T. Gorton

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Yes.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, under this bill, Robert Dole, at this point, is in exactly the position of one of the volunteer candidates for the U.S. Senate. A year ago, or a year and a half ago, whenever the key time was, he determined that he would operate under certain campaign restrictions in return, in his case, for a direct subsidy from the Federal Treasury. In the case of this bill, oh, no, not a direct subsidy, no taxpayer money here. We just take it away from private enterprise, people who own television stations, or from the public and postal fees. He made that determination. He did not realize at that time that he was going to end up with an opponent who would ignore these limitations and spend $40 million of his own money attacking him so that in order to survive through a group of primaries, he had to spend money he had not intended to spend. So he finds himself in a situation in which the other candidate for President of the United States, with all of the advantages that incumbency has, with $18 million, I think, left to spend directly on his campaign, is spending at least some of it harassing the opposing candidate for overspending on his allotment. So we have campaign election reform. Boy, we have it coming out of our ears in the field of the Presidency of the United States, the net result of which is that one of the two major candidates cannot campaign effectively between now and August. This is a triumph of election law reform? This is a triumph for the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States? I do not think so, Mr. President. But this is exactly what they want to do to the U.S. Senate in this bill. Presumably, the great evil is that there is too much in the way of communication of ideas and the people of America are too stupid to be able to figure out who to vote for if we have a free exercise of our first amendment rights and the ability to communicate those ideas through groups, including the groups we have voluntarily chosen to join. Some of the most severe restrictions in this bill are on what political parties can do, Mr. President, for their own candidates. Now, I do not think there is a single State in the United States of America in which the political party of a candidate for the U.S. Senate does not appear beside his or her name on the ballot. For the Senator from Wisconsin, it says Democrat, and for the Senator from Kentucky, it says Republican right on the ballot when you go in to vote. Yet, somehow or another, receiving more than a modest degree of financial support or direct expenditures from one's political party is deemed by the sponsors of this bill to be corrupting in nature. Mr. President, I do not understand that. I absolutely fail to understand the theory behind that limitation.

Mr. GORTON. That enhancement applies not only to the newspapers, of course. Just to take an example of one of the great proponents of the bill, Common Cause. Its ability to communicate its ideas is not in any way restricted by this bill, nor, of course, could it be. But the ability of a candidate who disagrees with the views of Common Cause, or the Sierra Club, or the National Rifle Association, or the AFL-CIO, is severely restricted and, as a matter of fact, may be rendered totally and entirely ineffective. Now, the proponents of this bill have said this is a very narrow bill. It only applies to the Senate, for example, and not even to the House of Representatives--as if we will ever end up getting a law of that nature. It does not apply to the Presidency. That was a statement made recently by, I think, the Senator from Arizona, which is entirely correct. It does not. But the philosophy behind the bill, that there is just too much free speech in politics today, is absolutely identical. So I think it not at all unfair, Mr. President, to say that we are faced today, right now, without any change in the present law at all, under present laws that stem exactly from the philosophy behind this bill, with the absolutely absurd situation in which there is only one person in the United States of America who may not raise money to communicate his ideas to the people of the United States, and that person is Robert Dole.

Mr. GORTON. Yes.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, we are at the heart of the matter now. The Senator from Arizona does not like the way in which first amendment rights are conducted or exercised at the present time. He therefore wants to limit them. The genius of America in voluntary associations is to him somehow so repulsive that no voluntary association, no unincorporated, voluntary association in America, none whatsoever, is going to be allowed to contribute to a candidate--none. You cannot get together in America in a voluntary association and contribute to a candidate because he does not like the distribution of money from political action committees. Well, thank God for James Madison. Thank God for the prohibition on the part of this Congress or any other Congress to abridge the right of free speech just because this Senator does not like the way in which it is exercised at the present time. The present law is bad, Mr. President. This law is worse.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. But have a statistic that you could go out and argue we need a national system, we need a national health care system because there are millions of people who are uninsured, rather than reduce that number by this new and constructive experiment.

Mr. GORTON. I have only one more comment and I wonder if the Senator from Georgia agrees with this proposition. Does he not believe, as I do, that if this bill were to come back to the Senate with this modest experiment on medical savings accounts included, it would have a significant majority of the votes of the Members of this body, Democrats as well as Republicans, and would easily go to the President, and that one of the reasons for this filibuster is to prevent that majority view from prevailing and to prevent the embarrassment of the President either having to veto this proposal as he has threatened to do or actually to back off and sign it?

Mr. GORTON. I thank the Senator from Georgia for yielding me this time.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I am convinced that the Senator from Georgia is correct in his analysis in what he has told us here in the Senate. We have now waited for more than 2 months facing a filibuster even of a procedural motion formally to appoint a conference committee to settle a set of vitally important health care issues for the people of the United States. Mr. President, there is little controversy over the desirability of portability of health care insurance, over certain restrictions on health care limitations because of preexisting conditions and a number of other features of the bill that passed the Senate. But the senior Senator from Massachusetts is so vehemently opposed to a concept called medical savings accounts that he and those who support it will not even permit a debate in the Senate, a vote in the Senate, on the issue. The Senator from Georgia pointed out that this is not a new concept. It is very much like the automobile insurance that all of us purchase in which we can make a set of value judgments and choices. Do we want to pay a high premium and have even minor damage to our automobiles paid for by the insurance companies, or are we willing to accept a high deductible up to an amount which we feel we can afford to pay ourselves in return for a much lower premium for an automobile insurance policy that will take care of the situation if our car is totaled or badly damaged? A medical savings account is essentially the same thing except because we place such a high value on health care insurance that we will offer certain tax advantages to that high deductible health care insurance, saying that people can save an amount of money up to that deductible on a tax-free basis to pay for the everyday health care insurance costs out of it and end up having the money itself if they do not actually use it and, at the same time, have a catastrophic health care plan which will keep families from bankrupting, or from tremendous financial distress in the case of major health care needs. One of the reasons that many people lack health care insurance today is the fact that they are in States or communities with community ratings, which means that young people with young families are required to pay far more for standard health care insurance policies than they are likely to use. And so they choose to have no insurance at all, running a very real risk in the process. As a consequence, if this proposal works, more people will have health care insurance against a catastrophic event in their lives than have it today. Perhaps the true objection of the senior Senator from Massachusetts is that as more people are insured against health care disasters in a free and voluntary system, there will be less demand for the nationalized health care system that he so vehemently supported in the last Congress and which failed when the American people decided that they did not want the Government of the United States to be running their health care. Personally, I think that may be the real objection, because it appears to me that there can almost be no other, to at least an experiment involving those who are self-employed or those who are employed by small businesses, many of which do not provide health care for their employees at the present time. If we go into this experiment and if this experiment works, more companies will provide health care for all of their employees on this catastrophic basis because it will cost them less. More employees will be encouraged to say more of us who are all consumers of health care will pay more attention to what it costs and we may end up with a far more efficient system than we have today. Right now, we are not only being denied that experiment, we are being denied even those other elements on which there is full agreement because one group of Members of this body says, no, this is such a terrible idea; it is so dangerous to let people make their own choices that we will stop the whole thing, the entire health care reform in order to prevent this from taking place. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this issue and seek the attention of the Senator from Georgia, who was kind enough to lend me this time, to ask him as a leader in this effort whether or not he agrees with these sentiments. Does the Senator from Georgia not agree that perhaps the central real objection here is an objection to allowing people a greater degree of choice over how they fund their health care, a greater degree of choice over ways in which insurance may be provided, a greater degree of attention to costs, simply a greater degree of control over their own lives?

Mr. GORTON. To try to see to it that we did not have more people covered by health care insurance.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, today I am offering an amendment which defines the future for Uniformed Services Treatment Facilities [USTFs] in order to ensure that these hospitals and clinics can continue to provide high-quality care to thousands of military beneficiaries throughout the country. Senators Sarbanes, Moynihan, and Murray have joined me as cosponsors of this amendment. I appreciate the accommodation of the Committee leadership for clearing my amendment for inclusion in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 1997. USTFs are former Public Health Service hospitals that were transferred to private, not-for-profit ownership during the Reagan administration. The late Senator from Washington State, Scoop Jackson, sponsored legislation in 1981 that completed this transition by deeming these hospitals and clinics facilities of the Uniformed Services and authorizing them to provide health care to military beneficiaries, including retirees and family members of active-duty personnel and retirees. I was proud to join as a cosponsor of that amendment during my first year in the Senate. USTFs have performed well over the past 15 years as providers of cost-effective and quality military health care. There are currently 9 USTFs operated by 7 organizations serving about 120,000 military beneficiaries in nine States: Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Washington. These facilities have a loyal base of beneficiaries who have come to rely on them as their primary care providers. USTFs have also pioneered new innovations in military health care, including full at-risk managed care. I sponsored an amendment in 1992 that required the Department of Defense [DOD] to enter into agreements with USTFs to carry out a managed care delivery program. The USTFs managed care program, called the Uniformed Services Family Health Plan, I am told, has further reduced costs and has consistently received a favorable beneficiary rating in excess of 90 percent. The USTFs are now at a crossroads. With their current participation agreements expiring next year, USTFs and DOD entered into negotiations late last year aimed at integrating the USTFs program into the overall military health care system. The negotiations resulted in a set of ``guiding principles'' which both DOD and USTFs accepted. My amendment implements these ``guiding principles'' by clarifying how the USTF program will be integrated into the TRICARE program. With one exception concerning the date for the application of TRICARE enrollment fees and increased co-payments, my amendment is identical to the provisions of the House-passed National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 1997. My amendment reflects a careful compromise reached between the USTFs and DOD to protect the interests of the military beneficiary and the taxpayer. In addition to integrating the USTFs into TRICARE, my amendment limits the growth of the USTF program and implements a recommendation of a new GAO report by disenrolling USTF beneficiaries who receive benefits under Medicare. A more detailed section-by-section summary of my amendment will follow this statement. Mr. President, this amendment is a true compromise which serves the interest of American servicemen and women. It not only has the support of the Health Affairs Office at the Defense Department, but except for the one difference already mentioned, the entirety of my amendment has been included in the House-passed bill. I thank the Committee leadership for agreeing to include this amendment in the Senate bill as well. I ask unanimous consent that the summary I mentioned be printed in the Record.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent the time be charged equally against both sides.

Mr. GORTON. The Senator from Nebraska is correct.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I regret the absence from the floor of the two Senators from North Dakota who just engaged in a discussion of this and of other budget proposals. But even in their absence, their statements should not go without response. At one level, the so-called Social Security argument, the proposition that these budgets are not balanced, we are dealing with mere debating points, and relatively outrageous debating points at that. At a second level, the concerns of the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Conrad, who was a part of the same bipartisan group attempting to reach a common ground on that issue, as I was, I wish my remarks to be more serious. I think his were more pointed and more thoughtful. I will try to do the same. More than a year ago, at the time at which this argument about whether or not payroll taxes and Social Security benefits should be counted when we determine whether or not the budget was balanced, Charles Krauthammer, in his column in the Washington Post, wrote: In my 17 years in Washington, this is the single most fraudulent argument I have heard. I do not mean politically fraudulent, which is routine in Washington, in a judgment call anyway; I mean logically, demonstrably, mathematically fraudulent, a condition rare even in Washington, and a judgment call not at all. Why did Mr. Krauthammer, an outside observer, write about this argument in this fashion? For one simple reason, Mr. President. The budget deficit of the United States of America, however many billions of dollars we are speaking of, is an exceedingly simple concept, readily understood by any citizen of this country. It is the difference between the amount of money the Government of the United States spends every year and the amount of money the United States takes in every year. Unfortunately, for various and sundry purposes, some good, some not so good, we have frequently passed laws that put some of these receipts into a particular fund, spend out of that particular fund, and then we have gone beyond that process to pretend they are not a part of the budget or of the budget deficit. But they are. The payroll tax is a tax which the Presiding Officer pays and I pay and every other working American pays, just to exactly the same extent that the income tax is a tax or an excise tax is a tax. The money spent by the Federal Government is a Federal expenditure, however worthy or unworthy its purpose, whether it is wasted or spent highly constructively. When we speak of a balanced budget in the year 2002, we speak of it in the sense of how much money we are spending and how much money we are taking in. When President Clinton says that he has a balanced budget in the year 2002, he speaks of it in the sense of how much money we spend and how much money we take in. When the bipartisan group, of which the Senator from North Dakota was a part, speaks of a balanced budget, it uses exactly that same concept. My gosh, Mr. President, by the argument that we received over here, we can balance the budget this year. All we have to say is that $150 billion of money we spend is not on the budget. Let us pass a law. Just pass a law. Let us say all the money that we spend on national defense is not counted on the budget. Presto, we would have a surplus, and we could all go home, and the budget would not be unbalanced. Mr. President, obviously, it is not as easy as that. The money we spend on national defense does count. The money we spend on Social Security does count. The money that comes in our payroll taxes does count. When we count everything, the budget is passed. Even worse, Mr. President, some Members voted against a constitutional amendment to balance the budget unless we included in it this fiction that payroll taxes for Social Security purposes and payments to Social Security recipients did not count. Mr. President, that is especially outrageous because by the time the constitutional amendment was ratified and became fully effective in this country, it would have exactly the opposite effect that the proposal has today. Today, the proposal outlined by the two Members from North Dakota would say we cannot count as balanced a budget that is, in fact, balanced. We have to state there is a $100 billion deficit because in that particular year, the Social Security taxes are taking in $100 billion more than is being paid out in benefits. We all know, we have been told, we know inevitably that sometime relatively early in the next century, exactly the opposite will be the case: The Social Security trust fund will be paying out more money than it is taking in. So if these Senators have their way, in 10 or 15 years we will be able to claim a budget is balanced while the Social Security trust fund is going bankrupt and while the country is, in fact, obligated to spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year that it does not have. The books will say the budget is balanced in exactly the same way that it would say that they were balanced today if we just decided to take national defense off budget and claim the money we were spending on it did not count, for some reason or another. It is for that reason, Mr. President, that Charles Krauthammer, a year and a half ago, said this was the most fraudulent argument he had ever heard in 17 years in Washington, DC. That is not the real issue before the Senate, in our judgment, as to whether or not to pass this budget resolution. That judgment really rests solely on the question, is it time to begin to move honestly toward a balanced budget? Is it time to arrest the growth rate of a handful of entitlements which each year take a larger percentage of our budget and each year contribute more to our budget deficit? Is it time to assure that we are going to have enough money for the very appropriated accounts about which the Senator from West Virginia was so eloquent, or are we going to allow them to be eaten up completely by these entitlements to the point which we will have no money for any of those purposes--for education, for the environment, for a park system, for the Department of Justice, because we are simply unwilling to deal with these entitlements? In fact, Mr. President, it is true under this budget resolution, the deficit in 1997 will be larger, by a small margin, than the deficit in 1996. The deficit in 1998 will begin to go down, it will be about the same as the 1996 deficit, and then it will go down more rapidly thereafter. Mr. President, if we were to adopt President Clinton's budget, the increase in the deficit in 1997 would be even greater, and in every single year it would be significantly more than it is under the proposal before the Senate now. Why? Because he does not arrest the growth of entitlements in the way we do. In the early years, at least, he proposes to spend much more in discretionary spending. Mr. President, this is what I principally regret about the argument of the Senator from North Dakota. The bipartisan budget, which the two of us supported, also has a higher deficit using these figures in 1997 than in 1996. It has a higher one in 1998 than in 1997. Yet, the Senator from North Dakota and I both supported it. Why? Because, in my opinion, it does a better job in the long-term control of entitlement programs. Thereafter, it allows for at least as much in tax relief to working Americans as does ours, and allows for more in the way of discretionary spending on education, law enforcement and the like. I felt it preferable to the one we have before the Senate now, but we did not win. This one is infinitely preferable to the proposal of the President, and it is infinitely preferable to doing nothing and allowing the status quo to continue and engaging in fruitless debate- point kinds of arguments. Mr. President, the job would have been easier had we started a year ago. The President's veto of a balanced budget then frustrated that goal. It would have been easier still if we had started 2 years before that, at the beginning of the Clinton administration, or 2 years before that in the Bush administration. For one reason or another, we did not. Now we have a series of excuses as to why we should not start now or, more precisely, why we should do it differently. Everyone is for a balanced budget. Everyone is for a balanced budget, Mr. President. It is always a different one. It is never the one they have before them. That, accumulated over 30 years, is the reason we find ourselves in our present position. I believe this resolution is going to pass. I think that will be a good thing. I believe the President of the United States is almost certain to veto the enforcement mechanisms which would make it a reality. That will be a bad thing. We are likely to be back here next year, whoever is President, faced with the same challenge, but a more difficult challenge. We will be further in debt, it will be more difficult to bring these spending programs under control, but we will have the same debate once again as we do now. It will not be won by debating points. It will only be won by a support of something that is actually before the Senate and something that will actually work, that this present resolution most certainly is. I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent it be charged equally against both sides.

Mr. GORTON. Reserving the right to object, would the Senator from Nebraska make that period of time end at 11:50 so that the Senator from New Mexico, as the proponent, may have the last 10 minutes? Can the Senator move it forward a little and end at 11:50?

Mr. GORTON. Would the Senator withhold?

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be allowed to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 12, 1996, to consider the Food Quality Protection Act (S. 1166).

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be allowed to meet during the Wednesday, June 12, 1996, session of the Senate for the purpose of conducting a hearing on S. 1726, the promotion of commerce on-line in the digital era.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask consent that the Committee on Finance be permitted to meet Wednesday, June 12, 1996, beginning at 11 a.m. in room SH-215, to conduct a markup on two tax bills.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet Wednesday, June 12, 1996, at 2 p.m. to hold a closed hearing on intelligence matters.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee to Investigate Whitewater Development and Related Matters be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 12, 1996, to conduct hearings pursuant to Senate Resolution 120.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, the sole issue before the U.S. Senate that is being debated this afternoon and voted on at such time as the House has completed action, is whether or not we accept a budget resolution agreed to by a majority of conferees on the budget. Once again, we are engaged in debate in which the opponents of this resolution, without exception, give lip service to a balanced budget. But as has been the case this year, last year, in 1994, in 1993, and every year back through the 1970's, it is always a different balanced budget, not this one, not the resolution we have before us right now. More taxes, says the Senator from South Carolina; more cuts in defense says another Senator; less in the way of a restriction on entitlement growth, says a third. Mr. President, I am convinced that it is that kind of ``I'm for a balanced budget, but not this one, not now, not this year, not this way,'' that causes us to have a national debt that exceeds $5 trillion. If I had my way, Mr. President, this would not be the balanced budget that we would be adopting. If the Presiding Officer had his way, this would not be the balanced budget we would be adopting. If my close and distinguished friend, the Senator from New Mexico, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, had his way, it would not be this balanced budget that we would be adopting. But I believe that each of us has said, even though he has not gotten his own way as against 99 other Members of the Senate, it is more important to take this step and to move forward in a correct and responsible direction than it is to say, ``Not now, not this year, not this way. Do it my way or don't do it at all.'' I listened with great sympathy to my friend on the other side of the aisle, the distinguished Senator from North Dakota, and I listened to him with great sympathy because of his obvious and evident dedication to reaching this goal. He and I and the Senator who is now presiding all were a part of the bipartisan group to which he referred. We worked for months on a proposal which would balance the budget and which could join together Republicans and Democrats. In spite of the opposition of the leadership in both parties and the President of the United States, we got 46 votes for our proposal. But 46 is not a majority of 100 Senators. I believe that was superior to the resolution that is before us now, but I do not believe it was perfect. As the Senator from North Dakota pointed out, each of us who was involved in that set of negotiations gave up something for the greater good. But we do not have that proposal before us right now. I must say that I am disappointed in my friend from North Dakota because the question is not whether or not there is a better way to do this--each of us can find something that he or she would use to improve this proposition-- the question is whether or not we are going to do something that moves us decisively in the right direction or nothing at all. I regret to say that, I guess, Mr. President, in the ultimate analysis we may do nothing. Oh, yes, we are going to pass this resolution. This is a responsible resolution which allows American working families to make at least a slightly greater judgment over how they spend the money they earn than they can do at the present time by lowering taxes on those families. That moves modestly, though not decisively enough, in the direction of reducing the growth of entitlement programs which are destroying the fiscal stability of this country and eating the heart out of the futures of our children and our grandchildren, and a resolution that deals responsibly with our need to fund something else through this Government than just a handful of huge income transfer programs and entitlements. We have that choice on one side, perhaps too modest on entitlements, too modest on tax relief for American working families, I think perhaps too stringent on much of our discretionary spending. Nonetheless, we have a choice of doing that or saying, ``Oh, no, this is not perfect. We will vote against it. We will do nothing. We will leave it until next year.'' Almost inevitably, a President of the United States running for reelection is going to end up vetoing all of the formal major statutory changes that would move us in this direction. I can only be reminded in connection with his actions, most regrettably, Mr. President, by the supposed comment of Louis the XV of France on his deathbed: ``After me, the deluge.'' The President sees a Medicare trust fund report that says that the Medicare hospital trust fund will go bankrupt in the year 2001, and even if he is reelected President of the United States, that is after his watch is over. So we do not need to do anything now. We can continue on the status quo road, at least until after this next election. It is exactly that attitude, which certainly is not exclusively held by the President of the United States, ``Let's wait until after the next election,'' that has given us this $5 trillion in debt. I hope against hope, Mr. President, of course, that in addition to a degree of responsibility of party discipline on this side of the aisle, we will have Members of the other party who say, ``This is not exactly what I wanted, but it certainly moves us in the right direction as a country. It certainly provides a degree of relief for this Nation. It will certainly help generations who are going to come after us who cannot vote in the elections of 1996. So I will swallow some of my reservations, and I make that move in the right direction.'' I hope against hope that the President will believe that is at least as advantageous as demagoging the issue. I will hope next year we come closer to doing something like the bipartisan budget that failed by so narrow a margin. I hope for all of those things, Mr. President, the only actual duty that I have right now and that every other Senator has right now is to say yes to this proposal that moves in the right direction, or, no, we can go another year without doing anything at all, letting the situation get worse and worse and worse. Mr. President, the overwhelming argument is in favor of the passage of this budget resolution.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, nothing I can say here today can add to the richness or the depth of the picture that has already been presented over the course of the last 2 weeks or so by other Members of this body and by those outside of this body with respect to our candidate for President and our retiring majority leader, Senator Bob Dole. All I can do is to take that photograph from a very slightly different angle and, I hope, make it at least a slightly deeper photograph of a great man. This is important, however, because the Bob Dole we, who have worked with him for a year or for a decade, know is not the Bob Dole as he has been pictured to our fellow citizens all across the United States. It is exactly for that reason, of course, that he is leaving us and his magnificent and, I believe, rewarding career in this body to share his real character, his real personality with all of the people of the United States in his quest for the Presidency. Bob Dole is, I think, first of all, a man of extraordinary patience-- perhaps the single most significant requirement for a leader of a body of 99 other Members, all of whom most of the time feel that they are in possession of absolute truth or the precise way in which the Senate should conduct its business. Bob Dole seems never to have lost a sunny equanimity, even under the most difficult circumstances. His wit seems never to have deserted him. His willingness to listen to advice and counsel--almost always unsolicited--seems to have been infinite, and at the same time that he has been willing to listen and been willing to consider the views from disparate sectors, he has been possessed by a deep dedication to principle, to direction, and to love of country. On the one hand, people in politics are criticized for being too rigid and not understanding and, on the other hand, for being too compromising. Bob Dole is neither. He has that rare combination of a dedication to principle and a willingness to listen and to accommodate the principles and ideas of others, which has made him a great success, has caused him to be the longest-serving leader of this party in the history of the U.S. Senate. And so because of those winning traits of personality and those deeper traits of character and principle, each of us who remain here in the Senate will be slightly the lesser by reason of his leaving. He, on the other hand, will be the better for it--for this surprising and principled decision, for his willingness to present himself to the American people without the protection of any office on which to fall back. I believe, Mr. President--and I believe firmly--that this open risk- taking, courageous Bob Dole, whom we have known for as long as each of us has been in the Senate, and whom his friends, neighbors, and family have known from his youth, will become increasingly known by, respected by, and loved by the people of the United States as he presents these traits of character and personality to them during the balance of this campaign. So we wish him bon voyage, the best of good luck, and we wish to the American people a new President with all of these wonderful characteristics for leadership and for making our country a better and stronger place in which to live.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may be able to use such of the time reserved for the Senator from New Mexico as I may use.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with.