Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GRAMM. If that were the effect.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I do not know how much you learn by having this job, but one thing you learn is patience. Let me say it is probably a good thing I didn't get the floor earlier because I would have gotten up and accused my colleagues of insulting my intelligence. But now I realize that the authors of this amendment have not the foggiest idea of what this amendment is about or what it does. Let me just start. There are a lot of points I want to make, but let me just begin with some English points. Before we get to legal points or security points, let's just talk about the English language. Our colleague from Nebraska said: I wouldn't do the amendment if I thought it limited the President's power. I would like to ask him to read the words of his amendment, on page 12, under the section that has to do with the President's labor- management powers. Remembering the President has the power in the name of national security to not put people out of the unions. That is a made-up term that the opponents of the President use over and over and over again. It is totally false. Nobody can take people out of unions. What it does is set aside work rules that inhibit the ability of the Department to do the job of providing national security. So the President has this exclusionary authority under the name of national security. Our colleague from Nebraska, Senator Nelson, says his amendment does not reduce the President's power. Let me start with the English language, and let me read line 10 on page 12. This is a heading, and the heading is: ``Limitation On Exclusionary Power.'' If it is not limiting the President's power, what is it doing?

Mr. GRAMM. Let me make my point. I have listened here for 2 hours, trying to get the floor. If this is not limiting his exclusionary power, this is false advertising. It does, in fact, go on and limit his power. But that is not the end of it. Then, on page 14, you have a new section heading, and what do you think the first words of it are? ``Limitation Related To Position Or Employees.'' Our colleague from Utah said he is not a lawyer and this is a hard debate. I am not a lawyer either although I guess over the years you learn how to read legal documents. But I do know a little bit about the English language. When heading after heading after heading is about limitation of power, you are talking about limiting power. Let me just start from the beginning because our colleague from Utah came over, listened to a lot of things that didn't make any sense to him, and he made a point. The point was, either this amendment does nothing or the authors of the amendment are not explaining what the amendment does. I will--certainly to my satisfaction, hopefully to others'--convince people that this amendment does a great deal. This is not some cosmetic change, where members of organized labor are being deceived. It looks to me as if they wrote the amendment and they knew exactly what they were doing. Let me start with just some obvious points. Besides the fact that the amendment is full of sections with the word ``limitations'' in the title, the amendment strikes the following language from the pending Gramm-Miller substitute. Let me read the language. You heard our colleague from Nebraska say we are not trying to take power away from the President. Let me read you the language they strike. The language reads as follows: notwithstanding any other provision of this act . . . I think people understand English. That means no matter what this act says. The language they strike says: . . . nothing in this act shall be construed to take away the statutory authority of the President to act in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations as existed on the day of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. In other words, no matter what else this amendment said, if it had not struck this language, the President would have the same national security power after this bill became law that he had on that horrible day, September 11. But guess what. This language is stricken by the amendment of the Senators. If they were not changing the President's powers, why did they strike this provision? They struck this provision because they may not know they are changing the President's powers but the people who wrote the amendment know they are changing the President's powers. And if they did not strike this provision, then everything they did in limiting his power would be nullified. Let's just start with what they did. Let me remind my colleagues of something that the opponents of the President desperately want you to forget. The President, in terms of waiving these labor agreements that limit his ability to hire new people, move people, and to put the right person in the right place is also limited by these agreements that restrict the ability to change policy concerning carrying firearms, to change the physical makeup of inspection areas at customs, and to deploy a Border Patrol agent in an area where there is no laundry.

Mr. GRAMM. I will be happy to yield, but let me just get through my basic points, and I will be happy to yield. I want some coherence to it.

Mr. GRAMM. Let me go ahead and yield if the Senator is going to talk.

Mr. GRAMM. Let me reclaim my time. It is the collective bargaining agreement and elements of it that the whole waiver is about. And I will get back to that. Let me go back to my point. The President did not ask for any additional authority in the name of homeland security to waive collective bargaining agreements. He never asked for additional power because every President since Jimmy Carter has had that power and every President since Jimmy Carter has used that power. You might ask yourself, if the President never asked for that power, why are we debating it? Why are we debating the President's waiver power if he didn't even ask for new power? The reason we are debating it is the underlying Lieberman amendment and the amendment that is proposed by Senator Nelson take power away from this President that every President since Jimmy Carter has had. We are in the remarkable circumstance that terrorists have attacked America. They killed thousands of our people. We are writing a bill to give the President the tools he needs to fight and win the war. The first provision in this bill is to take away from the President powers that every President since Jimmy Carter has had. It almost sounds unbelievable. But believe it. A second point that is interestingly enough even more unbelievable: Under this bill and this amendment, the members of Government who are moved into the Homeland Security Department would find themselves in a position that the President, in the name of national security, has fewer powers in hiring the right person, putting them in the right place, and moving them than he does at the Labor Department or the Office of Personnel Management or any other part of the Government. Interestingly enough, this bill and their amendment limits the President's emergency powers--not for the Government as a whole but only for the Department of Homeland Security. My third point is that we have heard this talk about these court rulings. It is a very good point. But, unfortunately, it makes the case against their amendment. These court rulings are on the basis of national security. The Constitution gives the President power as Commander in Chief. When the President in the past has made a ruling based on national security--Senator Breaux made the point, repeated by Senator Nelson-- those decisions have not been judicially reviewable or the court has deemed them not to be judicially reviewable. That is a pretty substantial power. But it is a power rooted in the Constitution. Guess what they do with this amendment. They change the President's power so the President has the power to move only in terms of their waiver--not on the basis of national security but on the basis of terrorism. Terrorism is not mentioned in the Constitution. Terrorism has not been litigated. Maybe it will be litigated and the power will be upheld. But the Office of Personnel Management, the experts in this area, the person who will probably be the Secretary, and the President of the United States, believe that changing the President's waiver power and basing it on terrorism rather than national security is a diminution of his power. If somebody didn't think so, why is it being done? Let me go my fourth point. We have heard a lot of discussion but let me try to get down to the facts. Again, we are all entitled to our own opinions. We are not all entitled to our own facts. There are 20,000 union members among the 170,000 people who are going to be moved into this Department. There are 20,000 other people who are covered by collective bargaining. But they are not union members. Under this amendment, rather than the President having his broad exemptive power to put the right persons in the right place at the right time, the President would now have to enter into negotiations. So we set up the Department. We are trying to get moving. We are trying to prevent another attack. We are trying to prevent Americans from dying. This is pretty serious business, in other words. What does the new Secretary have to do? He shows up, and 170,000 people are moved. He comes into his office. What is the first thing he has to do under this amendment? Double the number of people at the principal ports of entry? No. Change the disposition of agents to keep nuclear weapons from being brought into New York Harbor? No. The first thing the President has to do is to enter into binding arbitration with a labor union that represents 20,000 of the 170,000 people who work for the Secretary. Under this amendment, 20,000 union members and their unions would negotiate on behalf of 170,000 people, and 20,000 of them aren't even members of the union. Talk about a power grab--this is an extraordinary power grab. Before the Secretary can do anything, he has to enter into binding arbitration with these 17 unions that are representing 20,000 of the 170,000 people in this Department, and only 20,000 of them are union members. He has to enter into a binding arbitration with those unions that will bind the work rules for 150,000 people who are not even union members. What happens if the unions won't agree to the change in rules that would change the disposition of people in the Department to try to prevent a terrorist attack? What happens? You have binding arbitration. So here we are trying to protect people's lives, and rather than sending agents where we need them to go, we are in binding arbitration. Then a panel, which has the historic role of making decisions about whether a governmental department had the right to cancel a Christmas party or not, is now going to be making a decision governing the running of the Homeland Security Department.

Mr. GRAMM. Yes. I would be happy to.

Mr. GRAMM. First of all, I have to say to my colleagues that I am not aware of that case. But I am aware of the case at the Boston airport where Customs wanted to change the makeup of the inspection room to make it more efficient, and the National Treasury Employees Union appealed it to the FLRA, and they sided against Customs and the changes were not made. I am also aware that when there was an effort by INS to put more agents at the airport at Honolulu because of the large number of flights coming in and more inspectors were needed. In this case, the labor union representing the INS employees in Honolulu filed a case with FLRA saying it violated their contract to hire more agents. Guess what. The FLRA ruled in their favor. Maybe someday you could get it straightened out. But what happens if by not getting it straightened out in time somebody's mama or somebody's child ends up being killed?

Mr. GRAMM. I am aware of the case where an effort was made, in terms of foreign deployment, to pick the most able people because you have a limited number of people. That decision was overridden by the FLRA. They said you had to send the most ``senior'' people in terms of seniority. I would say these are exactly the kinds of problems the President is trying to deal with. The President is not trying to deny people the ability to pay union dues, if they choose. The President is not trying to discriminate against people based on race, color, creed, national origin. The President is trying to put the best person in the best place at the right time. The Senator has just outlined several examples of where we have not been able to get the job done in the past, and even where we have gotten the job done, that it has often been 14 months later. The point is, these terrorists--and we know there are thousands of them--are not taking a sabbatical while we are having this debate.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, let me finish up my remarks because I have spoken a long time. Although I could give a lot of concrete examples, let me just give a couple of them: Under current law, the President has the ability, by declaring a national emergency, to change the work rules for the Border Patrol. And every President since President Carter has had that power. This amendment would take away these emergency powers from the President because under a current agreement which the Border Patrol operates, there cannot be any prolonged deployment of Border Patrol agents in areas that do not have a series of amenities, including drycleaners. Under existing law, the President would have the ability to declare a national emergency and move Border Patrol agents to areas where there was a critical threat. He would not have that power under this amendment. Let me explain why. In order for the President to be able to use his emergency powers, the President would have to find, after the Department is created, that the position and duties of the person had been materially changed. By the way, you guessed it, the first word of the heading on page 14 of this amendment is ``Limitation''--``imitation Relating To Positions Or Employees''. Who are we limiting here? The President. Every one of these headings on limitation represents a limitation of the President's power. Let me give you an example. A Border Patrol agent is a Border Patrol agent, and after the creation of this Department, they will still be a Border Patrol agent. I asked that the amendment be changed to say that either the function had changed or the threat had changed. That proposal has not been accepted. What it would mean here is that if the President tried to use his powers to station a Border Patrol agent, on a prolonged basis, on one of the many areas along the border that did not have restaurants, churches, or drycleaners, there could not be a waiver to station them in that area. Now, I represent more of the border than any other Senator besides my colleague from Texas and I know that there are many such areas. The problem is that while they are doing the same thing, the threat is different. Before it was a bale of marijuana or a box of cocaine or an illegal alien we were talking about. Today we are talking about an anthrax capsule or a chemical weapons vial or a biological agent thermos or a nuclear device. But yet, under this amendment, the President would not have the power to make that necessary change. Our colleagues say a Border Patrol agent is still a Border Patrol agent and nothing has changed. Madam President, everything has changed. After 9/11, the world has changed, but not the thinking of the President's opponents. It has not changed. So let me sum up by simply pointing out why this amendment is unacceptable to the President, why he has said he would veto a bill that contained this amendment, and why we can't fight and win the war on terrorism with this amendment as part of the law. Now, there is no guarantee that we are going to be successful in stopping terrorism with a good plan, but General Eisenhower once said: A good plan does not guarantee success, but a bad plan does guarantee failure. This is what this amendment does. It takes away power that every President since President Carter has had and used. It sets a higher standard for using national security powers in the one agency of Government that is designated to protect the homeland security than it does any other Department of Government. So OPM would still have the same emergency powers that are denied to the President for homeland security, but he would not have them here. The whole standard by which the President could intervene is changed from national security to terrorism. We take a system where we in essence say to the President: OK, you want these 170,000 people brought together in one agency. We want you to give up national security power. If you will give it up, we will put together the Department. In other words, we will put it together if we can take away your power to actually run it. What this amendment would do is allow unions that have only 20,000 members out of the 170,000 people that will be brought into the agency, and it makes them the bargaining agent for all 170,000. We are going to hire somebody to fight terrorism. He is going to think he is coming in to fight terrorism, and he is immediately going to be in binding arbitration. And then, if the unions won't agree to his plan, it goes to a labor board that has the historic function of deciding whether a department can cancel Christmas parties or the color of uniforms or things of that nature. We set up an unworkable system. Finally, powers the President says he must have, powers related to labor-management relations and appeals, are taken away. So the amendment before us is no effort at compromise. I don't doubt the goodwill of the people who have offered it. But the plain truth is, it is further away from where the President can go than the last time we were discussing this issue. There has been only one compromise, and that compromise is the Gramm- Miller substitute which made 25 changes in the President's bill and preserved for Congress the power of the purse. It also did restrict the President's emergency powers but in ways that made sense. We said the President can't be arbitrary and capricious. We said the President cannot discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, national origin, and the list goes on. But the bottom line is that we realized we were fighting a war against vicious killers and the President needed the power to get the job done. We need to give the President that power. Our colleagues talk about the President using that power. The way it is now restricted, the only thing the President can use the power for is to fight terrorism, to put the right person in the right place at the right time. My point is, this amendment is not significantly different from the underlying bill in that it takes away powers the President already has, and it does not give him the flexibility he needs. The President has said he would veto it. In the end, if we want to get a bill, the logical thing we should do is try to reach a compromise. I do not see this as a compromise. I don't see anything in it that is a compromise. It takes power away from the President he has today. I believe it is totally unacceptable. I have given the authors of the amendment, in working with the White House, the changes they would have to make for the President to be able to accept it. I hope they will consider them. But the problem is, in order to give the President the power he needs to fight and win the war on terrorism, you have to change business as usual in Washington. If there has ever been an amendment that was committed to the status quo of business as usual, don't change anything, this is it. The amendment and the underlying bill are really based on the premise that government is to serve the people who work for the government, not to serve the people of this country, and the rights of these workers, as we have defined them in a bill that is now over 50 years old in its fundamental components. This is the equivalent of operating a horse and buggy on an interstate highway. When we are talking about protecting the lives of our people and homeland security, this amendment and the underlying bill still hew too much to the idea business as usual is more important than an effective program to help the President fight and win a war on terrorism. We are apparently going to have a cloture vote tomorrow. That cloture vote is going to fail. It is a gimmick and a game being played to try to deny the President the right to have an up-or-down vote on his proposal. Our colleagues who oppose the President have every right under the rules of the Senate to do what they are doing. I am not complaining about it. I am just trying to be sure people understand. If they can invoke cloture, they could put the President's program into a straitjacket where he does not get a straight up-or-down vote, where the first vote will be on this amendment which basically cuts the heart out of the President's program so people who oppose the President never have to vote up or down on the President's program. Our colleagues who oppose the President have the right to do this. I am not complaining about it. It is completely within the rules of the Senate. But I don't believe under the circumstances it is defensible. Basically, those of us who support the President are going to resist. We are going to deny cloture, and we are going to continue until the President gets an up-or-down vote. I don't think this is going to confuse anybody. I know sometime later today and probably in the morning, someone is going to stand up and say: Well, don't the people who support the President want to bring the debate to an end and give the President a vote? I don't believe people are going to be deceived. It is easy to give the President a vote. All you have to do is to set a time when the President's proposal can be voted on. That is all you have to do. Under these circumstances, we are not going to let business-as-usual practices in the Senate prevail. We are not going to let the President be denied an up-or-down vote on his proposal. It may be those who oppose the President will be successful. It may be they can defeat the President. It may be they can pass a bill the President has sworn to veto. It may be they can prevent the President from having a Department of Homeland Security in this Congress. They may do that. But what they cannot do is deny the President a vote. There was earlier a unanimous consent request propounded concerning allowing a vote on the pending amendment. So no one is confused, I would like to ask unanimous consent that at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, there be an up-or-down vote, yes or no, on the President's program, which is the Gramm-Miller substitute.

Mr. GRAMM. I have spoken beyond my limit of knowledge. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Reserving the right to object, Madam President, getting to amend the President's proposal before he gets a chance to have a vote is not giving the President an opportunity for an up-or-down vote. I have to object, though I will say we are going to have a vote on the President's proposal. Why not set it for 11 o'clock on Tuesday? Let's have the vote. If you can defeat the President, then you will make many special interests in Washington happy. If you cannot, we will have a bill. But at least we will settle the issue.

Mr. GRAMM. If the Senator will yield, I will respond. Madam President, it is obvious to a blind man that there have to be some people on the side of the aisle of the Senator from Connecticut who do not want to vote against the President's homeland security bill, and if you can amend it first with an amendment confusing people as to what you are really doing, then they are off the hook. You all are not doing this because it is fun. Obviously, you have your plan in mind. I have mine.

Mr. GRAMM. I object.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I have a lot of problems, but one of them is not not understanding. I understand perfectly that if people could be convinced--there is no sense getting into the details. I think we have overdone it. The President wants an up-or-down vote on his bill, and we are going to hold out for that vote. If you can defeat the President, you have defeated the President. But we want an up-or-down vote, and the way we have things structured in a parliamentary sense, you would have to get cloture on their amendment to vote on it, and you are not going to be able to get it.

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield so I can agree with him?

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GRAMM. It is true our bills are 95 percent the same. It is like you are giving the President this nice, new, shiny truck, only yours does not have a steering wheel. That is the fundamental difference. There is only 5 percent. It is like the plane that does not have the bolt that holds the tail on. That is the fundamental difference. Look, we are not holding it up. We are ready to vote. Set the vote for Tuesday. Let's have an up-or-down vote and see where we are.

Mr. GRAMM. I wanted to put something in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM

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

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

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I certainly do not object to any time Senator Inouye wants, but we have come to debate an amendment on the homeland security bill, and I would like to have an opportunity to speak on it. I do not object.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator may have 5 additional minutes.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, the pending business is homeland security. I came over to offer an amendment with the Senator from Georgia. The majority leader has made a statement. The distinguished President pro tempore of the Senate has made a statement. Our distinguished and beloved colleague from Hawaii has made a statement, and we are here to debate a war which we have an opportunity to do something about now. We are here to debate an issue where we have an opportunity to prevent anybody's blood from being spilled by having an effective homeland security program, and I want to exercise my right to speak on that issue. I want to be brief on the subject, but accusing a President of starting a war for political reasons is a pretty serious accusation. This Senate, on several occasions, has passed resolutions that in the strongest terms called on the President, if he so decided, to use force against Iraq. The United Nations has passed resolution after resolution that Saddam Hussein has rejected. So the idea that somehow this is a new problem and has suddenly been created out of whole cloth as we face the election simply will not bear up to scrutiny. Secondly, there has been a confusion between two wars, and I think this is a very important issue. In listening to all of those quotes, most of what has been said has had to do with a force resolution which we are not debating today, which we will be debating next week or the week after. As Jefferson said so long ago, good men with the same facts are prone to disagree. Based on our history in dealing with Saddam Hussein, based on the threat he poses, based on the new information on that threat which was made available by the British Intelligence Service and by the Prime Minister in today's paper, I reach a totally different conclusion than many of my Democrat colleagues in that I believe the President should be supported, and I believe a resolution of that support should pass in the Senate. As clearly as I can say, I think internationalism is important, I think the United Nations has a role, but when we are talking about the lives and safety of Americans, I am not going to turn those lives and that safety over to the U.N. As much as I love our allies, especially the British, I am not going to turn those lives and that safety over to our allies either. When we are talking about American lives, the buck stops with us. No matter what the United Nations decides, we are never, ever, under any circumstances, going to delegate to the United Nations the protection of American lives. Hopefully, the United Nations is going to come to their senses and support the President, but the idea that we ought to change this resolution, when we do debate it, to say we should work within the U.N. I am not willing to put American lives at risk based on what the U.N. may or may not do. A final point, in response to the debate we just had, we have a commingling of two different wars. The first war is with Iraq, and we are going to debate that in 2 weeks. Everybody will have a chance to state their position. I wanted to make mine clear today. The second war, however, is the war on terrorism. That is the war we are fighting today. That is the debate we are having today. When we started this debate as to giving the President the power to protect America from the horror we saw on September 11, it never crossed my mind we would end up with a Senate that was almost perfectly divided, where Republicans were on one side and Democrats, in the preponderance, were on the other. There is one exception, apparently, on each side at the moment. I have not looked into people's hearts. We have not had a vote. I do not know where people are down to the individual Senator, but it certainly appears at the moment that we find ourselves in the extraordinary circumstance that we are almost perfectly divided along party lines over the issue of giving the President the power he has asked for to defend the American homeland and to defend our people. Maybe this should not be a partisan issue, but if one defines a partisan issue as an issue that ends up being split along party lines then by that definition the debate we are engaged in right now, has become divided along partisan lines. The point I want to be sure people understand is the last statement quoted by the President was not about Iraq. It was about defending the American homeland. Why has this become a political issue? I do not believe Iraq is going to be a political issue, despite the fact some of our colleagues today have expressed reservations about Iraq. I believe in the end the President is going to get a much stronger vote on a force resolution on Iraq today than we got in 1991. In the end, I do not believe Iraq is going to be a partisan political issue. Why has homeland security divided the Senate right down the middle along partisan lines? The reason is, it involves a very tough choice. Government is about making tough choices. When one gets outside the civics class, it is not about black and white, right and wrong. It is about tough choices. It is about give and take. It is about giving up some things to have others. In fact, this whole idea that everything can be broken down into all positive and all negative completely misrepresents the reality of the world. There seems to be no objection to taking all of these Government agencies and putting them into one agency. So far as I know, 100 Senators are willing to do that. But remarkably, roughly half the Members of the Senate seem intent on taking away emergency powers the President had on September 11, but that would be taken away by the Lieberman bill that is before us. I wonder how many Americans who are listening to this debate understand the proposal made by Senator Lieberman, on behalf of the vast majority of Democrats, would actually weaken the President's ability to use national security powers to protect America. I do not think people understand that. Our Nation has been attacked. Thousands of our citizens have been killed. The lives of countless thousands have been altered forever. We are debating homeland security. We have a proposal before the Senate that says we want to take powers away from President Bush, powers that President Clinton had, that Bush 41 had, that President Reagan had, that President Carter had, and powers they used. Now, why are we debating such a proposal? How could it possibly make any sense that we were perfectly content to give every President since President Carter the ability to declare a national emergency and set aside business as usual in the Federal bureaucracy to respond to an emergency? But suddenly, as we are creating this Department, the majority proposes we take these powers away from President Bush. In other words, we will put everybody in the Department, but the price the President would have to pay is less ability to use emergency powers than four of his predecessors have had. The President has rejected that. Does anyone blame him? Can anybody believe that any President, especially this President, would sit idly by while the Congress takes away powers that his four predecessors had? I don't think anybody would think that is realistic. Why are we doing it? Why is the Senate almost evenly divided along partisan lines on this issue? The reason is, we are down to a tough choice. The tough choice is the following: To give the President the power to put the right person in the right place at the right time to do the right job in protecting lives, we have to change the way the Government operates. But there are powerful political interests that are opposed to making that change. And there are people who are committed to that system, the system we call the civil service system. I remind my colleagues we have had study after study after study, studies headed by Paul Volcker, appointed by President Clinton to be head of the Federal Reserve bank. We have had studies by Lee Hamilton, a Democrat in the House, and Warren Rudman, our beloved colleague from the Senate. In study after study concerning national security, they have concluded the following, and this is the Volcker Commission: ``The current system is slow. It is legally trammeled and intellectually confused. It is impossible to explain to potential candidates. It is almost certainly not fulfilling the spirit of our mandate to hire the most meritorious candidates.'' That is not President Bush talking. That is not Senator Gramm talking. That is Paul Volcker talking. The Rudman-Hamilton bipartisan commission on national security concluded that we needed an agile, flexible personnel system. And then they wrote: ``Today's civil service has become a drag on our national security. The morass of rules, regulation, and bureaucracy prevent the Government from hiring and retaining the workforce that is required to combat the threats of the future.'' What the President has proposed is that he have the ability to streamline the process, and when it comes to a choice between national security and the status quo in the Government system, the status quo must yield. When it comes down to union work rules, business as usual, or the life and safety of our citizens, the President says that the system has to yield. Civil service rights are important, but they are not as important as the right of Americans to life and freedom. When our people's lives are at stake, business as usual in Washington has to yield. The substitute that Senator Miller and I have offered prohibits the ability to discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, national origin, and arbitrary and capricious factors, but allows the President the flexibility to hire without waiting 6 months, to fire without waiting 18 months, to eliminate a system where 99 percent of Government employees get pay raises whether they received good evaluations or not. I am not saying one side is right and one side is wrong. Obviously, I believe the President is right, and I believe my Democrat colleagues, other than Senator Miller--and maybe some I don't know about--are wrong. Obviously, I believe that or I would not be standing up here. My opinion does not make their position morally inferior to my position. The division is about what is more important. That is what the division is about. You have powerful concerns on both sides. You have the concern of national security and you have the concern of Government employees, one of the most powerful political constituencies in America. I am not saying they are wrong and we are right. I am saying we disagree and we disagree almost perfectly along party lines and we have to make a choice. You cannot be for the primacy of existing work rules of the Federal Government and be for the primacy of national security. You have to make a decision. I have made my choice. My choice is, when Government work rules impede the protection of American lives, they have to yield. That is my choice. Many of my colleagues appear to have made a different choice. What are we talking about when we are talking about changing union work rules? I have heard over and over and over again that we are eliminating merit and unions. First, the substitute Senator Miller and I have introduced is a substitute which strictly constrains the President to make decisions based on merit, and it limits it strictly to those areas where lives are at stake. I will give some concrete examples. In 1987, the Customs Service at Logan Airport in Boston tried to change the inspection facility to make it safer and more efficient. But there was a union work rule that said the inspection facility could not be changed in any significant way without a renegotiation of the union contract. So guess what. The Treasury employee labor union went to the FLRA and they overruled Customs. And Customs was not able to change the inspection facility. Look, maybe when you are talking about trying to keep drugs out of the country or illegal aliens, those work rules are more important. But when you are talking about lives, are they more important? If we can increase the probability of keeping chemical or biological or nuclear weapons from coming in through an airport in America by changing the inspection facility, are we supposed to wait around 18 months to negotiate with the union about the ability to change the room in which the workers are working? Some of our colleagues think so, but I do not think so. I do not believe the American people think so. Let me give another example. You all remember Barry McCaffrey, the general who was appointed by President Clinton to be drug czar. He made note in the San Francisco Examiner about the different work rules of the different Government agencies that were protecting America's borders: Officials at one agency were actually forbidden to open the trunks of cars, a policy well known to drug dealers. Look, maybe it makes sense to some people that a union work rule says people working for this agency or in this classification can not open a trunk at a border inspection, and so dope gets into the country or an illegal alien gets into the country. But if it is a nuclear weapon, does it make sense? Do we really think preserving that work rule that General McCaffrey pointed out was being gamed by drug dealers--do we really believe that is more important than keeping a nuclear weapon from getting into the United States? That is the issue we are debating. I could go down the list and go on and on. In terms of deployment of the Border Patrol special task forces, the union work rule says you cannot deploy somebody where there is not a barber shop, a place of worship, or a dry cleaners. If we are just trying to keep dope out of the country, or keep out illegal aliens, maybe that is not so unreasonable. I do not agree with that, but maybe I am wrong. But when you are trying to keep weapons of mass destruction that can kill thousands of our people out of the country, do we really want to go to the FLRA and spend months and months and months trying to renegotiate this? Or do we want to give the President the power to say: Lives are at stake. As long as that is the case, under the emergency powers as President I am going to send the Border Patrol where there is no dry cleaner. That is what we are talking about. That is what this issue is about-- the ability to deploy on merit, when lives are at stake, instead of seniority. We are talking about the ability of agencies to set gun policies--something today they cannot do because of union work rules-- and search policies. When we are worried about drugs getting into the country or contraband of various kinds, maybe we want to say the union work rules are more important than the search policy. So you have to go to FLRA to renegotiate with the union and spend 18 months doing it. But if lives are at stake, and we are talking about a nuclear weapon getting into New York Harbor, surely people see the difference. These are the kinds of things we are talking about. Let me try to sum up where we are and what the issue is. We are divided almost perfectly along partisan lines with the exception of one Member on each side. Is preserving this old horse-and-buggy system from the 1950s--that was designed primarily to protect workers, not to get the job done--more important than enhancing the probability that we can protect lives? I say no. Some others say yes. That is the issue. It ends up being contentious because we cannot have it both ways. You can't serve two masters. You have to make a choice, and the choice I choose is national security. Madam President, how much time have I used?