Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I send a technical amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. GRAMM. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be temporarily set aside for the purpose of considering a technical amendment which has been cleared on both sides.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, in a moment we will have an amendment by the distinguished chairman of the full committee, which is going to shift the allocation among the subcommittees providing additional funding for Commerce, State, Justice and in the process solving many of the problems that hold this bill up. While we are waiting on that--and I understand the distinguished Senator from West Virginia has now signed off on that amendment--I want to say, as the new chairman of this subcommittee, that I have had an opportunity, for the first time, to work with the distinguished Senator of the full committee, Senator Hatfield, in that capacity. I think it is fair to say that the success that I have had in bringing the bill to this point is, in no small part, due to the assistance that I have had from the distinguished Senator from Oregon. I simply want to say that the Senator from Oregon has not only been very helpful to me in this bill, but I think he epitomizes what the skilled and dedicated legislator is all about. I had a great deal of respect for Senator Hatfield before we started trying to put together this very difficult bill. I have even more respect for him now. In case we have the miracle of miracles and we work out an agreement and this bill quickly becomes law and everybody scatters to the far ends of the continent, and maybe in some cases to the far ends of the world, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the distinguished chairman for the personal help and council he has given to me. He certainly is deserving of our thanks and our appreciation. Let me, in waiting for the amendment to be ready, simply suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM. Reserving the right to object, I have been talking to several other Members. We are trying to work out an agreement where we might actually reduce it down to four amendments that we would have on the bill. The Senator's would be one of those amendments, but it may very well be--as you know, there is competition for these offsets. Before I can accept that unanimous-consent request, I have to go back and talk to the people that I am talking to on the other side of the aisle. So if the Senator will withhold, I will go back and talk to them and maybe look at these offsets and see if we can work it out. I want to be sure that the same resources are not being promised to two or three different places.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we are certainly narrowing it down to opening statements. So with that, I ask unanimous consent that we begin opening statements and that it not be in order to offer an amendment until those opening statements are completed; at that point that--let me state it this way: I ask unanimous consent that it be in order now to have opening statements; that at the conclusion of the opening statements, subject to the agreement of the minority leader, at that point that it be in order for the distinguished Senator from Oregon, Senator Hatfield, to offer an amendment on behalf of himself and Senator Hollings.

Mr. GRAMM. Well, Mr. President, let me just then ask unanimous consent that we have opening statements by Senator Hollings and myself and any other Member who would wish to make an opening statement, that it also be in order for us to offer managers' amendments where we have agreement on both sides of the aisle, and that when an agreement is reached between the distinguished chairman of the full committee and the ranking member, Senator Byrd, that at that point it be in order for Senator Hatfield to offer his amendment which deals with some 20 different subjects. I think by doing it that way, we can expedite consideration. So I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to have opening statements, that it be in order for me to offer, on behalf of myself and Senator Hollings, managers' amendments where there is agreement on both sides of the aisle, and that it then be in order, when Senator Byrd has agreed, for the distinguished chairman of the full committee, Senator Hatfield, to offer an amendment on behalf of himself and Senator Hollings.

Mr. GRAMM. Well, if I might say to the distinguished Senator from West Virginia, this is not my amendment. There has been a series of discussions among Members. Basically what the Senator from Oregon has been doing is trying to find a way through our impasse. As I am sure our colleagues are aware, our appropriations bill has $4.26 billion less than requested by the President for our subcommittee. It has $1.9 billion less than a freeze. And it has $870 million less than the House. Senator Hatfield has been working with Senator Hollings and others to try to allocate funds to this subcommittee. I was unaware, I must say, that that had not been discussed with the distinguished Senator from West Virginia. I have an outline of the amendment. But probably what I should do under this circumstance is simply ask unanimous consent that we be able to do opening statements, that we be able to do the technical managers' amendments we have agreed to, give the distinguished Senator from West Virginia an opportunity to discuss this with Senator Hatfield, who is in a meeting with the Secretary of Energy on something very important in his State right now. When the agreement has been reached and the ranking member, Senator Byrd, is satisfied, then we can proceed with it. And, again, this is not my amendment; I have not been directly involved in it even though I have concluded that this is a prudent thing for us to do.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me try to give an opening statement on a very complicated bill without getting into too many of the details but in such a way as to basically cover the issues that are involved in this bill. I think there are many reasons why this is a very complicated and a very controversial bill. One reason is money. This bill, probably more than any other appropriation that we will consider this year, has a very tight budget. It, in fact, provides $4.26 billion less for Commerce-State-Justice appropriations than was requested by the President. It provides almost $2 billion less than a nominal freeze in the current level of appropriations for Commerce-State-Justice. And I remind my colleagues that, compared to some of the larger appropriation accounts, this is a fairly small appropriations bill in terms of actual dollar outlays. So when we are talking about $2 billion less for fiscal year 1996 than we are spending this year, we are talking about a substantial reduction in the ability to expend money for the carrying out of functions in the Department of Commerce, the Department of State, and the Department of Justice. The bill also has almost $900 million less than our counterparts in the House had. And this is the first point I want my colleagues to understand. When the President criticized this bill for not providing funding for purposes for which he requested funding, it is important for our colleagues--and, quite frankly, it is important for those who are following this debate--to understand that we are operating under a totally different budget than the President proposed. Our budget comes into balance in 7 years. Our budget substantially reduces discretionary spending. Our budget imposes very real constraints on spending money. The President, in proposing $4.3 billion more for these three Departments of Government than we proposed, does so in a budget that will not be in balance by the second coming. It does so in a budget that will not bring the deficit below $200 billion in a decade. So the fact that the President, in his budget, can request funding for many functions that we do not fund is simply a testament to the fact that our budget is a binding budget that is balanced over 7 years and the President's budget is not. There are several ways to approach the writing of an appropriations bill where you have to cut $4.3 billion. One way--and, quite frankly, in no way being critical, but I want people to understand why this is such a controversial bill--one way is to take the approach which has been taken in most other appropriations bills, and that is to simply take the level of savings that is dictated, nick a whole bunch of programs a little bit and, basically, take the approach that you are going to sort of hunker down and not fundamentally change anything. It seems to me, Mr. President, that this is roughly equivalent to an action that a family which is running out of money might take at the end of the month when they say, ``Well, we're running out of money and what we're going to do is spend a little bit less going to the movie and spend a little bit less on milk for the children.'' As we know, families do not operate that way. Families set priorities. Families decide toward the end of the month when they are running out of money that they are not going to go to the movie, but that they are going to continue to buy their children milk. As chairman of this subcommittee, I decided that if we were shooting with real bullets, if we were going to write an appropriations bill now that set out a path to balance the budget over 7 years, that we ought to recognize, to begin with, that we are going to have less money next year than we had this year, less the next, and less in each successive year for the next 6 years. So I made the decision to terminate programs, to set priorities. My original recommendation terminated some 12 programs outright. It also set very strong priorities. It was my decision as chairman of the subcommittee that not all programs in the Commerce, State, Justice appropriations bill were created equally. I believe that the American people have very strong preferences, and what I have tried to do within the monetary constraints that I have had as chairman, and this has been supported by the majority in both the subcommittee and the full committee, is to try to fund the President's effort in fighting crime. I am very proud of the fact that this bill fully funds the FBI and the DEA. It fully funds our efforts to incarcerate violent criminals. It provides a strong funding increase for the courts to hire prosecutors to provide the system of criminal and civil justice that we need to deal with the problems that we face. This bill provides a substantial increase in funding for the Justice Department, funding for our effort to fight violent crime, funding for our effort to fight drugs. I will come back in a moment and talk about changes in how the Justice Department would function, but let me make this point. While we provide, basically, the same level of funding requested by the President, we have in subcommittee and full committee on this bill changed the allocation of funding. In the crime trust fund, we spend less money on social programs, we spend more money building prisons. It is a belief of the subcommittee and the full committee that we need to get tough on violent crime, and we try to do that in this crime bill. The second area that we fund in this bill has to do with the Department of State. I have to say, Mr. President, that I have been somewhat disappointed. I visited with the Secretary of State. I explained to the Secretary of State the simple arithmetic of this bill, and the simple arithmetic of this bill is as follows: If we provide roughly the level of funding requested by the President for the Justice Department, if we provide funding for half of the increase requested by the Federal judiciary, what that means is, given the amount of money we have left, that we have to cut every other program by an average of 36 percent. That is the cold reality that we are looking at. I tried to explain to the Secretary of State that that was basically where we were and that that meant that we were going to have to reduce the level of funding for the State Department by roughly 20 percent. That is actually better treatment than we provided for the Commerce Department in this bill. We have not adopted the authorization bill for the State Department, but a majority of the Members of the Senate have voted for that authorization. It has been filibustered. We have been unable to get 60 votes and, as a result, what I did in writing the appropriations bill is I took the authorization bill which has received a majority vote in the Senate on a cloture motion and I used it as the blueprint to write funding for the State Department. The basic reductions that occur in the State Department budget have to do with American payments for membership in world organizations. The distinguished Senator from North Carolina, Senator Helms, in his authorization bill, dramatically reduces the amount of taxpayer funding that goes to world organizations to promote objectives that, at least in the minds of the majority of the Members of the Senate, did not reflect the will of the American people. I think it is important to note, and I want to be sure that it is part of the Record, that despite all of the moaning from the State Department that somehow not a sufficient account is taken in this bill that representing [[Page S 14492]] America abroad today is a dangerous business, something that I understand, I appreciate the sacrifice that is made by people who work in the State Department. As a result, I have fully funded every penny requested by the President in his budget for such expenditures. Even though he spends $4.3 billion more in his budget than we are allowed to spend in ours, I fund every penny the President requests for security abroad for both our Embassies and our personnel. So the criticism of the State Department that somehow we are underfunding the State Department and the needs of its people is simply verifiably false. This is a tough budget. It does reflect the fact that the American people do not believe that we are getting our money's worth with all of these world organizations where we pay the bulk of the dues and have a relatively small say in what they do and on how our money is spent. I think the plain truth is the American people understand that in the postwar period, America has been like a little rich kid in the middle of a slum with a cake. The whole world has looked at this cake and wanted a piece of it. We literally have run all over the world handing out pieces of this cake. Nobody has loved us for it. In fact, in many cases, they have not loved us, thinking they should have gotten more. The fundamental philosophy behind this appropriations bill is we need to stop sharing the cake, and we need to start sharing the recipe we used to bake the cake, which is free enterprise, individual liberty, and private property. So in the State Department appropriations bill, we provide $4.4 billion. The President requested $5.6 billion. Much of this reduction is taken in membership in world organizations. And, quite frankly, while this can be debated forever, I would be perfectly content to take my appropriations bill, take the President's budget, to tear the title page off, to put each of them on the table in every kitchen of every working American and let them decide whether they want money spent funding the war on violent crime in America, the war on drugs, gaining control of our borders, or whether they want the money spent paying dues to organizations around the world where the United States is now a member of these organizations and, in many cases, is paying the bulk of the dues. I do not think there is any doubt that the American people would choose the position that I have chosen. It seems to me that is why the State Department has not wanted to debate the real issue here. In terms of the Commerce Department, let me remind my colleagues that the budget that we adopted in the Senate was a budget that called for the elimination of the Commerce Department. I have listened to my colleagues talk about eliminating departments, and I then look at their willingness to vote to actually cut the programs, and I often see a gulf between the rhetoric and the reality. It is almost as if when people are talking about eliminating departments, they want to go down and take down the flag and take down the plaque off the wall, but they want the Government to keep doing the things the Department has been doing. When we adopted a budget that called for the elimination of the Commerce Department, when the Government Operations Committee reported a bill to eliminate the Commerce Department, I, as chairman of this subcommittee, believed that they were serious. And, as a result, we dramatically reduce spending in the Commerce Department. We set up a procedure to provide funds for current employees, and we provide the mechanism that would allow us, if in fact we pass the authorizing bill, to terminate the Department, and to do it in an orderly fashion. Now, many of the people who voted for the budget to eliminate the Department want to preserve some of its programs and, obviously, we are going to have votes on those. There are many programs within the Commerce Department that this bill eliminates outright. But, basically, it is a bill that begins the process of dramatically reducing the level of expenditures for activities where the Government is attempting to pick winners and losers in the American economy. There is a fundamental philosophical difference between the two parties on this issue. The party which I represent--the philosophy I believe in--believes that the market system ought to be the basic determining factor of who gets money to invest; that Government does not have the wisdom to make that decision and, quite frankly, even if it had the wisdom to make that decision, since it is inherently a political decision, it would not make that decision very well. That is an outline of the expenditures of the bill. As I said, the bill eliminates some dozen programs from the Minority Business Development Agency to the U.S. Travel and Tourism Administration, to the Technology Administration, to the information infrastructure grants, to the Death Penalty Resource Centers, to the Competitive Policy Council, the Ounce of Prevention Council, and the bill eliminates Legal Services as a Federal program. Now, let me talk about the language changes in the bill, because almost every one of these provisions is controversial. So let me try to tick through basically what the bill does. The House appropriations bill appropriated to their crime bill, which was part of the Contract With America. The Senate has not passed a crime bill. The crime bill passed in the House contemplated and, in fact, provided a dramatic change in the President's program to provide funds to State and local governments. We had no corresponding bill pass in the Senate, but we do have a bill that has been introduced by Senator Hatch in conjunction with Senator Dole. To make the House and Senate crime bills conformable, it was decided by the subcommittee and the full committee to write in the allocation formula from the Dole- Hatfield proposal, so that both appropriations bills are moving in the same direction toward block grants. Needless to say, with Senator Biden, this has been a very controversial subject, and we have worked out an agreement where Senator Biden will offer a substitute for this provision. Senator Hatch and Senator Dole would like to change their proposal, which was written into the bill, and so they will basically put the ball in the air. Each will submit alternatives, and we will determine, based on a vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate, what direction we move in. But let me be sure that everybody understands what the bill before us does in this area. The bill before us would allow communities to carry out the community policing program exactly as the President proposed, if they choose to. In the bill before us, we would allocate funds to local police departments, and they would have the ability to do community policing exactly as the President has proposed, if they choose to do it. The objection that has been leveled against this block grant is not that they cannot do what the President has proposed we do, but that they have the option of doing it in a different way. The objection to our language is not a dispute about the President's program so much as it is a dispute in the ability of local government and local chiefs of police to decide to use the money in a different way if they think that will work better for them. We have set out a guideline on how the money could be used. If people chose to do community policing, to put more policemen on the beat, as our crime bill last year proposed, and as the President supports, they could do that. If they decide that they want to have more policemen on the beat, but they want to use the funds for training, they could do that. If they decide that they want to work overtime to get better trained police officers on the street now while they bring new trainees into the police academy, they could do that. If they decide they need to use the funds to buy equipment to make their system more efficient, they could do that. But they have the capacity to carry out the program as the President has proposed, if they choose to. The second change in language has to do with the Legal Services Corporation. It is not news to any of my colleagues that I am not a fan of the Legal Services Corporation. I believe that is has some legitimate functions. But I think that, in many cases, they have not carried those functions out. [[Page S 14493]] Legal Services Corporation today has a lawsuit underway against every State in the Union that has tried to reform welfare. Every time any State in the Union has had a mandatory work requirement, the Legal Services Corporation has filed a lawsuit against them. Any time any State in the Union has tried to deny additional benefits to welfare recipients who have additional children on welfare, the Legal Services Corporation has filed a lawsuit against them. The Legal Services Corporation has a long history of using taxpayer funds to promote causes which are not taxpayers' causes. My view is, Mr. President, that if someone wants to file a lawsuit against the State of New Jersey saying that they cannot have a mandatory work requirement for welfare recipients because it violates the constitutional rights of welfare recipients to have to work, people ought to have a right to file that lawsuit. But they ought not to use taxpayers' money to do it. In any case, after many years of battling on this issue, this year I proposed--and was successful--in the initial mark to eliminate the Legal Services Corporation outright. I did not have the votes in subcommittee to do that. An agreement was reached where we eliminate the Federal Legal Services Corporation. We take roughly half the money that it is now spending and we give that money in a block grant to State governments. Then State governments, within a set of guidelines which limit the ability of organizations that take Federal taxpayers' money to engage, basically, in the promotion of class action suits, opposing welfare, and a series of other restrictions based on past concerns--have block grants to spend on legal services. It provides roughly half the funds that the existing program provides. Another controversial area of language in the bill has to do with prisoners' work. This is an issue which I feel very strongly about. I do not have much doubt in my mind that when the votes are counted on the floor of the Senate, I am going to lose on this issue. But I want the American people to know about it. Part of my reward for being chairman is that now people have to take this provision out. Let me define the problem. To keep someone in the Federal penitentiary this year is going to cost the Federal taxpayers $22,000. We could send somebody to Harvard for what we are going to pay to keep them in the Federal penitentiary. We are paying more to keep someone in the Federal penitentiary than they would make if they could earn twice the minimum wage working. Now, why is that so? Part of the reason is because of the way we build prisons. I have tried in this bill to begin moving us in the direction of stopping the building of Federal prisons like Holiday Inns, taking out the air conditioner, the color television, the weight room. The key ingredient in this direction is requiring Federal prisoners to work. Now, this is where we run headlong into greedy special interests. This is not just the greedy special interests of organized labor. It is also, quite frankly, the greedy special interests of corporate America. It is the greedy special interests of big business, and it is the greedy special interests of small business. We have three laws in effect that basically criminalize working Federal prisoners. It is basically criminal in America for prisoners to work in any conventional sense of working. Most Americans have not the foggiest idea this is true, and they would go absolutely berserk if they understood it. These three laws basically go back to the Depression era when we took a criminal justice system where prisoners were working, where they were to a substantial degree paying the cost of their own incarceration, and in the Depression era we started eliminating their ability to work. Now, some people could argue--though I would never make the argument--that it may have made sense in the Depression because by not having prisoners do something, someone else could do it and it would create a job. If one could have made that argument in the Depression, they cannot make that argument today. We have one Federal statute that makes it illegal for prisoners to work in producing anything sold in interstate commerce. We have a law that makes it illegal for a prisoner to produce anything that is transported in interstate commerce. We have another law that makes it illegal for prisoners to produce anything that is sold within the State in which it is produced. Then we have another provision that sets out guidelines where, if prisoners did produce something that was sold in the private market, they would have to be paid union scale. Let me translate all of those amendments and what they mean. What that means, in essence, is you cannot make prisoners work in producing anything to sell in the private sector of the economy. All over the country we have 100,000 people in the Federal penitentiary. We have 1 million people incarcerated in America. By and large, except for producing a handful of things that are relatively insignificant in value as compared to the total economy, they cannot work. Now, we have a bunch of programs in States where prisoners produce car tags. We have a Federal program where they produce furniture for the Federal Government. But by and large these laws prevent us from putting prisoners to work. I would like prisoners to work 10 hours a day 6 days a week. I would like to turn our Federal prisons into industrial parks. What I have done in this bill is I have overturned these three laws, and I have set out a simple guideline. What the bill says is that it is legal for prisoners to be required to work so long as the President certifies that what they produce is not sold in such a way as to glut a local market or to glut the national market. What I foresee under this provision, if it becomes law, is that we could turn our Federal prisons into industrial parks. Many of the goods that are produced abroad, component parts from everything from air conditioners to wheelbarrows to automobiles, we could produce some of those component parts with prison labor. If we stopped building prisons like Holiday Inns, we could probably cut the $22,000 in half. If we required prisoners to work, we could probably cut the $11,000 of net cost in half. I believe that within a decade we could cut the cost of incarcerating people by 75 percent. But we are probably not going to do it. Let me tell you why. Because organized labor and because a few industries that do not want any competition will support the offering of an amendment that will continue to criminalize prison labor in America. Now, I offered this provision in our bill because I think it is needed. I think when you have 1 million people incarcerated, it is inhumane not to have an orderly system where they can work. I will not drag this dead cat across the table too many more times here, but I want to remind my colleagues that when Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in the 1830's and went back home and wrote ``Democracy in America,'' one part of American life that he commented on was our prison system and how enlightened it was because we worked prisoners hard. Prisoners at that time were working 12, 14 hours a day 6 days a week, and de Tocqueville noted how enlightened it was because by making prisoners work it made life in prison bearable. If we made prisoners work today, not only would we save money, but people when they got out of prison would have a skill that they learned working in prison. If we made them go to school at night, they would know how to read and write, and having worked 10 hours a day 6 days a week, go to school at night, serve their full term, when they get out of prison they would not want to go back. That is not going to happen because this provision is going to be stricken out by special interests. I know it, but I want people to have to vote on it, and I want people to be able to look at their vote. Prisoners in America should be required to work. They should be allowed to work in producing things that we can sell. Every year our dear colleague, Senator Helms, offers an amendment to ban trade with countries that make prisoners work. Every year I wonder why we cannot make our prisoners work. How is it that we have people who are working two and three jobs, [[Page S 14494]] struggling to make ends meet, and we are paying $22,000 a year to keep somebody in prison, and then we cannot force them to work to produce something of value to pay for their own incarceration? It is called greedy, petty, special interests. The world ought to know about it. I hope to awaken them by putting this provision in this bill that somebody has to take out. Now let me talk very briefly about two other language provisions in the bill. One has to do with the 8(a) program. The 8(a) program is designed to help disadvantaged businesses. The basic idea of the 8(a) program was that there are some businesses that are disadvantaged and that we want to try to help them get on the playing field and be more competitive. The problem is that over the years, disadvantaged has come to mean minority or female. You cannot be disadvantaged, under the 8(a) contract, if you are not a minority and if you are male. So what I try to do is open up the 8(a) contract and say, no matter what your gender is, no matter what your race is, if you are operating in a depressed area, if you are a small, struggling business and you are hiring people who live in a distressed area, you ought to be treated in exactly the same way as someone doing exactly the same things you are who is from a different ethnic group or from a different gender. We do not eliminate the 8(a) program, we simply open it up to people who are disadvantaged because they are small business people in depressed areas with high unemployment and they are hiring people from those areas. This is a controversial subject. I understand that. But I believe, again, if we could put this proposal on the kitchen table in every kitchen in America and ask, if somebody is a small business person, if they are operating in an area of high unemployment, if they are hiring people who are from a high unemployment area, why should they be discriminated against based on race or gender? I think America has asked that question and I think America has answered it. They are waiting for the U.S. Senate to answer it and I want to give them a chance to answer it today. The final provision I want to talk about in the bill, in terms of language, has to do with quotas and set-asides. I understand where the Senate stands on this issue. Of all people here, I understand it. I offered an amendment earlier this year to ban set-asides, to open up competition, and to say that in bidding on a Government contract you have to be judged on merit; that you cannot be judged based on gender or race. The American people say, by an 80-percent margin, that they support the merit system. America was built on it. Discriminating against people is fundamentally un-American, but the Senate supports discrimination and proved it on that night in that amendment. This is my bill, as chairman of this subcommittee, and I am very proud of the fact that we have, in this bill, in the jurisdiction of Commerce, State, Justice under this bill, we say that it is illegal to discriminate against anybody in hiring, promotion, and contracting, and it is illegal to discriminate in favor of anybody. It is simple language. In fact, it is the language which the distinguished majority leader, Senator Dole, has worked out. I had worked out similar language but, frankly, I thought his language was better so I included it. It is basically a commitment to merit. I have to believe, based on our past vote, that this provision will be stripped out. But, again, America ought to know who is and who is not for quotas; who is and who is not for set-asides. Let me make it clear that the language in this bill preserves our total effort of outreach. It preserves our ability to go out and recruit people to apply for jobs. It gives us the full ability to work, to see that everybody gets on the playing field. But it requires that, once people are on the playing field, when it comes to being hired, being promoted, or getting a contract, that must be done by merit. So this is a very controversial bill. It is no accident that we have kept it to the end. I am quite proud of the bill. Obviously, others oppose it. And the way democracy works is that we propose and we debate, and I accept the outcome of it. But I think this bill represents a dramatic change and, quite frankly, I have been disappointed in the other appropriations bills in that we have committed to a budget that calls for a dramatic change but everybody seems to be waiting until next year or the next year or the next year to make these changes. I wanted to make them now. I may not be here 2 years from now. I do not know. I may not be on this committee next Monday--I do not know that either. But I do know that I believe this represents a dramatic break with the past. This bill terminates programs. This bill dramatically changes the way we operate the Federal Government. And I think it gives people a very clear choice. It defines a movement in the direction that I would like to see us go. I am proud that the subcommittee and full committee supported the effort to bring the bill to this point. I know there are some people on the subcommittee and full committee who, now that we are on the floor, will abandon us on some of these issues. But I think we have before us a good bill and, Mr. President, I appreciate the indulgence of the Chair as I outlined the bill. Let me yield the floor for the distinguished ranking member, a man who has served on this subcommittee as both chairman and ranking member, a man for whom I have very great respect, the distinguished Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. GRAMM. Yes, I did.

Mr. GRAMM. I would be very happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we have before us a very complicated bill, a very controversial bill. We are attempting to establish a sequence of activity with a goal of trying to expedite its consideration. In order that we might try to get all this to come together in an orderly fashion, because I know many of our colleagues hope to be gone this weekend--even though, knowing I would be managing the bill, I plan to be here tomorrow and Saturday, so I am in no hurry; I want to be sure my colleagues understand that--but in order to try to expedite our consideration here, we have put together an amendment that will be offered by Senator Hatfield, the distinguished chairman of the full committee, an amendment that is cosponsored by Senator Hollings. It has to do with adding to our 602(b) allocation; that is, allocating additional money to the subcommittee and then disbursing that money in such a way as to deal with some of the concerns that have been raised against the bill. And so that we could deal with this in an orderly fashion, I would like to propound a unanimous-consent request that we have opening statements by the distinguished ranking member of the subcommittee, by myself, by any other Senator who would like to make an opening statement; that then it be in order for us to submit for consideration managers' amendments that have been agreed to on both sides and any debate there might be on them; and then I would like it to be in order for the distinguished Senator from Oregon, Senator Hatfield, to offer his amendment with Senator Hollings because it addresses numerous issues. If we do not do it in that way, we are probably going to simply use up time as we try to deal with those issues one by one. We can certainly proceed without this unanimous-consent request, but I hope our colleagues will indulge us since our objective is simply to try to expedite consideration of the bill.

Mr. GRAMM. There is not a time. We are just saying it will be debated between 7 and 9, and that if it is completed, that it would be the vote after 9. If it is not, it would be pending.

Mr. GRAMM. I am not in a position that I can commit to that, I say to the Senator, because we have not checked on our side. We have not seen the final form of the Biden amendment. What I am trying to do is just have it considered. I assume there will not be--I assume we have the votes, but we want to look at it.

Mr. GRAMM. That is right.

Mr. GRAMM. It will simply be pending and will be the order of business when the Domenici amendment is disposed of.

Mr. GRAMM. All right. I ask unanimous consent that the next amendment to be considered be the Biden amendment; that there be 2 hours equally divided on that amendment; that if a vote is ordered on that amendment, it occur immediately after the pending amendment, which will be voted on at 9 o'clock; that the distinguished Senator from New Mexico be recognized at that point to offer his amendment.

Mr. GRAMM. I would like to get an agreement that allows the distinguished Senator from New Mexico bring up his amendment now, speak on that amendment as long as he chooses to, then Senator Biden would be recognized to offer his omnibus amendment, which is a crucial element to the completion of this bill, that there be 2 hours of debate equally divided, that would get us somewhere close to 9. We would have the pending vote. We would have the vote on the Biden amendment. Then the Senator's amendment would be the pending business and we would vote on it. And we would not vote on anything else until we voted on it.

Mr. GRAMM. Will the distinguished Senator yield?

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

Mr. GRAMM. I thank the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM. Parliamentary inquiry. This amendment will be, after he presents it, it will be set aside and be fully debatable at that point, is that right?

Mr. GRAMM. Has that unanimous-consent request been agreed to?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, has a unanimous-consent request been propounded?