Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time for morning business be extended by 10 minutes.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the nomination that is before the Senate of Lt. Gen. George T. Babbitt, Jr. to be promoted and receive an additional star to become general in the U.S. Air Force. When this nomination came to the Senate at an earlier time several months ago, I notified the majority leader that I would like to be informed prior to its coming to a vote. In Senate parlance, that is called putting a hold on this nomination. It was never my intention to hold up General Babbitt from receiving his additional star. But it was my intention to focus seriously on the policy of the Air Force which General Babbitt will be called upon to implement. Accordingly, I told the majority leader that I do not want this nomination to go forward until we have had an opportunity to discuss that policy in some length. The majority leader responded appropriately to my request, and we have had a series of events that I think satisfy my requirement for full discussion. I would like to outline those for the Senate today before I make it clear that I will have no further objection to proceeding with the nomination of General Babbitt. I speak entirely for myself. There are a number of other Senators who have also put holds on this nomination. What they will do with their holds is something that they will, of course, speak to on their own. I am speaking entirely, as I say, for myself on this matter. I have been criticized by some Members of this body for putting a hold on a nomination for a member of the uniformed services, and was told, ``No. This should apply only to civilian personnel in the Department of Defense. You are using the uniformed services for a political purpose.'' Mr. President, if anyone has been using the uniformed services for political purposes and political gain it has been the Department of Defense, not the Senator from Utah. The Department of Defense, under instructions from the Base Realignment and Closure Commission--or BRCC--was told to close two of its five air logistics centers. That would be the best result for the uniformed services; in this case the Air Force. A Member of this body, the then senior Senator from Maine, Senator Cohen, stood on this floor and berated the Department of Defense for its failure to abide by BRCC recommendations. He said very clearly that the Department of Defense was in violation of the BRCC recommendation by their attempts to keep two of those air logistic centers operating under the guise of privatization for competition. They invented a new term of art. They call it privatization in place. ``We will privatize the facility right where it is, which means we will not, as BRCC ordered us to, send the work that is currently going on in those facilities to the other facilities that can handle the work.'' That was what BRCC intended. That is what Senator Cohen attacked. And, yet, that is the policy that Secretary Cohen is now carrying out. That is the policy that I protested when I said that I do not want the nomination of General Babbitt to go forward until we can have a full airing of this issue. I am happy to report to the Senate that the full airing for which I called has, indeed, taken place. We had a hearing before the Armed Services Committee, particularly before the Readiness Subcommittee, chaired by the Senator from Oklahoma [Mr. Inhofe]. In addition, we had a hearing before the Appropriations Committee, and in those hearings we found that, according to the General Accounting Office, the GAO, that the Air Force proposal for privatization in place will cost this country an additional $500 to $700 million--maybe even $800 million. At a time of tight defense budgets, at a time when we are talking about balancing the budget, it seems perverse for the Defense Department to say that we are going to waste that much money. The Air Force in those hearings said, ``No. We will not waste that much money.'' But to the question of how much money will you save with your proposal of privatization in place, the Air Force has been basically silent. And their response has been overwhelmingly ``Trust us. We will not tell you how much money we will save, but trust us. We will save some, and the General Accounting Office figure is wrong.'' ``How wrong?'' ``Well, we do not know.'' ``Why wrong?'' ``Well, they don't understand our business.'' Mr. President, the General Accounting Office is the arm of the Congress created by law to be the fiscal watchdog of the executive branch. There can be no better example of the value of the General Accounting Office than this one, as they have gone behind the`trust me facade created by the Air Force and come up with numbers--lowest level $500 million, highest level $800 million, with $700 million being the guess about where it will finally come out. So, by virtue of the hold that I put on General Babbitt's nomination, we have had those two hearings and have gotten that information into the public and on the record for the Senate. In addition to those hearings, in response to my request to the majority leader, the Secretary of the Air Force last week met with me and two other Senators, Senator Nickles and Senator Inhofe. And we had a full and frank discussion about this issue. To be honest with you, Mr. President, there was not much encouragement to come out of that discussion. Essentially, Secretary Widnall said, ``There is no problem. Therefore, we will not discuss with you any solution.'' She said to me, ``Please remove your hold on General Babbitt because it is having a corrosive effect on the personnel of the Air Force to have them continue without a commander.'' I said to her, and I repeat here today, there is a corrosive effect in this area certainly. But it is not caused by the fact that there is no confirmed commander. The corrosive effect is being caused by the Air Force's callous disregard for the needs of their personnel in the surviving air logistics centers, and for their refusal to abide by the BRCC process. Following the meeting with Secretary Widnall today, I had a meeting again with Senator Nickles, Senator Inhofe, and with General Babbitt. Where the Air Force said there was no problem relating to overcapacity in the air logistics centers, General Babbitt acknowledged that there is a big problem, and pledged himself to do the best he could to try to resolve it. He made it very clear, as he appropriately should, that he was not going to violate Air Force policy; that, as a uniformed officer, he would carry out his orders in this regard. And we would expect nothing less from him. But he did acknowledge, as the Air Force has not, to my satisfaction, that there is a serious problem of overcapacity, and that it calls for serious management solutions. And he pledged himself to provide those solutions to the degree he could within the policy dictated by his civilian superiors. The Air Force has refused, as I have indicated, to give us any numbers. They have taken basically a trust me stance on this issue. General Babbitt, on the contrary, agreed, when I told him that we would want to see numbers, that he would make numbers available to the Congress. I said, ``General, as you proceed down this program of privatization in place, surely you are going to get some financial information that will tell you whether you are or are not saving money.'' And the financial information out of the Air Force should be available to us in Congress to compare with the analysis of the General Accounting Office. The Air Force, as I have said, Mr. President, has always refused to give us those numbers in the past. General Babbitt pledged that those numbers would be made available to Congress. I consider this a significant act of good faith on the part of the general, because, once we have those numbers in front of us in the Congress, we can appropriately deal with this issue. And, if we find that the Air Force is correct, and they are saving the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars of privatization in place, and the General Accounting Office is wrong, I will be the first to come to the floor and congratulate the Air Force, because certainly I, like every other Senator, want to see to it that we save the taxpayers' money. But, if we find that, once we have the real numbers, the Air Force is wrong and the General Accounting Office is right, then I will be the first to come to the floor and once again demand that the Air Force try to solve this problem more intelligently. The Air Force told us essentially there will be no change in policy regardless of whatever Congress does, regardless of your interpretation of the BRCC rules, and regardless of Senator Cohen's analysis, Secretary Cohen will insist that there be no change. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to continue for another 3 minutes.

Mr. BENNETT. General Babbitt agreed that he would do whatever he could within the constraints of the policy laid down by the Air Force to give us intelligent management of this problem. That is the first sign of cooperation that I have seen out of this administration since this issue first arose. So, Mr. President, because General Babbitt has made it clear, now that we have had our hearings in the Armed Services Committee, we have had our hearings in the Appropriations Committee, we have had our meeting with the Secretary of the Air Force, and we have had our meeting with him, that he will do what he can to address the issue within the constraints placed upon him by his civilian superiors to try to solve the problem, I am announcing my willingness to no longer insist that his nomination be held up. The purposes for which I made that insistence in the first place have been fulfilled. I will allow him to go forward to his additional star and his command, and I look forward to staying in touch with him in the spirit of the pledges he made to me and the other Senators this morning to see that this issue is properly resolved once and for all in the long term. In sum, Mr. President, I am in no way backing down from my conviction that this administration is shamelessly playing politics on this issue and has involved the uniformed services in a way that is totally inappropriate. I do not wish to be accused of doing the same thing in response because my desire is to solve the problem. I am hoping the administration will address it in the same spirit. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks the additional views of Senator William S. Cohen on S. 1673 be printed in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. BENNETT. I probably concluded prior to the time when I quit talking, but I got carried away.

Mr. BENNETT. I ask my friend from Alaska if he has a definition of what a highway is, in these circumstances. If he would share it with the Senate, I will be happy to yield the floor to allow him to do that.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to Cordell Roy for today.

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Chair. There is an old line in politics that applies in campaigning that says when you are explaining, you are losing. And there would be those who say, because of the technicalities of the explanations we have to give about this fairly technical matter, we are probably losing the issue. However, if you are explaining, it does not necessarily mean you are wrong. I am going to do my best to try to be as simple in my explanation today because we are not wrong on this one. This is not an issue where the Senators from the Western States are trying to do something improper for the rest of the country, something parochial just for ourselves. These are fundamental issues and they should be clearly explained and understood. I would like to focus on one road and one circumstance that will help explain this matter. I picked this road because it is perhaps the most controversial R.S. 2477 road in all of Utah. It has a very romantic name. Its been called the Burr Trail. I do not know who Burr was, and I do not know what trail he or she made across this land in the first place. I suppose at some point somebody will tell me all of that. Frankly, as I read about it in the newspapers and heard people talk about the Burr Trail before I became a Senator, I had visions of a footpath going through a forest. That is what a trail means to me. And then I was elected to the Senate and had to get into the details. This is, Mr. President, a picture of the Burr Trail. As the Presiding Officer can clearly see, this is a road. It is 28 feet wide. It is a well-traveled road. I have been on it. No, I did not need an all- terrain vehicle to get on it. I was on it in a street-legal vehicle, driving along it. It is used, whatever Mr. or Mrs. Burr anticipated, as the principal way the residents of Garfield County can get from one end of that county to another. It happens to run through the Capitol Reef National Park. It was with the full consent of the Federal Government that the western Burr Trail across BLM lands was improved. The lands in dispute have to do with the 8 miles of road that go through the Capitol Reef National Park. This sign the Presiding Officer cannot see, as far away as he is, says, ``Entering Capitol Reef National Park.'' I would call your attention to this sign as a guidepost because I am now going to show you a second picture of the Burr Trail taken somewhat after the first one, and here again is the identifying sign to show you where we are. There is one difference. If you would remember from the first picture, you will see that this is a blind curve. As you are coming down the Burr Trail here, if there is traffic coming the other way, you are not going to be able to see it. It is a blind curve. There could be an accident. Under R.S. 2477, the responsibility of maintaining the Burr Trail lies with the county. They own it. It is a right-of-way that they have received according to Federal law. The county went out and cut off 4 feet of land. As I said, the Burr Trail is 28 feet wide. As it got to this particular point, it narrowed to only 20, so the county decided to widen it to 24--not 28, not widen this curve as wide as the rest of the road but just take 4 feet off so you get a little bit of a view around the blind curve. They did that under their existing rights established by the Congress. Well, the reaction that occurred in the Interior Department would have had you believe they had gone into Yellowstone National Park and bulldozed Old Faithful. Interior officials were sent from Washington, DC, to Garfield County, sat down across the table from Garfield County officials and demanded that those officials immediately sign over their right to any meaningful management authority over the right-of-way. They also assured them that if county officials did not, they could face the full power and force of the Federal Government in Federal courts in the form of an aggressive legal action. This is not the only sin these county officials committed by creating an opportunity to see around the corner, by taking 4 feet off of an area that was, they understood, legitimately within their right-of- way. When they took this action, they did not realize they were setting off such an enormous controversy. County officials did some other things on this road. They also made some improvements where the washboard effect had been created. They made some improvements where there had been debris that got on the road. They did changes in a normal maintenance circumstance, and for this they are now in Federal court with the full force of the U.S. Justice Department accusing them of all kinds of terrible environmental sins. I am sorry, Mr. President, I do not see the terrible environmental sin, going from the first circumstance of this kind of a curve to this circumstance; of taking a road that is 28 feet wide, narrows going around that curve to 20, and saying, no, we will make it go around the curve at 24 feet. I do not know that this merits the kind of wrath that has been brought down by the Interior Department on the officials of Garfield County. But that is what we are faced with. That is what we are talking about here, Mr. President. It has little or nothing to do with the road. It has little or nothing to do with the county maintaining this kind of right-of-way. It has to do with is who is going to make the decisions. The Federal Government is determined they will make the decisions whether the Congress gives them the right to do it or not. They will ride roughshod over the rights of the States and the counties whether the Congress gives them the authority or not. When the Congress specifically refused to give them the authority, this Secretary of the Interior said, ``All right, if the Congress won't give me the authority, I will usurp it. I will take it on my own and see if the Congress has the willingness to demand that I live up to prior agreements.'' That is what this amendment is all about, a demand that the administration live up to prior agreements. That is what it is all about, the issue of can the States depend on the acts of Congress in terms of maintaining their existing rights. Mr. President, I would like to show you another picture. This one is not as controversial as the first pictures we have just seen. Those who say R.S. 2477 roads are mere trails, R.S. 2477 roads are mere footpaths, here is a picture of an R.S. 2477 road in the State of Utah. Why do I pick this particular one? Not because it is paved; there are plenty of R.S. 2477 roads in Utah that are paved. I picked this one because this is the road that millions of tourists will take when they come to the newly created Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. This is the road those tourists will have to use to come see the 1.7 million acres that the President spoke about so lyrically on the south side of the Grand Canyon last September. It runs for about 70 miles. If we decide that the Secretary is right and the Federal Government has jurisdiction over this road, I can tell you what the counties will decide. You take away their property rights in this road and the counties will say, ``Since you have taken our property rights, you maintain the road. It is not our road anymore, let's allow the Federal Government maintain it.'' This is the kind of responsibility we are going to give to the Bureau of Land Management if we accept the motion of the senior Senator from Arkansas. Frankly, as a member of the Appropriations Committee, I do not want that responsibility. I do not want to take on additional Federal financial burdens. When there is a county more than willing and able to maintain the road, I say, why don't we let it do it? We will not let it do it because the Secretary of the Interior says, ``We want jurisdiction. We want jurisdiction over this road. We cannot trust the county to maintain the road.'' I ask you, Mr. President, does this demonstrate that the county cannot be trusted to maintain the road? No, the real issue is that there are a number of roads in rural Utah that the Federal Government officials want closed. That is why they want to take away the property rights of those roads away from the counties, because they wants the roads closed. They want the roads shut down. The impact of shutting down the roads will be that, ultimately, people will move from the county because they cannot conduct commerce anymore. Ultimately, they would like to see southern Utah rid of human beings except those who work in motels and in fast-food places, people who have tourist oriented jobs. But they want no other jobs down there because they do not want any other economic activity in southern Utah to continue.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I am submitting today a resolution to address a matter that I consider vital to our national security. I have here a picture of the U.S.S. Stark that was disabled 10 years ago by an Exocet missile fired by the Iranians. Thirty-seven American sailors were killed in this disaster. I call your attention to a new missile patterned after the Exocet, only it is described by its sales brochures as having a ``mighty attack capability with great firepower.'' This is the C-802, an antishipping cruise missile. The sales group that is touting the mighty power of the C-802 is the Chinese. The Chinese have taken the Exocet and increased its power and increased its deadliness. The C-802 is being shipped. This picture shows a Chinese vessel, on the deck of which there are five smaller vessels, each one of which is equipped with four C-802's. You can see them on the back of the ships. These are the smaller ships on the back deck of this larger cargo vessel. Those ships are en route to Iran. The Chinese have now sold to Iran some 60 C-802's for their use in the Persian Gulf. Some 60 are mounted on 15 patrol boats. These patrol boats, again, have four missiles each. If one missile could damage the Stark as badly as we saw in the first picture, you see what 15 missiles could do. But the Chinese are not stopping with shipboard missiles. Here is an example of a land-based C- 802, and the Chinese are now in the process of selling these to the Iranians. Why should we be concerned about the land-based C-802? Here is a map of the Persian Gulf. This land mass is Iran. There are 500 miles of Iranian coastal waters facing the Persian Gulf. This is the Strait of Hormuz through which a very large percentage of the world's oil must go every day, something in excess of 25 percent. The Iranians have repeatedly threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz if the rest of the world does not do what Iran wishes it to do in a variety of ways. We heard such a threat, again, over the weekend with the Iranians saying that if the Americans were to try to take any kind of retaliatory action against Iranian terrorism, they would close this Strait of Hormuz. With land-based C-802's, they could hide them in caves or put them in other locations all along this 500-mile area, so that any shipping coming out of Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, or Saudi Arabia into the Persian Gulf would be vulnerable to an attack from a land-based C- 802. With 15 patrol boats, each one having 4 missiles, or 60 sea-based missiles, the Iranians could actually attack from either side, having the patrol boats out here on one side of the shipping lanes, with the land-based missiles on the other, and effectively seal off the world's supply of oil from the Middle East without too much difficulty. In personal human terms, there are about 15,000 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen within the range of the C-802 missiles in the gulf. Mr. President, there is a law known as the Gore-McCain Act passed in 1992 which says that foreign companies that deliver cruise missiles to Iran are subject to sanctions. I raised this issue with Secretary Albright, and I have raised it since in subsequent hearings. In January, Secretary Albright informed me that the administration will not enforce the terms of the Gore-McCain Act on the grounds that the missiles are not ``destabilizing.'' I am not quite sure what the word ``destabilizing'' means in this kind of a circumstance, but that is where the administration has chosen to come down. I believe that a nondestabilizing missile can be just as deadly to a ship as a destabilizing missile. Once a missile is fired, it knows no semantic definition, as it goes on its course for a kill. Ask the sailors on the Stark whether the presence of the Exocet missiles were destabilizing in the circumstance in the Middle East or not. Thirty- seven of them are dead. Given our obligation to those that we would place in harm's way in the name of this country, I believe the time has come to put this issue on the front burner. I have asked the administration about it. I have used the congressional oversight circumstance to bring it to their attention. Now, Mr. President, today, I submit a resolution outlining the sense of the Senate that the administration either enforce the Gore-McCain Act in this circumstance or take some other appropriate action. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter which I sent to Madeleine Albright on the 17th of April and a fact sheet relating to the C-802 missile be printed in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed as in morning business for not more than 10 minutes.

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 several matters to discuss with the Senate this afternoon. The first one I would like to touch upon has to do with the budget agreement that was reached over the weekend between negotiators on behalf of the Congress and the President of the United States. There has been a lot of conversation over the weekend on the talk shows about how terrible this agreement is. I have read where Democrats have attacked the agreement on the grounds that President Clinton has caved in to Republican demands. One Democratic commentator, a former staffer to the President, has said this deal guarantees the reelection of a Republican-controlled Congress in 1998. It is just awful. Then another commentator says this deal demonstrates how badly the Republicans have caved in to the President. It means the President can no longer be attacked for his failure to step up to the responsibility of dealing with taxes in a logical way or of dealing with Medicare in a responsible way. It is just awful. There are some who say, when both sides say it is just awful, that means it is truly awful. And then there are others who say, no, when both sides agree it is not what they want, it means we have finally arrived at the logical answer, somewhere down the middle. I think all of this is a little bit shortsighted. I want to stand and commend those who were involved in the negotiations for having accomplished something truly worthwhile. Does it do what I would like it to do in relation to the Tax Code? The answer is, ``Clearly not.'' We need to do far more about our taxes than this deal will do. Does it solve the Medicare problem in a responsible, long-term way? The answer is, ``Clearly not.'' It simply postpones the issue until we will have to deal with Medicare again. This, too, I find disappointing. In both instances we will see the details come up in the Finance Committee, and I hope the Finance Committee, within the parameters of the deal, can fashion resolutions to these problems that are better than the ones that we have seen talked about in the press up until now. But as we complain, one side and the other, about the deal not being what we would like, we overlook what I think is a truly significant accomplishment. For the first time in my watching of this process, either as a Member of the Senate or as an observer from the outside, we have a budget deal that does not depend upon smoke and mirrors for its budget figures to be reliable. We have a budget deal that does not say we will postpone all of the hard decisions to the fourth and fifth or sixth years. Instead, it says we will start to face the realities of what is happening around us right now. That is a very significant thing. The second thing I would like to comment on with respect to this deal was given reference to in this morning's Wall Street Journal in their editorial. They said the real hero of these budget negotiations is neither the administration nor the Congress, but the American economy. The reason we were able to finally arrive at a conclusion that seemed to satisfy temporarily both sides is because the economy is doing so well that the projections indicate that we will have more tax revenue than the earlier projections would have shown. I want to dwell on that for a moment. I gave a major speech on the floor a week or so ago in which I tried to get across the importance of the overall growth of the economy in our budget discussions. We talk about the budget as if everything is a sum zero game, that is, if we take it away from here, you must give it someplace else, and everything adds up to a single sum. That is not the case. The economy is like a business, constantly growing, constantly changing. I made the point in that previous speech that a sound business executive running a $1.7 trillion corporation would not have the simple choice of either raising prices or cutting spending. We hear the discussion on the floor so often that those are our only two choices in Government. We can either raise tax rates, which is the same thing as raising prices for a business, or we can cut spending, when, in fact, every business executive knows there are times when you can raise your prices and get away with it, and there are times when you should cut your prices in order to increase your market share. There are times when you do need to cut spending if it is wasteful or improper, but there are other times, when you are investing in the future, where you need to increase spending. This budget, for the first time in many years, seems to go down those roads. There are some areas where we are cutting tax rates, as we should-- cutting prices, if you will--to increase our market share and make the economy healthier. There are other places where we do need to cut some spending, and some places where we need to increase some spending. That is what upsets so many of my colleagues on the right side of the aisle. They treat all Government spending as if it is, per se, evil, and any single dollar they can cut out of the budget they assume is good. They remind me a little of an executive I knew in a company who was under heavy pressure to start to produce profits in his division. He responded to that pressure, and pretty soon the profits started to come in. His boss thought he was a hero. He said, ``Well, I did it by cutting spending.'' It was a year or so later that we discovered in that company what kind of spending he had cut. He had cut routine maintenance, and the physical plant over which he had responsibility was literally falling apart because the routine maintenance had not been done. He was a temporary hero by cutting spending, but, long term, he damaged the business and did damage to the interests of the shareholders. Our Nation's infrastructure has some significant problems. The air transport problems are very obvious to all. The highway problems are fairly significant and obvious. We need to be doing something about that. This budget allows us to have some of that, yes, increased spending in areas where it makes some sense. Why? Again, because the economy is doing so well. I have been on this floor when some of my friends have berated Alan Greenspan and said what a terrible job he is doing at the Fed because he has controlled the money supply in a way that they do not like. Can we now suggest it may well be that the current growth of the economy stems from wise stewardship at the Fed, and that, indeed, the reason we can afford some of these increased spending activities called for in this budget come from an intelligent management of the economy long term. Can we also suggest that this has come from an attitude at the Federal Reserve Board that says we must put price stability above all else and it will pay long-term dividends? Maybe it is those dividends we are beginning to cash in on in this budget deal. There is another thought I would like to leave with you, Mr. President, in terms of the economy and how well it is doing. I have spoken on this floor before about my experience as a business executive during what many people called the decade of greed, the 1980's, when we took a small company, so small it had four full-time employees, and saw it grow to the point, when I left prior to my run for the Senate, when it had 700 employees. I have commented it was the tax policies that were pursued in those years, pursued primarily by President Ronald Reagan, that made it possible for us to grow that company. But we were attacked because it was the decade of greed, and, yes, indeed, we did do well. I would like to point out that that company that grew in that period from 4 employees to 700, now has over 3,000. The momentum that was set in place in the 1980's is carrying forward into the 1990's, and it is that company and others like it that are providing the income taxes that make it possible for us to have this kind of a budget deal. So, as we look at the whole thing, let us understand that there are many things about it that I do not like. There are many things about it that many of the rest of us do not like. But the reason we were able to get this degree of agreement comes from the strength of the economy, and the one lesson we should learn, as we look at this budget agreement, is simply this: As important as anything else we do around here are those things that we do that will cause the economy to grow at a more rapid rate. Whether it is increasing taxes in a certain area or decreasing tax rates in another area, whether it is increasing spending on things like infrastructure and other investments, or whether it is decreasing spending on areas where there is a degree of waste and fraud, all of these things need to be done with the primary goal of seeing that the economy will increase in size. As it does, a number of things happen. The demand on our social spending goes down. There is no better welfare project in the world than a job, and a booming economy creates more jobs for more people. And we see it in terms of the impact on Government. We should pay attention to those kinds of things. Mr. President, I will have more to say on this as the budget process goes forward, but, while the weekend talk shows were still ringing in our ears, I wanted to make this general statement. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to continue as in morning business, on another subject, for up to another 5 minutes.

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Chair for his time and attention and yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Chair. (The remarks of Mr. Bennett pertaining to the introduction of Senate Resolution 82 are located in today's Record under ``Submissions of Concurrent and Senate Resolutions.'')

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Noticing the absence of a Senator who wishes to take advantage of that, Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be a period for the transaction of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. For the information of all Senators, the Senate will not be in session on Friday of this week in order to accommodate a meeting scheduled for the Democratic Members of the Senate. The Senate will reconvene on Monday at 12 noon. After a period of morning business, at 1 p.m., the Senate will begin consideration of the supplemental appropriations bill. Amendments are expected to be offered on Monday. Therefore, votes could occur, but will not occur prior to the hour of 5 p.m., on Monday. We will notify Members as early as possible on Monday with respect to rollcall votes occurring on that day. The Senate could also be asked to turn to any other Legislative or Executive Calendar items that can be cleared for action on Monday.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today it stand in adjournment until the hour of 12 noon on Monday, May 5. I further ask unanimous consent that on Monday, immediately following the prayer, the routine requests through the morning hour be granted and that there then be a period for the transaction of routine morning business until the hour of 1 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the nominations be confirmed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, any statements relating to the nominations appear at the appropriate place in the Record, the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then return to legislative session.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations on the Executive Calendar: Calendar Nos. 52 through 60, and all nominations placed on the Secretary's desk in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the joint resolution be considered read a third time and passed, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the joint resolution appear at the appropriate place in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Commerce Committee be discharged from further consideration of House Concurrent Resolution 61, and that the Senate proceed to its consideration.

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 ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the resolution appear at the appropriate place in the Record.