Wendell Ford

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye] is necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye] is necessarily absent. I also announce that the Senator from Delaware [Mr. Biden] is absent because of attending a funeral. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from Delaware [Mr. Biden] would vote ``nay.''

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye] is necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye] is necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, before we go to that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye] is necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye] is necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, let me just say, I have been listening to all this back and forth. I think it is part of the process. It does not bother me too much. But I listened to my constituents. One Senator gets up and says it this way. Another Senator gets up and says no, it is this way and you are wrong. No, you are wrong. Somebody has to be right and somebody has to be wrong. I learned from the other side of the aisle how to file amendments. They bring them in here 100 at a time, you know? They taught us how to put the amendments on. Now we get accused of having a few amendments out. We talk about NAFTA. Something happened to NAFTA in the House because they cut off the ability to help Mexico by eliminating the funding. The Democrats did not do that, Republicans did. There is a scenario going here, bouncing back and forth like a ping-pong ball. I think it is time everybody understand we do not intend to let this bill die. That is No. 1. No. 2, we want to continue to talk. I have been here day and night. I do not think any of the Senators have had to spend the night here recently. Get the cots. The Senator from Texas probably remembers all- night sessions. You know, it gets to be an interesting occasion. It is awfully hard to keep somebody on the floor. It is awfully hard to get any kind of rest, but we have been here all night. Recently we have not done that. That is the debate of this institution. So when you start badmouthing each other around here, I do not think it helps anyone. It just hardens the situation. I think we ought to continue to talk, continue to work. We want to make as good a bill as we possibly can. I have never heard in any of the remarks tonight what it does to individuals. What does it do to the general public? What does it do to the worker? What are these things we are trying to do here now? I hear nothing about big business. Big business had a 14-percent increase in profits the first quarter and individual hourly wages went down. Something is going well out there, if they are making that kind of money. Somehow we have to come together and think about the individual and working with the companies. Mr. President, I had not intended to make any remarks. I do not normally make many speeches on the Senate floor. But I just think this knocking each other out here, just hardens the situation. It creates gridlock, to come out here and get accused of things. We do what we think is best. I do not always win. I am having a hard time winning anything right now. But I understand the procedure. I was here for 6 years when the Republicans were in the majority in the Senate before. I went from majority to minority. Then all of a sudden we got it back again. We are back someplace else. So it is the system, and the system is debate. The system is talking. The system is communicating. The system is doing the best job you can, and you have to have something that you really believe in. And when you vote for it, you voted on the best piece of legislation that can be proposed to this institution. Sure, we have disagreements. That is what it is all about. That is what the committee system is all about. We do basically the same thing in committees that we do on the Senate floor. We listen to witnesses. We make up our mind. We offer amendments. We vote on amendments, and we vote the legislation up or down to send it to the Senate floor. That is part of the system. Then we do it basically again. It goes through the mill several times before it goes to the President for signature. This is not a stealth Congress. A stealth Congress is to do it real quick and get rid of it before you get someone to jump on you or before the phone starts ringing off the hook, before people start sending out letters. Stealth Congress is do it quick and get it over with. Some things are too important to do them quickly and get it over with. Some things are too important to individuals in this Chamber. And I learned from Majority Leader Mike Mansfield that on the Senate floor everybody is equal except the majority leader and the Democratic leader in this case. And the Chair recognizes them before anybody else. I understand that. That is a precedent. We exercise that. But everybody else has an individual right here. So we exercise that. I hope that we never lose that and that we start working together rather than try to divide, which will not get us together in the future. I yield the floor, Mr. President. Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Alabama [Mr. Heflin] and the Senator from Nebraska [Mr. Kerrey], are necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Fly America Amendments Act of 1995. As the workers of our country know, the Fly America Act is an indispensable element of American aviation policy. The act was intended to ensure that to the extent service is available on U.S. carriers, employees of the Federal Government must use that service. On May 3, 1994, the General Services Administration issued a request for proposals [RFP] for 1 year requirement contracts for carriers to provide air transportation services to Government employees traveling on U.S. official Government business. The RFP contained more than 5,000 city-pairs, of which approximately 1,114 involved international routes. American Airlines protested, because the RFP allowed U.S. carriers to bid on routes where the services was actually being provided by a foreign airlines under a code-sharing arrangement. On December 29, 1994, the Comptroller General of the United States held that code-sharing did not violate the Fly America Act. What the decision means is that a U.S. airline may submit the bid to GSA for an international route, but the actual travel is on a foreign airline. To put this more directly, Lufthansa is the designated provider of United States Government travel from Atlanta to Germany. Lufthansa and United Airlines are code-sharing partners, and United won the Atlanta bid. As far as I can tell, Lufthansa is not a United States citizen, is not a United States flag carrier, does not participate in the civil reserve air fleet [CRAF] program, and but for the Comptroller General misinterpretation, would not be able to bid on carrying United States Government employees on United States Government business. The bill I am introducing today essentially overturns the Comptroller's misinterpretation. The bill will restore the requirement that U.S. Government travel be provided on an aircraft that is owned or leased by a U.S. citizen and operated by a U.S. citizen. I urge my colleagues to support the bill. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Bingaman], the Senator from California [Mrs. Boxer], the Senator from New Jersey [Mr. Bradley], the Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Bumpers], the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Glenn], the Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin], the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Hollings], the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy], the Senator from Maryland [Ms. Mikulski], the Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Pryor], and the Senator from Maryland [Mr. Sarbanes] are absent on official business.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Bingaman] and the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Glenn] are necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Bingaman] is necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, may we have order? The Senator deserves to be heard. Mr. President, we are not in order. Mr. President, I make a point of order that the Senate is not in order.

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Bingaman] is necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Bingaman] and the Senator from Nebraska [Mr. Kerrey] are necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, may we have order, please?

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye] is necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, of the minority time, I yield myself 8 minutes.

Mr. FORD. Last fall, Republicans campaigned on the notion that all we had to do was cut wasteful spending and we could both eliminate the deficit and have tax cuts. What they did not tell voters is that by wasteful spending the Republicans meant programs affecting seniors, like Medicare and Medicaid; and that by tax cuts they meant cuts for well-off Americans. The more things change, the more things stay the same for the Republican Party. Look at the numbers. Whenever that tax cut for the well-off goes up, so do the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Is that just a coincidence? I do not think so. The bigger the tax break, the more they gouge out of Medicare and Medicaid. A $245 billion tax break, where the majority of the benefits--the majority of the benefits--go to those making over $100,000 a year, and a $452 billion cut from Medicare and Medicaid--that is the Republican's notion of a middle-income tax break and that is the Republican's notion of cutting waste. Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with the health of the Medicare trust fund. Just like someone has to pay for gifts from Santa, and just like someone has to pay for the deficit, someone has to pay for this tax cut for the well off. That someone turns out to be America's elderly, and America's middle- income families are right behind them. Because those cuts hit middle-income Americans not once, but twice. The obvious hit comes when families have to pick up the costs that Government no longer provides. That is no small task when you consider that before Medicare was created, at least half of all seniors went without health insurance and nearly 30 percent lived in poverty. Today, less than 1 percent go without health insurance, and 88 percent of our seniors have incomes above the poverty level. But the second hit comes from the failure to address the causes for high Medicare expenditures. Without critical changes, from cracking down on fraud to lowering costs to market reforms, providers will simply shift costs, raising premiums and making it that much harder for middle-income families to obtain insurance and employers to provide insurance. Everyone in this Chamber agrees that we cannot keep telling Government what we want, and then simply let our children pay for it. But, by instituting these irresponsible tax cuts for America's most well-off, we are sending our children the bill just as surely as we did with deficit spending. Of the top 140 institutions of higher learning in the world, 127 of them are located in the United States. Yet, instead of making these institutions more accessible and our children better prepared to compete in the global economy, this budget makes $10 billion in unnecessary cuts to education. For many of the students in my State, that cut could mean the difference between continuing their college education or settling for a minimum wage service job. There is no question that if they cannot get the education and training they need, they will be paying for that tax cut in lost wages. So, do not kid yourself about who is paying for that tax cut-- America's elderly and America's children. When we go from converting the numbers in this budget plan to the actual changes in specific programs necessary to achieve these numbers, everybody knows this budget is going nowhere because we all know about vetoes and we can all count votes. I believe the American people deserve better than this. This budget was put together behind closed doors by one party. The American people clearly want to see a bipartisan effort to craft a budget that calls on all of us to contribute equally to the solution. Mr. President, I will ask a couple of questions. How does the Republican budget conference report cut more in Medicare and Medicaid than the original Senate-passed budget, yet still produces less deficit reduction? Think about that for a minute. The answer: Because it increases tax breaks for wealthy Americans by an even greater amount, from $170 billion to $245 billion. Ask this question: If the Republican plan produces a true balanced budget, then why on page 3 of the conference report that we have heard about all day today, and no one has given an answer, does it show a deficit in the year 2002 of $108.4 billion? Answer: Because the Republican plan does not really balance the budget. It produces a fiscal year 2002 deficit of $108 billion. It is only when you count the projected $114.8 billion off-budget surplus in the Social Security Trust Funds that you can claim a ``balanced budget'' by 2002. financing for the faa Mr. President, the budget proposal before us today does not provide in detail how we will finance one of Government's most important safety agencies--the Federal Aviation Administration. This budget plan does, however, propose to cut transportation funding for highways, Amtrak, the Coast Guard, and aviation by an additional $10 billion beyond the President's proposal. That tells me one thing--someone is going to feel the squeeze--and aviation is a prime target. What we are looking at is a budget that could undermine the safest air transportation system in the world. That is wrong. My colleagues will not be surprised to learn that the demands on the FAA are greater today than ever before and they are expected to grow. FAA operates the world's largest air traffic control system, handling an average of two flights per second, every minute, every hour, 365 days a year. Their safety, security, and airport safety professionals conduct nearly 1,000 inspections on an average day. [[Page S 9371]] Their maintenance technicians every day keep 30,000 pieces of complex safety equipment across the Nation operating with an almost perfect reliability record of 99.4 percent. No other transportation system is as safe as American aviation. The question is--can it be even better? Absolutely. Under the current leadership of Administrator Hinson and Deputy Administrator Daschle, the agency has established a new safety goal of ``zero accidents''. The agency is taking aggressive steps to reach this new goal and I wholeheartedly support their efforts. But the real challenge for the FAA is that they are pursuing their ``zero accident'' objectives at a time they are being asked to absorb ever increasing budget cuts. For that reason, Mr. President, I am worried that this budget resolution marks a retreat from that important safety objective. FAA should not be and has not been totally immune from budget cuts. Over the past 2 years, the agency has seen its budget decline by 6 percent-some $600 million--while at the same time experiencing a 6- percent increase in air traffic. The FAA has been able to do more with less by eliminating programs no longer needed, overhauling others, and by reducing their nonsafety work force by nearly 5,000 employees. That's progress. But we can not, and should not let this budget resolution undermine the FAA's mission. Those savings were achieved through strong management and thoughtful and tough decisions. I worry that our budget decisions are exactly the opposite. We do not want to make aviation cuts with no rhyme nor reason. It is my hope that after the bickering and posturing end on this budget, we will return to what I have always valued, a bipartisan consensus on the importance of a safe and efficient aviation system. The administration also must understand that its proposal for a corporation has no support. They can sit and watch as the reform movement goes on, if they so choose, but that is their choice. I will work with my colleagues here on meaningful reform that moves the aviation system forward. We must begin with looking at how to reform the FAA. Senators Inhofe and Burns have put forward a proposal, and I know the Commerce Committee is seeking a bipartisan approach to FAA reform. We must also make a real commitment to providing the necessary funds. If we do not, I am afraid they will redo that old country saying-- ``that dog don't hunt''--to ``that plane don't fly.'' Mr. COHEN addressed the Chair.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, it is interesting to sit here and listen to ``we are here for change.'' Change? You know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. This budget is not for people. It is against the elderly, the students, the young people, and for the wealthy. So the Republicans have not changed one iota from the time I started growing up until today. It is the same. Change, only a small difference--small difference. The small difference is, if you are rich, you get a tax break. If you are poor, you get a tax increase. If you are a student trying to go to school, they reduce the amount of your ability to get an education. So the more things change, the more they stay the same. Years ago, when I grew up I heard someone say that ``Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. While deficits are when adults tell the Government what they want--and their kids pay for it.'' Thanks to this Republican budget resolution, we can now add that tax cuts [[Page S 9370]] are when well-off adults tell the Government what they want, and the elderly will have to pay for it. I have an editorial today from the Kentucky Post. I will read just a little bit from it. True, the Congressional Budget Office must certify in September that the lawmakers are meeting their spending targets-- but those targets are only for fiscal 1996, when the cuts are comparatively mild. (Like most budget plans, this one saves the hardest hits for later years.) The tax cut up front, the increase in the latter part of the budget cycle. We went through that under President Reagan. We gave the big tax cuts. We never cut spending for Government. And what happened? We kept right on increasing the deficit and increasing the debt. We have been down this road too often: [this editorial says] Tax cuts now, with the promise of spending cuts later; somehow the spending cuts never come and the nation goes deeper into hock. Moreover, tax cuts in an election year tend to pick up irresistible momentum. Tax cuts are fun and popular. Enacting the rest of the resolution will be neither. The congressional Republicans say they're prepared to fight to get spending under control. It would be a shame to see that resolve thrown away on an ill-considered tax cut. I ask unanimous consent that the editorial be printed in the Record.

Mr. FORD

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

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] is necessarily absent.