John Glenn

Mr. GLENN

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

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I, too, want to accept on behalf of our side this amendment. I think the Senator from Florida has made a very good point here. He is fleshing out some of the things that needed to be spelled out better in this language. I compliment him on that. One of the things we want to make certain is that this is a workable document when it passes. He is addressing that problem. So we are happy to accept this on our side.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GLENN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 173

Mr. GLENN. No objection.

Mr. GLENN. No objection.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise to very strongly support the amendment proposed by my colleague from Michigan. I do not think any Senator here wants to give up his or her rights to request the same information that anybody else has--whether a committee chairman or not. I think this is a key amendment here. I do not see this as any small amendment. To say that only chairmen of committees or only ranking minority members are the only ones who could ask CBO for a budget estimate gives up a right for a Senator to represent his or her State. And I do not think that is right. I think this was more of an oversight in the bill. It was not intended that Senators' rights be trampled on, but that would be the effect of this. So I see this as a very, very important amendment. Every Senator representing his or her State has a full right to ask for whatever information may be required to get an amendment through or to propose legislation. In this case, that means that Senator has to go to the Congressional Budget Office and get an estimate. Otherwise, when they try to bring something up in committee and it is brought up and someone says what is the estimate on this, that Senator would not be able to have an estimate. So they would be precluded, in effect--they would be precluded from putting in amendments that other Senators could put in, if the other Senators were committee chairmen or ranking minority Members. I do not think there was any intention to take away the rights of individual Senators. But lest there be any doubt about it I think we should pass this amendment. I hope it will be unanimous, if we pass it. To me it makes such common sense. So I rise in strong support of this and hope it could be accepted. If it cannot be accepted on the other side I hope the leadership on the other side could support this. We will have an overwhelming vote of support for this particular amendment because this really does correct something that needs to be corrected, something we should have done in committee but we did not have that opportunity. So here we are on the floor doing it, and I think this is a very important amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. The Senator is absolutely correct. I agree with that. We have already asked that be checked on our side to see how many will probably not be called up so we will know what is on the list. There are serious amendments left. And I am hoping the same thing can be done on the Republican side so we can combine things and maybe start getting some time agreements and so on. Just one further statement on this. One of the reasons I think there were some amendments filed on this is because when people finally had a chance to read the reports and understand what was in the legislation, they had some concern about it. So they started filing their amendments. These have been substantive amendments which we have been considering.

Mr. GLENN. Most of them yesterday and today. The ones that Senator Levin put in and several others here today. Some not dealing directly with this would have been accepted in committee. I grant that. But I think because we finally got the report people had a chance to look at it and understand what was in the bill. That is one reason we had so many amendments. Had we been permitted to do this in committee, I think there would not be nearly the number of amendments when we got to the floor.

Mr. GLENN. As I said a while ago, Mr. President, we had accepted five amendments; there were three on the Democratic side and two on the Republican side that were accepted--effective actions. We had one that was withdrawn. We had one that was set aside. We had one that was debated with the vote to occur tomorrow, and three were tabled. That is 11 effective actions, as I total them up. So we are moving on this, is my point. I know cloture has been filed. This is not the time to debate cloture. I just want to balance all of the blame we have been getting and the heat around us over here. I think it is not justified. At least the first 5 days that this was on the floor were not effective days for other reasons. They were noneffective days because of what happened in committee, which I think was unwarranted.

Mr. GLENN. We will do our best.

Mr. GLENN. As I pointed out a moment ago, 9 days is correct that we have been on this bill. The first 5 days we lost, as far as effective action on the bill goes, because of what happened in the committee and the speed of putting in the bill in the Senate one day, having a hearing the next day, the markup the third day, no report, and over our objections in the minority. We had repeated votes in committee, and it was a wrangle over that here on the floor--my distinguished colleague from West Virginia was involved. It was that wrangle on the floor about the filing of reports that were not filed when they were supposed to be, even after agreement they would be filed--it was that issue alone that caused us to lose the first 5 days. The last 4 days, where we have really been operating on this bill, especially the last 2 days, we have made excellent progress. As I said--we read off the list this bill today.

Mr. GLENN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GLENN

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

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I will not direct my address to the President's time to make a few remarks regarding the President's performance, with emphasis on the things that I think are important to the future of this country. We get so bound up here in our considerations on the Senate floor, in our committee work, and in our speeches back home that I think we sometimes do not really sort out the wheat from the chaff and try at least in our mind's eye to go 10, 15, or 20 years in the future, and look back to see what was really important to the people that was passed by any administration. What has effect 15 years down the road for every family, every child, the elderly, the young --everyone in our whole society? What then should be relegated to trivial footnotes of history? It seems as though quite often we concentrate on things that in history's 20-20 hindsight will be but trivia, while in the future we will live with the important things that were passed in any administration. I think we need to consider the Clinton administration in that light. The October 24 issue of Time magazine had a little graph that showed that this President, President Clinton, had passed and signed into law more of his stated agenda than any other President since Lyndon Johnson and before that back to Dwight Eisenhower. In other words, it was the most successful first 2 years--not quite 2 years, but the first 20 months--of accomplishing an announced agenda since President Dwight Eisenhower. That is a proud record quite apart from all the trivia and all the ups and downs of charges against the President that I think will wind up as small print footnotes later, trivia, in history. What we are talking about here is doing rather than talking. It seems to me people tend to ignore the record of what was done, what has been accomplished in this first 2 years. Too many on the other side keep talking about doing some of these things that are already under way, that are already being accomplished by this administration. I can go through some examples of this. The economy has never been better. We have the lowest unemployment in 4 years, and the budget deficit has come down 3 years in a row. That is not something for the future. This is being done now with the economic policies of this administration. We remember the reconciliation vote in August of the first year of this President's tenure in office. There was not a single Republican vote, not one, that we could get here in the Senate to pass that reconciliation. In fact, the Vice President had to break the tie on that vote. There were dire predictions by some on the other side that there was going to be massive unemployment. In fact, all the other things that were brought up at that time that have not occurred. The economy remains in good shape. I repeat this is the first time we will have reduced the budget deficit since the administration of Harry Truman-- 3 years of reducing the budget deficit. How about the size of Government? When this administration came in, we had a lot of publicity and talk about reinventing Government. But it was not all talk; a lot of things were also put into effect. Some 300 different programs have been cut in the last 2 years. We talk about reducing the size of Government, getting the Government down-sized. The objective stated last year was that within 3 years we would be able to reduce the size of the Federal work force by some 272,000 people. At that time, a lot of people clucked a little bit, put their tongue in their cheek and said, ``We will believe it when we see it.'' Well, we are seeing it. Right now, the current figure of reaching that goal of reducing the Federal work force by 272,000 is being accomplished. 98,000 people have already been cut from the Federal work force. Along with those cuts-- and I worked with the administration on this as chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee--has come something else. Formerly, the Federal work force was all skewed to bosses and there was not enough employees in many departments and agencies. In other words, the boss- to-employee ratio was not what it is in private business, academia, or anywhere. In businesses across the country, the ratio of managers to employees is 1 to 12 or 1 to 15. The Federal Government has drifted over the years to a point where it is top heavy. We have about a 1-to-7 manager-to-employee ratio. At the same time we are down-sizing by 272,000, how do we manage to adjust the manager-to-employee ratio? We put in buyout legislation along with early retirements. This encourages the GS--the civil service ratings--GS-13's, 14's, and 15's, who are basically the managers, to get out. So we are simultaneously down-sizing and correcting this imbalance that is very wasteful and adjusting it back to a better ratio that will compare favorably with what is done in private industry and private business. We do not hear that mentioned very often. When we get cut down to the 272,000 level, we will have the lowest Federal employment since John F. Kennedy was President. What other things have been done during the first 2 years of this administration? With the administration's support, the Congress put through a family leave bill. Everybody talks about making a more family-friendly administration here in Washington, a more family- friendly Nation. What could be more family friendly, I ask you, than allowing employees to have time off when there is a bereavement in the family, when somebody is sick, or when there is a birth in the family? These are times when a person's attention should flow to the family and be concentrated on the family. Once again, there were all sorts of dire predictions of what would happen if we passed this legislation. So there was one exemption put in that said if you have key employees, and taking those key employees out for family leave would hurt the business, they were exempted. But the regular rung of employees in a company that can be filled in for on a temporary basis, they would have the right to help take care of their families if there is sickness, or a mother or father needs help, or if a child is ill, or whatever. This administration is expanding Head Start. We now have an extra 200,000 young people in this country that have access to the benefits of the Head Start Program. Last evening the President talked about his National Service Program. This program is a helping hand. It is a program where people are doing constructive things for their community and reaping some benefit for it. I have talked to some of those people and they are proud of what they are doing under these Government programs. I submit that, once again, going into the future some 15 or 20 years, we will look back and many of those people will be in productive work because of the opportunity they were given at this time. I would be very surprised, if we took that view in the future and actually determined the past cost, if this program had not been something of benefit for the Government. Those people will be so much more productive. They will be paying taxes and will be productive citizens. Even more important will be the fact that their lives have been enriched, and they will be participating citizens in the future of this country. What can be more important than that? In another area, the college loan program has been expanded. The potential is there for some 20 million people to have the advantage of a college education over the next few years. For communities, there is a community development bank that has been provided. These are not things where we are just talking about it as though we had to do something in the future; these are things actually being done. They are being accomplished now. They are accomplishments of the first 2 years of this administration. These are not pie-in-the- sky things. These are things where the new administration made these proposals, worked with Congress, and we got them through. I think the news media concentrate on the trivia of history to the exclusion of some of the good things that have gotten through for which the President should get due credit as accomplishments achieved during the administration's first couple of years. Yet, too often we find the other side talking as though nothing has been done in these areas. We want to cut the size of Government. It is being done, my friends. It is being done now--and ahead of schedule. There has been a 98,000 reduction in the Federal work force already, but 272,000 was the goal, and that is coming. We are just seeing the beginning of GATT. I have not mentioned that. International trade is now being addressed. This is controversial. We have a lot of people in my State of Ohio, and some were for GATT and some were against GATT. I submit that we have moved into such an economic situation in the world that had we not finally terminated negotiations and gotten an agreement on GATT, we would have placed ourselves at a great disadvantage down the road. To give an example of what I am talking about, if we went back to a New England village 100 years ago or so, it probably made very little difference whether anyone came through that village from one year to the next. The buggy-maker was on one corner, the cobbler or the shoemaker was over on another corner, most people had a garden out behind the house, and there were vegetables grown out in the valley. It was basically a self-sufficient community that took care of itself. People took care of people; the community took care of its local community. Now, what happened? Then we developed out of that village, and the cobbler, in effect, became all of New England and parts of the South. The buggy-maker became Detroit, and the Imperial Valley in California became the supplier for the whole Nation, as our means of shipping were expanded. Then we developed even further, and what happened? The buggy-maker that was in Detroit became 30 percent Japanese, and the cobbler became Korea and Italy, and our food was sent all over the world, with hundreds of millions of tons being shipped everywhere. In other words, we became, whether we like it or not, a worldwide community. And the question is, are we going to move into GATT and participate and be the competitive Americans that we have always been, or are we going to ask for protection in a world that is moving toward international relationships? I think it is to the President's credit that he moved us into GATT. GATT was not something that was supported by just this President alone, but he brought it to its final culmination, and we got it through. GATT had been going on over the last two Republican administrations. It has been negotiated over a lengthy period of time. But it was brought to fruition, and now we have this agreement that I think will be a pattern, not perfect, that we can follow into the future. Now, have we accomplished everything that needs to be accomplished? Certainly not. There was a lot that did not get done in the first 2 years. Certainly health care is one that always comes up about what a great failure it was. Well, I think, in looking back on what happened here, the concentration on health care last year was not all a disaster, for this reason: For the first time we had a concentrated debate, concentrated attention on health care reform. Because of the efforts of the President and the First Lady, there was attention focused on health care all through last year. Maybe it excluded some other things. But was it a total loss? No; I do not think it was. Because what happened was the health care community, the health care providers, those in the health care industry, took a new look at themselves. They took a new look at themselves and said, maybe we can do better, and felt that they should do better or something was going to happen to them. So we find HMO's being formed and we find hospitals cooperating for the first time with other hospitals, not just in competition but working together to see whether they cannot share equipment and cut costs down. We find doctors' groups moving to HMO's. We find all sorts of things going on in the medical industry, the health provider industry, that are good, largely as a result of the concentration on health care during the past year. I do not want to be a Pollyanna about this and say that we solved our health care problems. Far from it. We have yet to address many problems, and they are still out there waiting to be addressed, because we have many millions of Americans that do not have health care insurance yet. But I would say that the costs are beginning to level off a little bit from what some of the predictions indicated because of the attention that was put on the industry last year and because of the action they have taken to try to reduce health care costs. So that is one that we have yet to deal with. There are environmental concerns that we have not yet addressed. Last night, the President spoke of several other issues that have not been addressed such as lobbying reform, political reform and campaign finance reform. There are two other issues that we are in the process of addressing. One of the two other objectives set early on in the administration was congressional compliance with the laws that apply to everyone. We voted that out of here. It went to the White House and the signing was just the day before yesterday. I participated in that signing. This legislation is something that I have pushed on the Senate floor since 1978 and it has taken all this time to get it through. Senator Grassley and Senator Lieberman took the lead in drafting this legislation through our Committee on Governmental Affairs last year and we almost had it through last fall. Those who would somehow seem to eliminate all past considerations as though this legislation was something brand new that was passed just because there was a change of political leadership in the Congress have not looked back to see the long history of what has happened in getting to the point where we are now. Had there not been some of the delays occasioned in the last 10 weeks of the past session, where nothing was being let through, we probably would have had congressional coverage legislation last fall. I would say the same with unfunded mandates, the bill that is on the floor right now. Unfunded mandates is another one that my colleague Senator Kempthorne from Idaho has taken a lead on. I have worked with him on this. We had a bill through committee last fall, S. 993, but, once again, because of the delays, we could not get it on the floor. We even finally tried to do it by unanimous consent. We could not do that last fall in the last few days of the session, so that did not get passed. So we are addressing that now. This legislation also has a long history over the last couple of years of being addressed under the leadership of the distinguished Senator from Idaho. And he has done a great job. It has been an honor for me to work with him on this legislation. We remain as committed as ever to getting it passed. We are involved now in some of the difficulties in getting it through. There were delays in committee. We were not permitted to bring up amendments in committee, so we are trying to address those amendments here on the floor right now to correct some discrepancies in the bill and to make the bill better and workable. So we will work through this. But I wanted to take this opportunity, since there were some comments made about the President's speech last night, to make these few remarks here today on the floor about the accomplishments of the first 2 years of this administration. I personally think the President can be very proud of these first 2 years. As I started off saying, Time magazine in the October 24 issue showed a bar chart of accomplishments of the announced agenda of Presidents going clear back to Dwight Eisenhower, since World War II. This President has the best record of getting through what he said he would do since Lyndon Johnson, who came in on the heels of the Kennedy assassination, had a great wave of support at that time, and going beyond that back to Dwight Eisenhower, who was trying to reform things after World War II and had the support of the people in that effort. So I think this is a Presidency in which we can be proud of its accomplishments. Did the administration accomplish everything they wanted? No, certainly not. There was a mammoth effort on health care last year that did not result in everything they wanted, and we still have to deal with that. But I wanted to set the record straight on what I think will be in the mind's eye, looking back 20 years from now or 15 years from now, as to what is affecting my family, your family, our children, our mothers and fathers, and so on. What, in this first 2 years, will be the important things that are affecting lives across this country? And come, it seems to me that we will be living with a lot of very, very important things. We will have had a stable economy during this time; we will have had a new relationship in trade that we can expand; the crime bill--I did not mention that; that is one that affects us everywhere we live--family leave, Head Start, national service. These are programs that are good. They are programs that I have been glad to be a part of helping put through here in the Congress. Mr. President, I believe we are ready to move on some other items here. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I had asked that we go into morning business. I ask that we return to regular order.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, in response to the majority leader's comments, we are working very hard trying to get just as many lined up with time agreements as short as possible so we can move it along. I know the majority leader's desire to end this this week. We are certainly cooperating in that endeavor to that end. We are trying very hard to line things up just as fast as we can, to get them tailored with the shortest time agreement as possible. I think we are making some progress, and we will continue. Mr. BAUCUS addressed the Chair.

Mr. GLENN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. GLENN. I thank the Chair, and I thank my colleague. I just say that I hope the same logic is used by the Senator from Utah when Senator Grassley's amendment comes up because the interpretation of his amendment would mean we go back 21 years and require a study of all mandates--all mandates, period. It does not have a $50 million threshold to it, as I understand it. It would be such an enormous study that we requested CBO to give us figures on how much it would cost them to do such a study, and they cannot give us an estimate right now. In other words, we are putting an unfunded mandate on CBO. He is concerned about CBO and I am, too, but I think the logic of what the Senator is trying to do should also be carried over to the consideration of Grassley, which would be an enormous study, beyond anything I would see proposed here.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield to me 1 minute?

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 182

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, what is the next order of business before the Senate?

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

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

Mr. GLENN

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

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I, too, would like to congratulate the Senator from Wisconsin. I think he has done an excellent job on this. We talked about this earlier. We worked back and forth across the aisle. He was willing to compromise and put in the language. I think it is excellent. I compliment him on what he has done. We are glad to accept it on our side of the aisle and urge we move to a vote.