Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to address what I think is a farce. Obviously, we are hearing about what are some very significant individual concerns and legitimate individual concerns about Federal employees who are being put through significant stress as a result of their inability to be paid, which I would note in many instances, such as the FBI and the DEA, result from the fact that the President vetoed appropriations bills which would have funded those agencies. But independent of that really personal and traumatic event which is occurring for many Federal employees, there is a much more significant event occurring here which is the question of how, after 26 years, we begin to put fiscal discipline into the Federal Government. And that has a lot of stories, too, a lot of personal stories. In fact, in our Nation today where there are approximately, I guess, 50 to 70 million children, depending on how you define a child, every one of those children are a personal story of the fact that we have not balanced our budget. A child born today will have to pay almost $170,000 just in interest during their working lives in order to pay out debts which our generation has put on their backs. That is a pretty big bill. Just 2 weeks out of work is a big deal, too. Nobody wants to put people through that burden. But what we are doing to our children as a nation is even more significant. So what is really the core issue of this debate is how we straighten out our fiscal house so that we do not end up passing on to the next generation of Americans a country without an opportunity for prosperity, and that comes down to being responsible in the managing of our Government. I want to talk a little bit today about what I would perceive as being a responsible solution to this balanced budget event, because we are hearing a lot of discussion and a lot of debate about how this should occur or how that should occur. But let me just note there are a few benchmarks upon which we can evaluate whether or not there has been success in getting under control the Federal spending, the rate of growth of Federal Government and, therefore, the opportunity to bring under control the Federal debt burden that we are passing on to our children. The real benchmark of this exercise is not quite honestly whether we meet a technical balanced budget in the year 2002, although that is absolutely critical that we do that, because such a balanced budget can be reached, unfortunately, through the adjusting and tinkering with assumptions. For example, if you change what the estimated inflation rate is over the next 7 years by just a percent or you change the estimated rate of revenues by the Federal Government by just a percent, you adjust by hundreds of billions of dollars the amount of money flowing into or out of the Federal Government. As a result, you can reach balance. Of course, assumptions have been part of the debate. That is why we have insisted there be a core score of assumptions called the Congressional Budget Office. But that really is not the essence of how you resolve the issue, because the essence of how you resolve the issue is what structural changes, what changes have you made in the way this Government functions that will guarantee or at least give us significant hope that we will be able to bring under control the expenditures of Government or the rate of growth of the expenditures of Government in a manner which will allow us to be able to afford the size of the Federal Government over the next 7, 10, 15 years. If you are going to address that issue, it is not so much reaching a balanced budget, it is the programs that drive Federal spending. So as we evaluate the process of reaching a balanced budget and what is occurring at the White House, I suggest we look at a few issues because those are the issues that are going to really determine whether or not we are successful. It is not so much whether the numbers that are put on the table after this meeting at the White House, which hopefully will be successful, is arrived at that say, yes, there is a balance by the year 2002; it is not so much those numbers that are important, it is the programmatic activity that underlies that. In this area, the core issue is the issue of entitlement spending. Entitlement spending are those programs which people have a right to have the Federal Government spend money on them because of their physical situation, their financial situation, because of their situation in their lifestyle. Those entitlement programs are the core problem that is driving the Federal debt. In fact, in the year 2015, all the revenues of the Federal Government will be absorbed by the entitlement programs. We will not have any money to spend on national defense or cleaning up the environment or having better schools. We will be spending everything just on entitlement programs. So the issue of whether or not we are going to bring under control Federal spending and whether or not we are going to be able to pass to our children and this country a fiscally solvent one versus one that is bankrupt, and whether our children will have an opportunity for prosperity really comes down to how we address these entitlement programs during this process. In doing that, I think we can score the activities by looking at a few specifics. If the proposal that comes out of the agreements or the discussions which are now going on with the White House--assuming there is a proposal; and I certainly hope there will be--but if such a proposal does not aggressively and affirmatively address those entitlement programs, then it will be essentially a facade, and we will have accomplished little. The pain that these Federal employees are going through subject to the continuing resolution failure will be for naught, and how can we know whether or not there has been substantive change or substantive action taken on the entitlement programs. Let me lay down a few benchmarks that I think we should look at. There are three basic programs that we are talking about here: Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare reform. In the Medicare accounts, clearly there has to be a new way to deliver services. There has to be more opportunity for competition. Our senior citizens have to be given more choices, more opportunity to go out in the marketplace, like their kids today, and be able to purchase services other than just what is known as fee for service. Thus, any reform that comes out of this process must involve the use and the utilization of marketplace forces in a very aggressive way. It must allow seniors to do as their children are doing today, which is to opt into other types of health care delivery, whether it happens to be an HMO, a PPO, or a group of doctors, or a PSO, which is another form of doctors and hospitals practicing together. Those various options must be made available to our seniors. And I hope that in any resolution of this matter--it must have that type of a choice program in it, a real choice program, and it cannot be just what we presently have in our Medicare system, which is basically an illusory choice program. You can also look at the Medicare reform effort and determine whether or not it is real by what the rate of the premium payment is. If we go back to a 25-percent rate of premium as being the part B premium borne by senior citizens, then we will know that basically there has been a sellout, that nothing has really happened. The fact is that 31.5 percent is what is needed as the part of the part B premium to be paid by seniors if we are going to have a solvent trust fund. Seniors cannot expect that the Medicare trust fund will remain solvent if they are going to ask their children to basically subsidize, at an ever-growing rate, the cost of the part B premium. The seniors cannot expect the Medicare system to remain solvent. Seniors have to be willing to pay their fair share. By paying their fair share and maintaining the premium at 31.5 percent is clearly a core test issue. Another test is whether or not there are copayments, especially whether or not we have a situation where, on the part B premium, people with high incomes are required to pay the full cost of the premium. Today, we have the top 500 of retirees from IBM last year being subsidized by the folks who are working at the restaurant, down at Joe and Mary's Diner or at the local gas station, and it is not right, it is not fair. They are being subsidized to the extent of almost 68.5 percent, the cost of their part B premium, and that is not correct. So any reform that comes out of this agreement has to have some sort of understanding that high-income individuals will bear the full cost of their part B premium. In the Medicaid accounts, it is very obvious that Medicaid has not worked the way it was supposed to. Nor has welfare. If we are going to make them work effectively, we have to give the States the flexibility to run the programs and to initiate original and imaginative approaches to running the programs. We have to end this huge drainoff of funds which is going into bureaucracy instead of going into care in the area of Medicaid and going into direct support in the area of welfare. Today, I think it is less than 40 cents of every welfare dollar actually gets to the recipient. The rest goes to overhead. In most States, the administrative costs represent about 15 percent of what the operating costs are of a program. So the difference between those two numbers is what States feel they can have available to address the needs of people versus ending up funding bureaucracies. So any program that is going to effectively address the outyear drivers of our budget problems, specifically the entitlement programs, must address the fact that Medicaid and welfare must be decoupled from the entitlement train and be returned to the States to be operated as States' programs with the flexibility being given to the State governments where there is as much compassion as in Washington to deliver these services to the less needy and to the more needy individuals. So these are some of the tests of whether or not we will reach an agreement which is real versus one that is illusory, and in looking at any balanced budget agreement, it is essential that we look at those tests because it is essential that we have an agreement that is real. I thank the Chair for his courtesy and yield back my remaining time. Mr. GLENN addressed the Chair.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Chair for noting that. I will just simply wrap up by saying if we are going to accomplish a balanced budget, we have to get this administration to agree to a balanced budget, to do it in 7 years, to do it with CBO figures, and to do it by addressing the spending that the Government is presently involved in.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Florida. I rise in support of the resolution. I guess the real question here is why we have reached the point where we need this resolution, which once again states that we want to have a balanced budget in 7 years and that we want to use CBO figures. The reason we have arrived at this point is because there has been an inconsistency from the administration, specifically from the President, as to what his position is on a balanced budget, as to what his position is on a timeframe for a balanced budget, as to what his position is on how we will account for getting to a balanced budget. We have had four different budgets sent up here by this administration. Not one of them has been in balance. Every one of them has been rejected by their own party within this Senate, if not on a formal vote, at least informally, a couple at least with formal votes, and we have an administration which has one day been in favor of a welfare reform bill which was passed by this Senate and then a few days later been opposed to the welfare reform bill passed by the Senate. We have an administration, the chief spokesman of which on health care, the wife of the President, has said that she wants to see a rate of growth in Medicare at 6 to 7 percent and the President in the same basic timeframe excoriating Republicans because we have proposed a rate of growth in health care, in Medicare, which is 6 or 7 percent. The inconsistency that comes forth from this administration is consistent. That is about the only consistent thing about this administration--its inconsistency. So we are once again calling on the administration to commit to what we thought they committed to 3 or 4 weeks ago but which they have backed off of, which is to balance the budget in 7 years and use CBO figures. We have heard a lot of discussion about why this is important, but I just want to reiterate that unless you look at the issue of how you are balancing the budget off the same baseline, unless everybody is looking at the same numbers, you can never get to any agreement assuming an agreement is possible. But there is a big issue here also, and that is that the few times we have been able to get any definitive direction out of the White House, it has become very clear that there are some deep philosophical differences between the two parties. We believe that borrowing from our children to pay for the costs of operating the Government today is wrong, that it is fundamentally wrong. I heard the Senator from North Dakota talk about the vulnerable people in our society. Who is more vulnerable than our children, people who are being asked, even though they do not have any ability to confirm this decision, to take on the debt which our generation is running up? We have, as Republicans, said this is not right, and therefore we put together a real budget that reaches balance in 7 years. Second, we have said you cannot run a system to assist our senior citizens if we know the system is going to go bankrupt in 7 years. We have been told by the trustees of the Medicare trust fund that it goes bankrupt in 7 years unless something is done, and so we have stood up and made a proposal which puts that system into solvency. We have done it in a way which gives seniors more choices than they have today, which gives seniors the same options essentially as Members of Congress in choosing their health care. We have done it by using the marketplace. We have further said that if you have a welfare system which says to people, you can stay on welfare all your life and then you can have your children on welfare, whether they are legitimate or illegitimate, and they can have their children on welfare, that is wrong; that people should not be on welfare for the remainder of their existence in this country but they should be asked to participate in the system of productivity which creates the ability to benefit those who are in need, and it is called work. So we have proposed under our welfare proposal that people be required to go to work after a reasonable amount of time, 2 years, and after 5 years of being on welfare they not be any longer a charge to the State but be required to be out in society being a productive citizen. These goals which we have--balancing the budget so that our children do not get the bills for this time but have an opportunity in their time to be successful; creating a Medicare system which is, first of all, solvent and, second of all, gives our seniors the same choices in the marketplace as citizens who are in the private sector; which allows a welfare system which is really directed at caring for the people who need support, not for the people who are abusing and using the system-- these basic goals which we have put forward have been essentially rejected by this administration. They have either been rejected out of hand or they have been rejected in indirect ways through the manipulation of the numbers or the proposals that they have brought forward. Underlying this administration's basic philosophy there appears to be a goal, or maybe it is their philosophy that is the goal, and it is called reelection. That is what is driving the basic decisions which we hear from the White House. There is no desire for substantive change for the purposes of improving the Medicare system or improving the Medicare system and getting our Government into balance. There does appear, however, to be a substantive drive for reelection. And that drive for reelection has caused this administration to time and again put forward proposals which are superficial, inconsistent.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise today to commend Cathy Myers, of my staff, who has completed 12 years of dedicated and exemplary service in the U.S. Senate. Since my election to the Senate in 1992, Cathy has worked in my office, unselfishly devoting her time, and effort in making the office run more efficiently and effectively. She is certainly someone you can count on and my staff and I appreciate everything she does for all of us. Cathy has been the consummate example of a devoted employee, and I wish her many more successful years of service. It is with great joy that I rise today in honoring Cathy Myers on the occasion of her 12th anniversary as an employee in the U.S. Senate.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Carolina, and I congratulate him on obtaining floor time for this bill and finally getting it to a point where it is going to pass. It really is an excellent initiative that deserves the support of the Senate and the House, and hopefully will end up being signed by the President. It has been a long time coming, as has been mentioned by a number of speakers, and it is long overdue. We are, after all, almost 4 years into the post-cold-war period, and yet we still function with a State Department, an AID and ACDA organization, not to say anything of USAI and Voice of America, that are clearly creatures created and designed for responding to a worldwide ideological confrontation with the Soviet Union. As has been mentioned many times in this debate, that is no longer the case; and yet the momentum of those departments go forward as if it were the case, in many instances. I come to this debate because I have the great good fortune to be, through no cause of my own, but luck basically, chairman of the Commerce-State-Justice Appropriations Committee, which basically must fund the ideas which come from the Foreign Relations Committee, which is so ably chaired by the Senator from North Carolina and so ably by such an able ranking member as the Senator from Rhode Island. Therefore, as the person responsible for the appropriations activities relative to the State Department, I take seriously the proposals of the Foreign Relations Committee because they are obviously going to guide the actions of the appropriating committee. It is our intention and has been our intention as the Appropriations Committee to essentially support and work with the Foreign Relations Committee as they pursue and reform and reorganize the State Department. I strongly support the basic concept which was created by, initiated by, and now has been instituted by the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in his proposal as presented in this bill, which is essentially that the State Department, ACDA, and AID must rethink their roles, so that, hopefully, we will see a bringing together of these various agencies in a manner which will lead to a more efficient, focused, and effective delivery of their mission. I happen to strongly be of the view, as I know the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee is--really I am of this view in large measure because of the education which I received while being on the Foreign Relations Committee, at the feet of the chairman and the ranking member--I am of the view that we need to give the Secretary of State more control over these various agencies so that we have a more coordinated policy. It is not a unique view, actually, held by Republicans only. It happens to be a view that at least initially was held by, I believe, the Secretary of State, and, I suspect, in the quiet of his office when he is not being confronted by the requirement of public policy positions pressed upon him by other members of the administration, he still agrees with that view and agrees with it strongly. It was a view which, initially at least, was supported by the Vice President in his proposals for reinventing government; that is, that we should give the Secretary of State, the person who logically is the prime spokesman and policymaker on behalf of the President of the United States, the authority to manage the foreign policy of the country. That means the authority to manage two major agencies which now function as independent satellites of the Department and, in some cases, extraordinary satellites. But this bill does not go so far as to direct how it is done precisely. Rather, I believe this bill takes the very logical approach of allowing the Department to report back and design a program which accomplishes the goals which I think are well set out, which is that more focus be given through the Secretary of State in controlling and managing the various functions of our international policy. Also, it proposes that in this exercise of reorganization we save some money, not a request which is illogical. There is no question but that there is a great deal of overlap, there is a great deal of duplication, there is a great deal of atrophied agencies within these various departments which were produced and created for the purposes of addressing issues of the cold war and which are no longer serving a viable function and which, in many instances, could easily be reduced or at least consolidated in a manner which would deliver more efficiency and refocus them more effectively and which would save dollars. The proposal which has come forward is to save, I think, $1.7 billion over, I believe, 7 years, if I am correct. And if I am not, I will be happy to stand corrected. I guess it is 5 years. I would note that this is not a reach. In fact, in the appropriations bill which was just recently passed by this Senate, we saved $500 million just in the year 1996; $65 million through rescissions, $435 million by reducing spending activities within these various departments. So we are clearly on the path to this level of savings. In fact, when it was reported at the initial proposal, which the Vice President's group, I believe, was dealing with and which had been put forward by various members of the administration, it would save, I think, approximately $5 billion during this same timeframe. I was supportive of that number and happened to believe that number is an attainable number, $5 billion rather than the $1.7 billion which is in this authorization bill. I hope as we move down the road toward this reorganization, that should this $1.7 billion become the number that is focused on or settled on, that the Department might even, in a gesture of good will, try to exceed that number and go closer to the $5 billion which was originally thought of. I can tell you right now, at least at the appropriating level, we are going to be looking for numbers at a little higher level because we think it is certainly doable. But I strongly congratulate the chairman of the committee for having gotten us on the road to what I think is a long overdue, but very effective as presently proposed, attempt to reorganize departments which were designed to address one issue, the cold war, and which now are not functioning effectively addressing a new issue, which is the world as we know it today. Today when we think of the threats that confront this Nation and the issues of international policy, we should be thinking about things like population excesses and thinking about things like environmental concerns. We should be thinking about things like availability of food. We have to worry about ethnic conflicts, and we have to worry about religious conflicts--totally different issues of philosophy, totally different issues of real threat to our country or real threat to stability around the world than what we confronted under the regime of the cold war. Thus, we need to reinvent the agencies which address that, and in this bill the chairman and the Committee on Foreign Relations has taken a major stride toward doing just that. So I congratulate the committee. I look forward to continuing to follow the guidance of the committee as we move forward in the appropriations process. Mr. HELMS addressed the Chair.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. First, I wish to thank the Senator from New Mexico for his generous comments. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. GREGG. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from North Carolina.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Carolina for his generous remarks. His assistance and guidance and thoughts on this bill were extraordinarily helpful to me. Obviously, coming to this bill at a late date, it was very nice to have the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee there to give me his thoughts and help us in crafting the bill. I very much appreciate that. At this point, I will suggest the absence of a quorum----

Mr. GREGG. I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Nevada. Probably the best way we can get that money is to get the entire Congress out of here for Christmas. At this point, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask that the time be charged equally to both sides.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Hatfield.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time be yielded back, except that there be 10 minutes reserved for the leader and 10 minutes reserved for the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Byrd; that a vote be set to occur at 4 o'clock on final passage; that the yeas and nays be ordered; and, that, pending the 10 minutes being used by the leader, or the 10 minutes to be used by Senator Byrd, we be in morning business.

Mr. GREGG. I yield to the chairman as much time as he desires.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, at this point I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask the time be charged equally to both sides.

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield 15 minutes to the Senator from Utah.

Mr. GREGG. I suggest the absence of a quorum. I ask unanimous consent that the time be charged equally to both sides.

Mr. GREGG. In that case I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. GREGG. Is the President aware of the unanimous consent relative to time limitations?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, it is my pleasure to proceed today with the conference report on the Commerce-State-Justice appropriations. This legislation comes forward after a considerable amount of activity and, obviously, some ups and downs on the road to passage. It is, however, I believe, an excellent piece of legislation in light of the hand which has been dealt. Clearly, in an attempt to balance this budget, we have had to make some significant reductions in this account overall in order to meet our goal of a balanced budget within 7 years. The numbers which were assigned to us by the Budget Committee and then allocated to us by the Appropriations Committee put us to the test in the area of trying to reach this goal. But I believe we have reached it in a very positive and responsible way. The essential thrust of this bill is to make sure that we adequately fund the activities of our criminal justice system and to make sure that we have [[Page S 18128]] adequate moneys and make available to the States adequate funds to undertake an aggressive posture relative to trying to control the spread of violence and crime in our Nation. As a result, we have committed a significant increase in dollars to the Department of Justice, approximately a 19.2-percent increase over the 1995 level. That increase in funding in the Department of Justice has come in the context of an overall reduction in funding for the bill generally of approximately $756 million. Thus, in order to accomplish that, we obviously had to take some funds from some of the other agencies. We have significantly reduced the funding, for example, in the area of the Department of Commerce and in the area of the State Department. In making those decisions to reduce funds in those two areas, I believe we have done it in a very constructive way. We have in the State Department, for example, fully funded, to the best of our ability anyway, the activities of the operations of the State Department. We made sure that the salary cap accounts and the construction accounts and the day-to-day functions of the State Department are funded in a manner which they feel they can accept. We have not, on the other hand, made a major commitment to the U.N. funding. We have funded the international organizations efforts and peacekeeping efforts, but we have kept the funding levels at a very low, or at least conservative, number, because we feel that is an appropriate decision. From my standpoint, I would rather be fighting crime in the United States and spending money on that than necessarily funding international organizations and peacekeeping at the United Nations. In the area of the Commerce Department, we have also made some very difficult decisions, but in the process, I think they are constructive decisions. We have, for example, funded very aggressively NOAA, which does very strong, effective research in the area of protecting the oceans, which are critical assets of not only our Nation but the world. At the same time we have, however, cut the overall funding for the Department of Commerce by approximately 14 percent below what it was funded at last year. So we have gone 14 percent below a freeze for the Department of Commerce. In order to accomplish that, we have had to reduce funding in a number of accounts, obviously, within the Department of Commerce. But I think the decisions for those reductions have been thoughtful and appropriate. Again, with the Small Business Administration, we have reduced the funding of the Small Business Administration by a considerable amount. But I believe we have given them still the capacity to go forward and participate in the process of funding initiatives to assist in the creation of jobs effectively. So, overall, this is a bill which accomplishes our major goals, the first goal being to live up to our obligations to balance the budget and, therefore, make the difficult decisions which require reducing of funding and, in the area of the Department of Commerce, move toward basically its elimination. At the same time that we are moving toward a balanced budget, we have made a very strong and aggressive commitment to the Department of Justice and to crime fighting. On that specific area, I think it is important to note that one of the issues of the debate is the manner in which we pursue these crime- fighting initiatives. We have proposed in this bill that a large amount of the violent crime trust fund will be sent back to the States in the form of a block grant which will emphasize and encourage the use of those funds for the addition of police officers on the streets but will not require that those funds be used for the addition of police officers on the streets. This is a departure from what the administration position was or what they desired. The administration, of course, has taken great pride in its proposal which created cops on the beat and their theory, and we respect that. But we happen to feel that a much more logical way to approach this is to say to the local policing authority to get what they need. Do you need police officers on the street, or do you need the ability to communicate with your police officers on the beat, or do you need the ability to make sure that your police officers on the beat have adequate equipment in order to defend themselves? We think it is much more appropriate to leave the decision as to whether or not the funds should be used for the creation of additional police on the street or whether it should be used in order to make the police who are on the street more effective in their job up to the local law enforcement agencies who are on the front lines and who have a much higher level of awareness of what is needed. We also felt that the President's proposal had some fundamental flaws. The basic one was that the way it was structured most of the communities which would have added police officers would find that at the end of 4 years they would have to have picked up the whole cost of that police officer's salary. We think that in the end, rather than encouraging more police officers on the street, it would end up with approximately the same number of police officers on the street and that the number that has been thrown out by the administration is an extreme exaggeration of the numbers of new officers who might actually end up on the street, the number the administration talks about being somewhere around 100,000, when in actuality the number they proposed would have been somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000 during the periods the funds were available and, after the funds were terminated, in our opinion, would have been less. In addition, we feel strongly in structuring the use of the violent crime trust fund significant dollars should be put into one-time items so that we are not creating programmatic events which we become responsible for at the end of the violent crime trust fund's period of existence, and thus we have encouraged things like one-time items that would encourage prison construction and activities such as that where we think we can help out the States as they go forward with their attempts to improve their criminal justice systems but not end up signing on to a program where we become liable for the States' responsibilities as far as the eye can see. In addition, we have strongly supported, for example, some of the initiatives which have traditionally been built up under the criminal justice system and which we think are important such as the Violence Against Women Act which receives a sixfold increase over the 1995 funding level and which we think is a very appropriate initiative. This is a quick outline. As we move forward this afternoon in discussing this bill further, we will get into more specifics, but at this time I would like to yield to my ranking member and colleague, whose knowledge and history of this legislation far exceeds anything I will ever obtain, and whose support and thoughtful advice and guidance I greatly appreciated during the process of putting this bill together, for whom I always had a great deal of respect, having gotten to know him when he was in New Hampshire on occasion a few years ago, but that respect has only grown exponentially as a result of my having had a chance to work with him in this committee.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I also wish to thank the Senator from West Virginia, who has been of tremendous assistance to this committee, obviously. I was sort of dropped into this committee out of the clear blue, and with the help of the Senator from South Carolina, the Senator from West Virginia, Members on our side have been able to struggle through the effort. I think we have produced a bill that is, if not supported by the other side, hopefully at least respected by the other side. I also wish to thank Senator Hatch, who was very helpful in this undertaking, and Senator Helms, and especially the staff on both sides of the aisle who have already been mentioned, of course, Scott Gudes and Emelie East, and David Taylor and Scott Corwin, Lula Edwards, and Vasiliki Alexopoulos on our side. They worked incredible hours, just overwhelming hours, under tremendous intensity. I do not know really how they do it. It is extremely impressive. I think what they all deserve is a good vacation in New Hampshire, and I hope they come. We would love to have them come up and relax. Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent on behalf of the Governmental Affairs Committee to meet on Thursday, December 7, at 9:30 a.m. for a hearing on S. 94, prohibition on the consideration of retroactive tax increases.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to hold a business meeting during the session of the Senate on Thursday, December 7, 1995, at 10 a.m. in SD226.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, December 7, 1995, to hold a hearing to receive testimony on ``An Agenda for the Information Age: Managing Senate Technology.''

Mr. GREGG

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