Robert Byrd

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I ask unanimous consent that I may yield to the distinguished minority whip without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I have no objection to such a request.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I have never seen 3 seconds yielded in this Chamber. Does the Senator want 1 minute or 2 minutes or 3 minutes?

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may speak out of order.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may yield to the distinguished Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, for not to exceed 15 minutes without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that the time utilized by the distinguished Senator not come out of my hour under the cloture rule.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. BYRD. Let me thank the Senator from Alaska for being a good servant of his people. He was selected as the Alaskan of the Century--I believe that was the title, the Alaskan of the Century--last year.

Mr. BYRD. He knows the needs of its people. He knows who sends him here. I welcome the Senator to the club. I have been in the same boat with the Senator in many ways, and I have no apologies to make for serving my people. I know who sends me here. I grew up in West Virginia when we had only 4 miles of divide four-lane highway in the whole State. There were only 4 miles in the whole State when I was starting out in the West Virginia Legislature. I know West Virginia, and what is one man's pork is another man's job. I hope the Senator will just turn the back of his hand to those who criticize him for helping his people. His people recognize that he deserves the kind of award they gave him. I join them. As long as I am here I am going to remember the people who sent me here. This money isn't going overseas. The money--so-called pork-- doesn't go overseas. It goes to help people in West Virginia--their schools, their highways. People need highways on which to get to work or just to go to the grocery store or go to the schools or to the doctor or to the hospital. Those highways I helped to build with that kind of ``pork'' have saved a lot of lives. It is much safer to drive on those four-lane highways in West Virginia than down through the curves and hollows, and along the deep ravines where one can't see up ahead beyond that next curve. Let me pay my respect to the Senator for doing a good job, being a good Alaskan, and a good representative of the people of Alaska.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, today I voted in favor of Mrs. Feinstein's amendment to the bankruptcy reform bill that would limit the amount of credit that credit card companies can extend to underage consumers. For the benefit of my West Virginia constituents, I offer a brief explanation of my vote. I supported the Feinstein amendment because I agree with the general philosophy behind it. Credit card companies are far too willing to offer credit cards to young, financially-inexperienced consumers. Many of these young consumers are college students without any income or credit history. Too often these young consumers get in over their head when credit card companies offer unlimited credit to buy whatever they want, whenever they want. The Feinstein amendment is a commonsense approach that would restrict the amount of credit that could be offered to these young consumers, unless they gain parental approval or are able to demonstrate their financial independence. However, I disagree that $2,500 is an adequate credit limit for protecting underage consumers. My own view is that this amount is too high. I would prefer to see a $500 credit limit. Even with a credit limit of $2,500, young consumers are at risk of accumulating massive credit card debt without the ability to repay it. A smaller credit card limit is more likely to reduce this risk. My hope is that, even though the Senate rejected this amendment, credit card companies will take it upon themselves to more carefully scrutinize to whom they are extending credit, and reign in their credit offers when necessary.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, this is the last day of February. I believe it was Percy Bysshe Shelley who said, ``O Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?'' Spring is just around the corner. Mr. President, while the Senate was in recess, the senior Senator from Massachusetts became a little bit more senior. On February 22, Senator Edward Kennedy celebrated his 69th birthday. Oh, to be 69 again. In recognition of that occasion, I wish to say today what an enjoyable privilege it has been to work in the Senate with Ted Kennedy. History will be fair to Senator Kennedy, and I have no doubt that history will judge him as one of the most effective Senators on that roll of 1,864 Senators as of now. He is one of those rare workhorses. In the Senate we have show horses and we have workhorses. The show horses, you see them on TV quite often for the most part. Of course, we expect our elected leaders to be on TV often, but the workhorses, you don't see them on TV quite as often. Ted Kennedy is one of those rare workhorse Senators in the truest meaning of that word. We will say it is one word, ``workhorse.'' Nearly every piece of progressive legislation since 1977 bears, if not Ted Kennedy's name, at least his imprint. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, so let me put it this way. I was first elected majority leader in the Senate in 1977. I was majority leader through the years of the Carter administration, 1977 through 1980. During that time, I was very familiar with the committee work, the legislation that I called up, the legislation that was amended, and the legislation that was adopted here and went to conference, the legislation that eventually became law. Many pieces of progressive legislation, beginning at the time of my tenure as majority leader the first time, carried Ted Kennedy's imprint. He is a Senator who does his homework; he knows his subject. When he calls up an amendment, when he manages a bill, when he is the ranking member on a bill that has been called up, Ted Kennedy knows what he is talking about. We may not always agree with him, but we listen because we know he has mastered that subject matter. Although blessed with wealth, he has always been a powerful and eloquent voice for the poor and oppressed, not just in the United States but also around the world. And he has also been a powerful and eloquent voice for the Democratic Party, its traditions, its causes. We will long remember his soaring voice, his speeches to Democratic conventions, as well as his passionate struggle for the rights of the working people, for health care reform, for the strengthening of the Social Security net for America's less fortunate. In the Senate, he has shown that public service is the place where, to paraphrase his late brother, John F. Kennedy, Americans can stop asking what their country can do for them but what they can do for their country. Though we were out of session on Ted Kennedy's birthday, I say belatedly that I will always remember the support that Senator Kennedy gave me during the years it was my privilege to serve as the Senate Democratic leader. When times got tough, as they occasionally do for a Senate leader, I knew I could always count on Senator Kennedy's assistance. It may have been needed for an additional vote; it may have been for his assistance in building approval for a legislative proposal, but whatever was needed, Senator Kennedy was there, and I was thankful. Senator Kennedy is a true friend, not only to me but also to the people of West Virginia, and when I make this personal reference the following two happenings will illustrate what I mean. When I reached my 80th birthday--the Psalmist doesn't promise 80 years; the Psalmist promises only 70, but goes on to say: And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. On my 80th birthday, I was in Charleston, WV, and the then-Governor of the State, Gov. Cecil Underwood, had invited me over to the Governor's mansion. I was enjoying a luncheon there, given by Cecil Underwood in my honor. During the luncheon, I was called to the telephone. On the telephone was my chief of staff, Barbara Videnieks, who said to me, ``Senator, we have a visitor in the office,'' meaning here in Washington. She said, ``Senator Ted Kennedy is here, and he has with him 80 roses.'' Ted Kennedy brought the roses to my office himself, 80 roses. I never had that to happen to me before, and I am not sure that many Senators in this Chamber, if any other than I, can recount such a beautiful experience as that was for me. There was Ted Kennedy in my office--I was in Charleston, at the Governor's mansion--with 80 roses on my 80th birthday. You can bet before he was able to get out of my office and down to the subway car I was on the telephone calling him and thanking him for being such a real friend. You would think we vote together just like that all the time. We don't. But we never argue about it; we never have any falling out about it, when we have little differences of viewpoints with respect to legislation. There is this underlying bond of friendship between Senator Kennedy and me. Last year, I was at the Greenbriar with my wife of 63 years on our anniversary. And, lo and behold, here came to our room at the Greenbriar 63 red roses. From whom? Ted Kennedy. I was surprised. That is Ted Kennedy. Our friendship will always be strong. He thought of me on our wedding anniversary, and he thought of Erma. He is just like that. But who else sent me 63 roses on our wedding anniversary? Nobody. I think it is remarkable that there has grown up that kind of bond of affection and friendship between these two Senators. Most people probably remember President John F. Kennedy introducing himself to the people of France by saying he was the person who accompanied Jaqueline Kennedy to Paris. A year before that, President Kennedy, upon a return visit to the Appalachian coal fields in West Virginia, introduced himself saying--here is President Kennedy saying-- ``I will introduce myself--Teddy Kennedy's brother.'' During the last election, I saw for myself a tremendous display of this continued affection for Senator Kennedy among my people, the people of West Virginia. When Senator Kennedy and I appeared at a political rally in the heart of the State's southern coal fields where I grew up, we were promptly swamped by swarms of people--swarms of West Virginians, mountain people--seeking Ted Kennedy's autograph and wanting to shake hands with him or simply to see him. I will always be pleased to introduce myself as Senator Ted Kennedy's friend, and I will always be glad that I have had the opportunity to serve with him in the Senate. I say belatedly to Ted Kennedy, with his birthday of a few days ago, Senator Kennedy, because of you, many people in this country are much better off. Because of you, millions of our citizens have a voice that is heard in these Halls. So happy birthday, Senator Kennedy, and may God bless you. Mr. President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BYRD

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

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I wish to associate myself with the remarks of the distinguished junior Senator from the State of Alaska concerning the meaning of the address and its eternal and continuing truths. We would all do well to listen annually to the reading of this address. I thank the distinguished junior Senator from Virginia for his eloquence and for his reading of the message this morning. I am only sorry more Senators have not attended this important occasion. That is nothing new. I have, I think, attended the reading of the Farewell Address of our first and foremost and greatest President, George Washington, for many years. I try always to attend if I am in the city, and it goes without saying that I am generally here at this time. I always get something new out of listening to this address. I only hope in the future our colleagues and our joint leadership will attempt to attend and encourage the attendance of all Senators to the reading of this address. I close by thanking my colleague, Mr. Allen, again. I thank the Senator from Alaska.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. BYRD. I thank my friend.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I have some remarks to make in connection with the reconciliation process, but I understand the leadership wishes to proceed with a little business transaction, so I shall yield the floor and not proceed with my statement until the leadership has been able to transact that business. In the meantime, I ask that I have control of the time until my speech has been completed.

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

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, one of the most significant pieces of legislation ever enacted by Congress was the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. In my capacity as Majority Whip, as well as Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee's Subcommittee on the Standing Rules of the Senate, I was deeply involved in the preparation of the Senate version of that bill, S. 1541. I assembled a staff working group to make extensive revisions to a bill that had been reported out of the Committee on Government Operations. That staff group consisted of representatives of the chairmen of the ten standing committees of the Senate, four joint committees, the House Appropriations Committee, the Congressional Research Service, and the Office of Senate Legislative Counsel, and the parliamentarian of the Senate--at that time, Robert Dove. On March 19, 1974, we took S. 1541 to the Senate Floor. At that time I stated that, ``when Senators look back some years in the future, many may be able to say that this was among the most important measures acted upon during our entire service in Congress.'' As I pointed out in my remarks on March 19, 1974, ``In the fifty years subsequent to the enactment of the Budget and Accounting Act, Congress had permitted its `power of the purse' under The Constitution to slip away, or diminish.'' That trend, as I further pointed out, had been magnified during the previous five years. While presidents over many decades had occasionally seen fit to withhold funds appropriated by Congress, in the years leading up to the enactment of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the President had expanded this practice to cover programs throughout the Government. Many billions of dollars had been withheld, not because of any changes in circumstances after the action of the Congress in approving the funding, but merely because the President did not agree with the priorities or the judgments made by the Congress. As a consequence, the confidence of the public in its Government processes had been diminished. In order to give force, then, to Congress's spending choices, and in order to stop this arbitrary withholding by the executive branch, it was necessary to put into place a new Budget and Impoundment Control Act. S. 1541 established a comprehensive congressional budget process. Under that act, a budget reconciliation process was established as an optional procedure to enhance Congress's ability to change current law in order to bring revenue and spending levels into conformity with the targets of the budget resolution. Let me repeat that sentence. There are probably Senators who wonder, why do we have a reconciliation process? Why was it created in the first instance? Let me say again, under that act, a budget reconciliation process was established as an optional procedure to enhance Congress's ability to change current law in order to bring revenue and spending levels into conformity with the targets of the budget resolution. At the time of the enactment of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, it was thought that Congress would pass its first budget resolution at the beginning of the session, followed by the annual appropriation bills and any other spending measures. Perhaps I should say that again, just to show how far we have wandered from the course originally conceived by the Congress as the reconciliation process. At the time of the enactment of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, it was thought that Congress would pass its first budget resolution at the beginning of the session, followed by the annual appropriation bills-- all of them; today that would be 13 annual appropriation bills-- followed by the annual appropriation bills and any other spending measures. Then Congress would issue any reconciliation instructions that might be necessary to bring the spending and the revenues in line with the budget resolution. That process was to then involve the passage of a second budget resolution. Reconciliation involves a two-stage process in which reconciliation instructions are included in the budget resolution in order to direct appropriate committees to achieve the desired budgetary results, and then to incorporate those results into an omnibus bill which is considered under expedited procedures in the House and the Senate. In its report entitled, ``The Budget Reconciliation Process: Timing of Legislative Action,'' updated October 24, 2000, the CRS states that reconciliation was first used during the administration of President Carter in calendar year 1980 for fiscal year 1981. According to the Congressional Research Service, then, reconciliation was not used at all from the time of enactment of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 until 6 years later, in calendar year 1980. During the period since 1980, for fiscal years 1981 through 2001, there have been 14 reconciliation measures enacted into law and three that have been vetoed. As was contemplated by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the reconciliation process has been a very important and powerful tool with which to enforce the policies of annual budget resolutions. As a properly used deficit-fighting tool, reconciliation bills that have been enacted have resulted in well over a trillion dollars in budgetary savings in the past two decades. I have often--at least in recent years--referred to the reconciliation process as a ``bear trap.'' It is a bear trap because of the fast-track procedures that were included in the Congressional Budget Act to help Congress enact quickly necessary changes in spending or in revenues to ensure the integrity of the budget resolution targets. This fast-track procedure limits Senate debate on reconciliation bills to 20 hours, and that time can be further limited by a nondebatable motion approved by a majority vote so that there being 20 hours on the resolution, a majority at any time could yield back its 10 hours, leaving only 10 hours, and then can proceed to move that the remaining 10 hours be reduced to 2 hours or 1 hour or a half hour or zero. That would be a nondebatable motion, and it needs only a majority to carry. Only germane amendments are allowed to reconciliation bills. Time on reconciliation bills, as I have already said, may be further limited by nondebatable motion. A determined majority could, in fact, as I have indicated, limit Senate consideration of reconciliation bills to no more than 1 hour, no more than 10 minutes, or no time at all. Reconciliation bills, unfortunately, have proven to be almost irresistible vehicles for Senators to use to move all manner of legislation because of these fast-track procedures. At times, the misuse has been gross. On June 22, 1981, when the Senate was considering S. 1377, the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981, then- majority leader, Howard Baker, called up amendment No. 171, which was cosponsored by me--I was then the minority leader--and by Senator Domenici of New Mexico, who is chairman of the Budget Committee, and by Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, the then-ranking member of that committee. Let me read a brief excerpt from a colloquy that occurred during the debate on that amendment: Mr. Baker. Aside from its salutary impact on the budget, reconciliation also has implications for the Senate as an institution. So long as a preponderance of its subject matter has a budgetary impact, a reconciliation bill could contain non-budgetary amendments to substantive law, and still be protected under the Budget Act. That notwithstanding, I believe-- This is Senator Howard Baker talking-- that including such extraneous provisions in a reconciliation bill would be harmful to the character of the Senate. It would cause such material to be considered under time and germaneness provisions that impede the full exercise of minority rights. That was the then-majority leader, a Republican, Howard Baker, speaking with reference to the protection of minority rights. His party was not in the minority. His party was in the majority at that time. But he spoke out on behalf of minority rights. Senator Baker further said: It would evade the letter and spirit of Rule XXII. It would create an unacceptable degree of tension between the Budget Act and the remainder of Senate procedures and practices. Reconciliation was never meant to be a vehicle for an omnibus authorization bill. To permit it to be treated as such is to break faith-- This is Republican majority leader, Howard Baker, speaking now -- with the Senate's historical uniqueness as a forum for the exercise of minority and individual rights. For principally these reasons, I have labored with the distinguished minority leader-- Referring to Senator Robert C. Byrd-- with the chairmen and ranking minority member of the Budget Committee, and with other committee chairmen to develop a bipartisan leadership amendment. This amendment would strike from the bill subject matter which all these parties can agree is extraneous to the reconciliation instructions set forth last month in House Concurrent Resolution 115. What will remain in the bill is directly responsive to these instructions, has a budgetary savings impact, and plainly belongs in a reconciliation measure. That is the end of my excerpt of Senator Baker's remarks. Mr. President, I followed Senator Baker's comments in 1981, as follows: Mr. Byrd. Mr. President, if the reconciliation bill is adopted in its present form, it will do violence to the budget reform process. The reconciliation measure contains many items which are unrelated to budget savings. This development must be viewed in the most critical light, to preserve the principle of free and unfettered debate that is the hallmark of the United States Senate. The ironclad parliamentary procedures governing the debate of the reconciliation measure should by no means be used to shield controversial or extraneous legislation from free debate. However, language is included in the reconciliation measure that would enact routine authorizations that have no budget impact whatsoever. In other cases, legislation is included that makes drastic alterations in current policy, yet, has no budgetary impact. The reconciliation bill, if it includes such extraneous matters, would diminish the value of Rule XXII. The Senate is unique in the way that it protects a minority, even a minority of one with regard to debate and amendment. The procedures that drive the reconciliation bill set limits on the normally unfettered process of debate and amendment because policy matters that do not have clear and direct budgetary consequences are supposed to remain outside its scope, talking about the scope of a reconciliation bill. I went on to say at that time: The amendment offered by the majority leader-- Meaning Mr. Baker-- and me omits several nonbudget related authorizations which should also be stricken from this bill. The fact that they were not included in this amendment should not be construed as accepting their inclusion in the bill. We have gone as far as we can go in this amendment, but we have not gone as far as we should go. And then, Mr. President, the amendment was agreed to by voice vote. The Senate's first several years' experience with reconciliation was described in a Congressional Research Service report entitled ``The Senate's Byrd Rule Against Extraneous Matters in Budget Reconciliation Bills,'' updated July 9, 1998. In that report, CRS states that reconciliation legislation often contained many provisions that were extraneous to implementing budget resolution policies. Reconciliation submissions by committees have included things that had no budget effect, that increased spending or reduced revenues when the reconciliation instructions called for reduced spending or increased revenues, or that violated another committee's jurisdiction. It was for this reason that I put forth what has come to be known as the ``Byrd rule'' as a means of curbing such practices. The Byrd rule has been extended and modified several times over the years and in 1990 was incorporated into the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 as section 313 and made permanent, 2 U.S.C. 644. I will not take the time of the Senate to go into great detail about the operations of the Byrd rule as applied to reconciliation measures. Suffice it to say, however, that, in general, a point of order authorized under the Byrd rule may be raised in order to strike extraneous matter already in the bill as reported or discharged--or in the conference report--or to prevent the incorporation of extraneous matter through the adoption of amendments or motions. A motion to waive the Byrd rule or to sustain an appeal of the ruling of the Chair on a point of order raised under the Byrd rule requires an affirmative vote of three-fifths of the membership of the Senate. It takes 60 votes to waive that Byrd rule. That Byrd rule has been criticized up one side and down the other. It has been criticized by the other body, by Members of the other body critical of the Byrd rule, but they should be thankful for the Byrd rule. What I am attempting to lay out for the Senate today is the fact that this reconciliation process, while being very effective in enabling Congress to meet its deficit reduction targets over the past two decades, is fraught with opportunities for abuse because of its fast- track procedures. When we created this reconciliation bill process, it was unthinkable that it would be used in ways that it has come to be used. The procedures have been abused. The abuse consists in the fact that those procedures take away from Senators the opportunity to offer their amendments and to debate them fully. That is the Senate's raison d'etre, its reason for being. Reconciliation is a nonfilibusterable ``bear trap'' that should be used very sparingly and, I believe, only for purposes of fiscal restraint. That was the intention in the beginning. It was not intended to be used as a fast track in order to ram through very controversial, very costly tax cuts or to ram through authorization measures that otherwise might entail long and vigorous debate. In other words, reconciliation should be used only for reducing deficits or for increasing surpluses in years when no deficits are projected. Relevant to this matter is a statement made on the Senate floor by the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Domenici, and repeated in the ``Budget Process Law Annotated, 1993 edition,'' on page 204. Here is what he said: Mr. President, will the distinguished minority leader-- Senator Byrd-- permit me to respond to what ``extraneousness'' means thus far in its evolution in the Senate? Let me suggest that, going back to 1981, we have evolved these four definitions, and I believe they are used by minority and majority members of the committee now. I would just read them quickly: One, provisions that have no direct effect on spending and which are not essential to achieving the savings. Two, provisions which increase spending and are not so closely related to saving provisions that they cannot be separated. Three, provisions which extend authorizations without saving money, and which are not so closely related to saving provisions that they cannot be separated. Four, provisions which invade another committee's jurisdiction, whether or not they save money. And I am not saying that is all inclusive, but, up to this point, that is what we have been using.'' So, Mr. President, there we have it, the statement in 1985 of Mr. Domenici, our distinguished Budget Committee chairman, as to what should be considered ``extraneous'' in reconciliation bills going back to 1981. Nevertheless, in recent years, regrettably, the Republican congressional leadership has chosen to stray from the definitions set forth by Mr. Domenici. In fact, our distinguished Democratic Leader, Mr. Daschle, came to the Senate Floor on May 21, 1996, during consideration of the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution, and delivered very eloquent remarks concerning the fact that the budget resolution then before the Senate contained reconciliation instructions which in our distinguished leader's view should not have been in order, essentially because that budget resolution for fiscal year 1997 instructed a committee to produce a reconciliation measure that actually increased the deficit. At that time, Mr. Daschle pointed out what I believe most Senators felt in their hearts was the proper use of the reconciliation process, namely, that reconciliation instructions should be used to ensure that authorizing committees achieved their deficit- reducing targets and that they should be used as a way of forcing deficit reduction on committees. That should be the sole reason for using the highly restricted vehicle called reconciliation. As our Democratic leader, Mr. Daschle, stated, ``We deprive Senators of their normal right to debate and amend only because we seek to ensure that the committees follow through in the crucial business of exercising fiscal responsibility.'' Nevertheless, the Chair ruled that the reconciliation instructions in question were in order, and the vote on the appeal of that ruling sustained the chair by a party-line vote of 57 yeas to 43 nays. And, so, those reconciliation instructions were included in the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution. It bears noting that the conference report on the budget resolution for 1997, on pages 82-83, contained a discussion concerning that year's reconciliation process. I quote from page 82 of that conference report as follows, ``Notwithstanding the fact that the authors of the 1974 Budget Act were neutral as to the policy objectives of reconciliation, since 1975, reconciliation and reconciliation legislation has been used to reduce the deficit. The conferees note that, while this resolution includes a reconciliation instruction to reduce revenues, the sum of the instructions would not only reduce the deficit, but would result in a balanced budget by 2002.'' So, Mr. President, the fiscal year 1997 reconciliation instructions, according to the conference report, resulted in deficit reduction, despite the fact that one of those reconciliation instructions allowed for a tax cut. Now that brings us to the problem we have faced in the last two years. In 1999, the reconciliation process was used by the Republican leadership to allow for a $792 billion tax cut to be brought to the Senate using fast-track budget reconciliation procedures, taking away the rights of Senators to debate fully and amend that tax cut bill. I believe this was the first time (or at least one of the rare times) that reconciliation instructions were issued that mandated a worsening of fiscal discipline for the Federal Government. Unlike the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution, I do not believe that the budget reconciliation instructions in 1999 resulted in improving the fiscal status of the Federal budget. Again, in the year 2000, the reconciliation process was used to allow for major tax cuts to be brought before the Senate in reconciliation bills. In short, we have, in my view, abused and distorted beyond all recognition the original, very limited purpose for the optional reconciliation procedure. Now, Mr. President, we have reason to believe the majority will again this year, put together a budget resolution which will contain reconciliation instructions to the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees directing them, this time, to bring forth a $2 trillion tax cut bill. Bad habits tend to perpetuate, it seems. In a recent article entitled, ``Budget Battles, Government by Reconciliation,'' in the National Journal on January 9, 2001, the author, Mr. Stan Collender, states that, ``. . . At this point, there is talk about at least five different reconciliation bills--three for different tax proposals and two for various entitlement changes. Still more are being considered. Taking advantage of the reconciliation procedures in this way would not be precedent-shattering, though it would clearly be an extraordinary extension of what has been done previously. Nevertheless, it would be the latest in what has become a steady degradation of the congressional budget process.'' Amen. Amen. A steady degradation of the congressional budget process. ``Reconciliation, which was created to make it easier to impose budget discipline, would instead be used to make it easier to get around other procedural safeguards with the result being more spending and lower revenues.'' We have virtually turned reconciliation on its head. Mr. President, there is no reason whatever to consider the President's tax cut proposal as a reconciliation bill. The Senate should take up that massive tax cut proposal, which could result in loss of revenues to the Federal Treasury of over $2 trillion over the coming decade, as a freestanding measure, and today I'm writing to the two leaders urging that be done. It should be fully debated and amended. That is what was done in 1981 when Howard Baker was majority leader and I was minority leader. President Reagan sent to Congress his tax cut proposal, as well as numerous proposals to cut spending. Appropriately, Congress used the reconciliation process to accomplish the spending cuts in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, but the Reagan tax cuts were brought before the Senate as a freestanding bill and were fully debated without depending on reconciliation fast-track procedures. More than one hundred amendments were disposed of and the Reagan tax cut bill was debated for twelve days prior to its passage. The Senate Republican leadership chose to do the right thing by bringing the Reagan tax cut bill to the Senate as a freestanding measure, rather than to use fast- track reconciliation procedures. It was thoroughly aired and the President's leadership was strengthened in the process. Taking the easy way, doing the expedient thing rarely requires much leadership. The Republican Leader, Howard Baker, did the right thing for his President, for the Senate, and for the country. In 1994, my own leadership pleaded with me--my own Democratic leader--at length to agree to support the idea that the Clinton health care bill should be included in that year's reconciliation package. Not only did then Majority Leader Mitchell attempt to persuade me to go along, President Clinton also pressed me to allow his massive health care bill to be insulated by reconciliation's protections. And particularly the request to me was, ``don't make a point of order under the Byrd rule.'' That would require 60 votes to overcome. There was the key: the Byrd rule. Mr. President, I could not--and I stated so to my own majority leader, and I stated so to my own party leader in the White House--I could not in good conscience look the other way and allow what was clearly an abuse of congressional intent to occur. I intended, if nobody else did, to make that point of order under the Byrd rule. So confronted with that situation, our majority leader and the others who were calling on me to go along accepted in good grace the fact that there was no point in pursuing that course. I felt the changes, as dramatic as the Clinton health care package which would dramatically affect every man, woman, and child in this Nation, had to be subject to scrutiny by the people of this country through amendment and debate. I said to the President, and I said to my majority leader, and I said to others who importuned me to go along, I said I cannot in good conscience allow the rule to be abused. The people of this country are entitled to know what is in the bill. It is a very complicated bill. It will be a very costly bill, a very far- reaching bill. Not only the people of this country but also the Senators who are voting on the bill need to know what is in it. They have a right to know what is in it. So I could not and I would not and I did not allow that package to be handled in such a cavalier manner. That wasn't easy to do. I stood up against my own majority leader. I stood up against the President of my own party and the White House. It was the threat--the threat--of the use of the Byrd rule that bolstered my position. I had 60 votes; that 60-vote provision was in my hand. In other words, I make the point of order, and if the Senate waives it, it takes 60 votes. It would be pretty hard to do. So my view prevailed, and ultimately, the Clinton health care proposal was not passed. It is time for this abuse of the reconciliation process to cease. We should not be using tight expedited procedures to take up measures that worsen the fiscal discipline of the Federal budget and that have far reaching, profound impacts on the people of this Nation. Take up measures of that kind and debate them for only 20 hours, if the full 20 hours allowed should be taken? Or debate them for half that long? Is that the way to fulfill our obligation to the people of this country? Is that the way that we live up to the oath we take to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic? It is an undermining of the legislative process to use the reconciliation instrument in order to enact a huge tax bill which is very controversial. There will be a lot of division of opinion on it. There are Senators who would want to offer amendments. But that beartrap of reconciliation measures, if that instrument is used, Senators will be denied the right to stand on their feet and debate at length and to offer amendments to that huge tax bill. It is not just the Senators who would be denied the right to debate and amend, it is the people, the people who send Senators here, the people back there on the Plains and the prairies and on the stormy deep, in the coal mines of this country, in the factories, in the offices. They are the people who would be denied the opportunity. They are going to pay for whatever mistake or mistakes such a huge tax cut measure will promote. The Bush tax cut bill should be brought up and debated as a freestanding bill, just as all appropriations bills are handled. Even emergency supplemental bills, to provide assistance to those who are hit by natural disasters, are fully debatable and amendable by the Senate. If any proposal ever did, the President's tax proposal requires extensive debate, thought, and caring concern. There are too many issues, too many unanswered questions. We are finding that out in the Budget Committee, which is chaired by Mr. Domenici and the ranking member of which is Senator Kent Conrad. We have had good hearings, good witnesses, good questions. The tax proposal could sap the budget of the resources needed to solve the Social Security and Medicare crises that loom just over the horizon, due to the impending retirement of the baby boom generation. I am talking about those people who are sitting out there in front of me; that is the baby boom generation. I was around a long time before the baby boom generation came along. A long time. After just 4 years of surpluses, this bill could put us back on a course towards deficits, returning us to the days when we had to spend the Social Security surplus for day-to-day Federal operations. Do you want to go back to that? Is that where we want to go back to? This bill would allocate over 42 percent of the tax cuts to the highest 1 percent of the taxpayers; over 42 percent of the tax cuts to the highest 1 percent of the taxpayers. One might say they are the people who pay that, pay most of the taxes. Well, wouldn't you like to be among that group? I would like to be in that group that pays most of the taxes. So shouldn't we have a discussion about this? Shouldn't we have a debate about it? Hear me, shouldn't we have a debate on this matter? I urge the leaders of this body to consider this. Give us a debate on this matter. Let the Senate work its will, after thoughtful debate and with Senators having an opportunity to offer amendments. If this bill undermines the financial markets' confidence that our Government is committed to long-term fiscal discipline, it could return us to the days of high interest rates, making the average wage earner's mortgage, education, and automobile more expensive. I think that possibility deserves a little debate. Don't you? How about you, who are watching through those cameras up there? Mr. President, the Budget Committee, to the credit of the chairman and ranking member of that committee, has held numerous thought- provoking hearings, and the testimony from those hearings has provoked excellent questions from the members of that committee. But the testimony has been, by no means, conclusive about the wisdom of huge tax cuts. I will support a tax cut. I like to vote for tax cuts. That is the easiest vote that one can cast. I have cast 15,877 rollcall votes in my tenure here in this body, and what an easy matter it is to vote to cut taxes. It doesn't take any courage. It doesn't take any backbone to vote to cut taxes. That is easy. But the testimony has not been conclusive about the wisdom of huge tax cuts, about the size of the surplus, about the accuracy of 10-year projections--and they are all over the lot, those projections, believe me. It is like predicting the weather. To predict what a surplus will be a year from now, 2 years from now, 10 years from now?--the efficacy of large tax cuts as a tool for stimulating the economy; the wisdom of having some sort of trigger mechanism before proceeding with these tax cuts; the ability to protect Social Security and Medicare in light of giant tax cuts; or the ability of our economy to continue its present rate of growth. Serious doubts have been expressed by many of those testifying and in the Budget Committee, itself, by members on both sides of the aisle. Yet I believe that the majority fully intends to bring the budget to the Senate floor with the President's tax proposal shrouded in this protective armor of reconciliation, virtually shutting out debate and precluding amendments by the full membership of this body--by the full membership of this body. Why hold these excellent, thought-provoking hearings at all, if that is the plan? Why do we have to have hearings, if that is the plan from the beginning? Hearings are intended to try to discover the flaws in a proposal, and to help Members make an informed judgment about the wisdom of proceeding with a matter. We who serve on the Budget Committee may have our chance to exercise our judgment on the budget, but what about the rest of the body? There are many, many views in this Senate on both sides of the aisle, and these views deserve to be heard. We are talking about a gargantuan tax cut--a behemoth, which threatens to eat up the surplus, drain the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, cripple domestic discretionary spending, siphon off needed defense dollars, and leave us fully unprepared to deal with natural disasters or foreign upheavals. We are talking about making very dramatic changes in our fiscal policies based on--what? Based on projections. And your projection is as good as her projection or as good as his or as good as mine--projections which are admitted by the projectors, themselves, to be very, very tenuous, indeed. I believe that the American people, those people out there, out in the mountains, in the coastal areas, those to the Pacific, to the Atlantic, from the Canadian-U.S. line to the Gulf of Mexico--all of you ought to have the benefit of a full and thorough debate about the choices before us. Do we pay down the debt with surplus monies? Do we reserve some of the surplus to protect the solvency of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds? How do we go about creating a wise and thoughtful plan concerning prescription drugs? Do we spend more on education, and public infrastructure? Do we allow more for Defense abroad and anti-terrorism at home? These are questions which need to be put before the full membership of the Senate and the House, and, through spirited debate and the offering of amendments, before the American people. This Senator just strenuously, strenuously objects to having these far-reaching, critical matters swathed in the protective bandages of a reconciliation process and ramrodded through this body like some self- propelled missile. Nobody who has listened to the testimony in the Budget Committee could possibly claim that the right choices are clear. They are not clear. There is vast uncertainty and disagreement about nearly every aspect of our future budget policy. The President's proposals are not an edict, and the Senate is not a quivering body of humble subjects who must obey under any and all circumstances. I suggest that, if the faint dream of effecting some sort of true bipartisanship in Washington for a time is ever to jell into something tangible, reliance on reconciliation as the torpedo to deliver a knock- out punch for the President is a tactic which must be abandoned. It is not a fair course. It is not a wise course. And, it is a course which shortchanges the American people. We must not shackle the intellects of one hundred Members of the Senate in this way. That is what we would be doing. We would shackle, hand and foot, the intellects of 100 Members. One-hundred representatives of 280 million people would be shackled in this body, and shackled, as well, on the other side of the Capitol in the House. We must not ignore the viewpoints of millions of Americans. We should not fear the wisdom of open and free-ranging debate about a proposal which is, at best, risky business. Now is no time to circle the wagons. Now is the time to hear all the voices and build consensus among ourselves and among our people. There will be no victory here, if we make the wrong choices and plunge this Nation back to deficit status. I implore the Leadership to bring whatever tax bill we write to the full Senate as a freestanding non-reconciliation bill for a thorough examination by this body. The President has said that he wants bipartisanship. He has said that he has faith in his plan. There is no need to hide behind the iron wall of reconciliation. Let us not damage the President's leadership with the ruthless misuse of a process in this body, which may hand him a very hollow victory, indeed. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his time, for his waiting, and for his very wise words.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, on behalf of the majority leader, that the Senate now enter into a period for the transaction of morning business and Senators be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each, with the exception of my own statement.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, every February our Nation celebrates the birth of two of our most revered presidents--George Washington, the father of our Nation, who victoriously led his ill-fitted assembly of militiamen against the armies of King George, and Abraham Lincoln, the eternal martyr of freedom, whose powerful voice and iron will shepherded a divided Nation toward a more perfect Union. Sadly, I fear that many of our Nation's school children may never fully appreciate the lives and accomplishments of these two American giants of history. They have been robbed of that appreciation--robbed by a school system that no longer stresses a knowledge of American history. In fact, study after study has shown that many of the true meanings of our Nation's grand celebrations of patriotism--such as Memorial Day or the Fourth of July--are lost on the majority of young Americans. What a waste. What a shame. In 1994, the National Assessment of Educational Progress assessed fourth, eighth, and twelfth-grade students' knowledge of U.S. history. The results of this study are deeply disturbing. The study divided students into three groups--advanced, proficient, and basic--based on their ability to recall, understand, analyze, and interpret U.S. history. Only 17 percent of fourth graders, 14 percent of eighth graders, and 11 percent of twelfth graders were judged to be ``proficient''. Over one-third of fourth and eighth graders failed to reach the ``basic'' level and more than half of the twelfth graders surveyed could not even achieve the ``basic'' category in the history of their own Nation. The questions were not overly difficult, especially not for a twelfth grader. One question asked students to name the document that contains the basic rules used to run the Government of the United States of America. Only 27 percent selected the U.S. Constitution as the correct answer. Imagine that--27 percent! How can we ever survive as a country, if more than \2/3\ of our high school seniors are so ignorant about our basic charter? This deplorable record indicates that too many American children lack even the most rudimentary grounding in U.S. history. Even more disturbing were the results of a study released last year by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni that tested the knowledge of college seniors who were on the verge of graduation. The organization gave students from fifty-five of our Nation's finest colleges and universities a typical high school-level American history exam. Nearly 80 percent--80 percent!--of these college seniors--the future leaders of our Nation--earned no better than a ``D.'' A mere 23 percent could identify James Madison as the principal Framer of the Constitution; more than a third did not know that the Constitution established the separation of powers in American government; a scant 35 percent could correctly identify Harry S. Truman as the President in office at the start of the Korean Conflict; and just 60 percent could correctly select the fifty-year period in which the Civil War occurred--not the correct years, or even the correct decade, but the correct half-century. These results are shameful and appalling. Not only are our grade- school students ignorant about their own history, so are our college students. Our children are being allowed to complete their formal educations without any semblance of historical context. To put it simply, young Americans do not know why they are free or what sacrifices it took to make us so. An American student, regardless of race, religion, or gender, must know the history of the land to which they pledge allegiance. They should be taught about the Founding Fathers of this Nation, the battles that they fought, the ideals that they championed, and the enduring effects of their accomplishments. They should be taught about our Nation's failures, our mistakes, and the inequities of our past. Without this knowledge, they cannot appreciate the hard won freedoms that are our birthright. Our failure to insist that the words and actions of our forefathers be handed down from generation to generation will ultimately mean a failure to perpetuate this wonderful experiment in representative democracy. Without the lessons learned from the past, how can we ensure that our Nation's core ideals--life, liberty, equality, and freedom-- will survive? As Marcus Tullius Cicero stated, ``to be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?'' Last session, fearing that our children were being denied any sense of their own history, I added an amendment to an appropriations act that I believe will be a starting point for a partial solution to this egregious failure of the American educational system. This amendment appropriated $50 million to be distributed as competitive grants to schools across the Nation that teach American history as a separate subject within school curricula--no lumping of history into social studies. Schools that have previously sought to teach American history should be commended, and schools that wish to add this critical area of learning to their curriculae should be helped to do so. It is my hope that this money will serve as seed corn, and that future funding will be dedicated to the improvement and expansion of courses dedicated to teaching American history on its own, unencumbered by the lump sum approaches of ``social studies'' or ``civics.'' The history of our Nation is too important to be swept under the bed, locked in the closet or distorted beyond all recognition. The corridors of time are lined with the mistakes of societies that lost their way, cultures that forgot their purpose, and Nations that took no heed of the lessons of their past. I hope that this Nation, having studied the failures of those before it, would not endeavor to test fate's nerve. Thucydides, the Greek historian, understood that the future can sometimes best be seen through the prism of the past. The following is an excerpt from the funeral oration of Pericles as reported by Thucydides in his ``History of the Peloponnesian War.'' Fix your eyes on the greatness of Athens as you have it before you day by day, fall in love with her, and when you feel her great, remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action . . . So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth and received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all sepulchers, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes by. For the whole earth is the sepulcher of famous men; and their story is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives. For you now it remains to rival what they have done and, knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy's onset.

Mr. BYRD

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

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States Armed Forces have great abilities, supreme dedication, and they deserve the highest level of support that this Nation can give them. But despite outstanding military troops, a number of challenges lie ahead for the Department of Defense, particularly in the area of allocating monetary resources. One of the first budget challenges that President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld will face is how to improve military readiness. By now, we are all familiar with the myriad problems confronting our military forces today--recruitment and retention problems, crushing deployment burdens, aging ships and tanks and aircraft, a scarcity of spare parts--even a scarcity of ammunition according to yesterday morning's Washington Post--substandard housing and outdated facilities--and the list can go on and on. All of these factors affect readiness. All of these deficiencies will require money to correct. Already, representatives of the Joint Chiefs are lobbying the Senate Armed Services Committee for a supplemental appropriations bill to increase the current defense budget by perhaps as much as $10 billion. Presumably, the Services will get around to making their wishes known to the Appropriations Committee as well, since it is that committee that actually has the responsibility over the supplemental appropriations. But regardless of the tactics employed, the supplemental is just the first sortie. Beyond the current budget, we are bracing for the likelihood of requests for major leaps in defense funding--perhaps as much as $50 billion a year--just over the horizon. With that said, I was heartened to read President Bush's comments in Monday's New York Times, in which he called for a comprehensive review of Pentagon priorities and strategies before seeking funding increases for modernization that make sense to me, it seems. Hopefully, President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld will be able to impose some order and discipline on the Pentagon budget process. That is probably going to be a pretty big order--a pretty big order to impose some order and discipline on the Pentagon budget process. Clearly, it is necessary to focus on defense, readiness, and national security. The United States cannot afford to lose sight of the fact that a strong defense is the key to national security. We must never risk complacency in a world that encompasses the likes of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden; a world in which the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons represents a threat to our very existence. But before we consider how much more money we need to spend on defense, I believe we should take a close look at how the Pentagon is managing the money and the assets it already has. Now, one of our colleagues, Senator Grassley, has been very interested in this same subject. It was his intention to speak this afternoon, but other matters have intervened, and he will speak on this same subject one day next week. Just recently, the General Accounting Office gave us a good insight into the current situation with the release of a status report on the Defense Department's management of key programs and assets. The conclusions are disturbing. In six key areas--financial management, information technology, acquisitions, contracts, support infrastructure, and logistics--the GAO found Defense Department management practices to be vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. Together, these deficiencies represent a tremendous drain on the ability of the Defense Department to operate efficiently, effectively, and safely. The GAO report put it starkly. Here is what it said: If these problems are not addressed, the report stated, ``inefficiencies will continue to make the cost of carrying out assigned missions unnecessarily high and, more important, increase the risks associated with those missions. Each dollar that is spent inefficiently,'' said the report, ``is a dollar that is unavailable to meet other internal Department priorities such as weapon system modernization and readiness.'' What is most disturbing to me is that, in program after program, management procedures are so garbled that the General Accounting Office cannot even estimate--cannot even estimate--the level of inefficiency. This is a critical knowledge gap when one considers the fact that the Defense Department accounts for about 15 percent of the entire Federal budget, and roughly half of all discretionary spending--roughly half of all discretionary spending. The Defense Department has a budget of about $310 billion a year and assets estimated at $1 trillion. Clearly, keeping score when dealing with numbers of that magnitude is a huge challenge. But it is a challenge that must be faced. In an agency as vast as the Defense Department, which has approximately 3 million military and civilian employees, sloppy accounting and accountability procedures can have enormous ramifications on personnel, on readiness, and on national security. Some of the details of the GAO report are shocking. For example, in the area of financial operations--just plain old bookkeeping in lay terms--the General Accounting Office reported that the Defense Department does not know with any certainty how much money it has available, and its books are in such disarray that it cannot pass a standard financial audit. Now, how about that? How about that? Let me repeat that for emphasis: The Defense Department, which is talking about needing an additional $50 billion dollars a year to meet readiness requirements, does not know with any certainty how much money it currently has available and cannot pass the test of receiving a clean audit opinion on its financial statements. Now, take that home with you and sleep on it. That is worth repeating. The Defense Department--this is not Robert Byrd saying this. I am just repeating what the General Accounting Office, the arm of the Congress, reported: The Defense Department does not know with any certainty how much money it has, and its books are in such disarray that it cannot pass a standard financial audit. The Defense Department, which is talking about needing an additional $50 billion--they want $50 more for every minute since Jesus Christ was born; that is $50 billion--a year to meet readiness requirements. Yet the Defense Department does not know with any certainty how much money it currently has available. It would seem to me that before Congress appropriates $50 billion more, we ought to know how much money the Defense Department has available. It cannot pass the test of receiving a clean audit opinion on its financial statements; that, despite the fact the Chief Financial Officers' Act of 1990 requires the Department of Defense to prepare annual audited financial statements. So the Defense Department is not living up to the law, is it? The Chief Financial Officers' Act of 1990 requires DOD to prepare annual audited financial statements. That was 1990. Yet 10 years, 10 long years after the enactment of that law, DOD has yet to produce financial statements that can be certified as complying with generally accepted accounting principles. Examples of DOD's financial management weaknesses abound. For instance, the GAO found that the Defense Department could not reconcile a $7 billion difference between its available fund balances and the Treasury's. GAO also discovered that the Department of Defense was unable to substantiate the $378 billion it had reported as total net reporting costs in 1999. DOD was unable to substantiate the $378 billion it reported as total net operating cost in 1999. Given this lack of accountability, is it any wonder then that DOD is constantly pressed for cash? In the space of one year, from 1998 to 1999, the DOD recalculated its environmental and cleanup requirements, increasing estimated environmental liabilities from $34 billion to $80 billion. Despite the increase, DOD still does not have a comprehensive inventory of all potential environmental and disposal liabilities. The final bill could be billions of dollars more. So here is the question I have: If the Department of Defense does not know what it has in terms of assets and liabilities, how on Earth can it know what it needs? Bookkeeping is only the tip of the iceberg. DOD's logistics operations, particularly inventory control, are a management nightmare. Unfortunately, this should come as no surprise to anybody. The DOD's inventory control practices have been flagged as inadequate and high risk every year since the General Accounting Office began assessing high-risk areas a decade ago. I was on the floor a decade ago talking about it, pointing out that the inventories were huge and talking about the inventory control practices. It seems to me one of the television networks was doing a piece on this several years ago. As a result, billions of taxpayer dollars are very probably being squandered. According to the General Accounting Office, the Defense Department continues to stockpile more than it needs. I think that is what it was doing 10 years ago when we had the television networks looking into that. It seems to me that it was Lesley Stahl, as I recall--my memory may be playing tricks on me, but I believe it was Lesley Stahl at that time--who was doing this, who went to where some of these inventories were stored and was doing a piece on that. Here we are 10 years later--same old problem. As a result, billions of taxpayer dollars are very probably being squandered. According to the General Accounting Office, the Defense Department continues to stockpile more than it needs. The television network at that time--the particular channel, I don't remember--was saying the same thing, bringing out the same thing. In the Baptist Church, we have a song: ``Tell me the old, old story.'' Well, this is the old, old story. According to GAO, the Defense Department continues to stockpile more than it needs, purchases items it does not need while at the same time maintaining insufficient quantities of key spare parts, and is unable to keep track of material being shipped to and from military activities. The General Accounting Office discovered that about half of DoD's $64 billion dollar inventory in spare parts, clothing, medical supplies and other support items exceeds war reserve or current operating requirements. At the time GAO reviewed the accounts, DoD had $1.6 billion dollars worth of inventory on order that was not needed to meet current requirements. GAO found that the Army had no way of knowing whether shipped inventory had been lost or stolen, and the Navy, in a 1999 review, was unable to account for more than $3 billion worth of shipped inventory, including some classified and sensitive items. And yet this bloated inventory is being amassed at a time when the Pentagon admits that it is experiencing readiness problems due to a lack of key spare parts. According to GAO, insufficient quantities of spare parts is one of the primary reasons that airlift and aerial refueling aircraft are performing below the Air Force's mission capable standard rates. GAO also red-flagged the Pentagon's 100 billion dollar a year weapons system acquisition program. The problems are pervasive: questionable requirements; unrealistic cost, schedule, and performance estimates; questionable program affordability; and high-risk acquisition strategies. Simply put, in its rush to acquire the next new thing, DoD is riding roughshod over reality, compressing systems acquisition decisions into unrealistic schedules and pursuing new weapons systems willy-nilly without adequate testing and evaluation, regardless of costs or the prospect of future funding, and despite a lack of reliable evidence that the systems can actually do what they are supposed to do. Was it a mere coincidence in timing or merely a matter of time that the GAO's questioning of DoD acquisition strategies involving the V-22 Osprey aircraft collided with headlines reporting allegations that a Marine Corps officer engineered the falsification of maintenance records to cover up problems with the Osprey? In its report, GAO noted that the Navy was moving toward a full-rate production decision on the Osprey aircraft program without having ``an appropriate level of confidence that the program would meet design parameters as well as cost and schedule objectives.'' Subsequently, GAO cited evidence that Navy and Marine Corps officials, in an apparent effort to cut costs and stay on schedule, deleted or deferred tests on the Osprey that could have revealed crucial information on system performance. The allegations of doctored records, as well as two crashes in the past year that killed 23 Marines, have resulted in the Osprey being grounded, the production decision deferred, and numerous investigations launched. But the damage has been done. Mr. President, the problems emerging from DoD's acquisition decisions for the Osprey are alarming enough. Even more alarming is the chronic nature of these problems. The Osprey is only the most recent questionable acquisition strategy to dominate the news. As GAO noted, ``After having performed hundreds of reviews of major weapon systems over the last 20 years, we have seen many of the same problems recur cost increases, schedule delays and performance shortfalls. The problems have proven resistant to reform in part because underlying incentives have not changed.'' It appears, from the data that GAO has gathered, that the Defense Department has fallen into the trap of making budget and management decisions on the basis of wishful thinking, not facts. ``Overly optimistic planning assumptions'' is the way GAO framed it. As a result, DoD has more programs than money. For example, GAO found that although the Defense Department planned to increase funding for its $11 billion dollar Defense Health Program by $615 million dollars between 2001 and 2005, DoD officials admitted that the program actually needed an extra $6 billion dollars during that time. That, Mr. President, is a $6 billion dollar understatement of need. Defense Department officials admitted to GAO that they underfund the health program in outyears to free up current funds for other defense programs. ``Overly optimistic'' in my opinion is an overly charitable way of characterizing that kind of deceptive budgeting. The General Accounting Office is not the only entity that has pointed out the flaws in DoD financial management practices. According to the Defense Department's own Inspector General's audit, the department's books are riddled with holes. The Inspector General found that 30 percent of all entries were made to force financial data to agree with various sources of financial data without adequate research and reconciliation, were made to force buyer and seller data to agree in preparation for eliminating entries, did not contain adequate documentation and audit trails, or did not follow accounting principles. Something is wrong with this picture. At a time when the Defense Department is scrambling to make ends meet, there is no excuse to invite waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement into the mix year after year after year. These are not merely administrative headaches. Like a steady trickle of water can wear away the mightiest foundation, inefficient management and sloppy bookkeeping can undermine the ability of America's men and women in uniform to carry out their responsibilities efficiently, effectively, and safely. GAO concluded that, ``Until DoD presents realistic assumptions and plans in its future budgets, the Congress will lack the accurate and realistic information it needs to properly exercise its decision-making and oversight.'' That summation goes to the heart of the matter. Congress cannot make reasonable decisions on future budget needs for the Department of Defense until DoD can offer a reliable budget basis on which to proceed. The Defense Department has been besieged by financial and related management problems for years. We all understand that there is no quick fix. But we should also understand the magnitude of the problem, and the impact that it has on readiness and the impact it will have on congressional confidence, the impact it will have on congressional appropriations, the impact it will have on the taxpayer. GAO is performing a valuable national service by identifying high- risk management problems at the Defense Department, but Congress needs to do more than express dismay at the annual reports. It may cost money to modernize the Pentagon's financial systems, but it would be money well spent, and could well pay for itself in a short period of time. Mr. President, I raised the issue of DoD's financial management woes with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld at his nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. To his credit, Secretary Rumsfeld did not attempt to gloss over the difficulties facing the Defense Department in improving its financial management systems. He pledged to tackle the problem, but he said that it would probably take outside help to find a solution, and that it could take a period of years to sort it out. I urge Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush to make financial and performance accountability in the Defense Department a top priority, and to work with the appropriate congressional committees to slay this particular dragon once and for all. As I said at the beginning of my statement, Senator Grassley will have something to say on this matter next week. He has devoted much time and thought to the problem. I am sure his concerns will continue. I look forward to working with him and others on the committee to try to be of assistance to the Department in cleaning up its act. The United States has real national security problems to confront. We can anticipate trouble from Saddam Hussein. Talk about all of these surpluses that have been projected now for years away from the present day. Who knows what Saddam Hussein may do overnight? Remember when he went into Kuwait? The world was shocked. America put a lot of men and women on the ground in the desert in the Middle East and a lot of money on the barrel head. That can happen again. Saddam Hussein is probably one of the most dangerous men in the world. There is no doubt about it. We don't know what he is doing by way of developing chemical, biological, and other weapons. He may threaten a neighboring state at any moment, and then watch those projections, those budget surpluses, vanish. We can anticipate trouble from him, and we must be ready for trouble from other hot spots on the globe. So we must invest in readiness. But we must also invest in accountability. The United States cannot afford to allow performance and accountability problems at the Defense Department to sap the strength of our investment in readiness. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.