Wendell Ford

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Alabama [Mr. Heflin] is necessarily absent. I also announce that the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy] is absent because of a death in the family. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy] would vote ``nay.''

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Now, that is clear.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, may I inquire of the Chair, what would be the procedure now since we are limited to 15 minutes and no other Senator is seeking recognition? What would be the parliamentary procedure, so that we might understand that for the rest of the day? I felt the Senator from Oklahoma could have gotten the floor in his own right without----

Mr. FORD. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I admire my new-made friend from Oklahoma. I, too, was Governor. I came to Washington about the so-called unfunded mandates. It was a little easier to take care of then than it is now because we had 12 years of Republicans who ran us from $900 million to over $4 trillion in debt in 12 years. It is a little tough for us now to carry that load.

Mr. FORD. Not now. I did not disturb the Senator when he was speaking.

Mr. FORD. Then we hear something about gridlock. If the Senator had been here 2 years ago, you would have been part of gridlock--and I say ``the Senator'' rather than ``you''; I want to be careful of my language for the Record--because the Republican side would not let us go with pieces of legislation we thought were important. Now they have become part of the Contract With America. The same pieces of legislation, basically, that were filibustered in the last session of Congress are now in the Contract With America. Surprising, is it not? Surprising. We stand here in the last few days, last couple of weeks, and act like the world has stopped. We forgot aging in the bill that came out of committee. It would have gone on and we would have excluded aging in the amendment. And the manager of the bill from the Republican side, the majority side, was a cosponsor of that amendment when he found out about it. So we have made some contribution. We had an amendment last night that was defeated, but utilities--and your State ought to be very interested in utilities--wanted that very badly, because the mandates to private enterprise stick and they do not stick on public entities under this legislation. So it is the business- oriented group here, I guess you would say, who have said to business: We are going to stick it to you. Because the mayors and commissioners out there are raising Cain, we are going to let them off the hook. So we have incinerators: Private and public. The public does not have to take the mandate but private will, regardless of what it costs. Landfills: Public and private. The private will have to get stuck with all that. Schools--think about schools, the mandate on schools. Private will have to be stuck with it; public will not. Hospitals; in my hometown we have two fine hospitals. Those fine hospitals want to come together--one is public and one is private--and come with an HMO, to merge and try to give better service at lower rates in my community. We better be careful because the private hospital might have to carry out some mandates that the public hospital will not have to. Why jam this thing through when all those problems are there that should be worked out? We wake up: Oh, I did not know it was in the bill. I will guarantee not a Senator here, with few exceptions, can tell you everything that is in the bill. You get up here and talk about, oh, we are just gridlocked. It may be gridlock, but a couple of things--real, I think--have happened. One, the utilities woke up and business woke up about what is getting ready to happen to them, for one. That is one. Then we found we left out the elderly; we exempted everybody but the elderly. AARP, I am sure, did not know it. But last night it was 99 to zip when you found it, and that was because we said let us look at the bill. And Senator Levin, from Michigan, was the individual who found it, brought the amendment up, and the Republican floor leader became a cosponsor of that amendment. That was helpful. You can stand here all you want to and say we have to get it through because the American people want it. But when small business and major businesses are being hurt, they are not able to be competitive with public--we have local incinerators and private; we have landfills, public and private; we have hospitals, public and private--and you are putting a heavier burden on business and taking it off of their competitor, which is government, I think you ought to take a step back and see what you are doing on this. We on this side have given you an opportunity to do that. If you want to continue to make the mistake, continue to make the mistake of putting horrendous burdens on business and not on the public entities, then go ahead. When this Senator, 8 years ago, introduced unfunded mandates legislation--the threshold was $50 million then and it has not changed--I got two Senators, two Senators who would be cosponsors. How times have changed. You said back, I guess in 1967 or 1968, you were here. Where were you when I needed you 8 years ago? Where was all this euphoria for unfunded mandates legislation? I introduced it a year later--nothing happened. So I dropped it. Maybe I should have carried it on. I would have been a part of the Contract With America. But I was there 8 years ago. I was there 7 years ago. The threshold is the same. Now you want to change some from $50 to $100 million. Things are beginning to change. And there are now some changes being made in the bill, I think for the better. You can fuss at me all you want to. You just give me the devil. Devil take the hindmost, you know? But I am doing what I think is right, and two changes have made this bill better. It does not go into effect until 1996. Why is the urge here to get something And one other thing, one other thing. Many of you, the new Members, are from the House. Over in the House you could be paid for your travel and be a frequent flier and you take those frequent flier miles and use them personally. That is all right on the House side. We have never done it on the Senate side. I am a chairman of the Rules Committee. I said no, and that is agreeable. So I had a little amendment here, if you recall, about a week or 10 days ago that said the House could not use taxpayers' money for personal use. They get out here on the floor and every Republican voted against me and said let the House take care of it. If they want to have it for personal use, let them do it. What is wrong is wrong and what is right is right. If you listened to Sam Donaldson the other night, and the House let the bill go through without making the changes and they are still getting the perk--you are going to get that amendment again. Because 50 million people watched, as they said the House did not take care of that personal perk. So think about it just a little bit. In this bill you are changing the rules of the House. You are changing the rules of the House in this bill. And I am going to ask you to stop it because you would not--Let them have the perk. So why should you mandate changes in the rules of the House in this bill? All the former House Members, how mad would you get when the Senate did that when you were in the House? You got pretty mad, got pretty upset. You did not want it done. That was the reasoning. But now in this bill it is all right. It is in your bill that you want to get through immediately, and you are changing the rules of the House. Try a look at page 26, (d), lines 1 through 5. Just take that little section of this bill and see what it does to the House. What is fair for the goose is fair for the gander. And you are going to have that amendment. You are going to say no, we just want to let them have perks. But in this bill, this is the difference. We are going to find out the attitude, and see how you go are going to vote because we are going to get that amendment. And it is coming pretty quickly. Maybe we can get it early Tuesday. But some changes ought to be made in the bill, and they will be offered. We will have a chance. The Senate will have a chance to be for or against this piece of legislation. Mr. President, I do not know about my time. I do not know whether I can reserve it. But some will not use time, and I will be able to get more time later on. But let us be reasonable about this. Talk about having comity. We get up and say how bad we are. I can go back and give speeches maybe of months ago almost identical on this side that the other side made. They are almost identical. So as times change, the more they stay the same. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I might say that under the rules of the Senate, he can get, by asking unanimous consent, all the time he wants. The Senator does not have to yield to him.

Mr. FORD

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

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I have a longtime habit that is hard to break and it is opposed to the rules of the Senate. I should not refer to another Senator as ``you.'' It was not any disrespect at all. So in referring to the two Senators, one, I think, from Oklahoma, the other from Pennsylvania, by using the word ``you'' I hope that it will not be taken as an affront in any way because I did not mean it that way. I will look at the Record and see if I cannot straighten it out by unanimous consent.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the only change I believe the Senator is making, so that we all understand it, instead of getting on S. 1 at 10 it will be at 10:30, and we are authorizing three Senators to speak in that time. Instead of 10 it will be 10:30, so that our colleagues know.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, will the distinguished majority leader yield?

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I think it might be appropriate, I say to my friend, that we review a little bit your understanding with our leader as to the offering of amendments so that we will not get into--it is a gentlemen's agreement, and we want to uphold our part of it. But I want to be sure everybody understands that, if you do not mind.

Mr. FORD. I have three on there that could go away. I thank the majority leader.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, it is a new day and I am enjoying it. I remember when I came from Frankfort, KY, as a former Governor, I had a file cabinet, one of those paper file cabinets, drawer size, with projects in it that I was unable to complete. If you remember--maybe you all are not old enough--but if you remember, we had a pocket veto of highway funds and utility funds by President Nixon. A suit was filed, as I recall--do not hold me to every detail, but a suit was filed--and I think Senator Muskie was the chairman of the Budget Committee, and the Governor of Missouri filed suit. The courts held that the President of the United States had to release that money. Well, we had been held up for a year and we were into the second year of appropriated funds, so we had a lot of money to spend. We were doing well. We got the first and second phases of some projects done--sewer, water, projects that I wanted to get finished. The senior Members here said to me--you know, I was gung ho. They said, ``That is all right, son; you just relax. We will get to it next week, and if we do not get to it that week, we will get to it the week after that.'' It was hard for me to take. That has only been 20 years, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. I wanted to move. When I was Governor, I picked up the phone and the highway department would move, or I picked up the phone and somebody else would do something for me. It was something that I felt I would be in a position to do here, but I could not. The rules were different; attitudes were different; the institution was different from the Governor's office. So, as my learned friend from Pennsylvania said, the House and Senate are different. The Senator from Pennsylvania talked about the nongermane amendments. Well, if you recall, it was on both sides of the aisle yesterday. It was not just Democrats that put up a nongermane amendment. A Republican put up a nongermane amendment which took hours. Even your majority leader offered a nonbinding amendment, a sense-of- the-Senate amendment to that amendment to try to get rid of it. We had another one on our side. It took hours. That proves a point, though, about the Senate. Every Senator has a right on this floor, and his right is not stymied by a Rules Committee and a vote of the Senate that limits him to 2 minutes or 5 minutes or three amendments, or something of that nature. Every Senator has a right. That makes this body significantly different. So the Republican Senator was within his right to offer a nongermane amendment here. The Democratic Senator was within his right to offer a nongermane amendment, under the rules of the Senate. So maybe you do not like it, but that was his right and he exercised that right. As far as frequent flier miles, I tried to put that on congressional coverage. I argued strenuously that we were not truly doing what we had told the American people we were going to do about congressional coverage. Congress took care of itself. You are immune. The people out there think you are not. We set up a commission to study and see what should apply--about $5 million a year. I, as former chairman of the Rules Committee, had set up the Fair Employment Office. That is about $1 million a year just for that office. You are not paying for it; the taxpayers are paying for it. I thought maybe we should lift the veil and let it all apply, instead of being special and Congress taking care of itself again. That was part of my problem. The distinguished majority leader said at that time that this bill would be accepted by the House and sent to the President. So I felt it was more incumbent upon me, then, and other Senators here, incumbent upon us to see that that bill was as good a bill as we could pass. Because it was not going to conference, we would not have a second shot at it. And so that became the concern of those that felt that congressional coverage was not adequate and that we were not being fair with the American people. So I just think you have to get it all in the right perspective. And when your leader says it will be accepted on the House side, I respect that statement. So, therefore, when I respect the individual and the statement he made, I became more concerned that this bill ought to be changed, if it was going to be changed, here, because they were going to accept it and, just like grease, go to the White House. So that was one of my concerns and one of the reasons I felt that we ought to debate that bill and try to change it and make it as good as possible. Because that was the last chance we were going to have; no other shot at it. So now on this piece of legislation, unfunded mandates, sure they want it. Oh, do they want it. I had a mayor from Kentucky, who is the retiring president of the National Mayors Association. Oh, do I get calls; do I get fussed at a little bit. But when you sit down and talk to them and say, ``Look, we are getting down to the amendments now that we feel are very important''-- and they are--``and we left out the elderly.'' We exempted everybody else but the elderly. I want to respect the elderly. I think they ought to be given the same kind of respect and coverage as others. So we put in the elderly. It is a good amendment. Everybody voted for it. Even those that are fussing at us because they think we are holding the bill up. My learned friend from Pennsylvania says we ought to get an agreed list. We have an agreed list. We did it last night. I stayed here until almost 1 o'clock this morning. I do not know where those Senators were when we made that agreement, but we made that agreement. And those amendments have to be offered by the individual Senator unless it is by unanimous consent. He or she has to be here and offer that amendment. We got that agreement. We have a time certain to shut off amendments, and then we go to third reading and that is debatable. We had a gentleman's agreement last night. And if, in the judgment of one or the other, that gentleman's agreement is breaking down, they have every right, it was said last night, to file a cloture motion. So I think we have done a decent job here, even though everybody wants to move it a little bit fast. I am going to vote for the bill. I am very strong for unfunded mandates. But I do not want to jeopardize the mother's milk of the economy, and that is business. If you are going to look at this bill and say you are going to mandate on business and not the public sector when they are in competition with each other, I think you ought to take a step back and look at it. Hopefully, some of these amendments will be taken very seriously. I hope that business will come forward. They are very strongly for the unfunded mandates bill. So I hope that they will look at it a little bit closer. Do they want to take a chance on having a public entity, government entity, to be in a better position to compete than they are? Maybe they already have. But this is another addition. I wish the Senator from Oklahoma were here. He talked about one filibuster that we filed cloture on. There were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 filibusters. Here they are. You voted on them in the 103d Congress. And now, when we are trying to correct a bill--and even getting Republican support for our changes in the bill--we are being fussed at because there is gridlock. There is no gridlock here. As the congressional coverage bill was to leave here and never to be considered again, we would never have another shot at it, I think it was incumbent upon us to try to correct it. And filibusters--there they are. There is the record. I will not put it in the Record. I do not want the cost of $480 a page. So Mr. President, I am overwhelmed by the attendance here this morning and those who want to wax eloquent. As I heard my distinguished friend from Arkansas say last night, he was going to wax eloquent. Someone said he was going to wax. He said ``no,'' it is going to be eloquent. So I am sure there is nothing waxing or eloquent about me. I am enjoying being here this morning and visiting with some of my colleagues and talking about this great institution and how we function here and what is good for the country and how fast we ought to be moving and that sort of thing. I was out here and someone said, ``You're awful nice, Ford.'' I said, ``Yes, I'm a better human being than I was because I want to be good.'' A lot of us got stomped on November 8--real good. I listened. I listened 8 years ago on unfunded mandates. I listened 7 years ago on unfunded mandates. I listened in 1991 when we cut off frequent flier miles for personal use. I listened then. The House Members came over here and wanted it. I turned it down. It was the Rules Committee who said ``no.'' I think we made a good decision under the circumstances. So those House Members came over here; and even the Vice President was interested in it when he was a Senator. So there are a lot of things. Just remember, it is all down in black and white in the history there. Let us be sure what we say, and I want to be sure what I say is correct. have some time. Mr. President, under the ruling of the Chair that when you are recognized each time, you have 15 minutes, I will yield the floor so I can be recognized again.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Johnston] and the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] are necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Johnston] and the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] are necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Johnston] and the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] are necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I thank the majority leader and the Democratic leader.

Mr. FORD. May I continue just a moment? I do not want to belabor it, but I want to be sure that my colleagues understand that if they want to propose an amendment, they have to be here to do that, under this unanimous-consent agreement. And any amendment that has been filed at the desk that was filed based on cloture, those amendments are, for all practical purposes, under this unanimous-consent agreement, null and void?

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, may I enter into this colloquy and ask one question? When you say the amendments are to be offered by a certain time, are those amendments that have already been filed considered ones that you just--you could repropose them now?

Mr. FORD. All I have to do is Xerox it and put it in tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow sometime?

Mr. FORD. Under this unanimous-consent agreement, if you have, as I do--and we have worked them out, I think, with the majority floor leader, my amendments, which then the rest of them would go away. But I have to refile those on the basis of setting aside the pending amendment, and we go to my amendment, or put them at the desk tomorrow; is that the way?

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Johnston] and the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] are necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Johnston] and the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] are necessarily absent.