[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 21]
[Senate]
[Pages 30934-30935]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



   FUNDING FOR DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND 
                               EDUCATION

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to comment on 
the pending appropriations bill which includes funding for the three 
Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, and Labor, the 
subcommittee which I chair for the Appropriations Committee.
  The legislative process has proceeded to this point in an 
extraordinary way. It had been my hope and plan that the bill for my 
subcommittee would have been taken up by the Congress, passed, and 
presented to the President in advance of the close of the fiscal year, 
September 30, but that has not occurred.
  It had been my hope and plan to present it to the President before 
the end of the fiscal year so he could have signed it or vetoed it and, 
had he chosen to veto it, there could have been a public debate on the 
priorities in the bill and also the key point of having local control 
on the decision of $1.3 billion, which has been allocated for 
additional teachers for the reduction of classroom size.
  Unfortunately, it has been the practice in the Congress in recent 
years to pass the bills after the close of the fiscal year and in a 
context where we are going to yield to the President's wishes, subject 
to a veto, because it may result in the closing down of the Government. 
Winston Churchill had it right when he said that democracy is a 
terrible form of government except compared to everything else. I think 
that would apply to representative democracy as well. Somehow we muddle 
through. We are in the final stage of the muddling process now.
  To describe the process to people who are not familiar with the 
inside of the Senate is very challenging. I was discussing with my son 
last night the plan to have the Senate convene at 12:01 a.m., November 
20, Saturday morning, to take up a cloture motion on the appropriations 
bill, and then to vote at 1:01 a.m. It was necessary to have the 
conversation because I had to defer lunch with my 4-year-old 
granddaughter, Perri, and picking up my 6-year-old granddaughter, 
Silvi, from school, all of which is fine, but there has to be some 
reason for that.
  We have Senators exercising their rights which, to be repetitious, 
they have a right to do, such as to have bills read for several hours, 
which does not change the ultimate outcome, or to have cloture votes 
with these extraordinary scheduling problems. I learned a long time ago 
that the Senate is a lot smarter than I am and the rules of the Senate 
are in place for a purpose.
  As one of our distinguished colleagues said yesterday in a closed 
caucus, Senators ought not be discouraged from exercising their rights 
because when they take to the floor and debate, have a filibuster, and 
have extended discussions for the purpose of acquainting the country 
with what is going on, perhaps it may arouse some public reaction to 
perhaps change what the Senate might be doing.
  So, in essence, I am delighted to see the Senate rules observed and 
rights to Senators activated. For whatever delay there is, so be it. It 
is my hope that next year the appropriations bill for my subcommittee 
on the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education 
will be completed at an early date. I have talked to our distinguished 
majority leader, Senator Lott, and I have had some encouragement that 
my bill may be taken up first next year, so that priorities can be 
established in regular course by the subcommittee, the full committee, 
and the Senate--the same on the House side--then conferenced and 
presented to the President for his signature or for his veto. If he 
chooses to veto the bill, so be it.
  The bill which was voted out of the Senate by a vote of 73-25 had 
been very carefully crafted on a bipartisan basis with my distinguished 
colleague from Iowa, Senator Tom Harkin. I learned a long time ago that 
if you want to get anything done in Washington in the Senate and the 
Congress, it has to be bipartisan. Senator Harkin and I worked through 
our bill. We had a very attractive bill. We had emphasized $300 million 
more than the President's figure on education, establishing the 
priorities which we thought were in order.
  We had provided very substantial increases to the National Institutes 
of Health because of the great work done there in looking for cures and 
being on the verge of cures for very many major maladies. We are within 
5 years striking distance, so the experts say, on Parkinson's and have 
made great progress on Alzheimer's and heart disease and cancer--
prostate cancer, breast cancer and cervical cancer.
  We picked a figure of $93.7 billion because we thought that would 
attract very substantial bipartisan support, that being $300 million 
higher in education than the President had, that it would qualify for a 
President's signature.
  Regrettably, the House of Representatives did not pass the bill. In 
conference, the bill was substantially altered, being joined with the 
bill for the District of Columbia. It had an across-the-board cut of 
almost 1 percent. The bill was ultimately vetoed. Then it came back for 
reconsideration.
  On reconsideration, the White House administration wanted to add some 
$2.3 billion more. I knew that would cause a major strain on the 
Republican side of the aisle, and there was a great deal of pressure to 
yield to the President because of the bad experience we had in December 
1995 and early 1996 when the Government was closed down and the 
Republican-controlled Congress took the blame. The result is that the 
Congress is now gun shy to fight with the President, gun shy because, 
with his threatened veto, the Congress has a strong tendency to back 
down, perhaps not on every point--the family planning issue and the 
U.N. dues was a notable exception--but backing down on almost every 
point. The result has been that we are developing an imperial 
presidency because we have a gun-shy

[[Page 30935]]

or timid Congress. That is very unfortunate.
  The issue came into sharp focus on the matter of classroom size 
reduction and additional teachers, with the President's program to add 
100,000 teachers. I think it is a very good program. I support it. But 
I do not support it if the local school district says that there are 
other needs at the local level which are more important to the school 
district than additional teachers and classroom size.
  When we crafted our bill, we said we would acknowledge the 
President's ideas as the first priority, but if the local school 
district made a decision after a fact finding study that they wanted to 
use the money for something else, then let them use the money for 
something else. We held tough to that position. Without going into all 
the details, finally we were undercut. The rug was pulled out, and 
there was a concession to the President on that point, with a bone 
being thrown to the Congress so that 25 percent could be used for 
teacher training. But that is not the kind of flexibility that is best 
public policy. The best public policy is, OK, class size reduction and 
additional teachers are important and they are the first priority, but 
if a local school district says our local needs are different, then 
let's not put them in a Washington, DC, bureaucratic straitjacket. That 
is the result of what has happened.
  It is my hope that next year we can take this bill up early. This 
issue will still be with us next year and President Clinton will still 
be with us next year. When Senator Harkin and I and other Republicans 
and Democrats, on a bipartisan basis, establish our priorities, let's 
legislate. As the Constitution says, the power of the purse is with the 
Congress--the appropriation power--so let us present the bill to the 
President. If he vetoes it, let's take the case to the public. I think 
we can certainly win on the issue of local control versus the 
Washington bureaucratic straitjacket. To do that, the bill has to be 
presented to the President before the end of the fiscal year. It has to 
be presented to the President in September--hopefully early September. 
That is the plan for next year.
  I would like to see the process modified where we do not have the 
White House officials in the legislative process as part of the 
negotiations. The Constitution says that Congress submits a bill to the 
President and he signs it or vetoes it. But that system has been 
aborted, observed in the breach more often than in the rule by having 
OMB officials, the Director of OMB, sitting down with the appropriators 
to decide what the President will accept before the Congress makes a 
decision and submits a bill to the President. That is not the 
constitutional way and we ought to change it.
  So against that backdrop with substantial concerns about what has 
been done, I do intend to vote for this appropriations package. I do so 
because the good points outweigh the bad points, perhaps close, but the 
benefits do outweigh the negatives. We come through in this bill with 
an increase in the National Institutes of Health funding by $2.3 
billion, for a total of $17.9 billion. Senator Harkin and I have taken 
the lead with an increase, 2 years ago, of almost $1 billion, last year 
$2 billion, and this year $2.3 billion. Some objections have been 
lodged, but nobody with sufficient bravado to try to take it out of the 
bill.
  Enormous advances have been made on dreaded diseases. They are within 
5 years of curing Parkinson's, so say the experts, with major research 
advances in Alzheimer's, cancer, heart ailments, and a whole range of 
various other ailments. With the Federal budget of $1.8 trillion, $17.9 
billion is not chopped liver, but it is not too much.
  This bill also has an increase in special education by $913 million, 
bringing the total to more than $6 billion on what is essentially a 
Federal obligation, and it frees State and local funds for other 
purposes. The Head Start increase is $608 million, to more than $5.2 
billion. Afterschool learning centers more than doubled for a total of 
$453 million. The substance abuse and mental health program increases 
by $163 million over fiscal year 1999, for more than $2.6 billion. AIDS 
funding increased by $185 million over last year to almost $1.6 
billion. There is first-time funding of $75 million for the Ricky Ray 
Hemophilia Act, which are appropriations that are long past due.
  We worked out an accommodation on the issue of organ allocation and, 
regrettably, at the last minute on a backdoor arrangement, a different 
provision has been added to another bill that will be voted upon by the 
Congress. Organ allocation has been very contentious. Last year we 
agreed, under considerable reluctance, to a 1-year deferral. The 
Secretary of Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala, promulgated 
regulations on October 1, and then came the cry for an additional 
delay. Some wanted it at 90 days.
  Finally, in a rather unusual way in my capacity as chairman of the 
conference, I invited Secretary Shalala to come to the conference on 
Wednesday, November 10. She was on her way home. We reached her in her 
car and she turned around from Georgetown and headed back to Capitol 
Hill. For more than an hour and a half we had a meeting with the House 
chairman, Bill Young, who very much wanted a 90-day delay and the 
ranking Democrat on Appropriations, Congressman Obey from Wisconsin, 
who also argued strongly for a delay. I urged that we not have the 
delay, as did Congressman John Porter, chairman of the House 
subcommittee. Finally, we hammered out an agreement for 42 days--21 
days for additional comments and 21 more days for a response to those 
comments.
  I had thought that closed the matter out and reported back to the 
leadership. The general rule is to leave these issues with the 
subcommittee chairmen, and we have hammered it out. I found out late 
yesterday that there is another bill with a 90-day extension. It is not 
possible to put a hold on the other measure, which is a conference 
report. There could be some delay, such as a reading of the bill, a 
vote for cloture, but the result would be the same.
  Let me say this to those who have increased the delay: It increases 
our tenacity to get these regulations into effect. There is some 
thinking that there will be an authorization bill that is going to 
validate the regulations. I am not one for predictions, but I am 
prepared to make one here. There won't be 60 votes for cloture. If that 
should be wrong, there certainly won't be 67 votes to override a 
Presidential veto. George Shultz, when he was Secretary of State, once 
made a prophetic comment that ``nothing is ever settled in 
Washington.'' That very thing is true in Washington; he hit that right 
on the head. Nothing is ever settled in Washington. I thought the delay 
on the organ transplant issue had been resolved, but it wasn't settled. 
George Shultz may be wrong; we may settle it with finality when this 
90-day period expires.
  In summary, the Congress will finally get the job done on this 
appropriations bill and finally move ahead on the bill from my 
subcommittee on funding the Departments of Health and Human Services 
and Labor and Education. I have given a brief thumbnail description as 
to what the pluses and minuses are. I will vote for it because the 
advantages outweigh the disadvantages. But it is my hope that we will 
learn from the experiences this year and do a much better job next 
year.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  Mr. President, 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. SHELBY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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