Jeff Bingaman

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Yes, Mr. President.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I wanted to comment on two major items today. First--this is a somewhat new item. I believe it is a new example of the abrogation of responsibility by the House Republican leadership. For 20 days we have been holding three-quarters of a million Federal civil servants hostage in this effort to exercise what Speaker Gingrich calls his right not to pass spending bills. He has referred to that many times in interviews. As a result, as the Senator from Virginia was just pointing out, many Americans--contract workers, those planning to travel, those seeking export licenses, those seeking federally insured mortgages--have had their livelihoods disrupted. Now the leadership in the House has added the military personnel of the country to the list of those whose livelihoods are being disrupted. Yesterday, the House failed to override the President's veto of the Defense authorization bill. And when they did that, Congressman Dellums sought to bring up S. 1514, which is a bill that the Senate passed last Saturday to ensure that our troops get their full January pay raise, both their basic pay and subsistence pay, which are to increase 2.4 percent, and their quarters pay, which is to increase 5.2 percent. When the Senate passed the bill last Saturday, the Presiding Officer, Senator Stevens, made the statement: ``Mr. President, this bill should not be controversial. The President asked that it be passed and has said that he will sign it as soon as he receives it.'' Congressman Dellums yesterday tried to bring it up in time so that the Pentagon could ensure that troops receive their full pay in their first January paycheck. He was refused. Mr. President, when we have troops in Bosnia and when our troops are proudly around the globe in other potential hot spots--South Korea, the Middle East--the House Republicans should not be adding them to the list of people who are being inconvenienced and whose livelihoods are being disrupted by inaction in Congress. This is yet another example of where Senate Republicans have acted responsibly in carrying out their duties under the Constitution; House Republicans have not. The Senate acted last Saturday on the Stevens-Thurmond bill as soon as the President vetoed the Defense authorization bill. I am sure many Senate Republicans do not agree with the President's veto of that Defense authorization bill, but they were not going to allow their differences with the President on that larger issue to adversely affect our troops. Mr. President, I can only hope that the House Republican leadership will reverse course today. Their refusal to take up and to pass that military pay bill yesterday was inexcusable. I hope they will do our military personnel and all Americans a service by bringing it up and passing it today.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Maryland. I will be brief. I did want to conclude my answer to his question. I think what we have is a very troublesome development in the way that the Congress and the President are interacting. It seems that the Congress is going to take the view that it only has a responsibility to enact a Defense bill, that other bills can go their own way--and, of course, its own appropriation, the legislative appropriation bill--and it is up to the President to try to get the others enacted. If that is the case, then you have essentially a hostage-taking or a standoff, which I think is very destructive of the system of Government as it was intended. This hostage-taking can be a two-way street. Hostage-taking begets more hostage-taking. As I indicated before, the President would be ill- advised, in my opinion, if these are going to be the ground rules for the interaction with the Congress, to sign a legislative appropriations bill in this new session of Congress until all appropriations bills for the executive branch have been signed and put into law. I am also greatly concerned that we are not going to be able to get good cooperation between the Legislature and the President on doing a Defense appropriation bill. If, as Congressman Livingston points out, once the President signs the Defense appropriations bill, the Congress is then absolved from the responsibility to work with the President on getting the other appropriations bills signed, that, to me, is a very troublesome situation, which I take as a great problem for all of us. Mr. President, I appreciate the chance to respond, and I hope that a reasonable resolution of these problems can be found. I thank the Senator from Maryland for the time.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Yes, I will be glad to yield.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the question very much, and I agree entirely with what the Senator from Maryland is saying. I believe it is a breakdown of our system. I believe the Founding Fathers who set up our system of government intended that all of us in Government, whether in the legislative branch or in the executive branch, would work together to try to maintain a functioning Government and to resolve disputes. That is not happening now. I was particularly bothered by an article on December 2 in the Washington Post where it talked about the impasse that was existing, and it referred to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the House, Mr. Livingston. It said: Livingston and other Republicans yesterday boasted that after weeks of standoff over spending issues, the momentum had shifted in the Republicans' direction when the President accepted the defense spending bill. ``I think that once the defense bill was off the table, the administration lost the leverage it really had planned on using,'' Livingston said. He added that most of the remaining spending bills include programs that ``are a greater concern to the President'' than to many other Members of Congress. To me, that does not bode well for the rest of our deliberations in the second session of the Congress. If the President needed to keep the Defense appropriations bill on the table in order to be able to bargain with the House, then the obvious message is that he would keep it on the table in a new session. I cannot conceive of the President this fall, for example, when we send him appropriations bills, I cannot conceive of him signing a legislative appropriations bill before all of the executive branch appropriations bills have been completed. It would not make any sense, if this is the new context in which we operate.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, today we are in the 19th day of the longest Government shutdown in the Nation's history. Let me begin, as others have here today, by commending the majority leader for his action yesterday in bringing to a vote, here in the Senate, a continuing resolution to restore funding for the ongoing operation of the Government. I frankly regret that it took us 18 days to have that continuing resolution brought to the Senate floor. But, regardless, I was very pleased to see that action by the majority leader yesterday. I also commend all Senators for agreeing to the passage of the continuing resolution. I think we all know that under Senate rules, any Senator could have objected and could have kept that measure from passing in yesterday's session. It says something about the merits of this issue, this issue of the Government shutdown, that every single Senator agreed to allow that bill to pass. Today, the House of Representatives will have to decide whether it, too, will pass the continuing resolution that we passed yesterday in the Senate, whether it will pass that resolution so it can be signed by the President and so that funding can be restored to the Government or, in the alternative, whether the House of Representatives will continue in what I believe is the irresponsible course that it has pursued, now, for several weeks. Since this second shutdown of the Government began, I have spoken three times on the Senate floor. Each time I have denounced the refusal of the Congress to fund the Government as irresponsible. I have denounced it as being an abuse of power by the Congress and an abrogation of responsibility by the majority here in Congress. I believe very strongly that the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution expected more responsible conduct by the later generations who would serve in this Congress. I believe very strongly that the American people deserve more responsible conduct by their elected officials. But I will not repeat today all the arguments that I made in the previous days. Instead, what I want to say today is that today, each Member of the House of Representatives should be given the opportunity to vote on whether or not to restore funding for the normal operation of Government. Let the people's elected Representatives vote on whether they believe that Government should be shut down or we should restore that funding. I saw the Speaker of the House made a statement yesterday that he did not know whether the votes were there, in the House, and he doubted that the votes were there in the House to pass the continuing resolution that we passed here in the Senate. It is very simple to determine that. Just put the question to a vote. Let each Member come on the floor of the House and cast his or her vote and answer to his or her constituents for that vote. The people's elected Representatives need to decide whether the Congress should continue to withhold funds needed to process student loans for this next semester of school. They need to decide whether it is proper for Congress to keep the campgrounds and monuments and visitors centers closed in our national forests and our national parks. They need to decide whether they want to continue withholding funds that are needed to process the 23,000 passport applications that are received each day by the State Department, that were received yesterday, that will be received again today. And they need to vote on whether the Congress wants to withhold one-half of the pay of three- quarters of a million Federal workers or, in fact, withhold the pay of that entire group, entirely, for the month of January--which I understand will be the case unless some continuing resolution is passed. People deserve to know how their elected Representatives stand on these issues. I know the response that some Republican House Members will give. They will refuse to vote for funding the Government and explain their position by invoking their earnest desire to get to a balanced budget. So let me respond to that just very briefly. First of all, the issue of whether Congress shares with the President the obligation of maintaining the functioning of Government is a separate question from whether we ought to commit ourselves to reach a balanced budget at some future date. I believe strongly that the Congress does share that obligation to maintain a functioning Government and it is not an obligation that can be ducked by Members of Congress by simply changing the subject. A second point is the obvious one that we are not going to bring the budget into balance this year. Nobody has stated that we could bring the budget into balance this year. The Speaker of the House has not claimed that, Senator Dole does not claim that, President Clinton has not claimed that. If everything works perfectly, the best that we could hope for is that if the Government takes certain steps during the next 7 years, and if the economy acts in certain ways during the next 7 years, that that combined result will get us to a balanced budget in the year 2002. So, those Congressmen and Senators, previously Senators, who insist on keeping the Government shut until the Government gets to a balanced budget will have a long time to wait. Congress meets every year. We pass new budget bills every year. We pass new appropriations bills every year. None of what we do around here is chiseled in granite. All of it is subject to change during this next 7 years. So we need to get on with our business. And part of our business and part of our responsibility is to restore funding for the normal functioning of Government. Finally, we have a shared commitment between the Congress and the President to reach a balanced budget. What we also need, and need very urgently in my opinion, is a shared commitment, including the commitment of House Republicans, to maintain a functioning Government. This Senate has acted responsibly in passing a continuing resolution to once again fund the Government as we did last evening. Today the House Republicans have the opportunity to act responsibly as well. I sincerely hope that they will seize that opportunity. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, we are now in the 18th day of the longest Government shutdown in the history of the Nation. Serious negotiations continue on the budget, but still the Republican majority in Congress refuses to pass legislation to fund the normal function of Government; that is, a clean continuing resolution. This persistent refusal to provide funding for normal Government operations is irresponsible. It is irresponsible conduct by the Republican majority, particularly in the House, which must originate appropriations bills regardless of which side may be right or wrong on the policy issues in the budget negotiations. Any time the negotiation occurs, each side begins by assessing its own as well as its opponent's strengths and weaknesses. Each side determines the actions that it can take to put pressure on the other to reach concessions. In these negotiations over the budget, for the first time in our Nation's history the Republicans who are controlling Congress have determined that they have the right to shut down the Government and they can use that right as a bargaining chip in their negotiations with the President. They do not see the obligation to keep Government functioning as a shared obligation. They do not see it. They do not see it as an obligation of both the executive and the legislative branches as previous Congresses have. Instead, they are quite willing to assign that responsibility exclusively to the President while, for their own part, keeping the Government closed as a bargaining ploy. This is a profound change in the way Congress views its responsibilities. It is simply wrong to see this is as more business as usual, more of the traditional bickering that characterizes Washington politics. In November, we had the longest shutdown in the 207-year history of the Republic, and it was 6 days long. Now we are at 18 days and counting in the second shutdown of this Congress. When our Founders embarked on the task of bringing to life the constitutional system, they devised in Philadelphia in 1787, it was the legislative branch of the Government which they called on to commence proceedings under the Constitution. The Congress met in New York in 1789, organized itself, provided for the counting of Presidential electoral votes and the inauguration of the President. The Congress then passed legislation to establish the great departments of the executive branch, to provide for the organization of the judicial branch, and to furnish appropriations to enable all the branches of our new national Government to perform their constitutional functions. It would be, frankly, unimaginable to our Founders that our branch, the first branch of Government whose duty it was to bring to life the Framers' plan, would ever think that it was within its purview to disable that plan by refusing to perform the Congress' primary constitutional responsibilities. It would be unimaginable for the new Congress to have decided not to complete the work of setting up the Government that the Constitutional Convention contemplated. In fact, it would have precipitated a major constitutional crisis for a radical majority in the first Congress to decide not to set up a particular department or not to fund a particular department just to get the bargaining leverage with a new President. Such a step then might have doomed the future of our new constitutional Republic. My Republican colleagues argue that it is not they who are acting irresponsibly in causing Government to remain closed. After all, they passed appropriations bills and the President has chosen to veto those bills. They are right; the President has exercised his veto. He has done so as provided in the Constitution. He has returned those bills to the Congress, also as provided in the Constitution. But when the President uses the veto, the Framers of the Constitution contemplated that Congress would either muster the two-thirds majority in each House needed to override the veto or make the changes necessary in the bill to satisfy the President's objections. When time has been required to resolve differences between the President and Congress on spending bills, all previous Congresses, 103 of them, have enacted continuing resolutions to maintain the normal functioning of Government. When this Congress and this Republican majority came, that all changed. For the first time in our Nation's history, the majority in Congress is refusing to perform its primary constitutional responsibility to maintain a functioning Government. It is abusing its power under the Constitution. This refusal, this abrogation of responsibility, this abuse of power is being explained away as a natural consequence of policy differences between the President and the Congress. But there have been many times in our history when policy differences between Congress and the President were great and were strongly held. Never before has Congress approached the negotiations of those differences with the view that responsibility for maintaining a workable Government rests exclusively with the President and the ability to keep the Government closed is a bargaining chip that Congress brings to the negotiations. If this Republican view is accepted with respect to a partial Government shutdown, why should it not also apply with respect to increasing the debt limit and extending the full faith and credit of the United States? If it is OK to shut down the functioning of Government to force the President to accept the Congress' negotiating position, why would it not be just as acceptable for the Congress to refuse to increase the debt limit for the same purpose? Why would it not be just as acceptable for the Republicans in Congress to say it is the President's responsibility alone to ensure the full faith and credit of the United States and he has to do it by agreeing to whatever we in Congress demand? This view by the Republican leadership of Congress is as radical as it is wrong. The Founders of our Nation provided for a government in which responsibility as well as power was to be shared. If the Congress will not hold itself responsible for maintaining a workable government, then the people who elect the Congress will surely do so. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the conference report on welfare reform, H.R. 4. I would like to briefly explain my reasons for doing so. First of all, I regret that we are planning to vote on this legislation at this time. It is my understanding that the conference report we are considering was released on Wednesday. Two days later, we are voting on this important piece of legislation that would dismantle the social safety net we have known for decades, and replace it with block grants to the States loaded with numerous requirements limiting the amount of assistance to some of our society's most vulnerable members. Although I voted for the Senate-passed version of this legislation to send a message that our current system can certainly stand some improvement, I would be reluctant to support any conference report on such a complex issue without having an adequate opportunity to review it, and to get the best information on its likely impact on my State. I regret that we have not had adequate opportunity to do that sort of analysis on the legislation before us. Nevertheless, I have had an opportunity to review the broad provisions of this agreement, and I do not believe that is likely to result in a better system for welfare recipients, or the States and communities involved in the current system. welfare recipients Mr. President, the current system is not serving its clients as well as it should. In too many cases, welfare and other public assistance has become a way of life, not a brief interlude of assistance. We have children growing up in a welfare culture, always living at the margin, and sometimes shuffled through the foster care systems of our various States. Their parents never seem to get the skills or opportunities that would enable them to support their families. Many of us have expressed the concern that too often, these parents are single parents trying to raise their families alone. Our current system, which knits together Aid for Families With Dependent Children [AFDC], Medicaid, food stamps, school lunch programs, and child protection moneys, seeks to provide a basic safety net. It seeks to ensure that in America, even the poorest of poor have food, shelter, basic clothing, safe homes for children, and an opportunity for something better. The main problem welfare reformers have sought to address this year is making sure that the safety net is not the primary means of support for families, and that people use this safety net for a short time before finding a means to become self- sufficient. Again, I share these goals. But what have the conferees returned to us to meet these goals? They have given us a system that will limit the time a person may receive benefits to 5 years in a lifetime, and imposed unrealistic requirements to work. They have limited the amount of time a recipient can spend training to get the skills that will enable them to find work that will make them self-sufficient. Let me talk for just a minute about what this bill does not do for recipients. Every credible expert agrees that the work requirements will be very difficult to meet without additional child care dollars. We are asking States to ensure that the number of working single parents go from about 20 percent now to 50 percent by 2002. These parents are not going to leave young children alone, so they will need day care. Still, while we are expecting to increase the work force participation of single parents by 150 percent, we are only increasing the core child care money in this bill by a little more than 20 percent--$1.9 billion over a baseline of $9.3 billion. This juxtaposition will prove to be totally unworkable. Another issue that has not been given adequate thought is why we assume merely taking an entry-level job will lead to economic independence for welfare recipients. I recently came across a University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for research on poverty study on welfare recipients which reported that to replace the benefits received on welfare, the average mother will need a job providing at least $8 to $9 an hour. The average job available to a person with the skills of the average working mother is only about $5.15 per hour, with little hope of real advanement. Obviously, this leaves a huge gap in income if the family this mother heads is going to be able to keep its members fed, clothed, and sheltered. I want to emphasize that we are not talking about the wage needed to live the middle class dream of home ownership in a nice suburb and a vacation every year. We are talking here about maintaining a subsistence standard of living. If we adopt the provisions included in this conference report it is likely that many families that are somehow surviving now are going to find themselves making choices between shelter, food, and clothing. In all likelihood, as my colleague Senator Moynihan pointed out on this floor last week, we are going to see a surge in the number of homeless families within a few years. The obvious solution here is to ensure that recipients have the skills they need to get better jobs, and that economy produces high wage jobs that they can fill. This bill unreasonably limits the amount of time recipients can take to upgrade their skills. Another issue I would like to address is the cuts to the food stamp program included in this legislation. I have heard some of colleagues tout that food stamps will remain an entitlement in most States. What they fail to mention is that this legislation severely cuts that and other nutrition programs. Food stamps alone would be cut by $32 million under the legislation before us. Although there are many other concerns raised in how people currently served by welfare will be affected by these provisions, the final point I want to raise concerns child protective services. The advocates of this conference agreement have stated that funds for foster care support are not being block granted. They fail to note, however, that funds for investigations, court procedures, quality assurance, professional training, and other services are block granted and capped by this conference report. Inevitably, these provisions will result in less protection for children suffering from neglect and abuse in this Nation. In States like my own, where protective services are under State supervision, the capped block grants will likely be unable to pay for the changes mandates in these services. the states and communities Clearly, the welfare proposal will not work from the perspective of welfare recipients. I doubt it will work from the perspective of the States and communities these recipients live in, either. I have not yet seen the final amount New Mexico will receive under the conference agreement. I believe, however, that the number touted by proponents for New Mexico under the vetoed budget agreement was about $135 million for the TANF portion of this welfare reform package. According to Department of Health and Human Services figures, however, New Mexico received $141.5 million in fiscal year 1995. Clearly, my State will not be getting a large increase in funding. Yet the mandate for child care inherent in the work requirements imposed by this bill are huge. New Mexico, and other States, will face a shortfall at a time when many States, including my own, are under extreme budget constraints already. The picture gets worse when one considers the other Republican proposals being tossed around the Capitol. The Republican budget contained significant reductions to the earned income tax credit. It also proposed substantial cuts in homeless assistance. At a minimum the Republican proposal cut homeless funding 32 percent. When eligibility for welfare runs out, and families are on the streets, they are going to have even fewer resources to draw on to help. I know that many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle believe that private giving and State resources will take up the slack. That is pure fantasy. conclusion In short, Mr. President, I have yet to hear a coherent statement from the proponents of this conference report regarding how communities will meet the needs of poor children and their families that will be generated by this legislation. If it were to become law, we would be trading in an admittedly imperfect system for one that is certainly not better, and perhaps is much worse. It seems particularly ironic to me that we are considering this ill- conceived legislation right before Christmas. Indeed, it is difficult not to think of Dickens' ``A Christmas Carol.'' I am particularly reminded of the statement of the ghost of Scrooge's business partner, explaining why he is fated to be a miserable ghost: ``Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'' Meaningful welfare reform is our business, Mr. President. It is my understanding that the President intends to veto this legislation. I hope that after that veto, we can get down to that business. Until then, God bless us, every one.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as if in morning business for up to 6 minutes.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, we are now in the seventh day of the second Government shutdown of the year. This is the longest partial shutdown of our Government in the almost 207 years of our Nation's history. The commonly held view is that the shutdown results from differences in policy between the Republican-controlled Congress and the President. The Republicans want their economic projections used to calculate the deficit reduction needed to get to a balanced budget. The President wants to ensure that reasonable funding levels are maintained for Medicare, Medicaid, education, environmental enforcement, and so on. This commonly held view is wrong. In fact, this crisis in government is not caused by differences between the President and Congress on policy matters. It is caused by the new and radical view that Republican congressional leaders have taken about Congress' constitutional duties and prerogatives. For the first time in our Nation's history, the congressional the government and keep it closed in order to extort concessions from the President on policy issues. House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey, this week, announced that the House will not send President Clinton a bill reopening the full Government--even temporarily--until there is ``a bill for him to sign'' that balances the budget in 7 years. This decision by Congress to shut down the Government until it gets its way is new. No previous Congress has interpreted the Constitution as granting it that right. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Gingrich referred to this newfound right as ``the key strategic decision made on election night a year ago.'' Mr. Gingrich stated; If you are going to operate with his [the President's] veto being the ultimate trump, you have to operate within a very narrow range of change. * * * You had to find a trump to match his trump. And the right not to pass money bills is the only trump that is equally strong. So, for the first time in our national life we have congressional leadership that believes it has the constitutional right to close the Government and keep it closed until Congress prevails. The immediate disagreement is about a whole tangle of budgetary issues, but if Congress has the right to close the Government in this disagreement, presumably it has that right whenever the President has the temerity to stand his ground on any issue. If the closing of Government is an inherent right of the Congress, then all powers of the President are necessarily subordinated. Those who wrote our Constitution never intended that the Congress have any such right as is now claimed. They set out a system of checks and balances among the branches of government and provided a method of resolving differences including a right of the President to veto legislation and the right of Congress to override that veto. But underlying all these checks and balances between the branches of government, those who wrote the Constitution assumed an obligation and desire on the part of all to maintain what Justice Jackson referred to as a ``workable government.'' (343 U.S. 579, 635 (1952)). When our Founders embarked upon the task of bringing to life the constitutional system devised in Philadelphia in 1787 and approved by the State ratifying conventions, it was the legislative branch of our new Government which they called on to commence proceedings under the Constitution. Pursuant to that call, the Congress met in New York in 1789, organized itself, and provided for the counting of the Presidential electoral votes and the inauguration of the President. The Congress then passed legislation to establish the great departments of the executive branch, to provide for the organization of the judicial branch, and to furnish appropriations to enable all the branches of our new National Government to perform their constitutional functions. It would be, Mr. President, frankly unimaginable to our Nation's Founders that our branch, the first branch of government, whose duty it was to bring to life the Framer's plan, would ever think that it was within its purview to disable that plan by refusing to perform the Congress' primary constitutional responsibilities. But the Republican leaders of Congress today are doing just that-- refusing to perform the Congress' primary constitutional responsibilities. They believe they have ``the right not to pass money bills'' and can use that so-called right as the ``ultimate trump,'' as Mr. Gingrich puts it, in their disagreements with the President. Mere policy differences, no matter how important, are not at the core of the present Government crisis. There have been many times in our history when policy differences between Congress and the President were great and were strongly held. The real cause of this crisis is the inflated and radical view taken by Republican congressional leaders concerning the rights of the Congress under the Constitution. What they claim as a right is instead an unprecedented abuse of power. Until a majority of each House of Congress recognizes this, the ``workable government'' which the Founding Fathers contemplated will remain at risk. Thank you Mr. President, and I yield the floor. Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I did want to ask the Senator from North Dakota a question. He referred to the old phrase ``first things first,'' and I have tried to read Peter Drucker and Steven Coffey and some of these people who advise us on proper management procedures, and they all make that same point--first things first. It seems to me the first thing we ought to be doing in this Congress is to be passing a continuing resolution to fund the Government. My question relates to an article that is in the morning paper where it says, ``GOP Pledges to Pay Furloughed Workers.'' It says, ``Congressional Republican leaders promised yesterday that the 260,000 Federal workers idled by the budget battle would eventually actually be paid for their days they are furloughed.'' Then it goes on to say, ``At a GOP meeting yesterday, House Speaker Newt Gingrich persuaded party members to agree to pay employees for days missed. The employees are losing about $40 million a day in wages, according to the administration.'' The question I get most from people in my State is, if you promise to pay these people, why not send them to work? It is one thing to charge the taxpayers $40 million a day for their services--and you can argue whether that ought to be done or not if you do not like the Government--but why are we paying people and not letting them work? It just does not make any sense to the people I represent. It seems to me that this place is becoming more Alice in Wonderland every day, and that is a classic example. If the Senator has a comment on that, I would be interested in hearing it.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, we are now in the second Government shutdown of the year. This is the second one we have had in a month. There have been many Government shutdowns in the past. In fact, I have been here in the Senate during some of those. But the shutdowns of this year seem very different than previous ones. Prior to this Congress, the shutdowns of Government were short, and they were generally regretted by the congressional leaders. And, even when the Congress and the President continued to be at odds, those involved were eager to pass continuing resolutions to restart the Government and maintain basic services. In this Congress we have a very different situation. In this Congress, the shutdowns are longer, and the Republican leadership in Congress sees the shutdown and the maintenance of the shutdown as an essential part of their strategy to gain leverage on the President in their negotiations with him about major policy issues. Monday morning, when I was reading the Wall Street Journal, I saw a statement in the front page article. The statement was from Speaker Gingrich. In reading that, I gained an insight into how we arrived at this year's shutdowns, and why these shutdowns are so different from those of the past. The paper describes the strategy that Speaker Gingrich devised to get his way in disagreements with the President. I will quote very briefly from that article. ``He''--that is Speaker Gingrich--``would need to make heavy use of the only weapon at his disposal that could possibly match President Clinton's veto: The power of the purse.'' Here is a quote from the Speaker. ```That's the key strategic decision made on election night a year ago,' Mr. Gingrich says. `If you are going to operate with his veto being the ultimate trump, you have to operate within a very narrow range of change . . . You had to find a trump to match his trump. And the right not to pass money bills is the only trump that is equally strong.''' Mr. President, I want to focus people's attention on this phrase ``the right not to pass money bills.'' The Speaker talks about this right, this so-called right. The obvious question is whether this is an appropriate and an acceptable trump for the Presidential veto, as the Speaker seems to believe, or whether, on the contrary, it is an abuse of power, whether it is a proper use of the power vested in the congressional majority under the Constitution, or whether it is a perversion or destruction of the delicate system of checks and balances set out by the Framers of the Constitution. I have done my best to analyze the Constitution in light of the Speaker's remarks, and it is my conclusion that the refusal to maintain funding for basic Government services is, in fact, an abuse of the power granted by the people to the Congress and the Constitution. I would like to take a few minutes to explain that reason. The Founding Fathers set up a very delicate system of checks and balances. In article I, Congress is given authority to make laws in a wide range of areas. For instance, Congress is given exclusive authority to appropriate money. Article I, section 9, reads: No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law. The Framers recognized the need to have a check on irresponsible legislation by the Congress and they gave the President the power to veto. Article I, section 7 contains that power. It says: Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law . . . be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve, he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it. . . . Clearly, when there would be a disagreement between the Congress and the President, the Framers of the Constitution wanted to provide a method for reconciling the differences, and in this language, this language describing the veto, they established a procedure to determine which side should prevail. When in disagreement with the Congress, the President would veto the bill and return it to Congress. If no agreement were reached, the Congress could pass the bill again, and if they had the votes, the two-thirds votes in each House to override the President's veto, the bill would become law. This system of checks and balances has served us reasonably well for 206 years, with both the Congress and the President generally agreeing to abide by the procedures set out in the Constitution. There was one major departure, and that was with the action by President Nixon to impound funds which the Congress had appropriated for spending. In that case, the final determination was that the President had, in fact, abused his power, that appropriations legally made and passed, in some cases over the veto of the President, prevailed over the contrary desire of the President to get his way. And just as the President in that case abused his power under the Constitution when he impounded funds that were legally appropriated over his objection, I believe that by shutting down Government services and maintaining those services shut down in order to gain leverage with the President on larger policy issues, the Congress is similarly abusing its authority under the Constitution. Those who wrote the Constitution were focused on how to resolve legislative differences between the Congress and the President. The Supreme Court has recognized this focus of the Founding Fathers. Mr. Justice Jackson in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Ccompany versus Sawyer stated: While the Constitution diffuses power the better to secure liberty, it also contemplates that practice will integrate the dispersed powers into a workable Government. It enjoins upon its branches separateness but interdependence, autonomy but reciprocity. 343 U.S. 579,635 (1952). The Founders of the country assumed that the failure of the President to sign legislation or the failure of Congress to enact legislation would be based on specific disagreements on what that legislation should contain, not on the desire of either the Congress or the President to extort concessions from the other on basic policy differences. Mr. President, I use the word ``extort'' here because I believe it actively describes the current situation. The dictionary defines ``extort'' as ``to wrest or wring from a person by violence, intimidation or abuse of authority.'' I believe we have an attempt here to wrest or wring concessions from the President by abuse of authority. Mr. Gingrich talks about Congress' so-called right not to pass money bills--in other words, the right to shut down the Government to get his way in disagreements with the President. He is not just asserting his right to disagree with the President on spending levels or levels of taxation. He is not just asserting the right to pass legislation reflecting his view of what is the right level of spending or taxation. He is not just asserting the Congress' right to pass those laws again over the President's veto if the disagreement continues. No, here the Speaker's position goes well beyond the constitutional framework for resolving disagreements between the Congress and the President. Here we have Mr. Gingrich's majority in Congress arguing for major changes in authorizing legislation in Medicare, in Medicaid, and in numerous other areas of policy in seeking to get its way by, in fact, refusing to fund the Government itself, the entire Government or what is left of the Government to be funded, if the President does not bow to their wishes--not just refusing to fund the portion of the Government that the President wants to fund and the majority wants to defund but refusing to fund other broadly supported areas of Government activity. This abuse of power or extorting of concessions from the President by refusing to maintain the basic services of Government is not part of the checks and balances that the Framers of the Constitution envisioned. They assumed that the maintenance of Government activities which both the Congress and the President deemed to be worthwhile would be supported by mutual consent of the two branches of Government. They did not anticipate that one branch would be willing to kill its own children unless the other branch agreed to give ground on policy disputes. The obvious question is whether in fact this so-called right not to pass money bills is the ultimate trump or even the best trump. I suggest it is not. I suggest that the Founding Fathers put one more trump in this delicate balance of Government structure, and that is the trump of the people's vote every 2 years. Abuse of power is always possible in politics and government, and the Framers of our Constitution were more keenly aware of the danger than any of us. In fact, the entire Constitution was written in reaction to the very abusive power which they suffered at the hands of the British monarchy. For that very reason, they provided what is literally the ultimate-- and certainly the best--trump, the right of the people to express their will every 2 years on who comprises the House of Representatives and on who holds one-third of the seats in the Senate. Article I, section 2, and article I, section 3, set out that the House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every 2 years and that a third of the Senate shall be elected every 2 years. Time will tell whether the people of the country decide to use that ultimate trump to remedy what appears to me to be a clear abuse of the power granted by the people to the Congress by way of the Constitution. Until that time, this extortion, this abuse of power, should stop. It should stop today. Today we should pass a continuing resolution to bring the Government back to full operation. Today we should pass a continuing resolution for a period long enough to allow careful negotiation on the budget and serious negotiation on the budget, not for the 2 or 3 days for which we were just advised by the majority leader we are likely to be passing a continuing resolution. And today we should resolve that the power not to pass money bills, which the Congress clearly has--and I do not dispute that Congress has that power, but that power should never become or never be seen as a right not to pass money bills, as Mr. Gingrich asserts. Today we should fully restore the checks and balances between the President and the Congress which the Constitution of the United States contemplated at the time of the founding of the Republic. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BINGAMAN

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

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the conference report on the defense authorization bill and to urge my colleagues to vote against it. Earlier this year I voted against the authorization bill in committee and on the Senate floor. In each case I was doing so for the first time in my 13 years in the Senate during all of which I have served on the Armed Services Committee. On September 6 when the Senate passed this bill I warned my colleagues that we were going to conference with a bad Senate bill and an even worse House bill and that it was hard to imagine a conference result many of us could support. My only hope was that having seen thirty-four Senators vote against the bill on September 6, including the ranking Democrat on every Armed Services Subcommittee, the majority would reach out to try to deal with the concerns of these members. Many of those who voted against the bill on September 6 were, like me, casting the first vote in their Senate careers against a Defense authorization bill. Unfortunately, there was no reaching out in conference. With the sole exception of the ballistic missile defense provisions there was not a Member level meeting of the conference to which Democrats were invited in two months. We were simply informed through our staffs as to how issues had been resolved, in some cases after that information had already reached the press. Indeed, I found the press a very enlightening source over the past two months about Member level meetings occurring between House and Senate Republicans. This is not how conferences have previously worked in my 13 years on the committee under Chairmen Tower, Goldwater, and Nunn. Never were the views of the minority disregarded on so many items. Never was there no opportunity given the minority to at least have their views heard during the conference and to test the sentiment of members, not staff, by putting issues to votes. There has always been a big four process where the full committee chairmen and ranking members would meet to try to resolve the truly difficult issues the solution to which had eluded the subcommittee chairmen and ranking members. But never before did that process start 2\1/2\ months before the end of the conference when almost no issues had been resolved at the panel level and never before were the results of that process, especially controversial results, not briefed to members for their discussion and approval at member-level meetings of Senate conferees. Mr. President, I believe that, unless corrected, what has happened this year on this bill in terms of process alone portends a very bleak future for the Armed Services Committee and the Defense authorization process. The majority may be dooming a committee that has always strived for bipartisanship, and therefore relevance, to becoming a highly partisan debating society with all the real decisions being left to the Appropriations Committee. When the Armed Services Committee works on a bipartisan basis, as Senator Smith and Senator Cohen did on the good acquisition reform provisions in this bill, it can make real contributions to providing this Nation an effective defense at the lowest cost to the taxpayers. But that was not the norm in this conference. I have spoken thus far about a broken process. Let me now, Mr. President, list some of the problems I see in this bill. I will use two baselines for comparison purposes, the defense authorization bill passed by the Senate on September 6 by a 64 to 34 margin and the Defense appropriations conference report which passed the Senate on November 16 by a 59 to 39 margin. This bill is significantly worse than both those measures. It not only authorizes a net $7 billion in additional spending for unrequested, often unneeded and unsustainable projects which were included in the appropriations conference report, it breaks new ground in making bad public policy in a whole series of areas not previously put before the Senate. I will not go through them all in any detail for that would take too much of the Senate's time on a doomed conference report. But let me cite some of the examples: provisions on ballistic missile defense which would clearly undermine the ABM Treaty and revive the cold war, a mandate to discharge people who are HIV-positive from the military even if they can carry out their responsibilities, a mandate to terminate the independent Office of Operational Test and Evaluation, an office that previously enjoyed strong bipartisan support, a series of shipbuilding provisions that represent the sum of all parochial interests, but fail to meet the national interest, a series of protectionist special-interest buy America provisions that go beyond anything I have previously seen in a Defense authorization conference report, provisions on funding of contingency operations and on command and control of U.S. Forces that raise constitutional issues, the total undermining of the land mine moratorium provision which this body passed 67 to 27 on August 4 and which we passed again as part of the foreign operations appropriations bill, and on and on. I am only going to go into detail on one relatively minor issue, the sale of the Federal interest in Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1 at Elk Hills, CA, a field that is currently jointly owned with Chevron Corp. This field is one of the 10 largest oil fields in the United States with some estimates of recoverable reserves running well over a billion barrels of oil equivalent. The taxpayers own approximately 78 percent of the field and Chevron owns the rest. This issue of the sale of Elk Hills was the subject of some considerable discussion last Friday. The point was made by the senior Senator from Virginia that the administration had proposed the sale of Elk Hills. That is true. But it is also true that the administration, as recently as 2 weeks ago, continued to ask for 2 years to complete the transaction--through September 30, 1997--and it is also true that the administration asked for the fallback option of authority to create a government-owned corporation to manage the reserves if it could not get an adequate price for its interest in Elk Hills. If the administration proposal were in this bill, particularly with regard to timing, this Senator would not be raising any concern about this provision. Unfortunately, it is not what is in the bill. Let me review the history as I understand it. Democrats on the Armed Services Committee have been concerned about insuring against a fire sale of this valuable asset since this issue was thrust upon us by the budget resolution in June. That resolution effectively mandated the sale of all the naval petroleum reserves in 1 year. We had held no hearings on this subject this year, and in the one hearing where this issue had been brought up in 1994, there had been criticism from the Republican side of DOE s plans to sell Elk Hills. Nevertheless, since the majority felt that it must respond to the budget resolution mandate, I and other Democrats sought as best we could without the benefit of hearings to add safeguards against a fire sale during committee deliberations in June and in a floor amendment in July. The most important safeguard was one cited by the senior Senator from Virginia on Friday; namely, that the Secretary of Energy and the Director of OMB could bring the sales process to a halt if they felt they were not going to get an adequate price or if they felt another course of action was more in the national interest. This safeguard is similar in effect to the administration safeguard that they be allowed to form a government-owned corporation as a fallback if they are not getting an adequate price. This is the course recommended by the National Academy of Public Administration. Unfortunately, all safeguards, both those in the Senate-passed authorization bill provision and those in the administration proposal, ran afoul of Congressional Budget Office [CBO] scoring. It was the view of CBO that the safeguards were likely to be utilized and that therefore a second bill would be needed to sell the Elk Hills reserve. So for purposes of the reconciliation bill, the committee, over Democratic opposition, recommended dropping the safeguard provision. As many Members know, thanks to the same CBO scoring, this provision became subject to the Byrd rule in the reconciliation process and was dropped from that legislation on a point of order. CBO effectively found that sale of the Elk Hills would not contribute to deficit reduction in fiscal years 1996 to 2002, and most importantly from the point of view of the Byrd rule, would make deficits worse for decades after that. CBO projected that the sale of Elk Hills would only generate $1.5 billion for the taxpayers. In my view, and luckily in the view of senior administration officials, if that's all the taxpayers are offered, this sale should not happen. CBO got this low number through the combination of a very conservative estimate of recoverable reserves and the use of a very high discount rate for future revenues, far above Government discount rates. Once this issue was taken out of the budget process, where it never should have been in the first place, I and other Democrats thought the best thing to do was put it off to next year so we could really understand it. That was the initial decision in the staff discussions in conference. But then the issue was reopened. To give the majority staff credit, they insisted on the key safeguard which the Senate had passed, namely, that the Secretary of Energy could stop the sale if the Government was not getting an adequate price or if another course of action better served our national interest. But when our minority staff recommended that we allow 2 years for the sale as the administration had proposed, my understanding is that the House majority staff refused. We regret that and regret that Democratic Members on our side were not given the chance to address the issue with Members from the other body. A rushed sale does not work in the taxpayers' interest, although it may well work to the advantage of private parties. Members on both sides know from experience that it often takes the executive branch in general, and the Department of Energy in particular, longer to do things than they predict. So the 2 years which the administration has requested may well be optimistic in terms of completing a one-of-a-kind transaction which the Department has never attempted before. The indications which my staff have heard are that the Department of Energy has been withholding information on the potential value of this field from interested private sector parties. At least one private sector entity seeking information in Government files about the field has been told it must use the Freedom of Information Act to get that information. That is obviously not the way to generate interest for potential buyers of this valuable asset which has produced a net $13 billion in federal revenues over the past 20 years. My view is that the controversy over this relatively minor provision in this huge bill is an example of where bipartisan member meetings might well have resulted in a different and better outcome. As I said earlier, there are far more important and numerous reasons to oppose this bill. But this provision is an example of the breakdown in the conference process which I referred to at the outset of my remarks and which I very much regret. Mr. President, it is not with any pleasure that I am going to cast my first vote against a Defense authorization conference report in my thirteen years in the Senate. I am sure that is true for the many Members who will be casting such a vote for the first time in their careers, some of which are far longer than mine. But I am absolutely sure that it is the right vote. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing the bill and sending it back to conference for more work. If it is passed, I will urge the President to carry out his threat to veto it. I hope the majority will then respond to the President's request to provide for the January 1 military pay raise on separate legislation prior to adjourning this year and that next year we can work on a bipartisan basis on a Defense authorization bill that can become law. Competition Provisions

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I wanted to join both Senators from Arkansas in stating what an excellent choice Jim Sasser is for Ambassador to China. I had the good fortune to be in Beijing this summer and to see firsthand the importance of that post which the President has chosen Senator Sasser to fill. I had the good fortune to serve here in the Senate for 12 years with Jim Sasser. I know of his great negotiating skills, his great leadership ability, and I believe his great advocacy skills, which will serve him well and serve this country well in this new position which he is about to take on. So I think the Senate has acted very appropriately, the President has acted appropriately, and I look forward to the day when Jim Sasser is our representative, very soon, in Beijing. I again commend all Senators for voting for his nomination.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I have serious concerns about the deployment of American troops in Bosnia. I certainly have concerns about the stability of the peace accord reached in Dayton. I have concerns about the potential disruption that Bosnian Serbs and other antipeace factions of the various affected parties may create. And I have no illusions about the vulnerability of Americans--our Nation's men and women who will be part of the Peace Implementation Force in Bosnia--to innumerable dangers as a result of this deployment. But leadership is not risk-free, Mr. President. It is clear that even as we are debating this issue, United States troops are participating in the NATO effort to implement the Bosnia peace agreement. Every nation in Europe--in Western Europe and Eastern Europe, even Russia--is deploying troops as part of the peace accord. The achievements that were reached after painstaking negotiations between Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic with support and facilitation by United States representatives, particularly Secretary of State Christopher and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, have generated the best chance yet of achieving a stable outcome for the Baltic region. It is clear that U.S. support of this NATO effort is essential if we are to maintain our leadership role in the world, and if the peace enforcement effort is to succeed. The November 21 peace agreement calls for the creation of a 60,000 member implementation force [I-FOR], which will be comprised of 30 countries. I-FOR's mission is not to side with the combatants, but is rather to monitor and enforce compliance with the military aspects of the settlement. I have listened carefully to testimony from defense and foreign policy experts on the use of military forces to enforce a peace regime. None of them has identified this as an easy mission and all have concerns. While I feel there are many risks which may potentially disrupt NATO's efforts to secure peace in the region, I agree with former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft that ``disaster is certain if the U.S. backs out of the situation now.'' Mr. President, I do not support an open-ended time frame to maintaining peace indefinitely in the region. I think that the debates this Chamber has had, the testimony that has been provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the dialog that many here have had with the President and Secretary Perry have underscored the critical significance of limiting the scope of our mission in Bosnia. I am confident that the President is committed to the 1-year time frame and is committed to the limited objectives he has presented--namely, separating the parties and maintaining the cease-fire. And I have been assured that those who attack our forces or impede this process will be dealt with swiftly and decisively. Mr. President, our troops are on the ground today in Bosnia; we are there, and we need to support our men and women. Congress should not withhold funds that are needed to support our troops, and we should not tie the President's hands during this time when American leadership matters so very much. My vote is to approve of U.S. participation in the NATO initiative.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I did not support the effort yesterday to begin writing exceptions into the first amendment of our Constitution. The first amendment protects the right of free speech, no matter how unpopular or offensive that speech is. The Court interprets this to include the right of people to burn a flag if a person so chooses. Presumably, the Court would reach the same conclusion with regard to a person's right to burn the Constitution or even the Bill of Rights itself. Modern technology has given us the ability to see political protest, including the burning of flags, as it occurs around the world--in Tiananmen Square, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and in South Africa. We are not only able to see the political protest, we are also able to see those governments step in to prevent that expression, to limit that speech, and to silence dissent and criticism aimed at those in power. This proposed constitutional amendment would sanction that same type of repressive action by our own Government. And such repression would not be permitted only when people are disturbing the peace, but also when they are trying to dramatize their strongly held political views. Like most citizens, I might find many of those political views offensive. But I am not willing to amend the Constitution to permit States and the Federal Government to restrict the expression of those views. It distresses me to see the symbol of our great Republic mocked and desecrated. But I am not so foolish as to mutilate those values themselves. The strength of our country is in large part due to the fact that we tolerated the expression of unpopular views. It does not strengthen us as a nation to begin, by constitutional amendment, to restrict the right of political expression. It does not protect our Nation to diminish the very liberties which have made us the envy of all mankind. Mr. President, it seems that this issue surfaces every 4 or 5 years usually before Presidential elections. We spoke about this issue before the last Presidential election and we debate the issue again now. Mr. President, one point which has come home to me time and again since I have been in the Senate, is that the Framers of our Constitution did a marvelous thing when they wrote that document and when they added to it the Bill of Rights. Not only did they produce a document embodying our most precious values and a system of government to advance and protect those values, they also had the wisdom to anticipate the very type of effort to silence unpopular expression. They anticipated it, and they guarded against it by requiring changes in the Constitution to be accomplished only by a two-thirds vote of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and then by the approval of three-quarters of the legislatures of our States. Those requirements have served us well in the present debate. I am glad that the necessary two-thirds vote to approve this amendment was not achieved in this Senate. I am heartened to hear the strong statements of many of my colleagues against the amendment. What about the public reaction to all of this? Recent polls show that a majority of Americans favor such a constitutional amendment and indicate that they would be inclined to vote against a Representative or Senator who opposed it. I would like to believe that, given time for additional reflection, most Americans would have a different view. I would like to believe that those of us in public life have a responsibility and opportunity to persuade our fellow citizens on this issue. Time will tell whether my beliefs are well-founded. I cast my vote against this proposed amendment with the satisfaction of knowing that I have done what is clearly right.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, Julian Grayson has retired from service to the Senate. He worked here longer than most of us ever will, and, unlike many of us, he is universally admired and appreciated. Mr. Grayson was a waiter for the Senate restaurants, and worked on the caucus lunches as well as in the Senators' private dining room. He started here in 1950, but left in 1964 to devote his full time to the Methodist ministry. After a successful career in that calling, he returned to the Senate in 1983 at age 67. He is a man of great dignity and spirit, and all of us who are fortunate enough to know him know that he is a man of many parts. I will miss our frequent conversations, and hope that he will, too.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my friend and colleague, the senior Senator from New Mexico, Senator Domenici, in introducing legislation today that will fairly compensate a group of dedicated former Federal employees for the loss of retirement benefits that they experienced as a result of the transfer of their duties from the Department of Energy to the County of Los Alamos, NM. Mr. President, in 1989, the responsibility for the Los Alamos Fire Department, which jointly serves the Los Alamos National Laboratories and Los Alamos County municipality, was transferred from the Department of Energy to the county. As a result of the transfer, some of these firefighters lost more than $20,000 in retirement funds that they had accrued with the Federal Government. And, as a result of the transfer, these individuals, who have served an average of 15 years with the Department of Energy, no longer have retirement benefits. Clearly, this is a situation that must be remedied as soon as possible. Mr. President, with the support of Senator Domenici I am sure that we will finally be able to provide these firefighters with the compensation for lost retirement benefits they have incurred as a result of the transfer of their responsibilities from the Federal Government to the State of New Mexico and I look forward to working for the prompt consideration and passage of this legislation.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, one of the first people I met when I came to the Senate, and one on whose kind interest I came to rely, was Richard Halverson, the man who served as Chaplain of the Senate from 1981 until early this year. Many of my colleagues have commented on his service to the Senate, and to all of us who work here. He considered what he called the Senate family--from the most senior cook to the least junior Senator--his flock. His approachable manner and generous ways endeared him to us all. ``I try never to be in a hurry,'' he said in an interview with the Hill last year. Everyone responded to this gentle, important courtesy in a place where schedules are demanding and often implacable. Kipling wrote of those who ``can talk with kings and keep the common touch.'' Dr. Halverson, in the course of his ministry here, demonstrated that he was capable of this skill, and each of us appreciated that when he talked with us, as well as with kings, we were elevated by his special attention. He will be in our thoughts and prayers for years to come.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my friend and colleague, the senior Senator from New Mexico, Senator Domenici, in introducing legislation today that will fairly compensate a group of dedicated former Federal employees for the loss of retirement benefits that they experienced as a result of the transfer of their duties from the Department of Energy to the County of Los Alamos, NM. Mr. President, in 1989, the responsibility for the Los Alamos Fire Department, which jointly serves the Los Alamos National Laboratories and Los Alamos County municipality, was transferred from the Department of Energy to the county. As a result of the transfer, some of these firefighters lost more than $20,000 in retirement funds that they had accrued with the Federal Government. And, as a result of the transfer, these individuals, who have served an average of 15 years with the Department of Energy, no longer have retirement benefits. Clearly, this is a situation that must be remedied as soon as possible. Mr. President, with the support of Senator Domenici I am sure that we will finally be able to provide these firefighters with the compensation for lost retirement benefits they have incurred as a result of the transfer of their responsibilities from the Federal Government to the State of New Mexico and I look forward to working for the prompt consideration and passage of this legislation.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, it was with great sadness that I learned of the death of Ernest Boyer who was president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Ernie Boyer was a friend to many of us in the Senate, and to thousands who will never know his name but who will feel his influence for years to come. His contributions to education are well known. ``Ready to Learn'' and ``The Basic School,'' his excellent primers on the state of American education, both make the strong case that we can't start too soon in preparing our children--through education--for the world they will face. It was my good fortune, Mr. President, to have Ernest Boyer as a sounding board, an ally, and a friend. We have lost a remarkable man with his death, and I hope that others of us will be able in some small measure to carry on with his ideas. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about ``sensible men and conscientious men all over the world [who] were of one religion of well-doing and daring.'' I believe, Mr. President, that Ernest Boyer's well-doing and daring sprang from his sensible view and his conscientious approach. He was very fine, and I will miss his counsel and friendship.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations conference report. When this bill was adopted by the Senate on September 29, it maintained the Community Oriented Policing Services Program [COPS] by eliminating the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Block Grant Program, reinstated the Legal Services Corporation, and fully funded the Violence [[Page S 18297]] Against Women Act. Now this appropriations bill returns to the Senate reflecting the wishes of the House at the expense of the Senate. The COPS Program has been eliminated by the re-instatement of the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Block Grant Program, the Legal Services Corporation will receive approximately $60 million less than the Senate had agreed upon, and the Violence Against Women Act will also receive approximately $40 million less than what the Senate agreed upon. As we all know, the COPS Program has proven to be successful. In one year, since the program's inception, New Mexico has received over 180 officers from the COPS Program. All parts of New Mexico have been awarded officer positions. From the Aztec Police Department in the north and Sunland Park in the South, to Quay County in the east and Laguna Pueblo in the west, all have felt the impact of this program. The COPS Program is different from the block grant contained in the conference report because it emphasizes the concept of community policing. It gets officers out into the community preventing crimes rather than reacting to crimes once they have been committed. Mr. President, I understand that the language in this appropriations bill would allow a community to use the block grant money to hire secretaries, buy a radar gun or buy a floodlight for a local jail. The law enforcement community is against this broad approach. The sentiment is best summed up by Donald L. Cahill, the chairman of the national legislative committee for the Fraternal Order of Police, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February on the block grant type proposal. He stated: This broader category opens the door to using these funds for numerous purposes other than hiring police officers--such as hiring prosecutors or judges, buying equipment, lighting streets, or whatever. These are all worthwhile--but they won't arrest a single criminal. The bottom line is to place more officers on the street and the COPS program has proven to be successful. That is why the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association, and the National Troopers' Coalition support the COPS Program. To quote Mr. Cahill again, ``Police are the answer for today and prevention is the answer for tomorrow.'' If the Senate agrees to fund the Violence Against Women Act at the figure contained in the conference report, the Senate is stating that this program is not as strong a priority as it was on September 29. If given the resources, this act has the potential to demonstrate that the Federal Government can make a real difference when dealing with violence against women. Through prosecution, outreach, and education, the Federal Government has assumed the responsibility of a full partner in this cause. In summary, our communities will suffer the direct affects of these misaligned priorities. Mr. President, I would like to take a few additional minutes to discuss some other areas of the conference report that have led me to oppose the bill. I want to preface my comments with a reminder to those who are earnestly committed to the future economic well-being of our Nation and our citizens. Balancing the budget is certainly a goal I support; this cause does make sense, but that goal alone is not enough to secure a robust and healthy economic future for our country. How we cut, what we cut matters a great deal. As many of you know, I have watched rather incredulously as aid to dependent children, student loans, Medicare and Medicaid, the earned income tax credit have been slashed and attacked in this Chamber as we proceed, without missing a beat, to provide nearly $800 million on 129 military construction projects above the Pentagon's request, above what the President of the United States proposed was necessary to maintain the national security interests of the country. We are making tough decisions that affect people's lives and impact the ability of so many who are hard-working, low income Americans to keep their families together, keep food on the table, and have a chance at getting their children into colleges. What we cut matters, and I am opposed to the decimation of our Nation's technology programs. Our firms are at a distinct disadvantage to firms in Germany, France, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and in nearly all industrialized nations when it comes to making the investments required to match what foreign government-industry partnerships provide for pre-competitive technology support. We have achieved laudable and significant results from the Technology Reinvestment Program, the Advanced Technology Program, and the Manufacturing Extension Program. While we cut programs, even eliminate some--the Office of Technology Assessment, for example, no longer exists--the Japanese Government despite its budget and economic problems is going to double its research and development expenditures by the year 2000. Our technology programs are not corporate welfare; these have been programs that have helped trigger the competitive rebound of our Nation's firms and that have helped small and medium-sized firms benefit from national technology programs and projects, that would have otherwise been the exclusive privilege of larger firms with the contacts, resources, and infrastructure to cooperate with national laboratories. This Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill is a disturbing ideological exercise that threatens the health of our future economy. The technology programs of the Department of Commerce help to expand our economy, help Americans compete in the global marketplace, and help to generate high-quality, high-wage jobs that our workers need. Many say that the reason that the Advanced Technology Program is being eliminated is that the projects did not earn any political ownership. This is a sad commentary on our judgment of what is important and not important as we make decisions in our budget-cutting efforts. As Leslie Helm of the Los Angeles Times wrote on November 26, 1995: The Advanced Technology Program . . . works because projects are proposed by industry and companies are required to match government money on their own. This is an example of how we should be leveraging the taxpayer's dollar, getting more from government investments than we otherwise would achieve. The ATP was created during the Bush administration and had strong bipartisan support, support that such a promising, successful program should have today. I also cannot support this bill because of the sharp reduction for the National Information Infrastructure Grants Program. The NII Program assists hospitals, schools, libraries, and local governments in procuring advanced communications equipment to provide better health care, education, and local government services. The conference report eliminates funding for the GLOBE Program, which promotes knowledge of science and the environment in our schools. And although it remains anemically funded, I think that the reductions in this bill for the Manufacturing Extension Program are wrong-headed and continue the trend of undermining our Nation's best efforts in decades at partnering with industry to maintain our national technological competitiveness both in the commercial and national defense sectors. We need to bias our spending toward those projects that produce real growth in our economy. Growth generates jobs, better incomes, and a higher standard of living for our citizens. For these reasons, Mr. President, I must strongly oppose this bill and urge the President to veto it.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. I appreciate that very much. I certainly agree that that is an important thing to do. The other issue I wanted to clarify is that the agreement calls for us to proceed to consider START II before we go out of session this year. Yesterday, again the majority leader said that it was his intent that we complete action on START II. I think it is very important that we do that. Again, I would just ask if it is his view that we can go ahead and get that treaty voted on and sent on before we go off on the holidays.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Madam President, let me just say that I appreciate the fact that we do have an agreement in this unanimous-consent agreement to bring it up before we conclude the session and move to the consideration of it. I am encouraged by the statement and by the indication of the Senator from North Carolina, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, that he thinks we can move to it very expeditiously. I appreciate the majority leader's very good work on the issues. I appreciate the Senator from North Carolina, and I also, of course, appreciate the Senator from Massachusetts, who I know has worked very hard to get this agreement and, of course, the Democratic leader as well. So thank you all. I no longer object to proceeding on the flag amendment. I know the majority leader intends to do that tomorrow. I have no objection.