John Glenn

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. I yield for a question.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the telecom conference report and its adherence to procedures we set up with passage of S. 1, the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995. We passed S. 1 one year ago with overwhelming bipartisan support. It was one of the two major items in the Contract with America that has actually been enacted. I am proud to be its coauthor along with my colleague, Senator Kempthorne. S. 1 sets up a process where, first, we would understand the cost of future Federal mandates on State and local governments before we voted to enact them. We would get this cost information from CBO and, to do so, we secured an additional $1.4 million in fiscal year 1996 funds for CBO to hire the needed analysts. Second, S. 1 ensures that we would pay for those mandates or otherwise face a possible point of order on the floor. We set a date of January 1, 1996 for the act's cost estimating and funding requirements to take effect. This telecom conference report violates S. 1's spirit, intent and requirements. Section 424(d) of the act stipulates that ``the conference committee shall ensure, to the greatest extent practicable'' that CBO shall perform cost estimates on conference reports containing Federal mandates. This provision was an amendment to S. 1 by Senator Gramm from Texas that was unanimously adopted by the Senate. It is meant to address the possibility of Federal mandates all of a sudden showing up in conference reports. State and local government groups alerted Members to three sections of the report, section 302, 303, and 602 that restricted or limited their authority to raise revenues through licensing and franchising fees. Section 421(3) of the act defines direct costs to mean ``the aggregate estimated amounts that all State, local, and tribal governments would be prohibited from raising in revenues in order to comply with the Federal intergovernmental mandate.'' So the State and local groups were right to raise these concerns and ask that CBO do a scoring of the conference report as required under S. 1. Unfortunately, CBO did not receive the conference report until this morning. Earlier efforts by the CBO analysts to get copies of earlier versions of the conference report were also unsuccessful. Apparently, they were ignored by the conference committee staff. That's not the process we envisioned under S. 1. I understand that the rights of way provisions in section 303 were altered to address State and local concerns. Those were the provisions that were of the greatest concern to them. However, that still leaves sections 302 and 602. Those sections are being looked at right now by CBO for their cost on State and local governments, but I'm afraid it's too late. We are going to pass this conference report shortly without having any estimate of what those costs might be. When we passed S. 1, I talked on the floor about how Congress and its committees would have to change the way they do business in order for the act to work. That change didn't happen on this conference report. I hope there is a better effort at compliance next time. I support this conference report because it makes long-needed and important reforms in the telecom industry. But in terms of following S. 1's rules and procedures, it falls far short.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, our Nation's few nonprofit medical practices have a well-deserved, international reputation for medical excellence. Among those prestigious institutions is the Cleveland Clinic, considered one of the world's finest medical facilities. The Cleveland Clinic and other outstanding facilities such as the Virginia Mason Clinic in Seattle, WA, and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, provide significant charity care, offer outstanding medical education and training, lead in medical research and are deeply involved in community service. However, compensation rules for non-profit employers--including teaching hospitals, community clinics, and integrated health systems, are governed by stringent limits on reasonable compensation which do not apply to physicians in private practice or in the for-profit sector. Today I am introducing along with the distinguished Senator from Washington [Mr. Gorton], legislation to amend the Internal Revenue Code to provide a limited exemption from IRC section 457 to eligible group medical practices. It would increase the dollar limitations for members and employees of those practices from the limitations of section 457(c)(2). I believe that this change in law would be good public policy. With flexibility to offer reasonable deferred compensation packages, these clinics can continue to recruit and retain the high quality individuals whose training, skills, and experience are crucial to the patient population they serve. An important way to encourage physician groups and other medical professionals to continue to organize in a not-for-profit status. However, current law provides for disincentives for this not-for-profit status. This legislation would remove these obstacles. Mr. President, companion legislation has already been introduced in the House. I urge the Senate Finance to carefully review the issues that we raise in this legislation and I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this measure.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of the legislation being offered by my colleague from Ohio. We have worked together very closely on the whole issue of professional sports team relocation. It should come as no surprise this is an issue that hits home for the people of our States. Organized, professional sports have always played a prominent role in American life. Individuals, cities, States, and even the entire nation have come together and rallied around sports teams. And professional sports teams have helped local economies rally and revitalized our inner cities, creating whole new sectors of economic opportunity. This week, many Americans' eyes are on Tempe, AR, where the Dallas Cowboys will take on the Pittsburgh Steelers to determine who will win a fifth NFL championship. Think of some of the other major sports events that have riveted the nation's attention over the past months. How about those Cleveland Indians and their amazing season which culminated in a World Series appearance? Who hasn't heard all the talk this winter about the return of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls' dominance of the NBA. And who can forget the elation we all felt watching Cal Ripken, Jr., take his historic lap around Camden Yards? What can be more American, or says more about our country, than stories such as these? Or how we bask in a team's victories, commiserate over the losses, and cheer exciting and dramatic exploits on the field or on the court? But there is a story that overshadows these and threatens this spirit, that is community pride. Of course, I am speaking of team relocation. And the relocation which has shocked the nation involves the Cleveland Browns. Let me tell you a little about Cleveland and the Browns. The Cleveland Browns have been a symbol of undying and unwavering fan support. Week after week, 70,000 people cram into Lakefront Memorial Stadium to root on the Browns. The ``Dawg Pound'' is a national symbol of fan support. Through 3-13 seasons, 13-3 season, exciting play-off victories, demoralizing play-off defeats, Browns fans have been through it all and still support their team. There's no talk of getting on or off a bandwagon in Cleveland--every fan is there, through thick and thin. That's what makes the announcement that the Browns intend to desert their home of 50 years the toughest to take. The Browns have enjoyed backing from generations of fans, only to be told that it doesn't matter. Well, it does matter. It matters to the season ticket holder who has been going to games for 30 years. It matters to the worker who sells hot dogs at the stadium. It matters to businesses selling Browns t- shirts, hats, and other paraphernalia. It matters to restaurants and hotels that cater to fans and players. It matters to those raised as Browns fans looking forward to passing along that tradition. It should matter to every football, baseball, hockey, and basketball fan across the country, because if it can happen to Cleveland, it can happen to you. And it should matter to every single taxpayer in America who are going to end up footing part of the bill for the Browns' move and others as relocation fever sweeps the country. It's shocking, but Federal tax subsidies are going to help ease the cost of the Cleveland Browns' relocation. It absolutely makes no sense that we should allow taxpayer dollars to back up this kind of deal. Why should taxpayers in Cleveland, or any American city, help foot the tab for their local team to pull stakes and move to another city? Talk about adding insult to injury. That's why I am pleased to join my colleague from Ohio today in introducing this legislation. Let me stress that this legislation does not put an all-out ban on the use of public money in such situations. In fact, it is a very narrowly tailored bill which says: if a team already took advantage of tax dollars to build its existing stadium; and there has been tremendous fan loyalty and support; and voters in the current jurisdiction have approved of the means to improve the team's current facility or build a new one; and the team's current lease has not expired; then, we're not going to allow Federal tax dollars to subsidize the move. I think that's pretty reasonable. We shouldn't be in the business of giving Federal tax subsidies to a team that already received the benefit of public money to build their existing stadium, that intends to turn its back on loyal fans and a community commitment to build or improve their stadium, and a team that has broken its lease--that team should not receive a Federal tax subsidy. Right now, Washington is embroiled in a very nasty and partisan debate about how our Government can reach a balanced budget. One of the key issues in this debate centers on tax cuts--who should get them, who shouldn't benefit. Well, I put to my colleagues the question: should tax breaks go to professional sports teams when they turn their back on an ironclad commitment that is already backed by a Federal subsidy? I'm sure my colleagues and all Americans know the answer to that question. The Senate has a unique opportunity to start putting an end to the chaos in professional sports. The bill we are introducing today is the second step in that effort. I intend to continue pushing our Fans Rights Act through Congress. We still need to grant leagues a limited anti-trust exemption related to team transfers. I am pleased that many of the witnesses at a Judiciary Committee yesterday agreed with this point. I hope there is Senate action on that bill, and the one we are introducing today, early this season. Mr. President, I am pleased to have worked with my colleague from Ohio on this important legislation. It will provide a solution to a serious, yet limited, problem. I urge all Senators to support this bill.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of the legislation being offered by my colleague from Ohio. We have worked together very closely on the whole issue of professional sports team relocation. It should come as no surprise this is an issue that hits home for the people of our States. Organized, professional sports have always played a prominent role in American life. Individuals, cities, States, and even the entire nation have come together and rallied around sports teams. And professional sports teams have helped local economies rally and revitalized our inner cities, creating whole new sectors of economic opportunity. This week, many Americans' eyes are on Tempe, AR, where the Dallas Cowboys will take on the Pittsburgh Steelers to determine who will win a fifth NFL championship. Think of some of the other major sports events that have riveted the nation's attention over the past months. How about those Cleveland Indians and their amazing season which culminated in a World Series appearance? Who hasn't heard all the talk this winter about the return of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls' dominance of the NBA. And who can forget the elation we all felt watching Cal Ripken, Jr., take his historic lap around Camden Yards? What can be more American, or says more about our country, than stories such as these? Or how we bask in a team's victories, commiserate over the losses, and cheer exciting and dramatic exploits on the field or on the court? But there is a story that overshadows these and threatens this spirit, that is community pride. Of course, I am speaking of team relocation. And the relocation which has shocked the nation involves the Cleveland Browns. Let me tell you a little about Cleveland and the Browns. The Cleveland Browns have been a symbol of undying and unwavering fan support. Week after week, 70,000 people cram into Lakefront Memorial Stadium to root on the Browns. The ``Dawg Pound'' is a national symbol of fan support. Through 3-13 seasons, 13-3 season, exciting play-off victories, demoralizing play-off defeats, Browns fans have been through it all and still support their team. There's no talk of getting on or off a bandwagon in Cleveland--every fan is there, through thick and thin. That's what makes the announcement that the Browns intend to desert their home of 50 years the toughest to take. The Browns have enjoyed backing from generations of fans, only to be told that it doesn't matter. Well, it does matter. It matters to the season ticket holder who has been going to games for 30 years. It matters to the worker who sells hot dogs at the stadium. It matters to businesses selling Browns t- shirts, hats, and other paraphernalia. It matters to restaurants and hotels that cater to fans and players. It matters to those raised as Browns fans looking forward to passing along that tradition. It should matter to every football, baseball, hockey, and basketball fan across the country, because if it can happen to Cleveland, it can happen to you. And it should matter to every single taxpayer in America who are going to end up footing part of the bill for the Browns' move and others as relocation fever sweeps the country. It's shocking, but Federal tax subsidies are going to help ease the cost of the Cleveland Browns' relocation. It absolutely makes no sense that we should allow taxpayer dollars to back up this kind of deal. Why should taxpayers in Cleveland, or any American city, help foot the tab for their local team to pull stakes and move to another city? Talk about adding insult to injury. That's why I am pleased to join my colleague from Ohio today in introducing this legislation. Let me stress that this legislation does not put an all-out ban on the use of public money in such situations. In fact, it is a very narrowly tailored bill which says: if a team already took advantage of tax dollars to build its existing stadium; and there has been tremendous fan loyalty and support; and voters in the current jurisdiction have approved of the means to improve the team's current facility or build a new one; and the team's current lease has not expired; then, we're not going to allow Federal tax dollars to subsidize the move. I think that's pretty reasonable. We shouldn't be in the business of giving Federal tax subsidies to a team that already received the benefit of public money to build their existing stadium, that intends to turn its back on loyal fans and a community commitment to build or improve their stadium, and a team that has broken its lease--that team should not receive a Federal tax subsidy. Right now, Washington is embroiled in a very nasty and partisan debate about how our Government can reach a balanced budget. One of the key issues in this debate centers on tax cuts--who should get them, who shouldn't benefit. Well, I put to my colleagues the question: should tax breaks go to professional sports teams when they turn their back on an ironclad commitment that is already backed by a Federal subsidy? I'm sure my colleagues and all Americans know the answer to that question. The Senate has a unique opportunity to start putting an end to the chaos in professional sports. The bill we are introducing today is the second step in that effort. I intend to continue pushing our Fans Rights Act through Congress. We still need to grant leagues a limited anti-trust exemption related to team transfers. I am pleased that many of the witnesses at a Judiciary Committee yesterday agreed with this point. I hope there is Senate action on that bill, and the one we are introducing today, early this season. Mr. President, I am pleased to have worked with my colleague from Ohio on this important legislation. It will provide a solution to a serious, yet limited, problem. I urge all Senators to support this bill.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, our Nation's few nonprofit medical practices have a well-deserved, international reputation for medical excellence. Among those prestigious institutions is the Cleveland Clinic, considered one of the world's finest medical facilities. The Cleveland Clinic and other outstanding facilities such as the Virginia Mason Clinic in Seattle, WA, and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, provide significant charity care, offer outstanding medical education and training, lead in medical research and are deeply involved in community service. However, compensation rules for non-profit employers--including teaching hospitals, community clinics, and integrated health systems, are governed by stringent limits on reasonable compensation which do not apply to physicians in private practice or in the for-profit sector. Today I am introducing along with the distinguished Senator from Washington [Mr. Gorton], legislation to amend the Internal Revenue Code to provide a limited exemption from IRC section 457 to eligible group medical practices. It would increase the dollar limitations for members and employees of those practices from the limitations of section 457(c)(2). I believe that this change in law would be good public policy. With flexibility to offer reasonable deferred compensation packages, these clinics can continue to recruit and retain the high quality individuals whose training, skills, and experience are crucial to the patient population they serve. An important way to encourage physician groups and other medical professionals to continue to organize in a not-for-profit status. However, current law provides for disincentives for this not-for-profit status. This legislation would remove these obstacles. Mr. President, companion legislation has already been introduced in the House. I urge the Senate Finance to carefully review the issues that we raise in this legislation and I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this measure.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the Senator from Iowa. I have been involved with the inspector general issue for a long time. The Governmental Affairs Committee, back about 1980, put in legislation to establish inspectors general across Government. There were some that were voluntarily in place at that time. We put it into 10 more agencies of Government on sort of an experimental basis. They ran for 10 years, and in 1990, I put in legislation that expanded the IG's. We have them now in 61 different agencies or departments of Government. They have done a superb job. They save in the billions and billions of dollars, and I do not know how many dollars they return for every dollar spent, but they have done a great job. To cut back on funding in those areas may be penny wise, but it is tens of dollars short. It is sort of indicative of the problem we have right now. We passed a Chief Financial Officer Act a little bit along the same line. We require audits in all departments and agencies in Government, and GAO is to supervise that, monitor them, and try and get decent accounting systems in Government. We are cutting those when we should be expanding the money for that kind of operation. We talk every day here about a balanced budget, yet to do the things that will get efficiency in Government, like IG's and CFO's, we cut the money for them. There was an article in the paper this morning about how the GAO is not going to have enough money now to do the supervising of the Chief Financial Officer Act that just comes into full compliance requirements this year. They have been building up to this since 1990, and now we are going to not even provide them the money for this. I cannot imagine what people are thinking about to put this kind of requirement in over in the House to cut back on money that is going to make more efficiencies in Government. Another one along the same lines is the IRS. There is something over $115 billion, $118 billion owed to the Government that we do not collect. Most of that is in bankruptcies, individual and corporate bankruptcies. But we say there is $28 billion, I believe it is, that they estimate is collectible. Yet, we are cutting the money for the tax system modernization system. We are cutting the personnel requirement or provisions at IRS, when we have $28 billion out there that we should be going after. It is collectible from people who are deadbeats, and it means that you and I and every other American that is honest about their taxes has to pay more taxes. Yet, in the interest of economy over in the House, they are cutting those fundings back. I just think it is ridiculous. Now the argument is that we are up against a Government shutdown. I agree that we sure are. I add that we are up against it for the third time, and every single time what they have done over in the House is put part of their legislative agenda on the CR, send it over to us on a short-term basis and say, ``Take it or leave it,'' and ``You have to get it passed on our basis, you cannot change it. And if you do, the Government shuts down.'' I am tired of legislative blackmail. That is exactly what this is. I plan to vote against this whole thing this time, just in protest. I think it is ridiculous. We are cutting back at least one-fourth for funding for VA and HUD, national service, EPA, and education. We are changing right-to-life matters in this. I just think we are legislating on a CR that should be passed as a clean CR to keep the Government running for a certain period while we then take up these individual matters, see what the proper level of funding should be, and make a rational decision on how we go ahead with funding all these things that are very important. We brought up the farm bill. What do the farmers in Iowa think about this? Do they know what their loans are going to be and deficiency, guaranteed next year? Do they know how much to borrow at the bank? No, they do not, because we have not done our job here. Yet, we try and take some of these things up and sock them on to a CR because now we are up against it. We are going to say the Government shuts down tonight unless we pass this on the basis that the House sent it to us, which has half of their legislative agenda on it that we do not agree with. They deliberately waited until a day before the deadline to send it over to us, and we can take it or leave it. Well, I do not plan to vote to take it. I just think we have been jerked around too many times here. And to say once again that, well, this is the last time and next time we are going to be tough, this is the third time we have done this. How many times do we have to get hit in the head before we do something about it? I think the Senator from Iowa makes a good point. I hope he keeps his amendment in, and I hope we have to vote on it. If there are other amendments to try and correct this, so be it. I think for us to be made the heavies here and say we cannot possibly vote against this or have amendments without being irresponsible, that we are going to stop the Government, it is the House that sent this over and put us in this short timeframe. I disagree with that way of doing business. I do not think we should accept these things. If there are changes we want to make, we ought to make them.

Mr. GLENN. It is absolutely true. If the Senator will yield further, there is not a single Senator in the U.S. Senate that would come out and say they favor fat, fraud, waste, and abuse in Government. Who is cutting out the fraud and abuse in Government? Who is on the front line out there in every department looking into fraud and abuse, stopping it, getting money back, referring cases to the Justice Department by the hundreds--hundreds and hundreds of them, that we did not used to have? It is the inspectors general. I just cannot say how shortsighted I think it is that they have cut these funds to begin with and cut the funds for the chief financial officers, for IRS compliance. It just is the most foolish activity in Government that I possibly can think of. I certainly urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to back the amendment of the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I sincerely regret that I must again rise in opposition to this year's defense authorization legislation. This is a new position for me this year. During my tenure in the Senate, spanning more than two decades, I have been a vocal supporter of the need for a strong and adequately funded national defense. My commitment to a strong defense is the reason that I sought membership on the Committee on Armed Services. As the former chairman of the Subcommittee on Manpower, I continue to be a strong supporter of our military members and their families. And, as the former chairman and now ranking member of the Subcommittee on Readiness, I support keeping our forces ready--that is keeping them trained and equipped to fight and win today wherever they are called upon to fight. I also recognize the equally critical need to invest in our ability to protect our freedom and our security in the future by funding the kinds of research and modernization programs that have made U.S. military forces the most combat capable and consequently the most feared forces in the world throughout the better part of this century. I make these background comments, Mr. President, in order to place my continued opposition to this year's defense authorization legislation in the proper context. This is the second time around for this conference report. There were many important and supportable provisions in the original conference report that remain in this bill, like the 2.4-percent military pay raise, the 5.2-percent increase in the basic allowance for quarters, the new housing initiative, as well as important acquisition reform measures. Furthermore, some critical improvements to the conference report are worth noting. I am pleased that the conferees eliminated the language requiring the deployment of a national missile defense system by the year 2003. And, I am pleased that the language restricting participation of U.S. forces under U.N. command and control was dropped. Nevertheless, this bill remains too flawed to support. Mr. President, for starters, this bill still adds $7 billion in unrequested funding. With that added $7 billion, this conference report, in my view, spends more and buys less. As we are all painfully aware, we are in the midst of a budget struggle that has twice closed the Government and has called into question the future existence of virtually every Federal domestic program. Yet, we are asked in this legislation to approve a $7 billion increase for the Pentagon. Seven billion dollars the Pentagon didn't request and, with few exceptions, $7 billion in budget authority for programs the Pentagon doesn't need in this year's budget, if at all. I could have supported additional funding for the Pentagon, if I believed it was funding the Pentagon needed. But the $7 billion in this conference report, like its predecessor, still wastes that money. It adds $450 million for national missile defense--bringing the total funding to $820 million. The conference report still adds $493 million for the B-2 and, if that half a billion dollar nest egg is used to bring production beyond the 20 B-2's already approved, that $493 million is a mere down payment on billions more for the B-2. The conference, report still buys F-15's, F-16's, F/A-18's, LHD's, LPD's, DDG's the Pentagon didn't ask for. The conference report still spends $30 million for nuclear testing. It still earmarks $770 million in unrequested National Guard and Reserve equipment. Furthermore, the conference report still discriminates against service members and their dependents by prohibiting abortions in overseas military medical facilities. The conference report still discriminates against HIV-infected servicemembers by requiring their discharge. The conference report still disregards the costs savings achievable through competition by directing the procurement of ships at certain shipyards. The bill takes the same approach with respect to ship maintenance and the purchase of naval equipment. I believe these funding and policy decisions are sufficient reason to vote against this conference report. Unfortunately, there are more reasons to oppose this legislation. The latest conference, which excluded most of the members of Armed Services Committee, including myself, revisited several funding decisions which do not appear to have been aimed at making better legislation or enhancing our national security but, instead appear to have been aimed at gaining additional votes for the conference report by appealing to home State interests. In a couple of instances, the conferees even funded programs that were beyond the scope of the conference, a practice to which I strongly object. Neither the House bill nor the Senate bill included funding for the HAARP Program, the Thermionics Program or the Counterterror Explosives Research Program. Yet, almost $20 million is earmarked in this conference report for these programs. Regardless of the merit or requirement for these programs, I object to their inclusion in the conference report because they were beyond the scope of the conference. This approach to drafting defense authorization is a dramatic departure from the practice of the Armed Services Committee. For at least as long as I have served on Armed Services, the committee has made its funding decisions based on our national security requirements, not based on parochial interests. Mr. President, I hope that this year's defense authorization process is only an aberration or false start rather than a glimpse of the Armed Services Committee's future. I hope that the committee's next attempt to draft legislation that will pass both Houses and be signed by the President will not represent merely a sufficient number of special interest items to make the bill passable but will mark a return to the committee's tradition of making a nonpartisan and objective assessment, in which all committee members are welcome and expected to participate, of what is in the best interest of our national security. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. nomination of gen. eugene habiger to be commander in chief of the u.s. strategic command

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise to comment on the decision currently before the Food and Drug Administration regarding the Procter & Gamble Co.'s petition for its food additive, olestra. Olestra is a fat-free food additive invented by the Procter & Gamble Co. This synthetic cooking oil and the decision by FDA are the subject of this week's Time magazine cover story. The scientific issues under review by FDA are fascinating and I commend FDA for its management of the review by the Food Advisory Committee. The Procter & Gamble Co. undertook its efforts to better understand fat in the human body in the 1950's and developed olestra in the 1960's. In 1971, Procter & Gamble began the approval process at FDA. More than two decades later, olestra has not yet been approved. Nobody is faulting the FDA; approval of olestra has posed unique and unprecedented scientific questions that had to be researched. Accordingly, the FDA has approached this unprecedented food additive with appropriate prudence, and Procter & Gamble was required to invent new protocols to test olestra's safety for human consumption. Regulatory review by the FDA is necessary to ensure the public health and safety. At the same time I believe that we should encourage innovation by American industry. I believe that unnecessary delay in the approval of new products will have a negative impact on the investment in research and development. Without the FDA approval, olestra cannot be manufactured for and used by the Nation's consumers. Procter & Gamble has invested more than $200 million in the development of this product and expects to invest many more millions to construct manufacturing facilities should olestra be approved. Therefore, I am pleased that the FDA has indicated that it will complete its decisionmaking process very soon. Mr. President, I ask that the text of my letter of December 13, 1995, to Commissioner Kessler of the FDA be printed at the conclusion of my remarks. U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, December 13, 1995. David A. Kessler, M.D., Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Park Lawn Building, Rockville, MD. Dear Mr. Commissioner: I am writing in regard to the food additive petition for olestra, the non-calorie fat substitute. Because of olestra's development by the Ohio based Procter & Gamble Company, I have been interested in the product and its review by the FDA. I am pleased to hear that the Food Advisory Committee has recommended to the FDA that olestra meets the statutory standard of ``reasonable certainty of no harm.'' I want to commend FDA for its management of the Food Advisory Committee review process. It is my understanding that based upon an objective scientific process, no significant new safety issues were raised and no new data raising concern were introduced. I further understand that the issues of labeling statements and postmarketing surveillance raised by Committee members were addressed and agreed to by Procter & Gamble prior to the meeting. FDA's commitment to further the process is certainly evidenced by the November 13 publication of the Federal Register notice announcing that all data, information and public comments on the petition were to be filed by December 1 in order to facilitate the FDA decision making process. I am pleased that the notice also indicated that the FDA intends to render a decision within 60 days of the conclusion of the Food Advisory Committee meeting provided no significant new safety issues are raised. Given the favorable review by the advisory committee and the absence of significant new safety issues or concerns, I believe that the FDA should take the necessary steps to ensure that the decision making process is completed within the timetable on or about January 17, 1996. I look forward to the final agency action on the olestra petition. Best regards. Sincerely, John Glenn, U.S. Senator. (At the request of Mr. Daschle, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, innocents are being penalized for something with which they had nothing to do. Congress protects its own income, of course. We do not give up any of the $133,600 a year, but for those making $33,000 a year, it makes all the difference in the world, and this because one small group thinks that they, and only they, have the wisdom on how this Government should go and that they can dictate the future of this Nation. We elect 535 people to the Congress of the United States, and what a charade it is that just a small group thinks that they can shut down everything and bring such pressure that the rest of Government, everyone else who is elected to Government will give in and say, ``OK, this is getting so bad that we give in to your unfair tactics.'' Why do we get into this mess? Let us go back just a few years and see what happened. Let us go back to the history. Let us ``go to the tape,'' as they say on the sports broadcasts. Did Democratic problems contribute to some of the situation we are in now? Why, of course it did. Back some years ago, we had an economy that was not as well managed as it should have been. We wound up at one time with 21-percent interest rates and 17-percent inflation rates, and that lead to what was called the ``Reagan revolution.'' That revolution came in with an experiment in supply-side economics, as it was called then, that did not work, and we can show that. In the years 1981, 1982 and 1983, we cut taxes by 25 percent--5 percent the first year, 10 percent the second year, 10 percent the third year. This was supposed to result in more investment and such an increase in the economy of this country that new revenues were going to more than make up the losses from those tax cuts. It flat did not work. When it started, we had, from George Washington through to the end of the administration of Jimmy Carter, $1 trillion in national debt. What do we have now? In the few short years since that experiment in supply-side economics, we have seen the debt skyrocket. We have added $3.9 trillion--$3.9 trillion--in the last few years. It will be just a short time until we hit a total debt of some $5 trillion. Entitlement growth has contributed to that, of course. Were we prompt in taking action to slow some of these things down, in Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare? No, we probably were not. But does that mean we dump the whole of the programs and just stop Government now? I know from talking personally with President Clinton on a trip he made to Ohio that first priority of the new administration was get control of the economy. Otherwise, all the other things would not be possible. What did he do? He came out with a program then, and it was a program that has had considerable success, in spite of the fact it seems to be mentioned only rarely these days. About half of it came in cuts in programs and about half of it came in some tax restoration, to restore some of those tax cuts that had happened under the Reagan administration and went too far. President Clinton, to his everlasting credit, had the fortitude to go ahead and make some changes in those programs and restore some of the tax rate that could bring us back into balance. We remember that day on the Senate floor very well in the summer of 1993. When the effort was made to pass the Clinton program, we had complete opposition on the other side, both in the Senate and in the House. It was a very dramatic moment when the Vice President, sitting as President of the Senate, broke the 50-50 tie and put the administration's program into effect. Now, every single Republican Member of the House and every single Republican Member of the Senate voted against that proposal to move toward a balanced budget. Every single one. There were no cries then about the balanced budget and so on. It was a complete stonewalling of the President's efforts to get us headed toward a balanced budget. Did it work, or did it not work in the ensuing years, since 1993? Let us look at the record. At the time the President made his proposal and at the time that we voted the program in, the budget deficit, per year, was running right at $300 billion. Last year, what was the record? The program was working. The budget deficit went down to $246 billion per year. Last year, the record is that it went down to $162 billion. So we were on the right path--without any major revolution, without dumping whole programs of Government. We were tailoring them back. I know from my own personal experience, because I was chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee and I was assigned billions of dollars to cut back on programs that did not have that big a budget, and we did it. It was tough and we made some very, very tough decisions at that time. That was opposed by every single Republican Member of the Congress, in the Senate and in the House. They said, ``We cannot restore any of those tax cuts. We cannot come up with any tax increase at all.'' That was the rationale for most of the opposition. Well, it did work. We have been on a track down where the budget deficit has been declining in each one of those years. Where was the Republican interest in the balanced budget? Did anybody ever say a good thing on this floor about what was happening as a result of those tough votes we made in the summer of 1993? We need to keep going with those reductions. I agree with that. It has leveled off somewhat. Some of the predictions indicate that it will be $150 to $200 billion as far as the eye can see. So we need to make an effort to keep cutting those down and do it not by some great revolution but by the evolution that has been successfully started. It is said that we have to transfer all these responsibilities to the States. Some should be transferred to the States; I agree with that. But I also say that these proposals to shut down the Government are not affecting only Federal employees, as has been pointed out on the floor here this morning, they also impact the people on welfare, children, the poor, and the care for the elderly. Here are a few examples of how the people of this country are being impacted, and this is not just Government employees, as important as that may be. We have some 54,000 Federal employees in the State of Ohio. All of those are not affected by this, but I will use that figure. I do not have a breakdown on how many exactly are impacted. We cannot get information because the appropriate offices that would provide that information are closed down. These Federal employees are important to us in Ohio. But, Mr. President, regarding care for the elderly, 600,000 elderly Americans face the potential of losing their services of Meals On Wheels, transportation, and personal care provided by the Department of Health and Human Services, if a CR is not passed this week. This covers protection and services for children, unemployment insurance, securities markets, and so many other areas that are affecting every single American, not just the Federal employees, right now. So what we need to do is say to our colleagues over in the House that ``enough is enough,'' as the majority leader has said. Enough is enough, and it is time that we got on with not only putting Federal employees back to work but rendering the services that the American people expect and are paying for and should have. Over in the House, the Speaker has said that the crown jewel is the tax cut. That comes out of Medicare, as I see it, some $270 billion. They say you cannot equate that. If you cannot equate it directly from Medicare to the tax cut, that means we are borrowing $245 billion to give a tax cut. We are borrowing the money to give a tax cut. I disagree with President Clinton's proposal on a lesser tax cut, also. I do not believe any tax cut at this time is necessary. Borrowing to give tax cuts is pure folly, as I see it. The social fabric of this Nation should not be changed by a revolution dictated by a few, but by evolution, slower change, which lets people adapt, whether it be the elderly, children, the sick, the poor, those who need Medicaid. To just throw this back to the States and say that we will give you a bag of money, but we are going to put a much greater increase on requirements that you have to comply with, makes the biggest mockery of the unfunded mandates legislation we passed earlier this year than I can possibly think of. So we are giving them responsibilities, a little bit of money, and saying, ``Good luck to you.'' Mr. President, I think we need a clean CR, again, that the House will accept. We have narrowed this down to where it is time that the House of Representatives and their group of diehards gave in a little bit and decide that we can negotiate these changes and put the Government back to work. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the Washington Post, Jan. 3, 1996] The Government as Stage Prop Hostage-taking is an ugly business. It doesn't matter what the cause. Innocent people are seized and used as pawns; they become political trading stamps whose welfare is exchanged for things the hostage-taker could not win by normal means. That, even more than the mindlessness, the waste (in the supposed cause of economy in government), the inconvenience and the instances of outright harm to unpaid workers and unserved citizens alike, is what is finally wrong with the current government shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole was trying again last night to find the formula to reopen temporarily. Good for him; it's the right position; and he takes it at a certain cost. Speaker Newt Gingrich said it would be ``very hard'' to find the necessary votes in the House without a budget agreement. Does he really lack the power to produce such a limited result? Sen. Phil Gramm, meanwhile, one of Sen. Dole's rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, spoke for the vaudeville wing of the party. He is one of those who, over the years, have found it convenient to make almost a cartoon of the federal government. It's a straw-man style of politics. First you portray the awful thing, then you run against it, and no matter if the portrayal bears scant relation to the reality. ``I do think we've discovered one thing,'' he said on television Sunday, ``and that is, Have you missed the government? I mean, doesn't it strike you funny that 280,000 government employees are furloughed, large segments of the government are shut down? I think this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that we need to go back and eliminate 150,000 to 200,000 bureaucratic positions.'' Mr. Gramm and others thus use the government as a stage prop. Rather than make the decisions they ought to be making--ought in fact to have made weeks ago--both parties are using it, or the lack of it, to score political points and gain leverage in the underlying budget talks, even as they also scramble to avoid the blame for the spectacle they have jointly achieved. We have a suggestion for them. They ought to reopen the closed agencies while they talk, since in fact they do finally seem to be talking. It's a nasty game, the shutdown, and it's gone on long enough.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, let me join with those who complimented Senator Dole for taking the leadership yesterday in sending a clean continuing resolution to provide Government funding over to the House. I not only want to compliment Senator Dole, I also want to compliment all the Republicans on their side of the aisle in the Senate because Senator Dole made that proposal, knowing full well that he had unanimous consent, or he would not have made it. So I want to not only congratulate him but also the Republicans on the other side who I feel are working in good faith trying to bring this to an end. Yesterday afternoon, I was making a couple of notes for some remarks on the floor this morning. I was going to start out by talking about hostage taking, how it is never pretty and it is always unfair. The innocents are penalized for something they had nothing to do with. I was not aware at that time of what the lead editorial in the Washington Post was going to be today. They say ``The Government as Stage Prop.'' They start out saying almost the same words: Hostage-taking is an ugly business. It doesn't matter what the cause. Innocent people are seized and used as pawns; they become political trading stamps whose welfare is exchanged for things the hostage-taker could not win by normal means. That, even more than the mindlessness, the waste (in the supposed cause of economy in government), the inconvenience and the instances of outright harm to unpaid workers and unserved citizens alike, is what is finally wrong with the current Government shut-down. I will not read the rest of the editorial. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks, along with another enclosure.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on behalf of ratification of the START II Treaty. I would like to begin by summarizing what I see as the three major features of this treaty. First, given that Russia remains the only country that presents a serious nuclear strategic threat to the United States, the treaty effectively addresses three key aspects of this threat: It will eliminate all Russian heavy inter-continental ballistic missiles [ICBMs], it will ban all multiple-warhead ICBMs, and it will put a ceiling of 1,750 on the number of nuclear warheads deployed on submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Second, the treaty continues a process of arms reductions that is vital not just to U.S. national security but that is also good for the U.S. economy: It will require a two-thirds reduction of the number of deployed United States and Russian strategic nuclear stockpiles by the year 2003. Third, reductions in nuclear stockpiles will help to curtail the global proliferation of nuclear weapons both by helping to fulfill America's commitment under the NPT to seek an end to the nuclear arms race. In these times of partisan bickering on all sorts of issues, I am gratified to see that this treaty had the support of all 18 members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In my remarks today, I will speak about the importance of the Senate providing its advice and consent to the START II ty Treaty--I will not address today any of the specific non-binding policy declarations that appear in the resolution, some of which I find agreeable, and some I do not support. Instead, I believe it is better to focus on the overall attributes of the Treaty and how it advances the U.S. national security interest. A Verifiable Treaty As with all of our arms control and nonproliferation agreements, the United States will depend heavily (but not exclusively) on ``national technical means'' to verify the START II treaty. Though I cannot discuss in any great detail the nature of these methods, I am gratified at the confidence that the Joint Chiefs and other members of our national security community have shown in the verification measures in this treaty. On March 1, 1995, Gen. John Shalikashvili, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that: We believe that the verification procedures are adequate to ensure that we will be able to detect any significant violations. Conversely, we also believe that the verification provisions are sufficiently restrictive to protect ourselves against unnecessary intrusion. Similarly, on May 17, 1995, Lt. Gen. Wesley Clark, the JCS Director for Strategic Plans and Policy, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that: We are confident that the majority of monitoring requirements for START II can be accomplished with high confidence and there is little chance that the Russians can engage in militarily significant cheating. Further, the Joint Staff judges that the military risk to U.S. security associated with any monitoring uncertainties is low. In short the START II Treaty is effectively verifiable. Echoing General Shalikashvili, General Clark added that: I am confident that the Treaty verification procedures are sufficiently restrictive to protect ourselves from unnecessary intrusion. The treaty follows closely the extensive verification regime established to monitor the START I Treaty. In addition, START II includes some new verification measures, such as: U.S. observation of SS-18 silo conversion and missile elimination procedures; exhibitions and inspections of all heavy bombers to confirm weapon loads; and exhibitions of heavy bombers reoriented to a conventional role to confirm their observable differences. The START verification regime for conducting on-site inspections is not an anytime, anywhere type of regime. As a result, both parties to the treaty must always be on the watch for covert facilities or activities. Last February 28, CIA Deputy Director Douglas MacEachin testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that: . . . when estimating our chances of detecting and correctly interpreting potential cheating, we judged that the increased openness of Russia and the former Soviet republics makes cheating increasingly difficult to conceal. He added later that: The Intelligence Community continues to doubt that Russia will be able to initiate and successfully execute a significant cheating program. The use of the term ``increasingly difficult'' rather than impossible, however, only underscores the vital importance of maintaining America's intelligence capabilities (both for collection and analysis) to monitor compliance with this treaty. I think this conclusion equally applies to all of America's arms control and nonproliferation agreements. From my vantage points on the Armed Services Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence, I will do my best to ensure that our country has the resources it needs to ensure a high standard of compliance with all of these agreements, most particularly START II. Looking Ahead Ratification of this treaty will constitute an important arms control milestone--it does not, however, constitute the end of the road by any means. Ratification will set the stage for several additional arms control measures that are vitally needed to strengthen U.S. national security. The treaty should thus not be viewed in isolation, but should instead be seen as a key stepping stone toward a safer world. By any measure, the agenda ahead is a lengthy one. We need to get on with ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention. We need to strengthen the safeguards that are used to monitor compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. We need to ensure the conclusion in 1996 of a treaty banning all underground nuclear explosions. We need to ensure that our export controls and sanctions policies are enforced and implemented in a manner that is consistent with our treaty obligations--and we have a long way to go, I am afraid, before we achieve that particular goal. We need to bring the British, French, and Chinese nuclear stockpiles into the global arms reductions process, particularly in the context of START III Treaty negotiations. We need to recognize the continuing value of the Anti- Ballistic Missile [ABM] Treaty in stabilizing nuclear deterrence and in holding down defense expenditures in a post-cold war world. We need to do more--much more--to strengthen controls over bomb- usable nuclear materials that are being produced particularly in Europe, Russia, and Japan for commercial uses. It is not enough merely to pursue a treaty banning the production of such materials for bombs or outside of safeguards--the security-related and environmental hazards of plutonium recognize no national borders or spurious distinctions between civilian and military uses. We should not seek to facilitate or to legitimize large-scale commercial uses of plutonium-- whether safeguarded or not--but should instead explore new measures to discourage such uses before the nuclear terrorist threat catches up with us. Above all, we need to recognize the relationships that exist between all of these important arms control regimes. If the nuclear-weapons states fail to live up to their obligations to reduce their strategic stockpiles, this will inevitably have an effect on the rate of the proliferation of such weapons to additional countries. If the United States abandons the ABM Treaty, this will inevitably affect in a most negative way the calculations of Russian leaders on both offensive and defensive nuclear strategies. If we succeed in reducing the stockpiles of the nuclear weapons states, but fail to curb the burgeoning production of new bomb-usable nuclear materials (especially plutonium and highly-enriched uranium) for commercial purposes, we should not be surprised to find ourselves facing new nightmares of nuclear terrorism, blackmail, proliferation, and extortion down the road. If we neglect the importance of traditional approaches to nonproliferation (in particular export controls and sanctions) and concentrate our energies and resources merely on developing offensive and defensive military countermeasures to proliferation, we will again face a more dangerous world--our priority must remain to prevent, rather than to manage, the global spread of weapons of mass destruction. Conclusion With these terms in mind, I urge all my colleagues to vote in favor of ratification of the START II Treaty. I would like to take this occasion to recognize the debt that this treaty owes to the persistent work of Senators Pell, Levin, and other long-time supporters of the START II Treaty in the Senate. I also credit the leadership of President Bill Clinton in encouraging timely action by the Senate in ratifying this important treaty. I can only hope that the bipartisanship the Senate is showing today in voting, I hope overwhelmingly, to approve this treaty will echo into the next session, where I am sure it will be needed as much if not more than the treaty itself.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise to speak very briefly about the remarks that Senator Byrd made on the floor. Mr. President, the subject that Senator Byrd brought up today is something that has been bothering me in an increasing way all during this year. Perhaps it is because some of the tensions are particularly high with regard to the directions that the Government, the Congress, is trying to take us this year. These concerns have bothered me as much as they have Senator Byrd and not just in the examples he mentioned earlier today but some others, also. I think it is time to reflect briefly on that and I will not take the Senate's time for very long, but I want to make a few remarks in support of his earlier statement. Our Government is formed with the respect of the view of all parties. We look back and our Constitution did not establish a benevolent monarchy where one person makes the decisions for all of our country and moves us ahead or behind on the decisions of one person. We have split powers in Government. We have a legislative, executive and a judicial branch of Government. We have seen our system of constitutional Government evolve into 435 House Members and 100 Members of the U.S. Senate. Mr. President, 535 people were sent here not to be of one mind or one kind of person or one view, but sent here expecting to bring our varied views from all over the country and work out the best solution to what the future of this country may be. Try as they may, no one person or one small group has all the wisdom so that they can confidently say we are right and you are wrong. That is not the way we are set up. And when it comes down to where we stoop to just name calling, which has happened on the floor, it tells more to me about the speaker than it does about the object the speaker happens to be belittling at the moment. I think we maybe should remember something that too often is forgotten on the floor. That is, you cannot build yourself up by tearing someone else down. When someone uses belittling or semi- insulting language to the President of the United States, does that demean the President? No, it does not. It demeans the speaker. And it brands the speaker as someone who is, perhaps, covering up an inability to deal with the matters at hand by attacking the other side in a belittling way. The resort to invective and character assassination is not constructive legislative discourse, as the voters expected. We have seen examples here on the floor in the last few months of signs being put up, ``Where is Bill? Where is Bill? Hey, where is Bill?'' Arms waving, ``Where is Bill?'' Playing to the cameras and referring to the President as ``that guy,'' repeatedly. We had, one evening here, over by the exit door over there on the east side of the floor, a number of House Members who had come over here and were on the floor that day. Senator Byrd was making a short statement, and they were milling around and actually laughing at Senator Byrd, laughing out loud at Senator Byrd on the Senate floor, sneering at him. When we called attention to them there, they kept right up, one person in particular. What has happened? I do not think we would have seen that some years ago. It is insulting, No. 1; insulting, not just to the President or not insulting just to Senator Byrd; it is insulting to the Senate of the United States of America. To me that is a new low. Is it any wonder, when we see our own Members behaving like that, any wonder why people have their doubts about the Congress of the United States? ``Politics,'' a great word, it stems from an old Greek word meaning ``business of all the people.'' I cannot think of anything in a democracy, anything in this United States of America, that deserves more respect and deserves more effort, nothing is more important than that business of all the people. We bemoan the lack of respect for Congress, while we need the greatest faith between the people of this country and their elected officials. We need the greatest faith, underline that, faith between each other here, if we are to accomplish what we are all about. We want to know that everyone here is working for the best long-term interests of the United States of America and not just trying to salve their own egos at the moment by making belittling remarks about others here or about the President. If we had a scale here and faith was on one end, doubt would be over here on the other. How do we move that scale toward faith? How do we restore faith? Not by casting insulting remarks at other officials. You have faith, you have confidence in our institutions, in our legislative, executive and judicial branches--we must have faith in Congress. We must do the things that will engender faith and confidence in Congress. We must do the things that will engender faith and confidence in the Presidency, whether Democrat or Republican, the office of the Presidency of the United States, the chief executive officer of our Nation. We must have faith and confidence in the Senate. We must have faith and confidence in Senators. We must have faith and confidence in each other if we are to accomplish our job. As Senator Byrd said, to use deprecating language toward each other or toward the President moves toward doubt; it moves toward doubt and dissension, and not toward that kind of faith that we need if we are to do our job. That just makes our problems even more intractable. We are all proud of our mothers, of course. I am proud of my mother. She has long since departed this world, but she used to have a lot of little homilies and a lot of little sayings. I still remember some of them today. When we, as kids, were being too critical of someone I remember my mother saying this one, ``There is so much bad in the best of us, and so much good in the worst of us, it ill-behooves any of us to speak badly about the rest of us.'' Maybe here on the Senate floor, when we get a little carried away sometimes back and forth, it gets very personal--as it has gotten too personal recently. Maybe we need to remember that. Here, where the business of all the people, the melding of ideas is supposed to take place, where the business of all the people is taking place on this floor, our conduct has to contribute to that, not detract from it. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I do not plan to object, I intended that the 5 minutes come out of our allotted time, not 5 minutes added on to the debate.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, to summarize some of the President's budget request, there was an additional $5.2 billion added, basically, to the following accounts: Army aircraft, $336 million added; Missiles, $189 million added; Wheeled and tracked combat vehicles, $357 million added; Other procurement, $506 million added. In the Navy: Aircraft, $686 million added; Weapons, they subtracted $127 million on that one; Ships, added $1.6 billion in ships that were not requested; Ammunition, plus $430 million; Other procurement, $18.6 million. In the Air Force: Aircraft, added $1.2 billion; Missiles, cut $709 million; Ammunition, added $343 million; Other procurement, minus $536 million. National Guard had $777 million added, most of it earmarked. Specifically an additional $212 million for six more F/A-18's; An additional $1.4 billion for the LHD-7; An additional $974 million for the LPD-17; An authorization for 3 DDG-51's while only providing the money for two; An additional $493 million for B-2 with no limitation on how those funds can be spent, including new production, which could be the decision later on. That language was fought over in the conference, I understand. It also had an additional $311 million for F-15E's; And an additional $159 million for F-16's. So, Mr. President, I support some of the good things I think were in this legislation, such as the military pay raise, the additional basic allowance for quarters and aviation retention pay. I hope that we can put those on to other legislation. I am the cosponsor of legislation to do that. For all the above reasons and more, I regret for the first time I will not be able to vote for a conference report on this. I do regret it very much. I know how hard the chairman, Senator Thurmond, has worked on this and how much he wants this. I do wish very much that I could support this, but I find that I just cannot, for all the reasons given above. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I require. I rise today to offer some remarks concerning the Department of Defense conference report now being considered by the Senate. I join Senator Nunn in his comments earlier today on the Senate floor here, in complimenting our committee chairman, Senator Thurmond, the staffs, and those who have worked a long time on this bill. I do not like to see charges of partisanship leaking into this year's debate because I have been a Member of the Senate for some 21 years, a member of the Armed Services Committee since 1985, and I have not always agreed with every line-item spending decision or every word of legislation included in past defense authorization and appropriations bills during my tenure here. Mr. President, I have supported those measures without regard to who controlled the Senate or who controlled the White House. I can say that without any qualms of conscience whatsoever. What I have worked for here is what is best for the United States of America and what is best for the security of the United States of America and our interests all around the world. I understood in the past that I would not agree with every item, but overall these bills have included, on balance, more positive aspects, so I could go ahead and vote for them. Much has been made of the fact that this bill does have some very, very good things in it with regard to pay, with regard to housing, with regard to aviation retention pay and some things like that. I support those items fully. I think we can still get those passed, even if this bill were not approved on the floor. I am already a cosponsor of an amendment to the continuing resolution that is being proposed to provide for those things, whether they are in this bill or not. So that will take care of some of those concerns. But, having said that, it is with much regret--it really is with regret--I find I must oppose this year's authorization conference report. I never before in all the time I have been in the Senate have opposed authorization and appropriations bills for defense and I very much regret that I had to this year. I voted against the Senate version of this bill and gave my reasons here on the floor and had hoped the bill could be improved in conference. Unfortunately, I do not believe that is the case. I believe the bill is not as good as the Senate bill that we sent to conference. So, for the first time in over 2 decades, I will vote against a defense authorization conference report. Let me just enumerate some of the reasons why. One of the top items in my estimation is that the carefully-crafted ABM language in the Senate bill, which we worked on very hard, and was only marginally supportable for many of us in the first place, has been made unacceptable. That is a very, very important item. This involves our balance of missiles around the world, and the conference report at the very least gives the appearance that the United States intends to unilaterally violate the ABM Treaty. On August 2, 1995, I discussed at some length my concerns over the version of the fiscal 1996 defense bill that was voted out of the Armed Services Committee. In that statement I described several problems with the bill's language on ballistic missile defense. Because the bill before the Senate today, I very much regret to say, does nothing to alleviate my concerns on this crucial issue--and I do term this a crucial issue--I must rise to speak, once again, against this ill- advised language. March 5 of this year marked the 25th anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, better known as the NPT. Thanks to some good diplomatic work by the Clinton administration, a task made all the easier by the good basic sense of the diplomatic objective, the United States succeeded in achieving its longstanding goal of securing unconditionally the unlimited extension of this treaty. No more of the 5-year things, where the NPT review had to meet every 5 years and decide whether we are going to go ahead with something like a nonproliferation treaty. This year the United States took the lead in pushing for, and was successful in getting unconditionally, the unlimited extension of this treaty. That was a major step. So, the primary purpose of that treaty is to curb the global spread of nuclear weapons. Article VI of the treaty commits the United States and other parties to make good-faith efforts relating to what the treaty calls the ``cessation of the nuclear arms race,'' something I have fought for ever since I have been in the Senate, some 21 years. It started clear back in 1978, with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act that I was the author of. Fortunately, here, too, the administration deserves some credit for its efforts on behalf of the START II treaty which the Senate should vote to ratify very soon. The START II treaty will substantially reduce the nuclear stockpiles of the United States and Russia, and will eliminate altogether not just the last of Russia's heavy nuclear ICBM's, the SS-18, but will also eliminate the most destabilizing weapons, land-based ICBM's with MIRV's, the multiple independently targeted nuclear warheads. These are known as MIRV's. In achieving these goals, America will take a long step in fulfilling its key arms control obligation under the NPT. Yet, START II does not deserve to be ratified just because it is consistent with America's clear international obligations under the NPT. The real reason all Americans should support the START II treaty is the most basic one. It serves the national security interests of our country. It serves our interests. Amid all of this progress on the NPT and START II fronts the new majorities of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House National Security Committee have inserted language into the current defense bill that will put America on a path, as I view it, out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. This treaty prevents both the United States and Russia from deploying a national missile defense against strategic nuclear attack, and in doing so the treaty has helped to lay the foundation for these deep cuts in the nuclear stockpiles. Furthermore, the treaty itself is holding down the enormous costs of maintaining the U.S. nuclear deterrent. The lack of a Russian defense against strategic United States nuclear missiles means that we can accomplish much more with less. If Russia is permitted to deploy a defense against such missiles, as it would if the ABM Treaty should collapse, we will end up having to spend a whole lot more for a whole lot less security. I have no doubt that Russia's political, military, and parliamentary leadership will view the language in this bill as an assault on the ABM Treaty. It is an action which would only create new incentives for Russia to reassess, or even abandon, its arms reduction obligations under START II. How the Congress could be seriously considering pulling America out of the ABM Treaty given the likely reaction such a step would trigger in Russia is a mystery to me. It is a recipe for rekindling a strategic nuclear arms race. Surely, the gains to U.S. security by retaining a strong U.S. commitment to the ABM Treaty override any gain from the costly and dubious missile defense scheme offered in this bill. Specifically, the bill requires deployment of a national missile defense system by a fixed date. I repeat that. It requires the deployment of a national missile defense system by a fixed date. Let me tell you how ludicrous that is just on the surface. The system has not been invented yet. Yet, we require that these scientific breakthroughs that would let us even put up a missile defense system that would be halfway capable have not even been invented yet, and, yet, we are requiring a date certain for it to be deployed. It requires the deployment of ABM systems that are not permissible under the current treaty. It includes a unilateral definition of ABM systems that can be developed in a treaty. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili has warned that such a statutory definition could jeopardize the prospects for early ratification of the START II treaty in Russia and negatively impact our broader security relationships with Russia. The missile defense language in this bill will lead not only to massive expenditures on missile defense systems that will never prove to be 100 percent effective but will eventually lead to even more massive expenditures--not just of public funds, but also of diplomatic capital, I might add--on offensive nuclear weapon capabilities. We will need to deal with a Russian strategic missile defense system. Whether one looks at the budgetary, or the strategic implications of this language, the results of such an examination I just think can only be termed ``foolishness.'' I would like to work with the new majority on the Armed Services Committee to address missile threats in a way that does not destroy the ABM Treaty. But I see little indication on this bill, or elsewhere, that the majority is interested in investing in prevention of missile proliferation. Instead, they want to pour out pounds or megatons of fallacious cures. What the majority should be proposing are new measures to prevent missile proliferation from occurring in the first place as opposed to shelling out tax dollars on sophisticated hardware and software to deal with--or, more accurately, pretend to deal with-- the problem after the fact. As I see it, this is a solution out looking for a problem because we do not have all the threats from abroad that we used to have. I will go into that in just a few moments. Congress's new majority is proposing nothing, for example, to ensure that U.S. missile proliferation sanctions are strengthened and implemented in a manner that serves as an effective deterrent to proliferation. I see nothing to indicate a new effort to strengthen export controls--for example, something I have long advocated and put in legislation and had passed--or to encourage measures to strengthen the MTCR, the Missile Technology Control Regime. Meanwhile, in this--what I view as a meat-ax approach to budget reduction--the State Department funds are being chopped back so that even fewer resources will be available for the pursuit of diplomatic measures aimed at halting nuclear and missile proliferation. Many in this new majority continue to seek the elimination of ACDA, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, which has worked hard over the years to strengthen U.S. policies in just these areas. In their zeal to inveigle our country out of the ABM Treaty, the new majority continues to tout an alleged missile threat from what they call rogue nations out there lurking somewhere in anticipation of launching ICBM's against targets in the United States. This whole rogue nation argument is simply an old-fashioned red herring. It a distraction from actions that are really needed to strengthen our national defense. Indeed, rogue nations may pose less of a threat to us than rogue defense bills like some of the provisions in this one that we have here today. I have noted several times the testimony before the Select Committee on Intelligence, of which I am a member, of the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General James Clapper, on this missile threat. He stated last January that ``We see no interest in or capability of any new country reaching the continental United States with a long-range missile for at least the next decade.'' In correspondence dated December 1, 1995, the CIA informed Senators Levin and Bumpers that the missile threat as identified in this bill was overstated. Though I fully agree with the CIA assessment, the agency could well have gone further by noting that, contrary to a popular belief, missiles are not proliferating in the world today. Indeed, in some important respects there has been a decline in certain types of missile proliferation threats. Over the years, we have seen the elimination of long-range missile programs in Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa. The Iraqi missile program has been destroyed. Egypt's efforts to build a long-range missile program has been terminated, and nobody seriously believes that Libya will have an ICBM capability any time soon. In the INF Treaty, the United States and Russia agreed to eliminate a whole class of missiles, and the START treaties have cut back substantially the numbers of nuclear ICBMs. When looking at missile programs that remain in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia, it is obvious that there is a global missile proliferation threat that must be addressed. Indeed, we could soon be witnessing robust missile races in at least two of these theaters, if they are not underway already. But do these developments justify a U.S. walkout from the ABM Treaty? Of course, not. On the contrary, we should ask the following: Do these developments justify an increased U.S. effort to enhance its intelligence capabilities, both analysis and collection; to strengthen export controls, both licensing and enforcement; to implement sanctions, both to punish and to deter; to ensure that our diplomats have the resources they need to roll back these programs; and, to ensure the readiness of U.S. forces that are deployed abroad to defend themselves against tactical missile attacks? Yes to every one of the above, especially the last. I want to see our defenses for our frontline troops, and those who may be in a combat's way, protected against the tactical missile attacks. But, nevertheless, I remain an optimist. I am hopeful that the new majority will someday come around to the view that Star Wars is not the panacea to proliferation. Indeed, a Star Wars we have yet to invent cannot be placed in place by a certain time because we have not invented all of it yet. We know from our star wars experience before that it is a bigger problem than anybody thought it was going to be back in those days. When they do, I will be ready to work with them to get our nonproliferation and arms control policies back on track. Judging from the content of this bill before us today, that day has clearly not arrived. So I remain firmly and unalterably opposed to this misguided missile defense legislation. I urge all my colleagues to join me in pressing this opposition for as long as it takes to restore some sanity to this program. Mr. President, I note for my colleagues that in my view this language is reason enough alone to oppose passage of the conference report. There are other reasons as well. This bill had $7 billion added above and beyond what the administration requested--one of the main reasons why I voted against it going in, before it went to conference. If that money had gone to operation and maintenance accounts where it is needed, if it had gone to pay all of our bills from peacekeeping operations already passed, which is somewhere around $2 billion, if it had gone for programs like that and things that we really need, depot maintenance, things like that where we are behind and did not have adequate budget provided, then I would not have objected. I would have said fine, we needed that and the administration should have requested it to begin with. But that is not where the added $7 billion additional went. One-half a billion dollars is unrequested and unwelcome B-2 funding that can be used to start new production and was brought back from conference, and another one-half a billion dollars was added to the national missile defense account. These two funding decisions are merely downpayments on huge programs in the outyears. And they make a mockery of the desire to balance the budget and eliminate deficit spending. We have part of the Government shut down here arguing over the budget, whether we are going to be able to get a balanced budget. Then we have add-ons like this for things that were not needed at all, and they are downpayments on huge programs in the outyears. If these programs alone go forward, the funding contained in this conference report represents a commitment to many, many more billions out there in the future. I think just the national missile defense program in the outyears requires outlays by one estimate of at least $43 billion, if we carry it out as it has been spoken of. I cannot support wasting precious taxpayer dollars on the B-2, for instance, that is well over half a billion a copy. That is taking out even all of the sunk costs of the past. And we know that every time we have made an estimate in the past on the B-2 it has gone up. One of the estimates was above half a billion per copy. It is around $650 to $700 million right now, if you figure all the costs that have to go into hangars and things like that for each airplane that is produced. The plane is an aerodynamic wonder. It truly is. I had the pleasure of going out and flying it not long ago. It is one that has cleared the hurdles that we in the Armed Services Committee put in to make sure that this unique airplane would indeed pass all of its aerodynamic tests. It does not have a rudder up there. You never see a vertical surface on that airplane. It meets all the different aerodynamic requirements in how you control it, and it is an aerodynamic marvel, I can guarantee you that. It flies beautifully. But when you put between half a billion and $1 billion per plane, it just is too much. Once again, I would say what we have provided here is something that is not required, not necessary, and is another solution looking for a problem. We have bombers that the Air Force has said are adequate when we combine what we have with the B-2's already produced or provided for and the B-1's. Those give us enough bomber capability to meet any threat we see right now. Overall, the funding level in this conference report is too high and the bulk of the funds will be spent in the procurement accounts, not on items requested by the Pentagon, not on requirements of the President's request that he sent to us but on items built in members' home districts. Now, the conference report authorizes the purchase of items not requested such as purchase of F-15's. Well, who does that benefit? The purchase of F-16's. Who does that benefit? The purchase of extra F/A- 18's. Who does that benefit? The purchase of extra C-130's. The purchase of extra C-21's, Lear jets, not requested by the Pentagon. These were add-ons. At a cost of an additional $1.6 billion, the conference report also authorizes the procurement of the LPD-17, the LHD-7 and an additional DDG-51, all three not requested by the Pentagon, not requested by the administration, yet they are add-ons. Who benefits? Whose district? Whose States benefit? How did those get into this conference report when the administration did not want them, at least not in this year's budget plan of how we are going to spend our increasingly scarce defense dollars? Mr. President, I have supported add-ons where they make sense in the past, and I would have supported some of the add-ons in the conference report, but the magnitude of the add-ons, the magnitude of all of these--just one of them is not enough to sink this bill, but you put them altogether, the add-ons and the solely parochial rationale supporting some of them, it is impossible to support this conference report. The conference report does not stop at spending too much on programs that we either do not need now or do not need at all. This bill marks the return of widespread earmarking in the authorization process. That is where you have a requirement for a certain aircraft or a certain item being purchased but it also specifically words things in a way that it has to be spent exactly where they want it spent in a certain person's district or a certain person's State. The unpalatable earmarking of close to $800 million that was included in the Senate for reserve component equipment has been expanded and now the bill contains additional earmarking in the shipbuilding and ship repair accounts. Earmarking, Mr. President, is a practice that the Armed Services Committee has in the past worked tirelessly to weed out of its bills. And through the years I think we have been reasonably successful in getting some of that earmarking wiped out. In the end, those efforts even impacted the appropriations bills which a few years back stopped earmarking the reserve component equipment accounts. And ironically, the appropriators for the most part chose not to earmark their bill this year, and it is the authorizers now that have loaded up our bill with so much pork that I referred to it one day on the Senate floor as an ``agriculture bill'' because it has so much pork in it. Mr. President, another remarkable provision in the conference report requires the sale of the Naval Petroleum Reserve. When this issue came up during consideration of the Senate bill, many of us disagreed with requiring the sale of this money-making asset, but we were bound to sell the reserve by reconciliation. In light of that reconciliation mandate, the committee worked to put safeguards in place in the authorization bill to make sure the American taxpayer got the best possible return on the sale of this asset. What is remarkable about the conference report with regard to the petroleum reserve also, it was dropped out of reconciliation. We would no longer be forced to sell the reserve but for the fact the authorization conference report now requires it to be sold. So it is dropped out of one report, the reconciliation bill, but kept in this authorization conference report and requiring that it be sold within 1 year. That is what made this thing really unacceptable: It required that it be sold within 1 year. The conference report undermines its own so-called safeguard by creating a buyer's market for the reserve, not an environment conducive to obtaining the best deal for the seller, the American taxpayer. At the same time, the conference report adds earmarked funding for programs of which there is a questionable requirement, the conference report takes a $450 million cut in the account that funds cleanup of our nuclear weapons complex, a requirement which I view as a moral as well as a legal obligation. That is one that I feel very strongly about. The cleanup is required because we started back about 1985 with a report that I got into, or asked the GAO to do on the Fernald part of the nuclear weapons complex, and at Fernald we found out there were lots of problems. I asked for studies of other places around the nuclear weapons complex and now have a stack of GAO reports probably 3\1/2\, 4 feet high through the last 10 years that have outlined this problem, going from a nuclear cleanup cost estimate back in those days of $8 to $12 billion for everything to now up to around $200 to $300 billion over a 20-year period, if we can figure out how to do it. Yet, we reduce funding for it in this year's bill. On what we might term social issues, this conference report, I believe, should be opposed. It prohibits service members and dependents from obtaining abortions paid for with private funds and just using military medical facilities, except in the cases of rape, incest, or where the life of the mother is in danger. If you are a female member of the armed services or a wife stationed somewhere overseas, you may not have the option of going to outside facilities as good as you would have if you were home in the United States. In the past, we have permitted cases of abortion where it was paid for with private funds but using the military medical facility. That is prohibited now with this legislation. The conference report also discriminates against HIV-infected service members by requiring their discharge. These are just some of the issues that have been attributed to my decision to vote against this conference report. I would like to comment for a moment on the process that led up to the conference report. Mr. President, this conference lasted for something close to 95 days. Conferees met at the panel level for 2 weeks--the panel level now, the subcommittee level--before being dissolved with outstanding issues still to be considered at the full conference level. From the time the panels were dissolved, nearly 3 months ago, until the committee members were informed last week that agreement on all issues had been achieved, the conferees met one time--just one time-- and that was not for the usual purpose of conferees meeting. The purpose of that one meeting was to give the outside conferees the opportunity to express their views. The other committees that were involved in some way that were permitted the courtesy of coming in and giving their testimony to the conferees, and that was the purpose of the one meeting. So when the panels dissolved, many, many issues remained unresolved, and the Senate conferees were never convened to discuss strategy for retaining important Senate positions, like the ABM language or funding for the B-2, positions that were strongly supported by the Senate as a whole. In the case of the ABM language, we had an overwhelming vote on the floor of the Senate, and the Senate position on B-2 funding was the result of a rollcall vote taken in committee. Dialog at the conferee level may have changed the outcome on some of the items that were given up to the House. Before concluding my remarks, Mr. President, for the record, although I do not support and will not vote for the conference report, I certainly do support the acquisition reform provisions contained in this legislation and hope we can attach those to some other piece of legislation if this bill should fail. Should this legislation be enacted, at least acquisition reform provisions can help make a better and more effective Government. Should the conference report fail to be enacted, I hope we can find a way to enact these procurement reforms by some other vehicle. Mr. President, I would like to take a few minutes to speak about some of the better points of the conference report for the fiscal year 1996 DOD authorization, specifically, divisions D and E on acquisition reform and information technology management, respectively. As you know, Mr. President, last year, the Congress passed the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, known as FASA, the first major piece of procurement reform legislation in a decade. Passage of FASA constituted a critical victory in the war against government inefficiency. It is a comprehensive government-wide procurement reform effort aimed at streamlining the acquisition process by reducing paperwork burdens through revision and consolidation of acquisition statutes to eliminate redundancy, provide consistency, and facilitate implementation. Now, I do not think anyone expected a second comprehensive round of reforms to follow so closely after FASA, especially while we were awaiting the new regulations, but with the dawn of the 104th Congress, we saw a proliferation of new and revitalized procurement proposals. I even introduced a bill myself on behalf of the administration, S. 669, the Federal Acquisition Improvement Act. Although I did not support every item in that bill, I am pleased to say that some of the better concepts have been included in this year's acquisition reform package. Before I talk about the substance of the bill, I want to say a word about the process that has been used to reach this end product. As with many bills, a vehicle is often sought for expedient passage. This year, the vehicle for government-wide acquisition reform is the DOD authorization bill. I want to be very clear when I say that I do not expect this to set a precedent for future acquisition reform discussions. Though most of these changes will also apply to the Defense Department, it was not my preference to enact government-wide changes on a DOD bill. Expediency in legislating does not always produce the best results. However, once the decision was made to go this route, we have worked hard to make the best of a less than favorable situation. A staff-level working group in the Senate spent several months scrutinizing each and every proposal to identify the most useful and most needed provisions. Even though the Senate had only two subcommittee hearings, we have done the best we could to consider opinions from interested parties however possible--by phone call, mail or meeting. And even without the formal medium of a hearing, we tried to consider as many viewpoints as possible, and I sincerely hope that no one feels excluded from this process. With that said, I am pleased to support, with one exception, the end product of what I consider an effort to build upon the acquisition reforms we initiated last year in FASA. The one exception is the proposed changes this bill makes to the recoupment laws which I do not consider to be part of acquisition reform. I cannot support this change. I would like to take a moment to highlight a few of the more significant changes being made to procurement law and explain my position on recoupment. In the area of competition, the Senate steadfastly refused to alter the current definition of full and open competition, found in the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 [CICA], despite a House proposal to the contrary. but to ease the burden on contractors, both large and small, who expend large amounts of money to compete for contracts which may never be awarded to them, we have instead authorized the use of two phase competitive procedures for certain construction contracts and allowed contracting officers to limit the competitive range of offerors to those who are judged to be best qualified. In the area of commercial items where a lot of work was begun last year with FASA, we have created a 3-year authorization for the use of streamlined procedures for the purchase of unmodified commercial items under $5 million. This should reduce the burden on contractors and shorten the deadlines and time it takes the government to acquire commercial items since less time is needed to prepare an offer. We also authorized the waiver of most statutory requirements for government contractors when we purchase off-the-shelf commercial items, because it is impractical and inappropriate to routinely apply government-unique requirements to ordinary commercial items that may be provided from a commercial assembly line or over the counter. We also define off-the- shelf commercial items and refine the definition of commercial services. Procurement integrity was an issue which was left unresolved last year by FASA with an agreement to take it up this year. We have streamlined these provisions to prohibit the improper disclosure of inside information, and included a recusal provision which would provide a statutory basis and statutory enforcement for ethics regulations already in place, and a limited revolving door provision, which would prohibit certain agency officials from going to work for a contractor for 1 year after certain involvement with certain contracts. In the area of protests and dispute resolution, repeal of the infamous Brooks ADP Act consolidates administrative protests in the General Accounting Office [GAO]. I am very pleased with this solution. I recognize that a protest is intended to be an action brought on behalf of and in the best interest of both the government and the taxpayer, making sure that both get the best deal. However, it seems to have gotten to the point where agencies routinely build time for protests into major procurements from the start, because companies often proceed with a protest if they lose out on a contract, regardless of the government's explanation for their loss of that contract. Because every major procurement or program seems to generate its own flurry of protests, I strongly prefer the GAO as the administrative forum of choice where the process is less formal, less costly, and less judicialized. I also recognize that GAO does not have the authority to issue binding declaratory judgements and that its decisions are merely recommendatory. There are very few instances where the agency has not followed a GAO recommendation, however, and in those instances, the agency must account to Congress for its actions, preserving the Congressional oversight role. Among other things, we have also severed the linkages between the successful implementation of a Federal Acquisition Computer Network and the FASA-authorized simplified acquisition threshold and pilot programs; reduced the number of certifications required of contractors; delayed the implementation of FASA's cooperative purchasing program until after a GAO study has been completed and reviewed; required agencies to conduct cost-effective value engineering programs; established requirements for the civilian acquisition workforce; authorized a demonstration project for personnel management in the DOD acquisition workforce; and amended the OFPP Act to eliminate obsolete and unnecessary provisions. Division E of the DOD bill, originally Senators Cohen and Levin's information technology management reform bill, will reform the way the Government both buys and manages its information technology systems. This section of the bill will not only force agencies to take a more strategic view of their information assets and enhance up-front planning, it will give the Government the tools it needs to keep up with the rapid pace of technological change in the information arena. It will also add to the information resources management reforms of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, of which I am a co-author. Hopefully this will lead to a substantial reduction in the number of horror stories we hear every year about information systems that are late, over budget and do not work. Finally, as I stated earlier, there is one provision that has been included as acquisition reform, but which I exclude from this category. This provision--which I cannot support--would essentially eliminate the requirement to recoup R&D costs paid by the U.S. on foreign arms sales. Even though the Secretary of Defense will be given authority to waive the recoupment fees only under certain circumstances, I am just not convinced that these changes are necessary, narrow as they may be, even if corresponding reporting requirements were added. The U.S. is already very competitive in world arms markets; new incentives are unnecessary. In the past, I have opposed other initiatives to use government institutions or government funds to underwrite foreign arms sales. Given our current dominance of the market, further encouragement of foreign arms sales is neither necessary nor desirable. Mr. President, it is easy to see that even after FASA, we have continued to address more difficult and complex issues with this second round of acquisition reform. Although I do not support and will not vote in favor of the DOD conference report, I am glad that, if it passes, at least the acquisition reform provisions can help to make a better and more effective government. And if the conference report does not get enacted, I hope some way can be found to enact these procurement reforms in another context.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. GLENN

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

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I could not add a whole lot to that. Let me say this. I do not know how we administer this thing if we do have it put into effect. I always thought we were supposed to be one Nation--one Nation--not a nation that passes amendments that says we are going to break this up and let 50 States make up their own minds about how they want to treat the flag. I think that is our job here, and I think we do it for the Nation right here. I think it is a mistake to let all this go out to the States. I remember back in 1976 we were celebrating the Bicentennial and we had bikinis, flag bikinis advertised in papers. I remember once watching a rock and roll concert that year, and it was quite a spectacle. It was one to make your blood boil, because the lead guitarist, who was bared from the waist up, did not have a shirt or anything on, but he is going at it and strumming and banging away on this thing. Pretty soon his pants started to slide down, and, lo and behold, you guessed it: He had flag shorts on. The audience went wild. I find that more objectionable than I do some of the things we are talking about, to protect the flag here from burning it. I do not know whether body fluids get spilled on the flag in situations like that, with the bikinis or whatever. But I find that reprehensible. Is that covered under something like this? We are leaving this up to 50 different States, yet we quote a Pledge of Allegiance that says ``one Nation''--one Nation, not a Nation of 50 separate entities, all free to make their own rules about how they want to treat the flag--``under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'' We do not say just for some and not for others, and we do not say the flag should have different treatment in different parts of the country either. So I disagree with this approach that says there is such a big problem out there we somehow need to do something, passing a constitutional amendment to take care of a nonproblem, really. There is not a great, huge rash of flag burnings out there that showed disrespect for the flag. I was told there were none last year. Then I was corrected by some of the veterans who visited me in my office a few days ago last week, and they said, no, they could verify there were three flag burnings this year. We have just under 270 million people in this country. That means one offense for every 90 million people. I really do not see that as being a tremendous problem for our country. We have a solution here out looking for a problem to solve. That does not make much sense to me. The flag symbolizes the freedoms we have. It is not the freedoms themselves. It is not the freedoms themselves, and those are the things that are important. Everyone on both sides of this issue, both sides of the aisle love and defend the flag, and if anyone came in here and tried to burn a flag right here there would be enough people to attack that person, I can guarantee you, that we would take care of it ourselves. That is the way most of these things will be taken care of back in our individual States. Without a doubt, the most important of the values are covered in the Bill of Rights. If we had not had that Bill of Rights put together, you know some of the States were prepared to not approve the Constitution of the United States. In that very first amendment we cover some very, very sacred things. We say in that very first amendment, ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech''--which is deemed to mean other examples--``or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.'' That is all there is in that article. It covers those things, but how important they are. Without that, we would not have had a Constitution of the United States. My time is up, Mr. President. If anyone wishes to look at my remarks in more detail, the Congressional Record of last Friday has it complete. My time is up and I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I gave a more lengthy speech on this subject last Friday. In fact, I talked for about an hour, I guess, because I felt strongly about what was going on with this piece of legislation. Rather than repeating those remarks of last Friday, I call attention to an article that appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer earlier this year by a columnist, Dick Feagler, a friend of ours who I have known for a long time. Dick writes sometimes with a humorous bent and a serious twist to it at the same time. I read this into the Record in the time I have remaining here because I think it pretty much says it all. The title is, ``Flag Should Stay Sacred in Our Minds, Not Law.'' His article goes on like this: Here they go again. Congressional Republicans, backed by some Democrats, are pushing for a constitutional amendment against burning the flag. That old bandwagon has more miles on it than your grandma's Edsel. But there are always plenty of new passengers eager to hitch a ride. In our area, freshman Congressman Steven C. LaTourette has climbed aboard for a short trip toward the stoplight of reason. Every four years or so, I have to write a column about this issue and it always makes me feel bad. I am a flag guy. I was raised on John Wayne movies. I feel good on the Fourth of July, and humble on Memorial Day. I am the kid who, at age 12, slipped a sternly worded note under the door of a merchant who never took his flag down at sunset. There's a grand old flag flying next to my front door 20 feet from where I'm writing this-- So every time this comes up, I ask myself, why don't I just go along with it. It would be so much easier. It would make my feel proud and patriotic and as American as a Marysville, Honda. Why not just support changing the Bill of Rights to keep Old Glory safe from the punks and the fanatics? Well, because it's dumb, that's why. That's one reason. There's a deeper reason, but I'll deal with the dumbness first. After all, as some of you keep reminding me, I've got enough dumbness in me now without increasing my inventory. If we make it against the law to destroy a flag, exactly what kind of flag are we talking about? Are we only talking about the official flag, made, I believe, in Taiwan, that you buy at the post office? How about the flag my father still has with 48 stars on it? Is that still THE flag? Suppose I run up a flag on my Singer and leave off a couple of stripes and a handful of stars? If I burn that, will I land in federal court? Who would go to that much trouble, you ask? Pal, you don't know your punks and fanatics. How about if I draw a flag on a piece of paper? Can I bum that? Suppose I draw it in black and white but it is still unmistakably a flag? Does it count? How about those little flags on toothpicks you stick in cocktail weenies? If I singe one of those will the FBI come vaulting over the patio hedge to nail me? Are we going to write a brand new amendment to the Constitution the covers the flag on the seat of a biker's britches? Is a flag decal a flag? Back in the '60s, I covered a dozen rallies where people burned their draft cards. The frequency of draft-card pyromania was so great that nobody bothered to apply for a replacement. When the hippie at the microphone announced it was arson time, the protesters just lit anything they weren't planning to smoke. If I announce I'm burning a flag, does that count, even if I'm not? Who is going to write the constitutional amendment that sorts all this out? It's beyond my poor powers, Yank George

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume. How much time do we have on this side?

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I listened very carefully to the last several speakers here on the floor, and I find myself almost at a loss as to where to start. If we go through a factual reality check here, on how this situation developed, I do not find it much like what I hear being discussed here on the floor. One of the speakers this evening talked about our entry into combat and equated it with Vietnam, equated it with Lebanon, where President Reagan--whose name has not been mentioned here although Clinton's has this evening, that is for sure--put 1,600 troops into Lebanon and said, ``We're going to stabilize Lebanon by making an example there, and that will bring them around.'' That is what got us into the trouble, not thinking the thing through, and thinking that a little bitty show of force would bring an end to what had been very lengthy combat in Lebanon. So I think we need a reality check here. To equate this whole effort as just some sort of a PR stunt does a disservice to the floor of the U.S. Senate and to our Government. It was even questioned as to whether we would stand behind our troops in Bosnia once they are in there. What a ridiculous statement. I find that abhorrent. Now, statements were made that we were injecting our people into a civil war, we are putting our people into combat. Now, let us get back to reality here. I agree completely that there have been long and historical difficulties in the Balkans. We do not need to run through all those this evening except to say some of these problems literally go back to the time of the Caesars. They are that old. The ethnic, political, and religious differences in that area led one of the Caesars to split the area that later became Yugoslavia into the East Roman Empire and West Roman Empire. That is how the orthodox influence came up into that part of the world. It has been a caldron of problems that contributed to the beginnings of two world wars. We have always had an interest in that area. We have a lot of people in our own country, a lot of people in my home State of Ohio representing the different ethnic groups in that part of the world. President Clinton said we would send 20,000 people in if--these were big ``if's''--if we could get arrangements for fighting to be stopped, so we could move in. We are not going to fight our way in. We did not make a commitment to actually send them in until some other things happened. What were those other things? And these are very, very important. What happened was that over the past 4 years the war has become so difficult for people in that area, that they wanted peace. They asked us to broker the peace. We did not suggest fighting our way in there. President Clinton has not said we are going to fight our way in there. Quite the opposite. They came to us and said they are tired of war. My colleagues have asked how can we believe these people who have been fighting all these hundreds of years are not just going to keep on fighting. Well, the big difference now is that they are tired of war. Should we believe them or not? Bosnia-Herzegovina is an area about one-half the size of the State of Ohio--we are not a huge State; we have about 41,000 square miles of territory in Ohio--Bosnia-Herzegovina is almost 20,000, 19,776 square miles, about half the size of Ohio. In other words, think of Ohio, and Interstate 70 goes across the middle. If, in that area down between that Interstate 70 and the Ohio River, we had had 250,000 deaths in the last 4 years and we had two million refugees in the last 4 years, would we be ready for peace? That is what occurred over in Bosnia. Even the most ardent warriors over there have become tired of war, of the slaughter and the dislocation of people. While every individual may not be signed on, 100 percent going to lay down their arms, this is what happened. They came to us. Diplomatic channels said all parties seemed to be ready to have us broker a peace if it was possible. I must commend Ambassador Holbrooke. I think he did a masterful job over there, stayed at it, stayed at it, stayed at it, back and forth, one capital to another, one group to another until they had an agreement to go to another place and try to negotiate peace. They came to Dayton. Wright Patterson was selected because the facilities were there providing security, some place to live, some appropriate barracks, and so forth. So they came to Dayton. Let me give my view. I was very dubious of this whole process at that point. I thought they would come to Dayton and it would be a short- lived conference. And what happened? Well, they not only asked to negotiate, but they, the parties involved, came to Dayton. They, the national leaders, the heads of state, did something I would not have thought possible: They stayed at Dayton for 21 days, the heads of state stayed there for 21 days negotiating. They finally hammered this thing out, and they initialed an agreement there, all of them. And they will sign it the day after tomorrow in Paris. So it is not our peace, it is their peace, with us making suggestions. But they are the ones who initialed it. They are the ones who asked to negotiate to begin with. What is our part in it? Our part is to help implement what they have agreed to. Much was made on the floor a few moments ago about what if they back out and the fighting starts again? They back out and what happens? I will say this, if that happens and if they break the peace agreement that they signed, that they wanted, that we brokered, that they agreed to, it is their failure, not ours. We are not there, as the President has said, the Vice President has said, the Secretary of Defense has said, General Shalikashvili has said, General Joulwan in Europe briefed us, to enforce a peace by forcing anyone back across a border. If they have decided this peace is no longer for them and they are going to start fighting again, our commitment at that point is we tried, we gave you people your chance at this thing, and we are out of there. We are not there to conduct large-scale combat. If that were the case, we would be going in with far more than 20,000 people, in my view. But let us say they do not back out and peace comes to the Balkans. We will have avoided the possibility of this conflict spreading over into Macedonia, down toward Turkey, with all that might entail. We have avoided the possibility of it breaking across borders up toward Europe, maybe into Eastern Europe. And we will maybe, possibly, have peace in that area because they asked for it, they wanted it. I had doubts when they came to Dayton and I wanted to see two things happen. I said this publicly at the time and talked to the President about it, talked to the Vice President about it, and talked to the Secretary of Defense about it. Two things: First, this agreement could not be wishful thinking. This agreement could not be something where we say, Well, yes, we're going to go in over there, and, yeah, since they want peace we will be able to settle in down there and we'll draw some borders once we get there and then we'll provide some peace. No, we could not do it that way. I felt that would be a recipe for disaster. I would have bet a sizable amount against the parties at Dayton really drawing up an agreement in sufficient detail that, as I said one night in a meeting at the White House, we have to decide which peach orchard is in what entity when you draw these lines. It had to be in that kind of detail. A second element was that the firing had to have stopped. That was a commitment agreed to by everybody. The parties had to see that the irregulars also will have stopped firing. And then we go in to maintain the peace. What came out of the negotiations, as far as detail? I brought along a chart. This is a chart they agreed to in Dayton. The detail was to be 1 to 50,000 scale. This is a brandnew map, just a few days ago. This is the separation zone. This area in here is an area that is an interim zone which the troops will move out of and back to these lines, and that is to occur within a stated time period. What is the accuracy of this? An inch on this scale would be somewhere around 4,000 feet, and the center line that is the demarcation line that we will monitor, shown in the center of this zone, accurate on this scale map to within 50 meters, close to 160 feet. Now, that is pretty good accuracy. We have the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina. All of that area has this kind of a map. I could not bring all the maps, because 1 to 50,000 would have an area about half the size of that wall at the end of the Senate Chamber. But our section will be up in this area, around Tuzla, up in this northeastern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, depicted here. This is Tuzla, which will be the American headquarters out of which we will operate. We will be operating to keep these zones clear in here. Why do we need to do that? If they said that they wanted peace, they are tired of war, 250,000 people killed, 2 million refugees in a small area, why can they not all just sit down and say, Stop fighting, and that takes care of that? One very good reason. The previous cease-fires that they have had in that area have been broken, for the most part, by what are called the irregulars. We were briefed on that when we were over there a few weeks ago. At least 20 percent, and some estimates run as high as 50 percent, of the combatants in this area are what they call irregulars. They are the farmers who go up and shoot, are up there manning a rifle or machinegun a few days, go back to their farm and somebody relieves them. They are not the people who are used to the usual military commands up and down the military structure. What has happened on most of the past cease-fires, and they have had over 30 of them in these 4 years of war and they have always broken down, is that somebody gets up there, triggers off a few rounds, the firing spreads and pretty soon the cease-fire has broken down. So the situation we find ourselves in is we have an agreement. I would not have thought it was possible to reach the kind of agreement they did in Dayton. It is detailed. The borders are established. It has been initialed. It is laid out on the 1 to 50,000 chart right here. In the local areas, they will have charts to a bigger scale, of course. The firing must have stopped, and the cease fire held while these negotiations were underway, by and large. When we go in, it will not be to fight our way in. It will be to go in and man these zones that keep the combatants apart. One reason that is a 4-kilometer wide area is so the small arms fire cannot be used across a zone. There are 2 kilometers on each side of that center mark down the middle of that zone. We will keep the forces separate. They say--they say, not us--they say that they want peace. We have helped them negotiate an agreement, and surprisingly, it is in enough detail that you can pick out which orchard is going to be where and which road intersection is going to be where. It is in that kind of detail. When we get over there, we will not go into areas where there is any active fighting that may have popped up again. We are not going in to squelch someone, we are not there to fight a war on one side or the other. We are there to set up a separation zone and enforce it. The question was asked on the floor here, what is our military task? Military tasks were agreed to at Dayton. The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of State have repeated these things over and over again. All parties have agreed that they will cooperate with us in these things that they asked us to enforce. Let me add one thing here. Why us? Why do they want our involvement? Why did they say they would not go along with just the other members of NATO unless we were involved? It is rather simple. They trust us and they do not trust the Europeans in NATO, and they have said that. This was stated to us in numerous briefings. They do not trust the others, but they do trust the U.S. Our job will be, first, to go in and supervise the selective marking of cease-fire lines, inter-entity boundary lines, and zones of separation, which is what we are talking about here. First zones will be marked, then military forces will begin moving out of the zones back into these permanent areas here. Once that has occurred, we will monitor and, if necessary, enforce withdrawal of forces to their respective territories within an agreed period. We will ensure that they have withdrawn behind the zone of separation within 30 days of transfer of authority. That is a clear military task. Then we will ensure redeployment of forces from areas to be transferred from one entity to the other within 45 days of transfer of authority. Further, we will ensure no introduction of forces into transferred areas for an additional 45 days, establish and man the 4-kilometer zone of separation, outlined here on the chart, 2 kilometers on either side of the cease-fire interentity boundary line. We will establish liaison with local military and civilian authorities, and we will create joint military commissions to resolve any disputes that there may be between the parties. Now, the statement was made a while ago on the floor that it smacks of nation building for our military in there. That is not true. Nationbuilding tasks are specifically not included as I-For tasks in the Dayton accords. Things that will not be I-For tasks are the humanitarian operations. Those will be handled by other international agencies. Nation building, economics, and infrastructure will be handled by others, not by our military. Disarming everyone is not an I-For task. Moving refugees is not a job for our military, nor is policing local towns, and so on. So this idea that we do not have clearly defined military tasks is just not true. Once again, I am still somewhat amazed that everybody agreed to all these things in Dayton and has said that they will abide by these commitments. If the parties decide that they want out of the agreement--we are already agreed, the NATO Ambassadors have said, General Joulwan told us during our briefings, and Secretary Christopher and Secretary Perry said, we are not there to fight on one side or the other. We would say that we successfully did our part. We would define our part as being a success if we went in there and manned these zones and kept them apart for a period of time, and they will have failed, not us. They will have failed the peace agreement that they asked us to negotiate, that they came to Dayton for, for which they stayed 3 weeks, 21 days, and they will sign in Paris the day after tomorrow. Now, where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us, I think, with reasonable risk. Nothing is without some risk, that is true. Even when we have maneuvers in this country, military maneuvers, sometimes something happens. Someone slips off a tank and they are hurt. Nothing is absolutely safe. It is like an old saying in aviation, ``The only way you have absolute, complete flight safety is to leave the airplanes in the hangar.'' I guess that is the situation we find ourselves in. Will there be some risk? Yes. Will it be tolerable? I think so. If it becomes intolerable and forces build up, and there is a push, we are out of there. I will not see that as being a failure. I will see that as, we did our level best. This year period we are talking about is time enough. If they really want peace and they are serious about it, then all these other humanitarian groups and nationbuilding groups--not our military--will come in immediately after our presence is felt to try to help those people get their country going again. Within a year, the people of Bosnia are certainly going to see the benefits of peace, as opposed to continuing the slaughter, which has been their norm for the last several years. Can 20,000 troops do it? Yes, I think they can. The 20,000 is not a force to come in for a big military operation. We are not going into a situation like the Persian Gulf, where we knew we were going into combat. It is the opposite. We are going in to help the parties and these irregulars to stay apart for a short period of time while we try, for the first time, to get lasting peace in that part of the world. Now, what are some of these groups that will be coming in? Well, those are being worked out right now, as to who will do what. But NATO itself will not be responsible--the NATO troops there will not be responsible for all the nationbuilding efforts. I might add that, as far as risk goes, you know, I wondered one day how many people in the Peace Corps we had lost overseas, so we made an inquiry. It turns out that through all the years of the Peace Corps, which obviously includes many thousands of people and many places around the world, we have lost 224 people in the Peace Corps that have died overseas in accidents, of disease, or whatever. I think that is interesting. I would not have thought it was that high. So we take some small risk any time our people move out on any endeavor anywhere in the world. But the risks, to me, are minimal. The benefits that can occur for the future are huge. NATO, for the first time, will have been moving out of their normal area. So, in that respect, it is an experiment. What has happened is, our military area that we are going to man as part of this force will be up here in this northeastern part. The British will be up in here. The French will be down around Sarajevo and down in this particular area down here. So it is not, as was said on the floor a while ago, that we are mixing up our troops all over Bosnia. That is not true. We are responsible for manning a certain area, and that is it. Now, I was afraid of one other thing. In the Balkan area we had the Soviet Union that through the years has had a special kinship with Serbia. It dates back a long time, a historical connection of heritage there. I was afraid that if we went in there, and NATO went in there, and we found the Russians having an interest in coming down and supporting people over on the Serbian side, we could wind up with us in this area here with Russia supporting the Serbs in here. We would have had a possible confrontation there between Russia and our forces. That would have been a confrontation with the potential for very major disaster. Now, what happened? Well, we got the Russians in. The Russians are going to be part of this. They will be manning some of this zone here adjacent to us, and they are cooperating in this effort. I think they, too, realize that if we do not get peace in that part of the world, it is liable to erupt again sometime in the future, and that would not be good for them, or us, or anyone else. If we cannot begin to see the benefits of peace in a year, then maybe it is impossible. I do not know. Maybe those countries go back to fighting again. But I think we will have been proud at that time that we at least were willing to take the small risks to let peace try and take root in that area of the world. I would think that some risk now may enhance the long-term leadership of the United States toward peace and freedom around the world and, in the long run, actually save lives. We have not been hesitant about taking jobs on around the world, and people trust us when we do this, by and large. We have many examples. We stayed in Korea since the Korean war. With the Marshall plan, the Truman doctrine, back in the post-World War II days, we did not try to take over Europe and make it a 51st, 52d, 53d, or 54th State over there. We helped them. We had the Truman plan, the Marshall plan, all these things to help nations recover from war. In other words, we have had a history of standing for peace and freedom around the world and, really, to take some minor risks to see that we encourage peace and freedom around the world. It does not always go perfectly. Did we lose some people we wish we had not lost in Somalia? Of course. I think we probably also in the long run saved a million lives in Somalia with the effort that we were willing to make. Are we wrong in trying to broker a Mideast peace? We had Prime Minister Shimon Peres here not 20 minutes ago on the floor of the U.S. Senate. He was here and gave a brilliant speech today. We have helped Israel and the Palestinians to bridge some of their differences. We have tried to broker peace in that area. We did not try to take Japan after World War II. We have tried to advance peace and democracy throughout South and Central America. We have a lot of budding democracies in that part of the world, Cuba being the major exception. We went into Haiti. It was criticized here on the floor a little while ago, but I think we are seeing Haiti come around, it is up and down, up and down, but generally up. It is a more peaceful situation than we might have thought was possible. Northern Ireland. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty we got permanently extended. We have tried to be a force for good around this world to our everlasting credit. To those who say we should not even risk going into this area I would say--they wanted the peace, they asked us to broker it, they have initialed it, they are the ones who will sign it in Paris. It is their peace, not ours. We are just trying to help them implement it. So to bring up all these what ifs and dire consequences--I think it is good to think about those things and be prepared for some of these things. But to stay out of that area because some of the things mentioned here on the floor might possibly remotely happen, I just do not think that should be done. We are, indeed, a nation that wants peace and freedom around the world. We have stood for that and stayed involved around the world. That does not mean at all that we try to take on all the problems of the world. We cannot be the world's policemen. I agree with that. But where we have an area of such historical conflict and importance to Europe, to not seize this opportu- nity--and I do view it as an opportunity--to not seize this opportunity to try to help them implement the peace that they say they want, I think would be wrong. I think we are well justified in going in, and I would not have thought this was possible 7 or 8 months ago. I would not have thought we would have such a detailed agreement, that I could stand here with a chart like this on the floor of the United States Senate and say these details have been signed onto by all parties in the Balkans. This is one small part around Tuzla, and the total map on this scale in the Senate would be the whole size of the wall; 50 charts cover Bosnia and Herzegovina. What we are doing is providing them a structure for implementing the peace they said they wanted and they agreed to. If they decide to opt out, then we are opting out, too. We will have done our job. I personally declare it a success that we tried. If they are dumb enough to break up the peace after all this effort, and all the nation building that will be going on in that area, then I must say I do not have much sympathy for them from that point on. We will not fight our way in. We only go in if all firing has stopped. Are we do-gooders, trying to do too much around the world? I do not think so myself. We take some risks for potentially huge benefits. The rest of the world looks at us as a nation that has no territorial designs. They trust us. I think we just might be able to implement this agreement and see peace break out in that area for an indefinite time into the future. If so, we will have done a great, great service for the rest of the world and particularly for that particular area. I know we will be debating this question tomorrow here, I do not think there is a final agreement yet on exactly how long tomorrow we will be debating these issues. But I think if this works out, then we will avoid the possibility of an encroachment down through Macedonia or toward Turkey. We will not see fighting spread across borders into eastern Europe. We will maybe have been a real instrument for peace. That is the objective here--not another Vietnam, not another Lebanon, not all the things that were mentioned here on the floor a little while ago. Maybe, just maybe, we can be a force for peace in that part of the world. That is the objective. I think we stand a very good chance of doing that. I support the President's move, and I hope that we can send an overwhelming message of support, because I do not want to have the people over there thinking that we are a divided nation back here. That would be the worst situation that we could possibly have. Mr. President, I am optimistic at this point. I think we have come a long way. We went through negotiations we did not think were possible. They have agreed to it. Heads of state stayed in Dayton 21 days, something we would have thought was absolutely impossible. They will sign this in Paris. It is their peace. All we do is help them implement it. It is their peace. If it breaks down, it is not our failure; it is their failure. I look forward to the continued debate tomorrow morning. I yield the floor.