Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Rhode Island. (Mr. Chafee), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Mack), and the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg) are necessary absent.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of all colleagues, I believe there are going to be three rollcall votes commencing at 5:30. So hopefully everybody will be present and we can move the votes fairly rapidly. I compliment the Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Santorum, for the outstanding debate he has conducted on the floor during the last couple of days. In addition, Senator Smith and others, I think, have presented a very compelling case that this procedure, the so-called partial-birth abortion procedure, should be stopped. There is no medical necessity for it. It is not necessary to save the life of the mother under any circumstances, according to experts such as Dr. Koop, the American Medical Association, and others. It is a gruesome, terrible procedure. It needs to be stopped. We have laws on the books that protect unborn endangered species from Oregon to Florida. We have fines and penalties that if you destroy an animal, or an insect, you can be subjected to fines and penalties of thousands of dollars. You can even go to jail for destroying the unborn of a particular type of insect which happens to be classified as endangered. Yet in this procedure, when we are talking about a child who is partially born, we won't give it any protection whatsoever. We are talking about a child, a human being. I know some people say, ``It's a fetus and not a child; it is not a human.'' Well, if we waited maybe 30 seconds, then it would be a child, or a human being, totally outside the mother's womb. I just find that incredible that we are not going to offer at least some protection for these unborn children. I want to allude to something else. There was a sense of the Senate passed earlier today, and some people have talked on it and said it reaffirms Roe v. Wade, as the law of the land. That Roe v. Wade is a great thing. There are a couple of points about this I would like to address. From a legislative standpoint, we are the legislative body; we pass the laws of the land. The Supreme Court is not supposed to legislate. I read the Constitution. We all have a copy. It says, in article I, section 1, of the Constitution: All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. All legislative powers. Then if you read through the conclusion of the Constitution, in the 10th amendment it says: All of the rights and powers are reserved to the States and to the people. It does not say in the case of abortion we give the Supreme Court the right to legislate. That is exactly what they did in Roe v. Wade. So now we have a sense of the Senate that says we agree with Roe v. Wade. I wonder how many people have really looked at Roe v. Wade. I thought I might introduce it into the Record because it is a very convoluted, poorly-drafted piece of legislation in which the Supreme Court legalized abortion. The Supreme Court doesn't have the constitutional power to legalize anything. They don't have the constitutional power to pass laws. That is what they did. I was going to insert Roe v. Wade into the Record, but it is too long, it has too many pages. I object to the Supreme Court legislating at any time, even if I agree with the legislative result. If Congress wants to codify Roe v. Wade, let somebody introduce legislation and let it go through the process. Let's have hearings. Does it make sense to have abortion legal, totally legal, without any restrictions whatsoever in the first trimester, and maybe little restrictions on the second trimester, and further on the third trimester? Is that the way Congress would do it? If we are going to do it this way, at least if the people don't like the laws Congress passes, they would have some recourse. There is no recourse to legislation dictated by the Supreme Court. So I strongly object to the idea of the Supreme Court legislating. I think the sense of the Congress was a serious mistake. I don't know if I am going to be a conferee or not, but I will work hard to make sure the sense of the Senate language is not included in anything that will be reported out on this bill. I think that would be a serious mistake. Again, I compliment the authors of the bill and state for the Record that I urge all people, Members of Congress, to vote for the legislation by the Senator from Pennsylvania to protect unborn children who are three-fourths born, or two-thirds born; give them protection-- maybe not as much protection as we give unborn animals under the endangered species. Evidently, we are not going to do that, but let's give them some protection. So let's pass this bill. We can go to conference with the House, and we can drop this sense-of-the-Senate resolution and pass the bill, and hopefully this time the President will sign it. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) and the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I annnounce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Roth), and the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Smith) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

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

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Chafee) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I will make one additional try. I ask unanimous consent that we have 4 hours equally divided on this bill.

Mr. NICKLES. Let's have the vote.

Mr. NICKLES. I object.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of my colleagues, we have been debating for the last hour or so--although we did have a discussion on the Wellstone amendment--the issue of the Bond amendment dealing with ergonomics. We have been debating it for a significant period of time. I personally am ready to vote on the amendment. I know there has been some discussion on both sides, but I ask unanimous consent that we have 30 additional minutes equally divided on the Bond amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, again, I think most things have been said on this amendment that need to be said. I don't know if Members want more debate. I will make an additional request, and that is that we have 2 hours of debate on the Bond amendment equally divided.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I thank and compliment the Senator from Missouri for offering this amendment. It is needed. This amendment is needed because the administration is getting ready to promulgate some regulations in the near future that will cost hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars for American industry. When I say American industry, I am talking about small business, as well as, big business. I am talking about an unbelievably complex set of regulations and there is no telling how much it will cost to implement these regulations. These regulations consist of how many motions you should make. That if you do more than a certain amount, then maybe that is not safe; or if you lift something, it cannot be lifted more than this number of times, or it will be too heavy or too stressful. OSHA and the Department of Labor try to make these very regulations and at the same time they say they honestly do not know what they are doing, so in many cases they will wait until laborers complain and then they will try to come up with regulations to alleviate their pain. These methods are not successful. We have in fact already addressed this issue. The Senate houses the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan group, to research complex issues. There is a CRS study that was updated August 31, 1999. I will read from a copy of this report that addresses further ergonomic regulation: Due to the wide variety of circumstances, however, any comprehensive standard would probably have to be complex and costly, while scientific understanding of the problem is not complete. It would be costly, it would be complex, and, frankly, it would not be understandable. It would not be workable. The state of scientific knowledge about ergonomics--and especially the role of non-work and psychological factors in producing observed syndromes--has become a key issue in the debate over how OSHA should proceed. Even if the problem were fully understood, the wide variety of circumstances will bedevil efforts to frame simple cost- effective rules. What are called ``ergonomic'' injuries are actually a range of distinct problems, much as ``cancer'' is not one but a family of diseases. Throughout the summary of this report, the point is that, due to a lot of circumstances, any comprehensive rules would have to be complex and costly while scientific understanding of the problem is not complete. What about a scientific study? Why don't we ask the scientists? If Congress' research arm says this is going to be costly, we do not have the scientific basis to do it, why don't we have scientific basis? Why don't we ask the experts to take a look at it and see if there is something they can come up with that would be workable? Well, we did do that. Last year, Congress passed and almost every Member of this body, or the majority of the Members of both Houses of Congress, passed a bill that funded $900,000 for the National Academy of Sciences to complete a study and review the scientific literature as mandated by Congress and the President on ergonomics. They have not completed that study. They should complete the study in about a year, January 2001; in 13 or 14 months. We are spending almost a million dollars on the study to ask the scientists to do an in-depth review. Yet many people say they want OSHA to go forth and come up with these complex rules in spite of the unfinished study. They are saying that they trust OSHA to come up with rules and regulations without this study, without the basis for making such rules? You talk about repetitive motions--OSHA often tells companies that they may possibly be doing something wrong and a company could ask OSHA whether or not they are in violation of certain standards and OSHA would reply: ``We don't know.'' These standards are almost impossible to define. What is repetitive motion? Standing at a machine on the job for 8 hours a day--that is ergonomic--is that too much? I grew up in a machine shop. I grew up in Nickles Machine Corporation. We lifted and moved a lot of heavy equipment. There is no way in the world some Federal bureaucrat knows what is the proper amount of weight that individuals should be moving around. There is no way to create a uniform standard that applies to each individual. Are they going to come in and supervise and say: You should not be standing there for that period of time? Maybe you should not be working at your computer for this amount of time. Maybe you should not be engaged in moving heavy objects. We are going to have the heavy hand of the Federal Government, Federal bureaucrats running all across the country trying to make those kinds of determinations, saying: If you do not comply with our infinite wisdom, we are going to fine you. We are going to close you down. Amazing. It is amazing that we would do such a thing. The proposed regulations by OSHA are not workable. They are unbelievably complex. Anybody who has looked at them from a standpoint of real-life experience in the workforce agrees that this is not workable. So what have we done if we succeed with this amendment? We have passed restrictions keeping this administration from going forward on this enormously complex, expensive, regulatory scheme. Last year, we said let's have this study, let's let this study go forward; let's look at real scientific facts before we implement a standard that could cost billions of dollars, and no telling how many jobs would be lost as a result. Let's let that happen. I regret that this was not already included in the committee bill. I think most people will acknowledge we have a majority vote on this. We have the votes to do this. We have Democrats and Republicans who will support this amendment. We have a majority; we have a majority vote in the House as well. Now we have this implied senatorial discussion: If you have this amendment, due to its complexity, we will discuss it for a long time; i.e. we will filibuster this amendment. We will not let this bill pass. We don't care if we bring down the largest appropriations bill, that deals with Education, Labor, Health and a multitude of Governmental agencies--we don't care if we bring down the whole thing. Why? Because organized labor wants this rule to go forward. I guess if the leadership of AFL/CIO wants this rule to go forward, we should absolutely let it go forward. That is what a few people are saying, although masked with niceties, in senatorial discussion: If you insist on a vote on this amendment, we are going to talk for a long time and not let this bill pass. As I said, we passed related legislation in 1998. We authorized the study I previously mentioned, to look deeper into the problems employees and industry face. Let's let the study work. Let's find out what the scientists have to say. Let's listen to the experts. We had a couple of congressional hearings regarding this very issue. The following was concluded from a hearing in 1997: Any attempt to construct an ergonomic standard as a remedy for regional musculoskeletal injuries in the workplace is not just premature, it is likely to be counterproductive in its application and enforcement. It is likely to be counterproductive. Does this give unions a chance to file complaints for harassment purposes? Has anybody thought of that? Of course they have. Does this increase people's leverage? ``If you work with us, maybe, a little bit, we will not be quite as vigorous in our complaints.'' Is this what we really want? Another statement was made by Dr. Stephen Atcheson and others with the American Medical Association: The debate concerning whether certain occupations actually cause repetitive motion disorders is now well over a century old and far from settled. This is complex business. You are talking about movements and actions in the workforce, and there are an unlimited number of movements and actions. Now we are going to have that regulated by the Federal Government? We are going to turn loose the Department of Labor, OSHA, to come up with regulations that have the force and the power to fine and assess and have bureaucrats telling people how to operate their businesses? As if people running those businesses could care less about their employees? The whole premise of this regulation is Government knows best; employers certainly don't care about their employees--which I do not believe. I have been an employer. You show me an employer who doesn't care about his employees, and I will show you somebody who is going out of business in a very short period of time and probably deservedly so. It is this presumption-- the Government knows best; we need Government as the caretaker for business operations--that I think is absurd. And we trust some bureaucrat in OSHA, who probably knows nothing about a particular operation, to come in and say: Here is how you should run your business. We know better than the people that have been managing that plant, working in that plant for years. There is no telling how much it will cost. No telling how many jobs will be lost, the costs that could be imposed, the costs that could result from unfair, unworkable regulations. I compliment my colleague from Missouri, and I urge my colleagues to support the Bond amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments made by the manager of the bill, and I also understand the Senate lingo that means if we offer this amendment, you will filibuster. That disappoints me greatly. I ask unanimous consent to be a cosponsor of the Bond amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: What is the pending business before the Senate?

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I would like to address a question to my friend from Pennsylvania regarding the Institutional Development Awards (IDeA) Program funding within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget. I am joined by my colleagues Senators Lott, Daschle, and Reid in support of the House level of funding for IDeA in the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies Appropriations bill. It is my understanding that the Senate level is $20,000,000 while the House level is $40,000,000.

Mr. NICKLES. The distinguished Majority Leader is correct. The point of this inquiry is to ask the chairman if he would reserve some resources for those IDeA states that receive the least among of research money.

Mr. NICKLES. I would also add that Oklahoma only receives, an average, $45 per person of research money.

Mr. NICKLES. I would like to thank the Chairman for his assistance.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. If the Senator can give me 5 minutes.

Mr. NICKLES. How much time remains?