Joe Biden

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I am glad to hear the Senator on the floor speaking to this. Would the Senator acknowledge what everybody forgets? I know the Senator is angry about it, as well. I want to remind everybody that the reason why the U.N. observers are there is that the United Nations went in and disarmed--disarmed--not only did we fail to allow the Bosnian Government to get arms, the arms that existed, we went into Srebrenica--the United Nations did, with our support--and disarmed the Bosnian Government, disarmed the Muslims, disarmed the Croats, in return for a promise that we would protect them. And when, in fact, it was clear and the Dutch were called in for air strikes by NATO, Mr. Akashi said no. I want everybody to remember what the Senator from Arizona is saying here. Not only did we not protect, we affirmatively--the United Nations and the West--disarmed those safe areas, took their weapons and said, ``We promise you in return that we will keep the Serbs from the door.'' But they knocked on the door, knocked it down, and there was nothing there for them to defend themselves with. Now, as the Senator from Arizona said, they stand by and watch. And it is not the fault of those Dutch blue helmets. It is the fault of the contact group. It is the fault of the West for failing to intervene, at a minimum with air power, significant air power. But I think the Senator is absolutely correct. This is an atrocity. We should lift the embargo immediately and we should make available what, under the law, the President is allowed to do. Two years ago, this Senate and Congress passed a piece of legislation authorizing the President, in his discretion, to make available up to 50 million dollars worth of weapons off the shelf now for those people. I stood in Tuzla the last time this happened and watched trucks come into Tuzla loaded with women and children, and I thought they were celebrating when I first saw them because they were holding up children in these dump trucks above their heads. As they unloaded the dump trucks, I understood why the children were being held above their heads and held outside of the dump truck. Do you know why, Mr. President? Because when they opened the gate and got out, there were three children smothered to death in the bottom of those 1995 versions of cattle cars being dragged into Auschwitz. If these were not Moslems, the world would be reacting, just like if it were not Jews in the thirties, the world would react. Shame on the West.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I will ask a question of my friend from Utah, or a generic question. It seems to me that what is happening here on the last amendment and this amendment is that we are allowing ourselves to be captives of a rule that we are setting out that makes no sense. This generalized notion, when one states it, that there should be no exemption sounds like a rule of equity. There should be no exemption. But when cryptosporidium--not a thing you take home in your lunch pail to feed to your children, not a thing that anyone can find any rational basis for thinking it could be beneficial in the food or water chain anywhere along the line. To suggest that you cannot take something that is of nothing but destructive capacity when ingested by human beings and explicitly exempt it from this process that is being put in place, seems to me to make one a victim of your own rule--a rule that is of no value in and of itself. This generalized notion that everything is on the table, everything has to be considered, is a little bit like saying that when we do the Federal budget, everything is on the table, including whether or not we have an army, or everything is on the table, including whether or not we continue to have a Constitution. There are certain things that are not on the table, and there is no value in anything other than keeping them off the table. Other things that are of such clear, damaging consequences to the public at large should be taken out of the general rule we have here, and we should say flatout, no, flatout cannot-- cannot. There is no tolerance level for certain things. I think we are getting caught up, and we are acting like lawyers. I am a lawyer, and I do not accuse my friend from Wisconsin of being a lawyer. I know he is not. Everybody always says, ``Do not call me a lawyer.'' Many of us here are lawyers, and we are sounding like lawyers. We are setting up rules. It is almost a tautology that we are constructing here. We are penalizing ourselves by making ourselves subscribe to a generalized proposition that makes no sense. And so I compliment my friend from Wisconsin in insisting that this change take place. And I think, to put it on the other side of the coin, what the Senator from Utah is saying--what damage is done to this legislation by doing what the Senator from Wisconsin wants? If we are going to err, does it not make sense to err on the side of seeing to it that there is not a repeat of the situation that occurred in the Senator's State? Does it not make sense to err on that side? What damage are we doing to a specific industry, a specific economic interest, a specific company by doing what the Senator wants? And even if we were, so what? I find this to be getting to be a very tortured discussion. So I hope our colleagues--and I know the last thing in the world my colleague from Utah would want to happen would be to change the law in such a way that we increase the possibility of what the Senator from Wisconsin is trying to prevent from happening again. This bill requires the agency to conduct all of the analysis required by this bill within 180 days, even if there is an emergency. I thought an emergency meant an emergency. I do not think the American people think that when they talk about emergency, they are talking about 180 days. Is that an emergency? How many people could we lose in 180 days? How much damage can be done? That is 6 months. We are not talking about an emergency where somebody says, I found this out today and tomorrow it stops. That is, I think, an unrealistic timeframe for conducting risk assessment and peer review and cost-benefit analysis, all of which is required. Assuming those requirements can be met, the bill then allows regulated parties to come in and challenge whether the benefits justify the cause, or that the agency adopt the cheapest regulatory alternative, or whether any analysis that is conducted has been done properly, or any number of other [[Page S 9788]] issues that can be litigated under this bill. The rule could be tied up in litigation. The parties could seek injunctions to prevent it from going into effect, based on the cumbersome requirements of the bill. And once the rule went into effect, industry could also petition to seek a repeal of the rule, or seek interpretation of the rule, or seek a waiver or an alternative method of compliance. If denied, they could then litigate these issues again in court. This bill already recognizes that some types of rules should be exempted from the requirements. For example, the bill already exempts rules affecting the banking industry--deposit insurance funds, the farm credit insurance fund. It exempts rules relating to financial responsibility of brokers, dealers of futures, commission merchants, and safeguarding investor security. It exempts anything relating to the introduction of a product into the market. Some of these exemptions could well be sensible on precautions, given the complex, cumbersome, expensive process required by this legislation. But certainly a rule affecting, in this case, cryptosporidium, or in the case of the last amendment, meat inspection and safety, is at least as important as to whether or not those exemptions which I just mentioned, including the banking industry and financial transactions, should be exempt. So we do have in this legislation, in essence, what the Senator from Wisconsin is seeking. But guess what it is for? It is not for public health and safety. It is for what my Republican friends seem most concerned about, and they should be concerned, I agree with their concern. But it seems they are concerned about property. Property. Not people--property. Banking industry, deposit insurance, farm credit insurance. We exempt that, why not exempt things that kill people? I am not arguing we should not exempt what they exempted. What I do not understand is the generalized statement made that everything is on the table. It is not all on the table. The rules affecting banking are not on the table the same way as the rest. Deposit insurance funds are not on the table the same as everything else. It is kind of funny. It reminds me--I have been here a long time. I remember when there was a move for the neutron bomb back in the 1970's when Carter was President. The virtue of the neutron bomb was that it killed only people and does not destroy property. That was a really great benefit of the neutron bomb. We are going to make it very, very difficult under the version my Republican friends are offering, to be able to protect the public on matters relating to things like cryptosporidium or E. coli and many other things, but not difficult to protect the public interest when it comes to Federal deposit insurance. Now, I think we should do what we have done as it relates to these economic interests, but what I do not understand is why is the thing the Senator is talking about, which literally, if not handled well, causes death, human life is lost, why is it not treated the same way? I suggest to my friend from Wisconsin, keep at it. Do not buy on-- which I know he does not--to the argument that everything is on the table. Everything is not on the table. Everything is not being treated the same way. Things affecting public health and safety are put in one category because business has interest in those things. Things that affect business in terms of potentially being exposed financially are exempted from this cumbersome process. Do not let them kid you, Senator. These folks understand what they are doing. They understand what they are doing. They are making it easier to make a mistake when it comes to public health and safety and making it, as they should, difficult to make a regulatory mistake when it comes to financial transactions. I do not think that is what the American people want. I think if you gave them a choice, would they take a risk on a Federal bureaucrat overstepping his or her bounds when it came to clean water, or take a risk at overstepping their bounds when it came to financial institutions, what do you think they would pick? I think they would say, ``I would run the risk of having an overzealous person take care of my water, an overzealous person taking care of my meat, an overzealous person taking care of the air I breathe.'' I know the Senator from Wisconsin. We have worked together too long. If anybody abhors bureaucracy, it is the man from Wisconsin. The Senator is the most no-nonsense businessman I have ever come across. That is why the Senator has been such a successful businessman as well as such as successful Senator. The Senator is one of the few people on the floor of this Senate who knows how cumbersome bureaucracy can be, who is frustrated by it as a businessman, and worked his way through it to become an incredibly successful businessman, is on the floor here saying, hey, wait a minute, we are going too far here. I hope the public understands what this is about because it is so complicated. We can get so caught up in this. What does peer review mean? What does it mean when we are talking about all of these various aspects of the bill? It comes down to simple things. From my standpoint, when it comes to cryptosporidium, which I can hardly pronounce but I know full well what the consequences of its ingestion, I am not as worried about some feckless bureaucrat out there exercising unreasonable power. I do not like bureaucrats exercising unreasonable power. But I want to say this is the place I least worry about it, least worry about it. Let me say, I would rather have some obnoxious bureaucrat making sure there is no E. coli in the hamburger my kid eats at McDonald's than I would worry about a bureaucrat overstepping their bounds in terms of telling banks what they can and cannot do. Is it not funny how this debate goes when it comes to money, when it comes to dollars? We do not want to fool around too much. When it comes to human life, when it comes to public health and public safety, well, then, we know how the bureaucrats are. This is not a defense of bureaucrats. I am a cosponsor of the Glenn bill. I want to remind everyone when the Glenn bill came out in another form--same substance but under another title several months ago--the environmentalists were against it. The Senator from Wisconsin and the Senator from Delaware are not up here being purists. We realize that bureaucracy gets in the way of business. We realize bureaucracy increases costs unnecessarily for consumers. We realize that Washington does not know all the answers, have all the answers. That is what the Glenn bill does. But this goes too far. It goes too far. As I said, I think I will go back to my home State, I will not speak for the Senator's State or any other State in the Nation, even presumptuous for me to speak of my own State, although I think I understand it as well as anyone. I have listened as hard as anyone over the last 25 years I have been in office. I make a bet. Ask them whether or not they are worried about whether or not someone is being overzealous and protecting their water, someone is being overzealous and protecting contaminants in the meat, or feces in the meat that they ingest, and whether that is something they really think the Senate should be worried about right now, and my guess is they are going to say ``You know, Senator, I don't think you are doing enough to make sure my water is clean. I don't think you are doing enough to make sure that the meat, the fish and the poultry I ingest lacks contaminants. I don't think you are doing enough to make sure that the environment and the air I breathe and the water I swim in and the beaches I bathe on are clean.'' ``I do think you are right, Senator, that worrying about pink flamingos and spotted owls and endangered species can be taken to a ridiculous extreme. Senator, when it comes to the water my kid drinks, when it comes to the hamburger my kid eats, when it comes to the beach my kid swims on, I do not think you are doing enough.'' Is that not the essence of what this debate is about? Which side can we err on? I think the Senator from Wisconsin is erring on the right side. I would suggest that this notion that everything is on the table, treated the same way, is not accurate. [[Page S 9789]] I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, if the Senator will withhold the tabling motion, I would like to make several brief comments.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I will try to decode this in what I understand to be, to use the phrase we all use here, basic old common sense. What the Senator from Wisconsin is saying is: Hey, look, if a bureaucrat oversteps his bounds and comes up with some preposterous ruling relating to pesticides or parasites in the water, and says that one--I did not even know the figure the Senator used, but one teaspoon--whatever the measurement was that would equal one teaspoon relative to the entire Great Lakes--and says you cannot put that in the water, that amount, if this is that ridiculous, there is emergency relief for the company which is doing that. It is called the Congress. That is the emergency relief. Come to Congress and say, ``That stupid bureaucrat just passed this rule saying you cannot have more than 1 part per hundred trillion of such and such in the water. We can pass a law. We can say no. It can be 5 million parts per trillion.'' That is the emergency relief I think we should have. But what is the emergency relief that he is suggesting for us, if in fact what is being done to the water system is damaging? It is this cumbersome procedure even under an emergency which is declared that takes months to occur. So I think common sense dictates to me if a manufacturer--that is what we are talking about, a business, an economic interest--is in fact damaged because some silly bureaucrat comes up with a rule that makes it impossible for them to conduct business and does no harm to the water system, there is recourse, emergency recourse--the U.S. Congress. What is the emergency recourse for the constituent in Wisconsin if in fact a pesticide is being put in the water that is causing serious damage? It takes time under this rule. The Senator says nothing is exempt. First of all, anything, any rule that does not affect $100 million worth of something is exempt from this process, this cost- benefit analysis, this risk assessment laid out in this thick piece of legislation in both the Glenn bill and the Hatch bill we are talking about. So that is one exemption. There is a second exemption, a series of exemptions. If you turn to page 16 of the text of the bill, it says it does ``not include''-- meaning that the cost-benefit analysis is not required for the following things: A rule that involves the internal revenue laws of the United States. So what it says here is even if the IRS comes up with a stupid rule where a cost far outweighs the benefits, it is not reviewable under this law. Even if the rule of an agency that impedes an international trade agreement, and if in the implementation of it the cost far outweighs the benefit, it is not subject to this legislation. The list goes on. Just pick another one. A rule or agency action that authorizes the introduction into commerce or recognizes a marketable status of a product. You would have the most damaging darned product in the world where the cost would far outweigh the benefit, and it is not reviewable. So this idea that there is something sacrosanct here about not exempting anything, what the Senator is asking for is this incredible exception where his amendment would be the only thing out there. There are a raft of actions that mindless bureaucrats can take that are not subject to the cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment required in this bill. Why? Why? Why should we somehow now impose a rule of legerdemain here in the Senate saying, ``Senator, what you are asking for is an exemption. You are asking for something to be treated differently than the rest of the bill. And we just cannot do that. It will open up the floodgates here.'' No one said that. But that is implicit. I would say to the Senator there are lot of things that are not subject to a cost-benefit analysis that mindless bureaucrats can undertake. I might add I do not think most bureaucrats are mindless. But let us pick that mindless bureaucrat. In law school we always talked about a ``reasonable man.'' No one could always find a reasonable man. But we always talked about the reasonable man. We have the mindless bureaucrat wandering the halls of Congress and the floor of this body. He or she is the person we are all after. Well, if we find that mindless bureaucrat and he or she is mindlessly engaged in regulations relating to the Internal Revenue Code, we say, ``You may continue to be mindless. This does not apply to you.'' If they are talking mindlessly interfering with a rule, interfering with the introduction of a product into commerce, you say, ``You can continue to be mindless.'' The list goes on for two pages: ``(iv) a rule exempt from notice and public procedure under section 553(a); ``(v) a rule or agency action relating to the public debt; ``(vi) a rule required to be promulgated at least annually pursuant to statute, or that provides relief, in whole or in part, from a statutory prohibition, other than a rule promulgated pursuant to subtitle C of title II of the Solid Waste Disposal Act (42 U.S.C. 6921 et seq.); ``(vii) a rule of particular applicability that approves or prescribes the future rates, wages, prices, services, corporate or financial structures, reorganizations, mergers, acquisitions, accounting practices, or disclosures bearing on any of the foregoing; ``(viii) a rule relating to monetary policy or to the safety or soundness of federally insured depository institutions or any affiliate of such an institution. . . .'' It goes on and on: ``(xi) a rule or order relating to the financial responsibility of brokers and dealers or futures commission merchants, the safeguarding of investor securities and funds or commodity future or options customer securities and funds, the clearance and settlement of securities, futures, or options transactions, or the suspension of trading under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. ``(xii) a rule that involves the international trade laws of the United States.'' They are all exceptions. There is not a cost-benefit analysis required for those; no requirement to do anything like any of this legislation we are about to pass. We can do that. Why cannot we do it for cryptosporidium or E. coli? What is the problem? Because there is emergency relief for an aggrieved party, if a mindless bureaucrat sets out a rule that has no relationship to science, and it is called the Congress. It can change the law. The bureaucrats can only make laws we authorize them to make. Why provide this kind of hurdle for an agency attempting to protect the water supply of the Nation? Why provide this hurdle to catch the occasional overzealous bureaucrat overreaching and damaging the property owner, or damaging a business interest? Why not provide it with the 535 Members of the Congress? If there is one side I would err on, I would err on the side of the Congress. But there are already significant portions of our commerce in this Nation that are legitimately and reasonably exempted from any cost-benefit analysis including any rule that does not have the impact of $100 million. I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. I will be delighted to yield.

Mr. BIDEN. I hope so.

Mr. BIDEN. No matter what it costs.

Mr. BIDEN. Let me make it easy for the Senator because I think it is important the public understand this arcane notion. Let us say the Congress passes a law, and the President signs it, that says no matter what it costs--in the legislation----

Mr. BIDEN. That is the key. Let me stop the Senator there, if I may, Mr. President. Section 624 is a different section than the section cited, making it clear that you do not--that cost-benefit analysis need not prevail if there are other factors. You cannot supersede the underlying law. The underlying law says on its face this is going to cost, say, an exorbitant amount. [[Page S 9679]]

Mr. BIDEN. All right.

Mr. BIDEN. Yes. We, the Congress, pass a law explicitly stating that this end must be met and we assign it to an agency in effect, and an agency writes a rule.

Mr. BIDEN. May I add a followup question? This is sort of a parlance that I can understand and everybody I think can understand. Let us assume we pass such a bizarre law to protect the welfare of individuals and it only gathered up 10, 12 people in all America who are affected by it. If a company, if an individual, affected by that cost and the onerous burden they would have to go through to meet the law, if they thought it was a bad idea, tell the Senator from Delaware what they would be able to do under this law to get to the point where the section the Senator referred to takes control. What I mean by that is, could an individual or a company come along and say, ``OK, I demand that the EPA do a cost-benefit analysis anywhere.''

Mr. BIDEN. And it is ended right there?

Mr. BIDEN. The Senator from Arizona cited--I apologize. I do not have a copy of the statement. But I hope I state it correctly. He cited a section. He referred to it as the Hillary Clinton report on mammography, or something to that effect, where he said that report included that women under the age of 40 for mammographies--the average cost was, and I forget the number--it was $150,000, or $15 million, whatever it was. For women over the age of 50, it would cost less. And it was suggested that we should follow a cost-benefit analysis, and decide that mammographies maybe should be only for women over 50 years of age because of the cost. The way this legislation is written, if in the wisdom or the lack of wisdom of the U.S. Congress and with the President signing the legislation, if we were to pass a piece of legislation which on its face made absolutely no economic sense, and we decided that even if it cost $10 million per life in order not to even have one life lost, you had to get to zero tolerance on some chemical, clearly it would not pass a cost-benefit analysis. Let us assume the cost-benefit analysis was done and it is clear that they come back and say, ``Look, this is going to cost $10 billion or $1 million or $500 million for every life you save.'' If the legislative bodies and the President wanted to do that, would they still be able to do that?

Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield for a question on that?

Mr. BIDEN. If the Senator will yield just one second on that point, the point the Senator just made I hope illustrates why the Senator from Michigan and I are not suspect of the Senator from Louisiana but why we are cynical about this because we know that the Senator from Utah and the Senator from Kansas wanted to supersede it. They kept telling us they did not. But we know they wanted to supersede. That is the problem. I think Senator Johnston has gone a long way to correcting that. But I just want the record to reflect, do not let anybody kid anybody. These folks, my colleagues, wanted, intended, to supersede. That is the point. That is why folks like me said ``bad idea.''

Mr. BIDEN. I thank my friend. Again, I hope that occurs because, look, most of us on this floor want serious regulatory reform. This is not a debate about whether or not we want regulatory reform. No one can argue, that the original bill out of the Governmental Affairs Committee was not significant regulatory reform. I am for it. I was for it then. I am for it now. So this is not a debate about whether or not we have significant regulatory reform, whether or not we are going to satisfy purists, whether or not we want to be bird lovers of America, to be happy with what we do. That is not my objective. My objective is to make sure that we do not unintentionally or intentionally undo the one success story of America, the one thing I can turn to and tell my kids beyond the fact that black children can now go to school with white children in my State which was segregated by law. I can literally take them through the county where I live and say, ``I could not swim there when I was your age. You can now.'' I can tell them and take them in the neighborhood I was raised in and say, ``I can walk out in the morning anywhere in this development where you [[Page S 9678]] live and work and breathe the air.'' They do not now have to breathe in oil. They can turn on their windshield wipers and the windshield is clear. I can point out to them that the Brandywine River, Christiana River, the Delaware River, and people sail on it now. When we were kids, there were big signs saying we could not do it. I can take them to the beaches, the pristine beaches of my State and say, ``You can swim anywhere any time and you don't have to worry about medical waste rolling up here.'' I can point to them and tell them that you no longer take what they took up until 12 years ago--garbage less than 1 mile out from the shores of my area--and dump it so it washes in. The environmental story in America has been a success story even with this aberration. I want to tell you, if my friends are as concerned, as I hope they are, about the environment as well as the aberration, I hope they will make clear these ambiguities. Maybe the Senator from Michigan and I are wrong about what the legislation says. But they can clear it up. They can clear it up very quickly for us and put to rest any of those steps. I yield the floor. Mr. JOHNSTON addressed the Chair.

Mr. BIDEN. I yield to the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. BIDEN. Let me respond. I will yield in a moment. Let me respond to that. I am glad to hear that, and that is useful. Maybe the Senator from Arizona and Senator Dole would consider, then, taking away a couple of more of what they think are red herrings. For example, why are we trying to undo all the Superfund site plans that are soon to go into effect? Why do we not take Superfund out of this legislation? It has no part in this legislation. We are told, when we raise that, it is a red herring. I would like him to supply suspenders on that one, too, for me. We have a belt; let us have suspenders. The next one I would like to consider, and then I will yield the floor completely, a second one is we are told the Dole-Johnston legislation does not in any way overrule existing environmental law. Why do we not just say that? Why not use that exact language, just say it, give us the suspenders along with the belt, because some of us, although maybe we ``doth protest too loudly'' maybe we are a little too cynical, maybe we read things in this legislation that are truly not intended to be there.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I say to my friend from Idaho, I will be brief. I think the Senator from Arizona is correct. We should not be arguing about whether we should have cost-benefit analyses. The Glenn bill does not argue about that. The argument is about whether or not the Dole bill takes too much of a risk with the public safety or not a sufficient risk. My friend from Arizona cited some things that I think could confuse folks. He indicated that the cost of regulation--and cited a study--was X billions of dollars per year, that that cost jobs, it cost every household $6,000 or $16,000, I do not know what his number was, per year; the implication being, if you vote for the Dole bill, those costs will evaporate, those costs will go away. The truth is, the Dole bill could be implemented tomorrow and the cost to households will actually go up, not go down. But let me just make a point. We all hear, and I can cite and will cite as this debate goes on, horror stories of regulations that have occurred in my State of Delaware, absolutely foolish, stupid things that bureaucrats do. We are all about here trying to rationalize this and have an element of common sense. Let us talk about common sense. What is common sense for a corporate executive is not necessarily common sense for the average citizen. If you are a corporate executive and you are running a steel plant in the Midwest, common sense dictates that you build a great big, high smokestack, like we used to see in the forties and fifties and sixties, 350 feet high. Common sense dictates that because it is the cheapest thing for you to do. And then you emit out of that gigantic smokestack into the upper airstream damaging particles to people's health, and you blow them across the country into Delaware, and you blow them into the State of New York and you have acid rain and you kill our fish and you kill our wildlife and you kill some of us. Now, that is common sense. You are the chief executive officer. Someone comes along and says, ``Now, I'll tell you what I can do for you here. We can, by you having to spend an additional half a billion dollars, clean your plant up. We can see to it that with the Clean Air Act, we are going--it is going to cost you now, it is going to cost your stockholders, it may even cost jobs, what it is going to do is cost you $400, $500 million to clean the plant up.'' If you are the corporate executive sitting at your desk, that is not common sense to you to go and spend all that money. So what do we have to do to make sure that the streams in Delaware are not polluted, that the Adirondacks do not have dead lakes where nothing lives because of acid rain? We have the Government come along and say, ``We're going to make you do that, we're going to make you do it.'' It is common sense to the person living in Delaware that it is not a good idea to have all those particles coming from the industrial Midwest into my State and choking us. That is common sense. It is a good idea to clean the air. But that is not common sense for the corporate executive. I am not suggesting they are bad or good guys, but listening to my friend from Arizona, it is like if we all just sat down and talked about this, common sense would prevail. Why did the Federal Government get in the business of air pollution and water pollution? Because the State of Arizona did not do it, the State of Delaware did not do it, the State of Kansas did not do it. I was raised in a place called Claymont, DE. It sits on the border of Pennsylvania and Delaware. There are more oil refineries per square mile along the Delaware River in Marcus Hook and Chester, PA--which is less than a half mile from where I was raised--than any place in America. When I was a kid, I would come out of where we lived, Brookview Apartments, my uncle would drive me to school. If it was a misty fall morning, you would put on the windshield wipers and literally there would be an [[Page S 9676]] oil slick on your windshield--not figuratively, literally. The State of Pennsylvania understood the prevailing wind went into Delaware. This was the southeast corner of Delaware, and it was a multibillion-dollar industry for the State of Pennsylvania. The idea that the folks in Pennsylvania were going to pass a law saying that all those oil refineries in southeast Pennsylvania, which blew into New Jersey and Delaware, had to clean up their refineries was nonexistent-- zero. There would be a lot of political pain for those legislators in voting against those captains of industry in their States, maybe costing jobs at that refinery, maybe costing income to that county. So the reason we got in the business in the first place is because industry did not do it. They did not do it. The States did not do it. How about clean water? I wonder how many people in this Chamber visiting Washington would like us to get out of the business of assuring that their water is clean. I do not know where they live, but I now live along a place called the Brandywine River. A factory was there, and when I was a kid, there used to be a pipe that came right out of the factory, a pipe that went right into the Brandywine, because common sense dictated that if you owned that factory, it made sense to spill that effluent into the river and wash it out into the Delaware River and into the Atlantic Ocean because it costs millions of dollars to put on devices to catch that dirty water. Well, today, I literally--not figuratively--can raft down the Brandywine River, which is a tradition in our State, on inner tubes on a Sunday with my kids. It is clean. Does anyone in this Chamber believe that had we not imposed costs on industry that that river would be clean today? Name me a place in America where that happened without regulation, because common sense dictated that it is better to give the stockholders more money in their dividends than less. I am not making a moral judgment. I am not making a statement about greed or anything. It is just common sense. It made sense. It was all right if the Government let you put it in the river and that took it away. Instead of spending $12 million to treat it on-site, put it in the river. My friend said we all take risks, that we get in our automobiles and we walk across streets. Guess why people get in their automobiles? They get in automobiles today because they know that the tires they buy meet certain standards that the Government imposes on manufacturers. So you do not have what you had in the 1940's and 1950's, tires shredding and people getting killed. We now have things called inspections. In every one of our States, in the beginning, you could drive a car when the motor car came along and you did not have to go to an inspection station, you did not have to show up there. You just took your risks. As more cars got on the road, even States figured, hey, wait a minute, a lot of folks are getting killed because they are putting in brakes that do not work, steering mechanisms that do not function. So we have all these regulations. Now, they are costly. They are costly. The only broad point that I wish to make now is that I hope no one here--I do not think my friend from Arizona is doing so--is arguing that we should not have those kinds of regulations. We are talking about the margins here. What we are debating here on this floor is what kind of oversight, if you will, by the judiciary, and what kind of oversight by industry, if you will, should there be to prevent the aberrations that occur--and they do occur--and the unnecessary costs that occur--and they do occur--from occurring? But if the good Lord could come down and divine for us every bureaucratic glitch that occurs in implementing regulations --I will give you one by the way. Unintended consequences. In my own State a friend of mine, a kid I grew up with, a very successful highway contractor in Delaware, shows up at a function with me. He walks up and says, ``Joe, I am helping you again this year, but I could kill you.'' I said, ``Why?'' He said, ``You voted for that Americans With Disabilities Act.'' I said, ``Yes, but you were for that.'' He said, ``Yes, but I did not know you were going to do what you did.'' I said, ``What did I do?'' He said, ``I will tell you what that act did.'' He owns a highway contracting company, and he hires flag persons. You know, we have them in all our States while they are repairing the roads. One guy with a flag puts up a stop sign, and with a walkie-talkie he calls the person at the other end and says, ``You let your folks go, I will put the stop sign up on this end.'' He said, ``I hired a guy that turned out to be hard of hearing, and so when he was given the walkie-talkie, he picked up the walkie-talkie and the guy down there would say, `OK, stop them.' But he did not hear them. So what would happen is cars would be coming through and they banged into one another.'' He said, ``I moved him to another job. I put him behind a grader, and he sued me under the Americans With Disabilities Act.'' He called over one of the most prominent lawyers in Delaware and said, ``Francis, tell him what you told me I have to do.'' Francis Biondi walks over and says, ``Joe, I told him he had to settle this for''--I will not mention the amount--``a sizable amount of money.'' It was several times what the average American makes in a whole year. I said, ``How could that be?'' He said, ``Well, they ruled that I had to take every possible action to accommodate this person's disability. So do you know what they told me I should do? I should have had an extension that ran up 30, 40 feet that had a red light and a green light on it at either end, and that guy would be able to look down, since his eyes were good, and he could see green so that he knows to press red, and he can see red and he will know to press green. His hearing would be taken out of it.'' I will quote my friend--I guess I will not because there was profanity in it. But he basically said, ``Why in the heck do I need him then, if I am going to do that?'' That is a bizarre outcome, in my view, for a well-intended piece of legislation. But assume we took out all of those nonsensical aberrations of regulations that we pass. I doubt whether anybody on this floor--and again, I beg the indulgence of my friend from Arizona. He gave a figure of several billion dollars and about $6,000 per household, I think. If we got rid of every one of those stupid things, we are still at about $5,000 a household. So I do not want anybody on the floor--we kind of mix things up on the floor here. Listening to my friend from Arizona, I think the average person would think that, well, if the Dole bill passes, a lot more people are going to be employed, and instead of my paying $5,000, $6,000 a year, I am not going to have to pay that anymore--not unless he is talking about doing away with the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act and all of these major environmental pieces of legislation. The third point I want to make--and then I will yield the floor--is that he mentioned lead paint. When I first got here in 1973, I was on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which then was called the Public Works Committee. I was given by the then chairman, Senator Randolph of West Virginia, a subcommittee assignment that had no legislative authority. I had authority to hold hearings. It is called the Subcommittee on Technology. And I could not understand why he was being so gracious to me until I found out the first assignment I was given. I was given the assignment--being one of the Senators from Delaware, a State with a lot of small companies like DuPont and others residing in that State--I was given the assignment of writing a report, after holding hearings, on whether or not we should phase out lead in gasoline or have lead traps in gasoline. The DuPont Co. had a patent for a lead trap. If I had written a report saying, ``Do not phase out lead in gasoline, do not eliminate lead in gasoline, just have lead traps like we had for pollution control devices,'' I was under the impression that would be a multimillion dollar, probably billion dollar, decision for the company. I do not recall any corporation during those hearings coming and saying we should take lead out of gasoline. There was overwhelming scientific evidence along the lines of those my friend from Arizona cited. He stated that it makes more sense to clean up the lead paint, dust, [[Page S 9677]] and particles in existing older housing than it does to take the last traces of lead out of contaminated sites in the ground where folks do not live, that are now Superfund sites. I happen to agree with him. But the broader point I wish to make is, were it not for a regulation by the Government in the first instance, there was no commonsense reason why corporate America thought it made sense to take lead out of gasoline. They all repeatedly made what we would call commonsense arguments. First, the reason lead is put in gasoline is that you can go further on a gallon of gasoline with lead in it than without lead in it. Second, it is not as costly to make the gasoline. Third, you will employ more people. Fourth, we have an oil embargo. It went on and on. There were commonsense, legitimate reasons--but against the public interest overall. Because, from the public's standpoint, common sense said, if you lived in a metropolitan area and you had a child, you would have to live with lead in gasoline coming out of tailpipes of automobiles or defective lead traps--which would be the case. And there would have been an incredible, enormous cost of maintaining those lead traps, additional costs. States would have to inspect the lead traps when you got your car inspected, and so forth. Common sense for the citizen said: My kid ingests that air just like the dust particles the Senator from Arizona referred to. So the common sense for the public--for us, as representatives of the public--was to say, ``No lead in gasoline.'' The commonsense position for those who made gasoline, and lead, was, ``Lead in gasoline.'' Again, I am not making a moral judgment. What I am saying is that, ``What is good for the goose ain't necessarily good for the gander.'' What seems to be common sense--there is an old expression. I believe it is an English expression. ``What is one man's meat is another man's poison.'' And that is literally true, literally true in environmental law. So, I hope, as we get into the detailed meat--no pun intended--of this debate, we do not confuse three things. One, regardless of which bill prevails, the total cost--I will argue later and hopefully will be able to prove to my colleagues--the total cost to the American public in terms of dollars, the difference will be de minimis. No. 2, there will be, still, a significant cost to the American public for these regulations because the American public decided that their ultimate priority is the air they breathe, the water they drink, the food they ingest. And the American public has had over 200 years of experience, culminating at the turn of the century with Lincoln Steffens and others, about what happens when you do not regulate people who deal with our air, affect our water, and produce our food. The third and final point I will make is that when we look at the cost, I ask my friends to count the increased cost in the number of bureaucrats that would have to be hired to meet the timetables imposed by the Dole legislation, and the cost in additional number of judges we would have to hire and the additional number of lawyers that will be paid, litigating every jot and tittle of the change in the Dole legislation. We should count those costs, compared them to the costs that come from the overstepping bureaucrat and the unreasonable regulation. Senator Glenn and Senator Chafee have a bill that at one time was a totally bipartisan bill. It passed out of the Committee on Governmental Affairs unanimously--without a dissenting vote; every Democrat and every Republican. Then, Senator Hatch, my esteemed chairman at the Judiciary Committee, presented the Hatch-Dole bill. I do not know what was so wrong with the bill that passed out unanimously from the Government Affairs Committee, a major piece of legislation, significantly rewriting regulatory law, significantly lifting the burden on American business without, in my view, doing unjust harm to American consumers. But something happened on the way to the floor. Now we have the Dole bill. Senator Dole came here today and proposed an E. coli amendment. Now, we argued in committee that the Dole bill, unless it was changed, would increase the prospect that people would die from E. coli in meat in their hamburgers--feces in their food. We were assured that cannot possibly happen under this law. If it was not going to be able to happen, why did Senator Dole have to come to the floor and propose an amendment on that?

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed 12 minutes in morning business.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise tonight to deplore the fall of the Bosnian City of Srebrenica. Almost 2 years ago, when Srebrenica was under siege in the despicable policy of ethnic cleansing, instigated by President Milosevic of Serbia and executed by General Silajdzic and the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Mr. Karadzic, I met with Mr. Milosevic to attempt to get into Srebrenica. I was unable to do that and went on up to Tuzla where hundreds, eventually thousands, of Bosnian Serbs and Croats were fleeing for their lives with all of their possessions on their back and their families in tow. I met in Tuzla with a man and a woman in their early forties who told me they had to make a very difficult decision as they fled over the mountains into Tuzla from Srebrenica, because they could not get back in. And I was wondering what that terrible decision was they were about to tell me. They pointed out they had left to die on the mountain top in the snow the man's elderly mother who was 81. They had to choose between taking their kids or the mother-in-law, or the wife, who could make it, or no one making it. The Bosnian Serb aggression and Serbian aggression--I know I sound like a broken record, I have been speaking about this for 2 years-- seems to cause very little concern in this country and the world. Mr. President, I think it is time for an immediate and fundamental change in our policy in the former Yugoslavia. Mr. President, the news this morning that the Bosnian Serbs have overrun, finally, Srebrenica, one of the United Nations' so-called safe areas, puts the final nail in the coffin of a bankrupt policy in the former Yugoslavia, begun by the Bush administration and continued with only minor adjustments by the Clinton administration. Given the feckless performance of the United Nations in Bosnia, it is no surprise that the Bosnian Serbs continue to violate several United Nations resolutions, and do it with impunity, and then thumb their nose at the entire world and the peacekeeping force there. In Srebrenica, the United Nations first disarmed the Bosnian Government military. I want to remind everybody of that. The Bosnian Government military was in Srebrenica, as in other safe areas, fighting the onslaught of Serbs with heavy artillery. The solution put forward by the United Nations, after having imposed an embargo on the [[Page S 9709]] Bosnian Government, was to go in and take the weapons from the Bosnian Serbs, the Bosnian military in Srebrenica, in return for a guarantee of protection for six safe areas. That was the deal. It was supposed to be putting the city and the surrounding areas under the protection of the United Nations. Then the United Nations, of course, did not live up to its half of the bargain. Its blue-helmeted peacekeepers were kept lightly armed and, as a consequence, unable to withstand a Bosnian Serb onslaught. NATO air strikes were called for by the Dutch blue hats. The United Nations concluded that this was not a good time to do that. NATO air strikes were eventually called in too late to have any effect. The safe area of Srebrenica proved to be safe only for Serbian aggressors. Srebrenica was filled with thousands of Moslem refugees from elsewhere in eastern Bosnia, the victims of the vile Serbian practice that they refer to as ethnic cleansing, the very people the United Nations pledged to protect in return for them giving up what few weapons they had. The United Nations defaulted on its honor. It has disgraced itself. And these pathetic souls, already once driven from their ancestral homes, are now reportedly fleeing Srebrenica to an uncertain fate in undetermined locations, and I expect many will meet the fate of that family I visited in Tuzla a year and a half ago. Could the United Nations have saved Srebrenica? Of course it could have, if it only allowed NATO to do its job promptly and fully. Perhaps the most frustrating and maddening aspect of the entire catastrophe is the fact that the Bosnian Serbs were able to defy NATO, which has been hobbled by being tied to the timorous U.N. civilian command, led by Mr. Akashi. Mr. President, we must immediately change the course of our policy in the former Yugoslavia. First of all, as I and others have been saying in this Chamber for more than 2 years, we must lift the illegal and immoral arms embargo on the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A resolution to that effect, which I am cosponsoring, will be introduced next week. I am confident that it will pass with a comfortable majority. Mr. President, the fall of Srebrenica has given the lie to pundits in the United States--but especially in Western Europe--who have ceaselessly issued dire warnings that if the United States would unilaterally lift the arms embargo, the Bosnian Serbs would then overrun the eastern enclaves. Well, Mr. President, apparently, someone forgot to explain this causal relationship to the Serbs. I suppose the apostles of appeasement will now say that if we lift the embargo, the Bosnian Serbs will overrun the remaining two enclaves, or maybe Sarajevo, or maybe Western Europe. After all, Mr. President, we have been led to believe that we are facing a juggernaut. That is nonsense. We are talking about a third-rate, poorly motivated, middle-aged force that has to dragoon its reserves from the cafes of Belgrade to fight. In reality, of course, this tiresome rhetoric has been a smokescreen for doing nothing, for sitting back and watching this vile ethnic cleansing, mass rapes, cowardly sniping at children, and other military tactics at which the Bosnian Serbs excel. ``How regrettable,'' the appeasers say publicly. ``But as long as these quarrelsome south Slavs contain their feuding to Bosnia,'' they add, ``then it is nothing to get too exercised about.'' Well, Mr. President, it is something to get exercised about. The geostrategic reality of the 21st century is that the primary danger to peace will most likely come from regional ethnic crises. We must not allow cold-blooded aggressors like Karadzic and Milosevic to get away with their terrorism. Europe, unfortunately, has other potential Karadzics and Milosevics. After we lift the arms embargo on Bosnia and Herzegovina, we should immediately put into place a program to train Bosnian Government troops, probably in Croatia. We should make clear that we are not neutral parties in this conflict, we are on the side of the aggrieved party, the Bosnian Government. This does not require a single American troop to set foot in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I have been told time and again that these folks cannot defend themselves. Well, of course they cannot defend themselves, they have no weapons. We should make it clear, Mr. President, that we are no longer signing on to this incredible policy that has been promoted in Europe. We should call an emergency session of the North Atlantic Council and tell our allies that NATO must immediately remove itself from the U.N. chain of command in the former Yugoslavia. The conflict there already constitutes a clear and present danger to the European members of the alliance. NATO does not need the blessing of the United Nations to protect its members' vital interests. Furthermore, we should restate to our NATO allies who have peacekeeping troops in Bosnia and Croatia that we will stand by President Clinton's commitment to extricate them, but only if the entire operation is under the command of the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, a United States general, and only if the operation is fully conducted under NATO rules of engagement. We should give immediate public warning to the Bosnian Serbs and their patrons in Belgrade that any further locking-on of radar to American planes flying over Bosnia will be cause for total destruction of the Bosnian Serb radar facilities, which is fully, totally within our capacity to do. Serbia should be given fair warning that if it tries to intervene, it, too, will receive immediate and disproportionate attacks on Serbia proper. There is no reason why our British, French, Dutch, and other NATO allies should object to this policy. If, however, Mr. President, they do not wish to follow our lead, then we should remind them that four years ago they wanted to handle this southern European problem themselves. And we should say, ``Well, good luck, it is now your problem, handle it.'' I do not think for a minute, Mr. President, they will take on that responsibility. It is about time this President and this administration understands that we either should do it our way or get out. Mr. President, nothing good can come out of this latest fiasco in Bosnia. The United Nations has been definitively discredited. NATO has been defied. As usual, defenseless and blameless Bosnian Moslems have been brutalized. This madness must stop, Mr. President. We must change our policy immediately. Tomorrow is not soon enough. I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise to offer my strong opposition to actions taken by the House Commerce/State/Justice Appropriations Subcommittee earlier this week. In passing the 1996 appropriation's bill the subcommittee Republicans have set off on a course which would cripple Federal, State, and local efforts to combat crime. If the subcommittee Republicans' plan is adopted: New FBI agents will not be hired; 20,000 State and local police will not be hired; thousands of wife-beaters will not be arrested, tried or convicted; new DEA agents will not be hired; 80,000 offenders released on probation will not be tested for drugs or subject to certain punishment; and digital telephony technology vital to law enforcement will not be developed. First, let me address the cuts to Federal law enforcement. The President requested an increase of $122 million for FBI agents and other FBI activities--but the subcommittee Republicans cut $45 million from that request. I would also point out that the subcommittee Republicans provides no dollars of the $300 million authorized for FBI in the Dole/Hatch counter-terrorism bill. This legislation has not passed into law, so some might say that is the reason that none of these dollars are made available. But, the subcommittee Republicans did find a way to add their block grant which passed the House, but not the Senate. So, I do not think there is any explanation for cutting the FBI other than a fundamental lack of commitment to Federal law enforcement by the subcommittee Republicans. I have heard time and again over the past several months from my Republican colleagues in the Senate that the President was not committed to Federal law enforcement. I have heard time and again from my Republican colleagues that they would increase funding for Federal law enforcement. Well, something just does not add up--House subcommittee Republicans will not give the President the increase he requested for the FBI, despite all the rhetoric I have heard over the past several months. The cuts to Federal law enforcement do not even stop there. The House subcommittee Republicans cut $17 million from the $54 million boost requested for DEA agents by the administration. That is more than a 30- percent cut. The House subcommittee Republicans provide no dollars of the $60 million authorized for DEA in the Dole/Hatch counterterrorism bill. Let me review another area where the actions of these subcommittee Republicans are completely opposite the rhetoric I have heard from the other side here in the Senate. The Violence Against Women Act--having first introduced the Violence Against Women Act 5 years ago, I had welcomed the bipartisan support finally accorded the act last year. I would note the strong support provided by Senators Hatch and Dole. But, when we have gotten past the rhetoric and it came time to actually write the check in the Appropriations Subcommittee, the women of America were mugged. The President requested $175 million for the Justice Department's violence against women programs, and the House subcommittee Republicans have provided less than half--$75 million. While the specific programs have not been yet identified, that $100 million will mean the key initiatives will not get the funding that everyone on both sides of the aisle agreed they should: $130 million was requested for grants to State and local police, prosecutors and victims groups; $28 million was requested to make sure that every man who beats his wife or girlfriend is arrested; $7 million was requested for enforcement efforts against family violence and child abuse in rural areas; and $6 million was requested to provide special advocates for abused children who come before a court. I keep hearing about how the Violence Against Women Act is a bipartisan effort. In all the new so-called crime bills I have seen proposed by Members of the other side, not once have I seen any effort to repeal or cut back on any element of the Violence Against Women Act. But, the actions of the House subcommittee Republicans tell a completely different story. To discuss yet another troubling aspect of the House subcommittee Republican bill--this bill eliminates the $1.9 billion sought for the second year of the 100,000 police program. That $1.9 billion would put at least 20,000 more State and local police officers on the streets--and probably many more, for the $1.1 billion spent so far this year has put well over 16,000 more police on the streets. What happens to the $1.9 billion? In the House Republican bill, these dollars are shifted to a LEAA-style block grant for ``a variety of programs including more police officers, crime prevention programs, drug courts and equipment and technology,'' quoting the summary provided by the House Republicans on the subcommittee. In other words, not $1 must be spent to add State and local police officers. I keep hearing about support for State and local police from the other side of the aisle. But, just when it really matters, just when we are writing checks and not just making speeches, America's State and local police officers are being ripped-off. Instead of a guarantee that police officers and police departments get each and every one of these $1.9 billion, the House subcommittee Republicans propose empty deal--money in the same type of grants that failed in the 1970's and under standards so lax that America's police could wait through all next year without a single dollar. Mr. President, I hope that the actions of the House Republicans on the subcommittee are reversed in the full Appropriations Committee. And if not there, then I hope these actions will be reversed on the floor of the House. But, if the House Republicans stand with the subcommittee and against Federal law enforcement, against FBI agents, against DEA agents, against the women of America, and against State and local police officers, I urge all my colleagues in the Senate to stand by the positions they have taken all year and stand up to the House Republicans.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I voted for the balanced budget amendment earlier this year, and more recently I cosponsored with Senator Bradley a budget resolution that achieved balance by the year 2002. I want to restore balance to the Federal budget, Mr. President, but not for its own sake. The balance I seek is a means to achieve more concrete, more [[Page S 9396]] human, more important goals than the abstract satisfaction of a tidy balance sheet. Our country is blessed, Mr. President, in many ways. By many measures our economy is strong. In the past couple of years we have enjoyed healthy growth in the productivity and output of our economy, by many measures the strongest on the planet. More Americans have found jobs, and, while you couldn't tell it from the comments of some of my colleagues, Mr. President, the first 3 years of the Clinton administration have seen the first three consecutive reductions in the deficit since the Truman administration. But there remain fundamental problems, Mr. President, problems that we must not lose sight of as we set our Nation's priorities with the budget resolution vote before us today. Two fundamental trends have kept the real achievements of our economy from benefiting the majority of Americans. Those trends are the stagnation, even decline, in the wages and salaries of working Americans, and the increasing inequality in wealth and income that threatens the middle-class stability that has been the ballast of our Nation since its founding. In many ways, Mr. President, the issues that concern me today are the issues that brought me into public life: How to meet our shared responsibility as public officials. Our responsibility is to provide for our Nation's future, by nurturing and educating our youth, and by investing in the knowledge and technology on which the economy of the future will be built. And we must also, Mr. President, honor our commitments to the generations whose achievements in war and peace secured for us our rich inheritance. The budget resolution before us today sets our Nation's priorities for the next 7 years. How does it measure up to our responsibilities? I am afraid, Mr. President, that this budget resolution before us today, the compromise struck by Senate Republicans with the House Republicans fails to meet the challenges before us. I voted against the earlier budget resolution, Mr. President, because it cut too deeply into education and nutrition programs, because it neglected our responsibility to lay the foundations in research and technology on which our future must be built, and because it took too much from our senior citizens and from struggling workers. Mr. President, this budget resolution is worse than the earlier one. It cuts $10 billion from student loans. It cuts $270 billion from Medicare, $182 billion from Medicaid. By cutting the earned income tax credit, it raises taxes on working families who are giving their all to stay afloat. It does all this, Mr. President, at the same time that it envisions tax breaks that would, if they follow the so-called Contract with America, give those among us who are already the most comfortable an even greater share of our national wealth, including the very wealthiest among us. By slighting investments in our children, by cutting resources for education and research, by increasing the price of college loans, this budget fails to meet our obligation to provide for our Nation's future. By cutting Medicare and Medicaid, it fails to honor our contract with the generations that went before us. By increasing taxes on the poorest working families, it reduces the take-home pay of those Americans already struggling to keep body and soul together. And by saving its generosity for those among us who--deserving as they might be--need it least, this budget drives a wedge of resentment deeper into the cracks already forming in our society. I will continue to seek ways to restore balance to our Nation's finances, Mr. President. And I will continue to seek ways to restore balance to our Nation's priorities. But I will vote against the budget resolution before us today.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President. Are we in morning business?