[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 21332-21336]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



 TREASURY AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2002--CONFERENCE 
                                 REPORT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the conference 
report will be stated.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The committee of conference on the disagreeing votes of the 
     two Houses on the amendment of the Senate to the bill (H.R. 
     2590) making appropriations for the Treasury Department, the 
     United States Postal Service, the Executive Office of the 
     President, and certain Independent Agencies, for the fiscal 
     year ending September 30, 2002, and for other purposes, 
     having met, after full and free conference, have agreed to 
     recommend and do recommend to the respective Houses this 
     report, signed by all of the conferees on the part of both 
     Houses.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will proceed to consideration of 
the conference report.
  (The conference report is printed in the House proceedings of the 
Record of Friday, October 26, 2001.)
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to take this opportunity to talk 
about the conference report we have now completed with the House of 
Representatives. It has been a delight and pleasure to work with 
Senator Campbell. I very much appreciate his work and the work of 
Patricia Raymond and Lula Edwards, and my staff: Chip Walgren and Matt 
King and Nicole Rutberg. They have been exceedingly helpful in putting 
together a very substantial conference report on a lot of subjects.
  Let me describe some of these issues. Some bills we consider when we 
have the conference report in front of the Senate consist primarily of 
salaries and expenses for a number of agencies in the Federal 
Government. About 40 percent of the Federal law enforcement functions 
are funded in this appropriations bill: The Customs Service; the Bureau 
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; the Secret Service; the Financial 
Crimes Enforcement Network; and other law enforcement agencies, 
including the IRS criminal investigation division, as well as the 
Postal Inspection Service, which a lot of people don't think much 
about--they don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, but especially 
in recent weeks they played an important role in law enforcement in our 
Federal Government.
  These agencies work tirelessly, often below the radar, and work to 
ensure our Nation's safety. We appreciate the work they do. We had to 
work under certain fiscal constraints in this subcommittee, as we do in 
all the appropriations subcommittees. This conference report represents 
a compromise on a good number of issues. Let me mention a couple of 
things on which we worked and in which I especially was interested.
  We added in this conference report $28.1 million for a new Senate-
initiated northern border initiative to hire additional Customs Service 
inspectors, special agents, and canine teams to enforce trade laws at 
our borders. In light of the tragic events of September 11, that is 
merely a downpayment on a much larger requirement on the northern 
border. It is quite clear this country will not achieve the kind of 
security it wants and needs unless it is able to provide for secure 
borders. That doesn't mean shutting off our borders, walling up our 
borders. It simply means providing security on our borders in order to 
allow those who are guests of this country to come in, in order to 
allow freight and commerce to move back and forth across the borders 
but at the same time have the capability to prevent those who are 
terrorists, known or suspected terrorists, from coming into this 
country.
  The northern border has been like Swiss cheese in terms of 
enforcement. We have spent a great deal of time and effort moving 
resources, inspectors, and agents to the southern border. For many 
years, we have been worried

[[Page 21333]]

about immigration and drugs coming across the southern border into this 
country. We have spent very little time, unfortunately, on the northern 
border. There are 128 border crossings, 24 of which are full time, 24-
hour crossings, many of which on this 4,000-mile northern border are 
simply a crossing where people are able to come across the U.S.-
Canadian border; then at 10 o'clock at night, when the border crossing 
closes, they put an orange security cone out and that becomes the 
security gate for the next 8 hours. But a cone cannot talk, walk, 
shoot, or tell a terrorist from a tow truck. It is not secure. We must 
do something to provide for secure borders at all of the country's 
borders, including the northern borders.
  To those who say there is not much activity on the northern border, 
they are correct. But at Port Angeles, a port on the northern border, 
some while ago a terrorist was apprehended. That terrorist was the so-
called millennium bomber who would have caused substantial explosives 
and bombs to be unleashed at the turn of the millennium and would have 
undoubtedly killed many American citizens. Good border work by Customs 
agents and others at Port Angeles averted that terrorist attack. We did 
add money for northern border initiatives to hire Customs Service 
inspectors, agents, and canine teams. That is a step in the right 
direction.
  I have also included money in this appropriations bill, $10 million, 
for the Customs Service to add to their ability to combat child labor 
laws and combat the child labor practices that occur around the world. 
What we are very concerned about is in some parts of the world there 
are people who use young children in virtually forced labor situations 
to produce their products, and they ship those products to this country 
to be put on the shelves of our stores in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles 
and Phoenix and Fargo. But that is not fair trade. Nor is it what we 
want to happen to children of the world. We do not want forced labor 
with children being exploited. We don't want the products of forced 
labor and child labor to be sent to the store shelves in our country. 
So the investigation of forced child labor in much of the world is 
something to which we need to pay a great deal of attention. I added 
$10 million for the Customs Service for that purpose.
  If I might in a graphic way describe one set of circumstances that 
was described to us in a hearing some while ago on these issues, they 
talked about young children, 8, 10, 12 years old making carpets in 
forced labor situations in some parts of the world. In the process of 
making carpets, at least according to some testimony, some firms were 
taking these young children, using gunpowder on the tips of their 
fingers, and lighting the gunpowder to cause it to explode. That 
explosion and the resulting burns and scarring on the tips of 
children's fingers meant those children, when they would stick 
themselves with needles as they made the rugs, would have no pain 
because their fingertips were full of scars.
  That is the sort of thing that is going on around the world and it is 
the sort of thing we need to find a way to stop. One way to stop it is 
not allow the product of that kind of forced child labor and inhumane 
treatment to come into this country. That is why I put an additional 
$10 million in this conference report to combat this situation.
  Another small amount of money that we have included in this 
conference report, I included it on the Senate side, is $500,000 
designed to deal with an issue that caused me great concern with 
respect to the Internal Revenue Service. The Internal Revenue Service 
had an inspection by the inspector general of its taxpayer assistance 
program. The inspector general created questions that were to be asked 
of the Internal Revenue Service taxpayer assistance areas and sent 
Federal employees around with these questions to get help from the IRS. 
Guess what. They went all over the country to many locations to get 
help from the IRS. They found that 72 percent of the time the Internal 
Revenue Service gave them either the wrong answer, incomplete, or no 
answers to the questions they had about how to fulfill their tax 
responsibilities. Just imagine that 72 percent of the time the 
questions asked of tax experts elicited the wrong answers.
  I read the inspector general's report and was so incensed by it I 
called the Internal Revenue Service Commissioner and I said: I know you 
are relatively new on the job and trying to do things differently; I 
deeply admire your work. But I want to tell you what I want to do. I 
want to have the inspector general do this same thing over and over 
again. They are going to do it once every second month. They will give 
six reports to Congress. I want to see improvement in those six 
reports.
  It is unforgivable that people who show up at the IRS asking for tax 
help get the wrong answer or no answer or an incomplete answer 72 
percent of the time. If the Internal Revenue Service can't do it, how 
on Earth can you expect the American people to comply with their tax 
responsibilities?
  We are going to get six reports in the next 12 months. I intend to 
come to the Chamber every time we get a report and disclose where there 
is progress with respect to providing answers and taxpayer assistance 
to the American people.
  It is a small issue in this bill. It is not a great deal of money, 
but it is a big issue for me. We cannot have a tax system for which you 
do not have taxpayer assistance. I want to put the ``service'' back in 
the words ``Internal Revenue Service.'' I want the American people to 
know where they can get answers, and get the right answers.
  Let me mention a couple of additional issues. We direct the General 
Services Administration, GSA, to initiate a pilot project to site what 
are called automatic external defib-
rillators, AEDs. If anyone has seen them, they look a little like a 
briefcase, not much bigger than a briefcase. We would put them in 
Federal buildings on a pilot project and provide training in their use 
to more effectively save lives.
  The defibrillators are to be used when someone suffers a cardiac 
arrest. Virtually anyone can use these defibrillators. I was at a 
demonstration where they showed how to use a defibrillator. 
Defibrillators are briefcase-sized, relatively inexpensive, and they 
save lives. They do it every day all across this country, and we ought 
to have them in every Federal building. We asked the GSA to do a pilot 
project that will save lives as we begin to put these in all Federal 
buildings.
  I mentioned several items that are in the conference report that we 
will ultimately consider. We fund the President's request of $180 
million in continued funding for the Office of National Drug Control 
Policy's Youth Antidrug Media Campaign, which has been ongoing now for 
some years. We add $20 million to the High Intensity Drug Trafficking 
Area Program, for a total of $226 million. We add $10 million to the 
Drug Free Communities Act, for a total of $50.6 million.
  I am not going to go down the list with all these issues. I will have 
some printed in the Record.
  This is a good report. Senator Campbell and I and our colleagues on 
the House side worked hard to reach a compromise that makes sense.
  I want to make a special point of an item that is not in this 
conference report that really should be. It deals with an issue I have 
been concerned with for a while. I will explain why it is not in the 
conference report. It is the issue of travel in Cuba.
  That sounds like a strange subject for an appropriations bill. We 
have had, as you know, a 40-year embargo with respect to the country of 
Cuba, an embargo on trade and travel. It has been my belief for some 
long while that it is not a moral policy for our country to use food 
and medicine as a weapon and we ought not include that in any embargo.
  At the very least, we ought to say the embargo against Cuba, which in 
my judgment has been a failure now for four decades--Fidel Castro has 
outlived all of those Presidents--clearly is a failure. But at the very 
least, we ought not continue to use food as a weapon. We ought to be 
able to send food and

[[Page 21334]]

medicine to Cuba or sell food and medicine to Cuba. The Canadians and 
Europeans can. Everyone else can. We cannot. I have been pushing to 
change that.
  We have been successful twice in the Senate by a vote of 70 votes in 
favor of changing it. In three separate cases we have been tripped by 
the House of Representatives, whose leaders in the first instance 
actually just adjourned the conference and never came back together 
because they would have lost the vote if they had taken the vote, and 
that is the way they hijacked this policy. In the second and the third 
year that we had some progress on this issue, they changed the language 
so in fact they said you could sell food to Cuba but in fact you could 
not. You could not even get private financing in this country to sell 
food to Cuba. That is how absurd it was, despite the fact that they 
boasted of the progress.
  In addition to that, last year they decided not only will we say you 
can sell food to Cuba but you cannot do it even with private financing, 
which is a byzantine bit of logic in my judgment, but we will also 
codify the regulations which restrict travel in Cuba. They were 
previously by regulation made effective. Now we will codify them, which 
actually tightens them. In fact, it was moving backward rather than 
forward with respect to our policy.
  That is a long way of describing something that happened that some 
months ago I thought was totally absurd. I read in the paper that the 
U.S. Treasury Department began levying fines against the American 
people for traveling in Cuba. I admit that current law prohibits travel 
in Cuba.
  Let me describe to you a fine, because I talked to this woman. She is 
a woman from Illinois. I will just describe one.
  A retired woman from the State of Illinois responded to an 
advertisement in a cycling magazine that a Canadian cycling group was 
taking a bicycle tour of Cuba. She thought, well, that sounded like 
fun. She sent a coupon, signed up, went to Cuba, and bicycled for 8 
days in Cuba with a bicycle tour group out of Canada.
  Eighteen months later, this retired American citizen from Illinois 
received a fine from the United States Treasury Department of $9,600 
for traveling in Cuba.
  Where did that come from? The Office of Foreign Asset Control--OFAC, 
at the Treasury Department. OFAC is supposed to be chasing terrorists. 
In early August of this year, well before September 11--in early August 
of this year, I wrote to the Treasury Department to say, in effect: How 
dare you spend your time and resources chasing a little old retired 
lady from Illinois.
  I can describe others as well. The fines ranged from $9,500 to 
$55,000 for those who traveled in Cuba. How dare you spend your time 
doing that when we expect you to be using these resources to track 
terrorists and track the money laundering and money movement to 
apprehend terrorists.
  Of course, a month later we discovered what terrorists mean to this 
country and the tragic consequences of terrorist acts that are 
committed in this country.
  This conference report I had hoped would deal with something that the 
House of Representatives put in their bill. They said no money shall be 
expended by the Treasury Department for enforcing the travel ban with 
respect to the country of Cuba. I went to conference with the House of 
Representatives, intending to recede to the House provision. But before 
I could do that, the House conferees decided to abandon their own 
position. So I could not recede to the position they no longer held.
  It only describes once again that no matter what the circumstances 
are on the issue of policy with respect to Cuba, the absurd proposition 
that this country ought to use food and drugs as a weapon, yes, even 
with Cuba in the pursuit of this foolish embargo that has been a 40-
year failure--the absurd proposition that we ought to have the Treasury 
Department chasing retired schoolteachers from Illinois who join a 
bicycle tour of Cuba and slap a $9,600 fine on them 18 months after 
they join a Canadian bicycle tour and bike ride 8 days in Cuba--the 
absurdity of that just leaves me almost speechless. Yet in the 
Department of the Treasury, in an office called OFAC, Office of Foreign 
Asset Control, they are spending money tracking people who might have 
traveled to Cuba.
  I called and talked to the lady from Illinois. She had no idea she 
was violating the law. What she was doing was riding a bicycle.
  She was retired and wanted to take a bicycle trip. And she did, with 
a Canadian cycling company, and then was slapped with a fine of $9,600.
  I didn't mean to go on at great length about it, except to say this 
subcommittee bill from both the House and Senate should have contained 
language straightening out both of these issues. One is the absurd 
proposition that we continue to use food and drugs as a weapon, which 
in my judgment is not a moral policy. It doesn't matter what country it 
is directed at; food ought not be used as a weapon.
  Second, we ought not fine American citizens because of restrictions 
on travel, as has been enforced here with respect to Cuba. They can 
travel in China. They can travel in North Korea. They can travel in 
every part of the world, except somehow, if they join a bicycle tour of 
Cuba, something awful is going to happen to them. That is not the best 
of what America has to offer in terms of foreign policy or public 
policy.
  As I indicated when I started, this conference report will, I 
believe, be called up in a bit. I expect my colleague, Senator 
Campbell, to come to the floor. He has a few things to say. I think 
following that, whenever it is ready, it is going to require a recorded 
vote because it did not have a recorded vote when it left the Senate. 
As is the case with most of these appropriations bills, it has a 
recorded vote when it leaves this body, and we have a recorded vote on 
the conference report. In this case, this conference report is going to 
require a recorded vote this afternoon.
  I encourage my colleagues to be supportive of it. I think it is a 
good compromise. It makes good, and it is an important investment, 
especially in the area of law enforcement. Forty percent of law 
enforcement in the Federal Government is funded in this particular 
appropriations conference.
  I want to make one other point.
  I want to say to all of those who are involved in Federal law 
enforcement--not just Federal law enforcement, but these comments apply 
to everyone in this country who spends time enforcing our Nation's 
laws, especially now with respect to terrorist acts--that this country 
is enormously proud of the dedication and commitment of law enforcement 
men and women all across this country.
  I walk in the front door of this Capitol in the morning, and I see 
law enforcement people standing there. I stop to talk to them. I 
understand they have been working in most cases 12 hours a day 6 days a 
week. And they have been doing that now for 2 months. There is no end 
in sight. It is not just these folks who work with us--the wonderful 
men and women in the Capitol Police Force.
  My colleague from Illinois is on the floor. I think he has the 
suggestion and idea about a more formal thank you, saying to them that 
we are really proud of what they do: What you do is critically 
important. And we ought to do that every day in every way.
  Again, it is not just them; it is the law enforcement components of 
the Secret Service, the Customs Service, postal inspectors, and so many 
other areas of the Federal Government who are also working 12 hours a 
day 6 days a week at this point.
  I think it is important as we consider this conference report on 
behalf of the Congress to say to them: Your commitment and your service 
to our country is not unnoticed. We deeply appreciate what you do for 
America during very difficult times.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Treasury-
general government conference report that Chairman Dorgan has brought 
to this body

[[Page 21335]]

for final passage. I thank him, once again, for the successful 
completion of the fiscal year 2002 appropriations process. Let me 
briefly mention some of the important parts of this bill.
  We are probably a month or more late in getting to the floor this 
conference report. But we have worked very hard on it. This bill 
provides much-needed resources for the law enforcement agencies under 
the jurisdiction of the Department of the Treasury.
  We have been able to provide $300 million for the Customs' ACE 
computer project. While this is more than twice the amount requested, 
it is still not enough to keep this program on the original schedule.
  The House agreed to provide an additional $20 million for the HIDTA 
Program--High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program--which has been 
so successful. However, we were unable to maintain any specific 
earmarks which were in the Senate bill. As a result, all the HIDTA 
programs must provide the necessary justifications for additional 
funding before growing or opening new ones.
  The conferees provided $180 million for the antidrug media campaign, 
as Senator Dorgan mentioned, which includes $5 million to target the 
new drug of choice with some of our young people, unfortunately, called 
ecstasy. We were also able to fully fund grants for the Gang Resistance 
Education and Training Program, commonly called the GREAT Program.
  While we were not able to grant all of our Members' requests, I think 
we came very close to it. There is a 4.6-percent general salary 
adjustment for Federal employees starting in January of 2002, and we 
provided the agencies under our jurisdiction with the funding necessary 
for this additional 1-percent salary adjustment.
  Funds have been provided for courthouse construction, site 
acquisition, and design projects, as well as needed repairs and 
alterations. Plus we were able to provide funds for a much-needed 
National Archives southeastern regional facility, which will be of 
value to constituents of several of our colleagues.
  This is a good bill, and I urge colleagues to vote for it on final 
passage.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I rise to offer for the record the Budget 
Committee's official scoring for the conference report to H.R. 2590, 
the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 
2002.
  The conference report provides $17.069 billion in discretionary 
budget authority, which will result in new outlays in 2002 of $12.601 
billion. When outlays from prior-year budget authority are taken into 
account, discretionary outlays for the Senate bill total $16.256 
billion in 2002. The conference report is within the subcommittee's 
section 302(b) allocation for budget authority and outlays. It does not 
include any emergency designations.
  We are already 1 month into the new fiscal year and the Senate is 
just now considering its third appropriations conference report. Ten 
more remain. It is important, therefore, that the Senate pass this 
report, which provides important resources to the Department of the 
Treasury, including its law enforcement bureaus, as well as to the 
Postal Service, General Services Administration, Office of Personnel 
Management and other agencies, as quickly as possible. I commend 
Senators Dorgan and Campbell for their bipartisan work on this bill and 
urge the Congress to expeditiously complete the remaining 10 bills to 
prevent any disruptions for Federal agencies or for the American public 
that depends on their programs and services.
  I ask unanimous consent that a table displaying the budget committee 
scoring of this bill be inserted in the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   H.R. 2590, CONFERENCE REPORT TO THE TREASURY AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT
    APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2002, SPENDING COMPARISONS-CONFERENCE REPORT
                        [In millions of dollars]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     General
                                     purpose     Mandatory      Total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conference report:
  Budget Authority...............       17,069       15,478       32,547
  Outlays........................       16,256       15,475       31,731
Senate 302(b) allocation: \1\
  Budget Authority...............       17,069       15,478       32,547
  Outlays........................       16,256       15,475       31,731
President's request:
  Budget Authority...............       16,614       15,478       32,092
  Outlays........................       15,974       15,475       31,449
House-passed:
  Budget Authority...............       17,022       15,478       32,500
  Outlays........................       16,261       15,475       31,736
Senate-passed:
  Budget Authority...............       17,118       15,478       32,596
  Outlays........................       16,182       15,475       31,657  CONFERENCE REPORT COMPARED TO:
Senate 302(b) allocation: \1\
  Budget Authority...............            0            0            0
  Outlays........................            0            0            0
President's request:
  Budget Authority...............          455            0          455
  Outlays........................          282            0          282
House-passed:
  Budget Authority...............           47            0           47
  Outlays........................           -5            0           -5
Senate-passed:
  Budget Authority...............          -49            0          -49
  Outlays........................           74            0           74
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ For enforcement purposes, the budget committee compares the
  conference report to the Senate 302(b) allocation.Notes.--Details may not add to totals due to rounding. Totals adjusted
  for consistency with scorekeeping conventions.

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank the conferees of this bill for 
their hard work in completing the conference report for this 
legislation. The report provides Federal funding for numerous vital 
programs in the Treasury Department and the General Government. 
However, once again, I find myself in the unpleasant position of 
speaking before my colleagues about parochial projects in another 
conference report.
  This conference report spends at a level 6.3 percent higher than the 
level enacted in fiscal year 2001. In real dollars, this is $458 
million in additional spending above the amount requested by the 
President, and a $1.9 billion increase in spending from last year. I 
must remind my colleagues that the Administration has urged us to 
maintain our fiscal discipline to ensure that we will continue to have 
adequate funds to prosecute our war against terrorism, to aid those in 
need, and to cover other related costs.
  In this bill, I have identified $217 million in earmarks, which is 
less than the cost of the earmarks in the bill passed last year, which 
totaled $356 million. Therefore, I applaud the efforts of the conferees 
in keeping parochial spending to a minimum in this bill but more must 
be done.
  While the amounts associated with each individual earmark may not 
seem extravagant, taken together, they represent a serious diversion of 
taxpayers' hard-earned dollars at the expense of numerous programs that 
have undergone the appropriate merit-based selection process. It is my 
view that the people who run these programs should be the ones who 
decide how best to spend the appropriated funds. After all, they know 
what their most pressing needs are.
  For example, under funding for the Department of Treasury, some 
examples of earmarks include: $2,000,000 as a grant to Florida 
International University for transfer pricing research; $3,500,000 for 
retrofitting and upgrades of the National Center Tracing Center 
Facility in Martinsburg, West Virginia; and $750,000 for the Center for 
Agriculture Policy and Trade Studies located at North Dakota State 
University.
  Under funding for the General Government, some of the earmarks 
include: $1,000,000 for the Native American Digital Telehealth Project 
and the Upper Great Plains Native American Telehealth Program at the 
University of North Dakota; $3,000,000 to help purchase land and 
facilitate the moving of the Odd Fellows Hall to provide for 
construction of a new courthouse in Salt Lake City, Utah; and 
$1,700,000 for a grant to the Oklahoma Centennial Commission.
  There are more projects on the list that I have compiled, which will 
be available on my Senate Website.
  In closing, I urge my colleagues to curb our habit of directing hard-
earned taxpayer dollars to locality-specific special interests.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. CAMPBELL. 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.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page 21336]]

  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I yield back the time on the Treasury-
Postal appropriations bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.

                          ____________________