Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, my first question is whether the Department of Justice has asked for this and whether they need these additional resources to deal with the challenges.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his answer. It seems to me this is more of an appropriations issue rather than something that is relevant to this bill. I remember in history that Members of Congress who were involved in ABSCAM were picked up without the additional authority that is in this amendment. I remember Mayor Marion Barry, the Mayor of Washington, was videotaped with existing powers and existing resources at that time without the additional information of this amendment. As we have said, both Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham are in jail under existing procedures and existing resources. While I certainly do not want to be here characterized as being reluctant to pursue wrongdoing, I am not sure I understand why this particular activity is essential now, whether we have any indication that there is a great deal of Government corruption in both Houses that needs this kind of additional attention. If they need more money because of additional workload elsewhere, I am more than happy to vote for the more money. I would appreciate it if the Senator from Vermont would give Members the background of why he thinks this additional activity is necessary.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I will look at this amendment with great interest. I appreciate the sincerity with which my friend from Vermont offers it. My first reaction to the increase in the statute of limitations is that is fairly reasonable. My only immediate reaction is it gives the impression that there is widespread corruption that is not being examined in the Congress.

Mr. BENNETT. I appreciate that clarification. I will examine the amendment with great care.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have enjoyed this debate on this amendment. At the risk of sounding like wishy-washy Charlie Brown, I agree with both sides; that is, I agree with Senator Conrad absolutely on the line-item veto. I came to the Congress supporting the line-item veto. I voted for the line-item veto. Then I watched how President Clinton used the line-item veto. What Senator Conrad had to say is exactly right. When the Supreme Court struck it down and Senator Byrd and Senator Moynihan both talked about how glorious a day it was for the Congress that the line-item veto had been stricken, I took the floor and said: I am converted. I agree with you. I will never vote for the line-item veto again. I remember Senator Moynihan saying, If Lyndon Johnson had the line-item veto he would have turned into an emperor. We must preserve the rights of the legislature against that kind of thing. What Senator Gregg has proposed is not a line-item veto. I know the press described it as such, but this will not be the first time the press has inaccurately described something that is going on here. Under the terms of Senator Gregg's amendment, the President is limited in the number of things he can send back to us. They can be overturned with a simple majority vote rather than the standard veto two-thirds. And it is not an abrogation of congressional authority. It simply gives the President the right to say, on selected issues: Do you really want to do this? I have looked this over. I found this, this, and this that strike me as particularly egregious. Do you really want to do this? And by a majority vote the Congress can say: Yes, we really do. And it is done. So it is not a line-item veto. It is simply a review of a relatively--not relatively, an absolutely narrow, few number of items. I am not sure I would have crafted it that way. I am not sure this is going to make much difference. But it does not have the potential for the kinds of mischief that Senator Conrad talked about. I agree with Senator Conrad, I am a new convert--not new anymore. I am a firm convert against the line-item veto. But I think the kind of additional executive review subject to a majority vote to overturn in Congress that Senator Gregg has proposed is not going to threaten the foundations of the Republic or even the stability of this institution. For that reason I will support the amendment.

Mr. BENNETT. I yield my 2 minutes to the Senator from Maine.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I am in favor of the tabling motion, so I will be happy to yield whatever time I have to the Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Rules Committee for her careful and cogent explanation of what is in the bill. I am happy to be an original cosponsor of S. 1. I will be a cosponsor of the substitute that will be provided under her leadership along with Senator Reid and Senator McConnell. I agree with her and with most others that we need to move ahead on this issue. We need to let the American people know we are paying attention to the ethics questions as they relate to lobbying and to our own internal activities. Her discussion of earmarks has very little to do with the way lobbyists operate but with the way the Congress operates. Lobbyists react to what we do. They are paid to pay attention to what we do and then shift and adjust their activities to match what is going on in the Congress. Many of the problems we have seen arise in the last dozen years have come from changes within Congress, changes in procedures-- not formal changes but evolutionary changes--that have come along as Congress has reacted to the pressures we face. My first experience in this town was as a teenager, as an intern. I suppose there is something wrong with me because I was enough of a political junky that I used to sit in the gallery at night when I could have gone home and listen to the debate in the Senate. I would amuse myself in the daytime by reading the Congressional Record. I am not sure how many people would do that today. In those days, debate in the Senate was real debate. Senators would come to the Senate, go back and forth with each other. Things were different. The way things moved through committees was different. It was a much more leisurely and orderly process. I have seen, in the 14 years I have been in the Senate, the process speed up to the point that even the kind of cursory examination we would give to legislation 14 years ago has gone by the boards. I have been part of the process of creating the omnibus appropriations bill, which is probably the worst possible way to legislate. Yet under the pressures we found ourselves confronted with it was the only way to get appropriations bills completed. I have watched as the authorizing process has gradually but inexorably broken down as authorizers now come to appropriators and say: We can't get this through our committee for a variety of reasons. Would you add it to the appropriations bill? The appropriations bill is picked because it is the only bill that has to pass. We have to fund the Government. I remember a Congress when Secretary Babbitt had a vital problem relating to his department and to my State. We talked it through. Then he said: Senator, see if you can get it on the CR, the continuing resolution. There was no opportunity for passage of that particular item. Here is a Cabinet officer, representing President Clinton, talking to a Republican Senator, representing the people of Utah, and the advice is: See if you can put it on the CR. Obviously, the process of orderly authorization, oversight, examination, and then appropriations which is laid down in our rules has broken down under the pressure. It was in that crucible where people such as Duke Cunningham would step forward and say: We are going to take advantage of this broken process to our own personal advantage. Now, understand, Duke Cunningham is in jail. Understand, Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who saw the opportunity of exploiting this breakdown, is in jail. The laws, the rules, the ethics that currently exist, gave rise in this present circumstance to a comment someone made. He said: You folks in the Congress are the only people I know who, when someone breaks the rules, decide the thing to do is to change the rules. There is some sense that perhaps we are overreacting to the scandals of Abramoff and Cunningham. I do not believe that S. 1 is an overreaction, nor do I believe is the substitute offered by Senators Reid and McConnell, of which I and I am assuming the chairman of the committee are original cosponsors. But as the debate goes forward, there might be a temptation to overreact in some of the amendments that will be offered to this bill and to the substitute. So I want to make a few points about the whole process of lobbying. Again, a little personal history: Back in the 1960s, I was a lobbyist. I have said my timing was terrible because when I went to work as a lobbyist, lobbyists were not paid as much as Members. Today it seems to be the other way around. I remember belonging to a group that very creatively called itself the Breakfast Group because we met for breakfast once a month. It consisted of all of the lobbyists of Fortune 500 companies in Washington at the time. We would meet at the Chamber of Commerce where the staffer from the Chamber of Commerce would brief us on their attitudes toward our issues. He left the chamber to set up an office for a Fortune 500 company and wanted to join the group as one of our members. We voted him in, and then we voted the membership closed because we said if we get too many more, it will be too big. There were 20 members. There were 20 people who were representatives of Fortune 500 companies at the time. Mr. President, this is an old document I hold in my hand from 2000, so it is 6 years old. It includes the names of all of the lobbyists who are currently in Washington. That little group of 20 has grown somewhat in the 40 years from then till now. But as you look through this list, one thing becomes clear that I think a lot of people do not understand with respect to the legislation we are considering. By virtue of all of the people who have now entered this kind of activity, virtually every single American is represented by a lobbyist. Every single American has someone lobbying in behalf of his or her interests, whether he or she knows it or not. I just dipped into this document, turned open some pages, at complete random, to see who are the lobbyists and what are they here for. Here on page 473, we have the Legal Action Center for the City of New York: A not-for-profit law and policy organization fighting discrimination against people with substance abuse problems, people with HIV/AIDS, and people with criminal records. So people who have substance abuse problems, HIV/AIDS, and criminal records have a lobbyist. Here is the Learning Disabilities Association. Here is the Lawyers Alliance for World Security: A national, non-partisan membership organization of legal professionals dedicated to stopping unrestrained weapons proliferation and bringing the rule of law to the newly independent nations of the former Soviet Union. So if you are against nuclear proliferation, you have a lobbyist. The League of Conservation Voters: A national, non-partisan arm of the environmental movement, works to elect pro-environmental candidates to Congress, publishes annual ratings of Congress, and so on. OK. Flipping ahead, we have the National Association of Schools of Dance: Accreditation of post-secondary educational programs in dance-- they have a lobbyist--along with the National Association of State Units on Aging: A national, non-profit public-interest organization dedicated to providing general and specialized information, technical assistance, and professional development support to State units on aging. And I went a little deeper away from national associations. We have, on page 636 the Solar Energy Research and Education Foundation: An educational organization developing a museum in Washington featuring interactive CD-ROM-based computer technology. And next to that is the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County and across the page, the Office of the Attorney General of the State of South Dakota. Every American is represented in one form or another by a lobbyist. So we must be careful as we deal with the perception that comes out of perhaps televisionland that all lobbyists are corrupt, all lobbyists operate with shady activities, with under-the-table money. If we decide that is, in fact, what we are dealing with and clamp down in such a way so hard as to get in the way of the National Association of Schools of Dance, we will do damage to the constitutional right--right there in the first amendment, next to freedom of religion and freedom of speech--the constitutional right to lobby. They did not call it that in the 18th century. They said the right to petition the Government for redress of your grievances because the Capitol had not been built and a lobby had not been created. But the word came out of people exercising their rights. We must respect that. We must recognize we have to do this very carefully. And we must recognize that internal reform, disclosure of earmarks, activities with respect to conference reports, cleaning up our own act of how we handle legislation is an important part of seeing to it that the process is proper. As I said at the outset, I do not believe S. 1 is an overreaction. I do not believe the amendment in the nature of a substitute is an overreaction. I am happy to be an original cosponsor of both. And I salute the majority leader in his determination to start out with this issue because it is an issue on which we can reach broad bipartisan agreement. It is an issue that can send the message to the voters that, yes, we recognize that, however it has evolved, the rules do need to be changed. Even though the people who broke the old rules were caught under the old rules, convicted under the old rules, and sent to prison under the old rules, we need to be looking ahead and recognize that in a world where virtually everyone is involved, in one way or another, we need to do this right. So I am happy to be a part of this debate, and I appreciate the leadership we are receiving from the majority leader and from the chairman of the committee. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT. Yes, Mr. President, that will be agreeable to me, with the understanding that if the Senator does show up, then they will go in the queue wherever they can fit.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, there are some Senators here who want to offer an amendment. I simply want to make a brief response to my friend from Illinois and his comments about corporate jets. I have seen firsthand exactly what he is talking about, where a corporate jet picks you up, takes you to a fairly remote location, and it is not only well stocked with food and drink but with experts who will fill you in on what it is they want you to know. There is another side of it, however. As the Senate knows, I am unburdened with a legal education, but there is one phrase that comes out of the legal profession and I think applies here, which is: Hard cases make bad law. I am speaking now for the most senior Republican who will very much speak for himself on this issue, but I think in this context it is appropriate to insert these remarks. In the State of Alaska, the only way one can get to 70 percent of the population locations in Alaska is by air. I suppose one could get there by dogsled, but as a practical matter, the only way you get there is by air. That being the case, there are planes flying all over Alaska every day, and virtually all of them are owned by corporations. The corporate executive is flying from Anchorage to point A or from Juneau to point B, or whatever, and says to the Senator: I am going there; can I give you a ride? There is no charter rate for these kinds of activities. Some of the planes are pretty small. But this is the only way you can get around in that State. A Senator said this morning in our breakfast meeting: In my State, I can get to every location in the State in less than an hour by automobile. I have been in the State of Delaware. It is hard to stay in the State of Delaware by automobile. But if you go to some of the large States of the West--Alaska being obviously the largest--and an absolute, firm ban on any kind of flight on corporate jets unless you are paying commercial hourly rates for the charter is to say to the Senators of Alaska: You cannot travel around your State; you can't communicate. Utah is a smaller State than Alaska. I don't take flights around Utah very often. I spend a lot of time in the car. From one end of the State to the other, it takes about 4 hours by car. Sometimes it is easier to do that than try to deal with the hassle of getting in and out of airports, and many of the places I go don't have airports. But I would hope, as we have this debate about corporate jets, that we do not think solely in terms of Halliburton's corporate jet with a single Senator surrounded by lobbyists, and we recognize at the other end of the spectrum there are circumstances that require--indeed, common sense dictates--the use of corporate jets fully reported, paid for in an intelligent way that will allow us to not take a single case and apply it to every situation. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I did not plan to talk about drug reimportation, but coming on the heels of this conversation, I simply want to make this one observation: The key statement made by the Senator from Louisiana was safe drug reimportation. And the key problem here is certifying that the drugs coming across the border--after they have been sent and then are reimported are, in fact, the same drugs, they are, in fact, safe. The Congress has said the drugs can be reimported back into the United States as soon as the Secretary can certify that they are, in fact, safe. I have seen the sample runs, if you will, that have been made on this issue. They have found again and again that a certain percentage of the drugs coming back are, in fact, not drugs manufactured in the United States. They have been manufactured elsewhere, packaged in Canada or Mexico or wherever, and then sent back to the United States fraudulently, as if they were, in fact, the original drugs. Now, they have not yet killed anybody that I know of. They are not so unsafe that they have, in fact, poisoned anybody. Overwhelmingly, the history has been that the dosage in the drugs is simply not the same as advertised in the drugs manufactured in the United States. They have traces of whatever the drug might be in the fraudulent packages, but the dose control is not the same, and it is dangerous to the individual taking the drug if he or she assumes they are getting a certain dosage and, in fact, they are getting less. That has been the challenge. That has been the problem. And until the Secretary of HHS, be it Donna Shalala or Michael Leavitt, can come forward and certify that all of these are, in fact, as advertised, it is the law that they cannot be brought into the United States. I think that is an appropriate law protecting people in the United States. I agree with the Senator from Wyoming that it really is not appropriate to hold up Dr. Von Eschenbach's confirmation on this issue because it has to be decided by the scientists and those who are doing the sampling of the shipments rather than the head of the FDA. I have gotten to know Dr. Von Eschenbach as the chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. You usually think of agricultural appropriations in terms of crop supports and USDA activities. But for whatever reason, in its wisdom, Congress at one point put jurisdiction over the Food and Drug Administration into that subcommittee. So, if you will, I have been in the position of dealing with this man as he has come begging. As we are in the Appropriations subcommittees, everybody who has responsibility over which we have control comes begging; that is, they come asking for things, they come outlining their position, and they come describing what they will do with the money. All of us who have been on the Appropriations Committee have had this experience with a wide variety of people from the executive branch. I have never seen anyone who has come before our subcommittee better prepared, with a better understanding of how the money will be spent, and with more vision as to where the money ought to be spent to take the agency into the future than Dr. Von Eschenbach. We have not just sat and discussed budget issues; we have not just sat and talked about dollars and cents--what are you going to spend here and what are you going to spend there--he has outlined for me in our conversations where he thinks the FDA of the future ought to be and what it will cost to get it there. I have been very struck and impressed by his vision for the FDA. This is not a man who is content to simply superintend what he has on his plate. This is a man who has the capacity to look to the horizon, and maybe even over the horizon, to see where America ought to be. In the practice of medicine right now, drug therapy is the cutting edge. Yes, we are developing new operations. We are developing new surgical procedures to try to push the envelope out further as far as health care is concerned. But the major breakthroughs are coming through drug therapy. There are all kinds of situations now where it can be handled with drug therapy that obviates the need for an operation or any kind of surgical intrusion. The implications of that are huge, and the role of the FDA in that kind of medical revolution of the future is paramount. We absolutely have to have at the head of the FDA, in that kind of revolution, a man who is visionary, a man who looks to the future, and a man who understands the potential that lies in the area which he superintends. Dr. Von Eschenbach, I am convinced, is such a man. I have his resume. We have heard it outlined here. It is an outstanding resume. But people with good resumes can come before us all the time and, in fact, have no vision. They spend their time tending what is on their own plate. This is a man with vision. This is a man who sees what can happen and who desperately wants to take the FDA in that direction. He said to me: Senator, I don't feel that I can institute these kinds of long-term changes as long as I am acting. I feel--I think appropriately, from my point of view--that I cannot make these kinds of structural changes in FDA's mission and direction until I have the imprimatur of the U.S. Senate and full confirmation. The longer we hold up his nomination, the longer we keep him from being confirmed, the longer we will wait for that kind of vision to be established in that agency. I think we have waited too long. I salute the majority leader for his persistence in bringing this nomination to the floor. At this time, with all the other things we have to do before this Congress comes to an end, this is one he could easily have put off. I am grateful that he did not. I am grateful that he filed a cloture motion to hold our feet to the fire on this one and say: It is time for us to act. It is time for us to give this man the imprimatur of our confirmation vote so he can move forward, he can infuse the agency with the kind of vision and excitement that I know he has. I have spent enough time with him, I have had enough conversation with him--have talked to his peers outside of the agency to know that the President has made an outstanding choice in Dr. Von Eschenbach. We as a country would be well served to have him in this place, and I urge the Senate to invoke cloture and confirm this nomination as quickly as we possibly can.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following staff members be accorded the privilege of the floor during debate and all votes on H.R. 5384, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2007: Fitzhugh Elder, Dianne Preece, Stacy McBride, Graham Harper, Galen Fountain, Jessica Frederick, Tom Gonzales, Tyler Owens, Amber Sechrist, Phil Karsting, and West Higginbothom.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor. I see Senator Conrad is in the Chamber prepared to discuss his amendment and expect that probably will take the remainder of the time until we come to the vote.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, today I am pleased to bring H.R. 5384, the fiscal year 2007 Agriculture appropriations bill, to the Senate for its consideration. It was written after carefully examining the administration's budget proposal, holding a number of hearings, and receiving significant input from Senators and other stakeholders. It was approved unanimously by the subcommittee on June 20 and reported to the Senate by the full committee on June 22. The bill is the product of a completely bipartisan effort. I thank Senator Kohl and his excellent staff for their hard work. We have established a pattern of bipartisanship in this subcommittee which we are delighted has continued on in this bill as well. The bill is commonly known as the Agriculture appropriations bill, but its impact goes far beyond the farms and ranches of the United States. The largest portion of the funding in this bill goes to nutrition and food programs for mothers and children, low-income individuals, and senior citizens. It also funds the agencies which conduct vital agricultural research, protect America's food and drug supply, conserve soil and water resources and wildlife habitat, and promotes the economic development of rural America. It is, indeed, a far-reaching measure. The bill the Senate is now considering totals approximately $98.3 billion in mandatory and discretionary funding. Of this amount, $18.2 billion is for discretionary funding, fully utilizing the 302(b) allocation which we were given. To touch on a few of the highlights, specifically, the bill increases funding by 5 percent for the land grant colleges, historically Black land grant institutions, Hispanic serving institutions, forestry schools, and the National Research Initiative. This is the first substantial increase in the formula funds since I took over the chairmanship of the Agriculture Subcommittee in these areas. It restores funding for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program to $108.3 million and funds the Women, Infants, and Children Program at $5.264 billion, fully meeting the estimated caseload requirements. It allows the enrollment of 250,000 acres in the Wetlands Reserve Program and restores the Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative. Further, it provides for new research into renewable energy and $25 million in renewable energy loans and grants. It fully funds the President's request for avian influenza at USDA and FDA. It maintains the safest food supply in the world by fully funding the Food Safety Inspection Service. And it speeds the approval of generic drugs to the marketplace by increasing the Office of Generic Drugs at the FDA by 10 million. All in all, I believe this is a bill Members can be proud of, and I am happy to bring it to the floor. At this point, I am happy to yield so we can hear from the distinguished ranking member of the subcommittee, with whom we have worked so close over these last 4 years, Senator Kohl.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank Senator Kohl for his comments and once again pay tribute to the spirit of bipartisanship he and I have been able to maintain. I appreciate his kind words about the staff and the attempts we have made to integrate both staffs so we have had the kind of professional result to which he has referred. Now, pursuant to the unanimous consent agreement that is in place, I understand the first order of business will concern agricultural disaster assistance. So I now ask further unanimous consent that once the Conrad amendment is offered to the Agriculture appropriations bill, the time until 5 o'clock be equally divided in the usual form, with a vote occurring in relation to the Conrad amendment at 5 o'clock today, with no second-degree amendments in order to the amendment prior to the vote. Now, I would add that we do expect a budget point of order to be raised, and therefore the vote is likely to be on the motion to waive the budget, assuming that is done.

Mr. BENNETT. I raise a point against the pending amendment because it would cause the subcommittee to exceed its allocation.

Mr. BENNETT. I recognize the concerns the distinguished Senators from Ohio have about protecting the Great Lakes and their efforts to balance the environmental and economic needs of the region. I look forward to working with my colleagues on this Issue.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, The Senator from Delaware has obviously made a very strong case for this important educational resource center in Delaware, and it is apparent that the Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village provides an important contribution to Delaware's economy and its agri-tourism and agriculture industry. I yield to my distinguished colleague, the Senator from Wisconsin.

Mr. BENNETT. In response to the Senator's question concerning this proposal, I am confident that this request will receive very careful consideration by the Senate conferees.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I would first like to applaud and thank the senior Senator from Mississippi and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Cochran. Because of his leadership, the Committee on Appropriations reported each of the 12 appropriations bills to the Senate before the August recess, while also shepherding the passage of a supplemental appropriations bill in the spring for the war in Iraq and the lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina. This is the earliest the committee has reported all its bills since 1988. I believe the Appropriations Committee to be one of the most difficult committees to chair in the Senate, and Chairman Cochran has done a marvelous job. During his tenure, he has worked diligently to maintain regular order, and once again this year he made sure the committee met its responsibilities. I also would like to thank my staff and the staff of Senator Kohl. Specifically, I would like to thank Galen Fountain, Jessica Frederick, Bill Simpson, and Tom Gonzales of the minority staff and Fitz Elder, Dianne Preece, Stacy McBride, and Graham Harper of the majority. A special mention goes to Hunter Moorhead, who ably assisted in the drafting of this legislation before leaving the subcommittee staff to take a position at the White House. These individuals work in a truly bipartisan manner, and I thank them for their hard work this year. Shortly, the Senate will vote in relation to the agricultural disaster amendment, and the Agriculture appropriations bill will come to a premature end. It was the first appropriations bill to be reported to the Senate this year, and it will likely be the last to be considered by the Senate in the 109th Congress. While I would prefer a vote on final passage, we will have to finish the fiscal year 2007 Agriculture appropriations bill in the 110th Congress. I wish Senator Kohl Godspeed as he takes over the helm of the subcommittee in the next Congress. It has been my pleasure to work with him over the last 3 years.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate now proceed to a period of morning business with the following Senators being recognized to speak: Senator Conrad for 2 minutes, Senator Specter for 20 minutes, Senator Byrd for 20 minutes, Senator Landrieu for 10 minutes, Senator Voinovich for 20 minutes, and Senator DeWine for an hour.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the measure be printed in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the measure be printed in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, on behalf of the majority leader, I send a second-degree amendment to the desk.