Arlen Specter

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Would Senator Nickles like the last word?

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we have attempted to set this first- and second-degree amendment aside, but we cannot get consent to do that. We are now seeking unanimous consent to move to foreign operations. We are waiting for final clearance.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we are trying to move this bill on Health, Health Human Services, and Education. We are seeking short time agreements so we can finish this bill by the close of business tomorrow. Senator Harkin and I, Senator Reid and Senator Coverdell's staff, are trying to get that done. We have not been able to move ahead at the moment because we cannot get consent to set aside the pending Nickles amendment, second-degree amendment. We are going to proceed now to foreign operations. We have consent on a proposal, which I am about to make. I ask unanimous consent the pending first- and second-degree amendments be laid aside and the Senate now proceed to the conference report to accompany the foreign operations bill and there be 1 hour for debate equally divided; the conference report should be considered read. I further ask the votes in relation to the pending amendment and the conference report occur following the use or yielding back of the time, and the votes occur in a stacked sequence with the second vote to be 10 minutes in duration.

Mr. SPECTER. Vote first on the conference report, since we will be taking that up.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, therefore Senators may expect votes to occur perhaps as early as 11:45. We have lost about a half hour waiting for this transition, so it is my hope that although we have the unanimous consent agreement for 1 hour, we might accomplish the debate in a half hour and finish at 11:45, where we could then be expected to proceed to a vote. If the managers insist on taking the full hour, then the vote will start at 12:15. But it is hoped, so we can move this bill along, to repeat, that we can have the time yielded back and start the vote as early as 11:45.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, on behalf of the leader, I understand there is a bill at the desk due for its second reading.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I object to further reading of the bill at this time.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Agreed.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the next order of business be 9 minutes for the Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Helms. I further ask consent that Senator Lautenberg be recognized to offer a second-degree amendment and there be up to 1 hour for debate equally divided in the usual form. I further ask consent that upon the use or yielding back of the time, the vote on the Lautenberg amendment be stacked for consideration later today.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I withdraw the request. Why, I don't understand, but I will withdraw the request because it is faster to do that than to find out what the reason is why we can't stack. I say, by way of explanation, if we stack the votes, we can move more expeditiously to dispose of the Senate's business. But I hear an objection to that. I ask unanimous consent that after Senator Helms is recognized for 9 minutes, that we proceed to Senator Lautenberg's second-degree amendment for 1 hour, equally divided, and that the Senate vote in relation to the Lautenberg second-degree amendment without intervening action.

Mr. SPECTER. Might I add, before proceeding to Senator Helms' recognition, Senator Harkin and I are in agreement, as are others managing the bill, to try to get time agreements for 30 minutes equally divided. If we are to move the bill, we need to do that. I think it is not inappropriate to say that we can get as much done in 30 minutes equally divided as we can with an hour equally divided. I yield the floor.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask my colleague from Oklahoma how much time he wishes.

Mr. SPECTER. I yield 5 minutes.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an additional amount of time be granted to this side equal to the time used in excess of the leader's allotted time. I first make an inquiry as to how much in excess of the leader's allotted time was just used.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I intend to make comments for a few minutes, and then I will be prepared to yield back the remainder of our time so we can proceed to a vote, if the Senator from New Jersey is prepared to do the same.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I am interested in the comment by the Senator from New Jersey about ``he is not a lawyer, but'' with respect to what has been offered on the floor of the Senate. I would suggest that if the Presiding Officer were a judge and was looking for competent evidence, evidence that had a factual basis, the speeches would be much shorter in this Chamber. One of the things I have been impressed with over the years is the difference in the kinds of assertions--on both sides of the aisle. I am not referring to anything the distinguished Senator from New Jersey has said. But when he talks about the authenticity of representations of fact, this body takes extraordinary liberty in what is represented as fact. When it comes to the numbers, my preference would be--and I know the Senator from New Jersey did not use the expression ``lying about the numbers,'' it is some budget expert--but I do not think a comment about lying, suggesting untruthfulness, is very helpful.

Mr. SPECTER. I will.

Mr. SPECTER. I thank my colleague from New Jersey for that. I walked in a little late and hadn't heard him say that. Maybe he repeated it. I respect the comment that there are different views. But to have a chart about lying, when the matters are subject to widespread disagreements as to how you calculate numbers, I would be very critical of budget expert Stan Collender--not critical of Senator Lautenberg--for using the expression ``lying.'' I don't think that advances the ball very much. I agree with a great deal of what is in the Lautenberg amendment. I agree we ought not cut Head Start, education, VA hospitals, border patrols, transportation, environmental funding, defense funding. I think that is exactly right. But when the Senator from New Jersey comes down to the sense of the Senate and says we should avoid using budget scorekeeping gimmicks, close special interest tax loopholes, and use other appropriate methods, starting with the budget loopholes--the President's budget had more than $20 billion of advance funding. Advance funding, regrettably, has become a commonplace practice that has been engaged in on all sides. I think the precedent and the custom are used generally and not subject to criticism from someone who uses them. When the President submits a budget with a tax increase of 55 cents a pack on cigarettes resulting in revenues of $6.5 billion, I might support that kind of a tax increase, but it is not money in the bank. It is pie in the sky. It is not even Confederate money. It doesn't exist anywhere. So when the President includes that in his budget, that is hardly a subject to criticize Republicans on grounds of gimmickry. When the advance funding is accepted that the President uses, and the Republicans have used it, too, but you can't have a tax increase to pay for discretionary programs under the Balanced Budget Act. I don't know if that is a very good provision, but I do know it is the law. I do know it is a law the President signed. So when the sense-of-the-Senate resolution calls for eliminating gimmicks and you have that approach--I won't call it gimmickry; why disparage the administration; just call it ``that approach''--it hardly is valid. Then the final line on the amendment by the Senator from New Jersey is ``and by using other appropriate offsets.'' I am all for appropriate offsets, but what are they? Where are they? I think what we have to do--and we are still struggling on this--is to bring our appropriations bills within the caps, not to cut Social Security. I agree totally with the Senator from New Jersey on not touching Social Security. I think that is an accepted conclusion on all sides. We are struggling with this bill, and we have a lot of amendments yet to be offered. This is a very massive bill, $91.7 billion. This bill was crafted in the subcommittee, the full committee, to take the maximum load that could be borne on this side of the aisle. I may be wrong about that. My distinguished colleague from Oklahoma raises some significant questions with me about the propriety of that amount of money. Well, we have to really, my metaphor is, run between the raindrops in a hurricane to find a bill which shall be passed by this body and go to conference with the House and can be signed by the President. I had occasion to have a word or two with the President about this bill last night, when we were talking about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The President doesn't like the bill because it takes out a lot of his programs. The Constitution gives some authority to the Congress on appropriations--a little more expressed, explicit authority to the Congress than to the President, although the President has to sign the bills, but we do have some standing. So when we disagree with some of the priorities and have added $2.3 billion to education and are $500 million more than the President, we are trying to fit this bill within the budget constraints and within the caps which we have. While we have dueling sense-of-the-Senate resolutions, I intend to vote against the resolution offered by the Senator from New Jersey. I voted for the resolution offered by the Senator from Oklahoma. I think, in all candor, that neither of these resolutions advances this bill a whole lot. What we have to deal with on this bill are the hard dollars and the specific programs. In the interest of moving the bill ahead, I will inquire how much time I have remaining in anticipation of yielding it back.

Mr. SPECTER. I yield the floor. Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I had inquired of the Parliamentarian how much time was being used when it was up to 17 minutes. I was informed that the Parliamentarian never interrupts the leader when the time is in excess. I didn't want to break with that custom. But it seemed to me, as a matter of comity and fairness, that if excess time was being used, there ought to be that much additional time on this side. But I understand the rules. If there is objection to that, so be it. How much more time is left on this side of the aisle?

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the arguments by the Senator from South Dakota. When he talks about Democrats being locked out, certainly he isn't talking about this bill. The ranking member and I worked on this bill in a collaborative partnership. I don't know if he is referring to other bills or just this bill, but there was no lock out here. When the Senator from South Dakota objects to across-the-board cuts and says--may we have order, Mr. President-- that we ought to take a look at matters one by one and make the tough choices, we ought to have the offsets, I would certainly be in favor of that. If the Senator from New Jersey had made specific requests on offsets, I would have been glad to vote on them one by one instead of saying ``other appropriate offsets.'' If he had identified special interest tax loopholes, I would have been prepared to vote on those one by one instead of the generalization. But I think it is worth noting that on this bill nobody on that side of the aisle has made any suggestion for any offset--not at all. We added to block grants $900 million by an amendment from the Senator from Florida. We had $900 million offered from day care and added to the bill by the Senator from Connecticut. We had $200 million offered but rejected by the Senator from California for afterschool; $200 million offered but rejected on class size by the Senator from Washington. We have amendments pending now by the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Wellstone, $3 billion for disadvantaged education; $3 billion for Head Start. Other amendments, the Senator from Massachusetts, $200 million on one; the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, $200 million on another. I think those are all very worthwhile programs. But it hardly lies in the mouth of those on the other side of the aisle to talk about hard decisions of offsets when they don't talk about any offsets and they don't talk about any hard decisions. They don't talk about specifics. I don't like across-the-board cuts, either. I have said so. I don't think we are going to have across-the-board cuts. I think that is the sword of Damocles which is hanging over this appropriations process to keep us within the caps. But we have hardly heard of any offsets or any tough decisions on the other side of the aisle. I yield the floor.

Mr. SPECTER. On our sequencing, we are now ready for an amendment from the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy. He and I have had an informal discussion on a unanimous consent request to not have any second-degree amendments, to vote on or in relation to the Kennedy amendment after 30 minutes equally divided. And I supplement that with no second-degree amendments prior to the motion to table.

Mr. SPECTER. It is my intention to stack the votes, to take them up later today, so there will be no vote before 4:15.

Mr. SPECTER. Yes.

Mr. SPECTER. I renew my unanimous consent request to have 30 minutes equally divided, no vote before 4:15, no second-degree amendments, and a tabling motion on or in relation to the Kennedy amendment.