[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 19030-19053]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 21ST CENTURY DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE APPROPRIATIONS AUTHORIZATION ACT--
                           CONFERENCE REPORT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of the conference report accompanying H.R. 2215, 
which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The conference report to accompany H.R. 2215, to authorize 
     appropriations for the Department of Justice for fiscal year 
     2002, and for other purposes.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the clerk will 
report the motion to invoke cloture.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close the debate on the conference 
     report to accompany H.R. 2215, the 21st Century Department of 
     Justice Appropriations Authorization Act:
         Harry Reid, Jeff Bingaman, Jean Carnahan, Hillary 
           Clinton, Thomas Carper, Richard Durbin, Paul Sarbanes, 
           Daniel Inouye, Bill Nelson of Florida, Jack Reed, 
           Patrick Leahy, Benjamin Nelson of Nebraska, John 
           Edwards, Tim Johnson, Joseph Lieberman, Byron Dorgan, 
           Tom Daschle.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call under the rule is waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
conference report accompanying H.R. 2215, the 21st Century Department 
of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act, shall be brought to a 
close? The yeas and nays are ordered under rule XXII, and the clerk 
will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. NICKLES; I announce that the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and 
the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) are necessarily absent.
  I further announce that if present and voting the Senator from Utah 
(Mr. Hatch) would vote ``yea.''
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 93, nays 5, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 229 Leg.]

                                YEAS--93

     Akaka
     Allard
     Allen
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Cantwell
     Carnahan
     Carper
     Chafee
     Cleland
     Clinton
     Cochran
     Collins
     Conrad
     Corzine
     Craig
     Crapo
     Daschle
     Dayton
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Fitzgerald
     Frist
     Graham
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hollings
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Miller
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Nickles
     Reed
     Reid
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stabenow
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Torricelli
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                                NAYS--5

     Gramm
     Lott
     Lugar
     Santorum
     Smith (NH)

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Hatch
     Helms
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Johnson). On this vote, the yeas are 93, 
the nays are 5. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn 
having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I thank Senators for this overwhelming vote 
in bringing this debate to a close. This is a piece of legislation that 
passed in the other body 400 to 4. This vote shows overwhelming support 
in this body.
  Senator Hatch, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, is 
necessarily absent. I know he supports this bill, too. And I thank, 
also on his behalf, those Senators who joined in this vote.
  I do not know what the pleasure of the body is, Mr. President, but I 
am perfectly willing to move forward. I am not going to request a 
rollcall vote. I don't know if anyone else wishes to have one. I think 
to have had such an overwhelming vote--93 to 5--gives a pretty good 
understanding of where the body is on a piece of legislation such as 
this that covers everything from drug abuse in juvenile areas, to 
creating 20 new judges, to protecting our FBI in dangerous situations.
  So, Mr. President, I am about to yield the floor, but I am perfectly 
willing to just go forward on the legislation. Obviously, if anybody 
else wants to speak on it or ask for a rollcall vote, that is their 
prerogative.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page 19031]]


  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                                  IRAQ

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition today to 
discuss the situation with respect to Iraq. At the outset, I compliment 
the President for coming to Congress. I believe that, as a matter of 
constitutional law, the President, as Commander in Chief, has the 
authority to respond to emergencies, but when there is time for 
discussion, deliberation, debate, and a decision, then it is the 
responsibility of the Congress, under the Constitution, to declare war 
and to take the United States to war.
  Originally, there had been a contention that the President did not 
need congressional authorization, but the President has decided to come 
to Congress, and I compliment him for doing that.
  I also think that the President has moved wisely in seeking a 
coalition of the United Nations, as President Bush in 1991 organized a 
coalition, came to the Congress, and had authorization for the use of 
force against Iraq which had invaded Kuwait. The assemblage of an 
international coalition is a very important item.
  The issue of inspections is one which has to be pursued. To say that 
Saddam Hussein is a difficult man to deal with, would be a vast 
understatement. He maneuvered and ousted the inspectors from Iraq some 
4 years ago.
  It seems to me the inspections have to be thorough, total, 
unannounced, intrusive, going everywhere, however, there cannot be an 
exclusion for the President's palaces, which are very large tracts of 
land and could conceal great quantities of weapons of mass destruction.
  Senator Shelby and I made a trip to the Sudan in August as part of a 
trip to Africa. In the Sudan, we found that there is an interest on the 
part of the Sudanese Government in cooperating with the United States, 
and they have agreed to inspections of their arms factories and their 
laboratories. They are no-notice inspections, where inspectors go in 
and break the locks, inspect, and take photographs anywhere, anytime, 
anyplace. I believe that has to be the format for inspections in Iraq.
  I am concerned about the timing of an authorization or declaration of 
war. I think an authorization for the use of force is tantamount or the 
equivalent to a declaration of war. That authorizes the President to 
wage war. It is a concern of mine as to whether there is authority for 
the Congress under the Constitution to make this kind of a delegation.
  The learned treatise written by Professor Francis D. Wormuth, 
professor of political science at the University of Utah, and Professor 
Edwin B. Firmage, professor of law at the University of Utah, engages 
in a very comprehensive analysis of this issue.
  The background of the issue is that, when the Constitution and the 
three branches of Government were formulated, Article I gave certain 
authority to the Congress. One of the authorities that the Congress has 
is the authority to declare war. Article II gave authority to the 
executive branch, to the President, and Article III gave authority to 
the courts.
  The core legislative responsibilities, such as a declaration of war, 
have been viewed as being non-delegable. They cannot be given to 
someone else. Professors Wormuth and Firmage say at the outset of 
chapter 13, on the delegation of the war power:

       That Congress may not transfer to the executive . . . 
     functions for which Congress itself has been made 
     responsible.

  The treatise further goes on at page 70 to point out--and I am 
leaving out references which are not directly relevant--but the two 
professors point out at page 70 that:

       The Framers . . . never supposed that a state of war could 
     arise except as a result of a contemporaneous decision of 
     Congress on the basis of contemporary known facts.

  In the Federalist Papers, Hamilton made an observation on this 
subject, and it is cited again in the treatise by the two professors 
noting that Hamilton in the Federalist Papers argued the system was 
safe precisely because the President would never be able to exercise 
this power, referring to the power to declare war or the power to use 
force. While not cast specifically in the dialogue of delegation of 
power, the Federalist tracts, written by Hamilton and cited by Wormuth 
and Firmage, do argue about the limitations of Federal power.
  The treatise by Professors Wormuth and Firmage then goes on to cite 
Chief Justice Marshall, who said--and again I leave out materials which 
are not directly relevant--it will not be contended Congress can 
delegate powers which are exclusively legislative.
  Here you have a power, the power to declare war, which is a core 
congressional power. Chief Justice Marshall has been the author of many 
doctrines which have survived 200 years since he served as Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court of United States.
  The treatise by Wormuth and Firmage then goes on to quote Clay, and 
they cite this reference:

       According to Clay, the Constitution requires that Congress 
     appraise the immediate circumstances before the Nation 
     voluntarily enters into a state of war.

  That is at page 207. The treatise further points out, Clay's argument 
was that:

       Congress itself cannot make a declaration of a future war 
     dependent upon the occurrence of stipulated facts, because 
     war is an enterprise in which all the contemporary 
     circumstances must be weighed.

  The treatise by Wormuth and Firmage goes on to point out that it is:

       Impossible for Congress to enact governing standards for 
     launching future wars.

  They note it is not possible to authorize the President:

       To initiate a war in a future international environment in 
     which significant details, perhaps even major outlines, 
     change from month to month or even from day to day. The 
     posture of international affairs of the future cannot be 
     known to Congress at the time the resolution is passed.

  So we have the generalized declaration that core congressional 
functions may not be delegated as a basic requirement under the 
constitutional separation of powers, and then an articulation of the 
reasons as to why this is the law. That is because, as noted in the 
authorities, the circumstances may change in a matter of months or, as 
noted, even in a matter of days.
  I am not unaware the Congress is proceeding on a timetable which is 
likely to eventuate a vote next week, or if not next week, shortly 
thereafter. As is well-known, we are in an election season, with 
elections on November 5. Today is October 3. The closing date of the 
Congress had originally been set at October 4, which would have been 
tomorrow, Friday. It has been extended until October 11. Nobody is sure 
when we will adjourn. When asked the question as to when the Senate 
will adjourn, I say the Senate adjourns when the last Senator stops 
talking. We do not know precisely when that will be.
  There is a move to have a vote before we leave town. Of course, we 
could come back. When there is a matter as important as a resolution 
authorizing the use of force, the equivalent of a declaration of war, 
there is no congressional responsibility that is weighed more heavily, 
more solemnly, or more importantly than that.
  I am not naive enough to think anybody is going to go into court or 
that a court would consider this, what we lawyers call a justiciable 
issue, or decide this sort of a matter. I do think it is a matter which 
ought to be focused on by Members of the Senate and House of 
Representatives. I have not seen any public commentary on the issue.
  I became very deeply involved on the legalisms of the doctrine of 
separation of power 8 years ago when there was a base closing 
commission where Congress delegated authority to a commission to decide 
which bases would be closed, and I think they inappropriately closed 
the Philadelphia Navy Yard. I studied the subject in some detail--in 
fact, argued the matter in the Supreme Court of the United States--so 
when this issue has arisen, I have been concerned about what the 
Congress is doing. I have studied the issue and have raised these 
concerns, which I want to share with my colleagues.

[[Page 19032]]

  I am well aware of the argument that it would strengthen the 
President's hand to have a very strong vote from the Congress of the 
United States, as he is negotiating in the United Nations. Secretary of 
State Powell is seeking a tougher resolution before inspections start. 
The U.N. inspectors met with the Iraqi officials and are talking about 
starting inspections in 2 weeks. Secretary Powell yesterday said he 
would like a tougher resolution so there are more stringent 
requirements to be imposed on Iraq before the inspections go forward. 
There are difficulties in dealing with the French, the Russians, and 
the Chinese.
  There is no doubt that a strong resolution by Congress supporting the 
President would give weight to the President's position. The 
predictions are generalized that the President can expect a very strong 
vote from the House of Representatives, based on what happened 
yesterday with the concurrence of Speaker Hastert and Democrat Leader 
Gephardt. The sentiments of the Senate may be somewhat different, 
perhaps a little more deliberative, but the predictions are that a 
resolution will come from the Senate backing the President as well.
  I think it is a momentous matter. It is one which we need to 
consider. We need to consider all of the alternatives short of the use 
of force. We need to consider whether our objectives can be attained 
without sending American men and women into battle; without exposing 
Iraqi civilians to casualties; without undertaking the problems of 
war--the attendant body bags, collateral damage, and the death of 
civilians, which is inevitable. We need to find a way to rid Iraq and 
the world of Saddam Hussein, and have the appropriate assurances that 
there are not going to be weapons of mass destruction which threaten 
the United States or our neighbors.
  There is a very serious concern as to what will happen with 
neighboring Israel. General Scowcroft, former National Security 
Council, wrote an article which appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 
August, raising a concern about an Armageddon, with the possibility of 
a nuclear conflict if Iraq and Saddam Hussein unleash weapons of mass 
destruction on Israel, and as to what the retaliation may be.
  The consequences are very difficult to figure out. If we can find a 
way to get rid of Saddam Hussein; have the assurances that the world 
will not be subjected to his maniacal impulses and his irrational 
tendencies, which includes his use already of chemical weapons in the 
Iran war and on his own people, the Kurds; if we can find a way to do 
that short of war, that certainly ought to be our objective. I raise 
this constitutional issue so that my colleagues may consider it, as 
well.
  Mr. SPECTER. I ask unanimous consent I may proceed for an additional 
5 minutes on an unrelated subject, the confirmation of Judge James 
Gardner.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                  Confirmation of Judge James Gardner

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, yesterday in what is called wrap-up in 
the Senate, by unanimous consent a Pennsylvania judge was confirmed. I 
had not known that his confirmation was imminent, however, I am very 
glad it was and I am very glad it was accomplished. I thank the 
managers, including the Senator from Nevada.
  I make a comment or two about Judge Gardner who was endorsed by 
Senator Santorum and me and passed our bipartisan nonpolitical 
nominating panel. Senator Santorum and I have maintained the practice 
which Senator Heinz and I had many years ago on submitting applicants 
to a commission which studies them, in addition to review by the 
American Bar Association and by the FBI.
  Judge Gardner graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, 
received his JD degree from Harvard University Law School, which is 
obviously an excellent educational background. He then joined a big 
firm in Philadelphia, Duane, Morris & Heckscher, and later went to 
Allentown where he became a member of the law firm of Gardner, Gardner, 
& Racines.
  He began his career in public service as Solicitor to the Lehigh 
County Treasury and later served as assistant district attorney in 
Lehigh County. I must say that being assistant D.A. is very good 
training for anything. People ask me what is the best job I ever had, 
being a Senator or district attorney, and I say the best job I ever had 
was assistant district attorney, getting to the courtroom and trying 
cases.
  He has been on the Court of Common Pleas of Lehigh County for some 21 
years, presided over 265 jury trials, and written nearly 1,000 legal 
opinions, 138 of which have been published.
  He is very active in community affairs. He is on the Board of 
Directors of the Boys and Girls Club of Allentown and the Allentown 
Police Athletic League. He has been awarded the Meritorious Service 
Medal from the President of the United States, and the Pennsylvania Bar 
Association's Special Achievement Award.
  We have a practice of trying to accommodate litigants by having 
various stations in Pennsylvania: one in Johnstown, one in Bethlehem 
and in Lancaster, and of course we have the district court sitting in 
Harrisburg, in Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and also Williamsport. Judge 
Gardner will be handling the station in Allentown to accommodate 
litigants so that they do not have to travel long distances to have 
their cases heard.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. I ask the Senator from Kansas how long he wishes to speak.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. I thank the Senator from Nevada. I would like to speak 
for 15 minutes. I think there are other people who would like to speak, 
as well,
  Mr. REID. We have spoken to the minority side. Senator Byrd wishes to 
use his hour postcloture. I ask unanimous consent he be allowed to do 
that beginning at 1:10, following the statement of the Senator from 
Kansas. Postcloture, he is entitled to that. I ask he be allowed to 
speak during that postcloture on any matter he wishes to talk about.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, we are on the judicial reauthorization 
bill that just received cloture. I was happy to see that taking place. 
I draw attention to the body to one particular provision that is 
important. It is J-1 visas. These visas are granted to people who were 
born in another country, other than the United States, but trained 
according to medical standards in the United States, in passing medical 
boards in the United States, and then able to serve throughout the 
United States. I know the Presiding Officer's State and my State are 
dependent on people born in foreign countries being able to provide 
medical services in Kansas.
  We have 105 counties and 20 that would be medically underserved if 
not for this feature called J-1 visas for medically underserved 
counties to have medical personnel, as I previously described.
  Within the provision of the judicial reauthorization bill, it allows 
for 30 J-1 visas on a per State, per year basis to work with 
recruitment of medical personnel. My State of Kansas is dependent on 
this feature. Twenty of our 105 counties would be medically underserved 
if not for J-1 visas. There was a problem within the old program that 
the oversight was not sufficient.
  After September 11, a number of people were concerned about who was 
getting into the United States under these J-1 visas: Are they properly 
supervised and properly observed, or is there potential for untoward 
elements that would come in this way that might seek to do harm to the 
United States? That was an area of concern. We were concerned about 
everyone coming to the United States at that point. This was another 
area where people had deep concerns.
  This program, as we have revised it, has supervision in place to 
watch this program and to meet the needs of States like Kansas where we 
have significant areas of medically underserved populations and at the 
same time meet the security needs of the United States so we do not 
allow in an individual who seeks to do harm to the rest of the United 
States.
  I worked in the Judiciary Committee. We worked on the Immigration

[[Page 19033]]

Subcommittee. This bill got through the House of Representatives. 
Congressman Jerry Moran from my State worked over there. We have met 
everyone's concerns to get this passed through the needs of States such 
as my own, particularly for rural States because this is a chronic 
issue, with significantly underserved areas, aging population in some 
counties that need more and more services and have more and more 
difficulty getting medical personnel into the areas. This is working 
under the J-1 category for medical doctors. We are using it for medical 
technologists. In the future we will need it for broader categories 
within health care as well, potentially for physical therapists and 
nurses, to get adequate personnel in places that are needed. It will be 
a valuable feature, looking into the future.
  Overall, the judicial reauthorization is a good bill, one that we 
should pass. It is significant. We have not had one of these 
reauthorizations for some period of time. It is certainly the time to 
be doing this, to bring this issue forward. I commend the chairman and 
ranking member and those who have worked very hard in the conference 
committee to move this issue forward.


                                  Iraq

  Mr. BROWNBACK. As we look and move forward on the issue of Iraq and 
war with Iraq and the potential of providing the President military 
authorization, I hope the body and the Members and people across the 
country and across the world look at the potential of a post-Saddam 
Iraq. Former Senator Kerrey of Nebraska and I worked, when he was in 
the Senate, with a group called the Iraqi National Congress, an 
umbrella group of opposition leaders, to try to bring to the forefront 
opposition groups, bring them together, and move forward with the track 
that once Saddam is out, moving forward with a democracy, with human 
rights, civil liberties for the people of Iraq.
  I think a lot of times we get caught too much in the downside 
potential. It is not only whether we can get Saddam out. It is not only 
what are going to be the problems of doing this. Sometimes we do not 
see the upside potential.
  There is clear downside potential in taking on Saddam Hussein, there 
is no question about that--potential loss of lives of our troops, our 
people, terrorist threats, potential loss of life in the region, loss 
of life in Iraq. It is undeniable.
  It is also unquestionable and undeniable that Saddam Hussein has 
killed a number of people already, gassed his own people, attacked 
Iran, gassed the Iranian people. He has continued to rule by fear. He 
has killed people within his own Cabinet and his own family. This is a 
man who is familiar with evil and has exercised it.
  What about after Saddam Hussein? What then? You have a country in 
that region that has a history of rudimentary democracy. From 1921 
until 1958, they had a constitutional monarchy, where you had a monarch 
but you also had a parliament that was elected by the people. They had 
control over budgets and ministers in the various areas of the Cabinet. 
It is not the level of our democracy today, but probably the level of 
the English democracy in the mid-1800s. They had a functioning 
democracy where they elected people and they had real legitimate 
authority within that. There is that basis.
  This is one of the oldest civilizations in the world where Iraq is. 
They would say this is the cradle of civilization, it has been there 
for thousands of years--and it has. It is an urban society. Eighty 
percent of the population are in urban areas. It is a well educated 
populace that is there. It is also sitting on 10 percent of the world's 
oil supply. So it has the ability to generate enough income to rebuild 
and grow itself.
  My point in saying all of that is that post-Saddam, when you get this 
man, who has brought so much evil to that region of the world and to 
the rest of the world, out of there, you have the basis of a real, 
growing, healthy, vibrant, democratic, free-market society. People are 
going to be free, and they are going to have liberty, and there is 
going to be great joy there for that possibility, and to be able to 
move forward in a region of the world that has not known much in the 
way of democracy.
  Outside of Israel and Turkey, you don't have democracies in that 
region of the world. You don't have any freedoms. You have a lot of 
resources, but you have a lot of poverty. That is because systems 
matter, and they have had systems that have been totalitarian in 
nature.
  Iraq has a history that is different. Until 1958, when there was a 
military coup, this was an operating country with many democratic 
features within it. They can build on that. Once that is established in 
Iraq, you move forward and press for democracy, and that is going to 
infect the entire region for democracy, human rights, religious 
freedom, pluralism, tolerance, free markets. Then it is going to be 
able to spread throughout.
  As former Secretary Henry Kissinger said at a hearing we had last 
week, he views that if we go in and deal with Iraq, it is going to have 
a very positive, salutary effect on the war on terrorism. It is going 
to say to a number of countries that we are serious about dealing with 
terrorists, we are serious that countries that house and support 
terrorists are our enemies; you are either with us or against us in the 
war on terrorism.
  If we do not go at Iraq, our effort in the war on terrorism dwindles 
into an intelligence operation. If we go at Iraq it says to countries 
that support terrorists--and there remain six in the world that fit our 
definition of state-sponsored terrorists--you say to those countries 
that we are serious about terrorism and we are serious about you not 
supporting terrorism on your own soil. This is going to be a big 
statement we will make.
  It is with a great deal of difficulty and it is with a great deal of 
cost. But the option of doing nothing is far worse than the option of 
doing something and acting now. The upside potential of our acting and 
helping allow the Iraqi people their freedom to be able to move forward 
with a democracy is significant upside potential, within that region, 
for liberty and freedom to expand throughout that area.
  We will have this debate on granting military authority to the 
President, which is going to be a significant debate in this body. 
Hopefully, we will look at all the issues, and I think we will. 
Particularly, we should look at things such as: Is Saddam Hussein going 
to be able to get weapons of mass destruction to terrorists and out of 
the country to attack other people during this period of time?
  I hope we will also look at the downside of not doing something and 
the upside of helping people pursue freedom and liberty, such as what 
has the potential of taking place in Iraq and pursuing a democracy 
there.
  I point out to people who are not familiar with this, Saddam Hussein 
does not control the whole country. He doesn't control the north of 
Iraq, the Kurdish region. It was reported that a number of Kurdish 
troops who are there are outside of his control. He has sporadic 
control in the south of the country. He controls it during the day; at 
other times, he doesn't. His main control is in the center, in the 
Baghdad region of the country. This is not a homogeneous population, 
nor is it completely under his authoritarian rule. We will be able to 
work with populations in both the north and south to build pressure on 
him in the center of this country when we move forward, addressing and 
dealing with Saddam Hussein.
  It is a big issue. It is a big issue for the country. It is a big 
issue for the world. It is a big issue for liberty. It is a big issue, 
dealing with a very militant, politicized strain of Islam in that 
region, and particularly in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein seeks to exploit. 
You know, he would not view himself associated with it, but he is 
certainly working to exploit that at this point in time. This is an 
important argument and discussion for this country and for the world.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Edwards). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page 19034]]


  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


          Rush to Iraq Resolution Ignores Unanswered Questions

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, Titus Livius, one of the greatest of Roman 
historians, said:

       All things will be clear and distinct to the man who does 
     not hurry; haste is blind and improvident.

  ``Blind and improvident''--``Blind and improvident.''
  Congress would be wise to heed those words today, for as sure as the 
Sun rises in the East, this country is embarking on a course of action 
with regard to Iraq that is both blind and improvident. We are rushing 
into war without fully discussing why, without thoroughly considering 
the consequences, or without making any attempt to explore what steps 
we might take to avert the conflict.
  The newly bellicose mood that permeates this White House is 
unfortunate--unfortunate--all the more so because it is clearly 
motivated by campaign politics. Republicans are already running attack 
ads against Democrats on Iraq. Democrats favor fast approval of a 
resolution so they can change the subject to domestic economic 
problems.
  Before risking the lives--I say to you, the people out there who are 
watching through those electronic lenses--before risking the lives of 
your sons and daughters, American fighting men and women, all Members 
of Congress--Democrats and Republicans alike--must overcome the siren 
song of political polls and focus strictly on the merits and not the 
politics of this most grave, this most serious undertaking--this most 
grave, this most serious issue that is before us.
  The resolution--S.J. Res. 46--which will be before this Senate is not 
only a product of haste, it is also a product of Presidential hubris. 
This resolution is breathtaking--breathtaking--in its scope. It 
redefines the nature of defense. It reinterprets the Constitution to 
suit the will of the executive branch. This Constitution, which I hold 
in my hand, is amended without going through the constitutional process 
of amending this Constitution.
  S.J. Res. 46 would give the President blanket authority to launch a 
unilateral preemptive attack on a sovereign nation that is perceived to 
be a threat to the United States--a unilateral preemptive attack on a 
sovereign nation that is perceived to be a threat to the United States.
  This is an unprecedented and unfounded interpretation of the 
President's authority under the Constitution of the United States, not 
to mention the fact that it stands the charter of the United Nations on 
its head.
  Representative Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to William H. Herndon, 
stated:

       Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever 
     he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you 
     allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it 
     necessary for such purpose--and you allow him to make war at 
     pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power 
     in this respect, after you have given him so much as you 
     propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it 
     necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from 
     invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, ``I 
     see no probability of the British invading us'' but he will 
     say to you ``be silent; I see it, if you don't.''
       The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making 
     power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the 
     following reasons. Kings had always been involving and 
     impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if 
     not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, 
     our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all 
     Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the 
     Constitution that no one man should hold the power of 
     bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the 
     whole matter, and places our President where kings have 
     always stood.

  If he could speak to us today, what would Lincoln say of the Bush 
doctrine concerning preemptive strikes?
  In a September 18 report, the Congressional Research Service had this 
to say about the preemptive use of military force:

       The historical record indicates that the United States has 
     never, to date, engaged in a ``preemptive'' military attack 
     against another nation. Nor has the United States ever 
     attacked another nation militarily prior to its first having 
     been attacked or prior to U.S. citizens or interests first 
     having been attacked, with the singular exception of the 
     Spanish-American War. The Spanish-American War is unique in 
     that the principal goal of the United States military action 
     was to compel Spain to grant Cuba its political independence.

  The Congressional Research Service also noted the Cuban Missile 
Crisis of 1962:

       . . . represents a threat situation which some may argue 
     had elements more parallel to those presented by Iraq today--
     but it was resolved without a ``preemptive'' military attack 
     by the United States.

  Article I, section 8, of the Constitution grants Congress the power 
to declare war and to call forth the militia ``to execute the Laws of 
the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.'' Nowhere--
nowhere--in this Constitution, which I hold in my hand--nowhere in the 
Constitution is it written the President has the authority to call 
forth the militia to preempt a perceived threat. And yet the resolution 
which will be before the Senate avers that the President ``has 
authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and 
prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as 
Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of 
Military Force'' following the September 11 terrorist attack.
  What a cynical twisting of words. What a cynical twisting of words. 
The reality is Congress, exercising the authority granted to it under 
the Constitution, granted the President specific and limited authority 
to use force against the perpetrators of the September 11 attack. 
Nowhere--nowhere--was there an implied recognition of inherent 
authority under the Constitution to ``deter and prevent'' future acts 
of terrorism. It is not in there. It is not in that Constitution. There 
is no inference of it. There is no implication of it for that purpose.
  Think, for a moment, of the precedent that this resolution will set, 
not just for this President--hear me now, you on the other side of the 
aisle--not just for this President but for future Presidents. From this 
day forward, American Presidents will be able to invoke Senate Joint 
Resolution 45 as justification for launching preemptive military 
strikes against any sovereign nations they perceive to be a threat.
  You better pay attention. You are not always going to have a 
President of your party in the White House. How will you feel about it 
then?
  Other nations will be able to hold up the United States--hold up the 
USA--as the model to justify their military adventures. Do you not 
think, Mr. President, that India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan, Russia 
and Georgia, are closely watching the outcome of this debate? Do you 
not think future adversaries will look to this moment to rationalize 
the use of military force to achieve who knows what ends?
  Perhaps a case can be made Iraq poses such a clear and immediate 
danger to the United States that preemptive military action is the only 
way to deal with that threat. To be sure, weapons of mass destruction 
are a 20th century and 21st century horror the Framers of the 
Constitution had no way of foreseeing. But they did foresee the frailty 
of human nature. And they saw the inherent danger of concentrating too 
much power in one individual. They saw that. That is why the Framers 
bestowed on Congress--not the President--the power to declare war.
  As James Madison wrote, in 1793:

       In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found, 
     than in the clause which confides the question of war or 
     peace to the legislature, and not to the executive 
     department. Beside the objection to such a mixture of 
     heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be 
     too great for any one man. . . .

  That was James Madison: ``the trust and the temptation would be too 
great for any one man.''
  Mr. President, Congress has a responsibility to exercise with extreme 
care the power to declare war. A war against Iraq will affect 
thousands--if not tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands--of 
lives and perhaps alter the course of history. It will

[[Page 19035]]

surely affect the balance of power in the Middle East. It is not a 
decision to be taken in haste, as we are being pushed today, as we are 
being stampeded today to act in haste. Put it behind us, they say, 
before the election.
  It will surely affect the balance of power in the Middle East. It is 
not a decision to be taken in haste under the glare of election-year 
politics and the pressure of artificial deadlines. And yet any observer 
can see that is exactly, that is precisely what the Senate is proposing 
to do--the Senate and the House.
  What a shame. Fie upon the Congress. Fie upon some of the so-called 
leaders of the Congress for falling into this pit.
  The Senate is rushing to vote on whether to declare war on Iraq 
without pausing to ask why. We don't have time to ask why. We don't 
have time to get the answers to that question: Why? Why is war being 
dealt with not as a last resort but as a first resort?
  Why is Congress being pressured to act now, as of today, I believe 33 
days before a general election, when a third of the Senate and the 
entire House of Representatives are in the final, highly politicized 
weeks of election campaigns? Why?
  As recently as Tuesday, October 1--this past Tuesday--the President 
said he had not yet made up his mind. As late as this past Tuesday, he 
had not yet made up his mind about whether to go to war with Iraq. And 
yet Congress is being exhorted, is being importuned, is being adjured 
to give the Presi-
dent open-ended--open-ended--authority now--give it to him now--to 
exercise whenever he pleases in the event that he decides to invade 
Iraq.
  Where are we? Where are our senses? Why is Congress elbowing past the 
President to authorize a military campaign that the President may or 
may not even decide to pursue? Aren't we getting a little ahead of 
ourselves?
  The last U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are 
confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and 
biological weapons and that he has since embarked on a crash course to 
build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence 
reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons but has not 
yet achieved nuclear capability.
  It is now October in this year of Our Lord 2002. Four years have gone 
by in which neither this administration nor the previous one felt 
compelled to invade Iraq to protect against the imminent threat of 
weapons of mass destruction, until today, until now, until 33 days 
before election day. Now we are being told that we must act 
immediately. We must put this issue behind us. We must put this 
question behind us. We must act immediately, we are told, before 
adjournment and before the elections.
  Why the rush? Is it our precious blood which will spew forth from our 
feeble veins? No. Those of you who have children, those of you who have 
grandchildren, those of you who have great-grandchildren should be 
thinking: It is the precious blood of the men and women who wear the 
uniform of these United States; that blood may flow in the streets of 
Iraq.
  Yes, we had September 11. But we must not make the mistake of looking 
at the resolution before us as just another offshoot of the war on 
terror.
  We know who is behind the September 11 attacks on the United States. 
We know it was Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network. We 
have dealt with al-Qaida and with the Taliban government that sheltered 
it. We have routed them from Afghanistan. We are continuing to pursue 
them in hiding. So where does Iraq enter into the equation? Where?
  No one in the administration has been able to produce any solid 
evidence linking Iraq to the September 11 attack. Iraq had biological 
and chemical weapons long before September 11. We knew it then. We 
helped to give Iraq the building blocks for biological weapons. We know 
it now.
  Iraq has been an enemy of the United States for more than a decade. 
If Saddam Hussein is such an imminent threat to the United States, why 
hasn't he attacked us already? The fact that Osama bin Laden attacked 
the United States does not de facto mean that Saddam Hussein is now in 
a lock-and-load position and is readying an attack on these United 
States. Slow down. Think. Ask questions. Debate.
  In truth, there is nothing in the deluge of administration rhetoric 
over Iraq that is of such moment that it would preclude the Senate from 
setting its own timetable and taking the time for a thorough and 
informed discussion of this crucial issue. What is the matter with us? 
We are the elected representatives. We are the most immediate elected 
representatives of the American people across this land. What is wrong 
with our taking the time to ask questions?
  The American people want questions asked. It is not unpatriotic to 
ask questions. Why shouldn't we ask questions? Why do we have to be 
rushed into voting on S.J. Res. 46? We should have an informed 
discussion of this crucial issue.
  The President is using the Oval Office as a bully pulpit to sound the 
call to arms, but it is from Capitol Hill that such orders must flow. 
Read the Constitution of the United States. The orders must flow from 
Capitol Hill, not from the Oval Office.
  The people, through their elected representatives in Congress, must 
make that decision. Why don't we have time? Why don't we take time? We 
make a huge mistake in deciding this issue in an effort to ``get it 
behind us.'' We are not going to get this issue behind us. It is not 
going to be put behind us.
  It is here that debate must take place and where the full spectrum of 
the public's desires, concerns, and misgivings must be heard. If 
Senators will have the backbone to speak out, to ask questions, to 
demand the answers to questions, the American people are waiting. They 
are listening. They want answers to their questions.
  I hear no clamor to go to war from my people. I hear only the 
telephones incessantly ringing, saying: Keep asking questions. We want 
to know why. Stand up for us, Senator.
  It is here that debate must take place. We should not allow ourselves 
to be pushed into one course or another in the face of a full-court 
publicity press from the White House. We have, rather, a duty to the 
Nation and to the sons and daughters of this Nation to carefully 
examine all possible courses of action and to consider the long-term 
consequences of any decision to act.
  As to the separation of powers, Justice Louis Brandeis observed:

       The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the 
     Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude 
     the exercise of arbitrary power.

  No one supports Saddam Hussein. If he were to disappear tomorrow, no 
one would shed a tear around the world, other than possibly tears of 
thanksgiving. I would not. My handkerchief would remain dry. But the 
principle of one government deciding to eliminate another government, 
using force to do so, and taking that action in spite of world 
disapproval is a very disquieting thing.
  Where does it end? What nation will be next? I am concerned that it 
has the effect of destabilizing the world community of nations. I am 
concerned that it fosters a climate of suspicion and mistrust in U.S. 
relations with other nations. The United States is not a rogue nation 
given to unilateral action in the face of worldwide opprobrium.
  We are about to change the face of the United States, a nation which 
believes in liberty, justice, and human rights. What are we about to 
change? What is it going to be? What is the new image of the United 
States going to be? That of a bully, ready to draw both guns and start 
shooting immediately? This is preemptive action, isn't it?
  I am concerned about the consequences of a United States invasion of 
Iraq. It is difficult to imagine that Saddam Hussein, who has been 
ruthless in gaining power, ruthless in staying in power, would give up 
without a fight. He is a man who has not shirked from using chemical 
weapons against his own people. I fear he would use everything in his 
arsenal against an invasion force, or against an occupation force, up 
to and including whatever chemical,

[[Page 19036]]

biological, or nuclear weapons he might still have.
  Iraq is not Afghanistan, impoverished by decades of war, internal 
strife, tribal conflict, and stifling religious oppression. Though its 
military forces are much diminished--and ours are somewhat diminished--
Iraq has a strong central command and much greater governmental control 
over its forces and its people. It is a large country that has spent 
years on a wartime footing, and it still has some wealth.
  Nor do I think the Iraqi people would necessarily rise up against 
Saddam Hussein in the event of a United States invasion, even if there 
is an undercurrent of support for his overthrow. The Iraqi people have 
spent decades living in fear of Saddam Hussein and his network of 
informers and security forces. There has been no positive showing, that 
I know of, in the form of riots or large and active internal opposition 
groups, that popular sentiment in Iraq supports a governmental 
overthrow or the installation of a democratic or republican form of 
government. There is no tradition of democracy in Iraq's long history. 
There is, however, a natural instinct to favor the known over the 
unknown, and in this instance the United States is an unknown factor.
  The President and his Cabinet have suggested that this would be a war 
of relatively short duration. If that is true--which I doubt--why would 
the Iraqi populace rush to welcome the United States forces? In a few 
weeks, they might have to answer to the remnants of Saddam Hussein's 
security forces. A prudent Iraqi would just put his or her head under 
the bed covers and not come out until the future became clear. Who 
knows, we might be lucky. We have been pretty lucky thus far in some of 
our adventures. We might be. But we might not be lucky. A United States 
invasion of Iraq that proved successful, and that resulted in the 
overthrow of the government, would not be a simple effort. The 
aftermath of that effort would require a long-term occupation.
  The President has said he would overthrow Saddam Hussein and 
establish a new government that would recognize all interest groups in 
Iraq. This would presumably include the Kurds to the north and the 
Shiite Muslims to the south because the entire military and security 
apparatus of Iraq would have to be replaced. The United States would 
have to provide interim security throughout the countryside.
  This kind of nation building cannot be accomplished with the wave of 
a wand by some fairy godmother--even one with the full might and power 
of the world's last remaining superpower behind her.
  To follow through on the proposal outlined by the President would 
require the commitment of a large number of U.S. forces--forces that 
cannot be used for other missions, such as homeland defense--for an 
extended period of time. It will take time to confirm that Iraq's 
programs to develop weapons of mass destruction are well and truly 
destroyed. It will take time to root out all of the elements of Saddam 
Hussein's government, military and security forces, and to build a new 
government and security elements. It will take time to establish a new 
and legitimate government and to conduct free and fair elections. It 
will cost billions of dollars--your dollars, the taxpayers of America--
to do this as well. And the forces to carry out this mission and pay 
for this mission will come from the United States. There can be little 
question of that.
  If the rest of the world doesn't want to come with us at the outset, 
it seems highly unlikely that they would line up for the follow-
through, even though their own security might be improved by the 
elimination of a rogue nation's weapons of destruction.
  So if the Congress authorizes such a mission, we must be prepared for 
what will follow. The Congressional Budget Office has already made some 
estimations regarding the cost of a possible war with Iraq. In a 
September 30 report, CBO estimates that the incremental costs--the 
costs that would be incurred above those budgeted for routine 
operations--would be between $9 billion and $13 billion a month, 
depending on the actual force size deployed. Prosecuting a war would 
cost between $6 billion and $9 billion a month. Since the length of the 
war cannot be predicted, CBO could give no total battle estimate. After 
hostilities end, the cost to return U.S. forces to their home bases 
would range between $5 billion and $7 billion, according to the CBO. 
And the incremental costs of an occupation following combat operations 
varies from $1 billion to $4 billion a month. This estimate does not 
include any cost of rebuilding or humanitarian assistance.
  That is a steep price to pay in dollars. But dollars are only a part 
of the equation. There are many formulas to calculate costs in the form 
of dollars, but it is much more difficult to calculate costs in the 
form of human lives--in the form of deaths on the battlefield and death 
from the wounds and diseases that flow from the den of battle.
  Iraq may be a weaker nation militarily than it was during the Persian 
Gulf war, but its leader is no less determined and its weapons are no 
less lethal. During the Persian Gulf war, the United States was able to 
convince Saddam Hussein that the use of weapons of mass destruction 
would result in his being toppled from power. This time around, the 
object of an invasion of Iraq is to topple Saddam Hussein, so he has no 
reason to exercise restraint.
  Now, we are being told by the White House, let him be assassinated: 
The cost of one bullet would be much less than the cost of a war. Now 
this Nation is embarking, isn't it, on a doctrine of assassination of 
other leaders of the world? Is the ban on assassinations being lifted? 
What do we hear from the White House? Are we going to revert to the age 
of the Neanderthals, the cavemen?
  The questions surrounding the wisdom of declaring war on Iraq are 
many, and they are serious. The answers are too few and too glib. This 
is no way to embark on war. The Senate must address these questions 
before acting on this kind of sweeping use-of-force resolution. We do 
not need more rhetoric from the White House War Room. We do not need 
more campaign slogans or fundraising letters. We, the American people 
need information and informed debate, because it is their sons, it is 
their daughters, it is their blood, it is their treasure, it is their 
children, men and women who are killed in the heat of battle.
  Before rushing to war, we should focus on those things that pose the 
most direct threat to us--those facilities and those weapons that form 
the body of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. The United 
Nations is the proper forum to deal with the inspection of these 
facilities and the destruction of any weapons discovered.
  If United Nations inspectors can enter the country, inspect those 
facilities, and mark for destruction the ones that truly belong to a 
weapons program, then Iraq can be declawed without unnecessary risk or 
loss of life. That would be the best answer for Iraq. That would be the 
best answer for the United States. That would be the best answer for 
the world. But if Iraq again chooses to interfere with such an ongoing 
and admittedly intrusive inspection regime, then, and only then, should 
the United States, with the support of the world, take stronger 
measures.
  This is what Congress did in 1991 before the Persian Gulf war. The 
United States at that time gave the United Nations the lead in 
demanding that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait. The U.S. took the time to 
build a coalition of partners. When Iraq failed to heed the U.N., then 
and only then did Congress authorize the use of force. That is the 
order in which the steps to war should be taken.
  Everyone wants to protect our Nation. Everyone wants to protect our 
people. To do that in the most effective way possible, we should avail 
ourselves of every opportunity to minimize the number of American 
troops we put at risk. Seeking, once again, to allow the United Nations 
inspecting regime to peacefully seek and destroy the facilities and 
equipment employed in the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program 
would be the least costly and the most effective way of reducing the 
risk

[[Page 19037]]

to our Nation, provided that it is backed up by a credible threat of 
force if Iraq, once again, attempts to thwart the inspections.
  We can take a measured, stepped-up approach that would still leave 
open the possibility of a ground invasion if that, indeed, should 
become the last resort and become necessary. But there is no way to 
take that step now.
  Mr. President, I urge restraint. Let us draw back from haste. 
President Bush gave the United States the opening to deal effectively 
with the threat posed by Iraq. The United Nations embraced his 
exhortation and is working to develop a new and tougher inspection 
regime with firm deadlines and swift and sure accountability. Let us be 
convinced that a reinvigorated inspection regime cannot work before we 
move to any next step. Let us, if we must employ force, employ the most 
precise and limited use of force necessary to get the job done.
  Let us guard against the perils of haste, lest the Senate fall prey 
to the dangers of taking action that is both blind and improvident.
  Mr. President, a paraphrase of Jefferson would be that the dogs of 
war are too vicious to be unleashed by any one man alone; that the 
Framers of the Constitution thought the representatives of the people 
in the legislative branch ought to make these determinations.
  Let us sober up. Let us sober ourselves. Let us take hold of 
ourselves. Let us move back from this engine of haste and destruction, 
this desire to get it over, this desire to get it behind us before the 
elections.
  Here we have a resolution, S.J. Res. 46, nine pages of beautifully 
flowered ``whereases,'' nine pages. Here we have a resolution by which 
the Senate of the United States and the House of Representatives would 
be abdicating, pushing aside our responsibility to make decisions about 
going to war.
  This is an abdication of our responsibilities. Here it is; what a 
shame; what a rag; it is enough to make those eagles up there scream, 
the eagles beside the clock--for a period that is unlimited in time. 
Hear me, hear me now, listen to this resolution on which we are going 
to vote. For a period of time that is unlimited, the President of the 
United States is authorized to make war anywhere he determines is in 
some way linked to the threat posed by Iraq--anytime, anywhere, and in 
any way.
  Get that. That is what this amounts to. This is a blank check, nine 
pages. A blank check. A blank check with whereas clauses serving as 
figleaves. That is what it is, a blank check with beautifully flowered 
whereas clauses serving as figleaves. This is a blank check. There it 
is.
  Look at it, nine pages, a blank check that does not simply remove us 
as representatives of the people from decisionmaking about the use of 
force now or the use of force in Iraq. It removes us as representatives 
of the people from making decisions about the use of war so far in the 
future as we can see. It removes us. You cannot make anything outside 
of it. It is plain.
  I know it is obfuscated and it is all sugar-coated with these 
figleaves of ``whereases.'' That means, let's say in the year 2014, the 
Congress will have no role in determining whether military force should 
be used in some country linked with Iraq or some purpose related to 
Iraq. The President can send military forces into war wherever he 
determines, and it may not be the President we now have. It undoubtedly 
will be another President because this goes on into the future, as far 
as the human eye can see.
  Under the Constitution, we are abdicating the congressional power to 
the President of the United States. He can send military forces into 
war wherever he determines it is in some way related to the 
``continuing threat'' posed by Iraq. This resolution, this power, this 
blank check, does not terminate if the regime is changed in Iraq. This 
resolution, this power, does not terminate if inspectors are allowed 
throughout Iraq. This resolution does not terminate if Iraq is disarmed 
and all of its weapons and weapons facilities are removed. No. The 
power goes on. You better read it--read it and weep.
  This resolution says that we, the Congress of the United States, are 
turning over our constitutional responsibility to the President for as 
long as there is some threat as the President determines; use whatever 
military forces he wants; wherever he wants to use them; as long as he 
determines it is necessary to react to the threat posed by Iraq and 
those working, no doubt, with Iraq, others that he can see as their 
allies.
  Do we want to do that? Do we want to abdicate congressional 
responsibility under the Constitution of the United States to this 
President or any President of any political party? Is that what we 
want? Do we want to be able to just wash our hands of it and say it is 
all up to the President; we turned it all over to the President?
  This resolution--it is nine pages--changes the constitutional 
presumption that the Congress makes the determination about whether to 
go to war and for the foreseeable future gives it to a single person 
elected by a minority of the people.
  Ronald Reagan, for example, was elected by one-fourth of the eligible 
voters of this country. So we turn this momentous power, this 
unimaginable power, over to one person, the President of the United 
States, elected by a minority of the people. The whereas clauses are 
pretty. Oh, they are pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, 
pretty whereas clauses, but they are just window dressing. That is all. 
They are just figleaves.
  All that is necessary is the President's own determination. Why do we 
take up all this space? Why do we take up nine pages? Why waste all 
this paper? It is nine pages of beautifully phrased ``whereases.'' If 
we want to pass this resolution, we can pass it by cutting it down to 
one sentence. That is all we need, one sentence. We do not have to have 
all of this window dressing, all this sugar coating, on this bitter 
pill. One sentence is all we need. One page is all we need.
  That sentence could simply say, and it would be legally the same as 
this document--hear me--we could say the President is authorized to use 
the Armed Forces of the United States for as long as he wants, wherever 
he wants, and in any manner he wants, without any approval by Congress, 
as long as he determines it is necessary to defend against a threat 
posed by Iraq, in his own determination.
  Let me read that again. Let's dispose of the 9 pages. All we need is 
one sentence in order to do exactly what the 9 pages would do. All that 
is necessary is the President's own determination. We can save a lot of 
space. We can save a lot of paper if we want to pass this resolution by 
cutting it down to one sentence, and that sentence could simply say--
and it would be legally the same as this 9-page document--the President 
is authorized to use the Armed Services of the United States for as 
long as he wants, wherever he wants, in any manner he wants, without 
any approval by Congress, as long as he determines it is necessary to 
defend against a threat posed by Iraq, in his own determination. 
Nothing else is needed but that sentence.
  The rest of it is of no legal consequence, just window dressing. That 
is the blank check part of this resolution.
  Let us guard against the perils of haste, lest the Senate fall prey 
to the dangers of taking action that is both blind and improvident.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Clinton). The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that under the 
conference report rules I be allowed to speak for up to an hour and do 
it on the subject of Iraq.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.


                                  Iraq

  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I say to my friend from West Virginia, 
the distinguished Senator, a great leader in the Senate, that he has 
been a voice of sanity and reason. He has been a voice that the 
Americans have wanted to hear.
  This is one of the most solemn duties we have, and the fact that it 
was going

[[Page 19038]]

to be rushed and the fact that it came right before an election and the 
fact that we have so many unanswered questions, those things are 
weighing on this Senator's shoulders. I am so pleased the Senator from 
West Virginia, from his perspective, as someone who has served so well 
and for so long, was able to speak out as he has.
  I do not know where we will wind up on this, but I do know we are 
going to have alternatives. I think the fact that we will have 
alternatives, in many ways, is because the Senator from West Virginia 
from day 1--remember the day 1--when our President did not even want to 
come to Congress, when his staff was saying to the President it was not 
necessary, that the Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Byrd, said, just a 
moment, read the Constitution.
  So before I begin, I thank my friend for his remarks.
  Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I thank the distinguished Senator from the 
great State of California for her gracious remarks. I thank her, too, 
for what she stands for, for standing up for the Constitution and for 
representing the people of her great State so well, so consistently, 
and so effectively.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, it means a great deal to me that the 
Senator has said these words.
  One of the most sacred, one of the most humbling, one of the most 
important--let me say the most important--roles Congress has to play is 
determining whether our country should send its sons and daughters to 
war.
  The role of Congress in war and peace must not be ignored. We can 
read it right out of the Constitution. Article I, section 8, says the 
following: The Congress shall have power to declare war.
  What has made me proud is that the American people understand this. I 
believe they understand it better than some in the administration who 
started off in August saying the President did not have to come to 
Congress in order to go to war with Iraq. To be specific, on August 26, 
the Washington Post quoted a senior administration official who said:

       We don't want to be in the legal position of asking 
     Congress to authorize the use of force when the President 
     already has the full authority. We don't want, in getting a 
     resolution, to have conceded that one was constitutionally 
     necessary.

  It is clear the American people will not support a war against Iraq 
without the agreement of Congress. According to a USA Today-CNN poll, 
69 percent of the American people favored military action with the 
support of Congress; only 37 percent favored military action if 
Congress opposed the move. It is also important to point out that 79 
percent of the American people support the use of force if it were 
supported by the United Nations; only 37 percent favored action without 
United Nations support.
  This is not a minor point. This administration did not want to come 
to Congress; and then, when it decided to do so because--frankly, they 
understood the views of the American people--they sent over a 
resolution which was the most incredible blank check I have ever seen. 
Its provisions basically said that even if Iraq complied with 
inspection and dismantlement, the administration could still go to war 
if Iraq failed to provide documentation, for example, on Kuwaiti POWs 
or because of its illicit trade outside the Oil-for-Food Program. Those 
issues certainly need to be addressed. There are very few people--I 
don't know of any--who believe those reasons should be enough to send 
our men and women and our bombs to Iraq.
  In addition, the original resolution gave the President the authority 
to use force not only in Iraq but in the entire region. When those in 
Congress--mostly Democrats but some Republicans, too--said we needed to 
deliberate on this important issue, take time to debate it and discuss 
it and ask questions, we were hit by a barrage of criticism from the 
Republican leadership and immediately the issue was made political.
  Representative Tom Davis, Chairman of the National Republican 
Congressional Committee, said:

       People are going to want to know before the election where 
     their representatives stand.

  Now, despite this pressure, I am proud to say my colleagues are not 
sitting back. We are going to fulfill our obligations under the 
Constitution. We are fulfilling our obligations to debate war and 
peace. We are not allowing this administration to ignore our views, our 
opinions, and our heartfelt concerns about America's sons and daughters 
and the innocent victims of war.
  While there are some in the administration who believe taking up the 
Iraq issue now will hurt Democrats, I am not so sure. I am not so sure 
the American people want us to roll over and be silent on this. I am 
not so sure the American people don't want us to see it as our duty to 
check and balance this administration. Already, because of our voices, 
the resolution offered by the President has been changed. In my view, 
it is still a very blank check for war with Iraq. I certainly cannot 
support a blank check. I think it is an affront to the people of this 
country to do that. Originally, it was an even blanker check, allowing 
the President to go to war anyplace in the region.
  The role of checks and balances that we play is already evident. I 
know that. I also know in the greatest country on the face of this 
Earth, in the country that is great because of its middle class and its 
productivity, in that country, in our country, it is necessary to not 
only deal with the issue of Iraq, to deal with the issue of terrorism, 
to protect our people when they fly in an airplane or walk past a 
nuclear plant or a chemical plant or cross a bridge, it is also 
important to deal with the impact of this administration's economic 
record: The worse stock market decline in 70 years, the worst economic 
growth in 50 years, the greatest loss of jobs in the private sector in 
50 years, and the threat that people feel from retirement insecurity 
and job insecurity, runaway health care costs, and a falling median 
income.
  Now, there are those who say the administration is bringing up Iraq 
now to avoid scrutiny from this volatile and miserable economy. There 
have been memos that show this to be their strategy. There have been 
anonymous statements to this effect. And whether that is true or not, I 
leave to the American people. I trust the American people to look at 
this.
  We must take care of the security of the American people. Economic 
security is part of that. I believe this administration is AWOL in this 
regard. As we deal with foreign policy challenges, we Democrats will 
insist we deal with domestic challenges, too. And again, let the people 
decide if they agree with us or not.
  This I will also say clearly: We are told constantly that the 
President has not decided yet whether he wants to go to war with Iraq. 
We hear it over and over. I sit on the Foreign Relations Committee. I 
am proud to sit on that committee. I chair the terrorism subcommittee. 
Recently, Colin Powell said to us in an open hearing:

       Of course the President has not made any decision with 
     regard to military action. He's still hopeful for a political 
     solution, a diplomatic solution.

  Secretary Rumsfeld said:

       The President's not made a decision with respect to Iraq.

  National Security Adviser Rice said:

       The President has not made a decision that the use of 
     military force is the best option.

  Ari Fleischer, the press spokesman, makes that same statement day 
after day after day.
  I ask, if the President hasn't decided to go to war yet, if the 
administration has not decided to go to war yet, if the military has 
not been told there is going to be a war, then why is the President 
coming to Congress now, before he has made a somber decision, and 
before he has answered many key questions?
  If our questions could be answered, the many questions we have, it 
would be one thing. However, I want to say unequivocally that the 
myriad of questions I have asked have not been answered.
  In good conscience, how can I vote to take our country to war alone, 
which is what the President wants from us, without allies and without 
the facts that I need to fulfill my responsibilities to the people of 
California.
  Madam President, you know my State very well. We have more than 30

[[Page 19039]]

million people. Out of the 880,000 reservists in the military, 61,000 
are from California. I owe them the best decision I can make. Those 
reservists, as Senator Inouye has pointed out, many of them have 
families. At times you will have a wife and a husband called up to go 
into the danger zone. I need my questions answered before I could vote 
to send this country, alone--alone--into battle.
  Here are the questions I have asked in one forum or another. Here are 
the questions that I either do not have answers to or the answers I 
have are incomplete. If we give the President the blank check he is 
asking for, which I will not vote for, if we give him the go-it-alone 
preemptive strike authority, which I will not vote for, then I think 
those who are considering voting for that ought to ask these questions. 
I will lay them out.
  How many U.S. troops would be involved?
  What are the projected casualties?
  Would the United States have to foot the entire cost of using force 
against Iraq?
  If not, which nations will provide financial support?
  Which nations will provide military support?
  What will the cost be to rebuild Iraq?
  How long would our troops need to stay there?
  Would they be a target for terrorists?
  What will the impact be on our fight against terrorism?
  Will Iraq use chemical or biological weapons against our troops?
  Will Iraq launch chemical or biological weapons against Israel?
  How will Israel respond?
  What impact will that have?
  How will we secure Iraqi chemical and biological weapons once the 
fighting starts?
  How do we make sure such weapons do not get into the hands of 
terrorists or terrorist nations?
  How do we make sure that Iraqi weapons experts, from Iraq, do not 
migrate to terrorist organizations or terrorist states?
  Have we given enough thought to alternatives to avoid war?
  Why haven't we worked with the United Nations to try Saddam Hussein 
as a war criminal? He is a war criminal.
  During the Foreign Relations Committee hearing with Secretary 
Albright, I raised the idea put forward by the Carnegie Endowment on 
coerced inspections. Has this or a similar idea been pursued?
  If we are concerned about Saddam Hussein acquiring weapons of mass 
destruction, why are we not fully supporting the Nunn-Lugar weapons 
dismantlement program?
  I do not doubt that Iraq is up to no good. I know they are. That is 
why I voted for the Iraq Liberation Act. We know that Iraq has 
biological and chemical weapons and that they used them against Iran 
and against its own Kurdish minority. We know that following the 
Persian Gulf war, Iraq promised to abide by the demands of the U.N. but 
failed to live up to its commitment. They have not allowed unfettered 
inspections. They have lied about chemical and biological weapons 
programs. And they continue to seek the capability to produce nuclear 
weapons.
  I do not doubt that there are some members of al-Qaida in Iraq. But 
there is al-Qaida in Syria. There is al-Qaida in Africa. There is al-
Qaida in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. There are cells in 60 nations, 
including the United States of America.
  The fight against bin Laden and his organization must not be 
weakened. I want to quote what the head of our Senate Intelligence 
Committee, Senator Bob Graham, has to say about this. You and I know he 
is not a man of overstatement. He said:

       At this point I think Iraq is a primary distraction from 
     achieving our goals of reducing the threat of international 
     terrorism.

  Listen to what Wesley Clark has said. He headed our NATO troops.

       Unilateral U.S. action today would disrupt the war against 
     al-Qaida.

  Despite statements by staff to the contrary, the President appears to 
want to go it alone in war when we are already in a war. According to 
the President, we are in a war, one that will require all of our wits 
and lots of our treasure, both in human capital and in tax dollars.
  I do not think it is enough to be critical of this blank check 
resolution the President is supporting. I want to say how I would 
approach this question. Iraq must be held to its word, as expressed in 
U.N. resolutions, that it will submit to thorough inspections and 
dismantlement of weapons of mass destruction, period.
  Let's repeat that. Iraq must be held to its word that it will submit 
to thorough inspections, unfettered inspections, and dismantlement of 
weapons of mass destruction, period. That is what they agreed to. They 
signed on the dotted line to do it. And that is what must happen. Those 
were United Nations resolutions, and we must work for an updated 
resolution ensuring that such unfettered inspections do take place or 
there will be consequences. These weapons are a threat to the world, 
and the world must respond. I believe if we handle this right, the 
world will respond.
  But if our allies believe we have not made the case, if they believe 
this is a political issue here, or if they believe it is a grudge match 
here, or if they believe that the whole thing is being manipulated for 
domestic political reasons, I believe that will hurt our Nation. I 
believe that will isolate us. I do not think that is a good path for 
our country.
  Can we rule the world with our weapons and our guns and our might? I 
am sure we can. I know we can.
  Can we win every military confrontation that anyone could ever 
imagine? Yes. We can.
  But I believe the greatness of our Nation has been built on other 
things: The power of our persuasion, not the power of our arsenal; the 
power of our ideals, not the power of our threats; the power and 
greatness of our people, not the power and the greatness of our 
machines.
  America at her best has been seen as a beacon of hope, not fear; an 
example not of ``Might makes right,'' but ``Might backing right.'' What 
is right at a time like this? I believe it is laying out a path for 
peace, not just a path for war; trying everything we can to avoid chaos 
and devastation to our own and to innocent civilians who may well be 
used as pawns in urban warfare.
  I believed that Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State 
under President Clinton, and Dr. Henry Kissinger laid out a path for 
peace when they spoke before the Foreign Relations Committee. They 
talked about unfettered inspections and dismantlement of weapons of 
mass destruction. As they said, and I agree, it will not be easy. Maybe 
it will be impossible. But there is no doubt in my mind that we should 
lay out that path and try for complete, unfettered inspections, with 
nothing off limits, to be followed by dismantlement of those weapons.
  For those who say it will never work, maybe they are right. But we 
have never pulled the massive trigger of our weapons on a nation that 
has not attacked us first. At the least--at the least--we should see if 
we can exhaust all other options.
  That is why I support the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, 
Senator Carl Levin, and his resolution that will be introduced. This is 
what it does:
  No. 1, it urges the United Nations Security Council to quickly adopt 
a resolution that demands immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted 
access for U.N. inspectors so that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction 
and prohibited missiles will be destroyed.
  No. 2, it urges this new U.N. Security Council resolution to 
authorize the use of necessary and appropriate force by U.N. member 
states to enforce the resolution if Iraq refuses to comply.
  No. 3, it reaffirms that, under international law and the U.N. 
Charter, the United States has the inherent right to self-defense.
  No. 4, it authorizes the use U.S. Armed Forces pursuant to the new 
U.N. Security Council resolution that deals with weapons of mass 
destruction.
  In closing, let me say very clearly that I will not vote for a blank 
check

[[Page 19040]]

for unilateral action. I also will not vote for a resolution that is 
dressed up to look like Congress has powers when, in fact, all the 
words really call for are consultations and determinations.
  That is when Senator Byrd said ``pretty'' words. He said, ``Pretty, 
pretty, pretty words.'' Sounds good--consultations and determinations. 
What does it really mean? Nothing. It means the administration tells us 
what they think. We already know what they think.
  To me, consultations and determinations without a vote by Congress 
are like a computer that is not plugged in. It looks good, it looks 
powerful, it looks impressive, but it does nothing.
  I didn't come to the Senate for the title. I didn't come to the 
Senate to debate meaninglessly on the Senate floor. I didn't come to 
the Senate to do nothing. I didn't come to the Senate to run away from 
a hard vote. I came to uphold the duties of my office. I came to 
represent the people of California.
  In the past 4 years, I have voted to use force twice--once against 
Milosevic to stop a genocide and once after September 11 when we 
suffered a barbarous attack. But, in this case, if any President wants 
to go to war alone or outside the type of coalitions we have built for 
the war on terror, or the last Persian Gulf war, then let him come to 
the American people, through the Congress for another debate and a 
vote.
  It is one thing to go with a coalition. It is one thing to determine 
that we will be part of a multinational force. It is another thing to 
do it alone, without a specific vote of the Congress before the 
President has decided to do so. As I have said, his aides keep telling 
us he has not made the decision. So why do we have to give him a blank 
check today? If he wants to go it alone, if he wants to send my people 
to a place where we don't even know if chemical or biological weapons 
will be used, we don't even know what the estimates of casualties are, 
we don't even know what it is going to cost, we don't even know how 
long we are going to have to stay there, we don't know what will happen 
if Israel responds--we don't know so many things--I don't think it is 
asking too much to ask my colleagues to support a resolution by Senator 
Levin. He said that if he wants to go it alone, then the President has 
to come back.
  In the Carl Levin resolution, it is implicit that he must come back 
if he wants to go it alone. Carl Levin's resolution authorizes force as 
part of the U.N. enforcement action to dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass 
destruction. But again, if the President wants to go it alone, he must 
come back to us.
  I believe the people of my State expect me, on their behalf, to get 
my questions and their questions answered, not to engage in guesswork, 
and, above all, not to abdicate my responsibility as a Senator to 
anyone else. If our Founders wanted the President--or any President--to 
have the power to go to war without our consent, they would have said 
so. But, again, this is what our Founders said in article I, section 8: 
Congress shall have power to declare war.
  Thank you very much, Madam President. I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BOND. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                        West Coast Port Closure

  Mr. BOND. Madam President, we have talked some about our fragile 
economy and the problems we are facing. Growth, which began slowing in 
1999, coupled with the tragic impact of September 11, has resulted in 
hardship for many. We have seen unemployment, reduced value of market 
securities, more problems with health care, and other difficulties.
  There are measures pending in this body I believe would do a great 
deal to help the economy. They are such things as passing a terrorism 
risk reinsurance bill, which could get our building trades back to 
work; passing an energy bill, which has the potential of employing more 
than three-quarters of a million people, and securing our energy 
independence. We have not been able to work on those.
  But now we face a further challenge, which is a self-inflicted attack 
on our economy by our own people; and that is the contract dispute 
which has closed the West Coast docks, providing a terrible bottleneck 
for crucial exports and imports.
  This is the line of commerce: Trade going out, agricultural products 
being sold; inputs, goods coming into the United States; and it is shut 
down by this dispute.
  Many Missouri constituents are asking us what can be done. Retailers 
are asking where their goods are for them to be able to make sales and 
continue to employ their people. Agricultural producers, who have meat 
for export rotting on their docks, are saying something must be done.
  According to the Wall Street Journal, goods valued at more than $300 
billion move annually through these ports. According to the New York 
Times, these ports handle half the Nation's imports and exports. 
Further estimates are that this shutdown could cost our economy $1 
billion per day and grow further as the shutdown continues to $2 
billion per day. The longer it goes, the worse it gets. Regrettably, 
the State of Missouri has the highest unemployment growth rate in the 
Nation, and we cannot afford economic homicide of this nature.
  This affects jobs upstream and downstream throughout the entire 
economy. It affects truckers and railroad workers and farm workers and 
retail clerks and consumers and others. These are real workers who are 
real people and have real families. They are hurting.
  I am not an expert on the specific grievances of these several 
hundred workers and their unions and the employers at the docks, but 
this major facility is nothing to toy with. I don't care if the 
grievances are moderate or petty, it is not worth the harm that could 
be done to thousands of other working people and our economy. The 
parties have to be brought together. One would think that workers 
reportedly earning $106,000 per year for less than 40 hours a week 
could resolve the grievances on the job without hurting other workers 
in my State who earn far less. While they sit on their chairs at the 
docks, people around the country are the ones suffering. This power 
play will have too much collateral damage to be allowed to continue.
  One company, National Cart Company, in St. Charles, MO is a 
manufacturer that employs 140 people. They manufacture material 
handling equipment and rely on some components from Asia. This is the 
busiest time of their year because their customers need their products 
to stock shelves for Christmas. Unless this is resolved, they will be 
laying off workers in 2 weeks or slightly more.
  Another company, TRG, located in St. Louis, with 80 employees, can't 
stock their shelves with recreation and travel accessories that they 
sell. When they shut down, their employees are out of work.
  Another St. Louis company, Donelly and Associates, manufactures 
telecommunications products. They only have seven employees, but if 
they do not get supplies in a week to 10 days, they will shut down, and 
those workers will be laid off. The president of that firm told my 
office that for every day the supply is disrupted it takes as many as 5 
days to get it back on line. He told us that the airlines have already 
stopped taking bookings out of Asia.
  Another plant manager from Magnet LLC in Washington, MO said they are 
unable to get supply, and he predicts that if this is not resolved, 
they may be forced to lay off workers in 2 to 3 weeks. They have 375 
employees and are urgently trying to make product to satisfy Christmas 
demand.
  There is a story in the Washington Post this morning about how people 
in Hawaii are stockpiling goods, and perishable food products are at 
risk of rotting on the docks. The retailers are trying to get winter 
and Christmas goods inventoried. Over 60 percent of beef exports and 50 
percent of pork exports and one quarter of our chicken

[[Page 19041]]

exports travel through these ports. Meat is rotting on the docks. Many 
freezers in the country are at capacity and inventories will become 
further backed up and prices will be depressed below levels that are 
already low.
  Yesterday, according to the Los Angeles Times, ``picketers tried to 
prevent a banana-carrying ship from leaving the dock, provoking a 
confrontation that brought out police in riot gear.''
  The Los Angeles Times has another story about how ``the labor dispute 
is putting a strain on independent truckers who move port-related 
cargo.'' They quote a truck driver named Jose Louis Martinez who 
``doesn't care whether labor or management is to blame in the dispute * 
* * he cared only that the wallet he would bring home to his wife and 
two daughters would be empty for the third time in four days.''
  There are over 10,000 truckers--the majority of them independent--who 
normally make as many as three visits a day to the ports, according to 
the California Trucking Association. Burlington Northern-Santa Fe said 
it has suspended shipments of marine containers to all West Coast ports 
and grain to ports to Washington and Oregon.
  I can't speak to the fairness of the labor negotiations, but I can 
speak to the unfairness of a few people being willing to injure many 
people to get their own way and to destroy a vital sector of our 
economy. I can't see how a dispute about bar code readers--they are 
objecting to bringing in bar code readers, things that they use in 
every supermarket I have been in, and most retail stores--should cost 
the economy billions of dollars and intentionally throw people out of 
work. Frankly, my constituents don't understand the approach being 
taken, which seems to be: We will tear down everyone we can until we 
get our own way. I think it is outrageous. I think these matters should 
be resolved immediately. They should be resolved with the docks open 
for business.
  This is extortion, where the hostages are ordinary working families, 
many of whom will never earn in any year as much as the dock workers 
earn in three-quarters of a year. If they were only hurting themselves, 
I would advise that we stay out of it and have at it. But they are 
dragging everyone else with them. Since when is the economic leader of 
the world closed for business? This is an outrage.
  Here our President and his team are working vigorously to open 
foreign markets. We gave them the power. But why? So labor disputes can 
have export products rot on the docks? We can all have disagreements 
about whether raising taxes or lowering taxes will help our economy. I 
have some strong views on that. People in this body disagree with me. 
But one thing we certainly ought to be able to agree on is that a 
tactic of this nature is bad for the economy, bad for working families, 
and should be resolved yesterday.
  I have asked the President--and sent a letter to him--to use his 
authority to intervene. I hope he will do that. I have read that some 
in this body object to his intervening. I know the President has agreed 
these people should get back to work. He expressed that view in strong 
terms and made mediation services available.
  Working families in my State cannot wait. It is a terrible shame it 
would come to this. It is a shame that people haven't worked this out 
on their own, as they should. But our economy is too fragile for self-
interested, shortsighted, and self-inflicted wounds of this nature.
  I urge the President to take further steps to stop this dispute, to 
get commerce flowing, and to get people back to work. Whether it be 
truckers and railroad workers in California or retail clerks throughout 
the Nation or agricultural producers in our heartland or other 
industrial workers who are making products for export to the Southeast 
Asian market, they are being denied a livelihood because of a dispute 
over bar code readers, something that is not really that advanced a 
technology but is in use every day in stores we visit.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. BURNS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I may speak 
as in morning business for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BURNS. Madam President, I thank my good friend from Missouri for 
his words today because they echo mine.
  Today I sent a letter to the White House and the President asking him 
to intervene in this slowdown and lockout, however you want to 
interpret it, of west coast ports. Today, 29 west coast ports, 
representing about half of our Nation's seaborne commerce, remain 
closed. Furthermore, we have another situation that complicates it. 
Weather conditions have temporarily limited the seaborne and other 
modes of commerce on the gulf coast due to Hurricane Lili. Our ability 
to export our goods or import our goods is quickly becoming paralyzed.
  The latest attempt at renegotiation between the Pacific Maritime 
Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Unions has 
stalled, and they have stalled based on protocol and the presence of 
security personnel.
  Isn't that something? While they are arguing that in those 
negotiations, we are just coming through a crop year in my State of 
Montana, and already that is having an effect on us. I am also a little 
bit disturbed about the negotiations on salaries of $110,000 to 
$140,000 a year; they are on the table also. I want to give you a 
little comparison on why we are a little out of kilter here.
  According to the USDA, the average farm operator household income is 
$65,000 a year. I don't like averages. That is on-farm and off-farm 
income. I don't like to deal in averages because I know there are 
exceptions to the rule. Averages are like: If you have one foot in a 
bucket of ice and the other foot in the oven, on average, you ought to 
feel pretty good. That doesn't always work. The average farmer in my 
State makes around $30,000 to $40,000 a year. That is net. And they are 
forced--after we make the investment, put in our labors--they are 
forced to watch their yearly harvest sit while the longshoremen and 
management squabble about salaries that are sometimes two to three 
times the amount of their gross.
  So I think it is about time that President Bush intervene. If the 
parties are unable to negotiate a compromise by the end of this week, 
it is time to take action before they do too much damage to our 
national economy, and particularly those people who are impacted by a 
stalemate at our ports. The President can invoke the Taft-Hartley Act 
to resolve this matter. According to law, a Taft-Hartley injunction can 
be invoked if ``a threatened or actual strike or lockout affecting an 
entire industry, or a substantial part thereof, engaged in trade, 
commerce, transportation, transmission, or communications among the 
several States, or with foreign nations, or engaged in the production 
of goods for commerce will, if permitted to occur or to continue, 
imperil the Nation's health and safety.''
  What it does, basically, is allow for a cooling-off period while 
workers go back to the ports and commerce is allowed to continue. It 
gives the negotiators this time to work out a compromise. An agreement 
is necessary, and the President does have the power to impose that 
agreement. Economic consequences have the potential to injure workers, 
employers, and consumers alike.
  The crisis is costing the U.S. economy up to $1 billion a day and 
will affect the economy that is struggling to grow. If you can imagine, 
fruits and vegetables and other perishables rotting at the ports--those 
coming in, and those to be exported. My good independent trucker 
friends are sitting around just letting their trucks idle, waiting for 
work. The alternative, such as air freight, is limited due to capacity 
and also security issues. Auto manufacturers are waiting on parts and 
components. One manufacturer has announced closure of its California 
plant.
  Of course, the retail impact is immeasurable, considering that right 
now all the goods and services are moving for the upcoming holiday 
season. The

[[Page 19042]]

west coast labor crisis is no longer about ``the rights of workers'' or 
``management negotiating philosophy.'' It is about American prosperity 
and protecting the principles of commerce for this Nation.
  If this shutdown is allowed to go on at the west coast ports, there 
is no doubt about the impact it will have on my State of Montana. It 
could not come at a worse time. Because of drought, and droughts in 
other countries, and a little bit of a shortage, wheat prices have gone 
up approximately $2 higher than we have had in the last 5 years. In 5 
years, this is the first time we have had a market--any kind of a 
market. And 90 percent of what we produce in my State is marketed in 
huge volumes, and it goes for export. The timing of this price advance 
is particularly fortuitous in light of the economic effects of a 4-year 
drought along with it. However, the labor crisis has already led to an 
8-cent to 12-cent drop in that market just since Sunday.
  We are feeling the effects in another way. What about my railroaders? 
Earlier this week, Burlington Northern and Union Pacific Railroads 
announced an embargo on all grain movements to the west coast of the 
United States, citing overcapacity and lack of storage.
  The net effect of those embargoes, again, will lead to overcapacity 
in grain storage facilities in my State of Montana. It is harvest time, 
folks, and this is the first time we have had a market, whenever the 
grain is ready. In other words, it is harvested and ready to roll, and 
it is ready to be shipped. Furthermore, right behind it, we are less 
than 30 days away from the corn harvest season; that will be in its 
peak.
  Grain car shortages will force farmers to find alternative storage 
capacity or leave their wheat on the ground exposed to the elements. We 
have seen that before. Even if the lockout concludes this week, the 
residual impact will lead to several weeks, possibly months, of delay 
in the movement of those products to our major ports. Even those who 
have sold their grain will not be able to deliver against their 
contracts and, more importantly, the income from that delivery is 
needed at this time of the year. This is the time we make our land 
payments. This is the time we pay our taxes.
  There is another aspect involved. We have spent hundreds of thousands 
of dollars in developing the Asian and other Pacific markets, on which 
we have to compete with our friends in Canada and Australia. We can do 
that for the simple reason that we have always been a reliable source. 
They can count on us not only for volume but also quality. We are 
jeopardizing that market development.
  So this is our opportunity, in normal times, to recapture some of 
those major exports that we lost over the last 2 or 3 years. We can do 
it. The only thing that is holding us back is this squabbling over 
salaries of $90,000 to $140,000, which are triple that of my average 
farmer in Montana. We are able to take advantage and recoup from years 
of drought, and it all could be lost with our inability to export.
  An extended work stoppage or slowdown by the west coast port workers, 
who enjoy some of the highest pay rates in the country, is already 
having its effect. Our shoes are getting a little tight. Grain millers 
of the world are coming to the United States for their supply, and they 
are denied delivery.
  In my letter to the President, I laid out that this is no longer a 
standard labor-management negotiation. It has become the groundwork for 
a potentially grave economic slowdown that will jeopardize consumer 
confidence and our national commercial infrastructure.
  Who says one little group cannot impact an economy that is suffering 
and trying to dig itself out of a 5-year hole?
  I hope the President takes note of the letter. I know Senator Bond 
has sent a letter to the White House asking the President to intervene 
and use the Taft-Hartley law with which to do it.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield back the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Carper) The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak on a 
matter other than the Department of Justice authorization bill but the 
time continues to run under the cloture rule.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Members' Pay Raise

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I had the opportunity to speak last 
Thursday night with regard to the issue of the possibility of war with 
Iraq. I am, of course, listening carefully to my colleagues as they 
discuss the prospect of war. Nothing could be more serious, and I am 
pleased this body will be engaged in this matter in earnest.
  The public nature of that debate stands, though, in great contrast to 
another matter. While the country is focused on whether or not to go to 
war, Members of Congress will once again be quietly sidestepping the 
issue of their own pay raise, an evasion that is made all the more 
inappropriate by the very fact that we may be on the brink of war.
  The cloakrooms have advised their offices that we are likely to 
consider another continuing resolution this week, and there is 
speculation that we are not likely to consider the individual 
appropriations bills that remain before we adjourn for this year.
  I raise this because there is increasing reason to believe that this 
body may not be able to consider the scheduled Member pay raise. 
Current law provides Members with an automatic pay raise without a 
debate or a vote, a stealth pay raise. The pay raise scheduled for 
January 2003 will be about $5,000. It follows automatic pay raises in 
January 2002, January 2001, and January 2000. Altogether these pay 
raises for Members of Congress, four pay raises in the last 4 years, 
total $18,000.
  The current system of stealth pay raises is already inaccessible, and 
the current legislative position of the body makes it even more so. We 
are unlikely to consider the Treasury-Postal appropriations bill, which 
is the traditional vehicle for amendments to stop the Member pay raise, 
and we may not consider other amendable vehicles.
  Members who favor the scheduled pay raise should not be comforted by 
this. Congress is not going to sneak this by without anyone noticing, 
nor will it be lost on the average citizen that Congress is allowing 
this to happen on what may be the eve of war.
  In his more recent volume on the life of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro 
recounts similar events early in World War II.
  He writes:

       During the war's very first months, while an unprepared 
     America--an America unprepared largely because of Congress--
     was reeling from defeat after defeat, a bill arrived on 
     Capitol Hill providing for pensions for civil service 
     employees. House and Senate amended the bill so that their 
     members would be included in it, and rushed it to passage--
     before, it was hoped, the public would notice. But the public 
     did notice: the National Junior Chamber of Commerce announced 
     a nationwide Bundles for Congress program to collect old 
     clothes and discarded shoes for destitute legislators. Strict 
     gasoline rationing was being imposed on the country; 
     congressmen and senators passed a bill allowing themselves 
     unlimited gas. The outrage over the pension and gasoline 
     ``grabs'' was hardly blunted by a hasty congressional 
     reversal on both issues. Quips about Congress became a 
     cottage industry among comedians: ``I never lack material for 
     my humor column when Congress is in session,'' Will Rogers 
     said. The House and the Senate--the Senate of Webster, Clay, 
     and Calhoun, the Senate that had once been the ``Senate 
     Supreme,'' the preeminent entity of American government--had 
     sunk in public estimation to a point at which it was little 
     more than a joke.

  Mr. President, let's not let history repeat itself. I call upon the 
leadership to ensure we have a debate and a vote on the scheduled pay 
raise. I am willing to accept a very short time limit, understanding 
the very important business we have, 20 minutes equally divided, even 5 
minutes equally divided. This will not take long. But the public is 
entitled to a debate and a vote.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, for the benefit of all Members, we expect to 
have a vote in the next hour, hour and 15 minutes on the motion to 
invoke cloture. We hope to have a voice vote on

[[Page 19043]]

the conference report that is before the Senate. I, therefore, ask 
unanimous consent that the Senator from Arizona, Mr. Kyl, be recognized 
to speak postcloture for up to 1 hour and he can speak on any subject 
he desires; following that, the two leaders will be recognized, Senator 
Lott and then Senator Daschle, and then we will proceed to a vote on a 
cloture motion.
  I ask unanimous consent for Senator Kyl, but I am alerting Members, 
following that, Senators Lott and Daschle will speak, and then we will 
vote on the cloture motion.
  I ask the Chair to approve my unanimous consent request regarding 
Senator Kyl.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Senator Kyl is in the building and will come to speak 
shortly. After that, the two leaders will appear, and we will vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I thank the assistant majority leader for his 
courtesy. I wish to address a matter that is not directly related to 
the conference report before us, though there is some indirect 
relationship to it. I assume I do not have to ask unanimous consent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Unanimous consent has already been granted.
  Mr. KYL. I thank the Chair.


                       Use of Force Against Iraq

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, we have really already begun the debate on a 
resolution to authorize the use of force against Iraq if the President 
deems it necessary. Several Members have come to the Chamber and spoken 
about the issue. We are going to begin that debate formally sometime 
this evening, I believe, and it will continue on through Friday, 
Monday, and then shortly thereafter we will be voting on this important 
resolution.
  As with the debate 11 years ago when force was authorized and we 
repelled Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Members of both bodies 
discussed the issue at a level, frankly, that we are unaccustomed to 
doing. When we are making a decision to send our young men and women 
into harm's way, when we are literally authorizing war, I think a 
degree of seriousness begins to pervade all of our thinking. We address 
these issues with the utmost of seriousness because we are aware of the 
consequences, and they deserve no less, and our constituents and our 
military deserve no less than that degree of consideration.
  When we debate this issue, we will find there are good arguments on 
both sides of the issue, and I realize there will be different nuances, 
so it is not as if there are just two sides to the debate. But at the 
end of the day, we are going to have the question before us: Are we 
going to authorize the use of force?
  There will be some alternatives before us. That debate needs to be 
based upon the very best information, the very best intelligence, the 
very best analysis we can bring to bear, and it also has to be based 
upon a good relationship between the legislative and the executive 
branches because in war we are all in it together. We have to 
cooperate. We have to support the Commander in Chief.
  The last thing we would ever do is to authorize the Commander in 
Chief to take action and then not support that action. Our foes abroad, 
as well as our allies abroad, need to know we will be united once a 
decision is made, and we will execute the operation to succeed, if it 
is called for.
  I am very disturbed at the way that part of this debate is beginning, 
and that is what I wanted to speak to today. There has been an effort 
by some to broadly paint the administration as uncooperative in sharing 
intelligence information with the Senate, and more specifically the 
Senate Intelligence Committee.
  I have been a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee now for 
almost 8 years, and I have been involved in the middle of a lot of 
disputes about information sharing. When we are sharing information 
about intelligence, those issues are inevitable, just as they are 
sometimes with law enforcement. In our democracy, these become very 
difficult decisions because we are a wide open country. We tend to want 
to share everything, but we also recognize there have to be a few 
things we cannot share with the enemy, and the lines are not always 
brightly drawn. Sometimes the executive branch and the legislative 
branch get into tiffs about what information should be shared, what 
information cannot be shared. Again, reasonable minds can differ about 
the specifics of those issues, but what has arisen is a very unhealthy 
war of words about motives and intentions, and we need to nip that in 
the bud today.
  I read a story in the New York Times reporting on a meeting of the 
Intelligence Committee, which I attended yesterday in the secure area 
where the Intelligence Committee meets, under strict rules of 
classification. We were briefed by two of the top officials of the 
intelligence community about matters of the utmost in terms of 
importance and secrecy, and yet there is a three-page story in the New 
York Times which discusses much of what was discussed in that meeting, 
without ever attributing a single assertion or quotation. There is no 
name used of anybody who was in that room, and so we do not know 
exactly who it was who went to the New York Times and talked about what 
went on in our meeting.
  I am not suggesting classified information was leaked. I would have 
to have an analysis done to determine whether anything in the article 
was actually classified information. What was discussed was a purported 
dispute between our committee and the executive branch about the 
release of certain information and the preparation of certain reports. 
I will get into more detail about this in a minute.
  Obviously, somebody from the committee, a Member or staff, went 
complaining to the New York Times and spread, therefore, on the pages 
of this paper a whole series of allegations about motives and 
intentions of the Bush administration relating to the basis for seeking 
authority to use force against Iraq, if necessary. This is exactly what 
will undercut the authority of the President in trying to build a 
coalition abroad as well as in the United States, and it is the very 
people who demand the President achieve that international coalition 
before we take action who are the most exercised about what they 
perceive to be a slight from the administration and who, therefore, are 
being quoted in this story.
  I do not know the names, but there is a limited universe of people 
involved. I am going to go over this article in fine detail just to 
illustrate my point.
  One of the sources cited in the story is a congressional official. I 
will quote the entire sentence.

       One congressional official said that the incident has badly 
     damaged Mr. Tenet's relations with Congress, something that 
     Mr. Tenet has always worked hard to cultivate.

  Mr. Tenet is George Tenet, the director of the CIA. Sometimes I agree 
with Mr. Tenet and sometimes I do not agree with Mr. Tenet, but I 
believe Mr. Tenet has the best interests of the United States of 
America at heart when he is working with the President and Congress to 
present information and develop the appropriate approach to the use of 
force, if that is necessary.
  My point was this, though: The article quotes one congressional 
official. What is a congressional official? It is either a Member of 
the Senate or the House of Representatives--though no Representatives 
were in this meeting; it was just a meeting of Senators--or it is a 
staff person hired by the Senate.
  I find it interesting the article quotes a congressional official.
  Most of the article quotes congressional leaders, Government 
officials, or lawmakers. Either a Member of the Senate or a member of 
our staff talked to the press about what went on in the meeting and did 
so in order to damage, or to call into question, I should say, the 
relationship between the Senate and the executive branch, and to 
question whether the administration was being cooperative with the 
Senate in providing information.
  Let me discuss this in detail now. The central theme is identified in 
the first line of the story:

       The Central Intelligence Agency has refused to provide 
     Congress a comprehensive

[[Page 19044]]

     report on its role in a possible American campaign against 
     Iraq, setting off a bitter dispute between the agency and 
     leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, congressional 
     leaders said today.

  Those are Senators--not staff but congressional leaders. Only 
Senators were in the meeting. So some Senators said the CIA had refused 
to provide us with a comprehensive report on the agency's role in a 
possible American campaign, and this set off a bitter dispute between 
the CIA and leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
  Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee would be probably two 
people, the chairman and ranking member. Mr. Shelby, the ranking 
member, the Senator from Alabama, will have to speak for himself. The 
chairman is Senator Graham from Florida. I suggest they need to clarify 
what their view is with respect to this story.
  In the first place, it is not true the Central Intelligence Agency 
has refused to provide us with the report described in the story. There 
were two reports requested. As the article discloses, the first report 
has been provided. It was done at breakneck speed. It has to do with 
Iraq's capabilities; what kind of chemical and biological weapons does 
Iraq really possess; how far along is it in developing its nuclear 
capability; what means of delivery does it have; and a host of other 
questions that were put to the intelligence community. It is obviously 
important for us to have the answers to those questions before we take 
action.
  The reality is the information was all there. It had simply not been 
put together in one report, as the committee requested. What we 
requested was something called a national intelligence estimate. A 
national intelligence estimate is not requested by the Congress. A 
national intelligence estimate is ordinarily requested by the President 
or the National Security Council, and it is essentially a document 
which is supposed to analyze a particular country's or region's threat, 
or threat from weapons of mass destruction. It frequently takes a long 
time, up to a year, perhaps, to prepare. The purpose for it is to 
inform both the administration and others such as the Congress that 
would be dealing with the issues, but it is not intended to be an 
operational document; that is to say, to be integrated in operational 
military plans. Nevertheless, even though this is not the normal way 
the document would be prepared, the agency people worked overtime to 
produce, in a matter of several days, a very thorough report. About 100 
pages in length was produced in about 3 weeks, according to the story, 
under very tight deadlines.
  It was presented yesterday. Most of the information had been 
presented before in a different way. But it was put together in one 
package.
  Leaders of the committee expressed their outrage that Director Tenet 
was not there in person to testify. He was with the President at the 
time. The two people who briefed us were very top officials of the 
intelligence community who probably knew more on a firsthand basis what 
was in the report even than Director Tenet. Some Members did not want 
to ask them questions but wanted to wait for Director Tenet to arrive, 
a pretty petulant attitude when we are trying to seriously address 
questions of war and peace.
  The information was before us. No one questioned the veracity of the 
information. We had a good hearing in discussing the various elements. 
That was one of the reports. There was complaining it should have been 
earlier, it should have been done more quickly. As pointed out, 
ordinarily these are the kind of reports that usually take a year to 
put together; it was done in a matter of 3 weeks. Under the 
circumstances, the community is to be complimented.
  The other report requested had to do with the role of the 
intelligence community in military operations, potential military 
operations against Iraq. In effect what was being asked, if we take 
forcible action against Iraq, and any aspect of the intelligence 
community is used in those operations, what is it likely to be? What is 
the likely response going to be? How effective do you think it will be? 
That is what the article means, in the first sentence, when it talks 
about a comprehensive report on its role in a possible American 
campaign against Iraq.
  The intelligence community, wisely, has a standard policy against 
doing analyses of U.S. action that is not overt and tied to military 
operations. We do not know our military plans for military action 
against Iraq if it were to come. Only the President and a handful of 
people involved in those plans know what they are. Thank goodness for 
that. There is so much leaking in this Government--both at the 
executive branch level and the legislative branch level--it would be 
folly in the extreme for operational plans to be discussed broadly 
before an operation begins or during the operation, for that matter. 
That is why we do not present that kind of analysis to anyone. Members 
of the Intelligence Committee ought to know that and ought not to feel 
slighted because it was not presented to us and because it will not be 
presented to us. That kind of information would be directly related to 
the plan of attack that the President may eventually approve.
  We know our leaders get called just before an operation begins and 
once it is begun, we begin to get information about how we will conduct 
the operation. But can anyone reasonably believe the plans of our 
military and intelligence community, in cooperating with some kind of 
action, should be put in a document and released to the Congress, even 
in classified form? If this article is any indication, it would be 1 
day before it would be in the newspaper. We cannot do that, putting at 
risk the lives of the men and women we may send in harm's way.
  One success in the Afghanistan operation was the fact that we were 
able to combine good intelligence with military capability. Without 
going into a lot of detail, everyone appreciates the fact we were able 
to get assets on the ground from whatever source, providing information 
to our aircraft, for example, about very specifically where certain 
targets were. As a result of having that good intelligence, we were 
able to strike at the heart of the enemy, avoid for the most part 
civilian casualties, or collateral damage, and very quickly overthrow 
the Taliban government, and rout or capture a lot of the al-Qaida.
  We do not know much publicly about the interrelationship between the 
intelligence community and the military, but we know they combined 
efforts to make this a successful operation. That is all most Members 
need to know.
  We do not need to know in advance of a military operation how the 
intelligence community is going to be integrated with the military in 
conducting this campaign, what they are each going to do, and what the 
enemy might do in response and so on.
  The article itself alludes to this when it talks about the ordinary 
purpose of a national intelligence estimate. But intelligence officials 
say a national intelligence estimate is designed to assess the policies 
of foreign countries, not those of the United States. I quote:

       ``They were asking for an assessment of U.S. policy, and 
     that falls outside the realm of the NIE and gets into the 
     purview of the Commander and Chief,'' an intelligence 
     official said.

  That is correct. So there was a misunderstanding of what a national 
intelligence estimate was, on the first part; second, the request for 
the information went far beyond what the administration should have 
been asked to provide and what it could provide. Yet Members of the 
committee were indignant that the administration had stiffed the 
committee, had stonewalled, had refused to provide this information.
  We have to engage in a serious debate about a very serious subject in 
a relatively objective way. We all bring our biases and prejudices to 
the debate. But one thing that should be clear to all of us is that the 
thing that is paramount is the security of American military forces in 
the conduct of an operation. And that cannot be jeopardized by either 
the inadvertent or advertent leak of material that pertains directly to 
those military operations.
  What was being requested here was wrong. And the administration was

[[Page 19045]]

right to say: I'm sorry, we cannot give that to you. The debate should 
not be adversely influenced by this unfortunate set of circumstances. 
We should decide whether we want to authorize force and what kind of 
force is authorized based upon the merits of the argument as we assess 
them.
  No one here should be led down this path that says one of the reasons 
we should not act yet, or that we should deny the administration the 
authority is because they have stonewalled us. They have not given us 
information we need before we can make a judgment.
  As a member of the Intelligence Committee, that is simply not true. 
There are briefings being conducted now--both in an informal way, very 
classified but informally, as well as formally--to Members of this body 
and the House of Representatives, to answer Members' questions about 
Iraqi's capabilities and intentions as we see them and our assessment 
of circumstances. I encourage all Members to get those briefings and to 
ask any question they can think of asking and to try to keep it up 
until the questions have been answered. Some perhaps may not be 
answered.
  For the most part, they will learn of the primary reasons the 
President has decided it may be necessary to take military action 
against Iraq. What they will not learn, should not learn, and for 
national security purposes cannot learn, is how the intelligence 
community is going to be working with the military in the campaign 
should one be authorized. Those are operational plans that only the 
President and his military and small group of advisers can be aware of 
before there is military action begun.
  There is other information in this news story that is inaccurate, in 
suggesting that there has been this huge tug of war between the 
committee and the CIA about getting information. In my own personal 
view, a lot of it has to do with lack of communication, lack of clear 
specificity about what was requested. I remember when the original 
request was made, it was a rather routine kind of request, certainly 
not the big deal that some members of the committee are trying to turn 
it into. Information was given orally about when it would be provided 
to us, and information was given orally about the fact that the 
military operations could not be discussed. Yet members of the 
committee seemed to be pretty upset about the fact that we had not 
gotten a formal letter from George Tenet laying this all out.
  The members of the Intelligence Committee who were there apologized 
and said: If we had thought a formal letter was necessary or we could 
have gotten it to you sooner and didn't do that, we are sorry about 
that. But here are the facts. You wanted to know what the facts are, 
and here are the facts.
  So I do not think we should be dissuaded from basing a decision on 
the merits of the case, one way or the other, however we decide to 
vote, on the phony issue of whether or not somebody is providing us 
information or whether they got it to us soon enough or whether the 
head guy came down to testify as opposed to people directly below him.
  As I said, he will be there to testify tomorrow in any event. This is 
all a smokescreen. It may be useful to some people who want to find 
some reason not to support the President other than simply outright 
opposition to taking military action. I understand that. There seems to 
be a popular view that most Americans want to take military action and 
politically people had better get on that bandwagon, so maybe people 
who do not really want to take that action have to find some reason, 
some rationalization, for not doing it.
  But I really don't think that is right. I think a lot of American 
people are where most of us are. We would prefer not to have to take 
military action. We would hope to have a coalition of allies. We hope 
there will be some way to avoid this. But at the end of the day, if the 
President decides it is necessary, we are probably willing to go along 
and authorize the use of force.
  There is nothing wrong with taking the position that at the end of 
the day we are not yet ready to make that decision and therefore not 
vote to authorize the use of force. If that is where Members come down 
and that is what they in their hearts believe, that is what they should 
say and that is how they should vote. But what they should not do is 
try to latch onto an artificial reason for saying no, predicated upon 
some perceived slight by the Director of the CIA or failure to provide 
information quickly enough or in exactly the form they wanted it or 
most certainly on the grounds that the intelligence community has not 
provided the kind of information about operations of the intelligence 
community that they would like to get. That information should not be 
provided, and nobody should base a decision here on the failure to 
obtain that information.
  Let me just speak a little bit more broadly. I will ask unanimous 
consent that at the conclusion of my remarks this particular article be 
printed in the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)

  Mr. KYL. A lot of people are approaching this issue on the basis that 
there has to be some demonstration that, in the relatively near future, 
Saddam Hussein is going to use a weapon of mass destruction against us 
or else this is not the time that we should take military action 
against him. That is a rational position to take, in a way. If you do 
not think that there is a real threat or that it is imminent, you could 
reach the conclusion that we should not engage in war, or at least 
ought to be continuing to try to engage in diplomacy or whatever.
  But there is another side to the coin. It is the way the President 
has chosen to look at it. I think, because he has chosen to look at it 
this way, he will go down in history as a very prescient leader.
  Noemie Emery, who is a fine writer, in an article in a periodical a 
week ago, observed that most Presidents have had to fight a war but 
only two Presidents have had to perceive a war. Harry Truman perceived 
the cold war. He instinctively knew at the end of World War II, when 
the Soviet Union was beginning to assert its power in regions of 
southern Europe, for example, and elsewhere, that it was important for 
the United States and other Western allies to stand and say no to the 
further expansion of the Soviet Union and communism, even though that 
was going to mean a longtime confrontation with the Soviet Union which 
might even escalate into a hot war.
  The Marshall plan to assist countries in southern Europe was a part 
of that perception, and we are well aware of all the other events that 
followed that. He perceived the need to stand and thwart the continued 
aggression of an evil power, and we are grateful to him for that.
  Emery said the other President to perceive a war is George W. Bush. 
Of course, September 11, you can say, made that easy. But I submit it 
is not necessarily that easy. Over time, people will begin to wonder 
whether our commitment to a war on terror is really all that important 
if there are not further attacks. If we go another several months, 
hopefully even a year or two, without a major terrorist attack on the 
United States, will the American people continue to believe that this 
is a war worth fighting? Or was it a one-time-only proposition?
  George W. Bush perceived the need to conduct a war on terror because 
he understood that from a historical point of view, over the course of 
the last dozen or 15 years, there had been a whole series of attacks 
against the United States or our interests, and when we in Congress 
Monday morning quarterback the FBI and CIA and say, ``You failed to 
connect the dots,'' I wonder what those same people say about President 
Bush's understanding of the history leading up to September 11. He is 
connecting the dots between the Khobar Towers and the Cole bombing and 
the embassy bombings in Africa. You can even go back further than that, 
bringing it on forward all the way up to September 11. Does an event 
have to occur every 6 months for us to believe this is really a war 
worth stopping or worth winning and bringing to conclusion? I do not 
think so.

[[Page 19046]]

  I think the President, when he said to the American people, we are 
going to have to be patient in this war, understood that we would have 
to be patient, that it could take a long time. I have been very 
gratified at the response of the American people in not being as 
impatient as we usually are as a people.
  Americans love to get in, get the job done, and move on. That is a 
great trait of Americans. But the President here is saying be patient. 
So far, I have been very impressed that the American people have been 
very patient. What the President has perceived, that not everybody has 
perceived, is that this is a struggle that has been going on for some 
time and it is going to continue in that same vein for as far out as we 
can see, unless we defeat terrorism.
  So the wrong question to be asking at this time is: Can you prove 
that there is an imminent threat to the United States as a result of 
which we have to take military action against Iraq? That is the wrong 
question.
  There are many fronts in this war on terror, from Lackawanna in New 
York where we get the six people who we think were connected to 
terrorism, to Tora Bora, Afghanistan, where we had to rout out members 
of al-Qaida; to Pakistan, where we are fighting remnants of al-Qaida; 
to places such as Yemen and Sudan and Somalia and the Philippines and 
Malaysia; Hamburg, Germany, where we have had to roll up al-Qaida 
operatives; and then other places in the Middle East where there is 
terrorism going on every day and when there are people such as Saddam 
Hussein building weapons of mass terror who would not be doing that, 
would not be spending the resources and trying to hide them, simply to 
play some kind of game. They are obviously serious people with evil 
intentions. I think everybody concedes that.
  Then the question becomes: Why should you put the burden on the 
President to prove that at a particular time Saddam Hussein is going to 
strike the United States in order to conclude that we have to do 
something about him? It is the same kind of thinking as in the late 
1930s, that, in retrospect, we look back on and say: Anybody could have 
realized that Hitler was somebody who had to be stopped. Why did 
Neville Chamberlain act so foolishly when he came back from Munich and 
said, ``Peace in our time''?
  I submit there are people today who are hoping against hope that 
Saddam Hussein will never use these weapons, weapons that are far 
greater than anything Adolph Hitler ever had in terms of their 
potential for destruction and death. I just wonder whether there are 
people who really believe we should wait until something specific and 
objective happens before we have a right to act, or whether 
preventative action is called for. Some call it preemption; some call 
it prevention. But the idea is that with war on terrorism you shouldn't 
have to wait until you are attacked to respond. That creates too many 
deaths, too much misery, and is unthinkable after September 11.
  The President, based upon good intelligence, has concluded that 
Saddam Hussein has a very large stock of very lethal weapons of mass 
destruction. By that, we mean chemical agents and biological agents 
which have been or can be ``weaponized''; that is to say, there are 
means of delivering those agents that can cause massive amounts of 
casualties; that he has been working to acquire a nuclear weapon.
  All of this is in open, public debate. And there is no doubt about 
any of it. The only doubt with respect to nuclear weapons is exactly 
where he is in the process. Of course, we don't know because he hasn't 
allowed us to inspect the places in his country where we believe he is 
trying to produce these nuclear weapons or, more specifically, the 
enriched uranium that would be a part of the weapons.
  For 4 years now, we have had no inspectors in the country, and before 
that most of the information that we got was based upon information 
from defectors--people who came out of Iraq and told us: You guys are 
missing what Saddam Hussein is doing. This is where you need to look. 
This is what you need to look for.
  When our inspectors then demanded to go to those places, one of three 
things happened. Either they said, no, you can't go there; that is a 
Presidential palace or whatever it is, or they went there and as they 
were walking in the front door satellite photos showed people running 
out of the backdoors with the stuff, or in the couple of cases we 
actually did find evidence of these weapons of mass destruction. Of 
course, at that point, Saddam Hussein said: Oh, that's right. I forgot 
about that. But whatever the defector said, that is all there is.
  So he was confirming exactly what we already knew and gave us nothing 
more than that. Yet there are those who believe through some kind of 
new inspection process that we are going to learn more than we did 
before; that this will be an adequate substitute for going in and 
finding these weapons of mass destruction in an unrestricted way.
  Saddam Hussein first said, You can have total access with no 
conditions, and he immediately began tying on conditions, the basis of 
which are laughable. You can't go into the Presidential palaces. They 
are grounds or areas with 1,000 buildings the size of the District of 
Columbia. We are going to send three inspectors in there? OK. There is 
the District of Columbia with all the buildings, and so on. Have at it.
  We are not going to find anything. We are going to be running around 
for years. So inspections are merely a means to an end. They are not 
the end. The goal here is not to have inspections. The goal is 
disarmament. And we know from intelligence that he has certain things 
he has not disarmed; that he hasn't done what he promised to do--both 
to the United States and the United Nations; that he hasn't complied 
with the United Nations resolutions. In fact, we see his violation of 
those resolutions almost every day. We don't have inspectors in there 
anymore who he was harassing and precluding from doing their job.
  But we do have aircraft flying in the no-fly zones and having 
American pilots and British pilots shot at every month, necessitating 
our taking those SAM sites and radar sites out of action by military 
force. So, in a sense, this is unfinished business from the gulf war 
which has never stopped. At a low level we have been trying to enforce 
the resolutions ever since the end of the gulf war. Our effort to rid 
many of these weapons of mass destruction is but the latest chapter.
  We made the decision in 1998 that Saddam Hussein had to go. We voted 
on a resolution here, and everybody was for it in 1998. If it was the 
right thing to do then, why is it no longer necessarily the right thing 
to do? He has had 4 more years to develop these weapons and to get 
closer to a nuclear capability.
  We now have a group of terrorists in the world who we know talk to 
each other, help each other, and give each other safe passage and 
access and places for training, and so on. We are developing 
information on connections with these terrorists and the State of Iraq. 
All of this has happened in the meantime. But now, suddenly, it is not 
the time.
  If we establish too high a burden of proof here we are going to be 
fiddling until we become absolutely sure it is time, and then it will 
be too late. That is why I believe the President is on the right track 
to say we don't know exactly when, where, or how but we know that this 
is a man who has very evil intentions and is working very hard to be 
able to strike at us. We can't let it happen. We can't wait until he 
has hit us to get him.
  For those reasons, and a variety of others that I will be talking 
about, I believe it is important for us to go into this debate with a 
view towards supporting the President, and the action that he has 
called for publicly and in the resolution that he has negotiated with 
congressional leaders and which has been placed on the floor.
  I believe at the end of the day we will conclude that the President 
should be supported and that we should authorize the use of force, and 
that we will have intelligence satisfactory for all of us to back up 
this resolution. And the final point--going back to the original point

[[Page 19047]]

of my conversation today--that it is a phony issue to somehow demand 
that the intelligence community provide us with information to which we 
haven't been given access. We have gotten all that we need to have 
access to. Our Members have asked for that information, and they can 
get it. The only information that they can't get is information that 
should not be provided anybody, including you, Mr. President, myself, 
and the distinguished minority leader who now joins us on the floor.
  I will have more to say later. I know the minority leader has some 
things he would like to say. At this point, I yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

                [From the New York Times, Oct. 3, 2002]

   C.I.A. Rejects Request for Report on Preparations for War in Iraq

                            (By James Risen)

       Washington, October 2.--The Central Intelligence Agency has 
     refused to provide Congress a comprehensive report on its 
     role in a possible American campaign against Iraq, setting 
     off a bitter dispute between the agency and leaders of the 
     Senate Intelligence Committee, Congressional leaders said 
     today.
       In a contentious, closed-door Senate hearing today, agency 
     officials refused to comply with a request from the committee 
     for a broad review of how the intelligence community's 
     clandestine role against the government of Saddam Hussein 
     would be coordinated with the diplomatic and military actions 
     that the Bush administration is planning.
       Lawmakers said they were further incensed because the 
     director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, who had 
     been expected to testify about the Iraq report, did not 
     appear at the classified hearing. A senior intelligence 
     official said Mr. Tenet was meeting with President Bush. 
     Instead, the agency was represented by the deputy director, 
     John McLaughlin, and Robert Walpole, the national 
     intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs.
       The agency rejected the committee's request for a report. 
     After the rejection, Congressional leaders accused the 
     administration of not providing the information out of fear 
     of revealing divisions among the State Department, C.I.A., 
     Pentagon and other agencies over the Bush administration's 
     Iraq strategy.
       Government officials said that the agency's response also 
     strongly suggested that Mr. Bush had already made important 
     decisions on how to use the C.I.A. in a potential war with 
     Iraq. One senior government official said it appeared that 
     the C.I.A. did not want to issue an assessment of the Bush 
     strategy that might appear to be ``second-guessing'' of the 
     president's plans.
       The dispute was the latest of several confrontations 
     between the C.I.A. and Congress over access to information 
     about a range of domestic and foreign policy matters. Just 
     last week, lawyers for the General Accounting Office and Vice 
     President Dick Cheney argued in federal court over whether 
     the White House must turn over confidential information on 
     the energy policy task force that Mr. Cheney headed last 
     year.
       The C.I.A.'s rejection of the Congressional request, which 
     some lawmakers contend was heavily influenced by the White 
     House, comes as relations between the agency and Congress 
     have badly deteriorated. The relations have soured over the 
     ongoing investigation by a joint House-Senate inquiry--
     composed of members of the Senate and House intelligence 
     committees--into the missed signals before the Sept. 11 
     attacks.
       Mr. Tenet in particular has been a target of lawmakers. 
     Last Friday, Mr. Tenet, a former Senate staffer himself, 
     wrote a scathing letter to the leaders of the joint 
     Congressional inquiry, denouncing the panel for writing a 
     briefing paper that questioned the honesty of a senior C.I.A. 
     official before he even testified.
       A senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet's absence at 
     the hearing today was unavoidable, and that no slight was 
     intended. The official said that he missed the hearing 
     because he was at the White House with Mr. Bush, helping to 
     brief other Congressional leaders Iraq. The official said Mr. 
     Tenet had advised the committee staff several days ago that 
     he would not be able to attend. Mr. Tenet has promised to 
     testify about the matter in another classified hearing on 
     Friday, officials said.
       One Congressional official said that the incident has badly 
     damaged Mr. Tenet's relations with Congress, something that 
     Mr. Tenet had always worked hard to cultivate.
       ``I hope we aren't seeing some schoolyard level of 
     petulance,'' by the C.I.A., the official said.
       While the House and Senate intelligence oversight committee 
     have received classified information about planned covert 
     operations against Iraq, the C.I.A. has not told lawmakers 
     how the agency and the Bush administration see those 
     operations fitting into the larger war on Iraq, or the global 
     war on terrorism, Congressional officials said.
       ``What they haven't told us is how does the intelligence 
     piece fit into the larger offensive against Iraq, or how do 
     these extra demands on our intelligence capabilities affect 
     our commitment to the war on terrorism in Afghanistan,'' said 
     one official.
       Congressional leaders complained that they have been left 
     in the dark on how the intelligence community will be used 
     just as they are about to debate a resolution to support war 
     with Iraq.
       Congressional leaders said the decision to fight the 
     Congressional request may stem from a fear of exposing 
     divisions within the intelligence community over the 
     administration's Iraq strategy, perhaps including a debate 
     between the agency and the Pentagon over the military's role 
     in intelligence operations in Iraq.
       Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been moving to 
     strengthen his control over the military's intelligence 
     apparatus, potentially setting up a turf war for dominance 
     among American intelligence officials. Mr. Rumsfeld has also 
     been pushing to expand the role of American Special 
     Operations Forces into covert operations, including 
     activities that have traditionally been the preserve of the 
     C.I.A.
       Congressional leaders asked for the report in July, and 
     expressed particular discontent that the C.I.A. did not 
     respond for two months. Lawmakers had asked that the report 
     be provided in the form of a national intelligence estimate, 
     a formal document that is supposed to provide a consensus 
     judgment by the several intelligence agencies.
       The committee wanted to see whether analysts at different 
     agencies, including the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence 
     Agency, the National Security Agency and the State 
     Department, have sharply differing views about the proper 
     role of the intelligence community in Iraq.
       But intelligence officials say that a national intelligence 
     estimate is designed to assess the policies of foreign 
     countries--not those of the United States. ``They were asking 
     for an assessment of U.S. policy, and that falls outside the 
     realm of the N.I.E., and it gets into the purview of the 
     commander in chief,'' an intelligence official said.
       Committee members have also expressed anger that the C.I.A. 
     refused to fully comply with a separate request for another 
     national intelligence estimate, one that would have provided 
     an overview of the intelligence community's latest assessment 
     on Iraq. Instead, the C.I.A. provided a narrower report, 
     dealing specifically with Iraq's program to develop weapons 
     of mass destruction.
       Lawmakers said that Mr. Tenet had assured the committee in 
     early September that intelligence officials were in the midst 
     of producing an updated national intelligence estimate on 
     Iraq, and that the committee would receive it as soon as it 
     was completed.
       Instead, the Senate panel received the national 
     intelligence estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction 
     program after 10 p.m. on Tuesday night, too late for members 
     to read it before Wednesday's hearing.
       The committee had ``set out an explicit set of requests'' 
     for what was to be included in the Iraq national intelligence 
     estimate, said one official. Those requirements were not met. 
     ``We wanted to know what the intelligence community's 
     assessment of the effect on a war in Iraq on neighboring 
     states, and they did not answer that question,'' the official 
     said.
       A senior intelligence official said the 100-page report on 
     Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program was completed in 
     three weeks under very tight Congressional deadlines, and the 
     writing had to be coordinated with several agencies.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I believe in just a moment the Senate will 
be ready to move to completion on the Department of Justice 
authorization conference report.
  Mr. President, I say to Senator Kyl from Arizona, who has been 
speaking for the last several minutes, that I appreciate his speech and 
his very effective and diligent work. He cares an awful lot about 
national security, about our defense capability, and about our 
intelligence communities, and his position on what we need to do in 
Iraq. It is not easy being a member of the Intelligence Committee 
sometimes. It takes a lot of extra meetings, a lot of briefings, and an 
awful lot that you can't talk about. For a Member of the Senate, that 
is tough. But Senator Kyl certainly does a good job in that effort.


                           Order Of Procedure

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, this unanimous consent has been cleared by 
both leaders. I ask unanimous consent that the yeas and nays be 
vitiated and that the conference report be adopted, without intervening 
action, motion, or debate; that the motion to reconsider be laid upon 
the table; that following adoption of the conference report, there be a 
period of morning business until 4:20 p.m.; that the time until 4:20 be 
divided between the majority and

[[Page 19048]]

minority leaders, and that Senator Daschle have the last period of time 
to speak; that without any intervening action or debate, at 4:20, the 
Senate proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to 
proceed to S.J. Res. 45.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The conference report was agreed to.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I thank the Senate for voting to end debate 
and to pass the bipartisan 21st Century Department of Justice 
Authorization Act conference report. I commend the Majority Leader for 
bringing this important legislation the floor and filing cloture in 
order for the Senate to take final action on the conference report.
  I regret that consideration and a vote on final passage on this 
important measure was delayed, but I thank the overwhelming majority of 
my colleagues for supporting cloture and passage of the conference 
report.
  This measure was passed by the House, by a vote of 400 to 4, last 
Thursday. All Democrats were prepared to pass the conference report 
that same day last week and any day this week. Given the Republicans' 
objection to proceed to a vote and given the refusal to agree to a time 
agreement, the Majority Leader was required to file cloture. I am glad 
that the filibuster is over.
  This legislation is truly bipartisan. It passed the House 400 to 4. 
The conference report was signed by every conferee, Republican or 
Democrat, including Senator Hatch and Representatives Sensenbrenner, 
Hyde, and Lamar Smith.
  Senators from both sides of the aisle spoke in favor of the 
legislation. In particular, I thank Senator Hutchison for coming to the 
floor on Tuesday to support this conference report. Senator Hutchison 
has spoken to me many times about the need for more judgeships along 
the Texas border with Mexico to handle immigration and criminal cases.
  The conference report includes three new judgeships in the conference 
report for Texas, one more than was included in the bill reported to 
the Senate by the Senate Judiciary Committee and passed by the Senate 
last December.
  I thank Senator Sessions for his statements on Tuesday and today in 
support of this bipartisan conference report.
  Although he opposes Senator Hatch's legislation regarding automobile 
dealer arbitration, which enjoys more than 60 Senate cosponsors and 200 
House cosponsors and was included in the conference report, Senator 
Sessions is supporting this conference report because it will improve 
the Department of Justice and support local law enforcement agencies 
across the nation. I appreciate Senator Sessions' work on the 
provisions in the conference report on the Paul Coverdell Forensic 
Sciences Improvement Grants and the Centers for Domestic Preparedness 
in Alabama and other States.
  Senator Brownback also spoke in favor of certain immigration 
provisions in this bill that he worked on with Senator Kennedy, the 
Chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. In 
particular, the conference report includes language sought by Senators 
Conrad and Brownback to reauthorize the program allowing foreign 
doctors educated in the United States to remain here if they will 
practice in underserved communities. This is a crucial provision to 
ensure that residents in some of our most rural states receive adequate 
medical care.
  The conference report also contains another important immigration 
provision to permit H-1B aliens who have labor certification 
applications caught in lengthy agency backlogs to extend their status 
beyond the sixth year limitation or, if they have already exceeded such 
limitation, to have a new H-1B petition approved so they can apply for 
an H-1B visa to return from abroad or otherwise re-obtain H-1B status. 
Either a labor certification application or a petition must be filed at 
least 365 days prior to the end of the 6th year in order for the alien 
to be eligible under this section.
  The slight modification to existing law made by this section is 
necessary to avoid the disruption of important projects caused by the 
sudden loss of valued employees. At a time when our economy is weak, 
this provision is intended to help. I thank Senator Kennedy and Senator 
Brownback for their work on this provision and their contributions to 
the conference report. I thank Senator Feinstein for her excellent 
speech earlier this week in support of this conference report. Senator 
Feinstein has been a tireless advocate for the needs of California, 
including the needs of the federal judiciary along the southern border. 
She has led the effort to increase judicial and law enforcement 
resources along our southern border. I am proud to have served as the 
chair of the House-Senate conference committee that unanimously 
reported a bill that includes five judgeships for the Southern District 
of California. Long overdue relief for the Southern District of 
California could be on the way once this conference report is adopted.
  Senator Biden also contributed a great deal to this conference 
report. He has fought doggedly to authorize a new Violence Against 
Women Office at the Justice Department, and his efforts have borne 
fruit in this legislation. He has also been one of the Senate's best 
advocates for reauthorizing the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency 
Prevention Act, which we do here. In addition, he was a cosponsor of 
the Drug Abuse Education, Prevention, and Treatment Act, and we have 
included many provisions from that bill in this conference report.
  I also would like to thank Senator Durbin for statements on the 
Senate floor and his dedicated efforts to authorize a new Violence 
Against Women Office, to expand the number of Boys and Girls Clubs in 
our nation, and to create new judgeships in Illinois.
  Senator Kohl was a tremendous help in our efforts to reauthorize the 
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, especially Title V of 
that Act, which provides for crucial prevention programs for our 
nation's youth.
  Senator Carnahan deserves the credit for the inclusion of the Law 
Enforcement Tribute Act in this conference report. That provision 
provides Federal assistance for local communities seeking to honor 
fallen law enforcement officers. Without her tireless work, we would 
not have been able to include that provision in this conference report.
  For his part, Senator Feingold was able to include his and Senator 
Hatch's Motor Vehicle Franchise Contract Arbitration Fairness Act in 
this conference report. That bill will ensure that auto dealers will 
have a level playing field in their disputes with the auto 
manufacturers.
  Finally, I also thank Senator Reid for his helpful comments and 
support throughout the debate on the legislation.
  Of course, our bipartisanship is evidenced by our including 
authorization for additional judgeships not only in California but also 
in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, North Carolina, Illinois and 
Florida. I have tried to improve on the record we inherited.
  In the six and one-half years that they controlled the Senate, the 
Republican majority was willing to add only eight judgeships to be 
appointed by a Democratic President, and most of those were in Texas 
and Arizona, States with two Republican Senators. We have, on the other 
hand, proceeded at our earliest opportunity to increase federal 
judgeships by 20, including in the border States where they are most 
needed, well aware these positions will be filled with appointments by 
a Republican President who has shown little interest in working with 
Democrats in the Senate. These include a number of jurisdictions with 
Republican Senators.
  I also commend the senior Senator from California for her leadership 
on the ``James Guelff and Chris McCurley Body Armor Act,'' the State 
Criminal Alien Assistance Program reauthorization, and the many anti-
drug abuse provisions included in this conference report. She spoke 
eloquently on the floor of the Senate regarding many of the important 
provisions she has championed in this process.

[[Page 19049]]

  This conference report will strengthen our Justice Department and the 
FBI, increase our preparedness against terrorist attacks, prevent crime 
and drug abuse, improve our intellectual property and antitrust laws, 
strengthen and protect our judiciary, and offer our children a safe 
place to go after school.
  This conference report is the product of years of bipartisan work. By 
my count, the conference report includes significant portions of at 
least 25 legislative initiatives. This legislation is neither 
complicated nor controversial. It passed the House overwhelmingly and 
in short order with a strong bipartisan vote.
  I thank my colleagues again for supporting the cloture motion and 
final passage of this conference report so that all of this bipartisan 
work and all the good that this legislation will do, will reach the 
President's desk. I particularly want to thank Senator Hatch, who 
worked very hard to help construct a good, fair and balanced conference 
report as did all of the conferees. Likewise, I want to thank Chairman 
Sensenbrenner and Representative Conyers of the House Judiciary 
Committee for working with us to conclude this conference report 
successfully.
  The staffs of these Members must also be thanked for working through 
the summer and over the last month to bring all the pieces of the 
conference report together into a winning package. In particular, the 
House Judiciary Committee staff has been enormously helpful, including 
Phil Kiko, Will Moschella, Blaine Merritt, Perry Apelbaum, Ted Kalo, 
Sampak Garg, Bobby Vassar, and Alec French. I would also like to thank 
the staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee, including Bob 
Sweet and Denise Forte. The Senate Judiciary Committee staff has shown 
its outstanding professionalism and I want to thank Bruce Cohen, Beryl 
Howell, Ed Pagano, Tim Lynch, Jessica Berry, Robyn Schmidek and Phil 
Toomajian, Makan Delrahim, Leah Belaire, Michael Volkov, Melody Barnes, 
Esther Olavarria, Robert Toone, Neil MacBride, and Louisa Terrell.
  I appreciate that not all Members were or could be conferees and 
participate in the conference, but after a full opportunity to study 
the conference report passed last week in the House by a vote of 400 to 
4, I hope that even those Members who raised objection will conclude 
that on the whole this is a good, solid piece of legislation.
  Although the debate is over, I want to address the objections raised 
by a few Members to this legislation. I thank these Members for coming 
to the floor to discuss their views and concerns, and want to show them 
the respect they deserve by responding to those objections. I should 
note that even in posing an objection to and delaying passage of the 
conference report--as is their rights as Senators--these Members 
acknowledged that there were parts of this bill they liked or may like 
upon review.
  Contrary to those who may argue that this legislation is not a 
priority, it is. Congress has not authorized the Department of Justice 
in more than two decades. While the Justice Department would certainly 
continue to exist if we were to fail to reauthorize it, that is not an 
excuse for shirking our responsibility now. I know that Senator Hatch 
and Representatives Sensenbrenner and Conyers share my view. It is long 
past time for the Judiciary Committees of the House and Senate--and the 
Congress as a whole--to restore their proper oversight role over the 
Department of Justice.
  Through Republican and Democratic administrations, we have allowed 
the Department of Justice to escape its accountability to the Senate 
and House of Representatives and through them to the American people. 
Congress, the people's representative, has a strong institutional 
interest in restoring that accountability. The House has recognized 
this, and has done its job. I am glad that we have done ours.
  I agree with those Members who say that we need to give anti-
terrorism priority, but not lose sight of the other important missions 
of the Department of Justice. The conference report takes such a 
balanced approach. Those critics who say that there is nothing new in 
this legislation to fight terrorism, have missed some important 
provisions in the legislation as well as my floor statements over the 
past week outlining what the conference report contains to help in the 
anti-terrorism effort.
  Let me repeat the highlights of what the conference report does on 
this important problem.
  The conference report fortifies our border security by authorizing 
over $20 billion for the administration and enforcement of the laws 
relating to immigration, naturalization, and alien registration. It 
also authorizes funding for Centers for Domestic Preparedness in 
Alabama, Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Nevada, Vermont and 
Pennsylvania, and adds additional uses for grants from the Office of 
Domestic Preparedness to support State and local law enforcement 
agencies. These provisions have strong bipartisan support. I thank 
Senator Sessions, Senator Shelby and Senator Specter for supporting 
cloture on the conference report and for final passage.
  Another measure in the bill would correct a glitch in a law that 
helps prosecutors combat the international financing of terrorism. I 
worked closely with the White House to pass the original provision to 
bring the United States into compliance with a treaty that bans 
terrorist financing, but without this technical, non-controversial 
change, the provision may not be usable. This law is vital in stopping 
the flow of money to terrorists. Worse yet, at a time when the 
President is going before the U.N. emphasizing that our enemies are not 
complying with international law, by blocking this minor fix, we leave 
ourselves open to a charge that we are not complying with an anti-
terrorism treaty.
  I agree with other Members that we should do more to help the FBI 
Director in transforming the FBI from a crime fighting to a terrorism 
prevention agency and to help the FBI overcome its information 
technology, management and other problems to be the best that it can 
be. The Judiciary Committee reported unanimously the Leahy-Grassley FBI 
Reform Act, S. 1974, over six months ago to reach those goals, but this 
legislation has been blocked by an anonymous hold from moving forward. 
This conference report contains parts of that bipartisan legislation, 
but not the whole bill, which continues to this day to be blocked to 
this day.
  Since the attacks of September 11 and the anthrax attacks last fall, 
we have relied on the FBI to detect and prevent acts of catastrophic 
terrorism that endanger the lives of the American people and the 
institutions of our country. Reform and improvement at the FBI was 
already important, but the terrorist attacks suffered by this country 
last year have imposed even greater urgency on improving the FBI. The 
Bureau is our front line of domestic defense against terrorists. It 
needs to be as great as it can.
  Even before those attacks, the Judiciary Committee's oversight 
hearings revealed serious problems at the FBI that needed strong 
congressional action to fix. We heard about a double standard in 
evaluations and discipline. We heard about record and information 
management problems and communications breakdowns between field offices 
and Headquarters that led to the belated production of documents in the 
Oklahoma City bombing case. Despite the fact that we have poured money 
into the FBI over the last five years, we heard that the FBI's computer 
systems were in dire need of modernization.
  We heard about how an FBI supervisor, Robert Hanssen, was able to 
sell critical secrets to the Russians undetected for years without ever 
getting a polygraph. We heard that there were no fewer than 15 
different areas of security at the FBI that needed fixing.
  The FBI Reform Act tackles these problems with improved 
accountability, improved security both inside and outside the FBI, and 
required planning to ensure the FBI is prepared to deal with the 
multitude of challenges we are facing.

[[Page 19050]]

  We are all indebted to Senator Grassley for his leadership in the 
area. Working with Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary 
Committee we unanimously reported the FBI Reform Act more than six 
months ago only to be stymied in our bipartisan efforts by an anonymous 
Republican hold.
  The conference report does not contain all of the important 
provisions in the FBI Reform Act that Senator Grassley and I, and the 
other members of the Judiciary Committee, agreed were needed, but it 
does contain parts of that other bill.
  Among the items that are, unfortunately, not in the conference report 
and are being blocked from passing in the stand-alone FBI Reform bill 
by an anonymous Republican hold are the following: Title III of the FBI 
Reform bill that would institute a career security officer program, 
which senior FBI officials have testified before our Committee would be 
very helpful;
  Title IV of the FBI Reform bill outlining the requirements for a 
polygraph program along the lines of what the Webster Commission 
recommended;
  Title VII of the FBI Reform bill that takes important steps to fix 
some of the double standard problems and support the FBI's Office of 
Professional Responsibility, which FBI Ethics and OPR agents say is 
very important; and
  Title VIII to push along implementation of secure communications 
networks to help facilitate FISA processing between Main Justice and 
the FBI. These hard-working agents and prosecutors have to hand-carry 
top secret FISA documents between their offices because they still lack 
send secure e-mail systems.
  The FBI Reform bill would help fix may of these problems and I would 
hope we would be able to pass all of the FBI Reform Act before the end 
of this Congress. These should not be controversial provisions and are 
designed to help the FBI.
  During the debate on this conference report, some Members complained 
it included provisions that were not contained in either the Senate or 
House bills. Now, each of the proposals we have included are directly 
related to improving the administration of justice in the United 
States. We were asked to include many of them by Republican members of 
the House and Senate.
  Let me give you some examples. The conference report reauthorizes the 
State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which President Bush has 
sought to eliminate. On March 4 of this year, Senator Kyl and Senator 
Feinstein sent me a letter asking me to include an authorization for 
SCAAP--which was not authorized in either the House- or Senate-passed 
bill--in the conference report. That proposal had been considered and 
reported by the Judiciary Committee but a Republican hold has stopped 
Senate consideration and passage. I agreed with Senator Kyl that we 
should authorize SCAAP. I still believe that it is the right thing to 
do.
  In addition to including the reauthorization of SCAAP, the conferees 
also authorized an additional judge for Arizona. Members have been 
arguing for years that their States need more judges. We took those 
arguments seriously, and added another new judge for Arizona on top of 
the two that were added in 1998 and the third that was added in 2000. 
As I said before, we have added 20 additional judicial positions in 
this conference report.
  Some have been critical of the conference report's authorization of 
funding for DEA police training in South and Central Asia, and for the 
United States-Thailand drug prosecutor exchange program. I believe that 
both of these are worthy programs that deserve the Senate's support.
  I have listened to President Bush and others in his Administration 
and in Congress argue that terrorist organizations in Asia, including 
Al Qaeda, have repeatedly used drug proceeds to fund their operations. 
The conferees wanted to do whatever we could to break the link between 
drug trafficking and terror, and we would all greatly appreciate the 
Senate's assistance in that effort.
  Beyond the relationship between drug trafficking and terrorism, the 
production of drugs in Asia has a tremendous impact on America.
  For example, more than a quarter of the heroin that is plaguing the 
northeastern United States, including my State of Vermont, comes from 
Southeast Asia. Many of the governments in that region want to work 
with the United States to reduce the production of drugs, and these 
programs will help. It is beyond me why any Senator would oppose them.
  Some have complained that the conference report demands too many 
reports from the Department of Justice and that this would interfere 
with the Department's ongoing counterterorism efforts. It is true that 
our legislation requires a number of reports, as part of our oversight 
obligations over the Department of Justice. I assure the Senate, 
however, that if the Department of Justice comes to the House and 
Senate Judiciary Committees and makes a convincing case that any 
reporting requirement in this legislation will hinder our national 
security, we will work out a reasonable accommodation. I think, 
however, that such a turn of events is exceedingly unlikely, as no one 
at the Department has mentioned any such concerns.
  Some Members have complained that the conference report includes 
pieces of legislation that had not received Committee consideration. 
Let me deal with some of the specific proposals that have been cited.
  The Law Enforcement Tribute Act was mentioned as a provision not 
considered by the Judiciary Committee, but this is incorrect. In 
reality, the Committee reported that bill favorably on May 16. Its 
passage has been blocked by an anonymous Republican hold.
  Complaints have been made about inclusion of the motor vehicle 
franchise dispute resolution provision in the conference report for 
bypassing the Committee. But, again, that is incorrect. The Judiciary 
Committee fully considered this proposal and reported Senator Hatch's 
Motor Vehicle Franchise Contract Arbitration Fairness Act last October 
31. It has been stalled from the Senate floor by anonymous Republican 
holds.
  A section allowing FBI danger pay was cited as a proposal that 
bypassed Committee consideration, but, again, the Judiciary Committee 
did consider this proposal as part of the original DOJ Authorization 
bill, S. 1319.
  Some have complained that the Federal Judiciary Protection Act, which 
is included in the conference report, had not come before the 
Committee, but on the contrary, this legislation, S. 1099, was passed 
the Judiciary Committee and the Senate by unanimous consent last year 
and in the 106th Congress, as well.
  A complaint was raised on the floor about a provision on the U.S. 
Parole Commission being included in the conference report. That was 
included because the Bush Administration included it in its budget 
request.
  A complaint was also raised about the conference report's provision 
establishing the FBI police to provide protection for the FBI buildings 
and personnel in this time of heightened concerns about terrorist 
attacks. Contrary to the critics, this proposal was considered by the 
Judiciary Committee as part of the FBI Reform Act, S. 1974, which was 
reported unanimously on a bipartisan basis but has been blocked by an 
anonymous hold.
  Similarly, a complaint was made on the floor about bypassing the 
Committee with the provision in the conference report for the FBI to 
tell the Congress about how the FBI is updating its obsolete computer 
systems. Again, this is incorrect. This provision was included in the 
FBI Reform Act, S. 1974, which was considered by the Judiciary 
Committee and unanimously reported without objection.
  Some critics have complained that the conference report includes 
intellectual property provisions that have passed neither the House or 
the Senate. It is not for lack of trying to pass these provisions 
through the Senate, but anonymous Republican holds have held up for 
months passage of the Madrid Protocol Implementation Act, S. 407. This 
legislation has passed the House

[[Page 19051]]

on three separate times in three consecutive Congresses. Let us get it 
passed now in the conference report.
  The conference report also contains another intellectual property 
matter, the Hatch-Leahy TEACH Act, to help distance learning. Contrary 
to the critics' statements, this passed the Senate in June.
  The Intellectual Property and High Technology Technical Amendments 
Act, S. 320, contained in this conference report, was passed by the 
Senate at the beginning of this Congress, in February, 2001. It is time 
to get this done.
  The criticism made on the floor that the juvenile justice provisions 
in the conference report never passed the House or Senate is simply 
wrong. The conference report contains juvenile justice provisions 
passed by the House in September and October of last year, in H.R. 863 
and H.R. 1900.
  The criticism that the conference report contains criminal justice 
improvements that were passed by neither the House or the Senate 
glosses over two important points: First, that many of the provisions 
were indeed passed by the House, and, second, that others have been 
blocked from Senate consideration and passage by anonymous Republican 
holds. Let me give you some examples.
  The conference report contains the Judicial Improvements Act, S. 2713 
and HR 3892, that passed the House in July, 2002, but consideration by 
the Senate was blocked after the Senate bill was reported by the 
Judiciary Committee.
  The Antitrust Technical Corrections bills, H.R. 809, had the same 
fate. After being passed by the House in March, 2001, and reported by 
the Senate Judiciary Committee, consideration was blocked in the 
Senate.


                               CONCLUSION

  This conference report is a comprehensive attempt to ensure the 
administration of justice in our nation. It is not everything I would 
like or that any individual Member of Congress might have authored.
  It is a conference report, a consensus document, a product of the 
give and take with the House that is our legislative process. It will 
strengthen our Justice Department and the FBI, increase our 
preparedness against terrorist attacks, prevent crime and drug abuse, 
improve our intellectual property and antitrust laws, strengthen and 
protect our judiciary, and offer our children a safe place to go after 
school.
  The conference report merits the support of the United States Senate 
to help the Justice Department and the American people.
 Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise in support of the 21st 
Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act. The 
Conference Report is now before the Senate. The title of the Conference 
Report--``The 21st Century Department of Justice Appropriations 
Authorization Act''--is appropriately named--the bill is a forward- 
looking measure which will strengthen the Justice Department and our 
judicial system as we face the new challenges of the 21st century. More 
specifically, the bill provides the Justice Department with the 
necessary tools and resources: to detect and prevent future terrorist 
attacks; to reduce drug abuse and prevent drug-related crimes; to 
enhance our country's ability to compete in international markets by 
improving our intellectual property and antitrust laws; and to address 
the growing needs of our at-risk youth by offering meaningful 
alternatives to the temptations of crime. The House last week passed 
the Conference Report by a vote of 400-4. I urge my colleagues to 
support this important piece of legislation.
  Before I address the substance of the Conference Report, I want to 
take a moment to thank my distinguished colleagues, Chairman Leahy, and 
House Judiciary Chairman Sensenbrenner, and Ranking Member Conyers, for 
all of their hard work, commitment and determination on this important 
matter. Senator Leahy and I have been working together for years to 
enact a Department of Justice reauthorization bill, and I am pleased 
that we are finally able to bring the matter to the Senate for its 
consideration.
  The Department of Justice's main duty is to provide justice to all 
Americans, certainly of central importance to our national life. It has 
the primary responsibility for the enforcement of our Nation's laws. 
Through its divisions and agencies including the FBI and DEA, it 
investigates and prosecutes violations of federal criminal laws, 
protects the civil rights of our citizens, enforces the antitrust laws, 
and represents every department and agency of the United States 
government in litigation. Increasingly, its mission is international as 
well, protecting the interests of the United States and its people from 
growing threats of trans-national crime and international terrorism. 
Additionally, among the Department's key duties is providing much 
needed assistance and advice to state and local law enforcement 
agencies.
  It has been over two decades since Congress reauthorized the Justice 
Department. If enacted, H.R. 2215 will be a significant step in 
Congress's efforts to reassert its rightful role in overseeing the 
operation of the Justice Department. By instituting a regular 
reauthorization procedure for the Justice Department, Congress will be 
able to ensure that the Justice Department has all the necessary tools 
to carry out its critical functions.
  Let me be clear that I am not advocating that we micro-manage the 
Department of Justice. I have full confidence in Attorney General 
Ashcroft and the thousands of employees who competently manage the 
Department daily. However, we cannot continue to neglect our 
responsibility to exercise responsible oversight of the Justice 
Department which so profoundly affects the lives of all Americans.
  The tragic events of September 11th have underscored the need for 
Congress to work closely with the Justice Department. Last year, we 
worked with the Justice Department to ensure swift passage of the 
PATRIOT Act, which has strengthened America's security by providing law 
enforcement with the necessary tools to fight the war against 
terrorism. We will continue to provide the Justice Department with the 
legislative tools and resources needed to win this war against 
terrorism.
  The 21st Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization 
includes a number of important provisions which I will briefly 
highlight. Most significantly, the bill fully authorizes the Justice 
Department and its major components for fiscal years 2002 and 2003. 
Among these authorizations are funding for the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation to protect against terrorism and cyber-crime, the Drug 
Enforcement Administration to combat the trafficking of illegal drugs, 
and the Immigration and Nationalization Service to enforce our 
country's immigration laws. The bill also adds 94 new Assistant United 
States Attorneys to implement the President's Project Safe 
Neighborhoods initiative which is aimed at reducing gun violence in our 
communities.
  With respect to congressional oversight, the conference report 
strengthens the authority of the Department's Inspector General in 
order to address internal issues within the Justice Department. It 
specifically expands the Inspector General's authority to include 
responsibility for investigating the FBI. In order to establish a 
baseline from which to focus future oversight of the Justice 
Department, the bill requires the Department to submit to Congress 
reports detailing the operation of the Office of Justice Programs and 
all of the Justice Department's litigation activities.
  The conference report enacts many of the provisions of the Drug Abuse 
Education, Prevention, and Treatment Act of 2001, S. 304, which I 
introduced in the Senate with Senators Leahy and Biden more than 18 
months ago, and which has received wide bipartisan support. This 
legislation marks a watershed event in the national effort to combat 
drug addiction, and makes a significant, sustained commitment to 
providing federal resources for reducing the demand for illicit drugs. 
Investing in proven prevention and treatment programs can help reduce 
the wreckage and the unwarranted burden of drug abuse on society.

[[Page 19052]]

  Specifically, the Drug Abuse Education, Prevention and Treatment 
provisions: No. 1, increase drug treatment grants for prisoners and 
residential aftercare programs; No. 2, require a study and review of 
drug-testing technologies and all federal drug and substance abuse 
treatment and prevention programs in order to recommend necessary 
reforms to these programs; No. 3, expand drug abuse and addiction 
research; No. 4, expand the Drug Courts program; No. 5, provide post-
incarceration vocational and remedial educational opportunities for 
federal inmates; and No. 6, provide grants to states to establish 
demonstration projects to promote successful reentry of criminal 
offenders.
  While ensuring effective drug treatment and prevention programs, the 
conference report includes a broad set of measures designed to protect 
our youth. Specifically, the bill supports the creation and expansion 
of Boys and Girls Clubs in our communities, enhances juvenile criminal 
accountability, and provides states with block grants to address 
juvenile crime. In addition to our nation's youth, the bill strengthens 
our criminal justice system by increasing penalties for those who 
tamper or threaten federal witnesses, or those criminals who harm 
Federal judges and law enforcement personnel.
  In addition to our Nation's youth, the bill provides increased 
attention to crimes against women by establishing a Violence Against 
Women Office within the Justice Department, which will be headed by a 
presidentially appointed and Senate confirmed Director. The Director, 
in part, will serve as a special counsel to the Attorney General on 
issues related to violence against women, provide information to the 
President, the Congress, State and local governments, and the general 
public, and maintain a liaison with the judicial branches of federal 
and State governments.
  The conference report addresses the operation of our federal 
judiciary by enacting long-needed judicial improvements and reforms to 
judicial disciplinary procedures. It also creates judgeships in various 
districts where there is a chronic shortage of federal judges to handle 
existing caseloads, particularly in our border States such as Texas, 
New Mexico, California, Nevada, Florida and Alabama. We need to do more 
here, and add judges in other districts where caseloads are high, and I 
am hopeful we will be able to do that next Congress.
  The bill also promotes America's economic security by enhancing our 
competitiveness in the world economy. Specifically, the bill makes some 
needed changes to our antitrust laws, and creates a commission to 
review our antitrust laws to determine what reforms, if any, are needed 
to ensure the effective operation of our free markets in our ``new'' 
high-tech economy.
  The conference report enacts critical amendments to the Radiation 
Exposure Compensation Act of 2000, S. 898, which I introduced in order 
to clarify the eligibility standards and to ensure appropriate 
compensation under the program. In addition, the bill enacts ``The 
Motor Vehicle Franchise Contract Arbitration Act,'' S. 1140, which I 
introduced, was passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and which 
received bipartisan support. This bill restricts the use of mandatory 
arbitration provisions in motor vehicle franchise contracts.
  Further, the bill includes several important provisions to reform 
intellectual property law. First, the bill directs the Justice 
Department to increase its enforcement of intellectual property laws. 
Second, aside from enforcement, the bill enacts the Technology, 
Education and Copyright Harmonization Act (TEACH Act, S. 487, which I 
introduced and has received bipartisan support. This Act enhances our 
country's education system by revising federal copyright law to extend 
the exemption from infringement liability for instructional 
broadcasting to digital distance learning. Third, the Conference Report 
enacts several important reforms of our patent and trademark system 
which I supported, including: authorization of the Patent and Trademark 
Office for fiscal years 2003 to 2008; revision of the filing and 
processing procedures for patent and trademark applications; and 
enactment of the Madrid Protocol Implementation Act, S. 407, which 
ensures international protection of United States trademarks.
  Finally, the conference report refines INS administrative procedures 
in two specific areas in order to reduce INS processing delays. First, 
the bill extends H-1B status for alien workers who wish to continue 
working beyond the authorized 6-year period. Second, the bill includes 
provisions for removal of conditional basis of permanent resident 
status applicable to certain alien entrepreneurs.
  The conference report is a long-awaited and much-needed measure which 
will ensure that Congress provides the required oversight--and support 
of--the Justice Department as it continues its critical role of 
enforcing our country's laws, protecting our country from terrorist 
attacks, enhancing our competitiveness in the world economy, and making 
our communities safer. Working together in a spirit of bipartisanship, 
the bill provides the necessary framework to ensure that Congress and 
the Administration will be able to identify solutions to the challenges 
faced by federal law enforcement, and to ensure the efficient operation 
of the Justice Department and each of its components.
  I would also like to take this opportunity to recognize the tireless 
work of the dedicated Staff members on both sides of the aisle whose 
work around the clock made this legislation possible. First, on my 
staff, I want to specifically commend my former staff member Leah 
Belaire, who recently joined the United States Attorney's Office for 
the District of Columbia as an Assistant United States Attorney. She 
along with my counsels, Mike Volkov, Wan Kim, Shawn Bentley, Patti 
DeLoatche, Rebecca Seidel, Bruce Artim, Dustin Pead, and my Chief 
Counsel and Staff Director, Makan Delrahim, all poured their hearts 
into this legislation. On Chairman Leahy's staff, I want to thank Tim 
Lynch and Ed Pagano, as well as Chairman Leahy's able General Counsel, 
Beryl Howell, and Chief Counsel and Staff Director, Bruce Cohan. On 
Chairman Sensenbrenner's staff, I want to commend Will Moschella, Steve 
Pinkos and Phil Kiko, for their hard work and dedication. On 
Congressman Conyer's staff, I want to thank Perry Apelbaum, Sam Garg, 
and Ted Kalo for their commitment to this legislation.
  Mr. President, this is an important piece of legislation that 
deserves our full support. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the 
conference report.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I regret to point out one very important 
provision that is missing from H.R. 2215: a district judgeship for 
Idaho. This is a matter of great urgency to the citizens of my State.
  Idaho has two Federal district judgeships, created in 1890 and 1954. 
We are one of only three States in the union with two Federal district 
judgeships.
  There are three distinct and widely-distant geographical areas in my 
State: the Southeast, the Southwest and the North. A district judge 
must travel up to 450 miles between division offices. This distance is 
greater than that traveled in other rural district courts, including 
those of Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota or Eastern 
Washington. In fact, only a district judge in Alaska has a greater 
distance to travel, when comparing these rural district courts. Because 
of the State's sheer size, its extraordinary increase in population, 
and tremendous growth in caseload over nearly five decades, the current 
situation is becoming increasingly unworkable, and we are seeking one 
additional judgeship.
  Unlike other States, we have no senior judges to fill in the gaps. We 
are depending on judges borrowed from other districts to help us, but 
obviously that can only be a temporary fix for the problem.
  To remedy this crisis, the State of Idaho has requested a third 
Federal district judge. All members of the Federal bench in Idaho agree 
with this request, and the Idaho State Legislature even passed a 
resolution petitioning Congress for this change.

[[Page 19053]]

  I have been working on this issue throughout the 107th Congress, 
introducing legislation along with my Idaho colleague Senator Crapo, 
consulting with the Senate Judiciary Committee and lobbying its 
members, writing to the Judicial Conference. Our senior district judge 
in Idaho personally visited Capitol Hill and talked with staff and 
members of the Judiciary Committee.
  When it became apparent that H.R. 2215 was the only legislative 
vehicle in this Congress for the creation of new judgeships, the entire 
Idaho Congressional Delegation, Senator Crapo and I, as well as our 
House colleagues Representative Mike Simpson and Representative Butch 
Otter, wrote to each member of the conference committee on this bill, 
reiterating our request.
  To date, not a single member of the Senate or House has opposed our 
request. Yet at the end of the day, H.R. 2215 fails to include an 
additional judge for Idaho.
  It is my understanding that our request was not given priority 
because the Judicial Conference of the United States refused to endorse 
it. While Idaho did not originally meet the narrow requirements imposed 
by the Conference before it recommends an additional judgeship, I have 
been informed in the last few weeks that we now meet those 
requirements, and Idaho hopes to obtain that critical endorsement in 
the future.
  With that, let me put the Senate on notice that my State will return 
in the next Congress with this request and will work for a better 
result. There should not be waiting list for people to obtain justice 
in our courts, but there is in Idaho until relief arrives in the form 
of a third Federal district judge.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I rise to address one aspect of the ``21st 
Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act,'' H.R. 
2215. Section 312 creates a number of Federal judgeships, including a 
temporary judgeship for the District of Arizona. Under the bill, the 
temporary addition of an extra seat to the 12-member Federal district 
court will commence in July 2003 and will end with the first judicial 
retirement that occurs after that ten-year period expires, returning 
the court to twelve seats.
  The District of Arizona sorely needs this judgeship. According to the 
Administrative Office of the United States Courts, the District of 
Arizona ranks 10th in total weighted filings among all 94 districts. 
The general standard for weighted filings established by the U.S. 
Judicial Conference as an indicator of a need for additional judgeships 
is 430. With 604 weighted filings per judgeship, the District of 
Arizona exceeds this criteria by 29 percent, despite the recent and 
much appreciated addition of four new judges. The high level of filings 
in the District of Arizona is not temporary. The weighted filings in 
this district have been substantially higher than the national average 
since 1985.
  The District of Arizona reported 6,300 civil and criminal case 
filings in 2001, a 26 percent increase in filings over a five-year 
period. The District's criminal felony caseload has increased 104 
percent over the past 5 years. The District ranks third among the 
Nation's 94 districts in weighted criminal felony filings per 
authorized judgeship, 231 percent above the national average. In 
addition to the burgeoning criminal caseload, the District's civil 
caseload is on the rise. This District is an unenviable 71st nationally 
in median disposition time for civil cases and 85th nationally in 
median time from filing to trial in civil cases. Seven percent of the 
civil cases have been pending over three years.
  According to the latest population statistics as reported by the U.S. 
Census Bureau, Arizona's population increased by 40 percent from 1990 
to 2000, while the national rate of population growth is only 13.1 
percent. Arizona is ranked second only to Nevada for percentage of 
growth. The Arizona Department of Economic Security projects the 
State's population will grow another 25 percent by 2010.
  This new judgeship will provide emergency aid to Arizona's District 
Court, whose judges are extremely overburdened by crushing federal 
caseloads. Arizona's Federal court, like those in other border states, 
suffers special burdens as a result of sharp increases in drug 
trafficking and immigration prosecutions. This backlog delays justice 
for Arizonans and disrupts the proper administration of the courts.
  I would like to commend Senator Leahy, Senator Hatch, and 
Representative Sensenbrenner for including this much-needed judgeship. 
This temporary judgeship is at least one reason to support the ``21st 
Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act.''

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