Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I am unaware of any other Senator who is planning to offer any amendment. I don't want to cut anybody off, but I made it clear during the vote that all amendments have to be offered tonight and all debate take place tonight. We are scheduled for the vote tomorrow morning. My understanding is that the Dayton amendment is still pending, and, therefore, if it can't be disposed of tonight, it would be available for tomorrow morning. The Jeffords amendment is still pending, and if that cannot be resolved tonight, that would be voted on tomorrow morning. Those are the only two I am aware of at the present time. I will suggest the absence of a quorum so we can check the list and see who else might be out there. But I would say to any who are monitoring our procedures on behalf of their respective Senators that the time for offering amendments is getting mighty short. We don't want to deny any Senator his or her rights, but I feel we have given fair warning this is what we will do. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time between now and 7 o'clock be evenly divided between myself and Senator Bingaman from New Mexico, with the vote on the Coburn amendment No. 1775 to occur at 7 o'clock to be followed by a vote on the Bingaman amendment, with the yeas and nays ordered in both instances with no other amendments being allowed to either amendment prior to the time.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I call for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, there is no question but that an education program to try to get our young people to eat better makes sense. There is no question that we should do what we can to deal with the challenge of obesity. Now let us look at a few realities with which we are faced. The President requested $10.25 million for the program. The amendment offered by Senator Bingaman and Senator Lugar would virtually double that amount. There is no other program we are dealing with where the request is to double the funds. We have people who are requesting incremental increases of 5 percent and 10 percent, but quite frankly we have resisted. The total number of earmarks and requests that have come in since the committee acted is over $50 million. We have stood firm against all of them and said we are sorry, the money isn't there. We feel we have to stand firm against it. So this $10 million would double the program as it currently exists and would be 20 percent of the total amount we on the subcommittee have said we cannot fund. The offset is very interesting. It is the common computer environment. It always seems easy to say, well, we can get by, by delaying activity with the computers. Let's cut the computers because education is more important. During the debate we have had today, we have heard complaints from people about interoperability, about inability to communicate in the time of emergency. Katrina has exposed problems with computers. If we were to cut the computer program as drastically as this would cut it, we run the risk of closing county offices. We run the risk of stopping the modernization of services right at a time when complaints are coming in about how antiquated those services are. But interestingly, as the $50 million requests have come in, almost all of them, when we told them you have to have an offset, say let's cut the computers. If indeed we responded to every one of the requests for additional spending, we would have cut the computers $50 million. I don't want to cut the computers at all. I accept the arguments that say we have challenges with communication in the Department; we need to have as modern a communication system as we possibly can. The common computer environment that is trying to create that interoperability should be encouraged and maintained. For that reason, as fond as I am of the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from Indiana, I have to oppose this amendment. I will ask my colleagues, when the time comes for the rollcall vote, to oppose it. There will be another bill next year. We will see where we are next year with overall spending. We will see where we are with respect to emergencies and how the Department of Agriculture is dealing with those emergencies. I am convinced when we come to that, as we sift through all the damage that is done by Katrina and perhaps by Rita and other challenges, we would like to have as powerful and as modern a computer system to deal with communications as we possibly can. For those reasons, the doubling of a program at a time of budget constraints that we find ourselves in, and taking the offset from a program where we feel we need to be as modern as we possibly can, gives me two reasons to say that I would be opposed to this amendment. I still have an additional 5 minutes and I frankly have said all I need to say. I yield back the remainder of my time. If the Senator from New Mexico wishes to claim it, I am happy to have him use it; otherwise, we can go into a quorum call until such time as the vote starts at 7 o'clock, unless there are other Senators who wish to speak.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, we have had previous conversations about the effectiveness of the Agriculture Department. We are talking about our own backgrounds. I have a little bit of background in advertising. I would be anxious before we spend this money to do a little analysis of how effective the advertising has been. You talk about instruction in schools. We all know that there are instructions that work and there are instructions that don't. My own experience is that the Government is not very good at advertising healthy lifestyle changes. We could have been spending--I have no idea. We have not researched this at all. I have no idea where the evidence might be. We could have been spending the 21 cents per pupil and wasting every bit of it in terms of results. I have something of a background in advertising and I know how much advertising budgets get wasted simply because the advertising campaign is not effectively carried out. I recommend to my colleagues we defeat this amendment and if, indeed, the Senator from Oklahoma and the Senator from New Mexico can examine this from their background and demonstrate we are getting a 17-to-1 return from this particular program, that we are getting a 17-to-1 return from the kind of instruction going on in classrooms, then I would be happy to endorse this at some future time. In terms of what has been the result of the $10 million we have been spending, how certain will we be that doubling that is going to, in fact, increase health among our children? It may well be that a GAO study would say the $10 million has been spent on training materials that have been ineffective and produced no result whatever. In effect, we are being asked to buy something of a pig in a poke without understanding exactly how it works. I hope we would stay with the committee allocation here. The issue is a very legitimate issue. I, for one, will be more than willing in the hearings to ask the Department to give us a demonstration of how effective this has been. If it can be demonstrated that it has, in fact, reduced obesity and has had some impact on diabetes, at that point I would be all for doubling it or tripling it because of the 17-to-1 figure the Senator from Oklahoma cites. But lacking that information, in this particular situation I would be loathe to proceed.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I call for the regular order on the Coburn amendment No. 1773.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I call for a vote on this by voice.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, the President's request for this program was $10 million. This amendment doubles it and takes the money away from computers at a time when the Department is doing its very best to increase its interoperability and raise its level of technological ability. I do not think doubling a program that has not been evaluated for its effectiveness is the right thing to do in this time of heavy budget pressure. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I am unaware of the existence of the cushion. I would be happy to work with the Senator to try to find out exactly whether there is one and how much it is. But the information that I received both from the staff and, admittedly, from the Department, is there is no cushion and passage of this amendment would, in fact, cause people who are currently in housing to lose their housing. I am not in a position to challenge the Senator's sources. I simply state that my sources have given me an additional answer. I have not looked over the books. I have not personally gone into the accounting of this situation, and therefore I am not in a position to do any more than state, as I have stated, that my information is different than his. Clearly, this is a subject that needs to be pursued. I congratulate him on raising it. The question for the Senate now is how we proceed on this amendment, whether the Senator will ask for a rollcall vote and, if he does, when we schedule it.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, the amendment offered by the Senator from Minnesota does involve some cost. We are, at the moment, unable to have a score from CBO. We are working on getting a scoring from CBO, so I ask we not vote on this amendment at the present time, until we get that. I will say to the Senator and to Senators, generally, since the passage of the bill by the committee, we have had a number of requests, such as the one from the Senator from Minnesota, many of which appear to be meritorious but when added together, we get a sum of money that we simply cannot sustain under our allocation. So we have taken the position that we will not entertain these additional requests for money. There are a number of Senators who have been disappointed as a result of that position, including, if I may say, the Senator from Utah. I felt that I had to deal with everybody equally, and those requests that have come in from my own State since the passage of the bill by the committee, with some difficulty, I have had to say to people, I cannot treat Utah differently than others. This is a meritorious issue the Senator has raised, and I am not saying we will automatically oppose it because it does add to the list that I described. Because we want to know exactly what the number would be and get the information from CBO, I ask that we set this one aside for the time being, and when we have that information, then I will be in a better position to respond to the Senator's amendment.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his comment and assure him this is no burden, and we will do the best we can.

Mr. BENNETT. Very good. We will have that discussion. As I say, my desire is to give Senators notice if they are at a location sufficiently far from the Capitol that they need a heads up. That is the only concern that I have. I will be here. I will be prepared to vote virtually at any time.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request in which all Senators, I believe, will be interested. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after the next vote, there be no other rollcall votes until 9:30 tomorrow morning, with the understanding that all amendments will be offered tonight, all debate will take place tonight, and all votes that occur tomorrow will be stacked to be followed by final passage.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, we are making progress. I see the Senator from Minnesota on the floor and hope that he can proceed with his amendment.

Mr. BENNETT. That means, Mr. President, that there will be no more votes tonight, and amendments that require rollcall votes will be voted on in the morning, and that we will go to final passage immediately at 9:30 tomorrow after disposing of any rollcall votes. We have several amendments pending which we hope we can deal with by voice votes tonight, and I hope that we will not have any more rollcall votes and can go immediately to final passage.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendments be dispensed with.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, the hour of 4 o'clock has come and gone. That was the hour by which all amendments to the bill had to be submitted. We had 120. We have disposed affirmatively of 31 of those, and we are not at all sure the other roughly 90 are all going to be offered. The majority leader has made it clear he wants to finish this bill tonight, and so I say to those who have amendments still on the list, if they do not show up to offer their amendments, we will move to third reading at an appropriate time. We want to accommodate the majority leader's desire. I think it is the desire of most of the Members of the Senate to move forward. So I say to the other Members who do have amendments, you are on notice that if you do not let us know you are going to be here and try to reserve some time to call up your amendment, we will indeed move to third reading. There are hotlines that have been going out to Senators who have amendments filed to give them that message. We will go forward in that fashion. Amendments Nos. 1754 and 1755 Mr. President, I do have two additional amendments to those that have already been cleared, which I send to the desk and ask for their immediate consideration. Both are on behalf of Senator Salazar of Colorado.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I call for a vote on the two amendments.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry be authorized to conduct a hearing during the session of the Senate on Wednesday September 21, 2005 at 9 a.m. in 328A, Senate Russell Office Building. The purpose of this committee hearing will be to review the status of the World Trade Organization negotiations on agriculture.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, there are cleared amendments at the desk, one from Senator Kyl and one from Senator Leahy. I ask unanimous consent that they be agreed to and that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. BENNETT. These amendments have been cleared on both sides. I ask for their approval by voice vote.

Mr. BENNETT. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.