Samuel Nunn

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4313 (Purpose: Relating to the participation of the State of Oregon in remedial actions at the Hanford Reservation, Washington)

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4319 (Purpose: To increase penalties for certain traffic offenses on military installations)

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4317 (Purpose: To provide for the treatment of the Hanford Reservation, Washington, and other Department of Energy defense nuclear facilities as sites of demonstration projects for the clean-up of Department of Energy defense nuclear facilities)

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Feinstein, I offer an amendment which would provide $6.5 million of the authorization for Air Force arms control implementation to be available for basic research in nuclear seismic monitoring. I believe the amendment has been cleared on the other side of the aisle. I urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, this amendment has been cleared. I urge its adoption.

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4304 (Purpose: To provide for preventive health care screening of military health care beneficiaries for colon or prostate cancer)

Mr. NUNN. I say to the Senator, is he assuming his amendment may not pass. If it is adopted, I will not be proposing that $1.7 billion.

Mr. NUNN. I will include the Senator on that if we are so fortunate as to defeat the Wellstone amendment.

Mr. NUNN. Yes, that is my belief of what we should do. I am not absolutely certain that will be done yet. I hope that would be done.

Mr. NUNN. I thank the Senator. Mr. President, we need to understand that while the defense spending levels in the budget resolution are higher than the President's budget this year, they are actually lower than the Clinton administration's defense plan in terms of budget authority starting in the year 2001. In other words, the administration is lower than the Congress this year, but higher in the outyears. I think the administration's outyear defense plan for 2001 and 2002 is about what we are going to need in terms of the defense budget, but I think the budget resolution is probably more realistic in terms of what we can afford for defense if we really are going to drive for a balanced budget in 2002. However, I feel that both the President's balanced budget plan and the Republican budget resolution, which is also aimed at balancing the budget, both of them assume unrealistic cuts in the outyears in overall discretionary spending, which includes defense, but is not limited to defense. That is betting on the future, and I think is an illusion. We are not going to make those size cuts in the outyears. That means under neither the budget resolution, nor the administration's proposal, are we likely to make the kind of cuts required to get the budget balanced in 2002. That is why I supported the Chafee-Breaux alternative, which in my view, represented a much more realistic picture of what is achievable, sustainable and sensible in terms of both defense and nondefense spending. In my view, Mr. President, we need to increase the defense topline now, to restore the balance to our defense program. We also need to extend the firewalls that the Senator from New Mexico has reinstated for fiscal years 1996, 1997, and 1998 in the budget resolution to protect any defense increases we are able to achieve and to provide some stability in the defense budget. Firewalls do not mean the defense budget cannot be cut. It can be. It does mean it will not be shifted to other nondefense purposes. We have been reducing the defense budget for a long time. The current builddown started during President Reagan's second term, significantly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It continued and was accelerated through the Bush administration and the Clinton administration. However, Mr. President, the time has come to stabilize the defense budget as much as possible. The defense budget has already made a major contribution to deficit reduction, more so than any other part of the budget. I am often intrigued by the arguments made about how many Federal employees we have cut out in the last several years. Mr. President, if you look at the numbers--I do not have the exact numbers in my mind-- something like 70 percent of all the Federal employees that have been cut from the payroll have been cut from the Department of Defense. Defense is doing its part, has done its part. We need to begin to level it off. Even if we defeat this amendment, there would still be a decrease in the defense budget in real-dollar terms from last year. Mr. President, modernization funding should be increased. The future readiness and future capability of the Defense Department requires modernization and it requires research and development. Those are the programs that have been cut most deeply during the defense drawdown. The pressure to achieve and maintain a balanced budget will make it very difficult to increase the defense budget above current levels--yet current levels are still artificially low as we work back towards a normal level of procurement and a normal level of infrastructure investment. Because we were reducing the size of the force and were able to keep the most modern equipment as we downsized, a temporary decline in procurement was appropriate. But we are now reaching the point where we have to get our modernization budget back up to a long-term level that will sustain our forces for the future. We have to start increasing the procurement budget to prevent the average age of our weapons technology from reaching unacceptable levels. At the same time, because the personnel drawdown is nearly complete, we are not going to be able to continue to reduce that part of our defense budget. It is unrealistic to expect this long period of declining defense budgets to continue. Similarly, during the BRAC era we underinvested in facilities modernization because nobody wanted to waste money modernizing facilities we might be about to shut down. But now that we have made those decisions and the BRAC process is over we are going to have to put more money in modernizing and maintaining the facilities we have left. So our children will be to have a budget that is slightly larger than the ones now planned. If we are going to balance the budget, it is unrealistic to plan for more than a slight increase. The budget resolution only increases the defense budget by about 1 percent over the levels in the administration's request--in order to have adequate funds for capital investments in weapons and facilities. This is why I oppose amendments which would reduce the defense topline number below the levels agreed to in the budget resolution. The funds added to the administration request by the committee have gone almost entirely to modernization--in other words, they have been invested in the future. I think my colleagues will find that the funds the Armed Services Committee added to the modernization accounts have gone mostly, not completely, to programs the service chiefs have requested, and most of these were programs the administration was already planning to do. So, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the Wellstone amendment.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. The Senator is correct.

Mr. NUNN. I urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4359 (Purpose: To provide service credit for service as senior ROTC cadets and midshipmen in the Simultaneous Membership Program)

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4360 (Purpose: To authorize the Secretary of the Army to accept less than full reimbursement of costs under the agreement for instruction of civilian students at the Foreign Language Center of the Defense Language Institute)

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I send to the desk an amendment by Senator Lieberman from Connecticut that would authorize funding for the Corps surface-to-air missile, known as Corps SAM, at the level requested by the President. I am a cosponsor of this amendment. I believe it has been cleared on the other side of the aisle.

Mr. NUNN. I urge adoption of the amendment.

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

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4357 (Purpose: To authorize funding for the Corps surface-to-air missile (SAM/Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) program at the level requested by the President)

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4358 (Purpose: To prohibit certain actions relating to the reorganization of the Army ROTC pending a report on the Army ROTC)

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment temporarily be laid aside, and I send to the desk an amendment.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, this is the fifth day of debate on S. 1745. I think it is appropriate to give the Senate another update--a very brief one--this morning on where we have been, and more importantly where we are going on this important measure. Thus far, we have debated this bill for almost 28 hours. We have disposed of 39 amendments. I will state, as I did yesterday, that we have not been keeping track of the exact amount of time consumed by consideration of the nonrelevant amendments offered thus far to our bill. But I am able to state that the Senate has spent too much time talking about things that are not relevant to this defense bill, that are not in our jurisdiction, would not be in the jurisdiction of the conference, would require outside conferees if they are put on this bill, and would be very unlikely to receive conference approval and be signed into law. So we are basically using our time to debate amendments that are not going anywhere in the long run, and we are doing that at the expense of completing this bill this week. Yesterday, we were running along at a pretty good clip. We completed a number of defense amendments. We had a number of other people ready to present amendments and were working for a unanimous consent agreement to have a finite list of amendments in order. Then we had another legislative hurdle which was put in our way; the fourth nonrelevant amendment to our bill; this one on the matter of FBI files. This effectively shut us down for the rest of the day, a situation that I know disappointed the chairman and disappointed me, as well as other committee members. The business before the Senate is the defense authorization bill. I hope that we can make this day the start of our quest to finish this bill this week and secure final passage without nonrelevant amendments. Mr. President, there is a difference between a relevant amendment and a germane amendment. A germane amendment is very technical. It has to be a deletion to the bill, or a deletion of money. There are all sorts of relevant amendments here, including amendments by the Intelligence Committee, most of which have been worked out, that are not germane. If we had invoked cloture a few minutes ago--and I voted against cloture--all of those intelligence amendments would be knocked out. Virtually all the amendments--not all but most of the amendments--that we have worked out that are going on this bill that are relevant but are not germane that we have already accepted but have not passed yesterday would have been knocked out. Any amendments relating to relevant ballistic missile defense--I see the Senator from Arizona on the floor--would be knocked out. The Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment which deals directly with the kind of terrorist threat that we have just witnessed in Saudi Arabia brings it home so that we can better protect our own cities. That is the subject of that amendment and certainly a matter of national security, but it would not have been germane to this bill, and that would have been knocked out. So I know there is a real and a very sincere effort here to get to the bottom line and pass this bill. But in doing so, we cannot prevent our colleagues from offering relevant amendments that are important to our national security, whether we agree with them or not. So there is a big difference between a relevant amendment and a germane amendment. Germaneness is required after cloture is invoked. I do not think it is time to invoke cloture. I think it would be a mistake to invoke cloture because we would then basically have not considered the serious amendments. We have spent most of our time considering nonrelevant amendments on this bill. As important as the stalking amendment is, the one that is now pending, that one is not relevant to this bill because it is not in our jurisdiction. It is in the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee. It is going to require outside conferees when we to go conference, if it passes. I intend to vote for it, but we are going to have a hard time getting that through. It is going to slow up the bill. It is very likely going to precipitate a gun amendment then on this side of the aisle, which we all know is going to take time. So I am just describing to our colleagues that their actions do have an effect on whether we can pass this bill or not. If we do not stick to relevant amendments that have a connection to national security and that are in the jurisdiction of this committee and in the jurisdiction of the conference, then we are going to be on this bill all this week. I know the leader said that we are going to stay until we finish it. I applaud that. We will not finish it this week. If he is determined to finish it, it may require next week. That is the way I see it now, unless we have cooperation from all of our colleagues and stick to amendments that are within the jurisdiction of this committee and this bill. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.

Mr. NUNN

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

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment offered by the chairman of the committee, Senator Thurmond. We are offering this amendment to reduce the overall funding level in this bill to comply with the budget resolution. Although the authorization bill is not technically required to conform to the budget resolution, our committee has always tried to conform its recommendations to the budget resolution, to the maximum extent possible, in order to keep our work relevant to the overall process and to give firmer guidance to the appropriations bill. This amendment lowers the national defense total funding authorized in this bill by $1.8 billion, to a level providing for the national defense function contained in the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution of $265.583 billion. This amendment is in the form of an overall reduction. It does not attempt to amend the bill in the dozens of places that would be necessary to make all the detailed reductions, nor does it spell out the even more numerous changes to all the line items in the report language but which are not part of the bill. In my view, that kind of procedure is not necessary or productive at this time. This amendment ensures, however, that the total authorized for defense in this bill matches the budget resolution. The committee will make the appropriate detailed adjustments during our conference negotiations. Mr. President, I will just take a brief period here to explain how we got to this point. The answer is simple. When we marked up our bill, there was no 1997 budget resolution number to mark to--no House number, no Senate number, no conference number. Our colleagues in the House were in the same situation. Their bill was reported and brought to the floor even earlier than this bill was. The House did not lower their version of this authorization bill on the floor to comply with the budget resolution. Their bill passed the House on May 15, before the budget resolution had gone to conference or even passed the Senate. The House bill exceeds the final defense spending level in the budget resolution by $1.1 billion in budget authority and eight-tenths of a billion in outlays. This armed services bill was ordered reported on May 2, while the Senate version of the 1997 budget resolution was not ordered reported until May 9. Because this bill was marked up before there was a Senate budget resolution or a House budget resolution defense number for 1997, we used the target for fiscal 1997 from last year's fiscal budget resolution, which was $267.3 billion in budget authority. It was the only funding target available for us to use. Furthermore, although the House version, like the Senate version, was reported after our Senate Armed Services Committee markup was completed, the defense number in the House version of this year's budget resolution was $267.2 billion in budget authority and was also consistent with the guidance from last year. In other words, we had two different numbers from the House and Senate that had to be reconciled in conference. Even after we did get the top line funding targets from the Budget Committees, we still had no definitive guidance about what our number would be. Since one of those two targets was basically what we had marked to, there was at least a chance we were already at the right number. So it did not make sense to try to change it before the budget resolution conference was concluded. So it was not until the budget resolution conference completed it on June 7, and adopted it on June 13, that we knew what the defense number would be. The budget resolution conferees adopted the Senate's defense number. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the national defense authorization level in our bill was equivalent to $267.4 billion in budget authority and compared to the budget resolution's budget authority level for national defense of $265.6 billion. That means our bill is over the budget resolution conference by $1.779 billion in budget authority, although it is right on target in terms of outlays, or actual cash. Because our bill was sequentially referred to the Intelligence Committee, which reported it out on June 11, for all practical purposes, we had no way to redo the bill before it came to the floor. Mr. President, I have explained why it is impractical, if not impossible, to redo our bill to comply with the budget resolution before considering this bill on the Senate floor. However, this amendment will bring the bill into compliance with the budget resolution number. This amendment would reduce the amount in the bill by $1.8 billion. The bill would be $11.2 billion above the President's budget request, but, again, will be lower than last year's bill and last year's defense total in real terms. So the defense budget is still coming down, in real terms, and this amendment will not change that. Mr. President, I urge the adoption of the Thurmond-Nunn amendment, and I also urge the Senate to vote against the Exon amendment, which cuts more substantially than does the Thurmond-Nunn amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I yield back all the time we may have.