[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 103 (Thursday, July 22, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8596-S8601]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, when major and hard-fought legislation
nears enactment, the rhetoric on this floor can get a little
overheated. Supporters of the measure sometimes overstate the
importance of the legislation or exaggerate its benefits. Opponents
make doomsday predictions of what will happen if the bill becomes law.
Only the passage of time can answer those arguments, but by the time
that answers are available, the Senate has often has moved on to other
battles.
Today, I want to take a few minutes on the floor to call the
attention of my colleagues and the American people to some promising
indications that the doomsday predictions of opponents of the McCain-
Feingold bill have not come to pass. As we told the Senate at the time,
McCain-Feingold will not solve every problem in our campaign finance
system, and it hasn't. Lately, there has been significant controversy
over so-called ``527 organizations,'' which the FEC has permitted to
operate in violation, I believe, of the Federal Election Campaign Act
of 1974.
Nonetheless, McCain-Feingold is working as it was intended to work.
It closed the political party soft money loophole, and it has restored
some sanity to a system that had truly spun out of control over the
last several elections. While it is still too early to reach a final
conclusion, it appears that the cynics and the doubters were wrong. And
that is good news for the American people.
When the Senate considered the McCain-Feingold bill in March 2001, we
had just finished a hotly contested Presidential election in 2000.
Nearly $500 million of soft money was raised in that election by the
two political parties, almost double what was raised in the 1996
election. Nearly two-thirds of that total was given by just 800 donors,
who contributed over $120,000 each to the parties. The biggest donors
contributed far more than that. The most generous soft money donor,
AFSCME, gave almost $6 million, all to the Democratic party. SEIU gave
a total of $4.3 million, mostly to the Democrats. AT&T gave a total of
$3.7 million to the parties, the Carpenters and Joiners Union $2.9
million, Freddie Mac and Philip Morris, $2.4 million. Then we had the
``double givers''--companies that gave money to both parties. In 2000,
there were 146 donors that gave over $100,000 in soft money to both of
the political parties.
The appearance of corruption created by this avalanche of soft money
was overwhelming. The public knew it; and we all knew it in our hearts.
And the Supreme Court knew it when it upheld the McCain-Feingold bill
against constitutional challenge in the case of McConnell v. FEC. The
Court stated the following:
As the record demonstrates, it is the manner in which
parties have sold access to federal candidates and
officeholders that has given rise to the appearance of undue
influence. Implicit (and, as the record shows, sometimes
explicit) in the sale of access is the suggestion that money
buys influence. It is no surprise then that purchasers of
such access unabashedly admit that they are seeking to
purchase just such influence. It was not unwarranted for
Congress to conclude that the selling of access gives rise to
the appearance of corruption.
In this election cycle, I am happy to report, political party soft
money is no more. Not reduced, not held in check, not capped--it is
just gone. I consider this one of the most significant developments in
American politics in the last 50 years. In 2002, a colleague told me on
this floor that he had just finished making an hour of calls asking for
large soft money contributions. He said he felt like taking a shower.
Now, many of my colleagues, including some who did not support our
bill, tell me how happy they are to not have to make those calls any
more. That's a huge change in how we spend our time, and how we relate
to people who have a big stake in what we do on this floor.
But what about the political parties? When we were debating McCain-
Feingold, we had a real difference of opinion on how the bill would
affect the parties. On one side were Senators who
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argued passionately that the bill would kill the political parties.
One Senator said the following during our debate:
This legislation seeks, quite literally, to eliminate any
prominence for the role of political parties in American
elections.
This legislation favors special interests over parties and
favors some special interests over other special interests.
Equally remarkable is the patchwork manner in which this
legislation achieves its virtual elimination of political
parties from the electoral process.
The same Senator claimed:
But under this bill, I promise you, if McCain-Feingold
becomes law, there won't be one penny less spent on
politics--not a penny less. In fact, a good deal more will be
spent on politics. It just won't be spent by the parties.
Even with the increase in hard money, which I think is a good
idea and I voted for, there is no way that will ever make up
for the soft dollars lost.
There isn't any way, he said, that they will ever make up for the
soft dollars lost.
Twenty months after the McCain-Feingold bill went into effect as the
law of the land, our two great political parties are alive and well.
Apparently they do have something to offer to the American people other
than fundraisers for lobbyists. A new study by Anthony Corrado and Tom
Mann of the Brookings Institution reports that through the first 18
months of the 2004 election cycle, the national party committees raised
$615 million in hard money alone, which was more than the $540 million
that they had raised in hard and soft money combined at a comparable
point in the 2000 election cycle. Let me say that again. As of June 30,
the parties had raised more in hard money in this election cycle than
they had raised in hard and soft money combined at a similar point in
the 2000 cycle.
Remember the Senator who said there was ``no way'' that the parties
could make up for the soft money they would lose under the McCain-
Feingold bill. Well it turns out that Senator was wrong.
The parties are not just surviving, they are thriving. And they are
doing this not just by taking advantage of the increased contribution
limits instituted by McCain-Feingold. Corrado and Mann state the
following:
While these increases in the contribution limits have
provided the parties with millions of additional dollars, the
growth in party funding in 2004 is largely the result of a
remarkable surge in the number of party donors. Both parties
have added hundreds of thousands of new small donors to their
rolls.
The numbers are truly astonishing. The Republican National Committee
has added a million new donors. The NRCC added 400,000 new contributors
in 2003. The DNC has recruited more than 800,000 new small donors
through direct mail alone. And these numbers don't include any new
online contributions in 2004. And, of course, they don't include the
hundreds of millions of dollars in hard money raised by the two major
party presidential candidates.
The parties are stronger than they were before not just because they
have raised more money than in 2000. Small contributors are a much
better indicator of strength than big contributors. Small contributors
volunteer, they are involved, they vote, and they inspire others to
contribute and vote. I believe McCain-Feingold saved the political
parties from the oblivion to which they were sending themselves with
their reliance on the easy fix of soft money.
The argument over the effect of the bill on the political parties was
just one of the disagreements we had when the bill was considered back
in 2001. Another dispute concerned what would happen to all that soft
money that had previously been contributed to the parties. Opponents of
the bill expressed absolute certainty that the money contributed to the
parties would simply migrate to less accountable outside groups. One
Senator said the following during our debate:
Why do we want to ban soft money to political parties, that
funding which is now accountable and reportable? This ban
would weaken the parties and put more money and control in
the hands of wealthy individuals and independent groups who
are accountable to no one.
Another Senator quoted a prominent Republican lawyer who
said: ``The world under McCain-Feingold is a world where the
loudest voices in the process are third-party groups.''
Those of us who supported the bill certainly recognized that some
donors would look for alternative ways to influence the political
process. But we also thought that much of the money that was being
given to the political parties was being given under duress. We argued
that if Members of Congress and other public officials weren't asking
for the money, much of it wouldn't be given at all. We had heard from
countless corporate executives that the soft money system, which many
had called legalized bribery, was really more like legalized extortion.
I will never forget the words of Ed Kangas the former CEO of Deloitte
Touche Tohmatsu. He said:
Businesses should not have to pay a toll to have their case
heard in Washington. There are many times when CEOs feel like
the pressure to contribute soft money is nothing less than a
shakedown.
In 1999, on this floor, I said the following in a debate with another
Senator who actually supported the soft money ban, but asserted that
soft money would simply flow to outside groups:
I have this chart. It is a list of all the soft money
double givers. These are corporations that have given over
$150,000 to both sides. Under the Senator's logic, these very
same corporations--Philip Morris, Joseph Seagram, RJR
Nabisco, BankAmerica Corporation--each of these would
continue making the same amount of contributions; they would
take the chance of violating the law by doing this in
coordination with or at the suggestion of the parties, and
they would calmly turn over the same kind of cash to others,
be it left-wing or right-wing independent groups?
I have to say . . . I am skeptical that if they cannot hand
the check directly to the political party leaders, they will
take those chances.
On this dispute, with 3\1/2\ months to go before the election, the
jury is still out. But once again, the early indications are that the
doomsday predictions of opponents of the bill will not come to pass.
Not long ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that it surveyed the
20 top corporate donors in the 2002 election cycle and more than half,
including Microsoft, Citigroup, and Pfizer, are resisting giving large
contributions to the outside groups, the 527s, that are trying to raise
unlimited contributions since the parties can no longer accept them. As
the article noted:
The reticence illustrates an uneasiness on the part of some
of the corporations to get sucked back into the world of
unlimited political contributions that they thought campaign
reform had left behind.
According to a Washington Post article in June:
[E]lection law lawyers said corporations are showing
significant reluctance to get back into making ``soft money''
donations after passage of the McCain-Feingold law.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, which maintains the
most complete database of information on 527s using the reports
required by the disclosure bill we passed in 2000, 527s that focus on
federal elections along with labor-funded 527s have raised
approximately $150 million as of June 30. This is far less than the
$254 million that had been raised in soft money by the parties at a
similar point in the 2000 election cycle and less than half of the $308
million raised in the first 18 months of the 2002 cycle. It is, of
course, possible that 527 fundraising will pick up significantly in the
wake of the FEC's determination in May that it will likely not regulate
these groups as political committees in this election cycle. But the
underlying problem with raising money for these organizations remain.
That is very simple. It is central to this whole issue. They cannot
offer the kind of access and influence that made the parties such
effective soft money seekers prior to the enactment of McCain-Feingold.
There is no doubt that ideologically motivated wealthy individuals
will continue to seek ways to influence elections. Most of the money
being donated to the 527s is coming from such people. I continue to
believe that many of these groups, since their stated goal is to
influence federal elections, should be required to register as federal
PACs, which can accept contributions of only $5,000 per year from
individuals. But even if they continue to operate outside the law, they
are not going to replace the political parties. Without significant
corporate support, they simply cannot raise the kind of money that the
parties raised in 2000, much less the amounts that would have been
raised under the old system in this election cycle.
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So to those who forecast or believed the doomsday scenarios back in
2001 and 2002 when we considered the bill, or who continue to believe
them today, I suggest you look at the numbers. McCain-Feingold is
working, and the Senate should be proud that it passed. As we approach
the 2004 elections, and the airwaves become saturated with political
advertising, note the difference. Party ads are paid for with the
contributions of millions of hardworking Americans proud to participate
in the political process and looking to parties and to their government
to represent them, not the special interests that used to write the big
checks.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDENT OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. 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. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent I be recognized to speak in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
9/11 Commission Report
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this may be the last day of Senate
activity before we take a recess for August. In that recess, both major
political parties will have their conventions in Boston and New York.
Members will be back home in their States, some campaigning, some
spending time with their families--a period of time we all look forward
to each year. However, we leave this Senate with a great deal of
unfinished business.
This morning, Governor Tom Kean, a former Governor of New Jersey, and
Congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana gave a briefing to Members of the
Senate on the 9/11 Commission Report. Let me say at the outset that
those two individuals, Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton, as well
as every member of this Commission, performed a great service for the
United States of America. They have produced a report which, frankly,
is a bargain. They were given an appropriation of some $15 million,
they had 80 staff people, and over a very short period of time by
congressional standards did a more thorough analysis of the events
leading up to September 11 than any analysis that has been done by a
congressional committee. They did it in a bipartisan fashion, an
analytical fashion, and they did it not looking for someone to blame or
someone to assign responsibility but, rather, to learn so they would
learn as a Commission and we would learn as a nation how to make
America safer.
As Governor Kean this morning went through this Commission report, he
outlined all of the occurrences, starting with the initial bombing of
the World Trade Center many years ago, that led up to September 11. As
he read the list, it went longer and longer and longer, all of the
clear evidence we had accumulated of activities by al-Qaida and other
terrorists threatening the United States of America. When you heard
this list, you reached the same conclusion he did; that is, why didn't
we see it coming?
There was so much evidence leading in that direction. Governor Kean
and Congressman Hamilton said many of our leaders, many of our
agencies, many Members of Congress, and many American people were still
thinking about the threat and danger of our world in terms of a cold
war. Now we were facing a new danger, a danger which was not obvious to
us, and very few people were prescient enough to see it coming.
He talked about how these al-Qaida terrorists on 9/11, with a budget
of less than half a million dollars, managed to see weaknesses in our
system of security, that they could bring a 4-inch bladed knife on a
plane but not a 6-inch bladed knife. All they needed was a 4-inch
knife. They used box cutters. They came on planes and threatened the
crews and commandeered the aircraft. They knew the doorways to the
pilots' cabin were not reinforced or locked. They put all this together
into this hideous plan of theirs to crash airplanes into the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Well, the facts were there for us to see, and most of us missed it.
But this Commission said: We need to look beyond that. We need to look
to the next question: What should we be doing to make certain America
is safer? What should we have learned from 9/11? And they identified
several areas.
Congressman Hamilton said: We need more imagination. At one point he
said--I suppose halfway in jest--we should have been reading more Tom
Clancy novels and thinking about possibilities rather than just
analyzing the way things had always been. We needed to make sure we
developed imagination, developed a program that could respond to these
new threats, capabilities. And we needed to make certain we had done
everything we could to organize and manage our Government assets so
they could be used most effectively.
Our friends in the military understand that. It is the reason why the
United States of America has the best military in the world. About 10
years ago, Senator Goldwater and Congressman Nichols proposed some
dramatic reforms in the military and its management to try to stop this
competition among the branches in the military and bring them together,
and it has worked. This cooperative effort has made our military even
that much better today.
Well, this Commission report suggests we need to do the same thing
when it comes to the 15 different intelligence agencies across our
Government that are responsible for collecting and analyzing
information, to warn us of dangers ahead. Fifteen different agencies,
with many extremely talented people, some with the most sophisticated
technology in the world, but often dealing with obstacles and hurdles
between agencies that should not exist.
They gave us examples: that one agency would know of the 19
terrorists on 9/11 and that many of them were dangerous people, but it
was not communicated to the Federal Aviation Administration to keep
them off airplanes; that we would establish standards which said: If
you were identified by our Government as a dangerous person, we are
going to search your baggage, but we are not going to stop you from
getting on a plane. All of these things suggest we need to be smarter
and better and tougher in the future.
The proposals they came up with are going to be controversial. They
will be discussed at length by Members of Congress and a lot of others.
But they are on the right track.
First: to give to one person new authority over these intelligence
agencies. Senator Feinstein of California, my colleague, has one
approach. The Commission has another approach. But the idea is to vest
in that person more authority to get the job done.
Second: to force together all these different agencies, 15 different
agencies, into a counterterrorism network that works and cooperates.
That is something that is long overdue.
And then, third: to look at Congress, because we have a role in this,
too. Congress did not do as good a job as it could have done. We have a
Senate Intelligence Committee, of which I am proud to be a part, and
the House Intelligence Committee. But we need more oversight. We need
to be able to develop the skills, with staff and our own commitment, to
ask hard questions of these intelligence agencies, to ask what they are
doing, whether they are being imaginative enough, whether they are
cooperating with other agencies.
We need to ask hard questions about the appropriations for these
agencies. I happen to serve on the Intelligence Committee and on the
Appropriations Committee. So I sat through both hearings recently. I
will tell you what happened in our Appropriations Committee hearing. It
was a meeting of the Defense Subcommittee, in the closed room upstairs.
Then-Director of the CIA George Tenet presented a lengthy analysis of
the intelligence threats to the United States, about 150 pages, and
went through it. On about page 110, he started talking about the
appropriations. That is what we were there for. We were there to
discuss the money needed for our intelligence operations. But the first
110 out of 150 pages were all about the threats around the world and
how serious they might be.
When it came time for members of the Appropriations subcommittee to
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ask questions, they dwelled on the front part of Mr. Tenet's
presentation, the first 110 pages. They dwelled on questions related to
threats to the United States.
I am way down the line on that committee. By the time it came, an
hour and a half later, to my questions, I said to Director Tenet: May I
ask you a question about your appropriations? It was the first question
asked about that at that hearing. We spent less than 10 minutes asking
about the money that was to be spent and why.
My question to Director Tenet at the time was: What is the most
significant part of your budget? How has it changed from last year? And
why do we need it?
Well, that is an obvious question in any Appropriations hearing. But
we never got to it until extremely late in the hearing. We can do
better.
One of the suggestions from Congressman Hamilton is to look for a
joint Intelligence Committee between the House and the Senate. There is
only one viable analogy, when we did the same thing with atomic energy
40 years ago. No one in Congress today served at that time. It would be
interesting to see how it worked.
Another is to give to the Senate Intelligence Committee and House
Intelligence Committee authorizing-appropriating authority. For most
people following this debate, this sounds so arcane it does not sound
important, but it is: to give to one committee the authority to look at
the programs and how they are working and then look at the budget and
see how it matches up. That is important.
We need to expand the Senate Intelligence Committee staff. We do not
have enough people. How can we possibly keep track of 15 different
agencies, thousands of employees, the reaches of these agencies into
countries all around the world, in the heavens above and the Earth
below, and do this with literally a handful of staff people?
On the Senate Intelligence Committee, which I have served on for 4
years, I have one staff person whom I share with another Senator. That
is not good enough. Part-time staff will not do the job.
Again, let me say, the 9/11 Commission report is a great service to
America. The men and women who spent the time to make it a reality
deserve our thanks and praise. President Bush was right yesterday. This
is not a matter of blaming President Clinton or blaming President Bush.
We are called on, as Members of Congress, in a bipartisan fashion, to
think of ways to change the law to make America safer. I think that is
what people across America expect of us.
Let me tell you what we can do today in a bipartisan fashion. We are
hours away from leaving. We will be off, as I said, for the August
recess. We will leave behind this Senate Calendar of pending
legislation. On the back page of this calendar, the first item: the
Homeland Security appropriations bill. It has been on this calendar
since June 17--over a month now. We will leave town. We will leave
Washington for 6 weeks, without passing the Homeland Security
appropriations bill.
We should have done that a long time ago. We should be moving toward
a conference to make sure that when October 1 comes, the new fiscal
year, we are ready to move, we are ready to send the resources that are
necessary not only to the Department of Homeland Security but to State
and local first responders. That is a critical issue.
Let me give you an example. The President's budget request for
Homeland Security has a total appropriation of $32.6 billion. This is a
7.7-percent increase over last year. In the House of Representatives,
they appropriated $33.1 billion, slightly more than the Senate. But the
problem is within the appropriations request itself.
President Bush's budget request for the Department of Homeland
Security represents a dramatic cut of $1 billion in money for State and
local first responders. I have said it repeatedly, God forbid another
act of terrorism hits the United States. People in the streets of
America are not likely to look for the number of the White House or of
the Senate. They will dial 911. They will be looking for first
responders in their community.
When we cut money, as the President's budget does, for State and
local first responders, we are shortchanging our line of defense, our
hometown line of defense against terrorism.
When you make these cuts to these State and local units of
government, let me give you an example of some of what we in Illinois
and other places may find at risk.
We need the money that has been cut in the President's budget for
homeland security. We need it to specially train and equip local and
State teams, firefighters, policemen, medical responders. We need it
for interoperable communications.
I was surprised to learn a few years ago that in my State of
Illinois, with 12.5 million people, there is no single network for the
police and firefighters and ambulance services and hospital trauma
centers to communicate. They each have different radio systems,
different frequencies. What is wrong with this picture? We need them
all together. If something should happen in my State or in a
neighboring State, in South Carolina, wherever it happened to be, the
first responders in that State should have a common communications
system. When President Bush's budget cuts money for State and local
responders, it reduces the likelihood that we can develop those
systems. We need standardized training, methods to share intelligence,
and we need mutual aid plans.
Most people, when they think of dangers and threats in the State of
Illinois, automatically think of the great city of Chicago that may be
a target. I hope it never happens. We had an exercise 2 years ago to
try to simulate what might happen if we had such a tragedy. We quickly
learned that if something did happen, we would need a dramatic increase
of first responders, that the existing police and firefighters in
Chicago and most major cities were inadequate to the task. We would
almost have to double their numbers. That means reaching out to
surrounding communities in mutual aid, so if it is a situation in
downtown Chicago or in a suburban area, surrounding units would come to
their assistance. That is done today over and over again across
America. When the tornado hit Utica, IL, a few months ago, they had
fire departments and first responders from all over the region coming
together. But in order to make this mutual aid happen, we need money
for the State and local responders to develop it. That line in the
budget was cut by President Bush. It needs to be restored by Congress.
We need to do that before we go home.
Within this same Senate calendar, you will also find other provisions
of homeland security, such as a provision to increase the safety and
security of nuclear powerplants. We have six nuclear powerplants in
Illinois. These are important for us. They provide more than half of
our electricity. They need better protection. We need better
coordination of the fire and police and medical units around them.
We also have in our State--and it is probably the reason why we have
been as prosperous as we have throughout our history--so much
transportation, intermodal facilities. I visited at the old Joliet
arsenal out in the area where Shell is. All of these trainyards and
interstate highways--each one of them is vulnerable and needs to have
special protection. We are a significant source of our Nation's food
supply. We have many great universities.
Our State is not unique. Virtually every State can tell the same
story of areas where we need to focus our attention and resources. We
have these four bills on the calendar that would address some aspects.
One of the bills provides for greater security and defense of nuclear
power facilities. That is one that is obvious. We will leave the Senate
today without enacting that legislation and moving it to conference
committee.
We also have a provision for the chemical industry. Obviously, here
is a part of the private sector that is really vulnerable. Legislation
has been developed to make it safer, and it sits on the calendar while
we spend our time spinning our wheels on the Senate floor.
The same thing for our ports with the thousands of containers that
come in on a daily basis, and our rail facilities. Each one of these
areas has a special piece of legislation on this calendar that we have
failed to address as we leave to go on our August recess. I
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hope there won't come a moment in the next 6 weeks when we look back
and say: We really should have done our work. We should have spent less
time on the Senate floor embroiled in these political debates that spin
our wheels and go nowhere and more time doing things people care about.
Further Important Issues
I have devoted this period of time in my speech on the 9/11
Commission report and homeland security, but I will say that we are
remiss if we leave Washington without thinking of other issues that
have a direct impact on the families and businesses across America.
Some are extremely obvious. Pick a State. Pick a city. Go to any
business, large or small, and ask them their No. 1 headache today. It
is likely that most will respond: The cost of health insurance. It is a
cost which is crippling businesses, denying coverage to many people, it
continues to go up and out of sight, and reduces protection for the
people who are supposed to be helped.
What have we done in Washington in the Senate on the issue of the
affordability of quality health care and health insurance? Absolutely
nothing. We don't even talk about it. We act as if it is not a problem.
It is the No. 1 complaint of businesses and unions and families in
Illinois. How can this representative body, charged with changing the
laws and making life better in America, have a session that is void of
any meaningful debate on the cost and availability of quality health
care? We will have done that. We will adjourn without having seriously
considered it.
The second issue is the state of the economy, whether we are prepared
to help those industries which have struggled during the last
recession, particularly manufacturing, whether our trade laws are
adequately enforced, whether we are training and equipping the
workforce of the future.
The third issue is obvious to most: What are we going to do about
energy? Are we going to continue to be dependent for decades to come on
the Middle East, drawing us into the intrigue of Saudi Arabia and those
surrounding countries and all the other sources or are we going to move
toward energy independence? We had a debate on an energy bill that went
nowhere. Sadly, that bill didn't get very serious about the real
issues. Can you imagine a debate on energy policy in America that does
not even address the question of the fuel efficiency of America's cars
and trucks? That was our debate. We decided, because the special
interest groups, the manufacturers, and some of their workers didn't
want to get into energy efficiency, that we would consider an energy
bill that did not address the No. 1 area of consumption of energy in
America--the fuel efficiencies of cars and trucks.
We can do better. America can have a good, strong, growing economy
that is environmentally responsible and energy efficient. We have done
it before, and we can do it again. What is lacking is leadership, on
the floor of the Senate, in the House, and in the White House. That is
critically important.
Of course, the one issue I started with is the issue that I will end
with--America's security defense. As we speak on the Senate floor
today, just a few minutes away by car are Walter Reed Hospital and the
Bethesda Naval Medical Center. In the wards and rooms of those two
great medical institutions are men and women who served our country
valiantly in Iraq, many of whom suffered extremely serious injuries. I
have been out with colleagues to visit with them from time to time and
can't help but be impressed. They are the best and brightest in
America. They are young men and women who stood up, took the oath, put
on the uniform, and risked their lives for America. My heart goes out
to them every day and many just like them who are serving in Iraq and
Afghanistan and all around the world.
We have to be mindful of the fact that our situation in Iraq is a
long-term commitment. No matter what you might have thought when we
decided to invade Iraq--and I was one of 23 Senators who voted against
the use-of-force resolution at that time--we all come together now
believing that we need to provide every resource our men and women in
uniform need to finish their mission and come home safely. That is
something that should never be far from our minds, as well as the
question of what we are going to do to make America safer here at home.
We talk about a war on terrorism, but former Senator Bob Kerrey of
Nebraska at the 9/11 Commission meeting made an observation we should
not forget. He said to Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet, who appeared
before the Commission, that it really isn't a war on terrorism.
Terrorism is a tactic. The question is, Who is the enemy using the
terrorism tactic? That is the real question. What should we be doing
now to discover the plots and dangers across the world that might come
to threaten the United States but also to reach out to the next
generation in countries around the world to let them know we are a
compassionate, caring people with values they can share and that their
lives will be better for that.
It goes beyond military strength and intelligence. It goes into
diplomacy and leadership around the world so that this country, as we
may hear from time to time, is not only strong at home but respected
around the world.
We can do our part. We need to reach out in different areas where we
have not as much in the past. Yesterday, I spoke on the floor about the
situation in the Sudan. It is a situation where literally a thousand
people a day are losing their lives to what is a horrible genocide
occurring in that country. We need to do more.
The United States has spent over $100 million so far in food aid. We
need to be a political force, too, to push that Sudanese Government to
do what is right and to work with the United Nations so that we say to
the world: The United States is not interested in treasure or
territory; we are a caring people, a humanitarian people who care about
some of the poorest places on Earth, such as the Sudan.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Dole). The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WYDEN. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WYDEN. I also thank my friend from Tennessee, Senator Alexander.
I know he wants to speak as well. I will not be long.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
(The remarks of Mr. Wyden pertaining to the introduction of S. 2723
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills
and Joint Resolutions.'')
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair.
(The remarks of Mr. Alexander pertaining to the introduction of S.
2721 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
9/11 Commission Report
Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this morning at about 10 a.m. we were
given an opportunity to meet with Governor Kean and Lee Hamilton, the
cochair of the 9/11 Commission. That is the subject of the news today.
I know both men well. I know Governor Kean better. We served as
Governors at the same time. I have known a lot of Governors. He was
Governor of New Jersey at the time he served. My judgment was he was
the best Governor in the country. Those leadership characteristics
certainly showed themselves with this report.
Mr. Hamilton said he had been working actively with the directors of
the CIA in every administration since Lyndon Johnson. In a few words,
he gave us a very impressive presentation. I believe this is an
impressive report. It is an impressive committee. It has had impressive
leadership, and it certainly will command my attention as one Senator.
I intend to read it all the way through, and I intend to take seriously
the recommendations. I hope all Americans will take time to read it.
Terrorism, as they remind us, whether or not we like it, is the
greatest challenge today to our national security. It will be for our
lifetimes and perhaps much longer than that.
This is a hard matter for us to come to grips with in the United
States of
[[Page S8601]]
America, because it seems too remote from us. It seems as if it is on
television. That is hard to say after 9/11 when 3,000 people were
killed in an hour.
But as Mr. Hamilton gave his report to us, he emphasized four areas
of failure--not President Bush's failure, not President Clinton's
failure, but our failure. In fact, he said both Presidents were active
and busy and interested and working hard on the threat. But in these
four areas, we as a country failed.
First was the failure of imagination. We didn't imagine what could
have happened that day. Second was a failure of policy. A third was a
failure of capability. And fourth was a failure of management.
It made me think, if I may give a personal reflection. I have thought
about it many times because I have heard various people suggest, ``Why
didn't President Bush think of this?'' or ``Why didn't President
Clinton think of this?'' As the Chair knows, I was busy in the mid
1990s trying to occupy the same seat President Bush occupies today. I
was a candidate for President of the United States in 1994, 1995, and
1996. I thought back many times. It never once occurred to me a group
of people might fly airplanes into the World Trade Center and into the
Pentagon and try to fly them into the Capitol.
It never occurred to me. And it also never occurred to me that if I
should by some chance be successful in that race, that within a year
and a half of taking office I would suddenly be interrupted in a
meeting in Florida with some schoolchildren, and in a short period of
time I would have to decide whether to shoot down a plane load of U.S.
citizens on a commercial airline headed toward Washington, DC. It never
occurred to me.
I thought for a long time: Maybe that is just me. Maybe I am naive
and have not had enough experience, but I have asked other public
officials with a lot more experience. I did not ask the Presiding
Officer, whose husband was a candidate for our country's highest
office, if that occurred whether they might have to shoot down such an
airplane. Maybe with her background in transportation, she would have
thought of that, but I didn't. And I think most policymakers did not.
Obviously, many people in intelligence didn't.
What Mr. Hamilton was saying, and Governor Kean, is we are going to
have to imagine all of the things that could be done, some of us at
least, and think about them and take those things very seriously in the
future.
As fortunate as we are to live in this big country with remote, safe
places, far away from a lot of the fighting we see on television, an
unfortunate part of living in today's world is there are real threats
and we are going to have to imagine those things that even candidates
for the highest office in our land a few years ago would not have ever
imagined.
I salute the Commission for its work. I thank them for it. I like the
fact that it is unanimous, without a single dissent, without a
dissenting opinion. I thank them for their job.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Alexander). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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