Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I would like to ask the Senator from Oklahoma a question. He mentioned food stamps. The Senator will recall that last year on the Agriculture appropriations bill, we debated the issue of allowing the States to experiment with giving food stamp- eligible recipients cash instead of food stamps. I have taken strong exception to that, and I do not mean to demean people who are on food stamps. But let us assume that a parent with three children is getting a couple hundred dollars a month in cash like an SSI check, or Social Security check, or anything else, and assume they get that check on the first day of the month and the television repairman, or the television cable company man shows up and says, ``I am here to disconnect the cable; you are behind 2 months and our rule is we have to disconnect. You owe us $50.'' I have this deep seated suspicion that the cable television guy is going to get the $50 and the children are going to get what is left. While that passed last year, I am going to do everything I can this year to undo that. It is still a pilot program. Some of the Governors like it because, as you know, if you go to the grocery store and spend a voucher, you have to pay sales tax on it. If you go to the grocery store and use a food stamp, you do not pay sales tax. So this is worth millions of dollars to States, which are always looking for new revenues--painless revenues, especially. My state has a 5-percent sales tax which also applies to groceries. There are not too many States which still tax food, but mine does. That means that Arkansans who are getting food stamps will see a 5-percent reduction in the amount of food they can provide for their children, even if they are careful about spending that money only for food. I was wondering if the Senator had any thoughts about that.

Mr. BUMPERS. May I ask one more question, and then I will leave the floor. I know the Senator wants to move to table my amendment. Let me ask the Senator this question: Is there one thing in the constitutional amendment, one thing, that requires the Senate to do anything between now and the year 2002, dealing with the deficit?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mine requires a 60-vote majority.

Mr. BUMPERS. The Contract With America calls for increased defense spending, for a middle-class tax cut, and a capital gains tax cut. In all, those three elements would cost, over the next 7 years, $471 billion. If we do nothing and adopt the Contract With America the deficit goes up $471 billion over 7 years and more than $700 billion over 10 years. The Senator says he wants to start on this deficit the minute we finish debate on the constitutional amendment, and I want to help him. That is the purpose of my proposed amendment. But how on earth can the Senator say to the American people we are going to deal with this thing while we are spending $471 billion more than we are spending now? I must say, Senator, increased spending on defense and cutting taxes and balancing the budget--I heard that $3.5 trillion and 14 years ago.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I wanted to offer an amendment following the Senator from Florida with the idea that we could debate it for awhile, until we wanted to go out, and have it begin in the morning first thing.

Mr. BUMPERS. I amend the unanimous consent request to allow the Senator from Massachusetts to go first.

Mr. BUMPERS. I modify my unanimous-consent request to yield 12 minutes to the two Senators equally divided.

Mr. BUMPERS. Of course. I was told by the Senator from Rhode Island that he thought 3 minutes each would do it. I will be happy to yield for a longer period. What would the Senator suggest?

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to yield to the Senator from Rhode Island for not to exceed 3 minutes, following which the senior Senator from Virginia be recognized for not to exceed 3 minutes, following which the senior Senator from Massachusetts be recognized for 2 minutes for the purpose of laying down an amendment, so that the amendment would qualify for a vote on Tuesday, and that immediately following the laying down of the amendment by the senior Senator from Massachusetts, I be recognized again for the purpose of calling up my amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. Will the Senator from Florida yield for a moment for a unanimous consent agreement? Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized to offer a motion for an amendment at the desk immediately following conclusion of the debate on the Graham amendment. no objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. BUMPERS. I have no objection. We will discuss this.

Mr. BUMPERS. Finally, Mr. President, if I may ask the distinguished Senator from Utah how long are we planning to go tonight?

Mr. BUMPERS. Is there agreement for time on this amendment?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I do not understand what the Senator from Utah said. A motion to table normally shuts off all debate.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I have more to say on this amendment than we have time for tonight. Besides that, the Senator from Georgia, Senator Nunn, wants to be recognized a little late to offer an amendment, and I know the Senator from Idaho has been here a long time and he is tired. Let me start off by making a few introductory comments about this whole process and not just about my amendment. This afternoon, as I reflected on the talking thoughts on the amendment, I thought, what on Earth is going on when we have an amendment before this body that was passed by the House of Representatives to amend the Constitution of the United States--we took it, and it is now House Joint Resolution 1, and we have probably voted close to 30 times. We voted about 70 times since we came in on January 3. We voted on amendments on this about 30 times and every single one of them, I believe, has been tabled. The distinguished floor manager on the Republican side of the aisle has moved to table every amendment and has prevailed almost on a straight party line vote on every amendment. Madam President, I think party discipline, at times, is a wonderful thing. That is what this Nation is all about. We have two parties. I hope we can keep it that way. I am not for third parties. I hear some sophistry about how that would work wonders for the country. I think we have done reasonably well with two political parties and I believe in party unity and discipline--to a point. But I would like to call the attention of my colleagues to how really bizarre this is. Here we are talking about the organic law of the Nation which has provided us with 205 years of unfettered freedom because of the brilliance of James Madison, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and all of the other Founders who crafted that brilliant document. Can you imagine in Philadelphia in 1787 George Washington, presiding over the Constitutional Convention to craft that document, saying, James Madison and I have sat down and crafted this amendment and we will broach no changes; and somebody says, Mr. Chairman--or whatever his title was--I have an amendment that I think would improve that, and James Madison says, Mr. President, I move to table that. That is the end of that amendment. Alexander Hamilton, who believed in more central Government--and I did not particularly agree with him, but he was a brilliant man--says, Mr. President, I have an amendment to change three words here that I believe would improve article and amend article IV on unlawful searches Voted on and that is it. Who here believes that the Constitution of the United States would be the document it is today if at the Constitutional Convention the Founding Fathers had carried on in such a manner? There are 100 Senators--two from each State of the Nation--and we have a right to offer amendments, but they are not even being entertained. They are just being summarily dismissed because they say, if we change this document, House Joint Resolution 1, this amendment to the Constitution, if we change one jot or tittle, the House will not take it back. Deliberative body? Well, that is laughable. We are not deliberating. Some people here are trying to actually improve it. Others, like me, are trying to kill it. But everybody gets the same treatment --they get tabled, harassment, and out of here. Going back to the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution were submitted in 1789, the same time the Constitution was ratified; and the first 10 amendments, which were the Bill of Rights, were adopted at the same time the Constitution was. Since that time, Madam President, there have been 11,000 proposals offered in the U.S. Congress to tinker with that document--11,000. We have had almost one a day since we came back here January 3, 1995. The last time I checked, 35 constitutional amendments had been proposed to the Constitution since January 3. That is the reason the other day--I think I mentioned this once before, but it is worth repeating. I went down to Wake Forest to speak at a convocation celebrating the 100th year of Wake Forest Law School. When they called me and said, ``What will your topic be?'' I said, ``I will call it `Trivializing the Constitution.''' That is what I spoke on, the trivializing the Constitution. There were 11,000 efforts to change a document that the most brilliant minds ever assembled under one roof put together, which has made this country what it is. And so we come here with an amendment that is as unworkable as prohibition. You know, everybody in this country wanted to put a social policy in the Constitution. They said we want to stop people from drinking, so we put it in the Constitution. About 14 years later we took it out. Do you know why? Because we found we had made a miserable mistake. Regardless of how you feel about drinking, that was not the issue. The issue was that we were setting social policy in the Constitution, and all we got out of it was organized crime--Al Capone, the founder of rum-running in this country. Organized crime is still firmly in place in this country. We were tinkering with the Constitution, and a misguided amendment caused it. The figures on this thing are so staggering, people do not want to hear it. Senators do not want to hear it. People who watch C-SPAN do not want to hear it. They do not relate to it. Think about it--promising the American people they would balance the budget by 2002, but first we are going to spend $471 billion more in tax cuts and increase defense spending-- If you took Social Security out of the equation, as the Republicans have suggested, approximately $2 trillion in spending would have to be cut to balance the budget by 2002. How many people in this body do you think, Madam President, believe we are going to cut $2 trillion in 7 years? The answer is in the question. Unhappily for all of us, the constitutional amendment is popular. A vote against House Joint Resolution 1 will not be the first unpopular vote I ever cast. But, as Woodrow Wilson said in his inaugural address, the biggest question for every politician who is a public servant in the mode of a statesman, the biggest question he always has to ask himself, is what part of the public demand should be honored and what part should be rejected. Politicians try to provide everything on the agenda for everybody. We have a $4.5 trillion debt to prove that. But statesmen have to ask themselves, does the proposal expand individual liberties? Does it provide for domestic or international tranquility? Does it educate our people? Does it provide for more health and general welfare? Or is it something to run for reelection on in 1996? I do not intend to denigrate or debase my colleagues, but I daresay, Madam President, if this amendment were being voted on in secret and every Senator knew that not one soul would ever know how he or she voted, you might possibly muster 40 votes max. But the reason the amendment is so popular is because the people of this country think that if you put language in the Constitution, something magical happens. What they do not understand is that there is a real possibility that nothing would happen. For example, Congress might be able to ignore the constitutional requirement if the courts were unwilling or unable to enforce it, as some proponents of the balanced budget amendment suggest. On the other hand, Congress might blindly follow the provisions of this amendment in a manner that causes economic ruin. For example, say we are in the midst of a recession, headed for a depression. We need to unbalance the budget in order to spend money to create some jobs because the unemployment rate has skyrocketed, as occurred during the Depression when it was 25 percent. If you have 41 people in the Senate who say, ``I am not voting to unbalance the budget under any conditions'', you could be faced with is an apocalypse. And I am telling you, Madam President, that is not a farfetched idea. I have watched, on this floor since I have been in the Senate, people vote to spend money on everything they could find and then when it came time to raise the debt ceiling they said, No! I am not going to vote to raise the debt ceiling. I just got through voting for $250 billion for a defense budget and for the space station and everything else I could find to spend money for, but I am not voting to raise the debt ceiling. I am going to go back and tell my people what a great fiscal conservative I am. The people of this country, and indeed the Congress, in their infinite wisdom have seen fit to tinker with the Constitution very, very rarely. As Norman Ornstein said amending the Constitution should be ``the fix of last resort''. This is a perfect description, ``the fix of last resort.'' To my friends who pride themselves on being conservatives, which I do when it comes to fiscal matters, do you know what Robert Goldwin at the conservative American Enterprise Institute said? ``True conservatives do not muck with the Constitution.'' All you conservatives, let me repeat it. This great man at the American Enterprise Institute said, ``True conservatives do not muck with the Constitution.'' My motion would refer House Joint Resolution 1 to the Budget Committee with instructions that the Committee report language which includes the requirements of my proposed amendment. Now, Madam President, my proposed amendment is designed for those members who really do not want to muck with the Constitution. I invite my colleagues to look at these two charts which describes why my proposed amendment is designed to do what needs to be done legislatively and, in my opinion, has more force and effect than a constitutional amendment. Can you believe that we are debating an amendment to balance the budget, and at the same time people are saying, ``let's go on a spending spree until the year 2002 and pray to God that people have forgotten what we said in 1995''. Let us not deal with the deficit until the year 2002. I say let us start right now. My proposed amendment, if enacted into law, would require that we will have a balanced budget by the year 2002. The constitutional amendment calls for a balanced budget, but contains no enforcement mechanism that would actually require a balanced budget. If that is not a dramatic difference, I do not understand the mother tongue, English. My amendment requires a balanced budget; the constitutional amendment calls for one. It does not demand it at all. My proposed amendment says you can waive the balanced budget requirement by a three-fifths vote. So does the constitutional amendment. My proposed amendment says you waive it if there is a declaration of war. The constitutional amendment says the same thing. My proposed amendment says if we are in a military conflict, a majority of each house can waive the requirement. The constitutional amendment includes the same provision. Budget Resolution passed by Congress between now and 2002 contain a glide path showing how we will get to a balanced budget by 2002. Everybody says we cannot balance the budget overnight. Everybody knows we cannot do it overnight. My proposed amendment is enforceable because a budget resolution could not be passed if it did not balance the budget in 2002. If a budget resolution is not passed, Congress is prohibited from enacting appropriations and tax bills. The constitutional amendment, on the other hand, may or may not be enforceable. Nobody knows for sure. The most beautiful thing about my proposed amendment is it is more enforceable than the constitutional amendment and it does not touch the Constitution. My proposed amendment also protects Social Security. The constitutional amendment raids the Social Security system to the tune of $681 billion between now and the year 2002. My proposed amendment says, ``Action now.'' Do you know what the constitutional amendment that we are debating here says? ``No requirement for action until the year 2002, at the earliest.'' That is right, America; 7 years before we even start on this whole thing and no requirement to do otherwise. Madam President, I have some more things I want to say, but everybody wants to get out of here. My distinguished friend from Georgia has an amendment he wants to lay down and discuss for a moment. So I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to yield to the Senator from Georgia for that purpose, that my motion be temporarily laid aside, and that it become the pending business when we return to House Joint Resolution 1 tomorrow morning.

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to modify the motion. I have discussed this with the Senator from Idaho. It is a motion that would require a 60-vote majority instead of a simple majority one place in the bill.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I send a motion to refer to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I cannot tell you how contemptuous I am of the fact that we could not get order in the Senate to deliver this tribute. Some of our own colleagues were heroes during World War II. Senator John Glenn, a brave marine, is on the Senate floor now. Nobody in this body fought longer and harder than he. And in one of the bloodiest battles of all, the battle of Guadalcanal, was Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island. I was asked by the Marine Corps to deliver this memorial, and I was happy to do it. I was not at Iwo Jima. I was just a young marine getting ready to be shipped out to invade Japan. Mr. President, many people in this body remember very little about World War II and nothing about Iwo Jima. We wanted that island so we could bomb Japan from the islands of Tinian, Guam, and Saipan. We needed Iwo Jima so that disabled planes that could not make it back to Tinian from Japan would have a relatively safe haven on which to land. It is estimated that the landing strip at Iwo Jima saved the lives of 25,000 airmen who would have had to ditch at sea and probably would have been lost if it had not been for those brave, almost 6,000, men who gave their lives there. I do not intend to criticize my colleagues, but it is tragic that sometimes people do not show more respect for those who provided the liberties for this Nation so we could stand here and debate these issues as free men and women. It is disappointing. Last night I went to bed, turned on the television set because that is a good way to go to sleep, and just happened to turn to PBS, the station so many people want to get rid of. I started watching a documentary on Iwo Jima, one of the most gut-wrenching documentaries I have ever witnessed. Men who had never talked about that battle, even to their wives and children, poured out their souls and their hearts to those interviewers. One man said that he killed a Japanese and when he went over to him--I do not know whether he killed him or whether he came upon him--and he said he had a wallet sticking out of his top pocket. He reached over and took it out. He was going to take it. He opened it up, and there was a picture of this young Japanese soldier's mother and father and of his wife and child. And he put it back. He said, ``I knew that that man was doing exactly what he had been forced to do, what he had been told to do--try to kill me. And I had'' been programmed to try to kill him. And he said, ``What a terrible way to resolve our differences.'' One other man said the Japanese were famous for having gold teeth. ``So,'' he said, ``I went around taking gold teeth out of Japanese soldiers' mouths. Got a bag full.'' He said, ``I can hardly stand to tell you that, it is so barbaric. But war is barbaric. I was just young. It is a terrible, shameful thing to admit that today. At the time I thought it was OK.'' Another man said there was a man in his company who said he went around cutting off the ears of Japanese soldiers--barbaric. Somebody told the company commander. This man, who had gathered a whole sack full of ears, was required by his company commander to dig a hole 6 feet deep and bury them and cover them. But of all those men of my age and a little older who spoke last night, virtually every one of them said, ``I did not hate the Japanese. I knew they were doing what they had to do, just as I was doing what I had to do.'' I am honored to have been a Marine, honored to have served in the same war, in the same service, with men like John Glenn, Howell Heflin and John Chafee, and especially honored to be asked by the Marine Corps to deliver this short eulogy to those 6,000 men who died and the 17,000 who were wounded and all of the 60,000 who participated. One man said last night that he felt almost guilty, after seeing what he had seen, coming home alive. I can sort of relate to that. Mr. President, I know everybody in this body joins me in paying tribute to these very brave men. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, if nobody else wishes to speak, let me just follow up on what Senator Ford has said and perhaps we can get back on the matter we are supposed to be debating. This has nothing to do with the Marine Corps. It has to do with another point I want to make. Several of us went to Europe on June 6. We went to Anzio in Italy before we went to Utah and Omaha Beaches. And I was really not prepared for the experience. Anzio, a battle I remembered well was memorialized by roughly 10,000 white crosses and Stars of David in the cemetery there. We were there on June 4. We went then to Utah Beach and Omaha Beach on June 6th. And behind each beach there were roughly 10,000 graves, Stars of David and crosses. Each one of those represented a knock on the door. ``We regret to inform you your son, your husband, your brother has been killed in action.'' That was one of the most traumatic things I ever experienced. President Clinton, in one of the cemeteries was talking to a man. The man said, ``This man who lies under this cross saved my life. He went out on a patrol that I was supposed to go on. I had been doing it every night. He said, ``No, you stay. I'm going tonight.'' ``And I let him go.'' That same man asked the President, ``Do you know Clayton Little?'' And President Clinton said, ``Know him? I should say so. He served in the legislature, both when Senator Bumpers was Governor of Arkansas and when I was Governor of Arkansas. He was one of the finest men I ever knew.'' The man said, ``He was one of the best friends I ever had. He was by my side during the entire battle at Anzio.'' But like this moment, I say to the people of this body that we ought to do this more often--stop and reflect on what is really important in our lives and in this country. I looked at all those graves, and I thought of the unbelievable trauma so many families had experienced as a result of each one of them. And I began to think about the things we say and talk about in this Chamber. And so much of it is not very important. And when you get caught up in the experience I had, you begin to get your priorities a little straighter. It is like a cancer diagnosis. You begin to realize what is important and what is not. But the point I want to close on, Mr. President, as Senator Ford has said very well, nobody should ever question the loyalty or the patriotism of anybody. I deplore that. We are all loyal Americans. We are here debating because we have serious policy disagreements, but we really agree on a lot more than we disagree on. Somebody came up to me and said, ``You know, today's generation would never bare their chest to those German machine guns on those beaches. They'd never get them out of those landing craft to walk up a beach, unprotected, baring their chest to German machine guns.'' And I said, ``Of course they would.'' They thought the same thing about our generation. And I believe that todays generation, if our liberties were at stake, would do the same thing we did. I yield the floor. Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS. The Iwo Jima Memorial is a fitting tribute to the 5,391 men killed, 17,370 men wounded, and the 60,000 men in that total force. But it is a tragedy that there cannot be a statue bloody battle. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be permitted to proceed for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. BUMPERS. The name Iwo Jima would soon take its place along such hallowed names as Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, Belleau Wood, Normandy, and Tarawa Atoll. As a vast naval armada moved closer to the shores of Iwo Jima, the commanders who would soon send their young marines into battle prepared messages to be read shortly before H-hour on board all ships of the invasion fleet. Maj. Gen. Clifton B. Cates, commanding the 4th Marine Division, reminded his marines of their recent victory on Tinian in the Mariana Islands, where the division's ``perfectly executed amphibious operation'' resulted in the capture of the island in 9 days, ``with a minimum of casualties to our unit, and with heavy losses to the enemy.'' Similarly, Maj. Gen. Keller E. Rockey, commanding the 5th Marine Division, searched for the proper words to exhort his men. Unable to draw upon past glories, as his division would fight together as a unit for the first time on Iwo Jima, Rockey reminded his men that the ``time has now come for us to take our place in the battle line.'' Noting that ``the hopes and prayers of our people go with us,'' he assured his marines that ``we will not fail.'' The upcoming 36-day battle on Iwo Jima would fully justify the confidence which Generals Cates and Rockey placed in their marines. One of the most visible and poignant memorials in this city commemorates the flag raising on Mt. Suribachi, the Iwo Jima Memorial, 4 days after the landing, but the battle would rage for 32 more days.Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, the Senate is not in order.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, 50 years ago, I was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, NC, while serving as a radio operator having achieved the rank of sergeant. That was on February 19, 1945. I listened with rapt attention, along with my fellow marines, to radio reports of a massive marine assault on an obscure Pacific island called Iwo Jima. Though at that time, I doubt whether any one of us could pinpoint that island on a map---- Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, could we have order? Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed for 5 minutes to deliver a eulogy honoring those men who died and who were wounded and who participated in the battle of Iwo Jima, 50 years ago.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I rise in support of what I believe is a very well-crafted and thoughtful amendment by the Senator from New Mexico. If this is going to be a permanent arrangement, then the House could legitimately say you have no business interfering with House rules. After all, we hate your 67-vote filibuster rule. But that is not what this amendment says. People should not confuse it with any Senate rules. This amendment is crafted to help the people who really believe in this amendment, and especially the people who have signed on to the Contract With America and promised the American people that they will balance the budget by the year 2002. In my opinion, a House rule that requires a 60-percent majority to raise only one kind of tax does not keep you from raising the gasoline tax, does not keep you from raising user fees, excise taxes, does not keep you from raising Social Security taxes. What the House has done is say that for now and ever you cannot raise taxes--income taxes only--without a 60- vote majority. The Senator from New Mexico is simply saying that this cannot go until the House backs off of that for this 7-year period. Let me say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that if this passes or if this does not pass, I will continue to cooperate with every soul in this body who is genuinely concerned about deficit spending and trying to balance the budget. I will help you cut spending. I might even help raise taxes if they are properly targeted. I will do anything to keep from ending my career in the Senate without having addressed this most crucial problem facing this Nation. But you cannot--the Republicans voted yesterday, and a few Democrats, who said you cannot take Social Security off the table. It has to be a part of this whole plan to balance the budget. Yet, the House says income taxes are off the table. What kind of logic is that, to say that the most regressive taxes, sales taxes--and we may go with a value added tax here, we may raise gasoline taxes, excise taxes, user fees and, yes, even the FICA tax that pays for Social Security. But if you say income taxes are off the table, you are saying the only progressive tax that the Congress might want to use to balance the budget is off the table. Only the regressive taxes that fall heaviest on the people who can least afford it, that is where you must find it. Mr. President, I do not want to be preaching about this, but that is nonsense and it is not fair. It is not fair to the elderly. It is not fair to the working people of this country. The people who applaud this are the wealthiest people in America, because they pay an inordinately small part of their incomes for these regressive taxes like gasoline taxes and so on. There are people in my hometown of Charleston, AR, who commute 50 miles to Fort Smith to work. We are sort of a suburb to Fort Smith, and most people work in Fort Smith. They drive their cars as much as I do every year and pay the same tax on that gasoline that I pay. And I make $133,000 or $135,000 a year--I forget which--and they are working for $25,000 a year or less, and we are saying that is just Jakey, and we may raise taxes on you some more, but we will not raise the taxes on the wealthiest people in America. Mr. President, I ask for 1 additional minute from the Senator from New Mexico.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of a motion to refer House Joint Resolution 1 to the Budget Committee, which I intend to make, be printed in the Record for the information of Senators.