Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Vermont.

Mr. NICKLES. I have 1 minute.

Mr. NICKLES. I would like to close on ours. You have 5 minutes.

Mr. NICKLES. I yield the Senator 1 minute.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I yield the Senator from Tennessee--how much time do I have?

Mr. NICKLES. To respond to a couple of comments, my colleague read from a Norwood letter that said the Republican conferees are not addressing liability. We have liability on the floor of the Senate. Mr. Norwood is not a conferee. Maybe he didn't know what he was talking about. We have liability on the proposal. Granted, there was not liability in the Senate bill we passed. There is on the bill we have before the Senate. When we talk about scope, we have scope that applies to 131 million Americans in the appeals process and liability that they can sue their HMO. To read a letter by a Congressman that says the conference is not doing anything, they don't have liability, and we have liability is a little misleading. When my colleague from North Dakota says our proposal doesn't have a Federal takeover of insurance, you might read the amendment. The amendment on page 2 says: (3) provide the Federal Government with the authority to ensure the Federal floor referred to in paragraph (1) is being guaranteed and enforced with respect to all individuals described in such paragraph, including determining whether protections under State law meet the standards of such Act. In other words, the Federal Government will run State insurance, period. The Federal Government is going to take over. It is in his amendment. I think that needed to be pointed out. I yield 10 minutes to my colleague and conferee on this bill, the Senator from Texas.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, how much time remains on both sides?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of all of our colleagues, it is my expectation we will have a vote about 7:20 p.m. I say to the majority leader, all time will expire by about 7:20 p.m. We are happy to vote on both proposals. So colleagues should be on notice to expect two rollcall votes beginning at 7:20 p.m. I yield 5 minutes to my colleague, a conferee on the bill, the Senator from Arkansas, Mr. Hutchinson.

Mr. NICKLES. I will be happy to let my colleague close. How much time remains?

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I compliment my colleague from Texas. I know sometimes it upsets people when we come out and say: Wait a minute, we are breaking the budget. I work with the Senator from Texas on the Budget Committee and he happens to be right. I also compliment my colleague from Pennsylvania, who is managing the bill. As the Senator from Texas mentioned, no matter what is in this bill, many people--particularly on the other side--say it is never enough. No matter what is in there, it is never enough. The Senator from Pennsylvania put in more money than the President requested for education, and we have had four or five amendments saying let's spend billions more. It is never enough. No matter what, we more than matched the President. The bill we have before us has outlays greater than the President requested and it is still not enough. I happen to be one who is, I don't want to say a wonk on numbers, but I am really picky on numbers. I think we ought to be accurate on numbers. I asked people before, by how much does this bill grow? The Senator from Texas just says it grows by a fifth. He understates the growth by just a tad. The growth in this bill is 20.4 percent in budget authority according to CBO. That is a lot of BA growth. Some people say we are growing other areas of the budget, and that is true. No other area of the budget is growing nearly as fast. The Defense appropriations bill we already had before us and passed, if my memory serves me correctly, was growing at 7-point-some percent. That is a lot. It is a big increase. This is growing almost three times as much in budget authority. People ask: What does that mean? It means the money we authorize to be spent; we are committing the Government to spend that amount. What are outlays? Sometimes outlays are easier to figure. The growth percentage in outlays is not quite as much. The growth percentage in outlays is 12 percent. The Senator from Texas wants to take off $2.4 billion because that is an offset. That is, frankly, a faulty offset. It is only in there so we can have more money in real growth in outlays, in budget authority, in commitment to growth spending. There is actually $4.9 billion in outlay offsets. The Senator from Texas might have been able to do the full $4.9 billion. I know he can do $2.4 billion, but there is $4.9 billion in offsets. I believe the chairman of the Appropriations Committee said we will drop those offsets. The real program growth--and this is what we are talking about in BA--is $104.1 billion. That compares to last year's $86.5 million in budget authority. That is a growth of 20.4 percent. That is a lot. If we adopt the amendment of the Senator from Texas, the growth will still be in excess of 17 percent. Granted, I know it will cause some consternation. I know the members of the committee will have to reshuffle and limit the growth of the spending in commitment to 17.5 percent. I happen to think that is doable. Maybe it is not the easiest thing in the world because we made commitments to grow spending more than the President did in this area or that area. Certainly, 17-percent growth is adequate, sufficient, and responsible. As to the bill before us, one can only say it complies with the budget if they take into consideration $4.9 billion of offsets which, frankly, will not happen. Again, I compliment my colleague from Texas for his amendment. I will submit for the Record a chart I put together which shows budget authority and outlays for the Labor-HHS bill for the last 10 years. For my colleagues' information, in 1990, 10 years ago, budget authority was $43.9 billion. Last year, it was $86.5 billion. It basically doubled in the last 10 years. The bill before us is trying to grow at 20 percent. In other words, it will double in about 4 years at twice the rate of growth of what we have done in the last 10 years. I think that would be a mistake. I am not critical of anyone. I compliment my colleague from Texas. He has a good amendment. I ask unanimous consent that the chart which shows the growth in this particular area of the budget, the Labor-HHS budget, be printed in the Record. It shows growth in outlays and in budget authority for the last 10 years.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Yes.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, let me just make an observation. I hear the threats that they are going to filibuster this amendment. This amendment deals with Labor-HHS appropriations. The Senate has the right to vote on whether or not we are going to spend the money in the Department of Labor to implement regulations that have a dramatic impact on business, on workers. We have a right to vote on it. The House voted on it; the Senate is going to vote on it. We have voted on this amendment in one way or another almost every year since 1995. This is not a new issue. So now some people are saying, wait a minute, we are not going to take this tough vote. Didn't we just have a vote on hate crimes? I think we had two. Didn't we have a vote on campaign finance? Some people didn't want to vote on those two issues on this side of the aisle. Didn't we vote on a Patients' Bill of Rights? Really, what the minority is saying is, we want to vote on our issues, but not on an issue that is relevant. Every amendment I just mentioned was not relevant to the underlying Department of Defense authorization bill. But still we ended up allowing those votes. We didn't have to. Now we have a relevant amendment to the underlying bill, Labor-HHS, the Department of Labor appropriations bill. We think the administration is going too far in the proposed regulations which they planned on having effective in December--these regulations the Clinton administration is trying to run through without significant hearings and without oversight and real analysis of how much it would cost. Here is an example. On cost alone, the Department of Labor said--OSHA said--this regulation will cost $4 billion. The Small Business Administration, which they control, said the cost could be 15 times as much, or $60 billion a year. This Congress is not going to vote on a regulation that could cost $60 billion a year as estimated by the Small Business Administration? The private sector estimates range to over $100 billion per year. Wow, that is a lot of money. Shouldn't we vote on it? Are these good regulations or not? Are we going to be able to stop them or not? Do we want to stop them? What are the regulations? They deal with ergonomics and with motion. OSHA--the Occupational Safety and Health Administration--is saying: We want to have some control over motion, and we think maybe this is harmful, and therefore we are going to control it. It may mean lifting boxes, or sitting at your desk, or anything minuscule, or something large. The Department of Labor is coming in and saying: You need a remedy, you need to change the way you do business, because we know how to do your business better, and if it increases costs, that is too bad--not to mention the fact that they say we are going to change workers comp rules in every State in the Nation. I wonder what Senator Byrd from West Virginia thinks about changing workers comp rules in West Virginia. I used to serve in the Oklahoma legislature. I worked on those laws and rules in our State. Are we going to have the Federal Government come up with a reimbursement rate of 90 percent when our State already passed a workers comp rule of 67 percent? Does the Federal Government know better? My suggestion is that my colleagues from Arkansas and Wyoming, in introducing this amendment, have every right to offer an amendment that says: We are going to withhold funds on this regulation. We don't want a regulation to go into effect in December without us having additional time to consider it, without knowing how much it is going to cost. Maybe it should be postponed or suspended; maybe we should let the next administration deal with it. Let's vote on it. For people to say, wait a minute, we don't like this amendment, so we are going to filibuster--there are probably a lot of amendments I don't like. Are we going to filibuster all of those? I think that would be grossly irresponsible. We need to let the Senate work its way.

Mr. NICKLES. Yes.

Mr. NICKLES. The original rule came out, I believe, in 1995, and it made very little sense. The latest proposal had over 600 pages. The business community and others who looked at it said it was not workable. The Department of Labor has come back and said let's revise it and make it more workable. Did they show us results? No. They said let's overrule the States' workers comp. If this went into effect--and I don't think it will, so maybe that is why people don't want to vote on it. But does this Congress really want to overrule every States' workers comp law? I don't think so. I think it would be a mistake. To answer the question, this administration has been trying to promulgate this rule for about 5 years. We have been successful most of those years in putting in restrictions to stop them. Unfortunately, we didn't get it in last year. To me, it was one of the biggest mistakes Congress made last year--not stopping this administration. Now they are trying to promulgate the rule, I might mention, right after the elections, right before the next President. I think a delay is certainly in order.

Mr. NICKLES. I think he asked me. They may have been working on this Department of Labor takeover of, I don't know what--workers involvement. But they issued the rule on November 23 of last year--a rule that has 600 pages. They may have been working on it for 10 years, but I doubt that. This administration hasn't been in office quite that long. But with enormous expense. I think, again, we should have a vote. To give an example, I came from manufacturing, and we lifted and moved a lot of heavy things. I don't really think somebody from the Department of Labor could come into Nickles Machine Corporation and say: Hey, we know the limits on what somebody can lift as far as pistons and cylinders and bearings are concerned. Therefore, we suggest you put a maximum on it. Or maybe every Senator--everybody has a machine shop, or every Senator has a bottling company. Somebody comes into the Senate every day and loads the Coke machines and the Pepsi machines. This rule says that you can't lift that many cases; that you can't lift two cases at once, or one case, or maybe you can only lift a six- pack or something. The net result would be an estimate that bottlers would have to hire twice as many people. Maybe this is an employment bill. My point is you could increase costs dramatically with draconian results without even knowing what we are doing. I think a delay and not to have a regulation with this kind of economic consequence coming right after the election and right before the swearing in of a new administration makes good sense. Let's postpone this until the next administration. I thank my colleagues for their efforts. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Campbell) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I congratulate and compliment my friend and colleague from Wyoming, as well as the Senator from Arkansas, Mr. Hutchinson, because they have offered an amendment that is one of the most important amendments we are going to vote on this year. The Clinton administration is trying to push forward an ergonomics rule that will have a draconian, negative impact on every single business in America. I want all my colleagues to know if this amendment is not adopted, if this ergonomics rule goes forward, there will be significant costs. Employers will be coming up to you asking: Why did you do this to me? I have some bureaucrat coming in and telling me how to run my business. I have a quote given by the individual who wrote these regs. She said: I love it; I absolutely love it. I was born to regulate. I don't know why, but that's very true. So as long as I am regulating, I'm happy. And she came up with the largest regulation in OSHA's history on business. The Small Business Administration estimated it will cost $60 billion a year, 15 times the cost that OSHA said. People in the private sector said it will cost over $100 billion a year. And the administration wants this to go forward right after the election, right before we have a change of administration. Senator Kennedy said this has been studied. Congress passed, in 1998, $890,000 for a study by the National Academy of Sciences. They are going to complete that study in January. We should let them do it. We should base this regulation on science, real science, not on a political agenda. They want to cram through an extensive regulation where bureaucrats are telling employees how to run their business, and to do that right before the election, before the next administration, will be a serious mistake. We need to stop it, and the way to stop it is to adopt the Enzi amendment. I say to my colleagues, this is probably the most important free-enterprise, private-sector initiative you'll vote on this year: If this year you believe business should be making decisions, support the amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the Enzi amendment.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, just briefly, this amendment would transfer $100 million away from the Colombian aid into the Department of Justice to be used for drug interdiction, for counternarcotic activities including and especially to combat methamphetamine production and trafficking, which is rampant throughout the United states, and also to use this money to enhance policing initiatives throughout the country in drug hotspots. I appreciate the cooperation of my colleagues and hope we will have an affirmative vote on that.

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

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3569.