Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the tally on the vote to repeal habeas corpus indicating the eight Senators who voted ``no'' be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I believe we have used up our time.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. We will withhold and reserve that for purposes of rebuttal.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Finally, Madam President, I call attention to one of the many extraordinary measures we are adding to this bill--the repeal of habeas corpus. The great writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, ``produce the body before the court,'' is the foundation of our legal system of liberties. I have commented that if I had to live in a country which had habeas corpus but not free elections, or vice versa. I would take habeas corpus every time. It is article I, section 9, of the U.S. Constitution. The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. Nothing in our circumstances requires the suspension of habeas corpus, which is in effect what this provision would do. To require a Federal court to defer to a State court judgment unless the State court's decision is ``unreasonably wrong'' will effectively preclude Federal review in these matters. This it seems to me is appalling. It would transform our State courts--not the Federal courts established under article III of the Constitution--into the ultimate arbiters of constitutionality. Very few Senators share that view. We had a vote in this regard last summer. There were eight of us who voted against the Comprehensive Terrorism Prevention Act of 1995, which contained an almost identical habeas corpus provision. In addition to the other extraneous matter that has been added to this legislation, we also have before us a provision to radically alter the ancient writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum. One would have hoped it would be self-evident that the U.S. Congress should not pass a major revision to the Great Writ of Liberty in the form of an amendment to a bill to temporarily extend the Government's borrowing authority. Five months ago, I was one of eight Senators to vote against the Comprehensive Terrorism Prevention Act of 1995. I voted against that bill because it contained the same habeas corpus provision that is attached to the legislation before us. For unrelated reasons, the terrorism bill was never enacted, and so we are again presented with this undesirable proposal. Fortunately, one does not need to be a lawyer to understand why this habeas corpus provision is such an awful idea. Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution provides that: The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. For well over a century--since the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867--we have honored the right of State prisoners to challenge in Federal District Court the constitutionality of their imprisonment. The habeas corpus amendment before us departs from that tradition by requiring our Federal courts to defer to State court judgments unless a State court's application of Federal law is unreasonable. Under this new standard of review, our Federal courts will be powerless to correct State court decisions--even if a State court decision is wrong. The new standard will require deference by the Federal courts unless a State court's decision is unreasonably wrong. This is a standard that will effectively preclude Federal review. Senators need not take my word for this, for I have it on the best available legal advice. Last summer, prior to the Senate's consideration of the terrorism legislation, I received a letter from the Emergency Committee to Save Habeas Corpus, a group of 100 of the Nation's most distinguished attorneys, scholars, and civic leaders. The co-chairs of the Emergency Committee are four former Attorneys General of the United States, two Republicans and two Democrats. They are Benjamin Civiletti, Edward H. Levi, Nicholas DeB. Katzenbach, and Elliott L. Richardson. They strongly oppose this proposal and have labeled it ``extreme.'' This proposal will in many cases transform the State courts--not the Federal courts established under Article III of the U.S. Constitution-- into the arbiters of Federal constitutionality. It will eviscerate the writ of habeas corpus, and that is something this Senator in good conscience must again oppose. I need hardly add that the debt limit legislation is obviously the wrong vehicle for such a proposal. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter from the Emergency Committee to Save Habeas Corpus, and the list of its members, be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, as there will be no rollcall votes in the Senate today, some Senators are away and may have missed the open letter to the President from Marian Wright Edelman, entitled ``Say No to This Welfare `Reform,' '' in this morning's Washington Post. She writes: As President, you have the opportunity and personal responsibility to protect children from unjust policies. It would be a great moral and practical wrong for you to sign any welfare ``reform'' bill that will push millions of already poor children and families deeper into poverty, as both the Senate and House welfare bills will do. It would be wrong to destroy the 60-year-old guaranteed safety net for children, women and poor families, as both the Senate and House welfare bills will do. An accompanying Post editorial makes a further point about the Senate welfare bill: Now here is the part you need especially to know: Mr. Clinton's own advisers have told him that it would likely consign as many as a million more children to poverty, and it would provide several billions less for child care than his own proposal of a year ago. [Their italic.] Mr. President, something important is happening here. There is a growing recognition that the Senate made a terrible mistake 6 weeks ago. We voted 87 to 12 to repeal title IV-A of the Social Security Act--with almost no understanding of what the consequences might be. Fortunately, the hard evidence has begun to come out. I only hope it is in time. Last Friday, the Los Angeles Times ran a front-page story about a September 14 report prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services. The report, which has yet to be officially released, concludes that the Senate bill would plunge 1,100,000 dependent children into poverty, and would also significantly deepen the poverty of children who are already living below the poverty line. I had the report made a part of the Record on November 1, and I hope every Senator will read it carefully. Another analysis will become available in official form early next week. The Office of Management and Budget--in response to a request from this Senator along with Representative Sam Gibbons and 10 other members of the conference committee on welfare--will release a report on Monday or Tuesday on the effects of the Senate and House bills on children. I fully expect that this new analysis will confirm what the earlier estimates indicated: either bill would be Armageddonic for children. Over the years Congress may have missed opportunities to help dependent children, but never in our history have we calculatedly set out to injure them. The administration's own analysis shows that this is precisely what will occur under either bill now before the conference. Mr. President, I ask that the open letter to the President from Marian Wright Edelman and the editorial from today's Washington Post be printed in the Record. The material follows: [From the Washington Post, Nov. 3, 1995] Say No to This Welfare Reform (By Marian Wright Edelman) An open letter to the president I am calling for your unwavering moral leadership for children and opposition to Senate and House welfare and Medicaid block grants, which will make more children poor and sick. As president, you have the opportunity and personal responsibility to protect children from unjust policies. It would be a great moral and practical wrong for you to sign any welfare ``reform'' bill that will push millions of already poor children and families deeper into poverty, as both the Senate and House welfare bills will do. It would be wrong to destroy the 60-year-old guaranteed safety net for children, women and poor families as both the Senate and House welfare bills will do. It would be wrong to leave millions of voteless, voiceless children to the vagaries of 50 state bureaucracies and politics, as both the Senate and House bills will do. It would be wrong to strip children of or weaken current ensured help for their daily survival and during economic recessions and natural disasters, as both the Senate and House bills will do. It would be wrong to exacerbate rather than alleviate the current shameful and epidemic child poverty that no decent, rich nation should tolerate for even one child. Both the Senate and House welfare bills are morally and practically indefensible. Rather than solve widespread child deprivation, they simply shift the burden onto states and localities with far fewer federal resources, weakened state maintenance of effort and little or no state accountability. As you well know, these block grants are not designed primarily to help children or to make families more self- sufficient. They are Trojan Horses for massive budget cuts and for imposing an ideological agenda that says that government assistance for the poor and children should be dismantled and cut while government assistance for wealthy individuals and corporations should be maintained and even increased. Do you think the Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Micah and Amos--or Jesus Christ--would support such policies? Neither the Senate nor House welfare bill is an example of the good competing with the perfect. Both are fatally flawed, callous, anti-child assaults. Both bills eviscerate the moral compact between the nation and its children and its poor. If child investments are unfairly and indiscriminately cut by many billions of dollars, there is perhaps some prospect of recouping the money over time when new child suffering becomes apparent, as it did after the Reagan cuts and as it will this time as pending cuts are many times worse. But longer-term and perhaps irreparable damage will be inflicted on children if you permit to be destroyed the fundamental moral principle that an American child, regardless of the state or parents the child chanced to draw, is entitled to protection of last resort by his or her national government. If any piece of the framework or cornerstone of the laws-- AFDC, Medicaid, family and child nutrition--is dismantled, we may not get them back in our lifetime or our children's. What a tragic step backward for America when so many children already are left behind. Both you and I know that there are lessons from American history, including the end of Reconstruction, when the immoral abandonment of structures of law and equity led to decades of setbacks for powerless Americans and battles we still are fighting today. What a tragic irony it would be for this regressive attack on children and the poor to occur on your watch. For me, this is a defining moral litmus test for your presidency. We cannot heal our racial divisions or prepare our nation for the future unless we give poor black, brown and white children a healthy and fair start in life. These pending block grants will make that task so much harder. Together with the proposed tax policies, they widen the income gulf between America's haves and have-nots. You have spoken too eloquently and worked too long for children to wipe it out with your signature now. It is nonsense for congressional leaders to argue that they are protecting children from a future debt children did not create by destroying the vital laws and investments children need to live, learn and grow today. That is the domestic equivalent of bombing Vietnamese villages in order to save them. It is moral hypocrisy for our nation to slash income, health and nutrition assistance for poor children while leaving untouched hundreds of billions in corporate welfare, giving new tax breaks of over $200 billion for non-needy citizens, and giving the Pentagon almost $7 billion it did not request. The Children's Defense Fund wants welfare reform. But we want fair reform that does not pick on and hurt children and that provides parents jobs and safe child care. We want reform that prepares our children for the new millennium--not reform that pushes them back to past inequities within and among states. We want to ``end welfare as we know it.'' But we do not want to replace it with welfare as we do not want to know it. We do not want to codify a policy of national child abandonment. Franklin Delano Roosevelt correctly said: ``Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.'' Every president since FDR--Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush--preserved the minimal national guarantee of income assistance for poor children. It is a precedent I hope and trust you will uphold. What was right and compassionate in FDR's day is right today and will be right tomorrow. There is an even higher precedent that we profess to follow in our Judeo-Christian nation. The Old Testament prophets and the New Testament Messiah made plain God's mandate to protect the poor and the weak [[Page S 16676]] and the young. The Senate and House welfare bills do not meet this test.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, my colleague and friend from Arizona is more generous than even the hyperbole of the U.S. Senate allows. There are some important issues here. It is interesting to note that issues such as the Social Security earnings test go far back in our history. Indeed it was raised in 1935. And the gentleman who was brought from the University of Wisconsin by Edwin Witte to be on the staff of the Committee on Economic Security that Francis Perkins established, is still very much with us--the former chief actuary of the Social Security system. He was staff director of the Commission on Social Security that President Reagan organized in 1982, and which included Senator Dole in 1983. It is amazing, the continuity of the persons who have worked with the original legislation, or were in the original administration, and their wisdom and wit is available to us today. On Monday, Senator McCain and the majority leader introduced S. 1372, a bill to gradually increase the earnings limit to $30,000 in 2002 for Social Security beneficiaries aged 65 to 69. Under current law the earnings test is projected to increase from $11,280 for this year to $14,400 in 2002. In the past I have supported liberalization of the earnings test, and I will continue to do so in the future. But I have always insisted that any liberalization of the earnings test should be paid for and should be considered in the context of overall policies on Social Security. This bill does neither. Under the bill, discretionary outlays are reduced. But this does nothing for the off-budget OASDI Social Security trust fund as outlays in this account are increased by almost $10 billion over the next 7 years. So the bill makes use of a budget gimmick. The interest rate received by the trust fund is increased by one-quarter of 1 percent so as to make it appear that the liberalization of the earnings test is paid for. And the bill is being considered--on the floor of the Senate, without having been referred to the Committee on Finance. This prevents us from taking into account the other important issues involved in the longrun financing of the Social Security system. If we want to liberalize the earnings test, this bill should be referred to the Finance Committee where we can have hearings, consider how to pay for it, and how to integrate changes in the earnings test with other Social Security policies. Let me make clear my support for the concept of increasing the retirement test to about $30,000. In 1990, I introduced S. 1909, a bill to increase the earnings test to $24,720 in 1996--roughly comparable to $30,000 in 2002. But I also paid for that liberalization of the earnings test by increasing the amount of Social Security benefits that would be subject to taxation. While that offset is no longer available, my bill addressed several important issues that are not addressed by the legislation now before the Senate. First, the liberalization was paid for with offsetting changes in the Social Security program. Second, the two provisions represented a move toward treating Social Security benefits on a parallel basis with private pensions. Individuals can retire from a company, collect a pension and continue to work in other occupations. And the portion of the private pension not previously taxed--the employer contribution and any accrued interest earnings--is taxed upon receipt of the pension benefit. Last week, along with every other Member of the Senate, I voted for the Senator from Arizona's sense of the Senate resolution acknowledging the need to raise the Social Security limit. The last clause of that resolution states: It is the intent of the Congress that legislation will be passed before the end of 1995 to raise the social security earnings limit for working seniors aged 65 through 69 in a manner which will ensure the financial integrity of the social security trust funds and will be consistent with the goal of achieving a balanced budget in 7 years. I would say to my friend from Arizona, let us do this, but let us do it right. Let us refer this bill to the Finance Committee and make sure we are indeed ``ensuring the financial integrity of the Social Security trust funds.'' There are two additional things to be said. First, the earnings limitation is a holdover from the 1930's. When the legislation was adopted the unemployment rate was about 25 percent. We did not have precise data on the unemployment rate and we used extrapolations from the decennial census. We counted everybody. We did not know about sampling. In April 1930, there was not much unemployment. And in April 1940, there was not much unemployment and, therefore, the Depression was not reflected in the unemployment data gathered in the decennial census. People did know that large numbers of workers were unemployed. So the earnings test was meant to discourage older retirees from continuing to work. It was meant to persuade people to leave the work force when they had retired. And that is from another era. We have had extraordinary success with American economic policy since the Employment Act of 1946. In all those years--a half a century, we have had less than 12 months in which the unemployment rate has been above 10 percent, and that was during the 1981-82 recession. The object of putting an end to the retirement test is not only appropriate, but it is at hand. In 1983, we did this. We arranged that persons who do work and are subject to the loss of benefits because of the earnings limitation are ``made whole,'' I think that is the usage, after they stop working. We phased in the so-called ``delayed retirement credit'' so that by 2005 it completely offsets the loss of benefits. Right now, beneficiaries get back about two-thirds of what they lose due to the earnings test. Why do you not want people to work beyond age 65 or 62? And why does the Government take benefits away and then give most--and by 2005, all--of them back? It is not the Government's business to tell you when you should work and when you should not work if what you are getting are benefits that you have earned. One problem I have with this measure is that it is not paid for in the mode I would have thought necessary and pretty central as a matter of principle, which is that all Social Security benefits be paid out of a trust fund financed by Social Security revenues--payroll taxes collected under the Federal Insurance Contribution Act (FICA) of 1935. This is no small matter. We would not be here today--I suspect we might be here--but with a very different Social Security System. At that time, no sooner did a bit of New Deal legislation get enacted, then it would be challenged and end up in the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court would find it unconstitutional. Frances Perkins, who was very much a person around Washington in the [[Page S 16578]] 1960's when I knew her, described the scene in a garden party in 1935 when Harlan Fiske Stone came up to her and said, ``What are you up to little lady,'' and she was a master mistress at getting men to do things for her because she appeared so helpless, and she said, ``We have this wonderful plan. It would give people retirement benefits, unemployment insurance, dependent children would get support, all these fine things, but every time we do something like this, great members in the Supreme Court say it is unconstitutional.'' He said, ``Tell me a little more, if you would.'' He listened. Then he leaned over and did something no Supreme Court Justice would ever do today. He said, ``The taxing power, my dear. All you need is the taxing power.'' So my distinguished predecessor, Robert F. Wagner, introduced the bill over here and the people did it over there in the Labor Committees and so forth. The bill that was signed by the President of the United States was introduced by a still obscure Representative from North Carolina who was chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means. It came over here to Finance. We passed it out, and in due time it was challenged, and the Supreme Court looked at it and said, ``You say this is a tax. Yes, it is a tax. ``It says here, Article 1, Congress should have the power to lay and collect taxes.'' That is why this is a Finance Committee legislation. We have always paid for Social Security benefits with FICA revenues. The measure before us pays for these benefits by an across-the-board- reduction in discretionary spending. I think you start at about one- tenth of a percent in fiscal year 1996 and go up to four-tenths of a percent by fiscal year 2002. These are large sums. We have to find about $10 billion over the next 7 years. We will be financing Social Security benefits from general revenues that are not spent on these discretionary programs. I have to assume that we will cut education programs. We will cut defense programs. We will cut transportation programs. Those outlay reductions will pay for the transfer of general revenues to the trust funds which pay for the increase in trust fund outlays. But these transfers are artificially created, by an increase of one-quarter of 1 percent above the interest rate received by the trust funds under current practice. The current rate is a blend of the actual rates paid on Treasury Securities with a maturity of more than 4 years. I do not think we should do that. I think it compromises the insurance principle. It compromises the right of the beneficiary to the benefits that is earned by payments into the fund. There is a nice story about this. In 1941, a very distinguished professor at Columbia, who had been a member of the President's Committee on Administrative Management--the Brownlow Committee--that President Roosevelt established in 1937, called on President Roosevelt to say he had been looking around things here and Social Security revenues were coming in now. They were all being posted, as the clerks will say, by Federal clerks with pens and nibs and cardboards, and they put down the 14 cents or the 22 cents that a person earned. The professor in question called on President Roosevelt and said, ``I think that is just a lot of extra paperwork we do not need. This is a pay-as-you-go system. Just collect the money and pay it out and stop all this record keeping, which is really not very essential.'' That was Luther Gulick of Columbia University. He lived to the age of 100. He died last year. I called him in upstate New York. He lived on the St. Lawrence River. I went over this recollection with him. His mind was clear as Easter bells and President Roosevelt said to him--you could see Roosevelt doing it: ``Now, Luther, I am sure you are right about the administrative matters, but I never thought of those provisions as a matter of administrative efficiency. I wanted every Social Security beneficiary to have a number and have an account so that''--I hope the Senate will forgive this usage because Luther Gulick recorded--``no damn politician can ever take the Social Security benefit away.'' That is why you have a number. Senator McCain, it is probably your dog-tag number, I would not be surprised. Originally it was not to be used for identification. Now it is. You get them in delivery rooms. We have never paid out a penny in Social Security benefits that did not represent contributions made to the trust fund. For the longest while, the Federal Government was required to pay both the employer and the employee contributions for members of the Armed Services Committee. They had not done so, and in 1983 we found a big chunk of money that was put in the trust fund. On that basis, I say we ought not to depart from the principle that entitles you to the money. It is called an entitlement because it is your money. We tax it the way we tax --and we did this in 1993--pension benefits. You calculate what you paid in, and what you already paid taxes on. Subsequently you pay taxes on the portion that was not taxed--the employer contribution and the interest earnings on your contribution and that of your employer. So, with the greatest enthusiasm for the enterprise but reservation about the specific financing mechanism, which, in my view, goes to not just a marginal but a central point of the nature of Social Security, I respectfully say I will not support the measure.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I do not in the least disagree with the point of the Senator about an increased work effort and therefore increased revenues, including direct revenues to the trust funds. What the actual amounts would be, how actuaries would judge them, is beyond my capacity, but there would be some and they would be not inconsiderable. Even so, I maintained what might seem to be too purist a view but it is one I hold, that only revenues from the trust fund should be used to pay benefits. We will see what the Senate's wish is. [[Page S 16579]] The principle is correct. The issue can be resolved, the sooner the better. But it is my hapless responsibility to say, not this afternoon.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I most assuredly am prepared to go to the bill and look forward to the Senator's remarks.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. Meyers who came here in 1934.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, a September 14, 1995, report by the Department of Health and Human Services concludes that the Senate welfare bill would push 1,100,000 children into poverty, and that the House bill would force 2 million children below the poverty line. The report, which has not been officially released by HHS, was the subject of a front-page news story in the Los Angeles Times on Friday, October 27. The New York Times and Washington Post ran their own stories about the report the next day. I first learned of the existence of this report 2 weeks ago, but was unable to obtain a copy until last Friday. The administration had previously refused to acknowledge that any such report existed. Mr. President, over the years Congress has on occasion missed opportunities to help our Nation's dependent children, but never before in our history have we calculatedly set out to injure them. The administration's own analysis shows that this is precisely what will occur under either bill now before the conference committee on welfare. Surely we will not permit this to happen. Surely the President will not permit this to happen. I urge all Senators to read the administration's report, and I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to note that the conference report for the Department of Transportation appropriations bill includes an appropriation of $20 million for capital improvements associated with safety-related emergency repairs to Pennsylvania Station in New York City and its associated service building. Pennsylvania Station is the busiest intermodal station in the Nation, with almost 40 percent of Amtrak's passengers nationwide passing through every day. Unfortunately, it is also the most decrepit of the Northeast corridor stations, others of which, such as Washington, DC's own Union Station, have been renovated with Federal grants. Today, Pennsylvania Station handles almost 500,000 riders a day in a subterranean complex that demands improvement. According to the New York City Fire Commissioner, there have been nine major fires at the station since 1987. Luckily, these fires have occurred at off-hours; as it stands, the station could not cope with an emergency when it is crowded with the 42,000 souls who pass through every workday between 8 and 9 a.m. In addition, structural steel in the station has shown its age and needs immediate repair. And these are just the most pressing needs. There is a redevelopment plan to change things for the better, a $315 million project to renovate the existing Pennsylvania Station and extend it partially into the neighboring historic James A. Farley Post Office, almost doubling the emergency access to the station's platforms which lie far below street level beneath both buildings. Moreover, there is a financing plan in place that could do this with $100 million from the Federal Government--with this bill, $51.5 million has already been appropriated--$100 million from the State and city, and $115 million from a combination of historic tax credits, bonds supported by revenue from the project's retail component, and building shell improvements by the Postal Service, owner of the James A. Farley Building. On August 31, 1995, Governor Pataki of New York chartered the Pennsylvania Station Redevelopment Corp. to oversee the project, following the signing of a memorandum of agreement by himself, Mayor Giuliani of New York City, Transportation Secretary Federico Pena, and Amtrak President Thomas M. Downs. Thanks to our colleagues on the Committee on Appropriations, $20 million can now be used immediately for pressing safety repairs at the existing station and its associated service building, in the first step of the overall redevelopment effort. These Federal funds go toward construction, and they will count toward the Federal share of the $315 million project to transform the station into a complex capable of safely handling the crowds that have made Pennsylvania Station the Nation's busiest intermodal facility. For myself and the 75 million other people a year who use the station, I would like to thank all those who have labored hard to make the station safer, in particular our colleagues Senator Hatfield, Senator Byrd, and Senator Lautenberg.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I withdraw that objection.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I object, Mr. President.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I agree with the comments of my friend and colleague, Senator D'Amato, and I share his concern of the proposed sunset of the low-income housing tax credit. The credit is a principal incentive which Congress makes available to individuals and corporations to invest in apartment construction and rehabilitation devoted to low-income renters. In fact, when the credit became permanent in 1993, it attracted many new, high quality developers to the construction of lower income rental housing. Today, the credit accounts for one out of every four apartments constructed nationwide and virtually all of the production of affordable rental housing. More importantly, State agencies, acting under Federal guidelines, manage the low-income housing tax credit program with a minimum of red tape. Under current law, the credit is limited to $1.25 per capita per State and is administered by the States on behalf of the Federal Government. Investors provide equity to projects in exchange for the credits to facilitate the development of affordable units. For 1995, based upon our Nation's current population, the States will allocate $325 million in credits, resulting in about $1.85 billion of private equity being invested in affordable housing. I could not agree more that to sunset one of the best examples of public-private [[Page S 16066]] partnership and Federal-State partnership would be a grave error.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, about 2 weeks ago we made a profound mistake in voting the welfare measure we did. A report now surfaces from the White House that says it will instantly plunge 1.1 million children into poverty. If that is the desire of this body, vote not to waive. You have a chance of redemption.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my vote on the Bradley amendment No. 3032 be changed from ``yea'' to ``nay.'' This request will not change the outcome of the vote.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, this amendment would strike the 40- percent reduction in indirect medical education payments in the reconciliation bill and restore $9.9 billion to teaching hospitals in the years 1996 to 2002. This reconciliation bill seriously threatens the future of medical research, physician training and care for the indigent. Teaching hospitals are a national treasure. To abandon them now would be a tragedy. I thank the Chair.

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its consideration.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Might we have order, Mr. President?