Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I yield myself up to 10 minutes from the time allocated to Senator Levin.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, let me say at the outset that the bill before us addresses a very important problem, which is to say the need to protect the Senate's constitutional role in the appointment of Federal officers. The Constitution, as my colleagues have indicated, provides that the President's power to appoint officers of the United States is to be exercised ``by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate. . . .'' Unfortunately, in too many cases over the course of the past several administrations, the Senate's constitutional prerogatives have too often been ignored through the executive's far-too-common practice of appointing acting officials to serve lengthy periods in positions that are supposed to be filled with individuals confirmed by the Senate. I think it is, therefore, entirely appropriate--indeed necessary--for Congress to act to remedy this situation. I appreciate very much the leadership given by the Senator from West Virginia, the Senator from South Carolina, and the chairman of our committee, the Senator from Tennessee. I also appreciate those Senators' willingness to work with the members of the Governmental Affairs Committee, including this Senator, to accommodate some of the concerns we have had as the bill moved through committee. The fact is, throughout that whole period of time, the effort to reform the Vacancies Act has been a truly bipartisan one, as it should be. Even though I believe there are some problems remaining with the bill, I also am confident that the process of resolving those problems has been conducted in good faith and with fairness on all sides. I therefore regret that, along with many of my colleagues, I find myself in the situation I am today, which is to say, prepared to vote against cloture on this bill, because I believe there remain serious substantive problems with the bill, and the procedural situation we are in now with a cloture motion having been filed in an attempt to limit debate will frustrate our ability to work together to solve some of those remaining problems. I think it is particularly unfortunate that we find ourselves in this position on this bill because I am confident that, were we not forced immediately into a cloture vote, we likely could work out the problems that remain with the bill. It remains my hope, if cloture is not obtained on the vote that will occur in a little more than 10 minutes, that we can continue to work together to achieve a unanimous consent agreement that will allow perhaps for amendments that are relevant, if not germane, according to the procedures of the Senate. Let me briefly give an example of one of the problems that I think remains with the bill which is of concern to some. As the bill is currently drafted, only one of two individuals can serve as acting officials in the case of a vacancy: Either the first assistant to the vacant position, a term of art that generally refers to the top deputy; or someone already confirmed by the Senate for another position. Because individuals holding Senate-confirmed positions already have a lot to do, it almost always will be the first assistant who takes over as the acting. But, by the terms of the bill, a first assistant apparently can take over only if he or she was the first assistant at the time of the vacancy. This severe limitation on the universe of individuals who may serve as acting is, in my view, a mistake that could be harmful to the functioning of the executive branch because it will have the effect of forcing many important positions to remain vacant, potentially for several months at a time. That is because there are many times when a vacancy occurs at a time that the first assistant position is also vacant. There may be other times when a first assistant, who was there when the vacancy occurred, may want to leave his or her job during the pendency of that vacancy. In both situations, as I read the literal terms of the bill as it is before us, it would require that during the duration of the vacancy, which could be many months long, we would be requiring that no one other than people who had already been confirmed for other positions would be eligible to serve as the acting in the vacant position. We would be effectively denying the executive branch the ability to put someone else in that position on an acting basis. Also troubling is what can happen when a new President comes into office. If individuals in Senate-confirmed positions leave before the new President takes office, as often happens, then the only people who would be qualified to serve as acting officials as the new administration gets off the ground, because they were the first assistants at the time of the vacancy, are holdovers, often political appointees from the previous administration. That could create an awkward situation that would require a new administration to staff itself with a previous administration's political appointees. I am confident that we could work this problem out were the bill to come to the floor under the normal processes. But, unfortunately, in the posture that it is now in, it is not so. So I must say I again will vote against cloture, but I do remain hopeful that if cloture is not granted on this next vote, we will be able to find a way together to continue the bipartisan path that this bill has taken, until this moment when it has reached the Senate floor, and find a way to find a common ground to move forward with this bill on which a lot of work has been done, and, though it is detailed and intricate, in which the public interest finds a great expression. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I yield the Senator as much time as he wants.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I think on this side we have spoken our piece. For the reasons indicated, we hope that our colleagues will vote against cloture and then that both sides can come together to achieve common ground and pass this important piece of legislation. I, therefore, yield back the remaining time from our side.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I rise simply to make an unrelated motion. I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to Laureen Daly of my staff during the pendency of S. 442 and H.R. 3529.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Privilege Of The Floor

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to Alcohol and Drug Recovery Centers, Inc. of Hartford, Connecticut, on its 25th Anniversary. ADRC provides much-needed services to the residents of 29 Greater Hartford communities: helping men and women first confront then overcome their addictions so they may live productive, substance free lives. For a quarter of a century, the dedicated workers of ADRC have lent a helpful hand to their neighbors, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, disability, or economic circumstances. Their work has had a tangible impact on the community and I am proud to honor ADRC for its work on behalf of Hartford-area families. This dynamic and proactive organization has continually blazed a trail for other community groups to follow. ADRC has worked hard to earn this praise on its silver anniversary and I am happy to wish all of its staff and friends continued success.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. I thank my friend from New Jersey particularly for his leadership in bringing this resolution forward and to express my own pleasure at being a cosponsor along with a bipartisan group of cosponsors. Mr. President, very briefly, this resolution is about principle. It is not about politics. It is about the principle of self-determination, which was at the heart of the creation of America--the principle of self-determination, democracy, self-rule. It has continued throughout our history to today, when it remains a fundamental priority element of our foreign policy toward other peoples and other nations. Really, what this is about is taking that fundamental American principle which we are eager to apply around the world and applying it to 4 million of our fellow American citizens who live on the islands that constitute Puerto Rico, who served and died in defense of America's freedom in disproportionate numbers. They deserve the right to become fully free, determine their destiny, participate fully, if they choose and how they choose, in our democracy. Senator Murkowski has been a very steadfast leader in this effort. It didn't get as far as he or we wanted, but this resolution at least gives us the possibility, before the 105th session adjourns and prior to the referendum that will be held in Puerto Rico in December, to say as Members of the Senate of both parties we welcome the exercise and recognize the right of our 4 million fellow Americans in Puerto Rico to express themselves to us and that we will review any such communication that results from the vote that they hold in December. It is the least we can do to be true to our principles. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I came to the floor to speak about campaign finance reform, and I will do that in a moment, but I thank my colleague from Missouri for adding me as a cosponsor of the resolution. As is obvious to my colleagues, I am neither from Missouri nor California, so my claim to being added is my status as a baseball fan. And even though my colleagues may think I am reaching, the fact is that when Roger Maris set the record I was in college together with the junior Senator from Missouri. So it gives me some standing. I do want to identify myself with his comments just to stress the obvious personal achievement here that has inspired the country, and also the way in which Mark McGwire did it. It was an act of fate, but somehow so correct, that he tied the record at the 61st homer on the day of his father's 61st birthday, because baseball, in my experience in this country, is very much a matter of one generation passing on the experience to another. My own memories of baseball, first memories, come from my dad taking me to games, and they are cherished memories. I can tell my colleagues--I hope I am not violating her privacy--when my youngest child was 4 days old, in March, I held her up to a TV set and said, ``Sweetheart, this is baseball, and you're going to love it.'' Fortunately, for me, she has, and we have shared that experience. As Senator Ashcroft indicated, Mark McGwire beautifully continued that with his son there as a batboy. The second is the obvious rapport between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, as they compete for this but do it with extraordinary mutual respect. To make the point that is obvious but maybe still worth making, here we have one person whose family has been in this country a long time, from a family of relative success and comfort, another a new American born in poverty in another country, coming here, joined together in this remarkable American game to I think this year break records that were previously thought to be impossible. And a final word about Roger Maris, who did set the record in the younger days of both my life and Senator Ashcroft's life. I felt that Mark McGwire probably brought the whole country to give more tribute to Roger Maris than he ever had before, and we owed it to him. So I am proud to be added as a cosponsor. Did the Senator from Missouri wish to add anything before I proceed to the topic of campaign finance reform? Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, if I may continue the stretch to link the two subject matters, baseball and campaign finance reform, may I say that unlike the Brooklyn Dodgers of old, those of us who support McCain-Feingold are not willing to wait until next year, and since McGwire and Sosa are setting the standard for doing what we thought was impossible, we hope they are an eye-opener for those who think adopting campaign finance reform is impossible for this Chamber this year. I make the comparison without wanting to set it too closely, but wouldn't it be great when this is over if we could refer to McCain- Feingold as the legislative equivalent of McGwire and Sosa? I will cease and desist and proceed with my remarks.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. If so, I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I rise to speak on behalf of McCain-Feingold, the amendment offered, to thank my two colleagues for the extraordinary, principled, persistent, and practical leadership that they have given this critical effort, and to urge my colleagues to support the cloture motion that comes up tomorrow. Madam President, we have a cherished principle in this country that every person gets one and only one vote, that a citizen's influence on our government's decisions rests on the power of his or her ideas, not the size of his or her pocketbook. The campaign finance system we have on the books protects this privilege. May I repeat, the campaign finance system we have on our law books protects this principle. It imposes strict limits on the amounts individuals can contribute to parties and to campaigns. The law prohibits unions and corporations from making most contributions or expenditures in connection with elections to Federal office, and it requires disclosure of money spent in advocating the election or defeat of candidates for Federal office. That is what the campaign laws as they are on the books today require. But as we learned sadly during the 1996 campaigns and the various investigations that have followed, those laws appear to be written in invisible ink, which is to say that they have been honored, if one can use the term satirically, only in the breach. They have largely been evaded. It has been several months since the Governmental Affairs Committee's investigation into the 1996 campaigns ended, but none of us who were part of that investigation will forget, nor I hope will others forget, what we learned there or our feeling of outrage and embarrassment upon learning it. We learned not only of hustlers like Johnny Chung, who saw the White House like a subway--put some money in and the gates will open, he said--or of opportunists like Roger Tamraz, who used big dollar donations to gain access that was originally denied to him by policymakers at the same time he declined even to register to vote because he saw the vote which generations of Americans have fought and died to protect as a meaningless exercise, a process which would gain him no real power, particularly not when compared to the power that $300,000 would give him. We also learned in the Governmental Affairs hearings last year of something that was in its way even more disturbing because it was more pervasive and had a far greater effect on our elections and on our government. We learned that we no longer have a campaign finance system, that the loopholes have become so large and so many that they have taken over the entirety of the law, leaving us with little more than a free-for-all money chase in its place. We learned last year that it was somehow possible, for example, for wealthy donors to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to finance campaigns, even though the law was clearly intended to limit their contributions to a tiny fraction of those sums. That is what the law on the books says. It was possible for corporations and unions to donate millions of dollars to the parties at the candidate's request despite the decades-old prohibition on those entities' involvement in Federal campaigns. That is clearly on the law books. It was possible for the two Presidential nominees to spend much of the fall shaking the donor trees, even though they had pledged under the law, in this case the Presidential campaign finance law, not to raise money for their campaigns after receiving $62 million each in taxpayer funds. It was possible for tax-exempt groups to run millions of dollars worth of television ads that clearly endorsed or attacked particular candidates, even though they were just as clearly barred by law from engaging in such partisan activity. Madam President, the disappearance, if I may call it that, of our campaign finance laws, which is to say the evasion of the clear intent of those laws, has serious consequences that none of us should overlook. Because our current system effectively has no limits on it, our political class, if you will, lives in a world in which a never- ending pursuit for money is often the only road--the only perceived road to survival. With each election cycle the competition for money gets fiercer and fiercer, the amounts needed to be spent get bigger and bigger, and consequently the amount of time Presidential candidates, national party leaders, fundraisers--all of us need to raise for our parties gets greater and greater. In the 1996 election cycle the national parties raised $262 million in so-called soft or unregulated money, 12 times what they raised in 1984. And what about the current cycle, the 1997-1998 cycle? National party committees in the first 18 months of the 1998 election cycle have raised almost $116 million in soft money, more than double the $50 million raised during a comparable period by national party committees in 1994, which was the last non-Presidential election cycle. Let none of us deceive ourselves that this unrelenting and ever- escalating money chase has no impact on the integrity of our Government and the impression our constituents have of our Government and those of us who serve in it. That clearly is the sad story, told by the Governmental Affairs investigation last year, and by the host of other investigations, journalistic and otherwise, that have been done of that 1996 election. Our country is focused at this moment in our history on the misconduct which our President acknowledged in his statement on August 17. The consequences of that misconduct were great, but that was the failure of one person. The failure that we speak of today, on the other hand, if we do not act to correct it, belongs to us all. It is systemic, and none of us should doubt that it will get worse unless we do something to change it. Senator McCain was right, the Senator from Arizona, when he said a while ago that probably the biggest scandal in Washington today is the current state of our campaign finance laws. How can any of us justify a system in which our elected officials repeatedly appear at events exclusively available only to those who can give $50,000 or $100,000 or more, amounts that are obviously out of reach for the average American and above the annual incomes, in fact, of so many of our citizens--the annual incomes of so many of our citizens. How can any of us justify a system in which we, public servants, must divert so much of our time from the people's business to the business of fundraising? How can we justify a system that has so disenchanted our constituents that, according to an October 1997 Gallup survey, only 37 percent of Americans believe that the best candidate wins elections; 59 percent believe elections are generally for sale; in which 77 percent of Americans believe that their national leaders are most influenced by pressure from their contributors, while only 17 percent believe we are influenced by what is in the best interests of our country? That is a searing indictment of what we are devoting our lives to--public service, the national interest; and it comes, I believe, directly from the way in which we raise money for our campaigns, certainly at the Presidential and national level. How can any of us justify not taking action, some action, to reform our campaign finance system this year, in this 105th session, after all of the time and energy and resources Members of both sides of the aisle have spent investigating, in effect denouncing, the conditions that prevail under the current system? The fact is, I respectfully suggest, that we cannot justify such a system and we cannot justify inaction. In the additional views that I was privileged to submit to the Government Affairs Committee report on its investigation of the 1996 campaigns, I wrote that I came away from that year-long investigation with an overarching sense that our polity has fallen down a long, dark hole into a place that is far from the vision of values of those who founded our democracy. I find it hard to see how others can come away from that experience, or any other experience which allows them to examine what has become of our campaign finance laws, without reaching a similar conclusion. We no longer live in a system in which every citizen's vote counts equally, or anywhere near equally. Instead, we live in a system in which what seems to matter most is how much money we can raise. It is time to act to restore a sense of integrity to our campaign finance system, to restore the public's trust in it and us. This is not a radical idea. All we are really asking is to restore our system to what it was meant to be, to what in fact the letter of Federal law is today: a system where individuals can participate in our political system, but they are limited in their ability to use their incomes to influence their Government; where only individuals, not corporations and unions, may use their money to directly influence our elections, and where we all know, through disclosure, who it is that is contributing and the public may judge to what extent those contributions are influencing our actions and our votes. Madam President, I hope that our colleagues will do what most observers seem to think we will not, which is to vote for cloture tomorrow to take up this bill and to clear this cloud from over our political system. I yield the floor. Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed as in morning business for up to 25 minutes.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I regret that on behalf of the minority leader we must object to the unanimous consent that was just propounded. On this side Members are working to try to find a way to make some progress on this matter and a number of matters related to criminal justice that also need attention. So I must, therefore, formally object.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to make the most difficult and distasteful statement, for me probably the most difficult statement I have made on this floor in the 10 years I have been a Member of the U.S. Senate. On August 17, President Clinton testified before a grand jury convened by the independent counsel and then talked to the American people about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern. He told us that the relationship was ``not appropriate,'' that it was ``wrong,'' and that it was ``a critical lapse of judgment and a personal failure'' on his part. In addition, after 7 months of denying that he had engaged in a sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, the President admitted that his ``public comments about this matter gave a false impression.'' He said, ``I misled people.'' Mr. President, my immediate reaction to this statement that night it was delivered was deep disappointment and personal anger. I was disappointed because the President of the United States had just confessed to engaging in an extramarital affair with a young woman in his employ and to willfully deceiving the Nation about his conduct. I was personally angry because President Clinton had, by his disgraceful behavior, jeopardized his administration's historic record of accomplishment, much of which grew out of the principles and programs that he and I and many others had worked on together in the new Democratic movement. I was also angry because I was one of the many people who had said over the preceding 7 months that if the President clearly and explicitly denies the allegations against him, that of course I believe him. Since that Monday night I have not commented on this matter publicly. I thought I had an obligation to consider the President's admissions more objectively, less personally, and to try to put them in a clearer perspective. And I felt that I owed that much to the President, for whom I have great affection and admiration, and who I truly believe has worked tirelessly to make life tangibly better in so many ways for so many Americans. But the truth is that, after much reflection, my feelings of disappointment and anger have not dissipated, except now these feelings have gone beyond my personal dismay to a larger, graver sense of loss for our country, a reckoning of the damage that the President's conduct has done to the proud legacy of his Presidency, and ultimately an accounting of the impact of his actions on our democracy and its moral foundations. The implications for our country are so serious that I feel a responsibility to my constituents in Connecticut, as well as to my conscience, to voice my concerns forthrightly and publicly. And I can think of no more appropriate place to do that than on this great Senate floor. I have chosen to speak particularly at this time before the independent counsel files his report because, while we do not know enough yet to answer the question of whether there are legal consequences of the President's conduct, we do know enough from what the President acknowledged on August 17 to answer a separate and distinct set of questions about the moral consequences for our country. Mr. President, I have come to this floor many times in the past to speak with my colleagues about the concerns which are so widely shared in this Chamber and throughout the Nation that our society's standards are sinking; that our common moral code is deteriorating and that our public life is coarsening. In doing so, I have specifically criticized leaders of the entertainment industry for the way they have used the enormous influence they wield to weaken our common values. And now, because the President commands at least as much attention and exerts at least as much influence on our collective consciousness as any Hollywood celebrity or television show, it is hard to ignore the impact of the misconduct the President has admitted to on our culture, on our character and on our children. To begin with, I must respectfully disagree with the President's contention that his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and the way in which he misled us about it is nobody's business but his family's and that even Presidents have private lives, as he said. Whether he or we think it fair or not, the reality is in 1998 that a President's private life is public. Contemporary news media standards will have it no other way. Surely, this President was given fair notice of that by the amount of time the news media has dedicated to investigating his personal life during the 1992 campaign and in the years since. But there is more to this than modern media intrusiveness. The President is not just the elected leader of our country. He is, as Presidential scholar Clinton Rossiter observed, ``The one-man distillation of the American people,'' and as President Taft said at another time, ``The personal embodiment and representative of their dignity and majesty.'' So when his personal conduct is embarrassing, it is sadly so not just for him and his family, it is embarrassing for all of us as Americans. The President is a role model who, because of his prominence and the moral authority that emanates from his office, sets standards of behavior for the people he serves. His duty, as the Reverand Nathan Baxter of the National Cathedral here in Washington said in a recent sermon, ``is nothing less than the stewardship of our values.'' So no matter how much the President or others may wish to compartmentalize the different spheres of his life, the inescapable truth is that the President's private conduct can and often does have profound public consequences. In this case, the President apparently had extramarital relations with an employee half his age and did so in the workplace, in the vicinity of the Oval Office. Such behavior is not just inappropriate, it is immoral and it is harmful, for it sends a message of what is acceptable behavior to the larger American family, particularly to our children, which is as influential as the negative message that is communicated by the entertainment culture. If you doubt that, just ask America's parents about the intimate and frequently unseemly sexual questions their young children have been asking them about and discussing since the President's relationship with Ms. Lewinsky became public 7 months ago. I have had many of those conversations with parents, particularly in Connecticut, and from them I conclude that parents across our country feel much as I do that something very sad and sordid has happened in American life when I cannot watch the news on television with my 10-year-old daughter anymore. This, unfortunately, is all too familiar territory for America's families in today's ``anything goes'' culture, where sexual promiscuity is too often treated as just another lifestyle choice with little risk of adverse consequences. It is this mindset that has helped to threaten the integrity and stability of the family which continues to be the most important unit of civilized society, the place where we raise our children and teach them to be responsible citizens, to develop and nurture their personal and moral faculties. President Clinton, in fact, has shown during the course of his Presidency that he understands this and the broad concern in the public about the threat to the family. He has used the bully pulpit of his Presidency to eloquently and effectively call for the renewal of our common values, particularly the principle of personal responsibility and our common commitment to family. He has spoken out admirably against sexual promiscuity among teenagers in clear terms of right and wrong, emphasizing the consequences involved. All of that makes the President's misconduct so confusing and so damaging. The President's relationship with Ms. Lewinsky not only contradicted the values he has publicly embraced over the last 6 years, it has, I fear, compromised his moral authority at a time when Americans of every political persuasion agree that the decline of the family is one of the most pressing problems we are facing. Nevertheless, I believe that the President could have lessened the harm his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky has caused if he had acknowledged his mistake and spoken with candor about it to the American people shortly after it became public in January. But, as we now know, he chose not to do this. This deception is particularly troubling because it was not just a reflexive and, in many ways, understandable human act of concealment to protect himself and his family from what he called the embarrassment of his own conduct when he was confronted with it in the deposition in the Jones case, but rather it was the intentional and premeditated decision to do so. In choosing this path, I fear that the President has undercut the efforts of millions of American parents who are naturally trying to instill in our children the value of honesty. As most any mother and father knows, kids have a singular ability to detect double standards. So we can safely assume that it will be that much more difficult to convince our sons and daughters of the importance of telling the truth when the most powerful man in the Nation evades it. Many parents I have spoken with in Connecticut confirm this unfortunate consequence. The President's intentional and consistent statements more deeply may also undercut the trust that the American people have in his word. Under the Constitution, as Presidential scholar Richard Neustadt has noted, the President's ultimate source of authority, particularly his moral authority, is the power to persuade, to mobilize public opinion, to build consensus behind a common agenda, and at this the President has been extraordinarily effective. But that power hinges on the President's support among the American people and their faith and confidence in his motivations and agenda, yes, but also in his word. As Teddy Roosevelt once explained, ``My power vanishes into thin air the instant that my fellow citizens, who are straight and honest, cease to believe that I represent them and fight for what is straight and honest. That is all the strength that I have.'' Sadly, with his deception, President Clinton may have weakened the great power and strength that he possesses of which President Roosevelt spoke. I know this is a concern that many of my colleagues share, which is to say that the President has hurt his credibility and, therefore, perhaps his chances of moving his policy agenda forward. But I believe that the harm the President's actions have caused extend beyond the political arena. I am afraid that the misconduct the President has admitted may be reinforcing one of the worst messages being delivered by our popular culture, which is that values are fungible. And I am concerned that his misconduct may help to blur some of the most bright lines of right and wrong in our society. Mr. President, I said at the outset that this was a very difficult statement to write and deliver. That is true, very true. And it is true, in large part, because it is so personal and yet needs to be public, but also because of my fear that it will appear unnecessarily judgmental. I truly regret this. I know from the Bible that only God can judge people. The most that we can do is to comment, without condemning individuals. And in this case I have tried to comment on the consequences of the President's conduct on our country. I know that the President is far from alone in the wrongdoing he has admitted. We, as humans, are all imperfect. We are all sinners. Many have betrayed a loved one, and most have told lies. Members of Congress have certainly been guilty of such behavior, as have some previous Presidents. We must try to understand the complexity and difficulty of personal relationships, which should give us pause before passing judgment on them. We all fall short of the standards our best values set for us. Certainly I do. But the President, by virtue of the office he sought and was elected to, has traditionally been held to a higher standard. This is as it should be. Because the American President, as I quoted earlier, is not just the one-man distillation of the American people but today the most powerful person in the world, and, as such, the consequences of his misbehavior, even private misbehavior, are much greater than that of an average citizen, a CEO, or even a Senator. That is what I believe Presidential scholar James David Barber, in his book ``The Presidential Character,'' was getting at when he wrote that the public demands ``a sense of legitimacy from, and in, the Presidency * * * There is more to this than dignity, more than propriety. The President is expected to personify our betterness in an inspiring way, to express in what he does and is (not just what he says) a moral idealism which, in much of the public mind, is the very opposite of politics.'' Just as the American people are demanding of their leaders, though, they are also fundamentally fair and forgiving, which is why I was so hopeful the President could begin to repair the damage done with his address to the Nation on the 17th. But like so many others, I came away feeling that, for reasons that are thoroughly human, he missed a great opportunity that night. He failed to clearly articulate to the American people that he recognized how significant and consequential his wrongdoing was and how badly he felt about it. He failed to show, I think, that he understood his behavior had diminished the office he holds and the country he serves and that it is inconsistent with the mainstream American values that he has advanced as President. And I regret that he failed to acknowledge that while Mr. Starr and Ms. Lewinsky, Mrs. Tripp, and the news media have each in their own way contributed to the crisis we now face, his Presidency would not be in peril if it had not been for the behavior he himself described as ``wrong'' and ``inappropriate.'' Because the conduct the President admitted to that night was serious and his assumption of responsibility inadequate, the last 3 weeks have been dominated by a cacophony of media and political voices calling for impeachment or resignation or censure, while a lesser chorus implores us to ``move on'' and get this matter behind us. Appealing as that latter option may be to many people who are understandably weary of this crisis, the transgressions the President has admitted to are too consequential for us to walk away and leave the impression for our children today and for our posterity tomorrow that what he acknowledges he did within the White House is acceptable behavior for our Nation's leader. On the contrary, as I have said, it is wrong and unacceptable and should be followed by some measure of public rebuke and accountability. We in Congress--elected representatives of all the American people--are surely capable institutionally of expressing such disapproval through a resolution of reprimand or censure of the President for his misconduct, but it is premature to do so, as my colleagues of both parties seem to agree, until we have received the report of the independent counsel and the White House's response to it. In the same way, it seems to me that talk of impeachment and resignation at this time is unjust and unwise. It is unjust because we do not know enough in fact, and will not until the independent counsel reports and the White House responds, to conclude whether we have crossed the high threshold our Constitution rightly sets for overturning the results of a popular election in our democracy and bringing on the national trauma of removing an incumbent President from office. For now, in fact, all we know for certain is what the President acknowledged on August 17. As far as I can see, the rest is rumor, speculation, or hearsay--much less than is required by Members of the House and Senate in the dispatch of the solemn responsibilities that the Constitution gives us in such circumstances. I believe the talk of impeachment and resignation now is unwise because it ignores the reality that, while the independent counsel proceeds with his investigation, the President is still our Nation's leader, our Commander in Chief. Economic uncertainty and other problems here at home, as well as the fiscal and political crises in Russia and Asia, and the growing threats posed by Iraq, North Korea, and worldwide terrorism, all demand the President's focused leadership. For that reason, while the legal process moves forward, I believe it is important that we provide the President with the time and space and support he needs to carry out his most important duties and protect our national interest and security. That time and space may also give the President additional opportunities to accept personal responsibility for his behavior, to rebuild public trust in his leadership, to recommit himself to the values of opportunity, responsibility, and community that brought him to office, and to act to heal the wounds in our national character. In the meantime, as the debate on this matter proceeds, and as the investigation goes forward, we would all be advised, I would respectfully suggest, to heed the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln's second annual address to Congress in 1862. With the Nation at war with itself, President Lincoln warned: If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch arguments, that time is surely not now. In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity. I believe that we are at such a time again today. With so much at stake, we too must resist the impulse toward ``catch arguments'' and reflex reactions. Let us proceed in accordance with our Nation's traditional moral compass, yes, but in a manner that is fair and at a pace that is deliberate and responsible. Let us, as a nation, honestly confront the damage that the President's actions over the last 7 months have caused, but not to the exclusion of the good that his leadership has done over the past 6 years nor at the expense of our common interest as Americans. And let us be guided by the conscience of the Constitution, which calls on us to place the common good above any partisan or personal interest, as we now in our time work together to resolve this serious challenge to our democracy. I thank the Chair. I thank my colleagues. I yield the floor. Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Senator from South Dakota. If I may, before posing my question, I want to reflect upon an experience I had last year as a member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee which held extensive hearings into this subject matter of the 1996 campaign and how it was financed. And I must say as I look back to it, the mental image I have of it is being waist deep in muck and fighting our way through it. It was a stunning, mind-altering, ultimately embarrassing experience, to see what has happened to our great democracy and the extent to which, at a time when we question the public's trust in government, we have created a system that amounts to evasion of law clearly by lawmakers, by all of us in the lawmaking class, by those who are running for office. And why do I say that? What became clear in those hearings, we have laws, we have laws that limit the amount of money that individuals can give to campaigns--$2,000 per individual. We have laws that limit the amount that a political action committee can give--$10,000 in the whole cycle--to a given campaign. We have laws that prohibit corporations and unions from contributing to political campaigns. It could not be clearer. And then there is created this so-called soft money loophole through which is driven not a Mack truck, a whole division, a whole army which has obliterated the limits. So we have individuals giving hundreds of thousands of dollars, we have corporations and unions giving millions of dollars, we make a mockery of the law, and we have just the effect the Senator from South Dakota and the Senator from Illinois have just talked about, which is quite the opposite of reform here--restricting people's rights. The reality, the place we have come to, the sad place we have come to, limits individual rights and, even more underneath that, the individual American's confidence that he or she has the same ability roughly as every other American to affect their Government. Why? You don't have to be a rocket scientist or a political scientist to come to the belief that an individual or a group that can give hundreds of thousands of dollars has more access to their Government than the average American does. I remember that during the debate we had--one of the earlier debates we had on this subject--one of our colleagues brought out a chart, and to me it told a lot of the story, and it responds to, I know, some of the conclusions made by Members of the Senate that the public doesn't really care about campaign finance reform. I disagree. When you ask people what problems they are most worried about, campaign finance reform is not going to come out on the top of that list, in part because I think there is a misapprehension. I read a quote last year from somebody who said, ``Oh, campaign finance reform. Well, I care more about how they spend my tax money than how they raise their campaign money.'' The reality is that how campaign money is raised, as we have seen here and the leader has spoken to quite eloquently--how campaign money is raised affects how their tax money is spent and who pays taxes. But look, we are leaders. We were elected to do what we think is right. We were elected to build confidence in our Government. So hopefully we will respond to more than just polls here. The chart that I referred to earlier that one of our colleagues brought out had two lines on it. One showed the trend line of contributions to American political campaigns. The other showed the trend line of the turnout of Americans in voting--startling difference. As the money goes up, the public participation in elections goes down because people don't think their vote counts anymore. I say to the Senator from South Dakota, as I think about the situation, as I know we got 52 votes for the McCain-Feingold bill here, and we were all raised to believe the will of the majority prevails in our democracy, it is not so in the Senate apparently. In the House, much to everybody's surprise--and I must say with some pride, due in good measure to the great leadership given by Congressman Chris Shays of Connecticut--the Shays-Meehan bill passed. We have another opportunity to right this wrong. The problem is not going to go away. Just in the last week, the Attorney General has commenced initial inquiries that relate to campaign finance practices in 1996. And I can't believe after all that we have learned, after all that the media has told us, after all that we know--because as the Senator from South Dakota has said, it is our lives; we are being pulled by the money chase away from what should be the focus of our interest, which is the people's business--I can't believe that we are going to end this 105th session of Congress without doing something to reform our campaign finance laws. So my question to the Senator from South Dakota, with thanks for his persistent leadership on this serious matter, is--well, two really. One, in the course of the Senator's career, if we are not able to pass campaign finance reform in this session, would the Senator not agree that this is one of the most grievous abdications of this Chamber's responsibility in a long time faced with a real problem? And second, I suppose, does the leader agree that part of what is needed here is for the public to speak to their elected leaders and plead with them, particularly in the Senate, those of our colleagues who can take us either to a vote or from 52 to 60 to break the filibuster, that it really matters to them that we adopt campaign finance reform this year?

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am delighted to join Senators Chafee, Graham, Specter, and Baucus to introduce the Promoting Responsible Managed Care Act of 1998. Our bill is a bipartisan effort that we believe can be enacted this year. Our effort is modest in authorship because we have chosen to draw from both Republican and Democratic bills, but bold in goal. We aim to bring protections to 161 million Americans without delay before this Congress adjourns. Included in those bold protections are new rights of access to specialists, access to independent grievance and appeals, quality report cards, and compensation if a plan's actions result in their injury. Excluded are those provisions, even some with appeal, that are likely to prevent any Congressional action on patients' rights this year. Over the last decade we have crossed over a turbulent river of change in health care. The raging cost escalation of the 80's and 90's buffeted families and tore away an ever increasing share of their paycheck to pay for health insurance coverage. Some couldn't afford the price, and lost their hold on health care--for themselves and their families. Today, the on flowing health care costs have slowed, but left behind permanent changes in the health care shoreline. We have a tool that has dammed up health care costs--managed care. Yet, after more than a decade of cost increases, we have over forty-one million uninsured among us that can't afford coverage. We need to be mindful of these uninsured and the millions close to losing their insurance whenever we intervene in the health care market in ways that raise costs. Managed care has calmed the rise in medical costs that buffeted us so badly and brought double-digit inflation under control. The average rate of increase of costs of medical plans dropped 10 percent between 1991 and 1996. Without managed care, costs would be higher, millions more would be uninsured, and wages and salaries would be lower. Today over 75 percent of Americans who receive their health coverage through their employer are in some form of managed care. Consumers no longer have a family doctor--they have a gatekeeper. They don't pick a physician--they (or in most cases, their employer) pick a network. A family's access to care, to drugs, to specialists all can be limited by the managed care organization. Now that cost increases have slowed, it is also time to focus on health care quality. Many people are nervous about the quality of their managed care plans. They are concerned that the success of managed care in containing costs, has come at the expense of health care quality. People want to know that they can get health care for their children from pediatricians, go see a specialist if their condition warrants some special attention, even go the emergency room if they feel that it is necessary. They want to know that they aren't going to be locked out of medical care by an unresponsive managed care bureaucracy, vainly calling an unanswered phone to get approval for necessary medical care. The entry of managed care into the health care marketplace has created competition that has lowered prices, enabling better access for millions to health care. But we also need to introduce competition over quality into this marketplace. Our bill covers all 161 million Americans who are privately-insured. It includes patient protection standards to protect patient's access to the physician of their choice including women's access to obstetrical/ gynecological specialists, a childs to a pediatrician, and other patients to specialists such as oncologists pursuant to a treatment plan. It protects continuity of care, so that patients can continue to see their physician through an illness or pregnancy despite changes in the managed care network. Plans would be prohibited from using ``gag rules'' to restrict physicians communication with their patients. Visits to emergency rooms would be covered based on the ``prudent layperson'' standard and would include reimbursement for post stabilization and maintenance care. Most important, we have included strong enforcement to protect these rights and protect the health and lives of all 161 privately insured Americans. We have four important enforcement rights. We give consumers the right to obtain performance information so they don't get trapped in a bad health plan in the first place, establish a new grievance and appeals process so that consumers have a speedy process and fair setting to seek needed healthcare, give the U.S. Department of Labor and Health and Human Services the right to place heavy fines on health plans that don't protect patients, and finally, if all three fail, give the patient new rights to sue for compensation in federal courts if all the new protections fail and they are injured as the result of a decision by their managed care plan. Our first enforcement tool is to empower consumer choice based on accurate, comparable information with information about their health care options. Millions of American healthcare consumers can get more information about the quality of a toaster oven or a candy bar than about their health plan. Report cards on health care quality should be the rule not the exception. Consumers who choose between plans, employers who purchase them, and plans and providers who compete for business will all drive up quality if report cards on their performance become the rule not the exception. Some of the large employers in my state joined together years ago to hold health plans accountable. These companies stood up to say before they would even offer a health plan to their employees, that plan would have to agree to provide their record of performance and outcome on critical services such as breast cancer screening, prenatal care, asthma and diabetic treatment. Workers at these companies now choose the plan with the best performance for them. All workers in America should have that right. It drives up quality and drives down bad managed care plans. We require that all health plans be held accountable by reporting how well they are doing in providing the services that keep people healthy. We allow the Secretary to develop requirements that will work for different types of insurance, but get critical quality information to workers and purchasers. Although Senator Nickles' bill includes voluminous information requirements, nowhere does he ask for the most critical information--how good a job is a health plan doing in keeping members of that plan healthy and alive. Our second enforcement tool gives consumers in a health plan the right to appeal a denial of coverage to a independent, external panel of fair-minded experts under specific, quick deadlines. When consumers need health care services, delays and indecision can be critical. The appeals process protects patients health by getting decisions made quickly and services provided before their medical condition worsens. No longer will consumers and their doctors spend months or even years fighting through a morass of managed care bureaucrats none of whom seem accountable, and all of whom add their own dollop of delay to a final decision. We have adopted the ``gold standard'' set by the Medicare program which guarantees an answer in 72 hours or less for urgent care, and in less than one month for even the most routine decisions. Consumers have full rights to appeal any denial of care--both internally and to an external body for a completely independent review. Third, we fix ERISA--a law that was enacted in 1974--so that it no longer blunts enforcement of patient protections. Under current law there are no meaningful enforcement remedies available to Americans who get their insurance through their employers. The U.S. Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services can do little to carry out their enforcement responsibilities. Individuals can not seek compensation when their health care plan makes a decision that injures them. A person, grievously harmed by their plan, can only sue for the cost of the benefit wrongly denied. For example, under current ERISA law, a mother on death's bed with cancer wrongly denied. For example, under current ERISA law, a mother on death's bed with cancer because she didn't get a mammogram would only be able to sue her health plan for the cost of the mammogram. The Democrats have chosen to address this problem by allowing participants in ERISA plans to seek redress, including uncapped punitive damages, in state courts, an absolute nonstarter with the Republicans. The Republican plan simply extends the enforcement mechanism provided under current law, which is to say the cost of the benefit denied, and have thrown in a small additional fine of $100 a day in cases where a health plan refuses to comply with the decision of the external appeal entity. $100 is a cruel compensation for a family that has lost a breadwinner through the botched denial of coverage of a managed care plan. We believe it is vitally important for Congress to step up to the plate with a real federal patient rights enforcement. In order to ensure that plans abide by the new patient protections in our bill, we give new civil money penalty and injunctive relief authority to the Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Labor. Plans that violate the law can be compelled to pay for it--up to $250,000. Finally, there will be those tragic instances where our broad, new protections fail. A person is injured despite their new rights and powers and the managed care organization is at fault. Under our plan, people can take their plan to court, and sue that plan for the full amount of any damages equal to their economic loss plus attorney's fees. The injured person can get back the loss of earnings or other benefits related to employment, medical expense loss, replacement services loss, loss due to death, burial costs, and loss of business or employment opportunities, caused by the coverage determination of the managed care plan. For the injured person and their family, the dollars probably can never compensate for the loss of health, but we think that it is critical that at least their economic losses by paid when a plan causes the injury. That is our plan, a stronghold of patient rights protected by four well-buttressed walls of individual and government enforcement. We have given patients the strongest tools at our disposal--information, appeal rights, agency enforcement, and access to the courts. Our proposal has these strengths, but not the baggage of provisions that partisans of either party I fear may use to prevent congressional action. I urge the passage of the Promoting Responsible Managed Care Act of 1998 so that 161 million Americans can receive its protections without delay.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the bill we are about to take up and vote upon, the Biomaterials Access Assurance Act. I am proud to have co-sponsored the Senate version of this bill with Senator McCain. We have worked together on this bill for a number of years now, and it is quite gratifying to see it now about to move toward enactment. Mr. President, the Biomaterials bill is the response to a crisis affecting more than 7 million Americans annually who rely on implantable life-saving or life-enhancing medical devices--things like pacemakers, heart valves, artificial blood vessels, hydrocephalic shunts, and hip and knee joints. They are at risk of losing access to the devices because many companies that supply the raw materials and component parts that go into the devices are refusing to sell them to device manufacturers. Why? Because suppliers no longer want to risk having to pay enormous legal fees to defend against product liability suits when those legal fees far exceed any profit they make from supplying the raw materials for use in implantable devices. Let me emphasize that I am speaking here about--and the bill addresses--the suppliers of raw materials and component parts--not about the companies that make the medical devices themselves. The materials these suppliers sell--things like resins and yarns--are basically generic materials that they sell for a variety of uses in many, many different products. Their sales to device manufacturers usually make up only a very small part of their markets--often less than one percent. As a result--and because of the small amount of the materials that go into the implants--many of these suppliers make very little money from supplying implant manufacturers. Just as importantly, these suppliers generally have nothing to do with the design, manufacture or sale of the product. But despite the fact that they generally have nothing to do with making the product, because of the common practice of suing everyone involved in any way with a product when something goes wrong, these suppliers sometimes get brought into lawsuits claiming problems with the implants. One company, for example, was hauled into to 651 lawsuits involving 1,605 implant recipients based on a total of 5 cents worth of that company's product in each implant. In other words, in exchange for selling less than $100 of its product, this supplier received a bill for perhaps millions of dollars of legal fees it spent in its ultimately successful effort to defend against these lawsuits. The results from such experiences should not surprise anyone. Even though not a single biomaterials supplier has ultimately been held liable so far--let me say that again: Not a single biomaterials supplier has ultimately been held liable so far--the message nevertheless is clear for any rational business. Why would any business stay in a market that yields them little profit, but exposes them to huge legal costs? An April 1997 study of this issue found that 75 percent of suppliers surveyed were not willing to sell their raw materials to implant manufacturers under current conditions. That study predicts that unless this trend is reversed, patients whose lives depend on implantable devices may no longer have access to them. What is at stake here, let me be clear, is not protecting suppliers from liability and not even just making raw materials available to the manufacturers of medical devices. Those things in and of themselves might not be enough to bring me here. What is at stake is the health and lives of millions of Americans who depend on medical devices for their every day survival. What is at stake are the lives of children with hydrocephalus who rely on brain shunts to keep fluid from accumulating around their brains. What is at stake are the lives of adults whose hearts would stop beating without implanted automatic defibrillators. What is at stake are the lives of seniors who need pacemakers because their hearts no longer generate enough of an electrical pulse to get their heart to beat. Without implants, none of these individuals could survive. We must do something soon to deal with this problem. We simply cannot allow the current situation to continue to put at risk the millions of Americans who owe their health to medical devices. Senator McCain, and I and the bill's sponsors in the House have crafted what we think is a reasonable response to this problem. Our bill would do two things. First, with an important exception I'll talk about in a minute, the bill would immunize suppliers of raw materials and component parts from product liability suits, unless the supplier falls into one of three categories: (1) the supplier also manufactured the implant alleged to have caused harm; (2) the supplier sold the implant alleged to have caused harm; or (3) the supplier furnished raw materials or component parts that failed to meet applicable contractual requirements or specifications. Second, the bill would provide suppliers with a mechanism for making that immunity meaningful by obtaining early dismissal from lawsuits. By guaranteeing suppliers in advance that they will not face needless litigation costs, this bill should spur suppliers to remain in or come back to the biomaterials market, and so ensure that people who need implantable medical devices will still have access to them. Now, it is important to emphasize that in granting suppliers immunity, we would not be depriving anyone injured by a defective implantable medical device of the right to compensation for their injuries. Injured parties still will have their full rights against anyone involved in the design, manufacture or sale of an implant, and they can sue implant manufacturers, or any other allegedly responsible party, and collect for their injuries from them if that party is at fault. We also have added a new provision to this version of the bill, one that resulted from lengthy negotiations with representatives of the implant manufacturers, the American Trial Lawyers Association--ATLA-- the White House and others. This provision responds to concerns that the previous version of the bill would have left injured implant recipients without a means of seeking compensation if the manufacturer or other responsible party is bankrupt or otherwise judgment-proof. As now drafted, the bill provides that in such cases, a plaintiff may bring the raw materials supplier back into a lawsuit after judgment if a court concludes that evidence exists to warrant holding the supplier liable. Finally, let me add that the bill does not cover lawsuits involving silicone gel breast implants. In short, Mr. President, the Biomaterials bill is--and I am not engaging in hyperbole when I say this--potentially a matter of life and death for the millions of Americans who rely on implantable medical devices to survive. This bill would make sure that implant manufacturers still have access to the raw materials they need for their products, while at the same time ensuring that those injured by implants are able to get compensation for injuries caused by defective implants. This is a good bill, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, it has struck me often in my 10 years here in the Senate that one can look at the life we lead here in different ways. In one sense, in a sense that is most visible, we do the work of the country: We hold hearings, we meet with constituents, we legislate. This is the Congress of the United States. But in another sense, it has struck me increasingly over the years I have been honored to be here that there is another level of experience in this Capitol, which is that we are, in our own way, a small town of our own. We are a community. Yes, we have the Members of Congress and we have all who serve in our offices so well. We have the officers of both Chambers and those who work to keep these Chambers going. But there is a broader community here that we are all part of. It is the people who keep the buildings in such good repair. We have doctors, we have nurses, we have clergy people, we have representatives of the media who live in this community with us who cover us. We even have our own newspapers. And we have police officers. We are a small town in the way that life is lived in so many small towns across America. But we are very different from most any of those small towns in that hundreds of thousands of fellow Americans--indeed, people from all over the world--come and walk through this great citadel of democracy, this great symbol of freedom, peacefully and respectfully, coming through our community. On Friday, as we all know, one madman disrupted the tranquility of our community and took two of our own, Special Agent John Gibson, Officer Jacob Chestnut. There is a sense of palpable sadness and grief in this Capitol today, a sense of mourning at the loss of these two officers, because they were members of our community. We saw them every day. We exchanged greetings with them. We deeply regret and in some ways, I am sure, feel anger at what happened on Friday to take these two fine men, these two heroes, from us. As we mourn their loss, I do think it is important for us to remember the extraordinary and unique war that law enforcement officers play in this small town, our little community, the Capitol of the United States, which is similar to the part they play in every other community across America. Think of what happened in those few tragic, jolting moments on Friday afternoon when danger occurred and the sound of bullets resonated through the halls of the Capitol. Most everyone in the Capitol ran for cover, locked their office doors, jumped under tables and desks, got out of the way of danger. But the law enforcement officers, the Capitol Police throughout this Capitol, including these two fallen heroes, rushed to the danger. That is their job, to protect the rest of us. It is an extraordinary difference in a quiet, normal moment on a midsummer Friday afternoon. Suddenly, one madman pierces all of that, and every officer, every Capitol Police officer in our small town, rushes to the danger, rushes to their duty station. These two responded with instinctive but extraordinary, heroic impulses to stop this man, and ultimately did, and save so many lives through their heroism. Mr. President, I mentioned this just to pay tribute in some small way to Special Agent Gibson and Officer Chestnut, but to remind us how much we owe these people in this small town of ours, and in every city and town across America, and why we ought not to just treat them with a warm hello but feel, as we do today, in some measure every day the gratitude we have to them and express that in the best way we can, which is not only as friends and fellow citizens of our communities, but when we have a chance, as employers, to treat them appropriately and according to the extraordinary responsibilities that they bear in a moment of crisis. Mr. President, by coincidence this morning, I was reading from Jeremiah's Book of Lamentations and I read the commentary on Lamentations in which were cited the comments of an ancient rabbi who was interpreting the Psalms, David's Book of Psalms. In dealing with the sadness, the sense of gloom that is so at the heart of the Book of Lamentations, this sage of old, in commenting on Psalms, expressed a thought that is familiar to all religions, which is, ``If I had not fallen, I could never have arisen. If I had not sat in darkness, I could never have seen the light of God.'' So in this time of deep and heavy darkness for our community here on Capitol Hill, we pray with faith together and the faith that unites us in our community, unites us as faith has always united people in American communities, that Special Agent Gibson and Officer Chestnut are seeing the light of God, that they are being welcomed in the warm embrace of eternal life, greeted as the heroes that they are. We pray, also, that God will grant strength and comfort to their families, to their friends, to their fellow officers in the Capitol Police corps, and in some measure to all of us in this small town, Capitol Hill, who, today, mourn their loss. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor. Mr. ROBB addressed the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I have an amendment which I send to the desk.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, little more than 24 hours from now, the members of the Liberal Democratic Party will be meeting in Japan to choose their new head, who will in turn become the next Prime Minister of Japan. In that sense, this resolution, which I have been privileged to introduce with a bipartisan group of cosponsors, the principal cosponsor being Senator Thomas of Wyoming, the chairman of the Asian Subcommittee of Foreign Relations, this resolution could not come at a better time. It recognizes the importance of our bilateral relationship with Japan, perhaps the most important bilateral relationship we have. It notes the economic crisis in Japan and the way in which it is beginning to affect our economy. Commodity prices are dropping; our import-export balance is being affected; our trade deficit is going up. It appeals to the leadership of our great ally, Japan, as the Liberal Democratic Party meets tomorrow, to not just choose a new leader but to choose a new bold course which will directly address the economic crisis in that country which is now affecting us. I urge a strong bipartisan vote on this as a message to our friends in Japan.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Long into the foreseeable future, Japan will remain one of our most important economic trading partners and strategic allies in the world, sharing our common goals of regional and worldwide prosperity and peace. The importance of our alliance, though, compels us to speak out and place our support behind the most innovative reform efforts in Japan and push for a swift resolution of the economic crisis there. Earlier this week, the House passed a similar resolution with the overwhelming support of 391 Members--only 2 opposed. Given the urgency of the issue and the value of a unified congressional position, I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan resolution. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to offer this bipartisan amendment, a sense-of-the-Senate resolution expressing our concern about the impact of Japan's recession on the economies of East Asia, Southeast Asia and the United States, and particularly appealing to the members--our colleagues and friends--of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, which is meeting tomorrow to choose their new president, who will in turn become the next Prime Minister of Japan--to be mindful of the very profound and friendly concern that we have in the U.S. Senate about the condition of the Japanese economy, about its impact on the people of Japan, of Asia, and indeed, of the United States. I am privileged to offer this bipartisan amendment on behalf of Senators Thomas, Graham, Lugar, Bingaman, Brownback, Durbin, Kohl, Reid, Mack, Breaux and Inhofe. For almost a half century, the United States has worked with Japan for the common goals of peace, stability, democracy and prosperity in East Asia and the world. However, in the face of the deepening Asian economic crisis, this alliance currently faces what may be its toughest challenge yet. So far, the United States has survived the Asian crisis relatively unscathed, thanks to our long-lived boom economy. But I fear that good fortune may now be ending. By some estimates, worldwide GDP growth will drop from 3.7 percent this year to 2.4 percent next year. Analysts have attributed plummeting commodity prices to the Asian crisis in this country and throughout the world. A major dropoff in demand for U.S. products in Asia has pushed the trade deficit well beyond expectations to a record $15.75 billion--15 and three-quarters billion--this May. Industrial production in OECD countries like the United States has fallen from 5 percent to 2 percent and is expected to fall further again to 1 percent. The slide of Asian currencies against the dollar has put serious competitive pressures on our exports and another round of competitive devaluations would have devastating consequences on our industries and our workers. Unquestionably, Mr. President, if the Asian recession continues, its impact on our economy will worsen and millions of Americans will feel what is happening in Japan and Asia. This bipartisan resolution emphasizes that the strong recovery of the Japanese economy, which remains by far the largest in Asia, comprising fully two-thirds of the Asian economy, will make or break the region. With every subsequent analysis, the economic picture in Japan darkens. Japan's financial system has fundamental flaws which have only recently been brought to light, but which most everyone now acknowledges, and the wide scope of their ramifications continues to unsettle and surprise economists. Bad bank loans in Japan account for $574 billion in debt in banks in Japan which claimed to be solvent only recently, a problem which is perpetuated by a weak auditing system. Formal and informal barriers severely restrict free competition, often holding foreign market share in certain sectors down below 5 percent. The yen continues to fall, down 45 percent against the dollar since 1995. Further devaluation of the yen could lead to a devaluation of the Chinese yuan, an event which would have significant ramifications, and bad ones, for the entire global economy, particularly for us in the United States. All of these factors have led to substantial and understandable dissatisfaction among the Japanese people which they expressed earlier this month, with surprising clarity to many people, in a historic election for the Upper House of Parliament. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost 17 of its 61 seats and the primary opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, picked up nine members to reach a total of 47 seats in the Upper House. These election results should be taken very seriously in the United States. The situation is bad in Japan, the people of Japan know it, and without change, it will get worse. It is today axiomatic that we live and work in a global economy. When an economic crisis of this magnitude hits a country as large and significant as Japan, the entire world feels the impact; particularly we feel it. Japan is, after all, our second largest trading partner. Japan imported almost $66 billion of American goods last year. That is more than four times the import of American goods into China, in spite of its much larger population. With 40 percent of American total agricultural product going abroad, the Asian economic crisis is, of course, having a very negative impact on American farmers. It is no surprise that we are suffering along with East Asia. Without a rally by the Asian economies, American growth will fall off. By all accounts, a stable Japan is the first significant step to a broader Asian recovery. Mr. President, I do want to indicate to my colleagues and the managers of the bill, I am prepared to yield the floor at any point if anyone wishes to proceed. If the managers have other business they want to do at this time, I am prepared to put the rest of my statement in the Record. If not, I will be equally prepared to proceed. I thank the managers, noting the nod from the Democratic floor manager. Japan has taken steps to address its economic troubles. Economic stimulus packages and structural reform committees have been set in place. However, both the vast extent of the reforms necessary and the current political turnover including the resignation of Prime Minister Hashimoto after the election returns, which I have just described, make it imperative that we in the United States place our full support behind the forces of change, bold change, in Japan, lest they lose momentum. Swift reform hopefully will be a priority in relations between our two nations. We know, of course, the President has been in touch with the leadership of Japan. Secretary Rubin has done the same. And it seems only proper, and in some sense is necessary, that the Congress of the United States make clear its broad-based concern for the current economic condition of Japan--and here on the eve of the Liberal Democratic Party elections tomorrow, it is our deep hope, our plea, that change be implemented. So today, along with the distinguished group of Members of both parties, whose names I mentioned earlier, I am pleased to offer this resolution to express to our President and to the Government of Japan that the Senate of the United States is following Japan's economic performance with increasing anxiety and is very concerned about the pressure that Japan's current economic crisis is putting on our overall bilateral relationship. While we applaud efforts in Japan in assessing the damage and beginning the reform, we need to maintain a strong position supporting the implementation of those reforms, even though we know they will be painful. The resolution that we submit today cites a number of fundamental reforms crucial to recovery in Japan and Asia, including deregulation of the Japanese economy, liberating the creative, innovative forces that are there, improvement of market access for foreign entities wishing to do business in Japan, enforcement of fair trade, and particularly bold and substantial banking reform. These are all actions which will increase the competitiveness of the Japanese market and of Japanese companies, providing greater opportunities for foreign investment in Japan and for the success of individual Japanese and foreign entrepreneurs. Mr. President, a more open and healthy Japanese economy is fundamental to the recovery of the entire Asian region. Seeing no one else on the floor, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 more minute to complete this statement.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I ask for the yeas and nays.