Robert Dole

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.

Mr. DOLE

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until the hour of 5 p.m. on Sunday, December 17; that following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be deemed 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 5:30 p.m. with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Let me indicate for the information of all Senators, as I said before, we will probably discuss the Labor-HHS bill, the motion to proceed. Maybe we will work that out. We will also maybe resume consideration of the DOD authorization conference report or any other available conference reports, and as I have stated, I do not believe there will be any rollcall votes. If there are, we will try to give everybody ample notice or arrange to have a vote at a later date or work out a voice vote of some kind.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. In an effort to make some headway on the Labor, HHS bill-- we have already had two votes which we have lost on a party-line vote-- I move to proceed to H.R. 2127, and I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. DOLE. Madam President, I have objected, and I hope the time will come in the next couple of days where we can do something like this. But we cannot do it now. Obviously, we have made no headway. I have been in a lot of negotiations around here, and I can tell when they are serious, I can tell when they are not. I can tell when they are posturing, and I can tell when they ought to end. I was not in the room, so I cannot make a judgment on this particular negotiation. But I do know that we made significant changes. I went over every one of the changes for hours and hours yesterday. We talked about the changes in my office with the Speaker and a number of Senators, and they were real and they were genuine and they were serious changes. We sought to address some of the concerns raised by the President and the Democrats in the House and the Senate. So I just say that I think we made a good-faith effort. It is all about good-faith efforts. We do not believe the President did. Maybe they thought, ``We will shoot them a blank the first time, and maybe the second or third time we will put a little something in it.'' But I think we have already gone beyond that point. It has been 26 days since we passed the last continuing resolution, and we are supposed to work all this out during that time. Well, nothing has happened, and we are here again. If there is no CR passed by midnight--and I am certain there will not be one passed--certain people will be affected over the weekend. If we do not pass one Sunday evening, a lot more people will be affected Monday morning. It will not be as many as last time because a number of the bills have been signed. The President can reduce the number because State, Justice, Commerce is at the White House, and he can sign that. That will take care of a number of employees if he signs that. HUD-VA is on the way; that will go to the President tomorrow. We will try to finish the DC appropriations sometime over the weekend, and we will try to figure out a way to get Labor-HHS. That would leave Foreign Ops, which we think we may have an agreement on, based on language from the Senator from Colorado, Senator Brown. That would be it. There would not be any more debate about a CR, but we would still have--Interior is going down tomorrow, too. That is another one. The President has all kinds of opportunities here to put people to work on Monday, without relying on a CR. He does not need one. That is the point I make. I might ask, Madam President, since I interrupted the distinguished Senator from Florida, if he could be recognized at this time.

Mr. DOLE. Well, let me say to the chairman of the Budget Committee, as I have indicated earlier, I am very disappointed because I understood the President--we have had a lot of talks the last few days on a number of issues--he indicated to me he was serious about this, because I asked him on the telephone, ``If you're not serious and we're not serious, why are we doing this? Why don't we do something else and go home?'' He indicated he was serious. I know that was not the final offer. Neither was ours the final offer. But we actually did things in our offer, real things in our offer that made a difference: Put money back into Medicare and Medicaid, more money for discretionary spending, whether it is education, environment, whatever. We thought we were in good faith. So I say to the Senator from New Mexico, I am disappointed. It seems to me we had an opportunity. This is now the 15th of December. This year is going to be over before long, and we are probably going to be right here to be able to see it leave. The question is whether or not we are serious about getting down to business. We ought to be meeting right now. The meeting ought to be going on right now. We ought to be talking about the 82 areas where we have a difference--82 areas, according to White House sources, major areas--plus probably dozens and dozens of others. So it would take all the energy we could muster between now and the 22d of December to even put together a framework of agreement, which I assume we would have to come back a couple days in January to pass under some expedited procedure. So I know it is not easy. It is not easy making tough decisions. It is easy doing, as I said, things Darman had not even thought of when he was around. Smoke and mirrors, they used to say in those days. Just save $54 billion there, but baseline----

Mr. DOLE. The Senator from South Dakota is here. But I think that is the general feeling I had. And I do not think it is accurate, but that is what the statement was.

Mr. DOLE. Madam President, I object.

Mr. DOLE. I will be happy to.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, let me indicate that I have talked to both Senator Domenici and Congressman Kasich. There was never any mention of the word ``walkout.'' They suggested if we got serious, we would all come back together. And that is precisely where it is. We are prepared to come back. When the President of the United States gets serious, then we are prepared to come back and start negotiations. I think most of us made plans to be here all weekend just for that purpose. We thought they were going to start this afternoon. We did start the meeting at 11:30, another meeting at 3 o'clock. And it seems to me that as I watched events unfold, I think maybe there is a split not on our side. I do not know of any. But I think the Democrats are split. Some want to resolve the problem and some want to go into next year so there can be an election issue on a balanced budget. Maybe that is a legitimate concern. We sent a balanced budget to the President. He vetoed it. We spent 10 months, 10 long, hard months putting that together. For the first time in my memory, we sent a balanced budget to put us on a path for a balanced budget by the year 2002 to the President of the United States, and he vetoed it. So he has already vetoed a balanced budget. And now he says that even though he has vetoed one and wants one--we do not want one, or do we want one? And I would hope that--there is still plenty of time. It is only 6 p.m. Friday. I would hope that the President of the United States would contact those of us who have the responsibility, the leadership, and say, ``Let us sit down and try to work this out.'' If we cannot work it out, let us stop kidding the American people. You cannot have it both ways, Mr. President. You cannot go out and attack us for trying to save Medicare, which you call a cut, and go back and take a look at Mrs. Clinton testifying on health care: ``You are going to need to lower the rate of growth of health care down to 6 or 7 percent,'' she testified, went before a committee. That is precisely what we are doing. That is what we are doing. We finally had an accurate reflection of what we are doing on ``Nightline'' last week. Everybody ought to watch it. They took all the rhetoric and all the politics and wrung it out. And now they told the American people, separate the politics, we are trying to save, preserve Medicare. And I will say to my friends on the other side, part B Medicare is voluntary. It does not come out of the trust fund. It comes out of general revenues. So the people working in the Senate, anywhere in the Senate, in the kitchen, anywhere, take their tax money and pay premiums for millionaires, multimillionaires. And the President says you cannot charge those millionaires--the Government is paying 68.5 percent--you cannot charge them 31.5 percent. It has got to drop down to 25 percent. That is the President of the United States who ought to say we are after all these people. He is protecting the people who could pay more. I do not understand it. He wants to keep it at 25 percent so everybody else in America can help pick up the premiums, part B, which is voluntary, for people who can afford to pay a lot more than the people paying the taxes in the first place. Yet he is out rapping us every day, as he just concluded, saying we are trying to devastate Medicare. It is not true, Mr. President. You know it is not true. So it seems to me that--I just look in the calendar. We have had this appropriations bill on the calendar since September 15, 3 months today, and we have tried twice to take it up. We failed on a party-line vote. I think I counted--somebody counted--about 160,000, 170,000 people would be able to go to work Monday morning had we passed that bill. But the Democrats--every Democrat opposed us on cloture so we could not get the bill up. So I filed cloture again. It will not get the vote until Monday. So it will be at least 1 day off or 2 days off. But I want the workers to know, the Federal workers to know, Republicans did not prevent this bill from coming up. This is the big one. This is the big one, as far as Federal employees are concerned. And maybe we can work out some consent agreement and pass it tonight by consent, go to conference, get it back here tomorrow or Sunday, in time so that the people--if you cannot get a CR--then they can go back to work. So, Mr. President, let me also state, as I said to my colleagues earlier, a list of the possible remaining items for Senate consideration prior to Christmas. It includes nominations and Executive Calendar items, subpoena for Whitewater, if that is going to be debated or necessary, whatever, the budget negotiation, whatever, continuing resolution, remaining appropriations bills, DOD authorization conference report, other available conference reports, rangeland reform. This is all assuming that we take up and pass the defense authorization bill on Tuesday, that we can do all these next week and the following week. I have the feeling that there may be a few absentees around here between Christmas and New Years. But it does seem very likely we will be in session, unless we can reach a framework of an agreement by the 22d of December, which appears to me to be fairly remote after what I thought was an indication from the President, 2 days running, that he was serious about it, he was prepared to come back here Friday and was prepared to get involved himself. I am certainly prepared to get involved myself. I know the Speaker is prepared to get involved. I know the Democratic leader indicated his readiness. And I assume the same is true for Congressman Gephardt. We ought to be doing it now--now. We ought to be doing this away from the press. I like the press. They are great people. But we are not going to negotiate if every 30 minutes each side has a press conference, as we did this afternoon, everybody out putting their spin on it. And now look where we are now. We are nowhere. We are right where we started. So, hopefully, if we ever do sit down, we will sit down somewhere where we cannot be found, where we can discuss the issues and not what spin we put on it after it fails. So I am still prepared to meet the President. I am still prepared to work with the President. The Democratic leader mentioned GATT. He mentioned NAFTA. They would not have passed without Republican support. The President knows that. Oh, it was fine to cooperate on those things because that is something he wanted. Well, the American people want a balanced budget by a big, big percentage. And we believe that we ought to have some real effort made by the President of the United States. So one thing I did not add to this would be welfare reform will be up next week, the conference report we will send to the President.

Mr. DOLE. In fact, I can say very honestly, we had a discussion after the first session, and the question was whether or not we ought to call the President of the United States by telephone and say, ``Mr. President, we can't negotiate with what was sent up here under your name, and if you're not serious, we don't see any reason to go back a second time.'' We said, ``No, let's go back again.'' We instructed Congressman Kasich and the Senator from New Mexico, ``Go back again. Nobody is blaming us for this not succeeding. Go back again and see if you get some serious statement or effort from Chief of Staff, Mr. Panetta, or somebody else.'' And that never happened. We did not walk out.

Mr. DOLE. As far as I know, I guess everybody left; they had to walk out, but nobody left saying, ``This is it; it's over.'' Now the President is on all the stations saying, ``Oh, well, they broke off talks, broke off talks, cutting education,'' cutting this, cutting that, same old propaganda that has been used in the past 60 to 90 days. So we are prepared to do whatever is necessary, and we are prepared to be here tomorrow and Sunday and Monday and all next week trying to pass the Labor-HHS bill, which would put some 100,000 people back to work, 180,000. The Senator from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, made a unanimous- consent request just 25 minutes ago to bring it up right now, and it was objected to. Not on this side. We have tried since September 15 to bring it up. It has been objected to. We cannot invoke cloture. We have every vote on this side, but not on that side. We do not have 60 Members. So I do not know how--we can bring it up if we agree to everything the Democrats want to do, then, ``Oh, we'll bring it up if you take out striker replacement, and you can't have any votes on your amendments or one vote.'' To me, that is not the way it ought to be. We are prepared to bring it up right now. They can move to strike striker replacement. We can move to strike some other committee amendments, and then finish the bill. It might take a day or two or three, but it will be completed. So I want the Federal employees to understand, whatever they may read in the paper or hear on the television from the President of the United States or somebody else putting the White House spin on it, this bill, H.R. 2127, has been on the calendar since September 15. We have attempted to bring it up time after time after time. You would all be working Monday had we completed action on this bill, but it was objected to not once, twice, three times and we could not invoke cloture. We had no problem on the Republican side. All the problems were on the other side. So if somebody is out there disappointed and in any of the agencies covered by this particular bill, they should understand precisely why it has not passed, why it has not gone to the President. We will take the rap on a couple of the others, as the minority leader indicated. On foreign ops, yes, it is held up on an abortion issue. DC is held up on a scholarship issue. We are trying to resolve that yet tonight. And the others have gone to the President or will go to the President. So my view is, this is a big one, talking about Federal employees. This is a big one. We have been trying to get it up for 90 days. So I hope the President mentions that the next time he speaks and asks the Democrats to cooperate. Of course, he is for striker replacement and issued an Executive order which we think went beyond his authority. We repealed that in the bill. That is why he objects, that is why Democrats object to our bringing it up. We are still around. We will be here this evening. We are prepared to reconvene if our colleagues are serious about it. If not, we will do the best we can to try to find some resolution between now and Monday morning. I yield the floor. Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. DOLE. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today it stand in adjournment until the hour of 11 a.m. on Saturday, December 16, that following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be deemed 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, there then be a period for morning business until the hour of 12 noon, with Senators to speak for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Minnesota for his statement. Let me indicate that we will be in session tomorrow by 11 o'clock. I do not believe there will be any votes tomorrow, but I am not certain. I cannot promise anyone. We will have meetings tomorrow morning on welfare reform on the conference report. There will be a meeting tomorrow morning on the D.C. appropriations bill. There will be debate tomorrow on the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, and we will again hopefully maybe get consent tomorrow to move to take that bill up. If that is the case, we could be considering amendments that might bring about some votes. We will probably have to be in session late Sunday afternoon in the event there should be a CR come over from the House. That may or may not happen. It depends on whether we get back into serious discussions on the balanced budget. If that happens, I assume the House would send us a 1- or 2-day continuing resolution. That would take us through Monday or Tuesday. I just say to my colleagues, I do not anticipate votes, but if votes should occur we will try to work out a way to give ample notice. It is pretty hard if you are on the west coast or somewhere in the western part of the United States to get back very quickly. We will try to figure out some way not to disadvantage anyone. Let me say before I conclude, I will ask Senator Boxer have whatever time she may need when I finish. Are we in morning business?

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to Darnell Clarence Jacobs, Sr., who will soon retire from the Senate after nearly 30 years of outstanding service. ``Jake,'' as he is known to his family and friends, began his Senate career in March 1966, as an employee of the Sergeant at Arms' custodial service operation. In 1981, Jake was promoted to supervisor of custodial services, and served in that position until 1988, when he accepted a position working in the Senate Chambers. Jake has been a dedicated and valuable member of the Senate family, and we wish him well as he retires to spend more time with his family-- his wife Jacqueline, and his three sons, Jeman, Derrick, and Darnell, Jr. I know all Members of the Senate join me in thanking Jake for his service, and in wishing him many more years of health and happiness.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. So, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that, after the Senator from California, Senator Boxer, speaks, that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order-- unless there is any other Senator wishing to speak? OK.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I know all Senators join with me in paying tribute to Andrew Chase, who will soon be retiring from the Senate. Andrew began his Senate career July 28, 1975, as an employee of the Sergeant at Arms' custodial service operation. In 1981, Andrew was promoted to assistant supervisor of Custodial Services and served in that position until 1988, when he accepted the position of night shift foreman for the environmental service operation. Now, after more than 20 years of service to the Senate, Andrew is retiring to spend time with his wife, Brenda, and his remarkable family--14 children, 25 grandchildren, and 3 great grandchildren. Andrew is also very involved in his community of Brandywine, MD, serving as president of the usher board at the Asbury United Methodist Church, and as a volunteer with the Kidney Foundation, where he visits and educates dialysis patients on kidney transplants. On behalf of the Senate, I extend our thanks to Andrew Chase, and our best wishes for a long and happy retirement.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, let me indicate that we have had very little success in the first, what we thought would be a serious negotiation on the budget. Apparently they were not serious. The offer by the President was filled with smoke and mirrors. I said earlier we might not be around here this weekend. Now I think there is a great likelihood we will be in session tomorrow and maybe unavoidably on Sunday. The House will probably send us a continuing resolution with some attachment. I am not certain quite what that would be. Maybe welfare reform. And that might take some debate, unless we get consent that everything passes by voice vote. So I need to alert my colleagues not to get too far away. And I will keep my colleagues informed as soon as I have further information. But it appears that there is not much prospect, not much reason to continue trying to negotiate with the White House when they do not want to really get serious about balancing the budget over the 7 years without falling back on the old smoke and mirrors and things that we thought maybe had changed. I think our next step would be to try to negotiate with some of our Democratic colleagues who are concerned about the budget and welfare reform and saving Medicare and tax cuts for families with children. And that will be pursued later this afternoon. So I can only say that we will be here some time yet today, and depending on when the House acts on the CR, probably tomorrow. But I will try to give my colleagues the specific times. And maybe some may not come in until afternoon depending again on how the House acts. I cannot give anybody more specificity, but as soon as I have information I will come to the floor and make an announcement.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, if I could just take a minute here, let me indicate that I still do not know for certain what the program will be today, tomorrow, and Sunday. I had hoped we would have some serious budget negotiations. I have just listened to the President of the United States. I must say I do not know who gives him advice, but I do not think he is telling the American people the truth. If he thinks he is engaged in serious budget discussions, then he ought to take a look at the budget. I must say that this administration is for a one-way street. It is all right to cooperate with them, but they are not going to cooperate with anyone else. And I have made an effort to do that as recently as 48 hours ago on this floor. I am a little frustrated that we have been 26 days now waiting for the administration to give us a legitimate offer to balance the budget in 7 years, using Congressional Budget Office estimates. It was my understanding, in talking with the President yesterday, that there would be a serious offer given to Republicans today. Anyone with any knowledge of the budget process could look at the offer made and tell you very quickly that it was not a serious offer. But here the President of the United States is getting on television saying that Republicans are recommending devastating cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, the environment and student loans after we put money back into those programs in our legitimate offer earlier today. So I am almost convinced that there is no real desire on the part of this administration to do anything except to play politics with the budget--and play politics with senior citizens and play politics with every other interest group in America. We have made an effort time after time to meet the President halfway. I believe the American people want a balanced budget in 7 years. They have indicated that. The President agreed to it, but we cannot do it with the same old smoke and mirrors. In fact, $54 billion of the savings today was ``baseline adjustments,'' which is one example, and there are other examples in the President's bill. Tax cuts--he has tax cuts in his bill, too, I think--in what, the 5th year. If everything was not in balance, you would trigger over those tax cuts. That is another way of how they save $23 billion. That is something that even Darman had not thought of when he was here. So they thought of a lot of good things down there. But I would hope the President of the United States would contact this Senator and the Speaker of the House of Representatives--the three of us sit down and get serious. This is serious business. If we do not have some agreement, if we do not pass the continuing resolution by Sunday evening, the Government will shut down again. One way to avoid that is to let us bring up the Labor-HHS bill, which the Democrats twice have objected to. We are going to ask consent--I guess we have already asked consent. That has been objected to. There are about 180,000 Federal workers. But, again, the Democrats will not agree to bring it up unless we agree to everything they want--take out striker replacement, do not vote on the abortion amendments. In other words, what we will do as the minority, and then we will accept or let you bring it up on the floor. So we would like to bring it up tonight and be on it all day tomorrow and all day Sunday. By Monday morning, maybe we could have it passed and go to conference and bring it back. That would be 180,000 Americans who could go to work. We are going to send down to the President now State, Justice, Commerce. VA-HUD will be sent down to the President; Interior appropriations tomorrow. All he has to do is sign those bills, and that will take care of nearly all of the Federal employees. That will leave remaining the District of Columbia bill and Foreign Ops. If we can get an agreement to bring up Labor-HHS, let us pass that tomorrow or Sunday in the Senate. So if the President is not willing to negotiate the balanced budget except on his terms, and he is not willing to sign the appropriations bills we send him except on his terms and is not willing to let us bring up one of the largest bills with the most Federal employees-- Labor-HHS, we have been prepared for the past 2 or 3 months, but it has been objected to by the Democrats. So I hope the American people understand, if people who are covered by that bill are not working on Monday, why they are not working on Monday. So, again, I would say to the President of the United States, tell the American people the truth. Do not come on television, Mr. President, and say that we are devastating this and devastating that, because, in fact, you know that in our budget we added back billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid and made other real adjustments. Maybe it is impossible. Maybe we are not going to get anything done. If that is what the President wants, he ought to just tell us that so we can make alternative plans, pass a very stringent continuing resolution and assume that is all we are going to get done. But in the meantime, we are still working on our side. We are still trying to resolve the differences on the DC appropriations bill and on the foreign operations bill. And I hope that they would be ready for passage, if not today or tomorrow, on Monday.

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask there now be a period for the transaction of routine morning business with Senators not to exceed 10 minutes each.

Mr. DOLE

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

Mr. DOLE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, we have had a number of inquiries about what the schedule will be for the remainder of the day. Frankly, I do not know. It depends on the meeting, which will take place here in a few moments with White House representatives and Members of the House and Senate, on the budget. It is my understanding that if a serious budget is proposed and presented by each side, then the House will be prepared to send us a short-term continuing resolution that would take us through at least next Tuesday. If that develops--and it may be later on today--I would have to check and see if there would be a request for a rollcall vote on either side. If not, we might be able to advise our colleagues within the next hour as to what the program will be. It is also my hope that on the defense authorization bill, even though the House does not take up the conference report until 4 o'clock, we might reach some time agreement on that bill to permit us to start debate earlier than 5 p.m.--in fact, early afternoon--and we can debate it on Monday and have that vote sometime around 11 o'clock on Tuesday morning. So what I am suggesting is that if everybody wants to cooperate, we may be able to work it out so there might not be any votes for the balance of the day or on Monday, and a vote will occur on Tuesday at around 11. But I cannot make that statement definitely at this time. So that is what we are working on. If my colleagues have ideas or objections or suggestions, I hope they will be in touch with me or staff between now and, say, 12:15. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.