Arlen Specter

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. If the Senator will yield, I do not. There are even different kinds of machines used in Pennsylvania, and there are still many paper ballots which are being used. It is astounding not to have rapid, accurate results on election night, with computers being what they are and the possibilities of electronics. This may be a matter on which the Federal Government will have to do some financing. The study ought to be made. Congress ought to consider it and try to solve at least a big part of this problem.

Mr. SPECTER. The legislation provides that the commission would have 1 year to complete a study and then 6 additional months to file a report. It is structured to be bipartisan, with the leadership of the House and Senate each having one appointee and the President having a fifth appointee, so the bipartisanship would be assured. If I may add, it is well known the Senator from Iowa and I worked very closely together on the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. We just had a brief informal discussion, so I may have picked up a cosponsor here before 12:30.

Mr. SPECTER. If the distinguished Senator will yield.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to introduce legislation which would seek to modernize voting procedures throughout the United States in Federal elections. I do not intend to become involved in the current controversies but instead have been considering where we go from here in order to try to prevent the kind of concerns and problems which we have at the present time. In Pennsylvania, I have had considerable comment from my constituents about the issue as to, in the electronic age, with computers available and with electronic devices available why do we have some sections of the country voting by paper ballot and why do we have a great variety of election procedures in voting, so that there is not uniformity and there is not a prompt count. Looking at that issue, it seems to me that we can do much better on how we vote in Federal elections. The thought on my mind is Congress should address this issue at least as to Federal elections, leaving the matters of State and local elections to State officials under our Federalist concepts. It is not really practical for someone to lay out an entire bill with the procedures to implement these objectives, but it seems to me--and I have been talking to some of my colleagues about it, and there are a number of Senators who are thinking in the same direction--that it will be useful to establish a commission which would take up the question of how we have election procedures which take advantage of computers and electronics so that votes may be tabulated accurately and promptly, and not have the kinds of issues which arose in our election on November 7. I do, therefore, submit, Mr. President, the structure of a bill to establish a commission for the comprehensive study of voting procedures for Federal elections, to take a look at not only Federal elections but State and local elections as well, but with the purpose of finding a way to have accurate reporting, electronic reporting, and speedy reporting. This bill is not in concrete. I am now soliciting cosponsors. I think we will have other cosponsors shortly. Since we have an abbreviated session today, with only a limited amount of time, I am introducing the bill at this time. Mr. President, I will make just a comment or two about the electoral college. As we have moved ahead with the concerns under the current contest between Governor Bush and Vice President Gore, I have found many of my constituents--and have noted comments in the media across the country-- who are surprised about the way the electoral college works. Illustratively, in my State of Pennsylvania, with 23 electoral votes, and Vice President Gore having received 51 percent of the vote and Governor Bush having received 47 percent, that Vice President Gore got all 23 of Pennsylvania's electoral votes. In discussions I have found--candidly, a surprise to me--a fair amount of concern among my constituents about changing the electoral college. There is some confusion that any change in the electoral college may have some impact on the current contest between Governor Bush and Vice President Gore, which, of course, is not the case. This current election is going to be determined under the existing rules of the electoral college as it now stands. It seems to me that consideration ought to be given to a modification. One approach would be to go to the popular election of a President. That appears to be unrealistic because there are so many smaller States which have only one Member of the House, two Senators, so they get three electoral votes. On a proportionate basis, they would be entitled to a 1-435th proportion in relation to the House, there being 435 Members of the House, but they have a 3-535th proportion, taking the House's 435 Members and the Senate's 100 Members. Since it takes a two- thirds vote to pass a constitutional amendment in the Congress, and ratification by three-fourths of the States, I think it is unrealistic to look to the popular election of a President. But there is an alternative way where it might be achieved; that is, with a proportional representation. S.J. Res. 51 was introduced in the 96th Congress by Senator Cannon, cosponsored by Senators Thurmond, Goldwater, Harry Byrd and Talmadge, which provided for a constitutional amendment for proportional representation, which might be the way to go. Illustratively, in a State such as Pennsylvania, with 23 electoral votes, and a vote split of 51 percent and 47 percent, it might be divided as 12 votes for Vice President Gore and 11 votes for Governor Bush. I think this is going to require further study. I do think it is plain that the purpose of having the electoral college, as reflected in the Federalist Papers, was to provide a buffer between the common voter, who was thought at that time not to be sufficiently informed to directly elect a President. That, of course, was changed when we had a constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of Senators. In the original Constitution, Senators were elected by the State legislatures, so that the common man did not vote directly for a Senator. But that has been changed as we have come to understand that in modern times every voter has a full capacity to make the direct election of an elected official with Senators, and I think on the same analogy to the President as well. But because of the extra leverage for the smaller States, which I do not contest, the direct election is not realistic. But perhaps a proportional election through the electoral college might be appropriate, with the smaller States having the additional advantage of having two electors, accounting for their two Senators. I think that is going to require further study. Again, I have been discussing that with my colleagues. I do think people in this country want to know what our plans are for the future. I also think there ought to be an awareness that many of us in the Congress are considering whether the electoral college should stand as it now is or whether it should be changed. An intermediate ground may be this proportional voting of the electoral college, as reflected in S.J. Res. 51 from the 96th Congress. I believe there is no doubt that we need to modernize election procedures, and that the way to go would be a five-person commission with appointments made by the President, the majority leader of the Senate, the minority leader of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, and the minority leader of the House. These matters ought to be subject to consideration to try to eliminate some of the problems which the country now faces. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I had asked for a quorum call for just a moment so that staff could complete certain paperwork. So it may be understood why I asked for the quorum call and asked that it be rescinded so promptly. On behalf of our distinguished majority leader, I have been asked to make this unanimous consent request.

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

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Again, on behalf of the majority leader, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate receives the adjournment resolution from the House, the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, all without any intervening action, motion, or debate.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to comment on the pending status of the work of the Congress. Yesterday, Senator Stevens took the floor and outlined the work of the Appropriations Committee, making it plain that nothing could be done on the last bill on appropriations for Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education, until Tuesday because there had to be a reading of the bill and the other procedural matters which had to be attended to, even if the conferees came to agreement on Friday. Senator Stevens suggested that there was no point in having the Senate and the House in session on Saturday and Sunday and Monday. Notwithstanding that, and notwithstanding Senator Stevens' contacts with the President and the President's men, we are here. We are here for absolutely no reason. I chair the subcommittee which has jurisdiction over that appropriations bill and we have been in negotiations with the White House for weeks. We have not been able to come to an agreement because of the intransigence of the White House. They may say it is the intransigence of the Congress. We have a way of saying the other party is intransigent. But there is no doubt that they are at least 50 percent responsible for the fact that we have not been able to come to terms on this bill. On this bill, the subcommittee that I chair met the President's figure of $106 billion. It was hard to do. My colleagues in this body and the Republicans in the House didn't like that figure; they thought it was too much money. But the chairman of the House committee and I prevailed to meet the President's figure so we can come to terms and have an accommodation and get the bill passed. We put $600 million in that bill--more for education than the President did. And the President asked for $2.7 billion for school construction and teachers. It was the view of many colleagues that that was not a Federal responsibility, but we gave this figure. We put an addendum on that if the local school boards decided they wanted it for something else, they could use it for something else, so that there would be local control, which is the essence of education in America, contrasted with the Washington, DC, bureaucratic straitjacket. Notwithstanding that, the White House, his negotiators, wanted every semicolon their own way. So that bill is still languishing in negotiations. But it is certainly not the fault of the Congress. We are here today and we will be here tomorrow. The Members --535 of us--had thought we would have concluded our business a long time ago. I can tell the American people--if anybody watches C-SPAN II--that the fault is not that of the Congress that we are still here. The President has decided that we will be in session on 1-day continuing resolutions, as his way of trying to make a political point. He is not making a governmental point, he is making a political point. He is making a political point to try to blame the Congress as a ``do-nothing'' Congress, when that is not the fact. He is trying to blame the Congress for a situation the White House is really responsible for--at least 50 percent responsible. We have come to a situation where the quality and parity between the Congress and the executive branch has long since evaporated. When the Government was closed down at the end of 1995, that was an enormous shift of power, so that now the Congress is really over a barrel to yield to whatever the President has to say. Being aware of that, we structured this final bill on Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education to finish it so that it could be presented to the President in September. The Senate acted on it on June 30, which established a record, going back to 1976 for the earlier set of action on this bill. Then we finished the conference report on July 27. It should have been presented to the President in September, and that projection was made so that we would be able to present it to the President and, if he vetoed it, have a national debate; and we thought we would be in a position to make our priorities stand up because the Constitution does give the Congress the responsibility and authority to establish the priorities. Mr. President, the essential point that I am coming to is that if we were not over a barrel in our relations with the President, we would submit to the President a continuing resolution for 3 or 4 days. But we are not doing that because it would be unseemly. We are not doing that because we don't want to engage in what might be viewed by the American people as a childish food fight. If we sent him a continuing resolution for 4 days, which would be reasonable under the circumstances, since we can't get anything done until Tuesday, and there was a stalemate and there was a closing of the Federal Government, the American people would say a plague on both of your houses. But the reality is that the Congress is being intimidated by the President and we are, in fact, being humiliated by what the President is doing. There needs to be some semblance of good will and comity between the Congress and the President. It doesn't exist and hasn't existed. This Senator has gone out of his way to try to work with the White House and try to find accommodations. But when you have this intimidation and what is really humiliation, it lingers. It has to be a factor considered, as we have so many delicate relationships with the executive branch of the Government. Frankly, I would like to see us submit a continuing resolution for 4 days and lay down the gauntlet to the President, if he wants to keep us around here doing nothing. But the parity between the branches has been lost and we are here wasting the time of 535 Members of Congress. We are wasting the time of the Congressmen, and we are also putting the people of America to a disadvantage because we have responsibilities to our constituents that will not be attended to today, or tomorrow, or Monday, or thereafter. I think it is high time that the Congress stood up and confronted the President because of this situation, which is simply intolerable.

Mr. SPECTER. No. I can have some time of my own. Mr. President, may I inquire of the majority leader if I may have 5 minutes at this time?

Mr. SPECTER. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SPECTER. Does the Senator from Nevada deny the fact that the President and the White House, or at least the people in question, are responsible for the failure to come to agreement on the one outstanding appropriations bill?

Mr. SPECTER. What facts are wrong?

Mr. SPECTER. Will the Senator from Nevada yield?

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, if I may have the attention of the Senator from Nevada, I listened very carefully to what the Senator from Nevada said and was looking for something which the Senator from Nevada said that factually disputed my representation of what has happened here. I did not hear anything disputed about what I have said. The facts are, No. 1, that there is one bill outstanding to finish the work of the Senate; that is the appropriations bill on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. All of the other complaints which the Senator from Nevada made--the litany that has been repeated day after day after day about what is wrong with the Republican Senate--is all prologue. We are standing here today on a Saturday session--we are going to have a Sunday session and we are going to have a Monday session--and nothing is going to be done because the President wants to gain political advantage.

Mr. SPECTER. No. He wants to gain political advantage by trying to make a representation that it is a do-nothing Congress. I will tell you what he is in effect doing. He is creating a do- nothing Congress on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday because we can't do anything in Washington. But there is a lot we could do in our States where we have a lot of meetings and a lot of constituent business and a lot of legislative business. But it is going to be a do-nothing Congress today, tomorrow, and Monday because right now the appropriations bill on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education has to be read, has to be printed, and has to be completed. So we are not doing anything. When the Senator from Nevada says that we ought to be working every day, I replied to the Senator from Nevada that he works every day. I have seen him work. He works every day. I would say to the Senator from Nevada and the other 98 Senators that I, too, work every day. So do the other 98 Senators. But we don't work at the direction of the President. We don't work for the President. We work for the American people. I work for 12 million Pennsylvanians. I don't work for the President. The Constitution has separation of powers. When the Founding Fathers organized the Constitution, they put Congress in article I. They didn't get around to the executive branch until article II. But today the system is inverted. Since the Government was closed down in 1995 and our business has gone over into October and sometimes into November, there is no way for the Congress to do anything--at least we think so--but to yield to the President. That is why, as I have said earlier, we structured this bill on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education so it could be finished and be presented to the President in September. The mistake we made, quite candidly, was that we were negotiating with the President. We have undertaken in recent years nonconstitutional proceedings. The Constitution says that Congress will present a bill to the President after the Congress decides what the legislation should be, and then the President either signs it or vetoes it. But that has been turned around. Now we have members of the President's executive branch sitting in our legislative conferences. We ought not have that. We ought to present our bill and let the President sign it or veto it. This Senator tried mightily to get that bill presented to the President in September. Then if the President wanted to veto it, so be it, that is his constitutional prerogative. But he doesn't have a constitutional prerogative to sit in on the legislative process and the Congress accede to it. We ought to change that. I think if the American people had seen this bill, they would have preferred the congressional priorities to the President's priorities. The Congress gave the President 90 percent of what he wanted--more than 90 percent. We have a bill which is $40.2 billion for education. The President's staff objected to $3.3 million, less than 10 percent of $40.2 billion. But we had some other priorities we wanted. We wanted special education. We also wanted money for the National Institutes of Health, where they have made enormous strides in conquering Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, heart ailments, and a whole range of medical problems. We had different priorities. I think if we had presented those priorities to the American people, the American people would have sided with the Congress. So September went by the board. There were negotiations in September. And I make the representation that it was the intransigence of the White House which resulted in those negotiations not moving forward. I make that representation because our priorities were as good as theirs or better. But having given the President 90 percent, he should have been willing to accommodate to the 10-percent change in our priorities without demanding to control every semicolon in the bill. I think we met him more than halfway when we gave him $2.7 billion for school construction and for teachers, but we said this ought to be local control if the local district needed something more. I was interested to hear what the Senator from Nevada had to say about the Las Vegas school system, its expanded school system and its need for schools. I can understand the need in Las Vegas for schools. However, I have a hard time understanding why Las Vegas schools ought to be paid for from Washington by the American taxpayers. If there is one area in the country which has a tax base to support their local needs, it is Las Vegas. Las Vegas is the gambling capital of the world, and I say that with respect. I have been there. I haven't gambled, but I have been there. They have an enormous tax base. If we are putting up $1.4 billion for school construction in the big bond issue for American cities such as Las Vegas where they can afford it themselves, I have grave questions as to whether we ought to be doing that. But we did it. We presented it for the President. The President's men wouldn't come to a compromise. So what has happened is all the bills are finished except one bill. That bill can't be acted upon until Tuesday at the earliest. And the President is keeping us here to make a political point. My preference would be, as Senator Stevens said yesterday on the floor, he was considering amending the continuing resolution to provide for a 4-day continuing resolution which would carry us to Tuesday just to send to the President; then let the President sign it or veto it. The difficulty with that is that the Government of the United States, the executive and legislative branches, are not exactly held in high esteem by the American people. And my instinct is that if we got into that sort of a situation, a game of chicken, a game which resembles a childish food fight, the people of America would say a plague on both of your Houses. It reminds me just a little bit of the confrontation that Piazza had with the Yankee pitcher. Piazza decided not to confront the Yankee pitcher after he threw a bat at Piazza. I think Piazza did the right thing, although people criticized him for not confronting the Yankee pitcher. We are in a situation where the President is keeping us here so he can make a political point to try to have a democratically controlled Senate and a democratically controlled House and win the Presidency. We are not here doing the business of the people. We would be doing the business of the people if we attended our regular schedules and were free to do constructive work instead of sit around here on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I do believe, Mr. President--speaking to the President of the Senate, Senator Bennett, who is presiding--we have been intimidated. The President is doing this as a form of punishment, a form of humiliation. We have a lot of very delicate relationships with the executive branch. It has to linger in the background among some minds as to just what the executive branch is doing, whether they are operating in good faith. I say bluntly, keeping the Congress in session without any purpose is the worst of bad faith. We will do our job notwithstanding the executive branch and the President's men and women exercising the worst of bad faith, but we won't forget about it. I yield the floor, and I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Congressman John Edward Porter who, after two decades of service in the House of Representatives, will retire at the end of this session. Since 1994, when John Porter became Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, and I took over as Chairman of the Senate Labor, HHS and Education Subcommittee, we have spent untold hours working together on what is arguably one of the most important pieces of legislation to be voted on by Congress each year. During his tenure, John Porter has earned a reputation as a champion of education, family planning, and disease prevention and control programs. But he is perhaps most recognized as a passionate and tireless advocate for the National Institutes of Health. Anyone who has spent time with him undoubtedly knows that he considers medical research to be one of our Nation's highest priorities. He makes no secret of his commitment, calling medical research ``our greatest hope for effectively treating, curing and eventually preventing disease and thereby saving our country billions of dollars in annual health care costs.'' I share John's passion for the NIH. I have said many times that it is the crown jewel of the Federal government. Over the past six years, he and I, working alongside my distinguished colleague Tom Harkin, have increased funding for biomedical research by $9.4 billion. In 1998, we made a commitment to double federal funding for the NIH over five years. And with this year's increase of $2.7 billion, we are on track to reach that goal by 2003. Even though John will no longer be in the Congress, I know that he will continue to help us fulfill that promise. John's commitment to medical research has earned him high praise from numerous scientific, medical and research organizations. Among the many honors bestowed on him, the American Medical Association recently honored him with the Nathan Davis Award as ``Outstanding U.S. Representative.'' The American Federation of Clinical Research honored him with its ``Distinguished Friend of Medical Research,'' Public Service Award. John's interests reach beyond medical research. He is the co-founder of the Congressional Coalition on Population and Development, an organization that advocates and defends international and domestic voluntary family planning programs. He is also a dedicated supporter of the arts and humanities, and since 1999 has served on the Board of Directors of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. John has an impressive education background: He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University. Following service in the U.S. Army, he received his law degree from the University of Michigan. He served three terms in the Illinois House of Representatives before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In addition to his public service, John was an attorney private practice in Evanston, Illinois. Today, I want to pay a special tribute to John by recommending that the neuroscience building on the campus of the National Institutes of Health be named the John Edward Porter National Neuroscience Center. This building will be a fitting tribute to a man who has devoted so much towards finding ways to prevent disease and improve the quality of life of all Americans. To John Porter, I say, you have carried out your responsibilities with skill born of rich experience and insight born of deep compassion. I want to offer to you my gratitude for the character, courage and dedication with which you have served the people of the tenth district of Illinois and the country. I wish you the best as you begin the next chapter of your life.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. I will be glad to yield at the end of my time, limited as it is.

Mr. SPECTER. No. We are discussing the issue of schoolteachers. Last year, in the middle of the night, there was a compromise which went around this Senator, the chairman of the subcommittee, and I am not prepared to take that unacceptable language. But it is a high-handed demand. We are not going to retreat from last year's language on a program the President thinks is important. We need to go back on track, and that is to follow the Constitution and submit our bills to the President. The Congress has the primary authority and responsibility for assessing priorities. We have the purse strings, it says in the Constitution. But that is not the way it is functioning today. When the President comes to Capitol Hill and issues a dictatorial statement that he is not going to sign continuing resolutions for longer than a day, fine, let him stay in town. It will be quite a change for the President's schedule if he stays in town to sign these continuing resolutions day in and day out. It is time the Congress stopped being blamed for everything. If the American people understood where we stand on my bill, that the President got the full sum he asked for, there is a difference in priorities--I ask unanimous consent for 2 more minutes, Mr. President.

Mr. SPECTER. I think the arguments by the Senator from North Dakota require some response. If I could have the attention of the Senator from North Dakota? I know the number of the White House. I called it last night in an effort to try to resolve the outstanding differences on the appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, the subcommittee of appropriations which I chair. When the Senator from North Dakota talks about insufficient money for discretionary spending, that is not necessarily true. In our subcommittee, on those three Departments we met the President's figure, $106.2 billion. We have structured our priorities somewhat differently. He wanted $2.7 billion for school construction and for more teachers. We gave that to him. But we added a very appropriate proviso, and that is, if the local boards decide they have sufficient of those items, they can use it for something else. The grave difficulty here has been, since the Government was closed, there has been a radical shift in power between the Congress and the President. Now the President expects everything on the threat of a veto. If he is going to veto something, that means the Congress has to cave to him and knuckle to him. We are proceeding in a nonconstitutional way. We have the executive branch in our legislative discussions before we arrive at our bills, and then we have a situation where the President has to have his way. There is no such thing as compromise. We are discussing language----

Mr. SPECTER. I ask unanimous consent I might be permitted to speak for 5 minutes since all the time has expired.

Mr. SPECTER. If the American people knew we met the President's figure of $106.2 billion but we think the National Institutes of Health ought to have a priority--we have raised them $1.7 billion more than the President, we have given more money to special education--I think if the American people knew that, they would say those are more important priorities. If the American people knew that we want to retain local control so school boards can spend the money the way they see fit on the local level if they do not think the President's priorities are preferable, that they prefer local control to a Washington, DC, bureaucratic straitjacket, then we could have that decision. But this Senator is not at all concerned about 1-day continuing resolutions. I am prepared to stay here a lot longer than is the President. I yield for a question.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to comment on the pending legislation, which will fund three major Departments in the United States: The Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education. I chair the subcommittee in the Senate Appropriations Committee which has the responsibility for this legislation. I am very concerned about what is happening to our constitutional process. I think it not an overstatement to say that we have a constitutional crisis in what is happening with the appropriations process in the relationship between the Congress and the President of the United States. Since the Government was closed in late 1995 and early 1996, there has been created a very significant imbalance between the Congress and the President with what is realistically viewed as practically a dictatorial system of the President saying what is acceptable and the Congress being held hostage, in effect, concerned about being blamed for shutting down the Government. That is not the way the Constitution was written. The Congress is supposed to present the bills to the President. If the President vetoes, then there are negotiations and discussions as to what will happen. But the status of events today is that the President calls the tune and the Congress simply complies. There is also a significant deviation because, contrary to constitutional provision, the President and the President's men and women participate in the legislative process. The Constitution says that each House shall pass a bill; there will be a conference committee; they will agree; and each House will then vote on the conference report; and, if approved, the bill is submitted to the President. The constitutional process does not call for the executive branch to participate in deciding what will be in the bills. But for many years now, representatives from the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, sit in on the conferences, are a party to the process, and seek to determine in advance what will be acceptable to the executive branch, contrary to the constitutional setup where Congress is supposed to pass the bills and submit them to the President. We have had a very difficult time in the last 3 years with what has happened with the appropriations bill covering Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. I spoke at some length about this problem on October 14, 1998, as we worked for the appropriations bill which turned out to be an omnibus bill. I was so concerned about the process that I voted against that bill. That was a tough vote to make since there were so many items on financing education which were very important and with which I agreed, and on financing Health and Human Services, again, which were important and with which I agreed, and on financing the Department of Labor, again, which were important and with which I agreed; but I felt so strongly that I voted against the bill and spoke at some length, as the Congressional Record will reflect on page S12536, on October 14th of 1998. Then on November 9, 1999, I again expressed my concerns about what the appropriations process comprehended as set forth in some detail on S14340 of the Congressional Record. This year, again, I am very concerned about where we are headed. The President submitted requests for these Departments for $106.2 billion. The Senate bill has provided the total amount which the President requested, but we have established some different priorities. That, under the Constitution, is the congressional prerogative. The Constitution calls for the Congress to control the purse strings and to establish the priorities. Of course, the President has to approve. But here again, the Constitution does not make the President the dominant player in this process; the Congress is supposed to traditionally control the purse strings. Working collaboratively with my distinguished colleague from Iowa, Senator Tom Harkin, we produced a bipartisan bill. I learned a long time ago that if you want to get something done in Washington, you have to be willing to cross party lines. Senator Harkin and I have done that. When the Democrats controlled the Senate, he chaired and I was ranking member; and with Republican control, I have the privilege, honor, to chair, and he is the ranking member. We have taken a very strong stand on appropriations for the National Institutes of Health, which I believe are the crown jewel of the Federal Government, maybe the only jewel of the Federal Government. This year we have increased funding for NIH by $2.7 billion, which is $1.7 billion more than the President's priority. Last year we appropriated $2.3 billion on an increase which, with an across-the-board cut, was reduced to $2.2 billion. The year before, it was a billion, and the year before that, almost a billion. So that we have added some--it is $2.7 billion this year, 2.2 last year, 2.0 the year before, a billion the year before that, and almost a billion the year before that. So that we have added $8 billion. I think it adds up to $8 billion; when you deal with all these zeros, sometimes they are not too easy to add up in your head. The Senate approved that, and the House approved that. We think with the enormous progress made on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and cancer and heart disease, and so many others, that is where the priorities should be. We also put in $1 billion more on special education than the President had in his budget, a matter of some concern to many in the Senate. With the leadership of the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire, who is now presiding, we put extra funding there because we think that is where the priorities ought to be. Then the President made a request for $2.7 billion for school construction and new teachers. There is a lot of controversy in the Republican-controlled Senate about whether these are appropriate Federal functions, but we ended up, in a carefully crafted bill, giving the President his priorities, with an addendum that if the local school district decided they did not need the money for construction, that the local school districts could allocate it to local needs. And if the local school districts decided they did not need the money for teachers, they would give it to local needs. The President has resisted this. This is a very fundamental difference in governmental philosophy, a Washington, DC, bureaucratic straitjacket versus local control--according to the President, the first call for his own programs on construction of schools and on more teachers. We worked very hard this year and the Senate returned a bill which was passed on June 30, which tied a record going back to June 30, 1976, when the fiscal year 1977 appropriations bill was passed. Then we completed the conference with the House, where we had it all set on July 27, which I think may have established a new record. I am not sure about that. And we did not add the final signature to the conference report because we didn't want to be in a position where the bill was sent to the President in August and held up there, but we finished all of our work. Regrettably, this bill has not been presented to the President because of the efforts on negotiations with the White House to try to get a bill which the President could sign. I repeat, I think it is a mistake, constitutionally and procedurally, to do that. We ought to send the President the bill. There have been, candidly, concerns within the Republican leadership where we have had bicameral meetings between the House and the Senate, the leadership, on precisely what should be done. It is my urging to my colleagues in the Senate and the House that we should stand by our bill of $106.2 billion, which is as much as the President asked for, and we should stand by our priorities, which give $600 million more to education. There is no higher priority in America than education. And we should stand by our priority of according $1.7 billion more to the National Institutes of Health. We should stand by our approach of giving the President what he asked for on teachers and school construction, subject to local determination if the local boards decide they do not want it for those purposes. But we ought not to buy our way out of town and to knuckle to the President and cave to the President. We ought to assert our legislative institutional standing. This bill could have been presented to the White House in early September. This Senator has pressed consistently in leadership meetings to present the bill to the President. It is my hope we will do that. I am not unaware of the fact that this is October 17 and that the Presidential election will be held 3 weeks from today. But I think we are dealing with values and principles here, constitutional principles which are paramount, and we ought to assert our legislative prerogatives and submit the bill to the President. There might be an opportunity for a national debate on this subject. Certainly it is worth an effort. There is no doubt that the President has the so-called bully pulpit, but there is a lot of concern in America on what the funding is going to be for the Departments involved here, not only the Department of Labor but certainly the Department of Education and certainly the Department of Health and Human Services. We ought to lay down a marker. We ought to lay down the gauntlet, and we ought to ask America to join in a debate to see where America's priorities lie. My own instinct is that we have the high ground here and we have the better case. So I hope the Congress will submit this bill to the President, will engage in that debate, and will assert our constitutional prerogatives to legislate. I think we have a good chance to have this bill finally enacted into law, or if it is vetoed, with some national debate, something very close to it. In the absence of any other Senator seeking recognition, I suggest the absence of a quorum. The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to commend the distinguished Senator from Mississippi for his leadership in producing a very sound Agriculture Appropriations bill. I have served with the Senator from Mississippi on that subcommittee for almost 20 years now and have participated in the conference just concluded which has produced this bill. I can personally attest to the professionalism, courtesy, and, perhaps most of all, the patience displayed by the Senator from Mississippi in presiding over those proceedings. The public has little opportunity to know what goes on in the legislative process generally, but they do hear about the introduction of bills and they do see, on C-SPAN and otherwise, the committee meetings and the questioning of witnesses, and to some extent they see on C-SPAN II, to the extent anybody watches, what happens on the Senate floor. But the conferences are largely unseen by the public. That is crunch time, when the work is concluded. Everything else which is done is really of much less significance than the conferences, where the final touches are put on legislation which constitutes the laws of the country. There are very long sessions. A week ago last night was illustrative of the point. The speeches tend to go very long. The presiding chairman has to have great patience, to have the proper balance between allowing every member to speak and getting the work completed. That conference had some very difficult issues, issues which related to relieving sanctions on Cuba, to allow more importations of food, and it went into an issue which is highly sensitive, where there really ought to be an evaluation as to our relations with Cuba. We did take a step in the right direction on releasing the sanctions as to food--really, largely as an economic matter for America's farmers. In the foreign operations bill there is a provision, which this Senator introduced, to try to get more cooperation on drug interdiction, which the Cuban Government is willing to do. Then we had important provisions on reimportation of drugs, on which the distinguished Senator from Vermont, Mr. Jeffords, who is now presiding, was the leader. It has come to pass that the appropriations bills, now, are the principal legislative vehicles, so to speak, for getting substantive legislation because it is only the appropriations bills, ultimately, which pass. So much of that is done in conference as opposed to amendments on the floor, which is the prescribed way. The senior Senator from Mississippi presided at that conference, and we produced a very important bill. As I have heard him report on it today, I am struck by its promise and its importance for the American people under his leadership. In the absence of any other Senator seeking recognition, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to discuss legislation arising from the investigation by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, which has been conducting oversight on the way the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have responded to allegations of espionage in the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. This bipartisan proposal will improve the counterintelligence procedures used to detect and defeat efforts by foreign governments to gain unlawful access to our top national security information by improving the way that allegations of espionage are investigated and, where appropriate, prosecuted. Together with Senators Torricelli, Grassley, Thurmond, Sessions, Schumer, Feingold, Biden, Helms and Leahy, I introduced the Counterintelligence Reform Act on February 24 of this year. The Judiciary Committee unanimously reported the bill on May 18, and it was referred to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which also deals with espionage matters. The Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously reported the bill on July 20, and has included the measure as an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization bill which passed the Senate today. Few tasks are more important than protecting our national security, so building and maintaining bipartisan support for this legislation to correct the problems we identified during the course of our oversight was my top priority. The reforms contained in this legislation will ensure that the problems we found are fixed, and that the national security is better protected in the future. To understand why this legislation is necessary, I would like to review two of the cases that the subcommittee looked at--the Wen Ho Lee case and the Peter Lee case. Former Los Alamos scientist Dr. Wen Ho Lee was arrested on December 10, 1999, and charged with 59 counts of violating the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and unlawful gathering and retention of national defense information. In a stunning reversal on September 13, the government accepted a deal in which Dr. Lee would plead guilty to one count of unlawfully retaining national defense information and would be sentenced to time served, in exchange for telling what he had done with the tapes. There remains a question as to whether Department of Justice officials tried to make up for their blunders in this case by throwing the book at Dr. Lee. The Judiciary Subcommittee on Department of Justice Oversight will continue to hold hearings on this matter, but it has been clear from the beginning that the Department of Justice bungled the investigation of Dr. Lee. The critical turning point in this case came on August 12, 1997, when the Department of Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) turned down an FBI application for an electronic surveillance warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. OIPR believed that the application was deficient because it did not show sufficient probable cause, and therefore decided not to let the application go forward to the special FISA court. In making this determination, the DoJ made several key errors. The Department of Justice used an unreasonably high standard for determining probable cause, a standard that is inconsistent with Supreme Court rulings on this issue. For example, one of the concerns raised by OIPR attorney Allan Kornblum was that the FBI had not shown that the Lees were the ones who passed the W-88 information to the PRC, to the exclusion of all the other possible suspects identified by the DoE Administrative Inquiry. That is the standard for establishing guilt at a trial, not for establishing probable cause to issue a search warrant. DoJ was also wrong when Mr. Kornblum concluded that there was not enough to show that the Lees were ``presently engaged in clandestine intelligence activities.'' The information provided by the FBI made it clear that Dr. Lee's relevant activities continued from the 1980s to 1992, 1994 and 1997, yet that was deemed to be too stale, and the DoJ refused to send the FBI's surveillance request to the FISA court. When FBI Assistant Director John Lewis raised the FISA problem with the Attorney General on August 20, 1997, she delegated a review of the matter to Mr. Dan Seikaly, who had virtually no experience in FISA issues. It is not surprising then, that Mr. Seikaly again applied the wrong standard for probable cause. He used the criminal standard, which requires that the facility in question be used in the commission of an offense, and with which he was more familiar, rather than the relevant FISA standard which simply requires that the facility ``is being used, or is about to be used, by a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.'' The importance of DoJ's erroneous interpretation of the law as it applied to probable cause in this case should not be underestimated. Had the warrant been issued, and had the FBI been permitted to conduct electronic surveillance on Dr. Lee, the Government would probably not be in the position--as it is now--of trying to ascertain what really happened to the information that Dr. Lee downloaded. There should be no doubt that transferring classified information to an unclassified computer system and making unauthorized tape copies of that information--seven of which contain highly classified information and remain unaccounted for--created a substantial opportunity for foreign intelligence services to access our most important nuclear secrets. The FISA warrant could have and should have been issued at several points, some before and some after it was rejected in 1997. Each key event where the FISA warrant was not requested and issued represents another lost opportunity to protect the national security. For example, Dr. Lee was identified by the Department of Energy's Network Anomaly Detection and Intrusion Recording system (NADIR) in 1993 for having downloaded a huge volume of files. As the name of the system implies, it is designed to detect unusual computer activity and look out for possible intruders into the computer. Individuals who monitored the lab's computers knew that Dr. Lee's activities had generated a report from the NADIR system, but didn't do anything about it. They didn't even talk to him. An opportunity to correct a problem, to protect national security, just slipped away. In 1994, Lee's massive downloading would have again showed up on NADIR, but DoE security people never took action. Now, we're told, they can't even find records of what happened. Yet another missed opportunity to protect the national security by looking into what was going on. When Wen Ho Lee took a polygraph in December 1998, DoE misrepresented the results of this test to the FBI. DoE told the FBI that Dr. Lee passed this polygraph when, in fact, he had failed. This error sent the FBI off the trail for two months. When Wen Ho Lee failed a polygraph on February 10, 1999, the FISA warrant should have been immediately requested and granted. It wasn't. The need for legislation to address these problems is obvious. The unclassified information on this case shows clearly that it was mishandled. The classified files make that point even more clear. Last year the Attorney General asked an Assistant U.S. Attorney with substantial experience in prosecuting espionage cases to review the Wen Ho Lee matter. That prosecutor, Mr. Randy Bellows, conducted a thorough review of the case and confirmed all of our major findings: the case was badly mishandled, the FISA request should have gone forward to the court. The list goes on. Our counter-intelligence system failed in this case, and the information at risk is too important to let this dismal state of affairs continue. The Counterintelligence Reform Act of 2000 will help to ensure that future investigations are conducted in a more thorough and effective manner. Among the key provisions in this legislation is one that amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, by requiring that, upon the request of the Director of the FBI, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense or the Director of Central Intelligence, the Attorney General shall personally review a FISA application. If the Attorney General decides not to forward the application to the FISA court, that decision must be communicated in writing to the requesting official, with recommendations for improving the showing of probable cause, or whatever defect OIPR is concerned with. Under this legislation, when a senior official who is authorized to make FISA requests goes to the Attorney General for a personal review, that senior official must personally supervise the implementation of the recommendations. This provision will ensure that when the national security is at stake, and where there is a serious disagreement over how to proceed, the Attorney General and other senior officials are the ones who work together to resolve disputes, and that the matter is not delegated to attorneys who have never worked with FISA before. The Counterintelligence Reform Act also addresses the matter of whether an individual is ``presently engaged'' in a particular activity to ensure that genuine acts of espionage which are belatedly discovered are not improperly eliminated from consideration. As FISA is currently worded, it is possible for someone like Mr. Kornblum to conclude that actions as recent as a couple of years ago or even a few months are too stale to contribute to a finding of probable cause. Although I do not agree with Mr. Kornblum's interpretation of the law, I am confident that the changes contained in the Counterintelligence Reform Act will make it clear that activities within a reasonable period of time can be considered in determining probable cause. The investigation of Dr. Lee was also mishandled in the field, where the FBI and the Department of Energy often failed to communicate. For example, after OIPR rejected the FBI's 1997 FISA application, the FBI told the Department of Energy that there was no longer an investigative reason to leave Dr. Lee in place, and that the DoE should do whatever was necessary to protect the national security. Unfortunately, no action was taken by DoE until December 1998, some 14 months after the FBI had said it was no longer necessary to have him in place for investigative reasons. To address this problem, and to ensure that there is no misunderstanding about when the subject of an espionage investigation should be removed from classified access, the Counterintelligence Reform Act requires that decisions of this nature be communicated in writing. The bill requires the Director of the FBI to submit to the head of the department or agency concerned a written assessment of the potential impact of the actions of the department or agency on a counterintelligence investigation. The head of the affected agency will be required to respond in writing to the recommendation of the FBI. This requirement with ensure that what happened in the Wen Ho Lee case--where the FBI said he could be removed from access but the Energy Department didn't pull his clearance for another 14 months--won't happen again. To avoid the kind of problems that happened when the DoE ordered a Wackenhut polygraph in December 1998, this legislation prohibits agencies from interfering in FBI espionage investigations. The provisions of this bill will make an important contribution to improving the way counter-intelligence investigations are conducted. The subcommittee's investigation of the Wen Ho Lee case has made it abundantly clear that improvements in these procedures are necessary, and the reforms outlined in this legislation are specifically tailored to provide real solutions to real problems. The subcommittee also looked at the espionage case of Dr. Peter Lee, who pleaded guilty in 1997 to passing classified nuclear secrets to the Chinese in 1985. According to a 17 February 1998 ``Impact Statement'' prepared by experts from the Department of Energy, The ICF data provided by Dr. [Peter] Lee was of significant material assistance to the PRC in their nuclear weapons development program. . . . For that reason, this analysis indicates that Dr. Lee's activities have directly enhanced the PRC nuclear weapons program to the detriment of U.S. national security. Dr. Peter Lee also confessed to giving the Chinese classified anti- submarine warfare information on two occasions in 1997. Under the terms of the plea agreement the Department of Justice offered to Peter Lee, however, he got no jail time. He served one year in a half-way house, did 3,000 hours of community service and paid a $20,000 fine. Considering the magnitude of his offenses and his failure to comply with the terms of the plea agreement--which required his complete cooperation--the interests of the United States were not served by this outcome. The subcommittee's review of the Peter Lee case led to the inevitable conclusion that better coordination between the Department of Justice, the investigating agency--which is normally the FBI--and the victim agency is necessary to ensure that the process works to protect the national security. One of the problems we saw in this case was the reluctance of the Department of the Navy to support the prosecution of Dr. Peter Lee. A Navy official, Mr. John Schuster, produced a memo that seriously undermined the Department of Justice's efforts to prosecute the case. This memorandum was based on incomplete information and did not reflect the full scope of what Dr. Peter Lee confessed to having revealed. As a consequence of the breakdown of communications between the Navy and the prosecution team, the 1997 revelations were not included as part of the plea agreement. This legislation contains a provision that will ensure better coordination in espionage cases by requiring the Department of Justice to conduct briefings so that the affected agency will understand what is happening with the case, and will understand how the Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA, can be used to protect classified information even while carrying out a prosecution. In these briefings Department of Justice lawyers will be required to explain the right of the government to make in camera presentations to the judge and to make interlocutory appeals of the judge's rulings. These procedures are unique to CIPA, and the affected agency needs to understand that taking the case to trial won't necessarily mean revealing classified information. The Navy's position, as stated in the Schuster memo, that ``bringing attention to our sensitivity concerning this subject in a public forum could cause more damage to the national security that the original disclosure,'' was simply wrong. It was based on incomplete information and a misunderstanding of how the case could have been taken to trial without endangering national security. The provisions of this legislation which require the Department of Justice to keep the victim agency fully and currently informed of the status of the prosecution, and to explain how CIPA can be used to take espionage cases to trial without damaging the national security, will ensure that the mistakes of the Peter Lee case are not repeated. I appreciate the efforts of my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence who have worked with me and the cosponsors of this bill. I am confident that the reforms we are about to pass will significantly improve the way espionage cases are investigated and, if necessary, prosecuted. I yield the floor. section 305