Arlen Specter

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I believe in short order we will be able to work out an additional portion of the unanimous consent for the vote on the Head Start amendment.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, if I may respond to the Senator from Florida, we are now moving ahead to the 5 minutes on my time, in response to the Senator from Illinois. We are then going to proceed to four votes. But we will be here following those votes. We are looking for amendments, and we will put the Senator from Florida first on the list following the votes.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, that arrangement is satisfactory. I want to be sure we do not go to the vote on Senator Byrd's amendment before we give Senator Durbin a chance to offer his amendment with a brief reply, if necessary, on this side. I reiterate, perhaps supplement, what has been said that we are going to be looking for at least six more amendments to debate tonight. We will be discussing with the Members during the votes their intentions, with an effort on all sides to pare down the list to the maximum extent possible. I yield the floor.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader and the Democratic leader for their statements. I am prepared to move ahead with the vote on the Byrd amendment. We have Senator Durbin waiting to offer an amendment.

Mr. SPECTER. I do.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we are making enormous strides with some $19 billion. Much as I would like to see another sum added, we simply do not have the money in our resolution. I refer to a letter from Dr. Joseph O'Neil, Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy, to Senator Frist dated July 17 specifying--and I will not take the time to read it now--that the $2 billion on this particular program is all that can be usefully expended. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. SPECTER. Aside from considering a substantive law change, has the Senator from New Jersey proposed one?

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the last stacked vote in this sequence, Senator Dodd be recognized to offer an amendment relating to Head Start; there be 10 minutes equally divided for debate in relation to the amendment; further, that following the debate, the Senate then proceed to a vote in relation to the Dodd amendment, with no amendment in order to the amendment prior to that vote.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, the Senator from Nevada has articulated some wisdom this morning in his comments about pride. I think of the statement ``pride goeth before a fall.'' I think we can retain our pride and also get this worked out.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, there are still a couple of other wrap-up items.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. I do.

Mr. SPECTER. The other 49 Republican Senators are not here. But in absentia. They are flaring, invisible flares all around the Senate Chamber. So we are heading for a tough time, I am afraid.

Mr. SPECTER. As a matter of power, in other contexts, in prior avocations, there were stronger terms which were used as to the situation. But I would call it concessions of power. That is a nicer characterization than others might be. But anger flares around this place pretty fast. There are a hundred Senators. This Chamber is barely big enough to contain the egos when people are calm, let alone when tempers flare. Right now there is a lot of flare over here, although you can't see it.

Mr. SPECTER. So this morning when the floor staff was considering the matter, in the absence of any agreement to set aside the Harkin amendment so we could vote on other matters or take up other matters, it was not possible to do. There is not agreement on this side of the aisle to give a time certain. My view is to do so, as a matter of comity.

Mr. SPECTER. That was on Tuesday.

Mr. SPECTER. It was my understanding the Senator took the position Friday morning there would not be any unanimous consent to setting aside the pending amendment until there was an agreement to vote on the amendment of the Senator from Iowa on overtime pay on Tuesday.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have heard my distinguished colleague, Senator Harkin, talk about the funding on Iraq and the war on terrorism, and I agree with him about the desirability of involving other nations. I believe the President is trying to do just that right now at the United Nations. The decision to authorize the use of force was a tough decision back on October 11 of last year. The vote was 77 to 23. I don't want to, if avoidable, get into an extensive discussion about members of the Democratic Party who supported that authorization but they were considerable. It was a very substantial vote, with more than three- fourths of the Senate voting in favor of the use of force. I supported the use of force and the objective of deposing an authoritarian dictator who had committed brutal acts against humanity, murdering tens of thousands, really hundreds of thousands, of his own people. Saddam Hussein conclusively had weapons of mass destruction in December of 1998, and there was never an explanation as to what he did with them. He had chemical weapons. He used them in the Iran-Iraq war. He used chemical weapons against the Kurds. He had bioterrorism. Now there are efforts to establish a democracy in Iraq and it is very difficult, admittedly, to secure law and order and maintain the peace there. The President is reaching out to other countries with the U.N. resolution, and I think the prospects are good that there will be a resolution. It is difficult to deal with the French and Germans. The French have always been difficult when it comes to a matter of U.S. leadership. The French backed out of NATO militarily decades ago. Behind the French and German opposition is an eye on the Iraqi oil. I think Russia will come along. I think China will not object. I think we will have a U.N. resolution and we will have a chance to get Muslim countries, Pakistan and Turkey, in and give more confidence to the Arab world and a broader base, perhaps ultimately in Egypt and other countries. We are working on that. If we can establish a democracy in Iraq, it will go a long way toward changing the complexion and face of the Middle East. I think there have already been significant changes in the attitude of Iran and other Arab countries with the tremendous demonstration of military power that the United States put on in winning the war so rapidly. And now the harder part, as it has eventuated, is to secure order in Iraq and move it toward democracy. We will have to wait and see the specifics of the President's proposal, and I will be interested in the vote of the Senator from Iowa and others. It will not be an easy vote to put up very substantial sums of money in Iraq but it will not be easy either way. The President is saying we have to stay the course, and I believe there is a very strong presumption in support of what the President will want to do as a matter of executive leadership when he comes forward with the specification as to how much money he wants and what he wants to use the money for. We will see. It is certainly true that at any time on the budget of the United States, whether President Clinton, President Reagan, the first President Bush, the current President Bush or President Carter is in the White House, if either Democrats or Republicans did not spend money on defense, we could spend more money on education. There is no doubt about that. We have a budget. It is a large budget. It is $2,200,000,000,000. So we make allocations. We allocate so much for various areas. When the argument is made that President Bush should not be given credit for increases in the education budget, I think that simply belies the facts. The support for President Bush is really present in the request he has made on the budget, and when the budget for the fiscal year was at $40 billion for 2001 and the first request was made by President Bush, he asked for $44.5 billion. The next year, 2003, he asked for an increase to $50 billion. This year, the administration's request is for $53 billion, slightly in excess. So from the 2001 budget, which was the last year of his predecessor, to this year, 3 years, there has been a 33 percent increase. If we take a look at the first 3 years of President Clinton, or the 3 years from fiscal year 1996, when the budget was $26 billion, through 1999, it went up to $32, a 23 percent increase. If we take the 3 years from 1998 through 2001, from $29 billion to $40 billion, there is a 33 percent increase. There has not been any characterization that President Clinton shortchanged education, and I think similarly there ought not to be the accepted argument that President Bush has shortchanged education. When it comes to the question of money for title I, I think it is fair to note--and I called attention to these facts when Senator Byrd offered this amendment last Tuesday--that when the Democrats controlled the appropriations process in the year 2001, looking for the 2002 budget, the authorization for title I was $13.5 billion. The appropriation made by the Democrats was $10,350,000,000, or $2,950,000,000 under what the authorization was. It is well known that the authorizations are characteristically much higher than the appropriations. When the argument is made that the authorization for title I is $6 billion higher today than the appropriation requested by the President, that is right in line with what was done when the Democrats controlled the appropriations process for fiscal year 2002 on the authorization bill, which passed on December 18, at $13.5 billion, and the appropriations bill which passed 2 days later, on December 20, at $10.35 billion. So I believe there has been a recognition of the education needs. It is my hope that we will spend more time talking about the substantive needs of schoolchildren than the issue of attaching political blame. It is my hope that we can move ahead with the completion of this bill. Last Wednesday and Thursday, we were talking about compiling a list, a list has not been compiled, and there was also talk about having a vote on the amendment offered by the Senator from Iowa on overtime pay with a request by the Democrats that the vote be scheduled for Tuesday. We were trying to work toward that objective. At least in the early stages of that discussion, they were not tied together, as I recollect the discussions. Senator Harkin and I have very infrequently disagreed. I cannot remember any disagreements on the facts. If we do have different recollections, we are usually very gentle about it and do not press the point on what could be misunderstandings. I see we are heading for a tough stalemate that is going to boil down to what occurs from time to time as to who is running the Senate, to put it bluntly. Is there a Republican majority leader or is it a majority leader in name only? I would very much like to work it out. I must say I am not pleased to have to arrange the Senate schedule around the availability of Senators who are running for President. I have considerable sympathy for Senators who run for President. There are three Senators in the Chamber today, plus the Chair, and two of the four have run for President. So it is a matter where it is not uncommon for Senators to run for President. In one of the first columns I read by John Kilpatrick when I came to the Senate after the 1980 election, he wrote--I thought it was in jest but I think he was serious--that when somebody rises and addresses the Chair of the Senate and says ``Mr. President,'' 35 heads turn, which is the way the Senate operates. It is a little disconcerting, to be mild about it, to have to arrange our schedule on voting for when the aspirants are in town. I am not unaware that if any one Senator wants to start to talk, the Senate will not conduct any other business and we could go to regular order. I have examined the procedures and we could vote on the Byrd amendment on a motion to table, which would not get us too far. We could vote on another amendment on a motion to table. We have to have unanimous consent to set anything aside. We had hoped to vote this afternoon on a series of amendments. I received a call this morning, when I was in Pittsburgh--I have a day job in Pennsylvania--from the floor leaders, and it appeared we would not be able to vote this afternoon and we should make that known so that people would not be rushing back to an empty Senate Chamber without any votes. Let me inquire, if I may, through the Chair, to my learned, distinguished, eminent colleague from Iowa, what are we going to do about our schedule?

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

Mr. SPECTER. If the Senator from Iowa would agree to set aside his amendment, he and I could agree on that and in the absence of objection we could then proceed with other amendments.

Mr. SPECTER. I am saying agree to setting it aside without agreeing to a time tomorrow.

Mr. SPECTER. If the Senator would yield--as our expression goes.

Mr. SPECTER. I do.

Mr. SPECTER. I will take your word for it.

Mr. SPECTER. If the Senator from Iowa will yield, there is a flareup because some people on this side of the aisle think they are being dictated to. I heard the terrible word ``blackmailed'' used in the Senate cloakroom, and I rushed out of the cloakroom. I didn't want to be subject to listening to that kind of language. But there is a feeling that we are being told what to do. I do believe it is accurate and fair to say that when the Senator from Iowa and I, and the Senator from Nevada and I, were negotiating on the list, that it was a sea change to say we are not going to go ahead with the list and we are not going to go ahead with the Dodd amendment Friday morning. The Senator from Connecticut was waiting to give the amendment unless we have a commitment from Republicans on voting on the Harkin amendment on overtime pay on Tuesday. That was the proposition.