Robert Dole

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, let me advise there will be no more votes today because the weather is lousy out there and the roads are going to be difficult if you live in the suburbs. But I would propound a unanimous-consent request. I assume there will be an objection, and there might be someone, a couple on this side who would like to speak briefly. Yesterday, the House passed by an overwhelming vote House Joint Resolution 132, which relates to balancing the budget, and so forth, over 7 years. So I would ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of House Joint Resolution 132, a resolution affirming that budget negotiations be based on the most recent technical and economic assumptions of the Congressional Budget Office, and shall achieve a balanced budget by fiscal 2002 based on those assumptions.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, let me yield to the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who did an outstanding job, and I congratulate him and members of our staff and our colleagues on this side for passing this most important conference report. I yield to the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, what is the pending business?

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I have been asked by a number of my colleagues if I could give some idea when we might be leaving here for the holidays, and I cannot. But I will lay out some of the items we would like to take up before Christmas or New Year's Eve, whichever. They are the nominations on the Executive Calendar and other calendar items; the Whitewater subpoena controversy, which may or may not be on the Senate floor. If so, we would like to do that on Wednesday. If there is a budget negotiated agreement, we would like to complete that, of course. There are three appropriations bills remaining; DOD authorization conference report, which we hope to have a vote on tomorrow. There will be a cloture vote on the Labor-HHS bill after consultation with the Democratic leader probably tomorrow. There are other available conference reports. The ICC sunset, I think that is a conference report, and then welfare reform conference report, which should come to the Senate Wednesday or Thursday. I will also say, and I think I have indicated this publicly, that there will be no votes today. We hope to receive the D.C. appropriations bill from the House late afternoon or early evening. I think we are trying to work out some agreement, because of the urgency of the matter, that we can deem that to have passed when it reaches the Senate. As soon as we have the language on the bill, we will give that to all the interested parties. What they have done is take out, as I understand, all the education provisions and, on that basis, I think the House is prepared to act. If anything develops between now--well, any time anything develops-- if there is any development and the President should call and say he would like to discuss the budget, I will certainly convey that to my colleagues. So there will be a period of morning business until 11:30, with no votes today. I hope to be able to have the D.C. appropriations conference report deemed agreed to when it arrives. There will be a cloture vote, as I have said, tomorrow. Also, last evening, there was an effort by Senator Dorgan by unanimous consent to pass a Senate continuing resolution. Normally appropriations originate in the House. I suggested that we might be able to accommodate them to do that until the 22d of December if they let us take the Labor-HHS bill, which has been tied up on the calendar since September 15 because of objections on the other side to one little provision in that whole bill. Today, if they are prepared to do that, I think we can work that out. The Speaker told me he would be very anxious to receive the Labor-HHS bill with the CR attached. So we will be working with the Democrats. If that can happen, that will at least keep everything open until the 22d. It is up to my colleagues on the other side. We are prepared to move on that at any time during the day. I know that my distinguished colleague, Senator Lott from Mississippi, will discuss in some detail some of the relief that could happen very quickly. I am very pleased to yield the floor.

Mr. DOLE. I thank the Senator from Vermont, and I thank also the chairman of the committee. That is satisfactory.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. I thank the Chair.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I know the chairman is on the floor and prepared to enter into debate or discussion, whatever. There may be Members opposed to the conference report. If they would like to speak, we would like to have them come to the floor and do that. As I understand, we are not able to get a consent agreement on when the vote will come. We hope it will be tomorrow morning. I know today is a holiday, so there will be no votes today, and I know that tends to increase the absentee rolls. In any event, I am going to recess subject to the call of the Chair, and we will stay in touch with the chairman of the committee. If there are those who desire to speak on this matter, they can certainly be able to come back into session very quickly. Before I do that, I will say the President has now vetoed this morning the Interior appropriations bill and the VA-HUD appropriations bill. What he said to the 133,000 Federal workers who are covered by the Interior appropriations bill is, ``You can't come to work.'' What he said to the 293,000 Federal employees that are covered by the VA-HUD bill is that ``You can't come to work.'' And later today, I understand he will say to 194,000 Federal workers who are covered by Justice, State, Commerce, that, ``You can't come to work.'' With the stroke of a pen, all of these Federal employees could have been back to work today. They could have been back to work yesterday or the day before and we would not have had a shutdown for that many, because he has had the bills on his desk. I always said until the Congress sent him the bills, we had to share the blame. But he has had these bills and he has vetoed them with some of the usual rhetoric coming from the White House these days, surrounded by little children saying we were about to endanger the lives of millions of children with the toxic waste dumps and all the exaggerated rhetoric they can think of in the White House. The result is that people, Federal employees, right before the holidays, are not going to be able to go back to their work because of President Clinton's veto. That is all it is. He had the bills. He could have signed the bills and the people would have been working and assured nothing would happen until the end of the fiscal year next October. So I am disappointed that President Clinton is again playing politics instead of looking at the policy. It seems to me that he is making matters more and more difficult. He refuses to talk seriously about a 7-year balanced budget which most Americans would like to accomplish, and now he is vetoing appropriations bills which would put Federal workers back on the job because he said the cuts are too deep. Again, it is the same old deception: Scare the American people, scare the children, scare the senior citizens, scare the veterans, tell everybody the sky is falling in, do not talk about the balanced budget, do not talk about the fact we would lower interest rates 2 percent. It means you would pay less for a student loan, a car loan, farm loan, machinery loan, whatever. These are the advantages of a balanced budget over 7 years. That is why Republicans are insisting, because we believe most Americans, regardless of party, want us to balance the budget. In fact, most do not understand why it is going to take 7 years. They would rather do it in 3, 4, 1, or 2 or 5 or 6. But we have agreed on 7 years. The President has agreed on 7 years. But ever since he agreed on that some 27 days ago, he has been backing away from it, confusing the American people with different numbers and different scenarios. I really believe unless we can accomplish something serious by Friday, it is probably not going to happen this year. I am not in a position to announce the schedule for the balance of the year, but the balance of the year is about here. New Year's Eve is not far off. I assume we will be here because we have a number of items we would like to take up. We do want to get to the budget agreement yet this year. I do not believe it will ever happen unless the President--who is the President--exerts the leadership and calls the majority leader of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives and asks us to come to the White House and sit down, without staff, without press, and say, OK, let us work this out, let us agree to some parameters, the three of us, and let us have other people come in and put the details together. If he would do that, I think we can probably make some progress. We have waited now for several days. The President certainly could find a telephone when he had a problem with Bosnia. He knew how to reach a lot of us. I wish he could use the same determination when it comes to balancing the budget.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Let me indicate that the President did call both myself and Speaker Gingrich this afternoon about 3 o'clock. Without getting into the details of what the conversation was, I am pleased that the President indicates a willingness now to accept our invitation to get serious about the budget and balance the budget in 7 years. I will be meeting with Speaker Gingrich a little later this evening. I think the President's call does demonstrate that he has at least heard our pleas over the weekend and indicates a willingness to talk about a balanced budget in 7 years, using CBO figures. Of course, he has certain concerns that he feels are a priority, and we have concerns we feel are a priority. I will not get into what we discussed about those but to say I think it is a step in the right direction. I want to thank the President for agreeing to sit down with the principals because I think it is time the principals become involved. It is time for adult leadership. It is time for us to start making decisions. The American people want a balanced budget. They know the benefits of a balanced budget, what it means in interest rates, what it means when you buy a car, borrow money for a student loan, buy farm machinery, a home, whatever. That is the purpose for this struggle for a balanced budget and why we feel so determined it should be done. Hopefully, there will be discussions yet today, but if not tonight, at least tomorrow.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today it stand in adjournment until 11 a.m., Monday, December 18, that following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, no resolutions come over under the rule, the call of the calendar be dispensed with, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and there then be a period for morning business until the hour of 11:30 a.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, following morning business on Monday, the Senate will resume consideration of the DOD authorization bill. I understand we are trying to get an agreement when we might vote on that bill Tuesday morning. The House will be taking up, in late afternoon because of the holiday tomorrow--after 4 or 5--the D.C. appropriations bill, which if passed by the House and passed by the Senate would then at least permit D.C. workers to be back on the job. It is my hope that we can get an agreement on the Senate side that would deem the conference report passed when received in the Senate; otherwise we might have to stay here until late tomorrow evening. I do not believe there will be any rollcall votes. If a rollcall vote is required on that bill, we would have to wait until Tuesday morning. But I believe under the urgency of passing this bill we can reach some agreement with colleagues on both sides of the aisle. There will also be a vote on the motion to invoke cloture to proceed to the Labor-HHS appropriations bill sometime Tuesday morning after consultation with the two leaders.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, if there be no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order. Thereupon, at 6:13 p.m., the Senate adjourned until Monday, December 18, 1995, at 11 a.m. 

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, let me indicate that I have met with the Speaker, and I think it is unlikely that there will be any continuing resolution. In fact, there will not be a continuing resolution coming from the House tonight, and I do not see any reason for the Senate to be in session. If there was any hope that there might be a continuing resolution coming over from the House side, we would have stayed here as long as we could. Then I understood that earlier the Senator from North Dakota, on behalf of the minority leader, Senator Daschle, was going to propound a unanimous-consent request which would in effect be a 5-day extension until December 22. It is an S.-numbered bill, which the House can refuse. But, in any event, it occurred to me that maybe a better way to approach that would be to add the continuing resolution to the Labor- HHS bill which has been pending here since September 15. We have had two cloture votes so far. We have had a number of unanimous-consent requests rejected. We will have another cloture vote sometime on Tuesday. That is one appropriations bill that has not left the Senate, and it is because of objections on the other side of the aisle. It has been along party lines, and I would hope that we could resolve it. It involves I think about 150,000 Federal workers, and if we could do that tonight, I understand again from the Speaker that he will use every effort to take the bill that we send to him and pass it in the House and send it to the President for his signature tomorrow. So on that basis, I will propound a unanimous-consent request. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate turn to consideration of Calendar No. 189, H.R. 2127, the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, that the committee amendments be considered and agreed to, en bloc, the bill be further amended with language to change section 106(c) of Public Law 10-456 to strike ``December 15th, 1995'' and insert ``December 22nd, 1995,'' that the bill be then immediately read a third time and passed.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I think it is fairly certain we will not be getting any continuing resolutions from the House today, so we will not be in session but for a few moments. It seems to me that there is not much reason to stay here if we are not going to have a continuing resolution come over from the House side. But I think in an effort to make that final determination, I would now move the Senate stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair. As soon as I have that information, we will come back.

Mr. DOLE. The Speaker is in my office, so I can find out rather quickly. It will not be a long recess. But I do not want to get into a Sunday afternoon brawl here on the floor about the budget. If it is not about the budget--I mean the President knows how to reach us up here. And we do not need to debate the budget this afternoon. We need to sit down, the principals, and try to work it out.

Mr. DOLE. Oh, yes. In fact, we may want to accept that request if we can add to it the Labor-HHS bill which the Democrats will not let us bring up on the floor. If the Senator can add that to the CR, we might do some business here this afternoon. That would put 150,000 people back to work, and we think that is very important. So the Senator might see if he can amend that. We might be able to agree to it. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOLE. Yes.

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

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Tomorrow, if we can renew our request, maybe by that time, if we have some word, if we could do this tomorrow morning, we could still get it over to the House; they could still act tomorrow. And again it would extend the Government to December 22, the partial shutdown would be lifted until December 22. Perhaps at that time there could be some agreement on the budget. Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I object. Let me indicate, of course, that the appropriations bill originates in the House. This does not have any standing in any event, but it would have standing if done in the way I prescribed because it would be attached to the bill. It would go to the House. I want to make the record very clear because I think sometimes people fail to understand why certain things happen. The Labor-HHS appropriations was reported, and it has been on the Senate calendar since September 15. Senator Hatfield, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, has been prepared every day since that time--along with Senator Specter, chairman of the subcommittee--prepared to bring that bill to the floor, and so has, I might add, the Senator from Iowa, Senator Harkin, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee. The leadership on the Democratic side, because of striker replacement--in other words, if we repeal the President's Executive order--will not let us bring the bill up. They are not willing to take their chances in a debate and are not willing to try to strike that provision on the Senate floor. So we have been stymied. So I would say to all of the people at the Labor Department, Mr. Reich, Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of HHS, and others who are nonessential--they are not nonessential--but the nonessential workers who will not be going to work tomorrow, to just take a look at the record--do not listen to the press--and take a look at the facts. The facts are that since September 15 that bill has been on the calendar. We have tried to get it up three or four times by unanimous consent. That has been objected to by my colleagues on the other side. We have had two cloture votes. We failed on cloture votes because of striker replacement. We failed along party-line votes. We only have 53 Republicans. We need 60 to shut off debate, and we will have another cloture vote on Tuesday. So what I suggest--and we want to keep the Government open until the 22--is to bring that bill up, pass it by unanimous consent, and add a 5-day additional continuing resolution to it so the Government will be open until December 22, which will be next Friday at midnight. It seemed to me that was a good way to dispose of two items that are still here that should have been disposed of weeks and weeks and weeks ago. And I regret that because of one provision, because of the President's allegiance to the organized labor leaders--not the working people--because of his allegiance to the labor leaders and all the money they pump into the Democratic Party, that because of this one little provision that deals only with an Executive order made by the President, we are going to keep 150,000 workers from their jobs tomorrow and maybe the rest of the week and a lot of other things, funding for NIH, a lot of other programs, including the Low-Energy Assistance Program in the Labor, HHS appropriations bill. So the public ought to know that when the labor leaders speak, my colleagues listen. They will not let this bill come up because the labor leaders are opposed to one provision--one provision. I know it is difficult for the media to print the facts and report the facts, but these are the facts. Do not take my word for it. It is all in the Congressional Record. Where is the calendar that will show how long it has been on it, to make certain I have it right? I think it is September 15. Reported by the committee September 15. So it has been around September to October, October to November, November to December. It has been around 3 months, 90-some days, and we cannot pass it because my colleagues on the other side will not let us pass it because of one provision--one provision and we could have opened up the Government. The Speaker said if we would get consent to do this, he would try to pass it tomorrow. So we have made an effort again, I hope in good faith. We tried before to bring this bill up. Let me also include in the Record, because I know I read today in the Washington Post how the tourists were frustrated and there may be some in the--the zoo is closed but the Senate is open. That ought to tell you something. I know what it tells you. But we are here. The bears are resting. In any event, maybe it ought to be the other way around. Close this up and open the zoo. If you cannot get into the zoo, this may be the next best choice. We wrote the President yesterday. We suggested to the President that he ought to sign the three bills that have been on his desk--Commerce, Justice, State, the Judiciary, which employs 194,000 Federal workers; the Interior bill, which employs 103,800 workers; and the VA-HUD bill, which employs 293,000 workers. Now, that is a total of 620,900 workers. All these bills have been on the President's desk. With all the stories today about the parks being closed and people came all the way here, it is an unfortunate thing that they came back here to see certain sights and participate in some of the holiday period festivities and all the buildings are closed. The President can take care of that with a stroke of the pen. He can do it right now. It is a little late for the weekend. But they would be open tomorrow morning. The bill is there, Mr. President. All you have to do is sign it, sign the other bills, and a lot of people will go back to work. So, again, I would like to include in the Record the list of the bills. If he would sign these bills, it covers the following agencies: Justice, Commerce, the Judiciary, State, Small Business, USIA, the Interior, Indian Health, Forestry, Energy, NASA, National Science Foundation, Veterans, Housing and Urban Development, EPA. In all these different agencies, people would be back to work, and we think that is important. So I would like to include that information along with a copy of the letter that the Speaker and I sent to the President yesterday indicating that we hoped that he would sign those bills. We also advised the President we could pass the DC appropriations bill tomorrow evening. We hope we can get consent to deem that passed in the Senate after it passes the House. And we also suggested to the President, I might add, the Labor, HHS bill and pointed out to the President that we have made repeated efforts to bring up the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill but the Senate Democrats have prevented the bill from moving forward. We asked for the President's help. We asked him yesterday to help us get the bill passed so that we can send it to him for his consideration and another 150,000 workers could continue working. So I ask unanimous consent that those be printed in the Record.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I am not a shutdown advocate. I think the Senator knows that I am not one of those who advocates it. I think the Federal workers become pawns in this exercise, which is not fair to them. And I have held that view. They are sort of caught in the middle. It is a very, very difficult issue that we are trying to bring together. The American people want us to balance the budget. They have wanted us to do that for a long time. They want a balanced budget amendment. We failed by one vote in the Senate. They want a 7-year--I think they would rather have a quicker one, but a 7-year balanced budget makes a lot of sense to many Americans because they see their interest rates lowering when they go out to buy a car or home loan or student loan. It will be much less expensive. It is like a tax cut for particularly middle-class Americans. So the American people are on the side of a balanced budget. They want welfare reform. They want us to preserve and strengthen Medicare. I think most Americans with children want tax cuts for families with children. So there are a number of very important matters that we need to resolve. We are not going to do it here this evening, obviously. But I say again, it seems to me that if people look at the record--and understand that this Labor-HHS bill, striker replacement, affects labor. It is on an appropriations bill, but it certainly is not the first time. I bet there are a dozen other measures on that bill that probably should be in an authorization bill. But in any event, there has been an objection. I regret there has been an objection. We could have sent it to the House where they could have taken it up tomorrow and maybe removed the partial shutdown. I have just been notified that Mr. Panetta, the chief of staff of the White House, indicates that the President will call Republican leaders tomorrow and apparently discuss a temporary spending authority bill. I hope that in addition to that, the President would discuss, how do we resolve the dilemma, how do we get together a balanced budget for 7 years? Again, I think it is time for adult leadership. It is time for the principals to be principals. We are prepared to do that. This is not an exercise that we want to take up through the rest of this week and all next week. But if necessary, I think the American people, once it is done and once they see the benefits, will thank us for staying here and getting our work done. That is what we get paid for.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, first I thank the Chaplain. I hope everyone was listening. Maybe we need all the guidance we receive and probably more.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Let me indicate that we will have a session on tomorrow. I am not certain whether or not there will be a continuing resolution come over from the House, but we should know by 5 o'clock. And if it does come from the House, it is my hope that we can pass it on a voice vote. There will not be any votes tomorrow. If somebody demands a rollcall, then we would wait and act on that late on Monday. So there will be no votes during tomorrow's session. We are still hoping to be able to reach an agreement for a time certain to vote on adoption of the DOD authorization conference report. That vote will come on Tuesday morning. We are also hoping that we will be able to proceed to the consideration of the Labor, HHS appropriations bill. A cloture motion was filed on the motion to proceed to Labor, HHS appropriations yesterday.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the provisions of rule XXII, the vote on invoking cloture occur on Tuesday, December 19, at a time to be determined by the two leaders, with the mandatory quorum being waived.