Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I look forward to reasoning with the Senator and the leadership on that very question. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Of course.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. In responding to the Senator from West Virginia, that is indeed the amendment. What is before the Senate now, as the Senator from West Virginia knows, is the House-passed bill. It is my intention, assuming the motion to proceed passes today, to offer as a substitute the legislation that was adopted by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in July, which has been distributed to the Senator from West Virginia and others.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Once again, Mr. President, that suggestion is agreeable to me. Debate, as the Senator from West Virginia knows, is limited to 3\1/2\ hours on each side. But some of this will depend on how many colleagues come to the floor to speak. Let us work together. I agree that we don't have to limit the time in which we go to closing arguments to the last half hour. We can work that out ourselves and take longer than that. That is fine.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from West Virginia for his graciousness. Of course, Senator Thompson and I return the respect the Senator kindly offered to us. This is a very significant debate. It goes to the heart of the security of the American people today, post September 11, and it is also, by my calculation, the largest reorganization of the Federal Government since the late 1940s. Therefore, the kind of debate in which I know the Senator from West Virginia intends to engage is very much in the public interest. I look forward to it.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from Tennessee for his very thoughtful statement. It has been a pleasure to work with him on the Governmental Affairs Committee, both when he led the committee and in the time that I have. I look forward to working with him in the weeks ahead to achieve what we all want to achieve, notwithstanding some differences that we have today, which is to secure the future of the American people here at home. I know that the intention was that Senator Byrd would speak next. He is not on the floor at the moment. I note the presence of the Senator from Texas.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. The Senator has that privilege, and I have no desire to limit debate. So let us just agree that quorum calls will remove time from the side that asks for the quorum call.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Please.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Senator from West Virginia. That order was exactly what I had in mind. I ask Senator Thompson if that is agreeable to him.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Fine. So we will close the debate in the last half hour going from Senator Thompson, to Senator Byrd, to myself.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I will.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Very well. Then it would be our understanding, after the Senator from Texas has completed his statement, that Senator Byrd will be recognized.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I appreciate the question. It was my hope we could agree that the time on the quorum calls be subtracted equally from each side. Is that agreeable to the Senator from West Virginia?

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Senator from New York for a very thoughtful statement. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Durbin for his statement and for the contributions he made substantively to the proposal and for his eloquent advocacy for the urgent necessity to get together and create a Department of Homeland Security. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I yield 15 minutes of my time now to the Senator from Illinois who, I might say parenthetically, has been an extraordinarily thoughtful, constructive participant in the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee's consideration of the question of homeland security and, in that sense, has contributed mightily to the proposal we will put before the Chamber tonight. I am glad to yield 15 minutes to Senator Durbin.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. The Senator is moving me. I say to Senator Byrd, obviously I do not want to cut him off. I guess in return I ask for a certain amount of mercy because I hope to leave in an hour to attend an event at my daughter's school. The Senator may proceed as he will. I do not intend to use the rest of my time, and I hope Senator Byrd will finish with as much dispatch as he can and still make his points.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes, Senator Thompson has concluded his remarks. When Senator Byrd has finished, I will have concluding remarks that will go no longer than 5 minutes.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Fine. I thank the Senator.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. But no later than 6:36 p.m.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I am pleased to have the Senator have the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Go right ahead. We both learned that at the same law school.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Should I rescind my offer?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I know Senator Boxer is expected around 5. I would like to speak for a few moments until then. I thank my colleague from Wyoming for his statement. To pick up on what he said, that one might get the impression listening to the debate that there was not anything good in this bill--specifically in the President's proposal on homeland security--there is a natural way, when amendments are filed, to focus on where we disagree, where the amendment disagrees with the underlying bill. But there is a big iceberg under the surface on which there seems to be disagreement. On that there is great agreement. In fact, I believe, though it is hard to quantify this, that more than 90 percent of the bill the Governmental Affairs Committee approved in late July is exactly the same as what President Bush desires. It is quite similar to the bill the Democratic majority on the committee adopted by a 9-to-7 vote in May which, in turn, is similar to the proposal of the commission headed by our colleagues, former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman. There is enormous agreement on what I would say are the guts of this bill and the guts of a new Department of Homeland Security: Coordinate the disparate agencies that are now disorganized, overlapping, creating gaps and vulnerabilities that terrorists took advantage of on September 11 and will again unless we close those gaps and eliminate those vulnerabilities. We cannot let that happen. Border security agencies are being brought together; emergency response is being centralized, working much more closely with State and local officials; infrastructure protection; intelligence, most important, to create that one place where all the dots come together so that we can see the terrorist plots before they are carried out and stop them; science and technology. Let's use the brain power, the innovation, as the Defense Department has, to make us as successful in the battle to defend the American people at home as those technological innovations have made us abroad in the fight in pursuit of our principles and our national interest. Most of this proposal enjoys broad bipartisan support. There are a few parts of the proposal right at the center which are in dispute. I understand the President does not support our proposal for a strong intelligence division in the new Department. It is critically important to break down the barriers that existed and still exist, to some degree, between the FBI, the CIA, local law enforcement, and State and local law enforcement as opposed to Federal law enforcement; bring all those dots together on one table so they can see the outline of what is coming and stop it before it happens. There is dispute from the White House on our national office to combat terrorism because we want the nomination of the director of that office to be approved by the Senate. So these are real disputes related to homeland security. The dispute that is going on now and the question of civil service rights is not relevant. I hate to see it stand as an obstacle in the path to adopting legislation creating a Department of Homeland Security which, as I say, will give the President at least 90 percent of what he wants in this new Department. In fact, far from limiting the authority of the new Secretary of Homeland Security with regard to the management flexibility that that Secretary has, our legislation protects the existing flexibility in law. The new Secretary would be able to remove employees for poor performance, transfer employees as needed, reward and give bonuses to those who perform ably. In fact, we add by this legislation to the existing management flexibility that the new Secretary would have because of a bipartisan amendment worked on very hard and thoughtfully by Senator Voinovich and Senator Akaka which would give the President and the Secretary of Homeland Security new powers to reward employees, attract top talent and reshape the workforce. It is quite an advance. So far from limiting the management flexibility of the new Secretary, we are increasing it beyond what any other Secretary has today, and we give the administration an open invitation, specifically in the letter in regard to the legislation we are proposing, by requiring the Secretary to come back every 6 months and to offer legislative recommendations. We specifically enumerate this again on personnel management that emerges from the experience the Secretary has over those 6 months. We have to remember that the civil service system evolved for a reason. It was designed to create some accountability, to protect the Federal workforce from favoritism, from patronage, from politicization, by creating a transparent framework for a merit-based personnel system. Obviously, it is not perfect. That is why we included these major reforms in the bill we reported out of our committee. But to essentially discard it, as the President's proposal would do, to give the Secretary and the President effectively unlimited authority to rewrite the civil service rules, would be a real step backward. A lot of this has to do with accountability. Accountability is an important goal in our public life and our public service. When people are being taken from the place where they work now--28 different agencies and offices, the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Agency, FEMA--and they are brought into this new Department, I think most managers in the private sector would want to do it in a way that would encourage those employees to believe we are all on the same team and we expect the most from them, we are going to work with them. By pulling away these civil service protections, I think we are going to have exactly the opposite effect. At a time when the average worker would naturally be anxious about a change of office or status, we are going to hang a sword over their heads that says no more civil service protection; they will lose their rights and, at worst, their job without the right to protest and seek review. Responding to the Senator from Wyoming, I say he is right, that some of our colleagues have not said enough positively either about the President's proposal particularly, because it is embraced in so much of what the committee will bring to the floor. There are these disagreements. I hope we can work them out. I hope where they are fundamental, we can put them off for 6 months and do the urgent work, which is to get this bill done. Let me say a word while I am speaking about items in dispute that I hope can be put off. This is the question of collective bargaining. I must say I have learned a lot about this. I have not been involved in some of these questions for a while, and I learned that collective bargaining rights were extended to Federal employees for the first time in 1962 by Executive order of President Kennedy and then were embraced in statute in 1978 under President Carter. In both the Executive order and the statute, there was a provision made that reflected, I think, special concerns during the cold war which said that if the President determined that union membership in a given agency or office was inconsistent with national security, the President could remove the right to collectively bargain without giving a reason other than to say it was inconsistent with national security, without any right of review or appeal by the employees who were therefore losing a basic right, which is to join a union. I do point out that Federal employees can neither strike nor in most cases do they negotiate for their salaries, which are usually set by statute. I am going to stop for a moment and ask my friend and colleague from Pennsylvania whether he would like to address the Senate on the motion before us.