[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 14943-14944]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       FEDERAL BUDGET RESOLUTION

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, there is another important issue we have 
before the Senate. We don't yet have a Federal budget resolution, even 
though we were supposed to have done that this spring.
  It is July. We have considered only one appropriations bill, and that 
has not been resolved with the House. We have not yet even considered 
the other 12 appropriations bills, including the Homeland Security 
appropriations bill. These are usually considered must-pass 
legislation, whether there is a Republican-controlled Congress or a 
Democratic-controlled Congress. Instead of passing these bills, 
however, we sit around not doing any work on the things that we 
absolutely need to do. We are working on political matters. The 
divisive constitutional amendment to federalize marriage is an example 
of that.
  For 215 years, we have left it up to States to define marriage. All 
of a sudden, are we going to tell them they do not know what they are 
doing? Are we going to take over the marriage issue from the States and 
define it for them? Are we going to treat this as a matter of urgency, 
that we must proceed to immediately while setting aside homeland 
security and the budget?
  Heck, the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held a few hearings on 
this issue, has not even considered the language of this Federal 
Marriage Amendment. We have not even voted on it in the Republican-
controlled Judiciary Committee. The fact that the Committee has been 
bypassed, and the FMA brought immediately to the Senate floor, is an 
unmistakable sign that political expediency--and haste in the 
furtherance of political expediency--is why it is here.
  Political expediency, whatever it takes, seems to be the leadership's 
guidepost, not the pressing needs of the country for homeland security 
funding or a budget. I am afraid that the paramount thing for the 
Republican leaders in this body at the moment are such divisive matters 
as federalizing marriage law by constitutional amendment. I remember 
the days when the Republican Party would say we are going to keep the 
Federal Government out of the doings of the States. Well, now we seem 
not only to politicize judicial nominations, making independent judges 
a wing of the Republican Party, but to politicize the Constitution 
itself.
  I think it is wrong. I think it is corrosive to seek partisan 
advantage at the expense of the independent Federal judiciary or our 
national charter, the Constitution. Maybe we should have a corollary to 
the Thurmond rule, which is that in Presidential elections, after the 
Fourth of July we do not consider judicial nominations, except by 
unanimous consent. Maybe we should have something called the ``Durbin 
rule.''
  The senior Senator from Illinois observed that we should prohibit 
consideration of constitutional amendments within 6 months of a 
Presidential election. I think he is right in pointing out that the 
Constitution is too important to be made a bulletin board for campaign 
sloganeering. Somehow we should find a way to restrain the impulse of 
some to politicize the Constitution. I think we have 50 or 60 proposed 
constitutional amendments before the Congress right now.
  While we are doing this political posturing, let us talk about what 
we might have been doing. I will take one issue, homeland security. 
This week, we received further warnings from the Republican 
administration about impending terrorist attacks. So what are we doing 
in the Senate to respond to those attacks? Why, we are going to launch 
a debate over gay marriage.
  The Homeland Security appropriations bill is stalled, but 
notwithstanding the warnings by the administration that there are 
impending terrorist attacks, first and foremost the Senate has to have 
a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. We cannot take time to 
bring up the Homeland Security bill, something that will probably pass 
in a day and a half.
  If the American people are uneasy about their security during the 
summer traveling season, that may be because of the conflicting signals 
they are receiving from the Government. At least this time it was 
Secretary Ridge and not the Attorney General who appeared on our 
Nation's television screens to warn of an impending al-Qaida attack. We 
may remember a few weeks ago, when the Attorney General made dire 
warnings the same day that Secretary Ridge, the Secretary of Homeland 
Security, told Americans to go out and have some fun this summer.

[[Page 14944]]

The American people must wonder what is going on. They must find it 
hard to believe what is going on in this Senate, how we are using our 
time now.
  I believe Congress should get on with providing the funding needed to 
address our security vulnerabilities, even at the cost of forsaking 
some of the President's tax cuts or a fruitless debate on marriage.
  We have heard the administration say we are in dire danger. We have 
given them everything they have wanted: the Homeland Security 
Department; we have gone deep into debt; we have actually threatened 
the Social Security fund by our huge deficits to give hundreds of 
billions of dollars on the fight against terrorism.
  It appears we simply cannot meet our needs with the resources we have 
available. But what do we do? Do we address this in the Senate, the 
greatest deliberative body on Earth? Heck, no. We are going to talk 
about gay marriages.
  Of course, the Republican Leadership has a history of not getting too 
concerned about the substance of homeland security issues. The issue of 
homeland security has been politicized from the start, and even the 
creation of the Department of Homeland Security is a case study on the 
political partisanship of my friends in the Republican Party. We may 
recall that at first they resisted strongly the idea of having a 
Department of Homeland Security especially the President himself.
  Then we heard the partisan attacks from many Republicans on the 9/11 
Commission, which the administration allowed to go forward in the first 
place only after great resistance.
  I hope and pray we can return to a time as we used to do, and as it 
was when I came to the Senate, when security issues were not used for 
partisan effect or political benefit. Given the track record of this 
administration for secrecy, unilateralism, overreaching, and abject 
partisanship, however, I certainly understand why many question their 
assertions. An administration that can hide legal memoranda justifying 
torture and then, when forced to acknowledge them, disavow them, does 
not earn our trust. An administration that reports that terrorism had 
decreased last year and then, when questioned, had to admit that it was 
wrong and reissue the report has basic credibility problems.
  So I wish we would turn away from these divisive legislative 
maneuvers and work together on the Nation's agenda. The senior member 
of the Senate, Senator Byrd, said it all better than I can. He spoke 
yesterday afternoon about the need to get about our business and the 
Nation's business. Senator Byrd offered wise counsel to the Republican 
leadership. I wish it had been listened to.
  Roll Call reported earlier this week that this week's activities 
amount to a showdown prompted by the Republicans' desire for a wedge 
issue they can use with undecided voters in November. That is a shame 
and a sham. When we should be considering measures to strengthen 
homeland security, Republican partisans are focused on devising wedge 
issues for partisan political purposes. Well, that is wrong. I urge the 
Republican administration and the Republican leaders in the House and 
the Senate to come back to the work of Congress, not the work of 
political partisans. Let us complete our work for the American people.
  The Senate does not have to be a battlefront for the Presidential 
campaign. There is plenty of time for that. In fact, I wonder if we are 
not setting ourselves up for people to say during the election season 
that the Republican-controlled Congress did not do the work of the 
people. Let us get on with doing it. One of the first things we can do 
is take the stalled Homeland Security appropriations bill and actually 
vote on it.
  If the hundreds of billions of dollars we have spent so far have not 
made us safe, then let us debate that and find what will.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.

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