Trent Lott

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to help state and local governments more effectively finance the cost of essential services such as schools, streets, and water and sewer systems. By easing tax law restrictions on the refinancing of certain bonds, this proposal would allow local jurisdictions to take advantage of favorable market interest rates. Financing the essential projects of our communities is primarily a state and local government responsibility. Federal tax laws should make it easier--not more difficult--for them to lessen the burden of taxes and other governmental charges on our citizens. The proposal would adjust tax law restrictions on the refinancing of certain bonds issued to provide services such as government-owned schools, hospitals, streets and water and sewer systems. Under current tax rules, most state and local governments may undertake an advance refunding of bonded indebtedness only one time and are thus unable to take full advantage of periods when market interest rates are low. This legislation would allow every state and local government an additional opportunity to refinance bonded indebtedness issued to finance essential governmental projects. Furthermore, this legislation would give state and local governments flexibility skin to that of a homeowner who refinances a mortgage to reduce monthly payments and thereby increase income. The federal government should not expect state and local governments to shoulder the burden of financing local infrastructure, and then deny them the flexibility to handle their own affairs in the most efficient and cost- effective manner. The change will help continue shifting power and control to local government where it belongs. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Finally, Mr. President, I send a second-degree amendment to the desk.

Mr. LOTT. I now ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk to the language proposed to be stricken.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk to the pending amendment.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk to the pending juvenile justice bill.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote scheduled for this evening be vitiated and that the Senate now turn to H.R. 1501.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. That is what I have had to do on occasion, too. And sometimes the majority leader might decide not to do that, to go ahead.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, one further parliamentary inquiry. That means, then, during the quorum call all time is coming out of the majority side?

Mr. LOTT. I inquire how the time has been divided and what time is remaining on each side.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, then I yield myself time out of this 54 minutes, realizing I also would have an opportunity to use my 15 minutes in closing. But there has been so much revisionist history espoused on the floor of the Senate today, I just did not want to let 1 hour 15 minutes go by without maybe correcting some of the record or putting an accurate history back into the Congressional Record. A famous quote comes to my mind, from what I have heard here today. I fear ``[thou] doth protest too much.'' In other words, there is an awful lot of protesting by the Democrats that has been going on that makes anybody who is a dispassionate, disinterested watcher just looking in, inquire why are they protesting so much? I have to note the inconsistency that is involved, too. Basically what the minority is saying, the Democrats are saying: As a protest statement, we are going to vote against reinstating rule XVI but we want to turn right around and reinstate rule XXVIII. This is Senate gibberish, I know, but it is inconsistent because they are saying we want to continue to offer legislation on appropriations bills but we do not want anything coming back out of conference between the House and Senate that exceeds the scope of what was in the bill. I think there is an inconsistency there. I think we ought to take a close look at the scope of the conferences question. We have time to do that. We have committees, a Rules Committee, and we have a Governmental Affairs Committee that have been considering rules changes. I think there are a number of rules in the Senate that should be reviewed. I think budget rules should be reviewed. For instance, this very week on the reconciliation bill which would provide some tax relief, at the end of the 20 hours, if amendments are still pending, we still have this very poor procedure where we might have to have what is called a ``vote-arama,'' of one vote after the other, one right behind the other every 2 minutes; I guess it would be 12 minutes between the votes--a very poor way to do legislative business. I think we ought to take a look at that and see if we cannot find a way to improve it. So there are a number of things we can do that I think will help the way the Senate does business. I would like to go back and remind Senators how this rule was changed, this rule XVI. Rule XVI was overturned by the Senate on March 16, 1995, on the Department of Defense supplemental appropriations bill. Senator Hutchison of Texas appealed the ruling of the Chair, in that the Chair ruled her amendment regarding a restriction on appropriations funds to make a final determination with respect to the endangered species list was legislation on an appropriations bill. In other words, this involved the Endangered Species Act. The Chair ruled this was legislating on an appropriations bill and therefore was out of order. That ruling was appealed. Many Members on the Republican side of the aisle supported her appeal. As a result, the Parliamentarian can no longer entertain a point of order that extraneous language is legislation on an appropriations bill. Again, keep in mind that up until that point that point of order would have been upheld by the Chair. That ruling was overturned and therefore a new precedent was set. Interestingly, in that vote, No. 107, on March 16, 1995, 54 Republicans voted to overturn the Chair, 44 Democrats voted to sustain the Chair's ruling. I am sure for the most part on both sides what was really being voted on was the substance of this endangered species list amendment. For instance, one interesting quote on that occasion came from our colleague, Senator Reid, who has been on the floor a good deal today. I think he summed up what was going on with regard to this particular amendment because I think probably, without putting words in his mouth, he was at least sympathetic to what Senator Hutchison was trying to do. But this is what Senator Reid said: But this is not the way to treat a very important matter. I am very upset. I am going to do everything that I can to make sure the President, if in fact this bill passes, will veto it if we start conducting business in this way. Basically he had indicated, I believe, that while he had some understanding and sympathy on the issue, he thought this was no way to be doing business. As a result of the overturning of the Chair, the appropriations process has certainly lost some of its legitimacy and has been complicated by the number of amendments, and their variety--and I am going to cite some amendments that were offered. The appropriations process is a very important part of our constitutional duty to the Federal Government. Yet with each passing year since this vote in 1995, it gets more difficult to get our appropriations bills through because of all the legislating that occurs on the appropriations bills. Let me emphasize, while I thought that most of the comments from the Democratic side today were very partisan, I don't view this as partisan. It should not be. The discussions we have had across the aisle over the past 4 years have been that this was a mistake; we ought to work together to change it. But let me give a recent example. This past week on the State-Justice-Commerce appropriations bill, I do not know how many amendments showed up on that bill, probably a hundred or so. I know of at least one specific example. I will not cite the specific bill because that Senator would know what I was talking about and would not feel that it would be appropriate that I cite his particular bill, but it was a whole bill that had not been introduced, had not been referred to committee, had not been reviewed by the committee, and would significantly change the way a process works in the Federal Government. That was going to be offered to the appropriations bill. That Senator was on my side of the aisle. So I really question that that is the way Senators would want this body to work, where whole bills will be cut out of whole cloth and brought to the floor of the Senate in a Senator's hand and he or she will say: I want this bill added to the appropriations bill. That is no way to legislate. We should not be doing that. But that is the kind of thing that has been happening since we had this ruling and then the appeal of the ruling of the Chair in 1995 that set this new precedent. The Senator from California was here earlier today commenting on this. Yet when this vote took place, she said: I think to come to this floor of the U.S. Senate and to add an amendment to the Defense emergency supplemental bill that deals with a very important and sensitive environmental issue is simply not the right way to legislate. Holy smoke, she is absolutely right. She said that on March 16, 1995. That was not what I thought I heard her saying today. Maybe I misinterpreted what was being said today. But that is the point. Senators will have an opportunity to offer amendments on other bills. The point is made quite often in this body, unlike the House--and nobody wants to make the Senate the House--any Senator can come to the floor on a bill involving, let's just say bankruptcy, and he or she can offer an amendment to deal with health care or can offer something to do with the Forest Service. We do not have these strict germaneness rules. We do take up legislative issues. But one of the reasons why the majority leader cannot bring more legislative bills to the floor is because, in many instances, it has taken so long to get through other issues such as juvenile justice or the Patients' Bill of Rights or other appropriations bills; therefore, making it very difficult to bring up other important legislative issues such as the Federal aviation reauthorization bill, the bankruptcy bill that I referred to, or the nuclear waste bill that has been reported out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. It makes it more and more difficult for anything to be done other than appropriations and reconciliation. And the reconciliation procession is very important because it is the only way you can get a bill dealing with taxes, for instance, to the floor without it being threatened by a filibuster or all kinds of other Senate legislative maneuvers. This is one where you bring it up, you have a specified period of time, you have an amendment process, you go through those amendments, and then you have a vote. That process moves quite easily through here. Right now we are in a period where appropriations bills and reconciliation are about all we can get done. There are complaints about filling up the tree. I have not gone back and done the research, but this process of so-called ``filling up the tree'' again is Senate language that is used to describe that all the different opportunities to amend are filled with amendments. I didn't invent that procedure. Other Senators who have been majority leader certainly have used that. Senator Mitchell used it. Senator Byrd used it. That is a very legitimate tactic or process which can be used, one that should not be used all the time, and one that has been used relatively rarely, but it certainly is a legitimate thing the majority leader can do to focus debate and to get debate concluded in a reasonable period of time. Let me give some examples of the kinds of things that have been tying up the Senate since we have been without the ability to strike them down by using rule XVI. First of all, it seems to me if you look at history, probably there has been an increasing number of amendments which have been offered on these appropriations bills. It seems now it is quite often within the range of 80 to 100 or 120 amendments on just about anything that comes along. Every Senator dumps his out basket on the floor of the Senate with every amendment he or she has ever dreamed of and some of the things with which we have to deal on appropriations bills, where it clearly would have been legislating on an appropriations bill, dealing with grasshopper research, lettuce genetic breeding, peach tree short life, tomato wilting, the feasibility of using poultry litter as possible fuel. Other examples are: removing of computer games from Government computers, repainting of water towers, swimming pool construction, the study of green tree snakes. These may be legitimate agriculture issues, but with others, they certainly would be considered to be frivolous in nature in terms of being offered as amendments on appropriations bills. While we have those examples, the ones that are the most startling and striking to me are the ones where whole bills or major amendments are offered on the floor of the Senate to appropriations bills that clearly is legislating on an appropriations bill, that do not apply in any way in terms of substance, where the committees have not been allowed to act, where the committee chairman has not had any input. It is time we bring this process under control. On more than one occasion, the exchanges between the Democratic leader and the majority leader have indicated that there has been a willingness or a desire on both sides to begin bringing this under control. I urge my colleagues to look at how this happened. A lot of people on both sides of the aisle at the time it happened did not realize the significance of it and, secondly, said at the time: Yes, this is probably a mistake. It has been a tool the Democrats have used over the past 4 years, and that is the way it works in the Senate. When you have a precedent, then Senators have a right to take advantage of it until a new one is set or until the Senate decides it is going in some other direction. There is nothing unusual about that at all. We should reinstate this rule XVI. We should look at a number of rules and budget procedures we have. We have appropriators who have come to me and expressed concern about this. People with a long history of paying attention to the rules of the Senate and the budget procedures and the appropriations bills, such as Senator Domenici and Senator Stevens and others, have said we need to get this back on track, we need to change the way we are doing business. I hope we can get through the appropriations process this year as soon as possible, so we can do some of these other bills that are very important to our country, so Senators will have an opportunity to fully debate and discuss these issues and offer amendments to issues that are outside the appropriations process. I hope we will have time to work with serious leaders in the Senate who are worried about the budget process, who are worried about the rules, and have some debate on the floor and make some changes. There is no desire at all to set up a Rules Committee in the House of Representatives sense, but there is a desire by this majority leader, as by every majority leader, to find a way to move the process and the legislation through the Senate. We did a marvelous job last week, if you look at it. It did not look pretty at various times, but last week we did pass reorganization of the Department of Energy. After probably a month of resisting doing the fundamental reorganization we need at the Department of Energy to stop the leaks of our very important nuclear secrets to China or anybody else, we finally got it to a vote last Tuesday, and the vote was, I think, 96-1--overwhelmingly bipartisan. One might ask: Why did it take you so long? That is the way the Senate works sometimes. We have to think about it; we have to have debate; we work out some amendments. Also, it might be that nobody wanted to be on record as being against reorganization of the Department of Energy. Again, it was dragged out, and we had problems getting to the intelligence authorization bill. We even had to have a cloture vote to get to the intelligence authorization bill, the bill that provides for the intelligence information for our Federal Government, for the CIA. I did not want to have to file a cloture motion on that, but I was told, in effect, that the Democrats were going to filibuster the motion to proceed. That meant the Democrats were going to filibuster even taking up the bill because they were not ready to debate the reorganization of the Department of Energy, I guess. I did not quite understand it. In order to get to a very important, very sensitive issue such as the intelligence authorization, the intelligence community of our Federal Government, which is such an important part of the defense of this country, the majority leader of the Senate had to file a cloture motion to even take up the bill for its consideration. If a change of heart had not happened, I would have had to file a second cloture motion to get to the substance of the bill. The pontificating we do sometimes around here, the posturing about, oh, we are cut off--what is a leader supposed to do when told the motion to proceed to a bill is going to be filibustered? At that point, I have to take action to move a bill, such as the intelligence authorization, forward. When the smoke cleared, it passed. We got that bill done. We got to the State-Justice-Commerce appropriations bill, a bill that quite often takes days, sometimes weeks, sometimes longer than weeks, with lots of amendments offered. As a matter of fact, with the cooperation of both sides of the aisle, on Thursday night at approximately 9:45 that legislation was passed. Today I went over and shook the hand of Senator Reid of Nevada and said: It would not have happened without your aggressive work in clearing amendments that could be accepted, in getting amendments withdrawn that really did not need to be offered. We did it on both sides of the aisle. I went to Republicans and said: You do not want to do this here. And Senator Daschle did the same thing on the Democratic side of the aisle. That is how one works through the appropriations bills because many of these amendments had no business being offered at that hour on that bill and on those subjects with no consideration being given by the committees or by the chairmen. If we can reinstate rule XVI today, we will see our appropriations bills able to go through without as much dilatory action or without as many amendments that really are strictly legislation on appropriations bills. I do believe that on both sides of the aisle Members know this precedent needs to be put back in place. Will it cure all the problems? No. As a matter of fact, Senators may just use other dilatory tactics, and if they can find a way to do that or if they can appeal the ruling of the Chair, maybe the precedent will be reversed again. That will be the will of the body. I will have no great concern about that. Then we can move on from this to the next step. Senator Stevens and Senator Byrd have proposed amendments that will go beyond what reinstating this particular rule XVI will do. I hope we would take a look at that before this year is out. So I may have to come back later on to respond in wrapup on some of these issues. But I do, again, refer you to the Shakespeare quote from Hamlet: I do think you ``protest too much'' as we work to reinstate a precedent that we all know will serve the institution quite well.

Mr. LOTT. I am glad to yield. You have no time; you have used it all today. We understand you had a lot of speakers. I would like to reserve as much of our time as possible for other Senators who wish to come to the floor to speak on this subject on our side. Having said that, I will be glad to yield.

Mr. LOTT. Didn't the Senator occasionally file a cloture motion on a filibuster of a motion to proceed?

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

Mr. LOTT. I get awfully excited when a point is made that I feel like I need to respond to. I will withhold until the Senator finishes his statement.

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

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I could, if the Senator will allow----

Mr. LOTT. That is right.

Mr. LOTT. The Patients' Bill of Rights.

Mr. LOTT. I yield the floor, Mr. President.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that there be a period for morning business, with Members able to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment today to recognize one of the finest officers in the United States Air Force, Major General Paul V. Hester. On July 30th, General Hester will leave his current job as Director of the Air Force Office of Legislative Liaison to take over the important posts of Commander, United States Forces, Japan; Commander, 5th Air Force; and Commander, United States Air Forces, Japan. During his time here in Washington--particularly with regard to his work on Capitol Hill--General Hester personified the Air Force core values of integrity, selfless service and excellence in all things. Many Senators and Staff enjoyed the opportunity to interact with him on a variety of important issues and came to appreciate his many talents. Today it is my privilege to recognize some of Paul's many accomplishments since he entered the military 27 years ago, and to commend the superb service he provided the Air Force, the Congress and our Nation. Paul Hester entered the Air Force through the Reserve Officer Training Corps from my alma mater, the University of Mississippi. While at ``Ole Miss'', he completed both bachelor's and master's degrees in Business Administration. He earned his pilot wings in December of 1971 at Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi and was then assigned to Davis- Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, where he flew the A-7D Corsair. A short time later, he was deployed to Southeast Asia where he distinguished himself flying combat missions and earned five Air Medals for outstanding airmanship and courage. Over his career, General Hester demonstrated his skill in other fighter aircraft, including the F-4, F- 15 and F-16, and logged more than 2,600 hours of flying time. General Hester's exceptional leadership skills were always evident to his superiors and he repeatedly proved himself in numerous select command positions. While stationed at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, he served as the commander of the 94th Fighter Squadron, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's famed ``Hat in the Ring Gang.'' He was also the first Commander of the 18th Operations Group, Kadena Air Base, Japan; Commander of the 35th Fighter Wing at Misawa Air Base, Japan, and prior to his assignment here in Washington, Commander of the 53rd Wing, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. At each and every one of these important posts, Paul Hester inspired the airmen under his command to achieve their best, and ensured our forces were sharpened and ready to undertake our warfighting commitments. Paul Hester also excelled in a variety of key staff billets. He served in the Air Force Directorate of Plans at the Pentagon, and he was a member of the Commanders' Action Group, Headquarters Tactical Air Command, Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. He experienced joint duty as both the J-5 Division Chief to the Joint Staff and as the Joint Chiefs of Staff representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Vienna, Austria. As a Lieutenant Colonel, he was selected as the Chief of the Air Force's Legislative Liaison Office to the U.S. House of Representatives. His performance in that important position is the reason he was brought back as a Major General to lead the entire legislative directorate for the Secretary of the Air Force. During his service to the 105th and 106th Congresses, General Hester has been the liaison to the Air Force on a variety of readiness issues and most recently, ALLIED FORCE operations in Kosovo. His clear, concise, and timely information was instrumental in supporting our deliberations of National Security matters. He was a crucial voice for the Air Force in representing its many programs on the Hill. General Hester's leadership, professional abilities and expertise enabled him to foster excellent working relationships that benefitted both the Air Force and the Senate. Throughout the time I have known Paul, I have been impressed with his skill in working with the Congress to address Air Force priorities. We were all pleased to see that Paul was recently nominated by the President for his third star, which will be pinned on by the Air Force Chief of Staff this Friday. I offer my congratulations to him, to his wife Lynda, and three children Leslie, Doug and Shelby. The Congress and the country applaud the selfless commitment his family has made to the Nation in supporting his military career. I know I speak for all my colleagues in expressing my heartfelt appreciation to General Hester. He is a credit to both the Air Force and our great Nation. We wish our friend the best of luck and are confident of his continued success in his new command.