Carl Levin

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. As the Senators from Michigan and South Dakota have noted, many soldiers returned from the gulf war with a variety of symptoms that have no discernible cause. Although environmental exposure in the gulf war cannot be ruled out as a cause, many believe that stress is a factor that may have contributed to these illnesses. I hope that efforts will be made to ensure that this bill provides adequate funding to ensure the continuation of this important research.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, we have before the Senate the fiscal year 2006 Department of Defense appropriations bill, H.R. 2863. This legislation makes a valuable contribution to our Nation's efforts to enhance the quality of life for our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines as well as their families, while continuing to transform our military forces to ensure that they are capable of meeting the threats to America's security now and in the future.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I rise to address the nomination of Stewart Baker to be Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. Last week, when Mr. Baker's nomination came before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, I voted no. That is my position today. Mr. Baker is an intelligent and accomplished man, but he does not have the experience necessary to fill this important post at this important time. Mr. Baker is a lawyer with experience in national security, trade, and technology. He has been widely published on topics such as cyber-security and civil liberties. I understand that he performed capably as the general counsel of the Silverman-Robb Commission on WMD intelligence capabilities. Mr. Baker might be well qualified for many positions at DHS, but he is not qualified to be Assistant Secretary for Policy. During his confirmation hearing before our committee, Mr. Stewart testified that he expected to be the ``central player'' at DHS on ``lessons learned'' from Hurricane Katrina, to develop emergency response policy, and to be a key player on immigration reform, among other matters. Yet when asked at his hearing if he had emergency response experience, he said ``no.'' He also admitted to having little expertise on immigration issues. While no one could be expected to be an expert on all of the issues addressed by DHS, it makes little sense to me to appoint a person with no emergency response experience to be the central player on lessons learned from Katrina, or to appoint a person with little immigration expertise to articulate Federal immigration policy, especially when, over the next few years, both issues--emergency response and immigration--will be so prominent at the Department. As we have learned from the Katrina disaster, we cannot afford to have inexperienced people in senior positions at DHS for on-the-job training.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, we owe it not only to the people who live and work in Washington, DC and the millions who visit, but to all Americans to do what we can to prevent gun violence in our nation's capital. It is important that we also respect the wishes of DC residents as they work to address the problems of gun violence in their own communities. Unfortunately, legislation introduced earlier this year would undermine both of these objectives. Among other things, the misnamed District of Columbia Personal Protection Act would repeal local laws in Washington, DC that ban the sale and possession of unregistered firearms, require firearm registration, impose common sense safe storage requirements, and ban semiautomatic weapons. Elected officials and community leaders throughout Washington, DC, have made clear their opposition to this bill and any other attempt to roll back Washington's local gun safety laws. In recent months, many groups around the country working to end gun violence have also expressed strong opposition to the proposed repeal of local gun safety laws in Washington, DC. In July, 44 national, state, and local organizations issued an open letter to Congress opposing the so called District of Columbia Personal Protection Act. Among the groups who signed the letter were the United States Conference of Mayors, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Black Police Association, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Their letter said: The citizens of the District of Columbia should have the power to decide by democratic means whether and how firearms are regulated in the city where they live. DC's current gun laws were passed almost 30 years ago by an elected city council, and these laws continue to enjoy broad support among business executives, law enforcement officials, health care professionals, civic organizations, and ordinary citizens. When legislation to repeal DC's gun laws was introduced last year, it generated widespread opposition--and attracted virtually no support--among DC residents. While this bill has not yet been considered in the Senate, the citizens of Washington, DC, continue to face attempts to roll back their local gun safety laws. During consideration of the fiscal year 2006 District of Columbia appropriations bill, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment strongly supported by the National Rifle Association which would prohibit funds in the bill from being used to enforce a local requirement that District residents keep their firearms unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock in their homes. Fortunately, the current Senate version of the bill does not include a similar provision and I am hopeful the House-passed language will not become law. The Senate should respect the will of the people of Washington, DC, with regard to local gun safety laws. I hope the Senate will focus its efforts on legislation that will help make communities across our Nation safer, not on steps which would make our Nation's Capital less safe. I ask unanimous consent that the above-mentioned letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, we have all gotten up on this floor and talked about the urgent necessity of helping the people of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. We have all been on this floor talking about the uniqueness of the disaster which is called Katrina. Every one of us goes back home. We received into our homes, our churches, our synagogues people who have been displaced by Katrina. Our people have responded magnificently to this disaster, to this catastrophe back home. Now the question is whether we in the Congress are going to be helpful to the victims in a way which we have been helpful in so many other disasters of a smaller magnitude by providing a loan so that operations can continue, or whether we are going to incorporate a provision in this loan which has never been incorporated before in any loan ever made to a community that obtained a loan under this law. We have never imposed this restriction that is in this bill on any community in this country. We have lent money to Ricksburg, ID; we have lent money to Johnstown, PA; we have lent money to Clifton, AZ; we have lent money to Albian Borough, PA; we have lent money to Vassar, MI, in my home State. There are occasions when those loans have been forgiven, and in the ones I just listed--and I want the majority leader to understand the depth of the feeling on this issue because it can happen to any of us-- the loans I just listed, including one to my home State, have been forgiven when they met the conditions of the Stafford Act for forgiving loans. But now we are telling the victims of the worst disaster we have had in this country that the Stafford Act provisions, which, under certain circumstances, could permit the forgiveness of a loan, will not be available to them. My amendment does not turn this loan into a grant. If my amendment is accepted, it would provide that the same terms and conditions under which this loan is made will be the terms and conditions that have been applied to other loans. To discriminate against these people who have been so victimized, to me, is unthinkable--that we would single them out for discriminatory language. I don't believe we can operate this way, and I don't believe the House would reject our language if my amendment is accepted. The Senator from Delaware and I went over to the House last night. We talked with the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and he indicated that the language which I am going to suggest would be acceptable to him. He didn't speak for the whole House, obviously, and if the Senator from Delaware chooses to comment on this, I think he will restate what I just stated as being accurate. My request, my plea, is that we adopt language which strikes the discriminatory provision which allows the Stafford Act forgiveness to be considered with these loans the way it has been considered with all other loans. That is my plea. And my plea is incorporated in an amendment. My amendment, which I ask the majority leader to consider, would strike the word ``not'' in the bill where it says: . . . that loans may not be canceled. Strike the word ``not'' and substitute the words ``may be canceled pursuant to the Stafford Act,'' and with an additional requirement, ``with the approval of the Congress.'' I suggest we add an additional safeguard, the safeguard of the Stafford Act, which has been applied to all other loans, but in addition to that, add a requirement that if there is forgiveness, it could only happen with the approval of the Congress. That is a double safeguard. That still would single them out as no others have been singled out, but at least it would keep the possibility explicit in the bill that under the circumstances that are provided for every other loan, that these loans might be forgiven should Congress so choose. I have been told we can always do that; we always have that power, and we do. It is implicit. But I think we should make it explicit to give people the assurance that in addition--it is bad enough to be victims of this hurricane; it is doubly bad to be victims of discriminatory language. And we are not going to walk down that road. We are going to hold our hand out to you and not insult or offend at the same time. I ask the leader whether he would amend his unanimous consent proposal to strike the word ``not'' on page 2, line 10, and substitute the words ``only with the approval of the Congress''?

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, first, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to explain an amendment which I am going to ask the majority leader to accept as part of this unanimous consent request, and that I be allowed to proceed for 4 minutes to explain what this amendment does.

Mr. LEVIN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, how much time is remaining on our side?

Mr. LEVIN. If the Senator is seeking recognition on his time, I have no objection.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, again, I thank my friend from Oklahoma. This is a prohibition on spending any additional money to operate any Web-based, end-to-end management system. That is what is in the language. It says you cannot spend any more money. We can't get the bugs out, which is what we should do if you can't spend any more money to improve this system. The Senator from Oklahoma goes back to an individual transaction system which does not provide the ability to determine whether travel is authorized, does not permit the people who are responsible to pay for the travel to know whether it is authorized and to pay for it by computer automatically. We have millions of transactions that are going to have to be paid for individually instead of part of the end-to-end system. So if the Senator had allowed for the correction of this system to work out the bugs, that would be one thing. But it does not. This says you cannot spend any more money on a Web-based system, and that is the mistake of this amendment. That is why it goes too far, although it is well intended.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma. I do so with some reluctance, actually, because I have great admiration for the Senator from Oklahoma and his efforts to curtail waste in the Government. I have joined him on a number of those efforts. As a matter of fact, I very much admire his efforts and the efforts of the subcommittee he chairs to go after waste. I think he is going too far in this particular case, and he is going after an effort to try to integrate the thousands--literally thousands--of financial management systems in the Department of Defense. We had a chart a few years back with a box for each financial management system in the Department of Defense, perhaps half the size of the curtain behind the Presiding Officer. There were thousands of boxes on that chart. We told the Department of Defense: You have to get your house in order; you have to get some financial management in the Department of Defense so that we can tell whether your expenditures--so that you can tell and then we, as oversight people, can tell--are those expenditures authorized; do your managers know how much you are spending on what; is the payment automatic when these expenditures are made? For instance, for travel, when a ticket is purchased, is that ticket paid for automatically the way it should be by a computer if it is authorized or is there going to have to be someone, as the status quo provides, cutting a check for the travel? That costs money. It may not appear in the cost of the ticket of the one transaction that may be the ``cheapest'' transaction, according to some system, but there is a cost to pay for that transaction. We want the payment to be automatic when the transaction is authorized. We want the ability of managers to know what is being spent, is the travel authorized, can you go back and track the travel automatically? Now we have thousands of systems out there, with thousands of managers, not integrated into a system, where the kind of management that is so essential in the Pentagon can occur. That is the problem with the amendment. It goes back to a focus on individual transactions to purchase tickets rather than to make a system to buy the travel part of an integrated management system. Look, we put a lot of pressure on the Pentagon. We have put a huge amount of pressure on it to come up with some financial management capability. They have been a failure at it. Now they are trying to do it--they have not succeeded, by the way. This system has plenty of bugs in it. As the Senator from Oklahoma properly points out, there are bugs in this system. But we don't kill the effort to try to get integrated financial management so there is some accountability for the funds that are spent by the Pentagon. We do not want to go back to ground zero. We want to try to make this work. And the problem with this amendment is that it goes too far because it says: None of the funds appropriated by this Act may be obligated or expended for further development, deployment, or operation of any web-based, end-to-end travel management system, or services under any contract for such travel services that provides for payment by the Department of Defense to the service provider-- Except for a fixed-fee transaction payment. That puts us back to millions of individual transactions which are unaccountable and for which we cannot have proper oversight. That is the problem. I admire the Senator's goal in trying to come up with a system which is better than the one we are now proceeding to acquire. We are going to work out the bugs, hopefully, in that system. But I disagree to going back to ground zero because we have to get some integrated financial management at the Pentagon. That is the purpose of this DTS system. It has not yet been achieved. I agree with the Senator from Oklahoma, it has not been achieved, but I don't think we ought to blow up the effort and go back to ground zero.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the only way we are going to be able to consider the Defense authorization bill, apparently, this year is if we offer this as an amendment and then amend it. You heard from the Senator from Alaska earlier today that this would open up the bill, the appropriations bill, to amendments, that they would be unlimited. We heard the opposite argument from our dear friend from West Virginia that this would restrict amendments on the authorization. The only way we are going to be able to have debate on amendments on the authorization bill is if we consider the authorization bill now. The leader, in his wisdom, pulled down the authorization bill when it was pending. As far as I know, there is not a decision on his part to bring that authorization bill back to the floor. How I dearly wish we could have a separate authorization bill. But we are not going to get it, except in this process. It is amendable. I assure my friend from West Virginia that the only way we are going to debate the authorization bill on the floor of the Senate and offer amendments is if we follow this process. It is amendable. It is debatable. It is free speech at its utmost. The alternative is the absence of debate on the authorization bill. We have been able to clear about 100 amendments, plus. We do that in the ordinary process. We do that every year on the authorization bill. We try to accommodate our colleagues. We have gone through that process. There are another dozen or so amendments which we would have to consider that we know about. Let us follow that process. There is so much in this bill that is needed. There is a health provision in this bill and a lot of other provisions.

Mr. LEVIN. I object.

Mr. LEVIN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I support the McCain amendment on interrogation standards because it protects our troops. Major General Fay, in his investigation into the role of military intelligence in the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, found that DoD's development of multiple policies on interrogation operations for use in different theaters or operations confused Army and civilian interrogators at Abu Ghraib.'' This confusion over what standards applied contributed to the horrific abuses of detainees. This confusion has put our troops at risk of being subjected to abusive treatment should they ever be captured. Senator McCain's amendment would protect our troops by establishing a single, uniform standard for interrogations. This is consistent with the recommendations of Major General Fay. Senator McCain's amendment also requires that detainees in U.S. custody shall not be subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment. This is consistent with the high standards to which our military is trained, with how we expect our soldiers to be treated if they fall into enemy custody, with our international obligations, and with our cherished values as Americans. I urge my colleagues to support the McCain amendment.

Mr. LEVIN. Can we have an idea as to how many are filed? Can we get that information?

Mr. LEVIN. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEVIN. If I can finish the sentence. I hope we can find a way consistent with the wonderful relationship which has existed between appropriators and authorizers in the defense area, that we can find a way to get this authorization bill before the Senate. We have tried to get it freestanding, without success. This is an opportunity to bring this bill to the Senate. As the Senator from Virginia said, we have over 100 items which have been cleared. That is not done for any sinister reason. That is done for a very simple way to expedite this bill so that the appropriators are not confronted with 100 amendments. The appropriators should not be confronted with an authorization bill where there are 150 amendments pending. The Senator from Virginia and this Senator have tried very hard to accommodate Senators on both sides of the aisle so we could help the appropriators, so we could represent to the appropriators that we would not be confronted with 100 or 150 amendments, but that a managers' package would be able to resolve most of those amendments. That has been done. It has been done in good faith. I hope that somehow or other the managers of this bill can find a way to help us bring this bill to the floor. There will not be more than perhaps a dozen amendments that would be offered to this bill, we think, because we believe we can work out most of the other amendments. That is my plea to the appropriators and to our good friends, the Senators from Alaska and Hawaii.

Mr. LEVIN. I join the Senator from Virginia in making a plea to our appropriators here, the managers on the bill, to understand the situation in which we find ourselves. That is, we had a bill in the Senate which the Republican leader decided for reasons which were very clear at the time that the bill would be pulled down. It was left in limbo. And the request is whether we will now have an opportunity to vote on a bill which does so much for the men and women in the military. We cannot think of any other way we can bring up the authorization except by offering it as an amendment to the appropriations bill, which is pending. It has met the threshold of germaneness, we are assured. The Senate will decide whether it is germane. But the Parliamentarian has advised the Senator from Virginia that it meets the threshold. So now with the provisions in this bill--the pay provisions, the special pay provisions, the bonuses, the death gratuity enhancement, the increased life insurance, the health care provisions, the TRICARE provisions--we could go on and on--there are critically important provisions in this bill to the men and women in the military. We have men and women in the military with their lives at risk in Iraq and Afghanistan and now we have an additional responsibility in the gulf. We have so much at stake. Usually appropriators and the authorizers have been able to work together. I hope that will continue now. Somehow or other I hope we will be able to figure out a way----

Mr. LEVIN. To try to clarify this, what the Senator from Virginia calls part 3 is a skinned-down version of 1 and 2, eliminating from 1 and 2 those provisions which might violate the understanding which existed that there would not be any provisions in this package that related to the energy piece and to the MILCON piece. The effort being made by the Senator from Virginia, as I understand it, is not to add something into this part in violation of an understanding, but is to make sure that parts 1 and 2--that this modification complies with the understanding that the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from Virginia had; is that correct?

Mr. LEVIN. Could the Presiding Officer tell us how many amendments have been filed and how many of them would fall as nongermane? Could the Chair just give us some idea, some estimate?

Mr. LEVIN. I assure the Senator from Alaska I will be brief. I simply join in the plea.

Mr. LEVIN. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President.