Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, last night, as we know, a fire broke out in the First Missionary Baptist Church in Enid, OK, which brings now to more than 30 the number of African-American churches that have been burned by arsonists over the past 18 months, and, of course, the pace seems to be quickening in the last couple of weeks. This outrage recalls memories of similar attacks on religious people and religious institutions throughout the centuries. Sadly, they continue in the other places in our world today. Christians, Jews, Moslems, and others have all suffered for their faith in many horrible ways. The details of the acts of persecution vary widely, but the seeds of hatred that underlie the terror are sadly and tragically quite the same. The sheer blasphemy--I use the word intentionally--the blasphemy of these church burnings must chill our souls. We do not know if the acts of arson are the result of some horrible conspiracy. But in some measure, it would be a little bit easier to grasp the enormity of this evil if it were the result of the work of a single group of criminals because we can crush such a small band of terrorists, which is what they are. But, if these arsonists are not connected in some organized way, we have to ask ourselves again, as we have before in our history, ``How do we fight back against the larger stain of racism that exists in so many individual hearts consumed by the shared desire to destroy the spirit of those they hate?'' The answer, I want to suggest to my colleagues today, to this conspiracy of crime and hate is to enter into our own conspiracy of law and love. By law I mean we must--and I am confident we are using--use every legal weapon in our arsenal, in society's arsenal, to investigate every fire and follow every lead until the perpetrators of these injustices are brought to justice. We must consider these to be acts of terrorism and use the most sophisticated techniques at our disposal to hunt down those who have perpetrated them. By love what do I mean? I mean reaching into ourselves and as a country enveloping the victims of the church burnings with our own prayers and support and acts of kindness to make up, as best we can, not just for their tragic loss of their houses of worship but to respond to the sense of fear and alienation that go with those burnings. Mr. President, the ties that bind us as Americans--particularly our shared faith in God--are greater than this evil. By coming together now, we can guarantee that these acts of evil will gain no ground. In a sense, all of us who worship God and try to love our neighbors as God's children are the targets of these hate crimes, these arsonists. Yes; we may have different backgrounds and come from different denominations, but we are bound by a common faith--the same faith that helped inspire the founding of this Nation, as is clear from the first words of the Declaration of Independence; that the rights with which we are endowed do not come from some committee of lawyers or constitutional theorists; that we are endowed by these rights by our Creator. That is the source of our liberty, the driving idea of our democracy. Religion has always been a source of strength and purpose and, indeed, of unity in America. Religious people have carried some of the most noble acts of citizenship and leadership across the history of our country. So when these arsonists strike at houses of worship in America, they strike at the heart of America, the source of America's strength. Those who are full of such hate must fear that which poses the greatest threat to them. The spirit of faith that inhabits those who worship in the churches that have been burned must strike great fear in the hearts of those who have burned them. But the spirit of faith that has been expressed in those churches is not only strong; it is, as the arsonists will learn, a spirit that is unbreakable. So, though the church is burned, the light of faith that has burned within that church will grow stronger and spread in the minds and souls of those who have worshiped there and, I believe, in the minds and souls of the great majority of the American people. So I look forward to the resolution coming forth and to whatever other ways in which this Senate can express its outrage at the acts of arson and its sense of fellowship and brotherhood in the most profound sense for those who have worshipped at these churches.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I want to speak following the very eloquent words of our friend and colleague from Illinois, Senator Moseley-Braun, about the wave of church burnings in the South. There is a way in which it would be assumed that all of us here in this Chamber, reflecting, representing, as we do the American people throughout the 50 States, would naturally be outraged by these church burnings. But this is one of those cases where it is important not to leave the assumption not testified to, not to leave the feelings unexpressed, not to leave the Chamber as a body silent. Therefore, I commend the Senator from Illinois for introducing the resolution which she will. I have asked her and she has agreed to add me as a cosponsor. At this point, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I intend to vote against House Joint Resolution 1, a joint resolution proposing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States. At the same time, I want to make it clear that not only do I support balancing the budget, I have devoted a good deal of my time in the Senate toward achieving that goal. Most recently, I worked with a bipartisan group of Senators to develop a bipartisan balanced budget package. We spent over 6 months putting together a package which set reasonable discretionary spending limits, began the process of entitlement reform, and contained a reasonable set of tax initiatives. I was, and continue to be, proud of these efforts. And while we did not win the vote on this package, I am delighted to note that we came pretty close in a 46 to 53 vote, with 24 Democrats and 22 Republicans voting for what has come to be known as the Centrist Coalition plan. I found this vote heartening and I think it speaks well for the future of balancing the budget. Because if there is one thing we are all coming to realize, it is that one political party is not going to be able to do it alone. Rather than heading down the path of amending our Constitution to say we want to balance the budget someday, I hope that Members of this body will consider redoubling our bipartisan efforts to actually balance the budget. It seems to me that we are very close to agreeing on a 7-year balanced budget plan, this year, in this Congress. We ought not to distract from that goal which is tantalizingly within our reach. I hope my colleagues will agree with me and join in a here and now attempt to balance the budget by supporting the budget which has been put forward by the Centrist Coalition.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, on Wednesday, May 22, because of obligations in my State, I was absent for two rollcall votes, rollcall Nos. 145 and 146. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 145 and ``nay'' on rollcall No. 146.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank my friend and colleague from Louisiana. I thank my friend from North Dakota, who I am pleased to see this morning paraphrasing the words of the Talmud, which come strongly from his lips. I appreciate that sentiment. Mr. President, I want to thank Senators Chafee and Senator Breaux for convening this so-called centrist coalition. Frankly, it has been one of the most satisfying experiences I have had in the 8 years I have been in the Senate, because we did what I thought we came here to do, which was to forget that we are Democrats or Republicans, focus on the responsibility that we have as Americans, elected by people from all parties in our State, and deal with central and obvious problems--and, in this case, most especially, the imbalance in our budget. Sometimes when I look at the course that both parties are taking here, frankly, on matters such as the budget, it seems to me it has become so highly politicized that we might as well have our press secretaries staffing us on budget questions. This centrist coalition attempted to find a third way. The group was driven by the knowledge that if we truly want to balance the budget, it is going to take Members of both parties, working cooperatively, to do so. Our group understands, I think, the first rule of compromise. It means you cannot always have your way, or, put more eloquently, as the junior Senator from Utah, Senator Bennett, did in quoting his father, ``It means that you attempt''--and I love this expression--``to legislate at the highest level at which you can obtain a majority.'' That is perfect. That is just what we attempted to do in this group. What does this proposal have? It faces the big problem in the budget which is that the so-called entitlements are skyrocketing. If we let them go, they will eat up our Government and make it impossible for us to continue to do what people want us to do without grossly overtaxing them. It approaches entitlement reform not in a weak and defensive way, but by understanding that there is another side to this question. Yes, as Medicaid and Medicare go up, people are benefiting, but people are paying for them. Just to state it briefly in the time I have, how can we explain to a worker, how can I explain to a factory worker in Connecticut making $30,000 a year that through his paycheck he is paying for part A and through his tax bills, 75 percent of part B Medicare for a senior citizen retired, making $30,000 a year, with no kids to send through college or feed and clothe; or forget the $30,000--a senior citizen making $50,000 or $100,000 or $1 million. It is unfair to the people. We have a reasonable number on discretionary spending, the most reasonable of any of the budget packages. Mr. President, we have a sensible tax cut program that will create growth, that stimulates savings and investment through capital gains cuts and through some very creative programs to encourage people to save more. Also, to help the middle class in targeted areas, such as offering a deduction and help in sending their kids to college, which, at least in Connecticut, is the greatest burden I find the middle class is shouldering as I talk to them when I go around the State. This is a solid, balanced, thoughtful program. Mr. President, 22 of us--11 Democrats, 11 Republicans--have put it together. I hope a lot of our colleagues surprise us and join us in getting this moving in the right direction toward balanced growth for our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to express my strong support for the concept of a tax deduction for college tuition costs. The amendment we are considering today specifies--that it is the sense of the Senate--that if there is any tax revenue raised by the Finance Committee beyond what is needed to pay for a per-child tax credit, it should be used to either finance a tax deduction of $10,000 per year for higher education tuition and student loan interest costs, or to reduce the federal deficit. While I am not comfortable with some of the language of the amendment, which appears to preclude tax cuts in any other form this year, I share the sponsors belief that a tax break for the costs of higher education should be among our highest priorities when discussing tax changes in the 1997 Federal budget. I am proud to be a cosponsor of a bill that was introduced by Senator Daschle in January, 1995 that would make working families with annual incomes under $100,000 eligible for a tax deduction of as much as $10,000. This legislation, which is based on a proposal made by President Clinton, is a commonsense approach. It is well targeted to ease an already crushing and still rapidly growing financial burden on many hard-working families who are struggling to get by today. Mr. President, we all know that the American people are anxious about their economic future. They are worried about the security of their jobs and about their ability to take care of their families. As any parent with children in college or children approaching their college years can tell you, nothing compounds these anxieties like the spiraling costs of higher education. For many average working families, there is a real fear that they will not be able to afford to send their children to college, or that doing so will break them financially. The basis for this fear is all too real. According to the College Board, the average yearly cost in 1994 for an undergraduate attending a private university was $19,561, which is 94 percent higher than the same cost 10 years ago. The average yearly cost for a public university, $6,862 is up 76 percent over the same period. It's no wonder then that many middle class families are being priced out of the higher education market. The establishment of a tuition tax deduction along the lines of what we are proposing, in combination with student loans and grants, would help many families keep pace with these rising costs. It would accomplish that goal without creating any new bureaucracy or burdensome regulations, and would leave it to families to decide how to maximize the benefit of the deduction. Best of all, it would help our children get the tools they need to find and hold on to good jobs. In today's economy, and even more so in the future, that means a college education. There is no more sound predictor of economic success than a 4-year degree. Consider this example: a male college graduate earns on average 83 percent more than a man with only a high school diploma. A similar disparity exists for women with different levels of education. We must also remember that many of the young minds that we stimulate today will be the engineers, inventors, business leaders and skilled workers who stimulate the economy and create the jobs of tomorrow. As one parent, wrote to me, ``Without the intellectual curiosity and the understanding of the world about us that a college education affords, along with the knowledge and the skills in some specific area, we would not develop the minds of those people in our country who are able to come up with the ideas and develop businesses that create jobs.'' Congress has an opportunity to respond to the fears of the American people about the financial costs of higher education and to their hopes about their children's futures. This tax deduction proposal is an important step toward reaching those goals, and I think it sends a strong message to the American people that we in Washington are listening. Congress should heed the calls of hard-working middle class families who want their Government to value education. This idea makes a world of sense, and hopefully it will soon help make us a nation of greater knowledge and prosperity.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of Senator Lautenberg's and Senator Kerry's amendment to restore funding for the National Park Service, EPA, NOAA, and the Department of the Interior. This amendment goes to the heart of the debate over what kind of government the American people want. And it expresses in legislative language some of the strongest values we hold dear. There is no doubt the American people are of a mind to reduce the size and cost of government. They believe government takes too much from their pockets and spends too much on programs that aren't working. Those are strongly held views, and on the face of it you might think this amendment runs counter to that public mood. But I would gladly take the opportunity to offer the essence of the Lautenberg amendment up for a very public vote of the American people. There is doubt whether we can prevail on the Senate floor. There is no doubt that we would prevail in the court of public opinion. Because for all their doubts about government, the American people expect government to fulfill some very basic duties. Protect them from foreign enemies. Protect them from crime. And keep them and their children safe from hazards that they are unable to defend against on their own. That most definitely includes environmental pollution. They also care deeply about global warming, endangered species, and preservation of America's parks and forests. Yes; they're mad about taxes, stagnant wages, and government waste. But they're mad about beaches they can't swim at, water they can't drink, rivers they can't fish in, and air that's unsafe to breathe. This amendment shows respect for America, its land, air and waters and its people, by restoring funds for clean water, safe drinking water, enforcement of environmental laws, cleanup of toxic waste sites, and preserving our national parks. Let me address several key aspects of the amendment. First, Senator Lautenberg's amendment would restore $623 million to EPA's science and technology budget over the next 6 years. Frankly, Mr. President, I simply can't understand why the proposal before us cuts the President's request in this area by 21 percent. Let's look at what the science and technology account at EPA does. This account funds the operating programs of the EPA's Office of Research Development and the program office laboratories. These organizations provide scientific and technical expertise to help meet the agency's environmental goals. Specifically, these funds are used to improve our understanding of risks to human health and ecosystems, develop innovative and cost effective solutions to pollution prevention and risk reduction. Funding from this account is used by EPA to develop risk assessment criteria and to develop sound cost-benefit research and techniques. As we all know, there has been extensive talk this Congress about the importance of both risk assessment and cost benefit analyses. And the specific programs that EPA will focus on with funds from this account are critical. For example, drinking water research at EPA evaluates the effects of the pathogenic bacteria, parasites, and viruses that can cause serious illness or even death. In the air quality area, EPA intends to focus a multiyear effort on the dangers of small particles of soot known as particulate matter. A recent report by the Natural Resources Defense Council concludes that approximately 64,000 people may die prematurely from heart and lung disease each year due to particulate air pollution. According to the report, lives are not just being shortened by days or weeks but by an average of l to 2 years in the most polluted areas. EPA's research will focus on mortality estimates, an evaluation of the biologic mechanisms resulting in harmful effects, and development of innovative control strategies. Mr. President, all of us would agree that it is critical that EPA's regulations and policies be based on good credible science. But developing that science involves a public investment of funds. We shouldn't criticize EPA for failing to rely on the best science if we don't provide the resources to do the job. Second, I strongly support the restoration of funding for the State revolving fund under the Clean Water Act. SRF money is critical for Connecticut and particularly Long Island Sound. The SRF program espouses the virtues that the majority has been emphasizing this Congress--it provides low interest loans to States to meet community based environmental needs and offers flexibility in how money is spent. For example, Connecticut has received $170 million in Federal funds and has committed over $1 billion in State funds since 1987 to improve sewage treatment plants. In Connecticut, clean water is not just an environmental issue--but an economic issue. Long Island Sound, for example, generates approximately $5 billion per year for the local economy--through fin and shellfish harvest, boating, fishing, hunting, and beach-going activities. The commercial oyster harvest is a great example. In 1970, Connecticut's once thriving shellfish industry was virtually nonexistent. Today, its $50 million harvest has the highest value in the Nation. This improvement is due in large part to required upgrades in water quality. Our work on cleaning up Long Island Sound, however, has a long way to go. Health advisories are still in effect for recreational fish consumption, and disease causing bacterial and viruses have been responsible for numerous beach closures. In March, the department of public health in Connecticut issued a fish consumption advisory for mercury levels in freshwater fish from Connecticut waterbodies. Connecticut still needs hundreds of millions of dollars to perform needed improvements on public sewage systems, which continue to be the largest source of pollution for the Sound. The total estimated cost of upgrading the outdated plants is estimated at $6 to $8 billion. Inadequate funding of the SRF delays needed improvements in Long Island Sound and in other great water bodies in this country -- improvements that have enormous economic, recreational, and environmental benefits. That's why I support the additional funding in Senator Lautenberg's amendment. Let me just touch briefly on several other provisions in the Lautenberg amendment. The amendment restores funding for NOAA's operations and research program. One of the missions of this program is to improve the National Weather Service's ability to predict hurricanes. This makes good economic sense. An average hurricane warning today covers about 300 miles of coastline and involves preparation and evacuation costs the public in excess of $50 million per event. The improved approach to predicting hurricanes proposed by the National Weather Service can reduce the size of the warning areas, saving more than $5 million per storm, according to the Weather Service. This is a highly cost- effective approach--the Service tells us that the savings are more than 50 times the cost of the proposed additional observations. The enhanced observations will result in earlier, more accurate warnings. It will allow the public to protect residences more effectively and to relocate boats, recreational vehicles to safe locations. It will save property owners and insurance companies huge amounts of money. Moreover, when the areas of warning are smaller, the National Weather Service believes they will be taken more seriously, leading to more thorough preparations and saving more lives. Mr. President, the Lautenberg amendment expresses more clearly than many pieces of legislation we debate on the Senate floor the kind of values we cherish in this country. I strongly urge its adoption. Mr. President, I want to speak on one other matter in the budget resolution. The budget assumptions to the Energy Committee appear to include an assumption that revenues will be obtained from drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, although this is not clearly spelled out in the committee's report. This would be a huge mistake. As we found out during the fiscal year 1996 budget discussions, a wide majority of Americans oppose this move and the President clearly will veto any bill that includes opening up ANWR for drilling. The arguments for balancing the budget by drilling in the Regue continue to be very weak. Geological surveys show that the odds of striking oil are extremely low--the estimate for a major strike is only 5 percent. Environmental studies predict irreversible damage from drilling to this pristine ecosystem from drilling, particularly the calving activities of the 150,000 caribou that simply have no where else to go. The footprint of development would span a network of hundreds of square miles along the highly sensitive coastline where wildlife and fish are concentrated. Mr. President, I urge that the Energy Committee not come back in the reconciliation bill with provisions to open ANWR for drilling.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a very worthy constituent, Mrs. Mary White. Mrs. White is retiring this month after years of service to both her State and her country, by working for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Mrs. White spent 21 years in public service. Her work for INS over the past 6 years has been exemplary, and has set a very high standard for her peers. My office, as well as many others, has enjoyed an excellent working relationship with the Immigration and Naturalization service over the years, due in large part to the cooperation we received from Mrs. White. On numerous occasions she has performed flawlessly, always keeping an attitude that focused on helping others. My best wishes go out to Mrs. White and her family. May she enjoy this new stage in her life, and be ever mindful of the respect and esteem we hold her in.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, a few days ago, on Tuesday of this week, a number of colleagues rose to express criticism of the actions of the Clinton administration with regard to arms shipments from Islamic countries, including Iran, across Croatia to supply the Bosnian Army and the decision made not to intervene by this administration in April 1994. Yesterday, our colleagues in the other body voted to appropriate $1 million to conduct a formal investigation of this incident, which has been referred to as Iran-Bosnia. Mr. President, as far as I am concerned, the suggestion here that what happened in April 1994 with the Clinton administration bore any resemblance to the Iran-Contra affair is wrong. There is simply no connection between the two. As my colleagues in the Senate know, for quite a long time--1993, 1994, 1995--I was very critical of this administration's inability to lift the arms embargo multilaterally, preferably, but unilaterally if necessary. But for the very reasons that led me to work, on a bipartisan basis, with the Senate majority leader and others to urge this administration to mandate finally that the arms embargo against Bosnia be lifted, I find the criticism of the administration and the President with regard to the decision made in April 1994 to be way off base, to be unfair, to be a bum rap. It is, in fact, quite the opposite of what was implied and expressed by all of us who worked so hard to convince our colleagues and this administration to lift the arms embargo against the Bosnian Government. I want to explain why I come to the conclusion that what the President did in April 1994 was not simply not wrong, but, in fact, I believe it was the right and moral decision to make. Let me go back to that time in early 1994. In January 1994, we passed an amendment, supported by the majority leader and myself and many others on both sides of the aisle, which expressed the sense of the Senate--because it is all we could manage to convince our colleagues to support--a sense of the Senate that we should lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian Government by an 87-to-9 vote. That was a vote here in this Chamber. That vote expressed the growing disgust, fury, and frustration by most of us here in this Chamber, if not people throughout the country and the world, that acts of aggression and genocide were occurring, primarily by the Serbs against the Bosnian people, and not only was the world just standing by, but we were prohibiting the Bosnian people from receiving the arms necessary to exercise their fundamental right of self-defense. That was in January of 1994 that the Senate spoke. In the spring of 1994, Bosnia was in dire straits. The newly established federation joining the Bosniacs and the Croats was in a very precarious state. The Bosnian Moslems in Gorazde, Sarajevo, and elsewhere were under siege, and not just casual siege but siege that threatened wide-scale death, destruction, and defeat. The Bosnians again, confronted by a foe with immense advantage and heavy weaponry, were, under an embargo passed in 1992 before the war broke out to try to stop the war from breaking out, denied by the international community the means to defend themselves. I said then repeatedly, as others did in this Chamber, that that embargo was unjust and immoral. Major cities in Bosnia were threatened with being overrun by the Serbs. In fact, the Bosnian-Croat Federation was on the edge of defeat and annihilation. Against that backdrop, in April 1994, the Croatian Government asked the United States, through diplomatic channels, whether the United States Government would object if Croatia were to allow arms shipments to go through its country, Croatia, to the Bosnian Government from other countries, primarily Islamic countries, including Iran. In fact, as I mentioned Islamic countries, there is some reason to believe that not just Iran, although that for understandable reasons concerns us, but also Turkey, perhaps Malaysia, perhaps including, with the support of our allies, Saudi Arabia, supplied arms to the Bosnians in transit through Croatian territory. The question then posed to the Clinton administration by this diplomatic query from Croatia was, should the United States at that point have acted forcefully to require the Croatians to stop those arms from going to the Bosnians? President Clinton decided that the United States would neither approve nor object to such shipments. American diplomats told the Croatian Government in response to their question that they had ``no instructions'' on the matter. That, I feel very strongly, was the right decision diplomatically and morally, for to have done otherwise would have meant that the United States was not simply refusing to supply arms itself to the Bosnian Government, was not simply at that point enforcing to the extent it was able the embargo against the Bosnians, but was in fact demanding that other countries that wanted to allow arms to go to the Bosnians not be allowed to do so. Some critics now insist that in making that decision the administration undertook covert action without reporting to Congress. That is a quasi-legal argument invoking, I suppose, memories of Iran- Contra, and I wish to explain why I feel there was not covert action here. In fact, it was neither covert nor was it action. Let me make clear, too, that unlike the Iran-contra episode, there was here no mandate from Congress not to supply aid as there was in the case of aid to the contras. In fact, here there was growing support in Congress to have the United States Government either supply arms to the Bosnians or at least, as happened later in the year, to stop enforcing this immoral embargo. Why do I say this was neither covert nor was it action? In legal terms, the administration decided to take no position, give no instruction on the delivery of arms through Croatia to Bosnia from Islamic countries including Iran. That does not constitute action. The State Department has made it very clear that the United States had no contact with Iran on this matter and took absolutely no action to facilitate these shipments. So I do not see how this can be construed as action by our Government which would require formal reporting to Congress under relevant law. Second, and very importantly, this decision was by no means covert. While my colleagues who have been critical of late of the decision have acted, I presume, on the basis of an article which appeared early in April of this year, 1996, in the Los Angeles Times about the President's decision, the fact is that the decision made by the President and the administration in 1994 to give no instructions to the Croatians on the question of Islamic shipments of arms to the Bosnians across their territory should have been known to all of us and certainly should not be construed as news. The leadership of the Congress and the relevant committees and their staffs have and at that time and from the beginning of the war in Bosnia had routine access to the very same intelligence information about the Islamic arms shipments that was seen by administration officials early in 1994, and, in fact, before. No one, to my knowledge, urged the administration to take any steps at that time to stop the arms from reaching the Bosnians. Arms shipments from Iran and the other countries to Bosnia, facilitated by Croatia, which incidentally took its share of these weapons, in fact, became public knowledge in a Washington Post article on May 13, 1994, approximately 1 month after the administration made the decision to give no instructions to the Croatians. Again, we heard, and the record shows, no calls from anyone to stop those shipments of arms. In June 1994, 1 month later and 2 months after the decision made by the administration, our colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain, speaking forcefully for the lifting of the arms embargo denying the Bosnian Government the right to self-defense, shared with us all--and it is printed in the Congressional Record--a June 24, 1994, Washington Times story entitled ``Iranian Weapons Sent Via Croatia--Aid to Moslems Gets U.S. 'Wink.''' The whole story was told 2 years ago, 2 months after the administration's decision. I urge my colleagues to look at that article. Thus, the Congress and the public not only knew of Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia, but we also knew of President Clinton's decision not to act to stop those shipments nearly 2 years ago. On April 14 and 15, 1995, a little more than a year ago, a year after the decision was made by the administration, the Washington Post reported extensively on the President's decision not to stop arms shipments destined to the Bosnian Government, and still, I think for understandable reasons, there was no clamor for the United States to stop those shipments. In fact, the Washington Post, in an editorial on April 16 of 1995 entitled ``Arms For Bosnia,'' endorsed President Clinton's decision saying that the risk of Iranian influence was ``A risk worth taking to serve what ought to be regarded as the political and moral core of American policy to render as much support as possible to the Bosnian Muslims.'' So there can be no doubt that we all knew or should have known about the Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia and the shipments from other Islamic countries 2 years ago, and we all knew or should have known of the President's decision not to try to stop those shipments in the spring of 1994. And during that whole time the Senate and the House of Representatives did not call for U.S. action to stop those shipments. Therefore, Mr. President, I conclude that these shipments were by no means covert. In fact, not only were they not covert, they were not wrong, and shortly thereafter we in Congress expressed our agreement with that conclusion. Later, in 1994--in fact, in August 1994, on August 11, 1994--with pressure building here for support of the resolution that Senator Dole and I and others were advancing to lift the arms embargo, unilaterally if necessary, the Senate adopted an amendment offered by the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Nunn, and then Senate majority leader, Senator Mitchell, as an amendment to the fiscal year 1995 Defense authorization bill which called for multilateral lifting of the arms embargo but, more relevant to the present controversy, mandated the end of any American involvement in enforcing the international arms embargo on the Bosnian Government. In October 1994, Senator Dole and I and our cosponsors, unfortunately, could not gain enough votes to pass our legislation mandating unilateral lifting of the arms embargo, but in response to our efforts the Congress adopted the Nunn-Mitchell provision as part of the fiscal year 1995 National Defense Authorization Act. So we in this body and our colleagues in the other body made it illegal, against the law, for the United States to use appropriated funds to enforce the arms embargo. So since November 1994, the Clinton administration has been prohibited from acting to intercept arms shipments to Bosnia from Iran or anybody else, exactly the decision made in April 1994 by the administration. In that sense, the decision was ratified by the Congress. Mr. President, let me make clear that I share the concern expressed by my colleagues who spoke the other day, and other times, about the continued Iranian presence and influence in Bosnia. In fact, the Senate majority leader and I raised this concern in a letter we sent a few months ago to President Izetbegovic of Bosnia. I believe there has been a response to that letter. But, of course, what I am saying here is that we need to see the results and the content of the administration's decision of April 1994 beyond the unfortunate but, after all, very limited, continued presence of Iran in Bosnia. The supply of arms to Croatia and Bosnia by Islamic countries in 1994 and before in fact changed the military balance in the former Yugoslavia. As a result, the Bosniacs and Croats were able to defend their people and their territory and even reverse Serb gains. I certainly--and I am sure most of my colleagues--would much rather have seen the arms embargo lifted and the arms supplied to the Bosnian Government by the United States or other friendly countries other than Iran. It is clear to me--it was then--that the Bosnian Government would have preferred that outcome, but just as a drowning person cannot be particular about who has thrown him a life jacket, a dying nation, a nation under death siege, as Bosnia was at that time, cannot be particular about who gives it arms. Without the supply of those arms, the Serbs, in my opinion, would have completed their campaign of territorial aggression, ethnic cleansing. With these arms, the Bosniacs and Croats cooperated to hold the Serbs in place--in fact, to reverse some Serb gains. Then we came to 1995, growing concern about the course of the war, and finally Senator Dole and I, and our cosponsors, were able to receive majority support here in this Chamber and in the other body for mandating a unilateral lifting of the arms embargo against the Bosnians. Srebrenica fell; a slaughter occurred there. With that in the public's mind, and being able to say to our allies in Europe that Congress was about to force him to lift the arms embargo unilaterally, the President was able to gain the allies' support for the NATO airstrikes which brought the Serbs to the negotiating table at Bosnia, which stopped the war and then led to the 60,000-person implementation force now there in Bosnia, with 20,000 Americans, whose presence, incidentally, was ratified in a bipartisan vote here in which the Senate majority leader, in an extraordinary act of bipartisanship, nonpartisanship, gave his support to that presence. So I say, in conclusion, that to criticize the Clinton administration, President Clinton, for their decision not to protest the flow of arms to Bosnia in April 1994 is unfair and inconsistent with the position that so many of us took that, in fact, the arms embargo should be lifted. The decision the President made was, in my opinion, moral. It would have been outrageously immoral to have watched aggression and genocide continue in Bosnia and have done nothing--in fact, not only to have done nothing, but to have acted to stop others from doing something to help the victims of that aggression and that genocide. Finally, in the struggle many of us made here on a bipartisan, nonpartisan basis to change the course of this war, I think we had a substantial effect. It was, in my opinion, some of the finest hours of this Chamber in affecting the course of foreign policy and world events, stopping aggression and genocide, and preserving stability in Europe. I hope we will not sully that extraordinary record of nonpartisanship with a kind of partisanship in hindsight, which is unjustified by the facts and inconsistent with the bipartisan leadership of this Chamber on this matter. I thank my colleagues, and I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. I thank my colleague.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, as we return to session today it is spring in Washington. The blossoms are out. It is a beautiful time, and yet I am sure the experience I had in flying back with my family yesterday was similar to what others returning yesterday experienced: It brought home the terrible tragedy that occurred while we were away-- the plane that went down in Croatia carrying Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and so many others. It filled me with a sense of loss again yesterday and today. I am proud that I had the chance to work with Ron Brown during his all too short tenure at the Commerce Department. I enjoyed working with Ron Brown at various stages of his career-- as an attorney, as a leading Democratic activist, as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and most closely and, I think, most creatively in these last 3 years as Secretary of Commerce. I am honored that I can call him a friend. We are all going to miss him--it's painful to think that my staff and I won't have the sheer fun of working with him again--and the country will miss him even more. I have the greatest respect for him, as have so many others, as a wonderful, warm human being and as a leader who had a clear-eyed vision of how to make our people and our country better. You never think of a man in the prime of life not being here. In a way, it is death that forces you to appreciate even more the great skills and the service that Ron Brown, displayed for our benefit. Ron Brown truly loved the job he had at Commerce. He always managed to fit himself well to the tasks he undertook, wherever he was, but this job really did fit him like a glove, from the moment he took it. He understood as soon as he started the job that the mission of the Department of Commerce is to promote economic growth, that it is job creation. He understood from his own experience the wide-open nature of our market system and that the market and its upward mobility was the unique way America had for creating opportunity for its citizens. Ron Brown never saw the business community as an enemy, he saw it as an ally in expanding opportunity, and he threw himself into this job with a single-mindedness and joyous commitment to moving the system, the economic system, so that it would deliver for all Americans. Against this background, I want to talk about two efforts he spent his time on at Commerce that I think were critical. I believe that they were truly extraordinary, and set a new performance standard for our Government's relationship with the private sector. Exports The first has been written about extensively in the days since his death, and even over the preceding 3 years: The incredible export promotion operation he put together at Commerce. But I do not think that enough has been said about why it was so important. Until the mid-1970's, the United States economy was on top of the world, dominating it. While our economic rivals, led particularly by Japan, were figuring out that selling advanced manufactured goods for export was the key to economic growth and raising the living standards of people back home, our Government was coasting on our success. We were not paying attention to the emerging economic message. Other countries built export promotion machines--and they were machines--through the most intimate and comprehensive alliances between business and government, the private sector and the public sector. But our Government paid too little attention to the need to build these alliances. American businesses--and I heard this repeatedly from business executives in Connecticut--would go abroad to compete, and they would see what the business-government alliances of our competitors were doing for export promotion. I remember being told a story by the executive of one of the companies in Connecticut; his firm was competing against two other companies, one from Asia and one from Europe, for a very large order in a foreign country. He went over there to participate in simultaneous bidding among the three business competitors. This company from Connecticut, a big company, had its executives and lawyers in one room. But in the other two rooms, the executives and representatives of the Asian company and of the European company were teamed up with a representatives of the Asian government and of the European government, respectively. The government representatives were combining with their companies to enhance their firms' offers. It made the contest unequal. The Connecticut company did not get the contract. We lost an opportunity and jobs. The State Department, I am afraid, continued to treat American business as if it had to be held at arm's length. Too many administrations went along with that distant attitude. Preoccupied with the end of the cold war and retaining the political alliances required for it, the State Department embraced a traditional and outmoded notion of what foreign policy was all about, of what mattered to people here at home. It missed what was happening in both the world economy and the American economy, which has been a grave error. It made export promotion a low priority, while our rivals made it the top priority. The State Department treated U.S. business like pariahs, it was ``Upstairs-Downstairs''--trade was beneath our diplomatic priorities. This hasn't ended. A Business Week editorial this week notes that, ``The U.S. foreign policy and security elite believe security should be divorced from economic issues. Some go so far as to suggest that providing security is a perk of global power.'' It concludes, ``We don't. American workers can't be expected to suffer economically to protect [other nations] from one another.'' Ron Brown shared this view, and he was the new momentum for bringing our economy into foreign relations. The President was his staunch ally on this effort, and helped him force change in this area. Ron Brown, working with President Clinton, understood that we had to create a central position in our foreign policy for our economic policy. Export promotion had to be at the core of our international outreach. It was not a bad thing, but, in fact, it was a very good thing, if the President visited a foreign country with the Secretary of Commerce and the issues they discussed with the leadership of that foreign country included buying American goods. I come from a very export-oriented State. In fact, it has the highest level of exports per capita of any State in the country. We know that exports create jobs, high-paying manufacturing jobs, and that each manufacturing job has an economic multiplier effect, creating a chain of goods and services behind it, longer by far than other types of jobs. The sad fact is that we have been disinvesting in manufacturing since the mid-1970s, even though we need these kinds of jobs more than ever to develop a strong economy and a better standard of living for our people which will continue America as the land of opportunity. Ron Brown, as Secretary of Commerce, understood this from the beginning of his service. When he began his export promotion effort, within days of arriving at the Commerce Department, the leaders of the American business community that I spoke to--and I particularly heard this from heads of firms in Connecticut--were in disbelief. Someone was finally paying attention to their priorities. Somebody was finally trying to help them pull together an American governmental countermovement to the vast efforts rival countries and their businesses had been mounting for decades, to take jobs and exports away from us. Finally, someone with real power, the Secretary of Commerce, understood the problem. At the same time, in the beginning, many in the business community were skeptical whether Ron Brown could make all this happen. But he proved them wrong, to their delight. He was great at this. Trained as a lawyer and always a superb advocate, he used those skills on behalf of American businesses throughout the world. He knew how to run campaigns, and he ran this export operation like a campaign, which is exactly what it is. Nobody had ever done this before in the way that Secretary Brown did, and our country has never benefited as much before as we did from his service. He even set up, in the Commerce Department, something like a campaign war room, where he would get reports on economic opportunities opening up around the world to sell American products and create American jobs--an early warning system. Then the letters and the phone calls would start flying--Ron Brown was a phone wizard, it was a technology invented for him, he was forever reaching out to touch some business leader or a head of State abroad. He followed those calls with visits, such as the one he was on when his life ended. He was so enormously skilled, he was so hard working, he so absolutely and irresistibly likable, he had such a great smiling charm, such sharp intelligence, he was such fun, he had such energy. The customers loved his performance. They all knew he spoke directly to and for the President of the United States, and that he would relay their messages back to the White House. Even our friends in Japan, who have systematically been denying entry for too many United States products for too long, liked him, as he worked very hard at breaking down their barriers. U.S. business strongly appreciated his commitment to them, his accomplishments. He was a terrific political operator in the very best sense of this phrase--he was mobilizing the political system to serve the public's needs. The business community understood this and respected it deeply--I've heard this again and again from U.S. companies. Ron Brown was a new kind of life force to them and they had great affection for him. Ron Brown and his team's export success was only beginning when he left us, because the historic changes he was starting are a long-term project. But this new direction was a very important accomplishment for America. A major job for Secretaries of Commerce from now on will be to promote U.S. goods, not just in the offhanded, random way of the past, but with all the force of Ron Brown's campaigns, or they will be judged failures. From now on, the Federal Government is going to have to get down and get to work with business selling our economy. It's about time, but it took Ron Brown to show us how to do it. Ron Brown has set an entirely new standard for the country by which all that come after him will be judged. Innovation A second remarkable thing he did as Commerce Secretary was to fight for innovation. This has been almost nowhere mentioned in the press, and it is not well understood by the public or the fourth estate or Congress. But Ron Brown understood that for the American dream of opportunity to be sustained for a new generation, a higher level of economic growth was crucial. In addition to exports, he concentrated on another ingredient of that strategy, innovation. Even before he was sworn in as Commerce Secretary, his friend George Fisher, then president of Motorola and now of Kodak, invited him to speak to a leading group of business thinkers, the Council on Competitiveness. Ron Brown set out in that speech an aggressive agenda of technology development and promotion. He recognized that innovation has been the great American competitive advantage for generations, that it is now under attack as our competitors expand, and that it has to be renewed if we are going to keep expanding our economy. Economists estimate that technology development--coupled with a technologically trained work force--has accounted for 80 percent of the increase in United States productivity and wealth for most of this century. Innovation is our bread and butter. Brown understood that since the Second World War, the Federal Government has backed most of the long term research and development and applied R&D that has gone on in the U.S., while business focused on shorter term product development. That is an economic reality--the risk and cost of R&D means that the private sector must focus on what it can raise capital for--shorter term products. It's a classic market failure problem, and until recently Congress on a bipartisan basis has supported the need for governmental support of innovation. Brown picked up a series of small technology and technology extension programs that had been quietly started at Commerce in previous administrations, and made them a central focus. With an able team around him, he made the Commerce Department the administration's leader in civilian technology development, and supported a new system of cooperative R&D development with business, requiring business to match Federal funding to ensure sounder Government R&D investments and leveraging Federal research dollars. He also helped expand a new system of manufacturing extension centers around the country, now in over 30 States, to bring advanced manufacturing techniques and technology to smaller and mid-sized manufacturers desperately in need of it to be able to compete with global competitors. In a time of budget cutting, he successfully found the resources to build these programs. He was also head of the administration's Information Infrastructure task force, formulating policies on the new information highway and how to expand our population's access to it. He was both an innovator and an innovation supporter, and was moving quickly toward making the Commerce Department what it long should have been: A department for trade and technology, where each of these two sides of the department provides synergy for the other. It was becoming an agency which provided governmental leadership in these two areas in support of the private sector, not trying to dominate it, and much stronger because of this. Ron Brown's clear success, of course, led to the usual Washington political reaction against signs of creativity. Unfortunately, for too much of this past year he had to spend time deftly deflecting attacks on the existence of the Commerce Department. But he had helped make it into an instrument for growth and job creation, and his efforts had strong support among business and work force constituencies. He had begun the process to put the Commerce Department on the map as a unique American engine to support opportunity and growth in America. He had a great dream for his agency, and I respect that dream very much. I, for one, pledge to him that I am not going to sit here in this body and let it get dismantled. barriers I have discussed his innovations at Commerce, but I want to raise an additional subject. Much was said in the aftermath of Ron Brown's tragic death about his role as a bridge builder. I say he was also a barrier breaker. I think sometimes about Chuck Yeager and how he felt piloting his X-1 rocket plane when he first broke the sound barrier. Ron Brown was a great barrier-breaker, too, our first African-American to achieve many things. While Chuck Yeager's courage enabled him to break his barrier, the sound barrier remained and had to be broken again by countless other pilots. Ron Brown's barrier-breaking was different. It also required courage, but he had a way of breaking barriers that began to erase them. He would get through a barrier in his wonderful, excited, buoyant way, and he would make everyone who watched him think, there goes another one, and why didn't we do that long ago? When Ron Brown became Commerce Secretary, many were expecting the President to name an experienced business leader, and were disappointed when he named a friend and politician. Ron Brown's outstanding performance as Commerce Secretary, and the depth of support he built in the business community, was unlike anything any Commerce Secretary has been able to do before. We watched and thought, there he goes through another barrier, the biggest he had ever faced. In so doing, Ron Brown broke an even bigger barrier. America has been blessed with a long line of outstanding African-American leaders. Many of those leaders have been seen as leaders of the African-American community. Ron Brown was intensely loyal to his African-American roots, but, like Colin Powell, he was also a national leader, an American leader who was clearly understood, in his great energetic way, to be battling for the well-being of every American. In his struggle to save the Commerce Department over the last year, Ron Brown often compared the abolition of the Department to unilateral disarmament in the international economic wars of today. In closing, I note that all around our city of Washington are statues of our great military heros. Now we are engaged in a different kind of global conflict: an economic global conflict. If we ever start building statues for those who have served courageously and with great success in this economic battle for the opportunity and the well-being of our people, we ought to erect a statue to Ron Brown as one of the finest of those leaders.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, this week the Senate Armed Services Committee is engaged in marking up the fiscal year 1997 Defense authorization bill. All of us on the committee, as well as many of my colleagues who are not on the defense committee, are concerned about how we fund, structure, equip, maintain and train our military forces to meet the challenges which our country faces today and will face tomorrow as we defend and advance our national interests. I would like to speak for a few moments today about some of the difficult questions I believe we are facing as we confront the challenges which lie ahead for our military forces. The millennium is coming and beyond it a new century--a century which, if what we see occurring around us today offers any indication, will bring changes few of us can begin to imagine, no more than people at the end of the 19th century could have foretold what the 20th century would bring. We need only to look at the incredible leaps which have occurred in technology in the past decade and the ever-increasing frequency with which new technological wonders are being introduced to know that the 21st Century will be a time of amazing change full of great opportunity and great risk for all of us. The past years have shown us not only that new technologies are becoming more readily available--whether it is faster, smaller and cheaper computers and computer chips, inexpensive and reliable global positioning systems, or communications which permit us to bring into our homes hundreds of different television channels from around the world, movies on demand, and global news which is real-time and all too real--but that changes will have to come about in the way we organize our daily lives and the very structure of businesses and institutions in response to that technology. Those enterprises which fail to adapt to new technology quickly find themselves behind their competitors and, in the private sector, are soon out of business. The same is true of national governments and military organizations-- those which are unable to recognize that rapid change is the one constant in our lives and cannot exploit that change, risk falling behind their potential competitors. History teaches that every significant new industrial or technological advance finds its way into warfare. Unlike business, however, the price of failure for our national security is not bankruptcy or disappointed shareholders; it could well be the loss of our freedom, our foreign markets and the safe and prosperous future which all of us seek for our children. Guaranteeing our security in the new century will require innovation. It will also require courage and wisdom as we incorporate technology and innovation into our defense structure. To help structure the very important debate which I believe we need to engage in across the country on national security, I would like to offer a few observations and pose a few questions First, as we look to the future, we ought to be asking a very basic question: What is it we want our military to be able to do? Not just in the sense of military capabilities--this is an important question we will get to shortly--rather, the broader question that underlies the other. What role do we want the United States to play in the next century and what will we need our military to be able to do in order for the US to play that role? I believe that America's values and interests in the 21st century will demand that we play at least as active a role in the world as we did in this century and especially during the cold war. We can already see signs of this in the optempo rates of all our Armed Forces in the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. We cannot shrink from playing our part as world leader, nor should we. To make a long story short, let me simply say that American leadership in world affairs increases the personal security and economic opportunities of the American people. This will be true in the next century as it is today. We have now and will continue to have vital national interests in the security and stability of Europe, Southwest Asia, the Middle East, East Asia and elsewhere, just as we have vital interests in maintaining our freedom of access to sea- and air-lanes of transportation and commerce. We must be able to defend these interests and values and to support those who share them with us. We must continue to pursue them in the century ahead, as we have in the past, in concert with strategic allies and coalition partners. We should, if at all possible, try to go about this work with our allies, particularly our NATO and Pacific partners, but even with partners, it is essential that the military force we begin to structure in the final years of this century will enable us to fulfill our role of internationalist leader in the next century. Second, we must consider and evaluate the sources of the challenges we are likely to face as we protect and advance our national interests in the international community of tomorrow. What kinds of regional hegemons are likely to develop in the years ahead and are any of them likely to graduate into a superpower status--either because they are smaller nations who obtain weapons of mass destruction or because they are larger nations who will have economic power coupled with weapons of mass destruction? In the near term, the likelihood of a superpower--or ``peer competitor'' which could directly threaten the United States--is low. It is precisely this lack of a near-term, superpower, peer competitor which provides us with breathing room, a window of opportunity, if you will, in which we can reassess our military structures and be willing to take some risks in order to ensure our Armed Forces are properly structured, sized and equipped in the longer-term. We can afford to step back and take a look at where we are and where we want to go and to take some risk today to prevent a much greater risk in the future if we fail to make this reassessment. Third, we must consider the form challenges to our interests are likely to take in the next century. Are conflicts likely to be of the cold war variety--either in the sense of needing to rely on our nuclear deterrent capability or requiring massive numbers of ground forces as would have been needed to fight a Soviet invasion of Western Europe--or will they be on the order and scale of Haiti, Somalia, or Bosnia. I believe that, in the near- and mid-term, they are more likely to be of the latter sort. As Gen. Charles Krulak, Commandant of the Marine Corps and someone who is thinking long and hard about ``the day after tomorrow,'' has said, the future is most likely not ``Son of Desert Storm;'' rather, it will be ``Stepchild of Somalia and Chechnya.'' We cannot rule out the possibility of another Saddam Hussein rising in a region of strategic interest to the United States nor can we discount the potential for a resurgence of Russian nationalism or aggressiveness, or Chinese or Islamic nationalism or aggressiveness particularly if coupled with the ability to deliver weapons of mass destruction. We must do all we can to prepare for such a possibility using every tool available to a country of our stature--economic, diplomatic, and military. To use the terminology of Secretary of Defense Perry, we must maintain a hedging capability to counter such threats if they arise. But we also must be ready for smaller contingencies which I believe will be more likely and, unfortunately, more frequent. We also cannot ignore the unconventional challenges which we face today and which we will, without a doubt, face on a greater scale in the decades ahead. Here I mean the threat of terrorist actions beyond and within our borders and the ever-increasing dangers posed by the spread of relatively inexpensive weapons of mass destruction-- especially chemical and biological weapons. We must have forces and policies which allow us to respond to all of these challenges and to head them off whenever we can. Our strategic planners must think hard and innovatively about the way others--both states and non-state actors--will try to influence what we do in the future. In this regard, I recommend to you an article which appeared in the January 29th issue of the Weekly Standard by Col. Charles Dunlap, an Air Force lawyer and a provocative thinker and writer. In this article, entitled ``How We Lost the High-Tech War of 2007,'' a fictional Holy Leader of some unstated group recaps the strategy used to defeat the United States by terror and exploiting the power of televised images of death and destruction. In a particularly unsettling passage, he says: Though we rarely defeated the Americans on the battlefield, we were able to inflict such punishment that they were soon pleading for peace at any price. With their economy in ruins, their borders compromised, their people demoralized, and civil unrest everywhere, they could not continue. We had broken their will! They had no choice but to leave us with the lands we conquered and the valuable resources they contain. And finally, we are told: ``We taught the Americans that no computer wages war with the exquisite finality of a simple bayonet thrust.'' So, while we work to exploit the technology of the future, we cannot afford to become its prisoner. Fourth, we must confront the question of how to shape, size and equip our military forces in order for them to do what we want of them and to be able to confront--and defeat if need be --the wide range of challenges we will face. While all of the preceding questions are important, this question is the one toward which the other questions lead. It is, in fact, the reason why we must ask and answer the preceding questions. When the Clinton administration came to office in 1993, Secretary of Defense Aspin undertook the Bottom-Up Review ``to define the strategy, force structure, modernization programs, industrial base, and infrastructure needed to meet new dangers and seize new opportunities.'' The Bottom-Up Review was a useful transitional document, but I believe it is already inadequate to the present and certainly to the future because it does not appropriately answer the preceding questions. The reality of the strategic environment has already changed and the resources we have committed to our military have been limited. It is time for a new strategic review by the Department of Defense on behalf of the President, and, I believe we would benefit at this time in our history from the work of an independent, bipartisan commission. I hope that Congress will mandate before long both a new Bottom-Up Review and a National Bipartisan Commission. I am confident that dedicated and innovative thinkers both within the Administration and outside it will be able to put us on the right course for the next century. This must be done soon. I do not believe that we can afford-- either fiscally or strategically--to continue to tinker at the margins of our military forces or to procure just the same sorts of Cold War systems in ever diminishing quantities (and at an ever-increasing price). As we seek to answer the questions of how best to size, shape and equip our military forces, we must take a hard look at technology, defense organization and management, industrial base capabilities, and research and development capabilities where we have a competitive advantage over potential adversaries. Then, keeping in mind the warnings of thoughtful people like Charles Dunlap, we must exploit these advantages to structure and equip our forces appropriately. I would caution against thinking of ``defense innovation'' strictly in terms of developing new technologies. That is overly simplistic and potentially dangerous. Innovation must incorporate organization, strategy, and doctrine as well. If we are to succeed in the new century, we must be innovative in our thinking about what we procure and how we procure it, the way our forces are organized and sized, and the way they will respond to challenges which may be unlike most of what we have encountered so far in our history. It is conventional wisdom today to say that a technology-driven revolution in military affairs is here. The technological advances I spoke of earlier beckon us to find ways to integrate what will be commonplace tomorrow into the decisions we are making today on weapons systems, command and control systems, intelligence gathering capabilities, and the means of conducting and defeating information warfare. As a subset of this question, we must consider ``how do we get from here to there?'' What is our transition strategy? How do we ensure that we do not reverse course in our procurement strategies so precipitously that important defense industries find themselves gutted of their skilled work forces, critical research and development, or essential near-term production? How do we ensure that we do not make technologically-driven alterations in our force structure that diminish the effectiveness and morale of our troops? Government and industry need to form a new partnership in which both sides work together to ensure that we develop and buy the right products at the right price and in the right quantities to protect our national security without fiscally overburdening the Nation. We cannot afford the luxury of buying products which do not provide the capabilities we need for tomorrow. Nor can we afford to procure weapons systems which just provide more of the capabilities we already possess. Throughout all of this runs the very serious question of fiscal resources. The traditional question ``how much is enough?'' is no longer sufficient--if, in fact, it ever was. We cannot be concerned just with aggregate spending levels though much of the current and future debate will center on the ``right number'' for the defense budget for this fiscal year or during the Future Years Defense Plan, or FYDP. If we are to succeed in making the best use of limited defense dollars, we must also ask ``are we spending defense dollars wisely?'' If we hope to be able to maintain the support of our people for spending to protect our national security, we must be able to demonstrate that we have broken the chains of tradition and parochialism within the Congress, the Executive branch and in the military services and are investing in a military force for the future not the past. The debate which many of us in the Congress have been and are engaged in must stay focused on the right questions. There is a danger that liberal Democrats, many of whom want to cut defense spending to increase social spending, will join Republican budget hawks, who want to cut defense spending to reduce the deficit, to form an odd-couple defense-cutting coalition. But neither group, as far as I can see, is asking the right questions before recommending that defense spending should be cut. And neither group acknowledges that we are spending a smaller percentage of our GDP on defense today than at any time since Pearl Harbor. Total defense expenditures may be able to be reduced in future years--although I am skeptical--but we won't know if this is the right decision until we answer the basic questions I have posed: what are the security challenges of the next century and what do we need to meet them? There are, in fact, a number of thoughtful studies underway today which are examining these questions. Each of them seems to start with the premise that our current force structure may well be most appropriate for the kinds of conflict which will occur least often in the future. We need to pursue this premise not as a means of hacking away at one service or another just for the sake of downsizing or as a means of capturing savings to procure one favored weapons system over another, but because technology may have the same potential to achieve personnel reductions in the military as it has in the private sector. Military success in the future will depend on how visionary and clear- headed we are today and on how courageous we are prepared to be. Remember the familiar line from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance, ``A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'' We have the intellectual strength in this country today both in the Pentagon and outside to ensure we do not maintain a foolish consistency and that we break with the models and standards of the past if that is what is best for our Nation's security. Andy Marshall and Bill Owens have certainly laid the groundwork for such thinking within the Pentagon. Organizations such as the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments have been active, creative and constructive in contributing to the debate with their analyses. The American Enterprise Institute, under the leadership of Dick Cheney and Richard Perle, and the Democratic Leadership Council, which I have the privilege of chairing, have completed studies or have work underway which have or will offer innovative and thought-provoking analyses and proposals. Taking these efforts in conjunction with my proposals for a new strategic review by the Department of Defense and an independent National Bipartisan Commission, I believe we can and will get it right, though the conclusions we come to may be painful for many to accept. We must be engaged in this difficult debate today if we are to have the best defense tomorrow and avoid maintaining the world's finest fighting force for wars we have already fought. We must also engage in it in order to rebuild the popular consensus which is essential for our national security in support of sufficient defense spending. If we involve more of our citizens in these discussions, Congress and the American people will be willing to provide the necessary resources, because they will understand that Sir John Slessor was right when he said: It is customary in democratic countries to deplore expenditure on armaments as conflicting with the requirements of the social services. There is a tendency to forget that the most important social service that a government can do for its people is to keep them alive and free. If we are, in fact, going to do our duty to keep the American people ``alive and free,'' we must engage in this debate with all our energy, our intellect and our courage. We owe this to the people who have sent us to the Senate to serve them and we owe it to the future of our great country. I hope my remarks today will be seen as a contribution to this important debate and I look forward to engaging all of my colleagues in these important discussions.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. I thank my friend and colleague from Louisiana and my friend and colleague from Rhode Island for the leadership of this group. Mr. President, it has been an honor and a pleasure to participate in this bipartisan group to achieve a balanced budget. This group has been meeting for nearly 6 months in an effort to come up with a budget that balances in 7 years. We started with the premise that coming to balance in a bipartisan way is not an impossible task. But, it certainly was painful at times. The cost of not pressing ahead to come to balance will hurt even more in the long run. And I very much believe the economic benefits of trying to come to balance make those tough decisions about slowing spending that much easier. I am particularly pleased with the efforts this group has made to address the growth in entitlement programs in both the short and the long term. Some of these changes will produce no savings in the 7-year budget window we are talking about. But they are much needed reforms and they will save a lot of money in the longer run. The package we are discussing here today contains smaller cuts in discretionary spending than any of the other major budget balancing plans that have been presented to date. The discretionary spending cut number contained in this plan is far more realistic than the numbers that have been floated in other plans. As we all know, these spending cut targets will need to be met year by year through the appropriations process. As any member of the Appropriations Committee can tell you, making dramatic cuts in discretionary spending is like trying to get water from a stone. There is just not a lot of slack there anymore. We need to go where the money is and that is in the explosive growth in entitlement spending. If we don't get a handle on this spending, we can forget about doing all of the things we believe the Federal Government ought to do. Things like improving education and building roads. Like providing for a national defense. Like keeping our air and water clean. As Matthew Miller observed in the New Republic, ``At this rate, by 2010, when the baby boom retires, entitlements and interest on the debt will take up all available revenue, meaning there won't be a cent left for the FBI, the Pentagon, (or) the national parks . . . Nor will there be a dime to bolster our lagging R&D, education and infrastructure investments, where we've trailed Germany and Japan for years.'' That is just the beginning. As Miller points out, ``Then if it's possible, things get worse.'' The critical need to control entitlement spending in this bill is growing. We learned earlier this week that Medicare's Hospital Insurance Program lost $4.2 billion in the first half of this fiscal year. This trust fund, which pays hospital bills for the elderly and disabled, lost money for the first time last year since 1972. But the loss last year was $35.7 million for the year, not $4.2 billion for half the year. The bipartisan plan adds an element of fairness to the voluntary portion of Medicare. We ask those who have more to pay more for this valuable benefit. The group has looked at recommendations made by the Boskin Commission on adjusting the consumer price index. That commission believed the adjustment should be in the neighborhood of 0.7 to 2. By this measure our proposal is cautious in its recommendation of less than a 0.7 change in the CPI. We have also consolidated the existing welfare programs into a block grant to States which will give States the flexibility they need to come up with innovative ways to help get the poor out of the welfare system and into the capitalist system. This budget package also contains a number of important tax provisions. We have included $130 billion in tax cuts in our package as well as $25 billion in corporate loophole closers. It is no secret that not everyone believes we need a tax cut at this time. Indeed, not everyone in the bipartisan group believes now is the time for a tax cut but we all recognized the need to compromise if we intended to put together a package that could actually pass. Personally, I think it important to include tax cuts, particularly in the broader context of why we want and need to balance the budget. Probably the most compelling reason for us to balance the budget is to minimize the dissaving which budget deficits represent. With an unsettlingly low savings rate in this country, the last thing we need is to add to that problem through government deficits. We very much need to boost savings and make that money available for investment which is essential to improving productivity, competitiveness and ultimately to creating jobs and increasing real wages in this country. I am delighted that the tax package we have put together contains genuine incentives for savings and investment and I think such a package adds to, not detracts from, this budget proposal. In the interest of full disclosure, I should also reveal that my home State of Connecticut labors under the highest per capita tax burden in the country, making tax relief all the more important to me. In particular, the bipartisan tax package contains a variation on a proposal that Senator Bob Kerrey and I have been working on, called ``KidSave.'' The bipartisan package allows parents to take a $250 credit for each of their children under the age of 17. However, if a parent agrees to set aside their credit in a retirement savings account for their child, that credit is doubled to $500. These retirement accounts would follow virtually all IRA rules with one exception: We would allow children to borrow against them for their higher education. Thanks to the wonders of compound interest, $500 a year invested for 17 years in a child's name at 10 percent growth a year, the average growth over the last 70 years, will yield over a million dollars by the time the child reaches age 60. That's great news for parents and kids. And it is also great news for our economy since we need to take strong steps to increase our drastically low savings rates. The bipartisan proposal would also allow parents whose income exceeds the income limits on the credit to set aside up to $500 in after-tax dollars in a KidSave account and reap the benefits of the tax-free build-up of these dollars. Under current law, it is very difficult to set up an IRA for a child since most children do not have the earned income needed to qualify for a retirement account. The bipartisan proposal also contains a 50-percent reduction in the capital gains tax for individuals as well as a drop in the corporate capital gains rate to 31 percent. This section also allows for the deduction of a loss on a personal residence sale and a 75-percent capital gains exclusion for qualified small business stock. These proposals are very similar to those contained in S. 959, a bill I have cosponsored with Senator Hatch from Utah. We should all keep in mind that the benefits of a capital gains cut will flow to millions of Americans of all income groups--to anyone who has stock, who has money invested in a mutual fund, who has property, who has a stock option plan at work, who owns a small business. That represents millions of middle class American families. And these are just the direct beneficiaries, not even counting the many middle and lower income people who will get and keep jobs thanks to the investments spurred by a capital gains tax cut. In addition, our proposal expands the availability of tax deductible IRA's and allows for penalty-free withdrawals from those accounts for a number of reasons. We have also included two higher education tax incentives, some significant AMT relief, estate tax relief, an increase in the self-employed health deduction to 50 percent and an extension of the expiring tax provisions. Taken together, these tax cuts will encourage investment and savings which will in turn stimulate economic growth in this country. That growth will generate jobs and those jobs will generate greater revenues. And of course, that revenue will make it easier for us to balance the budget. When all is said and done, I believe this is a thoughtful and meaningful set of tax provisions. They are part of a larger budget package which is thoughtful and meaningful as well. I hope that this Chamber will consider taking up this package, or something quite similar to it, in the weeks and months ahead. To not do so, would be passing up a tremendous opportunity. I hope we won't do that and I would encourage my colleagues to join us in our effort to move this bipartisan budget forward. Mr. President, it is April 25, 1996, and we are pleased to note this morning that our respective leadership and the White House have agreed, 7 months into fiscal year 1996, on a budget for fiscal year 1996. This is unprecedented and obviously regrettable. It has been tumultuous for those who work for the Federal Government. But, on the other hand, I would like to think that all of us have learned something from the travails of this year, the long and twisted path that we have followed, to finally be at a point where we can adopt a budget for fiscal year 1996. I hope we will take what we have learned and apply it to the broader challenge and opportunity we have to adopt a program to take us to real balance by a date certain. Can we do it? Well, 22 of us are here this morning, Republicans and Democrats who worked side by side, dropping our party labels and agreeing that we are all Americans, and that we have a common problem here, which is to take our country out of debt and to thereby help our economy grow. This group of 22 was able to do it. And we hope that this proposal that we are presenting this morning will filter out to our colleagues in both parties and up to the leadership of the Congress and the White House to give them the confidence that they, too, can work together to bring our budget into balance. This is exactly not only what America's future demands, but what the American people want today. Mr. President, I want to focus for a moment on the provisions of this package that deal with tax cuts. Tax cuts are controversial. Some people say--particularly on my side of the aisle--``Why have tax cuts if you are trying to balance the budget?'' But this group, wanting to present our colleagues with a package that had a chance of passage, included substantial tax cuts--$130 billion in tax cuts over the 7 years. I believe very strongly that these tax cuts are consistent with our aim of balancing the budget and, particularly, consistent with the desire that drives the movement to balance the budget. And that is the desire to get America growing--to create and protect jobs for average working Americans. We have in here a capital gains tax cut, a 50-percent cut on the individual side, one that I think will unleash billions of dollars of capital in the private sector and create the kind of momentum that can raise our national rate of growth from the anemic place we have been, up a half point, up a full point, to create millions of new jobs and greater wealth in our country. Mr. President, we have some incentives here for greater savings, expanded individual retirement accounts. And, Mr. President, we have some relief for the middle class. People talk about wage stagnation of the middle class. What is the best way to help overcome that wage stagnation? Put a little more money in the pocket of working families with children. Under our plan, parents can take a $250 credit for their children or agree to set that money aside in a KidSave account for that child's higher education and retirement and receive $500. Mr. President, this is a good, strong program. These tax cuts are a vital part of it. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, today I would like to recognize a group of students from Trumbull High School. This weekend, April 27- 29, 1996, more than 1,300 students from 50 States and the District of Columbia will be in Washington, DC to compete in the national finals of the We the People--The Citizen and the Constitution Program. I am proud to announce that a class from Trumbull High School will represent Connecticut. These young scholars have worked diligently to reach the national finals by winning first place at the statewide competition in Connecticut. The distinguished members of the team representing Connecticut are: David Abbate, Stephen Britton, Meredith Bucci, William Dunn, Brian Emery, Michael Felberbaum, Kristina Gospic, Pamela Harinstein, Bruce Malloy, Philip Moore, Jessica Paris, Michael Ragozzino, Douglas Rowe, Matthew Rowland, Jason Saunders, John Urbanati, Richard Van Haste and Alison Veno. I would also like to recognize their teacher, Rita Altieri, who deserves a share of the credit for the success of the team. The district coordinator Jane Hammer and the State coordinator Joani Byer also contributed a significant amount of time and effort to help the team to the national finals. The We the People--The Citizen and the Constitution Program is the most extensive educational program in the country developed specifically to educate young people about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The 3-day national competition simulates a congressional hearing in which students' oral presentations are judged on the basis of their knowledge of constitutional principles and their ability to apply them to historical and contemporary issues. Administered by the Center for Civic Education, the We the People-- Program, now in its ninth academic year, has reached more than 70,400 teachers and 22,600,000 students nationwide at the upper elementary, middle, and high school levels. Members of Congress and their staff enhance the program by discussing current constitutional issues with students and teachers. The We the People--Program provides an excellent opportunity for students to gain an informed perspective on the significance of the U.S. Constitution and its place in our history and our lives. I wish these students the best of luck in the national finals and look forward to their continued success in the years ahead.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, today we commemorate the 81st anniversary of the Armenian genocide, a horrendous crime against humanity which cannot be denied. Beginning on April 24, 1915--81 years ago today--the declining Ottoman Empire undertook a systematic effort to kill or drive out the Armenian people. By 1923, more than 1 million Armenians perished as a result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse. Others were driven from their homeland. The terrible tragedy that befell the Armenian people was the first systematic genocide in this century. Unfortunately, it was not the last. The Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's purges, and the killings of Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge are all further examples of brutality and death carried out in the name of the state. In Bosnia, American leadership and united international diplomacy and intervention has finally brought an end to the genocidal ethnic cleansing, though ethnic divisions there will be long in healing. We mark this date in history because it is so important that we remember. We must remember the Armenian genocide and other abuses of state authority against ethnic minorities. We must remember all of the victims of crimes against humanity. Our memory, our vigilance, is essential to ensuring that these acts do not happen again, to Armenians or any other group. The Armenian people and their culture have survived. The Armenian- American community is thriving in a land where cultural and ethnic diversity are increasingly valued. And the collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to an independent, democratic Armenian state. So let us remember the Armenian genocide, let us be vigilant to prevent such crimes in the future, and let us celebrate the Armenian people, who have overcome this tragedy to thrive in independent Armenia and in America.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, today I would like to recognize the volunteers of Hospice Care, Inc. in southwestern Fairfield County, CT. For 15 years Hospice Care has provided care and comfort to people with terminal illnesses. But beyond providing palliative care, Hospice is a program for individuals who are dealing with the emotional and spiritual changes that follow the diagnosis of a life-ending illness. Hospice could not offer its many meaningful services without its volunteers; they are an integral part of Hospice. Together with professional staff, volunteers work to relieve the physical, emotional and spiritual pain experienced by the patient and family. Volunteers provide direct patient and family services, including companionship and support, transportation, assistance with chores and errands, and pastoral and bereavement care. Volunteers visit patients and families in their homes and hospitals, nursing homes, homeless shelters, and residences for people with AIDS. These volunteers offer a listening ear and a shoulder to lean on during a family's most challenging times. Other volunteers work behind the scenes, serving on the Board of Directors, assisting in fundraising and public education efforts, and with administrative tasks. In 1994, 100 active volunteers donated more than 12,000 hours of public service, valued at over $250,000. But one cannot put a price tag on this dedicated service--these efforts are priceless, and Hospice could not operate as successfully as it does without its volunteers. It is with great pride and pleasure that I commend the volunteers of Hospice Care for their many hours of difficult and dedicated service.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Delaware. Mr. McCollum was right. Senator Biden was right in everything he said, except for where he said you could not wiretap my mother-in-law. I would like to talk to him later about that.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. She probably is. Mr. President, let me say first, both to the Senator from Delaware and the Senator from Utah, how very pleased in general I am that we have come as far as we have on this legislation. Over a year ago, President Clinton challenged us to reach a bipartisan consensus on counterterrorism legislation in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City tragedy. The Senate promptly did so, including the Dole-Hatch substitute bill we passed last spring, including in that bill most of the key provisions of the President's own counterterrorism bill offered earlier in the year by Senator Biden and others. Unfortunately, the Senate's spirit of bipartisanship did not reach the other body and did not, as fully as I think it should, reach the conference itself. The conference has produced a report and a bill that I would term a good bill in the war against terrorism. But it could and should be better. That is why I am supporting Senator Biden's motion to recommit, particularly directing the conference committee to insert this so-called multipoint wiretapping that I was privileged to offer along with Senator Biden and which, as he has indicated, passed the Senate overwhelmingly. Not only was that amendment dropped in conference, but even what I thought was the entirely uncontroversial provision in the Senate bill that would add specific terrorism offenses to the list of crimes for which wiretaps may be authorized was dropped as well. In other words, if there is a suspected terrorist out there now and law enforcement wants to tap his or her phones, they have to do so on suspicion of a crime being committed but it cannot be a terrorist act. They have to find some other specific crime that was committed. Mr. President, these omissions puzzle me and trouble me. I am afraid that they represent some strange left-right marriage of fear or skepticism or cynicism about the Government and about law enforcement officials particularly. As Senator Biden has said, the power to wiretap--let me say from my own experience and others in law enforcement--is a critically important tool in the hands of law enforcement, and they need that tool not to feather their own nest or build their own empires; they need it to protect us from the criminals, and in this case the terrorists. They are on our side, those who work for the U.S. attorneys, the FBI, the DEA, and the whole range of other law enforcement officials down to the State and local police. They are on our side. There is somehow a feeling that has grown at the extremes of our political discourse that we have a lot to fear from them. This provision, as Senator Biden has said, incorporates the classically American due process rules to make sure that any wiretap that is obtained is approved by a judge and is applied and used in narrowly and clearly circumscribed ways. Mr. President, for everything I know about terrorism, the ability to penetrate the highly secretive world of terrorists is the single most effective tool law enforcement officials have to prevent terrorism acts from happening and then to bring the terrorists to justice. We can build barriers around Federal buildings. We can increase law enforcement presence and try to fortify obvious targets. But we can never defend all of the targets of terrorists, because they are cowards. They will look for and strike undefended targets without remorse about killing innocent civilians. You simply cannot protect every target. They will strike everywhere. The object of the terrorist is to create terror and panic. So, the best defense we have against them is an offense, to penetrate their operations and to know that they are about to strike before they strike so we can cut them off. If there was ever a category of crime that warranted the full range of wiretap capacities that law enforcement officials have today, it is terrorism. That is what this amendment would do. Look. In a way, by not including this amendment that the Senate passed overwhelmingly, more essentially, allowing the terrorist to use all of the tools of modern technology, leave the house phone, go to the cell phone, go to the car phone, go to the phone booth, and we are saying to law enforcement, ``Oh, no, you cannot. We are going to make it hard for you to follow them. You are going to have to prove that they are moving with an intent to thwart that wiretap.'' Senator Biden's example is so perfect. Basically we are saying to the law enforcement folks, you have to hear a terrorist say on the phone that, ``I got to hang up, John. I'm afraid the FBI is listening to me. I am going to move out to my cell phone.'' You need that kind of proof of intent to get, under the current law, this multipoint wiretap. So we are saying to the bad guys, the criminals, the terrorists, you can use all of this modern telecommunications equipment, but we are going to stop law enforcement from trailing them. It is as if we said during the cold war that we had intelligence information that the Soviet Union had developed some very strong new weapon, that the Pentagon had the ability to counteract that weapon with a defense, but we are going to put strictures on them from using that weapon. It does not make sense. It is why I think it is so important to adopt this amendment. Mr. President, multipoint wiretaps are used very sparingly because of the requirements that Senator Biden set out. They have proved, however, according to testimony submitted by Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick to the Judiciary Committee, highly effective tools in prosecuting today's highly mobile criminals and terrorists who may switch phones frequently for any number of reasons. Again, as we have asked before on other measures, why allow ease of obtaining a multipoint wiretap against other criminals, including organized crime criminals, and not allow it against terrorists who threaten us in such a devastating way? Mr. President, the aim of this motion to recommit is a simple one. We want to be sure that our law enforcement officials receive the tools they need, the tools that will be there for them so that swift and effective action can be taken to prevent the World Trade Center explosion, to prevent Oklahoma City, to prevent any future disaster of that kind. We owe our Federal law enforcement officials that authority, that capacity, those tools. But the truth is we owe it to ourselves. They are out there trying to protect us and our families from being innocent victims of a terrorist. Every counterterrorism expert that I have ever talked to or ever heard, within the Government and without, will emphasize the importance of infiltration and surveillance in countering terrorists and bringing them to justice. Given the devastating effects of these acts, not only the maiming and death of men, women, and children, but these acts are assaults on the institutions of our Government, on the democratic processes which we cherish, and on our fundamental liberty to move safely and confidently throughout our society. They create the kind of fear that undercuts the freedom that we have fought for. So I do not understand why we would not want to give the law enforcement officials the same authority to obtain wiretaps when pursuing terrorists that they have under current law to pursue other kinds of criminals, and why we do not want to improve their ability to track all criminals, including terrorists, as they move from phone to phone and from place to place with the obvious intent of thwarting surveillance and covering their treacherous, deadly deeds. Mr. President, finally, I say we need to give the conferees another chance to strengthen this bill. As I said at the outset, it is a good bill, but it can and should be a better bill. I fear that, if we do not include a power like this one, that we are going to come to a day when we are going to look back and regret it--a terrorist act that will occur that could have been stopped if law enforcement had this authority. I know we want to pass this bill and have the President sign it by the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City tragedy, but the truth is that I would rather see us do this right, do it as strongly and effectively as we can. And if it takes a few more days, so be it. We have waited this long. We can wait a little longer to protect ourselves, our society, the institutions of our Government, and the basic freedom to live and move around in our great country from the horrible acts of terrorists within our midst. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, before I proceed with my remarks, let me just offer my thanks and appreciation to my dear friend and colleague from Georgia for the statement he has made, for the leadership he has given on this issue. He is known best, I suppose, for the extraordinary leadership he has given on matters of national security now for more than two decades in the Senate, but he has been a courageous leader in other areas, including this one of tax reform. It reminds us about why we will miss him next year and why I hope he will continue to push us in the direction of reform from the private sector. I thank my friend for his superb words.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, as we return to session today, it is spring in Washington. The blossoms are out. It is a beautiful time, and yet I am sure the experience I had in returning with my family yesterday was comparable with others coming back to Washington; it brought home the terrible tragedy that occurred while we were away, that of the plane going down in Croatia carrying Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and so many others, including two corporate executives from Connecticut, Claudio Elia and Bob Donovan. And coming back here to this city, where many of us came to know Secretary Brown, filled me with a sadness and a sense of loss yesterday and today. I wanted to come to the floor and share with my colleagues just a few thoughts about Ron Brown. I hope someday in the not too distant future to be able to offer to my colleagues some comments, if they did not have the opportunity to know them, about Bob Donovan and Claudio Elia, whose service to our country was extraordinary. Today, however, I wanted to speak about Ron Brown. I am proud that I had the chance to work with Ron Brown during his all too short tenure at the Commerce Department. I tremendously enjoyed working with Ron Brown in his various capacities as a private attorney, as a leading Democratic activist, as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and most closely and I think most creatively in this last period of years as Secretary of Commerce. I am honored that I can call him a friend. We are all going to miss him--it's painful to think that my staff and I won't have the sheer fun of working with him again--and the country will miss him even more. I have the greatest respect for him, as have so many others, as a wonderful, warm human being and as a leader who had a clear-eyed vision of how to make our people and our country better. This is a case which is so often true where you interconnect with a person in a professional capacity, but you never think of a man in the prime of life not being here. In a way, I suppose it is death that makes you appreciate even more the great skills and the enormous service that this individual, Ron Brown, displayed for our benefit. Ron Brown, it seemed to me, truly loved the job he had at Commerce. He always managed to fit well, wherever he was, and this job really did fit him like a glove, from the moment he took it. He had an early understanding that the mission of the Department of Commerce was to promote economic growth, that is job creation. He understood from his own experience the wide-open nature of our market system and that it was the unique way America had for creating opportunity for its citizens--the market, upward mobility. Ron Brown never saw the business community as an enemy, he saw it as an ally in expanding opportunity, and he threw himself into this job with a single-mindedness and joyous commitment to forcing the system, the economic system, to deliver for all Americans. Against this background, I want to talk about two areas of his time at Commerce that I think was so critically important. I believe that they were truly extraordinary, and set a new performance standard for our government's relationship with the private sector. Exports The first has been written about extensively in the last days since his death, and even some over the preceding three years: The incredible export promotion operation he put together at Commerce. But I do not think that enough has been said about why that was so important. Until the mid-1970's, the U.S. economy was on top of the world, dominating it. While our economic rivals, led particularly by Japan, were figuring out that selling advanced manufactured goods for export was the key to economic growth and raising the living standards of people back home, our Government in a way was coasting on our success. We were not paying attention to that message. Other countries built export promotion machines--and they were machines--through the most intimate and comprehensive alliances between business and government, the private sector and the public sector. But the truth is that our Government paid too little attention to that need to build those alliances. American businesses--and I would hear this repeatedly from business executives in Connecticut--would go abroad to compete, and they would see what the business-government alliances of our competitors were doing for export promotion. I remember being told a story by the executive of one of the companies in Connecticut, telling me that they were competing against two other companies, one from Asia and one from Europe, for a very large job in a foreign country. They went over there to participate in simultaneous bidding among the three business competitors. This company from Connecticut, a big company, had its executives and lawyers in one room. But in the other two rooms, the executives and representatives of the Asian company and of the European company were teamed up with a representative of the Asian government and of the European government, respectively. In that case, the Connecticut company did not get the contract. We lost some opportunity and jobs. The State Department, I am afraid, continued to treat American business as if it had to be held at arm's length. Too many administrations went along with that distant attitude. Preoccupied with the end of the cold war and retaining the political alliances required for it, the State Department embraced a traditional and outmoded notion of what foreign policy was all about, what mattered to people here at home. Too often they missed what was happening in the world economy and the American economy which has been a grave error. They made export promotion a low priority, while our rivals made it the top priority. The State Department treated U.S. business like pariahs, it was ``Upstairs-Downstairs''--trade was beneath our diplomatic priorities. This hasn't ended. A Business Week editorial this week notes that, ``The U.S. foreign policy and security elite believe security should be divorced from economic issues. Some go so far as to suggest that providing security is a perk of global power.'' It concludes, ``We don't. American workers can't be expected to suffer economically to protect [other nations] from one another.'' Ron Brown shared this view, and he was the new momentum for bringing our economy into foreign relations. The President was his staunch ally on this effort, and helped him force change in this area. Ron Brown, working together with President Clinton, understood that they had to create a central position in our foreign policy for our economic policy. Export promotion had to be at the core of our international outreach; that it was not a bad thing, but in fact it was a very good thing, that if a President visited a foreign country with the Secretary of Commerce and one of the items they discussed with the leadership of that foreign country was buying American goods. I come from a very export-oriented State. In fact, it has the highest level of exports per capita of any State in the country. We know that exports create jobs, high-paying manufacturing jobs, and that each manufacturing job has an economic multiplier effect, creating a chain of goods and services behind it, longer by far than most other types of jobs. The sad fact is that we have been disinvesting in manufacturing since the mid-1970's, even though we need those kinds of jobs more than ever to develop a strong economy and a better standard of living for our people which will continue America as the land of opportunity. Ron Brown, as Secretary of Commerce, understood this from the beginning of his service. When he began his export promotion effort, within days of arriving at the Commerce Department, the leaders of the American business community that I spoke to--and I particularly heard this from heads of firms in Connecticut--were in disbelief. Someone was finally paying attention to their priorities. Somebody was finally trying to help them pull together an American governmental countermovement to the vast efforts rival countries and their businesses had been mounting for decades, to take jobs and exports away from us. Finally, someone with real power, the Secretary of Commerce, understood the problem. The fact is, at the beginning a lot of folks in the business community were skeptical that Ron Brown could make this all happen. But he proved them wrong, to their delight. He was great at this. Trained as a lawyer and always a superb advocate, he used those skills on behalf of American businesses throughout the world. He knew how to run campaigns, and he ran this export operation like a campaign, which is exactly how it was. Nobody had ever done this before in the way that Secretary Brown did, and our country has never benefited as much before as we did from his service. He even set up, in the Commerce Department, something like a campaign ``war room,'' where he would get reports on economic opportunities opening up to sell American products and create American jobs--an early warning system. Then the letters and the phone calls would start flying--Ron Brown was a phone wizard, it was a technology invented for him, he was forever reaching out to touch some business leader or a head of state abroad. Then following those calls with visits, such as the one he was on when his life on Earth ended. He was so enormously skilled, he was so hard working, he was absolutely and irresistibly likable, he had such a great smiling charm, such sharp intelligence, he was such fun, he had such energy. The customers loved his performance. They all knew he spoke directly for and to the President of the United States, and that he would relay their messages back to the White House. Even our friends in Japan, who have systematically been denying entry for too many U.S. products for too long, liked him, as Ron Brown worked very hard at breaking down the barriers. U.S. business strongly appreciated his commitment to them, an enormous accomplishment. He was a terrific political operator in the very best sense of this phrase--he was mobilizing the political system to serve the public's needs. The business community uncderstood this and respected it deeply--I've heard this again and again from U.S. companies. Ron Brown was a new kind of life force to them and they had great affection for him. Ron Brown and his team's export success was only beginning when he left us, because the historical changes he was starting are a long-term project. But this new direction was a very important accomplishment for America. A major job for Secretaries of Commerce from now on will be to promote U.S. goods, not just on the offhanded, random way of the past, but with all the force of Ron Brown's campaigns, or they will be judged failures. From now on, the Federal Government is going to have to get down and get to work with business selling our economy. It's about time, but it took Ron Brown to show us how to do it. Ron Brown has set an entirely new standard for the country by which all that come after him will be judged. Innovation A second remarkable thing he did as Commerce Secretary was to fight for innovation. This has been almost nowhere mentioned in the press, and it is not well understood by the public or the fourth estate or Congress. But Ron Brown understood that for the American dream of opportunity to be sustained for a new generation, a higher level of economic growth was crucial. In addition to exports, he concentrated on another ingredient of that strategy: innovation. Even before he was sworn in as Commerce Secretary, his friend George Fisher, then president of Motorola and now of Kodak, invited him to speak to a leading group of business thinkers, the Council on Competitiveness. Ron Brown set out in that speech an aggressive agenda of technology development and promotion. He recognized that innovation has been the great American competitive advantage for generations, that it is now under attack as our competitors expand, and that it has to be renewed if we are going to keep expanding our economy. Economists estimate that technology development--coupled with a technologically trained work force--has accounted for 80 percent of the increase in U.S. productivity and wealth for most of this century. Innovation is our bread and butter. Brown understood that since the Second World War, the Federal Government has backed most of the long-term research and development and applied R&D that has gone on in the United States, while business focused on shorter term product development. That is an economic reality--the risk and cost of R&D means that the private sector must focus on what it can raise capital for--shorter term products. It is a classic market failure problem, and until recently Congress on a bipartisan basis has supported the need for governmental support of innovation. Brown picked up a series of small technology and technology extension programs that had been quietly started at Commerce in previous administrations, and made them a central focus. With an able team around him, he made the Commerce Department the administration's leader in civilian technology development, and supported a new system of cooperative R&D development with business, requiring business to match Federal funding to ensure sounder Government R&D investments and leveraging Federal research dollars. He also helped expand a new system of manufacturing extension centers around the country, now in over 30 States, to bring advanced manufacturing techniques and technology to smaller and mid-sized manufacturers desperately in need of it to be able to compete with global competitors. In a time of budget cutting, he successfully found the resources to build these programs. He was also head of the administration's information infrastructure task force, formulating policies on the new information highway and how to expand our population's access to it. He was a true innovation supporter, and was moving quickly toward making the Commerce Department what it long should have been: a department for trade and technology, where each of these two sides of the department provides synergy for the other. It was becoming an agency which provided governmental leadership in these two areas in support of the private sector, not trying to dominate it, and much stronger because of this. Ron Brown's clear success, of course, led to the usual Washington political reaction against signs of creativity. Unfortunately, for too much of this past year he had to spend time deftly deflecting attacks on the existence of the Commerce Department. But he had helped make it into an instrument for growth and job creation, and his efforts had strong support among business and work force constituencies. He had begun the process to put the Commerce Department on the map as a unique American engine to support opportunity and growth in America. He had a great dream for his agency, and I respect that dream very much. I, for one, pledge to him that I am not going to sit here in this body and let it get dismantled. All around this city of Washington are statues of Union Army generals. This is a good thing--they remind us of the crisis the Civil War represented to our country's future, of the great wave of sacrifice required thirteen decades ago to keep this country intact and to advance the freedoms it stands for. Now we are engaged in a different kind of conflict, a global economic conflict. There are no particular enemies in this conflict, at most we have rivals, not enemies, although in some ways the real enemy is ourselves because we have not yet been able to mobilize to confront our problems. This new conflict will test whether the great American dream of opportunity, of economic growth that will allow all our citizens to grow, will endure for future generations. Someday, if we are successful in keeping our opportunity dream alive, we should think about putting up some statues of the men and women in the private and public sectors who are the new generals, new kinds of heros, of that conflict. Ron Brown's statue should be one of the first we erect. Barriers I have discussed his innovative role at Commerce, but I want to say something about barriers, too. Occasionally, I think about how Chuck Yeager felt piloting his X-1 rocket plane when he was the first to break the sound barrier. Ron Brown was a great barrier-breaker, too, our first African-American to achieve many things. While Chuck Yeager's courage enabled him to break his barrier, the sound barrier remained and had to be broken again by countless additional pilots. Ron Brown's barrier breaking style was a little different. It also required courage, but he had a way of breaking barriers that began to erase them. He would get through a barrier in his wonderful, excited, buoyant way, and he would make everyone who watched him think, there goes another one, and why didn't we do that long ago? When Ron Brown became Commerce Secretary, many were expecting the President to name an experienced business leader, and were appalled when he named a friend and politician. Big business has long been a barrier for African- Americans, but Ron Brown's outstanding performance as Commerce Secretary, and the depth of support he built in the business community, was unlike anything any Commerce Secretary has been able to do before. We watched and thought, there he goes through another barrier, the biggest he had ever faced. In so doing, Ron Brown broke an even bigger barrier. America has been blessed with a long line of outstanding African-American leaders. In the past, those leaders typically have been leaders of the African- American community, and that has been very important for the country, too, and we need many more. Ron Brown well-remembered and was intensely loyal to his African-American roots, but, like Colin Powell, he was also a national leader, who was clearly understood, in his great energetic way, to be battling for the well-being of every American. That is a new, promising thing in America, it is a strong new step down our country's freedom road. Mr. President, he led this effort to take some small, relatively unknown program in the Commerce Department--the Advanced Technology Program is one--to build it into an engine for technology growth and job creation. Much was said in the aftermath of Ron Brown's tragic death about him being a bridge builder. I say he was also a barrier breaker. I think sometimes about Chuck Yeager, how he felt piloting that X-1 rocket plane when he first broke the sound barrier. Ron Brown was a breaker, too, but the thing about Yeager's accomplishment is that barrier has to be broken every time someone chooses to do it. Ron Brown broke barriers that erased them. When he became Commerce Secretary, many were expecting the Secretary to name an experienced business leader. They were disappointed when he named a friend and politician. But Ron Brown, by his outstanding performance at Commerce and the depth of support he built in the business community, broke another barrier and brought with him the business community and a lot of Americans. Ron Brown was true to and proud of his African-American roots and the community from which he came, but he became in his lifetime like Colin Powell: Not just an African-American leader, but a great American leader. Mr. President, finally, I say this. All around our city of Washington are statues of our great military heroes. Now we are engaged in a different kind of global conflict: an economic global conflict. If we ever start building statues for those generals who served as courageously and with great success in the economic battles that affect the quality of life and job opportunity for people in our country, we ought to erect a statue to Ron Brown as one of the greatest of those leaders. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the Rotary Club of Meriden, CT, on the occasion of their 75th anniversary. On April 26, 1921, Meriden joined the nationwide movement of Rotary Clubs under Charter 898. Numbering only 27 businessmen, the club had no idea then that they would grow into one of the pillars of the community. Ever since their founding, the club has immersed itself in the every-day life of Meriden, constantly striving to make the city a better place through the sponsoring of various activities and events. The Rotary Club of Meriden reaches out to the people in numerous ways. They were the first organization in the city to sponsor Little League Baseball, the great American game. The youth of Meriden are also assisted through college scholarships provided by the Rotary Club, as well as through the Meriden Public Library Career Center, which the club has long supported. The Rotary Club not only contributes to Meriden's spiritual beauty, but to its physical beauty as well. The club is responsible for planting over one thousand trees in the city. They work closely with other humanitarian groups, either bell ringing for the Salvation Army or sponsoring bloodmobiles for the Red Cross. The Rotary Club also strives to help those outside Meriden, its influence reaching as far as the international community. Their exchange study groups bring business and professional people to Meriden from countries such as France, Germany, and Japan, so that all may learn from one another. Meriden and the entire State of Connecticut is fortunate to have had a group such as the Meriden Rotary Club in its service for 75 years. Another 75 years of service and support is eagerly anticipated.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. A study by the Committee for Contraceptive Development, jointly staffed and administered by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, found that only one major U.S. pharmaceutical company still invests in contraceptive research. Why? The study blamed the legal climate, fear of lawsuits, for this situation. H.R. 956, this bill before us, would make these drugs and other medical devices more available. We have said over and over again, this bill protects the right of an injured plaintiff to get full recovery for damages, cost of medical care, loss of wages, any other provable item. It goes beyond, and says you can get recovery for noneconomic losses, intangibles like pain and suffering, from those who are responsible for the negligence. It simply puts a small limit on punitive damages. In doing so, yes, it helps some businesses expand, provide the miraculous products I have talked about, sell products for less; but it helps millions of other people. In a way, the beneficiaries of this legislation are not so visible. That is why I read from this testimony. But they, and millions and millions of others of them, are counting on us to pass this bill to bring balance and trust back to our legal system. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I will settle for 3.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. I thank my friend from the State of Washington. Mr. President, I have been thinking as I listened to the debate this morning, and what preceded it yesterday and before that, that there is a way of thinking around the Capitol that is not the way of thinking that I hear back home in Connecticut. It is what I call either-or. You know if an idea is put forward by a Republican, no Democrat shall be for it. If an idea is put forward by a Democrat, no Republican should be for it, or, in this case, if something is good for business, it has to be bad for consumers. That does not figure, particularly if you look at the overall effects of this bill. What I want to contend here is that because of the extraordinary work done by Senators Gorton and Rockefeller, and by the conferees from the Senate and the House, this is a win-win bill. This is a bill that is good for consumers and good for business. In that sense, it is good for our country overall. There is a way in which the opponents to the legislation approach it with such skepticism, turning every word in the most potentially damaging light and not considering the intentions of the sponsors and the authors and the record that we have tried constantly to build on the floor. Everybody in America knows, at least most everybody knows, that our civil justice system is not working well. I do not think anybody really can stand up and defend the status quo of the litigation system in America. Nothing is wrong with it. That is preposterous. The average person on the street--I stop them in Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport-- knows that lawsuits take too long; that people do not get justice in a timely fashion; that too much of the money goes to lawyers. They know that. I think the question is, how are we going to make it better? Why should we make it better? Because of the specific problems and shortcomings of the current system I just referred to and also because the public, the people have as little faith as the people of our country do today in our system of justice. That is a profound problem that goes beyond tort reform and anything else. It strikes at the very heart of people's faith in the Government they have. Lord knows, we know they have enough lack of confidence in the legislative branch, maybe some in the executive, but it goes to the judicial as well. I honestly believe, deeply believe that this bill--moderate, modest, sensible, small, incremental reform--is a step in the direction of beginning to restore some faith in the system, making it work for people who are injured and making sure that it does not destroy faith in the system by punishing people who are not guilty and letting those who are guilty often off without being punished. So I say this is win-win. It is good for business and it is good for consumers. It will create jobs by removing a deterrent to innovation and investment. It will reduce consumer prices by making litigation less expensive. If 20 percent of the costs that we are paying for a ladder is litigation-related costs, the cost of that ladder is going to go down if we can reduce that litigation cost some, and it goes on and on throughout the system. I wish to talk particularly again about this biomaterials section of the bill of which I am a cosponsor. It comes from something that is very real that is threatening something very good. The very real element here is that there is an unnatural shortage of raw materials. Judge Heflin referred to it. Thank God, Judge Heflin is healthy and well today because of the pacemaker he has. He is one of 8 million people who have benefited from medical implants of one kind or another. The device is put together by a manufacturer but it takes parts they buy from people who do not make these parts particularly for this purpose. They are not making much money on selling those parts. Batteries are one. The information I put into the Record yesterday shows that one of the manufacturers of batteries--a couple actually-- used in pacemakers have stopped selling to the manufacturers of pacemakers because they are afraid they are going to get sued for something that is not their fault. They would just as well sell the batteries to somebody else where the chance of a lawsuit is not as great. They are not worried about the negligence. They are worried about what it is going to cost them if they get tied up in a lawsuit. In the debate there is such skepticism expressed about these medical devices and pharmaceutical companies, et cetera. Sometimes when I look back and read history and I say, now, how far have we really come; how much better is the human race? I wonder if we have ascended very far in the way in which we deal with one another. However, there is one way we can objectively show that there has been extraordinary progress in human experience and that is in our health. We are living longer. You can see it year-by-year. We are up, I guess, in the mid-seventies now in terms of average life-span. A lot of that has to do with pharmaceuticals, these wonder drugs that have been invented. And a lot of it has to do with these medical devices that we are trying to protect by making sure that the manufacturers can continue to get the parts, the materials and the component parts, and are not frightened out of supplying those parts because of the fear of lawsuits. I said yesterday, when I talked about the allegations, the opponents of this bill keep lighting fires around the periphery to sort of stop people from voting for the bill. Those of us who support it put out one or two fires and there are three more burning over here. And one of the fires has been lit about how this bill would affect the existing breast implant procedure. I said at length yesterday--I will not repeat it today--the bill will not impact this procedure. This is prospective, only affects people who may file claims later. Breast implants are not being done any more. They were stopped by the FDA, except for a small number of clinical trials in 1992. With regard to new products, you cannot escape liability under the biomaterials section of this bill, if you are not just a supplier but you are a manufacturer or a seller or what you have done is negligently done in the sense that it violates either the contract requirements that the manufacturer has given you for the raw material or component part, which obviously would be for a part or material that is not negligently made, or the specifications for that part that are issued as part of the approval process. Every one of these medical devices has to go through the FDA before it can be sold and used to benefit people. Senator Gorton has spoken about one young girl and the extraordinary benefit to her life from the shunt that was put in her brain. We had testimony at a hearing I conducted from a Mr. Martin Reily of Houston, TX, about his young child, Thomas, who was discovered when he was 8 months old to have water on the brain, hydrocephalus. Mr. Reily said: Jane and I will never forget the Saturday in late October 1985, when we learned that Thomas had hydrocephalus. We initially were told that based on the level of fluid accumulated on his brain and the resulting pressure, he would surely have brain damage, probably severe. Surgery to place a shunt in Thomas was scheduled for the first thing Monday morning [2 days later]. The hours from late Saturday to Monday morning were the longest and darkest we have ever experienced. The thought of waiting even 1 day to have the surgery was almost unbearable, for each minute that passed the pressure was building in Thomas' head, which could further damage him. . . . On Monday morning, Thomas received a shunt. Within hours, he was showing improvement. His lethargy disappeared. He was alert. He smiled again for the first time in weeks and even stood up in his hospital crib. Within 36 hours, we were back home with the new Thomas. How different the outcome would have been for Thomas that day without the availability of the medical device he so desperately needed. What a miracle. Mr. Reily continues: Six months after his original surgery, Thomas' shunt clogged and required revision. In the 6 hours that Thomas waited for his shunt revision surgery, he became violently ill, vomiting continuously and finally becoming semi- comatose. Mercifully, his revision was successful and immediately he regained his old form, laughing and smiling while playing games in his hospital bed. Again, how different yet predictably sad and final would have been Thomas' fate without this medical device. As I reflect on Thomas' brief life, I see a child who has already overcome a lifetime of medical difficulties. * * * * * Early on, Thomas' mother and I went through a grieving process. We were grieving for the death of our vision of our perfect child. It was not until we let that vision go that we were able to see something much more beautiful; a young boy with an indomitable yet loving spirit who will not let his personal medical setbacks defeat him. I think that must be surely God's spirit living inside him. Mr. Reily concluded: So I stand before you today, as the guardian of that spirit, as Thomas' father, beseeching you to do everything in your power to ensure that the biomaterials necessary for Thomas' medical implant device be readily available and of the highest quality. For some time in the future, perhaps next month or next year, Thomas will wake me in the middle of the night to tell me that his head hurts and that he thinks his shunt has broken. He will ask if we can go to the hospital to get a new one right away. I pray I will be able to give him the only acceptable answer. It is remarkable testimony. We had other testimony that day from a most impressive woman, Peggy Phillips, who has worked for awhile as chief of congressional affairs for the Air Force Surgeon General, going to law school in the evening, getting home at 10 p.m., working until midnight, and so on, office work, very busy. ``However, on November 26, 1986,'' as she says, ``my life changed. I am told that I collapsed as I walked from my office to my car. I stopped breathing. I had no pulse. I had no blood flow to my brain, I was clinically dead.'' The story ends happily. She agreed to have an automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator put into her stomach. ``Following a few minor adjustments,'' she says, ``life with the AICD has not been much different than before.'' She goes on to document changes that have occurred, and appeals to us to make sure that some of the simple parts of that AICD, which keeps her going, monitors her heartbeat, gives her a shock when there is a danger that her heart is going to stop, keeping her alive--that flow of materials is not going to stop. These are consumers. Does this help business? It helps the businesses that make the medical devices; it helps Thomas Reily; it helps Peggy Phillips; it helps 8 million other people who are going to be kept alive, allowed to live normally by these devices. Earlier this morning my friend from California made some references about the impact of this legislation--somewhat on breast implant cases which I have spoken to earlier--but on women generally. I do want to put into the Record a statement here. I am going quote from it. Phyllis Greenburger, who is the executive director of a group called the Society for the Advancement of Women's Health Research, testified on April 4, 1995, to that same Senate subcommittee, that, `` * * * the current liability climate is preventing women from receiving the full benefits that science and medicine can provide. That,'' she says, ``is the reason I am here before you today.'' She went on to say: . . . there is evidence that maintaining the current liability system harms the advancement of women's health research. She completed her testimony by stating: Manufacturers of raw materials, unwilling to risk lawsuits, are limiting, and in some cases, terminating the sale of their product for use in an implantable medical device. . . . The threat to health is further magnified in cases where suitable substitute materials are not available. Women may be disproportionately impacted by such a shortage simply because they live longer than men, and as a result, suffer more from chronic disease, increasing their chances of needing a medical device, such as hip or joint replacements. For those of us currently in good health, the loss of these substances seems inconsequential. Yet for those like Peggy Phillips . . . [Whom I spoke of before] and others suffering from osteoporosis, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and other diseases, access to a full range of medical devices is crucial. I wonder if I might ask the Senator from Washington for 5 more minutes?

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank my friend and colleague from the State of Washington. Mr. President, I rise as an enthusiastic supporter of the conference report accompanying H.R. 956, called the Commonsense Product Liability Legal Reform Act of 1996. In this case, it is not just a title. This bill is full of common sense. It is reform. This is a moderate bill. It is a thoughtful bill. It reflects compromise. It reflects years of effort to solve a real problem. Sometimes when we get into the back and forth of the arcane legal concepts involved here, we may lose sight of the fact, as Senator Gorton pointed out in his excellent opening statement, and Senator Rockefeller, there is a real problem out there. Our tort system, our system for compensating those who were injured as a result of other's negligence, has gone off the track. People in this country know there is too much litigation. People know that they are not benefiting from it. They are actually paying more for it in higher consumer prices and lost opportunity for jobs and lost opportunity to use new products that require some risk. People in this country, businesses, are afraid to take that risk. Why? Because they are worried about being bludgeoned by a lawsuit, regardless of whether they are negligent or not. I have to tell you when I was attorney general of the State of Connecticut, I was involved--and my friend and occupant of the chair may have gone through the same experience--I was at a national meeting of the attorneys general. I recall voting for a resolution that spoke out against product liability reform. I did not know much about it. We were oriented in a different direction. I started going around the State of Connecticut. I made it a practice to visit businesses, particularly small businesses in the State. People out there are the heroes. They are out there, day in, day out. They are not making big money. They took a risk. They are working hard. Maybe they have 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 people, maybe a few more, in their business. I am interested always in knowing, how did you get started? How did you raise the money to get into it? How are you doing? What can I do to help you? Over and over again, right there at the top, one, two, or three, ``Do something about all this litigation. We are constantly being sued, and even though we are not negligent we have to pay so much money to lawyers.'' Or, ``We get frightened because they come after us not just to pay the cost of an injury, medical, lost wages, et cetera, but the intangibles of pain and suffering, or so-called punitive damages which go well beyond the specific injuries suffered. Please help us with this.'' That is how I got into this battle. It seemed to me this was a real problem. There is a real problem out there. The bill that comes out of conference is a real commonsense solution to that problem. It puts some very moderate limits and lines and parameters on the existing system. It does not deny an injured plaintiff the right to recover any wages lost, any medical expenses; indeed, even the so-called noneconomic intangibles of pain and suffering, loss of consortium, et cetera. What it does, basically, is to say in the category of punitive damages, punishment, I guess created at the outset for probably a good reason, which was to add to this civil justice system some sort of extra punishment to a truly negligent producer of a product, to get that person not to do that anymore. It is almost a kind of criminal penalty; in fact, it is quasi-criminal. What has happened with this presumably well-intentioned concept of punitive damages, it has become a club held over the head of defendants, worried that juries may come in with multimillion-dollar verdicts. So they settle regardless of whether they are negligent or not. So it is a limitation of the greater of $250,000, no small amount, or twice the compensatory damage that is economic and noneconomic as we have talked about--that is the basic limit on punitive damages that this bill provides. Very moderate. Senator Gorton and Senator Rockefeller have spent the 9 months since the Senate passed this bill, saying ``No'' to just about everyone who sought to change the bill passed on the Senate floor last May. They said ``No'' to Democratic Senators; they said, ``No'' to Republican Senators, and they said ``No'' to the House conferees. What they have produced is a bill that is remarkably similar to what the Senate passed last year with overwhelming Republican and Democratic support. Frankly, Mr. President, I do not understand why anyone who voted for this bill last May will not vote for cloture and vote for this bill today when it comes up. Senators Gorton and Rockefeller deserve our thanks, but to speak in much more tangible terms--they deserve our votes this afternoon to break this filibuster. They have spent these many months in the disagreeable position of saying ``No'' to so many, specifically so that Senators who voted for the Senate bill last May--we understood the margin was not greatly over the 60 votes required to break a filibuster. Again, not 51 for a majority, but 60 to break a filibuster. They kept saying ``No'' so that the 60-plus votes last May would stay there when the conference report came out. I think they have achieved what most people thought, frankly, was impossible in the conference report they brought up, because the House yielded to the Senate on almost every proposal, every measure, every item in controversy. What now do our colleagues, Senators Gorton and Rockefeller, face? Last-minute concerns, distortions, new arguments. I would not blame these two warriors if they were dispirited. I admire them for not being so. Unfortunately, it is what we have come to expect in these debates. The hostile fire keeps coming in from every different direction. It is like having a shot fired; it is defended against; another shot fired on another perimeter; it goes on and on. It is meant to blur over the basic requirement for this bill, and the basic moderation and common sense of the bill before the Senate. Mr. President, I have a particular interest in title II of this bill, the so-called biomaterials provision. It is almost identical to a bill that I was proud to cosponsor and introduce with our colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain, in 1994. We reintroduced it in 1995. Happily, the Commerce Committee incorporated the bill into the conference report on product liability early last year. Mr. President, among the attacks that have come up here at the last minute as we come close to finally doing this after 18 years, now, that we have been working at this. I make reference to the Bible. I hope we are not going to have to wander for the 40 years the children of Israel did before they got into the promised land. I am looking at my colleague and dear friend, Senator Gorton, he deserves better than that. Here we are, close to this vote. We look like we have worked out a very sensible bill and now new crossfire comes in after this proposal has been up for years. I want to answer a few charges raised against the biomaterials provision. In the middle of last week as the final conference report had been under discussion for months, was being completed, we are suddenly confronted with claims that the provision would ``devastate the chances for recovery,'' of claimants in the so-called breast implant cases; that those claimants then presented proposed amendments to fix the allegations that there were problems in the bill. Of course, we have also seen some extraordinarily active lobbying on behalf of those suddenly urgent amendments. Since so much confusion and concern seem to have been generated as a result, I want to respond. First, the product liability bill and the biomaterials provision is prospective. It does not go into effect until it is enacted. The bill only applies to civil actions filed after it is adopted. It would have, therefore, no effect on the thousands of breast implant claims already filed, pending--no effect. It would have no effect on claims filed in Dow Chemical's bankruptcy proceeding, past or future. It would have no effect, as Senator Rockefeller pointed out earlier, on the capacity of bankruptcy judges and State judges in product liability cases, including breast implant cases, to toll the statute of limitations, to stop it from going while the bankruptcy proceeding is going on. Finally, to the extent that any claims are filed after this bill becomes law, it would have no effect on the overwhelming majority of those cases, for the following reasons: First, Dow Corning was the originator and largest single manufacturer of breast implants. The biomaterials title explicitly preserves the liability of manufacturers and sellers of implants like Dow Corning. In other words, if you are claiming to be a supplier but you are actually a manufacturer or seller, there is no protection under the bill. Second, the provision has no relevance to litigation in which claimants are seeking to impose liability on Dow Chemical and Corning Corp., the two corporations that own Dow Corning, since neither was a biomaterial supplier under the title II definition of a supplier. To my knowledge, no one has argued that they were biomaterial suppliers. Third, while Dow Corning invented silicone breast implants and was the single largest manufacturer of them, they also sold silicone gel to other companies that manufactured breast implants. Those companies, generally, are the large pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies. Many claims have been made against them, and the biomaterials provision will have absolutely no effect on those claims. Now, what if a raw material supplier knew the product might harm the person in whom the medical device was implanted? Will that person be let off? No. Biomaterial suppliers who sell raw materials or components they know are going to hurt somebody will find no protection under the biomaterials provisions of the bill. If the raw material supplier knows its material will cause harm, and fails to disclose it, that supplier cannot be said to be providing the product described in the contract between the manufacturer and the supplier because it departed so substantially from the expectations of the parties. That, too, in the legislation before us, is an exception from the general protection offered to suppliers. They are not protected if, in fact, they are manufacturers, if, in fact, they are suppliers, and if they breach the specifications of the contract with the manufacturers or the description of the product as certified by the FDA. A supplier who provides a product that does not meet contract requirements, or these specifications, is not eligible for protection under the provision. We have tried to construct a liability scheme where suppliers would have some comfort that they would have the opportunity to prove their innocence early in the litigation. The responsibility of ensuring that a medical device is safe for the purpose intended should rest with the manufacturer responsible for the design, testing and research of that product, not with the supplier who is supplying a component that, of its own, will have no benefit and cannot be used as an implant for the consumer desiring it. The suppliers have been sued because they are viewed as ``deep pockets.'' The cases against them have almost always been dismissed without a finding of any liability. Raw materials suppliers are typically supplying generic products with a lot of different uses. I will get into what happened in the field that has generated a need for this provision in a moment. So let me repeat, Mr. President, that this provision will not preclude present or future breast implant claims filed against these companies. They remain available to satisfy judgments. Plaintiffs will likely argue that Dow Corning, for instance, was so involved in the creation of the product originally to be a manufacturer in all instances, or they violated applicable contractual requirements or specifications by supplying silicone gel that ``did not constitute the product described in the contract'' because it departed so substantially from the expectations of the parties. Those arguments are consistent with title II, and they will be in order if this bill is enacted into law. Remember what I said earlier, that the major difference here, even in an extreme biomaterials case, is that the arguments by the suppliers to get out of a case because they are innocent will be able to be made earlier in the litigation. Under our current system, these innocent raw material component suppliers who have supplied small amounts of material and have not been involved in design, testing, or manufacture of medical devices, fear the cost of being kept in these lawsuits for years more than they fear the judgments, because they know they are innocent. We have found very little evidence that such raw materials suppliers are ultimately ever found liable in these cases. So why the provision in the first place? This, again, is why I say this bill is not just an exercise in legal theory; it responds to a very real crisis out there in the real world. Title II, the biomaterials provision, is a response to what I would call a genuine public health crisis. It is there to end a frightening, artificially caused biomaterials shortage that doctors, patients, the American Cancer Society, the American College of Cardiology, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and other major medical societies, scientific organizations, and patient and consumer groups have all pleaded with Congress to solve. What is the cause of this artificial shortage of biomaterials, the stuff that you need to make the devices I am going to describe? It is not because we are running out of those materials. It is because the fear of litigation by the suppliers, who make very little money in supplying the raw materials and component parts for these extraordinary devices, far outweighs any benefit they can incur by selling these devices. It is just not worth it to them. But it is worth it to the 8 million people whose lives are either being sustained or made normal by the miraculous array of medical devices that technology makes possible today. What are we talking about? Pacemakers, hip and knee joints, hydrocephalic shunts for children, balloon angioplasty catheters, defibrillators, vascular grafts, and even, in some cases, sutures used in common surgery. We all know people whose lives are either being sustained or made better by these unbelievable devices. Fifty years ago, who would have guessed that life could be sustained by these devices? The fact is--and we have heard testimony before committees of Congress--that the people who make these devices obviously need raw materials to make them. They need resins, plastics, rubber, and other component parts. And the suppliers either have cut back or have given them a warning they are about to do it by a date certain. The most recent date is January 1, 1997, next January, because they cannot afford the millions of dollars that they have to pay to defend lawsuits for supplying a nickel's worth, a dime's worth, or a quarter's worth of plastic resin or rubber. The problem is not a genuine shortage. It is an unnatural shortage caused by a system of litigation that has gone wild. The economics of the decision that these raw materials suppliers make are unfortunately understandable because of the small amount of money that they make on these devices. The fact is that since 1994 12 raw material suppliers, including three major chemical companies, have decided to simply stop selling to medical device manufacturers. The medical device manufacturers are scrambling to find substitute products but sometimes they are simply not available. If you doubt whether this is a crisis just check the congressional testimony. Listen to the father of the young man--boy--who passed out because he had water on the brain. They put in a hydrocephalus shunt that takes the water out of the brain. The child was living a normal life. He actually came and testified before one committee hearing which I had. He is a wonderful looking young man, and very active. Periodically they have to replace that shunt. And, if there is not the raw materials to do that, this young boy faces a tragedy, and his family with him. It is worth noting that the administration in the statement of policy issued by the President over the weekend opposing the product liability bill singled out the biomaterials provision for praise and acknowledged the importance of ensuring that ``biomaterials suppliers will continue to provide sufficient quantities of their products to medical device manufacturers.'' Contrary to what some of our colleagues I am afraid may have heard in the last week or so from those opposed to this bill, this provision is not a trick nor a ruse to protect bad suppliers from legitimate claims. This is an effort to respond to a genuine public health crisis, one that is well documented, and, as I say, acknowledged by the administration in its praise, in its statement of policy. The biomaterials provision does nothing to reduce the liability of manufacturers, or other responsible parties but consistent with the fundamental and fair premise of this legislation--this conference report--it places responsibility where it ought to be--on those who do wrong, and protects from unnecessary harassment and enormous cost those who have done no wrong. Mr. President, this bill actually in that sense so fundamentally relates to the broader questions of values in our society and the fear that people often have that our legal system has gone astray, that those who do wrong are not punished and too often those who have done no wrong suffer. We most often hear that cry about the criminal justice system. But it has unfortunately become true in our civil justice system as well. The guilty parties do not pay enough. The innocent parties pay too much. And all of us end up paying, and the price we pay for consumer goods and lost jobs are paying for this irrational a system. Mr. President, that is what this bill is all about. There are those who oppose the bill who describe it in ``either/or'' terms. Either you are probusiness or proconsumer. You are either proinnovation or prosafety. That rhetoric misses the point--preventing us from dealing with the central issue. The fact is that this bill is probusiness and proconsumer. It is proinnovation and prosafety. It is aimed at putting liability back where it should be--on the parties who are actually responsible for any harm and so are best able to prevent injury. It is aimed at protecting the defendants from being frightened by lawyers and lawsuits into paying legal fees and settlement costs when they are in fact not responsible for any harm. All of that contributes to the cynicism and mistrust of our legal system which is so fundamentally corrosive to the way we live in our country, and so costly to our society. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a list of raw material suppliers and their action withdrawing various products from the market be printed in the Record.