[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 25290-25291]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            SENATE BUSINESS

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, if I may have the attention of the 
Senator from Nevada, I listened very carefully to what the Senator from 
Nevada said and was looking for something which the Senator from Nevada 
said that factually disputed my representation of what has happened 
here. I did not hear anything disputed about what I have said.
  The facts are, No. 1, that there is one bill outstanding to finish 
the work of the Senate; that is the appropriations bill on Labor, 
Health and Human Services, and Education.
  All of the other complaints which the Senator from Nevada made--the 
litany that has been repeated day after day after day about what is 
wrong with the Republican Senate--is all prologue.
  We are standing here today on a Saturday session--we are going to 
have a Sunday session and we are going to have a Monday session--and 
nothing is going to be done because the President wants to gain 
political advantage.
  Mr. REID. Will my friend yield for a question?
  Mr. SPECTER. No.
  He wants to gain political advantage by trying to make a 
representation that it is a do-nothing Congress.
  I will tell you what he is in effect doing. He is creating a do-
nothing Congress on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday because we can't do 
anything in Washington.
  But there is a lot we could do in our States where we have a lot of 
meetings and a lot of constituent business and a lot of legislative 
business.
  But it is going to be a do-nothing Congress today, tomorrow, and 
Monday because right now the appropriations bill on Labor, Health and 
Human Services, and Education has to be read, has to be printed, and 
has to be completed. So we are not doing anything.
  When the Senator from Nevada says that we ought to be working every 
day, I replied to the Senator from Nevada that he works every day. I 
have seen him work. He works every day. I would say to the Senator from 
Nevada and the other 98 Senators that I, too, work every day. So do the 
other 98 Senators.
  But we don't work at the direction of the President. We don't work 
for the President. We work for the American people. I work for 12 
million Pennsylvanians. I don't work for the President.
  The Constitution has separation of powers. When the Founding Fathers 
organized the Constitution, they put Congress in article I. They didn't 
get around to the executive branch until article II. But today the 
system is inverted.
  Since the Government was closed down in 1995 and our business has 
gone over into October and sometimes into November, there is no way for 
the Congress to do anything--at least we think so--but to yield to the 
President. That is why, as I have said earlier, we structured this bill 
on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education so it could be 
finished and be presented to the President in September.
  The mistake we made, quite candidly, was that we were negotiating 
with the President. We have undertaken in recent years 
nonconstitutional proceedings. The Constitution says that Congress will 
present a bill to the President after the Congress decides what the 
legislation should be, and then the President either signs it or vetoes 
it. But that has been turned around.
  Now we have members of the President's executive branch sitting in 
our legislative conferences. We ought not have that. We ought to 
present our bill and let the President sign it or veto it. This Senator 
tried mightily to get that bill presented to the President in 
September. Then if the President wanted to veto it, so be it, that is 
his constitutional prerogative. But he doesn't have a constitutional 
prerogative to sit in on the legislative process and the Congress 
accede to it. We ought to change that.
  I think if the American people had seen this bill, they would have 
preferred the congressional priorities to the President's priorities. 
The Congress gave the President 90 percent of what he wanted--more than 
90 percent. We have a bill which is $40.2 billion for education. The 
President's staff objected to $3.3 million, less than 10 percent of 
$40.2 billion. But we had some other priorities we wanted. We wanted 
special education. We also wanted money for the National Institutes of 
Health, where they have made enormous strides in conquering Parkinson's 
disease, Alzheimer's disease, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, heart 
ailments, and a whole range of medical problems.
  We had different priorities. I think if we had presented those 
priorities to the American people, the American people would have sided 
with the Congress. So September went by the board. There were 
negotiations in September. And I make the representation that it was 
the intransigence of the White House which resulted in those 
negotiations not moving forward. I make that representation because our 
priorities were as good as theirs or better.
  But having given the President 90 percent, he should have been 
willing to accommodate to the 10-percent change in our priorities 
without demanding to control every semicolon in the bill. I think we 
met him more than halfway when we gave him $2.7 billion for school 
construction and for teachers, but we said this ought to be local 
control if the local district needed something more.
  I was interested to hear what the Senator from Nevada had to say 
about the Las Vegas school system, its expanded school system and its 
need for schools. I can understand the need in Las Vegas for schools. 
However, I have a hard time understanding why Las Vegas schools ought 
to be paid for from Washington by the American taxpayers.
  If there is one area in the country which has a tax base to support 
their local needs, it is Las Vegas. Las Vegas is the gambling capital 
of the world, and I say that with respect. I have been there. I haven't 
gambled, but I have been there. They have an enormous tax base. If we 
are putting up $1.4 billion for school construction in the big bond 
issue for American cities such as Las Vegas where they can afford it 
themselves, I have grave questions as to

[[Page 25291]]

whether we ought to be doing that. But we did it.
  We presented it for the President. The President's men wouldn't come 
to a compromise. So what has happened is all the bills are finished 
except one bill. That bill can't be acted upon until Tuesday at the 
earliest. And the President is keeping us here to make a political 
point.
  My preference would be, as Senator Stevens said yesterday on the 
floor, he was considering amending the continuing resolution to provide 
for a 4-day continuing resolution which would carry us to Tuesday just 
to send to the President; then let the President sign it or veto it.
  The difficulty with that is that the Government of the United States, 
the executive and legislative branches, are not exactly held in high 
esteem by the American people. And my instinct is that if we got into 
that sort of a situation, a game of chicken, a game which resembles a 
childish food fight, the people of America would say a plague on both 
of your Houses. It reminds me just a little bit of the confrontation 
that Piazza had with the Yankee pitcher. Piazza decided not to confront 
the Yankee pitcher after he threw a bat at Piazza. I think Piazza did 
the right thing, although people criticized him for not confronting the 
Yankee pitcher.
  We are in a situation where the President is keeping us here so he 
can make a political point to try to have a democratically controlled 
Senate and a democratically controlled House and win the Presidency. We 
are not here doing the business of the people. We would be doing the 
business of the people if we attended our regular schedules and were 
free to do constructive work instead of sit around here on Saturday, 
Sunday, and Monday.
  I do believe, Mr. President--speaking to the President of the Senate, 
Senator Bennett, who is presiding--we have been intimidated. The 
President is doing this as a form of punishment, a form of humiliation. 
We have a lot of very delicate relationships with the executive branch. 
It has to linger in the background among some minds as to just what the 
executive branch is doing, whether they are operating in good faith.
  I say bluntly, keeping the Congress in session without any purpose is 
the worst of bad faith. We will do our job notwithstanding the 
executive branch and the President's men and women exercising the worst 
of bad faith, but we won't forget about it.
  I yield the floor, and I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennett). The Senator from Nevada.

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