[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2189-2190]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          SECOND LOOK AT WASTE

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to thank the Senator from Tennessee 
for his support at this second look at waste amendment which I have 
offered. The Senator's arguments, as always, are extraordinarily cogent 
and logical. He makes the point--which I think is very valid, as a 
former Governor who had the line-item veto, which is a much stronger 
authority than what we have in this amendment--that this is important, 
managing the fiscal house, to making sure that items which get into 
legislation as a result of being put in arbitrarily by some individual 
Member of Congress but which are not subject to the light of day in the 
traditional way--by being brought across the floor as individual items 
but, rather, are put into major pieces of legislation, sometimes 
representing hundreds of billions of dollars in spending--that those 
items can be reviewed again and get a vote as to their credibility and 
as to their appropriateness and whether they represent something on 
which American tax dollars should be spent.
  This proposal, this fast-track rescission, which is what it really 
is, is not a partisan proposal. In fact, as proposed in my amendment, 
second look at waste, it would actually be primarily under the control 
of the next President. It has a 4-year window of activity and then it 
is sunsetted. By the time it would get into law, should it pass the 
Senate and then pass the House, it is likely that this President will 
only have, probably, a year and a half to use this authority, and then 
the next President, whoever that President may be--maybe a Republican, 
maybe a Democrat--will have the authority to use this rescission 
ability for 2\1/2\ years. So it is not partisan.
  Second, it was drafted, as the Senator from Tennessee noted, 
basically to mirror a proposal that was put forward by Senator Daschle. 
In fact, I have called this amendment daughter of Daschle. It is 
essentially the Daschle amendment as offered back in 1995, which was 
cosponsored by Senator Byrd. There are only two major changes--well, 
three major changes, and I have already said to those who have asked me 
that I am willing to adjust those changes to bring it even more in line 
with Daschle.
  One of the changes in this bill from the Daschle bill was that the 
President would have 300 days to send up his rescission notice. Some 
people have expressed concern that that gives the President the ability 
to use that rescission notice as a club over people's heads. The reason 
we gave the President 300 days in this amendment was we had reduced the 
number of rescission notices in the Daschle amendment. There were 
potentially 13 rescission actions available to the President, and in 
this amendment, there are only 4 available to the President. Therefore, 
in the Daschle amendment, it was required that the rescission notice be 
sent up soon after the bill was signed. But, of course, with 13 
different opportunities, it could go on all year long. We felt that 
since we were reducing it to four, we should give the President more 
leeway as to when he sent up those rescission notices.
  But I can understand the argument. In fact, I accept the argument 
that maybe that is too much authority in the sense it gives the 
President too much leverage over the Congress. So when, I hope--I am 
using the term ``when''--when this amendment comes forward in an 
amendable form, I will offer an amendment to reduce the 300 days back 
to 30 days. So the President would have to send up his rescission 
notices within 30 days of it being signed, or at least asking us to 
take a second look at it, and that should adjust that problem and bring 
it directly in line, pretty much in line with what the Daschle 
amendment was originally.
  The other area which was different from the Daschle amendment is the 
issue that deals with mandatory spending. Some people have said new 
mandatory spending--not existing programs, not existing veterans 
programs or farm programs or Medicare or Medicaid, but if there is a 
new mandatory program, that can also be subjected to the President 
asking for a second look at it. It has been argued by some on the other 
side that this would undermine the ability to reach a comprehensive 
settlement on entitlement reform. That is really a straw argument. That 
argument has no legs.
  The practical matter is, if a President reaches an agreement with the 
Congress on something as extraordinarily important as major entitlement 
reform, part of that agreement is going to be that the President signed 
off on it. So this argument of, well, but the President might come back 
and change it later on with a rescission notice really has no legs. It 
is just being made for the purpose of giving comfort to folks who 
believe they want to vote against this amendment. If people want to 
vote against it, that is their right. But don't use that as an excuse.
  What this amendment essentially does is it allows the Congress to 
fulfill its obligation to make sure that money which is sent by our 
taxpayers is spent effectively, honestly, appropriately, and without 
waste. And, it gives the executive branch a role in asking the question 
of Congress: Did you really mean to spend this money?
  I have to say, I have been here for a while--14 years in the Senate--
and I have seen a lot of bills come across this floor which were fairly 
large, and when I took a look at them after I maybe had voted for it, I 
realized there were some things in them that I wished weren't in them. 
I didn't happen to vote for the highway bill which had the bridge to 
nowhere--the famous highway bill. But had I voted for it, I think I 
would have wanted to take a second look at some of the projects in that 
bill.
  The same is true of a lot of our appropriations bills when we get to 
the end of the year and we haven't gotten our appropriations process 
completed effectively, so we lump 3 or 4 different appropriations 
bills, sometimes 5 or 6, occasionally 10, appropriations bills into 1 
and we call it an Omnibus appropriations bill. Those bills tend to get 
items in them which have received no scrutiny, which are simply the 
result of an earmark for the purpose of accomplishing something which 
some Member of the Senate or the House feels is appropriate but which 
one suspects, if the entire House or the Senate were to take a look at, 
we would say: Well, better to put that money toward reducing the 
deficit than toward spending the money in this specific area.
  So this bill is, as I have said and as the Senator from Tennessee so 
eloquently said, a second look at waste. The purpose is to give us, the 
Congress, another tool to manage waste.
  Now, I wish it had come up last week because, quite honestly, I 
thought it was much more appropriate to last week's debate when we were 
debating earmarks and when about 50 percent of the debate time was 
spent on earmarks because that is what it is really about. But it has 
now been put on this bill as a result of an agreement I reached with 
the Senator from Nevada, the majority leader. I respected his position. 
I admire his leadership. I didn't want to create a situation where the 
lobbying bill got tied up forever over this issue, and the Senator from 
West Virginia said he would do that if I kept this amendment on the 
lobbying bill. So I agreed to put the amendment off and

[[Page 2190]]

bring it forward at this time. So, hopefully, no one, when we get to 
this issue of cloture, is going to vote against cloture on the theory 
that it is not appropriate to this bill because, as I said earlier, I 
think people are stopped from making that position. It is a technical 
legal term that basically says, out of fairness: You can't make that 
case because, basically, the reason this amendment is on this bill is 
because I was asked to put it on this bill by the majority leader. 
Therefore, that is why we are going forward at this time.
  So this is going to be the opportunity for Members of the Senate to 
vote on whether they believe a tool which will significantly improve 
our capacity to manage earmarks, to manage waste, is going to have a 
chance to be passed. It is a tool which has been offered by myself but 
which was actually offered by Senator Daschle and which was actually 
voted for by 37 members of the Democratic Party at that time, 20 of 
whom are still serving in the Senate. So it does seem to me that it is 
not unreasonable to ask that we take it up and pass it at this time and 
move it forward.
  When we get to the cloture debate, I will have more to say on the 
matter, but I did want to come down and express my appreciation to the 
Senator from Tennessee for supporting the amendment.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from New 
Hampshire would allow me to ask him a question or two.
  Mr. GREGG. Of course.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from New Hampshire was 
Governor, as I was, and my sense of this amendment is that it 
understands human nature pretty well. Is it not the Senator's 
experience as Governor, and as a member of the Appropriations Committee 
for a long time, that sometimes items slip through, and that the idea 
here would be for the President to be able to just send it back to 
Congress and say: Don't you want to take a second look at this before 
you actually spend taxpayers' money? Is that not the general idea that 
is expressed by this amendment?
  Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator for his question. He is absolutely 
right. The essence of his question is that the power is retained with 
the legislative branch. This is not a line-item veto. This is not a 
veto. This is just the President saying to us, the legislators who have 
the power of the purse, take another look at this, which is why Senator 
Byrd supported it the last time it was on the floor of the Senate.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. If the President sends a package of proposals back and 
asks: Do you really want to spend this money, and if a majority of the 
Senate decides that it did, and a majority of the House decides that it 
didn't, what happens then?
  Mr. GREGG. Well, answering the Senator through the Chair, then the 
money gets spent. If either House does not agree with the rescission, 
then the rescission fails. So the power of the legislative branch is 
retained, which is its constitutional authority, to spend money as it 
deems appropriate, and the President has no capacity to override that 
under this bill. All he has is the capacity to say to the legislative 
branch: Do you think you want to do this? If either House says, yes, we 
do, then the money is spent.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. One final question, Mr. President. Does the Senator 
from New Hampshire believe that Federal spending is one of the most 
difficult challenges we have here and is a matter that will need a 
bipartisan approach? And that we need to employ all the reasonable 
tools that we can to try to bring Federal spending under control? 
Otherwise, we are going to create a massive crisis for our children and 
our grandchildren, and this proposal would be one such reasonable tool.
  Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his question, which 
may have been rhetorical, and certainly I agree with that. To put this 
in context, we have to remember we are going to spend close to $3 
trillion--we probably will spend $3 trillion this year in the 
appropriating accounts and in our budgets. There is no way we can 
manage all that efficiently, but certainly every tool that we can get 
that helps us manage it efficiently we should have. This is just 
another tool in the tool box to make sure we don't waste the taxpayers' 
money.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Missouri is 
recognized.

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