John Glenn

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Second degree.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Is it, Mr. President, under the previous order or is it the desire of the Senator from Iowa to speak?

Mr. GLENN. Will the Senator yield for an additional reply to his question? This bill is prospective. It does not try to go back and undo what may have happened or what may have built up in the past. I see our distinguished colleague from Iowa on the floor, and I am sure he may want to address this because I understand he had a proposed amendment that we go by. But this bill is strictly prospective. It tries to address what has been the major problem with regard to the Federal-State relationship, and that is that we have specifically passed a lot of laws that impose mandates on the States. Now, we do not propose in this legislation to try to correct the situation where the Federal Government has had a responsibility--for example, immigration control--and that responsibility has been inadequately met to the point where it is developing into a major problem, at a major cost to States. We do not try to address some of those things. Now, that has to be addressed. I do not think it necessarily needs to be addressed in this legislation, because if it is, then, we are into a real quagmire of considering every situation where States or particular Senators from States have a feeling that because the Federal Government did not meet the States' responsibilities--say, in flood control or in whatever area it might have been--that we then have to come back and assume responsibilities for that later in this legislation. Now, I think it is very fair and proper that we address the immigration problem, but we made no attempt in this bill, nor do I really feel that we should in this bill, to address something like immigration, which is where the Federal Government, obviously, has not met its responsibility to control immigration for the United States of America. We have not been doing it, particularly in California, Texas, the border States along our southern border, and to some extent in other States, also. That is where the major problems have occurred, because the Federal Government did not meet its responsibilities. Then I think there should be separate legislation that deals with this. But this bill is not set up to address something that is of that nature and that is already behind us. I would say this: The major problem for most States--although that is a major problem for California, for instance--but the major problem for most States has not been of that nature where the Federal Government did not meet its responsibilities. The major problem we are trying to address here is where the Federal Government has in many respects gone too far, maybe, in meeting this responsibly and tossing this requirement downhill to the States and local communities and saying, ``You pick it up''--the States--``we are not going to do it.'' That was not done intentionally from the Federal Government with regard to immigration, although we have to address that. So, what we are trying to do, and the major cost to most States has come from the unfunded mandates where we have passed laws that require clean air, clean water, clean whatever it was, and said, ``OK, States, but you pick up the bill on this.'' We have not tried to address something that has happened where a Federal responsibility is not met and tried to address that in helping States like California, or Texas, or New Mexico--Arizona in particular, pick up the costs that they have, I feel, unfairly, been saddled with. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN. I believe Senator Levin brought that up in committee and has talked about putting an amendment in to that effect. And I think that is what we addressed. I favor a sunset because I think this is really landmark legislation. I think it is the first real piece of legislation that readdresses the relationship between the State, local, and Federal governments. As such I think the impact of this is going to be enormous. I do not disagree with making certain that we take another look at this because, if it is working well, we can reauthorize it at that time. If it is not working well, we can either make appropriate changes, or we can do away with it, if it is just fouling things up and having unintended effects. I do not think that is going to be the case. I have supported Senator Levin. I do not want to speak for him. It is my impression that at the appropriate time he will present a 3-year sunset provision.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I would be glad to respond.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I just want to comment briefly.

Mr. GLENN

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

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I agree completely with what the Senator from Nebraska just said. I do not propose to change the point of order at all. We do not change that. There is nothing about a point of order in this particular section of this thing. It has worked well for 20 years. I agree with that, with the Budget Committee, with the cost estimate and whether points of order lie, and the Parliamentarian makes that judgment. What we are talking about is what happens when it is not clear as to what is a mandate and what is not. Now, I think this problem would occur only very infrequently. I think most of the legislation put in will appear to be very clear when there is a mandate or when there is not a mandate. But what happens when there is a question about what is a mandate or what is not a mandate? That is the question. We do not propose to change the point of order that has worked well for 20 years. I agree with that. The language we are talking about here has nothing to do with points of order. It has to do with who makes the determination on what is a mandate and what is not. Over in the House, by the wisdom of the Budget Committee here, we give that authority to the Budget Reform and Oversight Committee in the House to make that determination in the few times it may come up. We see no reason why over here that should not be in the committee that has the assigned jurisdiction over intergovernmental matters--Federal, State, and local--assigned by the rules of the Senate, and the committee does its best to carry those out. So I submit it does not have anything to do with points of order. I support the points of order, the procedure we have had in the Senate for 20 years. I see nothing wrong with that. This is a whole different matter from that. Mr. EXON addressed the Chair.

Mr. GLENN. The Senator from Nebraska answered the question I was going to ask. But I do not understand yet why it is right for the Senate to dictate to the House, when it is in the legislation what the jurisdictions of different committees will be. My friend from Nebraska says, ``We understand they wanted it that way.'' Well, I do not automatically accede to the House having legislation over there that says, well, we think somebody in the Senate wants it, so that is the way we will do it. Yet, we dictate in this thing very specifically. The language is even almost identical from one part to the other in the language that provides for the assignment of responsibilities here in the Senate. It was in the legislation. And that is over in the House. Yet, we very specifically said, by action of the Budget Committee, OK, that is alright over in the House, we agree with that in the House. This is a logical definition of where things should go in the House. In the Senate we have to take the responsibility away from the Governmental Affairs Committee that, by the rules of the Senate, deals with matters of intergovernmental relations up and down the line, and we are going to take that responsibility away, without saying anything about it, and put it in this legislation and give that authority to the Parliamentarian. I just think that is illogical. I cannot accept the explanation by my friend from Nebraska as to exactly why we are doing this when it seems to me so logically in the other direction. If it is logical for assigning this to the House the way we did, then it is logical to assign it to the Senate the way we did. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I would like to respond to my friend from Nebraska briefly because I think there is some misunderstanding about what the provisions in this bill are, as well as to how the provisions were put into the bill. Nothing was slipped into, as he said, S. 1. Nothing was slipped into S. 1. It was in the bill submitted to the committee. We did not put it in. It was not an amendment in committee. It was placed into the legislation in the original language of the bill. A little while ago, the statement was made that this particular portion of the language was introduced in the Governmental Affairs Committee. That is just not true. The language was put in as a part of the original legislation that was submitted, the part on page 25. So any indication that something was slipped into S. 1, as though we were trying to get somebody else's jurisdiction, is just flat not true. There was basically an agreement made by all parties that were working on this bill that the division of responsibilities on this would be that the costs would be gone through and would be monitored by the Budget Committee. I had no objection to that. The mandates part of this, though, was part of the responsibilities the Senate, in our written instructions to the committee, the intergovernmental relations part, should be a responsibility of the Governmental Affairs Committee. There was no taking of somebody else's jurisdiction; quite the opposite. What is in the bill now is that the amendment would provide for taking responsibility away from the Governmental Affairs Committee, where it logically resides and where Senate instructions would normally be interpreted, where it should reside, and give it to the Parliamentarian to make a judgment on what is a mandate or what is not a mandate. I did not object to making this an amendment to the Budget Act. I did not expect at that point that making it a part of the Budget Act would mean that the Budget Committee then would insist that the mandates part of this or a judgment on the mandates part would be taken away from the responsibilities of the Governmental Affairs Committee. If this makes sense, then let me make one other reference to change that was made and is included in the language on page 27 of the bill. It is in heavy print. This was not in the original bill. It specifically gives the responsibility for making cost judgments over in the House to the Budget Committee. And also in the House, on any judgment regarding mandates, it gives that responsibility to the House Committee on Governmental Reform and Oversight. That was not in the original bill. That is, the Budget Committee here that we are mandating to the House that the Budget Committee over there will take up costs, and that the Committee on Governmental Reform and Oversight will deal with mandates. That was not even in the original bill. So we are saying: House of Representatives, here is how you have to take up this legislation, and here is the division of responsibilities on making judgments on it. of having the comparable committees in the Senate responsible for similar judgments over here, we say what is OK on the Budget Committee over here, we take it away from Governmental Affairs and give it to the Parliamentarian. Over in the House, you specifically made changes to provide specifically where the responsibilities would go and made them different than here in the Senate. I think that is wrong. I do not see why we specify that over there. If it is so wrong here, why is it so right in the House of Representatives? I just do not see the logic of this at all. So what the Budget Committee did in its markup was to vitiate an agreement that we had made prior to the introduction of the bill. There was no language introduced in the Governmental Affairs Committee at all. This all came out of the changes that the Budget Committee insisted upon. I am sorry that our committee chairman, Senator Roth, has left the floor because all this language we are talking about here was in the bill over there. Yet, he did not disagree with it in committee. He voted for the bill coming out of committee, supported the bill, moved it to the floor and wanted a vote on it. I was for that. I did not disagree. We had lost on several amendments we proposed that we thought would have made it stronger over there. Now we come to the floor and suddenly what is good for the House of Representatives, in the wisdom of the Budget Committee in giving it to the oversight committee over there, jurisdiction over mandates and jurisdiction over costs over there, when they come out of CBO; yet when we come to the Senate, we say the Budget Committee would consider costs over here. I do not quarrel with that one bit. I think that is a logical place to be. Suddenly, for reasons beyond my understanding, the Budget Committee tells the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, without any action on the Senate floor, your jurisdiction is down the tubes, and it goes to the Parliamentarian. It does not make any sense to me. That is the reason I think we were dealt with very unfairly over here. I will not ask the Parliamentarian, but I do not know whether the Parliamentarian prefers to have this particular responsibility, as a matter of fact. This puts an enormous responsibility on the Parliamentarian that is supposed to rule on Senate order and rules and not get off into the legislative function of making judgments that no Parliamentarian in the Senate has ever made except on points of order provided under the Budget Act. We are giving House committees specific responsibilities, but we are saying the Senate cannot have those same responsibilities in our comparable committees. So that is the reason I get exercised on this when I think it is a little bit ridiculous. I repeat that this was not something slipped into S. 1, as my colleague referred to. This was in the bill as submitted to the committee. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Might I respond to that first? I did not get in that discussion before. If I might give my view on that, it seems to me you do this a couple of ways. The committee should have some idea of how long it is going to take for a State or local community to get ready for whatever the mandate is. In other words, if it is a water system, a sewer system or whatever it is that we are dealing with, they would have an idea of how long it is going to take in advance of the requirement date, such as the Senator puts down here, the year 2005. If there was not a time put in, it would be my opinion that you would make an estimate of how many years it would take them to comply, and our sharing of the cost of that would start at whatever that time is. In other words, if the time limit that the Senator used in his example of the year 2005, if it was going to take 3 years in advance of that, the Federal funding portion of this, or whatever we worked out on that, would take the 3 years or 4 years or whatever the estimate was that would help them comply with that, or it would be worked out with the States. You could not wait until the mandate is to go into effect, in the year 2005 in his example, you could not wait until the year 2004\1/ 2\ and then say, ``OK, we are now going to help a little bit because their expenditures, if they are going to comply with that mandate, have to be made many times years in advance to allow them to comply.''

Mr. GLENN. Madam President, go ahead and we will come back.

Mr. GLENN. Madam President, reserving the right to object, the Senator wanted a couple of minutes, and I wanted to make another point on this before we leave this.

Mr. GLENN. But they just say: We cannot say whether it is zero or $50 billion. Then what do we do?

Mr. GLENN. What If their estimate is zero?

Mr. GLENN. Yes.

Mr. GLENN. Madam President, If the Senator will yield, I think, backing up the Senator from Michigan, I would have to say, in law-- whether being misconstrued or not--but to leave any doubt that CBO can say there are things we cannot score, there are things we do not know the answers to, there are things we cannot make estimates on, and they say that--and to say, ``but you have to whether you can or not,'' or something is not going to apply on the floor here, I think is the height of folly. I do not see the point of this, in trying to say if you cannot make an estimate that you have to anyway. What is the worst thing that happens if we say OK, we recognize the fact that you cannot make an estimate and if the CBO, with all their expertise cannot, I am not going to say that the Budget Committee is going to be any more able to do some of these things? There will be occasions where the Budget Committee also will say CBO could not and we cannot either. Does that say that a bill cannot come to the floor? No. I will tell you what it says. It says we will not have the waiver and the point of order and the waiver vote on it. But the worst that happens is a bill comes to the floor like it does now. We say, Here is what we think, and debate it, and we pass it or we do not pass it. But to say that a bill that CBO has considered and the Budget Committee has considered and say there is no estimate we can possibly make on this just by the nature of it--we already have a letter from CBO saying that would be the case sometimes--but to say you have to have one no matter what or you cannot bring a bill to the floor sort of seems to me a little bit ludicrous.

Mr. GLENN. Will the Senator yield?

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

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Would the Senator yield for a comment?

Mr. GLENN. Yes, that is correct.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, the Washington Post this morning has an editorial titled ``More on the Mandates Issue.'' The Washington Post has editorialized on this before, and they very properly, in this lead editorial this morning, point out the difference between the House bill and the Senate bill. I want to make sure that some of our colleagues who are trying to make up their minds on support for this legislation, that they not get confused between the two bills. This is not a long editorial, but I would like to read it so that everyone will understand exactly what the issue is. The title is ``More on the Mandates Issue.'' House Republicans partly disarmed critics of their unfunded mandates bill by keeping a promise and quietly fixing one defect last week in committee. They should fix another when the bill comes to the floor, perhaps this week. The mandates bill could well be the first major building block of the Republican congressional agenda to pass. The Senate's version is on the floor as well, and the president has said while avoiding details that he too favors such a measure. Mr. President, I would add that I entered the President's letter to us into the Record last week. The Republicans look upon it in part as the key to achieving other goals such as a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and perhaps welfare reform. Governors and other state and local officials are fearful of being stranded by the spending cuts implicit in both of these and conceivably could block them. The promise that at the same time they will get relief from federal mandates is meant to assuage them. In fact, the legislation doesn't ban unfunded mandates as so much of surrounding rhetoric on both sides would suggest. It would merely create a parliamentary presumption against them and require explicit majority votes in both houses to impose them. That's the right approach. Mr. President, I see our distinguished colleague, Senator Byrd, is on the floor. I know he has some comments to make on this. I ask unanimous consent that the editorial out of the Washington Post be printed in the Record in its entirety, and I yield the floor.

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

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will object, not for myself, but I believe we do have another Senator who wants to come to the floor and speak on this. So I would object until he can be here and express his views on this. I think he wanted to object to the unanimous-consent agreement, so, on his behalf, I object.