday season, we have to ensure that families 
are not left without the ability to make ends meet while searching for 
employment.


                  Foreign Operations Conference Report

  Mr. President, finally, let me briefly explain why I felt the need to 
ask unanimous consent to pass the Foreign Operations conference report. 
AIDS is the worse public health crisis the world has ever known. Mr. 
President, 8,000 people--8,000--die each and every day;

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15,000 people contract HIV every day, the majority of them young 
people.
  The Foreign Operations conference report provides $800 million for an 
increase--a much needed increase--in the Global AIDS Program. It is a 
positive step in our effort to fight and defeat this pandemic. It 
should have been done 2 months ago. We should not have to wait another 
2 months. The crisis is simply too pressing.
  Unfortunately, the Republican leadership and the House Appropriations 
Committee would have us wait. There are a lot of controversial items in 
this huge omnibus, but let's be clear: The Foreign Operations 
conference report and the increased AIDS funding is certainly not one 
of them. Foreign Operations was signed by every single conferee. It was 
minutes from being filed. Unfortunately, some Republicans intervened 
and demanded that it be rolled into the larger bill.
  Why? Because they wanted increased leverage on the omnibus and the 
controversial policy provisions, provisions that go against the will of 
bipartisan majorities in both Houses of Congress.
  So let's be clear. The reason they insisted on this was to hold 
increased AIDS funding hostage to these special interest giveaways. In 
a season of disappointments, that is especially disappointing. So I am 
very deeply disappointed that by unanimous consent we could not take up 
a bill that had passed unanimously in conference, signed by all the 
conferees, recognizing that 8,000 people who die every day will not get 
the kind of attention, the resources, the commitment, and the response 
they so desperately need.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.

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