John Glenn

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, to take up the issue before us on a constitutional amendment regarding the flag is a very difficult thing to do. The different expressions on the floor are certainly ones to consider whether people are for the amendment or against the amendment. It is very difficult because the feelings run so deep in both directions. I do not know whether there is anyone who is still on the fence with regard to their views on this matter. Until today, I have not said a much about this. I talked about it in the Chamber several years ago when we had the issue before us. But I think people who have very deep feelings on this can have their feelings and we respect those feelings. I do not quarrel one iota with people on the other side of the aisle who have their feelings for whatever reason. But I do think there is a danger here. I think the danger is that the flag does not need the protection in this argument. What needs protection is really the Bill of Rights, from those who would look at it rather superficially from my view. So until today, I have tended to hold my tongue and have kept my peace about this issue before us because it is no fun being attacked or being labeled as unpatriotic or a friend of flag burners. And I can assure you that I am neither simply because I have doubts about the wisdom of a constitutional flag burning amendment. I am not taking the floor to speak about this issue, as I say, because some of our feelings about the flag are difficult to discuss. Feelings run very deep and very strong. Let me make a few things very clear up front. We all, of course, love the flag, and I would say nobody in this Chamber or this country loves our flag more than I do. We all can make that same statement on the floor. I fought hard for this flag through two wars and representing the country in the space program, and so on. I am both honored and proud that few people in this Nation have been able to take this flag where I took it, at least on the first space flight. That is the first thing I selected when I had a personal preference pack, as they called it, along on the trip. I took along little silk flags so I could give them to my children, and they remain among my children's most cherished possessions to this day. I also know, more importantly, from my own personal experience that every last fiber, every stitch, every thread in that flag can be looked at as standing for someone who gave their life to defend it. At my age, I can tell you that I probably have more friends buried over in Arlington Cemetery bearing silent witness to our flag as I do bearing public witness to it in the world of the living. Maybe that is why I have so little patience and even less sympathy for those pathetic and insensitive few who would demean and defile our Nation's greatest symbol of sacrifice, the flag of the United States of America. Those are some of the reasons I have kept silent until now. It is now clear that a legislative alternative to amending our Constitution is probably not going to be possible before we have to vote on this. It is now equally clear that those of us who question the wisdom of watering down our Bill of Rights have no choice but to stand up to the political mud merchants in some respects, from some of the comments that have been made, and to speak out against those who would deal in demagoguery on this issue. It is now clear that those of us who remember and care deeply about the sacrifices made on behalf of freedom have a special responsibility, and we do, to point out that it would be a hollow victory, indeed, if we preserved the symbol of our freedoms by chipping away at those freedoms themselves. That is the important choice here. Are we to protect the symbol at the expense of even taking a small chance at chipping away at the freedoms that that symbol represents? On that score, let us be honest with each other and with the American people. The flag is this Nation's most powerful and emotional symbol, and it is. I have been here with Senator Kerrey once in the Chamber when he said he thought in Nebraska they did not need this because if somebody started to burn a flag, they would take care of it themselves right then and there and on the spot. And I agree with that. Back home in Ohio, we have almost 11 million people, and I think there are very few, who, if they saw a flag being burned, would not be willing to take action against that person or persons. It is a gut feeling. I feel that same way myself, and I would join into that. But we have to think a little longer score on this, it seems to me. So the flag is the Nation's most powerful and emotional symbol, and it is our sacred symbol. It is a revered symbol, but it is a symbol. It symbolizes the freedoms we have in this country, but it is not the freedoms themselves. And that is why this debate is not between those who love the flag on the one hand and those who do not on the other, no matter how often the demagogs try to tell us otherwise. Everyone on both sides of the aisle politically within this Chamber and everyone on both sides of this debate loves and respects the flag. The question is how best to honor it, to honor it and what it represents. Those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our flag did not give up their lives for just a piece of cloth, albeit red, white, and blue, and it had some stars on it. Not just for the flag. They died because of their allegiance to this country, to the values and the rights and principles represented by that flag and to the Republic for which it stands. Without a doubt, the most important of those values, the most important of [[Page S 18277]] those values, rights and principles is individual liberty, the liberty to worship and think, to express ourselves freely, openly and completely, no matter how out of step those views may be with the opinions of the majority. And that is what is so unique about this country of ours--unique among all the nations around this world-- Britain, France, you name them, any place where they have democracy, but ours is especially unique in that regard. That commitment to freedom is encapsulated, it is encoded in our Bill of Rights, perhaps the most envied and imitated document anywhere in the world. The Bill of Rights is what makes our country unique. It is what has made us a shining beacon in a dark world, a shining beacon of hope and inspiration to oppressed peoples around the world for well over 200 years. It is, in short, what makes America America. You may look back a little bit. You know, the Bill of Rights came into being because the States at that time were not going to approve the Constitution unless we had some of these additional protections included. And so those additional protections that were to be included became known as the Bill of Rights. They are the first series of amendments to the Constitution. Those States were only prepared to accept the Constitution with the understanding that these additional protections for each individual and each individual's rights were incorporated in that Constitution. That is how the Bill of Rights came to be. The very first item in that Bill of Rights, the first amendment in it to our Constitution has never been changed or altered even one single time. In all of American history, over 7,000 attempts have been made to put amendments through. Just 27 have gotten through, and there was not a single time in all of American history when this was changed, not during our Civil War even, not during the Civil War when passions ran so high and this Nation was drenched in blood like few nations have been throughout their history. That Constitution was not changed. It was not changed during any of our foreign wars. It was not changed during recessions. It was not changed during depressions. It was not changed during scares or panics or whatever happened in this country. That Bill of Rights has not been changed even during times of great emotion and anger like the Vietnam era, when flags were burned or desecrated far more than they are today. Our first amendment was unchanged, unchallenged, as much as we might have disagreed with what was going on at that time, as abhorrent as we found the actions of a lot of people at that time in their protests against the Vietnam war. But now we are told that unless we alter the first amendment, unless we place a constitutional limit on the right of speech and expression that the fabric of our country will somehow be weakened. Well, I just cannot bring myself to believe that that is the case. I think once the American people think this issue clear through, I do not think they will buy it, either, whether this passes or not. I do not think the American people will buy it. Once you get past the first gut feeling, if you saw a flag burning, of doing something about it, as I would--so many of the people who visited me in my office the last couple of days would do the same thing--would take action themselves against such activity. Much as that might be the case and satisfying though that might be, I think we have to look at the long term on this, get by the emotion of that moment and think what it is we are dealing with. What we are dealing with is the Bill of Rights, dealing with that first amendment to the Bill of Rights. We are saying for the first time in our country's 200-year history, we are going to make, albeit maybe just a tiny crack, but it will be a tiny opening that could possibly be followed by others. That first amendment says, ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;'' or the second item, ``or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.'' The part we are dealing with today is freedom of speech--freedom of speech. We are talking about freedom of expression. The Supreme Court has held on two separate occasions that no matter how much the majority of us, 99.999 percent of the people of this country disagree, that tiny, tiny, fractional, misguided minority, still under our Bill of Rights they have the right to their expression. Their expression is looked at as coming under that freedom of speech. You have to look at it from that standpoint. Are we going to even make a tiny opening in changing that first amendment that could be followed on, if we have a tiny, tiny, tiny minority that we do not agree with their religious beliefs, if we have a tiny, tiny, tiny minority that we do not agree with what the press says? There is no body more critical in this whole country of the press than the people in this very room, and me included along with them. We do not like some of the things that happen in the press. Do we want to open even a tiny, tiny, tiny chance that they might restrict our ability to assemble peaceably? And do we want to take a tiny chance that we would not be able to petition our Government for redress of grievances? Those are the things that are covered in that first amendment, known as the Bill of Rights, along with the other amendments that were incorporated before the Constitution was signed, before it even came into being. I think there is only one way to weaken the fabric of our country, our unique country, our country that stands as a beacon before other nations around this world. You know when you think about someone burning the flag, I truly do feel sorry for them. I honestly do. My initial gut reaction would be to stomp them, go after them, get them, stop the burning, and so on. It would be a natural reaction that so many people would have as well. I know all the ones that visited my office yesterday, I would not have to ask them to do that same thing. But that would be one way of showing our unhappiness with these few misguided souls. At the same time we would be taking action against them, I truly would feel sorry for them. Have they never known the feeling inside of looking at that flag and being proud? Have they never been able to apparently work in any way for their country or the military in war or peace, either one, in which they were called to take action for a purpose bigger than themselves? I say this morning that is one of the most exhilarating things that can ever happen to a man or woman, to be able to represent their country and be called to something, to a purpose bigger than themselves. I feel sorry for people who have never had that experience. It is something you cannot really explain. We had a parade once I was involved in down on Pennsylvania Avenue and I addressed a joint meeting of Congress down at the other end of the Capitol, and everybody was waving flags out there. Everybody was waving flags. My comment when I opened down there, I said it just meant so much to me to see all the flags waving coming down Pennsylvania Avenue. It made a hard-to-define feeling within that I could not really describe in words, but I hope that we never lose that hard-to-define feeling as a nation, as individuals and a nation. We would be a lesser country if we lost that exhilaration, that feeling of pride when we see a flag and see it displayed and see people's excitement. But I feel sorry for those people who have never known that feeling. I truly do. There would not be any problem with people burning the flag if everyone had that individual experience. But it is by retreating from the principles that the flag stands for--``principles'' underlined 16 times--principles that this flag stands for, that if we retreat from those principles, that will do more damage to the fabric of our Nation than 1,000 torched flags ever could do. The first amendment--I read it a moment ago--says simply and clearly: ``Congress shall make no law * * * abridging the freedom of speech''-- freedom of speech. For 200 years, in good times and bad, in times of harmony and times of strife, we have held those words to mean exactly what they say. That ``Congress shall make no law''--no law--that will in any way cut back on that freedom of speech, meaning freedom of expression, as the Supreme Court has said. [[Page S 18278]] And now, ostensibly to prohibit something that very rarely happens anyway, we are asked to alter those first amendment words to mean that Congress may make some laws--little ones--some laws restricting freedom of expression. I know the other side says, ``Well, what we're doing is putting this back to the States.'' They want us to just put it back to the States and let the States decide this. I do not care for that approach. Let me tell you, we are one Nation, one Nation under God, indivisible. It does not say we are going to split things up and we will treat our flag differently and the Constitution will only apply here, the Bill of Rights only applies one way in one State and a different way in another State. I do not agree with that. So I do not want to see us make some laws, even tiny laws, even the potential of a tiny little crack in that Bill of Rights that would restrict freedom of expression. I agree with, I believe the man's name is Warner. He is a lawyer here in town. He was in the Marine Corps and prisoner of war. One of his captors brought to him a picture of a flag burning in this country and said, ``There, that shows what the people think; that shows that it is no good. See this.'' He said, ``That is what freedom is all about. That is what expression is all about,'' or words to that effect. I did not bring his exact words here. He said he was proud of it, and it completely crushed his captor. The fellow did not know how to react to that. Yet, he was right. We can say that this time this law might be about flag burning. The next form of political expression that we might seek to prohibit would be in the religion area. There are lots of religions today. Splinter groups I do not agree with at all and, I would say, 99.99 percent of the people of the country would not agree with them at all. But do we make any restriction on how they can practice their religion? No. I do not like a lot of things the press writes today, but do we make any tiny little restriction on the press to pull back on what they can do? Or assemble or petition the Government, the other things that are covered in that first amendment. So we can say this time the laws would be about flag burning or flag desecration, to use the exact words. But what will the next form of political expression be that we seek to prohibit, if we start a crack that has not occurred, not in the 200-plus year's history of this country? I do not think there is necessarily a slippery slope out there that if we make this little crack here that everything is going to go downhill from there and away we go and we are going to see freedom of speech restricted, everything else and we do not know where that slide will end. I do not think that will happen, but do we want to take a chance that any misguided group of people in the future would even think about going to that end? And for what? For a threat that, at least in current years, is practically nonexistent? I had been told there was not a single flag burning this year. I was corrected yesterday, and the people visiting me said they believe there were three they had documented this year. That is one per approximately 90 million people in this country. We are about 260 million, close to 270 million. Even if those are true, and I do not question it. The gentleman who told me seemed to know what he was talking about, so I accept his version of this. But we are talking about one incident out of 90 million people. So I find it a little difficult to think that this is a very major problem at the moment. But some will ask, is not desecrating the flag obnoxious, abhorrent and offensive to most, and yet it is within our right? You bet. I find it just as obnoxious and abhorrent as any person possibly can, but I try to look beyond that. I said before, if I was present when somebody started to burn a flag right there, I have no doubt whatsoever I would join the many others here, and the galleries, who would take whatever action to stop it, physical or however we had to do it. But then you have to think beyond this. Do we want to change the Constitution of the United States and take even a chance of something that is 1-in-a-90 million shot of our citizens doing something like this, if that is the number from this year? Of course, desecrating the flag is offensive. It is offensive to the vast majority of Americans. Almost everybody. But that is precisely the reason we have a first amendment, to protect the kinds of political expression that are offensive and out of step with majority opinion in this Nation. The majority opinion said that we should not have civil rights in certain parts of this country. We went ahead with it. That was a much more pervasive problem than this is. But you do not need a first amendment to protect the expression of political views with which everyone else agrees. That is not what we need the first amendment for. You need the first amendment to protect minority points of view that the vast majority of people disagree with. That is what the protection is all about, and that is what sets this country of ours completely apart from any other nation in the world. So I think we have to get beyond just the visceral gut reaction of someone burning a flag and think beyond that as to what the implications are if we take action against those poor, misguided souls that I truly do feel sorry for, for reasons I spoke about a moment ago. They deserve to be protected. I may not like it, but they deserve to have their rights protected as much as I deserve to have my rights protected. So the amendment is to protect minority points of view with which the vast majority of people disagree. Protecting the minority viewpoints against the tyranny of the majority is exactly the point of the first amendment and why the Founders only agreed to approve the Constitution with the understanding that it was to be included. It has often been said it is possible to detect how free a society is by the degree to which it is willing to tolerate and permit the expression of ideas that are odious and reprehensible to the values of that society. You and I and a majority of our fellow citizens find flag burning and desecration to be vile and disgusting. But we also find Nazis marching in Skokie, IL, or the Ku Klux Klan marching and burning crosses in Selma, AL, to be vile and disgusting. But if the first amendment means anything at all, it means that those cruel and poor misguided souls, many of them I think demented, have a right to express themselves in that manner, however objectionable the rest of us may find their message. But what about the argument that the first amendment is not and has never been absolute, that we already have restrictions on freedoms of expression and that a prohibition on flag burning would simply be one more? After all, it said freedom of speech does not extend to slander, libel, revealing military secrets or yelling ``fire'' in a crowded theater. That is true. To the extent that flag burning would incite others to violence in response does not constitute a clear and present danger, and that is what the Supreme Court has said in their language. That is their language. The difference here is whether it is a clear and present danger that we have every right to try to avert. But this argument misses a key distinction, and that distinction is that all those restrictions on free speech I just mentioned threaten real and specific harm to other people, harm that would come about because of what the speaker said, not because of what the listeners did. To say that we should restrict speech or expression that would outrage a majority of listeners or move them to violence is to say that we will tolerate only those kinds of expression that the majority agrees with, or at least does not disagree with too much. That would do nothing less than gut the first amendment. What about the argument that flag desecration is an act and is not a form of speech or expression that is protected by the first amendment? Well, I think that argument is a bit specious. Anybody burning a flag in protest is clearly saying something. They are making a statement by their body language, and what they are doing makes a statement that maybe speaks far, far louder than the words they may be willing to utter on such an occasion. They are saying something, just the same way as people who picket, or [[Page S 18279]] march in protest, or use other forms of symbolic speech are expressing themselves. Indeed, if we did not view flag burners as something we find offensive and repugnant, we surely would not be debating their right to do so. Let me say a word about something that has gotten short shrift in this debate, something we should consider very carefully before voting on this amendment. I am talking about the practical problems with this amendment. Let us say we pass it, the States pass it, it becomes an amendment, and we change the Constitution. Then what a nightmare we would have enforcing it. First off, we are going to have 50 different interpretations. There is not going to be just one Nation on the Constitution or on the Bill of Rights anymore. There are going to be 50 little interpretations of what is in that Bill of Rights. I do not want to see that happen. But if Congress and States are allowed to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag, how precisely are we defining the flag? We do not have an official flag, as such, with an exact size, type, kind of ink, dyes, fabric, and the whole works. There is no official flag, as such. So does this amendment refer to only manufactured flags of cloth or nylon of a certain size or description, such as the ones we fly over the Capitol here and send out? I send out dozens of those every year, and I am very proud to do it. There is no official flag, so what size are we talking about? Does it refer to the small paper flags on a stick we hand out to children at political rallies or stick in a cupcake at a banquet? Those flags are often tossed on the floor or in a garbage can at conclusion of an event. I really do not know. I am asking these questions here. How about back in 1976 when we had the bicentennial? At that time, they were selling flag bikini swimsuits for women and boxer shorts for men. I remember seeing a rock concert one day, and at that time it was an abhorrent thing to me. The guy is strumming away on his guitar, and all at once he takes his pants off on the stage on that great occasion because he had flag shorts on underneath. How about bikinis? Should we permit flags to be worn as bikinis? We know they get soiled once in a while, too. Think of that. I do not want to use all these improper words in the Senate Chamber, but do we want someone possibly urinating on the flag of the United States, worn as shorts or a bikini? I do not. I find that abhorrent. But are we going to restrict that? I probably would like to restrict that, I can tell you. How are we going to define this as to what happens? How about the guy who jogs down the street with a flag T-shirt on and becomes drenched with sweat? I do not like that, but is it desecration? He is probably proud that he is wearing the flag. How about a guy that has an old flag with grease all over it, and he wants to destroy it. You are supposed to burn it to destroy a flag. So he holds it up and he is going to burn it and then he says at the same time, ``I am doing this because I do not like the tax bill they passed last year, and I am doing it in protest. I am burning the flag because I do not like what they did in Washington.'' Are we going to lock him up? Remember, the proper way to destroy a flag that is old or has become soiled is to burn it. But what if he does it in protest? What was his intent? Every lawyer will tell you that the toughest thing to prove is intent. We could go through example after example after example. We have a postage stamp now that has a flag on it. I was proud when they did that. I wrote a letter complimenting the Postmaster General for that, putting that on every piece of mail going out through the country, to remind people that we have a flag of the United States that stands for something; it stands for principles. What if you take a postage stamp flag and put a match under that thing and it burns up and you say, ``There,'' and you stomp on it? Can you be arrested under the new legislation? I do not know what the courts would do in a case like that. We can go on with all kinds of examples here of how this would be very difficult to administer, and it would be subject to 50 different interpretations. I might be able to do something in Ohio, and I drive across the Ohio River to Kentucky, West Virginia, or Pennsylvania and the same thing might be illegal. I could be arrested for doing something across the river, if we are going to have 50 different State interpretations along this line. So I come to the floor today to say that I think--and I regret having to feel that this amendment should and must be defeated, but I really feel that the dangers from it far outweigh the threat that we have to the flag from those 1 in 90 million, if the figures are correct, Americans that have burned a flag in protest this year, as I was told yesterday. I had been told there were no examples this year, but it was corrected, and I was told there were three certified examples of flag burning. That means 1 for every 90 million Americans. Is this something we need to correct as a major problem for this country with an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, which guarantees the freedom of speech and of expression in the Bill of Rights? It was not going to be signed by the States unless that was included. They felt that strongly about protecting the freedom of people to express themselves. I think history and future generations alike will judge us harshly, as they should, if we permit people who would defile our flag--or whatever disrespect they pay to the flag, whether they were stomping on it, or burning it, or using it as clothing, or whatever--I think future generations will think that they defiled our flag, but we do not want to let them hoodwink us into also defiling our Constitution, no matter how onerous their acts may be. It would be a hollow victory, it seems to me. We must not let those who revile our freedoms and our way of life trick us into diminishing them, or even take a chance of diminishing them. Mr. President, I do not think we can let the passions of the moment stampede us into abandoning principles for all time. My gut reaction is that if there was a flag burning or desecration here, or somebody showed disrespect for the flag, it would be the same for the Presiding Officer and everyone in this Chamber and all those in the gallery here--we would probably take our own physical action to stop it right here and now. But then we had better think about, before we take action, what that Bill of Rights means and how precious it is. In all 200 years, we have never made a single change to it. This Nation was not founded until that provision was included in the Constitution. They would not sign it unless that first amendment was included. If we are going to continue to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, I think we had better be very, very careful. We pledge allegiance to the flag, and that is not an official Government document. Something came up and it became adopted as sort of a pledge of allegiance. We say, ``I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands,'' and we reel that off sometimes at a dinner, while we are looking at our steak and waiting for the dinner to get started, and we think, Well, OK, and we sort of reel those words off and do not think about them. The rest of that pledge we should think about. I think it does tie in with this. Then we say those words ``one nation.'' We pledge that we will be one nation. These are the principles our flag stands for--one nation. We are going to stand before the rest of the world not as North and South, East and West, black and white, Republican or Democrat. We will be one nation before the rest of this world, and every single person is important, and we will be in every part of this country, and we will be one nation, a nation of might, a nation of resolve. One nation--not split up with 50 interpretations of the Constitution, 50 interpretations of the Bill of Rights for different parts of the country. The next words are truly unique. I have traveled all over the world and looked at government documents all over this world and never seen the next two words anywhere--``under God.'' We say, whether we are Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist, Baptist, Presbyterian-- as I am--or whatever you are, we recognize there is a higher power than all of us. If we just pray and listen a little bit--listen a little bit--maybe we will get enough guidance about how to go about helping this country in the future. [[Page S 18280]] It is under God; not just under getting money, not just under the greed of power, not just under a single standard of enforced religious beliefs which are also covered in that very first amendment of the Constitution. Our religious beliefs are not to be imposed by those that think that they, and only they, know and hold the truth. We sure have enough of those around these days. ``Under God.'' Pray a little, listen a little, and maybe we will get some guidance. Then we say ``indivisible.'' Not rich against poor, young against old, workers against owners, but indivisible. We stand before the rest of this world as an indivisible nation. Then we say words which I have not found anywhere else in the world, six almost magic words--``with liberty and justice for all.'' ``For all''--underline that in our discussion today--``for all.'' Liberty of what? Of course, liberty of opportunity. Sure, we want to see everyone have an opportunity. We want everyone to get a good education. We want much to have a fair shot at a good job and all the other things that we know about. It is not just for a favored few. It is not just for the rich and the wealthy and the land owners. It is for everyone in this country. And the protections are for everyone in this country. It is not just for those born to power and privilege. That first amendment talks of this. It says we will be free in our religion; we will be free in our speech, including ``expression'' which we are talking about today; we will be free in our assembly; and we will be free in redress of our Government. ``With liberty and justice for all''--liberty of opportunity and liberty of expression of those freedoms without any question for every single person--for all. Then we say ``and justice for all.'' That means equality. We are all equal, whether you are President of the United States or you are outside digging a ditch, you have the same protections, the same rights as any other person in this country. It does not say ``except'' in the case where there are 90 million and one goes astray we will penalize that guy and lock him out. It does not say that. I think that is a dream for which America still strives. We do not have a perfect society, not by a long shot. We have a long way to go, whether we are talking about civil rights or economic fairness in our country or the rights of every kid to get a decent education. We have so far to go. I am so proud of this country for addressing these problems. We are willing to stand up and address them and do it in an open forum. We do it every day here on the Senate floor. Where else in the world are people so concerned about the rights of every single individual in their nation--nowhere else in this world. Take the pledge. ``I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, one nation''--we will keep it one nation, under God. You bet. That is something unique in this country. We say there is a higher power, whatever our approach to that throne of grace may be. ``Indivisible''--we will not do things that tear our Nation apart and make us live under different rules. We will live under the same rules as much as we can. ``And with liberty and justice for all''--the liberty of opportunity, the liberty of sameness, how we are treated by our Government, and the justice of equality. Thank God for our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. I thank my colleagues for their insightful remarks on this important topic. I believe what we are really talking about here is maintaining the ability of the judiciary to address issues of particular importance to that branch of government. And bias is certainly such a topic. The judiciary is in the best position to determine whether this topic merits study or educational activities. And I believe the judiciary should be given the flexibility to do so. The Judicial Council of the Sixth Circuit, which includes my home State of Ohio, felt strongly enough about this issue that it has approved the formation of a task force on gender fairness and a task force on racial and ethnic fairness.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I want to address the situation we face in professional sports at the moment. What I am introducing today is a bill we call the Fans Rights Act. I believe we truly are at a crossroads in professional sports. When we talk about professional sports and introducing legislation, obviously the first question is why on Earth do we want to get the Government involved in professional sports? Keep our mitts out of that area. Stay away from it. We have no business getting into the area of professional sports. Yet, I would say that we are into a situation now that I think is very important. I think it is important for the country. It does involve professional sports. Why get Government involved? Professional sports, the way they are organized, do have to come to Government for antitrust exemptions and for permission to use broadcast money for various purposes and spread across interstate--a whole host of things where Government does, indeed, get involved. Beyond that, Americans are sports minded. Part of the fabric of the daily life of the United States is looking at the ball scores, looking at the scores on the weekends, and watching the professional sports teams operate. I think Senator Specter, at a hearing we had yesterday, put it well when he said, ``America has a love affair with professional sports.'' Indeed we do have a love affair with professional sports. We even have sports idols, of course, that are the role models for many of our young people. It goes into the whole fabric of this country. I will not belabor that idea any further. The shock waves of the Cleveland Browns' proposed move to Baltimore extend far beyond just the State of Ohio. Every community with a professional sports team needs to know this: Any city in America can fall victim to a bidding war in which the interests of loyal fans and communities are given very little consideration. Quite simply, if it can happen in Cleveland, where loyal fans supported the Browns through thick and thin, then, Mr. President, it can happen anywhere. Other communities may have been willing to grin and bear it, but in Cleveland, we are drawing a line in the sand and we are here to say that enough is enough. The new economics of sports is a zero sum game in which teams seem to bounce around the country and taxpayers too often are left holding the bag. Unfortunately, professional sports leagues, like the NFL, actually have little ability to regulate the movement of their own member teams. They cannot enforce their own bylaws that franchise holders agree to when they become members of the league. There is no process involved to allow a community to have any protection or input before such moves. A team simply picks up and goes, leaving behind fans, businesses, and a community that has invested vast emotional and financial support. Judging by the barrage of reports during football games each Sunday on nightly hockey broadcasts or in the sports pages each day, it would seem to lead us to believe that almost half of America's sports franchises are looking for greener pastures. Let me run through just a few of the things being considered right now. In Texas, the Houston Oilers have announced they are moving to Nashville. In Florida, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are rumored to be moving up to Orlando. The Chicago Bears are considering an offer to move over the border to Gary, IN. If that is not confusing enough, this past weekend various NFL commentators reported that: The Buccaneers will end up in Cleveland with the Browns' name; The Buccaneers will end up in Baltimore and the Browns will be sold; The Oilers transfer is not a done deal; and Both the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals are talking about relocating to Los Angeles, which lost both its teams in moves before this season. Does anyone find it ironic that the Cardinals are talking about relocating to Los Angeles to replace the Rams who moved to St. Louis to replace the Cardinals after they moved to Phoenix? No wonder the sports fans find it tough to even follow those moves. These are the people we are concerned about, not just those in the skyboxes. We are talking about the average American whose family has supported a franchise through season tickets, parking fees, T-shirts, and paraphernalia through concessions for decades and decades and decades, because it is those people who are the true fabric of American sports. It is those people who are truly hurt when a flagship team like the Browns threatens to leave town. We are here today to say that it is time to give a voice to the fans of America. That is what the Fans Right Act we are introducing today is all about. I think the league knows they have a basic problem. We have talked to Commissioner Tagliabue about this, and actually the league does not have control over where these franchises go even though their own bylaws say that a vote of the league owners will determine where the teams go. The problem has been that a few years back one of the owners decided to move anyway, even though the league had voted against him, on a move of the Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles, in effect thumbing his nose at the league when they voted that he could not move. He was taken to court. The league lost, and there was about a $50 million penalty assessed against the league, even though their own bylaws that the owner had agreed to said that the league could control the move. That is the situation we find ourselves in. Let me hasten to add that this is not an antiowners bill in any way, shape, or form. It does not prohibit the owners from making money. It does not limit the amount of money they can make. It does not stop them from cutting the best deals they can with their host cities. It does not even bar them from moving their teams to the other locations if there are good reasons for doing so. But it does require them to play by the rules that they themselves set and vote upon. It lets the league have the final say whether a transfer will be made or will not be made. Right now the league does not have that authority because it has been taken to court and shown that they did not have it. I realize that professional football, like all big league sports, is a business. It is a big business. But a business is comprised of its owners, its workers, and its customers. Team owners have rights. They do not hesitate to enforce them. Team players have rights, and they do not hesitate to enforce them either. The third part of that is I believe the team customers--the fans--have some rights also, and that is what this addresses. I say it is time that we help them enforce those rights--not just in Cleveland but all across this great country. If it were just one move, well, all right. I would doubt that would be the subject of any legislation here on the floor of the Senate. But, as I indicated earlier, this has become a basic problem in professional sports, and we are trying to address that problem. So while we recognize that professional sports franchises are clearly business and we must consider profit, we also believe Congress should take a number of steps to, in effect, help the league in its ability to control the destiny of the league. That is a power they do not now have. It gives them the power to increase stability and ultimately preserve the integrity of professional sports. Let me turn to some of the details. We accomplish the first by providing sports leagues with a very narrow, limited exemption to antitrust laws if the league has voted to block a move. Let me read that again. We accomplish it by providing sports leagues with a very limited antitrust exemption if the league has voted to block a move. This exemption would say that if the league prevails, they could not be taken to court in a situation like that. And the exemption would shield sports leagues from the likes of the $50 million antitrust lawsuit that we saw the Raiders win in the 1980's and from the types of lawsuits the NFL is currently fighting in court. What we are trying to do is let them run their own business but do it fairly. Yesterday, at a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, Commissioner Tagliabue asked for such an exemption so that the NFL could enforce its own bylaws. I discussed this with him in my office several weeks ago when I had written him a letter and told him what I was thinking about doing and the proposal we were about to make. So today we propose that Congress give the NFL and other sports leagues the legal ability to block the move of a team if they think it is not in the best interest of their sport. By law, we will require that these leagues abide by their own bylaws, which currently take into account fan loyalty and community support, their own bylaws that some owners see fit to not go along with even though they have agreed to those bylaws when they accepted the franchise in the league. Second, our legislation would also require that teams give communities at least 6 months' notice before a relocation can occur. This would allow communities facing a team relocation the opportunity to put together bona fide offers to purchase the team or induce it to stay. The sports league would be required to take these efforts into consideration as it considers a team relocation. And it would require a hearing so that people like Mayor Mike White in Cleveland and Art Modell, the owner of the Browns, could sit down together, with Cleveland and the Nation watching, and publicly discuss whether it is such a great idea for the Browns to leave Cleveland and what the reasons are for leaving. Third, our bill has a fair play clause. It says to owners thinking about moving their teams that no longer can they give a so-called relocation fee to the league, which I understand may be even distributed to the other owners before their vote, before the league votes on whether or not they should relocate. This is something Mayor White has talked a lot about, and my colleague, Senator Mike DeWine, made a strong case for it in yesterday's hearings and at a press conference we had this morning. I know he will make his own statement on that shortly. He is on the floor now. But there are two things you can say about it. First, it is just plain fair, and it makes sense to put that kind of a limitation, a fair play clause, in there. This bill sends a very clear message to the league and to the owners. ``We are giving you the tools that you yourselves have said you need to put your house in order. We are giving you authority to enforce your own bylaws that you all agree to and say you will play by. Congress does not want to run your business.'' I do not want to be involved in running the business out there. I think this legislation is much needed so that it can bring some order to what is a rather chaotic situation in the league now. I hope that this will be looked at very, very carefully at the January 17 meeting of the league in Dallas, which I believe is their current schedule. I believe this legislation, simple though it is, can fix the problem. It can fix the problem. Make no mistake, there are far harsher proposals out there that Congress may be inclined to consider. I know the distinguished Senator from Washington, who is in the chair right now and is the Presiding Officer of the Senate, has proposed some legislation in the past and has had experience with this in his home State in getting a team to stay and in setting up conditions that go along some of this same line. I know he feels that programs do not go far enough in what we are proposing here and has said so publicly this morning. So I am not telling tales that were private conversations of a day or two back. All I am pointing out is that there are harsher proposals out there. I do not want to see Congress forced to take these harsher steps, these tough steps. I would rather see the league take this authority we are giving them now and act on it, control their own league, and get on with the business of making sure that everything is very fair. Baseball has its own set of problems, of course, and there have been proposals in the past to take the antitrust exemption away from baseball. But the one thing to say about baseball is they have had authority to keep teams where they were and to not just float teams around willy-nilly, all over the United States. I was told this morning that it has been 24 years since a major league baseball team moved, that the new teams we have in the league are expansion teams. I have not checked that out, but I guess that is correct. It indicates that if you have authority to go ahead and run the league and to pass on the franchises and where they will be, there can be some stability. I will be introducing separate legislation which would allow a community to keep the team name in the event of a relocation. That will not be part of this legislation I have just submitted today. But the team name in the event of a relocation would remain, and the community could waive this right if it wishes to do so. I am working with Congressman Hoke in the House and Senator DeWine on that bill, and it will be introduced separately at a later date. I cannot think of any football team or any sports team for that matter that has enjoyed more loyal and fervent support from its community than the Cleveland Browns. Week in and week out, whether their record might be 13 and 3, or 3 and 13, just the opposite, over 70,000 fans regularly pack Cleveland Municipal Stadium to show their support to the Browns. At the hearing we had yesterday, Senator Thurmond, who was chairing the hearing, talked about how in his home State of South Carolina there is a loyal band of Cleveland fans, ``dawgs'' as we call them around Cleveland, as they call themselves, and the ``dawg pound,'' as they call the area where this particular group always sits in Cleveland Stadium, and Senator Thurmond said they have 800 South Carolinians who are loyal Cleveland fans and meet every time there is a Cleveland game. I told him then I had not been aware that we have a remote dawg pound, as we call it in Cleveland, down in South Carolina. I relate that only to indicate the loyalty of Cleveland fans all over the country. So this move cannot take place because anyone thinks there has been a lack of fan support or lack of fan interest in the Cleveland area. Mr. President, with this legislation, we say to fans in Cleveland and across the country, any sport that boasts it is played in America and made in America, as football has been termed, should be operated fairly in America also. So I think once again we are at a crossroads in professional sports, and I think this legislation will take us down the right path from that crossroads. Let me just say for all of you outside of Cleveland who may be listening, it happened to us in Ohio, in Cleveland, and it could happen to you. I think the legislation we are proposing today will go a long way toward giving the National Football League the ability, the legal ability, which they do not now have, to control their own league. It gives them the legal ability, and I think they will use it judiciously and properly and stop some of this turmoil of disruption that we see in the league right now, the way it has been operating in the last few years. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I send a bill to the desk. I ask it be properly referred.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I want to address the situation we face in professional sports at the moment. What I am introducing today is a bill we call the Fans Rights Act. I believe we truly are at a crossroads in professional sports. When we talk about professional sports and introducing legislation, obviously the first question is why on Earth do we want to get the Government involved in professional sports? Keep our mitts out of that area. Stay away from it. We have no business getting into the area of professional sports. Yet, I would say that we are into a situation now that I think is very important. I think it is important for the country. It does involve professional sports. Why get Government involved? Professional sports, the way they are organized, do have to come to Government for antitrust exemptions and for permission to use broadcast money for various purposes and spread across interstate--a whole host of things where Government does, indeed, get involved. Beyond that, Americans are sports minded. Part of the fabric of the daily life of the United States is looking at the ball scores, looking at the scores on the weekends, and watching the professional sports teams operate. I think Senator Specter, at a hearing we had yesterday, put it well when he said, ``America has a love affair with professional sports.'' Indeed we do have a love affair with professional sports. We even have sports idols, of course, that are the role models for many of our young people. It goes into the whole fabric of this country. I will not belabor that idea any further. The shock waves of the Cleveland Browns' proposed move to Baltimore extend far beyond just the State of Ohio. Every community with a professional sports team needs to know this: Any city in America can fall victim to a bidding war in which the interests of loyal fans and communities are given very little consideration. Quite simply, if it can happen in Cleveland, where loyal fans supported the Browns through thick and thin, then, Mr. President, it can happen anywhere. Other communities may have been willing to grin and bear it, but in Cleveland, we are drawing a line in the sand and we are here to say that enough is enough. The new economics of sports is a zero sum game in which teams seem to bounce around the country and taxpayers too often are left holding the bag. Unfortunately, professional sports leagues, like the NFL, actually have little ability to regulate the movement of their own member teams. They cannot enforce their own bylaws that franchise holders agree to when they become members of the league. There is no process involved to allow a community to have any protection or input before such moves. A team simply picks up and goes, leaving behind fans, businesses, and a community that has invested vast emotional and financial support. Judging by the barrage of reports during football games each Sunday on nightly hockey broadcasts or in the sports pages each day, it would seem to lead us to believe that almost half of America's sports franchises are looking for greener pastures. Let me run through just a few of the things being considered right now. In Texas, the Houston Oilers have announced they are moving to Nashville. In Florida, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are rumored to be moving up to Orlando. The Chicago Bears are considering an offer to move over the border to Gary, IN. If that is not confusing enough, this past weekend various NFL commentators reported that: The Buccaneers will end up in Cleveland with the Browns' name; The Buccaneers will end up in Baltimore and the Browns will be sold; The Oilers transfer is not a done deal; and Both the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals are talking about relocating to Los Angeles, which lost both its teams in moves before this season. Does anyone find it ironic that the Cardinals are talking about relocating to Los Angeles to replace the Rams who moved to St. Louis to replace the Cardinals after they moved to Phoenix? No wonder the sports fans find it tough to even follow those moves. These are the people we are concerned about, not just those in the skyboxes. We are talking about the average American whose family has supported a franchise through season tickets, parking fees, T-shirts, and paraphernalia through concessions for decades and decades and decades, because it is those people who are the true fabric of American sports. It is those people who are truly hurt when a flagship team like the Browns threatens to leave town. We are here today to say that it is time to give a voice to the fans of America. That is what the Fans Right Act we are introducing today is all about. I think the league knows they have a basic problem. We have talked to Commissioner Tagliabue about this, and actually the league does not have control over where these franchises go even though their own bylaws say that a vote of the league owners will determine where the teams go. The problem has been that a few years back one of the owners decided to move anyway, even though the league had voted against him, on a move of the Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles, in effect thumbing his nose at the league when they voted that he could not move. He was taken to court. The league lost, and there was about a $50 million penalty assessed against the league, even though their own bylaws that the owner had agreed to said that the league could control the move. That is the situation we find ourselves in. Let me hasten to add that this is not an antiowners bill in any way, shape, or form. It does not prohibit the owners from making money. It does not limit the amount of money they can make. It does not stop them from cutting the best deals they can with their host cities. It does not even bar them from moving their teams to the other locations if there are good reasons for doing so. But it does require them to play by the rules that they themselves set and vote upon. It lets the league have the final say whether a transfer will be made or will not be made. Right now the league does not have that authority because it has been taken to court and shown that they did not have it. I realize that professional football, like all big league sports, is a business. It is a big business. But a business is comprised of its owners, its workers, and its customers. Team owners have rights. They do not hesitate to enforce them. Team players have rights, and they do not hesitate to enforce them either. The third part of that is I believe the team customers--the fans--have some rights also, and that is what this addresses. I say it is time that we help them enforce those rights--not just in Cleveland but all across this great country. If it were just one move, well, all right. I would doubt that would be the subject of any legislation here on the floor of the Senate. But, as I indicated earlier, this has become a basic problem in professional sports, and we are trying to address that problem. So while we recognize that professional sports franchises are clearly business and we must consider profit, we also believe Congress should take a number of steps to, in effect, help the league in its ability to control the destiny of the league. That is a power they do not now have. It gives them the power to increase stability and ultimately preserve the integrity of professional sports. Let me turn to some of the details. We accomplish the first by providing sports leagues with a very narrow, limited exemption to antitrust laws if the league has voted to block a move. Let me read that again. We accomplish it by providing sports leagues with a very limited antitrust exemption if the league has voted to block a move. This exemption would say that if the league prevails, they could not be taken to court in a situation like that. And the exemption would shield sports leagues from the likes of the $50 million antitrust lawsuit that we saw the Raiders win in the 1980's and from the types of lawsuits the NFL is currently fighting in court. What we are trying to do is let them run their own business but do it fairly. Yesterday, at a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, Commissioner Tagliabue asked for such an exemption so that the NFL could enforce its own bylaws. I discussed this with him in my office several weeks ago when I had written him a letter and told him what I was thinking about doing and the proposal we were about to make. So today we propose that Congress give the NFL and other sports leagues the legal ability to block the move of a team if they think it is not in the best interest of their sport. By law, we will require that these leagues abide by their own bylaws, which currently take into account fan loyalty and community support, their own bylaws that some owners see fit to not go along with even though they have agreed to those bylaws when they accepted the franchise in the league. Second, our legislation would also require that teams give communities at least 6 months' notice before a relocation can occur. This would allow communities facing a team relocation the opportunity to put together bona fide offers to purchase the team or induce it to stay. The sports league would be required to take these efforts into consideration as it considers a team relocation. And it would require a hearing so that people like Mayor Mike White in Cleveland and Art Modell, the owner of the Browns, could sit down together, with Cleveland and the Nation watching, and publicly discuss whether it is such a great idea for the Browns to leave Cleveland and what the reasons are for leaving. Third, our bill has a fair play clause. It says to owners thinking about moving their teams that no longer can they give a so-called relocation fee to the league, which I understand may be even distributed to the other owners before their vote, before the league votes on whether or not they should relocate. This is something Mayor White has talked a lot about, and my colleague, Senator Mike DeWine, made a strong case for it in yesterday's hearings and at a press conference we had this morning. I know he will make his own statement on that shortly. He is on the floor now. But there are two things you can say about it. First, it is just plain fair, and it makes sense to put that kind of a limitation, a fair play clause, in there. This bill sends a very clear message to the league and to the owners. ``We are giving you the tools that you yourselves have said you need to put your house in order. We are giving you authority to enforce your own bylaws that you all agree to and say you will play by. Congress does not want to run your business.'' I do not want to be involved in running the business out there. I think this legislation is much needed so that it can bring some order to what is a rather chaotic situation in the league now. I hope that this will be looked at very, very carefully at the January 17 meeting of the league in Dallas, which I believe is their current schedule. I believe this legislation, simple though it is, can fix the problem. It can fix the problem. Make no mistake, there are far harsher proposals out there that Congress may be inclined to consider. I know the distinguished Senator from Washington, who is in the chair right now and is the Presiding Officer of the Senate, has proposed some legislation in the past and has had experience with this in his home State in getting a team to stay and in setting up conditions that go along some of this same line. I know he feels that programs do not go far enough in what we are proposing here and has said so publicly this morning. So I am not telling tales that were private conversations of a day or two back. All I am pointing out is that there are harsher proposals out there. I do not want to see Congress forced to take these harsher steps, these tough steps. I would rather see the league take this authority we are giving them now and act on it, control their own league, and get on with the business of making sure that everything is very fair. Baseball has its own set of problems, of course, and there have been proposals in the past to take the antitrust exemption away from baseball. But the one thing to say about baseball is they have had authority to keep teams where they were and to not just float teams around willy-nilly, all over the United States. I was told this morning that it has been 24 years since a major league baseball team moved, that the new teams we have in the league are expansion teams. I have not checked that out, but I guess that is correct. It indicates that if you have authority to go ahead and run the league and to pass on the franchises and where they will be, there can be some stability. I will be introducing separate legislation which would allow a community to keep the team name in the event of a relocation. That will not be part of this legislation I have just submitted today. But the team name in the event of a relocation would remain, and the community could waive this right if it wishes to do so. I am working with Congressman Hoke in the House and Senator DeWine on that bill, and it will be introduced separately at a later date. I cannot think of any football team or any sports team for that matter that has enjoyed more loyal and fervent support from its community than the Cleveland Browns. Week in and week out, whether their record might be 13 and 3, or 3 and 13, just the opposite, over 70,000 fans regularly pack Cleveland Municipal Stadium to show their support to the Browns. At the hearing we had yesterday, Senator Thurmond, who was chairing the hearing, talked about how in his home State of South Carolina there is a loyal band of Cleveland fans, ``dawgs'' as we call them around Cleveland, as they call themselves, and the ``dawg pound,'' as they call the area where this particular group always sits in Cleveland Stadium, and Senator Thurmond said they have 800 South Carolinians who are loyal Cleveland fans and meet every time there is a Cleveland game. I told him then I had not been aware that we have a remote dawg pound, as we call it in Cleveland, down in South Carolina. I relate that only to indicate the loyalty of Cleveland fans all over the country. So this move cannot take place because anyone thinks there has been a lack of fan support or lack of fan interest in the Cleveland area. Mr. President, with this legislation, we say to fans in Cleveland and across the country, any sport that boasts it is played in America and made in America, as football has been termed, should be operated fairly in America also. So I think once again we are at a crossroads in professional sports, and I think this legislation will take us down the right path from that crossroads. Let me just say for all of you outside of Cleveland who may be listening, it happened to us in Ohio, in Cleveland, and it could happen to you. I think the legislation we are proposing today will go a long way toward giving the National Football League the ability, the legal ability, which they do not now have, to control their own league. It gives them the legal ability, and I think they will use it judiciously and properly and stop some of this turmoil of disruption that we see in the league right now, the way it has been operating in the last few years. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I followed with great interest the comments made on the floor today, and on previous days, regarding the President's speech this evening on the situation in Bosnia and our potential participation in that effort. I have said all along that I thought the odds were stacked against a peace agreement that we could work on and that had sufficient detail to enhance the likelihood of doing some good in that troubled area of the world. We do, however, have an agreement that has been hammered out in Dayton. We should look at several things with regard to the agreement and what happens after the agreement. I said all along--and I say again today--the agreement must be specific in its detail. You cannot draw a line that is not exact. We cannot go over there and put our people in harm's way and find out later that something was not agreed to or that a line was not agreed to, or was not marked out closely enough. We must know precisely what we are protecting and who we are keeping apart. That kind of detail appears to have been worked out in Dayton. Today we got a copy of the Proximity Peace Talks. In this, they specify that we will use 1,000 to 50,000 scale maps and charts. This will define the lines down to within 50 meters. Local commanders enforcing the truce within those areas will get together with the local people to define it even down below that 155 or 160 feet that would be the 50 meters. That is a pretty good definition of road intersections and road routes, and all are listed here; they are well defined. We want to see this carried out. It appears that we are well along the way toward defining the agreement in its initial phases. The final agreement that will be signed in Paris--not just initialed--will even go into more detail, as I understand it. So the first requirement of a peace over there, and for our participation in it, or even considering American participation in it, is to see that we do have that agreement signed with as much detail as possible. Now, a second requirement is a tough one. That is, a cease-fire has to have taken place and be in effect. That sounds great. Some may think that the military commander puts out word and the cease-fire occurs and that is it. That is not the way it works in that Balkan area. We were briefed on our trip there several weeks ago. One of the big problems over there is that 20 to 50 percent of the people in combat over there are not the regular troops that receive commands down the military chain of command. They are what are called the ``irregulars,'' those who have a village they have been used to defending. They may have a rifle, and one man may be mowing hay one day and he decides it is his turn to protect whatever they are protecting. He then relieves another fellow and maybe takes the same rifle. That other man then goes back and cuts hay for a while. They take turns. Those irregulars that have interests in particular local areas have been the primary reason why the more than 30 cease-fire agreements have failed in the last couple of years. Over 30 agreements have failed because the irregulars are not really taking their orders from anyone. Once they start firing, other firing starts, and the whole thing breaks down again. So these two things must be in place before we can even consider sending Americans in there. One, the agreement must be worked out defining [[Page S 17539]] very, very specifically the borders of what belongs in one jurisdiction and what belongs in another. The second is that the cease-fire has to have actually occurred, and that includes the irregulars. The Proximity Peace Talk agreement document says: ``The parties also commit themselves to disarm and disband all armed civilian groups, except for authorized police forces, within 30 days after the Transfer of Authority.'' The definition of the lines is in another section. It says the lines will be ``accurate to within approximately 50 meters. During the period in which the IFOR is deployed, the IFOR commander shall have the right to determine, after consultation with the parties, the exact delineation of such lines and zones, provided that with respect to Sarajevo the IFOR commander shall have the right to adjust the Zone of Separation as necessary.'' They were able to hammer this out and get all parties to initial this agreement, and we hope to have the signing in Paris before too long. Why is it necessary that we go in at all? If they are willing to go to this length and say we agree we are all tired of war and that is the reason they have come as far as they have--we are tired of war and do not want to fight anymore. We are tired of the killing, tired of seeing people killed, and over 250,000 people have been killed. We are tired of seeing 2 million refugees floating from one place to another. They want peace. You may ask if they want peace that badly, why can they not just stop fighting? Well, they have a long history, going back several hundred years, of not trusting each other and not fully trusting the people in Europe either. But they trust the United States. To our credit, they trust us, and so we can be a party for good in that part of the world, if we want to be. And if the agreement is signed and if a cease-fire has taken place, then we can keep these irregulars, which I defined a moment ago, from breaking the peace within the 2- to 4-kilometer-wide area between the previously warring parties. They want peace. If we can help implement it, it seems to me that we can do a great service by doing that. Secretary Perry described yesterday, once again, the fact that we would not fight our way in. I heard comments on the floor today about whether we are to create peace or not. We are not there to create peace. We are not there to take one side or the other or carry anybody's battle for them. We are there to maintain a peace that will have been established before we move in, with the agreement signed by all parties and with a cease-fire actually having occurred--or we do not go in. We can help them achieve this peace because the parties trust us as long as we are involved. We did not fight our way in. We establish our separation zones, and we move into those separation zones. Local violations of the agreement will be met with a preponderance, an overpreponderance of force, as we were briefed by our military commanders in Europe while on our trip just weeks ago. This is not the U.N. rules of engagement. This is not debating and asking for permission to retaliate if fired upon. As it was described to us, if anyone fires on the forces in there, the implementation forces, they will be met with return fire of overwhelming support. Now, say someone changes their mind about this, which has been in the paper the last couple of days. Say any of the participants that initialed the agreement change their mind and say they now believe it is a bum deal, and ``we will not go on with what we initialed in Dayton.'' In that case, our participation is not going to occur. It is that simple. We are not there to go in and fight somebody's war for them. We are there only to help implement a peace that they have said they, themselves, want and that they have initialed in Dayton, and we would only go in after the final signing in Paris. Any general attempt at breaking the agreement would mean that we would not stay. We are not there to fight anybody's battle or establish peace throughout the Balkans by military action. We are there only to help separate the combatants for this 1-year period while they can see the benefits of peace more than the war that has gone on there for far too long. Let me put our involvement in a little bit different light. I believe a little risk now--and there is a little risk--may enhance our long- term leadership toward freedom and peace around the world, and in the long run, perhaps, even save lives. I think those who question American participation could well ask, why did we keep our troops in Korea at the end of the Korean war? Because we have been able to maintain peace in that area. How about the Middle East? We are very much involved in the Mideast. I know we have a good percentage of our population of Jewish heritage, and they are particularly interested in that part of the world, but I think our interest goes well beyond that and we have tried to get a Mideast peace because we care. We are a nation that wants to see peace. We do not like to see one nation fighting another. We are interested in the Mideast and the peace process there. We have pursued it for years and years and years. We accept that as part of the American way of doing good around the world, of putting into real terms our Christian-Judeo heritage of which we are so proud. Mr. President, Americans want to alleviate suffering. We never want to see people being killed or hurt or one nation pitted against another. Granted, we cannot take on all the world's problems, nor should we try. Any time we move outside the confines of our own country, whatever the purpose is, we do take some risk. There would be some risk in this situation, of course. I do not want to minimize this, but we take a little risk when we get up in the morning and get out of bed, I guess every time we take an airplane out of a hangar and fly it. Yet, we are willing to take that risk for the good that may come from it. Have we taken any risks in the past? I imagine if we had a vote here in the Senate today as to whether we would want to keep the Peace Corps in operation, we would find that the Peace Corps would be rather popular. There would probably be no votes against ending the Peace Corps because it has done a lot of good around the world. But how many lives have been lost in the Peace Corps by people overseas killed in accidents or shot or catching some disease? They were put at risk because they went overseas. Do you know how many there are? We have lost 224 people that have died overseas in the Peace Corps. Yet we do not say, pull the Peace Corps out because we have lost people overseas. We would not do that. Another issue that has repeatedly been raised is the fact that our leadership in NATO is very important. It is. As important as that is, I personally do not think we would go into Bosnia-Herzegovina just because our NATO allies say we should go in. ``So, America, you lead our way into that area.'' If they were going in some other area we thought was not right, I doubt we would want to rush in and be their leader just to show we are part of NATO. Too many American people, I think, do not have appreciation of NATO, though. Too many people in our country see NATO as a remnant of the cold war and not of the good things that NATO has done. It has been the most successful peacekeeping operation in the history of this world. At the present time, it is adapting under their own impetus with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, cooperating with the European Union, with the Partnership for Peace, which is in its fledgling status right now, and the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, which came into being in 1991. NATO has taken part in all of these things and is a tremendous benefit for peace in the world. We could even say that we have had economic benefits. Europe is an economic entity and is now one of three major economic centers in the world: Europe, Japan, and our own country. The main point here is the tragedy and suffering in Bosnia. All parties are war weary. There is now a framework for peace with a detailed agreement. If a cease-fire can come into place, we can move in and help stop what has been a tinderbox over the years and that helped trigger World War I. We do not want to see that ever happen again. Old enmities die hard. It is very complicated. There are ethnic, religious, patriotic feelings in that area where [[Page S 17540]] they do not trust each other. They trust us to come in and try and help implement peace in that area. This is one of the first times in history I think we have ever seen a superpower--and we are the world's superpower--that had no ulterior motive, that had no territorial designs, and would help to spread the benefits of democracy and freedom around the world. This is a place where, with perhaps little risk, we may enhance the long-term benefits toward freedom and peace that will literally save lives. I do not think we can withdraw from the world. We cannot withdraw to our own shores and take an isolationist stance. We can work for peace in that part of the world. I am thankful that we have not withdrawn from the rest of the world. We can be involved for good. To those who say we are off on another do-gooder mission around the world, I think we should take pride that we have a heritage of trying to do good, of trying to alleviate suffering, of trying to stop conflicts such as this one. We are a powerful nation that cares--truly cares about other people and what happens around the world. We care when 250,000 people have been killed. We care on a personal basis. We have empathy for the people there who have lost children, husbands, fathers, mothers, wives. Two million refugees. So we care. If we are to have leadership for the future, this is an opportunity for us to do what we have done historically, to care for other people. Obviously, we cannot take on everything in the world. But, here we can help to maintain the peace. We stayed active around the world after World War I. We stayed active after World War II and helped form the United Nations. We stayed active in Europe in partnership in NATO. Because of that alignment of the United States along with other nations, we have a world, now, which looks much more peaceful into the future than it did just a few years ago. I would say thank God we have a nation like the United States, a superpower, that truly does care about the suffering and about the tragedy of what is going on in a place like the Balkans. Thank God we have a nation like the United States, that wants the benefits of peace and cooperation for everyone. And thank God, if the conditions are right, if the agreement holds, and if the fighting has stopped, we are willing to take the risk that will have to be taken if we are to do much good in that part of the world. I look forward to President Clinton's speech this evening and his assessment of the situation. I believe that we want true, long-term peace in the world. I think we are a force for peace and freedom and taking the small amount of risk to enforce the peace will be worth it. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, earlier today Bosnia was discussed on the floor here. I wish to make a few remarks in that regard in the time allotted in morning business, because I think there is a great deal that is misunderstood about the peace process and our involvement in it and what our relationship is to the talks going on in Dayton. When we talk about the House, they had a lot of discussion in the House, and, of course, they had their vote over there, against any involvement in this or against going in militarily. But what has to be agreed to before we even get involved in any way, what has to be agreed to, is a complete peace agreement. It has to be agreed to, and not only agreed to but the firing has to have stopped before we move in. There are those who, apparently, assume we are going to have to fight our way in to establish peace and establish a peace as Tito did during the only period in modern history where there has been peace in Yugoslavia. That was a militarily imposed peace on the whole country. That is not the kind of peace we are talking about. There have to be two conditions met. First, there has to be an agreement. It has to be airtight. It has to be extremely detailed. It has to define exactly what the borders are. It has to define exactly which town is in what sector and what they have agreed to and signed up and said will be the new formation of those cities, those newly emerging countries in that area. So that agreement they are trying to work out in Dayton right now has to be in that fine a detail. It cannot be just a peace agreement that says we will move in and we hope we can establish peace. ``Yes, United States and NATO, you come and we know this will all work out.'' It is not that kind of agreement they are working toward. If I thought it was that kind of agreement, I would not be supporting this process whatsoever. What they are talking about is a very, very detailed agreement-- specific borders. Will this orchard be on this side? Whose territory will it be in? Will the next farm be in somebody else's territory? Will the road junction be in whose territory? That is the kind of detail they are trying to work out on huge maps out there in Dayton. I would say, it will be uphill at best that there will be any agreement coming out of that. I am still of the opinion that it is probably 60-40 against our ever being involved over there, because I doubt the parties will be able to come to that kind of definitive outline on a map as to who has what in their territory. It has to be that way or we should not get involved. Second, the firing has to have stopped. The firing has to have ceased. Obviously, the next question is, then, if they have that kind of commitment to peace, which they say they have, and that is the reason they are in Dayton talking, and they have come to a definitive peace agreement and firing has stopped, why does anybody need to go in? We were over there recently, just 1 month ago this weekend. Four weeks ago this weekend I was part of the Senator Stevens' Codel over there. We were briefed by our military leadership and by our people and U.N. people in Zagreb and Croatia. We flew into Sarajevo for a period of time, along with 21,000 pounds of peas on a C-130, and out again. We spent about half a day, which does not make us experts in that area, but it was interesting to see it, anyway. Then we came back through Brussels and talked to our Ambassadors there. But, when we were there, what we were so impressed with was there is a desire for peace. That is what has started this whole thing. The parties themselves say they are tired of war. The parties themselves say they want peace but are unable to get it. If we have the agreement and we have the cease-fire, why do we need to go? Here are the facts we were told while we were over there. It is estimated that about 20 to 50 percent of the people involved in the fighting there are what they call the irregulars. They are not people who are part of a regular, organized military militia that accepts commands from above or from Belgrade or anyplace else. They are people who are the irregulars. They are the farmers who are out cutting hay one day. They go up to the lines, up to the next village where there is a battle going on, they take a rifle from someone, they are in the lines for 3 or 4 days while someone else goes back to cut their hay. They are the people who, in the 30-some cease-fires that there have been over there so far, they are the ones who have violated the cease-fire because they basically do not take orders from anyone in particular. So the firing starts again, it spreads, and we have had 30- some cease-fires that have not worked. The fighting starts again. What is contemplated, and what our role would be over there--if we go in, if there is the airtight agreement, if the firing has stopped--then there would be zones set up between the parties along these borders, well-defined borders, where there would be 2- to 4-kilometer width areas in this that would be patrolled or would be monitored by the NATO forces, of which we would be about one-third of the total NATO force. I do not see that as being bad in that situation. Now, if there is firing by these irregulars or anyone else, we would put it down immediately. We would hope, because of the massive show of force we are putting in there, there would be no firing. If there is, it would be put down and put down immediately. It would be by NATO rules of engagement, not the U.N. rules of engagement. They are more of a debating society than anything else. But NATO rules of engagement say if you are fired on, you can obliterate that source. I asked General [[Page S 17448]] Joulwan, would we be permitted to take out anybody who fired on any of the NATO forces? Absolutely. That is key to the whole thing. Will there be any risk? I suppose there is. We have already had three people killed over there when we had Frasure, Kruzel, and Drew, who were in a vehicle that slid off the road and they were killed in the wreck. That is tragic. Our hearts go out to their families on this. I knew one of the gentlemen, Mr. Kruzel, in particular. It is a terrible thing that anybody is killed in a situation like this. But will there be any danger of accidents like that, or maybe somebody getting killed? There might be. But I would also point out we do not withdraw the Peace Corps from overseas, and the Peace Corps in its history has had 224 people who have died overseas. I was surprised it was that high a number. I would have thought it would have been a very, very few, but the Peace Corps lost 224 people so far, to this date, since its inception. Like the old saying in aviation, ``How do you have complete, 100 percent aviation safety? You keep all the airplanes in the hangar. You do not risk them.'' Yet we know how much good we have done around the world by being involved to some extent. We have a Christian-Judeo heritage of helping people, alleviating suffering around the world. We supply food, we send out AID programs. Of course, we cannot solve all the world's problems, either with peaceful organizations or with the military. But I think an American leadership in the world has been such a force for good, I would hate to see us go back to trying to be an isolationist America. I repeat once again, we have to have an agreement, airtight. The firing has to have stopped. Then we go in with minimal risk, with our NATO allies, to try to keep that peace that has been eluding them so far, basically because of the irregulars who do not honor these cease- fires. Our leadership is important. We restored democracy in Haiti. In the process of doing that, of leading, we have been involved in bringing peace to the Middle East, working on it in Northern Ireland, we see Russian nuclear weapons are no longer aimed at our people. We secured the indefinite extension of a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which was a big step forward. We achieved real progress toward a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. We reached an agreement with North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program. These are products of American leadership, and that is just a little, partial list. We have seen democracies growing in South America because of our involvement there. I think the risk over there, in that Bosnian area, if it is done pursuant to a well-thought-out agreement and a cease-fire, and we go in with a preponderance of force that people understand is going to be used if they break the peace and if they fire--to me is well worth the risk. Much has been made out of the fact that we want to provide leadership for NATO. I agree with that. I think our membership in NATO is very important. But that is not just the reason why we go in. That is pointed to, sometimes, as the reason we go in, in effect saying, ``There go our NATO people. We better rush out and lead them, because we are the biggest factor in NATO.'' I will not agree with that. NATO has to be right. Let us judge this on whether it is right to go in, or wrong to go in, and try to get peace in that area where peace has not taken root for so long, and where some of the actions that have happened there in the past have literally been the sparks that set off two world wars. So, if we can bring peace to that area, to me it is well worth the risk. NATO leadership, I think, is, important, and NATO has been looked at by too many Americans, I believe, as just some sort of a remnant of the cold war, and let us forget it and move out of NATO. Is it still important? I do believe NATO is important. It is important. NATO leadership is what is moving us into the organization for security and cooperation in Europe working with the European Union. We have a Partnership for Peace, which is in its fledgling days but becoming more and more important. The North Atlantic Cooperation Council was formed in 1991. That is moving ahead, and really is a good force for peace in that part of the world. We are the biggest factor in NATO. I think it is important that we retain that. But I do not see our leadership of NATO as just being the only reason we should move into that particular area. I know my time is up. Do not forget for 1 minute that we have to have an airtight agreement. We have to have a cease-fire, and on that basis we move in to try to give peace a chance in that very, very tough area of the world. I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I wanted to comment on Senator Grassley's concern. His concern is very well taken about the fact that we have an inadequate accounting system over at the Defense Department. But let me carry it beyond defense also. We also have an inadequate accounting system across all of our Government. Governmental Affairs worked on this going back about 7 or 8 years in the late 1980's, and for the first time--it is unbelievable that up until 1990 there was no requirement in the Federal Government to do a bottom-line audit at the end of the year. Some departments did it. Some agencies did it. Some did not. The Defense Department was one that basically did not. We put through a Chief Financial Officer Act; arcane, people did not even show up at hearings because it was such a boring subject. But once we passed that act, as Charles Bowsher, head of the GAO, said, it was probably the ``best financial management act that we passed around here in the last 40 years,'' to quote his words. Over in Department of Defense, they are trying to get that under control. But back in the years before that we would not even give them the money to do the upgrades on computers, and so on, to manage their equipment, manage their accounts. I have been out to the DFAS Center, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, and have gone through what they go through on trying to decide whether to pay a bill or not. Do you know what they are doing? They go from an office, and they go down the hall to a warehouse. They go down a long line of hundreds of thousands of manila envelopes, folders on metal racks, bring those files back, and lay them out on the table to decide. Yes, we will pay this, or not that, or something else. That is the way much of this work has been done. They are making great strides. They have even contracted some of this out. [[Page S 17163]] I have been out there. I think we are making great strides and John Hamre deserves a lot of credit for taking this on. Have we solved the problems yet in the time period to 1990? No, we have not. So we do not have the problem solved yet. But we are making progress. Meanwhile, I can quote horror story after horror story about how contractors have sent back in $700 million they said we had not sent bills in for, and things like that. I wanted to add my support for Senator Grassley's concern. I share his concern. I just want everyone to know that we are making progress in this area. I do not think we will have it by the end of next year, as Senator Stevens said. It is still a big job over there to get done. We are making a lot of progress in this area. We never required that until 1990.

Mr. GLENN. I misunderstood. I am sorry.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I wish to talk for a few minutes about the debt ceiling bill, what happened to it, and an amendment that was on it when it came to the floor. First, I want to make a couple of comments so that the public will understand exactly what this is all about. In general terms, we are talking about the balanced budget. There is not a soul in this Chamber, elected or otherwise, who would not agree that we want a balanced budget. I certainly agree with that. The question is, how do we get to that? We, on the Democratic side, were concerned about this back 2 years ago, in 1993, when we passed the President's proposal for the budget. There was a lot of difficulty passing that. It meant the committee chairs, of which I was one, had to go through and analyze everything to meet the objectives that were assigned as part of the debt reduction process. We did that. That was in the summer of 1993. The budget deficit at that time was running right at $300 billion a year and going up. What happened? We passed a $500 billion deficit reduction program and it was tough. We passed it without one single Republican vote--not a one. In the Senate, it was a 50-50 tie vote and the Vice President broke that tie. There were all sorts of dire predictions from the other side. I can remember some of the debate here. ``We are going to see millions unemployed. If this passes, it will be a terrible bill. Everything bad is going to happen.'' What happened? We were running right at $300 billion a year at that time. Last year, it went down to $246 billion, and now down to about $192 billion. We were on the right path toward a balanced budget. For the first time since Harry Truman we have had a reduced budget deficit 3 years in a row. So it has been working. We went from $300 billion to $246 billion to $192 billion. The problem is--and I am critical of our own administration and the Democrats and everybody else for not taking action that will keep that trend going. Instead of leveling off we should be trying to further reduce those annual deficits and keep us on the right track. It is not as though we have seen things run away in the last 3 years. I think the President deserves a lot of credit. He is not getting much from the other side, of course. The people over in the House in particular, some of the leadership over there just dismiss the fact for 3 years in a row, the first time since Harry Truman, we have had declining deficits. What has happened now? As part of this so-called Contract With America, they want to give a $245 billion tax break as a crown jewel. We are giving a $245 billion tax break, and the figures are that almost half, a little over half of that goes to people already making $100,000 a year. When I point that out to people back home in Ohio, they are incredulous that we could be permitting that to be considered, whether the cuts come from Medicare, Medicaid, education, or environmental protection. Basically, those are not areas that the American people want to give up and say that we are just going to whack with a two- edged sword, or swing machetes back and forth and whack those programs. The American people do not agree with that. So we have come to an impasse. We can put up with it for a few days. However, I understand that Speaker Gingrich told his staff in the House as reported on CNN about an hour and a half ago, that we could look forward to maybe 90 days of this. I hope that he is not serious about that because, if he is, this will get far beyond just being a domestic problem in the United States of America. We are the leading world currency. We are the leading economy in this whole world. And if ever there begins to be doubt and if ever there begins to be lack of trust in the good faith and credit of the United States of America around the world by letting this impasse run 90 days, we are in deep trouble. Everybody wants a balanced budget. As I understand it, what we are down to now is they said to the President, ``Well, we will agree to provide a clean continuing resolution if you will agree to a balanced budget over 7 years using CBO assumptions.'' I understand that the President agrees that we are going to balance this budget, the real question is how. The President, as I understand it, made an offer back that said, ``Well, OK, let's make it 7 to 10 years,'' using mutually agreed upon economic assumptions. And they turned it down. He has to come up with 7 years or else. That is just flat ideological blackmail. There is no other term that you can put onto it. I think this has gotten to be a bit ridiculous.

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

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, now to get down to a specific. We had two continuing resolution limit proposals yesterday in which we proposed a straight, clean spending extension to go to the President--nothing else on it, no amendments. Government gets back in operation and away we go, and that is it. There was objection on the other side to that. The debt ceiling question is very simple. Everyone knows that a debt limit extension is must legislation. You have to have it or everything else in Government stops. So everyone is aware that there is a lot of pressure toward getting that through. There is a lot of pressure on the President to sign it, and that is why it attracts amendments, because people believe if they can just get their pet amendment, whatever it may be, hooked onto this thing, it can become law without all the protective mechanisms such as hearings, open debate on the floor, perfecting amendments, and consideration of all the long-term impacts and all the other things that we normally have to consider. So people know that when you have a debt limit extension that is must legislation. What happened? We have no better example of the contempt with which the legislative process has been treated in recent days than the way in which the so-called regulatory reform bill was attached to the debt ceiling by the House Republicans without any hearings whatsoever, without any analysis, without adequate notice to the minority. A 112- page nongermane amendment was brought to the House floor and attached to the debt limit bill--112 pages. It was done with such haste that at least three versions of the amendment were circulating Thursday morning, November 9, the day of the debate and the vote. The day before, on November 8, the chief sponsor of the amendment had inserted one version into the Congressional Record. It was that version to which my remarks on November 9 were addressed. Revisions to the amendment were being made so close to the time of introduction on the House floor that the chief sponsors themselves misstated an important provision of the amendment. They referred to the definition of ``major rule'' and said it was defined in the amendment as one costing $75 million per year. In the amendment, the cost is $100 million. This is not a small point. Cost-benefit analysis of major rules is a huge undertaking that can result in documents--we were told in testimony before the Governmental Affairs Committee--reaching over 100 feet of shelf space just for one rule. So this is not something that is lightly considered. I do not know which number the House sponsors think is the correct one, since $100 million is in the amendment, but $75 million was mentioned by both key sponsors. Are their remarks in error, or is the number in the amendment a typographical error? We do not know. That should not surprise us. The night before, on November 8, the bill that was given to the House Rules Committee was 132 pages long and defined a major rule with a threshold of $50 million. The next day at 10 a.m. it was about 20 pages shorter, though still hefty, and defined a major rule with a threshold $75 million. That was the second version. Then, the third version appeared at about 2:30 p.m. after debate on the amendment had begun, and defined a major rule with a threshold of $100 million. No wonder the sponsors were confused. But that confusion did not stop the House Republicans from ramming the bill through with minimum debate. Well, since the President was going to veto the debt limit bill anyway, we agreed to let it go through the Senate, and I spoke about one version of this amendment on the Senate floor that night. I can tell you that if I thought this regulatory reform bill was going to become law, I would still be here talking these many days, almost. I feel that strongly about it. Mr. President, I have now examined the version that passed the House, and it turns out that my comments of November 9 require no major revision. I claimed that the amendment had a supermandate. They changed the language, but the supermandate is still there. How do I know that? Well, besides reading the language, I have the word of the chief sponsor, Representative Walker. In describing the amendment, he stated that current statutory standards can be ``superseded--the so-called supermandate''. Let us be clear about what that means. It means that 25 years of health-based environmental standards for clean air and clean water could be overturned if this amendment became law. Representative Walker also describes his amendment as ``not as tough as the House bill, nor as loose as the Senate bill''. That is one way of putting it. Here is another. The original House bill, H.R. 9, was as reactionary an antienvironment, antihealth, and antisafety legislative instrument as I have seen during my entire 20 years in the U.S. Senate. The Senate bill referred to is the Dole-Johnston bill, S. 343, which is a seriously flawed bill that has failed three cloture motions in the Senate this year. So, according to the chief sponsor of the amendment, the amendment is a cross between the reactionary H.R. 9 and the not-so-moderate version of S. 343 that failed on three cloture votes. Is this a moderate compromise? No, it is not. It is an example of what we can expect in a conference with the House on regulatory reform if we go into it with a Senate bill like S. 343. I think the Walker amendment is extreme. It is reckless, extreme in the burden it places on agencies to defend themselves from the unlimited litigation that would be unleashed by the judicial review provisions of this amendment. It is reckless in the jeopardy that it causes our laws concerning health, safety, and the environment. We passed it in the U.S. Senate and sent it as part of the debt limit bill over to the President. It is a good thing that he vetoed it. Mr. President, I am for regulatory reform, but not at the expense of the health and the safety of the American people. I worked hard all year with both Republican and Democratic colleagues to produce a moderate bill, and we came within two votes of passing it. I am still interested in producing a moderate bill that provides real regulatory reform but owes its provenance to no special interest group, and above all protects the American people. I am for a balanced budget, too. I am for all the things we are trying to do to get the Federal Government on the right track for the American people. But this game playing that is going on, that is largely coming from the House with literally poor and onerous pieces of legislation hooked on as amendments to an essential bill like the debt limit; this is something we cannot tolerate. The President was absolutely right to veto that bill, and I think we can still pass legislation here to benefit all of the American people. We can still do that in this Congress but not if the legislative process is treated with the literal contempt that has been evinced this past week by the way in which reg reform was attached to the debt limit bill. I thank my colleague for yielding, and I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. I thank my distinguished colleague from New York. I will be brief because I know the hour is late, but I cannot help but comment on one part of this debt limit bill that came over to us, and that is on regulatory reform. I am somewhat dismayed, Madam President, to report that the debt limit bill passed by the House contains an amendment by Representative Walker that, if enacted, could end up removing the protections for the American people on health and safety and the environment that have been painstakingly built up over decades. The amendment takes up 13 pages in the Congressional Record, new proposals, many of them, sprung on us, being introduced over there, just came out in the Record today, not time enough to really analyze these things, and purports to be a regulatory reform bill. It is not regulatory reform. It is regulatory dismantlement. It is regulatory elimination. The amendment does contain all the buzzwords associated with reg reform like cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, judicial review and the like. But this amendment is not meant to reform anything. It is, in fact, an extremist approach to regulation. And I do not use that word lightly. It is an extremist approach to regulation that would overturn existing environmental law and tie up in endless litigation the agencies whose missions are to ensure we have clean air, clean water, and safe food. Madam President, the documented deaths of innocent children and adults from E. coli poisoning that would have been prevented if there had been tough standards and regulation provides stark and deadly evidence of what the stakes are with respect to this issue. I am in favor of regulatory reform, fought for it, fought for it in committee, fought for it here on the floor, as all my colleagues will remember. And I worked hard in committee and on the floor to get a reasonable regulatory reform bill before the Senate. We passed a reasonable bill out of the Governmental Affairs Committee with more Republican support than Democrats because it was a unanimous vote of our 8-7 committee. And on the floor we almost passed it. It got 48 votes. But this amendment, the Walker amendment, is not reform. The Walker amendment borrows from the original House bill that many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle could not stomach either. They did not like it either. It also borrows from the Dole-Johnston bill that we debated for weeks, which is a seriously flawed bill itself. The Walker amendment contains, for instance, a supermandate that the proponents of the Dole-Johnston bill said they were opposed to. That provision would override existing health, safety, and environmental laws by prohibiting the issuance of health-based standards that may not meet harsh cost tests. The Walker amendment would make it difficult to issue health-hazard assessments and would create new defenses for lawyers to use to prevent enforcement over Federal health and safety laws. The Walker amendment would repeal the difficult Delaney clause without providing any appropriate substitute. Finally, the Walker amendment contains judicial review provisions that are applicable to the detailed procedural steps of the amendment that amount to a lawyer's dream. The lawyers' full-employment bill is what this Walker bill should be called. And anyone concerned about tort reform would find the judicial review procedures in this amendment truly a nightmare. Madam President, when the Dole-Johnston bill was being debated both privately and on the floor, it was frequently claimed that if the Senate passed a moderate reg reform bill, the House would go along with it in conference. Well, the Walker amendment certainly gives lie to that idea. It gives us a measure of the validity of that claim. The House in this case took a not-so-moderate Senate bill which is seriously flawed in many respects and could not resist turning it into an extremist proposition. I use that word not ill-advisedly. It is an extremist proposition that is riddled with special interest provisions harmful to the American people. Madam President, I repeat, I want reg reform, but not at the expense of the health and the safety of the American people or of the environment. There is no justification for the Walker amendment, particularly on this particular debt limit bill that is so important. If it survives in the Senate, the President will just have to veto the debt limit bill on this ground alone, and we will fight that battle another day. I reserve the remainder of our time.

Mr. GLENN. Madam President, I rise in strong opposition to dismantling of the Commerce Department as part of the debt limit. First of all, as a matter of process, the debt limit should be kept clean, and strictly limited to its purpose--to provide the Federal Government legal authority for a specified period so that it can meet its debt obligations. We should not be considering Commerce dismantlement as part of the debt limit. Nor should it be part of some ``catch-all'' bill like the continuing resolution or reconciliation bill. In taking this action, I believe that the republican majority is engaging in a high-stakes poker game where the fate of our economy and the Federal Government's ability to pay its debts is being wagered in an effort to win the prize of shutting down the Commerce Department. This is precisely the type of political brinkmanship that leaves the American people with such a sour taste about Congress and about government. It is completely and utterly irresponsible to use the threat of a Federal default to force the shuttering of a Cabinet Department. This proposal represents a total perversion of the legislative process. I also object to it on substantive grounds as well. We live in a economically inter-dependent world--a world in which trade and technology--the two primary missions of the Commerce Department--are playing an increasingly important role. I am a strong supporter of the current Commerce Department for those reasons. We need a strong advocate for U.S. business at the Cabinet table, and I believe that Secretary Brown has been very effective in playing that role. During the 2 days of hearings before the Committee on Governmental Affairs, he was praised by both Republicans and Democrats alike for his performance. The Majority even notes in the Committee report that Secretary Brown ``has received high marks for his active promotion of American exports.'' Under his leadership, the Commerce Department has been transformed from a bureaucratic backwater into an export promotion dynamo. For example, the Wall Street Journal reported just over a month ago how he and the Department made an all-out effort to secure a $1.4 billion contract in Brazil for a consortium of U.S. companies. If you ask the executives in those companies, they will tell you that they would have lost that contract to foreign competition if it had not been for the personal efforts of the Secretary. The Department spends about $250 million a year in trade promotion, which in 1994 yielded $20 billion in exports for U.S. companies. That amount supports about 300,000 U.S. jobs. The Department's International Trade Administration has done an outstanding job back in our home States--it has a network of 73 U.S. offices and 130 offices overseas-- and ITA estimates that for every taxpayer dollar it spends on export promotion, $10.40 is returned to the Federal treasury through tax revenues generated by exports. Also, the Department has very capably assisted the USTR in our Uruguay Round and NAFTA trade negotiations on issues ranging from auto parts, to textiles, to international copywrite law. Not surprisingly, these efforts, combined with a sound Clinton administration economic policy, have helped lead to a 17 percent increase in U.S. exports for the first 5 months of this year. We are entering the information age, spurred by rapid changes in information technology. It is an exciting time. The private sector is leading the way into the information economy. And that is as it should be. But are our colleagues aware that the Federal Government established the first computer information network? It was developed by the Department of Defense and was called the ARPAnet. The ARPAnet was the predecessor to today's Internet. In so many other areas of technological advancements that we readily take for granted, the Federal Government took the initial role of funding the R&D for technologies that later ended up powering our economy and improving our way of life. The Commerce Department is playing a key part in this development. NIST's Advanced Technology Program has been funding R&D in a cooperative partnership with the private sector to develop the technologies of tomorrow. The National Telecommunications Information Administration has been providing grants to develop the National Information Infrastructure, the so-called Information Superhighway. And the Technology Administration is coordinating interagency R&D on building the automobile of the 21st century. But this measure rejects the approach in investing in the technologies of the future by cutting and terminating a number of technology programs. These cuts and terminations reflect 19th century ``know nothing'' or Luddite thinking, not 21st century wisdom and foresight. They disregard the fact that our most competitive industries, from computers to agriculture to aerospace, were developed with Federal R&D assistance. And they fail to recognize that Japan, our foremost competitor, is planning to double its non-defense R&D spending by 2000 and will surpass the U.S. in total nondefense R&D spending by 1997. I can imagine that Tokyo's leaders are raising toasts of sake as they watch us on CSPAN today. This is not to say that the Commerce Department could not be reorganized so as to strengthen its mission and improve its effectiveness. I have sponsored legislation in the past to reorganize the trade and technology functions of the Federal Government, to bring them together under one roof in a Department of Industry and Technology. However, I did not propose destruction of the Department and the scattering of its component parts. I am an advocate of looking at the need to restructure and reorganize the entire Federal Government, and to do it carefully and in an integrated way, not just on a piecemeal basis. That is why I favor the establishment of a bi-partisan commission to design the government of the 21st Century. The basic structure of the Federal Government really has not changed much over the last 25 years. And I do not believe its current structure reflects the changes that our economy and society has undergone recently. So it needs to be examined and a bi-partisan, expert commission is really the best approach to take. Two years ago the Committee on Governmental Affairs supported the creation of such a commission to submit legislative recommendations on restructuring the Federal Government that Congress would have to consider on a ``fast- track'' basis. I still support this approach, and I offered an amendment in markup to establish such a commission as a substitute to the Commerce dismantling bill. Unfortunately, that amendment lost on a party-line vote. If this legislation were about reorganizing the Commerce Department, or about implementing a rational downsizing plan for the Department, then I believe that we could work together with the majority to produce good legislation. But this legislation is not about reorganizing the Federal Government's trade and technology programs to better coordinate them and improve their efficiency. Nor is this legislation about a rational downsizing of the Department. That is underway now. The Department is reducing its 35,000 person workforce in line with the President's plan to reduce the overall Federal workforce by 272,000 positions by 1999. Under the leadership of the National Performance Review, the Department is examining the privatization of the National Technical Information Service, parts of NOAA, as well as other programs. It is phasing out the Travel and Tourism Administration and modernizing Census collection. What this debate is about is the elimination of a Cabinet Department for purely symbolic and political reasons. It is about tacking a hide on the wall, putting a trophy on the mantle. Further, this proposal applies a blowtorch to $1 billion worth of Federal agencies and programs in the Department, melts them down and terminates them. Agencies that survive will be hobbled by a large cut. [[Page S 16907]] Most of that cut will fall on NOAA, at $1.9 billion the largest remaining agency and the home of the National Weather Service. And we are considering these draconian cuts at a time when the Florida coast continues to be battered by hurricanes. That is just plain foolish. The House Bill also ends many of the Great Lakes programs important to the midwest. Further, both House and Senate Appropriations Committees have rejected such deep cuts in NOAA's budget. Those Committees also preserved the Economic Development Administration, recognizing its value to economically-distressed regions of the Nation, especially those that have been negatively impacted by base closing. Yet this measure terminates the EDA. This measure transfers some of the Federal Government's trade agencies into the U.S. Trade Administration, consolidations that I have supported in past legislation. But unfortunately these agencies are being transferred into an administration and not a Cabinet Department. When our companies are fighting for large government contracts overseas and are competing against a Team Japan, or a Team Germany, I think it makes a difference when the respective foreign government gets the call from a U.S. Cabinet Secretary, as opposed to a lower ranking administrator. In the Committee report on the Senate bill, the majority discusses how downsizing and streamlining has been taking place in the private sector. I believe that an examination of the restructuring undertaken by the private sector is relevant in this context. Independent studies of private sector restructuring efforts show that their success is a hit or miss proposition and depends on several factors. A 1993 survey of over 500 U.S. companies by the Wyatt Company revealed that only 60 percent of the companies actually were able to reduce costs in their restructuring efforts. Both the Wyatt Survey and a similar one conducted by the American Management Association concluded that successful restructuring efforts must be planned carefully with a clear vision of their goals and objectives, and that proper attention be given to maintaining employee morale and productivity. Otherwise, the costs of reorganization may outweigh its benefits. I believe that government reorganization is a complicated task that cannot be successfully accomplished without serious study and deliberation, especially if it is going to achieve the dual goal of improving government efficiency and reducing costs. That means Commerce reorganization should follow, not precede the recommendations of a bipartisan commission. We should not be reorganizing the Commerce Department first and then forming a government commission to restructure the rest of government, as has been proposed. That does not make any sense. My hope is that the majority will abandon its narrow focus on the Commerce Department and focus instead on the more important issue of reorganizing and streamlining the Federal Government to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Until then, I will continue to oppose this legislation.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Madam President, I will yield in a moment to the Senator from North Dakota, but I ask my distinguished colleagues who made the remarks about the trip and the President not being willing to discuss things, it is my understanding when that chart was made from people that were there, sitting with Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich, that the President was back half a dozen times or so, had lengthy discussions with him about things and was told that they still did not have their side together on some of these issues and did not want to discuss them. I was told that by a person who was present, right there, at the time. I think as far as the President not coming out of the White House, that is not true.

Mr. GLENN. Yes.

Mr. GLENN. I believe Senator Jeffords wished to give his statement. I yield to him without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. GLENN. The firsthand was a person sitting beside him at the same time. I yield to the Senator without losing my time.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I want to add my voice to those in opposition to the Istook amendment which the House has added to this continuing resolution. Advocates, if I can use that term, of this provision have clothed it in rather attractive language. It has been presented as ending ``Welfare for Lobbyists,'' as they call it. If this were truly the case, in fact, if this were a commercial product, I reckon that the FTC would be investigating it for false claims. It is a real misnomer. For one truly expert in this area, turn to the distinguished senior Senator from Michigan [Mr. Levin]. He and I spent many years on legislation to achieve real lobbying reform, which we finally passed this summer. That measure truly brings sunshine and accountability into the netherworld of lobbying by special interest groups. The public finally will be able to know who is paying what to whom to lobby Congress and the administration on which issue. Whether it is a dubious project or a special tax loophole. That is real and substantive lobbying reform. I find it curious that many of the proponents of the Istook amendment--and their outside allies--have been so strangely silent--almost invisible--about pushing this bill on the House side. If they had spent half as much time on true lobbying reform legislation as this assault on nonprofit and charitable organizations, dare I say this reform would have already been signed into law by the President. So while I do not doubt their sincerity, I do question their motives. One Member whose motives and sincerity I do not question is the senior Senator from Wyoming. I know that he has attempted to explore some of these issues through the committee hearing process, as it should be done. I also know that he has worked hard in trying to negotiate an acceptable compromise. The amendment offered by Mr. Istook will have a profound and chilling effect on the ability of nonprofit and charitable organizations to continue advocating on the behalf of people and issues. It will have a devastating effect on the whole nonprofit sector, particularly small community-based organizations. [[Page S 16884]] It will impose severe burdens and mounds of paperwork on nonprofit groups. This, at a time when we are asking them to provide more public services while we provide less money. ``Try to privatize things,'' so we are told here, yet we are making it more difficult to do exactly that. Again, I find it very ironic that many of the ardent proponents in this ill-conceived endeavor have been leaders in the effort to cut out regulatory red tape and reduce the costs of paperwork on businesses and industry. But for these nonprofits we will be creating more rules, more bureaucracy, and more court litigation. We will just drown them in a sea of paperwork and audits. This legislation is also unnecessary. It restricts the amount of privately raised funds a Federal grantee can use to do advocacy and lobbying. But current law already metes out harsh penalties if such Federal funds are used by nonprofits and charitable groups to pay for such lobbying activities. And my understanding is that there is no orchestrated pattern of such organizations misusing Federal funds to lobby. So if we peel away this veneer, it is not quite what you do with the money, it is what you say. And just maybe, who you say it to, which, in turn, raises a constitutional issue. For the Supreme Court has ruled it violates the first amendment to condition the receipt of Federal funds on relinquishing protected rights of speech. This amendment will have a chilling effect on the right of citizens--individuals and associations alike--to petition their Government. I also have concerns with the definition used for ``political advocacy.'' It is so broad that almost any public role assumed by a nonprofit or charitable group on an issue or matter before Federal, State, or local governments would be covered. Moreover, individuals receiving some form of public assistance--such as WIC, disaster relief funds, NIH research grants, LIHEAP grants, you name it--could also be regulated. Now if a Federal grantee spends more than the specified threshold on advocacy, it will be barred from receiving Federal grants. Grantees will also be limited in who they associate or do business with. They will need certification from all of their vendors that they--the suppliers--are within the specified limits on how they use their own money for political advocacy. Mr. President, it is my understanding that one of the original requirements which has since been changed in the amendment as now proposed would have sent some of the complaints over to GAO for further investigation. That in its original form points out some of the weaknesses in some of our budget cutting here today because you talk about the potential of sheer frivolous lawsuits, and one of the things they were going to do with the original version of this as the main enforcement mechanism was going to be through what could be called a bounty hunter provision where any citizen could have taken their complaints regarding the use of such funds by these organizations directly to an agency inspector general, or the General Accounting Office. While I want to point out in the original version of this we have already cut GAO by 25 percent in 2 years, at the same time we are going to assign them an additional tax. I know this has now been cut out. I wanted to point that out--that this is what we are doing in one piece of legislation after another; requiring some of these agencies to do more at the same time we cut their budgets. We have been dealing in complex, substantive, constitutional, philosophical, and policy terms. But where is the impact going to be felt the most? The impact will be on real people; people with real problems, people who need help, who need society's help the most. These are the people most vulnerable in today's world, and who will depend so much on the nonprofit groups for essential services as Federal funding gets slashed. I have received many letters from Ohioans on the Istook amendment. These are people helping the homeless, caring for the sick, providing shelter to abused women and children, and treating the mentally impaired. Listen to their voices. Hear their pleas, at least while they're allowed to make them known to us. They are on the front-lines-- we need their input, we need their help. Mr. President, their pleas are just heartrending, some of them. They are trying their level best to give people help, and this would cut back on their ability to do exactly that. Here is what they are saying: Ohioans Speak Out on Istook Amendment The Columbus YWCA Interfaith Hospitality Network has a volunteer base of over 7,000 individuals and 100 religious congregations attempting through grassroots efforts to provide comfort and short-term hospitality to homeless families. During 1994 we served over 2000 individuals of which over 1200 were children. We are concerned about our guests and their futures, and want assurance that our voices, and theirs, will always have the opportunity to be heard.-- YWCA, Columbus. Faith Mission is dedicated to providing life saving and live improving services to homeless women, children and men and anyone in need. People come to our door, at times, with nothing but the clothes on their back and are in desperate need of not only basic life support, (food, clothes), but also services to help them regain self-sufficiency and move on to become contributing citizens to their community. If this bill passed, Faith Mission would be restricted from effectively providing these services, like job referral, medical services, mental health care referrals and support groups from chemical dependency and domestic violence.--Faith Mission, Columbus, Ohio. Berea Children's Home and Family Services provides healing and nurturing care to over 8,000 children and families who reside in Ohio. These abused and neglected children have no public voice of their own. In addition to the therapy they receive from our residential treatment and in-home therapy programs, they look to us to also be their advocates. We will be unable to adequately serve these victimized children if the Istook Amendment is introduced in a Senate bill and eventually approved by Congress.--Berea Children's Home and Family Services, Berea, Ohio. Through the last several decades, an effective partnership has been built between government and private, non-profit organizations to address many of the social problems of the day. One of the major reasons this has worked has been the ability of non-profits to inform legislators about what programs work and advise them about more effective ways to address problems. With the severe budget cuts to social programs currently being considered and passed, churches and non-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less. We have a responsibility to not only serve, but to stand up for the poor and vulnerable. This plan appears to muzzle the concerns of many of your constituents.-- Catholic Charities, Diocese of Toledo. The amendment will restrict Family Services' ability to help community groups become politically active in regard to matters that would improve their neighborhoods and the community at large. We would not be able to discuss with legislators the need for funding of important service programs to pregnant and parenting teenagers, the deaf and battered women.--Family Services, Akron, Ohio. If these unprecedented restrictions go through, organizations like ours will be forced to choose between providing services to people in need and providing a voice for the people we represent. Vital community services will be jeopardized and government will be cut off from the insights of the very organizations that are closest people government is trying to serve.--Caracole, Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio. I fear that publicly funded agencies, which deal with issues of drug abuse, domestic violence, sex abuse, etc., will find themselves in positions where they will have to forfeit their ability to impact on future legislation or public interest litigation, because they received any federal funds, regardless of amount.--Mental Health Services East, Inc., Cincinnati. The Achievement Center for Children provides a comprehensive array of services for children with physical disabilities and their families. These children have already been dealt a difficult hand in life through no fault of their own. Their issues and concerns need to be heard and understood.--Achievement Center for Children, Cuyahoga County. Vital Community services could be lost because organizations would not be able to share their knowledge of people in need and types of services needed with legislators and others in the position to provide assistance. the Istook Amendment would impose restrictions only on federal grants which go primarily to non-profit organizations. It would not impose restrictions on federal contracts which go primarily to for-profit organizations. These corporations would continue to be able to lobby the government.--Alcohol, Drug Addiction, and Mental Health Service Board, Lima, Ohio. Every Woman's House realizes that the commitment by Congress to addressing the issue of domestic violence is meaningless if vital programs, such as those offered by our agency, are not funded. The Istook Gag Order may eliminate any political advocacy on any governmental level and make the acceptance of any federal money subject to stricter reporting requirements, therefore limiting the available funding to domestic [[Page S 16885]] violence agencies.--Every Woman's House, Wooster, Ohio. It is the small independent non-profit organization that does most of the social service work in your district. Almost all of them get some money from the federal government and depend on it to survive. Most are too busy trying to help people have time to communicate with you on a regular basis, but do work closely with local officials as collaboration among agencies and departments create private/public partnerships. These efforts would come to a halt if the Istook Amendment goes into effect.--Ohio Parents for a Drug Free Youth. Lobbying with federal dollars is already illegal and penalties for violating the rules are severe. Our organization is well aware of this. Nonprofit groups speak for the public interest and represent large numbers of ordinary citizens and vulnerable populations who lack the skill/resources to assert their basic rights. This type of legislation limits not just lobbying, but free speech as well. Indeed, we view it as an assault on the First Amendment rights we now enjoy.--League of Women Voters of Oxford, Ohio. As a parent of a 13 year old mentally retarded son who has no speech, I know how important speech is. Please do not take away my voice. I need to use it for my son's many needs and other children/adults like him.--N.K., Parma, Ohio. When Alexis de Tocquerville visited the United States, he marveled at the natural tendency of Americans to form voluntary organizations to carry out the will of the people. Our vast non profit system is the result of that tendency. The present Congress, in its mindless rush to take government out of involvement in society, looks to the non profit world to pick up the shattered pieces. And, now, through the Istook Amendment, that same Congress is trying to silence the very groups that society will need to depend upon to survive.''-- Cleveland Institute of Art. To be fair, I have received a few letters from Ohioans. I am always glad to have the benefit of their views, too, although in this particular case we do disagree. But I was struck by the fact that the vast majority of those supporting the Istook amendment indicated they were involved in the beer wholesale or retail business. Their letters were almost identical and so many contained the following phrase: Moreover, the Center for Substances abuse Prevention (CSAP), working with their Neo-Prohibitionist allies, regularly promotes political activism, pushes anti-beer wholesaler legislation at the federal, state, and local level, and they pursue these activities with taxpayer dollars. Mr. President, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention is under the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services. Yes, it is federally funded. But what does it do? It supports hundreds of nonprofit groups, financing after-school and summer activities for youths, counseling for pregnant women, drug-free workplace programs, education efforts and good-health workshops. It also offers training, manages a clearing house for prevention information, and develops anti-drug education and promotion campaigns. I happen to think this is a worthy goal, and one that most Americans heartily support. The ravages of drug and alcohol rip apart our families, break up marriages, and destroy lives. Real lives and real people. Whatever we can do to prevent such abuse and educate people-- particularly our young adults--should be encouraged. The Federal Government does have a legitimate role in this area. The key is to make sure alcohol products are used responsibly. I don't consider myself a prohibitionist and would oppose efforts to do just that. But in this particular case, what concerns me is the fact that some in the beer and alcohol industry fear that by promoting efforts aimed at moderation and responsibility, the Federal Government is a threat to their livelihood. Their ultimate fear is that first comes moderation, next comes prohibition. So the real interest here is how much they sell, the bottom line, and their overall profits. It is not about policy. I also have received a letter from the Mothers Against Drunk Driving [MADD]. That organization receives a small Federal grant from the Department of Transportation to conduct workshops on highway safety and impaired driving. They also get a grant from the Department of Justice for serves and assistance to victims of drunk drivers. Again, I would bet most Americans would applaud their efforts. But for some, apparently, the message is too much. They don't want to hear it. Why? Because MADD has been involved in State initiatives to curb drunken driving and tighten blood alcohol content levels for drivers. You would think this would be in the public interest--getting drunk drivers off the road and imposing harsh penalties. But MADD has attracted the ire of the beer and liquor industry. Let me quote from MADD's letter: MADD takes pride in the role we have played to combat drunk driving and serve its victims and we resent the suggestion that we have been the recipient of ``welfare for lobbyists''. Most of these so-called lobbyists have paid for the right for their voices to be heard with their blood and tears or the lives of their loved ones. Mr. President, I like free and fair debate. Let us make policy decisions on the merits and the public's interest. But what galls me even further is the fact not only were these industry groups--along with the Heritage Foundation and the Christian Coalition--spearheading the Istook effort, they were in the back rooms to write it. Talk about lobbying reform. According to an article in the November 8, 1995, Wall Street Journal, during one negotiating session the able senior Senator from Wyoming noticed these parties in the room and told them, appropriately, to get out, or at least words to that effect. I notice that these groups have worked with some of the primary House leaders who have been all too happy to attach individual, specific interest riders to appropriations measures. Is this how the game is gong to be played? Where is the real reform here? Who is doing whose bidding? Mr. President, This amendment is ill-conceived, constitutionally impaired, and just plain un-American. It will stifle the efforts of those on the frontlines who are trying to deal with so many of the tragic problems in today's society. We cannot run from those problems, we cannot pretend they do not exist, though I suppose there are some who who would like that. Let us help those who are helping those most in need by defeating this hostile, chilling, and burdensome amendment. Vote on Amendment No. 3049

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the bill. Along with many Ohioans, I oppose the large Medicare cuts contained in the reconciliation bill and am concerned about their impact on all Americans. Medicare and Tax Cuts This bill calls for a $270 billion cut to the Medicare program yet gives away $245 billion in tax breaks--which disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans. I find it alarming that in order to achieve a $245 billion reduction in taxes, we will slash services for seniors who choose to keep their current Medicare coverage. This enormous Medicare cut will not balance the budget because it goes for a $245 billion tax break. To keep its Contract with America, Republicans will break our thirty-year contract that has successfully helped older Americans. The lesson here is the old story so often reflected in Republican economics: those who have, get; those who do not, get stuck. The tragedy here is that this massive Medicare cut is unnecessary. We all know the 1995 Medicare Board of Trustees report projected that the Medicare Part A Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund will run out of reserves in the year 2002. However, the Trustees also reported that only $89 billion in savings are necessary to restore the trust fund's solvency through 2006. The budget plan before us, which was drawn up behind closed doors, achieves much of its $270 billion in Medicare savings by cutting spending in the areas of inpatient and outpatient services, home health, hospice and extended care, physician and ambulatory facility services, and diagnostic test and durable medical equipment. For the people in my home state of Ohio, this means there will be $8.9 billion fewer dollars for health care. For beneficiaries, this cut will mean increased premiums, deductibles and co-payments for Medicare Part B services--which include many of the services I just mentioned. And how are we paying for it? We are going to cut taxes. We squeeze $270 billion from the elderly so that we can turn around and give $245 billion of it away in tax cuts. Now we have heard a lot of talk about how this side of the aisle is just engaging in demagoguery and class warfare. They tell us their bill is not slanted toward the wealthy. They say that this bill distributes tax cuts equally, regardless of your income. But, the American people know better. They know that just because someone says it is so, does not make it so. The real horror story of this reconciliation bill lies in the numbers. And the numbers the other side has produced just do not add up. The numbers do not add up because not only does this proposal cut medical care for America's seniors, but it raises taxes on the working poor by gutting the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). So you need to factor in the Republican EITC tax increase when making any distributional comparisons. When you do that, you will find that people with less than $30,000 will actually be worse off, come tax time, under this plan. But very wealthy taxpayers would be big winners. The wealthiest 13 percent of taxpayers--those with incomes above $75,000--would receive 53 percent of the Senate tax cut. So the wealthiest 13 percent get 53 percent of the benefits. Those making more than $200,000 would gain an average of $5,088 per taxpayer in the year 2000. By contrast, those with incomes between $20,000 and $75,000 would receive an average tax cut of only $320. Medicaid The budget reconciliation's treatment of Medicaid is truly alarming. Republicans would repeal the current Medicaid program and turn it over to the states as a fixed dollar amount block grant--eliminating the safety [[Page S 16094]] net for more than eight million pregnant women, children, disabled and elderly Americans, and weakening federal nursing home regulations that protect the indigent and their families. The federal government and the State of Ohio currently share in the funding of the Medicaid program and provide more than 1.85 million poor, elderly and disabled Ohioans with physician, hospital and nursing home care. Under the Republican proposal, Ohio would lose nearly $8 billion in federal Medicaid dollars over the next seven years. To offset these cuts, Ohio would be forced to slash or eliminate health services for low-income families and seniors, divert resources from other important programs, or raise taxes. Many people do not realize that nearly 70 percent of Medicaid spending goes toward long-term care for the elderly and disabled. These recipients are mostly middle-class Americans who are not aware that Medicare and most private insurance policies do not cover long-term care. Many become eligible for Medicaid when they quickly deplete their income and assets after entering a nursing home where costs average $3000 per month. Republican proposals would have abolished laws that protect spouses from having to sell their homes and assets to pay for nursing home bills, but due to widespread opposition both the House and the Senate wisely voted to retain spousal impoverishment protection. However, the House version of the Republican Medicaid reform bill repeals federal standards for nursing home and institutional care. This plan repeals such essential standards as quality assurance systems, staffing requirements, restrictions on physical and chemical restraints, and nutrition guidelines. I was pleased to support a successful Senate amendment which provides for the continuation of federal nursing home regulations and I will urge conferees to maintain federal standards. I support efforts to control the growth of federal health care spending, but I do not believe that Republicans should balance the budget, and give tax breaks, at the expense of our nation's most vulnerable citizens. Reform of Medicare and Medicaid should concentrate on strengthening and improving these important programs, not on squeezing out the maximum amount of budget savings. Today, when millions of Americans face limited access to medical care and live with the fear that an illness or loss of a job will leave them without health care coverage and expose their families to financial ruin, I feel it is essential to expand, rather than limit, access to medical care. There has been a great deal of debate about priorities in the Senate. I am not convinced the plan before the Senate is a fair reflection of America's priorities. In fact, it is Robin Hood in reverse. This plan to take from the poor and give to the rich might make the Sheriff of Nottingham proud, but it will not balance the budget. Education The Republican budget cuts student loans by $10.8 billion. This makes it much harder for working families and their children to finance a college education. If these cuts became law, the school house door will be closed for many students willing but unable to afford a college education. Other students and their families will see their choices for an education narrowed. The Republican proposal increases the interest rate on PLUS loans taken out by parents. The interest rate on parental loans would increase by 1 percent. Families considering PLUS loans are mostly working middle-income who make too much to qualify for full scholarships but not enough to write a check for tuition. The six-month grace period for graduating students would be eliminated. Interest would pile up during that period and would be added to the loan balance. The bill also charges schools a 0.85% fee on loans taken out by their students. This new tax on student loans will be passed on to students and their families, either financially or through cuts in school programs and services. I supported the amendment offered by Senator Kassebaum which restored some of the cuts in the student loan program, but it is only a step in the right direction and does not go far enough to ensure that working middle-income families can afford to provide higher educational opportunities for their children. Environment I oppose the provision to allow oil and gas leasing of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The coastal plain of the ANWR is one of our remaining ecological treasures, containing 18 major rivers, and providing habitat for 36 species of land mammals and more than 30 fish species. This pristine wilderness cannot be replaced. The impact of oil and gas leasing would forever alter this region. While proponents of leasing the ANWR argue that America's oil dependency requires this resource, they also advocate lifting the ban on exports of Alaska North Slope oil which is contained in this legislation. Americans are committed to protecting national parks and public lands. This commitment extends to protecting the ANWR even if the revenues from leasing the area would be dedicated to deficit reduction. The U.S. Geological Survey recently reduced its estimate of the potential oil yield from this area; therefore, the revenue assumptions in this bill may be grossly overstated. However, Mr. President, the environmental value of this natural area is far greater than any short term economic gain from oil and gas development. I am also opposed to provisions in the bill that will override existing environmental laws and cripple public health and environmental protections. At the same time, this measure contains provisions that continue to provide millions in annual federal subsidies to timber, mining, and ranching industries. These subsidies not only lack economic justification but often cause environmental damage. Several of these provisions have been previously defeated or have delayed consideration of other bills. Yet, in an effort to escape the notice of the American people and circumvent the legislative process these dangerous measures have been inserted into this massive reconciliation bill. Although this bill contains provisions regarding the Mining Law of 1872, it fails to ``reform'' the patenting process and continues to allow the taxpayers of this country to lose millions in revenues from publicly owned lands. In contrast to federal coal, oil, and gas leases for which the government receives substantial royalty payments, hardrock minerals are virtually given away under a law that has not been significantly revised since 1872. This situation is unconscionable. This measure also contains provisions from a federal grazing bill under consideration in the House. These provisions codify grazing regulations that were in place prior to Secretary Babbitt's proposed grazing revisions. Again, the American taxpayer and our nation's environment are the losers. For all these reasons Mr. President, I have concluded that I cannot support the passage of this legislation and I urge my colleagues to oppose the bill.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. I thank my colleague and look forward to working with him to address this issue as this bill moves into conference with the other body.

Mr. GLENN. I thank my friend. This provision concerns me because it skirts existing law, namely the Federal Property Act, which governs the process by which the Federal Government disposes of excess property. The Federal Property Act sets up a process designed to ensure that taxpayers--who footed the bill to acquire the property as well as the buildings and personal property associated with it--get the best return on their investment.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise to express my serious reservations concerning section 205 of the NASA authorization bill S. 1048. This provision authorizes the conveyance of approximately 1,200 acres of Federal property, including all improvements and any personal property located there to the State of Mississippi. Additionally this provision provides $10 million in transition assistance to the State of Mississippi. Would the distinguished chairman of the Committee, Senator Pressler, care to discuss this issue with me?

Mr. GLENN. In particular, the Property Act helps to ensure that we avoid the situation of one agency of Government giving property away, while another agency, unbeknownst to the first, may be trying to acquire similar property. Now, Mr. President, I cannot say that such a situation is happening in this case. We simply cannot say for sure because no screening has taken place. However, we have encountered such situations in the past, and I can assure my colleagues, that in such circumstances, the taxpayer ends up on the short end of the stick. One of the main purposes of the Federal Property Act is to ensure that, before Federal property is determined to be excess, a screening period occur during which time other Federal agencies have an opportunity to show that they have a compelling need for the property. The General Services Administration, the property management experts in the Federal Government, coordinate this screening. If no Federal agency speaks up during the screening process, then the property is made available to the States and other eligible nonprofit organizations. Can my friend from South Dakota tell me whether or not the Yellow Creek property has undergone my formal, or even informal, screening? If so, what have been the results?

Mr. GLENN. Would the Senator agree that it is in the best interest of the United States and the taxpayer that some form of informal Federal screening by the General Services Administration be conducted--in an expedited fashion, no more than 30 days--to assure us that other Federal agencies cannot make use of this facility?