Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. For 24 years.

Mr. GRAMM. Not that I can recall. So many things have gone by my old eyes; there may have been something, but I don't remember it.

Mr. GRAMM. I don't need to make any. If you want to make some comments, you have all the time you need.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me try to set this in historical context. In 1990, in the so-called budget summit agreement, a decision was made to allow the Congress and the President, acting jointly, to declare items emergency items and, therefore, allow the spending on that item to operate outside the budget process. In other words, where the President and the Congress agreed that something was an emergency, then the budget process did not apply. But what was required to make it an emergency was two things: The President said it was an emergency and Congress said it was an emergency, and the combination of the two triggered the exemption. Now, I have been here a long time, and my memory fades, but I don't believe that we have ever had a provision such as the one in this bill because in this bill we have a situation where there is $14 billion of funding that the President did not say was an emergency. Congress says it is an emergency and, therefore, by the definition of the emergency waiver that was written into permanent law in 1990, this $14 billion would not qualify. It would not qualify because it only has half of the action that is required to provide the emergency. It has Congress saying it is an emergency, but the President says it is not an emergency. This bill gets around that 1990 permanent law provision by saying the President has a choice. He can take the whole bill as a deemed emergency or he cannot spend any part of it as an emergency. In other words, it overrides the President's prerogative in this process by saying to him that under the law you had to say it was an emergency and Congress had to say it was an emergency, and you had to be talking about the same thing. But now we want to spend $14 billion that you say is not an emergency. We have $18 billion in the bill that you say is an emergency and we say is an emergency. But we are not going to let you spend that $18 billion unless you spend our $14 billion and say it is an emergency. So this is a complete perversion of that emergency waiver. Now, I have to say that the waiver has been probably the most misused part of every budget that has been adopted since 1990. If I had known then at Andrews Air Force Base what I know today, I would have never agreed to this waiver because it has been abused over and over again. But it has never been abused--at least to the best of my knowledge--the way it is being abused today because the President is being forced to make this an emergency, even though he did not designate it, in order to get the genuine emergency money which he designated and Congress approved. I think this really perverts the process, and I really believe this amendment ought to be adopted.

Mr. GRAMM. If the Senator will yield.

Mr. GRAMM. Fine.

Mr. GRAMM. I don't want to make a rebuttal but try to save the Senate a little time. The only thing I know that remains to be done is a point of order against the bill. I don't think it will change a single vote. If we could agree to let me make the point of order and then have these two votes back to back, we could save people some time--if we wanted to do that.

Mr. GRAMM. Reserving the right to object, I am sorry; I did not hear.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I might be recognized for the purpose of making a point of order.

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

Mr. GRAMM. I have asked unanimous consent to make a point of order.

Mr. GRAMM. I object.

Mr. GRAMM. Yes.

Mr. GRAMM. Yes.

Mr. GRAMM. That is correct. I object.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I want to make a proposal that I think is reasonable. The Parliamentarian has now ruled on the remaining amendments, as to whether they are germane or whether they are subject to a point of order, which would bring them down, and that is only true in the case of one of Senator Byrd's amendments. I want to propose that all those that are germane we accept by unanimous consent and that all those that are not germane fall. They could bring them up, we could raise germaneness. The Chair already ruled they would be struck down. We will have wasted 2 hours of time, and we would end up with exactly the same result. I am not sure if we voted on some of these germane ones they would pass. But it is almost midnight. I want to propose that all of the items on the list that are germane be adopted by unanimous consent or as modified--in the form that the Chair has it--that we adopt them, and those that are not germane we drop, and we would finish our business.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, reserving the right to object, every other amendment which is nongermane would be barred postcloture. I do not see any reason why this amendment should be treated differently than any other, and I object.

Mr. GRAMM. Maybe when we get into the postcloture we can. Finally, to sum up--and this is a President who has not vetoed a single bill, who came to this city determined to work on a bipartisan basis--he says: If the supplemental appropriations bill were presented to the President in its current form his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill. The point I am responding to is that when people say they do not understand why there is opposition to this bill given that we are in an emergency situation, that simply leaves out that the President has already said he would veto this bill. What we should be doing, it seems to me, is sitting down, perhaps the committee should go back and rewrite the bill, work with the President, and craft something the President would sign. The idea that somehow there is foot dragging going on when the President has already said he would veto the bill, I don't view as productive work in which we are engaged. It seems to me what we should be trying to do is to make this bill acceptable to the President. I also note that if you look at every agency of the executive branch of Government, you see that this bill funds every single agency of the executive branch of Government at a higher level than the President requested, except one. There is only one agency of Government that does not get more funding than the President requested under this bill. Guess what it is. Only one agency does not get more funding than requested by the President. What is the agency? The Defense Department. And this is a bill that is about homeland security. So there are two sides to the story. We are at an impasse. Those who want to see a bill signed into law and want to support a President who believes his effort is being subverted have some responsibility to do that. It is not that we are trying to be mean or hateful, it is that the President, who asked for the bill, said he will veto it. The numbers provided by the committee show it grossly overspends what the President requested; and not only that, it overfunds in areas that the President has said do not represent emergencies. Finally, in what I think is a twisting of the process, when we had a budget, we said there could be an emergency under two circumstances: With an agreement of two parties, the President and the Congress. If the President says something is an emergency and Congress says it is an emergency, it does not count on the budget. But under this bill, this $14 billion of nonemergency spending that is added, the President cannot take any of the money that is provided for an emergency, even though it is $10 billion less than he asked for; he cannot spend any of it, unless he designates this $14 billion add-on as a nonemergency. That is a perversion of the whole emergency designation.

Mr. GRAMM. The President has asked for this funding as part of his ongoing appropriation process. The funds would be available on October 1. The odds that we are going to spend the money before October 1, in my opinion, given the experience we have in these kinds of matters, is relatively low. What this amendment does in reality is it takes an ongoing appropriation to provide funding for the storing of specimens in test tubes and jars in a new facility, makes it an emergency so that money that would have been provided in the regular appropriation process can be spent on something else. I will read from the Washington Times statements about this issue. Smithsonian officials acknowledged that the need for specimen storage did not result from the terrorist attacks on September 11. ``It predates September 11,'' said Jerome Conlon, assistant director for facility operations. ``It certainly has been on our wish list, yes.'' The point is there are a lot of things on wish lists. Almost anything could be deemed to be an emergency. The point is the President sent us a targeted list of things that cost $29 billion. This is an item that has to do with the storage of specimens in the Smithsonian. It is true that one can argue that someone could blow up the Smithsonian and get an afterburn from specimens in alcohol. One could argue that almost anything we would do would be an emergency, but the point is the Smithsonian does not say this is an emergency. The President did not ask for it as an emergency. It seems to me that an explosive at a chemical plant in Beaumont, TX, would be a lot more dangerous than one in the Smithsonian with alcohol tubes. I want to protect against both, but the point is where is the line drawn on what is an emergency? If we took the standard that anything that could potentially be considered as a terrorist target is fair game for this emergency appropriation, we could literally spend $100 billion, $200 billion. The point is the President did not consider this to be an emergency. The Smithsonian did not consider this to be an emergency, but it was added to this bill along with other items on which we will vote, some of which are even clearer, but I think this is a pretty clear example of something that was in the appropriation process that the President requested through the normal channels but it has found its way into emergency funding. I do not think we ought to do this. I think this is one of a dozen or so clear examples of where we have overreached in designating emergency. You can make an argument for anything that it has an emergency overtone to it, but basically this is an ongoing activity of the Smithsonian. It was in the President's request for 2003. I think logic would dictate that it be funded through the normal process. Let me make this concluding point. The question before us, it seems to me, is not are we going to build this new building for the Smithsonian; the question is, does it represent such a dire emergency that it should be exempted from the budget process and we should fund it by running a deficit and funding that out of the Social Security trust fund? I argue that where we are talking about clear examples, where the President and the Congress agree, which is our definition of an emergency, in law, that there is an imminent threat, the answer is yes, we should run a deficit to do it. But in a case where the President says this is not an emergency, where it is going to occur anyway through the normal appropriations process, where the Smithsonian admits that it is not an emergency, it has been on their wish list for quite awhile, something they want to do and that is worthy, it seems to me that under these circumstances this should not be funded as an emergency. I think the case is clear cut. Obviously, people can vote however they want to vote, but what we are doing in this emergency designation is we are waiving the Budget Act, we are raising the deficit, we are spending the Social Security trust fund because this is an imminent emergency. The point is the Smithsonian says it is not. The President says it is not. The question is, should we designate it as that or should we allow it to be funded through the normal appropriations process where the funds will be available on October 1? It seems to me that the clear answer is, this should not be in this list of dire emergencies.

Mr. GRAMM. I cannot yield now because I have a very limited time. If we had unlimited debate, I would yield.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I rise in support of the McCain amendment.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I might speak despite the fact that a motion to table has been made.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me make one point and then I will be through. Part of what makes it hard to determine what is happening is that the bill does make appropriations for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operations, research, and facilities of $29.2 million. That is new money that is provided in this bill on an emergency basis. What the Senator from Hawaii is saying is that his amendment does not require new money because he is taking it from money that was appropriated in Public Law 107-77. Our problem is that while you are taking $2.5 million for this purpose from money that was appropriated for this general account, the bill puts in $29.2 million into the account. So it is hard for us to tell--at least it is not obvious--that while you are spending old money, that the bill is not replacing that old money with new money which is, in fact, designated as an emergency. Perhaps this is a technicality, but it is the source of the issue we are trying to raise. I do not know what the $2.5 million--which is being transferred for this purpose--was going to be used for in the first place, and I would not be shocked if it were a lower priority than what the Senator wanted to use it for. But there is $29.2 million of new money for the same account that the committee--let me read the language: The committee recommendation includes $29.2 million for NOAA to address critical homeland security requirements. The problem is, is any of this $29.2 million going to replace the $2.5 million that is being transferred for this purpose? That is what we cannot tell. Hence, that is why this issue has been raised by the President and by others as an example of a nonemergency that is being funded. It is clear that the money is being transferred from an existing account, but the question is, Is any of this $29.2 million going to pay for what is being taken away? That is the question.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me be brief and try to put this amendment in context. The President, as Commander in Chief, sent the Congress a request for some $28 billion of emergency funding; that is, funding that we deem so critical that we are going to waive the Budget Act, increase the deficit, and spend Social Security money for the purpose of funding it, to basically try to respond to the attack on 9- 11 and to try to prevent another attack. The President made that request and the Senate Appropriations Committee has now come forward with a bill that spends $4 billion more than the President asked for; that underfunds his request for emergency items by $10 billion. That overfunds nonemergencies by $14 billion. There is no way on the floor of the Senate that we are going to get this bill back in line with the President's request. Hopefully, that will happen in conference. But the President has sent a letter saying he is going to veto this bill because it spends $4 billion more than he asked, he does not give him $10 billion he wanted, and it gives him $14 billion he did not want. Obviously, it is within our capabilities and within the ingenious ability of the Senate and Senators to make almost anything an ``emergency.'' I make the following points about this building. First, the President did not ask for it. The President did not include this in his emergency request. I assume he did not include it because, while he supported funding it consistently in each budget, he did not believe it met the high threshold of a national crisis. Second, it is not as if we are talking about money for research. We are talking about money for a building that will be built over an 8- year period. It looks to me as if what we are seeing is an effort to take this emergency bill and tack on money to speed up a project that would be funded anyway. Now maybe if we built this building in 7\1/2\ years instead of 8 years there would be a benefit to come from it. I don't doubt it. That might very well be. I am against animal diseases, so I might be a beneficiary. Next year I might be in the goat business and there might be a benefit directly in this for me. But the question is, Is this such a dire emergency that it ought to be funded in an emergency bill that is aimed at the threat of terrorism? A plausible case, even though the President did not ask for it, that if this were direct funding for research that we were going to conduct over the next 3 or 4 months, one might make a plausible case. I don't believe you make a plausible case in a building that will be built over the next 8 years, that giving it $50 million more now is an emergency. Again, some people want to view this as Senator McCain and I are trying to be tightwads and that we are trying to take out these projects that have merit. I assume since we have been funding this for a while, and intend to fund it for another period of years, that it does have merit. The question is, Is it a dire emergency? I don't believe it is. Senator McCain and I could have gone on and on and on in offering these little amendments. After this third one, we will have made our point. Our point is that no one cares. Our point is, the fix is in, we have done this bill, and 31 people cared, but the vast majority of Members of the Senate are not willing to try to trim this bill back. I don't want to use up the time of the Senate. I want the President to sign an emergency bill. I personally believe we would get there quicker if we get it closer to what he requested. I don't understand why we want to move forward with a bill he said he would veto. Maybe it will be fixed in conference. After this vote, we will have made the point that the bottom line is, when it gets right down to individual programs, even in what is supposed to be a dire emergency, a crisis, and even though the President did not request it, we just simply do not have the vote to take these things out. There is no lesson in the second kick of a mule and this is the third kick Senator McCain and I are experiencing. If you didn't learn anything from the first or second one, you are unlikely to learn anything from the third one. It would be our intention, I believe, that we have a vote on this, and whatever happens here, happens. Then I have a point of order if there are 60 votes for this bill, so as far as I am concerned, it is off to the President and conference and see what happens. I yield the floor.