[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12486-12488]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       THE SENATE NEEDS A BUDGET

  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I might say to the distinguished Senator 
from West Virginia, since I like cappuccinos, it would be better than 
some other things we might buy.
  In any event, the Senator from Kansas is going to speak shortly, and 
I will try not to go too long. The Senator from West Virginia, Mr. 
Byrd, I have been listening, and not to your entire speech, but I say 
the Senator from New Mexico agrees with some of what you said. But I 
would not expect you to lay the blame in Congress where the blame lies 
in Congress. I believe much of the delay on everything is attributable 
to the fact that the majority party has not yet as of this day produced 
a budget. So if we want to talk about delays, as chairman of the Budget 
Committee, my good friend, you do not know what number to mark to. 
Nobody has yet told you how many dollars you have to spend. If the 
budget does anything, it starts with that.
  It also ropes in, in some good and major way, the entitlements that 
are supposed to come up the remainder of this year and next year. We do 
not have that around either. That is one of the reasons we keep getting 
60 votes

[[Page 12487]]

for every proposal that might be something that we ought to be 
considering for the American people.
  It is given an added burden because we do not have a budget. So I 
have said this, not as many times as some have urged me to say it, but 
I have said we need a budget. I do not know if we need it now--it is 
almost August--but I do believe we have to remind ourselves that 
whether we like the budget process or not, whether it will be in 
existence next year, we will know in advance. But as part of the 
process we go through, clearly it is not good for the American people 
that it not be done. It causes an awful lot of problems. It can cause 
us to spend an awful lot of money. It might indeed cause us to be 
behind schedule on things and we ought not be, especially in an 
election year when we have to tear ourselves away from an election, a 
number of the Senators do, plus the rest of the elections in our 
country.
  Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DOMENICI. I am pleased to yield.
  Mr. BYRD. Inasmuch as he addressed some of his remarks to me, I share 
the Senator's concern that there is no budget. I was also concerned the 
previous year when there was no markup in the Budget Committee of the 
budget bill. I was a member of that committee.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Yes, indeed.
  Mr. BYRD. There was no markup. So each side, of course, can find some 
fault with the other. The point is, we are at the present moment, and 
Congress is being blamed by the administration for not passing a 
supplemental bill quickly. I have pointed out that the administration 
could be more helpful in this regard. Senator Stevens and I, and other 
Members of the Appropriations Committee, have been working with a 
Republican House and we stand ready and have stood ready all along to 
meet to try and work out these differences.
  The administration could be more helpful to us if it would urge the 
Republican House to move faster. We ought to get that supplemental 
back--that conference back to both Houses this week. We ought not to be 
any longer than that.
  I am glad to say the distinguished chairman of the House side of the 
Appropriations Committee is calling me, I believe today, and he is 
working with Senator Stevens and Mr. Obey.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Is that the House or the budget chairman?
  Mr. BYRD. I beg your pardon?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Is that the House or the Budget Committee chairman?
  Mr. BYRD. I am glad the Senator pointed to my inadvertence. It is the 
House Appropriations Committee chairman, Mr. Young. He is working with 
Mr. Stevens, Mr. Obey, and myself. So we hope to get a supplemental 
conference report this week.
  I thank the distinguished Senator for his courtesy in yielding.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I did not intend to get into a debate about the 27 
years of budgets that I have been part of in the Senate. I merely call 
to the attention that right now, this year--we did get a budget last 
year. We did not get it out of committee, but the statute did not 
require that.
  I do not want to debate that issue. I merely mentioned that my good 
friend was producing a litany of things that were causing the delay, 
and I thought it was a little bit lopsided toward blaming the 
administration for the delays. A lot of them are our fault, starting 
with the fact that we do not have a budget.
  Yes, the President has a different approach to what he wants to use 
the money for than we do, but we better get on with it. It is not too 
much different than most Presidents in sending us their budgets, and 
the sooner we get on with facing up to our responsibility the better we 
are.
  We have been sitting around waiting for somebody else--and it was not 
the President--for a long time in the Senate, as time ran buy and the 
appropriations were needed. We are going to get them done just like we 
do every other year. I used to think because it got late and because I 
was worried we were not in session, that we would not get it done. We 
will get it some way or another. We always have. We have been late. We 
have had partial passages of supplementals and then we have had other 
ways of putting two or three bills together, all of which should not 
happen. But if you need to do them, you need to do them. That will be 
the case this year, too, I hope. I hope it will be done expeditiously.
  Now, I want to move to the subject I came to the floor about.
  Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DOMENICI. I am glad to yield.
  Mr. BYRD. I ask that the time for this colloquy not be taken out of 
the time allotted to the Senator from New Mexico.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOMENICI. This colloquy will not come off of my time.
  Mr. BYRD. I hope the Senator will have all the time he wants.
  It is too bad we get into these little kinds of colloquies, but I 
believe the candidate who said he was going to change the tone in 
Washington would go a long way towards helping to change that tone if 
he would stop beating Congress over the head in his public speeches. 
Just the other day, he complained about the Congress not passing his 
supplemental bill and the chairman of that committee. I am not at fault 
for not getting it passed. The Republicans on that committee are not at 
fault. We voted it out of the committee solidly, 29 to 0. So we work in 
a bipartisan fashion in that committee.
  Senator Stevens and I are working in a bipartisan fashion, and the 
administration does not help things when it lambastes the Congress 
publicly and talks about the supplemental bill, the delays in getting 
that bill down to the President.
  We put every dollar in that bill that the President asked for for 
defense, and part of that delay is caused by the administration itself. 
I cannot help but respond to that kind of partisanship when it is sent 
out over the public airwaves by the one man in this country who 
commands the attention of the press. Nobody else can compete with a 
President when it comes to that, but we all are going to have to answer 
to voters. I will stand at the judgment bar as well, but we on the 
Appropriations Committee are doing everything we can to move the bill.
  We are scheduled to take up the remaining appropriations bills before 
this month is out. Senator Stevens is working with me in that regard, 
and so is Senator Domenici and the others. Let us call it 50/50, a 
draw, like the All-Americans did last night?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Well, you just added another one. You went to the 60. 
So I have to go to the 60.
  Mr. BYRD. The Senator says ``you.'' Under the Senate rules, we are 
not supposed to address another Senator in the second person.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am not here as much as the Senator and 
I slip every now and then.
  Mr. BYRD. We all slip.
  Mr. DOMENICI. It is pretty hard to get that out of your head, but I 
think I have the floor now. Is that correct?
  Mr. BYRD. The Senator does.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Yes.
  Mr. REID. If the Senator will yield, Senator McConnell, if he were 
here, wished to speak on his amendment, which is the pending matter on 
the bill that will be before the Senate in a few minutes. I ask 
unanimous consent that following the statement of the Senator from 
Minnesota, which is for debate only on the bill, the Senator from 
Kentucky, Mr. McConnell, be recognized for debate only on his amendment 
for up to 30 minutes.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Reserving the right to object, if I could inquire, I 
believe in the former unanimous consent I was to be recognized after 
Senator Domenici. If that is not impacted by the unanimous consent 
request, I will have no objection.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct. It would not be affected by 
the unanimous consent request.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. I remove my objection.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, am I limited by a certain amount of 
time?

[[Page 12488]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 8\1/2\ minutes remaining.

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