Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. If you read this unanimous consent request, three things strike you, I think.

Mr. GRAMM. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I thank my dear colleague and floor leader. I will make a couple of comments. I have listened to these arguments, and I would say they have been made very effectively and with great eloquence. But as I hear them, they boil down to two simple arguments. The first argument is that if we are going to use military power against Saddam Hussein, we ought to do it within the context of the United Nations and it ought to be part of a multinational effort. I reject that. I reject it because when we are talking about the security of our Nation, I am not willing to delegate the responsibility of protecting it to the U.N. When it comes to the lives and safety of our people, I am not willing to leave that up to the U.N. I am not even willing to leave it up to our allies. It is the responsibility of the U.S. Government. That is why we need this resolution. The plain truth is, if nobody else in the world is willing or able to do this job, we are able and we are willing. That is what this resolution says. And by being able and being willing, I believe there will be others who will help us. The second argument can be explained through an analogy. Let's say there is a rattlesnake nesting in your rock garden. Our colleagues are saying, look, if you go in there and try to find that rattlesnake and try to kill him, he is liable to bite you. The probability of being bitten is lower if you leave him alone. For a short period of time, they are right. There is no doubt about the fact if you put on your snake boots and you get rat shot and your pistol and go out there with a stick and start poking around trying to find him, the probability during that period of time that you are going to get bitten does go up. But most rational people get their pistol and get that stick and go out there because that rattlesnake will be out there for a long time. Your dog might go through there and get bitten. Your grandchild might be playing out there. The good thing about going in to find a rattlesnake is you know he is there and you are alert to the threat. My view is we do have the rattlesnake in the rock garden. We have the ability to go in and get him out. And because of the threat that it poses to us, I don't think we ought to wait around to do what we know we need to do. In looking at the future, I say the threat is greater if we do not act than if we do. Those are the two arguments I hear. They are in fancier garb and they are better put. But it really boils down to, let's turn over our security to the U.N. or to our allies. I am not willing to do that. Let's avoid the risk of this conflict because it will be dangerous while the conflict is going on. It will be a lot safer once the conflict is over. That is where we are. I think we are doing the right thing. I think we are going to have an overwhelming vote. We have had great bipartisan success on this force resolution because Saddam Hussein has no organized political support in America. I wish we did not face organized political support for opposition to homeland security.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I will wait until this amendment is completed and then I will speak.

Mr. GRAMM. How about 4\1/2\ minutes?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I have 5 minutes.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, this has been a great debate. I want to congratulate Senator Warner and Senator Lieberman, and I want to thank my dear friend John McCain for his leadership on this issue. Even error has been presented on the floor of the Senate in a way that one could be proud of. I think these kinds of debates build the stature of the Senate, and when the American people listen to this debate they will realize that on this issue there is a lot of serious thinking, a lot of good thought, and I believe in the end we are going to make the right decision. I have waited to speak--did the Senator want me to yield?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, how much time do we have remaining?

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, when I first came to the Senate, like many members, I took my two sons onto the floor of the Senate before the session started and found my desk. I asked them if they wanted to sit in my chair. One son chose Barry Goldwater's seat to sit in, and the other son chose Strom Thurmond's seat. Looking back, that is easy for me to understand. There are so many things you could say about Strom, but there is one thing I can say about Strom Thurmond that I am certain of and that is, someday I will proudly tell my grandchildren that I served in the U.S. Senate with Strom Thurmond. Like those happy band of brothers who fought with King Harry on St. Crispin's Day, I will tell my grandchildren how I fought with a great man, a great leader, to accomplish great deeds. He has had a profound and lasting impact on our country. But there is something more remarkable. He is eternally young. Not just in being a 100-year-old Senator, but young in the ability to adopt new ideas, to change as circumstances change, and in the process to grow, even during the longest tenure in the Senate in history. I love Strom Thurmond. I admire him, and for my whole life, I will be proud that I was able to call him colleague and friend.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Finally, seeing I have another colleague come to the floor, I want to say something about two issues that are before us that I am frustrated with, as, I am sure, are many of my colleagues. But in both cases, our problem is the power of special interests as pitted against the public interest. We are trying to do a homeland security bill, and it is not easy because to change the way Government does business is to take on a powerful political constituency, the Government employee labor unions. They are organized and they are active. We are all aware that we are having an election next month. Members are being forced to choose between national security and political security, to choose whether we are putting business as usual and work rules negotiated between the Government and unions above protecting the lives of our citizens. It is frustrating to me that even when people's lives are on the line, powerful special interests can wield the kind of power that the Government employee labor unions have been able to bring to bear on this issue. I had always thought when we started this debate that when we were talking about protecting the lives of Americans, we were going to give the President the benefit of the doubt. But at least to this point we have not. A second issue is terrorism insurance. I was with the President yesterday. Many of our colleagues were there. He was talking about $16 billion of projects, 300,000 construction hard-hat jobs that we were not creating because people were afraid to build high-profile projects because they cannot buy terrorism insurance. The President has asked us to move forward on a bill. In October, the House had already acted on the bill and, on a bipartisan basis, Senator Dodd, Senator Sarbanes, Senator Enzi, and I worked out a compromise which was agreed to by the Treasury that had a compromise on the issue of: Can you sue somebody who is a victim of terrorism for punitive damages? The President's view is very strong on the subject; that is, when somebody has been the victim of terrorism, it is like someone coming onto a hospital ship to prey on them by filing lawsuits against them. Lawsuits against terrorists is fine, but for victims of terrorism there shouldn't be punitive damages. We worked out a compromise on a bipartisan basis. But the plaintiff's bar came out against that compromise, and, as a result, we have never been able to do anything from that point on. Again, it is the case where there is a powerful special interest that is preventing us from promoting the public interest. I am hopeful in the remaining days of this session--and I believe unless the end point is changed, today is Wednesday, so tomorrow is Thursday; we are probably not going to do a lot of work on Friday or Monday. Then we are planning to adjourn Thursday, or Friday, or Saturday at the latest--if we are ever going to do something on homeland security and terrorism insurance, we had better get on with it. The amazing thing is that it is apparently going to be very easy for us to pass a resolution giving the President the power to go to war. I support that because I think American security interests are at stake. We can do that because there is no well-organized, powerful political special interest group that supports Saddam Hussein. But we can't do homeland security and we can't do terrorism insurance because there are organized, effective, powerful special interest groups that oppose what we are trying to do. I hope we can overcome that hurdle. I hope in the process we can pass these two important bills. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Let me also say that I put a statement in the Record today about Strom Thurmond. I was busy trying to deal with homeland security when we had the time to speak on Strom Thurmond. But I do want to relate one story about Strom, which is in my statement in the Record. When I was elected, like many new Senators do, before we went into session I brought my two sons to the Senate. I guess one of them was about 8 and one of them was about 10--or maybe 10 and 12, I lose track. Anyway, we found my desk. So I said to my sons: Do you all want to sit in my chair? By this time they had looked around at all of the desks, and they decided they didn't want to sit in my chair. They wanted to sit in Barry Goldwater's chair and Strom Thurmond's chair. I guess at the time, my feelings were a little hurt. But looking back, when I am sitting on the front porch of a nursing home somewhere and nobody remembers who I am or what I ever did, I am going to be able to say to myself: I knew and I served with the great Strom Thurmond. An absolutely remarkable man, not because he is 100 years old, in the Senate, but because he is forever young--not in a physical sense. My God, his physical capacities are amazing. I remember one night, it was about 2 in the morning, we were in session. Senator Byrd was keeping us here to debate something. I was dog tired. I was talking to Strom, and he was lamenting that his brother had died because he hadn't taken care of himself and burned the candle at both ends. I said to Strom: How old was your brother? He was 89 years old. But to Strom, that was not taking care of yourself. The amazing thing about Strom Thurmond's eternal youth is not physical, it is mental. This is a man in his long career who could learn new lessons. This is a man who is not ashamed to say: I am not as ignorant as I used to be. This is a man who could admit to changing his mind. We are in the only profession where people look down on you if you learn something; that somehow you are inconsistent if you thought one way one day and you acquire more information and you change your mind. The most amazing thing about Strom Thurmond to me is that through all of his public service, from supreme court justice in South Carolina, from superintendent of schools, to general in the Army on D-Day--we all know the story about one of our colleagues going over with President Reagan and saying to Strom he should have been there at Normandy, and Strom said he was there. And he was there when it counted, on June 6, 1944--is that eternal youth, that ability to learn something new, to have a new perspective and to change that makes Strom Thurmond the most remarkable person with whom I have served.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I begin by talking about our dear colleague, Jesse Helms. It is hard to decide what to say about this good man that virtually everybody in America knows. As expected with someone who has strong views as Jesse Helms, they either like him or they don't like him. I like him. In fact, I am proud to say that I love the senior Senator from North Carolina. So much has been said about him, I don't want to be repetitive, but there are a few points I want to make. It is important to look back at America and what America was like and what the Senate was like and what debate was being conducted when Jesse Helms came to the Senate. It is fair to say Jesse Helms was conservative before conservative was cool. When Jesse Helms came to the Senate it was conventional wisdom in the Senate to begin every foreign policy statement with a long list of indictments, not against our would-be adversaries, but against our own country. There was a guilt about America, this doubt about our purpose and our policy. Jesse Helms, as a young member of the Foreign Relations Committee, started the process of changing that debate. Jesse Helms may have had doubts about many things, but he didn't have any doubts about America. He did not have any doubts about what we stood for and stand for. He did not have any doubts about the fact there was an evil empire, that there was a cold war. He was very actively involved in the fighting and winning of that cold war. Today, we just had a lesson on a bipartisan basis from our colleagues that rejects all of this baloney that somehow we should turn over the protection of Americans to the U.N., that unilateralism was the wave of the future. On a bipartisan basis, our colleagues said when you come down to American interests and American lives, those decisions have to be made by the American President. That is a dramatic change from what the Senate, America, and the world were like when Jesse Helms came to the Senate. Probably no one has done more to change that than he has. Before Jesse Helms came to the Senate, social conservative was a synonym for Neanderthal. People in the political arena were a little bit ashamed to talk about the role of religion in American history. Talking about religious values and God were so out of fashion that no up-and-coming Senator with big ambitions would do it. Jesse Helms was a catalyst in changing all of that. Whether you agree or disagree with Jesse Helms on the role of religion in American life, whether you agree or disagree about the importance of values in our schools, in our families, in our country, whether you consider yourself in the worn political cliches of the era to be pro-life or pro-choice, there was no spokesman for traditional American values when Jesse Helms came to the Senate. They may have been old-fashioned to everyone else, but Jesse Helms was comfortable espousing those values as he has always been comfortable in his own skin. There are many stories I could relate about Jesse Helms. I am kind of sorry that many of my young colleagues did not know Jesse Helms in the old days. But knowing him now is a pretty good substitute for it. I will relate one story which I think brings, in one encapsulated form, Jesse Helms. There was a debate in the Senate--I was in the House--about a gasoline tax, and there was a broad bipartisan consensus that we ought to raise taxes on gasoline. After all, people were riding up and down the road in these pickup trucks--we didn't have SUVs to any significant degree then--but Congress, knowing that people really needed smaller cars and needed to learn to live on less, and that we were going to have to accept smaller ambitions and smaller dreams, they had it all figured out, and so Congress was going to impose a new tax on gasoline. Jesse Helms almost alone stood up against it. As we all know, they do not call this the greatest deliberative body in history because those of us who are in it are such great deliberators. They call this the greatest deliberative body in history because any individual Member has tremendous power. Any individual Member who feels very strongly about something can have a profound effect on it. So Jesse Helms, almost singlehandedly, was holding up this gasoline tax. They wanted to adjourn, and everybody was unhappy. We all are familiar with peer group pressure. It is something you are born subject to, and it never goes away until they lower you in the grave. We all want to be loved, we all want to be accepted, which is why so many of us bend with the wind. But Helms was not doing any bending that day. So on the debate went on. Finally, the Senate adjourned. No gasoline tax. So, Jesse is feeling kind of down and unloved as he is driving back to North Carolina, and he goes into a restaurant and orders a sandwich, and he is sitting there, and this guy over in the corner says: That's Jesse Helms. And everybody in the restaurant stood up and applauded. So his views were out of fashion in the Senate. However, he was a positive impediment. He was a throwback to the era when people did not understand that the Senate and the Government had all the wisdom. They knew what Americans needed, and he was just standing in the way; a man from another age, another era. But in that truck stop restaurant where real people were eating, where people were there who were going to be affected, Jesse Helms was a hero. What a great blessing it has been to the country that Jesse Helms came to serve here. I am proud to call him my friend. I am proud of his great service. I will always remember serving with him.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I will be brief. By using cloture, this is an effort to put us into a straitjacket that will guarantee the President will not get an up-or-down vote on his program. Now one may be against the President; they may believe there are some priorities higher than the life and safety of our citizens. I do not. But whether one agrees with the President or not, when thousands of our citizens have been killed, when we are at war with terrorism, the President of the United States has the right to have an up-or-down vote on his program. That is what we insist on. We will not get that if cloture is voted for.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we were debating homeland security at one point earlier today. A perfect example of the kind of problem I am concerned about has just come to my attention. That is a complaint that has been filed by the National Treasury Employees Union against a system that we are all familiar with. When there is concern about a potential terrorist attack, the Government has set up threat priorities. Green is a low threat, blue is a guarded threat, yellow is an elevated threat, orange is a high threat, and red is a severe threat. We have just gotten word that the National Treasury Employees Union-- and I want to put this in the Record--has filed a complaint basically contending that this system of ratings violates their union contract because the Department was required to negotiate with them before it sent out a warning system. I also want to put in the Record the statement from the White House release on it that said: In effect, the union is saying that the Customs Service has no right to implement the President's homeland security direction without entering into lengthy negotiations. And since the Customs Service went ahead anyway, it is now suing the Customs Service in the Federal Labor Relations Authority. This is a case that just happened that we ought to be looking at as we write this bill. I thank the Senator for yielding. To save money for the taxpayers, we produced one document on one side of the paper, and the other document on the other side of the paper. So when we put it in the Record, look on both sides of the paper. I ask unanimous consent that these documents be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I will respond to the distinguished Democratic floor leader by simply going back and reviewing the facts and setting out the obvious blueprint that will solve our problems. I remind my colleagues we have been on this bill for over 4 weeks largely because of the debate on the Byrd amendment, and not a minute of that time was wasted because we were convinced by the major premise of the Byrd amendment. In the Gramm-Miller substitute we deal with that problem by maintaining the power of the purse, which is the fundamental constitutional power of the Congress. I am not complaining about the fact that we have spent the bulk of our time on an amendment that is still pending because the plain truth is we learned something ``we'' being Senator Miller and I. We learned something. We concluded that Senator Byrd was right on and we changed our substitute. By the way, we have never voted on the Byrd amendment. The plain truth is the great bulk of the time we have been on this bill we have been debating that amendment, and it is yet to be resolved. I remind my colleagues that Senator Thompson, the ranking Republican on the committee, offered a simple amendment that said we ought not tell the President how to set up the White House. This amendment was partly controversial in terms of the President's National Security Adviser and his terrorism adviser. That amendment was, sure enough, adopted. But only after 6 days of delay on the part of our Democrat colleagues. And then there were other delays before it was ever added to the bill. The problem is, they have delayed this bill, and not us. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion. They are just not entitled to their own facts. The weakness our colleagues on the other side of this issue have is that the facts are against them. What is the old deal in law? When the facts are against you, argue the law. What is the current holdup? The President of the United States, working with a Democrat and a Republican, has spent 4 weeks listening to things that have been said and concerns that have been raised, starting with Senator Byrd. We have made 25 major changes in the President's proposal. In terms of the President's personnel flexibility, we have limited his power to eliminate exactly the concerns that have been raised by every opponent of the President who has spoken out on this issue. Does the fact that we have eliminated the ability to discriminate while preserving basic workers' rights in terms of being judged on merit change the rhetoric of the debate? No. When people are debating, they still act as if the President could be arbitrary or capricious. But the point is he cannot be under our bipartisan substitute that the President supports. We are at war. We were attacked on September 11. Thousands of our people were killed. The President has asked us to bring together 170,000 people in the Federal Government to help him prosecute this war and protect American lives. After listening to many concerns, changing the President's proposal, and adopting 95 percent of the Lieberman proposal Senator Lieberman says: You have taken 95 percent of my bill. What is wrong with it, if you are for 95 percent of it? It is like a nice, shiny, fancy red truck--I remember our ranking member drove one in the campaign--still legendary--but it is only missing a steering wheel. What Senator Miller and I have done, working with some 45 of our colleagues, is we have taken that truck and we have put a steering wheel in it. In wartime, with American lives at risk, the President of the United States, asks only one thing: Give him a vote on his homeland security bill. Some people may view that as an extraordinarily extreme request. But I submit that there is not a State in the Union, whether it is Connecticut or Nebraska, Tennessee, New Jersey, or North Carolina, where you could go into any coffee bar in any drugstore or restaurant, and sit down and gather a group of people around and ask them the following question: When the President has asked for powers to defend American lives during wartime, should we give him these powers that he says that he needs? My guess is you would have a hard time finding somebody in Nebraska who would say no. All we are asking is something very different. We would like him to be given the tools to do the job. We are simply asking that we have a vote on his proposal. Our Democrat colleagues say: No, we are not going to give you an up- or-down vote on the President's proposal. We are going to make you vote on it the way we want to write it, before we let you vote on it the way the President wants it. Under the rules of the Senate, they can do that. Under the rules of the Senate, if they have the votes, they can do whatever they want to do. The Democrats have the right to deny the President an up-or-down vote. They have the right to do it under the Senate rules. We know at this very moment that terrorists are plotting the murder of our citizens, we know this and worry about it every day. Under these extraordinary circumstances, the question is not what they have a right to do, but rather it is what is right to do. Let me say this. We have this little gimmick going on. It is too cute by half. The gimmick is that by using the parliamentary procedure of cloture, they are going to put the President's proposal into a straitjacket where they get to change it before it is voted on. Look, I have used parliamentary procedure myself. Every Member has a right to do it. But do you think the American people are stupid? Do you think the American people are not going to figure out what the game is here? Do you think the American people are not going to get it straight, that not only are you not with the man and do not support the President's request for the tools he wants, but you won't even give him a vote on the tools? You have the power to do it under the rules of the Senate, but you have to have the votes, and you don't have the votes. So we are going to play this game. I hope everybody is watching this--I hope a lot of people are watching it. I can tell you one thing. I used to think, before I got old, that I had reasonable political abilities. But I could not defend the position of the opposition. There is no city in my State that I could go into and take the position of the opponents of the President and walk out of there with my hat, much less with my head. The bottom line is we are going to go through a little parliamentary gimmick tomorrow where we are going to vote on cloture to try to put the President into a parliamentary straitjacket where he never gets a vote on his proposal. But there is a problem. It takes 60 votes to get cloture, and our Democrat colleagues do not have 60 votes, and they are not going to get 60 votes. So, rather than playing all these games while American lives are in jeopardy, the obvious thing to do is to give us a vote. I would be happy to propound a unanimous consent request to have a vote at 11 o'clock on Tuesday, up or down, on the President's proposal. We want a vote on the President's proposal. Look, I know people back home. They are trying to pay the bills. They are trying to figure out how to get Sarah off to school. They are not quite paying attention. But I do not think they are going to believe that the President does not want his own proposal to be voted on. Again, they may be confused. They are not paying attention. They are busy. They are counting on us to do the right thing. But they are not stupid. The way to solve this thing and get on with this bill is to do something you are going to end up doing anyway, and that is, give the President a vote. Let me reiterate that no one has proposed a compromise that I have not set down and talked to him about. It continues to dumbfound me that we have had an issue of life and death for American citizens become a partisan issue. I think every person in the Chamber who has been involved in this debate will have to grudgingly say that this is true. Now before somebody comes out here and starts screaming let me tell you what partisan issue is. It is an issue where you draw the line right down the middle of the Senate and almost everybody on the left side of the Senate is on one side and almost everybody on the right side of the Senate is on the other side. That is how we define issues becoming partisan. How did it ever happen, when you saw the way we all felt after 9/11? Let me tell you how it happened. It happened because it is not easy to provide for homeland security. The vote on Iraq is an easy vote because, so far as I know, there is no organized, active political constituency for Saddam Hussein. He doesn't have an organized political group in America that is actively lobbying on his behalf, of which I am aware. There are some people who believe we ought to turn over American security to the U.N. I understand that view. I reject it. When the lives of my people are at stake, it is my responsibility and it is the responsibility of our Government. It is not the responsibility of our allies, not the responsibility of the U.N. I am not willing to delegate it to anybody else. But I respect differences of opinion. But that is an easy issue compared to this issue. The reason it is an easy issue compared to this issue is that you cannot promote homeland security without having to make tradeoffs. That is why we are here. We all want to protect Americans. I would never say--and I don't believe that my Democrat colleagues are--we are not concerned about national security. The problem concerns that it is not free. The problem concerns that there are tradeoffs. And the tradeoff is, if we are going to give the President the power to hire the right person, put them in the right place, and at the right time, if we are going to allow the President to have the tools to fight an enemy that did show up anywhere and could kill thousands of our people, we have to be willing to change the way we do business in a Federal bureaucracy. The Federal bureaucracy does not want to change the way we do business. Unlike Iraq, this is an issue where there are strong political forces that are against giving the President this power because they do not want to change the way they run their business. Look, I am not going to stand up here and state that the position that the rights of public employees is morally inferior to the position that lives are more important than ``workers' rights.'' I believe it is a law of order. But that is a moral judgment somebody else has to make. All I am saying is the reason this has become such a contentious issue is that we have one of the most powerful political forces in America--the public employee labor unions and the Federal bureaucracy-- and to have an effective homeland security system, you cannot have the horse-and-buggy civil service that we have today. Interestingly enough, there are only 20,000 members of the union who would be among the 170,000 people who will be brought together in this agency. And only 20,000 of them are members of unions. Yet, remarkably, we have an amendment pending that would give unions that represent 20,000 workers veto power over the President's decision with regard to 170,000 workers. I don't think that would make a whole lot of sense where I am from, and I don't think it makes sense where you are from. But that is why we have a battle. Let me also say that I think part of our problem was, when this bill was written in committee, and when it was being debated early on, nobody was paying much attention to it except organized special interests in Washington, DC. As a result, this was written as sort of a business-as-usual bill. But business is not usual. When workers' rights interfere with people's right to their life and their freedom, then I think there has to be some flexibility. I am going to talk more in a moment about the bill. Maybe I should let other people talk before I do. But let me just sum up by saying we have been on this bill for over 4 weeks because the opponents of the bill have taken that tack. We have been on this bill for 4 weeks because it took 6 days to get a vote on the amendment offered by Senator Thompson, and even then it was 3 more days before it was added to the bill. All we want is to have a vote on the President's proposal. We are going to get it. We can go through all kinds of games. We can fill up the tree, as they say. We can use parliamentary procedure. We can try to get cloture and put the President in a box. But the American people are not going to be deceived because they are not stupid. In the end, they want the President to have the tools he needs. But they are never, ever going to accept not even giving him a vote. Maybe you can justify this. Maybe this makes sense where you are from. But there are a lot of things at night when I get down to say my prayers for which I thank God. One of them is, I don't have to defend a position of the people on the other side of this issue, because I am totally incapable of doing it. I don't think it is defensible. I want to urge them once again, let us work out a compromise. I am going to in a moment--this is the last point I will make because others are getting ready to speak--outline why this amendment by Senator Nelson is anything but a compromise. I am going to outline for only a moment how this totally destroys the ability of the President to get the job done. I think most people, when they listen to that, and who are objecting, will understand what the issue is about. But I have given the Senator in writing the changes he would have to make for the President to be able to accept it. In the previous offer that was brought forward, we gave one simple change--preserving the supremacy of the President on national security. Every President since Jimmy Carter has had the ability in the name of national security to make personnel changes. But, remarkably, the Senator's amendment and the underlying bill take away from President Bush powers that he had the day before the terrorist attacks. How many Americans would be absolutely stunned to know that in the name of homeland security we are debating a bill that takes away power from the President to use national security powers? Somewhere, somehow, somebody's priorities have gotten way off base. Either the President and those of us who support him are completely lost in terms of any weighting of the reality of the world we are in, or the people who oppose the President have gotten badly off base and out of tune with the reality we face. Obviously, I don't make the judgment about which side is lost in the wilderness. But I would have to say I believe the American people are going to reach the conclusion that the President is right and reasonable and the people who oppose him are wrong and unreasonable. There is a way out of this mess. But the President can't do it alone. I urge my colleagues to end this charade, reach an agreement, and let us have a bipartisan bill. And, if you are not willing to do that, you are going to have to give the President an up-or-down vote. There is no other way you are going to be able to do it without it. We can go through the process. We can vote on cloture tomorrow. We are not going to get cloture. We can do it next week. But in the end, the President is going to get a vote. But what the President wants is not a vote but a compromise with one constraint--the President has only got one constraint: Give me something that can work. Give me the tools to finish the job. But don't give me tools that won't work. He has a little bit harder time than his opponents because their proposals don't have to work. His proposals do. That is my plea. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GRAMM. Is our Senator aware, while our colleague from Louisiana cites a court case that upheld the President's power to grant a waiver under national security, that the Senator's own amendment changes the criterion from national security to terrorism?

Mr. GRAMM. That, in fact, the very standard that the court has upheld is a standard that he changes. It is clear to those who are looking at making this work that a standard based on terrorism is not as strong as a standard based on national security. So I think what we are seeing, over and over again, is one discussion but another reality. I just ask the Senator if he is aware that part of what is being done is a change from the standard that gives the President the ability to waive on national security concerns to a standard to waive on terrorism concerns, where there is no comparable litigation, and where there are no comparable precedents?

Mr. GRAMM. That is right.

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GRAMM. Is the Senator also aware that making the determination on the basis of terrorism is very different than making the determination on the basis of national security? In fact, the roots of the President's national security powers go back to the Constitution. It is unclear how the courts would interpret or define terrorism. Let me ask the following question. I think the Senator made a relevant point. If we all want the President to have national security powers, why are we having this debate? If you want to take the clothing off this amendment, is the Senator aware that in the last provision in the amendment that it strikes a provision in the pending substitute that guarantees that any power the President had under national security the day before the terrorist attack, he would continue to have after this bill? Is the Senator aware that provision is stricken by this amendment? Can the Senator imagine, if our colleagues really, sincerely want the President to have emergency powers, why they would want to strike that provision?

Mr. GRAMM. Seventy-one?

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, no one has been clearer or more effective or more concerned about trying to protect the rights of people who work for the Federal Government than the Senator from Virginia. It would have been easy for the Senator from Virginia to simply look the other way, forget about the terrorist threat, and be on the other side of this issue. It has not escaped my attention many people who are Government employees work in the Senator's State. I thank the Senator for making this bill, supported by the President, better by his input. I thank him for looking at the big picture. If we could keep everything the way it is and provide for the national security of the country, there would not be much of a debate. But, unfortunately, in real life, it is not black and white, right or wrong; it is tough choices. Maybe it is because the Senator has the background of having been involved in defending the Nation himself, having been Secretary of the Navy, or maybe it is simply because he just has the big picture. I thank him for his leadership on this issue. I assure him, if there is any way we can work out an agreement on a bipartisan basis to find a solution, I want to do that. There is one constraint: We cannot give the President a law that won't get the job done. If he says he needs a pickup truck, we can't give him this beautiful, shiny pickup truck with no steering wheel. I look forward to working with the Senator. I appreciate his leadership and, quite frankly, his courage on this issue.