Samuel Nunn

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. I am speaking of the proposal we now have before us. I thank my friend. I am glad the authors are considering that, because I can assure you, if we debate this bill another 2 or 3 days, another 3 or 4 days, there are going to be a lot of other things that people are going to point out because this has not been thought through. I believe the original proposals, the rescission proposals, have been thought through by the authors. I did not agree with the McCain proposal because of the two-thirds vote, but I think it had been thought through, the rescission part. This proposal has not been thought through. You are going to find one problem after another with this. For it to come on the floor of the Senate of the United States with a cloture motion at the same time, bypassing committees, bypassing the rescission proposals that had come out of the and come up as a compromise with the threat of a cloture motion--this proposal has not been thought through. It is riddled with loopholes. I am glad that particular amendment is being strongly considered, but it has not been adopted and of course I have no way of knowing what is going to be adopted so my remarks have to be addressed to the bill, the underlying bill as it now stands. But I thank my friend from Arizona. I hope there will be that clarification as well as others that take place. The rescission proposals would not have that problem. The President would send up rescissions on money items. He would not be sending up language revisions. Those are totally different animals than what we have here on the floor. This hybrid that has been put together as a compromise has injected whole new areas that were not contemplated in the rescission bill and present totally different problems. For us to pass this bill in a week or 4 or 5 days to me is very bad legislative procedure and will come back to haunt us if we continue to legislate this way on these things that are this important. It is obvious this matter has not been thought through. In short, Mr. President, the proposed substitute is likely to give us the worst of both worlds. It does not subject to veto the earmarks that are buried in floor statements, committee letters, and phone calls to Cabinet Members. Those could be addressed in rescission bills. They will not be able to be addressed in this bill. It does subject to veto legitimate policy disagreements between Congress and the executive branch that have to be addressed in statute. I hope my friend from Arizona is correct on that, that policy disagreements are going to be addressed in an amendment. I have not had a chance to study the amendment and I do want to study that. I believe the impact of the substitute proposal will be almost the opposite of what the Members of Congress and the American public had in mind when they said--and say in polls and in their letters and phone calls--they want a line-item veto. Mr. President, I think it is also important to note, as I mentioned earlier in my summary remarks, that the substitute we have before us and that we may vote on even as early as tomorrow night, permits the President to increase Federal spending. The proposed substitute has been justified as a means to decrease Federal spending. This claim overlooks the fact that the substitute as drafted also permits the President to increase Federal spending. As Members will recall, we acted last week on a defense supplemental bill to address urgent readiness problems. That bill not only contained increases in spending for readiness, it also contained rescissions--decreases in spending--to minimize the impact on the deficit. A number of those offsets, were strongly opposed by the President, such as the reductions in environmental spending and reductions in the Technology Reinvestment Program. Under the proposed substitute, each paragraph in the supplemental would be enrolled as a separate bill, including the rescissions. As a result, the President would be free to sign into law all the increases in spending and to veto any or all of the rescissions. In other words, the President could increase the deficit by hundreds of millions or billions of dollars without congressional approval. Only a two-thirds vote of both Houses could override these actions. Is it any wonder that any President would desire to have this power? Obviously, any President would want these powers because he can take a rescission and an appropriations bill that decreases an expenditure, veto the rescission, and keep the appropriations. What are we doing here? Do we really know what we are doing in this proposal? In that regard, the proposed substitute is clearly inferior to the Domenici-Exon expedited rescission proposal. Under an expedited rescission, the President could only propose decreases in spending. I must say I believe that is also the way the amendment of the Senator from Arizona would have worked. The President could not obtain any increases under the Domenici-Exon expedited rescission procedure. Why do those who support reductions in Federal spending want to give the President the authority, under the proposed substitute, to increase Federal spending instead of restricting his power to reductions in spending? I can only conclude that this proposal has not been carefully thought through. The proposed substitute if implemented in good faith, if none of these loopholes is taken advantage of by this Congress or a future Congress, will, in my opinion, result in rigidity, inflexibility, and in some cases chaos in the management of the Government's fiscal affairs in the executive branch. Mr. President, the problem with the proposed substitute is that if it is administered in good faith with line-item appropriations, and if no loopholes are used by the Appropriations Committees--and I have already described the gigantic loopholes that could be used--I believe it will cause chaos in the management of Government's fiscal affairs. The most telling critique of the proposed substitute comes from the Republican majority on the Governmental Affairs Committee. This was the report that came out with the rescission bill that had been brought out of the Governmental Affairs Committee just about 10 days ago. In explaining why it was better to have lump sum appropriations rather than line-item appropriations. Senator Roth and the Republican majority on the Governmental Affairs Committee made the following observations in their report on S. 4, which was the original proposal before this substitute came in. Quoting from that majority report in the Governmental Affairs Committee: Congress and the executive agencies are in broad agreement that lump-sum financing is an effective way to manage the Federal Government. Because of lump sum appropriations, federal agencies are able to shift funds within large appropriations accounts and therefore adjust to changing conditions during the course of a fiscal year. By making these shifts inside the account, the overall dollar figure for the activity is not violated and therefore there is no need to seek remedial legislation from Congress. Fund shifting takes place under established reprogramming procedures, with agencies notifying designated committees of the shifts and in some cases seeking the advance approval of those committees. * * * This flexibility is important for the agency and for Congress in its oversight capacity. It is possible, although not desirable, to apply the state budgeting system to the Federal Government and give Presidents the kind of line-item veto available to governors. To maximize item-veto authority for the President, the details in conference reports, agency justification materials, and other nonstatutory sources could be transferred to appropriations bills * * * . At this point I am not quoting. This majority report is describing the problem exactly with the substitute we have before us. Back to the quote: * * * However, placing items in appropriations bills would produce an undesirable rigidity to agency operations and legislative procedures. If Congress placed items in appropriations bills, agencies would have to implement the bill precisely as defined in the individual items. In cases where the specific amounts detailed in the appropriations statutes proved to be insufficient as the fiscal year progressed, agencies could not spend above the specified level. Doing so would violate the law. Agencies and departments would have to come to Congress and request supplemental funds for some items and rescissions for others, or request a transfer of funds between accounts. Neither Congress nor the agencies want this inflexibility and added workload for the regular legislative process. If we want further argument against this substitute, let us turn to what the Republican majority on the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight said in making similar observations in their report on the line-item veto legislation that they passed, which I must say is totally different from the substitute we have before us now. Quoting from the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Republican majority: We do not itemize appropriation bills and see no reason to do so. . . . The details do not appear in the law. . . . We could take the details from nonstatutory sources and place them in appropriations bills, but that would add an undesirable rigidity to agency operations. Executive officials would have to implement highly detailed bills no matter the magnitude of change that occurs over the course of [a] fiscal year. Their only opportunity for relief would be to come to Congress and request legislation to increase others. Agencies would be forced to seek large numbers of statutory amendments to the original appropriations bill. No one in either branch wants that. Item-veto authority, as practiced at the state level, would require the Federal Government to itemize appropriations bills. Such a step would disrupt and undermine effective agency management. What we have, Mr. President, is both the Republican majority on the Senate side in Governmental Affairs, and the Republican majority on the House side in Governmental Affairs, have written reports in connection with line-item veto that directly critiques and criticizes and describes as rigid and unworkable, in my words, the proposal that we are now about to vote on and will probably pass. It is an amazing legislative performance. I have never seen anything quite like it to have a committee report by the majority come out and basically to decry and criticize a later proposal that is on the floor as a substitute for the ones brought out of committee. Let me illustrate the problems described by the Republican majority on the Governmental Affairs Committee. Assuming the Appropriations Committee set forth all the line items for defense in the defense appropriations bill, this would mean that a single defense appropriations bill, as we now know it, would be enrolled as over 2,300 separate public laws. Reprogrammings between these public laws would no longer be possible. Reprogramming could not take place because each item would be in a separate law. As a result, fiscal managers would no longer be able to move funds from a program that is in trouble to a program that is ahead of schedule. Overseas pay and benefits shortfalls caused by devaluation of the dollar could not be addressed through reprogramming in the defense arena. To the extent that Congress requires an agency to eat a pay raise--or absorb the cost by shifting funds from other programs--the agency would be unable to provide for the pay increase through reprogrammings. Increases in operational tempo in time of international tension could not be funded through a reprogramming from lower priority programs. Readiness shortfalls would go unaddressed because money could not be moved from lower priority O&M accounts into training activities. We know how long it takes us to get through a supplemental appropriations bill. We are going to have to have supplemental after supplemental after supplemental based on this legislation, if we pass it. There is going to be no end to the number of supplementals that we are going to have just in the Department of Defense alone. The legislative activity load is going to just go up astronomically if we pass this legislation. If military personnel accounts experienced temporary shortages--as they did last year in the Air Force Reserve just before Christmas-- funds could not be reprogrammed to meet payrolls. In other words, Mr. President, the executive branch would be faced with fiscal gridlock. Like Gulliver, they would be bound by Lilliputians in the form of thousands of minute appropriation bills. Our fiscal managers would be unable to make reasonable adjustments during the course of a year to spend the money wisely, and would be forced to delay actions needed to obtain savings or meet other critical military needs. Moreover, because they could not move the money between line items, there would be a great incentive to spend all of the funds appropriated to a particular line, even if the money could be used more wisely in another program--just exactly the opposite of the incentives we want to give the managers in DOD, or any other department. They would know that they could not move it because they could not reprogram. They would know if they come to the Congress, they might have to wait sometimes months, maybe even before the fiscal year is over, to be able to come up here and get another law passed so they could spend the money in some other category. Are they going to be great managers and turn it back in? We all know what happens when people have money to spend in agencies. It is a problem every government faces. They spend it or lose it. Usually, unfortunately, they spend it. That is what is going to happen here, multiplied by thousands of line items. In other words, Mr. President, a proposal that started out to try to save the taxpayers money, to try to delete waste, fraud, abuse, and pork out of all sorts of legislation--a worthy objective and I think one that could be achieved with something like the Domenici-Exon proposal--is now in the form of a substitute that we are about to vote on. That is a formula for delay, inefficiency, and waste. That is how this process has evolved--an amazing process. Mr. President, the final comment on this proposal that I will make is that the substitute we will probably vote on tomorrow does not address the main problems criticized by its supporters. I must say, these are legitimate criticisms of our current process. I am not a defender of the current process. I think for us to have rescissions come from the President and, by doing nothing over here, allow those rescissions to have no meaning at all, is unacceptable. We must change that. But the way to change it is not this proposed substitute. It is to require us to put the spotlight on and to vote again, as is provided in the Domenici-Exon proposal. That should be what we are really voting on here. I hope we are going to have a chance to vote on that. I hope some people will change their minds, because we still have a chance to pull this ox out of the ditch. Anybody who does not believe these are real problems has not studied this very seriously, in my view. The substitute does not address a lot of the problems that really need addressing in the Congress. Proponents of the substitute really hope the President will use it to correct the problems in the legislative process. I do not mind the President correcting problems in the legislative process under the right kind of proposal. Why do we not try to correct our own problems? Why turn it all over to the President and say, Mr. President, we have all these problems and we do not handle this right, we are pretty sloppy, we have a lot of pork in legislation, and we have unauthorized appropriations and earmarks, we cannot solve it. We will send it down for you to solve it. As a consequence, we will shift a lot of power from one branch to the other. I suggest we ought to address the problems ourselves. Unauthorized appropriations, for instance, are a significant problem. Why do we not establish an effective point of order against unauthorized appropriations? I know the Senator from Arizona would agree with that. Earmarks that avoid the competitive process are wrong. Why do we not establish an effective point of order against earmarks that avoid merit-based selection procedures? Adding a project in conference that was not included in either bill, House or Senate, is another significant problem. I think it is a terrible practice. Why do we not establish an effective point of order against projects added in conference that were not in either bill? Conference reports that are not available for review prior to debate are a further problem. This particularly happens at the end of the session on appropriations bills. Why do we not require conference reports to be available 2 or 3 days before debate? The proposed substitute addresses none of these problems. On the contrary, the substitute presumes that Congress will continue to employ procedures that fail to constrain unnecessary spending. Mr. President, we are putting the cart before the horse. Before we ask the President to exercise our own responsibilities, we need to make every reasonable effort to clean up our own act. This is not just a matter of congressional prerogative. If we fail to restrain ourselves, we can hardly expect the President to do it for us. And if we give him these tools, we are going to be surprised over the years--I am not talking about President Clinton, and I am not talking about any specific President, but there is going to be a tremendous disillusionment with the American public, because they are going to find over the years that we are going to convert pork that costs millions of dollars into strong-arm tactics by some President down the line that is going to cost the country billions of dollars--threatening to take out millions in order to get people to vote for billions. Believe me, it is going to happen. continue to earmark funds for pork barrel projects and then blame the President if he does not veto the very projects we approve. Mr. President, I know that many who support the proposed substitute do so out of strong conviction that something must be done to control Federal spending, and I agree. I agree with that point. But in our zeal to control spending, we must not lose sight of our duty to exercise our constitutional legislative responsibilities with care. The history of this legislation is not particularly edifying. The committees of jurisdiction, the Budget Committee and Governmental Affairs Committee, have marked up bills based on the use of a rescission process, not a separate enrollment process. I will repeat that. These bills brought out of committee, at least with committee deliberation, are totally different from what we have before us now that is a substitute. Mr. President, the proposed substitute may be written on tablets of stone in terms of the way the votes are around here, but that does not make it good legislation. As I have pointed out, it has enormous loopholes that will permit continued pork barrel earmarks--the very earmarks that we could capture if we use the Domenici-Exon expedited rescission proposal. The proposed substitute gives the President the authority to increase spending by vetoing rescissions, a power that he would not have under the Domenici-Exon expedited rescission proposal, or under the McCain proposal. Again, I do not favor the McCain proposal because of the enormous shift of power to the President. But it would certainly not have the defects we have out here today. This substitute creates the potential for chaos in Federal fiscal management, a problem that would not arise under the Domenici-Exon expedited rescission proposal. It does nothing to address the legislative problems that encourage earmarks such as unauthorized appropriations, additions in conference reports, and conference reports that are not available in advance of debate for examination. Mr. President, there are numerous other problems with the proposed substitute which have been pointed out by others. My friend from West Virginia pointed out numerous problems. These include the constitutionally questionable practice of delegating legislative power to the enrolling clerk and the enormous burden placed on the President of having to sign nearly 10,000 separate appropriations acts. I visualize in the future where we will have candidates seeing who can sign the most pieces of paper the fastest, because that is going to require an enormous amount of Presidential time. We are going to have thousands and thousands of signing ceremonies, I suppose, and a lot of pens. It is going to be good for the fountain pen industry but not for Government. Presidential time management is a serious problem. I would rather have a President working on correcting abuses in Government rather than signing 10,000 or 12,000 bills a year. Mr. President, we have a choice in this debate. We can give the President and the Congress the tools needed to effectively address wasteful spending, or we can vote for a bill that is an invitation for Congress to exploit loopholes as well-- if that does not happen--as an invitation to fiscal gridlock in the executive branch. We should reject the proposed substitute and work in a bipartisan fashion, which is entirely possible here in this bill. I think both the majority of the House, the majority of the Senate, Republicans as well as Democrats, really want an effective tool here. But, Mr. President, this is not it. This substitute should be rejected, and we should work together on an effective rescission bill that gives the President the authority to address wasteful appropriations and unnecessary tax expenditures but does not cause the kind of mess that is going to be caused by this legislation. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NUNN. Will the Senator yield on that?

Mr. NUNN. Will the Senator yield for a brief comment?

Mr. NUNN. Using the example I discussed earlier, the appropriation bill could simply provide $1 billion for army aircraft procurement. It could set forth minimal descriptive material in the committee report and then provide all the details, including a pork-barrel earmark, in a floor statement or a letter to the Department of Defense. Alternatively, the committee could include all noncontroversial materials in the committee report and then address a pork-barrel earmark in a floor statement or letter to the DOD. In either case, Mr. President, the President of the United States under the proposed substitute would have nothing to veto except the big lump sum procurement. That is all he would have to veto. He would not have the detail in there. The substitute appears to be based on the mistaken premise that the only way Congress can earmark a pork-barrel project is through bill or report language. Mr. President, that is naive and ignores both legislative history and precedent. Unlike report language that interprets a legislative provision, a line item in a committee report which sets forth a committee's policy direction on expenditures has no legal standing. It has no more legal effect than a speech in the Chamber, a letter from a committee, or a phone call from a committee chairman. Therefore, those who want to earmark or add pork do not need report language. They can use any other form of communication to the executive branch. The likely effect of the substitute will be to drive the pork into underground shelters where it will be hidden from scrutiny. If the substitute is enacted, the really egregious earmarks no longer will be set forth in committee reports. The earmarks will be described in floor statements, letters from committees, or even phone calls from committee chairmen to the heads of agencies. The proposed substitute will not eliminate pork. It will drive it underground. A related loophole is the failure of the substitute to cover floor amendments. It is not unusual for an amendment to be offered in this Chamber to increase a lump sum appropriation by a specified amount without stating the purpose in legislative language. The purpose is often set forth in the statement of a sponsor. Under the proposed substitute, an amendment that increased a lump sum appropriation would not be enrolled as a separate bill even if the sponsor stated that the purpose of the increase was to earmark funds for a pork-barrel project. Once the amendment is adopted by the Senate, there is no requirement that the purpose of the amendment be discussed even in the conference report. Mr. President, let us look at how a pork-barrel earmark would fare under the proposed substitute as compared to how it would fare under the Domenici-Exon expedited rescission bill or under the original McCain bill. Under the proposed substitute, if the earmark is set forth in a floor statement or committee letter, there is no requirement that the item be set forth separately in the bill or separately enrolled. Unless the item is set forth in the bill, the President could not veto it. Under the Domenici-Exon expedited rescission proposal or under the McCain original proposal, however, the President would not be limited to items expressly set forth in the bill. The President could propose rescission of a specified amount of money for a specified purpose. The President would be guaranteed a vote in the House and the Senate in a specified period of time. That would not only serve as improvement in the current law in the case of the Domenici-Exon proposal, but it would also be a great improvement over the proposed substitute, which has enormous loopholes. Ironically, the proposed substitute would enable the President to veto items that reflect legitimate policy differences between the President and the Congress. When we have major disagreements on matters of policy, we must express our requirements in legislation in order to ensure that the President carries out the will of Congress. Let us take, for example, an item that both of my colleagues in the Chamber, the Senator from Nebraska and the Senator from Arizona, are very familiar with, the V-22 aircraft. The 3sprey, or the V-22 aircraft, has been a controversial item for several years. The V-22 has had strong bipartisan support in the Congress, yet the Bush administration wanted to cancel it. Congress insisted on authorizing and appropriating funds for the V-22 because we believed the funds were genuinely include specific legislative provisions to ensure that the program was not canceled. Under the proposed substitute, however, the President could have vetoed the V-22. He could have vetoed the strategic sealift program that Congress initiated. He could have vetoed congressional increases for weapons systems that had not been in the President's budget but which made a crucial difference in Operation Desert Storm, such as Stealth fighters and the Patriot missile. He could have vetoed the $1 billion LHD-6 ship that was added by the Congress even though it was not in the President's budget. Many of our colleagues want to increase and restructure our missile defense program. That is another item ripe for a Presidential veto under the proposed substitute. The separate enrollment proposal allows the President to veto any paragraph of the appropriation bill. The proposal is not limited to provisions containing pork-barrel earmarks. In fact, it is not limited to funding items. The proposal applies to any numbered section or any unnumbered paragraph. That means the President can veto funding limitations as well as funding amounts. In doing so, he could approve the appropriation bill but he could veto conditions under which the appropriation was provided. The President, for example, could veto a provision such as section 8135 of last year's appropriation bill. And I believe Senator Levin has been talking about that, the Senator from Michigan. That provision stated, ``None of the funds appropriated by this act may be used for the continuous presence in Somalia of United States personnel, except for the protection of United States personnel after September 30, 1994.'' That provision was strongly supported by many of those who now back separate enrollment. The President did not want the provision. I am sure he would have loved to have had the ability to veto that provision without affecting the underlying DOD appropriations. Have any of the supporters of the proposed substitute, especially those who opposed the operations in Somalia or Haiti, considered the war powers implications of the drastic new restrictions on the congressional power of the purse? The power of the purse is the only thing we have to deal with. The War Powers Act does not work. Everybody over here knows it. The power of the purse is the only way that Congress has to enforce restrictions on foreign troop deployments. That power under this bill as now drafted in my opinion will be largely gone. Another part of the DOD appropriation bill, section 8008, last year provided: Funds appropriated by this act may not be used to initiate a special access program without prior notification 30 calendar days in session in advance to the Committees on Appropriations and Armed Services of the Senate and House of Representatives. Those special access programs, as other programs, are very highly classified programs that I will not discuss here on the floor. But I have no doubt the President, any President, would welcome the ability to veto that provision. This was a limitation on Presidential expenditures, saying you cannot spend this money except under certain limited conditions. The President could keep the money, veto the conditions, and off we go--more expenditure, not less, as people want when they say they want a line-item veto. Under the substitute there is just as much chance, over a period of years, that the President, any President, would veto a restraint on spending as well as an increase in spending. This is not what the public has in mind when they say they support a line-item veto. In my opinion, there is just as much chance this provision, this bill, will cause an increase in spending as there is a decrease. That does not even take into account the ability of the President under this new power to basically take certain provisions in a Senator's State and say, ``You have these five provisions and if you do not vote with me on, for instance, health care, my proposal on health care, I am going to make sure these proposals do not go into law unless you can produce two-thirds of the vote in both bodies to do so.'' It is a huge power shift to the President. But I am not even dwelling on that in this speech today. It is a huge power shift to the President. And any President that has a pet project--health care, or whatever they want to get through--will have a very greatly enhanced ability to do that. Not by saving the public money, which is what they want, but by threatening to veto those provisions in exchange for Senators and Members of the House basically voting to increase spending on one of the President's proposals. It could be billions of dollars. In my opinion what we are setting up here, the way we are heading--we are setting up provisions which give the President of the United States a chance to threaten millions of dollars in exchange for getting votes for billions of dollars. That is not what the public intends. That is exactly where this proposal is headed. Mr. President, to take another example, the President could veto the so-called Hyde amendment restricting the use of Federal funds for abortion that has been included in the Labor-HHS appropriation bills over the years because it would be enrolled as a separate bill under the proposed substitute. The Hyde amendment was included as section 509 of the fiscal year 1995 Labor-HHS appropriations bill, and reads as follows: Section 509. None of the funds appropriated under this act shall be expended for any abortion except when it is made known to the Federal entity or official to which funds are appropriated under this act that such procedure is necessary to save the life of the mother or that the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest. I wonder if the people who are so enthused about this amendment, and this proposal, have really thought through what they are doing.

Mr. NUNN. I will go ahead and yield, yes, sir.

Mr. NUNN. I do not remember using the word the Senator attributed to me, because I do not think it would be easy. But I think it will be a lot easier if the Senate sent up a rescission bill. And I think if we stuck to either the Domenici-Exon bill or the McCain bill on rescissions, that is the way to go about it. I do not question what the Senator is trying to do. I agree. I do not question the problem you have identified. I agree.

Mr. NUNN. Will the Senator yield to me?

Mr. NUNN. As the Senator knows, on reprogramming, the reprogramming comes up by written request. It goes to four different committees. It is examined by the committees. All the members of the committees have access to that information if they want it. The reprogramming is not done by telephone. And if the Senator wants to prevent reprogramming, the Senator is going to actually basically have the Department of Defense come up with one bill after another all year long. There will not be time for anything else. I do not think the Senator has thought through this proposal. I think the Senator has thought through the problem and I think he has thought through it very carefully and I admire him for his fights on that. I think he will find I voted with him on his amendments most of the time. And I think he would recall the challenge to the appropriations earmarks. I started that on the floor of the Senate. We actually won a majority vote on three different occasions. We have had the money taken out of the earmarks on the Senate side. In the final analysis, it usually gets put back in at the end of the conference. So I agree with the Senator's frustration. But the problem is every time you see a problem around here, that does not mean whatever solution you throw at it is going to be the answer. I am saying that there is a problem. The Senator is right, there is a problem. There are ways to address that problem. But these solutions are going to create a whole other set of problems that are worse than the problems that the Senator is describing. That is my case.

Mr. NUNN. It was a different proposal. I examined that proposal. It was the Mattingly proposal. It did not have anything like the level of lines required in this one. It was a different proposal.

Mr. NUNN. That is OK.

Mr. NUNN. The money is spent on other Defense Department needs.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my two distinguished colleagues, Senators Roth and Glenn, and the other original cosponsors in urging the adoption of the sense-of-the Senate language on the unlimited and unconditional extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at the upcoming renewal session beginning next month. The importance of the treaty to U.S. nonproliferation efforts can hardly be exaggerated. The Committee on Governmental Affairs held a hearing on Tuesday of this week, with a panel of distinguished witnesses, which served to highlight the strong bipartisan support for extension of the treaty. I urge my colleagues to support this important resolution of endorsement of the unlimited and unconditional extension of the NPT. Mr. ROTH addressed the Chair.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Madam President, I want to start by commending the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from Hawaii for their hard work on this bill. I know there are no two members of the Senate more concerned about our national security than Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye. They have been given the difficult task of balancing our national security needs with the need for deficit reduction, and I can certainly appreciate the pressures they are under. The Appropriations Committee has moved quickly on this supplemental, which the administration says must be enacted by the end of this month. I think the Senate has improved on the House bill in some respects. I particularly want to commend the managers for rejecting the reduction proposed by the House to the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. That is a program the Secretary of Defense feels very strongly about, as do I. I also think the managers were wise to reject the addition of $670 million in unrequested funds contained in the House bill. Some of those additional funds do address must-pay bills, which I will come back to in a moment, but they are not programs that belong in an emergency supplemental. Madam President, the Defense Department needs a supplemental, and I think the leadership of the Defense Department is doing what they feel they need to do to get a supplemental enacted in a timely fashion to avoid a repeat of the disruptions in training that caused readiness problems in fiscal year 1994. However, I have several concerns with the approach the Senate is whether this supplemental is a good deal for the Defense Department on balance. First, it does not provide the net increase in defense spending for readiness that was requested by the administration, despite the concerns many of my colleagues have expressed about readiness. The costs of the contingencies are covered, but only by making cuts elsewhere in the defense budget. Unlike the administration request and the House-passed bill, there is no net increase in funding for the Department of Defense in this supplemental. Because this bill is not designated as an emergency, it requires all increases to be fully offset in both budget authority and outlays-- otherwise enactment of a supplemental could cause a sequester. As this bill demonstrates, it is necessary to cut more budget authority than you add in order to achieve that goal when the supplemental requirements fall in the faster spending accounts, which is usually the case. In the future, I fear that we will find that attempting to offset fast-spending operation and maintenance outlays on a one-for-one basis will be extremely difficult and overly restrictive. DOD is willing to make some of the cuts in this bill, such as termination of the TSSAM Program, which was anticipated in the budget, but they had planned to use these cuts to offset the cost of other must-pay bills later on this year. I might add that I regret that the TSSAM Program was not able to overcome its problems, because it is a technology we very much need, in my view. I am not quarreling with the administration's decision to terminate the program, although I am concerned that the amount of money rescinded in this bill will not allow sufficient funds to pay the Government's termination costs. I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Alaska that he is aware of that issue and plans to review it in conference. According to Deputy Secretary Deutch, DOD already has $800 million in must-pay bills unrelated to these specific contingencies which will require reprogrammings, which is a process by which funds are transferred from one defense program to another during a fiscal year. By taking the easier cuts for this bill, we are just making it harder to deal with those other must-pay bills later. Yet this bill also reduces DOD's 1995 reprogramming authority, thereby reducing their flexibility later in the year if more problems come up. There are other cuts in this bill that the Department of Defense does not agree with, such as the reductions to the Technology Reinvestment Program. In addition to the concerns I have regarding specific programs in this supplemental, I am troubled by the impact on the defense budget and on defense management that the approach this bill takes of making DOD absorb the full cost of these contingencies could have if it is viewed as a precedent for funding future contingencies, which I hope it will not be. It largely defeats the purpose of having a supplemental. I am not sure we have really thought through the impact of what we may be doing to the military with this 100 percent offset approach. Last week, Gen. Gordon Sullivan, the Chief of Staff of the Army, told the Armed Services Committee that if the Congress adopts a policy of forcing the military to completely offset the costs of any contingency operation: . . . it is just going to destroy our training programs, our quality of life programs, and it is going to be difficult to manage the readiness of the force . . . It is going to come out of reducing real property maintenance. We may have to furlough civilians, terminate temporary employees, curtail supply requests, park vehicles, reduce environmental compliance. It is going to have a major impact. General Sullivan said that in the event the military is told to assist a large-scale evacuation of U.N. personnel from Croatia: I just have to stop training, and I will have to move money around from elsewhere to keep that operation going since obviously what you expect me to do is to fight and win your wars. So, I will have to get the money from people who are not doing that to support it. Now that may sound like an exaggeration to some, but if you understand the laws that govern the defense budget, you will see why General Sullivan's comments are right on target. The cost of an operation, such as paying for the airlift to get there, the fuel, spare parts, and so on, must come out of the operating budget. The military does not have the authority to divert funds from the procurement of weapons, or from research or military construction or military personnel accounts, even if they wanted to. And even within the operating budget, there are further constraints. A large portion of the operating account is civilian pay, so you cannot save money there without firing civilians. And you cannot cut really cut the money to operate the bases--you have to pay the light bill. So the areas General Sullivan is talking about--training, maintenance and repair of the buildings on our military bases--are the only areas where the military has the flexibility to change its plans halfway through the year. And in fact that is exactly what happened last year--money had to be diverted from training. In the past we have paid for contingencies and natural disasters such as the Midwest floods, the Los Angeles riots, the California earthquake, and the cost of the Somalia and Rwanda operations last year, as emergencies under the agreement reached in 1990 as part of the Budget Enforcement Act that set up discretionary caps. What we have done, at least in defense, was make a good faith effort to offset these supplementals as best we could. About 70 percent of the cost of the 1994 Somalia supplemental was offset by defense rescissions, for example, while all of the costs of the Rwanda mission, which was about $125 million, were emergency funds. So in the past we have been consistent about calling an emergency an emergency, but sometimes we have fully or partially tried to offset those costs and sometimes we have not. That is basically the approach the House is taking. They provided emergency supplemental appropriations for the Department of Defense and then tried to offset those appropriations, in budget authority but not in outlays, using savings from both defense and domestic programs. It is my hope that the House position would prevail on this fundamental point, that is, the question of whether we are going to treat the costs of contingency operations that cannot be anticipated in advance as emergencies for budget purposes. If we start dropping the emergency designation, we could end up tieing our hands in responding to future emergencies while we wait to find 100 percent offsets. Strong consideration must be given to budgeting for unanticipated contingencies in advance in the DOD budget, but this inevitably runs into the issue of implicit congressional approval for military operations and war powers considerations. In addition to my concerns about the financial impact on the Defense Department if this bill is viewed as a precedent, I also share the concerns expressed by the Senator from Hawaii about the long term policy implications of telling the military any future contingency they are involved in is going to come out of their budget dollar for dollar. This is going to have an impact on their ability and their willingness to respond to situations like Haiti or Cuba, or especially a much more expensive operation like peace enforcement in Bosnia, in the future. It could have the effect of dictating our policy on the use of force through the appropriations process. I hope the policy of making the Defense Department absorb the costs of these operations is viewed as a one-shot proposition, not as a precedent for future supplementals, because if we are telling the Department of Defense that any time there is an emergency that comes up and they come over and request supplemental funds that they are going to have to provide a 100-percent offset, then we are going to change the nature of the responsiveness of the Department of Defense itself to the missions that may, indeed, be crucial to our Nation's security. If the Department of Defense is told that any unanticipated operation they undertake, either unilaterally or with NATO or the United Nations, is going to have to be completely offset within the defense budget, which means they are going to have to basically kill or substantially alter crucial defense programs in order to absorb those costs, the United States is not going to be as involved as we have been in world affairs, including commitments to our allies and commitments that we have voted for at the U.N. Security Council. This complete offset policy sounds good in speeches but it has very serious implications for the Department of Defense. Make no mistake about it, this complete offset policy means the long-term capability of the Department of Defense is going to go down. It does not mean that the immediate readiness is going down because that can be protected. But future readiness, future capability, requires modernization and it requires research and development, and those are the programs being cut by this complete offset policy. So 5 or 10 years from now, people will have a very serious problem with readiness if we continue to declare there is no emergency even when our forces are responding to the unanticipated events that we all know will take place somewhere in the world from time to time. Madam President, I also want to note that this bill contains domestic rescissions of about $1.5 billion. I understand that the defense portion of this supplemental is outlay neutral in 1995 without the domestic rescissions, but that over the 5-year period the domestic rescissions are necessary to make the whole bill outlay neutral over the long run. Many of my colleagues do not support the idea of using domestic rescissions to offset the cost of a defense supplemental. My view is either we have firewalls or we do not. The Congress has cut defense to pay for domestic supplementals in the past, so I do not see any reason why we should not look to domestic programs to offset the cost of defense supplementals, especially if we are going to start adopting the policy of offsetting both the budget authority and outlays of supplementals. I hope we decide to reinstate defense firewalls, Madam President. But until we do, I believe domestic programs should be on the table to fund defense supplementals, just as defense programs have been put on the table to fund domestic supplementals. In 1990, for example, $2 billion in defense funds were rescinded to substantially offset the cost of a supplemental providing economic aid to the new democratic governments of Panama and Nicaragua as well as funds for food stamps, fighting forest fires, veterans programs, and many other programs. That same fiscal year, discretionary spending was reduced across the board to fund antidrug programs. So once again there was a net transfer of funds from the defense budget to the non-defense discretionary part of the budget. I should also point out that previously the defense budget has been held to a higher standard than the domestic budget. As I have already pointed out, 70 percent of the defense funds provided in last year's emergency supplemental for Somalia were offset by defense rescissions. But only about 25 percent of the non-defense funds provided in that supplemental were offset by rescissions. If the Congress is contemplating setting out a new policy for offsetting supplementals, or not offsetting supplementals, I think that policy has to be fair in its treatment of defense and domestic emergencies. Haiti Reporting Requirement Madam President, I am also concerned that the requirement for a Presidential report on the cost and source of funds for military activities in Haiti is linked to a cutoff of funds for those activities if the report is not submitted within 60 days after enactment of this act. I generally oppose linking a cutoff of funds for any military operation to anything other than the accomplishment of the mission. If the Senate opposes a military activity or operation, it should vote to cut off the funding. In the case of the Haiti operation, however, the Senate voted several times in the last session not to prohibit the President from ordering the deployment of United States forces to Haiti. I do not think that the Senate would be prepared to vote to terminate the funding for the Haiti mission now that it has been carried out with such professionalism by United States forces and is in the process of being turned over to a U.N. operation that will be commanded by a United States general officer. In this case, moreover, virtually all of the information that the President would have to provide in his report to Congress was mandated last session by Public Law 103-423, a joint resolution regarding United States policy toward Haiti, that was signed into law by the President on October 25, 1994. President Clinton has now submitted four reports pursuant to sections 2 and 3 of that legislation that call for monthly reports until the mission is over. Those reports were submitted to Congress on November 1, December 6, and December 31, 1994, and on February 8, 1995. If the President had refused to submit those reports, then perhaps it would make sense to condition the continued availability of funding on the submission of such reports in the future. But the President has been submitting those reports and there are no indications that he plans to stop submitting them. I do not plan to offer an amendment to this bill to delete the cutoff of funding provision. I base my decision on the urgent need of the Department of Defense for this supplemental funding and my realization that there will be a difficult conference with the House on this bill. I therefore want to avoid any action that could delay this legislation. The fact that President Clinton will be able to submit the report required by this bill has minimized my concern over the funding cutoff provision. But I did want to note my concern over this provision and to signal my determination that this provision not serve as a precedent for this type of action. ef-111 system improvement program [sip]

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I want to commend Senator Boxer for her sense-of-the-Senate amendment concerning the anomalous situation in which some military prisoners facing punitive discharges continue to receive substantial amounts of military pay while in confinement. The amendment would express the sense of the Senate that: First, Congress should enact legislation that terminates the entitlement to pay and allowances for each member of the Armed Forces who is sentenced to a punitive discharge. Second, that the legislation should provide for restoration of pay in the event that the punitive discharge is set aside. Third, that the legislation should include authority for the establishment of a program that provides transitional benefits for spouses and other dependents of a member of the Armed Forces whose pay is terminated in such legislation. Mr. President, I would briefly like to outline the background of this issue. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a court-martial has great discretion over the sentence. Depending on the maximum punishment authorized for an offense, a sentence can include a punitive discharge--bad-conduct of dishonorable--or dismissal of an officer, confinement, a reduction in rank, and forfeiture of pay. Although many individuals sentenced to a punitive discharge and confinement also are sentenced to total forfeiture of pay, there are exceptions. Recent new stories have highlighted the fact that some persons with substantial confinement and punitive discharges continue to receive military pay. On January 11, Senator Boxer introduced S. 205 with the goal of ending pay for such individuals. I support the purposes of the Boxer bill, and I congratulate her for initiating legislation to close this loophole. There are a number of technical questions which must be addressed by the Armed Services Committee with respect to the drafting of this legislation. These include: First, should the restriction on pay also apply to prisoners sentenced to substantial periods of confinement even though the sentence does not include a punitive discharge? Second, should the restriction apply at the time the sentence is announced by a military judge or at the time the sentence is approved by the commander who convened the court-martial? Third, what should be the impact of a commander's decision to suspend the effect of a punitive discharge? Fourth, how do we address the problem of prisoners who are currently receiving pay without violating the ex post facto clause of the Constitution (Art. I, sec. 9, cl. 3)? Fifth, how do we address the transitional issues that face innocent spouses and children of such prisoners who are stationed overseas or far from their home of record without creating an expensive entitlement? I have discussed these matters with Senator Boxer and have specifically addressed the questions to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Edwin Dorn. Secretary Dorn has advised me that the Department of Defense is very close to completing a legislative proposal that would address my questions. Mr. President, I am confident that we can close this loophole. I look forward to working with Senator Boxer, and with Senator Coats and Senator Byrd, the chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Personnel of the Armed Services Committee, in addressing this issue.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, echoing the remarks of my friend from New Mexico, I think it would truly be a unique hour in the history of the Senate if we could let the policemen and the maids and the janitors come up for an hour and talk about Dick Halverson. None of us could express what this whole family of the Senate would say about this wonderful man who is a devoted follower of Jesus and who lives that example every day, more so than any person I have ever observed in my life; and whose religion is not only through the spoken word, but most of all through example. Benjamin Franklin, who first suggested that sessions of the then- Continental Congress be opened with prayer, once said that true human happiness is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. The Members of the Senate have enjoyed such daily advantages--I would not really call them small--having been blessed over the past 14 years by the thoughtful opening prayers of the Chaplain of the Senate, Dr. Richard Halverson. In all that time, Dr. Halverson has been a real pastor to the Senate as a whole, sharing our long sessions, agonizing with us at times of difficult decisions, and helping us wrestle with the great moral concerns of our Nation. He has been there for each of us from the majority leader to the policemen to the waiters, conscious of the special pressures of our responsibilities, and of the pressures those responsibilities place on our families. He has brought to his duties a deep compassion and a deep concern for the moral climate of our Nation. He has shared his knowledge of the Scriptures and the thoughts of great spiritual leaders through the ages from many faiths, bringing to our attention passages from books and poems and his own meditations that he thought would be helpful to us as a body, through his prayers and pastoral letters, and as individuals in a variety of thoughtful ways. Before he came to minister to the Senate, Dr. Halverson ministered to Presbyterian congregations from the Midwest to Hollywood to Maryland. We have benefited from his long experience and understanding of human frailty and human needs, and of the capacity of human beings to be compassionate, wise, and courageous as well. A committed follower of Jesus who lives his beliefs, he has never tried to impose his personal beliefs, but has worked hard to help us live up to ours, and to help us find the wellsprings of moral and ethical action as legislators and leaders. I would like to think I speak on behalf, as the Senator from New Mexico has, of everyone here, the thousands of people in the Senate family, when we say to Dick Halverson, our friend, our colleague, our mentor, our adviser, and most of all our example: Thank you and God bless you and your family. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Madam President, I rise in support of the amendment offered by my colleague from New Mexico. I appreciate the pressures on the Appropriations Committee. The Senator from Hawaii and the Senator from Alaska have done a commendable job in trying to handle this supplemental under very difficult circumstances. I share the sentiments expressed by the Senator from South Carolina about the overall supplemental. I hope it is viewed as a one-shot proposition, because if we are sending a signal to the Department of Defense that any time there is an emergency that comes up and they come over and request supplemental funds that they are going to have to have 100 percent offset, then we are going to change the nature of the responsiveness of the Department of Defense itself to the missions that may, indeed, be crucial to our Nation's security. One mission comes to mind on a hopefully hypothetical basis, but it could become a reality. We may get into a situation, even in the next 30 or 45 days in Croatia, where the United Nations is ordered to get out of Croatia. There is no doubt that this evacuation could precipitate more fighting in Bosnia, and could even require rescue missions to get U.N. personnel who are in harm's way in Bosnia out of that war-stricken area. And if the Department of Defense is told that anything they do in that kind of rescue mission with NATO and with the United Nations is going to have to be a 100 percent offset, and they are going to have to basically kill or substantially alter crucial defense programs in order to absorb that, then that is going to be a very strong signal that the United States is not going to be as involved as we have been in world affairs, including commitments to our allies and commitments that we have voted for at the U.N. Security Council. So this complete offset sounds good in speeches but it has very serious implications for the Department of Defense. Make no mistake about it, this complete offset policy means the long-term readiness of the Department of Defense is going to go down. It does not mean that the immediate readiness is going down because that can be protected. But future readiness requires modernization, it requires research and development, and those are the programs being cut by this complete offset policy. So 5, 6, 7 years from now, people will have a very serious problem with readiness if we continue to declare there is no emergency even when our forces are responding to the unanticipated events that we all know will take place in the world from time to time. I hope this is not viewed as precedent. As my friend, the chairman of the committee, the Senator from South Carolina, said: If this is a precedent, we are going to have some serious problems. I know the Department of Defense worked with the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from Hawaii in identifying offsets. I know they are still concerned about certain programs, such as the program Senator Bingaman is discussing, the technology reinvestment program, which is one of the programs that is being severely impacted by this supplemental. Also, environmental cleanup is being impacted severely under this bill. And that environmental cleanup is not only something that has to be done in base closures, but we have solemn commitments to Governors in a number of States that we are going to carry that out. And as we cut back on these environmental impact funds in the Department of Defense, make no mistake about it, there are going to be lawsuits involved, litigation involved, contractual obligations that are going to have to be breached. I do not say that all of that is going to flow from this bill. But it is going to flow if we continue to have to take these kinds of actions. So I understand the Senator from Alaska has worked very hard on this, as has the Senator from Hawaii, who has put up a warning light about the direction that this bill takes us in. I hope that not only the Appropriations Committee--because they are carrying out, I have no doubt, the will of the majority here--but I hope the majority itself will think about the implications for defense. Because one of the things in the Contract With America, and in other commitments made by those on both sides in running for office, was a strong national defense and protecting readiness. The problem is, Madam President, readiness is being defined as just the next year or two, when readiness has to be defined over the next 5 to 10 years. And readiness, by that definition, includes research and development and includes procurement. And and development and to procurement, we simply will not have modern and ready forces 5 years from now or 10 years from now. So I rise in support of the amendment offered by my colleague from New Mexico. I support the TRP Program as one of those crucial programs for future military readiness for several reasons. First, it is our bridge to the future for the technology needs of the Department of Defense. We all know how difficult it has become to fund the technology programs we know we will need for the forces that will be in the field 10 years from now and 15 years from now. We are having to depend more and more on research conducted by the civil sector of our economy. For a long time the research and development flowed from defense to the civil sector. That is still true in some cases, but increasingly a larger and larger percent of our crucial defense technology is flowing from the civilian commercial sector to the Department of Defense. The Defense Department can no longer afford to be the leading edge of every technology. TRP gives us access to those dual-use research projects that will benefit both the defense and the commercial sectors. Second, because the research is dual-use, it is cost shared. Industry is paying the bulk of the cost in most of the TRP projects. This means that for every dollar we put in the TRP program we get from $2 to $10 of research that helps our defense efforts from the private sector. So this is leveraged money. We get a lot more back from the private sector than the Federal dollars we put in. Third, the TRP program is competitive. It is not in any way pork. It is based on merit and on competitive selection. The research goes to those institutions that propose the most important research projects and who propose the best cost-sharing arrangements. This is how we assure ourselves that the work is important. Industry would not put their money or time on the line if they did not think the research would pay off for them and for the Nation. So I urge my colleagues to support the Bingaman amendment, which does not, as I understand it, shift funds but which expresses the strong sentiment of the Senate on these programs. I urge my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee, Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye, to do the best they can in conference to hold the Senate mark and not to cut below the Senate mark, which is already going to take this program to a point of some jeopardy. So I thank the Senator for his leadership. This has been a subject that he has led in the Senate Armed Services Committee and in the Senate and in the Congress. In my view, the Senator from New Mexico has done a great deal of meritorious work for our long-range national security by taking the lead on this program. So I thank him for his leadership, and I thank him for yielding.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the bill was passed.

Mr. NUNN

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

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, it is my hope that we can accept this amendment. I am checking right now to make sure there is no one who has a strong feeling otherwise. But I think the Senator from Arizona makes a good case. These reports oftentimes are needed when first requested and then they get into law and they become permanent fixtures. So where we can eliminate a lot of these reports, I would certainly welcome that. We have done some similar things in the authorization bill in the defense report. Once, I recall, DOD complained very much about all the reports. We gave them the authority to come up and tell us all they did not want. Lo and behold, they ended up wanting most of them. So you never know who has decided they like reports until you test the waters. But I think that is what the Senator from Arizona is doing here. He is testing the water. It would be up to those, I understand, who want to keep a report to have it specifically reviewed as well as have it go on in perpetuity. I hope we accept this, and I think we will get an affirmative OK of that in just a minute. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Further, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be added as additional cosponsors--Senator Stevens, Senator Akaka, Senator Grassley, Senator Thomas, Senator Cohen, Senator Thompson, Senator Rockefeller, and Senator D'Amato.

Mr. NUNN. In this Congress, the House of Representatives is decidedly more receptive to this legislation. A modified version of S. 560 was included in H.R. 9, the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act of 1995, which includes many of the regulatory and paperwork relief provisions of the Republican Contract With America. Representatives Bill Clinger, the new chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, the new name for the Committee on Government Operations, was the principal Republican cosponsor to H.R. 2995, the House companion to S. 560 in the last Congress. So he has been working on this a long time. In this Congress, he introduced H.R. 830, the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, with Representatives Norm Sisisky as the principal Democratic cosponsor. I might add Representative Sisisky has worked on this legislation for several years with me, including trying last year to get this legislation through the House in the last couple of weeks of the session. On February 22, the House passed H.R. 830 by a rollcall vote of 418-0. Like the reported version of S. 560 in the last Congress, S. 244 has the support of the Clinton administration. During testimony before the House Small Business Committee on Friday, January 27, Sally Katzen, Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, stated the administration's support for S. 244. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 enjoys strong support from the business community, especially the small business committee. It has the support of a broad Paperwork Reduction Act coalition, representing virtually every segment of the business community. Participating in the coalition are the major national small business associations--the National Federation of Independent Business [NFIB], the Small Business Legislative Council [SBLC], and National Small Business United [NSBU], as well as the many specialized national small business association, like the American Subcontractors Association, that comprise the membership of SBLC or NSBU. Other participants represent manufacturers, aerospace and electronics firms, construction firms, providers of professional and technical services, retailers of various products and services, and the wholesalers and distributors who support them. Leadership for the coalition is being provided by the Council on Regulatory and Information Management, known as C-RIM and by the U.S Chamber of Commerce. C-RIM is the new name for the Business Council on the Reduction of Paperwork, which has dedicated itself to paperwork reduction and regulatory reform issues for more than a half century. While he was C-RIM's executive director, Bob Coakley worked tirelessly on advancing this legislation. Bob came to C-RIM after many years of service to the Committee on Governmental Affairs, especially for our former colleague, Lawton Chiles, the father of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, when he was in the Senate. Of course he is now Governor of Florida. The coalition also includes a number of professional associations and public interest groups that support strengthening the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980. These include the Association of Records Managers and Administrators [ARMA] and Citizens for a Sound Economy [CSE], to name but two very active coalition members. Given the regulatory and paperwork burdens faced by State and local governments, legislation to strengthen the Paperwork Reduction Act is high on the agenda of the associations representing elected officials. As Governor of Florida, Lawton Chiles, has worked hard on this issue within the National Governors Association. During its 1994 annual meeting, the National Governors Association adopted a resolution in support of legislation to strengthen the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980. The principal purpose of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 is to reaffirm and provide additional tools by which to attain the fundamental objective of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980--to minimize the Federal paperwork burdens imposed on individuals, businesses, especially small businesses, educational and nonprofit institutions, and State and local governments. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 provides a 5-year reauthorization of appropriations for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs [OIRA]. Created by the 1980 act, OIRA serves as the focal point at OMB for the Act' implementation. OIRA is also the focal point for the regulatory review process, which is exercised under an Executive order. As the Congress undertakes its fundamental changes to the Government processes for the formulation of regulations, OIRA's role and its broad authorities under the Paperwork Reduction Act will be become even more obvious. I would like to highlight just a few of the provisions of the bill. It reemphasizes the fundamental responsibilities of each Federal agency to minimize new paperwork burdens by thoroughly reviewing each proposed collection of information for need and practical utility, the act's fundamental standards--need and practical utility. The bill makes explicit the responsibility of each Federal agency to conduct this review itself, before submitting the proposed collection of information for public comment and clearance by OIRA in the Office of Management and Budget. The bill before us reflects the provisions of S. 560 that further enhance public participation in the review of paperwork burdens, when they are first being proposed or when an agency is seeking to obtain approval to continue to use an existing paperwork requirement. Strengthening public participation is at the core of the 1980 act and is strengthened even further in this act. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 maintains the 1980 act's Governmentwide 5-percent goal for the reduction of paperwork burdens on the public. Given past experience, some question the effectiveness of such goals in producing net reductions in Governmentwide paperwork burdens. The Coalition believe that the bill should reflect individual agency goals as well. If seriously implemented, the proponents argue that such agency goals can become an effective restraint on the cumulative growth of Government-sponsored paperwork burdens. Although this provision is not in the bill before the committee today, I am hopeful that it will be strengthened in this manner before becoming law. The bill includes amendments to the 1980 act which further empower members of the public to help police Federal agency compliance with the act. I would like to describe two of these provisions. One provision would enable a member of the public to obtain a written determination from the OIRA Administrator regarding whether a federally sponsored paperwork requirement is in compliance with the act. If the agency paperwork requirement is found to be noncompliant, the Administrator is charged with taking appropriate remedial action. This provision is based upon a similar process added to the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act in 1988. The second provision encourages members of the public to identify paperwork requirements that have not been submitted for review and approval pursuant to the act's requirements. Although the act's public protection provisions explicitly shield the public from the imposition of any formal agency penalty for failing to comply with such an unapproved, or bootleg, paperwork requirement, individuals often feel compelled to comply. This is especially true when the individual has an ongoing relationship with the agency and that relationship accords the agency substantial discretion that could be used to redefine their future dealings. In other words, leverage. Under S. 244, a member of the public can blow the whistle on such a bootleg paperwork requirement and be accorded the protection of anonymity. Next, I would like to emphasize that the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 clarifies the 1980 act to make explicit that it applies to Government-sponsored third-party paperwork burdens. These are recordkeeping, disclosure, or other paperwork burdens that one private party imposes on another private party at the direction of a Federal agency. In 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that such Government- sponsored third-party paperwork burdens were not subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act. That was contrary to the authors' original intent as has been often stated by the Governor of Florida, then-Senator Lawton Chiles. The Court's decision in Dole versus United Steelworkers of America created a potentially vast loophole. The public could be denied the act's protections on the basis of the manner in which a Federal agency chose to impose a paperwork burden, indirectly rather than directly. It is worthy of note that Lawton Chiles went to the trouble and expense of filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court arguing that no such exemption for third-party paperwork burdens was intended. Given the plain works of the statute, the Court decided otherwise. The bill makes explicit the act's coverage of all Government-sponsored paperwork burdens. Once this bill is enacted, we can feel confident that this major loophole experience under the act, it is prudent to remain vigilant to additional efforts to restrict the act's reach and public protections. The smart use of information by the Government, and its potential to minimize the burdens placed on the public, is a core concept of the 1980 act. The information resources management [IRM] provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 build upon the foundation laid more than a decade ago by our former colleague from Florida. These provisions of S. 244 are the major contribution of my friend from Ohio, who has emphasized the potential of improved IRM policies to make Government more effective in serving the Public. Mr. President, I would like to recognize the contributions of several staff members. First, David Plocher, counsel for Senator Glenn, who along with Tony Coe, an associate counsel in the Office of Senate Legislative Counsel, did much of the drafting. Next, I would like to recognize Frank Polk, the committee's Republican staff director, who assisted Senator Roth over the many years of effort that have gotten us to this point, and also on my staff Rocky Rief and Matthew Sikes, who have been diligent in working on this legislation; and, finally, certainly not least and probably more than any other individual person, Bill Montalto, who has provided assistance to me as well as Chairman Bumpers and the ranking Republican members of the Small Business Committee. In this and many other efforts Bill has served well many Members of the Senate, the Committee on Small Business, and indeed the entire small business community. For 13 years, Bill Montalto has served the Small Business Committee. Six years prior to that he was in the service of the U.S. Army. He was there a lawyer and counsel and a logistics specialist. I have had an opportunity to work with this remarkable public servant for all of those 13 years as he served the Small Business Committee. We have worked on a number of legislative initiatives, such as the mentor- protege program which is now functioning. On the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, Bill brought his expertise in the small business arena to bear in that legislation which was passed by the Armed Services Committee and the Governmental Affairs Committee, and helped initiate and further small business development centers that are operating all over the country. Bill was invaluable in his creation of the concept of developing that legislation. The SBA 504 program, no one knows more about that program than Bill, and the SBA Preferred Surety Bond Program and numerous others which have helped our small business community. Bill will be leaving the Small Business Committee on the Senate side, and my understanding is that he will be going to a key position on the Small Business Committee on the House side. So we will continue, hopefully, to benefit from his advice and his expertise and his dedication in all of these areas. So to Bill Montalto I owe a special debt of gratitude today, and I am sure Senator Bumpers, who was chairman of the Small Business Committee, now ranking Democrat, and others who have worked with him would echo my sentiments expressed here today. I am sure Senator Bond and others who have worked on this legislation, also, would certainly know that Bill has done a wonderful job here. Mr. President, with those comments, I urge my colleagues to pass this legislation. I hope we can pass it today or certainly tomorrow. And I hope that we will be able to have a meeting of the minds with the House and send this bill to the President. It is long overdue. I think it will help begin to alleviate some of the crushing burden of paperwork for so much of our business community. I yield the floor. Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, today, the Senate turns to consideration of S. 244, the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. As the Senator from Delaware, my good friend, Senator Roth, has already explained, this bill reauthorizes appropriations for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs [OIRA] and it strengthens the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980. This represents years of hard work which began in the 100th Congress. S. 244 is substantially identical to S. 560, the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1994, which was approved by the Senate, not once but twice in the closing days of the last Congress. It passed the Senate by unanimous voice vote on October 6, 1994. the following day, the text of S. 560 was attached to a House-passed measure, H.R. 2561, and returned to the House. Unfortunately, it was not cleared for action before the adjournment of the 103d Congress. The House of Representatives did not act on it. Like S. 560 in the last Congress, S. 244 enjoys strong bipartisan support. Chairman Roth and Senator Glenn are both original cosponsors. Both have worked long and hard on this needed legislation to strengthen the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 and to reauthorize appropriations for OIRA. The crafting of a consensus bill in the last Congress was made possible by the skill and leadership of my friend from Ohio, Mr. Glenn, and my friend from Delaware, Mr. Roth. Leading cosponsors of S. 244 also include the new chairman of the Committee on Small Business, Senator Kit Bond, and the committee's ranking Democratic member, Senator Bumpers. Former Chairman Bumpers and successive ranking Republican members of the Committee on Small Business, including Senators Boschwitz, Kasten, and Pressler, have been original cosponsors of the predecessor legislation in the 101st and 102d Congress. The Committee on Small Business, of which I am a member as well as the Governmental Affairs Committee, has played a crucial supporting role in sustaining the effort to enact legislation to strengthen the 1980 act. Such support is not surprising since relief from paperwork and regulatory burdens is vital to the small business community. It has become a focus of activity for the Committee on Small Business, the Committee on Governmental Affairs, and several other committees in the Senate as well as their counterparts in the House of Representatives. This year we are being joined by colleagues from both sides of the aisle, many of whom are present or former members of the Committee on Small Business as well as the Committee on Governmental Affairs. When introduced, S. 244 had 21 bipartisan cosponsors. My friend from Mississippi, Mr. Lott, as inadvertently omitted from the list. He should have been on the list when it was originally introduced. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Lott be added to list of original cosponsors to the bill.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that letters of support from the Paperwork Reduction Act Coalition and individual member organizations may be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, while we are waiting and working out, hopefully, the managers' amendment, I would like to speak briefly on another subject, with the stipulation that if someone comes in, I will be glad to be interrupted.