Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I am telling people so, hopefully, they will have their amendments together tonight, and staff will listen to this request and be all charged up to get their amendments down here by 12 o'clock tomorrow.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, at this time I send to the desk a managers' amendment. I ask unanimous consent the managers' amendment I have now sent to the desk be considered and agreed to, en bloc. These noncontroversial amendments have been cleared by both sides.

Mr. GREGG. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, tomorrow I will ask unanimous consent that all first-degree amendments be filed by noon. Hopefully, we can get an agreement on that. I am not asking it now.

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

Mr. GREGG. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that under the time agreement, no second-degree amendments be in order.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that the time be equally divided.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, as we know, the violent crime trust fund was set up back in 1993, and the concept of it was through savings which would occur as a result of the reduction in personnel in the Federal Government, that funding from those savings would be used to expand our efforts in fighting crime in this country. It has been a tremendous success. As a result of the violent crime trust fund, we have been able to undertake a significant expansion of the efforts of the FBI, the INS, the DEA, just to name a few at the Federal level, and also our local and community law enforcement, who are so important to us. This is critical. Without this trust fund, we might have some serious problems as we go down the road maintaining some of these efforts. The President is funding his Community Oriented Policing (COPS) Program from the violent crime reduction trust fund. Later, we are going to get from the other side an amendment which, I presume, deals with the COPS Program, but as a practical matter, I think we have resolved it. I do not think we are going to have a problem on this bill with the COPS Program. The COPS Program was a violent crime initiative, and a good one. It worked. I have to admit, I had suspicions about it when it was first offered, but it has worked out. We move on to other initiatives in the violent crime trust fund: terrorism initiatives; some initiatives to deal with the question of how the FBI is able to identify DNA; and initiatives with local communities, for their efforts to gear up with the technology of today. So, for example, when someone is arrested on the street, a law enforcement officer will have the computer capability to immediately contact the FBI, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), and get a reading as to whom that person is and in what possible other activity he or she might be involved. These are critical expansions in our efforts in law enforcement across this country. They are proving to work well. As we move down the road, they will work even better, I am sure. We have a number of major initiatives at the Federal level. We just got our Integrated Automated Fingprint Identification System up and running, fingerprinting. The NCIC program is working now. And coming on line--it may take some more years than I would like--is something dealing with information sharing initiative (ISI) which will give Federal agents the computer capability they need to have instant access to what is going on nationally. This is an initiative that is very appropriate. There are a lot of other things that are going to make our law enforcement much more effective as it deals with crime in this Nation. In addition, of course, we have done a lot in the area of DEA and drug enforcement. The violent crime trust fund plays a major role, and it is about to run out, so we should reauthorize it. That is why I have offered this authorization. I hope the Senate will agree to it. I suggest we set a vote for tomorrow, if that is all right with the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, this amendment deals with the violent crime trust fund. I understand there are some people who wish to speak on it. I ask unanimous consent that debate on this be limited to an hour.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I bring before the Senate today, on behalf of myself, the Senator from South Carolina, and members of the Appropriations Committee, the bill to fund the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the judiciary, and related agencies, which I want to spend some time discussing. But before I do that, let me begin by thanking, for the extraordinary amount of work and effort that they put into this bill, my staff and the staff of the Senator from South Carolina. They have put in so many hours. It is incredible. They spent evenings here. They spent nights here. And they spent weekends here, all at the expense of their families. I, for one, am extraordinarily appreciative of that. Privilege Of The Floor Let me mention a few folks. I ask unanimous consent that all of these people be granted full floor privileges during the consideration of this bill. Jim Morhard, of course, who is the clerk of the staff and chief operating officer, Paddy Link, Kevin Linskey, Eric Harnischfeger, Clayton Heil, Dana Quam, Meg Burke, Vas Alexopoulos, Jackie Cooney, Brian McLachlan, Lila Helms, Emelie East, and Tim Harding. These folks work incredible hours. We very much appreciate it. Mr. President, this bill recommends a total of $35.3 billion in spending for the fiscal year 2000. The bill provides, however, $918 million less than was appropriated in fiscal year 1999. In fact, if you include in it the fact that we have had the significant increase in the amount of money that is being spent on the census over what was spent last year, because we are headed into a census period, the real reduction below last year's spending in this bill is closer to about $2.6 billion. It is, of course, significantly less than the President's request. Much of this reduction, however, from the President's request, is the result of the fact that we decided not to fund advanced appropriations, something I very much oppose, and I think is bad policy. The President included in his budget request advanced funding requests of considerable amounts. We simply did not proceed with those. In fact, his advanced funding initiatives covered 6 years out. So I hope the President won't be putting out press statements that we are ``denying'' him something. When we get to those years, we will take a hard look at his request and, hopefully, be able to address them in a way that we can agree on them, should we all be in our present positions. The Committee chose not to add a great deal of money for many of the President's requests that are new initiatives. We instead took a very strong, fiscally conservative approach. We stay within our budget allocation, which was $918 million below last year's level. The Administration's proposed programmatic spending increased by 29.5 percent over last year's enacted budget. We decided that was a mistake. Ironically, considering the amount of the increase, the President's budget still underfunded what we considered to be critical functions of these agencies under our jurisdiction. Specifically, the Border Patrol was underfunded by $185 million; and targeted programs that the Committee relies upon, such as the State and local law enforcement block grants, cut by $522 million; juvenile crime funding by $250 million; and State prison grants by $665 million. These were all reductions in the President's budget, even though the President's budget was a high number. So we took the President's budget, and we tried to work with it, and we put our priorities in place. I think we have come up with an excellent bill considering the tightness of the allocation and the pressures which are on us. We had to reevaluate our priorities in light of that. The Justice Department is, of course, the single biggest area in our bill. It is a big number. It represents, obviously, a significant part of the responsibility of the Federal Government. It has within it agencies such as the FBI, DEA, INS, U.S. Attorneys Office, and many other subagencies that do an exceptional job of protecting our country and making us a safe nation in which to live. We have attempted to show our concern and our respect for the efforts of these agencies by funding them as aggressively as we can in the context of this difficult financial situation in which we find ourselves. We have, however, also made some initiatives. First, we initiated efforts in the area of children and youth. Last year, unfortunately, we saw--and this year we have seen--students shoot people in schools. We have seen violence in schools of extraordinary proportions that has depressed us and outraged us. Last year we were a little bit ahead of the curve, I guess, in this Committee in that we set up a fund the purpose of which was to address safe school initiatives. This year we are expanding that fund. The Safe Schools Initiative was really an effort by myself and Senator Hollings. It addressed issues such as making sure that schools would have the opportunity, if they so desired, to have police officers work with the students, making available better equipment for schools, and determining whether weapons were being brought into the schools. It is to provide a significant amount in the area of prevention in the schools so that there would be adequate counseling funds available. That effort, which was started last year with approximately $240 million, is continued in this bill aggressively. We have for example, put $180 million in for school resource officers. The idea is to have police officers in the school systems, if the school systems want them, to help educate kids as to the need to respect the law and to work with law enforcement. There is $38 million for community planning and prevention activities, which is a big sum, and $25 million to develop new and more effective safety technology that schools can use for surveillance. We are also providing a significant amount of money for a number of specific agencies which we think do an extraordinary job in helping prevent crime and deal with kids who may have gotten off the path in their early years. Specifically, we are providing $50 million for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which we think have done an excellent job. We also put money in for Big Brothers/Big Sisters and for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, significant amounts of dollars, increases over last year. We don't want to reinvent the wheel. We think there are programs out there working. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, we are saying to the programs, ``Let us help you.'' They are the professionals, and they know how to do this. They have a track record of doing it well, such as the Boys and Girls Club, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Let us support you. We have done that in this bill. I named those three agencies; there are others. We also escalated the effort in the area of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to a level of $284 million, and $100 million for the juvenile accountability block grants, giving funds to States that come forward to use the money. We address the Missing and Exploited Children Program. Again, the National Center has done an extraordinary job. The FBI has the strike team in this area. We have funded both those areas very aggressively. We feel very strongly this is an area where we have made progress, and we want to keep that progress going. For example, we have a Cyber Tipline for parents, teachers--even kids, if they are so inclined--who can directly access the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The tipline is reached through the Internet. The information entered goes to professionals who review each concern, whether it happens to be pornography, pedophilia, or just a threat to a child. Professionals can directly access the proper law enforcement agency or community service agency to immediately be brought into the process for addressing that person's concern. We have done a great deal in the area of fighting drugs. I can go on at considerable length in the drug-fighting area. We put a high priority on this. We felt the Administration maybe missed the mark a little bit. Instead of giving the DEA the reinforcement teams they needed, they underfunded the teams. We funded the regional and mobile enforcement teams at the level the DEA wanted so we can have the strike teams that have been so successful. In the methamphetamine area we have done a great deal, and we will continue to push that aggressively. The Justice Department covers such a broad spectrum, there is no shortage of areas to discuss. I am trying to highlight themes of the bill. We are trying to put funds where we know we get results. We are trying to address needs we know are essential, such as the safe school programs, the missing children programs, the issue of child pornography on the Internet, and the pedophile issue of predators over the Internet. Again this year, we put an extremely strong effort into the violence against women initiatives. This was an area both Senator Hollings and I felt strongly about. We have funded this aggressively over the last few years. We will continue to fund this area aggressively. The bill includes $283 million to combat violence against women. The funding continues special grants started last year at the suggestion of Senator Wellstone for colleges to have funds available to address threats against women on campuses. We have Indian initiatives in the bill, including the Indian Country Law Enforcement Initiative. These have mostly been done at the suggestion of Senator Campbell, who is the head of the Indian Affairs Subcommittee, and is also on this Committee. He has had great ideas. We have initiatives in the area of DNA identification. A long-standing effort of the Committee has been to make sure that we are getting better prepared for what is an inevitable, unfortunate event, and that is a terrorist attack against American facilities. We are coming upon, unfortunately, the anniversary of the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam attacks. We know there are evil people that wish Americans harm. We have to get ready for that. We have had a three-prong approach to this which was started about 4 years ago, purely through the urging and initiative of this Committee. We set up a task force effort for coordination of the agencies on counterterrorism. We have great results, although we are nowhere near where we need to be. However, we are moving in the right direction. The three levels of effort are: (1) counterintelligence, especially overseas counterintelligence; (2) interdiction of people before they get to the United States; and, (3) the issue of dealing with an event should a catastrophe occur as a result of a terrorist attack. We have set up counterterrorism initiatives in this bill, and we continue to expand all our efforts on all three of those fronts. We fund research to try to get a handle on how to respond to biological and chemical attacks. For first responders, we are giving communities the ability through police, fire, and health facilities, when they are first on the scene, to be able to handle that efficiently. We have an excellent national effort on first responders. There is adequate funding for the FBI and State Department, which are under our jurisdiction, in their efforts of counterterrorism, intelligence, and identifying the threat. I don't claim we are there. We are just at the beginning, an adolescence level. We were at an embryonic state 4 years ago, but we have grown and gotten better. We will continue to grow and get better. Unfortunately, we are in a race against time, in my opinion, but we do recognize that. It takes a long time to educate and get people up to speed. It takes a long time to buy the equipment we need. We are doing our best at it. In this Committee, and I think as a government, we are working well together. The INS issue is another big issue we tried to address. We have had a lot of support from people who have border issues. Certainly, Senator Hutchison from Texas has been a strong member of this Subcommittee and feels very strongly about this. Senator Domenici, of course, from New Mexico feels strongly about this. Senator Kyl from Arizona feels strongly about this. Last year, we funded an extra 1,000 Border Patrol agents in our bill. Unfortunately, the INS has not been able to put those people in place. There are a lot of excuses flying around and a lot of finger pointing. We think we have in this bill addressed the finger pointing. There should be no excuse for not getting those folks on board. We have added another 1,000 agents on top of those 1,000. We had made a commitment to add 3,000 and we are keeping that. We differ with the White House, who did not address the 1,000 agents. There was a front-page newspaper story about people in terror in Douglas, AZ, of being overrun by illegal aliens. People cannot water their garden without a gun in order to protect themselves. We have to control our borders. This bill makes an extraordinary effort to do that. We have funded aggressively the Commerce Department. That is not an understatement, even in the context of our tight funding situation. We have increased the Census Bureau significantly with $1.7 billion of new funds, for a total of $3.1 billion. We understand they do not feel that is enough. We will hold hearings to find out what they think they need. The night we were marking up, we got the notice they were upset with the amount of money. I found that to be ironic and not very good management. When I see something similar to that, I say to myself maybe we better find out what they really do need. If they can't get it to us sooner than that, maybe there is not a good management scheme behind that request. We will have hearings to find out. There may have to be some further effort to address the census funding. I recognize that. I think everybody else recognizes that. The NOAA account is well funded. This is a very important agency for many who live on the coast. Obviously, it is critical, but equally important, for those that happen to live in Oklahoma or in Arkansas where the severity of the weather can have horrible events. As in Oklahoma recently, the importance of adequate atmospheric predictions are critical. We have taken a major effort to adequately fund that. NTIA and ITC--we have funded all those as best we can. We think we have done a good job, especially in the international trade accounts. State Department is another agency which comes under the jurisdiction of this Committee. This Committee has fascinating jurisdiction. State Department, of course, is critical. We had the Crowe report, which told us that we need to spend $1.4 billion annually for a period of 10 years in order to get our embassies to a position where they could adequately defend themselves against potential terrorist attack. We are coming up on the 1-year anniversary of that event. Now, we did have an emergency appropriation a year ago of $1.4 billion and that is being spent, and I think they are doing a good job of using that money to do the initial, primary protective things they need to do: put in barriers, change the location of the security houses, and making sure people have adequately secured the immediate activity going on in the embassies. But there are tens of embassies which have to be repaired, changed, physically moved in order to become secure. The cost is extraordinary. The White House regrettably did not send up a very high number in security. They asked for $300 million. We put a priority on this. We have it up to $430 million in this bill, which was difficult to do in the context of the caps we are working with. We hope to find more money somewhere as we move down the road because we feel very strongly that giving adequate security--not only physical security is important, but I feel very strongly, and I know Senator Hollings feels strongly, the dependents of our people we send overseas need to have security. If you have kids going to school, if your wife is living, going to the grocery store or maybe working another job in a foreign country, she, and your children--or your husband and children--should not be at risk. We should be able to give them security too. So we are trying to upgrade the security, not only for the diplomats but also for their dependents, something I place a very high degree of responsibility on. Obviously, the State Department has a lot of other functions. U.N. arrears has been an item of considerable discussion now that there has been an agreement. With the foreign relations authorization bill being passed, we have funded the arrears. There is still some discrepancy as to what the number was in that agreement, but our intention is to fund the arrears, pursuant to the agreement reached between Senator Helms, the Administration, and the U.N. But let's remember those moneys do not get spent unless the U.N. lives up to its responsibilities to start putting in place adequate accounting systems, to cut down on what is the patronage system there, which is outrageous, and to give the United States an adequate voice in the budgetary process. It does not have this now because it was kicked off the Budget Committee which was inexcusable considering the fact we pay 25 percent of the costs of that institution. We have also, of course, funded a variety of other activities within the State Department, and we are totally committed to trying to give the State Department the resources they need. I recognize there are some shortfalls here in the State Department which again were forced upon us by the tight constraints we are confronting. They are not shortfalls which we are happy with, but they were things we had to do, especially in the overhead area. There may be some amendments to move money around in the State Department. If there are, I am going to ask people serious questions as how they can do that because there is no budget in the State Department that has any excess money in it. I can assure my colleagues of that, after we have gone through this and had to reduce overall spending a stated $73.683 million below last year's level, but it's actually $3.614 billion below the President's budget request. We have funded this year's services at last year's levels. It is something members of the Subcommittee have agreed with. We also made, as I mentioned, a major initiative in the area of Internet on a variety of different levels. I feel very strongly we should not discipline the Internet. It's not our job to try to control the Internet. It would be a serious mistake as a Government. We should not be taxing it. What we do need to do is look at those areas where the Federal role is appropriate. One, of course, as I mentioned before, is to continue to police the Internet relative to the use of child pornography and the predations of pedophiles on the Internet. We have again aggressively funded the FBI efforts in that area, along with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Boys and Girls Clubs' initiatives in this area, so we can start to get a handle on this. So when a predator goes on the Internet and starts selling child pornography, or starts trying to entice a child, through the use of the Internet, into some sort of meeting that might end in the harm of that child, that predator will have to ask themselves, ``Am I talking to a child or am I talking to a FBI agent or a trained local law enforcement agent?'' That is a good question today because, I can tell you, there are a lot of FBI resources committed to this. Every day we are multiplying the number of local law enforcement resources committed, so people are at significant risk if they try to use the Internet for those types of things. In addition, the Internet is unfortunately being used to prey on senior citizens through fraudulent schemes. We funded the FTC effort in this area, which I think is very important. They started their own initiative to try to deal with fraud over the Internet, and we are aggressively funding this program. Not of less importance, but not as personally important because it doesn't impact individuals so immediately, but certainly it can impact them, is the need for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to be more aggressive. They understand this. There is an initiative that came from the SEC to get more aggressive in monitoring the Internet and certainly the stock activities on the Internet. Therefore, we fund the SEC initiatives in this area. We are happy to do that. In our opinion, we fund adequately the other agencies regulatory agencies, SBA, FCC. I already mentioned the FTC and the SEC. So we have attempted in this bill to address, with the extremely limited amount of money that we had, the needs of the agencies which are under our control. Mr. President, I now yield to the Senator from South Carolina. Before I do, I thank the Senator from South Carolina for his extraordinary knowledge and support. I say this every year, but it is absolutely true. He brings so much institutional history to this bill, we really could not function without him. He understands what the background is of these issues as they come down the pike, something I do not necessarily understand. That type of information is critical. He is wonderful to work with. I respect his knowledge, his ability, and his willingness to be supportive and helpful on what is a very complex bill, which includes many strong initiatives of which he is certainly the father. I yield to the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask the Chair to lay before the Senate Calendar No. 153, the fiscal year 2000 Commerce, Justice, and State appropriations bill.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, the Senate will convene at 9:30 a.m. and will be in a period of morning business for 1 hour. Following morning business, the Senate will resume debate on the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill. Amendments to the bill will be offered, debated, and voted on throughout the day tomorrow. The majority leader announces that there will be no breaks in action on the bill. Therefore, Senators should be prepared for votes and adjust their schedules accordingly.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H. Con. Res. 158, which is at the desk.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until the hour of 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 22. I further ask unanimous consent that on Thursday, immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then begin a period for morning business until 10:30 a.m., with Senators speaking for up to 5 minutes each, with the following exceptions: Senator Coverdell, 10 minutes; Senator Collins, 10 minutes; Senator Voinovich, 10 minutes; Senator Durbin, or his designee, 30 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of S. 1217, the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Vermont.