Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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

Mr. GRAMM. Continuing: The Senate includes scores of unneeded items that total billions of dollars all classified as emergency.

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRAMM. I am very happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I yield myself such time as I might consume. I do not know if anybody is confused about what is happening. I guess with everything that has been said today and yesterday maybe they are, so let me try to straighten it out. The President sent a request to the Congress for an emergency appropriation for $29.7 billion. In his request, the President outlined what he thought we needed to provide homeland security and to deal with the crisis that it poses. He urged Congress not to load up this bill with extraneous appropriations and not to use this as a vehicle to spend a whole bunch of money that we do not have, now that we are looking at the potential of running a $100 billion or $150 billion deficit. That is the request that the President made. Let me outline the bill before us. I hear my dear friend, the Senator from West Virginia, talking about people dragging their feet; we need this bill. The President has already said he will veto this bill. The President has already issued a detailed outline running four pages, single-spaced, saying what is wrong with the bill and saying in the clearest possible terms that he is going to veto it. So is this a political exercise or is this making law? Well, I guess that depends on one's perspective. Why is the President so upset about this bill that he is saying it will be the first bill he has vetoed since he has been President? That is pretty extraordinary. A bill he requested, a bill that is aimed at providing homeland security, the man who requested it, who has the responsibility to all the people of the country for providing homeland security, the man who under the Constitution is Commander in Chief, is now saying he is going to veto this bill. Why is that? Here is why: First, this bill spends $4 billion more than the President requested. That is $4 billion, in the words of our dear colleagues on the other side of the aisle, that will come right out of the Social Security trust fund. That is $4 billion that will not be there for trust fund accounts or for any other purpose. The problem does not stop there. My guess is, if $4 billion of add-on spending had been piled on to this emergency bill the President probably would have swallowed hard, noted this is the way Congress works, and signed the bill. But that is not the biggest problem. Four billion dollars of overspending is not the biggest problem, and I will read from the committee's own document, from their committee report, where they outline what they are doing. The President requested in emergency appropriations, to deal with exactly the needs we are talking about, $24.447 billion. When the President requested $24.447 billion for emergency appropriations, what does the committee provide; what does the bill before us provide? It provides not $24.447 billion. It provides $14.041 billion. In other words, this bill not only spends $4 billion more than the President asked for but in the committee report summary, it notes that it underfunds the President's request by over $10 billion. In other words, $10 billion in emergency appropriations the President asked for were not provided in this bill. Now, one might say, they spend $4 billion more than the President but they do not fund $10 billion of emergency funding he asked for? How is that possible? I will explain how it is possible. In contingency emergency appropriations, these are things that are not true emergencies, the President had $2.7 billion of offset expenditures, but we do not provide $2.7 billion for nonemergency items. We provide $17 billion of nonemergency items and we do not pay for them. As a result, this bill funds $14 billion of nonemergency items that the President did not request. So is anybody startled that even a President who goes the extra mile to be bipartisan, even a President who has done everything he could do to try to make this effort a bipartisan effort, has finally balked and said, look, the Congress is spending $4 billion more than I asked for? They are giving me $10 billion less in emergency spending than I asked for, and they are giving me $14 billion of nonemergency spending I did not ask for. As a result, the President is pretty upset. He kind of feels his effort to prosecute this war is being used to fund programs that he believes--and I am not saying he is the only person with an opinion--do not represent the right priorities. Now given this is the situation we are in, given that our President has said he would veto this bill, is anybody shocked that Republicans are concerned about it and that we are objecting to it?

Mr. GRAMM. I am happy to.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. It sure enough looks like we are not going to have one.

Mr. GRAMM. Well, there is certainly a separation of powers issue. Whether it gets to the constitutional level or not, I don't know. The point is, this is taking away the President's role in the emergency designation by changing the system so that he cannot get any of the money, even the amount we agree is a genuine emergency, when the President says so and we say so. Therefore, by law, that makes it an emergency. He cannot get a penny of that money unless he takes the $14 billion that he says is not an emergency, but he has to say it is an emergency to get the other $18 billion.

Mr. GRAMM. Are you sure I voted for it?

Mr. GRAMM. Yes, I am going to have to object. The point is the way we got----

Mr. GRAMM. That is right.

Mr. GRAMM. No. 3691: That amendment is, as far as I know, germane.

Mr. GRAMM. As far as I am aware, it is a precedent. As I said, I haven't gone back and researched it, but I don't remember one.

Mr. GRAMM. Fine.

Mr. GRAMM. I object.

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. Will the Senator yield?

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. I do not know if I voted for it or not, but it was a bad precedent. (Laughter.)

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

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. For 24 years.

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