Samuel Nunn

Mr. NUNN

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

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 2277

Mr. NUNN. I urge adoption.

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

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I urge adoption of the amendment.

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

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. NUNN. I thank the Senator from Kentucky for handling these amendments while I was upstairs doing some negotiation with Senators Cohen, Warner, Levin, and others on the ABM matter. We will continue that negotiation. We will be discussing with the leaders and our colleagues some of the concepts we talked about. We will talk more about that on Monday. I thank the Senator from Kentucky. Amendment No. 2275 (Purpose: To state the sense of the Senate on the Midway Islands)

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, in the bill there is a provision, which I authored and the committee accepted, which would establish a defense modernization account for, really, the first time in my knowledge. That says to the various departments of the military--Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps--that they can have a defense modernization account for any savings, including money they might otherwise feel compelled to spend at the end of the year to make sure they had fulfilled their budget expectations. That is where a lot of waste goes on in budgeting, and in the Government, is the urge and incentive we inadvertently create in Government to have all Government agencies, not just the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, to spend money at the end of the year so they look like they needed all the money they originally budgeted. Much waste comes from that. So the provision in the bill I offered will establish a defense modernization account and say to each one of the services that they will be able to take any savings that they are able to accumulate during the year and put it in this modernization account. They will be able to use it, subject to the approval of the Congress. It has to come back through the Congress, either through direct appropriation or through an approval process that we go through here. It has to come back. But subject to that, this money will be able to be used where we need it most and that is in long-term modernization. Senator Glenn has been for this proposal, but he had some concerns about it. This amendment would modify the defense modernization account to limit the total balance of the account, to limit the number of years the funds may remain in the account, to provide for additional oversight, and to sunset the account. I agree to all of these proposed changes and I urge the adoption of the amendment.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, this issue has already been raised and voted on just 2 months ago on the budget resolution, as the Senator from New Mexico said. That was the appropriate place to debate this. These firewalls are part of an overall Senate and House budget agreement. I think just to pick out one part of it and say we are going to pull it apart, either from the defense point of view or overall point of view--contrary to what the Senator from Arkansas may be assuming, these firewalls also protect domestic spending for the next 3 years. There are many Members of this body in the House and the Senate who feel that defense spending should be higher and are willing to take it out of domestic spending. We saw the House vote last night to cut $9 billion out of the domestic budget. Believe me, if we take down the firewalls, within a year or so you may find just the reverse, I say to my friend from Arkansas, than what you assumed. Because what the Senator from Arkansas assumes is if you take down the firewalls, you are going to take money out of defense and put it in domestic. Not necessarily so. That has been the indication in the past. I am not sure that is the case now. I think, Mr. President, though, the main point I want to make is the firewalls do keep a separate account between defense and domestic. But there is nothing in the firewall provision of the Budget Act that in any way prevents defense from being cut. Anyone who wants to cut defense can come on the floor, propose an amendment to cut defense, either on this bill or the appropriations bill, and defense will be cut if a majority approve that amendment. What the firewalls do, and I think this is very important, they say if you cut defense it goes to deficit reduction, it does not get shifted to another spending account. That is what the firewalls do. I think they are very important. I think they preserve both defense and domestic spending, as the Congress decides on the budget resolution. It is not as if we do not make decisions here. We make decisions on the budget resolution. We decide what goes within those firewalls. We do it every year. So that is the key place to make these changes. I urge the Bumpers amendment not be agreed to. I thank the Chair.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, if I could say to the leader, I believe the order provided the McCain amendment would be disposed of, then the Kohl amendment would be taken up and debated. Before the Kohl vote, the Boxer amendment would be taken up and debated, and then we would vote on Kohl and Boxer after that. So as I understand it, we will dispose of the McCain amendment first. Then we will have debate on the Kohl amendment and then we will have the debate on the Boxer amendment and we will vote on those two amendments after that. That is my understanding.

Mr. NUNN. I thank my colleague from Georgia. Mr. President, I would just say very briefly, and reserve the remainder of my time, that there are three problems with this amendment. It does look like a simple amendment. I know the Senator from Arizona is sincere in his efforts to try to save money for the Federal Government. One of the problems with this amendment--and there are three main problems. First of all, it will not work. It is an accounting nightmare. We would have to basically call off the security for a period of weeks or perhaps months while a team of lawyers and accountants went down and negotiated not only with the Olympic committee but with many different jurisdictions, as my colleague from Georgia pointed out. So the first problem is it is not workable with an entity like the Olympics that is operating in five States in many different local jurisdictions, that is not intending to make a profit, that is putting up a huge number of buildings and structures that would have to have an amortization table set up because they are going to be turned over to local entities afterwards. How can you determine a property in those circumstances? The second problem is it is not going to save the Government any money. They do not intend to make a profit. If they see they are going to have a surplus toward the end of the games, they are going to try to put it back into the games. I have been told that over and over and over. The third problem with it is it will probably cost the Government money. How would it cost the Government money if we adopt this and it became law? It would cost the Government money because this amendment says very clearly that no reimbursement would take place until the event is complete. Right now the agreement that has been worked out with DOD is that anything that is not related to the security is reimbursed immediately. So DOD does some things that are not security related that get reimbursed. They have already reimbursed the Government something like $55,000. It will probably be something in the neighborhood of $1\1/4\ million to $1 million before it is over. So this amendment, intending to save money, will end up, in my view, costing money because there will be no excess. The other problems--the big problem is what State and local governments do. Our States are putting at least $35 million or $40 million in. There will be events in Tennessee. Tennessee is going to be spending money. Once we adopt this, each State is going to say, ``We want to get reimbursed for our costs before the Federal Government.'' I do not know how that will play in this amendment. Perhaps someone could explain it. So this amendment is simply not workable. It will not save the Federal Government any money. It would reverse the precedent we have had over and over again. Mr. President, this is what is at stake here. We have 195 countries, 100 heads of state, 15,000 athletes and officials, 15,000 media representatives, 25,000 Olympic family and VIP's, 12 million tickets, 350,000 visitors per day, 3,000 hours of TV coverage, 3 billion viewers around the world. That is what is at stake. How much would Germany have paid for the security to prevent the slaughter that took place by terrorists at Munich in 1972? Do we want to nickel and dime security and have the ACOG committee, knowing they may be called on for some kind of cost accounting nightmare reimbursement and then negotiate with our military to see what we need in terms of chemical warfare specialists, what we need in terms of people who know about biological warfare, what we need it terms of communications? Mr. President, we do not want that for the Olympics. We do not want a black eye for the Olympics. We do not want to cut security to the bone and then end up with some tragedy or some great embarrassment. So I urge the rejection of the amendment and reserve the remainder of the time.

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

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I urge the adoption of the amendment by the Senator from California. I congratulate her on her leadership in bringing this to the attention of the Department of Defense Armed Services Committee. This reaffirms a provision that the bill now has in it precluding pay for military prisoners who are sentenced to extended confinement. I believe that term is defined as ``over 1 year.'' I also believe it changes the appeal time before the actual compensation is cut off. The bill has 21 days. This has 14 days after conviction. This is an abuse that has gone on too long. It was not brought to the attention of our committee or the Department of Defense. I congratulate the Senator for his leadership. I urge its approval.

Mr. NUNN. Has the Senator from Indiana used all the time he needs?

Mr. NUNN. I yield back the time. Vote on Motion to Table Amendment No. 2116

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, is this a 15-minute vote?

Mr. NUNN. I will suggest a 10-minute rollcall vote, unless there is objection. I ask unanimous consent that the vote be 10 minutes in length.

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

Mr. NUNN. It would be based on the average cost and add the differential cost, and the baseline year would be what year?

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I would like to ask the Senator from Iowa a couple of questions about the amendment and make sure I understand it. As I understand the amendment, the Senator is setting up a formula tied to the incremental cost of stationing U.S. forces in NATO. Is that right? Is it confined to NATO countries?

Mr. NUNN. The incremental costs--how would the Senator from Iowa define incremental costs?

Mr. NUNN. Do we have that kind of base cost anywhere? Has anybody computed incremental cost so that we know what that incremental cost is or how they compute the incremental cost?

Mr. NUNN. Would the Secretary of Defense decide the incremental cost would be based on what it would cost to station those troops at Fort Stewart, GA, or would he pick out Fort Lewis, WA, or would he pick out what it would cost to station them right outside New York City? There is a variation in the cost all over the United States. If you stationed United States troops in Hawaii near an impacted area, or San Diego, the costs are much higher than someplace else in the United States--I suspect higher than in Europe. Does the Secretary of Defense have total discretion to determine under this amendment what is an incremental cost and then determine where these troops would be stationed as a comparative basis in the United States?

Mr. NUNN. I am trying to see whether this is an obligation of the alliance. For instance, we do not have any forces in Norway. We have very few forces in the southern flank of Turkey. We now have forces in Italy related to Bosnia. Let us just take that, for example. We have a number of Air Force personnel in Italy related to the Bosnian situation. That is an alliance obligation. Italy allows units to use bases there for the purpose of flying those protective Bosnian flights, Deny Flight. Would Italy be responsible for reimbursing the United States for those incremental costs or would the whole NATO alliance be responsible?