Daniel Coats

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I understand there is a bill on the calendar available to read a second time.

Mr. COATS. I object to further proceedings of this measure at this time.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, this morning the time for the two leaders has been reserved and the Senate will immediately resume consideration of S. 4, the line-item veto bill. Under the consent agreement, any Senator with an amendment on the list will have until 10 a.m. this morning to offer that amendment. At the hour of 10 a.m., the Senate will begin 2 hours of debate on the Daschle substitute amendment. Therefore, Members should be aware that rollcall votes will occur throughout the day and that it is the intention of the majority leader to complete action on the line-item veto bill today.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Can I inquire of the Senator from West Virginia, will he be prepared to call up that amendment today?

Mr. COATS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. COATS. The answer to that--if the Senator will yield, Mr. President, the answer to that is no, unless it is new spending or a change in the benefit, it would not be subject to the line-item veto.

Mr. COATS. No. It only applies to new spending.

Mr. COATS. The answer to that is no.

Mr. COATS. The Senator from Indiana will be happy to try, depending on the complexity of the questions.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. COATS. Six years.

Mr. COATS. I have not.

Mr. COATS. It appears that it does. In fact there is----

Mr. COATS. I think the whole purpose of this exercise----

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I yield to the Senator from Arizona so he may ask questions of the Senator from Georgia and he may respond without having to go through this convoluted procedure. In fact, I yield the floor so the Senator from Arizona can take the floor to ask questions.

Mr. COATS. It does provide for the separate enrollment of all appropriated measures. But the application of the bill, application of the veto, the power given to the President only goes to the new spending or expansion of benefits available under the entitlement program.

Mr. COATS. The mandatory spending must go out under the law as it is currently written--mandatory spending. Only new spending is subject to the line-item veto.

Mr. COATS. I am sorry; would the Senator restate that question?

Mr. COATS. The amount appropriated must go out under the existing law. The only way in which the President could veto a provision is if the underlying law were changed to increase the amount of spending as the result of an expanded or new benefit. So additional spending to meet the mandatory requirement under the law would not qualify for a line-item veto. But if there were additional spending as the result of a change in the underlying law which increased spending as a result of that change, that increase is subject to the line-item veto.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, therefore I ask for its first reading.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I inquire of the Chair if H.R. 1158 has arrived from the House of Representatives?

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I now ask for its second reading.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that there be a period for the transaction of routine morning business with Senators permitted to speak therein for not to exceed 5 minutes each.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Madam President, I would just point out to my colleague and friend from Nebraska that the separate enrollment procedure is not something that is new. In fact, it is a procedure which has enjoyed support not only from Republicans but also from Democrats. Senator Hollings, more than a decade ago, suggested, discussed, proposed the separate enrollment procedure. Senator Biden, then chairman of the Judiciary Committee, spoke very articulately in favor of the separate enrollment procedure and its constitutionality. It is a means by which we attempt to accomplish the end that I think most now are admitting needs to be accomplished. That is, to provide a means by which we can check the unnecessary pork-barrel spending that has come out of this Chamber and the House Chamber and sent to the desk, to the President, in increasing amounts ever since the adoption of the Budget Act of 1974. It is a practice that Members have used, and I suggest many have abused, of attaching to otherwise necessary legislation that the President needs to sign items that are designed to favor a few or favor a parochial, narrow interest. So as we have struggled to define the vehicle that will achieve the necessary number of votes to grant a check and balance against this practice of Congress, we have looked at various forms--enhanced rescission is one; constitutional amendment is another; separate enrollment is the third. Modern technology has allowed us to accomplish separate enrollment in a means and way in which we could not a few years ago. Five or six years ago, it was a valid complaint and a valid objection to say that it would lead to an incredibly difficult and complex process which would require the enrolling clerk to go through all kinds of machinations and additional work in order to accomplish the breakdown of a particular piece of legislation into individual items which could then be enrolled and sent to the President. Today, computer programs allow that to be accomplished in a matter of hours, if not minutes--depending on the size of the bill. What used to be described as a nightmare of a procedure now is a routine procedure, accomplished both in the Senate and in the House. Separate enrollment has the advantage of allowing the President to know exactly what is laid on his or her desk, what item constitutes additional spending for a particular purpose. Rather than the obfuscation and rather than the confusion over how taxpayers' money is going to be spent we now, under separate enrollment, pick up a piece of paper which contains a single item, incorporated in a form which the President can either accept or reject. No longer will we have the excuse of saying, ``I didn't know what was in that massive bill. I thought we were voting on an emergency appropriation. I thought we were voting on something of national interest. It was only later I discovered, to my horror, that it included all kinds of special tax benefits for single individuals, for limited interests, special breaks for special interests.'' Or, ``I didn't know that the appropriations that went forward provided what is often characterized as embarrassing expenditures of something that can only be described as pork-barrel spending. ``Even had I known it, I'm afraid I would have had to vote for the bill, because it provided emergency funding for our national defense; it provided emergency funding for hurting Americans as a consequence of a hurricane or floods or an earthquake, or necessary spending for essential functions of Government.'' Or, ``I didn't want to shut the whole Government down. We were right up against the deadline.'' Yes, those rascals always slip a few things in there at the end, but we were up against the deadline and we had a massive bill that we had to pass or send to the President. The President is faced with the choice of either accepting the entire bill or rejecting the entire bill. The President--each President in this century with one exception--has formally asked the Congress, ``Let me have line-item veto authority so that I am not''--as Harry Truman said--``blackmailed by the legislature into either accepting the bill with all of its extraneous, nonrelevant spending, or rejecting the bill and sending it back.'' By the way, you send a lot of these major appropriations up at the very end of the fiscal year with hours to go, sometimes, before the fiscal year runs out, and then you put me in a position of saying if I do not like something in that legislation, I have to send the entire bill back and close every office, and all the horror stories about the essential functions of Government are then raised. That is, as Harry Truman said, legislative blackmail. Madam President, what we are attempting to do is to fashion a procedure, a process which will allow the President to say ``I'll accept 99 percent of that bill or 94 percent of that bill, but I can't accept it with these dozen items in there that do not have anything to do with the bill, that do not go toward any national interest, that are simply attached because Members knew that this is the way to get their pork-barrel spending through, that I had to accept the bill.'' By the same token, this is a process which will change the way Members behave, the way Members act. Because now, knowing that the President would have the power under line-item veto to single out their particular item, to single it out on one page of paper for everyone to see, and knowing that the only way that item could become law is if this Congress brought it back up and that Member were forced to come to the floor, debate, and explain what was in the bill, what the spending was for, and turn to his colleagues and say, ``I need your support but, by the way, you will have to put your `yes' or your `no' on public record so that your constituents understand how you feel about that particular item,'' knowing that, I predict most Members will say, ``I don't think that particular spending item is so important that I want to risk having to debate that or putting other Members on notice.'' Or, ``I don't think I can get the necessary votes to achieve that particular purpose.'' Separate enrollment brings forward into the light of public scrutiny the particular item of expenditure, and no longer will we be able to hide that item. Madam President, I note that the Senator from West Virginia has arrived on the floor, and I am more than happy to yield.