Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

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

Mr. HOLLINGS. I have just been informed that the distinguished Senator from Louisiana wanted to be heard on the amendment. I understand that the Senator will speak after we agree to the amendment. She will be here shortly.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I yield.

Mr. HOLLINGS. We can clear it after a while, but I am not ready to agree right now.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Not on this side, not yet.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Will the distinguished leader yield? I have to check two other things. We are not prepared to agree to that.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mr. HOLLINGS addressed the Chair.

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

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

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. HOLLINGS. And the Senator from Illinois.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I have no objection, with the understanding that 10 minutes on this side be reserved for the distinguished Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin. I have no objection.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I think the Senator from Arizona should proceed. Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I think the distinguished Senator from Washington has really outlined the concerns of both sides of the aisle. The Senator from Arizona has a good initiative here. Without further comment on our side we accept the amendment.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I think the distinguished chairman has stated it extremely well. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my Subcommittee Chairman and colleague, Senator Gregg, in presenting to the Senate S. 2260, the Fiscal Year 1999 Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary and related agencies appropriations bill. Once again, I would like to commend Chairman Gregg for his outstanding efforts and bipartisan approach in bringing to the floor a bill that--given the number of priorities we have been asked to address within our limited 302(b) allocations--is good and balanced. In the Commerce, Justice, and State appropriations bill, we fund a wide variety of Federal programs. We fund the FBI, the DEA, the State Department and our embassies overseas, fisheries research, the National Weather Service and weather satellites, the Supreme Court, the Federal Communications Commission, and the list goes on and on. In total, this bill provides $33.2 billion in budget authority which is a little over a billion above last year's appropriated levels and a little over a billion below the President's request. The bill is right at our section 302(b) allocation. Chairman Gregg has touched on many of the funding specifics in this bill, so I will not repeat the details; however, I would like to point out to our colleagues some of the highlights of this bill: justice and law enforcement This bill provides appropriations totaling $17.8 billion for the Department of Justice. Within the Justice Department, the bill provides $2.95 billion for the FBI, $1.2 billion for the DEA, and $1.08 billion for the U.S. attorneys. Safe Schools Initiative--The bill also includes a new initiative, the Safe Schools Initiative for which Senator Gregg and I have provided $210 million in an effort to combat violence in our schools. This past spring it seemed like there wasn't a week that went by without the country having to suffer through the trauma of watching on the news another story of school shootings or school violence unfold. And the ages of the victims and the violent youth get younger and younger with each report. National statistics provided by the Justice Department indicate that between 1989 and 1995, there has been a 37 percent increase in the number of students age 12-19 reporting violent crimes at school. In 1995, there were 3 million students age 12-19 reporting that they knew a student who brought a gun to school, and over 1.2 million students reported seeing a student with a gun at school. The idea behind this initiative is to stop violence from spreading throughout our Nation's schools like so many drugs have. This initiative is aimed at protecting our children by putting more police in the school setting. The bill provides $175 million through the COPS Program, for local police departments and sheriff's offices to work with schools and other community-based organizations to develop programs to improve the safety of elementary and secondary school children and educators in and around our nation's schools. In Richland County, Columbia, I recently visited a school that employed a police officer as both a teacher and a mentor--serving as an authoritarian figure while at the same time establishing friendships with the kids. We need more programs like this--and this initiative is a step in that direction. This initiative is also aimed at creating prevention programs for our young people to stop this violence before it begins. The bill provides $25 million from the Juvenile Justice At-Risk Children Program for communities to implement approaches unique to their particular problems. For example: State centers may provide accountability and responsibility training, violence reduction training, juvenile mentoring, training for teachers to recognize troubled children, parent accountability and family strengthening education. In Richland County, Columbia, the same program that puts the policeman in the classroom has him out of the school fields after classes are over, teaching students about responsibility, cooperation, and positive interaction. Mr. President, three years ago, Richland County began a program of placing police officers in the school setting. This program, operating out of the Sheriff's office, places 20 certified police officers in high schools and middle schools throughout Richland County. The police officers are called ``School Resource Officers'' and basically serve as counselors, role models, and teachers. The officers assist teachers in the school by developing and teaching lesson plans that include: conflict resolution, law related education, psychology classes on drug abuse, and how to vocalize concerns rather than act out violence, etc. This program is a proven success. Officer David Soto of Richland County, just named School Resource Officer of the Year, made 126 arrests at the school in his first year, 56 is the second, and only 36 this past year. His presence is most certainly making a difference. And this new initiative will too. For grants, the bill provides $1.4 billion for the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Program, $282.7 million for Violence Against Women Program, $711 million for State prison grants, $552 million for the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant Program, $40 million for drug courts, and $284 million for juvenile justice programs.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I would question the ruling of the Chair. I was told I would have the 15 minutes. I don't know how the Chair can change that ruling. That was the understanding.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I am sorry I could not sneak in the majority leader's handwritten amendment. He can amend but we can't. Mr. TORRICELLI addressed the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, what really occurs is we are back now-- the leadership says after 10 years--really after 20 years. And much has occurred during that 20-year period. Practically all of the States have faced up--the State of Oklahoma, the State of South Carolina have all enacted product liability reform. It is not a particular problem. The small businesses, for example, are enjoying the best of investment, the best of new initiatives in small business. The small business folks, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, are really quoted as saying here that--and I quote an economist for the NFIB--``Far from worrying that the expansion has just about played itself out, more and more small-business owners feel that the best is yet to come.'' So the small businesses really are not having any problem. The idea of the litigation explosion has been answered, that you could not get insurance to get insurance. Foreign competition--the foreign companies are flowing into America without any problem of product liability. So now they try to say it is the small business thing. And, of course, the small businesses say the best is yet to come and they are having one of the finest clips that they have ever had. So they are not having problems. We searched Lexis-Nexis to find where these egregious verdicts are that this particular measure would take care of. They are nonexistent. So we looked at the bill itself. And you find out really what is a politically rigged instrument to take care of the political needs, not the business needs, of America, whereby you take a poll and kill all the lawyers. And we have been into that. The lawyers have become unpopular until everybody needs one. And the best of the best lawyers, who have been bringing these cases and succeeding and everything else, are to be sidelined in this drive by big business, all under the cover of small business. The bill itself, Mr. President, is an atrocity. I say that because now the plea, in the preamble of the Rockefeller-Gorton measure, is uniformity. And they start off immediately saying, with punitive damages, those States who regulate the punitive damages or control them are not applied to by this particular measure; but those States that have it, this bill would apply. So there is no uniformity on the very face or attempt to get uniformity itself. It is not just for small businesses. That is for all businesses, large and small, relative to the matter of uniformity and relative, of course, to the matter of small businesses itself. But we come, Mr. President, with the phone ringing all during the weekend and last night with respect to the sellers being exempted under this bill. They know what they are doing. There are dozens and dozens of cases up in New York to the effect that the sellers--only one--the hospital, where they have incurred AIDS, hemophiliacs have incurred AIDS, through tainted blood transfusions or otherwise. And obviously they cannot find out the individual, but you know it is applied by the hospital. You want to get the safety practice by the hospital or the seller. Now, this vitiates dozens and dozens of cases over the country, and particularly in the New York area. Again, with respect to asbestos cases, they know exactly what they are writing. They are saying, with respect to toxic materials, that, of course, this does not apply to toxic materials, that the asbestos is exempted from the 18-year statute imposed because the reference is to the exclusion of toxic harm. But, of course, asbestos is not toxic in the eyes of the Owens Corning counsel. He announced asbestos is not toxic, so they get rid of that group of cases. Otherwise, they really come with the statute of repose, which is the most egregious thing I have ever seen. Here we are trying, in product liability, to protect consumers and individuals, and they say now that they would exempt an injured person from a defective product; but the purchaser or owner of that particular product for whom the injured person is working, he or she or it can sue that manufacturer. So the rights of businesses are protected to the detriment of injured consumers in America. The unmitigated gall of including that particular provision in this bill, talking about product liability is just unheard of. But in any event, the lower-income worker, the matter of the punitive damages of $250,000 or less--you can well see that lower-income worker from McDonald's who is making $15,000 or $17,000 a year--double the economic injury; namely, double that salary loss of $34,000 for a Dalkon Shield user, that we have the Dow Chemical implant on the front page, the settlement, this morning, $3.2 billion. But under the Dalkon Shield here, that particular individual----

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Well----

Mr. HOLLINGS. I appreciate the distinguished Senator from New Jersey permitting me that opportunity. What really happened is I was told from 9:15 to 9:30. And I will try to wrap it up as quickly as I possibly can.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, will the distinguished Senator yield? I don't want to lose my time. We were allocated a few minutes before we vote on cloture. The Senator is into, I think, my segment of the 9:15- to-9:30 time. I don't want to disturb the distinguished Senator, but I don't want to lose my time. Is that the regular order?