Robert Dole

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I shall object. Again, repeating, it seems to me that there was a provision that we might have added to the deeming provision which would have defined the scope of employment once back to work. We are told that the Justice Department, or whoever would make that determination, would probably conclude that they could go back into almost normal duties. We were prepared to at least look at that provision. In fact, I ask unanimous consent that that provision be printed in the Record.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that once the Senate receives the document entitled ``A Bill to Provide for Deficit Reduction and Achieve a Balanced Budget by the Fiscal Year 2002,'' that is agreed to by the President and the congressional leaders, that the bill be considered under the following restraints: That there be 12 hours for debate on all amendments, motions, and appeals in connection therewith, and all other provisions in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 be in effect as if it were a reconciliation bill. I further ask that once the Senate receives from the House the bill entitled ``A Bill to Provide for Deficit Reduction and Achieve a Balanced Federal Budget by 2002,'' that it be in order for the majority leader to introduce and place directly on the Senate Calendar the concurrent resolution revising the first concurrent budget resolution, as provided for under the Budget Act of 1974, and that the consideration of that concurrent resolution be limited to 1 hour to be equally divided in the usual form, with all other provisions of the Budget Act in effect with respect to the consideration of that concurrent resolution.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be deemed read the third time, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the matter be placed at the appropriate place in the Record.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, the Democratic leader and I will be on the floor momentarily. We are trying to figure out some way to work out a problem we have. Hopefully we can get it done. In the meantime, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. I think we have indicated to other Senators we will continue negotiations, we will attempt to clear the House message, maybe with a modification, the back-to-work bill, and if we cannot find some solution, it may be that we will just pass the Middle East Peace Facilitation Act. We will not be in session, I do not think, very long tomorrow. I hope we are not in session on New Year's Day.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that once we complete our business today, the Senate stand in recess until the hour of 12 noon on Sunday, December 31, 1995, that following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be deemed approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and there then be a period for morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess under the previous order.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, the 2d session of the 104th Congress will automatically commence at 12 noon today. Therefore, in order to end the first session, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, we have been in recess subject to the call of the Chair, and we will recess again in a moment, but I wanted to announce that the House did pass the bill that we tried to pass last night in the Senate. It extends the Mideast Peace Facilitation Act for I think 90 days. It deems all Federal employees essential. In other words, they can all go back to work. It guarantees they are going to be paid. And it also has attached to it expedited procedure so when we get a balanced budget, we will not be engaged in weeks and weeks and months and months of debate in the Senate. Now, some of my Senate colleagues may wonder why that is in the House bill. It is in the House bill because we could not pass it on the Senate side. So they agreed to put it in their bill. And we have been working together on the theory that if we get a balanced budget agreement with the President of the United States and with the Democratic leaders and the Republican leaders, we ought to pass it. The American people want us to pass it. So I would only say that later this afternoon, after having an opportunity to visit with the Democratic leader, I will make a unanimous-consent request that we turn to the message from the House on S. 1508, the so-called back-to-work bill, which also provided for expedited procedure and extension of the Middle East Peace Facilitation Act. That is what we will try to clear later today. If we cannot do it, we cannot do it. It just takes one objection. I wish to commend the House for their leadership, Congressman Wolf and Congresswoman Morella and Congressman Davis, for their initiative this morning in getting this done and also the majority leader, Congressman Armey, and the Speaker, Congressman Gingrich. So hopefully we will get this done. If this happens, people can start making plans to go back to work after the New Year's holiday.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I will just take a minute or two. I do share the view expressed by the Democratic leader that it is not fair to the Federal employees. And I must say that a lot of people call me and say it is not fair to the taxpayers; if you are paying people for not working, that is not a very good idea either. I do not suggest the Federal employees want it that way, but that is precisely what has happened. It is my hope we can come to some resolution here very quickly. That is why we will come in again tomorrow at noon, in the hopes that tonight we can work out something so that people can go back to work on Tuesday, and that if they cannot be, as the Democratic leader indicated, paid immediately, at least they can be assured they will be paid. I think we have made progress in our budget negotiations with the President, with the Democratic leadership, Senator Daschle, Congressman Gephardt, myself, Speaker Gingrich, and Majority Leader Armey on the House side. We will go back tonight, we are going to be there tomorrow morning, and maybe even later tomorrow, but at least tomorrow morning. I hope during that time tonight and tomorrow morning the Democratic leader, Senator Daschle, and I can devise some way to come back up here tomorrow, pass a resolution, send it to the House, and that the House will accept it. It seems to me that on Tuesday Federal employees should be back to work, parks should be open, and we ought to be about our business. I hope we can get that resolved. I just say, so that the record is complete, a number of bills were passed that were vetoed by the President: VA-HUD, a lot of Federal employees involved; State, Justice, Commerce, vetoed by the President, a lot of Federal employees involved; the Interior bill, vetoed by the President, a lot of Federal employees involved; Labor-HHS, we cannot get it up because of a party split on the Senate floor, a lot of Federal employees involved. We do have a CR for the District of Columbia until the 3d of January. That leaves one bill that is still hung up because of one difference. We ought to be able to resolve that one difference. The foreign operations appropriations bill is very important, and I hope we can resolve it perhaps as early as Wednesday or Thursday of this next week. We are prepared to proceed. We had hoped we might have passed the bill with the Mideast Peace Facilitation Act, deeming all employees essential, and the expedited procedure. That is not going to happen. We need to find another way to address the problem. As the Democratic leader indicated, the primary aim is to get people back to work as quickly as possible, either with pay or certainly with the assurance that they will be paid, so that they can make plans that are necessary. I know I speak for my colleague, Senator Warner of Virginia, who has been in contact with me daily, and I know other Members of the House who were in contact with me today, Congresswoman Morella of Maryland, Congressman Wolf, and Congressman Davis of Virginia. We will be working with them and others who have an interest in this. I thank my colleague.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. DOLE. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 1514, introduced today by myself for Senators Stevens, Thurmond, Coats, and others which would authorize a 2.4-percent increase in pay and allowances and a 5.2-percent increase for basic allowance for quarters for the members of the uniformed services.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. As I understand, Senator Dorgan cannot be on the floor right at this moment, so I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess now subject to the call of the Chair and try to work it out with him later.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. There will be a period for morning business until 10:30 a.m. with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each. We are continuing budget negotiations today. As I said yesterday, I think we have made some progress, and we will continue again, beginning at 11 a.m. There is hope that the Senate can pass legislation today that would deem all Government employees essential, thereby sending everybody back to work. If that legislation can be worked out, it would be the intention of the leadership to pass that bill by unanimous consent. I am also advised the House may take action on that bill today and send it to the Senate, so that would require us to take some action. In addition to that, they may add to that the Middle East Peace Facilitation Act, plus the expedited procedure would also be in the House bill. Also today, before we go over until tomorrow, we hope to pass the military COLA increase contained in the DOD authorization bill and vetoed by the President. We may include in that other provisions that need to be attended to in the next few days, so there will be a further announcement on that. Again, I hope we can do that by unanimous consent. I do not know of any objection to the military COLA increase contained in the DOD authorization bill. I will not make any unanimous-consent requests at this time, but I will probably later in the day, and I will advise the distinguished Democratic leader, Senator Daschle, so there will not be any surprises. Again, let me indicate I hope we can work out some expedited procedure. If we are going to get an agreement where all the party leaders are involved--Democrats, Republicans, and the President--it seems to me that we ought to be able to agree on some procedure in the Senate so we can pass the 7-year balanced budget once we agree to it. Otherwise, we could be in debate here for weeks and weeks and weeks because of Senate rules. That is all that is holding up all these Federal workers going back to work. We are prepared to pass that bill immediately. Federal employees can go back to work and be guaranteed their pay. To me, that would be a big step in the right direction. I hope we can resolve this before the day is finished. We will be discussing it, I am certain, with Senator Daschle and others throughout the day. I understand that the Senator from North Dakota, Senator Dorgan, wishes to speak, and following his remarks, unless there are any other requests, I move we stand in recess subject to call of the Chair.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair, and hopefully that will be within the next hour or so, so employees will not have to wait all day while we meet at the White House.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object. I will just state to my friend from Vermont that we both share the same feeling about returning employees to work. But if we can, as I indicated earlier, get these bills down to the President, agree with the President any problems he has with these bills will be resolved in the budget agreement, then these employees will be back to work until the end of the fiscal year. So it would be permanent, it would not be a 30- day continuing resolution. That would leave, as I said, the District of Columbia, which is now under a continuing resolution, and Labor-HHS, if I can convince my colleagues to let us bring that up, and then foreign ops where there is only one difference holding up that very important piece of legislation. I would be constrained to object on that basis.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, based on what I said earlier, I now ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1643 regarding MFN status for Bulgaria, and that the Senate now proceed to its immediate consideration; that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the text of H.R. 2099, HUD-VA, H.R. 1977, Interior, and H.R. 2076, State, Justice, Commerce, as vetoed by the President, be inserted, the bill be advanced to third reading and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, all without any further action or debate.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I had not thought of that, but I think that probably would be something to think about. These are separate bills, not the ones vetoed by the President. It would be new bills. They would be identical to the ones he vetoed. But the one additional ingredient here is that we are on these budget negotiations, and we are serious about it--the President is, I am, the Speaker is, Senator Daschle and Congressman Gephardt are. I know on the Interior bill, for example, there are only about three reasons the President said he vetoed that bill. Those are all the parts and all the things we are hearing about on the nightly news. We ought to be able to resolve that. Maybe we can come back later and try, instead of these three at once, maybe sending down one we might be able to work out. We would do this only with the agreement of the President. So we are not trying to do anything here that the President would not sign off on, and I intend to raise that at our 3:15 meeting and tell him in good faith that if he would let us send down these one or two bills, we are prepared to resolve differences as part of the budget agreement. I thank my colleague from Vermont. Maybe we can revisit this in a different form later today.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Well, I am not certain there will be a CR, but something has to be done. That is my view. I cannot speak for all of my colleagues in the House and Senate. But I think there is some recognition--there are a couple of concerns that people have. First of all, as I have said before, the employees are sort of the pawns in this game. This is a struggle for whatever we hope will happen over the next 7 years. It is very important. But to somebody out there who is not working and only lives from paycheck to paycheck, it is not a very happy choice, and they should be paid, even though some are saying, ``Well, you are paying people for not working.'' My view is that if it was voluntary on their part, you should not, but it is involuntary. They cannot go to work. Some tried, in Baltimore, to show up for work and they were told to go home. That is a long answer, I guess, to saying there has to be some way around this. That is why I thought, yesterday, that maybe the appropriations bills--if the President would consent to that--then we can probably figure out a way to get Labor-HHS out of here. We have one little provision--and the Senator from Vermont knows more about it than I do--on the foreign ops bill. I will work with the Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, today when the Senate convened, the President pro tempore, Senator Thurmond, appointed the Senator from Idaho, Senator Kempthorne, to be Acting President pro tempore for the day. It is my understanding Senator Thurmond is necessarily absent attending business in South Carolina and attending the funeral of the president pro tempore of the South Carolina State Senate, the Honorable Marshall Williams. While Senator Kempthorne was Acting President pro tempore for today, one of his responsibilities was to sign duly enrolled bills. Signing enrolled bills is part of the process necessary prior to the documents being sent to the White House for the President's approval or disapproval. Senator Kempthorne had the distinct pleasure to sign the following enrolled bills, therefore facilitating their being sent to the White House: H.R. 4, welfare reform; H.R. 394, State pensions; H.R. 1878, enrollment of HMO's; and H.R. 2627, Smithsonian coin. I want to commend Senator Kempthorne and congratulate him on his work today. I hope the President signs all the bills. That may or may not be the case.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period for the transaction of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2203, just received from the House.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I will make one more unanimous-consent request. I ask unanimous consent that following the remarks of Senators Leahy, Dorgan, and Nickles--unless there are others wishing to speak--the Senate would stand in recess subject to the call of the chair.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. I thank the Senator from Idaho. Mr. President, the time for the two leaders has been reserved, and there will be a period for morning business until 12:30 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each. I do not anticipate any rollcall votes today. I am going to make a request, but I know it is going to be objected to. I hope we can revisit it later this afternoon because most of us would like to see everybody back to work. A week ago today, we passed in the Senate by unanimous consent a proposal to deem all Government employees essential so they can go back to work and not be in violation of anything, and also provided for pay for those Federal employees. So it is my hope that we do not have to wait until next week to resolve this. It is my understanding that we may be in session throughout the afternoon subject to the call of the Chair in the event the House should take some action on the measure we passed last week. Yesterday, in an effort to at least get some people back to work, the Speaker and I wrote a letter to the President of the United States. It was not intended to be critical. There is nothing critical in it, because we are in the midst of budget negotiations, and we agreed not to discuss the budget negotiations. But it was our thought perhaps if we passed Interior, and State, Justice, Commerce, and HUD-VA, that would put a lot of people back to work. There are some things the President does not like in those bills. We can resolve those differences in the budget agreement. He can sign the bill and we would not need a CR to cover most of the employees not working now. Then we have the Labor-HHS bill we have been unable to bring up because of objection on the other side of the aisle. We have had two cloture votes and lost on party-line votes. That leaves the D.C. appropriations bill. There is a continuing resolution for the District government until January 3. And then that leaves the foreign ops bill, which we still hope to resolve. I know the Senator from Vermont has been directly involved in that, along with the Senator from Kentucky, Senator McConnell, and others. It is still our hope maybe we can resolve that today if possible. I guess the point I want to make is, there is a 3:15 p.m. meeting at the White House with budget negotiators. I will certainly update the Senate as to the progress following that meeting. What we have agreed to do after each meeting is issue a joint statement so it will not upset anybody and somehow get it off track. It is my view that the American people want us to reach an agreement on a balanced budget regardless of party, and I am talking about people outside the Capitol, people out in the real world, like some would say. I have had an opportunity to meet with some of those people in North Carolina and Iowa in the past week. I think they want us to do this for the right reason, not that it is a game, or not that it is Republicans versus Democrats, but that it would, if we could get a balanced budget agreement, if the President was on board and it did pass the Congress, then we believe, based on experts, that interest rates would drop 2 percent, for example. That is 2 percent on a college loan, 2 percent on a car loan, 2 percent on a farm loan or home loan, and that would be in the interest of all Americans, certainly regardless of party or regardless of philosophy. So that is why I think there is a good-faith effort on the part of the President and on the part of the leadership, Republican and Democratic leadership in the House and Senate, and we will proceed this afternoon at 3:15. We are prepared to stay through the weekend, if necessary. Sooner or later we have to reach out and make some of the tough decisions on Medicare and taxes, but, in my view, if we are serious about this, we can do it, or if we cannot reach an agreement, we ought to disagree and Congress can do what Congress feels must be done and the President can do what the President thinks must be done. Having said that, I will also advise my colleagues hopefully in the next couple of hours what I anticipate the program to be for next week. We do start a new session of Congress on Wednesday of next week. I guess we have been in like this before a couple of times. I am advised we would come in at 11:55 next Wednesday, adjourn sine die, and then at noon, 5 minutes later, start the new session. But I will give all the other details. I am not certain how many of my colleagues will be present at that time.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I will not extend this but just to thank the Senator, my colleague, my friend from Vermont, and to indicate I think there is this sense, at least in our meeting today, that everybody is going to have to give. It is not all going to be one way or the other. So I think there is that recognition by parties on both sides. Obviously, it has to continue. We would like to have everything. They would like to have everything. But the American people, what they really want is a 7-year balanced budget using CBO numbers or the same numbers. They may not understand congressional numbers, White House numbers, but they understand using the same numbers. So I hope we can accomplish that. I would not bet the farm on it yet. In any event, many of us would like to be other places--like Iowa or New Hampshire--today, but we are working on a balanced budget. I hope people there will understand that.