William Cohen

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. I think this legislation is serious. There is still some confusion, frankly, among a lot of Members in terms of exactly how it will work. So I think we will take as long as necessary to work our way through that. I think that is the spirit with which the sponsor of the bill has approached this. He has made a number of very positive and constructive changes since he originally introduced the legislation. I think he is going to be willing to work, in whatever fashion we can, to strike strong bipartisan support for the bill. I yield the floor. Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I just want to take a moment to commend the Senator from Ohio for his statement urging his colleagues to support this legislation notwithstanding the defeat of a number of amendments that were offered and rejected. I might say, just speaking for myself, that a number of the amendments which were offered, were they to be offered as free-standing legislation, probably would enjoy broad bipartisan support. But we should be clear about what is taking place. There is a momentum that has started in the House of Representatives. There is the Contract with America that the majority in the House and the Senate would like to see brought to the floor for debate and disposition. The majority is determined during that first 100 days to do whatever it can to facilitate that. Now, given the fact that we have different rules in the Senate than in the House, they can act much more expeditiously than we can in the Senate. The Senate was not designed to act in that fashion. In fact, this institution was designed to slow things down so we could have more careful deliberation than the other body. I must say that even though amendments were offered and rejected, it did would hope that the Senator's colleagues would heed his call for support for the underlying legislation, not only, as he indicated, because if a law is right for others it should be right for us. We should also recognize that the motivation for this legislation was not only to impose a sense of equity but also a sense of reality. Someone once described Washington as being a city of marble surrounded on four sides by reality. That is what has been missing for the most part in terms of the reality of the consequences of what we do. We pass legislation from the very highest of motivations. We are trying to help people who are in need of help. We are trying to improve workplace safety; we are trying to improve the health and well-being of our constituents; we are trying to do many things on behalf of other people. Yet we do not necessarily do so in a way that is reflective enough of the consequences that must be borne by others that we do not have to bear ourselves. So this is not only an issue of equity. I think it really is motivated principally from an issue of reality--that we will be more aware of the consequences of what we are about to do if we are forced to live under the same rules. So I would urge my colleagues to support the recommendation of the Senator from Ohio that, notwithstanding the rejection of the amendments which were offered, they lend their support to this measure.

Mr. COHEN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, on behalf of myself and Senator Pryor, I am pleased to submit a resolution to provide funding from the contingent fund of the Senate for operational moneys for the Senate Special Committee on Aging for the years 1995 and 1996. I am hopeful that the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration will approve this funding request. The amounts contained in this budget request fully comply with the direction of the Rules Committee to reduce the operational budget of the committee substantially below the 1994 budget authorization level. Senator Pryor and I are fully committed to implementing these reductions in both the salary and administrative portions of the committee budget. We believe that the budget submissions we are providing today to the Rules Committee reflect the commitment of myself, as chairman, and Senator Pryor, as ranking member, to make the operations of the committee as efficient as possible and to support the leadership's goal of reducing the number of Senate staff. We are confident that the committee will be able to pursue a very active agenda of oversight, investigations, and consumer education within these staffing levels. The Special Committee on Aging plays a critical oversight function to the Congress and the American taxpayer. While some of the programs and issues reviewed by the committee are within the legislative purview of other committees, the Aging Committee conducts essential oversight and investigations of these programs to ensure that they are serving the needs of older Americans and taxpayers. This past Congress, for example, the committee examined a broad array of issues affecting the elderly, including major fraud and abuse scams targeting Medicare; drug addicts manipulating the Social Security disability programs; trends of escalating out-of-pocket health care costs of older Americans, including prescription drug and long-term care costs; crime against the elderly; and consumer scams targeting senior citizens. In many instances, findings and recommendations of the committee with respect to the issues it which have been enacted into law. This year, the Aging Committee stands ready and able to take on a host of issues affecting older Americans. Some of the issues we plan to address this year will be investigating fraud and abuse in the Medicare and Medicaid programs and recommending proposals to better protect these programs and their beneficiaries from fraudulent practices; evaluating and recommending improvements in the administration of the Social Security disability programs to ensure a more efficient expenditure of taxpayer dollars; and evaluating the effects of entitlement reform on programs serving the elderly and retired populations. We will also continue to evaluate the effects of health care reform proposals on the elderly, including proposals to assist older Americans and their families bear the exorbitant costs of long- term care. Mr. President, for more than 30 years, the Special Committee on Aging has overseen the needs and trends of our Nation's aging population and the programs that serve current and future generations of older Americans. It has been my great pleasure and honor to serve under the able leadership of Senator Pryor as chairman of the Aging Committee and I look forward to working closely with him in his new capacity as ranking member of the committee in a bipartisan, cooperative spirit that has been the tradition of the committee for over 30 years. We look forward to the challenges the 104th Congress will hold for the Aging Committee, and urge the Rules Committee to approve our budget request.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, first let me commend the Senator from Michigan. He and I have worked on the Governmental Affairs Committee, and the oversight subcommittee, since coming to the Senate in 1979. I regard him as one of the truly dedicated individuals in reforming our system both here and in the executive branch. I have the very highest regard for him, and I cannot praise him enough in terms of the work ethic that he demonstrates day in and day out on the issues that we deal with. I have been an original cosponsor with the Senator from Michigan on both the lobby disclosure and the gift ban bill. And I might point out historically what has taken place. Initially, we took up the issue of lobby disclosure because we realized that the current laws governing lobbyists are a mess. The laws are so ambiguous, so riddled with exceptions, so unclear that only a very few of the many thousands of lobbyists in this city even bother to register. In fact, many who register feel they are doing so at their peril, that it is unnecessary for them to do so; they have insufficient standards and guidelines. They realize that there is very little, if any, enforcement. I am aware of any penalty ever having been levied. But we felt at the time that the public was genuinely concerned about fundamental questions, very simple questions. Who is paying how much money to whom to do what? Those were the simple questions we think are on the minds of the American people. And I think the Senator from Michigan is correct that many feel that their elected officials are no longer in charge of actually governing the country; that ``special interests and lobbyists'' are in fact calling the tune and dictating what the rules are going to be. So I joined with the Senator from Michigan in sponsoring the lobby disclosure measure, only to find out that after we had introduced the measure, after it had come out of the committee and was coming to the floor, it was editorially attacked, as I recall, in one of the leading newspapers of this country, saying what a gross oversight on the part of the Senator from Michigan and the Governmental Affairs Committee that they did not deal with the gift ban issue. It was not our intent at that time to link lobbying disclosure with the gift ban issue. We were not ignoring the gift ban issue. We simply felt lobby disclosure was an appropriate subject matter for us to devote our energies to and to make recommendations. And, frankly, we thought at the time that we had a comprehensive agreement. We found that most of the lobbyists who came in and testified actually welcomed a clarification of the existing laws. We took hours and hours of testimony. We thought that we actually were making a very constructive proposal to all of them so they know there is one set of rules, not one for those who lobby for foreign firms or countries, not one for domestic interests here at home, but one set of rules and very clearly stated. We thought that was in the best interest certainly of the country, and also the lobbyists themselves. Then the gift ban proposal was raised at the last moment and it was implied unfairly that the Senator from Michigan did not want to deal with the gift ban issue. At that point, we decided to hold additional hearings solely on the gift ban issue. We tried to put together legislation addressing both the ban on gifts to Members as well as the lobby disclosure. That is how the two originally were linked. As the Senator from Michigan indicated, he has now delinked these issues, calling for a sense-of-the-Senate resolution to take up lobbying disclosure later and to deal only with the gift ban issue for now. I take issue only with one statement the Senator from Michigan has made. He said if we fail to act today, this is a copout. I would like to indicate to my friend and colleague, with whom I have worked all of these years, that I do not intend to cop out on anything during the course of this year. In fact, I was one of the few Republicans who stood with him in the final moments of the last session, over the objection of many of my fellow Republicans, in going forward with the legislation that we had developed. But I must say today--and I have indicated this to him privately, and I will do so publicly now--that I will not support attaching this amendment to the bill under consideration, for a very simple reason. I believe that the majority leader deserves the opportunity to work closely and in concert with the House for the first time in the unique situation that both bodies are now controlled by the Republican party to give the Republicans a chance to govern. As I recall Senator Dole saying during the campaign in the fall months, ``Give us a chance to govern, and if we don't measure up, if we don't do the job, throw us out.'' Those are pretty straightforward and very tough words. What Senator Dole is asking for is a chance to say: Let us take this measure up, S. 2; it is not perfect, but it is something that we think we can reach agreement on very quickly with the House, that we may be able to avoid the need for a conference, and pass a bill quickly that will tell the American people we are in fact subjecting ourselves to the laws that we subject them to. He has also made a pledge to me and to others--and it is a pledge that I will repeat here today for myself: Let me tell my friend from Michigan, in the event that his amendment is not successful, in the event it is tabled, that I pledge to him and to other Members here that I intend to support gift ban legislation. I intend to support lobby disclosure. I intend to give Senator Dole an opportunity to bring it up in a relatively short time. He has not given me a specific timetable, but I would say within the next couple of months, I expect we will consider this legislation and any amendments that might be offered to it--and I suspect there will be amendments. There are people on this side that still do not agree with provisions that we supported. I will make this representation to my colleagues: That I intend to support the legislation. I will not do so today. I will give the majority leader an opportunity to carry through what he said he wanted to do, and that is a chance to govern. And if we fail to do so properly in the eyes of the American people, throw us out. So at the appropriate time--and that time to be determined by the majority leader; and it is something that I will continue to watch carefully and work on with my colleague from Michigan--I will join him in offering his legislation. In the event he is unsuccessful in bringing this to a vote today, I will join him and vote for both of these bills in the future. But today, I am urging my colleagues, as one who is an original cosponsor of both bills, to give Senator Dole an opportunity to govern, to see if we cannot pass this legislation as quickly as possible so we can avoid going through a lengthy conference with the House which could in fact derail the momentum that exists for taking swift action on the Congressional Accountability legislation. Give us an opportunity to prove what can be done in a short period of time and then insist that we bring these two measures back to the floor for a vote, at which time I will be joining with my colleagues from Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio. I thank my colleague from Minnesota for yielding. I yield the floor.

Mr. COHEN. I will take 5 minutes.