Robert Byrd

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. As of today, when would that time expire?

Mr. BYRD. So I come to the conjunction ``but''--paragraph 1, section 7, article I, of the U.S. Constitution. Here is what it says: but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. Now, we all know that when fast track is brought to the Senate, Senators may not propose amendments. In my way of reading the Constitution, that is not in accordance with what the Constitution says. What did the Framers mean? It is obvious that they meant the Senate could amend on any bill. Let me read the whole section again, the whole paragraph, section 7: All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but---- B-U-T---- the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. It doesn't say it ``shall.'' The Senate may not want to offer any amendments, but it ``may.'' But now we come along with this so-called trade promotion authority. Ha, what a misnomer that is. And that is plain old fast track. And a lot of Senators and House Members are going to go to their oblivion on fast track if the people back home ever wake up to what is going on. . . . but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. It doesn't say ``on some other Bills'' or ``on certain other Bills.'' It says ``as on other Bills.'' It seems to me the Senate has a right to amend. And I know there are some of us who sought to appear before the Supreme Court on the subject of the line-item veto, and the Supreme Court ruled that we do not qualify because we personally were not injured by the line-item veto. But on a case which was later brought by parties that did qualify as having been injured, the Supreme Court ruled the line-item veto was unconstitutional. I wonder what the Supreme Court would say about fast track, especially in light of this constitutional provision. I am here to raise that question. If the committee can complete its business before 11:30, that will be in accordance with the rules. But if it doesn't, I hope somebody on that committee will make the point that the committee does not have permission to meet. I would object to any request made for that today. I thank the distinguished Senator for yielding.

Mr. BYRD. Has the Finance Committee reported out the fast track?

Mr. BYRD. Does the committee have permission to meet?

Mr. BYRD. Is it going to today?

Mr. BYRD. When?

Mr. BYRD. I put the Senate on notice I will object to that committee meeting after 11:30 today while the Senate is in session. Mr. President, along that line, may I say I have asked the chairman of the Finance Committee to give some of those of us who are opposed to fast track an opportunity to appear before the committee. I am not on the Finance Committee. I would like to have an opportunity to appear before that committee and speak against fast track. That is all I am asking. I made that personal request of the chairman of the committee yesterday, and he said: Well, I could appear before the committee after it had acted on fast track, after it had marked up the bill. Well, there is no point in my appearing before the committee after it has marked up the bill. That is a really silly suggestion, if I might say so: I will make my impassioned plea to the committee after the committee has met and marked up the bill. Why should I go appear before the committee after that committee has marked up the bill? What a silly proposition. Mr. President, there are those of us--there are a few around here-- who object to fast track. And I am sorry the distinguished chairman of that committee said no. Now, as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I don't think I would say that to any Senator. I would not say it to a Republican Senator; I would not say it to a Democratic Senator. The very idea, on a matter as important as fast track to discuss around here--I am just disappointed a Senator would get that kind of a brushoff. Now understand, I went to the distinguished chairman yesterday and asked him if he would mind putting that matter off and allow some of us--or a few of us; I know one Senator who is against fast track--to allow us to appear before the committee. And I got kind of a brushoff, I would say. Well, all I could say was I was disappointed. I am still disappointed. Let me read a section of the Constitution to Senators. Section 7 of article I, paragraph 1: All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but---- Get this---- but---- Mr. President, may we have order in the rear of the Senate.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, while the leader is on the floor and while Mr. Baucus is on the floor, will the Senator yield to me for 5 minutes?

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, what was the request?

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Did I understand there will be 1 hour equally divided on the debate?

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, as the request is worded, time on quorum calls, et cetera, would not be counted because the word is ``debate''; am I correct?

Mr. BYRD. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, my inquiry was made because I want to be sure we have 1 hour on the debate. It is going to take us a few minutes to get some chairs, and I do not want that time coming out of the debate. So there is no ulterior or devious motive behind my having asked that question. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, how much time do I have?

Mr. BYRD. I thank the Chair. Madam President, let us pause for a moment, back away, and determine if we might be able to see the forest and later see the trees. Remember, Senators, that in this package I have offered, and which was adopted in the Appropriations Committee, I sought to do three things: No. 1, to give the President every penny he asked for for defense. He requested $21 billion. And there is not a penny cut away. We have added $7.5 billion for New York, et al, and $7.5 billion for homeland defense. We have a package that gives to the President $21 billion for defense. It provides that New York City and other areas that were attacked on September 11 would get the $20 billion that the President promised and to which we committed ourselves. On top of that, there is $7.5 billion for homeland defense. I didn't go to New York. I didn't go up there and promise that. But I saw, and I heard, with my heart and mind responding. We believe we ought to stand by our promises to New York, New Jersey, et al. Some have argued that approval of $15 billion for homeland defense and for New York disaster relief will result in pumping up spending for years to come. That is not my intent. In fact, I have included a provision in this bill directing OMB and the Congressional Budget Office to exclude the $15 billion from baseline calculations of future spending. This $15 billion supplemental is intended to respond to the urgent needs and vulnerabilities that have been created by the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the anthrax attacks. It is not a permanent increase in spending. It should not be a permanent increase in spending. Having laid that to rest, let me read just a few excerpts from news stories. Let us talk about the homeland defense. Defense of the homeland is important and in the final analysis even more so than defense overseas. The opposition that has raised this point of order is saying we can wait for defense of the homeland, we have to take care of our men and women oversees. I am for doing everything within our power to defend the men and women whom we send overseas. As a matter of fact, I was the Senator who stepped forth several years ago during the war in Vietnam when my own party and my own majority leader at that time were opposed to attacking the Vietcong enclaves in Cambodia. I took the position that we had men in Cambodia and we ought to attack those enclaves. I took the position that we had a duty to do whatever was necessary and that the President of the United States, Mr. Nixon, had a duty to do whatever was necessary to protect the men and the women he sends overseas into battle--whatever is necessary. He had a right to do that. He had a duty to do it. My own party on that occasion took issue with that idea. They were opposed to bombing the enclaves in Cambodia, which were attacking our military men in South Vietnam. So don't look at me and pretend I am a Senator who is battling for political reasons. I was not then. I am not now. This amendment is to protect the people here at home--relatives of those men and women who are overseas, children of those men and women who are overseas, mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers of those men and women who are overseas. Ask the men and women overseas: How would you vote today? Would you vote for homeland security? Would you vote to advance the cause, to give homeland security a jump-start, to protect your people back home in the USA? And the people back home are not only the relatives of those men and women who are in Afghanistan; there are also military men and women here in this country, still. And they, too, might be subject to injury, to disease, to death as a result of terrorist acts over here. How blind can we be? So there is a division line here saying: Oh, we must do everything possible for our men and women overseas--and we are doing that; we are not cutting one penny out of defense abroad--but as to homeland defense, the Administration says let's wait, let's wait until we analyze and wait until we get further reports and wait until our department heads can come forward with proposals. Wait, they say. Here is a story in The New York Times today in which [Mr.] Ridge Promises Security Funds ``For States in Next Budget.'' When will that be? I will read just a bit: A day after the nation's governors asked Congress for an immediate $3 billion to fight terrorism, Tom Ridge, director of homeland security, promised that President Bush's budget proposal next year would include ``substantial down payments'' to the states for security. Mr. Ridge spoke as questions of how much domestic security should cost after Sept. 11 have proliferated on Capitol Hill and as states, facing recession and budget shortfalls, are grappling with how to pay for new responsibilities to help guard borders, bridges, dams and nuclear power plants. . . . On Wednesday, the National Governors Association released a preliminary survey of domestic security costs, estimating that they would run the states $4 billion in the first year. So here we are: The States of the Nation are grappling with serious problems involving their own budgets. They have budget shortfalls. They are crying out for help. And yet here we have the Director of Homeland Security saying: Wait--Wait. We do not have time to wait. We do not have that luxury. A vote against my waiver of the point of order sends the message that it is more important to win a political battle than it is to win the war against terrorism. Why will they not vote for this package? This package, as it was written originally, had an emergency designation which would say to the President: Here is the money. You do not have to spend it. You can spend it or not spend it, depending upon the circumstances at the time. Well, the Senate has already stricken from that package the emergency designation. Now we are at the stage where we are going to vote to waive the point of order. Those who vote against the waiver send the message that it is more important to win a political battle than it is to win the war against terrorism. That is what a vote against the waiver means. The President has said he will veto this bill if it has more money than he requested. Is the Senate going to be blind to the fact--and I have had Senators say to me: Well, why do we press ahead when the President has said he will veto? The answer is: If we back away every time a President threatens a veto, then the Chief Executive of this Nation will reign supreme. He will become an emperor. No matter what his political party, he will become an emperor, he will be king. What would the Framers think of that? How would the Framers look upon this Senate that cringes when a President says he will veto? I think they would be dumbfounded to see that the time has come when the legislative branch will flinch, will cringe when a President issues a veto threat. Certainly the majority of the people in this broad land of ours feel that the time is at hand when we need to jump-start homeland defense so that aid will immediately flow to the people at the local level: The policemen, the firemen, the paramedics, the people in the hospitals, the people in the labs, the people in the emergency rooms in the hospitals. This is the time. If something happens tomorrow, tonight, next week, or the week after, the people at the local level need to know that their paramedics, their firemen, their policemen are going to have monetary assistance. The Governors will know that. The mayors will know that. Will our pleas fall upon deaf ears? Unfortunately, politics reigns supreme in this Capitol. Once again, the people will lose. An entire Defense bill, representing months of work by Senator Stevens, Senator Inouye, and others, is going to fall. Why? Because of political petulance. Ah, the Chief Executive, our people here say, must win. He has said he will veto. What is one man's judgment against the judgment of the majority of the people? It is obvious that the terrorists can strike. We know that. Anthrax taught us that. I think this is an extremely unwise course to take in time of war. This is a war. Oh, Administration leaders say, we should not challenge the President. I say that this is not a challenge to anybody, except to the consciences of all of us who are sent here by the people of the United States. Will we let political blinders get in the way of what we know is right. We all know it is right to provide protections to the people against the sinister, deadly attacks on our own shores. And we have seen them already. The people are crying out for help. Our military needs to know that games are not being played with defense. Can we not lift our eyes from Budget Act points of order long enough to do what our country needs us to do. Apparently not. So, keep your political blinders on. All that matters is winning for the President. Winning! That is all that matters. I wish that, just once, the thick fog of cynicism--and it is so thick that you can cut it with a knife--could be lifted from this town. I wish, just once, we could listen to our hearts--pay no attention to politics, just listen to our hearts and clear our minds of fog and political partisanship. Let our hearts and clear, rational minds, not the hotheads--not the hotheads of political gamesmanship--guide our actions. In this game of political cloak and dagger, the only ones being stabbed in the back are the American people. Now, each of us is going to have to stand before the American people and answer questions. If this point of order prevails, we break our promise to the people to protect them. We break the promise to the people of New York City to help them with this tragedy. We continue the decades of partisan political squabbling that so often occupy us in this self-consumed, cynical, myopic town. When I came to the legislative branch, we had two major political parties. In the year that I came here to the legislative branch, the Republicans were in control. Joe Martin of Massachusetts, Republican, was the Speaker of the House of Representatives. John Tabor of New York was the Republican chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the House. Yes, those men were politicians, but first of all they were patriots. And how about those men at Valley Forge? How about those men who wrote the Constitution, how would they feel? How would those Framers feel? What would they think if they could hear the arguments, the pitiful, weak arguments that are being advanced against this package? How would they feel if they could read in the press of our day what is being said by those who oppose this package? Wouldn't they say: Let's work together? Wouldn't they say: We, the Framers, wrote ``we the people, in order to form a more perfect union.'' How would the Framers feel about that? We are not forming a more perfect union here in this Senate. No, we are using a point of order that requires 60 votes to overcome. We are going to vote the party line and turn our backs and give the back of our hands to the American people. We can't be proud of ourselves. Oh, we win the political battle: oh, yes, we will uphold the hands of our President when he carries out his veto threat. Mr. President, I want to help the President. I want to help him keep his promises to New York. I want to help him keep his promises to the people of this country regarding homeland defense. We all know he made such promises. So it will be a political victory for the Administration. But where does that leave us? Where does that leave the people of the nation? They are going to have to wait. A supplemental will not be coming along for a while, and it won't be adopted for a while. I don't know how long. But we are going to say to the people: You wait. Oh, yes, on fast track the President got on the White House phones, I am told, and called Members of the other body and said: Please, support your administration; we need fast track. But, Mr. President, on Homeland defense, the Administration says, wait, wait, wait. It seems to me to be a rather arrogant attitude on the part of the administration. They say: Wait, we will tell you, the Congress, how much we need. We will let you know when we have done these analyses and after the departments have all gotten together and we have all come to a decision as to what we need, then we will tell you how much we need. That is an arrogant attitude, Mr. President, in my opinion. What we are saying is, we want to help you, but we think the danger is there. We think we ought to act now. We ought not wait. That is what we are saying. I hope all Senators will hear me. Hear me, Senators. Listen to what I am going to say. Under the Budget Act, legislation cutting taxes or increasing mandatory spending is supposed to be paid for because of the tax cut bill signed this summer. We are currently facing a 4-percent cut in Medicare spending in January. Hear me, Senators! I wish my voice could ring across the land, that the people could hear me, if they could have time to contact their Senators. Let me say it again: Because of the tax cut bill signed this summer, we are currently facing a 4- percent cut in Medicare spending in January. A 4-percent cut in Medicare would result in $8.5 billion in cuts for hospitals, physicians, home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities, and managed care plans. This isn't going to be easy. This is not going to be easy. You can wrap the robes of political partisanship around yourselves, but you won't keep out the chilly winds that are going to blow right in your face. A 4-percent cut in Medicare would result in $8.5 billion in cuts for hospitals, physicians, home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities, and managed care plans. Such cuts may force health care providers to cut staff, threaten to cut the quality of care to our elderly who receive health care through Medicare, or force them to discontinue to see Medicare patients. My proposal includes a provision to block--get this now, my proposal that is in this bill which is about to be brought down--my proposal includes a provision to block these Medicare cuts. So it is not going to be easy to explain to those people out there who are your constituents that it is more important to cast a political vote here than it is to cast a vote for the people back home. Wait until those Medicare cuts face you, the Senators who will vote against this waiver. You will be hiding behind a sixty-vote point of order. I am not denying any Senator's right to make points of order. This is a 60-vote point of order. So we can hide behind that. Or can we? Think about it. There will be a few people, in this country at least, you will meet on the campaign trail who will have heard what you are about to do. Any Member who votes against the motion to waive this 60-vote point of order is voting to allow the massive $8.5 billion cut in Medicare to go into effect in January. Explain that one to your constituents. Explain that one to your conscience. I don't propose to be anybody's keeper of conscience, but it would certainly be on mine if I voted that way. There is no person of any party to whom I would give precedence for party reasons or preference in any way, over the obvious needs of the American people to be protected from terrorist attacks, and the needs of the people to be able to have their hospitals, their physicians, their home health agencies, their skilled nursing facilities and managed care plans not be jeopardized by this point of order. Madam President, how much time do I have?

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I again thank my friend. And we hear that term used so loosely in this body and on Capitol Hill, ``my friend.'' He is my friend, this man. I admire him. There is something behind the political facade of this man. He is a man. He is a man, and here is a man in Danny Inouye. I thank him as we soon will come to a close, I assume. I may need some more time. The distinguished Senator from Alaska yesterday gave me as much time as I asked for, and I will be requesting that time again. I believe the Senator from Massachusetts wanted me to yield to him at this point. How much time does the Senator wish?

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I only have something near 2 minutes left.

Mr. BYRD. The distinguished Senator yields me 15 minutes, and I thank him.

Mr. BYRD. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I thank the distinguished Senator. How much time remains?