Wendell Ford

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, we are nearing the witching hour of the unanimous-consent agreement on the amendments that will be considered tomorrow. I have proposed to my colleague that even those amendments that we have included in the managers' package be listed, in case there might be some wording change that might be needed. If they are not on the list, therefore, it would be difficult, parliamentary wise, for them to be accommodating. I don't want any of my colleagues not to have the ability to change a word or something like that tomorrow. I don't think we ought to get into a unanimous-consent agreement on changing. Then we get unanimous-consent agreements for additional amendments. Of course, I would like to get them cut off tonight if at all possible. So we will have at least one more amendment that will be offered. Then we are looking at around 8:15, or somewhere in that neighborhood, for a unanimous-consent agreement on the finite list of amendments for S. 1994. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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

Mr. FORD. Sure, we will.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, one of the mistakes that has been made here tonight is, I guess, saying no more votes. When it is said ``no more votes,'' they scatter like a covey of quail. So we will be looking for amendments as best we can. We have a managers' package that will take care of many of the Senators who have offered amendments. We are, I think, fairly close-- down to maybe six or eight amendments that will be the finite list. But we never know. The thing I want my colleagues to understand is that the majority leader has told the Senator from Arizona that he wants to get a unanimous-consent agreement tonight on a finite list of amendments and start voting on it at 11 o'clock tomorrow. All I can do is try to protect my colleagues as best as I can to a point. So I hope at least those on my side, if you have an amendment, will please come and let me have it so that it can be on the list. If not, I think you may get left out. I yield the floor. Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I am disturbed by this amendment. This amendment is the total Department of Transportation. It has nothing to do directly with aviation. This is an aviation bill. This indicates to me that, if you do not like the winner, this gives you the ability to get rid of him. It is page after page of what a contractor has to do, what the Secretary of Transportation has to do, and all of these things. This is the total Department of Transportation. We are here today to talk about airports. I thought it was referring to airports, and about airport authority. This says the Secretary of Transportation or the Administrator to award a contract in an amount greater or equal to $1 million. So the Senator from Colorado is going to have to do a lot of work on this one before this Senator agrees to it, and he will have to present it and have a vote in the Senate. I yield the floor.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I say to my friend, I haven't seen the amendment, so it is hypothetical. You made a statement that left an inference here on what we were supposed to do, and so I will wait and get a copy of your amendment. I think your intent is good, but I am not sure that the end result will get what you are looking for. I would like to see the amendment.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, S. 1994 authorizes the programs of the FAA for 1 year. The bill must pass because it is an authorization bill. The FAA cannot issue any airport grants unless this bill is passed. Under S. 1994, the FAA would spend approximately $35 million more on small airports for fiscal year 1997 than was spent in fiscal year 1996. I believe the chairman of the committee, Senator Pressler, noted that was one of the things he felt was so important in S. 1994. The House has passed its FAA reauthorization bill. That is H.R. 3539. They did that last week. So it is incumbent upon us to get our bill out so we can go to conference and have the bill back to be presented to both the House and the Senate as soon as possible. S. 1994 also contains a title that addresses FAA reform, the long- term issues relating to how much money FAA needs, and how to raise the funds. A task force will review these issues and work with the Secretary of Transportation on developing legislation that will be submitted to Congress for review. We have no expedited procedures here, so what we are saying is that this task force will get it together with the advice and counsel of the Secretary of Transportation, and that package is to be submitted to Congress for our review or support or whatever it might be. So I think it is real important--very important that we get this out. The structure of the FAA would change slightly--and I underscore ``slightly''--making it more independent of oversight by the Secretary of Transportation in the safety regulatory arena. Finally, the bill includes a title concerning aviation security and covers many of the issues that Senator Pressler said, as a member of the Gore Commission, that they recommended. These items are generally consistent with the Gore Commission's recommendation. The bill also authorizes the collection of up to $100 million in overflight fees, fees charged to foreign air carriers flying through our air traffic control system. Some of this money could help pay for the essential air service programs that are so important to less populated areas. Mr. President, I might say, one of the reasons this is put in here is that other countries charge us overflight fees. We have never done that. So I do not think there could be any retribution of any kind if we add those fees, because we will be doing the same thing they are doing. They are using our system, they are flying over this country in a safe manner, and therefore we charge them a fee for our services. So I hope my colleagues are listening. I hope if my colleagues have any amendments that they want us to consider as they relate to S. 1994, that they come forward and we be able to put those on the list. Those Senators who might be concerned if their amendment has been included in the managers' amendments or not, we will be more than pleased to visit with them right away so we can assure our colleagues that their amendment has been taken care of. So, Mr. President, I look forward to moving this legislation forward. I look forward to cooperating with my friend from Arizona, Senator McCain, and that we will pass a piece of legislation that will be acceptable and that we will be proud of in the final results. I yield the floor. Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. FORD. If it is all right with the Senator, I think I have it cleared with my colleague. I ask unanimous consent this amendment by the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Chafee, be set aside until tomorrow, and that before the amendment is voted upon, there be 15 minutes of debate, 5 minutes for the Senator from Rhode Island and 10 minutes for Senator Baucus of Montana.

Mr. FORD. What I am trying to do is give them 15 minutes. That does not preclude me or anybody else from taking time because they get a minimum of 15 minutes tomorrow. If I want to oppose the amendment I will oppose it and take 30.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I withdraw my request.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will not object. I would like to make a point here. Many of these amendments are included in the managers' amendment to the bill. This is so that there will be no problem tomorrow with our colleagues coming in and saying we did not get the right language or the right words, they are covered under this situation. If the managers' amendments are all right, we will strike them off. I think you will find that about two- thirds of these will be gone; at least two-thirds of the relevants will be gone. So when you get right down to how many amendments we will have tomorrow, it will be very few. I hope we can expedite the passage of this legislation. I wanted my colleagues to be sure that we are trying to protect them, so that they won't come in here tomorrow and say we have done something wrong and words were left out. I wanted to be sure that everybody understood that. And that is one reason that the list is so long because we have basically taken care of most of them. So I thank my friend for what he is attempting to do here. I think it is the right thing to do. Mr. President, I do not object.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I am glad to cooperate with my friend in getting any kind of objections to his unanimous-consent agreement worked out. I think we are at a position where, if we just sit down and be reasonable tomorrow, we can move very quickly. I hope that the majority leader will not entertain the notion to pull this bill down if we can't finish it in an hour or so tomorrow. I think there is too much in this bill, and we have worked too hard and come too far for that even to be considered. I hope that we can go ahead and move this bill and move it expeditiously, and that we are not in a position where we have to do it in an hour or hour and a half or 2 hours. On the other hand, I think as amendments are offered we should attempt to try to limit each of those amendments by some time agreement as it relates to the amendment being considered at the time. Or we might work our list. We could work our list tomorrow and see how much time would be needed by each presenter, and maybe we could have a time agreement or a UC early tomorrow. I will attempt to look at these amendments and see if there is a time agreement. I am going to call some of the Senators and say, ``Your amendment is in the managers' amendment. There was nothing wrong with it, so your name gets scratched.'' So I am going to proceed on that basis and attempt to help my friend and see if we can't secure some time agreements prior to 11 o'clock tomorrow.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, we will just set this amendment aside and take our best hope tomorrow and go.

Mr. FORD. I want to add my voice to this discussion. I know that the House has included a privatization provision, which I cannot accept. I want to let my colleagues know of my grave concerns about this matter. I know others share my concerns. If Senator Specter's concern is over one general aviation report, I suspect we all can appropriately address that matter.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, let me thank my friend from North Dakota, Senator Dorgan. You never know when you get up on the floor and make a statement about the way you feel--the response from the Senator from Arizona, chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, is that he agrees with you. I agree with you. So now we have three. So when you start out, maybe you thought you were by yourself, but you are not. One item I would like to add to what we expect from FAA is that we put responsibility on those who are operating FAA to do all these great things, and then we don't give them the wherewithal to do it. Think about that. We demand the safest airline service in the world, but yet we say we're going to play Mickey Mouse with your money. We went 10 months at $19 million a day lost, and now on January 1, we will start losing a similar amount until we wake up and try to fund it. Sure, we have in this bill a study on other ways to finance, but we don't have it yet. That study has to be sent to us for review by the Secretary of Transportation. What do we do between now and then? We are going to hear some folks, ``Where's my money for my airport?'' Well, you didn't pay for it. ``Where is my help on essential air service?'' The Senator from North Dakota made his point. In the managers' amendment that will be agreed to shortly, the amendment of the Senator from North Dakota, as it relates to small airports, essential air service, all those things will be in this bill. He has made a great contribution. I say to my friend from Arizona, I know his toughness, I know his ability, and I will be glad to follow his lead in trying to work out something before we leave here to extend the ticket tax until such time as a report comes back under this bill. That would at least give us something to go on. But I understand the turf around here. I understand we have jurisdictions in our committee. I understand the smoke and mirrors that are being played with the ticket tax. It ought to go to airlines. It ought to go to FAA. It ought to go to safety. It ought to go to small airports. But, no, we play Mickey Mouse, and we then turn around and say, ``Where's all our help?'' You just can't do it. So I agree with my friend from Arizona, and, in particular, my friend from North Dakota. I thank him for his statement tonight. I believe if those Senators who didn't hear his statement--their staffs hopefully did--they will have an opportunity to read the Record in the morning to see what the Senator said, and he makes sense. There wasn't anything partisan about his statement. There is nothing partisan about the statement of the Senator from North Dakota. He was just spelling out the facts, and when you listen to the facts and you don't respond, as eloquently as he laid them out, then I think we have something more than trying to serve our constituency back home permeating this Chamber. I yield the floor.

Mr. FORD. If the Senator will yield for a question, without his losing the right to the floor. The Senator is asking for kind of a public notice of taking a bid when it is not the lowest bid, but we always put the lowest and best. So if you want us to say that we don't think the contractor is qualified and so, therefore, we put out openly that the reason we turned down the lowest bid is we didn't think the contractor was qualified, then you would open the airport board up--or whoever it is--to a lawsuit saying that this contractor is not qualified and, therefore, we are throwing out his bid. That gets to be a little bit tough, I imagine, when there is a bid of any significance. I am trying to prevent lawsuits on my airport board.

Mr. FORD. Sometimes, I say to my friend from Colorado, when you have to publicize the bid, it is in the local paper, and you can go by and pick up blueprints for $25 or $100, or whatever it is, and you take it and work up your estimate. When the bid date comes, you make your bid. When do they determine that contractor is qualified or not qualified?

Mr. FORD. That is correct. The only thing I was attempting to do here--if there are other amendments that come up, we will set yours aside. Once that amendment is taken care of, yours will come back as the pending business. That is what I am trying to do, because there will not be a vote tonight.

Mr. FORD. That would be fine. I do not know how much time in opposition because I have not had much information tonight relating to the opposition to your amendment. I suspect, since you have offered the amendment to take it out of the bill, that there will be a lot of work going on tonight and there will be a few people who will want to speak against your amendment tomorrow.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I ask unanimous consent I be made a cosponsor of the resolution commending Howard Greene.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, may I just take a moment to associate myself with the remarks of the distinguished Senators from Alaska and Pennsylvania, as they relate to our friend Howard Greene. I think you have to understand the institution to understand the value of an individual like Howard Greene. I think you have to understand the fairness, you have to understand that your word is good, that when you tell a Senator something, that is the way it is. If something happens that it cannot occur that way, you have the good judgment to come back and say to that Senator it cannot happen now, and tell him why. I have never talked to Howard Greene and asked for anything, but what I received the most courteous attention as if I was the only one seeking any kind of information or help from him. So I will miss Howard Greene. I think the Senate will miss Howard Greene. I hope those who are taking Howard's place will understand that they are filling very, very large shoes. To my friend Howard, I wish him well. I hope his days ahead are full of pleasure, and I hope that he can find something that will fulfill him as much as his operation here in the Senate. I yield the floor.

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

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