Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, while we await our instructions on closing out business of the day, I would like to just very briefly, though we are going to speak tomorrow at some length about the Domenici amendment, say that I think it is important tonight to at least to begin to call our colleagues' attention to the fact that the Domenici amendment is not simply an amendment to reestablish the Federal Legal Services Corporation. We can debate the merits of that and the demerits. I believe the demerits outweigh the merits. But the Domenici amendment has a profound impact on the rest of this bill because it cuts other programs. I simply want to leave with my colleagues tonight a very brief outline of what the Domenici amendment does in order to fund this expansion in legal services. It cuts $25 million from our efforts in the Justice Department related to the Criminal Division, to the Civil Rights Division, to the Environmental Division. It cuts funding for the U.S. attorneys office by $11 million. That is money that would have gone to fund U.S. attorneys to prosecute drug felons and gun felons. It cuts $40 million from the FBI budget, funds that would be used to build the new FBI academy, to build infrastructure, which the FBI greatly needs. It cuts the Bureau of the Census both economic and statistical analysis and the census itself in a period when we are getting ready to have the 2000 census, the millennium census. It cuts funding for the court of appeals, for district courts, and for other courts by $25 million. Every day we have people waiting to be tried in civil cases and criminal cases, and we are cutting funding for our courts to fund legal services. Funding is cut by $21 million for the reorganization/transition fund in the State Department. That is a major Republican initiative in an authorization bill for which the majority of Senators have voted in the affirmative. The bill cuts funding for the commerce transition fund. The budget adopted by the Senate called for the elimination of the Commerce Department. This eliminates transition funds that would be required. Finally and stunningly, the distinguished Senator from New Mexico has a budget gimmick in the funding mechanism which has a delayed obligation of $115 million which becomes effective only on September 1, 1996, so that we are in fact committing ourselves to a level of funding which is substantially higher than the funding level which is claimed in this amendment. No one needs to give me a lecture on the power of the special interest groups that support the Legal Services Corporation. I understand that perfectly, and I understand that the majority of the Members of the Senate support funding for the Legal Services Corporation. But I want my colleagues to know that in supporting that funding, they are supporting cuts in our criminal activities, our civil rights activities in the Justice Department, our Environmental Division within the Justice Department. They are denying funding for the FBI Academy and in the process cutting funds for courts. So what we are talking about is basically cutting funding for prosecutors, for the Justice Department to work in areas that are critically important. We are cutting funding in courts when we desperately need more prosecutors and more courts. I hope my colleagues will look at these offsets. Governing is about choices, and the choices we look at on this bill are, basically, do we want to fund courts and U.S. attorneys to prosecute violent criminals and drug felons or do we want to fund the Legal Services Corporation? To me that is a very easy choice. I wish to be sure that my colleagues understand it, and I thank the Senate for in the closing moments of this legislative day giving me the opportunity to make it clear to people what we are talking about. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, these amendments have all been cleared on both sides. I ask unanimous consent that they be agreed to en bloc, and that statements accompanying the amendments be printed in the Record as if read.

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

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I am sure that the same is true for Senator Hollings. We would try to accommodate the Senator in every way we can.

Mr. GRAMM. It sounds to me as if we have a pretty full schedule for the rest of the evening. My guess is that tomorrow morning would be a good time. But it may well be at some time tonight people will decide to get finished, at which point obviously the Senator could offer the amendment. We are basically set now in terms of unanimous consent on two amendments. One is a fairly comprehensive amendment by Senator Biden where we will have 2 hours equally divided. Then we are going to Senator Domenici on trying to bring back the Federal Legal Services Corporation, which will be debated, I would think, pretty extensively. We have an amendment pending by the Senator from Arizona. So I cannot tell the Senator that he would not get to offer it tonight, but if I were the Senator, if we are here tomorrow, I would try to do it in the morning.

Mr. GRAMM. If the distinguished Senator from Arkansas will yield----

Mr. GRAMM. With righteous passion.

Mr. GRAMM. If the Senator will yield, nothing in this unanimous- consent request would in any way limit the Senator's ability to offer his amendment or any other amendment.

Mr. GRAMM. So I am reluctant to lock us into voting on the Domenici amendment next.

Mr. GRAMM. And we might decide for some reason that we might want to go ahead and consider other amendments intervening.

Mr. GRAMM. If the distinguished Senator will yield, I have no objection to what the Senator is doing, but it may well be that we might have an extended debate.

Mr. GRAMM. I would be perfectly happy to have the Senator bring the amendment up, offer it, lock in his offsets, if he has them, and I think that is a legitimate concern. What I would like to do, given that we had talked about having the debate on the Biden amendment begin at 7, is, if the Senator offers the amendment now, to come back to it. This is a very important amendment to me. I am strongly opposed to it. And I think it will be something that will be debated at some length. Clearly, the distinguished Senator from New Mexico has the right to the floor under the unanimous-consent request. So if he wants to exercise that now, he can. And perhaps we might look at the following potential unanimous-consent request--that he would bring up the amendment and debate it for up to 20 minutes. Then it would be set aside. Senator Biden would be recognized to bring up his omnibus amendment, 2 hours equally divided, and at that point we would have reached the hour of 9 o'clock and we will have the first vote. We at that point could either go back to the McCain amendment and dispose of it or we could go back to the Domenici amendment and debate it. Either of those things I would be agreeable to.

Mr. GRAMM. The Domenici amendment would then be brought up after the votes had occurred beginning at 9 o'clock.

Mr. GRAMM. It has already been requested. We would have a vote on the McCain amendment, and at that point the Biden amendment would still be pending, and if the debate is completed, we would have that vote at that point. I propound that unanimous-consent request.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we continue to have some problems in that people are trying to find offsets for their amendments. It takes time to do that, and they discover that others have used the funds available. It should be hard to spend money. So I am not complaining about it. But to try to sort of bring some order to the process, I would like to ask unanimous consent that the distinguished Senator from Colorado, Senator Brown, be recognized for up to 10 minutes to offer an amendment; after the 10 minutes, that the amendment would be set aside and would be fully subject to debate or any other relevant motions. Then the Senate would go back to a debate on the McCain amendment until that debate is completed. If a rollcall vote is asked for on the McCain amendment, then it would be stacked after the rollcall vote, currently scheduled for 9 o'clock, is completed. At that point, Senator Biden would be recognized to offer his omnibus crime amendment. There would be 2 hours of debate equally divided, which would get us to the 9 o'clock hour, at which point we would have a vote on the pending amendment. If there is a rollcall vote asked----

Mr. GRAMM. Between $300 and $700 million for it. In essence, the Senator's amendment is trying to protect the taxpayer from losing a minimum of a quarter of a billion dollars by simply enforcing our end of the contract?

Mr. GRAMM. So the request is, having not fulfilled their commitment to the taxpayer, they want the right to sell it to somebody for $45 million, when, if we exercised the contract on behalf of the taxpayers and took it back, we would get between $300 and $700 million--million?

Mr. GRAMM. If the distinguished Senator has time, let me ask a question to be sure I have this. Back when we used to give spectrum away, we gave spectrum to a company that took it on the agreement that they would use it, that they would initiate construction, that they would begin to broadcast on that signal. The date that they agreed to is now past; is that right?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me thank Senator Biden for working with me on this amendment. We had provided in the appropriations bill a tripling of funding for violence against women, which represented our largest increase in expenditure in the bill. Our problem was that, given the overall financial constraint we had, there was no way we could fund the authorized level of the program. So Senator Biden and I were in a position that we both wanted to provide more money. This has been one of the top priorities of the bill. But yet we were still short of the full program that the Senate had authorized. When the distinguished chairman of the committee allocated additional funds to the subcommittee, as he did in his amendment that was just adopted a moment ago, it allowed us to go ahead and to fully fund this program. I am, therefore, very happy to join my colleague from Delaware in this amendment. I think given the funds that are now available that this represents a wise expenditure of money. I join my colleague in supporting this amendment, and urge our colleagues to adopt it. I yield the floor. Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the corrections to the committee report that I send to the desk be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, the bill that is currently before the Senate, H.R. 2076, fiscal year 1996 Commerce, State, Justice appropriations bill, as reported by the Senate Appropriations Committee, contains several inadvertent errors. This amendment is purely technical in nature and is intended to accurately reflect the amendments which were adopted in both subcommittee and full committee. This amendment has been cleared by the distinguished floor manager on the other side. It is simply necessary to straighten out all of the drafting errors that have been created in getting the bill to this point.

Phil Gramm

Speeches

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