Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, let's remember what we are debating here relative to the merits of the various amendments. We heard another restatement of this representation that the President has not made a commitment to No Child Left Behind. He has not only made a commitment, he has made the most significant commitment to education in recent history, the most significant commitment to title I in history, and the most significant commitment to IDEA in history. Compared to the prior administration, his commitment represents a massive increase. In fact, if you take the 7 years of the prior administration, running up to 2001, and compare it to the President's first 2 years, the President has actually made a commitment that exceeds those 7 years in 2 years by approximately $500 million. Or almost 25 percent more than what President Clinton put into education over 7 years, President Bush has put into education in 2 years. His commitment to title I has been a 27-percent increase over the Clinton commitment. His commitment to special education has been $1 billion a year each year for the first 2 years of his administration, the two most significant increases in history compared, again, to the Clinton years. It dwarfs what the administration did during that period. That isn't necessarily the issue, although it has been a matter of debate. The issue is the appropriateness of the two different amendments. The Kennedy amendment essentially tries to fund No Child Left Behind at about a $4.6 billion level of additional funding, which theoretically gets to an authorized level, which is pretty hard to put your hand around but theoretically gets there. We are talking about putting $5 billion, which works out to about the same number as Senator Kennedy's, into the No Child Left Behind bill. From a dollar standpoint, the two amendments are essentially the same. Where they differ is in how they approach those dollars. We say to local school districts: Here is the money. You can take it. You can use it to address your needs in your local school systems as you try to respond to No Child Left Behind. We know that many of our school systems think that in areas such as teacher training or classrooms or maybe just testing or whatever it is, they think they need more money for No Child Left Behind. This money we are proposing goes to them without any strings, without any controls coming from Washington. It says, you have to use it for No Child Left Behind initiatives. As a result, it is going to give the flexibility to local school districts which they really want with these dollars to accomplish the goal which, let's not forget, is to make sure the kids learn. The whole purpose of this bill is to make sure the kids learn. The priorities should be how we get to that point. The second thing we do in our amendment, which is not done under the Kennedy amendment, is that we pay for it. I just heard the Senator from Illinois say: We don't need to pay for this. We can't cut anything else. Listen, we are running a deficit. We are at war. We are a nation which is under some fiscal strain in our economy. The fact is, we have to reinstitute fiscal discipline in the Congress. Regrettably, under the prior Congress, no budget was passed. The Democratic Party, for whatever reason, decided not to bring a budget to the floor of the Senate in the last session of the last Congress, which left us without any enforcement mechanisms. It was, in my opinion, a grossly irresponsible act; the first time in my experience in this Congress that we did not have a budget. Therefore, we did not have enforcement mechanisms. Now we are in a situation where the President has said, through the force of his bully pulpit: Here is the number, 750. It is a reasonable number. It represents a significant, dramatic increase in funding by the Federal Government. It represents a massive increase in Federal spending. It is a double-digit increase in Federal spending. He said: Hold that 750 number. Members of the other side are not willing to do that. They don't want any budget discipline. We believe there should be budget discipline. We believe our job as legislators is to prioritize. The first order of business is to defend our Nation with strong and effective antiterrorism activity, and we have a President who is doing that. We have aggressively funded that. I happen to believe the second order of business is to fund education. That is why we propose this amendment which basically reallocates funds from other accounts into the education account and fully funds No Child Left Behind as defined by Senator Kennedy's definition. I happen to believe No Child Left Behind is getting significant dollars, probably more than they can spend, but these additional dollars will absolutely guarantee that our local school districts have the money they need. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, what is the status of the time?

Mr. GREGG. I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Rhode Island. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. I would appreciate it if the Senator from Rhode Island would allow me to proceed with a unanimous consent request. I ask unanimous consent there now be 60 minutes equally divided between myself and Senator Kennedy; provided further that following the use or yielding back of the time, the Senate proceed to a vote in relationship to my amendment, to be followed immediately by a vote in relationship to Senator Kennedy's amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I reserve my request of the Senator from Massachusetts and yield the floor.

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

Mr. GREGG. It is being brought to the Senator at this moment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I send my amendment to the desk. I hope we can enter a time agreement for a vote on these two amendments. I ask the Senator from Massachusetts if he feels we can enter such a time agreement.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I am hopeful we can arrive at some timeframe for wrapping this up and getting on to a vote. I have spoken with the Senator from Massachusetts about that. I believe he is also amenable to that approach. I do intend to lay down an amendment in a few minutes which we have already represented will be one of two amendments voted on. Prior to laying down that amendment, I did want to respond to a number of the representations made over the last hour or so on the issue of the President's commitment to No Child Left Behind and the Republican Party's commitment to it and how we will make this law work well. First, let's remember, when this law was passed, it really was a bipartisan effort to try to accomplish something special for our kids, especially low-income kids on whom we had just an inordinate amount of data and, unfortunately, real-life examples of the fact that they were not being educated at a level that made them competitive in America, that low-income kids were being left behind and that, as a result, we were turning out generations of children who were not able to participate in the American dream because they were not able to read and write and to add and subtract and do math at a level competitive with their peers. All these numbers get thrown out here, but this bill, No Child Left Behind, has at its core the simple purpose of making sure that American children, children in our public school system, which is the essence of the strength of our Nation--we all understand that; the ability to get an education in America and the public school system has and always will be the essence of our strength--learn what they need to learn, that they are able, when they finish their elementary and secondary school experience, to participate in American society, to find a good job, and take part in the American dream. That was the purpose. You have to thank the President for leading the Nation in this direction. He feels it with great emotion and purpose, as does the Senator from Massachusetts, as do many people who worked on this bill. We want to do something that gives those kids an extra shot at the American dream, make sure they do not get left behind. No Child Left Behind was passed, and it had four basic purposes. I will just quickly recite them so we are all working off the same page. The first purpose was to give local school districts more flexibility over how they managed their dollars, Federal dollars specifically. The second purpose was to make sure there was an accountability system where, when a child goes through the system, how a child is doing at different grade levels could be compared to other grade levels. The third purpose, of course, was to fund adequately this bill, which I believe was done, and which I think we can defend. On that point of funding, I want to start with a little bit of a comparison. When the President came into office, we, of course, had the experience of a prior administration in the area of title I, low-income programs. The Clinton administration--in the 7 years leading up to President Bush's undertaking of this effort--had put approximately $2 billion into title I. Within the first 2 years of President Bush's administration, he added $2.5 billion to title I. The single largest increase ever experienced by title I occurred in his first year, the second largest increase was in his second year, and probably the third largest will occur in the third year--if he gets the billion dollars he asked for. That is title I. The practical implications of this are that increases under President Bush represented about a 27-percent jump in title I over what the prior administration did. If you look at it in cumulative years, you see it is rather startling. Over 7 years, the Clinton administration did $2 billion. Over 2 years, President Bush did $2.5 billion. Massive increases. To put it into real dollar terms, the difference in new education funding--total--between the last year of the Clinton administration and the first year of the Bush administration is, again, $20 billion--$42 billion versus $60 billion. These are massive increases of funding into the educational system in order to try to make sure we meet the requirements and needs of No Child Left Behind. In addition to this type of funding, which was direct cash into the school systems type of funding on the discretionary side, the President also made a huge and dramatic commitment in the area of giving parents more dollars in their pockets, through a tax cut, which was directed specifically at the issue of helping parents educate their children--a $30 billion tax cut, which created new deductions for qualified high education expenditures, increased the amount individuals could contribute to their educational savings accounts, and dramatically expanded the availability of tax-free distributions for qualified tuition plans--a very significant effort, which has basically been overlooked and never even mentioned in the debate on the other side. This tax cut the President put in place, which benefits moderate- income Americans as they attempt to educate their children with cash in their pockets, which they can then put into the savings vehicles and other vehicles that assist them as their children get ready for college--and also assist in the elementary and secondary school area-- also helped teachers by giving them some deductions that they didn't have before as they spend money in doing things relative to their classrooms, such as buying books, maps, and things such as that. In addition to the huge increases, the $20 billion actual increase--a huge increase in title I funding--the President made a dramatic commitment to IDEA, special education, the biggest single commitment to special education in the history of the country. Again, this dwarfs the effort made by the Clinton administration in special education. During the run-up years before President Bush came into office, President Clinton actually proposed virtually no increase in special education. In fact, in 1992-93 when he came into office, you would see virtually no green bar. The only year the Clinton administration asked for a significant increase was in his last year in office when they asked for $300 million, I think. There were dramatic increases made in this period--in 1999, 2000, 2001--and they came as a result of the Republican Congress and the leadership. I would like to think I played a role in that, along with Senator Lott and Senator Specter. We were able to dramatically increase special education funding during this period. When President Bush came into office, he ratcheted up special education funding dramatically, putting a billion dollars of new money into special education in each of the first 2 years of his term in office, which translated to money going back into the school districts to assist them in moving forward and addressing the requirements of special needs children. So we have had increases in title I, which are historic under this administration, and which dwarfed the increases in title I put in by President Clinton's administration--a 27-percent increase just in year 1. We have increases in overall discretionary education funding of $20 billion year to year. We have the increases in special education funding--again, dwarfing anything done in the prior administration--a billion-dollar annual increase each year. And we have the massive increase in availability of money to parents to save for their children's education through the tax cut. So the effort here has not been anything but significant in the area of trying to make sure we have funding in education, and this administration has certainly made that commitment. This chart shows how that works in relationship to all the other funding going on in the Federal Government. Here we are in the midst of a war on terrorism. We have a health care concern. If you look at the education funding, it has gone up 132 percent. Health care funding has gone up 96 percent. Defense spending has gone up 48 percent. The fact is that education funding is outstripping every other element of the Federal budget by dramatic amounts as a percentage and, in real terms, in real dollars flowing back to the States. No Child Left Behind specifically. I already mentioned that the title I money has jumped by 27 percent. Let's look behind that to some of the other accounts that are involved in the No Child Left Behind bill. One of the important things the No Child Left Behind bill did was to take all sorts of accounts, merge them together, and then say to the local communities: Here is the money, with no strings attached. You can do what you want with this money. But in the end, what we want is to make sure that every child at the third-grade, fourth-grade, fifth-grade, or sixth-grade level has learned enough so that their parents and the other people in the community can compare whether or not that child is learning at a level that is competitive with their peers and with other school districts: Accountability, to put it quite simply. Instead of controlling input and having lots of strings running to the child and to the funding, as it came out of the Congress, we reversed that trend and said: We are not going to put a lot of strings on what comes out of the Congress, but we are going to expect results. We have had discussion of this before. One area where I think this has been most telling and constructive is that of teachers. This bill took a lot of the different teacher funds, such as the Eisenhower Fund and the classroom size fund, and moved them into a pool of money, and then it said to the local school district--principals especially because they are key here--you can take this new pool of money, and instead of having to spend it under the categorical terms you used to get it under so you could only spend it for the purpose of basically classroom size reduction or teaching math-science, you can use it however you want for your teachers, to improve your teacher situation. If you want to hire more teachers, you can do that. If you want to have your teachers better trained, you can do that. If you want your teachers to have better technical support, you can do that. If you have good teachers and you want to pay them more to keep them, you can do that with the money. All sorts of different options were given to the local school districts to make sure that teacher money was more effectively used. And then we increased the money flowing into that account, again dramatically--35 percent. That was up by $742 million over the last year of the Clinton administration. So, once again, I think you can see that the game plan of No Child Left Behind was to fund aggressively, with flexibility, and then leave it to the local school districts to find out how to best use the dollars. That is exactly what has been accomplished. The number increases, as I have said, are rather dramatic in this area. In fact, the number increase in education has been so dramatic that we presently have here at the Federal Government approximately $4.5 billion that has not been drawn down by the States and local communities because the money has been flowing in so fast that they cannot keep up with how to spend it. That is hard to believe, but it is true. Here is a chart that reflects that $4.5 billion. The majority of it is in the school improvement program, and in the special education grant program, and in the education for disadvantaged program. But it is there, and it is available, and it hasn't been spent yet. When I hear colleagues on the other side saying there is a dearth of money available in the Federal Government, and just because we have increased it by 27 percent, that is not enough; and because we increased it by $20 billion in a year, that is not enough; and just because we cut these taxes, that is not enough; and just because we have a 12-percent increase in educational funding, that is not enough, it does seem to me when we have $4.5 billion sitting down there at the Department of Education waiting to be distributed, that might be a sign we are doing a pretty good job in putting money into the system and, hopefully, we are going to start getting it out the door, too, fairly soon. That is where we stand today. A very important point is that if you want to do another comparison, which I think is fairly interesting, we have heard almost incessantly we have to fund the authorization level; we have to fund the authorization level; we have to fund the authorization level. The only problem with that argument is the Congress almost never funds the authorization level. Authorization is a goal, but it is hardly ever attained. The purpose of authorization and appropriations is sometimes quite different. If we are to assume that is the purpose--that we must fund the authorization level--then I have to ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: What were they doing the last time they controlled the Congress and the Presidency? What were they doing? Because at that time there was a $2.7 billion difference between the authorized level and the appropriated level, which represented a 21-percent difference. If we look at the Bush administration's difference between authorized and appropriated levels, it is 15 percent. We are doing 50 percent better under this administration. It is pretty hard to defend this authorization argument, in my opinion. That puts us at the point where we are now, and I hope I have adequately responded to some of the comments on the other side, although I suspect I might have engendered some other comments from the other side. But let me go on to the amendment which I intend to offer. I am still awaiting its arrival, so I will have to wait before I can send it to the desk. The purpose of the amendment is to say: OK, I am willing to increase the funding for education, and I think people on our side are willing to increase the funding for education, but let's do it in a way that is responsible. The President has said--and it was agreed to at one point--that we will stay at a $750 billion discretionary number. I think it is pretty important we start getting fiscal discipline around here or we are going to be in big trouble. I think that is obvious. In order to accomplish this--I do think education is a priority, and I do think as we prioritize items within the Federal Government we have to put education right up there. In fact, if I were to prioritize, I would put fighting terrorism as No. 1, and that is in a class by itself because we have to defend ourselves. These people want to kill us because we are Americans, and we have to make sure we are ready to respond to them and defend ourselves. Fighting terrorism is No. 1. Right behind fighting terrorism comes the issue of education. I believe a reasonable approach to this question of how we fund education is that if we are going to jump the number significantly--and under the proposal of the Senator from Massachusetts, he has about $4.6 billion in here for No Child Left Behind, we are going to jump that amount dramatically, then we ought to do it in a way that is fiscally responsible. I am offering an amendment which increases the funding by $5 billion, but it says that we do an across-the-board cut to get to that number so that we are going to stay under the $750 level. In addition, I do not know about my colleagues, but I am hearing from my school systems again: We need more flexibility. I am saying we have $5 billion you can fund No Child Left Behind, you can fund anything under the No Child Left Behind bill, but we are not going to put any strings on this. You are, basically, going to get this money to assist you at the local schools in undertaking and accomplishing the No Child Left Behind effort. In addition, you can use this money, if you feel you need to, for IDEA and for programs like TRIO. Essentially, we are not going to put any strings on this. We are going to send it back to the States and say: All right, States, this is an add-on. You are concerned about unfunded mandates. If there is anything in this bill that is unfunded and is a mandate, these dollars will certainly take care of it. I want to touch base on that because there was some representation out here that the testing regime in the bill is an unfunded mandate. It simply is not. It is fully funded under this bill, and the bill specifically says you do not have to pursue the testing regime if it is not paid for. That is a totally irresponsible statement. In fact, and I know in my State, they are spending $300,000 per test. Under this bill, they are going to get $500,000 per test. So they are actually going to make money in their testing regime in New Hampshire, which I am sure they will put to good use in some other area of education. This amendment is a fairly reasonable, straightforward amendment. It is $5 billion more. It is actually a little higher than the proposal of the Senator from Massachusetts in the area of No Child Left Behind funding--$5 billion more--but it is going to be done by an across-the- board cut so it is fiscally responsible. The money will be available with no strings attached. Our local school districts and State school districts can see we mean it when we say there is no unfunded mandate in this bill. Amendment No. 19

Mr. GREGG. I do not object.

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, is it the understanding then that the first vote will be on my amendment and the second vote will be on Senator Kennedy's amendment?

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator for his comments. I simply add, today we have a letter from Admiral Abbott, in which it is stated that they think this money is unnecessary, and I believe their point is it is unnecessary at this time because these agencies can't handle it. Let me go through why that is the case with the agencies with which I have some familiarity. I have been fortunate enough to serve as either ranking member or chairman of the Commerce-State-Justice Subcommittee for about 8 years, and during that time I have come to know with some familiarity of the activities of the agencies under that jurisdiction, many of which impact homeland security. Let me specifically talk about the FBI, INS, first responders, and the issue of the Marshals Service. This amendment includes in it $137 million for the Triology Program. The Trilogy Program was an attempt to get coherence into the computer systems of the FBI and basically be able to get every agent at the FBI the capability to go online and instantaneously access the database of the FBI, so you would have the capacity of a field agent actually having the information necessary to find out, if they ran into a suspect, what that suspect's threat situation was and also to feed into the system information they may have developed that was important to protecting the country, especially in the area of terrorism. Unfortunately, Trilogy has become a large disaster. A big part of the disaster of the Trilogy Program is that we, last year, threw $237 million at the program that they didn't need in order to develop it. That was part of our efforts last year to try to show that we were concerned about terrorism. This money, essentially, buried the program. As a result, in large part, the program has fallen apart. The situation is that the FBI software and hardware contracts for Trilogy have essentially become gold plated. The cost is soaring. The schedule is out of control. Right now we still do not have contracts on Trilogy hardware or Trilogy software. We are completely at the mercy of the contractors. The practical effect of that is that we now have a program which has what is estimated to be an approximately $213 million increase in 1 year--that is a 57-percent increase--and we are not getting what we expected out of the program. The simple fact is that putting another $137 million on top of a program which already is awash with money, so much awash in money that it basically has caused the FBI to lose its focus on how to best get contracts for software and hardware, is not going to help the program at all. In fact, to put another $137 million into the program is not going to contribute anything to making Trilogy work better. Regarding the additional funds in this amendment, there is a point made that, in the prior bill from which this bill was brought up, there is at least $100 million of unobligated funds at the FBI. We happen to think it is probably much higher than that. It may approach $150 million. It makes much more sense to say to the FBI: You spend the unobligated funds first before we put more funds on top of the funds you already have, because we already know you are having trouble managing the additional resources that you have received. The FBI is, regrettably, a very troubled agency today. I don't think there is anybody who has been following the news who doesn't recognize that. If you happen to follow the actual substance of the situation, you can appreciate that. For example, the National Infrastructure Protection Center, NIPC, which presented a spending plan that was so at variance with what the committee guidance was--and this was committee guidance when the committee was under the chairmanship of Senator Hollings, who did an extraordinary job as chairman of this subcommittee, by the way--it was so at variance with that we had to redirect $30 million and basically NIPC was transferred out of the FBI because they simply couldn't handle the program any longer. The Foreign Terrorism Tracking Task Force--this was created on a whim. It was a press release creation. We still don't know what it does. We still can't figure out what it does. As a practical matter, it doesn't know what it does. The efforts to implement the Webster Commission mandates on security have ended up creating unnecessary tasks because of the initial Bureau reluctance to allow us to have full oversight. That has made it impossible for us to determine whether the Webster Commission mandates are being met. Director Mueller is trying very hard, and I have immense respect for him. I honestly believe--unfortunately, with time--he is going to get the FBI up and running, to be the type of force it needs to be in order to protect us from terrorist attacks. But right now the FBI has serious managerial problems. It does not have serious cash problems. We have funded the FBI at very high levels in this bill, very high levels. They have significant unobligated funds. Programs such as Trilogy do not need more money. What they need is more management. We can move on to the INS. The amendment would add $267 million more for INS construction. The fiscal year 2003 bill before us already provides $267 million for INS construction. We doubled INS construction, compared to historic levels at which INS construction was getting funded. If you take the money now being proposed in this amendment, you will be doubling it again. This is one area in the INS Department where they actually do things well--construction. They know what they are doing. They do it well. But, as any other agency, if you overwhelm it with funds, many more funds than it can handle--and I respectfully present that a quadrupling of funds in one agency's construction account is an overwhelming event--you are going to find that agency starts to erode its internal control mechanisms and you are probably going to find that money will be spent recklessly, inappropriately, and, unfortunately, wasted. The doubling of the money in this account is a reasonable number. I don't see how anybody can say it is not a reasonable number, which is in this legislation as it comes from Senator Stevens. It does not need to be quadrupled. The amendment also calls for $262 million in the exit/entry program. The exit/entry system is, unfortunately, another computer disaster. It is a proposed system. Unfortunately, it is a promise; it doesn't exist. We can't even begin to develop the system until the INS has a central computer control network. The INS has so mismanaged its information technology programs over the years that we now have several core systems that cannot communicate with one another. That is one of the reasons the 9/11 disaster is so frustrating. It was the fact that the INS systems couldn't communicate with each other that didn't allow us to find out that we had folks training in flight school 9 months before the event. The situation is so bad that the proposed fiscal year 2003 mark provides $83 million for the Justice Department to come in and develop a new central computer system for the INS, because we have decided--and this wasn't my unilateral decision; this was a decision made under Chairman Hollings' leadership, and I applaud him for it because he went into this and they understand the problem--we came to the conclusion the INS couldn't straighten this out; it is such a disaster, their computer systems. The amendment would have us spend $362 million on a system that, if developed, would be standing in isolation because there is no central computer system that is working now at the INS. What we need to do first is develop a central computer system at the INS that can communicate within the INS, and then with the exit/entry system in place. So we are putting the cart before the horse, to say the least, and it is going to cost us $360 million to do it and it makes very little sense, although it is well intentioned. But it is not good fiscal management for that agency. Finally, the amendment adds some $80 million for salaries and expenses. The fiscal year 2003 mark already funds 500 new Border Patrol agents and 460 new inspectors. We know from the historical experience over the last few years that we have been trying to hire up the Border Patrol and that we simply can't fill these positions as fast as we would like. We can say they want 1,000 new Border Patrol agents. We know they will not get them. Why? Because we have language requirements. We require significant training experience for these individuals. And up until last year or the year before, we didn't pay them enough to get the people who had those qualities. We are losing them at a high rate, especially since TSA came into existence and the rate of pay there was better than the Border Patrol. We saw people migrating from the Border Patrol over to there. We need to fill the slots that are already there. We need to hire up those slots and not be putting another $80 million on top of that. That is $80 million that can't be used. It really isn't necessary in order to accomplish what we want in the area of hiring up the Border Patrol. We know--once again, like the FBI--that the INS has huge amounts of money that are sitting there that are unobligated and basically becoming slush funds. That is what this $80 million would be added to. Just last month, like a rabbit out of a hat, when a hole in the security bill was announced, they came up with $30 million at the INS, bang, just like that. We don't know where it came from, but we know they found it in that agency. Unfortunately, this $80 million, as well intentioned as it is, is simply not going to be able to be used because we have already put in place as many new positions as they possibly can hire up in the next 8 months which this bill covers. In the area of the U.S. Marshals, the U.S. Marshals is a small agency that is trying hard. They are sort of like the little-engine-that-could agency. This amendment is suggesting $537 million for 200 new deputy U.S. marshals--the revival of an idea that I think was initially put on the floor here by Senator Graham of Florida last year. Again, it is well intentioned. But this is especially an agency that we do not want to overload with money they can't use and with which they would potentially end up producing inefficiencies and waste. Rather than throwing a whole lot of money and saying hire up a whole lot of new people at the U.S. Marshals Service, this bill suggests that we shift 106 presently underused senior U.S. marshalls away from their desks and back onto the front lines. What is the advantage of doing this versus hiring up? The advantage is you don't end up with fresh, new faces out there; you end up with people who have line experience, knowledge, and ability, and who will from day 1 know how to handle a difficult situation should they confront it in a courthouse. This is a prudent course. The amendment of the Senator from West Virginia, unfortunately, in my opinion, would simply swamp the marshals. It is better to bring 106 senior deputies back to the fold than to chase and try to capture 200 rookies who may or may not be able to be added in time, and may or may not be able to be constructive, compared to moving the 106 onto the front line. By moving those senior marshals to those positions, we will address the problem most effectively. That is why the bill takes this approach rather than additional funding. The bill has also added a huge new increase on top of the very dramatic increase that is in the bill for first responders. This is an area where I have spent a huge amount of time, as has Senator Hollings. Our committee basically first began the first responder effort 3 years before the 9/11 event. We set up five major schools across the country. We started with training. Actually, we had them in 167 cities before 9/ 11. We wish we had been able to do more. We weren't. But as a practical matter, this is an area where we have focused a lot of energy and a lot of time to get this program to work right. It is working right. This is one of the real things in our efforts to address terrorism that is working right. This bill has put $2 billion into what used to be DPO, the Domestic Preparedness Office, which will go out to the police and the emergency responders. Then it has another $1 billion-plus going over to FEMA, which will help with fire first responders. We don't want to put more money on top of that--and I will be willing to place odds on this one--than these agencies are going to be able to handle in the next 8 months, and at the end of the next 8 months we are going to pour another dramatic amount of money into this account. We understand that these are the people who need the support. They need the technical support and the training. They need the equipment. But we also understand, once again, that putting these types of dollars into these agencies this fast--into the local fire departments, local police departments, local public health departments--if you do it at a rate that you can't keep track of it and you can't manage it effectively, you are going to end up with a lot of bells and whistles rather than substantive equipment. That is what we don't want. We don't want people buying blue lights; we want people taking care of the equipment they should be buying--respirators or machines--and we want the training to be directed at the training needed by a first responder in a terrorism event--especially weapons of mass destruction. We don't want this money simply ending up by placing dollars that are flowing into these agencies. The $2 billion that is coming out of our subcommittee and the $1 billion-plus coming out of the FEMA subcommittee is a dramatic increase and a very significant commitment to the first responder program. Putting more money on top of that, as the Homeland Security Assistant Secretary, Admiral Abbott, pointed out, simply isn't going to add to solving the problem. As well intentioned as this amendment is--it is well intentioned, and I respect immensely the author, but certainly the author's commitment to this issue which as been acted on for the last few years in a very aggressive way--I think at this time that the administration has it right and knows what it is doing as well as anyone can in this type of a climate and that this bill properly funded was brought to the floor by Senator Stevens. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. Fine. I am yielding for a question. I am not yielding the floor, but the time is being charged to the Senator from West Virginia; is that correct?

Mr. GREGG. I yielded for a question.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield for a second? I have to reclaim my time.

Mr. GREGG. That is correct.

Mr. GREGG. Designated Deputy Director.

Mr. GREGG. For a question.

Mr. GREGG. Of course, I yield----

Mr. GREGG. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate the concerns of the Senator from West Virginia. We all admire his commitment to the issue as we all try to make sure we as a nation have prepared effectively to address the issue and the threat of terrorism in our homeland. This has been a priority. This has been the No. 1 priority of the President of the United States. I don't think anyone can argue that this President has not committed himself and his administration in an almost messianic effort to get our Nation ready to defend itself in the face of this terrorism threat. Thus, we have to give great credibility to do what the President wants and believes he needs in order to accomplish the protection of the homeland. What he has said he wants and needs is in the bill as brought forward by Senator Stevens, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. In fact, the add-ons which are requested by the Senator from West Virginia, in large part, although well intentioned, may in fact undermine the effort to try to get efficiently into place a response to the threat of terrorism. Why is that? Because sometimes when these agencies receive much more money than they can handle, they handle all their money poorly. If they receive the money they need to do the job right, they focus on doing the job right rather than simply spending the money. The administration has written us and said they believe the additional funds requested by the Senator pro tempore emeritus are inappropriate. I have a letter signed by Admiral Abbott, the Deputy Home Security Adviser: I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your leadership in bringing the fiscal year 2003 omnibus budget bill to the floor of the Senate. I am writing today to strongly oppose amendments to your bill that would add extraneous spending above the levels requested by the President. In particular, the Byrd amendment purports to provide $5 billion additional homeland spending that is unnecessary. That is one paragraph from this letter. He is very clear. The President of the United States, through his Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security--Deputy Secretary-designee anyway--Admiral Abbott, has said this money is not needed and it is not appropriate for the effort they are trying to undertake to protect the homeland. I don't think anyone can question but that this President understands the importance of protecting the homeland. I will go through a few specifics relating to issues over which I have had jurisdiction with my subcommittee I have been honored to chair on the Appropriations Committee, the Commerce, Justice, State, and the Judiciary Subcommittee.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I heard an impassioned plea by the Democratic assistant leader on the other side of the aisle, whom I greatly admire and respect. I am not sure whether he considers himself the assistant majority leader now or the assistant leader, but I would point out some facts that maybe should be filtered out of the smokescreen of dialogue that has taken over. The facts are these: The resolution before the Senate is a resolution to appoint majority members to committees so our new Members can be confirmed to committees and so the majority can take the chairmanships of the committees of the Senate. That is the resolution before the Senate. That is the resolution which has always come to the Senate. This resolution does not address the issue of funding. The issue of funding has not actually come up from the standpoint of needing to be done until sometime in February. It does not address the issue of space, because the issue of space has never been addressed in this type of resolution. This resolution is the prototypical resolution that comes before a Senate every time a Senate organizes. Under the constitutional form of government we have in the United States, after elections the party that takes the majority organizes the Senate, appoints the members to the committees and has members of the committees become chairmen as a result of being in the majority party. The Senator from Nevada, who I respect, has decided to cloud this issue of appointments to the committees with the issue of funding. I guess they see this as a point of leverage which they can use to question the funding through addressing the issue of membership to the committees. What is the practical effect of the actions of the Democratic membership of the Senate today? The practical effect is they are denying the proper transfer of power that proceeds after an election. They are essentially saying the election last fall does not matter; that they remain chairmen of the committees in the Senate, even though they are in the minority party. Earlier today, I had a discussion with a Member of the Democratic leadership in the sense that he was chairman of the Banking Committee, and he represented he still considers himself to be chairman. Yet he also acknowledges, as I think anybody does who is fairminded about this, that he presently is in the minority. How can one be chairman of the committee in our form of government if they are in the minority? They cannot. They are usurping the rights of the people of this country who have elected a majority in the Senate. The majority has the right to chair the committees of the Senate, and yet the Democratic membership has decided to deny that right to the American people, the right which they put forward when they voted in November. I suppose if I were a Member of the Democratic side of the aisle, I would have been frustrated by that election. It was the first time in recent memory--or maybe ever--that a sitting President actually won control of one of the bodies of Congress in an off-year. It was startling. I thank President Bush for his efforts, and I thank those folks who subscribe to his view of the way we should govern. Obviously, I am very appreciative of the fact that as a result of that election we ended up going into the majority on the Republican side. Granted, it was only by one vote, but that is all it takes. All it takes in our constitutional form of government is one vote to be in the majority. We do not function under a super majority for the purposes of organizing the Senate. We do not have to have 60 votes to organize the Senate. We have to have a 1-vote majority. When one gets that 1-vote majority after an election, in a two-party system, involving a constitutional form of government, which is what we function under, then the new minority which used to be the majority is supposed to transfer power over to the majority peacefully and without resistance. What are we seeing today? Resistance. We have heard the assistant leader--who may consider himself to be assistant majority leader or the assistant minority leader, I am not sure, but the assistant leader say his heels are dug in and we could be here, I suppose, until Lake Powell freezes over before we are going to get a change from their side of the aisle. That fundamentally undermines the concept of constitutional government after an election in a two-party system. They may have a legitimate concern over funding. I happen to think they do not. I believe the majority leader has made very reasonable offers in this case and, in fact, when it becomes public I think the public will feel they were extremely reasonable offers, but they have no reasonable argument for holding up the proper transfer of power in a constitutional government. They are doing fundamental damage to the way we govern if they continue down this road. There are Members on their side--in fact, all of the Members on their side--who I greatly respect, but there are some Members on their side who have an immense history and strength on the issue of the integrity of the process in the Senate. I cannot believe those Members are not cringing at the thought we have not transferred responsibility in an orderly way in the Senate. The resolution before the Senate does not deal with space. It deals with who is the majority party. It is totally inappropriate for Members from the other side to be chairing committees and claiming chairmanships of committees when they are no longer in the majority position. It frustrates not only our side of the aisle but, more importantly, it frustrates the intent and purpose of our form of government. It is a serious matter. And the Senator from Nevada has dug his heels in. So be it. Speaking as one Senator on this side, I find this issue to be of such significance that I don't know how we can back off of our request that the majority be the majority, that the chairmanships go to the majority, that the memberships of the committees be given to the majority. If we did, what would have been the purpose of the last election? We would be fundamentally undermining that election. What happens in the future? Do we move into a government where elections are reasonably irrelevant if they are close? No. Close elections happen in America. Presidents are elected by the electoral college without winning the popular vote. But the fact is they were elected under the constitutional form of government. Majorities take control of the Senate when more Members of one party arrive in the Senate than from the other party. We have received certification from the Secretaries of State across the country who have established beyond question that the Republican Party presently holds the majority in the Senate. And, as such, the Republican Party has the right to and must claim the chairmanships of the committees of jurisdiction in the Senate. If we fail to do that, we fail our responsibility to the electorate. It is very hard to understand how the other side of the aisle can attempt to undermine this most fundamental exercise of the transfer of power after an election in a constitutional government.

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

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. You made my point.

Mr. GREGG. Is the Senator from Maryland in the majority party in this body?

Mr. GREGG. If the Senator will yield for one last question, the Senator from Maryland has now declared himself the chairman of the committee.