Kay Hutchison

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Will the Senator yield?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Four minutes. I thank the Senator. I appreciate that. This is the Faircloth-Hutchison amendment and it is also the Faircloth-Hutchison bill that would eliminate the marriage penalty tax. All this amendment says is, it is a priority of Congress to eliminate the marriage penalty tax. We don't think Americans should have to choose between love and money. Yet 21 million American couples today have to make that exact choice, because they go into a higher tax bracket when they get married. Let me give an example. A rookie policemen in Houston, TX, makes $33,500. His wife is a schoolteacher in the Pasadena independent school district making $28,200 a year. When this young couple got married, they owed Uncle Sam $1,000 more a year. This is at a time when they would like to buy their first home, when they have to buy a second car. They are having to pay Uncle Sam $1,000 because they got married. That could be two house payments, three or four car payments, and we are taking it away from them by an unfair Tax Code. Our Tax Code does not meet the fairness test. I think this sense of the Senate says it best--that it will be the highest priority of Congress to correct this inequity in the law. I don't think Congress intended it, but that is the way it happened, and Congress does have the power to correct it. I hope we will take this opportunity to speak with a loud, firm, clear voice, that Americans should not have to pay more money because they get married than they would have to pay if they stay single. That is the issue, a very simple amendment. I hope we will have a unanimous vote when this amendment comes forward to show that we intend to do something about this if we possibly can within the constraints of the surplus, and that if we are not able to do something, it will be the highest priority when we do have that budget surplus that I have seen spent in so many ways already in the last year. We haven't seen that budget surplus, so I think spending it is a little premature. I do appreciate the fact that this committee set aside $10 billion for the first year for tax cuts, and I think if we can build on that, we can do some good for the hard-working American. We should continue to give money back to the people who earned it. You can always tell who cares about the people who earn the money, and that is by how they refer to tax dollars. We refer to tax dollars as belonging to the people who worked for them, and we are going to try to let people keep more of the money they earned. They deserve it. That is what setting this priority will do for 21 million American couples. I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, Medical schools and teaching hospitals, the training ground for our nations' healthcare personnel and the centers for world class cutting-edge medical innovation, are facing significant challenges as new efforts of cost containment force radical transformation in the healthcare market. There has been a steady decrease in the pharmaceutical R&D performed at medical schools and teaching hospitals. A study by three pharmaceuticals companies revealed that while pharmaceutical R&D is larger dollarwise than NIH, the university-based portion of clinical trials fell from 82% in 1989 to 68% in 1993. Given this fact, I am pleased to be an original co-sponsor of The Medical Innovation Tax Credit introduced by Senator D'Amato. This bill would give a tax credit of up to 20% on qualified research expenses to firms that conduct and expand their biopharmaceutical research activities at medical schools and teaching hospitals. In my home state of Texas, medical technology is poised to become a high-tech boom industry. Texas is currently home to more than 500 medical technology companies with $5 billion in annual sales, according to a new report released by the Austin-based Texas Healthcare and Bioscience Institute. Medical technology companies currently employ about 38,000 people, making it a medium-sized manufacturing industry comparable to the state's paper, lumber and aircraft industries. Texas' growing presence in medical technology is firmly rooted in the state's universities and health-related research institutes. Academic health centers such as The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Baylor College of Medicine and MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth position Texas as a world leader in biomedical research. By stimulating more private-sector research at these institutions, the Medical Innovation tax Credit will help ensure America's continued preeminence in bio pharmaceutical research; provide needed resources for medical schools and teaching hospitals; and encourage more clinical trials to be conducted in the United States. Mr. President, I look forward to working with Senator D'Amato and members of the Finance Committee to create an environment that will enable medical technology to grow and create jobs.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, the question is not whether we are winning the war on drugs. If that were the question, the answer would be no, and everybody who has spoken would be in agreement. The question is, What is our best strategy to win the war against drugs? I just submit to you that the answer is not making an enemy of Mexico. Mexico is not 2,000 miles from our border. Mexico is our border. Mexico is our second largest trading partner. We are not dealing with an easy issue. The sophistication of the drug dealers who are coming in from South America through Mexico into our country is phenomenal. We have found tunnels as deep as 60 feet below ground through solid rock across our border. We have found stashes of illegal drugs buried on the beaches. We have found high-performance boats and satellite communication. It is not like someone isn't trying. It is a very difficult problem. If we are going to win the war on drugs, or have any chance, the only way we can do it is through cooperation. And I don't think harsh rhetoric against our neighbor is the best way to do it. Do I think we are successful? No; we are not successful. We are not successful in controlling demand. And certainly Mexico has not been successful in controlling supply. Mr. President, it isn't the time to start hurling charges back and forth across the Senate Chamber to solve this problem. What we must do is try to sit down in cooperation. If President Zedillo was saying, ``Go fly a kite, we are not going to work with you,'' that would be one thing. He isn't. He is trying desperately. He doesn't want a criminal element in Mexico any more than we want a criminal element on the schoolgrounds of America. So I hope we will not do something intemperate, which is not what the U.S. Senate normally does. I hope we will not act in haste and do something that would hurt our cause more than it would help. Mr. President, I am urging my colleagues to vote against the Coverdell-Feinstein resolution because I think the better way is cooperation. I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of a member of our leadership team on our side, the Senator from Idaho. I think he is right on. I think the Senator from Kansas was right on. The Senator from Oklahoma was right on. I want to talk about what my amendment does. It expresses the sense of Congress that the President and Congress should create the conditions for withdrawal of U.S. ground combat forces from the NATO- led stabilization force in Bosnia. What we are trying to do is lay the groundwork for an honorable exit. You know, every time we come up to a deadline that the President himself has set, he says we cannot just leave, it would be irresponsible to leave, it would throw everything into chaos. That is absolutely true. It would be irresponsible to leave right now. But why is that? Why would it be irresponsible to leave right now? It would be irresponsible to leave right now because we have not laid the groundwork for an honorable exit and the President has gone on without the authorization of Congress to say this is going to be an unending mission. On November 27, 1995, the President said, ``First, the mission will be precisely defined with clear, realistic goals that can be achieved in a definite period of time. Our Joint Chiefs of Staff have concluded that the mission should and will take about a year.'' The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs strongly concurred with the President's assessment in their testimony before Congress that it would not get involved in such tasks as forcing the resettling of refugees or capturing war criminals and that we should have an end date. The Vice President of the United States also provided additional assurances, arguing that the deployment would not lead to mission creep and that within a year hostile forces would be separated, the borders would be marked, elections would be organized and held, and police forces would be established. As that deadline approached, the President extended the mission further by announcing a new deadline of June 1998, once again assuring the American people and Congress that the mission would be achievable. The mission creep, which concerned General Shalikashvili when he said that, without a fixed end date, mission creep would occur, has come to pass with our military now adding missions such as capturing indicted war criminals, seizing and controlling broadcast facilities. U.S. commanders of NATO have stated on several occasions, in accordance with the Dayton peace accords, the principal responsibility for apprehending war criminals would be the parties themselves. Mr. President, Secretaries of Defense and Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs have said throughout this 3-year period that setting a deadline is a good thing. But on December 19, 1997, President Clinton finally said he had misjudged the mission and he was committing the U.S. military to an open-ended mission which would only end when certain unnamed, concrete benchmarks had been accomplished. Since then, we have seen the benchmarks, but they are not very concrete. I introduced a resolution of disapproval for this mission to Bosnia in November 1995. It was narrowly defeated, by three votes. Many of my colleagues specifically said they voted against that resolution only after receiving solid assurances from the administration regarding the length and cost of the deployment. The mission is now in its third year, and the President is saying there is no end in sight. Mr. President, unless Congress exercises our constitutional responsibility, we are going to see an unending mission where there are no clear goals and there is no exit strategy. I am second to none in appreciating the great work that our military has done in Bosnia. I have been there five times. I have met with the troops. Their courage, their dedication, their professionalism have permitted a separation of the belligerent parties. There has been a significant reduction in the violence and suffering in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They have accomplished every mission they have been given, and they have done it in exemplary fashion. But, Mr. President, the administration keeps moving the goalposts. Now we have had forces in Bosnia for 3 years, we have spent $8 billion of our taxpayers' money, and now we see the President expanding the mission without coming to Congress first. My resolution today says that Congress is expressing its concern and opposition to the policy of the President that has resulted in this open-ended deployment without the prior authorization of Congress and urges the President to work with our European allies to set an orderly transition so that American troops can leave by January 1, 1999. Mr. President, I think my 5 minutes are up. I want to ask that others be allowed to speak. I hope Senator Byrd is going to be able to speak, and certainly Senator Feingold. I do have some closing remarks, but I would like to yield at this time. Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I yield up to 5 minutes to Senator Craig.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I anticipate for those who are trying to set a time that we will be ready at about maybe 10:30. I would say this will take 30 to 40 minutes. Let me just briefly state what the amendment does, and then I am going to yield to Senator Inhofe and then Senator Roberts and then Senator Craig for their remarks. Mr. President, this is an amendment that would express the sense of the Senate and the Congress to the President that we should create the conditions for withdrawal of U.S. ground troops from the NATO-led stabilization force in Bosnia. That is what the amendment does. We all know that the President on December 19 of last year declared that Bosnia would be an open-ended commitment for the United States. Congress was not in session. Congress was not consulted. There was no authorization, and the President has made this an open-ended mission. I am very concerned about the mission creep, and I am very concerned that the President has bypassed the Congress, and the Congress has constitutional responsibilities that cannot be bypassed by the President. That is why I am calling up this amendment today. I very much appreciate the remarks of the majority leader, Senator Lott, and the chairman, Senator Stevens, saying that this is going to be brought up, we are going to discuss it, we are going to tell the President that the Congress of the United States is not asleep, that we know our constitutional responsibilities and that we now have a commitment that this is going to be discussed and a policy will be set, and we will have an up-or-down vote in the defense appropriations bill later this year before the June 30 deadline that we now face and that we have now seen the President walk away from. So, Mr. President, we are going to exercise our responsibilities. We can do no less, and that is why we are discussing this today. I am very pleased to now ask Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma to take up to 5 minutes for his views on this issue. I intend to talk about what the amendment does as soon as those who have time commitments have been able to speak. I yield to Senator Inhofe.

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

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2083.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I appreciate very much the remarks of both the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Minnesota. I hope that we will be able to work something out that they would also be comfortable with, because we do want to exercise a responsible approach to our role in this whole Bosnia peace process. But I do think we also have a responsibility to have clear conditions and a clear exit strategy. So I hope we will be able to work together. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Sessions be added as an original cosponsor of my amendment.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I object on behalf of the chairman.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object on behalf of the chairman----

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I so appreciate the great leadership of the Senator from West Virginia. He understands better than any Member of this body the role of Congress in sending our troops into foreign conflicts or into harm's way anywhere overseas. He understands and he has spoken eloquently about not only our role but our responsibility. He well knows that the Founders who wrote the Constitution of the United States had a model. They had a model of a king. The king was able to declare war and implement it. The king held the purse strings and the power. Our Founders very clearly said, ``We are not going to do that.'' And in the Constitution they provided that there would be a dual power. The President can commit troops; only Congress can declare war. That is what our Constitution says, and if one side falls down on their responsibility, then we have an unlimited power in the President. That is not the American way; furthermore, it is a dangerous precedent. Congress must stand for its responsibility to make sure that if our troops are going into harm's way, if our taxpayers are going to spend $3 billion a year on a mission overseas, Congress must authorize it, and we do it with the power of the purse, which is the appropriations process. That is why we are standing here today, to serve notice to the President that we are not going to stand here for an unlimited commitment in Bosnia until we have a rationale for it, until the President comes to Congress and says, ``Here is why we are doing this, here is the United States security interest, here is our responsibility as a superpower to our allies in NATO, and here is our exit strategy.'' That is what the President must come to Congress to give--a responsible exit strategy. I think we could ask the President for that. We could ask the President to look again at the Dayton accord. Let's see how it goes and what can we do to have a better prospect for lasting peace, have a combined joint task force that would be led by Americans, but in which we would transition out at a specified time. Let's have an orderly transition and let our allies know up front what they can expect from us, so that we don't come on to a deadline and then have the President say to us, ``Oh, but it would be irresponsible to leave right now.'' It is irresponsible to leave right now because we haven't laid the groundwork for an honorable exit, and now is the time to do that. That is why we are talking about it today and why we will have, as part of our defense appropriations bill this year, a statement of purpose, which we hope the President will give us, that will include an honorable exit strategy. We can do it if we start now. We can work with the President toward this honorable exit, and we can go back to our constitutional responsibility to make sure that the President presents a mission before he sends our troops into harm's way, and that the President makes sure that he provides for the funding when it doesn't take from our readiness and the quality of life of the troops that we have all over the world for missions that only the United States can fulfill and for which we must remain ready. Mr. President, that is the responsibility of Congress. That is what my amendment would do today. Mr. President, I am going to withdraw this amendment because the chairman of the committee and the majority leader have given us a time certain when we can vote on a policy statement by this Congress which will have the force of law, and I hope the President will work with us so that we can agree on an honorable strategy that fulfills our commitment to our allies, that fulfills our responsibility to the world, that makes sure we have a United States security interest and provides for the payment for it, and last but certainly not least, an exit strategy that is honorable in line with the United States of America. Mr. President, I withdraw my amendment. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I would just like to point out I had told Senator Stevens that I thought we would be finished by 10:30. If the Senator from Wisconsin would look at the time--and also Senator Byrd is on the floor, and I would like him to have a chance to speak, if he seeks recognition. So with that in mind, I just wanted to set the parameters of our informal agreement. Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Let me make a parliamentary inquiry. Don't we have unanimous consent that there would be a 5-minute notification to every speaker?

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I am going to speak today on the very important responsibility that the U.S. Senate has in ratifying the addition to the NATO treaty. I am a strong believer in the Senate's constitutional obligation and responsibility to advise and consent on treaties. Generally speaking, I also believe we have an equally strong obligation and responsibility to oversee American foreign policy. In fact, I think too often in this body we simply acquiesce to the President--regardless of party--when it comes to these responsibilities. Members on both sides of the aisle too often interpret the authority the Constitution gives to the President to conduct foreign policy as somehow superior to the authority the same document gives to us to oversee, advise, and consent. Because the Framers of our Constitution were concerned about the unchecked power of the executive branch, they placed the responsibility to advise and consent on all treaties in the U.S. Senate. I have read the Federalist Papers. I have studied the Constitution and what went into making the Constitution of the United States. It was clear that the Framers of the Constitution were very concerned about the king they had just left. And they put power in the legislative branch of Government to make sure that a treaty that would obligate the United States would be well thought out and not something that would be easily given by our Chief Executive. Because of that responsibility, I find myself--and the Senate in general--facing a dilemma when it comes to the question of whether or not to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. On one side we have colleagues who strongly support the resolution of ratification. I respect their views, and I believe they are in the majority in this body. But throughout the course of the past few days of debate, I have heard some of those supporters speak out in an intemperate manner about the reservations other Members have raised. I have heard supporters say, in effect, that any reservation is a bad reservation, that the proposal to add these new members is moral and just and needs no further thought. We have been told that the United States owes these countries membership in NATO, and it has been implied that to question this assumption is to question the very merits of the cold war and NATO's role in winning that war. I was just a citizen during Desert Storm, and I watched intently the debate in the U.S. Senate on the resolution to approve sending our soldiers to Desert Storm. What struck me about that debate was that it was a wonderful debate, and it was what I thought the Senate would be and should be. It was Members speaking from the heart about what they believed their responsibilities were and how they would exercise those responsibilities in relation to what the President was asking them to do. I never heard one Member in that debate criticize another Member for having a different view. And I think that is what the Senate should be today as we debate NATO expansion. Many of us who have reservations about this proposal are strong supporters of NATO--I certainly am--and of American leadership within the alliance, because I think NATO is the best defense alliance that has ever been in the history of the world. I want to make sure that we preserve it. We understand, however, that there are many other places in the world where only the United States can and will lead. We cherish the role that NATO played in winning the cold war, and it is because of that commitment to support NATO that we take this responsibility to consider the ramifications of enlargement so seriously. Mr. President, many of us with reservations are not isolationists. Neither are we interventionists. We want to see the United States take its fair place in the world and its fair share of the responsibility, but we do not think it should be involved in every regional conflict, dissipating our strengths and endangering our role as a superpower capable of responding where no one else will. On the other side of the dilemma--in which many of us find ourselves, frankly--is the failure of the President of the United States to lead. While our colleagues who support NATO and support the enlargement vigorously oppose any reservations and conditions we may wish to debate, the fact is it was the President's responsibility as the executor of American foreign policy to negotiate these reservations and conditions. Instead, he all but promised the three countries under consideration--worthy countries--that their admission into the alliance was assured. He presented this to the Senate as a fait accompli, and now it is being suggested that any opposition or even reservation must be seen as isolationist or, as some colleagues in this body have suggested, as appeasement of the antidemocratic forces of the cold war. Mr. President, we have seen this approach to difficult foreign policy issues by the President before. In Bosnia, the President negotiated peace accords that required the involvement of tens of thousand of U.S. troops and then dared the Congress to oppose his decision to send those troops. More recently, in Iraq he sent tens of thousands of U.S. forces without having laid out any coherent mission. So what should the President have done? I think the responsibility of the President of the United States was to sit down with our NATO allies at the end of the cold war and say, ``We won the cold war. Now let's talk about what is the biggest threat to our collective body, and let's address that threat.'' What is the purpose of NATO? That should have been the first question. Given our victory in the cold war and the consolidation of freedom and democracy in the former Soviet bloc, what should we do that would enhance the security of Europe and look to the security threats to all of us in the future? What is the role of the United States in a revised strategic alliance? Does the United States need to be the glue that holds Europe together? Or is this the time to start encouraging our European allies to take more responsibility for their own continental security? I am not saying there is the answer before us, but I say this should be the question. The second thing the President should have done before we started talking about specific countries is establish the criteria for membership, having negotiated a new post-world-war strategic rationale, as he should have done. Then the President should have organized the allies to start thinking about the criteria for new members. It would have been better to set these qualifications before personalities were involved. No. 3, having adopted a new strategy on admission and identifying the country that could help NATO execute that strategy, the next step for the President would have been to establish the fair share of the United States of America. He would have made it clear to the allies exactly what it is the United States would bear, mindful ever of the reality that we already pay for 25 percent of NATO's common costs. He would have discussed with the allies the amounts the United States already spends disproportionately to maintain the remainder of power in Asia and in the Middle East. He would have recounted those early debates in the United States about NATO membership 50 years ago when the Senate and President Truman agreed that the United States commitment could not continue at such levels forever if we were to maintain the capability of responding elsewhere in the world. It was President Truman who was thinking ahead at the time with the Congress of the United States and realized that there were limitations which must be addressed for the long term. Fourth. With a new strategic rationale, a new mission, new members identified and reasonable cost sharing, the President should then have established some mechanism to ensure that NATO was not importing into the alliance the border, ethnic or religious disputes that have riven Europe for centuries. He would have pointed to the ongoing conflict in the Balkans, the longstanding conflict between Greece and Turkey and seen the opportunity to leverage our allies' desire for NATO enlargement into a formal process of dispute resolution that would be well understood and accepted by all members present and future. Such a process would prevent the United States and other NATO allies from having to honor mutual defense commitments required by the alliance in the event of border or other conflicts that are not worthy of the alliance's involvement. We all know that this has not happened. Instead, the President has presented to us a proposal to add new members to the alliance--nothing more, nothing less. We know nothing about what it will cost the United States. The administration's own estimates have varied wildly. They are somewhere between $400 million and $125 billion. We are not considering an updated, new strategic rationale for the NATO alliance. We are not considering standard criteria for membership for other countries to have a precedent. We are not considering how the expanded alliance will handle future conflicts among members or between members and nonmembers. To put it simply, we are today debating who and when, and we should be debating how and why. That is the crux of my problem with this process. So it is left to the Senate to answer these questions and provide this definition. I commend the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, my friend, the senior Senator from North Carolina. He tried to do this work in his committee. He has established some good conditions and reporting requirements that are in the proposal before the Senate today. But because the President put the cart before the horse, we are facing a terrible dilemma. We are trying to put the criteria in place on the Senate floor that should have been negotiated before invitations were issued. So where are we now? We are considering three wonderful countries, and we are talking about the criteria and the cost and the new mission in the context of whether we would take these wonderful countries into NATO. I do not like to be faced with a dilemma of voting against these countries, the hopes of which have been raised to such high expectations. I am affected by that dilemma because every one of these countries has wonderful people who are trying very hard for democracy and a free economic system. I want to support these countries. I want to support NATO enlargement. The key for me is whether we can set responsible conditions that should have been set before we ever got into invitations for membership. I hope I will be able to do it because I hope the Senate will act in a responsible manner and do what the President should have done, and that is provide for the mission of a post-cold-war NATO, look at the fair share that America should put into European security, establish a border resolution process for disputes, and make sure that the criteria are set so that we will not raise false hopes or no hopes from other countries that will be seeking membership. Let us talk about where we are now for our own security interests. Our defense resources are being stretched to the limit. We are leading all over the globe. We have tens of thousands of U.S. forces in Asia. We have thousands in Korea. We have thousands in Bosnia, with thousands more backing them up. I have already mentioned the Middle East where it seems only the United States is able to lead in that vital area. While these obligations have grown since the cold war, the forces we have to meet them have decreased. In fact, defense spending has declined by 40 percent in real terms since the peak in 1985. Our ability to modernize and prepare those forces for the 21st century threat has been mortgaged against today's more urgent, though ultimately less important, priorities. Regardless of the cost, our intention to add security obligations seems to contradict the reality of declining defense budgets and the general post-cold-war retrenchment that is taking place in all of the Western democracies. French President Jacques Chirac has already flatly declared that France does not intend to raise its contribution to NATO because of the cost of enlargement. It seems fitting that we are discussing these issues even as we are preparing to approve an additional $1/2 billion to the ongoing U.S. mission in Bosnia. It is a warning about cost estimates and reality. This administration estimated the cost of the operation in Bosnia at less than $2 billion. Recently, Secretary of Defense Cohen acknowledged that we are approaching $8 billion, and now our mission has no withdrawal date so there is no limit. Mr. President, we are drawing $8 billion out of a shrinking defense budget, and we are having trouble recruiting in the Army, and we are having trouble keeping our F-16's in parts. What are we thinking? Have we looked at the big picture here? So this is why I and other Members are going to try to impose cost containment on the expansion of NATO. It is long past time that we tried to establish somewhat more equity between the amount we spend and the amount our allies spend to defend their countries. Right now, the United States spends nearly 4 percent of our gross national product on defense. Our allies spend an average of 2.5 percent. In NATO, we bear about 25 percent of the common costs. Our next closest ally spends 18 percent. So we will be introducing several amendments to establish equity for our fair share of NATO. We want to pay our fair share, but I am not sure we are there yet. I am also concerned about the question of collective security. In an era when border and ethnic disputes may be on the rise, we obviously need to look at the example of the Balkans to see what could happen with the United States pledging, as we have in NATO, to consider an attack on an ally as an attack on the United States of America. I am aware that the President and the Secretary of State have assured us that the very promise of NATO enlargement has served to hasten resolution of many longstanding disputes. Certainly, it seems that Hungary has worked quite hard to reach an agreement with Romania regarding the ethnic minorities and borders, and there are other good examples. However, NATO is not a stakeholder in that resolution. Should the alliance expand to include Hungary as a member and should Hungary's agreement with Romania break down, for whatever reason, we would face a significant problem of alliance management as we work to resolve the dispute. Frankly, we have seen the burden imposed on the alliance by the ongoing dispute of Greece and Turkey. It makes little sense to pass up this opportunity to fix this problem. So I have an amendment that will require the U.S. representative at NATO to enter into discussions with our allies on establishing such a process. My proposal for doing so would be for the North Atlantic Council to establish a formal mechanism for resolving disputes. There are a variety of approaches to do this. I am just going to suggest one to be like that used in American labor disputes. If such a process were adopted by the North Atlantic Council, countries would have the opportunity to resolve the dispute among themselves in this way. If by a certain date the parties cannot resolve the dispute, the North Atlantic Council could implement the dispute resolution mechanism. Each disputant would select a NATO country to represent it. The two representative members would together select a third member. These three NATO members could then form a dispute resolution council to consider the matter and help negotiate a settlement. Once a settlement is established, the disputants would have a specific period to accept or reject it and conduct the bilateral diplomacy needed to ratify it according to each country's laws. If the dispute resolution council's negotiated settlement is rejected, the rejecting disputant would forfeit their article 5 collective security protection. I have discussed this process, or something similar to it, with the Foreign Ministers of the three prospective allies. Their responses were positive. Their only question was that they wanted to ensure they would not be treated differently from present members of the alliance. That is a fair statement, and I agree with them. It should apply to present and future members. This is an opportunity to help the situation we face now and for any future developments we may not see on the horizon. There are other ways that we can improve the resolution before us. NATO needs a new strategic rationale. We must ask the question, Why do we have this great alliance in the post-cold-war era? What should be the goal for future alliance in Europe? What is our collective strategic need? And what is our threat? How does expanding the alliance help us with other priorities such as deterring the spread and use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction? We are putting the cart before the horse by adding new members to the alliance without first answering the question as to what those members will be asked to do and what purpose the alliance serves for the future. We have a golden opportunity to recreate this remarkable alliance in ways that were not possible when it was forged in the crucible of the cold war. If we miss this opportunity, we could sow seeds for the eventual demise of the alliance if it loses its focus and becomes mired in all manner of regional disputes. We should not be debating who and when. We should be debating how and why. Mr. President, I take very seriously my responsibilities as a Member of the Senate to do what is best for America, what is best for our present troops that are protecting our security and the security of generations to come. How we approach our obligation to European security is a key part of the future security of the United States. We must establish our place in the world, our responsibilities in the world and make sure that we can cover those responsibilities with the strength and integrity that our word as the greatest superpower in the world should have. If we do this on a piecemeal basis, without laying the groundwork for the strength of this alliance, we could risk losing the alliance in the long term and we could risk losing the strength of America. I will not allow that to happen without at least speaking for what I think would maintain the place for America in the world, the strength of our country, and making sure that we have the ability to be the beacon for what is the best of people and that we have the strength to back it up. Our decision on the way we approach this alliance, this treaty, and the future of this alliance is key to the future of America. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, this morning the Senate will resume consideration of NATO expansion and its treaty, with amendments to the resolution of ratification being offered throughout the day. As previously stated, any Senators with amendments are encouraged to contact the managers of the treaty with their amendments. As earlier stated, it is hoped that the Senate will be able to make considerable progress on the treaty today. In addition, the Senate may consider any other legislative or executive business cleared for Senate action. As previously announced, no rollcall votes will occur during today's session. The next vote will occur at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, hopefully in relation to an amendment to the NATO treaty. Also, the second cloture vote in connection with the Coverdell A+ bill has been postponed, to occur on Tuesday, March 24, in an effort to work on an agreement towards orderly handling of that bill. Therefore, a second cloture vote will occur on the Coverdell A+ bill on Tuesday, if an agreement cannot be reached in the meantime.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Thank you, Mr. President. I am speaking now for the leader to let Members know what the script is today.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise today to say that we have taken, or are in the process of taking, one major step toward more tax relief for the hard-working American family. The budget resolution, which is being marked up as we speak right now, will allow for $30 billion in tax relief for the hard-working Americans. This $30 billion is not nearly enough. I hope that we will be able to expand the $30 billion. But, at least it recognizes that we need to keep on the same course that we started last year, and that is giving back to the American people more of the money they earn so they can decide how they want to spend it, rather than sending it to Washington and letting somebody here decide what is best for their families. That is what we are trying to do in this Congress. We are trying to give more of the money that people earn back to them. And $30 billion will not do it, but at least that is a beginning. It is a beginning for new tax cuts that we would propose over the next 5 years. I am very pleased to say that both Congressman Archer, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and Senator Roth, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, both of whom will be responsible for setting the priorities in tax cuts, have said their first priority is the marriage penalty tax. I am very pleased that Senator Faircloth and I are working on a bill that will provide that relief. There is a Faircloth-Hutchison bill that allows people to put their money together and split it in half. There is a Hutchison-Faircloth bill that will allow people to file as single or married, whichever is best for them. We want the hard-working young couple that gets married not to have to pay a penalty. Let me just give you an example that is a true one. A rookie policeman in the city of Houston, TX, makes around $30,000 a year. He marries a Pasadena School District schoolteacher who makes about $28,000 a year. When they get married, they will owe almost $1,000 in additional taxes. Mr. President, we think that is wrong. We do not think that Americans should have to choose between love and money. We do not think that young couples who are getting married, who want to have their first home, who want to buy that new car, should have to give more money to Uncle Sam because they decided to get married and start their family. That is not the American dream. So we are going to try to do something about it. I want to commend Senator Faircloth from North Carolina, because he took the early lead on this. He and I have been working together to eliminate the marriage penalty tax once and for all. I am very pleased that Senator Roth and Bill Archer, from Texas, who understands this issue--have said this is a first priority. If we can give this relief to that young couple that gets married, they will be able to perhaps put that money aside for a downpayment on their first home, or perhaps a downpayment on a new car. Rather than sending that money to Washington for the government to decide how they should spend it, we need to let couples keep that money they earn, which in many cases could equal a couple of car payments. So, $30 billion is not quite enough. The Joint Tax Committee says that it would be roughly $110 billion over 5 years that would be taken out of the Government coffers to repeal the marriage penalty. We are going to have to keep working to look for either a budget surplus or more money that could be set aside, or we may have to phase that in. But the bottom line is this is one step toward the right thing to do. It is one step more in the direction of giving more tax relief to that young couple that decides to get married, who are in entry-level positions, just starting their lives together, and we are going to make that happen. If we have to do it by phasing it in, we will do it; if we have to do it by finding more money, we will do it, because we believe it is the right thing to do. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor to the Senator from North Carolina, who is a cosponsor with me of both of the bills that would give tax relief to that young couple who should not have to choose between love and money.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to follow Senator Campbell in morning business.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, yesterday, I introduced, on behalf of our Nation's charitable organizations, the IRA Rollover to Charity Act. It will allow donors to roll assets in an IRA to a charity or a deferred charitable gift plan. The effect would be to unlock certain taxable income and allow individuals to choose to direct personal resources to charitable causes penalty-free. Under my proposal, a person who has reached age 59\1/2\ will be allowed to move assets penalty-free from an IRA directly to charity or into a qualifying deferred charitable gift plan--e.g. charitable remainder trust, pooled income funds and gift annuities. In the latter case the donor would be able to receive an income stream from the retirement plan assets that would be taxed according to normal rules for those giving methods. Upon the death of the individual or the individual's spouse, the remainder would be transferred to charity. Recent studies show that assets of qualified retirement plans comprise a substantial part of the net worth of many professionals. The IRA Rollover to Charity Act lifts current law disincentives to this important source of charitable giving. IRA assets represent untaxed income and cannot be withdrawn without being subject to taxation in full at the time of withdrawal. As a result, if an IRA is transferred into a charitable remainder trust, donors are required to recognize all such income. Therefore, absent the changes called for in the legislation, the donor will have taxable income in the year the gift is funded. Mr. President, this bill will unleash an enormous resource for charities servicing cultural, educational, environmental, health- related, religious and humanitarian purposes. If passed, the bill could be a huge asset for charitable organizations and I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this bill.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I thank the Senator.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment. I think Senator D'Amato, Senator Sarbanes, and all of those who worked so hard, including especially Senator Domenici, for helping us find this money in the budget, should be commended, because there is no question that highways are the lifeline of our country. But there is a point at which in you cannot build enough freeways in our biggest cities to get rid of the congestion. This is especially happening in some of the States that have new emerging big cities that have not kept up with their infrastructure demands. Some of those cities are in my State of Texas. We now have some of our biggest cities starting to try rail. And some are being successful. For instance, in Dallas, when people said, no one could get Dallasites out of their cars, nevertheless, people are leaving their cars to ride the new DART trains. It has been so successful--over an extended period of time--that they are going to try to get the extended DART lines out in a quicker timetable. So it is very important that we look at cities, not only like Dallas, but San Antonio, El Paso, Austin, and Fort Worth in my State. There are other States now that are looking at new transit systems--Colorado, Utah--Western States that have not had traffic problems before. The issue really is that in order to have a good infrastructure in our country, we must have more than one mode of transportation. Highways are the lifeline. But we also have airports and airplanes. We have buses. We have trains. Particularly in our urban areas, this is the only way we can address congestion. We cannot have a clean environment in a major city if we have cars stuck on freeways for hours at a time. We cannot have environmental purity throughout our States if we do not have some way to stop this congestion. The aesthetics. You cannot continue to build big spaghetti-bowl freeways and have any kind of aesthetics if you cannot get away from that. So I do think highways are our first line. And that is why the lion's share of the money is going to highways. But I think this amendment, that allows $5 billion additional for transit, half of which is earmarked for our new starts, recognizes that there are new emerging cities that are behind in their infrastructure improvements. This will give them the capability to do new starts in things like rail systems that will have, hopefully, the success of the Dallas DART train. Even Houston is beginning to look at this kind of rail system in a line from Katy to downtown where the freeway congestion is like a parking lot most of the day. These are things that I hope we can help to start. I hope that we can give incentives to some of our major big cities that have not had years and years and years of mass transit funding to be able to start thinking of new and innovative ways to have a cleaner environment, to stop the waste of money and time of congested traffic, and to have aesthetics that are also pleasing in a city. So these are the reasons that I am supporting this amendment. I think it is quite a good compromise. I think Senator D'Amato and Senator Domenici, along with Senator Sarbanes, and all of those who had the foresight to provide this extra money, are to be commended. And I do commend them. I hope my colleagues will recognize that this is an environmental vote, it is an anesthetic vote, it is a time-conserving vote, and it is a money-conserving vote. I hope that we will pass this and give our cities the chance. The locals match this Federal funding. It is not like it is all Federal funding. The local people should match. That is the right thing to do. But this does give them a very important start. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, just to sum up. I think the Hutchison- Grams-Ashcroft half and half bill is sound policy. It is a responsible approach. If we, indeed, have worked hard and cut the deficits and will go toward a balanced budget even sooner than we thought, I think we create a great dilemma of what to do with the surplus. Because we have worked so hard and become more efficient, I hope we will take this opportunity not to backslide, not to go into more spending programs that will put us in the same situation we were before, but instead take the opportunity to start paying down the $5 trillion debt. So this would be an opportunity to start paying down the debt and put in the pockets of hard-working Americans more of the money they earn. Thirty-eight percent of a person's income is too much to be doling out to Government programs that you may or may not think are a good priority. So we are going to try to lessen that at the same time that we begin to pay down the debt so our children and grandchildren will not have to take from us that kind of burden. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the managers of the bill for allowing us to take this time to introduce the bill. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank Senator Grams for taking a leadership role in this. He has been dedicated, since he was elected to the U.S. Senate, to sound fiscal policies. I think this bill is a sound approach to any surplus that we might have. I appreciate his cosponsorship. I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Ashcroft as a third original cosponsor of the bill.