Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, as I contemplated what I might say here today, I went back in my computer and pulled up a letter I wrote on September 22, 2001, in response to a friend of mine who corresponded with me in that difficult time. He is a history professor. I have known him since high school. And I sat down at my computer and simply let things flow out. I have now decided to share that letter with the Senate and with the country as I look back on it after a year's time. I think it reflects better than anything I could create now not only my feelings at the time but my concern for where we should be and what we should be doing. I read the letter dated September 22, 2001: I have your letter, dear friend, and am moved to reply in depth using you as my audience as I make an attempt to speak to all the issues I see. I start with the President's address to the Congress last Thursday. It has been called historic, one of the greatest Presidential addresses ever given. It certainly had that character and, listening to it in a packed chamber more hushed than I can ever remember, I was struck by the power, eloquence and directness of his words. From a distance of a day or two, however, as I analyze it and discuss it with my colleagues, I realize that the speech was more than moving rhetoric. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, a U.S. President has laid out a clear statement of what the world is now like and what the U.S. role must be in that world. The fact that this has not been done before is less a knock on previous Presidents than a realization that, until September 11, Americans in general were probably not yet free of all our Cold War illusions. We are the world's only remaining superpower, we told ourselves. We are a just compassionate nation, we said. Ergo, we reasoned, it follows that, under our vigorous stewardship, the world itself will become a just and compassionate place, albeit little by little. With Hitler and Stalin and Mao all dead, we thought, with the Soviet Union gone, evil--true malevolence--has gone from the world stage. It only pops up here and there in the form of an isolated Serb or Somali warload. No more. Now we know that evil is alive and thriving, still threatening the peace everywhere in the world. Irrational hatred has not disappeared. The same mindset of fanaticism that built gas chambers 60 years ago is now hijacking airplanes and flying them into buildings, overseeing the preparation of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. As the President made so starkly clear, the world's new enemies hate freedom as much as Hitler did, and are prepared to kill millions as much as Stalin did. Evil has not gone away; it has simply changed its political language and its physical address. Our Cold War mentality told us that the trouble in the Middle East was about Israel, about power politics between established nation states, about borders and economics and markets. I readily agree that Israel has real problems with her neighbors, and they with her, but this is not about those problems. It is not about Israel. It is about defending the helpless against evil. President Bush told us that America is feeding the poor in Afghanistan. I didn't know that before. Since his speech I have been in briefings from those familiar with the region who tell us that the Taliban uses food as a weapon, denying it to those that oppose them. They say they hate us for our support of Israel, but they also hate us because we are trying to feed the starving in their own country, and thus undermine their effort to starve everyone into submission. They hate us because we profane their world with our notions of freedom--we ``pollute the holy places'' with business people and diplomats who let women drive and appear in public with bare faces. They hate us because we take the youth of all countries, including theirs, into our universities and teach them about science and economics and democracy, as well as about blue jeans and movies and freedom to travel and open debate. President Bush said it better than I can, and it was necessary for him to lay all that out if the Country is to ``get'' what we are facing. The President spoke of the diplomatic front in this war, of our need for partners. . . . He reported good progress there, citing Pakistan as an example. In the same briefings that told us about food shipments to Afghanistan I learned that the current leaders of Pakistan really don't have much of a choice in this fight because they are a target themselves. They hardly qualify as democrats by our definition, but the radicals still hate them for even their tenuous ties to us. By some estimates, the radicals are close to bringing the government down and turning Pakistan into another Afghanistan. The same is true, in terms of the radical's end goal, in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The leaders of those countries know they are at risk, and have been for some time. Sadat was murdered because he was willing to go to Jerusalem and say, ``No more war.'' Those leaders need our help and are willing to help us in return because, long term, they know that the only nation with the capacity to lead a world wide campaign to eliminate this evil is ours. The success we are having in building a coalition of partners in the first days of this conflict is one of the most encouraging signs that things are, for the moment, going somewhat well. You are a historian; you know that the Second World War didn't begin on December 7th. Neither did this one begin on September 11th. As was the case with Europeans in the 30's, Americans have been in Foreign Policy denial in the 90's. Thrilled with the demise of our four-decade Soviet enemy, we read articles about the ``end of history'' and ignored the signs that were there to be seen. Now we have to go back and examine those signs . . . We must realize that we are truly at war, and, as was the case in 1941, really have been for some time. The embassy bombings, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, the intelligence warnings--all these should have told us that this is a war and not, as some of the commentators have described it, a law enforcement problem. What's the difference? . . . In a war you focus on prevention of attack, not punishment. You . . . go after the enemy's assets to destroy them before they can be used to destroy you, gather the best intelligence you can and then play hunches and probabilities. You don't give out Miranda warnings. Please accept my assurance that our leaders know how different and difficult this war will be. They know that we have to have partners, and that many of these partners have internal problems that will prevent them from being the kind of ``allies'' on which we could traditionally count. . . . The team that President Bush has assembled is experienced, intellectually nuanced in its understanding, and deep. Down below the level of Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice is a significant bench of very solid players who understand what we are up against. . . . So there we are. It has fallen our lot . . . to be the leader of the free world in a struggle that is global and against an enemy that is fanatic, decentralized, persistent, completely fearless and very, very patient . . . . bin Laden and his fellow fanatics have decided that they can defeat [us] . . . by keeping intact their capacity to visit horror on us at unexpected times. We will not have won until that capacity is destroyed. This will be a very long, tricky and difficult fight. But, as the President said, we will win it. And it will be worth it. The stakes are nothing less than they were in 1941 and through the Cold War years, for us and for all the rest of those who want to live in freedom. Madam President, reading that a year later, I still feel the same way.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I would like to comment on the bill as it stands and some of the challenges relating to it rather than any specific amendment. All of us, as we want to arrive at a position, fall back upon our own experience. I have some experience that I think is relative to this situation which I would share with the Senate. I have shared it with some members of the committee, but I have found in my time in the Senate that there is no such thing as repetition. Every speech is given as if it is brand new and no one has ever heard any of this before. I have learned that from some of my more senior colleagues here. First when I arrived here, I found it a little distressing, but after I found out how often people listen to what you say, I decided it is probably a pretty good thing, because repeating something over and over again in this body, many times, is the only way you can get anybody to listen to you. With that, let me share with you and my colleagues, and any others who may be listening, my experience with a similar situation when I served in the first term of the Nixon administration. In the 18 months prior to President Nixon's election, Joe Califano, as the Chief of Staff to President Johnson, conceived of the idea of the Department of Transportation. We were one of the few industrialized countries in the world that did not have a ministry of transport, as it is called in most other countries. We found that our transportation functions were scattered all over the Government. Mr. Califano, consulting with President Johnson, convinced the President that the time had come to create the American version of a ministry of transport. So the Department of Transportation was born. On paper, it looks like a department that was created at the Harvard Business School. You had a series of assistant secretaries who were staff officers. You had a series of administrators who were line officers. It was put together with modern business terminology and a complete understanding of how a large organization should be formed. It took the Federal Highway Administration out of the Department of Commerce, where it was such a significant part of that Department that they had two Under Secretaries, one an Under Secretary for Transportation and the other an Under Secretary for everything else. It took the FAA from its status as an independent agency reporting directly to the President. It was called the Federal Aviation Agency. It was renamed the Federal Aviation Administration so that the terminology would be comparable. It took the Coast Guard out of the Treasury Department. It goes all the way back to the time of Thomas Jefferson, perhaps, as being part of the Treasury Department looking for smugglers so they could collect duties on people who would bring goods into the United States. The Coast Guard represents a significant part of our transportation activity, and it was recognized it no longer belonged in the Treasury Department. There was a fledgling group called the Urban Mass Transit Administration that was over at HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But they recognized it had nothing, really, to do with housing and belonged over in the new Department of Transportation. They looked at some other areas where there needed to be some initiatives in transportation and created some new agencies solely for those--the Federal Rail Administration being the chief among them. Then it took some other isolated agencies, folded them in, put them on a piece of paper, and said: Here is your new department. Alan Boyd, who was the Under Secretary of Commerce for Transportation, was made the new Secretary of Transportation and for 18 months struggled with the challenge of trying to bring these groups together. His service was terminated when President Johnson left office. John Volpe came down, as former Governor of the State of Massachusetts, to assume the Secretaryship of the Department of Transportation. The Under Secretary was James Beggs, who came over from NASA, where he had performed excellent service as an associate administrator there. I was hired to run the congressional liaison function for the Department. As I say, the Department was 18 months old. When I walked into it to take over my new duties, I found that almost no one knew what those new duties would be because the challenge of bringing together, at a departmental level, all of the people involved in congressional liaison had not been successfully met in the 18 months previous. I am not putting any blame on Secretary Boyd or on any of the people who worked with him during that 18 months. As I became acquainted with the Department and its functions, I realized how difficult it was to bring together agencies that had no common culture, no common background, that had been operating in many different places across the Government, and turn them into a clearly, smoothly functioning single unit. Indeed, there were some people in that organization who refused to admit they were even members of the Department of Transportation. An anecdote: One of the personnel officers who worked for the Assistant Secretary for Administration got on the elevator and punched the button that said eighth floor. Someone behind her said: You are one of those DOT types. The eighth floor was the floor that had been recommissioned for the offices of the Secretary. The tenth floor was where the Administrator of the FAA worked. She turned around and said: We are all DOT types. Her remark was not favorably received. The folks behind her in the elevator said: We are FAA. You are DOT. It is a small anecdote, but it demonstrates that after 18 months there were still people who had a hard time bringing themselves into the new Department. To my own specific experience, I found that the FAA still had its own congressional relations function. Urban Mass Transit didn't have one at all. They had not really brought anything over with them from HUD. The Federal Highway Administration had a well-entrenched congressional liaison function, and the Coast Guard had been at it for close to 200 years, and they were not about to give that up to anybody as unimportant as a Cabinet officer. The new agencies that had been created didn't have any service. They didn't know what they were doing. Those officers who had been trying to perform congressional relations functions for the Secretary and the team of Assistant Secretaries that had been created under him had been floundering and flopping around trying to find their way in this morass. Secretary Volpe and Under Secretary Beggs gave me the challenge of trying to pull all of this together. It was one of the most interesting and difficult experiences of my then-young life. That was enough years ago that I was a young man when I undertook that. Eventually, we were able to pull all of those functions together into a single office reporting directly to the Secretary. I rearranged all of the functions so that everyone involved in that activity reported to me either directly or through my deputy. I said: I will give you an assignment--as if we were a consulting firm dealing with clients. You, sir, your client is the FAA. You, sir, your client is Urban Mass Transit, and so on. You will not be acceptable to me if your client is unhappy. If the Administrator of the FAA believes he is not getting the kind of congressional relations he deserves, he will complain directly to me as we meet together in the Secretary's staff meetings, and I will be around to see you. But at the same time, you work for me. And, through me, you work for Secretary Volpe. This meant that when we had an issue that required more manpower and womanpower than that particular officer could provide, I could rally the resources of the office and the other officers to help on that particular issue at that particular time. We were much more flexible. I think we were much more efficient and effective. As it turned out, a large percentage of President Nixon's domestic agenda fell under the Department of Transportation. Congress passed, with our help and liaison, a whole series of landmark bills setting down the transportation process for this country. It was one of the most stimulating experiences of my life. What does that have to do with the Department of Homeland Security? In making the kinds of changes that I have described, I had to have management flexibility so that when, with the Secretary's authority, I didn't have--it came from the Secretary--I could say: You no longer work for the Administrator of the FAA; you now work for me. You no longer report to the Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, you now work for me. This is how we are going to set your procedures, and this is how we are going to rationalize salaries within the office that I created. I was able to do that because the enabling act that created the Department of Transportation gave the Secretary management flexibility to move people around within the Department without coming back to the Congress for approval. He had flexibility to change payroll. One of the interesting things that occurred was that in the FAA, promotions were all made on even numbers; that is, you went from a GS-4 to a GS-6; from a GS-8 to a GS-10; from a GS-10 to a GS-12, and so on. In other parts of the Department they did two numbers per jump, but they were all on odd numbers. As I brought all of these people together in the same offices, I had some GS-5's and GS-6's. The amount of money they were earning, frankly, was the same. It was very interesting to me, coming from the corporate world as I was at that time in this somewhat strange and challenging world of the U.S. personnel system. We had to rationalize that or the office didn't make any sense. We had to make some changes. We didn't do it in a way that damaged anyone. No one lost money. No one lost position. But someone had to transfer from the odd system to the even system, and adjustments had to be made. And they were made on the basis of what made the most sense for the office and how it would work. The flexibility that was written into the act made that possible. One interesting thing that probably doesn't apply anymore but that came out of that experience was the result with respect to supergrades. In those days, a GS-16, GS-17, or GS-18 was called a supergrade, and each Department had a set number of supergrades. That was true of the Department of Transportation. I don't remember what the number was, but the Department could not have more than 25 or 35 or whatever the number was of supergrades. As I went through this process of bringing all of these people together, I was able to walk into the Under Secretary's office and say: I am giving you back three supergrades--because so many of these people had held supergrade positions in the previous administration. The way we organized this, I only needed two supergrades--one for myself and one for my deputy and everybody else was a GS-10 or below. I didn't realize what I was doing because the Under Secretary greeted me with one of the biggest smiles I have ever received and said: This is pure gold because there are other places in the Department where the positions deserve supergrades and I don't have any supergrades to give them. And you have just freed up three supergrades by virtue of your consolidation of this function. I don't know where the supergrades went. But they went out to other deserving people. That is why I feel so strongly in favor of President Bush's position that the Department of Homeland Security must be formed with flexibility for management and personnel and other decisions on the part of the Secretary. I have been there and I have seen how vital it is. If we had to go through the kinds of hoops that are created in the Federal personnel system in the reorganizing something as insignificant as my offices--I am talking about 30 to 35 people max; I am not talking about anything approaching the challenge of this new Department--if we had to go through all of those hoops in reorganizing my office, I would have spent the entire 2 years that I was there working on personnel issues and management issues instead of trying to get the program passed through the Congress--the landmark legislation that was passed. I still have the pens that President Nixon gave me and my picture in the Cabinet Room when those bills were signed. We would not have been able to get that done. We would have been snarled up in all of the internal management challenges of, well, we have to go to Congress to get this approved or that approved; we haven't got the flexibility to do it. I have that personal experience that drives me to stand with the President on this issue and to say that I believe the President is correct when he says he will veto this bill, if that flexibility is not there. None of us should have the false assumption that this Department will work for at least 3 and more likely 5 years. All of us should understand how difficult a management challenge this is going to be under the best of circumstances. The Department of Transportation, as I say, 18 months after its formation was still not working. John Volpe didn't come in and wave a magic wand to make it work overnight. John Volpe and Jim Beggs labored for a full 4 years beyond the 18 months that it had under President Johnson. It was only toward the end of those 4 years that you began to see things really meshed together and start to work together and see a real Department of Transportation instead of the old turf battles that had been there. The Department of Defense took longer than that to come together. It was the kind of reorganization more closely paralleling the size of the one we are now doing. It is instructive to remember that the first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, committed suicide. The challenge of managing that difficult a bureaucracy was sufficiently great that this dedicated public servant--perhaps too dedicated because he took it so seriously-- that he ultimately could not cope with it and committed suicide, which demonstrates how serious it is for us to do this right. I do not want the new Secretary, whoever he or she may be, to have any more impediments placed on the challenge of making this Department work than are necessary. To not give the Secretary the management flexibility that the President has called for is asking for failure in this Department. As I say, it is not going to work for at least 3, and more likely 5, years. That does not mean we should not do it. We should do it because if we wait a year, that will just push back a year the 3-to-5-year period that it will not work. But let's be realistic about it. Let's understand from the model of Government mergers, let's understand from the model of corporate mergers, how difficult this is going to be; and then let us, in the Congress, fashion a piece of legislation that says we are going to make it as easy as possible for the new Secretary to do all of the internal kinds of shifting and changing necessary to make it work closer to the 3-year figure than to the 5-year figure. Now, I hope I am wrong. I hope it will work magnificently in 6 months. But life tells me that is not likely. So that is why I voted against this bill in committee. I said to Chairman Lieberman: If you really needed my vote to report out this bill, I would give you my vote because I think the bill ought to be reported out. But since you don't need my vote, I want to register my deep concern about the management flexibility and lack thereof that is written into this bill. And the only way I can do that is to cast a vote against the bill. Someone has asked me: Well, if it comes out of the Senate and the President is not given the management flexibility he has asked for, how will you vote on final passage? I will probably vote against it on final passage, even though some people say to me: Oh, let it go to conference and we'll fix it in conference. I have learned around here the motto ``let's fix it in conference'' does not always work. Very often it comes back from conference worse than when it went to conference, and then you are stuck. So I am dedicated to the creation of the new Department. I will do everything I can to help the President and the Congress pass legislation that makes sense. But I cannot, from my own experience, believe this makes any sense if it does not go forward with complete management flexibility in every possible way. A press conference was held today in which some Members of this body were quoted as saying that those of us who believe as I have just described are union baiters; that our whole motive here is to bash organized labor; our whole motive here is to attack honest working people. Let me take you back to my experience at the Department of Transportation. It was my first experience in an executive branch organization. I had served on Capitol Hill as a staffer, as a Government employee, but I had never been a civil servant. And I went in with some of the standard prejudices that many people in the private sector have about civil servants: That they don't work very hard; that they are just serving their time until their 40-year period for retirement comes along; that they are not very entrepreneurial; that they are not interested in new ideas; that they take as their motto, ``We were here before you got here, and we will be here after you leave, so we don't need to pay any attention to you.'' There were some who had that view, there is no question. There is a very small percentage of civil servants who feel that way. I was overwhelmed with admiration for the career civil service people in our Government who were dedicated, determined to make Government work, absolutely determined to do the very best job they could, and open to suggestions and comments that may have come from the political appointees. We had an Assistant Secretary for Administration, a position that is a civil-service-protected position, who had been appointed by Alan Boyd. He was a known Democrat. But because his position had civil service protection, there was not anything that Secretary Volpe could do about it. He was as helpful to me in this reorganization effort that I have just described as anybody at the Department. He sat down with me and helped take me through the labyrinth of Federal regulations. And when I made some mistakes--and I made several which were beauts--he did not jump all over me. He said: It's our fault for not having warned you in advance that that's what would happen if you did it that way. And if we had been there, we would have helped you do it another way. And let's see to it that it happens the other way. These people do not need to be protected from competent managers. These people need to be motivated and excited about the creation of a new Department. If the new Department is being created with intelligent management and flexibility on the part of the management, the civil servants will respond, certainly those at the Department of Transportation. They will respond with enthusiasm: At least we are moving forward in an area where we have been deficient in the past. Thank you for the opportunity for this new kind of service that the old paradigm would not allow. They will be supportive of this. Maybe their union managers are fearful of what management might do, but get a competent manager in as the Secretary and have him or her choose competent people as the Assistant Secretaries and the other administrators, give them the flexibility to do the right management thing, and the civil servants will not feel attacked. They will not feel under siege. They will feel liberated and excited. And they will be part of the solution because if this Department is going to work in 3 years rather than 5, it has to have the support of the civil servants; it has to have the kind of partnership between the civil servants and the political leadership that America has seen happen so often in so many other places. So I reject the notion that my call for management flexibility is somehow an attack on the civil servants or an attack on their unions. Instead, it is reaching out and saying: Join with us to make the best kind of Department we possibly can and, thus, create for you the best working environment you can ever be in in your Federal career. Be part of something truly exciting, something truly significant and historic, the creation of a new Department in the 21st century dealing with 21st century challenges that this country has not had to face in its past history. But don't let us start out with a traditional 19th-century-style management-labor confrontation. Do not let us start out with: We have to protect our turf and everything we have now, and we have absolutely no confidence at all that the management will do anything but attack us. Let's put all of that aside and say: What are we dealing with here? As I say, we are dealing with a 21st century challenge of the kind this country has not faced in its history. We are trying to reorganize the assets of the Government to meet this challenge in a cohesive, coherent, intelligent way. Let us never lose sight of that objective and keep our eye on that ball as we write this legislation and as we adopt amendments on the floor. One of the first amendments that will be offered will be one to give the Secretary, through the President, the kind of management flexibility I have been talking about. I intend to support that as strongly as I know how, for all of the reasons I have laid out here. I hope my colleagues will join with me. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, 1 month ago today on July 1, 2002, the International Criminal Court was formally brought into existence. There has been objection to the International Criminal Court in America and, indeed, there has been a great deal of angst among our friends and allies around the world over the fact that President Bush removed America's signature from the treaty that created the International Criminal Court. I have read some of the press around this controversy with great interest. I have been particularly struck by the fact that Chris Patton of the European Parliament, who is probably as good a friend as America has anywhere in Europe, has, in the American newspapers, expressed his great concern about our failure to endorse the International Criminal Court and to fully support it. I cannot speak for the administration. I cannot speak for my colleagues in the Senate, but I can speak for myself, and I think Chris Patton and the others throughout the world who have expressed concern with our actions on this issue have the right to understand why some Americans are opposed to the International Criminal Court. I intend to lay out today the reasons why I, as one Senator, am opposed to the International Criminal Court in an effort to help our friends around the world understand some of the difficulties that many Americans have and to make it clear that my opposition to the International Criminal Court is not a knee-jerk response as some European newspapers may expect. First, I should make it clear for those who may be listening or who might read the speech afterwards what the International Criminal Court is because I find that many of my constituents have no idea what it is. So very quickly, Madam President, I will lay out what it is we are talking about here. The International Criminal Court is a permanent international judicial institution that was organized and established by countries around the world for the purpose of redressing the most serious crimes in the international community. And here we are talking about those crimes that historically have lent themselves to war crimes tribunals-- genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Those are the crimes considered to be so horrific that nations and leaders of nations can be held responsible for their commission. The International Criminal Court is similar in purpose to the World War II tribunals that were convened after the end of that conflict. We know of the Nuremberg trials and the trials related to the Japanese war criminals. The International Criminal Court was created as a permanent tribunal of that kind. It is comparable to two tribunals that are currently in operation: The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In both cases, those two bodies are moving forward to identify the individuals who committed crimes against humanity, or war crimes, and take action against them in an effort to establish an international norm of behavior and make it possible to hold people accountable for how they behaved in conflicts. Currently, over 75 countries have ratified or otherwise accepted the statute that created the International Criminal Court. That statute said when 60 countries had ratified, it would become effective. It is effective as of July 1. It is located in The Hague. So with that background, let me outline why I am opposed to America's ratification and support of the International Criminal Court as it currently stands. I will begin by saying why I am not taking this position. I am not taking this position because I believe America should not enter into international agreements. I know there are some who say we should not have any international agreements at all. That position is foolish, in my view. We have to enter into international agreements in the world in which we now live. Indeed, one could argue it is to America's benefit to do so. There has been controversy, for example, about the World Trade Organization, the WTO. I have constituents who complain about America membership in the WTO saying it is terrible that we are under this international agreement. I tell them that the WTO was America's idea and that the WTO makes it possible for Americans to do business around the world. If we did not have this kind of mechanism to sort through the disagreements on trade issues, America would not be able to export, America's economy would be damaged, and Americans would be put out of work. It is a good thing for the United States to be part of the WTO. So my opposition to the International Criminal Court is not because I am automatically opposed to international agreements. Also, it is not because I want, as some European journalists suggest, American dominance around the world; that America is so haughty and so proud that we cannot honor any kind of international law. I am enough of a student of history to know that any superpower that tries to dominate the world through their own power ultimately falls. The Romans found they could not maintain a worldwide empire. The Ottomans found they could not maintain the far-flung empire that existed all the way from Spain to the borders of India. More recently the British, with the viceroy in India and troops around the world, discovered they could not do it either. I do not think the International Criminal Court is a bad idea because I want America to take some kind of hyper-power position of dominance around the world. I think America's record throughout history is very good on this issue. We should remember that Americans, when they win wars, do not occupy territory. When we won the Second World War, we not only liberated the Dutch, the French, and the Belgians, we also liberated the Germans. They are freer today than they were under the Nazis. They have more human rights and more individual property rights than they ever had prior to the war. America leaves behind, as we now are demonstrating in Afghanistan, a legacy of freedom and food, and that legacy will continue. So the suggestion that opposition to the International Criminal Court stems from some kind of empire impulse on the part of Americans is something I reject. Finally, I do not reject the International Criminal Court because I want Americans to dismiss the importance of international law. After all, the United Nations, which heavily influences the development of international law, was an American idea and is located on American soil and has been supported by American appropriations. Most United Nations functions around the world involve American troops. So I reject many of the journalistic arguments that supposedly explain why I oppose the International Criminal Court. I do not think they are appropriate. So why do I object to the International Criminal Court? I need to go back a little bit in history, and I hope my colleagues will indulge me as I go into America's history to lay the predicate for the position I am taking. We in America adopted as our first state paper a document we call the Declaration of Independence. It is perhaps the most important state paper we have ever adopted. In the Declaration of Independence, we lay down certain principles which the Continental Congress believed were beyond debate; that is, self-evident truths. One of these self-evident truths held that individual rights do not come from government. The phrase in the Declaration of Independence is ``endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.'' The purpose of government is set forth in that document. The purpose of government is to secure these rights, deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed. These are sacred words to Americans, and they come, as I say, from our first state document, and I believe still our most powerful. The reason they are so sacred is because we are the only nation in the world that is founded on an idea. Every other nation throughout the world is founded on a tribe. People are bound together by a common ethnic history. That may have been our beginning, but it is not the nation we now have. If I may go back to an example very close to Utah and talk about the Olympics. If one watched the Olympics on television and saw the athletes coming from the various countries around the world, one can almost always identify where the athlete is from by his or her name or the ethnic look that he or she brings to the television. But that cannot be done with Americans. The American Olympians are named Kuan and Lapinski, Louganis and Blair, Jordan and Byrd. They are Black, they are White, they are Asian in ethnic background. They come from all over the world. In America, we do not have a common tribal base. All that holds us together as a nation is a dedication to the ideas set forth in the Declaration of Independence, the ideas that our rights come from God and that the purpose of government is to secure those rights, not grant them in the first place. That is demonstrated by the fact that those of us in this Chamber, unlike any other parliamentarians or officeholders around the world, do not take an oath to uphold and defend the country or the people. Our oath is to uphold and defend the Constitution that was drafted to incorporate the core idea of this Nation. We have a sworn oath recorded in Heaven, to use Lincoln's phrase, to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies. So we have a unique attitude about rights, about law, and about our responsibilities to a document and an idea that undergirds that document. Let me speak a little more American history, and any of our European friends who might ultimately read this speech might, I would hope, find this somewhat interesting. I think there is something of a parallel between the adoption of the Constitution and the discussions that are going on around the world right now. The 13 States that made up the United States of America in the first place were united against a common enemy during the Revolutionary War. But when the war was over, they began to quarrel among themselves. They each printed their own money. There were tariff barriers between States. There were all kinds of arguments about what law would apply from one State to the other, somewhat like the confusion that goes on around the world today. The decision was made to try to find a way to impose a single rule of law across all 13 of these States. That is what produced the Constitutional Convention. When the Constitution was written and then submitted to the 13 States for ratification, it said, much like the underlying statute of the International Criminal Court, that it would take effect as soon as three-fourths of the States had ratified it. It did not require unanimous ratification but said that as soon as three- fourths of these States have ratified it, it will take hold and it will apply to all. Now, in the practical world of that time, one State could prevent it from taking hold because if that one State, which was so much more powerful than the others, had not ratified it, the whole thing would have fallen apart. That was the State of Virginia. Another State arguably in that same position would be the State of New York. If Virginia and New York had not ratified, the other 11 could have, and we still would not have had a workable document. This, if I may be so bold, is somewhat similar to the situation that people are raising with respect to the International Criminal Court. They say 75 nations may ratify it but if the United States doesn't, it will not work. And the United States is outside. Back to our own history for a moment. Virginia was outside. Virginia was not the first State to ratify, Delaware was, followed by Pennsylvania, followed by Georgia, and so on. But Virginia was holding out. One of the reasons Virginia was holding out was that the man who was arguably the second most powerful politician in Virginia--the No. 1 politician in Virginia was, of course, George Washington--and the second most powerful politician in Virginia, Patrick Henry, multiple times Governor of Virginia, was unalterably opposed to the Constitution. He led the fight against ratification in Virginia on this ground: He said there is no bill of rights in this Constitution. The rights that it seeks to protect for us Americans are not specified. I am not sure that he used the term ``vague'' but he could have because the Constitution, as originally drafted, was very vague about which rights would be preserved. Now, the leading politician in Virginia seeking ratification, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, who did get it ratified in New York, argued with Patrick Henry. Madison and Hamilton said to Patrick Henry: You don't want these rights laid out specifically in this Constitution; you want to leave it vague. If you enumerate them specifically, you will inevitably forget something, and then by not listing that which you forget, you will put that right in peril. Everybody understands, Madison and Hamilton said, that all of the rights we have are protected by the Constitution as it exists, and to specify them will limit them. You are making a mistake if you demand specificity. Patrick Henry was having none of that. Patrick Henry stood firm and demanded the defeat of the ratification resolution in the Virginia Legislature. However, he ultimately gave way to the predominant rule of politics in America in the 18th century which is: Anybody who opposes George Washington loses. George Washington, as the president of the constitutional conference, had enough prestige that the Constitution was, indeed, ratified in Virginia but with this political understanding: James Madison said, if you ratify the Constitution, I will run for Congress. I will go into the House of Representatives-- which he assumed would be the dominant body of the new government--and I will propose a bill of rights. That promise took enough sting out of Patrick Henry's argument that Patrick Henry lost the fight and Virginia ratified and the Constitution was adopted and we had the new nation. True to his political promise, Madison went to the House of Representatives, and offered 12 articles of amendment to the Constitution, 11 of which were adopted. The first 10 we now revere as the Bill of Rights. We can now, looking back after two centuries, realize that Patrick Henry was right, that the Bill of Rights is as much a revered part of the idea that holds this country together as anything else that is written in the Declaration of Independence or the rest of the Constitution itself. We hold commemorative ceremonies honoring the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Now, what does this have to do with the International Criminal Court? At the risk of being overly egotistical, let me try to play Patrick Henry. The International Criminal Court is based on a statute that is vague, so vague that I believe my constitutional rights, those for which Henry, Madison, Hamilton, and Washington and all the rest of them fought, are in peril. When I say that to my European friends, quite frankly, they laugh. Or they say to me, reminiscent of Madison's argument to Hamilton, no, no, no. You misunderstand. The International Criminal Court is not going to threaten your constitutional rights in any way. It is designed to go after the bad guys. It is designed with the same intent as the tribunal for Yugoslavia or the tribunal for Rwanda. It is designed to make sure that we have a permanent tribunal in place. My reaction to the assurances that my rights will never be attacked is, I think, in concert with Patrick Henry's reaction to the assurances that he was given by Madison and Hamilton. My concerns are reinforced by some of the things I have heard. For example, I have been told there are groups that want to bring suit in the International Criminal Court against President Bush, charging him with a crime against humanity for his failure to send the Kyoto treaty to the Senate for ratification, that his opposition to the Kyoto treaty constitutes such a gross violation of the opportunities around the world that it is a crime against humanity. I have inquired whether or not such an action could come before the International Criminal Court and have gone through it with legal scholars. The answer is, yes, such an action could come before the Court, but, of course, it would be laughed out by the prosecutor and the President would never have to go to trial. That does not give me a lot of reassurance, that the case could be brought--but of course the President would not be found guilty. How can we know, 20 years from now, or 30 years from now, that some future President would be found guilty for making a policy decision that he or she decided was in the best interest of the United States but that the International Criminal Court decided was not in the best interest of the rest of the world, and so it would be defined as a crime against humanity? And given the vague nature of the statute of the International Criminal Court, that is a very real possibility. Let me give another possibility that comes very much to home. There are those around the world who are insisting that the United States pick a numerical target for foreign aid; that is, we pick a number which would be a percentage of GDP. And they are saying in their rhetoric that the United States is not meeting its responsibility to the underdeveloped world until it meets this arbitrary percentage of GDP in adopting foreign aid. I am a member of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, the subcommittee that determines how much foreign aid we appropriate. Under the language of the International Criminal Court, am I liable for my actions as a Member of the Senate? The language is very specific. Being a member of the parliament does not exempt one from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Suppose someone decides that the U.S. failure to meet that artificial number constitutes a crime against humanity and that if we do not raise our foreign aid to that number, all of those who are legislators, most specifically those who are appropriators, can be hauled before the International Criminal Court and prosecuted for our failure to adopt that kind of appropriation. I do not want to run the risk. When I raise it, once again, with those who are in favor of the International Criminal Court, they laugh it off and say that is not why it was designed, that is not what it will look at, no, that kind of prosecution will never be brought. Then when I raise the question: But could it be brought under the language of the statute as it currently exists? They say, Well, yes, it could be. But you know the prosecutor would never go forward with such a case. Again, at the risk of being immodest, I want to be Patrick Henry on this issue. I want to say we will not proceed--I will not proceed; again, I will not speak for my colleagues--I will not proceed to vote to ratify a treaty on the International Criminal Court until I am satisfied that the language is so absolute that I will not lose any rights I currently have under the U.S. Constitution. I say to those who say: no, no, this is only going to deal with people like Milosevic. We are never going to see this sort of frivolous activity, and the United States should understand that you have no need to worry whatsoever about this international tribunal. Indeed, the United States helped create safeguards that are already in the International Criminal Court that say if the United States proceeds to prosecute someone who is accused of a war crime, the International Criminal Court will lose its jurisdiction. In other words, if an American serviceman is accused of a war crime, as happened in Vietnam in the village of Mi Lai, and the United States prosecuted that serviceman, as we did under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, then the ICC has no jurisdiction and backs away. So you, who have a great track record of prosecuting war crimes among your own servicemen, need have no worry whatsoever of this international tribunal. We have two precedents that are now before us that have just come up in the last few months, and I find them disturbing in the face of all of these reassurances. The first one has been written about rather extensively in the Washington Post and the New York Times. It involves a Washington Post reporter who has been subpoenaed. He happens to live in Paris right now. He has been summoned by the tribunal dealing with Yugoslavia to come in and testify. And he said: I don't want to come in and testify. It would have a chilling effect on reporters covering the war if we thought the things we wrote about the war would be subject to the jurisdiction of a war crimes tribunal afterwards. The Washington Post has taken the position that the reporter is exactly right. It has been written up in the New York Times also, sympathetically. The reporter's name is Jonathan C. Randal. He is retired from the Post. As I say, he now lives in Paris. The Yugoslavia tribunal has said: You do not have the right to refuse. We are going to require you to come. And he can be arrested by the police in Paris, handed over to the tribunal by the police in France, and he loses his American constitutional rights because the statute creating that tribunal is vague on the area of his rights. There is another incident that has just come up. The same tribunal, which we are told is a precedent for the International Criminal Court, has been asked to indict William Jefferson Clinton and his National Security Adviser, Anthony Lake; and the then-Deputy National Security Adviser, Samuel Berger; and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke; and the U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, all of whom are being accused of complicity in war crimes conducted by a Croatian general who was acting within the framework of American foreign policy at the time. Here is a case where a President and his advisers make a decision in the best interests of the United States. The President and his advisers are now being investigated to see whether or not they should be called before the tribunal. The specter of an American President called before an international tribunal for actions as straightforward as President Clinton's actions were in this circumstance is a specter I do not want to see repeated before the International Criminal Court. I do not want any future American President to believe that he or she is in danger of being named as an accomplice in some act of some other individual. We do not know whether or not the International Criminal Court could do that under its present statute. It is so vague that it cannot answer that question. In other words, under the present circumstance, it is not just an American citizen such as the reporter from the Washington Post who might be called in, it is not just a member of the Appropriations Committee who might be called in, there is a precedent being established that the President of the United States might be called in to answer in this international forum for actions he or she took in the best interests of the United States as those interests were defined at the time. So I come back to my reasons for not wanting to ratify the treaty creating the International Criminal Court. I understand that as he signed it, President Clinton himself said this treaty is not ready for ratification. President Bush took our signature off it in order to make it clear to the world that it was not ready for ratification. I applaud that position--both President Clinton's position that it is not ready to be ratified and President Bush's decision to remove all doubt as to America's position on this point. But I do want to make it clear, as I tried to do at the beginning, that I am not opposed to the idea of creating some kind of tribunal that can deal with these heinous crimes we see around us in this world that is still not rid of the horrific activities that are called war crimes and crimes against humanity. I am not opposed to America being subject to the rule of international law in an area where America's track record of behavior is so good that I am sure America could handle this without any difficulty. My problem is the vagueness. My problem is the possibility that the International Criminal Court will go far beyond what we think of as war crimes and will invent new ones, like the ones I have described here. My problem is that we do not have a clear outline of rights that will be protected in this Court. Just as Patrick Henry stood and said, do not ratify the Constitution of the United States until there is a clear bill of rights written into it, and held that position to the point that James Madison finally gave in and gave us the Bill of Rights, I think American legislators should stand and say: Do not ratify the International Criminal Court until there is a bill of rights, until we know exactly that the rights we have under the Constitution, that the Declaration of Independence declares as being ours by God-given sanction, are protected, that Americans will not be called before this Court in a way that would put us in jeopardy of those rights. That is my bottom line with respect to the International Criminal Court. I believe the United States should stay engaged and involved in discussions about it. I don't think we should turn our backs and walk away and say we will never have anything to do with it or be involved in it. I think by virtue of its observer status, which it still has with respect to the International Criminal Court, the United States should continue to talk to the other countries in the world about this. But the bottom line should be that when the United States finally does decide to ratify the International Criminal Court, it will be in a regime where no American citizen will lose any of the rights that are currently guaranteed to him or her under the American Constitution. I believe it can be done. I encourage everyone around the world to focus on that and not say we don't need to talk about that, that this is just for the bad guys, but recognize that if you are building an institution that is going to last for 50, or 100, or 200 years, as our Constitution has, you must be as careful in creating it as the Founders were in creating our Constitution in the first place. We are the freest nation in the world. We would like the rest of the world to have the same benefits as we do. Let us be very careful as we create an international judicial body to make sure that it maintains that high standard of freedom. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I am happy to.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I have no problem with the Senator from Rhode Island going ahead. I have been waiting while the other three Senators went through. I don't have to worry about a press deadline in Utah. We have probably already passed it. I am happy to allow the Senator from Rhode Island to go first if the Senator from Florida is agreeable.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I may be allowed to proceed in morning business for up to 30 minutes.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that that be the case, that I be allowed to speak with the time being charged.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed as in morning business.

Mr. BENNETT. May I inquire, Mr. President, if the time would be running even if we were in a quorum call?

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed for the next 6\1/2\ minutes, with the time charged, as in morning business.

Mr. BENNETT

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

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have been reading the popular press, as have most of us. As we watched the gyrations that occur in the stock market at the moment, I have been interested at the way people in the press have been portraying what has been happening. We have been told in the last few weeks that the market went down because President Bush's speech was not tough enough when he spoke to Wall Street. We have been told that the market went up because Chairman Greenspan's presentation to the Banking Committee was encouraging. We have been told that the market went down because the Banking Committee's bill on corporate governance was too tough and was frightening people. Then we were told that the market went up dramatically because the same bill was passed and people were reassured. The consequence of all of this is to demonstrate to me that the popular press does not have a clue as to why the market does what it does. They do not understand market forces, and they are looking for reasons with little or nothing to do with what happens in the market. I will make a few comments about the market and what it is we might really do in Congress if we want to have an impact on the market and the economy. In the short-term, there are two factors that we know about investors in the stock market. No. 1, they hate uncertainty. They hate a situation where they do not know what is going on. This is one of the reasons why they reacted to the recent scandals with respect to accounting: They did not have the certainty that they could depend on the numbers. Now, as they are beginning to sort through some of the information we have, they are beginning to feel a slight increase in certainty in their reaction to the numbers. That is showing up in some of the stabilization in the market. It has nothing to do with what kind of a speech the President gives or how eloquent we are in the Senate. No. 2, the market has a herd mentality in the short-term. If everyone is selling, we ought to sell. That is the reaction in many brokerage houses. There are those who say: We are contrarians; if everyone is selling, we are going to buy; we are out of the herd mentality. But they are in a herd mentality among the contrarians. So there is no careful analysis of what is going on but a flight from uncertainty and a herd mentality, both of which rule the market in the short-term. In the long term, however, which is what really matters, there are also two factors in the market we must pay attention to. No. 1, in the long term, the market is self-correcting. Errors of judgment that are made on one side of a trade are compensated for by intelligent decisions on the other side of the trade. One brokerage house or one fund manager who overreacts and makes a serious mistake is offset by another fund manager who serendipitously makes the right decision. Over time, the markets are self-corrected so that the frantic headlines we see in Time Magazine or on the front pages of the New York Times, the market this or the market that, on the basis of the President's speech or the Congress's actions, over time they have no relevance to reality whatever. The market over time is self-correcting, goes in the right direction, and rewards people who do the right thing and punishes people who do the wrong thing. Second, over time, the market depends on fundamentals. There are periods of time when we have froth. There are periods that I call ``tulip time''--remembering the tulip mania of the Netherlands. Over time, these periods of froth are squeezed out, and the market makes its decision on fundamentals. I say to my friends in the popular press who are trying to sell air time or newspapers: Stop trying to frighten the American people one way or the other. Come back to an understanding that fundamentals in the economy are the things that really matter--not speeches by the President, not actions necessarily by the Congress. I think we had to act on the corporate governance area, but we didn't drive the market up or down by the action that we took. We added to the question of fundamentals. How well the Sarbanes-Oxley bill works will play itself out in the fundamentals. If it works in a solidly fundamental way, it will benefit the markets. If it turns out it has flaws, it will hurt the market. But the speeches we imagine as we pass the bill have little or no impact. One final comment. If we were serious about doing something to change the culture in corporate America, we ought to consider removing taxation on dividends. We have had a lot of conversation about options and managing earnings. If dividends become a reason why people buy stocks, as they once were, that would change the nature of corporate governance fairly fundamentally. If a CEO knew his stock price would go up if his dividend were increased and if his investors knew if they get an increase in dividends it would not be eaten up in taxes, there would be a change in the corporate boardrooms of this country that would be salutary. I don't have the time to go into this, but at some future time I will explore it. I raised this with Chairman Greenspan when he testified before the Banking Committee and asked him about the propriety of removing taxation from dividends. That was the beginning of a conversation that I want to have over time. As we go through the experience of the present economic difficulties and the gyrations of the market, it is time to reflect on fundamental things we can do that will change the nature of the corporate culture. Addressing stock options and expensing stock options is something we can talk about. Dealing with corporate compensation is something we can talk about. Back to my earlier point. Over time, the market responds to fundamentals, and, over time, we ought to look at some fundamental changes. That means we have to look at the tax laws. There is nothing that government does that affects corporate activity more than the Tax Code. That is where we ought to look for serious cultural changes. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. The Senator from Utah yields back all his time.

Mr. BENNETT. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4324

Mr. BENNETT. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4323

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I am in favor of this amendment.

Mr. BENNETT. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, one of the pleasures of handling this bill is that there are almost always no additional amendments or complications.

Mr. BENNETT. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4322

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I have no objection to this amendment.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, as indicated by my cosponsorship of the amendment, I endorse what Chairman Durbin has said and urge the Senate to adopt the amendment.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I am grateful for the generous remarks of my friend and chairman, the Senator from Illinois. I am grateful for the cooperative way in which we have been able to work through this bill. The Senator from Illinois had the challenge of taking over this subcommittee in the middle of the session, and he had just come to the subcommittee by virtue of his assignment to the Appropriations Committee. He has demonstrated that he is a very quick study. He has moved quickly to get on top of these issues. I do not want to repeat the various elements of the bill he has described, but it is a good bill and it is one that I am happy to join in recommending to the Senate. As the Senator from Illinois has indicated, I have been advocating for some time a merger of the Capitol Police, at least with the Library of Congress Police, and looking at the other police agencies that are under our jurisdiction. We are now moving ahead with this. I think it only makes sense, in the new security environment in which we find ourselves. To have an area as small as the Capitol campus be divided up into jurisdictions under, not necessarily competing but certainly different police departments, does not make a whole lot of sense. I have made reference to this before, but I think it is appropriate here. One of the things that was particularly significant for the success of the Olympics in Utah was the coordination that occurred between competing law enforcement agencies. Of course, we were involved in a much bigger venue there, a much larger geographic area, but it was important that everybody got together and was able to communicate. Given the small nature but highly visible nature of the Capitol campus, it makes sense to have the police come together. I am grateful to my friend from Illinois for his support and leadership on this particular issue. We all know about the Visitor Center. We can't come into the Capitol without having it in our face every day. But the demands of the Architect of the Capitol to bring that project through are significant. So I think the decision of the committee to fund a Deputy Architect of the Capitol, creating a full-time manager for the day-to-day activities of the Architect of the Capitol, is the right decision. Senator Durbin has been particularly aggressive in trying to solve some of the management challenges the Architect of the Capitol has had over the past years. The decision to move toward a Deputy Architect, toward an operating officer to run the office of the Architect of the Capitol, is a good decision, and I think we need to highlight that in this bill. Finally, I want to make a personal comment about a very small but maybe high-profile aspect of this bill, which is the Russian Leadership Conference that now has been expanded, as Chairman Durbin has indicated, to include other countries. During the Fourth of July break, I was in Russia. This was the fourth time I had been there. I was very pleasantly surprised at the high degree of pro-American atmosphere we ran into. I was in Russia before when there was, frankly, an underlying current of suspicion--I wouldn't go so far as to say anti-American attitude in Russia, but suspicion of America and America's motives. We got that over the issue of the expansion of NATO, for which I voted and which I supported. The first time I met with members of the Russian Duma, they were automatically anti-expansion of NATO. And no matter what we tried to talk about, they would always bring it back to NATO and, what are you Americans doing? On this occasion, we met with officers of the National Council. They told us they were going to rename it the Senate because they indicated they did not get appropriate respect in their own country, when everybody thought of the parliament being the Duma and they thought of themselves as the upper house. We are very careful in this Congress that we never use that term. And they thought, if they renamed themselves the Russian Senate, they would get appropriate respect. One of the members of that council told me this story. He said: My grandmother told me that all her life she has been taught to mistrust, indeed fear, NATO. However, she said, in the present atmosphere, if President Putin tells me that NATO is no longer a threat, I guess I am going to have to change my point of view. He told me that story to illustrate President Putin's popularity in Russia, but I took that story to indicate a significant change in Russian attitudes toward Americans, and it has been the Russian leadership group that has been participating in this function, that we have been funding out of this subcommittee, that has helped plant the seeds of that kind of circumstance. So even though it is a relatively small amount and has been a controversial program with Members of the House of Representatives, I can give personal testimony, if you will, that it has borne fruit, that the fruit has been significant, and I congratulate Senator Durbin on his continued support of this program and its expansion into other countries as well. So, Madam President, I am happy to join with Senator Durbin in recommending this bill to the other Members of the Senate and urging its passage.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I have no objection to this amendment as illustrated by my cosponsorship.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, let me say to my friend from Nevada that his words are well-taken. His passion is understood. At least as far as I am concerned, his determination to get this bill through is fully shared. However, on behalf of the ranking member of the Banking Committee, Senator Gramm, and reserving his rights, as I am sure the Senator from Nevada has from time to time reserved the rights of some of his colleagues, I must object.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I am told that the amendment is still under review on this side of the aisle; therefore, I must again object.