Russell Feingold

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. I thank the Chair. (The remarks of Mr. Feingold pertaining to the submission of S. Res. 83 are located in today's Record under ``Submissions of Concurrent and Senate Resolutions.'')

Mr. FEINGOLD. I yield the floor.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to William Leonard Blockstein who died last week at age 69. Bill was professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison following a notable career there. Prior to his retirement in 1991, he was the Edward Kremers professor of pharmacy in the School of Pharmacy, clinical professor of Preventive Medicine in the Medical School, and professor and director of the health sciences unit of university extension. continuing professional education, health planning, and consumer health education, and edited or coedited 15 books. In 1985, he received the American Pharmaceutical Association's Joseph P. Remington Medal, pharmaceutical science's most prestigious award. But as distinguished a scientist as he was, Bill was an even better human being. As one of his colleagues from the University of Wisconsin noted, Bill was a good friend to everyone. Marge Sutinen, the women he planned to marry this July, said that Bill was one of the most charitable men in the community, and indeed, his charity and friendship had no limits. I had known Bill for years when I asked him to be the first senior intern in my Senate office, and he kindly consented. Though he did spend time advising me on health care issues--a subject on which he had considerable expertise--as many Members understand, working in a Senate office, especially as an intern, does not always involve the most glamorous of work. Bill, a nationally recognized scientist and emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin pitched in on every task, cheerily helping out younger staffers and interns with any and all office chores. Bill loved art, and was an avid supporter of the arts. He loved to travel, and I understand he was planning to travel to Sweden and Great Britain later this year. He was active in Friendship Force, a group that combined his altruism and desire for fellowship with that enthusiasm for travel. He enjoyed being out with people, and especially loved to go dancing. He found pleasure in the cloths he wore--often proudly sporting a new tie or shirt around the office to the delight of the rest of us. Bill's obvious pleasure in these and other things was contagious. It was simply not possible to be in the same room and not be infected by his enthusiasm. Bill suffered more than his share of personal tragedy, including the death of his wife Liesl, killed by a drunk driver in 1986. But throughout that and other tragedies, Bill said that it was important to celebrate life every day. He did just that. No one did a better job of living than Bill Blockstein. I shall miss him a great deal.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, today I am pleased to join with the senior Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Bumpers] to submit a resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that enacting an across-the-board or so-called middle-class tax cut during the 104th Congress would hinder efforts to reduce the Federal deficit. Mr. President, though I would certainly like to support a tax cut measure, especially one that provides a Well Deserved tax break to middle-class Americans, supporting that kind of proposal is simply not responsible right now, especially given the recent developments with respect to the balanced budget amendment. During a month of telling debate on the proposal, we have not done one thing that will actually help us achieve the widely shared goal of a balanced budget. Mr. President, it is time we did. We have been making some headway in reducing the deficit. President Clinton's 1993 deficit reduction package was a critical turning point in our fight to reduce the deficit, and we are now in the third straight year of progressively lower deficits. However, we need to do more, and I firmly believe we not only undermine those needed future efforts but could also jeopardize the progress we have already made if we rush along now and do tax cuts. Mr. President, let me emphasize that my opposition to tax cuts is bipartisan--the tax cut proposals of both parties are wrong. I publicly opposed the President's proposed tax cuts the same day he even announced them. An I think opposition to the tax cuts proposals of both parties has bipartisan support. In fact, I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the Senator from Oregon [Mr. Packwood], the Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Chafee], and the Senator from Maine [Mr. Cohen] for their support of a similar effort that I made as part of the debate on the balanced budget amendment. Their support was particularly heartening, and I think it reveals a growing consensus that deficit reduction must be a higher priority than tax cuts right now. As part of his fiscal year 1996 budget, the President, has proposed about $63 billion in tax cut over the next 5 years, and that is a figure that grows to $174 billion over 10 years. Even more troubling the Republican contract with America has proposed tax cuts totaling $196 billion over 5 years and the whopping figure of $704 billion over 10 years. To me, all of those figures represent the cost of a lost opportunity. The President's tax cuts are part of his budget package, and he has indicated that they are more than offset by $184 billion in spending cuts. And at least some of those supporting the Republican Contract With America tax cut package have indicated they too would be offsetting the cost of those tax cuts with spending cuts. However, even if they are fully offset--I hope we would agree that to be an absolute minimum requirement--we would do much better to forego those tax cuts. Eliminating the President's tax cut proposals, while doing nothing else to his budget, would result in $72 billion in additional deficit reduction over the next 5 years--the $63 billion in foregone tax cuts plus $9 billion in interest savings. Just doing that, and nothing more, would produce a Federal budget deficit of $170 billion in fiscal year 2000, $24 billion lower than the $194 billion projected as part of the President's budget. In fact, the figures for the Contract With America tax cuts are very dramatic. Assuming spending cuts are produced to offset that tax cut package, and then assuming we decided not to adopt those tax cuts, doing nothing else to the President's budget would result in $217 billion in additional deficit reduction over the next 5 years--$196 billion in foregone tax cuts plus $21 billion in interest savings. Just doing that, and nothing more, would produce a Federal budget deficit of $114 billion in the year 2000, $80 billion less than what the President projected. Over 10 years, just under this scenario, we would save $178 billion in interest costs alone by not adopting the Contract With America tax cut package, and could produce $882 billion in deficit reduction. Let me conclude by noting that tax cut proposals are grounded in the old politics of the free lunch--promise the people a tax cut and a balanced budget. mess which now confronts us and undermined the American people's faith in their Government. By resisting calls for tax cuts, we not only help alleviate pressure on the deficit, we also can begin to restore the lost confidence of the American people in their elected officials. I hope other members will join Senator Bumpers and me in persuading a majority of the Senate that it is irresponsible to cut taxes as we are trying to reduce the deficit and balance the Federal budget.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, as the Congress begins to debate the foreign aid budget this year, U.S. assistance and involvement in Africa is once again in question. It would be a grave mistake for the United States to disengage completely from Africa, particularly at this point. As the success stories of South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, and other African nations in transition tell, there is potential for great gains in Africa--both politically and economically. At the same time, even recent history demonstrates that if we ignore Africa, conflicts and problems can explode into political, economic, and humanitarian disasters for which we all pay the price. On this note, I commend to my colleagues an article which appeared in the New York Times this weekend entitled, ``In Africa, West Can Pay Now or Later.'' It charts several reasons for international involvement in Africa in the global context, and documents some reasons for U.S. investment in the continent. Though some would like to write off Africa as irrelevant to U.S. interests, it is impossible to argue that what happens in a continent of close to 1 billion people has no effect on us. An investment in Africa of money, diplomacy, and attention today will help develop political stability, which in turn will yield economic benefits for Africans and international trading partners: Together political and economic developments will help reduce the number and level of tragedies we have witnessed in Africa. Reducing the Federal deficit is in our national interest and should be our top priority. But a wholesale abandonment of U.S. investment in regions of the world such as Africa is not in the U.S. interest. We need to make sensible decisions about necessary U.S. investments. In the long run, our populations, the environment, universal human rights, and international markets will benefit greatly from a relatively small investment today. I ask that the text of the article be printed in the Record. The article follows: [From the New York Times, Feb. 26, 1995] In Africa, West Can Pay Now, Or Later (By Howard W. French) Abidjan, Ivory Coast.--Having struggled across the Sahara, 250,000 starving Sudanese refugees assemble on the Moroccan coast, hoping to cross the Straits of Gibraltar to Europe. As an armada of camera crews film them, the refugee's leader launches this challenge to European Union coastal guards who would stop them: ``All we ask of you is, watch us die.'' The event is pure fiction, the final scene of a 1990 BBC television drama. But development experts say it neatly illustrates a stark choice looming for the industrialized world: Pitch in more energetically to bring Africa into the global economic fold, or wait and watch as the continent decends into a quickening spiral of disaster. an exploding population With its population due to double to about 1.2 billion in less than 30 years, and expected to reach 2 billion by 2050, an Africa is crisis could well become the desperate stage for a mass emigration the likes of which have never been seen. Despite such warnings, however, the West seems to have grown only more indifferent to Africa's fortunes. Some American congressmen have recently likened aid to the continent to throwing money into a rathole; Britain has said it will cut its contributions to Africa through the European Union, and even France is grappling with ways to reduce obligations to its former possessions. In response, frustrated development experts and new democratic leaders in Africa have argued that would be far cheaper to help the continent out of its problems now than to rescue it later. To get a sense of scale, it helps to look at two examples where extremely rapid population growth rates--well over 3 percent a year--are expected by United Nations statisticians between now and the year 2000. They are Nigeria, which in the early 1990's had 116 million people and a gross national product per capita of only $350, and Kenya, which had 25 million people and produced just $340 per person. Nevertheless, the experts on Africa recognize that in an era of austerity at home, arguments about investing abroad today to prevent crisis tomorrow have limited appeal. They now argue that traditional aid grants are not necessarily the answer. ``The most effective thing that could be done for Africa right now doesn't involve new money, but systematic debt relief,'' said Thomas Callaghy of the University of Pennsylvania. ``You could write off all of Africa's debts tomorrow, and it wouldn't affect international financial markets.'' But then, ``When you look at what has just happened in Mexico you realize just how hard a thing this is to sell politically.'' If Africa's approaching peril is not enough to motivate the West to act with greater generosity, many hope that old- fashioned appeals to profit might. Whether it was spices or gold or slaves or vast quantities of gems and minerals, the continent has always been a rich, if risky, El Dorado for the venturesome outsider. Why do investors hesitate before Africa's new opportunities? Following Ghana's independence, Kwame Nkrumah, its first president and a pioneer of the continent's ultimately disastrous fling with socialism, defined the historical problem, noting the ``paradox'' that Africa's ``earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below the soil continue to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Africa's impoverishment.'' Now, throughout much of the continent, several years of dramatic efforts to remove barriers to trade and investment, trim bureaucracies and rejoin the global economy have mostly swept away the legacy of three decades of Mr. Nkrumah's brand of socialism. Ghana and Uganda are prominent examples, and investment in South Africa can at last be viewed as an investment in the continent as a whole. Because of these changes, Africa's riches are again up for grabs. But so far, the international business community has largely disappointed the development experts. Mali, for example, can't find a partner to help finance a new power company, even though companies from the United States, Australia and Canada rush to explore for gold and diamonds and oil there. Their hope is for the kind of quick extraction of wealth that led to the continent's early disenchantment with capitalism. If Africa still requires a more cooperative form of economic involvement, development experts say, it is because the years under socialism did little to alleviate deep social problems that include an undereducated population whose needs grow faster than weak governments can possibly cope with, poor roads and communications, a lack of managerial expertise, and most of all a shortage of capital. So Africa is in a bind: major foreign private investment in productive new industries is unlikely unless these problems are solved first, but the only sources of help to fix them is overseas. ``People cling to the myth that if only these countries would get their policies right, everything would be okay,'' said James Gustave Speth, the administrator of the United Nations Development Program. ``There is no reason to believe that Africa can't make it, but right now this is a continent that is bleeding and without substantial outside help, there is no hope.'' In addition to cutting debt burden, economists say the West should drop barriers to transformation industries for developing countries. In this, they say, there could be a payoff for the West as well. ``Aid to Africa is not welfare,'' J. Brian Atwood, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, wrote recently in The International Herald Tribune. ``Africa is today what Latin American and Asian markets were a generation ago. It is the last great developing market.'' But what many see as a sensible management of long-term interests collides with political expediency. ``Putting people on their feet is just good business sense'' said Edward V. K. Jaycox, vice president of the World Bank. ``But it is a question of old-fashioned industrial structures in the north, where a lot of people are engaged in activities that they are loath to give up.'' By that he meant something very much like what Mr. Nkrumah used to say: If the West really wants to see an Africa healthy for investment, it should stop raiding the gold veins and diamond mines and open not just its wallets but its markets as well.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I want to express my support of the amendment offered by the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy] last night which would specifically provide that the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution does not provide the President of the United States with unilateral power to impound funds or raise taxes. This amendment will be voted on next Tuesday and I hope it will be adopted. Mr. President, this amendment raises interesting questions because the opponents have repeatedly said that they do not believe that the balanced budget amendment, as drafted, should be interpreted to give the President the power to impound funds or raise taxes. Many have stated they would oppose giving that kind of power to the executive branch, even through the implementing legislation. The Judiciary Committee's majority report states, unequivocally, ``it is not the intent of the committee to grant the President any impoundment authority'' under the proposed balanced budget amendment. Yet, these same Members have strenuously opposed an amendment which would clarify this issue once and for all, by making it clear that neither the balanced budget amendment, nor any implementing legislation enacted pursuant to its authority can give the executive branch the unilateral authority to bring the budget into balance by raising taxes or impounding funds. It seems to me you can't have it both ways: you can not argue you don't support giving the President these sweeping powers and at the same time fight against an amendment which would make it clear that the balanced budget amendment does not provide such authority to the executive branch. Mr. President, it is particularly important that this issue be settled now, clearly and in a forthright manner, because it raises very serious and profound questions about how this country will be governed if this constitutional amendment is adopted. The question of Executive power under this amendment, like the question of the role of the courts, is one that ought to be answered now, before the amendment is added to our Constitution, not sometime later, in the distant future. The people of this country have the right to know in advance whether this amendment will allow a fundamental restructuring of the balance of power and responsibilities between the three branches of Government. The State legislators, who have an important responsibility when they vote whether or not to ratify this proposed amendment, ought to have this question resolved before they cast their votes. If this amendment can be construed to give the President the right to, for example, withhold Social Security checks, or salaries of military and civilian employees of the Federal Government, or grants to State and local governments in order to meet the constitutional mandate for a balanced budget, then we ought to know that in advance. Mr. President, the pending amendment to make it clear that the balanced budget amendment does not grant these sweeping powers to the executive branch is not about whether you are for or against the balanced budget amendment--it is about whether the proposed constitutional amendment is drafted in a way that can result in a fundamental change in the way this country is governed. The balance of powers between the three branches of Government-- legislative, executive, and judicial--is a concept which is fundamental to our system of Government. It has stood us well for more than 200 years. Our democracy has survived and thrived because the checks and balances contained in our Constitution has prevented any one of these branches from becoming dominant. Without adoption of the pending amendment, that balance could be fundamentally altered. Mr. President, let me stress again the issue here is not about whether you support or oppose the balanced budget amendment. It is about whether you believe that the President should have the power to impound funds or raise taxes on the American people at his or her sole discretion. The concentration of this type of power in the hands of the executive is not something that I believe the people of this country want to see happen. They want to see their elected officials use some fiscal discipline and restraint to bring our Federal budget into balance. They want us to stop deficit spending and increasing the national debt--a debt that will be passed on to their children and grandchildren. I do not believe that these concerns about fiscal responsibility means that the American people want to see the emergence of an imperial Presidency. I do not believe that they want this President or the next to have the power to unilaterally impound funds or raise taxes. If the proponents of the amendment truly believe that the amendment does not bestow those powers on the President, then they ought to be willing to accept this amendment. Their resistance gives this Senator a great deal of concern, particularly in light of the strong legal arguments that have been presented indicating that the proposed balanced budget amendment could well be construed by the courts and the executive branch to bestow on the President extraordinary powers to impound funds or raise taxes in the event that the constitutionally mandated budget balanced has not been achieved. Mr. President, this is not a risk that we should expose ourselves to when a simple solution--adoption of the pending amendment--will resolve the question. A number of legal scholars have concluded that without such an amendment to the balanced budget amendment, the President would have such balanced budget. Their arguments, which I will summarize briefly, make a good deal of sense and we ought to heed their warnings. These scholars note that the balanced budget amendment which the Senate is now considering is silent on the issue of how it will be enforced. The amendment itself provides simply that total outlays cannot exceed total receipts in a fiscal year, unless each House of Congress approves a specific deficit by a three-fifths vote. The amendment, however, does not specify what action can be taken if an unconstitutional deficit arises, either because of the inaction of the legislative and executive branches, or because of unforeseen changes in economic factors. At the same time, proponents argue that the balanced budget amendment is self-enforcing. The Judiciary Committee report states, ``both the President and Members of Congress swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, including any amendments thereto.'' As to how the President is expected to carry out that responsibility, particularly in the case of a recalcitrant Congress, the committee report simply states that it is not their intent to grant the President any impoundment authority, and that, in any event, Congress has the power under section 6 of the amendment to pass legislation that specifically denies impoundment powers to the President. The implication of these passages in the committee report is clearly that the proponents of the amendment recognize the very real risk that the proposed amendment opens the door to a President acting to impound funds or raise taxes to meet the constitutional mandate of a balanced budget and that they hope that Congress will proscribe that authority in implementing legislation. That is a thin argument upon which to rest such a profound issue as maintaining the constitutional balance of powers. If Congress failed to pass legislation to preclude a President from taking unilateral action to bring a budget into balance by either impounding funds or raising taxes or Congress passed such legislation, but a President vetoed it and his or her veto was not overridden, there is every reason to believe that such authority would be there for a strong executive to take under the guise of carrying out his or her constitutional obligations. Indeed, a President might well feel compelled to veto such legislation for the very reason that it would tie his or her hands in seeking to comply with the constitutional mandate to prevent outlays from exceeding revenues in any given fiscal year. The Constitution, article II, section 3, obligates the President of the United States to ``take care that the Laws be faithfully executed.'' A commonsense reading of the proposed balanced budget amendment and the obligation of the President to faithfully execute the law means that the President must act to either impounds funds or raise taxes if the total outlays of the Federal Government exceed the total revenues in any fiscal year. A broad range of respected legal scholars have reached that conclusion. Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger testified before the Judiciary Committee that the proposed constitutional amendment would authorize the President to impound funds to insure that the outlays did not exceed revenues. Harvard University law professor Charles Fried, who served as Solicitor General during the Reagan administration, testified that section 1 of the proposed amendment ``would offer a President ample warrant to impound appropriated funds'' in a year when actual revenues fell below projects and a bigger than authorized deficit occurred. Other legal scholars who have reached similar conclusions include former Attorney General Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, Stanford University Law School Professor Kathleen Sullivan, Yale University Law School Professor Burke Marshall, and Harvard University Law School Professor Laurence Tribe. Mr. President, I think it is important to stress that we are not talking here about the President exercising something along the lines of a line-item veto. Legislation which would give the President line- item veto authority to remove spending items from appropriation bills and provide Congress the opportunity to override those vetoes has passed the other body and will soon be debated in the Senate. The Judiciary Committee has also already held hearings last month on proposed constitutional amendments to provide the President with line- item veto authority. What we are talking about here, however, is not a line-item veto, but the power of the President to take whatever steps he or she deems necessary, including impounding funds and raising taxes without any review by Congress in order to meet the constitutional mandate of a balanced budget. That is a very different process from a line-item veto authority and one which would vest the executive branch with unprecedented fiscal powers. Mr. President, although much of the discussion regarding the Presidential powers to faithfully execute the requirements of a balanced budget amendment have focused upon the issue of impoundment authority, there is no reason to conclude that a President would not have equal powers to achieve a balanced budget by unilaterally raising taxes, duties or fees in order to generate the revenues needed to avoid an unconstitutional deficit. That is certainly not a result most proponents of the balanced budget amendment would like to see happen. The only sure way to prevent it is to adopt the pending amendment which would foreclose that option. Mr. President, the best way to ensure that the balanced budget amendment is not interpreted to give Presidents the power to unilaterally impound social security checks or raise taxes on middle class workers is simple--put it in writing. Adoption of this amendment will make it clear that the balanced budget amendment does not, in fact, authorize the President to exercise this kind of unprecedented power. Those who oppose this amendment have given no good reason why they are not willing to accept this amendment. They ask that the American people accept, on good faith, that they ``do not intend'' to give the President these powers. The American people should not have to rely upon ``good intentions.'' Why take the risk? Let's write it into the amendment.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. FEINGOLD. I object.

Mr. FEINGOLD. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum. Mr. FORD addressed the Chair.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, this amendment is fairly straightforward. Last week, Mr. President, we had a debate and a vote on a motion I proposed which would have had the effect of nullifying the provisions of the committee report to the Judiciary Committee which created a special exemption for the Tennessee Valley Authority Power Program. The TVA was the only Federal program mentioned in the entire committee report that was given this kind of special treatment. Although we did not prevail, my motion received bipartisan support. Since that time, a number of Members have come up to me and told me that it was right to pursue what I like to call this constitutional pork. Members who were both for and against the balanced budget amendment appear to have been taken aback at the audacity of the TVA supporters to insert this kind of provision into the actual legislative history of the constitutional amendment. A number of organizations supporting the balanced budget amendment, such as the National Taxpayers Union, the Concord Coalition, and the Citizens Against Government Waste have also indicated that they did not agree with the idea of placing this language in the committee report for only one special program. Some said it was just plain wrong to do it. Nonetheless, Mr. President, I recognize that the proponents of the balanced budget amendment are determined that no amendments or motions, with the exception of the Dole second-degree amendment with respect to Social Security and the right-to-know amendment, would be adopted. That has been an open goal that has been achieved thus far. Mr. President, what I propose to do is to offer this amendment which tracks the language that was placed in the committee report that exempted TVA from the balanced budget amendment and then urge that my amendment be rejected. In other words, this is an opportunity for the Senate now to go on record to oppose this special treatment provided for the TVA in the committee report and, at the same time, in no way would disturb the balanced budget amendment itself. The Senate would simply go on record showing that we do not want this kind of protection guaranteed for one program and not others. By offering this amendment and asking that it be rejected, the entire Senate would have the opportunity to reject the committee language and therefore nullify its impact as legislative history when the courts get around to interpreting the balanced budget amendment and, for that matter, when this Congress or future Congresses get around to balancing the budget. So, Mr. President, our action to reject this amendment does not answer the question of whether TVA should have any of its subsidies cut when the Congress gets around to try to achieve a balanced budget amendment. What it does say, and all it says, is that the TVA should be on the table just like every other Federal program, including Social Security, which, at this point, is still on the table. If Congress decides, as some TVA proponents claim and as is stated in the language of the committee report, that the electric Power Program is paid for entirely by the ratepayers, then Congress can act accordingly at that time. If they win that argument, so be it. If, however, Congress decides that the appropriations to TVA for its stewardship program is subsidizing its Power Program, or if Congress decides that the TVA ought to pay for the overhead cost of selling its debt obligation and low-interest loans, or if Congress decides there is some other inappropriate subsidy, then it will be free to make those decisions. The point is, these are issues that Congress needs to decide, not as a part of the process of proposing a balanced budget amendment, but as a part of the process of making the tough choices. These options should not be curtailed or limited because the TVA proponents have been successful in slipping favorable language into the committee report at an earlier stage. Mr. President, yesterday morning, as we went into session, I had a chance to hear Chairman Hatch resume the debate on the balanced budget amendment. This is what the chairman said the principal justification for the balanced budget would be. He said, ``The balanced budget amendment would introduce an element of competition into the spending process;'' that every program would have to compete. He said programs will not be allowed to simply show that they by themselves are meritorious, but they are going to have to show they are meritorious in the context of the whole budget picture. He said it will not be enough for a program just to show that it is worthy, but that it has to be worthy compared in the context of the whole; that it actually is a priority item. It was this very rhetoric, Mr. President, that encouraged me to return to this subject and to make sure that the Senate as a whole is clear about its intent on this matter and not just let it be decided by some committee language which the courts would feel constrained to respect. Mr. President, I understand that there may be some on the other side of this issue who will argue that the Senate's rejection of this amendment should not be interpreted as rejecting the committee report language, but rather simply an expression of the view that the language referring to the TVA should not be in the Constitution itself. clear on the issue, I am the author of this amendment and the intent of the author of the amendment is crystal clear. The TVA should not have a special status carved out for it under the balanced budget amendment. I am seeking to have the Senate reject this amendment so the full Senate can go on record as saying that TVA, like other programs, is going to be on the table when Congress starts cutting Federal subsidies to achieve a balanced budget. Notwithstanding what other statements the proponents of the language inserted in the committee report may make, the author of the amendment intends the vote to serve as a repudiation of the notion that the TVA has some special protected status. And I trust that those who seek to use legislative history as a guide in interpreting the amendment, should it be ratified, will give due weight to the author of the amendment. So, Mr. President, I move to table the pending amendment and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk and I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Thank you, Mr. President. Amendment No. 291

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I have been waiting a number of hours to call up an amendment pending at the desk. But I understand that the Senator from California has an amendment that she wishes to call up next. So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from California be recognized to call up her amendment, and that immediately thereafter her amendment be set aside and I be recognized to call up an amendment.

Mr. FEINGOLD. I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to speak for 1 minute.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized to call up an amendment at the desk.

Mr. FEINGOLD. I would be happy to yield for the question.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, let me express my pleasure to the Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from Tennessee for supporting in effect my motion to table and the motion to table of the Senator from North Dakota. That is exactly what I had hoped they would indicate. I believe that the only reason we are having this discussion at this point is quite simply that somebody pulled a fast one here in the committee and now we are out on the floor actually discussing it.

Mr. FEINGOLD. I am aware of the fact, and I told the Senator from Kentucky that I just got here 2 years ago. And, yes, I confess I did not discover this language until this year. I did not find this little caper in there until now.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Had I been here 10 years ago, maybe it would have taken me 3 or 4 years to find it. But there it is. I wish I had found it last year. But fortunately I have had an opportunity to join the Judiciary Committee now, and my staff had more of a chance to find these things. We found it. It is time to get rid of it. Mr. President, there was an effort here to try to undo the real intent of the balanced budget amendment. There is an attempt, a classic attempt, to abrogate, to say you are for the balanced budget amendment, but say, of course, that it does not apply to my State, to my program. I think there is not a reasonable person who would not agree that this is part of the problem. It is always easy to support cuts if it does not affect your own home State. However, this notion of actually putting the exemption into the Constitution, which my opponents on this are being very candid about now--they are saying that is exactly what you are trying to do--is something new. The other side is trying to exempt TVA. It is not just idle talk. The purpose of the committee language is to exempt it. That is why they are trying to make this distinction between my motion to table and committee language. But it is not working because everyone knows what the intent is of the people who put it in there. And everybody knows what my intent is. It is laid on the record. In fact, Mr. President, today in the Washington Post, there is an editorial entitled ``Constitutional Pork.'' It is all about this problem, this committee language. I ask unanimous consent that the editorial from the Washington Post, dated February 23, be printed in the Record.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, fortunately this editorial lays out exactly the intent, my intent, the intent of the Senator from North Dakota, and that is to undo, explicitly undo, what was done in the committee; to say that the Senate as a whole would table such language that would have the effect of exempting either all or part of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Mr. President, the Senator from Kentucky indicated that I had put four amendments in for possible introduction as amendments, and that is correct. But I have chosen one amendment and that amendment is this one. It is the one that, by its rejection, overrides the language of the committee report. It would have the effect of overriding the committee report by tabling the very language from the committee report. That is the purpose of amendment No. 291. It is not a disingenuous attempt. It is the only way I could think of to override the effect of this committee report which the members did not explicitly consider. Everybody should understand there was not a point in the process of the consideration of the balanced budget amendment in the Judiciary Committee where we all said, ``OK, let's decide if the TVA should be exempt or not.'' The whole process was done and the committee report was written, and then it was thrown in there, presumably at the staff level. That is how it was done. And I guess that is the way it is done when it is business as usual, when you are trying to protect your own pork but at the same time you are saying you are for a balanced budget. It is a lot better to do it in a quiet staff room than it is to do it out on the floor of the Senate or even in front of the Judiciary Committee. That is what was done here. I assure everyone who is looking at this what was done here was something people did not want us to know about. My intent is not something any judge is ever going to have to wonder about. The Senator from Kentucky says they are going to have to be able to read it and limit it some way. But I laid my intent right on the record. The purpose of the motion to table is to override the committee language that seeks to exempt the TVA. Whether it seeks to exempt part of the TVA or all of the TVA or something in between, the intent of the motion to table, as explicitly stated by the two Senators who have moved to table, is to override the committee language. Now, I wonder how a court will have any trouble figuring that out. Clearly, they know the difference. In fact, this is a very interesting proposition in terms of legislative history. What is being suggested here is that, even if the U.S. Senate as a body explicitly votes to table certain language, the courts are going to find the committee report to be more persuasive than the rollcall vote of the Members of the U.S. Senate. I doubt it. I would not bet the farm on that interpretation of legislative history. I think you will find you will come up wanting with that approach. So let us be clear. My intent and the whole purpose of this is to not allow a committee report to find its way into constitutional interpretation or to exempt some or all of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Let us get back to the real issue here. The real issue is: Why do I have to even be out here at all? Only because something was attempted which no one would try to do out here on the floor, to exempt one particular program from one particular area while everybody else has to compete fairly. So I am very happy about the way the record stands now. And I am a lot happier than I was when I did not have these two Senators supporting me on the record to override the intent of the committee. Mr. President, let me just say a few words about the other issue that has been raised about this notion that somehow the TVA has nothing to do with the Federal budget. That is what they are saying. This is a great deal, they say. We are making money on it, they say. It is a good thing for the Federal Government, which it may well be. But the point is, there are an awful lot of people that think it is a loser or it is time to phase it out. It was a wonderful thing when Franklin Roosevelt brought this forth, and it really helped that area of the country during the Depression, but it is not open and shut at all that this program is a moneymaker for our country. In fact, an awful lot of people think it should be one of the top items for cuts. That is what the National Taxpayers Union has said. That is what the Congressional Budget Office has said. That is what a number of pieces of legislation already introduced this session by Members of both parties and both Houses have said. Let me read briefly from the ``CBO Reducing the Deficit: Spending and Revenue Options,'' March 1994. Because many of TVA's stewardship activities are necessary to maintain its power system, their costs would more appropriately be borne by users of the power. . . Direct costs to the Federal Government could be reduced by about $70 million annually if the TVA were to increase power rates or fees to cover costs of all stewardship activities. . . A very different view than this view has been offered out here that says it has nothing to do with Federal dollars. Let me cite from the ``Department of Energy Federal Energy Subsidies: Direct and Indirect Interventions in Energy Markets,'' November 1992. When compared with interest rates paid by investor-owned utilities, the TVA is estimated to have benefited from a subsidy of $231 million in FY 1990. A few pages later, the report says: Historically, TVA was granted subsidies in the form of low- interest loans, debt forgiveness, and lower payments in lieu of taxation. In fiscal year 1988, TVA received a subsidy--a subsidy, Mr. President--of $661.9 million in the form of lower payments in lieu of taxes, and that $661.9 million ``* * * can be counted as revenue losses to all levels of government.'' This is real money. It is almost up to the point where, as the former Senator from Illinois, Senator Dirksen, said, we are talking about real money from the Federal Government transferred away from our ability to balance our budget. The report also says, TVA . . . Sells a large portion of its debt to the Federal Financing Bank (FFB). . . . TVA's ability to access FFB acts as a subsidy in two ways. First, TVA does not incur any expenses to underwriters or marketing expense when it goes to the FFB. Second, it obtains financing at lower interest rates through the FFB. So I will concede this to my friends on this issue, this is debatable. Yes, it is debatable whether or not the Federal Government has to pay out directly or indirectly to the TVA. But there is one thing that is clear and it is that at a very minimum it is debatable and that we cannot resolve it here today and that this is not the place to be resolving it. Why are we resolving it today? Because certain Senators decided that they should not have to go through that same scrutiny that all the rest of us do, which is that later on, whether we pass the balanced budget amendment or not, we have to all get out here and fight and fight hard for our own programs and our own home States. dairy State. Would it not be nice to have a constitutional exemption for the dairy program? But that is not the way this process should work, and we all know it. It is not fair. It is just not fair to exempt one program and let everyone else in this country have to fight like heck to protect the hard-working people in their home States, all of whom, I assure you, in every one of these 50 States, have arguments just as worthy. So this attempt to enshrine this in the Constitution is one that is a bit of an embarrassment, it seems to me. All I am trying to do here--and apparently we will prevail on this now--is to just get rid of it. A mistake was made by trying to do this in the Judiciary Committee. We all make mistakes, and it is understandable, certainly not the most horrible thing that was ever done around this place. But when you make a mistake, it is time to clean it up and correct it. Our motion to table cleans up the mistake and returns to a notion of fair play, whether the balanced budget amendment passes or not. So, Mr. President, I guess I am going to have to leave it to the future. We have to see if the balanced budget amendment passes. We have to see if it gets ratified. But some day maybe somebody will take a look at this record, and I guess they are going to have to decide which side was playing games, which side was trying to pull a fast one, and which side was just trying to put everybody on the same playing field. I am absolutely confident that when the courts look at this, when the Congress looks at this and, most importantly, when the American people look at this, they will all conclude that one side was trying to have their cake and eat it, too--to pose for the holy picture and say you are balancing a Federal budget but to still keep the pork in your own back yard. That is an outrageous example of trying to have your cake and eat it, too. All we are trying to do is clean it up. I thank the Chair.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask the Senator, with his motion to table, is his intent the same as my intent on the previous motion to table, which is to make it clear that the Senate does not seek to exempt the Tennessee Valley Authority from the balanced budget amendment and to override the committee language to that effect?

Mr. FEINGOLD. For a question.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to temporarily suspend enforcement of the reformulated gas requirements as mandated by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. I do so, Mr. President, as a supporter of the Clean Air Act, the reformulated fuels program, and of the Environmental Protection Agency. However, the situation over the past few weeks in Milwaukee, since the introduction of reformulated fuel on January 1, 1995, has caused me great concern. In introducing this measure, I am joined today by two of my colleagues in the other body, Representative Kleczka and Representative Barrett, who have introduced similar legislation. The EPA Regional Office in Chicago has received at least a thousand calls from individuals in Milwaukee who are experiencing problems using reformulated fuels. During the first week of February, 1995 phone calls to my Milwaukee office were coming in at rates of 5-8 per hour, and several hundred constituents have contacted me to share their experiences. Among the concerns that these individuals express, and of primary concern to me, is that this gasoline is making them ill. Additionally, Mr. President, citizens of Milwaukee want to know what the EPA knows about how the gasoline will perform both in their cars and in two stroke-engines such as snow blowers and snowmobiles, when the price, which is currently running between 10 and 15 cents more than regular gas will come down, and how to identify the various blends of gasoline at the pump. I wrote to Administrator Browner on February 10, 1995 expressing these concerns and have not yet received a response. While price and performance are significant problems that need to be examined, the health of the citizens of Milwaukee, Mr. President, simply cannot wait. Administrator Browner, in a meeting with the Wisconsin delegation last Friday, February 17, 1995, announced that the Agency would not make a final decision on suspending the fuels until after they went to Wisconsin. The Agency believes, Mr. President, that Wisconsin's problems could best be addressed by switching fuels among different reformulated blends. In response to the calls and inquiries from the Wisconsin delegation and Governor Thompson, and in line with the EPA's announced position, the Agency did hold a public meeting in reformulated gasoline. The Milwaukee Sentinel reported that more than 400 people showed up for the meeting, overflowing the room. The Agency has pledged to say in Wisconsin as long as it takes to address my constituents' concerns. It seems, Mr. President, that these concerns are significant and that the Agency should suspend its enforcement of the rule until it completes its on the ground assessment, particularly while people's health is potentially at risk. Gasoline blended with three different oxygenates is being sold in Milwaukee, some containing MTBE derived from methane, some containing ETBE derived from ethanol and natural gas, and some containing ethanol. The EPA knows from more than $2 million in health studies, Mr. President, that one of the oxygenates, MTBE, has the potential to produce both cancer and other health effects--and the jury is still out on the ethanol blends. The current data that the Agency has on Milwaukee's overall air quality and on specific situations my constituents face every day such as refueling, riding inside their cars, and having their vehicles sit in enclosed garages, is too limited for a quantitive estimate of population exposure to the host of oxygenates used in the six county area. At best, the data have been used to estimate a broad range of potential exposures. However, Mr. President, we are no longer in a potential exposure situation--people are putting this stuff into their tanks. While I understand that actual epidemiological experiences in Milwaukee may be difficult for EPA to interpret, I cannot as a responsible policymaker rule out the fact that Milwaukee's topography and temperature results in exposures in my State that are different than the other parts of the country. I also understand, Mr. President, that Milwaukee is not alone in experiencing problems with reformulated fuels. Several of the nine other cities required to use the fuels are facing similar concerns. I believe that these requirements should be suspended until the health concerns can be fully investigated. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Will the Senator yield for a question?