Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have a couple of comments to make about the comments that were made previously by the Senator from Texas. Before that I have a little bit of business to take care of of a different nature.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I want to repeat something in perhaps a little bit of a different way that I mentioned yesterday because we talked about a lot of things on this floor that are very significant, such as our health delivery system and such as the deficit. But our Nation's defense perhaps is the most significant subject that we could have to talk about. I was so dismayed and shocked yesterday when I read what the President was saying through Secretary of Defense William Perry that we now are going to leave our troops over in Bosnia for a period longer than the 12 months that they agreed to. I am on the Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee. I can tell you that at the time this happened, I could not believe that we were sending troops into a warring area with an exit strategy that was geared to time, 12 months, as opposed to events. I do not know of any time in history that this has been the case. So during the October 17 Senate Armed Services Committee meeting and several other meetings, and on the floor, we talked about the fact that we did not believe it was going to be a 12-month operation. I asked specifically Secretary Perry, as well as other people asking him in the same meeting--one was Senator Robb from Virginia and one was Senator Bingaman from New Mexico--``Are you absolutely committed to bringing the troops home in 12 months?'' The answer was always, ``Yes, we are committed.'' It was hard for me to believe that could be possible. So I went over to the northeast sector of Bosnia where we were planning at that time to send our troops. When I got there and went up to the northeast sector, finding out no other American had been up there, I found out from General Haukland, from Norway, who was in charge of the U.N. troops of that sector, that, in fact, it was laughable. I said, ``Are you aware that our troops are coming back in 12 months?'' He said, ``You mean in 12 years?'' That is when he drew this analogy, when he said putting the troops in there is like putting your hand in water, and you leave it there for 12 months and take it out and nothing has changed; it is still there. So we are making a longer term commitment than the President of the United States promised the American people. I can tell you right now, I stood right here on December 13 of last year when we had the resolution of disapproval that was authored by the junior Senator from Texas and myself, Senator Hutchison and myself. We lacked four votes of passing a resolution of disapproval. Mr. President, we would have had those four votes and many more if the American people had known, and if the Senators in this Chamber had known, that it was going to be a long-term proposition. Right now it does look like it is open-ended. We could talk about the cost of it, we could talk about the mission, but the point is, they told us something that they knew was not true on December 13, at the time they passed the program to send American troops over into an area we have no vital security interest in. I am not saying, ``I told you so.'' I am just saying, it was so obvious at the time and everyone is on record and the President is on record and John Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is on record and Secretary Perry is on record, all of them assuring it was going to be 12 months, and now we know it is not going to be 12 months. As I said yesterday, we have to serve notice on the administration that when they try to extend that time, we in this Chamber will do everything we can to support our troops who are over there, but they are going to have a fight in keeping our troops over there for an undetermined period of time.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, if I could have just a minute or so more, I want to mention the budget resolution that was passed yesterday. I did not like it. I did not say anything about it at the time. I have to say publicly, on the record, now, the only reason I did support it is I think that is the only way we could have anything at all for defense. There is a very distinguished House Member from Oklahoma, Congressman Watts. I think he feels the same way, that this is the only way we can do it. It is not a lean enough budget. It is not one that is as good as I would like. But, nonetheless, we went ahead and passed it. I think that brings up the other point, and that is our discussion last week on the balanced budget amendment. I do not know how people can have such a change of heart. I think there are six Democrat U.S. Senators who openly supported the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in 1994, and they voted for it. This is the resolution that they voted for in 1994, Senate Joint Resolution 41, and they turned right around and actively opposed the same exact language in a balanced budget amendment that failed to pass by a couple of votes last week. They tried to say it was different. They said this had the Nunn amendment that addressed judicial review. I would like to read something into the Record, just to make sure no one tries to use that to make people think this is not the same resolution that they voted for 2 years ago and then voted against this last week. This is right out of the Record, Senator Nunn speaking. He said: Mr. President, as I noted last Thursday, adoption of the balanced budget amendment to me is very important, but I also noted that without a limitation on judicial review, a limitation which was accepted during our 1994 debate, when offered by Senator Danforth of Missouri, we could radically alter the balance of powers among the three branches of government that is fundamental to our democracy. So those Senators that we actively debated with, those very honorable Senators from West Virginia and North Dakota and Kentucky--these are exactly the same thing. I think maybe it was a mistake that was made. A better way to approach this would be to come up and say, ``We did make a mistake, I did not know it was the same thing,'' and perhaps we would have a chance, still, of passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Because until we do this, until it is in the Constitution so we do not have any choice, we are going to continue to play this game where we are going to put all of our cuts in the outyears and we are not going to be able to pass a balanced budget. A balanced budget amendment is the only other way, and I hope those six Senators who voted for and supported a balanced budget amendment in 1994 would reconsider. With those votes, we would be able to pass one and send it to the States for three-fourths of the States to ratify. I have no doubt in my mind they would ratify it in a very short period of time. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I think that the senior Senator from Texas articulated the MSA environment that we are in right now with the health bill in a very accurate way. But I believe that he overlooked one thing. I agree with him that we have a system that has a built-in disincentive to save or to get services, medical services and health care services, that would be less expensive. I am not any different than anyone else. I suggest that you are probably the same way, Mr. President. Once you pay your deductible and you are in the course of a year, you are going to go out and get any kind of health services that you need if it does not cost you anything. So you have something built into the system. I cannot think of any other service or product in America where you would have a system built in that encourages you to pay more. I have heard some percentages of savings ranging between 40 and 60 percent if we could have MSA's. But the one thing the Senator from Texas did not mention was that it also provides another benefit to those individuals because, if someone is between jobs or if someone gets fired from a job, this offers portability. It is a fund that can be drawn upon, or, if there is a catastrophic illness, this can be used for that. It is just beyond me. I have not been able to think of one logical argument that the Senator from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, had against MSA's. I could see perhaps some doctors objecting to it because, obviously, people are going to be more cost conscious and are not going to be getting services they do not need. Ironically, though, I am proud of the medical community. I have yet to have one doctor tell me that he did not want to have MSA's. They are not opposing it even though they are the only group I could think of who possibly would lose some financial advantage by a system going in place. So I am hoping that we will be able to get this. I cannot believe that our entire health program is being held hostage just because of the medical savings account, something that benefits everyone--all Americans, young, old, rich, poor--everyone equally.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I know there is a lot of redundancy in what we all say around here, and certainly I have tried to make these points before, but we had quite a discussion this morning debating the budget resolution. During that time, I guess one of the most eloquent Senators in the history of this body, Senator Byrd from West Virginia, had some comments that I want to respond to. One was he commented on the mistake that he made when he voted for tax cuts back in the 1980's. I suggest that there is a basic difference in philosophy. I hope it came out. I think people have to weigh this on their own. I can remember, in 1992, a quote I attribute to Laura Tyson, the chief economic adviser to President Clinton, who said, ``There is no relationship between the level of taxation that a nation pays and its productivity.'' I think that is the crux of where we are now in our debate, whether it is about the balanced budget amendment or just a balanced budget. If you really believe that, then I can understand why people would not want to have tax cuts and why they would vote the way they do. But I have to remind the distinguished Senator that there is no period of time in history when we had greater tax cuts than there was in the 1980's. That is when we had our marginal rates coming down so dramatically. In 1980, the total revenues for Government were $517 billion. In 1990, it was $1.03 trillion. It doubled in that period of time. During that period of time, we had the greatest tax decreases of any 10-year period in America's history. The revenues from marginal rates went, in 1980, from $244 to $466 billion. That is where the basic difference of opinion is. People want to have more of their money to invest. For each 1 percent increase in the economy, it develops an additional $26 billion of new funds. The distinguished Senator from West Virginia said--and this is a quote, I wrote it down--he said, ``The people of America are going to wake up and say we are tired of cutting domestic discretionary programs.'' I think that is a basic difference of opinion among many of us here. I think perhaps the majority of us do not believe that. We think the people of America are not tired of cutting domestic programs. They are tired of tax increases. They are tired of deficit increases. They are tired of having their children and their grandchildren born into an environment where they immediately inherit a $19,000 debt, and if we do not do something to change it, they will end up having to pay 82 percent of their entire lifetime income just to support Government. Another thing that was said was said by the distinguished Senator from North Dakota, who again used the ``S'' word, I call it, star wars. I have to say, and I firmly believe it--I am on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee and I was on the same committees over in the House of Representatives--I believe there is a greater threat facing America today than there has been, certainly, since World War II, maybe since the Revolutionary War: the proliferation of nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, and the lack of defense against delivery of those weapons. As the distinguished Presiding Officer knows, because he is on the same committees I am, we are in an environment where we have had slashes in the military budget for 12 consecutive years. So now we are essentially where we were in buying power in 1980 when we could not afford spare parts. So I think it is doing a disservice to the American people to use such terms as star wars. When you realize it is not $70 or $80 or $90 billion, we are talking about an investment that the American people have made in national missile defense today of about $50 billion. Just take the Aegis ships, 22 Aegis ships, already paid for, already floating, that have launching capability, all we have to do is spend about $4 billion more to give them the capability of getting into the upper tier to give us the defense system that we have to have. We have rogue nations, as James Woolsey said, some 25 to 30 rogue nations, nations that have weapons of mass destruction, not the obvious ones of Russia and China and North Korea, but Iran, Iraq, and all the other nations, Syria, Libya. I think about the war that took place, the Persian Gulf war, where Saddam Hussein said, ``If we could have waited for 5 more years before we invaded Kuwait, we would have been able to have the missile capability of delivering a weapon of mass destruction at the United States of America.'' This is coming from a guy who murdered his own grandchildren, so we are not talking about normal people who think like we do. So I would say I wanted to respond to those two statements made by those two very distinguished Senators from West Virginia and from North Dakota.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I introduce legislation to reauthorize the National Environmental Education Act. I am joined by my colleagues, Senators Chafee, Lieberman, Faircloth, Kempthorne, Moynihan, Reid, and Lugar. And I am joined on the House side by my colleague, Congressman Scott Klug of Wisconsin, who is introducing an identical bill in the House today. This bill will reauthorize the educational efforts at the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation and the EPA's Office of Environmental Education. These programs support environmental education at the local level. They provide grant money and seed money to encourage local primary and secondary schools and universities to educate children on environment issues. With the importance of the environment and the continuing debate on how best to protect it, it is vital to educate our children so that they truly understand how the environment functions. Over the last few years environmental education has been criticized for being one-sided and heavy-handed. People have accused environmental advocates of trying to brainwash children and of pushing an environmental agenda that is not supported by the facts or by science. They also accuse the Federal Government of setting one curriculum standard and forcing all schools to subscribe to their views. This is not how these two environmental education programs have worked, and I have taken specific steps to ensure that they never work this way. The programs that this act reauthorizes have targeted the majority of their grants at the local level, allowing the teachers in our community schools to design their environmental programs to teach our children, and this is where the decisions should be made. In addition, the grants have not been used for advocacy or to lobby the Government, as other grant programs have been accused of doing. This legislation accomplishes two important functions. First, it cleans up the current law to make the programs run more efficiently. And second, it places two very important safeguards in the program to ensure its integrity in the future. I have placed in this bill language to ensure that the EPA programs are balanced and scientifically sound. It is important that environmental education is presented in an unbiased and balanced manner. The personal values and prejudices of the educators should not be instilled in our children. Instead we must teach them to think for themselves after they have been presented with all of the facts and information. Environmental ideas must be grounded in sound science and not emotional bias. While these programs have not been guilty of this in the past, this is an important safeguard to protect the future of environmental education. Second, I have included language which prohibits any of the funds to be used for lobbying efforts. While these programs have not used the grant process to lobby the Government, there are other programs which have been accused of this and this language will ensure that this program never becomes a vehicle for the executive branch to lobby Congress. This bill also makes a number of housekeeping changes to the programs which are supported by both the EPA and the Education Foundation which will both streamline and programs and make them more efficient. The grants that have been awarded under this program have gone to a number of local groups. In Oklahoma alone such organizations as the Stillwater 4-H Foundation; Roosevelt Elementary School in Norman, OK; Oklahoma State University; the Kaw Nation of Oklahoma; and the Osage County Oklahoma Conservation District have received grants for environmental education under these programs. This is an important piece of legislation, and I hope both the Senate and the House can act quickly to reauthorize these programs.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I introduce legislation to reauthorize the National Environmental Education Act. I am joined by my colleagues, Senators Chafee, Lieberman, Faircloth, Kempthorne, Moynihan, Reid, and Lugar. And I am joined on the House side by my colleague, Congressman Scott Klug of Wisconsin, who is introducing an identical bill in the House today. This bill will reauthorize the educational efforts at the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation and the EPA's Office of Environmental Education. These programs support environmental education at the local level. They provide grant money and seed money to encourage local primary and secondary schools and universities to educate children on environment issues. With the importance of the environment and the continuing debate on how best to protect it, it is vital to educate our children so that they truly understand how the environment functions. Over the last few years environmental education has been criticized for being one-sided and heavy-handed. People have accused environmental advocates of trying to brainwash children and of pushing an environmental agenda that is not supported by the facts or by science. They also accuse the Federal Government of setting one curriculum standard and forcing all schools to subscribe to their views. This is not how these two environmental education programs have worked, and I have taken specific steps to ensure that they never work this way. The programs that this act reauthorizes have targeted the majority of their grants at the local level, allowing the teachers in our community schools to design their environmental programs to teach our children, and this is where the decisions should be made. In addition, the grants have not been used for advocacy or to lobby the Government, as other grant programs have been accused of doing. This legislation accomplishes two important functions. First, it cleans up the current law to make the programs run more efficiently. And second, it places two very important safeguards in the program to ensure its integrity in the future. I have placed in this bill language to ensure that the EPA programs are balanced and scientifically sound. It is important that environmental education is presented in an unbiased and balanced manner. The personal values and prejudices of the educators should not be instilled in our children. Instead we must teach them to think for themselves after they have been presented with all of the facts and information. Environmental ideas must be grounded in sound science and not emotional bias. While these programs have not been guilty of this in the past, this is an important safeguard to protect the future of environmental education. Second, I have included language which prohibits any of the funds to be used for lobbying efforts. While these programs have not used the grant process to lobby the Government, there are other programs which have been accused of this and this language will ensure that this program never becomes a vehicle for the executive branch to lobby Congress. This bill also makes a number of housekeeping changes to the programs which are supported by both the EPA and the Education Foundation which will both streamline and programs and make them more efficient. The grants that have been awarded under this program have gone to a number of local groups. In Oklahoma alone such organizations as the Stillwater 4-H Foundation; Roosevelt Elementary School in Norman, OK; Oklahoma State University; the Kaw Nation of Oklahoma; and the Osage County Oklahoma Conservation District have received grants for environmental education under these programs. This is an important piece of legislation, and I hope both the Senate and the House can act quickly to reauthorize these programs.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have been very distressed, as many people have, over the recent developments in Bosnia, statements that have been made, attributed to a number of our high-ranking officials, including Secretary of Defense William Perry. Many of us were quite outspoken in our opposition to sending troops into Bosnia back when the decision was made by the President and his administration. I can remember having the resolution of disapproval that I had with Senator Hutchison. We only lost that by four votes. One of the selling points on the floor was this is going to be a mission that will be completed, successfully completed, and the troops will be out in a period of 12 months. None of us believed that at that time. I can remember so well on October 17 of 1995, the Senator from New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, asked the question of Secretary Perry: ``What do we contemplate as far as a remaining presence once the one-year period is up, or once the IFOR troop development is complete? Would we expect to see some residual NATO force remain?'' Secretary Perry responded: ``I expect that the security-- that the function of external forces maintaining security will be accomplished by then . . . The IFOR, the NATO force which is responsible, an external force for maintaining security--we expect that function to be completed in one year and the forces to be completely removed.'' Later in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said: ``The implementation force will complete its mission in a period not to exceed 12 months. We believe this will be more than adequate to accomplish the needed tasks that will allow the peace to be self- sustaining. As we did in Haiti, we anticipate the IFOR will go in heavy and, if successful''--a key phrase--``would begin drawing down significantly far in advance of the final exit date,'' that exit date being 12 months. We keep hearing how successful the operation is, so we assume, if successful, that condition has been met. He was talking about drawing down the forces far in advance of the 12-month period that he committed to. I suggest the commitment was much stronger. I asked in that committee meeting: ``Are you saying to this committee on the record that 12 months is it, and after 12 months we are out of there?'' I remember that distinctly because I asked the question of General Shalikashvili: ``Can you tell me any time in military history when you had an exit strategy that is geared to time as opposed to events.'' That was October 17. General Shalikashvili, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also responded at that time to a question asked by Senator Robb of Virginia. The response was: ``From a military perspective,'' this is General Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top guy, ``From a military perspective, as I evaluated the tasks we wished this force to accomplish, it was my judgment that in fact can be done in 12 months or less.'' Right after that, Mr. President, I wanted to see for myself, and I spent some time and went over to Bosnia, went alone, and talked to a number of the commanders. Not a single U.S. NATO or U.N. commander thought the peace in Bosnia could be achieved in anything close to 12 months. I thought I would talk to the people in the northeast sector, which is that sector assigned for our troops, our thousands of troops that would go over there and accomplish some mission that is still not real clear to me. I could not get there, only to find out that no American had been up there in the northeast sector. I remember so well a very attractive British general by the name of Rupert Smith, who we will be hearing a lot from. He is quite a figure. He took pity on me after the second or third day and agreed to help me get up there. So we did, in a driving snowstorm, go up to the northeast sector, where we talked to those individuals up there with the United Nations. The commander at that time, from Norway, was General Haukland, who said at that time when I said, ``Can you assure us that our participation up in this northeast sector can be done and the mission accomplished and we can be out of here in 12 months,'' and they all started laughing. General Haukland used the analogy, he said, ``Senator, it is like putting your hand in water and then leaving it there 12 months, and you take it out of there and everything is back the way it was, and you cannot tell your hand was there in the first place.'' He started talking about the responsibilities we would have to keep peace up there. At one time, when I said, ``12 months,'' he said, ``You mean 12 years.'' ``No, we mean 12 months.'' It was a very distressing experience. When we came back, we had another Senate Armed Services Committee, and we repeated the questions to Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and General John Shalikashvili. Again, they were emphatic that it would be done. Of course, that is when we had the lengthy debate on the resolution. I will read to you out of the Congressional Record from December 13 from this floor, right here, quoting myself: But the administration cannot have it both ways. President Clinton cannot say that our vital interests are threatened in Bosnia and at the same time pledge that we will be out of Bosnia in a year. If two vital interests--European security and NATO alliance--are truly threatened in Bosnia, how can there be a one-year statute of limitations on our response? Since when are American vital interests only worth one year's commitment? . . . If there are vital interests at stake, the administration should be honest and tell the American people that we are committed to Bosnia for a longer period of time. In the last few days, Tuesday's Washington Post: `` * * * A consensus is growing among senior NATO officials that a substantial NATO-led follow-on force will likely patrol Yugoslavia well into 1997, according to alliance officials in and Western diplomats.'' Strong indications are that United States troops will stay in Bosnia for much longer than 1 year. Finally, yesterday, the other shoe dropped, and Secretary Perry said, ``NATO will not want simply to give up on the investment that we have made in Bosnia.'' This is a kind of a creep that we get into. We make a commitment, and while mission creep is a very realistic thing, this is commitment creep. We are now saying we will be there for a longer period of time. I wanted to be proven wrong, but I was right when I said on this floor on December 13, 1995, and I have to repeat it now because this will become a major issue: The simple truth, Mr. President, is that the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina is about to become America's pet country. The United States of America is going to own Bosnia and all of her problems just as soon as the 1st armored division sets up in Tuzla. Does anyone really believe that we will leave Bosnia in a year if the threat to her stability remains? Does anyone really believe after arming, training, and equipping the Bosnian army for a year that we will stand by and watch if our pet army is on the verge of defeat? Of course not; if Bosnia is as important as the administration says it is, we will stay in Bosnia as long as we have to . . . I say to my colleagues-- December 13. We are on the verge of what may be a very long commitment. I am not saying that to say we were prophetic at that time, Mr. President. I am only saying that we made that statement. I firmly believe there are more than four Senators who would have voted for the resolution of disapproval if the administration had been honest with us and admitted to us that our commitment was going to be longer than 1 year. They were not honest with us. They were not honest with America. That was just a commitment that happens to coincide with the reelection in November of this current year. I think it is something we have to address. We will have to make a decision. Are we going to stay in until some tragedy takes place? I remember so well--I am not being partisan, I am not just being a Republican on this floor--it was George Bush in December 1992 that sent the first American troops over to another commitment that we had, with the idea they would be coming back in 90 days, and of course Bill Clinton took office in January 1993, and the troops stayed over in Somalia. It was not until 18 of our troops were brutally murdered and their corpses dragged through the streets of Mogadishu that the American people finally put enough pressure on the administration to bring our troops home. I see the same type of analogy right here, that we could leave them there indefinitely. I can tell you right now if they do not stay with that 1-year commitment, it will not be just another few days, another week or another month; it will be exactly as every U.N. commander, U.N. and NATO force that we dealt with said it was going to be and predicted, as we told the American people. It is going to be a much longer period of time. This is a very serious thing. We are going to have American troops at risk. It is far more serious than the other one; that is, while we are deploying troops all around the world on missions that are either peacemaking or peacekeeping--and the world is expecting us to do this now all the way from the Near East to the Far East to the Middle East--now they are expecting us to come in on the Golan and come into the Gaza on peacemaking and peacekeeping missions at the same time we are sending our American troops. We are depleting our very scarce resources. As I said earlier on the floor today, we have been cutting our military budgets each year for 12 consecutive years, and we are in the same position we were back in 1980. So it exacerbates that problem to think we are going to be leaving troops over there longer than this period of time. I am deeply distressed about developments in the Middle East, and about the things we are hearing out of Iraq. I remember so well when the Saddam Hussein--the guy who murders his own grandchildren--made a statement 5 years ago that if we had waited 5 years to invade Kuwait he would have had the capability of reaching the United States with a missile with a weapon of mass destruction. This is a very serious thing. So we are making it even worse by leaving troops in place where the President committed to the American people the troops would be out in a period of 12 months. I never believed they would. Most of the people here never believed they would. I suggested there are many people who would have voted in favor of a resolution of disapproval to keep our troops out of it. Now we are in the position where I would lead the charge to support our troops over there, but we have to go back to the original mission, keep our commitment to the American people, and keep our commitment to this Congress and to the Senate Armed Services Committee. So I serve notice to the administration at this time that it is not going to be easy for them to leave our troops over there past the time that they promised and committed to us the troops would be back. I yield the floor. Mr. GRASSLEY addressed the Chair.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, while I was presiding, I listened to the accolades and the very warm remarks that have been aimed toward our leader, Bob Dole, and so richly deserved by Senator Dole. I could think of only two characteristics that have not been brought up yet. They came from two experiences that I had. One was back when I was a very fresh, new, freshman Senator. I happened to have been supporting Phil Gramm for President of the United States, who was a primary opponent of Bob Dole's, only to find that he and I had a trip to take together from Washington out to Independence, KS, since we had been active in getting a very significant product liability bill passed that put America back into making airplanes again. I got to thinking of traveling all the way with a guy when I was actually opposing him. I was very uncomfortable about it. I can tell you during the entire trip, you would have thought I was his, Bob Dole's, chairman. I have never seen a person so absolute in his forgiveness and understanding. Second, a couple of years ago I can remember when Bob Dole was coming in to do a fundraiser for me at 7:30 in the morning in Tulsa, OK. By coincidence, it happened to be the morning after the night they considered President Clinton's soft-on-crime bill. Bob Dole was really wrapped up in that. That was one of the disappointments he had. He lost it by one vote. He got on a plane, it had to be sometime after midnight, came all the way to Oklahoma in a driving rainstorm, and was there at 7:30 in the morning. His staff was exhausted. He looked like he was just showing up for his first prom. I have never seen a guy with energy like he has. The two characteristics, boundless energy and compassionate forgiveness, are two characteristics that will serve America in a grander way. What a guy.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I ask the distinguished and honorable Senator from Kentucky if he did, in fact, vote for Senate Joint Resolution 41 in 1994?

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. INHOFE. You suggested I impugned your integrity.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. INHOFE. Reserving the right to object, I want the Record to be clear that these are the----

Mr. INHOFE. I have the two resolutions right here. They are exactly the same. I ask the Senator to show me or read to me where they are different.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. It was a statement made. Put it this way: Is it not true in 1994 you voted for and supported and totally supported the balanced budget amendment that was then before this body? Is that not the same exact balanced budget amendment you voted against yesterday?

Mr. INHOFE. One quick question. Earlier today I quoted you. Did I inaccurately quote you in any way?

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I rise today to express regret over what happened yesterday. Yesterday was a very significant day in America. We had an opportunity yesterday to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Of course, it did not work out. We fell short by a couple votes. It reminds me a little bit of last year when we fell short by one vote--one vote--one vote away from forcing fiscal discipline into two bodies that have expressed and shown and demonstrated no fiscal discipline over the past 40 years. This is not anything that is new. I can remember, Mr. President, back in the middle 1970's when there was an ad by, I think, the National Taxpayers Union. They had a nationwide ad. They were trying to express to the people of America how serious the debt was, and tried to give us an understanding as to what these dollars really mean. Because once you start getting past $1 million or $1 billion or $1 trillion, nobody really has any concept of what it is. Our debt right now, when you say $5 trillion, does not mean an awful lot. So back in the middle 1970's I can remember this very effective ad that they had. What they did at that time--the Empire State Building was a tall building--they took $100 bills, and they stacked them up until they finally reached the height of the Empire State Building. They said, ``That is $400 billion. That is our national debt.'' At that time we looked at it and said, ``You know, we can't go much beyond this. You start talking about the interest that is going to be necessary to pay on the national debt. Can we really afford it?'' Because when you make interest payments, you have to use revenue dollars that would otherwise go to defending our Nation or to paying for education and the environment and the other needs, structural needs that this Nation has in such abundance. So at that time, back in the 1970's, I remember so well someone who was in this body for quite a lengthy period of time. His name was Carl Curtis. He was a U.S. Senator from Nebraska. He was just a delightful gentleman. He came up with an idea. He came out to Oklahoma. I was in the Oklahoma State Senate at the time. He said, ``You know, we can't seem to get across to the people in the U.S. Senate how much the people at home want us to exercise fiscal discipline, how much they want us to balance the budget and quit borrowing more and more from future generations.'' So to demonstrate this--this was his idea, not mine; Carl Curtis--he said, ``We're going to go out and get three-fourths of the States to pass resolutions that would preratify an amendment to the Constitution.'' As we all know, we have to get two-thirds of the vote of the House and the Senate; then it has to be ratified by three- fourths of the States. ``So if we can show that there are three-fourths of the States who want to have a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, then that will give us the influence that we need to get it passed in the U.S. Senate.'' It sounded like a good idea. So he came out to Oklahoma. I remember so well we went around to--I remember one time at the Kay County Fair we made a presentation of this. These are just good, earthly people who are paying taxes and working for a living. And they all thought it was a great idea. So I introduced in the State Senate of Oklahoma back in 1974 a resolution to preratify the constitutional amendment. I remember that Anthony Kerrigan at that time--I think he is retired now, still resides in Washington--he wrote in a syndicated column that was all over the Nation, and the name of it was, ``A Voice in the Wilderness.'' He said, ``Way out in Oklahoma is a State senator who has successfully passed the first resolution to preratify an amendment to the Constitution to balance the budget.'' That was over 20 years ago. This is not anything that is new. In fact, it goes back even further than that. Thomas Jefferson was the one who came back from France and said if he had been here during that constructive process of the Constitution, he would have had something that would prohibit us from borrowing money, except in times of war. This is something that is not anything new. We heard in the discussion, in the debate in the last few days, over and over again by those who are fighting a balanced budget--not balanced budget amendment, but balanced budget. It is interesting that you never hear anyone on the stump campaigning for office, ``We want to spend more money. We do not want a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We want to fiscally discipline ourselves. And it is our job to do it.'' Yet, when they come here there is so much influence here not to balance the budget, not to have fiscal discipline, they do not do it. We have heard these people over and over again on the floor saying, ``We do not need a constitutional amendment because we were elected to do that.'' I say we have demonstrated clearly in both bodies of this Congress that we are incapable of doing it without something to force us to do what we ought to do voluntarily. We have demonstrated that so clearly that this is the only vehicle out there that I can think of that would do it. The argument has been made on this floor that the Governors and the States are lowering taxes and are boasting about the fact they are lowering taxes, and if we pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, we will have to have dramatic, draconian increases in State taxes to pay for the services that otherwise they would get from the Federal Government. That just is not true. There is a mentality, I know, in the White House that the only way to raise revenue is to raise taxes. I can remember a very articulate President of the United States who was a Democrat, John Kennedy, who said back in his administration, ``We have to raise more revenue; to do this, we are going to lower taxes to stimulate the economy.'' A lot of people do not realize, for each 1 percent of economic growth, that produces new revenues of $26 billion. If he can do this, this will allow him to raise more revenues. That is exactly what happened in the Kennedy administration. They reduced taxes and that increased revenue. Along in 1980 when President Reagan was elected, President Reagan said, ``We have to have more revenues and we have to use those revenues to reduce the deficit and reduce the debt and ultimately do something about debt, so we are going to cut taxes, marginal rates,'' and we went through, in the 1980's, the largest tax cuts in any 10-year-period in the history of America. The results are there. The total revenues that were generated to operate Government in 1980 were $517 billion. Then in 1990, the total revenues were $1.30 trillion--they doubled, exactly--between 1980 and 1990. That was a period of time when we had the most dramatic cuts in our marginal rates. As far as the income tax is concerned, the total receipts in 1980 were $244 billion, and in 1990 $466 billion, almost doubling, at a time we reduced our rates. You might say, ``Well, wait a minute. We hear on the floor that during the Reagan years we had such dramatic increases in our deficit.'' Yes, we did, but that was not as a result of the fact that we were reducing taxes; that was the increase in revenues, the problem that we were spending more money here in the Senate and in the House. So while revenues went up, our spending went up exceeding that increase, and the deficits continue. Now, in hindsight, I say maybe the President at that time, President Reagan, should have vetoed a lot of those bills he did not veto. That is what the current President is getting by with now in vetoing all the things he ran on when he ran for President of the United States and what most of the Republicans who took over control of the U.S. Senate ran on in 1994. Speaking of President Reagan, I remember one of the greatest speeches of all time was called ``A Rendezvous With Destiny,'' way back in the middle 1960's. The speech that Ronald Reagan made, I remember a sentence he said. ``There is nothing closer to immortality on the face of this Earth than a Government agency once formed.'' That certainly has proven to be true. Once you form an agency to respond to a problem that is there, and the problem goes away, then the agency continues, and their political muscle expands. So there are problems that are out there that can be dealt with, but they cannot be dealt with unless we force ourselves to do something to discipline ourselves in this manner. There is one other problem that I think adds to this. A study was made--and I cannot document it, but I do have the document back in my office--over 98 percent of the people who come to visit their Senator or their House of Representatives Member are coming because they want to increase funding for some program. It might be for a problem. They might be a contractor; it might be a program that they feel in their hearts needs to be expanded. What do we hear, if we are here in Washington? We hear from the people who come in and say, ``We want to spend more money.'' That is one of the reasons I have been an advocate for term limitation for so many years. I made it a practice to commute. I still live back in my State of Oklahoma and I come up here during the time we work and we vote and we have committee meetings, and I go back so I am there virtually every weekend. When you do this, you talk to the people who are back home, that I sometimes get chastised for referring to as ``real people,'' implying there are not real people here. Really, those who come in and want something out of Government generally are people who are here for some particular cause--their cause or for a personal gain. The fact remains that over 98 percent of the people that come in are here for increased funding. That is something I meant to mention when they use the arguments that we will have to have draconian cuts in Government if we have a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. That is not true. A study made by the Heritage Foundation--and I got it renewed only this week to see, is it true today--if we were to take all Government programs and not cut one Government program, entitlement programs and all the rest of them, and increase these programs with growth caps of 1\1/2\ percent a year, we could balance the budget in 7 years and have the tax cuts that the Republicans want, the $500 tax credit per child, the tax decreases in capital gains in order to stimulate the economy. We could make the trust funds well again; we could secure Social Security, Medicare--all of that, without cutting one program. Realistically, that will not happen. We understand that, Mr. President, because when it gets down to it, there are programs that need to be cut and some that need to be increased by more than 1\1/2\ percent. If we had a resolution, if it could be structured, I have thought we might be smarter just to let every program grow by that percentage. When I have townhall meetings--and I have more than most because I am back in my State more than most Members are--and you have people coming in who are senior citizens, and you tell them, ``What if we were to put a cap on your Social Security of 1\1/2\ percent, if you knew that all other Government had to do the same thing?'' They all nod with approval and say ``yes.'' Their concern is they would have to take the hit and the veterans would not, or somebody else would not. I think all the American people want is to be treated equally. I guess the point I am trying to make here is, you do not have to have draconian cuts to have a balanced budget. Now, I do not want to use up too much time because there are others who want to speak during this period of time reserved by the distinguished Senator from Georgia, Senator Coverdell, but I do want to address something. I was quite disturbed yesterday when the very distinguished senior Senator from Kentucky came to the floor. I was chastised for some of the comments that I made. One of the statements I made that offended him was that he implied I was saying that people say one thing at home and say something else in Washington. Let me read exactly what I said so that there can be no misunderstanding. I said this after I had read some quotes of various Senators who were strong supporters of a balanced budget amendment in 1994 and turned around and spoke against it and voted against it this time. What I said was: ``So I think it is something that we need to look at, and I'm hoping that those individuals, as the distinguished Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley said, a lot of the Senators who are voting for this because they want to go the party line instead of voting with the people at home, better really stop and think about it before noon tomorrow,'' the day before yesterday, ``because the people at home are not going to forget,'' and I know that is true. People at home are not going to forget because the vast majority of the Democrats and the Republicans in America--approximately 80 percent--want a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. So I did go back and read some quotes from individuals. One was from the Senator from North Dakota, Senator Dorgan, who said, ``This constitutional amendment, no matter what one thinks of it, will add the pressure that we reconcile what we spend with what we raise.'' This was March 1, 1994. This time he was one of the most articulate Senators that was opposing the balanced budget amendment. Then the distinguished Senator from South Carolina, Senator Hollings, said, ``So let us debate, pass, and ratify the balanced budget amendment by writing a balanced budget amendment into the basic law of the land. We will compel Washington to do its job.'' I agree. That is what he said on March 1, 1994. This time he was one of the leaders in opposition to the balanced budget amendment. Then, of course, the one I have a great deal of respect for, the distinguished minority leader, Senator Daschle from South Dakota, back in February 1994, said, ``Too much is at stake for us to settle for this tax. A balanced budget amendment will provide the fiscal discipline our Nation must have in order to meet the needs of the present generation without bankrupting those of the future.'' That was Senator Daschle in 1994. Of course, he led the opposition this time. So I hope that the distinguished Senator from Kentucky will understand the context in which I was saying this. I do not understand how somebody could be such a strong supporter in 1994 and then oppose the same thing in 1996. I have the two resolutions here. They are worded exactly the same-- not approximately the same, but exactly the same. Back in 1994 this was Senate Joint Resolution 41. All of these Senators were talking about how great this was and how we had to do it--I was applauding them for their courage--only to turn around and oppose this in 1996. What happened between 1994 and 1996? Nothing, except the debt has grown to over $5 trillion. So when the Senator from Kentucky came in--I had not quoted him, but I will now. He said this back on March 1, 1994. He said, ``I support the efforts of my friend and colleague from Illinois''--talking about Senator Simon, who is a very courageous guy, and one I complimented probably more than I have ever complimented anyone else on the floor yesterday. Senator Ford said, ``I support the efforts of my friend and colleague from Illinois to take on this persistent fiscal dishonesty. I hear so much about if 40-some-odd Governors can operate a balanced budget, why can't the Federal Government? I operated under it''--this is Senator Ford, who was a Governor of Kentucky--``and it worked. I think implementation of this amendment will work. I think we can make it work. I do not understand why it takes a brain surgeon to understand how you operate a budget the way the States do. This is an opportunity to pass a balanced budget amendment that will work and will give us a financially sound future, not only for ourselves but for our children and our grandchildren.'' I was criticized yesterday because I said those individuals who opposed the balanced budget amendment--I am talking about those who voted against the balanced budget amendment--are people who are liberal in their philosophy, and there is nothing wrong with that. That is the ``L'' word, and there is nothing wrong with it. Either you are liberal or conservative. It just means how much involvement we want the Federal Government to have in our lives. If we want more Government involvement, we have to raise taxes and pay more. Fortunately, for the people of America, they can get out of this environment that we are in right now and not just listen to what we say, but they can look and see how we perform. We are rated in every area by different rating organizations. If people are concerned about how we are on social issues, family issues, they can look at the Christian Coalition rating and see how we have voted. If they want to know how we are on regulations and business issues, they can look at the National Federation of Independent Business. They have a rating system, and they will tell you. You do not have to listen to us. They will tell you who is for less Government involvement in our lives. We are the most overregulated nation in the world. That is why we are not globally competitive. Look and see how we are rated. If you want to know who the conservatives are, do not listen to us. I have yet to hear anybody go out on a stump and say, ``Vote for me, I want to spend more money.'' They do not say that. So do not listen to us. Look and see how we are rated. The National Taxpayers Union uses ratings of A, B, C, D, or F. Those are the five ratings. Of those individuals--the 33 Democrats who voted last year against the balanced budget amendment--I am sure the same thing is true this year, but we have not had enough time to get the ratings--they were rated either a ``D'' or an ``F'' by the National Taxpayers Union. So they are liberals. I do not know why they are ashamed of being a liberal. I have yet to hear a conservative being embarrassed about being a conservative. But many liberals try to say, ``I am moderate,'' or ``conservative.'' Here is the last thing I was personally chastised for. Here is a photo of two little children, which I did not use last night. I used a photo of my newest grandson. These are my two other grandchildren. They are the same age and are children of two different sons. This is Maggie Inhofe, and this is Glade Inhofe. What I was getting across yesterday was that the balanced budget issue, and the deficits in this country, is not a fiscal issue; it is a moral issue. These are the faces of innocence, who did not do anything wrong. This is little Jase, who was born January 9. The day he was born, at the moment he took his first breath, he inherited a $19,000 personal debt as his share of the national debt. He did not do anything wrong. These kids were born 3 years ago. So I think we need to look at the whole subject of a balanced budget amendment as the only way we can discipline ourselves. We demonstrated that very clearly. Let us not think about what it is going to do to the people up here today. It is not going to affect us. It is the next generation that is going to have to pay for it. I suggest to you, Mr. President, that we did a great disservice yesterday to all of Americans, to future generations, when we passed up an opportunity to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We are going to do it; it is just a matter of time. We may have to do it in the next legislature, or when there is another President in the White House. But we are going to do it, so that these guys right here are not going to have to pay for our extravagances. It is a moral issue. I yield the floor. Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I am going to wind up here. I will only mention the last thing that was stated by the Senator from North Dakota in response to something the distinguish Senator from Texas, Senator Hutchison, said this morning. When she started in business, she made it grow, and it was difficult. He said, ``I bet you started with debt.'' ``Yes.'' The difference is this: The business Senator Hutchison is talking about and the businesses that are started with debt have to pay that debt back. We do not, and that is the difference. Our debt just accumulates, and that is why we are looking at $5 trillion. The difference is, they pay it back, and we do not. Getting to the comments made by the distinguished senior Senator from Kentucky--and I think so much of him; I have held him in very high regard--we just disagree philosophically. When he talked about the deficit reduction programs of 1990 and 1993, yes, one of those was a Republican President. In 1990, it was George Bush. I disagreed with him at that time, and I even went on ``Nightline'' and talked about how we should not have caved in to the Democrat-controlled Congress. As a result of that one cave-in by President Bush, he lost the election. The next one is 1993. In 1993--he can call it a deficit reduction plan--it was the largest single tax increase in the history of public finance in America or anyplace in the world, and that is not a quote from conservative Republican Jim Inhofe, that is a quote from Senator Dan Moynihan, who was then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. So you look at these things in a different light. I would just say to those who are holding on to the past and those who do want to have business as usual and want to go back to and continue the social revolution of the middle 1960's, those days are behind us. The last thing I will say, I hope that the Senator from Kentucky did not mean it when he implied that I impugned his integrity. All I was doing was quoting him, and regardless of how we interpret the quotes, I do not think he wanted me to quote his entire statement that was page after page. But I will say this: These are the two resolutions we talked about. The Senator from North Dakota said that does not include the amendment by Senator Nunn. I think you are talking about the judicial review amendment. I suggest to you that, verbatim, that same amendment was offered and passed by Senator Danforth in 1994. So we have identical resolutions, and regardless of whether the distinguished Senator from Kentucky was quoted or misquoted, he still supported this back then, as the Senator from North Dakota did, and opposed it yesterday. I yield the floor. Mr. SIMPSON addressed the Chair.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I will make this very brief, because several questions have come up concerning Social Security. I think it is a very critical thing. I happen to have been privileged to be presiding yesterday when the distinguished Senator from Wyoming, the senior Senator, Senator Simpson, who is the chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee and, I think we all agree, is the authority in this body on Social Security--he is here and will be responding to these questions in a much more informed and eloquent way than I would be able to respond to them. But I do have to respond to a few things that have been said by both my good friend, the Senator from North Dakota, and the Senator from Kentucky. First of all, it was implied--I am sure it was not intentional--that I was only concerned about Republican grandchildren. Obviously, we are all concerned about our own. I opened my remarks yesterday on the floor making a reference to Senator Simon, who had talked about Nicholas Simon, his grandchild. I said I know he is just as emotionally involved with his children and grandchildren as I am, and Democrats are as much as Republicans. I hope that is understood. But, when the distinguished Senator from North Dakota used the example of government control, with the rats eating the bread laced with arsenic, certainly if I had been there at the time I would have strongly supported an effort to stop these types of abuses and these types of unsanitary practices from taking place. But there is a fine line here. You come to a point where, if you see that point, you have too much government control. I think that is one of the basic philosophical differences, and it is an honest difference, between Democrats and Republicans. I suggest to you, if you talk to Tim Carter of Skiatook, OK, who was called a couple of days before Christmas a few years ago and put out of business by the EPA, what he had done wrong was he moved his business from one area of Skiatook, OK, a very small city, to another area, and did not inform the EPA of this move. I said, ``They do not know that you moved?'' He said, ``Well, yes, I informed the district office, but they apparently did not inform the national office.'' For that reason they put him out of business and they took his number away from him. Then, when I finally got that corrected, he called me again and he said, ``Now I have another problem. I have an inventory of 50,000 bottles.'' He had some kind of operation, horse spray or something, that they manufactured. Apparently there is a market for it. He said, ``The EPA says I cannot use those bottles now, because during that brief time I was out of business they gave my number to somebody else.'' This is the type of thing. Or Jim Dunn, who owned a third generation family lumber company in Tulsa, OK, who called me up and said, ``The EPA put me out of business.'' This was a couple years ago. I was in the other body at the time. I said, ``What did you do wrong?'' He said he did not do anything wrong. He said, ``I have been selling used crankcase oil to the same contractor for a couple years and they traced some of that to the Double Eagle Superfund Site and they say I am in violation. They are going to impose $25,000 a day fines on me.'' This is a company that had its net increase the year before of something like $50,000. He was out of business. The heavy hand of overregulation. We corrected that situation. But if he had not called me, he probably would be out of business today. That contractor he sold his oil to 10 years ago was licensed by the Federal Government, by the State of Oklahoma, by Tulsa County. He did nothing illegal. Yet Government was regulating him out of business. This is what I am talking about. Have we gone beyond that point, to where we are the most overregulated society or country, to the point where we are not globally competitive? I say, yes, we are overregulated.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from North Dakota talked about star wars. He and I have had this discussion. There is, I guess, nothing to be gained other than to update it and put it in the context of today's debate, but it always offends me when we talk about star wars. Star wars is a phrase that was coined to make it look like this is something fictitious, something imaginary, when in fact there is a very real threat that is facing the United States of America, that of missile attack. We know the Russians have their SS-25. They have the SS-18, which is a MIRV'd missile with a number of warheads capability, some 10 warheads. We know the Chinese have a missile that can reach us. We know the North Koreans are in the final stages of developing the Taepo Dong missile that originally was going to reach the United States by 2002. Now we feel, our intelligence community feels, it will be the year 1999. We were on schedule from 1983 to protect ourselves against a missile attack, so that we would have protection, or a defense system in place, by the year 1999. We are not talking about star wars. We are not talking about even space-based launchers. We are talking about technology that is alive today. We have bought and paid for and have almost $50 billion invested in 22 Aegis ships that are floating now, paid for. They have launching capability. They can knock down missiles coming in. But they cannot knock down missiles coming in, ICBM's, that would come in from above the atmosphere. So we are trying merely to take that $50 billion that has already been spent, spend $4 billion more so they can reach above the atmosphere and knock down a missile that might be coming from North Korea. We would have some 30 minutes' time between the time a missile is launched and our technology tells us when that was launched. I am an aviator. I flew an airplane around the world a couple of years ago. I used the global positioning system, that is satellites, for navigation all the way around. We can know what is happening around the world today. The technology is there. So, if a missile is launched in North Korea, we know it is coming, we have 30 minutes to do something about it, but you cannot hit it because it is above the upper tier. All we need to do is spend about 10 percent more of the money that we have spent to be able to give the capability to knock it down. That is not star wars. I do not know where they come up with this $70 billion or $60 billion. The CBO came out and said it would cost about $31 billion to $60 billion more, over the next 14 years, if we installed and made a reality all of the proposed missile defense systems. We are not suggesting that. No one is. The other day on this floor I said it is like going into a used car lot and saying I want to buy all the cars. You do not need to do that. You get the one that works, the one that fits your needs, and that takes care of it. That is the way we are in our missile defense system. I hate to use that as an example. I hate to be redundant by coming back over and over again, talking about it, but it has to be talked about. When the distinguished Senator from North Dakota said we are talking about a budget next week about spending $11 billion more than the Pentagon wants--yes, I will be supporting that. Those of us who are conservatives over here, we want cuts in programs. We have to defend America. I was so proud of the chiefs of the four services testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, who came in and--this is the first time, I think, in the history of this country this has happened--they defied their own President and said we have to have $20 billion more in order to defend America. This is what they said. They are not the top. There is the Secretary of Defense, appointed by the President; not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili, who is also appointed. These are the ones in charge of the four services, and it took a lot of courage. We do need it and it took courage. ``Where is the money going to come from for all these,'' the Senator said. If he had been listening, I outlined a program we have been talking about for several years now. The Heritage Foundation and others came up with it. If we take all our Government programs and not eliminate one program, but only expand each one by 1.5 percent, we would be able to balance the budget and have the tax cuts that we have talked about that Americans desperately need. That is not realistically what is going to happen, but we could do it, and I would live with that in a heartbeat, a 1.5 percent increase in the defense budget. We have cut our defense budget 11 consecutive years. We are down now below the level where we were in 1980 when we could not afford spare parts. So that is significant.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I think he yielded the floor. I ask unanimous consent I be allowed to speak as in morning business.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I understand all time has expired on both sides at this time.