Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. That's correct. Obviously, the fact that they paid $22 million didn't guarantee a clean election.

Mr. NICKLES. I will read a statement that came from the Department of Justice, on page 2: ``Because of the deep entrenchment of La Cosa Nostra in the Teamsters electoral process, the consent decree gave the Government and the IBT the option to have the IBT election supervised by a court-appointed officer.'' It is because of the mob influence that has been with this union for a long time. I want it to be out. Hopefully, it is out. Obviously, there was still some corruption in the last election, which had a lot of taxpayer funding. The fact that the taxpayers had funds in it didn't clean it up. That is my point.

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. I do not think so for this reason: One, because I think the Congress of the United States was elected to appropriate the money, not an unelected judge in New York; and, two, this is timely because this is an appropriations bill for 1998. If the election is ordered, it will be for 1998. I think, instead of allowing the Departments of Labor and Justice and this administration, who has very close ties with this particular union and might like to give them a $22 million gift--I don't think we should do that. So in this bill we are appropriating for next year, I think we should make it very clear that the taxpayers got the shaft and so did the Teamsters out of this last $22 million, and it should not happen again. We clearly have the constitutional prerogative and right, as stated by CRS and the Constitution, to control Federal funds. I think we should make it very clear that in any subsequent election the Teamsters should pay for their own election. Every other union in the country pays for their own elections. They should do so. Incidentally, when you look at the 1991 election, which they paid for, it was a good election. Then look at the election where the taxpayers put in $22 million; it was a corrupt election. That should tell you something. Federal funds don't automatically mean you are going to have clean elections. We can still have oversight. We have oversight in Third World countries where our Government is involved in bringing people in, whether it's President Carter or others, to help oversee and make sure elections are clean and upright. Don't get me wrong. The Mafia has been very involved in the Teamsters, and they have been for decades. I want them to be out. I want the union to be clean. I want people to be able to vote and elect their representatives. It is kind of embarrassing, despite all this money, when you have a union of 1.4 million people and only 400-some- odd-thousand voted in the last election. I don't think the U.S. taxpayers should have to take the hit for paying for it to the tune of $22 million.

Mr. NICKLES. I have the floor. Let me correct you. What I said, the way I hope it would be done is the way it was done in 1991. You had Federal supervision, you had Federal observers, you had Federal monitors, but you did not have taxpayers paying $22 million for the election in 1991, and you had, in 1991, an election that had Federal observers stating that they thought this was a fair, clean election. That is what I want. I want the Teamsters to have a fair, clean election and I do not want the taxpayers to take another ride for $22 million. If we followed the thought that you and Senator Kennedy have, you could have another corrupt election, taxpayers would be out another $20 or $30 million, an observer could receive another $400,000 for saying, ``Oops, it was corrupt again,'' and we could do it again and again and again. Taxpayers have been taken for a ride once, we should not be taken for a ride again.

Mr. NICKLES. I tell my colleague my thought is it should be handled the way it was in 1991. We had Federal supervision and observation of the election in 1991 but the cost of the election was borne by the Teamsters.

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. NICKLES. Several comments were made that we are vitiating the consent decree. Totally false. I will tell my colleagues, you can read the consent decree, it does not say anything about a rerun election. The consent decree did say that the Teamsters would pay for the 1991 election and taxpayers would pay for the 1996 election. The Teamsters came out very well. They got a nice gift, $22 million, maybe more, which is over about $45, maybe $50 per person as the cost to the taxpayers of this vote. That is pretty high. Some of us do not think we should do it again. Maybe I was asleep at the switch in 1989. It happened. Nobody objected. And in 1991, since the Teamsters paid for it, it never came up. I was not aware of it until after the 1996 election and we found the abuse. It is an abuse on the Teamsters and on the taxpayers and should not be repeated. That is the reason we have the amendment before the Senate. We do not vitiate the consent decree. We say in the future, judge, we know the consent decree is silent. It does not say who should pay for it. Now, frankly, if you read the Constitution it says Congress shall have the power to appropriate money. It does not say ``an unelected judge.'' It does not say a judge, where a consent decree is silent, has the power to go in and mandate something, like mandating U.S. taxpayer funds. Some of us think elected officials should make that decision, not unelected judges. We are stating that in the future if there is another election, let the Teamsters pay. This is not a group of individuals that cannot afford it.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, one final comment. We talk about this money, and people say, ``Big deal.'' We are talking about $22 million. The Federal subsidy for Presidential campaigns is what? $71 million for a general election. That is the amount of money that Senator Dole received; that is the amount that Clinton-Gore received from the taxpayers. This is one-third as much. That amount of money was for the entire country. We are talking about 1.4 million people, and only 500,000 or less voted last time. Should taxpayers be liable for $22 million, or more? I do not think so. So this amendment tries to protect taxpayers. That is all it does. It tries to be fair to Teamsters and does not get involved in who should win in any way, shape, or form. It does not have anything to do with the UPS strike whatsoever. The only involvement of the UPS strike was the fact that they found out there was a corrupt election, and that information was withheld until after the strike was over. I am just saying, let us just make sure that taxpayers do not get stuck again. We got stuck in 1996. It was a corrupt election. Let us not let it happen again for future elections. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES. The Senator is exactly right.

Mr. NICKLES. The answer to the Senator's question is no. The Government can have some oversight and be involved in monitoring the election, trying to make sure there is not corruption in the election. We should not have to pay for it.

Mr. NICKLES. Certainly.

Mr. NICKLES. I rise in support of the amendment offered by my colleague from Idaho. Mr. President, let me just clarify again, some of our colleagues were not aware of the taxpayers' support for the last election. I told a couple colleagues--they said, ``How much did we spend?'' We spent $22 million; some people said more. The union has 1.4 million members. A little less than 500,000 voted. And $22 million is a lot of money. And a lot of money was wasted or maybe abused. It was abused, frankly, because it was taxpayers' money. That did not happen when it was their own union money. I mention, every other union in the country uses their own money for their own elections, as they should. So, again, I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment. This is not an unfair amendment. This even says that we can still use taxpayers' money. If for some reason the Teamsters do not have the money, they can borrow money from the Federal Government. They just have to pay it back. It happens to be, in my opinion, consistent with the consent decree because the consent decree is silent. The word ``rerun election'' is not mentioned in the 1989 decree. So what we are trying to say is, in future elections they should pay for it. We can still have Federal Government monitors. We can still have some oversight to try to make sure it is not abused, as that last election was. Taxpayers were abused as well as Teamsters last time. So I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Murkowski] is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I heard the comments of my colleague from Alaska, but basically what he is saying is we should not tell the Department of Labor how to spend money. In this appropriations bill we appropriate money for the Department of Labor. In this case they appropriated about $22 million--admittedly it came from the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice--to conduct this last election. And they did a pretty crummy job. We paid millions of dollars and we ended up with a corrupt election. I do not want that to happen again. We talk about adherence to the consent decree that was agreed to in 1989. I think my original amendment is in adherence to the 1989 consent decree, because it said that the Teamsters will pay for the 1991 election. They paid for it. And guess what. There was no complaint that it was a corrupt election. They paid for it themselves. You know what. People are a lot more frugal with their own money. They are less likely to steal from their own members. They are less likely to be corrupt maybe with their own members' money than they would be with taxpayer money. So we had a 1991 election. Mr. Carey won. Fine. And I don't know that anybody--there was an overseer in the 1991 election. They did not allege fraud in that. So the 1991 election was done by the Teamsters. They paid for it. They should have paid for it. They had a good election. No one said a thing. The 1996 election the taxpayers paid for. I will admit I did not know we paid for it until I read about it. And when did we read about it? Well, the overseer of the election, she announced during, or after the UPS strike--and that is the only thing UPS has to do with this--she waited until after the UPS strike to announce that there was fraud and that her recommendation would be that we need a new election. Mr. Carey only won by a few thousand votes. She said that maybe there were hundreds of thousands of dollars that were funneled in his direction and so she thought a new election was warranted. Fine. Let there be a new election. I am just saying in the new election taxpayers should not pay for it. We did not pay for the one in 1991. It was a clean election. We paid for the one in 1996 and there was corruption. A lot of money was moved around. Let's make sure, if we have an election in 1998, it is not a corrupt election. That is the purpose. This bill funds the Department of Labor for 1998. Let's make sure that taxpayer money is not used for this purpose. Somebody says, well, is this in compliance with the consent decree. I will tell you the consent decree is silent on a rerun election. It does not say it. I read the consent decree two or three times. It does not say anything about a rerun. So maybe a judge would determine, well, maybe taxpayers should pay for it. Maybe a judge would not. But wait a minute. Congress is supposed to appropriate money, and we have opinions. If somebody says, well, we are violating, we are stamping out the consent decree, hogwash. The consent decree does not say it. I did not request this, but there is a Congressional Research Service study dated May 1995, what would happen if Congress--does Congress have the right to withhold the money? The answer is yes. I will read you the quote from CRS. I will ask unanimous consent to put the entire study into the Record. But it says: Legislation enacted by Congress limiting or restricting the funds for the 1996 election would be a Federal law, and the Government parties would be bound to take appropriate action in reliance on that law. What are the consequences to the Congress of not appropriating all the funds necessary to supervise the 1996 IBT elections? There would appear to be no consequences to the Congress. The consent decree does not appear to obligate the Government to supervise the 1996 elections, either directly or indirectly. Rather, the decree embodies the consent of the union defendants to governmental supervision. We had governmental supervision in 1991. We will in 1998. What I am saying is let's just not pay for the election. This is not a destitute group of individuals. These are people who do quite well. Great. I read something; they average $27 an hour, about $50,000 a year. Fine. Why is the Federal Government paying for the election? We did not pay for the other election. We did not pay for the 1991 election. Why would we pay for a rerun of the election? All I am trying to do is protect taxpayers' money. And my colleague is suggesting, well, maybe somebody is upset about the UPS settlement. That has nothing to do with it. I am offended by that allegation. That is totally ridiculous. All I am trying to do is protect taxpayers. They had their strike. They had their settlement. And some people are running around saying, ``great victory,'' and so on. So be it. I am just saying you are not entitled to another $22 million of taxpayers' money. If the Teamsters pay for it--if it cost the Teamsters maybe less than half an hour to pay for their own election, they should pay for it. I even went so far in the amendment to try to be fair. Some people said make sure you put in language that no Federal funds be used to conduct the election. You could use it to oversee the election, to supervise the election. We do that in Third World countries. We do that in new democracies, so maybe we would spend a little money to oversee the election. I think that is fine, to have observers to try to monitor the election, to see that we would eliminate some of the corruption, but we had corruption when we had Federal funding because people took some of the Federal money and abused it. I am trying to make sure that does not happen again. Do we have the constitutional right to do it? Absolutely. CRS said we do. The consent decree is silent on a rerun. Certainly we can do that. And my colleague from Alaska says the judge may not even agree. We had the overseer, who made $300,000 or $400,000 monitoring this election, find out it is corrupt, withholds that information until after the UPS strike and then says, oh, yeah, we are going to have a new election. I didn't want to tell anybody during the strike because it might have influenced the strike one way or another. Oh, yes, but we need a new election. I am saying fine. If they need a new election, I agree. If that's her recommendation, fine. I am saying taxpayers shouldn't pay for it. Very plain and simple. We can monitor it. We can try to make sure it is not corrupt. But we should not pay for it. It's that simple. We didn't pay for the 1991 election. They had a good election. Certainly we can allow an election in 1998, if there is to be an election. If there isn't going to be an election, fine. My amendment wouldn't cost the taxpayers. I am trying to save the taxpayers money. So this amendment wouldn't cost anything. The very thought of my colleague who said maybe the administration would veto it, wait a minute. You have an appropriations bill that is actually hundreds of billions of dollars. They are going to veto this bill because they want to protect the Teamsters from what? Paying for their own election. Give me a break. You have to be kidding. How special interest could this group be? I know I saw the Vice President with the Teamsters on Labor Day, with thumbs up, and so on. But surely they would not veto a bill that says this group, which is pretty well compensated at an average--I guess truckers are making something like, I don't know, $27 an hour, wages and benefits--surely they say taxpayers that make a lot less than that should not be paying for their election when the consent decree does not say that. The consent decree is silent, frankly, on election reruns. I can't imagine that the administration would recommend vetoing a bill over something that special interest. So, Mr. President, I think we have had adequate debate. I would just urge my colleagues to vote to table the Kennedy amendment, and I move to table the Kennedy amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. How long would that take?

Mr. NICKLES. Reserving the right to object, since that is my amendment. I ask the Senator, you want unanimous consent to set our amendment aside for how long?

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, the amendment I send to the desk on behalf of myself and Senator Jeffords is an amendment that deals with the potential rerun of the 1996 Teamsters election. I think most of my colleagues are aware the Teamsters election, which was held in 1996, has now been held invalid, at least by the administrator overseeing the election who determined that there was fraud, that there was corruption, and that there needed to be another election. She has now made that petition before the U.S. district court. The court will rule on that. My guess is she will probably order another election. The purpose of this is to ensure that taxpayers won't pay for the next election. To give my colleagues a little history of how the U.S. taxpayers paid for the last one, I have heard estimates of around $22 million. I also heard more than $22 million, maybe higher or closer to $28 or $29 million, but the taxpayers paid millions of dollars, $20 million-some for the 1996 Teamsters election. Now it seems that the Federal overseer of that election says it was not fair, it was not right, there was corruption, it needs to be held over again. The purpose of this amendment is to say that taxpayers will not pay for it again. I might mention, somebody said why would taxpayers pay for it in the first place? Mr. President, 99 percent of all union elections that are held in this country, the U.S. taxpayer does not pay for. There was a 1989 decree with the Teamsters and the Justice Department entered into in 1989 that called for the elections both in 1991 and 1996. The 1991 election, I might mention, had oversight by the Federal Government but was not paid for by the Federal Government. Actually, the Teamsters paid for the 1991 election. With Federal Government oversight, no allegations of improprieties or corruption were made. It was a good election. The 1996 election, however, provided for in the decree, provided that the taxpayers would pay for the 1996 election. Now the overseer of that election said, wait a minute, there was fraud, we will have to have another election. The purpose of this amendment is, let's not pay for it, let the Teamsters pay for it. Somebody said, well, maybe they do not have the money, it could cost several million. I heard it could cost $10 million, it might cost $20 million. Who knows? I think they will be more frugal if they are paying for it. Certainly, they are capable of paying for it. In the event they do not have the money, our amendment allows for the taxpayers to pay for it, but we have to be paid back. Again, I think taxpayers did not get their money's worth out of the 1996 election. If you paid $20 million-some and you find there was rampant corruption, fraud, and abuse to the extent we have to have another election--we should not let that happen again. So, that is the purpose of my amendment. I think it is a fair amendment. It is in accord with the 1989 decree ordered in the past. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment of the Senator from Indiana [Mr. Coats] to prohibit the use of Federal money to conduct research using fetal tissue on Parkinson's disease, fetal tissue that is produced from elective abortion. The Coats amendment exempts spontaneous abortions, exempts ectopic pregnancies. But really the thrust of his amendment is that we do not want to turn abortion clinics into mills producing tissue that is used for research. I support his amendment. I do think it is immoral to use fetal tissue from elective abortions for medical research. I think occasionally we have to make moral statements. Do we really want to allow abortion clinics to harvest material to be used for research in whatever disease? In this case it is Parkinson's disease. Do we really want that to happen in this country? We had a prohibition on it for years. It was not done for years. Now some people think that maybe it would be a good idea. Tissue can be harvested, can be used if the abortion is spontaneous, but not in the case of elective abortions. Do we want to have a situation where an individual goes in and kills a human being, although not yet born, maybe up into the eighth month of pregnancy, kill that unborn human being and use that human being's cells for medical research? I do not think so, and I do not think we should fund it. The Senator from Indiana should be complimented for his amendment. I wish that this amendment was not necessary. I heard yesterday that NIH or someone has alluded to the fact that NIH, had no objections to the amendment. So I am maybe a little bit surprised that others are opposing this amendment as aggressively as they are. I urge my colleagues to support the Coats amendment. I think it is a good amendment. I regret that it is needed, but it is needed. I think it is important. I do not think we as a country want to have a national policy allowing abortion mills to kill unborn children and use their body parts for medical research. That is a serious issue. That is what we are voting on. So I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the Coats amendment. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Idaho for such time as I need.

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