Carl Levin

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Feingold, I offer an amendment which requires the Under Secretary of Defense to provide a report on certain matters pertaining to the V-22 Osprey Program before the aircraft is returned to flying status, and I send the amendment to the desk.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I understand the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico has now been cleared on both sides. We welcome that news. He has been working hard on this amendment for a number of years to provide some equity to some people who have had severe losses. I have always commended him on his efforts and supported him. I think we have worked it out within the budget constraints of the bill. Perhaps the Senator from Oklahoma would agree that his amendment will be temporarily laid aside so the Senator from New Mexico could offer an amendment.

Mr. LEVIN. We have no objection to this amendment.

Mr. LEVIN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 1686

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of Senator Kennedy. I ask the pending amendment be laid aside.

Mr. LEVIN. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, this amendment would allow the Navy to renew long-term leases to oceanographic research vessels without recompeting the award of those leases. I believe this amendment has been cleared by the other side.

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

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

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the Congressional Budget Office is required to prepare a cost estimate for spending legislation reported by committees. The cost estimate for the bill reported by the committee, S. 1416, was not finished at the time the report on this bill was filed. The CBO cost estimate is now available. I ask unanimous consent that the Congressional Budget Office cost estimate for the Defense authorization bill reported by our Committee on Armed Services be printed in the Record. Because the four sections removed from S. 1416 should not affect the funding levels in the bill, this CBO cost estimate will also apply to S. 1438 which we are presently considering.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I believe there is an order sequenced for two amendments. Am I correct? Amendment No. 1594

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

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, we have heard basically three arguments. One is that this is the wrong time to do this, following the events of September 11. It seems to me, the compelling answers are set forth in the letters from Secretary Rumsfeld and GEN Shelton on that issue. Secretary Rumsfeld: ``the imperative to convert excess capacity into war-fighting ability is enhanced, not diminished,'' because of those events because we need to maximize our resources--in his words--``the finite use of resources.'' And the authority to realign and close bases and facilities will be a critical element to ensure the right mix of bases and forces within our warfighting strategy. We are asking our troops to take risks. It seems to me, at a minimum, we ought to be willing now to set aside our own back-home concerns and do what is essential in order to have the efficient use of resources. We cannot afford infrastructure which is excess at any time but surely when we are asking our troops to go into combat. There is no justification for us to continue to say we are going to preserve excess infrastructure. This begins in 2003. I emphasize this because some or our colleagues have said, if you don't know the force structure, how can you know the base structure? We don't know what our force structure is going to be. That is why in the bill itself we require that before 2003, before this base structure plan is put into place--and here the words of the bill are being quoted: The Secretary shall carry out a comprehensive review of the military installations of the Department of Defense . . . based on the force-structure plan submitted under subsection (a)2. . . . There must be a force structure plan submitted under this law prior to the base restructuring proposal. Finally, in terms of savings, we heard that at times you cannot prove the savings. We have shown, it seems to me, through GAO report after GAO report, that--and now I am going to quote from one of the more recent ones: Our work has consistently affirmed that the net savings for four rounds of base closure and realignment are substantial. That is the GAO talking. And we have had a report from the Department of Defense, a very specific report, showing the savings in a chart which lays them out line by line. I ask unanimous consent that the Department of Defense chart showing specifically where the $6 billion annual recurring savings comes from be printed in the Record. That is a significant amount of money. We cannot afford to waste this money. We cannot afford to ask our forces to go into combat if we ourselves will not do what is necessary to give them the resources. This is excess baggage. They should not be going into combat with the belief that we are not willing to strip the excess, at least starting in the year 2003, at least starting after there is a new force structure that has been decided upon, if they are going to be taking the risks we are going to be asking them to take.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I oppose the amendment that strikes section 821 of our bill. Section 821 is a good government provision. It simply says the private sector should be allowed to compete when it comes to selling items to the Department of Defense and that Federal Prison Industries should not establish a monopoly and say the Department must buy an item made in the prison, even though the private sector might be able to make it more cheaply. I think everybody wants prisoners to work. But I hope everyone also wants the private sector to be able to survive and compete and be able to offer products to its own Government. I think if anything would shock taxpayers, it would be that the private sector--private businesses, private industry--is precluded from bidding on items the Department of Defense wants to buy. I think it also would come as a shock that the private sector can produce something more cheaply than can a prison at times. The Senator from Texas said about 20 percent of the time the prices are lower in the private sector, according to a study, than they are from a prison. That is not bad savings--20 percent of the time. Of course we want prisoners to work. The Senator from Kansas just said we should not stop the prisons from competing for purchases by the Department of Defense. We are not stopping the prisons from competing. What we are trying to do in this legislation is allow the private sector to compete, instead of saying Prison Industries can establish a ``must buy from us'' policy. The Senator from Texas also said this is the only provision in the bill which talks about competition. There are probably dozens of provisions in this bill that promote competition explicitly. This is but one of them. The Senator from Texas said: Why don't we, then, say competition will be everywhere; eliminate Davis-Bacon--which of course he favors anyway. If he wants to offer an amendment to eliminate Davis- Bacon, that is his right. But that is not in this bill. What is in this bill is the opportunity for private businesses to bid. If they are underbid by prisons, that is the way it is. Prisons have tremendous economic advantages when it comes to bidding. Obviously, 25 cents or 50 cents or a dollar an hour is an incredible advantage to prisons when it comes to bidding. But even with that advantage, the private sector can produce things more cheaply and at better quality at times. At those times, how in Heaven's name can we tell a Government agency that they must buy from a prison if they can buy more cheaply from the private sector? How in the name of Heaven can we tell someone in a private business, or an employee in a private business, that he cannot bid on something that his Government is buying? That is all this language does. It doesn't end the Prison Industries program, or come close. There are all kinds of things prisoners can and should be doing, by the way, including focusing on things the Government buys that it currently imports. There are all kinds of opportunities. We talk to Federal Prison Industries about this year after year. They always say they are going to do something about it, and they have not. The Senator from Texas says let's do a study. We just had a study, in 1999, April. This is what the joint study of the Department of Defense and the Federal Prison Industries did. This is the result of that study: On price, 54 percent of Department of Defense electronics buyers, 70 percent of Department of Defense clothing and textile buyers, 46 percent of Department of Defense furniture buyers, 53 percent of Department of Defense office case goods buyers, and 57 percent of Department of Defense systems furniture buyers rated the Federal Prison Industries prices as average, fair, or poor. There is a lot of room in there to save money for the Department of Defense. On delivery, the figures are approximately the same: Roughly 50, 60 percent say: average, fair, or poor. On quality, about 50 percent say average, fair, or poor. Those are averages. These are buyers at the Department of Defense. So we ought to be very clear what this provision does and does not do. It allows, for the first time in a long time, a private person who is working hard on the outside of prison to make a product and be able to bid when his Government is buying that product and not be stopped from bidding by an establishment of a monopoly by Federal Prison Industries. There are letters which we received, to which I think my friend from Virginia will also refer. I will place one of the letters in the Record. It comes from the AFL-CIO, urging us to oppose any effort to weaken or eliminate the Federal Prison Industries reforms contained in the bill. It says at the end that the AFL-CIO supports prison work programs and recognizes that they make prisons safer for correctional staff. They say: However, we do not believe that the Federal Prison Industries should enjoy a monopoly that unilaterally deprives other firms and workers of job opportunities. Section 821 represents a more balanced policy and we urge you to support it. Finally, my friend from Texas talks about letting prisons sell in the private sector. We have laws going back 50 years which say that they can't. The reason we say that is because it is obviously totally unfair to say that 25 cents or 50 cents an hour should be able to compete commercially against people who provide products when they are paying a decent wage. We prohibit imports from China that are made with prison labor. Yet the suggestion of the Senator from Texas is, hey, let's just, across the board, allow prisoners to make anything that goes into the commercial world at the scale that they are paid. In that case, he said he would favor the language and broaden it to include anything. He says that is real competition. That sure is. That is totally unfair competition. You can't compete. If an employer pays a decent wage to somebody, you can't possibly compete with somebody who is paying 25 cents or 50 cents an hour. Yet that is the approach which the Senator from Texas really favors and says so openly on this floor. That is not an approach which too many of us--I hope--would favor. I surely don't favor that. To hold that up as being what is desirable, and short of that we should not allow a private business in this country to offer to supply its own Government a product because Federal Prison Industries has said you may not bid because we have a monopoly on this item, it seems to me, is just highly wrong. The language in the bill has been carefully constructed; it simply allows for competition. It doesn't say that Federal Prison Industries can't compete at all, as the Senator from Kansas suggested. That is not what it says at all. It simply says, allow private businesses to compete, as I think most Americans would think that the private sector surely can now compete when it comes to providing the Department of Defense with products. We received many letters from owners of businesses across this country. From an office supply company in Biloxi, MS: I could go on and on about how we could have sold the product much cheaper which would have saved taxpayers' money, faster delivery, which would have increased productivity, and, finally, better service. You get the picture. From Tucson, AR: The Prison Industries' representatives routinely refuse waivers. The answer is the standard ``we have products which will meet your needs.'' No explanation. They refuse to answer waiver requests in a timely fashion. I had a $110,000 order for the Arizona Air National Guard in Tucson literally taken away by Prison Industries. The representative demanded the designs--the company's--and said that Prison Industries would fill the request. No waiver, no discussion. Fairfax, VA: You know, it is not just the impact that Federal Prison Industries has had on our businesses. It is the waste of everybody's tax dollars when furniture costs more and doesn't even do the job. According to Economy Office Products of Fairfax, VA: Federal Prison Industries tells their customers what the customer can have rather than the needs of the customer. I hope this language will remain in the bill and that the effort to table it on the part of Senator Gramm will fail. When the time comes for a tabling motion, I hope that tabling motion is agreed to.

Mr. LEVIN. I object.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, very briefly, there are a number of points which the Senator from Texas has made which deserve, again, to be refuted. I will pick two of them. First he says Mr. and Mrs. America, if they only knew, they surely would say that we have to allow the Prison Industries to establish a monopoly so that the Defense Department must buy a product from Prison Industries, even though the Defense Department is paying more for it from Prison Industries than they do from a private firm. I think Mr. and Mrs. America would be stunned, would be shocked if they heard that a private firm is not allowed to bid on a product that the Government is buying. I think Mr. and Mrs. America would probably shake their heads in disbelief and say: Wait a minute, you mean that the office supply company down the street my husband or wife works at is not allowed to bid even if they have a lower price than Prison Industries at 50-cents- an-hour labor? You mean that firm, that company, where my spouse has a job, cannot even bid on it? Talk about being stunned. That would stun Mr. and Mrs. America. There is something else, by the way, about Mr. and Mrs. America to which I want to make reference. We do not allow Americans to buy products made by Chinese prison labor. We prohibit it. We just do not think it is right that we should be competing with Chinese prison wages. It is tough enough to be competing with wages of people who are not in prison in other countries, but we have a prohibition on that. Yet our friend from Texas says we ought to let prison labor sell in the private sector. That is really what is at issue by the way. The issue is much more than the language which is in this bill which would simply allow the private sector to compete. What the Senator from Texas is really after and has said he would support would be a provision that would let prison labor make products and sell in the private sector. I want to see whether or not the American public will support a system where our workers not in prison have to compete with prison wages. I do not think they want to do it any more than we want to compete with Chinese prison wages. I do not think they want to do it. Yet that is what the Senator from Texas says he will support. I hope this Senate will reject that as being really what the Senator from Texas is after and, according to his own words, something he will support. The issue before us is a narrower issue. Although the issue I mentioned may be the underlying issue, the narrower issue is the language in this bill. The language in this bill simply says that if a private firm wishes to bid on a product that the Department of Defense is buying, it ought to be allowed to do so and that Prison Industries should not be able unilaterally to say a private company may not bid, that Prison Industries is going to have a monopoly. The Senator from Texas repeated perhaps 20 times that the effort here is to kill prison labor, kill Prison Industries. Of course, it is not. It is to permit the private sector to compete. Indeed, the statistics, which he cited a number of times, support our language. It was his statistics which said that in 78 percent of the procurements by the Department, the price paid to Prison Industries was actually lower. Fine. We are not trying to change that. All this language does is take care of the other 20 percent, which is also one of the statistics cited by the Senator from Texas. In the other 20 percent, according to the Senator from Texas, it would actually be cheaper for the Department of Defense to buy from the private sector than it would from Prison Industries. He cites that statistic as proving that in most cases it would be cheaper for the Department to buy from Prison Industries. Fine. We are not trying to stop that. We are not trying to stop the Prison Industries from competing. We just want to allow the private sector to compete so that in 20 percent of the cases where the Department of Defense would save money by buying from the private sector, it would be allowed to do so. Madam President, I hope this language will stay in the bill. It has broad support. It is also, it seems to me, so fundamentally fair that American citizens not in prison be allowed to bid on items that their Government is buying. That to me is so obvious and so fair that it would come as a shock to American citizens to learn that is anything other than what the current system is. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, do I have any time remaining?

Mr. LEVIN. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, if the Senator from Texas wants to offer an amendment to modify the Davis-Bacon law to accomplish what he talked about, he ought to offer it. Nobody offered it in committee, but the Senator from Texas is free to offer it. What troubles me is we have a bill which is of critical significance to the Armed Forces of the United States. We have pay increases in the bill. We have housing allowances. What the Senator from Texas is saying is, unless he gets his way on this issue, he is not going to allow that bill to go forward. It seems to me that is wrong, and that is the problem. That is what has caused this particular situation. That is the only reason the Senator from Virginia obviously offered the amendment and moved to table it, to see whether or not there is support for the position of the Senator from Texas. If the Senator from Texas prevails on his position, fine. If he does not prevail on his position, this bill is too important, has too much in it that matters to the security of this country, to be held up by one Senator who insists he is going to get his way even if the majority of the Senate disagrees with him. That is what the issue is. It seems to me that is the overriding issue. Back to competition, if the Senator from Texas believes there should be an amendment that would modify Davis-Bacon, I would urge him to offer that. Let us debate it. Let us vote it, but let us not hold up the Defense bill as his position would.

Mr. LEVIN. I object. I have said very clearly that the Senator should offer the amendment if he wants to do so. Send the amendment to the desk. Let's debate that amendment. Win or lose, modify Davis-Bacon if he wishes. Send an amendment to the desk. We will debate it. But what I object to is holding up the Defense bill on this ground. We do not do this by unanimous consent.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet on Tuesday, September 25, 2001, at 2:30 p.m., for a hearing entitled ``Weak Links: How Should the Federal Government Manage Airline Passenger and Baggage Screening?''